UNCLE 
 
 JOE'S 
 
 LINCOLN 
 
 EDWARD A. 
 STEINER
 
 LINCOLN ROOM 
 
 from 
 CARL SANDBURG'S LIBRARY

 
 UNCLE JOE'S LINCOLN
 
 BY EDWARD A. STEINER 
 UNCLE JOE'S LINCOLN 
 
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 Uncle Joes Lincoln 
 
 By 
 
 EDWARD A. STEINER 
 
 Author of "Introducing the American Spirit,' 
 " On the Trail of the Immigrant " 
 
 New York Chicago 
 
 Fleming H. Reve// Company 
 
 London and Edinburgh
 
 Copyright, 1918, by 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 
 New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
 Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. 
 London: 21 Paternoster Square 
 Edinburgh : 75 Princes Street
 
 tf C 
 
 This book is dedicated to my 
 boyhood* s friend 
 
 Jacob Mandl 
 
 who in these troubled days is serving 
 his adopted country efficiently and 
 modestly and who though he has re- 
 mained poor has made others rich by 
 his upright and unselfish life
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 TO Mr. Walter P. McGuire, of the 
 American Boy Magazine, I am in- 
 debted for the suggestion that I re- 
 write and enlarge my little sketch, " Abraham 
 Lincoln in Hungary," which appeared in my 
 book, "Against the Current," published in 
 1910. 
 
 In doing this, new incidents were recalled, 
 and " Uncle Joe's Lincoln " is the result. 
 
 What gave me the greatest joy in writing 
 it, was that it afforded me the opportunity 
 of bearing witness to the patriotism of our 
 foreign-born citizens, who in this period of 
 national stress have not failed in loyalty and 
 devotion to their adopted country. 
 
 It is a matter of pride to see their names 
 on the Honor Roll of the nation, paying in 
 part at least, the debt we, the alien born, owe 
 to our United States. 
 
 E. A. S. 
 
 Grinnell College. 
 
 7
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 I. IN WHICH THE THREE-QUARTERS OF A MAN 
 
 FORGIVES AS HE WAS ONCE FORGIVEN . 13 
 
 II. TELLS How THE LINCOLN ARMY BEGAN 
 
 THE CELEBRATION OK THE FOURTH OF 
 JULY ...... 40 
 
 III. TELLS How IT ENDED IN A MIRACLE . 51 
 
 IV. THE BURIAL OF A HILL, WHEN ABRAHAM 
 
 LINCOLN'S FAMOUS SPEECH AGAIN BECAME 
 FAMOUS ...... 66 
 
 V. IN WHICH THE SPIRIT OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 TRIUMPHS OVER THAT OF NAPOLEON 
 BONAPARTE . . . . 78 
 
 VI. A REAL TYRANT is PUT TO FLIGHT BY AN 
 
 IMITATION GHOST . . .89 
 
 VII. THE " KING OF THE SLOVAKS " ENTERS 
 
 INTO His REST AND UNCLE JOE RINGS 
 
 THE CHURCH BELLS .... 105 
 
 VIII. THE MARVELLOUS, MAGICAL, MECHANICAL 
 
 THEATER PRESENTS THE CIVIL WAR, AND 
 UNCLE JOE SUFFERS DEFEAT AND WINS 
 A VICTORY . . . . .123 
 
 IX. UNCLE JOE GETS RELIGION AND PAYS Hu 
 
 DEBT TO ABRAHAM LINCOLN . .141 
 
 X. THE THREE-QUARTERS OF A MAN Is MADE 
 
 WHOLE AGAIN, AND UNCLE JOE GOES ON 
 
 His LAST JOURNEY . . . .141 
 
 XI. TELLS How THERE HAPPENS TO BE A 
 
 LINCOLN CLUB ON THE EAST SIDE OF 
 NEW YORK 160
 
 In which the Three-Quarters of a Man 
 Forgives as He Was Once Forgiven 
 
 WE were playing soldiers in our yard. 
 It was not easy to march over the 
 rough cobblestones with which the 
 yard was paved, and maneuvers could not 
 be very extensive, for we were shut in on 
 three sides by huge brick walls which sepa- 
 rated us from our neighbors. On the fourth 
 side was the orchard, which extended to the 
 river, and was zealously guarded by a fierce- 
 looking and merciless old Hungarian, whose 
 name was Istvan. 
 
 He wore wide, linen trousers which looked 
 like a divided skirt, a blue waistcoat, and 
 over that a sheepskin coat. He usually 
 walked very softly, ready to catch any cul- 
 prit who might have gone into his orchard ; 
 but his sheepskin coat was old and smelled 
 
 '3
 
 14 Uncle Joe's Lincoln 
 
 so badly that it always betrayed his com- 
 ing. 
 
 He had a dog to help him a kindly, old, 
 hunting dog who had served his day chasing 
 rabbits and was now to chase less nimble 
 apple thieves. 
 
 Istvan carried a gun, which was supposed 
 to be loaded with salt, and we were mightily 
 afraid of it, though no living man or woman 
 had ever heard it go off. That may have 
 been due to the fact that no boy ever dared 
 enter the orchard uninvited, and there were 
 but few invitations. 
 
 The self-appointed General of our army of 
 six soldiers was Yanczy Pal and the fact 
 that he is now, if he is still alive, a cap- 
 tain in the Austrian army, may prove the 
 theory that commanders are not made, but 
 born. 
 
 He was the only boy in a real uniform. 
 He boasted of many ancestors who were 
 soldiers, and he wore those parts of their 
 wonderful equipments which the moths had 
 spared. Inasmuch as they lived before wise 
 men had learned from stupid animals to pro-
 
 The Three-Quarters of a Man 15 
 
 tect themselves against their enemies by what 
 naturalists call " protective coloring " that is 
 before our soldiers wore khaki he was most 
 gloriously attired. 
 
 He wore the czako (helmet) of a Hussar, 
 the red coat of an artillery officer and the 
 tightly fitting trousers of the infantry. The 
 trousers fitted as closely as tights and were 
 sky blue. Yanczy Pal was tall for his years ; 
 but I often wonder how a man ever wore 
 those trousers. He told us that his uncle, 
 who was a great general, was so thoroughly 
 a soldier that he had a nightgown made of 
 army cloth, and wore all his crosses and 
 medals to bed. 
 
 Yanczy also carried a sword a cavalry 
 sword, and it was so long that he had to 
 wear it over his shoulder like a gun. None 
 of the rest of the army could boast of heroic 
 soldier ancestors who wore brass buttons and 
 braid on their nightgowns ; so four of the 
 common soldiers (they were all common 
 soldiers except Yanczy Pal and myself) wore 
 their civilian clothes very civilian indeed. 
 They were one-piece suits buttoning in the
 
 1 6 Uncle Joe's Lincoln 
 
 back, and we had used three cents' worth 
 of gilt paper to give them a military aspect. 
 The three cents had been contributed by me, 
 and because of that I received a commission 
 and became Quartermaster General. As the 
 gilt glory did not last longer than one cam- 
 paign, I was frequently called upon to finance 
 the army. 
 
 My own uniform, while not altogether mil- 
 itary, was, to me at least, the real thing. I 
 wore brass buttons, each one of them 
 stamped with an eagle. They were put 
 through the cloth of my coat and fastened 
 by a nail. My hat was ornamented by a 
 greasy-looking black string, to which were 
 attached two buttons which looked like 
 acorns. Had you seen me you might not 
 have recognized in me a member of the 
 Grand Army of the Republic, but that is 
 exactly what I tried to resemble. You may 
 well wonder why a little boy way off in Hun- 
 gary, in the foot-hills of the Carpathians, had 
 so strange a notion ; but " that is another 
 story," and, before I finish, I hope you will 
 know the reason.
 
 The Three-Quarters of a Man 17 
 
 Anyway we were drilling, and I think that 
 the General purposely directed all our ma- 
 neuvers toward the orchard, in which the 
 apples were temptingly green ; and while, 
 like real soldiers, it was not " ours to reason 
 why, ours but to do or die," we hoped that 
 after the army was licked into shape we 
 might invade the orchard. 
 
 As I have said, the army was being drilled 
 in our yard, and the General made a greater 
 racket than ever, with his " Habt acht" 
 which means " Attention 1 " That we could 
 easily give him, but when it came to the 
 command of " Rechts um" and " Links um" 
 our response was neither quick nor unani- 
 mous, for a boy's right side and left side 
 seem to him very much the same, and 
 the General did that which of course is 
 the duty of every general to do under sim- 
 ilar circumstances. He called us a pack of 
 jackasses, and other more or less compli- 
 mentary names. He even swore at us, and, 
 as the printer who sets this type will not 
 know this swearword, and need not use 
 dashes to show how much he is shocked, I
 
 1 8 Uncle Joe s Lincoln 
 
 will write it down. This is what he said, 
 " Basama Teremtete / " 
 
 He said it more than once, and when he 
 followed that with something even worse, his 
 army then and there mutinied. He then un- 
 buckled his sword, which he had to hold 
 with both hands, and told us that his uncle 
 once cut off the heads of a whole regiment 
 for resisting a commanding officer ; that he 
 would now, as always, follow his illustrious 
 ancestor's example ; and that, while he 
 might spare our heads, the raid upon the 
 orchard would be indefinitely postponed, un- 
 less we apologized immediately. 
 
 While the racket was at its height, there 
 came into the yard a strangely pathetic 
 figure, a man who hobbled across the cob- 
 blestones with great effort. He wore a faded 
 suit of blue ; one trouser leg was superfluous 
 for there was no leg in it, and one sleeve 
 was also empty. The brass buttons which 
 were once a part of his coat adorned my 
 uniform, and the soft, slouch hat he wore 
 was minus its braid, for that too he had
 
 The Three-Quarters of a Man 19 
 
 given me to aid in my soldier-like appear- 
 ance. 
 
 He was a rather untidy man with his face 
 covered by a heavy beard, he had a harsh, 
 hoarse voice and he shook his fist at us in a 
 threatening way because we had disturbed 
 his afternoon nap. The entire disorganized 
 army was ready to run ; but retreat was im- 
 possible, as the only way out was blocked by 
 the man in blue ; around us were the three 
 walls, and at the other end of the garden 
 were Istvan, the dog, and the gun loaded 
 with mythical salt. 
 
 " Uncle Joe," who was not anybody's 
 uncle, chose that name for himself when, 
 after many years in the United States, he 
 returned to Hungary to die in his native 
 country, after fate had denied him that priv- 
 ilege while he fought for the Union. He had 
 a generous pension, most of which he spent 
 for drink. When he returned to his home 
 town, from which no one had missed him, 
 though he had been away more than a 
 quarter of a century, I was the only one to 
 greet him.
 
 2O Uncle Joe's Lincoln 
 
 Even that was an accident, for I played 
 truant and did not go to the service that par- 
 ticular Sabbath. I was on the market-place 
 waiting for the omnibus, to see who would 
 unload himself from its mysterious depths. 
 It was very exciting to see who was coming 
 to us from the far unknown, as it was our 
 only means of communication with the out- 
 side world ; for not only did we have no 
 railroad, we hadn't even a newspaper, which 
 would tell us once or twice a week who had 
 come or who was going away. 
 
 When I asked the omnibus driver how 
 many passengers he had brought, he laughed 
 and said : " Three-quarters of a man " ; 
 which puzzled me greatly until I saw the 
 old soldier alight. Knowing that my dear 
 mother never turned a stranger from her 
 door, I took him home, and so it happened 
 that this veteran of the Civil War, who had 
 left an arm and a leg on some battle-field in 
 the United States, was living in a back room 
 in our house. That is how I came to wear 
 Uncle Sam's brass buttons, and to want to 
 look like a member of the G. A. R.
 
 The Three-Quarters of a Man 2 1 
 
 However, Uncle Joe brought me much 
 more than brass buttons ; he enlarged my 
 world by adding to it a new continent, and 
 he taught me a wonderful chapter of history. 
 Many and many a long winter's evening I sat 
 in his room, while by the light of a tallow 
 candle he read to me about the Civil War, 
 using sulphur matches to show me the posi- 
 tion of the different armies. The matches 
 with heads on them were Union soldiers, 
 and those without heads were soldiers of the 
 Confederacy. This method of teaching his- 
 tory consumed so many of my mother's 
 matches that once she asked me whether 
 Uncle Joe ate them. 
 
 I also learned the names of the great gen- 
 erals and, while some of them were difficult 
 for me to pronounce, I remember them all ; 
 and even now when I mention them, I can 
 hear Uncle Joe telling me that in English 
 you write a name one way and pronounce it 
 quite differently, which seemed to me rather 
 foolish, and on that point I have not changed 
 my opinion. 
 
 There was one name which gave me no
 
 22 Uncle Joe's Lincoln 
 
 trouble, for it was pronounced as it was 
 spelled, and when Uncle Joe spoke of that 
 man it was with deepest reverence. He had 
 his picture in his room. It hung over his 
 bed, and around it were draped the Stars 
 and Stripes, which even then I thought the 
 most beautiful flag in existence. 
 
 To me the pictured face seemed infinitely 
 more noble than those of the proud kings 
 who ruled over us. It was a sad face ; at 
 least one side of it seemed sad, while the 
 other side wore a smile, as if he meant to 
 say " Life is never all sadness, but neither is 
 it all a joke." 
 
 Under his bushy black hair, upon his 
 broad forehead, were many wrinkles, and 
 they looked as if they had been worn into it 
 by a great sorrow. His eyes, set deep in his 
 thin, muscular face, looked honest and keen, 
 and I was sure that one could not easily tell 
 a lie to such a man, for he could look right 
 into one's heart. His nose was large and so 
 was his mouth, and I knew that he must be 
 generous. 
 
 On the whole it was not a handsome face,
 
 The Three-Quarters of a Man 23 
 
 not half so handsome as that of our king. 
 Evidently God took plenty of time to make 
 a king. He did not need him especially. 
 But in a country's great crisis, the Master 
 Workman had taken the common clay and 
 shaped it quickly and breathed into it as 
 much of His spirit as it would hold, and 
 named it Abraham Lincoln. At any rate, 
 Uncle Joe thought he was the most wonderful 
 man who ever lived, and the more I learned 
 about him, the more I shared that opinion. 
 
 When Uncle Joe appeared on the scene 
 that day in the garden, and the General who 
 had threatened his mutinous army was ready 
 to run, and his soldiers with him, I, knowing 
 that his bark was worse than his bite, said : 
 " Oh, Uncle Joe, tell us, do you think that if 
 Abraham Lincoln had called us jackasses and 
 said ' Basama Teremtete ' and we objected to 
 being ' basamad? that he would have had our 
 heads cut off?" 
 
 I knew that when you appealed to Uncle 
 Joe in the name of Abraham Lincoln, it 
 was indeed like pouring oil upon troubled
 
 24 \TJncle "Joes Lincoln 
 
 waters, and I was not mistaken. Forgetting 
 that we had disturbed his afternoon nap, he 
 soon had us lined up, General, Quarter- 
 master General, and all, and we were drilling 
 to new words of command. 
 
 It was no more " Habt acht" and " Rechts 
 um," " Links urn " ; it was " Attention ! " 
 " Right 'bout face I " " Left 'bout face 1 " At 
 least that is the way it sounded, and when 
 we did not know which was right or left, he 
 tied a handkerchief on the side with which 
 we were not to be on speaking terms, and he 
 called it the " Blow your nose side." 
 
 When we had finally mastered the in- 
 tricacies of right and left, he made us march 
 around the yard to the tune of Yankee 
 Doodle. He first whistled it, and no doubt 
 it brought memories of his campaigns, for 
 then he began to hum it; and before he 
 knew it, he was singing it, and we heard 
 those strange words at whose meaning we 
 could but vainly guess. When we asked for 
 a translation, he permitted us to be at rest, 
 and, leaning against the wall, began : 
 
 " Yankees are the people who live in the
 
 The Three-Quarters of a Man 2 5 
 
 northern part of the United States, and the 
 people of these states didn't want the people 
 of the Southern States to keep the slaves. 
 Boys, do you think it is right to keep 
 slaves ? " We replied in unison, " No, sir 1 " 
 "That's right," he said, "that's what the 
 Yankees thought; but the people of the 
 Southern States said : ' If you won't let us 
 keep our slaves we will fight you,' and those 
 Basama Teremtete rebels began to shoot at 
 the Yankees. 
 
 " I was then living in St. Louis, by the 
 big Mississippi River, the biggest river in 
 the whole world." You see Uncle Joe was 
 something of an American, not only in his 
 love for the right and his willingness to fight 
 for it, but also in his way of thinking that 
 everything in the United States is the 
 biggest. "And so," he continued, "I en- 
 listed and became a Yankee." 
 
 "But what does 'doodle' mean?" I was 
 emboldened to ask, for Uncle Joe was begin- 
 ning to tell all about the war, which I had 
 heard ever so many times. 
 
 11 Oh, ' doodle,' well, hm ! well that is just
 
 2,6 Uncle Joes Lincoln 
 
 doodle. It means doodle. You see when 
 we marched, we had some one play the fife, 
 and that was the doodle, and when we saw 
 the rebels well, we just doodled and 
 doodled, and at Vicksburg, you see, we 
 went to town; we just took the town, and 
 that is 'Yankee Doodle went to town.' Town 
 means city," and wishing to escape further 
 examination about Yankee Doodle, he was 
 about to call his army into action, when I 
 asked him another question. 
 
 " What is macaroni, Uncle Joe ? " 
 " Oh, you muddle-headed ignoramus you, 
 don't you know what macaroni is? It's 
 well, it is something good to eat. It's what 
 we got to eat when we took the town," and 
 we were summarily brought to order, and 
 once more marched toward the orchard to 
 the tune of Yankee Doodle. 
 
 He hobbled along ahead of us, and, when 
 we came to the closed gate, he evidently 
 thought he was with Sherman on his march 
 to the sea, for he began to sing another song 
 to a livelier and better tune, which ended 
 like this : " While we go marching through
 
 The Three-Quarters of a Man 27 
 
 Georgia." To a victorious army there are 
 no obstacles, not even closed garden gates. 
 He lifted the latch, and triumphantly the 
 army entered the protected domain of old 
 Istvan. 
 
 As luck would have it, neither Istvan nor 
 his dog was visible, and hardly had we come 
 under the shade of the apple trees when the 
 army, without so much as " by your leave," 
 broke ranks and began filling its pockets 
 with green apples that is, those of us who 
 had pockets big enough. Our General, 
 Yanczy Pal, had such tight trousers that no 
 apple, no matter how small, could be put 
 into the pockets, and those on his coat were 
 sewed up with gold braid. My pockets were 
 ample. I stuffed them as full as I could and 
 I committed a great camouflage. I put my 
 pocket handkerchief on top of them leav- 
 ing one end hanging out as convincing 
 evidence. 
 
 Ahead of us Uncle Joe still hobbled, to the 
 tune of " Marching Through Georgia," quite 
 unconscious of our defection. When he 
 came to the end of the garden where the
 
 28 Uncle Joe's Lincoln 
 
 gate opened toward the river, he stopped, 
 turned right about face as quickly as he 
 could on one leg, and then he discovered that 
 he was without his army. 
 
 We were still under the apple tree, for we 
 were not satisfied with windfalls ; we had 
 shaken it, gently of course, and were busy 
 putting away the surplus in our shirts or 
 in any place where apples fitted, and it is 
 marvellous how easily apples fit into a boy's 
 clothes. 
 
 Uncle Joe came hobbling back. The 
 General was nearest him in a very inviting 
 posture, and he applied his crutch where the 
 trousers fitted the tightest. The other boys 
 ran as fast as their legs could carry them, 
 and I, of course, with them. I couldn't run 
 so fast as they, for my pockets being very 
 ample and my shirt quite large, I was loaded 
 down with apples. Running even as mod- 
 erately as I did, I shed apples in all direc- 
 tions, much to my dismay. 
 
 That evening I did not as usual go 
 voluntarily into Uncle Joe's room. My 
 mother sent me in. I was in a very re-
 
 The Three-Quarters of a Man 29 
 
 pentant mood, for green apples taste best 
 before you have eaten them, and both my 
 conscience and my stomach troubled me. 
 As soon as I entered the room, he took me 
 by the ear, and he was never gentle with 
 little boys' ears. He dragged me up to his 
 bed, right in front of Abraham Lincoln's 
 portrait: "Down on your knees, you little 
 deserter ! " 
 
 I fell on my knees as if I had been struck 
 down. " Now ask that great man's pardon," 
 cried Uncle Joe. " You were marching be- 
 hind a Union soldier, and you basely de- 
 serted and stole ! Yes, sir, you stole apples ! 
 You're not fit to ask his pardon, do you 
 hear?" he shrieked, half crying, " You're not 
 fit, sir ! You are not fit 1 " 
 
 Then I began to cry, moved as much by 
 the anguish in his voice as by my inner 
 pangs. He, too, began to cry, not as a little 
 boy cries, but in big sobs, as if something in 
 him were breaking. 
 
 " You're not fit," he sobbed again, " not 
 fit, just as I was not fit to ask his pardon." 
 Then the tears came thick and fast as if that
 
 30 Uncle Joe's Lincoln 
 
 which had broken in him were pouring its 
 contents through his eyes. When we both 
 were through crying we felt better. I never 
 before knew that crying helped a boy's 
 stomach-ache as well as his conscience. 
 Then he took me on his lap and told me 
 how it happened that he always fell down on 
 his knees before Abraham Lincoln, and asked 
 and received his pardon. I don't remember 
 the names of places he mentioned ; they 
 sounded strange, and I could not pronounce 
 them. I shall, however, try to tell the story 
 just as he told it ; for though it was a simple 
 story it had a tremendous effect upon my 
 whole life. 
 
 Uncle Joe looked for his handkerchief, and 
 when he found it he wiped the tears from his 
 cheeks, then blew his nose several blasts, 
 and when he finally began to speak it was in 
 big gulps, as if he had to swallow something 
 before he spoke. 
 
 " You little rapscallion you, I am going to 
 tell you something I have never told to any- 
 body, and if you tell it to anybody while I 
 am living I'll scalp you ! " and he took my
 
 The Three-Quarters of a Man 3 1 
 
 shock of hair and pulled it till it hurt, and 
 I solemnly promised I wouldn't tell the great 
 secret he was about to entrust to me. 
 
