*m University of California Berkeley nw%^ / iiiiilliiiliilltililllliUIIUIIilllll^ JOHN N. EDWARDS BIOGRAPHY, MEMOIRS, REMINISCENCES AND RECOLLECTIONS HIS BRILLIANT CAREER AS SOLDIER, AUTHOR, AND JOURNALIST CHOICE COLLECTION OF HIS MOST NOTABLE AND INTERESTING NEWSPAPER ARTICLES, TOGETHER WITH SOME UNPUB- LISHED POEMS AND MANY PRIVATE LETTERS. ALSO A REPRINT OF SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO AN- UNWRITTEN LEAF OF THE WAR COMPILED BY HIS WIFE JENNIE EDWARDS KANSAS CITY, Mo. : JENNIE EDWARDS, PUBLISHER iSSg COPYRIGHTED JENNIE EDWARDS DONOHUE & HENNEBERRY, PRINTERS AND BINDERS, CHICAGO. DEDICATION. TO THE FRIENDS OF MY DEAD HUSBAND, SOLDIERS AND CIVILIANS, CONFEDERATES AND FEDERALS, DEMOCRATS AND REPUB- LICANS, I INTRUST THIS WORK JENNIE ED WARDS. CONTENTS. PAGE. DEDICATION. BY JENNIE EDWAKDS .'... 3 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. BY REV. GEO. PLATTENBURG.. ..... 9 TWENTY YEARS OF FRIENDSHIP. BY MORRISON MUNFORD. ... 37 MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS OF JOHN N. EDWARDS: POOR CARLOTA 65 A STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND 66 PILOT, WHAT OF THE SHIP ? 68 QUANTRELL 69 THOMAS BUCHANAN READ 70 JAMES GORDON BENNETT 71 FENIMORE COOPER 73 SOHUYLER COLFAX. j 74 BON VOYAGE, Miss NELLIE 75 LITTLE NELSON W. DALBY 76 HENRY CLAY DEAN 77 HENRY WARD BEECHER 78 GENERAL ALBERT SIDKEY JOHNSTON 80 KATKOFF 82 A FISH STORY 84 PROHIBITION 85 ON DEMOCRACY 88 NOT MEN ENTIRELY 89 EVERY TUB ON ITS OWN BOTTOM 91 BOURBON DEMOCRACY 92 A VERY PLAIN REMEDY 93 M. TAINE ON NAPOLEON 95 THE STATUE TO CALHOUN 97 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL 98 THE BATTLE OF THE FLAGS 99 GENERAL GORDON 100 VICTOR HUGO 102 HENRY M. STANLEY 104 DEATH FROM STARVATION 105 IN A FOREIGN LAND 107 ALWAYS ,A WOMAN 108 MORE LITERARY MUTILIATION 110 CHRISTMAS REJOICINGS Ill 5 Vi CONTENTS. PAGE. POOR VALENTINE BAKER 114 ROSCOE CONKLING 116 ON SOUTHERN POETS 118 As TO KING DAVID , 119 DR. JOSEPH M. WOOD 121 WAR QUAKER FASHION 123 WlLL-O'-THE-WlSP 124 WOLESLEY ON McCLELLAN AND LEE 126 CLEVELAND RETIRES TO PRIVATE LIFE 128 WASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAY , 130 TIME MAKES ALL THINGS EVEN 132 JAMES N. BURNES 134 DEATH OF THE PRINCE IMPERIAL 137 BAZAINE 138 THE NEY MYTH 140 DON CARLOS AND MEXICO 142 POOR FRANCE 143 EDMUND O'DONOVAN. . 146 THE REVISED NEW TESTAMENT 148 THE GERMAN SUCCESSION 149 A NEW REVISION OF THE BIBLE 150 THE REVISED BIBLE 150 MARRIAGE OF CAPTAIN COLLINS 152 THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL 152 OUIDA AND ZOLA 154 Is DEATH ALL? 155 THE NEW YEAR 156 WHOSE FAULT is IT? 157 GONE DOWN AT SEA 158 BETTER WAR BY LAND THAN SEA 160 A CLOSE CALL 161 THE KILLING OF JESSE JAMES 163 VETERAN SAM 165 ADDRESS ACCEPTING A FLAG 167 CARRIER'S ADDRESS OF THE MISSOURI EXPOSITOR .... 168 MURDER DONE; OR, THE GYPSY'S STORY 171 THE BIVOUAC OF THE DEAD 174 THE MARRIAGE OF PERE HYACINTHE 176 NAPOLEON AND His DETRACTORS 178 THE BEST ONE HUNDRED BOOKS 180 PERSONAL TRIBUTES 181 NEWSPAPER TRIBUTES 196 SHELBY'S EXPEDITION TO MEXICO. AN UNWRITTEN LEAF OP THE WAR . 229 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. BY REV. GEO. PLATTENBURG, DOVER, MO. The subject of this brief sketch, John Newman Edwards, was born in Warren County, Va., January 4, 1839. Whilst a mere boy he learned tpye-setting at the town of Front Royal, a place now of great and heroic mem- ories, in the Gazette office, a paper at this writing called the Sentinel. Even at that time he was regarded as a boy of extraordinary powers, having, at the immature age of fourteen years, as testifies a contemporary, written a story that gave him " wide celebrity. " While yet a boy, through the influence of his relation, Thomas J. Yerby, of Lexing- ton, now of Marshall, Mo., he was induced to come to the State of Missouri in 1854 or 1855. Arriving in Lexington, he soon thereafter entered upon his avocation of printer in the office of the Expositor, by whom conducted I do not now recall. Here, really, began the education of this singularly gifted boy, wjiose manhood was to be so rich in strange adventures and romance. Of schools Major Edwards knew but little, his advantages of this kind were limited and poor in character. As a boy, he loved soli- tude this peculiarity in manhood made him shy to the verge of girlish timidity. He loved the fields, sweet with " the breath of kine " and the new-mown hay. He lingered in the dim vistas of the woods, and from out their slumberous shadows, dreamily watched the ceaseless swirl of the great river. This love of nature and its communion, 10 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. made him fond of the hunt and the pastime of gentle Izaak Walton. His life during these years, in and about Lexington, was of the ordinary uneventful character, belonging to extreme youth and peaceful times. But the storm was brewing. The distant and sullen muttering of a great political upheaval was breaking ominously upon the nation's ears. Great questions lying radically at the very base of the two antagonistic conceptions of the American system of gov- ernment, were loudly and hotly contested by the sections of the country. The slavery question was not the cause, but the occasion of the threatened rupture. Whatever men may say, or however much they may deplore sectional 'controversy, there were, as there are, but two great drifts of thought as to the true theory of our institutions, the one, denominated, " State Rights/' the other, the steady trend toward centralization. Leaving the truth or falsity of these contested theories out of the question, the fact remains that out of them came one of the mightiest struggles known to the annals of the race. The rupture came. The "golden bowl was broken," the "silver cord was loosened," and there came an era of hate and blood that all good men ought gladly to wish to be forgotten. HIS CAREER AS A SOLDIER. It is at this juncture that Major Edwards began his active career. In the year 1862, Gen. Jo. 0. Shelby organized a regiment near Waverly, Lafayette County, Mo. Of this regiment Frank Gordon was Lieutenant- Colonel. Colonels Shanks and Beal G. Jeans, with Capt. Ben Elliott in command of a battalion, joined and united with Shelby at this point. This command moved on the day of the Lone Jack fight with a view of forming a junc- tion with Cockrell and Coffee. The forces of Shanks, Jeans, and Elliott, with his own regiment, constituted the original force under Shelby. Of this command, after the expiration of several months, upon the retirement of BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. H Captain Arthur, John N. Edwards received the appoint- ment of Brigade- Adjutant, with the rank of Major. This occurred in the month of September, 1863. When finally Shelby was promoted to the command of a division, Edwards shared the fortune of his generous and chival- rous leader and became the Adjutant of the division, I think with the rank of Colonel, though of this I have no positive evidence at hand. In this positionhe continued until the disbanding of the whole command after Lee's surrender. Shelby's force, as we have seen, left Waverly to form a junction with Cockrell and Coffee, but on reaching Columbus in Johnson County, he heard of the Lone Jack battle, and was compelled to revise his plans. He began to work his way south, invironed by almost indescribable difficulties, and never at any time were the experiences and dangers of this illustrious body of men greater or graver. Care, prudence and courage of the highest order were manifested in successfully making this junction, with the men that fought at Lone Jack, an accomplished fact. This was done at or near Newtonia, from which point the united force fell back to McKissock's Springs, in Arkansas. Of this force, as Senior Colonel, Shelby took command, Lieut. -Col. Frank Gordon being at the head of the old regiment. From McKissock's they fell back to Cane Hill, a place made memorable years before by one of those tragedies so incident to frontier life of almost indescribable horror. Here they rested, Hind- man at that time having his headquarters at Van Buren. To Shelby was given the arduous and dangerous duty of watching and contesting, step by step, the Federal advance from Fayetteville. It was necessarily Shelby's additional duty to cover Hindman's movements at Van Buren, Blount performing a like service for Curtiss. During this period the splendid soldierly qualities of this whole command were daily exhibited. The soldier alone knows the hardships, and the demand for an almost superhuman endurance in this form of military service, of such varied fortune of defeat and victory. During the whole period immediately 12 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. prior to the battle of Prairie Grove, Shelby held the posi- tion in front of Hindman's advance, and finally, on a frosty December morning, he opened the hard contested fight of Prairie Grove. The sad December night before the battle is thus described by Major Edwards himself, and as he alone could do it: "The moon this night had been eclipsed, too, and upon many of the soldiers the weird, mysterious appearance of and rushed once more to the MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 89 asasult upon Radicalism as though Jefferson had written its platform and Jackson were leading its columns to the fight. This time the hero was destimed to enjoy the victory and the martyr to wear the crown. Not a hand was lifted to stay the inauguration of Cleve- land. After renewing its youth the party was back again in the house of its father serene, unconquerable, and healed of all of its grievous and manifold wounds, even as Lazarus was healed in the bosom of Abraham. While attempting to prove the indestructibility of the Demo- cratic party from the brief history we have given of the organiza- tions it has successfully encountered, the sacrifices it has made and the sufferings it has heroically endured, we have said nothing of the no less formidable enemies it has had to grapple within many of the States. Whatever sprang up in the shape of an ism, a craze, or a local uprising, there was the Democratic party, square in the breach, fighting the one long, eternal fight for the repose and the integrity of the national organization. It might be greenbackism, or tad- poleism, or prohibition, or whatever other name these emeutes went by, the party set its face against them like a flint, and sooner or later carted them all away to the potter's field, many a time without even a shroud or a coffin. And now the cry is that organized labor is to kill the Democratic party. What for, in the name of common sense and the simplest instincts of common self protection? If the Democratic party from the very first hour of its creation up to the present hour has not been the friend of the laboring man, then kill it. If it has not, both in and out of Congress, fought every kind and species of monopoly, kill it. If it has not stood as a wall against every land grant, grab or steal, and every extravagant appropriation, kill it. If it has not been a constitutional party in every bone and fiber, seeking to preserve home rule and States' rights in their very essence and purity, without which no republic can be long free, kill it. If, in short, it has not been the steadfast and unselfish friend of the oppressed, no matter by whom, or how, or in what fashion, kill it. But if , after having been all these things, there is a single honest workingman to-day in the country who would vote to destroy the Democratic party, that same workingman would murder his father. Parricide is parricide, whether political or social, and a party of parricides is as impossible in America as that an immacu- late soul, washed white in the blood of the Lamb, should not enter heaven. NOT MEN ENTIRELY. [Kansas City Times, March 8, 1887.] In adversity the attitude of the Democratic party was superb. In six desperate presidential campaigns did it drag its battered and crippled old limbs up to an assault upon the Republican party that splendidly organized party born of the Civil War. the spoiled child of pillage and the sword, intrenched in the treasury, claiming to own the nation by the divine right of Appomattox Court House, hobnob- bing with God Almighty in its platforms,and calling Him boss, with the reconstruction aegis over it as a yellow flag over a hospital six times, we say, did the Democracy rush to the fight, successful only in its last encounter with the giant of Radicalism. It was a gaunt and grizzled old thing, this Democratic party. It had hungered and thirsted for a long time. It had laid out of nights, and slept in corn shocks, and gone barefooted many times, and had cockleburrs in its hair, and needed quinine powerful bad for its "ager shake," and 90 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. spoke a strange gibberish about the Constitution, and wanted to know where its little Meenie, called States' rights, was ; but, God bless it ! it was the same old glorious Rip at heart who had gone up into the mountain, singing like a school boy and jocund like a reveler. And now what? Nothing, except that it has got fat again. In renewing its youth it has become somewhat obstreperous. The old house appears to be a little bit circumscribed. The old political family Bible appears to have been revised. Some of its chapters appear to have been interpolated with chapters on prohibition. The niche where once stood the radiant figure of the Constitution is filled with a gutta percha thing, chiseled by the hands of congressional jobbers, and made to cover every appropriation from a silk milch cow up to an ironclad which can not go to sea. As for States' rights, an overflowing public treasury put its velvet paw upon it, and ever since the contact it has purred at the feet of power as the little white mice purred and purred in the velvety hands of Count Fosco. Many saints have been persecuted and many martyrs stoned. In short, the Democratic party appears to be in a transition period appears to be about changing front in presence of the enemy some- thing which Hannibal never attempted and which Bonaparte dared not do but thrice in his lifetime. This condition of things, however, is not calculated to encour- age the opposition so much as to make its own old guard lukewarm or indifferent. The old Democratic party regarded the individual as the unit of society, upon the integrity of which society depended wholly. The personal liberty of the citizen. Jefferson and his associates drove the Federal party out of power on this issue, which was fundamental in the struggle which gave us our free government, and which produced the Constitution. As was the citizen so was the State. The State began at the family. Children were taught at the fireside to love it, to fight for it, to obeys its laws, to revere its institutions and to preserve for it every right guaranteed by the con- stitution. Hence the doctrine of States'^ rights, which once made the Democracy so dear to the people. Which gave to it its magnifi- cent staying qualities, which enabled it to be grand in victory and august in defeat, and which, as contradistinguished from Federalism or centralization, made it essentially the party of the poor man and the pride of every true lover of liberty in the whole land. If it would still retain its hold upon the country it must come back to first principles. It must show that it is fit to reign by stamp- ing upon its administration the features of the great organic law under which it was created. To do this it must be economical in the handling of public money. It must get rid of the idea, as soon as possible, that this is a paternal government, and that whenever there is either a flood, a drouth, a murrain among cattle, a splenetic fever, or a fever of any sort, the only cure is to open the treasury doors. It must extirpate mugwumpery in its own ranks by putting a Simon-pure Democrat in every Federal office in the United States. It must go oftener to the shrine of Andrew Jackson and less to the living presence of those independent fellows who strive a lifetime to take the backbone out of American politics and invent new names for party fealty, truth and devotion. There is yet plenty of time to do all these things, but they must be done thoroughly and in perfect order. The place to begin is in the next Congress. The Democrats have a majority in the House, and upon the work of this majority much will depend that is not now believed in or even imagined. MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 91 EYERY TUB ON ITS OWN BOTTOM. [Kansas City Times, July 17, 1887.] It makes not one particle of difference whether the labor party does or does not put a presidential ticket in the field. We take it for granted that it will. Or the Henry George party. We take it for granted that it will. Or the prohibition party. We take it for granted that it will; but it does make a wonderful sight of differ ence what the Democratie party proposes to do in the premises. Let these various organizations do as they please. This is a free country, and the greater the multiplicity of parties, we suppose, the greater the magnitude of personal or political liberty. Parties are everything in a republic. In France there are some twenty odd, probably. However, all this, the Democratic party has only itself to depend upon primarily for success in 1888. Some great overmas- tering principle must be enunciated by it, and so emphasized as to carry conviction home with it and make it also fragrant and allur- ing with the truth. Nothing that is fast-and-lpose, hot-or-cold, may- be-so-yes or may-be-so-no can live an hour in the winds and the storms of the next campaign. 'Questions have arisen which have got to be answered, and the Democratic party must give its answer in such a way as will make the dust of old Andrew Jackson quicken and stir in its last resting place. Platforms generally are milk and cider. They mean broadcloth or blue jeans. Big sunflowers or scarlet japonicabuds. Something that is soft, pliant and easy to handle. Something that suggests: "Let me tangle my hand in your hair, Jeane*te; It is soft as the floss of the silk, my pet." But in the next national Democratic platform there must be two or three planks which need to be all iron. No metaphor. No lullaby rhetoric, singing a soft, low song at the cradle of interpreta- tion. ]tfo apple plucked and pitched into the committee on resolu- tions by Henry Watterson to be pared by Mr. Randall until it might be a peach, or a quince, or an ivory billiard ball. Our country at last has come face to face with the necessity of few words and many deeds. The prayers now put up must be like Sir Richard Waller's riding down to Naseby: "O, Lord ! Thou knowest how busy I must be this day. If I forget Thee, do Thou not forget me. March on, boys." It is not necessary for the Democratic party to do aught else except to deal frankly and justly with the people. In many directions they seem somewhat bewildered. Beset by a multitude of recruiting officers for all sorts of organization, they simply need to be made able to lay hands upon Democracy. Therefore its organization must be perfect; its discipline of the old days; its platform the^law and the gospel; its declarations patriotic but adamant, and its every movement that of something which is being led and guided by the Constitution. Three times in the history of this republic has the Democratic party prevented a change in its present form of government. As for labor it has given it everything it now possesses in the way of hearty recognition, liberal laws and strong safeguards to prevent the least encroachment. Since It was created it has been especially the party of the poor man and the stranger. It has nothing to fear from hon- est labor, although there may be fifty so-called labor tickets in the 92 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. field, and all working against it. Let all things else go except a full and perfect reliance upon its own resources. Call back its old time energy and discipline, and the people will do the rest. BOURBON DEMOCRACY. [Kansas City Times, May 22, 1888.] One hears much of this term lately. It is as glib in the mouths of certain republican men and newspapers as the forked tongue in the mouth of a snake. And just as glibly does it dart in and out, by its rapidity something like a nerve that jumps and throbs under galvanism, and something like a cut-throat in ambush where the hedge is thickest, or the road the most lonely and God-forsaken. In their estimation Bourbon Democracy means to pull dowji ; burn school-houses; retrograde; have here and there a touch of the thumb-screw; the rack also upon occasions; proscription always; guerrillas out in the underbrush; all the better if a few train robbers ride and raid; breaking into the strong places where the public money is kept; chaos; no more law and order; no more jails; the Rebels in the saddle; and no pitch hot in any available direction. The truth about Bourbonism in Missouri is just this: It got its name from the fact that it would not steal in the old days, nor disfranchise, nor break into meeting-houses to deprive other denominations of their property, nor confiscate railroads, nor run away with county funds, nor be generally unclean, despicable and dishonest. True, a Bourbon Democrat delighted in the past. He believed in the old-fashioned way of doing things. He lived in peace with his neighbors. He burnt neither their hay, their "wheat nor their straw stacks. Nor was one ever known to break into a smoke-house. He believed in the family, and taught his children to rely upon it as the basis of all society, the foundation upon which the State rested, the bulwark against which all the Cossacks in the world tould not prevail when they came to attack civil and religious liberty. He liked his dram and got the best that was going. No Puritanical processes invaded his sanctuary, preaching free love on the one hand and prohibition on the other. Virtue was a shrine at which all the brave Missourians worshiped. The seducer, before the lust had died out of his heart, died on his own dunghill. The Bourbon Democrat was also a pastoral American. He hunted, fished, plowed, loved the "woods, laughed and sang at his work, indulged much in reverie, which is the parent of sadness, did not know how to lie, never knew the road to Canada with his stolen goods and chattels, would have put his wife or daughter to death before permitting either to work or. vote at the polls, the one with the straddle or the waddle of an alligator on land, the other with the leer or the musky smell of the street walker. What a happy commonwealth, this great one of ours! Peace, plenty, prosperity, happiness, truth, manhood, courage, money^ in bank, thoroughbreds in pastures, the devil beyond the' Alleghanies, and each man's fireside his altar and his citadel. One day the sky grew suddenly black as one of Pharoah's Egyptian midnights. In the darkness there were heard the footsteps of men in motion. The travail of civil war was at hand and por- tentious births came every where to the surface. The face of Mis- souri changed as suddenly as the maps Napoleon used to make of MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 93 Europe when he would inundate it like a mountain torrent from the Rhine to the Vistula. Strange animals got in. A hybrid thing, called a registrar, was it not one-half Bashi Bazouk and the other half horse stealer or blackmailer, went about with his little thing- gum-bo D ballot boxes to cheat, to rob, to ensnare, to betray, to dis- franchise the Bourbon Democrats. These registrars had armed guards. They knew a mule on the other side of a mountain. Fine, fat Durhams made their mouths so water as to cause one to think mad dogs had been about. It was not the drooling and dripping of mercury, but the vims of carpet-baggery, robbery and innate scoun- drelism. In this condition this salivation was saturnalia. The man who would not take the oath to forswear his people, his kindred and his blood was a Bourbon Democrat. So also was the man who defended his stable with a shotgun. So also were the men Bourbon Democrats who organized a body-guard for Frank Blair when on his blessed tour of enfranchisement, and smote the beggars and the bulldozers hip and thigh at Warrensburg and at Marshall. So also were all the people who would not put collars on their necks and chains around their ankles. Then there came another day when all this hierarchy of looters, proscriptionists and thieves was tumbled down in one working and squirming mass together. The blue-bottle flies had found their carrion, and from that hour to this the carcass has never known a resurrection. Hence, when a term is to be applied of particular odium, as is supposed by some of these leavings of the old carpet-bag days, the person so banded against is called a Bourbon Democrat. Hence also the virulence with which Morehouse is being attacked, and Glover and Claiborne and many more who are in the field as candidates upon the Democratic ticket. Very well! It is an honor higher than the grand cross of the Legion of Honor itself. Hunted, proscribed, shot at, robbed, over- ridden, swallowed up, who is on top to-day? The Bourbons, bless God, as they are understood to be by their Republican re vilers. And look at the hands of these very same Bourbons. Are they not clean? They never stole a railroad nor appropriated money that belonged to some office of trust and responsibility; never broke into churches, never murdered a righteous minister of the gospel, never drove off other people's mules, horses, oxen, sheep, hogs and cattle in droves, never tore jewelry from the ears and fingers of women; but it is on top, we tell you, with victory on every one of its banners which flies to the wind, a president in the "White House and Elaine, the speckled gentleman, betwixt the devil and the deep sea. A VERY PLAIN REMEDY. [Kansas City Times, February 26, 1889.] Representative Democrats from all portions of the State have just met in St. Louis to consider the ways and means of a practical and thorough reorganization of the party. Any political caucus or convention which the Hon. Champ Clark, of Pike county, presides over and addresses, commends itself at once not alone to the con- fidence but to the active support of the entire Democracy of Missouri. Young as he is, he is possessed of that kind of progressive ardor and all prevading faith which removes mountains. In the lares and pen- ates of his political household there are only the gods of his fathers. The results of the late election showed all too plainly that the 94 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. Democratic party in Missouri -was sick sick enough to call in a doctor. Its malady came from a tampering with too many poisons. It had wandered iar afield from the spot where stood many of its ancient landmarks. It had stopped too long to dally with Circe, and all too long to make love to the Sirens. Wolf tracks might be seen all about its premises. Many of its gods were mere pinchbeck or putty. Its leadership went by the name of nincompoopery or no good. It was everything for men and nothing for principle. The old guard was forced in many instances to give place to conscripts. About many of the camp tires there was either dearth, desolation or absolute night. Some of its martyrs were stoned, some of its saints were crucified, and some of its heroes were put to death. Change appeared to have laid its polluting hands upon every- thing that should have been held sacred and inviolable. Men who had never been Democrats aspired to gushing and garrulous supremacy in the way of organization Political tramps pointiog to a certain glib unction of speech as prima facie evidence of their right to fill pulpits and pose as meek and lowly preachers of the gospel of Christ got thick among the chinaware and the crockery- ware of the Democracy, and did more devilment in one year than so many bulls of Bashan could have done in ten. Emotional women sometimes -unfrocked and always unsexed got among the one suspendered, and so ogled and ogled andso manipulated and manip- ulated them, that in three days they brought each to the verge of insanity, so making him scowl at his wife, his companion for forty years, the blameless mother of six grown up children, with a hideous expression of carving-knives and strychnine. Laws, that the people had been living under peacefully and prosperously for forty years, were changed with the rapidity of the figures in a kaleidoscope. Each session of the Legislature exuded from its lowest depths, which is demagogy, cartload upon cartload of oint- ments, unguents and healing things, so that the plan of salvation might be done away with, and the great marquee of the millennium pitched upon the blue grass about the capitol buildings. The courts also took a hand from the lowest to the highest, and as a result of all these came gloom, disgust, sullenness, an indifference almost sui- cidal, an apathy which froze like a Dakotian blizzard as it fell, a great pulling apart from a lack of cohesiveness, a great falling away because of a scowling demoralization black as a night with a tem- pest in it and, finally, an almost overwhelming defeat at the polls. We name no names and we make neither a crimination nor a recrimination. We have simply pointed out the wounds upon the body of the Democratic party yet all unhealed and bleeding and cry aloud for that blessed balm we know to be still somewhere abiding in this our political Gilead. And now what about a remedy for it all a remedy for organiza- tion at its ebb, discipline shattered, querulousness and fault-finding everywhere, four congressmen lost, a bare working majority in the Lower House of the Legislature, and some splendid Democratic parties torn from their hitherto steadfast moorings and given over, rudder- less and dismasted to the wreckers and spoilers of the great political deep? A very plain remedy is nigh at hand come back to first prin- ciples. The present general assembly of Missouri, Democratic in both branches, can do this vitally necessary and inestimable work. Resolutions are all very well in their way, but, like fine words, they butter no parsnips. Such meetings as the one just held in St. Louis, MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 95 if they do no good can at least do no harm. The masses, however, want acts not words. If the present general assembly will show to the State that It is a dignified, economical, practical body, opposed to every form and feature of experiment in legislation; proscriptive in no single degree and in no single given direction; willing to live and lat live; that it means to purge its lobbies free from the hateful yet ruinous presence of a swarm of gad-fly cranks of all sexes, nationalities and politicalpredilections; if it will quit meddling with old landmarks and cease to follow the teachings and advice ot those who are never happy unless they are living in political chaos, and never well-fed, clothed or housed unless there is political dynamite and upheaval on every hand if, in short, it will teach by example that the Democratic party of Missouri is what it once was the pro- tector of the poor man, the friend of the laboring man, a foe to proscription in all its Protean shapes, a zealous guard over the peo- ple's money, free from all manner of envies, jealousies and spites, a true lover of the Constitution, a stalwart champion of home rule and States' rights, despising buncombe, and setting its face as a flint against every quack doctor of a demagogue peddling all sorts of vile legislative nostrums and specifics, the Democracy will rally to it en masse, reform its ranks, and go forward into the next fight with all of its old-time resolution and audacity. But there must be no back- ing and filling. The hour has struck when a new day is to be ushered in of either men or mice. M. TAINE ON NAPOLEON. [Kansas City Times, April 17. 1887.] M. Taine, having in his own estimation, pilloried Victor Hugo, for all the future, has been writing a series of articles on the life and character of Napoleon Bonaparte. M. Taine is a French literary charlatan, who carries the commune into literature and strives to pull down as many great names as pos- sible, the better to propitiate the red Republicans of the faubourgs. It is not the first time in history that a rat has been known to attack an elephant not the first time in history that little six-by-nine luci- fers have risen in revolt against the living God and been kicked into perdition for their audacity. Indeed, among a certain class of authors the writing of sacrileg- ious things is looked upon as the frank license of superior skill, and the formulating of blasphemous speeches the strongest sort of evi- dence that behind the sacrilege and behind the blasphemy there is a genius that might illuminateand entrance theworld. To this class belongs Henri Taiue. It is positively painful to see him drag his crooked and crippled limbs up to the assault upon the mighty Corsican. Why so feeble an assailant should choose for his pattering and inconsequential blowsso huge a colossus is only to be accounted for upon the supposition that notoriety, even though it be of the infamous sort, is better than no notoriety at all. Pos- sessed perfectly of this spirit was Eratostratus, the Ephesian, who burnt the famous temple of Diana, and Randolph, who pulled the nose of Andrew Jackson. Red republicanism never had a master in Europe until Napoleon came. He organized it, drilled it, armed it, equipped it, and then served it out as food for gunpowder. Jacobin bones were left on every battle-field from Moscow to Waterloo. He found the crown of Louis XVI. rolling in a gutter of blood, and he picked it up, cleaned 96 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. it, and put it upon his head. To keep it there he had to make war. All the kings in Europe coalesced to kill him, and to save his own life he became a king himself. That necessitated army after army, and who so well qualified to fight as those old Septembrizers, those old Dantuniau butchers of the Abbaye, those old cut-throats of the Cordelier club who apostrophized the guillotine as a beauti- ful woman, and wrote sonnets to its knife as to a coquettish maiden. Napoleon knew the who e savage lot better than any other man in all France, and he managed, first and last, to get the great bulk of them killed. Their lineal descendants to day are such rabid Republicans as Taine, Madame De llemusat, Jung, and a whole host of other third-rate scrioblers, who imagine that they can put out the light of the sun by lighting two-penny tallow candles. And how do they seek to blacken the fame of the great Napo- leon? How does this despoiler of the dead, Taine, seek to do it? By adverse criticisms of his genius as a soldier? No. By logical discussions of his capacity as a commander-in-chief? No. By showing wherein he failed as a ruler, a lawgiver, an emperor, the conqueror of Europe? No. By comparing him unfavorably to Ca3sar, Hannibal, Marl borough, Frederick the Great? No, but by dwelling upon the venial sins and shortcomings of his personal char- acter. He delights to tell how Napoleon gave way at times to par- oxysms of ungovernable temper. How he swore at his secretaries, pinched the ears of his aids de camp, roared out at Josephine, abused his marshals, broke furniture, threw his clothes in the fire, insulted ambassadors, kept five or six mistresses, would not brook contra- diction, did not know what patience was, cared nothing for music, could not spell, did not know French, never read a book, abomin- ated plays, persecuted Madame De Stael, put on theatrical airs, was the terror of courtiers, and the overbearing despot whom all about him feared. And is this not a wonderful way to sum up the life and char- acter of Napoleon Bonaparte? To gossip about him in the style of an old woman; to tell of the little faults and foibles of poor human nature; to become his valet in order to see him at his toilet, in his bath, when he is relaxed, when he has nothing else to do except to make himself disagreeable; to leave out the Italian campaign, the Austrian campaign, the Prussian campaign; to say nothing of the Alps where the eagles of the mouutaics and tbe eagh s of the standards touched wing and wing and soared together; nothing of Montenotte; of Lodi, of Arcola, of Marengo, of Austerlitz, Wagram and Jena, of Eylan, Friedland and Borodino; nothing of the raft upon the Niemen, the peace of Tilsit, and three monarchs at his feet pleading for the bare right to reign. And yet M. Taine calls ail this interminable stuff of his about Bonaparte's boots, temper, toilettes, idiosyncracies of various kinds, and what not, an accurate and critical summing up of the life and character of the greatest soldier, the greatest lawgiver, the greatest adminis- trator and the greatest ruler in all ways to make a nation powerful that the world ever produced The desire of the red Republicans to bring imperialism into disrepute may be all very legitimate and desirable, but why send a rat to attack an elephant? Were there not others of the earth alto- gether earthly to be carped at and picked to pieces? It takes a god to destroy a demi-sfod. No pigmy of a man, much less such a man as Henri Taine, chained Prometheus to the rock and summoned the vultures from the sky to prey upon his vitals. For work like that the forger of the thunderbolts had to apply his hands. The garru- MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 97 lous Frenchman has simply lighted his two-penny candles in front of that tomb under the dome of The Invalides, and proposes to put out the sun of Austerlitz. THE STATUE TO CALHOUN. [Kansas City Times, April 27, 1887.] South Carolina did well yesterday when she unveiled the statue which had been erected to the memory of her foremost citizen, John C. Calhoun. That he was the strongest man the South ever pro- duced in many intellectual ways, no Northern man doubts; that he was the strongest man the nation ever produced in many intellectual ways, the North will never admit. As parlies exist at present; as long as sectional lines remain as rigidly drawn as they are to-day; while the memories and the events of the Civil War still go to make up the standard whereby public men are tried, analyzed, and given a place in contemporaneous history, Calhoun, colossus though he was, can never leave his mighty impress upon much beyond the con- fines of his own immediate section. The day will come, however, when Tie will be dealt with as an American in the broadest and fullest acceptation of the term. Not as a South Carolinian alone, not as a Southern man alone, not solely as a States' rights man, but as a citizen of the entire republic, born to its institutions, the eloquent advocate of its safest policies, the fearless exponent of its best thoughts, the most inspired expounder of its wise institutions, and the most prophetic statesman a nation ever had to warn it of its perils, and point out to it the dangers that might be averted if it were true to its own interests and to the civilization which called it into being. The orator of the occasion was well chosen. The Hon. L. Q. C. Lamar, both by education and sympathetic political training, was thoroughly equipped for the work he was expected to accom- plish. Without feeling it or knowing it, perhaps, the great South Carolinian had been his model in more ways than one 1 . It was in these qualities alone, more than in any other, the orator says, was to be found thecauseof his unparalleled hold upon the love, reverence antitrust of his people. "His/' hesays, "was the greatness of a soul, which, fired with a love of virtue, consecrated itself to truth and duty, and with unfaltering confidence in God, was ever ready to be immolated in the cause of right and country." In an article of this sort, or even in an article of any kind in this day and generation, it would be time thrown away and effort wasted to attempt a criticism upon the intellectual side of Calhoun's character. As well discuss light, or heat, or germination, or the sun's rays, or the ebb and the flow of the ocean. As the advocate and the champion of States' rights, both in their essence and their purity, he never had an equal. None whoever lived in this country approximated him in luminous power and unanswerable logic. He was never ornate. He stood in speaking as some vitalized figure carved from marble. 