Chapter VI: Life on the Press. 1866-1869 (1)

I become managing editor of John W. Forney's _Press_--Warwick the King- maker--The dead duck--A trip to Kansas in the old buffalo days--Miss Susan Blow, of St. Louis--The Iron Mountain of Missouri--A strange dream--Rattlesnakes--Kaw Indians--I am adopted into the tribe--Grand war- dance and ceremonies--Open-air lodgings--Prairie fires--In a dangerous country--Indian victims--H. M. Stanley--Lieutenant Hesselberger--I shoot a buffalo--Wild riding--In a herd--Indian white men--Ringing for the carriage with a rifle--Brigham the driver--General and Mrs. Custer--Three thousand miles in a railway car--How "Hans Breitmann's" ballads came to be published--The publisher thinks that he cannot sell more than a thousand of the book--I establish a weekly newspaper--Great success--Election rioting--Oratory and revolvers--How the meek and lowly Republicans revolvered the Democrats--The dead duck and what befell him who bore it--I make two thousand German votes by giving Forney a lesson in their language--_Freiheit und Gleichheit_--The Winnebago Indian chief--Horace Greeley--Maretzek the Bohemian--Fanny Janauschek and the Czech language--A narrow escape from death on the Switchback--Death of my father--Another Western railway excursion--A quaint old darkey--Chicago--I threaten to raise the rent--General influence of Chicago--St. Paul, Minnesota--A seven days' journey through the wilderness--The Canadian--Smudges--Indians--A foot journey through the woods--Indian pack- bearers--Mayor Stewart--I rifle a grave of silver ornaments--Isle Royale--My brother, Henry Perry Leland--The press--John Forney carries Grant's election, and declares that I really did the work--The weekly press and George Francis Train--Grant's appointments--My sixth introduction to the General--Garibaldi's dagger.

We had not lived at Mrs. Sandgren's more than a week when George Boker, knowing my need, spoke to Colonel John Forney, who was at that time not only Secretary of the Senate of the United States, but the proprietor of the _Chronicle_ newspaper in Washington, of the _Press_ in Philadelphia, "both daily," as the Colonel once said, which very simple and commonplace expression became a popular by-word. Colonel Forney wanted a managing editor for the _Press_, and, as I found in due time, not so much a man of enterprise and a leader--that _he_ supplied--nor yet one to practically run the journal--that his son John, a young man of eighteen, supplied--so much as a steady, trustworthy, honest _pivot_ on which the compass could turn during his absences--and that _I_ supplied. I must, to explain the situation, add gently that John, who could not help it considering his experiences, was, to put it mildly, a little irregular, rendering a steady manager absolutely necessary. It was a great pity, for John the junior was extremely clever as a practical managing editor, remembering everything, and knowing--what I never did or could--all the little tricks, games, and wiles of all the reporters and others employed.

Colonel Forney was such a remarkable character, and had such a great influence for many years in American politics, that as I had a great deal to do with him--very much more than was generally known--at a time when he struck his greatest political _coup_, in which, as he said, I greatly aided him, I will here dwell on him a space. Before I knew him I called him Warwick the King-maker, for it was generally admitted that it was to his intense hatred of Buchanan, added to his speech-making, editing, and tremendously vigorous and not always over-scrupulous intriguing, that "Ten-cent Jimmy" owed his defeat. At this time, in all presidential elections, Pennsylvania turned the scale, and John Forney could and did turn Pennsylvania like a Titan; and he frankly admitted that he owed the success of his last turn to me, as I shall in time relate.

Forney's antipathies were always remarkably well placed. He hated Buchanan; also, for certain personal reasons, he hated Simon Cameron; and finally it came to pass that he hated Andrew Johnson with a hatred of twenty-four carats--an _aquafortis_ detestation--and for a most singular cause.

One night when this "President by the pistol, and smallest potato in the American garden of liberty," was making one of his ribald speeches, after having laid out Horace Greeley, some one in the crowd cried--

"Now give us _John Forney_!"

With an air of infinite contempt the President exclaimed--

"I don't waste _my_ powder on dead ducks."

He had better have left that word unsaid, for it ruined him. It woke Colonel John Forney up to the very highest pitch of his fighting "Injun," or, as they say in Pennsylvania, his "Dutch." He had always been to that hour a genial man, like most politicians, a little too much given to the social glass. But from that date of the dead duck he became "total abstinence," and concentrated all his faculties and found all his excitement in vengeance hot and strong, without a grain of sugar. In which I gladly sympathised and aided, for I detested Johnson as a renegade Copperhead, or rather venomous toad to the South, who wished with all his soul to undo Lincoln's work and bring in the Confederacy. And I believe, on my life and soul, that if John Forney had not defeated him, we should have had such disasters as are now inconceivable, the least of them being a renewal of the war. Johnson had renegaded from the Confederacy because, being only a tailor, he had ranked as a "low white," or something despised even by "quality" negroes. The Southern aristocracy humbugged him by promising that if he would betray the Union he should be regarded as one of themselves, by which very shallow cheat he was--as a snob would be--easily caught, and in due time cast off.

