Boston in 1862—Kind friends—Literary circles—Emerson, O. W. Holmes, Lowell, E. P. Whipple, Agassiz, &c.—The Saturday dinners—The printed autograph—The days of the Dark Shadow—Lowell and Hosea Biglow—I am assured that the Continental Magazine advanced the period of Emancipation—I return to Philadelphia—My pamphlet on “Centralisation versus States Rights”—Its Results—Books—Ping-Wing—The Emergency—I enter an artillery company—Adventures and comrades—R. W. Gilder—I see rebel scouts near Harrisburg—The shelling of Carlisle—Incidents—My brother receives his death-wound at my side—Theodore Fassitt—Stewart Patterson—Exposure and hunger—The famous bringing-up of the cannon—Picturesque scenery—The battle of Gettysburg—The retreat of Lee—Incidents—Return home—Cape May—The beautiful Miss Vining—Solomon the Sadducee—General Carrol Tevis—The Sanitary Fair—The oil mania—The oil country—Colonel H. Olcott, the theosophist—Adventures and odd incidents in Oil-land—Nashville—Dangers of the road—A friend in need—I act as unofficial secretary and legal adviser to General Whipple—Freed slaves—Inter arma silent leges—Horace Harrison—Voodoo—Captain Joseph R. Paxton—Scouting for oil and shooting a brigand—Indiana in winter—Charleston, West Virginia—Back and forth from Providence to the debated land—The murder of A. Lincoln—Goshorn—Up Elk River in a dug-out—A charmed life—Sam Fox—A close shot—Meteorological sorcery—A wild country—Marvellous scenery—I bore a well—Robert Hunt—Horse adventures—The panther—I am suspected of being a rebel spy—The German apology—Cincinnati—Niagara—A summer at Lenox, Mass.—A MS. burnt.
We went to Boston early in December, 1861, and during that winter lived pleasantly at the Winthrop House on the Common. I had already many friends, and took letters to others who became our friends. We were very kindly received. Among those whom we knew best were Mrs. and Mr. H. Ritchie, Mrs. and Mr. T. Perkins, Mrs. H. G. Otis, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Ward—but I must really stop, for there was no end to the list. Among my literary friends or acquaintances, or “people whom I have very often met,” were Emerson, Longfellow, Dr. O. W. Holmes, J. R. Lowell, E. P. Whipple, Palfrey, G. Ticknor, Agassiz, E. Everett—in a word, all that brilliant circle which shone when Boston was at its brightest in 1862. I was often invited to the celebrated Saturday dinners, where I more than once sat by Emerson and Holmes. As I had been editor of the free lance Vanity Fair, and was now conducting the Continental with no small degree of audacity, regardless of friend or foe, it was expected—and no wonder—that I would be beautifully cheeky and New Yorky; and truly my education and antecedents in America, beginning with my training under Barnum, were not such as to inspire faith in my modesty. But in the society of the Saturday Club, and in the very general respect manifested in all circles in Boston for culture or knowledge in every form—in which respect it is certainly equalled by no city on earth—I often forgot newspapers and politics and war, and lived again in memory at Heidelberg and Munich, recalling literature and art. I heard, a day or two after my first Saturday, that I had passed the grand ordeal successfully, or summa cum magna laude, and that Dr. Holmes, in enumerating divers good qualities, had remarked that I was modest. Every stranger coming to Boston has a verdict or judgment passed on him—he is numbered and labelled at once—and it is really wonderful how in a few days the whole town knows it.
I had met with Emerson many years before in Philadelphia, where I had attracted his attention by remarking in Mrs. James Rush’s drawing-room that a vase in a room was like a bridge in a landscape, which he recalled twenty years later. With Dr. Holmes I had corresponded. Lowell! “that reminds me of a little story.”
There was some “genius of freedom”—i.e., one who takes liberties—who collected autographs, and had not even the politeness to send a written request. He forwarded to me this printed circular:
“Dear Sir: As I am collecting the autographs of distinguished Americans, I would be much obliged to you for your signature. Yours truly, --- ---”
While I was editing Vanity Fair I received one of these circulars. I at once wrote:—
“Dear Sir: It gives me great pleasure to comply with your request. Charles G. Leland.”
I called the foreman, and said, “Mr. Chapin, please to set this up and pull half-a-dozen proofs.” It was done, and I sent one to the autograph-chaser. He was angry, and answered impertinently. Others I sent to Holmes and Lowell. The latter thought that the applicant was a great fool not to understand that such a printed document was far more of a curiosity than a mere signature. I met with Chapin afterwards, when in the war. He had with him a small company of printers, all of whom had set up my copy many a time. Printers are always polite men. They all called on me, and having no cards, left cigars, which were quite as acceptable at that time of tobacco-famine.
Amid all the horrors and anxieties of that dreadful year, while my old school-mate, General George B. McClellan, was delaying and demanding more men—mas y mas y mas—I still had as many happy hours as had ever come into any year of my life. If I made no money, and had to wear my old gloves (I had fortunately a good stock gathered from one of Frank Leslie’s debtors), and had to sail rather close to the wind, I still found the sailing very pleasant, and the wind fair and cool, though I was pauper in ære.
Mrs. Harrison Gray Otis held a ladies’ sewing-circle to make garments for the soldiers, at which my wife worked zealously. There were many social receptions, readings, etc., where we met everybody. It was very properly considered bad form in those early days of the war to dance or give grand dinners or great “parties.” It was, in fact, hardly decent for a man to dress up and appear as a swell at all anywhere. Death was beginning to strike fast into families through siege and battle, and crape to blacken the door-bells. There was a dark shadow over every life. I had been assured by an officer that my magazine was doing the work of two regiments, yet I was tormented with the feeling that I ought to be in the war, as my grandfather would surely have been at my age. The officer alluded to wrote to me that he on one occasion had read one of my articles by camp-fire to his regiment, who gave at the end three tremendous cheers, which were replied to by the enemy, who were not far away, with shouts of defiance. As for minor incidents of the war-time, I could fill a book with them. One day a young gentleman, a perfect stranger, came to my office, as many did, and asked for advice. He said, “Where I live in the country we have raised a regiment, and they want me to be colonel, but I have no knowledge whatever of military matters. What shall I do?” I looked at him, and saw that he “had it in him,” and replied, “New York is full of Hungarian and German military adventurers seeking employment. Get one, and let him teach you and the men; but take good care that he does not supplant you. Let that be understood.” After some months he returned in full uniform to thank me. He had got his man, had fought in the field—all had gone well.
I remember, as an incident worth noting, that one evening while visiting Jas. R. Lowell at his house in Cambridge, awaiting supper, there came a great bundle of proofs. They were the second series of the Biglow Papers adapted to the new struggle, and as I was considered in Boston at that time as being in my degree a literary political authority or one of some general experience, he was anxious to have my opinion of them, and had invited me for that purpose. He read them to me, manifested great interest as to my opinion, and seemed to be very much delighted or relieved when I praised them and predicted a success. I do not exaggerate in this in the least; his expression was plainly and unmistakably that of a man from whom some doubt had been banished.
