Chapter 30

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"We did! we _did_!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"How is John Forney getting on?"

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

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

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

In the summer Colonel Forney went to Europe with John the junior. When he left he said, "I do not expect you to raise the circulation of the _Press_, but I hope that you will be able to keep it from falling in the dead season." I went to work, and what with enlarging the telegraphic news, and correspondence, and full reports of conventions, I materially increased the sale. It cost a great deal of money, to be sure, but the Colonel did not mind that. At this time there came into our office as associate with me Captain W. W. Nevin. He had been all through the war. I took a great liking to him, and we always remained intimate friends. All in our office except myself were from Lancaster County, the birthplace, I believe, of Fitch and Fulton. It is a Pennsylvania German county, and as I notoriously spoke German openly without shame ours was called a Dutch office. Once when Colonel Forney wrote a letter from Holland describing the windmills, the _Sunday Transcript_ unkindly remarked that "he had better come home and look after his own Dutch windmill at the corner of Seventh and Chestnut Streets."

I had at this time a great deal to do with the operas and theatres, and often wrote the reviews. After a while, as Captain Nevin relieved me of a great deal of work, and I had an able assistant named Norcross, I devoted myself chiefly to dramatic criticism and the weekly, and such work as suited me best. As for the dignity of managership, Captain Nevin and I tossed it from one to the other like a hot potato in jest, but between us we ran the paper very well. There was an opera impresario named Maurice Strakosch, of whom I had heard that he was hard to deal with and irritable. I forget now who the prima donna in his charge was, but there had appeared in our paper a criticism which might be interpreted in some detail unfavourably by a captious critic. One afternoon there came into the office, where I was alone, a gentlemanly- seeming man, who began to manifest anger in regard to the criticism in question. I replied, "I do not know, sir, what your position in the opera troupe may be, but if it be anything which requires a knowledge of English, I am afraid that you are misplaced. There was no intention to offend in the remarks, and so far as the lady is concerned I shall only be too glad to say the very best I can of her. _Comprenez_, _monsieur_, _c'est une bagatelle_." He laughed, and we spoke French, then Italian, then German, and of Patti and Sontag and Lind. Then I asked him what he really was, and he replied, "I do not believe that you even know the name of my native tongue. It is Czech." I stared at him amazed, and said--

"Veliky Bog! Rozprava pochesky? Nekrasneya rejece est."

The Bohemian gentleman drew a handsomely bound book from his pocket. "Sir," he said, "this is my album. It is full of signatures of great artists, even of kings and queens and poets. There is not a name in it which is not that of a distinguished person, and I do not know what your name is, but I beg that you will write it in my book."

Nearly the same scene was repeated soon after, with the same words, when the great actress Fanny Janauschek came to Philadelphia. At that time she played only in German. Her manager, Grau, introduced me to her, and she complimented me on my German, and praised the language as the finest in the world.

"Yes," I replied, "it _is_ certainly very fine. But I know a finer, which goes more nearly to the heart, and with which I can move you more deeply."

"And what is that?" cried the great artist astonished.

"It is," I replied, in her native tongue, "_Bohemian_. That is the language for me."

Madame Janauschek was so affected that she burst out crying, though she was a woman of tremendous nerve. We became great friends, and often met again in after years in England.

I have seen Ristori play for thirty nights in succession, {346} and Rachel and Sarah Bernhardt; but as regards true genius, Janauschek in her earlier days was incomparably their superior; for these all played from nerves and instinct, but Janauschek from her brain and intellect. I often wondered that she did not write plays. It is said of Rachel that there was once a five-act play in which she died at the end of the fourth act. After it had had a long run she casually asked some one _how it ended_. She had never read the fifth act. Such a story could never have been told of Janauschek.

In the summer there were one or two railroad excursions to visit new branch roads in Pennsylvania. While on one of these I visited the celebrated Mauch Chunk coal mines, and rode on the switchback railway, where I had a fearfully narrow escape from death. This switchback is a _montagne Russe_ coming up and down a hill, and six miles in length. Yet, though the rate of speed is appalling, the engineer can stop the car in a few seconds' time with the powerful brake. We were going down headlong, when all at once a cow stepped out of the bushes on the road before us, and if we had struck her we must have gone headlong over the cliff and been killed. But by a miracle the engineer stopped the car just as we got to the cow. We were saved by a second. Something very like it had occurred to my wife and to me in 1859. We were going to Reading by rail, when the train ran off the track and went straight for an embankment where there was a fall of 150 feet. It was stopped just as the locomotive protruded or looked over the precipice. Had there been the _least trifle_ more of steam on at that instant we must all have perished.

In November of this my second year on the _Press_ my father died. One thing occurred on this sad bereavement which alleviated it a little. I had always felt all my life that he had never been satisfied with my want of a fixed career or position. He did not, I think, _very_ much like John Forney, the audacious, reckless politician, but he still respected his power and success, and it astonished him a little, and many others quite as much, to find that I was in many respects Forney's right-hand man, and manager of a bold political paper which had a great influence. A day or two before he died my father expressed himself kindly to the effect that I had at last done well, and that he was satisfied with me. At last, after so many years, he felt that I had _etat_--a calling, a definite position. In fact, in those days it was often said that Forney could make himself President, as he indeed might have done but for certain errors, no greater than have been committed by more successful men, and a stroke of ill-luck such as few can resist.

The winter passed quietly. I was extremely fond of my life and work. Summer came, and with it a great desire for a change and wild life and the West, for I had worked very hard. A very great railway excursion, which was destined to have a great effect, was being organised, and both my wife and I were invited to join it. Mr. John Edgar Thompson, the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, Mr. Hinckley, of the Baltimore road, President Felton, Professor Leidy, Robert Lamborn, and a number of other notables, were to go to Duluth, on Lake Superior, and decide on the terminus of the railroad as a site for a city. Mrs. John E. Thompson had her own private car, which was seventy feet in length, and fitted up with every convenience and luxury. To this was added the same directors' car in which I had travelled to Minnesota. There were to be in all ten or twelve gentlemen and ten ladies. There was such efficient service that one young man, a clerk, was detailed especially to look after our luggage. As we stopped every night at some hotel, he would inquire what we required to be taken to our rooms, and saw that it was brought back in the morning. I went off in such a hurry that I forgot my Indian blanket, nor had I any revolver or gun, all of which, especially the blanket, I sadly missed ere I returned. I got, before I left, a full white flannel or fine white cloth suit, which was then a startling novelty, and wore it to the Falls of the Mississippi. Little did I foresee that ere it gave out I should also have it on at the Cataracts of the Nile!