I had been but a few weeks on the _Press_, and all was going on well, when one morning the Colonel abruptly asked me if I could start in the morning for Fort Riley, of which all I knew was that it constituted an extreme frontier station in Kansas. There was to be a Kansas Pacific railway laid out, and a large party of railroad men intended to go as far as the last surveyor's camp. Of course, a few editors had been invited to write up the road, and these in turn sent some one in their place. I knew at once that I should have something like the last year's wild life over again, and I was delighted. I borrowed John Forney's revolver, provided an agate-point and "manifold paper" for duplicate letters to our "two papers, both daily," and at the appointed hour was at the railway station. There had been provided for us the director's car, a very large and extremely comfortable vehicle, with abundance of velvet "settees" or divan sofas, with an immense stock of lobster-salad, cold croquettes, game, with "wines of every fineness," and excellent waiters. The excursion, indeed, cost 1,000 pounds; but it was made to pay, and that to great profit.

We were all a very genial, congenial party of easy-going geniuses. There was Hassard, the "day editor" of the _New York Tribune_, who had been with me on the _Cyclopaedia_, and to whom I was much attached, for he was a gentlemanly scholar, and withal had seen enough of life on the _Tribune_ to hold his own with any man; and Captain William Colton, who had been with me in Tennessee; Robert Lamborn, who had studied science in Germany, and was now a railroad man, and many more who are recorded in my pamphlet, "Three Thousand Miles in a Railway Car," and my old associate, Caspar Souder, of the _Bulletin_. This excursion was destined, in connection with this pamphlet, to have a marvellous effect on my future life.

In every town where we paused--and our pauses were frequent, as we travelled very much on the "go-as-you-please" plan--we were received by the authorities with honour and speeches and invited to dinners or drinks. Our conductors were courtesy itself. One afternoon one of them on a rough bit of road said, "Gentlemen, whenever you wish to open a bottle of champagne, please to pull the cord and stop the train. You can then drink without spilling your wine."

So we went to Chicago and St. Louis, where we were entertained by Mr. Blow, and where I became acquainted with his daughter Susan. She was then a beautiful blonde, and, as I soon found, very intelligent and cultured. She was long years afterwards busy in founding philanthropic schools in St. Petersburg, Russia, when I was there--a singularly noble woman. However, at this time neither of us dreamed of the school-keeping which we were to experience in later years. At this soiree, and indeed for the excursion the next day, we had as a guest Mr. Walter, of the London _Times_.

The next day we had a special train and an excursion of ladies and gentlemen to visit the marvellous Knob or Iron Mountain. This is an immense conical hill with a deep surrounding dale, beyond which rise other hills all of nearly solid iron. Returning that evening in the train, a very strange event took place. There was with us a genial, pleasant, larky young fellow, one of the famous family of the MacCooks. When the war came on he was at college--went into the army, fought hard--rose to be captain, and then after the peace went back to the college and finished his studies. This was the "event." We were telling stories of dreams; when it came to my turn I said:--

"In 1860 I had never been in Ohio, nor did I know anything about it. One night--it was at Reading, Pennsylvania--I fell asleep, I dreamed that I _woke up_, rose from the bed, went to the match-box, struck a light, and while it burned observed the room, which was just the same as when I had retired. The match went out. I lit another, when what was my amazement to observe that _everything in the room had changed its colour to a rich brown_! Looking about me, I saw on a kind of _etagere_ scores of half- burned candles in candlesticks, as if there had been a ball. I lighted nearly all of them. Hearing a sound as of sweeping and the knocking of a broom-handle without, I went into the next room, which was the hall where the dance had been held. A very stupid fellow was sweeping it out. I asked him where I was. He could not reply intelligently. There came into the hall a bustling, pleasant woman, rather small, who I saw at a glance was the housekeeper. She said something to the man as to the room's being dark. I remarked that there was light enough in my room, for I had lit all the candles. She cried, laughing, 'What extravagance!' I answered, 'My dear little woman, what does a candle or two signify to you? Now please tell me where I am. Last night I went to sleep in Reading, Pennsylvania. Where am I now?' She replied (and of this word I was not sure), 'In _Columbus_, Ohio.' I asked if there was any prominent man in the place who was acquainted with Philadelphia, and who might aid me to return. She reflected, and said that Judge _Duer_ and his two daughters (of whom I had never heard) had just returned from the East."

Here MacCook interrupted me eagerly: "You were not in Columbus, but in _Dayton_, Ohio. And it was not Judge Duer, but Judge _Duey_, with his two daughters, who was that summer in the East." I went on:--

"I left the room and went into the hall. I came to the front door. Far down below me I saw a winding river and a steamboat."

Here MacCook spoke again: "That was _surely_ Dayton. I know the house and the view. But it could not have been Columbus." I went on:--

"I went downstairs too far by mistake into the cellar. There I found a man sawing wood. I went up again. [Pray observe that a year _after_, when I went West, this very incident occurred one morning in Cincinnati, Ohio.] I found in the bar-room three respectable-looking men. I told them my story. One said to the others, 'He is always the same old fellow!' I stared at him in amazement. He held out one hand and moved the other as if fiddling. Monotonous creaking sounds followed, and I gradually awoke. The same sounds continued, but they were caused by the grasshoppers and tree-toads, who pipe monotonously all night long in America."

Nothing ever came of the dream, but it all occurred _exactly_ as I describe it. I have had several quite as strange. Immediately after I had finished my narration, some one, alluding to our party, asked if there was any one present who could sing "Hans Breitmann's Barty," and I astonished them not a little by proclaiming that I was the author, and by singing it.