 "When the war broke out," he began 
 after my solemn pledge of secrecy, " I was 
 living in St. Louis. Before that I had been 
 sort of a drifter. I didn't amount to much 
 here, and I didn't amount to much in 
 America. ' You can't teach an old dog new 
 tricks.' I was a good-for-nothing boy, I 
 never became a much better man. Chang- 
 ing the climate may improve a man's health, 
 but it doesn't always necessarily improve his 
 character. Over there a man can do all sorts 
 of things and fail ever so many times ; but 
 there is always a chance for him if he tries 
 again. So I kept on, trying first one thing 
 and then another. 
 
 " I worked on a farm, I taught school, I 
 became an agent and sold many things to 
 people who did not want them or did not 
 need them. Then I worked on a boat and 
 finally I landed in St. Louis. I came there 
 without a cent of money, and I walked up 
 from the levee into the town and began look-
 
 32 Uncle 'Joe s Lincoln 
 
 ing for a job. I went into a German news- 
 paper office and asked them to give me a 
 copy of the paper for I didn't have money 
 enough to pay for it, and they offered me a 
 job as a helper in the printing office. It was 
 hard work but I liked it. I was a great 
 reader, and papers from all over the country 
 came to our office ; so I read during my 
 spare time, getting something of an educa- 
 tion that way. I finally became a printer 
 and made good wages, but I squandered all 
 the money I earned on drink." 
 
 Then he stopped and gulped again as if 
 he were swallowing what he had to say, and 
 when he finally spoke, his voice was harsh, 
 as if he were angry with somebody. He 
 pushed his hand roughly through my curly 
 hair. 
 
 " Don't you ever drink, boy ! I'd rather 
 kill you now than to think that you would 
 have to suffer what I suffered ! I gambled," 
 and he pulled my hair, " and finally I stole 
 money," and again he gave my hair a 
 vicious pull. I was hoping that he would 
 not confess all his sins to me, for if he did
 
 The Three-Quarters of a Man 33 
 
 and pulled my hair every time, I wouldn't 
 have a hair left. I knew his failings, and 
 they were many. 
 
 " When the war finally came, the foreign- 
 ers in St. Louis went with the Union and I 
 went with them. I was a pretty tough 
 fellow, and didn't think very much about the 
 government, but I hated slavery. I didn't 
 want anybody oppressed. I was always for 
 the under dog, perhaps because I always was 
 one myself. I loved Abraham Lincoln, our 
 President. I loved him because he was once 
 a poor man like myself, and had no educa- 
 tion except what he got himself ; so when I 
 had a chance I enlisted, but I found soldier- 
 ing pretty tough. I didn't like to do what 
 somebody else told me, and anyway I know 
 now that I was a coward. Don't you ever 
 be a coward 1 " and again my hair was pulled. 
 
 " I deserted I " He dropped me to the 
 floor, and, as there was no soft carpet, I felt 
 the hard boards very decidedly, and began to 
 cry. " Sh I " he said. " You little deserter ! 
 Stop your bellowing ! Don't let any one 
 ever hear what I told you 1 If you ever tell
 
 34 Uncle Joe's Lincoln 
 
 I'll scalp you 1 " and I felt another tug at my 
 badly dishevelled hair. 
 
 " I deserted ! Don't you ever " Before 
 
 he had a chance to grasp my hair again and 
 admonish me never to desert, I was at the 
 door, ready to run ; but the old man coaxed 
 me back with a piece of rock candy, which 
 he used rather freely in his struggle with a 
 chronic case of bronchitis, and which was my 
 reward for listening to his stones about the 
 war. I did not make the mistake of letting 
 him take me on his lap. I listened from a 
 safe distance as he began to tell me more 
 about his shortcomings. 
 
 " Yes, I deserted, and lived for a long 
 time like a wild animal, sleeping out in the 
 woods and living on whatever I could steal 
 or beg. Don't you ever beg 1 " Fortunately 
 I was beyond the reach of his hand, but he 
 had to punish somebody at the remembrance 
 of his misdeeds ; so he pulled his beard every 
 time he made a confession. It was pitiful 
 to see it, but it was less painful to me. 
 
 " Finally I was caught and put into prison," 
 he went on, " and that was a mighty good
 
 The Three-Quarters of a Man 35 
 
 thing for me. The very best thing for any- 
 body, when he has done any wrong, is to be 
 caught and properly punished. But it is one 
 thing to be locked up and another thing to be 
 told that, because you are a deserter, you will 
 be shot. Oh, boy 1 " and then he pulled his 
 beard so hard I was more than thankful that 
 it wasn't my hair. 
 
 11 My life, which I didn't value enough to 
 keep myself decent, all at once seemed kind 
 of a sacred thing. That which I had pro- 
 faned, and stepped on, as if it were a nasty 
 bug, became something like a small piece 
 of God. I was a gambler and a drunkard, a 
 thief and a deserter, but I wanted to live." 
 
 I thought his heart would break, for his 
 breath seemed to have stopped, he grew pur- 
 ple in the face, and it was a great relief to 
 hear him speak again. 
 
 "I wanted to live and there was just one 
 man who could give me my life back again, 
 and that man was Abraham Lincoln. I had 
 cut his picture out of a newspaper, and 
 fastened it onto the wall with some paste I 
 made out of chewed-up bread, and I used to
 
 36 Uncle yoe's Lincoln 
 
 kneel before that picture and pray as if I were 
 praying to my God. You say your prayers, 
 you little deserter ? " He turned to me again, 
 angrily. I nodded my head. " Yes, you say 
 prayers as if you were grinding coffee for 
 your mother, and with as much feeling ! Oh, 
 boy, I prayed as if I were tearing out my 
 heart by the roots. I was praying for my 
 life. I wanted another chance to live, and 
 then when it came my time to die I wanted 
 to die like a man, not like a dog. 
 
 " It was two days before I was to be shot, 
 and I had given up all hope. I was lying on 
 my cot and wanted to forget that I was alive, 
 when the door opened and my jailer came in, 
 and after him a tall, lean, lank man. He was 
 so tall he had to bend nearly double to get 
 through the door, and when he straightened 
 himself out, I saw it was President Lincoln ! 
 If God Almighty had come down into that 
 stinking jail, I wouldn't have been as scared 
 as I was. Then he talked to me like any 
 mother would have talked to me if she had 
 found me a condemned deserter. 
 
 " I thought I would rather die than have
 
 The Three-Quarters of a Man 37 
 
 him talk to me that way. If he had said, 
 'You good-for-nothing rascal, it serves you 
 right ; that's what you get for deserting ! ' or 
 if he had taken a stick and hit me with it, I 
 could have stood it ; but he looked into my 
 eyes and he seemed to see my whole rotten 
 insides, and I felt that I wanted to hide myself 
 from that look. His voice was tender as a 
 woman's, and I cried like a baby. 
 
 "Then the President saw the picture on 
 the wall, and the jailer told him something, 
 and I fell down on my knees and I held on to 
 his bony legs till the jailer pulled me away. 
 I acted like a raving maniac after he left me, 
 and they had to tie me up. They were 
 afraid I would brain myself against the hard 
 stone wall of my cell. 
 
 "That night I didn't sleep at all. The 
 next day an officer came to see me and I 
 thought he came to take me out to be shot. 
 He had a big envelope in his hand and it 
 looked like the death warrant. When he 
 began to read I stopped my ears. I didn't 
 care then whether I was to be shot or not, 
 but I didn't want to hear about it. In spite
 
 38 Uncle yoes Lincoln 
 
 of my having stopped my ears I could hear 
 something ; I caught one word, then after I 
 took my fingers out of my ears, I heard that 
 I was pardoned. Oh, boy, boy, do you know 
 what that means ? I was pardoned I " He 
 reached toward me with his big stick uplifted, 
 and, fearing that I had not shown the right 
 kind of appreciation (but how could I, never 
 having been condemned to death?), I ran 
 from him, but he beckoned me, with a smile. 
 Instead of hitting me with his stick, he em- 
 braced me and kissed me over and over 
 again, and, considering that he had a fright- 
 fully bushy beard and didn't keep himself 
 especially clean, I felt that I would have pre- 
 ferred his cane to his kisses. 
 
 " Oh, boy," and this time he availed him- 
 self of the chance to pull my hair again, " I 
 went back to the army after a while, after a 
 long while, for I had to stay in prison, and 
 then I fought. Oh, boy, I fought ! I didn't 
 fight for the niggers or for the United States. 
 I fought for President Lincoln, and I fought 
 like "a 'lion. This* is how I fought!" He 
 shook the limp trouser leg, "and this," and
 
 The Three-Quarters of a Man 39 
 
 he shook his empty sleeve. Then he looked 
 up to the flag-draped picture. "You see, 
 Abraham Lincoln, what you made out of a 
 rascally deserter, you see, you see ? " and he 
 shook his limp trouser leg and his empty 
 sleeve right into the face of Abraham Lin- 
 coln. 
 
 Before he let me go, he impressed me 
 again and again with the enormity of my 
 crime. I had deserted the army commanded 
 by one of the soldiers of President Lincoln, 
 I had stolen apples while I was a deserter, 
 and I ought to be punished. While I de- 
 served to be shot, he would be merciful ; but 
 I had to be punished and I was, both inter- 
 nally and externally. I had a sleepless night. 
 The green apples looked after that, and the 
 next day when the army drilled again in our 
 cobblestone paved yard, I wore my usual 
 uniform, but the brass buttons were missing, 
 and my hat was minus the greasy braid with 
 its buttons which looked like acorns.
 
 II 
 
 Tells How the Lincoln Army Began the 
 Celebration of the Fourth of July 
 
 UNCLE JOE'S advent awakened 
 within us the martial spirit, asleep in 
 our town since 1866, the year when 
 the Prussians invaded it in their war with 
 Austria, writing the history of the new Ger- 
 many with the points of bayonets dipped in 
 the blood of our fathers. The old soldier's 
 stories of the victorious Union Army, his 
 share in which was not minimized, stimu- 
 lated our imaginations, and we resolved that 
 ours was to be a Lincoln Army, and its task 
 was to bring liberty to our little world, 
 where it was so badly needed. 
 
 Our immediate duty was the celebration 
 of the Fourth of July, and included a parade, 
 a picnic and fireworks. It was to be a real 
 holiday, and we were neither to fast before 
 we feasted, nor pray before we played, which 
 
 was the customary way of observing holi- 
 
 40
 
 The Fourth of July 4 1 
 
 days ; therefore we awaited its coming with 
 unmixed joy. 
 
 We were used to parades in the form of 
 religious processions; but picnics were as 
 new to us as apples were to Adam before the 
 Fall, and the nearest we had come to fire- 
 works was some red light which Yanczy Pal 
 had obtained somewhere, and which we 
 lighted on his parents' historic mahogany 
 table. What happened to us in conse- 
 quence it is not necessary to chronicle. 
 
 According to Uncle Joe, the elements out 
 of which a picnic should be constructed 
 were sandwiches, lemonade and ice-cream. 
 This menu disturbed our imaginations more 
 than it might have disturbed our digestions. 
 The word Sandwich we found in our geog- 
 raphy ; but it seemed alien to our bill of fare, 
 and we decided that it was composed of hu- 
 man flesh or something equally unpalatable. 
 
 Yanczy Pal, the wisest among us, told us 
 that he had tasted lemonade when he had 
 fever, and that he knew the elements from 
 which it was made ; but before the mystery 
 of ice-cream even his brain reeled. It did
 
 4 2 Uncle Joe's Lincoln 
 
 not help us to understand when Uncle Joe 
 explained that " When the ice on the outside 
 of the cream melted, the cream on the inside 
 of the ice became ice, and so, the ice-cream." 
 It remained one of the unbelievable American 
 mysteries, and we accepted it as we accepted 
 Uncle Joe's account of the battle of Gettys- 
 burg, or his description of Niagara Falls. 
 
 Unfortunately the realization of most of 
 our hopes was to wait until we came to the 
 United States ; for while the old soldier was 
 a brave man, he had brought with him from 
 America an unconquered foe, who came 
 upon him and vanquished him at regular 
 periods when his pension came from Uncle 
 Sam. Then he would appear at the Black 
 Eagle Inn, where among the well to do he 
 would drink sweet Hungarian wine, and 
 throw his money to the Hungarian Gypsies. 
 When his money grew less, he went to 
 Abraham Fuchs' dram-shop, where with 
 common peasants and roaming Gypsies, he 
 drank plain, white, biting vodka, till his 
 last cent was gone. Then in a repentant 
 mood he would beg my mother's pardon,
 
 Fourth of "July 43 
 
 promising never to drink another drop, and 
 keep his word until the next time the postman 
 brought the well-known official envelope. 
 
 I remember how excited we were the day 
 the fireworks came, and how my mother 
 would not give the box house room for fear 
 of an explosion. Finally, under cover of the 
 night, Uncle Joe and I deposited it in the 
 granary, we alone knowing its hiding-place. 
 
 We drilled every day. We marched and 
 countermarched. We took the town by 
 storm and retook it again and again. We 
 sang Yankee Doodle and waved tiny flags 
 of stars and stripes which Uncle Joe had 
 made for us by the aid of colored paper, 
 scissors and paste. It was to be no mere 
 imitation of the American Fourth of July ! 
 We determined to make it a real Inde- 
 pendence Day of our own, and while we 
 could not overthrow the government, we re- 
 solved to shout the " Battle Cry of Freedom " 
 when the fireworks bombarded the air. 
 
 Alas, for our hopes I The first of July 
 marked a new quarter, and on that day 
 Pan Fiala, the postman (who, by the way,
 
 44 Uncle Joe's Lincoln 
 
 could not read, and was dependent on any 
 one he met to decipher the addresses), 
 brought the money from the United States ; 
 and Uncle Joe forgot that some twenty boys 
 were wishing time to speed till the glorious, 
 yet unknown, much anticipated Fourth of 
 July should release the pent-up enthusiasm 
 of a great Liberty Army, and reveal the 
 mystery of sandwiches, the miracle of ice- 
 cream and the glory of fireworks. 
 
 No doubt he meant to keep sober. I know 
 he did ; for he gave all the money he re- 
 ceived to my mother, and he kept his reso- 
 lution for five hours. He paced up and 
 down his room from about eleven till four 
 in the afternoon. He acted like a caged 
 animal, and then, ashamed to ask for the 
 money, he did that which was ever the ref- 
 uge of tempted men ; he told a lie. 
 
 He said he wanted some money to pre- 
 pare for the picnic, and that evening he was 
 at the Black Eagle Inn letting the picnic 
 slide down his throat, and throwing Uncle 
 Sam's dollars at the fiddling Gypsies. 
 
 On the third of July, following the usual
 
 The Fourth of July 45 
 
 program, he was drinking vodka at Abra- 
 ham Fuchs', and when the Fourth of July 
 dawned we found Uncle Joe so drunk that 
 he didn't know the difference between the 
 anticipated day and Christmas. Had it not 
 been for the determination of Yanczy Pal 
 who, as I have said, was destined to be a 
 leader of men, the day would have remained 
 just a hot day in the seventh month instead 
 of the more or less glorious and never-to-be- 
 forgotten Fourth. 
 
 So it happened that General Yanczy Pal 
 was reviewing the Lincoln Army. 
 
 Old horse pistols, dull bayonets and rusty 
 swords displaced our wooden weapons, and a 
 motley assortment of parts of uniforms took 
 the place of the three cents' worth of gilt pa- 
 per, which had to be so frequently renewed ; 
 while three times six soldiers passed in review 
 before Yanczy Pal, our doughty General. 
 
 " Infantry forward ! " he shouted ; and ten 
 stalwart boys advanced, led by their captain, 
 Pavel Chorvat. His father, the blacksmith, 
 was far famed for his strength and size. He 
 could lift the heaviest sack of grain, throw the
 
 46 Uncle yds Lincoln 
 
 most vicious horse, and boasted that his chest 
 was once used for an anvil without any dam- 
 age to his lungs. He could also drink more 
 whisky than any man within many miles, and 
 swear the fiercest oaths. His son promised 
 to be a " chip of the old block," or a spark 
 from the same anvil. 
 
 The infantry which Captain Pavel Chorvat 
 commanded, was racially, religiously and so- 
 cially representative of our much mixed, or 
 rather, badly divided community : Protes- 
 tants, Catholics, Jews, Magyars, Slovaks and 
 two Gypsies. 
 
 The review of the infantry proving satis- 
 factory, the General shouted again, " Cavalry 
 forward ! " and Armin Griinwald, son of the 
 Jewish horse-dealer, led that branch of our 
 army in review. They were all his father's 
 stable-boys, and the only equipment they had 
 which fitted them for the cavalry was a strong 
 stable odor. The captain was a tall, raw- 
 boned lad, and because his face was as 
 speckled as one of his father's horses, we 
 called him "Speckled Horse." His special 
 fame among us rested upon the fact that he
 
 The Fourth of July 47 
 
 never ate rye bread. He said it made him 
 sick at his stomach. 
 
 " Artillery forward ! " the General again 
 commanded, and Stephen Potoczck, the sole 
 representative of that branch of the army, 
 passed in review. He was assigned to the 
 artillery, or the artillery was assigned to him, 
 because he was the largest boy among us, 
 fat rather than tall, and had the reputation of 
 being able to consume more dumplings than 
 any boy in the village. They were so large 
 and hard that they resembled cannonballs, 
 and as " Cannonball " he was enscribed in the 
 archives of the Lincoln Army. 
 
 " Commissary Department forward 1 " And 
 I passed before the scrutinizing gaze of the 
 General. I carried a jar of dill pickles, a loaf 
 of freshly baked bread and a big lump of 
 sugar, all borrowed from my mother's pantry. 
 
 The review was eminently satisfactory in 
 view of the fact that the long anticipated 
 sandwiches, lemonade and ice-cream which 
 Uncle Joe was to provide, had all been con- 
 sumed by him in the form of Hungarian wine 
 and vodka.
 
 48 Uncle yoes Lincoln 
 
 One boy still remained in the ranks, unrec- 
 ognized and unreviewed. He was Rudolph, 
 a lame boy, the son of a poor, Jewish ped- 
 dler. Although he had a fighting soul, he 
 was a cripple. He limped before the Gen- 
 eral, took off his cap in unmilitary and hum- 
 ble fashion, and, in his peculiar, sad drawl, 
 said : " Mr. General, what will I be ? " 
 
 " You," replied the General, after his be- 
 helmeted head had sunk in deep meditation 
 upon his breast. " You," he replied with a 
 haughty sneer, " will be the veterans." 
 
 "Veterans," Rudolph asked, encouraged 
 by the high-sounding word, " and what do 
 they do ? " 
 
 "Veterans are the cripples who are no 
 earthly good in the army," was the reply. 
 
 The poor boy's face grew red, then pale ; 
 his big lower lip quivered as if he were say- 
 ing something to himself which he dare not 
 say aloud, and he stepped back into the ranks 
 followed by the laughter of the whole, cruel 
 army. 
 
 After the review the General gave us our 
 marching orders. Our object was the Rus-
 
 The Fourth of July 49 
 
 sian Hill which was to be taken by storm. 
 We were to march down the Kunovszka 
 Ulitza (main street), past the court-house, 
 through the narrow lane which led to the 
 creek, and also served as an open sewer, and 
 then in gallop up the Hill. 
 
 The marching orders were carried out. 
 We passed by the court-house, and the seat 
 of the government of our district, cruel and 
 corrupt though it knew itself to be, did not 
 tremble. The gendarmes who kept guard 
 did not notice us, though we defiantly whis- 
 tled Yankee Doodle and waved the flag of the 
 American Republic. We crossed the pottock 
 (creek) without mishap, and clambered up 
 the Russian Hill at a gallop, leaving the 
 General and Rudolph in the rear. 
 
 We never knew just how it happened, but 
 as we looked back we saw the General with 
 Rudolph on top of him, scratching, biting, 
 and beating him. Tearing his uniform, and 
 snatching his sword from under him, he 
 threw it down the Hill, then he himself rolled 
 down its grassy slope, and when he had 
 reached a safe distance, he shouted at us a
 
 50 Ujicle Joes Lincoln 
 
 derisive good-bye, accompanied by a well- 
 known gesture in which both his outstretched 
 hands and his nose had a part. 
 
 The General finally reached us minus his 
 sword, a few inches of gold braid and several 
 brass buttons. His hands and face were 
 badly scratched and bleeding, he was crying, 
 and his nose needed wiping. He was indeed 
 a defeated General, defeated by a veteran 
 who was " no earthly good in an army." 
 
 Without being ordered by my superior 
 officer, I sent the cavalry down the Hill to 
 capture the lame boy and recover the Gen- 
 eral's sword. Then I applied " First Aid " 
 by lending the General my handkerchief. 
 The cavalry returned without the deserter 
 and desecrater of the head of our army, but 
 did bring the sword, and with the return of 
 the symbol of his power, he again took com- 
 mand, and the Russian Hill at the edge of 
 our town resumed historic importance after 
 fifty years or more of obscurity. It became 
 the center of our celebration, and might well 
 have been rebaptized, Liberty Hill.
 
 Ill 
 
 Tells How it Ended in a Miracle 
 
 " TT "I" ILLS are good for slidin' down on " 
 2 is the boy's view of the use of a 
 hill, and he is right. That is just 
 what the Russian Hill had been used for by 
 several generations of boys, and they never 
 knew or cared to know that it had a history. 
 We, I mean the boys of my generation, dis- 
 covered its historic importance. Every dis- 
 coverer, however, follows the path marked 
 out for him by those who were within sight 
 of the promised land and did not enter it, 
 like the great prophet and lawgiver, Moses. 
 
 The boys who slid down that Russian Hill 
 before us wore it smoother and smoother, so 
 that we finally followed in the groove upon 
 which they had worn out certain parts of 
 their trousers. Our inheritance was a track 
 as smooth and white as if it had been made
 
 52 Uncle "Joes Lincoln 
 
 of ivory, and when our impress had for a 
 long time been made upon it, particles of the 
 white substance became dislodged, and we 
 found them to be bones ; small bones at first 
 fingers and teeth ; then larger ones, such 
 as arms and thigh bones. They were un- 
 mistakably human remains. This was in- 
 deed a discovery, which gave us all the thrills 
 that an army in the making needed. 
 