My brother Henry had at once entered a training-school for officers in Philadelphia, distinguished himself as a pupil, and gone out to the war in 1862. The terrible ill-luck which attended his every effort in life overtook him speedily, and, owing to his extreme zeal and over-work, he had a sunstroke, which obliged him to return home. He was a first-lieutenant. The next year he went as sergeant, and was again invalided. What further befell him will appear in the course of my narrative.
The Continental Magazine had done its work and was evidently dying. I had never received a cent from it, and it had just met the expenses of publication. It had done much good and rendered great service to the Union cause. Gilmore had very foolishly yielded half the ownership to Robert J. Walker, of whom I confess I have no very agreeable recollections. So it began to die. But I have the best authority for declaring that, ere it died, it had advanced the time of the Declaration of Emancipation, which was the turning-point of the whole struggle, and all my friends in Boston were of that opinion. This I can fully prove.
The summer of 1862 I passed in Dedham, going every day to my office in Boston. We lived at the Phœnix Hotel, and occupied the same rooms which my father and mother had inhabited thirty-five years before. We had many very kind and hospitable friends. I often found time to roam about the country, to sit by Wigwam Lake, to fish in the river Charles, and explore the wild woods. I have innumerable pleasant recollections of that summer.
I returned in the autumn with my wife to Philadelphia, and to my father’s house in Locust Street. The first thing which I did was to write a pamphlet on “Centralisation versus States Rights.” In it I set forth clearly enough the doctrine that the Constitution of the United States could not be interpreted so as to sanction secession, and that as the extremities or limbs grew in power, so there should be a strengthening of the brain or greater power bestowed on the central Government. I also advocated the idea of a far greater protection of general and common industries and interests being adopted by the Government.
There was in the Senate a truly great man, of German extraction, named Gottlieb Orth, from Indiana. He was absolutely the founder of the Bureaus of Education, &c., which are now nourishing in Washington. He wrote to me saying that he had got the idea of Industrial bureaus from my pamphlet. In this pamphlet I had opposed the commonly expressed opinion that we must do nothing to “aggravate the South.” That is, we should burn the powder up by degrees, as the old lady did who was blown to pieces by the experiment. “Do not drive them to extremes.” I declared that the South would go to extremes in any case, and that we had better anticipate it. This brought forth strange fruit in after years, long after the war.
While I was in Boston in 1862, I published by Putnam in New York a book entitled “Sunshine in Thought,” which had, however, been written long before. It was all directed against the namby-pamby pessimism, “lost Edens and buried Lenores,” and similar weak rubbish, which had then begun to manifest itself in literature, and which I foresaw was in future to become a great curse, as it has indeed done. Only five hundred copies of it were printed.
I was very busy during the first six months of 1863. I wrote a work entitled “The Art of Conversation, or Hints for Self-Education,” which was at once accepted and published by Carleton, of New York. It had, I am assured, a very large sale indeed. I also wrote and illustrated, with the aid of my brother, a very eccentric pamphlet, “The Book of Copperheads.” When Abraham Lincoln died two books were found in his desk. One was the “Letters of Petroleum V. Nasby,” by Dr. R. Locke, and my “Book of Copperheads,” which latter was sent to me to see and return. It was much thumbed, showing that it had been thoroughly read by Father Abraham.
I also translated Heine’s “Book of Songs.” Most of these had already been published in the “Pictures of Travel.” I restored them to their original metres. I also translated the “Memoirs of a Good-for-Nothing” from the German, and finished up, partially illustrated, and published two juvenile works. One of these was “Mother Pitcher,” a collection of original nursery rhymes for children, which I had written many years before expressly for my youngest sister, Emily, now Mrs. John Harrison of Philadelphia. In this work occurs my original poem of “Ping-Wing the Pieman’s Son.” Of this Poem Punch said, many years after, that it was “the best thing of the kind which had ever crossed the Atlantic.” Ping-Wing appeared in 1891 as a full-page cartoon by Tenniel in Punch, and as burning up the Treaty. I may venture to say that Ping-Wing—once improvised to amuse dear little Emily—has become almost as well known in American nurseries as “Little Boy Blue,” at any rate his is a popular type, and when Mrs. Vanderbilt gave her famous masked ball in New York, there was in the Children’s Quadrille a little Ping-Wing. Ping travelled far and wide, for in after years I put him into Pidgin-English, and gave him a place in the “Pidgin-English Ballads,” which have always been read in Canton, I daresay by many a heathen Chinese learning that childlike tongue. I also translated the German “Mother Goose.”
And now terrible times came on, followed, for me, by a sad event. The rebels, led by General Lee, had penetrated into Pennsylvania, and Philadelphia was threatened. This period was called the “Emergency.” I could easily have got a command as officer. I had already obtained for my brother an appointment as major with secretary’s duty on Fremont’s staff, which he promptly declined. But it was no time to stand on dignity, and I was rather proud, as was my brother, to go as “full private” in an artillery company known as “Chapman Biddle’s,” though he did not take command of it on this occasion. [252] Our captain was a dealer in cutlery named Landis.
After some days’ delay we were marched forth. Even during those few days, while going about town in my private’s uniform, I realised in a droll new way what it was to be a common man. Maid-servants greeted me like a friend, other soldiers and the humbler class talked familiarly to me. I had, however, no excuse to think myself any better than my comrades, for among the hundred were nearly twenty lawyers or law-students, and all were gentlemen as regards position in society. Among them was R. W. Gilder, now the editor of the Century, who was quite a youth then, and in whose appearance there was something which deeply interested me. I certainly have a strange Gypsy faculty for divining character, and I divined a genius in him. He was very brave and uncomplaining in suffering, but also very sensitive and emotional. Once it happened, at a time when we were all nearly starved to death and worn out with want of sleep and fatigue, that I by some chance got a loaf of bread and some molasses. I cut it into twelve slices and sweetened them, intending to give one to every man of our gun. But I could only find eleven, and, remembering Gilder, went about a long mile to find him; and when I gave it to him he was so touched that the tears came into his fine dark eyes. Trivial as the incident was, it moved me. Another was Theodore Fassitt, a next-door neighbour of mine, whose mother had specially commended him to me, and who told me that once or twice he had stolen ears of maize from the horses to keep himself alive. Also Edward Penington, and James Biddle, a gentleman of sixty; but I really cannot give the roll-call. However, they all showed themselves to be gallant gentlemen and true ere they returned home. The first night we slept in a railroad station, packed like sardines, and I lay directly across a rail. Then we were in camp near Harrisburg for a week—dans la pluie et la misère.
We knew that the rebels were within six miles of us, at Shooter’s Hill—in fact, two of our guns went there. Penington was with them, and had a small skirmish, wherein two of the foemen were slain, the corporal being, however, called off before he could secure their scalps. That afternoon, as I was on guard, I saw far down below a few men who appeared to be scouting very cautiously, and hiding as they did so. They seemed mere specks, but I was sure they were rebels. I called on Lieutenant Perkins, who had a glass, but neither he nor others present thought they were of the enemy. Long after, this incident had a droll sequel.
Hearing that the rebels were threatening Carlisle, we were sent thither on a forced march of sixteen miles. They had been before us, and partially burned the barracks. We rested in the town. There was a large open space, for all the world like a stage. Ladies and others brought us refreshments; the scene became theatrical indeed. The soldiers, wearied with a long march, were resting or gossipping, when all at once—whizz-bang—a shell came flying over our heads and burst. There were cries—the ladies fled like frightened wild-fowl! The operatic effect was complete!