'The stream of his discourse flowed from him as some calm, clear, yet resistless river. Many replies were made to his arguments in favor of this States' rights interpretation of the Constitution, but answers never. On one memorable occasion Mr. Webster is reported as saying, in connection with a speech Calhoun had just made in defense of State sovereignty: " It may be replied to, but it can never be answered. Sir, it is unanswerable." Secretary Lamar's address is quite full and satisfactory. He does not present Calhoun in any new light, but it brings him out 98 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. again into the full view of the public. His is a character to be studied from every standpoint, especially from every public and political standpoint. The present generation do not inform themselves as thoroughly as they should of the lives and characters of the great ones gone, more particularly the great ones who founded the republic. They know Clay, Calhoun and Webster more by the constant repe- titi >n of their names than by any careful examination or summing up of the life or works of either. We do not say that the American in- tellect has deteriorated since the men of the Revolution lived or their immediate descendants, but we do say that the age of statesmen appears to have passed. The men charged now to conduct public affairs are generally weak, very much swa} r ed by personal likes and dislikes and full of deceit, subterfuge and trickery. The great need to-day in the councils of the country is an unselfish courage. Patriotism without courage is as mere sounding brass and tinkling cymbal. Indeed, patriotism is but another name for the very high- est sort of courage the courage of conviction, devotion and truth. One thing more. Many believe that the results of the war put to death forever 1 he doctrine of States' rights. There never was a greater mistake if liberty itself is to live and the present form of government endure as the Constitution established it. Calhoun's spirit and teachings are yet to save the nation from the unutterable despotism of centralization. CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. [Kansas City Times, May 14, 1887.] If it be true that the hand of death is even now being heavily laid upon Charles Stewart Parnell, the great Irish leader, the century will not have furnished, when the end is finally reached, a more piti- ful and deplorable giving up of life. It is the surroundings which will constitute the tragedy. He is carrying his country's banner. He is just in the prime of his physi- cal manhood, if that is to be measured by years, and just in the per- fect possession of every intellectual faculty. More united than they have ever been, even under O'Connell, the Irish people are at his back. He has already put forth so many admirable qualities of leadership. He has been so patient in adversity, so calm in defeat, so wise in counsel, so brave in actual combat that to lose him now would be for Ireland, in this mighty duel to the death for liberty, like losing her sword arm at the shoulder. A volume might be written upon the part that sudden or inop- portune death has played in the history of nations. When at Lussac bridge the lance head of a Breton squire sped truer to the heart of John Chandos than all the steel of the chivalry of France had done on the fifty f oughten fields, was it any wonder that the Black Prince, worn by disease and bent under his harness, exclaimed wearily when the news was brought to him, "God help us then! We have lost everything on the thither side of the seas " Or if Montcalm had lived, what might fin ally have been the fate of Canada? If Caesar had been spared, while he might not have cared to save the repub- lic, would he not have made Nero and Caligula impossible? What might not have happened also to Catholic Europe if that old war wolf from the north, Gustavus Adolphus. had not fallen at Lutzen, ankle-deep in blood, five balls in his body and a saber stroke which crushed his skull? Who can doubt for a moment that all the misery, pillage and degradation which the South endured through eight MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 99 years of Grantism and reconstruction would not have been saved her if the miserable assassin had stayed his hand and permitted Abra- ham Lincoln to live and carry out his policy? We do not say that the Irish struggle would not go on even though Parnell should die suddenly from the grievous sickness which is now said to have fallen upon him ; but we do say that his loss at such a time would be almost irreparable. He knows his people, and he knows them at that better by all odds than any among his following. In his hands he holds the threads of every combination. A large proportion of the machinery of campaigning, both offensive and defensive, is the result of his own individual and [indomitable work. Gladstone leans upon him in perfect confidence and trusts him implicitly. His influence over his co-workers and associates is remarkable in a cause that has so few of the elements of physical success as compared with its adver- saries. At a word he could make war or peace, bring about an uprising or precipitate a revolution. Nor can too much stress be laid upon this powerful gift or factorship in his character as a leader. The hour may come when it will be folly any longer to either speak, plead, or negotiate. The hand that sometimes refuses the sword must forever renounce the scepter. There are also times when a great cause, no matter how holy or just, must either fight or abdicate. Then we firmly believe Parnell will fight. THE BATTLE OF THE FLAGS. [Kansas City, Times July 3, 1887.] General Sheridan from one standpoint and ex-President Jeffer. son Davis from another, have just written each a practical and sensible communication on the subject of the Confederate flags captured in battle, or supposed to have been so captured. Sheridan writes as a soldier; Davis as a statesman, with some' of the touches of the amazing grace of politics thrown in. Each represents the extreme of two civilizations, but the place of their meeting is the common ground of common sense and practical humanity. It is well for these distinguished gentlemen to have their say, the first with a sort of f e-f o-f um of the ride to Winchester, and the second with a sort of funereal sighing for a " Touch of the vanished hand, And the sound of a voice that is still;" but the fighting men of the line, whom history never mentions and never thinks of, have their own ideas and opinions also as to this entire flag humbuggery, no matter where the flags now are or when and where they were first captured. As far as the great mass of the Confederate private soldiers are concerned they do not care two straws whether these so-called captured flags are to day in some spread-eagle Federal museum in Washington City, in Nova Scotia, in Booroo-Booroo Gha or in Afghanistan. The cause for which they once floated in the hot, lit foreground of many a terrible and pitiless battle, after having appealed to the sword perished by the sword. That was the end. The last lion of the Confederacy, borne backward in his leap at Gettysburg, died at Appomattox Court House. That again, we say, was the end. There was no more cause. No more struggle, no more government, no more armed resistance no more anything for the South except misery, 100 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. poverty, graveyards everywhere, crepe everywhere, mourning everywhere, and finally the beak of the reconstruction vulture where once had been the musket of the brave invader. Besides, there is a wonderful amount of gush and tomfoolery about this flag business for other causes and reasons. Take the whole mass and mess and muck of them beginning at the palmetto flag of South Carolina, with a coiled rattlesnake at the root of the tree, and leading on up through device after device and experiment after experiment, until the regulation stars and bars were reached and what is left at last but something that can be found on every field where one of those parti-colored and variegated banners was unfurled the deathless valor of the Confederate soldier. That is all that the survivors care anything about. Many a time they fought splendidly without any flag at all. It was the cause they wereafter. Their uniform was supposed to be gray in color, but who can erect a standard whereby rags and tatters shall be contrasted. Who shall prescribe the hue of seams and darns and patches ? Another thing: How many of these so called captured flags were ever really captured in actual battle? Some, we know, fell into Federal hands through capitulation. Somecametothem through the pre-emption of discovery. Hidden away securely, as was sup- posed, by detachments on a raid or outlying scouting parties, they were either given up by faithless guardians or unearthed by the enemy himself. Some were mere buckram flags, parodies upon the originals, pieced together by frolicsome school girls and stuck up on poles by the roadside in sheer womanly bravado. Some were furi- ously and gloriously taken at the point of the bayonet; but, how- ever, any or all of them were taken, the fact is eternal that those who now have them are welcome to them forever and ever. Neither do the surviving Confederate soldiers care two straws for the political aspect of the flag question. The American people make up a composite race one part being demagogues and the other part toadies, the demagogues, however, standing vastly in the ascendency. The Republican demagogues have been and are yet making much of an uproar over President Cleveland'sfirst action in the matter of the captured flags. They would march en masse to Washington to prevent their return. They would rise en masse to tear from his office any executive officer who would dare to attempt such a thing. They would do a great many other terrible things, among the balance to re-enact the role of the ass under the lion's skin; "but high above all this rant, and roar, and fustian, there can simply be seen another edition of the bloody shirt. True, this loyal old bugaboo is a little bit different in its cut, and a little bit shrimper in its gather and pucker, but how Sherman's grand old gal, Eliza Pinkston, would delight to see it wave as of old, and how John Sherman himself will wave it for her delectation in the spirit land, and for his own advancement in the land of the demagogues and the toadies. One thing as well as another serves for a bloody shirt, and why not the return of the flags captured or supposed to be captured from the Confederate forces? GENERAL GORDON. [Kansas City Times, July 17, 1887.] General Gordon has been found again in Equatorial Africa, this time far up in the Gondokoro country and the big lakes. MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 101 What is he doing there? What has he been doing since hi3 miraculous escape from Khartoum? Nothing. He never escaped. He has never been seen after the gates of his defenses were sold by the miserable Egyptians to the Arab followers of the still more miserable Mahdi. Most probably he died under a hundred spear thrusts. It is gen- erally understood that his head was cut off. He may also have been flayed. This sort of mutilation is very common in the East, and Gor- don was superstitiously regarded as some monster of a different race, who would arise again if he were not dismembered. The Gondokoro story is an old one. There never was a day during the siege when Gordon could not have escaped from his envi- ronments at Khartoum. The soldiers could have gone with ease the citizens would have been sacrificed. He preferred that they should all die together. If ever there was a Christian soldier in the fullest and freest acceptation of the term, Gordon was one. The average Christian soldier, however, was most generally a sneak. Behind the mask of meekness and lowliness he had the ambition of a king eagle. Look at Cromwell. He used to pray as many as eleven times a day. In battle he was known to dismount his own cavalry regiment the Ironsides and put up a fervent appeal for victory, all of which did not prevent him from cutting off the head of one king, and becoming one of the sternests despots of Europe. Then there was old Monk, who came alor;g behind Cromwell. He piddled and prayed all the way up to London, playing fast-and-loose with Parliament, higgling with the Presby- terians, hot and cold by turns to the Episcopalians, and finally went over to Charles II. for so much cash in hand and an earldom. But Gordon was a Christian general in this, that he frankly declared what he believed, what his convictions were, what motives controlled him, and for all of these he fought, prayed, and died. Of all other English generals, we recall only the name of Havelock. Gordon was sent especially to bring out of the Soudan the Egyptian garrisons. It was as a giant going into the night to drag forth its specters. It was literally the unknown he was about to ride into, and he had for arms only a small walking cane and a well- worn Bible. Poor missionary ! so trustful and yet so doomed. His government abandoned him early. Red tape tied him tighter than the bonds of Paul at the first onset. Not a single sol- dier was ever given him. He asked for bare two hundred British at Wady-Halfy. Refused. For bare 5,000 Turks for tne whole territory. Refused. For Nubar Pasha as assistant. Refused. For a garrison at Berber. Refused. For money to organize the natives. Refused. Sir Evelyn Baring, a water gruel diplomat sent out to Cairo to see what was needed, never saw Egypt in his life before, and only then from within sight of the Red Sea and the Mediterra- nean, dealt with this Samson as with a baby. He set him upon a high chair, tucked a napkin under his chin, and bade him live on Nile water. Poor soul! He still watched on, hoped on, prayed on, starved on, fought on. He saw garrison after garrison surrender, and chief after chief fall away from him. None of his race were by him or about him. His army was made up of everything which would run, sell, desert, betray, steal, rob do every detestable deed known to man but it would never fight. No wonder this last despairing cry came from him in his pitiful helplessness "O! for but one more touch of elbows with the men who stood with me in the Crimea." He was thinking then of the old Black Watch, the famous 92d High- 102 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. landers his regiment and he was hearing again the pealing of the slogan, and the bagpipes playing as of old, and loud, and shrill, and high- All the Blue Bonnets are over the border. Surely, surely, then, his youth must all have come back to him. And all his childhood found him on the hills. There came a day, however, when he was not to see the sun set any more. First, the flour gave out, then the meal. There were no medicines. There never had been any since Hicks Pasha went out on his last march to deification or death, and found a butchery There had been, no meat for month's. Cats and dogs and whatever else crept or crawled had long ago been devoured. Grass was gnawed on the streets as the wild King Nebuchadnezzar gnawed it while God's curse of madness abode upon his head. Finally, Sir Evelyn Baring's bill-of-fare had become alone possible: Eat Nile water. All day one day they ate it, and that night six of Gordon's pashas opened six gates to the enemy. The Nile water was evidently a ration not fit for a soldier. There is not much more to say, only when any liar puts in motion a report that Chinese Gordon is hiding in the wilds of Equatorial Africa, such liar should be instantly destroyed. No more precious and peerless valor has any man shown through all the ages. He went, beautiful in the warrior joy of free and accepted" death, and took from fate's outstretched hand the martyr's crown only such crown as is fit for heroes. He made no moan. A simple, faithful, stainless knight, death smote him in the harness and he died by the standard. VICTOR HUGO. [Kansas City Times, July 21, 1887.] In various ways, and by many tangled and broken lanes and avenues, efforts are being made in France to belittle Victor Hugo, and raise up over against him the younger Dumas, Octave Feuillet, Emile Zola, and a dozen or so other young gentlemen of the pen, sown to be a field of wheat, but sprouted as rye, grew as rye, and continued to be rye until the hogs were turned in upon it, showing by their greediness that it was not alone rye, but a very fine quality of rye at that. We will admit that these gentlemen may have been sown as wheat sound, prolific, unmistakable wheat but the wheat was bogus, and the outgrowth something else except the original seed. We think that we can understand the present attitude of most of the French writers of Paris toward Victor Hugo. He soared too high when he soared, and when he alighted it was upon a crag inaccessible. Mediocrity loves company. Birds that twitter, and sing, and peck here and there about the eaves and gables of houses, have no use for eyries. The sun blears their eye-sight. Collapsed pinions are so many barometers of altitude. Their lungs give away above a tree-top. If their precious little bills are not eternally stuffed with bon-bons and sugar plums, they become inarticulate. Every throat is dumb until it has been food-expanded. Another thing: These so-called rivals of Hugo were manufac- turers; Hugo was creator By manufacturers we mean in literature the faculty to saw, plane, smooth, adjust, emasculate, make the MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 103 proprieties trim, dove-tail, glue together, make pagodas, have arti- ficial lakes, get big gold fish, some water lilies, a water dragon or two, and an ape. By creators we mean a stroke of the pen and a passion. Another stroke, and humanity down in the lists like a giant struggling to do some good. Another stroke, and a star in the east, and the camel drivers down on their knees, terrified but not knowing that a Christ has been born. Another stroke, and lo! Jean Valjean! Another stroke, and lo! Napolean Bonaparte. This is what it means to be a creator. Take the younger Dumas as an example. It is true that he labors under the immense disadvantage of being the son of his father, who was a splendid giant, and who peopled the heavens with con- stellations like Athos and Aramis and Porthos and D'Artagnan but take him as the rival of Hugo, self-appointed and, perhaps, self- exalted. If iu literature you gave him a sobriquet, it would be the "Anatomist." He analyzes a cough, but he evokes no idea of con- sumption. He dissects a suicide, but he leaves behind the philosoph- ical belief that some sort of expiation was needed for a life already too much advanced. He deals with love, and it is pull Dick, pull Devil, as to which of the lovers care the least for each other. He stands by the deathbed, and he scoffs at the priests. He arms him- self for war, and; he jeers at the young conscript who cries because he has just left his sweetheart or his mother. He makes a patriotic address, and he brings in atheism. He makes an address upon lit- erature, and between two weak and hesitating fingers he snuffs out the candle called Victor Hugo. Snuffs it out! Hold on a little bit. That can't be done. Men afloat that is to say, rushing from pillar to post, here to-day and gone to-morrow, living by travel, and a great deal of it like light things. A straw pile, only so it is afire, breaks the monotony of a day's ride. A blockade of any sort is a benediction, because a blockade signifies force, power, obstruction, something that must be inquired into, something that can be inquired about. But when anchored men say, Who is this young Alexander Dumas? I have read him some, but he don't touch me, somehow. He discourses much. He appears to be particularly sententious in some places, and particularly prolix in others, but in putting every thing together, I find that if you take away the chaff you break up the harvest. Break up the harvest! Lord bless you, there was never any- thing planted to make a harvest. Dumas fils was and is a manufact- urer. Hugo was the creator. Dumas was satisfied with giving to his finest character a cough not necessarily fatal, but rather weak, suffocating and appealing. He was further satisfied with making his poor victim die at the right time for himself, at the wrong time for science and for human sympathy, ready with a thousand hands to apply a remedy. Hugo comes upon the stage like Danton used to, not knowing what he wanted until he got a smell of blood. You hoar him first like a bugle, faint, not exactly timid, but far away^ Nobody pays any attention. ''Bug Jargal" dies with the publisher. "Notre Dame " poises a little bit, touches here and there, wavers to and fro, perishes by the wayside. "LesMiserables!" Hush! Did you hear that trumpet? The nation took time to listen. Presently "it came trooping. All chords were touched, all nerves responded, all devotions leaped active and alive, all humanity stirred in its sleep, all splendid manhood put its hand upon its sword. And the "Dame with Camelias" of the younger Dumas, who 104 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. has just delivered an address before the French academy think of that who has just delivered it against Victor Hugo and his writ- ings. And now for a si mile: They stood Enjoras up against a dead wall. A dead wall in French and Spanish executions is a wall too high for the most nervous con script to fire over, or for the most hard shooting musket to penetrate. They stood Enjoras up against one in the house where he was captured. He had curly, auburn hair. The blood in his cheeks came and went as the web and the woof of the Lady of Shalott. Perhaps he had not slept for sixty hours. He had seen death all day and offered to shake hands with him, but death denied the contact. Finally they stood him up. After it was all over, and nothing was left but the midnight and the corpses, one old grenadier said: "It seemed to me that I was shoot- ing at a flower." What is the appearance the situation presents when not grena- diers, but conscripts and militia stand Victor Hugo up against a dead wall and shoot at him ? A flower ? Never. Some king eagle is a good name, after he has towered above Gillatt, who went down to his death and his glory for a woman who had rather tie a pinch- beck curate's white cravat than take the paladin, Breton though he might have been, who had just conquered the devil fish and the Douvers. We make mention of these things solely to show what a war is being waged upon Hugo. It is ridiculous, but it is practical. Hugo's day is near at hand. These other people ? Ah ! nothing. They have no days. HENRY M. STANLEY. [Kansas City Times, July 23, 1887.] And now the rumor comes that Henry M. Stanley, the noted African explorer is dead killed by a native in some sort of com- bat or other. It may not be true, and he may still be alive; but the probabilities are against him. . He was on the same old mission. Out goes an explorer into the unknown. He gets lost, or hemmed in, or captured. " The far cry comes up from Macedonia" for help. A rescue is planned. Some other explorer, equally as devoted, starts to accomplish it. And a third one to find the second, and may be a fourth one to find the third, until as was the case with Dr. Liv- ingstone as many as seven rescuing parties went to hunt first and last for him, and would have been hunting yet probably if Stanley himself had not come upon him accidentally. This expedition Stanley is now on, if he is living, is an expedition to rescue Emin Bey, one of the last beleagured foreign officers left over from the Soudan folly. Of course men can do as they please. Personal bravery is something that always has been and always will be admired. Whoever risks his life for the faith that is in him is a hero. It is something after all to see a person in the full pos- session of a splendid manhood take every desperate chance that can be encountered simply to solve the source of a river. Espe- cially when that river, to say nothing of its source, can never be anything else while the world stands except a breeder of fevers that kill in an hour, the haunt of savage wild beasts and still more sav- age natives. The weight of all the testimony ever compiled is to the effect that the white man cannot live, work, and thrive in equa- torial Africa. Stanley did better than the great bulk of his race He tells us why : "In four years in the jungles," he says, "1 did MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 103 not drink altogether four teaspopnfuls of either whisky or brandy." He studiously kept out of the night air. He never slept upon the bare ground. He always ate sparingly, and used very little meat. And even with it all he further says : "A white man who goes into the far tropics without a plentiful supply of opium, quinine, and calomel had far better go without a compass, some good fire-arms, and plenty of gun-powder. In the first place, you would never get out ; in the last place, you would have thirty chances ^out of one hundred." Now, here is the testimony of a man who was not yet thirty when he went first to hunt for Livingstone. Who was an athlete. Whose liver worked like a piece of prize machinery. Who eschewed alcohol in every shape. Whose head was as clear as a winter's night. Whose digestion was perfect, and yet who tells those who are to come after him that if they ever want to get back they must bring plenty of calomel, quinine and opium. Can it ever be forgottenhow Dr. Livingstone, the presence of death in his very tent, groped about on his hands and knees till he found his medicine chest and ate calo- mel by the handful? And for what is all this done ? For science, some say. For geog- raphy, say others. For adventure, exploration, curiosity, because it is desirable, say others still. For a little gold dust. Two or three goril- las that never materialize and a few hundred pounds of ivory. Very well. It is a splendid field to roam about in, get lost in, get the jungle fever in; but one must have things pretty well closed up behind him at home. When he starts it will be well for his peace of mind if he has no further retrospects. Stanley was a gallant and daring American. What a pity if he too, should perish on the threshold. DEATH FROM STARVATION. [Kansas City Times, July 24, 1837.] A great discussion is now going on between some English and French journals as to how starvation kills, what are the accompany- ing symptoms of starvation, and what the appearance of the body after it has been starved to death. The text for said discussion was the finding some weeks ago of a castaway boat in the Indian Ocean, wherein were seven dead sailors, said to have all died from starvation. The dead men were Frenchmen. The principal point in dispute seems to be what material changes take place in the reasoning faculties of the brain. To what extent, in other words, is the moral nature of man involved as evidenced by many horrible acts of cannibalism? Death by starvation has been simply regarded as a wasting of the body, a horrible agony, an increasing weakness, a lethargic* state of the brain, coma, stupefaction, death. While all this is going on in a physical sense, however, what about the intellectual faculty and its power of distinguishing right from wrong? Is this, too, not undergoing the process of wasting and death? Is this not, too, losing complete control over all those superb moral qualities which make so many Christian heroes and martyrs in the world? Is not the residue simply what the - Angels uprising, unveiling, affirm, That the play is the Tragedy Man, And its hero the Conqueror Worm. The most deep rooted and powerful feeling of human nature 106 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. tbe love of a mother for her offspring is perverted in cases of btarvation. During the siege of Jerusalem by Titus, Jos^phus tells us that mothers ate their babies in great numbers and greedily. A similar case is mentioned in Second Kings, sixth chapter and twenty-ninth verse. It occurred during the famine in Samaria. In such cases, if the intellectual faculty was not entirely gone who doubts for a moment that the mothers would have perished with their children? No end of books have been written on the subject of starva- tion, some taking one ground and some another; some contending that the brain dies first, and some that it is the last to die. In the case of these seven dead sailors, although there was much distor- tion on some of the faces, no attempt had been made at cannibalism. From this the French medical journals argue that the brain dies last, and that the moral faculties are the last to leave the human tenement. What are the symptoms of death from want of food, and how long can man subsist without solid or liquid nourishment? Chossat the great French pathologist, says from eight to eleven days, and after forty per cent, of the weight of the body is consumed. Now, as this means the waste of more of certain tissues than others, it may be interesting to mention those that suffer most. The fat wastes 93 per cent, of its weight; the blood, 75; the spleen, 71; the liver, 52; the heart, 44; the bowels, 42, and the muscles, 42. On the other hand, the following parts waste much less: The bones, 16 per cent. ; the eyes, 10; the skin, 33; the lungs, 22, and the nervous system only 2 per cent. another argument in favor of the proposition that the brain dies last. But the pointmost worthy of attention among these figures is the point that there must be almost consumption of fat be- fore death takes place in fact, death by starvation is really death by cold. As soon as the fat of the body goes and fat is the principle that keeps up heat death takes place. The temperature of the body dim- inishes but little until the fat is consumed, and then it falls rapidly. The last symptoms of starvation from want of food have been given in ten thousand books, and they are generally the same whether in the polar regions or the tropics. They are: Severe pain at the pit of the stomach, which is relieved on pressure. After a day or two this pain subsides, to be followed by a feeling of weak- ness or sinking in the same region. Then an insatiable thirst super- venes, which, if water be withheld, thenceforth becomes the most distressing symptom. The countenance becomes pale and cadaver- ous. The eyes acquire a peculiarly wild and glittering stare. Then a general emaciation. Then the body exhales a peculiar fcetor and the skin is covered with a dirty, brownish-looking and offensive secretion. The bodily strength rapidly declines, the sufferer totters J in walking. His voice grows weak, and he is incapable of the least exertion. At last the mental powers fail. First stupidity, then imbecility, and at the end a raving delirium. Chossat, above quoted, sneers at tlie idea that intellectual loss must precede cannibalism. He declares that man is a carnivorous animal, and that he approaches the hog nearest in all of his instincts and appetites. Hence, when he gets desperately hungry, he will eat his fellows like a sow will eat up an entire litter of pigs. However, the discussion goes on, and we are only interested in it to the extent of finding out by any research or resource of science, when the man who feeds upon his fellow is a physical or a moral monster, or both. This is the pith and point of the present discus- sion. MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 107 IN A FOREIGN LAND. [Kansas City Times, August 31, 1887.] The death of Mrs. Hubbard, the wife of the Hon. Richard H- Hubbard, American minister to Japan, was singularly touching and pitiful. She was sick a long time. She saw the inexorable reaper afar off. As he came nearer and nearer she dreamed oftener and of tener of her home by the setting sun. Just before she went out into the night she weariedly asked: "Are we not almost there ?" Where ? At her Texas home of course, for none can know except the exile in person how that name home lingers the last upon the lips just before they become inarticulate forever. Her loved ones were behind her, sleeping the sleep that wakes not till the blow- ing of the trumpet. She might perhaps have been a girl again. There again she saw the same low, large moon lifting a realm of romance out of the sea, and there again she saw the darkness and the twilight, as twin ghosts, creeping in from the outermost gloam- ings and obscuring all the land together. Outside a mocking bird was singing as though its voice had a soul and that soul had already caught a glimpse of heaven. It could not be true that the wan, wasted face was never again to feel the breezes of her own native land, nor the fading vision ever again to see the green of the prairie and the blue of the sky grow glad together. Had she not been on a long journey? Was she not so tired so tired? Would she not reat ? Had she not wistfully asked : "Are we not almost there ?" What voices she must have heard before she got to the river. What faces must have stood out of the mists of her younger days and smiled upon her as she set her tender feet upon the ragged rocks of the road which led down to the Jordan. What shadows came forth on either hand and gathered close about her for recognition, as some gay, or blooming, or happy, or blessed, or beautiful thing her girlhood had known and her memory had treasured, until smit- ten in a foreign land she was forced to go the dark way all alone. "Are we not almost there?" Yes, entirely there now, but not in the home where she had left her idols and where, through its open windows, she could see the monuments above her head. It was another home, one not made with hands. Perhaps it was beautiful. Perhaps it was satisfying and comforting. Perhaps the new life brought a new delight in the smiting of the palms and the playing of the harp-players; but where was her Texas home, the one she longed to reach? Where the mocking bird in the bushes? Where the lazy cattle grazing, knee deep all day in the sunshine and the grasses? Where the stile at the gate? Where the familiarity that, even in the blacknessof darkness, could lay a hand on fifty familiar objects? Where the " luteunswept and^the pieces of rings?" Where " the fragments of songs that nobody sings?" One knows nothing whatever about all these things. It is not given to finite minds to tell what is over beyond the wonderful river, but this abides: When the sun has risen for the last time in life, when the tide is just about to turn, when there have been years of exile, and it may be years also of bitterness, isolation and despair, one great yearning rises above and masters every other emo- tion the yearning just to get home, the yearning which prompted the old, immemorial question: " Are we not almost there?" 108 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. ALWAYS A WOMAN. [Kansas City Timers November 22, 1887.] It was a woman, and a beautiful one at that, in that terrible eastern story who, when the night deepened, stole away from the side of her drugged and drunken husband, a lord of armies and kingdoms, and crowns and crept to the hovel and the arms of a beastly ragpicker, where her food was to be garbage and her caresses blows. It was to Lacenaire, the Paris butcher, who killed people like fatted hogs and sold their flesh in delightful sausages, that a grand dame cried out, supposed to be a duchess : " They will cut off your head. Very well. You shall have as many masses a$ a king. Not for your soul's sake, however, but your sausages." Evidently this magnificent animal had been eating some of the pork. When Charlotte Corday forced a passage into the bathroom of that wild beast Marat, and plunged a dagger into his breast, it was a woman who flew upon her like a tigress, knocked her down, leaped upon her ferociously, tore out her hair, lacerated her face, and strove to bite out her flesh by mouthfuls. "When she was removed," says Camille Desmoulins, who reported the trial, "the face of Marat's mistress was as bloody as if she had that moment been eat- ing raw flesh just cut from a recently slaughtered ox." " And the prisoner ? " inquired the judge. " Even in her blood she was beau- tiful. I did not see her torn and disfigured face, however ; I only saw her soul." Poor, grandly-gifted, intrepid, unfortunate journalist! There came a day when even your colossus Danton could not save you, and when this one little speech alone though only a sudden out- burst of pity, or tenderness, or romance would weigh more in the scales of the Terror, which was to try you than did the gigantic, two-handed sword of the barbarian Brennus weigh in the scales when Rome was buying back her very life with jewels and precious and golden things enough to freight a vessel. But to meaner and viler things: When the anarchists had done their devil's work in Chicago, and when a suddenly awakened and infuriated country was demanding that those who preached dynamite should fare equally with those who acted dynamite, the hunt was up for a scrofulous, pestiferous fellow who needed mer- cury badly in some one of its preparations or other, called Johann Most. Where was he? In what hiding place was stowed away the carcass of this slinking cur of revolution, barking furiously before danger began to show itself, and then through alleys and places where offal is deposited hurrying away to a congenial kennel. One day they found him, and where do you think? Under a woman's bed. And there sat the woman in front of his place of con- cealment, rocking as blandly as the May winds rock the apple blos- soms and singing low to herself, no doubt, as her scullion hero crouched under the bed, some song of the grand old days when lance-shaft was splintered to gauntlet-grasp and sword blade was shivered at the hilt something which, when looking out upon the wild sea of fight would call aloud to tell of one peerless leader com- ing down to guide its vanguard: I know the purple vestment; I know the crest of flame; So ever rides Mamilius, Prince of the Latian name. MISCELLANEOTS WRITINGS. 109 One respects and glorifies the heroic Highland maiden Who when the bloodhounds of Claverhouse were hot on the flying foot- steps of her youthful lover gave him shelter under her hoops. The moss troopers came; entered in; ransacked that house from cornerstone to rafter; broke into closets ; thrust broadswords through bedticks; sounded the wainscoting; knocked in the heads of hogsheads, and rummaged every box and barrel capacious enough to hide a man; but no fugitive. There sat the maiden, serene and smiling, never stirring a fold of her dress, or lifting so much as a finger from her lap. Finally the fellows of the broad- swords, and they were slashing fellows, too, bade her a rough good- bye as they rode away.^ Then out popped her lover, radiant. Then he wanted to take her in his arms and caress her. Then she broke down, burst into a flood of tears, and cried passionately: "Go away! Go away! Go instantly! I hate you!" But she didn't, bless her pure, virginal, heroic soul "for," as old David Ramsay says, a quaint old story-teller of the olden time, "they were mar- ried after the evil days, and Claverhouse sent a young peacock of an aide to dance at the wedding." But under" a bed with a woman on guard ! Under a bed and he a man of war! Under a bed and he the fierce evangel of a new crusade of bomb-shells, gunpowder, fulminates that tear mountains to pieces, oaths taken at midnight at a coffin for a court, pass-words, grips, signs, signals, gabble, gush, rant, cant scoundrelism, and boom! boom! boom! Lord of Israel! what sort of a woman was that who stood guard over that sort of a lover? But a little more of Mr. Most. After a speech in New York the other day, notorious for its blasphemy, ferocity, and evil counsel, the law laid hold of him and brought him to its bar. Bail, of course, but who do you think was his bondsman ? It was not a man at all, but only another woman, said to be rich, said to have a home, husband, children, property, the good things of life, and to be a devout believer in every infernal doctrine put forth by the most advanced anarchist. A little before this, yet another woman, well known in New York took upon herself the task of erecting a monument to the hanged scoundrels, who appeared to have made rampant all the crankism latent in the country. She swears to rest neither day or night until she has raised money enough to carry out her purpose. "Audit shall be as high as Washington's, too," she said, defiantly, to a reporter, "if we choose to make it so." We frankly confess that we do not understand anything about the whole business. Of course, in the bosom of every woman ever yet born into the world there is something of the nature of the tigress, and in all the black and the dark things of a man's life, those threads which are blackest and go mainly to make up the warp and the woof, are always woven by a woman's hand ; but the tigress, is a cleanly animal. Gordon Gumming says that she bathes three times a day in her native jungles, that she will not touch the meat she has not slain, and that for her offspring she is the bravest wild beast known to the earth. And yet what could this bonds- woman for Most do for her off spring if anarchy could barely once hold the city of New York for twenty-four hours. Whence comes, however, to sum it all up, this morbid, mon- strous, unaccountable female craving for making heroes, angels, and models out of all sorts, kinds, and conditions of murderers men who have butchered in cold blood. Who have not killed in open com- bat, body to body and pistol to pistol, but have ambushed their vie- 110 JOHN NE \VMAX EDWARDS. tims'and slaughtered them before they could turn about. Ogre murderers, pitted and pustuled, as though yet iu their veins and mixed with their blood there still flowed the incarnate spirit of small-pox. Beetle-browed murderers their ancestry still traceable to some traveling showman's escaped chimpanzee. Pert young murderers of the long hair order, beginning with a stolen horse and ending by killing a man in his sleep for money. Romantic mur- derers, who poison friends, pack their bodies in trunks and then go off in a blaze of glory, leaving behind them a track that might be followed in a coach and four. Mysterious murderers regular dons of fellows low- voiced, soft of speech, perfumed, affecting jewelry, dirt under their finger nails, and kept by a woman. But whatever the kind of murderer, he gets fresh fruits, flowers, visits when admissable, sly little missives, fondling when possible, books marked at any passage that is amorous, all too often means to escape, money, delicate things, bon-bons, adulation, flattery x hero worship, sympathy, pity, and tears. But bring to the attention of one of these murderer worshipers some member of his victim's family who needed help, and she would draw back her dainty garments as though they might be touched by the finger of a leper, and throw a kiss to her beloved as she flounced away from the cell. But, after all, nature takes care of such creatures as these called women? Those who finally do not die through pads, stays, corsets, and bustles, die in the midst of an apothecary shop. MORE LITERARY MUTILATION. [Kansas City Times, Dec. 12, 1887.] Sir Richard Burton is probably the ablest, the most gifted, and the most thoroughly equipped and accomplished Oriental scholar any English-speaking country ever produced. His knowledge of the Arabic language is almost perfect, as also his knowledge of East- ern customs and manners, Eastern traditions, superstitions, and folk lore, and especially Eastern literature, which he delights to revel in and to inhale whatever there was about it of perfume, languor, dal- liance, and love. Well, he once upon a time made a literal transla- tion of the "Arabian Nights/' accompanied by a mass of invalua- ble notes, which threw a flood of light upon points that had hitherto been obscure so obscure, indeed, as to be a sealed book to every- body. Only 1000 copies of the translation were printed, and these instantly found their way into the hands of such scholars in Eng- land, France,and Germany as could the more quickly lay hold upon them. So far so good, but now comes Lady Burton, with her edition of her husband's great work. It has been pruned, trimmed, dove- tailed, pared down, peruked, periwigged, pomatumed, essenced, and perfumed. Out of some 3,000 pages of the famed original, she makes the modest statement that she has only found it necessary to cut out, carve, mutilate, make patchwork of, make crazy-quilts of, some four or five hundred ! As for the notes and the explanations of the first edi- tion, which made it so extremely valuable in more ways than one, what about them ? Have they, too, been sprinkled with rosewater, and submitted to the inspection of some sacerdotal mummy who, wea- ried out long ago with parish tittle-tattle, gossip and scandal, has MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. HI withdrawn to his own hide-bound sarcophagus, hating and condemn- ing everything which comes to him from the outside world, telling of a civilization which he could never understand because of its frankincense, its myrrh, its odors, and its Odalisques, and because in snuffle, and groan, and drone, and monotone, it is not up to the standard of the " Pilgrim's Progress, "or " Baxter's Saints' Rest." And Lady Burton's self-confidence over what she has done in the way of mutilation, and her self-assurance that she has done it so well, are all the more amusing and refreshing because of the fact, as she states herself, that Justin Himtley McCarthy, M. P., assisted her much in the little matter of expurgation. And was it not a little matter ? Only some four or five hun- dred pages out of 3,000. Only! Why, there is nothing in thirf world that could furnish a counterpart for such vandalism, unless one could find a sculptor greater than any known to ancient or modern times, who, after carving out a magnificent statue of Apollo, needing only life to be a god, proposed to put it in