 Of course we had dug a cave in its side. 
 Every boy at one time or another has dug 
 a cave ; I suppose because ages and ages 
 ago his ancestors had to live in caves, and 
 the first thing a boy learned to do was to dig 
 or help dig for a place in which to live. It 
 sort of got into his blood, and now he has to 
 do it. It is rare, however, that the average 
 boy who plays soldier, or brigand, has such a 
 cave as we dug for ourselves into the side of 
 Russian Hill. The first few spadefuls yielded 
 nothing but small human bones, then we 
 struck steel, and a rusty gun, which none of 
 us dared touch for fear it would go off. We 
 were not afraid of the small silver and large 
 copper coins which our cave yielded us, but
 
 Tells How it Ended in a Miracle 5 3 
 
 we were frightened to death when we struck 
 our first skull. 
 
 The whole army was on the run except 
 Yanczy Pal. His brave ancestors, who had 
 turned many a good head into just such a 
 skull, had bequeathed him their courage. 
 He did not flinch when a little later we un- 
 earthed a whole skeleton, and with the aid of 
 Pavel Chorvat who, being a blacksmith's 
 son, was also made of fairly stern stuff, made 
 the skeleton rather presentable by binding it 
 together with strong wire. 
 
 Now we not only had a cave, but we had 
 a big secret, and such a secret ! A real skel- 
 eton of our own 1 
 
 Uncle Joe told us that in America secret 
 societies used skeletons in their initiations, 
 and so every boy who joined our army was 
 initiated by having the gruesome thing 
 flashed at him when he entered the cave ; 
 then with his hand touching the skull he had 
 to take an oath that he would not betray us, 
 on penalty of his life. 
 
 After the inglorious interruption caused by 
 the temporary defeat of Yanczy Pal, the next
 
 54 Uncle "Joe's Lincoln 
 
 item on the program was in order : namely, 
 the picnic; but instead of the mysterious 
 sandwiches, and the unbelievable ice-cream, 
 we had to content ourselves with dill pickles 
 and water which we drew from a near-by 
 well. To this we added sugar and some 
 artificial coloring ; for we were told by Uncle 
 Joe that the really patriotic lemonade was 
 generously tinted. 
 
 After we had disposed of these delectable 
 refreshments we made speeches, indulging 
 in the repetition of big words, such as The 
 Union, Freedom, and Democracy ; words 
 which we had caught from Uncle Joe, and 
 which we understood about as well as many 
 older people to whom they were not so new. 
 Our oratorical passion being satisfied, we 
 planned for the burning of the fireworks, the 
 only tangible contribution made by Uncle 
 Joe to our celebration. 
 
 It was decided that I was to bring the box, 
 which no one but myself had as yet seen, 
 to the market-place. Yanczy Pal, being a 
 good Roman Catholic, decreed that to be 
 perfectly safe the fireworks must be set off
 
 Tells How it Ended in a Miracle 5 5 
 
 under the protection of the statue of St. 
 Florian, who was the heavenly guardian 
 against fire. When the rockets had done 
 their worst in frightening the people, espe- 
 cially the minions of the law, we were to 
 rush through the streets proclaiming freedom 
 for the Slovaks, who were in greatest need 
 of liberation, being the poorest and most 
 oppressed of our population. 
 
 Before we left for our homes to await the 
 darkness, each member was again sworn to 
 a secrecy which it was difficult to keep ; for 
 the secret was so big that it threatened to 
 leak from such small vessels as we were. 
 Moreover, we all smelled of the cave, having 
 lingered in it much longer than usual ; fur- 
 thermore, dill pickles and artificially colored 
 water, drawn from a long-neglected and 
 tainted well, were playing havoc with our 
 stomachs. 
 
 When I reached home, my dog came run- 
 ning out to greet me as usual, but after the 
 first embrace he dropped his tail between his 
 legs, stuck his snout into the ground and 
 dug and dug as if he were burying some-
 
 56 Uncle Joe's Lincoln 
 
 thing. Not being able to get rid of the dis- 
 agreeable odor that way, he looked at me 
 reproachfully as if to say : " Where under 
 the sun have you gathered up so much bad 
 smell?" 
 
 My sister asked no questions when she 
 met me at the door. She closed it in my 
 face and I went to the kitchen. There, our 
 cook told me that I smelled exactly like the 
 ghost which she once met at midnight, who 
 told her that he was a tormented soul escaped 
 from Hell. Then she ran to her room and 
 brought back a bottle of holy water with 
 which she sprinkled me. When that was 
 of no avail she very roughly took me by the 
 nape of my neck and pushed me out into 
 the wood-shed. I was not sorry to be alone, 
 for things were happening to me which one 
 does not care to have happen in public. 
 The dill pickles and the tainted water be- 
 came very obtrusive, and I had a solemn 
 hour of it, first fearing I was going to die 
 and then as I grew still worse, hoping I 
 should die ; for life just then was a frightful 
 torture. Long before the sun had set I was
 
 Tells How it Ended in a Miracle 57 
 
 found, made to undress in the wood-shed, 
 hustled to my room and put to bed. 
 
 Eight o'clock came. Minus my clothing I 
 lay between two feather beds, with the zenith 
 of the Fourth of July celebration approach- 
 ing. Of course I had to be there, being the 
 only one who knew where the fireworks were ; 
 so in spite of the fact that I felt as sick as a 
 boy is capable of feeling when his digestive 
 apparatus is in active revolution, I crept 
 stealthily out. After assuring myself that 
 Uncle Joe was still in the twilight zone be- 
 tween drunkenness and sobriety, and that no 
 aid could be expected from him, I went to the 
 granary and dug the box of fireworks out of 
 the grain. I carried it to the market-place 
 and to the sheltering shadow of St. Florian 
 who, with his bucket carved in stone, stood 
 ready to protect the town from its impending 
 doom. Less than half our army had gath- 
 ered. All looked pale and seemed in no 
 mood for liberating anybody. 
 
 Cannonball was absent, so our whole artil- 
 lery was out of commission. The cavalry, 
 too, was minus its Jewish captain only the
 
 58 Uncle Joe's Lincoln 
 
 Gypsy boys had come, for they were used to 
 bad smells, and their stomachs being copper 
 lined were proof against anything. 
 
 Yanczy Pal, our brave General, was pres- 
 ent, and Pavel Chorvat, who had drunk worse 
 things than tainted sugar water, also ap- 
 peared. There were enough of us to set off 
 the fireworks although there were too few of 
 us to strike terror to the hearts of the op- 
 pressors. 
 
 The night watchman was making his first 
 round. He carried a wooden horn, and a 
 long, old-fashioned halibard was his weapon. 
 He tooted the hours from nine till four, sol- 
 emnly warning all sinners, thieves and rob- 
 bers to get out of his way, and they usually 
 did. We waited till we but faintly heard him 
 at the other end of the Kunovszka Ulitza. 
 We heard him sing his pious song commit- 
 ting the people to the care of the heavenly 
 powers. 
 
 " The night has come to weary men, 
 To rest the tired Christian ; 
 To Lutherans, Gypsies and to Jews, 
 I bring this blessed Christian news.
 
 Tells How it Ended in a Miracle 59 
 
 If you are poor, oh ! worry not, 
 To suffer is man's earthly lot ; 
 If rich do not the poor neglect, 
 St. Florian will your house protect." 
 
 Knowing that after that pious provision for 
 mankind he would spend an hour at the inn, 
 we proceeded with our celebration though 
 not without fear and trembling. Yanczy Pal 
 lighted the first and last match, crossing him- 
 self and committing the town to the care of 
 St. Florian, as from his outstretched hand a 
 monster serpent leaped hissing toward the 
 sky and from its mouth spewed bombs of 
 many colors which fell across the church 
 steeple and poured a rain of fire upon the 
 thatched roofs of the town. Then that hap- 
 pened, which so often has happened in 
 the United States, before the Fourth of July 
 became safe and sane. The entire contents 
 of the box went into the air at once; for 
 Yanczy Pal had dropped the unextinguished 
 match into it. Immediately we were envel- 
 oped in whirling wheels and hissing serpents. 
 Never since the Prussians had taken the 
 town had there been heard such a dreadful
 
 60 Uncle Joe's Lincoln 
 
 cannonade. Doors were opened, cries of 
 alarm were heard and men were running 
 toward St. Florian, who was gloriously il- 
 lumined by the elements which he was sup- 
 posed to control. 
 
 In spite of our paralyzing fear we ran, but 
 were too frightened to shout the " Battle Cry 
 of Freedom." Fortunately we were not very 
 far from the little alley which led to Russian 
 Hill. We crossed the creek in the dark, 
 found our way to Russian Hill by the light 
 of the unpitying stars, and then went into 
 hiding in our sheltering cave, more gruesome 
 than ever. My comrades began to whimper, 
 for some of them suffered from minor burns, 
 and more, from fear. 
 
 None of us dared return to our homes 
 except the Gypsy boys, who, their homes 
 being in the open, did not have to fear creak- 
 ing hinges and telltale stairs. The rest of us 
 huddled close together and awaited develop- 
 ments. We heard the watchman blow the 
 tenth hour, then in a pious song call down 
 the curses of Heaven upon all unrepentant 
 sinners who plan mischief in the dark
 
 Tells How it Ended in a Miracle 6 1 
 
 " Oh, ye who have transgressed to-night, 
 Ye cannot be secure in flight. 
 The power of God, or arm of State 
 Will reacli you ere the night is late. 
 Come forth out of your hiding-place 
 While yet there is forgiving grace, 
 Oh, hear while 1 the hour blow 
 Or else you'll go to Hell below." 
 
 We knew he meant us and silently awaited 
 the judgment of Heaven. We did not have 
 long to wait. The murmur of voices became 
 audible in the distance, and Yanczy Pal, the 
 bravest of us, who was guarding the Hill, 
 reported lights hurrying in our direction. 
 They came nearer and nearer and encircled 
 the Hill. Then we heard the voice of trea- 
 son. Rudolph the lame was leading the 
 gendarmes toward the cave and pointing out 
 the opening. We were betrayed, but not 
 yet defeated. We dragged the skeleton to 
 the opening of the cave. I say we, although 
 no one was brave enough to do it but Yanczy 
 Pal. It broke into fragments as he pulled it, 
 but enough remained to guard the entrance 
 to our fortress. 
 
 We were sheltered behind the frame of the 
 man who at one time was a brave soldier,
 
 62 Uncle jfoe's Lincoln 
 
 and for a minute or more his defense was a 
 mighty tower. 
 
 The first gendarme who approached the 
 cave gave a fierce yell when he faced the 
 grinning skull, then ran headlong down the 
 Hill. We heard a scampering of many feet 
 and saw the lights moving away from us. 
 Another gendarme approached. He pushed 
 aside the skeleton, and then our brave General 
 threw at him another frightful object. While 
 he was not hurt, he almost turned turtle in 
 his flight, his lantern dropped to the ground 
 and he was swallowed by the darkness. 
 
 We heard again the voice of the traitor 
 telling the enemy not to be afraid, that he 
 knew it was just a bunch of boys, and he 
 named us. Then the flood broke upon us. 
 Again lights approached the opening of the 
 cave but now we had no more skulls to 
 throw. Faintly we could see the watchman 
 with his ancient weapon pointed at us. Be- 
 hind him came the gendarmes and we knew 
 that the battle was lost. We were dragged 
 out, taken to the court-house, locked up in a 
 filthy hole, and our parents were sent for.
 
 Tells How it Ended in a Miracle 6 3 
 
 In their presence we were chastised in the 
 way and in the place boys have been chas- 
 tised from the beginning of the world. Also 
 we were told what all boys are told and none 
 believe that it " hurt our parents more than 
 it did us." 
 
 Our unfortunate parents were assessed a 
 proper fine which they paid, after which we 
 went home, sadder and wiser but undaunted ; 
 for I managed to whisper to Yanczy Pal that 
 Uncle Joe had told me that the Lincoln Army 
 suffered defeat many a time, that the war 
 lasted four years and was finally won. 
 
 " Yes," he replied, " that's so." Then he 
 added, " Basama Teremtete " on the traitor. 
 
 When we reached home I was once more 
 punished and I felt so sick that I did not 
 need to be sent to bed. When at last I fell 
 asleep I dreamed dreadful dreams of skele- 
 tons and slaughter ; of the Russian Hill col- 
 lapsing and falling right on my stomach. 
 Rudolph the lame was riding it as if it were 
 a hobby horse, and calling my attention to 
 the fact that veterans were good for some- 
 thing after all.
 
 64 Uncle Joe's Lincoln 
 
 Uncle Joe was there and I could hear him 
 sob as if his heart would break. Gradually 
 the dream seemed to fade away. I remem- 
 ber how relieved I felt that it was only a 
 dream. I was not in jail but in my room, 
 safe between two feather beds. However, I 
 was puzzled, because while all the rest of the 
 dream had faded, Uncle Joe was there. His 
 hand was softly touching my curls and he 
 was sobbing, his head buried in one of the 
 feather beds. I called him by name. His 
 crutch, which was leaning against the bed, 
 fell, as he rose on his one leg, evidently 
 startled by my voice ; then his whole body 
 seemed to collapse over me as he embraced 
 me. Between sobs he told me that I had had 
 typhoid fever for many weeks and that they 
 did not expect me to live. Had I died he 
 would have committed suicide ; for he would 
 have been my murderer. 
 
 The doctor came and Uncle Joe was sent 
 from the room for fear he would excite me 
 too much. In a few minutes he came hob- 
 bling back and knocked at the door, asking 
 permission to give me something. He
 
 Tells How it Ended in a Miracle 65 
 
 pressed a piece of paper into my hands but 
 I felt too weak to read it. I fell asleep and 
 slept the first dreamless sleep for many a 
 day. When I woke the note was still in my 
 hand, moist from perspiration. Slowly I un- 
 folded it. " My dear Yingelle (little boy), 
 get well as quickly as you can. Please for- 
 give me for drinking up your Fourth of 
 July. I am glad I did not swallow the fire- 
 works although my insides felt as if I had 
 swallowed them. I will never drink another 
 drop of liquor, so help me Abraham Lin- 
 coln." 
 
 Thus in spite of the fact that the Fourth of 
 July did not liberate anybody but ended in 
 a catastrophe, including several cases of 
 typhoid fever, it was nevertheless a glorious 
 and never-to-be-forgotten day ; for the peas- 
 ants declared that a miracle had happened. 
 St. Florian had protected the town from fire 
 which had rained from Heaven upon the 
 thatched roofs of their isbas, and Uncle Joe 
 stayed sober until but that is another story ; 
 for one cannot expect two miracles to hap- 
 pen in one day.
 
 IV 
 
 The Burial of a Hill, when Abraham 
 Lincoln's Famous Speech again Be- 
 came Famous 
 
 OUR town was the seat of govern- 
 ment for a large district, and the 
 aristocrats were the officials, or the 
 officials were the aristocrats either would be 
 correct. Judges, tax assay ers, collectors and 
 commanders of gendarmes gave the town 
 both dignity and revenue, and it was sadly 
 in need of both. 
 
 The official most envied by us was the 
 Kisbiro, who discharged a multiplicity of 
 functions, being justice of the peace, jailor 
 and town crier. He looked about ten feet 
 tall to boys of our size ; but that he was 
 seven feet I know, for the deaf and dumb 
 tailor who made his clothes also made mine. 
 
 As he could not read even figures, he meas- 
 66
 
 The Burial of a Hill 67 
 
 ured the length of his patrons against the 
 wall, and I took official measurement of the 
 Kisbirds height with a yardstick. 
 
 Whether he had sufficient judicial wisdom 
 to be justice of the peace I do not know ; but 
 he looked fierce enough to be a jailor ; he 
 could beat a drum so that it sounded like a 
 small thunder-storm, and he announced the 
 new laws and regulations as if he were talk- 
 ing from Mount Sinai. We envied him 
 neither his size nor his many offices, but we 
 did envy him his great big drum ; for it was 
 the one thing our army needed to be really 
 an army. Who knows hovr we might have 
 stirred the world for liberty, had we pos- 
 sessed that elemental musical instrument ? 
 
 At the first, imperious beats of his drum 
 on a certain morning, some time after the 
 community had recovered from its first 
 Fourth of July celebration, old and young 
 rushed into the street to hear the latest of- 
 ficial announcement. " By command of the 
 Velky moshny " (which, literally translated, 
 means high and mighty) " Foe Ispan, there 
 will be a holiday on next Tuesday. All
 
 68 Uncle 'Joe s Lincoln 
 
 stores, shops and schools are to be closed 
 from nine till" twelve." That was good news. 
 
 He also commanded by the same high 
 authority that no water should be drawn 
 from the wells in the vicinity of Russian 
 Hill, which Hill would be demolished on 
 that day, and its contents officially reburied 
 in consecrated ground. That was bad news, 
 for we should lose a perfectly good cave and 
 a famous sliding place. 
 
 Russian Hill, which was thus officially to 
 go out of existence, had a history long before 
 we gave it importance by our Fourth of July 
 celebration, and as it is not entirely uncon- 
 nected with modern events, I may as well 
 tell about it now. 
 
 Our country was, politically, the Austro- 
 Hungarian Monarchy. It was made up of 
 two badly matched halves each wanting to 
 be the whole, and that had been the cause of 
 much friction, which in 1848 ended in a con- 
 flagration. Our half of Hungary was in re- 
 volt against the other half, and its people set 
 up a separate government under a great 
 patriot whose name was Lajos Kossuth. He
 
 The Burial of a Hill 69 
 
 had to flee from his country and for a while 
 lived in the United States and was treated 
 as a guest of the nation. He spoke before 
 Congress, and at a banquet given him, Dan- 
 iel Webster made an eloquent speech, eulo- 
 gizing this famous Hungarian exile. 
 
 The Austrian government was unable to 
 conquer the revolting Hungarians, so the 
 Emperor asked the Czar of Russia to send 
 his troops to help him. Russia and Austria 
 have been foes and allies so often that it 
 keeps boys wondering whether nations have 
 any more sense than youngsters, who give 
 each other a black eye one day, and the next 
 day nibble at the same ice-cream cone. The 
 Czar despatched his soldiers, and they fought 
 the revolutionists near the town where we 
 lived. 
 
 The heroic dead, Russians, Croatians, 
 Hungarians and what not, were buried to- 
 gether, and their mass grave was called 
 Russian Hill ; but its historic importance was 
 almost forgotten until we recalled it to the 
 authorities. 
 
 That it had been a menace to the health
 
 70 Uncle Joe's Lincoln 
 
 of the community had to be found out by an 
 epidemic of typhoid fever, a direct result of 
 our celebration, which therefore was justified. 
 With the decision to bury the dead in conse- 
 crated ground, there arose anew the prob- 
 lems which ever disturbed our never peaceful 
 religious atmosphere. 
 
 There were three cemeteries in which the 
 three religious communions buried their 
 dead, Roman Catholics, Protestants and 
 Jews ; and though not always overcareful 
 where or how their people lived, they were 
 very particular about where they were bur- 
 ied ; so the reinterment of the remains in 
 Russian Hill led to a violent quarrel, which 
 was finally left to the government for settle- 
 ment. As government settlement involved 
 the usual delay, I had time fully to recover 
 and the community had time to forget ; so I 
 had an important part in the public ceremony 
 in spite of the fact that a few months before 
 I had been a fugitive from justice. 
 
 By competitive trial I was chosen to make 
 a speech on behalf of the school children, on 
 that solemnly festal occasion. All my con-
 
 The Burial of a Hill 7 1 
 
 servative relatives were opposed to my 
 taking part, because the government de- 
 cided that the Roman Catholic cemetery 
 had a better claim to the dead than that 
 of any other faith. My mother consented 
 to my participation In the exercises because 
 Uncle Joe, who during his long sojourn in 
 the United States had lost whatever religious 
 scruples he may have had, pointed out the 
 fact that it was the patriotic and not the 
 religious phase of the occasion which I was 
 to represent. After all, what are the objec- 
 tions of Orthodox relatives compared with 
 one's chance to make a speech before the 
 dignitaries of one's little but significant 
 world ? 
 
 The speech I was to deliver was written 
 for me by my teacher, and in Uncle Joe's 
 eyes it had three faults. First, it was too 
 long ; second, it was full of big words, hard 
 to pronounce and harder to understand ; 
 third, it was written in an antagonistic spirit, 
 exalting one national group over the other 
 and therefore calculated to create bad feeling. 
 
 So Uncle Joe took it upon himself to ab-
 
 72 Uncle yoe's Lincoln 
 
 breviate and simplify it, which he did so 
 effectively that, when under his training I 
 had learned it, not a bit of the original 
 speech remained. To this day I remember 
 every word of it ; for what one stores in one's 
 brain when very young is rarely forgotten, 
 and those words had their permanent effect 
 upon my diction as well as upon my thought. 
 Each simple sentence was as clear as if cut 
 into steel, the thoughts were sublime, and 
 wooed me by their kindly spirit. 
 
 I have always felt profoundly grateful to 
 Uncle Joe for writing that speech ; although 
 I was severely punished for using it instead 
 of the one prepared for me. It took me 
 twenty years or more to find out that Uncle 
 Joe was a plagiarist ; but I have forgiven 
 him, and I am sure that Abraham Lincoln 
 has, for in his brain and heart the thoughts 
 were conceived. No doubt it was the first 
 time that his words were heard in our coun- 
 try, and they were like balm upon the fester- 
 ing wounds of our racial body, so distressed 
 by jealousies, hates and prejudices. One 
 sentence of that speech has helped me more
 
 The Burial of a Hill 73 
 
 than anything I have since read, outside the 
 Bible ; but I would anticipate should I quote 
 it now. 
 
 Other members of the Lincoln Army had 
 a share in the proceedings. Yanczy Pal in 
 his gorgeous uniform led the procession of 
 school children, and acted as master of cere- 
 monies during the exercises conducted by 
 them. 
 
 " Cannonball " carried a wreath which en- 
 circled his whole body, and the heat and dust 
 made him look like an animated fried cake. 
 
 " Speckled Horse " proudly bore the 
 school flag; so on the whole, the Lincoln 
 Army did not fare badly in the distribution 
 of honors. 
 