About ten thousand rebel regulars, hearing that we had occupied Carlisle, had returned, and if they had known that there were only two or three thousand raw recruits, they might have captured us all. From this fate we were saved by a good strong tremendous lie, well and bravely told. There was a somewhat ungainly, innocent, rustic-looking youth in our company, from whose eyes simple truth peeped out like two country girls at two Sunday-school windows. He, having been sent to the barracks to get some fodder, with strict injunction to return immediately, of course lay down at once in the hay and had a good long nap. The rebels came and roused him out, but promised to let him go free on condition that he would tell the sacred truth as to how many of us Federal troops were in Carlisle. And he, moved by sympathy for his kind captors, and swearing by the Great Copperhead Serpent, begged them to fly for their lives; “for twenty regiments of regulars, and Heaven only knew how many, volunteers, had come in that afternoon, and the whole North was rising, and trains running, and fresh levies pouring in.”
The rebels believed him, but they would not depart without giving us a touch of their quality, and so fired shell and grape in on us till two in the morning. There were two regiments of “common fellows,” or valiant city roughs, with us, who all hid themselves in terror wherever they could. But our company, though unable to fire more than a few shots, were kept under fire, and, being all gentlemen, not a man flinched.
I did not, to tell the truth, like our captain; but whatever his faults were, and he had some, cowardice was not among them. Some men are reckless of danger; he seemed to be absolutely insensible to it, as I more than once observed, to my great admiration. He was but a few feet from me, giving orders to a private, when a shell burst immediately over or almost between them. Neither was hurt, but the young man naturally shied, when Landis gruffly cried, “Never mind the shells, sir; they’ll not hurt you till they hit you.”
I was leaning against a lamp-post when a charge of grape went through the lamp. Remembering the story in “Peter Simple,” and that “lightning never strikes twice in the same place,” I remained quiet, when there came at once another, smashing what was left of the glass about two feet above my head.
Long after the war, when I was one day walking with Theodore Fassitt, I told him the tale of how I had awakened the family at the fire in Munich. And Theodore dolefully exclaimed, “I don’t see why it is that I can never do anything heroic or fine like that!” Then I said, “Theodore, I will tell you a story. Once upon a time there was a boy only eighteen years of age, and it happened in the war that he was in a town, and the rebels shelled it. Now this boy had charge of four horses, and the general had told him to stay in one place, before a church; and he obeyed. The shells came thick and fast—I saw it all myself—and by-and-bye one came and took off a leg from one of the horses. Then he was in a bad way with his horses, but he stayed. After a while the general came along, and asked him ‘why the devil he was stopping there.’ And he replied, ‘I was ordered to, sir!’ Then the general told him to get behind the church at once.”
“Why!” cried Theodore in amazement, “I was that boy!”
“Yes,” I replied; “and the famous Roman sentinel who remained at his post in Pompeii was no braver, and I don’t think he had so hard a time of it as you had with that horse.”
I was put on guard. The others departed or lay down to sleep on the ground. The fire slackened, and only now and then a shell came with its diabolical scream like a dragon into the town. All at last was quiet, when there came shambling to me an odd figure. There had been some slight attempt by him to look like a soldier—he had a feather in his hat—but he carried his rifle as if after deer or raccoons, and as if he were used to it.
“Say, Cap!” he exclaimed, “kin you tell me where a chap could get some ammynition?”
“Go to your quartermaster,” I replied.
“Ain’t got no quartermaster.”
“Well, then to your commanding officer—to your regiment.”
“Ain’t got no commanding officer nowher’ this side o’ God, nor no regiment.”
“Then who the devil are you, and where do you belong?”
“Don’t belong nowher’. I’ll jest tell you, Cap, how it is. I live in the south line of New York State, and when I heard that the rebs had got inter Pennsylvany, forty of us held a meetin’ and ’pinted me Cap’n. So we came down here cross country, and ’rived this a’ternoon, and findin’ fightin’ goin’ on, went straight for the bush. And gettin’ cover, we shot the darndest sight of rebels you ever did see. And now all our ammynition is expended, I’ve come to town for more, for ther’s some of ’em still left—who want killin’ badly.”
“See here, my friend,” I replied. “You don’t know it, but you’re nothing but a bushwhacker, and anybody has a right to hang or shoot you out of hand. Do you see that great square tent?” Here I pointed to the general’s marquee. “Go in there and report yourself and get enrolled.” And the last I saw of him he was stumbling over the sticks in the right direction. This was my first experience of a real guerillo—a character with whom I was destined to make further experience in after days.
An earlier incident was to me extremely curious. There was in our battery a young gentleman named Stewart Patterson, noted for his agreeable, refined manners. He was the gunner of our cannon No. Two. We had brass Napoleons. At the distance of about one mile the rebels were shelling us. Patterson brought his gun to bear on theirs, and the two exchanged shots at the same instant. Out of the smoke surrounding Patterson’s gun I saw a sword-blade fly perhaps thirty feet, and then himself borne by two or three men, blood flowing profusely. The four fingers of his right hand had been cut away clean by a piece of shell.
At the instant I saw the blade flash in its flight, I recalled seeing precisely the same thing long before in Heidelberg. There was a famous duellist who had fought sixty or seventy times and never received a scratch. One day he was acting as second, when the blade of his principal, becoming broken at the hilt by a violent blow, flew across the room, rebounded, and cut the second’s lip entirely open. It was remarkable that I should twice in my life have seen such a thing, in both instances accompanied by wounds. Long after I met Patterson in Philadelphia, I think, in 1883. He did not recognise me, and gave me his left hand. I said, “Not that hand, Patterson, but the other. You’ve no reason to be ashamed of it. I saw the fingers shot off.”
But on that night there occurred an event which, in the end, after years of suffering, caused the deepest sorrow of my life. As we were not firing, I and the rest of the men of the gun were lying on the ground to escape the shells, but my brother, who was nothing if not soldierly and punctilious, stood upright in his place just beside me. There came a shell which burst immediately, and very closely over our heads, and a piece of it struck my brother exactly on the brass buckle in his belt on the spine. The blow was so severe that the buckle was bent in two. It cut through his coat and shirt, and inflicted a slight wound two inches in length. But the blow on the spine had produced a concussion or disorganisation of the brain, which proved, after years of suffering, the cause of his death. At first he was quite senseless, but as he came to, and I asked him anxiously if he was hurt, he replied sternly, “Go back immediately to your place by the gun!” He was like grandfather Leland.
A day or two after, while we were on a forced march to intercept a party of rebels, the effect of the wound on my brother’s brain manifested itself in a terrible hallucination. He had become very gloomy and reserved. Taking me aside, he informed me that as he had a few days before entered a country-house, contrary to an order issued, to buy food, he was sure that Captain Landis meant as soon as possible to have him shot, but that he intended, the instant he saw any sign of this, at once to attack and kill the captain! Knowing his absolute determined and inflexibly truthful character, and seeing a fearful expression in his eyes, I was much alarmed. Reflecting in the first place that he was half-starved, I got him a meal. I had brought from Philadelphia two pounds of dried beef, and this, carefully hoarded, had eked out many a piece of bread for a meal. I begged some bread, gave my brother some beef with it, and I think succeeded in getting him some coffee. Then I went to Lieutenant Perkins—a very good man—and begged leave to take my brother’s guard and to let him sleep. He consented, and my brother gradually came to his mind, or at least to a better one. But he was never the same person afterwards, his brain having been permanently affected, and he died in consequence five years after.