We went on to Leavenworth, where we had a dinner at the hotel which was worthy of Paris. We had, for example, prairie pullets or half-grown grouse, wild turkeys and tender venison. Thence to Fort Riley, and so on in waggons to the last surveyor's camp. I forget where it was on the route that we stopped over-night at a fort, where I found some old friends and made new ones. A young officer--Lieutenant Brown, I think--gave me a bed in his cabin. His ceiling was made of canvas. For weeks he had heard a great rattlesnake moving about on it. One day he had made a hole in the ceiling and put into it a great fierce tom-cat. The cat "went for" the snake and there was an awful row. After a time the cat came out looking like a devil with every hair on end, made straight for the prairie, and was never heard of again. Neither was the snake. They had finished one another. On another occasion, when sitting in a similar cabin, my gentle hostess, an officer's wife, whom I had known a few years before as a beauty in society, remarked that she had two large rattlesnakes in her ceiling, and that if we would be silent we might hear them crawling about. They could not be taken out without rebuilding the roof.

Captain Colton had just recovered from a very bad attack of fever and ague, and, being young, had the enormous appetite which follows weeks of quinine. I saw him this day eat a full meal of beefsteaks, and then immediately after devour another, at Brown's, of buffalo-meat. The air of the Plains causes incredible hunger. We all played a good knife and fork.

About twilight-tide there came in a very gentlemanly Catholic priest. I was told that he was a roving missionary. He led a charmed life, for he went to visit the wildest tribes, and was everywhere respected. I conversed with him in French. After a while he spread his blanket, lay down on the floor and slept till morning, when he read his prayers and departed.

The next day the fort square was full of Kaw Indians, all in savage array, about to depart for their autumnal buffalo-hunt. I met one venerable heathen with his wife and babe, with whom I made genial acquaintance. I asked the wife the name for a whip; she replied _B'meergashee_; a pony was _shoonga_, the nose _hin_, and a woman _shimmy- shindy_! I bought his whip for a dollar. The squaw generously offered to throw in the baby, which I declined, and we all laughed and parted.

I went to the camp, and there the whole party, seeing my curious whip, went at the Kaws to buy theirs. Bank-bills were our only currency then, and the Indians knew there were such things as counterfeits. They consulted together, eyed us carefully, and then every man as he received his dollar brought it to me for approval. By chance I knew the Pawnee word for "good" (_Washitaw_), and they also knew it. Then came a strange wild scene. I spoke to the chief, and pointing to my whip said, "_B'meergashee_" and indicating a woman and a pony, repeated, "_Shimmy- shindy_, _shoonga-hin_," intimating that its use was to chastise women and ponies by hitting them on the nose. Great was the amazement and delight of the Kaws, who roared with laughter, and their chief curiously inquired, "_You_ Kaw?" To which I replied, "_O_, _nitchee_, _me_ Kaw, _washita_ good Injun me." He at once embraced me with frantic joy, as did the others, to the great amazement of my friends. A wild circular dance was at once improvised to celebrate my reception into the tribe; at which our driver Brigham dryly remarked that he didn't wonder they were glad to get me, for I was the first Injun ever seen in that tribe with a whole shirt on him. This was the order of proceedings:--I stood in the centre and sang wildly the following song, which was a great favourite with our party, and all joining in the chorus:--

I slew the chief of the Muscolgee;
I burnt his squaw at the blasted tree!
By the hind-legs I tied up the cur,
He had no time to fondle on her.

_Chorus_.

Hoo! hoo! hoo! the Muscolgee!
Wah, wah, wah! the blasted tree!

A faggot from the blasted tree
Fired the lodge of the Muscolgee;
His sinews served to string my bow
When bent to lay his brethren low.

_Chorus_.

Hoo! hoo! hoo! the Muscolgee!
Wah, wah, wah! the blasted tree!

I stripped his skull all naked and bare,
And here's his skull with a tuft of hair!
His heart is in the eagle's maw,
His bloody bones the wolf doth gnaw.

_Chorus_.

Hoo! hoo! hoo! the Muscolgee!
Wah, wah, wah! the blasted tree!

The Indians yelled and drummed at the Reception Dance. "Now you good Kaw--Good Injun you be--all same me," said the chief. Hassard and Lamborn cracked time with their whips, and, in short, we made a grand circular row; truly it was a wondrous striking scene! From that day I was called the Kaw chief, even by Hassard in his letters to the _Tribune_, in which he mentioned that in scenes of excitement I rode and whooped like a savage. It _may_ be so--_I_ never noticed it; perhaps he exaggerated, but I must admit that I do like Indians, and they like me. We took ambulances or strong covered army-waggons and pushed on. We were now well out on the plains. All day long we passed prairie-dog villages and saw antelopes bounding afar. At night we stopped at the hotel _Alla Fresca_, or slept in the open air. It was perfectly delightful, though in November. Far in the distance many prairie fires stretched like miles of blazing serpents over the distance. I thought of the innumerable camp- fires before the battle of Gettysburg, and determined that the two were among the most wonderful sights of my life. We rose very early in the morning, by grey light, and after a drink of whisky pushed on. I may here mention that from 1863 for six years I very rarely indeed tasted any intoxicant.