 I was proud, but most unhappy. I wore a 
 new suit of clothes ; for though I had been 
 told that I was not to have any after ruining 
 my best suit in our late campaign, this offi- 
 cial occasion demanded one. It was made 
 large enough in anticipation of my growth, 
 and heavy enough in preparation for the 
 coming autumn. I also wore new shoes 
 with patent leather tips, and it was a hot,
 
 74 Uncle Joes Lincoln 
 
 sultry day. The heat seemed to expand my 
 suit and contract my shoes, and my torment 
 was increased by the collar I wore. I had 
 not yet reached the age when I could boast 
 collars of my own, so that on state occasions 
 I wore one which was never intended for a 
 male being. It belonged to my sister. 
 Women evidently can stand all sorts of tor- 
 tures from their clothes tortures under 
 which the sterner sex wilts ; and that is ex- 
 actly what I did, I wilted, all of me. My 
 poor brain, in anticipation of the speech, my 
 collar and everything else except my shoes ; 
 they refused to wilt, but grew stiff as boiler 
 plate, and the hotter they grew, the more 
 unyielding they became, and I was in tor- 
 ment every minute. 
 
 All the ministers of the different religious 
 faiths took part, and to make sure that the 
 remains were properly buried, a priest of the 
 Greek Orthodox church, which was not rep- 
 resented among us, was imported for the 
 occasion. He officiated for nearly two hours, 
 most of the time in a language which no one 
 understood, so that I was not the only suf-
 
 The Burial of a Hill 75 
 
 ferer. When he finished, in my anxiety to 
 be done, I thought Yanczy Pal signalled that 
 it was my turn, but instead the choir was to 
 sing. So while I ascended the steps to the 
 platform, they sang a beautiful although sad 
 anthem, which like all anthems was largely 
 the repetition of one phrase : " Their weary 
 feet are at rest, are at rest." I felt nothing 
 but feet and saw nothing but steps, of which 
 there seemed to be a thousand. At last the 
 choir ceased to glorify the feet of the dead 
 and my chance came. I saw Uncle Joe crowd- 
 ing close to the platform. He planted him- 
 self directly in front of me ; for he had 
 pinned the speech to his Grand Army hat 
 which he held so that in case my memory 
 failed me, I could read it. 
 
 The precaution was not necessary. The 
 speech had become part of me. It was in- 
 spired by Lincoln's Gettysburg address, 
 most of which it embodied, and was as ap- 
 plicable then as it was at the national ceme- 
 tery when the survivors of our Civil War 
 were asked to rededicate themselves to the 
 Union.
 
 76 Uncle Joe's Lincoln 
 
 There were also sentences from other ad- 
 dresses, more or less aptly interwoven, and 
 the closing words were Lincoln's immortal , 
 phrase : " With ' malice toward none, and, 
 charity toward all." 
 
 I was not old enough to know the full 
 meaning of it, but I think I sensed it, and my 
 audience received it with its full, vibrating 
 force. When I finished, there was a silence 
 and then a shout, quite out of keeping with 
 funerals. The crowd surged around me. 
 The Greek Orthodox priest embraced me till 
 I seemed suffocated in his embroidered vest- 
 ments ; the Lutheran pastor shook my hand 
 and the Roman Catholic priest extended his 
 for me to kiss. After so democratic an ad- 
 dress I was in no mood for that, but I shook 
 it, much to his discomfiture. 
 
 A dear lady of the nobility anointed me 
 with her tears, while another nearly spoiled 
 my new suit by traces of rouge. All the 
 time I was eager to escape my large suit, my 
 small shoes and my collar, whose pins had 
 broken loose from their moorings and were 
 stabbing me.
 
 The Burial of a Hill 77 
 
 When I escaped my admirers I faced the 
 reverse side of the shield. The teacher who 
 had written my speech took me by my wilted 
 collar and shook me until my teeth chat- 
 tered, telling me to stay after school the next 
 day to be punished. 
 
 At last under the shelter of a blooming 
 acacia tree, I divested myself of my new 
 shoes, my cruel collar and heavy coat. I 
 was joined by " Cannonball," " Speckled 
 Horse " and Yanczy Pal, who then and there 
 demonstrated how futile the noble thoughts 
 of the best of men may be. 
 
 The officers of the Lincoln Army, assem- 
 bled for the first time since their betrayal by 
 Rudolph the lame, began planning how to 
 wreak vengeance upon him. How could I 
 enter into their schemes, with that glorious 
 closing sentence still vibrating in my ears, 
 like the notes of a hymn amid the arches of 
 some great cathedral 
 
 " With malice toward none, with charity 
 toward all"
 
 V 
 
 In Which the Spirit of Abraham Lincoln 
 Triumphs over That of Napoleon 
 Bonaparte 
 
 YANCZY PAL, be it understood, was 
 an aristocrat, and came from a very 
 illustrious family. His warrior an- 
 cestors as a reward for their services received 
 much land from the king. They built them- 
 selves a big house which was called a 
 Castell. It had two stories, and was for a 
 long time the only building in our town 
 which boasted such dizzy heights. It con- 
 tained many rooms which seemed to us 
 children royal in their appointments ; al- 
 though when Yanczy Pal was born in one 
 of them, their splendor had faded. The tap- 
 estried walls were dingy, and the upholstered 
 furniture was so worn that the springs pro- 
 truded like the ribs of a lean cow. The 
 
 ancestral portraits which adorned the walls 
 78
 
 The Spirit of Abraham Lincoln 79 
 
 looked dull and their gilded frames were 
 tarnished and crumbling. 
 
 To us of the Lincoln Army not born in 
 two-story buildings and with no illustrious 
 ancestors, it was inspiring ; and it was a great 
 day in our lives when we were permitted to 
 walk over the waxed floors and gaze our fill 
 at the wonderful sights. 
 
 There were a few of those things which 
 especially fascinated me, and one was a 
 piano. I suspect that if I should see it now, 
 it would look small, old-fashioned and insig- 
 nificant, and would sound like an old tin pan 
 if I heard it ; but then it seemed to me the 
 most remarkable and most mysterious thing 
 I had ever seen, and heavenly harps played 
 by some angelic musician would not have 
 sounded half so sweet as when Yanczy Pal's 
 older sister played the Blue Danube Waltz 
 on that battered instrument. 
 
 Still a greater fascination than that of the 
 piano was exercised over me by a suit of 
 mail, once worn by Yanczy Pal's heroic an- 
 cestors. It was so huge that only a giant 
 could have carried it, and stood in the State
 
 80 Uncle Joes Lincoln 
 
 room, or that which had served as one. At 
 the time of which I am writing it was used as 
 a bedchamber when high State officials or 
 military officers visited our district. Later, 
 when I read the romances of Walter Scott, 
 they had the same kind of influence over 
 me as this armor. It stimulated my im- 
 agination, and many a fantastic story swept 
 through my brain as I gazed at the suit of 
 mail. I thought of castles and kings, the 
 clash of arms ; gallant knights, and lance 
 thrusts for fair ladies. I created for myself a 
 world of my own in which I lived every time 
 I had a chance to look at that ancient relic. 
 
 The greatest thrill which the Castell 
 afforded me and which made my rather 
 dreary world very exciting, was a secret pas- 
 sage which Yanczy Pal and I discovered. A 
 castle wouldn't be a castle without a secret 
 passage, and a boy's life would be without 
 one of its supreme experiences without his 
 knowing or reading of it. The secret pas- 
 sage in the Castell led from the panelled 
 State room out into the garden, and cruel 
 gossip had it that it was used by Yanczy
 
 The Spirit of Abraham Lincoln 81 
 
 Pal's spendthrift ancestors to escape from 
 their creditors. 
 
 In the park at the rear was the tenpin alley, 
 and thither at the appointed time we found 
 our way across devious paths ; for Yanczy 
 Pal's parents were trying to shield their aris- 
 tocratic son from contact with us plebeians. 
 The tenpin alley itself was overgrown by 
 weeds, and so uneven that the tenpins were 
 battered and hadn't much leg' to stand on. 
 They were ever so much easier to knock 
 down than to put up, and the strong jarring 
 of the balls usually sent them all into a heap. 
 The balls were oval from wear, and so split 
 and gouged that to my imagination they 
 suggested skulls ; therefore when the Lincoln 
 Army gathered that afternoon, we all renewed 
 our vows and pledged our lives, with our 
 hands upon the tenpin balls. 
 
 The army, since its defeat, was badly crip- 
 pled in numbers and none of us dared appear 
 in uniform. There are cowards everywhere, 
 even in the Lincoln Army, and many of its 
 former members failed to respond to their 
 names when the General once more reviewed
 
 82 Uncle Joe's Lincoln 
 
 us. Evidently he had seen a picture of the 
 defeated Napoleon, and I suspected that he 
 was imitating him, as he stood before us, his 
 head on his breast, one hand behind his 
 back, and one between the buttons of his 
 coat, his hat askew, Napoleon fashion. 
 
 Then he addressed us, with the echoes of 
 the funeral orations still in his mind. It was 
 all very eloquent and moving. There was 
 only one object before us and that had to 
 be speedily accomplished vengeance on the 
 traitor. Armin Griinwald and Cannonball 
 were ordered to bring the lame boy dead or 
 alive, and the rest of us remained to plan the 
 manner of his punishment. I cannot quite 
 imagine what we thought about the matter. 
 I know I had a frightful horror of death, and 
 the very word created in my mind an un- 
 pleasant sensation ; so to deliberately plan 
 the death of another human being must have 
 been repellent and horrible. I remember 
 that one boy, Pavel Cliorvat, the black- 
 smith's son, suggested pieces of sulphur 
 matches soaked in whisky ; another one pro- 
 posed poisonous mushrooms. Shooting and
 
 The Spirit of Abraham Lincoln 83 
 
 hanging were suggested ; but we had no 
 firearms, and hanging seemed very cruel. 
 When the vote was taken, the poisonous 
 mushrooms carried the day, and I, as the 
 Commissary Department, was ordered to 
 procure them immediately. 
 
 Not far from the tenpin alley was a famous 
 tree. It was so large that ten boys hand in 
 hand could not span it, and its height seemed 
 to reach the clouds, like the spire of some 
 great cathedral. It was called the Hussite 
 tree, because it was believed that the Hus- 
 sites, a persecuted religious sect, once wor- 
 shipped under it. Mushrooms in abundance 
 grew around it. The dampness which envel- 
 oped me when I began looking for them 
 must have cooled my vengeful spirit, and 
 my horror of death led me to select such of 
 the fungi as I knew not to be poisonous. 
 When I returned to the army, it had been 
 suggested that we all hide in the branches 
 of the Hussite tree, and when our brave 
 squadron, which had gone for the traitor, 
 returned with him, we should appear sud- 
 denly with the cry : " Death to the traitor I "
 
 84 Uncle "Joe's Lincoln 
 
 Before very long we heard the expedition 
 returning, bringing Rudolph. He had been 
 taken by guile, not knowing of the reorgani- 
 zation of the army, and walked into the trap 
 we had laid, unconscious of what awaited 
 him. As soon as he came under the tree 
 we shouted together, " Death to the traitor I " 
 and climbing down as fast as we could, en- 
 circled our victim. He was terribly fright- 
 ened and tried to run away. Fear added to 
 his strength and it took the combined efforts 
 of the army to drag him to the tenpin alley 
 where his punishment was to be meted out. 
 His face was red from rage. He struggled 
 desperately, scratching, kicking and spitting, 
 and Yanczy Pal's announcement that he was 
 forthwith to be executed drove the poor fel- 
 low into a fit of hysterics. Fortunately I 
 remembered that Rudolph had taught me 
 " gibberish," a language which is sometimes 
 called " dog Latin." For two lessons I paid 
 him three old steel pens and a dill pickle. 
 
 In the hubbub I managed to tell him that 
 nothing would happen to him, but that he 
 must do exactly what he was commanded.
 
 The Spirit of Abraham Lincoln 8 5 
 
 He quieted down, and Yanczy Pal, again 
 assuming the Napoleonic attitude, harangued 
 the traitor, telling him of his own illustrious 
 ancestor, who cut off the heads of a whole 
 regiment of soldiers for insubordination, and 
 that with the same courage he would now 
 take the life of our betrayer. 
 
 " Executioner, come forward ! " he shouted 
 at me. I left the ranks and approaching my 
 victim, offered him the "cup of hemlock," 
 some water in which the mushrooms had 
 been soaked. To the consternation of his 
 tormentors he took the cup out of my hand 
 and drained it. I saw the look of horror 
 creeping from face to face ; no doubt the 
 boys were beginning to realize the cruelty of 
 it, or they were thinking of the consequences 
 to themselves. 
 
 I cannot help wondering whether I was not 
 posing, and wished to appear magnanimous. 
 At any rate I called the attention of the army 
 to the fact that Uncle Joe was a deserter and 
 was about to be shot when Abraham Lincoln 
 pardoned him, and that in all things we must 
 do what he had done. Every one was ready
 
 86 Uncle Joe's Lincoln 
 
 to forgive the offense, but the problem was 
 how to save the boy who had already drunk 
 the fatal poison. I suggested to the horri- 
 fied army that I had read somewhere that 
 if a person who has eaten poisonous mush- 
 rooms is soundly slapped in the face, it will 
 cure him. I was implored to do it, and to 
 do it quickly. With a solemn air, I walked 
 up to the lame boy, and told him that, 
 though he deserved death, in the name of 
 Abraham Lincoln we would forgive him, if 
 he would swear by one of the tenpin balls 
 that he would tell no one what had happened, 
 that he would rejoin the army, and hence- 
 forth be faithful. He so promised. 
 
 I am sure that Yanczy Pal was not quite 
 satisfied by the procedure for he once more 
 assumed the Napoleonic attitude, and again 
 talked of his noble ancestor who cut off the 
 heads of a whole regiment of soldiers. I, 
 too, acted a part, for I assumed the Lincoln 
 pose, as best I could. I repeated in a very 
 loud voice a sentence from the speech pre- 
 pared for me by Uncle Joe and for which I 
 received twenty lashes from the teacher whose
 
 j The Spirit of Abraham Lincoln 87 
 
 literary effort had been made useless. That 
 was the first, but not the last time I suffered 
 for the glorious sentiment it contained. 
 
 "With malice toward none and charity 
 toward all," I repeated ; then slapped the lame 
 boy soundly in the face, at the same time 
 telling him that he was both cured and for- 
 given. 
 
 As Rudolph did not die then and there, but 
 lived to be a useful and loyal member of the 
 Lincoln Army, I proved conclusively that 
 slapping a boy's face is a good antidote for 
 poisonous mushrooms, that charity is a good 
 cure for malice and that Abraham Lincoln 
 was a better man to follow than Napoleon or 
 Yanczy Pal's heroic and glorious ancestors. 
 
 In spite of the fact that all the members of 
 the Lincoln Army felt very happy in having 
 saved a human life and forgiven a traitor, 
 Yanczy Pal told us upon adjournment that 
 we were a lot of cowards and sissies. To 
 emphasize his disgust with us and especially 
 with me, he said " Basama Teremtete " three 
 times, then spat on the ground three times, 
 and once in my direction. He dismissed us
 
 88 Uncle Joe's Lincoln 
 
 and told us to appear in the same place on a 
 certain day (for the Hussite tree was to be 
 our headquarters), as he had resolved upon 
 far more thrilling adventures in the future. 
 From that time, however, our army was never 
 again as united as before ; for Yanczy Pal 
 became my enemy and Rudolph was my 
 friend The seeds of discord had been sown, 
 and the harvest was not so very far away.
 
 VI 
 
 A Real Tyrant is Put to Flight by an 
 Imitation Ghost 
 
 DEPRIVED of our cave we took to 
 the tree top. In the natural history 
 of man, the process is supposed to 
 be reversed. When man was living in the 
 tree tops, he naturally used his arms more than 
 his legs, just like the monkeys ; and when he 
 sprang down, and ran into a hole to hide 
 himself from his enemies, he began to use 
 his legs, and became ever so much more of a 
 man, and less of a monkey. Some of us had 
 not sprung very far, judging from the way 
 we took to the tree in whose branches we had 
 built ourselves a club-house. We came to- 
 gether to improve our minds, sadly in need 
 of it. We possessed only one book, a His- 
 tory of the United States, lent us by Uncle 
 
 Joe, who took great interest in our venture, 
 89
 
 90 Uncle Joe's Lincoln 
 
 but knew nothing about the mischief we were 
 concocting. 
 
 Uncle Joe had told us that Abraham Lin- 
 coln had not gone to school and that he edu- 
 cated himself out of books which he read 
 lying on the bare floor. While we would 
 have liked to do in all things as he did, es- 
 pecially in not going to school, the law and 
 our parents compelled us to go ; so we bor- 
 rowed whatever books we could, and pro- 
 ceeded to educate ourselves according to 
 Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 We had no public library and I doubt that 
 there were a hundred books in the town. 
 There were only two sources open to us ; one 
 of them was a loan library kept by the glazier, 
 who lived in one room, which was workshop, 
 living-room and library combined. The 
 books were largely yellowbacks of the cheap- 
 est and poorest kind. The other was the li- 
 brary shelves in the State room of Yanczy 
 Pal's home. These books were a curious 
 combination of a little bit of everything. 
 They were mostly religious books written in 
 Latin, so were not very useful in our educa-
 
 A Tyrant Put to Flight 91 
 
 tion, and we had to borrow them when no- 
 body was looking, which was not proper or 
 always easy. Nevertheless a deep impression 
 was made upon us by what we read, and the 
 mere handling of the books we could not un- 
 derstand left its influence. 
 
 It is over forty years since all this hap- 
 pened ; yet the other day when my boy 
 asked me what an automaton is, my mind 
 immediately jumped back forty years, and I 
 saw Pavel Chorvat, pockmarked, strong, ill- 
 smelling youth, to whom I had been reading 
 about a remarkable automaton which was 
 being exhibited in the capitals of Europe. It 
 was the topic of conversation at that period, 
 and we went to work at once to make one 
 out of the steel armor in Yanczy Pal's State 
 room. 
 
 We sneaked up our secret passage, Pavel 
 with a lot of wires and tools borrowed from 
 his father' s shop. I followed with the big 
 book which had in it the description of the 
 automaton. After many fruitless attempts, 
 he finally succeeded )in making the knight 
 Uft his steel hands, when we manipulated the
 
 92 Uncle Joes Lincoln 
 
 wires. It was Pavel's first step toward be- 
 coming an inventive genius, and it aroused 
 in all of us whatever mechanical skill we 
 possessed, and could couple with our rich 
 imaginations. 
 
 Now, as I think back to that period, I 
 realize how scant our supply of books was, 
 and how inappropriate those we did read ; 
 also how deep was the impression which 
 they made upon our minds. Whenever I go 
 to a public library and see the stacks of 
 books, the free access to them, rooms for the 
 children, and the librarians especially trained 
 to care for their intellectual needs, I wonder 
 whether as we had too little, the children now 
 may not have too much, and whether the 
 advantage was not ours. 
 
 We certainly did appreciate the printed 
 page, and in an unsystematic way came to 
 know that there was a larger world than our 
 own, and^thatmuch could be learned about it 
 through books. Above all else it gave us 
 new ideals, which in our confused way we 
 tried to realize. Yanczy Pal and a few others 
 chafed under this unsoldier-like existence,
 
 A Tyrant Put to Plight 93 
 
 and more than once when I read aloud, I 
 noticed that they were restless and did not 
 share with me my thirst for knowledge. 
 
 We were growing older and changing in 
 many ways, but a greater change was taking 
 place in the world around us which, though 
 it was tucked away in the Carpathian Moun- 
 tains, felt the pressure of industrial and polit- 
 ical events. We saw the use of the first coal 
 oil lamp, and were able to explain its myste- 
 ries to those who had not educated them- 
 selves as we had. We greeted the coming 
 of, the first sewing-machine with particular 
 joy, because it came from America, and we 
 knew something about the inventor and the 
 location of 'the factory which exported the 
 machines to Europe. We were also present 
 when the first threshing-machine made its 
 appearance. It was the first steam-driven 
 machine any one in our region had ever 
 seen, and two tragedies were connected with 
 its coming. 
 
 The first day it was used, after drink had 
 been passed to the laborers, one of them 
 wanted to show his courage by jumping over
 
 94 Uncle Joe's Lincoln 
 
 the opening into which the grain was fed. 
 He fell into it, his feet were caught by the 
 revolving machinery, and while he was not 
 instantly killed, he died soon after. This in- 
 cident impressed itself deeply upon our 
 minds ; for it was the first violent death we 
 had seen. That night the peasants attacked 
 the threshing-machine and demolished it, be- 
 cause they believed it was made by the devil. 
 
 But the changes which affected us most 
 were in the political field and they furnished 
 that kind of activity for the army which our 
 General desired, and which was needed to 
 keep up its martial spirit. 
 
 I have already indicated that the country 
 in which I lived was inhabited by many dif- 
 ferent races and peoples, speaking different 
 languages. The ruling people were the 
 Magyars, who spoke a language which they 
 brought with them from Asia, their original 
 home. They were a warlike race and con- 
 quered many small nations. Out of their 
 territory they formed the Kingdom of Hun- 
 gary, which later became a part of the Austro- 
 Hungarian Monarchy. For many centuries
 
 A Tyrant Put to Flight 95 
 
 they permitted the different people to speak 
 their own languages, but suddenly they de- 
 cided that all must learn the language of 
 their conquerors, and that momentous deci- 
 sion was made at a time when the Lincoln 
 Army had no other object than to get an 
 education a la Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 The cruel blow fell first of all upon our 
 teachers. Those who did not know the 
 Magyar language were discharged, and a 
 strange type, less kindly and very arrogant, 
 took their places. Our text-books were 
 taken from us, and replaced by those in a 
 new language which many of us had never 
 spoken and did not understand. Our names 
 were Magyarized and turned around, for in 
 the new language the family name comes 
 first and the given name last. The names 
 of the streets were changed ; even our town 
 was rebaptized so that we really lived in a 
 totally different world. 
 
 The new order was to be officially inau- 
 gurated by the visit of a great functionary. 
 He was the Foe Ispan, a sort of governor, 
 who was appointed to his office by the king.
 
