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MY OWN STORY 
 
MY OWN STORY 
 
 WITH RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 NOTED PERSONS 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN TOWNSEND TROWBRIDGE 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 Ne cede malis. — Heraldic Motto. 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 <&bt fitoetjjibe pte$$> Camfcri&ge 
 
 1903 
 
THE LItiRARY OF 
 CONbrtfcSS, 
 
 Two Copies Received 
 
 SEP 15 »903 
 
 Copvugnt Entry 
 
 CLASS Ct Wc No 
 
 COPY B. 
 
 ^C>% 
 
 <\ 
 
 I 
 
 kv 3 
 
 COPYRIGHT 1902, I903, BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 
 
 COPYRIGHT 1903, BY JOHN TOWNSEND TROWBRIDGE 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 Published September, igoj 
 
FOREWARNING 
 
 The significance of the saying (Carlyle's, is it 
 not ?) that the story of any man's life would have 
 interest and value, if truly told, is recognized, I 
 think, by the most of us ; yet each is apt to 
 fancy at least one exception to the rule, namely, 
 his own particular life. This certainly was the 
 case with myself, even up to the time when I 
 was induced — reluctantly for that reason — to 
 undertake these memoirs. I have therefore 
 been not a little surprised at the manner in 
 which the chapters that appeared in recent num- 
 bers of the Atlantic Monthly have been received, 
 and can only attribute it to whatever success I 
 may have had in fulfilling the condition that 
 points the saying. 
 
 Yet that the story I tell is not the bare, 
 absolute, unveiled verity I hasten to avow, in the 
 interest of the truth which I believe in and would 
 
vi FOREWARNING 
 
 sincerely serve. Under the purest tones of the 
 violin, persists ever the dry, dreary, accompany- 
 ing sound of the friction of the bow upon the 
 strings ; the player hears it, as likewise do any 
 of his auditors who chance to be too near the 
 instrument ; but it is properly no part of the 
 performance, and will not, if he is skilled, mar 
 his musical numbers. Alas, if he be not skilled ! 
 
 Skilled or otherwise, I have endeavored to 
 hold my audience at a little distance. While 
 aiming always at entire fidelity to the main and 
 minor facts of my record, I have kept out of it 
 as much as possible the ennuis and annoyances, 
 the errors and heartaches, of which my life has 
 doubtless been no freer than yours who peruse 
 these pages, if as free. I say this especially to 
 dispel the illusion in which some, I find, have 
 followed the published magazine chapters, — that, 
 in respect to discouragements and failures, human 
 ills and frailties, mine has been an exception to 
 the common lot. Strange illusion indeed ! 
 
 I desire also to correct a quite different 
 impression, derived from the same source, that I 
 
FOREWARNING vii 
 
 have lived what in these later years is termed a 
 " strenuous life." I do not greatly believe in the 
 strenuous life for myself, much as I may admire 
 it in another, and I had no idea that I was living it 
 in the periods of struggle and not over-successful 
 achievement I have portrayed. Our strivings after 
 better things than wealth and power and display, 
 even for complex intellectual acquirements and 
 the accomplishment of the worthiest aims, may 
 be too incessant and intense, and dry up in us 
 the springs of spirit they should feed. We do not 
 often enough rest in the divine passivity that heals 
 the hurts of time and is the restoring bath of our 
 being. Not that I would counsel a purposeless 
 drifting, while choice of direction is left us, with 
 strength of arm for the oar. Only dreams come to 
 us in our sleep Not alone the great prizes of life, 
 but often the mind's solace and the body's health, 
 wait upon work. The world is for endeavor; the 
 world is the flint, the will of man the steel. 
 
 The heraldic motto on the title-page of these 
 reminiscences (given also on a later page with its 
 context in the Sibyl's charge to ^Eneas) is in 
 
viii FOREWARNING 
 
 reality the motto of the Trowbridge coat of 
 arms. The coat of arms I have no special inter- 
 est or pride in, but the motto I deem worthy to 
 be prized, to be cited, and to shape one's life by. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. A Backwoods Boyhood i 
 
 II. Starting out in the World ... 62 
 
 III. First Experiences as a Writer ... 89 
 
 IV. Early Years in Boston 134 
 
 V. Friends and First Books 175 
 
 VI. The Writing of Neighbor Jackwood . 211 
 VII. Underwood, Lowell, and The Atlantic 
 
 Monthly 233 
 
 VIII. Cudjo's Cave and Other War Stories — A 
 
 New Home 259 
 
 IX. The South after the War . . . .271 
 
 X. Our Young Folks and Books for the Young 317 
 
 XL Recollections of Emerson and Alcott . 335 
 XII. Walt Whitman — with Glimpses of Chase 
 
 and O'Connor 360 
 
 XIII. Oliver Wendell Holmes 402 
 
 XIV. Longfellow 418 
 
 XV. Closing Numbers 451 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 John Townsend Trowbridge . . Frontispiece 
 From a photograph by Litchfield. 
 
 Birthplace of J. T. Trowbridge 10 ^ 
 
 Showing the out-door oven and the Rochester road. 
 Drawn by Charles Copeland, from descriptions ftir- 
 nished by the Author, and by the Author's eldest sis- 
 ter, Mrs. Greene. 
 Rebecca Willey Trowbridge (the Author's Mother) 
 
 at the age of 58 60 
 
 From a daguerreotype. 
 
 Major Mordecai M. Noah 98 
 
 Redrawn from a middle-age p07'trait. 
 
 Brattle St. Church 134 
 
 From a photograph loaned by the Bostonian Society. 
 Edward T. Taylor (" Father Taylor ") 138 
 
 From a photograph loaned by his daughter, Mrs. Dora 
 Taft Brigham. 
 J. T. Trowbridge at the age of 21 . . . .150 
 From a daguerreotype taken in 184Q. 
 
 Theodore Parker 168 
 
 From a photograph. 
 
 Harriet Beecher Stowe 174 - 
 
 From a daguerreotype taken in 1852. 
 Charles F. Brown ("Artemus Ward") . . .182 
 
 From a photograph. 
 C. G. Halpine and B. P. Shillaber . . „ .188 
 From a photograph. 
 
xii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Dr. Wm. T. G. Morton 206 
 
 From a photograph. 
 Ben: Perley Poore 216 
 
 From a photograph. 
 Moses D. Phillips 228 
 
 From a photograph. 
 James Russell Lowell 236 
 
 From a photograph taken in middle life. 
 Francis H. Underwood 248 
 
 From a photograph taken in middle life. 
 Windsor Warren Trowbridge 266 
 
 From a photograph taken in his fifth year. 
 Lookout Mountain 288 
 
 From a photograph taken in /86j. 
 Gen. P. H. Sheridan 304 
 
 From a photograph loaned by the Mass. Order of the 
 Loyal Legion of the U. S. 
 Columbia, S. C., after Sherman's Raid . . .312 
 
 From a photograph loaned by the Mass. Order of the 
 Loyal Legion of the U. S. 
 J. T. Trowbridge at the age of 45 . . . . 322 
 
 From a photograph taken in 1873. 
 Daniel S. Ford 328 
 
 From a photograph loaned by the editors of " The Youth's 
 Companion." 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson in Early Manhood . . 348 
 
 From a daguerreotype tn possession of the Emerson 
 family. 
 Lewis B. Monroe at the age of 38 . . . . 352 
 
 From a photograph. 
 A. Bronson Alcott in later years .... 358 
 
 From a photograph. 
 Hon. Salmon P. Chase 370 
 
 From a photograph taken in 1863. 
 William D. O'Connor 378 
 
 From a photograph loaned by Mrs. O' Connor- Calder. 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xiii 
 
 Walt Whitman at the age of 55 390 
 
 From a photograph. 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes 408 
 
 From a photograph in Harvard University Library. 
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow .... 420 
 
 From a photograph in Harvard University Library. 
 Arlington Lake (Spy Pond) 446 
 
 From a photograph by Mr. F. G. Frost. 
 Autograph Lines from " Three Worlds " . . . 448 
 The Trowbridge Home Arlington .... 458 
 
 From a photograph. 
 
Tu ne cede malis ; sed contra audentior ito, 
 Qua tua te Fortuna sinet. 
 
 jEneid VI., 95, 96. 
 
 Yield not, whatever woeful stroke may be 
 Thy portion, when befalls the evil day ; 
 
 But draw fresh courage from calamity, 
 
 And forward press, where Fortune points the way. 
 
MY OWN STORY 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 
 
 My English ancestor, Thomas Trowbridge, of 
 Taunton, came to this country about the year 
 1634. He was a grandson of that earlier Thomas 
 who gave to the poor of Taunton the perpetual 
 income from certain lands, to be dispensed by the 
 wardens of St. Mary Magdalene and St. James, in 
 which churches tablets commemorating the gift 
 and the giver are conspicuously placed. Once a 
 year, for now almost three hundred years, accord- 
 ing to the terms of the will, " the Poorest, Oldest, 
 most Honest and Impotent Poor " are assembled 
 to hear a sermon, receive each his dole, and be 
 reminded to thank God and the donor for the 
 benefaction. As they receive only a shilling each, 
 it is to be hoped the homily is not long. Despite 
 the degrading conditions, regularly on St. 
 Thomas's day the churches are thronged by appli- 
 cants for the charity ; and one of the wardens 
 assured a kinsman of mine, some years since, that 
 
2 MY OWN STORY 
 
 it was "a blessing to the poor." As a descendant 
 of the well-meaning Thomas, I am thankful for 
 the warden's further assurance that the very old 
 and infirm are excused from hearing the sermon, 
 and get their gratuity without going to ask for it 
 publicly. 
 
 The emigrant, Thomas, brought his wife and 
 two sons to America ; and a third son was born 
 to him in Dorchester, Mass., where he first settled. 
 He removed to New Haven in 1639, made voyages 
 of traffic to Barbados, and finally went back to 
 England, leaving his boys in New Haven, in the 
 care of an unfaithful steward. The oldest of these 
 sons, Thomas, is the ancestor of the New Haven 
 family of Trowbridges. From the third son, 
 James, I am descended. 1 
 
 James returned to Dorchester, where his father 
 
 1 The Trowbridge family derives its name from its ancient 
 inheritance, Trowbridge, in the parish of Crediton, in Devon- 
 shire, where it resided for many centuries, and which was the 
 property of Peter de Trowbridge in the reign of Edward the 
 First. A younger branch of the family was settled in Taunton, 
 in Somersetshire, as early as 1541. That nearly all the Ameri- 
 can Trowbridges are descended from this branch appears from 
 the fact that whenever any of them are able to trace their an- 
 cestry back three or four generations, the line can nearly always 
 be found in The History of the Trowbridge Family, published by 
 Thomas R. Trowbridge, of New Haven, in 1872, a full and care- 
 fully prepared genealogy, to which I am chiefly indebted for 
 these early data. 
 
A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 3 
 
 must have left some property to look after, and 
 later settled in Cambridge Village (now Newton). 
 He was the grandfather of Judge Edmund Trow- 
 bridge, the eminent jurist, and of Lydia Trow- 
 bridge, who married the rising young barrister, 
 Richard Dana, and became the mother of an illus- 
 trious line. A brother of Edmund and Lydia was 
 John Trowbridge, of Framingham, the father of 
 Major John Trowbridge, who served in the Revo- 
 lutionary War. 
 
 My father, Windsor Stone Trowbridge, grand- 
 son of Major John, was born in Framingham, 
 where I found a sister of his still living, a gray- 
 haired woman, when I first came to New England 
 in 1 848. She showed me the site of the home of 
 their childhood, marked only by a ruined cellar 
 overgrown with grass and weeds, — a scene full 
 of suggestiveness to an impressible youth, going 
 on such a pilgrimage, to seek some trace of his 
 parent's early years. 
 
 When still quite young my father was taken by 
 his parents to Oneida County, in Central New 
 York, where, his mother dying, he was bound out 
 to a Westmoreland farmer, John Townsend, with 
 whom he lived until he was twenty-one, receiving, 
 in return for his services, his board and clothing, 
 a common-school education, and, on attaining his 
 majority, a yoke of oxen and a hundred dollars in 
 
4 MY OWN STORY 
 
 money. The service could not have been unduly- 
 hard, for Mr. Townsend was a kind man, and he 
 treated his ward in every respect as he did his 
 own son, John, the boys being brought up to- 
 gether like two brothers. But there was a preju- 
 dice against such service, the hardships of which 
 my father, in after years, sometimes endeavored 
 to impress upon his own youngsters, when for 
 our disobedience he would make the threat, " I '11 
 bind you out if you don't behave better ! " — 
 with a prodigious frown, which, however, did not 
 frighten us, knowing well, as we did, how much 
 easier it was for him, with his irritable temper 
 and kind heart, to make a threat than it was to 
 execute it. 
 
 My father and the younger John Townsend 
 never forgot their early attachment, but remained 
 good friends long after my father left Westmore- 
 land for the Genesee country, as it was then called, 
 farther west. I was named for that companion of 
 his boyhood, who made us at least one visit in our 
 backwoods home, — a visit impressed upon me by 
 an interesting circumstance, although I was then 
 but four years old. Mr. Townsend stood with his 
 back to the fire, and taking from his pocket a 
 silver half-dollar, gave it to me, as he remarked, 
 "for my name." It was probably the first half- 
 dollar piece I had ever seen, and I did not see 
 
A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 5 
 
 much of that. I don't remember just how it dis- 
 appeared, but I have a distinct recollection of my 
 father's saying he would give me a sheep for it, a 
 proposition with which both the big and the little 
 John Townsend were, I suppose, content. No 
 doubt I thought it a fine thing to have a sheep 
 all my own. There was, moreover, a condition 
 attached to the transaction which I did not quite 
 grasp at the time, but which was explained and 
 well understood by me later. In that new country 
 a farmer too poor . to purchase sheep would some- 
 times take a small flock of a neighbor, with the 
 obligation to return double the number at the end 
 of four years. My father proposed to take my 
 sheep on those terms ; it was still to be mine, but 
 he was to have its wool and its progeny, and give 
 me that sheep and another, or, at any rate, two 
 sheep, on my eighth birthday. From that time it 
 was understood that I was part owner of the flock. 
 When I was six, I was told that I owned a sheep 
 and a half ; and in watching the flock I used to 
 wonder which whole sheep was mine and which 
 half of which other sheep I could properly claim. 
 When I was eight, I was the proud proprietor of 
 two sheep ; when I was twelve, my father continu- 
 ing to hire sheep of me, I had four ; and I was 
 then able to figure out the bewildering number 
 I would have, at that rate, when I got to be as old 
 
6 MY OWN STORY 
 
 as he. At sixteen I had eight sheep ; at seven- 
 teen I was entitled to ten ; but then I left the 
 homestead and the undivided flock, — a source of 
 ever multiplying and illimitable riches, if there 
 were anybody to account to me for the hundreds 
 of thousands of sheep that should now be mine by 
 that simple rule of increase. It was always my 
 fault that I did not look closely after my material 
 and, for that matter, my more ethereal interests. 
 I kept John Townsend's worthy name, but his half- 
 dollar, and the fortune founded upon it, vanished 
 into air, into thin air, like so many of my early 
 and late expectations. 
 
 II 
 
 That part of the Genesee country to which my 
 father emigrated was the township of Ogden, in 
 Monroe County, a few miles west of the river that 
 gave the region its name. Soon after attaining 
 his freedom he had married a Westmoreland 
 farmer's daughter, Rebecca Willey (granddaugh- 
 ter of Captain John Willey, of East Haddam, 
 Conn., a veteran of the Revolution), when she was 
 eighteen and he twenty-one. They kept house 
 about a year and a half in Westmoreland. Then, 
 in the depth of winter, namely, in February, 1812, 
 he yoked his oxen to a sleigh, on which were 
 loaded a few farming and kitchen utensils and 
 
A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 7 
 
 household goods, — all it could safely carry in the 
 condition of the road, if road it might be called, a 
 mere wagon track cut through the primeval woods, 
 — and set out with her upon their rough journey 
 of over a hundred miles and I know not how many 
 days. What is now Syracuse was then a frontier 
 settlement ; beyond that their way lay for the 
 most part through the unbroken solitudes of the 
 forest. There was no bridge over the Genesee, 
 and but one house at the Falls, where the city of 
 Rochester now stands. The emigrants expected 
 to cross by a ferry at the mouth of the river, but 
 they found the river frozen over, and the ferry- 
 boat blocked. They put up at a log tavern, and 
 crossing the next morning on the ice, pushed on 
 into the vast and shadowy wilderness, my father 
 walking by the horns of the oxen to navigate the 
 sleigh among the projecting roots and through the 
 snow-filled hollows ; the bars of sunshine slanting 
 along the arches of great trunks and limbs, and 
 the tinkling ice crust dropping from the boughs 
 overhead. They reached their destination that 
 afternoon. 
 
 It was in the midst of dense woods, where 
 a Westmoreland acquaintance had already made a 
 small clearing and built a cabin. He took in the 
 newcomers, and helped my father " roll up a 
 house," — a mere hut, built of logs not too large 
 
8 MY OWN STORY 
 
 for two men to roll up on inclined poles, and place 
 one upon another. The "puncheon" floor was 
 of split chestnut logs, the sleigh boards serving as 
 the floor of the loft. Not a nail was used in the 
 construction ; nails were expensive ; wooden pegs 
 took their place. No stones could be gathered 
 on account of the deep snow, and my mother's 
 kettles would sink down into the soft ground 
 which formed the hearth. The snow stayed until 
 April. When it was gone, and she went out and 
 found some " good, nice stones " to set her kettles 
 on in the fireplace, she " felt rich," as she used 
 smilingly to tell us children in later years. 
 
 So my parents set up their simple housekeep- 
 ing, and passed, I have no doubt, their happiest 
 days, — days as happy, very likely, as any their 
 children, or numerous grandchildren or great- 
 grandchildren, have enjoyed in the stress of a 
 more complex civilization. She sang at her work ; 
 his axe resounded in the forest. He made a 
 clearing, and planted corn and beans and potatoes 
 among the stumps. Their first child was born in 
 that hut. The clearing grew, and before long a 
 larger, well-built house replaced the primitive 
 cabin. 
 
 This more substantial house had one large 
 room on the ground floor, about twenty feet square, 
 a low-roofed chamber, to which access was had by 
 
A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 9 
 
 a ladder, and in the course of time a " linter " 
 (lean-to) addition. The linter was framed, but 
 the main part was built of logs. These were hewed 
 on the inside, and the cracks between them filled 
 with a plaster made of clay. The filling was lia- 
 ble to crack, and it was necessary to patch the 
 broken places every fall. This was called " chink- 
 ing up the house," and it made a happy time for 
 the older children, there being always some of 
 the moist clay left over, which they could use in 
 making cups and saucers and other ornaments for 
 their playhouses. The floor was of dressed chest- 
 nut planks, the beautiful grain kept scrupulously 
 clean and smoothly polished. At one end of the 
 room was a huge stone fireplace, with great and- 
 irons, and heavy shovel and tongs in the corners. 
 In the linter were the spare bed with its white 
 counterpane, a tall brass-handled bureau, and our 
 father's large oaken chest, with its complicated 
 tills, always a marvel to the younger children, who 
 would run and peep wonderingly whenever he 
 went to open it. 
 
 The large room in the main part was kitchen, 
 parlor, and bedroom all in one. Curtained off in 
 one corner was the parents' bed, covered by a 
 handsome pieced quilt, and pillow slips of fine 
 homemade linen, with our mother's maiden initials 
 fancifully stitched upon them in blue letters. The 
 
io MY OWN STORY 
 
 curtains and pillow slips were a part of her wed- 
 ding outfit, and had been woven for her by our 
 Grandmother Willey. Under the bed was a 
 trundle-bed, drawn out at night for the youngest 
 children to sleep in, and pushed back by day, 
 when all would be concealed from view by the 
 drawn curtains. Each child passed from the 
 mother's arms to that trundle-bed, which gener- 
 ally held two or three at a time ; the older ones, 
 as their successors came, being allowed — and it 
 was accounted a proud privilege — to go " up cham- 
 ber " to sleep. There was no pantry, cupboards 
 serving instead. Outside the house was a large 
 brick oven, where the family baking was done. 
 It was under a shed, which was some protection 
 to our mother when she had "a bad day for bak- 
 ing/' 
 
 In this log house all the nine children were 
 born except the first and the last. I was the 
 eighth, and in it I first saw the light (that of a 
 tallow candle) in September, 1827, after our 
 parents had been fifteen years in their backwoods 
 home. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The event, of so much more importance to me 
 than to any one else, took place so nearly on the 
 stroke of midnight that it was uncertain whether 
 

 
 BIRTHPLACE OF J. T. TROWBRIDGE 
 
A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD n 
 
 the 17th or 1 8th of the month should, in strict 
 accordance with the fact, be set down as my 
 birthday. In my childhood, some freedom of 
 choice being left to me in the matter, — strange 
 as it may seem that a boy should be able to choose 
 his own birthday, — I stoutly maintained that 
 the 17th was the anniversary, since it added the 
 dignity of one day to my youthful years, and 
 brought the presents, if there chanced to be any, 
 one day earlier. But later in life, for a sadder 
 reason, I fixed upon the date that made me a day 
 younger. Then there was the satisfaction of feel- 
 ing that I was a child of the morning. I had, 
 however, cause to regret, even in my boyhood, 
 that I did not put off my entrance upon the stage 
 a few weeks longer, for then I could have enjoyed 
 the distinction of being born in a new framed 
 house, which the family moved into while I was 
 yet in the cradle. But as it made not the slight- 
 est difference to me at the time, so now I am as 
 well content as if my eyes had first blinked and 
 my infant lungs piped in a palace. 
 
 The house in which my boyhood was passed, a 
 two-story farmhouse painted white, with green 
 blinds, stood, and I believe yet stands, on the 
 north side of a road running east and west, a mile 
 or more from the " Basin," as we used to call it, — 
 Spencer's Basin, now Spencerport, on the Erie 
 
12 MY OWN STORY 
 
 Canal. This was the nearest village. It was a 
 small village then, but it prides itself on being so 
 much of a village now that friends of mine, living 
 there, express surprise that I do not claim it as 
 my birthplace, it is so much more distinctive ! 
 But I was not born in a village. Ogden includes 
 Spencerport, and is distinctive enough for one so 
 obscurely born and bred. 
 
 Behind the house was the well, with its iron- 
 bound bucket ; and not far beyond that was the 
 fine orchard of apple and peach trees, which my 
 father's hand had planted, and which were in 
 their thrifty prime in the days of my childhood. 
 
 Beyond the barn and orchard were the rolling 
 pastures, the grainfields where I hoed corn and 
 pulled redroot, and the wood-lot, which had been 
 spared when the forest was driven back to make 
 space for farm land. Beyond the wood-lot was 
 the canal, with its passing boats, in sight from 
 the rear fences of our farm, but not near enough 
 for us boys to be in very great danger of contami- 
 nation from the generally rude and often vicious 
 characters of the boatmen. This great waterway 
 is only about two years older than I, having been 
 completed in 1825. It was one of the delights of 
 my boyhood. I went " in swimming " in it, on sum- 
 mer evenings ; in the autumn I peddled nuts and 
 apples on it, dropping from the bridges upon the 
 
A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 13 
 
 decks of passenger boats passing under. I skated 
 on the frozen surface of the slack water in winter, 
 and had on its banks many a boyish adventure. 
 
 Still beyond the canal, on the north, was Lake 
 Ontario, not many miles away, but veiled from 
 view by a skirt of the ancient wilderness. When 
 I revisited the farm in later years, the distant 
 woods had disappeared, and the lake was visible 
 from the high pasture land over which I had 
 driven the cows hundreds of times in the sum- 
 mers long gone by. As I recalled those summers 
 on the pleasant hills, the feeling of glad surprise 
 with which I looked off on the blue expanse was 
 pierced by a pang of regret that that " thing of 
 beauty " could not have been " a joy " of my bare- 
 foot boyhood. 
 
 Jessamine vines and morning-glories grew be- 
 fore the front windows, and in beds near by were 
 all the old-fashioned flowers, of which the pink 
 and the flower-de-luce were always my favorites. 
 Roses I admired, and other flowers had their spe- 
 cial charms, but I loved the pink, and something 
 in the exquisite tint and velvety softness of the 
 bosom of the flower-de-luce awakened in me a 
 yearning no words could ever express. I remem- 
 ber when my sisters introduced into their garden 
 a novelty known as the " love apple," prized for 
 its beauty only, until it was popularized as the 
 tomato, and banished to the vegetable garden. 
 
i 4 MY OWN STORY 
 
 In front of the house the ground fell in a gentle 
 green slope to the road, on the other side of which, 
 not many rods off, was an immense gloomy 
 swamp, shaded by lofty elms that shut out the 
 sun, and full of fallen trunks, rotten logs covered 
 with moss as with coats of thick fur, and black, 
 silent pools that to my childish imagination had a 
 mysterious depth. Awe and wonder peopled for 
 me those profound solitudes. By night raccoons 
 whinnied and owls hooted in them, and at times 
 clouds of mosquitoes came out of them. The 
 roaring wind in the tossing sea of tops, the creak- 
 ing of dry limbs, the fireflies fitfully embroidering, 
 as with stars and threads of gold, the dark skirts 
 of the swamp, and the bears and panthers and 
 phantoms which I fancied inhabiting it, filled my 
 childish soul with wonder and joy. There frogs 
 held their concerts ; and often, after a shower, 
 when the wind was southerly, sulphurous odors 
 were wafted to us from the troubled pools. 
 
 One would think our farmhouse must have 
 been in an unhealthy place, but it was not so. 
 We had no ague in our neighborhood, and there 
 were probably no malarial mosquitoes in the 
 swamp. The house stood on high ground, and 
 our only protection against mosquitoes was a 
 smudge-fire on summer nights. 
 
 There was a tradition among the boys that this 
 
A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 15 
 
 swamp was impassable, and I think I must have 
 been nine or ten years old before I ventured to 
 penetrate its dim recesses very far. Then, taking 
 advantage of an unusually dry season, and mark- 
 ing the trees so that I could find my way back, I 
 tramped and scrambled through it, and found to 
 my surprise that it was only a belt of woods, with 
 high and dry farm lands on the other side. I lost 
 my awe of it from that day, and almost wished I 
 had left it unexplored. I have since found many 
 such dark and mysterious places in life, filled with 
 shadowy terrors, until, with a little resolution, 
 they have been passed through. When last I 
 visited the old homestead, there was no black and 
 dismal swamp in front of it, but a well-drained 
 broad green meadow basking in the summer sun. 
 
 IV 
 
 The new house also had its great fireplace, and 
 one of the pleasant recollections of my boyhood is 
 the generous fire that on winter nights filled the 
 room with its glow. The building of this fire was 
 a somewhat elaborate affair. After the evening 
 chores were done, my father would appear in the 
 doorway with the big backlog coated with snow, 
 often of ampler girth than himself, and fully breast 
 high to him as he held it upright, canting it one 
 way and another, and " walking " it before him on 
 
1 6 MY OWN STORY 
 
 its wedge-shaped end. He would perhaps stand 
 it against the chimney while he took a breathing 
 spell and planned his campaign. Then, the and- 
 irons hauled forward on the hearth, and the bed 
 of half -burnt brands and live coals raked open, 
 the icy log was got into the fireplace, where a 
 skillful turn would lay it over, hissing and steam- 
 ing, in its lair of hot embers. It seemed a thing 
 alive, and its vehement sputtering and protesting 
 made a dramatic moment for at least one small 
 spectator. The stout shovel and tongs, or per- 
 haps a piece of firewood used as a lever, would 
 force it against the chimney back ; then a good- 
 sized stick, called a "back-stick," was laid on top 
 of it, and the andirons were set in place. Across 
 the andirons another good-sized stick was laid, 
 called a " fore-stick," and in the interspace smaller 
 sticks were crossed and thrust and piled, all 
 quickly kindled by the live coals and brands. 
 
 In very cold weather a fire was kept burning 
 all night, our father getting up once or twice to 
 replenish it. Even in summer the coals rarely 
 became extinct. A good heap of them, covered 
 with embers at bedtime, would be found alive 
 when raked open in the morning. This was a 
 needful precaution before locofoco matches came 
 into use. Every house had its tinder-box, but 
 starting a flame with flint and steel was a tedious 
 
A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 17 
 
 process at the best, and "borrowing fire" was 
 usual among neighbors when one had the mis- 
 chance to lose his overnight. I am unable to say- 
 how long this custom continued, but I must have 
 been seven or eight years old when a vagabondish 
 neighbor came to our house one morning with his 
 wife's foot-stove to get some coals. He was a 
 reckless liar, of whom it was proverbially said that 
 he would "lie for the fun of it" when the truth 
 would have been more to his advantage. As 
 we had had our breakfast, my mother said to 
 him, " Your folks must have slept late this morn- 
 ing." "Bless you, no! "he replied; "we were 
 up at daylight, and my wife has done a large iron- 
 ing." I remember with what good-natured effront- 
 ery he joined in the laugh against him when my 
 mother said she would like their receipt for doing 
 an ironing without fire. 
 
 The foot-stove was a small sheet-iron box in a 
 wooden frame, and with a perforated cover, made 
 for holding a basin of live coals imbedded in ashes ; 
 it was used in cold weather to rest the feet on 
 in the sleigh, or in the cold meeting-house. My 
 mother always took hers to church with her from 
 October until April. Between services, a fresh 
 supply of coals was obtained at a house near by, 
 for the afternoon. 
 
 The first friction matches I ever saw were 
 
18 MY OWN STORY 
 
 brought to school by a boy who lighted one by 
 placing it in the folds of a piece of sandpaper and 
 drawing it out with a quick pull. When we who 
 stood looking on saw it come out actually on fire, 
 our wonder and envy knew no bounds. No, sir ! he 
 would n't let one of us ignite or even touch one ; 
 he would light just one more himself, and only 
 one, and we need n't tease, for those magical bits 
 of wood were too precious to be wasted in idle 
 experiments. It wasn't long before everybody 
 had matches, and a new era in household econ- 
 omy began. 
 
 Along with matches, stoves came into the set- 
 tlement. A " Franklin " was set up in our kitchen, 
 and the arched brick oven, that had been built 
 into the chimney by the fireplace to supersede 
 the primitive oven outside the house, was itself 
 superseded. The tin " baker," in which meats 
 were roasted before an open fire, also became 
 obsolete. We still had open fires in the sitting- 
 room, and sometimes in the "east room " (or par- 
 lor) when my sisters came to have beaux. 
 
 When I was seven years old, my eldest sister, 
 Venilia, married one of these beaux, a young Ver- 
 monter, who had taught our district school and 
 made her acquaintance while boarding around. 
 I do not recall the wedding ceremony, but I re- 
 member well the beautifully frosted wedding-cake, 
 
A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 19 
 
 served to a large company grouped before our sit- 
 ting-room fire. It was winter, and not long after, 
 namely, in February, 1835, the young couple emi- 
 grated to " the West," as our father and mother 
 had done just twenty-three years before. 
 
 The " West " in this instance was Illinois. The 
 day of their departure remains vividly impressed 
 in my memory. There was snow on the ground, 
 but instead of a sleigh and oxen a large emigrant 
 wagon drawn by horses was brought to the door. 
 The tearful adieux were said (I wondered why my 
 mother and sisters cried so), and the great slow 
 wagon rolled away, the wheels clogging with the 
 damp snow (I can still see them), and the white 
 canvas top soon disappearing over the hill; be- 
 fore it, a pilgrimage of near six hundred miles ! 
 It was a much longer but not rougher journey 
 than that of our parents, which in some respects 
 it resembled. As our father and mother had 
 found the ferryboat blocked by ice at the mouth 
 of the Genesee, so the later emigrants arrived at 
 the Detroit River when it was closed over by a 
 " cold snap " in the month of March. My bro- 
 ther-in-law would not risk crossing with his young 
 wife in the loaded wagon, but took her over first, 
 in a light cutter, running at the horse's head, to 
 insure safety with speed ; the tough, thin ice un- 
 dulating under the gliding runners. Afterwards, 
 
20 MY OWN STORY 
 
 by dividing his load, he got all over without acci- 
 dent. They were almost a month in reaching the 
 head of Lake Michigan, near which a cluster of 
 houses around a fort, on a dismal flat, marked the 
 spot where the miracle of a mighty city was so 
 soon to rise. They could now congratulate them- 
 selves on being near their journey's end — only 
 twenty-five miles farther to go ! But, crossing 
 the vast plain over which Chicago now spreads, 
 they found it a seemingly endless waste of melt- 
 ing snow and slush, almost knee-deep to the team ; 
 then, for the first time, my sister lost heart and 
 cried. Was that the beautiful prairie land of 
 which they had heard so much, and where they 
 were going to pass their lives ? But hope rose 
 again when they crossed the Des Plaines and 
 came into the grove-girt, rolling prairie country, 
 where their new home was to be, in a land of 
 flowers and wide horizons. 
 
 Not even the all-night fires could keep our house 
 warm in very cold weather. After my older bro- 
 ther and I had been promoted from the trundle- 
 bed (which went with us from the old house into 
 the new), we slept in an unfinished corner of the 
 chamber that must have had an arctic temperature 
 on many a winter night. The bare rafters and 
 
A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 21 
 
 rough roof boards sloped down over our bed, the 
 wind whistled around the gable and perhaps rat- 
 tled a loose shingle, and sometimes on stormy 
 nights a fine snow sifted down insidiously, spray- 
 ing ever so softly any part of nose or cheek or 
 ear tip left peeping out from under the bedclothes. 
 It was not an uncommon thing to find a little 
 white heap or two, mere fairy snowdrifts, on the 
 spread in the morning. Oh, but how we slept ! 
 And what brisk fun it was, jumping out of bed in 
 the stinging cold of the wintry dawn, to catch up 
 our clothes and scamper downstairs with them, 
 to dress before the crackling fire ! The only seri- 
 ous discomfort of those nights, that haunts my 
 memory, was waking up, and perhaps lying awake, 
 with cold feet. To remedy that, my brother and 
 I used to run out into the snow barefoot, just be- 
 fore going to bed. The excruciating ache caused 
 by this heroic treatment reacted in a glow that 
 would commonly last all night. 
 
 In the course of time our corner of the attic 
 was done off and we had a white-plastered room 
 to sleep in and keep our chests in, like the rooms 
 our sisters occupied in the other end of the house. 
 But there was an "under the eaves" part that 
 always remained unfinished. That, in my earliest 
 years, was the lurking place of phantoms ; and 
 there was a den of impish creatures behind the 
 
22 MY OWN STORY 
 
 great chimney. My father belonged to the militia, 
 and had been called out to resist a threatened 
 landing of the British at the mouth of the Gene- 
 see, in the war of 1812. The musket he had car- 
 ried in that bloodless expedition leaned at the 
 mouth of the den ; no mere inanimate stock and 
 barrel, but a dumb sentinel, conscious of the mys- 
 teries it guarded, and ready day and night to do 
 its solemn duty. It kept a very special lookout 
 for small boys. How real a thing it was to me, 
 in that unfriendly character, may be inferred from 
 a naive reply I made when one of my sisters asked 
 why I always shied in passing near that corner. I 
 said, " I 'm afraid the old musket will snap at me !" 
 I had seen my father take it down and try the old 
 flint lock, and had marveled at his temerity. 
 
 I never had a good look at one of the impish 
 creatures, but I knew just what they were like. 
 They had no bodies, nor much in the way of heads, 
 for that matter, their faces being set flat on their 
 little straight legs, like the tops of milking-stools. 
 But they were only about one half or one quarter 
 the size of milking-stools. Neither had I ever 
 really heard them, but the certainty that they pat- 
 tered off on their little legs when they saw me 
 coming, and then chuckled and whispered and 
 leered, away back in their black hole, could n't 
 have been whipped out of me. 
 
A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 23 
 
 Among the heirlooms which time had stranded 
 in our unfinished attic were some weaving-frames, 
 cards for carding wool, a hackle, and our grand- 
 mother Willey's small flax spinning-wheel, all 
 which had gone out of use. As long ago as I can 
 remember, the unsold wool from our flock was no 
 longer carded by hand, but was sent to a factory, 
 from which it came back in the form of beautiful 
 white rolls, to be spun by the mother and sisters, 
 on the big spinning-wheel downstairs. The spun 
 yarn went again to the mill, where it was woven 
 and dyed, and came home "fulled cloth," to be 
 cut up into garments, fitted and stitched and 
 pressed by our mother's own hand. 
 
 VI 
 
 The world was all a mystery to me, which I was 
 forever seeking to solve ; but the greatest mystery 
 of all was that of the people around me. I can 
 hardly remember a time when I did not try to enter 
 somehow into their consciousness and think with 
 their thoughts. I would sit patiently in my little 
 chair, and watch my mother rocking and knitting, 
 something within me yearning to fathom some- 
 thing in her ; wondering how it seemed to be as 
 old as she, how life looked to her, and what it was 
 that made her chair rock and her hands move, 
 always just so, and not otherwise. When I was 
 
24 MY OWN STORY 
 
 old enough to be taken to meeting, I would enter- 
 tain myself by studying certain persons whose 
 faces fascinated me, endeavoring to guess their 
 secrets, and to make out why one was gray and 
 wrinkled, another young and handsome, and why 
 one was always so distinctly one's own self and 
 not another's. I knew they never had any such 
 thoughts as troubled a little boy like me, but what 
 were their thoughts ? 
 
 At times it seemed to me that while the people 
 and things around me might be real, I was a sort 
 of dream. Then they were the dream, and I was 
 the sole reality ; even my own father and mother 
 and brothers and sisters were phantoms, and the 
 earth and trees and clouds were pictures, provided 
 for my use and entertainment. These Sittings 
 across my inner consciousness would hardly reach 
 the surface of my thoughts ; if ever they did, I 
 was sensible enough to perceive that they were 
 the idlest illusions, and I early outgrew them. 
 
 But the feeling that everything was provided 
 and prearranged for me was more persistent. In- 
 visible beings surrounded and watched over me, 
 and shaped the world and all things for my good. 
 They knew all that I did or thought or felt ; they 
 were so near and so real that I sometimes talked 
 to them, and was sure they whispered to me, 
 though I could never quite make out what they 
 
A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 25 
 
 said. This belief — if anything so formless and 
 unreasoned can be called a belief — was wholly 
 instinctive, and could not have been suggested by, 
 as it probably antedated, any teaching I received 
 regarding God and the angels. God, according 
 to my earliest conception, was a big man, taller 
 than our well-sweep ; and angels were great white 
 things with wings. My invisibles had nothing so 
 tangible as wings, and were as bodiless as the 
 breeze that brushed my hair. The sense of their 
 immediate presence became gradually obscured ; 
 but even after I was old enough to argue my- 
 self out of it, I never quite lost the feeling of 
 their oversight and guidance, — the feeling which 
 I have elsewhere commemorated, attempting to 
 define what is so indefinable : — 
 
 " The haunting faith, the shadowy superstition, 
 That I was somehow chosen, the special care 
 Of Powers that led me through life's changeful vision, 
 Spirits and influences of earth and air." 
 
 Problems which have baffled the greatest minds 
 oppressed me at a very early age. I can remem- 
 ber lying on my back under an orchard tree, when 
 I could n't have been more than eight or nine 
 years old, gazing up through the boughs into the 
 blue depths of the sky, and trying to think of time 
 and space, until my inmost sense ached with the 
 effort. It was the beginning of time that troubled 
 
26, MY OWN STORY 
 
 me, for it must have had a beginning ; and yet — 
 what was before that ? And there must be a limit 
 to the sky ; but when I conceived of that limit as 
 a great blank wall, no matter how far away, the 
 same difficulty met me, — what was beyond that 
 wall? My older brother seemed never to have 
 thought of such things, and hardly to know what 
 I meant when I spoke of them. I could never be 
 satisfied with my mother's answer when I carried 
 my questions to her, — " Those are things nobody 
 can understand," — and I wondered how it could 
 satisfy her. It was no explanation to say that God 
 made the world, unless somebody could tell me 
 who made God, or how he made himself, and 
 what was before God was. 
 
 VII 
 
 I was brought up under the shadow of the Cal- 
 vinism of those days, and listened to its preachings 
 and teachings, sitting in the straight-backed pew 
 of the meeting-house or on a bench of the Sunday- 
 school. Sunday was a day of irksome restraint 
 and gloom. It began at sundown on Saturday, 
 and ended at sundown on Sunday, and sometimes 
 a little earlier for us boys, if the afternoon chanced 
 to be overcast, and we could persuade our mother 
 that it was time to relieve the pressure and let 
 our youthful spirits effervesce. Fortunately she 
 
A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 27 
 
 was more liberal than her creed, and although any- 
 thing like games or sports was prohibited in the 
 hours that were to be kept "holy," and a certain 
 amount of serious reading was enjoined, we gen- 
 erally had the freedom of the barn and fields and 
 orchard before and after church. No work was 
 performed except the necessary chores. 
 
 Church-going was rigidly observed. Our meet- 
 ing-house was at Ogden Centre, a mile away as 
 the crows flew when they flew straight ; it was 
 considerably farther around by the road. Every 
 Sunday morning the one-horse wagon was brought 
 to the door about the time the ringing of the first 
 bell sent its loud bim-bom over the woods and 
 farms and into our hearts, with all its solemn asso- 
 ciations. The mother, in her best black gown, 
 and with her foot-stove, if the weather was cold, 
 the father, freshly shaved, in his high black stock 
 and equally uncomfortable tall black hat, and such 
 of the sisters as were at home, filled the two broad 
 seats, with perhaps one of us youngsters wedged 
 in, though we preferred to walk in good weather ; 
 then the vehicle moved out of the front gate, and 
 joined the procession of wagons going in the same 
 direction, impelled by the same pious duty. With 
 the foot-stove or without it went luncheons for 
 the noonday hour, for the religious exercises were 
 an all-day affair, with forenoon and afternoon ser- 
 
28 MY OWN STORY 
 
 vices, and the Bible-class and Sunday-school in the 
 interval which the minister took for rest between 
 his sermons. It was not supposed that his hear- 
 ers needed rest. There were sheds for the vehi- 
 cles, and the man who was kind to his beasts 
 usually put into his wagon with the family sand- 
 wiches a small bag of grain for his team. The 
 services began at half past ten, and were over at 
 half past two, unless the afternoon sermon was 
 "lengthy," as it was very apt to be: four hours 
 of doctrine and edification on which Heaven was 
 supposed to smile ; four hours of light and sun- 
 shine and recreation stricken out of our lives on 
 that so-called day of rest. 
 
 I can remember how utterly vacuous I felt, in 
 both mind and body, at the end of that exhausting 
 ordeal. Often one of the family would remain at 
 home, to take care of the house, and of my younger 
 brother, five years my junior, before he was old 
 enough to be subjected to that long confinement. 
 Happy the day and blissful the chance when that 
 care -taking was assigned to me. I was never 
 lonely when left alone, yet I was always glad when 
 I saw the dust and heard the rumble of vehicles 
 coming home from meeting. I knew how hungry 
 everybody would be, and never failed to have the 
 pot and kettle boiling. 
 
 My mother was a woman of strong devotional 
 
A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 29 
 
 feelings, and with an unquestioning faith in a 
 divine Providence and in immortality. She no 
 more doubted that eternal life awaited her in the 
 blissful society of friends she had known here 
 than that she should awaken in the morning after 
 a normal night's sleep. This belief seemed inher- 
 ent in her, and she loved to dwell upon it. The 
 doctrines of total depravity and eternal torment 
 she accepted on the authority of her church ; but 
 that they were external to her spiritual nature I 
 am convinced, for the reason that she never in- 
 sisted upon them, nor even mentioned them, as I 
 now recall, in her endeavors to impress upon us 
 younger children the necessity for a " change of 
 heart." Three of my sisters became church mem- 
 bers in their girlhood. I think my older brother 
 also joined the church ; if he did, he became a 
 backslider. He got " converted " in the tremen- 
 dous excitement of revival meetings, but in him 
 the exuberance of unreflecting animal spirits did 
 not permit the religious feeling to strike perma- 
 nent root. 
 
 My father was a constant church-goer, and he 
 at one time led the choir. He never became a 
 communicant, not because he had leanings toward 
 skepticism, but because he had not consciously 
 " experienced religion." If right living constitutes 
 righteousness, there was no more righteous man in 
 
3 o MY OWN STORY 
 
 the church than he was out of it. But he had not 
 met with the change of heart which was deemed 
 essential to an admission to its fold. He was at 
 times persuaded by our mother to conduct family 
 worship, but he lacked the gift of prayer in which 
 she abounded ; and I recall painful occasions when, 
 as we all knelt at our chairs, he broke down in 
 his supplication, becoming stranded, so to speak, 
 with his burden ; whereupon she would sail in and 
 take it up, and on a full tide of eloquence bear it 
 into port. 
 
 I had something of my mothers natural reli- 
 gious feeling, yet not all the pains of perdition 
 preached by imported revivalists — which, in the 
 dim candle-light, amid the misty exhalations, the 
 sobbings and moanings, of the evening meetings, 
 frightened my mates and acquaintances into seek- 
 ing the " anxious seat " — could terrify me into 
 following their example. Something granitic within 
 me resisted all such influences. Whatever intel- 
 ligence and spiritual perception I had revolted 
 against the threatenings hurled down upon us by 
 those pulpit prophets of wrath, and I sat cold and 
 critical, at times even cynical, I fear, when the 
 exhorters shouted, and some of the worst boys I 
 knew, recently convicted of sin, got hold of me 
 and implored me to come forward, be prayed for, 
 and gain a hope. 
 
A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 31 
 
 I prayed by myself, frequently aloud, when I 
 was walking alone in the fields ; prayed earnestly 
 that the truth might be shown to me, opening my 
 heart to it like a flower to the light, and making 
 vows to follow wherever it led, to live by it and 
 confess it, at whatever cost. I remember doing 
 this when I was about twelve years old. But the 
 more I thought of the fall of man, total depravity, 
 the scheme of redemption, and kindred tenets, the 
 more strongly they impressed me as being unnat- 
 ural, and humanly contrived. Once I became an- 
 gry with a sled I was making, the pieces of which 
 would not fit according to my plan. I gave it a 
 vindictive kick. Then I checked myself and said, 
 " That 's like what they say God did when he 
 made the world and found it did n't suit him." I 
 was calmed and shamed, and at once set about 
 putting the pieces together. 
 
 I was always wondering at the beauty and mys- 
 tery of the earth and sky, — the air in its place, 
 the water in its place, the birds adapted to their 
 life, the fishes to theirs, the growth of trees and 
 grass and flowers, the sun by day, and by night 
 the moon and stars ; and I never once imagined 
 that these visible miracles could have come about 
 by any sort of chance. I had a vague conception 
 of a law of adaptation in nature, some power 
 that kept the balance of things, which in later 
 
32 MY OWN STORY 
 
 years the theories of evolution and the survival of 
 the fittest tended to confirm and explain. I clung 
 intuitively to a belief in divine Providence and an 
 intelligent Source of Life ; not in consequence 
 of the religious instructions I received, but rather 
 in spite of them. I say in spite of them, because 
 I regard those preachings and teachings as hav- 
 ing been distinctly harmful to me in many ways. 
 They cast a shadow over my childhood, and en- 
 shrouded in baleful gloom even the Sun of Right- 
 eousness. It was not until long after I got away 
 from them that I came back to the Bible with 
 a fresh sense of the beauty of its literature, and 
 of the spiritual insight and power that illumine 
 the best parts of it, and make it, above all other 
 books, the Word of God. 
 
 VIII 
 
 With her strong devotional feelings and a sen- 
 sitive temperament, my mother possessed great 
 energy of character. She had taught school in 
 her girlhood, and was always ambitious of giving 
 her own children a good education. We all had 
 what the district school could afford ; and it was 
 chiefly owing to her strong determination that my 
 two younger sisters were sent to " select schools " 
 at Rochester and Spencer's Basin. Our father did 
 not oppose their going, but the family means 
 
A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 33 
 
 were limited, and he would often say that he 
 " could n't see where the money was to come 
 from " to provide things which her rigid economy 
 rendered possible. By the exercise of that and 
 by managing the " butter and cheese money," of 
 which she had the control, she contrived to send 
 the girls away to school. Once when I was at 
 home sick with a cold, and was supposed to be 
 asleep on the lounge, I heard her say to my father 
 that she wanted enough of the wheat and wool 
 money saved to " educate John with ; " to which 
 he replied, " What good will it ever do him ?" Yet 
 I knew that he was as proud as she was of what 
 they had heard of my progress in my studies, and 
 as desirous of doing for me all their circumstances 
 would allow. From many a task I was saved be- 
 cause I was seen with a book in my hand. 
 
 My father had almost too delicate a constitution 
 for the life of hard labor to which he was born. 
 He had a talent for music, of which he was pas- 
 sionately fond, and which he used to teach in the 
 early pioneer days. I can remember seeing him 
 so much affected by the singing of the country 
 choir in the old meeting-house, during which part 
 of the service it was customary for the congrega- 
 tion to stand, that he was obliged to sit down, 
 overcome by his emotions. I might not have 
 guessed what the trouble was, but for our mother 
 
34 MY OWN STORY 
 
 saying to him after meeting that she should think 
 he might control his feelings a little better ; she 
 did n't consider the singing anything so very fine. 
 "Maybe not," he replied. "But it brings up 
 something — I can't tell what ! " And his voice 
 choked with the recollection. One of the satisfac- 
 tions of his life was the Sunday evening gathering 
 in our sitting room, when neighbors would some- 
 times come in and unite with him and my sisters 
 (one of whom had an unusually good voice) in 
 singing the old fashioned hymns. 
 
 He had an irritable temper, but he was a kind 
 and indulgent parent, and in my childhood I was 
 fonder of him than of anybody else in the world, 
 even our mother. When he sat down with us in 
 the evening, I liked to climb upon his knees, put 
 my arms around his neck, and have him " baird " 
 me, that is, rub his beard of two or three days' 
 growth against my cheek, while I hugged him 
 affectionately. Our mother undoubtedly had as 
 deep and sincere a love for us, and would perhaps 
 have done even more for us than he, but somehow 
 I never got quite so near to her heart as I did 
 to his. She was far more strict than he, in the 
 discipline of us children ; fortunately for us, no 
 doubt, although I certainly did not think so at the 
 time. More than once when she was about to 
 punish me for some offense, he would exclaim, 
 
A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 35 
 
 " I '11 attend to him ! " — take me sternly by the 
 collar, lead me out into the orchard, cut a very 
 small switch, give me two or three very light 
 strokes with it across my back, then say, in the 
 lovingest tones, " There ! now be a good boy, and 
 mind your mother ! " On my return to the house 
 she would ask, " Well ! did he whip you ? " With 
 hypocritical woe in my features, I would falter, 
 "Yes!" at which her just remark would very 
 likely be, " I don't believe he half punished you ! 
 I 've a good mind to punish you over again ! " 
 But I don't remember that she ever did. 
 
 He early instilled into us a detestation of dis- 
 honest practices and of the shirking of obliga- 
 tions; and was himself ever a model of upright 
 conduct and neighborly dealing. He was con- 
 sulted by many persons in common matters of 
 business, and strangers came from long distances 
 to get his opinion of horses, for which he had a 
 great love, and of which he had an intuitive know- 
 ledge. For nearly twenty years he was collector 
 of the town taxes, an office that gave him a plea- 
 sant occupation in winter, and opportunities for 
 meeting all sorts of people, in his all-day rides. 
 
 During all that time he was also a town con- 
 stable, and served many a writ. But he was a 
 peacemaker, caring more for the promotion of 
 right and good will than for securing a fee. I well 
 
36 MY OWN STORY 
 
 remember his advice to an angry man who once 
 came with a summons for him to serve : " You 're 
 foolish to sue ! Go and talk it over with him in a 
 neighborly spirit, and meet him halfway. Don't 
 rush into a lawsuit." 
 
 He had a horror of debt, being perhaps over 
 cautious in that regard. He took up originally 
 only forty acres of land, but he might have had 
 four or five times as much if he had been willing 
 to borrow money to pay for it. For ten acres ad- 
 ditional he afterwards paid more than three or four 
 hundred would have cost, at the government price. 
 " I would do just so again," he would say. " I 've 
 seen too much of the wreck and ruin caused by 
 debt." He no doubt had in mind an instance which 
 had come very near to him and my mother. My 
 grandfather, Alfred Willey, had been a well-to-do 
 farmer in Westmoreland, and had lost all his pro- 
 perty by becoming security for a friend, — " House 
 and home, everything, even to the old grindstone, 
 just by signing his name ! " as my mother used to 
 say, in speaking of the family disaster. 
 
 My father had an inexhaustible fund of good 
 stories, which he would tell one after another as 
 long as he had listeners, commonly linking them 
 together with " That puts me in mind," or " That 
 reminds me again." I can see him now, in his 
 favorite attitude on a winter's evening, after light- 
 
A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 37 
 
 ing his pipe with a coal, standing with his back to 
 the fire, a pitcher of cider warming beside him on 
 the hearth, and his face in a genial glow, while he 
 exercised his powers of humorous mimicry, to the 
 amusement of us children and any guests that 
 had dropped in. 
 
 IX 
 
 After my grandfather Willey lost his West- 
 moreland property by " signing his name," he 
 moved with his family to Ogden, where he died 
 when I was two years and nine months old. It 
 was my first sight and knowledge of death, and I 
 remember how bewildered I was by it. I asked 
 why they " put grandpa in that cradle." I could n't 
 have been present at the burial, but it must have 
 been explained to me, for the gloom of it left 
 upon me a life-long impression. I recollect riding 
 with my parents at twilight, sitting in my little 
 chair between their feet in the wagon, and ask- 
 ing mournfully, at every lonesome - looking spot 
 we passed, " Is this where grandpa was buried ? " 
 It was as if nobody had ever died before, and 
 somebody should have prevented so dreadful a 
 thing happening to my good grandpa. 1 
 
 1 I recall only one other circumstance of as early an ascer- 
 tained date. This was a tremendous hailstorm that occurred 
 one Sunday in June of the same year (1830), when all the win- 
 
38 MY OWN STORY 
 
 After her husband's death my grandmother 
 Willey lived with her married sons and daughters, 
 with all of whom she was in a manner welcome ; 
 yet her presence was a cloud under whatever 
 roof. The loss of the Westmoreland home was 
 but one of many misfortunes that saddened her 
 later years. After the removal to Ogden she had 
 broken her ankle by falling with her horse on a 
 rough backwoods road, the bones had been badly 
 set, and she walked on the side of her foot, limp- 
 ing painfully with a cane. In her younger days 
 she had been a woman of remarkable vigor and 
 courage, and had once made a horseback journey 
 from Westmoreland to her old home in East Had- 
 dam, Ct, carrying all the way thither and back a 
 two-year-old child before her on the saddle. Un- 
 fortunately she did not have the religious faith 
 which her daughter, my mother, enjoyed, to sus- 
 tain her in her afflictions ; and her complaints 
 were wearisome to hear. She must have been a 
 sore trial to our parents, but I believe they made 
 the best of it, and I think my older sisters under- 
 stood and commiserated her condition ; but to us 
 
 dow panes on two sides of the house were shattered. To get 
 me out of the way of the terror and danger of it, my mother put 
 me on her bed, from which I watched her stepping cautiously 
 around with a broom, sweeping the hailstones and broken glass 
 into a heap on the hearth ; a scene as vivid in my memory to-day 
 as anything in my life that has happened since. 
 
A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 39 
 
 boys her coming was portentous of storm and her 
 going an occasion of glee. I may have owed to 
 her the suggestion of Grandmother Rigglesty, in 
 Neighbor Jackwood, but it was not at all her por- 
 trait that I sketched in that aggressively unami- 
 able character. After I was old enough to appre- 
 ciate her truly admirable traits and the nature of 
 the calamities that had broken her, I felt remorse 
 for my childish uncharitableness towards her, and 
 have always wished that I might atone for it by a 
 kind word in her memory. She died in the home 
 of a daughter in Illinois. I never saw her after 
 I was about nine years old. 
 
 It was always a great event in my boyhood 
 when my father would take me with him to Roch- 
 ester, especially if I could be indulged with a sight 
 of the Falls, and hear once more the story of Sam 
 Patch's fatal jump. After about my eleventh 
 year that marvel of nature became associated in 
 my mind with a yet more tragically impressive 
 circumstance. A cousin of mine, a young mar- 
 ried woman, living in Rochester on a bank of the 
 Genesee, went one winter day to fill a pail at the 
 water's edge, and never returned. When search 
 was made for her, the marks of her fingers were 
 seen on the snow-crusted brink, where she had 
 
4 o MY OWN STORY 
 
 evidently slipped and fallen into the river, and 
 struggled in vain to get out. The finger-marks 
 were traced for two or three rods in the direction 
 in which the current had swept her on, then they 
 disappeared. It was four or five days before her 
 drowned body was recovered, off the lake shore, 
 near the mouth of the river. From that time I 
 could never behold the falls without picturing the 
 poor girl's horror and fear as she felt her numbed 
 and wounded fingers slipping from the icy crust, 
 and saw herself borne by the wild rapids to inevi- 
 table death in the plunging cataract and boiling 
 gulf below. 
 
 XI 
 
 Our district schoolhouse was at a crossing of 
 the roads half a mile or less east of our home. It 
 was of red brick, its walls were cracked, and kept 
 from falling asunder by iron rods passing com- 
 pletely through, at a convenient height for boys 
 to jump up to, and catch, and perform gymnastic 
 feats on, in the dingy old entry, at recess. Gro- 
 tesque methods of enforcing discipline among the 
 pupils were in vogue in those days, — " sitting on 
 nothing," with the back against the wall ; " hold- 
 ing down a nail in the floor," with a forefinger, 
 in a painfully stooping posture ; standing with an 
 arm outstretched and a pile of books in the hand ; 
 
A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 41 
 
 " licking jackets," when two boys who had quar- 
 reled received from the master each a stout switch, 
 and were made to fight out their feud in the pre- 
 sence of the edified school, he himself putting in 
 a cut for example when they were too tender of 
 each other and did not hit hard enough. The 
 school was ungraded and the methods of teaching 
 were primitive, but there is this to be said of it, 
 that the pupil that had a mind for self -improve- 
 ment could get a fair common-school education 
 under the worst teachers, and that some of these 
 were far better than the system they represented. 
 At school or elsewhere I was by disposition 
 the least quarrelsome of boys. But I was quick 
 in my resentments, and liked to pay all debts 
 promptly. If I suffered a blow, my unregenerate 
 notion was that the next belonged to the other 
 fellow's cheek, not to mine, and that when such 
 things were passing, it was better to give than 
 to receive. Deep down in my heart I abominate 
 warfare, among boys, or men, or nations ; and be- 
 lieve in the coming time when mutual good-will, 
 forbearance, and the love of righteousness will 
 usher in a reign of peace. Boys are nearer the 
 primitive man than we their elders are; there 
 must be individual growth to correspond with ra- 
 cial progress, before the so-called natural deprav- 
 ity of wild beast traits, developed in the struggle 
 
42 MY OWN STORY 
 
 for existence, is redeemed in them by the spirit 
 of love, or transformed into power, in safer condi- 
 tions. The wild apple-tree sprout bears thorns 
 that disappear from the robust stem. A boy may 
 be so well born that he will pass through the world 
 without conflict, with no defense but his wise, 
 sweet, gentle nature. But such are rare ; and, 
 for my part, I prefer that one should stand up 
 for his honor and his right, even to the extent 
 of fighting for them, rather than yield to wrong 
 because he is a milksop. 
 
 As I look back now, there seem to have been 
 two boys in me ; one the truly gentle boy, shrink- 
 ing from contact with the ruder sort, and yearn- 
 ing for trustful and loving comradeship ; the other 
 a dormant but too easily roused cave-dweller. The 
 savage came uppermost in two or three minor 
 battles with schoolmates, and in one furious fight 
 with a strange boy I had the ill fortune to en- 
 counter at a militia muster, — a performance that 
 caused me infinite humiliation at the time, on ac- 
 count of its publicity, but which I look back upon 
 now without compunction, since it was undertaken 
 in defense of a younger companion. 
 
 XII 
 
 I was only an average pupil until about my fif- 
 teenth year, when a slight thing gave my mind 
 
A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 43 
 
 a start. In what was called the "back part 
 of the spelling-book " there was a list of foreign 
 words and phrases with their English equivalents 
 affixed. We had not been required to learn these, 
 and perhaps they interested me the more for this 
 reason. I went through them eagerly, committed 
 them to memory, and conceived an ardent desire 
 to study a foreign language. 
 
 I wished to have some necessary books bought 
 for me, but money for such things was scarce in 
 our family, and no doubt my parents thought it 
 better that I should confine myself to studies that 
 were taught in school. An invalid cousin of mine, 
 a young lady who had had a boarding-school edu- 
 cation, heard of my ambition, and on her deathbed 
 directed that her French books should be given to 
 me. There were only three of these, — a gram- 
 mar of the old-fashioned sort, a small dictionary, 
 and a reader, — but I never in my life felt richer 
 than when the precious volumes were brought 
 home and put into my hands. 
 
 It was probably all the better for my mental 
 discipline that the language was not made easy to 
 me by our more modern methods. Yet I did not 
 find it hard ; there was a joy in acquiring it which 
 made a pastime of the dry conjugations and of 
 the slow process of reading with the help of a 
 dictionary. 
 
44 MY OWN STORY 
 
 I did not find much difficulty with anything but 
 the pronunciation. The textbooks gave me little 
 help in that, and after the death of my cousin I 
 did not know anybody who had the slightest 
 acquaintance with the language. I went through 
 the grammar and reader, and a Telemaque which 
 I found in the town library, and so got to read 
 and translate the language before I ever heard 
 it spoken. 
 
 I took other books from the library, which was 
 supported by subscribers, of whom my father was 
 one. 1 I read Ivanhoe with wonder and delight, 
 and in consequence of the historical curiosity it 
 excited in me, took out next an abridged Hume's 
 History of England. I read Cooper's Spy and 
 
 1 In a letter written for the centennial celebration of the settle- 
 ment of Ogden, August 7, 1902, I said of this library: "I dare 
 not now attempt to tell how much I owe to that small but 
 well-chosen collection of books — how the common world was 
 transformed for me by the poets and romancers that smiled on 
 me from those obscure shelves ! It was surely a colony of 
 enlightened and public-spirited settlers who, as soon as food and 
 shelter were secured, there in the heart of the wilderness, added 
 to the rude life they hewed out of it life's inestimable ornament, 
 literature. Ogden doubtless has a vastly more comprehensive 
 and attractive library to-day ; but the value of such an institu- 
 tion depends, after all, upon what we ourselves bring to it ; and 
 it is well to remember that the few books that nourish vitally the 
 eager mind are better than richly furnished alcoves amid which 
 we browse languidly and loiter with indifference." 
 
A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 45 
 
 Leather Stocking Tales, James's Richelieu and 
 Henri Quatre, Croly's Salathiel, and Ingraham's 
 Lafitte, the Pirate of the Gulf, and thought them 
 all good. 
 
 I read Byron with the greatest avidity, and be- 
 came possessed of a copy of Scott's Lady of the 
 Lake, whole pages of which — I might almost say 
 whole cantos — I was soon able to recite from 
 memory. I was even absorbed in Pope's Essay 
 on Man, regarding it as the most perfect combi- 
 nation possible of sublime philosophy and lucid 
 verse. I read much of Shakespeare, and tried to 
 read more. Othello, King Lear, The Tempest, 
 Hamlet, Timon of Athens, and a few other plays 
 interested me profoundly; but I could not get 
 through Love's Labour 's Lost. As I look back 
 now, I am surprised at the boyish audacity with 
 which I criticised works so famous. The indecen- 
 cies and whimsical conceits I found in the plays 
 offended my taste, and I thought the tragical end- 
 ing of Hamlet too melodramatic, although I did 
 not have that word for what I felt to be forced 
 and artificial in that homicidal scene. The rhymed 
 endings of heroic blank-verse speeches made my 
 heart sink. 
 
 I went through a volume of Plutarch because I 
 liked it, and Rollin's Ancient History because I 
 thought it one of those things a well-informed 
 
46 , MY OWN STORY 
 
 youth ought not to neglect. A similar sense of 
 duty carried me over dreary tracts of Aiken's Brit- 
 ish Poets, which I blamed myself for finding dull, 
 and Pope's Homer, which I thought I ought to 
 like for the reason that Homer and Pope were both 
 celebrated poets. But the couplets that I found 
 so cogent and convincing in the Essay on Man be- 
 came monotonous in the Iliad, and left me un- 
 moved. Of other books I remember reading at 
 that age, I may mention Abercrombie's Intellec- 
 tual Powers, Blair's Rhetoric, some volumes of 
 the Spectator, the Arabian Nights and Gulliver's 
 Travels, Locke's Essay on the Human Under- 
 standing (abridged edition), works on Phrenology 
 and Physiology, Paradise Lost, and the Pirate's 
 Own Book. When I had money of my own I 
 purchased books in Rochester, among others some 
 volumes of a Bibliotheque Choisie de la Litera- 
 ture Franchise, of which I best recall Alfred de 
 Vigny's fine historical romance, Cinq-Mars. I 
 procured Latin textbooks, and took up the study 
 of that language, also without a teacher. 
 
 Up to the time of my intellectual awakening, I 
 had scarcely any clear conception of the use and 
 meaning of English grammar, although I could 
 parse fluently and recite all the rules. The study 
 of another language threw a flood of light on the 
 grammar of my own, like a lantern shining back- 
 
A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 47 
 
 ward on a path one has been treading in the dark. 
 My mind also awoke to the real value of other 
 branches, of which only a parrot-like knowledge 
 had been required of me hitherto. And " compo- 
 sition " became a delight. 
 
 XIII 
 
 I began to write verses when I was thirteen, 
 but I was accused by some of my mates of copy- 
 ing them out of books, until I composed an acros- 
 tic on the name of one of them. As it was a 
 name Mrs. Hemans and Kirke White would hardly 
 have cared to celebrate, even if they had heard of 
 it, and as the ingenuity of altering any of their 
 lines to suit it would have been considerable, the 
 charge of plagiarizing was not pressed. 
 
 After I was thirteen I attended only the winter 
 term of the school, my services being required on 
 the farm in summer ; but the teaching I missed 
 was probably no loss to me when my mind had 
 become independently aroused. In the hour's 
 nooning with the books I loved, I have no doubt 
 but I learned more than I should have done in the 
 whole day's routine in school. I almost wonder 
 now at the extent of my studies and readings 
 while I was doing a boy's regular work on the 
 farm. I was fond of sport, and liked to hunt 
 and fish and play ball and fly kites as well as most 
 
48 MY OWN STORY 
 
 boys. But I made a good deal of " odd spells " 
 which others idled away. The men of learning 
 and genius I read about, or whose writings I 
 admired, caused in me pangs of despairing emula- 
 tion, as I constantly contrasted their high achieve- 
 ments with my own petty, unprofitable life. 
 
 It was not alone the love of study that kept me 
 at my books. I saw my companions give them- 
 selves up to idle talk and amusement, and often 
 wished that I might pass my days as carelessly as 
 they. What was that inward scourge which chas- 
 tised those shallower inclinations, and drove me 
 back to my self-allotted tasks ? Many times I 
 asked myself this question. I did not know then 
 how much may be acquired in the course of a 
 year by a boy engaged in almost any kind of work, 
 who gives now and then a leisure hour to earnest 
 reading and study without a teacher ; but I was 
 finding it out by experience. 
 
 I was in many respects fortunately situated, al- 
 though I did not know it at the time. I thought 
 it hard that I could not have the educational privi- 
 leges which some boys at the Basin had, and 
 which they scorned and wasted. I had a cousin 
 on the Willey side living in Geneseo, where I 
 visited him. His father was a lawyer, and the 
 son had all the advantages of an academic course, 
 and of a village life, simple enough, in fact, but 
 
A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 49 
 
 cultured and elegant in comparison with my own. 
 He was two or three years older than I, so learned 
 that I hardly dared speak to him of my humble 
 studies, and so well dressed that I was ashamed 
 of my country clothes, as I knew he was, when 
 his Geneseo friends saw him with me on the street. 
 His position and accomplishments were so far be- 
 yond anything I could hope ever to attain that I 
 went home with a very poor opinion of my oppor- 
 tunities, and might have been discouraged from 
 my endeavors at self -improvement if I had not pur- 
 sued it for its own sake, or if something within me 
 deeper than discouragement and better than am- 
 bition had not held me to my purpose. I was 
 naturally indolent, and it was probably well for me 
 that, instead of circumstances made easy for me, 
 I had obstacles to overcome. 
 
 My father never drove his boys or his hired 
 men. I generally had a good part of a rainy 
 day to myself, and often afternoons, when work 
 was not pressing. I nearly always had a book 
 handy which I could snatch up between whiles. 
 I fear this habit was a source of annoyance to the 
 family, and I can remember hearing the frequent 
 question, "Where's John?" answered with tart 
 impatience, " Oh, he 's got his nose in one of his 
 everlasting books somewhere ! " I am sorry to 
 say I did not always take my nose out as soon as 
 
5 o MY OWN STORY 
 
 I should have done. My ambition did not invari- 
 ably receive that encouragement from other mem- 
 bers of the family which could have been desired. 
 I was painfully impressed by what one of my sis- 
 ters, five years older than I, once said of preco- 
 cious boys, who know more at fourteen or fifteen 
 than they ever do afterwards, adding, "I guess 
 that is going to be the way with John." I don't 
 suppose that this was really her opinion, but it was 
 natural to think that any branching conceit in a 
 younger brother should be kept well pruned. Not 
 that I ever made a parade of my acquirements. 
 I often wished that my reputation for reading and 
 study had been less, in order that less might have 
 been expected of me. I knew a little of so many 
 things that I was credited with knowing many 
 more, my ignorance of which was often a source of 
 embarrassment and humiliation. 
 
 XIV 
 
 This studiousness on my part developed in me 
 an independence of social excitements and a reli- 
 ance on my own inward resources, as appeared in 
 the way I spent the Fourth of July when I was 
 fifteen years old. While every other boy in the 
 town went to the " celebration," I remained at 
 home, entirely alone, with no company but my 
 books and my own thoughts. When I was tired 
 
A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 51 
 
 of reading — for I had weak eyes, and could never 
 use them long at a time — I went out into the field 
 and hoed corn for an hour or two, an altogether 
 voluntary task. Then I went back to my book 
 and my frugal dinner which I prepared myself and 
 ate while I read ; then returned and hoed corn for 
 another hour in the afternoon. The exercise re- 
 freshed me for the reading, and the reading made 
 the open air and the sunshine and the society of 
 cawing crows and wild hawks, sailing over, a re- 
 newed delight. I think it was the happiest Fourth 
 of July of my boyhood ; and I did not envy my 
 brothers the uproarious fun they had to tell of 
 when they came home at night. To spend an en- 
 tire day in work seemed to me a wicked waste of 
 time and opportunity ; but to break it up with 
 intervals of reading and study, in this way, was 
 my ideal of a farm-boy's life. 
 
 In the way of literature everything was grist 
 that came to my mill. I even have an affectionate 
 recollection of two or three old-fashioned school- 
 books. The Historical Reader had a new interest 
 for me after I had read Ivanhoe, and it was the se- 
 lections from Milton and Shakespeare in Porter's 
 Rhetorical Reader that sent me to Paradise Lost 
 and Hamlet. The brief extracts from the poets 
 in Goold Brown's Grammar had for me an indefin- 
 able charm. 
 
52 MY OWN STORY 
 
 I was not particularly good in arithmetic, but 
 algebra appealed powerfully to my understanding, 
 and I had great pleasure in it. This I studied in 
 school when I was fifteen and sixteen. 
 
 One of my sisters had a copy of Burritt's As- 
 tronomy and Geography of the Heavens, which I 
 studied by myself, tracing out the principal con- 
 stellations visible in our latitude, and learning 
 pretty thoroughly all that was then popularly 
 taught concerning the stars and the solar system. 
 This was welcome food to my reason and imagina- 
 tion. 
 
 I was not, however, so bookish a boy as this con- 
 densed and continuous account of my studies may 
 seem to imply. They were for the most part done 
 at odd spells, the summer's farm work, the night 
 and morning chores in winter, sports and social 
 recreations occupying always the greater part of 
 my time. 
 
 The weakness of the eyes I have mentioned 
 was another hindrance. There was no trouble 
 with the sight, and my mother used to say that 
 they were as strong as any child's until I had 
 the measles, which left them irritable and with a 
 tendency to chronic inflammation. When I was 
 twelve years old, I was sent to Dr. Munn, an ocu- 
 list of some note, in Rochester, to have my eyes 
 examined. He said there was nothing the matter 
 
A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 53 
 
 with them but a slight congestion, which could 
 be quickly remedied. I said that was what I had 
 come for, and submitted to his treatment. He 
 called an attendant to hold my head on the pad 
 of the chair, and proceeded to pass a short curved 
 lancet around each eyeball, between it and the lids, 
 as coolly and with as little regard for my outcries 
 as if he had been peeling onions. I was in his 
 chair five minutes, and his fee was five dollars. 
 As I had expected nothing more than a prescrip- 
 tion, I had only a two-dollar note with me. He 
 took the money from my pocketbook, which I 
 blindly handed him, bound my handkerchief on 
 my bleeding orbs, saying they would be all right 
 in a day or two, and sent me home by the neigh- 
 bor who had brought me, and who had witnessed 
 the treatment, as much surprised at it as I was. 
 I should n't have regretted the pain, intense as it 
 was, if any good had come of it ; but it was weeks 
 before my eyes fully recovered from that worse 
 than useless operation. It may have done them 
 no permanent harm, but it certainly did them no 
 good. The irritability remained, always easily 
 aggravated by over-use of the eyes, a cold, or 
 much exposure to artificial light. And it has con- 
 tinued, a very serious inconvenience, through all 
 my life, interfering with my literary labors, often 
 causing me to shun society and evening entertain- 
 
54 MY OWN STORY 
 
 ments, and so, unfortunately, tending to confirm 
 in me a natural inclination toward retirement and 
 reverie. 
 
 XV 
 
 Although not the most useful lad on a farm, I 
 liked certain kinds of farm work very well. Plough- 
 ing was my favorite employment. I drove the 
 team with the lines passed over my back and 
 under one arm, and at fifteen turned a furrow, my 
 father said, as well as any man. In those lonely 
 but pleasant hours in the field, with no compan- 
 ions but the kind, dumb, steady-going horses, I 
 made a great many verses, which I retained in my 
 memory and wrote down after the day's work was 
 done. 
 
 Tales and romances in rhyme, after the manner 
 of Byron and Scott, I planned and partly com- 
 posed in this way. It may be in consequence of 
 the habit thus formed that few of the many 
 verses I have written since have been composed 
 with pen in hand. They have oftener come to 
 me when I have been walking in the woods and 
 fields, or by the waterside, or lying awake in the 
 dark. 
 
 I was lying thus awake when I composed the 
 first of my pieces that got into print. I was six- 
 teen years old, and was attending the winter term 
 
A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 55 
 
 of the district school. The teacher had announced 
 to our class, in dismissing us at night, that com- 
 positions would be expected of us, and I thought 
 it would be a novelty to write mine in rhyme. I 
 did not decide on a subject until after I had gone 
 to bed ; then the Tomb of Napoleon occurred to 
 me. Before I slept I had shaped five nine-line 
 stanzas in the metre of Childe Harold, which I 
 wrote out and revised the next day. 
 
 With the exception of an essay on the Disap- 
 pearance of the North American Indians, full of 
 wailing winds and moaning waters and other stock 
 imagery befitting the subject, this was the most 
 serious thing I had undertaken in the way of a 
 school composition, and it was received with min- 
 gled incredulity and astonishment. One boy of 
 my age loudly declared that I could never have 
 written a line of it. I said, " You have a good 
 reason for thinking so." "What is that?" he 
 eagerly asked. I replied, " Because you could n't 
 have written a line of it yourself to save your 
 life ! " 
 
 It was much talked about in school and out ; 
 and as much to my surprise as anybody's, it soon 
 appeared in the columns of our county newspaper, 
 the Rochester Republican. I never knew whether 
 it was my father or the schoolmaster who sent it 
 to the printers, but the author's initials were given, 
 
56 MY OWN STORY 
 
 "J. T. T., of Ogden," with the extenuating phrase, 
 " a lad of sixteen years," which did much to de- 
 stroy any satisfaction I might otherwise have felt 
 on first seeing my rhymes in print. It was cop- 
 ied by a Chicago paper, accompanied by an edi- 
 torial note comparing it with " the early produc- 
 tions of Prior, Pope, and Chatterton," and calling 
 attention to it as " an indication of what might be 
 expected of the author at a more mature age." 
 This was the first newspaper notice any lines of 
 mine ever received, and it did no harm. 
 
 Up to this time I had never quite dared to think 
 that anything I might write was worth publishing. 
 If I had secret dreams of becoming an author, 
 they were scarcely acknowledged even to my- 
 self. Shy and diffident, I did not show my most 
 intimate friend, I did not reveal to one of my 
 own family, the quires of foolscap I was spoiling 
 with verses composed while following the plough. 
 After the veil of my reserve had been lifted by 
 that first publication, I began to send to the 
 papers short poems occasionally, which appeared 
 with my initials, but without the offensive refer- 
 ence to the writer's tender years. 
 
 I did the usual farm -boy's chores that winter, 
 before and after school. I milked two or three 
 cows, foddered the cattle and sheep, rode the 
 horses to water, often chopping the ice out of the 
 
A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 57 
 
 trough in cold weather, and shoveled paths through 
 the drifts. I was naturally of a hopeful and cheer- 
 ful disposition, and I remember that as a very 
 pleasant winter. 
 
 But in the spring I fell into an unaccountable 
 melancholy. There had been talk of my continu- 
 ing my studies and preparing for college, but it 
 seemed that nothing was to be done about it that 
 season. The school was over ; I thought I was 
 accomplishing nothing ; I was wasting my youth ; 
 I was in my seventeenth year ! The idea of an- 
 other summer spent in farm work filled me with 
 despair. 
 
 I did not conceal my despondency; my folks 
 called me sullen, and asked me what was the 
 matter. The mere mention of my misery inten- 
 sified it. I could not have told what ailed me ; 
 I nursed imaginary woes. I was reading Byron 
 again, and fancied myself akin to that stormy, dis- 
 satisfied spirit. 
 
 " I had not loved the world, nor the world me." 
 
 There is no knowing how long this morbid state 
 would have continued had not a real and over- 
 whelming sorrow come to drive from my mind 
 all unreal wrongs and causeless discontent. My 
 father was stricken with an incurable and rapid 
 disease, and died in May. This first intimate 
 
58 MY OWN STORY 
 
 acquaintance with death and the anguish of sep- 
 aration seemed suddenly to end my boyhood, while 
 the great calamity changed all our lives. 
 
 XVI 
 
 My mother was left with the small farm of fifty 
 acres, her three boys and one unmarried daughter 
 still at home. The will provided that my elder 
 brother, Windsor, then only nineteen, but an active 
 and enterprising youth, fond of horses, cattle, and 
 country life, should keep the homestead, while I 
 should be free to stay or go, after I was seventeen. 
 