So we went on till we reached the last surveyor's camp. We had not been there half an hour before a man came in declaring that he had just saved his scalp, having seen a party of Apaches in their war-paint, but luckily hid himself before they discovered him. It was evident that we had now got beyond civilisation. Already, on the way, we had seen ranches which had been recently burned by the Indians, who had killed their inmates. One man, observing my Kaw whip, casually remarked that as I was fond of curiosities he was sorry that he had not kept six arrows which he had lately pulled out of a man whom he had found lying dead in the road, and who had just been shot by the Indians.

Within this same hour after our arrival there came in a Lieutenant Hesselberger, bringing with him a Mrs. Box and her two daughters, one about sixteen and the other twelve. The Indians had on the Texas frontier murdered and scalped her husband before her eyes, burned their home, and carried the three into captivity, where for six months they were daily subjected to such _incredible_ outrages and cruelty that it was simply a miracle that they survived. As it was, they looked exactly like corpses. Lieutenant Hesselberger, with bravery beyond belief, having heard of these captives, went alone to the Indians to ransom them. Firstly, they fired guns unexpectedly close to his head, and finding that he did not start, brought out the captives and subjected them to the extremes of gross abuse before his eyes, and repeatedly knocked them down with clubs, all of which he affected to disregard. At last the price was agreed on and he took them away.

In after years, when I described all this in London to Stanley, the African explorer, he said, "Strange! I, too, was there that very day, and saw those women, and wrote an account of it to the _New York Herald_." I daresay that I met and talked to him at the time among those whom we saw.

Not far from our camp there was a large and well-populated beaver-dam, which I studied with great interest. It was more like a well regulated town than is many a western mining village. I do not wonder that Indians regard _Quahbeet_, the beaver, as a human being in disguise. N.B.--The beaver always, when he cuts a stick, sharpens it like a lead-pencil--which indicates an artistic nature.

It was now resolved that a number of our party should go into the Smoky Hill country to attend a very great Indian council, while the rest returned home. So I joined the adventurers. The meeting was not held, for I believe the Indians went to war. But we rode on. One morning I saw afar a few black specks, and thought they were cattle. And so they were, but the free cattle of the plains, or buffaloes. That evening, as we were out of meat, Colton and others went out to hunt them, and had a fine chase, but got nothing.

The next morning Colton kindly gave me his chance--that is, he resigned to me a splendid black horse used to the business--and most of us went to the field. After a while, or a four miles' run, we came up with a number. There was a fine cow singled out and shot at, and I succeeded in putting a ball in just behind the shoulder. Among us all she became beef, and an expert hunter with us, whose business it was to supply the camp with meat, skinned and butchered her and cooked a meal for us on the spot. The beef was deliciously tender and well flavoured.

Now, before this cooking, in the excitement of the chase, I had ridden on like an Indian, as Hassard said in his letter, whooping like one all alone after the buffalo, and in my joy forgot to shake the spent cartridge out of my Spenser seven-shooter carbine. All at once I found myself right in the herd, close by a monstrous bull, whose height at the instant when he turned on me to gore me seemed to be about a hundred and fifty feet. But my horse was used to this, and swerved with incredible tact and swiftness, while I held on. I then had a perfectly close shot, not six feet off, under the shoulder, and I raised the carbine and pulled trigger, when it--_ticked_! I had forgotten the dead cartridge, and was not used to the arm which I carried. I think that I swore, and if I did not I am sorry for it. Before I could arrange my charge the buffaloes were far away.

{Stairs of rock: p329.jpg}

However, we had got our cow, and that was more than we really needed. At any rate, I had shot a buffalo and had a stupendous run. And here I must mention that while racing and whooping, I executed the most insanely foolish thing I ever did in all my life, which astonished the hunter and all present to the utmost. I was at the top of a declivity from which there descended a flight of natural stairs of rock, but every one very broad, like the above sketch.

And being inspired by the devil, and my horse not objecting at all, I clattered down over it at full speed _a la_ Putnam. I have heard that Indians do this very boldly, declaring that it is perfectly safe if the rider is not afraid, and I am quite sure that mine must have been an Indian horse. I hope that no one will think that I have put forward or made too much of these trifling boyish tricks of recklessness. They are of daily occurrence in the Wild West among men who like excitement, and had Robert Hunt been among us there would have been fun indeed.

So we turned homewards, for the Indian Conference had proved a failure. We had for our driver a man named Brigham, to whom I had taken a great liking. He had lived as a trader among the wildest Indians, spoke Spanish fluently, and knew the whole Western frontier like his pocket. The day after we had seen Mrs. Box come in, I was praising the braveness of Lieutenant Hesselberger in venturing to rescue her.

"It isn't all bravery at all," said Brigham. "He's brave as a panther, but there's more in it than _that_. There is about one man in a hundred, and not more, who can go among the most God-forsaken devils of Injuns and never get hurt. The Injuns take to them at a glance and love 'em. _I'm_ such a man, and I've proved it often enough, God knows! Lieutenant Hesselberger is one, and," he added abruptly, "Mr. Leland, _you're_ another."

"What makes you think so?" I said, greatly surprised.

"'Cause I've watched you. You've got Injun ways that you don't know of. Didn't I notice the other day, when the gentlemen were buying the whips from the Kaws, that every Injun took a squint, and then came straight to _you_? Why didn't they go to one of the other gentlemen? Because they've got an instinct like a dog for their friends, and for such as _we_."