some great gallery of art for the world to see. Before doing this, how- ever, he would cut away a leg, saw off an arm, put out one eye, pinch a piece off the nose, and then cry aloud to everybody : " Come up and see the work of your Phidias, greater than whom no sculptor was ever born upon the earth." But why go on ? Juggled with and cheated in all sorts of ways in his adulterated flour, sugar, coffee, pepper, yeast powder,wine, whisky, beer, brandy, in the most of what he eats and what he drinks, why should this easy-going, rollicking, broad-shouldered, good natured beast of all burdens, called the American, draw the line at his literature ? Skimmed milk is skimmed milk, no matter whether in the greasy pot of a swill-fed dairy, or within the guilt and gold of Lady Burton's dishwater edition of her husband's "Arabian Nights." One thing more : before the work is printed, we respectfully suggest that it be dedicated to Anthony Comstock. CHRISTMAS REJOICINGS. [Kansas City Times, December 27, 1887.] It is well to make Christmas the one precious holiday of the nation; to fill it full of mirth and good cheer; to rest from labor and have a reckoning with time; to open the heart and the purse to every cry of sorrow and every tale of distress; to remember that midnight sky across which a star flashed that had never yet been seen on shore or sea; to ask why in that lowly manger a babe was found, aboveits head an aureole, and in its eyes the light of a mighty revelation; to recall how from all the long, cold, cruel, terrible night of paganism there came forth a far voice in the wilderness echoing the tidings of a New Jerusalem; think over all that Christianity has done for the world and it may yet do if infidelity does not defile it ; politics debauch it. agnosticism corrupt it, materialism obscure it, perni- cious pulpit-teachings emasculate it, and brutal sectarianism finally eat it up alive. That the birth of Christ, the deliverer of the human race, and the mysterious link connecting the transcendent and incomprehensive attributes of the deity with human sympathies and affections, should be considered the most glorious event that ever happened and the most worthy of being reverently and joyously commemo- rated, is a proposition which must commend itself to the heart and 112 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. reason of every one of His followers who aspires to walk in His footsteps and share in the ineffable benefits His death has secured to mankind. And was not the birth of our Saviour the most glorious event that ever happened in all history? The world was rotten at eveiy pore and vein and organ and artery of its body. Born in the reign of Tiberius Caesar, that monster of everything beastly in lust and horrible in cruelty. Rome then almost the mistress of everything known of either land or water was given up wholly to war, murdtr, pillage, rape, gladiatorial butcheries, and excesses of other kinds so monstrous and so unnatural that historians have not yet agreed as to their origin, whether, in fact, they were borrowed from the Greeks, the Babylonians, the Assyrians, or from a race in further Egj'pt, long antedating the loves, the crimes, the sins and the follies of Cleo- patra. Look where one would, chastity was the exception and not the rule. Woman was literally a beast of burden in most of the nations, and was bought and sold as a ewe or a heifer upon the hoof. Polygamy abounded. Slavery in the most intolerable form ever known to man universally existed, the master having the absolute power of life and death over his slave. War was little less than absolute extermination, Conquest meant either depopulation, extinction, or absorption. Some of the massacres surpassed in extent and atrocity every thing ever yet recounted of Timour Lenk orZingis Khan. Out of this sort of a civilization there comes forth a Nero, aPhalaris, a Caligula, a Domitian,aHeliogabalus,aMarius, and aSylla human butchers all, possessed of a thirst for blood that never knew an hour of appeasement until the assassin's hand smote some, and death in the fullness of their years smote the balance. Paganism was the only religion if such indeed it can be called and it taught nothing but a gross and licentious materialism. To live was simply to enjoy. Possession was the only thing need- ful to struggle for the possession of palaces, slaves, kingdoms, jewels, concubines, fine linen, spices, wines, wild beasts, shows, monster circuses, triumphal processions, luxury, trophies, monu- ments, temples, and legions that roamed at wilCbutchering as they roamed, through Europe, Asia, and Africa. Might was right, and the sword the only arbiter. Mankind appeared to have but one mission, that of making war, in which the strong laid hold of the weak, and either slew them, exiled them, or made them helpless and pitiful slaves. It was then that the Judean shepherds, watching their flocks by night, saw a great, strange light in the sky, and it w T as then, in a trough of a stable in Bethlehem, the founder of a new faith, a new belief, and a new religion, first showed himself in human form to a world which was to put Him to death because, in full accord with His heavenly mission, He wished to redeem and save it. And how feeble and helpless the struggle first appeared. On every hand was menace, wrath, unbelief, and despotic power. The Roman tyranny was harsh beyond measure, soulless, and omnipotent. How long would paganism tolerate the preaching of doctrines which were eventually to shatter its idols, purify its temples, and convert its worshipers. And yet how touching, tender, and appealing were the doctrines thus preached. Woman was enfranchised and made fit to become the helpmate and companion of man to adorn his household, rear their offspring, teach purity and virtue, thereby making the family homogeneous, and thereby making as adamant the foundations upon which to erect the two precious and priceless fabrics of society and the state. When polygamy died something MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 113 like human freedom began to take vigorous and healthy root in the earth. The Sermon on the Mount penetrated and illuminated the surrounding darkness, as Sinai must have blazed forth as some huge mountain on fire when Moses went up to have laid upon him the command of the Lord. As balm softer than any in Gilead, how the inculcations to be charitable to one another, and good to one another, and just and forbearing to one another, must have fallen upon the ear of the miserable and persecuted in every laud the captive in his dungeon, the slave in his fetters, the emperor with his purple about him, and the beggar in his rags and his ulcers, even as another Lazarus. And then the promises of a haven of rest in the end. Here at last was something tangible. Here at last was something which stopped death's power to make the grave the end of all which robbed the grave of its power to any longer to make of its coffin and its winding sheet utter and absolute oblivion. Here at last was something beyond the Jordan. When the road had been rough, and weary, and desolate. When old age had come on apace, and all the air was full of farewells for the dying. When the morning was never so bright any more on the hill- tops, nor the twilight ever so weird and strange any more in the valleys. When youth had seen all the fires of its aspirations and ambitions go out one by one on desolate hearthstones. When fancy could no longer fly and imagination no longer take wings and soar, fas a bird that soars and sings. When illusions had simply become spectres to torment or affright. When the light had so soon, so soon died out of the loved faces of the early doomed and dead. When there were voices in the air that nobody could hear, and sounds in the darkness that nobody could interpret. When the tottering gait had well nigh reached the limit of its strength, and the tremulous hand the fullness of their tension. When life was felt to be flaring in all the veins as a taper^ about to be spent, and something like the presence of the Invisible Angel was left to be at the door here then at last was the blessed promise of the resurrec- tion. Is it any wonder, therefore, that the Christian world hallows the birthday of such a Redeemer of such a God showering upon it such a multitude of inestimable blessings? The whole plan of sal- vation fraught as it is with so many glorious promises and pledges is one of the simplest, purest, and most easily adopted of all the other aggregated mass of teachings and revealments the ingenuity of man or the inspiration of so-called potentates, prophets, or powers, ever intellectually encompassed. It appeals to everything that is pure, truthful, clean, upright, and unselfish in humanity. It asks for nothing that is not good to grant either as the indi- vidual, the citizen, the ruler, the conqueror, or as a simple unit in the vast volumes of the population which people the earth. Millions have embraced it and die as only those can died who are filled with a perfect peace. To the poor and afflicted it has brought such con- solations as made grievous burdens less difficult to be borne, and physical pain or mental agony less agonizing in its tortures and afflictions. It has made nations merciful and the strong more toler- ant and helpful of the weak. It has resisted a legion of assaults, and seen a legion of its assailants cast down, broken, overwhelmed, or disgraced^ Blessed, therefore, is the land which still hallows, reveres, and celebrates its Christmas. There is not another day so momentous in all ancient or modern chronology. 114 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. POOR VALENTINE BAKER. [Kansas City Times, January 6, 1888.1 It is all very well now to sing paeons over the grave where Gen- eral Valentine Baker has been buried. He recks not now of any war-trumpet that may be busy with his name or fame. The poet may sing of his sorrowful and tempestuous life, and the novelist may make of him a hero to adorn many a tale and romance; but he is past all heeding now he has crossed over the river to rest, it may be, with many another soldier under the shade of the trees. General Valentine Baker, not long dead of a sudden heart trouble, was born in 1831. Joining the British Army in 1848, he served with brilliant courage and enterprise in Kaffir land, in India, and in the Crimea. His regiment then was the Twelfth quarters of the globe. The Prince of Wales was his steadfast friend aye, more than friend, for they were roystering companions together. When the Prince made his somewhat celebrated visit to this country, the daring colonel of the Tenth Hussars was in his train, a confidential adviser and a constant attendant. It was remarked that the two men seemed inseperable. Fate was weaving a web for the future, however, and poor Baker with his eyes wide open went straight to his destiny. One summer night flushed somewhat with the wine of the mess-table and the wine of the glorious weather he was riding up from the camp at Aldershot to London. In the same railroad apart- ment with him was a lady whom he did not know, whom he had probably never seen, and who was disposed to be friendly, at least, if not a little free. Some courtly conversation was held between the two, and Baker saw or imagined he saw an opportunity for an intrigue. Perhaps he pushed his suit. No doubt he would not take the first no for an answer. It may be that with the glamor over him he came too near for a man who came to be denied ; but whatever he did, when the train reached London the woman called a police officer, told her story, and Baker was required to answer at a court of justice the next morning. He made no defense publicly. He simply said to the magistrate, "I have sinned, perhaps, and I will suffer. Let the law be satis- fied." He was imprisoned for a brief period, but the Queen, when his sentence had been served out.took his regiment away from him, drove him from the army, and so branded him that he was octracised by soci- ety in all its mean, petty, abject and malignant ways, until Valen- tine Baker sought service with the Turk. The Russo-Turkish War of 1877-8 was just on the eve of outbreak, and the Sultan made him a major general and assigned him to the command of the gendarmerie or what would be called in this country home-guards. This he perfectly drilled and disciplined, and afterwards when the war was becoming every day more bloody and desperate he was given a division of regulars and sent rapidly to the front. At the Balkans he fought splendidly, was decorated by the Sultan, and undoubt- edly saved the army of Suleiman Pasha, then in full retreat for Adrianople. Over and over again appeals were made to Queen Victoria to reinstate him in the British army, but they might just as well have been made to a stone. The Prince of Wales never forsook him, and MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 115 made two touching personal requests of his mother in regard to him, but her obdurate heart never melted for a moment. Until his dying day the sentence of the court-martial stood over against his name unexpunged. Once he told the true story of his railroad adventure, but not for the purpose of softening the Queen or begetting sympathy. His first advances, he said, were unobjectionable. The woman appeared rather to return his expressed admiration, and to be not averse to a little coquetry. Desiring to make the flirtation a little more emphatic on his part, she stopped him curtly, and that was the end. After- ward he spoke no word to her that was not perfectly proper and respectful. The entire British army believed him, as did as well almost the entire British public, outside of the army. By and by there were troubles in Egypt, and thither went Baker, the soldier instinct still powerful upon him, and a great yearning still in all his being to fight for his country, even though he fought under a foreign flag. At Tel-a-Kebir, Baker was among the first to storm the works of Arab! Pasha. Afterward Osman Digna grew bold, grew ram- pant, grew defiant, and Baker marched to encounter him with a small Egyptian force of ragamuffins. British soldiers were denied him, but he went forward without them. At El Teb the Arabs delivered one volley and charged home. The Egyptians did not even wait to receive the' onset. They fled ignominiously, and the flight was a massacre. In the rear, and almost alone, Baker made heroic efforts to rally his men, but if he had been a desert sand dune talk- ing to the wind he could have made no less impression. Finally he was shot in the leg. There were scars of a half dozen worse wounds on his body, and he paid no attention to this. When near to succor, and almost within shoulder touch of the British lines, an iron ball tore through his left jaw, destroyed the sight of one eye, knocked him from his horse, and knocked him "insensible. In another moment he would have been speared to death, but of a sudden a defiant bugle note rang out loud and shrill and challeng- ing, and, if he then could have looked up and looked forward, lie might have seen his own idolized regiment, the Tenth hussars, rush- ing down to the rescue, % If he had lived until the Prince came regularly to the throne he would have been restored instantly to his own again; but, poor fellow, fate would not even let him do that. He died at Ismalia, far from his own sea girt land, and almost before he could say fare- well to those about him or leave a single little message for the loved ones that were not by. We were aware of the claims now being made that, if he had lived a little longer, the Queen, taking advantage of her jubilee year, would have restored him to the ranks of the British army in fact, making such restoration a crowning act of mercy and grace. If she ever entertained anintention so righteous as this, red tape prevented its fulfillment. How pitiful sound the remarks made about him by a distinguished general officer, who was also his intimate friend: "It is sad to think of the poor fellow lying upon his sick bed, heartbroken with the many disappointments he had experienced. All his hope had centered on the jubilee year, yet it seemed drawn to a close without the Queen having shown any sign of relenting. It is then easy to understand how, in Baker's weakened condition, desire to live may have died out, for he knew nothing of the pleas- ant surprise in store for him. Could he but have realized the cer- tainty of his restoration, the poor fellow would probably have been 116 JOHN NEWilAX EDWARDS. living still. The Queen's pardon came too late, and all that his sor- rowing friends can now do is to join in raising a tribute to the memory of one who was a far better man than many whom the world delights to honor." It certainly can not be denied that after life's fitful fever he will sleep well. ROSCOE CONKLING. [Kansas City Times, April 18, 1888.] " A great man has fallen this day in Israel." At the grave's side no one should write of him except as a typi- cal American citizen. If there had been anything of dross, death's crucible left only the gold in its value and purity. On the shroud there was noplace for hands that might have smutched it with par- tisanship; in the coffin there was no place for the cold formula of political creeds no place for the cold presentment of any Nemesis born of the fierce struggles and passions common to all men who follow a flag and fight its party's battles. Coukling was a proud man proud of his clean hands, his clean public record, his clean professional life, his clean personal charac- ter. He lived in an atmosphere where scandal never came. Under the terrible stress and strain of fifteen years of war and reconstruc- tion, with his armor scarcely ever off, and his naked blade scarcely ever at rest in its scabbard, he fought a savage fight, but always in the open. Others tortured; he desired to draw the line at the not unreasonable utilization of the North's unmistakable victory over the South. Jobbers swarmed about him; he barred the treasury doors the best he could through all those terrible days of rapine, confiscation, and the gathering together of the birds of prey. Oiheis, sodden with the thrift which follows the fawning of demagogues, cringed constantly at the feet of Lincoln and Grant; Conkliug stood splendidly erect as some huge column supporting an edifice wherein Solomon might have greeted and reveled with the Qiuen of Sheba. And horn he hated a little, a mean, a sneaking, or a contc n>] t- ible thing. The man's whole nature seems to have had wir^s especially granted to soar above tbe partisan hrgs in their stk s; the partisan bullocks horning one another off from the troughs of public plunder. No margins tempted him; no ring allurements, seductive at every step with valuable spoils, ever attracted his atten- tion ; no lobbyist ever dared to approach him with a special plea ; across the black page of the De Golyer contracts, and the infamous paj-roll of the Credit Mobilier thieves, no mortal eye ever saw written thereon the white name of Roscoe Conkling. Can the same be said for the apostolic sniveler who tried to humble him, to break that proud spirit, to shear the locks from that stalwart Samson, to chain him to the chariot wheels of a detested secretary of state, to insult him in the house of his friends, to crack a master's whip and bid him surrender, to banish from all part or lot in a Republican administration this heroic Warwick, only knowing how to spend millions for defense but not a cent for tribute ? Conscious of the perfect rectitude of a life so far spent in the service of his friends and his party, not capable of becoming a dwarf , that he might escape the volleys of that pigmy brood which had come into ephemeral life through the last bloody-shirt foment of reconstruction politics, and unable to consort with the man-buyers MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 117 of the Pension Bureau and the two-dollar inundators of Indiana, with Star-route Dorsey opening the sluices and the dykes, he put away politics and went proudly out into the ranks of the honest working people, where he knew the air to be pure, and where he was positive that he could still maintain his consoling self-respect and liis spotless honor. And now he is dead in his prime. Possessed of an intellect equal to that of any of the great ones gone. Quiet, studious, and devoted to his profession. Not, perhaps, what in these days might be called a popular leader because his standard was too high and his will too unbending he would have been wise in counsel, mas- terful in a cabinet, and superb in the field. Intolerance of shams made liim appear at times lordly, supercilious, and dictatorial; but behind the semblance was the substance, and in extremity every- thing else was unreckoned of except the iron. There was nruch in common between himself and General Grant, and this fact will go far to explain their unselfish and unbroken friendship. Grant never whined ; neither did Conkling. Grant was firm, resolute and indom- itable; so was Conkling. Very late in his second term Grant had at last discovered the snares and the pitfalls prepared for him by his toadies and his flatterers; Conkling long before had foreseen their danger and hastened to his chief with heartfelt and valuable warnings. Grant confided in many, Conkling infew; but the middle ground upon which they both met and fraternized was the loyal respect one had for the other. This, being always the bond of com- munion, no matter the separate road each took in response to its bidding, each always reached it simultaneously. Hence, amid the wreck of all things dear to Grant's ambition at Chicago, Conklicg went down with the colors. He died too soon. There would have been a mighty work for him to have done in the near future. To many thinking men the nation is on the eve of a crisis. There are elements this day at work which are yet to make patriotism once more as precious as when our forefathers pledged to freedom whatever they bad of life, of property, and of sacred honor. There will come by and by ques- tions to be settled some of them pressing, some undeniable, some perhaps perilous which will need for their grappling some such in- tellect as Conkling's clear, incisive, luminous; imbued somewhat with omniscience; not afraid of the knife, still less of 1he caustic; seeing the entire Union, unobscured as to the paltry efficacy of par- tisan panaceas, serene even with the ship in the breakers, pon- tifical like a priest's, aggressive like a soldier's where is there such an one left for such emergencies in New York, where indeed in the United States? There be makeshifts in abundance doughty political physi- cians who treat symptoms but never the disease itself. The land is full of inanities that gambol on the political green as lambs do in blue-grass pastures, when April is in the air, and the south wind tells what it yet intends to do for the buds and blossoms. There are quacks, and formulas, and nostrums by the shipload. There are babblers of finance, and men in buckram to organize and util- ize labor movements. There are multitudinous makers of trusts, eating up the substance of the people, and feeding competition on husks and shavings; but where are the giants to keep the faith and keep this blessed land from mortal injury? One has just fallen prostrate as some great oak falls, never to rise again. 118 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. ON SOUTHERN POETS. [Kansas City Times, September 14, 1888.] The Atlanta Constitution, in dealing quite lengthily the other day with Southern poetry and poets, seems only to know and put forward three: Father Ryan, Sidney Lanier, and Paul H. Hayne. It is well. No word is said amiss of these. If in a garden of flow- ers, they would have been roses; if in a forest of trees, they would have been oaks. But the horizon was not far enough away, the vision was too much contracted. Any Southern sky with only three stars in it is not a benignant sky. Neither is it a sky under which the mocking birds will sing their merriest and the young lovers linger out longest, none nearer to listen to the old, old story than the passion flowers at the gate. Where is Poe, that strange, weird, and still undefinable genius, whose every verse was a wail, whose every heart-beat was super- natural, and whose every gesture took ^ hold upon death? Not a poet, you say? If this be so, then what is poetry? If it be poetry to make the flesh creep and to be cold and hot by turns, then Poe was the wizard of such emotions. He was the man who conjured up ghosts, he was the man who so peopled the imagination with horrors that it became haunted. Hayne never did this. His flight was too near the earth to hear songs that were never sung and words that were never spoken. Where is Dr. F. O. Tick or and his "Little Giffen of Tennessee," a lyric which will remain immortal while the language lasts. 'Out of the focal and foremost fire. Out of the hospital walls as dire, Smitten of grapeshot and gangrene. Eighteenth battle and he sixteen Spectre ! such as you seldom see, Little Giffen of Tennessee." Where is Harry B. Flash, the lyrical music in him as splendid as in a military band playing as it might play if it were playing for Leonidas ? Where the poems indeed from which we make an extract ? "By blue Patapsco's billowy dash, The tyrant's war shout comes, Along with the cymbals' fitful clash, And the growl of the sullen drums." Where is James R. Randall with "Maryland, My Maryland," and fifty other ungathered fugitives just as exquisite ? Where is John R. Thompson tender, musical, a ballad maker as perfect as Rossetti, a weaver of words as unequaled as Tennyson? Where is Henry Timrod, death's hand on him at nineteen, with enough odes to make a gold mine out of a sassafrass thicket ? Where is W. W. Harney with his "sudden stabs in groves for- lorn," andthat "Blockade Running," where one old classmate striving for Wilmington called out to another old classmate who was pur- suing : "You'll want boots to follow me All nisrht," said the master, "With your wrought iron roster, Old Geordie of Maine." Where is Samuel Minturn Peck, who can be as quaint as James Whitcomb Riley, as exquisitely tender as Riley, and as full of that rare pathos which makes the fingers of poetry take hold of the heart- strings ? MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 119 Not one of these does the Constitution touch, nor lift up, nor put in a frame, nor hang lovingly in its sanctum. This should not be. Scant praise at best has Southern literature or Southern writers ever received from any source, but mainly because neither had an audi- ence. Their territory now, however, is widening and becoming more populous. It is not right just at this peculiar juncture to make any invidious distinctions. The Constitution's field is almost too limited to breathe in, much less to do a good day's plowing. Its Pantheon is wofully lacking in gods. It is a temple with only three shrines, while all the outside and abounding space is as desolate as a forest without leaves. Perhaps it will fill it later. As for the Southern women who have written poetry, we have nothing to say, unless it "would be to ask the question : Did a woman ever write poetry ? If one ever did it has surely not been Miss Rives in her " Herod and Mariamne." AS TO KING DATID. [Kansas City Times, September 16, 1888.] Mr. Ernest Renan, who was once a priest, and who even now professes to live in the odor of sanctity, is again busily engaged in taking venerable and respected tradition to pieces. Having already finished with Christ and His Apostles having already dealt as he was best able with the New Testament, he has now turned him to the Old and it is King David who comes first under fire. Renan has a peculiarintellectual development, even fora French- man. No writers of this or any other century ever equaled the French for lucidity of statement; the vivid power of illustration; a satire that is perfectly exquisite; delightful badinage; an irony which never purposely corrodes, but if purposely then only upon occasion; swift movement; the commingling of tragedy and com- edy ; an inherent dramatic encompassment that is never at a loss for similes or situations while to marshal all these as is desirable, using either of itself or the whole together as a mass, there is the scaccato or epigrammatic style which to all others is so incomparable. None can write biography like the French. As for memoirs, these in their hands are unapproachable. Renan has every one of these valuable gifts at his disposal always valuable to an author and he has more. Pie has the educa- tion of a Jesuit. This means about fifteen years of hard, uninter- rupted study before it is supposed that a man knows anything. He is the. fluent master of ten languages, among the ten being Persian, Turkish, the Hebrew, and the Arabic. Probably at least three of these he learned in order all the more readily to get at the Bible and attempt to destroy many of its idols yet dear to the human heart. Before he began his " Life of Christ " he spent three years in Egypt and Palestine, The Sultan then owned the two countries, and hence his knowledge of the Turkish and Arabic must have stood him in most excellent stead. His sister accompanied him, an enthusiast like himself, as he was then. They went anywhere and everywhere. They appeared to have no idea of fear. When night came they pitched their tents. The Arabs did not seem to understand them; the Bedouins forgot to even ask them for backsheesh. The sister never returned. She died under a date palm in the desert, tenderly nursed, it is true, having skillful physicans at her side, and plenty of female attendants. But the priest, where was he? Her brother? no, her God. 120 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. Time went on, and Renan got further and further away from the sweet recollections of his college days, from the tender influ- ences of a gentle and benignant life, from the restraints of an intel- lectual discipline that he so much needed as a safeguard against spiritual shipwreck, from well ordered fields wherein nothing grew that was noxious or told of harm, from old friends and old associa- tions, and the end then came speedily. The ardent young believer was a hardened skeptic. He had grown gray in unbelief in anight. Endowed as he was intellectually, what a spectacle and what a ruin! Using the gifts which Providence had so lavishly bestowed upon him to enlighten and succor mankind, he squandered them in terri- ble attacks upon the very foundation of society itself. And they were terrible, these attacks of his. The "Life of Christ" is one of the most insidious, dangerous, yet attractive books in any language. The danger lies in its distillation. Its poison tastes like honey. On the edge of every pitfall there is a fringe of roses. This fringe is also a screen. One reaches out for a rose and instead finds engulf ment. The full flow and flood of the tide of the narrative is poetry set to music. As the children fol- lowed the flute of the Pied Piper of Hamelin into the heart of the mountain, never to be seen of mortal again, so young men follow the words and the thoughts of this wizard of the pen, and the result in all too many cases is the hardening of the heart and the stiffening of the'neck. His ' ' Lives of the Apostles " is not so sweet to the taste nor so delightful to the palate. It jars often. It is at times harsh, rasp- ing, bitter. Not content with killing his victim he often chooses to skin him. As he gets older of course this spirit will grow upon him. He will not seek to seduce so much from this on as to demol- ish. Scantier and scantier will become the wine he offers from his own clear champagne country, and plentier and plentier the acrid brew and the brew which burns like acid. One can easily see this sort of feeling deepening over and about Renan in his recent comments upon David. In three numbers of a leading Paris review he has dealt with this King of Israel. He describes him as a black-hearted hypocrite. A selfish egotist, incapable of a sentiment of sympathy or a disinterested idea. A coward in war, who wept over Absalom and then broke bread with his murderer. He declares that he kept a harem, and that, although he did dabble to some extent in poetry, he never wrote the Psalms. He contrasts him with Saul, making of one a hero and a warrior of great renown of the other a sneak and a trickster. David's deed of putting Uriah in front of the battle to be killed as he was, in order to take to wife his beautiful widow Bathsheba, is made into a ferocious picture which probably no other hand could paint except the hand of such a monster. But the question arises, and it is a very natural one. What has brought about this exhumation of David? And what will happen to Solomon when Renan gets to him, who was the son of that very Bathsheba the savage Frenchman has just taken as a text to crucify her imperial ravisher? One can see no earthly good to arise from it all. If Renan writes just to see how powerfully he can write, then it must be admitted that he does it to perfection, although his inspiration now appears to be of the devil . MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 121 DR. JOSEPH M. WOOD. [Kansas City Times, September 20, 1888.] One of the lights of the medical world clear, luminous, a great beacon set as it were upon a high hill has suddenly gone out for- ever. How death must have rejoiced when it laid him low. No more mortal enemy of the inexorable destroyer ever lived in the land. For more than fifty years man and boy he grappled with it, rescued its victims, drove it from bedsides almost ready for the shroud, fought it hand to hand across a coverlet, routed it from households where every room was an intrenchment, smote it until even its terrors were put to flight, snapped the shaft of its imme- morial spear in sheer derision, taunted it with its impotency, and filially became such an implacable foe that it seemed to avoidhimas it he were superhuman. And now to think that in this last encounter, he who had saved so many could not save himself. But then this splendid defender of his race had grown gray in the war harness. An active battle well on to fifty years long had left him worn, and old, and less able to withstand the final onset. He had the frame of a giant yes, but he had also done the work of a giant. He had the strength of any four ordinary men yes, but he put it forth so lavishly in supplying the demands of his profession that when he needed a reserve for himself that reserve had been exhausted. He had the buoyant life and vitality of some great conquerer yes, even as Cortez, but he poured them all out for others, never caring seemingly to know if a day would not come when a little, at least, of this vast wealth should have been laid away for the final grapple. And yet how could he see or know or care about any of these things thow could he take note to day what might happen or be required for to-morrow? He lived for others. He was one of the most generous, unselfish and lovable of men. A tale of want, or sorrow, or suffering made him as a little child, he, this giant of a sur- geon, whose very operating knife had about it something almost of inspiration. The record of his good deeds could only have been written by the recording angel. And they have been so written, never fear. And many a page they took, shining all over and through as though the pinions of the heavenly dove had been folded there to make them blessed and resplendent. Why, this man would often wait for the darkness to cover him before he departed on his missions of mercy. He wrought out the miracles both of his heart and his intellect by stealth. To surprise him in any act of charity was to put him to flight. If any one ever spoke of it in his presence he would go away pained. That hand which was all iron, when the steel was in it, was always open when it became necessary to succor as well as to save. No matter what the nature of the succor was whether money, medi- cines, food, raiment, care, watchfulness, professional attendance, hired nurses he never hesitated a single moment to open his purse or bestow his precious attainments upon the needy and the afflicted. Even if his own life had ever depended upon an accurate summing up of all these abounding charities, to save it he could not have made a report of even a fractional part. Verily, with him the hand that did not give never knew in a single instance what the hand which did give was doing. Once, when cholera was sweeping from the east to the west, and over the plains, and across the Rocky Mountains, ravaging remorse- 122 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. lessly where it touched, Dr. Wood was coming from St. Louis to Liberty Landing on a crowded emigrant steamer. The steerage swarmed with poor folks, men, women and children. Piercing as the neigh of a frightened horse the cry arose that the White Specter which leaves the faces of all those whom it has undone so pinched and pallid and wan was aboard the boat, doing the same old inevitable work that it had been doing from its home on the Ganges to the Pacific Ocean. Dr. Wood was just then in the very strength and flower of his young manhood. Life was so fair, so fair before him. Perfect physical health and perfect physical manhood made all nature delicious, and all the world adorable. Every road which ran to the future had upon it growing grasses and blooming flowers, and sing- ing birds in all the branches of the trees. Death was below him in its most appalling character. He went below. For nearly a week so far from going to bed he never even took off his clothes. He did the work of a dozen men. His frame, which up to that time had been colossal, now sud- denly came to be iron. Hir nature took upon itself attributes even unknown to their possessor. He was physician, nurse, undertaker, consoler, confessor, musician but, whatever he was, he staid. We said musician yes, musician. Well knowing the power of imagination over the human mind in all epidemics, even in those not so virulent as a cholera epidemic, Dr. Wood took his medicine case in one hand and his fiddle in the other. He was an excellent per- former then. After seeing and prescribing for all of his patients he would play them a lively tune something that would make self quit preying upon self, something that would make the heart beat faster, and the icy circulation strive just one more time to get at all the extremities. What a spectacle! Here was death, intrenched in the reeking atmosphere of a steerageway, defied with the rollicking tunes of a master fiddler. It was Mirabeau's death song materialized on a western river: "Crown me with flowers, intoxicate me with per- fumes and let me die to the sounds of delicious music." But they did not die, many of them. Considering the unfavor- able nature of the surroundings and the malignant type of the disease, many were saved. And what was Dr. Wood's reward? The prayers and the blessings of these poor survivors which fol- lowed him for years after in the shape of letters and little tokens in tbe way of remembrance and affection. Through rigid quarantine and perpetual fumigation the cholera was kept from the cabin pas- sengers.* And it was well. Dr. Wood's mission was in the steerage and there he meant to stay even though he were stricken down in mid-battle. God, however, spared him to finish his life, and to build some priceless monuments of science and skill to adorn his noble profession. Dr. Wood, in its very essence and purity, was a medical philos- opher. He went up from cause to effect with the rapid stride of the born commander. Said Bichat, that wonderful Frenchman, who died too young for the sake of humanity: "The discovery of the cause is the discovery of the remedy." To this end Dr. Wood marched with a set will that never relaxed or yielded. His glance was instantaneous. He seemed to fathom disease through the appli- cation of a sixth sense which might well be named intuition. His diagnosis was as unerring as the tide's ebb and flow. His resources in any desperate crisis were as manifold as they were instantly evoked. No extremity, however desperate, ever confused his MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 123 searching glance or ruffled the calm serenity of the great physician. Hence, when many of his brother practitioners, had patients sup- posed to be nearing the inevitable hour, Dr. Wood was most gener- ally called in for consultation. So frequently was this done that the practice passed into a proverb. A lady one day made it vivid by an epigram. Awakening from a deep sleep she saw Dr. Wood standing by her bedside, and exclaimed: " What, then, is it so bad as this? I see that Dr. Wood is here." So remarkable had his fame become for snatching people f ] om the very jaws of death, and so widely known had this reputaiion been made, both in medicine and surgery, that he was sent for at various times to New York, Baltimore, Washington City, upon sev- eral occasions to Philadelphia, often to St. Louis, and to as many as two hundred places in the State of Missouri. These demands were constantly made upon him until he gradually withdrew from his more arduous labors to devote more time to his own personal and devoted friends. Dr. Wood had a face like the face of that famous English sur- geon, Sir Astley Cooper. Genius beamed from every line of it from every form, fashion, contour and feature. In repose it was some- times sad, yet always august. Butwheu that peculiar smile of his broke over it, then it shone as the east shines when low down on its utter most verge the shadows begin to lift a little and the dawn tostir therein, peering over the edge and waiting to bless the world. It had often and often been remarked for its fascination and from the way it made his face transfigured. Seen in the sick chamber, it brought hope, faith, help, consolation. Seen in social life it attracted all who wanted solace, confidence and unrestrained communion. And now it will never more be seen again anywhere this side of the Wonderful River. He had lived his life as some huge old oak which the wind for years could not prevail against, the light- nings shiver, nor the storms uproot. But, stricken at last by time, which strikes all earthly things to dust, it falls a forest monarch, never to be upreared again in all the ages. So fell our giant, who was yet full of all gentleness, and ten- derness, and charity, and good deeds, and a stainless manhood, and a fame that will endure while intellect does homage to intellect, and genius has a shrine where all its devotees can kneel and worship. A life so grandly and so unselfishly lived sinks from the sight of those who yet remain with the halo of noble deeds about it, and leaves behind the example of its own magnanimous dedication to duty and to humanity. But beyond? What of that? Ah t " Who shall murmur or misdoubt When God's great sunshine finds us out ? " WAR QUAKER FASHION. [Kansas City Times, September 21, 1888.] The telegraph tells us that the Third German Army Corps, led by the Emperor, was repulsed after a hot battle in an attack upon Berlin, which was defended by the guards. How many were killed ? None. How many were wounded I None. Then it was a Quaker battle? Not absolutely necessary it was only a part of the autumn rnanoeuvrers. By the way, does this mimic sort of warfare amount to anything? 