 This arrangement seemed the best that could 
 be made. My brother was quite unselfish about 
 it. Taking me aside a few days after the funeral, 
 he said I could have the farm if I wished it, and 
 if I thought I could care as well for it and for our 
 mother's interest in it as he could. He urged me 
 to think it carefully over, assuring me that he 
 would be satisfied either to remain or to go in my 
 place. Now that the choice was left to me, leav- 
 ing home became a more serious matter than it 
 had appeared before, my future and his and our 
 mother's more or less depending upon my decision. 
 If I remained I was sure of a living, and I could, 
 no doubt, always command some leisure for my 
 favorite pursuits. On the other hand, a feeling of 
 loneliness and uncertainty all at once oppressed me 
 
A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 59 
 
 at the prospect of going out into the world un- 
 guided, inexperienced, to make my dubious way. 
 I consulted our mother, who said she would con- 
 sent to whatever we desired ; it would be equally 
 hard to part with either of us, and perhaps I 
 might, after a while, get to manage the farm as 
 well as he could, and do as well by our younger 
 brother. So it was still left to me ; and I confess 
 that I was half tempted to choose the immediate 
 good and the more timid part, as I was to be more 
 than once tempted to choose between the narrow 
 certainty and the larger possibility, in the years to 
 follow. 
 
 After two or three anxious days and nights, 
 courage and resolution came. I said, " It was 
 father's plan ; he knew best. You are cut out for 
 a farmer; I am not." I saw that Windsor was 
 relieved. "But remember," he joined with our 
 mother in saying, " this will always be your home 
 whenever you wish to come back to it." 
 
 I never went back to it, except for brief visits, 
 after starting out to make my own way in the 
 world ; and before many years it passed from his 
 and her hands, to become the possession of stran- 
 gers. My brother married at twenty-one, a step 
 of which our mother approved, although she felt 
 that thenceforward the home for which she had 
 toiled so long and made so many sacrifices was no 
 
60 MY OWN STORY 
 
 longer her home, as it had been from the time 
 when her own hands helped to carve it out of the 
 wilderness. It had a new mistress, as was fitting ; 
 and where her own children had played, grand- 
 children soon toddled about the door. My brother 
 was a good farmer, but he had a restless disposi- 
 tion. He grew tired of the farm and wished to 
 sell it. She consented even to this heartbreaking 
 sacrifice. His new home was to be hers, and the 
 homes of her married daughters would always be 
 open to her, but there was no other spot in the 
 world like that where her very life had so long 
 struck its roots ; and when these were uptorn, she 
 felt that she was from that time forth a "sojourner 
 in the land," as she used to say with Christian re- 
 signation. 
 
 Windsor tried two or three kinds of business, 
 and finally settled down as a market gardener in 
 Lockport, where we already had a sister living. 
 Our mother's widowhood lasted thirty-eight years, 
 — four years longer than the entire period of her 
 married life. She died in Lockport in 1882, in 
 her ninety-first year. Her constant prayer had 
 long been that she might not outlive ner useful- 
 ness, and that prayer seemed to have been granted. 
 She retained all her faculties to an extraordinary 
 degree, and was remarkably active until a fatal ill- 
 ness, occasioned by a fall which crippled her ; but 
 
REBECCA WILLEY TROWBRIDGE 
 
 The Atithor^s Mother at 36 
 
A BACKWOODS BOYHOOD 61 
 
 even in those last days she delighted to be doing 
 bits of knitting or embroidery for some of her 
 children or grandchildren, her perfect faith in a 
 future life continuing to the close. 
 
 Whether her later years would have had fewer 
 trials if I, instead of my brother, had remained 
 and kept the homestead, can never be known; 
 but unquestionably it was better for me that I 
 should go. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 STARTING OUT IN THE WORLD 
 
 Being seventeen in September (1844), I went to 
 live with my married sister, Mrs. Fidelia Phelps, 
 in Lockport, for the purpose of attending a classi- 
 cal school there. My brother-in-law was a farmer, 
 tilling his flat and uninteresting acres of stiff, 
 clayey soil, about half a mile west of what was 
 then the village, acres now long since gathered 
 under the brooding wing of the spreading city. 
 
 The Lockport episode was quite to my liking ; 
 I had a good home in the country, I had the vil- 
 lage and the school. The canal, the water-ways, 
 the mills, the business life, I was interested in all ; 
 and, above all, in the locks. I passed the head of 
 these twice a day on my way to and from school, 
 and spent many a leisure half hour watching them. 
 The opening and shutting of the gates, the pass- 
 ing of the boats up and down, their swaying hulls 
 rising or falling and bumping, as the powerful 
 boiling and gushing floods were let in or out, filling 
 or emptying the narrow and deep-walled cham- 
 
STARTING OUT IN THE WORLD 63 
 
 bers ; the characters of the boatmen and gatemen, 
 and their varied movements through all the locking 
 process ; — all this had for me an ever fresh fasci- 
 nation. The Falls of Niagara were only eighteen 
 miles away, and often in the still autumn weather 
 I listened to their continuous, low, hardly distin- 
 guishable roar, a sound that always breathed a 
 quiet joy into my soul. 
 
 The school was kept by a fairly good teacher, 
 and was attended by about fifteen day pupils, vil- 
 lage boys and young men. As a way-mark in my 
 boyish studies I may state that I was far enough 
 along in Latin to enter the advanced class and 
 take up Cicero's Orations. Out of school I found 
 an educated French-Canadian, who gave me pri- 
 vate lessons in French pronunciation, and encour- 
 aged my visiting his family ; this being my first 
 practice in speaking the language. 
 
 II 
 
 It was in Lockport, when I was seventeen, that 
 I first had the pleasure of earning something with 
 my pen. A prize having been offered by the 
 Niagara Courier for the best poetical New Year's 
 Address of the carrier to his patrons, for Janu- 
 ary 1, 1845, I determined to compete for it. I 
 had never sent any verses to the Courier, although 
 I walked by the office door every morning on my 
 
64 MY OWN STORY 
 
 way to school ; but I had for some time wished 
 to drop a contribution into its letter box, and I 
 reasoned that, even if I did not win the prize, 
 I might write something that would introduce me 
 favorably to the editor. 
 
 I soon composed and handed in a patriotic 
 octosyllabic screed of some two or three hundred 
 lines, with backward glances at Columbus and the 
 Pilgrim Fathers, and forward glimpses into our 
 country's future ; here a touch of the pathetic in 
 alluding to the vanishing red men, and there a bit 
 of the picturesque in describing Niagara Falls and 
 the primeval forests. In a few days I summoned 
 courage to call at the office and introduce myself, 
 this being my first encounter with that superior 
 being, an editor. He of the Courier seemed sur- 
 prised at my boyish appearance, found some fault 
 with the politics — or lack of politics — in my 
 Address, which, however, he acknowledged to be 
 the best that had yet been received, and promised 
 that I should soon hear from him if the prize was 
 awarded to me. 
 
 Not hearing from him, I had quite given it up, 
 when on New Year's morning I saw the carrier 
 leaving a handsome printed sheet at the village 
 doorways. In a tremor of doubt and expectation 
 I ran up some steps on which it lay half open, 
 and discovered, to my immense surprise and satis- 
 
STARTING OUT IN THE WORLD 65 
 
 faction, that it was my Address ! I shall never 
 forget how well it looked lying there, with a rising 
 sun for a heading, over the large numerals, 1845 ! 
 
 I lost no time in procuring a copy, and oh, how 
 well it read ! I had begun to think my verses 
 poor stuff, but the sight of them in print, with the 
 editorial approval upon them, — tossed on door- 
 steps and under porches, with the morning paper, 
 for all the town to read, — quite altered my opin- 
 ion of their quality. 
 
 Still not hearing from the prize, I let a few days 
 pass, and then once more, with blushing cheeks 
 and palpitating heart, climbed the Courier's office 
 stairs. I may as well confess here that I was 
 a blushing youth, with a good deal more courage 
 for encountering actual danger than for meeting 
 people whom my imagination made formidable. 
 A monarch on his throne could hardly have been 
 more formidable to me at that time than the edi- 
 tor of the Niagara Courier. 
 
 He turned from his desk, where he was busy 
 with his morning's mail, gave me a glance of re- 
 cognition, and kept on opening his letters. I 
 supposed he would save me the embarrassment 
 of explaining my business, but he did n't. 
 
 "As I have not received the book," I said, " I 
 have come in to inquire about it." 
 
 The "book" was the prize, — a handsomely 
 
66 MY OWN STORY 
 
 bound copy of Griswold's Poets of America, a 
 work I was exceedingly desirous of possessing. 
 To my chagrin I was informed that it had not yet 
 been purchased, but that if I would call again in 
 a couple of days it would be ready for me. I re- 
 turned at the appointed time and was again put off. 
 
 " Come in to-morrow," the editor said, " and I 
 will have it for you." 
 
 So once more I mounted his stairs. Still no 
 book. Thereupon I grew indignant. For the 
 moment I felt myself morally superior to the great 
 man who was trifling with me ; and I told him 
 that I should not trouble him again. As I was 
 going out of the office he called me back, and tak- 
 ing out his pocket-book, offered me in settlement 
 of my claim a dollar and a half. As the edition 
 specified would have cost twice as much, I felt 
 that I had been circumvented ; but I had deter- 
 mined never again to subject myself to the hu- 
 miliation of seeming to beg for what rightfully 
 belonged to me, and in a moment of indecision 
 I was weak enough to take the money. I was 
 straightway angry with myself for having con- 
 sented to the compromise, and went away think- 
 ing of the dignified and cutting things I ought 
 to have said, after the opportunity had passed for 
 saying them. 
 
 Thus the triumph of receiving my first com- 
 
STARTING OUT IN THE WORLD 67 
 
 pensation for literary effort, like that of my first 
 appearance in print, had its dash of unpleasant- 
 ness ; a wholesome lesson, no doubt, to my youth 
 and inexperience. I was early learning that there 
 is little unalloyed satisfaction in this sphere of 
 existence, whatever there may be in any other. 
 There is ever a flaw in our good fortune ; just as, 
 in our worst fortune, there is nearly always some- 
 thing that may be changed by time and patience 
 into a blessing. 
 
 Even what remained to me of my self-com- 
 placency on this occasion was extinguished a 
 little later, when I reexamined my New Year's 
 Address with a sickening doubt, an appalling ap- 
 prehension, that it might be — that it must be — 
 that it was — like my Tomb of Napoleon — mere 
 
 bosh. 
 
 Ill 
 
 During a school vacation I took a run over to 
 Pembroke, in Genesee County, to attend for one 
 week a class in reading and elocution. A run it 
 literally was. Pembroke village was twenty-five 
 miles from my Lockport home, there was no 
 public conveyance thither, and I made the jour- 
 ney on foot, starting off one morning in high 
 health and spirits, and getting through by sun- 
 down ; — a brisk and exhilarating trip. 
 
 The teacher of the class, a retired clergyman, 
 
68 MY OWN STORY 
 
 was a good reader himself, simple and impressive ; 
 but as he drilled us in imitative exercises chiefly, 
 the week's tuition amounted to but little, with at 
 least one pupil. Yet perhaps I ought not to say- 
 just that. For, although the first principle of 
 elocution, — namely, that freshness of percep- 
 tion and feeling must precede and accompany 
 all true expression, in order to assimilate the tone 
 of reading to the tone of speaking, — although 
 this foundation principle of naturalness and power 
 was neglected, or insufficiently insisted on, some 
 of his teachings, in the externals of the art, es- 
 pecially in clear and correct enunciation, were 
 excellent. I remember particularly an exercise in 
 the sounds st and sts, which impressed me as 
 so admirably adapted to overcome the common, 
 slovenly habit of slurring or dropping entirely the 
 / in such combinations, that I give it here. These 
 lines we were required to pronounce trippingly on 
 the tongue : — 
 
 " Amidst the mists, 
 
 With stoutest boasts, 
 He thrusts his fists 
 
 Against the posts, 
 And still insists 
 
 He sees the ghosts." 
 
 The school had been recommended to me by a 
 prominent Pembroke citizen, who also invited me 
 to his house for the week of my stay. This friend 
 
STARTING OUT IN THE WORLD 69 
 
 was Amaziah Jenkins, a relative of my Lockport 
 relatives, a man of original ideas, an experienced 
 educator, and an ardent abolitionist. He was 
 moreover the first man I ever knew who had pub- 
 lished a book ; a live author. This to my mind 
 was a very great distinction, although the book in 
 this instance was only an English Grammar. Fa- 
 miliar daily intercourse with him was not merely 
 encouraging to my self-confidence ; it was instruct- 
 ive and mentally stimulating. He was ready to talk 
 on all sorts of subjects that interested me, and 
 on one that interested me but little ; for although 
 I had a natural abhorrence of slavery, I had heard 
 it preached against so much in our Ogden pulpit 
 that I had grown indifferent to discussions of it. 
 He liked to puzzle me with difficult grammatical 
 questions, of which I recall a sample or two — 
 how to construe "what" in the phrase, " He has 
 more money than he knows what to do with," and 
 " minutes " in "He was given five minutes for re- 
 flection," — which latter construction has occa- 
 sioned the shedding of much erudite ink, in recent 
 years. 
 
 He had in his chambers some barrels of books, 
 mostly educational ; among which I found a trea- 
 sure that I had the felicity (for it was nothing less) 
 of carrying away with me at the end of my visit : 
 all of Virgil in one volume, the original accompa- 
 
7 o MY OWN STORY 
 
 nied by a transposed text with an interlinear trans- 
 lation, — a work designed for teachers ; but as I 
 was to so great an extent my own teacher, I felt 
 that I was entitled to its help. I found it an in- 
 valuable assistant, saving me an immense amount 
 of time and labor in looking up definitions and 
 coaching me over difficulties of construction 
 which, without it, would have left me little 
 strength or leisure for the enjoyment of the im- 
 mortal hexameters. This was in fact the most 
 precious acquisition I had to remember the Pem- 
 broke incident by. 
 
 At the close of the Lockport school, my Pem- 
 broke friend urged me to try canvassing for an 
 anti-slavery paper with which he had some con- 
 nection. To this I reluctantly consented, not in 
 order to help the cause he had at heart, but to 
 earn money towards preparing myself for college. 
 By the provisions of the will I had received fifty 
 dollars from the old homestead on my seven- 
 teenth birthday, and I was to have as much more 
 the following September; but more than all I 
 could hope to save from this would be necessary, 
 if I was to continue my studies in an academy. 
 So I agreed to the canvassing project. 
 
 But I never really undertook it. So invincible 
 was my repugnance to asking of anybody what 
 might seem a favor to myself that I drew back 
 
STARTING OUT IN THE WORLD 71 
 
 from the first door I started to enter, and threw 
 up my commission without having solicited a sin- 
 gle subscription. As this was my first step in 
 the direction of anything that looked like business, 
 I was deeply chagrined at so inauspicious a com- 
 mencement. In our boyhood, it was always my 
 older brother who was the more eager to begin 
 new enterprises, while I insisted more on the 
 obstacles in the way ; but having entered into a 
 scheme with him, I was the one to stick to it in 
 the face of discouragements and to argue for its 
 completion. But now I seemed to detect in my- 
 self an infirmity of purpose that might prove a 
 pitfall in the way of any success in life. 
 
 Beside the necessity of earning something, I had 
 another incentive to start out as a canvasser, — 
 the desire to see new places. I gave up the can- 
 vassing, but not the idea of travel. I had as yet 
 seen but little of the world, but that little com- 
 prised objects of interest and wonder that nour- 
 ished my imagination, — the great woods in the 
 shadow of whose mysteries and within the sound 
 of whose roar my childhood was passed; the 
 Genesee, and the falls at Rochester (falls indeed 
 then, and strikingly picturesque, before the mill 
 sluices drank them dry) ; Ontario, to my young 
 fancy a boundless blue sea, as I stood upon the 
 wave-washed shore ; then Niagara with its mighty 
 
72 MY OWN STORY 
 
 cataract and wild cliffs and rapids ; even the canal 
 and the Lockport locks ! And now came an op- 
 portunity for seeing something of what was then 
 the far West. 
 
 IV 
 
 My oldest sister and her husband, Daniel 
 Greene (the Vermont schoolmaster), had been 
 eleven years settled in their Illinois home, when in 
 the summer of 1845 I determined to see the land 
 she lauded so in her letters, — the land of the 
 grouse and the deer, of prairie flowers and prairie 
 fires, of grove-bordered streams and boundless 
 horizons. Their westward journey had been made 
 across Canada, the most practicable land route 
 from Buffalo to Detroit in 1834. Our father and 
 mother had both successively visited them, he 
 partly by water and partly by stage-coach across 
 Michigan (the roughest of stage routes), and she 
 by schooner around the lakes, a voyage of nearly 
 two weeks from Buffalo to Chicago. A line of 
 steamboats had since been established between 
 those two cities, and it was by steamboat that we 
 (my unmarried sister accompanied me) made the 
 trip by the lakes. 
 
 I have forgotten how many days it took, but to 
 my mind the voyage was not half long enough, 
 and when our boat went hard aground in the 
 
STARTING OUT IN THE WORLD 73 
 
 St. Clair River, I remember experiencing some 
 regret that with the help of a tug and stretched 
 hawsers it was got off in the course of an after- 
 noon. I have made I know not how many west- 
 ern journeys since, but never another that I en- 
 joyed with so much zest, or that I so vividly re- 
 member. To this day I can see the large, tranquil 
 fishes at the bottom of the deep, still, wonderfully 
 clear water of the Straits of Mackinaw, where we 
 lay two or three hours, and where I should have 
 been delighted to remain as many days. 
 
 Mr. Greene met us in Chicago, then a shabby 
 city of eleven thousand inhabitants, plank side- 
 walks, and unpaved streets, which became sloughs 
 of mud in foul weather, and in which I was after- 
 wards to see many a farm wagon stalled, with 
 wheels sinking to the hubs in the mire. It had 
 no attractions for me except the lake shore, 
 which had not yet been ruled off by railroad 
 tracks ; and after a day and a night at a hotel, I 
 was glad to drive out across the flat, adjacent 
 prairie and over the fine upland country beyond, 
 to Nine Oaks farm, on the East Branch of the Du 
 Page. What a welcome we received there, how 
 our sister ran out to meet us as the wagon turned 
 up to the gate, and hugged us and cried over us 
 as she took us into the house, — these are memo- 
 ries of the time, which cannot be dwelt on here. 
 
74 MY OWN STORY 
 
 I found within sight of the house, between the 
 skirting grove on one side and the river winding 
 through the broad bottom-land on the other, the 
 charms her facile pen had painted for my allure- 
 ment ; and within an hour or two after our arrival, 
 I was tramping, gun in hand, through my brother- 
 in-law's buckwheat, scaring up and shooting — 
 or, to be more exact, shooting at — prairie chick- 
 ens on the wing. That very evening I saw my 
 first deer, a lovely doe, in graceful leaps undulat- 
 ing over the high grass of the bottom-land, going 
 to drink at the river. 
 
 V 
 
 I did some work on the farm, the rest of that 
 summer and in the autumn following, and some 
 desultory studying and reading ; but spent more 
 time ranging the woodlands and high prairies, on 
 horseback or afoot, sometimes hunting strayed 
 cattle by the sound of the bells, always a welcome 
 music, when heard afar off over the fenceless hills, 
 or in bushy underwoods. But oftener I hunted 
 more interesting game, — chiefly prairie hens, and 
 latterly deer, shooting of these, as I recall with com- 
 punction, two ; one a fine buck, the sad story of 
 which would be long to tell, the other a slender 
 doe, that turned up at me such piteous, almost 
 human eyes, as she lay bleeding at my feet, that 
 
STARTING OUT IN THE WORLD 75 
 
 I wished never to shoot another deer, and never 
 did. 
 
 There was one creature, common then and 
 there, which I let pass no opportunity for destroy- 
 ing. This was the prairie rattlesnake. Rather 
 than suffer one to live, I would walk a long dis- 
 tance for a club with which to finish it. I fully 
 sympathized with the surveyor who, strolling away 
 from his camp one evening, came upon a rattler 
 on the open prairie. He had only his cigar in 
 his hand, and there was neither stick nor stone 
 within a mile. The coiled reptile presented so fair 
 a mark that he felt sure he could kill it with his 
 boot, which he pulled off for the purpose. The snake 
 struck as he did, and in his nervousness he let 
 the boot fall. It was then absolutely necessary 
 to kill the snake in order to get back his boot ; so 
 he pulled off his other boot, and lost that in the 
 same way. The snake held the fort ; and there 
 was nothing for him to do but to walk back to his 
 camp, a good mile, in his stockings. 
 
 Cattle, that would never pay the slightest at- 
 tention to any other snake, would start violently 
 aside at sight or sound of a rattler. This dread 
 of the creature must have been instinctive, for it 
 could hardly have been the result of individual or 
 inherited experience ; it was not probable that the 
 average ox, or any one of its progenitors, had ever 
 
76 MY OWN STORY 
 
 received a venomous bite. My brother-in-law had 
 a dog that exhibited the same instinctive repug- 
 nance, but in a different way. If he came upon a 
 rattler stretched out on the ground, he would 
 make a dart at its neck, and shake it to pieces be- 
 fore the deadly, fanged head had time to turn. If 
 it had got into a coil, his attack was more circum- 
 spect ; he would begin to walk around it at a safe 
 distance, barking excitedly, his head toward the 
 poised head of the reptile, causing it to follow his 
 movements, until the coil was sufficiently un- 
 wound, when he would make a quick dart, and 
 — look out for the flying fragments ! How he 
 ever learned this trick nobody knew. The de- 
 velopment of the venom in the reptile and of the 
 instinct in the animal would be, if one had the 
 needful data, an extremely interesting study in 
 evolution. 
 
 The bite of the prairie rattlesnake is dangerous, 
 but not necessarily fatal. I knew of one painful 
 case. A boy killed a snake, as he supposed, and 
 left it lying under a stone. The act was witnessed 
 by a younger brother about three years old, who 
 followed him home, and interrupted his story to 
 say, " Snake bite me!" The older said, " That 's 
 just his fancy; I killed it, and he wasn't any- 
 where near it." The child insisted, " Snake bite 
 me!" and, when it was late to apply a remedy, it 
 
STARTING OUT IN THE WORLD 77 
 
 was noticed that his hand was swelling. Hand 
 and arm swelled frightfully ; the face and entire 
 body turned dark purple; he fell into a stupor 
 that lasted several days, and barely escaped death. 
 It seemed that he had gone back to the snake 
 after the older boy had left it, that he had moved 
 the stone, and received a bite. 
 
 The usual remedy was whiskey, and a popular 
 one. So popular was it in fact, among a certain 
 class, that one could readily believe what was said 
 of impecunious topers, — that they would some- 
 times get themselves bitten purposely, and then 
 make appeal to the charitable-minded for the quart 
 of cure. It took a deal of one kind of poison to 
 counteract, in the system, a very minute quantity 
 of the other. 
 
 VI 
 
 There was a pleasant society in the neighbor- 
 hood, in which I found enjoyment, notably when 
 snow came, and the weather was fine for sleigh- 
 ing parties, — sleigh bottoms packed with hay and 
 buffalo robes, and merry young people full of the 
 inspiration of that new, free, western life. One 
 Saturday afternoon two sleigh loads of us drove 
 to Joliet, where in the cheer of a good hotel we 
 took no note of time or of a change in the weather, 
 and so became lost in a thick snowstorm, at night, 
 
78 MY OWN STORY 
 
 on the open prairies, on our return drive of some 
 fifteen miles. A furious blizzard was setting in ; 
 and, though we had great confidence in the driver 
 of our foremost sleigh, a sagacious and self-reli- 
 ant young man, when he acknowledged to me 
 that he had no idea where we were, I was im- 
 pressed with the alarming prospect of our passing 
 the night in our open sleighs, or under them, if as 
 a last resort we turned them over, with the bot- 
 toms canted against the driving storm. 
 
 I suggested that if he could n't find the track, 
 perhaps the horses might. He agreed, slacked 
 the reins, and let the pair travel as they would. 
 In the blinding snow it was impossible to discover 
 any change in their course ; and, if their instinct 
 was trustworthy, what soon followed was disheart- 
 ening. Their steady trot fell off to a walk, then 
 suddenly they stopped. There was some obstacle 
 ahead ; it proved to be a fence. A solitary settler 
 had inclosed his little home-lot of an acre or two, 
 and, with no credit to the team, by sheer good 
 luck we had struck it, when there were a score 
 of chances to one of our passing it, and driving 
 on over the storm-swept, limitless prairies. His 
 hut was near by, — found after a little tramping 
 and shouting ; we roused him up, and he set us 
 on our way. 
 
 That winter I was beginning, for the first time, 
 
STARTING OUT IN THE WORLD 79 
 
 to earn an independent livelihood. I taught the 
 district school in my brother-in-law's neighbor- 
 hood, — three and a half or four months, at twelve 
 dollars a month and my board. The " board " 
 meant " boarding around " in the homes of my 
 pupils ; which again meant living a week or so at 
 a time in the pleasantest of them, neglecting the 
 others, and spending my Saturdays and Sundays 
 and much other surplus time with my friends. 
 Some of my best pupils were German children, 
 whose parents had lately settled in that region, 
 and who could speak hardly a word of English 
 on entering the school. The rapid progress the 
 brightest of these made in learning to read and 
 write and speak a new language was something 
 marvelous. Both the teaching and the boarding 
 around among the better class of families were a 
 novel and profitable experience ; I had an interest- 
 ing little school, and I was sorry when it came to 
 a close. One reason for my regret was, it must 
 be acknowledged, a pecuniary one. " Twelve 
 dollars a month and board " seems little indeed, 
 but I had never earned wages before, and when 
 should I have another opportunity of earning as 
 much, and as easily ? 
 
 In the spring my brother-in-law, to give me 
 some encouragement in the way of business, I 
 suppose, — certainly with no idea of advantage to 
 
80 MY OWN STORY 
 
 himself, — made me an astonishing proposition. 
 I had expected to return to the East in April, but 
 both he and my sister urged me to remain with 
 them another summer. Farm wages would have 
 been hardly the thing for him to offer or for me 
 to receive ; so he proposed that I should take 
 some of his land to work " on shares." He would 
 furnish seed, team, farming tools, everything but 
 the work, which I was to do ; my compensation to 
 be, as I remember, one third of the crop. The 
 crop was to be spring wheat ; his corn and other 
 crops he would raise, with the help of his hired 
 man. Considering my age (eighteen) and a sad 
 habit I had contracted of lingering too long over 
 books, it was a surprising offer. The work I 
 would have to do was what I liked best on a 
 farm, — ploughing and harrowing, and harrowing 
 again after the seed was sown ; I liked the coun- 
 try and the neighborhood, and above all my sister 
 and her family (Mr. Greene was one of the most 
 upright and liberal men I knew, and one of the 
 wittiest) ; I should be in one sense my own mas- 
 ter and have some leisure for my studies. I con- 
 sidered all these advantages, and consented, no 
 doubt wisely, to his plan. 
 
 After the crop was " in " I remained, waiting 
 for it to mature, doing meanwhile some work for 
 my brother-in-law, and reading (as I remember) 
 
STARTING OUT IN THE WORLD 81 
 
 Burns's poems, which I had found at the home of 
 a friend, the Bucolics of Virgil, in the volume I had 
 brought from Pembroke, and some German, hav- 
 ing that year begun the study of that language. 
 I recall but little regarding the wheat crop, ex- 
 cept that it grew finely in that rich prairie soil, 
 and gave fair promise of paying me well for my la- 
 bor, until at a critical time, j ust as the milky berry 
 was filling, there came a week of hot and humid 
 weather ; the " rust " struck the rank stalks, the 
 immature grains shriveled, and my hopes with 
 them ; and my beautiful fields, although they 
 turned duly from green to golden, produced but a 
 poor and unprofitable crop. That was the last of 
 my farming. 
 
 I did not stay for the threshing, but returned 
 to the East in August, visited my relatives in 
 Ogden and Lockport, and in the autumn (being 
 then nineteen) took a district school in Lockport, 
 two or three miles north of the village. 
 
 VII 
 
 In my Lockport school I had about thirty pu- 
 pils, of ages varying from seven or eight years to 
 eighteen or twenty, two or three of the older boys 
 being larger and taller than myself. I was warned 
 that previous teachers — " masters " they were 
 called — had had trouble with big boys in that dis- 
 
82 MY OWN STORY 
 
 trict, and that physical energy and rigid discipline 
 would be required to get through the winter term 
 satisfactorily ; but I had faith that I could succeed 
 as I had succeeded with my smaller Illinois school. 
 
 From the start I found the older pupils, girls 
 and boys alike, amenable to reason, and if I some- 
 times had to inflict slight punishments on the 
 younger ones, it was because their natural restless- 
 ness and love of mischief were too strong in them 
 for the undeveloped moral sense, and because no 
 unassisted teacher in a school of that sort, miscel- 
 laneous and ungraded, has time for persuasive 
 measures only, in each particular case requiring 
 discipline. I "boarded around" again, and that 
 custom helped me to establish friendly relations 
 with parents and pupils. 
 
 I made the morning fires that winter, not merely 
 because building fires was considered one of the 
 master's duties, but for the advantages attending 
 it. There was something indescribably exhilarat- 
 ing in leaving my boarding-place as soon as I had 
 eaten my breakfast, facing the frosty air, and 
 tramping through the snow to the schoolhouse at 
 the Corners ; starting a blaze in the cold, coffin- 
 shaped stove, stuffing it full of wood, then sitting 
 down before it in my cap and overcoat, with my 
 feet on the hearth, and having an hour or more all to 
 myself over my Virgil or Schiller or La Fontaine. 
 
STARTING OUT IN THE WORLD 83 
 
 Not a picture or frame of any sort relieved the 
 dingy gray of the blank, plastered walls. The 
 floor in places most trodden was worn to the sem- 
 blance of shallow valleys, with ranges of miniature 
 hills where the shiny heads of board-nails pro- 
 tected it from abrasion. The benches were of 
 the plainest, shiny-smooth in the part most ex- 
 posed to friction, and the desk surfaces were 
 diversified with intaglios not particularly ornamen- 
 tal, boats, house-gables, tomahawks (the last was a 
 favorite device), cut, or rather dug out, by juven- 
 ile jack-knives. Yet though my surroundings 
 were so unattractive, and so absolutely comfort- 
 less but for the blaze my own hands kindled, I 
 was oblivious of all that bleakness and bareness 
 and ugliness ; I was in the domain of mind, with 
 high thoughts and purposes for my companions. 
 I look back now to that far-off time with envy of 
 my own fine spirits and joyous youth ; and I lack 
 words to tell how sweet to me was the seclusion of 
 those morning hours in the cheerless school-room 
 before the pupils came stamping in. 
 
 The boarding-place I best remember was the 
 house of a man named Gibson, who had three 
 children in my school, — not half so many as I 
 could have wished, since the more pupils there 
 were in a family, the longer the master was en- 
 titled to claim its hospitalities. Gibson was an 
 
84 MY OWN STORY 
 
 educated Scotchman who had come to this coun- 
 try as a civil engineer, and had finally settled down 
 as a Niagara County farmer. He would spend a 
 whole evening talking to me of Scott and Burns, 
 and of one younger Scotch writer of whom he 
 predicted great things. Burns he knew almost 
 by heart; and he recited Tarn O'Shanter with 
 amazing unction and animation. The younger 
 author, who had been a friend of his early man- 
 hood, a comrade and classmate, still wrote to him 
 from Scotland quaintly entertaining letters and sent 
 him all his books successively as they appeared. 
 So desirous was he of interesting me in them that 
 he offered to lend me any or all of them, and 
 would, I have no doubt, if I had become his pro- 
 phet's disciple, have presented me a volume, with 
 the flyleaf inscription which I should be rather 
 glad now to have — " From his friend, Thomas 
 Carlyle." Although I was to come later under 
 their powerful influence, I thought then I had no 
 time for " Hero Worship," " Sartor Resartus," or 
 the " French Revolution." Youth passes many 
 such doors that stand ready to open for it into 
 treasure-houses of golden opportunity. 
 
 VIII 
 
 The range of studies required to be taught in the 
 ungraded district school of those days was some- 
 
STARTING OUT IN THE WORLD 85 
 
 thing preposterous, often extending all the way 
 from the first steps in reading, writing, and num- 
 bers, to higher arithmetic and grammar, including 
 perhaps algebra, natural philosophy, and chemistry, 
 the two last without any laboratory or apparatus. 
 Mine being a winter term, I had no abecedarians, 
 for which mercy I was grateful. Quill pens were 
 in use, and during the half hour given to the writ- 
 ing lesson the prevailing silence was broken by 
 the scratching of nibs, and the altogether too 
 frequent appeal, " Mend my pen, master ? Please 
 mend my pen ? " Skill in pen-mending was one 
 of the teacher's indispensable accomplishments ; 
 he was likewise required to write the learners' 
 copy. Mere drudgery much of this was, and it 
 would have been intolerable to my youth and 
 inexperience and sensitive nervous-sanguine tem- 
 perament, but for the double necessity of doing 
 my duty to those under my charge and of earning 
 my humble salary — sixteen dollars a month, that 
 season. Yet the pleasure I took in some of my 
 work atoned for much of the annoyance attending 
 the rest. I had classes in algebra and French, 
 which were a positive satisfaction. The French 
 was voluntary on my part, three or four of my 
 advanced pupils having taken it up, at my sug- 
 gestion, in place of chemistry. 
 
 I had no serious trouble in governing the school, 
 
86 MY OWN STORY 
 
 except on one critical occasion, when an act of 
 haughty disobedience on the part of one of the 
 older boys, taller if not heavier than I, resulted in 
 a rough-and-tumble contest for supremacy on the 
 school-room floor, in the presence of the amazed 
 and frightened pupils. When we finally went 
 down together, it chanced that I was a-top. It 
 was even a more decided moral than a physical 
 victory, for I felt that the sympathies of the entire 
 school, even of the boy's brother and sister, were 
 on my side. I have described a struggle very 
 similar to this in one of my minor novels, " The 
 Little Master," but between the actual circum- 
 stance and the fictitious one suggested by it, there 
 is this important difference, that in my own case 
 the rebellious pupil's parents, as well as his brother 
 and sister, sided with the teacher. After that, 
 harmony reigned in my little realm, and I was 
 made to feel in many ways the increased good-will 
 of all the older scholars. 
 
 IX 
 
 The Lockport winter term was the last of my 
 experience as a school-teacher. At its close I 
 went to Brockport, a village on the Erie Canal, 
 where there was an academy, with the intention 
 of entering it. I entered it for one day ; or, more 
 strictly speaking, for one hour. I saw the prin- 
 
STARTING OUT IN THE WORLD 87 
 
 cipal, whom I remember as a stocky man with a 
 wooden leg, and talked with students who had 
 been a year or two in attendance. When I learned 
 how long they had been in traversing fields of 
 study which I had passed, unassisted, in one half 
 the time (more superficially, without doubt), how 
 far in advance I was, in Latin, of the class I hoped 
 to enter, and how far behind in Greek, and how 
 little progress the routine of the term promised 
 after all, I was dismayed at what, to my boyish 
 conceit, appeared a treadmill process of education. 
 The truth was, my desultory methods of study 
 had rendered me impatient of what would have 
 been, undoubtedly, a useful discipline. I had ideal- 
 ized the academy, which I had longed for and 
 looked forward to so long, fancying it something 
 entirely different from the Lockport classical 
 school ; and I found it a little more of the same 
 sort, on a larger scale. With my habits of solitary 
 application, I could do out of it all I could hope to 
 do in it, and more in directions in which I wished 
 to go. 
 
 Then there was the important economic consid- 
 eration. From my farming and teaching I had 
 saved barely enough money to take me through 
 the term ; and at its close I should have to go to 
 work to earn more, either at farming or teaching. 
 To neither of these occupations did I desire ever 
 
88 MY OWN STORY 
 
 to return. I went out from the throng of students 
 when the organization of classes had barely begun, 
 and walked the streets of Brockport village in a 
 deeply anxious frame of mind, until I had reached 
 one of those momentous decisions which often 
 mark a crisis in our lives. I would give up all 
 thought of working my way through college, and 
 face the world at once in search of fortune, if 
 fortune there might be for one so ill prepared and 
 of so uncertain aims. 
 
 I hastened to the pleasant village home where I 
 had engaged board for the term, and found, to my 
 relief, that the room would be in request by other 
 applicants ; packed my trunk, and hurried with it 
 on board the first packet boat for Spencer's Basin ; 
 returned to the Ogden homestead for a brief visit, 
 and to put into shape some poems and sketches, 
 a few in print but more in manuscript, which I 
 had not yet been wise enough to burn ; then, on 
 the tenth day of May, 1847, not Y et twenty years 
 of age, I started for New York. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 FIRST EXPERIENCES AS A WRITER 
 
 Traveling by packet boat on the Erie Canal, 
 from Rochester, and by steamboat down the Hud- 
 son from Albany, I arrived at the pier in New 
 York at daybreak on the morning of May 15, 
 1847. 
 
 And what a daybreak it was ! The great river, 
 the shipping, the mast-fringed wharves, the misty 
 morning light, the silent streets of the hardly yet 
 awakening city, the vastness and strangeness and 
 mystery of it all, kindled my enthusiasm and made 
 me glad I had come. In all that mighty metro- 
 polis I knew not a single soul ; I brought no mes- 
 sage to any one, not a letter of introduction ; I 
 knew no more what was before me than if I had 
 dropped upon Mars or the Moon ; but what of 
 that ? Here was life, and I was young ! 
 
 It was characteristic of my impressible and 
 impulsive nature that I strolled about City Hall 
 Park and down Broadway to the Battery, where I 
 sat long on the benches, enjoying the novel scenes, 
 
9 o MY OWN STORY 
 
 the sails and steamboats, the dashing waves, the 
 cool breeze from the water, then crossed by ferry 
 to Brooklyn and back, before I thought of looking 
 for a boarding-place. Then I found one on the 
 shady side of Duane Street, quite near Broadway, 
 and not very far from the steamboat wharf, where 
 I had left my trunk. In country fashion I knocked 
 at the door, and wondered why nobody came to 
 let me in. I was so green I did not know a door- 
 bell. 
 
 The door was opened by a smiling little doctor, 
 who, I must do him the justice to say, continued 
 to smile (perhaps he smiled all the more) when he 
 learned that I had come for board and not for a 
 prescription. He instructed me in the mysteries 
 of the bell-pull, and a maid convoyed me upstairs 
 to the landlady. It was a boarding-house "for 
 gentlemen only," the " gentlemen " being for the 
 most part dry-goods clerks, and young men — 
 elderly men, too, as I was soon to discover — out 
 of business and seeking employment. 
 
 I had a roommate at first, a companionable 
 fellow, who began at once to enlighten me in the 
 agreeable vices of city life, offering to " take me 
 everywhere." He was so well dressed and so 
 frankly friendly, and the allurements he described 
 were, from his point of view, such matters of 
 course for any one privileged to enjoy them, that 
 
FIRST EXPERIENCES AS A WRITER 91 
 
 I did not realize at all that my first city acquaint- 
 ance was a dangerous one. Indeed, he was not 
 dangerous to me. I listened to him with curiosity 
 and perfect toleration, and took one or two walks 
 with him ; but soon withdrew from his society, 
 simply because our tastes were not congenial, and 
 I had aspirations to which his atmosphere was not 
 the breath of life. I told our landlady that I must 
 have a room by myself, or go elsewhere, — that I 
 not only wished to write and study a good deal, 
 but that the mere presence of a roommate was 
 irksome to me. She gave me a small room with 
 one window, high up in the house, — the conven- 
 tional garret, in short, — and I was happy. 
 
 What, after all, was the motive that had brought 
 me to New York? That I had secret hopes of 
 becoming an author is certainly true ; but I had 
 not confided them to my most intimate friend, I 
 scarcely dared acknowledge them to myself ; and 
 I was not presumptuous enough to suppose that 
 at the age of nineteen, ill equipped as I was for 
 such a career, I could start in at once and earn a 
 living by my pen. I carried with me my manu- 
 scripts and books, and habits of study and compo- 
 sition, in which I had satisfaction for their own 
 sake, and which I fondly believed would reward 
 me with happiness, if not fortune, in the near 
 future ; but in the mean time I flattered myself 
 
9 2 MY OWN STORY 
 
 that I was looking for some business of a practical 
 nature. 
 
 I answered an advertisement for a young man 
 who wrote a good hand and knew something of 
 accounts, and found a crowd of applicants at the 
 place before me. I visited an employment office, 
 which got my dollar on the false pretense of in- 
 suring me a good situation within a week, but 
 rendered me not the slightest service. I had 
 cherished, like so many country boys, romantic 
 dreams of going to sea ; I frequented the wharves, 
 and observed the sailors, and was quickly cured 
 of any desire to ship before the mast, but still 
 fancied I would like to be a supercargo, or some- 
 thing of that sort ; even a voyage or two as cabin 
 boy might have its attractions. I had also heard 
 of such a position as that of navy captain's secre- 
 tary, which I thought would be peculiarly desir- 
 able for a youth of some literary capacity wishing 
 to see the world. One day, perceiving a man-of- 
 war in port, and a fine-looking officer on the 
 quarter-deck walking to and fro under an awning, 
 I ventured on board, and accosted him, with all 
 due respect, as I thought then, and as I still be- 
 lieve. I have quite forgotten what I was starting 
 to say, but I remember well the curt command 
 that cut me short : " Take off your hat when you 
 address a gentleman ! " uttered without discon- 
 
FIRST EXPERIENCES AS A WRITER 93 
 
 tinuing his walk, or turning his face, which he 
 carried high before him. 
 
 If he had hurled a binnacle at me, or a bow- 
 anchor, or anything else naval and characteristic, 
 I could not have been more astounded. Seeing 
 that he wore his own cap (handsomely gold-laced, 
 as I have him in my mind's eye still), and we were 
 in the open air but for the awning, I could not 
 possibly discover how I had merited so brutal a 
 rebuff. I stared at him a moment, stifling with 
 astonishment and humiliation, and indignant 
 enough to hurl back at him anything in his own 
 line, a capstan or a forecastle — I was too angry 
 to make a discriminating choice. Fortunately I 
 had sense enough to reflect that he was in his 
 own little kingdom, and that if I was not pleased 
 with the manners of the country the sooner I 
 took myself out of it the better. I turned my 
 back on him abruptly and left the ship, choking 
 down my wrath, but thinking intently (too late, as 
 was my habit) of the killingly sarcastic retort I 
 might have made. Thus was quenched in me 
 the last flickering inclination for a seafaring life. 
 
 II 
 
 Meanwhile I went about the actual, unpractical 
 business which, unconfessedly, I had most at 
 heart. I offered a volume of verses — in a variety 
 
94 MY OWN STORY 
 
 of styles, derived from Byron, Scott, and Burns, 
 with here and there a reminiscence of Hudibras — 
 to two or three publishers, all of whom but one 
 declined even to look at them (perhaps looking at 
 the author's face was sufficient), telling me, kindly 
 enough but firmly, that no book of poems unless 
 written by a man of established reputation could 
 possibly attract public attention. The one who 
 did at last consent to examine my manuscripts 
 returned them with even fewer words, no doubt 
 thinking he had already wasted too many on a 
 hopeless case. 
 
 "I must make a reputation before I can get 
 anybody to print my volume," I said to myself ; 
 and I could see but one way of doing that. I 
 selected some of the shorter pieces from my col- 
 lection, and began offering them to the weekly 
 papers, along with some prose sketches which I 
 had brought from the country, or completed after 
 my arrival. I did not find editors anxious to fill 
 their columns with my poetry; and though my 
 prose articles met with more favor, I was told 
 even by those who expressed a willingness to 
 print them that they did not pay for " such 
 things." 
 
 I was a shy youth, and it really required heroic 
 effort on my part to make these calls on editors 
 and publishers, and offer them my crude literary 
 
FIRST EXPERIENCES AS A WRITER 95 
 
 wares, which I was pretty sure to have handed 
 back to me, perhaps with that cold silence so much 
 more killing even than criticism to a young writ- 
 er's aspirations. How often in those days I stood 
 panting at an editor's door, waiting to still my 
 heart-beats and gain breath and courage for the 
 interview, then perhaps cravenly descending the 
 stairs and putting off till another day the dreaded 
 ordeal ! I could never forget those bitter experi- 
 ences, which I trust made me somewhat tender of 
 the feelings of literary aspirants when in later 
 years it came my turn to exercise a little brief 
 authority in an editorial chair. 
 
 Rebuffs from other sources made me peculiarly 
 sensitive to the first kind words of encouragement 
 that I remember receiving in those days. I sup- 
 pose I was all the more grateful for them because 
 they came from one of those whom it required 
 most courage to meet. In my boyhood I was 
 overawed by imposing reputations; and in 1847 
 Major Noah was one of the prominent men of New 
 York. He had originated two or three daily 
 papers, and was then editor and proprietor of the 
 " Sunday Times." He had written successful 
 plays, and was the author of. two or three books ; 
 he had served his country abroad, and had, if I re- 
 member rightly, been mayor of New York. He 
 was an Israelite who aspired to be a leader of the 
 
96 MY OWN STORY 
 
 Israelites ; and he had made himself widely talked 
 about at home and abroad by his Utopian scheme 
 of gathering his people together in a city of the 
 Jews on Grand Island in the Niagara River. This 
 New Jerusalem was actually begun, but never got 
 much beyond a monument on the ruins of which 
 could be read long afterwards the inscription : 
 " Ararat, a City of Refuge for the Jews, founded 
 by Mordecai M. Noah in the month of Tishri, 5586 
 (September, 1825), and in the 50th year of the 
 American Independence." He was a leading 
 politician, and a well-known figure in New York ; 
 large, portly, with strong, florid, Hebraic features, 
 at that time a little over 60 years of age. 
 
 To him, among others, I submitted a specimen 
 of my verse. He looked up from his desk, in a 
 small, littered room, where he was writing rapidly 
 his weekly editorials for the " Times," and told me 
 dryly that it would be of no use for him to read 
 my poem, since he could not print it. 
 
 " It may be of use to me, if you will take the 
 trouble to look at it," I said ; " for I should like 
 to have some person of experience tell me whether 
 there is any chance of my earning money by my 
 pen in this city of New York." 
 
 "Anybody who wishes to do that must write 
 prose and leave poetry alone," he replied. Where- 
 upon I told him I had at my boarding-place an 
 
FIRST EXPERIENCES AS A WRITER 97 
 
 unfinished story I would like to show him. " Fin- 
 ish it," he said, "and bring it to me. I shall not 
 probably be able to use it, but I may direct you 
 to somebody who can. At all events, I will tell 
 you what I think of it." 
 
 From the moment when he spoke to me I was 
 relieved entirely of the diffidence with which I had 
 approached him. When I went to call on him 
 again I felt that I was going to see a friend. 
 Meanwhile I had finished my story — the most 
 ambitious thing I had yet attempted — and sent 
 it to him. 
 
 He offered me a stool beside his chair and laid 
 out my manuscript on his desk. 
 
 " Young man," said he, " I think you have it in 
 you." I was speechless, shivering with joy. 
 "This," pushing my poem aside, "is well enough ; 
 you may get to write very good verse by and by. 
 But don't write any more while you have to earn 
 your living by your pen. Here is your strong- 
 hold," laying his large but delicate hand on my 
 story. " I have n't had time to read much of it, 
 but I see that you have struck the right key, and 
 that you have had the good sense not to make 
 your style too dignified, but lively and entertain- 
 ing. You have humor; you can tell a story; 
 that 's a great deal in your favor." 
 
 This is the substance of his kindly comment, 
 
98 MY OWN STORY 
 
 which the novelty of the circumstance and the 
 immense importance to me of the occasion im- 
 pressed indelibly upon my mind. He then in- 
 quired if I had any other means of support. 
 
 "None, whatever," I replied, "unless I go back 
 to farming or school-teaching, which I don't mean 
 to do." 
 
 " All the better," he said ; " necessity will teach 
 you sobriety, industry, thrift. You will have to 
 work hard; you will meet with a great deal of 
 discouragement; but writing for the press is a 
 perfectly legitimate profession, and if you devote 
 yourself to it, there is no reason why you should n't 
 succeed." 
 
 I do not know that ever in my life any words 
 had made me so happy as these. In subsequent 
 days of struggle, when more than once I was on 
 the point of flinging down my pen, I sometimes 
 wondered whether they were wise for him to speak 
 or good for me to hear. But now that more than 
 half a century has passed, and I can look back 
 upon my early life almost as dispassionately as if 
 it were that of another person, I can thank him 
 .again for the first authentic judgment ever pro- 
 nounced upon my literary possibilities. 
 
 " Come with me," he said, putting on his hat ; 
 and we went out together, I with my roll of manu- 
 script, he with his stout cane. Even if I had been 
 
MAJOR MORDECAI M. NOAH 
 
FIRST EXPERIENCES AS A WRITER 99 
 
 unaware of the fact, I should very soon have dis- 
 covered that I was in company with an impor- 
 tant personage. Everybody observed him, and it 
 seemed as if every third or fourth man we met 
 gave him a respectful salute. He continued his 
 friendly talk with me in a way that relieved me of 
 all sense of my own insignificance in the shadow 
 of his celebrity and august proportions. Looking 
 back upon myself now, through the glass of mem- 
 ory, I behold a very different figure from that 
 which retired so precipitately from the unman- 
 nerly officer's quarter-deck hardly two weeks be- 
 fore. One is a confident youth, stepping hopefully 
 beside his noble guide and friend ; the other, an 
 abashed and verdant boy. There seem to be 
 two of me on those curiously contrasted occasions. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The Major took me to the office of a publisher 
 in Ann Street, who did not chance to be in. He 
 left my manuscript with a good word for it, and a 
 promise to call with me again. Twice afterwards 
 he took me to Ann Street with no better success. 
 Such disinterested kindness, on the part of an 
 old and eminent and fully occupied man, to a 
 strange lad from the country, warms my heart 
 again with reverence and gratitude as I think of it 
 at this distant day. 
 
 : LofC. 
 
ioo MY OWN STORY 
 
 At last he gave me a letter of introduction to 
 Mr. Williams, the Ann Street publisher, and ad- 
 vised me to find him when I could. I did at last 
 find him, with a smile on his face and my own 
 manuscript in his hand, reading it with manifest 
 amusement, when I handed him Noah's letter. It 
 was a story, as I recollect, in some ten chapters, 
 in which I had made an attempt to portray West- 
 ern scenes and characters as I had observed them 
 during my year in Illinois. After some talk about 
 it, he asked me what price I expected to receive for 
 it. I replied that I had not put any price upon it. 
 
 " Major Noah," I said, "advised me to leave that 
 to you." But as he urged me to name a " figure," 
 I said I had hoped it might be worth to him about 
 a hundred and twenty-five dollars. 
 
 " Hardly that," he said, with a smile. " We 
 have never paid so much for any writer's first 
 story." 
 
 " Oh, well," I replied, " name your own price." 
 
 He named twenty-five dollars. That seems a 
 ludicrous falling away from my figure, but I did 
 not regard it as at all ludicrous at the time. 
 Twenty-five dollars, as the first substantial earn- 
 ings of my pen, was after all a goodly sum, for 
 one in my circumstances, and vastly better than 
 the return of my manuscript into my hands. 
 That a production of my pen could be deemed to 
 
FIRST EXPERIENCES AS A WRITER 101 
 
 have any money value was a consideration that 
 carried with it present satisfaction and hope in 
 the future. I gladly accepted his offer, and saw 
 him lay my story away on a shelf beside a number 
 of others awaiting each its turn at the newspaper 
 mill of novelettes attached to the publishing shop. 
 
 Soon after that Major Noah took me to the 
 office of Mr. Holden, publisher of "Holden's Dol- 
 lar Magazine," so called because it was sent to sub- 
 scribers for one dollar a year, although, as I found, 
 it earned a still further claim to the title by paying 
 its writers one dollar a page. An introduction by 
 Major Noah insured me polite attention from Mr. 
 Holden, who read promptly the story I offered 
 him (a sort of backwoods adventure), accepted it, 
 and printed it in his forthcoming number. These 
 were the first contributions of mine ever accepted 
 by "paying" publications. The Holden story 
 was quite short ; it made only five or six pages, 
 and I remember having to wait for my five or six 
 dollars until it appeared between the covers of the 
 magazine. It was copied into Howitt's " People's 
 Journal," of London, and reprinted in many papers 
 in this country, and was the cause of my indulging 
 illusory dreams of a brilliantly dawning reputa- 
 tion. 
 
 After getting a second story accepted by " Hol- 
 den's," and one by another periodical of some liter- 
 
io2 MY OWN STORY 
 
 ary pretensions, of which I have forgotten even 
 the name, I determined to devote myself solely to 
 writing for magazines and newspapers. I have 
 now to tell how, after I had given up all thought 
 of seeking other employment, other employment 
 sought me. 
 
 IV 
 
 Among the Duane Street boarders was an Eng- 
 lishman of somewhat distinguished appearance, 
 Dr. Child, with whom I soon became quite inti- 
 mately acquainted, although he was my senior by 
 about fifteen years. Perhaps we were all the more 
 interested in each other because of the contrast in 
 our early lives; he had been confessedly a pro- 
 digal, and he told me of the opportunities he had 
 wasted, while I confided to him mine, which I 
 had shaped for myself against adverse circum- 
 stances. His father had been a successful oculist 
 in a provincial English town, in whose office he 
 had had experience as an assistant, and upon 
 whose death he had essayed to succeed him in his 
 practice. Failing in that, and in several other 
 ventures, he had come to this country with an 
 eyewater which he hoped to transmute into a Pac- 
 tolian stream. He had been some time in New 
 York, looking for a partner in his enterprise, — 
 the doctor to furnish the formula, as an offset to 
 
FIRST EXPERIENCES AS A WRITER 103 
 
 the ten or twenty thousand dollars necessary for 
 the manufacture and advertising. 
 
 He had a professional habit of scrutinizing peo- 
 ple's optics, and perceiving signs of the chronic 
 irritation in mine, he presented me with a bottle 
 of Child's Magical Remedy (or Radical Remedy ; 
 I have forgotten just what he called it, but one 
 name is as good as another), which he guaranteed 
 would cure them in ten days. This was the begin- 
 ning of our friendship, which would have con- 
 tinued till this time if it had lasted as long as the 
 ailment has that he proposed to relieve. 
 
 I had known him barely a month when he one 
 day drew me aside to ask if I had a little money 
 I could spare. "Not for making eyewater," I 
 replied jokingly ; but he was profoundly serious. 
 He went on to say that he had left a wife in Eng- 
 land, that she had followed him to America (rather 
 against his wishes, I inferred), and was then stay- 
 ing with a relative in Hoboken. He was planning 
 to set up housekeeping with her, and had selected 
 a small tenement suitable for their purpose in Jer- 
 sey City. But the furniture was all to be bought, 
 and he was out of money. The Hoboken relative 
 (an engraver of gold watch-cases and watch-dials) 
 would help him a little ; but he needed about forty 
 dollars more ; and could I accommodate him with 
 that amount ? 
 
104 MY OWN STORY 
 
 " I have as much," I said (I had just got my 
 twenty-five dollars from the Ann Street shop), 
 "but I shall probably need it to pay my board 
 before I get more." 
 
 "Advance me forty dollars," he replied, "and 
 come and live with us and board it out ; " arguing 
 that a quiet home, like the one offered me, would 
 be much pleasanter, and better for my literary 
 work, than the Duane Street boarding-house. 
 
 I was easily persuaded, and handed over to him 
 nearly all the money I had, rather rashly, as it 
 seems to me now ; but although, in his role of 
 oculist and self-styled " doctor," I considered him 
 a charlatan, I trusted him as a friend. The house 
 was furnished, and I went to live with the reunited 
 pair, in very modest quarters in Jersey City. 
 There I passed the rest of that summer quite com- 
 fortably, taking long rambles on the Jersey side, 
 a salt-water bath every morning on a tide-washed 
 beach of the great river, and frequent ferry trips 
 to New York. I had a good room to write in, with 
 which indispensable convenience I felt I could be 
 happy almost anywhere. 
 
 In the shop of the Hoboken relative the doctor 
 had learned to do a little ornamental work with 
 the graver, chiefly on gold pencil-cases ; and some 
 time in the autumn he set up a little shop of his 
 own, in the back room at home. I used to sit by 
 
FIRST EXPERIENCES AS A WRITER 105 
 
 his table, watching him ; and one day, borrowing 
 a graver and a strip of zinc, I amused myself with 
 them while we talked. After a little practice I 
 could cut his simple rose-petals and little branch- 
 ing scrolls as well as he could, and soon found my- 
 self working on the pencil-cases. Gold pencils 
 were the fashion in those days, and as Christmas 
 was approaching, he had more work than he could 
 do without assistance. On the other hand, the 
 periodicals I was writing for had accepted as many 
 of my articles as they could use for some time to 
 come, and, as I generally had to wait for my pay 
 until the day of publication, I was in need of 
 money, and glad of a chance to earn it. So, when 
 he proposed to take me into partnership, I accepted 
 the offer, bought a set of gravers, and settled 
 down to the work, which was quite to my taste, 
 and which, almost from the start, I could turn off 
 as rapidly as he. It required something of a knack 
 to make with a free hand the clean, graceful 
 strokes, of varying width and depth, taking care 
 never to cut through the thin material. 
 
 Those were pleasant hours for me, in the small 
 back room. The doctor was excellent company. 
 He had done a good deal of miscellaneous reading, 
 and seen a life as widely different from mine as 
 his provincial England was distant from my own 
 native backwoods and Western prairies ; and (if 
 
106 MY OWN STORY 
 
 his wife chanced to be out of earshot) he delighted 
 to impart to me his varied experiences. Some of 
 these were not, from a moralistic point of view, 
 particularly to his credit, but I was an eager stu- 
 dent of life, and nothing human was foreign to my 
 interest. 
 
 His eyewater having failed to float his for- 
 tunes, it is difficult to conjecture what would have 
 become of the Jersey City housekeeping, and of 
 me and my forty dollars, but for this industry, to 
 which he was introduced by the Hoboken rela- 
 tive. I boarded out his debt to me according to 
 our agreement ; and through the connection thus 
 formed I was by the middle of December earning 
 two or three dollars a day at the trade picked up 
 thus by accident. 
 
 It was not solely to keep the work from seeking 
 other hands, nor through good-will to me, that he 
 took me into partnership. He was then getting 
 his pencil-cases from the factories, and it was gall- 
 ing to his sense of dignity that he, a professional 
 man and a gentleman (an English gentleman, re- 
 collect), should be obliged to go for them, and 
 return them, and receive his paltry pay, like a 
 common mechanic. 
 
 After we became partners, I assumed the out- 
 door duties, which were an agreeable change from 
 plodding over the pencil-cases, the more especially 
 
FIRST EXPERIENCES AS A WRITER 107 
 
 as one of the factories was in New York, and 
 crossing the ferries was a delight to me, in all 
 weathers and at all seasons of the year. I can see 
 myself now, on a wild winter's morning, watching 
 from the bow — or, if there was too keen a wind, 
 or snow or sleet driving, from a cabin window — 
 the careening sloops, the diagonally-crossing ferry- 
 boats, the foraging gulls, and the cakes of floating 
 ice amid which our boat made its way. 
 
 After Christmas, work was less plenty, and 
 occasionally there was none at all. We now ex- 
 perienced the disadvantage of not having acquired 
 the handicraft by a more thorough apprenticeship. 
 The New York factory, pleased with our pencil- 
 cases, proposed to me to take silver combs to 
 engrave ; and I remember how reluctant I was to 
 admit that I had learned to do pencil-cases only. 
 The surface of the high silver comb (such as ladies 
 wore in those days) called for a breadth of treat- 
 ment quite beyond my experience. The foreman 
 thought I could do it, and, after my frank confes- 
 sion, I was willing to make the trial. I took home 
 one of the combs and carved on it a design that 
 must have astonished him by its bold originality. 
 I recall the peculiar smile with which he held it 
 up and regarded it. I can also still imagine the 
 galaxy of bright faces that would have been turned 
 towards any lady venturing to bear that cynosure 
 
108 MY OWN STORY 
 
 aloft on her back hair in any civilized assembly. 
 It would have been just the thing for the Queen 
 of Dahomey, or a belle of the Cannibal Islands. 
 But the factory was not making combs for those 
 markets. Blushing very red, I remarked, " I told 
 you I couldn't do it." 
 
 The foreman replied, " I guess you told the 
 truth for once ! " 
 
 We had a good laugh over it, which he probably 
 enjoyed more than I did. I knew as well as he 
 how grotesquely bad it was, and was surprised 
 when he added, — 
 
 " For a first attempt you might have done worse. 
 You need practice and instruction." He then 
 proposed that I should come and work in the 
 shop, assuring me that I should be earning a good 
 living in the course of a few weeks. He knew 
 my friend's Hoboken relative, who was easily 
 earning his seven or eight dollars a day by cutting 
 miniature setters and pheasants, nests with eggs, 
 and tufts of grass, on gold watch-dials, and thought 
 I could do as well in time. The proposal was al- 
 luring, and it required courage to decline it. But 
 I had chosen my calling, and could not think seri- 
 ously of another. 
 
 Soon after that, the supply of pencil-cases ran 
 so low that there was not work enough even for 
 one ; so I withdrew from the partnership and re- 
 
FIRST EXPERIENCES AS A WRITER 109 
 
 turned to my writing, — which, indeed, I had never 
 quite abandoned. I passed the winter pleasantly 
 and contentedly enough. But one such winter 
 sufficed. Then in spring the young man's fancy 
 lightly turned to a change of boarding-place. 
 
 One forenoon, as I was strolling on Broadway, 
 not far above City Hall Park, I saw in a door- 
 way the notice, " Furnished Room to let." There 
 were similar notices displayed all over the city, 
 and I must have passed several that morning ; but 
 at that door, up a flight of steps (there was a wine 
 store in the basement), something impelled me to 
 ring, — my good genius, if I have one. It proved 
 to be the one domicile in which, if I had thought 
 of it beforehand, I should have deemed it espe- 
 cially fortunate to be received. If I had sought 
 it I should probably never have found it ; and I 
 had come upon it by what appeared the merest 
 chance. 
 
 A French maid admitted me, and a vivacious 
 Frenchman, who spoke hardly a word of English, 
 showed me the room, and introduced me to his 
 wife, a stout, red-faced woman, as voluble and 
 friendly, and as delightfully ignorant of English, 
 as himself. They seemed as happy at the pro- 
 spect of having a lodger who could speak their 
 
no MY OWN STORY 
 
 language a little as I was pleased to enter a family 
 in which only French was spoken. They took no 
 boarders, and the room alone — a good-sized one, 
 up three flights, with an outlook on Broadway — 
 cost two thirds as much as I had paid for board 
 and lodgings together in Duane Street and Jersey 
 City, — far too much for my precarious income ; 
 but I could not let pass such an opportunity for 
 acquiring a colloquial familiarity with the language 
 I had as yet had but little practice in speaking. 
 As I was to get my meals outside, I thought I 
 could, when necessary, scrimp enough in that di- 
 rection to offset the higher room rent. 
 
 I hastened back to Jersey City, packed my 
 books and baggage, and took leave of the friends 
 in whose home I had been an inmate for about nine 
 months. I was a home-loving youth, and it was 
 always painful for me to sever such ties, even after 
 they had become a little irksome ; but in this in- 
 stance any regrets I may have felt were lessened 
 by the immediate certainty of a desirable change. 
 I was like a plant that had outgrown its environ- 
 ment, and exhausted the soil which had for a sea- 
 son sufficed for its nourishment ; and the very 
 roots of my being rejoiced in the prospect of trans- 
 plantation. 
 
 I saw little of the Childs after the separation, 
 and soon lost track of them altogether. I often 
 
FIRST EXPERIENCES AS A WRITER in 
 
 wondered what had become of the doctor, with 
 his eyewater, and his pencil-case engraving, so in- 
 compatible with his English dignity, and of do- 
 mestic Mrs. Child, with her dear little dropped k's, 
 — into what haven they could have drifted, out of 
 the fierce currents of our American life, which 
 they seemed so incompetent to cope with ; but I 
 never knew, until, some five and twenty years 
 afterwards, a tall, elderly gentleman, with grizzled 
 locks, and of rather distinguished appearance, 
 sought me out, in Arlington. It was my old friend 
 the doctor. He had come to make me a friendly 
 visit ; but it seemed that it was, after all, partly 
 woman's curiosity that had sent him ; Mrs. Child 
 having charged him not to pass through Boston, 
 where he had business, without learning for a cer- 
 tainty if J. T. Trowbridge, the writer, and so forth, 
 was the person of the same name who, when little 
 more than a boy, had engraved pencil-cases and 
 sat up late nights over his books and manuscripts 
 in the Jersey City cottage. I was gratified to learn 
 that they had found a port of peace, into which 
 Providence itself seemed to have guided their 
 bark, after many vicissitudes of storm and calm. 
 They had at last found their proper place in an 
 Old Peoples' Home, or some such institution, in 
 Baltimore, not as dependent inmates, I was glad 
 to know, but as superintendent and matron. I 
 
ii2 MY OWN STORY 
 
 could hardly imagine a more ideal position for him 
 with his affable manners and mild dignity, and for 
 her with her strict domestic economy, — not too 
 strict, I trust, for the inmates under their charge. 
 Another quarter of a century, and more, has 
 swept by since the doctor's visit, and the two 
 must long since have fallen in with the procession 
 of those who have entered that Home, from the 
 world of struggle and failure, and, after a sojourn 
 more or less brief in its tranquil retreat, passed 
 on into the shadow of the Greater Peace. 
 
 VI 
 
 My Broadway landlord was M. Perrault, one of 
 the best known members of the French colony in 
 New York ; an accomplished violinist, and leader 
 of the orchestra at Niblo's Garden. The family 
 was as characteristically French and Parisian as 
 the Jersey City household had been English and 
 provincial. Although only a lodger, I was wel- 
 comed at once to the small salon, and made to 
 feel so much at home in it that from the first I 
 spent much of my leisure time with the Perraults 
 and their friends who frequented the house. The 
 very first Sunday after my arrival I was invited 
 to dinner, and made acquainted with French cook- 
 ery, and that indispensable attendant upon it and 
 promoter of good cheer, Bordeaux wine. There 
 
FIRST EXPERIENCES AS A WRITER 113 
 
 were only four at table, the two Perraults, their 
 son Raphael, a boy of nine, and myself, the only 
 guest. But it was a dinner of courses, — not very 
 expensive, I judge, and certainly neither lavish 
 nor ostentatious ; every dish simple, individual, 
 and prepared in ways that were at once as novel 
 to me as they were agreeable. Perrault was him- 
 self an amateur cook, of a skill that might have 
 qualified him as a chef, if he had not been making 
 a good income more satisfactorily by conducting 
 Niblo's orchestra, teaching the violin, and copy- 
 ing scores. He was the inventor of a sauce Per- 
 rault, which, Madame boasted, was popular among 
 their New York compatriots, and even had some 
 vogue in Paris. Every few days after that, me- 
 morably on Sundays, he would come to my room 
 and smilingly announce that he had given the 
 finishing touches to the dinner, and had come to 
 take me down with him, perhaps adding gentle 
 force to urgent persuasion. If I remonstrated, 
 " Not so soon again ; you are altogether too 
 kind ! " he would assure me that my dining with 
 them was considered by both him and Madame as 
 a favor, and she especially would be desolee if I 
 declined. Nor could I believe him in any way 
 hypocritical ; there could be no motive for their 
 proffered hospitality but the satisfaction there was 
 in it for them and for their guest. They were 
 
ii 4 MY OWN STORY 
 
 kind-hearted, fond of society, and ardent in friend- 
 ship, and if their Gallic cordiality was sometimes 
 effusive rather than deep, it was not insincere. 
 
 I had been with them but a short time when 
 another opportunity was opened to me, — golden, 
 glorious, to an impecunious youth ! Might Per- 
 rault have the pleasure of taking me to the thea- 
 tre ? When Niblo's was n't crowded he could at 
 any time smuggle in a friend. Of course I was 
 enchanted to accept ; and well I remember the 
 awesome mystery of the dim stage entrance, — 
 his violin preceding him, as we passed the obliging 
 doorkeeper, and I following, fast held by his other 
 hand ; — then the tortuous way behind the scenes 
 and under the stage, to a seat in the front row, 
 near the orchestra (there were no orchestra stalls 
 in those days). The house was filling rapidly; 
 the musicians took their places ; quiet succeeded 
 the rustle of music leaves and the tuning of in- 
 struments, and suddenly, in an instant, what there 
 was of me was converted into a bundle of thrills 
 from head to foot, my joy in the music quickened 
 by the novelty of the situation and the pride I 
 felt in Perrault's leadership. 
 
 The performance that followed was not by any 
 means my first play ; but I had never before seen 
 a great actor in a great part. The piece was 
 Merry Wives of Windsor, and from that coigne 
 
FIRST EXPERIENCES AS A WRITER 115 
 
 of vantage, a seat in the front row, I for the first 
 time beheld Hackett as Falstaff, to my mind then, 
 and as I remember it still, an amazing perso- 
 nation of the greatest comic character on the 
 stage. Other good acting I witnessed that season 
 at Niblo's, under Perrault's auspices, but every- 
 thing else fades in the effulgence of Falstaff, 
 and the rainbow hues of a troupe of ballet girls 
 that came later. Could it have been any such 
 troupe of frilled and lithe-limbed nymphs that 
 Carlyle saw on a London stage, and scornfully 
 described as " mad, restlessly jumping and clip- 
 ping scissors " ? — those leaping and pirouetting, 
 curving and undulating shapes, miraculous, glori- 
 fied, weaving their dance, every movement timed 
 to the strains of the orchestra, a living web of 
 beauty and music ! For such indeed they were 
 — not jumping scissors, in whirling inverted 
 saucers ! — to my dewy adolescence. 
 
 Among the advantages enjoyed in my new lodg- 
 ing, I must not omit a large miscellaneous collec- 
 tion, mostly in paper covers, of the works of 
 French authors. It was not lacking in the earlier 
 classics, but it was especially rich in the produc- 
 tions of contemporary writers, novelists, drama- 
 tists, poets, then at the zenith of their celebrity, 
 or nearing it, — Sue, Balzac, Victor Hugo, George 
 Sand, and her confrere, Jules Sandeau, Lamar- 
 
116 MY OWN STORY 
 
 tine, Dumas, Scribe, Souli£, and a long list beside. 
 These I read indiscriminately and with avidity, in 
 days of discouragement and forced leisure, while 
 waiting for my accepted articles to appear, or for 
 others to be accepted by the periodicals I was 
 writing for. My solitude was peopled and .my 
 loneliness soothed by a world of fictitious charac- 
 ters in Monte Christo and Les Trois Mousque- 
 taires (I wish I could read them now, or anything 
 else, with such zest !), Le Juif Errant (I had my 
 own choice copy of Les Mysteres de Paris), Hugo's 
 Le Dernier Jour d'un Condamne, George Sand's 
 Indiana, and, among others not least, Scribe's 
 Pequillo Alliaga, a romance of adventure, eclipsed 
 by the number and popularity of the author's 
 dramas, but worthy, I then thought (I wonder 
 what I should think now), to take rank with Le 
 Sage's Gil Bias. Perrault was a scoffer at super- 
 stition and prudery (I shrink from saying religion 
 and virtue, which might perhaps be nearer exacti- 
 tude), and he did not mind the risk of corrupting 
 my youth by putting into my hands Voltaire's La 
 Pucelle and Parny's La Guerre des Dieux. But 
 the risk was not great. Something instinctive 
 afforded me a duck -like immunity in passing 
 through puddles. 
 
FIRST EXPERIENCES AS A WRITER H7 
 
 VII 
 
 It might have been possible for me to live by 
 writing stories at one dollar a page or two dollars 
 and a half a chapter, if I could have got them 
 published after they were accepted or paid for 
 when published. To widen my field, and secure, 
 as I hoped, better compensation, I sent an essay 
 to the Knickerbocker, then the foremost literary 
 periodical in the country. It quickly appeared in 
 those elegant pages, to which Irving and his com- 
 peers had given character ; and full of confidence 
 in this new vehicle for my productions, I went one 
 morning to call on the polite editor. He received 
 me cordially, appeared somewhat surprised at my 
 youth, and assured me that the covers of his mag- 
 azine would always be elastic enough to make 
 room for such papers as that which I had given 
 him. " Given " him, I found it was in a quite 
 literal sense, for when I hinted at the subject of 
 compensation, he smilingly informed me that it 
 was not his custom to pay for the contributions of 
 new writers. As he had rushed my essay into 
 print without notifying me of its acceptance, or 
 consulting me as to the signature I wished to have 
 attached to it, and as I had purposely withheld 
 the pseudonym under which I was writing for less 
 literary periodicals, and had not yet begun to write 
 
n8 MY OWN STORY 
 
 under my own name, he had published it anony- 
 mously, so that I did not even have the credit 
 of being a contributor to Knickerbocker. I was 
 then using chiefly the pseudonym of Paul Creyton, 
 which I kept for some years for two reasons, — 
 first, because I was well aware of my work being 
 only that of a 'prentice hand, and wished to re- 
 serve my own name for more mature composi- 
 tions ; and, second, as Paul Creyton grew in popu- 
 larity, I found an ever increasing advantage in 
 retaining so good an introduction to editors and 
 readers. If I had put off using my own name 
 until I was confident of doing my best work, I 
 might never have used it ; so that, as it seems to 
 me now, I might as well have begun using it from 
 the first, — or rather, a modified form of it, writing 
 it Townsend Trowbridge, omitting the J. or John 
 for greater distinctiveness, and to avoid confusion 
 of identity with any other Trowbridge. 
 
 I can hardly remember now what periodicals I 
 wrote for, or what I wrote ; but one story I recall, 
 which I should probably have forgotten with the 
 rest, if it had not come to light again, like a lost 
 river, a few years later. It was a novelette in 
 three or four installments, that was accepted by 
 the Manhattan Flashlight (although that was not 
 the name of the paper) with such unexampled 
 promptitude, and in a letter so polite, complimen- 
 
FIRST EXPERIENCES AS A WRITER 119 
 
 tary, and full of golden promise, that once more the 
 tide in my affairs seemed at the flood. Or nearly 
 so ; each installment was to be liberally paid for 
 when published, and the first would be put into 
 the printer's hands immediately upon my accept- 
 ance of the editorial terms. Accept them I did 
 with joyful celerity ; then, having waited two or 
 three weeks, I called at the publication office, only 
 to find the door locked, and the appalling notice 
 staring me in the face, " To Let — Inquire Room 
 below." At "room below" I inquired with a sick 
 heart, " What has become of the Flashlight ? " 
 and was told that it had "gone out." The pro- 
 prietor had decamped, leaving behind him nothing 
 but debts ; and I could neither come upon his trail 
 nor recover my manuscript. 
 
 Two or three years afterward a Boston editor 
 asked me how it chanced that I was writing a 
 continued story for a certain New York weekly 
 paper of a somewhat questionable character ; a 
 paper I had never heard of before. It was my 
 lost river reappearing in the most unexpected of 
 desert places. I wrote to the publisher for expla- 
 nations, and after a long and harassing delay was 
 informed that he had received my manuscript 
 with the assets of some business he had bought 
 out (not the Flashlight), that I must look to his 
 predecessor for redress, and that he would be 
 
120 MY OWN STORY 
 
 pleased to receive from me another story as good ! 
 He must have been lacking in a sense of humor, 
 or he would have added "on the same terms." 
 Redress from any source was of course out of the 
 question. 
 
 About this time, in Boston, I knew of a similar 
 adventure befalling a story by an author of world- 
 wide reputation. After the publication of The 
 Scarlet Letter had made " the obscurest man of 
 letters in America" one of the most famous, the 
 gloomy but powerfully impressive story of Ethan 
 Brand, which was written several years before, 
 and had lain neglected in the desks of unappre- 
 ciative editors, appeared as " original " in the col- 
 umns of the Boston Literary Museum. Know- 
 ing the editor, I hastened to inquire of him how 
 he had been able to get a contribution from Haw- 
 thorne. Complacently puffing his cigar, he told 
 me it had come to him from some other office, 
 where it had been "knocking around," that he 
 did n't suppose it had ever been paid for, and that 
 he had printed it without consulting the author. 
 He rather expected to hear from him, but he 
 never did; and it is quite probable that Haw- 
 thorne never knew of the illicit publication. He 
 must have kept a copy of the strayed Ethan 
 Brand, which not long after appeared in author- 
 ized form elsewhere. 
 
FIRST EXPERIENCES AS A WRITER 121 
 
 Among the few friends who used to climb to 
 my third-story room on Broadway was old Major 
 Noah, whom I can remember flushed and puffing 
 like another Falstaff, as he sank into a chair after 
 ascending those steep flights. He would stop on 
 his way downtown, to give me a kindly greeting, 
 and to inquire about my prospects ; he also gave 
 me a little work to do in the way of translation 
 from the French. He once brought me a volume 
 of Paris sketches, from which, not reading the 
 language himself, he desired me to select and 
 translate for him such as I deemed best suited to 
 the latitude of New York. The surprising simi- 
 larity of the life of the two cities was exemplified 
 by the fact that the translations I made were 
 printed with but few changes in the columns of 
 the Sunday Times, and served quite as well for 
 New York as for Paris. I quickly caught the 
 trick of adaptation, and soon had the pleasure of 
 seeing those social satires appear in the Major's 
 paper (anonymously, of course), with many local 
 touches I had given them before they passed 
 under his experienced pen. 
 
 VIII 
 
 Another good friend I had was Archibald 
 McLees, an expert line and letter engraver, and a 
 man of very decided literary tastes. I found his 
 
122 MY OWN STORY 
 
 shop a delightful lounging place ; seated on a high 
 stool, with his steel plate before him, in white 
 light, he would talk with me of Dickens and 
 Scott, Beranger and Moliere, turning now and 
 then from his work, with an expressive look over 
 his shoulder, to give point to some story, or a 
 quotation from Sam Weller. We dined together 
 at the restaurants, took excursions together (he 
 knew the city like a native), and once went 
 together to sit for our phrenological charts in the 
 office of the Fowlers. The younger Fowler made 
 a few hits, in manipulating our craniums ; but on 
 coming away, we concluded that, except for the 
 names written on our respective charts, it would 
 have been difficult to distinguish one from the 
 other. McLees had as much literary ability as I, 
 according to the scale of numbers ; while I seemed 
 fully his equal in artistic taste and mechanic skill. 
 As the object I had chiefly in view, in consulting 
 a phrenologist, was to get some outward evidence 
 of my aptitude for the career I had chosen, the 
 result was disappointing. Fowler's first words, 
 in placing his hand on my forehead — " This 
 brain is always thinking — thinking — thinking!" 
 — led me to expect a striking delineation ; but I 
 afterwards reflected that, like other remarks that 
 followed, they would have applied equally well to 
 any number of heads that passed under his obser- 
 
FIRST EXPERIENCES AS A WRITER 123 
 
 vation. He made a correct map of the country, 
 yet quite failed to penetrate the life of the region, 
 or to take into account the electric and skyey in- 
 fluences which, quite as much as the topographi- 
 cal conformation, cause each to differ from any 
 other. About this time I went with a young man 
 of my acquaintance to attend one of Fowler's 
 lectures. My friend was a rather commonplace 
 fellow, but he had a massive frontal development, 
 and Fowler, who singled him out from the audi- 
 ence and called him to the platform for a public 
 examination, gave him a Websterian intellect. 
 Websterian faculties he may have had, yet he 
 somehow lacked the spirit needful to give them 
 force and character. The mill was too big for 
 the water power. 
 