We were coming to Fort Harker. I forget how it all came about, but we found ourselves afoot, with a mile or two to walk, carrying our guns, carpet-bags, and _petites bagages_, while about fifty yards ahead or more there was Brigham driving on merrily to the fort, under the impression that we had secured other conveyance.

Captain Colton fired his carbine. It made about as much noise as a percussion-cap, and the wind was from Brigham toward us. Carried away by an impulse, I caught Colonel Lamborn's light rifle out of his hand.

"Great God!" he cried, "you don't mean to shoot at him?"

"If you'll insure the mules," I said, "I will the driver." My calculation was to send a bullet so near to Brigham that he could hear it whizz, but not to touch him. It was not so dangerous as the shot I had fired over Sam Fox, and the "spirit" was on me!

But I did _not_ know that in the covered waggon sat Hassard talking with Brigham, their faces being, as Hassard declared, just about six inches apart. I fired, and the bullet passed just between their noses!

Hassard heard the whizz, and cried, "What's that?"

"_Injuns_, by God!" roared Brigham, forgetting that we had left the Indian country two days behind us. "Lie down in the waggon while I drive." And drive he did, till out of gunshot, and then putting his face out, turned around, and gave in full desperate cry the taunting war-whoop of the Cheyennes. It was a beautiful sight that of Brigham's broad red face wild with rage--and his great gold earrings and Mexican sombrero--turning round the waggon at us in defiance like Marmion!

But when he realised that _we_ had fired at him, just as a pack of d---d Apaches might have done, for fun, to stop the waggon, his expression became one of utter bewilderment. As I came up I thought there might be a shindy.

"Brigham," I said in Spanish, "_es la mano o el navajo_?" [Is it to be hand, or knife?]

Brigham was proud of his Spanish; it was his elegant accomplishment, and this was a good scene. Grasping my hand cordially, he said, "_La mano_." Like a true frontiersman, he felt in a minute the _grandeur_ of the joke. There was, if I may so vulgarly express myself, an _Indian-uity_ in it which appealed to his deepest feelings. There was a silence for several minutes, which he broke by exclaiming--

"I've driven waggons now this twelve years on the frontier, but I never heard before of tryin' to stop the waggon by shootin' at the driver."

There was another long silent pause, when he resumed--

"I wish to God there was a gulch (ravine) between here and the fort! I'd upset this crowd into it d---d quick!"

That evening I took leave of Brigham. I drank healths with him in whisky, and shook hands, and said--

"I did a very foolish and reckless thing to-day, Brigham, when I shot at you, and I am sorry for it, and I beg your pardon. Here is a dagger which I have had for twenty-five years. I carried it all over Europe. I have nothing better to give you; please take it. And when you stick a Greaser (Mexican) with it, as I expect you will do some day, then think of me."

The tears rose to his eyes, and he departed. I never met him again, but "well I wot" he ever had kindly remembrance of me. We were to be guests of General Custer at the fort, and I was rather shy of meeting the castellan after firing at his driver! But he greeted me with a hearty burst of laughter, and said--

"Mr. Leland, you have the most original way of ringing a bell when you want to call a carriage that I ever heard of."

As for Hassard, when he witnessed my parting with Brigham, he said--

"This is all mighty fine! daggers and whisky, and all kinds of beautiful things flying around for Brigham, but what am _I_ to have?"

"And what dost thou expect, son Hassard?" I replied.

Holding out both his hands, he replied--

"Much tobacco! much tobacco!"

This was in allusion to a story told us by Lieutenant Brown. Not long before, the Lieutenant, seeing, as he thought, a buffalo, had fired at it. But the buffalo turned out to be an Indian on a pony; and the Indian riding fiercely at the Lieutenant, cried aloud for indemnity or the "blood-fine" in the words, "Much tobacco!" And so I stood cigars.

Life is worth living for--or it would be--if it abounded more in such types as Mrs. General Custer and her husband. There was a bright and joyous chivalry in that man, and a noble refinement mingled with constant gaiety in the wife, such as I fear is passing from the earth. Her books have shown that she was a woman of true culture, and that she came by it easily, as he did, and that out of a little they could make more than most do from a life of mere study. I fear that there will come a time when such books as hers will be the only evidences that there were ever such people--so fearless, so familiar with every form of danger, privation, and trial, and yet joyous and even reckless of it all. Good Southern blood and Western experiences had made them free of petty troubles. The Indians got his scalp at last, and with him went one of the noblest men whom America ever brought forth. {333}

That evening they sent for a Bavarian-Tyroler soldier, who played beautifully on the cithern. As I listened to the _Jodel-lieder_ airs I seemed to be again in his native land. It was a pleasure to me to hear from him the familiar dialect.

At St. Louis we were very kindly entertained in several distinguished houses. At one they gave us some excellent Rhine wine.

"What do you think of this?" said Hassard, who was a good Latinist.

I replied, "Vinum Rhenense decus et gloria mense."

In the next we had Moselle wine. "And what of this?"

I answered, "Vinuin Moslanum fuit omne tempore sanum."