124: JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. It can have no possible feature in common with war in its sure enough form and fashion. Sham war goes by certain fixed rules arranged over a map at night to be carried out in the morning. This brigade is to do so and so, as will this division, as will this corps. The attack is planned as would be a pleasure trip, the defense also. Nothing is left to skill, to superior generalship, to the sudden mass- ing of strong columns upon weak ones, to the swift concentration of a more powerful artillery ; while last, but by no means least, nothing is left to that intangible yet all powerful thing called by the ancients fate and by the moderns fortune. Charles V. perfectly understood it when the great Conde baffled him at Metz: "I am too old," he said. " Fortune needs to be wooed by younger lovers." On the other hand, actual war calls every resource of the com- mander into instant action, and demands that he shall be capable on the moment to seize upon and make favorable every circumstance as i t arises. It is i mperati vely necessary that the army which attacks shall be governed largely by the movements of the army which resists. A plan of battle is all well enough, but it must be a plan that will stretch for leagues, contract for leagues, change its entire sum and substance or be of such a nature as to be abandoned altogether when it is no longer fit to be relied upon in the face of its surroundings. In other words, it is one thing to plan and^another thing to execute. Actual war gives scope to all that is daring, wary, crafty, impassive and omniscient in man; mimic war puts him on an easy-going horse, and bids him ride leis- urely down a certain road and halt at a certain stopping place for the night. Actual war means to get there first with the most men, and then go for everything in sight; mimic war means that if so and so happens, then so and so must be done. Here are your metes and bounds. Those whom you have to encounter have also their metes and bounds. On each side they are inexorable. Do what you are told and attend to your own business. Therefore we ask again, Do these mimic mancEuvrers ever amount to anything? "I nevermanceuvrer/'said Grant. "Wherever I find General Lee I shall attack him." All of which did not pre- vent him from grinding to powder by sheer attrition. "The com- pany is the unit," said Napoleon. "It is my captains who have won all my victories. Drill for me your companies perfectly and I will do all the balance." The Roman legions gave all their spare time to rigid drill and discipline. Marlborough made his soldiers well nigh invincible by launching them against the enemy. The suggestion merely of a mimic manceuvrer to old Frederick the Great would have brought a blow from his walking stick. Wellington in all his life never perhaps dreamed of one. Hannibal rested when he did not fight. Alexander feasted when he was not marching. Who knows, however, but what the times have changed greatly? It may be that the German Emperor knows his business much better than any one else can in the American republic, whose standing army could be comfortably camped in a twenty-acre field. Any way Ber- lin is safe, and that is something to be thankful for. WILL-O'-THE WISP. [Kansas City Times, September 22, 1888.] There has been published for some time, in newspapers as well as in magazines, a wonderful story of a hidden treasure, said to have been buried by an Indian when Pizarro conquered Peru. Accord- MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 125 ing to reports, which break forth every now and then as though the suoject were a new one, many a hunt has been made for it and many a hunter has given up the search, baffled and disappointed. And no wonder, if they take the following as a lamp for their feet and a light for their eyes. It is from the American Magazine, and it reads: "Everyone who has read Prescott's fascinating volumes knows what followed. "With the aid of the Spaniards, Atahualpa conquered his brother. When he lay a prisoner in the hands of the guests he had treated so hospitably, he offered to fill his prison with gold if they would release him. They agreed, and his willing subjects brought the treasure, but the greedy Spaniards demanded n.ore. Runners were hurried all over the country, and the simple, unselfish people surrendered all their wealth to save their king. But Pizarro became tired of waiting for the treasure, and the men in charge < f it, upon hearing the news that Atahualpa had been strangled, buried the gold and silver in the L'anganati, where the Spaniardshavc been searching for it ever since." "Everybody who has read Prescott's fascinating volumes knows " no such thing. Atahualpa never saw a Spaniard, and most probably never heard of one, until seven months, and most likely two years, after he had whipped his brother in two pitched battles, seized upon his capital and dispossessed him of his territory. It was the old story of a divided inheritance. Huayna Capac, by far the greatest Inca of all of a long line of Peruvian Incas, divided his kingdom, at his death, between his two sons, Huascar and Ata- hualpa. The first was mild, generous, lovable, merciiul and just ; the last was fierce, intractable and savage. He rose upon Huascar, conquered him, and dethroned him. Then came Pizarro, who lured Atahualpa into the city of Caxamalca. He came accompa- nied by an armed following of some six thousand. These were butchered to a man and the person of the Inca himself seized upon and held in close confinement. The declaration that he offered Pizarro as a ransom his prison full of gold is simply laughable. It was only one apartment which Atahualpa promised to fill, and this was seventeen feet broad by twenty-two feet long. The height was indicated by a line drawn nine feet from the floor. Nothing was to be melted down. The gold was to retain the original form of the articles into which it Had first been manufactured. The line had not been anywhere even nearly reached and it is quite probable that it could never have been reached when the Spanish soldiers began to clamor furiously for a division. Pizarro either could not or would not gainsay them. He.ordered some very- skillful goldsmith to reduce everything to ingots, or bars of a uni- form standard, which were afterward nicely weighed under the superintenderce of the royal inpr-ectors. The total amount of gold was found to be about $15,500,000 of our money. One fifth of this \va.s sent to the then emperor of Spain, Charles V., which he duly received and duly made returns for in the shape of very valuable land grants and most extraordinary privileges bestowed upon the conquerors. The balanceof this gigantic amount of ransom money was next distributed, at a ratio fully agreed upon, among Pizarro's officers and men. Ts^t a word is said anywhere about a single gold bar being buried by Indian or what rot. The wordL'langanali is never written on a single page of Pre. c cott's history which deals with this dark, this thrilling, this almost miraculous episode in Peruvian conquest, the conquest itself being the greatest miracle of them all. 126 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. The final manner of the killing of Atahualpa has never been satisfactorily explained. Whether he was strangled, garroted, or burnt, is yet an open question for debate. He certainly lost his life. He had murdered his own brother, his rightful sovereign, and to the third generation he had destroyed every relation who was supposed to contain a drop of the blood of the mighty Inca, Huayna Capac. The surroundings of Pizarro were desperate. At the best he never had over 700 Spanish soldiers all told, and he was in the midst of a hostile population of seven or eight millions. It seems incredible, but it is true. Worse circumstanced, and more fearfully beset, Lis kinsman and townsman, Cortez, did the same with Gautemozin, the last Aztec monarch of Mexico. The silly paragraph from the magazine above quoted would never have been referred to at all had it not been accompanied by tne declaration that a company in New York was being formed for the purpose of hunting for the buried treasures of Atahualpa which, if buried at all, were buried nearly 350 years ago. Should it be formed and should any of its prospectors go pestering about ihe site of the ancient Caxamalca, the Peruvians themselves would laugh them out of South America. By the way, this buried treasure business is no new will-o'-the- wisp no new Jack-with-his-lautern. They are still hunting for the gold the pirate Kidd hid somewhere out of sight. Acre after acre bas been dug over or plowed over to find the treasures of La- fitte, although Lafitte had been amnestied long before he died peace- fully in his bed, and had no need to bury any treasures. There are three islands in the Pacific Ocean, off the Mexican port of Tepic, called " The Three Marys," which have been regularly explored for half a century by hunters hunting for the gold that that cruel buc- caneer Morgan must surely have buried somewhere on one of the three, according to tradition. But after all, perhaps, it is just as well as not to let these sort of cranks complacently alone. They are perfectly harmless and their credulity is one of the few imbe- cile phases of human nature which amuses the multitude. WOLESLEY ON M'CLELLAN AND LEE. [Kansas City Times, September 30, 1838.] "And lastly, let me glance at General Lee. Lee's strategy when he fought in defense of the Southern capital, and threatened and finally struck at that of the United States, marks him as one of the greatest captains of this or any other age. No man has ever fought an uphill and a losing game with greater firmness, or ever displayed a higher order of true military genius than he did when i n command of the Confederate Army. The knowledge of his profession displayed by General McClellan was considerable, and his strategic concep- tions were admirable, but he lacked one attribute of a general, without which no man can ever succeed in war he was never able to estimate with any accuracy the numbers opposed to him. It was the presence in Lee of that intuitive genius for war which McClellan lacked, which again and again gave him victory, even when he was altogether outmatched in numbers." Lord Wolesley in Fortnightly Review. Why single out McClellan for these kind of comparisons? Why make him alone, of all the Federal commanders, the one sole standard by which shall be tried the military, successes and abilities of Lee? Lord Wolseley has not alone done this, although he has MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 127 done it often; but the Count of Paris, also, Colonel Chesney, Colonel Freemantle, Count Von Borcke and a multitude of American writers good, bad and indiflerent. Why not occasionally range up along- side of him McDowell or Burnside or Hooker or Hal leek or Pope or Mead or Grant? He fought all of these at some one time or another, and surely out of the vast array of writers that could be easily enumerated others besides McClellan might be contrasted with the great Virginian. We have an abiding faith in the military genius of Lord Wol- seley. It is fashionable, we know, to dismiss him with a sneer, and ridicule his capacity because he has only fought Zulus, negroes and Arabs. This is not all of ^ the truth. ^ He has fought Russians as well, the stubbornest race in all the history of war except the Eng- lish, and a race that stands killing with something of the fatalism of tue Turk, and much of the stoicism of the North American Indian. General Jo Shelby once called upon Marshal Bazaine that time he commanded the French in Mexico on business for some of his old soldiers. They wanted to enlist under Bazaine, and Shelby went directly to the Marshal in their behalf. Business done, wine was brought. Over this the two men lingered longer than either thought. One episode of the conversation impressed Shelby much. Said Bazaiue, in substance: "I should like more than you may imagine to meet this Grant of yours on the battlefield. He should pick fifty thousand Americans and I fifty thousand Frenchmen." Shelby answered with a smile, yet boldly: " In that event, Marshal, I fear much that you would be worsted." Something of a desire similar to Bazaine's must be felt by a great many to see Lord Wolseley in command of a British army that was to play its part upon some great European battlefield. It is then that we firmly believe he would prove himself to be another Marl- borough. We do not say Wellington because Wellington was a mere episode in the great French drama then drawing rapidly toward its close. He entered by a back door into Spain when Napoleon was dreaming of Moscow. He found a nation in arms to meet him, and greet him, and help him against the invader. And of what a race of people was this nation composed! The Romans, world conquer- ors, never conquered Spain. Two of the Scipios perished there. Julius CaBsar left the old Iberians unsubdued in their mountains. Hannibal barely escaped destruction there. The Saracens swept over the land like a tempest, and as suddenly subsided. The^Moors staid longer, but were finally exterminated. And it was with the descendants of this invincible Spanish race that Napoleon was sup- posed to be fighting lazily, languidly,and desultorily^-when Well- ington came. True, the demigod went in person once and ran every- thing into the ocean, British and all, but his heart was beyond the Niemen. He was pluming his eagles for that swoop upon Russia which was rewarded with St. Helena. We say Marlborough, there- fore, and not Wellington. One thing Lord Wolseley appears never to have understood nor any of the balance of the foreign authors for that matter that McClellan f ousrht Lee in the splendid youth, vigor and physical development of theSouthern Confederacy. Every sol- dier following this flag was a volunteer. The pride of emulation between the States begot a spirit of heroic endeavor that in its intens- ity was truly Homeric. Men rushed to battle as to a marriage feast. They clamored for it, they adorned themselves for it, they suffered and endured all things joyously for it, and, when once being in, so bore themselves that the world wondered how regiments of almost 128 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. boys as it were could endure to be decimated, and yet close up, shout, and go forward. To meet this army of Northern Virginia, McClellan organized the Army of the Potomac. That army saved the Union. There is not a Federal general living or dead who could have faced Lee when he faced him and held his own as he held it ; bedeviled as he was by the idiots at Washington ; hated and betrayed by Stanton ; thwarted by an insane fear forever rampant of the capital being in danger; his most completely prepared and cherished movements constantly inter- fered with ; bewildered by a mass of chaotic and driveling orders sufficient to swamp a man-of-war ; caressed to-day and banished to-morrow to stand up against all these things, we say, and a multi- tude more just as hurtful, weakening and tormenting and fight Lee week after week, retreating, it may be, but forever fighting , and losing nothing but the ground which he had first taken himself, is to prove McClellan the real hero and commander on the side of the Federals. And yet Grant gets all the glory. For a time yes. During this generation and another? perhaps. The history, however, of these events has yet all to be written, Eulogy is not history, nor laudation, nor special pleas, nor messes of political pottage, nor favoritism, spread-eagleism and Badeauism. History is a surgeon. It goes at a thing knife in hand. It lays bare veins, nerves, arteries, bones, muscles, all the organs, the whole physical structure of man. Its nomenclature is inexorable. It covers up nothing, suppresses nothing, has no shame, burns no incense, worships no idols. It is the angel by the gate with truth's flaming sword in its hand. Never more into the garden can there come again its prostitutes, its revelers and its defilers. When Grant came he had the country by the tail. He had only to grunt and the earth shook with the tread of reinforcements. He had only to crook one finger and Stanton fell upon his knees. He had only to sulk one day in his tent and there was crape on the doors of the executive mansion. At the rate of six to one he ground Lee to powder. That proportion of sheep could have overcome a lion. But for the grinding, as we have said, Grant got all the glory. So be it. The truth, the purity, the integrity and the priceless abil- ity of such a man as McClellan are wonderfully out of place in a republic. Republics honor and adore only those things which hap- pen to be in at the death. CLEVELAND RETIRES TO PRIVATE LIFE. [Kansas City Times, February 18, 1889.] Precisely two weeks before the completion of his fifty -second birthday President Cleveland will retire from the chief magistracy of the Nation. He is in the full prime of his manhood; in the full perfection of his life and strength. He was the youngest, save one, of all the presidents, when inaugurated, General Grant beini}- his junior by but a single year. He is now several years younger than a majority of the presidents were when elected. The future ought to be, and no doubt is, very fair before him. He can with much calmness and self -possession look forward to a long period of activ- ity and usefulness in his profession, and it is with no little pride and satisfaction that his countrymen may regard his decision to return again to business. It settles for the time, and perhaps for all time, MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. ^09 the question of pensioning the ex-presidents. It is a practical illus- tration, in fact, of Jeffersonian Democracy. In more ways than one President Cleveland has shown himself to be a remarkable man. When he was elected to his present high office the Democratic party had been out of power for twenty-three years. Everywhere the declaration was made that the conservative forces of the country not only distrusted it but were afraid of it. Many believed in such talk, however much it was full of utter ab- surdity, and folded their arms in mute acceptance of an assertion which was composed equally of boast, greed and invidious lying. It remained for Cleveland to give all such specious claims their swift quietus, and he goes out of office as much respected and depended upon as any of his predecessors, no matter his name or at what period in the history of the republic he was president. He came at a time when it was needful that a halt should be called. Monopoly born of the Civil War and strengthened and fenced about by every sort of congressional enactment which could render it less and less amenable to assault was in complete posses- sion of the nation. A tariff higher in its rates of protection and heavier in the weight of its burdens than any tariff the people had ever before known or thought possible was simply devouring agri- culture and all the productions of agriculture. Public extravagance had grown to be a public curse. It pervaded every branch of the cmf service, and kept the national treasury, for at least nine months in the year, swept as clean and as bare as a threshing floor. It was the era of jobs, of rings, of all sorts of \margins for enterprising boodlers, for irresponsible legislators, and for a partisan army of foragers who looked upon the General Government in the light of a great protector, who owed every one of them a living and a fat liv- ing at that. The only thing, therefore, to be considered was best how to get at it, how to make it as bountiful as possible and how to squeeze out of the Federal funds as many dollars as could possibly be laid hands upon or in some manner circumvented. Centralization was the rule, while to legislate the least in favor of the people was looked upon as time thrown away and energies wasted. The question then was not so much as to whether a Democrat could or could not be elected president, but entirely as to the kind of a Democrat. No milk sop, no easy-going politician content to let things as they were abide as they were; no ambitious aspirant who after he had once been chosen chief magistrate would make one entire administration so shape itself as to secure another; no trim- mer, time-server, or a man afraid of responsibility. A sort of halt- ing, hesitating, half smothered cry came up from the masses, "Give us iron!" and they got iron. If the country had been raked fore and aft a sterner man than Cleveland could not have been found, nor one more stubborn, nor one more determined to do his duty despite all personal conse- quences. He instantly called a halt. He attacked monopoly in its very den, surrounded by the bones of its myriads of victims. He struck the shield of the"high protective tariff with the iron point of his lance, which meant a combat to the death, and it had to muster its last man and its last dollar just to hold him^at bay. He did not seek to know what enemies he was causing to rise up against him. He believed that he was right and he pressed forward^o the attainment of his objects with whip and spur His own, simple, high-spirited and patriotic course felled sectionalism to the earth at a single blow. If he did not kill, he certainly put it beyond all 130 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. signs of life and motion during the time, at least, of his own admin- istration. He cut down expenses; saved millions to the taxpayers, economized in a multitude of practical ways; secured for actual settlement an area of squandered territory as large as all of New England; proved to the nation that the Democratic party was the best party after all to rule over it best for its peace, progress and development and that it could never have or enjoy the blessings of perfect local self-government until this party was permitted to hold and dispense power for not less than the lifetime of a single gen- eration. That he was beaten for re-election proves nothing. He accom- plished splendidly the objects of his mission. He gave the people time to stop awhile, to think and to look well about them. Time will do the balance. He could have won easily the second time if he had held his peace. Most men would have done so, but true to his honest convictions, both of head and heart, Cleveland cried out against the evils and the times, and bade his party do a giant's battle against them. And defeat or no defeat, the Democratic party to-day is more powerful than ever. WASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAY. [Kansas City Times, February 25, 1889.] In more senses than one George Washington was the reai father of his country. His fame abides with the people as firmly as it did the day of Yorktown or Saratoga, and his name is just as much dwelt upon and revered as when he delivered his farewell address. Modern history makes mention of no actor in great and stirring events even in events so momentous as- the founding of a nation who held the love and veneration of his countrymen so long and so sincerely. In referring to the Seven Years' War, begun by Frederick the Great, Voltaire said : "Such was the complication of political inter- ests that a canton shot fired in America could give the signal that would set Europe in a blaze." Not quite. It was not a cannon shot, but a volley from the hunting pieces of a few backwoodsmen, com- manded by a Virginian youth, George Washington. To us of this day the result of the American part of the war seems a foregone conclusion. It was far from being so; and very far from being so regarded by our forefathers. The numerical superi- ority of the British colonies was offset by organic weaknesses fatal to vigorous and united action. Nor at the outset did they^or the mother country aim at conquering Canada, but only at pushing back her boundaries. The possession of Canada was a question of diplo- macy as well as of war. If England conquered her she might restore her, as she had lately restored Cape Breton. She had, or ought to have had a vital interest in keeping France alive on the Amer- ican continent. More than one clear eye saw at the middle of the last century that the subjection of Canada would lead to a revolt of these British colonies in question. So long as an active and enter- prising enemy threatened their border they could not break with the mother country, because they needed her help. And if the arms of France had prospered in the other hemisphere, if she had gained in Europe or Asia territories with which to buy back what she had lost in America, Canada, in all probability, would have passed again into her hands. As has been ably and lengthily presented and discussed by a MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 131 number of French, English and American historians, the most momentous and far-reaching question ever brought to issue on this contineut was : Shall France remain here or shall she not ? If, by diplomacy or war she had preserved but the half, or less than the half of her American possessions, then a barrier would have been set to the spread of the English speaking races ; there would have been no Revolutionary War, and, for a long time, at least, no inde- pendence. It was not a question of scanty population strung along the banks of the St. Lawrence; it was or under a government of any worth it would have been a question of the armies and generals of France. America owes much to the imbecility of Louis XV., and to the ambitious vanity and personal dislikes of his mistress, the Pompadour, Be these speculations and prognostications, however, as they may, when the colonies finally did revolt it took the last man and the last dollar just barely to win the fight ; nor would they in all probability had it not been for French gold, soldiers and ships. The further probability is also great that with their own resources and those joined to them from the outside 'the colonies would have been worsted in the Revolutionary War had not such a man as George Washington been on hand to command their armies, and to be at once general, lawgiver, statesman, purveyor, breakwater, ark of refuge, and a leader of uncommon intellectual resource and iron strength and fortitude of character. In the sense of a Caesar, a Hannibal, an Alexander, or a Napo- leon, it is certain that Washington was not gifted with any such " military abilities as made these great conquerors world-renowned, but he had others which, for his times and circum- stances, were just as valuable. He had a patience which nothing could ever ruffle, baffle, or make weary. His patriotism was so high and exalted as to mount almost to the altitude of religious fer vor. His great dignity of person and character caused his soldiers to look upon him with awe, and to believe that where he lead it could only be glory to follow. In this but in this alone was he the counterpart of Wallenstein . He lost battles but he won campaigns. . He was forced many times to retreat, but he was never routed. In this but in this alone was he the counterpart of Frederick the Great. His moral courage was equal to his physical, the first making him impervious to all fear of taking responsibility, and the last giving him conspicuous valor in the face of the most desperate perils and surroundings of war. His tenacity and resolution of purpose wassuch that these obstacles which to others appeared insurmountable, were to him but mere stepping-stones whereby he could mount higher and higher in his country's service. Whether contemplating the immi- nent danger the nation ran in the almost successful accomplishment of Arnold's treason, or the last death hours of what seemed going to be the.army's life amid the horrors at V-alley Forge, his adjuration to his soldiers was Cromwellian that they should perpetually put their trust in God and keep their powder dry. Totally devoid of all ambition of the sort which most generally comes to either the heroes or the dominators in a great war, Congress relied upon him implicitly, and followed his suggestions or advice as if his superb disinterestedness had really been inspiration. He begged only for food, clothing, arms and ammunition for his fighting men. He lived as they lived, fared as they fared, suffered as they suf- fered; while it is out of such stuff that both victors and martyrs are made. To the first class belong Cortez, the two Pizarros, Garibaldi, Bolivar, Robert Bruce, William Tell, Marshal Ney and Gustavus 132 JOHN NEWMAN EDWAKDS. Adolphus. To the last class belong Harold, Alfred the Great, Henry of Navarre, Gordou, Lawrence, Havelockand William Wal- lace. Offered the garments of royalty, he pushed them aside, not as Caesar did the crown to seize it later, but because his conscience was high and holy, and because he had fought for the real body of liberty iu all of its truth, essence and substance, and not for its sham, its make-shift and its counterfeit presentiments. In the light now of all the past which still shines so vivid, so instructive, and so consoling where was the American soldier who could have taken Washington's place and created the American republic? Greene, Gates, Charles Lee, Sullivan, Putnam, Hamil- ton, Burr, Schuyler, Arnold admitting him true or any of the balance of his more prominent subordinates? As well contend that all of his marshals combined could have made the only great Napoleon. There is not a patriotic citizen to-day in the land but who should take upon himself a labor of love in teaching his children the grand patriotism and the spotless integrity of this superb char- acter. He knew neither envy, detraction, littleness of soul, malice, jealousy, fault-finding, nor invidious favoritism. It was a character luminous with good deeds and with a devotion to country that some few in history may have equaled, but not one who has ever surpassed. TIME MAKES ALL THINGS EVEN. [Kansas City Times, October 8, 1889.] The order had gone forth to destroy Robespierre. That mon- ster who, when he came out of the charnal house went into the tomb, was come at last to the place where an eye had to be rendered up for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Under the fire of those mer- ciless accusations and arraignments which shriveled him up as some old parchment in flames, he turned green. It was a way lie had. Where other men, so bestead, turned pale, this one turned green. He essayed to speak, stammered, halted over his words, was not articulate, and finally stood still, speechless, yet with his lips a working. Then Lasource thundered out: "The blood of Danton chokes thee, Robespierre!" Through Elaine the blood of Conkling is about to choke Harri- son. From the grave a skeleton hand has been stretched forth to press the crimson chalice to his lips and force its drinking to the uttermost drop. The letters of Dr. Watson, Conkling's life-time physician, and George C. Gorham, a well-known stalwart repub- lican, have both been published. Each but voices the views and investigations of a multitude of Conkling republicans who write no letters and fall into the hands of no newspaper reporters. In New York the voters who go to make up this class are numerous, well organized and powerful. Call that dominating influence which per- meates them and welds them together as a steel bar a sentiment, if you please, but beware of that sentiment, no matter whether in poli- tics or what not, which makes brave men cry out and puts brave men to working. Right there desperation is born, and from that comes any act or deed within the encompassment of human intellect or human fixedness of purpose. Conkling was the idol of his following. Such was his person- ality or individuality that those who served under his banner felt more for him than the ordinary respect felt by the private for hia MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 133 chief they loved him even as David loved Jonathan. His hopes were their hopes, his aims theirs, his ambition theirs, his wounds made their bodies bleed, the blows rained upon his devoted head brought them to their knees, and when in the last onset he went down before the blackest and basest desertion and betrayal ever known to American politics, they went down with him, all their bands playing and all their flags flying in the air. Nor was it any wonder that such a man had lavished upon him so much of constancy and devotion. In politics he was never a trimmer, adapting means to ends and lying, not alone to impose upon mortal credulity, but even to fool God. He never went back from the front leaving his best to die there because he was a coward. He never apologized. The human mind is so constituted that the man who apologizes before he fights is already forsworn and pil- loried. He never stole anything. At a period when Grant made legislators out of looters, governors out of jackboots and judges out of demijohns, Conkling held his nose with white, clean hand while the vultures of reconstruction were devouring the South. Roguery was culminating. Robeson and his pals had stolen a navy. One of the Shermans had been driven from the bench for bribery and pecu- lation. A secretary of war, caught with every pocket bulged out with boodle, had built for him a bridge of gold to retreat beyond the reach of the penitentiary. A secretary of the interior, selling decisions in bales, broke down under the weight of accumulated spoils, and confessed to one-half in order to retain the other. Blaine stood before the nation branded and disgraced. Another speaker, Colfax, had been djiven ignominiously from public life. The Stir-route revealments had made the masses shudder. Default- ers in every department of the civil service piled up fortunes and decamped. Pillage was everywhere. It was no infamy to steal , and the bigger the pile the swifter the condonement. Would the storm ever abate, the waters ever subside, the light ever flash? forth in the east, the crest of Ararat ever rear itself up through the infinite black- ness of darkness to greet the sunrise and the morning? Through it all, however, Conkling stood as some great pillar of Parian marble, without a fleck, a flaw, a spot, a stain, a fracture, or a soilment. No whisper even marred the faultless array of a splen- did integrity. Proud, scorning the public thieves with all the scorn of "his magnificent nature, heroic in the management of his party, stricken to the heart at the sight of so much fraud, violence, and venality, and yet unwilling to overthrow the edifice of his labor and his love while there was yet left a single chance to purify it, he made one more rally, his final one, and literally saved Garfield from the jaws of Democratic devourment in New York. And even while he saved him the teeth of those jaws came together with a rasp and grind that permitted no equilibrium to be restored to Saint Oleag- inous until he reached the mayflower atmosphere of the Western Reserve. And his reward? Blaine and Gartield formed a conspiracy to politically disgrace this chevalier sans peur et sans reproche of a Conkling who would neither lie, cheat, take bribes, groan in the amen corner, wrestle with the sisters in prayer, nor write letters to De Golyer nor to Mulligan and, well, the country knows the bal- ance. History repeats itself, and what Blaine was to Garfield so he is to be again to Harrison, should Harrison be elected. No wonder, then, that there is a vengeful yet righteous revolt along the entire Conkling line. They mean that the blood of their idol, Conkling, 134 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. shall choke Harrison, because in choking him they strangle also the hated Elaine. JAMES N. BURNES. [Kansas City Times, January 24-25, 1889. J The sudden and fateful blow which yesterday struck down the Hon. James N. Burnes, of the Third Congressional District, in the midst of his labors and his usefulness struck also the unprotected bosom of Missouri. In the high noon of a splendid intellect, still in the full flow and vigor of a perfect manhood, proud for his State, ambitious for his State, loving his State as though it were a prescient thing with whom he could confer, and upon whom he could rely for counsel, guidance and inspiration, he stood in the hall of the House of Re- presentatives as her especial champion, guardian and friend. And then to see him fall as he did with all of his war harness on fall in mid career with his work yet scarcely begun, and the laurels bound tHick about his brows as green as when they were gathered in the early morning of his first success, and as his most precious victories ah ! it was pitiful. One had to know James N. Burnes long and well to sound to its uttermost depths the virile force and power of his many-sided char- acter. It was not as a worldly moral or physical development that one could know it, as he stood out boldly in the open, fighting the battles of life with life's own weapons. Then and there he took such blows, full front, as time and situation dealt him, giving back stroke for stroke, yielding nothing to force, or blandishment, or seduction; but hewing a path straight forward to the goal, with head erect and soul undaunted. These were simply the periods when all the iron in his blood went to make his muscles tense, his will adamant, and the courage of his convictions as unswerving as the tides of the sea, which ebb and flow, and yet which go on and on forever. No. it was not as the gladiator that one should have studied the man Burnes stalwart, indomitable, crushing obstacles, striding over difficulties, scaling precipices high enough seemingly to shut out the sunlight from his most cherished hopes, and obscure as with the very blackness of darkness his most ardent aspirations. He was then all nerve, energy, unyielding effort, unflagging zeal and heroic endeavor. He was then grappling with destiny hand to hand and yoking fortune to his chariot wheels to minister unto his slightest wants and obey with alacrity his imperious bidding. Of course then the brow was corrugated, the light of battle still shone in his eyes, the dust of the conflict was still upon his garments, the heat of the strife was still rioting in his blood, and, until the vic- tory was won, and from the stricken field he had gathered the spoils that belonged to him by right because of a mighty prowess and an almost savage resolution, something like a dark hour would seem to be upon this soul. He brooded then, and may have been a little bit taciturn and a little bit reserved. But afterward when he unbent how gentle, and fascinating, and lovable he was. His face would then shine out as though for back- ground an aureole was put to make it speaking with humanity, and radiant with tenderness and affection. As a son he idolized his father and mother. As a husband he always bore himself as if he had never gone beyond the blissful probation of the ardent lover. As a parent he made constant com- panions of bis children, entering into all of their little whims, MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 135 notions and adolescent ambitions, teaching them how to be frank of speech and generous of heart and nature. As a neighbor the latch-string of his door was always out, and none in distress who ever knocked there or entered there went away empty-handed. As a citizen his enterprise knew no limit, his liberality was without bounds, his resources multiplied themselves by the amount of oppo- sition he had to encounter, while his faith in the people among whom he lived and wrought never wavered a moment. Whatever was apportioned for him to do was done as if as assistants he had both omnipotence and omniscience. As a public man he pointed to a stainless official record, and boasted with pardonable . pride of duties faithfully and conspicuously done. He was yet in the prime of life. In a single congressional ses- sion he took immediate rank with the ablest and the most experienced of his colleagues and associates. Samuel J. Randall put one day his hands upon his head to give him asit were an appreciative blessing, and when he arose he was a giant. None can say now to what posi- tion he might not have aspired, or to what height he might not have soared and reached if God had not called him hence for purposes unknown to poor finite minds which strive, and yearn, and reach out from under the shadow of a great bereavement to take once more the hand that was ever open to succor the helpless and ever closed to defend a friend. And now he has gone out from the vision of all who knew him and loved him so. Yes, he has gone the dark way all alone. No comrade at his side; no voices of the olden time to make music for him; no paths that were once so familiar to him to walk therein; no trees that he once planted, and watered, and pruned to uprear themselves by the roadside to make him shade; no tender words to greet him as used to greet him in the old days when returning to his home; no sweet good-byes to bid him God speed as of old at the parting. The great unknown is over, and around, and about him, Is it light there, and can he see far away to his front and yet within encompassment the Great White Throne, and the jasper gates and the golden streets of the New Jerusalem ? Surely,surely, if anybody can he can; if anybody ever did so see he has already seen, for did he not die like a soldier on duty? Ah! yes, he "Died with his harness on the broad-sword leaping The wild fight surging fast, Love wounded, with each stroke, yet keeping 1 , His stout front to the last ! When others faint of heart, sank down despairing, He cheered the battle on. To his last life-drop still that gay smile wearing, As if the day was won. And was it not ? Does truest, noblest glory, In shallow triumph lie ? They longest, brightest live, in song and story, Who die as martyrs die." IN HIS PUBLIC CAPACITY. We have already made the declaration that the character of the Hon. James N. Burnes had many sides, while to be thoroughly understood and appreciated it would have to be summed up from several standpoints family, social, business, public and political. Having already discussed him as son, husband, father, neighbor, citizen and friend, it may not be amiss or inopportune now to look into his public and political life, 136 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. He entered his career in Missouri at the very foot of the ladder. In one sense fortune had been good to him, for it had given him splendid physique, rugged development, great intellectual power, untiring energy and indomitable will. To prove this, just see how leaning upon the arm of his associate, Butterworth, the hand of death even then tearing remorselessly at his heart-strings he walked erect as a grenadier on guard to his committee room and laid him down, the same sweet smile on his placid face, and the same kind light in his frank, clear eyes, which even then, perhaps, were gazing upon another morn than ours. While always taking an eager local interest in politics giving freely of his time and money to the organization and advancement of the Democratic party he asked nothing for himself, nor sought for himself any place of political