 I kept up a correspondence with McLees for 
 some time after I left Boston ; a circumstance I 
 had quite forgotten until one of his sons informed 
 me, not long ago, that the family still preserves 
 letters of mine written to him (O delicious salad 
 days !) in French. I have no wish to see them. 
 
 IX 
 
 I carried out heroically enough my plan of re- 
 trenching in other ways to offset, when necessary, 
 my increased room rent. This necessity came 
 not very long after my installment at Perrault's. 
 
124 MY OWN STORY 
 
 I stopped buying books, but that was no great 
 sacrifice as long as I had access to shelves crowded 
 with the most attractive French authors ; and an 
 evening now and then at Niblo's made it easy for 
 me to forego other places of amusement. Then 
 I could enjoy a band concert any fine summer 
 evening sitting at my open window. 
 
 To keep myself comfortable and presentable in 
 the matter of dress was always my habit ; I bought 
 nothing on credit (probably I could n't have done 
 otherwise if I had tried) ; and I should have felt 
 dishonored if ever my laundress delivered her 
 bundle and went away unpaid. So that there 
 remained only one direction in which my expend- 
 itures could be much curtailed. 
 
 I had begun with three meals a day at the res- 
 taurants, which I soon reduced to two, then a few 
 weeks later to one, and finally on a few occasions 
 to none at all. I did n't starve in the mean while ; 
 on the contrary I lived well enough to keep my- 
 self in the condition of excellent (although never 
 very robust) health, which I enjoyed at all sea- 
 sons, and at whatever occupation, through all my 
 early years. Hungry I may have been at times, 
 but no more so, probably, than was good for me, 
 and never for long. When I could n't afford a 
 meal at the restaurants I would smuggle a six- 
 penny loaf up my three flights and into my room 
 
FIRST EXPERIENCES AS A WRITER 125 
 
 (I was ashamed of this forced economy), with per- 
 haps a little fruit or a wedge of cheese. This I 
 might have found hard fare, and unsatisfactory, 
 had it not been sauced with something that made 
 up for the lack of luxuries : a pure and wholesome 
 light wine, vin ordinaire, which through Perrault 
 I could get in the store downstairs at the import- 
 er's price of a shilling a bottle (twelve and a half 
 cents). With a glass of this I could always make 
 a palatable meal off my loaf and fruit ; the worst 
 feature being the solitariness of it, and the absence 
 of that which renders a frugal repast better than 
 a banquet without it, friendly converse at table. 
 In this respect the restaurant was not much bet- 
 ter, except when I had a companion at dinner, 
 which was n't always convenient ; so that I soon 
 became weary enough of this unsocial way of 
 living. Sometimes I hardly knew where the next 
 loaf was coming from ; but then I would get pay 
 for an article in time to keep me from actual want 
 and out of debt ; or I would raise money in 
 another way that I shrink from mentioning, not 
 from any feeling of false pride at this distant day, 
 but on account of the associations the memory of 
 it calls up. 
 
 When necessity pressed, I would take from my 
 modest collection the volumes I could best spare, 
 and dispose of them at a second-hand bookstore 
 
126 MY OWN STORY 
 
 for about one quarter what they had cost me, yet 
 generally enough for the day's need. One night 
 I even passed under the ill-omened sign, that 
 triple emblem of avarice, want, and woe, the 
 pawnbroker's three balls ; an occasion rendered 
 memorable to me by a painful circumstance. I 
 parted with a flute that I had paid two dollars and 
 a half for when I had a boyish ambition to be- 
 come a player, and which I was glad to pledge for 
 the cost of a dinner when I had given up the 
 practice and did n't expect ever to resume it. 
 The money-lender's cage had two wickets open- 
 ing into the narrow entry-way ; while I paused at 
 one of these, the slight, shrinking figure of a 
 woman all in black came to the other, and pushed 
 in, over the worn and greasy counter, a bundle 
 which the ogre behind the bars shook out into a 
 gown of some dark stuff, glanced at disapprov- 
 ingly, refolded, and passed back to her with a sad 
 shake of the head. She had probably named a 
 sum that did not appeal to his sense of what was 
 businesslike ; and she now said something else in 
 a choked voice, in reply to which he once more 
 took in the garment, and gave her in return a 
 ticket, with a small coin. A wing of the little 
 stall where she stood had concealed her face from 
 me while she was transacting her sorrowful busi- 
 ness, but I had a full look at it as she went out, 
 
FIRST EXPERIENCES AS A WRITER 127 
 
 and so pinched with penury and wrung with dis- 
 tress did it appear, that a horribly miserable and 
 remorseful feeling clutched at my vitals, as if I 
 were somehow implicated in her calamity, and 
 ought to put into her hand the two or three shil- 
 lings (whatever the sum may have been) that I 
 had received for the flute. I should have been 
 happier if I had done so. I was young, stout- 
 hearted, patient with ill fortune, if not quite defi- 
 ant of it, and sustained by the certainty that my 
 need was as temporary as it was trivial; while 
 hers, as I fancied, was a long-drawn desolation 
 that only death could end. Her image haunted 
 me, and for many days and nights I could never 
 pass a pawnbroker s sign without feeling that 
 clutch at my heart. 
 
 The band concert I have spoken of should also 
 be enumerated among the advantages of my Per- 
 rault lodging. Opposite my room, but a block or 
 two farther down Broadway, was the Cafe* des 
 Mille Colonnes, a brilliant house of entertainment, 
 with a balcony on which an orchestra used to play, 
 on summer evenings, the popular airs of the 
 period, to which I listened many a lonely hour, sit- 
 ting by the window of my unlighted chamber, 
 " thinking — thinking — thinking ! " The throngs 
 of pedestrians mingled below, moving (marvelous 
 to conceive) each to his or her " separate business 
 
128 MY OWN STORY 
 
 and desire ; " the omnibuses and carriages rumbled 
 and rattled past ; while, over all, those strains of 
 sonorous brass built their bridge of music, from 
 the high cafe balcony to my still higher window 
 ledge, spanning joy and woe, sin and sorrow, past 
 and future, all the mysteries of the dark river of 
 life. Night after night were played the same 
 pieces, which became so interwoven with the 
 thoughts of my solitary hours, with all my hopes 
 and doubts, longings and aspirations, that for years 
 afterward I could never hear one of those mellow, 
 martial, or pensive strains without being immedi- 
 ately transported back to my garret and my crust. 
 
 X 
 
 I wonder a little now at the courage I kept up, 
 a waif (as I seemed often to myself) in the great, 
 strange city, a mere atom in all that multitudinous 
 human existence. I do not remember that, even 
 at the lowest ebb of my fortunes, I ever once lost 
 faith in myself, or a certain philosophical cheerful- 
 ness that enabled me then, as it has always since, 
 to bear uncomplainingly my share of rebuffs and 
 discouragements ; I never once succumbed to 
 homesickness or thought of returning to my fur- 
 rows. I have only grateful recollections of those 
 times of trial, which no doubt had their use in 
 tempering my too shy and sensitive nature, and 
 in deepening my inward resources. 
 
FIRST EXPERIENCES AS A WRITER 129 
 
 This way of living could not have continued 
 long before it was relieved by a change as welcome 
 as it was unexpected. Although I managed some- 
 how to pay my room rent when due, the Perraults 
 must have suspected my impecuniosity, for their 
 invitations became more and more frequent, until 
 I found myself dining with them three or four 
 times a week. If this hospitality had meant only 
 social enjoyment and a solace to my solitude, it 
 would have been pure satisfaction ; but it had for 
 me, moreover, a money-saving significance that 
 touched my self-respect. So I remarked one day, 
 as I took my customary seat at their table, that I 
 could n't keep on dining with them so often unless 
 they would consent to take me as a boarder. Be- 
 fore this they had declared that they would not 
 receive a boarder for any consideration ; I had 
 now, however, come to be regarded as one of the 
 family, and they readily acceded to my proposal. 
 One of the family I then indeed became, and as 
 intimate a part of their French menage as I had 
 been of the English household in Jersey City. 
 
 It was a rather rash arrangement on my part, for 
 the terms agreed upon, though moderate enough 
 in view of the more generous way of living, made 
 my weekly expenses nearly double what they had 
 been at Dr. Child's or in Duane Street, and this 
 at a time when I had only a vague notion as to 
 
i 3 o MY OWN STORY 
 
 how I was to meet them. That my horror of debt 
 should have permitted me to rush into this indis- 
 cretion is something I can hardly explain. Circum- 
 stance led me a better way than prudence would 
 have approved ; I obeyed one of those impulses 
 that seem often to be in the private counsels of 
 Providence, and are wiser than wisdom. I had 
 had enough of the restaurants, and bread eaten in 
 secret had ceased to be pleasant. I felt no com- 
 punctions in exchanging those useful experiences 
 for French cafe au lait and French cookery, a 
 more regular home life, and daily good cheer. 
 
 I became more at ease in my mind as to money 
 obligations ; and from that time I do not remem- 
 ber to have had much difficulty in meeting them. 
 The Perraults trusted me implicitly, and were 
 always willing to await my convenience when my 
 weekly reckonings fell in arrears. Perrault over- 
 flowed with good-fellowship, and with a vivacity 
 akin to wit; and Madame had but one serious 
 fault, — that which accounted for her too rubicund 
 complexion. Quite too often, after the midday 
 lunch, poor little Raphael was sent downstairs with 
 her empty bottle, to be filled at the wineshop be- 
 low with something more ardent than Bordeaux 
 or Burgundy. I was fain to go out when I saw 
 the cognac come in, to take its place beside snuff- 
 box and tumbler, on her sitting-room table ; but 
 
FIRST EXPERIENCES AS A WRITER 131 
 
 would sometimes be persuaded to sit with her 
 while she sipped and talked, and took snuff and 
 grew drowsy, and then perhaps in the midst of a 
 sentence dropped asleep in her chair, to awaken 
 not seldom in an ill temper that vented itself on 
 poor little Raphael if he chanced to be near. At 
 other times she would be as indulgently good to 
 him as became a mother ; and me she always 
 treated with the utmost courtesy and kindness. 
 I never had a word of disagreement with her save 
 on a single topic ; in the discussion of which she 
 herself unconsciously presented a living argument 
 on my side, — an argument, however, that I could 
 not with propriety adduce. I would never unite 
 with her in lowering the contents of the bottle. 
 
 XI 
 
 Meanwhile I was enjoying increased facilities 
 for acquiring a colloquial familiarity with the 
 French language. When I entered the house I 
 could read and translate it readily enough, and 
 I had gained a good accent from my French- 
 Canadian teacher in Lockport ; but I spoke it 
 stiffly and bookishly, and it was difficult for me to 
 follow a rapid and careless enunciation. In a com- 
 pany of French-speaking people I would lose a 
 large part of the conversation that was not ad- 
 dressed directly to me. But I was passing happily 
 
i 3 2 MY OWN STORY 
 
 through that transitional stage, and getting a prac- 
 tical use of the language that was to be of ines- 
 timable value to me all my life. I may add here 
 my belief that in no other language is the disad- 
 vantage so great of having first learned it by the 
 eye only, and not by the ear ; often in such a case 
 the ear never quite catches up with the eye in 
 understanding it. 
 
 I was so well satisfied with my later domestic 
 arrangements that I rested in the comfortable 
 feeling that they would continue indefinitely. 
 But they were to be suddenly interrupted. 
 
 I had been with the Perraults only about five 
 months as a lodger, and the latter half of that 
 time as a boarder, when another of those circum- 
 stances that override our plans took me away from 
 them and from the city. In August of that year, 
 1848, — fifteen months after landing on the pier, 
 early that May morning, from the North River 
 boat, — by the advice of a literary acquaintance I 
 made a trip to Boston, chiefly for the purpose of 
 securing new vehicles for my tales and sketches, 
 in the periodical press outside of New York. My 
 cheery " Au revoir ! " to my French host and 
 hostess proved to be a final farewell. I found 
 the latitude of Boston so hospitable to those light 
 literary ventures that I prolonged my stay, and 
 what was at first intended as a visit became a 
 permanent residence. 
 
FIRST EXPERIENCES AS A WRITER 133 
 
 Thus ended, before I was yet twenty-one, the 
 New York episode of my youth. I had not ac- 
 complished what I secretly hoped to do, I had 
 passed through trials and humiliations, and tasted 
 the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. 
 But I had come out of the ordeal with courage and 
 purpose undiminished, a heart unscathed by temp- 
 tation and unembittered by disappointment. My 
 first stumbling steps were no doubt better for my 
 discipline and right progress than the leap I 
 vaguely aspired to make at the outset. It is well 
 that we cannot always bend the world to our will ; 
 and I long since learned to be thankful that no 
 publisher was found undiscerning enough to print 
 my first thin volume of very thin verse. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 EARLY YEARS IN BOSTON 
 
 " Take me to a good boarding-place," I said to 
 the cabman who picked me up on my arrival in 
 Boston that morning in August, 1848; and he 
 set me down at No. 33 Brattle Street, in an ancient, 
 unattractive quarter of the city. Indeed, all that 
 part of Boston through which our wheels rattled 
 over the rough cobble-stone pavements impressed 
 me as unattractive, if not ancient ; and I could n't 
 help comparing the narrow, crooked streets, into 
 the midst of which I was whirled and dropped, 
 with Broadway, which my windows had looked out 
 on for the last five months, and to which I had 
 grown strongly attached. 
 
 "Never mind," I said to myself consolingly; 
 " I shall stay here only a couple of weeks." 
 
 No. 33 was near the lower end of the street, 
 three or four doors from the Quincy House, which 
 popular hostelry has long since taken in that and 
 other adjoining brick buildings in its successive 
 extensions. Just beyond that was the old Brattle 
 
BRATTLE STREET CHURCH 
 Showing, cannon-ball 
 
EARLY YEARS IN BOSTON 135 
 
 Street Church, which had quartered a British 
 regiment during the siege of Boston, and still 
 showed conspicuously, imbedded in the masonry 
 over the door, the twenty-four pound iron ball, 
 from a rebel cannon at Cambridge, that struck 
 the brick front the night before the evacuation. 
 
 The boarding-house was kept by Mrs. Kit- 
 tredge, a widow, who received me with such mo- 
 therly kindness and made me so comfortable 
 that I felt well satisfied to pass there the days of 
 my exile from the Perrault manage and French 
 cookery, while seeing the city and transacting my 
 business with the editors. The longer I stayed 
 in Boston the better I liked it. I quickly discov- 
 ered the harbor and the two rivers that united to 
 form it ; the Common, like a patch of beautiful 
 country on the skirt of the town, and the Public 
 Garden beyond, then a garden only in name, an 
 unfilled lower level, with made land and raised 
 streets on three sides, and a broad embankment 
 on the fourth, fronting Charles River, and fencing 
 out the tides. That embankment presented an 
 attractive walk. 
 
 I found the Boston weeklies ready to accept 
 about everything I had to offer, and set gleefully 
 to work to furnish the sort of contributions most 
 in demand. " Stories, give us stories ! " said they 
 all ; and stories they had from me from that time 
 
136 MY OWN STORY 
 
 forth. The pay was small, indeed, but I had no 
 longer any difficulty in getting my articles pub- 
 lished. The most flourishing of these papers 
 paid its writers only two dollars a column, or one 
 hundred dollars for a novelette running through 
 ten or twelve numbers. Some paid only half 
 those rates, while others kept to "the good old 
 rule, the simple plan," of paying very little, or 
 nothing at all, relying for contributions upon 
 amateurs who were not only eager to write for no- 
 thing, but who aided largely in the support of at 
 least one so-called "magazine," by interesting 
 their friends to subscribe for it, or to buy the 
 issues containing their articles. 
 
 So I settled down for the fall and winter in 
 Boston, and with deep regret wrote to the Per- 
 raults, giving up the room they had retained for 
 me, and sending for such effects as I had left in 
 their keeping. Thus closed my twenty-first year. 
 
 II 
 
 One of the best of the Boston weeklies of 
 those days was the Olive Branch, a semi-religious 
 family paper, to which I became a frequent con- 
 tributor, and to the readers of which I became so 
 favorably known that in the summer following, 
 1849, I was invited to join a party in an excursion 
 to Moosehead Lake, with the understanding that 
 
EARLY YEARS IN BOSTON 137 
 
 I was to write for that paper letters descriptive of 
 the region visited, then in the heart of the wilds 
 of Maine. I was ever ready for any adventure, 
 and few things could have delighted me more 
 than the prospect of this one, in which I was to 
 see strange scenery, with agreeable companions, 
 and find, among the woods and waters of that wil- 
 derness, congenial subjects for my pen. I have 
 quite forgotten to what steamboat, or stagecoach, 
 or hotel interest I owed this privilege ; it was 
 probably a combination of such interests ; for, as 
 I remember, I had no fares or other expenses to 
 pay during the two or three weeks of that memo- 
 rable journey. 
 
 Among my fellow travelers there were two of 
 whom I cherish an affectionate remembrance. 
 These were old Father Taylor, the pulpit orator, 
 and Mrs. Taylor. He was then in the meridian 
 of his powers, one of Boston's celebrities, and a 
 striking personality. I had heard him preach at 
 the.Seaman's Bethel, not because I cared much for 
 preachers and sermons, — not having then recov- 
 ered from the aversion to them with which my 
 early experience had inspired me, — but because 
 nobody in those days could be said to have seen 
 Boston who had not seen and heard Father Tay- 
 lor. His sermons were never learned or dog- 
 matic, but wonderfully earnest and direct, often 
 
138 MY OWN STORY 
 
 illustrated by quaint nautical metaphors (he had 
 followed the sea in his youth), and enforced by a 
 " terrible gift of familiarity " that brought him 
 heart to heart with his hearers. These were 
 largely composed of men from the wharves and 
 ships, with their families and friends, to whom he 
 did incalculable good, in shaping their paths to- 
 ward sober and righteous living. 
 
 He was then near sixty years old, but his seamed 
 and tawny visage made him appear much older ; 
 rather short of stature, but active, and as full of 
 enthusiasm as a boy. He was certainly a more 
 ardent fisherman than the youngest member of 
 the party ; for, as I recall, when our little Moose- 
 head steamboat swung around under the stupen- 
 dous overhanging rock of Mt. Kineo, and, having 
 once looked up in awe and astonishment, I turned 
 to witness the effect on Father Taylor, I beheld 
 him, not gazing upward at all, but down at the 
 water, with rod in hand, watching his line, which 
 he had flung over for a bite as soon as the paddles 
 were still. He joined in the camping-out and 
 moose-hunting by night, and was as eager as any 
 of us to get a shot at the noble game, as our deftly 
 paddled canoes glided into the mouth of some 
 stream, and we heard the clash of boughs where 
 the animals crossed or came to drink, but never 
 within range of our guns. 
 
EDWARD T. TAYLOR (FATHER TAYLOR) 
 
EARLY YEARS IN BOSTON 139 
 
 The fame of the great preacher's advent went 
 abroad in the wilderness, and drew a large con- 
 course of people to hear him when he preached 
 from the deck of the steamer at Greenville, the 
 Sunday after our arrival. " It seemed " (to quote 
 his own words) " as if God had shaken the woods 
 and hills to bring his people together." I re- 
 mained to note the strange audience that had 
 gathered from nobody appeared to know where — 
 pioneer settlers and wood-choppers, hunters and 
 trappers and guides, half-breeds and Indians, 
 stage-drivers, steamboat-men and tourists, with 
 many women and children ; — then, having heard 
 enough of the sermon to write a notice of it, I 
 stole away to my room in the hotel to indite my 
 Olive Branch letter. 
 
 It was known to the members of our party that 
 I did not stay through the services, and it occa- 
 sioned some comment, which I regretted, fearing 
 to wound my venerable friend, not in his minis- 
 terial vanity, if he had any, but by inspiring in 
 him a pious concern for my soul. That "con- 
 cern" was a subject which, in my boyhood, I had 
 conceived an invincible repugnance to hearing dis- 
 cussed ; and I congratulated myself that in all our 
 daily intercourse since we left Boston, Father 
 Taylor had never once inquired whether I had 
 met with a change of heart. He would probably 
 
i 4 o MY OWN STORY 
 
 now infer that I had not. That Sunday evening, 
 after I had finished and folded my letters, a rap 
 came upon my door, and I could hardly have told 
 whether I was pleased or disturbed, as, on open- 
 ing it, I met the genial but serious countenance 
 of the old preacher. 
 
 " Young man," he said, " it 's a fine evening, 
 and I want a little walk and talk with you. Will 
 you come ? " 
 
 " With pleasure ! " I responded ; and it was 
 with pleasure indeed that I strolled and conversed 
 with him, during the summer twilight hour, on the 
 wild and lonely shore of the lake. He inquired 
 about my boyhood and my life in Boston, and 
 talked of our trip, yet never once edged toward 
 the topic I dreaded to have introduced. At last, 
 as we were returning to the hotel, he said, — 
 
 " Young man, there 's one thing I want to im- 
 press upon you. There 's nothing like being pre- 
 pared." He paused and confronted me, with the 
 twilight gleam from the clear sky and the reflec- 
 tion from the water lighting his benign counte- 
 nance, furrowed by long experience of the world's 
 sins and woes. "We are enjoying a blessed op- 
 portunity, and must make the most of it. We are 
 to take an early start up the lake in the morning, 
 and what I suggest is that we should have our 
 fishing-tackle, bait, everything needed for the 
 
EARLY YEARS IN BOSTON 141 
 
 day s sport, on board the steamboat before break- 
 fast." 
 
 How I loved the dear old man at that moment ! 
 
 During the summer my mother came on from 
 Western New York to visit me in Boston. I met 
 her in Framingham, my father's birthplace, where 
 we had relatives, and brought her back with me 
 to my Brattle Street boarding-house. I had re- 
 solved not to go home until I was assured of suc- 
 cess in my chosen vocation ; and she had not seen 
 me for over two years. It had been my habit to 
 send her everything I wrote, and to keep her con- 
 stantly informed as to my varying fortunes, so 
 that she felt but little concern regarding my moral 
 and material circumstances ; but she yearned to 
 behold her " absent child " once more, and to see 
 with her own eyes how he was living and the kind 
 of company he kept. She appeared contented 
 with me in every respect, except that she wished 
 I would go to church more regularly and " write 
 more poetry." She stayed with me a few days 
 at No. 33, and we did not meet again for another 
 two years. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Among our Brattle Street boarders was Charles 
 Chadwick, a native of Nantucket, who, like Father 
 Taylor, had seen much of the world's sins and 
 
i 4 2 MY OWN STORY 
 
 woes, but from a different moral point of view. 
 He wore a blue broadcloth swallow-tail coat, with 
 metal buttons (high style in those days), and was 
 always carefully groomed, from his blond hair 
 combed sleekly over his full, low forehead, to his 
 well-polished boots. He had a noticeable stoop 
 in his shoulders, and another peculiarity not so 
 noticeable, but which I discovered when I helped 
 him off with his boots, on a memorable occasion. 
 There was only bare skin visible inside of them ; 
 he had never worn socks since he ran away to sea 
 at sixteen, and, he assured me, he never had cold 
 feet. He was extremely social, and an entertain- 
 ing humorist and story-teller, qualities that at- 
 tracted me from the first ; and as he flattered me 
 with his attentions (he was twice my age), we soon 
 became friends. 
 
 He called himself a "ship-broker." When I 
 asked what a ship-broker did, he told me he was 
 just then trying to sell, for its owner, an old brig- 
 antine that had once been " turned out to grass," 
 but which had latterly been repaired and fitted up 
 for the voyage around Cape Horn ; the newly de- 
 veloped Calif ornia " gold craze" having produced 
 a scarcity of vessels suitable for that trip. He was 
 asking eleven thousand dollars for the brigantine ; 
 and, as he further informed me, if he found a 
 purchaser at that price, his commission would 
 
EARLY YEARS IN BOSTON 143 
 
 amount to eleven hundred. I thought it would n't 
 take many such sales during the year to insure 
 a ship-broker, of no very extravagant habits, a re- 
 spectable livelihood. 
 
 I was quite astonished therefore when he one 
 day imparted to me confidentially the fact that he 
 was temporarily a " little short," and that he would 
 be ever so much obliged if I would lend him fifty 
 dollars ! I replied that I had n't more than half 
 that sum in the world. I was getting not more 
 than one or two short articles a week published 
 and paid for ; and while this was better than I 
 had been doing at one time, my expenditures had 
 proportionally increased. 
 
 By no means discouraged, he replied : " It 's 
 low water with me now, and twenty-five will tide 
 me over a few days, probably until I can close 
 the dicker for the brigantine. Fact is, my board 
 bill is in the doldrums, and I 've got to raise the 
 wind somehow ! " 
 
 I never could withstand an appeal of that sort, 
 and after some demurring, I ended by doing as I 
 had done in the case of my earlier friend, Dr. 
 Child ; I gave him all the money I could con- 
 veniently get together, although I saw no advan- 
 tage to myself in the transaction, but considerable 
 risk. It seems a curious circumstance to me now, 
 that one impecunious as I often was should have 
 
i 4 4 MY OWN STORY 
 
 been a frequent lender of small sums, but never a 
 borrower. These sums were usually repaid, al- 
 though I recall one boon companion, who held a 
 clerkship in the office of the collector of the port, 
 receiving a salary amounting to three times my 
 modest income, yet who was chronically "dead 
 broke," and was always borrowing omnibus fares 
 and other trifles, too insignificant ever to be men- 
 tioned again between friends. Another carried 
 his borrowing practices so far as to go to my room 
 in my absence, and help himself to my linen. 
 When he said to me once, apologetically, " I sup- 
 pose you were surprised that I didn't return that 
 shirt I borrowed;" I replied, " Not at all ; I should 
 have been surprised if you had returned it." After 
 I had been so far prospered as to be able to place 
 a small deposit in a savings-bank, the father of a 
 family once besought me for a loan of sixty dollars. 
 When I told him, to my sincere regret, that I had 
 no such sum at command, he made answer that 
 his quarter's rent was due, that he had been un- 
 able to collect some bills he had relied on to make 
 up the needful sum, and he didn't know which 
 way to turn, if I could n't help him. 
 
 " I have n't it," I repeated ; " but " — I thought 
 of my poor little savings-bank deposit, and of a 
 family man's natural distress on being unable to 
 pay his rent — "I might possibly raise it for you." 
 
EARLY YEARS IN BOSTON 145 
 
 Although I knew there would be a loss of ac- 
 cumulated and prospective interest if I withdrew 
 my money from the bank, and I could not think 
 of taking interest from a friend, his expressions of 
 gratitude paid me in advance for any such sacrifice. 
 I went at once and drew the sixty dollars, which 
 I handed him without saying how I had come by 
 it. Here paid me in a week or two, thanked me 
 warmly, and added this naive remark : — 
 
 " If you hadn't lent me the money, I should have 
 had to take it out of the savings-bank, and have 
 lost the interest." 
 
 I smiled, and held my peace. There are plea- 
 santer experiences than to have one's satisfaction 
 in a friendly act dashed by the discovery that one's 
 good-nature has been imposed upon, or that one 
 has been too weakly obliging. 
 
 IV 
 
 Such, however, was not my experience with the 
 ship-broker. I loaned him more money when I 
 had it, and was useful in keeping his board bills, 
 at least, out of the " doldrums," until he came to 
 me one evening in my room, in a flush of excite- 
 ment. The dicker for the brigantine had been 
 closed, the money paid over, and he had got his 
 commission. He took from his pocket a fat roll 
 of banknotes, counted out his debt to me on my 
 
146 MY OWN STORY 
 
 writing-table, in the lamplight, and vowed eternal 
 gratitude and friendship for the accommodation ; 
 with more effusion of speech and moisture of the 
 eyes than seemed to me quite necessary, or befit- 
 ting the occasion. In my innocence I deemed the 
 success of his sale sufficient to account for the glow 
 he was in ; but I did not yet know Chadwick. 
 
 " I 've waited an unconscionable while for this 
 let-up," he said, " and now we 're going to cele- 
 brate it." What he really said was, " cerebrate it ; " 
 for I noticed that his tongue was a little thick. 
 " Come along out ! " and he clutched me by the 
 arm. 
 
 When I asked what he proposed to do, he said 
 he was going to take me to see somebody in 
 " Macbeth ; " but that we had time to " splice the 
 main brace " first. Then the truth dawning upon 
 me, I remarked, " You have spliced the main brace 
 once or twice already ! " 
 
 " That 's straight as a handspike ! " he admitted. 
 " I 've kept steady as a Chinese junk for over two 
 months, and now it 's time to shake out a reef or 
 two." He used nautical metaphors, especially 
 when he was "cerebrating," as freely as old 
 Father Taylor did in his sermons, but to a dif- 
 ferent purpose. 
 
 Finding it impossible to persuade him either to 
 remain with me or to go directly to the theatre, 
 
EARLY YEARS IN BOSTON 147 
 
 leaving the main brace without further splicing, I 
 accompanied him, very reluctantly, with an un- 
 quiet feeling that he was to be taken care of and 
 brought safely home ; and — to be brief, omitting 
 details, it was the closing incident of that night's 
 too wild and lurid experience, that the absence of 
 socks became apparent, on the pulling off of his 
 boots. One of us went to bed sober, but that one 
 was not the man from Nantucket. He had had 
 what he called a " cruise." 
 
 Cruises of this kind were, I found, periodic with 
 him, though of not very frequent occurrence. I 
 never again attempted to steer his course in one 
 of them, or to bring him into haven, when he had 
 his " three sheets in the wind." It was undoubt- 
 edly this unfortunate habit that had separated 
 him from his family (he was a married man), and 
 hindered him from that success in life which his 
 talents and social qualities might otherwise have 
 attained. 
 
 It did not, however, hinder him from following 
 up the brigantine business with another venture 
 of a maritime character, in which I became espe- 
 cially interested. He found a moneyed partner 
 to join him in fitting out on their own account a 
 vessel, the Minerva Jones, for the voyage around 
 the Horn ; he avowed his intention of sailing in 
 her, and offered me a free passage if I would go 
 
148 MY OWN STORY 
 
 with him. I gladly accepted, believing I could 
 do well by writing letters for the Olive Branch 
 and other Boston papers, and gain a useful ex- 
 perience, even if I failed to make a fortune in the 
 California gold fields. I have often wondered what 
 would have been the effect on me and my literary 
 work if I had gone to the Pacific Coast at that 
 early day. 
 
 The Minerva Jones was advertised for freight 
 and passengers, and the date of sailing announced. 
 I shaped all my plans for sailing in her, looking 
 forward with hope and glee to the sea voyage and 
 strange adventures in a new land. The day ar- 
 rived, and the Minerva Jones still lay at the 
 wharf, awaiting freight and passengers that were 
 for some reason slow in occupying her hold and 
 berths. There were repeated postponements, and 
 I remember that Chadwick had to board one of 
 his passengers for some weeks at a hotel, and keep 
 him entertained, in order not to lose him and his 
 merchandise, which had already been got aboard. 
 When at last the Minerva Jones actually swung 
 off into the stream, I had engaged in another 
 enterprise, that detained me, for good or ill, in 
 Boston. Thus I missed my chance of becoming 
 a "forty-niner." 
 
 Chadwick also remained behind, but went to 
 California later ; and when next I heard from him, 
 
EARLY YEARS IN BOSTON 149 
 
 through a friend who knew him in San Francisco, 
 he had " made a fortune and lost it." He was then 
 past sixty, and it was late in life for him to make 
 another. I fear it was thenceforward " low water " 
 with him, and that all the voyage of his life was 
 
 " Bound in shallows and in miseries." 
 
 But there is a tide that flows at last for all. 
 
 Twenty -five years after the Minerva Jones 
 incident, the chief actor in it reappeared, not to 
 my outward eyes but to my inward consciousness, 
 and became a vivid presence, while I sketched his 
 sometimes too vivacious and convivial traits in the 
 minor novel, Fast Friends. I described a few of 
 his actual jocosities and improvidences and in- 
 vented others in keeping, shifting the scene from 
 our " No. 33 " to my old Duane Street boarding- 
 place in New York. In writing fiction I could never 
 hold back my fancy from expanding and idealizing 
 a character taken from life ; and in the develop- 
 ment of this story Manton, put on the easel for 
 Chadwick, became a suggestion rather than a por- 
 trait. 
 
 V 
 
 The enterprise that kept me in Boston was a 
 new weekly paper, for which two other parties 
 furnished the capital and I (as they were pleased 
 to term it) the "brains." For reasons of policy 
 
150 MY OWN STORY 
 
 they preferred to be "silent partners" as far as 
 the use of their names was concerned. One was 
 interested in another publication of which the new 
 paper was to be in some sense a rival. The third 
 party was Hotchkiss & Co., newsdealers, who 
 could not give their imprint to the new sheet 
 without danger of prejudicing the proprietors of 
 numerous other publications sold over their coun- 
 ters. So it was determined to issue the paper 
 under the firm name of "J. T. Trowbridge & Co." 
 I remonstrated strongly against this, not only on 
 account of my youth and inexperience (I was then 
 barely twenty-two), but because I aspired to be 
 known solely as a writer. However, as I could 
 still keep my nom de plume unspotted from the 
 world of business, I suffered my judgment — and 
 I can truly add, my modesty — to be overruled. 
 As an equal partner I was to be entitled to one 
 third of the profits when there were any ; mean- 
 while I was to draw a small salary, sufficient for 
 my living expenses, on account of my editorial 
 work, and receive additional pay for such tales and 
 sketches as I chose to contribute. The name of 
 the new weekly was The Yankee Nation, a title 
 not of my choosing. 
 
 I found in my new position other advantages than 
 the one my friends were inclined to joke me about, 
 — that of always having my contributions accepted. 
 
J T. TROWBRIDGE 
 A t the age of 21 
 
EARLY YEARS IN BOSTON 151 
 
 It afforded me, indeed, an independence of the 
 whims of editors, and made me one of the judges 
 on the bench before which I had hitherto appeared 
 only in the crowd of clients more or less humble. 
 It gave me free access to concert halls and thea- 
 tres, and I was surprised and flattered when some 
 of the great publishing houses began to send me 
 their books for notice, and to quote The Yankee 
 Nation as authority in advertising them. Better 
 than all this, I had steady employment ; while in 
 the use of the office pastepot and scissors, and in 
 reading manuscripts and proofs and conferring 
 with contributors, I experienced at least partial 
 relief from the hot-house process of forcing the 
 imagination for ideas, to which the writer must 
 often subject himself who depends for a livelihood 
 solely upon his pen. I still wrote a great deal, 
 however ; altogether too much for my own good, 
 I am sure, and probably for the paper's ; being 
 always ready to supply a story, long or short, or 
 to fill space for which no fit contribution was 
 offered. What I wrote must have been often 
 very poor indeed, but to my mind now, as I look 
 back, the marvel is that it was no worse. 
 
 I formed a pleasant acquaintance with contribu- 
 tors and friendly relations with a few. I was care- 
 ful never to treat anybody with the coldness and 
 curtness with which I had often been treated by 
 
152 MY OWN STORY 
 
 editors ; while, young as I was in appearance and 
 in years, there seemed small danger of my over- 
 awing the humblest, as I had been overawed. 
 Nevertheless, I was sometimes embarrassed by 
 the robes of imputed dignity that invested my boy- 
 ishness in the editorial chair. I recall an instance 
 which a ghastly subsequent circumstance im- 
 pressed on my memory. 
 
 VI 
 
 I had hardly had time to adjust myself to the 
 novelty of my situation, when one morning in the 
 latter part of November, 1849, a spare, thin-shoul- 
 dered, very plainly dressed old gentleman entered 
 the office to see about getting into the paper an 
 article that had been left with me a short time 
 before. It was not his own composition, but a 
 descriptive letter from some foreign land, written 
 by a young person in whom he was interested. It 
 was a relief to learn that he was not a decayed 
 author in need of earning a few dollars, as his 
 appearance at first led me to suspect. When I 
 handed the manuscript back to him, expressing 
 regret that I could n't use it, he remarked depre- 
 catingly that he did not expect to receive pay for 
 it, even intimating that he would be willing to pay 
 something for its insertion. As I could not ac- 
 cept it even on those terms, he went off with an 
 
EARLY YEARS IN BOSTON 153 
 
 air of disappointment, having spoken all the while 
 in a low tone, and treated me with a deference 
 that mightily amused the foreman of the printing- 
 room who witnessed the interview. 
 
 " Do you know that man ? " he said excitedly. 
 "He could buy out this shop and every other news- 
 paper on the street, without putting his hand very 
 deep into his pocket either ! " He went on to say, 
 " That is Dr. Parkman, one of the richest men and 
 best-known figures in Boston ! " and he laughed 
 at the idea of his coming in that meek manner to 
 ask me to accept a manuscript. 
 
 I was surprised, but should probably have never 
 thought again of the incident but for the shocking 
 circumstance already alluded to. 
 
 Dr. George Parkman was a retired physician, 
 brother of Dr. Francis Parkman, the eminent 
 Unitarian divine, and uncle of the younger Fran- 
 cis, the future historian, who was to make the 
 name illustrious. The old doctor was reputed 
 eccentric and close in his dealings, yet he was a 
 philanthropist in his way ; it was he who gave the 
 land for the Harvard Medical College in Boston, 
 and he had published a treatise on insanity and 
 the treatment of the insane, — an author, after 
 all, though not of the class I at first surmised. 
 This venerable citizen went out from my office 
 and, that day or the next, mysteriously disap- 
 
154 MY OWN STORY 
 
 peared, — so soon, in fact, after our interview that 
 I fancied I must have been one of the last persons 
 who saw him alive. 
 
 The sudden and unaccountable vanishing, in an 
 afternoon, in an hour, of " one of the richest men 
 and best-known figures in Boston," was the won- 
 der of the town, until that feeling was changed 
 to amazement and horror when his dissevered and 
 half-destroyed remains were discovered in the 
 laboratory of Professor John White Webster, of 
 the Medical College. Webster had an amiable 
 and highly esteemed family ; he was a professor 
 of chemistry, a writer on scientific subjects, and 
 a person of high position in social and scientific 
 circles. He was arrested, tried for the murder, 
 and convicted. When it was too late he made a 
 confession that might have lightened the gravamen 
 of the charge against him if it had been made in 
 time. According to that statement, the old doc- 
 tor, on that last afternoon of his life, had come to 
 the professor's office to collect a debt about which 
 there had arisen some annoying difficulties, and 
 by his overbearing insistence and angry denun- 
 ciations had provoked from Webster a fatal blow. 
 Instead of proclaiming at once the crime, commit- 
 ted, as he averred, in the heat of passion, Webster 
 concealed and cut up the body, burned portions 
 in the furnace, and had the rest in hiding, await- 
 
EARLY YEARS IN BOSTON 155 
 
 ing destruction, when he was exposed by the 
 janitor. Despite all the influences brought to 
 bear, to save the guilty man from the gallows and 
 his innocent family from their involvement in the 
 hideous tragedy, the law took its course, and he 
 was hanged on the last Friday of August, 1850. 
 What horror and misery might have been averted 
 (I used to think) if Dr. George Parkman had faced 
 his debtor with something of the conciliatory 
 meekness with which he approached the youth 
 clothed in the brief authority of an editor's chair ! 
 
 VII 
 
 The authority was even briefer than the wearer 
 of it had reason to expect. The Yankee Na- 
 tion made so good a start, and kept so prosper- 
 ously afloat for five or six months, that Mr. Isaac 
 Crooker, of Hotchkiss & Co., who had been its 
 business manager from the outset, determined to 
 devote to it his entire attention, and withdrew from 
 that firm for the purpose. He took the paper as 
 his share of the firm's assets, and bought out the 
 third partner, thus assuming all interests except 
 my own. He was a genial fellow worker, and our 
 mutual relations were always as pleasant as pos- 
 sible ; my satisfaction in the new arrangement 
 having but one serious drawback, Mr. Crooker's 
 uncertain health. He had a consumptive ten- 
 
156 MY OWN STORY 
 
 dency, which after another half year or so became 
 so pronounced that his physician ordered him to 
 leave all business cares behind and seek a more 
 congenial climate. With my consent he turned 
 over his two-thirds interest to another publisher, 
 whose main object in acquiring it was, as it proved, 
 to give employment to a relative, a retired minis- 
 ter, by placing him in the editorial chair. As 
 there had been a tacit understanding that I was to 
 keep the position, this was an unpleasant surprise 
 to me. I had become accustomed to the routine 
 work, and liked it, and was looking forward to an 
 early sharing of profits, which had been hitherto 
 absorbed in the expenses attending the establish- 
 ment of a new publication. But as I held only a 
 minority of the stock, I submitted to the inevit- 
 able (I could always do that with a stout heart 
 and a smiling countenance), and walked out of the 
 office with my few personal belongings under my 
 arm, cheerfully giving place to my grave and rev- 
 erend successor. As the chief merit of the paper 
 — if it had any merit at all — was the vivacity 
 the abounding good spirits of its youthful editor 
 infused into it, and as that quality quickly evapo- 
 rated under the clerical control, it failed to please 
 its old patrons, or to attract new ones ; like poor 
 Crooker, it fell into a decline, and hardly survived 
 him, lingering a few months longer, and then dis- 
 appearing from the world's eye. 
 
EARLY YEARS IN BOSTON 157 
 
 I had been but a very short time out of the edi- 
 torial office when my friend Ben : Perley Poore 
 (he always punctuated his praenomen with a colon) 
 accosted me one day on the street in this wise : — 
 
 " You are just the man I am looking for ! The 
 Fair opens to-day " (it was one of Boston's early 
 industrial expositions), " and I am starting a little 
 sheet, The Mirror of the Fair, that I want you to 
 take charge of." 
 
 "'Angels and ministers of grace'!" I ex- 
 claimed. " I know nothing about the Fair, or 
 anything in it." 
 
 " Go in and see it," he replied, "and in fifteen 
 minutes you will know as much about it as any- 
 body. Write two or three short articles a day on 
 any subject suggested ; then brief comments, five 
 or ten line paragraphs, about the most curious or 
 interesting things you find ; having our advertisers 
 in mind, first and always." 
 
 This was the substance of his instructions, and 
 after taking me into the Fair and introducing me 
 to the management, he left me, as he said, "to 
 work out my own salvation." I seem to have 
 worked it out satisfactorily, for with the exception 
 of the advertising columns, I wrote almost the 
 entire contents of the little daily Mirror of the 
 Fair as long as there was any Fair to mirror. 
 
 Poore was at that time publishing his American 
 
158 MY OWN STORY 
 
 Sentinel, and at the close of the Fair he offered 
 me a position on that paper, which I was not slow 
 to accept. I wrote for it sketches and editorials, 
 and assisted him in the office, taking entire edi- 
 torial charge of the paper in his frequent absences. 
 It was during his absence in Washington, early in 
 185 1, that a poor little innocent article of mine, 
 touching satirically upon our Northern zeal in 
 slave-catching and Southern threats of secession 
 (burning questions then), lost it many subscribers, 
 and, I fear, hastened its demise. 
 
 This was my last experience as an editor in 
 those years, but not quite my last opportunity. 
 Some time after the Sentinel incident I was called 
 upon by the proprietor of a Boston daily, who 
 made the astonishing proposal that I should be- 
 come its editor-in-chief. Astonishing, indeed, for 
 I had had no training in journalistic work of the 
 kind that would be required of me. I did not be- 
 lieve myself fitted for it, and wondered that any- 
 body should have conceived such an idea of my 
 capabilities. I regarded even my connection with 
 the weekly press as something merely temporary, 
 all my aspirations being toward some more dis- 
 tinctively literary occupation. The salary offered 
 (twice what I could hope to earn by my pen) was, 
 I confess, a staggering temptation, as I sat for a 
 moment gazing into the face of my visitor, almost 
 
EARLY YEARS IN BOSTON 159 
 
 doubting his sanity; but I put it promptly and 
 
 resolutely behind me. I might have pleaded my 
 
 youth, my natural indolence, my self-distrust ; 
 
 above all, my insufficient knowledge of men and 
 
 events. I merely said, "I could never do the 
 
 necessary night work ; my eyes would not permit 
 
 it." This was my ostensible reason for declining 
 
 the position; but, behind that, an inner Voice, 
 
 irrespective of all reasons, shaped an irrevocable 
 
 No. 
 
 In fact, I engaged in no other editorial work of 
 
 any kind until Our Young Folks was started in 
 
 1865. 
 
 VIII 
 
 Some interesting events marked the history of 
 Boston in those early years. I had been but a few 
 weeks in the city when, October 25, 1848, the 
 Cochituate water was introduced. There was a 
 grand procession through the streets, then a cele- 
 bration on the slopes of the Common overlooking 
 the Frog Pond. An ode, written for the occasion 
 by a brilliant young poet of Cambridge, James 
 Russell Lowell, was sung by an immense choir of 
 school children, and there were appropriate ad- 
 dresses, setting forth the benefits of the new water 
 supply, which was to replace the antiquated wells 
 and cisterns, and meet the needs of the growing 
 city for an indefinite future, — the next millen- 
 
160 MY OWN STORY 
 
 nium, some predicted. After so much impressive 
 preparation, Mayor Quincy smilingly asked if it 
 was the people's will that the water should be 
 brought in. A multitudinous, jubilant shout went 
 up, as if it had been meant to reach the moon. 
 The mayor's hand waved, cannon thundered, all 
 the bells of the city clanged. As if roused by 
 the summons, a lion-like head of tawny-maned 
 water pushed up through the fountain's collar, 
 seemed to hesitate a moment at the amazing spec- 
 tacle of human faces, then reared and towered, in 
 a mighty column eighty feet in height, and shook 
 out its tumbling yellow locks in the sunset glow. 
 The flow, turbid at first, gradually cleared, chan- 
 ging from dull gold to glittering silver, and the 
 great concourse of citizens broke up, with counte- 
 nances illumined as if shone upon by a miracle : 
 even the prophets of evil, the doubters and fault- 
 finders of the day, hardly foreseeing in how few 
 years Boston would be clamoring for a more abun- 
 dant water supply ! 
 
 As I look back now, I cannot help wondering 
 how many of those citizens yet live and recall the 
 wild enthusiasm of the hour. Where are the 
 happy school children who sang ? Who of them 
 survive, old men and women now, to tell the tale ? 
 Boston has • since had another Mayor Quincy, 
 grandson of him whose upraised hand set the guns 
 
EARLY YEARS IN BOSTON 161 
 
 and bells dinning and the water spouting. The 
 chief water commissioner was Nathan Hale, one 
 of Boston's foremost citizens ; since when, a son 
 of his, then an obscure young country minister, 
 has shaped for himself a long and useful and dis- 
 tinguished career. The Cambridge poet, writer of 
 the not over-successful ode (too long and too full 
 of subtle and even learned allusion for the occa- 
 sion, with some unsingable lines), has more than 
 fulfilled the promise of his prime, and passed on, 
 leaving a name high among the illustrious of the 
 age. 
 
 The new fountain, in its varied forms, became 
 the Common's chief attraction, adding the one 
 needed charm of soaring and plashing water to 
 that green pleasure ground. The surrounding 
 slopes and malls were long my daily and nightly 
 haunt. There I found solace for my continued 
 exile from the country, and, especially on summer 
 evenings, indulged my love of lonely reverie. 
 
 IX 
 
 In the last weeks of September, 1850, came 
 Jenny Lind. The avant-courier of tempestuous 
 excitement attending her visit made itself felt at 
 the auction sale of seats that took place two or 
 three days before the first concert. That morning 
 I met on the street an acquaintance, who told me 
 
i62 MY OWN STORY 
 
 he was going to attend the sale " just out of curi- 
 osity," and asked me to accompany him. I like- 
 wise had some curiosity to gratify j the auction 
 sale of seats for the Swedish Nightingale's first 
 concert in New York having produced, on a 
 smaller scale, as lively a sensation as her singing. 
 The first choice of seats for that first night had 
 brought, over and above the regular price of tick- 
 ets, two hundred and twenty-five dollars ; the 
 purchaser being neither a musical enthusiast nor 
 a millionaire, but a man of business, Genin, the 
 hatter. He had been shrewd enough to foresee 
 the value of such an advertisement, which, Bar- 
 num tells us in his autobiography, "laid the foun- 
 dation of his fortune," Genin hats, already in 
 fashion, soon becoming the vogue in all the great 
 Eastern cities. 
 
 Tremont Temple, in which the auction was 
 held, was filling rapidly as we entered ; a remark- 
 able gathering of business men, newspaper men, 
 speculators, musicians, persons of leisure of all 
 sorts. 
 
 The bids for the first ticket began high, — $50 
 or $75, — and they were running up in quick 
 jumps, when my companion said to me, " Hold 
 my hat, Trowmridge ! " (he had a way of talking 
 through his nose), stepped up on the seat beside 
 me, and put in a bid that distanced all the rest, — 
 
EARLY YEARS IN BOSTON 163 
 
 " Two hundred and twenty-five dollars ! " He 
 had begun where Genin left off. 
 
 After that the bids mounted by fifty and twenty- 
 five dollar leaps, the owner of the hat I held lead- 
 ing all competitors : " Four hundred — four hun- 
 dred and fifty — five hundred — five hundred 
 twenty-five " — to my utter amazement. I pulled 
 his coat-tail, whispering hoarsely, " You 're crazy ! 
 you 're crazy, man! " but he gave no heed to any 
 other voice crying in that wilderness than those 
 of the auctioneer and of the one rival bidder who 
 followed him beyond the five hundred mark. 
 
 " Six hundred ! " That, after some hesitation, 
 was the competitor's last call. 
 
 " Six hnndred and twenty-five dollars ! " the 
 owner of the hat responded instantly, and stood 
 calmly erect and expectant, until the first choice 
 was knocked down to him at that price, amid up- 
 roarious applause. Then he smilingly reached 
 down for his hat, waved it, bowing to the specta- 
 tors as they continued to cheer him, and resumed 
 his seat. The next choice brought a premium of 
 only $20, and the climax of excitement was over. 
 
 " You thought I was crazy ! " said the purchaser 
 of the first ticket, as we walked away from the 
 Temple together. " What 's your opinion now ? " 
 
 I had had time to think it over, and I admitted 
 that, if the first Jenny Lind ticket in New York 
 
i6 4 MY OWN STORY 
 
 was worth $225 to an advertising hatter, the first 
 Boston ticket might be worth $625 to a man of 
 his profession. 
 
 The purchaser of this ticket was Ossian E. 
 Dodge, a singer of comic songs and a giver of en- 
 tertainments in which he was the sole performer. 
 His comic power consisted largely in grotesque 
 grimaces, and the feats of a voice that could go 
 down and down into the very sepulchres and cata- 
 combs of basso profundo, until the hearer won- 
 dered in what ventriloquial caverns it would lose 
 itself and become a ghost of sound. He called 
 himself a song-writer as well as a singer, and some 
 of the published songs of the day bore the unve- 
 racious inscription, " Words and music by Ossian 
 E. Dodge." I wrote the words of one of these, 
 and somebody else composed the music ; and I 
 had reason to believe that all the songs he claimed 
 as his own were produced in this vicarious man- 
 ner. I may add that they were probably paid for 
 in the same coin he dealt out to me, namely, the 
 " ninepences " and " fourpences " of New England 
 (the shillings and sixpences of New York and 
 other States), which were the current small 
 change of those days. These were taken in at 
 the doors of his concerts, the usual price of ad- 
 mission to which (before Jenny Lind's advent) 
 was ninepence, or twelve-and-a-half cents. Two 
 
EARLY YEARS IN BOSTON 165 
 
 ninepences, or four fourpences, were, nominally, 
 worth a quarter of a dollar ; but as they were sub- 
 ject to the shrinkage of the fractional one-half or 
 one-quarter cent, when paid out singly, nobody 
 liked to receive them in any quantities, and the 
 banks would take them only at a discount. Dodge, 
 however, insisted on paying his small debts with 
 them ; a practice which I recalled when, in writ- 
 ing Martin Merrivale, I described Killings, in 
 his dealings with the hero, opening a leather 
 pouch, counting out forty smooth-worn fourpences, 
 and tendering them to Martin on the crown of his 
 hat. Killings, I here confess, was frankly in- 
 tended as a portrait of Dodge, whose charlatan- 
 ism and love of notoriety I then believed (I am 
 not quite so sure now) made him legitimate game 
 for my satire, after some unfairness in his treat- 
 ment of me had caused a rupture between us. 
 
 The sensational purchase of the $625 ticket 
 conjoined Dodge's name with those of Jenny Lind 
 and her famous manager, in temporary publicity ; 
 and he lost no time in taking advantage of such 
 advertising. Very soon was issued a well-exe- 
 cuted lithograph representing P. T. Barnum, solid, 
 bland, and benignant, in the act of introducing 
 Mr. Ossian E. Dodge, smiling and elegant, to 
 Jenny Lind, adorably gowned, and graciously 
 bending, with her eyes modestly downcast at the 
 
166 MY OWN STORY 
 
 high-lights on Ossian's boots. This picture, ap- 
 propriately framed, was exhibited in shop windows 
 all over the city and in the suburbs, and it pre- 
 ceded the comic singer wherever his concerts 
 were announced. He had never drawn large 
 audiences in Boston ; but his first concert there, 
 after the Jenny Lind episode, filled Tremont 
 Temple to its utmost capacity, at quadruple the 
 old rates of admission, and reimbursed him in a 
 single night for the cost of the ticket. 
 
 Jenny Lind, if I remember rightly, gave four 
 concerts in Tremont Temple, in which high prices 
 for seats were maintained ($3 to $7, plus what- 
 ever premium they would command), and after- 
 wards two concerts, at what were called popular 
 prices, in the immense new hall over the then 
 recently constructed Fitchburg Railroad station. 
 I heard her at one of the Tremont Temple 
 concerts, and again at the first Fitchburg Hall 
 concert, where a disastrous panic was so narrowly 
 averted. 
 
 Anticipating a rush on the last occasion, and 
 having invited a lady friend to accompany me, I 
 took the precaution of going early to the hall that 
 memorable evening, and succeeded in getting good 
 seats on the right hand side (how well I remem- 
 
EARLY YEARS IN BOSTON ,67 
 
 ber the exact position !) about halfway back from 
 the stage. Soon the uproar began. The seats 
 were not numbered, and the auditorium would ac- 
 commodate only about four thousand people, while 
 by some oversight five thousand tickets had been 
 sold. As the throngs came pouring in, the crowd- 
 ing for places, the eddying and recoiling and voci- 
 ferating, became frightful ; and a double danger 
 threatened, that of the floor giving way under the 
 enormous weight imposed upon it, and of the mul- 
 titude destroying itself in its own terror and frenzy. 
 Even after the disappointed hundreds who could 
 not get in had been turned away, and the time 
 had passed for the opening of the concert, the 
 tumult continued. My companion was frightened, 
 and entreated me to take her out ; and I became 
 excited in trying to quell the excitement of others. 
 The orchestra struck up, but its strains were 
 drowned in the general disturbance. Somebody 
 tried to address the audience, half of whom were 
 on their feet, while everybody seemed to be cry- 
 ing, " Down ! down ! " those who were up calling 
 as loudly as those who were already down. Some 
 pulled down those who were standing before 
 them, to be in turn pulled down by those behind. 
 Then on the stage a radiant figure appeared, 
 serene, but with bosom visibly heaving; and a 
 voice of uttermost simple purity glided forth like 
 
168 MY OWN STORY 
 
 an angel of light on the stormy waters, stilling 
 them into instant calm. 
 
 XI 
 
 I had not been long in Boston when Theodore 
 Parker's growing fame — or infamy, as some good 
 haters of his heresies preferred to call it — at- 
 tracted me on Sunday mornings to the Melodeon, 
 where the small independent society over which 
 he had been lately installed held its meetings. 
 
 The Melodeon — entered from Washington 
 Street just below the site of the present Boston 
 Theatre — was a popular concert and exhibition 
 hall, where the very beatings of the pulse of New 
 England reforms could be felt and measured. 
 There, notably, the old time anti-slavery conven- 
 tions hammered away at that amazing futility, 
 abolitionism, abhorred and derided, but neverthe- 
 less destined to prove the coulter of the terrible 
 war-driven emancipation plough. There one could 
 listen to the uncompromising Garrison, whose aim 
 was solely to convince, and not to charm ; to the 
 eloquent Phillips, who charmed even when he did 
 not convince ; to the brothers Burleigh, one of 
 whom favored a fancied resemblance to the pic- 
 tures of Christ, by parting his hair in the middle 
 and letting it fall on his shoulders in wavy folds ; 
 to Frederick Douglass, a natural orator, whose 
 
THEODORE PARKER 
 
EARLY YEARS IN BOSTON 169 
 
 own rise from slavery was the most powerful of 
 all arguments for the cause he advocated ; to Pills- 
 bury, Foster, and others noted or notorious in 
 their day, women as well as men, their names now 
 remembered only in connection with that agita- 
 tion. Parker was one of the leaders in it ; his 
 exceptional ability and position as a preacher gave 
 him more than a local reputation, and carried the 
 odium of his name as far as those of Phillips and 
 Garrison were known and hated. How he was 
 regarded in South Carolina was illustrated by an 
 experience a Boston merchant once had at Charles- 
 ton. An excited crowd gathering around the 
 hotel register where he had written his name 
 observed him with suspicious whisperings and 
 threatening looks, which became alarming ; when 
 the excited landlord stepped up to him and said 
 anxiously : " Your name is Parker ? " " That is my 
 name, sir." "Theodore Parker, of Boston? the 
 abolitionist ? " " Oh no, no, sir ! I am Theodore 
 D. Parker, a very different man ! " The landlord 
 breathed a sigh of relief. " I am mighty glad to 
 hear it ! " he said. " And allow me to give you 
 a bit of wholesome advice. When you are regis- 
 tering your name in Southern hotels, write the 
 *D ' damned plain ! " 
 
 Parker occasionally spoke at antislavery meet- 
 ings, but he was at his best when he had the 
 
170 MY OWN STORY 
 
 Melodeon platform to himself, with his own pecu- 
 liar audience before him. There every Sunday 
 morning his sturdy figure could be seen standing 
 behind his secular-looking desk ; no orator, rarely 
 using a gesture, entirely free from the conven- 
 tional pulpit tone and mannerism; reading his 
 hour-long discourse (lecture rather than sermon) 
 with a grinding earnestness well suiting his direct 
 appeals to the reason and conscience of his audi- 
 tors. The reading might at times have seemed 
 monotonous but for the refreshing modernness of 
 his topics, and the illustrative wit and fact and 
 logic that illuminated them. 
 
 I was at first repelled by the occasional merci- 
 lessness of his judgments and the force of his 
 invective ; for he could out-Garrison Garrison in 
 his denunciations of slaveholding and its politi- 
 cal and clerical supporters ; and even while he 
 voiced my own early convictions regarding the 
 theological dogmas in the gloom of which I had 
 been reared, I was often made to wince by the 
 harshness of metaphor he applied to them. 
 
 I seem to have got well over this sensitiveness 
 by the time his congregation, having outgrown the 
 limits of the Melodeon, removed to the then new 
 Music Hall, in the autumn of 1852; for upon that 
 event I addressed to him a sonnet that opened 
 with these lines : — 
 
EARLY YEARS IN BOSTON 171 
 
 Parker ! who wields a mighty moral sledge 
 With his strong arm of intellect ; who shakes 
 The dungeon-walls of error ; grinds and breaks 
 
 Its chains on reason's adamantine ledge ; 
 
 and ended with — 
 
 That champion of the right, whose fearless deeds 
 Proclaim him faithful to the sacred trust ; 
 
 Truth, crushed, entombed, but newly risen, needs 
 To cleanse her temples of sepulchral dust, 
 Yea, to hurl down that thing of rot and rust, 
 
 That skeleton in mail, Religion cased in creeds ! 
 
 I saw no harshness of metaphor in this, nor in- 
 deed any fault except that the last line was an 
 alexandrine. But the editor of Boston's favorite 
 evening paper (of whom I shall have more to say- 
 later), to whom I offered it, handed it back to me 
 with the remark : " I suppose you are aware that 
 these sentiments are contrary to those entertained 
 by nine out of ten of our readers ?" — instancing 
 Parker's offensive radicalism in politics and reli- 
 gion. I said I was pleased to know that that was 
 his reason for not printing the lines. " It is a very 
 good editorial reason," he replied ; and we parted 
 amicably. 
 
 In response to my mother's frequently ex- 
 pressed wish that I should " write more poetry " 
 and go oftener to meeting, I informed her in a 
 letter about this time that I occasionally wrote 
 verses, and that I went frequently to hear Rev. 
 
1 72 MY OWN STORY 
 
 Theodore Parker, — writing the "Rev." (as the 
 Charleston landlord would have said) quite plain. 
 I did not send her the sonnet ; and I left her to 
 learn from a good uncle of mine that " if Theo- 
 dore Parker was n't doing as much harm in the 
 world as the devil, it was because he was n't so 
 smart as the devil ; but that he was doing as much 
 harm as he knew how." She believed in her boy, 
 however, and I had little trouble in convincing 
 her that with all his faults Parker was a great 
 and brave and conscientious man. 
 
 I did not get my sonnet printed, but I meant 
 that it should have at least one interested reader, 
 and accordingly sent a copy of it to Parker him- 
 self. It called out from him a kindly appreciative 
 letter, and brought me the honor of his acquaint- 
 ance. This ought to have proved a very great 
 advantage to me ; for he invited me to come and 
 see him, showed me his collection of rare books in 
 the different languages of which he was master, 
 and proffered me the free use of them, either to 
 examine there in his library, or to carry away 
 and read at my leisure. " Come in at any time," 
 he said, "and help yourself; don't be afraid of 
 intruding upon me. I shall be glad to see you, if 
 I am here ; and to talk with you, unless I happen 
 to have a pressing task in hand." He encouraged 
 me to talk about my early life and my reasons for 
 
EARLY YEARS IN BOSTON 173 
 
 leaving home ; and used me as an illustration of a 
 point in his next Sunday's discourse, quoting my 
 very words, when he alluded to the country-bred 
 youth who comes to the city "because he aspires 
 to something better than working on a farm at 
 twelve dollars a month ; " to me a curious exem- 
 plification of his habit of making every rill of ex- 
 perience tributary to that omnivorous stream, his 
 weekly sermon. 
 
 His generous offer of his library appears to me 
 now as surprising as my failure to make use of it 
 was unaccountable. In thanking him for the 
 enviable privilege, I felt sure that I should return 
 in a day or two and enjoy it. Then the thought 
 of finding him at his desk, writing his next Sun- 
 day's homily, decided me to wait until Monday ; 
 then for some reason I postponed the visit another 
 week ; then — then — in short, I did not go at all ! 
 He never repeated the invitation, and I let so long 
 a time elapse that I was at length ashamed to re- 
 mind him of it. Thus the perverse imp of diffi- 
 dence and irresolution held me back from many 
 advantages in life, which I had but to face with 
 simple faith and courage, lay hold of, and possess. 
 I recall with shame another instance of my un- 
 fortunate faint-heartedness in those days. When 
 I most needed such a friend and adviser, I had 
 the good fortune to meet Mrs. Stowe, then in the 
 
174 MY OWN STORY 
 
 dazzling dawn of her success and fame. She 
 treated me with exceeding kindness, complimented 
 something I had written, and invited me to visit 
 her in Andover, adding, " I want you to make our 
 house one of your homes." I remember well the 
 words and the winning smite with which they were 
 spoken. Of course I promised to go, and of course 
 I never went. Long afterwards I reminded her 
 of that gracious invitation, and of my seemingly 
 ungracious treatment of it. " Foolish boy ! " she 
 said; "why didn't you come?" Foolish boy 
 indeed ! 
 
 The discourses of Parker were a moral and in- 
 tellectual stimulus, and well I recall the tremen- 
 dous temporary effect of some of them, — like his 
 sermon on Daniel Webster ; — but they never en- 
 tered very deeply into my life. Extreme radical 
 as he was in his religious and reformatory opin- 
 ions, the great body of modern thought has come 
 so nearly abreast with him, even passing in some 
 directions beyond him, that he appears a moderate 
 conservative to those who read his writings to-day. 
 Perhaps his influence over me would have been 
 stronger if it had not been early eclipsed by that 
 of his great contemporary, Emerson. 
 
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 FRIENDS AND FIRST BOOKS 
 
 I boarded at No. 33 Brattle Street a little over 
 a year, then moved to more attractive and commo- 
 dious quarters at the corner (southeast) of Beach 
 Street and Harrison Avenue. There I had a well- 
 furnished front chamber, where, on Sunday after- 
 noons, I welcomed a few friends, who soon began 
 bringing their friends, so that before long I had 
 about me a set of lively companions, all older than 
 myself, and two or three near twice my age. 
 There were two retired army officers who had 
 served in the Mexican war, three or four writers 
 for the press, a sailor who had had as many adven- 
 tures as Sindbad, and others of varied experiences. 
 I greatly enjoyed their good fellowship ; and it 
 was solely for the sake of hospitality that I began 
 to keep cigars and a decanter on my table. Before 
 long I found myself mixing a glass when I sat 
 down to write, and sipping it between paragraphs. 
 I think it was some indiscretion on the part of my 
 guests, one or two of whom could n't withstand 
 temptation, that awakened in me a consciousness 
 
176 MY OWN STORY 
 
 that I was forming an evil habit and encouraging 
 it in others. That consciousness had only slum- 
 bered all along ; and when it was finally roused, 
 resolution to change my way of life was roused 
 with it. Accordingly, after I had been about a 
 year in my Beach Street quarters, I engaged rooms 
 in a small and very quiet place leading off Tre- 
 mont Street, not far above the Common. I took 
 care not to be found at home for three or four 
 Sunday afternoons after my removal, and thus 
 managed to sift out, from those whose friendship 
 I wished to retain, my less desirable associates. 
 
 From that time forth I never took any sort of 
 stimulant to facilitate composition. Stimulants 
 used for that purpose are like stones let fall into 
 a fountain to create an overflow. The immediate 
 effect may be to raise the water, but at the best 
 they merely forestall the supply, and, even if they 
 do not render it turbid, they often choke it at the 
 source while appearing temporarily to increase it. 
 
 Tobacco, in the form of cigarettes and cigars, I 
 had used with moderation ever since I came to 
 Boston ; but as I was now becoming intimate in a 
 small circle where even the taint of it in clothing 
 was unwelcome, I soon gave up smoking altogether. 
 I have always rejoiced at a resolution that rid me 
 so early of a habit which might otherwise have be- 
 come inveterate. 
 
FRIENDS AND FIRST BOOKS 177 
 
 I roomed with a private family and got my 
 meals at boarding-places near by ; for one while at 
 a home of vegetarian reformers, where I lived for 
 an entire year without tasting animal food or miss- 
 ing it ; and later at a French table d'hote, where 
 I went back to French conversation and French 
 cookery. In that retired apartment (No. 1 Seaver 
 Place, to be exact), with the exception of summers 
 spent at the mountains or elsewhere, or in travel, 
 and ten months in Europe, I passed the next eight 
 years of my life. 
 
 II 
 
 In the summer of 185 1 I indulged myself in a 
 delightful trip, around by Lake Champlain, the St. 
 Lawrence, and Lake Ontario, to Western New 
 York ; spending a week or two at Niagara Falls 
 and Lockport, and for the first time in over four 
 years revisiting my mother and brothers in the old 
 homestead. There was much joy and some heart- 
 ache in seeing again the well-known Ogden faces, 
 in living over in memory the sports and hopes 
 and irksome tasks of my boyhood, and in breaking 
 open the golden-globed peaches, as I lay on the 
 same old orchard turf, in the warm September 
 weather. 
 
 Returning to Boston and my new quarters in 
 Seaver Place, early in the autumn, I resumed my 
 
178 MY OWN STORY 
 
 sketch-writing, and gave what time I could spare 
 from it to something which I hoped would prove 
 a work of more lasting importance. 
 
 It had long been my ambition to publish a book, 
 and I now set about writing a novel, to which I 
 gave my spare hours all the rest of that autumn 
 and the following winter. 
 
 The story chiefly concerned two Boston families, 
 one recently risen to wealth and social pretension, 
 the other aristocratic and decayed, whose relations 
 with each other gave scope for some good dialogue 
 and delineation of character. The early chapters 
 were, as I remember, lively enough ; but I had 
 started out impulsively, without any well-defined 
 plan, and, what was worse, without any interior 
 knowledge of the kind of life I was attempting to 
 describe. I found it impossible to work my situa- 
 tions up to a climax ; I lost my interest in the 
 task, and held myself to it by mere force of will, 
 bringing it to a premature conclusion, while it was 
 never, in fact, properly finished. I still had hope 
 that entertainment enough would be found in the 
 story to redeem it from utter failure : but, after it 
 had been successively declined by two or three 
 publishers, I began to take their view of it, which 
 confirmed my own private judgment, and smiled 
 in a sickly sort of way when one of my friends, 
 who had borrowed it to read, declared, on returning 
 
FRIENDS AND FIRST BOOKS 179 
 
 it, that the opening chapters were as good as those 
 of Vanity Fair. When I asked about the con- 
 cluding chapters, he said he " did n't get so far 
 as those." I fear nobody ever did. He was sure 
 he could find a publisher for it, if I would let him ; 
 but I had by that time made up my mind that it 
 should never again be offered for publication, un- 
 less I could first find courage to rewrite the latter 
 half. That courage never came. 
 
 Ill 
 
 One of the Boston weeklies I wrote for in the 
 early fifties was The Carpet Bag, to which I was 
 attracted less by any pecuniary advantage it offered 
 than by my very great liking for the man who gave 
 it whatever character and reputation it enjoyed. 
 This was Benjamin Penhallow Shillaber, who had 
 begun life as a compositor, and while setting type 
 in the office of The Boston Post had commenced 
 printing in that paper his quaint sayings of "Mrs. 
 Partington," so widely popular in their day, and 
 now so nearly forgotten. He had a large, genial 
 nature, something like Walt Whitman's, but with- 
 out Whitman's courage and immense personal 
 force, and with nothing of his genius ; although 
 Shillaber, too, was a poet in his way, writing with 
 great facility a racy, semi-humorous verse, speci- 
 mens of which he collected in a volume, Rhymes 
 
180 MY OWN STORY 
 
 with Reason and Without, in 1853. He also pub- 
 lished The Life and Sayings of Mrs. Partington, 
 with the proceeds of which he purchased a home 
 in Chelsea, unfortunately in a quarter where real 
 estate was destined to decline in value. Our ac- 
 quaintance began in 1850, and ripened quickly 
 into a friendship that continued as long as he lived, 
 notwithstanding a divergence in our political 
 opinions, — a divergence that became very wide 
 indeed when men of the North had to choose be- 
 tween a Union dominated by slavery and resistance 
 to that domination. Even at the time of Lincoln's 
 second election there was a modicum of truth in 
 what I said to him jocularly, that I believed he 
 would vote for Jeff Davis if Jeff Davis had the 
 regular Democratic nomination, indorsed by The 
 Boston Post. 
 
 Shillaber's physical proportions, his wit and 
 humor and amiable social qualities, made him for 
 many years a notable figure in Boston. I believe 
 it can be said of him more truly than of any other 
 man I ever knew — except perhaps one I shall 
 have much to say of farther on — that he never 
 made an enemy. During all the latter part of his 
 life he suffered greatly from inherited disease, the 
 gout ; but neither persistent pain nor enforced 
 retirement and inactivity could ever cloud that 
 cheerful, optimistic nature. 
 
FRIENDS AND FIRST BOOKS t 8i 
 
 IV 
 
 Working at the printer's case in The Carpet Bag 
 office, where I first saw him, was a sandy-haired, 
 thin-featured youth, with a long nose and pale com- 
 plexion, known as Charley Browne. He had been 
 brought to Boston, from Maine, in 185 1, by his 
 uncle, Dr. Calvin Farrar, who was getting a pam- 
 phlet printed, to advertise a water-cure establish- 
 ment he had at Waterford, and who offered the 
 job to the printers of The Carpet Bag, provided 
 they would take the boy with it. They took the 
 job and the boy (then aged seventeen), who before 
 he was much older began to write mildly funny 
 things for the paper over the signature, " Lieuten- 
 ant Chubb." He probably chose the pseudonym 
 Chubb for the reason that he himself was lank ; 
 just as he may have claimed to have learned his 
 trade in the office of The Skowhegan Clarion, be- 
 cause of the oddity of the name, whereas he had 
 really come from another town in Maine, and from 
 the office of a paper less grotesquely labeled. His 
 serious countenance veiled a spirit of original and 
 audacious waggery ; and he was even then known 
 to be capable of the same conscientious painstaking 
 in the accomplishment of a solemn act of drollery 
 as when, a few years after, while on a lecturing 
 tour in midwinter, occupying with a friend a room 
 
182 MY OWN STORY 
 
 of arctic temperature, he got out of bed in the 
 middle of the night to hang before a wind-shaken 
 sash a " skeleton " hoopskirt he had found in a 
 closet, remarking shiveringly, " It will keep out 
 the c-o-oarsest of the c-o-old ! " From Boston he 
 went to Cleveland, where Charley Brown of The 
 Carpet Bag became Charles F. Browne of the 
 Plaindealer, and Lieutenant Chubb developed 
 into Artemus Ward. 
 
 It was in The Carpet Bag office that I first met 
 that brilliant young Irishman, Charles Graham 
 Halpine, who had graduated from Trinity Col- 
 lege, Dublin, at seventeen, become a journalist 
 and an adventurer soon after, and was Barnum's 
 private secretary when that enterprising showman 
 brought Jenny Lind to Boston in the autumn of 
 1850. He had come to The Carpet Bag office 
 to see about some Jenny Lind advertising, when 
 he announced his intention of quitting Barnum 
 (" B-b-barnum," he called him, for he had an 
 engaging hitch in his speech) and of settling 
 down in Boston, — as he did, upon the showman's 
 departure. He took an office in Tremont Row 
 and immediately began earning a good income by 
 writing advertisements in prose and rhyme, and 
 poems and paragraphs for the press. He was 
 
CHARLES F. BROWN (ARTEMUS WARD) 
 
FRIENDS AND FIRST BOOKS 183 
 
 a little above the medium stature, with a florid 
 complexion, superabundant animal spirits, and 
 a maturity of mind and manner astonishingly 
 beyond his years, then barely twenty-one. 
 
 He quickly got the run of our politics, be- 
 came a Democrat (as I believe Irish-Americans 
 mostly do, there being in the name something 
 alluring to haters of monarchy), and gained a local 
 reputation as a wit and satirist in the columns of 
 The Boston Post, then in its golden prime under the 
 direction of its founder, Charles Gordon Greene. 
 Like Charles Lamb, Halpine sometimes made his 
 stammer tributary to his wit, as when, upon Mrs. 
 Stowe's going abroad in 1853, on a supposed 
 mission to collect funds for the anti-slavery cause, 
 he nicknamed her, first among his friends and 
 afterward in print, " Harriet BeseecherBe Stowe." 
 
 He conceived an ardent attachment for Shilla- 
 ber, with whom he associated himself in the man- 
 agement of The Carpet Bag. He and I had our 
 individual literary enthusiasms, which struck out 
 sparks of mutual personal interest at our first in- 
 terview ; with us acquaintance and intimacy might 
 almost be said to have been twin-born. We both 
 had good memories for the things we liked, and 
 vividly I recall the happy evening hours we spent, 
 walking up and down the slopes of the Common, 
 or seated on a bench by the fountain, reciting to 
 
i8 4 MY OWN STORY 
 
 each other passages from our favorite poets. It 
 was he who thus introduced me to Macaulay's 
 Lays of Ancient Rome, delivering parts or the 
 whole of more than one (I remember especially 
 Horatius) in a measured, solemn chant that lapped 
 me in the elysium of a new sensation. I in turn 
 repeated, among other things, Poe's Sleeper, — 
 the most strikingly beautiful of all the produc- 
 tions of that aberrant genius, — and stanzas from 
 Mrs. Browning's Vision of Poets, which I at that 
 time prodigiously admired, but find almost un- 
 readably diffuse and faulty of form to-day. Over 
 all the intervening years I hear again his sharp 
 exclamation of rapturous astonishment at the 
 lines, — 
 
 " And visionary Coleridge, who 
 Did sweep his thoughts, as angels do 
 Their wings, with cadence up the blue." 
 
 Halpine's Lyrics by the Letter H. was a little 
 volume so bright with promise that the writer 
 seemed surely destined to poetic eminence. 1 Un- 
 happily his restless energy and exuberant fancy 
 were unaccompanied by those other gifts of genius, 
 patient persistence and the capacity for taking 
 
 1 Published in 1854. Among the seventy or more lyrics was 
 one, The Ruby, addressed to me, in " acknowledgment of a ring 
 received from " — and so forth, on some occasion which I have 
 entirely forgotten. 
 
FRIENDS AND FIRST BOOKS 185 
 
 pains. What Byron said of himself was more 
 literally true of Halpine, — he must capture his 
 prey at a pounce or miss it altogether; but he 
 lacked Byron's power of holding on after a fortu- 
 nate seizure. He rarely returned to a poem after 
 the first inspiration had cooled, and it generally 
 went into the waste-basket if once left unfinished 
 or needing much revision. He had amazing speed 
 in short heats. 
 
 An unrestrained and sometimes misguided im- 
 petuosity affected his conduct as it marred his art, 
 and it led to a catastrophe that was almost a tra- 
 gedy. A divergence of our aims in life had been 
 the cause of our gradually drawing asunder, after 
 about two years of pretty close intimacy, but I 
 was still on friendly terms with him when he came 
 to me one day to ask my aid in an affair, the an- 
 nouncement of which filled me with incredulous 
 astonishment. It was nothing less than a duel. 
 
 Halpine was a reckless critic, and after he be- 
 became connected with The Carpet Bag (in 1852) 
 he began to print in that sheet articles of the 
 old-fashioned slashing sort of which Shillaber 
 could hardly have approved. He delighted espe- 
 cially in worrying with his wit a young poet named 
 Handiboe, who came, I believe, from one of the 
 Southern States, — who, at any rate, cherished a 
 Southern sense of so-called honor and a prejudice 
 
186 MY OWN STORY 
 
 against personal abuse. Stung to rage, Handiboe 
 sent him a solemn challenge by the hand of a 
 friend, who had likewise lived in the South and 
 was familiar with the " code." 
 
 This challenge Halpine brought to me, with the 
 astounding request that I should serve as his sec- 
 ond ; he was quite in earnest, declaring his inten- 
 tion to give Handiboe, whom he confessed to hav- 
 ing injured, " satisfaction." I consented to act as 
 his friend, if he would authorize me to go to the 
 other party and explain that the offensive article 
 was written more for sport than from any mali- 
 cious intent, that he regretted the injury, and that, 
 at all events, a duel in New England was impos- 
 sible. But Halpine would not consider such a 
 course. He said : " We can go to Canada and 
 have it out there. If you will not be my second, 
 somebody else will." Finding it impossible, either 
 by remonstrance or ridicule, to alter his deter- 
 mination, I accepted the responsibility, solely in 
 order to prevent the duel from coming off. 
 
