III.

Now, we’ve had enough of travel, And, in turn, laid down the gavel. In triumph having reached fourscore, We’ll give our thoughts to art and lore. In the time-honored retreat, Side by side, we’ll take a seat, To younger hands resign the reins, With all the honors, and the gains. United, down life’s hill we’ll glide, Whate’er the coming years betide; Parted only when first, in time, Eternal joys are thine, or mine.

The following letter sent me by Miss Anthony, just as I was putting the finishing touches on this book, shows that she is still active enough to give personal attention to a large correspondence:

* * * * *

“MY DEAR FRIEND: I have just found your card of Christmas and New Year’s greeting of 1898 and 1899--among _autograph letters_--a huge pile of them--that I have undertaken to demolish this beautiful July Sunday morning. How your card found its way into the pile is past my knowledge, for I am sure the rest of the envelopes are not farther back than six weeks. It seems but a very short time since I made a general clearing up and out of a similar pile.

“Do you remember how Henry Ward Beecher used to say he enjoyed writing his name for the boys and girls? Well, how few there are left of the pioneers in either anti-slavery or woman’s rights. I feel almost like a _Spared Monument_ of both crusades.

“I hope you are well and that all is well with you.

“Very sincerely yours, “SUSAN B. ANTHONY, “July 22, 1900. “Rochester, N. Y.”

* * * * *

[Illustration: JULIA WARD HOWE]

Julia Ward Howe comes from a long line of Puritan ancestry. She was an ardent worker in the anti-slavery cause. In 1856-57 she and her husband, Dr. Howe, edited an anti-slavery paper, _The Boston Commonwealth_, and were leaders with Garrison, Sumner, Phillips, Higginson, and Theodore Parker. It was Dr. and Mrs. Howe who brought about meetings in Boston for the discussion of the problems of the Abolitionists on one side and pro-slavery advocates on the other. Robert Toombs of Georgia, who boasted that he would hold his slaves under the shadow of Bunker Hill Monument, and Colonel Sam Houston of Texas, took part. “I remember,” said Mrs. Howe, “we had lively times.”

All through the Kansas Free State struggle and the startling raid at Harper’s Ferry, in which the Doctor’s name was closely connected with that of “Old John Brown,” Mrs. Howe was the unflinching helpmate of the brave philanthropist and scholar with whose name her own is interwoven.

In 1861 Mrs. Howe wrote the “Battle-Hymn of the Republic.” She gave me the manuscript, which I have yet, and she told me how she came to write it.

“Late in the autumn of 1861, I visited the capital with a party of friends, among whom were Governor and Mrs. Andrew, Mr. and Mrs. E. P. Whipple, and my pastor, the Rev. James Freeman Clarke. One day we drove out to a review of troops some distance from the city. The day was fine and everything passed off well; but a _sudden surprise_ on the part of _the enemy_ interrupted the proceedings before they were well begun. A small body of our men had been surrounded and cut off from their companions; reinforcements were sent to their assistance, and the expected pageant was necessarily given up. We turned our horses’ heads homeward. For a long distance the foot soldiers filled the road. They were before us and behind us, and we were obliged to drive very slowly. We presently began to sing some of the well-known songs of the war, and among them, ‘John Brown’s Body Lies a-Mouldering in the Grave.’ This seemed to please the soldiers, who cried, ‘Good for you!’ and they themselves took up the strain. Mr. Clarke said to me, ‘You ought to write some new words to that tune.’

“I replied that I had often wished to do so.

“In spite of the excitement of the day, I went to bed and slept as usual, but awoke next morning in the gray of the early dawn, and, to my astonishment, found that the wished-for lines were arranging themselves in my brain. I hastily rose, saying to myself, ‘I shall lose this if I don’t write it down.’ Immediately I searched for a sheet of paper and an old stump of a pen that I had had the night before, and began to scrawl the lines almost without looking. Having completed that, I lay down again and fell asleep, but not without feeling that something of importance had happened to me.”

The poem was written at Willard’s Hotel, and, set to music, was sung by every soldier in our army.

She has spoken to French scholars and wits in their own tongue and chief city. In Florence and Rome she has spoken to Italian audiences, having in Rome, during her last visit, also read two sermons to liberal congregations. She is a person of great wit, as well as learning, being as a speaker essentially and intellectually womanly; but she can startle her audience even now by some unexpected and spirited outburst of opinion that justifies her high reputation as a poet and her noble record as a brave, clear thinker. Her intellectual activity is unremittent. She could always have more engagements than she desires, and, as a marked favorite, is still in request.

Mrs. Howe is the aunt of Marion F. Crawford, the sister of a famous banker, wit, and bon vivant; the mother, too, of a brilliant daughter who has also made her own place before the public.

She is past eighty years of age, and yet, if I said to her, “Mrs. Howe, I have an engagement for you to speak in Omaha next Monday night,” she would be there.

She is a great traveller and a great woman, and still available for the lyceum.

Mrs. Howe has devoted her life untiringly to everything that elevates humanity. For thirty years she has been lecturing in all parts of the United States, and has always shown, herself the elegant, well-bred, highly educated woman.

At the tenth annual reunion of the Medal of Honor Legion of the United States, held in the Academy of Music, Brooklyn, Tuesday evening, September 11, 1900, Mrs. Howe was present and received such a welcome as she will probably never forget. Despite the fact that the temperature ranged away up into the nineties the great auditorium was crowded. Over every available space in the entire building were draped American flags whose folds across the front of the boxes and across the proscenium were held in place by golden eagles with outstretched wings. On the speaker’s desk was an immense bouquet of lilies, which was presented to Mrs. Julia Ward Howe after the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” had been sung.

The members of the Legion, numbering over two hundred, occupied seats on the front of the stage to the right and to the left of the speaker’s desk. Seated back of them and rising tier upon tier clear back to the wall were four hundred bright-faced young ladies, all in dainty gowns of white, who led the inspiring singing as Mrs. Howe was conducted on the arm of Col. Willis L. Ogden to the speaker’s stand from the box on the right of the stage. While the band played her hymn the great audience arose and greeted her with cheers and storms of applause that were long continued.

After the singing of the hymn and after Mrs. Howe had taken her seat at the front of the stage, Mr. James McKean, in a few eloquent words, presented her the massive bouquet of lilies. He said:

“Mr. Chairman, after the inspiring words of the ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic,’ any words from, me must, indeed, seem trivial and inopportune; but the committee in charge of this reception request me in their behalf, and on behalf of this great audience, and on behalf of our distinguished guests on this occasion, to express the infinite pleasure given us that we have here present that lady who was inspired to write this noble hymn to the tune of which the armies of the Republic have marched in the past and will march forever to victory and success.

“Some of us can recall the first appearance of this magnificent hymn and have participated in that discussion of the line, ‘In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea.’ There was a contention on the one side that reference was had to the Mayflower, which carried the spirit of Christianity across the ocean and planted on our shores the institutions of liberty and glory. I suppose the true interpretation was the great hymnology of Bethlehem, the meaning of the place where ‘Christ was born across the sea.’ Whether it have one meaning or the other, we feel thankful that you have woven into that beautiful hymn that reference to lilies. Perhaps that line has suggested to the committee that they ask you to receive to-night, as a very slight token of their appreciation, this bouquet of lilies. Their beauty is temporal, their fragrance is ephemeral, but be sure, in presenting them to you, it is a token of our everlasting gratitude for what you have done and an appreciation that you are able to be here to-night.”

Mrs. Howe, in a voice that was heard distinctly in every part of the great Academy of Music, replied as follows:

“My dear sir and you defenders of the country--my country--I am happy to be here to-night and in the presence of this great multitude thank you for your reception to me. When you were fighting in the field I was one of the women who at home was praying for you. We were anxious every time you entered a contest, but that dear old flag has never been dishonored. I remember going to Washington just after the war broke out and I thought, ‘What can I do?’ I had children and I was obliged to look out for my soldiers at home, but I still wondered what I could do. It was at this time that the hymn which you have sung came to me, and if it has cheered and made you happy I thank God for it. I am glad there are so many of you left and I am glad that I am here to see you.

“Some of you I know. I am now only an aged matron, but I thank God that your courage and patriotism is to be handed down to the future, and we are certain that the flag will go nowhere except on honorable errands, and when once gone it shall never be recalled. God bless you all.” (Great applause.)

Mrs. Howe was born in New York, May 27, 1819. She is therefore now in her eighty-second year.

Julia Ward Howe will be long remembered for her work for women, for literature, and in the anti-slavery cause; but she will be most loved and longest remembered for her inspiring “Battle Hymn of the Republic”:

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord: He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored: He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword: His truth is marching on.

REFRAIN.--Glory, glory, hallelujah, Glory, glory, hallelujah, Glory, glory, hallelujah, His truth is marching on.

I have seen Him in the watch fires of a hundred circling camps; They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps; I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps; His day is marching on.--REFRAIN.

I have read a fiery gospel, writ in burnished rows of steel: “As ye deal with My contemners, so with you My grace shall deal; Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel, Since God is marching on.”--REFRAIN.

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat; He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat: O be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet! Our God is marching on.--REFRAIN.

In the beauties of the lilies Christ was born across the sea With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me: As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, While God is marching on.--REFRAIN.

Anna E. Dickinson, from her first appearance until she retired from the lecture field, was without question the “Queen of the Lyceum.” She made her début as a speaker early in the war. Attending a Quaker secular meeting, or a woman’s rights meeting held under Quaker auspices, when she was hardly out of short clothes, she heard a man make a bitter, sarcastic speech in opposition to granting women equal political rights.

[Illustration]

“I got madder and madder,” said Anna, in telling the story, “and just as soon as he sat down I jumped up like a Jack-in-a-box and began to reply to his tirade. As I spoke I left the pew and walked down the aisle to where he sat, and shook my fist in his face as I continued to answer him. I had no idea of speaking at all, and was as much astonished as anybody at what I did.”

That settled it. There was no escaping her destiny after that. The speech astonished every one who heard it by its splendid rhetoric and logical force. She was invited everywhere after that. When Fort Sumter was fired on, she found her true vocation, for no one loved the Union more passionately than this young Quaker girl, and an assault upon it fired her soul with the intensest fervor. She took the stump for the Republicans in New England, and created a cyclone of patriotic enthusiasm wherever she went. The Democrats gave her the credit of changing Vermont from a Democratic to a Republican State.

She went from there to Connecticut, and was equally successful in arousing political patriotism and in urging men to volunteer. East and West, wherever she appeared in the Northern States, the same story was told. Everywhere she was recognized as an oratorical Joan of Arc.

During and after the war she lectured in regular courses, and became so popular that only Gough and Beecher rivalled her as a lyceum favorite; but it was on war topics that she was heard at her best. Then, in pleading for the Union, she spoke and looked like one inspired, and never failed to thrill and enthrall her audiences. In vituperation and denunciation she had no rival among living orators. In politics she had a “level head.” The power of her arguments was surpassed only by the force of her anathemas.

This great woman had a passion for the stage, and after having established a just claim to be regarded as one of the greatest actors in a true sense in her country’s history, she yearned to win the reputation of a great player on the mimic stage. Of course she failed. The stern and stalwart personality, the imperious individuality that made her a great factor in the history of her day, disqualified her for excellency on the stage, and not even her most devoted friends could conceal or deny the fact that she was a dead failure. “With all her skill as an orator, and with all her ability as a writer, Anna Dickinson broke down utterly when she attempted to win Thespian laurels.

[Illustration: MARY A. LIVERMORE]

Mrs. Livermore, still a favorite in her seventy-ninth year, is the most successful woman on the platform I have known. Interested actively in her husband’s pastoral and editorial work as a leading Universalist minister, Mrs. Livermore was one of the first American women to fill a pulpit or occupy an editorial position. She had given her public “testimony” against chattel slavery before her marriage, upon her return home from Virginia, where, in the early forties, she had been occupied as a governess. Her career as a lecturer, however, fairly began with the closing years of the Kansas strife and the first election of Abraham Lincoln. Indeed, I first saw Mary A. Livermore among the reporters in the Wigwam in Chicago in 1860, when Abraham Lincoln was first nominated for President.

At that time she was the busiest woman in the Northwest, editing her husband’s paper, carrying on a regular correspondence for other journals, writing books and magazine articles, managing hospitals and homes, while advancing an extended temperance agitation. Withal her home was always attended to. The civil war found the largest of place for this great-brained woman. At the request of President Henry W. Bellows of the United States Sanitary Commission, she, with her friend, Miss Jane O. Hoge of Chicago, became associates in the Northwest and co-operated in all the vast labors of both sanitary and Christian commissions.

Soon after being placed in charge of the Northwestern branch of the United States Sanitary and Christian Commission, she, with a few other women, went to Washington to talk with President Lincoln.

“Can no woman go to the front?” Mrs Livermore asked.

“No civilian, either man or woman, is permitted by _law_,” said Mr. Lincoln. But the great heart of the greatest man in America was superior to the law, and he placed not a straw in their way.

Mrs. Livermore’s first broad experience of the war was after the battle of Fort Donelson. There were no hospitals for the men, and the wounded were hauled to the steamers in rough Tennessee wagons, most of them dying before they reached St. Louis. Some poor fellows were chopped out of the frozen mud where they had been lying from Saturday morning until Sunday evening.

She asked a blue-eyed lad of nineteen, with both legs and arms shattered:

“How did it happen that you were left so long?”

“Why, you see they could not stop to bother with us. _They had to take the fort._”

The Sanitary and Christian Commission expended about $50,000,000 during the war. Of this the women raised the greater portion, and Mrs. Livermore was one of the most efficient helpers in raising the money. She went among the people and solicited funds and supplies of every kind.

One night it was arranged that she should speak in Dubuque, Iowa, that the people in that State might hear direct from their soldiers at the front. When she arrived, instead of finding a few women, she found a large church packed with men and women eager to listen. The governor of the State and other officials were present. She had never spoken to a mixed assembly. It was arranged that a prominent statesman present should jot down a few facts from her lips, and then, as best he could, tell the audience the experiences of the woman who had been on the battlefields amid the wounded and dying. As they were about going on the platform, the gentleman said:

“Mrs. Livermore, I have heard you say at the front that you would give your all for the soldiers--a foot, a hand, or a voice. Now is the time to give your voice.”

After a moment’s hesitation, she said, “I will try.”

When she rose to speak, the great crowd before her seemed blurred and dark. She could not even hear her own voice, but, as she went on, the needs of the soldiers crowded upon her. She forgot all fear, and for two hours held her audience spell-bound. Men and women wept, and patriotism was rampant.

At eleven o’clock $8,000 was pledged, and then, at the suggestion of the presiding officer, they remained until one o’clock to perfect plans for a fair, from which they cleared $60,000. After this, Mrs. Livermore spoke in all the cities, helping to organize many of the more than 12,500 aid societies formed during eighteen months.

As money was more and more needed, Mrs. Livermore decided to try a Sanitary Commission Fair in Chicago, then her home. The women said, “We will raise $25,000,” but the men laughed at this as an impossibility. The farmers were visited and solicited to give vegetables and grain. Fourteen of Chicago’s largest halls were hired. The women had gone into debt $10,000, and the men of the city began to think and declare them crazy. The Board of Trade called on them and advised that the Fair be given up; the debts should be paid and the men would give the $25,000 when, in their judgment, it was needed.

The women thanked them courteously, but pushed forward in their work.

It had been arranged that the farmers should come on the opening day, in a procession, with their gifts of vegetables. Of this plan the newspapers made great sport, calling it the “potato procession.”

The day came: The school children had a holiday, the bells were rung; one hundred guns were fired, and the whole city gathered to see the “potato procession.”

Finally it arrived--great loads of cabbage and onions, and over four thousand bushels of potatoes. The wagons each bore a motto draped in black, with the words:

“WE BURIED A SON AT DONELSON,”

“OUR FATHER LIES AT STONE RIVER,”

and other similar inscriptions. The flags on the horses’ heads were bound with black. The women, who rode beside a husband or son, were dressed in deep mourning. When the procession stopped at Mrs. Livermore’s house, the jeers were over, and the dense crowd wept like children.

Six public halls were filled with things for sale, while eight were closed so that no other attraction might compete with the Fair.

Instead of $25,000, the women cleared over $100,000! Then Cincinnati followed with a Fair, making $225,000; Boston, $380,000; New York, $1,000,000; Philadelphia, $200,000 more than New York.

Mrs. Livermore had resigned all positions save the one on her husband’s paper, secured a governess for her children, and subordinated all demands upon her time to those of the Commission’s work. She organized soldiers’ aid societies; delivered public addresses to stimulate gifts of money and supplies in the principal towns and cities of the Northwest; wrote letters by hundreds personally and by amanuenses, and answered all that she received; wrote circulars, bulletins, and monthly reports; made trips to the front with sanitary stores, to the distribution of which she gave personal attention; brought back large numbers of invalid soldiers, who were discharged that they might die at home, and whom she accompanied in person or directed by proxy to their several destinations; detailed, by order of Secretary Stanton, women nurses for army hospitals, and accompanied them to their posts. In short, the story of her own and other women’s work during the war has never been told, and can never be understood save by those connected with it. Mrs. Livermore has published her reminiscences of those crucial days in a large volume, entitled “My Story of the War” (Hartford, Conn., 1888), which reached a sale of over fifty thousand copies.

Then Mrs. Livermore entered as a speaker and writer on woman’s suffrage, blazing, as she did in the Sanitary army work, a wide road and a broad place for herself, until early in the seventies she devoted herself entirely to the lecture platform.

For twenty-five years Mrs. Livermore has been the most conspicuous of women orators on the lecture platform. Hers was the first woman’s name on the list of the Redpath Bureau. She has the widest range of topics of any woman lecturer--biographical, historical, political, religious, and reformatory. She has lectured on an average of one hundred times a year in the lyceums, besides over one thousand times on temperance and a thousand times on woman’s suffrage, for she has always advocated the enfranchisement of her sex, with her other work. She has travelled more miles than any woman living. She can preach as well as lecture. I have known her to travel and lecture six nights a week, and when she returned from a long lecturing tour she would tell us of having preached twice on nearly every Sunday during her absence, besides morning addresses before schools and societies of women.

Mrs. Livermore has written a score of useful books, and edited half a dozen papers, been active politically, foremost in the social life of her home locality, taken an interest in all public affairs, political and economic, and yet has always been an ideal wife and mother. Around her are happy homes with devoted grandchildren while over fifty years of married life have knit closer the bonds of personal and spiritual life. She is an ideal American woman in all the active ways of its engrossing life.

While in Boston, January, 1900, in charge of the exhibition of Tissot’s paintings, “The Life of Christ,” and also a course of lectures by the Dean of Ely, I sent invitations to Mrs. Livermore, expressing surprise at not seeing her at either place. She wrote me:

* * * * *

“MELROSE, MASS., January 7, 1900.

“DEAR MR. POND:

“You are very kind to remember me so generously, and I appreciate it. The time has been when wild horses could not have held me back from an exhibition of the ‘Tissot Paintings,’ nor from the admirable lectures of Dean Stubbs. But I am an old woman now--I shall be eighty on my next birthday, and while I am in remarkable health, and rarely know a sick day, yet since my husband’s death the heart has gone out of me forever. I keep steadily at work, omitting nothing that I ought to do, but it is the stern compulsion of duty now that moves me. I rarely get beyond what I ought to do, and that consumes my time very thoroughly. The joy of work, the pleasure of doing, the delight in seeing and hearing new things have gone from me. I am not sorrowful, nor desolate, and I thank God that I was permitted to accompany my husband to the very verge of the life beyond, and that he was conscious and serene to the last moment. I have only a hand’s breadth of life before me, and shall not live long enough to get once more into my old touch with the life of to-day.

“I sent two of my pretty granddaughters to the Exhibition of Paintings, who took with them a picture of you, to help them identify you, if you were present. They came home, declaring that ‘they had stared every man at the show out of countenance,’ but they did not find you. They would have introduced themselves to you, if they had found ‘a man to match their picture.’ They were enthusiastic over the paintings. ‘They were as exquisite as miniatures,’ they said. Yesterday, my oldest granddaughter and namesake, just graduated from Wellesley, went with her betrothed to see the paintings. I haven’t yet heard their report.

“Oh, my dear friend, nobody dies of ‘rheumatism,’ nor of asthma. People afflicted with those perennial ailments live to kill everybody that helps take care of them. So, buy a cane, or a pair of crutches, according to the sort of rheumatism you have, and keep on hobbling round. I thought I had rheumatism for two years, and doctored for it, and anathematized it--when it turned out to be a broken tendon. I had neglected it so long that it was past cure when I consulted a specialist, and now--now I wear a cane, and all my friends add to my collection of canes on my birthdays and at Christmas.

“Once more thanking you for your kindness, I remain,

“Yours very truly, “MARY A. LIVERMORE.”

* * * * *

Miss Lucy Stone was to address a meeting of the Anti-Slavery Society, of Maiden, Mass., of which William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and Theodore Parker were the presiding geniuses, in the autumn of 1847. The following announcement was made by the pastor of the Congregational Church: “I am requested by Mr. Mowey to say that a hen will undertake to crow like a cock at the Town Hall this afternoon at five o’clock. Anybody who wants to hear that kind of music will, of course, attend.”

[Illustration]

Everybody besieged Mr. Mowey to learn what kind of hen it was. He told them, it was Miss Lucy Stone, a young woman who was graduated from a college in an Ohio town called Oberlin, where women were allowed the same educational privileges as men. This remarkable announcement was a great advertisement, and brought together a large meeting.

It was the first time in the lives of the people that a woman’s voice was heard from the rostrum in the cause of freedom. From that time onward for many years Lucy Stone travelled and lectured in behalf of “woman suffrage” and the slave, suffering the same persecutions as did Phillips and other lecturers.

One night, while speaking in New England, a pane of glass was removed from a window behind the speaker, and a hose put through it. The little woman lecturer was deluged with ice water. Wrapping her shawl closely about her, she calmly finished her address. Again, at Cape Cod the Anti-Slavery Society held a meeting in a grove. The mob surrounded the speakers and roughly handled Mr. Foster and Miss Stone. The bravery of the latter so won the admiration of the leader of the mob that he defended her with a club, and stood by her while from a stump she addressed the multitude. The listeners were so moved by her speech that they subsided into quiet, and at its conclusion a collection of $20 was taken up to pay Foster for his coat.

“When Lucy Stone died, at Dorchester, Mass., October, 1893, the entire press of America and the civilized world eulogized her. The Boston _Herald_ said: “She goes to her grave honored, beloved, and mourned by the whole American people.” The New York _Independent_: “The death of Lucy Stone removes one of the world’s greatest benefactors.” _Harper’s Weekly_: “Her life was full of earnestness, goodness, blessedness, and the world is better that she lived.” I knew Lucy Stone only slightly during the last decade of her life. She was small in stature, dainty in dress, and possessed a voice of singular sweetness. Hers was a sympathetic and charming personality. Never again will there be a woman orator of her type. Conditions are wanting. She was a product of the times.

[Illustration: CLARA LOUISE KELLOGG]

Miss Clara Louise Kellogg, born and educated in America, gifted with one of the sweetest voices ever heard, endowed with common sense, energy, and character above reproach--of American lyric artists of this generation there is no name that has carried more weight. She was educated not only in her own, but also in the French, German, and Italian languages. Her musical talent amounted to genius, and she translated a repertoire of standard Italian operas into English. Making her début in the Academy of Music, in New York, in 1862, she became a favorite at once and held first place as an American prima donna for twenty years without a peer. Without a peer in that field she was also a thoroughly sensible business woman. Sought after in society more than any other of our singers, she was always a sincere and devoted lover of her art. Her personal friends were among the choicest people we have; she was never in any company that was not the best. She read the newspapers, and took an active part in all important national issues. She was a brilliant conversationalist. She never wanted a great guarantee for singing where there was no cash in the house. She made money for herself and her manager. She made a fortune and retired. She owns a pretty summer home in New Hartford, Connecticut.

She has been an honor to her profession, her sex, and her country. She possesses all the qualifications that the word lady implies. Her associate artists respected, admired, and loved her. Miss Kellogg is an expert on the banjo, and is very fond of negro songs.

Many and many an evening when we had an off night, or were spending Sunday in some poor hotel, she would get the company together in the parlor, and if there happened to be a piano, she would give us an evening of song and music in which the principals of the company would join, and the doors would be thrown open and the corridors and adjoining rooms thronged with guests, who were delighted with an entertainment that wealth and managerial skill could never produce.

Her speaking voice was almost as agreeable to listen to as her singing voice, and thus she was an admired attraction wherever she happened to be. In the hotel parlors, or in a box at the opera, she was invariably surrounded by groups of charmed listeners. She was a Good Samaritan, too. Having studied medicine, she carried a little case of standard remedies. If one of the singers was threatened with a cold she could always nip it in the bud. If an accident occurred, she had bandages and necessary supplies to bring relief.

She could comfort the distressed. Here is an instance: On our arrival at St. Paul, while waiting in the hotel parlors to be assigned to our rooms, William, our piano-tuner, came to me with tears running down his face. He was in deep distress; he must leave us at once and go back to New York. His brother had died. Miss Kellogg, seeing the poor fellow, immediately came to his relief.

“What is it, William?” she asked.

“My brother is dead. I must go home.”

“When did he die?” asked Miss Kellogg.

“I did not get the letter until just now. It has been forwarded from Omaha. He has been buried two weeks.”

Miss Kellogg tried to persuade him that he could be of no assistance in hurrying home now, that in a short time we would all be back, and he would be better off to remain with the company. Besides, we could not spare him, as there was no one to take his place. He was persistent, being a superstitious young German.

Miss Kellogg said at last, “Now, William, come with me.”

She walked out with him to a dry-goods store, bought a piece of black crêpe, and tied it on his arm in a very elaborate bow. She made him get a silk hat and have it trimmed with crêpe. In half an hour William was back among us, decorated in full mourning and completely consoled. The entire company were sympathizing with him. He was almost happy, and the rest of us were satisfied and pleased.

Clara Louise Kellogg knows the way to every human heart, from the most humble to the highest.

Emma Abbott, “honest little Emma” is what George Lake called her. I first knew this child singer in 1867. She was a member of a concert company. It was not a bad company, either, at least, Chicagoans thought so. It consisted of

Mrs. Frank Lombard Soprano. Little Emma Abbott, the child wonder Song and Guitar. L. J. Boutwell Tenor. Tom Corwin Basso.

In Appleton, where I lived, I managed the concerts, which were then considered a great success. The receipts were about $75. Tickets, twenty-five cents. The party spent Sunday in Appleton, and in the afternoon we had the child wonder and her guitar at our house. My critical musical ear was not fully developed at that time. I thought the staccato pyrotechnics, and the deep alto, and all the intermediate notes, mixed with the thunder and lightning and other noises of the instrument, the most wonderful of anything I had yet seen and heard. Everybody present seemed to be affected as severely as I was. Mr. Corwin told me that this girl was certain of becoming one of the world’s greatest opera singers some day. I did not understand all he meant then, any more than I did that some day I should be living in New York or Boston, and would be glad to pay this child wonder $500 for her first concert on her return to America, after having become a “finished artist,” as Emma styled herself.

Miss Abbott’s name found favor all over the country. She made friends with the churches, lodges, and societies of all kinds. Her company was generally known as the attraction for the opening of all new opera houses. No combination ever travelled more miles or endured more hardships than the Abbott Opera Company, and no company of artists ever worked for such pittance of salaries. No artist ever worked harder than Miss Abbott. She would often sing seven and sometimes eight operas a week. She required no artist to do more than she did herself.

She was a conspicuous auditor on every public occasion that gave opportunity. At fairs, races, ball games, athletic tournaments she seldom failed to receive demonstration of recognition, and was invariably noticed in the press the following day. She steered clear of metropolitan cities. Her value was in smaller cities and country opera houses, where she drew large crowds with light expenses. She has done “Martha” with an orchestra of a piano, violin, and cornet, and seldom had an orchestra of over six. I saw and heard her in Louisville, in “Romeo and Juliet,” with an orchestra of seven, and the house packed to its fullest capacity.

[Illustration]

Here is a letter of Emma’s which illustrates her managerial care:

* * * * *

“DEAR MR. POND: I write to tell you to be sure to see the second act of Mignon [containing toilet scene of _Styrienne_, etc.], to-night, for that is the important one for me. I know how gentlemen, who are so busy as you are, generally do. They come when the important part is all over.

“In haste, “Yours faithfully, “EMMA ABBOTT.”

“Be sure and let me see your wife.”

* * * * *

This reminds me of an incident in Louisville. I was there with Henry Ward Beecher on a Saturday night. Miss Abbott and her company were at another theatre. I attended the Abbott matinee that afternoon. I wanted to see Miss Abbott as _Juliet_ (Castle as _Romeo_), and to see and hear the “Abbott kiss,” which was their great advertising feature that season. I saw it all. Miss Abbott was in her wonderful, heavy lace _Juliet_ dress, and her blond wig with the two great braids that trailed with her skirt. It was wholly an Abbott occasion, with little to attract attention to any other members of the company. The time arrived for the kiss. It came. It was a success. It was real, and the smack sounded to the remotest nook of the gallery.

After the performance that afternoon I rode to the hotel in a carriage with Miss Abbott and her husband, Eugene Wetherell, to the Gait House, where we three dined together. I had reserved a box for them at the Mercantile Library Hall lecture in the evening, which was crowded to hear Mr. Beecher. I remained near the door until some time after the lecture began, watching for “Honest Little Emma” to appear.

The lecture was about half through when something happened. The attention of the audience was attracted to the front of the house. All of a sudden there came walking down the centre aisle Miss Emma Abbott in her _Juliet_ make-up and wig, the trail fairly sweeping the aisle. Walking down to the orchestra rail, she turned and walked in front of the audience to the box which was on the left of the stage, and which she might easily have reached by the side aisle without observation.

After the great wave of interruption had spent itself, Mr. Beecher continued his lecture to the end, when Miss Abbott leaped from the box, rushed to Mr Beecher, in whose church in Brooklyn she had formerly sung, exclaiming:

“Dear Mr. Beecher, how do you do? You must excuse my _Juliet_ make-up and dress and wig. I felt that I must see you, and I rushed from the opera over here without changing my dress, fearing I should miss you.”

She had not seen the theatre since five o’clock, as she had a double company, and in the evening the opera of “Carmen” was given with Mr. and Mrs. Macdonald (now of the Bostonians) and Tom Karl as tenor. The little fraud! It is reported that she left a fortune of over half a million dollars.

Miss Helen Potter personated favorites of the lyceum to such perfection that she crowded the Music Halls in Boston and the Academy of Music in Philadelphia. The entertainment was entirely novel, and eminently popular. It consisted of readings, chiefly humorous and heroic, well chosen, dramatic, and in costume. They were “lyceum personations,” not only of the manner, but of the rhetoric, of distinguished lecturers and elocutionists of that time (the seventies).

[Illustration: MISS POTTER’S IMPERSONATION OF JOHN B. GOUGH]

Miss Potter’s personations of John B. Gough were so perfect, the wig, beard, and masculine garments so well chosen and so well arranged, and his peculiarities of voice and manner so faithfully represented, that the audience often forgot it was a personation and thought that they were listening to Gough himself.

Miss Potter made a fortune with her entertainment. She cleared over $20,000 in her second season, was a favorite for about eight years, and then retired. She has no successor.

Annie Grey came to America early in the summer of 1898 to give her Scottish song recitals before several of the Chautauqua assemblies. She appeared before a number of these large gatherings, at Monona Lake Assembly, Madison, Wis., at Rock River Assembly, Dixon, Ill., at Bay View Assembly, Mich., and at the Ocean Grove (N. J.) Assembly, where she kept over four thousand people charmed for nearly two hours solely by her singing and recital of the old Scotch ballads. It was a unique entertainment, which captivated and charmed all these assemblies. There had never been anything like them before in this country.

[Illustration]

At each recital Annie Grey sang one or two songs in Gaelic, to illustrate the beauty of that language, accompanying herself on the clarsach or ancient Scottish harp, once the national instrument, before it was supplanted by the bagpipes. The instrument she used was made especially for her, and had stops so arranged that the key could be quickly changed. It was a great favorite everywhere she went. Her mother, Madame Ogilvie Grey, an eminent pianist, travelled with her, filling two numbers on the programme with Scotch melodies on the piano and also playing many of her daughter’s accompaniments in a really wonderful way.

The subjects of Annie Grey’s song recitals were: “The Lays, Lilts, and Legends of Scotland,” “Robert Burns: His Pathos and Humor Told in Poetry and Song,” and “The Gathering of the Clans.” In the latter she graphically told in song and story the stirring incidents connected with the Jacobite rising in 1745, to which period Scotland owes many of the best of her ballads.

In the musical world Annie Grey holds a position of unique importance, and enthusiastic audiences and appreciative remembrances are hers by right of conquest in her chosen field of Scottish minstrelsy. Here no one can touch her: she is supreme. In Scotland, in all parts of England, on the Continent, and in the United States, the delightful entertainments of her own devising and her own single-handed performance have brought the wealth of Scottish minstrelsy, with its marvellous power over the emotions of men and women, home to the understanding and hearts of thousands. Being in love with her subject, she carries her audience with her from first to last, making it laugh or thrill or sadden as she wills. Her voice is perfectly modulated for lecturing and reciting purposes, and her singing of Scottish songs stands apart and above anything that has ever been attempted in the same line in this country. Certainly at the present time it would be difficult to name any professional woman who can sing “The Auld Scots Sangs,” grave and gay, patriotic and humorous, with more fervor and feeling than Annie Grey. Her distinct enunciation of the words, and the expression she puts into them, make her singing most enjoyable. Where necessary, she also infuses a good deal of dramatic passion into her performance.

She gave interesting accounts of the composition of various ballads and songs, and told graceful and pathetic details of the lives and circumstances of their authors. Of “Annie Laurie,” which she sang with remarkable expression, she said: “I am surprised to find in America the thought that ‘Annie Laurie’ was written two hundred years ago, for I have the honor of a personal acquaintance with Lady John Scott, its author, who is now in her ninetieth year, and who, I can assure you, has no thought of being an antiquity.”

Annie Grey invariably received ovations at the conclusion of her entertainments, and hundreds flocked to the platform to attest their appreciation of her efforts. Her manner was not in the least bit affected, and she received all praises with the utmost grace.

Annie Grey has sung before Queen Victoria and her court at Balmoral, on which occasion her Majesty presented Miss Grey with a diamond bracelet. She has sung before many other of the crowned heads of Europe, and with many of the Italian opera singers well known to American audiences. She was the original Buttercup in Pinafore when that opera was produced in Edinburgh. For many years she was the favorite pupil of the famous master Randegger.

I had first heard of Annie Grey through Mr. Christy, her London manager, then when I saw her unbroken success and popularity with the refined, and therefore somewhat critical, audiences at the Chautauqua assemblies, where she first appeared in America, I felt confident that she would be a success wherever she went in the United States, and so secured her for a supplementary tour.

After the Chautauquas she gave three recitals before crowded audiences in New York, and received most generous praise from the entire New York press. The Chickering Piano Company showed their friendly interest by offering the gratuitous use of Chickering Hall, and supplied her with a grand piano both at her recitals and in her hotel.

