Part 33

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!

So we started and after a few hours' travel, stopped at Altona. There I was very much amused by an old darkey at the railway-station hotel, who had, as he declared, "specially the kyar of de ladies an' quality." He had been a slave till the war broke out, and had been wondrously favoured by visions and revelations which guided him to freedom. "De Lawd he 'pear to me in a dream, an' I hyar a vi'ce which cry, 'Simon, arise an' git out of dis, an' put fo' de Norf as fass as you kin travel, fo' de day of de 'pressor is at an end, an' you is to be free.' So I rosed an' fled, hardly a-waitin' to stuff my bag wid some corn-dodgers an' bacon, an' foller de Norf Star till I git confused an' went to sleep agin, wen, lo, an angel expostulated hisself befo' my eyes in a wision, an' say, 'Simon, beholdes' dou dat paff by de riber? Dat's de one fo' you to foller, ole son!' So I follers it till I git on de right trail. Den I met anoder nigger a-'scapin' from the bon's of captivity, an' carryin' a cold ham, an' I jined in wid him--you bet--an' so we come to de Lawd's country."

And so gaily on to Chicago. We went directly to the first hotel, and as soon as I had toiletted and gone below, I saw on the opposite building a sign with the words _Chicago Tribune_. This was an exchange of ours, so I crossed over, and meeting the editor by chance in the doorway, was welcomed and introduced to Governor Desbrosses, who stood by. Then I went to a telegraph office and sent a despatch to the _Press_. The man wanted me to pay. I told him to C. O. D., "collect on delivery." He declined. I said, "Your principal office is in Philadelphia, is it not?--Third and Chestnut Streets. Just send a telegram and ask the name of your landlord. It's Leland, and _I'm the man_. If you make me pay, I'll raise your rent." He laughed heartily and let me off, but not without a parting shot: "You see, Mr. Leland, there are so many scallawags {349} from the East come here, that we are obliged to be a little particular."

I returned to the hotel, and was immediately introduced to some one having authority. I narrated my late experience. He looked at me and said, "How long have you been in Chicago?" I replied, "About thirty minutes." He answered gravely, "I think you'd better _stay_ here. You'll suit the place." I was beginning to feel the moral influence of the genial air of the West. Chicago is emphatically what is termed "a place," and a certain amount of calm confidence in one's self is not in that city to any one's discredit. Once there was an old lady of a "hard" type in the witness-box in an American city. She glared round at the judge, the jury, and the spectators, and then burst out with, "You needn't all be staring at me in that way. I don't keer a --- for you all. I've lived eleven years in Chicago, and ain't affeard of the devil." Chicago is said in Indian to mean the place of skunks, but calling a rose a skunk-cabbage don't make it one.

Walking on the edge of the lake near the city, the waters cast up a good- sized living specimen of that extraordinary fish-lizard, the great _menobranchus_, popularly known as the hell-bender from its extreme ugliness. Owing to the immense size of its spermatozoa, it has rendered great aid to embryology, a science which, when understood _au fond_, will bring about great changes in the human race. We were taken out in a steamboat to the end of the great aqueduct, which was, when built, pronounced, I think by the London _Times_, to be the greatest engineering work of modern times.

In due time we came to St. Paul, Minnesota. We went to a very fair hotel and had a very good dinner. In the West it is very common among the commonalty to drink coffee and milk through dinner, and indeed with all meals, instead of wine or ale, but the custom is considered as vulgar by swells. Having finished dessert, I asked the Irish waiter to bring me a small cup of black coffee and brandy. Drawing himself up stiffly, Pat replied, "We don't serve caafy at dinner in _this_ hotel." There was a grand roar of laughter which the waiter evidently thought was at _my_ expense, as he retreated smiling.