 Handiboe' s second was a journalist and play- 
 wright, a social Bohemian (though we had n't that 
 name for the species in those days), by name 
 Ned Wilkins, known to me only by reputation up 
 to that time. He called upon me with due for- 
 mality, and I was pleased to find that he took 
 the same view of the matter that I did. He had 
 
FRIENDS AND FIRST BOOKS 187 
 
 once been engaged in an affair of honor in New- 
 Orleans, and he explained to me how the seconds, 
 of whom he was one, had made bullets of bread- 
 crumbs coated with tin-foil, loaded the pistols in 
 the presence of their principals and allowed them 
 to fire that harmless ammunition at each other 
 at ten paces until their honor was satisfied. He 
 said : " We will take a trip to Niagara Falls and 
 maybe have an interesting time." I was young 
 and adventurous enough to agree to the trip and 
 the ruse of the bread-crumb bullets. 
 
 How our two principals would have demeaned 
 themselves if they had thus been brought face to 
 face, weapons in hand, can only be conjectured; 
 for the affair, even while our plans were pending, 
 was precipitated to a most unlooked-for, calami- 
 tous conclusion, the circumstances of which, al- 
 though I was deeply concerned in it, cannot be 
 related here. Halpine went soon after to New 
 York, where he began at once a new and success- 
 ful course in journalism and politics. 
 
 Upon the breaking out of the Rebellion he be- 
 came a war Democrat, entered the Sixty-ninth 
 Regiment as lieutenant, and quickly rose to the 
 rank of adjutant-general on the staff of General 
 Hunter. He served with that officer in South 
 Carolina; transferred to the staff of General-in- 
 Chief Halleck, he had charge of that officer's 
 
188 MY OWN STORY 
 
 military correspondence, and afterwards assisted 
 Hancock and Can by in revising the army regula- 
 tions. Meanwhile he wrote war songs that be- 
 came popular with soldiers in the field (Sambo's 
 Right to be Kilt being one of the most effective) 
 and also contributed to the press the humorous 
 Private Miles O'Reilly papers, which, together 
 with the songs, were afterward collected in book 
 form. Retiring from the army with the brevet 
 rank of brigadier-general, he returned to New 
 York, became a conspicuous figure in metropoli- 
 tan politics, edited The Citizen, and held the lucra- 
 tive office of register. His death was fortuitous 
 and untimely. Suffering from an attack of neu- 
 ralgia, he administered to himself — with charac- 
 teristic rashness, I have sometimes thought — 
 an overdose of chloroform, and thus terminated 
 his own life in his thirty-ninth year. He had 
 great talent, vigor of mind and body, and engaging 
 social gifts ; and I have always felt that only the 
 more commonplace qualities of patience and pru- 
 dence were needed for the fulfillment of his early 
 
 promise. 
 
 VI 
 
 In the autumn of 1853 there came to Boston a 
 Connecticut girl of eighteen, with a portfolio of 
 sketches in prose and verse by " Ellen Louise," 
 which she was offering to editors in advance of their 
 
GEN. C. G. HALPINE AND B. P. SHILLABER 
 
FRIENDS AND FIRST BOOKS 189 
 
 appearance in a book. The poems were the dewy 
 buds of a talent that was afterwards to find its 
 fullest flowering in sonnets remarkable for their 
 tender feeling and sustained melody ; while her 
 conversational and other personal and social gifts 
 were prophecies (could one have read them aright) 
 of the unique sphere of influence she was to fill 
 in Boston and London society during these later 
 decades. Her graceful girlish contributions were, 
 as I remember, readily taken by editors ; one of 
 whom, — quite too readily, some of us thought, — 
 while accepting her articles, got himself accepted 
 by the writer, and Ellen Louise Chandler became 
 Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton. 
 
 VII 
 
 Another apparition of young womanhood, that 
 I remember as beaming transiently upon Boston 
 in those years, was the Maine poetess who wrote 
 under the pseudonym of " Florence Percy," and 
 later under her own name, Elizabeth Akers, after 
 her marriage with one of the most gifted of 
 American sculptors. A well-known poem of hers, 
 Rock me to Sleep, became the subject of a noto- 
 rious contention, in which I was so much inter- 
 ested, as a friend of the deeply injured author, 
 that I give it a brief mention here. It had been 
 some time published, and had already achieved a 
 
i 9 o MY OWN STORY 
 
 phenomenal popularity, when a New Jersey den- 
 tist and amateur rhymester, Dr. Ball, claimed the 
 authorship. Being a person of ample means, he 
 employed an advocate at a liberal fee (one thou- 
 sand dollars, it was said at the time) to support 
 his pretension in a pamphlet ; in which were 
 given letters of reputable witnesses who remem- 
 bered hearing him, the said Ball, read the poem 
 from manuscript before ever it appeared in print 
 under Florence Percy's name. The public was 
 largely imposed upon by this special pleading, and 
 William Cullen Bryant was misled into attributing 
 the poem to the supposititious author in an edition 
 of Bryant's Library of Poetry and Song. Un- 
 fortunately for his case, Ball issued a volume of 
 his own verse, of so contemptible a quality that 
 the purloined Rock me to Sleep, which was in- 
 cluded in it, with additional stanzas by Ball him- 
 self, shone (as I wrote in a letter of remonstrance 
 to Bryant) like a diamond in a dust heap ; whereas 
 (as I went on to argue) any one examining Flor- 
 ence Percy's poems would find among them many 
 of equal and some of decidedly superior merit. 
 Another friend of Mrs. Akers, who carried to 
 Bryant my letter, enforced its representations in 
 an effective personal appeal ; and in the next edi- 
 tion of the Library, Rock me to Sleep appeared 
 rightly credited. Mrs. Akers has continued to do 
 
FRIENDS AND FIRST BOOKS 191 
 
 excellent work in verse and prose ; while Ball is 
 remembered only in connection with his piratical 
 pretense. 
 
 Was he then a freebooter by premeditation, and 
 were his reputable witnesses base perjurers? It 
 has always seemed to me probable that he had writ- 
 ten something in a similar vein, that he had read 
 the verses to undiscriminating friends, and that 
 they afterwards confounded them with the poem 
 in question ; perhaps aiding him in the self-delusion 
 that his sentiments, if not his very lines, had been 
 plagiarized. But, however innocently he began, 
 he must have known what a bad business he was 
 in before he had proceeded very far. Throughout 
 the whole of it, Mrs. Akers, annoyed as she must 
 have been by the charge of theft brought against 
 her by the real thief, acted with commendable 
 dignity and self-restraint. 
 
 The incident is not without parallel in our 
 literary annals. A certain Miss Peck claimed the 
 authorship of William Allen Butler's Nothing to 
 Wear, after that poem had become famous. It 
 was another woman, a Mrs. or Miss Emerson 
 (her very name is passing into kindly oblivion), 
 who laid violent hands on Will Carleton's Betsy 
 and I are Out, constituting it the leading poem 
 of a volume of her own inferior verse. More re- 
 cently an attempt has been made to deprive Ella 
 
i 9 2 MY OWN STORY 
 
 Wheeler Wilcox of one of her popular lyrics. It 
 is sometimes adduced as an argument against the 
 actual authors in such cases that the copyright 
 law is not invoked for their vindication. That law 
 is but a precarious protection for anything that 
 has originally appeared, without its express attes- 
 tation, in the pages of a periodical ; as was the 
 case with each of the poems in question. I once 
 lost a valuable property in one of my duly copy- 
 righted early volumes, the contents of which had 
 been first printed as a serial story in a non-copy- 
 righted newspaper. Nobody else claimed the 
 credit of the authorship, but, because of the neg- 
 lected technicality, I was for years robbed of the 
 royalties of a continuously selling book. 
 
 VIII 
 
 Another Boston weekly to which I was a fre- 
 quent contributor was The Yankee Blade, con- 
 ducted by a man of culture and experience, Wil- 
 liam Mathews, — afterwards Professor Mathews, 
 of the University of Chicago, author of Oratory 
 and Orators, and other popular works. He one 
 day said to me, after reading a sketch I had handed 
 him, "You ought to write a book." I replied 
 that I should "like to find a publisher of the 
 same opinion ; " which led to his taking me, a 
 few days later, to the publishing house of Phillips, 
 
FRIENDS AND FIRST BOOKS 193 
 
 Sampson & Co., one of the largest and most enter- 
 prising in Boston. 
 
 I did not then enter the publishers' office for the 
 first time. The stately and urbane head of the firm 
 received us with the same distinguished courtesy 
 with which he had bowed me from his presence, 
 on handing back the manuscript of my unfortu- 
 nate novel, that I had submitted to him some 
 months before. He did not seem to recall the 
 circumstance, and I was grateful to him for greet- 
 ing me as if he then saw my blushing face for the 
 first time. 
 
 Between him and my friend there had evidently 
 been talk concerning me, and the question of 
 what I might do for the house soon came up. 
 
 "Not a novel — not just now; that may come 
 later," Mr. Phillips said, in answer to a suggestion 
 from me ; " but a domestic story, something that 
 will make wholesome reading for young people 
 and families. To be a book about this size," — 
 handing me a small volume. " If you like to try 
 your hand at something of the sort, I shall be 
 happy to give it favorable consideration." 
 
 Careful as he was not to commit himself fur- 
 ther, and disappointed as I was not to receive a 
 commission for a more important work, I accepted 
 the humble task, and hurried to the Common to 
 walk off my excitement and to think over the 
 
i 9 4 MY OWN STORY 
 
 plan of a story. Before I went home to my room 
 in Seaver Place, I had not only the motive and 
 main incidents clearly in mind, but also the title 
 of the book, to be named from the chief actor in 
 it, — Father Brighthopes, the old clergyman whose 
 gracious influence was to give character to the 
 narrative. In a few days I sent Mr. Phillips the 
 first fifty pages of the story, and went soon after 
 to learn its fate. 
 
 " I have n't had time to look at your manu- 
 script," he said as I took the seat to which he 
 motioned me. That was discouraging, for, being 
 well launched in the narrative, it was important 
 for me to know at once if I was to go on with it. 
 " I carried it home with me, to Worcester, and 
 gave it to my wife." My hopes pricked up a little ; 
 I thought I had rather take a woman's opinion of 
 it than that of the clearest-headed business man. 
 Meanwhile I maintained a smiling serenity of man- 
 ner, prepared for any fortune. 
 
 His eye caught sight of a stocky figure passing 
 the office door. " Ah, there is Mr. Broaders ! 
 Mr. Broaders attends to our printing. Mr. Broad- 
 ers, how long before you will have some proofs 
 for Mr. Trowbridge ? " 
 
 "There will be a batch to-morrow or next day," 
 Mr. Broaders replied. " I can show him a sample 
 page now, if he cares to look at it." 
 
FRIENDS AND FIRST BOOKS 195 
 
 I still endeavored to keep an unruffled demeanor, 
 and answered, as if I had been accustomed to 
 sample pages all my life, " Thank you, I should 
 like to look at it." 
 
 I was not dreaming; it was indeed a printed 
 page of my story. 
 
 " Then Mrs. Phillips did n't find it so very bad ? " 
 I said, repressing a shiver of pleasant excitement. 
 " I have more here, if she would like to see it." 
 
 " She can read it after it is in type. The 
 printers will want the manuscript as fast as you 
 can furnish it, — won't they, Mr. Broaders ? — if 
 we are to issue the volume this spring, which we 
 think will be a good time for it." 
 
 This was a bewildering surprise to me, but I 
 merely remarked that I had expected to revise the 
 manuscript carefully before it went to the printers. 
 
 " What revision you find necessary can be done 
 in the proofs," said Mr. Phillips, decisively, handing 
 my second batch of copy to Mr. Broaders, with 
 hardly a glance at it. 
 
 So it chanced that the story passed into type 
 about as fast as it was written, with all its imper- 
 fections ; and I had n't the heart to do much to it 
 in the proofs. In about three weeks it was ready 
 for the binders, and it was published in that 
 month of May, 1853. 
 
 Its success was immediate, and far exceeded my 
 
196 MY OWN STORY 
 
 expectations, for the little volume seemed to me 
 exceedingly faulty, as soon as it had gone irrevo- 
 cably out of my hands. The critics were kind to 
 it; people of the most opposed sectarian views 
 united in accepting Father Brighthopes as an em- 
 bodiment of practical Christianity — that religion 
 of the heart, which is no more a part of any creed 
 than a living spring is a part of the strata through 
 which its waters gush ; and I was soon gratified 
 and humbled by hearing how he had affected many 
 lives — more, I feared, than he had affected mine ! 
 Readers of the book generally conceived of the 
 author as himself a venerable clergyman ; and 
 some who sought his acquaintance on account of 
 it expressed incredulous surprise on finding him 
 hardly more than a boy. 1 
 
 IX 
 
 Up to that year my health, although never ro- 
 bust, had been uniformly good, often exuberant. 
 In all weathers I enjoyed my daily walks, gave 
 myself ample recreation, mental and social, and at 
 one time, for about a year and a half, took sparring 
 lessons of Professor Cram, and other vigorous ex- 
 ercise, at his Gymnasium on Washington Street. 
 
 1 This account of how Father Brighthopes came to be written 
 is condensed from the Preface to the Revised Edition, issued in 
 1892, forty-nine years after the original publication. 
 
FRIENDS AND FIRST BOOKS 197 
 
 But I was never a good sleeper, and often when 
 my mind was too actively employed, and I most 
 needed sleep, I got least. That spring I fell into 
 a state which the doctors called " nervous debility," 
 and having a horror of drugs, I spent the month 
 of June at a water-cure establishment in Worcester, 
 where I made a pretty thorough trial of the shower 
 bath, sitz bath, wet-sheet pack, and other interest- 
 ing processes pertaining to that treatment. Mr. 
 Phillips, my publisher, lived in Worcester, and I 
 had other agreeable acquaintances there. 
 
 Edward Everett Hale was then in Worcester, 
 settled over his first parish ; before his marriage 
 he had boarded with Mr. Phillips, who knew him 
 intimately, and who took me one Sunday to hear 
 him preach. Dining with Mr. Phillips, after the 
 services, I drew from him this opinion of Mr. 
 Hale,— 
 
 " Mr. Hale," he said, " is a very able man. But 
 I doubt if he ever makes his mark in the world, 
 for the reason that he lacks industry." 
 
 A singular judgment, it may seem, in the light 
 of what this " very able man " has since accom- 
 plished. But the truth is, Mr. Hale was not in 
 the habit of bestowing much study upon his ser- 
 mons (the one I heard was short, and shall I be 
 quite frank about it and say flimsy ?) ; and Mr. 
 Phillips could not well foresee how far the wonder- 
 
198 MY OWN STORY 
 
 fully versatile activity, the large understanding, 
 and still larger heart of this preacher, philanthro- 
 pist, man of letters, were to carry him in the next 
 half hundred years. His " industry," if we may 
 call it such, must have been prodigious, though 
 not of the plodding sort, or centred overmuch in 
 his sermons. 1 
 
 1 In the summer of the World's Fair, at Chicago, riding away 
 from a club dinner, in a coach with Dr. Hale and Eugene Field, 
 I ventured to repeat this dictum, uttered by Mr. Phillips forty 
 years before. Dr. Hale looked grave for a moment, as his mind 
 glanced back to those old Worcester days, then dryly remarked, 
 " Mr. Phillips was a good friend of mine, and — in most matters 
 — a very sagacious man." 
 
 Upon an occasion commemorating Dr. Hale's eightieth birth- 
 day, April 3, 1902, I contributed the following reminiscence : — 
 
 In writing a word for Dr. Hale's eightieth birthday, the first 
 thing that occurs to me is the grudge I owe him for the constant 
 rebuke his continued marvelous activity puts upon idle young 
 fellows like me. I remember the first time I ever saw him, 
 although I am sure he will not in the least recall the first time 
 he saw me. It was in Worcester (where he was then settled 
 over his first parish), forty-nine years ago this coming month of 
 roses. I am certain of the year (1853), and I know it was rose- 
 time, for as I was leaving his door in company with our " mutual 
 friend," Mr. M. D. Phillips, the publisher, Mr. Hale turned 
 aside from the garden walk to pluck a blooming wonder, which 
 he handed me with the remark, " Mr. Trowbridge, are you 
 learned in roses ? " Of course I was n't learned in roses, and of 
 course he was. This was the first humiliation he ever put upon 
 me, but I forgave him, for I carried away the color and the per- 
 fume, and was willing to leave the science and the care of cul- 
 tivation to him. For similar reasons, I pardon the manifold 
 
FRIENDS AND FIRST BOOKS 199 
 
 In Worcester, too, that summer, I first saw and 
 heard another young minister, Thomas Wentworth 
 Higginson, presiding over a "free church " there, 
 and preaching (in a hall, as I remember) sermons 
 marked by the careful preparation, earnestness of 
 thought, and grace of style which have character- 
 ized all his subsequent work now for almost fifty 
 years. The friend who took me to hear him told 
 me that Higginson even then contemplated with- 
 drawing from the pulpit in order to devote himself 
 to literature. " Entreat him not to do that ! " I 
 said, speaking out of my own experience of an 
 author's early struggles, without considering his 
 maturer years, or how well his academic training 
 and thorough culture fitted him for boldly entering 
 on a career of letters which in my undisciplined 
 youth, and with my poor equipment, I had found 
 so arduous. 
 
 I did not derive any appreciable benefit from 
 the douching, soaking, and skin friction to which 
 I was subjected at the Worcester Water Cure. 
 What I really needed was rest, or some treatment 
 (if any treatment at all but Nature's own) that 
 would soothe the nerves and restore nutrition, — 
 
 reproaches laid upon my ignorance and inaptitude by his amaz- 
 ing activities and acquirements, for I, too, like the rest of the 
 world, have all the while been sharing the results of his later 
 half-century of work in the rose-garden of humanity. 
 
200 MY OWN STORY 
 
 safeguard the citadel, so to speak, instead of draw- 
 ing the vital energies away from it by the constant 
 surprises and assaults they had to resist at the 
 harassed outposts. Moreover, the society of 
 people whose invalidism was their chief interest in 
 life and topic of conversation was not cheeringly 
 tonic. 
 
 On my way back to Boston I stopped to see my 
 Trowbridge relatives in Framingham. When, at 
 dinner, I had occasion to remark that I could n't, 
 with impunity, eat all things set before me, a wise 
 old grandam of the family poured for me a glass 
 of hard cider, saying, " Drink it, and you '11 have 
 no more of that trouble." I drank, and verified 
 her prophecy. Whether I owed my restored di- 
 gestion to the cider, or to some other cause, I 
 cannot affirm. I had had a needed mental rest, 
 and now the physical forces that had been so 
 incessantly diverted to the surface by the water 
 treatment turned inward, to the tired system's 
 grateful relief. 
 
 Not wishing to settle down at once to work, 
 in July I set off on a more extensive journey 
 than any I had hitherto undertaken. I found my 
 mother in Lockport and took her with me to our 
 relatives in Illinois ; then, in the course of the 
 
FRIENDS AND FIRST BOOKS 201 
 
 summer, continued my trip by stage-coach and 
 steamboat to the " far northwest," as it was then 
 called, — as far, in effect, as St. Paul and the Falls 
 of St. Anthony. 
 
 St. Paul had then twenty-five hundred inhab- 
 itants ; the village of St. Anthony fifteen hun- 
 dred ; there was no Minneapolis. The Mississippi 
 fell perpendicularly, eighteen feet, over a horse- 
 shoe of limestone ledge, into a wildly picturesque 
 gorge, instead of sliding tamely down an inclined 
 wooden " apron," as when I saw it sixteen years 
 later ; the " apron " having been constructed to 
 prevent the wearing away of the Falls. At that 
 earlier visit, the bed of the river, below the cata- 
 ract, was islanded by enormous blocks of the lime- 
 stone stratum, fourteen feet in thickness, which 
 had been undermined by the back eddies cut- 
 ting out the softer substratum, and broken off by 
 the weight of their own projecting mass ; and the 
 work of destruction was still going on. 
 
 It was a journey full of interest and adventure, 
 and of discomforts not a few. The passage down 
 the Illinois River was made memorable by the light- 
 draft stern-wheel steamboat getting aground at 
 low and still falling water ; by the terrible August 
 sun beating down on us by day, and swarms of 
 mosquitoes invading the cabin by night, where 
 the sleepers snored in scattering volleys and by 
 
202 MY OWN STORY 
 
 platoons. The return trip across northern Illi- 
 nois, from Galena to Naperville, almost justified 
 what was charged against some Western stage- 
 coach routes in those days, that passengers who 
 had paid their fares had to go afoot and carry 
 rails. The rails were for prying the coach wheels 
 out of the mud. I did my share of the walking, 
 but conscientiously refrained from the rail carry- 
 ing, after seeing an enraged settler rush out at us 
 with a gun, to shoot the first man that laid hand 
 to his dooryard fence. Fences were few and rails 
 scarce ; and (being within range of his rifle) I 
 inclined strongly to his view of the question. 
 
 I returned to the East by the way of New York 
 city, where I learned that my good friend Madame 
 Perrault had been dead a year or two, and that 
 poor little Raphael (no longer little) had a young 
 stepmother, who, I was glad to learn, did not 
 send him out so often as his own mother had 
 done, with the bottle to be replenished. 
 
 I got pretty nearly over my nervous debility 
 that summer, and might have recovered quite, but 
 for a passion that possessed me for spreading a 
 new gospel among my relatives, and friends old 
 and new. I had enjoyed, within the past year, 
 what seemed to me a spiritual illumination, and 
 had got so far beyond my early repugnance to the 
 discussion of religious topics, that I burned with 
 
FRIENDS AND FIRST BOOKS 203 
 
 zeal to combat and overthrow the gloomy, irra- 
 tional, humanly contrived doctrines that had bred 
 in me that repugnance. I would hold forth half 
 the night on this theme, to anybody who would 
 listen ; and to my unspeakable satisfaction, there 
 were those who listened, and rejoiced, and believed. 
 
 XI 
 
 Returning to Boston in October, I set to work 
 at once to take advantage of the wind of success 
 that had filled the sails of my first little book ; 
 and by the middle of January (1854) had followed 
 that by two more of a similar character, written 
 one after the other, with the stereotypers at the 
 heel of my pen. 
 
 Then my publishers proposed to me what I had 
 in vain proposed to them not so very long before, 
 — a novel. A full-fledged work of fiction, as they 
 called it, to be issued in monthly parts, after the 
 manner with which Dickens and Thackeray had 
 familiarized the public. I was at first dismayed 
 by the suggestion, foreseeing how much to my 
 disadvantage would be the comparison with those 
 great writers which my following their fashion 
 would seem to challenge. I was willing enough 
 to undertake the work of fiction, but I desired to 
 write it more at my leisure than would be possible 
 with the inexorable printer waiting for my monthly 
 
2o 4 MY OWN STORY 
 
 copy. The publishers argued that I could get a 
 good start by beginning at once ; their plan being 
 to bring out the first number in the spring. On 
 the last day of January Mr. Sampson (whose pet 
 scheme it was) took me to spend a night with him 
 at his home in West Roxbury ; and when we 
 parted at midnight, and I went to bed (but not to 
 sleep), I had assented to the venture. To this 
 day I marvel at my own temerity and at the firm's 
 amazing confidence in me. 
 
 February 6 I commenced writing Martin Mer- 
 rivale, his X Mark ; by the middle of March I had 
 three numbers (to make thirty-six large duodecimo 
 pages each) in the hands of the illustrators and 
 stereotypers ; and on May I the initial number 
 was issued. Each number was to have as a fron- 
 tispiece a carefully drawn illustration by Hammatt 
 Billings, one of the most skillful designers of those 
 days, but so exasperatingly remiss in keeping his 
 engagements that after a deal of trouble in getting 
 the first two or three blocks from him, I put my 
 manuscript parts into the hands of S. W. Rowse 
 (later the famous crayon artist), who furnished all 
 the subsequent drawings, and with whom I had 
 always the pleasantest personal and business re- 
 lations. 
 
 Early in July I took my work to Wallmgford, 
 Vt., in a lovely valley of the Green Mountains, 
 
FRIENDS AND FIRST BOOKS 205 
 
 where I finished it late in August. The month 
 of September I passed chiefly among the White 
 Mountains, and returned to Boston about the last 
 of the month, to see the concluding numbers of 
 Martin through the press. There were to have 
 been fifteen of these, but after seven or eight 
 had been published separately, the remainder 
 were issued together, in December, simultaneously 
 with a bound volume containing the completed 
 work. 
 
 The subject of the story was a young writer 
 from a rural village going to Boston to find a pub- 
 lisher for his great romance, The Beggar of Bag- 
 dad. His adventures among publishers, editors, 
 and "brother authors," beginning at the foot of 
 the hill of difficulty, the top of which he had ex- 
 pected to reach at easy strides, were among the 
 best things in it, if there were any " best ; " while 
 the romantic and sentimental parts were the poor- 
 est, and very poor indeed, in comparison with the 
 high ideal I had had in mind when I set out to 
 write. The issue in numbers was not a financial 
 success ; and it was not until the volume had had 
 time to make its way with the public, as it did but 
 slowly, that I received any substantial returns for 
 my steady half-year's labor. 
 
206 MY OWN STORY 
 
 XII 
 
 In the autumn of that year (1854) I assisted an 
 especial agent of the Post Office Department in 
 preparing for the press a volume of his varied and 
 often amusing experiences ; and might have been 
 engaged in a more strictly biographical piece of 
 work but for my self-distrust. Dr. Wm. T. G. 
 Morton earnestly desired me to write his life, 
 giving particular attention to the details of his 
 discovery of anaesthesia, which had latterly gained 
 for him a world-wide renown. Without scientific 
 attainments outside of his profession, that of dent- 
 istry, but inspired with the faith that there must 
 be some means of alleviating the sufferings he 
 was himself often called upon to inflict, and, con- 
 sequently, the more terrible agonies attending the 
 surgeon's knife, he had sought aid and informa- 
 tion wherever it was to be had ; but to him alone 
 was due the credit of rendering painless opera- 
 tions under etherization a practical success. No 
 man who, in the face of difficulty and discourage- 
 ment, has pursued a sublime but elusive idea to 
 the final hour of triumph, ever experienced a 
 prouder satisfaction than Morton must have felt 
 when, at the first public demonstration of his 
 method, at the Massachusetts General Hospital, 
 October 16, 1846, Dr. Warren turned to the attend- 
 
DR. WILLIAM T. G. MORTON 
 
FRIENDS AND FIRST BOOKS 207 
 
 ing physicians, — up to that moment skeptical, if 
 not contemptuous, and hardly yet convinced that 
 the patient, who had slept tranquilly while a tumor 
 was taken from his throat, was not dead, — and 
 said to them decisively, "Gentlemen, this is no 
 humbug ! " It was a magnificent reward for all 
 his trials and sacrifices. But man cannot live by 
 fame alone. Morton, when I knew him, was a 
 poor man. He had given his discovery to human- 
 ity, and would doubtless have received an early 
 and ample grant from Congress for that incom- 
 parable boon, had not rival claimants rushed in to 
 dispute with him the honor, and ultimately to pre- 
 vent the award. What he wished me to do was to 
 lay the subject broadly and convincingly before 
 the public, with the object of influencing Congress 
 in his favor. I sincerely doubted my talent for 
 doing a work of that sort or acting the part of an 
 advocate, and after some hesitation declined it. 
 When later I found I was not altogether lacking in 
 such ability, I regretted not having written the 
 biography of the originator of painless surgery. 
 
 XIII 
 
 In the following winter I had my first experi- 
 ence in writing for the stage. Miss Kimberley, 
 an actress of some note in those days, applied to 
 me, through her manager, George Roberts, a well- 
 
208 MY OWN STORY 
 
 known figure in Boston journalism and kindred 
 enterprises, to translate for her Voltaire's tragedy 
 of Semiramis, with a view to her assumption of 
 the title role. As anything like a translation of 
 the measured and monotonous alexandrines, in 
 which are couched the interminable set speeches 
 of Arzace, Otane, Assur, and the rest, would have 
 emptied any American theatre, stampeding the 
 best-intentioned audience in the very first act, I 
 proposed a free adaptation by omissions and com- 
 pressions, accelerating the movement, introducing 
 two or three humorous minor characters to relieve 
 the oppressive gloom of the drama, and rendering 
 the whole in as terse idiomatic blank verse as I 
 could command. My plan being approved, I set 
 to work some time in February and completed the 
 work in about three weeks. Roberts carried off 
 the manuscript about as fast as it was written, 
 and brought back from his protegee enthusiastic 
 praises of rhy adaptation. As my object in under- 
 taking it had been chiefly to raise money for a 
 trip abroad in the spring, and as the party I was 
 dealing with had not a very sound financial repu- 
 tation, I exacted cash payments now and then as 
 the sheets went out of my hands, but got caught 
 on the last act, for which Roberts gave me only 
 his autographic promise to pay, — a promise that 
 was never redeemed. 
 
FRIENDS AND FIRST BOOKS 209 
 
 Miss Kimberley starred with Semiramis two or 
 three seasons, with rather better success, I think, 
 than she ever achieved in anything else. I had 
 stipulated that my name should not be connected 
 with it, not merely because it was hack-work of 
 the most hurried kind, but likewise for the reason 
 that the play was announced as " written ex- 
 pressly " for her, without any reference to Vol- 
 taire. The groundwork was Voltaire's, and there 
 was enough of it to found a very good charge of 
 plagiarism on, if I had claimed the paternity of 
 the piece without acknowledging that origin. 
 Often I gave the gist of twenty or thirty deliber- 
 ate see-sawing lines in a swift phrase of two or 
 three; and where I followed the original most 
 closely I stripped away veils, to come directly at 
 the thought, — as I did quite literally in the open- 
 ing speech of the Queen, — where she sweeps 
 across the stage, but pauses distractedly to ex- 
 claim, — 
 
 " O voiles de la mort, quand viendrez-vous couvrir 
 Mes yeux remplis de pleurs et lasses de s'ouvrir ? " 
 
 This I rendered, — 
 
 O death ! O grave ! 
 When will your welcome, everlasting shades 
 Cover these aching orbs ? 
 
 I wrote in passages that might, I fancy, have 
 
210 MY OWN STORY 
 
 caused the sage of Ferney to lift his skeptical eye- 
 brows a little, as when Semiramis contrasts the 
 things of the spirit with the sterile philosophy 
 with which her minister seeks to console her. 
 
 O Philosophy, 
 Thou cheat and plaything of the intellect, 
 Thou comest not near the soul ! There is a sense 
 And wisdom of the spirit deeper far 
 Than thy most subtle and down-piercing roots 
 Have ever struck. Things that thou deem'st unreal 
 Are the essential substance that shall last 
 When all this goodly show, this regal pomp, 
 These towers and temples that adorn the globe 
 And seem eternal, shall have passed away. 
 
 I had no further pecuniary interest in the play 
 than the partial payments I was fortunate enough 
 to secure, and Mr. George Roberts's valuable 
 autograph. 
 
 In the spring (April, 1855) I went abroad, and 
 spent ten months in Europe, seeing London, 
 Paris, Florence, Rome, Naples, and other points 
 of all-absorbing interest to an enthusiastic youth 
 (of all which I dare not pause to speak), but pass- 
 ing the summer and autumn mainly in Paris, where 
 I completed another novel that marked an epoch 
 in my literary activity. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE WRITING OF NEIGHBOR JACKWOOD 1 
 
 Few of the present generation of readers will re- 
 member the fugitive slave cases that agitated the 
 country about the middle of the last century, one 
 of which, that of Anthony Burns, shook the con- 
 servative town of Boston as by a moral earthquake. 
 To this affair especially, and to two or three simi- 
 lar cases, I owed, in a large measure, the powerful 
 impulse that urged me to the writing of an anti- 
 slavery novel. How I was influenced by them ; 
 how, almost in spite of myself, and against my own 
 literary taste and judgment, I was led to construct 
 a story with the one tabooed and abominated sub- 
 ject craftily concealed (as was charged at the time) 
 in the very heart of it, a surprise to be exploded 
 like a bombshell in the face of unsuspecting read- 
 ers, — how I came to commit this atrocity, if it 
 
 1 This chapter comprises a large part of an Introduction to the 
 latest, revised edition of the novel, Neighbor Jackwood. By the 
 courtesy of the publishers, Messrs. Lee and Shepard, I am en- 
 abled to add it to these memoirs, in the order in which it belongs. 
 
212 MY OWN STORY 
 
 was one, I shall endeavor to show in this chapter 
 of reminiscences. 
 
 I early imbibed a prejudice against any agitation 
 of the slavery question. In the small community 
 in western New York where I was brought up, I 
 knew, in my boyhood, only two outspoken aboli- 
 tionists. One of these was our good Presbyterian 
 minister, Mr. Sedgwick, a worthy man with an un- 
 fortunate hobby, as it was deemed, and as perhaps 
 it was. His hearers were all good Whigs and 
 Democrats, who paid him for preaching sound 
 doctrinal discourses, and did not care to be re- 
 minded, Sunday after Sunday, that, as members 
 of the two great political parties of the day, they 
 were wickedly winking at a wrong committed in 
 States some hundreds of miles off. Whatever the 
 subject of his sermon, he was apt to introduce his 
 delenda est Carthago somewhere in the course of 
 it ; and he was particularly vehement in his argu- 
 ments against those who endeavored to prove by 
 the Bible that slavery was right. The other abo- 
 litionist was a somewhat eccentric young man, who 
 taught our district school two or three winters, and 
 taught it very well. But as he was known to enter- 
 tain erratic ideas on various subjects, and had been 
 heard to declare that " even if the Bible said slavery 
 was right, that would n't make it so," his advocacy 
 was not of a kind to help an unpopular cause. In 
 
WRITING OF NEIGHBOR JACKWOOD 213 
 
 short, he did n't count ; and Mr. Sedgwick stood 
 bravely alone, our sole, persistent, in-season and 
 out-of-season, rabid abolitionist. 
 
 I never was a good listener to sermons of any 
 sort, unless they happened to be interesting ; and 
 when imprisoned in the bare old meeting-house, I 
 was usually thinking so intently of other things 
 that I would hardly be aware of the unwelcome 
 topic being hammered on the ministerial anvil, 
 until I saw my father begin to fidget in his seat, 
 and the frown to gather on his brow. Often the 
 cloud would remain until dispelled by the genial 
 influence of the late Sunday dinner. Once when 
 I had been left at home, and went to open the 
 dooryard gate for the one-horse family wagon as 
 it drove up, I noticed the ominous scowl on my 
 father's face, and said, loud enough to be heard, — 
 
 " I guess Sedgwick has been pounding slavery 
 on his pulpit cushion again to-day." 
 
 "Another of his everlasting abolition ha- 
 rangues ! " exclaimed my father, as he got down 
 from the wagon at the door. " I wish I had some 
 sort of patent, long-action, quick-pressure gag to 
 spring on him the instant he speaks the word 
 ' slavery.' " 
 
 And yet he was a hater of all kinds of oppres- 
 sion, and one of the most scrupulously just men I 
 ever knew. 
 
2i 4 MY OWN STORY 
 
 "Wrong?" he would say. "Of course it's 
 wrong ; nothing under heaven can make it right 
 for one human being to own another. But what 's 
 the use of fighting it here at the North ? Leave 
 it where it is, and it will die of itself. Any serious 
 attempt to abolish it will bring on civil war and 
 break up the Union." 
 
 He often made use of these stereotyped words ; 
 but he would add, " I 'm opposed to the spread of 
 it; we've a right to take that stand," — little 
 dreaming that in less than twenty years a deter- 
 mined "stand," taken by the North against the 
 extension of slavery, would bring on attempted 
 
 disunion and the civil war he dreaded. 
 
 *■ ■ 
 
 II 
 
 So the subject of abolition became to me a dis- 
 agreeable one, and continued so after I went to 
 Boston in 1848, then in my twenty-first year. 1 I 
 
 1 Since this was written a letter has been returned to me, 
 which I wrote from Lockport, N. Y., to a sister in Illinois, in 
 January, 1845, when I was seventeen years old. In it I speak of 
 competing for the prize offered by the Niagara Courier, for the 
 best poetical New Year's Address to its patrons, mentioned 
 earlier in these pages. " I called at the office in a few days, and 
 was told by the editor that mine was the best they had received, 
 but that there was almost too much antislavery about it, and not 
 enough Whiggism." I do not remember a line of the address, 
 and am surprised to find that the abhorred subject cropped out 
 in it. 
 
WRITING OF NEIGHBOR JACKWOOD 215 
 
 did not find it popular in that highly conservative 
 city. The followers of Garrison and Phillips were 
 few ; society looked upon them as dangerous fanat- 
 ics, and the very name of abolitionist was covered 
 with an opprobrium that clung to it long after the 
 course of political events had justified their moral 
 convictions. The slave power itself was fast doing 
 more than its most relentless enemies could accom- 
 plish towards awakening not Boston only, but all 
 the North, to the insatiableness of its greed and 
 the danger of its aggressions. Its reign was a reign 
 of terror. Good people who, like my father, 
 quieted their consciences with the cry, "Let it 
 alone ! leave it where it is ! don't agitate the sub- 
 ject ! " found that it would not be let alone, that 
 it would not rest where it was, that it was itself 
 the great agitator, which would not cease its 
 menaces until it could flaunt its black flag over the 
 whole abject Union. 
 
 The enactment, in 1850, of the Fugitive Slave 
 Law, turning all the North into a hunting-ground 
 for escaping human chattels, roused a spirit of re- 
 sistance in thousands who had hitherto remained 
 indifferent, or timidly submissive, to the encroach- 
 ments of the monster. It made an " antislavery 
 fanatic " of me. How dangerous I was I did not 
 myself suspect, until Mr. Ben : Perley Poore, then 
 publishing his Sentinel in Boston, went off to 
 
2i6 MY OWN STORY 
 
 Washington, and left me in charge of the paper, 
 as I have already related. He had been gone a 
 week or two, when something on the subject of 
 Northern abolitionism in one of our Southern ex- 
 changes provoked me to reply. I meant my article 
 to be dispassionate and judicial ; and when it was 
 written and carefully revised, I couldn't see any- 
 thing in it that should give offense to right-think- 
 ing readers. So I printed it. Then the deluge ! 
 I hardly knew what I had done, when my good 
 friend Poore came hurrying back from Washington, 
 and walked most unexpectedly into the Sentinel 
 office one morning, where he found me seated at 
 the desk, unconscious as a cherub of any wrong- 
 doing. When I expressed surprise at seeing him 
 so soon, he said he thought it was time for him to 
 come and look after his editor. Always genial and 
 kind, he yet made me feel extremely uncomfort- 
 able when he added, — 
 
 " Good heavens, Trowbridge ! what were you 
 thinking of, to turn the Sentinel into an abolition 
 paper ? " 
 
 " Is that the way you look at it ? " asked the 
 cherub. 
 
 " That 's the way subscribers will look at it," he 
 replied. 
 
 A good deal nettled, I said, " Then perhaps you 
 would like me to leave the paper ? " 
 
BEN. PERLEY POORE 
 
WRITING OF NEIGHBOR JACKWOOD 217 
 
 " Leave the paper ? " he echoed, with about the 
 bitterest laugh I ever heard from his lips. " Print 
 another such article, and the paper will leave 
 us!" 
 
 He went on to give a grimly humorous account 
 of the sensation my poor little screed created in 
 Washington, where he had many friends and sub- 
 scribers, all of proslavery sentiments, and of his 
 sudden haste to leave that city. 
 
 " Of course," he added, " I laid it all to the boy 
 I had left in the office." 
 
 "Well," I said, "what was there about the boy's 
 article that they could reasonably object to ?" 
 
 He was generous enough to reply, " Nothing, in 
 my opinion. Every word of it is true enough. 
 And you may think it strange that a man can't 
 print in his own paper what he thinks on a great 
 public question like slavery; but that is a fact. 
 We shall see." 
 
 And we did see. Angry protestations from 
 subscribers were already lying unopened on his 
 desk. More came in, from North and South alike ; 
 and one of our South Carolina exchanges did me 
 the honor to answer my article with an insolent 
 threat of secession, — an old threat from that 
 State, even in those days, and not altogether an 
 idle one, as was so long believed. 
 
 Mr. Poore was too good a friend to discharge 
 
218 MY OWN STORY 
 
 me for an act of indiscretion already committed. 
 But he was right in his prognostication. The 
 paper soon after left us ; that, too, without the 
 help of another antislavery leader. How many 
 subscriptions my imprudence lost it I never knew. 
 It never had too many. 
 
 Ill 
 
 I shared the intense interest awakened in Boston 
 by its famous fugitive slave cases of 1850 and 
 185 1, — the romantic escape of Ellen and William 
 Craft, and the more notorious -and dramatic epi- 
 sodes of Shadrach and Thomas Simms. Yet I 
 hardly realized what inflammable antislavery stuff 
 was in me, until the capture of Anthony Burns 
 occurred, in May, 1854. 
 
 I was living in bachelor lodgings in Seaver 
 Place, engaged in writing Martin Merrivale, when 
 the terrible realities of that event put my poor, 
 fictitious characters to ignominious flight, and 
 kindled in me a desire to write a novel on a wholly 
 different subject. 
 
 It was not easy, at that time, to take a runaway 
 slave out of Boston ; secrecy and subterfuge had 
 to be used, without much regard to the forms of law. 
 Burns was arrested on a false pretext, and hurried 
 before United States Commissioner Edward G. 
 Loring, before it was known that kidnappers were 
 
WRITING OF NEIGHBOR JACKWOOD 219 
 
 again in the city. It had been hoped that the 
 rescue of Shadrach and the tremendous difficul- 
 ties encountered in the rendition of Simms would 
 sufficiently discourage similar attempts, as indeed 
 they did for a time. Burns had really been seized, 
 not for any petty offense, as was pretended, but as 
 a fugitive from the service of Charles F. Suttle, a 
 Virginia slaveholder. The truth became quickly 
 known, despite the precautions taken to conceal 
 it ; and the report, which was made a rallying cry 
 to the friends of the oppressed, " Another man 
 kidnapped ! " ran with electric swiftness through 
 the city. 
 
 Commissioner Loring was also judge of probate, 
 and a man of eminent respectability. In his pri- 
 vate life he was, no doubt, just and humane. I 
 was present, and watched his face with painful in- 
 terest, when he rendered his decision in the case. 
 In vain had Mr. Richard H. Dana made his elo- 
 quent plea for the prisoner, warning the commis- 
 sioner that what he was about to do would take 
 its place in history, and praying that it might be 
 in accord with a large interpretation of the law, 
 with the higher conscience, and with mercy. The 
 commissioner had evidently determined to perform 
 what he deemed his duty, without any betrayal of 
 emotion. His face was slightly flushed, but firm. 
 My pity was not all for the slave ; some of it was 
 
220 MY OWN STORY 
 
 for such a man in such a place. On a bench be- 
 fore him sat Theodore Parker and Wendell Phillips, 
 the great preacher and the brilliant orator, whose 
 certain and terrible denunciations of what he was 
 about to do might well have made him pause. 
 Perhaps, as a commissioner acting under the Fugi- 
 tive Slave Law, and ignoring the laws of Massa- 
 chusetts, he could not have rendered a different 
 judgment. But he might have resigned his com- 
 mission, and washed his hands of the whole black 
 business in that way. Without a tremor of lip or 
 of voice, he coldly reviewed the evidence and the 
 law in the case, and remanded Anthony Burns to 
 slavery. Then Parker and Phillips arose, and 
 walked arm in arm out of the court-room, convers- 
 ing in low tones, with bowed heads and lowering 
 brows. 
 
 Meanwhile Boston was in a turmoil of excite- 
 ment. Public meetings were held, an immense 
 one in Faneuil Hall on the evening preceding 
 the removal of the fugitive ; and that night there 
 was a gallant attack upon the Court House in 
 which he was confined. A stick of timber was 
 used as a battering ram against one of the western 
 doors, which was broken in ; there was a melee of 
 axes, bludgeons, and firearms, and one of the 
 marshal's guard was killed. But the assailants, 
 led by that ardent young reformer, Thomas Went- 
 
WRITING OF NEIGHBOR JACKWOOD 221 
 
 worth Higginson, of whom, later, the world was 
 to hear considerably more, and by a colored man, 
 Lewis Hayden, were unsupported, and were driven 
 back. 
 
 Reports of the Faneuil Hall meeting and of the 
 assault on the Court House rallied an immense 
 crowd to Court Square and the adjacent streets 
 the next morning, to witness the final act of the 
 drama. It was a black day for Boston, that 27th 
 of May, 1854 ; the passions of men were stirred 
 to their depths, and often friends were divided 
 against friends. I remember meeting in the crowd 
 one with whom I had been on intimate terms not 
 long before. He had been an officer in the Mexi- 
 can war, and was as much of a Roman as to his 
 nose and character as any man I ever knew. But 
 that day the Roman in him was enlisted in a bad 
 cause. Drawing me aside in the crowd, and open- 
 ing his vest, he grimly called my attention to a 
 revolver thrust into an inside pocket. 
 
 "What *s that for, Ned ? " I asked, in the old 
 familiar way. 
 
 "lam one of the marshal's private deputies," 
 he answered, with brutal frankness. " There are 
 over a hundred of us in the Court House there 
 and in this crowd. At the first sign of an attempt 
 to rescue that damned nigger, we are going in for 
 a bloody fight. I hope there '11 be a row, for it 's 
 
222 MY OWN STORY 
 
 the top-round of my ambition to shoot an aboli- 
 tionist." 
 
 " Well, Ned," I replied, " you may possibly have 
 an opportunity to shoot me ; for if I see a chance 
 to help that * damned nigger ' I 'm afraid I shall 
 have to take a hand." 
 
 Any attempt of the kind at that time was out 
 of the question. The broken door was barricaded ; 
 the Court House was a fortress. Besides his hun- 
 dred deputies, — men recruited for the most part 
 from the brutal and vicious classes of society, fre- 
 quenters of grog-shops and gaming-saloons, — be- 
 sides this posse of desperadoes, disposed as his 
 special guard and distributed through the crowd 
 they were to watch and thwart, the marshal had 
 the police force of Boston and a large body of 
 militia, ostensibly to keep the peace, but practi- 
 cally to aid him in his ignoble task. The Court 
 House was encircled by bayonets, and Court Street 
 and State Street were lined on both sides with 
 files of troops, keeping a lane open all the way to 
 Long Wharf for the expected procession. 
 
 At last it set forth, led by a vanguard of armed 
 police. " There he is ! " went up a half -stifled cry 
 from the multitude; and there indeed he was, 
 that one poor, hunted, black bondman, whom a 
 derisive fate had that day made the most-talked-of 
 and important figure in all New England. What 
 
WRITING OF NEIGHBOR JACKWOOD 223 
 
 must he have thought of the great concourse of 
 citizens, the swords and clubs and muskets, that 
 met his bewildered gaze as he walked forth from 
 his prison ? — all there for him, the wretched and 
 baffled runaway from Virginia ! I remember his 
 scared black face, as he rolled his eyes about for 
 a moment before he was hurried away ; not so 
 very black, either, — a complexion rather of bronze 
 than of iron, — with a gleam of excitement in it 
 which was almost a smile. He had heard the 
 blows that thundered against the Court House 
 door the night before ; he knew what they meant ; 
 he knew how Shadrach had been rescued ; but if 
 he still cherished a hope of his own deliverance, 
 it must have abandoned him at that moment. All 
 was over. The free land to which he had escaped 
 through difficulties and dangers was no free land 
 for such as he. Back he must go to bondage and 
 the lash. 
 
 There was no pause. The marshal and his 
 special guard inclosed Burns in a compact pha- 
 lanx, following the vanguard, and another body of 
 armed police brought up the rear. The march 
 was rapid, amid groans and hisses, and now and 
 then a cheer, from the ranks of spectators. From 
 Court Square into Court Street, gazed at from 
 hundreds of windows, some of which were draped 
 in black in token of the city's humiliation ; past 
 
224 MY OWN STORY 
 
 the old State House, and over the very ground 
 where the first blood was shed preluding the Re- 
 volutionary struggle, some of it the blood of a 
 black man, — scene of the Boston Massacre ; and 
 so on, down State Street, moved the strange pro- 
 cession, between the two rows of bayoneted guns, 
 to Long Wharf, where, by the President's orders, 
 a revenue cutter was in waiting, to receive on 
 board the kidnappers and their prey. 
 
 IV 
 
 It was a long time before I could sit down again 
 quietly to the fiction on which I was engaged. I 
 felt a burning desire to pour out in some channel 
 the feelings which, long suppressed, had been 
 roused to a high pitch of excitement by this last 
 outrage. Still, something of the old repugnance 
 to the subject of slavery remained ; I shrank from 
 the thought of making a black man my hero ; the 
 enormous popularity of Uncle Tom, instead of 
 inciting me to try my hand at an antislavery 
 novel, served rather to deter me from entering the 
 field which Mrs. Stowe had occupied with such 
 splendid courage and success. 
 
 More than once, before the Anthony Burns 
 affair, before Uncle Tom even, the fugitive slave 
 as a subject for a novel had come up in my mind, 
 and I had put it resolutely aside ; but now it pre- 
 
WRITING OF NEIGHBOR JACKWOOD 225 
 
 sented itself again, and persistently haunted me. 
 "Why a black man?" I said to myself. "All 
 slaves are not black. And why a man at all ? " 
 as I thought of Ellen Craft. " Sympathy will be 
 more easily enlisted for a woman, white, with 
 native refinement and sweetness of character, and 
 yet born a slave, with all the power and prejudice 
 of legal ownership and cruel caste conspiring to 
 defeat her happiness." And I fell to thinking of 
 that worst form of slavery which condemned to a 
 degrading bondage not those of African blood 
 alone, but so many of the descendants of the 
 proud white master race. 
 
 Though I was hardly conscious of it, the thing 
 was taking shape in my mind when I went to 
 spend the summer (of 1854) at Wallingford, Vt., 
 in the bosom of the Green Mountains. In the 
 broad and beautiful valley of Otter Creek I found, 
 in an old farm-house, a quiet place to live, and 
 think, and write. I gave four or five hours a day 
 to Martin Merrivale, and had ample leisure, in the 
 long summer afternoons, to bathe in the streams, 
 wander in the woods, climb the mountains, and in 
 the course of my rambles make extensive acquaint- 
 ance with the country and the people. 
 
 One day, while exploring the interval about the 
 confluence of Otter Creek and Mad River, — 
 which became Huntersford Creek and Wild 
 
226 MY OWN STORY 
 
 River in the novel, the scene of the fishing ad- 
 venture of Mr. Jackwood and Bim, — lost, like 
 them, amid the tortuous windings of the two 
 streams, still further lost in my own imaginings, 
 I suddenly saw rise up before me out of the 
 tall grass the form of an old hag. And it was 
 not an old hag at all, but a beautiful girl in dis- 
 guise ; nor yet a girl, but really a creature of my 
 own imagination, which appeared as vividly to my 
 mind's eye as if it had been either or both. 
 
 " Both it shall be," I said ; " a forlorn maiden 
 in the guise of an old woman, lost here in this 
 wilderness of alders and long grass and labyrin- 
 thine streams ! — a mystery to be accounted for." 
 And the phantom-like projection of my fancy 
 took its place at once in the plan of the story, 
 giving it life and form from that hour. 
 
 I was impatient to get " Martin " off my hands, 
 and to begin the new novel, of which I wrote the 
 first chapters in the old Vermont farmhouse, in 
 the midst of the scenes described. It was then 
 thrown aside, to be taken up later, under very 
 different circumstances. I carried the manuscript 
 to Europe with me in the spring of 1855 ; and 
 having settled down in Passy, just outside the 
 walls of Paris (now a part of Paris itself), I resumed 
 
WRITING OF NEIGHBOR JACKWOOD 227 
 
 work upon it, writing a chapter, or a part of a 
 chapter, every morning, and joining my friends 
 in excursions in and about the gay capital in the 
 afternoon. 
 
 I had one friend there who, by his sympathetic 
 and suggestive criticisms, assisted me greatly in 
 my work. He read the manuscript almost as fast 
 as it was written, and was always eager to talk 
 with me about the incidents and characters, and 
 their development ; thus keeping up my interest 
 in them when it might otherwise have flagged 
 amid the diversions of a life so strangely in con- 
 trast with the life I was depicting. Often we 
 walked together to the Bois de Boulogne of an 
 evening, sat down on a bench by one of the lakes, 
 and discussed the Jackwood family, Enos Crum- 
 lett and Tildy, Hector and Charlotte, and the 
 slave-catchers, until these became more real to us 
 than the phantasmal beings, in carriages or on 
 foot, moving before our eyes in the lighted park. 
 This friend was Lewis Baxter Monroe, afterwards 
 well known as Professor Monroe of the Boston 
 School of Oratory, whom I shall have other oc- 
 casions to mention, further on in these memoirs. 
 
 The story finished, I had great trouble in nam- 
 ing it. I suppose a score of titles were consid- 
 ered, only to be rejected. At last I settled down 
 upon "Jackwood," but felt the need of joining to 
 
228 MY OWN STORY 
 
 that name some characteristic phrase or epithet. 
 Thus I was led to think of this scriptural motto 
 for the title-page : " A certain woman went 
 down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among 
 thieves." Which suggested the question, " Who 
 was neighbor unto this woman ? " and the answer, 
 " Neighbor Jackwoodr And I had my title. 
 
 I read the proofs of the novel in the spring of 
 1856, after my return to America ; but it was not 
 published until the following winter, for a special 
 reason, which found considerably less favor with 
 the author than with the publishers. Mr. Phil- 
 lips was afraid the work might be lost sight of in 
 the dust raised by Mrs. Stowe's Dred, which he 
 was to issue about the time my humbler venture 
 was ready. I was repaid for this tax upon my 
 patience when, after the book had been out a few 
 days, and the press notices were beginning to 
 come in, Mr. Phillips greeted me one morning 
 with his peculiarly stately bow and a serene smile, 
 and remarked significantly, " Our friend Jack- 
 wood needn't have been afraid of anybody's dust." 
 
 It had the advantage of a fresh and unhack- 
 neyed theme, and was the first serious attempt to 
 depict those phases of country life amid which the 
 narrative moves, and to render the speech of the 
 people with due regard to its humorous flavor, 
 yet absolutely without exaggeration. Although it 
 
MOSES DRESSER PHILLIPS 
 
WRITING OF NEIGHBOR JACKWOOD 229 
 
 was written "with a purpose," that purpose was 
 inclosed, as far as possible, in the larger aim of 
 telling a strong and interesting story. Of course 
 the antislavery element in it was liberally de- 
 nounced, and the bombshell of surprise, before 
 mentioned, caused a shock to the prejudices of 
 many worthy people. They were horrified by the 
 mere suggestion of a union between the hero and 
 heroine. I had been careful to offset the cloud of 
 heredity resting upon her by one more terrible 
 lowering upon his family and threatening him ; 
 but those so quick to take offense at the one gave 
 no heed to the other. 
 
 VI 
 
 The success of the novel led to its dramatiza- 
 tion by the author for the Boston Museum stage, 
 then managed by the veteran actor W. H. Smith, 
 who took the title role of Neighbor Jackwood. 
 The part of Enos Crumlett was expanded to the 
 proportions of William Warren, a comic actor of 
 rare powers, for many years a prime favorite with 
 Boston audiences, that never wearied of his broad 
 yet delicate and genial humor. I engaged all the 
 players to read the book while studying their 
 parts, and thus secured unusually good persona- 
 tions of the characters from a mediocre company. 
 We had a bright young girl, Rose Skerritt, to 
 
2 3 o MY OWN STORY 
 
 personate Bim. Mrs. Thompson, who was never 
 a noticeably bright star in anything else, blazed 
 out conspicuously as Grandmother Rigglesty, into 
 which character she threw energies she was not 
 before supposed to possess, — so conscientious in 
 her presentation of it that, as Dr. Holmes re- 
 marked, she "took out her teeth." 
 
 The first night of the piece was memorable to 
 at least one person in the audience. I went early 
 to the theatre, and ensconced myself, with a 
 friend, in an obscure corner, where I could care- 
 fully watch the performance, to see where it 
 dragged, and note whatever changes should be 
 made in the inevitable " cutting " process to take 
 place the next day. All went prosperously, until 
 suddenly there was a hiss, and a storm of howls 
 and hisses immediately followed. A crisis in the 
 plot had been reached which roused the opposi- 
 tion of the proslavery part of the audience, — a 
 very large part, as it seemed for a while. A 
 counter-storm of cheers and clappings set in, and 
 there was a prolonged uproar that threatened to 
 end the performance. Victory at last remained 
 with the friends of the piece, and the performance 
 proceeded. 
 
 "You will cut out those objectionable speeches ?" 
 my friend whispered in my ear. 
 
 " No," I replied ; " I will strengthen them." 
 
WRITING OF NEIGHBOR JACKWOOD 231 
 
 An amusing incident occurred when we were 
 on our way to the theatre that first night, Monday, 
 March 16, 1857. Being just then personally 
 interested in playbills, I turned aside to see what 
 a man was pasting over one which I had regarded 
 with especial satisfaction, whenever I passed it 
 that day and the preceding Sunday. It was the 
 bill of the next days performance of Jackwood ; 
 and on it was announced, in the showy head-lines 
 then in vogue, the astonishing success of the first 
 performance, which we were then on our way to 
 witness ! 
 
 Tremendous Hit ! ! 
 
 Received with Thunders of Applause ! ! ! 
 
 "All right, only the man anticipates a little," 
 said my friend, as we went on laughing. " But 
 we '11 take it as a good omen." 
 
 I may here add that this incident served as 
 a hint for the opening lines of Author's Night, 
 written a few years later : — 
 
 " ' Brilliant Success ! ' the play-bills said, 
 Flaming all over the town one day, 
 Blazing in capitals blue and red, — 
 Printed for posting, by the way, 
 Before the public had seen the play" etc. 
 
 Jackwood had a long and prosperous run on 
 the boards in Boston, and was afterwards brought 
 out in other places, but with less satisfactory re- 
 
232 
 
 MY OWN STORY 
 
 suits. In New York it was badly acted, all the 
 naturalness and humor of the parts being de- 
 graded to mere farce ; as I saw to my sorrow, on 
 an occasion rendered the more harrowing to my 
 feelings as an author by the fact that I had invited 
 my friends of those years, Mr. and Mrs. Richard 
 Henry Stoddard, and another friend who had 
 accompanied me from Boston, to occupy a box 
 with me at the absurd performance. 
 
 It is now some years since the play has been 
 represented by any professional company, but it 
 is still used in amateur theatricals ; and the novel 
 has never lacked readers. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 UNDERWOOD, LOWELL, AND THE ATLANTIC 
 MONTHLY 
 
 I followed the play of Neighbor Jackwood 
 on the Museum stage with a spectacular piece, 
 Sindbad the Sailor, which also had a prosperous 
 run of several weeks ; and did other work for the 
 Museum proprietor, Mr. Moses Kimball, in the 
 way of adaptation and dramatization. Meanwhile 
 I contributed to two of the popular Philadelphia 
 magazines, also to Putnam's and Harper's ; and 
 in the summer of 1857 I made still another West- 
 ern journey, writing letters for the New York 
 Tribune over the signature of " Jackwood." 
 
 In the fall of 1857 The Atlantic Monthly was 
 started, an event I shall now give some account of, 
 together with recollections of the man to whom, 
 more than to any other, its inception was due. 
 
 II 
 
 I remember well the occasion of my first meet- 
 ing with Francis Henry Underwood, much better 
 
234 MY OWN STORY 
 
 indeed than I recall the month, or even the year, 
 although I think it must have been late in the 
 autumn of 1853. It was on a Monday morning, 
 and he had been but an hour or two at the desk 
 newly placed for him in the counting-room of 
 Phillips, Sampson & Co. As I entered on some 
 errand, the strange face looked up with a surprised, 
 interested, penetrating expression, which kindled 
 into cordial recognition as the urbane head of the 
 firm approached and introduced us. 
 
 He was then in the flower of early manhood, 
 not quite twenty-nine years old, with a fine ruddy 
 complexion, frank yet dignified manners, and an 
 admirable aplomb which made him a noticeable 
 man in any company. He had had his share of 
 the varied experiences commonly attending the 
 career of a typical self-made American. He had 
 been school teacher, law student, and clerk of the 
 Massachusetts State Senate in the stirring " coali- 
 tion" days of 1852, when stalwart Henry Wilson 
 was president of that body, and Banks and Hoar 
 and other notable members of the House were in 
 training for the wider arena of national politics. 
 But his aspirations were always more literary than 
 political, and after a year's service in the Senate 
 he had found a more congenial position in the 
 great publishing house, where his chief duties 
 were to examine manuscripts offered for publica- 
 
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 235 
 
 tion, and conduct correspondence with authors. 
 I found him extremely companionable, warming 
 quickly to a new acquaintance ; and I envied in 
 him the entire absence of that shyness which in 
 me too often repressed the ardor of social im- 
 pulses. He had many friends among all sorts of 
 people, but principally among artists and writers. 
 There was one, particularly, of whose intimacy he 
 was justly proud, the brilliant wit and poet of Cam- 
 bridge, — " my friend Mr. Lowell," as he com- 
 monly spoke of him with undisguised satisfaction. 
 I saw him almost daily at his office, but our 
 real intimacy began when first he invited me to 
 his house. " Come and dine with me on Sunday," 
 he said, "and in the afternoon we will walk over 
 to Elmwood." It was a red-letter day for me, 
 when I went out from Boston at the appointed 
 time, found him in his modest home (he was liv- 
 ing in Cambridge), and after dinner walked with 
 him to the home of the Lowells. 
 
 Ill 
 
 I had never yet seen the author of the Biglow 
 Papers and A Fable for Critics ; and the antici- 
 pation of meeting him sensitized my mind for 
 sharp and enduring impressions. I retain a dis- 
 tinct picture of Elmwood as it looked that after- 
 noon : a spacious, square, old-fashioned mansion, 
 
236 MY OWN STORY 
 
 standing in the midst of snow-covered grounds, 
 and surrounded by tall trees and clumps of ragged 
 lilacs, all bare of foliage except the pines lifting 
 their golden-green tops in the wintry sunshine. 
 My guide entered like a familiar guest, and led 
 the way up three flights of stairs to a large front 
 room, which was the poet's study. Mere words 
 often convey to the mind impressions of form and 
 color ; and I had conceived of Lowell — not from 
 anything he had written, but solely from the sound 
 of the two syllables of his name — as a tall, dark, 
 dignified person, with a thin face, ample forehead, 
 and prominent nose. Very great, therefore, was 
 my surprise when I was ushered into the presence 
 of a compact little man in short velvet jacket, 
 with wavy auburn hair parted in the middle over 
 a full, fair forehead that appeared neither broad 
 nor high, and a bright, genial face more expres- 
 sive of the vigorous and humorous Hosea than of 
 the exalted Sir Launfal. 
 
 The easy cordiality of his greeting put me at 
 once at my ease, and prepared me for the enjoy- 
 ment of a delightful occasion. He was accus- 
 tomed to receive, at that hour on Sunday after- 
 noons, a small circle of friends, among whom he 
 was the shining central figure. Soon after our 
 arrival Robert Carter came in, a short, sturdy 
 man, with a big forehead spanned by a pair of gold- 
 
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 
 
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 237 
 
 bowed spectacles, a walking cyclopaedia of infor- 
 mation. Dr. Estes Howe, Lowell's brother-in-law, 
 and two or three others made up the company, 
 and a quiet, desultory conversation ensued ; not 
 at all that of gods discoursing " from peak to peak 
 all about Olympus," but very much like the talk 
 of men of sense and culture anywhere. Some 
 good stories were told, there was now and then a 
 meteoric pun, or a wise observation illumined a 
 subject like the sudden flash of a search -light ; 
 but what interested me most was the reading by 
 Lowell of some verses which I do not remember 
 ever to have seen in print. The talk turning upon 
 French poetry, he took from a shelf of ponderous 
 volumes a work of Voltaire's, from which he first 
 read us a part of Hamlet's soliloquy in the great 
 Frenchman's attenuated and flexible alexandrines ; 
 a version as much like the original as some luxu- 
 riant vine is like a rugged trunk it climbs and 
 hides. This paraphrase Lowell had retranslated 
 into English quite faithfully, giving it, however, 
 some sly turns to bring out with ludicrous effect 
 its graceful feebleness in contrast with the sen- 
 tentious Shakespearean lines. 
 
 It was late in the afternoon when the company 
 separated, and I went home to tea with Under- 
 wood ; then in the evening I walked back to Bos- 
 ton, stopping long on the bridge — one of Lowell's 
 
238 MY OWN STORY 
 
 " caterpillar bridges crawling with innumerable legs 
 across the Charles" — to watch the stars mistily 
 wavering in the dark, full river, and to think over 
 the events of the afternoon. 
 
 Besides these Sunday afternoons at Lowell's 
 there were Friday evening gatherings, — " osten- 
 sibly for whist, at the house of each of the party 
 in turn," as Underwood tells us in the The Poet 
 and the Man. The whist club included Lowell, 
 Carter, John Bartlett, John Holmes, and other 
 friends and neighbors of Underwood. Then there 
 were very informal dinners in Boston, nearly al- 
 ways attended by him and Lowell, and often by 
 Edmund Quincy, Francis Parkman, and Dr. 
 Holmes. Such were some of his associates, and 
 all who knew him will attest how generous he was 
 in sharing old friendships with new friends. If 
 never any false pride deterred him from making 
 his friends useful to him, he had the right of one 
 who was equally ready to serve them or to make 
 them useful to one another. One especial favor 
 which he would have done me I recall with min- 
 gled gratitude and regret. Hearing that I was 
 intending to go abroad in the spring of 1855, he 
 interested himself in my plans, and one morning 
 met me with a significantly uplifted finger, and 
 the startling announcement, " It is all arranged ; 
 you are going with Mr. Lowell ! " 
 
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 239 
 
 Startling indeed, for although I knew that Mr. 
 Lowell, lately appointed professor of modern lan- 
 guages in Harvard University, to succeed Mr. 
 Longfellow, was to have a year of study in Europe 
 before assuming the duties of that position, I had 
 not conceived the possibility of having him for a 
 fellow passenger. 
 
 " I have talked it over with him. He is going 
 in a sailing-vessel, and you two will probably be 
 the only passengers. Don't say a word against 
 it ! " Underwood went on, as I murmured some- 
 thing about different arrangements. " Take my 
 advice, — cancel them ; give up everything else 
 for this rare chance." 
 
 Alas, those different arrangements ! My friend 
 Monroe (mentioned in the preceding chapter) was 
 going abroad with three Spanish-American youths 
 to superintend their education in Paris, and I had 
 engaged to accompany them. Neither he nor 
 they could speak French, and my familiarity 
 with that language was depended upon to aid in 
 establishing them in the great foreign metropolis. 
 Time was important to them, and they were 
 to make the voyage in a steamer. I should 
 myself have preferred the more leisurely and less 
 expensive passage ; and I knew how delightful 
 as well as profitable to me, with my imperfect 
 education and unsettled literary aims, would be 
 
2 4 o MY OWN STORY 
 
 a month's daily intercourse with a finished man 
 like Lowell, in the vast and unbroken seclusion 
 of the ocean. But I could not well change my 
 plans. Underwood called me an idiot, as perhaps 
 I was. But he did not weary of serving me ; 
 and I cannot forbear the pleasure of recording an- 
 other instance of his active friendship. When I 
 came home, a year later, with the manuscript of 
 Neighbor Jackwood in my trunk, he took a lively 
 interest in putting it through the press ; and it 
 was afterwards through his mediation that I was 
 engaged to make a dramatic version of it for the 
 Boston Museum stage. 
 
 IV 
 
 Boston had as yet no magazine that could com- 
 mand the united support of the best writers and 
 of an appreciative public. The Dial, started in 
 1840, with such contributors as Emerson, Theo- 
 dore Parker, and Margaret Fuller, was designed 
 as a vent to the new wine of Transcendentalism, 
 and commended itself chiefly to the few who had 
 felt the fine intoxication of that ferment. It was 
 near its last days when, in 1843, Lowell and his 
 friend Robert Carter started The Pioneer, with 
 Poe and Hawthorne in its list of contributors ; 
 which also failed for the lack of something behind 
 it more substantial than enthusiasm and genius. 
 
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 241 
 
 Up to the time I write of there had been no other 
 noteworthy venture of the sort. There was, in- 
 deed, the scholarly and exclusive North Ameri- 
 can Review, an able quarterly, which had not yet 
 metamorphosed itself to a monthly and emigrated. 
 Philadelphia had its three graces, Graham's, Go- 
 dey's, and Sartain's, and New York its old Knick- 
 erbocker, new Harper's, and Putnam's ; why then 
 should not Boston be represented by a monthly 
 of her own, worthy of her literary reputation, and 
 of the authors who stood ready to contribute to its 
 pages ? This was a question one often heard dis- 
 cussed ; the idea was in the air, as they say, like 
 so many ideas that wait for the right hour and the 
 right man for their materialization. 
 
 The man in this case was Underwood, whose 
 position made him a connecting link between a 
 circle of brilliant writers and a publishing firm 
 of enterprise and reputation. He had made an 
 earlier unsuccessful attempt to establish it, with 
 J. P. Jewett & Co. as publishers ; and he now 
 talked it over again with his literary friends, on 
 the one hand, particularly with Professor Lowell ; 
 and with Phillips, Sampson & Co., on the other, 
 particularly with the "Co." Mr. Sampson was 
 then in feeble health, and practically out of the 
 business. Mr. Phillips, affable but dignified, had 
 a glacial atmosphere when urged to consider pro- 
 
242 MY OWN STORY 
 
 positions which his judgment failed to approve, 
 and Underwood found his cold side when he 
 talked to him of the magazine. The "Co." in 
 those days was Mr. William Lee, then a young 
 man, later of the firm of Lee & Shepard. He and 
 Underwood were on intimate terms; and when 
 Underwood came in, electrically charged, from 
 conferences with his Cambridge friends, he found 
 Lee a good conductor. The two partners were 
 in the habit of going out to lunch together ; and 
 in that hour of relaxation the junior would some- 
 times bring up the subject of the proposed mag- 
 azine, arguing that they ought not to miss so 
 magnificent an opportunity. The cooperation of 
 Lowell, Longfellow, Whittier, Emerson, Haw- 
 thorne, Holmes, — a dazzling array of names, — 
 was assured ; and no doubt that of the then most 
 popular writer in the world, a woman, could be ob- 
 tained. Warming by degrees, the senior at last 
 said he would consult Mrs. Stowe. 
 
 Four or five years before, the manuscript of 
 Uncle Tom's Cabin, or rather the scrapbook con- 
 taining the newspaper chapters clipped from the 
 National Era, had been offered to Messrs. Phillips, 
 Sampson & Co. for publication in book form. The 
 firm had at that time a large Southern trade, 
 
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 243 
 
 which they feared would be imperiled by the ap- 
 pearance of their imprint on the title-page of that 
 flaming antislavery tract in the guise of fiction. 
 Nobody could have foreseen that Uncle Tom was 
 to create for itself a book trade of more value in 
 a single year than the ordinary trade of any house 
 for a decade ; so that we need not marvel at the 
 seeming short-sightedness of Mr. Phillips when, 
 after a brief consultation with his partners, he de- 
 clined the proffered book with his customary 
 courtesy and "with thanks." It went to an ob- 
 scure Boston bookseller, who had little to risk by 
 the undertaking, and, as it proved, fortune and 
 immense publicity to gain. Its success not only 
 revolutionized public sentiment on the subject of 
 slavery ; it also converted booksellers from their 
 conservative views of the relative value of a South- 
 ern trade. Mrs. Stowe could well afford to for- 
 give the slight put upon a performance that had 
 vindicated itself so triumphantly ; and receiving 
 an intimation that Mr. Phillips would not decline 
 a second work of hers, she had, in 1854, given the 
 firm her Sunny Memories, following it in 1856 
 with the antislavery novel, Dred. 
 
 The publisher and the authoress were on exceed- 
 ingly friendly terms, and Mrs. Stowe rarely came 
 to town without calling upon Mr. Phillips. It 
 was noticeable that while she gave to some of the 
 
244 MY OWN STORY 
 
 humble frequenters of the Winter Street store one 
 or two careless fingers, the whole of the little hand 
 that had written the most famous book of modern 
 times went out very graciously to him. When he 
 mentioned to her the project of the new magazine, 
 she received it with instant and cordial approval, 
 and promised it her earnest support. The pub- 
 lisher hesitated no longer; a chain of agencies 
 had accomplished what might never have come 
 to pass had either one of them been absent. I 
 remember Underwood's radiant countenance when 
 one morning he announced to me in strictest con- 
 fidence that the proposed publication was finally 
 decided upon ; that Lowell was to be editor in 
 chief, and that he was to be Lowell's assistant. 
 I dare say my own face grew radiant, too, when 
 he went on to say that a contribution from me 
 would be expected for the first number. 
 
 VI 
 
 The new venture was not yet named, and while 
 all of us who were in the secret were ransacking 
 our wits for a good title, Dr. Holmes, who seemed 
 ever ready with the right thing at the right mo- 
 ment, christened it The Atlantic Monthly. 
 
 Early in June, 1857, Underwood went abroad 
 in the interest of the forthcoming magazine, taking 
 letters to the foremost British from the best-known 
 
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 245 
 
 American writers. Emerson alone, in a charac- 
 teristic note, declined to furnish the desired in- 
 troductions. " Since my foreign correspondents 
 have ceased sending their friends to me, it seems 
 hardly fair," he wrote, "that I should accredit any 
 of mine to them." It was Underwood's first trip 
 to Europe, and the mission was very greatly to his 
 mind. 
 
 It was the intention to issue the initial number 
 a month or two before it actually appeared, and it 
 was to open with the first chapters of a serial 
 story by Mrs. Stowe. This she was unable to fur- 
 nish, hindered, I think, by some domestic calamity. 
 Then came the financial panic of that year, and it 
 was feared the publication might have to go over 
 to the next year, or be postponed indefinitely, — a 
 peculiarly dismal prospect to writers whose con- 
 tributions had been accepted. Few people were 
 aware how narrowly the great publishing house 
 escaped collapse in that tempestuous time. It 
 was October when the delayed first number ap- 
 peared, bearing date November, 1857. 
 
 In this age of magazines, great and small, when 
 nobody is surprised to hear of new ones starting 
 up every few months, it is difficult to conceive of 
 the wide interest excited by the advent of the long- 
 expected Atlantic. The articles were unsigned, 
 which Mr. Phillips himself thought a mistaken 
 
246 MY OWN STORY 
 
 policy, with so resplendent a group of names that 
 might have served to emblazon the announce- 
 ments. The publishers' self-denial found compen- 
 sation, however, in the interest of the riddles of 
 authorship which the public was each month in- 
 vited to solve. That of some of the principal 
 articles was generally an open secret, while the 
 guesses as to others were often amusing enough ; 
 as when a poem by a little known writer was 
 copied and went the rounds of the press attributed 
 to Longfellow or Emerson, — an incident not cal- 
 culated to please either him who was thus deprived 
 of his due credit (as I can attest from my own ex- 
 perience), or the other who had a doubtful honor 
 thrust upon him. 
 
 In place of the hoped-for chapters of a serial, 
 Mrs. Stowe had in the first number only a short 
 story, The Mourning Veil, which was disappointing. 
 When asked why so slight a sketch had been 
 admitted, Underwood replied, " When a boy goes 
 a-fishing and catches a small fish, he puts it into 
 his basket for luck, hoping to catch a big one by 
 and by." The magazine caught a big one indeed 
 when, a few months later, The Minister's Wooing 
 began to appear in its pages. 
 
 To that first number Emerson contributed, be- 
 sides an essay, four short poems, one of them the 
 mystical Brahma, which was to be more talked 
 
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 247 
 
 about and puzzled over and parodied than any- 
 other poem of sixteen lines published within my 
 recollection. " What does it mean ? " was the 
 question readers everywhere asked; and if one 
 had the reputation of seeing a little way into the 
 Concord philosophy, he was liable at any time to 
 be stopped on the street by some perplexed in- 
 quirer, who would draw him into the nearest door- 
 way, produce a crumpled newspaper clipping from 
 the recesses of a waistcoat pocket, and with knit- 
 ted brows exclaim, " Here ! you think you under- 
 stand Emerson ; now tell me what all this is 
 about, — ' If the red slayer think he slays, 1 " and 
 so forth. 
 
 Longfellow contributed his beautiful tribute to 
 Florence Nightingale, Santa Filomena; Lowell 
 had a versified fable and a sonnet ; and there was 
 a paper by Motley, whose early novels of Morton's 
 Hope and Merry Mount had been forgotten, while 
 his Rise of the Dutch Republic had suddenly 
 placed him in the front rank of living historians. 
 But the great surprise of the number was a con- 
 tribution which, if not by a new hand, showed that 
 a new force had entered into our literature ; the 
 first of a series of papers of inimitable wit and 
 brilliancy, by a hand that never seemed to grow 
 old nor to lose its wonderful facility, until it was 
 laid to rest in Mount Auburn, — the hand of the 
 
248 MY OWN STORY 
 
 kindly and beloved Autocrat of the Breakfast- 
 Table. 
 
 I was the youngest, and, with a single excep- 
 tion, am now the sole survivor of the group of 
 contributors to that first number. 
 
 Underwood enjoyed greatly his position on the 
 magazine. Every article offered passed through 
 his hands, but though he possessed unlimited 
 power of rejection, the power of final acceptance 
 rested solely with Lowell. Yet Underwood was 
 not merely the coarse sieve this might imply. He 
 often made up the numbers, subject, however, to 
 Lowell's approval ; he conferred with authors, and 
 he was himself also a contributor. He had done 
 a useful work in uniting the forces that combined 
 to originate the magazine, but the character of it 
 was entirely the creation of Lowell. 
 
 VII 
 
 The death of Mr. Phillips and the subsequent 
 breaking up of the firm in 1859 resulted in the 
 severance of Underwood's connection with the 
 magazine. He soon found other employment, and 
 held successively, under Cleveland's two adminis- 
 trations, the positions of consul at Glasgow and at 
 Edinburgh. 
 
 Abroad, his fine presence, his public addresses 
 and after-dinner speeches, and more particularly 
 
; 
 
 FRANCIS H. UNDERWOOD 
 
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 249 
 
 his lectures on American Men of Letters, made 
 him a prominent figure in society ; and the Uni- 
 versity of Glasgow recognized his distinction by 
 conferring upon him the degree of LL. D. 
 
 He had a varied, an interesting, and on the 
 whole an enviable career, which closed in Edin- 
 burgh in 1894. He found unfailing enjoyment in 
 literature, music, and art, in friendship and in 
 congenial labor ; and his love of nature remained 
 fresh and vigorous to the last. He wrote bio- 
 graphical sketches of Longfellow, Whittier, and 
 Lowell; compiled handbooks of American and 
 English literature ; and was the author of two or 
 three novels. Undoubtedly, his representative 
 work, the work by which Dr. Underwood will be 
 best remembered, is Quabbin, the Story of a 
 Small Town, his own native Enfield, written in 
 Glasgow in an interval of leisure between his two 
 consulships. In the work on which he was en- 
 gaged at the time of his death, The Builders of 
 American Literature, only one volume of which 
 was completed and published, occur these words 
 regarding an earlier man of letters : " The literary 
 world has need of such accomplished and indus- 
 trious writers, and could often spare more bril- 
 liant men," — words that will apply with equal 
 justice to Francis Henry Underwood himself. 
 