Having captured New York, she laid siege to Boston, where four recitals won a capitulation, as the press notices show. The civic and military authorities appeared in full uniform at her first recital there, the Clan Mackenzie, in Highland costume, was present and made her a Scottish Chief, and the White Rose Society publicly decorated her with their order set in gold.

From Boston she went to Montreal, then to Cleveland, Pittsburg, Philadelphia, Saratoga, and to many of the large cities and towns of the United States. Everywhere she was received with the greatest kindness and enthusiasm, and her admirers made her many presents. The practical wife of a Scottish millionaire handed her a box of oatmeal cakes and a card informing her that she had had them specially baked for Annie Grey and her mother.

Some of her most delightful experiences, as she afterward said, were connected with the recitals she gave at leading colleges for women. She spoke of the students she met there as “such charming girls,” and said she should “never forget the sound of those lovely, fresh American voices, as we all sang together ‘Auld Lang Syne’ before parting.”

Annie Grey and her mother, while in this country, were frequently guests at my house, and there met Hall Caine, Zangwill, Justin McCarthy, Lieut. Herbert Ward, of Stanley expedition fame, and Mr. Le Sage, the New York representative of the London _Daily Telegraph_.

One evening she and her mother gave the Burns Lecture-Song Recital in our drawing-rooms. It was a grand success. One of our neighbors, a well-known critic, who has been a regular attendant at these functions for years, declared in the presence of the audience that it was the most delightful entertainment of all we had ever given.

Zangwill took dinner with us another evening, and gave in our parlors the finest lecture we had yet heard from him. The house was crowded. Mr. W. F. Frame, the celebrated Scotch singing comedian, and Mr. Booth, the musical director, were spending that night with us. After the lecture we had singing by Frame and Annie Grey--a triple bill. At the close of the evening all the company joined hands and danced around a circle, singing “Auld Lang Syne.” Zangwill joined hands with us and entered into the spirit of the whole affair, as much a Scotchman as any of them. It was jolly, indeed.

Her last appearance in America was on the afternoon of February 2, 1899, when she gave her “Lilts, Lays, and Legends of Scotland” for the Winter Memorial Library at the Staten Island Academy. Mr. William Winter declared it one of the best he remembered in all his experience among public gatherings, and shortly afterward referred to it again in the following letter:

* * * * *

“HOME, February 17, 1899.

“MY DEAR MR. POND: I have your kind and welcome letter of February 12, and I am indeed glad to know that Annie Grey was pleased with her visit to Staten Island. Her coming to us was an honor and a benefit, and she made a deep and lasting impression on the minds of her audience. For my own part, I shall always remember her, and also her venerable mother, with the greatest kindness and pleasure.

“Faithfully yours, “WILLIAM WINTER.”

* * * * *

Mrs. Maud Ballington Booth is another great woman, as much in demand at the present time (1900) as any of those before mentioned were in their palmiest days.

[Illustration]

Mrs. Booth is the ablest woman orator in America. Her cause is one of the most worthy. She has something to say and knows how to say it. She is also one of the most loved women in the land, as well as the most attractive of all our public speakers--as great intellectually as she is simple and devoted spiritually.

Possessing fire and magnetism, with oratorical gifts of the highest order, deep convictions, high purpose, and burning earnestness, she has all the essentials for the highest of success. It has been difficult to induce her to enter upon the lecturer’s work, for she feels, as all know, so high a devotion to those labors of religion and philanthropy that her name is associated with as to dread the fascination of a work that might divert her energies in ever so slight a degree. But, realizing also possibilities in the winning of new channels of influence and the earning of means that may largely help her own work forward, Mrs. Booth has taken up the task with all her powers, and she fascinates and wins on all occasions.

Miss Mary Proctor, in her excursions to the heavens, comes of a line of astronomical ancestry. Richard A. Proctor, the great English astronomer, gave his first lectures in America in the early seventies. His coming was widely heralded by the newspapers and no scientific lecturer ever met with a more hearty welcome from the best public. I remember I went from Leavenworth, Kansas, where I then lived, to Chicago, on purpose to see and hear him, and paid three dollars for a ticket.

[Illustration]

That was before the stereopticon had been invented, and his illustrations, consisting of maps and charts drawn on canvas, were at that time counted as marvels, though they would attract no attention in these modern days. The scholarly attainments of the man and his simple, eloquent descriptions were an additional revelation to the audiences, which were composed of the most select and intelligent of the general public.

It was a great season for Professor Proctor, and as fruitful to the public as it was lucrative to the lecturer, for it created a general interest in astronomy, which to-day is almost as universally studied as Brigham Young’s three R’s--“readin’, ’ritin’ and ’rithmetic”--which, he insisted, was all the education any person needed who had fair common sense.

I know I date my first interest in astronomy to Professor Proctor’s lectures, and I know, too, that the interest in the subject became so widespread that it was then a common theme in the family, at public assemblies and on the cars.

Two prosperous seasons and the professor returned to England, but not to remain there long. He had met with such hearty appreciation over here, and had made so many friends, that he decided to return and make his home in America. He selected St. Joseph, Mo., one of the richest and, as seemed to him, one of the many Western cities that must have a great future. There he moved with his family, consisting of two daughters and three sons.

After a tour in the South, Professor Proctor returned to New York, put up at the Westminster Hotel, and was taken ill there with yellow fever, which he had contracted in Florida. He died after a very brief illness on September 12, 1888, and was buried in Greenwood Cemetery, where a monument was erected over his grave by the late George W. Childs.

During the World’s Fair, in Chicago, at kindergarten meetings for teachers and children, a young lady gave a lecture on “Astronomy for Children” before representatives of the kindergarten schools all over the country. Her audience was fairly electrified by the simplicity, eloquence, and marvellous knowledge displayed in this address.

After the lecture, many came forward to congratulate the fair speaker, and to ascertain who she was and whence she came. It proved that she was Miss Mary Proctor, of St. Joseph, Mo., where she had a kindergarten school, and that she was the daughter of the late Richard A. Proctor, the famous English astronomer.

Representatives of newspapers from all parts of the country happened to be present. They telegraphed to their home papers accounts of this young woman’s wonderful address, and she awoke the next morning to find herself famous.

I at once proposed that she enter the lecture-field, but it was with great hesitancy that she could think of leaving her work with the children, whom she loved so dearly, at her home in St. Joseph. She was interviewed by reporters, and asked to write on astronomy for the leading magazines and the great Sunday newspapers. She also prepared lectures on astronomy, with elaborate illustrations, and was invited to lecture before the literary societies and clubs, colleges and public schools. She has held the very first place as a woman in the profession up to the present time. She has written a book on astronomy entitled “Stories of Starland,” for children, and her name has become a household word. Her great ambition is to be known as “The Children’s Astronomer.”

She looks young to stand before an audience and deal with such weighty topics, but she does so in a manner that holds the attention and interest of every hearer, young or old.

Her voice is clear, forcible, pleasant and well modulated; her delivery, graceful and easy. She never refers to notes of any kind while on the platform. Her talks are full of simple example and metaphor, and free from all technical terms. She has inherited her father’s gift of popularizing the most abstruse subjects and illustrating their vastness by comparisons associated with daily life.

Her lectures for children, “Giant Sun and His Family” and “Legends of the Stars,” and her more advanced lectures on “Other Worlds than Ours,” “Wonders of the Star Depths,” and “Mars, the Planet of Romance,” are all beautifully illustrated by stereopticon views that are quite as wonderful for this day as her father’s cruder pictures were thirty years ago.

Miss Mary Proctor is one of the rare examples of the heredity of genius.

Outshining her charms as a lecturer are the charms of her private life, where, of course, very few are privileged to know her. She is the attraction of the household. Children as well as grown up folks love her, and she is queen of the situation wherever she happens to be.

It has been our privilege to entertain her in our home several times. Her theme was usually the skies and the heavens. The stories she tells about the stars when conversing with little children on these topics fix in their young minds a knowledge of the geography of the heavens as long terms of study from books could never do.

And yet this little lady whom the children love so much, when surrounded by great scientists and scholars, is perfectly at her ease. It is a charming intellectual display and a wonderful lesson and privilege to see Miss Mary Proctor under any of these conditions.

HUMORISTS Josh Billings was a popular humorous lecturer for several years, but not a repeater. There is hardly a village of five thousand people and over within a radius of five hundred miles of New York where he has not given his lecture on “Milk,” the only lecture which he ever had. He insisted that a tumbler of milk should always be on the table in front of him, to which he never alluded in any way whatever. He always sat down while he lectured. I don’t remember of ever seeing him stand a moment on the platform. He immediately walked to his chair, sat down and commenced his talk.

[Illustration]

His lecture was a shower of “Josh Billings’s” epigrams, sparkling as they tumbled over each other in falling from his lips, reflected from his bright eyes over his spectacles.

“Ladies and gentlemen:

“I hope you are all well.”

“There’s lots of folks who eat well and drink well, and yet are sick all the time. These are the folks who always ‘enjoy poor health.’”

“People who agree with you never bore you.”

“The shortest way to a woman’s heart is to praise her baby and her bonnet.”

“A man is a bore when he talks so much about himself that you kant talk about yourself.”

“Still I go on talking.”

“Comik lecturing is an uncommon pesky thing to do.”

“There ain’t but phew good judges of humor and they all differ about it.”

“If a lecturer trys to be phunny he iz like a hoss trying to trot backwards, pretty apt to trod on himself.”

“Humor must fall out uv a man’s mouth like musik out uv a bobolink, or like a young bird out uv its nest, when it iz feathered enuff to fly.”

“In delivering a comic lecture it iz a good general rule to stop sudden; sometimes before you git through.”

“This brings me to the mule--the pashunt mule. The mule is pashunt because he is ashamed of hisself. The mule is haf hass and half jackass, and then kums to a full stop, natur discovering her mistake. They weigh more according to their heft than enny other creeter except a crowbar. They kant heer enny quicker nor further than the hoss, yet their ears are big enuff for snow shoes. You kan trust them with enny one whose life ain’t worth more than the mules. The only way to keep them into a paster is tu turn them into a medder jining and let them jump out. Tha are reddy for use just as soon as tha will do to abuse. Tha are a modern invention. Tha never have a disease that a good club wont heal.”

“There is but one other animal that kan do more kicking than a mule, and that is a quire singer. A quire singer giggles during the sermon and kicks the rest ov the week.”

“This brings me to suggest the bumble-bee.”

“The bumble-bee iz more artistic than the mule, and as busy as a quire singer.”

“The hornet is an inflammable buzzer, sudden in his impreshions and hasty in his conclusion, or end.”

“Kindness iz an instinckt, politeness only an art.”

“Remember the poor--it costs nothing,” and so it goes on between the intervals of laughter until the hour is up and laughter won’t come any more because it is completely laughed out.

“I lecture for nothing, with $100 thrown in,” he said.

We never had the slightest difficulty in filling all the time that he could give us. He was a delightful man to know personally--kind, gentle, sincere and very sympathetic, with an intense fondness for children. A child riding in the same car with him could hardly escape his patronage and attention, and what was especially peculiar about him, as with Mr. Beecher, he always attracted children to him.

When “Josh” passed away, I know that I lost a very dear friend, and that all who had known and heard him felt the same way. His was a noble spirit.

I find but two of “Josh Billings’s” (Henry W. Shaw) letters among my collection, as most of his correspondence was with the Redpath Lyceum Bureau, and were filed away with the mass of other correspondence. I find one, directed to me personally, in reply to an invitation to witness the exposé of spiritualism by Harry Kellar, at Horticultural Hall in Boston, and it is as follows:

* * * * *

“NEW YORK, January 16, 1878.

“MAJOR MI DEER: I regret, (i may say that, i fairly mourn,) that i kant be present to witness yure friend Kellar’s expozure ov spiritualism in Horticultural Hall in Boston, the hub ov the univers. Altho not present in the flesh (mi actual weight iz 186 pounds), in spirit i shall be thare (mi spirit on this partiklar matter ways 642 pounds), the whole ov which yu are welkum to. Thare are a fu spiritualists whom i pity; these are the phools,--thare are a greater number whom i dispize; theze are the frauds, and ded beats ov the profeshion.

“Enny man who kan bring a kounterfitter to justiss, enny man who kan beat a thimble rigger at his own game, enny man who kan probe a _Three Kard Monte_ wretch, and dispoil him ov hiz little joker, i look upon az a child ov genius, at work in the vinyard ov truth and morality. The only spiritualizm that haz suckceeded yet iz the kind that haz got the most fraud in it. Tell Harry i pray that suckess may crown hiz noble efforts.

“Good-by Major “Yours unto deth-- “‘JOSH BILLINGS’ “(Henry W. Shaw).”

* * * * *

Thomas Nast--up to his time, caricature had been a minor branch of art. He made it one of the most potent agencies for creating and influencing public opinion.

[Illustration]

No editor, no orator, no division commander in our army, no captain in our navy, did more to put down the rebellion with pen, tongue, or sword than did Mr. Nast with his pencil.

It was said of Luther that his words were half battles. With equal truth Nast’s war pictures were military assaults. They stirred the patriotic blood in the North, and sent battalions of youth to rally round the flag.

Like many famous artists, Mr. Nast was personally shy, and would sooner go on a forlorn hope than face an audience. After trying to induce him to join the army of lecturers, and getting reply after reply declining even to consider the subject, my predecessor, Mr. Redpath, adopted a course that showed enterprise, and was successful in inducing Mr. Nast to enter the lecture field.

Finding that Mr. Nast had quarrelled with the Harpers, and was going to Europe, Mr. Redpath took passage on the same steamer, and introduced himself to Mr. Nast. Mr. Nast laughed and said:

“Well, you have got me where I cannot run away; but it’s no use--I won’t lecture.”

Mr. Redpath, nevertheless, got his chance to set forth the advantages of lecturing, went with Nast to London, and before coming away got his consent, if Mrs. Nast would agree to it. Returning to New York, he secured Mrs. Nast’s approval, and the next fall Thomas Nast made his début as a lecturer. His lectures were illustrated--that is, he drew on large sheets of paper crayon pictures and pictures in oil in presence of his audiences. The crayons were both plain and colored, and he drew with such amazing rapidity that the people were delighted.

On one occasion, in Philadelphia, he went to his blackboard and began the outlining of a building. When the sketch was finished, he turned and said with apparent simplicity, “I can draw a house.” As the theatre was packed, the double meaning conveyed “brought down the house” at once.

He had a long list of engagements, six nights a week, with a certainty of from $200 to $500 a lecture. He earned $40,000 that season, and, as he got homesick, cancelled about $5,000 worth toward the close. Nevertheless, it is an illustration of the thorough honesty of the man that he insisted that the bureau should receive its full commission on the fees of the cancelled lectures.

Although he met with great success, Mr. Nast had such a distaste for the work that he could not be induced to try another season. At first he had stage fright in the worst form. When he was to make his first appearance in a country town in Massachusetts--Peabody, I believe--he asked Mr. Redpath to go with him, and, when he arrived at the hall, said: “Now, Redpath, you got me into this scrape and you will have to go on the platform with me.” Mr. Redpath, who never had that sort of fever, readily enough consented, and sat on a chair close behind the artist. He said that Mr. Nast was so nervous that he dug his nails into the reading desk. A few months afterward, Mr. Nast faced a New York audience in Steinway Hall as jauntily as if he had been a veteran comedian.

At the time that Horace Greeley became a candidate for President of the United States, it was said that Mr. Nast’s cartoons killed the great editor. Be that as it may, we remember in that campaign Mr. Nast’s cartoons attracted universal attention--Horace in the old white coat with the Gratz Brown card appended to his coat-tails; and this was the way that card came there.

Mr. Nast had prepared a cartoon of a number of the candidates on the ticket, with Greeley at the head. It had been sent into the engraver’s room, when somebody remarked to Nast that he had omitted the name of the Vice-President.

“Oh,” he said, “is somebody a candidate for Vice-President? Oh, yes; Brown of Missouri.”

He simply wrote the name and tacked it to the coat-tail of Greeley, and that went through the papers.

Brown of St. Louis was a delightful man. He signed the pledge after he was nominated for Vice-President, but during the campaign tour in the East it was reported that Brown drank too much at a banquet in New Haven, and the Good Templars’ Society telegraphed to some persons in New Haven to ask whether the report were true. Word came back that they did not know whether he were drunk or not, but he ate butter on his watermelon. One of the cartoons had Brown as Bacchus a-straddle of a big watermelon, in the act of buttering a slice.

Another and possibly even a more telling one was the cartoon which depicted Mr. Greeley as consuming his own broth--that is, feeding himself from a bowl filled with the denunciations and criticisms he had, during his long career as the leading Whig and Republican editor of the United States, fulminated against the Democratic party and its policies. As he was that party’s nominee the point was obvious.

The way that the cartoon came to be was something like this: Once Ben: Perley Poor, the famous correspondent of the Boston _Journal_, and Richard J. Hinton, a Washington journalist, were both active and earnest on the side of the Republican ticket. Hinton was the press secretary of the Congressional and National committees of his party, and is fond nowadays of asserting that the “campaign of education,” then carried on under his direction, was the active cause of the destruction of the franking privilege that followed during the first session of Congress in Grant’s second term. Between these two keen-witted “Knights of the Quill,” it was decided to prepare and publish a campaign document containing choice extracts from all the various denunciations of the Democracy which had appeared in the columns Mr. Greeley edited. Major Poor was clerk of the Printing Records Committee of Congress; he knew where the files were. A score of searchers and copyists were employed, and in a few days a huge document of nearly two hundred pages was put into type. A bundle of revises was sent to Nast by the press secretary with a request for a cartoon. They were returned at once with the famous picture of Mr. Greeley with the bowl and the long handled _Tribune_ spoon, from which he was, politically speaking, thus made to sup sorrow of his own making.

Petroleum V. Nasby’s letters--to these, next to the cartoons of Thomas Nast, will the historian undoubtedly give credit in their influence in inspiring people with enthusiasm for the cause of the Union. Indeed, a member of Mr. Lincoln’s cabinet, the Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Boutwell, said in a public speech shortly after the war:

“The rebellion was put down by three forces: the army and the navy of the United States, and the letters of Petroleum V. Nasby.”

[Illustration]

Petroleum V. Nasby was the _nom de plume_ of David R. Locke of Ohio. At the beginning of the Civil War he was a young and obscure man, editing a little country paper in the interior of Ohio. It occurred to him that it would be a good idea to write a series of letters, one a week, exposing and ridiculing the Democratic party. These letters pretended to be written in earnest by a Confederate War office-seeker. They succeeded in deceiving even the County Democrats for a time.

One meeting of the faithful framed a resolution commending the fidelity to Democratic principles shown in the Nasby letters, but urging Mr. Nasby, for the sake of policy, not to be so outspoken. The sarcasm was so broad that it is difficult, if one reads them to-day for the first time, to understand how the most illiterate partisans could mistake them. But at a time when men’s passions were red hot, and their prejudices volcanic, they were universally applauded by the upholders of the Union.

The circulation of Locke’s paper rose rapidly, and he became one of the most famous men in America in less than a year. He soon bought an interest in the Toledo _Blade_, then in a dying state. He moved to Toledo, supervised the paper, and its circulation increased until it rivalled the most popular journals of the continent both in its sale and its influence. When he died, in 1888, the _Blade_ for several years had had a circulation of over one hundred thousand.

From being a poor country editor Locke had become one of the wealthiest men in the West, and died a millionaire.

Of course, as soon as he had won a national reputation, he was invited to lecture. He used to boast that he made, during his first lecture season, the longest and most lucrative lecture tour recorded in the annals of the lyceum.

He lectured every secular night for nine or ten months, and made over $30,000 by the tour. His lectures until some time after the war were very popular; but he had none of the graces of the orator, and as the war fever abated, he gradually lost his hold, and retired from the field.

One day Nasby came into our office in Boston just as Gough was passing out. Nasby said to me:

“I suppose Gough’s mad at me. I was in St. Paul, at the Merchants’ Hotel, and hard up for a letter. I saw Gough was registered there, and I ordered two whiskey cocktails sent to his room. Then I wrote my letter on what I saw.”

Nothing that was said could make “Nasby” see at the time the outrage he had perpetrated. It is probable, however, that when his own habits changed, some years later, he realized the offence committed and the wrong done to a man of honorable life and pure purposes.

His intense Republicanism made him hate the Irish and Irish-Americans, and as he afterward said:

“If I ever missed a chance to get a dig at the Irish for twenty years before I went to Ireland, I can’t remember it.”

He used to sneer at the Irish for clamoring for freedom at home, and supporting the pro-slavery party when they came to America. A few years before his death he made a tour of Europe, and in coming back reached Belfast and got among the Orangemen of the North. These men intensified his prejudices, and when he reached Dublin he had made up his mind to write a series of Nasby letters ridiculing Parnell and the Irish movement for home rule. Mr. Redpath happened to meet him there, but found it impossible to convince him that the Irish were wholly in the right in their struggle for home rule. Finally, finding that he could not make Nasby understand the tyranny of the Irish landlords, he offered to make a bet to convert him. And a curious bet it was. Redpath said:

“Take a map of Ireland and pitch a sixpence on any part of the West, and whether I have been there or not, if you and Bob (his son) will go there with me, I will convince you by what I shall show you that I am right and the Irish are right, and I will pay your expenses if you don’t come back a worse Irishman than I am, but you will pay mine if you are converted.”

The offer was accepted, and Nasby fixed on the Killarney Lake region. In going there from Cork the party stopped over at the Galter Mountains, and Nasby was so shocked at the horrible poverty he saw there, and at the stories he heard from the people, that in coming back he offered to send the best Winchester rifle in America to the jaunting-car driver if he would promise to shoot a landlord.

“Which landlord, your honor?” asked the driver.

“Oh, any one, I don’t care,” replied Nasby, “so long as he is an Irish landlord.”

On returning to America Locke astonished his old friends by becoming a more radical champion of Irish rights than even his friend Redpath, whom the Irish-Americans had already christened “the adopted Irishman.”

President Lincoln telegraphed to Toledo: “For the genius to write like Nasby I would gladly give up my office.” Of all publications during the Civil War none had such a charm for him. It was a delight to see him surrender himself completely to their fascination.

Of his letters Charles Sumner says, in the preface to Nasby’s book, “it is impossible to measure their value.”

[Illustration: MARK TWAIN]

Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain) I consider one of the greatest geniuses of our time, and as great a philosopher as humorist. I think I know him better than he is known to most men--wide as his circle of acquaintances is, big as is his reputation. He is as great a man as he is a genius, too. Tenderness and sensitiveness are his two strongest traits. He has one of the best hearts that ever beat. One must know him well fully to discern all of his best traits. He keeps them entrenched, so to speak. I rather imagine that he fights shy of having it generally suspected that he is kind and tender-hearted, but many of his friends do know it. He possesses some of the frontier traits--a fierce spirit of retaliation and the absolute confidence that life-long “partners,” in the Western sense, develop. Injure him, and he is merciless, especially if you betray his confidence. Once a lecture manager in New York, whom he trusted to arrange the details of a lecture in Steinway Hall, swindled him to the amount of $1,500, and afterward confessed it, offering restitution to that amount, but not until the swindle had been discovered. They were on board ship at the time, and “Mark” threatened to throw the fellow overboard, meaning it, too, but he fled ashore. In “The Gilded Age” “Mark” immolated him. (Mr. Griller, Lecture Agent, page 438, London Edition). The fellow died soon afterward, and James Redpath, who was a witness to the scene on the steamboat, and who knew the man well, insisted that “Mark’s” arrow killed him; but he would have fired it all the same had he known what the result would be.

General Grant and “Mark Twain” were the greatest of friends. C. L. Webster & Co. (Mark Twain) published “General Grant’s Memoirs,” yet how like and unlike are the careers of the soldier and the citizen!

Grant: poor, a tanner, small farmer, selling cordwood for a living, with less prospect for rising than any ex-West Pointer in the army; then the greatest military reputation of the age; twice President of the United States; the foremost civilian of the world; the most honored guest of peoples and rulers who ever made the circuit of the earth.

“Mark Twain”: a printer’s apprentice in a small Missouri River town; then a “tramping jour” printer; a Mississippi roustabout guarding freight piles on the levee all night for pocket money; river pilot; a rebel guerilla; a reporter in a Nevada mining town; then suddenly the most famous author of the age; a man of society, with the most aristocratic clubs of America, and all around the civilized globe, flung open to him; adopted with all the honors into one of the most exclusive societies on this continent, the favored companion of the most cultivated spirits of the age, welcomed abroad in all the courts almost as a crowned head. “Peace hath its victories,” etc.

There is indeed another parallel between Grant and Twain. Grant found himself impoverished two years before his death, when was left for him the most heroic part of his lifework, to write his memoirs (while he knew he was dying), for which, through his publishers, C. L. Webster & Co. (Twain), his family received nearly half a million dollars. That firm failed in 1894, leaving liabilities to the amount of $80,000 over and above all it owned for “Mark” to pay, and which he has earned with his voice and pen in a tour around the world, paying every creditor in full, in one year’s less time than he calculated when he started at Cleveland on the 15th day of July, 1895. Yes, there is a parallel between the two great heroes in courage and integrity; they are more like than unlike.

“Mark Twain” became a lecturer in California in 1869, after he had returned to San Francisco from the Sandwich Islands. He had written from there a series of picturesque and humorous letters for the Sacramento _Union_, a California journal, and was asked to lecture about the islands. He tells of his first experience with great glee. He had written the lecture and committed it to memory, and was satisfied with it. Still, he dreaded a failure on the first night, as he had had no experience in addressing audiences. Accordingly, he made an arrangement with a woman friend, whose family was to occupy one of the boxes, to start the applause if he should give the sign by looking in her direction and stroking his moustache. He thought that if he failed to “strike” the audience he would be encouraged by a round of applause, if any one would start it after he had made a good point.

Instead of failure, his lecture was a boundless success. The audience rapturously applauded every point, and “Mark” forgot all about his instructions to the lady. Finally, as he was thinking of some new point that occurred to him as he was talking, without a thought of the lady at all, he unconsciously put his hand up to his moustache, and happened to turn in the direction of the box. He had said nothing just then to cause even his appreciative audience to applaud; but the lady took his action for the signal, and nearly broke her fan in striking it against the edge of the box. The whole house joined her applause.

This unexpected and malapropos applause almost knocked “Mark” off his pins; but he soon recovered himself, and became at once one of the favorites of the platform. He lectured a year or two in the West, and then, by Petroleum V. Nasby’s advice, in 1872-73, James Redpath invited him to come East, and he made his first appearance in Boston, in the Redpath Lyceum Music Hall. His success was instantaneous, and he has ever since remained the universal platform favorite to this date, not only in America, in Australia, in India, in the Cape Colonies, and throughout Great Britain; but in Austria and in Germany, where large crowds pay higher prices to see and to hear “Mark Twain” than any other private citizen that has ever lived.

In his tour around the world “Mark Twain” earned with his voice and pen money enough to pay all his creditors (Webster & Co., publishers) in full, with interest, and this he did almost a year sooner than he had originally calculated. Such a triumphal tour has never before been made by any American since that memorable tour around the world by General Grant. Samuel L. Clemens has been greeted in France, Switzerland, Germany, and England almost like a crowned head.

He wrote me from Paris, May 1, 1895: “I’ve a notion to read a few times in America before I sail for Australia. I’m going to think it over and make up my mind.” On May 18th he arrived in this country, and I made arrangements for him to lecture in twenty-one cities on his way to the Pacific, beginning in Cleveland, July 15th, and ending in Vancouver, British Columbia, August 15th. From that place he was to sail for Australia, via Honolulu, where it was planned that he should speak while the ship was waiting; but owing to yellow fever no landing was made there, and over $1,600 was returned to the disappointed people of Honolulu.

June 11th he wrote me from Elmira that if we have a circular for this brief campaign, the chief feature, when speaking of him should be, that he (M. T.) _is on his way to Australia and thence around the globe on a reading and talking tour to last twelve months_; that travelling _around the world_ is nothing, as everybody does it. But what he was travelling _for_ was unusual; everybody didn’t do _that_.

“I like the approximate itinerary first rate. It is _lake_ all the way from Cleveland to Duluth. I wouldn’t switch aside to Milwaukee for $200,000.” His original idea was to lecture in nine cities, besides two or three others on the Pacific Coast. I was to have one-fourth of the profits except in San Francisco, where he was to have four-fifths. But we did not go to San Francisco.

There were five of us in the party: Mr. and Mrs. Clemens, Clara (one of their daughters), Mrs. Pond and myself. During the journey I kept a detailed journal, from which I shall quote:

* * * * *

“Cleveland, July 15, 1895.

“At the Stillman with ‘Mark Twain,’ his wife, and their daughter Clara. ‘Mark’ looks badly fatigued.

“We have very comfortable quarters here. ‘Mark’ went immediately to bed on our arrival. He is nervous and weak. Reporters from all the morning and evening papers called and interviewed him. It seemed like old times again, and ‘Mark’ enjoyed it.

“The young men called at 3 p.m. and paid me the fee for the lecture, which took place in Music Hall. There were 4,200 people present, at prices ranging from 25 cents to $1. It was nine o’clock before the crowd could get in and ‘Mark’ begin. As he hobbled upon the stage, there was a grand ovation of cheers and applause, which continued for some time. Then he began to speak, and before he could finish a sentence the applause broke out again. So it went on for over an hour on a mid-July night, with the mercury trying to climb out of the top of the thermometer. ‘Mark Twain’ kept that vast throng in convulsions.

* * * * *

“Cleveland, Tuesday, July 16th.

“Ninety degrees in the shade at 7:30 a.m. Good notices of ‘Mark Twain’s’ lecture appear in all the papers. ‘Mark’ spent all day in bed until five o’clock, while I spent the day in writing to all correspondents ahead. If Sault Ste. Marie, the next engagement, turns out as well in proportion as this place, our tour is a success. ‘Mark’ and family were invited out to dinner with some old friends and companions of the Quaker City tour. He returned very nervous and much distressed. We discover a remarkable woman in Mrs. Clemens. There’s a good time in store for us all.

* * * * *

“Wednesday, July 17th, S.S. _Northland_.

“Our party left Cleveland for Mackinac at seven o’clock. ‘Mark’ is feeling very poorly. He is carrying on a big fight against his bodily disability. All that has been said of this fine ocean ship on the Great Lakes is not exaggerated. Across Lake Erie to Detroit River, Lake St. Clair, and the St. Clair River is a most charming trip. ‘Mark’ and Mrs. Clemens are very cheerful to-day. The passengers have discovered who they are, and consequently our party is the centre of attraction. Wherever ‘Mark’ sits or stands on the deck of the steamer, in the smoking room, dining room, or cabin, he is the magnet, and people strain their necks to see him and to catch every word he utters.

“On this lake trip occurred an incident of which I have already written. It was the second day out on Lake Huron, and ‘Mark’ was on deck in the morning for the first time. Many people made excuses for speaking to him. One man had stopped off in Cleveland on purpose to hear him. Another, from Washington Territory, who had lived forty years in the West, owned a copy of ‘Roughing It,’ which he and his wife knew by heart. One very gentle, elderly lady wished to thank him for the nice things he has written and said of cats. But the one that interested ‘Mark’ the most was a young man who asked him if he had ever seen or used a shaving stone, handing him one. It was a small, peculiar, fine-grained sand-stone, the shape of a miniature grindstone, and about the size of an ordinary watch. He explained that all you had to do was to rub your face with it and the rough beard would disappear, leaving a clean, shaven face.

“‘Mark’ took it, rubbed it on his unshaven cheek, and expressed great wonder at the result. He put it in his vest pocket very unceremoniously, remarking at the same time: ‘The Madam (he generally speaks of Mrs. Clemens as ‘The Madam’) will have no cause to complain of my never being ready in time for church because it takes so long to shave. I will put this into my vest pocket on Sunday. Then, when I get to church, I’ll pull the thing out and enjoy a quiet shave in my pew during the long prayer.’

* * * * *

“Friday, July 19th, Grand Hotel, Mackinac.

“We came by steamer _F. S. Faxton_, of the Arnold Line. It was an ideal excursion among the islands. Although it was cold, none of our party would leave the deck until the dinner bell rang. ‘Mark’ said: ‘That sounds like an old-fashioned summons to dinner. It means a good, old-fashioned, unpretentious dinner, too. I’m going to try it.’ We all sat down to a table the whole length of the cabin. We naturally fell in with the rush, and all got seats. It was a good dinner, too; the best ever I heard of for 25 cents.

“We reached the Grand Hotel at 4:30. I saw one of ‘Mark’s’ lithographs in the hotel office, with ‘Tickets for Sale Here’ written in blue pencil on the margin. It seemed dull and dead about the lobby, and also in the streets. The hotel manager said the Casino, an adjoining hall, was at our service, free, and the keeper had instructions to seat and to light it. Dinner time came; we all went down together. It was ‘Mark’s’ first appearance in a public dining room since we started. He attracted some attention as he entered and sat down, but nothing especial. After dinner the news-stand man told me he had not sold a ticket, and no one had inquired about the lecture. I waited until eight o’clock and then went to the hall to notify the man that he need not light up as there would be no audience. The janitor and I chatted until about half-past eight, and I was about to leave when a man and woman came to the door and asked for tickets. I was on the point of telling them that there would be no lecture when I saw a number of people, guests of the hotel, coming. I suddenly changed my mind and told them: ‘Admission $1; pay the money to me and walk right in.’ The crowd kept rushing on me, so that I was obliged to ask everybody who could to please have the exact amount ready, as I was unable to change large bills without a good deal of delay. It was after nine o’clock before the rush was over, and I sent a boy for ‘Mark.’ He expressed his pleasant surprise. I asked him to walk to the platform and introduce himself, which he did, and I don’t believe an audience ever had a better time of an hour and a half. ‘Mark’ was simply immense.

“I counted my money while the ‘show’ was going on and found I had taken in $398. When about half through, two young men came to the door and wanted to be admitted for one dollar for the two. I said: ‘No; one dollar each; I cannot take less.’ They turned to go; then I called them back and explained that I needed two more dollars to make receipts just $400, and said:

“‘Now, if you’ll pay a dollar each and complete my pile, you can come in and enjoy the best end of the performance, and when the ‘show’ is out, I’ll take you down-stairs and blow you off to twice that amount.’

“They paid the two dollars, and after the crowd had left, I introduced them to ‘Mark,’ and we all went down to the billiard room, had a good time until twelve o’clock, and ‘Mark’ and I made two delightful acquaintances. This has been one of our best days. ‘Mark’ is gaining.

* * * * *

“Saturday, July 20th, Mackinac to Petoskey.

“‘Mark’ is feeling better. He and I left the ladies at the Grand, in Mackinac, and went to Petoskey on the two o’clock boat and train. The smoke, from forest fires on both sides of the track, is so thick as to be almost stifling. There is a good hotel here.

“There was a full house, and for the first time in a number of months I had a lecture room so crowded at one dollar a ticket that many could not get standing room and were obliged to go away. The theatre has a seating capacity of five hundred, but over seven hundred and fifty got in. ‘Mark’s’ programme was just right--one hour and twenty minutes long. He stopped at an hour and ten minutes, and cries of ‘Go on! Go on!’ were so earnest that he told one more story. George Kennan was one of the audience. He is going to give a course of lectures at Lake View Assembly, an auxiliary Chautauqua adjoining Petoskey, where about five thousand people assemble every summer. Mr. Hall, the manager, thought that ‘Mark Twain’ would not draw sufficient to warrant engaging him at $250, so I took the risk outside, and won.