I may note as characteristic of my brother, that, twelve years after his death, Walt Whitman, who always gravely spoke the exact truth, told me that there was one year of his life during which he had received no encouragement as a poet, and so much ridicule that he was in utter despondency. At that time he received from Henry, who was unknown to him, a cheering letter, full of admiration, which had a great effect on him, and inspired him to renewed effort. He sent my brother a copy of the first edition of his “Leaves of Grass,” with his autograph, which I still possess. I knew nothing of this till Whitman told me of it. The poet declared to me very explicitly that he had been much influenced by my brother’s letter, which was like a single star in a dark night of despair, and I have indeed no doubt that the world owes more to it than will ever be made known.
During the same week in which this occurred my wife’s only brother, Rodney Fisher, a young man, and captain in the regular cavalry, met with a remarkably heroic death at Aldie, Virginia. He was leading what was described as “the most magnificent and dashing charge of the whole campaign,” when he was struck by a bullet. He was carried to a house, where he died within a week. He was of the stock of the Delaware Rodneys, and of the English Admiral’s, or of the best blood of the Revolution, and well worthy of it. It was all in a great cause, but these deaths entered into the soul of the survivors, and we grieve for them to this day.
Our sufferings as soldiers during this Emergency were very great. I heard an officer who had been through the whole war, and through the worst of it in Virginia, declare that he had never suffered as he did with us this summer. And our unfortunate artillery company endured far more than the rest, for while pains were taken by commanding officers of other regiments, especially the regulars, to obtain food, our captain, either because they had the advance on him, or because he considered starving us as a part of the military drama, took little pains to feed us, and indeed neglected his men very much. As we had no doctor, and many of our company suffered from cholera morbus, I, having some knowledge of medicine, succeeded in obtaining some red pepper, a bottle of Jamaica ginger, and whisky, and so relieved a great many patients. One morning our captain forbade my attending to the invalids any more. “Proper medical attendance,” he said, “would be provided.” It was not; only now and then on rare occasions was a surgeon borrowed for a day. What earthly difference it could make in discipline (where there was no show or trace of it) whether I looked after the invalids or not was not perceptible. But our commander, though brave, was unfortunately one of those men who are also gifted with a great deal of “pure cussedness,” and think that the exhibiting it is a sign of bravery. Although we had no tents, only a miserably rotten old gun-cover, and not always that, to sleep under (I generally slept in the open air, frequently in the rain), and often no issue of food for days, we were strictly prohibited from foraging or entering the country houses to buy food. This, which was a great absurdity, was about the only point of military discipline strictly enforced.
At one time during the war, when men were not allowed to sleep in the country houses (to protect their owners), the soldiers would very often burn these houses down, in order that, when the family had fled, they might use the fireplace and chimney for cooking; and so our men, forbidden to enter the country houses to buy or beg food, stole it.
I can recall one very remarkable incident. We had six guns, heavy old brass Napoleons. One afternoon we had to go uphill—in many cases it was terribly steep—by a road like those in Devonshire, resembling a ditch. It rained in torrents and the water was knee-deep. The poor mules had to be urged and aided in every way, and half the pulling and pushing was done by us. All of us worked like navvies. So we went onwards and upwards for sixteen miles! When we got to the top of the hill, out of one hundred privates, Henry, I, and four others alone remained. R. W. Gilder was one of these, besides Landis and Lieutenant Perkins—that is to say, we alone had not given out from fatigue; but the rest soon followed. This exploit was long after cited as one of the most extraordinary of the war—and so it was. We were greatly complimented on it. Old veterans marvelled at it. But what was worse, I had to lie all night on sharp flints—i.e., the slag or débris of an iron smeltery or old forge out of doors—in a terrible rain, and, though tired to death, got very little sleep; nor had we any food whatever even then or the next day. Commissariat there was none, and very little at any time.
From all that I learned from many intimate friends who were in the war, I believe that we in the battery suffered to the utmost all that men can suffer in the field, short of wounds and death. Yet it is a strange thing, that had I not received at this time most harassing and distressing news from home, and been in constant fear as regards my brother, I should have enjoyed all this Emergency like a picnic. We often marched and camped in the valley of the Cumberland and in Maryland, in deep valleys, by roaring torrents or “on the mountains high,” in scenery untrodden by any artist or tourist, of marvellous grandeur and beauty. One day we came upon a scene which may be best described by the fact that my brother and I both stopped, and both cried out at once, “Switzerland!” The beauty of Nature was to me a constant source of delight. Another was the realisation of the sense of duty and the pleasure of war for a noble cause. It was once declared by a reviewer that in my Breitmann poems the true gaudium certaminis, or enjoyment of battle, is more sincerely expressed than by any modern poet, because there is no deliberate or conscious effort to depict it seriously. And I believe that I deserved this opinion, because the order to march, the tramp and rattle and ring of cavalry and artillery, and the roar of cannon, always exhilarated me; and sometimes the old days of France would recur to me. One day, at some place where we were awaiting an attack and I was on guard, General Smith, pausing, asked me something of which all I could distinguish was “Fire—before.” Thinking he had said, “Were you ever under fire before?” and much surprised at this interest in my biography, I replied, “Yes, General—in Paris—at the barricades in Forty-eight.” He looked utterly amazed, and inquired, “What the devil did you think I said?” I explained, when he laughed heartily, and told me that his question was, “Has there been any firing here before?”
Two very picturesque scenes occur to me. One was a night before the battle of Gettysburg. The country was mountain and valley, and the two opposing armies were camped pretty generally in sight of one another. There was, I suppose, nearly half a cord of wood burning for every twelve men, and these camp-fires studded the vast landscape like countless reflections of the stars above, or rather as if all were stars, high or low. It was one of the most wonderful sights conceivable, and I said at the time that it was as well worth seeing as Vesuvius in eruption.
Henry had studied for eighteen months in the British Art School in Rome, and passed weeks in sketching the Alhambra, and, till he received his wound, took great joy in the picturesque scenery and “points” of military life. But it is incredible how little we ate or got to eat, and how hard we worked. It is awful to be set to digging ditches in a soil nine-tenths stone, when starving.
As we were raw recruits, we were not put under fire at Gettysburg, but kept in Smith’s reserve. But on the night after the defeat, when Lee retreated in such mad and needless haste across the Potomac, we were camped perhaps the nearest of any troops to the improvised bridge, I think within a mile. That night I was on guard, and all night long I heard the sound of cavalry, the ring and rattle of arms, and all that indicates an army in headlong flight. I say that they went in needless haste. I may be quite in the wrong, but I have always believed that Meade acted on the prudent policy of making a bridge of gold for a retreating enemy; and I always believed, too, that at heart he did not at all desire to inflict extreme suffering on the foe. Had he been a General Birney, he would have smote them then and there hip and thigh, and so ended the war “for good and all,” like a Cromwell, with such a slaughter as was never seen. I base all this on one fact. At two o’clock on the afternoon before that night I went to a farmhouse to borrow an axe wherewith to cut some fuel; and I was told that the rebels had carried away every axe in great haste from every house, in order to make a bridge. Now, if I knew that at two o’clock, General Meade, if he had any scouts at all, must have known it. But—qui vult decipi, decipiatur.