250 MY OWN STORY 
 
 VIII 
 
 The starting of The Atlantic was to me an event 
 of vital interest and importance. It was a distinc- 
 tion for a young writer to appear in its pages. 
 The pay for contributions was for those days un- 
 precedentedly liberal, and the hospitality of its 
 covers afforded a stimulus to high endeavor. I 
 contributed to the early volumes poems, stories, 
 sketches of travel, and one political paper, We are 
 a Nation, into which I poured the fervor of my 
 patriotic feeling, on the second election of Lincoln. 
 
 I had followed as faithfully as I could Major 
 Noah's advice as to writing prose instead of poetry. 
 Having burned my metrical romances, I wrote 
 verse only at intervals for the next ten years. 
 Then with the ampler leisure gained by the publi- 
 cation of my books, I returned to my early love. 
 I find, on looking back, that I contributed to the 
 first volumes of The Atlantic articles in verse 
 oftener than anything else, among them some of 
 my most prosperous poems, At Sea, Midsummer, 
 The Pewee, and another that had such unusual 
 fortunes, and regarding which I am so often ques- 
 tioned, that I will give a brief account of it here. 
 
 As long ago as the summer of 1855 I saw in the 
 streets of Paris a strolling showman with a troupe 
 of six trained dogs. The appearance of the man, 
 
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 251 
 
 his good-humored drollery, evidently masking more 
 serious traits of character, and his almost human 
 relations with his patient, dumb friends, must have 
 impressed me more than I was aware ; for, after 
 my return to America the year following, he came 
 up in my mind as the subject of a dramatic sketch, 
 which soon began to sing itself in rhyme. I dis- 
 carded five of the dogs, in order to concentrate 
 attention and sympathy upon one; and allowed 
 the master to tell his own story, with which I 
 seemed to have little more to do than to put it into 
 form. When about half written it was thrown 
 aside for work I deemed more immediately impor- 
 tant, and the fragment lay neglected in my desk for 
 two or three years. Then one day I chanced to 
 look it over just before setting out on a long ram- 
 ble ; more stanzas began to link themselves to 
 those freshly called up in my memory, and by the 
 time I returned from my walk I had the poem ready 
 to commit to paper in its nearly completed shape. 
 I was then at a loss to know what to do with it ; 
 for I did not imagine that the only magazine I was 
 in those days sending poems to would welcome 
 anything so vagabondish as The Vagabonds. I 
 read it to a few friends, who listened to it with 
 moist eyes, but who confirmed my misgivings as 
 to its having sufficient dignity for The Atlantic. 
 So it went back into my desk, to lie there two or 
 
252 MY OWN STORY 
 
 three years longer, until one who had come to be 
 nearer to me than all others, reading it or hearing 
 it read, with joy and tears declared that it must be 
 published at once. I took her advice, but in send- 
 ing it forth I was careful to accompany it with 
 another poem, sufficiently literary, By the River, 
 which I thought would serve to keep my Vagabonds 
 in countenance. Proofs of the one in which I had 
 least confidence were the first to come to me for 
 correction, and on a margin appeared the surpris- 
 ing note in blue pencil, — " Perfectly beautiful, 
 nothing could be finer in its way — whom by ? " 
 the proof-reader's query addressed to the editor, 
 The Atlantic contributions in those days being un- 
 signed. 
 
 Once more I heard from it before it reached the 
 public, Mr. James T. Fields (then editor) having 
 given an advance copy to an elocutionist, and heard 
 him read it with " wonderful effect," he assured me, 
 one evening at Mr. Longfellow's house in Cam- 
 bridge. Fields then predicted for it a great suc- 
 cess on lyceum platforms ; astonishing me by 
 saying that, for public recitation, there had been 
 nothing like it since Poe's Raven. 
 
 To Fields I was indebted for the name of the 
 dog, " Roger ; " a circumstance I had forgotten, 
 but which was recalled to mind when, some time 
 after, Mrs. Fields showed me in their house on 
 
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 253 
 
 Charles Street an album of autograph poems, — 
 many of them by writers the most famous of the 
 day, — bound up with which I discovered the 
 original manuscript copy of The Vagabonds, with 
 the word " Roger " in Fields's well-known hand, 
 written over the less euphonious name (whatever 
 it may have been) that I had bestowed on the wan- 
 dering fiddler's companion. 
 
 The poem received universal commendation 
 from the press, with a single noticeable excep- 
 tion ; almost every writer has his one especial, 
 never-failing, unrelenting, untiring assailant in the 
 ranks of the critics, and I had mine. The maga- 
 zine number containing it (March, 1863) had been 
 out a short time, when my oldest sister wrote to 
 me from Illinois to ask if I could tell her anything 
 about the author of that strange poem, The Vaga- 
 bonds. She went on to say, " I cannot help feel- 
 ing that it was written by a person who has gone 
 through some such terrible experience of intem- 
 perance and misery as he describes." I hastened 
 to inform her that the author was a no more dis- 
 sipated wretch than her own younger brother, 
 whose art she had complimented in suspecting 
 his sobriety of character. 
 
 The piece was taken up by public readers all 
 over the country, and I soon heard of it in places 
 as remote as Melbourne and Shanghai. Often 
 
254 MY OWN STORY 
 
 one would come to recite it to me, under the pre- 
 tense of asking for criticism and suggestion, but 
 in reality to get some written word of approval 
 that might help him with the public. To one 
 who brought letters commendatory of his art 
 from such men as Horace Greeley, Dr. Bellows, 
 and Bayard Taylor, I said, with the absolute sin- 
 cerity I used towards all, — "I have heard others 
 deliver the poem, and I must do you the justice 
 to declare that I never heard any one begin to read 
 it as badly as you do." His theatrical mannerisms 
 and false intonations caused me to ask to look 
 again at the letters ; but they were undoubtedly 
 genuine. How he could ever have obtained them 
 was a marvel and a mystery. After some dis- 
 cussion, I said to him at parting, " You feel a little 
 hard towards me now, but some time you will see 
 that I have done the kindest thing in my power 
 by telling you the truth." He went from me to 
 an eminent elocutionist, recited The Vagabonds 
 to him, elicited his criticisms, and then explained 
 why he wished for them : " I lately read it to the 
 author, and was unwilling to accept his judgment 
 of my rendering, but you have corroborated it in 
 every particular." 
 
 The most powerful interpretation of the poem 
 I ever listened to in private was by that exceed- 
 ingly clever personator, Sol Smith Russell ; the 
 
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 255 
 
 best public ones were by Professor Churchill, of the 
 Andover Theological Seminary, and James E. Mur- 
 dock, the actor. It was even taken up by women 
 elocutionists, one of whom, a talented lecturer and 
 entertainer, produced with it an effect that was at 
 least novel, through the contrast between the vaga- 
 bondish character represented and her own ele- 
 gant manners and fashionable attire. 
 
 A holiday edition of the poem, with drawings 
 by F. O. C. Darley, was brought out at Christmas 
 time, 1863 ; and I afterwards made The Vaga- 
 bonds the leading poem of my first volume of 
 collected verse. 
 
 IX 
 
 Of my Atlantic stories the most important 
 was Coupon Bonds, which after its appearance in 
 two numbers of the magazine (Sept. and Oct., 
 1865) was in such demand that a large separate edi- 
 tion was issued in paper covers. Bankers became 
 interested in its distribution ; and one of the most 
 active in popularizing the enormous loans necessi- 
 tated by the war, himself once assured me that 
 the story had an appreciable influence in stimu- 
 lating confidence in the government and its 
 securities. 
 
 A play constructed from it mainly by the use 
 of paste and scissors was brought out by Miss 
 
256 MY OWN STORY 
 
 Alcott and her friends in Concord ; other versions 
 were produced in different places, the author of 
 one of which threatened to sue the chief promoter 
 of the Concord play (Mr. G. B. Bartlett) for in- 
 fringement of copyright. I then made a careful 
 dramatic version, which I copyrighted and pub- 
 lished ; it was for a long time in lively demand, 
 and is still acted by amateur companies. 
 
 I remember but one serious criticism of the 
 naturalness of the incidents and characters in the 
 story ; and that was a sound one, from the critic's 
 point of view. Some friends of mine once visited 
 a well-to-do Western farmer, who maintained that 
 nobody was ever so anxious about the safety of 
 valuable documents as the Ducklows were about 
 their coupon bonds. Being left by themselves in 
 the family sitting-room, one of the party took up 
 a book from the table and dropped out of it upon 
 the carpet a folded paper. It was a thousand-dol- 
 lar government bond ; and probably not the only 
 one that might have been picked up, lying about 
 the house. 
 
 The sketches of travel I contributed to The 
 Atlantic were two, descriptive of the battle-fields 
 of Gettysburg and the Wilderness which I visited 
 after the close of the war, as I shall relate farther 
 on ; A Carpet Bagger in Pennsylvania, three papers 
 on the coal and oil regions of that State in 1869 ; 
 
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 257 
 
 and in the following year three articles giving an 
 account of a trip to the wilds of Minnesota and to 
 a then new settlement at the head of Lake Su- 
 perior, — the rough cocoon of the city of sub- 
 sequent marvelous growth and prosperity, Duluth. 
 
 In the mean time had occurred an event to 
 which I have briefly alluded in my notice of 
 Underwood, but which deserves fuller mention, 
 since it was to me, at the time of it, almost a 
 calamity. The first publishers of The Atlantic 
 were, as I have stated, likewise the publishers of 
 my books. The death of Mr. Sampson and that 
 of Mr. Phillips, which took place soon after, led 
 to the breaking up of the firm, in the fall of 1859, 
 and the sale at auction of its enormous stock of 
 books and sheets and stereotype plates. My own 
 books went to a New York house, that of a step- 
 mother, so to speak, very different from the home 
 where they had been born, their exile from which 
 I felt as a personal grief. 
 
 Fortunately The Atlantic went into good hands, 
 those of Ticknor & Fields ; regarding which ac- 
 quisition by the latter firm it is interesting to 
 note that it was a project of the elder and, one 
 would have supposed, the more conservative mem- 
 ber, while it was opposed by the junior, whose 
 
258 MY OWN STORY 
 
 literary tastes and associations with authors would 
 have seemed likely to render him 'the more ear- 
 nest of the two in its favor. The price looked 
 formidably large for those days, and Mr. Fields 
 deemed it too hazardous an undertaking. If he 
 had been on the ground he might have thought 
 differently ; but he was abroad, and could be con- 
 sulted only by transatlantic communication. The 
 sum involved ($10,000) was in truth a moderate 
 one, considering the enormous prestige of the 
 reputation of the magazine, and of its galaxy of 
 writers, and in view of all the advantages secured 
 to the house making the purchase ; at all events 
 the senior's courage and sound judgment were 
 abundantly vindicated. My contributions to it 
 continued, and resulted for me later in intimate 
 business relations with that firm and its successors. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 CUDJO'S CAVE AND OTHER WAR STORIES — A 
 NEW HOME 
 
 I 
 
 Political convulsion succeeded the dissolution 
 of the firm of Phillips, Sampson & Co., and 
 brought new discouragement, in addition to that 
 caused by the loss of their friendly interest in my 
 books. The Southern sky was black with clouds 
 that burst in the Civil War. I was still writing 
 for the magazines, and also applying myself, 
 rather languidly, to another work of fiction, when 
 the great national conflict, which had set back 
 the waters of my literary course, forced them with 
 accumulated impetus into a new channel. 
 
 Having allayed the excitement which impelled 
 me to write one antislavery novel, I did not enter- 
 tain the possibility of ever being moved to write 
 another. Political events rushed rapidly to a crisis, 
 which came with the election of Lincoln, and 
 brought to exultant souls the certainty that the 
 encroachments of the slave power had at last 
 reached a barrier forever impossible for it to over- 
 
2 6o MY OWN STORY 
 
 pass. The war of secession was a war of emanci- 
 pation from the start. It could not be otherwise, 
 whether the actors engaged in it wished it so or 
 not ; campaigns and acts of Congress, battles and 
 proclamations, victories and defeats, were not so 
 much causes or hindrances as eddies of the stream 
 in whose mighty movement they were formed and 
 swept along. 
 
 I was eager to bear my own humble part in the 
 momentous conflict, and took up again the only 
 weapon I had any skill to use. I wrote a patriotic 
 story, The Drummer Boy ; not especially designed 
 as an attack upon slavery, more than any word 
 uttered or blow struck for the Union was a word 
 or blow aimed at the enemy striving to destroy it. 
 But the old heat was fevering me, and no sooner 
 was The Drummer Boy hurried on his mission 
 than I flung myself upon the writing of as fiery 
 an antislavery fiction as I was capable of compass- 
 ing. The country had been but slowly awakening 
 to a consciousness of the truth that the slave was 
 not only to be freed ; he was also to cease to be 
 a merely passive occasion of the contest, and to 
 become our active ally. Too many calling them- 
 selves patriots still opposed emancipation and the 
 arming of the blacks, and clung tremblingly to the 
 delusion that the Union and slavery might both 
 be preserved. The idol-house of the old preju- 
 
WAR STORIES 261 
 
 dice was shattered, but not demolished. I was 
 impatient to hurl my firebrand into the breach. 
 
 II 
 
 In this case I had a title for my novel before a 
 page of it was written. Wishing to bring into it 
 some incidents of guerrilla warfare and of the 
 persecutions of the Union men in the border slave 
 States, I cast about for some central fact to give 
 unity to the action, and form at the same time a 
 picturesque feature of the narrative. The idea of 
 a cave somehow suggested itself, and I chose for 
 the scene a region where such things exist. As 
 no especial economy was required in its construc- 
 tion, I thought I might as well have a cavern of 
 some magnificence ; or rather, I thought little 
 about it, — the whole thing flashed upon me like 
 a vision, as I lay awake one night, with my im- 
 agination aflame, lighting up that strange world 
 under the eyelids so vivid amid the surrounding 
 dark. The cave, the burning forest, and the fire- 
 lit waterfall, with much of the plan of the drama, 
 all came to me, as I recall, in those two or three 
 hours of intensely concentrated thought. I 
 adopted Cave at once as part of my title, but felt 
 that it was necessary to make some felicitous 
 addition. I was some time, indeed many nights 
 and days, in finding a fit name for my runaway 
 
262 MY OWN STORY 
 
 slave, who was to inhabit the cavern and help me 
 out with my title. Cudjo was finally decided 
 upon for him, and Cttdjo's Cave for the book. 
 But the hero of it was not Cudjo, although I no 
 longer shrank from giving a black man that role. 
 Neither was it the young Quaker, turned fighter ; 
 Penn Hapgood was only the ostensible hero. The 
 real hero, if the story had one, was the proud and 
 powerful, full-blooded African, Pomp, whom I 
 afterwards carried forward into the third and last 
 of my war stories, The Three Scouts. 
 
 Cudjo' s Cave was a partisan book, frankly de- 
 signed to fire the Northern heart. This was, per- 
 haps, the chief of its many faults. It contained 
 scenes of violence such as I should never, under 
 other circumstances, have selected as subjects for 
 my pen. I adapted, but did not invent them ; 
 the most sensational incidents had their counter- 
 parts in the reign of wrath and wrong I was 
 endeavoring to hold up to the abhorrence of all 
 lovers of the Union and haters of slavery and 
 secession. The art of the book suffered also 
 from the disadvantage I labored under of never 
 having visited the region I described, or studied 
 the dialect of the people. The result was some- 
 thing quite different from what discriminating 
 readers have noticed in Neighbor Jackwood, 
 where, almost unconsciously to the author, the 
 
WAR STORIES 263 
 
 dialect became so much a part of the characters 
 that no two of them, not even members of the 
 same family, are made to talk just alike, but each 
 has his or her own persistent peculiarities of 
 speech. The fault I speak of lay deeper, how- 
 ever, than the dialect. The characters of the 
 later novel were portrayed more from without; 
 those of the earlier one, from within. But though 
 lacking in true emotional depth, the inferior work 
 had an external life and an impetuous movement 
 which gave it vogue, and enabled it to carry some- 
 thing of the political influence it was intended to 
 convey. 
 
 Ill 
 
 It was written with great rapidity in the sum- 
 mer and autumn of 1863, and published in Decem- 
 ber. It was issued by a young and enterprising 
 firm that displayed considerable ingenuity and no 
 little audacity in advertising it. Pictures of the 
 cave were on envelopes and posters, and I remem- 
 ber a bookseller's window on Washington Street 
 rendered attractive by a pile of the freshly bound 
 volumes erected in the similitude of a cave. A 
 private letter to the author from Secretary Chase, 
 then at the zenith of his fame as a national finan- 
 cier, was made to do service in ways he could 
 hardly have anticipated any more than I did when 
 
264 MY OWN STORY 
 
 the publishers obtained permission of him to use 
 it. It was printed, and extensively copied by the 
 press, and the interior of every street-car in Bos- 
 ton was placarded with a signed extract from it, 
 outstaring the patient public week after week in a 
 manner that would have made the great Secretary 
 wince, could he have seen it, as it did me. 
 
 The publishers' methods combined with the 
 circumstances of the time to secure immediate 
 popularity for the book, — a popularity it still con- 
 tinues in a measure to enjoy, having long outlived 
 the occasion that called it forth, and the exist- 
 ence of the firm that launched it so successfully. 
 
 In a journey through the Southern States at 
 the close of the war (as will be related in the suc- 
 ceeding chapter) I paid a visit to East Tennessee, 
 and was pleased to find that I had not gone far 
 wrong in my descriptions of the region where the 
 scenes of the story are laid. But I failed to get 
 any authentic news of the actors in it, or to dis- 
 cover the precise locality of the cave. I have 
 lately been told that there is somewhere in the 
 vicinity of Cumberland Gap a cave which guides 
 and hotel-keepers claim as the original and only 
 Cudjo's. I have never seen it. 
 
 Before proceeding to write of the Southern 
 tour alluded to, it is necessary to go back in my 
 narrative and take up one or two dropped stitches. 
 
A NEW HOME 265 
 
 IV 
 
 For about eight years I had my residence in 
 Boston at No. 1 Seaver Place ; then, in Novem- 
 ber, 1858, I went to live on Prospect Hill, in Som- 
 erville, in the home of Mr. Alonzo Newton, — a 
 sightly abode, with the great green billow of the 
 hill (since shorn away) rising beyond, and the 
 grass-overgrown ridges of the ancient fortifica- 
 tions not more than two or three minutes' walk 
 from our door. There Prescott and his compatri- 
 ots intrenched themselves after Bunker Hill ; and 
 from that natural observatory Washington must 
 have pondered the military situation and his coun- 
 try's dubious cause, many a summer's day during 
 the siege of Boston, and in lonely night hours, 
 looking off at the lights of Boston town, and the 
 line of rebel camp-fires twinkling here and there, 
 from Mystic River near by to far-away Dorches- 
 ter Heights. 
 
 The old earthworks were my daily resort, and 
 there on the loftiest embankment was for years 
 a footpath which my solitary steps had worn and 
 kept open, as in all weathers, under sun or moon 
 and stars, I paced that quarter-deck of the great 
 ship sailing the universal deep. There I fashioned 
 my poems or studied my plots (that of Cudjo 
 among them), walking to and fro, to and fro, in 
 
266 MY OWN STORY 
 
 the deepening gloom of evening, amidst a galaxy 
 of near and innumerable distant lights ; or by day, 
 with many cities and villages outspread before and 
 around, the ribbons of two rivers flowing to form 
 their large bow just at the harbor's gleaming 
 throat ; the more distant sea flashing in the morn- 
 ing sun, and the wide horizon undulating to wooded 
 crests of dreamy blue. 
 
 To that home I brought my young wife, Cor- 
 nelia Warren, of Lowell, early in May, 1 860 ; and 
 there we lived, except for absences long or short 
 at the mountains or the seaside, and one longer 
 sojourn in West Cambridge, until, after a brief 
 illness, she died in March, 1864, leaving one child, 
 a boy infant six weeks old. Of that four years' 
 dream of happiness, and of her whose loveliness 
 of character had inspired it, I can say no more in 
 this place than that 
 
 " Such things were, 
 That were most precious to me." 
 
 The baby boy — who, I will add, inherited 
 largely his mother's fairness of features and 
 charm of character — fell into such tender hands 
 that he never knew the loss he had sustained. 
 He was a tie that united me more closely still to 
 the Newton family; the mother cherished him 
 with a mother's pride and love; and he became 
 the special care of the oldest daughter, then a girl 
 
WINDSOR WARREN TROWBRIDGE 
 In his fifth year 
 
A NEW HOME 267 
 
 of sixteen, who nine years later took the vacant 
 place which I had long thought would never again 
 be filled, and became his mother indeed. 1 
 
 Meanwhile I acquired the home I now occupy, 
 in Arlington (then West Cambridge), and took 
 my boy there with the Newton friends in June, 
 1865. It is located on one of the pleasantest 
 streets in the suburbs of Boston, — a street rightly 
 named " Pleasant." Hardly a week passed before 
 I had my sail-boat on the lake. Wild woods were 
 within five minutes' walk from my dooryard gate. 
 So perfect was my contentment in this quiet home 
 that I could think of no inducement that would 
 take me farther from it than Boston, six or seven 
 miles away, for at least a year or two to come. 
 Yet I was no more than settled in it, with my 
 first flowers blooming and my hens cackling in the 
 poultry yard, when I was summoned to set off 
 on an adventure full of uncertainty and of doubt- 
 ful duration. 
 
 One day early in August I was called upon by a 
 Hartford publisher, Mr. L. Stebbins, who had been 
 soliciting me, by correspondence, to write a book 
 for him, to be " sold only by subscription." The 
 devastating Civil War had then recently closed, 
 and the subject of the volume was to be a descrip- 
 
 1 Windsor Warren Trowbridge died at Colorado Springs, in 
 March, 1884, having just completed his 20th year. 
 
268 MY OWN STORY 
 
 tion of the principal battle-fields and the condition 
 of the States lately in rebellion. Mr. Stebbins 
 had first proposed the work to Bayard Taylor, 
 whose engagements would not permit him to un- 
 dertake it, but who said to him, with an emphasis 
 that seemed to have been convincing, that I was 
 the man for it. So Mr. Stebbins had come from 
 Hartford to see me, not at all disturbed by my 
 having declined his proposal by letter, and think- 
 ing, as he said, that "a personal interview might 
 be useful." 
 
 "It won't be useful at all, Mr. Stebbins," I 
 made answer. " I have been only two months in 
 my new home here, and I would n't leave it to 
 make a rough journey through the Southern 
 States, at this time of year, for any inducement 
 you can hold out." 
 
 " It is a favorable season for the trip," he re- 
 plied. " You will go first to Gettysburg, Cham- 
 bersburg, Harper's Ferry, Washington, and so 'on 
 to Richmond ; ' and by that time it will be cool 
 weather." 
 
 To my further objection that I was writing for 
 Ticknor & Fields' magazines, and was bound to 
 furnish an article every month for one of them, 
 he replied, — 
 
 " You can arrange that ; and I see no reason 
 why you should n't print in them a few chapters, 
 
A NEW HOME 269 
 
 as you prepare them for the book, — say five or 
 six ; they might help to advertise it." 
 
 This was a weighty argument. Still I de- 
 murred, laying stress upon the great number of 
 books about the South that were sure to be writ- 
 ten and published during the coming year, and on 
 the risk of such an undertaking. 
 
 " There will be no risk to you, as far as money 
 matters are concerned," he answered with quiet 
 promptness. "All your expenses will be paid, 
 and I think I can make the remuneration satis- 
 factory." 
 
 I asked what he meant by satisfactory ; and he 
 named a sum that interested me. In buying my 
 new home I had left a mortgage on the place 
 which I expected to be two or three years in pay- 
 ing off ; and here was an opportunity of lifting 
 the incumbrance by a few months' hard work, 
 and of adding, besides, a goodly sum to my bank 
 account. The journey through parts of the deso- 
 lated South, where society was still in a chaotic 
 state, would undoubtedly be attended by hard- 
 ships, discomforts, and some danger. But it would 
 afford an opportunity of seeing those States in 
 that tremendous crisis of their history, in the 
 paroxysm intervening between the periods of sub- 
 jugation and emancipation and of hardly yet at- 
 tempted reconstruction. The pecuniary consider- 
 
270 MY OWN STORY 
 
 ation justified the trip, and I saw advantages in it, 
 against which no allurements of home and peace- 
 ful pursuits, or other sentimental reasons, should 
 be allowed to have weight. 
 
 I proposed some modification of the terms 
 offered, to which Mr. Stebbins cheerfully ac- 
 ceded. I conferred with Mr. Fields, as to contri- 
 butions to the two magazines during my absence ; 
 and within a week's time from my interview with 
 Mr. Stebbins started off on my journey with a light 
 heart and no incumbrance but a traveling shawl 
 and a stout valise. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 
 
 I proceeded as directly as possible to Gettys- 
 burg, where I spent several days studying the 
 battle-field, gathering anecdotes of that great and 
 decisive conflict, and writing out my observations. 
 From there I went to Chambersburg, which the 
 rebel invaders had burnt ; then by the way of 
 South Mountain and Antietam to Harper's Ferry, 
 the place of John Brown's sanguinary last fight 
 and capture; and thence to Charlestown, the 
 scene of his hurried trial and execution. 
 
 I looked in vain for any traces of those clos- 
 ing events in the brave but visionary old man's 
 life. The jail in which he was confined had been 
 burned to the ground. The court house was a 
 melancholy ruin, abandoned to rats and toads; 
 four massy white brick pillars, still standing, sup- 
 ported a riddled roof, through which the tranquil 
 sky and gracious sunshine smiled. Names of 
 Union soldiers were scrawled along the walls. 
 The work of destruction had been performed by 
 
272 MY OWN STORY 
 
 the hands of those hilarious boys in blue to the 
 tune of " John Brown " — the swelling melody of 
 the song and the accompaniment of crashing tim- 
 bers reminding the citizens, who thought to have 
 destroyed the old hero, that his " soul was march- 
 ing on." 
 
 I asked a bright young colored girl to point out 
 the spot where John Brown's gallows stood. She 
 led across barren fields outside the town, and 
 into a wilderness of flowering and seeding weeds, 
 waist high to her as she tramped on, parting them 
 before her with her hands. 
 
 " Here is about where it was," she said, stop- 
 ping in the midst of the desolation. " Nobody 
 knows now just where the gallows stood. There 
 was a tree here, but that has been cut down and 
 carried away, stump and roots and all, by folks that 
 wanted something to remember John Brown by." 
 
 I stood a long time on the spot, amid the grace- 
 fully drooping golden-rods, and looked at the same 
 sky old John Brown looked his last on, the same 
 groves, and the distant Blue Ridge, the sight of 
 whose cerulean summits, clad in softest heavenly 
 light, must have conveyed a sweet assurance to his 
 soul. 
 
 The jail in ashes, the court house in ruins, and 
 a neighboring church that was turned into a stable 
 by Union troopers and had not yet been cleansed 
 
THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 273 
 
 of the abomination, were, on a small scale and in a 
 mild way, typical of the devastation I was to wit- 
 ness throughout my Southern journey, wherever 
 the harrow of war had left its trace. 
 
 II 
 
 About the last of August I reached Washing- 
 ton, where I remained ten or twelve days, writing 
 out my notes, gathering material for new ones, 
 and seeing old friends and new acquaintances. 
 Whitelaw Reid, who had lately accompanied 
 Chief Justice Chase in his coastwise Southern 
 tour on a United States revenue cutter, and was 
 then preparing his book, After the War, went 
 with me over the Bull Run battle-fields, and gave 
 me from his own experience valuable hints as to 
 what was before me. To one-armed General O. O. 
 Howard, a brave man and true, I was indebted 
 for much useful information, a general letter of 
 introduction to military heads of departments, and 
 this cheerful bit of advice as to the guerrillas and 
 Yankee-haters I might meet : " Let them kill you 
 if they want to ! " 
 
 Chief Justice Chase (my old friend, of whom I 
 shall have much to say in another place), fresh 
 from his own Southern tour, expressed great in- 
 terest in my trip, and saying, "Excuse me a 
 moment," turned to write a letter at his desk. 
 
274 MY OWN STORY 
 
 He handed it to me unsealed, with the remark, 
 " Perhaps this may be of some use to you." It 
 was a general letter of introduction, cordially com- 
 mending me " to all with whom his opinion might 
 have weight." It proved of very great use to me 
 indeed. 
 
 General Garfield I met on the street quite un- 
 expectedly, not knowing that he was then in Wash- 
 ington. Tall, well-proportioned, broad-minded, ur- 
 bane, how well I remember him and his hearty 
 handshake as, having heard whither I was bound, 
 he bade me good-speed on my mission ! This was 
 the last time I ever spoke with him, although I 
 afterwards saw him on two or three occasions on 
 the floor of Congress. Not many of his friends 
 then imagined that he had before him, in a not 
 very remote future, the great goal of the Presi- 
 dency, which he was to reach only to be hurled 
 from that height by a petty assassin's mad act. 
 
 Ill 
 
 A breezy trip of three hours by steamer down 
 the Potomac, from Washington, brought me to 
 Acquia Creek, and I was at once in the track of 
 our armies in the famous " on-to-Richmond " 
 campaigns. 
 
 Fredericksburg, which I reached that afternoon, 
 was still half in ruins, with broken walls, and soli- 
 
THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 275 
 
 tary chimney stacks standing like grim sentinels 
 over foundations overgrown with weeds and this- 
 tles. I rode into the city on the top of a coach 
 beside a vivacious expressman, who was carrying 
 in his tin box fifty pardons from President John- 
 son to prominent Virginia rebels. In talking with 
 him I for the first time in my life realized fully 
 what " State pride " was. To hear him pronounce 
 the word V-i-r-g-i-n-ia, dwelling with rich into- 
 nations on the luscious vowels and consonants, 
 was as good as eating a peach. " I believe my 
 State is worth all the rest of the Union," he ex- 
 claimed, with excited countenance, lip curled, and 
 eye in a fine frenzy. He had been opposed to 
 secession, but State pride had carried him with 
 her into the war. 
 
 In singular contrast with him was a sturdy old 
 man whom I met in Fredericksburg. Pointing 
 out the havoc made by Burnside's shells, he ex- 
 claimed bitterly, — 
 
 " You see the result of the vanity of Virginia ! " 
 
 I asked him if he was a Virginian. " I am ; but 
 that is no reason why I should be blind to the 
 faults of my State." 
 
 " You were not much in favor of secession ? " 
 I suggested. 
 
 " In favor of it ! " he exclaimed, kindling. 
 "Didn't they have me in jail here nine weeks 
 
276 MY OWN STORY 
 
 because I would n't vote for it ? Now look at 
 this ruined city ! the farms and plantations laid 
 waste ! the rich reduced to poverty, young men 
 and boys with one leg, one arm, or one hand ! 
 the broken families, the tens of thousands of 
 graves ! It is all the result of vanity ! vanity ! " 
 which seemed but another name for "State 
 pride." 
 
 To these samples of the endless variety of char- 
 acters and conversations I was to meet and make 
 note of on my tour through Secessia, I will add 
 one more here. From Fredericksburg I was 
 driven out to the field of Spottsylvania by a plea- 
 sant-featured young fellow, who, like many of the 
 young men, white and black, I had seen in that 
 region, wore United States Army trousers. 
 
 " Dar was right smart o' trad'n' done in Yankee 
 clo'es, last years of de war," he explained. 
 
 I asked, " Did you rob a dead soldier of those 
 you have on ? " 
 
 " No ; I bought dese in Fredericksburg. I 
 never robbed a dead man." When I suggested that 
 they might have been taken from a dead soldier 
 by some one else, he replied stoically, " Mought 
 be ; but it could n't be ho'ped " (helped). " A 
 po' man can't be choice." 
 
 He used "de " for " the " almost invariably, with 
 many other expressions that betrayed early asso- 
 
THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 277 
 
 ciation with negroes. He told me his name was 
 Richard H. Hicks. 
 
 I asked, " What is your middle name ? " 
 
 " I hain't got no middle name." 
 
 " What does the < H.' stand for ? " 
 
 " < H.' stands for Hicks ; Richard H. Hicks ; 
 dat's what dey tell me." He could n't read ; had 
 never been to school ; " never had no chance to 
 learn." 
 
 This confession somehow touched me with a 
 sadness I had not felt even at the sight of un- 
 buried or half-buried dead men in the woods. 
 Young, active, naturally intelligent, he was himself 
 dead to a world without which this would seem to 
 us a blank, the world of literature. I thought of 
 Shakespeare, David, the prophets, the poets, the 
 historians and romancers, and as my mind glanced 
 from name to name on the glittering entablatures, 
 I seemed to be standing in a glorious temple with 
 a blind youth by my side. I asked if he had ever 
 heard of Walter Scott. 
 
 " No, I never heard of dat Scott ; but I know a 
 William Scott." 
 
 " Or of a great English poet called Lord 
 Byron ? " 
 
 " No ; I never knowed dar was such a man." 
 
 What a gulf betwixt his mind and mine ! Sit- 
 ting side by side on the buggy seat, we were as 
 
278 MY OWN STORY 
 
 far asunder as the great globe's poles. He was 
 a common product of Southern institutions, such 
 as in rural New York or New England it would be 
 impossible to find. 
 
 IV 
 
 On the fields of Spottsylvania, Chancellorsville, 
 and the Wilderness, — if they could be called 
 fields, which were largely overgrown with scrub 
 oaks and dwarfish pines and cedars, — I came 
 upon evidences of the most terrible fighting which 
 the four years' conflict had witnessed ; for this was 
 the sanguinary course of which Grant had declared, 
 " I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes 
 all summer." I passed whole thickets that had 
 been killed by the horizontal leaden hail and left 
 standing like fields of huddled bean poles ; groves 
 of larger trees, cut entirely off by bullets, the 
 stubs remaining like enormous scrub-brooms 
 pointing towards heaven ; planks from the plank- 
 roads piled up and lashed against trees, to form a 
 shelter for pickets ; a woman and a child, with 
 knapsack and pail, stolidly picking up bullets, as 
 if they had been gathering chincapins, as I at first 
 thought they were ; knapsacks and haversacks, in 
 heaps or scattered ; pieces of rotted clothing, frag- 
 ments of harness, tin plates and canteens (some 
 pierced with balls) ; rusted fragments of shells, 
 
THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 279 
 
 with here and there a round shot or a shell unex- 
 ploded ; straps, buckles, cartridge-boxes, old shoes ; 
 and, ghastlier than all else, now and then a stray- 
 skull or an entire skeleton, which the burying 
 parties had overlooked in out-of-the-way places ; 
 or the hideous half -resurrection of the dead that 
 had been laid in graves too shallow, where the 
 rain -washed soil exposed a breast bone, a grinning 
 jaw, or fleshless toes sticking out. 
 
 I sometimes found old letters strewing the 
 ground, often torn and half-decayed, and with 
 the characters faded and blurred by fierce suns 
 and drenching storms. And beside one of Grant's 
 intrenchments I picked up the mildewed fragment 
 of a German pocket Testament. Strangely enough, 
 in this Gehenna of human sacrifice and innumer- 
 able unknown graves, these were the words that 
 caught my eye, on the hardly legible leaf : — 
 
 " Die du mir gegeben hast, die habe ich bewahret, 
 und ist keiner von ihnen verloren." 
 
 " Those that thou gavest me I have kept, and 
 none of them is lost." 
 
 On the fifteenth of September I took the train 
 at Fredericksburg for Richmond, and covered in 
 three hours the space which our troops were more 
 than as many years in fighting their way over. 
 
280 MY OWN STORY 
 
 It was with strange emotions that I entered 
 the city which the storm of war had still left beau- 
 tiful, although she seemed to be mourning for her 
 sins in dust and ashes, — dust which every wind 
 whirled up from the unwatered streets, and the 
 ashes of the Burnt District. 
 
 I was rather homesick at first, in a hotel that 
 afforded me very poor accommodations ; but this I 
 soon exchanged for one fronting on Capitol Square, 
 and was happy when, throwing open the shutters 
 of the room assigned me, I looked out on the 
 park, the State Capitol (which had also been the 
 Capitol of the Confederacy), Crawford's colossal 
 equestrian statue of Washington soaring amid the 
 trees, and the far-off, shining James. I could 
 always be happy anywhere with a quiet room for 
 study and seclusion, and a fair outlook. 
 
 I carried letters of introduction to Governor 
 Pierpont, executive under the new regime, and his 
 private secretary, General Strother, author and 
 artist, who, over the pseudonym of " Porte 
 Crayon," illustrated his own magazine articles ; to 
 General Terry, commander of the military depart- 
 ment, and his chief of staff, General J. R. Hawley, 
 now Senator Hawley of Connecticut ; to the as- 
 sistant commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau, 
 and to others who had assimilated a vast deal of 
 information about the anomalous conditions I had 
 
THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 281 
 
 come to study, and who were obligingly ready to 
 impart it. Generals Terry and Hawley treated 
 me with the utmost kindness, furnishing me with 
 an army horse, and one of the staff for a guide, 
 for trips which I could not well make on foot or 
 on wheels. My boyish habit of horseback exer- 
 cise on the farm, or riding for cattle or game on 
 the prairies of Illinois, had quickly come back, and 
 I was to find it exceedingly useful during my 
 Southern tour. 
 
 On a corner opposite my hotel, with a spire 
 clean as a stiletto, was St. Paul's Church, where 
 President Jefferson Davis heard the gospel 
 preached from the slave-owner's point of view; 
 and where he sat in his pew on that memorable 
 Sunday morning, when Lee's dispatch was handed 
 to him, announcing that Richmond was lost. Not 
 very far away was St. John's Church, whose 
 ancient walls reechoed Patrick Henry's renowned 
 speech, since spouted by schoolboys, — " Give 
 me liberty or give me death ! " — two widely con- 
 trasted scenes, affording food for reflection. 
 
 I paid an early visit to the halls of the late Con- 
 federate Congress, in the State Capitol ; where it 
 was my fortune to set on foot a movement plea- 
 sant to remember. I found the halls a scene of 
 dust and confusion ; the desks and seats had been 
 ripped up, and workmen were engaged in sweeping 
 
282 MY OWN STORY 
 
 out the last vestiges of Confederate rule. The 
 furniture had gone to an auction room, to be sold 
 under the hammer ; I reported the fact to a mem- 
 ber of the American Union Commission (supported 
 by Northern benevolence), who was looking for 
 furniture to be used in the freedmen's schools, and 
 he made haste to bid in the relics. I could fancy 
 no finer stroke of poetical justice than the con- 
 version of the seats on which sat the legislators of 
 the great slave empire, and the desks on which 
 they wrote, into seats and desks for negro children 
 and adults learning to read. 
 
 VI 
 
 Among the many interesting or astonishing 
 sights awaiting me, in and around Richmond, I 
 must mention one, the like of which I was often 
 to witness throughout the devastated South. This 
 was the issuing of what were called "destitute 
 rations " by the United States Commissary, to 
 hungry-looking, haggard crowds, — sickly faced 
 women, jaundiced old men, and children in rags ; 
 with here and there a seedy gentleman who had 
 seen better days, or a stately female in faded ap- 
 parel, which, like her refined manners, betrayed the 
 aristocratic lady whom war and emancipation had 
 reduced to want. Colored people were not per- 
 mitted to draw rations for themselves at the same 
 
THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 283 
 
 place with the whites ; but there were among these 
 a good many colored servants " drawing " for their 
 mistresses, who remained at home, too ill or too 
 proud to come in person and present the tickets 
 issued to them by the Relief Commission. 
 
 At the place where " destitute rations " were 
 issued for the blacks, business appeared dull ; a 
 surprising circumstance considering that the 
 colored population then crowded into Richmond 
 about equaled the white population. In the book 
 I was preparing I endeavored to trace the reasons 
 for this discrepancy ; which I pass over here, hav- 
 ing mentioned the subject at all, merely to draw 
 attention to the policy of our government, unprece- 
 dented in the world's history, of following its victo- 
 rious armies with stores to feed a conquered pro- 
 vince and with express-boxes full of pardons for its 
 enemies. Great stress, not unjustly, has been laid 
 upon the corruption of the carpet-bag governments 
 that undertook, in the interests of Federal Union 
 and of the enfranchised blacks, the reconstruction 
 of the States that had been in rebellion. Corrupt 
 enough they in many cases were, without question. 
 But the wrongs committed by them were as passing 
 shadows in the splendor of the magnanimity shown 
 to a vanquished foe. 
 
 In Virginia, as in other parts of the South, I 
 found those who had been in the Confederate ranks 
 
284 MY OWN STORY 
 
 generally the most ready to resume their loyalty 
 to the flag they had fought against. The Seces- 
 sionists who had kept out of the war were the most 
 persistent and the most violent in their hatred of the 
 restored Union. The female Secessionists were 
 bitterest of all. They would yield nothing even to 
 the logic of events. To appeal to their reason was 
 idle ; but they were vulnerable on the side of the 
 sentiments ; and many a fair one was converted 
 from the heresy of state rights by some handsome 
 Federal officer, who judiciously mingled love with 
 loyalty in his addresses, and pleaded for the union 
 of hands as well as the union of States. 
 
 VII 
 
 From Fortress Monroe, as I stated in my 
 narrative, I was called home by an affair of busi- 
 ness requiring my attention. That affair, I may 
 explain here, was the putting through the press 
 of a hundred pages or more of my forthcoming 
 book, to form a " dummy " of sample chapters and 
 contents, for the use of agents in soliciting sub- 
 scriptions. 
 
 The return home at that time was extremely 
 fortunate, for I had already received into my sys- 
 tem seeds of a distemper, which developed into a 
 severe and prolonged siege of bilious fever, — the 
 first serious illness to which my constitution had 
 
THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 285 
 
 ever succumbed. I could never believe that this 
 was caused by overwork or change of climate and 
 diet ; for the life agreed with me, and I grew ro- 
 bust and bronzed, until the first insidious symp- 
 toms appeared, brought on by the "wulgar error" 
 (as an admirer of Sam Weller suggested) of not 
 putting enough whiskey in my water, during the 
 warm September days I passed in Richmond, 
 when I was possessed by an abnormal thirst. 
 The distressing sickness, of a month's duration, 
 I could have borne with equanimity but for my 
 impatience to get back to my work, and my anxi- 
 ety on account of the publisher, who had so large 
 a risk in my ability to carry it to completion. 
 But in this crisis, as in all my relations with him, 
 he was courageous and generous to the last de- 
 gree. He expressed himself as highly satisfied 
 with what I had done thus far, begged me not to 
 exert myself until I was fully recovered, and pro- 
 ceeded to prepare the "dummy" for his canvas- 
 sers, who, all the following winter and spring, 
 would be selling the book while I was completing 
 
 it. 
 
 VIII 
 
 I resumed my Southern tour in December, pass- 
 ing through central and southwest Virginia into 
 East Tennessee, where I was curious to observe 
 the country and people I had attempted to depict 
 
286 MY OWN STORY 
 
 in Cudjo's Cave ; and where I beheld so much 
 that was dishearteningly prosaic and chilling to 
 the imagination that I deemed myself fortunate 
 in not having visited the scene before choosing it 
 for the incidents and characters of my story. 
 
 A few farmers had comfortable-looking painted 
 or brick houses; while scattered everywhere 
 over the valleys and mountain slopes were poverty- 
 stricken, weather-blackened little framed dwell- 
 ings and log huts. Many of these were without 
 windows, the inmates — as the custom was 
 through a large part of the South — living by the 
 daylight let in through open doors and the fire- 
 light from great wide chimneys. The villages 
 were without sidewalks or paved streets. In 
 Greenville I saw President Johnson's Tennessee 
 home, a plain brick dwelling, with mud almost up 
 to the front door. 
 
 The fires of the old war-time feuds were still 
 burning. Secessionists who had assisted in the 
 hanging and robbing of Union men were in jail or 
 in exile. I saw later one of these fugitives who 
 told me how homesickly he pined for the hills and 
 dales of East Tennessee, which he thought the 
 most delightful country in the world. But there 
 was a rope " hanging from a tree for him there," 
 and he could n't go back. 
 
 A Union man, whom I met on the abutment of 
 
THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 287 
 
 a burned railroad bridge at Strawberry Plain, was 
 telling me about the rebel operations at that 
 place, when a fine fellow came dashing into the 
 village on horseback. 
 
 "There's a dog-goned rebel now!" said my 
 man, eyeing him with baleful glances. " He 's a 
 rebel colonel just come back. He '11 get warned ; 
 and then if he don't leave, he must look out ! " 
 
 It was useless to preach forgiveness and good 
 will to men still burning with the memory of their 
 wrongs. 
 
 The rebel spirit was still rampant in places 
 where personal protection was afforded by the 
 power it had lately fought. At the table of the 
 Bell House, in Knoxville, a diner who sat near 
 me called out to one of the waiters, a good-look- 
 ing colored man, — " Here, boy ! " 
 
 " My name is Dick," said the " boy," respect- 
 fully. 
 
 " You '11 answer to the name I call you, or I '11 
 blow a hole through you ! " swore the gentleman. 
 He proceeded, addressing the company, "Last 
 week, in Chattanooga, I said to a nigger I found 
 at the railroad, 'Here, Buck, show me the bag- 
 gage-room.' He said, < My name ain't Buck.' I 
 just put my six-shooter to his head, and, by God ! 
 he did n't stop to think what his name was, but 
 showed me what I wanted." 
 
288 MY OWN STORY 
 
 My pleasantest recollection of Chattanooga is 
 the ascent of Lookout Mountain, from that place, 
 on an army horse provided for me by General 
 Gillem, who was in command there, and who gave 
 me his orderly for an attendant. The orderly was 
 an intelligent quadroon, who had been Grant's body 
 servant in the early days of the war. He had much 
 to say of the famous chief, whom he described as 
 quiet, kind, a great smoker, very silent, and never 
 excited ; "a heavy sleeper and a heavy drinker." 
 
 " There was only one time when he appeared 
 troubled in his mind ; that was after the battle of 
 Shiloh. About that time he seemed to wake up 
 to the notion that he 'd got a big job to do ; for he 
 suddenly left off drink, and I never saw him take 
 any whiskey after that." 
 
 Of Lookout Mountain, the scene of "fighting 
 Joe Hooker's " famous " battle in the clouds," 
 and of the incomparable view from the summit, 
 with cloud shadows chasing each other over hazy 
 ranges and misty vales, as far away as the eye 
 could see, and with the long, bright, crooked Ten- 
 nessee curving in to the very base of the mighty 
 crags on which we stood, — of all this, and of other 
 things that made that day golden in my memory, 
 I can give here only a glimpse, or less than a 
 glimpse, in passing. 
 
THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 289 
 
 IX 
 
 My visit to Nashville chanced on the first anni- 
 versary of the battle which took place there, under 
 the eyes of the citizens, on the fifteenth and six- 
 teenth days of December, 1864, when Hood's army 
 was annihilated, and a period put to rebel rule in 
 the States Sherman had left behind him in his 
 great " march to the sea." 
 
 The wife of a noted general officer who was in 
 the thickest of the fight told me something of her 
 experience, watching from the Capitol with a glass 
 the movements of his troops, — the swift gallop of 
 couriers, the charge, the repulse, the successful 
 assault, the ground dotted with the slain, and the 
 awful battle-cloud rolling over all, enfolding, as she 
 at one time believed, his dead form with the rest. 
 But he lived, and was present when she told me 
 the story. The battle was no such fearful thing 
 to the brave soldier in the midst of it as to the 
 loving wife looking on. 
 
 At Nashville I saw Governor Brownlow, better 
 known as "Parson Brownlow," whose published 
 sayings, spiced by quaintness and wit, had given 
 him a national reputation, remembered now by few. 
 He was especially interesting to me as an out- 
 spoken convert from the proslavery doctrines he 
 formerly advocated to the radical ideas which the 
 
2 9 o MY OWN STORY 
 
 agitations of the time had shaken to the surface 
 of society. His elevation to the high office of 
 governor of the State had not tended to modify 
 his style of conversation. He believed a rebel had 
 no rights except to be " hung in this world and 
 damned in the next." But this and similar expres- 
 sions did not proceed so much from a vindictive 
 nature as from a tendency to strong, extravagant 
 statement, common in the West and South. 
 
 From the governor's I went over to the division 
 headquarters to call on Major-General Thomas, — 
 a very different type of native Southern man. 
 Born and bred in Virginia, his patriotism was 
 national, knowing no state boundaries. In ap- 
 pearance, he was the most lion-like of all the 
 Union generals it was my good fortune to meet. 
 Beside that magnificent live oak of a man, Gov- 
 ernor Brownlow was a poplar, with sensitive leaves 
 rustling in every wind. An imperturbable, strong 
 character, never betrayed into excess by any excite- 
 ment, the general's opinions, which he imparted 
 freely, possessed great interest and value for me 
 
 and my book. 
 
 X 
 
 On the trip by train from Nashville to Corinth 
 I made acquaintance with a manly young South- 
 erner, whose character enlisted my sympathy, and 
 whose conversation I condense here, as a sample 
 
THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 291 
 
 of the hundreds of such with which my notebooks 
 overflowed. 
 
 " We have lost our property, and we have been 
 subjugated, but we brought it all on ourselves. 
 Nobody that has n't experienced it knows anything 
 about our suffering. I never did a day's work in 
 my life, and don't know how to begin." 
 
 Speaking of the negroes : " We can't feel to- 
 wards them as you do ; I suppose we ought to, 
 but it is n't possible. They 've always been our 
 owned servants ; we 've been used to having them 
 mind us without a word of objection, and we can't 
 bear anything else from them now. I was always 
 kind to my slaves. I never whipped but two boys 
 in my life, and one of them I whipped three weeks 
 ago." 
 
 " When he was a free man ? " I said. 
 
 " Yes ; for I tell you that makes no difference 
 in our feeling towards them. I sent him across 
 the country for some goods. He came back with 
 half the goods he ought to have got for the money. 
 I may as well be frank, — it was a gallon of whis- 
 key. There were five gentlemen at the house, 
 and I wanted the whiskey for them. I told Bob he 
 stole it. Afterwards he came into the room and 
 stood by the door, — a big, strong fellow, twenty- 
 three years old. I said, ' Bob, what do you want ? ' 
 He said, 'I want satisfaction about the whiskey.' 
 
2 9 2 MY OWN STORY 
 
 He told me afterwards, he meant that he was n't sat- 
 isfied I should think that he had stolen it, and he 
 wanted to come to a good understanding about it. 
 But I thought he wanted satisfaction gentlemen's 
 fashion. I rushed for my gun. I 'd have shot him 
 dead on the spot if my friends had n't held me. 
 They said I 'd best not kill him, but that he ought 
 to be whipped. I sent to the stable for a trace, 
 and gave him a bull-dose with it, hard as I could 
 lay on." 
 
 I asked if Bob made no resistance. " Oh, he 
 knew better than that ! my friends stood by to 
 see me through. I was wrong, I know, but I was 
 in a passion." 
 
 I said, " According to your own showing, some 
 restraint seems to be necessary to you, and some 
 protection for the negroes ; on the whole, the 
 Freedmen's Bureau is a good thing, is n't it ? " 
 
 He smiled : " Maybe it is ; yes, if the nigger is 
 to be free, I reckon it is ; but it 's a mighty bitter 
 thing for us ! " 
 
 XI 
 
 I have purposed keeping the Freedmen's Bureau 
 and Freedmen's Schools as much as possible out of 
 these reminiscences. But I cannot forbear recall- 
 ing here a few observations made at that time, at 
 Memphis and elsewhere, so little is now known 
 
THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 293 
 
 or remembered of what were then matters of such 
 tremendous import. 
 
 The codes of the slave States prohibiting the 
 teaching of the simplest rudiments of learning to 
 the subject race, and denying to it the privileges 
 of citizenship, had been rendered incongruous and 
 obsolete by emancipation. The former kindly rela- 
 tions generally existing between masters and ser- 
 vants, as long as the servants humbly kept their 
 place, had been violently disturbed or disrupted 
 altogether; while the old prejudice against color, 
 or any taint of it, had been intensified to a sort of 
 mania in the dominant class by the freedmen's 
 assumption of freedmen's rights. That this as- 
 sumption was often insolent, and that many of 
 the emancipated believed that their new-found 
 liberty meant an endless orgy of idleness and in- 
 dulgence, cannot be gainsaid. It would have been 
 surprising had it been otherwise. But the real 
 wonder was that such vast numbers of the suddenly 
 disenthralled should have remained peaceable, pa- 
 tient, waiting for the promised deliverance that 
 did not come, and in the mean while willing to 
 work, even when work was offered them on worse 
 than the old slave-driver's terms. 
 
 In that bewildering crisis the late masters were 
 hardly more capable than the blacks of grasping 
 the significance of events, or of appreciating their 
 
294 MY OWN STORY 
 
 new duties and opportunities. If they had under- 
 stood the situation, and had had the wisdom and 
 courage to lay aside their prejudices and take 
 the leadership that belonged to them, in reestab- 
 lishing the ruptured relations on grounds of hu- 
 manity and justice, there would have been little 
 need of such an instrument of the government as 
 the Freedmen's Bureau, and the portentous race- 
 problem would have been nearer its natural solu- 
 tion than it has been at any time since that instru- 
 ment was withdrawn. To say that such a course 
 was not possible for them is not to impute to 
 them any blame, but to state a simple fact. 
 
 The Bureau's function was to protect the freed- 
 men and readjust their relations to the superior 
 race. It regulated labor contracts, and saw that 
 they were properly observed by employers and 
 employed. Its courts were designed to adjudi- 
 cate in cases that could not be safely intrusted 
 to the civil courts. I watched carefully scores 
 of cases decided by these tribunals, in different 
 places, and do not remember one in which sub- 
 stantial justice was not done. No doubt excep- 
 tions occurred, but I do not believe they were 
 more frequent than those which occur in common- 
 law courts ; and they were insignificant compared 
 with the wholesale wrong to which the unpro- 
 tected freedman would have been subjected in 
 
THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 295 
 
 communities where old slave codes and immemo- 
 rial custom denied to him the "inalienable rights" 
 of man. I have read in recent fiction, by writers 
 whose memory does not go back so far as mine, 
 farcical descriptions of acts attributed to agents 
 of the Bureau, which, from my own observation in 
 all the States I visited, I unhesitatingly pronounce 
 exceptional, and the outgrowth of a later time, or 
 absurdly exaggerated and impossible. 
 
 A great variety of business was brought before 
 the Bureau. A negro man came to advertise a 
 reward of fifty dollars for information that would 
 help him find his wife and children, sold away 
 from him in times of slavery. A white woman, 
 who had been warned by the police that she must 
 not live with her husband because he was black, 
 claimed protection in her marriage relation, bring- 
 ing proof that she was in reality " colored." A 
 boy, formerly a slave, to whom his father, a free- 
 man, willed some money, loaned it to his owner, 
 who gave his note for it, but would never repay 
 it, and now the boy came, pulling the worn and 
 soiled bit of paper from his pocket, as proof of his 
 claim for principal and interest. Such document- 
 ary evidence, long kept concealed, was serving to 
 right many a wrong. I once saw a large package 
 of wills, made in favor of slaves, usually by their 
 white fathers, all of which had been suppressed 
 
296 MY OWN STORY 
 
 by the legitimate heirs. One, a mere rag, scarcely 
 legible, had been carried sewed in the lining of a 
 slave- woman's dress for more than forty years, the 
 date of the will being 1823. By that instrument 
 her son was legally emancipated ; but her owner, 
 who claimed to be the boy's owner by inheritance, 
 threatened to kill her if the will was not de- 
 stroyed, and he believed that it had been destroyed. 
 That boy was now a middle-aged man, having 
 passed the flower of his years in bondage ; and 
 his mother was an old woman, living to thank God 
 that her son was free. The master, a rich man, 
 had as yet no idea of the existence of that will, by 
 which he might be held responsible for the pay- 
 ment of over forty years' wages to his unlawful 
 
 bondman. 
 
 XII 
 
 Proceeding from Memphis by steamboat, down 
 the Mississippi, on the afternoon of the third day 
 I sighted Vicksburg, situated on a high bluff, with 
 the sunlight on its hills and roofs and fortifica- 
 tions ; golden fair in the enchantment distance 
 lends. 
 
 The town was still rude with the scars left by 
 the famous siege. It sloped up rapidly from the 
 landing, on hills cut through by streets, which 
 afforded the inhabitants excellent facilities for 
 burrowing during the investment. The base of 
 
THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 297 
 
 the hills and the yellow, cliff-like banks of the 
 excavated ways appeared completely honeycombed 
 with caves, which still remained, a source of as- 
 tonishment to the stranger, who could easily fancy 
 them the abodes of a colony of prodigious bank- 
 swallows. 
 
 Many of the caves were mere " gopher-holes," 
 as the soldiers called them. Others were quite 
 spacious. The entrance was usually large enough 
 to admit a person stooping slightly ; but, within, 
 the roofs of the retreats were hollowed sufficiently 
 to allow a man to stand upright. Each family 
 had its cave. 
 
 Not many houses were destroyed by the bom- 
 bardment. When it was hottest, it was estimated 
 that six thousand shells were thrown into the city 
 by the riverside mortars every twenty-four hours, 
 — stupendous and amazing fireworks, if the cliff- 
 dwellers peeped out of their holes to observe ! 
 Grant's siege guns, in the rear of the bluffs, 
 dropped daily four thousand more along the rebel 
 lines. It seemed incredible that so small an 
 amount of damage should have been done by so 
 prodigious and prolonged a cannonade. The sol- 
 diers too had their " gopher-holes," and laughed 
 at the howling and exploding projectiles. Of the 
 women and children in the town, only three were 
 killed and twelve injured. The besieged were 
 
298 MY OWN STORY 
 
 cut off from supplies, and both citizens and sol- 
 diers suffered more from the scarcity of provisions 
 than from the falling thunderbolts. 
 
 Like all the army officers to whom I was ac- 
 credited, Major-General Wood, in command of 
 the military department of Mississippi, extended 
 to me every possible courtesy and kindness, and 
 gave me letters to other commanders of depart- 
 ments I was still to visit. I passed memorable 
 hours with him at his headquarters, or riding by 
 his side around the fortifications below Vicksburg, 
 inspecting redans and rifle pits, approaches and 
 defences. 
 
 One day I joined a small equestrian party of 
 ladies and gentlemen, got up by one of his lieu- 
 tenants for my benefit, and rode to various points 
 of interest ; taking in Fort Hill, in the " crater " 
 of which, after the Confederate bastions had been 
 mined and blown up, occurred one of the most 
 desperate combats that marked the siege ; and a 
 little way down the slope, the spot rendered his- 
 toric by the interview that terminated the long 
 struggle for the key to the Mississippi. There, 
 in full view of the confronting armies, the two 
 commanding generals met under an oak-tree, and 
 had their little talk. 
 
 " Where is the tree ? " I inquired. 
 
 Like the tree near which John Brown's gallows 
 
THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 299 
 
 stood, it had long since disappeared, root and 
 trunk and branch, cut up, broken up, dug up, dis- 
 severed and scattered all over the country in the 
 form of relics. 
 
 The monument near by, a neat granite shaft 
 raised to commemorate the surrender, seemed 
 likely to have a similar fate. It bore the simple 
 inscription, " Site of Interview between Major- 
 General Grant and Lieutenant-General Pember- 
 ton, July 4, 1863 ;" and it was surrounded by an 
 iron fence. The shaft had been shamefully mu- 
 tilated, and the fence broken down. I wonder if 
 the obliterated eagle and shield of the escutcheon 
 have been restored, and how much of the monu- 
 ment exists to-day ? 
 
 XIII 
 
 The Quitman, in which I took passage for 
 New Orleans, — one of the finest of the large 
 Mississippi packets, — treated her patrons sump- 
 tuously ; furnishing, as I remember, an excellent 
 quality of claret as a part of the regular dinner 
 fare, a bottle flanking each plate, after the French 
 fashion, which appeared to have been introduced 
 into Louisiana by the Creoles, and which I sup- 
 posed was to be found nowhere else in this coun- 
 try, until I met with it afterwards in some part of 
 California. 
 
3 oo MY OWN STORY 
 
 The river trips gave a delightful variety to my 
 journey ; they also afforded abundant opportuni- 
 ties for studying political and social conditions in 
 the characters and conversations of the passen- 
 gers, and for observing some of the old slave- 
 drivers' methods of working the blacks. The 
 Quitman had sixty deck hands, all colored ; 
 and the way they were hustled and hurried and 
 cursed impressed itself on my memory, by the 
 very pity of it. We were nearly all night at 
 Natchez loading cotton ; and the next day I no- 
 ticed that the mate yelled himself unusually 
 hoarse in getting his freight on and off. I took 
 occasion to talk with him about the deck hands. 
 He said, — 
 
 " These men are used up. They hain't had no 
 sleep for four days and nights. I 've seen a man 
 go to sleep many a time, standing up, and tumble 
 over, with a box on his shoulder. We pay more 
 wages than almost any other boat, the work is 
 so hard. But we get rid of paying a heap of 'em. 
 When a man gets so used up he can't stand no 
 more, he quits ; and he don't dare to ask for 
 wages, for he knows he '11 get none, without he 
 sticks by to the end of the trip." 
 
 While we were talking a young fellow came up, 
 looking much exhausted, and told the mate he 
 was sick. 
 
THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 301 
 
 " You ain't sick, neither ! " the mate roared at 
 him. " You 're lazy. If you won't work, go 
 ashore." 
 
 The young fellow limped ashore at the next 
 landing. 
 
 " Is he sick, or lazy ? " I asked. 
 
 "Neither," said the mate. "He's used up. 
 He was as smart a man as we had when he come 
 aboard. The men can't stand it. Not one of 
 these will ship' for another trip ; they 've had 
 enough of it. There 's no compellin' 'em. You 
 can't hit a nigger now but these damned Yankee 
 sons of Satan have you up and make you pay for 
 it. I like a nigger in his place, and that 's a ser- 
 vant, if there 's any truth in the Bible." There 
 was something grimly incongruous in such allu- 
 sions to Scripture, on lips hot with wrath and 
 wrong. 
 
 The levees grew higher and higher as we 
 steamed on, a large and fertile part of Louisiana 
 lying below the level of only moderately high 
 water ; we passed bends and bayous, and forests 
 of cypress-trees growing out of the swamps, heavy, 
 sombre, and shaggy with long trailing moss ; and 
 on the first day of January, 1866, arrived at the 
 Crescent City. 
 
3 o2 MY OWN STORY 
 
 XIV 
 
 It was midwinter ; but the mild, sunny weather 
 made me fancy it was the month of May. The 
 gardens of the city were verdant with tropical 
 plants. Roses in full bloom climbed upon trel- 
 lises or the verandas of houses ; oleander-trees, 
 bananas with their broad, drooping leaves six feet 
 long, and Japan plum-trees, bearing plums that 
 would ripen in February, grew side by side in the 
 open air. There were orange-trees whose golden 
 fruit could be plucked from the balconies they 
 half concealed. Magnolias, gray-oaks and live- 
 oaks, some heavily hung with moss that swung 
 in the breeze like waving hair, shaded the yards 
 and streets. And there were vegetable gardens 
 checkered and striped with delicately contrasting 
 beds and rows of lettuce, cabbages, carrots, beets, 
 onions and peas in blossom. I seemed to have 
 entered a midwinter Paradise. 
 
 I put up at the St. Charles, famous before the 
 war as a hotel, and during one year of the war as 
 the headquarters of General Butler. He had not 
 left behind him a savory reputation, and I found, to 
 my surprise, that General Banks, who succeeded 
 him in command of the department, was still less 
 respected even by Union men. The rebels had 
 a certain respect for Butler, much as they hated 
 
THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 303 
 
 him ; his word could be relied upon ; but Banks 
 made ready promises to both sides, and kept 
 faith with neither. 
 
 A very different man from these was the sturdy 
 soldier I found in command of the military divi- 
 sion of the Southwest, Major-General Phil Sheri- 
 dan. My letters to him were the first I delivered, 
 and I scarcely needed any others. He went 
 himself to introduce me to Governor Wells, to 
 Mayor Kennedy, and to others whom he thought 
 it would be pleasant or useful for me to know. I 
 found him a man of small stature, somewhat mas- 
 sively built, with exceeding toughness of consti- 
 tutional fibre, and an alert countenance, alive with 
 energy. I inquired if he experienced no reaction 
 after the long strain upon his mental and bodily 
 powers occasioned by the war. 
 
 "Only a pleasant one," he replied. "During 
 my western campaigns, when I was continually in 
 the saddle, I weighed only a hundred and fifteen 
 pounds. But my flesh was hard as iron. Now I 
 weigh a hundred and forty-five." 
 
 His conversation was at times so thickly punc- 
 tuated with emphatic expletives, that he once 
 paused, and confided to me this interesting ex- 
 perience. 
 
 " It 's a blanked bad practice, and when I went 
 into the war I was as free from it as a young min- 
 
3o 4 MY OWN STORY 
 
 ister. I never swore until once when I was get- 
 ting some artillery over the mountains of West 
 Virginia. The mules would n't pull, the drivers 
 were disheartened, all was confusion, everything 
 dragged. At last I exploded ; I burst out with a 
 volley that worked a miracle." Then followed a 
 brief account of how the mules jumped, the boys 
 whipped and shouted, the wheels turned almost 
 of themselves, and the guns and caissons went 
 clattering over the crests ; reminding me of the 
 old woman's kid that would n't pass the stile, until 
 all at once the mouse began to gnaw the rope, the 
 rope began to hang the butcher, the butcher be- 
 gan to kill the ox, and so on. " But it 's a blanked 
 bad habit," he repeated, " and I don't excuse it in 
 anybody." 
 
 He was delightfully frank and familiar; but 
 when I asked if he remembered just what he said 
 to the routed troops, when he met them on his 
 famous ride to Winchester, and turned them back, 
 changing disaster to victory, he merely smiled 
 significantly, without committing himself to any- 
 thing explicit. 
 
 XV 
 
 I left New Orleans by rail for Lake Pontchar- 
 train, where just at sunset, one evening, I took the 
 steamer for Mobile. It was a night of tranquil 
 
GEN. P. H. SHERIDAN 
 
THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 305 
 
 beauty on the lake. Strange constellations rose 
 in the southern hemisphere, while others, around 
 the opposite pole, which never set in the latitude 
 of our Northern States, sank below the horizon. 
 I had never seen the North Star so low before. 
 
 The next morning we were in the Gulf of Mex- 
 ico, having entered it by the South Pass. All the 
 forenoon we sailed its lustrous, silken waters, with 
 tumbling porpoises keeping us company, and peli- 
 cans flying around us, or sporting and diving in 
 the waves. 
 
 From Mobile I ascended the Alabama River to 
 Selma, three hundred miles as the stream twists 
 and winds ; proceeding thence to Montgomery, 
 Atlanta, Macon, and on through Middle Georgia, 
 in the track of Sherman's devouring and devas- 
 tating host. According to a tradition which I 
 found current there, Sherman remarked, while on 
 his grand march through the State, that he had 
 his gloves on as yet, but that he would take them 
 off in South Carolina. Afterwards, in North Car- 
 olina, I heard the counterpart of this story. 
 "Boys," said he, "remember we are in the old 
 North State now ; " which was equivalent to put- 
 ting them on again. If the burned gin-houses, 
 cotton-presses, railroad depots, bridges, and freight- 
 houses, which blackened his track in Georgia, 
 showed what he could do with his gloves on, it 
 
306 MY OWN STORY 
 
 was appalling to think what he might have done, 
 with them off, in South Carolina. 
 
 I made more than one wide detour, and had 
 often to resort to stage or private conveyance, to 
 get over gaps in the railroads where the tracks had 
 been destroyed, and had not yet been rebuilt. The 
 relaid tracks were very rough ; many of the old 
 rails having been imperfectly straightened and put 
 down again. 
 
 Sherman's men had all necessary devices for 
 destroying tracks. Said an inhabitant, "They 
 could rip 'em up as fast as they could count. They 
 burnt the ties and fences to heat the iron red ; 
 then two men would take a rail and wrap it around 
 a tree or a telegraph post. Our people found some 
 of their iron-benders, and they helped mightily 
 about straightening the rails again. Only the best 
 could be used. The rest the devil could n't 
 straighten ! " 
 
 Riding beside the destroyed tracks, it was 
 amusing to observe the shapes into which the iron 
 had been twisted. " Hairpins " predominated. 
 " Corkscrews " were also abundant. Sometimes 
 we found four or five rails wound around the trunk 
 of a tree, that would have to be cut before they 
 could be removed. Some would have a twist in 
 the middle, with the ends facing both ways. 
 Sherman must have had at least one glove off in 
 Eastern Georgia. 
 
THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 307 
 
 "A neighbor of mine," said an East Georgian, 
 " buried all his gold and silver and built a hog-pen 
 over the spot. The Yankees mistrusted a certain 
 new look about it, ripped it away, stuck in their 
 bayonets, and found the specie. Another hid his 
 gold under the brick floor of his smokehouse. 
 The rascals smelt out the trick, pulled up the 
 floor, got the gold, and then burnt the smoke- 
 house. My wife did the neatest thing. She took 
 all our valuables, such as watches and silver spoons, 
 and hid them in the cornfield. With a knife 
 she would just make a slit in the ground, open it 
 a little, put in one or two things, and then let 
 the top earth down, just like it was before. The 
 soldiers went all over that field, sticking in their 
 bayonets, but they didn't find a thing. The joke 
 of it was, she came very near not finding some of 
 the things herself." 
 
 XVI 
 
 From Augusta I hastened on to Savannah, a 
 city of strange, semi-tropic aspect ; of which I re- 
 member particularly the moist and heavy atmos- 
 phere, the night fogs encamping upon it, and the 
 dead level of its sandy streets, shaded by two or 
 four rows of moss-draped trees. More impressive 
 than all else was the marvelous Bonaventure 
 Cemetery, with its avenues of indescribable beauty 
 
308 MY OWN STORY 
 
 and gloom, under long colonnades of huge live- 
 oaks, solemn, still, and hoary, the great limbs 
 meeting overhead, and bough and branch trailing 
 shrouds of long fine moss, that hung in ghostly- 
 silence, or waved mysteriously in every sighing 
 wind. 
 
 The railroad track running north from Savannah, 
 through a country of rice plantations, had been 
 converted into Sherman's hairpins and cork- 
 screws, and had not yet been rebuilt. But, al- 
 though I was now turning my face homeward, and 
 should have preferred the wings of a dove with no 
 stops at way stations, I was n't sorry for the chance 
 that took me around to Charleston by sea. There 
 was little travel and less business between the two 
 cities at that time ; two or three small steamers 
 sufficing for the entire traffic. Going on board 
 one of these inferior boats one afternoon, at 
 Savannah, I awoke the next morning in Charleston 
 harbor. 
 
 A warm, soft, misty morning it was, the pale 
 dawn breaking through rifts in the light clouds 
 overhead, a vapory horizon of dim sea all around. 
 What was that great bulk away on our left, drifting 
 silently past us ? It was the thing known as Fort 
 Sumter. But it was fast on its rock ; it was we 
 who were drifting. It was historic ground we 
 were traversing — or, rather, historic water. Fort 
 
THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 309 
 
 Moultrie, Castle Pinckney, James Island, — how 
 one's heart stirred with the memories these names 
 called up ! What was that lying at anchor ? A 
 monitor, with a man on its low flat deck walking 
 almost level with the water. Two noticeable ob- 
 jects followed in our wake. One was a proud- 
 beaked New York steamer ; the other, the won- 
 derful light of dawn dancing upon the waves. 
 
 Before us all the while, rising and expanding at 
 our approach, its wharves and shipping, its ware- 
 houses and church steeples gradually taking shape, 
 as the low peninsula pushed out between its two 
 rivers, was the haughty and defiant little city that 
 inaugurated Secession and kindled the fire it took 
 a nation's blood to quench. 
 
 The ruins of Charleston were the most pictur- 
 esque of all I saw in the South ; the gardens and 
 broken walls of many of its finest residences re- 
 maining to attest their former elegance. Broad, 
 semicircular flights of marble steps, once conduct- 
 ing to proud doorways, were cracked and calcined 
 slabs, leading up to high foundations, swept of 
 everything but the crushed and blackened frag- 
 ments of their former superstructures, with here 
 and there a broken pillar, and here and there a 
 windowless wall. 
 
3 io MY OWN STORY 
 
 XVII 
 
 In Charleston and its vicinity I saw and talked 
 with a great number of people of all conditions, 
 high and low ; among others more or less worth 
 meeting, Mr. William Gilmore Simms. 
 
 Simms had been a popular author twenty-five 
 years before. In my boyhood I had read his 
 rather sensational Pelayo, and one or two other of 
 his romances, the recollection of which inspired 
 me with curiosity to see the author. 
 
 I found him in a printing-office, doing some sort 
 of work on a daily paper ; a man of sixty, with 
 shortish iron-gray hair and roughish features, — 
 not at all my idea of a great writer who could 
 harrow up the souls of boy readers. He was quite 
 ready to talk to me, particularly upon one topic, 
 namely, the damage the Yankees had inflicted 
 upon his beloved State and idolized city. 
 
 " Charleston, sir," he said, with a level fixity of 
 look, " was the finest city in the world ; not a large 
 city, but the finest. South Carolina, sir, was the 
 flower of modern civilization. Our people were the 
 most hospitable, the most accomplished, having 
 the highest degree of culture and the highest sense 
 of honor, of any people, I will not say of America, 
 sir, but of any country on the globe. And they 
 are so still, even in their temporary desolation." 
 
THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 311 
 
 All this I could not gainsay ; my intimacy with 
 the world's civilizations not being sufficient to en- 
 able me to formulate an argument. When I would 
 have led him to speak of actual incidents and con- 
 ditions, he launched forth more of these orotund 
 utterances. As they did not convey precisely the 
 sort of information I was in search of, I was unable 
 to adorn my pages with them, and find that I did 
 not mention Mr. W. G. Simms in my volume. 
 
 XVIII 
 
 Wherever else Sherman may have had his gloves 
 on, he certainly had them off on his way from 
 Charleston to the State Capital ; and there he 
 flung them into the fire. What the rebel invaders 
 of Pennsylvania did in a small way at Chambers- 
 burg, our army repeated on a scale of appalling 
 magnitude at Columbia. 
 
 The city was not destroyed, however, by General 
 Sherman's orders. It is quite probable that the 
 fire was started by flying flakes of the flaming 
 cotton burned by the Confederates themselves in 
 their retreat. Then undoubtedly marauders took a 
 hand in spreading it. Three fifths of the beautiful 
 city went up in roaring flames in one night. 
 
 Through Governor Orr, to whom I had letters, 
 I made acquaintance with Mayor Gibbes and other 
 citizens ; and to them I was indebted for many 
 
312 MY OWN STORY 
 
 reminiscences and anecdotes. On the night of the 
 fire, a thousand men' could be seen, in the yards 
 and gardens of the city, by the light of the flames, 
 probing the earth with their bayonets for buried 
 plunder. The dismay and terror of the inhabitants 
 can hardly be conceived. Trunks and bundles 
 were snatched from the hands of hurrying fugi- 
 tives, broken open, rifled, and then hurled into the 
 flames. Ornaments were plucked from the necks 
 and arms of ladies and caskets from their hands. 
 
 An old gentleman who had purchased two 
 watches for his grandchildren had one snatched 
 from him by a soldier. In his rage and grief he 
 exclaimed, " You may as well take the other ! " 
 and his suggestion was cheerfully complied with. 
 
 Another sufferer said, "That watch will be 
 good for nothing without the key. Won't you 
 stop and take it ? " " Thank you," said the sol- 
 dier ; and he went off proudly winding his new 
 chronometer. 
 
 The soldiers were full of humorous remarks 
 about the ruined city. " What curious people you 
 are ! " said one. " You run up your chimneys be- 
 fore you build your houses." 
 
 One man's treasure, buried by his garden fence, 
 escaped the soldiers' divining rods, but was after- 
 wards discovered by a hitched horse pawing the 
 earth over it. Some treasures were hidden in 
 
THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 313 
 
 cemeteries, but they did not always escape the 
 search of the soldiers, who showed a strong mis- 
 trust of new-made graves. 
 
 I talked with some good Columbians who ex- 
 pressed the most violent hatred of the Yankees, 
 for the ruin of their homes. Others took a more 
 philosophical view of the subject. This difference 
 was thus explained to me by Governor Orr's pri- 
 vate secretary, a young man (an old man now, if 
 he is still living, as I trust he may be) who had 
 been an officer in the Confederate service. 
 
 " People who were not in the war cannot under- 
 stand or forgive these things. But those who 
 have been in the army know what armies are ; 
 they know that, under the same circumstances, 
 they would have done the same things." 
 
 And I was reminded of Jeff Davis's famous 
 speech at Stevenson, Ala., in 1861, in which he 
 predicted that grass should grow in the streets of 
 Northern cities that Southern armies were to lay 
 waste with " sword and torch." 
 
 XIX 
 
 I continued my tour through North Carolina, 
 into Virginia again, and at Richmond completed 
 the circuit, having given four months to my two 
 journeys, and visited ten of the States which had 
 been the principal scenes of the Great Conflict. 
 
3 i4 MY OWN STORY 
 
 I reached home in February, in excellent health, 
 and immediately set about the completion of my 
 record of observations. 
 
 I sent the manuscript to the printers as fast 
 as it was written, and had the last pages through 
 the press some time in June. The book — a vol- 
 ume of 590 pages, with maps and steel and wood 
 engravings — had for title : " The South : Its 
 Battle-Fields, Desolated States and Ruined Cities, 
 its People and Prospects." I made the narrative 
 as literally faithful to facts as the most conscien- 
 tious painstaking would permit. Wherever prac- 
 ticable, I stepped aside and let the people I met 
 speak for themselves. Notes taken on the spot, 
 and in many cases under almost insuperable diffi- 
 culties, — on horseback, in jolting wagons, by the 
 uncertain firelight of a farmhouse or negro camp, 
 sometimes in the dark and in the rain, — enabled 
 me to do this in many cases with absolute fidel- 
 ity. Idiomatic peculiarities, often so expressive 
 of character, I was careful to reproduce without 
 exaggeration. It was this almost photographic 
 and stenographic truthfulness which rendered the 
 volume unique among the large number on the 
 same subject appearing about the same time. 
 
 While admitting evidence from all classes with- 
 out prejudice, I reserved the right of the court to 
 render judgment, and expressed my own opinions 
 
THE SOUTH AFTER THE WAR 315 
 
 pretty liberally in discussing conditions and causes, 
 the results of emancipation and plans of recon- 
 struction, negro suffrage, free labor, the educa- 
 tion of the freedmen, and kindred questions. I 
 shall not trouble the present reader with my ar- 
 guments and conclusions, but dismiss the subject 
 with a single consideration, which I do not remem- 
 ber to have laid stress upon at the time, but which 
 recurs to me now with impressive force, in review- 
 ing those four months' experiences. It is this : 
 that no other country or epoch ever furnished such 
 abundant and rich materials for romantic or real- 
 istic fiction, humorous, tragic, pathetic, pictur- 
 esque, full of great events and of the most amaz- 
 ing contrasts of characters and conditions, as 
 appealed to the heart and imagination in the old 
 slave States, at that period of social upheaval. 
 That the currents, counter-currents, and sombre 
 abysses of that troubled time have floated some 
 bright fiction, must be freely admitted. That 
 they did not burst forth and overflow in tidal 
 waves of power and passion, lifting a great and 
 enduring literature, is the marvel. 
 