We were kindly received in St. Paul by everybody. There is this immense advantage of English or American hospitality over that of all other countries, that it introduces us to the _home_, and makes us forget that we are strangers. When we were at the end of the fearfully wearisome great moral circus known as the Oriental Congress, held all over Scandinavia in 1890, there came to me one evening in the station a great Norseman with his friends. With much would-be, ox-like dignity he began, "You ha-ave now experienced de glorious haspitality off our country. You will go oom and say--"

"Stop a minute there!" I exclaimed, for I was bored to death with a show which had been engineered to tatters, and to half defeating all the work of the Congress, in order to glorify the King and Count Landberg. "I have been here in your country six weeks, and I had letters of introduction, and have made no end of acquaintances. I have been shown thousands of fireworks, which blind me, and offered dozens of champagne, which I never touch, and public dinners, which I did not attend. But during the whole time I have never once seen the inside of a Swedish or Norwegian house." Which was perfectly true, nor have I ever seen one to this day. There is a kind of "hospitality" which consists of giving yourself a grand treat at a tavern or _cafe_, and inviting your strangers to it to help you to be glorified. But to very domestic people and utter Philistines, _domestic_ life lacks the charm of a brass band, and the mirrors and gilding of a restaurant or hotel; therefore, what they themselves enjoy most, they, with best intent, but most unwisely, inflict on more civilised folk. But in America and England, where home-life is _worth_ living and abounding in every attraction, and public saloons are at a discount, the case is reversed. And in these Western towns, of which many were, so to speak, almost within hearing of the whoop of the savage or the howl of the wolf (as Leavenworth really was), we experienced a refinement of true hospitality in homes--kindness and tact such as I have never known to be equalled save in Great Britain. One evening I was at a house in St. Paul, where I was struck by the beauty, refined manners, and agreeableness of our hostess, who was a real Chippeway or Sioux Indian, and wife of a retired Indian trader. She had been well educated at a Canadian French seminary.

We were taken over to see the rival city of Minneapolis, of which word my brother Henry said it was a vile grinding up together of Greek and Indian. _Minne_ means water; _Minne-sota_, turbid water, and _Minne-haha_ does not signify "laughing," but _falling_ water. This we also visited, and I found it so charming, that I was delighted to think that for once an Indian name had been kept, and that the young ladies of the boarding-schools of St. Paul or Minneapolis had not christened or devilled it "Diana's Bath."

We were received kindly by the Council of the city of Minneapolis. Half of them had come from the East afflicted with consumption, and all had recovered. But it is necessary to remain there to live. My wife's cousin, Mr. Richard Price, who then owned the great saw-mill next the Fall of St. Anthony, came with this affliction from Philadelphia, and got over it. After six years' absence he returned to Philadelphia, and died in six weeks of consumption. Strangely enough, consumption is the chief cause of death among the Indians, but this is due to their careless habits, wearing wet moccasins and the like.

Now a great question arose. It was necessary for the magnates of our party to go to Duluth, and to do this they must make a seven days' journey through the wilderness, either on a very rough military road cut through the woods during the war, or sometimes on no road at all. Houses or post-stations, often of only one or two rooms, were sometimes a day's journey apart. The question was whether delicate ladies, utterly unaccustomed to anything like hard travel could take this trip, during which they must endure clouds of mosquitos, put up with camp-cooking, or often none, and otherwise go through privations such as only an Indian or a frontiersman would care to experience? The entire town of St. Paul, and all the men of our party, vigorously opposed taking the ladies, while I, joining the latter, insisted on it that they could go; for, as I said to all assembled, where the devil is afraid to go he sends a woman; and I had always observed that in travelling, long after men are tired out women are generally all right. They are never more played out _than they want to be_.

"Femme plaint, femme deult, Femme est malade quand elle veult, Et par Sainte Marie! Quand elle veult elle est guerye."

And of course _we_ carried the day. Twelve men, even though backed up by a city council, have no chance against any ten women. To be sure women, like all other savages, require a male leader--I mean to say, just as Goorkha troops, though brave as lions, must have an English captain--so they conquered under my guidance!

Having had experience in fitting out for the wilderness, I was requested to see to the stores--so many hams to so many people for so many days, so much coffee, and so forth. I astonished all by insisting that there should be one _tin cup_ to every traveller. "Every glass you have will soon be broken," I said. And so it was, sooner than I expected. As tin cups could not be found in St. Paul, we bought three or four dozen small tin basins of about six inches diameter at the rim, and when champagne was served out it was, _faute de mieux_, drunk from these eccentric goblets.