* * * * *

“Sunday, July 21st.

“‘Mark’ and I left Petoskey for Mackinac at 5:30 this morning, where we joined the ladies and waited five hours on the dock for S.S. _Northwest_ to take us to Duluth. It was severe on the poor man, but he was heroic and silent all the way. He has not tasted food since the dinner on the _Faxton_ Friday.

“Monday, July 22d.

“On Lake Superior; S.S. _Northwest_. I was on deck early and found the smoke all gone. In its place was bright sunshine, but it has been so cold all day that few of the other passengers are on deck. Captain Brown and Purser Pierce are doing all they can to hurry us on, for we are eight hours late.

“We landed in Duluth at just 9 p.m. Mr. Briggs, our correspondent, met us at the wharf with a carriage. As our boat neared land Briggs shouted:

“‘Hello, Major Pond!’

“‘Hello, Briggs!’

“‘Is Mark Twain all right?’

“‘Yes; he is ready to go to the hall; he will be the first passenger off the ship.’

“‘Good. We have a big audience waiting for him,’ said Mr. Briggs.

“‘We’ll have them convulsed in ten minutes,’ said I.

“‘Mark’ was the first passenger to land. Mr. Briggs hurried him to the church, which was packed with twelve hundred and fifty warm friends (100 degrees in the shade) to meet and greet him. It was a big audience. He got through at 10:50 and we were all on board the train for Minneapolis at 11:20.

“It was my busy night. The train for Minneapolis was to start at twelve o’clock. The agents in New York who had fitted me out with transportation and promised that everything should be in readiness on our arrival in Duluth, had forgotten us, and no arrangements for sleeper or transfer of baggage had been made. I had all this to attend to, besides looking after the business part of the lecture, which was on sharing terms with a church society. Everything was mixed up, as the door-tender and finance committee were bound to hear the lecture. I could get no statement, but took all the money in sight, and was on board the train as it was starting for Minneapolis.

“Tuesday, July 23d, Minneapolis.

“We are stopping at the West Hotel; a delightful place. Six skilled reporters have spent about two hours with ‘Mark.’ He was lying in bed, and very tired I know, but he was extremely courteous to them, and they all enjoyed the interview. The Metropolitan Opera House was filled to the top gallery with a big crowd of well-dressed, intelligent people. It was about as big a night as ‘Mark’ ever had to my knowledge. He introduced a new entertainment, blending pathos with humor with unusual continuity. This was at Mrs. Clemens’s suggestion. She had given me an idea on the start that too much humor tired an audience with laughing. ‘Mark’ took the hint and worked in three or four pathetic stories that made the entertainment perfect. The ‘show’ is a triumph, and ‘Mark’ will never again need a running mate to make him satisfactory to everybody.

“The next day the Minneapolis papers were full of good things about the lecture. The _Times_ devoted three columns and a half of fine print to a verbatim report of it. The following evening in St. Paul ‘Mark’ gave the same programme, which was commented on in glowing terms by St. Paul papers.

* * * * *

“Friday, July 26th, Winnipeg--The Manitoba.

“We have had a most charming ride through North Dakota and southeastern Manitoba. It seems as if everything along the route must have been put in order for our reception. The flat, wild prairies (uninhabited in 1883) are now all under cultivation. There are fine farmhouses, barns, windmills, and vast fields of wheat--‘oceans of wheat,’ as ‘Mark’ said--as far as eye can reach in all directions, waving like as the ocean waves, and so flat! Mr. Beecher remarked to his wife when riding through herein 1883: ‘Mother, you couldn’t flatter this country.’

“We had a splendid audience. ‘Mark’ and I were entertained at the famous Manitoba Club after the lecture--a club of the leading men of Winnipeg. We did not stay out very late, as ‘Mark’ feared Mrs. Clemens would not retire until he came, and he was quite anxious for her to rest, as the long night journey in the cars had been very fatiguing. On our arrival at the hotel we heard singing and a sound of revelry in the parlors. A party of young gentlemen of the lecture committee had escorted our ladies home. They were fine singers, and, with Miss Clara Clemens at the piano, a concert was in progress, that we all enjoyed another hour.

“Saturday, the 27th, we all put down as the pleasantest day thus far. Several young English gentlemen who have staked fortunes in this northwest in wheat ranches and other enterprises, brought out their tandems and traps and drove the ladies about the country. They saw the largest herd of wild buffalo that now exists, in a large enclosure. They were driven to various interesting suburban sights, of which there are more than one would believe could exist in this far northwest new city. Bouquets and banks of flowers--of such beautiful colors!--were sent in; many ladies called, and all in all it has been an ovation. ‘Mark,’ as is his custom, did not get up until time to go to the lecture hall, but he was happy. Several journalists called, who he told me were the best informed and most scholarly lot of editors he had found anywhere; and I think he was correct. There was another large crowd at the lecture, and another and final reception at the famous Manitoba Club. We were home at twelve, and all so happy! We’re on the road to happiness surely.

* * * * *

“Monday, July 29th.

“We have been in Crookston, Minn., all day, where we were the first and especially favored guests of this fine new hotel. ‘Mark Twain’s’ name was the first on the register. We are enjoying it. ‘Mark’ is as gay as a lark, but he remained in bed until time to go to the Opera House. This city is wonderfully improved since I was here in 1883 with Mr. Beecher, in 1885 with Clara Louise Kellogg, and in 1887 with Charles Dickens, Jr. The opening of this hotel is a great event. People are filling up the town from all directions to see and hear ‘Mark,’ and taking advantage of the occasion to see the first new hotel (The Crookston) in their city with hot and cold water, electric lights and all modern improvements.

* * * * *

“Tuesday, July 30th, en route.

“We left Crookston at 5:40 A.M.; were up at 4:30. Everybody was cheerful; there was no grumbling. This is our first unseasonable hour for getting up, but it has done us all good. Even Clara enjoyed the unique experience. It revived her memory. She recollected that she had telegraphed to Elmira to have her winter cloak expressed to Crookston. Fortunately the agent was sleeping in the express office, near the station. We disturbed his slumbers to find the great cloak, which was another acquisition to our sixteen pieces of hand baggage. Our train was forty-five minutes late. ‘Mark’ complained and grumbled; he persisted that I had contracted with him to _travel_ and not to wait about railway stations at five o’clock in the mornings for late trains that never arrived. He insisted on travelling, so he got aboard the baggage truck and I _travelled_ him up and down the platform, while Clara made a snap shot as evidence that I was keeping to the letter of my contract.

[Illustration: KEEPING THE LETTER OF THE CONTRACT]

“When we boarded the train, we found five lower berths (which means five sections) ready for us. There was a splendid dining car, with meals a la carte, and excellent cooking. All the afternoon there were the level prairies of North Dakota wheat just turning, the whole country a lovely green; then came the arid plains, the prairie-dog towns, cactus, buffalo grass, jack rabbits, wild life and the Missouri River--dear old friend that had borne both of us on her muddy bosom many a time. It was a great day for both ‘Mark’ and me. The ladies were enthusiastic in proportion as they saw that ‘Mark’ and I were boys again, travelling upon ‘our native heath.’

* * * * *

“Wednesday, July 31st, Great Falls, Montana.

“We arrived at the Park Hotel here at 7:30 A.M. after a good night’s sleep. Interest grows more and more intense as we come nearer to the Rocky Mountains. It brings back fond memories of other days. The two Brothers Gibson, proprietors of the hotel, drove our party out to Giant Spring, three miles distant. It is a giant, too. I never saw a more beautiful or more wonderful spring. A big river fairly boils up out of the ground, of the most beautiful deep peacock green color I ever saw in clear water. The largest copper ore smelters in the world are here. The Great Falls could supply power enough for all the machinery west of Chicago, with some to spare.

“‘Mark’ is improving. For the first time since we started he appeared about the hotel corridors and on the street. He and I walked about the outskirts of the town, and I caught a number of interesting snapshots among the Norwegian shanties. I got a good group including four generations, with eight children, a calf and five cats. ‘Mark’ wanted a photograph of each cat. He caught a pair of kittens in his arms, greatly to the discomfort of their owner, a little girl. He tried to make friends with the child and buy the kittens, but she began to cry and beg that her pets might be liberated. He soon captured her with a pretty story, and she finally consented to let them go. Few know ‘Mark’s’ great love for cats, as well as for every living creature.

* * * * *

“Thursday, August 1st, Great Falls to Butte, Montana.

“We started at 7:35 A.M. All seem tired. The light air and the long drive yesterday told very much on us all. ‘Mark’ had an off night and was not at his best, which has almost broken his heart. He couldn’t get over it all day. The Gibson Brothers have done much to make our visit delightful, and it has proved very enjoyable indeed. Of course, being proprietors of the hotel, they lose nothing, for I find they charge us five dollars a day each, and the extortions from porters, baggagemen and bellboys surpass anything I know of. The smallest money is two bits (25 cents) here--absurd!

* * * * *

“August 2d, Butte, Montana.

“We enter the Rocky Mountains through a cañon of the Upper Missouri; we have climbed mountains all day, and at Butte are nearly 8,000 feet high. It tells on me, but the others escape. The ladies declare it has been one of the most interesting days of their lives, and ‘Mark’ has taken great interest in everything, but kept from talking. After reaching the hotel, he kept quiet in bed until he went to the hall. He more than made up for last night’s disappointment and was at his best. I escorted Mrs. Clemens and Clara to a box in the theatre, expecting to return immediately to the hotel, but I found myself listening, and sat through the lecture, enjoying every word. It actually seemed as if I had never known him to be quite so good. He was great. The house was full and very responsive.

“After the lecture many of his former Nevada friends came forward to greet him. We went to a fine club, where champagne and stories blended until twelve, much to the delight of many gentlemen. ‘Mark’ never drinks champagne. His is hot Scotch, winter and summer, without any sugar, and never before 11 p.m.

* * * * *

“Friday, August 2d.

“To-day ‘Mark’ and I went from Butte to Anaconda without the ladies. We left the hotel at 4:30 by trolley car in order to have plenty of time to reach the train, but we had gone only three blocks when the power gave out and we could not move. It was twelve minutes to five and there was no carriage in sight. We tried to get a grocery wagon, but the mean owner refused to take us a quarter of a mile to the depot for less than ten dollars. I told him to go to ----. I saw another grocery wagon near by and told its owner I would pay any price to reach that train. ‘Mark’ and I mounted the seat with him. He laid the lash on his pair of bronchos, and I think quicker time was never made to that depot. We reached the train just as the conductor shouted ‘All aboard!’ and had signalled the engineer. The train was moving as we jumped on. The driver charged me a dollar, but I handed him two.

“At Anaconda we found a very fine hotel and several friends very anxiously waiting to meet ‘Mark.’ Elaborate arrangements had been made to lunch him and give him a lively day among his old mountain friends, as he had been expected by the morning train. Fortunately he missed this demonstration and was in good condition for the evening. He was introduced by the mayor of the city in a witty address of welcome. Here was our first small audience, where the local manager came out a trifle the loser.

“A little incident connected with our experience here shows ‘Mark Twain’s’ generosity. The local manager was a man who had known ‘Mark’ in the sixties, and was very anxious to secure him for a lecture in Anaconda. He, therefore, contracted to pay the price asked. Anaconda is a small city, whose chief industry is a large smelting furnace. There were not enough people interested in high-class entertainments to make up a paying audience, and the manager was short about sixty dollars. I took what he had, and _all_ he had, giving him a receipt in full. As ‘Mark’ and I were not equal partners, of course the larger share of the loss fell to him. I explained the circumstances when we had our next settlement at the end of the week, hoping for his approval.

“‘And you took the last cent that poor fellow had! Send him a hundred dollars, and if you can’t afford to stand your share, charge it all to me. I’m not going around robbing poor men who are disappointed in their calculations as to my commercial value. I’m poor, and working to pay debts that I never contracted; but I don’t want to get money in that way.’

“I sent the money, and was glad of the privilege of standing my share. The letter of acknowledgment from that man brought out the following expression from ‘Mark’: ‘I wish that every hundred dollars I ever invested had produced the same amount of happiness!’

“In Helena (August 3d) the people did not care for lectures. They all liked ‘Mark’ and enjoyed meeting him, but there was no public enthusiasm for the man that has made the early history of that mining country romantic and famous all over the world. The Montana Club entertained him grandly after the lecture, and he met many old friends and acquaintances. Some of them had come all the way from Virginia City to see their former comrade of the mining camps. One man, now very rich, came from Virginia City, Nevada, on purpose to see ‘Mark’ and settle an old score. When the glasses were filled and ‘Mark’s’ health proposed, this man interrupted the proceedings by saying:

“‘Hold on a minute; before we go further I want to say to you, Sam Clemens, that you did me a d----d dirty trick over there in Silver City, and I’ve come here to have a settlement with you.’

“There was a deathly silence for a moment, when ‘Mark’ said in his deliberate drawl:

“‘Let’s see. That--was--before--I--reformed, wasn’t--it?’

“Senator Sanders suggested that inasmuch as the other fellow had never reformed, Clemens and all the others present forgive him and drink together, which all did. Thus ‘the row was broken up before it commenced’ (_Buck Fenshaw_)--and all was well. ‘Mark’ told stories until after twelve. We walked from the club to the hotel up quite a mountain, the first hard walk he has had. He stands the light air well, and is getting strong.

* * * * *

“Sunday, August 4th, Helena.

“The dry burning sun makes life almost intolerable, so that there has been hardly a soul on the streets all day. ‘Mark’ and I had a good time at the Montana Club last night. He simply beats the world telling stories, but we find some bright lights here. There were present Senator Sanders, Major Maginnis, Hugh McQuade, A. J. Seligman, Judge Knowles, of the United States Supreme Court, who introduced Mr. Beecher in Deer Lodge and Butte in 1883; L. A. Walker, Dr. C. K. Cole, A. J. Steele, and Frank L. Sizer. We have very heavy mails, but are all too tired to open and read letters that are not absolutely necessary to be read.

“‘Mark’ lay around on the floor of his room all day reading and writing in his notebook and smoking. In the gloaming Dr. Cole, with his trotters, drove ‘Mark’ and Mrs. Clemens out to Broadwater, four miles. The heat gave way to a delicious balmy breeze that reinvigorated everybody. How delightful are these summer evenings in the Rocky Mountains!

* * * * *

“Monday, August 5th, Missoula, Montana.

“Senator Sanders walked with ‘Mark’ to the station in Helena this morning, while I accompanied the ladies in a carriage. Whom should we meet walking the platform of the station but Mrs. Henry Ward Beecher, on her way to visit her son Herbert in Port Townsend. It was a delightful surprise. Senator Sanders at once recognized her, as in 1883 he joined our party and drove from Helena (then the end of the eastern section of the Northern Pacific Railroad) to Missoula, the eastern end of the western division. We then drove in a carriage with four horses, via Butte and Deer Lodge, and it took four days to make the journey. Senator Sanders travelled the same distance in five hours with us to-day in a Pullman car.

“At Missoula we all drove in a ‘bus’ to the Florence House, the ladies inside and ‘Mark’ and I outside with the driver. Here we saw the first sign of the decadence of the horse: a man riding a bicycle alongside the bus, leading a horse to a nearby blacksmith shop. At ‘Mark’s’ suggestion I caught a snapshot of that scene. Officers from Fort Missoula, four miles out, had driven in with ambulances and an invitation from Lieutenant-Colonel Burt, commandant, for our entire party to dine at the fort. The ladies accepted. ‘Mark’ went to bed and I looked after the business.

“We had a large audience in a small hall, the patrons being mainly officers of the fort and their families. As most of the ladies who marry army officers come from our best Eastern society, it was a gathering of people who appreciated the occasion. After the lecture, the meeting took the form of a social reception, and it was midnight before it broke up. The day has been one of delight to all of us. As we leave at 2:30 P.M. to-morrow, all have accepted an invitation to witness guard-mounting and lunch early at the fort.

* * * * *

“August 7th.

“Two ambulances were sent to the hotel for our party and Adjutant-General Ruggles, who is here on a tour of inspection. ‘Mark’ rose early and said he would walk to the fort slowly; he thought it would do him good. General Ruggles and the ladies went in one ambulance (the old four-mule army officers’ ambulance) and the other waited some little time before starting, that I might complete arrangements for all the party to go direct from the fort to the depot. I was the only passenger riding with the driver, and enjoying the memory of like experiences on the plains when in the army. We were about half way to the fort when I discovered a man walking hurriedly toward us quite a distance to the left. I was sure it was ‘Mark,’ and asked the driver to slow up. In a minute I saw him signal us, and I asked the driver to turn and drive toward him. We were on a level plain, and through that clear mountain atmosphere one can see a great distance. We were not long in reaching our man, much to his relief. He had walked out alone and taken the wrong road, and after walking five or six miles on it, discovered his mistake, and was countermarching when he saw our ambulance and ran across lots to meet us. He _was_ tired--too tired to express disgust--and sat quietly inside the ambulance until we drove up to headquarters, where were a number of officers and ladies, besides our party. As ‘Mark’ stepped out, a colored sergeant laid hands on him, saying:

“‘Are you ‘Mark Twain’?

“‘I am,’ he replied.

“‘I have orders to arrest and take you to the guardhouse.’

“‘All right.’

“And the sergeant walked him across the parade ground to the guardhouse, he not uttering a word of protest.

“Immediately Lieutenant-Colonel Burt and the ambulance hurried over to relieve the prisoner. Colonel Burt very pleasantly asked ‘Mark’s’ pardon for the practical joke and invited him to ride back to headquarters. ‘Mark’ said:

“Thanks, I prefer freedom, if you don’t mind. I’ll walk. I see you have thorough discipline here,’ casting an approving eye toward the sergeant who had him under arrest.

“The garrison consisted of seven companies of the Twenty-seventh United States Colored Regiment. There was a military band of thirty pieces. Guard mount was delayed for General Ruggles’ and our inspection. The band played quite a programme, and all declared it one of the finest military bands in America. We witnessed some fine drilling of the soldiers, and learned that for this kind of service the colored soldiers were more subordinate and submissive to rigid drill and discipline than white men, and that there were very few desertions from among them.

“Attached to our train from Missoula station were two special cars, bearing an excursion party consisting of the new receiver of the Northern Pacific Railroad and his friends, one of whom we were told was the United States Supreme Court Judge who had appointed this receiver. An invitation was sent in to ‘Mark’ to ride in their car, but as it came for him alone and did not include the ladies, he declined.

“It was an enjoyable ride to Spokane, where we arrived at 11:30, and put up at the Spokane House, the largest hotel I ever saw. It was a large commercial building, covering an entire block, revamped into a hotel. A whole store was diverted into one bedroom, and nicely furnished, too. Reporters were in waiting to interview the distinguished guest. ‘Mark’ is gaining strength and is enjoying everything, so the interviewers had a good time.

“We spent all day, August 8th, in Spokane. The hotel was full. The new receiver and his gay party are also spending the day here, but all leave just before the time set for the lecture.

“In the forenoon ‘Mark’ and I walked about this remarkable city, with its asphalt streets, electric lights, nine-story telegraph poles, and commercial blocks that would do credit to any Eastern city. There were buildings ten stories high, with the nine top stories empty, and there were many fine stores with great plate-glass fronts, marked ‘To Rent.’ In the afternoon our entire party drove about the city in an open carriage. Our driver pointed out some beautiful suburban residences and told us who occupied them.

“‘That house,’ he said, as we drove by a palatial establishment, ‘is where Mr. Brown lives. He is receiver for the Spokane Bank, which failed last year for over $2,000,000. You all know about that big failure, of course. The receiver lives there.’

“Pointing out another house, he said: ‘That man living up in that big house is receiver for the Great Falls Company. It failed for nearly a million. The president and directors of that company are most all in the State prison. And this yere house that we are coming to now is where the receiver of the Washington Gas and Water Company lives,’ etc.

“‘Mark’ said to the ladies: ‘If I had a son to send West, I would educate him for a receiver. It seems to be about the only thriving industry.’

“We found here a magnificent new theatre--the Opera House. It has cost over $200,000 and was never yet a quarter filled. The manager was greatly disappointed at the receipts for the lecture; he had counted on a full house. Where he expected the people to come from I don’t know. The receipts were not much better than in Missoula. ‘Mark’ didn’t enjoy it, and manifested no delicacy in so expressing himself.

“As we have a day here, the ladies have overhauled and repacked their trunks. I think there is no occupation that has the fascination for women when travelling as the unpacking and overhauling of large travelling trunks. They go at it early, miss their luncheon, and are late to dinner, and yet show no signs of fatigue.

“There was another incident here. Our ladies dressed their best for dinner, and outshone the receiver’s excursionists, who occupied most of the great dining hall. ‘Mark’ didn’t see it, as he never comes down to dinner. I know I saw it, and enjoyed a feeling of pride. I just felt and knew I was envied by the men at the other tables. Clara Clemens is a beautiful girl. As we passed out of the dining room into the great parlor, she sat down to the Chickering grand piano and began playing a Chopin nocturne. It was in the gloaming. Stealthily guests came in from dinner and sat breathlessly in remote parts of the boundless room listening to a performance that would have done credit to any great pianist. Never have I witnessed a more beautiful sight than this sweet brunette unconsciously holding a large audience of charmed listeners. If it was not one of the supreme moments of her mother’s life, who saw and heard her, then I have guessed wrong. It was an incident forever fixed in my memory.

“That night at 11:30 we went aboard the sleeper on the Great Northern Road. Everything was in readiness for us. The next day was one full of interest as we rode over the Rockies on the zigzag road, travelling over thirty miles to make seven. ‘Mark’ rode on the engine, greatly to the delight of the engineer.

“We transferred at Seattle to the little ‘Greyhound of Puget Sound’--_The Flyer_--said to be the fastest steamer in the world. ‘Mark’ sat on the deck of _The Flyer_ watching the baggage-smashers removing our trunks from the baggage car to the truck which was to convey them to _The Flyer_, and exclaimed: ‘Oh, how I do wish one of those trunks were filled with dynamite and that all the baggage-destroyers on earth were gathered about it, and I just far enough off to see them hurled into Kingdom Come!’

“We arrived in Tacoma at five o’clock, and have sumptuous apartments at The Tacoma, a grand caravansery built by the Northern Pacific Railroad Company. The ‘receiver’ is an old friend of mine, formerly a contractor on the Northern Pacific Railroad. I also found another old friend in C. H. Prescott--one of the prosperous. He is local ‘receiver’ of the Northern Pacific Railroad, the highest distinction a man can attain out here. This is another overgrown metropolis. We can’t see it, nor anything else, owing to the dense smoke everywhere.

“Here in Tacoma the ladies are to remain and rest, while ‘Mark’ and I take in Portland and Olympia.

* * * * *

“Friday, August 9th, Portland, Oregon.

“At Tacoma early this morning Mr. S. E. Moffett, of the San Francisco _Examiner_, appeared. He is ‘Mark’s’ nephew and resembles his uncle very much. On his arrival ‘Mark’ took occasion to blaspheme for a few minutes, that his relative might realize that men are not all alike. He cursed the journey, the fatigues and annoyances, winding up by acknowledging that if everything had been made and arranged by the Almighty for the occasion, it could not have been better or more comfortable, but he ‘was not travelling for pleasure,’ etc.

“He and I reached Portland on time, 8:22, and found the Marquam Grand packed with a waiting audience and the sign ‘Standing Room Only’ out. The lecture was a grand success. After it ‘Mark’s’ friend, Colonel Wood, formerly of the United States army, gave a supper at the Portland Club, where about two dozen of the leading men were entertained for two hours with ‘Mark’s’ story-telling. They will remember that evening as long as they live. There is surely but one ‘Mark Twain.’

* * * * *

“Saturday, August 10th, Portland to Olympia.

“Smoke, smoke, smoke! It was not easy to tear ourselves away from Portland so early. _The Oregonian_ contains one of the best notices that ‘Mark’ has had. He is pleased with it, and is very jolly to-day.

“We left for Olympia at eleven o’clock, via Northern Pacific Railroad. Somehow ‘Mark’ seems to grow greater from day to day. Each time it seemed as though his entertainment had reached perfection, but last night surpassed all. A gentleman on the train, a physician from Portland, said that no man ever left a better impression on a Portland audience; that ‘Mark Twain’ was the theme on the streets and in all business places. A young reporter for _The Oregonian_ met ‘Mark’ as he was boarding the train for Olympia, and had probably five minutes’ talk with him. He wrote a two-column interview which ‘Mark’ declared was the most accurate and the best that had ever been reported of him.

“On the train a bevy of young ladies ventured to introduce themselves to him, and he entertained them all the way to Olympia, where a delegation of leading citizens met us, headed by John Miller Murphy, editor of the oldest paper in Washington. They met us outside the city, in order that we might enjoy a ride on a new trolley car through the town. As ‘Mark’ stepped from the train, Mr. Miller said:

“‘Mr. Twain, as chairman of the reception committee, allow me to welcome you to the capital of the youngest and most picturesque State in the Union. I am sorry the smoke is so dense that you cannot see our mountains and our forests, which are now on fire.’

“‘Mark’ said: ‘I regret to see--I mean to learn (I can’t see, of course, for the smoke) that your magnificent forests are being destroyed by fire. As for the smoke, I do not so much mind. I am accustomed to that. I am a perpetual smoker myself.’

* * * * *

“Monday, August 12th, Tacoma, Wash.--The Tacoma.

“I had trouble in settling at the Opera House; the manager is a scamp. I expected trouble, and I had it.

“The Tacoma Press Club gave ‘Mark’ a reception in their rooms after the lecture, which proved to be a very bright affair. ‘Mark’ is finding out that he has found his friends by the loss of his fortune. People are constantly meeting him on the street, at halls, and in hotels, and telling him of the happiness he has brought them--old and young alike. He seems as fresh to the rising generation as he is dear to older friends. Here we met Lieutenant-Commander Wadhams, who is executive officer of the _Mohican_, now in Seattle harbor. He has invited us all on board the man-of-war to dine to-morrow, and we have all accepted.

“‘Mark’ had a great audience in Seattle the next evening. The sign ‘Standing Room Only’ was out again. He was hoarse, but the hoarseness seemed to augment the volume of his voice. After the lecture he met many of his friends and admirers at the Rainier Club. Surely he _is_ finding out that his misfortunes are his blessings. He has been the means of more real pleasure to his readers and hearers than he ever could have imagined had not this opportunity presented itself.

* * * * *

“Wednesday, August 14th, Seattle to Whatcom.

“Mark’s’ cold is getting worse (the first cold he ever had). He worried and fretted all day; two swearing fits under his breath, with a short interval between them, they lasted from our arrival in town until he went to sleep after midnight. It was with great difficulty that he got through the lecture. The crowd, which kept stringing in at long intervals until half-past nine, made him so nervous that he left the stage for a time. I thought he was ill, and rushed back of the scenes, only to meet him in a white rage. He looked daggers at me, and remarked:

“‘You’ll never play a trick like this on me again. Look at that audience. It isn’t half in yet.’

“I explained that many of the people came from long distances, and that the cars ran only every half hour, the entire country on fire causing delays, and that was why the last instalment came so late. He cooled down and went at it again. He captured the crowd. He had a good time and an encore, and was obliged to give an additional story.

* * * * *

“Thursday, August 15th, Vancouver, B.C.--The Vancouver.

“‘Mark’s’ throat is in a very bad condition. It was a great effort to make himself heard. He is a thoroughbred--a great man, with wonderful will power, or he would have succumbed. We had a fine audience, a crowded house, very English, and I think ‘Mark’ liked it. Everything here is English and Canadian. There is a rumor afloat that the country about us is beautiful, but we can’t see it, for there is smoke, smoke everywhere, and no relief. My eyes are sore from it. We are told that the _Warrimoo_ will not sail until Wednesday, so I have arranged for the Victoria lecture Tuesday.

* * * * *

“Friday, August 16th, Vancouver.

“Our tour across the continent is virtually finished, and I feel the reaction. ‘Othello’s occupation gone.’ This morning ‘Mark’ had a doctor, who says he is not seriously ill. Mrs. Clemens is curing him. The more I see of this lady the greater and more wonderful she appears to be. There are few women who could manage and absolutely rule such a nature as ‘Mark’s.’ She knows the gentle and smooth way over every obstruction he meets, and makes everything lovely. This has indeed been the most delightful tour I have ever made with any party, and I wish to record it as one of the most enjoyable of all my managerial experiences. I hardly ever expect another. ‘Mark’ has written in a presentation copy of ‘Roughing It’:

“‘Here ends one of the smoothest and pleasantest trips across the continent that any group of five has ever made.’

“‘Mark’ is better this evening, so we shall surely have a good lecture in Victoria.

* * * * *

“Saturday, August 17th, Vancouver.

“We are all waiting for the news as to when the _Warrimoo_ will be off the dry dock and ready to sail. ‘Mark’ is getting better. I have booked Victoria for Tuesday, the 20th.

“‘Mark’ has lain in bed all day, as usual, spending much time writing. Reporters have been anxious to meet and interview him, and I urged it. He finally said: ‘If they’ll excuse my bed, show them up.’ A quartet of bright young English journalists came up. They all had a good time, and made much of the last interview with ‘Mark Twain’ in America, as it was. ‘Mark’ was in excellent spirits. His throat is better.

* * * * *

“Monday, August 19th.

“We are at Vancouver still, and the smoke is as firmly fixed as we are in the town. It is bad. ‘Mark’ has not been very cheerful to-day. He doesn’t get his voice back. He and I took a walk about the streets, and he seemed discouraged, I think on account of Mrs. Clemens’s dread of the long voyage, and because of the unfavorable stories we have heard of the _Warrimoo_. We leave Vancouver, and hosts of new friends, for Victoria, B.C., and then we part. That will not be easy, for we are all very happy. It makes my heart ache to see ‘Mark’ so downhearted after such continued success as he has had.

“On August 20th the boat for Victoria arrived half an hour late. We all hurried to get on board, only to be told by the captain that he had one hundred and eighty tons of freight to discharge, and that it would be four o’clock before we left. This lost our Victoria engagement, which I was obliged to postpone by telegraph. ‘Mark’ was not in condition to relish this news, and as he stood on the wharf after the ladies had gone aboard he took occasion to tell the captain, in very plain and unpious language, his opinion of a passenger-carrying company that, for a few dollars extra, would violate their contract and obligations to the public. They were a lot of ---- somethings, and deserved the penitentiary. The captain listened without response, but got very red in the face. It seems the ladies had overheard the loud talk. Soon after ‘Mark’ joined them he came to me and asked if I wouldn’t see that captain and apologize for his unmanly abuse, and see if any possible restitution could be made. I did so, and the captain and ‘Mark’ became quite friends.

“We left Vancouver on _The Charmer_ at six o’clock, arriving in Victoria a little after midnight.

* * * * *

“Wednesday, August 21st, Victoria, B.C.--The Driad.

“‘Mark’ has been in bed all day; he doesn’t seem to get strength. He smokes constantly, and I fear too much also; still, he may stand it. Physicians say it will eventually kill him.

“We had a good audience. Lord and Lady Aberdeen, who were in a box, came back on the stage after the lecture and said many very nice things of the entertainment, offering to write to friends-in Australia about it. ‘Mark’s’ voice began strong, but showed fatigue toward the last. His audience, which was one of the most appreciative he ever had, was in great sympathy with him as they realized the effort he was obliged to make, owing to his hoarseness.

“A telegram from Mr. George McL. Brown says the _Warrimoo_ will sail at six o’clock to-morrow evening. This is the last appearance of ‘Mark Twain’ in America for more than a year I know, and I much fear the very last, for it doesn’t seem possible that his physical strength can hold out. After the lecture to-night he expected to visit a club with Mr. Campbell, who did not come around. He and I, therefore, went out for a walk. He was tired and feeble, but did not want to go back to the hotel. He was nervous and weak, and disappointed, for he had expected to meet and entertain a lot of gentlemen. He and I are alike in one respect: we don’t relish disappointment.

* * * * *

“Thursday, August 22d.

“We are in Victoria yet. The blessed ‘tie that binds’ seems to be drawing tighter and tighter as the time for our final separation approaches. We shall never be happier in any combination, and Mrs. Clemens is the great magnet. What a noble woman she is! It is ‘Mark Twain’s’ wife who makes his works so great. She edits everything and brings purity, dignity, and sweetness to his writings. In ‘Joan of Arc’ I see Mrs. Clemens as much as ‘Mark Twain.’

* * * * *

“Friday, August 23d, Victoria.

“‘Mark’ and I were out all day getting books, cigars, and tobacco. He bought three thousand Manilla cheroots, thinking that with four pounds of Durham smoking tobacco he could make the three thousand cheroots last four weeks. If perpetual smoking ever kills a man, I don’t see how ‘Mark Twain’ can expect to escape. He and Mrs. Clemens, an old friend of ‘Mark’s’ and his wife, now living near here, went for a drive, and were out most of the day. This is remarkable for him. I never knew him to do such a thing before.

[Illustration: THE LAST SNAPSHOT BEFORE THE “WARRIMOO” SAILED]

“The _Warrimoo_ arrived about one o’clock. We all went on board and lunched together for the last time. Mrs. Clemens is disappointed in the ship. The whole thing looks discouraging, and our hearts are almost broken with sympathy for her. She tells me she is going to brave it through, for she must do it. It is for her children. Our party got out on the deck of the _Warrimoo_, and Mr. W. G. Chase, a passenger, took a snapshot of our quintette. Then wife and I went ashore, and the old ship started across the Pacific Ocean with three of our most beloved friends on board. We waved to one another as long as they kept in sight.

“Before sailing ‘Mark Twain’ wrote a letter to the editor of the San Francisco _Examiner_, from which I quote:

“‘Now that I reflect, perhaps it is a little immodest in me to talk about my paying my debts, when by my own confession I am blandly getting ready to unload them on the whole English-speaking world. I didn’t think of that--well, no matter, so long as they are paid.

“‘Lecturing is gymnastics, chest-expander, medicine, mind healer, blues destroyer, all in one. I am twice as well as I was when I started out. I have gained nine pounds in twenty-eight days, and expect to weigh six hundred before January. I haven’t had a blue day in all the twenty-eight. My wife and daughter are accumulating health and strength and flesh nearly as fast as I am. When we reach home two years hence, we think we can exhibit as freaks.

“‘MARK TWAIN.

“‘Vancouver, B.C., August 15, 1895.”

* * * * *

On September 17, 1897, he wrote me from Weggis, Lake Lucerne:

“I feel quite sure that in Cape Town, thirteen months ago, I stood on a platform for the last time. Nothing but the Webster debts could persuade me to lecture again, and I have ceased to worry about those. You remember in the Sam Moffett interview in Vancouver, in 1895, I gave myself four years in which to make money enough to pay those debts--and that included two lecture seasons in America, one in England, and one around the world. But we are well satisfied now that we shall have those debts paid off a year earlier than the prophecy, if I continue able to work as I have been working in London and here, _and without any further help from the platform_. And so it is, as I said a moment ago, I am a cheerful man these days.”