 The book had a success which it may have owed 
 largely to the Hartford method of selling publica- 
 tions " only by subscription." But while this 
 may have had advantages in insuring for it a cir- 
 culation, it was not so well adapted to enlarging 
 
3 i6 MY OWN STORY 
 
 the reputation of the writer. The volume had no 
 advertising, and was hardly heard of at all in the 
 ordinary avenues of the book trade. While agents 
 were quietly distributing it in their districts, many 
 readers who knew me through my other writings 
 remained ignorant that I had produced such a 
 work. 
 
 As I had the privilege of using in advance six 
 chapters from my book in Ticknor & Fields' two 
 periodicals, I gave to The Atlantic those already 
 mentioned, and printed four articles, — A Visit to 
 Mount Vernon, The Battle-Field of Fredericks- 
 burg, Richmond Prisons, and A Tennessee Farm- 
 House, — in the other magazine, of which some 
 account must now be given, as I was already 
 somewhat intimately, and was to be still more 
 intimately, associated with its fortunes. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 OUR YOUNG FOLKS AND BOOKS FOR THE YOUNG 
 
 The war was nearing its close, and an era of as- 
 sured prosperity for the North was setting in, when 
 Mr. Fields invited my cooperation in establishing 
 anew "illustrated magazine for boys and girls." 
 I at once became interested in it, and, with other 
 friends of Mr. Fields, began to consider the im- 
 portant question of an appropriate and attractive 
 title. Dr. Holmes, who had christened The At- 
 lantic, wittily suggested The Atlantic Lighter ; a 
 number of other names were proposed and re- 
 jected, Our Young Folks being the one finally 
 chosen. Well-known contributors were enlisted 
 for the early numbers, — Mrs. Stowe, Miss Alcott, 
 Whittier, Higginson, Aldrich, Rose Terry, Miss 
 Phelps, and a long list besides. Among the later 
 writers were Edward Everett Hale and his sister, 
 Lucretia Hale (author of the quaint Peterkin 
 Papers), Bayard Taylor, James Parton, Mrs. Eliz- 
 abeth Akers-Allen, Celia Thaxter, and Charles 
 Dickens, who contributed a four-part serial story, 
 A Holiday Romance. Lowell and Longfellow also 
 
3 i8 MY OWN STORY 
 
 were represented by poems. The magazine was 
 a financial success from the start. 
 
 The first number was that for January, 1865, 
 with the names of J. T. Trowbridge, Gail Hamil- 
 ton, and Lucy Larcom on the cover, as editors. 
 These were retained until Gail Hamilton's violent 
 rupture with the publishers (who were also pub- 
 lishers of her books) over a question of copyright, 
 which led to her attack upon them — especially 
 upon the member of the firm who had been her 
 personal friend — in her wonderfully witty but 
 woefully unwise Battle of the Books. When it 
 was no longer possible to keep her name, all the 
 names were quietly dropped from the cover, and 
 those of the two other editors appeared only 
 on the title-pages of the yearly volumes. Mr. 
 Howard M. Ticknor was office editor from the 
 first, while I was contributing and (nominally) con- 
 sulting editor until, after Mr. Ticknor' s with- 
 drawal from the firm and Miss Larcom' s retire- 
 ment from the chair in which she temporarily 
 succeeded him, I became manager in 1870. 
 
 The firm at that time, under its new name of 
 Fields, Osgood & Co., occupied a spacious store 
 and chambers at 1 24 Tremont Street, where I had 
 a well-furnished and attractive room up two flights, 
 with windows overlooking the Common. Below 
 mine was the private room of Mr. Fields, then head 
 
OUR YOUNG FOLKS 319 
 
 of the firm, and editor of The Atlantic. Mr. How- 
 ells was his assistant, and soon to be chief, if not 
 practically so already. Adjoining Mr. Fields's room 
 was a large reading-room, in a corner of which 
 Mr. Thomas Bailey Aldrich, conductor of Every 
 Saturday, had his desk. In the position of cashier 
 and book-keeper was an earnest and capable young 
 man, Mr. Edwin D. Mead, who left it in the early 
 seventies to complete in Germany his studies for 
 some sectarian ministry, his chosen profession, 
 which he seems to have outgrown before he en- 
 tered it, for when he returned from abroad it was 
 to begin a larger life-work in literature and reform. 
 The house had a lunch-room, with a generously 
 served table, at which publishers and editors met, 
 and such contributors and book authors as hap- 
 pened to be about were often welcomed. My 
 habit was to give only my morning hours to office 
 work, and to go home to Arlington at noon ; but 
 when I was detained in town, this lunch-table and 
 its goodly company made ample amends for the 
 
 inconvenience. 
 
 II 
 
 I contributed to Our Young Folks a great vari- 
 ety of articles in prose and verse ; among others, 
 Darius Green and his Flying Machine, which im- 
 mediately, like The Vagabonds, became a favorite 
 with platform readers and reciters all over the 
 
3 2o MY OWN STORY 
 
 country. I wrote for it a series of papers on prac- 
 tical subjects, that were afterwards collected in a 
 volume entitled Lawrence's Adventures among 
 the Ice-Cutters, Glass-Makers, Coal-Miners, Iron- 
 Men, and Ship-Builders, giving in the guise of a 
 story carefully studied and accurate accounts of 
 the industries described ; in gathering material for 
 which I had gone as far as the iron-mills and coal- 
 mines of Pennsylvania. To avoid making my own 
 name too conspicuous I put the pseudonym Harvey 
 Wilder to a series of articles on natural history, 
 and that of Augustus Holmes to papers on Vol- 
 canoes and Geysers, Mountains and Glaciers, 
 What is the Sun ? Glimpses of the Moon, and kin- 
 dred topics. I had the satisfaction of knowing 
 that I made these subjects interesting, and was 
 amused when a critic, in commending this " new 
 writer" (Augustus Holmes), concluded his notice 
 with the remark : " It would be well if more men 
 of science would write in this entertaining style." 
 For serials we had Mayne Reid's Afloat in the 
 Forest, Kellogg's Good Old Times, Carleton's 
 Winning his Way, Dr. Isaac I. Hayes's Cast Away 
 in the Cold, Mrs. Whitney's We Girls, Mrs. Diaz's 
 William Henry Letters (which, although not in 
 the form of a story, were in their naturalness and 
 humor more diverting than most stories), and, to 
 crown all, T. B. Aldrich's Story of a Bad Boy. 
 
OUR YOUNG FOLKS 321 
 
 III 
 
 I had written short stories for the magazine, but 
 none continued through more than three numbers, 
 when, in the fall of 1870, after I had become man- 
 aging editor, I consulted the publishers as to whom 
 I should invite to furnish the serial for the ensuing 
 year. It was getting late in the season, and none 
 had as yet been volunteered. One of the firm gave 
 me a droll look and remarked, in the words of 
 Priscilla, "Why don't you speak for yourself, 
 John ? " I asked if he meant it. " I mean it ! " 
 he answered decisively. 
 
 So I wrote Jack Hazard and his Fortunes, turn- 
 ing aside each month from my other work to fur- 
 nish the installments, which ran through the twelve 
 numbers of 1871. For a subject I went back to 
 the Erie Canal, the old Ogden homestead, and 
 Spencer's Basin ; and took for my chief character 
 a vicious little driver with intent to bring out what 
 good was latent in him, by redeeming him from 
 evil influences and placing him in favorable sur- 
 roundings. Connected with him in interest was 
 his noble Newfoundland dog, Lion. The old 
 homestead I peopled with the Chatford family, and 
 gave to the neighborhood other fictitious charac- 
 ters, all true to the life I had known there, but 
 none of them portraits. I had great fun in writing 
 the story, a chapter of which I would dash off at 
 
322 MY OWN STORY 
 
 a sitting, in an afternoon, and perhaps send it the 
 next day to the printers, with hardly an erasure. 
 In each mail came letters showing the interest of 
 readers everywhere in Jack and his dog. 
 
 The story had been the leading feature eight or 
 nine months, when the same member of the firm 
 who had suggested my undertaking the serial (this 
 was Mr. John S. Clark, now of the Prang Educa- 
 tional Company) said to me, " It won't do to finish 
 Jack's Fortunes in the December number ! In 
 completing it for the volume, leave it open for a 
 sequel, which we will announce for next year. 
 That boy and dog are running so well they can't 
 stop for another twelvemonth, sure ! " 
 
 Accordingly I followed the initial story with A 
 Chance for Himself, and that in turn, for similar 
 reasons, with Doing his Best, the third of the Jack 
 Hazard series. I had already begun a fourth, Fast 
 Friends, the first chapters of which were in type, 
 with a large part of the magazine number for Janu- 
 ary, 1 874, when the proverbial " thunderbolt out 
 of a clear sky " struck the publishing house. 
 
 IV 
 
 The sky was not so clear as it had seemed to 
 many of us who were enjoying the fancied security 
 of that hospitable roof. Mr. Fields retired from 
 the firm in 1871, and Mr. J. R. Osgood (who, like 
 
J. T. TROWBRIDGE 
 
 At the age of 4b 
 
OUR YOUNG FOLKS 323 
 
 Mr. Fields, had risen from the ranks in the busi- 
 ness) became head of the house. He was able, 
 honorable, large-hearted, but aggressive and self- 
 confident, and under his leadership the concern 
 assumed enterprises involving hazards which the 
 other's more conservative judgment could hardly 
 have sanctioned. Of these, I remember most about 
 Every Saturday, which began, and ran some time, 
 as a modest reprint of selections from foreign pe- 
 riodicals ; but which J. R. Osgood & Co. (the new 
 firm) changed to a large illustrated sheet, designed 
 to rival Harper's Weekly in popular favor. It did 
 not, however, prove a success ; and before long 
 financial difficulties necessitated the disposal of 
 The Atlantic Monthly to its present publishers, 
 and the sale of Our Young Folks to Scribner & 
 Co., who merged it in St. Nicholas. 
 
 Thus again I experienced the severance of agree- 
 able and advantageous business relations that I 
 had come to consider permanent. With the house 
 established by the elder Ticknor, as with that of 
 Phillips, Sampson & Co., I had esteemed it an 
 honor to be connected ; and once more I felt de- 
 prived of a home. The " Old Corner Bookstore " 
 (on the corner of Washington and School streets) 
 was old and famous as early as when I first came 
 to Boston. Phillips, Sampson & Co. had Emerson 
 and Prescott leading their list of authors ; while 
 
3 2 4 MY OWN STORY 
 
 Ticknor & Fields were the publishers of Longfel- 
 low and Tennyson, Lowell and Hawthorne, and all 
 that goodly company to whose names Emerson's 
 was also to be added after the downfall of the 
 other house. The acquisition at the same time 
 (1859) of Tne Atlantic Monthly had been all that 
 was needed to give the Old Corner unrivaled pre- 
 eminence as representative of the best literature 
 of New England, and of Old England in America. 
 I followed The Atlantic with my contributions, 
 which led to the publication by the firm, not only 
 of my books for the young growing out of Our 
 Young Folks, but also of three other books, of 
 some importance at least to their author, — Cou- 
 pon Bonds and Other Stories, consisting chiefly of 
 contributions I had made to The Atlantic and Har- 
 per's ; and two volumes of verse, The Vagabonds 
 and Other Poems, and The Emigrant's Story and 
 Other Poems, also collected from periodicals. The 
 scattering of these volumes was not the least of 
 the casualties I had to deplore, upon the passing 
 of the firm of J. R. Osgood & Co. All, however, 
 went into good hands ; and the misfortune that 
 lost me the editorship — to which I had become 
 attached by so many interests that I felt the loss 
 as a personal bereavement — brought with it, as 
 misfortunes so often do, its compensation, in the 
 freedom it gave to form other engagements. 
 
OUR YOUNG FOLKS 325 
 
 V 
 
 Along with Our Young Folks the new serial I 
 had commenced writing for it went over to St. 
 Nicholas, the chapters I had put into type for our 
 January number going into the January number 
 of that magazine. In the same number I published 
 a card, in which, as editor, I took leave of Our 
 Young Folks readers, and bespoke their favor for 
 the new monthly. 
 
 I confidently expected to finish Jack's career in 
 Fast Friends, but that story had been running 
 hardly half a year when I was invited to New York 
 for a conference with Mr. Roswell Smith and Mrs. 
 Dodge, regarding a serial for the ensuing year 
 (1875). Mr. Smith was Dr. J. G. Holland's part- 
 ner in the publication of St. Nicholas and Scrib- 
 ner's Monthly (now The Century). Mrs. Dodge 
 was then, as always after, chief editor of St. Nicho- 
 las ; and Frank R. Stockton, at that time unknown 
 to fame, was, as I well remember, her office assist- 
 ant. For a couple of days Mr. Smith, whose guest 
 I was, gave a large part of his leisure to making 
 my visit pleasant ; and I came home with a com- 
 mission to write a fifth Jack Hazard story, The 
 Young Surveyor. 
 
 This was the last of the series, Jack hav- 
 ing reached manhood, and won the hand of the 
 heroine ; but it was not the last of my continued 
 
326 MY OWN STORY 
 
 stories for St. Nicholas. Others of a similar char- 
 acter succeeded, the chief of which were His Own 
 Master, The Tinkham Brothers' Tide-Mill, Toby 
 Trafford (written at Geneva, during my second 
 sojourn abroad), and, passing over several others, 
 Two Biddicut Boys (1897), the latest up to this 
 time ; all republished duly in book form. 
 
 VI 
 
 While I was still connected with Our Young 
 Folks, Mr. Ford (for whom I had previously writ- 
 ten a good deal when he was editor of the Watch- 
 man and Reflector) asked me for contributions to 
 the Youth's Companion, which he had recently 
 acquired. The Companion had been started early 
 in the century by Nathaniel Willis, father of N. P. 
 Willis, and had held the even tenor of its way as 
 a rather namby-pamby child's paper, until by a 
 curious combination of circumstances Mr. Ford 
 woke up one morning to find himself its sole pro- 
 prietor. It had then about five thousand subscrib- 
 ers. Being a man of broad business views, he 
 had at first hardly dreamed of doing much with it ; 
 but while looking about for an enterprise nearer 
 the level of his ambition, he put some money and 
 a good deal of thought and energy into the little 
 paper. He was reluctant, he once frankly con- 
 fessed to me, to connect his reputation with " so 
 
THE YOUTH'S COMPANION 337 
 
 small an affair ; " and so issued it over the ficti- 
 tious firm name of "Perry Mason & Co.," by 
 whom it purports to be published to this day. It 
 was for a long time a mystery, even to those who 
 had transactions with the concern, who "Perry 
 Mason & Co." could be. There was then no other 
 " Perry Mason " or " Co." than the quiet little man 
 with the pale forehead and round smooth face, 
 whose plain signature was to become so familiar to 
 me, signed to letters and checks, Daniel S. Ford. 
 
 My engagement with Our Young Folks prohib- 
 ited me from writing for any other periodical, ex- 
 cept The Atlantic, to which I remained a pretty 
 constant contributor ; but as soon as I was released 
 from that, Mr. Ford again called on me, and I 
 went over to the Companion, writing for it stories 
 long and short, and after a while one serial a year, 
 for many years. From a mere child's paper he 
 was converting it rapidly into a miscellany of the 
 very first class for young people and families. Its 
 circulation increased at a rate that astonished Mr. 
 Ford himself, rising by waves and tides from 
 thousands to hundreds of thousands. Of all this 
 I felt myself a part, and it was a part which he 
 was always magnanimous in recognizing. 
 
 He was as liberal with his pay as he was with 
 his praise. Both may have been designed to en- 
 courage my contributions ; but I think he was as 
 
328 MY OWN STORY 
 
 sincere in the one as he was generous in the other. 
 The pay he increased voluntarily, without any 
 solicitation on my part, often drawing his checks 
 for larger sums than our agreement called for, and 
 making them from time to time larger and larger, 
 until the rate of compensation became, considering 
 the circumstances, munificent. Our personal re- 
 lations were of the pleasantest. When I handed 
 him a manuscript, he frequently drew his check 
 for it immediately, without reading it ; always 
 urging me to write more. 
 
 Unfortunately, while the paper was building up, 
 his health was breaking down ; he became simul- 
 taneously an invalid and a millionaire. I was one 
 of the last contributors whom he continued to see 
 and transact business with personally. At last it 
 became so difficult for him to meet any attaches 
 of the paper except his " heads of departments," 
 as he called them, that I discontinued my visits 
 to him, some time in 1887. The business of the 
 concern had then grown to prodigious propor- 
 tions. He had as many heads of departments as 
 the President of the United States, and the paper 
 circulated over half a million copies. I once 
 heard Dr. Holmes wittily describe the increase in 
 the number of instructors in the Medical College 
 since his time. "Then," said he, "there were 
 five or six of us. Now there are over seventy. 
 
DANIEL S. FORD 
 
THE YOUTH'S COMPANION 329 
 
 The roast beef of yesterday is the hashed meat 
 of to-day." The change in Mr. Ford's working 
 force, from the time when I began with him to 
 the last year of our intercourse, was even more 
 surprising. He was at first alone in the editor- 
 ship and business management. Afterwards Mr. 
 Hezekiah Butterworth became editorial assistant. 
 Then one by one others were taken on, until 
 there were anywhere from twelve to twenty on 
 the editorial staff alone. The paper in the mean 
 while adopted the policy of securing for its adver- 
 tised lists of contributors banner names, which 
 were paid for and paraded at a cost that would 
 have ruined in a single season a periodical of less 
 affluent resources. Even members of the Eng- 
 lish royal family were induced to become con- 
 tributors to the paper which Mr. Ford, a few 
 years before, had been unwilling to put his name 
 to as publisher. As he gradually withdrew from 
 its management my own contributions to it be- 
 came fewer, and ceased almost altogether during 
 my second sojourn in Europe from 1888 to 1891. 
 I could never feel at home in the paper's pala- 
 tial new quarters, and it could never again be to 
 me what it had been in the era of its earlier 
 marvelous growth, and in the happiest days of 
 the remarkable man who may be said to have 
 created it. 
 
33° 
 
 MY OWN STORY 
 
 VII 
 
 My contributions to the Companion comprised, 
 besides a large number of short stories and other 
 sketches and poems, some of my most success- 
 ful serials, among these The Silver Medal, The 
 Pocket Rifle, and The Little Master. All the 
 long stories and many of the short ones, like my 
 contributions to Our Young Folks and St. Nicho- 
 las, have been reissued in book form. 
 
 I also wrote a serial for one sensational paper, 
 a New York weekly. Although I was offered an 
 exceptionally good price for this, I hesitated about 
 accepting it until I had consulted two or three 
 judicious friends, one of them Mr. Longfellow. 
 
 " Accept it, by all means ! " he said. " Of 
 course you will not write down to the level of 
 such a paper, but try to bring it up to your level. 
 You will have an audience that you would prob- 
 ably reach in no other way." And he added 
 something more as to the good work I would do 
 by showing that literature could be entertaining 
 without being melodramatic. 
 
 I furnished the story, which, while not at all sen- 
 sational, won the approval of the publishers, and 
 which was afterwards included in my sets of books 
 for the young, under the title Bound in Honor. 
 
 All this time I continued subject to the "bliss- 
 
BOOKS FOR THE YOUNG 331 
 
 ful thralldom of the Muse." In 1877 I published 
 The Book of Gold, comprising, with the title 
 poem, four others of lesser length, all of which 
 had first appeared in Harper's Magazine, illus- 
 trated with a view to the volume ; A Home Idyl 
 in 1 88 1, and The Lost Earl in 1888, both likewise 
 made up principally of my metrical contributions 
 to periodicals. 
 
 In addition to the five books of verse already 
 designated, I will mention Guy Vernon, in a 
 Masque of Poets (1878), of the authorship of 
 which anonymous novelette in verse I now make 
 public acknowledgment. 
 
 VIII 
 
 My stories, written ostensibly for the young, 
 were intended for older readers as well ; and this 
 was doubtless one secret of their success. I was 
 sometimes amused by hearing of a parent carry- 
 ing home the periodical containing an installment 
 of one of my serials, and hiding it from the 
 younger members of the household until he had 
 enjoyed the first reading of the chapters. This 
 was one of the satisfactions that reconciled me to 
 a kind of work not at all in the direction of my 
 earlier ambition, but which a sort of fatality — 
 perhaps the divinity that shapes our ends — led 
 me to do. 
 
332 MY OWN STORY 
 
 Once when l was trouting in a mountain 
 stream I came to one of those po1 holes that peb- 
 bles ia whirling eddies occasionally scoop in the 
 solid ledge. It was cask shaped, with polished, 
 
 bulging sides, and it was filled with crystal-clear 
 water, in the depths of vvhieh were discernible 
 
 fishes oi extraordinary size. They would not rise- 
 to ;i fly, but I let down ;i bail, s;iw one of the 
 lusty fellows make lor it, and drew out a dace 
 
 about lour or live inches long. Wondering how 
 the large fish had missed the hook and allowed a 
 little brother to take it, I dropped my bait again, 
 once more saw a big one seize it, and once more 
 pulled out a small wriggler. I had to repeat this 
 process several times before my senses were con- 
 vinced that the large fishes were an illusion, oc- 
 casioned by a combined retraction and reflection 
 of light in the oval shaped rocky receptacle. The 
 giants peopling the pot-hole were mere pygmies, 
 one and all. 
 
 This lias been largely my experience in life. 
 The fish in the pool of anticipation has (with few 
 exceptions) appeared vastly larger than when I 
 caught and took it from the hook. The fame and 
 good foil une I cast my line lor, which hope and 
 
 imagination magnified to such alluring propor- 
 tions, proved but modest prizes, when landed in 
 the light of common day. Likewise the great 
 
BOOKS FOR THE yoiinc 
 
 men I have approached have proved i<> be moi 
 tals with the usual limitations* when I have come 
 to regard them al ihort range, Instead ol great 
 epics and works of fiction thai .ill the world would 
 be waiting to acclaim, I have written some minor 
 poems cued ioi by .1 few, hali ;i dozen novels, and 
 a large number ol smallei books, thai have been 
 su( « essful enough in then way, 
 
 These last, as I have endeavored to show, were 
 written, qo1 so much from choice, as in answer 
 to an actual immediate demand foi what, .1:. it 
 proved, 1 was well fitted to do, namely, a style <,i 
 story thai should not he bad as literature, and 
 
 Which should interest ;it the :„ime lime yoim;; ;uid 
 
 old. This I have been the more willing to do 
 because the love story, deemed Indispensable in 
 mosl novels, has been so overdone as to become 
 flat and unprofitable excepl when retouched vvitii 
 exceptional freshness; and because 1 was glad <>i 
 an opportunity to produce a Borl ol minoi novel 
 true to life, wi!h oihei elements oi Interesl re 
 placing thai traditional material. Unquestion 
 
 ably, too, I obeyed ;i l.ivv ol my naluie in moving 
 
 on lines ol least resistance, in novel-writing 1 
 had « "mil less 1 ompel Itors, many v.r.i ly ablei 1 han 
 myself, in my own j)(( uliai held 1 was alone. 
 When 1 was returning from the World's Fail 
 
 in 1893, a young woman journalist came down 
 
334 MY OWN STORY 
 
 from Buffalo to Lockport to " interview " me, in 
 my brother's house, for the Illustrated Express. 
 In her three-column article in that paper I was made 
 to say many things differently from the manner 
 in which I did say them, and others that I did 
 not say at all, as is common with " interviewers ; " 
 but I find in her report one paragraph which so 
 exactly expressed my mind upon the subject of 
 my boys' stories that I reproduce it here. " Un- 
 doubtedly," I said, " they have in a great measure 
 obscured my popularity as a writer of verse. I 
 have naturally felt somewhat aggrieved at this. 
 My best, fullest, and most thoughtful work has 
 been woven into my poems ; yet I find myself far 
 more widely known as a story-writer than as a 
 poet. But the fact has its compensations. Wher- 
 ever I go I am greeted as an old friend by boys, 
 or by men who have read my books as boys, or, 
 better still, I receive the thanks of some mother 
 whose boy she fancies the reading of my books 
 has consoled in times of sickness, or perhaps 
 helped to find, and inspired to keep, the right road. 
 I don't know but that, after all, the most satisfac- 
 tory monument I could choose would be to live in 
 the hearts and memories of mothers and boys." 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF EMERSON AND ALCOTT 
 
 I had in my early years several literary passions, 
 more or less ardent and enduring. The first were 
 Scott and Byron, the idols of my boyhood. Then 
 it was Poe, the melody and glamour of whose 
 verse had for me an indescribable fascination. 
 Afterwards came Tennyson, who, with an equal 
 sensitiveness to beauty and the magic of words, 
 opened fountains of thought and of human in- 
 terest that seemed never to have been unsealed in 
 Poe. Dickens was an early favorite ; a little later 
 Thackeray ; and I had unbounded admiration for 
 Carlyle. Shelley I never greatly cared for, except 
 in a few lyrics (I could never get through The 
 Witch of Atlas or The Revolt of Islam) ; — he had 
 fine ^Eolian chords, but a thin sounding-board ; — 
 and Keats was too luxurious a draught to be more 
 than rarely indulged in. At one time I addicted 
 myself to Browning ; and Shakespeare I had al- 
 ways with me. Macaulay, Montaigne, Plato, Whit- 
 man, — to each of these I gave in turn seasons 
 
336 MY OWN STORY 
 
 of almost exclusive devotion. But of all writers 
 ancient or modern, poets, philosophers, prophets, 
 the one to whom my spiritual indebtedness was 
 first and last the greatest, was Emerson. 
 
 II 
 
 I heard much of Emerson during my first years 
 in Boston, but through such false echoes that 
 mere prejudice rendered me indifferent to the 
 man and his message. More than to any other 
 source, I owed this misconception to Boston's 
 favorite evening paper, whose versatile and gifted 
 editor — himself a poet, the author of at least one 
 popular song, and of two or three dramas more or 
 less successful — now and again printed extracts 
 from Emerson's writings, with such comments 
 upon them as perverted their meaning and ex- 
 posed them to ridicule. It was not till long after 
 this that my own experience taught me to dis- 
 trust such extracts ; as when some critic accused 
 me of making the new moon rise in the east, cit- 
 ing from one of my stories a sentence that really 
 seemed to convict me of the blunder he at the 
 same time charged against Coleridge, in the 
 famous lines, — 
 
 " From the sails the dew did drip — 
 Till clomb above the eastern bar 
 The horned moon, with one bright star 
 Within the nether tip." 
 
EMERSON AND ALCOTT 337 
 
 Just what the Ancient Mariner had in his vivid 
 but somewhat ill-regulated imagination, I will not 
 stop to discuss ; but what I described — as the 
 context would have shown — was the " horned 
 moon " indeed, rising over the city roofs ; not the 
 new moon, however, but the old moon, — not cre- 
 scent but decrescent, — which the youthful hero 
 of the story, in studying the stars from his scuttle 
 window too long past midnight, saw (as I myself 
 had seen it in just such circumstances) soaring 
 pale and ghost-like in the morning sky. This early 
 moon (which Coleridge undoubtedly had in mind, 
 with the morning star not too literally " within the 
 nether tip ") my critic had very likely never ob- 
 served; just as the talented editor of evening news 
 had never witnessed those splendors of the spirit- 
 ual dawn which the poet-seer discerned, and which 
 his detractors saw fit to discredit and deride. 
 
 With this editor (the same who had previously 
 declined to print my sonnet to Theodore Parker) 
 I became acquainted later, and found him to be 
 not only a person of taste and culture, as his own 
 writings showed, but a fair-minded man, who 
 would not, I am sure, have done any one an inten- 
 tional wrong. But how great a wrong he had 
 done, not only to Emerson, but still more to me, 
 I became aware, when a happy chance revealed to 
 me the constellations of thought against which he 
 had so long helped to keep my scuttle closed. 
 
338 MY OWN STORY 
 
 It was a passage from Emerson in Griswold's 
 Prose Writers of America which, by its incisive- 
 ness of style and singular suggestiveness, startled 
 me as by a new discovery, and sent me hasting to 
 the nearest bookstore for the first volume of the 
 Essays. This must have been in the latter part 
 of 1852 ; for in my copy of the Second Series I 
 find my name and the date written, "January, 
 1853 ; " and I had read, and proclaimed from the 
 housetop of my enthusiasm, and given away, the 
 First Essays, before I procured another copy, 
 along with the Second Series. The First Series I 
 have now in a later edition, 1859; between which 
 and the earlier one I must have possessed and 
 parted with several successive copies, which in 
 those days I had a mania for presenting to friends 
 who had not read Emerson, and to whom I ima- 
 gined he would bring as welcome a revelation as 
 he had brought to me ; choosing always the First 
 Series, comprising Self-Reliance, Spiritual Laws, 
 and Heroism, for that propaganda. It was a fond 
 illusion. I found that those gift copies were sel- 
 dom read ; or, if read at all, that their beauties 
 were but hazily perceived, and their skyey herald- 
 ings unheeded. 
 
 To the Essays I quickly added the Poems, Re- 
 presentative Men, Nature, and the Addresses, con- 
 tributions to The Dial, — whatever of Emerson I 
 
EMERSON AND ALCOTT 339 
 
 could lay my eager hands on. No words of mine 
 
 are adequate to describe the effect upon me of 
 
 those extraordinary writings. It was more like the 
 
 old-time religious conversion or change of heart 
 
 than anything I had ever before experienced ; 
 
 some such effect as the best Biblical writings 
 
 might have had, if I could have brought to them 
 
 as fresh and receptive a mind, undulled by the 
 
 dreary associations of my Sunday-school going and 
 
 pew-imprisoned boyhood. They inspired me with 
 
 self-trust ; they reinforced my perceptions, and 
 
 opened new vistas of ideas, as if some optic glass 
 
 of highly magnifying and separating power had 
 
 been added to my hitherto unaided vision. They 
 
 caused me to make vows to truth, to purity, to 
 
 poverty, — if poverty should be the penalty of 
 
 absolute obedience to truth ; vows, alas, which had 
 
 often to be renewed, but never to be disowned or 
 
 renounced. 
 
 Ill 
 
 When I considered by what misrepresentations 
 I had been kept out of that which I felt to be an 
 inestimable birthright, I could not quite forgive 
 their author ; and I had afterwards an opportunity 
 of knowing that the injury had touched one more 
 deeply concerned than I. That opportunity came 
 after I had begun to publish my first small books 
 through Phillips, Sampson & Co., who were also 
 
34 o MY OWN STORY 
 
 the publishers of Emerson's volumes. They were 
 at the same time issuing a series of English clas- 
 sics, under the supervision of the Boston editor in 
 question. 
 
 Entering the bookstore one forenoon, I met the 
 said editor going out; and presently saw Emer- 
 son at a shelf examining some books. In the pri- 
 vate office I found Mr. Phillips, who received me 
 with a curious smile, and, when I had entered, 
 closed the door. Then he related with quiet glee 
 a circumstance that had just occurred. The edi- 
 tor, seeing Emerson at the book-shelves, had 
 asked Mr. Phillips for an introduction to him. Mr. 
 Phillips said, " I will consult Mr. Emerson ; " and 
 going out into the bookroom he proposed the pre- 
 sentation. Emerson bent his brows and responded 
 in his slow, emphatic way, — 
 
 " Sargent ? Mr. Epes Sargent, of the Evening 
 Transcript ? " Then, after a pause : " I have no- 
 thing for Mr. Sargent, and Mr. Sargent has nothing 
 for me." Perfectly dispassionate and dignified ; 
 but there was nothing more to be said, and Mr. 
 Phillips had to go back to his visitor, and tell him 
 that the desired introduction was declined. I was 
 pleased through and through to learn how my own 
 grievance in the matter had been atoned for, and 
 still more interested to find that even the serene 
 Concord sage was, after all, human, and capable of 
 
EMERSON AND ALCOTT 341 
 
 a righteous resentment, — if that can indeed be 
 called by so misleading a name which was more 
 likely the feeling he avowed in his letter to Henry 
 Ware, regarding their differences of opinion : " I 
 shall read what you and other good men write, as 
 I have always done, — glad when you speak my 
 thought, and skipping the page that has nothing 
 for me." He simply " skipped " Mr. Sargent. 
 
 It may be in place here to state that the con- 
 servative editor grew in time to be as radical as 
 Parker, if not as transcendental as Emerson ; dur- 
 ing the war of emancipation he published an anti- 
 slavery novel, and afterwards wrote books on 
 spiritualism, of which he became an earnest expo- 
 nent. 
 
 That the average editor and man of culture 
 should have found in Emerson many enigmas 
 seems natural enough, and hardly to need an 
 apology, since even the young Cambridge poet, 
 Henry W. Longfellow, could write in a letter to 
 his father, upon the appearance of the first book 
 of Essays, in 1841, that it was "full of sublime 
 prose poetry, magnificent absurdities, and simple 
 truths. It is a striking book, but as it is impossi- 
 ble to see any connection between the ideas, I do 
 not think it would please you." The lack of con- 
 nection was indisputable ; and, if a fault, charac- 
 teristic. There was nothing of the willow or the 
 
342 MY OWN STORY 
 
 elm, no graceful sweep of foliage or drooping spray, 
 in the mind of the man or in his style of writing. 
 His ideas were like the needles of the pine, each 
 separate, pointed, bristling, in number infinite, 
 crowning the stately stem that was a symbol of 
 himself, as it was his favorite among all the forest 
 trees. 
 
 Once on an ocean voyage an accomplished Bel- 
 gian who was coming to this country asked me 
 about our best writers. I gave him a volume of 
 Emerson, and he undertook the essay on Man- 
 ners. In a little while he came to me in amaze- 
 ment and disgust, declaring that there was no 
 logical sequence in the thoughts. I said, "That 
 does not trouble me. I see the mountain peaks, 
 and take for granted the invisible range out of 
 which they rise." But for him, without clear 
 logical sequence there was no such thing as style. 
 
 IV 
 
 At the time of the Sargent episode I had myself 
 never spoken with Emerson, and should have 
 deemed it high presumption on my part to ask to 
 be presented to him. All the more gratifying 
 therefore was the way in which our first interview 
 came about. Entering the publisher's private 
 room one day, I found Mr. Emerson there ; and, 
 having said " Good-morning " to Mr. Phillips, I 
 
EMERSON AND ALCOTT 343 
 
 retired to the bookroom. There Mr. Phillips came 
 to me and said Mr. Emerson would like to meet 
 me. Thrilled with happy surprise, yet doubtful, I 
 said, " I am afraid you suggested it ! " " Not at 
 all," he replied. " When you spoke to me in the 
 orifice, he kept his eyes on you ; and after you had 
 gone out, he asked, ' Is that somebody I ought to 
 know ? ' I told him who you were, and he said, 
 1 1 wish to see him ! ' " 
 
 Just when this occurred I cannot now recall, ex- 
 cept that it was in the spring of the year; for 
 when, after one of his questions I told him that I 
 lived in Boston, he inquired, " How can you spare 
 the country, this gay spring weather ? " I said, 
 " That is something we cannot spare altogether ; 
 we must have our Woodnotes, and be free to fol- 
 low our Forerunners." The moment I had spoken 
 I feared he might regard the allusion to his poems 
 as idle compliment ; but it evidently did not dis- 
 please him. With his " wise, sweet smile," he re- 
 marked, " I confess a tender interest in any men- 
 tion of my poems ; I am so seldom reminded that 
 they are ever read by anybody. It is only my 
 prose that gives them a sort of vicarious vitality ; " 
 a just statement of the comparative esteem in 
 which his prose and verse were held in those early 
 years of the second half of the century. After 
 some deprecatory words from me, he went on, in 
 
344 MY OWN STORY 
 
 his peculiar, hesitating manner, pausing often as 
 if seeking the right word, then uttering it with an 
 emphasis that relieved it of any suspicion of uncer- 
 tainty : — 
 
 " I feel it a hardship that — with something of 
 a lover's passion for what is to me the most pre- 
 cious thing in life, poetry — I have no gift of 
 fluency in it, only a rude and stammering utter- 
 ance." 
 
 After this I felt there was no longer any danger 
 of appearing a base flatterer ; I forgot his fine in- 
 junction of forbearance, in the presence of high 
 behavior to refrain from speech, — 
 
 " Nobility more nobly to repay ; " — 
 
 and averred the penetrating thought, often the in- 
 comparable note of beauty and sweetness, I found 
 in his verse, citing some lines that at least attested 
 an appreciative familiarity with it. "Here and 
 there a touch ; here and there a grain among the 
 husks," he smilingly admitted. To all which I lis- 
 tened with intense interest, having hitherto been 
 barely able to conceive of any limitations, con- 
 scious or other, in the master I so much revered ; 
 fancying the rudenesses he deplored to be an es- 
 sential part of his scheme, a relieving background 
 to his beauties ; fondly imagining some magic of 
 genius even in his rare grammatical lapses, like 
 
EMERSON AND ALCOTT 345 
 
 the strange error of construction in these lines, 
 perpetuated, I think, in later editions, — an error 
 which a simple transposition of the words to their 
 natural order will instantly reveal, — 
 
 11 There need no vows to bind 
 Whom not each other seek, but find." 
 
 The talk turning upon other topics, I remem- 
 ber particularly what was said of Alcott, one of 
 whose " Conversations " I had lately attended, 
 and found, as I confessed, disappointing. I said, 
 " It was no doubt partly my fault that he was n't 
 inspired ; for, as he told us complacently after- 
 wards, 'a wise man among blockheads is the great- 
 est blockhead of all.' " 
 
 With an amused smile Emerson replied, " That 
 is Alcott ! He is wise, but he cannot always com- 
 mand his wisdom. More than most men, he needs 
 provocation — and the happy moment." When I 
 asked why so great a man had never written any- 
 thing remarkable, he said, "He makes sad work 
 indeed when he attempts to put his thoughts on 
 paper; as if the jealous Muse forsook him the 
 moment he betakes himself to his pen." I recall 
 also this observation : " He has precious goods on 
 his shelves ; but he has no show-window." This 
 was the first time I ever heard the " show-window " 
 metaphor used in this way, and I am inclined to 
 think it originated with Emerson, perhaps on this 
 
346 MY OWN STORY 
 
 occasion. I myself may have aided to popularize 
 it by quoting him. 
 
 I had after that opportunities of seeing the 
 more familiar side of the sage ; and I remember 
 how scandalized I once was, at a Saturday Club 
 dinner (when I was present as a guest, not as a 
 member), to hear him rallied by the convivial and 
 too irreverent Horatio Woodman for his " neglect 
 of duty " and " want of conscience " in some 
 business of the club. Emerson took the badinage 
 in good part, answering, in a sort of dazed sur- 
 prise, that he had not understood just what part 
 of the neglected business had been intrusted to 
 him. "You should have known," said Wood- 
 man. "Every member of this club is expected 
 to do his duty." I could n't help recalling the 
 incident, a few years later, when Woodman sud- 
 denly dropped out, not only from the Saturday 
 Club, but from all business and social circles that 
 knew him so well as a man of affairs and a con- 
 sorter with literary celebrities ; vanishing in a 
 manner that unfortunately gave color to charges 
 of " neglect of duty," and even of the more serious 
 "want," on his part. 
 
 At that same table I, for the first and only time, 
 saw Emerson, sitting opposite me, light a cigar, 
 and pull away at it as unconcernedly as the least 
 saintly man at the board. That he should partake 
 
EMERSON AND ALCOTT 347 
 
 sparingly of wine, I regarded as fitting enough. 
 But to me there appeared something incongruous 
 about the cigar, I hardly know why ; for it always 
 seemed right and proper that Holmes, Lowell, 
 and even Longfellow should smoke. I believe, 
 however, that Emerson did not have the tobacco 
 habit. His indulgence (if it was an indulgence) 
 was limited to rare occasions. 
 
 V 
 
 Emerson's appearance was striking, and his 
 manner not without a certain austere awkward- 
 ness, especially noticeable on the lecture platform, 
 where for years I seldom missed an opportunity 
 of hearing him. He was tall and spare, with a 
 marked stoop of the shoulders, a head carried 
 slightly forward, and fine eyes of a peculiar peer- 
 ing, penetrating expression. The strong aquiline 
 nose was the most characteristic feature, but he 
 had ears to match ; they were the side wheels to 
 that prow ; viewed behind, they stood out from 
 his head like wings borrowed from the feet of 
 Mercury. The head itself was one to baffle 
 phrenology. There seemed to be nothing re- 
 markable about it except its unusual height in 
 the spiritual and moral regions, veneration, firm- 
 ness, self-esteem. It was otherwise almost com- 
 monplace, full in the observing faculties, but 
 
348 MY OWN STORY 
 
 falling away to flatness in what is known as 
 causality ; likewise full, however, in ideality and 
 sublimity. His power did not lie in the so-called 
 reasoning faculties ; he neither possessed nor 
 overmuch esteemed the gifts of the controver- 
 sialist and the dialectician. He never argued, he 
 announced ; what was reasoning in others was in 
 him a questioning of the perceptions. To all this 
 add temperament, genius, the torrential source of 
 being we name the soul, elusive to the anatomist, 
 and to the fumbling fingers of the phrenologist 
 forever past finding out. 
 
 In lecturing he had but one gesture, a down- 
 ward thrust of his clenched right hand, held con- 
 torted and tense at his side, and used with uncon- 
 scious earnestness in driving his imaginary stakes. 
 He was at times amusingly careless with his manu- 
 script, losing his place and searching for it with 
 stoical indifference to his patiently waiting audi- 
 ence, — " up to my old tricks," as I once heard 
 him say, when he was an unusually long time 
 shuffling the misplaced leaves. He had the same 
 habit that marked his conversation, of seeming 
 often to pause and hesitate before coming down 
 with force upon the important word. His voice 
 was a pure baritone, and a perfect vehicle for his 
 thought, which in great and happy moments im- 
 parted to it a quality I never heard in any other 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 
 
EMERSON AND ALCOTT 349 
 
 human speech. Schools of oratory, teachers of 
 elocution, might have learned a new lesson from 
 those resonant intonations ; and I knew at least 
 one professor of the art who studied them with 
 the closest admiring attentiveness. Professor 
 Lewis Monroe, who had himself a voice of extra- 
 ordinary breadth and mellowness and of highest 
 culture, once said to me, as we walked away 
 together from one of the lectures, " Those tones 
 cannot be taught ; they are possible only to him 
 who can fill them with the same energy of spirit ; 
 it is the soul that creates that voice." Wendell 
 Phillips had an organ of greater range, on the 
 whole the most effective oratorical instrument I 
 ever heard ; it had all the notes of persuasion, 
 sarcasm, invective, impassioned appeal ; in its 
 combination of qualities surpassing that of the 
 graceful and finished Everett, the witty and fa- 
 miliar Beecher, the too ponderous Sumner, the 
 almost inspired Kossuth, — even the voice of the 
 great Webster, as I heard it, probably in its 
 decadence, when the worn and weary statesman 
 was lifted to his feet, to make his last speech in 
 Faneuil Hall. Emerson was no orator, like either 
 of these ; he had no gift of extemporary utterance, 
 no outburst of improvisation. But in the expres- 
 sion of ethical thought, or in downright moral 
 vehemence, I believed and still believe him un- 
 
35o MY OWN STORY 
 
 equaled. Well I remember how he once thrilled 
 an immense audience in Tremont Temple, in the 
 Kansas Free State war days, in speaking of the 
 principles of the Declaration of Independence, 
 which Rufus Choate had recently brushed rather 
 contemptuously aside as "glittering generalities." 
 Emerson quoted the phrase ; then after a mo- 
 ment's pause, hurled at the remotest benches 
 these words, like ringing javelins : " They do 
 glitter ! they have a right to glitter ! " with a 
 concentrated power no orator could have sur- 
 passed. 
 
 VI 
 
 The Alcott Conversation to which I have al- 
 luded was held one evening, at the house of Mr. 
 Alonzo Newton, in Cambridge ; and there were 
 present, besides myself, Mr. and Mrs. Newton and 
 Mr. Lewis Monroe, all eager for new thought 
 and full of the joyous anticipation of listening to 
 so sublime a teacher. I recollect his main stock 
 of ideas, — upon diet (he was a vegetarian, as I 
 had once been for a good twelvemonth) ; upon 
 temperament, insisting upon the superiority of 
 the light, or angelic, to the dark, or demonic, and 
 instancing himself and Emerson as types of the 
 " highest," Mrs. Newton and myself as " almost 
 the highest," and Mr. Newton and Mr. Monroe 
 as much lower in the scale ; then, among other 
 
EMERSON AND ALCOTT 351 
 
 things, the proper attitude of a wise man uttering 
 his wisdom, — not standing, but seated (he himself 
 always sat). As Monroe had aspirations toward 
 oratory, and usually felt an impulse to rise to his 
 feet when he had anything impressive to say even 
 to a small audience, he ventured a question on 
 that point ; to which Alcott answered serenely 
 that such an attitude might be natural to a person 
 of the inferior temperament, but not to one of the 
 purer type. I said I should hardly suppose that 
 temperament had so much to do with it, in Mon- 
 roe's case, as his habit in teaching; he was accus- 
 tomed to talking on his feet ; I was not, and would 
 never talk on my feet, if I could help it. Alcott 
 said oracularly, "I teach ; I sit." 
 
 He thereupon took from his pocket a limp- 
 covered book in which were copied or pasted 
 selections that he at times relied upon to help 
 out his Conversations. He first read Emerson's 
 Bacchus (which I knew by heart), and read it 
 badly, in a sort of schoolboy manner, amazing in 
 one who called himself a teacher, and who had 
 in fact been a school-teacher many years of his 
 life. This he followed with The Goblet, the first 
 lines of which were indelibly impressed upon 
 my memory by the twang and unction of his 
 intonations. 
 
352 MY OWN STORY 
 
 " I drank the dregs of every cup, 
 All institutions I drank up ; 
 But still one cup remains for me, 
 The sacred cup of Family." 
 
 " That is not Emerson's ? " I commented, al- 
 though the poem had lines in Emerson's manner, 
 
 — I should say now in Emerson's worst manner. 
 " It is — not — Emerson's," Alcott slowly re- 
 plied ; and as no further comment was forthcom- 
 ing, he closed the book, in a dead silence. I knew 
 then that the poem was his own, as well as I did 
 when I saw it long afterwards in his Tablets, with 
 emendations, and — what was still more to its 
 advantage — without the singsong. As Monroe 
 was then beginning his great work as a teacher of 
 elocution, which finally developed into the School 
 of Oratory (of Boston University), and as the first 
 principle of his system was absolute naturalness 
 of tone and emphasis, I felt — and indeed a glance 
 at his countenance during the reading assured me 
 
 — that he had pleasantly recovered from the shock 
 of having his impulse as to attitude condemned 
 by our philosopher as belonging to the lower tem- 
 perament. 
 
 After that, more abstruse subjects were intro- 
 duced, and Alcott threw out some of his transcen- 
 dental ideas, not with any coherence or coordina- 
 tion, but rather in hints and tangents. These 
 
LEWIS B. MONROE 
 
 At the age of 38 
 
EMERSON AND ALCOTT 353 
 
 regarded preexistence, — which he entertained 
 not poetically, like Wordsworth in his Intimations, 
 but more literally even than Plato, from whom his 
 particular views on the subject appeared to have 
 been derived, — with especial reference to the 
 "lapse." By this he meant the lapse from the 
 original state of perfection in which the souls of 
 men were created, and from which they fell be- 
 fore they were born into the world, or there was a 
 world for them to be born into. The creation of 
 the world itself seemed to have been disastrously 
 affected by this lapse. As, according to Spenser, 
 whose familiar line he quoted, — 
 
 " Soule is forme, and doth the bodie make," — 
 
 so, according to Alcott, by a supposed law of cor- 
 respondences more subtle than Swedenborg's, the 
 soul of man made the world, and, because of the 
 said lapse, flawed it with imperfections. Reptiles 
 and other malignant and grotesque creatures were 
 merely man's low thoughts and evil dispositions 
 projected into those concrete forms. It was anew 
 juggling of the old riddle, — if man was created 
 perfect, how could he fall ? and, since a sinless 
 deity could not have created sin, how came sin into 
 the world ? It was hard to tell whether this curi- 
 ous readaptation of the Calvinistic dogmas of the 
 fall of man and the origin of evil, with its strong 
 
354 MY OWN STORY 
 
 flavor of Neo-Platonism, was to be received as 
 fact or fable ; but what I learned subsequently of 
 Alcott's philosophy convinced me that it was seri- 
 ously meant. Even in those early days, before 
 the publication of The Origin of Species had revo- 
 lutionized nineteenth-century thought, the best 
 minds were coming gradually to a perception of 
 the truth, — more or less dimly foreshadowed by 
 here and there a writer ancient or modern, — that 
 the methods of nature are evolutionary ; that, as 
 Emerson expressed it, in the fine pre-Darwinian 
 lines, — 
 
 " Striving to be man, the worm 
 Mounts through all the spires of form." 
 
 But Alcott's theory was quite the reverse of this, 
 — that man, instead of ascending through nature, 
 had descended into it from some previous state 
 of existence, and had muddled it. Much of this 
 appeared to me hazy fantasticality. We found him, 
 nevertheless, an interesting man, and well worth 
 our money (his fee for a Conversation was any- 
 where from five dollars upwards, or whatever his 
 friends chose to give him) ; although this particu- 
 lar Conversation proved, as I confessed to Emer- 
 son, disappointing. 
 
 VII 
 Some time after this I had the pleasure of at- 
 tending another of these Conversations, which was 
 
EMERSON AND ALCOTT 355 
 
 held at the house of Dr. William F. Charming, — 
 a son of the great Channing, and a man of scien- 
 tific attainments, well known at that time as the 
 inventor of Boston's system of electric fire alarm. 
 Alcott should on that occasion have talked well, 
 if ever ; for there were present, besides Channing 
 and other persons of culture, Whipple the essayist, 
 and Emerson himself. Even in that atmosphere 
 his genius spread but feeble and ineffectual wings. 
 The Conversation was much more constrained 
 than it had been in the smaller company at Mr. 
 Newton's ; and I remember how depressingly it 
 flagged, until Emerson, as if to prompt his friend, 
 perhaps also to give him a hint as to his inert con- 
 dition and a chance to explain himself out of it, 
 spoke of the intermittence of the divine influx, 
 saying with his customary alternating pause and 
 compensating emphasis, — "What do you think 
 of the — solstice ? of the — eclipse ? We are not 
 always — in the sun." 
 
 Yet with that opening Alcott had only cloudy 
 and commonplace suggestions to make, regarding 
 reaction after effort, periods of rest, and the like ; 
 never once soaring into the blue. I could not 
 help recalling, and wishing to quote, the fine sen- 
 tences Emerson himself had struck out on this 
 theme, in one of his essays, writing of the differ- 
 ence between one hour and another in life ; of our 
 
356 MY OWN STORY 
 
 faith coming in moments, our power descending 
 into us we know not whence ; and of our being 
 pensioners of this ethereal river whose flowing we 
 neither control nor comprehend. I was able sub- 
 sequently to recall many things said by others that 
 evening, although nobody talked particularly well ; 
 but hardly anything of Alcott's. His part in the 
 Conversation seemed strangely lacking in spon- 
 taneity and point. If to me so much less memo- 
 rable than I had previously found it, at my friend's 
 house in Cambridge, it could not, I am sure, have 
 been altogether owing to my greater susceptibility 
 to the first impression. 
 
 VIII 
 
 Alcott was tall and well proportioned, with thin 
 white hair worn in long, flowing locks, a pure, pale 
 complexion, placid features, and a rather loose 
 mouth. Placidity appeared to be his normal con- 
 dition, from which you would have said no con- 
 ceivable circumstances could rouse him to any dis- 
 play of energy. If an acquaintance met him in 
 the woods, he could be counted upon to do two 
 things, — begin to discourse, and to look about 
 for a log to sit down on. He began life as a 
 Yankee peddler ; but that occupation, commonly 
 thought inseparable from shrewdness and an eye 
 for the dollar, did not seem to have developed in 
 
EMERSON AND ALCOTT 357 
 
 him a sense of the practical value of money, or of 
 pecuniary obligation. He had perfect faith in a 
 Providence that justified the ways and looked out 
 for the welfare of the saints. A friend of mine 
 once saw him on a Nantasket boat, without a 
 ticket, or money to pay for one. When called 
 to account by the fare-taker, he remarked inno- 
 cently that the trip had attracted him, and that he 
 believed "there would be some provision" — a 
 belief that was immediately vindicated by a pas- 
 senger recognizing him, and stepping up to make 
 the said "provision." There were times, before 
 his daughter Louisa began to earn money by her 
 facile and popular pen, when the family would 
 have starved but for the generous gifts of Emer- 
 son and others, and the energies of Mrs. Alcott, a 
 woman of great worth and good sense, who kept 
 the wolf from the door while her husband dreamed 
 dreams. 
 
 I met him occasionally in those years, and tried 
 hard to accept his own estimate of himself, and 
 to see in him what Emerson saw. His own esti- 
 mate and what Emerson saw are curiously shown 
 in a passage from Emerson's diary, quoted in San- 
 born's Life of Alcott : "I said to him, ' A great 
 man formulates his thought. Who can tell what 
 you exist to say ? You at least ought to say what 
 is your thought, what you stand for.' He looked 
 
358 MY OWN STORY 
 
 about a little and answered that he ' had not a lec- 
 ture or a book, — but if Zoroaster, Pythagoras, 
 Socrates, Behmen, Swedenborg were to meet in 
 this town, he should not be ashamed, but should 
 be free of that company.' It was well said, and 
 I know not whom in this country they would ask 
 for so readily." 
 
 I wrote once, in an epigram intended for the 
 eye of a friend : — 
 
 Do you care to meet Alcott ? His mind is a mirror, 
 Reflecting the unspoken thought of his hearer : 
 To the great he is great ; to the fool he 's a fool : 
 In the world's dreary desert a crystalline pool, 
 Where a lion looks in and a lion appears ; 
 But an ass will see only his own ass's ears. 
 
 But he was not always great even to the great. 
 Margaret Fuller, who had unsurpassed opportuni- 
 ties of judging him, having known him intimately 
 for years and been associated with him in his 
 famous Boston school, — of whom he himself wrote 
 (in his diary) that she had " a deeper insight into 
 character than any of her contemporaries," — 
 never found Alcott " great " until on one happy 
 occasion, regarding which she wrote to Emerson, 
 " I am inclined to think he deserves your praise, 
 and that he deceived neither you nor himself in 
 saying I had not yet seen him." This seems, 
 however, to have been an exceptional experience 
 
A. BRONSON ALCOTT 
 
EMERSON AND ALCOTT 359 
 
 on the part of Miss Fuller. If it took the fore- 
 most woman of her day so long to obtain even 
 that glimpse, it is small wonder that to so many 
 who lacked her opportunities the "lion" should 
 have remained unrevealed. 
 
 When I found that even his most illustrious 
 friend failed at times to evoke a luminous image 
 from the pool that to my apprehension appeared 
 oftener stagnant than crystalline, I was still bound 
 to credit those who discovered in him a profundity 
 I could never perceive. Yet I have marveled not 
 a little at Emerson's taking so seriously preten- 
 sions that must even to him at times have seemed 
 grotesque, as when Alcott once said to him (as 
 cited again in Sanborn's Life of Alcott), "You 
 write of Plato, Pythagoras, Jesus ; why do not you 
 write of me ? " 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 WALT WHITMAN — WITH GLIMPSES OF CHASE 
 AND O'CONNOR 
 
 I first made acquaintance with Whitman's writ- 
 ings when a newspaper notice of the earliest edi- 
 tion of Leaves of Grass reached me, in Paris, in 
 the autumn of 1855. It was the most exhilarating 
 piece of news I had received from America during 
 the six months of my absence abroad. Such vigor, 
 such graphic force, such human sympathy, such 
 scope and audacity in the choice and treatment of 
 themes, found in me an eagerly interested reader 
 of the copious extracts which the notice contained. 
 When I came to see the volume itself, — the thin, 
 small quarto of 1855, — I found in it much that 
 impressed me as formless and needlessly offensive ; 
 and these faults were carried to extremes in the 
 second and enlarged edition of 1856. Yet the 
 tremendous original power of this new bard, and 
 the freshness, as of nature itself, which breathed 
 through the best of his songs or sayings, continued 
 to hold their spell over me, and inspired me with 
 
WALT WHITMAN 361 
 
 intense curiosity as to the man. But I had no 
 opportunity of meeting him till he came to Boston 
 in the spring of i860, to put his third edition 
 through the press. 
 
 Then, one day, I was stopped on Washington 
 Street by a friend who made this startling an- 
 nouncement : " Walt Whitman is in town ; I have 
 just seen him ! " When I asked where, he replied : 
 "At the stereotype foundry, just around the 
 corner. Come along ! I'll take you to him." The 
 author of Leaves of Grass had loomed so large in 
 my imagination as to seem almost superhuman ; 
 and I was filled with some such feeling of wonder 
 and astonishment as if I had been invited to meet 
 Socrates or King Solomon. 
 
 We found a large, gray-haired and gray-bearded, 
 plainly dressed man, reading proof-sheets at a desk 
 in a little dingy office, with a lank, unwholesome- 
 looking lad at his elbow, listlessly watching him. 
 The man was Whitman, and the proofs were those 
 of his new edition. There was a scarcity of chairs, 
 and Whitman, rising to receive us, offered me his ; 
 but we all remained standing except the sickly 
 looking lad, who kept his seat until Whitman 
 turned to him and said, " You 'd better go now ; 
 I'll see you this evening." After he had gone 
 out, Whitman explained : " He is a friendless boy 
 I found at my boarding place. I am trying to 
 
362 MY OWN STORY 
 
 cheer him up and strengthen him with my mag- 
 netism ; " a practical but curiously prosaic illus- 
 tration of these powerful lines in the early 
 poems : — 
 
 " To any one dying, thither I speed and twist the knob of the 
 
 door. . . . 
 I seize the descending man, I raise him with resistless will. . . . 
 
 despairer, here is my neck, hang your whole weight upon me ! 
 
 1 dilate you with tremendous breath, I buoy you up, 
 
 Every room of the house do I fill with an armed force, lovers of 
 
 me, bafflers of graves ; 
 Sleep ! they and I keep guard all night, 
 Not doubt, not decease shall dare to lay finger upon you." 
 
 The difference between the prosaic fact and the 
 poetic expression was not greater than the contrast 
 between Whitman as I had imagined him and the 
 simple, well-mannered man who stood and talked 
 with us. From his own descriptions of himself, 
 and from the swing and impetus of his lines, I 
 had pictured him proud, alert, grandiose, defiant of 
 the usages of society ; and I found him the quiet- 
 est of men. I really remember but one thing he 
 said, after sending away the boy. The talk turning 
 on his proof-sheets, I asked how the first poems 
 impressed him, at this re-reading ; to which he 
 replied, " I am astonished to find myself capable 
 of feeling so much." The conversation was all 
 very quiet, pitched in a low key, and I went away 
 somewhat disappointed that he did not say or do 
 
WALT WHITMAN 363 
 
 something extraordinary and admirable ; one of 
 the noticeable things about him being an absence 
 of all effort to make a good impression. 
 
 II 
 
 I got on vastly better with him when, the next 
 Sunday morning, he came out to see me on Pros- 
 pect Hill, in Somerville, where I was then living 
 (in the later home of the Newtons). 
 
 The weather was perfect, — it was early May ; 
 the few friends I introduced to him were congenial 
 spirits ; he was happy and animated, and we spent 
 the day together in such hearty and familiar inter- 
 course that when I parted with him in the evening, 
 on East Cambridge bridge, having walked with 
 him thus far on his way back to Boston, I felt that 
 a large, new friendship had shed a glow on my 
 life. Of much of that day's talk I have a vivid 
 recollection, — even of its trivialities. He was not 
 a loud laugher, and rarely made a joke, but he 
 greatly enjoyed the pleasantries of others. He 
 liked especially any allusion, serious or jocular, to 
 his poems. When, at dinner, preparing my dish 
 of salad, I remarked that I was employed as his 
 critics would be when his new edition was out, he 
 queried, " Devouring Leaves of Grass ? " " No," 
 I said, " cutting up Leaves of Grass ! " — which 
 amused him more, I fancy, than the cutting up 
 
364 MY OWN STORY 
 
 did that came later. As the afternoon waned, 
 and he spoke of leaving us, the vivacious hostess 
 placed a book before the face of the clock. I 
 said " Put Leaves of Grass there. Nobody can 
 see through that." " Not even the author ? " he 
 said, with a whimsical lifting of the brows. 
 
 Much of the talk was about himself and his 
 poems, in every particular of which I was pro- 
 foundly interested. He told me of his boyhood 
 in Brooklyn ; going to work in a printing office at 
 the age of fourteen ; teaching school at seventeen 
 and eighteen; writing stories and sketches for 
 periodicals under his full name, Walter Whitman 
 (his first Leaves of Grass was copyrighted by 
 Walter Whitman, after which he discarded " Wal- 
 ter " for " Walt ") ; editing newspapers and mak- 
 ing political speeches, on the Democratic side ; 
 leading an impulsive, irregular sort of life, and 
 absorbing, as probably no other man ever did, the 
 common aspects of the cities he was so proud of, 
 Brooklyn and New York. His friendships were 
 mostly with the common people, — pilots, drivers, 
 mechanics ; and his favorite diversions crossing 
 the ferries, riding on the top of omnibuses, and 
 attending operas. He liked to get off alone by 
 the seashore, read Homer and Ossian with the 
 salt air on his cheeks, and shout their winged 
 words to the winds and waves. The book he 
 
WALT WHITMAN 365 
 
 knew best was the Bible, the prophetical parts of 
 which stirred in him a vague desire to be the bard 
 or prophet of his own time and country. 
 
 Then, at the right moment, he read Emerson. 
 
 Ill 
 
 I was extremely interested to know how far the 
 influence of our greatest writer had been felt in 
 the making of a book which, without being at all 
 imitative, was pitched in the very highest key of 
 self-reliance. In his letter to Emerson, printed 
 in the second edition of Leaves of Grass, speak- 
 ing of " Individuality, that new moral American 
 continent," Whitman had averred : "Those shores 
 you found ; I say, you led the States there, — 
 have led me there." And it seemed hardly possi- 
 ble that the first determined attempt to cast into 
 literature a complete man, with all his pride and 
 passions, should have been made by one whose 
 feet were not already firmly planted on "those 
 shores." Then there was the significant fact of 
 his having mailed a copy of his first edition to 
 Emerson. 
 
 Whitman talked frankly on the subject, that 
 day on Prospect Hill, and told how he became 
 acquainted with Emerson's writings. He was at 
 work as a carpenter (his father's trade before him) 
 in Brooklyn, building with his own hands and on 
 
366 MY OWN STORY 
 
 his own account small and very plain houses for 
 laboring men ; as soon as one was finished and 
 sold, beginning another, — houses of two or three 
 rooms. This was in 1854; he was then thirty- 
 five years old. He lived at home with his mother ; 
 going off to his work in the morning and return- 
 ing at night, carrying his dinner pail like any com- 
 mon laborer. Along with his pail he usually 
 carried a book, between which and his solitary 
 meal he would divide his nooning. Once the 
 book chanced to be a volume of Emerson ; and 
 from that time he took with him no other writer. 
 His half-formed purpose, his vague aspirations, 
 all that had lain smouldering so long within him, 
 waiting to be fired, rushed into flame at the touch 
 of those electric words, — the words that burn in 
 the prose-poem Nature, and in the essays on 
 Spiritual Laws, The Over- Soul, Self-Reliance. 
 The sturdy carpenter in his working-day garb, 
 seated on his pile of boards ; a poet in that rude 
 disguise, as yet but dimly conscious of his powers ; 
 in one hand the sandwich put up for him by his 
 good mother, his other hand holding open the 
 volume that revealed to him his greatness and 
 his destiny, — this is the picture which his simple 
 narrative called up, that Sunday so long ago, and 
 which has never faded from my memory. 
 
 He freely admitted that he could never have 
 
WALT WHITMAN 367 
 
 written his poems if he had not first " come to 
 himself," and that Emerson helped him to "find 
 himself." I asked him if he thought he would 
 have come to himself without that help. He 
 said, " Yes, but it would have taken longer." 
 And he used this characteristic expression : " I 
 was simmering, simmering, simmering ; Emerson 
 brought me to a boil." 
 
 It was in that summer of 1854, while he was 
 still at work upon his houses, that he began the 
 Leaves of Grass, which he wrote, rewrote, and 
 re-rewrote (to quote again his own words), and 
 afterward set in type with his own hand. 
 
 I make this statement thus explicit because a 
 question of profound personal and literary inter- 
 est is involved, and because it is claimed by some 
 of the later friends of Whitman that he wrote his 
 first Leaves of Grass before he had read Emerson. 
 When they urge his own authority for their con- 
 tention, I can only reply that he told me distinctly 
 the contrary, when his memory was fresher. 
 
 The Emersonian influence is often clearly 
 traceable in Whitman's early poems ; seldom in 
 the later. It is in the first line of the very first 
 poem in which he struck the keynote of his defi- 
 ant chant : " I celebrate myself." And at times 
 Emerson's identical thought reappears with slight 
 change in the Leaves. Two or three instances 
 
368 MY OWN STORY 
 
 out of many will suffice. Emerson wrote : " Sup- 
 pose you should contradict yourself, what then ? 
 With consistency a great soul has simply nothing 
 to do." Whitman says : — 
 
 " Do I contradict myself ? 
 Very well, then, I contradict myself, 
 I am large, I contain multitudes." 
 
 Emerson : " Shall I skulk and dodge and duck, 
 with my unreasonable apologies ? " Whitman : — 
 
 " I see that the elementary laws never apologize, . . . 
 We have had ducking and deprecating about enough." 
 
 Emerson : " The unstable estimates of men 
 crowd to him whose mind is filled with a truth 
 as the heaped waves of the Atlantic follow the 
 moon." Whitman: — 
 
 u Surely whoever speaks to me in the right voice, him or her I 
 shall follow, 
 As the waters follow the moon, silently, with fluid steps, any- 
 where around the globe." 
 
 Yet the form Whitman chose for his message 
 was as independent of Emerson's as of all other 
 literary forms whatsoever. Outwardly, his un- 
 rhymed and unmeasured lines resemble those of 
 Tupper's Proverbial Philosophy ; but in no other 
 way are they akin to those colorless platitudes. 
 To the music of the opera, for which he had a 
 passion, more than to anything else, was due his 
 
WALT WHITMAN 369 
 
 emancipation from what he called the "ballad- 
 style " of poetry, by which he meant poetry ham- 
 pered by rhyme and metre. " But for the opera," 
 he declared, that day on Prospect Hill, "I could 
 never have written Leaves of Grass." — 
 
 Whitman was at that time a man of striking 
 personal appearance, as indeed he always was : 
 fully six feet tall, and large proportionally ; slow 
 of movement, and inclined to walk with a loun- 
 ging gait, which somebody has likened to an " ele- 
 phantine roll." He wore his shirt collar open at 
 the throat, exposing his hairy chest, in decidedly 
 unconventional fashion. His necktie was drawn 
 into a loose knot, or hung free, with serpentine 
 ends coiled away somewhere in his clothing. He 
 was scrupulously neat in person, — " never dressed 
 in black, always dressed freely and clean in strong 
 clothes," according to his own description of him- 
 self ; head massive, complexion florid-tawny, fore- 
 head seamed with wrinkles, which, along with his 
 premature grayness, made him look much older 
 than he was. Mr. Howells, in his First Impres- 
 sions of Literary New York, describes a meeting 
 with him a few months later, that same year 
 (i860), and calls him "the benign old man." 
 Whitman was at that time forty-one. 
 
 I did not see him again for three years and a 
 half ; meanwhile the Civil War was raging, and 
 
370 MY OWN STORY 
 
 in 1862 he went to the front to nurse his brother, 
 Lieutenant-Colonel George W. Whitman, who had 
 been wounded at Fredericksburg. This was the 
 beginning of his hospital work, which became so 
 important an episode in his life. 
 
 IV 
 
 In the latter part of November, 1863, a fortu- 
 nate circumstance placed me in friendly relations 
 with Hon. Salmon P. Chase, and I became a guest 
 in his Washington home. He was then at the 
 summit of his fame and power as Secretary of the 
 Treasury, in which office his eminent ability, his 
 integrity of character, and his immense popularity 
 as the father of the "greenbacks" and the suc- 
 cessful manager of the Nation's finances in the 
 crisis of its greatest peril, had made him, next to 
 President Lincoln, the most important personage 
 in the government. 
 
 In person, the Secretary was a grand specimen 
 of massively compact manhood, perfectly erect, 
 over six feet tall (six feet one, I think he told 
 me) ; always decorously dressed, his imposing 
 figure commonly set off by a well-fitting frock 
 coat ; features full and strong, complexion light, 
 face smooth-shaven, and eyes light and beaming, 
 with that peculiar fullness of the eyeball that 
 denotes near-sightedness. He was august in the 
 
HON. SALMON P. CHASE 
 
SECRETARY CHASE 37 i 
 
 true sense, sometimes austere ; and I can under- 
 stand why some who did not know him under 
 favorable conditions should have thought him 
 cold-hearted. He was surprisingly unreserved 
 in his expressions of opinion regarding public 
 measures and public men, not even sparing the 
 President. His frankness of speech was habitual, 
 and undoubtedly gained him some enemies. I 
 remember two of his political friends coming in, 
 one evening, to present to him a young man who 
 had made himself the hero of the hour by writ- 
 ing a partisan article of a particularly slashing 
 character. The Secretary received him kindly, 
 but instead of praising his performance, said of it 
 simply — "I thought it very indiscreet," — with 
 a smile like a flower above a thorn. The thorn 
 pierced, nevertheless, and I noticed that the 
 young man went away with a diminished admira- 
 tion of the Secretary. 
 
 I saw a great deal of him during my stay, — 
 at his own table, where there were often noted 
 guests, in his private office, and at the Treasury 
 Department ; and I was frequently his companion 
 in before-breakfast walks. He was not distin- 
 guished for wit, but his conversation, always enter- 
 taining, was often embroidered with a playfulness 
 which the background of his stately presence set 
 off. At the breakfast table one morning he read 
 
372 MY OWN STORY 
 
 aloud, with an amusement we all shared, a ridicu- 
 lous newspaper account of his being locked in his 
 office with his report, which he was then writing, 
 and inaccessible even to President Lincoln. 
 
 I said, " They should add that when you go to 
 walk you have a guard." 
 
 He glanced at my slender goatee and quoted, — 
 
 " ' A whiskered pandour and a fierce hussar.' " 
 
 He strongly disapproved of the President's 
 habit of telling all sorts of stories, to all sorts of 
 people, on all sorts of occasions ; yet he himself 
 sometimes repeated a Lincoln story with good 
 effect. One evening (my note-book says Dec. i) he 
 came in to dinner after attending a cabinet meet- 
 ing at which the President submitted to his heads 
 of departments the draft of his message to Con- 
 gress, and having read it, invited their comments. 
 For some time — he said in relating the incident 
 — nobody spoke. Then he broke the awkward 
 silence by suggesting an amendment ; whereupon 
 Seward proposed another. 
 
 " Governor," said Lincoln, turning to his Sec- 
 retary of State, " you remind me of a Blue Grass 
 farmer who had a black man and a fine yoke of 
 oxen. One day the black man came running to 
 the house ; — ' Massa', says he, ' dat ar off ox, 
 him dead. T'udder too. T'ought I would n't tell 
 
CHASE AND O'CONNOR 373 
 
 you bofe tuh oncet, fear you could n't stand 
 'em ! ' " 
 
 Among the noted guests I remember meeting 
 at the Chase house that season were Senator 
 Sherman, Speaker Colfax, Beecher, Greeley, and 
 General Garfield, a frequent and familiar visitor. 
 It was during my stay that the Secretary's ac- 
 complished daughter, Kate Chase Sprague, of 
 whom he was exceedingly fond and proud, and 
 her millionaire bridegroom, the youthful Senator 
 from Rhode Island, returned from the famous 
 wedding tour that followed their recent brilliant 
 but ill-starred marriage, and took up their abode 
 beneath the paternal roof. 
 
 I had at that time few acquaintances in Wash- 
 ington. One of the most prized of these was 
 William Douglas O'Connor. He had turned aside 
 from literature, in which we who knew him in the 
 flower of his youthful promise had believed him 
 destined to excel, and entered a department of the 
 government, — one of those vast mausoleums in 
 which so many talents, small and great, have been 
 buried, and brave ambitions have turned quietly 
 to dust. Chase had himself, in his younger days, 
 sought a humble position in the Treasury ; and it 
 is quite possible that, had he obtained it, nothing 
 
374 M Y OWN STORY 
 
 would ever have turned him out of that tomb, ex- 
 cept the necessity of making room for some other 
 incumbent, under the hoary old spoils system, to 
 which, with all its evils, we must also accredit the 
 good sometimes resulting from such enforced lib- 
 erations. In the day of his greatness the Sec- 
 retary was not averse to being reminded of this 
 possibility, smiling sternly once, as I recall, when 
 a younger person at his table pictured him as a 
 clerk grown gray in the service, meekly receiving 
 his orders, — " Chase, do this ! " " Chase, attend to 
 that ! " — in the department where, having reached 
 it by other routes, and by the steps of statesman- 
 ship, he was then autocrat. 
 
 O'Connor's first employment was in the Trea- 
 sury ; in the Treasury, also, when I first knew him, 
 was that other valiant friend of Whitman's, John 
 Burroughs, who, fortunately for himself and his 
 readers, escaped O'Connor's fate. When O'Con- 
 nor left the Treasury it was to enter the Light- 
 house Board, where he became head clerk, and 
 sat like a spider in the midst of his web, a coast 
 light at the end of each invisible line, hundreds or 
 thousands of miles away. In those useful radia- 
 tions the beams of his genius became too deeply 
 immersed to shine otherwise than fitfully in what I 
 always deemed his proper sphere. Except to take 
 up now and then the championship of some cause 
 
WHITMAN AND O'CONNOR 375 
 
 that appealed to his chivalrous nature, like that of 
 Delia Bacon's Shakespearean heresy, or Elizabeth 
 Akers' authorship of Rock me to Sleep, or Whit- 
 man and his Leaves of Grass, at a time when the 
 man and his book were in the lowest depths of 
 that opprobrium from which they were so slow to 
 emerge, — but for occasional efforts of this sort, 
 the most eloquent of pens became subdued to the 
 daily routine of office drudgery. He was not 
 learned, in an academic sense, but he was a rapid 
 and omnivorous reader, with an astonishing mem- 
 ory, which when he wrote became an illumined 
 arsenal of literary allusion. It seemed as if such 
 weapons of language and rhetoric as he possessed 
 should have made him our foremost knight of let- 
 ters, an American Hugo. Perhaps he was con- 
 scious of some defect of temperament that unfitted 
 him for such a career. A certain heat and fury 
 seemed necessary to move his mind to creative 
 activity. There was in everything he wrote a 
 tendency to excess, which marred his remarkable 
 novel, Harrington, and in his polemic papers be- 
 trayed him into extravagances of over-statement. 
 He and Burroughs were the two earliest and 
 ablest champions of Walt Whitman's work ; but 
 their writings on that theme presented the widest 
 possible contrast : Burroughs's Walt Whitman as 
 Poet and Person being calm, unhurried, candid, 
 
376 MY OWN STORY 
 
 judicial ; The Good Gray Poet of O'Connor, all 
 aflame with wit and scorn and passionate elo- 
 quence. 
 
 O'Connor was then in the prime of his powers, 
 strikingly handsome, with a winning graciousness 
 of manner that gave to his gay volubility an in- 
 describable charm. I knew of his intimacy with 
 Whitman, and when one day I found him at his 
 office, and had answered his many questions, tell- 
 ing him where I was domiciled, one of the first I 
 asked in return was, "Where's Walt?" — the 
 familiar name by which Whitman was known to 
 his friends. 
 
 "What a chance ! " said O'Connor, in his ardent 
 way. " Walt is here in Washington, living close 
 by you, within a stone's throw of the Secretary's 
 door. Come to my house on Sunday evening, and 
 I will have him there to meet you." 
 
 VI 
 
 On seeing him again at O'Connor's, I found 
 Whitman but little changed, except that he was 
 more trimly attired, wearing a loosely fitting but 
 quite elegant suit of black, — yes, black at last ! 
 He was in the best of spirits ; and I remember 
 with what a superb and joyous pace he swung 
 along the street, between O'Connor and me, as 
 we walked home with him, after ten o'clock. 
 
WHITMAN AND O'CONNOR 377 
 
 Diagonally opposite to Chase's great house, on 
 the corner of E and 6th streets, stood one of those 
 old wooden buildings which then and for some 
 years afterwards lingered among the new and 
 handsome blocks rising around them, and made 
 the " city of magnificent distances " also a city of 
 astonishing architectural contrasts. In the fine, 
 large mansion, sumptuously furnished, cared for 
 by sleek and silent colored servants, and thronged 
 by distinguished guests, dwelt the great states- 
 man ; in the old tenement opposite, in a bare and 
 desolate back room, up three flights of stairs, quite 
 alone, lived the poet. Walt led the way up those 
 dreary stairs, partly in darkness, found the key- 
 hole of a door which he unlocked and opened, 
 scratched a match, and welcomed us to his garret. 
 
 Garret it literally was, containing hardly any 
 more furniture than a bed, a cheap pine table, and 
 a little sheet-iron stove in which there was no fire. 
 A window was open, and it was a December night. 
 But Walt, clearing a chair or two of their litter of 
 newspapers, invited us to sit down and stop awhile, 
 with as simple and sweet hospitality as if he had 
 been offering us the luxuries of the great mansion 
 across the square. 
 
 Sit down we did (O'Connor on the bed, as I 
 remember), and " drank delight of battle " over 
 books, the principal subjects being Shakespeare 
 
378 MY OWN STORY 
 
 and Walt's own Leaves of Grass. Over Shakes- 
 peare it was a sort of triangular combat, — O'Con- 
 nor maintaining the Baconian theory of the 
 authorship of the plays, and Walt joining with me 
 in attacking that chimera. On the other hand, I 
 agreed with O'Connor in his estimate of Lear and 
 Hamlet and Othello, which Walt belittled, prefer- 
 ring the historical plays, and placing Richard II. 
 foremost; although he thought all the plays prepos- 
 terously overrated. Of his own poems ("pomes" 
 he called them) he spoke modestly, listening with 
 interest to frank criticisms of them (which he 
 always had from me), and disclaiming the pro- 
 found hidden meanings O'Connor was inclined to 
 read into some of them. Ordinarily inert and slow 
 of speech, on occasions like this his large and gen- 
 erous nature became suffused with a magnificent 
 glow, which gave one some idea of the heat and 
 momentum that went to the making of his truly 
 great poems ; just as his sluggish moods seemed 
 to account for so much of his labored, unleavened 
 work. 
 