 96 Uncle Joe's Lincoln 
 
 He was to be received officially, and the 
 entire population in its various capacities 
 went out to meet him the clergy, the 
 school children, the different guilds, the 
 gendarmes, and the many officials in whom 
 we were richly blessed. 
 
 The Foe Ispan arrived in his state carriage 
 drawn by six horses, with marvellous, richly 
 decorated harness. They raised a great 
 cloud of dust, and as the carriage came 
 nearer and nearer, we shouted at a given 
 signal : " Elyen ! Elyen ! " which was the 
 cheer in the language under which we were 
 now to live. It means " Long may he live," 
 or something complimentary like that ; but 
 to tell the truth we didn't care how long he 
 lived, for we had made up our minds that we 
 wouldn't like him because he came to op- 
 press us. 
 
 Of course his headquarters were in Yanczy 
 Pal's home, and this gave the Lincoln Army 
 its chance to again act in a liberating ca- 
 pacity. There was much scouring and cook- 
 ing and ever and ever so many things to do 
 there, so that the members of the Lincoln
 
 A Tyrant Put to Flight 97 
 
 Army could lay their plans pretty much un- 
 observed. Every one was excited about the 
 Foe /span's coming, and so were we, but 
 from a different cause. We planned to drive 
 the oppressor from the town, and lay all its 
 inhabitants under obligation to us. We had 
 little doubt that our names would become as 
 immortal as that of Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 That night there was a State supper at 
 Yanczy Pal's home, to which many of the 
 town dignitaries were invited. It lasted long 
 into the night ; so after all our preparations 
 were made, we went home, said our prayers 
 and went to bed. When we were supposed 
 to be asleep we got up, and without saying 
 our prayers, went to the Hussite tree, and 
 together moved toward the secret entrance. 
 It is only fair to say that the whole army 
 was not active in this enterprise. As usual 
 Yanczy Pal was the directing genius, al- 
 though I must lay claim to having suggested 
 some of the most cruel features of the night's 
 performances. 
 
 Pavel Chorvat as the mechanician was 
 present, and Rudolph the lame boy was
 
 o8 Uncle 'Joe's Lincoln 
 
 X */ 
 
 given the opportunity to redeem himself by 
 showing especial bravery in undertaking the 
 most risky part of the enterprise. Cannon- 
 ball was not invited to come, for he was too 
 fat to squeeze through the secret passage. 
 
 We walked up the concealed stairway 
 noiselessly, having left our shoes at home, 
 and each of us went to our appointed post 
 while the Foe Ispan was regaled with meat 
 and drink, and long after-dinner speeches. 
 Through the secret opening in the book- 
 shelves we crept into his room. Rudolph 
 was helped into the suit of armor and shown 
 how to manipulate the wires, by which the 
 head could be turned at will, and the hands 
 lifted. We had tried to make it walk, but 
 that is something no automaton has ever 
 been able to do, and we had to be satisfied 
 with these meagre achievements. 
 
 Back of the book-shelves we had arranged 
 sheets of tin, hammers, bells, and a very 
 interesting toy which makes an annoying 
 racket. It is not unknown as an instrument 
 of torture in the hands of American young- 
 sters of the present day. Removing a few
 
 A Tyrant Put to Flight 99 
 
 books from the shelves, gave us a chance to 
 watch what was going on in the room and 
 be ready for flight if things should not go as 
 we had planned. 
 
 The maid came in to turn back the 
 sheets and arrange the heavy feather beds 
 under which his Highness was to slumber, 
 but didn't. She extinguished the lamp and 
 lighted a candle which served our purpose 
 admirably. We managed to keep quiet 
 while she was in the room, although if she 
 heard any noise she might have thought 
 that it was rats, which are rather partial to 
 castles. Yanczy Pal had provided some 
 coffee to keep us awake during our vigil, 
 but once I thought that Rudolph had gone 
 to sleep within the armored knight. I crept 
 into the room and poked his steel ribs, 
 frightening him badly. 
 
 It was long after eleven o'clock when his 
 Highness, the Foe fsfian, appeared. Evi- 
 dently the red wine he had been drinking 
 had put him in good humor, for he came in 
 smiling, rubbing his hands and cracking his 
 knuckles. He was none too steady on his
 
 ioo Uncle Joe's Lincoln 
 
 feet, and as he approached the knight we 
 were fearful that he might collide with him. 
 Fortunately he managed to steer clear of 
 him, but he stopped in front of him and 
 winked, and we heard him say : " Well, old 
 man, what are you doing here ? " Then he 
 laughed as if pleased by his joke. 
 
 We heard him groan as he stooped to pull 
 off his boots. Evidently it was a long and 
 hard job ; for he groaned as if he were in 
 great pain. This gave Rudolph the oppor- 
 tunity to manipulate his wires. The hands 
 of the knight, which were in repose when the 
 Foe Ispan entered the room, were now point- 
 ing at him. When he lifted his head after the 
 shoes were off and saw the changed position 
 of the hands he cried : " Basama Teremtete!" 
 which, as my readers know, is unprintable 
 in English. Then he picked up a shoe and 
 threw it at the knight who quickly turned his 
 head and lifted his mailed fist threateningly. 
 When the Foe Ispan saw that, he yelled at 
 the top of his voice and dived under his 
 feather bed, covering himself as much as 
 he could, no doubt with the determina-
 
 A Tyrant Put to Flight 101 
 
 tion not to drink so much red wine the next 
 time. 
 
 We gave him time to compose his badly 
 shaken nerves, and then methodically we 
 turned the rattle just half a turn at a time. 
 He sat up, relighted the candle, looked under 
 the bed, listened at the door which led into 
 the next room, then blew out the candle and 
 went to bed again. We gave him a few 
 minutes more, and Pavel Chorvat began 
 striking the tin plate with a hammer at reg- 
 ular intervals until the fatal twelfth stroke 
 sounded. 
 
 Then the Foe Ispan jumped out of bed. 
 He did not take time to light the candle. In 
 the dark he grabbed what clothes he could, 
 but did not stop to put them on. He rushed 
 for the door which he could not find, for we 
 heard him feeling around the wall. The next 
 moment the worst that could have happened 
 to him occurred ; he collided with the armored 
 knight, and Rudolph let loose an unearthly 
 yell. At that instant the Foe Ispan found 
 the door, made for the stairway, which was 
 nearer than he thought, and we heard his
 
 IO2 Uncle jfoe's Lincoln 
 
 rotund figure strike every step as he fell to 
 the bottom. 
 
 Needless to say we did not stay where we 
 were. We quickly liberated Rudolph, picked 
 up our paraphernalia and hurried back to our 
 beds. 
 
 " The best laid schemes of mice and men 
 gang aft aglee," and so did ours ; for instead 
 of delivering the town from the oppressor, 
 he stayed for a week, much to the dismay of 
 Yanczy Pal's parents. He had to remain in 
 bed, but refused to occupy the State room, so 
 another had to be prepared, and he was 
 under the care of the doctor, who dosed him 
 for his shattered nerves and plastered up his 
 bruises. 
 
 All sorts of rumors were current in the 
 town. Some said he drank so much that he 
 was on the verge of delirium tremens ; others 
 believed that the devil came to fetch him, 
 and said they smelled sulphur in his room. 
 That was true, for we had used a good many 
 old-fashioned sulphur matches. For a long 
 time the castle had the reputation of being 
 haunted. There were a few wise ones who
 
 A Tyrant Put to Flight 103 
 
 knew just what kind of imps were after the 
 Foe Ispan. Fortunately for us they were the 
 Slovaks, who hated the new order of things, 
 and were not sorry that we had been in such 
 ghostly mischief. We did not know that 
 our secret was not our own, until we had 
 said good-bye to his Highness. 
 
 He was leaving without pomp and cere- 
 mony. The army, however, was there to say 
 good-bye to him. As his carriage began to 
 move we cried : "Ely en ! Elyen ! " and he 
 opened his purse and threw us some coppers. 
 Money in the hands of boys was rather 
 scarce, so although it came from our enemy, 
 we picked the pennies out of the dust and 
 made for the grocery store, kept by a very 
 interesting old man who was called the 
 " King of the Slovaks," because he was their 
 last descendant and an ardent defender of 
 his people's rights. His name was Svatopluk 
 Holub, after the last Slovak king. He sold 
 two kinds of candy : stick candy of uncertain 
 age, and candy whistles which were our favor- 
 ite confection, because we could blow them 
 and suck them at the same time ; music and
 
 104 Uncle jf r oe 's Lincoln 
 
 sweetness both for a penny. We invested in 
 a whistle apiece. As we passed our pennies 
 to the old man, he took me by my curly hair 
 and shook me, saying with a faded smile 
 playing upon his sad and wrinkled face: "Ve 
 ste velke Hunczuty." " You are great ras- 
 cals. Keep your money, and come to see 
 me soon again." 
 
 We kept the money and went to see him 
 soon again, and so learned to know of the 
 sorrows and burdens of the " King of the 
 Slovaks," who was a particular friend of 
 Uncle Joe.
 
 VII 
 
 The "King of the Slovaks" Enters into 
 His Rest and Uncle Joe Rmgs the 
 Church Bells 
 
 UNCLE JOE had travelled farther than 
 anybody in our town not only in 
 miles but also in his thought. He 
 had no sympathy with the racial and relig- 
 ious quarrels of our community. " Yingele" 
 he used to say, "a man is a nigger only 
 when he is black in his heart, and before 
 God a half naked Gypsy is as good as a 
 proud Magyar in red breeches. Only God 
 the Almighty could make a man ; but even 
 our deaf and dumb tailor can make a man's 
 clothes. It does not matter about a man's 
 creed or his language ; the question is, how 
 does he live and what does he say ? " 
 
 A man with such ideas was regarded as 
 somewhat of a revolutionist, and but few 
 people could understand him and fewer sym- 
 pathized with him ; that may be the reason 
 105
 
 106 Uncle jfoe's Lincoln 
 
 he lived so much with children. Since he 
 had remained sober and was saving his 
 money, he had still fewer friends. He had 
 one crony, and that was the "King of the 
 Slovaks." Whenever I had to look for Uncle 
 Joe I would go to the grocery store, and if I 
 found him he would give me a piece of 
 herring, a delicacy to which he became 
 addicted when he stopped drinking, and 
 which I accepted not because I liked her- 
 ring, but because after having eaten it I 
 needed something to sweeten my mouth. 
 
 The eating of the herring was quite a 
 ceremonious affair. The " King of the 
 Slovaks " served it on a piece of brown 
 paper; then Uncle Joe would take his pen- 
 knife, scale the fish and, while I held it by 
 the tail, beat it thoroughly on both sides 
 with the handle of the knife, singing, as he 
 did so, a little song which was used when he 
 was a boy and which had survived until my 
 own day. For all I know to the contrary, 
 it may still be used in making salt herring 
 ready for the skinning. This is the first 
 verse :
 
 The " King of the Slovaks " 1 07 
 
 " Little fishes when they're caught 
 They are really good for nought 
 But to scale them, and to beat, 
 Skin them, then they're good to eat.' 1 
 
 The second and third verses were just like 
 the first. 
 
 In the same ceremonious way, after being 
 skinned, and halved, the air bladder, which 
 was called the soul of the fish, would be sent 
 to heaven ; that is, it was thrown to the ceiling, 
 and if it stuck there the soul was safe, but 
 if it didn't, and fell to the floor, it was utterly 
 lost. It must be said that as Uncle Joe had 
 served in the army, his aim was good, and 
 all his herring were good herring. 
 
 The two men were great talkers, Uncle 
 Joe easily outdoing the grocer, and while 
 the two men talked, I would suck my candy. 
 I noticed that at such a time I was never given 
 a candy whistle, but a stick of candy ; for had 
 I received a whistle, the temptation to use it 
 would have been irresistible, and I should 
 have disturbed their interesting conversation. 
 
 When Uncle Joe was not talking about 
 the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln, and the
 
 io8 Uncle Joe's Lincoln 
 
 Negroes whom he helped to free, Svatopluk 
 Holub would talk about his royal ancestors, 
 the Slovaks, and their struggle to retain their 
 language and customs. They were rarely 
 interrupted in their conversation, for custom- 
 ers were few, and when they came they had 
 to wait the " King's " pleasure before he 
 would hand them the two cents' worth of 
 sugar they wished to buy. 
 
 Usually Uncle Joe made a round of visits 
 on Saturday afternoon. That was his re- 
 ligious exercise ; for his visits were always 
 among the poor and the lonely. His round 
 was always the same. He began with an 
 old couple, one of which, the man, was dying 
 from cancer. I never wanted to go in there 
 with him, but he would take me by the back 
 of my neck and say : " You have been to the 
 synagogue and have prayed and have eaten 
 a piece of fat Sabbath goose ; now come in 
 and get some more religion." 
 
 Then there was an old widow, who had 
 
 been rich and now lived upon charity. She 
 
 was a dear, dried-up little lady, immaculately 
 
 .neat, and I loved to go to see her. Uncle
 
 The " King of the Slovaks " 1 09 
 
 Joe would sit by her side and hold her hand 
 as he told her about his adventures in the 
 New World. I noticed that he always told 
 her about the ladies he had courted and those 
 who had courted him, and she would shake her 
 skinny finger at him and say : " ' As the twig 
 is bent so is the tree inclined ' ; you were a 
 charmer before you went to America. You 
 proposed to me when you were fourteen years 
 old." " Too bad you didn't take me," he 
 would tell her, " then I would still have my 
 leg and arm." 
 
 There were half a dozen places we visited, 
 but invariably he would end at Svatopluk 
 Holub's who always had the same greeting : 
 " Come in," he would say ; " let us eat a her- 
 ring and save its soul." On Sunday after- 
 noons when the grocery store was closed to 
 the public, Uncle Joe would drop in for a cup 
 of tea. It was brewed from the blossom of 
 the linden tree and was horribly bitter tast- 
 ing stuff, but I always took as many cups as 
 I could get ; for with each cup there was a 
 piece of rock candy which lasted long after 
 the bitter taste of the tea had disappeared.
 
 1 1 o Uncle Joe's Lincoln 
 
 The " King," like Uncle Joe, was an old 
 bachelor. There was a story of his having 
 fallen in love with the daughter of the Baron, 
 and that she loved him ; but not only was he 
 poor he was a Slovak patriot, and her father 
 was a Magyar and would not hear of their 
 marriage ; so she had entered a nunnery. He 
 always wore the picturesque costume of his 
 people. He not only dressed like a Slovak, 
 he also looked like one. The Magyars wore 
 mustachios, the fiercer and longer they were, 
 the more one was a Magyar; he was 
 smoothly shaved. 
 
 The special characteristic of his dress was 
 the shirt, which was a sort of badge of de- 
 fiance. He was one of the few men among 
 the educated class who wore it, and it became 
 the symbol of his loyalty. The shirt, which 
 was gaily embroidered, had no collar, but- 
 toned on the side and was not tucked in at 
 the waist. He wore that kind of shirt, though 
 because of it he lost one customer after 
 another, and when he was summoned before 
 the judge and had it taken from him, the 
 next day or week or as soon as he could pro-
 
 The " King of the Slovaks" 1 1 1 
 
 cure such a shirt again, he defied the authori- 
 ties by wearing it. 
 
 Our army had split in two ; it was pro- 
 shirt and anti-shirt. Yanczy Pal led the 
 anti-shirt or Magyar party, and he had the 
 majority of the boys on his side. The pro- 
 shirt party was led by Pavel Chorvat, who 
 was the strongest of us, and in our frequent 
 fights we usually won, though Pavel did most 
 of the beating. The pro-shirt army had its 
 headquarters at the " King's " store, while 
 Yanczy Pal and his set met in the Hussite 
 tree. Military enterprises gradually grew out 
 of the reach of our group, not only because 
 we were few, but because the " powers that 
 be " were against us ; so we decided to avenge 
 ourselves and write a book. May I say in 
 all modesty that the idea was mine, and that 
 Pavel Chorvat opposed it as outside the prov- 
 ince of an army ; but when I told him that we 
 would write a book about the Slovaks, some- 
 thing to stir the world to the wrongs they suf- 
 fered, he gave his permission, though he was 
 of very little use. 
 
 I was not discouraged in my undertaking
 
 1 1 2 Uncle Joe's Lincoln 
 
 by the fact that I had read in the Bible during 
 my lessons in religion that " of the making 
 of books there is no end" ; though I agreed 
 with the writer that "much learning is a 
 weariness to the flesh," especially the learn- 
 ing which came to us in a new language 
 and turned our little world upside down. 
 
 I was soundly whipped for saying that 
 Abraham Lincoln was a greater man than 
 Stephen the First, King of the Hungarians, 
 who was indeed a good king as kings go ; 
 but how could he have been better than 
 Abraham Lincoln? Pavel Chorvat was not 
 only beaten but locked up in the school- 
 master's cellar for saying that Svatopluk 
 Holub was the King of the Slovaks. We 
 began writing the book as a revenge upon 
 the unjust government, and we relied upon 
 Svatopluk Holub to furnish us the facts. We 
 were sure of the facts ; where the paper, the 
 printing press, and the money were to come 
 from we did not know, or care. The story, 
 as we gathered it and never wrote, was some- 
 thing like this. I cannot vouch that it is ex- 
 actly as he told it to us, for we wrote our
 
 The " King of the Slovaks " 113 
 
 notes on pieces of brown paper and very fre- 
 quently Uncle Joe would beat his herring on 
 them ; so making them odorous and useless. 
 
 The "King" looked every inch a King 
 when he told us the meaning of the word 
 Slav. "It may come from the word Slava 
 which means fame, or from Slovo which 
 means to speak." He thought it was the 
 latter because they called the other people, 
 especially the Germans, " Nemczy" which 
 means the dumb, or those who cannot speak. 
 Uncle Joe agreed that it was the latter, for 
 that is usual with people who do not under- 
 stand one another. 
 
 " They are of great antiquity," Svatopluk 
 told us, "and occupied all the region in 
 Europe from the North Sea down to the 
 Black Sea. They were not warriors but 
 hunters, and then they became farmers, and 
 have never ceased to love the soil." He 
 insisted that the Slavs invented all agricul- 
 tural implements, and tried to prove it by 
 the fact that the word for plough in all the 
 languages is from the Slavic. Uncle Joe re- 
 torted that the Americans invented every-
 
 114 Uncle jfoe's Lincoln 
 
 thing, and there was a lively squabble be- 
 tween them. The "King" argued that our 
 word plough came from the Slavic pluck and 
 Uncle Joe was equally sure that plough was 
 used long before pluck. 
 
 "The warlike nations," the "King" con- 
 tinued, when Uncle Joe would let him, " drove 
 the Slavs from the land they possessed, con- 
 quered them and tried to make Germans 
 out of them. Then the Turks came in vast 
 hordes out of Asia, devastated their towns 
 and villages, and carried their wives and 
 daughters away into their harems. Then the 
 Magyars came and they were the worst of 
 all," and again there was a lively clash be- 
 tween him and Uncle Joe, who could not 
 think of any one worse than the Turks. 
 
 "The trouble with you Slavs," Uncle Joe 
 said, "is that you need an Abraham Lin- 
 coln and the Union, and not till you have 
 them will you amount to anything in the 
 world." Uncle Joe's panacea for everything 
 was Abraham Lincoln and the Union. 
 
 " You little Slovaks, what do you amount 
 to ? " he said contemptuously ; " but if all
 
 The " King of the Slovaks " 115 
 
 you Slavic nationalities were united, you 
 could drive the Magyars back to Asia where 
 they came from." 
 
 He did not say that very loud, for it was 
 treason and would have got him into trouble. 
 I had written several pages of notes, when 
 Uncle Joe took them from me, and said, 
 "That will make a fine bed for my dying 
 herring. Bring us a fat one, a milt one;" 
 so a herring was skinned and its soul sent to 
 heaven on my literary effort. 
 
 I think it was Ascension Day when I visited 
 the " King " alone. I was puzzled even then 
 by the religious differences which divided 
 our community, and he told me just how the 
 Christian religion came to his people. " They 
 were once heathens, even as every one's an- 
 cestors were, and their religion was very bar- 
 baric, and cruel. It left the people ignorant 
 and degraded, and one of my kingly an- 
 cestors sent emissaries to the Greek King 
 who was ruling his world from Constanti- 
 nople, asking him to send among the Slavic 
 people missionaries who spoke their language 
 and could preach to them. Prior to that
 
 1 1 6 Uncle Joe's Lincoln 
 
 time some missionaries had come from Ger- 
 many. They were pious and good men, but 
 not being able to speak Slavic, the people 
 were suspicious of them because the German 
 kings were their enemies. King Michael 
 then sent them two consecrated monks, who 
 came into this very region where we are 
 living." That, of course, excited me very 
 much, for I realized for the first time that 
 our place was of historic importance. 
 
 " Their lives were so Christlike that it did 
 not take them very long to spread their faith 
 and their memory has never faded from the 
 minds of the grateful Slavs. The names of 
 these missionaries were Cyril and Methodius, 
 and the alphabet, which they invented and 
 which many of the Slavic people use, is 
 called the Cyrillian alphabet." 
 
 While I retained some of the historic facts 
 he told me, and learning so much about 
 these people later helped me to remember, 
 I have forgotten the best things, the snatches 
 of song and the folk tales. There is one 
 story, however, which I remember, because I 
 tried to make a really great story out of it
 
 The " King of the Slovaks " 117 
 
 later in life and failed ; but I shall write it 
 down in the simple way in which he told it, 
 which may after all be the best way. 
 
 "THE MAGIC VIOLIN 
 " A dear old grandfather lived with his 
 young grandson in a village, and feeling his 
 end approaching, bequeathed him his violin. 
 From the birds the lad learned his songs, and 
 as he mourned for his grandfather, he played 
 plaintively on his instrument. Many years 
 passed and the youth went to the village 
 dances to play. In one place he met a most 
 beautiful maiden whose name no one knew, 
 nor did any one know whence she came. 
 After the dance she always disappeared in 
 the forest. He fell in love with her and she 
 loved him. 
 