That ended the Emergency. The next day, I think, we received the welcome news that we were no longer needed and would soon be sent home. On the way we encamped for a week at some place, I forget where. There was no drill now—we seldom had any—no special care of us, and no “policing” or keeping clean. Symptoms of typhoid fever soon appeared; forty of our hundred were more or less ill. My brother and I knew very well that the only way to avert this was to exercise vigorously. On waking in the morning we all experienced languor and lassitude. Those who yielded to it fell ill. Henry was always so ready to work, that once our sergeant, Mr. Bullard, interposed and gave the duty to another, saying it was not fair. I always remembered it with gratitude. But this feverish languor passed away at once with a little chopping of wood, bringing water, or cooking.
One more reminiscence. Our lieutenant, Perkins, was a pious man, and on Sunday mornings held religious service, which we were obliged to attend. One day, when we had by good fortune rations of fresh meat, it was cooked for dinner and put by in two large kettles. During the service two hungry pigs came, and in our full sight overturned the kettles, and, after rooting over the food, escaped with large pieces. I did not care to dine, like St. Antonio, on pigs’ leavings. My brother finding me, asked why I looked so glum. I replied that I was hungry. “Is that all?” he replied. “Come with me!” We went some distance until we came to a farmhouse in the forest. He entered, and, to my amazement, was greeted as an old friend. He had been there in the campaign of the previous year. I was at once supplied with a meal. My brother was asked to send them newspapers after his return. He never sought for mysteries and despised dramatic effects, but his life was full of them. Once, when in Naples, he was accustomed to meet by chance every day, in some retired walk, a young lady. They spoke, and met and met again, till they became like friends. One day he saw her in a court procession, and learned for the first time that she was a younger daughter of the King. But he never met her again.
There were two or three boys of good family, none above sixteen, who had sworn themselves in as of age—recruiting officers were not particular—and who soon developed brilliant talents for “foraging,” looting, guerilla warfare, horse-stealing, pot-hunting rebels, and all those little accomplishments which appear so naturally and pleasingly in youth when in the field. For bringing out the art of taking care of yourself, a camp in time of war is superior even to “sleeping about in the markets,” as recommended by Mr. Weller. Other talents may be limited, but the amount of “devil” which can be developed out of a “smart” boy as a soldier is absolutely infinite. College is a Sunday-school to it. One of these youths had “obtained” a horse somewhere, which he contrived to carry along. Many of our infantry regiments gradually converted themselves into cavalry by this process of “obtaining” steeds; and as the officers found that their men could walk better on horses’ legs, they permitted it. This promising youngster was one day seated on a caisson or ammunition waggon full of shells, &c., when it blew up. By a miracle he rose in the air, fell on the ground unhurt, and marching immediately up to the lieutenant and touching his hat, exclaimed, “Please, sir, caisson No. Two is blown to hell; please appoint me to another!” That oath was not recorded. Poor boy! he died in the war.
There was one man in our corps, a good-natured, agreeable person, a professional politician, who astonished me by the fact that however starved we might be, he had always a flask of whisky wherewith to treat his friends! Where or how he always got it I never could divine. But in America every politician always has whisky or small change wherewith to treat. Always. Money was generally of little use, for there was rarely anything to buy anywhere. I soon developed here and there an Indian-like instinct in many things, and this is indeed deep in my nature. I cannot explain it, but it is there. I became expert when we approached a house at divining, by the look of waggons or pails or hencoops, whether there was meal or bread or a mill anywhere near. One day I informed our lieutenant that a detachment of rebel cavalry had recently passed. He asked me how I knew it. I replied that rebel horses, being from mountainous Virginia, had higher cocks and narrower to their shoes, and one or two more nails than ours, which is perfectly true. And where did I learn that? Not from anybody. I had noticed the difference as soon as I saw the tracks, and guessed the cause. One day, in after years in England, I noticed that in coursing, or with beagles, the track of a gypsy was exactly like mine, or that of all Americans—that is, Indian-like and straight-forward. I never found a Saxon-Englishman who had this step, nor one who noticed such a thing, which I or an Indian would observe at once. Once, in Rome, Mr. Story showed me a cast of a foot, and asked me what it was. I replied promptly, “Either an Indian girl’s or an American young lady’s, whose ancestors have been two hundred years in the country.” It was the latter. Such feet lift or leap, as if raised every time to go over entangled grass or sticks. Like an Indian, I instinctively observe everybody’s ears, which are unerring indices of character. I can sustain, and always could endure, incredible fasts, but for this I need coffee in the morning. “Mark Twain”—whom I saw yesterday at his villa, as I correct this proof—also has this peculiar Indian-like or American faculty of observing innumerable little things which no European would ever think of. There is, I think, a great deal of “hard old Injun” in him. The most beautiful of his works are the three which are invariably bound in silk or muslin. They are called “The Three Daughters, or the Misses Clemens.”
It occurred to me, after I had recorded the events of our short but truly vigorous and eventful campaign, to write to R. W. Gilder and ask him—quid memoriæ datum est—“what memories he had of that great war, wherein we starved and swore, and all but died.” There are men in whose letters we are as sure to find genial life as a spaccio di vino or wine-shop in a Florentine street, and this poet-editor is one of them. And he replied with an epistle not at all intended for type, which I hereby print without his permission, and in defiance of all the custom or courtesy which inspires gentlemen of the press.
“May 8th, 1893.
“Editorial Department, The Century Magazine,
“Union Square, New York.“My Dear Leland: How your letter carries me back! Do you know that one night when I was trudging along in the dark over a road-bed where had been scattered some loose stones to form a foundation, I heard you and another comrade talking me over in the way to which you refer in your letter? Well, it was either you or the other comrade who said you had given me something to eat, and I know that I must have seemed very fragile, and at times woe-begone. I was possibly the youngest in the crowd. I was nineteen, and really enjoyed it immensely notwithstanding.
“I remember you in those days as a splendid expressor of our miseries. You had a magnificent vocabulary, wherewith you could eloquently and precisely describe our general condition of starvation, mud, ill-equippedness, and over-work. As I think of those days, I hear reverberating over the mountain-roads the call, ‘Cannoneers to the wheels!’ and in imagination I plunge knee-deep into the mire and grab the spokes of the caisson. [266a]
“Do you remember the night we spent at the forge? I burnt my knees at the fire out-doors, while in my ears was pouring a deluge from the clouds. I finally gave it up, and spent the rest of the night crouching upon the fire-bed of the forge itself, most uncomfortably.