 O'Connor was a man of unfailing eloquence, 
 whom it was always delightful to listen to, even 
 when the rush of his enthusiasm carried him be- 
 yond the bounds of discretion, as it did in the 
 Bacon-Shakespeare business. Whitman's reason- 
 ing powers were not remarkable ; he did not im- 
 
WILLIAM D. O'CONNOR 
 
WALT WHITMAN 379 
 
 press me, then or at any time, as a great intellect ; 
 but he was original, intuitive, a seer, and his im- 
 mense and genial personality gave an interest to 
 everything he said. In my enjoyment of such 
 high discourse, I forgot the cheerless garret, the 
 stove in which there was no fire, the window that 
 remained open (Walt was a " fresh-air fiend "), and 
 my own freezing feet (we all kept on our over- 
 coats). I also forgot that I was a guest at the 
 great house across the quadrangle, and that I was 
 unprovided with a latch key, — a fact of which I 
 was reminded with rather startling unpleasantness, 
 when I left O'Connor at the foot of Walt's stairs, 
 hurried to the Secretary's door, I know not how 
 long after midnight, and found myself locked out. 
 All was still and dark within, except that I could 
 see a light left burning low for me in my own 
 chamber, a tantalizing reminder of the comfort I 
 had exchanged for the bleak, deserted streets. 
 My embarrassment was relieved when I reflected 
 that in those wild war times the Secretary was 
 prepared to receive dispatches at any hour of the 
 night. I rang boldly, as if I had been a messen- 
 ger bearing tidings of a nation's fate. The vesti- 
 bule gas was quickly turned up, and a sleepy- 
 looking colored boy let me in. 
 
3 8o MY OWN STORY 
 
 VII 
 
 Two mornings after this I went by appointment 
 to call on Whitman in his garret. " Don't come 
 before ten o'clock,'' he had warned me; and it was 
 after ten when I mounted his three flights and 
 knocked at the door of his room, — his terrible 
 room, as I termed it in notes taken at the time. 
 
 I found him partly dressed, and preparing his 
 own breakfast. There was a fire in the sheet-iron 
 stove, — the open door showed a few coals, — and 
 he was cutting slices of bread from a baker's loaf 
 with his jackknife, getting them ready for toasting. 
 The smallest of tin teakettles simmering on the 
 stove, a bowl and spoon, and a covered tin cup 
 used as a teapot comprised, with the aforesaid use- 
 ful jackknife, his entire outfit of visible housekeep- 
 ing utensils. His sugar bowl was a brown paper 
 bag. His butter plate was another piece of brown 
 paper, the same coarse wrapping in which he had 
 brought home his modest lump from the corner 
 grocery. His cupboard was an oblong pine box, 
 set up a few feet from the floor, opening outward, 
 with the bottom against the wall ; the two sides, 
 one above the other, made very good shelves. 
 
 I toasted his bread for him on the end of a 
 sharpened stick ; he buttered the slices with his 
 jackknife, and poured his tea at a corner of the 
 
WALT WHITMAN 381 
 
 table cleared for that purpose of its litter of books 
 and newspapers; and while he breakfasted we 
 talked. 
 
 His last slice buttered and eaten, he burned his 
 butter plate (showing the advantage of having no 
 dishes to wash), and set his bag of sugar in the 
 cupboard, along with his small parcel of tea ; then 
 he brought out from his trunk a package of manu- 
 script poems, which he read to me, and which 
 we discussed, for the next hour. 
 
 These were his war pieces, the Drum-Taps, then 
 nearly ready for publication. He read them un- 
 affectedly, with force and feeling, and in a voice 
 of rich but not resonant tones. I was interested 
 not alone in the poems, but also in his own inter- 
 pretation of the irregular yet often not unrhythmi- 
 cal lines. I did not find in them anything compar- 
 able with the greatly moving passages in the earlier 
 Leaves : they were more literary in their tone, 
 showing here and there lapses into the conven- 
 tional poetic diction, which he had flung off so 
 haughtily in the surge of the early impulse. They 
 contained, however, some fine, effective, patriotic, 
 and pathetic chants ; and were, moreover, entirely 
 free from the old offenses against propriety. I 
 hoped to be able to persuade some good Boston 
 house to publish the volume, but found, when I 
 came to make the attempt, that no firm would 
 
382 MY OWN STORY 
 
 undertake it ; and it remained in manuscript until 
 1865, when Whitman issued it at his own expense. 1 
 
 From that morning I saw him almost every day 
 or evening as long as I remained in Washington. 
 He was then engaged in his missionary work, in 
 the hospitals ; talking to the sick and wounded 
 soldiers, reading to them, writing letters for them, 
 cheering and comforting them sometimes by 
 merely sitting silent beside their cots, and per- 
 haps soothing a pallid brow with his sympathetic 
 hand. 
 
 He took me two or three times to the great 
 Armory Square Hospital, where I observed his 
 methods of work. I was surprised to learn that 
 he never read to the patients any of his own com- 
 positions, and that not one of those I talked with 
 knew him for a poet, or for anybody but plain 
 " Mr. Whitman." I cannot help speaking of one 
 poor fellow, who had asked to see me because 
 Whitman had told him I was the author of one 
 of the pieces he liked to hear read, and who 
 talked to me with tears in his eyes of the comfort 
 Whitman's visits had given him. The pathos of 
 the situation was impressed upon me by the cir- 
 
 1 Some time afterwards I had the satisfaction of engaging a 
 Boston bookseller to permit his imprint to be placed upon the 
 title-page of Whitman's Democratic Vistas, which was, however, 
 like the Drum-Taps, published at the author's expense. 
 
WHITMAN AND CHASE 383 
 
 cumstance that his foot was to be amputated 
 within an hour. 
 
 Whitman always carried into the wards a few 
 fruits and delicacies, which he distributed with 
 the approval of the surgeons and nurses. He 
 also circulated, among those who were well enough 
 to read, books and periodicals sent to him for that 
 purpose by friends in the North. Sometimes he 
 gave paper and envelopes and postage stamps, 
 and he was never without some good tobacco, to 
 be dispensed in special cases. He never used 
 tobacco himself, but he had compassion for those 
 who had been deprived of that solace, as he had 
 for all forms of suffering. He wrote Washington 
 letters that winter for the New York Times, the 
 income from which, together with contributions 
 from Northern friends, enabled him to carry on his 
 hospital work. 
 
 VIII 
 
 Whitman and Chase were the two men I saw 
 most of, at that time, in Washington. That I should 
 know them both familiarly, passing often from 
 the stately residence of the one to the humble 
 lodging of the other, seemed to me a simple and 
 natural thing at the time : great men both, each 
 nobly proportioned in body and stalwart in charac- 
 ter, and each invincibly true to his own ideals and 
 purposes : near neighbors, and yet very antipodes 
 
384 MY OWN STORY 
 
 in their widely contrasted lives, — one princely in 
 his position, dispensing an enormous patronage, 
 the slenderest rill of which would have made life 
 green for the other, struggling along the arid 
 ways of an honorable poverty. Both greatly am- 
 bitious : Chase devoutly believing it his right, and 
 likewise his destiny, to succeed Lincoln in the 
 presidency ; Whitman aspiring to be for all time 
 the poet of democracy and emancipated manhood, 
 — his simple prayer being, " Give me to speak 
 beautiful words ; take all the rest ! " One a con- 
 scientious High Churchman, reverencing tradition, 
 and finding ceremonious worship so helpful and 
 solacing that (as he once said to me earnestly) he 
 would have become a Roman Catholic, if he could 
 have brought himself to accept the Romish dog- 
 mas ; the other believing in the immanent spirit 
 and an ever-living inspiration, and as free from all 
 forms and doctrines as Abraham alone with Deity 
 in the desert. For the statesman I had a very 
 great admiration and respect ; for the poet I felt 
 a powerful attraction, something like a younger 
 brother's love ; and I confess a sweet and secret 
 joy in sometimes stealing away from the company 
 of polished and eminent people in the great house, 
 and crossing over to Walt in his garret, or going 
 to meet him at O'Connor's. 
 
 I thought no man more than Whitman merited 
 
WHITMAN AND CHASE 385 
 
 recognition and assistance from the government, 
 and I once asked him if he would accept a position 
 in one of the departments. He answered frankly 
 that he would. But he believed it improbable 
 that he could get an appointment, although (as he 
 mentioned casually) he had letters of recommenda- 
 tion from Emerson. 
 
 There were two of these, and they were espe- 
 cially interesting to me, as I knew something of 
 the disturbed relations existing between the two 
 men, on account of Whitman's indiscreet use of 
 Emerson's famous letter to him, acknowledging 
 the gift copy of the first Leaves of Grass. Whit- 
 man not only published that letter without the 
 writer's authority, but printed an extract from it, 
 in conspicuous gold, on the back of his second 
 edition, — "I greet you at the beginning of a 
 great career ; " thus making Emerson in some 
 sense an indorser not only of the first poems, but 
 of others he had never seen, and which he would 
 have preferred never to see in print. This was an 
 instance of bad taste, but not of intentional bad 
 faith, on the part of Whitman. Talking of it 
 once, he said, in his grand way : " I supposed 
 the letter was meant to be blazoned ; I regarded 
 it as the chart of an emperor." But Emerson had 
 no thought of acting the imperial part toward so 
 adventurous a voyager. I remember hearing him 
 
386 MY OWN STORY 
 
 allude to the incident shortly after that second 
 edition appeared. Speaking of the attention the 
 new poet was attracting, he mentioned an English- 
 man who had come to this country bringing a 
 letter to Whitman from Monckton Milnes (after- 
 ward Lord Houghton). "But," said Emerson, 
 " hearing that Whitman had not used me well in 
 the matter of letters, he did not deliver it." He 
 had afterwards made a strenuous effort to induce 
 Whitman to omit certain objectionable passages 
 from his edition of i860, and failed. And I knew 
 that the later writings of Whitman interested him 
 less and less. " No more evidence of getting into 
 form," he once remarked, — a singular comment, 
 it may be thought, from one whose own chief 
 defect as a writer seemed to be an imperfect 
 mastery of form. 
 
 With these things in mind, I read eagerly the 
 two letters from Emerson recommending Whit- 
 man for a government appointment. One was 
 addressed to Senator Sumner; the other, I was 
 surprised and pleased to find, to Secretary Chase. 
 I had but a slight acquaintance with Sumner, and 
 the letter to him I handed back. The one written 
 to Chase I wished to retain, in order to deliver it to 
 the Secretary with my own hands, and with such 
 furthering words as I could summon in so good 
 a cause. Whitman expressed small hope in the 
 
WHITMAN AND CHASE 387 
 
 venture, and stipulated that in case of the failure 
 he anticipated, I should bring back the letter. 
 
 As we left the breakfast table, the next morning, 
 I followed the Secretary into his private office, 
 where, after some pleasant talk, I remarked that I 
 was about to overstep a rule I had laid down for 
 myself on entering his house. He said, " What 
 rule ? " I replied, " Never to repay your hospi- 
 tality by asking of you any official favor." He 
 said I need n't have thought it necessary to make 
 that rule, for he was always glad to do for his 
 friends such things as he was constantly called 
 upon to do for strangers. Then I laid before him 
 the Whitman business. He was evidently im- 
 pressed by Emerson's letter, and he listened with 
 interest to what I had to say of the man and his 
 patriotic work. But he was troubled. " I am 
 placed," he said, "in a very embarrassing position. 
 It would give me great pleasure to grant this 
 request, out of my regard for Mr. Emerson ; " and 
 he was gracious enough to extend the courtesy of 
 this " regard " to me, also. But then he went on 
 to speak of Leaves of Grass as a book that had 
 made the author notorious ; and I found that he 
 judged it, as all but a very few persons then did, 
 not independently, on its own merits, but by con- 
 ventional standards of taste and propriety. He 
 had understood that the writer was a rowdy, — 
 
388 MY OWN STORY 
 
 " one of the roughs," — according to his descrip- 
 tions of himself. 
 
 I said, "He is as quiet a gentleman in his 
 manners and conversation as any guest who 
 enters your door." 
 
 He replied : " I am bound to believe what you 
 say ; but his writings have given him a bad repute, 
 and I should not know what sort of a place to give 
 to such a man," — with more to the same purpose. 
 
 I respected his decision, much as I regretted it ; 
 and, persuaded that nothing I could urge would in- 
 duce him to change it, I said I would relieve him 
 of all embarrassment in the business by withdraw- 
 ing the letter. He glanced again at the signature, 
 hesitated, and made this surprising response, — 
 
 " I have nothing of Emerson's in his handwrit- 
 ing, and I shall be glad to keep this." 
 
 I thought it hardly fair, but as the letter was 
 addressed to him, and had passed into his hands, 
 I could n't well reclaim it against his wishes. 
 
 Whitman seemed really to have formed some 
 hopes of the success of my mission, after I had 
 undertaken it, as he showed when I went to give 
 him an account of my interview with the Sec- 
 retary. He took the disappointment philosophi- 
 cally, but indulged in some sardonic remarks about 
 Chase and his department, regarding which some 
 choice scandals were then afloat. " He is right," 
 
WHITMAN AND CHASE 389 
 
 he said, " in preserving his saints from contamina- 
 tion by a man like me ! " But I stood up for the 
 Secretary, as, with the Secretary, I had stood up 
 for Whitman. Those very scandals had no doubt 
 rendered him cautious in making appointments. 
 And could any one be blamed for taking the 
 writer of Leaves of Grass at his word when, in 
 his defiance of conventionality, he had described 
 himself as "rowdyish," "disorderly," and worse ? 
 " ' I cock my hat as I please, indoors and out,' " 
 I quoted. Walt laughed, and said, " I don't blame 
 him ; it 's about what I expected." He asked for 
 the letter, and showed his amused disgust when 
 I explained how it had been pocketed by the Sec- 
 retary. 1 
 
 1 A brief memorandum of this interview, which Whitman made 
 in his diary, with characteristic carelessness in the formation of 
 sentences, appears, in facsimile of his handwriting, in a book by 
 Thomas Donaldson, Walt Whitman the Man. The book I 
 have never seen ; but a friend sends me a printed copy of the 
 memorandum. It is dated Dec. 11, and is as follows : 
 
 " This forenoon Mr. Trowbridge has been with me, — he had 
 a talk yesterday with S. P. Chase, the secretary of the treasury, 
 about me ; presented Emerson's letter to Mr. C. — he said some 
 commonplaces about wishing to oblige R. W. E. & Mr. Trow- 
 bridge ; — then said he considered Leaves of Grass a very bad 
 book, & he did not know how he could possibly bring its author 
 into the government service, especially if he put him in contact 
 with gentlemen employed in the bureaus, — did not think he 
 would be warranted in doing so, — he considered the author of 
 Leaves of Grass in the light of a decidedly disreputable person. 
 
390 MY OWN STORY 
 
 I should probably have had no difficulty in 
 securing the appointment if I had withheld Em- 
 erson's letter, and called my friend simply Mr. 
 Whitman, or Mr. Walter Whitman, without men- 
 tioning Leaves of Grass. But I felt that the Sec- 
 retary, if he was to appoint him, should know just 
 whom he was appointing ; and Whitman was the 
 last person in the world to shirk the responsibility 
 of having written an audacious book. 
 
 Whether the same candor was used in procur- 
 ing for him a clerkship in the Interior Depart- 
 ment, to which he was appointed later, I do not 
 know. He had been for some time performing 
 the duties of that position, without exciting any 
 other comment than that he performed them well, 
 when a new Secretary (James Harlan), coming in 
 under Johnson, and discovering that the grave 
 and silent man at a certain desk was the author 
 of a reprehensible book, dismissed him uncere- 
 moniously. 
 
 IX 
 
 It was this incident that called out from O'Con- 
 nor his brilliant monograph, The Good Gray Poet, 
 in which Whitman was so eloquently vindicated, 
 and the Secretary received so terrible a scourging. 
 
 Mr. T. mentioned to him my employment for a year past among 
 the wounded and sick soldiers, — it did not seem to make any 
 difference." 
 
WALT WHITMAN 39 1 
 
 What seemed for a time unmitigated ill fortune 
 proved to be a very good thing for Whitman. He 
 was soon after appointed to a better place in the 
 office of the Attorney-General, and he himself 
 used to say that it was O'Connor's defense that 
 turned the tide in his favor ; meaning the tide of 
 criticism and public opinion, which had until then 
 set so tremendously against him. O'Connor's 
 pamphlet was followed, two years later (1867), by 
 John Burroughs's Walt Whitman as Poet and 
 Person. Countless other publications on the 
 same inexhaustible theme have appeared since, — 
 reviews, biographies, personal recollections, studies 
 of Walt Whitman ; a recent Study by Burroughs 
 himself ; volumes of eulogy and exegesis, commen- 
 tary and controversy, wise and foolish ; a whole 
 library of Whitman literature, in English, French, 
 German, and other languages. There are Walt 
 Whitman Societies and Fellowships, and at least 
 one periodical is devoted largely to Whitmanana. 
 I saw Whitman many times in Washington, 
 after that memorable season of 1863; again when 
 he came to Boston to deliver his lecture on Lin- 
 coln ; and lastly in his Camden home, where the 
 feet of many pilgrims mounted the steps that led 
 to his door, and where an infirm but serene old 
 age closed the " great career " Emerson had been 
 the first to acclaim. 
 
39 2 MY OWN STORY 
 
 All this time I have watched with deep interest 
 the growth of his influence and the change in 
 public opinion regarding him. To me, now almost 
 the sole survivor among his earliest friends and 
 adherents, wonderful indeed seems that change 
 since the first thin quarto edition of the Leaves 
 appeared, in 1855. If noticed at all by the critics, 
 it was, with rare exceptions, to be ridiculed and 
 reviled ; and Emerson himself suffered abuse for 
 pronouncing it " the most extraordinary piece of 
 wit and wisdom America had yet contributed." 
 Even so accomplished a man of letters as James 
 Russell Lowell saw in it nothing but common- 
 place tricked out with eccentricity. I remember 
 walking with him once in Cambridge, when he 
 pointed out a doorway sign, " Groceries," with the 
 letters set zigzag, to produce a bizarre effect. 
 " That," said he, " is Walt Whitman, — with very 
 common goods inside." It was not until his 
 writings became less prophetical, and more con- 
 sciously literary in their aim, that Lowell and 
 scholars of his class began to see something 
 besides oddity in Whitman, and his popularity 
 
 widened. 
 
 X 
 
 That such a change took place in his writings 
 Whitman himself was aware. Once when I con- 
 fessed to him that nothing in the later poems 
 
WALT WHITMAN 393 
 
 moved me like some of the great passages in the 
 earlier editions, he replied : "lam not surprised. 
 I do not suppose I shall ever again have the affla- 
 tus I had in writing the first Leaves of Grass." 
 One evening he was reading to O'Connor and me 
 some manuscript pieces, inviting our comments, 
 when he came to the line, — 
 
 " No poem proud I, chanting, bring to thee." 
 
 " Why do you say ' poem proud ' ? " I asked. 
 "You never would have said that in the first 
 Leaves of Grass." 
 
 "What would I have said ?." he inquired. 
 
 " ' I bring to you no proud poem,' " I replied. 
 
 O'Connor cried out, in his vehement way, 
 "That 's so, Walt, — that 's so ! " 
 
 " I think you are right," Walt admitted, and he 
 read over the line, which I looked to see changed 
 when the poem came to be printed ; but it ap- 
 peared without alteration. It occurs in Lo, Vic- 
 tress on the Peaks, an address to Liberty, for which 
 word he uses the Spanish " Libertad " — another 
 thing with which I found fault, and which I hoped 
 to see changed. I will say here that I do not be- 
 lieve Whitman ever changed a line or a word to 
 please anybody. In answer to criticism, he would 
 at times maintain his point ; at others, he would 
 answer, in his tolerant, candid way, " I guess you 
 
394 MY OWN STORY 
 
 are right," or, " I rather think it is so ;" but even 
 when apparently convinced, he would stand by his 
 faults. His use of words and phrases from for- 
 eign languages, which he began in his 1856 edi- 
 tion, and which became a positive offense in that 
 of i860, he continued in the face of all remon- 
 strance, and would not even correct errors into 
 which his ignorance of those languages had be- 
 trayed him. In one of his most ambitious poems, 
 Chanting the Square Deific, he translates our good 
 English "Holy Spirit" into "Santa Spirita," 
 meant for Italian ; but in that language the word 
 for "spirit" is masculine, and the form should 
 have been " Spirito Santo," with the adjective cor- 
 respondingly masculine. William Rossetti, who 
 edited a volume of selections from Leaves of 
 Grass for the British public, pointed this out in 
 a letter to Whitman, who, in talking of it with 
 me, acknowledged the blunder ; yet through some 
 perversity he allowed it to pass on into subsequent 
 editions. 
 
 In these editions Whitman showed that he was 
 not averse to making changes ; he was always re- 
 arranging the contents, mixing up the early with 
 the later poems, and altering titles, to the confu- 
 sion of the faithful. Now and then he would in- 
 terject into some familiar passage of the old pieces 
 a phrase or a line in his later manner, strangely 
 
WALT WHITMAN 39S 
 
 discordant to an ear of any discrimination. A good 
 example is this, where to the original lines, — 
 
 " My rendezvous is appointed, it is certain, 
 
 The Lord will be there, and wait till I come, on perfect terms," — 
 
 he adds this third line, — 
 
 " The great Camerado, the lover true for whom I pine, will be 
 there," — 
 
 a tawdry patch on the strong original homespun. 
 The French " rendezvous " in the first line is legit- 
 imate, having been adopted into our language 
 because it expresses something for which we have 
 no other single word, and Whitman would be a 
 benefactor had he enriched our vernacular in that 
 way. But " camerado " — of which he seems to 
 have become very fond, using it wherever he had 
 a chance — is neither French (camarade) nor 
 Spanish (camarada), nor Portuguese, nor Italian, 
 nor anything else, to my mind, but a malformed 
 substitute for our good and sufficient word "com- 
 rade." " Lover true," like "poem proud," is of a 
 piece with those "stock poetical touches" which 
 he used to say he had great trouble in leaving 
 out of his first Leaves, but which here, as in other 
 places, he went back and deliberately wrote into 
 them. 
 
 For another set of changes to which I objected 
 he was able to give a reason, though a poor one. 
 
396 MY OWN STORY 
 
 In the Poem of Faces, " the old face of the mother 
 of many children " has this beautiful setting : — 
 
 " Lulled and late is the smoke of the Sabbath morning, 
 It hangs low over the rows of trees by the fences, 
 It hangs thin by the sassafras, the wild cherry, and the cat-brier 
 under them." 
 
 " Smoke of the Sabbath morning " he altered, 
 after the first two editions, to " smoke of the First 
 Day morning." In like manner, elsewhere, "the 
 field-sprouts of April and May " was changed to 
 "the field-sprouts of Fourth Month and Fifth 
 Month ; " " the short last daylight of December '■ 
 to "the short last daylight of Twelfth Month," 
 and so on, — all our good old pagan names for the 
 months and days, wherever they occurred in the 
 original Leaves, being reduced to numbers, in 
 plain Quaker fashion, or got rid of in some other 
 way. " I mind how we lay in June " became " I 
 mind how we once lay ; " and 
 
 " The exquisite, delicate, thin curve of the new moon in May" — 
 
 a most exquisite and most delicate line, it may be 
 observed in passing — was made to read, not " new 
 moon in Fifth Month " (that would have been a 
 little too bad), but "new moon in spring." I 
 thought all of these alterations unfortunate, except 
 possibly the last ; nearly all involving a sacrifice 
 of euphony or of atmosphere in the lines. When 
 
WALT WHITMAN 397 
 
 I remonstrated against what seemed an affecta- 
 tion, he told me that he was brought up among 
 Quakers ; but I considered that too narrow a 
 ground for the throwing out of words in common 
 use among all English-speaking peoples except a 
 single sect. To my mind, it was another proof 
 that in matters of taste and judgment he was 
 extremely fallible, and capable of doing unwise 
 and wayward things for the sake of a theory or of 
 a caprice. 
 
 In one important particular he changed, if not 
 his theory, at least his practice. After the edition 
 of i860 he became reserved upon the one subject 
 tabooed in polite society, the free treatment of 
 which he had declared essential to his scheme of 
 exhibiting in his poems humanity entire and 
 undraped. For just six years, from 1855 to i860 
 only, he illustrated that theory with arrogant 
 defiance ; then no further exemplifications of it 
 appeared in all his prose and verse for more than 
 thirty years, or as long as he continued to write. 
 It was a sudden and significant change, which 
 was, however, covered from observation in the 
 reshuffling of the Leaves. In thus reediting the 
 earlier poems, he quietly dropped out a few of the 
 most startling lines, and would, I believe, have 
 canceled many more, but his pride was adamant 
 to anything that seemed a concession. 
 
398 MY OWN STORY 
 
 XI 
 
 No doubt Whitman suffered some impairment 
 of his mental faculties in the long years of his 
 invalidism. He is said to have gone over to the 
 Bacon side of the Bacon-Shakespeare controversy, 
 and even to have accepted the Donnelly cipher. 
 How confused his memory became on one sub- 
 ject of paramount interest is evinced by a passage 
 in his Backward Glance o'er Travel'd Roads, 
 where he says of the beginnings of Leaves of 
 Grass that, although he had "made a start be- 
 fore," all might have come to naught — " almost 
 positively would have come to naught " — but for 
 the stimulus he received from the " sights and 
 scenes" of the secession war. To make this 
 more emphatic, he adds the astounding assertion, 
 "Without those three or four years [1862 to 
 1865], and the experiences they gave, Leaves of 
 Grass would not now be existing." Whereas he 
 had only to look at his title-pages to see that not 
 his first, nor his second, but his third edition, 
 comprising the larger and by far the most impor- 
 tant part of his poetic work, was published in 
 i860, months before the first gun of the war was 
 fired or a single State had seceded. After this, 
 we need not wonder that he forgot he had read 
 Emerson before writing his first Leaves. 
 
WALT WHITMAN 399 
 
 When Whitman's genius flows, his unhampered 
 lines suit his purpose as no other form of verse 
 could do. The thought is sometimes elusive, hid- 
 ing in metaphor and suggestion, but the language 
 is direct, idiomatic, swift, its torrent force and 
 copiousness justifying his disregard of rhyme 
 and metre ; indeed, it has often a wild, swinging 
 rhythm of its own. But when no longer impelled 
 by the stress of meaning and emotion, it becomes 
 strained and flavorless, and, at its worst, involved, 
 parenthetical, enfeebled by weak inversions. 
 
 There are the same disturbing inequalities in 
 his prose as in his verse. The preface to his first 
 edition exhibits the masterful characteristics of 
 his great poems; indeed, much of that preface 
 made very good Leaves, when he afterwards 
 rewrote it in lines and printed it as poetry. At 
 its worst, his prose is lax and slovenly, or it takes 
 on ruggedness to simulate strength, and jars and 
 jolts like a farm wagon on stony roads. Some of 
 his published letters are slipshod in their composi- 
 tion, and in their disregard of capitalization and 
 punctuation, almost to the verge of illiteracy. 
 Had William Shakespeare left any authentic writ- 
 ings as empty of thought and imagination, and 
 void of literary value, as some of the Calamus let- 
 ters, they would have afforded a better argument 
 than any we now have against his authorship of 
 
4 oo MY OWN STORY 
 
 the plays. Perhaps some future tilter at wind- 
 mills will attempt to prove that the man we know 
 as Walt Whitman was an uncultured impostor, 
 who had obtained possession of a mass of power- 
 ful but fragmentary writings by some unknown 
 man of genius, which he exploited, pieced to- 
 gether, and mixed up with compositions of his 
 own. 
 
 But after all deductions it remains to be un- 
 equivocally affirmed that Whitman stands as a 
 great original force in our literature. Art, as ex- 
 emplified by such poets as Longfellow and Ten- 
 nyson, he has little or none ; but in the free play 
 of his power he produces the effect of an art 
 beyond art. His words are often steeped in the 
 very sentiment of the themes they touch, and 
 suggest more than they express. He has large- 
 ness of view, an all-including optimism, boundless 
 love and faith. To sum all in a sentence, I should 
 say that his main purpose was to bring into his 
 poems Nature, with unflinching realism, — espe- 
 cially Nature's divine masterpiece, Man ; and to 
 demonstrate that everything in Nature and in 
 Man, all that he is, feels, and observes, is worthy 
 of celebration by the poet ; not in the old, selec- 
 tive, artificial poetic forms, but with a freedom of 
 method commensurate with Nature's own ampli- 
 tude and unconstraint. It was a grand conception, 
 
WALT WHITMAN 401 
 
 an intrepid revolt against the established canons 
 of taste and art, a challenge and a menace to the 
 greatest and most venerated names. That the 
 attempt was not so foolhardy as at first appeared, 
 and that it has not been altogether a failure, the 
 growing interest in the man and his work suffi- 
 ciently attests ; and who can say how greatly it 
 might not have succeeded, if adequate judgment 
 had reinforced his genius, and if his inspiration 
 had continued as long as he continued to write ? 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
 
 I made acquaintance with Oliver Wendell Holmes 
 soon after the Atlantic Monthly was started, 
 and from that time was often in the way of meet- 
 ing him at receptions, banquets, and on more 
 private occasions. One of the first talks I ever 
 had with him was at some gathering, I have for- 
 gotten what, when, allusion being made to the 
 grammatical inaccuracies of famous writers, I 
 instanced the opening lines of The Prisoner of 
 Chillon, — 
 
 " My hair is gray, but not with years, 
 Nor grew it white 
 In a single night, 
 As men's have grown from sudden fears ; " — 
 
 and also Byron's "There let him lay!" which 
 occurs in the famous address to the ocean, in 
 Childe Harold. The Autocrat remarked, in his 
 quick, nervous way, " Suppose Trowbridge or 
 Holmes had made those blunders ! would n't the 
 critics have had a war dance ? " As he had 
 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 403 
 
 already achieved a dazzling reputation, while I had 
 none to speak of, this coupling of our names to- 
 gether was to me, I confess, flatteringly pleasant. 
 
 Another colloquy I recall that began less 
 auspiciously. It was at an Atlantic dinner, 
 where, a seat beside me becoming vacant, he 
 came and occupied it. He betrayed not a little 
 irritation as he began, — 
 
 " I 've a nut to crack with you ! The critic of 
 the " — no matter what publication — " says you 
 can write better than I can. What do you think 
 of that ? " 
 
 I tried to parry the question with an allusion I 
 thought would please him. " That must be when 
 you are not writing * as funny as you can,' doc- 
 tor." But he shook his head, and insisted : what 
 did I really think of it ? Such a comparison 
 being too absurd to be taken seriously, I re- 
 plied, — 
 
 " That 's a critic after my own heart ! If only 
 all were as astute ! But here 's a scribbler in 
 the " — I named the print — " who says Edmund 
 Kirke can write better than I can. So what am 
 I to think?" < 
 
 Thereupon the cloud turned its silver lining. 
 He laughed and said : " If you can write better 
 than I, and Kirke can write better than you, then 
 Kirke is the man ! We know where we are ! " 
 
4 04 MY OWN STORY 
 
 At table he was unflaggingly vivacious, ready 
 at repartee, as witty as Lowell without Lowell's 
 audacity at punning (they called each other " Wen- 
 dell" and " James," talking perhaps from one end 
 of the table to the other), and, for the immediate 
 moment, as wise as Emerson. Underwood, in his 
 monograph on Lowell, The Poet and the Man, 
 has by some lapse of memory misquoted a passage 
 of words that took place between Emerson and 
 Holmes at one of the early Atlantic dinners. 
 The conversation was upon the orders of archi- 
 tecture ; it was Emerson, not Holmes, who had 
 been saying that the Egyptian was characterized 
 by breadth of base, the Grecian by the adequate 
 support, and the Gothic by its skyward soaring. 
 Then it was Holmes, not Emerson, who flashed 
 out instantly, " One is for death, one is for life, 
 and one is for immortality." I did not hear this, 
 but it was repeated to me at the time by one who 
 did. 
 
 At another of the Atlantic dinners, Holmes 
 surpassed even himself in the sparkle and flow of 
 his Autocratic dissertations. Hardly any one sus- 
 pected that he had in his napkin the proofs of his 
 next Autocrat paper, procured for him by one of 
 the publishers of the magazine, who was present, 
 and who afterwards imparted to me the secret. 
 
 Many anecdotes illustrative of the doctor's wit 
 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 405 
 
 were current in those years. I will cite but one. 
 When the friends of the rival claimants of the dis- 
 covery of anaesthesia were proposing monuments 
 for each, Holmes suggested that all should unite 
 in erecting a single memorial, with a central group 
 symbolizing painless surgery, a statue of Jackson 
 on one side, a statue of Morton on the other, and 
 the inscription beneath : "To E(i)ther." 
 
 II 
 
 I never heard Holmes converse when he did 
 not converse well ; and once at least I had the 
 satisfaction of contributing in some degree to his 
 flow of spirits. Underwood, inviting me to a sup- 
 per at which the doctor was to be the guest of 
 honor, begged that I would come prepared to make 
 a little speech, or to read something appropriate 
 to the occasion. As speech-making was always 
 irksome to me, I scribbled some lines heartily 
 appreciative of the Autocrat, which I carried with 
 me, and read, at a call from Underwood, in a lull 
 of the conversation. The next day I received a 
 letter from our host, in which he wrote : " It is to 
 you, more than any one else, that the success of 
 last evening is due. Your poem was not only a 
 pleasure in itself, but it wrought a great change 
 in the guest, and brought forth all his brilliant 
 powers. I never heard him talk so well." 
 
4 o6 MY OWN STORY 
 
 With one of the kindest hearts, open to friends, 
 and often sympathizingly helpful to strangers, he 
 yet cherished a sort of Brahminical exclusiveness ; 
 something in the earlier Autocrat papers even 
 made you feel that he was at times too compla- 
 cently conscious of a superior caste and culture. 
 The tone of his writings softened and his nature 
 grew ever more kindly with years. The Poet at 
 the Breakfast-Table was considered less successful 
 than its predecessors, the Autocrat and the Pro- 
 fessor ; but there was noticeable in the later writ- 
 ings an increased mellowness of flavor that com- 
 pensated for any supposed falling off in the wit. 
 While they were running in The Atlantic Monthly, 
 I read them always eagerly in advance sheets, 
 begged or borrowed from the editorial room (then 
 immediately under that of Our Young Folks, in 
 the building on Tremont Street), neglecting all 
 other occupations for that instant indulgence. 
 Very likely this was one of a happy combination 
 of circumstances that caused me to see in them 
 what I might look for in vain to-day ; our early 
 enthusiasms are so apt to pale in the light of later 
 experiences and changed conditions. Re-reading 
 those papers now, thirty years and more after- 
 wards, would no doubt cause me to wonder a little 
 at that particular enthusiasm ; but I am glad I had 
 it, since it moved me to express, in a letter to the 
 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 407 
 
 doctor, my appreciation of the genial quality that 
 breathed in the new series, "bathing all in the 
 softest Indian Summer air." The recognition was 
 probably all the more welcome to him on account 
 of the disparaging criticisms the monthly num- 
 bers were provoking from the press in many quar- 
 ters. He wrote in reply (under date of May 12, 
 1872) : " I was just sitting down to write when I 
 received your letter, which gave me such singular 
 pleasure that I must tell you how much happier 
 I was made by it. Perhaps I wanted a pleasant 
 word to give me heart for what I was doing ; at 
 any rate I felt really refreshed by your kind ex- 
 pressions, and very grateful. ... A few lines of 
 sympathy from one, the value of whose esteem we 
 know, go a great way towards repaying an author 
 for his cares and labors. You may be sure that 
 you obeyed a very healthy impulse when you sent 
 me a note which I shall keep among the treasures 
 of my correspondence." 
 
 He was frankly fond of praise, and although 
 few men of letters ever breathed that incense 
 more frequently or with fuller breath, he never 
 lost his amiable and sincere enjoyment of it. He 
 once told me of a letter he had received from an 
 ardent lady admirer, and well I recall the gusto 
 with which he exclaimed, " It is gushing ! and I 
 like it ! " What he relished with such zest he in 
 
4 o8 MY OWN STORY 
 
 turn generously bestowed, and I have letters of 
 his regarding some things of mine that had in- 
 terested and pleased him — beautifully written 
 letters, their neat and graceful chirography now 
 faded by time — which I " keep among the trea- 
 sures of my correspondence," to quote words that 
 have so much deeper a significance in my case 
 than they could have had in his own. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The doctor's small, upright, animated figure 
 seemed possessed of inexhaustible vitality, but in 
 his advancing years his public appearances be- 
 came a severe drain upon it, and he felt the need 
 of husbanding it for special efforts, as he confided 
 to me on more than one occasion. We were both 
 engaged to deliver poems at the great Moore Fes- 
 tival, given in Boston in May, 1879, m celebration 
 of the Irish poet's centennial birthday ; and I re- 
 tain a very vivid recollection of the Autocrat's dis- 
 may when we learned that the guests had been 
 brought together an hour before the banquet was 
 to take place ! After talking for twenty minutes 
 or so to those who crowded around him, eager to 
 catch a word from his lips, he whispered to me 
 despairingly, " Help me out of this ; don't let any- 
 body follow ! " 
 
 I said in alarm, " You are not going away ! " 
 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 409 
 
 "For half an hour," he replied. "I am going 
 to get into a horse-car and ride up and down until 
 the real, honest hour for the dinner arrives. I 
 must save my voice for my poem." 
 
 He returned in time to go in fresh and smiling 
 to the dinner on the arm of that gifted young 
 Irish revolutionist and adventurer, journalist and 
 poet, John Boyle O'Reilly, while I followed with 
 General Patrick A. Collins (now Mayor of Bos- 
 ton) for an escort. These two noted Irish- Ameri- 
 cans were among the foremost promoters of the 
 festival, but not, I think, responsible for the too 
 early assembling of the guests ; and I doubt that 
 either of them knew what had become of the doc- 
 tor in that half hour interval. He was in fine 
 voice for his poem. 1 
 
 IV 
 
 A few months later, in December of that same 
 year, 1879, I nac * the honor of uniting in the cele- 
 bration of Dr. Holmes's seventieth birthday, con- 
 tributing a poem, Filling an Order, to the post- 
 prandial exercises, at the famous Breakfast given 
 to him by his publishers. It was one of the most 
 notable gatherings of literary celebrities from far 
 and near which Boston had ever witnessed. The 
 
 1 My own poem, read at the Moore Banquet, was Recollec- 
 tions of Lalla Rookh. 
 
4 io MY OWN STORY 
 
 Autocrat's own beautiful and touching poem, The 
 Iron Gate, read in a voice at times tenderly play- 
 ful, at others vibrant with deeper emotion, was 
 of course the memorable event of the Breakfast, 
 and worthy of the audience and the hour. His 
 praises were sounded by others in every key, in 
 prose and verse ; but I shall speak here only of 
 my own contribution. 
 
 The Order, fabled to have been received by 
 Dame Nature in her laboratory, was for " three 
 geniuses," one a bard, one wise, and one supremely 
 witty, to grace an obscure town by the sea named 
 Boston. The finer ingredients were mixed, and 
 the souls set to steep, each in its glowing ves- 
 sel : — 
 
 In each by turns she poured, she stirred, she skimmed the shining 
 
 liquor, 
 Threw laughter in, to make it thin, or thought, to make it 
 
 thicker ; 
 But when she came to choose the clay, she found, to her vex- 
 ation, 
 That, with a stock on hand to fill an order for a nation, 
 Of that more finely tempered stuff, electric and ethereal, 
 Of which a genius must be formed, she had but scant material — 
 For three ? for one ! What should be done ? A bright idea 
 
 struck her ; 
 Her old witch eyes began to shine, her mouth began to pucker. 
 Says she, " The fault, I 'm well aware, with genius is, the pre- 
 sence 
 Of altogether too much clay, with quite too little essence, 
 And sluggish atoms that obstruct the spiritual solution ; 
 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 41 r 
 
 So now, instead of spoiling these by over-much dilution, 
 With their fine elements I '11 make a single, rare phenomenon, 
 And of three common geniuses concoct a most uncommon one, 
 So that the world shall smile to see a soul so universal, 
 Such poesy and pleasantry, packed in so small a parcel." 
 So said, so done ; the three in one she wrapped, and stuck the 
 
 label : 
 Poet, Professor, Autocrat of Wifs own Breakfast-Table. 
 
 I had the satisfaction of feeling that I had the 
 audience with me in the reading ; and that the 
 fable pleased the subject of it I was gratifyingly 
 assured in a letter I received from him a few days 
 later, from which I cannot forbear quoting a single 
 sentence : — 
 
 " I thought your poem excellent when I listened 
 
 to it, but my hearing is not so sharp as it once 
 
 was, and I did not know how excellent, how neat, 
 
 ingenious, terse, artistic it was until I came to 
 
 read it." 
 
 V 
 
 One of the later occasions in which my voice 
 was publicly heard with the Autocrat's was the 
 Garden Party, given by Houghton, Mifflin and 
 Company, at Governor Claflin's country house in 
 Newton, to Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, in cele- 
 bration of her seventieth birthday. This was in 
 the leafy month of June, 1882. At that open 
 air festival we heard Mrs. Stowe herself, her 
 brother, Henry Ward Beecher, and other celeb- 
 
4 i2 MY OWN STORY 
 
 rities ; but the chief event was Dr. Holmes's 
 poem. 
 
 The doctor's voice was not remarkable, — it 
 was slightly husky, and lacking in clear reso- 
 nance, but in his use of it he made you forget 
 that it was not the fittest organ for his purpose; 
 just as you were rendered oblivious of his inferior 
 stature (five feet four or five) by his animation 
 and perfect aplomb. Surely no other so narrow 
 human jaw was ever the gateway of such intelli- 
 gent and forceful speech ("the smallest adult jaw 
 I ever fitted teeth to," his dentist once said to 
 me) ; but it had a nervous tension that compen- 
 sated for its insignificant size. Lowell, Longfel- 
 low, Whittier, Hawthorne, Agassiz, like the most 
 of his great contemporaries, might have justified 
 the findings of the phrenologist or physiognomist ; 
 but he, even more than Emerson, demonstrated 
 the truth that, of brains, quality is better than 
 quantity, that spirit is more than flesh. He was 
 a living disproof of Whitman's proud attestation 
 that " size is only development." 
 
 The Autocrat's voice and manner were never 
 more effective than on that refulgent afternoon at 
 the Claflin Garden Party. Who that was present 
 can ever have forgotten the two opening stanzas 
 of his poem, The World's Homage, in which he 
 fancied people of every land who had read Uncle 
 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 413 
 
 Tom summoned to the table, and the Babel of 
 tongues that would have been heard there ? 
 
 " Briton and Frenchman, Swede and Dane, 
 Turk, Spaniard, Tartar of Ukraine, 
 
 Hidalgo, Cossack, Cadi, 
 High Dutchman and Low Dutchman, too, 
 The Russian serf, the Polish Jew, 
 Arab, Armenian, and Mantchoo, 
 
 Would shout, * We know the lady ! ' " 
 
 Only to those who heard him can the cold 
 types convey an idea of the emphasis and percus- 
 sive force of enunciation which he flung into this 
 felicitously rhymed, surprisingly collocated list of 
 names. It was greeted by such an outburst of 
 irrepressible applause as was not heard before or 
 after on that day, not even at the close of his 
 reading. As I joined in the hand-clapping and 
 watched the face of Mrs. Stowe wreathed in 
 smiles, I fortunately forgot my own dozen or more 
 four-line stanzas, snugly folded away in my breast 
 pocket, to be unfolded and to come forth later. 
 
 As the persistent and prolonged uproar sub- 
 sided, it was with a startled feeling that I remem- 
 bered the ordeal of comparison before me, and 
 with something like a cowardly wish that the 
 verses I had thought tolerably well of up to that 
 moment might be quietly dropped from the cata- 
 logue of things to be called for. I must acknow- 
 
4 i4 MY OWN STORY 
 
 ledge that the feeling marred a little my enjoy- 
 ment of the remainder of Holmes's recital, and 
 was perhaps the cause of my fancying in the sub- 
 sequent stanzas a falling off from the superla- 
 tively bright and vigorous opening. Or was it 
 possible (as these are very frank memoirs, I ven- 
 ture the suggestion), — was it barely possible that 
 I indulged a secret hope that the prestige of those 
 dazzling first flashes might be mercifully tempered, 
 for my sake ? 
 
 If for a moment I cherished that feeble hope, I 
 had ample time to return to a more resolute and 
 generous frame of mind before delivering my tri- 
 bute. The doctor was followed by other readers 
 and speakers, who caused my interest in my own 
 forthcoming effort to rise by degrees, to revive, 
 and put forth buds of faith and buoyant expec- 
 tation, until I finally stepped upon the improvised 
 platform with a tranquil confidence not unjusti- 
 fied, I think, by the reception accorded to my 
 reading of The Cabin. As was inevitable, some 
 of the thoughts in the doctor's poem were paral- 
 leled in my own. 
 
 The Slave went forth through all the earth, 
 
 He preached to priest and rabbin ; 
 He spoke all tongues ; in every land 
 
 Opened that lowly Cabin. 
 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 415 
 
 VI 
 
 One or two briefly told anecdotes must close 
 these desultory reminiscences of one of Boston's 
 most remarkable men. Going once to hear a lec- 
 ture by Matthew Arnold, I entered the hall early, 
 and, seeing Holmes alone in one of the central 
 seats, took a place beside him for a chat while 
 the audience was coming in. Soon we saw Rev. 
 James Freeman Clarke wandering down one of 
 the side aisles, with his numbered ticket in his 
 hand, scanning the backs of seats. 
 
 " There," said the doctor, " is my Double. We 
 were friends in boyhood, we were classmates in 
 college, our orbits are forever crossing ; wherever 
 I go he appears. I can no more avoid him than I 
 can my own shadow." While he was relating 
 some curious instance of this seeming fatality, 
 Clarke drew near, still observing the backs of 
 rows ; when I inquired, — 
 
 " What is your number, Mr. Clarke ? " He 
 named it. "Here it is," I said, "beside Dr. 
 Holmes ; I am in your seat." 
 
 One afternoon, in the years of which I am writ- 
 ing, I chanced to call upon Mr. Longfellow just 
 after he had received a visit from the doctor. 
 
 " What a delightful man he is ! " said he. " But 
 he has left me, as he generally does, with a head- 
 
4 i6 MY OWN STORY 
 
 ache." When I inquired the cause, he replied : 
 "The movement of his mind is so much more 
 rapid than mine, that I often find it difficult to 
 follow him, and if I keep up the strain for any 
 length of time, a headache is the penalty." 
 
 Every one who knew the Autocrat must have 
 been impressed by this trait ascribed to him by 
 Longfellow, — the extraordinary rapidity of his 
 mental processes. Not that he talked fast, but 
 that his turns of thought were surprisingly bright 
 and quick, and often made with a kind of scientific 
 precision, agreeably in contrast with the looseness 
 of statement commonly characterizing those who 
 speak volubly and think fast. In one of the early 
 Autocrat papers he made this comparison : " Writ- 
 ing or printing is like shooting with a rifle ; you 
 may hit your reader's mind, or miss it. But talk- 
 ing is like playing at a mark with the pipe of an 
 engine ; if it is within reach, and you have time 
 enough, you can't help hitting it." His own talk 
 was less like hose-playing than most men's. It 
 was more like shooting with a rifle, — and it was 
 always sure to hit. In view of this habitual viva- 
 city, how we must marvel at his length of life, 
 measured not by years only, but by the amount 
 of thought and feeling and spiritual energy that 
 animated him throughout his long and fortunate 
 career ! 
 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 417 
 
 Holmes's place among the writers of his time 
 is distinctly assured. He enriched our literature 
 with a new form of essay as distinctly individual 
 as Montaigne's or Charles Lamb's. In metrical 
 composition his work is voluminous and varied, 
 much of it ephemeral, but all of it lucid and musi- 
 cal ; and he has left a few lyrics that take high 
 rank — one of them almost the highest — as pure 
 poetry. A characteristic note is a certain playful 
 tenderness ; and I think his Muse charms us most 
 when she appears, like the bride in the ballad, — 
 
 " With a smile on her lips and a tear in her eye," — 
 
 when the verses are dewy and tremulous with a 
 feeling which the wit irradiates and sets off, yet 
 seems half designed to conceal. 
 
 " Of sweet singers the most sane, 
 Of keen wits the most humane." 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 LONGFELLOW 
 
 Although Longfellow was not one of my liter- 
 ary passions, — perhaps because I came under his 
 influence so gradually, — the spirit that breathed 
 in his poems inspired in me a feeling of love and 
 admiration long before I saw him, — a feeling that 
 grew in depth and constancy after I was admitted 
 to his acquaintance, and the acquaintance ripened 
 into friendship. 
 
 That honor was rather late in coming to me, 
 entirely through my own perverse neglect of op- 
 portunities, which I have elsewhere confessed and 
 deplored. When the hour of meeting came, it 
 was he who took the initial step toward it. Grasp- 
 ing my hand warmly, he began at once to talk to 
 me of my poems with a delightful sincerity that 
 blew away like dandelion woof or thistle-down the 
 last film and feather of my aloofness, and made 
 me humbly ashamed of it, when he inquired 
 earnestly, — 
 
 " Why have you never come to see me ? " 
 
LONGFELLOW 419 
 
 "Because," I said, "I never felt that the work 
 I have been trying to do gave me any right to 
 intrude myself on your attention." And, with 
 the frankness that is often the twin sister of 
 reserve, I went on to speak of his being already 
 a famous poet, a Cambridge professor, a man re- 
 presenting the highest culture, when I first came 
 to Boston with the odor of my native backwoods 
 still upon me, — without friends, or academic ac- 
 quirements, or advantages of any sort ; — and of 
 the feeling I could never quite get over, of the 
 immense distance between us. 
 
 " That," he replied, " is the effect of mirage ; it 
 
 is illusion. At any rate, there is no such distance 
 
 now." And there never was, from that time 
 
 forth. 
 
 II • 
 
 Longfellow was slightly below the medium 
 stature, but of a sufficiently stocky build, well 
 planted on his feet, as the French say ; with 
 strong, symmetrical features, which must have 
 been singularly handsome in his youth as they 
 were singularly noble in his later years ; the fore- 
 head sweeping to a shapely width in constructive- 
 ness and ideality; mild blue eyes under fine 
 brows, and hair and beard of patriarchal white- 
 ness. Charles Kingsley said of him in 1868 : "I 
 do not think I ever saw a finer human face ; " 
 
4 2o MY OWN STORY 
 
 which might have been truly said of him to the 
 last. 
 
 He had the simplicity of manners which belongs 
 to strong, true natures, and a tact and sympathy 
 that prompted him to meet all persons on their 
 own ground of interest and experience. Of all 
 people I ever knew he was the most charitable in 
 speech, tolerant even of faults which society 
 deems it dangerous to condone. I never heard 
 him speak with anything like indignant condem- 
 nation of anybody except a certain class of critics 
 who sit in judgment upon works they have neither 
 the heart to feel nor the sense to understand. 
 Some kind friend once sent me a review in which 
 a poor little volume of my own verse was scalped 
 and tomahawked with savage glee. Turning the 
 page, I was consoled to see a volume of Longfel- 
 low's treated in the same Ojibway style; for, I 
 reflected, " The critic who strikes at him blunts 
 the weapon with which he would wound others." 
 Meeting him in a day or two, I found that some 
 equally well-meaning friend had sent him a copy 
 of the same review. I was surprised to see how 
 much he was annoyed by it, and said to him, — 
 
 " I may well be disturbed when they try to blow 
 out my small lantern, but why should you care 
 when they puff away at your star ? " 
 
 He replied, "The ill-will of anybody hurts me. 
 
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
LONGFELLOW 421 
 
 Besides, there are people who will believe what 
 this man says. If he cannot speak well of a book, 
 why speak of it at all ? " 
 
 "He must earn his bread," I suggested. 
 
 "So," he replied, "must the hired assassin and 
 the highwayman." 
 
 Ill 
 
 He had suffered from abundant unjust and fool- 
 ish criticism in earlier days ; but I do not believe 
 his wise, calm spirit was ever more than tempo- 
 rarily ruffled by it. Older readers will remember 
 the very general depreciation, the ridicule in para- 
 phrase and parody, with which Hiawatha was at 
 first received. But Hiawatha quickly came to 
 rival Evangeline in public favor ; and the relent- 
 ing reviewers joined afterwards in the chorus of 
 its praise. Evangeline had likewise been the sub- 
 ject of much adverse comment, especially in re- 
 spect to the hexameters, which were declared 
 unsuited for English verse. Poe's ridicule of them 
 remains a brilliant example of a style of criticism 
 common in the middle of the last century, but 
 which is hardly possible among self-respecting 
 men of letters to-day. Having resorted to the 
 old trick of printing as prose a passage selected 
 for his purpose, to illustrate the absence of the 
 spondee, indispensable in the Greek hexameter, 
 
422 MY OWN STORY 
 
 he went on to say that he could manage the point 
 Longfellow and others had missed ; giving as a 
 sample these lines, in which the spondee is very 
 much in evidence : — 
 
 " Du tell ! when shall we hope to make men of sense out of 
 
 the Pundits 
 Born and brought up with their snouts deep down in the mud 
 
 of the Frog Pond ? 
 Why ask ? who ever yet saw money made out of a fat old 
 Jew, or downright, upright nutmegs out of a pine knot ? " 
 
 This was very funny ; and " du tell," " deep 
 down," "Frog Pond," and the like are good spon- 
 dees. But Poe himself felt obliged to apologize 
 for the dactyls ; " hope to make," " men of sense," 
 "born and brought," which take the place of dac- 
 tyls, being, properly speaking, not dactyls at all. 
 Such criticism goes to show that the Greek and 
 Latin hexameter is not possible in English verse, 
 nor in any verse that is scanned by accents, and 
 not by long and short syllables. This Longellow 
 knew as well as anybody, and what he attempted 
 was some such adaptation of it as Goethe had 
 brought into favor with German readers in his 
 Hermann und Dorothea. Poe's travesty had long 
 been forgotten, or it was kept in the minds of 
 men only by Poe's growing fame as a poet, and 
 Longfellow could well afford to smile at it benig- 
 nantly, as he did at that and Poe's other attacks 
 
LONGFELLOW 423 
 
 upon him, when I once ventured to recall them to 
 his mind ; for his choice of metre, and his easy 
 management of it, had been amply justified by 
 time and the judgment of mankind ; the flowing 
 hexameters which relate Evangeline's beautiful 
 story continuing to be read, then as now, by 
 learned and unlearned alike, with perennial de- 
 light. 
 
 IV 
 
 Longfellow had little of Holmes's facility in 
 writing occasional verses, and still less of Holmes's 
 boyish delight in reciting them. Yet Holmes 
 himself never wrote anything more graceful than 
 the tribute to Agassiz on his fiftieth birthday, 
 or more delightfully rollicking than the other 
 Agassiz poem, Noel, written in French, — a trifle, 
 indeed, but yet a tour de force, appreciated by 
 those at least to whom French is an acquired 
 tongue, and who have adventured their poetic 
 feet among the hedges and pitfalls of the hiatus 
 and other artificial restrictions of French verse. 
 It may be in place here to repeat what Longfel- 
 low's brother-in-law, Thomas G. Appleton, once 
 said to me of the poet's mastery of modern lan- 
 guages and literatures. " It is an accomplishment 
 which his fame as a poet has too much overshad- 
 owed, but which should give him a foremost repu- 
 tation among American scholars." 
 
4 2 4 MY OWN STORY 
 
 Holmes could hang his halo of verse on any 
 star of occasion, but Longfellow needed an im- 
 pulse from within. When urged by his Bowdoin 
 classmates to write something for their semi- 
 centennial anniversary, no happy thought sug- 
 gested itself, and he hastened to unburden his 
 mind of the care and responsibility of such a 
 task by positively declining it. Then came the 
 inspiring motive of Morituri Salutamus, one of 
 his noblest poems, drawn from the deeps of his 
 poetic nature, and written in a glow of enjoyment 
 chilled only by the prospective ordeal of public 
 delivery. The final announcement that he was 
 to appear in person and read his poem thrilled 
 with joyous expectation every son of Bowdoin, 
 and rallied to the college, on the eventful day, 
 such throngs of its alumni and friends as it never 
 saw gathered before. I think that, when the hour 
 came, he rather enjoyed what he had dreaded ; 
 and his kindly nature must have been gratified by 
 an opportunity of giving pleasure to so many. I 
 asked a Bowdoin man how Longfellow bore him- 
 self. " Finely ! " he said. " I could n't hear him, 
 but it was glory enough to have him there, and to 
 have his poem in print afterwards." 
 
LONGFELLOW 425 
 
 His voice was ill fitted for public speaking ; it 
 was habitually gentle and low, and it was irksome 
 for him to raise it above the conversational pitch. 
 I never heard it on any public occasion except 
 once. At the great Boston Banquet given by 
 Houghton, Mifflin and Company in honor of 
 Whittier's seventieth birthday, it was with the 
 utmost difficulty that Whittier himself could be 
 prevailed upon to be present. Growing old was 
 bad enough, he said, "without being twitted of 
 it," — as Pickard relates in his full and graphic 
 Life of the poet. A sense of the incongruity 
 of such a performance with the principal charac- 
 ter left out finally prevailed over his diffidence ; 
 almost at the last hour he consented to appear, 
 and in acknowledgment of the tremendous ova- 
 tion that greeted him, he spoke a few well-chosen 
 but rather hesitating words, which could not be 
 called a speech. Even then he would not trust 
 himself to read the poem he had prepared, and 
 which he had in advance engaged Longfellow to 
 read for him. Longfellow introduced the poem 
 with some easy conversational remarks ; in them, 
 and in the reading of Whittier's Response, his 
 manner was self-possessed and unaffected ; but 
 his voice lacked carrying quality ; and although I 
 
426 MY OWN STORY 
 
 was in a position to catch the lowest words dis- 
 tinctly, I judged, by the hollowing of hands 
 behind ears, that neither he nor Whittier was 
 heard well at the remoter tables. 
 
 Longfellow, Emerson, and Holmes were the 
 chief guests of honor, besides Whittier himself. 
 Holmes, of course, had a poem to read, and he 
 read it with his usual enunciative vigor. Emer- 
 son, who was already beginning to show signs of 
 the decay of his powers which progressed slowly 
 but fatally in the following years, made a few 
 remarks laudatory of Whittier, and particularly 
 of Whittier' s Ichabod, which he then proceeded 
 to read, not very effectively, as it proved. 1 
 
 1 I had also prepared, by invitation, a poem to read at the 
 Whittier Banquet ; but as the subject of it withdrew in the midst 
 of the proceedings in his honor, and before my place in the pro- 
 gramme had been reached, I quietly followed his example, left 
 the speakers still speaking (at eleven o'clock), and reserved my 
 Story of the Barefoot Boy for later publication. It was founded 
 on an incident of the poet's boyhood, which I had from his 
 younger brother Matthew, and which I told very much as it was 
 told to me, except that I put it into rhyme, and transferred the 
 scene to the open air from the bedroom and bed where it actually 
 occurred. Pickard, in his Life of Whittier, describes the cham- 
 ber in which the two boys slept, and, alluding to the poem, 
 adds : " The two little Quaker boys had found they could lift 
 each other, and one evening experimented upon the proposition 
 made by the elder, that by lifting each other in turn they could 
 rise to the ceiling, and there was no knowing how much fur- 
 ther if they were out of doors ! The prudent lads first tried the 
 
LONGFELLOW 427 
 
 VI 
 
 The reading of Ichabod was regarded by Long- 
 fellow as one of two unfortunate mistakes which 
 were committed, by famous guests, on that memo- 
 rable evening. In talking over the Banquet with 
 me a day or two after, he asked if I was not amazed 
 at Emerson's want of tact in selecting such a poem 
 for such an occasion. 
 
 "Why, no," I answered in some surprise; "it 
 did n't strike me so. I have always thought 
 Ichabod one of Whittier's strongest poems, — 
 perhaps his very strongest political poem." 
 
 " But what a terrible denunciation of Web- 
 ster ! " he exclaimed. " It was perhaps well 
 enough for the time when it was written ; but 
 the passions of men have cooled, and I am sure 
 Whittier himself regrets having made so terrible 
 an attack upon our greatest statesman, — once 
 the idol of Massachusetts, and still believed in by 
 
 experiment, standing upon the bed in their little room. Trow- 
 bridge says : — 
 
 " ' 'T was a shrewd notion, none the less, 
 And still, in spite of ill success, 
 
 It somehow has succeeded. 
 Kind Nature smiled on that wise child, 
 
 Nor could her love deny him 
 The large fulfillment of his plan, 
 Since he who lifts his brother man 
 
 In turn is lifted by him.' " 
 
428 MY OWN STORY 
 
 a large number of those present at the dinner. 
 Why bring up again, at such a time, a subject 
 that must be offensive to many ? " 
 
 I had not regarded it in that light ; it was 
 characteristic of Longfellow's large charity that 
 he had. When I said I hardly thought the par- 
 tisanship of the poem was noticed by the audi- 
 ence, he immediately began to make excuses for 
 Emerson, saying, " Of course, he took only the 
 literary view of it, as you did." 
 
 I thought this curiously illustrative of the dif- 
 ference in temperament between Longfellow and 
 his two distinguished friends. He lacked the fine 
 ethical energy of Emerson and the forceful im- 
 pulse of the Quaker poet, while his abhorrence of 
 oppression was no doubt as great as theirs. He 
 was not formed for conflict ; he shrank from 
 severity of censure and deprecated injustice even 
 to the unjust. He who had written and published 
 Poems on Slavery as early as 1842, when to utter 
 a word against the divinely appointed institution 
 was to invite opprobrium, — he who was Charles 
 Sumner's closest friend, admiring in him the war- 
 fare he was himself unfitted to wage, — must be 
 ranked as a fearless and consistent opponent of 
 slavery, notwithstanding the charge of time-serv- 
 ing once brought against him for consenting to 
 the omission of the slavery pieces from an edition 
 
LONGFELLOW 429 
 
 of his poems otherwise complete. This was no 
 sacrifice of principle, although he perhaps yielded 
 too much to the representations of the publisher, 
 who was packing his goods, so to speak, for a 
 market the gates of which were too narrow for 
 that load. These were not his best poems, nor 
 even his second best ; they continued to be issued 
 in other editions, and their suppression in that 
 particular one showed no such " subserviency to 
 the slave power" as some abolitionists, notably 
 Parker in one of his sermons, indignantly averred. 
 His reprobation of Webster's course was as deep 
 as that of the more fiery Whittier, whom it in- 
 spired to write Ichabod, or of the philosophic 
 Emerson, when it drew him from his studious 
 solitudes, and moved him to declare, in a public 
 discourse on the Fugitive Slave Law, " Every 
 drop of blood in this man's veins has eyes that 
 look downward." While deploring the great 
 statesman's advocacy of that law, Longfellow's 
 broad charity and calm equipoise of opinion led 
 him to judge the man himself more as posterity 
 is judging him. 
 
 That Holmes had a son who enlisted in our 
 Civil War and was dangerously wounded is a 
 circumstance that has been kept in the memory 
 of men by the Autocrat's narrative of his Hunt 
 for the Captain, and by the Captain's subsequent 
 
430 MY OWN STORY 
 
 career as an eminent jurist. It is not so well 
 remembered that Longfellow likewise gave a son 
 to his country's service in the great conflict 
 against slavery, a son who was also dangerously 
 wounded at the front, and whom the father simi- 
 larly hastened to seek and bring home. 
 
 VII 
 
 Once we were speaking of the prices paid to 
 the best writers by the best periodicals, when 
 Longfellow remarked that he could never get over 
 the feeling that one hundred dollars was a very 
 large sum for a poem of perhaps not half a hun- 
 dred lines. I said it did not seem so to me, even 
 if we considered merely the labor that went into 
 it, let alone the name and fame of the author. 
 
 "You would think differently," he said, "if 
 you had written as many poems for three and five 
 dollars each as I have," — those being the prices 
 he had received for some of his earlier well-known 
 pieces, which he named. The immortal Psalm of 
 Life — which, with the marks it bears of an im- 
 perfect mastery of the art he was afterwards to 
 bring to such perfection, yet breathes the inmost 
 spirit of his genius, — the poem that may almost 
 be said to have established his reputation — was 
 sold for three or five dollars (certainly not more 
 than five, — I think he told me three) to the 
 
LONGFELLOW 43 x 
 
 Knickerbocker Magazine, in which it first ap- 
 peared. This was in 1838. Through the agency 
 of his versatile friend, Samuel Ward, in New 
 York, he was enabled in a few years to command 
 three or four times five dollars for anything he 
 chose to write, — fifteen or twenty dollars being 
 really a dazzling price for a poem in those days. 
 
 The Hanging of the Crane was disposed of to 
 the New York Ledger for an exceptionally large 
 sum ; the history of which transaction was related 
 to me by Longfellow about the time it took place. 
 The poem was finished in December, 1873, and 
 sent to Ward in New York, who received it with 
 rapture, and wrote that he thought his " trotting 
 friend Bonner " would pay " two guineas a line for 
 it." As it comprised about two hundred lines, 
 this meant a little more than two thousand dol- 
 lars. Mr. Fields advised that it should not ap- 
 pear in any periodical, but be issued at once in a 
 small and elegant illustrated volume. Longfellow 
 held the matter in consideration for a month or 
 more, then consented that the poem should be 
 submitted to Bonner, who promptly proposed to 
 pay one thousand dollars for it, — about five 
 dollars a line. Longfellow thought this offer 
 munificent enough, and would have accepted it 
 unquestioningly ; but Ward demurred, contend- 
 ing that such a poem from so famous an author 
 
432 MY OWN STORY 
 
 should have a higher value for the Ledger, — a 
 sheet that had founded its enormous success 
 mainly on the stories of Sylvanus Cobb, Jr. Bon- 
 ner thereupon consulted his lawyer, a man of 
 liberal views, who said : " Ward is right. Send 
 Longfellow a check for three thousand dollars, 
 and give Ward an honorarium of one thousand 
 for his mediation." Bonner was himself a man 
 of the most liberal disposition, which was evinced 
 not only in practical matters, but in those of a 
 more personal nature ; as when, the Ledger having 
 gradually outgrown the Cobb, Jr., style of story, 
 instead of casting out with business-like indiffer- 
 ence the writer who had been so useful to him, 
 Bonner retired him on a pension of four thousand 
 dollars a year, which Mr. Cobb enjoyed in his 
 home in Norway, Maine, after he had ceased to 
 write, and as long as he lived. 
 
 Bonner saw the force of his lawyer's sugges- 
 tion; and so it happened that The Hanging of 
 the Crane appeared in the Ledger at an expense 
 to that paper of four thousand dollars, three 
 fourths of which went to Longfellow, and one 
 fourth to Ward. Considering that it was after- 
 wards issued by the poet's publishers in a sump- 
 tuous holiday edition that had an immense sale, 
 it is safe to say that this poem of two hundred 
 lines was, for its length, the "best paid " piece of 
 purely literary work ever produced. 
 
LONGFELLOW 433 
 
 VIII 
 
 In speaking of this poem I am reminded of a 
 poetical figure in it that may have been suggested 
 by one in my own poem, Service, which had ap- 
 peared in The Atlantic Monthly some time before. 
 I had written : — 
 
 " For me the diamond dawns are set 
 In rings of beauty." 
 
 In Longfellow's lines the image is reversed, the 
 dazzling dawn becomes the smiling close of day, 
 and the sun 
 
 " Like a ruby from the horizon's ring 
 Drops down into the night." 
 
 Longfellow was of course unconscious of this 
 adaptation, — if indeed it was an adaptation, and 
 not a figure that had arisen independently in his 
 own mind ; although Service was a poem of which 
 he had spoken to me of having read. 
 
 His imagination, like that of every true poet, 
 was the haunt of suggestions that had come to 
 him often from unknown sources and by unre- 
 membered ways, — teeming fancies ready to start 
 forth in the light and take place and shape in 
 the page they were needed to adorn. Sometimes 
 the thought that first appeared in one form reap- 
 peared in another ; as when the poet wrote in his 
 journal (November 18, 1850), "This college work 
 
434 MY OWN STORY 
 
 is like a great hand laid on all the strings of my 
 lyre, stopping their vibrations," and afterwards, in 
 The Golden Legend, — 
 
 " Time has laid his hand 
 Upon my heart, gently, not smiting it, 
 But as a harper lays his open palm 
 Upon his harp, to deaden its vibrations." 
 
 I do not know that anybody had used this image 
 before ; but in Excelsior he had written, — 
 
 " A voice falls like a falling star," — 
 
 to discover later (as he notes in his diary) that 
 Brainerd had already said the same thing of the 
 mocking-bird's note, — 
 
 " It falls 
 As a lost star falls down into the marsh." 
 
 Wordsworth has in one of his odes, — 
 
 " All treasures hoarded by the miser Time," — 
 
 which Longfellow, as he notes again in his diary, 
 had never read when in his Ode to a Child he 
 wrote, — 
 
 " The buried treasures of the miser Time." 
 
 He was generally fortunate enough to detect 
 these echoes or resemblances in advance of the 
 critics, but not always : as when the one striking 
 image, in the one memorable poem of the Bishop 
 of Chichester, — rendered memorable only by this 
 
LONGFELLOW 435 
 
 circumstance, — - reappeared as the " muffled 
 drums " of the Psalm of Life, and brought down 
 upon him the injurious charge of plagiarism. As 
 he himself observes in his journal, " One cannot 
 strike a spade in the soil of Parnassus without 
 disturbing the bones of some dead poet." 
 
 Here again I am reminded of a thought which 
 I once adapted from him, and which must have 
 persisted in my mind long after I had forgotten 
 that it had any other source than my own imagi- 
 nation. Early in 1858 I wrote the following win- 
 ter piece, which I print here to illustrate a curious 
 literary circumstance relating to two names of 
 much greater interest than my own : — 
 
 When evening closes, and without 
 
 I hear the snow-storm drive and sift, 
 
 And Boreas plunge with many a shout 
 
 Into the tree and through the drift, 
 
 Methinks that up and down, 
 
 With his merry, mocking clown, 
 
 Goes the old king who gave away his crown. 
 
 The king so old and gray ! 
 
 Alas, alas the day 
 That saw him part his golden crown 
 To deck fair Summer's forehead gay 
 
 And Autumn's tresses brown ! 
 
 The cruel sisters twain 
 
 Have robbed him of his train ; 
 And now all night he laughs and raves, 
 And beats his breast and sings wild staves, 
 
436 MY OWN STORY 
 
 And scatters his white hair over the graves. 
 A mad and broken-hearted Lear, 
 
 He roams the earth with crazed brain ; 
 Ah, would the gentle Spring were here, 
 The sweet Cordelia of the year, 
 To soothe his bitter pain ! 
 
 Fondly believing this to be original, and think- 
 ing tolerably well of it, I handed it to Underwood 
 for The Atlantic. He likewise thought well of it, 
 and took it to Cambridge, for Lowell's accept- 
 ance. It came back to me with the comment that 
 it had a fault. This was not the overworked 
 and worn-out classic Boreas, which certainly had 
 no business in so modern a composition, and which 
 could easily have been changed to North Wind. 
 Nor yet was it the bookish " methinks," in the use 
 of which I might have pleaded the example of 
 Hawthorne, who even puts it into the colloquial 
 speech of some of his characters, — if ever the 
 speech of Hawthorne's characters may be termed 
 "colloquial." As for the feeble inversions, "fore- 
 head gay," and "tresses brown," — where the 
 adjective is placed after the noun for the too ob- 
 vious convenience of the rhythm and rhyme, — 
 they were indeed blemishes, which I was to have 
 sense and conscience enough to banish altogether 
 and forever from my later verse, along with all 
 such earmarks of the conventional poetic diction ; 
 although I might have justified them by adducing 
 
LONGFELLOW 437 
 
 the usage of poets the most renowned. But the 
 fault that condemned my winter piece was none 
 of these. It was the worst of all faults. The 
 leading idea of the poem was stolen — " Long- 
 fellowniously obtained," as Underwood laughingly 
 said, quoting, I think, his editor-in-chief. I im- 
 mediately looked up the Midnight Mass for the 
 Dying Year, and was dismayed to find there the 
 image I had so shamelessly plagiarized : — 
 
 " The foolish, fond old Year 
 Crowned with wild flowers and with heather 
 Like weak despised Lear ; " 
 
 the comparison being carried further in the suc- 
 ceeding stanzas. 
 
 Of course I did not print the poem in The 
 Atlantic, or anywhere else, but flung it aside in 
 wrath and humiliation, and hardly ever gave it a 
 thought afterwards, until I was reminded of it by 
 the aforementioned curious circumstance, to the 
 point of which I am now coming. It is this : in 
 Lowell's volume, Under the Willows and Other 
 Poems, which appeared ten years later (1868), 
 the title poem has on page 10 these lines : — 
 
 " And Winter suddenly, like crazy Lear, 
 Reels back, and brings the dead May in his arms." 
 
 Now this was also undoubtedly an unconscious 
 appropriation of the same image that I had " Long- 
 
438 MY OWN STORY 
 
 fellowniously obtained ; " and the incomprehen- 
 sible thing about it is that Lowell should have 
 picked up, and pocketed, and afterwards have 
 stuck into his poetical shirt front, the little gem, 
 the ownership of which he had detected in my 
 more expansive setting. The only explanation 
 seems to be that he had forgotten both Long- 
 fellow's original and my imitation, and reproduced 
 the idea as innocently as poets are all liable to 
 reproduce ideas, — as he himself reproduced a line 
 of Shelley in an earlier part of the same poem 
 (Under the Willows), where he describes the 
 West (west wind) — 
 
 " Shepherding his soft droves of fleecy cloud ; " — 
 
 which are certainly the English poet's "white 
 fleecy clouds " over again, — 
 
 " Shepherded by the slow, unwilling wind." 
 IX 
 
 Longfellow was accustomed to receive all sorts 
 of people, some of whom sought him out for the 
 most whimsical reasons ; like the English visitors 
 who said to him with astounding frankness, " As 
 there are no ruins in this country we thought 
 we would come and see you." The old colonial 
 Craigie mansion, with its windows commanding 
 the broad valley where — 
 
LONGFELLOW 439 
 
 " The flooded Charles . . . 
 Writes the last letter of his name," 
 
 was unquestionably, both from its earlier and later 
 associations, the most attractive house in Cam- 
 bridge. But I was always so much more inter- 
 ested in the man I went to see there than in 
 anything else in or about it, or even in the memo- 
 ries of the great Washington, whose historical 
 headquarters it had been, that I never really saw 
 it, save in the most partial and casual manner, 
 until one afternoon, when some ladies sent in their 
 cards just as I was taking leave. They came with 
 the modest request that they might be shown the 
 house and "just speak with Mr. Longfellow if he 
 was n't too busy to see them." He promptly 
 gave orders that they should be admitted, and 
 turning to me, said, " Stay, and help me entertain 
 these callers ; " which I was very glad to do, as 
 it gave me an opportunity of seeing, with him 
 for cicerone, not only such parts of the house 
 and the things in it as I had seen before, though 
 never so advantageously, but other parts, with 
 their numerous objects of interest. Our host, 
 in his genial way, tried to palm me off also as 
 an "object of interest," but without distinguished 
 success. 
 
 Beginning with the room in which the visitors 
 found us, — the front room at the right of the 
 
440 MY OWN STORY 
 
 entrance, once General Washington's official head- 
 quarters, but in later years the poet's study, in 
 which so many of his famous poems had been 
 written, — he had some simple but illuminating 
 word of association or suggestion for every object 
 to which he called attention : among many other 
 precious things, perhaps the most precious, uni- 
 form bindings of the original manuscripts of his 
 works, nearly complete, and shelved behind glass, 
 — all in his own unvarying, beautifully round, up- 
 right hand, the most of them in pencil ; Cole- 
 ridge's inkstand, always in sight on his centre- 
 table ; sand of the desert in an hourglass (subject 
 of his well-known poem); in the drawing-room an 
 exquisitely carved agate cup, the work of Benve- 
 nuto Cellini, which had once belonged to the poet 
 Rogers ; everywhere portraits and pictures, among 
 these Buchanan Read's painting of Longfellow's 
 Daughters, which was then well known to the 
 public through photographic copies, and which, 
 by an ambiguity in the grouping, had given rise 
 to the absurd story that one of Longfellow's chil- 
 dren had no arms. Regarding this monstrous 
 fable he said : " My friend Lowell once heard a 
 loud-talking woman expatiating upon it in an omni- 
 bus full of passengers, and took occasion to cor- 
 rect the popular error, saying that he knew the 
 family, and that he could vouch for each of the 
 
LONGFELLOW 441 
 
 children having a good pair of arms. The woman 
 retorted, ' I have it on the best authority ! ' and 
 that settled it." 
 
 He had a fund of quiet humor in relating tradi- 
 tions connected with the old house ; one of which 
 commemorated an occasion when Washington was 
 said to have indulged in the laughter so rare with 
 him. It was when General Putnam brought to 
 headquarters an old woman taken as a spy, whom 
 he carried, reluctant and struggling, on his back 
 into the house, — a sight which proved too much 
 for the gravity even of the Father of his Country. 
 After the ladies were gone I asked Mr. Longfel- 
 low if such visits were not sometimes a bore to 
 him. "Yes," he said, "if the comers are preten- 
 tious or shallow-minded ; then I make as quick 
 work with them as courtesy will allow. But 
 these were sincere persons, and I am glad to have 
 afforded them a pleasure which was evidently so 
 much to them, and which they will remember all 
 their lives." 
 
 " And the memory of which they will transmit 
 to their children," I could not help adding. 
 
 His conversation was simple and easy, and often 
 enlivened by a genial pleasantry, to me more 
 welcome than the wit that keeps the listener too 
 
442 MY OWN STORY 
 
 much alert. I never heard him make a pun. And 
 never, in my presence, did there fall from his lips 
 an expression that had in it any flavor of slang, 
 except on one occasion. At the time when the 
 Nineteenth Century magazine was launched, we 
 were discussing Tennyson's sonnet, which ap- 
 peared, a proud figure-head, on the prow of the 
 first number. I remarked that it had one particu- 
 larly expressive line, — 
 
 " Now in this roaring moon 
 Of daffodil and crocus." 
 
 Longfellow's face lighted up, as he took a stride 
 across his hearth, repeated the words, and stop- 
 ping before me, exclaimed, " It is a fine thing to 
 have one strong line go ripping through a son- 
 net ! " 
 
 It has been said, by one who had exceptional 
 opportunities for knowing him, that Longfellow 
 seldom if ever mentioned his distinguished contem- 
 poraries, either to criticise or commend. This does 
 not accord with my recollection of the various 
 conversations I had with him. Rarely indeed 
 did a word of disapproval fall from those gracious 
 lips ; but he was by no means reticent or luke- 
 warm when there was occasion for praise. I have 
 already quoted his comments on Emerson and 
 Whittier, in connection with the Ichabod incident. 
 He once spoke freely of Emerson's faulty ear, 
 
LONGFELLOW 443 
 
 and said that in at least one instance Emerson 
 rivaled Whittier in the badness of his rhymes, — 
 
 " Who bides at home, nor looks abroad, 
 Carries the eagles, and masters the sword." 
 
 But then he went on to speak of The Snow-Storm 
 as a perfect gem of blank verse, citing the de- 
 scription of the housemates gathered — 
 
 " Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed 
 In a tumultuous privacy of storm" — 
 
 and pronouncing the last to be one of the most 
 beautifully suggestive lines written by any modern 
 poet. 
 