In the first waggon were Mr. and Mrs. Thompson and Mrs. Leland. Their driver was a very eccentric Canadian Frenchman named Louis. He was to the last degree polite to the ladies, but subject to attacks of Indian rage at mere trifles, when he would go aside, swear, and destroy something like a lunatic in a fury, and then return quite happy and serene. I was in the second waggon with three ladies, a man being wanted in every vehicle. Our driver was named George, and he was altogether like Brigham, minus the Mexican-Spanish element. George had, however, also lived a great deal among Indians, and been at the great battle of the Chippeways and Sioux, and was full of interesting and naive discourse.

Of course, we of the two leading waggons all talked to Louis in French, who gave himself great airs on it. One morning George asked me in confidence, "Mr. Leland, you're not all French, are you?" "Certainly not," I replied; "we're from Philadelphia." "Well," replied George, "so I told Louis, but he says you _are_ French, like him, and shut me up by askin' me if I hadn't heard you talkin' it. Now what I want to know is, if you're _not_ French, how came the _whole_ of you to know it?" I explained to George, to his astonishment, that in the East it was usual for all well-educated persons, especially ladies, to learn it. I soon became as intimate with George as I had been with Brigham, and began to learn Chippeway of him, and greet the Indians whom we met. One day George said--

"Of course you have no Indian blood in you, Mr. Leland; but weren't you a great deal among 'em when you were young?"

"Why?"

"Because you've got queer little old Injun ways. Whenever you stop by the roadside to talk to anybody and sit down, you always rake the small bits of wood together and pull out a match and make a _smudge_" (a very smoky fire made by casting dust on it), "just like an Indian in an Injun kind of way." (In after years I found this same habit of making fires of small bits of wood peculiar to old English gypsies.)

The smudge is the great summer institution of Minnesota. It is the safeguard against mosquitos. They are all over the State in such numbers that they constitute a plague. We all wore all the time over our faces and necks a kind of guard or veil, shaped exactly like an Egyptian _fanous_ or folding lantern. It is cylindrical, made of _tulle_ or coarse lace, with rings. At every house people sat in the porticos over a tin bucket, in which there was a smudge--that is to say, in smoke. In the evening some one goes with a tin or iron pail containing a smudge, and fills the bedrooms with dense smoke. One evening Mr. Hinckley and another of our party went fishing without veils. They returned with their necks behind swollen up as if with _goitres_ or _Kropfe_. I knew a young Englishman who with friends, somewhere beyond Manitoba, encountered such a storm of mosquitos that their oxen were killed, and the party saved themselves by riding away on horseback. So he told me.

At the stations--all log-houses--the ladies collected pillows and buffalo blankets, and, making a great bed, all slept in one room. We men slept in waggons or under a tent, which was not quite large enough for all. The Indian women cut spruce twigs and laid them over-lapping on the ground for our bed. By preference I took the outside, _al fresco_. One night we stayed at a house which had an upper and a lower storey. The ladies camped upstairs. In the morning, when we men below awoke, all took a drink of whisky. There entered a very tall Indian, clad in a long black blanket, who looked on very approvingly at the drinking. I called to my wife above to hand me down my whisky flask. "There is a big Indian here who wants a drink," I remarked. "I think I know," she replied, "who that big Indian is," but handed down the flask. "Don't waste whisky on an _Indian_" said one of my companions. But I filled the cup with a tremendous slug, and handed it to the Objibway. He took it down like milk, and never a word spoke he, but when it was swallowed he looked at me and winked. Such a wink as that was! I think I see it now--so inspired with gratitude and humour as to render all words needless. He had a rare sense of tact and gratitude. Soon after I was sitting out of doors among a few ladies, when the Indian, who had divined that I was short of Chippeway and wished to learn, stalked up, and pointing to our beauty, said gravely, _squoah_--_i.e._, woman. Then he indicated several other articles, told me the Indian name for each and walked away. It was all he could do. The ladies, who could not imagine why this voluntary lesson was given to me, were much amused at it. But I understood it; he had seen the Injun in me at a glance, and knew what I wanted most!