profit or preferment. He was then well content to lay the foundations broad and deep for that career of the future which was to be so briefly brilliant and solamentably short. In public life Missouri has sent to the frontsome veritable giants. Their names belong to history, and their actions are the precious heirlooms and idols of the commonwealth. But this State, however, no matter the past, had never one to stand for her in the halls of Congress who was wiser in council, bolder in action, loftier in bearing, kinder in intercourse, less amenable to demagogy, less pli- ant to sinister surroundings, less affected by the clamorings of the rabble, less easy to be swerved from the demands of duty, less im- pervious to the flatteries and the seductions of the designing and surely not one who more rigidly lived up to the maxim that personal and political honor were synonymous terms, and that he who strained or forswore the one strained and forswore the other. When Colonel Burues went first to Washington as one of Mis- souri's representatives he was new to Congress and to the ways and surroundings of congressional life. Of course he understood thor- oughly the nature and extent of the resources which he possessed, but how many others did? He saw the future stretching away before him as some new, strange land, and a figure therein casting something about him, now on this side and now on that, which might have been a horoscope. Could that future be seized, utilized, possessed, encompassed? He would try. 1 At a single step he took rank with the vanguard. Placed next to Mr. Chairman Randall on the most important committee in the House, that of appropriations, he soon graduated as a leader of men. Gifted with that rarest of all gifts, the gift of getting acquainted, and with that other twin brother gift, the gift of never forgetting a face or a person, he soon knew every member of the House, and equally as soon was on terms with all of the heartiest and kindliest in- tercourse. His motto as a Congressman was: " In business no pol- itics; in politics stand by the party to a funeral." How he did grow from the very start! One had to know him, be with him, be close to him, be where one could see him daily in the House to know what manner of a gladiator he was. When the French spoliation claims bill likely to take anywhere from thirty to eighty millions of money out of the treasury was up for passage Colonel Burnes scored his greatest and proudest triumph. It was the day of the combat. He came to participate in it, faultlessly attired. A little white tuberose bud was pinned to his immaculate coat. Any one man among the spectators in the gallery might have whispered to another: "What! has Spartacus renewed his youth and changed his nationality?" MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 137 The battle began. Colonel Burnes led the fight against the measure. His attitude was superb his knowledge of details wonder- ful. Every effort known to the ingenuity of legislation was massed as a catapult to crush him at a blow. Question after question poured in upon him as so many javelin points to pierce the armor of his perfect imperturbability. He stood erect as Ajax with the lightning flashes of the opposition flashing all about him'. To every speech he listened deferentially as though in her boudoir he was listening to the low, soft words of some beautiful woman. All over his face was that peculiar smile of his, a little bit quizzical, a little bit satir- ical, a little bit eager and questioning ; but always winning and attractive as though it had just been glorified by the burst of some sudden sunshine. Assailant after assailant leaped to cross steel with him at close quarters. He simply shortened his sword arm as he sainted, and murmured " Habet ! " "Habet!" take it, take it and another one lay dead on the dripping sands of the arena. Every joint in his harness was lance proof. The color in his cheeks scarcely deepened. His explanations were luminous; his answers, not longer than a hand, were vivid as the flashes i f flame in the night. The ablest debaters in the House formed phalanx and moved to his overthrow. For this one he had a rapid saber-cut of speech; for this one a delicate word of badinage, which went home like a knife thrust; for this one some rolicking piece of railery, which overwhelmed him with the laughter of his colleagues; for this one a massive array of unanswerable^facts; for this one a logic so cold as almost to freeze, and so much of the iron sort as to beat down all opposition; and for this one some courteous reply, high bred anc' facile, which made the seeker after the light see it almost ere the lamps were lit to hasten the revealment. Then it wasthat Randall leant over toward old man Kelley and whispered : ' ' How superb he is. " How superb, indeed ! The memorable triumph of that day is still a wonder, a memory, a tradition, a delight among all the quid nuncs, the old stagers, the old critics and the old philosophers at the national capital. And now what? A great light has gone out from the political firmament of Missouri; a great Democratic leader has gone to his rest with the blade Excalibor broken in his hand, and his bloodied banner across his dauntless bosom. It is so pitiful, so sorrowful so. The days to come promise much of evil deeds and treacherous devil's work. Where then shall those turn who worship the very name of Democracy to find the fleetest foot on the corrie, the sagest council in cumber. Find them ! When Edward, the Black Prince, was told that the lance-head of a Breton squire had found the life's blood of John Chandos in an insignificant skirmish at Lussac bridge, hepiteously exclaimed: "God help us, then; we have lost every- thing on the nither side of the seas ! " DEATH OF THE PRINCE IMPERIAL. [From the Sedalia Democrat, June, 1879.1 At last the full particulars of the death of the young Bonaparte have been published to the world. Sir Evelyn Wood the English general who accompanied the ex-Empress Eugenia on her mournful journey to the place in Africa where her son was killed has made his report to the British Government, It was quite brief, yet it con- 138 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. tained a story of quiet heroism that will be as deathless as immor- tality itself is deathless. He stood at bay like a lion, says the report, and died fighting like a hero. On his body were seven wounds, his sword was broken and his revolver was empty. Now, all this is very little; it is also a great deal. Almost any sort of a war produces such heroes; the sort of a war England wages with barbarians quite a number. When a soldier comes face to face with his destiny he most generally dies, fighting hard like a wolf, set upon or encompassed. Any history of the Civil War in America is rich with such annals, and lurid also. It is something to die, no matter under what flag, or for what cause, or king, or creed, or country. It is perhaps, easier to die when one is unnoted, isolated, having no tongue behind to cry out over fate, nor any heart to make a moan. But this was a Prince, who died from assegai wounds in Africa. Princes do not often so. Princes who are heirs to Austerlitz and Waterloo never but once in the world's life. He was but a boy. His mother had raised him that is to say he had been made pious, timid, modest like a girl, and sensitive like a nun at an altar. One moment as he stood on the perilous edge of the fight it might have appeared as if Hoche had come back from La Vendee, or Desspix from Marengo. In his death he vindicated his dynasty. He died not as Bonapartes have done, but as Bonapartes should have done. Before that body in its tropical battlefield the French republic has no need to keep itself uncovered. He stood for the saber, it is true, but the saber has ever been the standard of France. Gambetta preaches peace, but it is the peace of Samson ere the thick locks have grown long again, and the soft undoing wrought by Delilah has hardened into war last. France will surely feel more of rever- ence for the Bonapartes when the tale is told of how this last one died in a stronger army, true to his name, true to the fame of the nation which had cast him out, and true to those mighty hopes which must have flitted before him darkly those that one day would make him the ruler of an empire like his father's. Ridicule is a merciless weapon with the French. It has dealt savagely with many high, holy, and august things. Its most exquis- ite torture is to be found in tlie newspapers. These never failed to show sticking out from under the long scarlet robe of the phantom which they called Louis Napoleon, the great muddy boots of the coup d' etat. These newspapers were also busy with this boy. He was simply like an old piece of parlor furniture belonging to the Empire. He was not in use any longer. He was obsolete an anachronism. But death sanctifies. Tender things will be said of this boy now in France, and much recalled of his heroic death, if the time ever shall come when any Bonaparte attempts to play over again the role of his ancestors. BAZAINE. [Kansas City Times, April 30, 1887.1 The attempt to assassinate Marshal Bazaine, once a prominent figure in French history, was a most causeless and cowardly attempt. The usual commentary goes with the announcement of the crime the would-be assassin is believed to be insane. Of course. Never a murderous devil yet failed to have put up for him some sort of a plea of this kind whenever lie did a deed that MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 139 was particularly noticeable for its horrible details and its atrocious cruelty. "Whoever is the least bit theatrical in the gratification of his blood-mania is crazy as a matter of course. The same villain must only be permitted to stab, shoot or poison in a calm, deliberate, methodical "manner. If he does not speak, very well. If he does not change color in presence of the rigid corpse of his victim, still very well. If no look, or word, or action tells that somewhere about the murderer there is a soul, it is just splendid. There is no insanity about that man. He shall be hung because his equanimity is so superb and yet so diabolical. But if ever a murderer is known to mutter in his sleep, be seen much alone, be heard to make dire threats, act strangely upon public occasions, rave over little things, establish a reputation as a crank, or parade the streets with a" brass band why, he is insane, of course, and must not be punished though he slay a hecatomb. Marshal Bazaine commanded at Me tz during the Franco-Prussian War, and after the battle of Gravelotte, wherein all the advantages of the fight were all on his side, he surrendered this almost impreg- nable fortress, and with it an army of nearly 300,000 men. Such a surrender, when the number of soldiers surrendered is taken into consideration, never occurred before in history. It really seems impossible that such a surrender could have taken place without a desperate effort to break through, but it did take place, and when the war ended Bazaine was tried for treason, found guilty, sentenced to be shot, had his sentence commuted to imprisonment for life in the Chateau d'lf by President Thiers, escaped from there one stormy night in an open boat at sea, and has since been a poor, isolated, proscribed political exile in Spain. And now the man who has just attempted to kill him, if, indeed, he has not succeeded, is already being hedged about from the garrote by being declared crazy. Was Bazaine guilty of treason at Metz? Contemporaneous his- tory is of the opinion that he was not. The French character is such that at every period of national disaster it furiously demands a scape-goat or a victim. This desperate lot fell upon Bazaine. At his trial he proved conclusively that the fortress he was ordered to defend was almost absolutely barren of provisions; that the heavy- guns upon the fortifications were comparatively without ammuni- tion; that his musket cartridges had been reduced to sixty rounds to the man; that he was encompassed about by 500,000 Germans; that his artillery was practically useless because of a scarcity of horses and grape and canister shot, and because he had positive orders from his master, the Emperor Napoleon, to make the besttermshe could, but under no circumstances to compromise his army by a bloody but indecisive battle. Napoleon's object was plain. He never believed that the Germans would dethrone him, and he wanted Bazaine's army to re-establish himself upon the throne of France after he had made a definite treaty of peace with the German con- querors. Bazaine was also with Maximilian in Mexico, and gave evidence there of much soldierly skill and rare adminstrative capacity. He had driven Juarez into Texas, held the more populous states under a complete system of military subjugation, garrisoned with picked troops the more important cities, and was just getting ready to consolidate the power thus obtained, and to issue a general amnesty, both civil and military, when the civil war in the United States came to an end. That also brought to an end the French occupa- tion. With over a million of men in arms, the United States Govern- ment turned instantly to an emphatic reassertion of the Monroe 140 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. doctrine, and ordered Louis Napoleon to get out of Mexico as soon as possible. He got out, and rapidly. Bazaine lias been held responsible for the death of Maximilian, and a multitude of penny-a-liners have gone into elaborate details to show how he badgered, outraged, and finally betrayed to his undoing the hapless Austrian. No baser lies were ever told to blacken the name and the fame of a splendid soldier. Marshal Bazaiue strove the best he knew to induce Maximilian to abandon Mexico. He pointed out to him the impossi bilityof maintaining his position in a country that was against him en immse, and argued from a purely military standpoint that it would require an army of occupation of at least 300, 000 soldiers to keep him on histhrone, andhedid nothave 10, 000 reliable troops. Maximilian ref usrd to be guided by the marshal, and in so refusing hejost his life. From a simple captain of a company in an infantry regiment of the line, Bazaine fought his way up to be a Marshal of France. But for Metz he would to-day have been an honored man in his own cou mi y, loved, respected and surrounded by every comfort in his old age. As it is, he may be dying from the blow of an assassin, poor, friendless an exile, and a so-called traitor. What a strange thing is fate. THE NET MYTH. [Kansas City Times, May 15, 1887.] This is a country where quite a number of men will not stay dead after they are dead. One can find scores of people who con- scientiously believe that "Wilkes Booth is still alive ; nay more, who have educated themselves to the belief that they have seen him. It has not been so very long ago that quite along and interesting story went the rounds of the newspapers to the effect that he was in com- mand of a merchant vessel in the China seas, so changed by a life of exposure, toil, and hiding, as to be almost impossible of recogni- tion even by his mostintimate friends. It would be difficult to enumerate the number of times that Quantrell has been seen and conversed with since he was killed in Kentucky. But ihe other day Brigham Young was encountered in the mountains of Utah, in strict incognito, and waiting and watching against an hour in the near future when he should again take into his liands the management of the Mormon State, and shield and save his chosen people from destruction. Once, according to well accepted romance or story, we had an unmistakable Bourbon prince among us, the Rev. Eleazer Williams, who was none other than the unfortunate son of Louis XVI. and his murdered queen, Marie Antoinette. Now conies the rehabilitation of another myth, and the reclothing of it with flesh, blood, a local habitation, and a name. The local habitation is the little town of Piedmont, N. C., and the name none other than that of Michael Ney, Marshal of France, Duke of Elchingen, Prince of Moskwa, and that beloved comrade of the mighty Bonaparte, who, when even surrounded by half a million of heroes, called him alone the bravest of the brave. The story, briefly summed up, is about this: Marshal Ney was not shot on December 7, 1815, as all history declares. Favored by his old comrades, who were detailed to see the execution carried out, a condemned criminal was put in his place, the forms of the killing were duly gone through with, the real Key escaped to the United MISCELLANEOUS WRTTTXGS. 141 States, taught school in North Carolina under the name of Peter S. Ney, lived there until about 1837 as schoolteacher, and finally died as a worn and broken old man in either 1838 or 1839. These are the most essential points. To make P. S. Ney, the schoolmaster, become the real Michael Ney, Marshal of France, declared to have been stood up against a dead wall and shot about daylight of a raw, cold morning in December, 1815, much ingenious filling in is resorted to, and much plausible fabrication. Unless history is a lie, this story, as now being so extensively told, has been too carefully arranged, overworked, and overdone. The North Carolina Ney was a man of fine education and knew la\v. Marshal Ney had scarcely any education at all, and perhaps in Lis whole life had never looked into a law book. The North Carolina Ney was very fond of strong drink, and upon many described occa- sions got uproariously drunk. Marshal Ney was noted for his abstemious habits, and especially for his dislike of the various forms of alcohol. Indeed, it was to this fact alone thathe himself attrib- uted his wonderful endurance throughout all the horrors of the Russian retreat, an endurance which Napoleon noted when he gave info his hands the keeping of the rear guard and the preservation of all that was finally preserved of the Grand Army. The North Carolina Ney was always on guard lest his identity should be suspected. He would never speak of himself, never say whether he had been a soldier or not, never discuss Bonaparte except as a thousand of his enthusiastic pupils might have do&e, never wrote or received letters from France, and once, when addressed by a wandering Frenchman as "Marshal Ney," gave the poor unfortunate such a terrible look that he soon sneaked away from his presence and fled the neighborhood in mortal fear lest he be slaughtered. Now, what, under such circumstances, might not the real Mar- shal Ney have done, admitting always for the sake of argumert the proposition that he had escaped, through the connivance of his friends, the cowardly vengeance of the Bourbons. The very first moment he landed upon American soil he was as free as the wind. No living mortal would have dared to lay hands upon him for any political crime much less for the alleged crime of devotion to his ( m- peror and to his beloved France. He had left behind him a v.ife whom he idolized, and children who were the joy of his life. Why should he not have written to them, had them to have joined 1dm, found for them a happy home in a country where his last days might have been spent in" tranquil peace and rest? Had this course not been to him the most preferable one, what was to have prevented his own return to France after the expiration of a few years of exile? An amnesty had been granted by Louis XVIII., by Charles X., and by Louis Philippe. In the reign of either he might have gone back home with perfect safety, and he lived through the reign of two of these, and through many years of the reign of the other. As to the question, however, of the real Ney's death at the hands of the Bourbons, perhaps that has never been doubted by any one except these North Carolina quid nuncs and sensation concoct- ers. Napoleon tells at St. Helena, both to Las Casas and O'Meara, all about Ney's death. Montholon, in his memoirs, does the same. Bourrienne is exceedingly full upon the subject. A strong effort was made to save him, but Fouche, that horrible butcher of the reign of terror that spy, thief, traitor, coward, servile slave, and cringing suppliant at the feet of power swore that Ney should be killed as a 142 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. sort of sacrifice to appease the fury of the allies. Key was chosen as the victim because he had fought them oftener, more desperately, with more ferocious success, had put more of them to rout, killed more of them, was more indomitable and created wilder and fiercer havoc in their ranks than any other subordinate who served under Napoleon. Hence they hated him with th hatred of kings for the very qualities which had served to make him famous and glorious. The Bourbons demanded his death because of his heroic efforts to save the day at Waterloo, which, if saved, would have precipitated them into another flight into England. Wellington was also besought to save Ney, but Wellington never saved anybody. A more supremely cold, greedy, selfish man never figured in the pages of history. The army which saved him and glorified him at Waterloo he called "a beastly army," and so grudgingly did he bestow praise upon those who served under him that one could scarcely ever tell from his dispatches and bulletins from the battle field whether he ever had such a thing as a private, a corporal, a sergeant, a lieutenant, a captain, a major, a colonel, or a general of any^ grade under him. As he was among his soldiers, so, also, was he in public, in private, and in the midst of his family. However, all this is a digression. Bourrienne refers especially to the North Carolina myth and dwells, because of it, especially upon the actions of Ney after the restoration of the Bourbons. He tells how Ney, believing that he was protected by the terms of the general surrender, made no effort to escape, whichmight have been easily accomplished. How, when ordered for trial before a military court, he pleaded his privilege as a peer of France and demanded to have a jury of his peers. In doing this, said Napoleon, he signed his own death warrant. His old comrades in arms would have acquitted him. Bourrienne finally goes into minute particulars of the execution, giving the name of the commander of the firing party, a fanatical Bourbon emigrant, describes the scene, the death moments, the grave, and the fury of the old soldiers afterward. No, the Ney of North Carolina was either a hoax or an impos- ter. DON CARLOS AND MEXICO. [Kansas City Times, May 23, 1887.] Nothing could possibly be more absurd than the story that Don Carlos, of Spain, is coming to Mexico to create an empire and erect a throne. If he comes to Mexico at all, which is a matter of very much doubt, he would come simply as any other Spanish gentleman, and as such would bear himself what time he remained in the country. As for making an empire out of Mexico, that is the silliest non- sense ever born in the brain of a crank. France tried it when the United States was struggling in the toils of a furious Civil War. First and last no less than forty thousand veteran French soldiers were operating in Mexico at one time, to say nothing of the native forces enlisted in the cause of Maximilian, and yet the very best that they could do was to hold the towns while the Juaristas held the country. All they ever owned, or occupied, or controlled, or felt safe in, was that extent of territory and no more which their cannon covered. When, finally, the French were recalled, the Juaristas closed in behind them, generally a day's march behind and saw them safe out of the so-called empire. Then they turned about, toppled over poor Maximilian, and shot him with about as MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 143 many compunctions of conscience as they would have shot a prairie wolf. The farce ended with a tragedy. It is difficult to see who or what is at the bottom of this Don Carlos business. To one who has lived in Mexico and understands something of the Mexican situation the story is too absurd even for an audience of cranks. They say he is to come as a special repre- sentative of the Church party. Aft hat Church party? Mexico is a Catholic country. There is no other religion there except the Cath- olic religion. Here and there in a few of the larger cities a Protest- ant mission or two may live from hand to mouth, and feebly, bur, the great mass of the nation is as Catholic as Spain or Austria. Then what is the use of talking about this idiotic myth of a Church party ? The concoct ers of the Don Carlos story also make him out a Spaniard, who is to have an especial backing at the hands of the Spanish colony in the City of Mexico. This colony is to take him in charge, fete him, chaperone him, make a social lion out of him, put him en rapport with the blue bipods, enlist aristocracy on his side, array bank accounts under his standard, provide the ways and means of revolution, revolutionize. The Spanish colony! Lord bless us every one, if revolutions in Mexico were done up in bunches like asparagus, the Spanish colony could not even get to see the ground from which had been cut a single asparagus stalk, much less to encompass an entire bundle. The Spanish colony is composed of an exceedingly stiff and formal lot of senors and senores, with some beautiful senoritas sandwiched between, young plants of grace in every respect, and fair to look upon as the blush rose or the lily. The wine is good, the discourse grave, the minuets stately; but when you say revolution you say aloes to the honeycomb and ice to the Burgundy. Thereafter, the Spanish colony might help to make Don Carlos fit for an auto defe, but never for a foray that had vigor enough in it for another Quere- taro. The Spanish colony was formed for other purposes. The nearest approach it will ever make to bloodshed will be a bull fight, and the nearest approach to an uprising the crush at a theater when some bright, particular star sings who is a Spanish favorite. Another thing: Nobody has got any business fooling about Mexico under the impression that thrones grow on trees down there. It has learned many a stark, stubborn and stalwart lesson lately. Its own revolutions have been remorsely drowned out in blood. Its own revolutionists have been stood up against a dead wall and shot in droves to cure them of the old robber fever, of the old robber pronunciamiento days. It is as matter-of-fact as an oak tree, and as logical as a column of figures. It means to be a nation among nations not the by-word and reproach of all who set any store by stability, and believe that self-respect must first begin at home before national respect can be inculcated and insisted upon abroad. Don Carlos may go to Mexico and have a most delightful visit, but if he proposes to potter much about dynamite he had infinitely better stay where he is. POOR FRANCE. [Kansas City Times, June 2, 1887.] At last the red Republicans and the opportunists have done their work, and to the revolt there has succeeded a revolution. General Boulanger has been overthrown. If this were all, if this were simply the pulling down of one 144 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. man and the putting up of another, if this were only the rising or the falling of the political mercury in that most mercurial of all barom- eters, Paris, if this merely meant that the king is dead or that the king lives, if behind the face of the ever piquant and attractive farce there was not another face eager, hungry and splashed somewhat with blood why, what difference would it make who strutted his brief hour upon the stage, or whether the dances were such as the grisette might enjoy at her last sou, equally with the grand dame at her last lover? But it was not the French citizen Boulanger, who was thus put upon, nor the French General Boulanger, nor the Secretary of War Boulanger, but it was Boulanger the idea, the prescience, the terrible embodiment of a maimed and mutilated nation's half-stifled cry for vengeance. In the presence of those two cruel and yet bleeding wounds, Sedan and Gravelotte, it does seem that even a congress of Jacobins or dynamiters might have had some pity for France. That'instead of the can-can in sight of these wounds the entire representative body should have arisen, uncovered and saluted. That instead of a whole forest full of chattering monkeys, there should have come out at least from some one single jungle a roar that told of a lion crouching. That instead of whole parliamentary rights wasted in shriek and grimace, and shrug and epilepsy, something should have been heard somewhere of the sounding of trumpets and the whist- ling of s\vord-b!ades. That instead of there being only heard in all the darkness the gutteral croakings and chokings of carrion birds, the putrid offal thick in their distended throats, there might have been heard the screams and the gatherings of the symbolic eagles, scenting from their eyries the blue grapes which grew by the Rhine, even as in the old days and from the towering Alps they scented the oil and the wine of another Paradise named Italy. Boulanger stood for the army that poor army which has been so cheated, juggled with, preyed upon by jobber, ruinously led and stupidly fought since Solferino. At Spicheren the ball-cartridges were a size too large for the bore of the chassepots. At Metz it had neither shell nor caunistershot. Two days before Gravelotte its meat ration had failed. At Sedan it was shoeless, tunicless and well-nigh out of ammunition. In front of Paris, and yet in the heart of one of the richest and most fertile nations on earth, it went hungry for even bread. In the end it had to take from the bloody hands of its own ferocious and ravening wolves of countrymen what was left of desolate, blackened, mutilated Paris. Boulanger took this army; bound up its wounds; recalled its history; made its standards once more adorable; gave it the esprit de corps it had not known since it had transfigured Europe at the double quickstep; dealt with it as some perfect machine which had a soul; taught it that patriotism was the holiest word ever created by God upon the lips of man; gave it the splendid resources which come from ample numbers, organization, enthusiasm, discipline, ambition, a battle cry that had vengeance in it, and then, as one huge, compact, colossal mass, he held it, waiting and obedient, for another march to the Rhine. This, we say, is what Boulanger had done for the army, and because he had he was slaughtered by communists and dynamiters, joined to a lot of demagogues and politicians that have for fifteen years made France the wonder, the pity, and the scorn of Europe- To get a good look at the crime and the cowardice of such an act, take down simply the map of Prussia after Jena Auerstadt and MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 145 Friedland. As a kingdom it was almost literally wiped out. The omnipotent hand of Napoleon, clothed With the thunderbolts, had suddenly been thrust forward through the gloom, and the torment of battle, and with a sponge soaked in blood had obliterated the fig- ures which stood for Prussia from the blackboard of continental Europe. The King had no capital. The beautiful Queen beautiful as some celestial portrait cut from a picture-book the angels paint and keep m heaven was dying of a broken heart. Prussia itself, and in every extremity, was stricken with a paralysis pitiful to even its French despoilers. Two men came as the Lord's annointed, two men Stein and Scharnhorst. They pieced here and they patched there. They darned this hole and they basted that one. It was Prussia always. Men, they whispered, for they did not dare to cry aloud, everything for Prussia. If you die, yes, many of you will, but you die for Prussia. You give up your silver, your jewelry, your fruits your fields, your homes, your live stock, your household goods yes, yes, we know all this very well, but it is for Prussia. Your boy children never come back to you; no, but they went away for Prussia. You go hungry often, and your uniform is a mass of rags, and the blood from your naked feet has splotched the snow, but if only your car- tridge-boxes are full for Prussia what matter the haversacks that are empty. Here's old Blucher. Here's old Marshal Vorwarts, who for twenty years was always drunk; who for twenty years was always in the saddle; who, when he wished to sleep well, took off one spur, and who, when he wished to sleep luxuriously, took off both. And the result? Blucher got to Waterloo; Grouchy never got there at all. But to reach Boulanger's case and see it in all of its concentrated idiocy and want of patriotism. It is only necessary to imagine Stein and Scharnhorst deposed by the very nation it was about to save, and to restore again, unmutilated and greater in power and territory than ever, to its old imperial rank among the monarchies of Europe. In France the demagogues and politicians, joined to the red caps and dynamite, would have torn those two army creat- ors to pieces even before they had given a soul to the army which they had summoned from chaos to encounter one who might well have been looked upon as more than mortal. Is it any wonder that France, in its last war with Germany, never won even a skirmish from Weissomburg to Paris ? Is it any wonder, then, that it has never had among its commanders such a soldier as Von Moltke, nor among its politicians such a statesman as Bismarck ? Von Moltke in Paris would have been exiled at thirty. Under that hydra-headed thing called the French Republic Bismarck would have either gone mad or died before his first protocol, with all that mighty intellect of his buried with him, as absolutely unknown to the world as the grave of Moses. So France appears to Europe, and so she will always appear as long as Paris is Babylon, qualified by steam, electricity and daily newspapers There is no more iron in the blood of Paris. What the newspapers have spared in the way of reverence, religion and old- fashioned truth, manhood and virtue, the faubourgs have finished. Ferry is a fearful old mugwump, decayed at the top. It is doubtful if Grevy ever heard of Austerlitz, and DeFreycenet is a second Jim Blaine, without half Blaine's ability. The monkey part of the French character is in the saddle. 146 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. EDMUND O'DONOYAN. [Kansas City Times, June 2, 1887.] This is the name of an Irish journalist who made himself famous. A little thin shred of a life of him has just been published in England, not greater than seventy or eighty pages, perhaps, when it might well have gone to five hundred. His father was a learned professor in the University of Dublin. Devoted to his work there, he permitted his eldest born, Edmund, to do pretty much as he pleased, and he pleased to become a surgeon. After a little practice in this line, it further pleased him to become a botanist and a geologist. Then he traveled. Then he began a life of adventure which, in many ways, was one of the most adven- turous lives that ever had an abiding place in the realms of either truth, romance, or fiction. Irishman born, bred and educated, he was one among the very first to espouse the Fenian cause, and give to it youth, energy, dar- ing, enthusiasm and devotion. He mastered the military tactics of the text-books that he might become a drill sergeant. He was rarely gifted by Nature to be both orator and agitator, and he was both at a gallop. He enlisted recruits, organized them, drilled them when he could, in some barn, or some lonely hillside, in some isolated glen. When the drilling was done, the exhortations would begin, and these went home to the hearts of his young Irishmen ready to follow their young drill master to war or the scaffold. James Stevens, the great head, front, and leader of the Fenian movement, was his life-long guide, counselor and friend. One day the British authorities laid hold upon Stevens and made him fast in the dungeon of a Dublin prison. They could not or did not keep him, for he soon broke out and fled to France. O 'Donovan quickly followed after, joining him in Paris. Then with tongue, pen and purse he wrought splendidly for his chief, and for the cause of Ire- land so dear to his heart. The Franco-Prussian War came on, and gave him the oppor- tunity so long beseechod for, the opportunity to make his first essay in arms. He joined a French regiment of the line as a private sol- dier, fought as became his race, was named a captain on the field of battle for heroic deeds, was shot down, captured, locked up in a German fortress, escaped through sheer pity if not a tenderer senti- ment of the gaoler's daughter, and got safely home once more to Ireland. The Carlists were next to break loose among the hills of Spain, and thither rushed O'Donovan as a correspondent for the London News. Somewhat of a guerrilla, much of a journalist and a passa- ble artist, he fought, wrote and sketched until his reputation became European. Meanwhile he had learned to speakFrench, Spanish and German. Afterward he added to these Turkish, Russian and Arabic and two or three dialects for especial use among the Tekkes and Turco- mans of Tartary. Admirable polyglot, was there ever known in all newspaper history before or since a journalist so thoroughly equipped for war by land or sea among the Arabs or the Cossacks, by the blue Bosphorus, or where, God willing, old Mazeppas steeds to-morrow , "Shall prraze at ease Beyond the swift Borysthenes?" One day, while still fighting, and writing, and penciling among MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 147 the guerrillas of Don Carlos the same Don Carlos, by the way, whose name of late has been so absurdly mixed up with some certain intrigues or conspiracies in Mexico a dream, a vision, an inspira- tion came to him as he lay by a bivouac fire, the night wind keen like a knife and the canteen empty. He would see what the Russians were doing in Central Asia; that is to say, he would go into the jaws of a lion, and, more proba- bly into the jaws of death. Russia was gathering herself together there lor a mighty spring upon Merv and the Hindoo Kush Mount- ains, the gates to Herat. This spring was afterward made just as O'Donovan said it would be, and how he said it would be, and when he said it would be. England then remembered the warning words of this prophetic Irishman, young as he was, and Fenian though he was, as looking westward from the walls of Candahar she could see the lances of the Cossacks, clear cut and uplifted, wrathful against the lurid sunset. Every attempt made by an Englishman to get into the Russian possessions of Central Asia had theretofore failed. Most of the attempts were stopped at the frontier- If the frontier was barely got over by some one bolder than another, a cloud of cavalry instantly enveloped him, and he was given his choice to quit the country for- ever or die by the rope. It is not recorded that any of the adven- turers came to an end so ignominious. All the Oases in and around Merv was an unknown land to England. All that was known by anybody about it was the knowledge that it was inhabited by Russian specters. They flitted hither and thither through the gloom, but what were they doing? O'Donovan took it upon himself to find out. He laid his plans fully before the London News; explained them in every detail and ramification. He was endorsed and they were endorsed, and he started. 