In another letter he said: “I managed to pull through that long lecture campaign, but I was never very well, from the first night in Cleveland to the last one in Cape Town, and I found it pretty hard work on that account. I did a good deal of talking when I ought to have been in bed. At present I am not strong enough for platform work, and am not going to allow myself to think of London, or any other platform, for a long time to come. It grieves me, for I could make a satisfactory season in London and America now that I am practised in my trade again.”

On April 4, 1899, he wrote me from Vienna: “No; I don’t like lecturing. I lectured in Vienna two or three weeks ago, and in Budapest last week, but it was merely for fun, not for money. I charged nothing in Vienna, and only the family’s expenses in Budapest. I like to talk for nothing, about twice a year; but talking for money is _work_, and that takes the pleasure out of it. I do not believe you could offer me terms that would dissolve my prejudice against the platform. I do not expect to see a platform again until the wolf commands. Honest people do not go robbing the public on the platform, except when they are in debt. (Disseminate this idea; it can do good).”

In the autumn of 1895 I wanted him to give fifty lectures in England, but he thought it would not be worth his while. His book was the next thing to be thought of and planned for. Four years later, while he was in Sweden, I again suggested lecturing at a thousand dollars a night. “I think there’s stuff in ‘Following the Equator’ for a lecture, but I can’t come,” he wrote.

As a letter writer “Mark Twain” is inimitable. He writes with the same unconventionally with which he talks, and his letters are the man.

* * * * *

“DEAR POND:

“O, b’gosh, I can’t. I hate writing.

“Ever thine,

“‘MARK.’”

* * * * *

is characteristic. He is always humorous. Once he arranged for a donkey to be sent to the Elmira summer home for one of the children to ride. He acknowledged the receipt: “Much obliged, Homer, for the jackass. Tell Redpath I shall not want him now.” Of course the latter reference was to a business matter, but the conjunction was irresistible. In the autumn of 1899 he wrote to me: “I’m not going to barnstorm the platform any more, but I am glad you have corralled Howells. He’s a most sinful man, and I always knew God would send him to the platform if he didn’t behave.”

In another letter he writes: “Say! Some time ago I received notice that I had been elected honorary member of the ‘Society of Sons of Steerage Immigrants,’ and was told that Kipling, Hop Smith, and Nelson Page are officers of it. What right have they to belong? Ask Page or Smith about it.”

But it is not always fun. His business letters are clear and straightforward. He understood how to deal with his audiences and to meet requirements with the utmost honesty. But his “nerves” were readily worn out on the surface, and one of his horrors was delay in beginning and the late comers who always interrupt. He devised small programmes, printed on stiff card paper, so that they could neither be used as fans nor rustle, which is so annoying to a person on the platform. He and Cable were always friends, but the novelist never could resist the temptation to lengthen the reading of his selections, and this made a constant friction, because it necessarily curtailed the time left for “Mark,” sensitive ever to the obligation he felt to the audiences.

Throughout the scores of letters in my possession there are constant and charming references to his wife and children, unpremeditated in expression, and therefore the more valuable. His hospitable spirit is also as fully exhibited. He has the keenest sense of personal honor, as well as of his own rights.

I had received a letter from the Secretary of War notifying me that by order of the President a Congressional medal of honor had been presented to me for “most distinguished gallantry in action”--gallantry thirty-seven years ago. I was so proud that I wrote Mark about it. He wrote me from Austria, June 17, 1898, in reply:

* * * * *

“Keltenburgeben.

“DEAR POND: My, it’s a long jump from the time you played solitaire with your cannon! Yes, I should think you would want to go soldiering again. Old as I am, I want to go to the war myself. And I should do it, too, if it were not for the danger.

“To-day we ought to get great news from Cuba. I am watching for the Vienna evening papers. This is a good war with a dignified cause to fight for. A thing not to be said of the average war.”

* * * * *

“Mark Twain” eats only when he is hungry. I have known him to go days without eating a particle of food; at the same time he would be smoking constantly when he was not sleeping. He insisted that the stomach would call when in need, and it did. I have known him to sit for hours in a smoking car on a cold day, smoking his pipe and reading his German book with the window wide open. I said once: “Mark, do you know it’s a cold day and you are exposing yourself before that open window, and you are booked to lecture to-night?”

“I do--know--all--about it. I am letting some of God’s fresh air into my lungs for that purpose. My stomach is all right, and under these conditions I am not afraid of taking cold.”

“But,” said I, “the car is cold, and you are making the passengers uncomfortable by insisting on that window being wide open.”

“They deserve to be uncomfortable for not knowing how to live and take care of themselves.” He closed the window, however.

“Mark” seldom had a cold, and with the exception of carbuncles was never ill.

“Pudd’n Head Wilson” was first acted by Frank Mayo, of whom “Mark’s” appreciation was very sincere. While seeing the play for the first time, at the Herald Square Theatre, the audience discovered “Mark” in a box, and vociferously called: “Mark Twain! Mark Twain!” He rose up and said:

“I am sure I could say many complimentary things about this play which Mr. Mayo has written and about his portrayal of the chief character in it, and keep well within the bounds both of fact and of good taste; but I will limit myself to two or three. I do not know how to utter any higher praise than this: that when Mayo’s ‘Pudd’n Head’ walks this stage here, clothed in the charm of his gentle charities of speech, and acts the sweet simplicities and sincerities of his gracious nature, the thought in my mind is: ‘Why, bless your heart, you couldn’t be any dearer or lovelier or sweeter than you are without turning into that man whom all men love, and even Satan is fond of--Joe Jefferson.’”

In May, 1895, he wrote to me from Paris: “Frank Mayo has done a great thing for both of us; for he has proved himself a gifted dramatist as well as a gifted orator, and has enabled me to add another new character to American drama. I hope he will have grand success.”

The serious side of “Mark Twain” is shown in the following letter to a woman whose sister wished to go upon the lecture platform; this letter went the rounds of the press years ago, but it should be kept alive. I reproduce it, as it points a moral:

“I have seen it tried many and many a time. I have seen a lady lecturer urged upon the public in a lavishly complimentary document signed by Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, and some others of supreme celebrity, but--there was nothing in her, and she failed. If there had been any great merit in her, she never would have needed those men’s help; and (at her rather mature age) would never have consented to ask it.

“There is an unwritten law about human successes, and your sister must bow to that law. She must submit to its requirements. In brief, this law is:

“1. No occupation without an apprenticeship.

“2. No pay to the apprentice.

“This law stands right in the way of the subaltern who wants to be a general before he has smelt powder; and it stands (and should stand) in everybody’s way who applies for pay and position before he has served his apprenticeship and proved himself.

“Your sister’s course is perfectly plain. Let her enclose this letter to Major J. B. Pond, Everett House, New York, and offer to lecture a year for $10 a week and her expenses, the contract to be annullable by him at any time after a month’s notice, but not annullable by her at all; the second year, he to have her services, if he wants them, at a trifle under the best price offered by anybody else.

“She can learn her trade in those two years, and then be entitled to remuneration; but she cannot learn it in any less time than that, unless she is a human miracle.

“Try it, and do not be afraid. It is the fair and right thing. If she wins, she will win squarely and righteously, and never have to blush.”

No man has ever written whose humor has so many sides, or such breadth and reach. His passages provoke the joyous laughter of young and old, of learned and unlearned, and may be read the hundredth time without losing, but rather multiplying, in power. Sentences and phrases that seem at first made only for the heartiest laughter, yield at closer view a sanity and wisdom that are good for the soul. He is also a wonderful story-teller. Thousands of people can bear testimony that the very humor which has made him known all over the world is oftentimes swept along like the débris of a freshet by the current of his fascinating narrative. His later works, like “The Yankee at King Arthur’s Court” and “Joan of Arc,” show that he has studied and apprehends also the great problems of modern life as well as those of history. Mark is personally as human as his humor; as tender and sensitive to the aspirations of the mind as in his daily living.

Business relations and travelling bring out the nature of a man. After my close relations with “Mark Twain” for sixteen years, I can say that he is not only what the world knows him to be, a humorist, a philosopher, and a genius, but a sympathetic, honest, brave gentleman.

* * * * *

MARK TWAIN and GEORGE W. CABLE travelled together one season. Twain and Cable, a colossal attraction, a happy combination! Mark owned the show, and paid Mr. Cable $600 a week and his travelling and hotel expenses. The manager took a percentage of the gross receipts for his services, and was to be sole manager. If he consulted the proprietor at all during the term of the agreement, said agreement became null and void.

[Illustration]

These “twins of genius,” as I advertised them, were delightful company. Both were Southerners, born on the shores of the Mississippi River, and both sang well. Each was familiar with all the plantation songs and Mississippi River chanties of the negro, and they would often get to singing these together when by themselves, or with their manager for sole audience.

So delightful were these occasions, and so fond were they of embracing every private opportunity of “letting themselves out,” that I often instructed our carriage driver to take a long route between hotels and trains that I might have a concert which the public was never permitted to hear.

Mr. Cable’s singing of Creole songs was very charming and novel. They were so sweet, and he sang so beautifully, that everybody was charmed, it was all so simple, and quaint, and dignified.

* * * * *

“MARK TWAIN,” “NASBY,” AND “JOSH BILLINGS” happened to drop in at the Redpath Bureau in Boston at about the same time, one morning in 1873, after their return from lectures in nearby towns.

This conjunction of stars seemed hardly remarkable at that time, for in the palmy days of the lyceum in New England the parlor of the Redpath Bureau was a sort of club-room for men and women of letters, where they were accustomed to rendezvous in the morning after returning from some suburban lecturing engagement. I there met for the first time Wendell Phillips and William Lloyd Garrison, being introduced to them by Mr. James Redpath. I have heard Beecher, Phillips, and Garrison in many a delightful discussion of old times in these rooms. It was no uncommon occurrence for Anna Dickinson, Mrs. Livermore, Julia Ward Howe, and Miss Anthony to meet one another there.

[Illustration]

But the morning that the three greatest humorists of the time met there, as they were talking, it occurred to me it would be an interesting souvenir to have a group photograph of them. So I said to them, “Gentlemen, if you will come down to Warren’s and sit for a photograph, I will pay for it.” My invitation seemed to have no effect until Mr. Redpath interceded. He was manager and owner of the bureau at the time, and on his invitation we all went to Warren’s, and they sat for the picture, which is here reproduced.

This picture has often been referred to as being in collections belonging to other friends of the distinguished humorists, but I hardly think any of them ever knew how it came to be taken.

There was a very large picture taken of the group at the same time, which was the private property of James Redpath and sold with his collection. I never knew where it went. I wish I could find it, for it was a fine photograph, and I should like to own it.

* * * * *

“MAX O’RELL” (Paul Blouet), that witty Frenchman, is the only professional humorist that I ever imported, and is one of the humorous lecturers who always score a “platform success.”

He has made three successful lecture tours in America. From Nova Scotia to New Orleans and from the Atlantic to the Pacific he has appeared in all the large cities, and the immense audiences that have welcomed him everywhere attest his success.

[Illustration]

His fun is contagious. Socially he is one of the most entertaining of men, with a good story apropos of nearly everything. He tells in his own most humorous way one instance of the Chicago reporter’s impudence and enterprise. One night he had been in bed in the Grand Pacific Hotel perhaps an hour or so when there came a very decided rapping at his chamber door.

“Who’s there?” called Max O’Rell.

“A reporter,” came the answer.

“Well, I can’t see you now. I’m in bed.”

The Frenchman heard his door being pushed open, and the chair which he had placed against it tumbled over. Some one advanced into the room, struck a match, and proceeded to light the gas.

“Well, well! What’ll you have, sir, what’ll you have?” cried Max O’Rell, indignant at this cool intruder.

The reporter tossed the match into the fireplace, and throwing himself into a chair, said:

“What’ll I have? Oh, I’ll have a whiskey cocktail.”

He wrote a book entitled “America as Seen through French Spectacles.” If he had not written that book he would have been still more popular with the lyceum. He made a trip through Australia and wrote another book which the Australians didn’t like. Had he possessed Mark Twain’s sagacity, sincerity, and love of his fellow-man, and had he seen things from their favorable point of view instead of from their objectionable side, he might certainly get as much fun out of it and his popularity would have continued. He left a riley wake clear around the world, whereas the American humorist made friends of all who met or heard or read him. I am very fond of Max O’Rell. At the same time, it is impossible to enjoy all his eccentricities. But I made allowance for all of his peculiarities, and my heart went out in sympathy for him when he was obliged to cut short his last tour and return to London because of ill health.

He is the heroic mirth provoker of his time--unlike any other humorous lecturer. His audiences are kept in convulsions of laughter from beginning to end. Occasionally one thinks he has found a let-up and that he is going to have a rest, when all of a sudden he is struck in another funny spot, and things go on that way until he has finished. I never could understand why he should not be one of the greatest natural platform attractions in the world, for I have never known a man to give an audience more delight.

In his “Brother Jonathan and His Continent” he says: “Major Pond was the only man I met in America who was not a colonel.”

[Illustration: NYE AND RILEY]

* * * * *

BILL NYE was an editor when I first met him, and as I had been a printer, of course I felt akin to him. I had formed an attachment for him that made me wish to know him, so when I found myself in Laramie, on a return trip from California, I improved the opportunity to make his acquaintance. The trains from East and West across the continent met at Laramie, and made a stop of one hour, and Laramie was a lively city during that time.

I used my dinner hour to call on William. I asked a man to direct me to Bill Nye’s office, and he replied, “Just over that livery stable,” pointing across the way. I started across the street. Just over the road doorway of the stable hung a sign painted in black letters on a plain board:

“LARAMIE BOOMERANG

Walk Down the Alley Twist the Gray Mule’s Tail _Take the Elevator Immediately_.”

I went into the sanctum and found Nye writing at a plain table at the far side of the room, quite unaware of my presence. From photographs and descriptions I knew him by his back, and at once exclaimed:

“Hello, Bill!”

Nye rose from his seat and replied smilingly: “Hello, Jim! I guess this is Jim Pond. How are you, Major?”

I told him people were reading and talking of him all over the country, and that I believed he could make money lecturing. He replied that he had never given the matter a thought, and was trying to earn a living with his pen and through the Laramie postmastership, to which he had just been appointed.

From that time on Bill Nye and I were close friends. When he came East to live, and purchased his Staten Island home, our wives and children became friends also, and we knew and loved one another, and that love never lost any of its ardor.

I did not see Nye again until about 1886. I was looking out of my office window in the Everett House in New York, and noticed a tall, straight, slim, fair-haired man, in a slouch hat, whose countenance wore an expression of inquiry, and who seemed to be trying to find the entrance to my place. We recognized “ourselves,” and I beckoned to him, and told him to come around to the front door and have a bell-boy show him to my rooms. I added that there was no sign, or mule’s tail to twist, or elevator to take.

Bill came in and stared about at the pictures of great men and women on the walls as if he were a fresh, unsophisticated country boy--and so he was so far as experience was concerned. He told me that he had been engaged on the staff of the New York _World_ and was going to move to New York. The hardest part was to accustom himself to the politics of _The World_, but he said he supposed he could become used to that as soon as he became acclimated.

After a pleasant chat we dined together at Moretti’s. Nye asked if he would be expected to learn to eat macaroni like some of our Bohemian neighbors. This was his first Italian dinner; it was all of great interest to him, all new, and he saw it from the standpoint of an inexperienced youth.

I told him that now he was coming East to live I would make some money for him in the lyceum. He seemed doubtful, but said he would try it.

His first lecture under my auspices was given in Bridgeport, Conn. A certain organization (the Y. M. C. A.) in that place seemed to think the name of Bill Nye would draw, and engaged to pay him $150; so Bill was fitted out with his contract, and went to Bridgeport. The committee met him, and were very polite.

The contract read: “In consideration for said lecture the party of the first part agrees to pay to the party of the second part (Mr. Nye) $150 in currency on the evening of the lecture, before eight o’clock.”

Mr. Nye was on hand before the appointed time. A little after eight o’clock the president of the organization said:

“Mr. Nye, we are ready. Will you please follow me to the stage?”

Nothing was said about payment.

Mr. Nye said he was ready, but that he must return to New York as soon as the lecture was over, and added that he hoped he would not be detained. The president made no response, but walked on, followed by Bill. The Opera House was crowded, and the president remarked to the speaker of the evening that it was the largest house they remembered having on an opening night.

At the close of the lecture no one came to Mr. Nye to offer payment, and he was obliged to hint to the president that there was a little matter of business that had been forgotten.

“Oh, yes,” returned the president; “come with me to the box-office.”

“It’s twenty minutes to ten,” said Nye, “and I must catch the ten o’clock train.”

When they reached the box-office, the treasurer, who was counting the receipts of the evening, said:

“Mr. Nye, shall we settle with you or with Major Pond?”

“I have a copy of the contract, the same that you are holding in your hand, which reads ‘Settlement to be made in currency with party of the second part before eight o’clock.’”

“Oh, how much is it?”

“One hundred and fifty dollars in currency,” said Nye.

“One hundred and fifty dollars! Why, who ever heard of so much money for only an hour’s talk?”

“Did you lose any money on the venture?” asked William.

“Oh, no. The house was full; but we don’t think you ought to exact such an exorbitant sum for an hour’s talk.”

“Gentlemen, I must catch that train in ten minutes. Will you kindly settle with me?”

“You will take our check, won’t you, Mr. Nye?” asked the treasurer.

“Yes, if the contract says so. How does it read?” asked Mr. Nye, with impatience.

“It does read currency. You won’t take less than $150?”

Mr. Nye said nothing, and the treasurer counted out the money, for which Nye signed a receipt. Then he said:

“Gentlemen, I suppose you delayed this payment and decoyed me in here for the purpose of making me angry, thinking that when you gave me this money I would fling it back in your faces in a mad fit. You are mistaken. I’m a good-tempered man.”

Mr. Nye, like every one human who attempts to make a whole evening of fun, found lecturing irksome. The audience would fairly bubble over with laughter until every fun-liking muscle of their faces relaxed and left one sombre, wet-blanket expression all over the assembly; and there they had to sit, and the humorist had to proceed to the end of the programme without a response. It was the same with Mark Twain until he took a running mate and interspersed pathos by introducing George W. Cable, and by means of a varied programme achieved the greatest success ever known in the way of a platform entertainment.

* * * * *

JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY’S recitals of his own pathetic and humorous dialect poems have touched the tender chords in the hearts of the people, and they have vibrated in sympathy with the joys of his creations. His name is one of the best-loved household words in our cultivated American homes. A popular poet is not always a popular reader of his own poems, but Mr. Riley is fully as effective with his voice as with his pen. He is our American Burns.

After he had acquired fame as a very successful reader of his poems, Mr. Nye thought that by combining with him they might be as successful as some others. So Riley was approached, and the result was a combination of humor and pathos for the season of 1888-9. Riley came to New York, and the arrangements were perfected in my office. Nye and I were to be owners of the combination, and Riley, who always declared, “I’m no business man,” was to receive $500 a week and his hotel and travelling expenses.

Advertising methods were next discussed. Something unique must be thought out. I suggested a short biographical sketch of each one. Mr. Riley said, “Bill, you write my autobiography, and I’ll write yours.” This was agreed upon, and the manuscript was put into my hands the next day.

Finally, the programme had to be decided upon, and in another twenty-four hours that was mapped out. After it was finished and ready to send out I had the first copy framed, with a nice mat around it. When the mat was brought in, Riley asked me to let him see it. He took a pen, and in about an hour had decorated it with pen drawings worthy of an artist. It still hangs in my office.

* * * * *

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF BILL NYE

_Written by Himself_

_Through James Whitcomb Riley_

Edgar Wilson Nye was born in Maine, in 1850, August 25th, but at two years of age he took his parents by the hand, and,

[Illustration: THE NYE-RILEY PROGRAM, WITH MR. RILEY’S DECORATIONS]

telling them that Piscataquis County was no place for them, he boldly struck out for St. Croix County, Wis., where the hardy young pioneer soon made a home for his parents. The first year he drove the Indians out of the St. Croix Valley, and suggested to the Northwestern Railroad that it would be a good idea to build to St. Paul as soon as the company could get a grant which would pay them two or three times the cost of construction. The following year he adopted trousers, and made $175 from the sale of wolf scalps. He also cleared twenty-seven acres of land, and raised some watermelons. In 1854 he established and endowed a district school in Pleasant Valley. It was at this time that he began to turn his attention to the abolition of slavery in the South, and to write articles for the press, signed Veritas, in which he advocated the war in 1860, or as soon as the Government could get around to it.

In 1865 he graduated from the farm and began the study of the law. He did not advance very rapidly in this profession, failing several times in his examination, and giving bonds for his appearance at the next term of court. He was, however, a close student of political economy, and studied personal economy at the same time, till he found that he could easily live on ten cents a day and his relatives.

Mr. Nye then began to look about him for a new country to build up and foster, and, as Wisconsin had grown to be so thickly settled in the northwestern part of the State that neighbors were frequently found less than five miles apart, he broke loose from all restraint and took emigrant rates for Cheyenne, Wyo. Here he engaged board at the Inter-Ocean Hotel, and began to look about him for a position in a bank. Not succeeding in this, he tried the law and journalism. He did not succeed in getting a job for some time, but finally was hired as associate editor and janitor of the Laramie _Sentinel_. The salary was small, but Mr Nye’s latitude great, and he was permitted to write anything that he thought would please the people, whether it was news or not.

By and by he had won every heart by his gentle, patient poverty and his delightful parsimony in regard to facts. With a hectic imagination and an order on a restaurant which advertised in the paper he scarcely cared through the livelong day whether school kept or not.

Thus he rose to Justice of the Peace, and finally to an income reported very large to everybody but the assessor.

He is the father of several very beautiful children by his first wife, who is still living. She is a Chicago girl, and loves her husband far more than he deserves. He is pleasant to the outside world, but a perfect brute in his home. He early learned that, in order to win the love of his wife, he should be erratic, and kick the stove over on the children when he came home. He therefore asserts himself in this way, and the family love and respect him, being awed by his greatness and gentle barbarism.

He eats plain food with both hands, conversing all the time pleasantly with any one who may be visiting at the house. If his children do not behave, he kicks them from beneath the table till they roar with pain, as he chats on with the guests with a bright and everflowing stream of _bons mots_ which please and delight those who visit him to such a degree that they forget that they have had hardly anything to eat.

In conclusion, Mr. Nye is in every respect a lovely character. He feared that injustice might be done him, however, in this sketch, and so he has written it himself.

* * * * *

It is scarcely necessary to say that before these “autobiographies” were written the humorists exchanged life stories and personal data; and in writing the sketches they adhered to the essential facts with reasonable fidelity. The idea proved a happy thought, and there was much comment upon it at the time. Of the two biographies, the one by Mr. Nye was conceded to have the keener edge.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY

_Written by Himself_

_Through Edgar Wilson Nye_

The unhappy subject of this sketch was born so long ago that he persists in never referring to the date. Citizens of his native town of Greenfield, Ind., while warmly welcoming his advent, were no less anxious some few years ago to “speed the parting guest.” It seems, in fact, that, the better they came to know him, the more resigned they were to give him up. He was ill-starred from the very cradle, it appears. One day, while but a toddler, he climbed, unseen, to an open window where some potted flowers were ranged, and while leaning from his high chair far out, to catch some dainty, gilded butterfly, perchance, he lost his footing, and, with a piercing shriek, fell headlong to the gravelled walk below; and when, an instant later, the affrighted parents picked him up, he was--a poet.

The father of young Riley was a lawyer of large practice, who used, in moments of deep thought, to regard this boy as the worst case he ever had. This may have been the reason that, in time, he insisted on his reading law, which the boy really tried to do; but, finding that political economy and Blackstone didn’t rhyme, he slid out of the office one hot, sultry afternoon, and ran away with a patent medicine and concert wagon, from the tail end of which he was discovered by some relatives in the next town, violently abusing a brass drum. This was a proud moment for the boy; nor did his peculiar presence of mind entirely desert him till all the country fairs were over for the season. Then, afar off, among strangers in a strange State, he thought it would be fine to make a flying visit home. But he couldn’t fly. Fortunately, in former years he had purloined some knowledge of a trade. He could paint a sign, or a house, or a tin roof--if some one else would furnish him the paint--and one of Riley’s hand-painted picket fences gave rapture to the most exacting eye. Yet, through all his stress and trial, he preserved a simple, joyous nature, together with an everwidening love of men and things in general. He made friends, and money, too--enough, at last, to gratify the highest ambition of his life, namely, to own an overcoat with fur around the tail of it. He then groped his way back home, and worked for nothing on a little country paper that did not long survive the blow. Again excusing himself, he took his sappy paragraphs and poetry to another paper and another town, and there did better till he spoiled it all by devising a Poe poem fraud, by which he lost his job; and, in disgrace and humiliation shoe-mouth deep, his feelings gave way beneath his feet, and his heart broke with a loud report. So the true poet was born.

Of the poet’s present personality we need speak but briefly. His dress is at once elegant and paid for. It is even less picturesque than all-wool. Not liking hair particularly, he wears but little, and that of the mildest shade. He is a good speaker--when spoken to--but a much better listener, and often longs to change places with his audience so that he also may retire. In his writings he probably shows at his best. He always tries to, anyway. Knowing the manifold _faux pas_ and “breaks” in this life of ours, his songs are sympathetic and sincere. Speaking coyly of himself, one day, he said: “I write from the heart; that’s one thing I like about me. I may not write a good hand, and my ‘copy’ may occasionally get mixed up with the market reports, but, all the same, what challenges my admiration is that humane peculiarity of mine--_i.e._, writing from the heart--and, therefore, _to_ the heart.”

* * * * *

The Nye-Riley combination started in Newark, N. J., November 13, 1888. It was our trial venture. I was ill and unable to be present. The receipts were light, for both men were of Western fame, and had yet to acquire reputations in the East. They found some fault because I was not present, so I got out of bed and went the following evening to Orange, N. J., where we found a very small audience, so small that Nye refused to go on, and wished to end the business then and there. It was not until after much persuasion that he consented to appear. The show was a great success “artistically,” but the box-office receipts were only fifty-four dollars.

It was not a pleasant day, for the manager, that followed. The Actors’ Fund had an entertainment in one of the theatres, and I had contributed these “Twins of Genius” as my share of the numerous attractions. They were the success of the occasion, and the newspapers so declared the next day. From that time, applications began to come in from all over the country, East, West, North, and South. The first week’s business showed a balance on the wrong side for the owners, but the “no-business man” did not show a sign of murmuring. Nye’s humorous weekly syndicate newspaper articles made him a drawing attraction, and Riley’s delightful readings of his dialect poems made the entertainment all that the public desired. I ran the show myself in Boston, securing Tremont Temple for the occasion. “Mark Twain” had come to Boston on purpose to attend the entertainment, as he had never heard these “Twins of Genius.” I caught him in the lobby of the Parker House, and told him that he must introduce them. He replied that he believed I was his mortal enemy and determined that he should never have an evening’s enjoyment in my presence. He consented, however, and conducted his brother humorist and the Hoosier poet to the platform. Mark’s presence was a surprise to the audience, and when they recognized him the demonstration was tremendous. The audience rose in a body, and men and women shouted at the very top of their voices. Handkerchiefs waved, the organist even opened every forte key and pedal in the great organ, and the noise went on unabated for minutes. It took some time for the crowd to get down to listening, but when they did subside, as Mark stepped to the front, the silence was as impressive as the noise had been, as Mark said afterward. At that supreme moment nothing was heard but--silence! I had engaged a stenographer to take down the speech, and this is what Mark said:

“I am very glad indeed to introduce these young people to you, and at the same time get acquainted with them myself. I have seen them more than once, for a moment, but have not had the privilege of knowing them personally as intimately as I wanted to. I saw them first, a great many years ago, when Mr. Barnum had them, and they were just fresh from Siam. The ligature was their best hold then, but literature became their best hold later, when one of them committed an indiscretion, and they had to cut the old bond to accommodate the sheriff. In that old former time this one was Chang, that one was Eng. The sympathy existing between the two was most extraordinary; it was so fine, so strong, so subtle, that what the one ate the other digested, when one slept the other snored, if one sold a thing the other scooped the usufruct. This independent and yet dependent action was observable in all the details of their daily life--I mean this quaint and arbitrary distribution of originating cause and resulting effect between the two: between, I may say, this dynamo and this motor. Not that I mean that the one was always dynamo and the other always motor--or, in other words, that the one was always the creating force, the other always the utilizing force; no, no, for while it is true that within certain well-defined zones of activity the one _was_ always dynamo and the other always motor, within certain other well-defined zones these positions became exactly reversed. For instance, in moral matters Mr. Chang Riley was always dynamo, Mr. Eng Nye was always motor; for while Mr. Chang Riley had a high, in fact an abnormally high and fine, moral sense, he had no machinery to work it within; whereas Mr. Eng Nye, who hadn’t any moral sense at all, and hasn’t yet, was equipped with all the necessary _plant_ for putting a noble deed through, if he could only get the inspiration on reasonable terms outside. In intellectual matters, on the other hand, Mr. Eng Nye was always dynamo, Mr. Chang Riley was always motor: Mr. Eng Nye had a stately intellect, but couldn’t make it go; Mr. Chang Riley hadn’t, but could. That is to say, that while Mr. Chang Riley couldn’t think things himself, he had a marvellous natural grace in setting them down and weaving them together when his pal furnished the raw material. Thus, working together, they made a strong team; laboring together, they could do miracles; but break the circuit, and both were impotent. It has remained so to this day; they must travel together, conspire together, beguile together, hoe, and plant, and plough, and reap, and sell their public together, or there’s no result. I have made this explanation, this analysis, this vivisection, so to speak, in order that you may enjoy these delightful adventurers understandingly. When Mr. Eng Nye’s deep, and broad, and limpid philosophies flow by in front of you, refreshing all the regions round about with their gracious floods, you will remember that it isn’t his water; it’s the other man’s, and he is only working the pump. And when Mr. Chang Riley enchants your ear, and soothes your spirit, and touches your heart with the sweet and genuine music of his poetry--as sweet and as genuine as any that his friends, the birds and the bees, make about his other friends, the woods and the flowers--you will remember, while placing justice where justice is due, that it isn’t his music, but the other man’s--he is only turning the crank.

“I beseech for these visitors a fair field, a single-minded, one-eyed umpire, and a score bulletin barren of goose-eggs if they earn it--and I judge they will and hope they will. Mr. James Whitcomb Chang Riley will now go to the bat.”

It was a carnival of fun in every sense of the word. Bostonians will not have another such treat in this generation. It was Mark’s last appearance in Boston.

After the performance, the three invincibles went to the Press Club, where a shower of jokes, stories unpublished (and that never will be published), poems, and epigrams was poured into the Boston writers until all were full. The event is still fresh in the memory of all who have survived it. They appeared in all the large cities before great audiences, and the season was financially successful up to the middle of April.

For some weeks Mr. Riley had not been a well man, and it finally became necessary to cancel a long list of bookings. The stars returned to their homes, and settlements with disappointed committees and local managers absorbed all the profits. Pacific Coast correspondents still clamored for Nye, even if Riley were not available; so it was arranged to give Mr. Nye a musical support instead of a poet, and resume the unfinished tour. Nye was well received everywhere, and wrote back cheerful accounts of the Bill Nye troupe from “ocean to ocean.” But it had been the Nye-Riley combination that the people wanted and expected, and in every city where they had appeared together the season before they were wanted again. So we tried it once more, and in the season 1889-90 did a tremendous business in Washington and in the South. The combination was a more profitable attraction than any opera or theatrical company.

This tour ended my business relations with Bill Nye, but it did not end our love each other.

James Whitcomb Riley and Nye were a peculiar pair. They were everlastingly playing practical jokes.

I remember when we were riding together, in the smoking compartment, between Columbus and Cincinnati. Mr. Nye was a great smoker and Mr. Riley did not dislike tobacco. An old farmer came over to Mr. Nye and said:

“Are you Mr. Riley? I heard you was on the train.”

“No, I am not Mr. Riley. He is over there.”

“I knew his father, and I would like to speak with him.”

“Oh, speak with him, yes. But he is deaf, and you want to speak loud.”

So the farmer went over to him and said in a loud voice:

“Is this Mr. Riley?”

“Er, what?”

“Is this Mr. Riley?”

“What did you say?”

“Is this Mr. Riley?”

“Riley, oh! yes.”

“I knew your father.”

“No bother.”

“I knew your father.”

“What?”

“I knew your father!”

“Oh, so did I.”

And in a few moments the farmer heard Nye and Riley talking in ordinary tones of voice. Imagine his chagrin!

In an article published in the Sunday newspapers, Nye paid his gentle respects to James Whitcomb Riley as his “old comrade and partner in the show business.” Remarking that some admirer gave Riley “the place left vacant by Doctor Holmes,” he suggested that “we must pause to think how different the two men were.” While the Hoosier poet could “compare with Holmes in the size of audiences, the doctor’s humor was of a more strictly Massachusetts character. He would be content with a pun or conundrum, while Riley enjoyed _practical_ humor.” He proceeded to give an example by narrating how, upon one occasion, the manager warned the hotel man that nothing “but clean shirts and farinaceous food” was to be sent up to “No. 182.” The poet, with “his keen sense of humor,” as Nye termed it, found that the room communicated with No. 180, and that the man who was domiciled there had gone out for the evening. He stepped in and “at odd times used the bell of No. 180 with great skill, thereby irritating his manager so much that he returned to New York on the following day. “Holmes,” continued Nye, “had none of this dry, crisp humor, but cared more for a subtle and delicate play upon words than for a play upon a lecture manager or a hotel proprietor.”

The letters which follow bring to me laughter, with the memory, also, of suffering which echoes behind the mirth. Nye caught the motes as they danced in the sunlight and held them up before us for common amusement. Their antics made him laugh, and he wished others to laugh also; but he kept the sunshine. Within its rays might be seen the dust and the rain; but the glow was always there. No human mote was ever hurt by impalement on his pen. Always humorous, he never failed in human kindliness. He made men laugh out of sheer sense of fun, never by a single shaft of malice. His “heart-easing mirth” was wrung quite often from personal suffering. Writing each week for a public that broadened with the enjoyment he gave, there was but little room for permanence in Nye’s works, though his books still continue to sell. He always gave a great deal of credit to Mrs. Nye for the successful management of his business affairs. Some investments caused reverses, but the result was perhaps unavoidable under general business conditions at the time. Mrs. Nye was once taken in by a real estate operator who secured confidence by assuming a religious character. Nye never ceased to joke about it. The lots were found to be under water, and the humorist suggested the use of a diving bell in locating them.

In one of the earliest of Nye’s letters he wrote: “I feel so kinky this spring that I believe that I am warranted in authorizing you to make a limited number of dates not too far from New York for my new illustrated lecture on the New South, and other things. I will accompany the lecture with my voice, and you can say with safety that it will be gently facetious and mildly instructive.--Bill Nye.”

From St. Joseph, Mo., when nearing the close of a severe but successful tour, Nye wrote that Western managers all wished to arrange business for him. “But,” he added, “I am quite doubtful whether I will make a show of myself any more. It may be gratifying to some, and surely if it be pleasant to be fêted, and fed, and wined, and dined, and fined, from one end of the country to the other, I ought to be happy. But I do not pant for that kind of joy.”

He closed as usual with merry quip and kindly humor, by requesting that his kindest regards and deepest sympathies be given to Miss Glass (my secretary). “What a noble, self-sacrificing girl she is! to sit there day after day surrounded by such unpleasant associations, and printing stuff that ought to go into the waste-basket, yet never murmuring nor repining.”