And here I would say that every memory which I have of Missouri (and there are more by far than this book indicates), as of Missourians, is extremely pleasant. The State is very beautiful, and I have found among my friends there born such culture and kindness and genial hospitality as I have never seen surpassed. To the names of Mary A. Owen, {334} Blow, Mark Twain, and the Choteaus I could add many more.

So we jogged on homeward. I resumed my work. I had written out all the details of our trip in letters to the _Press_. They had excited attention. The Pennsylvania Railroad Company suggested that they should be published in a pamphlet. I did so, and called it "Three Thousand Miles in a Railroad Car." They offered to pay me a very good sum for my trouble in so doing. I declined it, because I felt that I had been amply paid by the pleasure which I had derived from the journey. But I received grateful recognition subsequently in another form. The pamphlet was most singular of its kind. It was a full report of all the statistics and vast advantages of the Kansas Pacific Road. It contained very valuable facts and figures; and it was all served up with jokes, songs, buffalo-hunting, Indians, and Brigham. It was a marvellous farrago, and it "took." It was sent to every member of Congress and "every other man."

Before it appeared, a friend of mine named Ringwalt, who was both a literary man and owner of a printing-office, offered me $200 if I would secure him the printing of it. I said that I would not take the money, but that I would get him the printing, which I easily did; but being a very honourable man, he was led to discharge the obligation. One day he said to me, "Why don't you publish your 'Breitmann Ballads?' Everybody is quoting them now." I replied, "There is not a publisher in America who would accept them." And I was quite right, for there was not. He answered, "I will print them for you." I accepted the offer, but when they were set up an idea occurred to me by which I could save my friend his expenses. I went to a publisher named T. B. Peterson, who said effectively this--"The book will not sell more than a thousand copies. There will be about a thousand people who will buy it, even for fifty cents, so I shall charge that, though it would be, as books go, only as a twenty-five cent work." He took it and paid my friend for the composition. I was not to receive any money or share in the profits till all the expenses had been paid.

Mr. Peterson immediately sold 2,000--4,000--I know not how many thousands--at fifty cents a copy. It was republished in Canada and Australia, to my loss. An American publisher who owned a magazine asked me, through his editor, to write for it a long Breitmann poem. I did so, making, however, an explicit verbal arrangement _that it should not be republished as a book_. It was, however, immediately republished as such, with a title to the effect that it was the "Breitmann Ballads." I appealed to the editor, and it was withdrawn, but I know not how many were issued, to my loss.

I had transferred the whole right of publication in England to my friend Nicolas Trubner, whom I had met when he had visited America, and I wrote specially for his edition certain poems. John "Camden" Hotten wrote to me modestly asking me to give _him_ the sole right to republish the work. He said, "I hardly know what to say about the price. Suppose we say _ten pounds_!" I replied, "Sir, I have given the whole right of publication to Mr. Trubner, and I would not take it from him for ten thousand pounds." Hotten at once published an edition which was a curiosity of ignorance and folly. There was a blunder on an average to every page. He had annotated it! He explained that _Knasterbart_ meant "a nasty fellow," and that the French _garce_ was _gare_, "a railway station!" Trubner had sold 5,000 copies before this precious affair appeared. After Hotten's death the British public were informed in an obituary that he had "_first_ introduced me" to their knowledge!

Hans Breitmann became a type. I never heard of but one German who ever reviled the book, and that was a Democratic editor in Philadelphia. But the Germans themselves recognised that the pen which poked fun at them was no poisoned stiletto. Whenever there was a grand German procession, Hans was in it--the indomitable old _Degen_ hung with _loot_--and he appeared in every fancy ball. Nor were the Confederates offended. One of the most genial, searching, and erudite reviews of the work, which appeared in a Southern magazine (De Bow's), declared that I had truly written the Hudibras of the Civil War. What struck this writer most was the fact that I had opened a _new_ field of humour. And here he was quite right. With the exception of Dan Rice's circus song of "Der goot oldt Sherman shentleman," and a rather flat parody of "Jessie, the Flower of Dumblane," I had never seen or heard of any specimen of Anglo-German poetry. To be _merely original_ in language is not to excel in everything--a fact very generally ignored--else my Pidgin-English ballads would take precedence of Tennyson's poems! On the other hand, very great poets have often not made a new _form_. The Yankee type, both as regards spirit and language, had become completely common and familiar in prose and poetry, before Lowell revived it in the clever _Biglow Papers_. Bret Harte's "Heathen Chinee," and several other poems, are, however, _both_ original and admirable. Whatever the merits or demerits of mine were--and it was years ere I ever gave them a thought--the public, which is always eager for something new, took to them at once.

I say that for years I never gave them a thought. All of the principal poems except the "Barty" and "Breitmann as a Politician," were merely written to fill up letters to C. A. Bristed, of New York, and I kept no copies of them--in fact, utterly _forgot_ them. _Weingeist_ was first written in a letter to a sister of Captain Colton, with the remark that it was easier to write such a ballad than any prose. But Bristed published them _a mon insu_ in a sporting paper. Years after I learned that I published one called "Breitmann's Sermon" in _Leslie's Magazine_. This I have never recovered. If I write so much about these poems now, I certainly was not vain of them when written. The public found them out long before I did, and it is not very often that it gets ahead of a poet in appreciating his own works.