'Twere long to tell of that wonderful adventure. Of the foes that he baffled, the streams that he swam, the disguises that he assumed, the ambushments that he escaped, the robbers that he out- witted, the Cossacks that he outrode, the chiefs that he bribed, the coolness that never weakened and the smiling audacity which abode to the end. He.won, however, in the desperate race," and liis book, "The New Oasis," was the result. It was printed by five nations, one among them being even Russia herself, and well all of them may have done so, for it contained more accurate and valuable information upon the Asiatic positions of Russia and Great Britain than has ever yet been put in print before or since the famous gal- lop. The pitcher, however, was about to go for the last time to the well. The night was beginning to fall and the darkness to gather. One of the purest and most dauntless spirits journalism ever gave to the newspaper world to ennoble it and crowd it thicker still with yet more unselfish and heroic deeds was about to take its flight forever. The Soudan was all aflame. The Arab had turned savagely upon the Egyptian, and there was war between civilizations as old as Abraham. Of course O'Donovan could never stay his hand when all that was hoary and majestic in the history of the race might look down upon his marchings and his bivouacs, his battles by day and his reveries by night. He almost flew to Cairo, and was hot and eager with impatience until he joined the army of Hicks Pasha on its last ma*rch to exter- mination. Not a man of it, something over eleven thousand, ever survived to tell the tale of the monstrous slaughter. Edmund O'Donovan perished with the rest. He had a presentiment that he should never survive the campaign, but in spite of it, if not because 148 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. of it, he appeared to be all the more determined to see if fate had really and finally forsaken him. Surely this English life of him will soon be republished in America. THE REVISED NEW TESTAMENT. [Kansas City Times, June 13, 1887.] We refer to the Revised Version of the New Testament. It can not be made to supersede the old King James translation. It came with a great flourish of religious trumpets. For ten years it was in the hands of scholars said to be in every way exalted. When the work was done, the cry went up from orthodox lips that it marked a wonderful epoch in religious history. It was to fasten the attention of the world upon it, and thereby bring about such an upheaval as had never been known in all the long record of spiritual movements, uprisings and revivals. Multitudes of those who professed to be theologians and Scriptural commentators praised it to the skies. Large sums were spent for early copies. The numbers sold at the beginning were enormous. Every adventitious aid possible was given to the sale, and the markets were bulled ecclesiastical ly . The gudgeons were baited with an edition without a hell, and the new orthodox revolution, as far as any sort of an insight could be got from the sur- face, was an accomplished fact. Beneath the surface, however, the revolution did not revolution- ize. The established Church of England never would and never has approved of it synodically, although it demanded the translation the longest and loudest. No other Protestant denomination ever offi- cially made use of it in its churches and Sunday-schools. The Catholics would not touch it under any circumstances. Families proscribed it. Writers and speakers, lay or clerical, so scorned it that they would not quote from it. Tabooed, spurned, a failure from the beginning, it has now passed almost completely out of sight and out of mind. And what is the reason for it all? Mr. John Fulton attempts to give the reason in the June number of "The Forum." He says in substance that top many changes were introduced to suit some and not enough to suit others. He also thinks that the poetry of many- passages was impaired by giving them a too literal translation. A certain degree of obscurity serves to give a charm to the expression of poetical sentiments. No one is pleased with a likeness of a person made by measuring his features, and reducing them to a certain scale, no matter how attractive they may have been or are. Mr. John Fulton does not go deep enough. He does not get down to the real bone and sinew of the subject. The translated New Testament, or rather the revised edition of the New Testa- ment, was the work of a lot of intellectual dudes. They refined away poetry, pathos, rugged Saxon, quaint forms of express- ion, old landmarks, verses that had been lived and died by for centuries, old texts, old promises and old prophecies. One thing the people as a mass will never permit to have taken away from them, and that is the old-fashioned Bible. They never asked^ for any revision. They never for a moment considered that a revision was necessary . The old 'King James version was venerated. Since its publi- cation it has been a household book, the one sacred record of the births, marriages and deaths in a family for a generation. Its teachings had brought solace in sorrow, surcease in pain, comfort MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 149 in affliction, support in misfortune, ease in torment, light in dark- ness, and better than all, something when the final summons came that made it less dreadful to go down into the valley of the shadow and cross over that wonderful river, which in all lands and in all tongues has been called the river of death. We do not say anything about the admirable quality of the scholarship manifested in the version of the New Testament, for no doubt that was very high and perfect ; but the new translation itself was an impossible thing from the start if the intention was to make it root out the version that it pretended to correct and beautify. It makes no difference what a man may want with his Bible, how he may use it, how explain, how expound, how interpret it, he is only solicitous to know that it is his father's Bible, and that the refiners, the agnostics, the tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee fellows of the last half of the nineteenth century have not laid their hands upon that. If that is intact all the balance is easy. The denominational pro- cession can go forward thereafter as it pleases. Anchored fast to his old-fashioned Bible, even the very gates of Greek shall not pre- vail against his old-fashioned belief in fire and brimstone. THE GERMAN SUCCESSION. [Kansas City Times, June 14, 1887.] If the Crown Prince of Germany is at all superstitious and most thorough soldiers are and if he reads half the occult stories told about him, and half the predictions made as to what his fate is likely soon to be, the chances would be good to send him to a premature grave through sheer nervous irritation and worriment. First, when his father was quite a young man, unmarried and sowing his wild oats plentifully, a gypsy told his fortune. He was to be king and wear three crowns. He was to have a male heir, but the heir was not to succeed him. Later on the young man married, and was soon made king of Prussia. Afterward of Hanover, then of all Germany. Here was the three crowns the gypsy predicted. Still later on, and yet a little while before the Franco-Prussian War, the Emperor William again had his fortune told. Another gypsy cast his horoscope. He would live, the old Zingaree said, until his ninety-second year, and that when he died he would bs succeeded, not by his son, but by his grandson. The son would die before his father. This son is the present Crown Prince, whose life even at this moment is in immi- nent peril. The physicians in attendance upon him and he has some that have a world-wide celebrity have not } 7 et determined what to call the morbid growth in his throat. If it is cancerous, like General Grant's, no power short of the Lord Almighty can save him from a speedy death. The old Emperor William, his father, recalling the two gypsy prophecies, is reported as being firmly of the belief that it is cancer, and that his son and heir will die within the year. Then again the weird, the haunting, the evil-foreboding White Lady has been seen again at the Berlin palace. She was never known to appear except to indicate some sudden calamity to the house of Hohenzollern most generally death. Since the serious illness of the Crown Prince the fact seems to be pretty well authen- ticated that she has been seen twice, and each time with a look of terror and anguish on her face. She first made her appearance dur- ing the reign of the Emperor's mother the beautiful, the unfortu- 150 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. nate and the broken-hearted Louise and has been part of the imperial household ever since. Does her last visit bode evil to the Crown Prince? Who knows? A NEW REVISION OF THE BIBLE. [Kansas City Times, July 23, 1887.] A brief cable dispatch announced the other day the fact that quite a number of denominational people, whatever that may mean, had met in London and discussed freely the ways and means of pre- paring another translation of the Bible. They adjourned to meet again shortly. Make it, gentlemen make it by all means. Rub up your Hebrew and your Greek. Get quickly at your roots, your verbsand your conjugations. Print a plentiful supply. Go upon the princi- ple that ' ' Mark Twain" did when dealing with the lightning-rod man: " Certainly I will take a rod, ten, fifteen, fifty. Put half a dozen on the house, twenty on the barn; put them everywhere. One on the servant girl, one on the cow, six on the woodshed and then come back to me for further orders. Lightning-rods are great things to have in a family." But, seriously, what earthly use is there for another translation of the Bible? The last one, not yet four years old, fell still-born. A few cranks discussed it pro and con, and then it dropped out of the public sight forever. Here and there a few enthusiasts pro- claimed it from the housetops, but the people went by on the other side. Once in a while a sweet geranium leaf of a youngster sought to open with it his first call to preach, but his congregation drew the line at sheol, and he quickly had to hunt another transla- tion considerably more ancient. People are afraid of new Bibles. Education is everything in the matter of faith. Once well set in his religious ways and the average man or woman will stick at the crater of Vesuvius, even though an eruption is off only the distance of an hour. Habit also fills a great space. To be able to find certain texts at the places assigned to them is much more potential than to be able to interpret them. People cry out against superstition, but it has been one of Christianity's handmaidens. It has done a powerful sight of good and a powerful sight of harm, but its good deeds are legion as to one bad one. So, also, with Christianity itself. About the old Bible there is a sort of superstition that enshrines it and makes it invincible. Of course many things enter into the superstition to harden and crystallize it, but it exists and can not be cast aside or ignored, hence the folly of another translation no matter how per- fect of the Holy Scriptures. THE REVISED BIBLE. [Kansas City Times , July, 1888.] The English publishers of the revised edition of the Bible, especially the revised New Testament, complain very much that the venture, in a business point of view, is a dead failure. There is no demand for this revised Bible, either in part or in whole. Much money has already been lost, they say, more will be lost, and they profess not to be able to understand why the sales are not larger and the profits more reassuring. MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 151 A blind man might see why. The masses of the people do not want the revised Bible, will not have it, will not buy it, have no faith in it, no respect for it, no tolerance for it aye, for it, in fact, they have only supreme contempt and bitter mockery. With every human creed, belief, or spiritual profession there always goes a certain amount of superstition. It is not the super- stition of ignorance. It is not the creed superstition which leads to violence, bloodshed and murder. It is not the fanatical super- stition which takes the sword in one hand and the crucifix in the other. It is not the proselyting superstition which mistakes the shadow for the substance, and seeks to bring about universal brotherhood by extirpating all freedom of thought and independ- ence of action. It is rather the sentimental superstition which believes old things to be better than new; the faith of the old days more holy than the faith of the new; the old ideas of futurity more reverent than the new agnosticism, which does not know; the old Bible, as pur fathers taught it, more sacred than anything a broader learning can fashion, or a higher education make more pliable to modern thought and insipid forms of expression. Especially does the unvexed and unexpurgated Bible take hold of the human imagination and do with it as it pleases. It has been handed down from generation to generation. The family's genea- logical tree has taken root thee. In sunshine it has sung praises to the Lord; in shadow it has poured ointment into the hurts and tem- pered the wind to the shorn lamb. Birth saw its precious depository busy with the record, and death knew that however the stealth of its bereavements, something would be writ to tell of what had been given and what had been taken away. And then what delightful memories of childhood cluster about the old Bible. Call it the King James version, or the Dou ay ver- sion, or whatever other version you please, so only it is the old Bible, to childhood it is a sentient thing. It has life and breath and speech and motion. For every doubt it has an explanation, and for every wound a Gilead full of balm. Its promises are articulate, and it soothes as it promises. To doubt its inspiration in those halcyon days would have been to doubt a father's care or a mother's tender- ness. Somehow, no matter how, it grew about the heart and became chief among its holy household gods. Every line in it was taken literally, interpreted literally, and acted upon literally. It provided for a future. It robbed death of the severity of its sting; it denied to the grave the exultation of its victory. As one grew older it took upon itself shape after shape that had not before been discovered, because to be more and more of a necessity. It was historical, theological, polemical, scientific, hygienic, geological and prophetic. It was a single volume and a library. Day after day it gathered unto itself new strength; reading after reading it revealed unto the student new beauties of thought and new avenues of investigation. All in all, it was to him the most satisfying book ever printed, and so when he went out into the world for himself, along with the faces of the other near ones and dear ones, there went also the form and the face of the idolize d old family Bible. No wonder, therefore, that the work which would cut and carve this precious instrument is almost universally looked upon as sacri- legious work, receiving bitter denunciations instead of indorsment, or so completely ignored as to entail heavy financial losses upon those who, through much learning, vainly imagined that they could saturate the Word of God with their Greek and Hebrew refinements 152 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. and force it upon the recognition of those who yet believe in the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures- MARRIAGE OF CAPTAIN COLLINS. [Kansas City Times August, 1888.] So this wary old campaigner has been captured at last. So the old veteran battery commander, who never lost a gun in all the four years' war, in one swift moment lost both his heart and whatever may be looked upon as the blessedness of single life. So this splen- did cannoneer, -whom General Jo Shelby took as a boy and left as a giant, has become as pliant as a woman's necklace in as tender a pair of hands as ever threaded the strands of life with the golden beads of purity and devotion. Ah! love! love! There are thousands of the comrades of Captain Collins thipday all over Arkansas, Texas and Missouri who will rejoice that such a destiny has come at last to one who has deserved so much at the hands of fortune deserved so much because of truth, courage, gen- erous manhood, steadfastness to friendship, perfect honor and a faith that will fail not till the end. Then if these old comrades of his could have seen his beautiful bride so modest, so gentle, so refined, the dew of the morning of her young life yet glistening upon the roses in her cheeks, their con- gratulations would have been sent up to him twice, once because of the resolution which made him draw near to such a shrine to offer incense, and once because the priestess who presided there had so many of the qualities of splendid American womanhood as to fit her perfectly for adoration. And now the two go out into the world hand in hand together. Perhaps it may be dark sometimes. Perhaps in some mornings no birds may be heard to sing. Perhaps fate's hand may now and then smite hard -and smite the things which are tenderest. Perhaps across the home threshold some shadows may fall which can be lifted never more until the Hght that never was on shore or sea lift them beyond the wonderful river; but stand up, old comrade, ten- der and true. You are the oak. It is for you to sit sentinel by the hearthstone, for you to make holy with devotion the perfect shelter of the roof -tree. Everything that is touching in woman's confi- dence has been reposed in you. The perfect purity of a sinless and stainless life is yours for the cherishing. The sunhas risen on this newer and fuller existence, and that journey has been entered upon which must go forward to its final abiding place of domestic happi- ness. Since it has been begun, may the good God send to bless it those bountiful things which make the flowers to bloom for you, and the green sward to be gracious for your feet, and soft winds to blow for you, and a perfect possession to come unto you, as the gentle night-dews come to a summer's hill. THE GREAT AMERICAN NOYEL. [Kansas City Times, October, 1888.] The Boston Herald asks with more plaintiveness than the sub- ject demands, it seems to us, when the great American novel may be expected. Before such a question could be answered one would have to understand what is meant by the great American novel. If it is to be a " Les Miserables " of a book, the answer would be easy, MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 153 for it would consist of the single word never; but until a book in some degree approaching this is produced this side of the Atlantic it is not worth while to talk about any really distinctive or represen- tative work of American fiction. The American novels, now being printed by the carload and scattered broadcast over the country, furnish the best possible evi- dence that the Herald's question must remain in abeyance for a satisfactory answer if not for a whole century at least for the half of one. There never was such a ruck of simper, insanity and gush. There was never such a reign of platitude, idiocy and drivel. No power anywhere. No imagination. No hand that can paint a picture to interest, much less to haunt one. Nothing that forces a sigh, much less a shudder. Nothing that casts athwart the sky of a perfect imbecility a single lurid flash to tell that the sun of genius is about to lift itself above the horizon. The old novels, by far the best ever published in this country, are no longer read. Who to-day sets any store by James Fenimore Cooper ? and yet he was as much of an American as the American eagle. The forests at his touch took any hue or color. They were green like green seas, or desolate like snow wastes in December. They were jocund with bird songs, or hushed as though the vast presence of the Angel of Silence brooded in all their branches. He put his hand upon the streams and, as they hastened on to the sea, they had a speech which he interpreted. He dramatized the wigwam and the Indian, the trapper and the scout, and gave to the civilization of the border the terse, picturesque form of expres- sion which even to this day, dialect though it be, still retains all of its pathos and intensity. His pictures of pioneer life were perfect. The hunter, the trapper, the scout, the guide, the red warrior, the warpath, the block-house, the ambushment, the butch- ery they are as well recognized now as portrayed by this wiz- ard as they were in the days when Montcalm pitched his marquee in front of Fort William Henry, and poor old Munro, heroic Scotch- man though he was, surrendered at last to French finesse and Indian deviltry. But Cooper is forgotten. And so is Poe. And Hawthorne will be by and by. Namby-pamby ism is the standard. Any situation which would make a mouse squeak is eliminated from all latter-day American novels. The end is everything, the denouement as the chirrupers like to call it. That mustbe a marriage, everybody happy, the hero getting a medicine chest, and a copy of Godey's Lady's Book for a wife, and the heroine .cetting one of Sam Jones' spider-legged dudes and a walking stick for a husband. Hysteria and hair-pin. The bustle and the pad. Tootsy-wootsy and baby -boy. Lord of Israel ! what a race of chimpanzees would be born into the world if these modern American novelists could have the making of its procreators. Coming like the white butterflies in June, and going like the white caterpillars in November, there is one funny sort of a man called Henry James, an American in the spring and an Englishman in the fall, who has had the audacity to declare that he is the great American novelist. Why, he isn't a novelist of any kind, let alone an American novelist. If truth had ever had the fashioning of a nora de plume for him it would have been insipidity. His women wheeze like people with the phthisic. Now and then he has a stat- uesque one, and she faints at the sight of a Japanese fan. Skilled in essences, and with a smelling bottle always handy, he will go into a drawing room and have four or five on the floor at once, some 154 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. with their bodies unlaced and some in hysterics. His men are my Lord Fitznoodle, and my Count Nonentity. He an American novel- ist ! Henry James the great American novelist ! Yes, just about as much as the pine cone on the ground is the gigantic pine tree. If the Boston Herald is really in distress for a day to come when that mythical thing, the great American novel, is to be born, it had just as well begin now to tear its hair and rend its garments. Come back again, say at the end of another century. The land is too new. The standard of taste is too low. There is too much shoddy affec- tation, and veneering to the front. The genius of the age lies in money getting and money grabbing. The "yaller" covers have the boom. Iron is king. Wait for more refinement, luxury and culti- vation. Wait for the moccasin tracks to be obliterated. And while you are about it, our dear contemporaries, just wait for the Millen- nium. OUIDA AND ZOLA. [Kansas City Times, 1889.] There is a literary club in Boston composed entirely of women, Its name is the " Analytical," and the last subject brought before it for discussion was rather a peculiar one, to speak modestly, being this: "As between Ouida and Zola, which of the two is the most immoral?" It is not recorded what the verdict was, if a verdict was indeed reached; but the debate, in the event that it took a wide range, must have been exceedingly bizarre and somewhat interesting. To settle the question of immorality between two such authors, not a few edged tools would have to be handled. A spade would have to be called a spade most emphatically. Vigorous English would have to come in all along the line in"no uncertain manner. Comparisons would have to be made by direct and apropos quota- tions. No mere ipse dixit in thatassembly would have had the toler- ance of a moment. There were the models, stripped from necklace to satin slipper, and there were the judges, impassible as Plymouth Rock, taking note of each development. Between the two authors thus discussed the immorality of each and of course we only refer to their writings differs merely in the way it is presented. Ouida's immorality is perfumed, essenced, plumed, scarfed, jeweled, full of poetry and full of romance Zola's is brutal, indiscriminate and low-bred. .Ouida is always refined, picturesque and suggestive; Zola lays about him with a club. Ouida builds palaces for her Phrynes; Zola is content with a rookery. Ouida crowns vice with flowers and decorates it with diamonds; Zola is satisfied with rags and tatters. Ouida goes many times to mass and sometimes to confession; Zola sneers alike at God and devil. Ouida trips daintily to trystings, the red in her cheeks and wind in her hair; Zola in great muddy boots that smell of the stable. Ouida's approach is heralded by the swish of silk and the odor of violets; Zola's by the stumblings of the drunkard and the peculiarflavor of absinthe and brandy. Ouida gilds everything touches the cheeks with rouge and the eyes with henna; Zola does not even use soap and water. Ouida is luxury, sensuousness, down, ermine, rare wines, passionate wooings and passionate embraces; Zola is mechanical lust put together like a machine and quite as soulless. Ouida's assignations have in them the singing of birds, and the leaping of sword-blades; Zola's the shivering of plassps in tavern brawls and the bacchanalian shouts of vulgar revelers. Ouida MISCELLANEOUS WHITINGS. 155 quiets conscience, weakens resolution, puts a silken scarf over the eyes of purity, baits her traps with bait from a king's table, makes a tiuce with continence, gives virtue a plenary indulgence, and lifts constantly a curtain for glimpses of Paradise; Zola thrusts rudely into the hand a printed bill of fare that orders may be issued according to appetite. Ouida appeals to the spirit; Zola to the flesh. The immorality of the one has over it always something of a gar- ment, transparent though it may be and of the color of flesh; Zola does not even put on a fig leaf about the loins. These, therefore, are the two styles of immorality which the fair ladies of the analytical club no doubt discussed in all the ins and outs and ramifications of their putrescence and abomination. As none but women were present this discussion in all probability took a wide range and license, although we are of the opinion that Ouida had the most votes. What next? IS DEATH ALL? [Kansas City Times.] There come up in connection with Colonel Ingersoll's eulogy delivered upon the life and character of Roscoe Conkling some serious thoughts. To Ingersoll he was a paladin. Yes, and to many another besides Ingersoll. He is desribed by the orator as being brave, true, clean, immovable in his friendships, and unalterable in his love. The country knew that long ago. We put aside all of Ingersoll's slush, wherein the bloody shirt and abolitionism are mixed in equal proportions, and come directly to the question: Where, beyond the grave, is the Pantheon for such a hero? Take this great American as he is put upon Ingersoll's canvas. Look at his face, his eyes, his pose, his stature and his whole com- manding presence in every feature and aspect. Is no soul there? If there is a soul, who gave it? Into whose hands does it return? Is it annihilation? Do men like Napoleon, Caesar, Hannibal, Victor Hugo and a whole mighty array of other giants disappear into noth- ingness? It can not be. It is against reason, common sense, revealed religion, the Bible, the agony in the garden, the torture on the cross. It is also against human nature. Man, in any state, is supremely selfish. He wants a hereafter. He wants another world when he gets old, a place to lie down, to sleep, perhaps to dream. Life's battle may have borne against him heavily. Bosoms despite all love, and courage, and watchfulness, and tenderness have been stricken home at his side. He knows where his graves are. The dew falls upon them like a benediction. The birds sing above them as they do when they find sweet seed in the summer grasses. He is worn now, and feeble and far spent. He dies, and Ingersoll says that death is the last of him. He turns to a leaf, a sprout, a shrub, perhaps a four-leaf clover, perhaps a head of timothy, it may be one thing or it may be another; but, whatever it is. the end is utter oblivion. It is against every selfish instinct of man that such a fate is desirable. In his inner being there is a constant revolt against such abominable paganism. Indeed, it is worse than paganism. Pagan- ism did have its altars, its shrines, its sacred groves, its temples, its vestal virgins, its priests, its augurs, its elysian fields, its gods, its goddesses, its spirits of good and of evil; but it never had extinc- tion. Instead, it had sinners immortal in their capacity to suffer 156 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. and endure. It had Pluto and Prometheus; it had Proserpine and Acteon; it had Midas and Tantalus ; it had the Furies and the Eumenides, but its future was never without a resurrection. That has remained for the superior development of the nineteenth century steam everywhere; electricity everywhere; oceans speaking to the land through great coils of wires that even teach the fishes a speech, and cause the great yet invisible monsters of the deep to send forth their avants courier, their krakens, their sea serpents, their devils of indescribable things which have as many arms as a wheel has spokes, and in each arm the strength of a screw- propeller send them forth to know all the meaning of the new things men have invented who are totally without souls, and yet with an intelligence equal to the angels. In fact, this wonder- ful period in the life of mankind has waited for Robert G. Ingersoll. It may be all as he says, but he has put his race at a terrible dis- advantage. He has made of them mummies, monkeys and blocks of wood. As far as he could he has burned out the eyes of faith. He has taken from cripples, paralytics and deformed people what little staff and script they had for this unknown journey, creeping on apace and making fiercer and fiercer inroads at every returning season. He has made of the holy mysteries things to deride, ridi- cule, spit on, daub with mud, dress in rags and scarify like lepers. And then to think that he had the audacity to deliver a eulogy on Roscoe Conkling. Sacrilege! Sacrilege! Sacrilege! THE NEW YEAR. To all things there must come a past to those who sin and love and suffer and repent, and who go on through life and make no prayer or moan, it is well, in the infinite wisdom of God, that there is a past. The heart buries its treasures there. It is full of sad , sweet faces lying asleep in the sepulchres, full of ' ' broken vows and pieces of rings. " There, when life was at its flood and the world full of all glad and green-growingthings, it held so many memories that came only when youth and hope were strong and rare, like winsome lock of hair, some garment of spice-smell or sky-color, some apple-tree white and pink with blossoms, some tune that came in with the sunset and lingered until the night had fallen, some snowy tents of the dogwood perched beyond the early green of meadows washed with dew and wiped with the moonshine, some twi- light trysting by the garden-gate, the moon bending low in the West and the twilight busy with the lilacs, some lapsing flow of running water where the tree-tops were jubilant with nests and tremulous with many wings something that came only in the first spring-time and affluence of life, and that lingers until the stars have faded one by one, and the sounds are heard of the waves of the wonderful river. The new year comes, however, and behind it are all the old and crowded years, some of them glad as with sunshine, and some of them sorrowful as with tears. It is best neither to remember nor forget. Let the past lie out peacefully among its sepulchers and its shadows, and let the present be all our own. There are rugged bat- tles yet to fight, there are triumphs yet in store, there is work for all who know the meaning of that simple word duty, there are fields to cultivate, consecrated efforts to put forth, and Illustrious examples to set for all the future. Nothing is lost or thrown away. Poor finite hearts that yearn, and doubt, and stand aside abashed as the MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 157 great cavalcade of high deeds and heroic actions go by, have only need to lift themselves up and become as giants in the march of prog- ress. It will be dark many times, and the winds will blow cold, and the clouds will gather; but after the midnight the morning, anoV after the cold, gray dawn in the east, the blue sky filled with its sun- shine and its bountiful and temperate air. WHOSE FAULT IS IT 2 In a recent discourse the Rev. J. P. Newman is reported to have said, in referring to the Chicago anarchists : The cry goes up to-day for absolute liberty, destroy the Bible, tear down the churches, exile the pastors, abolish the Sabbath. Could any American citizen have anticipated ten years ago such an advance ? Would any American citizen ten years ago have foretold that to-day men call- ing themselves good citizens and Christians would sign and circulate a petition for the pardon of those whose hands are red with the blood of the keepers of the peace and defenders of the public safety ? What is back of this anarchy ? This foul, revolutionary movement of miserable, cowardly wretches, who ought to have been hung long ago ? Liberty means obedience to law, absolute liberty has no place in this land, and he who comes to us from abroad should under- stand that for those who yell for absolute liberty and its practices, we have the dungeon, the gallows, or exile. This is all very well as far as it goes, but it has merely skimmed the surface of the evil which afflicts the country. Who pities those dynamiters of Chicago? Who is lifting a hand to save them from the rope except those who are but little better than they? Dr. Newman need not have belabored these straw men so furiously. They are the mere outgrowth of a poison that lies deeper; that has been at work for thrice ten years; that is as difficult to eradi- cate as leprosy; that the pulpit has had as much to do in making deadly as a morass has in breeding malaria; that is becoming more intense every day, more destructive and more impervious to medi- cament we mean the poison of infidelity. The gravitation toward a religion that has neither a Bible nor a Savior has been going on steadily in the United States for thirty years. It began when the New Testament was prostituted by the elimination of an actual devil and a real hell. It began when a reign of sensationalism set in, and when texts were not taken from the Holy Scriptures, but from the most abnormal and outrageous events of everyday society, the more fashionable the better and the more given over to worldliness and display. What has become of the old-fashioned orthodoxy? What of a faith that once had to be manifested by works? What of Bible verses and Bible expoundings? What of the whole congregation joining in old-fashioned hymns, sometimes quaint but always full of that kind of pathos which made people stronger and better for the singing? What of the lowly meeting houses, with wooden benches and uncarpeted aisles? Fashion has killed them all. Infidelity has done its work all too well, bringing to aid it as faithful allies agnosticism, material- ism, atheism, doubt, questioning, ridicule, politics, prohibition, the world, the flesh and the devil. The race is fast becoming one of scoffers and unbelievers. It has no use for preachers who make violent partisans out of themselves, and go about mixing in every- thing that belongs to the ballot-box, and the meetings. Before it 158 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. will listen to them it will go to the other extreme and assume an air of infidel bravado out of their disgust or defiance. Who hears religion preached any more in the fashionable churches? It has become to be considered a species of anguish to call Jesus Christ any longer the Son of God. The inspiration of the Bible is a myth that has been sent to keep company with the sea serpent. The whole beautiful and appealing plan of salvation, made touch- ing and supremely lovable through the life, the teachings, the cruci- fixion, and the resurrection of an immortal sacrifice, is now no more accounted of than the bleeding and empty skin of a slaugh- tered bullock. The road to Heaven has been made musical with resonant organs and choirs of singing people who sing operatic airs that boldly proclaim the green room and ogle the can-can not a little wantonly. And then the texts. Sermons have been preached on base ball, on horse racing, on watering places, on battle flags, on cipher dis- patches, on the waltz, on victorious armies, on the navy and what it did in the war, on forty acres and a mnle, on Ingersoll, a cart load or two on Guiteau, one in this town on Jesse James, quite a number on the address Ingalls made concerning Ben Hill, 10,000 probably on Grant, not so many on Garfield; but precious few about Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Nor is Dr. J. P. Newman any better than a good many others who have thus made the pulpit a place for man canonization and the church a place for man idolatry. He has preached more politics to the square inch of brain than any other preacher in the country. When Grant was president he never had a favorite colt to chafe its tail, that this inspector of consulates did not give his congregation a discourse on the misfortune. Toady always, and spread-eagle always, is it any wonder that such so-called expounders of the gospel drive men in multitudes into any species of unbelief whicn will array them openly against these charlatans and impostors? Socialism is accursed of God, but so is infidelity. No nation mentioned yet in all history ever prospered a single hour or in a single undertaking after it abandoned the simple belief and faith of its fathers, for -w ith these go truth, virtue, honesty and patriotic manhood. It is no longer capable of making heroic sacrifices. It is no longer fit to rise up against adversity, affliction or chastise- ment. Its spiritual torpor is complete, and it is physically incapa- ble of a single emotion. There are many instances recorded where the pulpits have killed liberty. GONE DOWN AT SEA. The blue of the sky and the blue of the ocean were blended together when the City of Boston sailed away from England in the springtime, westward bound. It is winter now, and snows have fallen, and the faces of all the seas have been white with the wrath and the pain of the tempest, but never more forever will there come up from the great deep a whisper to tell where the brave ship went down. Three hundred were on board. Mothers were there with their children newly born; maidens were there upon whose fair head shad blown the pleasant winds of France, and in whose eyes were the light of English summers ; youth stood upon the prome- nade deck looking far into the future, with hope that had upon its wings the morning and the sunrise ; manhood's stalwart faith gazed camly on the azure face of the eternal ocean, and listened to the MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 159 voices of the tide as one hears soft music in a dream ; beauty lingered late among the happy hours that had for solace merriment and laughter ; and all the stars were kind, and all the elfin lights that danced along the deep took mermaid shapes and whirled and sported round the ship as though 'twere sailing in among the islands of the blessed. Blithe battle blowing all about the sunny slopes of France, and in amid the vine leaves and the vines as running water, took eyes and hearts from the ocean bird sailing grandly on to her inarticulate death. Was there any storm, clothed with the wind and hurricane, that grappled and overthrew the ves- sel? Nobody knows. Did the fiery lightning run all along the spars and light the sails and shrouds and hull for funeral pyre? The ebb and flow of moon-made tides carry no message back to either shore. Oh! it was pitiful, that death ''alone, alone, all alone alone on the wide,wide sea." Some died and made no moan. Some must have floated with drenched, loose arms flung wide apart and smiles of childhood on the wan, thin faces. Was the night brooding upon the water, moonless and starless? Could a south wind have blown, perfumed with land odors, only to bring the skeleton reaper and the pitiless storm? What said all the beautiful maidens in death's broken and touching talk? Were not the mother's eyes more steadfast than any there, and were not her prayers more holy and fervent as she lifted her face to heaven a face that bore a living likeness to the fair-haired boy in tears upon her bosom? Was it morning when the good ship went down, and had the night, like a corpse abandoning a bier, stolen the shroud from the face of the ocean ? In all the lost three hundred was there one to whom death came as a benediction one that smiled sweetly as the angry, crawling waves came up the oaken ribs, and murmured wearily and wistfully to ears that could not hear: "Fair mother, fed with the lives of men, Thou are subtle and cruel of heart, men say; Thou hast taken, and shall not render again; Thou art full of thy dead, and cold as they; But death is the worst that comes of thee; Thou art fed with our dead, O Mother, O sea, But when hast thou fed on our hearts? or when, Having given us love, hast thou taken away?" Oh, but nothing mangles, and rends, and devours like the sea. It laughs with insatiable lips and comes to its prey screened by the zephyrs and by gracious and temperate airs. The clouds and the waves conspire. There is a gulf in the sky and a gulf in the ocean, and all between is the freighted bark, having frail things, and beau- tiful things for cargo and ballast, run from billow to billow, and a great noise is heard as of agony and fear, and hard bestead and Eunted like a wounded, stricken thing, the good ship, City of Bos- ton went down and left no piece of wreck, no spar, no white face swollen with the sleep of death, no bonnie tress of hair coiled about and tangled with seaweed, no broken and battered boat, no whisper in wind or air to tell how the wild waves went over all. There are hearts yet in the old world and the new that are lis- tening for the signal guns which tell of her offing truly made and her anchors fast in the harbor of repose. The laughing morning winds, fed with the dew and the sunrise have tripped over the grave of the wreck, and when they had passed the sea wore its placid smile, and there were no murmurs to tell of the three hundred sleeping peacefully beneath. The hurricane and the tempest have rocked them down amid the coral caves of old ocean, but no dreams 160 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. come to the eternal slumber and no noises entered into the everlast- ing rest.. Is it best so ? Poor, finite souls that only feel love's cease- less vigils and stretch in vain the longing arms of hopeless sorrow, think little of the faith which bids them weep no more and pray for hope and consolation. The morning brings no ship and night no dear ones to the home-hearth swept since the day of sailing. It can not be that the secrets of the drowned must remain forever in the inexorable bosom of the sea. Surely some wave will bear them shoreward, some drift take them out to the islands where summer is eternal and where shipwrecks never come. BETTER WAR BY LAND THAN SEA. [Kansas City Times.] The talk is still of earthquake, shipwreck and disaster. By land and sea the face of the Lord appears to be turned away from the people. It is impossible to read the stories which come from Italy with- out a shudder at the wholesale destruction of so much life and property. Villages disappear as a stranded ship on a pitiless lee shore. Towns are blotted out as though a swift hand, holding a sponge, had suddenly washed away the figures on a blackboard. This hand, however, is appalling, for it emerges from the darkness and retires again into the darkness. It is death, but it is the sort of death that comes to the far south on the east wind, weaving its winding sheets where the jangles are, and leaping out from the dark lagoons, a horrid specter, just when all nature is most jocund and when, in listening to the birds, one can dream in his dreams that surely such songs must also be sung in " The sweet fields of Eden." Cities wherein it has been joyous to live, and wherein peace, and all the good angels who wait upon her, have dwelt together as vestal virgins in a temple have heard the blowing as of some titanic subterranean horns, and have seen walls crash down and palaces crumble as though a legion of imprisoned Joshuas were reaching upward again for that sun which will never stand still any more in the plains of Agalon. The priest dies by the altar. In the cradle the baby croons and goes to sleep forever. The strong man turns, as it were, sword in hand, to defend his household. The gray hairs of age count for nothing beyond the old, immemorial aureole. The mother, beauti- ful in the august beauty of accepted death, rushes to guard hfr chil- dren and perishes above them as though she, too, had the Douglas blood in her veins, as when " Dead above the heart of Bruce The heart of .Douglas lay." There were revels and routs and balls. In several of the stricken places bridal affairs were in process of consummation. Music abounded. Odors were everywhere. On the silk and satin edges of the throngs the click as of castanets came to stir the blood, as the blast of bugles do in battle. These were the feet of the merry dancers " dancing in tune." Suddenly death took a hand in all too many of these transac- tions; as he came at Herculaneum , as he came at Pompeii; as lie has come so of ten, so often to so many in the first springtime and affluence MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 161 of youth; to so many who have never known any other season except spring, with its passion flowers, or summer with its roses so he came to many a shattered and desolated hamlet, or village, or town in Italy. Every sort of shape we have described death took in its recent terrible visitations, and our own people barely catch glimpses of the real horrors of the work done by these dreadful upheavals. The inmates of churches, convents, schools, palatial residences, hovels, marts of commerce, all avenues of trade and traffic have perished in a moment, have been multilated or crippled or robbed of everything which is really fit to make life enjoyable. If a certain number of the human race have to be destroyed violently, as many contend, to maintain the equilibrium of the pop- ulation, why not let them be destroyed through war? Only the strong, then, the fearless and the ambitious, have to go. Glory awaits the survival of the fittest. They can see death as he waits for them. He is yonder in that battery's smoke. Where that tawny earthwork crouches, all about it seemingly asleep, as some gorged wild beast in its lair, he has been in ambush since the early morn- ing. Takecarei Those half-bent figures, with guns at a trail, just creeping like panthers into the right-hand thicket, are as so many spectral fingers pointing to death's unerring line of battle. You hear in the darkness the clanking of steel scabbards, cries, oaths, the neigh- ing of horses, a steady tramp, tramp, as of waves breaking on a beach, and a low, continuous rumble, as of thunder at sea. Be ready! Death is marching through the night to do its deadly work in the daylight. An attacking army is getting into line. But who perish? Only men men men! Young, stalwart fellows, lusty food for gunpowder, and fit to get over yonder all the houris and odalisques that may be had in the warrior's Paradise. No children perish. No babes at the breast. No aged people at the brink of the grave. No priest at the altar. No brides "betwixt the red wine and the chalice." A CLOSE CALL. [Kansas City Times.'