From Iowa City, early in the following year, he wrote:

“I wish a good many times that I had you along to jump on various people with your ponderous weight and make them tired. More especially the fresh young man and the autograph fiend. The other night at Mankato we had the house stuffed full and the stage crowded with people. Then I had to hold an autograph recital after the show. It was a great success. Here I am slowly freezing to death as I write these lines. I am in room No. 6⅝. The stove is a boy’s size holding a pint of soft coal. The bed has no sheets or pillow slips, but the chambermaid who comes in every spring--into the room, I mean--says they expect some sheets some time to-day, and tells me that no expense will be spared to make the hotel a success.

“It is a great pleasure to get your letters when I land at a lonesome hotel which smells like the Dead Past and--cabbage.”

In a letter written from _The World_ office to me, in California, in June, 1888, Mr. Nye says that “it is funny that a little cuss like you should make such a cavity in New York when away from it.” Telling of his remarkable success on _The World_ and the increased payment given for the funny weekly paper he furnished, he added that “J. Pulitzer pressed me to go to Europe on Saturday with him, and said we would practically own the steamer, which is true, as he draws $2,000 a day from _The World_ and is really out of the reach of want, but I was afraid he would not like me as a travelling companion, and so remained at home.... More money here just now.... Saturday, the Authors’ Club and self go up to Cornwall-on-the-Hudson, to ‘Miss’ E. P. Roe, who writes pieces for the papers.”

In a letter from Staten Island, where he was residing, he rather plaintively tells how the house was struck by lightning. From Minneapolis he merrily tells of umpiring a baseball match.

Under date of September 28, 1888, he writes a letter headed “In Hospital,” closing thus: “Yours with a heart full of gratitude and a system full of drugs, paints, oil, turpentine, glass, putty, and everything usually kept in a first-class drug store.

“BILL NYE

“P.S.--Open all night.”

* * * * *

From Buffalo, without other date than Friday, 1889, he writes: “Considering the fact that I have written to you so seldom, you have been real kind to write right on. ‘God bless you,’ as the feller says, ‘for your kind but wabbly heart.’ We are at the Iroquois, because it is ‘absolutely fireproof.’ We noticed that in Lynn and Boston the absolutely fireproof buildings were a little hotter while burning, and so we have chosen one for winter use whenever we could.”

One of his letters was written at a railroad junction in Minnesota where he was waiting for the next through train to La Crosse, and had “only twenty-three and one-half hours to wait.” The railroads were then running in the interest of the “Hotel and Eating-House,” and made it a rule to avoid connections as much as possible.

* * * * *

“MY DEAR POND:

“I am writing this at an imitation hotel where the roads fork. I will call it the Fifth Avenue Hotel, because the hotel at a railroad junction is generally called the Fifth Avenue, or the Gem City House, or the Palace Hotel. Just as the fond parent of a white-eyed, two-legged freak of Nature loves to name his mentally diluted son Napoleon, and for the same reason that a prominent horse owner in Illinois last year socked my name on a tall, buckskin-colored colt that did not resemble me, intellectually or physically--a colt that did not know enough to go around a barbed-wire fence, but sought to sift himself through it into an untimely grave--so this man has named his sway-backed wigwam the Fifth Avenue Hotel.

“It is different from your Fifth Avenue in many ways. In the first place, there is not so much travel and business in its neighborhood. As I said before, this is where two railroads fork. In fact, it is the leading industry here. The growth of the town is naturally slow, but it is a healthy growth. There is nothing in the nature of dangerous or wild-cat speculation in the advancement of this place, and while there has been no noticeable or rapid advance in the principal business here, there has been no falling off at all, and the roads are forking as much to-day as they did before the war, while the same three men who were present for the first glad moment are still here to witness the operation.

“Sometimes a train is derailed, as the papers call it, and two or three people have to remain over, as we did, all night. (Luckily this happens to be an ‘open date’ for our combine.) It is at such a time the Fifth Avenue Hotel is the scene of great excitement. A large codfish, with a broad and sunny smile and his bosom full of rock salt, is tied in the creek to freshen and fit himself for the responsible position of floor manager of the codfish ball. A pale chambermaid, wearing a black jersey with large pores in it through which she is gently percolating, now goes joyously up the stairs to make the little post-office lock-box rooms look ten times worse than they ever did before. She warbles a low refrain as she nimbly knocks loose the venerable dust of centuries and sets it afloat throughout the rooms. All is bustle about the house. Especially the chambermaid. We are put up in the guest’s chamber here. It has two atrophied beds made up of pains and counterpanes. The light, joyous feeling which this remark may convey is wholly assumed on my part.

“The door of our room is full of holes where locks have been wrenched off in order to let the coroner in. Last night I could imagine that I was in the act of meeting, personally, the famous people who have tried to sleep here, and who moaned through the night, and who died while waiting for the dawn.

“This afternoon we pay our bills, as is our usual custom, and tear ourselves away from the Fifth Avenue Hotel. We leave at 2:30. Hoping the roads may continue to fork just the same as though we had remained, and that this will find you enjoying yourself, I am,

“Yours truly, “EDGAR WILSON NYE.”

* * * * *

On the back of one of his letters was a peculiarly drawn sketch of an elongated hand and an extended index finger. Below was a burlesque advertisement of a certain “Postmaster-General and dealer in gents’ fine underwear,” and a variety of funny articles. He adds, “This space reserved at reasonable rates,” and then, as I was still in England, asks me to give his regards to Stanley, with a funny addenda in messages also to “Victoria and P. Wales.”

I find a visiting-card left in my office about this period, on the back of which Mr. Nye had written: “10 P.M.--It is now too late to make more than three or four dollars at poker before quitting-time, so I will go home.

BILL.”

It must be said here that Nye was not a card-player, and this was only one of many references to things he never did.

A letter from Arden, N. C. (the town where he died), was dated “Sabbath Morning, Just After Prayers.”

“I used to keep a scrap-book in which I glued the little printed statements about my having called and subscribed for the paper, or to the effect that I had just laid a porcelain egg on the editor’s table measuring nine inches in circumference, but the book warped and the glue in it turned sour, so that when I used to give it to my guests to read while I went upstairs to dress, I noticed that they frequently opened the window and sometimes went out for more air, strolling so far away from the house that they never got back. So I don’t keep a scrap-book any more.”

Referring to his new play, “The Cadi,” he wrote:

“The prospects are fine. What the _Vampire Press_ will say no one knows, but Robson, Jefferson, among ’em, are hopeful and tickled. Let me know if you can come to the show so I can ‘avoid the rush.’”

Nye’s friendships were steadfast. He wrote once, after John Cockerill retired from the New York _World_: “The paper has wired me to ‘reconsider.’ But I would rather stick by Cockerill under all circumstances, as he has been my staunch friend always, and now I’m his’n.”

In 1892, Bill Nye was lecturing, and, as usual, quite successfully. At that time our business relations had ended, and he was under other management. He wrote to me from Chicago: “Everything is unsettled except my salary, which is paid every twenty-four hours.”

Of a former experience he remarks: “I’d have done better to put in that spring cultivating colts. However, it is none of my business this time. The ghost walks every night.” Again during this tour he says: “I would enjoy your letters more if you would not refer to Chautauqua, I have always refused to lecture in the stockades. I’ve got a trunk full of their letters now asking me to speak a few words in absolute confidence to the United States in Foley’s Grove, but I will not. I am saving my voice to cool my hot Scotches next winter.” He adds: “We had a long visit with Riley last week. We had some old-fashioned fun, and I descended for the day to the realms of Poesy, where they chew ‘star’ tobacco. Poesy is indeed a strange gift.”

In another letter he apologized for the smallness of the paper by saying:

“This paper belongs to Mrs. Nye, and the envelope belongs to a man who wanted an autograph. So, you see, I am getting economical. It has a stamp.”

Here is a letter which he illustrated in a humorous fashion:

* * * * *

“ARDEN, N. C., May 23, 1895.

“MY DEAR JUNIUS BRUTUS POND:

“There’s no use talking, with all your faults I enjoy the sight of your wild, unlicensed penmanship. ‘Another season of pleasure and amusement stares us in the face,’ as you so truly, so succinctly, and so merrily say! Oh, it is fun to be merry all the time at so much per pop, is it not?

“Merrily yours, “LITTLE BILLIE NYE.”

“P.S.--We have just merrily passed through diphtheria, but all is serene again.”

* * * * *

In another letter of a near-by date he wrote: “Tell Mark Twain that if he had not possessed the fatal gift of humor he might now be President of the United States, and if I could have had my way he should have been, anyway.

“Mr. Depew told me that Garfield admitted to him many years ago that he (Garfield) was naturally a humorist, but had smothered the low, coarse impulse to be amusing in order that he might forward his political ambitions. And what was the result? He went down to his grave full of laudable puns, but Mark Twain will live forever in the glad hearts of a billion people, and with all due respect to Max O’Rell, who, on rather small capital, has realized under your able management many a good American dollar, I am glad that the sage of Hartford spoke up to him.

“Foreigners who come here and buy large fur overcoats and live on lobster à la Newburg for the first time, should not go home and speak lightly of our morals, either in France or England.”

A characteristic letter came to me from Buck Shoals, Arden, N. C., under date of July 4, 1894:

* * * * *

“DEAR JAMESIE:

“Your note of the 28th of June struck my thirsty soul like a drop of dew on the back of a somewhat feverish, warty toad, and so now on this our country’s glorious natal day I take in hand to acknowledge receipt of same.

“If ever a feller had his heartstrings strained to their utmost limit for eight consecutive weeks, I have.

“Mrs. Nye was for some days halting between life and death, and lost her big baby boy after all; then Bess came home from school with fever, and both she and her mother are barely out of the woods now.

“In the midst of it all our house caught fire one fine night when I had gone to bed more dead than alive, but we cut open the wall and got at it with our amateur fire brigade before the whole structure had begun to blaze.

“However, all is well now, and both the invalids will recover fully, directly. The insurance company paid up promptly, and once more I breathe a full, delicious breath of ‘this justly celebrated climate.’

“I did not write anything so all-fired mirthful during those weeks, but got through somehow, having five weeks ahead on the Sunday-letter job. I’m real tickled to know that you like the history, and you will be glad to know that she has an ever-increasing sale, one book seeming to call for another, as Uncle Sydney would put it. I shall look forward with joy to your forthcoming book, for I feel no little pride in my autograph collection of Hoosier poetry.

“Poor old Burbank [at one time Mr. Nye’s “running-mate”], I was about to say, but why should I say that when he is taking a grand old rest after a rather thorny trip? There never lived a more unselfish gentleman than he. He was not brilliant as an originator, perhaps, but he honestly admitted it, and used to the utmost and best all the powers that God gave him. There are mighty few comrades who can go through dark alleys and dangerous stage entrances that are kept locked against the lecturer and only open to the call of the felonious loafer who comes to shift your scenery--only a few comrades, I say, who can go through frosty towns and bitter weather cheerily, as he did--noble old man. And there’s no such test on earth to try a feller’s mettle, is there? I think it’s a good idea to reform and abandon such a life before the hearse is actually at the door waiting for one. I am cheerily preparing to say farewell to these triumphal tours which wreck both soul and body at so much a pair. But I must close and relight my punk. Good-by, old man, and ‘take keer o’ yourself.’ Write to me whenever you are tempted to disobey your physician, and I will promptly respond.

“Yours ever, BILL”

* * * * *

The personality of the professional humorist is often of a very different sort from that which those who know him only through his merry-making would naturally picture. The history of one and another shows that they have turned their bright side to the world, have laughed and joked, and have so bubbled over with humor that they seem to have no serious side--all this with a background of physical disease, or a personal sorrow, that made mental depression inevitable, and to be constantly fought against.

Bill Nye, with whom the public smiled for so many years, kept alive his quaint humor in the face of bodily disability under which men of less courage would have succumbed at once.

He had a happy spirit, a genuine humor, which can ill be spared. He said no ill-natured or malicious thing in all his writings, and, for one so quick to discover shams, this one fact speaks volumes for the sweetness of his soul.

EXPLORERS, TRAVELLERS,

AND

WAR CORRESPONDENTS

[Illustration: HENRY M. STANLEY]

HENRY M. STANLEY was engaged by me in the summer of 1886, while travelling in England with Henry Ward Beecher. I was asked if I did not want Henry M. Stanley in America. I replied that Mr. Stanley had once made the attempt, and had been a most dismal failure. A day or two later, when I mentioned this circumstance to Mr. Beecher, he replied: “Get Stanley if you can. He is one of the greatest men we have. I have been reading ‘Through the Dark Continent’; it is a great book. He is doing good work for civilization. He is clean.”

I arranged then to call upon Mr. Stanley at his apartments in New Bond Street and learn what his ideas were in regard to revisiting the United States. There I saw him for the first time, and found a very quiet, unassuming little man with dark hair and penetrating light blue eyes, reticent, but very pleasant. He allowed me to do the talking.

I related what I had heard Mr. Beecher say of him, and saw at once that it pleased him. It was about one o’clock. I asked him if he had lunched; he had not, so I invited him to the Café Royal, where we lunched together.

At luncheon I tried to entertain him with conversation, telling of America and the changes that had taken place during his absence. He listened attentively, but made no response; finally, in order to get him to speak, I began to put questions to him about Africa and its people. I then discovered that I had found and touched the proper key, and he was soon relating to me wonderful accounts of his adventures. When we came to separate, I remarked that there was a great American comedian playing at the Gaiety Theatre, and asked if he would not like to see and hear him. He replied that he would be delighted, so the appointment was made, and we occupied a box at the Gaiety together that evening in company with a young English friend of mine. Mr. Stanley seemed to enjoy the play very much, paying the closest attention until the curtain dropped.

We parted at Charing Cross, Stanley saying, “Good-night; I am indebted to you for a very enjoyable evening,” and started home. I don’t know why, but as he turned the first corner I hurried after him. I have never told this before, and I cannot tell now why it was that I could not help following him. But he had produced a most remarkable impression upon me. I kept saying to myself: “That is Stanley! Stanley, the wonderful explorer! What a life he has had! How I should like to have shared with him his hazardous adventures! How I should like to serve such a man!”

The next morning I received the following letter from Mr. Stanley, which he must have written and mailed to me on his return from the theatre:

* * * * *

“MY DEAR MAJOR POND:

“I am willing to go to America and deliver fifty lectures for you, beginning November 29th next, six lectures a week, you paying me $100 a lecture and my travelling expenses from the date of the first lecture to the close of the tour, settlements to be made weekly. In case I am recalled by the King of the Belgians, I am to be allowed to return without let or hindrance. If this proposition meets your views, you may sign and return a copy of this letter, which I send in duplicate.

“Yours very truly,

“HENRY M. STANLEY.”

* * * * *

I at once signed a duplicate copy of the letter, and then cabled to America that I had secured Stanley for a lecture tour. I returned home in October, and found a number of letters and inquiries relating to the lectures.

When Mr. Stanley arrived in America, November 27, 1886, I had rented Chickering Hall, New York, for the first lecture of the tour. I secured Henry Ward Beecher to present Mr. Stanley, who had been interviewed fully by the reporters on his arrival. There were columns about him in all the newspapers in New York and adjoining cities.

The evening came, but tickets had gone slowly. Mr. Beecher introduced Mr. Stanley in a brief description of his remarkable career, paying a handsome tribute to his work for usefulness to mankind, and then followed the lecture entitled “Through the Dark Continent.” It was descriptive of his many adventures in Central Africa, and proved to be thrilling and interesting in the extreme.

Mr. Beecher had prophesied correctly.

At the third lecture, given in New Haven, it became evident that Mr. Stanley would be a success. Mr. Beecher had been right. The next lecture was at Hartford. I could not get a hall or opera house, so I rented Unity Church. Here in Hartford Mr. Stanley was the guest of his friend S. L. Clemens (“Mark Twain”), who presided and introduced the explorer in a characteristic address of welcome to his city and his fireside. After the lecture, returning to Mr. Clemens’s home, I invited “Mark” to go to Boston with us on the following day and introduce Stanley, where I was sure of a great crowd. “Mark” said the only objection to accepting such an invitation was the “taking a feller so unawares, with no possible time to prepare a suitable, impromptu, extemporaneous speech for so important an occasion.” Mr. Stanley seemed pleased with the suggestion, and as the two men were great friends, the arrangement was made. As “Mark,” Stanley, and I spent the time together after the Hartford lecture, each apparently unmindful of the coming event of the evening, the following introductory speech by Mark on that occasion will give an idea of his resources in an emergency. The humorist and the explorer walked on to the platform simultaneously--a combination such as a Boston audience has rarely met. “Mark” stepped to the front and introduced his friend as follows:

“Ladies and Gentlemen: If any should ask, Why is it that you are here as introducer of the lecturer? I should answer that I happened to be around and was asked to perform this function. I was quite willing to do so, and, as there was no sort of need of an introduction, anyway, it could be necessary only that some person come forward for a moment and do an unnecessary thing, and this is quite in my line. Now, to introduce so illustrious a name as Henry M. Stanley by any detail of what the man has done is clear aside from my purpose; that would be stretching the unnecessary to an unconscionable degree. When I contrast what I have achieved in my measurably brief life with what he has achieved in his possibly briefer one, the effect is to sweep utterly away the ten-story edifice of my own self-appreciation and leave nothing behind but the cellar. When you compare these achievements of his with the achievements of really great men who exist in history, the comparison, I believe, is in his favor. I am not here to disparage Columbus.

“No, I won’t do that; but when you come to regard the achievements of these two men, Columbus and Stanley, from the standpoint of the difficulties they encountered, the advantage is with Stanley and against Columbus. Now, Columbus started out to discover America. Well, he didn’t need to do anything at all but sit in the cabin of his ship and hold his grip and sail straight on, and America would discover itself. Here it was, barring his passage the whole length and breadth of the South American continent, and he couldn’t get by it. He’d got to discover it. But Stanley started out to find Doctor Livingstone, who was scattered abroad, as you may say, over the length and breadth of a vast slab of Africa as big as the United States.

“It was a blind kind of search. He was the worst scattered of men. But I will throw the weight of this introduction upon one very peculiar feature of Mr. Stanley’s character, and that is his indestructible Americanism--an Americanism which he is proud of. And in this day and time, when it is the custom to ape and imitate English methods and fashion, it is like a breath of fresh air to stand in the presence of this untainted American citizen who has been caressed and complimented by half of the crowned heads of Europe; who could clothe his body from his head to his heels with the orders and decorations lavished upon him. And yet, when the untitled myriads of his own country put out their hands in welcome to him and greet him, ‘Well done,’ through the Congress of the United States, that is the crown that is worth all the rest to him. He is a product of institutions which exist in no other country on earth--institutions that bring out all that is best and most heroic in a man. I introduce Henry M. Stanley.”

After this Boston triumph, applications by telegraph and mail came pouring in from all parts of the country. Stanley saw that he was a success, and seemed pleased that his manager was on the winning side. He suggested that I might as well lay my season out for one hundred lectures, instead of fifty (singular, too, he did not suggest a rise in his fee), and so we agreed, and I hurried back to New York to complete the bookings for one hundred nights. Of course, in our contract, Mr. Stanley had stipulated that in case he was recalled by the King of Belgium, he was to be allowed to return without let or hindrance, but that was not expected.

Mr. Stanley was delivering his tenth lecture in Amherst, Mass., on Saturday evening, November 11th. I was in my office in New York writing letters. It was ten o’clock in the evening when I received the following telegram:

* * * * *

“AMHERST, MASS., November 11, 1886.

“J. B. POND, EVERETT HOUSE, NEW YORK.

“Must stop lecturing. Recalled. Sail Wednesday at 4 A.M.

“HENRY M. STANLEY.”

* * * * *

All my hopes dashed to the ground in a moment! It was not the first disappointment in my life, however. I turned out my lights and retired, to try to rest and think. Stanley certainly would and must go, and no power on earth could prevent that. I determined to meet him cordially on his arrival, and to lend him all the aid in my power toward getting away on so short a notice.

The next morning (Sunday, November 12th), about 6 o’clock, Mr. Stanley arrived, and came immediately to my room in my hotel to tell me that it required every moment of his time to get ready and sail Wednesday morning by steamship _Eidler_ at four o’clock. His decorations and valuable presents from Queen Victoria and other monarchs were at a jeweller’s on exhibition. He asked me to collect them personally, as he had a great deal to do. He had accepted a commission to go back to Africa at once, heading an expedition for the relief of Emin Pasha; there was no time to lose, for he must equip the expedition in the shortest possible time, as many lives were at stake.

Early in the forenoon people began to call. There were representatives of the manufacturers of firearms and every sort of equipment necessary for the work.

That evening, after a long day of consultations and dictations of correspondence in preparation for his hurried departure, after we had dined together, Mr. Stanley sat down in my office for about two hours, smoking vigorously and uttering not a word. I knew he was undergoing a severe mental struggle. He realized the hazardous risk he was taking, the deprivation and suffering incumbent on such an expedition, with the chances, even the most favorable to be considered, against losing not only his own life, but the lives of many others. He finally spoke to me of the singular business he had been engaged in during the day--that of examining and getting information as to which were the most effective firearms for the destruction of human life.

As his and my experience in the Indian country had been somewhat similar, he asked me if I did not think, after all, that if we had pursued wholly peaceful tactics with the Indians our Government would have been more successful with them. He was considering whether it was not best to undertake this mission across Africa with an unarmed company rather than to have the appearance of a body of armed invaders. So far as the natives were concerned, he had no misgivings, but the army of slave-hunting Arabs under the leadership of Tippoo Tib were dangerous foes and must be resisted. I discovered in Mr. Stanley that night a good man, with a brave, sympathetic, tender heart. I know I felt a deep sympathy and love for him and confidence in him that has lasted ever since, and will last while I live.

Monday morning Mr. Stanley and his stenographer were at work early. People that he had set to work on Sunday were going in and out, all busy carrying out instructions or orders for such arms and equipment as he wanted and could best get in this country. I know he ordered several hundred repeating rifles and a large stock of camp equipments.

Monday night a dinner was given to Mr. Stanley at Delmonico’s by his friend Mr. Henry S. Wellcome, an American merchant residing in London. It was a delightful occasion. All who were present knew Stanley well and expressed absolute faith in the ultimate success of this the most hazardous adventure the great explorer had ever attempted. As the _Eidler_ was to sail at the unseasonable hour of 4 the next morning, we proposed to see Stanley on board the ship, so there was a long evening on hand. Stanley related many incidents of his African experiences, among them a visit among the Karaguas, a large and somewhat intelligent African tribe. There was a bulldog in his caravan which attracted the special admiration of a Karagua chief, who called attention to the fact that the white man’s dog resembled his men more than the white man himself, for the dog’s nose and the Karaguas’ noses were very much alike, and the white man and the Karagua dogs were also very much alike, both having long noses.

It was proposed that we adjourn to Madison Square Garden, to Buffalo Bill’s Wild West. We occupied two boxes and enjoyed the performance to a late hour. And as it was not in the nature of Stanley to keep his friends waiting up all night, he insisted on a separation then and there, that he might go on board the steamer. As he and I shook hands when we parted, all that he said to me was: “I owe you eighty-nine lectures, which I will deliver if ever I return from Africa.”

Stanley went to Africa; three years rolled by, during two years of which no tidings were heard of him or his expedition. Finally the news came--he had reached the goal. Since his departure for Africa I had been non-committal in all of my correspondence for Stanley. I heard that his London agent was booking dates. I was satisfied that if such were the case he was doing it without authority, for no one had had time to hear from him; besides, he was otherwise engaged. His friend Mr. Wellcome, in London, wrote me that he was sure Stanley would not lecture, as he had his book to write; besides, he was such a hero now, and was receiving so much recognition from royalty, that he could not lecture in public, for it would be undignified. The air was full of rumors, but remembering Stanley’s last words, I had not the slightest fear of these rumors.

In due time, after the explorer’s arrival in Zanzibar with Emin Pasha, I received a long letter from him, telling me that he had yet to finish his book; that as soon as he got to London he would write me again. He reached there in April, 1890, after an absence of three and a half years. Business took me to London at that time, where I arrived on May 8, 1890. Stanley was the hero of the hour, and his name was on every tongue. Here let me say that at no time had I for one moment a doubt of his safe return to civilization, nor--a matter of much less moment--a single fear that when the time came he would fail me in renewing the broken lecture tour we were engaged in when he was called to take the leadership of the Emin Relief Expedition. This brief statement will serve as a key to the little comedy that followed on my arrival. It was given out that Mr. Stanley would see no one. The book, which he himself considered as his report of the Emin Expedition, was being written, and the publishers naturally were pressing for “copy.” There were other reasons for speech, as was seen when the cruel and strangely sad story of the rear guard had not only to be published, but more fully explained in its tragic features, because a concerted attack on Stanley’s reputation in Great Britain was made. It came about when there was a possibility of its wrecking the lecture tour, which finally grew into the most successful lecture engagement ever made in the United States.

I said nothing of all this in London, but at once called on Mr. Wellcome at his place of business there. I found him absorbed in preparation for a great dinner to be given to Henry M. Stanley by “Americans in London.” He declared himself glad to see me, but regretting that he was too busy to give me any attention. I was at once informed that no one could see Stanley. He received no callers in his apartment, I was candidly told, and was so overwhelmed with letters and cards that none received attention except those under _royal seal_. I must wait until June 3d and see him at the banquet, where all would have an equal chance. There was no use in writing to him, for he opened no letters. So I must wait and take my chances with the crowd, according to this information. At the same time, I could see no reason why I should not drop Mr. Stanley a line of congratulation and let him know I was near him. This I did.

The next morning came a rap on my door and a call, “Letter, sir.” “Tuck it under the door,” I replied. I took my time getting out of bed. When I did get up and opened the letter, I found it was from Mr. Stanley, dated the same evening I had written:

* * * * *

“34 DEVERE GARDENS, S.W.

“DEAR MAJOR POND: I am glad to know that you are in London; come down and see me at eleven to-morrow. You will see ‘Not in’ on the door. Get into the lift and come straight to my apartments. Will be glad to see you.

“HENRY M. STANLEY.”

* * * * *

I was in that “lift” at exactly eleven o’clock on the morning of May 14, 1890. The “lift” boy asked, “Is this Major Pond?” “Yes,” I replied. “This way, please,” and he opened a door. There stood Stanley; not the Stanley of three and a half years ago. His black hair was now white. We grasped each other by the hand, and it was some time before Stanley said: “It’s all right, Major. I am glad to see you. Sit down.” I replied that I did not want to occupy one moment of his time. He assured me that I need not hurry. So for an hour he entertained me, relating much of his experience; how gratifying it was to return, and how much he would like to accept the generous hospitality and courtesies shown him on all sides, but he had his book to finish and some engagements to dine with friends, so with the coming dinner by Americans he was filled up as far as he dared engage himself. Of course I said nothing about lecturing in America and soon arose to bid him “Good-by.” He asked for my address, which, was given, but I did not see him again until the American banquet. Then he discovered me in the crowd and sent for me, and in the presence of that great crowd of hero-worshippers and banqueters, introduced me to his officers, Dr. Park, Stairs, Jephson, and Nelson, who were seated on the right and left of him.

After that first interview I thought I would call on Mr. Wellcome again. I found him still eagerly engaged in the preparations for the coming banquet. He was very cordial. I told him that I had called to see if I could ascertain any further news about our hero. He assured me that I should surely see him at the dinner; but he could give me one piece of news: Stanley was not going to lecture. I did not tell him, or any one else, that I had seen Stanley.

Business kept me fast in London until early in June. It was Friday, the 6th, when I received a telegram from Stanley at Ascot, asking me to meet him at his London apartments at five o’clock that day. I was there, and he met me cordially, saying:

“Major Pond, on the 25th of September I am to be married, and on the 10th of October I take a degree at Cambridge. I owe you eighty-nine lectures. It is needless for me to tell you that I have received some very fabulous offers. I show you two of them, but I conceal the signatures.”

They were very dazzling. I recognized the writing of one of them. It was an offer of fifteen hundred dollars a lecture for one hundred lectures, and all expenses from London and return.

“I have no thought of accepting them. I want you to go to your hotel and put your proposition in writing, whatever you wish; do the best you can for me. Come Sunday at five o’clock and we will sign the papers. We will have a little dinner together. I will introduce you to the future Mrs. Stanley. Then you can go about your work.”

I was there with the proposition made out in duplicate, and found a card on the door, which read as follows:

* * * * *

“MAJOR: Unavoidably called away. Put the papers under the door. I will sign and return them.”

(No signature.)

* * * * *

I was disappointed, not distrustful. I had expected to meet Miss Tennant, of whom so much was being said and written. It was a lonesome walk back to my hotel. I did not care to visit the club and did not wish to talk, so I dropped into a Methodist meeting at St. James’s Hall, heard the Rev. Hugh Price Hughes give a great crowd a real Calvinistic lashing, and then dined at the Café Royal, alone and gloomy and homesick. Reaching my hotel at ten o’clock I found a package in a large envelope waiting for me. It was the contract I had drawn up and left at Stanley’s apartments, duly signed by Henry M. Stanley. It was for one hundred lectures, more or less, in America, to begin in New York, Tuesday, November 11, 1890. Not an alteration of any kind or a word of suggestion was made.

I did smile all by myself that night, and the smile lingered on my face all the next day, when I called again on my friend Wellcome and told him I was going back home to America, asking him if he could possibly give me any encouragement about Stanley; he replied that he could not. “It would not do for so great a man to disregard the general sentiment of royalty as to condescend to lecture for money, though he might obey royal command and speak for some charities.”

I told him that I was going on Wednesday to Glasgow (the Royal Scottish Geographical Society were to dine Stanley that night, and I had received an invitation from the president, of course at Stanley’s request), and I wished that he, Villiers, and a few friends would dine with me at the Savoy on Tuesday. Wellcome accepted, and six of his friends and my friends had a jolly good time. During the evening Mr. Wellcome entertained us with talk about his friend Stanley. Everybody knew he was the nearest man to the hero of the hour.

During the evening Mr. Wellcome mentioned that Stanley was going to be banqueted in Glasgow. I suggested (having an invitation in my pocket) that I should like to be there. He explained how impossible it was for any one not a member to obtain an invitation or to be admitted.

After a long and to me enjoyable evening, when the gray dawn showed itself on the Thames embankment, the party broke up. I called Mr. Wellcome to one side and in strict confidence told him that I had a contract with Stanley for an American lecture tour; that we had frequently been together; that I was going to Glasgow to the Stanley dinner. He--well, he wilted!

Stanley was something more than a lecturer to me. I had known of him over twenty years before in the West, as a newspaper correspondent. His graphic descriptions of Western events and scenes in which I was a small part always found favor in my sight because of their simple exactness. I had seen him in Omaha and also on the plains, in connection with the remarkable Indian campaigns of the later sixties, but never had the courage to approach him. I felt an awe and respect for him that held me aloof.

And yet Stanley was the personification of modesty. At the dinner given by Americans in London to Stanley, the Rev. Dr. Joseph L. Parker, the famous London preacher, came up to me and said: “Major Pond, I wish you would introduce me to Stanley.”

“I shall not have to go far to do that,” said I; “the gentleman with whom you just saw me talking is the man himself.”

“No, no,” said Dr. Parker, “that can’t be; why, that is a small man. Stanley must be a great big fellow.”

The explorer is not more than five feet seven inches in height, but stocky and well set.

A moment later Stanley advanced toward Dr. Parker, reached out his hand, and said: “I am very glad to meet you, Dr. Parker, and I am gratified that so eminent a man should have expressed a desire to be introduced to me.” As a matter of fact, nothing of the sort had been intimated to Stanley; he had simply overheard the remark about his size and at once had tactfully smoothed matters over.

It was on his return from a trip to Aldershot, 1890, where he had been to visit the graves of some of his comrades, that he told me of his coming marriage and the honor awaiting him at Cambridge. He then suggested a date for his departure to New York after October 25th. “The _Teutonic_ sails on October 29th,” was my reply. His answer was: “That will do.”

The _Teutonic_ arrived November 5th, and was detained over night at quarantine on account of a heavy fog. The party consisted of Mr. Stanley and his bride, Mrs. Dorothy Tennant Stanley; Mrs. Tennant, her mother; Lieutenant Mounteney Jephson, and Hamilton Aide, a well-known London literary man, dramatic author, and critic. I met Stanley and his wife standing on the upper deck, and he greeted me very cordially, introducing me to Mrs. Stanley, who quietly remarked:

“I don’t like you, Major Pond.”

“I’m very sorry, Mrs. Stanley. I think so much of your husband that it will be sad for me if I cannot have your friendship.”

“That’s why I’m sure I’ll dislike you. Why should you want him more than I do?”

“We’ll see,” I said. In a few minutes more we were all having a delightful conversation together. I was introduced to Mrs. Tennant, Mrs. Stanley’s mother, and Mr. Hamilton Aide, her nephew.

At the first word of the sighting of the _Teutonic_, the New York newspaper men, headed by Colonel Finley Anderson, of the United Press, Stanley’s personal friend, came down to meet their distinguished fellow-craftsman. It was noticed that Mr. Stanley, in replying to Colonel Anderson’s little speech of welcome, referred to his arrival as to a “home-coming.” Then an appointment was made at my office for five o’clock in the afternoon. The New York newspaper men were waiting in my office at the time set, but Stanley was then unaware of the important matter that they wished to bring to his attention. A representative of the London _Times_ awaited his arrival at the hotel with a cabled message from the _Thunderer_. While Stanley was on the ocean the English press had contained severe and somewhat startling attacks on the truth of the famous chapter on the rear guard in his new book. In this the story of Major Bartellot and his death had been told, not to the credit of the deceased officer. I am not intending again to present the controversy that Bartellot’s family and Lieutenant Throop had launched with their volumes replying to Stanley’s severe but restrained criticism of Bartellot’s actions and methods. A storm of almost savage indignation against Stanley had been aroused thereby. _The Times_ had cabled in full the article it had published, and had directed its representative in New York to obtain and cable Mr. Stanley’s reply. The situation had become almost threatening.

I did not doubt that Stanley would fully maintain his own honor, but I began to understand that such scandals were involved as might set the public mind against the whole business of African exploration.

Stanley retired with _The Times_ correspondent. It is a matter of almost “ancient history” to recall the plain and simple, but able and courageous, frankness with which the Bartellot-Throop-Jamieson attacks were met. The explorer had endeavored to hold back the personal misconduct, of which he knew the men intrusted with the command of the rear guard had been guilty. He now told the whole story, the details of which are still fresh in the public mind. Forced to defend himself, he did so with the same steady courage and directness of will that had always marked his actions. He gave dates and names, as well as acts, and placed at the disposal of the London _Times_ the complete evidence which he had heretofore been very desirous, because of the families and friends of the men, to keep from becoming public property. That interview was printed in _The Times_ the next morning. It changed the situation almost immediately so far as English opinion was concerned. But it was the American press and what might follow of adverse criticism that affected me most closely.

I dined with the party that evening, and Stanley was as jovial, cordial, and self-poised as I ever saw him. He showed no sign of the fatigue attending such a remarkable strain as that five hours of momentous interviewing.