However, I was "awful busy" in those days. I had hardly begun on the _Press_ ere I found that it had a weekly paper, made up from the daily type transferred, which only just paid its expenses. Secondly, I discovered that there was not a soul on the staff except myself who had had any experience of weekly full editing. I at once made out a schedule, showing that by collecting and grouping agricultural and industrial items, putting in two or three columns of original matter, and bringing in a story to go through the daily first, the weekly could be vastly improved at very little expense.

Colonel Forney admired the scheme, but asked "who was to carry it out." I replied that I would. He remonstrated, very kindly, urging that I had all I could do as it was. I answered, "Colonel Forney, this is not a matter of time, but _method_. There is always time for the man who knows how to lay it out." So I got up a very nice paper. But for a very long time I could not get an agent to solicit advertisements who knew the business. The weekly paid its expenses and nothing more. But one day there came to me a young man named M. T. Wolf. He was of Pennsylvania German stock. He had lost a small fortune in the patent medicine business and wanted employment badly. I suggested that, until something else could be found, he should try his hand at collecting "advers."

Now, be it observed, as Mozart was born to music, and some men have a powerful instinct to study medicine, and others are so unnatural as to take to mathematics, Wolf had a grand undeveloped genius beyond all belief for collecting advertisements. He had tried many pursuits and failed, but the first week he went into this business he brought in $200 (40 pounds), which gave him forty dollars, and he never afterwards fell below it, but often rose above. "Advers." for him meant not adversity. It was very characteristic of Colonel Forney, who was too much absorbed in politics to attend much to business, that long after the _Weekly Press_ was yielding him $10,000 a year _clear profit_, he said to me one day, "Mr. Leland, you must not be discouraged as to the weekly; the clerks tell me in the office that it _meets its expenses_!"

There was abundance of life and incident on the newspaper in those days, especially during election times in the autumn. I have known fights, night after night, to be going on in the street below, at the corner of Seventh and Chestnut, between Republicans and Democrats, with revolver shots and flashes at the rate of fifty to a second, when I was literally so occupied with pressing telegrams that I could not look out to see the fun. One night, however, when there were death-shots falling thick and fast, I saw a young man make a most _incredible_ leap. He had received a bullet under the shoulder, and when a man or a deer is hit there he always leaps. I heard afterwards that he recovered, though this is a vital place.

It happened once that for a week the Republicans were kept from resisting or retaliating by their leaders, until the Democrats began to disgrace themselves by excesses. Then all at once the Republicans boiled over, thrashed their foes, and attacking the Copperhead clubs, threw their furniture out of the window, and--inadvertently perhaps--also a few Copperheads. Just before they let their angry passions rise in this fashion there came one night a delegation to serenade Colonel Forney at the office. The Colonel was grand on such occasions. He was a fine, tall, portly man, with a lion-like mien and a powerful voice. He began--

"My friends, fellow-citizens and Republicans, you have this week acted nobly."

Cries from the crowd, "_We hev_! _we hev_!"

"You, when smitten on the right cheek, turned unto the oppressor the left."

"We did! we _did_!"

"You are beyond all question models--I may say with truth, paragons of patience, long-suffering, and humility. You are--Christian gentlemen!" "We air! we _air_!"

While this was passing, a great gloomy thundercloud of the Democratic enemy gathered on the opposite sidewalk, and as the Colonel lifted his voice again, there came a cry--

"Shut up, you d---d old Republican dead-duck!"

That word was a spell to raise the devil withal. Bang! bang! bang! went the revolvers of the Union men in a volley, and the Democrats fled for their lives down Seventh Street, pursued by the meek, lowly, and long- suffering Christians--like rabbits before wolves.

The enemy at last resolved to attack the _Press_ and burn the building. Then we had one hundred and fifty policemen sent to garrison and guard. There was a surging, howling mob outside, and much guerilla-shooting, but all I can remember is my vexation at having so much to disturb me in making up the paper.

I never went armed in my life when I could help it, for I hate _impedimenta_ in my pockets. All of us in the office hung up our coats in a dark place outside. Whenever I sent an assistant to get some papers from mine, he said that he always knew my coat because there was no pistol in it.

Scenes such as these, and quite as amusing, were of constant occurrence in those days in Philadelphia. "All night long in that sweet little village was heard the soft note of the pistol and the dying scream of the victim." Now, be it noted, that a stuffed dead duck had become the _gonfalon_ or banner of the Republicans, and where it swung there the battle was fiercest. There was a young fellow from South Carolina, who had become a zealous Union man, and who made up for a sinful lack of sense by a stupendous stock of courage. One morning there came into the office an object--and such an object! His face was all swathed and hidden in bloody bandages; he was tattered, and limped, and had his arm in a sling.

"In the name of Heaven, who and what are you?" I exclaimed. "And who has been passing you through a bark-mill that you look so ground-up?"

In a sepulchral voice he replied, "I'm ---, and last night _I carried the dead duck_!"

Till I came on the _Press_ there was, it may be said, almost no community between the Germans of North Philadelphia and the Americans in our line. But I had become intimate with Von Tronk, a Hanoverian of good family, a lawyer, and editor, I believe, of the _Freie Presse_. I even went once or twice to speak at German meetings. In fact, I was getting to be considered "almost as all de same so goot ash Deutsch," and very "bopular." One day Von Tronk came with a request. There was to be an immense German Republican _Massenversammlung_ or mass-meeting in a great beer-garden. "If Colonel Forney could only be induced to address them!" I undertook to do it. It was an entirely new field to him, but one wondrous rich in votes. Now Colonel Forney, though from Lancaster County and of German-Swiss extraction, knew not a word of the language, and I undertook to coach him.