 " A very wicked woman, who was the per- 
 sonification of envy, told the other girls, who 
 were jealous of the beautiful stranger, to scat- 
 ter the white fluffy seed pods of dandelions 
 on the floor, and if she were a wood fairy, as 
 they thought, her clothes would catch fire. 
 " When the maiden came out of the forest
 
 1 1 8 Uncle Joe's Lincoln 
 
 to the dance, she noticed the seed pods and 
 disappeared, to the grief of her lover, who 
 nearly died from his great sorrow. When he 
 recovered he took his violin and went out 
 into the world to seek, her. Everywhere at 
 the edge of the forests he played, wandering 
 among the trees day and night, calling for his 
 beloved. 
 
 " One day in the spring when all the flow- 
 ers were in bloom, he was playing on a rock 
 at the edge of a beautiful lake. He was put- 
 ting all his heartache into his music so that 
 the very trees began to sigh and the flowers 
 wept sweet-scented tears. Suddenly the 
 maiden appeared to him. His joy knew no 
 bounds, and he would not let her go again. 
 She told him that she had been stolen from 
 her parents' home while she was a little baby 
 in her cradle, and that she was cursed to be a 
 wood fairy for a hundred years or until some 
 youth through ardent love would release her 
 from the curse by his music. This he had 
 done and she was free to marry him. 
 
 " He was overjoyed, but before they were 
 married he had to promise her that he would
 
 The " King of the Slovaks " 119 
 
 never be rude to her nor beat her as the 
 Slovak husbands often beat their wives ; for 
 even if he should strike her with the stems 
 of flowers, the curse would come back and 
 she would have to live out her hundred years 
 in the forest. This he promised and was a 
 very tender and loving husband. They pros- 
 pered and were growing very rich. 
 
 " One time when he was away on business, 
 she told the hired man to go out into the 
 fields and cut the rye and bring it into the 
 barn. When her husband returned he 
 thought she had done wrong and began to 
 scold her. In his anger he took a handful 
 of the grain, and slapped her hands. She 
 wept bitterly and told him that if he had 
 been patient with her one more day, the 
 curse would have been removed forever ; but 
 now she must go back into the forest for a 
 hundred years. She disappeared, leaving 
 the heart-broken man alone on the farm. 
 The next day it stormed and hailed and 
 every one's harvest but his was ruined. 
 Then he realized that his wife was right in 
 having the grain brought into the barn.
 
 1 20 Uncle Joes Lincoln 
 
 That winter the neighbors were starving, and 
 being jealous because he remained rich, they 
 set fire to his barn, and he had to flee for his 
 life. All he saved of his possessions was the 
 precious violin, and he went out into the 
 world again to seek his wife. 
 
 " On the same rock on the shore where he 
 had wooed her, she appeared to him in a 
 dream and told him that she could not return 
 to him again. She touched the violin with 
 her fairy fingers, and out of her hair made 
 new strings for his bow. She kissed his fore- 
 head, and told him to go out into the world 
 and make the people happy with his music. 
 Wherever he went he charmed and entranced 
 his hearers, for his music was not like that of 
 mortals but like the music of heaven. He 
 grew famous and rich but he never returned 
 to his home, and never was happy, for he 
 was still seeking his lost wife. One day he 
 was found in the shadow of the same rock 
 where she had come to him. The violin was 
 clasped close to his heart, and on his face 
 shone a beautiful, peaceful smile which did 
 not fade away he was dead ! "
 
 The " King of the Slovaks " 121 
 
 Every time I hear a really great violinist, 
 especially if he is of the Slavic race, and so 
 many of them are, I think of this touching 
 story which, though it is only a fairy story, 
 reveals the genius and also some of the weak- 
 nesses of these great people. 
 
 The " King of the Slovaks " looked less 
 kingly as time passed. He was wretch- 
 edly poor, and the edibles in his store were 
 growing old and stale. Even his herring be- 
 came uneatable. " Their souls have turned 
 black," Uncle Joe said, "and when a her- 
 ring's soul turns black it is fit neither for 
 heaven nor for hell." Although the " King " 
 was poor and ill, his shirt was always im- 
 maculate and always defiantly Slavic. 
 
 One day as I went to school I noticed that 
 the door of his store was locked. I raised 
 the alarm. Pavel Chorvat lifted me up to 
 the window and when I knocked repeatedly 
 and there was no answer, he went home and 
 brought his father, who opened the door, and 
 we found the " King of the Slovaks " dead in 
 his bed, and the room full of charcoal fumes. 
 
 No one knew just how he died, but the
 
 122 Uncle Joe's Lincoln 
 
 Kisbiro who acted as coroner said that he 
 died by his own hand. None of us would 
 believe it, although the church authorities 
 did ; for he was denied a public funeral, the 
 bells were not to ring for him, and he was to 
 be buried in unconsecrated ground. How- 
 ever there was a funeral procession, though 
 there were neither acolytes nor holy water. 
 
 All the faithful Slovaks, dressed in their 
 national garb, followed the plain, unpainted 
 casket, and when they reached the corner of 
 the Kunovska Ulitza they heard the church 
 bells ring. They rang irregularly and dis- 
 cordantly, for they were being rung by three 
 hands unused to such a task. One of the 
 hands was Uncle Joe's and the other two 
 were mine. Uncle Joe paid a heavy fine, 
 more than half his monthly pension money, 
 and as he gave it to the Kisbiro, he said 
 something which neither he nor I understood. 
 It sounded like Basama Teremtete, only there 
 was more of it, and I knew the words were 
 English ; for it was not the first time he had 
 used them in my presence.
 
 VIII 
 
 The Marvellous, Magical, Mechanical 
 Theater Presents the Civil War, and 
 Uncle Joe Suffers Defeat and Wins 
 a Victory 
 
 I AM glad I lived at a time when wonders 
 never ceased, when even the common- 
 place thrilled me, and the unusual was a 
 miracle. A wandering troup of bayazos (jug- 
 glers and tumblers), in tights and velvet 
 breeches, seemed like a chapter from a fairy 
 tale ; and when I saw a toy balloon which 
 Yanczy Pal had for he had everything it 
 excited me more than when, a few years ago, 
 Billy Robinson flew over our American home 
 in a flying machine which he had built. 
 
 The railroad was a day's journey from us ; 
 I knew of the telegraph, but had not yet 
 heard its ticking. Once my teacher demon- 
 strated an electric battery which rang a bell, 
 123
 
 124 Uncle Joe's Lincoln 
 
 and I nearly lost my faith in the Almighty. ; 
 for what was there left for Him to do, if some 
 acids could create energy ? 
 
 Most of Uncle Joe's wonder stories about 
 America I took with a grain of salt ; but when 
 he tried to describe Barnum's circus, I reluc- 
 tantly put him down as a liar. 
 
 I know my boy would not exchange his 
 youth for mine, and why should he? The 
 world moves by him on the screen ; at the 
 turn of a crank he hears his favorite Jazz 
 band (horror of horrors to me) ; and he can 
 play the piano by stepping on it, though he 
 may not know one note from the other ; but 
 I am wondering whether he ever had such a 
 thrill as I experienced when I read on a poster 
 pasted on a corner house of the Kimovska 
 Ulitza that " Madame Breshkovska's Mar- 
 vellous, Magical, Mechanical Theater" would 
 favor our town with a visit and give daily 
 exhibitions of its wonders. Posters were not 
 uncommon on that particular corner, but 
 they were usually small and very prosaic, 
 announcing when the medical officers would 
 come to examine men for the army, or when
 
 T/ie Marvellous, Mechanical Theater 125 
 
 the taxes were due, or when everybody had 
 to appear before the doctor to be vacci- 
 nated. 
 
 These posters were huge in comparison, 
 and were colored, and there were pictures 
 which were meant to whet our unsatisfied 
 appetites and they did. There were adjec- 
 tives in the reading matter such as I never 
 knew any language could possess. " Gigan- 
 tic, marvellous, wonderful, stupendous, spec- 
 tacular, amazing" were a few of them. Of 
 course if I had ever seen an American circus 
 poster, those words would have seemed tame, 
 and one of the thrills would have been miss- 
 ing out of my life. Besides these adjectives 
 there were other words whose meaning we 
 could but vaguely guess " kaleidoscopic, 
 bengalic lights, stereopticon, amphitheater, 
 and the hanging gardens of Semiramis." 
 
 I am not exaggerating when I say that I 
 spent hours reading and rereading the 
 poster, and my poor brain was dizzy from the 
 whirl of the anticipated wonders. Even 
 Uncle Joe was wildly excited, for one para- 
 graph on the poster promised in eloquent
 
 126 Uncle Joe's Lincoln 
 
 language, "pictures from the Great Amer- 
 ican War," and the battles were to be fought 
 on the stage by soldiers " mechanically agi- 
 tated, but true to life." 
 
 One morning as I went to school, the 
 Rinok (the town square on which all streets 
 meet) wore a new aspect. Madame Bresh- 
 kovska's "marvellous, magical, mechanical 
 theater" had arrived, and the world was not 
 quite the same. Four gaudily painted wagons 
 of the circus type were lined up between 
 St. Florian and St. Michael. Children of all 
 ages stood around with mouths agape, and 
 stayed there in spite of the fact that the 
 school bells were ringing, and dire punish- 
 ment awaited the tardy ones. One of the 
 wagons was especially attractive. The cher- 
 ubim and seraphim which guarded the Holy 
 of Holies could not have been as gorgeously 
 attired as were the carved figures which 
 adorned its four corners. On one side was a 
 portico shaded by an awning of badly faded 
 cloth of gold, and over the door which led 
 into the interior was written that which 
 brought us both hope and despair. Allur-
 
 The Marvellous, Mechanical Theater 127 
 
 ing descriptions of the wonders displayed 
 within were printed in two languages : 
 
 " An education without going to school ; 
 travel without going out of town ; the whole 
 world at your feet for a trifle ; the treasures 
 of the universe for a look ! " That was hope. 
 
 " Admission first class, one florin ; second 
 class, fifty kreutzers ; third class, in the gal- 
 lery, thirty kreutzers. Soldiers, and children 
 under six, half price." That spelled despair. 
 A florin was as much as a million to most of 
 us, thirty kreutzers for third class was a for- 
 tune, and all of us were considerably over six 
 years of age. 
 
 Yanczy Pal told us boastingly that he was 
 going first class, and none of us believed 
 it. I had a faint hope that Uncle Joe would 
 take me ; but Rudolph, Speckled Horse and 
 Cannonball were absolutely hopeless of ever 
 getting " an education without going to 
 school," or seeing " the treasures of the uni- 
 verse." Armin Griinwald, our erstwhile cap- 
 tain of cavalry, was the other fortunate one 
 whom the gods favored. He was a horse- 
 man's son, and his father had the honor of
 
 128 Uncle Joe's Lincoln 
 
 boarding the noble steeds which drew the 
 " marvellous, magical, mechanical theater." 
 Some of the performers were to share that 
 honor with the horses. 
 
 While we stood before the wagon, torn be- 
 tween hope and despair, and mostly despair- 
 ing, the door opened and a woman rolled 
 into view. How she ever managed to come 
 through that door I do not know, for when 
 she emerged she filled all the space under 
 the awning, and the cherubim and seraphim 
 were hidden from us. Madame Bresh- 
 kovska, for it was she, was no beauty and 
 yet she was fascinating, at least to me ; for 
 she was indeed a new species, as new and 
 strange as her " marvellous, magical, mechan- 
 ical theater." Her nose was almost lost be- 
 tween her snapping black eyes and her huge 
 mouth, which looked larger by virtue of a 
 quite unmistakable mustache. Her square 
 chin was adorned by a beard. She addressed 
 us in a voice whose timbre might cause a 
 calliope to blush. She was not a bit compli- 
 mentary. She called us "loafers" and in- 
 vited us either to " light out or step in " and
 
 The Marvellous, Mechanical Theater 129 
 
 have a share in getting the wonders of the 
 world ready for the public. No second invi- 
 tation was necessary ; school or no school, we 
 entered upon our tasks with an ardor never 
 evoked by our mothers' invitations to fetch 
 and carry. 
 
 Pavel Chorvat, being the strongest, became 
 assistant to the tent crew, while Cannonball 
 was to join the orchestra and carry the big 
 drum. He was selected for this task because 
 he was of a size almost to fit a spare uniform, 
 and how we envied him! Speckled Horse 
 and Rudolph were to be stage hands, and I, 
 the youngest and smallest, was selected for 
 the most humble of all duties I was to peel 
 potatoes. The boys laughed at me and I 
 had a good notion to cut and run, but how 
 glad I was that I did not follow my first im- 
 pulse ; for my position made me a member 
 of the family. I peeled potatoes under the 
 supervision of Ludmilla, my first fairy queen, 
 who pulled my curly hair after the manner of 
 Uncle Joe ; but it did not hurt. She awoke 
 vanity within me by telling me that so pretty 
 a boy as I ought to become a photographer,
 
 130 Uncle Joe 's Lincoln 
 
 and then all the ladies would come to have 
 their pictures taken, and I would become a 
 rich man. At the first chance I looked into 
 a mirror and thought myself as beautiful as 
 the cherubim and seraphim ; so I determined 
 to become a photographer. 
 
 That whole day was as different from 
 others as any day well could be ; I walked 
 on clouds though I peeled potatoes for hours ; 
 for this I was soundly spanked when I came 
 home at noon with my clothes wet and 
 spotted. When I returned to school my 
 teacher made me write " Go to the ant, thou 
 sluggard " five hundred times for playing 
 truant Evidently he and Ludmilla did not 
 agree about my future. 
 
 From two to four each day we studied re- 
 ligion, and never before was my mind so 
 little on my lesson as that day. What did I 
 care for the wanderings of my forefathers in 
 the wilderness and the voice of God speaking 
 from Sinai, when the " marvellous, magical, 
 mechanical tjieater" was to throw open its 
 portals that evening, and I had a third class 
 ticket in my pocket, earned by peeling pota-
 
 The Marvellous, Mechanical Theater 131 
 
 toes? What did the wise man's lament 
 about " vanity, all is vanity " mean to me, 
 when I still felt Ludmilla's hand upon my 
 curly head and heard her voice ringing in my 
 ears, saying that I ought to be a photog- 
 rapher, and that the ladies would come to 
 me to have their pictures taken ? 
 
 Time went at a snail's pace, and the pages 
 of the Bible seemed endless ; but at last it 
 was four o'clock, the lesson in religion was 
 over and I was on the Rinok, the transformed 
 Rinok. St. Florian was almost lost beside 
 the gorgeous tent which had arisen by his 
 side, and St. Michael was invisible ; in fact 
 he was inside the tent and had a chance to 
 see the wonders of the world for nothing. 
 At the main entrance stood the cherubim and 
 seraphim and beneath the awning a throne 
 was being made ready for the queen, who 
 was to open the portals to the wonders of the 
 world and take in the sheckels. 
 
 None of my friends who had accepted 
 positions with the theater had come to 
 school to study religion. They had been 
 completely absorbed by their tasks, and
 
 132 Uncle Joes Lincoln 
 
 were helping to get the wonder world ready. 
 The crowd surged around the tent and long 
 before the advertised opening hour the en- 
 trance was besieged by a mob ; somewhere 
 in its midst was a little boy, nearly suffocated 
 but sublimely happy, and that little boy 
 was I. 
 
 At last the band appeared above the 
 portico, Cannonball in a red uniform some- 
 what too small for him, beating the drum 
 with all his might without regard to time or 
 rhythm. I had never before seen a man 
 blowing a horn which he seemed to swallow 
 and bring up again, and Gabriel's trumpet 
 could not have been more awe-inspiring. 
 The man who was curled up inside the double 
 base horn like a snail in its shell made me 
 laugh ; I thought the most skillful of the 
 musicians was the one who beat the snare 
 drum, throwing the drumsticks into the air 
 and catching them again without missing 
 any of the music. He certainly was a 
 wonder. 
 
 On one throne sat Madame Breshkovska 
 and on the other side, on a throne less lofty
 
 The Marvellous, Mechanical Theater 133 
 
 and not so secure, sat my queen, Ludmilla. 
 I have no talent for describing ladies' gowns, 
 and the lack of it was early manifested. All 
 I know is that the dresses were the most 
 wonderful I had ever seen, and though since 
 that time I have seen real queens and 
 empresses in their State attire, I think none 
 of them wore such wonderful clothes. 
 
 Madame Breshkovska acted as her own 
 " barker." I wish there were a more fitting 
 word, for indeed she did not bark, she 
 bellowed. When she finally called out 
 " Entrez, Entrez, Ladies and Gentlemen, 
 Entrez ! The . marvellous, magical, me- 
 chanical theater is now open ! Entrez ! 
 Entrez /" you would have gone in, even if 
 you had known that your doom awaited you 
 there. 
 
 The crowd was mostly third class; not 
 only because third class folk were more 
 numerous but because first and second class 
 people had reserved seats, and thus the rich 
 missed the biggest part of the fun. What 
 could be more exciting than to be part of a 
 great throng hungry for the wonders of the
 
 134 Uncle Joe's Lincoln 
 
 world, pushing toward the goal, with one 
 mind and one energized, joyful agony; hold- 
 ing on to its coppers until the doors were 
 opened, then throwing them down in reckless 
 abandon and racing for the gallery ? Nearly 
 squeezed to death I reached the door, my 
 ticket safely clasped in my hand as I thought, 
 only to find when I opened it that it was as 
 empty as a broken egg-shell, and I nearly as 
 badly crushed. 
 
 Vainly did I plead with Ludmilla, telling 
 her that I was the boy who peeled the 
 potatoes and whose curls she had admired. 
 Oh, woman ! Thy name is inconstancy ! 
 She did not know me, or pretended not to 
 know me, and the same hand which had 
 patted my curls caught me by the back of 
 my neck and drew me out of the engulfing 
 vortex, away from the gate of my paradise. 
 I might have become a woman hater then 
 and there, and I should not have been to 
 blame; for few men are crossed in love so 
 early in life. I cried so loud that I was 
 heard above the sliding trombone and the 
 beat of Cannonball's drum.
 
 The Marvellous, Mechanical Theater 135 
 
 Then my unexpressed prayer was heard 
 and my deliverer sent; for Uncle Joe ap- 
 peared and he had two first class tickets, one 
 for himself and one for me. He had bought 
 them that afternoon and had been looking 
 for me everywhere. Thus ever is the darkest 
 hour just before the dawn and I proudly 
 walked in and made a face at my lady love 
 as I passed by her throne. Our seats were 
 in the first row, where as yet no one but the 
 nobility sat. Yanczy Pal was my neighbor, 
 and he didn't like it a little bit. 
 
 Has ever any man's fortune turned more 
 completely around ? In the morning peeling 
 potatoes to earn a third class ticket, and in 
 the evening sitting in the first row, on a plush- 
 covered seat, with judges and tax assessors 
 and other dignitaries and right next to the 
 haughty General, Yanczy Pal ! Inwardly I 
 crowed louder than any rooster ever could 
 have crowed, and I took every occasion to 
 let the people in the gallery know where I 
 sat. But my curiosity was stronger than my 
 vanity, and soon I became absorbed in the 
 preparations for the opening. Mysterious
 
 136 Uncle Joe's Lincoln 
 
 noises were heard behind the scenes, the band 
 began to play and at last a bell rang, the sig- 
 nal for the performance to begin. A hood 
 was dropped over the chandelier in which 
 nearly a hundred candles flickered, and a 
 mysterious gloom filled the tent. 
 
 The magic lantern was the first of the won- 
 ders seen. Shapes and colors leaped upon 
 the screen and wound in and out in kaleido- 
 scopic fashion, making my head dizzy, yet 
 filling my mind with awe. Where did these 
 shapes come from? Where did they go? 
 Uncle Joe tried to explain, but his physics 
 were as weak as my understanding, and it 
 remained a wonder till greater miracles hap- 
 pened. 
 
 Pictures of distant scenes crept out of the 
 dark, and we could almost touch them. 
 Paris, Peking and St. Petersburg were there ; 
 palaces of kings and great cathedrals showed 
 to us their facades and towers ; monuments 
 and bridges enriched our drab existence. 
 Indeed it was fairy-land, and worth more than 
 it cost, and I forgot the fickleness of woman 
 in the glory of the new, strange scenes.
 
 The Marvellous, Mechanical Theater 137 
 
 Some way the seven wonders of the world 
 did not appeal to me as much as the newer 
 wonders, and I shall never forget what I felt 
 when the Capitol at Washington was flashed 
 upon the screen. Uncle Joe gave a shout 
 which was heard all over the tent. The high 
 and well born nobility did not like his audible 
 approval, and hisses were heard. Uncle Joe, 
 however, was in his element and so was I. 
 That Capitol thrilled me as no building has 
 since. It was the Temple of Freedom ! It 
 typified the thing I had learned to fight for 
 so early in life ! It was the people's Capitol, 
 yea, above all else it was Abraham Lincoln! s 
 Capitol! There he stood when he made that 
 inaugural speech, there he put his hand upon 
 the Book and swore to uphold the constitu- 
 tion ; and there his body had lain in state ! 
 
 When the next picture appeared I thought 
 Uncle Joe had lost his mind, for he leaped 
 from his seat and, hardly resting upon his 
 crutch, he waved his hat toward the crowd 
 and shouted, " Three cheers for Abraham 
 Lincoln 1 " There, indeed, was his face upon 
 the screen, more than life size, smiling upon
 
 138 Uncle "Joes Lincoln 
 
 us as if to say, " I like you, dear people, I 
 have always liked you, and I hope you are 
 having a good time." Once more Uncle Joe 
 shouted, "Three cheers for Abraham Lin- 
 coln ! " and again he gave them, three times 
 three, with a will. Again the nobility was 
 shocked, and the judge came over to Uncle 
 Joe and told him to behave himself or he 
 would be thrown out ; that this was not the 
 wilderness of America, but a highly civilized 
 community. Uncle Joe, freeman that he was, 
 told the judge to " mind his own business," 
 and the show proceeded. 
 
 The third part was the American war, 
 fought by soldiers " mechanically agitated." 
 I do not recall now how large the figures 
 were. I do know that they were not much 
 agitated, for they went across the stage in 
 solid formations much like tin soldiers in a 
 box. When they began to move Uncle Joe 
 was up again and whistling " Marching 
 through Georgia." Soon, however, he be- 
 gan to hurl contemptuous remarks toward 
 the stage. "That wasn't a war," he said, 
 " that was a parade. Get a move on them."
 