In the interview of that evening Stanley was absolutely great. There were twenty-three reporters present, picked men of the great newspapers of New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago. One of the best-known men, Mr. Balch, was chosen to direct the questions. My rooms were packed. The men were all keen set and full of the historical significance, too, of their opportunity. Stanley seated himself, smiling, and for three hours submitted to an intellectual ordeal which was simply astounding. The interviewers, with ample time to look up the issues, were prepared with keen questions, and, as he answered, others were called out on every side. Balch, an able man, declared it was a wonderful exhibition of knowledge and will power. “Stanley,” he said, “was the best witness I ever saw. He was armed at all points, and answered without a moment’s hesitancy, never once crossing himself in the slightest degree.”

During the latter part of the scene various gentlemen who had come to call on Mr. Stanley, among them Charles A. Dana and Murat Halstead, stood in the open hallway of my office, listening to the remarkable proceeding, and admiring the skill and power of the man who sat there with lighted eyes, animated features, and a live brain that burned through every movement and lighted up every word he uttered.

The first Stanley lecture in New York in 1890 was a remarkable event. The interest was made greatly more active by publication on Friday, the 7th of November, of the remarkable series of interviews of which mention has been made. But no one anticipated its tremendous character. The gross receipts were $17,800. Such a jam never was known before, and the carriage crush about the building was almost beyond police control. The lecture originally announced was “The Relief of Emin Pasha.” At Mrs. Stanley’s suggestion, “The March through the Forest” was chosen, which brought in the story of the pygmies and other remarkable discoveries made.

The tour that followed this entrée was like the march of a triumphal hero. Our evenings after the lecture were delightful, and the daily intercourse so long continued was personally maintained without a jar or break of any sort. I found Mr. Stanley not only strictly honorable in business matters, but generous also. When for a brief period business was bad, he showed a marked disposition to make matters more even, though there was no necessity whatever, taking the tour as a whole, to make any change in the agreement made in London. Perhaps the most striking feature of the engagement was, so far as concerns Mr. Stanley, the remarkable fidelity that he gave to the work he had undertaken. He was constantly remoulding, polishing, and improving the lectures during the tour.

Stanley is one of the most conscientious men I ever knew. While in Boston, after we had been about a week on the tour, the weather was fine and there was beautiful sleighing. Mrs. Stanley and the ladies of our party had come in from a delightful sleigh ride which some friends had tendered. They all looked so rosy and fresh, beaming with delight as they stepped from the sleigh, that we agreed then and there that Mr. Stanley really should lay aside his writing and take a sleigh ride too, behind that spanking four-horse team, and hear the jingle of the hundreds of sleigh bells. I said, “He must come and enjoy it.” Mrs. Stanley said, “Let’s you and I go fetch him.”

We rushed up to his room; he was working on his lecture, making some changes, when Mrs. Stanley, with cheeks like roses and charged with oxygen of the outdoor atmosphere, threw her fur-clad arms about his neck, saying: “O, Bulle-me-tal-ie (the name he is known by in Africa), come and have a ride and breathe the most delicious air under heaven. Do come; it will do you so much good and help you for to-night.”

After listening to Mrs. Stanley’s eloquent pleadings a moment or two, he rose from his seat and said to me:

“Major Pond, you are paying me a fabulous sum for my nightly services. Now it is my duty to do the best I can. If you say you are satisfied with my work as it now is, I will stop and go for a drive.”

I could not answer his argument, and he did not take the sleigh ride. From the start until the finish, one hundred and ten lectures, Stanley showed signs of steady improvement. He was good at the start, but shortly became a fine speaker and then a better speaker, and before he had finished he was the best descriptive speaker I ever heard. He had overcome difficulties that would discourage any other man; as Casati wrote of him (Casati, ten years with Emin Pasha in Africa): “Jealous of his own authority, Stanley will not tolerate interference, neither will he take the advice of any one. Difficulties do not discourage him, neither does failure frighten him, as with extraordinary celerity of perception he finds his way out of every embarrassment.”

Henry M. Stanley was never fond of company. He appreciates friends, and those who know him intimately are very fond of him. He is generally cautious and sparing of words, especially when strangers are about. Receptions and dinners worry him, as he cannot bear being on exhibition under showers of forced compliments. His manners and habits are those of a gentleman. He shows great fondness for children, especially young lads, who often approach him for his autograph. He will enter into conversation with them and question them as to their purposes in life, advising them as to the importance of honesty and character as essential to success in life, and generally concluding with some incident in his experience that is sure to make a lasting impression. In our private car, where we lived for three months, were Mr. and Mrs. Stanley, Mrs. Tennant, Mrs. Pond and her sister, and often some visiting friends. Stanley would entertain us night after night with incidents of his wonderful experience that would make a far more interesting book than he has yet written. His best sayings have been spoken in private. Mrs. Stanley, being a brilliant conversationalist, had the happy faculty of bringing out his most interesting points.

Stanley is one of the best-read men I have ever met. He is familiar with the histories of all civilized and uncivilized peoples. As a journalist he is appreciated by reporters and interviewers more highly than any man I ever knew except Mr. Beecher. Never did he refuse to see a representative of the press who sent up his card. If busy, he would say: “Please make my compliments to the gentleman and say that as soon as I am disengaged I will be pleased to see him.”

Altogether, I have never parted with a client with greater regret, or found one holding me in bonds of friendship and respect to so great a degree. Sir Henry Stanley does me the honor to regard me as a friend, and I am constantly indebted to him, and to Lady Stanley also, for delightful correspondence. Some extracts from the many letters in my possession will illustrate the value of the views expressed and the soundness of a judgment which has been almost wholly verified by events. I present without apology the extracts which follow.

A capital letter from the Richmond Terrace (London) home, under date of October 2, 1892, is of interest because of its description of electioneering in England:

* * * * *

“I am pledged,” he writes, “to many things in the coming time--the contest at North Lambeth again, Bible Society, Missionary and anti-Slavery meetings, keeping up the Uganda question before the public, stimulating and comforting the Directors, and trivial things of this kind. They absorb time and keep a man from stagnating, and perhaps a modicum of good is extracted from the whole.

“As regards the election, I fear on your side they do not understand anything about it. I sometimes see the cablegrams sent over from here, and I do not wonder that you are all misled. I was asked at the last moment to stand; there were only nine clear days for work and to get made known among 7,300 electors, to get offices, posters, pamphlets, and canvassers, and that entailed an amount of work that was appalling. My opponent had been at work three years, nursing the constituency; I had only nine days. The results were that I was defeated by 130. Of course, the usual lying was resorted to. They can lie here with as much disregard to future torments as in New York, and they have introduced largely pernicious systems from America, which I know the Americans would gladly extinguish if they knew how. Added to these, the lower classes have something which is peculiarly their own: a noisy, brutal disposition which must relieve itself by pounding or breaking something, while the intolerance they display toward their opponents is wholly unknown in America. When this temper is at the hottest, women go down before the brawny fist like sheep in the shambles, and bald heads often get seriously cracked. I used to think that England was a country of order and that only at Donnybrook would you meet with such scenes as I have witnessed. There is no attempt at order, there is no policeman present to preserve it. Only might is respected--clubs and arms. The doors are thrown open to all--the radical candidate seeks for a strong force of roughs by whom, when the Unionist presents himself, he is greeted with a continuous uproar. If he persists in speaking, the mob advances and ‘_ware_’ heads then. This, in short, is politics at its worst over here, but homicide is much rarer than with you.”

* * * * *

A London letter of May 31, 1894, gives a still more vividly interesting account of electioneering methods. Mr. Stanley writes:

* * * * *

“I see that you scarcely comprehend what the term electioneering means in England. It would be impossible for a candidate to absent himself from his constituency for any longer period than the national holidays. He must hold himself ready for any request from any of his supporters every day between the hours of 10 A.M. and 10 P.M. He, in the mean time, must visit every house in the borough (7,200 houses in mine) to try to make the acquaintance of every voter and of some member of his family. He must contribute not only his services as patron (chairman, supporter of numberless charities, meetings), but funds as well, whenever solicited. But more than that, he must hold himself ready to exchange his services with those of fellow-candidates in the country. These various duties which fall upon the candidate must be performed cheerfully and with good will, otherwise it will be charged to him that he is indifferent to the cause and to the public he has affected to serve. I have as many as eighty visits in a day, and if you will only take the trouble to calculate you will find that to visit 7200 voters requires a large number of days, and as visits can only be made in the intervals between public functions of great variety, not more than 200 a week can be expected from the most active. You may fairly say that it requires a year’s steady work to get through an ordinary constituency. Then, you know the failing of the public is to forget your face and name, and to keep them in mind you will have to begin again and continue what is called the ‘musing.’ I need not say more. You will see why a candidate cannot absent himself for more than a fortnight or so from the duties he has undertaken, and I think your letter is thus fairly answered. We are waiting to hear the sound of the trumpet to enter the lists. It may be heard any day, and we are on the tiptoe of expectation.”

* * * * *

From Richmond Terrace, under date of June 19, 1896, came an interesting letter which refers in the beginning to the death, then recent, of the late Colonel Thomas Knox. Stanley writes:

* * * * *

“I had been much impressed by the aged appearance of Knox, but I did not expect so soon to hear of his death. He was a fine genial man, of grand appearance, and I always thought a dinner table enriched by his appearance. I am exceedingly sorry, for New York is the poorer for his loss--for there is one friend less to me.... But it is thus we drop away one by one.

“How suddenly that Venezuela business broke upon England! I had been prepared for it by my visit to the States, and I had clipped dozens of newspaper articles bearing upon the subject while I was over there. About ten days after my arrival here I was visited by the manager of one of the principal newspapers here, and asked what I thought of the Eastern question, and I had answered that I was not much interested in it, as I was interested in the squall brewing in the West. He asked me what I referred to, and I replied that we might expect a terrific explosion presently from America in regard to the Venezuela dispute. He was astonished, for he had not heard of it. I then gave him my clippings for his editor to study and prepare himself. Sixteen days after, the storm burst, taking England all aback.

“Now, on this Venezuela subject, I am entirely on the side of America, but I must admit I am not surprised that the English papers backed up Lord Salisbury and differed from me. Taught by the virulent remarks of your journals I had, of course, devoted much time to understanding it, whereas English editors were exceptionally ill-informed about the matter. There are two or three injudicious remarks in Olney’s despatch which put British backs up, but after reflection it is wonderful how many have come round to my opinion--that, whatever the transgressions of Olney may be, there is a great deal of justice in the American demand. I feel quite sure, now that so much is admitted, it will not be long before the opinion becomes general that we were in the wrong in refusing arbitration, while the more I think of Olney’s despatch, the more impressed I am that Olney could scarcely have written otherwise than he did. For I argue that had he contented himself with the usual suave tone of diplomacy he would not have succeeded in rousing the attention of the nation to the necessity of settlement. His despatch would have lain quietly in the archives of the Foreign Office, whereas now every Englishman knows sufficient of the subject to distinguish right from wrong; and while there is still a majority who take the despatch to be an affront to British dignity, there is a minority increasing in numbers who think that British honor would be consulted by considering the justice due to Venezuela, and that British interests would be promoted by acquiescing with the American demand.

“But that all your journalists were wrong in assuming that we in this country entertained any other feeling than that of true affection for the Americans has been conclusively proved by the different receptions accorded the President’s message and the German Emperor’s telegrams to Kruger. On reading the first our people were simply astonished and grieved, but the other roused the war feeling from the Hebrides to the Channel Islands. I have never witnessed anything like it in England before. It was entirely unexpected from one whom we had made so much of. It was premeditated, also, and this is what enraged us. No one could conceive what business it was of Germany’s to interfere with our Protectorate, nor how we had given any one a reason to suppose that, because Jameson had been so mad, we were so lost to all sense of honor and justice as not to be willing to do what was right in the case. It will be a long time before we forgive Germany, you may rest assured, and every act of hers for years to come will be viewed with great suspicion. Personally, I do not know which was maddest, Jameson’s ride for the gold mines of Johannesburg or the Emperor William’s attempt on the Protectorate of the Transvaal. Both were foolish.”

* * * * *

He closed this interesting letter with his always pleasant compliments and messages for my family.

From Argelus-Gazoust, France, under date of August 5, 1898, in response to a letter suggesting a lecture on Anglo-Saxon relations, Stanley replies:

* * * * *

“Yes, I quite agree with you that we have numerous highly endowed members of Parliament who would like to have the opportunity to address American audiences upon the Anglo-American alliance, or any other subject, but you see the faculty of orating is born with them; they can’t help it. Whereas with me it is different. I can’t speak unless I have something to say and the time to say what is imposed upon me has come.

“Now, with regard to this Anglo-American alliance. It is a good thing and a natural thing for both nations to come together and shake hands and make a league of friendship. But the necessity for that is not imperative for either side. England is at peace with all the world, though she frets herself now and then. America has her enemy at her mercy, and nobody is going to interfere with her. Where is the need for the hurry? Then, naturally, having passed the impressionable period of my life in America--and born in Britain, having an English wife and home--I feel able to see a trifle clearer than some of those who are all American or all English. I have not a particle of prejudice, though my duty lies on this side. My opinion is we must not be too precipitate. The two nations are gravitating together. True friendship cannot be forced, but is a slow process, requiring time. There are many Americans who have not even thought of the subject, there are English who cannot entertain the idea. If such people are spoken to about the alliance they are apt to say things neither kindly American nor kindly English would like to hear.

“No! Wisdom suggests we leave the feeling to grow and solidify. If either country was in distress, that would be the proper time to breathe more life into that spirit of kinship and kindliness which we know exists, and bring the reserved and proud peoples together, but to-day there is no necessity for either nation to think particularly about the matter. One is fat and proud with its Bank of England and big navy, the other is in a quiver of delight over Manila, and Santiago, and the heroes--Dewey, Schley, and Shafter. The time is not suitable for speaking of alliances. If you Americans will come out of that Continent and take your share of the Old World’s concerns, you will know better what is meant by alliances. Were I not in a dreadful hurry and every member of the family impatiently waiting for me, I could relate some curious thoughts of mine about that matter, but I am not allowed to form one connected sentence in peace. I cannot offer myself for the Lyceum this term.”

* * * * *

A fair picture, certainly, this of Ulysses the wanderer with the distaff in hand.

Under date of February 6, 1899, the day before Parliament was to meet, Sir Henry writes that, looking round for arrearages of work, his eyes caught sight of my 1899 letter.

* * * * *

“The year 1899 is starting so smoothly in England that the blank page might serve for a news letter. We have long ago calmed down about the mad French attempt on the Upper Nile, and we are so interested in the Czar’s Peace Circular that we relaxed our attention to Russian misdoing in China. With Germany we have no question, and America has civilly refrained from twisting our Lion’s tail. Old Kruger is probably more concerned with his personal infirmities and the Colonists are following their usually orderly habits, so that all around 1899 promises to be very quiet with us.”

* * * * *

This was a promise that events soon proved was easily broken, but even Stanley could not foresee the sharp awakening for England as well as ourselves. He proceeds:

* * * * *

“I wish I could feel your prospects are also as satisfactory. I don’t know what you think of it, but it seems to me this Imperialism is going to prove costly and disturbing to America, and her well-wishers are in doubt whether it be wise in her to take upon herself the task of regenerating the Philippines. If you don’t mind the expense and bother of reforming these barbarians and making them orderly, we will not do more than wish you well through the self-imposed task.”

* * * * *

Under date of November 24, 1899, Sir Henry M. Stanley replied to a letter of mine wherein, at the suggestion of an experienced editorial friend, I had pointed out to him the value of a short lecture tour in the United States, during which no man could with such authority as himself point out to the American people the situation in South Africa. My adviser very strongly urged the fact that the views of Sir Henry M. Stanley would not only greatly affect opinion here, but would tend largely to extend his influence as a statesman in his own country. Stanley illustrates his own modesty by ignoring _in toto_ my suggestion, and then thus frankly criticises the British-Boer situation at the date of his writing:

* * * * *

“We are not doing so well in the Transvaal as I expected, but everything proves to me how really necessary it was that the evil humors which had been gathering for the last nineteen years should come to a head and be boldly dealt with. It proves, also, how remiss we have been in thus delaying in considering the Transvaal matters as serious. No people on earth are so averse to war as we are, and so prone to be guided by goody-goody sentiment. Being rich, prosperous, and contented, we seem to forget that all people are not so happy, and accordingly fail to provide against other people’s discontent with us.

“This sunny belief in the power of sentiment will certainly be our bane some day. From sentiment we left our African frontiers unprotected; we left our garrisons in Natal open to an enemy that has been breathing nothing but threats for ever so long; from sentiment we left the Afrikander Bund to make its preparations, diffuse its opinions, and conspire to oust us from South Africa; from sentiment we allow Kruger to build his forts, arm his people with cannon and Mausers, and, naturally, when everything is ready for the crisis for which Kruger has been preparing, we profess to be surprised that Natal and Cape Colony have been invaded, and that the Boers have been able to present such a bold front to us.

“That war itself and the small disasters we have met are the penalties we pay for the belief we profess that all men can be persuaded by reason or soothed by sentiment. By all means profess as loudly as you may the very best of sentiments toward people with whom you desire to be on amicable terms, but don’t forget that human beings are not angels or children, to be restrained by sentiment alone. If you have interests, no amount of sentiment will protect them, especially when they lie so temptingly close to another race. That is a paraphrase of the old saying: ‘Pray to God, but keep your powder dry.’ We have prayed both to God and the Boer, but in most reprehensible fashion we have forgotten all about the powder.

“What is going to happen to us if we continue to be thus neglectful of the commonest precautions? Heaven only knows. In England we are so given to the cultivation of beautiful phrases and logic that no one of the simple kind can hope to have simple truths listened to. Our newspaper leaders are written in such Johnsonian-Gladstonese that plain people pass them over as being ‘grand,’ but they are scarcely understood by the many. In admiration of the sound we have lost the sense, and the direct, simple English has no chance in these libretto days.

“In other ways we are also degenerate. Fancy ten thousand English soldiers, willing to be led anywhere, remaining penned up in that hollow of Ladysmith by a force of say even twenty thousand raw Boer militia! It is all of a piece with that grand strategic genius which chose a hollow for the South African Aldershot, with not even an intrenchment until it was too late.”

* * * * *

The following is a characteristic and forcible presentation of opinions which he of all men has the right to express:

* * * * *

“FURZE HILL, PERBRIGHT, SURREY, October 10, 1899.

“MY DEAR MAJOR: Your introduction of Mr. Howland has resulted, as you are probably aware, in the publication of an article in his magazine (_The Outlook_) on Anglo-Saxon Responsibilities. I have just seen it, and though it was written before the Transvaal crisis became acute, subsequent facts have, I think, borne my hints out.

“The above is my present address, where I am simply roughing it, owing to the chaos prevailing inside and out. I am therefore in no condition for writing a letter for the public eye, as you yourself would be the first to admit if you could see my surroundings. Besides, I cannot see the object of interesting the public in anything just now, and the Anglo-Saxon relations are the topic of a thousand pens more or less capable of instructing everybody who can read or think. Whether we shall fight or not depends upon Kruger. He alone has it in his power to stay the storm, but whether he will use that power or not, no one--probably not Kruger even--can say. My opinion of Kruger differs from almost every writer in the fact that I say he is a confirmed ass, or if you prefer the true meaning of it--an obstinate old fool.

“I wrote ‘Through South Africa’ some two years ago, and if you will look at chapter seven, I think--I have not the book by me--you will see how the present crisis and the probable termination of it are fulfilling the prediction I made.

“I really do not know which to pity most, the English who hate war and who would do anything in honor to avoid it--dragged to war and future trouble against their will--or the Boers, whose stupid obstinacy is likely to be their ruin.

“A few years ago, before the Jameson raid, Kruger said, ‘I will never give you anything, and now let the storm burst.’

“It is a bad-tempered man who said that, and Kruger’s bad temper is the most prominent characteristic of his nature. His sheer bad temper has caused all this row and will eventually bring him to shame unless, may the gods grant it, he is thoroughly frightened by a stronger, sterner, fiercer will.

“I have known individuals like Kruger before, and though their obstinate wills seemed adamantine, many yielded before a greater and superior will.

“The South African war--should it take place--will prove the salvation of South Africa, if it is conducted rightly. We should have an overwhelming force over there, and the utmost energy should be employed to bring it to a perfect finale, where all white should be free and equal. The country should be given up to the people, and outsiders should refrain from meddling in their affairs.”

* * * * *

At social functions given by the press in his honor Stanley was always at his best. He appeared among newspaper men as perfectly at home--one of the profession, claiming no honors or no place that could or would not be attained by any live journalist should the occasion offer. It is this attitude that so helped to make of him in America the favorite hero of the pressmen of the land.

GEORGE KENNAN was introduced to me by Mr. Roswell Smith, President of the Century Co. His letters on Siberia were appearing in _The Century Magazine_ and creating a great deal of interest.

Mr. Smith called on me one morning. I was somewhat under the weather, having been ill for some time. He asked me if I had heard of George Kennan. I told him I had known more or less of Mr. Kennan; that he had been a lecturer in a small way before he went to Siberia. Mr. Smith told me that Kennan’s articles, he believed, had more than doubled the circulation of the magazine, and that one or two editions had already been exhausted and they were obliged to reproduce them. He suggested that I secure Mr. Kennan for some lectures, and gave me his address.

[Illustration]

I immediately wrote him asking if he would lecture, and got a favorable reply. I also sent out “feelers” to my customers, and to my surprise applications came pouring in from all parts of the country. I saw that success was almost certain, and proposed to Mr. Kennan a certain sum of money for two hundred lectures. I offered him $100 a lecture--$20,000 for two hundred lectures--and to pay all of his expenses, which he accepted.

It was the season of 1889 and 1890. Mr. Kennan was in wretched health during the entire tour, devoting his nights to writing letters and sending his earnings to the poor Siberian exiles whom he had known in that country. He was loaded down, and almost broken down, with sympathy for the poor people, whose cause he was so ably championing in this country. But notwithstanding all of his other work, Mr George Kennan travelled and lectured two hundred consecutive secular nights, travelling almost every day. Not an audience was disappointed nor a railroad connection missed.

Mr. Kennan cleared $20,000 that season from his lectures. The next season he did a very handsome business, and could have been much more popular had it not been for the revolting stories he told of the wretched condition of those suffering Siberian exiles. Many of his stories were heart-sickening, and for that reason, I believe, more than any other, he is not to-day the most popular lecturer in America. His excellent voice, charm of manner, and grace of diction are all that is best in a platform speaker.

Frederick Villiers, war artist, can lay claim to a more varied experience in the field than perhaps any of his fellows. The intimate friend of Archibald Forbes in seven campaigns, the fourth man in the quartette of war artists that followed the Russian army to the gates of Constantinople, he has also done service in Afghanistan, in Egypt, in the Soudan, in Servia, in Burmah; and everywhere he has been in the thickest of the fight.

[Illustration]

Of the group of war artists and correspondents in the battle of Metemmeh, on the Nile, and the Egyptian campaign, he alone escaped unscathed, while J. A. Cameron, of the London _Standard_; St. Leger Herbert, of the London _Morning Post_; Capt. W. H. Gordon, of the Manchester _Guardian_; Col. Fred Burnaby, of the _Morning Post_, and Edward O’Donovan, of the London _Daily News_, were killed outright, and Colonel Burleigh, of the London _Daily Telegraph_, was wounded. Mr. Villiers was the only European war artist in the war between Japan and China.

In 1895 he started from New York on a lecture tour through America and Canada, and visited Australasia, lecturing in all the principal towns of Australia, New Zealand and Tasmania. He eventually returned to England via the Cape, lecturing in Cape Colony and the Transvaal, and completing his second tour around the world.

In the following year he visited Moscow a second time, for the coronation of the present Emperor, Nicholas II. In 1897 he acted as special correspondent for _The Standard_ with the Greek army, and for that paper and _The Illustrated London News_ during the 1897 Soudan campaign.

He has been all through the recent Nile expedition, and was present at the capture of Khartoum in his capacity of correspondent for the _Globe_ and _Illustrated London News_. When the South African War broke out Mr. Villiers was lecturing in Australia, with a tour booked around the world via Japan and across the American continent. He cancelled a long list of engagements from California to New England and went back to the latest war as correspondent for his London papers. He has again returned to England and is now lecturing on the Boer war. Villiers is one of the heroes of the present century.

A man of remarkable coolness, he never flinched under fire and was always able to seize a vantage point for his work without undue recklessness. He was the artist and writer at all times in the field, never a volunteer fighter; but always ready to help the wounded, if near, and occasion offered. Perhaps no man in his chosen work was always so ready for departure and so instantly able to compass the best methods of reaching his destination and of getting at work upon arrival. An excellent speaker, simple and straightforward, with much to tell, he goes at his audience just as he works on the scenes before him when on the march or under fire.

Dr. Frederick A. Cook, of Brooklyn--physician, anthropologist, Arctic and Antarctic explorer, author and lecturer--has not only made an enviable reputation for himself along each of these varied lines, but is personally one of the most charming of men. He is as modest and unassuming as he is accomplished, although he has succeeded in doing some things which no other man before him ever did. From nearly 80 degrees north latitude to 71 degrees 36 minutes south latitude is a long distance for a north-and-south journey, but Dr. Cook can say, as no other man living can: “I have done it.”

[Illustration]

He filled the position of surgeon and anthropologist with Peary’s first Arctic expedition in 1891, and during 1893 and 1894 he was engaged in explorations of the west coast of Greenland. Again in 1897 he joined the Belgian expedition which sailed on the _Belgica_ to explore the Antarctic continent and channels, being the only American in the party. For thirteen months their ship drifted in the pack ice, in which she had been caught, and was finally got out only by sawing a channel through the ice nine miles long. This expedition was the first, and Dr. Cook was the only American, that ever camped and sledged on the Antarctic continent.

While in these far southern latitudes, Dr. Cook, as anthropologist to the expedition, visited and described a cannibal tribe from whom no previous scientist had escaped alive.

His lecture descriptive of his adventures has proven one of the most interesting yet offered to the lyceum. It is illustrated with photographs taken by the doctor himself, and these are as beautiful as they are unlike any others ever shown to the public.

Dr. Cook is gifted with a fascination of description and a powerful voice which make his lecture even more interesting, if possible, than to read of his thrilling adventures in his book, recently published.

Among polar explorers I do not regard any one as more bold, more to be depended upon for accuracy of statement, or whose scientific training better fits him rightly to appreciate the value of each new fact discovered, than Dr. Frederick A. Cook, our fellow-countryman.

Robert E. Peary, Civil Engineer, U. S. Navy, returned in the autumn of 1892 from his second Arctic exploration, bringing with him a number of dogs, the sledges on which he made his journeys, and a collection of Esquimau souvenirs, such as sledges, dog harness, clothing, tents, spears, fishing tackle, cooking utensils, and furniture, and gave an exhibition in the Academy of Music, Philadelphia, under the auspices of the Academy of Science. I attended the lecture, or rather, exhibition. Mr. Peary appeared in his Arctic costume, with the dogs, sledges, tents, weapons, bear skins, and seal furs in great quantity and variety on the stage--a sort of Esquimau village. It was an interesting exhibit. Mr. Peary gave a delightful lecture, illustrated with some of the finest stereoscopic views of Arctic scenery I had ever seen presented, views which he had himself taken while on the expedition.

[Illustration]

I tried my best to secure Mr. Peary for some lectures in New York, Boston, and other cities, but, being an officer of the Government and under orders, it was impossible to secure him. Later on he obtained leave of absence and permission to fit out a second expedition, and he could lecture from January until April, so I arranged for what proved to be one of the most vigorous lecture campaigns that I had ever managed up to that time.

We began in the Academy of Music, Brooklyn, and up to the first of April (one hundred and three days) Mr. Peary gave one hundred and sixty-five lectures. The five dogs were as much a drawing feature as Peary himself, and were a great advertising card, especially where there was sleighing, as Henson, Mr. Peary’s colored servant, who had accompanied him on the expedition, hitched them up and drove them about the cities wherever they went, attracting the attention and wonder of the entire communities. They seemed to take as much interest in the show as they probably had shown in their great overland journeys across the Greenland Ice Cap with their master. The dogs were very fond of being petted, and liked ladies and children. After the lecture they were brought on the stage and the children in the audience were allowed to rush forward and meet them. There was never an instance of the dogs showing the slightest ill temper or of objecting to be caressed or fed by the auditors. One remarkable thing about the dogs was that they would insist upon their rights and their share of the entertainment. They would wait very patiently until the time for Mr. Peary to finish, but if he happened to speak a little longer than the usual time, the dogs would set up a howl so that he would have to stop. They never became uneasy until their own time arrived.

It was a general tour, and Mr. Peary visited most of the large cities, two lectures a day. It was a great combination. Of all the tours I ever had the pleasure of managing none met with greater success on a short notice than this one. The profits for those few weeks were about $18,000. Yet Mr. Peary was disappointed, for he was fitting out a second Arctic expedition and needed something like $80,000 for his scheme. He admitted that under any other circumstances he would have considered the tour one of the most successful in the world, but because he could not make $2,000 or $3,000 a day it seemed a loss of time to him, and he was obliged to resort to other means to raise the funds that he needed. However, Mr. Peary never once complained, I never heard him speak an unkind word either to the employees or to his dogs. He is a great worker. His stenographer and typewriter accompanied him, and he carried on an immense correspondence, together with his other work, perfecting all plans for his expedition.

He met with many misfortunes on the second expedition of twenty-five months’ stay in North Greenland in 1893-95, and his return to the lecture field proved not very remunerative. No doubt this was partly due to the fact that he undertook to give simply illustrated lectures, without the dogs and the other attractions which he had on the previous tour.

[Illustration]

Mr. Peary is one of the finest descriptive lecturers we have ever had, with his heart and soul in his work. If he succeeds in reaching the Pole (which we shall probably know before this book goes to press), then he will be the biggest attraction in the world. Otherwise, he will be classed as one of the great Arctic heroes who did his best and knows how to relate the accounts of his heroic adventures to as many auditors as still retain interest in Arctic explorations. Peary is a nineteenth-century hero, and will continue to push on because he cannot stop.

In writing this book, I am not making a programme, preparing a circular, or giving a list of speakers and entertainers. I recall only those names and work that come back most impressively, and any omission is not from lack of appreciation, but one of memory only. Yet though the walls are crowded, there is still room to give a name to one of the bravest. Another of the beloved women yet remains among us. My reference is to Mrs. Peary, the wife of the famous Arctic explorer. She has not intellectual capacity alone, but more than womanly courage, as is proven by the years spent in Greenland wastes of ice and snow, the first woman of Caucasian stock known to have wintered within the Arctic Circle. Later, the same high devotion made her take up the no less exacting task of raising funds for her husband’s relief, the return of his belated expedition and the saving thereby of the important scientific results and personal fruits of the great and toilsome, as well as dangerous exploration work he has set himself to accomplish. Mrs. Peary entered the lecture field to accomplish and achieve this work of relief. She did it, too, and in so doing showed possession of a speaking talent that would have made her a permanent success.

Capt. Joshua Slocum, who conceived the idea that he could sail alone around the world, is about the newest and most remarkable of the small list of hazardous adventurers who have _done something that no other man has succeeded in accomplishing_, and thereby acquired world-wide fame. He is well entitled to a place alongside the heroes Peary, Nansen, and Dr. Cook.

[Illustration]

Captain Slocum comes of “a blue-nosed ancestry, with Yankee proclivities,” as he puts it. “Both sides of my family were sailors,” says the captain “and if any Slocum should be found not seafaring, he will show at least an inclination to whittle models of boats and contemplate voyages. My father was the sort of man who, wrecked on a desolate island, would find his way home if he had a jack-knife and could find a tree.”

After following the sea twenty years as a shipmaster and losing his bark, _Aquidneck_, wrecked on the coast of Brazil, and making the voyage home with his family in a canoe, Captain Slocum conceived the idea of building a boat and sailing alone around the world. He accomplished this remarkable feat, built the _Spray_ entirely with his own hands, launched, equipped, and sailed her by himself, over forty thousand miles, visiting many foreign ports, to the great amazement of the natives of every clime. In his voyage around Cape Horn there were over seventy days during which he never heard a sound except his own voice, the wind, and the lapping of the waves.

What is most remarkable of all is that Captain Slocum is able to write and describe the incidents of the entire voyage and his wonderful experiences in a manner so graphic and simple that it absolutely charms and fascinates his hearers as few ever did or ever could do.

The experiences of Captain Slocum have proved him to be one of the greatest navigators of the age.

It is wonderful to listen to the descriptions of some of his hairbreadth escapes and to hear him answer, as quick as a flash, questions of every conceivable sort put to him by expert seafaring auditors. I have listened for hours to these seeming tournaments in navigators’ skill, and never yet did the captain hesitate for an instant for a reply that went straight to the mark like a bullet.

Captain Slocum’s book, “Sailing Alone Around the World,” (published by The Century Company), has had a large sale, which is constantly increasing.

Had all this occurred twenty years ago, it would have meant a fortune for Captain Slocum, and a stimulant for the lyceum such as it is impossible to secure under present conditions. “Because why?” you ask. Because under the present conditions, lecture courses are forced upon the communities by agents representing various lecture bureaus, who start out with sample photographs and circulars (regulation size), round up a committee of enterprising citizens who want to do something for the town, and persuade them to go on a guarantee fund to secure a course of lectures and entertainments. They listen to the bureau agent’s recommendations of “the greatest orator of the times, Mr. Breeze,” and “the great traveller and adventurer, Mr. Push,” “the latest and most original dialect poet, Mr. Verse,” “Miss Wonder, whose dramatic recitations have captivated metropolitan audiences in all the large cities,” and “Miss Good, who is a direct descendant of a great-grandniece of Oliver Wendell Holmes’s cousin.” The course is made up, and contracts are signed before the agent leaves town. Then for six months the course is being talked up. The bureau agent remains for a few days to assist the local canvassers in getting started, telling them who the celebrities are that are to make the town so famous by their visit, etc.

Over fifty such courses are already announced for the State of Michigan the coming autumn, August, 1900, over two hundred in the State of Illinois, nearly as many in Iowa, and so proportionately all over the country. More than $6,000 a week is now being disbursed by bureaus to agents “selling courses.”

So when the newspapers and _The Century Magazine_, _McClure’s Magazine_, and _Harper’s Magazine_ publish the accounts of such heroic adventures as Captain Slocum’s, and a circular is sent out announcing his intention to relate from the lecture platform for the enlightenment of the public the story of his adventures, this local guarantee committee informs the captain that they already have “a course” in their city, which means that an independent lecture or entertainment of any kind, no matter how meritorious, is boycotted by the local committee in every city in the Union of from 2,500 to 40,000.

John L. Stoddard was the most phenomenal success as a professional lecturer, pure and simple, that I have ever known. He began in Boston with the bureau in 1878, together with what he could do for himself, as the bureau did not see enough in his lectures to make him an offer for all of his time. I heard him several times in churches in and about Boston, and declared him a success. I wanted to make him a big offer, but partnership stipulations--that our firm should not speculate--prevented that. I went nightly to hear him and see his pictures. Two young men engaged him for a lecture in Music Hall, Boston, and made a lot of money. They tried it again with the same result; then in suburban towns. Until the warm summer days and short nights set in, crowds were limited to the capacity of the auditorium. I have heard many lecturers whom I thought Stoddard’s superior from a professional point of view, but no other lectures with illustrations have ever drawn one quarter the people to hear them that his did. He has held first place as a stereopticon lecturer for twenty years and has retired with a fortune. Men and women have said to me: “What is the secret of this man’s success?” My only reply is: “The people like to hear him. I like to hear him.”