"You will only need one phrase of three words," I said, "to pull you through; but you must pronounce them perfectly and easily. They are _Freiheit und Gleichheit_, 'freedom and equality.' Now, if you _please_, _fry-height_."

The Colonel went at his lesson, and being naturally clever, with a fine, deep voice, in a quarter of an hour could roar out _Freiheit und Gleichheit_ with an intonation which would have raised a revolution in Berlin. We came to the garden, and there was an immense sensation. The Colonel had winning manners, with a manly mien, and he was duly introduced. When he rose to speak there was dead silence. He began--

"Friends and German Fellow-citizens:--Yet why should I distinguish the words, since to me every German is a friend. I am myself, as you all know, of unmingled German extraction, and I am very, very proud of it. But there is one German sentiment which from a child has been ever in my heart, and from infancy ever on my lips, and that sentiment, my friends, is _Freiheit und Gleichheit_!"

If ever audience was astonished in this world it was that of the _Massenversammlung_ when this burst on their ears. They hurrahed and roared and banged the tables in such a mad storm of delight as even Colonel Forney had never seen surpassed. Rising to the occasion, he thundered on, and as he reached the end of every sentence he repeated, with great skill and aptness, _Freiheit und Gleichheit_.

"You have made two thousand votes by that speech, Colonel," I said, as we returned. "Von Tronk will manage it at this crisis." After that, when the Colonel jested, he would called me "the Dutch vote-maker." This was during the Grant campaign.

Droll incidents were of constant occurrence in this life. Out of a myriad I will note a few. One day there came into our office an Indian agent from the West, who had brought with him a Winnebago who claimed to be the rightful chief of his tribe. They were going to Washington to enforce the claim. While the agent conversed with some one the Indian was turned over to me. He was a magnificent specimen, six feet high, clad in a long trailing scarlet blanket, with a scarlet straight feather in his hair which continued him up _ad infinitum_, and he was straight as a lightning rod. He was handsome, and very dignified and grave; but I understood _that_. I can come it indifferent well myself when I am "out of my plate," as the French, say, in strange society. He spoke no English, but, as the agent said, knew six Indian languages. He was evidently a chief by blood, "all the way down to his moccasins."

What with a few words of Kaw (I had learned about a hundred words of it with great labour) and a few other phrases of other tongues, I succeeded in interesting him. But I could not make him smile, and I swore unto myself that I would.

Being thirsty, the Indian, seeing a cooler of ice-water, with the daring peculiar to a great brave, went and took a glass and turned on the _spicket_. He filled his glass--it was brim-full--but he did not know how to _turn it off_. Then I had him. As it ran over he turned to me an appealing helpless glance. I said "_Neosho_." This in Pottawattamie means an inundation or overflowing of the banks, and is generally applied to the inundation of the Mississippi. There is a town on the latter so called. This was too much for the Indian, and he laughed aloud.

"Great God! what have you been saying to that Indian?" cried the agent, amazed. "It is the first time he has laughed since he left home."

"Only a little pun in Pottawattamie. But I really know very little of the language."

"I have no knowledge of the Indian languages," remarked our city editor, MacGinnis, a genial young Irishman, "least of all, thank God! of Pottawattamie. But I have always understood that when a man gets so far in a tongue as to make _puns_ in it, it is time for him to stop."

Years after this I was one evening in London at an opening of an exhibition of pictures. There were present Indian Hindoo princes in gorgeous array, English nobility, literary men, and fine ladies. Among them was an unmistakable Chippeway in a white Canadian blanket-coat, every inch an Indian. I began with the usual greeting, "_Ho nitchi_!" (Ho, brother!), to which he gravely replied. I tried two or three phrases on him with the same effect. Then I played a sure card. Sinking my voice with an inviting wink, I uttered "_Shingawauba_," or whisky. "Dot fetched him." He too laughed. _Gleich mit gleich_, _gesellt sich gern_.

While living in New York, and during my connection with the _Press_, I often met and sometimes conversed with Horace Greeley. Once I went with him from Philadelphia to New York, and he was in the car the observed of all observers to an extraordinary degree. He sat down, took out an immense roll of proof, and said, "_Lead pencil_!" One was immediately handed to him by some stranger, who was by that one act ennobled, or, what amounts to the same thing in America, grotesquely _charactered_ for life. He was the man who gave Horace Greeley a lead pencil! I, as his companion, was also regarded as above ordinary humanity. When the proof was finished "Horace" said to me--

"How is John Forney getting on?"

"Like Satan, walking to and fro upon the face of the earth, going from the _Chronicle_ in Washington one day to the _Press_ in Philadelphia on the next, and filling them both cram full of leaders and letters."

"Two papers, both daily! I tell Forney that I find it is all I can do to attend to one. Tell him not to get too rich--bad for the constitution and worse for the country. Any man who has more than a million is a public nuisance."

Finally, we walked together from the ferry to the corner of Park Place and Broadway, and the philosopher, after minutely explaining to me which omnibus I was to take, bade me adieu. I do not think we ever met again.