 The Marvellous, Mechanical Theater 139 
 
 This time Madame Breshkovska appeared 
 through the gloom and whispered into Uncle 
 Joe's ear. He told her that she had a fake 
 war on that stage and he wouldn't stand for 
 it. A quarrel was imminent, and I hoped it 
 would not break up the show. 
 
 At that moment a " mechanically agitated " 
 soldier appeared, carrying an American flag 
 which fluttered enticingly in a " mechanic- 
 ally agitated " breeze. I know now what the 
 flag says at a time like that, and I can under- 
 stand just why Uncle Joe held up his crutch 
 with his hat on top of it and waved it frantic- 
 ally as he gave three cheers for the flag, and 
 yelled like a mad man. I have felt that way 
 myself, many a time. But then I wished 
 Uncle Joe's patriotism were not of quite so 
 violent a brand, for a dark shadow swept over 
 the lighted stage obscuring both flag and sol- 
 diers. Madame Breshkovska swooped down 
 upon Uncle Joe, and picking him up as if he 
 were a feather, carried him out of the tent, 
 while the hood was drawn up to light her on 
 her way and make Uncle Joe's disgrace visi- 
 ble to all. She did not go through the near-
 
 140 Uncle Joes Lincoln 
 
 est door but the whole length of the tent, 
 dropping him on the ground outside. I fol- 
 lowed with his crutch and his hat 
 
 " Go back, Yingele" he said, trying to push 
 me through the door ; but his joy had been 
 mine in seeing the Capitol, and Abraham 
 Lincoln, and the waving flag, and the dis- 
 grace was mine, too ; so I never saw the end 
 of those "treasures of the universe." But 
 what other treasures could there have been ? 
 
 Uncle Joe felt the disgrace of being carried 
 out by a woman, and felt it so much that 
 when on our way home we approached the 
 Black Eagle, he began to falter, and his body 
 swayed in the direction of the door. Sud- 
 denly he thrust me from him as if a great 
 power which he could not resist controlled 
 him, and entered the inn, leaving me in the 
 dark, to go home alone. 
 
 When Madame Breshkovska's "marvel- 
 lous, magical, mechanical theater" left us, 
 St. Florian and St. Michael looked down upon 
 a changed world ; for Uncle Joe had " got re- 
 ligion " and Rudolph the lame had run away 
 with the " Wonders of the Universe."
 
 IX 
 
 Uncle Joe Gets Religion and Pays His 
 Debt to Abraham Lincoln 
 
 ALTHOUGH my mother told me a 
 dozen times to lie still and go to 
 sleep, I did not for I could not. My 
 brain was in a whirl. I saw strange geo- 
 metric figures appearing and disappearing, 
 cathedrals flew by me like monster butter- 
 flies, cities were created and annihilated, and 
 I fought the Civil War with Uncle Joe and 
 Abraham Lincoln. Ludmilla stroked my 
 curls, then held me by the back of my neck, 
 and I decided to become a photographer so 
 that all the young ladies would come and 
 have their pictures taken and make her 
 jealous. Just before I fell asleep I heard 
 Uncle Joe push his door open with his 
 crutch, and that excited me even more than 
 the whirl of the wonders of the world ; in- 
 deed it was the greatest wonder, for Uncle 
 141
 
 142 Uncle Joes Lincoln 
 
 Joe had never before come home the same 
 night on which he entered the Black Eagle 
 Inn. 
 
 When I woke the next morning I found 
 him sober and sad. A new, strange look had 
 come into his eyes as if he were both ashamed 
 and surprised. He did not allude to the 
 events of the evening before, and went out 
 shortly after drinking his coffee. Fearing 
 that he might be returning to the inn, I fol- 
 lowed him ; but much to my surprise he 
 went into the house of the Rabbi instead, 
 and that was even a greater miracle than his 
 remaining sober when he had money. 
 
 It is hardly necessary for me to say that 
 Uncle Joe and the Rabbi had not been on 
 speaking terms. Uncle Joe was as much a 
 heathen in the eyes of the Rabbi as he was 
 a revolutionist in the eyes of the law. He 
 never went to the synagogue, he ridiculed all 
 forms of religion whose spirit had departed 
 from them, and, horror of horrors, it was 
 rumored that he ate pork. The rumor was 
 correct, for when my mother reproved him 
 for that iniquity he said : " I ate pork for
 
 Uncle Joe Gets Religion 143 
 
 three years in the army, and it didn't hurt 
 me, and if hogs are really such bad animals 
 as you think, the best thing to do is to kill 
 them and eat them." Of course that was 
 poor reasoning and a bad example for the 
 rest of us, to whom the abstinence from pork 
 was one of the pillars of our faith. More 
 than once my mother was reproved by the 
 Rabbi for harboring an apostate in her home, 
 and a very pious uncle of mine never entered 
 our door while he was living with us ; but 
 she steadfastly refused to turn him out. 
 
 Just what happened in the Rabbi's home 
 we never knew ; but on the following Friday 
 evening, the eve of the Sabbath, Uncle Joe 
 surprised me by saying, " Yingele, I will go 
 to the temple with you." All through the 
 service Uncle Joe sat by my side in our 
 family pew, which smelled of varnish and 
 tallow candles, watching me ; rising when 
 the responses called for rising, and kissing 
 the sacred fringes fervently when he saw me 
 kissing them. 
 
 The pious men were not so engrossed in 
 their devotions that they failed to notice
 
 144 Uncle Joe's Lincoln 
 
 Uncle Joe in the place where he had not 
 been seen before. There was quite an au- 
 dible hum as they commented upon it, and 
 when we left the sacred precincts they gave 
 him a " Good Sabbath " greeting, as if he 
 were one of them. When we reached home, 
 festally lighted by the Sabbath candles, and 
 my mother, meeting me at the door, put her 
 hands upon my head and blessed me as was 
 her custom, Uncle Joe said in a subdued 
 voice, " Bless me, too," and bowed his head 
 as if he were just a little boy ; and she blessed 
 him. 
 
 Eating the Sabbath meal was as much a 
 religious function as praying in the temple. 
 A red cloth on which prayers were embroid- 
 ered covered the poppy seed bread, and 
 when it was withdrawn and the blessing 
 asked upon the meal, Uncle Joe joined rather 
 haltingly, for he had not repeated it for many 
 a year. He had an annoying habit of eating 
 his soup very noisily, and at this meal every 
 spoonful he swallowed was accompanied by 
 a nervous gulp, which was always a sign of 
 his having something on his mind of which
 
 Uncle Joe Gets Religion 145 
 
 he was eager to relieve himself. With a 
 drumstick of the Sabbath goose in his hand, 
 he gesticulated for some time without saying 
 anything; when he had gathered sufficient 
 courage he broke the silence of the evening 
 by calling my mother by her first name, 
 which he had never done before. 
 
 " Deborah, dear, do you believe in God ? " 
 My mother's faith had never wavered, and 
 she scarcely knew what he meant "I 
 mean," he said, " do you believe that God 
 cares enough for His creatures to take an 
 interest in their affairs?" Here, too, her 
 testimony was reassuring ; for had not God 
 comforted her when she was widowed and 
 had He not sustained her when she was in 
 despair ? 
 
 Uncle Joe had dropped his drumstick. 
 His he^ad sank upon his chest till I feared 
 that his beard and the gravy on his plate 
 were in danger each of the other. "Deb- 
 orah, dear," he said again, "you won't 
 think me a fool or a lunatic if I tell you that 
 I saw the Almighty Himself last night, at the 
 Black Eagle Inn?"
 
 146 Uncle Joe's Lincoln 
 
 Of that my mother was not so sure, for 
 " no man can see God and live " and " surely 
 the Almighty, blessed be His name, would 
 look for a better place in which to reveal 
 Himself than the unholy tobacco-smoke-filled 
 Black Eagle Inn." 
 
 And then Uncle Joe told her his experience 
 after he left " Madame Breshkovska's Mar- 
 vellous, Magical, Mechanical Theater," which 
 accounted for a number of mysterious things 
 that had happened since he left me out in 
 the dark, as he disappeared through the 
 doors of the Black Eagle Inn. His shame at 
 being carried out of the theater by a woman, 
 the fumes of wine which assailed his nostrils, 
 the unspent pension money in his pocket, 
 were all to blame for his going into the inn 
 at all. His cronies greeted him more joy- 
 fully because of his long absence from their 
 carousals, and the waiter brought a bottle of 
 Hungarian wine of his favorite vintage ; but 
 when he began to fill his glass something 
 seemed to hold back his hand ; he tried to 
 lift the bottle and couldn't. Then involun- 
 tarily he closed his eyes and, without know-
 
 Uncle Joe Gets Religion 147 
 
 ing why he did it, began repeating his even- 
 ing prayer which he thought he had forgotten 
 entirely ; for it had lain unused in his mind 
 since he said it the last time, sixty or more 
 years ago. 
 
 While he was repeating it, he thought he 
 saw God, looking as stern as the District 
 Judge who had reproved him that evening. 
 He had a long beard and fierce mustaches. 
 He sat upon a thunder-cloud and lightning 
 was playing all around Him. That was the 
 way he used to see God when he was a little 
 boy and tried to think what He looked like. 
 Then the picture faded, and he saw God 
 again ; this time He wore the uniform of the 
 Union Army, and when he could see His 
 features He looked more like the Captain 
 who court-martialed him when he deserted. 
 Gradually the blue uniform faded away, and 
 he saw a tall, lean, lank figure dressed all in 
 black, and a face full of grief looked upon 
 him. The forehead was wrinkled, the eyes 
 were made tender by unshed tears, and he 
 thought he heard the voice of Abraham 
 Lincoln say to him : " Have I spared your
 
 148 Uncle Joe's Lincoln 
 
 miserable life so that instead of dying as a 
 deserter by bullets, you should die as a 
 drunkard, killed by wine bottles ? " 
 
 " Then," said Uncle Joe with deep solem- 
 nity, "a hand seemed to lift me from my 
 chair. No, it was not the hand of Abraham 
 Lincoln, he wouldn't have been strong enough 
 to do it. It was the hand of the Almighty 
 Himself, and He carried me out of the room 
 as if I were a feather in His hand. No, I 
 hadn't tasted a drop of the wine. I wasn't 
 drunk ; I was more sober than I have been 
 for years. Deborah, dear, it was the hand 
 of God Himself, blessed be His name 1 " 
 
 My mother did not have much faith in his 
 religious experience, and she urged him to 
 put into her keeping the unspent pension 
 money ; but he turned his pockets inside out 
 to assure her that it was gone, and told her 
 in a whisper, as if he did not wish the de- 
 parted spirits to hear him, that he had given 
 it all to the Rabbi for the "Haskora" (a 
 memorial) to his most beloved dead. 
 
 From that time, Uncle Joe went twice each 
 day to the synagogue, as if to make up for
 
 Uncle Joe Gets Religion 149 
 
 his past deficiencies, and I, alas ! had to go 
 with him, for he could not wind the prayer 
 strap around his arm or place it on his fore- 
 head. Not having had such a definite re- 
 ligious experience as Uncle Joe, and usually 
 skipping whole pages of my prayers, I found 
 his piety rather irksome ; for he was as 
 punctilious about my devotions as he was 
 about his own. He punched my ribs or 
 rapped my knuckles when he caught me 
 skipping some of the prayers, evidently for- 
 getting that the Lord Himself had not 
 " lifted me out of my chair and carried me 
 out as if I were a feather." I believed Him 
 far away in His heaven and so busy running 
 this universe that one or two pages of prayers 
 more or less did not bother Him very much. 
 All Uncle Joe's belated religious fervor 
 went into the observance of the Day of 
 Atonement. My mother made him a prayer 
 shroud of the finest linen, and he bought him- 
 self a silken prayer mantle, pledging a large 
 part of his next pension money for it. I car- 
 ried his paraphernalia of worship to the tem- 
 ple with some pride, though frankly I did not
 
 150 Uncle Joe's Lincoln 
 
 anticipate the long day of fasting and prayer 
 with any joy, and wished that it were the 
 Fourth of July instead, with its still untasted 
 joys of sandwiches and ice-cream. Uncle Joe 
 looked unusually pale and worn, for his old 
 enemy, the bronchial cough, was troubling 
 him, though he tried to suppress it for fear 
 of disturbing the service. The synagogue 
 was always crowded on this solemn day. 
 The air was heavy and humid, and as the 
 slow hours wore on, women fainted from the 
 rigor of the fast, and little boys teased for 
 food. More than one of them slipped out 
 and found their way into the pantry at home, 
 and came back boasting how well they stood 
 the fast, and that they were not a bit hungry. 
 But this time I was not one of the deserters, 
 for Uncle Joe hovered over me as a hen hov- 
 ers over her lonely chick. He scarcely per- 
 mitted me to go from his side, for he needed 
 my help in guiding him through the mazes 
 of the long service, and he wanted to do 
 everything according to custom. It was one 
 of the longest and hardest days I ever lived. 
 A thousand times or more, forward and back-
 
 Uncle Joe Gets Religion 151 
 
 ward, I counted the spindles in the railing of 
 the gallery which separated the women from 
 the men worshippers, and each time Uncle 
 Joe drew my attention back to the prayer 
 book, often with his usual vicious pull at my 
 curls. Twice I escaped him and went up to 
 the gallery, and had a good cry, hiding my 
 face in my mother's lap, and smelling at her 
 quince pierced all over with cloves. That did 
 not sufficiently revive me so I bit into it. 
 The juice refreshed me, and I hope the re- 
 cording angel did not take notice. 
 
 At last the sun was sinking and its wel- 
 come rays rested on the Ark in which the 
 sacred scrolls of the Law were kept. The 
 climax of the long service drew near, the 
 stragglers came flocking back, the women 
 ceased their chatter ; the Rabbi, his hoary 
 head covered by the prayer mantle, ap- 
 proached the sacred desk, and in plaintive 
 voice began the service for the dead. Uncle 
 Joe was all in a quiver, suppressing his per- 
 sistent cough and gulping a sure sign of 
 his nervous state. 
 
 I am sorry to say that I have forgotten
 
 152 Uncle Joe's Lincoln 
 
 nearly all the melodies of the synagogue 
 service ; it is a long long time since I heard 
 them, but if I should live to be a hundred 
 years old I shall remember that chant for the 
 dead. It was almost a slumber song, as if 
 the Rabbi were crooning a lullaby to the 
 spirits of the departed, or trying to comfort 
 them if they needed it, or assuring them that 
 they were still remembered upon that earth 
 from which they had gone, and that their im- 
 mortality was secure. All were remembered 
 in a general way ; those who died of illness, 
 or accident, through famine or through war. 
 Then came a chant of exaltation, and a new, 
 high and solemn note into his voice ; it was 
 the remembrance of the martyrs, and they 
 were all named the Rabbis burned by the 
 inquisitors in Spain, those who had helped to 
 conserve the faith by dying for it ; then the 
 names became more modern, and more famil- 
 iar, names of those slain by the mobs in their 
 " Jew baiting," and their descendants were as 
 thrilled by this recital as if the very dead were 
 come back among them. 
 
 Every one hung breathless upon the words
 
 Uncle Joe Gets Religion 153 
 
 of the Rabbi ; the atmosphere grew tense from 
 spiritual excitement. There was a pause as 
 if the end had come ; then one name was 
 uttered coupled with Uncle Joe's as the 
 founder of that memorial : " Aa-vro-hom 
 Leen-co-o-ln ! " The last syllable was long 
 drawn out by the Rabbi, who no doubt 
 thought it was some foreign Hebrew he was 
 thus remembering before the throne of the 
 Almighty. 
 
 Then Uncle Joe's suppressed cough released 
 itself. I thought the old man would choke to 
 death, and I had to lead him out while his 
 poor frame was shaken as by convulsions. 
 He did not speak a word, while we sat for a 
 long time on the stone bench, in the yard of 
 the synagogue. Then between the paroxysms 
 of his cough, I heard him say half question- 
 ingly: "We are quits now, Abraham Lin- 
 coln."
 
 The Three-Quarters of a Man Is Made 
 Whole again, and 'Uncle Joe Goes on 
 His Last Journey 
 
 THE cough did not subside so that we 
 could return to the synagogue for 
 the closing service, and I fear I was 
 not sorry. I had a hard time getting Uncle 
 Joe home, for he was so exhausted that he 
 could scarcely propel himself on his crutch, 
 and I was too weak and hungry to help him. 
 When we reached home he went to bed, and 
 I had no other care than to look for the first 
 star which was the heavenly signal that the 
 fast might be broken. No astronomer ever 
 searched the heavens with greater eagerness 
 than I searched them, and when I saw a 
 faint twinkle in the evening sky I proclaimed 
 it most joyfully. 
 
 Uncle Joe coughed all night and did not 
 X 54
 
 Uncle Joe Takes His Last Journey 155 
 
 sleep that night, or the next day or night 
 The doctor made frequent visits, and shook 
 his head ; but long before Uncle Joe was 
 told that this might be the end, he knew it. 
 On Sunday afternoon I found my mother in 
 his room, holding his emaciated hand and 
 reassuring him as he tried hard to ask her to 
 forgive him. Once or twice he attempted to 
 lift the stump of his arm, forgetting that it 
 was gone, or tried to raise his head, then sank 
 back exhausted by the effort. His eyes had 
 a far-away look and he was muttering in 
 English. The next day the doctor came sev- 
 eral times, and late in the afternoon, when I 
 came home from school, I heard from afar 
 the weird, discordant chanting of prayers, 
 and the lamentations of the pious men of the 
 burial society, who were helping the release 
 of Uncle Joe's weary soul Old men they 
 were mostly, in their workaday dress. 
 Their voices were hard and harsh, and I 
 pitied the poor struggling, dying man, wish- 
 ing with all my heart that I had the power to 
 drive them all out of the room ; for then he 
 might have died more easily.
 
 156 Uncle Joe's Lincoln 
 
 The Hebrew has no illusion about death ; 
 it is his goal, and he cannot escape it. He 
 faces that fact every day, and wears his 
 shroud at his wedding and on the great holy 
 days. The Death Angel comes, and cares 
 not to hide his coming. He seems to walk 
 heavily over the creaking floor, with booted 
 feet. The elemental agonies of the dying are 
 not eased by words of consolation, nor is the 
 grief of the mourners covered by draperies 
 or fragrant flowers. 
 
 No doubt all the hope of the race for sur- 
 vival after death is contained in the prayers 
 the men were offering, but they were recited 
 in Hebrew, and neither they nor Uncle Joe 
 knew what they were saying. His poor tor- 
 tured soul was seeking its release. He saw 
 me and beckoned. I tried to run away, for 
 death held strange terrors for me ; but the 
 smile of recognition which flitted over his 
 pain-drawn face drew me back, and I knelt 
 before him, trying to hide my face in the 
 feather bed on which he lay. 
 
 His hand moved over my curly hair (he 
 was too weak to pull it) and I lifted my eyes
 
 Uncle Joe Takes His Last Journey 157 
 
 to his. He tried to point to the flag which 
 was above his bed, and I, knowing what he 
 wanted, climbed up and released it and 
 spread it on the coverlet. His fingers moved 
 nervously over it, as he tried to say some^ 
 thing but couldn't. I nodded understand- 
 ingly, for I knew he wanted to be buried in 
 the flag. We had spoken of it many times. 
 
 " Bury me in the Stars and Stripes," he 
 used to say, " even if I am buried in the 
 potter's field. That's why I brought Old 
 Glory with me." 
 
 He moved restlessly, still looking at me 
 intently as if to say, " Don't you understand, 
 little boy, what I want most ? " I did under- 
 stand, and took from the wall the picture of 
 Abraham Lincoln, and he looked at it in- 
 tently. I was about to remove it, for I was 
 eager to be gone, but his beseeching eyes 
 drew me back, and I held it before him 
 again. He tried to lift himself but only half 
 succeeded ; then he raised his hand in salute, 
 falteringly and with great effort and fell 
 back gasping for breath. 
 
 I fled from the room and ran as fast as I
 
 158 Uncle Joe's Lincoln 
 
 could to tell the news to my cronies. I went 
 to the Castell where I had not gone for a long 
 time, to tell Yanczy Pal, for enmities are for- 
 gotten in the face of sad tidings ; then up to 
 the mill to tell Cannonball. I stopped at the 
 smithy and shouted to Pavel Chorvat that 
 Uncle Joe was dying. I think I felt proud ; 
 for in a place where news was scarce it was 
 something of a privilege to be the first one to 
 tell it. 
 
 When I reached home it was all over, and 
 Uncle Joe had joined his comrades of the 
 Grand Army of the Republic who had pre- 
 ceded him upon the last, long, weary march. 
 In accordance with their custom the pious 
 men laid his body on the floor. He was 
 dressed in the new linen shroud which he 
 had worn but recently on the Day of Atone- 
 ment, and wrapped around it were the Stars 
 and Stripes, which never before nor since cov- 
 ered a greater lover of the flag of freedom. 
 
 Upon a plain wooden slab his body was 
 carried to the God's Acre and at the head 
 of the funeral procession walked Yanczy Pal, 
 Pavel Chorvat, Speckled Horse, Cannonball
 
 Uncle Joe Takes His Last Journey 159 
 
 and the Gypsy boys to whom he had given 
 many a penny. I was in advance of them, 
 for I had an appointment with Old Istvan 
 behind the big willow tree at the farther end 
 of the cemetery. He had brought his gun 
 by request, and his dog came unbidden. I 
 had contracted with the old peasant to fire a 
 salute of two guns, but Yanczy Pal insisted 
 that there must be three, both for military 
 and religious reasons. I did not mind the 
 extra cost for the other shot, but when I 
 asked him what the religious reason was, 
 and he said " One for the Father, one for the 
 Son and one for the Holy Ghost," I objectedc 
 But Yanczy Pal being born to command, had 
 his way. The pious men had said their 
 prayers and Uncle Joe's body was lowered 
 into the grave. As the men threw clods of 
 earth upon it, at the same time praying that 
 the burden of them might be light upon him, 
 three shots were fired. Istvan and Yanczy 
 Pal crossed themselves, there was a scamper 
 of little feet, a cry of alarm from the mourn- 
 ers and the Lincoln Army had paid its last 
 tribute to its founder and inspirer Uncle Joe.
 