[Illustration]

ACTORS AND DRAMATIC CRITICS

Joseph Jefferson is an actor in whom the romantic ardor of devotion to the dramatic art has never languished. Youth is gone, but not its enthusiasm, its faith, or its fire. He still embodies Rip Van Winkle with a sincerity as intense and with an artistic execution as thorough and as fresh as if the part were new, and as if he were playing it for the first time. The spontaneous drollery, the wildwood freedom, the endearing gentleness, the piquant, quizzical sapience, the unconscious humor, the pathetic blending of forlorn, wistful patience with awestricken apprehension, the dazed, submissive, drifting surrender to the current of fate, and the apparently careless, but clear-cut and beautiful method--all those attributes that bewitched the community long ago remain unchanged, and have lost no particle of their charm.

[Illustration]

One Sunday morning, in Plymouth Church, just as Mr. Beecher was about to begin his sermon, and there was a deathly silence all over the house, Mr. Beecher said:

“Yes, I have been to the theatre. Mr. Beecher has been to the theatre. Now if you will all wait until you are past seventy years of age and will then go and see Joseph Jefferson in ‘Rip Van Winkle,’ I venture the risk that it will not affect your eligibility for heaven if you do nothing worse.”

Mr. Jefferson can command $1,000 a night in the large cities, if he will only consent to lecture. He and Sir Henry Irving are overrun with invitations to appear before college audiences.

William Winter was first called to my attention by Henry Ward Beecher, in 1876, while we were on the train between Fall River and Boston. Mr. Beecher was reading the New York _Tribune_. He usually read his morning paper from beginning to end, and this time he had got as far as the dramatic criticism, when he said to me:

“If you want to have the true estimate concerning the drama you should read William Winter in _The Tribune_. He is the most graphic writer there is, and he is a fine critic and absolutely clean. Here’s what he says of this young actress, Mary Anderson, as ‘Juliet.’”

[Illustration]

Mr. Beecher then read aloud to me a column prophesying a brilliant success, which proved to be fully realized. Since that time I have read everything Mr. Winter has written. I watched and read and admired the man. I noted the interest that he took in all matters pertaining to the advancement, culture, and education of the community where he lives, his founding of the Arthur Winter Memorial Library at the Staten Island Academy, with a contribution of rare books and gems of literature that could have been collected only by one of fine gifts and refined tastes such as Mr. Winter possesses.

Reading of this acquisition to the academy and the erection of a hall for lectures, etc., I felt an interest in the success of this movement, and wrote my first letter to Mr. Winter, proposing to furnish such of my stars as would contribute lectures and entertainments for his public.

A most gracious and appreciative letter of thanks came in return, which is one of my choicest delights. I so wrote him, and received another characteristic reply. So it has kept up ever since. I now, as far as possible, stipulate with my coming stars that they give one evening during their season to the Winter Memorial Library, and it has come about that they all look forward to that appointment with great expectation, because it is an audience that, for fine appreciation, is not to be excelled anywhere. Marion Crawford, Annie Grey, H. E. Krehbiel, and Ernest Seton-Thompson, all declare the Winter Memorial their ideal audience.

For over thirty-five years (since August, 1865), Mr. Winter has been the dramatic critic of the New York _Tribune_, and during that time he has wielded an influence more potent in the advancement of the drama than that of all the other New York critics combined. He is incorruptible and not afraid of consequences. Once a very prominent manager, knowing that Mr. Winter and I were friends, came into my office and asked for a confidential talk, which was granted. He began like this:

“You know William Winter well, do you not?”

“I have very little association with him. I know him well enough to understand that he is my friend and would go as far to serve me as he would any friend.”

“Is he well fixed or is he poor?” asked the manager.

“He’s not rich. How could he be, with only the resources of his pen as his income, and with a family of sons and a daughter to educate?”

“Major, would $2,500 be any inducement for him to visit the Union Square Theatre to-morrow evening, and give that girl, the greatest actress in the world, a send off?”

I said: “It would be a waste of time and money. You would be as safe in offering $50,000 as any other amount. If Mr. Winter goes there he will write as he sees, and will do the subject justice.”

The manager told me that he had made sure of every paper that he wanted but the _Tribune_, and he would give more for that paper than for all the others, because whatever Winter wrote the public believed. He had already secured the next best dramatic writer for less than half he offered me if I could secure Winter.

While I was writing this book, one of the other New York dramatic critics to whom that manager referred was in my office, and we went out to lunch together. He wanted to borrow $2. He said that the New York newspapers of to-day would accept nothing from his pen, nor from other prominent old journalists, while William Winter seemed to be as much in evidence as ever.

I couldn’t help saying: “I will quote what a theatrical manager said to me twelve years ago: ‘I secured the next best writer in New York for less than half what I would offer to Winter, but the public believes what Winter writes’; and it is true.”

In reply to a letter from him recommending a great Shakespearean scholar and reader, I once wrote Mr. Winter that there was no public demand for a scholarly address on Shakespeare or any literary subject; that there was scarcely a statesman even, or any man of letters, that even colleges and institutions of learning cared to engage for commencements and other public occasions, but that I had letters from many leading colleges offering fabulous prices if I could secure Henry Irving or Joseph Jefferson for them, and on this encouraging symptom I offered each of these great actors $10,000 if they would each give ten addresses on these occasions.

Here is Mr. Winter’s reply:

* * * * *

“September 5, 1896.

“MY DEAR MAJOR POND:

“I observed with some wonder your amazing offer of _$1,000 a night_ to Irving and to Jefferson, for ten lectures, for _college commencements_. There must, of course, be some ‘business’ in this, or you would not think of it, but I should be very glad to know what qualifications are possessed by these gentlemen, or by any other _actors_, which entitled them to this peculiar eminence. A university is _a seat of learning_, and I have always supposed that the honors and rewards of _learning_ are due to great _scholars_, whose lives have been passed in study, in thought, and in labor for the art of literature and the cause of education. Mr. Irving and Mr. Jefferson are masters of the art of acting, and no one admires them more than I do; but I should hardly select either of them as monitors for a university commencement, any more than they would select me as a director of the stage.

“Faithfully yours, “WILLIAM WINTER.”

* * * * *

One of Mr. Winter’s most cherished friends was George William. Curtis, and it is his ambition to add a George William Curtis Memorial Lyceum to the Staten Island Academy. He is sure to accomplish the work if he is spared another five years.

He is the last of his kind. Only by his bravery and his fidelity to his profession could he survive the natural loneliness of his environment.

There has been scarcely a great actor or actress or theatrical manager for the last forty years whom he has not known intimately and who has not been his dear friend. Among this number must be included Joseph Jefferson, Sir Henry Irving, Edwin Booth, Lester Wallack, John McCullagh, Lawrence Barrett, Barney Williams, W. J. Florence, William Weaver, John Gilbert, Adelaide Neilson, Ellen Terry, Charlotte Cushman, and Augustin Daly. One can readily come in touch with the tender vibrations and longings of his heart by reading the following poem in memory of his friend Augustin Daly, which is here reprinted by the kind permission of the Macmillan Co.:

A. D.

Died June 7, 1899.

Long he slumbers; will he waken, greeting, as he used to do, With his kindly, playful smile, his old companions, me and you?

Long he slumbers--though the wind of morning sweetly blows to sea, Though his barque has weighed her anchor, and the tide is flowing free.

Long he slumbers; why, so helpless, doth he falter on the shore? Wherefore stays he in the silence, he that never stayed before?

“Do not wake me!” Oh, the pity! How shall we poor toilers strive If his strong and steadfast spirit keep not our frail hope alive?

All his days were given to action, all his powers of mind and will: Now the restless heart is silent, and the busy brain is still.

Gone the fine ideal fancies, glorious, like the summer dawn! Ev’ry passionate throb of purpose, ev’ry dream of grandeur gone!

Courage, patience, deep devotion, long endurance, manly trust, Zeal for truth and love for beauty--gone, and buried in the dust!

Ah, what pictures rise in mem’ry and what strains of music flow, When we think of all the magic times and scenes of Long Ago!

When once more we hear, in Arden, rustling trees and rippling streams; When on fair Olivia’s palace faint and pale the moonlight beams;

When the storm-clouds break and scatter, and o’er beach, and crag, and wave, Angels float, and heavenly voices haunt the gloom of Prosp’ro’s cave!

Well he wrought--and we remember! Faded rainbow! fallen leaf! All fair things are but as shadows, and all glory ends in grief.

Worn and weary with the struggle, broken with the weight of care, Low he lies, and all his pageants vanish in the empty air.

Nevermore can such things lure us, nevermore be quite the same; Other hands may grasp the laurel, other brows be twined with fame.

Far, and less’ning in the distance, dies the music of the Past; In our ears a note discordant vibrates like an angry blast;

On our eyes the Future rushes, blatant, acrid, fraught with strife, Arrogant with tinselled youth and rank with flux of sensual life.

Naught avails to stem the tumult--vulgar aims and commonplace, Greed and vice and dross and folly, frenzied in the frantic race.

Naught avails, and we that linger, sick at heart and old and grim, Can but pray to leave this rabble, loving Art and following him.

Very lonely seems the pathway; long we journeyed side by side; Much with kindred hope were solaced, much with kindred anguish tried;

Had our transient jars and murmurs, had our purpose to be blest, In our brotherhood of travel, in our dreams of age and rest,--

Yonder, where the tinted hawthorns scarlet poppyfields enfold, And the prodigal laburnum blooms in clust’ring globes of gold.

Ended all--and all is shadow, where but late a glory shone, And the wanderer, gray and fragile, walks the vacant scene, alone.

Only now the phantom faces that in waking dreams appear! Only now the aerial voices that the heart alone can hear!

Round and red the sun is sinking, lurid in his misty light; Faintly sighs the wind of evening, coldly falls the brooding night.

Fare thee well--forever parted, speeding onward in the day Where, through God’s supernal mercy, human frailties drop away!

Fare thee well; while o’er thy ashes softly tolls the funeral knell-- Peace, and love, and tender memory! so, forever, fare thee well! WILLIAM WINTER.

Sir Henry Irving’s advancement to the order of knighthood aroused great interest among theatrical people throughout the world. An honor has been conferred upon dramatic art, and it has fallen on the one person in the English-speaking world most fitted to bear it as the representative of all that is best in dramatic art.

Honors of this kind have been bestowed with much freedom on painters, writers, and musicians, but never before accorded to an actor. This instance, therefore, involves an unusual recognition of the acted drama as the peer of its kindred arts.

[Illustration]

No actor is held in higher esteem by his fellow-actors than Sir Henry Irving. His high abilities are not more admired on the stage than his personal qualities in private life. The congratulations he has received on this advancement are more general and more sincere than could have been bestowed on any other living actor. For the above reason, Sir Henry Irving is offered fabulous sums if he will lecture or give readings. I offered him $10,000 if he would give ten readings before college societies.

It was my privilege to introduce Henry Irving to Mr. Beecher during the season of the latter’s first visit to this country. I accompanied him and Miss Terry to Plymouth Church; we all sat in Mr. Beecher’s pew with Mrs. Beecher. Two more attentive listeners Mr. Beecher never had. Irving had heard Mr. Beecher lecture once--that memorable lecture in Manchester, England, in 1863, when he stood before that great English mob four hours before they would allow him to be heard. Mr. Irving had told me of having been one of the standees on that occasion, and was so intensely interested that he hadn’t time to be tired.

Mr. Irving listened without moving even a muscle of his face during the sermon.

Of course, no two auditors would have attracted the attention of that great congregation more intensely at that time. After the benediction, everybody seemed fixed in their places with eyes centred on Irving and Terry. Mr. Beecher stepped down from the pulpit and made his way to the pastor’s pew. As he approached Mr. Irving he said in a loud voice that all could hear, “Will the congregation please move out?” He then extended his hand to Mr. Irving, saying to me, “Mr. Pond, please walk with Mr. Irving to my house.” He then shook hands with Miss Terry, who at that time held Mrs. Beecher in her embrace. As the crowd passed out, Mr. Irving and I walked ahead of Mr. Beecher, who had Miss Terry on his left arm and Mrs. Beecher on his right. As we entered Mr. Beecher’s drawing-room, Mr. Irving and Mr. Beecher engaged in topical conversation on the sofa, and Mrs. Beecher sat down in a rocking-chair, and Miss Terry, taking an ottoman, placed it at Mrs. Beecher’s feet and threw herself upon it, with both hands clasping Mrs. Beecher, and her head in Mrs. Beecher’s lap. She was not aware of the capture she had made, to the surprise of all the Beecher family; for of all women that Mrs. Beecher had always shunned and despised, actresses she most abhorred, and Miss Terry was the first one to whom she had even spoken to her knowledge. This was the beginning of a friendship that was more like that of mother and daughter than mere friends, and continued until the end of Mrs. Beecher’s life.

At dinner was such a Sunday scene as was often the custom, one which could occur nowhere else except in the Beecher family. There were present Col. H. B. Beecher, Henry Ward’s eldest son, and his wife; Colonel Beecher’s daughter Kate (the late Mrs. Harper); and Mr. William C. Beecher, the second son, all endowed with Beecher brains. The hour was a display of intellect and wit. I never saw Mr. Irving so delightfully entertaining as on this occasion, and he and Miss Terry told me it was the most interesting and delightful day of their lives.

When Mr. Beecher died, I received a cablegram from Henry Irving, asking me to place a wreath on the casket, with the card, “Adieu, noble friend!--Henry Irving.”

Mr. Irving came into my office one morning in November, 1887, while he and his company were playing at Wallack’s Theatre. He asked if I were busy. Of course I was at his service then and there. He said:

“I see by the papers that a fund is being raised for a statue to Mr. Beecher, in Brooklyn. Can you tell me if the plans are formulated, and if Miss Terry and I can be of assistance? I think my company would gladly contribute their services for an extra matinée of ‘Faust’ for that object.”

I assured Mr. Irving that it would be highly appreciated. I went with him to the theatre, where a rehearsal was on. Mr. Irving asked the attention of the company for a moment. He told them that he and Miss Terry would like to invite them all to join in an extra performance of “Faust,” the entire proceeds to be given to the Henry Ward Beecher Statue Fund. The suggestion met with a very hearty and unanimous approval. The matinée was given, and $3,100 was sent to Ripley Ropes, treasurer of the fund, which was duly acknowledged.

Miss Charlotte Cushman was on the stage forty years. The last twenty-five of these years she was the greatest actress of her time. She died in the Parker House, Boston, February, 1876. I started for Kings Chapel, from where she was buried, at 8:30, and found the little church and neighboring thoroughfares thronged with the sorrowing multitude waiting with the hope of getting just one view of the casket which contained the remains of their departed friend.

[Illustration]

Miss Cushman’s memory is still green. Her cottage at Newport and her grave at Mount Auburn are among the first objects inquired for by visitors to these places.

The last few years of her public life were devoted to public reading. In that department she was without a rival,--Fanny Kemble having retired to private life,--and in simplicity, personal magnetism, humor, and stalwart force of execution her readings have never been equalled. In the autumn of 1874 she gave six readings in Chicago for Messrs. Carpenter & Sheldon, managers of the Star Course, for which they paid her $5,000. The readings took place in McCormick’s Hall, on the north side of the city. The gross receipts for those six readings aggregated upward of $17,000.

In 1857 a tramping jour printer had come from Kansas seeking employment on the daily papers in St. Louis. It was the year of the great financial panic. There were so many printers out of work that those having steady employment yielded half of their time to “subs.”

At the house where I boarded I sat next to the prompter of the People’s Theatre, an old man, the most popular prompter ever known to the profession, Jimmie Anderson. I took to the old fellow, and he was very nice to me. One evening he invited me to the theatre, on the stage, where I stood beside him and saw Neafie in the “Corsican Brothers.” I walked home with him after the theatre. Before retiring that night he told me that the office of call-boy in the theatre was vacant, and I might have it--seven dollars a week. I began the following Monday. Charlotte Cushman opened that night with Lady Macbeth. It was the first time I ever saw her.

During the play Miss Cushman came to Mr. Anderson somewhat excited, saying, “Jimmie”--they all called him Jimmie--“the boy who carried my basket to-night loitered by the way. That basket contains most of my jewels. I must have somebody that I can rely upon who will walk faithfully by my side.”

Anxious to earn an extra dollar, I hunched old Jimmie, and he turned around and spoke very savagely to me:

“Will you do it?”

“Yes,” said I.

So that night I walked home with Charlotte Cushman, the great actress, carrying her basket to her room in the Planters’ House.

I did this until Saturday, when I was taken ill and obliged to send a substitute, who brought the basket on Saturday night.

After the play, when the lights were turned off with the exception of the star’s dressing-room, I was curled up on the stage among a lot of scenery. I heard Miss Cushman, coming out of her room, say:

“Where is that boy who carried my basket?”

I replied, “Here.”

She walked across the stage, piloted by the night watchman with his lantern, and reaching out her hand to me said:

“I hope you are not going to be ill,” and placed a coin in my hands.

I hurried to get to where there was sufficient light, to discover that I was the owner of a twenty-dollar gold piece.

That night I changed my lodging.

I did not meet Miss Cushman personally after that until 1874-5. I was giving Sunday-night entertainments in Boston, which were meeting with very great success. I thought of Charlotte Cushman, and telegraphed her at Newport, offering her $1,000 if she would give a reading in the Boston. She accepted.

The night of the reading I was so busy that I did not have an opportunity to place in Miss Cushman’s hands the envelope containing the certified check for $1,000. It was not until after the performance that I went to her hotel and sent up my card. The bell-boy returned with the answer, “Miss Cushman says show the gentleman up.”

Miss Cushman met me very cordially in her room. She was in a very happy mood, as the hall had been crowded with people.

“Miss Cushman,” I said, “I intended to hand this envelope to you on the platform, but I was so busy in front of the house that I could not get an opportunity. Please pardon me.”

“Oh, that is all right, Major Pond. Sit down and have some supper.” (Stars always have supper after their performances.)

During the conversation at the table I said: “Miss Cushman, that $1,000 check of this evening is the interest on twenty dollars that you invested in me in 1857.”

Then I related the incident of the twenty-dollar gold piece which she gave me when I was sick back of the stage in St. Louis.

“Are you that boy?” she asked, with a reminiscent smile.

“Yes,” said I, smiling back, “the very boy.”

“Well, I am glad to see you. I have often wondered if you survived.”

We were both glad.

Miss Ellen Terry, the greatest actress of our times, possesses a remarkable range of powers from low comedy to the highest tragic force, but always suggesting a lovely spirit behind the mask. At one moment she can be a queen of tragedy, at another a boisterous hoyden, at another a gentle, refined, high-bred lady. Her mirth is perfect gladness.

[Illustration]

In private or social life, no matter how select or distinguished the surroundings or attractive the company, she eclipses every lady present, and is always the centre of attraction.

No better estimate of the genius of Miss Terry can be given than Mr. William Winter’s description of her in the character of Rosamund, in Tennyson’s “Becket,” which I quote, by permission of the Macmillan Co., from “Shadows of the Stage”:

* * * * *

“Tennyson’s Rosamund is one of the loveliest creations in English literature. No character could be imagined in more complete unison with the nature and attributes disclosed in the acting of Ellen Terry. She embodied it in a fluent and delicious vein of spontaneity. In that part, as in Goethe’s Margaret, she conquered by simply allowing a rich individuality to show itself through careless glee, confiding abandonment, and a sweet bewilderment of tremulous apprehension, and once through the proud self-assertion of elemental nobility. That seems not difficult in the saying, but, obviously, it must be difficult to do; for whenever, in acting, the effect of nature is most absolute, there the means of art have been applied with the most of glamour, and concealed with the best of disguise. Throughout her performance there was no effort. All was grace. In the fugitive scene with Becket, and in the affectionate prattle--half raillery, half fondness--in the bower scene with Henry, the conditions are so simple that the effect might have become insipid but for her sumptuous personality, her profound sincerity, the plenitude of her enticing and piquant ways, the sunshine of her face, and the music of her delicious voice. During those scenes her preservation of girlish sprightliness never lapsed--till, with the final exclamation, ‘Some dreadful truth is breaking on me,’ she struck the chord of tenderest pathos, and showed herself all woman. Beauty and tenderness, in forlorn apprehension, overshadowed, shaken, and made half wild with nameless dread, constitute a conflicting image of lovely grief, such as Ellen Terry, beyond all the players of our time, is best fitted to impress upon the heart.”

* * * * *

I have frequently been offered $1,000 if I could secure Miss Terry for an afternoon’s reading in the drawing-rooms of wealthy people in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston.

LITERARY LECTURERS

[Illustration]

Matthew Arnold came to this country and gave one hundred lectures. Nobody ever heard any of them, not even those sitting in the front row. At his first appearance in Chickering Hall every seat was sold at a high price. Chauncey M. Depew introduced the speaker. I was looking after the business in the front of the house. There was not a seat to be had excepting a few that were held by speculators on the sidewalk. As Mr. Depew and Matthew Arnold appeared before the audience, somebody told me that General and Mrs. Grant had just arrived and had seats in the gallery, but some other people were occupying them. I immediately got a policeman, and working through the standing crowd, found that they were the last two seats on the aisle in the gallery. We had no difficulty in getting the occupants to vacate as soon as they discovered who held the tickets. We had just heard the last few sentences of Mr. Depew’s introduction when Matthew Arnold stepped forward, opened out his manuscript, laid it on the desk, and his lips began to move. There was not the slightest sound audible from where I stood. After a few minutes General Grant said to Mrs. Grant, “Well, wife, we have paid to see the British lion; we cannot hear him roar, so we had better go home.” They left the hall. A few minutes later there was a stream of people leaving the place. All those standing went away very early. Later on, the others who could not endure the silence moved away as quietly as they could.

Matthew Arnold went to Boston, and some friends there urged him to take lessons in elocution, which he did. He engaged the well-known instructor, Mr. Marshall Wilder (not Marshall P. Wilder of vaudeville fame), but it only helped to make the performance appear more ridiculous than before.

Mr. Arnold had his manuscript copied in very large letters on flat cap paper and bound in portfolio style, which he mounted on an easel at his right. He would throw his eyes on the manuscript and then recite a sentence to the audience, turn his head for the next sentence and recite that in a loud, monotonous voice, and in that way to the end of the show.

Notwithstanding all his eccentricities, the best people of America paid $2 a ticket to see and hear the great poet and critic, and he returned to England with a very handsome sum of money, which he must have needed or he never would have allowed himself to be subjected to so ridiculous a spectacle as he made of his performance.

His own impressions of the success of the lecture are given in the following letter which he wrote to his daughter:

* * * * *

“THE ST. BOTOLPH CLUB, 85 BOYLSTON STREET, “BOSTON, November 8, 1883.

“MY DEAREST FAN:

“Here is Thursday and my Sunday letter has not yet been written; but you have heard from Flu, and she will have given you some notion of what our life here is. I hope, however, to write once in every week to you. I wrote last from New York, before my first lecture. I was badly heard, and many people were much disappointed; but they remained to the end, were perfectly civil and attentive, and applauded me when I had done. It made me doubtful about going on with the lecturing, however, as I felt I could not maintain a louder pitch of voice than I did in Chickering Hall, where I lectured, and some of the American halls are much larger. There is a good deal to be learned as to the management of the voice, however, and I have set myself to learn it, though I am old to begin; the kindness of the people here makes everything easier, as they are determined to like one. The strength of the feeling about papa, here in New England, especially, would gratify you; and they have been diligent readers of my books for years. The number of people whom, somehow or other, I reach here is what surprises me. Imagine General Grant calling at the _Tribune_ office to thank them for their good report of the main points of my lecture, as he had thought the line taken so very important, but had heard imperfectly! Now I should not have suspected Grant of either knowing or caring anything whatever about me and my productions.

“Your ever affectionate “M. A.”

* * * * *

[Illustration]

John Boyle O’Reilly, the poet, editor of the Boston _Pilot_, the leading Roman Catholic newspaper of New England, and the first weekly devoted to Catholic and Irish interests ever published in this country, was at the time of his death the most popular lecturer of his time with Catholic societies. Boyle O’Reilly had passed an eventful life. Very early in his young manhood he became identified with the Fenian Brotherhood, under James Stevens, the Irish leader who came so nearly organizing a successful rebellion against British rule that it is a matter of record that at one time there was a Fenian Council organized in nearly every regiment in the British army that permitted Irish recruits, as well as in a large majority of all British ships of war. O’Reilly entered the Ninth Hussars in order to learn military life and skill. He became sergeant-major, the highest warrant position obtainable in the rank and file. He was so completely trusted that the Secret Service detective kept on duty in the regiment made him his confidant. The regiment was on duty at Dublin Castle when James Stevens was captured and brought there a prisoner. Besides the Ninth Hussars, there was also a Highland regiment in the garrison. Stevens escaped, aided by the Fenians under O’Reilly and his regimental associates. The young sergeant held high command in the brotherhood. A great commotion followed, and the Highlanders were put on guard with orders to hold every Irishman within the bounds. Before this was made public, O’Reilly attempted to leave, carrying the despatch bag often entrusted to him. He was stopped at the Castle gates, an act which was apologized for at the time. Before night fell it was known that a Fenian Council was in existence there. Its membership was almost defined, but its leader’s name still remained a secret. An order for summary execution of all was promulgated, martial law being in force, unless this name was given. Boyle O’Reilly, to save his associates from this fate, made the announcement himself. His action being treasonable, the penalty was death, and Sergeant O’Reilly was tried at once, found guilty, and condemned. This sentence was commuted to penal transportation for life, and the young soldier was sent to Western Australia, the last of British convict settlements. He remained five years before making his escape and reaching America in safety. The quality of manhood that Boyle O’Reilly possessed was displayed not only in the reckless courage and daring shown in the Fenian incidents, and in the patient, manly endurance exhibited in his years of prison servitude, but it reached a higher plane by far when he settled down to the life of a freeman and citizen in the metropolis of New England. With the maturity of his intellectual life intensified and deepened by the strange experiences through which he had passed, there came to him the conviction that conspiracy was personally demoralizing as well as futile as a policy. He felt that any genuine and sincere agitation could be best achieved in a free community by close adherence to the open ways that equal citizenship afforded. He never assumed, then, any other rôle than that of an American, while faithful always to the better interests of his own people. Boyle O’Reilly easily became one of the most popular men and scholars of Boston. He took an active part in all public affairs, social and political, and soon became as “to the manor born.” He was successful as a lecturer from the outset, for he had the genius of the poet, and the wit and warmth of an Irishman--qualities that, with a most attractive presence, made him popular always. But he cared more for his home, his newspaper, and his library than for the platform. Nevertheless, he was able to do a good deal of lecturing, where the distances would permit, without neglecting his other duties.

John Boyle O’Reilly, an Irishman and a Catholic, has been President of the Papyrus Club in Boston, a chair occupied by Webster, Lowell, Emerson, Whittier, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, and has a memorial niche in the new Public Library of Boston, where is to be found the finest collection of Irish literature in America. The accompanying picture he signed for me only a short time before his death.

Mr. Hamilton W. Mabie, associate editor of _The Outlook_, and author of several books that rank among the finer literature of our land, is one of our very best public speakers. He is one of the first called upon to deliver addresses on nearly all of the most important occasions, and his literary lectures are also in great demand.

[Illustration]

If the mantle of Edward Everett has fallen upon any man of this generation, that man is Mr. Mabie. As an orator he is popular in the same sense that Mr Everett was. He possesses more humor than Everett. But in his self command, in his reserve force, in the purity of his language, in his quiet intensity and refinement of appearance on the platform, he belongs to the same school, and to-day heads it.

In dignity of bearing, in clearness of expression, in the finish of his sentences, in the charm of his manner, Mr. Mabie is a model for all public speakers.

Each season on the lecture platform has more firmly established his position as one of the foremost essayists, critics, and orators of this country. He has addressed and delighted the most cultivated audiences wherever he has appeared, and recalls have been numerous. His lectures have been received with special favor before colleges, literary clubs, and wherever substance and form of the very highest order are appreciated.

Ralph Waldo Emerson was a favorite of the lyceum for nearly forty years. He had finished his lecturing career when I took up the business, but his memory was very green to all lecture committees that thronged our office in Boston year after year, and many urgent applications were made for him to appear after he had retired to his home at Concord.

[Illustration]

One morning Mrs. Mary A. Livermore came into our office in Boston, somewhat disturbed by the fact that the newspapers that morning had announced that the publishers of the Boston _Herald_ had obtained an option on the Old South Meeting House, and that it was to be torn down, as the society was going to build a new church on the Back Bay and were to sell the old structure. At that time the Redpath Lyceum Bureau was a sort of rendezvous for the leading men and women of letters. Very soon Mrs. Julia Ward Howe came in, accompanied by Father Neil, a patriarchal minister of the Baptist profession, whose great white beard hung down to the skirts of his garments. There was a general feeling of indignation expressed by every one present that this great pile was to be desecrated or demolished. Mr. Redpath came in late, and about the first word he uttered was:

“Do you see the Old South Church is to go? It is sold to the _Herald_ company.”

There was more indignation generally expressed, and Mr. Redpath went out to see the parties and to ascertain if the report was true. When he returned he reported that it was a fact that the parties had the option for sixty days, but were willing to release it if the citizens wished to preserve it. Then and there was an organization formed or talked of for the preservation of the church, and it was decided to get up an entertainment.

Before the day was over some ladies came in and announced to Mr. Redpath that they were going to make the attempt to preserve the old pile, and thought of giving an entertainment in the church as soon as possible in order to start a fund for its preservation. What could the Redpath Bureau furnish that would draw a crowd that would pay a good price? We thought it all over, and it was decided to try Mr. Emerson, as he had not lectured in Boston for a number of years.

It was my fortune to be sent to Concord, at Mr. Redpath’s suggestion, to see if Mr. Emerson would come in and give us a lecture. I went out and met the dear old man at the Manse House. He greeted me very cordially and gladly accepted the invitation to come in and lecture. The date was fixed; it was advertised in the newspapers; tickets were put out at from one to three dollars, and many of the Boston ladies sold them. The afternoon for the lecture came. The Old South was filled with as choice an audience of the blue blood of Boston as has ever assembled in that old chapel. Mr. Emerson came in and was introduced by Father Neil. As he began reading his lecture the audience was very attentive. After a few moments he lost his place, and his grand-daughter, sitting in the front row of seats, gently stepped toward him and reminded him that he was lecturing. He saw at once that he was wandering, and with the most charming, characteristic, apologetic bow he resumed his place--an incident that seemed to affect the audience more than anything that could possibly have occurred. A few moments later he took a piece of manuscript in his hand, and turning around with it, laid it on a side table.

Just then one of the audience said to me (I think it was Mrs. Livermore or Mrs. Howe), “Please have the audience pass right out,” and rushing up to Mr. Emerson, said, “Thank you so much for that delightful lecture,” then turning around, waved the audience to go out.

He probably had been speaking about fifteen minutes. The audience passed out, many of them in tears. It was one of the most pathetic sights that I ever witnessed. It did not attract very much attention just then, and I never read any account of it in the newspapers. I suppose it was out of love and veneration for the dear man that the incident did not receive public mention, but there must be a great many still alive who were witnesses of that memorable scene. It was Ralph Waldo Emerson’s last public appearance.

[Illustration: WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS]

William Dean Howells, Mark Twain always insisted, would be a success on the platform if he would ever consent to go lecturing, and on that recommendation, more than my love for his books, few of which I have ever read, I have used my persuasive eloquence on him more than on any other American author. I had other reasons for importuning Mr. Howells. One was because so many applications had come to me, year after year, from lyceums in all parts of the country, urging me to secure him and expressing wonder that he should refuse. Another was that every visit to the popular novelist increased my faith in the ultimate success of my object. He was always cordial and polite and seemingly pleased that there was so much of a desire on the part of the public to see and hear him, not knowing whether he could entertain them or not. He always seemed to reason very encouragingly from a business standpoint, going into details of probable results from a tour of from fifty to one hundred lectures, as compared with what he could earn by writing during the same length of time. He would like to try it, but there was the risk of health, and of giving up a certainty for what seemed to him an uncertainty. He felt sure that he could prepare a lecture that would please the people and give much information concerning the mysteries of his craft that he could not impart so well in any other way. He was more or less pessimistic concerning himself.

Finally there was some prospective change at _Harper’s Weekly_, to which he had regularly contributed so long, and to my delight, in the spring of 1899, he informed me that he would accept my offer, and that I might book fifty engagements for him to lecture, not more than four times a week, and not to go farther west than Kansas or Iowa. I think I never made an announcement that gave me more real inward satisfaction, for in all the years of my pursual of him I had come to learn his painstaking habit of devotion to his work, and that whatever he attempted would be sure of success.

When Mark Twain learned that Mr. Howells had at last consented to undertake a lecture tour, he wrote me:

* * * * *

“I am glad you have corralled Howells. He’s a most sinful man, and I always knew God would send him to the platform if he didn’t behave.”

* * * * *

He went to his country place in Maine to prepare his lectures. I received frequent letters from him telling me that he was taking easily to the work, and that I might feel satisfied that his lecture would meet the public approval. His first lecture, “The Heroes and Heroines of Fiction,” was given at my house.

His first public lecture was in Ypsilanti, Mich., for I had planned to make the long rides and distant cities before cold weather set in. Prevented by sickness from accompanying him myself, I sent another gentleman with him in my stead, and together they made a tour of the principal cities of the middle West. The newspaper criticisms of Mr. Howells’ lectures were fine, and everywhere that he went he found large and enthusiastic audiences. He endeared himself to his hearers. A gentleman in Des Moines, Ia., after Mr. Howells’ lecture there, sat down and wrote me a letter, from which I quote:

* * * * *

“DEAR MR. POND:

“I am led to address you in this familiar way out of the enthusiastic pleasure which I have enjoyed over the visit of Mr. Howells, and I have thought it would be pleasing to you to know that his reception here was enthusiastic and appreciative. It was my good fortune to have him, with President McLean of the State University, and Major Byers of this city, at a little one o’clock lunch at my home on Wednesday, 1st inst., and his stay there will always be remembered by us as a delight. He is one of the sweetest tempered and most lovable men that I have ever known. The trait which, perhaps, first becomes noticeable when you have met him is his absolute honesty and faithfulness to the truth, and he carried out this principle in his lecture by making it not alone an effort to please, but by giving us an hour of the most valuable instruction. It is not necessary for me to enlarge upon the importance of this in a day so prolific of novels, and when it is so important that our novel reading should be well directed. Mr. Howells created a splendid impression in Des Moines, and has left the literary life of our city decidedly the better for his presence.”

* * * * *

The cordiality of the people he met throughout those middle Western States was almost too much for Mr. Howells. He wrote me from Emporia, Kansas:

* * * * *

“I had a great house--1,300 or 1,400--last night here, and only less quick and keen than in Topeka, where it was perfect. But I cannot stand the racket. I cannot sleep without drugs, and I will ask you not to make any more dates for me after Hamilton, if you can get me there; for I cannot promise to fill these; and I don’t want to disappoint people. It is the _kindness_ (as I foresaw) that kills. I _cannot_ refuse people’s hospitality, and it is simply disastrous.”