 Bayard Taylor's feat, reported at the time, of 
 writing in a single night, immediately upon the 
 arrival of the book in America, a review of Victor 
 Hugo's La Legende des Siecles, giving metrical 
 translations of some of the poems, — all remark- 
 ably well done, and occupying a page or two (I 
 have forgotten just how much space, and am afraid 
 to say two or three pages) in the next morning's 
 Tribune, — this he pronounced an achievement of 
 which probably no other man in America would 
 have been capable. He expressed great admira- 
 tion for Taylor's varied gifts, and remarked, 
 " How narrowly he escapes being a great poet ! " 
 adding that he had facility, rhetoric, feeling, a 
 sense of beauty and melody, yet lacked the last 
 "indefinable touch." 
 
44 4 MY OWN STORY 
 
 XI 
 
 His ways with young children were exceedingly 
 gracious and winning. My own girls (then very 
 young indeed) had been kept out of sight when- 
 ever he called, until one day, hearing their laugh- 
 ter in the hall, he asked to see them. Overawed 
 by his gray hair and beard and venerable aspect, 
 but attracted by his smile, they approached with 
 bashful pleasure as he held out his arms to them ; 
 when he broke down all barriers by saying, — 
 
 " Where are your dolls ? I want you to show 
 me your dolls ! Not the fine ones you keep for 
 company, but those you love best and play with 
 every day." 
 
 Before the mother could interfere, they had 
 taken him at his word, and brought the shabby 
 little favorites with battered noses, and were 
 eagerly telling him their names and histories, 
 while he questioned them with an interest that 
 wholly won their childish hearts. Notwithstand- 
 ing its humorous and homely aspect, — or partly 
 perhaps on account of it, — the scene suggested 
 a more beautiful and human picture of the often 
 treated subject, " Suffer little children to come 
 unto me," than any I ever beheld. 
 
 On another occasion I took the elder of the 
 little girls to see him, along with some Western 
 
LONGFELLOW 445 
 
 relatives, who thought their visit to the East 
 would miss its crowning satisfaction if they should 
 go back without seeing Longfellow. We found 
 other company at the house, and the conversation 
 had become so animated that the presence of the 
 child was forgotten by everybody except our host. 
 Suddenly he arose with a smile, saying, " I can't 
 bear that little Grace should n't also be enter- 
 tained ! " and going into the hall, he set the 
 musical clock to playing its tunes for her, while 
 her elders talked. 
 
 He sometimes brought to see me his intimate 
 and almost lifelong friend, Professor George W. 
 Greene, the historian, of Greenwich, R. I. ; and 
 at one of their visits our Windsor, then a boy of 
 thirteen, took us out on the lake in his boat. 
 Professor Greene, who was in feeble health, 
 wished to pull an oar; Windsor, full of health 
 and spirits, pulled the other, and pulled too hard 
 for him. This he continued to do, notwithstand- 
 ing my remonstrance, — being slow to realize 
 how much it was needful that he should moderate 
 his stroke, — when Mr. Longfellow said, — 
 
 " Let him row his own way ! He enjoys it ; and 
 we must n't interfere with a boy's happiness. It 
 makes no difference to us whether we go forward 
 or only circle round and round." An incident 
 in itself slight, but illustrative of his thoughtful 
 regard for the happiness of the young. 
 
446 MY OWN STORY 
 
 XII 
 
 It was while walking alone with me once on the 
 shore of that lake (Arlington Lake, or Spy Pond), 
 that Mr. Longfellow, after stopping to gaze for 
 some moments in silence at the island and the 
 distant banks, overleaned by willows and water- 
 maples, said to me, — 
 
 " Why have you never put this lake into a 
 poem ? " 
 
 I said I supposed it was because I had it in 
 view every day. " When I get away from it, then 
 very likely my imagination will come back to it, 
 and I may write something about it." 
 
 " Don't wait for that," he replied ; " do it 
 
 now 
 
 I have always regretted that I did not then and 
 there enter into an agreement with him that we 
 should each write a poem on the subject. What 
 a precious companion piece we might then have 
 had to his Cadenabbia and Songo River ! I can 
 almost imagine these lines, inspired by Lake 
 Como, to have been breathed by his Muse that 
 very afternoon, as we stood gazing from our 
 shore : — 
 
 " Sweet vision ! do not fade away ; 
 Linger until my heart shall take 
 Into itself the summer day, 
 And all the beauty of the lake ! " 
 
/ 
 
LONGFELLOW 447 
 
 This was in September. I waited until the glory 
 of the month of May was on the wooded shores 
 and the reflecting water, then, in memory of his 
 inspiring suggestion, I wrote Menotomy Lake. 
 
 I cannot forbear quoting here the last letter I 
 ever received from him, it is so characteristic of 
 the kindness of heart that prompted him, even in 
 illness, to pen with his own hand a brief message 
 that he knew would carry happiness to a friend. 
 The same sheet bore the printed announcement 
 which his family were then sending to his corre- 
 spondents : " On account of illness, Mr. Longfellow 
 finds it impossible to answer any letters at pre- 
 sent ; " a circumstance that rendered all the more 
 touching his voluntary note to me. And it be- 
 came still more sacredly precious when it proved, 
 not only the last to me, but one of the last letters 
 he ever wrote. The poem referred to was Three 
 
 Worlds. 
 
 Cambridge, Dec. 16, 188 1. 
 
 Dear Mr. Trowbridge, — What a beautiful 
 poem is this of yours in the January Atlantic ! 
 
 I have read it with delight, and cannot help 
 writing a line to say so. 
 
 Faithfully yours, 
 
 Henry W. Longfellow. 
 
448 MY OWN STORY 
 
 XIII 
 
 In him passed the most purely poetical of the 
 entire group of our early singers. Bryant, jour- 
 nalist and politician, would now be forgotten as a 
 poet but for Thanatopsis, the lines To a Water- 
 fowl, and one or two other pieces. The reputa- 
 tion of Poe — a man of genius, if ever there was 
 one, but an adventurer, and also something of a 
 charlatan — likewise rests upon three or four 
 poems, one might almost say on one or two. 
 Whittier, prophet and reformer, had extraordinary 
 poetic sensitiveness and a winning spirituality, 
 but (certainly until his later years) he was too 
 much an improvisatore to regard uniform excel- 
 lence in his work. Whitman brought sheaves in 
 abundance, but too often with stubble plucked up 
 by the roots and the soil adhering. Holmes was 
 a wit and a man of science ; Lowell, satirist, es- 
 sayist, diplomatist, and assuredly a poet, but one 
 whose affluence of fancy and largeness of cul- 
 ture did not insure him always against incongru- 
 ousness of metaphor and roughness of utterance ; 
 Emerson, pursuing ever the loftiest ideals, yet a 
 transcendent master of crystalline prose rather 
 than of rhythmical harmonies. Longfellow was 
 not the greatest of the group. He was neither 
 brilliant nor versatile nor intense ; great power 
 
[Autograph lines from " Three Worlds"'] 
 
 
 A^A^/- (^-X; 
 
 J^Z-U^ 
 
 
 Jr/k-- (^^^^^^Y cOnrz^/^jzC+J 
 
LONGFELLOW 449 
 
 and great passion were not among his gifts ; the 
 charm of his verse is more in sentiment and 
 atmosphere than in any distinctively vigorous in- 
 tellectual quality. But he was always the poet, 
 devoted to the poet's ultimate aims, and, amid all 
 the distractions of college work or other duties 
 and interests, breathing the cool airs of the Par- 
 nassian groves. 
 
 Every great reputation is certain to be dimmed 
 by time, and to suffer from comparison with daz- 
 zling new stars, even with meteors that flash 
 transitorily across the sky. Longfellow is no 
 exception to the rule ; it has even become a fash- 
 ion to decry his poetry as commonplace. He did 
 not experiment in many metres, nor startle us 
 with audacities, nor witch the world with haunt- 
 ing melodies. Commonplace his poetry undoubt- 
 edly is, inasmuch as it has entered into our litera- 
 ture and into our lives, and has so ceased to be a 
 novelty, — commonplace too, possibly, here and 
 there, in a more depreciatory sense. But, when 
 all admissions are made, may we not ask — pass- 
 ing over without mention his more important pro- 
 ductions, those on which his fame is mainly based 
 — is it not pertinent to inquire what writers of 
 to-day, on either side of the sea, are blending 
 thought and feeling in such forms of beauty as 
 The Two Angels, The Bridge, The Arsenal at 
 
450 MY OWN STORY 
 
 Springfield, The Birds of Killingworth, — and a 
 long list beside of poems as full of a wise, sweet 
 humanity and as perfect in their art ? 
 
 His work, more than most men's, was the out- 
 growth of his character ; and the same might 
 almost be said of the circumstances of his life, 
 which seemed the natural branching and foliage 
 of the genius they were to support and enfold. 
 But for the one overwhelming catastrophe of his 
 home (not forgetting the earlier intimate afflic- 
 tion), I know of no other so altogether happy and 
 harmonious career. He lived long in the enjoy- 
 ment of the fullness of his fame, and died the 
 most widely read and best beloved poet of the 
 English tongue. 
 
 No more fitting, no more touching tribute can 
 be paid to him than in the words of his most illus- 
 trious contemporary, who, in his own darkening 
 years, when his memory was in eclipse, and those 
 sky-piercing faculties showed like shattered peaks 
 amid clouds, having stood long by the open coffin 
 of his friend, and gazed his last upon the features 
 death had stilled, murmured gently, " I do not 
 remember his name, but he was a beautiful soul." 
 
 A beautiful soul in very truth he was. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 CLOSING NUMBERS 
 
 What I have thus far written of my life seems 
 not much more than shaping a path through the 
 woodland, broadly scoring now and then a way- 
 mark and opening up a vista, but leaving on 
 either side aisles of light and deeps of shade 
 unsurmised, and affording few glimpses of the 
 boundless blue above. When the work has gone 
 irrevocably out of my hands, I shall doubtless be 
 better able than I am now to determine how much 
 more, or how much less, should have been told. 
 
 I had it in mind to write more fully of some 
 worthies whom I have barely mentioned, and 
 to fill out a page here and there with notes 
 upon others whom I have not found it conven- 
 ient to mention at all; particularly to call up 
 again a few of the stars that within my recollec- 
 tion have shone above the charmed horizon of 
 the footlights : the great contralto, Alboni, full- 
 orbed, refulgent, who appeared in Boston con- 
 certs two years after Jenny Lind, and remains 
 
452 MY OWN STORY 
 
 to me a hardly less glorious memory than that 
 peerless queen of song ; the lithe, electric Ra- 
 chel and the truly royal Ristori, both of whom I 
 saw in Paris now almost fifty years ago ; our own 
 Charlotte Cushman, an actress of exceptional 
 force and talent, the ideal Meg Merrilies (barring 
 some harsh stage mannerisms), full of pathetic 
 dignity as Queen Katharine, but almost too virile 
 and unlovely a Lady Macbeth, and still less fitted 
 for Rosalind, or any character endowed with 
 delicacy and charm ; the elder Booth, who lacked 
 the well-modulated art of his eminent son Ed- 
 win, yet possessed more native genius, — small of 
 stature, but all nerve and fire, — who could enact 
 Richard III. to the wild joy of the groundlings, 
 or Iago to the calm satisfaction of the judicious ; 
 Forrest, whose robustiousness in rending a pas- 
 sion made one too often forget his really great 
 qualities (conspicuous in King Lear), and his 
 admirable elocution (noticeable even in a part so 
 wholly unsuited to him as Hamlet) ; last, but in 
 power foremost of all the histrionic personages, 
 early or late, American or foreign, whom I have 
 had the good fortune to see, — the Italian whose 
 superb personality united the most consummate 
 art with the most prodigious energy, — Tommaso 
 Salvini. Nor, since I name these, should I omit 
 from the list Dickens as a personator of his own 
 
CLOSING NUMBERS 453 
 
 creations, — Micawber, the Wellers, Buzfuz, and 
 the rest, — whose Boston readings in 1867 I dis- 
 tinctly recall ; a brisk little man most exquisitely- 
 attired, with a button-hole rose, glittering studs 
 and rings, a heavy fob-chain festooning his low- 
 cut waistcoat ; a bald crown, and a portentous 
 port-wine complexion, which a maroon-colored 
 screen, always in place behind him on the plat- 
 form, and a maroon-colored desk in front, were 
 artfully designed to relieve ; a theatrical manner, 
 a worn-out actor's voice, and many false intona- 
 tions (the rising inflection being much too insist- 
 ent), but with marvelously mobile features, an 
 animation of style and a contagious sense of his 
 own fun which would have redeemed worse faults. 
 
 II 
 Of other influences than those I have desig- 
 nated, which have affected decisively my views of 
 life, I ought to mention, more particularly than I 
 have yet done, Darwin's great work on the Origin 
 of Species. Singularly enough, I was first made 
 acquainted with it by its most able and famous, 
 most learned and persistent assailant. Shortly 
 after the book appeared I heard Agassiz restate 
 its main facts and arguments so fairly, so fully, so 
 convincingly, that although he ended by declar- 
 ing, " I don't believe a word of it ! " I was left 
 
454 MY OWN STORY 
 
 confronted by the substantial truth of what, to my 
 apprehension, all the reasons he proceeded to 
 array against it failed to overthrow. Not that I 
 ever accepted the unmodified Darwinian doctrine 
 in all its implications. Within its province it 
 threw vivid light upon many things, but it cast 
 no ray into the Infinite Beyond. 
 
 Counterbalancing that influence was one yet 
 more potent, of which I must also make mention, 
 if only in briefest terms. 
 
 Fully half a century ago I became familiar 
 with the phenomena of spiritualism, and had in 
 my early and late investigations of them some 
 quite astounding experiences, which no argu- 
 ments based upon "jugglery," "hypnotism," 
 " thought-transference," " subliminal conscious- 
 ness," or anything of that sort, under whatever 
 guise, could ever explain away. I was convinced 
 that, under all the frauds and foibles that could 
 be charged against mediums and their dupes, 
 there were living truths, — that man has spirit-dis- 
 cerning powers, and that those who have embarked 
 before us on the Unknown may send back to us 
 signals more or less intelligible through the mists 
 that have closed in upon their voyage. I found 
 in the communications so much that was confused 
 and misleading that I gradually ceased to consult 
 them after I had become fully satisfied as to their 
 
CLOSING NUMBERS 455 
 
 source ; but the faith, thus established, has never 
 faltered ; and to it I have owed, especially in 
 times of bereavement, many consolations. Even 
 though the identity of the voices may sometimes 
 rest in doubt, much yet remains. The assurance 
 remains, not new indeed, but once more vitally 
 renewed, that the mind has occult faculties rarely 
 developed in this state of existence, which pre- 
 suppose a more ethereal condition fitted for their 
 unfolding, as the submerged bud of the water-lily, 
 struggling upward from the ooze, and groping 
 dimly through the grosser element, is a prophecy 
 of the light and air in which it is to open and 
 flower. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Perhaps I ought to state that I have endeav- 
 ored always to do the duties of a private citizen 
 in the humblest capacity, on school committees, 
 on juries, as public library trustee, and in further- 
 ing objects of utility and charity. My tempera- 
 ment and my tastes have kept me out of public 
 life, but since the nomination of Fremont for the 
 presidency I have been deeply interested in na- 
 tional politics, as a liberal and an optimist, in the 
 fullest sense of those words. I have had a very 
 pleasant experience of public audiences in lectur- 
 ing and in reading from my own works. 
 
456 MY OWN STORY 
 
 I account it a specially good fortune that I 
 have been able to meet every important business 
 engagement I ever made, with a single exception. 
 In all my dealings with publishers and editors I 
 have never once failed to deliver, promptly as 
 promised, the manuscript of a book, an editorial, 
 or magazine article, or chapter of a serial story I 
 may have been writing, with the printers counting 
 on my weekly or monthly copy ; and I have been 
 equally favored in keeping my other appointments 
 with the exception mentioned, — a Western lec- 
 turing tour, which in quite recent years I was 
 compelled by illness to abandon when I was ac- 
 tually on my way to fill the dates booked for me. 
 It would be baseness on my part to make a state- 
 ment of this sort in any boastfulness of spirit ; I 
 give it, on the contrary, simply as a part of my 
 record, and with devout thankfulness that I have 
 been enabled thus to keep my mind clear from 
 the clouds of unmet obligations. 
 
 IV 
 Of what the world calls " honors " I have none 
 I care to speak of ; although, also as a matter 
 of record, I may mention the honorary degree of 
 "A. M." received from Dartmouth College, and 
 the large silver medal of the Massachusetts Hu- 
 mane Society, conferred for " humane exertions " 
 
CLOSING NUMBERS 457 
 
 in saving a life in circumstances of difficulty and 
 danger (in January, 1872) : circumstances which 
 were in fact such that a stalwart spectator — who 
 stood in an excited but helpless crowd on the 
 shore of Mystic Lake, and saw me go out alone on 
 treacherous ice, regardless of wild warning cries, 
 with no support but two fragments of board I had 
 hurriedly torn from a fence, and drag a drowning 
 boy out of the water, in which I was myself partly 
 submerged by the sinking of the ice under one 
 of my boards — exclaimed vehemently, as I 
 drippingly regained the bank with the boy, "I 
 would n't have done that, not for ten million dol- 
 lars ! " The medal, or rather the act it was de- 
 signed to commemorate, I valued as attesting 
 qualities the quietest life may conceal, even from 
 their possessor ; nor was my satisfaction in it 
 disturbed by a neighboring farmer's saying that 
 the boy " was the worst melon thief in town, and 
 I might as well have let him drown." It was this 
 incident that suggested my story of The Silver 
 Medal, written a few years later. 
 
 V 
 
 I still keep my Pleasant Street home in Arling- 
 ton, to which it is always a gratification to re- 
 turn, after absences long or short, — the longer 
 the absence the greater the gratification. The 
 
458 MY OWN STORY 
 
 longest absence was when I spent three years 
 abroad with my young family (from 1888 to 
 1 891), chiefly in Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and 
 France, — an experience of interest and benefit 
 to us all, especially to the two older children, 
 then at the susceptible period of early girlhood, 
 when the art of the masters, the foreign lan- 
 guages heard spoken, and the people and scenes 
 observed, are instinctively absorbed. 
 
 I was one of the first to discover the advan- 
 tages of Kennebunkport (Maine) as a seaside 
 resort ; and after spending parts of a number of 
 summers there, in 1887 I built a house of my own 
 on Cape Arundel, where I generally manage to 
 pass with some members of my family a few quiet 
 weeks each season by the surge-buffeted ledges 
 that divide Wells Bay from the open Atlantic. 
 
 VI 
 The friend who did more than any one else 
 to induce me to write these recollections — who 
 has since passed to where, " beyond these voices, 
 there is peace " — thought I ought to insist upon 
 a point which he deemed somewhat exceptional in 
 the experience of imaginative writers. Not only 
 can few who will tell their stories look back so far, 
 but fewer still have from the beginning of their 
 careers relied for a subsistence upon their pens. 
 
CLOSING NUMBERS 459 
 
 Nearly every successful writer I know has had 
 in his youth or in time of need an independent 
 income, or a public office, or an editorship, or 
 some other regular occupation to relieve him 
 from the constant necessity of harrowing his wits 
 for daily bread. This is as it should be. I should 
 not dare, even in these more propitious days, to 
 give any young man such advice as kind old 
 Major Noah gave to me. To the most actively 
 creative mind intervals of rest are required ; and 
 it is then a wholesome change to turn from the 
 task of invention to the routine of a profession, or 
 to the light labor of reviewing, or of editing the 
 writings of others. Reviewing I have done very 
 little of, because I never felt that I had a right to 
 sit in hasty judgment upon books ; and with the 
 exception of two brief periods of which I have 
 made mention, I have held no editorial office. 
 From my twentieth year I have relied almost 
 solely upon my pen for support. It might have 
 been better otherwise — who can tell ? Not that 
 I would ever have divorced myself from the 
 Muse ; but I would have kept her as the mistress 
 of the manage, not the maid. On the other hand, 
 I owe much even of my happiness to the neces- 
 sity of literary labor. A natural indolence would 
 often have seduced me to postpone and avoid 
 that which, even when entered upon reluctantly, 
 has been to me joy and health. 
 
460 MY OWN STORY 
 
 Another question rises here, which has often 
 risen in my mind before, as to what would have 
 been the effect upon my life if I could have 
 enjoyed the advantages, which I envied in others, 
 of a university education, and (what would have 
 been of greater value still) of early association 
 with people of gifts and culture. The academic 
 training would undoubtedly have saved me from 
 much poor 'prentice work in story writing, and 
 have afforded me a better preparation for a later 
 start. But I doubt not all was as it should 
 have been for my daily needs and ultimate good. 
 Instead of accusing my fate, I breathe evermore a 
 prayer of thankfulness for the blessings that have 
 fallen to my share. I have had, not an adven- 
 turous, nor a greatly varied, but on the whole a 
 happy course, and am now near its close. At the 
 middle milestone between threescore and ten and 
 fourscore, when my " way of life " should long 
 since (adjudged by the average human experi- 
 ence) have " fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf," 
 I am in the enjoyment of a tolerably green old age. 
 I have known the sharpest afflictions, but " though 
 much is taken " how much more " abides " ! I 
 still carry my five feet eight inches and my 
 twelve stone avoirdupois with easy uprightness, 
 and am active on my feet, if no longer alert to 
 mount stairs two steps at a time or to cut 3's 
 
CLOSING NUMBERS 461 
 
 and 8's on the ice. I have always enjoyed mixing 
 a moderate amount of manual labor with my more 
 sedentary pursuits, and continue to find pleasure 
 and benefit in trimming a border, pushing a lawn- 
 mower, or pruning a vine. 
 
 That something of the freshness of dawn is 
 preserved for me in the evening of my days, I 
 believe that I owe primarily to a sound though 
 delicate constitution ; to an instinctive, never 
 ascetic obedience to the laws of health ; and, 
 above all, to a mind open to the "beauty and 
 wonder " of the existence in which we are " em- 
 bosomed." Add to this a philosophy of fortitude 
 and renunciation which has enabled me to receive 
 the rebuffs of fortune " with a heart for every 
 fate," and which I have endeavored to carry into 
 all the concerns of life ; although I have been less 
 able to live up to it (I grieve to record) at times 
 of petty provocation than in crises of greater mo- 
 ment : a minor annoyance may perchance move 
 me, while the weighty occasion settles me quietly 
 to some unyielding substratum of my nature. I 
 have often questioned why, with all my infirmi- 
 ties of will and passion, I have not more than 
 once gone to wreck on this perilous voyage of 
 time. But headstrong impulse and impetuosity 
 of temper are not, after all, bad fellows for the 
 crew, as long as the Captain keeps the deck. 
 
462 MY OWN STORY 
 
 VII 
 
 I made my fiftieth birthday the occasion of 
 an autobiographic poem, which I find sums up 
 my experience of life even better at seventy-five 
 than it did at twoscore and ten. This is my 
 apology for citing from it these stanzas in this 
 place : — 
 
 Riches I never sought and have not found, 
 And Fame has passed me with averted eye ; 
 
 In creeks and bays my quiet voyage is bound, 
 While the great world without goes surging by. 
 
 No withering envy of another's lot, 
 Nor nightmare of contention, plagues my rest ; 
 
 For me alike what is and what is not, 
 Both what I have and what I lack, are best. 
 
 A flower more sacred than far-seen success 
 
 Perfumes my solitary path ; I find 
 Sweet compensation in my humbleness, 
 
 And reap the harvest of a tranquil mind. 
 
 I keep some portion of my early dream ; 
 
 Brokenly bright, like moonbeams on a river, 
 It lights my life, a far elusive gleam, 
 
 Moves as I move, and leads me on forever. 
 
INDEX 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abercrombie, Dr. John, his 
 Intellectual Powers of Man, 
 46. 
 
 Academy, Brockport, N. Y., 
 86-88. 
 
 Agassiz, Louis, 412, 423, 453. 
 
 Akers, Elizabeth, see Allen, Eliz- 
 abeth Akers. 
 
 Alboni, Marietta, Italian con- 
 tralto, 451. 
 
 Alcott, A. B., his Conversations, 
 345> 350-356; his theory of 
 temperament, 350 ; of the 
 " lapse," 352-354 ; personal 
 appearance, 356 ; trust in 
 Providence, 356, 357 ; esti- 
 mate of himself, 357-359; 
 how estimated by Emerson 
 and Margaret Fuller, 357, 
 358. 
 
 Alcott, Mrs. A. B., 357. 
 
 Alcott, Louisa M., 255, 256, 
 
 317, 357- 
 
 Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 317, 
 319 ; his Story of a Bad Boy, 
 320. 
 
 Allen, Mrs. Elizabeth Akers, 
 " Florence Percy," her Rock 
 me to Sleep, and the contro- 
 versy over, 189, 191 ; 317, 375. 
 
 American Sentinel, Poore's, J. 
 T. T.'s connection with, 157, 
 158. 
 
 Appleton, Thomas G., on Long- 
 fellow's scholarship, 423. 
 
 Ararat, Jewish " City of Re- 
 fuge," in Niagara River, 96. 
 
 Arlington, Mass., formerly West 
 Cambridge, 266; J. T. T.'s 
 home in, 267, 457. 
 
 Arlington Lake, or Spy Pond, 
 267, 445-447- 
 
 Arnold, Matthew, 415. 
 
 Atlantic Monthly, 233, 241-248, 
 250-252 ; acquired by Tick- 
 nor & Fields, 257, 258 ; 323, 
 3 2 4- 
 
 Backwoods home of author's 
 boyhood, 8-23. 
 
 Bacon, Delia, 374. 
 
 Bacon - Shakespeare contro- 
 versy, 378, 379, 400. 
 
 Ball, Dr. A. M. W., his claim to 
 the authorship of Rock me 
 to Sleep, 190, 191. 
 
 Balzac, Honore de, 115. 
 
 Banks, N. P., in Massachusetts 
 Legislature, 234 ; at New Or- 
 leans, 302, 303. 
 
 Barnum, Phineas T., showman, 
 162, 165, 182. 
 
 Bartlett, George B., 256. 
 
 Bartlett, John, 238. 
 
 Beecher, Henry Ward, 349, 373, 
 4". 
 
466 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Bellows, Dr. H. W., 254. 
 Beranger, Pierre Jean de, 122. 
 Billings, Hammatt, artist, 204. 
 Blair's Rhetoric, 46. 
 Blizzard on Illinois prairies, 77, 
 
 78. 
 Boarding houses, Duane St., 
 
 New York, 90, 91, 102, 149; 
 
 No. 33 Brattle St., Boston, 
 
 134, 135; Beach St., Boston, 
 
 175. 176. 
 
 Bonaventure Cemetery, Savan- 
 nah, Ga., 307, 308. 
 
 Bonner, Robert, buys Longfel- 
 low's Hanging of the Crane 
 for the Ledger, 431, 432. 
 
 Book of Gold, The, and Other 
 Poems, 331. 
 
 Booth, Edwin, actor, 452. 
 
 Booth, Junius Brutus, father of 
 preceding, 452. 
 
 Boston, J. T. T.'s residence in, 
 1 32 et seq. 
 
 Bound in Honor, writing of, 330. 
 
 Brainerd, J. G. C, 434. 
 
 Brattle St. Church, Boston, and 
 its 24-lb. shot, 134, 135. 
 
 Brockport, N. Y., academy at, 
 86-88. 
 
 Brown, Goold, English Gram- 
 mar, 51. 
 
 Brown, John, scene of trial and 
 execution of, 271-273. 
 
 Brown, Charles Farrar, " Arte- 
 mus Ward," 18 r, 182. 
 
 Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 
 her Vision of Poets, 184. 
 
 Browning, Robert, 335. 
 
 Brownlow, William G., (" Par- 
 son,") see Taylor, (" Father,") 
 governor of Tennessee, 289, 
 290. 
 
 Bryant, William Cullen, 190,448. 
 
 Bucolics of Virgil, 80. 
 
 Burleigh Brothers, at anti-slav- 
 ery meetings, 168. 
 
 Burns, Anthony, fugitive slave, 
 rendition of, 211, 218-224. 
 
 Burns, Robert, Poems, 81, 84, 
 94. 
 
 Burritt, Elijah H., Astronomy 
 and Geography of the Heav- 
 ens, 52. 
 
 Burroughs, John, clerk in U. S. 
 Treasury, 374 ; his champion- 
 ship of Walt Whitman, 375, 
 
 39 1 - 
 
 Butler, Gen. Benj. F., at New 
 Orleans, 302, 303. 
 
 Butler, William Allen, his No- 
 thing to Wear claimed by 
 Miss Peck, 191. 
 
 Butterworth, Hezekiah, 329. 
 
 Byron, Lord, 45, 54, 57, 94, 184, 
 l8 5» 335> 402. 
 
 Cabin, The, poem read at the 
 celebration of Mrs. Stowe's 
 seventieth birthday, 413, 414. 
 
 Cafe des Mille Colonnes, its 
 band concerts, 127, 128. 
 
 Calvinism, shadow of, 26-32 ; 
 203. 
 
 Cambridge Village (Newton), 
 James Trowbridge settles in, 
 
 3- 
 Canal, Erie, 12, 13, 62, 63, 72, 
 
 89, 321. 
 "Carleton" (C. C. Coffin), 
 
 320. 
 Carleton, Will, his Betsy and I 
 
 are Out claimed by another 
 
 writer, 191. 
 Carlyle, Thomas, letters to a 
 
 friend in America, 84 ; on 
 
 troupe of ballet girls, 115; 
 
INDEX 
 
 467 
 
 J. T. T.'s early admiration 
 
 for, 335- 
 Carpet Lag, The, Boston weekly 
 
 paper, 179, 181-183, 185. 
 Carpet Bagger in Pennsylvania, 
 
 A, magazine papers, 256. 
 Carter, Robert, 236, 238, 240. 
 Cellini, Benvenuto, 440. 
 Chadwick, Charles, shipbroker, 
 
 141-149. 
 Chance for Himself, A, sequel 
 
 to Jack Hazard, 322. 
 Chancellorsville, battle-field of, 
 
 278, 279. 
 Channing, Dr. William F., Al- 
 
 cott Conversation at the house 
 
 of, 354-356- 
 
 Charleston, S. C, scenes in har- 
 bor of, 308, 309 ; city of, after 
 the war, 309. 
 
 Chase, Hon. Salmon P., let- 
 ter from, used to advertise 
 Cudjo's Cave, 263, 264 ; his 
 interest in J. T. T.'s Southern 
 tour, 273, 274; Secretary of 
 the Treasury, 370, 374 ; per- 
 sonal characteristics, 370, 37 1 ; 
 Washington home, 377 ; dis- 
 approves of Lincoln's stories, 
 yet repeats one, 372, 373 ; 
 compared with Walt Whit- 
 man, 384 ; declines to give 
 Whitman an appointment, 
 387, 388. 
 
 Chicago, site of, in 1835, 20 > m 
 
 i845» 73- 
 
 Child, Dr. and Mrs. George, 
 102-112, 143. 
 
 Choate, Rufus, his famous say- 
 ing, 35°- 
 
 Church-going sixty years ago, 
 27, 28. 
 
 Ciurchill, Prof. J. W., elocu- 
 tionist, 255. 
 Cicero, Orations of, 62. 
 Civil War, breaking out of, 259, 
 
 260. 
 Claflin, Ex-Gov. Wm., Stowe 
 
 Garden Party at residence of, 
 
 411. 
 Clark, John S., of J. R. Osgood 
 
 & Co., 322. 
 Clarke, Rev. James Freeman, 
 
 Dr. Holmes's "double," 415. 
 Cobb, Sylvanus, Jr., pensioned 
 
 by Bonner, 432. 
 Cochituate water, introduced 
 
 into Boston, 1 59-161. 
 Coleridge, S. T., his Ancient 
 
 Mariner, 336, 337. 
 Colfax, Schuyler, 373. 
 Collins, Gen. Patrick A., at the 
 
 Moore Festival, 409. 
 Columbia, S.C., destruction of, 
 
 31 1 ; visited after the war, 
 
 3II-3I3- 
 
 Commissary, United States, is- 
 suing " destitute rations," 282, 
 283. 
 
 Confederate Capitol, after the 
 war, 280-282. 
 
 Cooper, James Fenimore, some 
 novels of, 44, 45. 
 
 Copyright law, sometimes a 
 precarious protection, 192. 
 
 Coupon Bonds, story, some ac- 
 count of, 255, 256. 
 
 Coupon Bonds and Other 
 Stories, 324. 
 
 Court House, Boston, converted 
 into a fortress, and assailed, 
 220-223. 
 
 Craft, Ellen and William, fugi- 
 tive slaves, 218, 225. 
 
468 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Cram, professor of pugilism, 
 
 196. 
 Crawford, Thomas, his equestri- 
 an statue of Washington, 280. 
 " Creyton, Paul," pseudonym, 
 
 118. 
 Croly, Rev. George, his Sala- 
 
 thiel, 45. 
 Crooker, Isaac, publisher of 
 
 The Yankee Nation, 155, 156. 
 Cudjo's Cave, war novel, 259- 
 
 265, 286. 
 Cushman, Charlotte, American 
 
 actress, 452. 
 
 Dana, Richard, marries Lydia 
 Trowbridge, 3. 
 
 Dana, Richard Henry, defends 
 fugitive slave Burns, 219. 
 
 Darius Green and his Flying 
 Machine, 319. 
 
 Darley, Felix O. C, artist, 255. 
 
 Darwin, Charles, on the Origin 
 of Species, 453, 454. 
 
 Davis, Jefferson, President of 
 Confederate States, 180 ; in 
 church when he received news 
 that Richmond was lost, 281 ; 
 his threat to lay waste North- 
 ern cities with sword and 
 torch, 313. 
 
 Dial, The, organ of New Eng- 
 land Transcendentalists, 240. 
 
 Diaz, Mrs. Abby M., her Wil- 
 liam Henry Letters, 320. 
 
 Dickens, Charles, 122; novels 
 in monthly numbers, 203; con- 
 tributor to Our Young Folks, 
 317, 318 ; 335 ; as reader and 
 personator, 452, 453. 
 
 Dodge, Mrs. Mary Mapes, con- 
 ductor of St. Nicholas, 325. 
 
 Dodge, Ossian E., buys Jenny 
 
 Lind ticket for $625, 161- 
 164 ; vicarious author of comic 
 songs, 164 ; his collections of 
 coins, 164, 165; sketched as 
 "Killings," in Martin Mer- 
 rivale, 165 ; successful self- 
 advertising, 165, 166. 
 
 Doing his Best, 3d Jack Haz- 
 ard story, 322. 
 
 Dorchester, Mass., Thomas 
 Trowbridge's settlement in, 2. 
 
 Douglass, Frederick, ex-slave 
 and anti-slavery orator, 168, 
 169. 
 
 Drummer Boy, The, war story, 
 260. 
 
 Duluth, Minn., in 1869, 2 57- 
 
 Dumas, Alexandre, the elder, 
 his Monte Christo and Les 
 Trois Mousquetaires, 116. 
 
 Du Page River, East Branch of, 
 73- 
 
 East Tennessee, after the war, 
 264, 285-287. 
 
 Elocution, first principles of, 68, 
 352 ; exercise in, 68. 
 
 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 174; 
 connection with the Dial, 240 ; 
 declines to furnish letters of 
 introduction, 245 ; contribu- 
 tor to the Atlantic Monthly, 
 242 ; poem wrongly attributed 
 to, 246; his Brahma, 246, 
 2 47 5 3 2 3 J early misconcep- 
 tions regarding, 336, 337 ; in- 
 fluence of his writings on 
 J. T. T., 336, 339 ; capable of 
 a righteous resentment, 340, 
 341 ; J. T. T.'s first meeting 
 with, 343-345 ; at a Saturday 
 Club dinner, 346, 347 ; per- 
 sonal appearance and pnre- 
 
INDEX 
 
 469 
 
 nology, 347, 348 ; on the lec- 
 ture platform, 348-350; 354; 
 at an Alcott Conversation, 
 355-356 ; his estimate of Al- 
 cott, 345, 358 ; early letter to 
 Walt Whitman, 3S5, 386 ; let- 
 ters recommending Whitman 
 for a government appoint- 
 ment, 385-389 ; on styles of 
 architecture, 404 ; at Whittier 
 Banquet, his reading of Icha- 
 bod, 426-428 ; his faulty ear, 
 442, 443; 448; at Longfel- 
 low's funeral, 450. 
 
 Emigrant's Story, The, and 
 Other Poems, 324. 
 
 English royal family, members 
 of, write for Youth's Compan- 
 ion, 329. 
 
 Erie Canal, see Canal, Erie. 
 
 Essay on Man, Pope's, 46. 
 
 Ethan Brand, Hawthorne's 
 tale, adventures of, 120. 
 
 Everett, Edward, 349. 
 
 Evolution, Theory of, 32, 354, 
 453. 454. 
 
 Farrar, Dr. Calvin, hydro- 
 pathist, 181. 
 
 Fast Friends, 4th Jack Hazard 
 story, 149, 3 22 > 3 2 5- 
 
 Father Brighthopes, 194-196. 
 
 Field, Eugene, 198, footnote. 
 
 Fields, Mrs. Annie, 252. 
 
 Fields, James T., publisher and 
 editor, on The Vagabonds, 
 252; names the dog in that 
 poem, 252, 253 ; 258, 270 ; in- 
 vites J. T. T.'s cooperation 
 in establishing Our Young 
 Folks, 317; 3 I 8,3 I 9>3 22 >33 1 - 
 
 Fields, Osgood & Co., 318, 
 
 3 l 9> 3 22 - 
 
 Filling an Order, poem read at 
 
 the Holmes Breakfast, 409- 
 
 411. 
 Fish story, an illustrative, 335. 
 Fitchburg Hall, Jenny Lind 
 
 concert in, 166-168. 
 Foot-stove, construction and use 
 
 of, 17, 27. 
 Ford, Daniel S., " Perry Mason 
 
 & Co.," 326-330. 
 Forrest, Edwin, American actor, 
 
 45 2 - 
 
 Foster, Stephen S., anti-slavery 
 agitator, 169. 
 
 Fowler, L. N., phrenologist, his 
 hits and failures, 122, 123. 
 
 Framingharn. Mass., ancestral 
 home of the Trowbridge fam- 
 ily. 3- 
 
 Fredericksburg, Va., after the 
 war, 274-276. 
 
 Freedmen's Bureau, observa- 
 tions on, 292-295 ; work of, 
 295, 296. 
 
 Fremont, Gen. John C, nomi- 
 nation of, for the Presidency, 
 
 435. 
 French Colony in New York in 
 
 1848, 112. 
 French language, as learned by 
 
 eye and ear, 131, 132. 
 Fugitive Slave Law, created 
 
 anti-slavery sentiment, 215; 
 
 supported by Webster, 429. 
 Fuller, Sarah Margaret, her con- 
 nection with the Dial, 240 ; 
 
 association with Alcott, and 
 
 estimate of, 358. 
 
 Garfield, Gen. James A., 274, 
 
 373- 
 Garrison, William Lloyd, aboli- 
 tionist, 168, 170, 215. 
 
470 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Genesee Country, the, 4, 6. 
 
 Genesee Falls, 7 ; tragedy at, 
 39,4o; 71. 
 
 Geneseo, village of, 48, 49. 
 
 Genin, " the hatter," his fortune 
 made by a Jenny Lind ticket, 
 162. 
 
 Gettysburg, battle-field of, 256. 
 
 Gibbes, Mayor of Columbia, 
 S.C.,311. 
 
 Gibson, a classmate of Carlyle, 
 82, 8 3 . 
 
 Gillem, Gen. Alvan C, in com- 
 mand at Chattanooga, 288. 
 
 Goethe, his Hermann und Doro- 
 thea, 422. 
 
 Gold pencil-case engraving, 
 104-108. 
 
 "Grandmother Rigglesty," char- 
 acter in Neighbor Jackwood, 
 39 ; as acted by Mrs. Thomp- 
 son, 230. 
 
 Grant, Gen. U. S., his famous 
 saying, 278 ; his body servant, 
 288 ; change of habits after 
 the battle of Shiloh, 288; 
 scene of Pemberton's surren- 
 der to, 299. 
 
 Greeley, Horace, 254, 373. 
 
 Greene, Charles Gordon, jour- 
 nalist, 183. 
 
 Greene, Daniel, marries J. T. 
 T.'s oldest sister, 18 ; in Illi- 
 nois, 72, 73, 79, 80. 
 
 Greene, George Washington, 
 historian, 445. 
 
 Greene, Venilia Trowbridge, 
 marriage and emigration to 
 Illinois, 18-20 ; 72, 73 ; com- 
 ment on The Vagabonds, 253. 
 
 Griswold, Rufus W., his Poets 
 of America, 65 ; Prose 
 Writers of America, 338. 
 
 Gulf of Mexico, steamboat voy- 
 age on, 305. 
 Gulliver's Travels, 46. 
 Guy Vernon, novelette in verse, 
 
 331- 
 
 Gymnasium, Professor Cram's, 
 196. 
 
 Hackett, James H., as " Fal- 
 staff," 115. 
 
 Hale, Rev. Edward Everett, 
 161; preaching in Worcester, 
 197, 198, and note; 317. 
 
 Hale, Lucretia P., 317. 
 
 Hale, Nathan, Boston water 
 commissioner, 161. 
 
 Halpine, Charles Graham, Bar- 
 num's private secretary, 182 ; 
 contributor to Boston news- 
 papers, 183 ; his Lyrics by 
 the Letter H., 184; affair of 
 honor with Handiboe, 186, 
 187 ; adjutant-general in the 
 Civil War, 187, 188; Miles 
 O'Reilly papers, 188 ; death, 
 188. 
 
 " Hamilton, Gail " (pseudonym 
 of Abigail Dodge), her con- 
 nection with Our Young 
 Folks, 318; Battle of the 
 Books, 318. 
 
 Handiboe, E. J., his challenge 
 of Halpine, and the reasons 
 therefor, 185, 186. 
 
 Hanging of the Crane, The, his- 
 tory of, 431, 432. 
 
 Harlan, James, Secretary of the 
 Interior, 390. 
 
 Harvard Medical College, tra- 
 gedy at, 154. 
 
 Hawley, J. R., General and Sen- 
 ator, 280, 281. 
 
 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, adven- 
 
INDEX 
 
 471 
 
 tares of his manuscript story, 
 Ethan Brand, 120; 240, 412, 
 436. 
 
 Hayden, Lewis, attempts rescue 
 of fugitive slave Burns, 220, 
 221. 
 
 Hayes, Dr. Isaac I., his Cast 
 Away in the Cold, 320. 
 
 Hemans, Felicia, 47. 
 
 Henry, Patrick, his famous 
 speech, where delivered, 281. 
 
 Hexameters, classic, adaptation 
 of in English, 421, 422. 
 
 Hicks, Richard " H.," 276-278. 
 
 Higginson, Thomas Went- 
 worth, preaching in Worces- 
 ter, 199 ; attempts rescue of 
 fugitive slave Burns, 220, 
 221. 
 
 His Own Master, minor novel, 
 326. 
 
 Historical Reader, 51. 
 
 Hoar, Hon. George F., in the 
 Massachusetts House of 
 Representatives, 234. 
 
 " Holden's Dollar Magazine," 
 101. 
 
 Holland, Dr. J. G., 325. 
 
 " Holmes, Augustus," pseudo- 
 nym of J. T. T., subjects 
 treated under, 320. 
 
 Holmes, John, 238. 
 
 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, his 
 comment on Mrs. Thompson's 
 " Grandmother Rigglesty," 
 230 ; at informal dinners, 238 ; 
 first Autocrat papers, 247, 
 248 ; christens The Atlantic 
 Monthly, 244, and proposes 
 The Atlantic Lighter for 
 Our Young Folks, 317 ; on 
 instructors in the Medical 
 College, 328 ; 347 I J- T. T.'s 
 
 early interviews with, 402 
 403 ; vivacity at table, and 
 anecdotes of, 404, 405 ; Brah- 
 minical exclusiveness, 406 ; 
 the Professor papers, and cor- 
 respondence regarding, 406, 
 407 ; at the Moore Festival, 
 408, 409 ; at the Breakfast cel- 
 ebrating his seventieth birth- 
 day, 409-411; comment on 
 Filling an Order, 411 ; at 
 Claflin-Stowe Garden Party, 
 411-414 ; his " Double," 415 ; 
 mental characteristics, 416 ; 
 place in American literature, 
 417 ; occasional poems, 423, 
 424; at Whittier Banquet, 
 426; his Hunt for the Cap- 
 tain, 429 ; 448. 
 
 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Jr., 
 " Captain " and eminent ju- 
 rist, 429, 430. 
 
 Home Idyl, A, and Other 
 Poems, 331. 
 
 Homer, Pope's, 115. 
 
 Hooker, Gen., " Fighting Joe," 
 scene of his "battle in the 
 clouds," 288. 
 
 Hotchkiss & Co., Boston news- 
 dealers, 150, 155. 
 
 Howard, Gen. O. O., his cheer- 
 ing advice, 273. 
 
 Howe, Dr. Estes, 237. 
 
 Howells, William D., editor of 
 the Atlantic Monthly, 319; 
 on Walt Whitman, 369. 
 
 Hudibras, Butler's, 94. 
 
 Hugo, Victor, his Le Dernier 
 Jour d'un Condamne, 116; 
 La Legende des Siecles, re- 
 viewed by Taylor, 443. 
 
 Hume, David, his History of 
 England, 44. 
 
472 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Illinois River, steamboat 
 
 travel on, in 1853, 201 - 
 Ingraham, J. H., his Lafitte, 
 
 45- 
 " Interviewers," ways of, 334. 
 
 Jack Hazard and his For- 
 tunes, how written, 321. 
 
 Jackson, Dr. Charles T., 405. 
 
 James, G. P. R., novels of, 45. 
 
 Jenkins, Amaziah, grammarian 
 and abolitionist, 69, 70. 
 
 Jersey City, N. J., J. T. T.'s life 
 in, 104. 
 
 Jewett, J. P. & Co., 241. 
 
 Keats, John, 335. 
 
 Kellogg, Elijah, 320. 
 
 Kennedy, Mayor of New Or- 
 leans, 1865-66, 303. 
 
 " Killings," character in Martin 
 Merrivale, 165. 
 
 Kimball, Moses, proprietor of 
 Boston Museum, 233. 
 
 Kimberley, Miss, actress, Vol- 
 taire's Semiramis translated 
 and adapted for, 207-210. 
 
 Kingsley, Charles, observation 
 on Longfellow, 419. 
 
 Kittredge, Mrs., boarding-house 
 keeper, 135. 
 
 Kossuth, Louis, 349. 
 
 La Fontaine, Jean de, 82. 
 Lamartine, Alphonse de, 115, 
 
 116. 
 Lamb, Charles, 183. 
 Larcom, Lucy, 318. 
 Lawrence's Adventures, topics 
 
 comprised in, 320. 
 Leaves of Grass, see Whitman, 
 
 Walt. 
 Lee, Robert E., .Confederate 
 
 general, his dispatch an- 
 nouncing the loss of Rich- 
 mond, 281. 
 
 Lee, William, of Phillips, Samp- 
 son & Co., 242. 
 
 Le Sage, his Gil Bias, 116. 
 
 Levees of the Mississippi, 301. 
 
 Library, circulating, in early 
 settlement, 44 and note. 
 
 Lincoln, Abraham, 250, 259, 
 370-372. 
 
 Lind, Jenny, concerts in Amer- 
 ica, 161-168 ; 182, 451, 452. 
 
 Little Master, The, minor novel, 
 86, 330. 
 
 Locke, John, On the Human 
 Understanding, 46. 
 
 Lockport, N. Y., J. T. T.'s life 
 in, 62-72 ; teaching school in, 
 81-86; 200. 
 
 Log house, J. T. T.'s birth- 
 place, 8-10. 
 
 Longfellow, Henry W., 242, 
 246, 247 ; a reading of The 
 Vagabonds at the house of, 
 252 ; contributor to Our 
 Young Folks, 318 ; advice to 
 J. T. T., 330 ; 347 ; comment 
 on Emerson's Essays, 341 ; 
 400, 412, 415, 416; J. T. T.'s 
 first meeting with, 418, 419; 
 personal appearance, 419, 
 420; on a certain class of 
 critics, 420, 421 ; Hiawatha, 
 421 ; Evangeline, 421, 423 ; 
 Poe's attacks upon, 421-423 ; 
 occasional poems, 423, 424; 
 at the Whittier Banquet, 425, 
 
 426, and his comments on, 
 
 427, 428; attitude towards 
 slavery, 428-430 ; prices re- 
 ceived by, for early poems, 
 430, 431 ; contributes to the 
 
INDEX 
 
 473 
 
 New York Ledger, 431, 432 ; 
 unconscious borrowing of 
 ideas by him and others, 433- 
 438 ; in his Cambridge home, 
 438-441 ; comments on con- 
 temporaries, 442, 443; ways 
 with children, 444-446; on 
 the shores of Spy Pond, 446 ; 
 his last letter to J. T. T., 447 ; 
 his enduring fame, 448-450; 
 characterized by Emerson, 
 
 45°- 
 
 Lookout Mountain, ascent of, 
 288. 
 
 Loring, Edward G., U. S. Com- 
 missioner, remands Anthony 
 Burns to slavery, 218-220. 
 
 Lost Earl, The, and Other 
 Poems, 331. 
 
 Lowell, James Russell, writes 
 Ode for Cochituate Water 
 Festival, 1 59-161 ; at Elm- 
 wood in 1854, 235-238 ; ap- 
 pointed Harvard professor 
 and sails for Europe, 239; 
 starts The Pioneer, with Rob- 
 ert Carter, 240 ; edits the At- 
 lantic Monthly, 244-248 ; con- 
 tributes to Our Young Folks, 
 318 ; 347 ; his characteriza- 
 tion of Walt Whitman, 392 ; 
 404,412,436; his borrowings 
 from Longfellow and Shelley, 
 437, 438 ; 440. 
 
 Macaulay, Thomas B., his 
 Lays of Ancient Rome, 184 ; 
 
 335- 
 
 Mackinaw, Straits of, 73. 
 
 Mad River, tributary to Otter 
 
 Creek, 226. 
 "Manton," character in Fast 
 
 Friends, 149. 
 
 Martin Merrivale, novel, 165, 
 203-205, 218, 225, 226. 
 
 Matches, first friction ("luci- 
 fer"), 17,18. 
 
 Mathews, Prof. William, 192, 
 
 193- 
 
 McLees, Archibald, engraver, 
 121-123. 
 
 Mead, Edwin D., 319. 
 
 Melodeon, Boston, Theodore 
 Parker preaches in, 168-170; 
 anti-slavery meetings held in, 
 168, 169. 
 
 Menotomy Lake, poem written 
 at Mr. Longfellow's sugges- 
 tion, 446, 447. 
 
 Merry Wives of Windsor, 
 Hackett as " Falstaff " in, 
 114, 115. 
 
 Milton, his Paradise Lost, 51. 
 
 Minerva Jones, The, fitted for 
 voyage to the California 
 coast, 147, 148. 
 
 Minnesota, trips to the wilds of, 
 201, 257. 
 
 Mirror of the Fair, The, J. T. 
 T.'s editorship of, 157. 
 
 Moliere, 122. 
 
 Monroe, Lewis Baxter, his in- 
 terest in the writing of Jack- 
 wood, 227 ; 239 ; remark on 
 Emerson's voice, 349 ; at an 
 Alcott Conversation, 350- 
 352 ; his great work, 352. 
 
 Montaigne, 335. 
 
 Moore, Thomas, his centennial 
 celebrated in Boston, 408, 
 409. 
 
 Moosehead Lake, trip to, in 
 1849, 136-141. 
 
 Morituri Salutamis, Longfel- 
 low's poem, occasion of, 
 424. 
 
474 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Morton, Dr. William T. G., his 
 discovery of anaesthesia, 206, 
 207, 405- 
 
 Motley, J. L., historian, 247. 
 
 Moulton, Mrs. Louise Chandler, 
 188, 189. 
 
 Mount Kineo, Maine, 138. 
 
 Munn, Dr., oculist, operation 
 
 by, 52, 53- 
 Murdock, James E., actor, 255. 
 Music Hall, Boston, Theodore 
 
 Parker preaches in, 170-174. 
 
 Nashville, anniversary of bat- 
 tle of, 289. 
 
 National Era, Uncle Tom's 
 Cabin in clippings from, 
 242. 
 
 Neighbor Jackwood, the novel, 
 39; the writing of, 211-232; 
 240, 262, 263, 364. 
 
 Neighbor Jackwood, the play, 
 229-232, 240. 
 
 New Orleans, city of, in 1865-66, 
 301, 302. 
 
 Newton, Mr. and Mrs. Alonzo, 
 265-267, 350, 363. 
 
 New Year's Address, prize, 63- 
 67 ; 214, note. 
 
 New York city, a May morning 
 in, 89, 90 ; J. T. T.'s life in, 
 89 et seq. 
 
 Niagara Courier, 63-66. 
 
 Niagara Falls, 6^, 71, 72. 
 
 Niblo's Garden in 1848, 112, 
 114, 115, 124. 
 
 Nine Oaks, Illinois farm, 73. 
 
 Noah, Major Mordecai M., jour- 
 nalist and playwright, 95 ; his 
 Utopian " City of Refuge," at 
 Niagara Falls, 96 ; friendly 
 aid and advice to J. T. T., 
 96-101 ; 121, 250, 459. 
 
 O'Connor, William Doug- 
 las, leaves literature for a 
 government office, 373 ; in 
 the Lighthouse Board, 374 ; 
 his novel, Harrington, 375 ; 
 championship of unpopular 
 causes, 375 ; intimacy with 
 Walt Whitman, 376-378 ; his 
 brilliant defense of, 390, 391. 
 
 Ogden, Monroe Co., N. Y., J. 
 T. T.'s birthplace, 6, 12; its 
 centennial celebration, 44, 
 note ; revisited, 177, 321. 
 
 Olive Branch, weekly paper, J. 
 T.T.'s contributions, 136, 137. 
 
 Ontario, Lake, 13, 71. 
 
 O'Reilly, John Boyle, poet and 
 journalist, at the Moore Fes- 
 tival, 409. 
 
 Origin of Species, The, Dar- 
 win's, 354, 453, 454. 
 
 Orr, Governor, of South Caro- 
 lina, 311. 
 
 Osgood, James R., publisher, 
 
 3 22 » 3 2 3- 
 Otter Creek, in valley of the 
 
 Green Mountains, 225, 226. 
 Our Young Folks magazine, 
 
 159, 3!7-3 2 3» 3 2 7. 
 
 Parker, Rev. Theodore, 
 preaching at the Melodeon, 
 168-170 ; at Music Hall, 170- 
 J 73 ; J- T. T.'s sonnet to, 171, 
 337 ; compared with the devil, 
 172; in his library, 172, 173; 
 conservative radicalism of, 
 174; at the rendition of fugi- 
 tive slave Burns, 220; con- 
 tributor to the Dial, 240; 
 censure of Longfellow for 
 subserviency to the slave 
 power, 429. 
 
INDEX 
 
 475 
 
 Parker, Theodore D., Boston 
 merchant, advised to write 
 the D in his name conspicu- 
 ously plain, 169. 
 
 Parkman, Rev. Francis, Uni- 
 tarian divine, 153. 
 
 Parkman, Francis, historian, 
 153. 238. 
 
 Parkman, Dr. George, his dis- 
 appearance and tragic end, 
 
 I52-I55- 
 Parny, French poet, his La 
 
 Guerre des Dieux, 116. 
 
 Parton, James, 317. 
 
 Passy, France, summer at, 226, 
 227. 
 
 Pawnbroker's establishment, 
 scene in, 126, 127. 
 
 Pemberton, John C., Confeder- 
 ate general, scene of his sur- 
 render to Grant, 299. 
 
 Pembroke, N. Y., a vacation 
 at, 67-70. 
 
 Pennsylvania coal and oil re- 
 gions, 256, 320. 
 
 People's Journal, of London, 
 Howitt's, reprints story by J. 
 T. T., 101. 
 
 " Percy, Florence," pseudonym, 
 see Allen, Mrs. E. A. 
 
 Perrault, M., leader of Niblo's 
 orchestra, 109, no, n 2-1 16, 
 129-132. 
 
 Perrault, Mme., 109, no, 112, 
 113; her one fault, 130, 131; 
 death of, 202. 
 
 Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart, 317. 
 
 Phelps, Mrs. Fidelia Trow- 
 bridge, 62. 
 
 Phillips, Moses D., publisher, 
 193-195, 197, 198; his esti- 
 mate of Rev. E. E. Hale, 197, 
 198 and note; of Neighbor 
 
 Jackwood, 228 ; declines 
 Uncle Tom's Cabin, 243; 
 undertakes Atlantic Monthly, 
 244; death, 248; 257, 340, 
 342, 343- 
 Phillips, Sampson & Co., 192, 
 203, 234, 241-243, 248, 259, 
 
 323> 324, 339- 
 Phillips, Wendell, anti-slavery 
 
 orator, 168, 215, 220; his 
 
 voice, 349. 
 Phrenology, 122, 123, 347, 348. 
 Pickard, S. T., his Life of 
 
 Whittier, 425 ; 426-427 note. 
 Pierpont, Governor of Virginia, 
 
 280. 
 Pillsbury, Parker anti-slavery 
 
 agitator, 169. 
 Plato, 335, 353. 
 Plutarch, 45. 
 Pocket Rifle, The, minor novel, 
 
 33°- 
 
 Poe, Edgar Allan, his Sleeper, 
 184 ; contributor to Lowell's 
 Pioneer, 240 ; J. T. T.'s early 
 passion for, 335; attacks on 
 Longfellow, 421-423 ; 448. 
 
 Poets of America, Griswold's, 
 65. 
 
 Pontchartrain, Lake, evening 
 on, 304, 305- 
 
 Poore, Ben : Perley, publishes 
 The Mirror of the Fair, 157; 
 The American Sentinel, 1 58 ; 
 objects to J. T. T.'s turning 
 the Sentinel into an anti- 
 slavery paper, 216-218. 
 
 Pope, Alexander, his Essay on 
 Man, and Homer, 45, 46. 
 
 Prescott, William H., historian, 
 
 3 2 4. 
 Prospect Hill, Somerville, Mass., 
 old earthworks on, 265, 266; 
 
476 
 
 INDEX 
 
 J. T. T.'s residence on, 265, 
 266, 363, 369. 
 
 Psalm of Life, Longfellow's, 
 price paid for by the Knicker- 
 bocker Magazine, 430, 431. 
 
 Public Garden, Boston, in 1848, 
 
 135- 
 Putnam, Israel, Revolutionary 
 general, provokes the mirth 
 of Washington, 441. 
 
 Quincy, Edmund, 238. 
 
 Quincy, Josiah, mayor of Bos- 
 ton in 1848, 160. 
 
 Quincy, Josiah, mayor of Bos- 
 ton, grandson of preceding, 
 160. 
 
 Quitman, The, Mississippi 
 steamboat in 1865, 299-301. 
 
 Rachel, French tragic actress, 
 
 452. 
 Rattlesnakes, prairie, 75-77. 
 Read, Thomas Buchanan, his 
 
 painting of Longfellow's 
 
 daughters, 440. 
 Recollections of Lalla Rookh, 
 
 poem read at the Moore 
 
 Festival, 409 note. 
 Reid, Mayne, his Afloat in the 
 
 Forest, 320. 
 Reid, Whitelaw, 273. 
 Rhetorical Reader, Porter's, 51. 
 Richmond, Va., after the Civil 
 
 War, 279-283. 
 Ristori, Italian actress, 452. 
 Roberts, George, gets Voltaire's 
 
 Semiramis adapted for Miss 
 
 Kimberley by J. T. T., 207, 
 
 208 ; his valuable autograph, 
 
 208, 210. 
 Rochester, N. Y., site of, in 
 
 1812, 7. 
 
 Rogers, Samuel, banker-poet, 
 
 440. 
 Rollin's Ancient History, 45. 
 Rossetti, William, editor of 
 
 English edition of Leaves of 
 
 Grass, points out a blunder 
 
 of Whitman's, 394. 
 Rowse, S. W., artist, illustrator 
 
 of Martin Merrivale, 204. 
 Russell, Sol Smith, actor and 
 
 personator, 254. 
 
 Sabbath-keeping sixty years 
 
 ago, 26-28. 
 St. Anthony, Falls of, in 1853 
 
 and 1869, 201. 
 St. Nicholas, magazine for 
 
 young people, 323, 325, 326. 
 Salvini, Tommaso, Italian actor, 
 
 45 2 - 
 Sampson, Charles, of Phillips, 
 
 Sampson & Co., 204, 241, 257. 
 Sanborn, F. B., his Life of Al- 
 
 cott quoted, 357, 359. 
 Sand, George (Mme. Dude- 
 
 vant), 115, 116. 
 Sandeau, Jules, 115. 
 Sargent, Epes, editor of Boston 
 
 Transcript, 171 ; 336, 337 ; 
 
 "skipped" by R. W. Emer- 
 son, 340, 341. 
 Saturday Club, at a dinner of, 
 
 346, 347- 
 Savannah, city of, in 1866, 307. 
 Schiller, 82. 
 School, district, of the olden 
 
 time, 40, 41, 78, 79, 81-86. 
 Scott, Sir Walter, his Ivanhoe, 
 
 44, 51 ; Lady of the Lake, 
 
 45 5 54,84,94, 122,335. 
 Scribe, Augustine Eugene, 
 
 French author, his Pequillo 
 
 Alliaga and dramas, 116. 
 
INDEX 
 
 477 
 
 Seaver Place, Boston, J. T. T.'s 
 residence in, 176, 177, 194, 
 218, 265. 
 
 Sedgwick, Rev. Mr., abolition- 
 ist minister, 212, 213. 
 
 Semiramis, Voltaire's, trans- 
 lated and adapted for Miss 
 Kimberley, 207-210. 
 
 Seward, William H., Lincoln's 
 Secretary of State, 372. 
 
 Shadrach, fugitive slave, 218, 
 219. 
 
 Shakespeare, 45, 51, 335, 377, 
 378, 379> 399. 400. 
 
 Shelley, 335. 
 
 Sheridan, Gen. P. H„ at New 
 Orleans in 1865-66, 303, 304. 
 
 Sherman, John, Senator, 373. 
 
 Sherman, Gen. William T., his 
 " march to the sea," 289 ; 
 his "gloves," 305, 306; track 
 of his army through Georgia, 
 305, 308 ; at Columbia, 311. 
 
 Shillaber, Benjamin P., (" Mrs. 
 Partington,") 179, 180, 183, 
 185. 
 
 Silver Medal, The, story for the 
 young, 330, 457. 
 
 Simms, Thomas, fugitive slave, 
 218, 219. 
 
 Simms, William Gilmore, 
 Southern novelist, 310, 311. 
 
 Sindbad the Sailor, spectacular 
 play, 233. 
 
 Skerritt, Rose, actress, as 
 " Bim " in Neighbor Jack- 
 wood, 229, 230. 
 
 Slavery question, agitation of, 
 168, 169, 212-215. 
 
 Sleigh-riding on the Illinois 
 prairies, 77. 
 
 Smith, Roswell, publisher of St. 
 Nicholas, 325. 
 
 Smith, W. H. Sedley, stage- 
 manager and actor, 229. 
 Snake-bite, popular remedy for, 
 
 77- 
 
 Soulie, Frederic, French author, 
 116. 
 
 South, The, book of travels in 
 the desolated States after the 
 Civil War, 267-270, 284, 285, 
 3i4-3 J 6. 
 
 Southerners, typical, after the 
 war, 275-278, 283, 284, 286, 
 287, 289, 290-292, 300, 301, 
 306,307,310,311,313. 
 
 Spectator, Addison's, 46. 
 
 Spencer's Basin, or Spenceport, 
 in the town of Ogden, 11, 12, 
 321. 
 
 Spenser, Edmund, quoted, 353. 
 
 Spiritualism, 454, 455. 
 
 Spottsylvania, battle-field of, 
 276, 278, 279. 
 
 Sprague, Mrs. Kate Chase, 373. 
 
 Sprague, William, senator from 
 Rhode Island, 373. 
 
 Stage-coach travel, Western, in 
 1853, 202. 
 
 Stebbins, L., Hartford publisher, 
 267-270, 285. 
 
 Stockton, Frank R., 325. 
 
 Stoddard, Mr. and Mrs. Rich- 
 ard Henry, 232. 
 
 Stowe, Mrs. Harriet Beecher, 
 invites J. T. T. to her home, 
 174; nicknamed by Halpine, 
 183 ; her Uncle Tom, 242- 
 244 ; Dred, 228, 243 ; contrib- 
 utor to Atlantic Monthly, 244- 
 246; to Our Young Folks, 
 317 ; celebration of her seven- 
 tieth birthday, 411-414. 
 
 Strother, Gen. David H., 
 " Porte Crayon," 280. 
 
478 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Sue, Eugene, novels of, 115, 116. 
 
 Sumner, Charles, 349, 428. 
 
 Suttle, Charles F., Virginia 
 slaveholder, 219. 
 
 Swedenborg, his law of corre- 
 spondences, 353. 
 
 Syracuse, N. Y., a frontier set- 
 tlement, 7. 
 
 Taunton, Eng., ancestral home 
 of Trowbridges, 1. 
 
 Taylor, Bayard, 254, 268, 317 ; 
 his feat in reviewing Hugo's 
 La Legende des Siecles, 443 ; 
 Longfellow's estimate of, 443- 
 
 Taylor, Edward T., (" Father,") 
 on a trip to Moosehead Lake, 
 137-141; 146. 
 
 Tennyson, Alfred, his superior- 
 ity to Poe, 335 ; 400, 442. 
 
 Terry, Gen. Alfred H., 280, 281. 
 
 Terry, Rose, 317. 
 
 Thackeray, William Make- 
 peace, 203, 335. 
 
 Thaxter, Celia, 317. 
 
 Thomas, Gen. George H., 290. 
 
 Thompson, Mrs., actress, takes 
 out her teeth playing "Grand- 
 mother Rigglesty," 230. 
 
 Three Scouts, The, war story, 
 262. 
 
 Ticknor & Fields, house of, 257, 
 258, 316, 323, 324. 
 
 Ticknor, Howard M., 318. 
 
 Tinkham Brothers' Tide-Mill, 
 The, minor novel, 326. 
 
 Toby Trafford, where written, 
 326. 
 
 Townsend, John, Westmore- 
 land farmer, 3, 4. 
 
 Townsend, John, the younger, 
 4 ; his name and his silver 
 half-dollar, 4-6. 
 
 Transcendentalism, New Eng- 
 land, 240. 
 
 Tremont Temple, auction sale 
 of Jenny Lind tickets in, 162- 
 164 ; concerts, 166. 
 
 Tribune, New York, letters to, 
 
 233- 
 
 Trowbridge ancestry and fam- 
 ily, 1-3 and note. 
 
 Trowbridge, Cornelia Warren, 
 266. 
 
 Trowbridge, John, major in war 
 of the Revolution, 3. 
 
 Trowbridge, John Townsend, 
 named for his father's foster 
 brother, 4 ; his first silver half- 
 dollar, and his great flock of 
 sheep, 4-6; birth, 10, 11 ; 
 backwoods home, 1 1-23 ; 
 childish illusions, 21-25; early 
 religious feelings, 25-32 ; gen- 
 tle and savage traits, 41, 42 ; 
 intellectual awakening, 42- 
 47 ; first verse-making, 47 ; 
 solitary studies and farm- 
 work, 47-52 ; trouble with the 
 eyes, and an operation, 51- 
 53 ; first printed poem, 54- 
 56 ; causeless melancholy and 
 a real sorrow, 57, 58 ; leaving 
 home, 58-62 ; attends school 
 in Lockport, 62, 63; writes 
 prize New Year's Address, 
 63-67 ; vacation at Pembroke, 
 67-70 ; trip by the Lakes to 
 Illinois, 72, 73 ; life on the 
 prairies, 74-78 ; teaches 
 school in Illinois, 78, 79; 
 rents land and raises crop of 
 wheat, 79-81 ; teaches school 
 in Lockport, N. Y., 81-86; 
 enters Brockport Academy 
 for one hour, 86-88 ; goes to 
 
INDEX 
 
 479 
 
 New York, 88, 89 ; in a city 
 boarding-house, 90, 91 ; seeks 
 employment, 92, 93, and a 
 publisher for a volume of 
 poems, 94 ; befriended by 
 Major Noah, who aids him 
 in selling a novelette, 95-100 ; 
 contributes to Holden's Dol- 
 lar Magazine, 101 ; removes 
 to Jersey City, 104; engraves 
 gold pencil-cases, 105-108 ; 
 returns to New York, 109, 
 1 10 ; life in a French family, 
 1 1 2-1 1 6, 124-132 ; experi- 
 ences as a writer, 117-121 ; 
 sits for phrenological chart, 
 122, 123 ; removes to Boston, 
 132, 133 ; excursion to Moose- 
 head Lake, 1 34-141 ; nar- 
 rowly escapes being a " forty- 
 niner," 1 41-148 ; edits The 
 Yankee Nation, 149-156; 
 The Mirror of the Fair, 157, 
 and Poore's Sentinel, 158; 
 at Jenny Lind concerts, 166- 
 168 ; acquaintance with Theo- 
 dore Parker and Mrs. Stowe, 
 170-174 ; changes lodgings 
 and habits, 175-177 ; revisits 
 old homestead, 177 ; writes un- 
 successful novel, 178; friend- 
 ship with Shillaber, 179, 180; 
 acts as Halpine's second in an 
 affair "of honor," 186, 187; 
 writes Father Brighthopes, 
 193-196 ; at a water-cure es- 
 tablishment, 197-200 ; jour- 
 ney to the northwest, 200- 
 202 ; writes Martin Merrivale, 
 203-205 ; adapts Voltaire's 
 Semiramis for Miss Kimber- 
 ley, 207-209 ; visits Europe, 
 209 ; witnesses rendition of the 
 
 fugitive slave Burns, 218-224 ; 
 Neighbor Jack wood, the 
 novel, 226, 227, and the play, 
 229-231 ; other dramatic 
 work, 233 ; acquaintance with 
 Underwood and Lowell, 233- 
 240, and connection with the 
 Atlantic Monthly, 244-256 ; 
 journeys, 256, 257 ; Cudjo's 
 Cave and other war stories, 
 259-264; removes to Pros- 
 pect Hill, 265 ; first marriage, 
 266 ; second marriage, 267 ; 
 removes to Arlington (West 
 Cambridge), 267 ; engaged to 
 write book about the South, 
 at the close of the war, 
 267-270 ; visits scene of John 
 Brown's execution, 271-273; 
 Washington, 273 ; Freder- 
 icksburg, 274-276 ; Grant's 
 battle-fields, 278, 279 ; Rich- 
 mond, 279-284 ; return home, 
 and serious illness, 284, 285 ; 
 visits East Tennessee, 285- 
 287 ; Lookout Mountain and 
 Nashville, 288-290; observa- 
 tions on Freedmen's Bureau, 
 292-296 ; to Vicksburg and 
 New Orleans, 296-304 ; on 
 the track of Sherman's grand 
 march, 305-30 7; at Savan- 
 nah, 307, 308; Charleston, 
 309-311 ; Columbia, 31 1-31 3; 
 completes The South, 314 ; 
 Our Young Folks, 317-319; 
 contributions to, 316, 320 ; 
 Jack Hazard stories, 221, 222, 
 226 ; connection with St. 
 Nicholas, 325, 326; with 
 Youth's Companion, 326- 
 330 ; best known not by his 
 best work, 333 ; his literary 
 
48o 
 
 INDEX 
 
 passions, 335, 336 ; influenced 
 by Emerson, 336-339 ; his 
 first meeting with, 342-345; 
 observations on Emerson and 
 Alcott, 345-359; earl y ac- 
 quaintance with Walt Whit- 
 man and his writings, 360- 
 370; guest of Hon. S. P. 
 Ch?se, in Washington, 370- 
 373 ; intercourse with Chase 
 and Whitman, 373-391 5 ob- 
 servations on Whitman, 391- 
 401 ; first meetings with Dr. 
 Holmes, 402, 403 ; corres- 
 pondence with, 406-408, 41 1 ; 
 appearance with, at the Moore 
 Festival, 408, 409; reads 
 poem at the Holmes Break- 
 fast, 409-411 ; reads poem at 
 the Stowe-Claflin Garden 
 Party, 411-414; at the Whit- 
 tier Birthday Banquet, 425, 
 426-427 and note ; inter- 
 course with Longfellow, and 
 observations on, 427-450 ; 
 investigations of spiritual- 
 ism, 454, 455 5 " honors," 457, 
 458; philosophy of life, 461, 
 462. 
 
 Trowbridge, Lydia, marries 
 Richard Dana, 3. 
 
 Trowbridge, Rebecca Willey, 
 J. T. T.'s mother, 6-10; 28, 
 29, 32-38; widowhood, 58-61 ; 
 141. 
 
 Trowbridge, Windsor, brother 
 of J. T. T., 29. 
 
 Trowbridge, Windsor Stone, 
 father of J. T. T., birth and 
 boyhood, 3, 4; emigrates to 
 the Genesee Country, 4-8 ; 
 talent for music and story- 
 telling, 33-37 ; death, 57 ; on 
 
 the slavery question, 213, 
 214. 
 
 Trowbridge, Windsor Warren, 
 son of J. T. T., 266, 267, note. 
 
 Tupper, Martin F., his Prover- 
 bial Philosophy, 368. 
 
 Two Biddicut Boys, minor 
 novel, 326. 
 
 Underwood, Francis H., 
 234 ; literary adviser of Phil- 
 lips, Sampson & Co., 234, 
 235 ; his friendly offices, 235- 
 238 ; projects the Atlantic 
 Monthly, 241-244; assistant 
 editor, 244-248 ; death in Ed- 
 inburgh, 249; his Quabbin, 
 249 ; report of an Emerson- 
 Holmes conversation, 404 ; 
 supper to Holmes, 405. 
 
 Vagabonds, The, history of, 
 
 250- 2 55- 
 
 Vagabonds, The, and Other 
 Poems, 255, 324. 
 
 Vicksburg, after the war, 296, 
 297 ; surrender of, 298 ; monu- 
 ment commemorating, 299. 
 
 Vigny, Alfred de, his Cinq- 
 Mars, 46. 
 
 Virgil, 69, 70, 80, 82. 
 
 Voltaire, his La Pucelle, 116; 
 Semiramis, translated and 
 adapted by J. T. T., 207-210; 
 his Soliloquy of Hamlet, re- 
 translated by Lowell, 237. 
 
 Wallingford, Vt., 204, 225. 
 " Ward, Artemus," see Browne, 
 
 Charles F. 
 Ward, Samuel, negotiates sale 
 
 of Longfellow's poems, 431, 
 
 43 2 . 
 
INDEX 
 
 481 
 
 Warren, Dr. J. C, at Massachu- 
 setts General Hospital, 206, 
 
 207. 
 
 Warren, William, comic actor, 
 as " Enos Crumlett," 229. 
 
 Washington, city of, in 1863, 
 376, 377- 
 
 Washington, Gen. George, on 
 Prospect Hill, 265 ; his head- 
 quarters in Cambridge, 439 ; 
 how his gravity was once 
 overcome, 441. 
 
 Water-cure, at Worcester, au- 
 thor's trial of, 197, 199, 200. 
 
 Webster, Daniel, Parker's ser- 
 mon on, 174; his last speech 
 in Faneuil Hall, 349; advo- 
 cacy of the Fugitive Slave 
 Law, 429. 
 
 Webster, Prof. John White, 
 kills Dr. Parkman, 154; con- 
 victe; and hanged, 154, 155. 
 
 Wells, governor of Louisiana 
 in 1 866, 303. 
 
 "West, The," in first half of 
 19th century, 19, 72. 
 
 West Cambridge, see Arlington. 
 
 Westmoreland, N. Y., home of 
 author's parents, 3, 6. 
 
 Whipple, Edwin P., at an Al- 
 cott Conversation, 355. 
 
 Whiskey, remedy for snake-bite, 
 
 77- 
 
 White, Kirke, English poet, 47. 
 
 Whitman, Lieut.-Col. George 
 W., brother of Walt, wounded 
 at Fredericksburg, 370. 
 
 Whitman, Walt, 179, 335 ; his 
 first Leaves of Grass, 360, 
 361 ; reading proofs of his 3d 
 edition, 361 ; a visit from, 
 363, 364; influenced by Em- 
 erson, 365, 368 ; personal ap- 
 
 pearance, 361, 369, 376; his 
 Washington garret, 377 ; on 
 Shakespeare's Plays, 378 ; his 
 simple breakfast, 380 ; Drum- 
 Taps, 381 ; work in hospitals, 
 382, 383 ; compared with 
 Chase, 383, 384 ; Emerson's 
 letters to, and regarding, 385 ; 
 Chase refuses appointment 
 to, 387-389 ; memorandum re- 
 garding, 389 note ; appointed 
 to and turned out of place in 
 the Interior Department, 390 ; 
 O'Connor's defense of, 390, 
 391 ; later publications con- 
 cerning, 391 ; death at Cam- 
 den, N. J., 391 ; change in 
 public opinion regarding, 
 392 ; Lowell's characteriza- 
 tion of, 392 ; his writings esti- 
 mated, 392-401, 448. 
 
 Whitney, Mrs. Adelaide D. T., 
 her We Girls, 320. 
 
 Whittier, John G., 317, 412 ; 
 Boston Banquet in honor of, 
 426, 427 ; his boyish experi- 
 ment in levitation, 426-427 
 note ; his Ichabod, reading 
 of, by Emerson, censured by 
 Longfellow, 427-429 ; 443, 
 448. 
 
 Whittier, Matthew, brother of 
 preceding, anecdote of, 426- 
 427 note. 
 
 Wilcox, Ella Wheeler, 192. 
 
 " Wilder, Harvey," pseudonym 
 of J. T. T., subjects treated 
 under, 320. 
 
 Wilderness, battle-field of the, 
 256, 278, 279. 
 
 Wilkins, "Ned," Handiboe's 
 second in " affair " with Hal- 
 pine, 186, 187. 
 
482 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Willey, Alfred, author's grand- 
 father, 36, 37. 
 
 Willey, Capt. John, veteran of 
 Revolutionary War, 6. 
 
 Willey, Olive Cone, author's 
 grandmother, 10, 38, 39. 
 
 Willey, Rebecca, see Trow- 
 bridge, Rebecca Willey. 
 
 Williams, Mr., Ann St. pub- 
 lisher, 100, TOI. 
 
 Willis, Nathaniel, founder of 
 The Youth's Companion, 326. 
 
 Willis, Nathaniel P., 326. 
 
 Wilson, Henry, President of 
 Massachusetts State Senate, 
 
 234- 
 Woodman, Horatio, 346. 
 Wordsworth, William, 353, 434-. 
 
 Yankee Nation, The, Boston 
 
 weekly, 149-156. 
 Young Surveyor, The, 5th Jack 
 
 Hazard story, 325. 
 Youth's Companion, The, 326- 
 
 330 ; J. T. T.'s contributions 
 
 to, 330. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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