CONTENTS
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
INDEX

ECCENTRICITIES OF GENIUS


PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO. LTD., NEW-STREET SQUARE
LONDON

Copyright, 1900, by
G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY, NEW YORK

To

G E O R G E   R.   P E C K.

I   D e d i c a t e   t h i s   B o o k.
J. B. POND.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

J. B. Pond.

PREFACE

“A blaze of splendor is the pictorial part of this book, an art gallery on the wing. You need not visit New York, or Dresden, or Berlin, or Rome, to see the masterpieces, for the best part of them is now, my dear reader, between your forefinger and thumb! The publishers of this book have ransacked the earth for these three, hundred and thirteen gems (313).”

“GREAT is the responsibility! of the publishing a book, especially in this case where the publishers, a MONTH BEFORE THE BOOK IS PUBLISHED! HAVE SOLD! 250,000 COPIES THEREOF! An unprecedented occurrence in the history of LITERATURE!” (the capitals, italics, and astonishers are mine.—J. B. P.).—“The Pathway of Life,” Rev. T. DeWitt Talmage.

“It is not to illustrate any heroic achievements of a man, but to vindicate a just and beneficent principle, in its application to the whole human family, by letting in a light of truth upon a system esteemed by some as a blessing, and by others as a curse and a crime.”—“My Bondage and Freedom,” Frederick Douglass.

FIRST QUESTION ANSWERED.

At that I was still more frightened. He said:

“You see the editor in that sanctum—” Just then a man came to the door from an adjoining room and spoke very gently to me. I never forgot that.

He said, “I want an apprentice to learn the printer’s trade. Would you like to try? I will give you $25 for the first year, $30 for the second, and $50 for the third.” I agreed.

“You go in there and roll that press,” said the foreman.

It seems the regular “devil” had had an altercation with the foreman and left, and one of the journeyman printers was rolling a handbill, while a man outside with his sulky and horse was waiting for it, and that poster I can always recall. It was a rude cut of a stallion, with black letter announcements relating thereto. That beautiful clean white paper and the glossy black ink startled me. I never got over it. I have been using black ink and white paper ever since.

To make a long story short, I was behind that press and covered with printers’ ink in a very few minutes. After the handbill was printed, the foreman lifted the form, called me to his side of the press, and said:

“Take this form to that sink and wash it.”

I started, and right in front of the sink it seems a little of the lye had accumulated and the floor was slippery. I slipped and down I went. The chase went over my head and the type flew in all directions. The foreman said:

“There! by thunder, you leave!”

The editor stepped out of the sanctum and said,

“What’s the matter?”

“He’s pied that form,” replied the foreman.

“Did you show him how to wash it?” asked the editor.

“He leaves, or I do,” said the foreman.

“You can leave if you want,” said the editor.

Probably the reader can imagine my feelings at having such a friend to take my part.

So the foreman left, and I did the best I could, picking up the type until it was about time to quit, when the editor told me to come with him to his house.

I went there and looked in; at first I did not dare enter. There was the first upholstered furniture I had ever seen, a white tablecloth, glass tumblers and napkins—such things I had never seen. There were figures on the carpet. Two beautifully dressed ladies came downstairs and took seats at the table directly opposite me. I must have turned crimson. I was completely dazed by their beauty and so embarrassed I must have betrayed my feelings. I was glad my feet were under the table, for I was barefooted. I went through some motions, but ate no supper. Next morning I was to be at the office, open it, and have it swept by seven o’clock. I had the key in my pocket and it fairly burned there, so anxious was I to be at my new work and to turn that key in the lock.

I was at the office before six to sweep it out. I hunted around and found a broom and began sweeping everything toward the door. I swept the sanctum, a corner partitioned off from the main room, of the printing office. I dared not pick up the loose exchanges lying on the floor, but swept around them, and had almost a winrow of dirt moved up to the door, amid clouds of dust, when Walker Rouse, the elder apprentice, came in and exclaimed:

“Whew, what a dust! Why, you haven’t sprinkled before sweeping!”

I did not know what he meant until he got the sprinkling pot and showed me how to sprinkle the floor, and then how to dust the bank and cases and the editor’s sanctum, pick up and fold the exchanges, and tidy up his desk. All this Walker showed me how to do by doing it for me. At seven o’clock the printers came around. The editor came in at eight.

“Boy,” he said, “what is your name?”

“James—James Pond.”

“James, your office is looking fine. You are beginning well.”

And so it has been going ever since. I think I have had credit a great many times for what somebody else has done.

The Fountain City Herald survived but a few months. I went from Fond du Lac to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, where I obtained work on the Oshkosh Democrat, served my time as an apprentice, and then went to Madison, Wisconsin, and worked as a journeyman. In the summer of 1856, with Charles G. Finney, Jr. (son of the president of Oberlin College), I found myself in Kansas, working on The Herald of Freedom, at Lawrence; a little later carrying a Sharp’s rifle (“Beecher Bible”) with old John Brown. In the fall I went to St. Louis, to work during the winter. Then back to Wisconsin.

In 1873, after the war and emancipation of the slaves, I found myself associated with the first gentile paper in Utah—The Salt Lake Tribune. About that time the railroad had reached Zion, and there was a tremendous influx of gentiles. We had territorial officers who could not be used by the Mormons, and there was considerable excitement. President Brigham Young and several Mormon leaders were put under arrest. There were so many gentiles that they could not possibly find accommodations at the hotels, and Brigham Young proclaimed to his people that they could open their houses and receive them as boarders, and that a fair price for their board—not exorbitant, but a fair price—should be charged. He thought three dollars a week a good price for board. He admonished his people that they must not forget that they were all missionaries.

It happened that a Methodist minister (the Rev. C. C. Stratton) and his wife obtained board with Ann Eliza Young, then Brigham Young’s last and nineteenth wife, who was keeping house by herself in a small cottage, not far from the Lion House. Ann Eliza was born in Mormonism and reared in Utah by her mother, who was an educated woman and one of the first converts of Joseph Smith, living in Nauvoo, Ill., for several years before they migrated to Utah. Ann Eliza was a very intelligent woman, but her whole life was circumscribed by Mormonism. She had never attended any other church, and never read any other literature than Mormon books. She was a conscientious woman. It was through this Methodist minister and his wife that she apostatized.

One evening it was arranged that Ann Eliza should tell her story to the guests of the hotel (the Walker House), where she had taken refuge under the protection of the officials of the territory—Governor Woods and Chief Justice McKean, who lived there. I was there also and had something to do with making the arrangements. She did give her story—the most interesting and thrilling story that anybody ever heard. That speech was telegraphed to the Associated Press, and the next day came telegrams from theatrical managers, showmen, and speculators from all parts of the country. One was from P. T. Barnum and another from James Redpath, the owner of the Lyceum Bureau, in Boston, whom I had met and known in Kansas in 1856. It asked her to lecture.