} The assassin who fired point blank at Jules Ferry, not probably over five feet away, surely meant to kill him. He hit him twice, but it appears as if neither bullet broke the skin, much less penetrated. In this no doubt many will see a miracle those who are always seeking for signs, signals, portents, and interpretation outside of human nature and common sense. The multitude, however, will only see a very indifferent pistol and powerfully poor gunpowder. Jules Ferry is one of the strongest men intellectually in France. He is a philosopher, a bit of a stoic, not given to retrospects, never disturbed by illusions and looks askance at the French republic as if it were some untamable mustang of a thing, dangerous to mount and impossible to ride. In addition, he lives up to Talleyrand's famous motto: "Never have anything to do with an unlucky man." But as to Jules Ferry's politics ah! that is quite another mat- ter. He may be a Republican and he may not. A Bonapartist, then? Never. Of that dynasty he once said: " In that nest there was only one eagle. The world can not afford such eagles but rarely in the centuries." Orleanist? No. The younger generations of Louis Philippe, Charles X., and that other old fellow of Chambord, with hislillies in place of the tri-color, and that preposterous soubriquet of his of 162 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. Dieudonne the God-given do not fuse, can not unite their forces, have no cohesion, have no sense, don't know France, don't know its population. They belong to his proscribed crowd of unlucky people. Opportunist? That may be. An Opportunist in politics is what an Agnostic is in religion. In either surrounding , the creed thoroughly summed up, is this: I do not know. There may be a devil and tnere may not. There may be something above in the shape of a New Jerusalem and there may not. After this life there may be another and there may not. After death there may be a resurrection and there may not. I do not know. This is the Agnostic. The Opportunist reasons pretty much in the same way. Every- thing and nothing are taken for granted. There may be a war with Germany. Very well. There may be a Russian alliance. Still very well. Perhaps one of these days a coup d'etat may come along. It would not surprise me. A republic is impossible in France. I have never denied it. The army at heart is for a mon- archy. That does not surprise me. I simply do not know. What- ever the new broom may be, I shall take good care to have hold of the handle. Is, then, M. Jules Ferry a Republican? Evidently the poor fool who tried to kill him thought not, as did those who were back of him, and who probably sent him to the galleys for the bal- ance of his natural lifetime. They will scarcely cut off his head. The guillotine now-a-daysis a kind of an aristocratic institution. It has spilt so much blood of blue-blooded people first and last that the thing has become to have a sort of horrible prescience. Some- thing of the souls of those great ones whom it has put to death may have entered into its own mechanical organization. Mark you, a king died under its knife. And a queen. And heroic old generals grown gray in war, with only their scars to tell their story. And orators whose eloquence belongs to immortality. And that colossus Danton. whose tramp across the surface of France shook Europe, and at the roar of whose terrible voice armies sprang instantly into life and marched away to the frontier why, indeed, should not the guillotine be a little bit particular now about its victim, and be granted some favors in the way of discriminating between criminals? M. Ferry is not the man who can touch the fiber of the national heart of France, which is in constant vibration either sensitively or violently, because he is not in unison with it. Between political parties who decimate and immolate one another, he is clearly of the opinion that it is not best to tear too many passions to tatters. In the days gone by he was a stubborn fighter in the ranks of whatever opposition was uppermost, but always in the ranks of the opposition. Of late he has neither written much nor spoken scarcely any at all. He is of the opinion that the republic does not know what it wants nor whither it is going. No doubt he is tired. He has reached that age in life when he would like to think a little. He sees all the par- ties about him actuated rather by likes than by hopes, by aversions rather than by principles. He sees no brilliant star arising amid the mists of the evening to guide new generations aright on the pathway that leads to his ideal republic, and he doubts, folds his hands and sets still. Why, of all other men, he should have been singled out to be murdered, surpasses all understanding on this side of the ocean. MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 163 THE KILLING OF JESSE JAMES. [Sedalia Democrat, April, 1881.] " Let not Caesar's servile minions, Mock the lion thus laid low: 'Twas no 1'oeman's hand that slew him. 'Twas his own that struck the blow." No one among all the hired cowards, hard on the hunt for blood- money, dared face this wonderful outlaw, one even against twenty, until he had disarmed himself and turned his back to his assassins, the first and only time in a career which has passed from the realms of an almost fabulous romance into that of history. We called him outlaw, and he was, but Fate made him so. When the war came he was just turned of fifteen. The border was all aflame with steel, and fire, and ambuscade, and slaughter. He flung himself into a band which had a black flag for a banner and devils for riders. What he did he did, and it was fearful. But it was war. It was Missouri against Kansas. It was Jim Lane and Jennison against Quantrell, Anderson and Todd. When the war closed Jesse James had no home. Proscribed, hunted, shot, driven away from among his people, a price put upon his head what else could the man do, with such a nature, except what he did do? He had to live. It was his country. The graves of his kindred were there. He refused to be ban- ished from his birthright, and when he was hunted he turned sav- agely about and hunted his hunters. Would to God he were alive to-day to make a righteous butchery of a few more of them. There never was a more cowardly and unnecessary murder com- mitted in all America than this murder of Jesse James. It was done for money. It was done that a few might get all the money. He had been living in St. Joseph for months. The Fords were with him. He was in the toils, for they meant to betray him. He was in the heart of a large city. One word would have sum- moned 500 armed men for his capture or extermination. Not a single one of the attacking party need to have been hurt. If, when his house had been surrounded, he had refused to surrender, he could have been killed on the inside of it and at long range. The chances for him to escape were as one to 10,000, and not even that; but it was never intended that he should be captured. It was his blood the bloody wretches were after blood that would bring money in the official market of Missouri. And this great commonwealth leagued with a lot of self-con- fessed robbers, highwaymen and prostitutes to have one of its citi- zens assassinated, before it was positively known he had ever com- mitted a single crime worthy of death. Of course everything that can be said about the dead man to justify the manner of his killing, will be said; but who is saying it? Those with the blood of Jesse James on their guilty souls. Those who conspired to murder him. Those who wanted the reward, and would invent any lie or concoct any diabolical story to get it. They have succeeded, but such a cry of horror and indignation at the infernal deed is even now thundering over the land that if a single one of the miserable assassins had either manhood, conscience, or courage, he would go, as another Judas, and hang himself. But so sure as God reigns, there never was a dollar of blood-money obtained yet which did not bring with it perdition. Sooner or later there 164 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. comes a day of vengeance. Some among the murderers are mere beasts of prey. These, of course, can only suft'er through cold, or hunger or thirst; but whatever they dread most that thing will hap- pen. Others again among the murderers are sanctimonious devils who plead the honor of the State, the value of law and order, the splendid courage required to shoot an unarmed man in the back of the head; and these will be stripped to their skin of all their preten- sions, and made to shiver and freeze, splotched as they aie and spotted and piebald with blood, in the pitiless storm of public con- tempt and condemnation. This to the leaders will be worse than death. Nor is the end yet. If Jesse James had been hunted down as any other criminal, and killed while trying to escape or in resisting arrest, not a word would have been said to the contrary. He had sined and he had suffered. In his death the majesty of the law would have been vindicated ;but here the law itself becomes a muid< rrr. It leagues with murderers. It hires murderers. It aids and aU is murderers. It borrows money to pay and reward murderers. It promises immunity and protection to murderers. It is itself a murderer the most abject, the most infamous, and the most cow- ardly ever known to history. Therefore this so-called law is an out- law, and these so-called executors of the law are outlaws. There- fore let Jesse James' comrades and he has a few remaining worth all the Fords and Littles that could be packed together between St. Louis and St. Joe do unto them as they did unto him. Yes, the end is not yet, nor should it be. The man had no trial. What right had any officer of this State to put a price upon his head and hire a band of cut-throats and highwaymen to murder him for money ? Anything can be told of man. The whole land is filled with liars and robbers, and assassins. Murder is easy for a Lucdrtd dollars. Nothing is safe that is pure or unsuspecting, or just, tut it is not to be supposed that the law will become an ally and a co-worker in this sort of a civilization. Jesse James Ins been murdered, first, because an immense price had been set upon his head, and there isn't a low-lived scoundrel to-day in Missouri who wouldn't kill his own father for money; and second, because lie was made the scape-goat of every train robber, foot-pad and high- wayman between Iowa and Tex?is. Worse men a thousand times than the dead man have been hired to do this thing. The very character of the instruments chosen shows the infairc us nature of the work required. The hand that slew him had to be a traitors ! Into all the warp and woof of the devil's work there were threads woven by the fingers of a harlot. What a spectacle ! Missouri, with splendid companies and regiments of militia. Missouri, with a hundred and seventeen sheriffs, as brave and as efficient on the aver- age as any men on earth. Missouri, with a watchful and vigilant marshal in every one of her principal towns and cities. Missouri, with every screw and cog and crank and lever and wheel of her administrative machinery in perfect working order. Missouri, \A iih all her order, progress and development, had yet to 'surrender all these in the face of a single man a hunted, lied-upon, proscribed and outlawed man, trapped and located in the midst of thirty -five thousand people and ally with some five or six cut-throats and prostitutes that the majesty of the law might be vindicated, and the good name of the State saved from all further reproach ! Saved ! Why, the whole State reeks to-day with a double orgy that of lust MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 165 and that of murder. What the men failed to do, the women accomplished. Tear the two bears from the flag of Missouri. Put thereon, in place of them, as more appropriate, a thief blowing out the brains of an unarmed victim, and a brazen harlot, naked to the waist and splashed to the brows in blood. "VETERAN SAM." [Kansas City Times, July 31, 1884.] MY DEAR FRIEND Enclosed please find a picture of an old friend of yours. You will probably recognize him as the old "Col- orado Sam" who helped to escort you and General Marmaduke across Current River, by way of Chalk Bluff, and again met you at Prairie Grove, and was on the "war-path" all through the "Price Raid," and all through Missouri, bushwhacking around against your boys. I have him now at home, a living monument of what once was the most faithful friend that man ever had in "times that tried men's souls." A faithful and obedient servant in war, and a loving and true friend in peace; a target for Confederate bullets; roughing it with the boys; oftentimes half fed and ridden well nigh to death, he never complained. All through the great struggle of the bitterest war that was ever waged, he never failed in the performance of his allotted duty, and now at thirty years of age, he has found a home with his old master, there to pass away the remaining years of his life, amid all the luxuries that horseflesh could desire. A play- thing for the children, a pet for the women and a friend and comrade of the man that fought with and against him, "Veteran Sam," long may he live. Your old friend, E. W. KINGSBURY. P. S. I expect to ride him at the celebration of Elaine's inaug- ural. "VETERAN SAM." [St. Joseph Gazette, August 3, 1884.] Elsewhere in to-day's paper we publish a letter from an old friend and associate of the old days, Capt. E. W. Kingsbury, now of Kansas City. It will explain itself. It will tell of a veteran war horse, thirty years of age, which has at last come back into the hands of his old master, where, if tenderness and affection can avail aught, he will have added to the already lengthy span of his life many more good and thrifty years. Captain Kingsbury commanded Company A, of the Second Colorado Cavalry Regiment, and if there was a finer company or a galanter Captain in either army, the war history up to date makes no mention of the fact. Indeed, the whole Regiment was noted for its staying and fighting qualities. Quantrell and his lieutenants had been doing pretty much as they pleased along the Kansas border until the Second Colorado came. They would congregate, make a desperate dash, do some sudden deed of wholesale killing, and disappear. Seeing in the night like any other beasts of prey, they mustered and raided while it was the darkest. Ordinarily they were never followed into the brush. Ordinarily the foremost among the great bulk of the pursuers stopped short at the timber line as though it were a line of unindurable fire. 166 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. Composed largely of plainsmen, miners, men of the frontier and old Indian fighters, the Coloradans stopped at nothing. Whether by day or by night, when they struck a trail they followed it to a funeral. " Damn these fellows," Quantrell used to say, over and over again, " will nothing ever stop them?" It was very hard to do. Shelby was the only man who ever did, and he had to give up about eight hundred of his very best in less than an hour's fighting to do even that much. It was* near Newtonia, Newton County, Missouri a place where was fought one of the quickest, hottest, bloodiest little combats of the Civil War. It was the last combat of the Price Raid, of 1864, and took place on a prairie almost as level as a sea strand. Shelby was still covering the rear of Price's stricken expe- ditionary column, as he had been, day and night, ever since the fight at Mine Creek, near to where Pleasanton, Kansas, now stands. Every furious onslaught had failed either to break or shake his hold loose from the rear. He fought, ran, turned about, fought again, ran some more, wheeled round again, still kept fighting, and finally saved everything that was left to him to save after Mine Creek. Blunt, a grand soldier in every way, and a grand man besides took up the hunt where Pleasanton left it off, and poured after the fleeing Confederates a devouring tide of veteran horsemen, the Sec- ond Colorado leading, with Captain Kingsbury and his company in advance of the Regiment. They had two or three squadrons of white houses, and wherever these were encountered the Confederates knew well always that the Second Colorado was to the front. Shelby, as he took position in front of Blunt, spoke to his advance,a picked body of soldiers, in curt.sententious phrase: "Boys, there are our old white horses again. It's the Second Colorado. It is going to be a stricken field for somebody. I can't fall back any further, and they won't." Thereafter the combat was a duel. The white horses went down fast, but so did a good many other horses which were not white. Most generally where the steed lay, there also lay his rider. No one, unless he has been a participant in a prairie fight between two bodies of veteran soldiers, knows how bloody and pitiless they most of them were. No tree, no hillock, no sway of the ground, no shelter. It was a savage grapple out on the open, where, when all w^as done, he who held the field had nothing to exalt himself over him who surrendered it, fighting. Captain Kingsbury was badly wounded at Newtonia, and so was his brave old horse, "Veteran Sam," a picture of whom, in his thirtieth year, his old master has just sent to the editor of this newspaper. This little present is prized much. It recalls events of the old war days which were made happy, some of them, with faithful com- radeship, and some of them made sad as with tears. Perhaps no two bodies of opposing soldiers ever had more real respect for each other, or oftener gave evidence of it than did Shelby's men and the Coloradans. They fought each other desperately, but when the fighting was done whichever side held the field that side made mer- ciful haste to look after the wounded. Since the war, and when- ever any of these two bodies meet, there is always a lovefeast. In Jackson county, where fully two regiments of Shelby's old soldiers used to reside, and where there are living to-day many of Quant- rell's most savage guerrillas, Captain Kingsbury s name is a house- hold word, and many is the story tbey tell to this day of the daring and prowess of the " Colorado boys." In wishing again, therefore, a still further lease of life for " Veteran Sam," we do not well see how we could put it stronger MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 167 than by wishing that he may live until his gallant master rides him at the " celebration of Elaine's inaugural." ADDRESS ACCEPTING A FLAG. [From the Camden, Arkansas, Herald, February 26, 1864.] Captain J. N. Edwards, of Shelby's Brigade, received the banner on the part of the escort, with the following address: Ladies, Mr. Speaker and Soldiers: In receiving this flag, as the representative of this Company, I take upon myself a proud and pleafeing task. Made by the fair hands of woman; dedicated to a grand and glorious cause; sanctified by the holy symbols of a true faith its crest to-day is as bright as the sunlight that flashes on steel. Pure and stainless as an angel-guarded child, it must never be dishonored. It is confided to your keeping as a tender and timid maiden gives her virgin heart to the first sweet whisperings of love. Cherish it, protect it, fight for it, die for it. There is a day to come when it must receive its baptism of fire and blood in the rattle of discordant musketry, and the thunder of impa- tient drums. Let it ever be on the crest of battle, its blue folds the meteor of the storm, its bright associations cheering the warrior's heart like the white plume of Navarre. Once more the spring-time comes with the tread of invading armies, and the shouts of cruel foe. The road is plain and the path is beaten. Here are the blue skies and the green fields of our native Southland ; here our fathers sleep; and here cluster all our idols and our household gods, glorious with the light and the love of a lifetime; and when the Old Cavalry Division of General Marmaduke takes the field, our enemies will sternly find "That Nottingham has archers good; And Yorshire men are stern of mood; Northumbrian prickers wild and rude. ' On Derby's hills the paths are steep; In Ouse and Tyne the fords are deep; And many a banner will be torn, And many a knight to earth be borne, And many a sheaf of arrows spent, 'Ere Scotland's king shall cross the Trent." Into your hands, veterans of Springfield, Hartville, Prairie Grove and Helena, I surrender this standard. A lady made it; her prayersfollow it; your General gave it; and you will defend it. And oh! amid the wreck and ruin of contending squadrons; the clash of raging steel, and the glare of maddened powder; the shout, the charge, the forlorn rally where beauty and gloom go down together; the wild, tempestous shock of battle; the headlong rush of steed and steel, may God keep it pure and spotless as the grand old flag that waved o'er Sumter's battered walls. When the deadly war is over; when the red banners of strife have gleamed over the last foughten field, and paled beyond the sunset shore; when our gJorious cause has risen beautiful from its urn of death and chamber of decay, with the^ternal sunlight of land redeemed on its wings; and the white pinions of peace, like a brooding dove, are hovering about us, let the memories of this day go with you; let the affections of your hearts go with this old banner all tattered and torn though it may be and cling to it, and linger round it, like the dew on a summer hill. In your name I thank the fair donor in your name I thank our gallant General. 168 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. CARRIER'S ADDRESS OF THE MISSOURI EXPOSITOR. January 1, 1861. [By John N. Edwards.] Time's tireless wing has borne away The fond old year of yesterday ; Not crowned with flowers, as sweet June dies, Mid weeping stars and tender skies, And twilight fountains murmering by A sad and tender lullaby ; But as some grim old warrior falls, When foemen storm his castle walls. Let winter mourn the monarch dead, And heap his snow-drifts on his head For all his farewell gifts were hers, The ermine robes, the frozen tears, The naked trees, and everything That wpos and loves her rival, Spring. ' Tis vain, perchance, and sad as vain, To call its memories back again ; Yet from without the silent past, Dark shadows o'er the heart are cast ; A happy home where death has been, To claim the fairest form within ; A tress of hair, but it's dimmed by years ; A tiny glove, but it's soiled by tears ; The little grave on the cold hill-side, That was made the morn the baby died, Mark all too well the ebb and flow Of joys and sorrows here below; And the sky is dark, and the night is drear, God shield us now from the tempest here ! Great events are on the gale That soon may tell a darker tale; And oh ! it was a fearful sight To see the armies ranged for fight. Grim Lincoln led the Northern host. Imbued too strong with Seward's boast: That all the States must now be free, And curst the hydra, slavery. Yet still against his subtle art Came Breckinridge, with lion heart, Douglas' war-cry too was heard, And Bell's poor, threadbare rallying word. They close in conflict loud and high Rang banner-shout and battle-cry. Some fought for fireside, home, and wife, Some fought for natural love of strife, And some, alas! for very hate Of all our memories, good and great. Yet still against the mighty North Breckinridge led on his own loved South ; And by his side was Yancey's crest, A cockade on his dauntless breast With lance in rest and spur of fire MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 169 He charged where burst the storm-cloud higher ; South Carolina's wave-kissed shore Sent back a proud, defiant roar ; And green Virginia's bosom rose In sorrow o'er her sisters' woes. In vain! in vain their strength and mightl In vain was Yancey's giant fight Down went the fairest banner there, Hurled back the pious patriot's prayer ; And baffled, routed, forced to yield, They slowly left the hated field. Where will it end? God only knows! Ask every Southern wind that blows; Ask armed men that meet by day, And swear to fling their lives away; Ask every lone star on high, That breathes the freedom of the sky; Ask every curse that goes to heaven, With hate and fury fiercely laden ; Ask South Carolina's bursting shock, And feel the Union reel and rock, As, with her lone flag in the sky, She bids it now a last good-bye. All is dreary, dire and dark No ray of hope, no tiny spark To tell the watchers on the shore The ship of state is safe once more. Ah! see the grand old vessel quiver 1 How her timbers groan and shiver ! Discord's lightnings flash around her, Burn the ropes and shrouds above her; Treason's bloated form is there; War's cruel sword is keen and bare; Ambition scales the dizzy mast, And gives a black flag to the blast. Helm aport ! hard hard alee! God! how deadly white the sea! Breakers ! breakers ! through the gloom Hear their solemn, sounding boom. Can you save her? Pilots, listen ! How the grim rocks gleam and glisten! Save her for our father's sake, Save her for the lives at stake, Save her for the precious freight, Save our glorious ship of state! Starry flag, float on, unfurled, The beacon of the wide, wide world, And bear for aye, o'er land and sea, The magic spell-word, Liberty! Cause on effect fate's giant wing Is dark with terrors yet to bring, And every day but adds a leaf To destiny's sad book of grief. Scarce e'er the mockery had begun, To welcome England's monarch's son, A helpless mass of bleeding clay, The dying, butchered Walker lay, 170 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. And Rudler pines where tropics shed A living poison on his head. Away! away! o'er leagues away! Italia's night is almost day. Hear the watchword Como rings With the melody it brings. Fight as brothers let us die Die beneath our own loved sky! Charge, then, heroes, do not waver, Charge once more, and then you save her. Charge with Freedom's battle-cry, Charge with Garibaldi! Spain in torpor long had lain, Now starts to living life again; And Austria, wounded near to death, Is threatening, with her feeble breath. The garlands Solferino gave, May deck the first Napoleon's grave; But France needs other trophies now, To bind around her monarch's brow; A wild, grand shock where armies meet, Crowns and kingdoms at her feet A second Moscow's lurid glare Where England's Windsor towers fair; The cold, despotic Russian Czar Is brooding o'er Italian war, And now a low, deep, deadly cry, Is bursting out from Hungary. Let tyrants tremble Freedom's star Is hung upon the verge of war, And but to gain it crowns will sink, Thrones totter on the fearful brink; Sacked cities swell with lurid breath, The reeking pestilence of death Till God's eternal justice reigns, And blood wipes out the peasant's pains. When sick of foreign courts and places, Sick of titled heads and faces Come gladly back to Lafayette, The gem of Missouri's coronet. Now where the velvet prairies gleam, With flowery robe and sparkling stream, The iron horse, with rapid flight Will wake the echoes of the night; And proudly toss its burning crest, In honor to the giant West. And where, beneath the grand, bright sun, Is fairer town than Lexington? God bless her commerce, trade and arts, God bless her generous people's hearts, And bless and crown her lovely girls With smiles of love, and waves of curls Till every glance of merry light Will raise them up a chosen knight. Who'll swear by faith and tiny glove, Who'll break a lance for his lady-love! Thus, on the dawn of sixty-one, MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. Its uutried journey just begun I wish you health, and wealth, and joy, And gift besides for the CARRIER BOY. MURDER DONE; OR, THE GYPSY'S STORY. [By John N. Edwards.] (1870.) Months of sorrow and days of sin ; A life gone out as the knife went in. Hush ! The moon was too young to see, The shadows they fled aghast from me ; And a spirit wailed out from the open door : ' A dead man lies on the chamber floor! " Evelyn Clare was debonair, Darkness dwelt in his dreamy hair Dwelt, and dallied, and tangled in Much of sorrow and more of sin. Hush ! The moon was behind a cloud Hidden away as a corpse in a shroud : Hidden away, but it peered at *ne, Peered and grinned through the aspen tree ! Love is ripe fruit ready to fall In the arms of the sunshine over the wall So fleet to fall and die in a day, Its red gold ruined and kissed away. Isabel came with her peach-colored face, Ringlets ablow and her baby grace Came and sighed and evil came after, And blood and tears in the wine of laughter 'Till Isabel's lips in moan go over All the languid lips of her lover. Evelyn Clare was a king, they said, Crowned with love from the heart to the head ; A pale-browed king to dabble about In seas of silks, and revel, and rout, With kisses for coin and ruined hair, A panther- king in his school-girl lair. Girt about with adorable things, Scented scarfs and talisman rings, Plentiful tresses shorn away From heads grown old and gray in a day. The air was a song and the song had a tune, Meet for the mystical roses of June. The earth and the sky, and the sky and the air Were all in league with Evelyn Clare. He came and whispered : "My Gypsy maid, Give me a tangled lock to braid." To braid ! Oh, God ! if that were all - Hush ! can you hear the dead man fall ? I saw youth's crown on his Bacchanal crest, Isabel's face on his dreaming breast 172 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. A lily face with eyes in eclipse, Poppy dew on the venomous lips ; He stirred but once and the words came free " The Gypsy maid is nothing to me." Lost ! lost ! lost ! A beautiful soul is lost : A beautiful soul went down down Down like a ship at sea Who knows if a soul be lost ? The moon went into a cave Whose stalactites were pointed with stars With a scintillant crescent of stars, And a sweet south wind came over the rye And broke on the lattice bars. It was ten by the castle clock Ten, and the night in bloom, With bud of stars and blossom of clouds, And the great rose of the moon. The arbor ivies coiled and clung To hear the accents of his tongue ; And Isabel for sounds to waft her Pleasure-boat had low-toned laughter Laughter such as you seldom hear Under the moon by a dead man's bier. Hark ! Is that a step on the staircase there Hushed in the light of the great knife bare ? Hark ! to the bearded lips that tell : " I love you, love you, Isabel !" He lay in the moon for the moon to keep Opiate wine for the drunkard sleep. He lay with arms flung wide apart, Weak fence for the guard of the lying heart. He lay like a lover taking his rest, The red in his cheeks and the dreams in his breast, The red in his cheeks and the wind in his hair, And Isabel's heart with Evelyn Clare. Mad ! Who's mad ? The Gypsy maid, Cast off, abandoned, and betrayed ? Mad ! Who's mad ? The Zingaree The tropical plant from over the sea ? The poisonous flower stripped of its leaves, And bound in the wreath of his lily sheaves ? Avaunt ! pale moon, and send your cloud To rift me the rain of a lover's shroud ! Pretty little Isabel, prim as any pink, Did you ever care about did you ever think, Half a summer's afternoon of the suns that shine, Over lovers woed with steel stabbed for kisses over wine? Waxen lady, Isabel, dainty lady lapped in white, Tawny Gypsies mingle dirges with the bridal's music night, Hark ! I hear the dancers dancing, hear the love-lorn light guitar, MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 173 Softer than a maiden's masses for her lover slain in war. Hark ! I hear the waltz's clarion filled with pulses fierce as wine, Lit by beauty's blessed beacons, starred by dusky eyes divine. Hark ! I hear the pleading prattle wafted from the lips of girls, Half their shoulders bare as swimmers, half their heads in bloom with curls, Hark ! I hear your Ev'lyn's voice rounding off its pliant lies, As the south wind strips the cloud-veil from the summer of the skies. I struck but once struck hard 1 The aspens bowed in the yard ; The moou was hid on valley and hill, The damp dews fell in the window sill. His lips moved once, oh, God ! to tell Death's broken talk to Isabel. The morn came up the broad oak stair, Wan as a childless mother at prayer Came to the face of the stricken sleeper, And hid his lips for the lips of the weeper. Came and went, and the sun came after, Splashed with jrold each beam and rafter ; Came breast high through the open door, And blessed the dead man on the floor. Ho ! good right hand, ye are red, ye are red ! And the soul of the lily -browned lover is fled. And lover and maid lie stark and still In a little green grave down under the hill ; And a curse to make the dead afraid Goes up to the sky on the Gypsy maid. The Gypsy maid whom Evelyn Clare Caught in a braid of Gypsy hair, Caught, and snared, and caged in glee, 'Till she sung the songs learned over the sea. Sung, and rocked his cradle a bier, Sung, and dropped a venomous tear, Sung, 'till the eyes went into eclipse, And death drank the dew of the bearded lips. The old owl up in the aspen tree, Spoke last night and glared at me. Spoke in a dreary undertone : ' ' The dead the dead can the dead make moan ? " All last night I lay awake, The grass, moon-flecked as a spotted snake, Wove pallid hands that grasped in strife, A deathly dripping dagger knife. And a luminous star from the midnight's crown, Suddenly shimmered and settled down, Half on the low grave under the hill, And half on the tinkling, tremulous rill. The dead came forth arid dallied there, Isabel Lorn and Evelyn Clare. One arm lifted high above her, 174 JOHN NEWMAN ED \VARDS. And one about her spectral lover. " Make inoan ! " said the owl, cursed fate and death, 'Twas a love that lived after fleeting breath. Here and there the lovers strayed, And laughed aloud at the Gypsy maid. I strangled his voice, but oh, God ! I would I could strangle the moan That rushes up from the silent sod When I walk with the midnight alone I THE BIVOUAC OF THE DEAD. (.Kansas City Times, 1872.] One of the most thrilling w ar lyrics in our language is known by this title. A quatrain has heen selected from it to serve as an inscription over the gates of the National Cemetery at Boston, in which the soldiers of Massachusetts are buried. It has probably been printed at sometime or other in every newspaper in the United States. I believe it has almost invariably been mis-printed, and the public is entitled to a correct copy. The occasion for which it was written was duplicated in the State Cemetery of Kentucky on the 15th, and this poem was read over the remains of its author by a brother poet, Major Henry Stanton, who had access to original rec- ords that enabled him to verify the text. Soon after the Mexican War, Kentucky erected a noble monument to her dead soldiers, and whenMcKee and Clay and others of her he- roes who fell in the gorge of Buena Vista, were reinterred at its base, their comrades in arms, the brave and gifted Theodore O'Hara, wrote " The Bivouac of the Dead " as the poem of the occasion. Major Cary H. Fry, upon whom the command of the Second Kentucky Regiment devolved after the Colonel and Lieutenant-Colonel fell, was present when the poem was first read in public. On the 15th there was another great military and civic diplay on the same spot, and the same poem was read over the remains of O'Hara and Fry. In the war between the States they had served in opposing armies, but the State had their moldering coffins, with that of Adjutant Cardwell, brought from far distant graves to rest side by side with their comrades of the Mexican War. General Wm. C. Preston delivered the funeral eulogy, and we subjoin his sketch of the author, before introducing the poem : "Theodore O'Hara was a native of this county, the son of a father well known throughout the State for his accomplishments as a scholar and his worth as a citizen. Receiving a good classical education from his parent, O'Hara entered upon life blessed with an ardent mind, a handsome person, and a brave and generous char- acter. He soon became known to the public as an editor in the city of Louisville, where the easy grace and scholarly polish of his arti- cles soon attracted attention and placed him high in the favor of the Democratic party. He did not remain long in this pursuit, but war being declared against Mexico, he abandoned a profession in which he was rapidly acquiring distinction, and accepted a captain's com- mission in the army. His dashing character .and poetic tem- perament made him popular in a service suited to his tastes and genius, and, sharing the dangers and the glory of our arms from Vera Cruz to Mexico, O'Hara remained in service until the termina- tion of the war. Not long after this period, O'Hara was one of MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 175 those who landed with the force at Cardenas under General Lopez for the liberation of Cuba, when Crittenden, Logan and others per- ished, but he escaped with a few of the survivors. " When the recent war between the States commenced, O'Hara at once embraced the cause of the South, to whose principles he had always adhered , and became a staff officer under General Brecken- ridge. In the Confederate armies O'Hara by his courage and serv- ices, attained the rank of colonel, and after the establishment of peace retired with a constitution impaired by the hardships of mili- tary life to the vicinity of Columbus, Ga. , where he not long after- ward died. Having known Colonel O'Hara intimately, both in his campaigns in Mexico and in the South; having enjoyed the pleasures that his cultivated mind and genial temper gave to the camp-fire or the march; having witnessed his brilliant courage and quick discern- ment in battle; having seen him in the defiles of Mexico, by the side of Sidney Johnson in his dying moments at Shiloh, and with Breck- euridge in his charge at Stone River, I here, in this solemn moment, can sincerely say that I believe no braver heart will rest beneath this consectrated sod, and no spirit more knightly or humane ever lingered under the shadow of yonder monument." The following is the correct text of "The Bivouac of the Dead:" The muffled drum's sad roll has beat The soldier's last tattoo ! No more on life's parade shall meet That brave and fallen few; On fame's eternal camping ground Their silent tents are spread. And glory guards, with solemn round, The bivouac of the dead. No rumor of the foe's advance Now swells upon the wind, No troubled thought at midnight haunts Of loved ones left behind ; No vision of the morrow's strife The warrior's dream alarms, No braying horn nor screaming fife At dawn shall call to arms. Their shivered swords are red with rust, Their plumed heads are bowed, Their haughty banner, trailed in dust, Is now their martial shroud And plenteous funeral tears have washed The red stains from each brow, And the proud forms, by battle gashed, Are free from anguish now. t The neighing troop, the flashing blade. The bugle's stirring blast, The charge, the dreadful cannonade. The din and shout are past Nor war's wild note, nor glory's peal, Shall thrill with fierce delight Those breasts that never more may feel The rapture of the tight. Like the fierce Northern hurricane That sweeps his great plateau, Flushed with the triumph yet to gain Came down the serried foe Who heard the thunder of the fray Break o-er the field beneath. Know well the watch word of that day Was victory or death. 