“You will remember that we helped dig the trenches at the fort on the southern side of the river from Harrisburg, [266b] and that one section of the battery got into a fight near that fort; nor can you have forgotten when Stuart Patterson’s hand was shot off at Carlisle. As he passed me, I heard him say, ‘My God, I’m shot!’ That night, after we were told to retire out of range of the cannon, while we were lying under tree near one of the guns, an officer called for volunteers to take the piece out of range. I stood up with three others, but seeing and hearing a shell approach, I cried out, ‘Wait a moment!’—which checked them. Just then the shell exploded within a yard of the cannon. If we had not paused, some of us would surely have been hit. We then rushed out, seized the cannon, and brought it out of range.
“By the way, General William F. Smith (Baldy Smith) has since told me that he asked permission to throw the militia (including ourselves) across one of Lee’s lines of retreat. If he had been permitted to do so, I suppose you and I would not have been in correspondence now.
“You remember undoubtedly the flag of truce that came up into the town before the bombardment began. The man was on horseback and had the conventional white flag. The story was that Baldy Smith sent word ‘that if they wanted the town they could come and take it.’ [267] I suppose you realise that we were really a part of Meade’s right, and that we helped somewhat to delay the rebel left wing. Do you not remember hearing from our position at Carlisle the guns of that great battle—the turning-point of the war? [268]
“I could run on in this way, but your own memory must be full of the subject. I wish that we could sometime have a reunion of the old battery in Philadelphia. I have a most distinct and pleasant remembrance of your brother—a charming personality indeed, a handsome refined face and dignified bearing. I remember being so starved as to eat crackers that had fallen on the ground; and I devoured, too, wheat from the fields rubbed in the hands to free it from the ear. . . .
“Sincerely,
R. W. Gilder.“P.S.—I could write more, but you will not need it from me.”
Truly, I was that other comrade whom Gilder overheard commending him, and it was I who gave him something to eat, I being the one in camp who looked specially after two or three of the youngest to see that they did not starve, and who doctored the invalids.
I here note, with all due diffidence, that Mr. Gilder chiefly remembers me as “a splendid expressor of our miseries, with a magnificent vocabulary” wherewith to set forth fearful adversities. I have never been habitually loquacious in life; full many deem me deeply reticent and owl-like in my taciturnity, but I “can hoot when the moon shines,” nor is there altogether lacking in me in great emergencies a certain rude kind of popular eloquence, which has—I avow it with humility—enabled me invariably to hold my own in verbal encounters with tinkers, gypsies, and the like, among whom “chaff” is developed to a degree of which few respectable people have any conception, and which attains to a refinement of sarcasm, originality, and humour in the London of the lower orders, for which there is no parallel in Paris, or in any other European capital; so that even among my earliest experiences I can remember, after an altercation with an omnibus-driver, he applied to me the popular remark that he was “blessed if he didn’t believe that the gemman had been takin’ lessons in language hof a cab-driver, and set up o’ nights to learn.” But the ingenious American is not one whit behind the vigorous Londoner in “de elegant fluency of sass,” as darkies term it, and it moves my heart to think that, after thirty years, and after the marvellous experiences of men who are masters of our English tongue which the editor of the Century must have had, he still retains remembrance of my oratory!
At last we were marched and railroaded back to Philadelphia. I need not say that we were welcome, or that I enjoyed baths, clean clothes, and the blest sensation of feeling decent once more. Everything in life seemed to be luxurious as it had never been before. Luxuries are very conventional. A copy of Prætorius, for which I paid only fifteen shillings, was to me lately a luxury for weeks; so is a visit to a picture gallery. For years after, I had but to think of the Emergency to realise that I was actually in all the chief conditions of happiness.
Feeling that, although I was in superb health and strength, the seeds of typhoid were in me, I left town as soon as possible, and went with my wife, her sister, and two half-nieces, or nieces by marriage, and child-nephew, Edward Robins, to Cape May, a famous bathing-place by the ocean. One of the little girls here alluded to, a Lizzie Robins, then six years of age, is now well known as Elizabeth Robins Pennell, and “a writer of books,” while Edward has risen in journalism in Philadelphia. There as I walked often eighteen or twenty miles a day by the sea, when the thermometer was from 90° to 100° in the shade, I soon worked away all apprehension of typhoid and developed muscle. One day I overheard a man in the next bathing-house asking who I was. “I don’t know,” replied the other, “but if I were he, I’d go in for being a prize-fighter.”
Everybody was poor in those days, so we went to a very cheap though respectable hotel, where we paid less than half of what we had always given at “The Island,” and where we were in company quite as happy or comfortable as we ever had been anywhere, though the death of her brother weighed sadly on my poor wife, and her dear good mother, whom I always loved tenderly, and with whom I never had a shade of difference of opinion nor a whisper of even argument, and to whom I was always devoted. I seem to have been destined to differ from other mortals in a few things: one was, that I always loved my mother-in-law with whole heart and soul, and never considered our ménage as perfect unless she were with us. She was of very good and rather near English descent, a Callender, and had been celebrated in her youth for extraordinary beauty. Her husband was related to the celebrated beauty Miss Vining, whom Maria Antoinette, from the fame of her loveliness, invited to come and join her court. At the beginning of this century no great foreigner travelled in America without calling on Miss Vining in Delaware. There is a life of her in Griswold’s “Republican Court.” It is without any illustrative portrait. I asked Dr. Griswold why he had none. He replied that none existed. I said to him severely, “Let this be a lesson to you never to publish anything without submitting it first to me. I have a photograph of her miniature.” The Doctor submitted!
This summer at Cape May I made the acquaintance of a very remarkable man named Solomon. He was a Jew, and we became intimate. One evening he said to me: “You know so much about the Jews that I have even learned something from you about them. But I can teach you something. Can you tell the difference between the Aschkenazim and the Sephardim by their eyes? No! Well, now, look!” Just then a Spanish-looking beauty from New Orleans passed by. “There is Miss Inez Aguado; observe that the corners of her eyes are long with a peculiar turn. Wait a minute; now, there is Miss Löwenthal—Levi, of course—of Frankfort. Don’t you see the difference?”
I did, and asked him to which of the classes he belonged. He replied—
“To neither. I am of the sect of the ancient Sadducees, who took no part in the Crucifixion.”
Then I replied, “You are of the Karaim.”
“No; that is still another sect or division, though very ancient indeed. We never held to the Halacha, and we laugh at the Mishna and Talmud and all that. We do not believe or disbelieve in a God—Yahveh, or the older Elohim. We hold that every man born knows enough to do what is right; and that is religion enough. After death, if he has acted up to this, he will be all right should there be a future of immortality; and if he hasn’t, he will be none the worse off for it. We are a very small sect. We call ourselves the Neu Reformirte. We have a place of worship in New York.”
This was the first agnostic whom I had ever met. I thought of the woman in Jerusalem who ran about with the torch to burn up heaven and the water to extinguish hell-fire. Yes, the sect was very old. The Sadducees never denied anything; they only inquired as to truth. Seek or Sikh!