 XI 
 
 Tells How There Happens to Be a Lin- 
 coln Club on the East Side of New 
 York 
 
 NO, it was not a trick of fate. We 
 were foreordained to be Americans, 
 all of us except Yanczy Pal. He 
 went to the Military Academy in Vienna and 
 received his commission, and when I saw 
 him last he was riding at the head of his 
 regiment. I felt like telling him not to look 
 so proud and haughty, but he could not help 
 that for he inherited his arrogance from 
 his heroic ancestors, who wore their military 
 decorations on their nightgowns and to 
 whom all civilians were Basama Teremtete. 
 
 Since our boyhood I had seen him just 
 once before, when I was revisiting the scenes 
 of the Lincoln Army's exploits. My little 
 girl was with me, and she was fascinated by 
 the man in a sky blue uniform trimmed in 
 
 gold braid and buttons. He stopped and 
 1 60
 
 The East Side Lincoln Club 161 
 
 talked to the little " Amerikauska" and 
 when I told him who I was he seemed glad, 
 but only for a moment ; then his face took 
 on the Napoleonic expression. He put his 
 hand between the buttons of his sky blue 
 coat, clicked his spurs, and saying that times 
 had changed, marched off with great dignity. 
 For a minute I resented his indifference and 
 was tempted to remind him that he had 
 never given me back the handkerchief I lent 
 him when a " veteran who is no earthly good 
 in the army " had given him a very humiliat- 
 ing thrashing. Realizing, however, that I am 
 a citizen of the United States, which is some- 
 thing more than being an officer in His 
 Majesty's army, I refrained from recalling 
 the incident. 
 
 While Yanczy Pal never became an 
 American, he married a very rich American, 
 who, as it was reported, ruled the regiment 
 and its commander ; so while the rest of us 
 became citizens of the United States, he 
 merely became, although indirectly, its sub- 
 ject. 
 
 Most of the rest of us you will find in New
 
 1 62 Uncle Joe's Lincoln 
 
 York City, that great catch basin of the 
 world's human overflow. All of us are 
 among those whom Abraham Lincoln said 
 God evidently liked, for He made so many 
 of them, the poor. Individually we own 
 no real estate, but together we have pur- 
 chased an acre of ground, " out Jersey way," 
 for a cemetery ; for the poor, while living in 
 tenements, want to make sure that they need 
 not be buried in paupers' graves. 
 
 Twice a month on Sunday afternoons, the 
 members of the Lincoln Army living in New 
 York meet together. If you care to visit 
 them you will have to take the Third 
 Avenue elevated, which, of course, is cheaper 
 than a taxi ; and while you travel you may 
 see " how the other half lives." You must 
 not be so absorbed in looking at the moving 
 picture, of which each glimpse is a tragedy 
 or a comedy, as to forget to leave the car on 
 Sixtieth Street, or thereabouts. Be sure that 
 you turn east rather than west, for here, in- 
 deed, " East is East, and West is West, and 
 never the twain shall meet." Here you will 
 strike the backwash from Fifth Avenue and
 
 The East Side Lincoln Club 163 
 
 Park Avenue, from costly mansions and as 
 costly apartments. In these crowded streets 
 live the postmen, butlers, pressers and clean- 
 ers, chauffeurs and manicurists, and the multi- 
 tude of those who minister to the rich. On 
 each corner is a saloon with a delicatessen 
 shop not far away, and Hungarian and 
 Bohemian restaurants and coffee houses cater 
 to national appetites. 
 
 A block or two from the car line you will 
 find a building completely given over to the 
 gratification of the fraternal instinct, the 
 passion for cooperation. Ascending a steep, 
 musty stairway, you enter a small lodge 
 room, used in turn by Secret Societies, 
 Labor Unions, and Sick and Benefit Asso- 
 ciations. It is full of all sorts of parapher- 
 nalia, the symbols of brotherhood used in the 
 ritual of the religion of doing good. Don't 
 be repelled by the odors, which range from 
 stale cigarette smoke to that which is most 
 innocent and yet most penetrating garlic. 
 The sour smell of the drippings from the 
 near-by bar is quite obtrusive, and the air is 
 apt to be heavy and stifling.
 
 164 Uncle Joes Lincoln 
 
 I went to this room for the first time a 
 good many years ago, when first I learned 
 that several prominent members of the Lin- 
 coln Army belonged to a " Sick and Benefit " 
 society which held its meetings there. The 
 Stars and Stripes are in evidence, not born of 
 the patriotic fervor engendered by the war ; 
 the flag has been there ever since this club 
 became part tenants of the lodge room. The 
 picture of Abraham Lincoln hangs on one 
 side of the Grand Master's chair and that of 
 Uncle Joe on the other side, and when the 
 members enter the room they always salute 
 them and the flag which drapes them. Grad- 
 ually they have learned proper decorum for 
 they were unaccustomed to parliamentary 
 usage, and at first the meetings were highly 
 entertaining. 
 
 However, if you had attended one with me 
 on the second Sunday in April of this year, 
 you would have found the proceedings con- 
 ducted not only according to Roberts' Rules 
 of Order, but full of patriotic fervor, for they 
 were dedicating their service flag. Their 
 wives and children and grandchildren were
 
 The East Side Lincoln Club 165 
 
 with them, and while they created a little 
 confusion, they also added to the impressive- 
 ness of the occasion. 
 
 Rudolph the lame presided. Doubtless 
 you remember that it was he who ran away 
 with the " Marvellous, Magical, Mechanical 
 Theater." Years after, he married Lud- 
 milla, the fairy queen who had roused my 
 ambition to become a photographer. 
 
 Cannonball, grown unrecognizably slender, 
 well-groomed, and looking thoroughly effi- 
 cient, led his tiny granddaughter of three 
 years, to the platform. Her part in the pro- 
 gram was to pledge allegiance to the flag. 
 A more exquisite little creature I have never 
 seen like a bit of delicate china, with large, 
 liquid gray eyes and hair of burnished gold. 
 
 Encouraged by a few reassuring words 
 from her proud grandfather, she began, her 
 fingers meanwhile twisting in and out of the 
 folds of her abbreviated white frock : 
 
 " I pledge alle-g-i-ance to my flag (there 
 she saluted) and the re-pub-lic for which it 
 stands. One nation, in-di-vi-si-ble " that 
 was such a big word " with lib-er-ty and
 
 1 66 Uncle Joe's Lincoln 
 
 justice for all." The last few words were 
 said all in one breath, quickly, as children 
 are apt to say last words of " a piece." 
 
 A storm of applause followed, and as if 
 moved by one impulse, those foreign-born 
 parents and grandparents rose, and saluted 
 the flag their flag. 
 
 Speckled Horse is secretary of the club 
 and is remarkably efficient. His daughter 
 played the Star Spangled Banner, and we all 
 knew every verse, and sang without falling 
 by the way when its high notes were 
 reached. 
 
 The secretary read the minutes of the last 
 meeting. In these days when billions of dol- 
 lars are offered up on the altar of our coun- 
 try, you might not have been thrilled by the 
 sums of money they have given for the Red 
 Cross and the purchase of Liberty Bonds ; 
 but when you remember that none of them 
 has ever earned more than five dollars a day, 
 and that most of them work at seasonal 
 labor, their hundreds and thousands are fairly 
 eloquent. What touched me even more 
 than the money they have given for our be-
 
 The East Side Lincoln Club 167 
 
 loved land, was the fact that over one-third 
 of the members of that Abraham Lincoln 
 Club pledged not less than one hour daily for 
 work in the Liberty Loan or Red Cross cam- 
 paigns. This work, of course, had to be 
 done after their day's duties were over. Also 
 they are looking after their own dependents 
 and have drawn into their fellowship nearly 
 three hundred of their countrymen, later 
 comers to this new Fatherland ; have paid 
 weekly sick benefits, looked after the unem- 
 ployed, and buried the dead. None of them 
 has become a burden to charitable organiza- 
 tions, nor have they exploited society, but 
 they have contributed to the national weal by 
 performing necessary labor. 
 
 One of their number, and he the most 
 modest among them, Cannonball, is now in 
 government employ, and is doing expert 
 work faithfully for a wage not at all in propor- 
 tion to the service he renders. How proud 
 he is thus to serve his country, and how we 
 all admire him ! 
 
 Before the meeting closed the service flag 
 was unfurled. Six stars shine there for sons
 
 1 68 Unc/e Joe's Lincoln 
 
 serving our country " somewhere in France " ; 
 all have gone voluntarily and the Lincoln 
 Club is justly proud of them. One of the 
 stars is golden. It is Speckled Horse who 
 mourns for his son, who went with the engi- 
 neers, and it was his company which, while 
 safe in the rear, sprang to the aid of the 
 hard-pressed British, and he met his death 
 doing more than his duty. I trust that Uncle 
 Joe has met this brave young spirit up yon- 
 der, where they are remembering us, living 
 in the throes of our suffering. 
 
 When the service flag had been properly 
 hung, Rudolph the lame made the dedicatory 
 address, and I quote the closing sentences of 
 his truly great speech. 
 
 "Some day when we shall be safely re- 
 moved from this unbelievable time, when 
 passions have cooled and the past is but a 
 precious memory, the service which we, the 
 foreign-born in America, have rendered, will 
 be recorded. We of the Lincoln Club are but 
 a fraction of the millions who have labored 
 in mine and mill to strengthen the national 
 arm ; who have given ungrudgingly of our
 
 The East Side Lincoln Club 169 
 
 pittance and have sent out our sons with 
 heavy hearts, perhaps, but with gratitude 
 that we too may have a share in the uni- 
 versal sacrifice. Our six stars represent a 
 very small part of some four hundred thou- 
 sand alien-born in the service of this gov- 
 ernment, and our gold star is but one of 
 the thousands which in splendor shall shine 
 through the ages, proclaiming our loyalty to 
 our adopted country. 
 
 " Let us go to our homes and to our work 
 with new courage to live, and suffer, and die, 
 if need be ; so that this ' government of the 
 people, by the people, for the people, shall 
 not perish from the earth.' " 
 
 The women were crying and the men were 
 winking hard, if not frankly wiping their 
 eyes, when the chairman's gavel struck the 
 table, and the meeting was declared ad- 
 journed. 
 
 Most people look back upon certain days 
 in their lives, which they call " Red Letter " 
 days, and among many such in my life I 
 recall two, with feelings of profound grati-
 
 '170 Uncle 'Joe's Lincoln 
 
 tude : one was the day when I received offi- 
 cial notice that I had been made an honorary 
 member of the Lincoln Club on the East Side 
 of New York the other, when I had the 
 long-desired opportunity to visit the city of 
 Springfield, Illinois, and make a pilgrimage 
 to the tomb of Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 It is a commonplace enough city, like 
 many another in the great Mississippi Valley, 
 but to me it was holy ground ; there, where 
 "Abraham Lincoln walks at midnight," I 
 saw the house where he lived, read the tab- 
 lets which mark the places where he prac- 
 ticed law, and then I went out to visit his 
 tomb. Ornate it is, and too much so ; noth- 
 ing is there which interpreted to me his 
 genius and character. There were many 
 sightseers, who talked loudly and walked 
 irreverently, where only a whisper should 
 disturb the silence. 
 
 When they left (and I was thankful to see 
 them go), convincing the guard that I meant 
 no harm, I went close to the tomb, the stony 
 bed in which our loved martyr sleeps, and 
 the story of Uncle Joe passed through my
 
 The East Side Lincoln Club 171 
 
 mind, with all that my knowing him had 
 meant to me and the comrades of my youth. 
 Placing a wreath upon the tomb in the name 
 of the East Side Lincoln Club, I pledged to 
 his country, which is ours, and to his cause, 
 also ours, our loyalty and devotion forever. 
 
 Strange it seemed ; yet why should it be 
 strange? As I read the inscription carved 
 in stone, the speech which I made at the 
 burial of Russian Hill came back to me word 
 for word, and I repeated it aloud. There was 
 one sentence which I repeated three times : 
 
 " With charity toward all t with malice 
 toward none." 
 
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 The charmingly written account of an American girl's ad- 
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 romantio elements, such as becometh a story written beneath 
 the shadow of glorious Lebanon, in a region of wondrous sun- 
 sets, quiet sheep-folds and the scent of orange blossoms. 
 Those who read and succumbed to the fascination of "The 
 Lady of the Decoration," may anticipate a similar pleasure 
 from this delightful volume. 
 
 FRANCIS GEORGE 
 
 The Only Nancy _ 
 
 A Tale of the Kentucky Mountains. ^I2m6, clotH, 
 net $1.25. 
 
 A story of a Southern mountain-community, told with viv- 
 idness and power. The author's long association with, and 
 knowledge of these people enables him to write with freedom 
 and fidelity of the region made famous by John Fox, Jr. 
 Nancy, the central figure, is a real flesh-and-blood character, 
 as indeed are all the rest of the people in the pages of "Thfl 
 Only Nancy."
 
 FICTION, JUVENILE, ETC. 
 
 J. J. BELL Author of " Wee Macgregw >t 
 
 Cupid in Oilskins 
 
 I2tno, cloth, net $1.00. 
 
 "Much of the charm of "Wee Macgreegor* and 'Oh! 
 Christina" is found in this satisfying story of love and war. 
 'Charlie' is a gunner on a British patrol boat who is inspired 
 to attempt the sinking of an enemy submarine partly from 
 devotion to a lass admired by many a lovelorn sailor. There 
 is fun in the story with patriotism and a high sense of honor 
 and withal a tenderness for which Bell's heroes and hero- 
 ines are noted." The Continent, 
 
 PROF. EDITARD A. STEINER Author ef" The Imtni- 
 grant Tide." etc. 
 
 My Doctor Dog 
 
 i6mo, boards, net 500. 
 
 A famous author in a new vein. Taking for a theme his 
 possession when a boy of a little fox-terrier, Prof. Steiner 
 furnishes some altogether delightful pictures of the land of 
 bis childhood, and of the quaint manners and customs obtain- 
 ing in the land of the Carpathians. The story is given an 
 American application sequel, in which all Prof. Steiner'a rich 
 endowment as a powerful and sympathetic writer finds full play. 
 
 A. FREDERICK COLLINS 
 
 The Magic of Science 
 
 Profusely Illustrated. I2mo, cloth, net $1.25. 
 
 Time will never hang heavily on the hands of the boy who 
 owns this book. It is a work that will appeal to every boy 
 or girl from nine to ninety. Its pages open up a practically 
 unending vista of entertainment, which is as much valuable 
 knowledge as it is diversion and amusement. Nearly one hun- 
 dred and fifty sketches illustrate the text. 
 
 FLORENCE PELTIER 
 
 Through the Rainbow 
 
 A Fairy Story. With Illustrations in color by 
 Clara P. Wilson, and in black and white by Jewel L. 
 Morrison. Small quarto, cloth, net $1.00. 
 
 In some respects the reader is reminded of "Alice in Won- 
 derland"; in others, met only by new, original fancies. A 
 book of sheer, unalloyed delight. To a captivating story told 
 in the freshest, most charming sort of way, an added wealth 
 of illustrations, done both in color and black-and-white, com* 
 plete a "straight cut" to the heart of a child.
 
 BOOKS FOR MEN 
 
 ROBERT E. SPEER, P.P. Mtrrick Lectures, 1917, 
 
 Ohio Wesley an University 
 
 The Stuff of Manhood 
 
 Some Needed Notes in American Character, 
 net $1.00. 
 
 Dr. Spee_r holds that the moral element^ of individual char- 
 acter are inevitably social and that one service which each 
 man must render the nation is to illustrate in his own life 
 and character the moral qualities which ought to character- 
 ize the State. To a discussion of these ideals and some sug- 
 gested methods of their attainment, Dr. Speer devotes this 
 stirring, uplifting book. 
 
 CORTLANP MYERS, P.P. Minister of 
 
 ' Trtmoni Temple, Boston 
 
 Money Mad 
 
 I2mo, doth, net SGC. ' : -^ 
 
 The fearlessly-expressed views of 3 popular pastor and 
 preacher on the all-important question, of Money. Dr. 
 Myers shows how a man may make, save, spend, and give 
 money without doing violence to his conscience, or his stand- 
 ing as a member of the Church of Christ. 
 
 CHARLES REYNOLDS BROWN, P.P. Yale University 
 
 Five Young Men 
 
 Messages of Yesterday for the Young Men of To- 
 iday. I2mo, cloth, 7Sc. 
 
 Dean Brown's literary output is always assured of wel- 
 come and a large reading. His new work is specially suitable 
 to students in college, or young men in business or in the 
 home. But the general reader of almost any type, will be 
 able to find something of value in this latest volume from the 
 pen of a recognized writer of light and leading. 
 
 DEWITT McMURRAY of the Dallas Daily News 
 
 The Religion of a Newspaper Man 
 
 I2mo, cloth, net $1.50. 
 
 "Every one of the chapters sparkles with' a thousand gems 
 that Mr. McMurray has dug out of obscure as well as better- 
 known hiding-places and sprinkled in among his own thoughts 
 His quotations and there are literally thousands of them 
 are exquisitely timed and placed." -Springfield Republican. 
 
 BURRIS A. JENKINS, P.P. 
 
 The Man in the Street and Religion 
 
 I2tno, cloth, net $1.25. 
 
 "In a convincing and inspiring way and in 3 graceful 
 style, the author presses home this truth, the result of years 
 of trained study of human nature. The book is the k'T'ji 
 that 'the man in the street' well enjoy." Boston Globe.
 
 FICTION, JUVENILE, Etc. 
 
 CYRUS TOfTNSEND BRADY AND SON 
 
 \Veh of Steel ILLUSTRATED BY 
 veu ui oieei THE KINNEYS 
 
 A Story About a Father and Son by a Father and 
 Son for All Mankind. I2mo, cloth, net $1.35. 
 
 "All who delight in adventure stories will find a thrill in 
 every chapter in this story by Cyrus Townsend Brady."- 
 Des Moines Capital. 
 
 ABE CORY 
 
 The Trail to the Hearts of Men 
 
 A Story of East and West. Illustrated, I2mo, 
 cloth, net $1.35. 
 
 A story of action and power with the scenes laid in China. 
 The hero is a man of high ideals, determined upon a life of 
 high purpose. Social ties including a sweetheart endeavor 
 to hold him, and he has to come to the cross-road of decision. 
 He chooses for his higher ideals to find in the long run, the 
 other things are his. There is much of the spell of adventure 
 in the story, and some quickly-moving scenes that grip and 
 hold the reader with undiminished interest. 
 
 S. HALL YOUNG Author / "Alaska Days with John Muir" 
 
 The Klondike Clan 
 
 Illustrated, I2mo, cloth, net $1.35. 
 
 Out of his wonderful experiences in the great Northwest, 
 Dr. S. Hall Young has evolved a story of breathless interest 
 dealing with the days of the Great Stampede to the Yukon in 
 the days of the gold cra_ze. Dr. Young's adventures are real 
 adventures, through which he and those of whom he writes 
 literally passed. A book of vigour, interest and power. 
 
 /. /. BELL WITH "KITCHENER'S MOB" 
 
 Wee Macgreegor Enlists 
 
 Illustrated, I2mo, cloth, net $1.00. 
 
 "A rare and rollicking book, is this one. For all its fun, 
 it gives a graphic picture of present-day Scotland and the 
 Scotch. But, oh, it's the wee Mac and Private Thompson 
 and Christina that belong in the Caledonian Hall of Fame!" 
 Evening Sun. 
 
 CHARLES H. LERRIGO Doc William's Stronghold 
 
 The Castle of Cheer 
 
 I2mo, cloth, net $1.25, 
 
 "One resounding note of optimism," "Doc Williams is a 
 benefactor of the race, for in these pages he succeeds in 
 instilling a note of cheer into the soul of a fellow-mortal. It 
 is a strong, inspiring, invigorating story, spicy with romance 
 and humor." The Continent.
 
 NEW EDITIONS 
 
 S. HALL YOUNG 
 
 Alaska Days with John Muir 
 
 Illustrated, I2mo, cloth, net $1.15 
 
 "Do you remember Stickeen, the canine hero of John 
 Muir's famous dog story? Here is a book by the man who 
 owned Stickeen and who was Muir's companion on that ad- 
 venturous trip among the Alaskan glaciers. This is not only 
 a breezy outdoor book, full of the wild beauties of the Ala_s- 
 kan wilderness; it is also a living portrait of John Muir in 
 the great moments of his career." New York Times, 
 
 S. R. CROCKETT Authtr tfSilvit Sand." ttc. 
 
 Hal 'o the Ironsides : 
 
 Illustrated, 12010, cloth, net $1.25. 
 
 "Crockett's last story. A rip-roaring tale of the days of the 
 great Oliver days when the dogs of war were let loose in 
 English meadows, and "the gallants of England struck home 
 for the King." Examiner. 
 
 FANNY CROSBY 
 
 Fanny Crosby's Story 
 
 By S. Trevena Jackson. Illustrated, cloth, net $1.15 
 
 "This is, in a way, an autobiography, for it is the story of 
 Fanny Crosby's life as she told it to her friend, who retells 
 it in this charming book. All lovers of the blind hymn 
 writer ought to read thi* volume. It tells a story of pathos 
 and of cheer. It will strengthen the faith ana cheer the 
 heart of every reader." Watchman-Examiner, 
 
 PROF. HUGH BLACK 
 
 The New World 
 
 i6mo, cloth, net $1.15. 
 
 "Dr. Black is a strong thinker and a clear, forcible writer. 
 Here he analyzes national tendencies toward unrest social, 
 material, religious. This he does with moderation yet with 
 courage, and always with hopefulness." The Outlook. 
 
 S. M. ZWEMER, P.P., F.R.G.S. Auth>r ./ A ratia. ,*. 
 
 Childhood in the Moslem World 
 
 Illustrated, 8vo, cloth, net $2.00. 
 
 "The claims of millions of children living and dying under 
 the blighting influence of Islam are set forth with graphic 
 fidelity. Both in text and illustrations, Dr. Zwemers new 
 book covers much ground hitherto lying untouched in Mo- 
 hammedan literature," Christian Work.