176 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. Full many a norther's breath has swept O'er Angostura's plain, And long; the pitying sky has wept Above its molder'd slain. The raven's scream or eagle's flight, Or shepherd's pensive lay, Alone now wake each solemn height That frowned o'er that dead fray. Sons of the Dark and Bloody Ground! Ye must not slumber there, Where stranger steps and tongues resound Along the heedless air; Your own proud land's heroic soil Shall be your fitter grave; She claims from war its richest spoil The ashes of her brave. Thus, 'neath their parent turf they rest; Far from the gory field, Borne to a Spartan mother's breast On many a bloody shield. The sunshine of their native sky Smiles sadly en them here, And kindred eyes and hearts watch by The heroes' sepulchre. Rest on, embalmed and sainted deadl Dear as the blood ye gave; No impious footstep here shall tread The herbage of your grave; Nor shall your glory be forgot While fame her record keeps, Or honor points the hallowed spot Where valor proudly sleeps. Yon marble minstrel's voiceless stone, In deathless song shnll tell, When many a vanished year hath flown. The story how ye fell; Nor wreck, nor change, nor winter's blight. Nor time's remorseless doom, Can dim one ray of holy light That gilds your glorious tomb. THE MARRIAGE OF PERE HYACINTHE. [Kansas City Times.] This man, with a name like a flower, would lead a revolution. This French priest charitable, amorous, poetical would deal with an iron and austere thing like celibacy, and dismiss it as a thread- bare cassock or cowl. To prepare himself for the conflict, he has just married. From out the soft and mellowed light of his honey- moon, and from amid the ardent transports of his delicious life, he has written in favor of matrimony. Were this document nothing but a great, palpitating heart, its settings and adornments are com- plete. It is uxorious, roseate, sensuous, full of little sentences like a sigh thick with images like his nights with kisses. If Hyacinthe was not a Frenchman, he would understand how fruitless the work which would seek to batter down a wall with an ostrich feather. If he had not mistaken vanity for inspiration, he would understand how hopeless the task of attackirg in the name of the church an ordinance interwoven with the very fibers of the church. Excommunicated, he yet aspires to the altar ; man- sworn, he yet clings to the odors of a former sanctity ; awake in the hush of his honeymoon nights, he yet hears in his memory the matin and the vesper bells of Rome; and happy in the arms and the MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 177 smiles of his wife, he would yet be happy in the holy robes and vestments of his order. The last is impossible. Good Catholic he may be, and zealous in the cause of his God and his church, but a priest nevermore for ever. He has violated his vows of celibacy, he has lifted his hand against his faith, he has faltered in the presence of the enemy, and he has been cashiered and dismissed. It is well. The time has come when French sensationalism should receive a check. Cathol- icism has had quite enough of Lacordaire, Michelet, Renan, Hya- ciuthe, and Victor Hugo. Caesar's prayer was pitiful, but it was full of prophecy: "Oh! God, if Rome is to be cursed, curse her not with old men in her extremity." And if the church of Paris could cry out it would be in thunder tones against the deadly reign of materi- alism falsely called science; of sensationalism; of a philosophy so servile as to become infidelity; of that furious yearning and striving after impossible and invisible things; of the poets who coin their genius into satire that religion maybe wounded; of authors who deny the Christ that miracles maybe lampooned; and of priests like Hyacinthe who, to win popular applause, wear the cassock to-day and the masquerade dress to-morrow. Let the iron creed and discipline of the church pass over them all. Brilliant Hyacinthe believed himself a Mahomet, but in lieu of the scimetar he carried an orange blossom. In the early years of his priesthood, and when all Paris came to his ministrations at Notre Dame, the rustle of a silken gown affrighted, and the flash of a black eye drove him beyond the bright line of the chandelier's light. Now how changed. Bitten by the tarantula of sensation- alism, the man who only had his voice, his beautiful white hands, his wonderful rhetoric, French and staccato, his eyes that were violet at times and at times dreamy or brown this man, adored of the women, and watched from afar by grisettes and dames of grand degree, turned upon Rome because he could make a pretty parable, and demanded of Rome a thing that Rome would not give even to Rome itself. Baffled, he rebelled. New York received him in finished New York fashion, and for a month he was a lion. Some Yankees, shrewder than others were, flattered him with a future filled by an American Pope, and painted for him a spiritual empire as grand as the continent. Having embraced one lust, he dallied with another, and for long days he staggered upon the edge of the pit that had been dug for him. He did not fall in, but he did not repent, and so he returned to Europe to marry, and to continue his absurd and ridiculous issue with the church. Luther led a revolution ; Hyacinthe wages an emeute. Between a revolution and an emeute there is this difference; the first comes from the masses, the last from the passions; the first destroys, pulls down, obliterates, but it builds up, re-creates and re establishes; the last consumes, demolishes, stagnates, dies; the first commits great crimes that good may follow; the last commits the same that bad may follow. Luther married and went on to a warfare that was audacious and gigantic; Hyacinthe marries and only marries. Beyond this he claims to be all that he ever promised to be when he took his vows the same in faith, in belief, in creed and in doc- trine. Poor Frenchman, not to know that in breaking one vow he broke them all, and that, should the days of Methuselah be his, he can never more be received in the bosom of that church he has forsaken for the white arms and the scented hair of his beloved. 178 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. / NAPOLEON AND HIS DETRACTORS. [Kansas City Time*, August 10, 1888.] This is the title of a book written by Prince Napoleon, which is just now getting well under fire in England. If it has been trans- lated and reprinted in this country it is well; if it has not been so done the sooner it is done the better all of which means that the sooner it is done the sooner will some publishing house put a pile of money into its pocket. The animus against this publication, on the part of the London Illustrated News is that it touches up strong points that are facile and leaves untouched other points which are still more facile and still more unassailable. Let us look into this question a little bit. The News says that he disposes in a most masterly manner of Bourienne, Madame de Remusat, Miot de Melito, the Abbe de Pradt and Prince Metternich, and then adds we quote it literally: " But what is to be said of a champion who enters and quits these particular lists without ventur- ing to touch the shield of M Lanfrey?" The shield of M. Lanfrey! Angels and ministers of grace, defend us; why not say the shield of Sir Walter Scott? The last wrote to be a baronet. He prostituted his splendid genius to pull down a man who, in his Scottish heart of hearts he must have adored, and who in so many elements of his character must have been near of kin to all those heroes who stood out like men of iron from the pages of " Marmion," the " Lady of the Lake," " Rokeby " and the " Lord of the Isles." Lanfrey ! One approaches him as one might well approach a snake. Did he attack the genius of Napoleon as a soldier? he could not. Did he attack his campaigns, where every capital was an outpost and every sovereign a mere cup-bearer? he could not. Did he attack his capacity as a lawgiver, wherein he wrote like Tac- itus and collated like Justinian? he could not. What, then, did he do? He wrote so that the Bourbons might give him the gewgaw of a ribbon and the grimcrack of a decoration . He wrote of Napoleon's private life; of his supposed lusts and his supposed love affairs; of My Lord Petulancy and My Lord Impatience; of how he took ten minutes to dinner and ten hours to his studies; of how he had shot Palm, a bookseller, and d'Enghien, a prince; of how he made gren- adiers out of stable grooms and marshals of France out of men who had bled horses. Poor babbler! Mme. de Remusat could havedone better than that. Her grievance was that groping one night cer- tainly en dishabille to find Napoleon's chamber she stumbled across Roustem, the Arab, swart, wide awake and lying prone across the threshold. She fled, shrieking, iust as the tawny hand of the east clutched at the white garments or western civilization. From that hour Madame de Remusat looked upon Napoleon as an ogre. If they had embraced, perhaps she would have looked upon him as an angel. Who knows? When Don Juan found Miss Fitz Fulke at the end of the corridor, whatever else happened, no skeleton has ever yet outlined itself to prove Miss Blue Stocking right, or to prove the propriety of putting a spray or two of lilacs on the grave where Miss Prim Propriety lies buried. Lanfrey Remusat! While attack- ing Napoleon for the large embraces that happened in his God-ap- pointed career, contemporaneous history has perhaps forgotten that Lanfrey was a Bourbon sneak and Madame a baffled lady of the bed chamber. MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 179 The News makes other points which we desire especially to refer to. It admits everything as connected with Napoleon's military genius, but it qualifies everything because the military side of his character does not comport with his moral side. In proof of this he cites several instances. Perhaps the most salient is this one wherein he refers to the author of the book : Nor has he a word to bestow on such a wretched business as his uncle's legacy to Cantillon, the French officer who was tried for an attempt on the life of the Duke of Wellington perhaps the most hopelessly ignoble bequest which has ever found its way into any testamentary document on record. We challenge the record to prove that Napoleon ever left a legacy to Cantillon because he proposed to assassinate the Duke of Wellington. He denied it. Every instinct and action of his whole life proved it to be a lie. Of course it is easy to enclose in the last will and testament of such a man as Bonaparte, administered upon by the Bourbons, the final development of a thousand daggers; but all such stuff as this, and all such stuff as the Wellington assassin- ation is bogus. Per contra. When the dead body of George Cadoudal was searched he had on his person a hundred and some odd sovereigns of British money. When Luttrel was grabbed with more British gold on his person, and a bale or two of incendiary proclamations ready to be issued out of hand, he was not shot but set free. The whole career of Napoleon was merciful to such a degree that every unbiased historian has taken notice of it. We do not discuss these moral aspects of Bonaparte's character. We only contend against the proposition that the News sets up, that he must be judged by his moral example that is to say, whether he kissed a woman more or less, whether he pardoned a criminal more or less, or whether he bore himself circumspectly more or less. Nothing of Lodi ! Nothing of the Pyramids ! Nothing of Mon- tenotte! Nothing of Arcola! Nothing of Marengo! Nothing of the transfiguration one half inspiration and the other half endow- ment where the corporal became emperor. The News does not even skim the surface. It sums up every- thing, but it does not deliver. 180 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. THE BEST ONE HUNDRED BOOKS. A RECENT LIST ARRANGED BY MAJOR J. N. EDWARDS. [Kansas City Times, April 7th, 1889. The Bible. Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Hume's History of England. Thiers' French Revolution. Thitrs' Consulate and Empire ; Lamartine. History of the Girondists. Michelet's Roman Republic. Mommsen's Rome. Les Miserables. Shakespeare, with Lear, first of all his plays. Voltaire's Louis XIV. Voltaire's Charles XII. Prescott's Mexico and Ferdinand and Isabella. Charles V and Philip II. Motley's Rise of the Dutch Repub- lic ; United Netherlands, and John of Barneveld. . Guizot's History of France. Macaulay's History of England ; his Essays and his Lays. Lamartine's History of Turkey. Hugo's Ninety-Three. Hugo's Toiler's of the Sea. Grammont's Memoirs. Louvet's Chevalier de Faublas O'Mera's Voice from St. Helena. Montholon's Memoirs. Scott's Ivanhoe, the Lady of the Lake, Marmion and Lord of the Isles. Rossetti's Poems. Swineburne's Laus Veneris. Irving's life of Washington and his Fall of Grenada. Rollin's Ancient History. Dumas' Count of Monte Cristo and Three Guardsmen. Wandering Jew. Burke's Lives of the Popes. Hildreth's History of the United States. Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. Napier's Peninsula War. Josephus. Froude's Julius Caezar. Tactitus what can be gotten of him. Soutonius as fragmentarj r as it is. Memoirs of Baron Besenval. Carlyle's French Revolution and Frederick the Great. Tennyson's Poems as a Whole. Kinglake's Crimean War. Cooper's five stories, known as the Pathfinder Series. Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter. The Koran. Plutarch's Lives. Csezar Commentaries. Jomin's Campaigns of Napoleon, also his Art of War. Thackeray's Georges. Bulwer's Strange Story and What Will He Do With It ? Dickens' Mutual Friend and Bleak House. Lawrence's Guy Livingstone and Barren Honour. What is left of Livy. Napoleon's War Maxims. Xenophon's Anabasis. The Iliad. Smith's Wealth of Nations. Hazlitt's Life of Napoleon. Memoirs of the Duchess Abrantes. Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. Byron's Poems. Knight's History of England. Charles O'Malley and Tom Burke of Ours. Davis's Poems, The Irish Patriot. Southey's Life of Nelson. Orators of France. Democracy in America. Chesney's Military Biographies. Life of Marion. Antommarchi Autopsy on Napo- leon. PERSONAL TRIBUTES TO MAJOR JOHN N. EDWARDS " A man there came whence none could tell Bearing a touchstone in his hand, And by its unerring spell Tested all things in the land. Quick birth to transmutation smote, The fair to foul the foul to fair- Purple nor ermine did he spare, Nor scorn the dusky coat." If the west ever produced a man who got at the heart of things, that man was John Edwards. If it has ever produced a man of purely chivalric spirit, of high courage and noble endeavor, a man who knew and loved truth and honor and uprightness and manly bearing, who hated shams and pretense and cant and low cunning, that man was John Edwards. It made no difference how cunning, how deep the deception, how thick the veneering, he went to the core; and it made no difference how rude and rugged and moss-grown the rock, he found the diamond, and found it at the first stroke of hi spick. " He was a good judge of a man." Made by his early education and association somewhat provincial, yet he wrote "Bon Voyage, Miss Nellie," and no native born New Englander with a tra- ditional Mayflower ancestry laid so pure and high a tri- bute on the grave of Henry Ward Beecher. No, he ceased to be provincial save when as a partisan he was " in the saddle and moving things." A born soldier, he knew intuitively when he was in an impregnable position and rested himself, caught at a glance the seam in his opponent's armor, and in a trice his sword-point was 181 182 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. through it. He was " quick to hear the clarion call, the war steed's neigh, the brave man's battle cry" ; and when the call to the rescue came, when battle had to be made, his voice was heard clearest and loudest, and at the front. But, molded on the heroic type, life to him was always heroic; and if disaster followed, if the battle had been waged and lost, if defeat had come to high courage, if death had laid his hand on a man, or sorrow had so much as touched him with her finger, though an enemy, then no hand was laid more gently on the wound than his, no sad- der dirge was wailed over lolanthe's bier, and no cooing mother ever crooned a sweeter song to soothe her fretted babe. Dying in the prime of manhood, his life so full, was yet well rounded and complete. The concentration or fixed- ness of purpose that ever goes hand in hand with genius, was always well upon him, and carried him out beyond the minor affairs of life. Great men have great thoughts and great purposes, and deal only with great things, and John Edwards was a great man. It was of little moment to him whether his own or his friend's garners were full, but it was a matter of great moment to him whether the outlook for food for next year was equal to the needs of the human race. The broils of the neighborhood did not attract him; but with the eye of a seer he watched night and day the movements on the chess-board of Europe; for his own personal salvation he cared little, but for the sal- vation of the world, of whatever brotherhood or creed, he would have offered up his own life. With his broad liber- ality he sacrificed personal gain to the public weal, buried his animosities for the good of his cause, and buried his cause for the good of his race. And yet this man, with the burden of a mission on his shoulders, who led in the for- lorn hope, who was full of the wisdom and traditions of a classic and heroic past, who dealt hard blows with his sword, and wrote hard words with his pen, was as simple and modest as a young girl, depreciating his own efforts and blushing to hear himself praised. In a provincial town, there lived and died a woman who had barely reached PERSONAL TRIBUTES. 183 middle life. Standing by her grave, one was struck by the looks of surprise on the iaces of those who had gathered .to perform the last sad. rites. There were Jew and Gen- tile, saint and sinner, the rich and the poor, the literary club and the unlettered serving woman, the frocked priest and non-conformist clergyman, the townspeople in coupes and the country folk in carts, and each creed and class was surprised to see the other, for each thought she belonged to itself. She belonged to none singly, but to all. The in- scription on a little monument near the battle field of Camden came to mind: "To the memory of the noble Baron De Kalb, born in Germany, but a citizen of the world." And around the memory of Major Edwards has again gathered the motley throng the Jew and the Gen- tile, the saint and the sinner, the rich and the poor, the literati and the unlettered laborer, the frocked priest and the non-conformist, the politician and the voter, the townspeople in their coupes and the country men in their carts, the civilian and the soldier, and each class and creed is surprised to see the others, and each avers that he be- longs to itself; and yet he belonged to no race or class or creed or country, but to all, for he was a "citizen of the world." And as each lays his tribute down, it is but the tribute to a single side of this many-sided man. Those who have read "Shelby and his Men/' who had followed the career of Major Edwards from 1862 through the varied fortunes of the southern arms, until 1865, when all hope was gone, and he and General Shelby, with a band of chosen and faithful followers, pressed their way south- ward, swam the Rio Grande with their sabers between their teeth and a repeater in either hand, and laid their swords at the feet of the noble but ill-starred Maximilian in the halls of the Montezumas, imagined him to be a giant in stature. Years after, when that most eccentric and phenomenal character, Henry Clay Dean, was on a hurried visit to Kansas City, with but an hour to spare, he called at the Times office for the author of " Poor Car- lotta." When a stripling was presented to him, he was so overwhelmed that he dropped his valise and sat down. He 1C4 JOHN NEWMAN EDWAKDS. staid three days, and laid the foundation of an attachment that only death severed. In some respects this ponderous man and the stripling were alike. Both knew how to love and how to hate; both were classic in their tastes Dean being not only, as Edwards was, an elegant and forcible writer, but also a finished and powerful orator, which Edwards was not. Both were poets, although neither ever penned a rhyme, and both belonged to another age, or rather were exponents of a civilization that has passed. The fact that nature reproduces herself is well attested. The child of to-day resembles no living relative, but the picture-gallery reveals its prototype. Is the Past not jealous of the Present? Is she not afraid of oblivion? And does she not send forward, from time to time, a champion of her sacred rites and customs? Such men are among us but not of us. Young though they be, we pay them the reverence and respect that is due to age. They are some- times called, for want of a better term, reactionists; but they are the true conservative element of the times in which they live. The past is known to them; but the future, save as guaged by the past, is a sealed book. John Edwards was such a man. These men discover no new continents, make no revolutions, scan innovations warily, place the brake on the wheels of progress until it is toned down in harmony with precedent, and look askance at the approach- ing stranger; but with things that have been they are en rapport. In an inconstant present they are the faithful custodians of " the sacred things the protecting statutes and the sacred fires/' They are no John the Baptists, proclaiming a new era, but Aarons, faithful to their charge of keeping the fires burning on the altars and keeping pure the records of the dead. They know nothing of barter or trade or of commerce, and demand all things of all men for the common weal. Their lives are heroic lives, and there is not a chronicle of valor, of sacrifice, of stout endeavor, of manly daring, of patient waiting, that is not at their fingers' ends: nor a ballad of love or war that is not familiar to their ears. With the gross and earthly they have nothing in common, but with love, with PERSONAL TRIBUTES. 185 devotion, with honor, with sacrifice, their hearts beat in unison. They do not love D'Aramis, the shrewd, recalci- trant priest; but Athos, the chivalric, the gentle man of honor, the pure nobleman; Porthos, the burly Porthos, with his lumbering gait, his loud voice, and his ponderous fist, and his huge shoulders that held up the arch of stone to his own undoing; and D'Artagnan, the wild, royster- iug, loyal " fighting sword blade." Ah! these are men of their kidney. Such men emancipate their heroes of their day, and habilitate them in the forms of the past. If John Edwards sometimes glorified men that we all could not glorify, it was no fault of his. Such deeds and valor as he sang in poetry and song, Sir Walter Scott sang in poetry and song, and Victor Hugo sang in poetry and song, and Alexander Dumas sang in poetry and song. If some of these men interrupted traffic and failed to be conventional as to the rights of holding certain trusts, Ich Van Dor, Eobin Hood, and other favorite heroes of. ours, created the same social disturbances in their day and generation; yet they are none the less heroes to us; more, these men had once been his followers and comrades in scenes and hours that he so graphically paints in his loving tribute to George Winship: " By lonesome road- sides, in the thickets at night, when the weird laughter of the owl was as the voice of the fabled choosers of the slain, crying out unto voice the roll of the dead, who were to die on the morrow for God and the confederacy; in the hot lit foreground of many a stormy battle-day, men's lives falling off from either flank of it like snow; in many a lonesome bivouac, when winter and hunger, as twin furies of civil war, flew over the sleeping camp together; in many a desperate border raid, where the wounded had no succor and the dead no sepulchre; in far off and half- forgotten foreign lands, where the flag that floated above them was a black flag, and the comrades, who broke their bread and shared their blankets, knew nothing of their name, their speech, their life, their race, their creed, their country." To a man of his temperament, this was a baptism of fire and a consecration to brotherhood that 136 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. only death could dissolve. Men who followed him through such hours as these were as much his brothers as if they had been taken from his own mother's womb. Was the author of " Poor Carlotta" a poet? Of the very highest type; a poet without effort and without knowing that he was a poet. It has been repeatedly said that Victor Hugo was his model. This is doubtful. While he is terse, pointed, and rapid, after the style of Hugo, yet this is due more to the nature and manner of the man himself than to an effort to copy. Major Edwards was not a robust man, physically, was of a highly nervous organization, and his quick, pithy, pointed style was unavoidable. For a man of his physique and few years he did an immense amount of work, and work of the kind that he did may not mean effort, but it meant high tension, and high tension means exhaustion, and exhaustion means, if a man goes on, " The silver thread be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain; or the wheel be broken at the cistern." To what a region of elevation he lifts one, and at a bound an optimist of the purest type. He had his dark and dreary hours when life sat heavily upon him; but gen- erally the sun was shining, and the birds were singing in the trees, and the flowers were in bloom. If he wrote of battlements and turrets, and waving banners and horse- men in armor and sword and buckler, the sun always illumed the turrets and reflected itself back from the burnished shields and gleaming sword-blades. How he loved the beautiful and the bright and the grand; and rapidly passed before his eyes visions of noble men and stately dames, strong castles, and fair women, and tall knights with clanking swords, and "all quality, pride, pomp and circumstance of glorious war." In the close of his tribute to young Winship, how nearly he foretold his own taking off: "That pitiless disease which neither stayed nor sorrowed a moment in its work, which knew nothing of the splendid past of the gentle young hero, which counted for naught the five precious scars on his PERSONAL TRIBUTES. 187 poor, wasted body, which would not lengthen his life a single hour by receiving in propitiation all the days he had marched without food, and all the nights he slept without blankets, and so it seized him as he stood grave and brave and calm to the last and carried him away to where the dark ?" Eead in the answer the simple confession of faith, not strictly orthodox from the point of the "straighest sect," but still a confession solacing to the friends who knew and loved him, a confession that any noble woman or brave man may repeat and which will remain an ever-blooming flower upon his grave. "Ah, no ! Sincerity must be religion. Over beyond the river called Jordan there must be growing trees, and running rivers, and fragrant fields, called the sweet fields of Eden for all who on this side the sunset shore fought or bled or died for king or cause or creed or country. Heroism is a consecration to God, and death because of it but a going to God. Over there surely the soldier is gently dealt with. If he was brave in life, and noble and courteous and generous and merciful, he had the attributes which certainly could make a heaven, and, therefore, this one dead to-day and buried within the historic soil of Jackson was foreordained to happiness after death. It may be late in coming; the bivouac may be right cold and dreary for many a one yet who has to pass through the valley of the shadow and over the river called death; and after the night the morning, and after the judgment day the New Jerusalem." BRUMMELL JONES. From HON. SAMUEL J. RANDALL. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES U. S. ) WASHINGTON, D. C., May 12, 1889. J COLONEL MUNFOHD: My Dear Sir Permit me to express to you my sincere sorrow at the sudden death of J. N. Edwards. He was a warm and true friend of mine, and I tried to be his whenever occasion offered. His excellent judgment and 188 ' JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. splendid mental accomplishments are a loss which, in common with the good people of Missouri, I deeply deplore. Yours truly, SAMUEL J. KANDALL. From A FEDERAL SOLDIER. LAS CRUCES, N. M., June 1, 1889. Dr. MORRISON MUNFORD: My Dear Sir Since talking with you I was suddenly called here by telegram, and may not return to Kansas City for several days yet. Thinking perhaps Mrs. Edwards might desire the "New Year," the wondrously beautiful creation of Major Edwards, of which I spoke to you before my return, I inclose it herewith. You will have to handle it carefully, as I have carried it with me over many miles of weary travel, and for many long years. I have read it to many men to friends and strangers, and it always excites unbounded admiration. It is a short little piece, takes but little space, but I know of no living man who could write it or speak it as an original production. Nor does my reading tell me of any of the dead who could write such an article but John N. Edwards and Victor Hugo. I loved Edwards before I had ever seen him, just from reading his wonderful productions, and after seeing him and becoming acquainted with him I only loved him more intensely. May God bless his wife and children and raise up kindly friends to love and care for and protect them. Very sincerely yours, JAMES K. WADDILL. GENERAL SHELBY'S TRIBUTE. BUTLER, Mo., May 7, 1889. General Jo Shelby was found by the Times' corre- spondent at hie home, eighteen miles northwest of here, to-day. " The news of Major Edward's death was a great shock to me," said the General. " I have known him and loved him since he was a boy. It is hardly within PERSONAL TRIBUTES. 189 the power of language to portray or describe Major Edwards as his noble character merits. God never created a more noble, magnanimous; and truer man than John N. Edwards. When the war broke out he threw himself into the conflict with all the ardor of his warm nature, and during the long, bloody struggle, he was ever loyally devoted to the cause he championed. The following is from General J. C. Jamison, late Adjutant-General of the State : GUTHRIE, to. TER., May 7,1889. DR. MORRISON" MUNFORD : My Dear Doctor The saddest thing I ever re*ad in your great newspaper was the death of my beloved friend, Major John N. Edwards. No death ever fell with such poignant grief or affected me so deeply as his. I first knew him when the fortunes of war threw* us together in the same prison at Johnson's Island, in 1863. The friendship there formed only grew stronger as time went on, and only a few weeks ago, in Jefferson City, we spent an afternoon reviewing the past and discussing the future. He possessed a heart big enough to take in the whole of humanity, and this problem was often the theme of discussion. His generosity was only bounded by h.is ability to minister to the unfortunate. His was the most lovable character I ever knew. His heroism in times of danger was absolutely the sublimest thing I ever saw. He seemed to lose his per- sonal identity as the danger grew more imminent, and only thought of the safety of his men and his beloved commander. But I did not start out to write of his personal traits of character, but to say that I had the honor, as the editor of the Clarksville (Mo.) Sentinel, to publish the first, and, I believe, the only real story ever written by him entitled "Guy Lancaster," the scene being laid in Virginia. This romance was published in 1867, 1868, 1869, and the papers containing it are bound in book-form, and are in my library at Jefferson City. May the clods rest lightly over the body of our friend. J. C. JAMISON. 190 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. From JUDGE WILLIAM YOUNG, OF LEXINGTON. When affairs are moving along their usual course within well-marked boundaries, and the spectacle of life is made up of the commonplace, struggles of men for money, place and power ; when no great issue presents its uncompromising front ; when public matters lie quiet under the ferment of individual interests ; when the steady grind of greed is going on, then men take value and become important in proportion to the sum of their accumu- lations. But let there come a shock ; let all the lines be broken, and the plain boundaries be destroyed ; let a crisis approach, and danger threaten ; let affairs present a prob- lem that can not be solved by the ordinary rules of action; let dread and doubt and uncertainty prevail, and then it is that men arie rated for themselves alone, and borrow no value from mere possessions. In such times, there are men toward whom all eyes are turned in expectancy, and to catch the sound of whose voices all ears are strained. Not because they are always correct, or to be implicitly followed ; not because of supernatural wisdom, or unerring judgment, but because of their clear convictions of right, their supreme unselfishness, their complete fearlessness, their absolute sincerity, their hatred of shams, and their unfailing faithfulness. ^ There was erstwhile one such man in Missouri who is now no more. There was one such voice that is silent now. John N. Edwards is dead ! Imbued with passions hot and strong, gifted with a fiery and heroic genius, endowed with dauntless courage, yet tempered all by a most generous disposition and the tenderest of hearts, he was a rare man, whose like we shall scarcely see again. Coming up into manhood on the eve of a mighty revo- lution, his high spirit reveled in the political excitement of the times, when words were things, and every act of vital consequence, and method of expression never lost the glow caught from the fires of insurrection and war. This most romantic and chivalrous of souls was placed PERSONAL TRIBUTES. 191 by fortune in the very position that enabled him to see and know more of the romantic realities of the war than perhaps any man now living in Missouri. As the companion of Shelby, during all the while that phenomenal cavalryman was rising from the rank of cap- tain to that of major-general, he was an active participant in all of the thrilling scenes enacted then. The secrets of nearly every one of the daring expedi- tions from that part of the Confederate forces were con- fided to him. His council was sought, and his assistance invoked on the eve of every wild scheme of reprisal, or about all of those enterprises that depended for success on the personal bravery of the participants. He was the trusted confidant of every reckless, desperate, restless spirit that sought danger in the front, by charge, or arti- fice, or strategern; or that waged the mad, wild war of personal hate far in the lines of the enemy. His was a nature that invited confidence. He was burdened with more vital secrets affecting the credit, life, and honor of others than any other man perhaps in all of the land. In it all, how truly, purely, perfectly faithful he was. Such a life, with such a nature, could not fail to pro- duce a rare combination a strange blending of contra- dictory characteristics. Inured to scenes of. carnage, and realizing from experi- ence how great the sacrifices necessary to victory, and how sternly regardless of individuals he must be who would conquer, in the height of his absorbing devotion to the cause he espoused, he called, with clarion voice and smok- ing pen, upon the leaders of his cause for the most extraor- dinary, heroic, and relentless policy; but for all this he himself would have lost the most important battle, or yielded the fruits of the greatest victory, before he would have trampled upon the prostrate form of a brave but help- less and unresisting foe. An enthusiast in politics, and the advocate of the severest party discipline, amounting to the utter ostracism of the delinquents, yet all was excused, and all condoned by the slightest extenuating circumstance or at the first intimation of regret. 192 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. Ambitious to an unwonted degree,, he sought no position, held back by his exquisite consideration for some friend whose cause he was always ready to espouse with a per- fectly unselfish devotion. Detesting the falseness and meanness and sordidness of humanity, he was wont to lash and scourge it with almost frenzied indignation and disgust, and yet he loved all man- kind, one by one. There were none high enough to excite his envy or command his adulation, so there were none so low as to escape his sympathy. His friendship was marvelously true. It was the rul- ing trait of his character. Especially was this the case with those who had been with him in the stirring scenes of war. His devotion to these became a part of his being, and neither poverty, nor disgrace, nor crime even, could separate his regard from them. He found an excuse for all of their faults, and served them with untiring faithful- ness through all circumstances. With him to be once a friend was to oe always such, and to him the voice of distressed friendship was as the voice of God. It was as a newspaper writer' that the public knew him best, and in this capacity he held a place second to none in Missouri in influence. Whenever he wrote, and on whatever subject, his mind seemed crowded with poetical figures and apt illustra- tions, mostly of a heroic cast, suggested by his experience as a soldier, or drawn from the thrilling records of chiv- alry. The most trivial incident, apparently, assumed at times to his many-sided mind an aspect of momentous importance, and, under his wonderful word-painting, took on such colors as to attract the eyes of the nation. But it was upon the happening of some great calamity, or the occurrence of some incident of unusual impor- tance, or the approach of a political crisis, and especially an appearance of a wavering in the ranks of his party, that his heroic genius shone out in full splendor. Then it was that, with a pen tipped as it were with fire, he wrote PERSONAL TRIBUTES. 193 words tliat burned into the hearts of his readers; then it was that the lightning of his genius flashed out and lit up the whole social or political horizon, and the reverberating thunder of his utterances startled the sleeper and the unconcerned. On every occasion of unusual popular interest, for the last twenty years or more, while agitation and dissention was going on over some proposed action, his earnest, manly sentiments were the inspiration of many a worker, and his sublime courage gave confidence to many a doubter. Bat it was when argument and counsel had culminated on some decisive action, and an appeal made to the coun- try for a verdict thereon, that his rallying cry was most eagerly listened for. In all of this time there has been no crisis in the affairs of his party, whether arising from internal dissen- tions, political defection, or rival strength, that every Dem- ocrat in this section has not hastened to read what he might write upon the subject. This was not on account of a belief in his infallible judgement, although he was quick to discern and just to discriminate. It wasnot on account of implicit confidence in his vast political wisdom, although he had an intuitive knowledge of men and a genius for politics. It was not on account of his splendid periods and fervid bursts of eloquence, although in these he had scarcely a rival. It was because friend and foe alike knew that his was the expression of a fearless, true, incor- ruptible man ; that, however mistaken, he believed as he wrote, with all his heart and mind, with a belief as sub- lime as his courage. He might not solve the problem, but he always exposed the difficulty. His passions or affections might cause him to err in position, but he always struck to the point, and no hero or chivalry ever pointed his lance with truer aim at the center of his enemy's shield than did he. No paladin in battle ever charged with less regard for consequences to himself than did this Murat of Missouri journalism on the political field. His influence over thousands in Missouri and else- 194 JOHN NEWMAN EDWARDS. where was unbounded. There were, and are, many who not only listened eagerly for his voice, but, having heard it, all controversy with them was at an end. Over many who had no personal acquaintance with him this influence of his was exerted. It was not his eloquence, or his fire, or his courage that captivated them. It was asomething running through all that he did or said; that looked out of his eyes, that sounded in his voice, that appeared between the lines of all he ever wrote. It was as imperceptible as a spirit to the common eye, but making its presence felt upon kin- dred spirits. It was that, back of genius and education and culture, vitalizing and inspiring all, there was, as the chief part of his being, physically, mentally, and spiritu- ally, a gushing, throbbing, warm, true Great Heart. And now we are to write that this great heart has ceased to beat. In the quiet cemetery, near the little town of Dover, his still and silent form has been laid away until the great day of resurrection. The green grass waves gently over him, and from the neighboring wood the sound of the singing of birds is low. Sleep on, great heart! Thou art done with earth and its sorrows and joys, its victories and defeats, its sins and virtues. Many of thy comrades have gone before. A few years more and the last one will cross over to thee. But while we live, aye, while our children and children's children live, there shall never a deed of daring, or an act of devoted friendship, such as thou didst love to hear of and do, be performed, but that the telling of it shall bring thee fresh to mind, and so all the heroism of the land shall help to keep thy memory green. Sleep on, great heart! Thougn there shall be sighs and prayers and "tears and breaking hearts for thee," thou shalt never more feel a kindred woe. Sleep on, great heart! Thine enemies are powerless to do thee harm. For when detraction, and envy, and hate, and all uncharitableness have done their worst, and heaped upon thy grave all of thy weaknesses and thine errors, thy follies and thy sins, we might admit them all, but we PERSONAL TRIBUTES. 195 will bring such a multitude of thy merits, thy countless kindly acts so secretly done, thy devotedness to friends who owe thee all, thy generosity to foes now turned to friends, thine undaunted courage, thy perfect sincerity, thy noble unselfishness, and thine undying faithfulness though thyself hath died, and lay them, too, upon thy rest- ing place, until when the angels look down from heaven they will see only the mountain of thy virtues, under whose towering height all of thine imperfections are com- pletely hid from sight. Sleep on, great heart! Love is stronger than hate. Where one shall blame a hundred more shall praise where one condemn a thousand shall pay you tribute of undying love. Love shall stand guard for thee, Friends without number, Bereaved and disconsolate over thee weep: Sweet be thy dreams, Untroubled thy slumber; Tranquilly, peacefully, resifully sleep. Y. NEWSPAPER TRIBUTES. MAJOR JOHN N. EDWARDS. [Kansas City Times, May 5, 1889.] No pen but his own should write of a nature like that of the brilliant journalist who died yesterday at Jefferson City The spiiit of Major John N. Edwards is justly measured in the hearts of a thousand men who knew him on the battlefield and in the intellect- ual life of later years, but to interpret it in words is beyond any one who has not his'richness of flashing phrase, his warm love of the great and the beautiful and his constant study of the best literary models. And who has those resources, or who has the charity of soul, the tender sympathy, the insight into the subtler beauties of humanity and nature? Not one. Yet friendship will not allow the first opportunity to pass for telling the world, however poorly, \\ hat a noble man has departed. Filling a part in the intense commercial life of the West, Major Edwards had no thought of money except to regret that he had nut more when he wished to help a fellow man. In an age of ephem- eral literature he had no literary passion except for the great masters, and if his all embracing charity preserved a patience with the slight performances of the day, his unspoiled taste saved him frc m either admiration or imitation. Absorbing from his intimate acquaintance with the masters of all nations, a vast amount of knowledge, he formed a style all his own, and for twenty years he has had a circle of readers wider than that gathered around any contemporary Amer- ican journalist. The chivalric spirit of the man, his bountiful vocab- ulary, his singular faculty for imaginative illustration, his habii of instantly striking at the heart of a subject and his skill in changing from the simplest of prose to the dramatic or poetic, as the phases of his thought suggested, invested his writing with an individually and charm which every one of the readers in the circle recognized at a glance. As the soldier boys were cheered and held to their cause by his brave example in the weary days at the close of the war, his friends and all the readers were his friends were held to their political allegiance, to their faith in ideals and works, \vhtn the mistakes and misfortunes incident to most human affairs threat- ened disorganization and dispersion. The measure of hisservk-