I confess that Mr. Solomon somewhat weakened the effect of his grand free-thought philosophy by telling me in full faith of a Rabbi in New York who was so learned in the Cabala that by virtue of the sacred names he could recover stolen goods. Whether, like Browning’s sage, he also received them, I did not learn. But c’est tout comme chez nous autres. The same spirit which induces a man to break out of orthodox humdrumness, induces him to love the marvellous, the forbidden, the odd, the wild, the droll—even as I do. It is not a fair saying that “atheists are all superstitious, which proves that a man must believe in something.” No; it is the spirit of nature, of inquiry, of a desire for the new and to penetrate the unknown; and under such influence a man may truly be an atheist as regards what he cannot prove or reconcile with universal love and mercy, and yet a full believer that magic and ghosts may possibly exist among the infinite marvels and mysteries of nature. It is admitted that a man may believe in God without being superstitious; it is much truer that he may be “superstitious” (whatever that means) without believing that there is an anthropomorphic bon Dieu. However this may be, Mr. Solomon made me reflect often and deeply for many a long year, until I arrived to the age of Darwin.
I also made at Cape May the acquaintance of a very remarkable man, whom I was destined to often meet in other lands in after years. This was Carrol (not as yet General) Tevis. We first met thus. The ladies wanted seats out on the lawn, and there was not a chair to be had. He and I were seeking in the hotel-office; all the clerks were absent, and all the chairs removed; but there remained a solid iron sofa or settee, six feet long, weighing about 600 pounds. Tevis was strong, and a great fencer; there is a famous botte which he invented, bearing his name; perhaps Walter H. Pollock knows it. I gave the free-lance or condottiero a glance, and proposed to prig the iron sofa and lay waste the enemy. It was a deed after his Dugald Dalgetty heart, and we carried it off and seated the ladies.
In the autumn there was a vast Sanitary Fair for the benefit of the army hospitals held in Philadelphia. I edited for it a daily newspaper called Our Daily Fare, which often kept me at work for eighteen hours per diem, and in doing which I was subjected to much needless annoyance and mortification. At this Fair I saw Abraham Lincoln.
It was about this time that the remarkable oil fever, or mania for speculating in oil-lands, broke out in the United States. Many persons had grown rich during the war, and were ready to speculate. Its extent among all classes was incredible. Perhaps the only parallel to it in history was the Mississippi Bubble or the South Sea speculations, and these did not collectively employ so much capital or call out so much money as this petroleum mania. It had many strange social developments, which I was destined to see in minute detail.
My first experience was not very pleasant. A publisher in New York asked me to write him a humorous poem on the oil mania. It was to be large enough to make a small volume. I did so, and in my opinion wrote a good one. It cost me much time and trouble. When it was done, the publisher refused to take it, saying that it was not what he wanted. So I lost my labour or oleum perdidi.
I had two young friends named Colton, who had been in the war from the beginning to the end, and experienced its changes to the utmost. Neither was over twenty-one. William Colton, the elder, was a captain in the regular cavalry, and the younger, Baldwin, was his orderly. It was a man in the Captain’s company, named Yost, who furnished the type of Hans Breitmann as a soldier. The brothers told me that one day in a march in Tennessee, not far from Murfreesboro’, they had found petroleum in the road, and thought it indicated the presence of oil-springs. I mentioned this to Mr. Joseph Lea, a merchant of Philadelphia. He was the father of Mrs. Anna Lea Merritt, who has since become a very distinguished artist, well known in England, being the first lady painter from whom the British Government ever bought a picture. Mr. Lea thought it might be worth some expense to investigate this Tennessee oil. I volunteered to go, if my expenses were paid, and it was agreed to. It is difficult at the present day to give any reader a clear idea of the dangers and trouble which this undertaking involved, and I was fully aware beforehand what they would be. The place was on the border, in the most disorganised state of society conceivable, and, in fact, completely swarming with guerillas or brigands, sans merci, who simply killed and stripped everybody who fell into their hands. All over our border or frontier there are innumerable families who have kept up feuds to the death, or vendettas, in some cases for more than a century; and now, in the absence of all civil law, these were engaged in wreaking their old grudges without restraint, and assuredly not sparing any stranger who came between them.
I had a friend in C. A. Dana, the Assistant-Secretary of War, and another in Colonel Henry Olcott, since known as the theosophist. The latter had just come from the country which I proposed to visit. I asked him to aid me in getting military passes and introductions to officers in command. He promised to do so, saying that he would not go through what I had before me for all the oil in America. [274] And, indeed, one could not take up a newspaper without finding full proof that Tennessee was at that time an inferno or No-man’s Land of disorder.
I went to it with my eyes wide open. After so many years of work, I was as poor as ever, and the seven years of harvest which I had prophesied had come, and I was not gathering a single golden grain. My father regarded me as a failure in life, or as a literary ne’er-do-weel, destined never to achieve fortune or gain an état, and he was quite right. My war experience had made me reckless of life, and speculation was firing every heart. I bought myself a pair of long, strong, overall boots and blanket, borrowed a revolver, arranged money affairs with Mr. Lea, who always acted with the greatest generosity, intelligence, and kindness, packed my carpet-bag, and departed. It was midwinter, and I was destined for a wintry region, or Venango County, where, until within the past few months, there had been many more bears and deer than human beings. For it was in Venango, Pennsylvania, that the oil-wells were situated, and Mr. Lea judged it advisable that I should first visit them and learn something of the method of working, the geology of the region, and other practical matters.
My brother accompanied me to the station, and I left at about 8 p.m. After a long, long, weary night and day, I arrived at an oil town, whose name I now forget. By great good fortune I secured a room, and by still greater luck I got acquainted the next morning at breakfast with three or four genial and gentlemanly men, all “speculators” like myself, who had come to spy into the plumpness and oiliness of the land. We hired a sleigh and went forth on an excursion among the oil-wells. It was in some respects the most remarkable day I ever spent anywhere.
For here was oil, oil, oil everywhere, in fountains flowing at the rate of a dollar a second (it brought 70 cents a gallon), derricks or scaffoldings at every turn over wells, men making fortunes in an hour, and beggars riding on blooded horses. I myself saw a man in a blue carter’s blouse, carrying a black snake-whip, and since breakfast, for selling a friend’s farm, he had received 1250,000 as commission (i.e., £50,000). When we stopped to dine at a tavern, there stood behind us during all the meal many country-fellows, all trying to sell oil-lands; every one had a great bargain at from thirty or forty thousand dollars downwards. The lowest in the lot was a boy of seventeen or eighteen, a loutish-looking youth, who looked as if his vocation had been peddling apples and lozenges. He had only a small estate to dispose of for $15,000 (£3,000), but he was very small fry indeed. My companions met with many friends; all had within a few days or hours made or lost incredible sums by gambling in oil-lands, borrowing recklessly, and failing as recklessly. Companies were formed here on the spot as easily as men get up a game of cards, and of this within a few days I witnessed many instances. Two men would meet. “Got any land over?” (i.e., not “stocked”). “Yes, first-rate; geologer’s certificate; can you put it on the market?” “That’s my business. I’ve floated forty oil stocks already, terms half profits.” So it would be floated forthwith. Gambling by millions was in the air everywhere; low common men held sometimes thirty companies, all their own, in one pocket, to be presently sprung in New York or elsewhere. And in contrast to it was the utterly bleak wretchedness and poverty of every house, and the miserable shanties, and all around and afar the dismal, dark, pine forests covered with snow.
I heard that day of a man who got a living by spiritually intuiting oil. “Something told him,” some Socratic demon or inner impulse, that there was “ile” here or there, deep under the earth. To pilot to this “ile” of beauty he was paid high fees. One of my new friends avowed his intention of at once employing this oil-seer as over-seer.
We came to some stupendous tanks and to a well which, as one of my friends said enviously and longingly, was running three thousand dollars a day in clear greenbacks. Its history was remarkable. For a very long time an engineer had been here, employed by a company in boring, but bore he never so wisely, he could get nothing. At last the company, tired of the expenditure and no returns, wrote to him ordering him to cease all further work on the next Saturday. But the engineer had become “possessed” with the idea that he must succeed, and so, unheeding orders, he bored away all alone the next day. About sunset some one going by heard a loud screaming and hurrahing. Hastening up, he found the engineer almost delirious with joy, dancing like a lunatic round a fountain of oil, which was “as thick as a flour-barrel, and rising to the height of a hundred feet.” It was speedily plugged and made available. All of this occurred only a very few days before I saw it.
That night I stopped at a newly-erected tavern, and, as no bed was to be had, made up my mind to sleep in my blanket on the muddy floor, surrounded by a crowd of noisy speculators, waggoners, and the like. I tell this tale vilely, for I omitted to say that I did the same thing the first night when I entered the oil-country, got a bed on the second, and that this was the third. But even here I made the acquaintance of a nice Scotchman, who found out another very nice man who had a house near by, and who, albeit not accustomed to receive guests, said he would give us two one bed, which he did. However, the covering was not abundant, and I, for all my blanket, was a-cold. In the morning I found a full supply of blankets hanging over the foot-board, but we had retired without a light, and had not noticed them. Our breakfast being rather poor, our host, with an apology, brought in a great cold mince-pie three inches thick, which is just the thing which I love best of all earthly food. That he apologised for it indicated a very high degree of culture indeed in rural America, and, in fact, I found that he was a well-read and modest man.
It was, I think, at a place called Plummer that I made the acquaintance of two brothers named B---, who seemed to vibrate on the summit of fortune as two golden balls might on the top of the oil-fountain to which I referred. One spoke casually of having at that instant a charter for a bank in one pocket, and one for a railroad in the other. They bought and sold any and all kinds of oil-land in any quantity, without giving it a thought. While I was in their office, one man exhibited a very handsome revolver. “How much did it cost?” asked B. “Fifty dollars” (£10). “I wish,” replied B., “that when you go to Philadelphia you’d get me a dozen of them for presents.” A man came to the window and called for him. “What do you want?” “Here are the two horses I spoke about yesterday.” Hardly heeding him, and talking to others, B. went to the window, cast a casual glance at the steeds, and said, “What was it you said that you wanted for them?” “Three thousand dollars.” “All right! go and put ’em in the stable, and come here and get the money.”
From Plummer I had to go ten miles to Oil City. If I had only known it, one of my very new friends, who was very kind indeed to a stranger, would have driven me over in his sleigh. But I did not know it, and so paid a very rough countryman ten dollars (£2) to take me over on a jumper. This is the roughest form of a sledge, consisting of two saplings with the ends turned up, fastened by cross-pieces. The snow on the road was two feet deep, and the thermometer at zero. But the driver had two good horses, and made good time. I found it very difficult indeed to hold on to the vehicle and also to keep my carpet-bag. Meanwhile my driver entertained me with an account of a great misfortune which had just befallen him. It was as follows:—
“Before this here oil-fever came along I had a little farm that cost me $150, and off that, an’ workin’ at carpentrin’, I got a mighty slim livin’. I used to keep all my main savin’s to pay taxes, and often had to save up the cents to get a prospective drink of whisky. Well, last week I sold my farm for forty thousand dollars, and dern my skin ef the feller that bought it didn’t go and sell it yesterday for a hundred and fifty thousand! Just like my derned bad luck!”
“See here, my friend,” I said; “I have travelled pretty far in my time, but I never saw a country in which a man with forty thousand dollars was not considered rich.”
“He may be rich anywhere else with it,” replied the nouveau riche contemptuously, “but it wouldn’t do more than buy him a glass of whisky here in Plummer.”
Having learned what I could of oil-boring, I went to Cincinnati, and then to Nashville by rail. It may give the reader some idea of what kind of a country and life I was coming into when I tell him that the train which preceded mine had been stopped by the guerillas, who took from it fifty Federal soldiers and shot them dead, stripping the other passengers; and that the one which came after had a hundred and fifty bullets fired into it, but had not been stopped. We passed by Mammoth Cave, but at full speed, for it was held by the brigands. All of which things were duly chronicled in the Northern newspapers, and read by all at home.
I got to Nashville. It had very recently been taken by the Federal forces under General Thomas, who had put it under charge of General Whipple, who was, in fact, the ruling or administrative man of the Southwest just then. I went to the hotel. Everything was dismal and dirty—nothing but soldiers and officers, with all the marks of the field and of warfare visible on them—citizens invisible—everything proclaiming a city camp in time of war—sixty thousand men in a city of twenty thousand, more or less. I got a room. It was so cold that night that the ice froze two inches thick in my pitcher in my room.
I expected to find the brothers Colton in Nashville. I went to the proper military authority, and was informed that their regiment was down at the front in Alabama, as was also the officer who had the authority to give them leave of absence. I was also informed that my only chance was to go to Alabama, or, in fact, into the field itself, as a civilian! This was a dreary prospect. However, I made up my mind to it, and was walking along the street in a very sombre state of mind, for I was going to a country like that described in “Sir Grey Stele”—
“Whiche is called the Land of Doubte.”
And doubtful indeed, and very dismal and cold and old, did everything seem on that winter afternoon as I, utterly alone, went my way. What I wanted most of all things on earth was a companion. With my brother I would have gone down to the front and to face all chances as if it were to a picnic.
When ill-fortune intends to make a spring, she draws back. But good fortune, God bless her! does just the same. Therefore si fortuna tonat, caveto mergi—if fortune frowns, do not for that despond. Just as I was passing a very respectable-looking mansion, I saw a sign over its office-door bearing the words: “Captain Joseph R. Paxton, Mustering-in and Disbursing Officer.”
Joseph R. Paxton was a very intimate friend of mine in Philadelphia. He was still a young man, and one of the most remarkable whom I have ever known. He was a great scholar. He was more familiar with all the rariora, curiosa, and singular marvels of literature than any body I ever knew except Octave Delepierre, with whose works he first made me acquainted. He had translated Ik Marvel’s “Reveries of a Bachelor” into French, and had been accepted by a Paris publisher. He had been a lawyer, an agent for a railroad, and had long edited in Philadelphia a curious journal entitled Bizarre, and written a work on gems. His whole soul, however, was in the French literature of the eighteenth century, and he always had a library which would make a collector’s mouth water. Had he lived in London or Paris, he would have made a great reputation. And he was kind-hearted, genial, and generous to a fault. He had always some unfortunate friend living on him, some Bohemian of literature under a cloud.
I entered the office and found him, and great was his amazement! “Que diable, mon ami, faistu ici dans cette galère?” was his greeting. I explained the circumstances in detail. He at once exclaimed, “Come and live here with me. General Whipple is my brother-in-law, and he will be here in a few days and live with us. He’ll make it all right.” “Here, Jim!” he cried to a great six-foot man of colour—“run round to the hotel and bring this gentleman’s luggage!”