* * * * *

On his return to New York he brought up the subject again, by writing me:

* * * * *

“The trouble with lecturing is the social side, which is essentially a part of it, and a very pleasant part. If I could lecture every night (which I cannot) and arrive every day too late for an afternoon reception, and get away as soon as I read my paper, it would be fine, but that is impossible.”

* * * * *

This tour, I believe, brought a great deal of pleasure and profit to the novel-reading public (and whom does that term not include?) who had their first opportunity to hear the greatest realist in American fiction explain the technique of his profession. It seems, too, that some of the experiences were an education to Mr. Howells, who wrote me:

* * * * *

“Grinnell was my first glimpse of the real West, and it is simply stupendous. The beauty and richness of the country are marvellous. Co-education is the true thing for the West. I have never met brighter minds than among the women members of the faculty. What charming people, all!”

* * * * *

But he got homesick for New York and his desk, and some weeks before the tour was completed, he countermanded his request to make engagements for him only every other day, and asked me to crowd in all the dates possible in November, so as to let him off early in December.

Although in haste to escape from what he termed “the worst slavery I ever imagined,” and to get back to his writing, he called a halt at Hamilton, Ohio, the town of his early boyhood. How much human nature and “boy” nature the following few words reveal:

* * * * *

“Hamilton is my ‘Boy’s Town’ and I wish to go there on almost any terms. I could lecture there the night after Cincinnati, and I should like a day off there afterward.”

* * * * *

He did stop off there, and preceding his regular lecture on “The Novel and Novel Writing,” he delighted the people of Hamilton with some of his autobiographical reminiscences. The town was proud of him, if one may judge from the extended reports that appeared in the local papers.

I have since made several attempts to induce Mr. Howells to fill lecture engagements and thus give pleasure to the many people who are constantly applying to me for him, but his prejudice against the platform seems adamantine. Here is a record of one such futile attempt:

* * * * *

(Dict.) “May 24, 1900.

“MY DEAR MR. HOWELLS:

“Will you go to Wilmington, Del., and lecture for $350? I should think it would be splendid recreation for you. There are a great many people who have died for the want of platform ozone.”

“Sincerely yours, “J. B. POND.”

“Mr. W. D. Howells, 40 West 59th St., N. Y.”

* * * * *

“40 WEST 59TH ST., May 24, 1900.”

“MY DEAR MAJOR:”

“I am not quite hungry enough yet. But I appreciate your kindness, and I wonder at Wilmington.”

“Yours truly, “W. D. HOWELLS.”

* * * * *

I wanted to say something of Mr. Howells--better than I knew how to write--so I asked my friend, Mr. George W. Cable, to write it for me, and here is what he has to say:

* * * * *

Nearly twenty years ago, Mr. Thomas Sargent Perry wrote of Mr. Howells: “He has made over the American novel, taught it gracefulness and compactness, and has given it a place in literature along with the best of modern work.” This was far from the first word of praise and appreciation evoked by Mr. Howells, who, as editor of a leading literary magazine, as poet and as novelist, had already firmly established himself in the ranks of the writers of to-day. And since his name first became known it has grown constantly more familiar and more loved, until to-day it is regarded as that of the most typically American of American writers, without a rival in his particular field of work.

This field of work has been the subject of more or less discussion among his readers, regarding its merits and demerits. But however much discussion there may be, as to the subject he has chosen, there can be absolutely no doubt as to the excellency of his treatment of it. He has chosen, as Thomas Wentworth Higginson tells us: “To look away from great passions, and rather to elevate the commonplace by minute touches.” He began by throwing aside all the meaningless conventionalities that then hung around the novel, boldly asserting that, “As for him, he was a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles--an observer and a portrayer of the trivial commonplaces of life.” Yet in truth he is far more than this; to quote Mr. Perry again, Mr. Howells touches the reader’s shoulder and points out the beauty hidden in simple actions, the pathos lurking beneath seemingly indifferent words--in short, the humanity of life.”

To “paint the thing as he sees it” has been and is ever Mr. Howells’s chief aim in his work. And because of his patient, conscientious adherence to this principle, he gives us life, his characters are not puppets, conjured from a wild imagination and moved mechanically by strings, but living, human men and women, such as we meet any and every day--very ordinary, perhaps, and at times even uninteresting, except that, as Browning has it:

“We’re made so that we love First when we see them painted, things we’ve passed Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see.”

It is as the leading exponent of realism in art that Mr. Howells stands to-day--for realism as opposed to romanticism, for living interest in the world around us instead of a vague, fanciful dreaming about the past. Mr. Howells himself has told us that we cannot have romanticism back because we live now in an age of hopeful doing and striving, not of mere dreaming. “Like Tolstoi and Ibsen,” some one has written of him, “his types are drawn directly from the reality he knows, and have no prototypes in fiction. All romantic traditions are discarded and the story moves on, not only with the strictest regard for probability, but with the inevitableness of life itself.”

His “heavenly scorn” for conventions and traditions, for all that is second hand or sham, and his conscientious desire to set forth the truth and to show us life as he knows it, are the fundamental bases of his success. Yet I think he has become endeared to the American people even more through his pure, unqualified Americanism--his “contemporaneousness,” as Boyesen calls it, when he says, “That good-natured disrespect toward the past, that humorous tolerance of amusing shams, that large-hearted sympathy and kindliness toward all humanity, which are the most characteristic qualities of the American people, have never before found so typical a representative in American literature.” His men and women are not only real men and women of to-day, they are American men and women; and if he has been censured for giving us frivolous, inconsequent, nervously silly women, it is, as some one has said, because, “the vain and weak women intrude themselves a good deal in real life, while the Olive Hallecks and Penelope Laphams are content to keep a post of quiet observation farther back.” His fine, pure, unselfish women are not wanting any more than are his strong, noble men. He is too keen an observer to fail to recognize their existence even in the “everyday world” that he depicts, but his all-pervading humor ferrets out weakness and inconsequence and folly, exposing them, not in an unfriendly way, but with a generous, sympathetic smile that makes even his victims smile with him.

Still, even this kindly humor is far less noticeable in his later work than in his early writing. It has rather broadened into a large human sympathy, a genial love of his kind, and a keen appreciation of their merits as well as of their faults. When he moralizes, as he sometimes does, it is, as some one has said, in an “open and fearless treatment of the living problems of the hour.... Underlying each of his later works is the thought of a perfect brotherhood.”

To quote Thomas Sargent Perry again, than whose appreciation of Mr. Howells I know of none finer: “That he has delighted us all, we all know. He has shown us how genuine, how full of romance, is the life about us which seems sordid and has a fine reputation for sordidness. It is the tone of the author’s mind that makes the mark upon that of the reader, and who that knows Mr. Howells’s work does not feel that he learns new sympathies and gentler judgment from his generosity and careful study?”

Mr. Howells is not only one of the most prolific of all imaginative American writers of the first rank, but within the last ten years or so he has come to be regarded as one of the foremost authorities, if not the very first, in the criticism of current poetry and romance. Hundreds of thousands of readers put themselves under the inspiration and leading of his printed talks upon books and writers of the day, and while he has been to our vast reading public one of the least seen of literary Americans, no portrait is better known than his, no man’s utterance upon any subject of literary value is more widely or eagerly considered. All the more emphatically is this latter statement true of the subjects he has now chosen for his public lectures. These themes are peculiarly his own, and the opportunity to see the very face and hear the living voice of the man himself is one that, it may safely be predicted, the whole book-loving element of American society will avail itself of with a keen and affectionate delight.

G. W. CABLE.

Northampton, Mass., July, ’99.

* * * * *

I want Mr. Howells to live to a good old age, as long as the great war horses of the platform lived. The people want to see and hear him most of all. Here is what his friend, Mark Twain, said of lecturing at the close of the American end of his tour around the world:

“Lecturing is gymnastics, chest-expander, medicine, mind healer, blues destroyer, all in one. I am twice as well as I was when I started out. I have gained nine pounds in twenty-eight days, and expect to weigh six hundred before January. I haven’t had a blue day in all the twenty-eight.”

George William Curtis has filled, as no other American man of letters of this generation, the ideal of clear intellect, pure taste, moral purpose, chivalry of feeling, and personal refinement and grace. The grace and culture he possessed were as natural as his courtesy and his faith in mankind. They were ingrained as part of his being, wrought into every strain and making the strands of his everyday life.

[Illustration]

From the moment of his entrance into public life as a speaker, now nearly fifty years ago, he entirely satisfied the higher conception of purity, dignity, and sweetness. He was a lecturer of beautiful presence and was superbly artificial, yet this artificiality was natural. His hair and beard were a beautiful silver-gray, his face was pale, his manner studied, his voice cultivated. It was as enjoyable to hear him as to listen to an opera, and was a lesson in grand manners and elocution.

His voice, like his manners and appearance on the platform, was ideal--clear, bell-like, silvery. He could be heard in the largest of halls without apparently any special effort. It was a delight to listen; every syllable was distinct, yet there was no strain. The enunciation was perfect. The matter of his speeches was like the sound, perfect in sense, clear in meaning, as graceful as the speaking, and always carrying the sense of conviction to the hearers.

A gentleman, and exclusive in bearing, Curtis was, nevertheless, profoundly democratic. He believed in his fellowmen--that was the essence of his democracy--and, like Wendell Phillips, he illustrated in his manners and greeting that the noblest refinement was in all senses a part of the most complete faith in republican doctrine and in the essential equality of human beings. For twenty years Mr. Curtis commanded the highest fees--about the same as Gough, Beecher, and Phillips. He always read his lectures from carefully prepared manuscripts.

MISCELLANEOUS Henry Watterson I have known for the twenty-five years that he has been coming to the Everett House, New York. I think I know him better than many of those who count themselves intimate acquaintances and friends. My office has been his headquarters most of that time, where he has been in the habit of meeting all classes of political leaders, newspaper managers, and editors, and where have been discussed all progressive schemes in the interest of telegraph news, printing machinery, paper manufacture, and advancement in industry of all kinds, political, social, scientific, and for the general good in all directions.

[Illustration]

A Democratic leader and editor of the most influential paper in the South, he has counted such men as Greeley, Raymond, James, Whitelaw Reid, Dana, McGill, and John Swinton among his nearest friends and advisers. He was looked upon by his political opponents as one of the safest of their advisers. I think Henry Watterson has had the entrée to the White House during every administration since Grant’s, excepting Hayes, although I hardly think he and President Cleveland were over fond of each other.

There are conditions under which a close friend of the Colonel can learn all about him--his remarkable social experiences, especially among the men and women of the lyric and dramatic stage. At one time he knew every great actor, actress, singer, and manager in the English-speaking world, and they were all his friends.

Colonel Watterson has been a successful lecturer during the last two decades and has covered as much territory as any other man. He is equally popular in New England and in the South; is a favorite in Texas, California, Arkansas, Kansas, Iowa, and all the Western States. He has given his lecture on “Abraham Lincoln” before crowded houses in Southern cities where, when he was a rebel captain, he would joyfully have directed the Federal President’s execution.

Until 1894 he conducted the councils of his party in all national conventions, and has wielded an influence more potent in the advancement of the Democratic party than any other man of his time.

He is a charming man personally, honest, kind-hearted, and sincere in every way (except at poker: I have known him to rake in all the chips in a three-round jack-pot, and raise out five good players--a Vice-President of the United States, a governor of a State, and three United States Senators--on a bobtail flush). His friends are legion. As a public speaker I think he is as bad as he is charming in private conversation. The secret of his universal popularity is his own magnificent self.

The Hon. William Parsons, a Dublin barrister, was a splendid representative of a school of literary and historical lecturers, who, like Dr. John Lord, followed the platform as a profession. Taking him all in all, Mr. Parsons was decidedly the most satisfactory man to manager and audiences alike that has come from abroad. His taking presence, charming manners, and well-equipped brain, admirably furnished, his ease of speech and pleasant, well-trained voice, together with his ready wit and careful scholarship, made him a favorite always during the twelve years he was continuously coming here for the lecture season. But his voice was his best tool; it never wore on himself or tired his hearers.

[Illustration]

From 1873 to 1884, the Hon. William Parsons made annual lecture tours in America. Next to Gough, he was about the first one to be booked for the following season wherever he appeared. Generally he returned after the close of a lecture tour with his time for the following season all booked solid and contracts in his pocket. His lectures were biographical.

William E. Gladstone could not be prevailed upon to undertake a lecture tour in America. I made him a final otter of £4,000 for twenty lectures. Of course he did not accept it; yet, if he had only known the reception he would have gotten in America, and the anxious, almost feverish desire that there was on the part of the people to see and hear him, I think he would have been inclined to run across. There is no auditorium in this country that he could not have filled nightly at big prices. But possibly the fear also of the reception may have influenced his negative. It certainly did affect John Bright in the series of refusals he made to my several suggestions.

[Illustration]

I met Mr. Gladstone three times at his home in London and submitted propositions for a tour of fifty lectures. He did not discourage me at first, but later on said that he thought he was too old to make the trip. “Besides,” he added, “why should I go to America? Don’t all Americans come to see me?” I give the letter Mr. Gladstone sent me in reply to my last:

* * * * *

“DEAR SIR: I have to acknowledge the receipt of your letter, with all the kindness it expresses, and the dazzling proposals which it offers. Unhappily my reply lies not in vague expressions of hope, but in the burden of seventy years, and of engagements and duties beyond my strength, by the desertion of which, even for the time needed, I should really be disentitling myself to the good will of the people of America, which I prize so highly.

“I remain, dear sir, Your most faithful servant, W. E. GLADSTONE.”

“February 7, 1880.

“TO MAJOR J. B. POND, Boston, U. S. A.”

* * * * *

On two occasions I breakfasted with Mr. Gladstone at his Harley Street house. He was very much interested in my stories of Western frontier life, and asked if I had any objections to having a stenographer sit behind a screen and take down the “stories.” So on my third visit we sat down to breakfast and I talked. I had been thinking all the night before and all the morning on my way to his house what I would say, but when once seated at the table, somehow, unconsciously, I was going on at a great rate, giving experiences of my Western life, all drawn out of me by Mr. Gladstone’s fascinating way of doing things. It was one o’clock when we rose from the table. He said: “Major Pond, I cannot tell you how interesting your visit has been to me. I thank you for it.” The reporter was concealed behind a screen very near. I have looked for the stories in print, but I never found them.

P. T. Barnum I first saw in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, in 1853. The agitation over the Maine Law had excited the then new and farthest Western State, Wisconsin, and there was a movement on foot to have the Maine Law passed by the State Legislature. Many speakers were secured from the East, among whom were Mrs. Fowler, Mrs. S. R. I. Bennett, P. T. Barnum, and another gentleman, a famous agitator, whose name I forget. This party travelled in a two-horse carriage from town to town, holding temperance meetings and making speeches. I know that I walked with my father from Alto to Fond du Lac (twenty miles) to see and to hear “the great humbug,” Barnum. I remember Darling’s Hall was packed. The women speakers, to my eye, seemed very beautiful. I remember that the hair of one hung in long ringlets down each side of her face and neck, and her shoulders and arms were bare! She was very picturesque.

[Illustration]

Then came the first gentleman, whom I didn’t care for; but at last came Barnum, “the humbug.” The first handclapping and cheers that I ever remember hearing were for Barnum. I didn’t understand what it was all about. A handsome, medium-sized man, in dark trousers, white vest, and a black sack coat, smooth shaven, with a wealth of curly black hair, and a smile all over his face, stepped forward on the platform. He prefaced his remarks by saying:

“Yes, I am a ‘humbug,’ but the cause which I have championed in company with these friends is sincere. That is no humbug. I have consented to accompany them throughout your State to help, if possible, in establishing a law in this young State that may save thousands and tens of thousands from ruin. You have laws for the prevention of murder and of theft and of all other crimes, but no law for the prevention of a man’s stealing and wasting his earnings in strong drink and impoverishing his family.”

He made a very eloquent appeal to our people, and closed his speech by reassuring his friends that he was no humbug, “but look out next year. I expect to send a show into this country. Then you may get humbugged.” He retired with more cheers and applause. The next year Barnum’s woolly horse was exhibited throughout the West, and everybody _was_ humbugged. My father, at great sacrifice, took all his family, and all the settlement did likewise. I didn’t see him after that until 1875 or 1876.

While I was associated with Mr. Redpath in Boston I engaged Mr. Barnum to give twenty lectures on temperance in New England, paying him $2,000 and his expenses. His first lecture was in Music Hall, Boston, in the Redpath Lyceum Course, before a very large audience.

The day he arrived at Boston I met him and Mrs Barnum, his new young wife, at the station. Each had small handbags. I asked him if he had any large baggage. He said they had none, excepting what they carried in their hands. I started to pilot them to a carriage, when Mr. Barnum said: “We will walk to the Parker House. It is not necessary to go to the expense of a carriage.” I accompanied him on his tour through New England, where he lectured in all the large towns, and he would never allow his manager to incur an extra expense for any unnecessary comfort. He was the most prudently economical man that I have ever known. It made no difference to him who paid the expenses. If they were unnecessary, he didn’t want them incurred. Invariably he walked from the station to the hotel. In business relations with him afterward I found that same rigid economy in all his dealings.

He told me that the large full sheet lithograph of his own head cost him a little less than a cent and a half each; I could not have got them at the time for less than eight cents. He also told me that his book, “The Life of P. T. Barnum,” a bound volume of several hundred pages, was printed in Buffalo, and cost him a trifle over nine cents each and sold for a dollar; but he bought a million copies both of the book and of his lithograph. He always arranged to have his colored show bills made so as to answer the same purpose from one year to another. He seldom had a new drawing made, but, with the introduction of modern type descriptive bills, he could border the old colored posters and make a fine display. He had bill-posting reduced to a fine art. He claimed that there was only one liquid a man could use in excessive quantities without being swallowed up by it, and that was printer’s ink.

His house in Bridgeport was a museum of itself. All the gems of the old museum that were of extraordinary interest as curios were to be seen there. Although he cared nothing especially for rare paintings, the things that he gathered about him seemed designed to attract the eye rather than the ear or the finer qualities of the mind. His band was composed of the cheapest musicians that could be hired. For his side shows he engaged people personally. I remember a man who had a special act of some kind that rather attracted Barnum’s interest as a feature for a side show. The man spoke of a woman he knew with whom he did a double act which made a great hit. Mr. Barnum at once asked if she were his wife. The man said, “No.”

“Well,” says Barnum, “you must fix that. You will have to make arrangements to occupy the same berth in the sleeping car. We put four people in a section.”

Once I told Mr. Barnum of an experience a friend of mine had at his show in Milwaukee. There was a big crowd around the ticket wagon, but he got through it and called for eight tickets, holding out a $50 bill to the agent, who seized it, handed him eight tickets and a wad of money. After he got out of the crowd and counted his money he found that he was $20 short, and of course that spoiled the enjoyment of the show for him. He seated his party, went back, and waited for an opportunity to get to the box office. The ticket seller just politely bluffed him off, insisting that he got his right change, and one or two “bouncers” around the office hustled the man away. Of course there was no recourse for him whatever. The story seemed to make no impression on Barnum at all. He simply said, “That was nothing; my man pays $5,000 a year for the privilege of selling tickets at my show.” I asked him if that was the custom, and he said it was with all circuses and big shows on the road; that the privilege of selling tickets was awarded to the highest bidder. For years he had never let it for less than $2,500. I afterward learned that that was indeed the custom.

Mr. Barnum frequently gave me passes to his show, written out in his own handwriting and always on the cheapest kind of paper. I wish I had kept some of them. I have had as many as a dozen of them in my pocket at one time.

He and I were one day sitting in the show in Boston a few minutes before the time for the performance to begin. The show peddlers came along crying, “Lemonade! Lemonade!” and, not recognizing Mr. Barnum, shouted in his face. Mr. Barnum said to them:

“Go to the other part of the show. I don’t want you to peddle these things anywhere within my hearing.”

That afternoon one of the Amazons in the great Amazon march, which was a feature that year, was run over and killed by a chariot near the entrance of the ring. Mr. Barnum did not move, and I said:

“That is dreadful, isn’t it?”

“Oh,” he replied, “there is another waiting for a place. It is rather a benefit than a loss.”

I think I never knew a more heartless man or one who knew the value and possibilities of a dollar more than P. T. Barnum. I am told he left a very handsome fortune. He cut always with a gold knife. A more plausible, pleasant-speaking man was never heard. It was as good as the show itself to listen to him in conversation. He was familiar with every slightest detail of his great performance.

I said to him once: “You utilized Jumbo’s stampede in the Zoological Gardens, London, to pretty good advantage as an advertisement.”

Barnum replied: “We did nothing. We could not help it. I had been to a thousand dollars’ expense sending men to India, and had sketches made of the scene of capturing this immense beast, and had started my man to Buffalo with drawings and orders for the printing when I saw in the papers that Jumbo refused to leave the garden, and that there was a general uprising of the children of London, who were making a protest against his going. I had a cable proposition to buy him back, but I didn’t sell. It never cost me a cent to advertise Jumbo. It was the greatest free advertising I ever heard of.”

Mr. George H. Daniels, general passenger agent of the New York Central & Hudson River Railroad, is a many-sided man who has added a new subject to the lecture platform.

[Illustration]

It is somewhat surprising that although almost every conceivable phase of art, literature, science, invention, adventure, and philanthropy has been treated by lyceum lecturers, the almost limitless subject of the evolution of facilities for rapid and luxurious travel has been neglected. Yet it is a subject in which the great travelling public is much interested. The development of the means of travel and commerce is so universally a part of daily life that we do not stop to realize the causes of the tremendous strides which have been made in these fields within a single lifetime. It remained for Mr. Daniels to introduce us to this interesting subject.

Early in the Civil War Mr. Daniels left the public school in Aurora, Ill., and enlisted in the marine artillery of New York, going to North Carolina with the Burnside expedition, later becoming a government steamboat pilot for the inland waters of North Carolina and Virginia, serving in that capacity until the close of the war.

After the war he became connected with Western railroads and has grown up in the transportation business, so that he has not only observed, but has had an important part in its development. In his special department he has shown a combination of rare executive ability which amounts almost to genius. He is original in his way of doing things and is full of new and progressive schemes. Besides this, Mr. Daniels is a man of excellent literary ability, as well as originality of thought--a rare combination of qualities.

His speeches are concise and to the point and crowded with information. He is _the_ man to address railroad assemblies on all sorts of occasions, and is one of the most brilliant of speakers. If our lyceum managers could realize the great educative influence such lectures would have upon their community, they would not be long in restoring the lyceum platform to its original position when it stood for genius, ability, and education.

In spite of his brilliant qualities as a writer and speaker, Mr. Daniels is satisfied with the very highest position in his profession, and is not ambitious to fill any other niche of public eminence. He has risen by sheer ability to the high position which he now occupies in his special line, and is contented to remain the “right file in the front rank,” with the largest income of any general passenger agent in the world.

Mr. Daniels, it is expected, will soon convey passengers from New York to Chicago between sunrise and sunset, via the New York Central Railroad.

Mr. Ed. Heron-Allen, who is now a barrister in London, was one of the most unique as well as most remarkable successes in the way of a lyceum novelty that I ever discovered. He came to me while I was in London with Mr. Beecher in 1886, and showed me a little book which he had written on the science of the hand.

[Illustration]

He at once impressed me as one of the most dashing and attractive young gentlemen I had ever met, and I found that he was a favorite with many of the swell clubs and literary societies. He was a young man with tremendous assurance, which at once inspired confidence on the part of whomever he met.

He wished to go to America and give lessons and lectures on the science of the hand, and went so far as to propose that he would hire a hall and give his lecture that I might judge of it for myself. He did so, and Mr. Beecher and I, with a number of his friends, attended the lecture in Hempstead, London.

When he was eighteen years of age he was sent to the continent to secure a collection of violins and other stringed instruments for the Colonial Exhibition in London. His expedition was very successful, and he became so intensely enamored of his work that he wrote a book on violin making, which is now a standard authority on the subject for all violin makers. He seemed possessed of many most remarkable gifts.

Arrangements were completed, and he came to America on the same steamer on which Mr. and Mrs. Beecher, my brother, and I returned. He was the most popular man on the boat, improvising a number of brilliant social affairs that added to the pleasure of the voyagers.

On his arrival in New York, he took an extensive suite of parlors at the Everett House, and held a press reception, at which he examined the hands of many of the reporters and their friends, including several men of distinction, and wrote descriptions of the characters of many, to the wonder and admiration of his auditors.

Within a week he was a favorite in New York’s best society. He sent out his cards announcing that he would give lessons in the science of the hand, with charts and written descriptions accompanying them. One leading young ladies’ school in New York arranged for seventy sittings of pupils, each of whom paid ten dollars. Their hands were examined, charts made, and a description of their character was written out. Ed. Heron-Allen was indeed a very busy young man. He employed a stenographer to take down his descriptions of the hands and write them out to accompany the printed charts in which he himself inserted the lines of the hands he examined. He found a stenographer who could take down his descriptions with such accuracy that when he had finished his examinations the chart and descriptive paper were ready to hand over to the pupil enclosed in a cardboard roller and tied with a tasty bow of various-colored ribbons. In this way he was kept very busy for a number of weeks, and would often come down to my office at the close of a day’s work and turn in from $100 to $150 in cash, which he had taken in from visitors in a single day.

He served a five-o’clock tea in his parlors every day, at which his fair pupils invariably assisted. In fact, it became a regular custom for the daily papers, under the head of “What is Going On in Society,” to announce the name of the lady who was to “pour tea” at Ed. Heron-Allen’s _séunce_. that day.

Notwithstanding the peculiarity of his profession, he had the entrée to the very best families of New York.

It was not long before there arose a jealousy of him among the young men of New York, and a great many of them were much opposed to him, but that made no difference to him. He was a favorite, and he knew it. He kept right along making friends and money.

He went to Boston and repeated his successes there, with headquarters at the Vendome. Mrs. Jack Gardner took him up, which of course made him a social attraction there. Then he went to Chicago, Philadelphia, and back to New York.

One day he and I, in company with a prominent citizen of Brooklyn, visited a famous violin maker in that city who was anxious to meet Mr. Heron-Allen. We found our way up to his studio or workshop, where he was hard at work in his shirt sleeves and apron, and before him lay Ed. Heron-Allen’s book on the violin. As he had not been apprised of Mr. Heron-Allen’s coming, the visit was a complete surprise; but it was a very interesting meeting to hear those two experts discussing the mechanism of the violin, and reminded one of the oft-quoted saying, that “if you want something you must give something.” Mr. Heron-Allen discovered we had a great violin maker in America, and the violin maker claimed he was greatly benefited by the visit from the man whom he considered possessed the greatest knowledge of the violin of any one of his years.

Cheirosophy became irksome to Ed. Heron-Allen in a short time, and he decided to turn his attention to literature. He told me that he was going to write a novel, that he had found a publisher who was to make an advance on royalties, and that he was going to try living the life of a Bohemian litterateur for two years, depending for his living entirely upon what he could make with his pen. He withdrew from society, took apartments in some obscure place in New York, and I didn’t see him for some months. One morning I met him on Fourth Avenue, and he looked emaciated and hungry. He said he was going to get some breakfast. I invited him to breakfast with me, but he declined, and said he was still engaged in his literary labors and depending upon them wholly for his sustenance. He did keep it up for two years, but came near starving to death. During that time he put out two books--one “The Kisses of Fate,” the other I have forgotten.

He afterward called upon me and told me that he was going back to London to take charge of his father’s business, who was a well-established barrister in Soho.

The season following I visited him at his office in London. He had some public position in the law courts, which I visited with him. He was not clerk of the court, but seemed in charge of the distribution of briefs and assignment of cases for the judge. He invited me inside the railing and introduced me to the judge on the bench as Judge Pond of New York, as coolly as though it were an indisputable fact. The judge welcomed me on the seat by his side, and was very chatty and agreeable to me. I managed in some way to mask my identity and to keep up the delusion until the hour for adjournment, when Mr. Heron-Allen and I walked out, he thanking the judge for his kindness to his friend. When we got out on the street he nearly fainted with laughter over the practical joke and the way it had succeeded.

On my last visit to London, in 1897, my wife and I dined at his house. He is happily married, owns a big establishment, has a fine profession, and has had some of the most wonderful experiences of any man I have ever known. He was a great friend of Sir Richard Burton, who declared to me that of all the interesting and remarkable characters he had ever met, Ed. Heron-Allen was the most interesting, and suggested that he should have been a great soldier and leader of armies. His youthful appearance would lead one to believe him a mere boy. His manner and habits are those of a perfect gentleman. Putney, London, was the home of his boyhood. He was reared in affluence, and in the part of London where he lived he was known by all classes, rich and poor, as “The Pet of Putney.”

Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore was the greatest manager of his time, as well as the greatest military bandmaster. To him is due almost all the credit of making it possible to produce fine orchestral effects with a military band. Before his time military bands were simply brass bands, and the introduction of wood instruments--the oboe, saxaphone, flute, piccolo, and clarinet--dates from the year of Gilmore’s great Peace Jubilee.

[Illustration]

In 1859, in Salem, Mass., he organized Gilmore’s Band, which he maintained until his death, Sept. 24, 1892. In Music Hall, Boston, Gilmore introduced the first band concerts, at popular prices, that were self-sustaining. For years, in Boston and New England, Gilmore’s Band headed the great parades.

He conceived and carried to a triumphant success the greatest musical jubilee festival ever known in all the world--the World Peace Jubilee Festival of 1872, when it did seem that wars were over and all the world was at peace. The immensity of the scheme was all the product of Gilmore’s brain. For over a year (1868-69) he found little encouragement. Business men scoffed at the wild idea and fairly laughed in his face at his persistence. “Finally,” as he told me himself, “I found one Boston merchant who was willing to listen to me, and as I unfolded the possibility and feasibilities of the plan and the great stimulus it would be to Boston trade, I saw that he caught the idea and comprehended the situation. This was Mr. Eben Jordan, who then and there promised me his help. I had no trouble from that time on. Mr. Jordan raised and supplied the money. I set about the details, secured the ground, had plans for the great coliseum drawn, contracts awarded, and the work was progressing rapidly and to the satisfaction of all interested. The great arches were raised, and the immensity of the structure attracted much public attention. People came from far and near to see the monster auditorium that was rising above everything in Boston. I was about ready to start for Europe to secure musical talent for the event, when, one morning, I saw headlines in the papers: ‘The Great Gilmore Coliseum Levelled to the Ground by a Hurricane,’ etc. I went out to the grounds and there everything lay flat. There was not a post standing. Those great arches were blown down and all was a hopeless wreck.

“I did not lose my courage, but called on Mr. Jordan, who listened to me as attentively as on the first occasion. I assured him that the accident was surely the most fortunate thing that could possibly have occurred. I had discovered, during the progress of this auditorium, which I had planned to seat 20,000, that it was inadequate, as the public attention which it was attracting warranted the fitting up of a building with three times that capacity. I was receiving orders from one end of the country to the other for blocks of seats, thousands of applications from singers to join the chorus, and there was not a military band leader in the country but had applied to join the great orchestra. We must have an auditorium with a capacity of 50,000--nothing less. I got that committee together, and before I slept that night had new plans matured and ready to announce the next morning.

“New life was instilled into the great project. The accident had provided the sure means of success. The whole community was heart and soul in it. The new coliseum was built. I engaged leaders, got out books of music to be used for choruses, and within three months singers were being drilled in all the New England cities.”

In 1871 Mr. Gilmore visited the capitals of Europe and succeeded in accomplishing what no other man could have brought about. He obtained from the governments of England, Germany, France, Ireland, Russia, and Italy, their national bands, all composed of enlisted men, and these bands were sent at the expense of their respective governments to take part in the World’s Peace Jubilee Festival.

It was interesting to hear from Mr. Gilmore’s own lips the accounts of his visits to the capitals and his arguments with the heads of governments when they tried to show the absurdity of granting leave of absence to enlisted men to visit our free country. Naturally, they said, the men would all desert, and quite naturally, too, the Americans would offer all inducements for them to desert--inducements quite irresistible, if all reports were true.

Mr. Gilmore replied that he would put them on their honor; that musicians were above the average of intelligence; they were gentlemen, and they would never desert. The fact that their sovereigns put trust in them and granted this privilege, would test their honor and their pride. He proposed to make a competitive international military band tournament, and every musician would feel bound to see his band bring home the prize.

Gilmore succeeded. Those foreign bands were a great feature of the jubilee, and their respective nations took a patriotic pride in seeing that nothing was lacking of perfect equipment for the visit.

The greatest opera singer of that time was Mme. Peschka Leutiner, who was subsidized by and under contract with the German government. Consent of the German Emperor must be obtained to bring her to America. Gilmore’s application for this great singer was refused. Nothing daunted, he secured an audience with Emperor William, and before leaving had obtained his consent, which meant an imperial order for Germany’s greatest singer to take the leading part in the World’s Peace Jubilee. “I never will forget the kindness and courtesy I received from the great emperor, and the feeling of triumph I had as I left his august presence,” said Mr. Gilmore afterward.

Many an evening while on tour, over his bottle of champagne after a concert (it was his custom to take a pint of champagne every night before going to bed), have I enjoyed Gilmore’s description of his successful visits to European capitals and the cordial receptions he had everywhere.

The great Peace Jubilee was the talk of the world to a greater degree than anything that has since taken place except the World’s Fair in Chicago.

While the plans for it were in progress, Gilmore was constantly being told by musical friends that his ensemble was so large as to render impossible the harmony of 1,000 instruments and 10,000 voices. They would be necessarily so far apart that the time required for the sound to travel would produce discord.

“I told them to wait and see,” said Gilmore, “and when I stood before that orchestra and that vast chorus, on my twenty-foot elevated stand, with my ten-foot baton in my hand, and began the opening overture with one grand harmony over the great coliseum, my triumph was complete. Major Pond, I would not have exchanged places with the greatest monarch living.” What a triumph!

THE WORLD’S PEACE JUBILEE IN BOSTON IN 1872. P. S. GILMORE, Director.

Chorus: 10,000. Orchestra: 1,000.

Orchestra leaders: Carl Zarrhan, Johann Strauss, and Dr. Tourjie.

Pianist: Dr. Von Buelow.

Soloists: Mme. Peschka Leutiner, Mme. Rudersdorff, and Miss Adelaide Phillips.

National bands: English, German, French, Italian, Russian, Irish, and American (the Marine Band, of Washington, D. C.).

In 1873 Mr. Gilmore went to New York with his band, which became the Twenty-second Regiment Band of that city. He remained its leader up to the time of his death and made annual concert tours all over the country. It was my privilege to conduct several of these tours; in fact, I was his sole agent for booking his concerts until I was outbid by Mr. Blakely, who toured the band the four last years they were on the road. Gilmore’s Band, always one hundred strong, was at the head of all great public parades. Its appearance along the line of march was the signal for great outbursts of applause. Gilmore conceived the greatest and most popular schemes for hitting the music-loving as well as the patriotic masses. He was not a business man in the sense of loving to acquire money. In fact, he cared very little for money, but much for the fame of his band. He was a hard worker, and never left a rehearsal until everything was right. His musicians loved him and everybody respected him.

Once he and I were walking together down Broadway and were speaking of Parnell, who was then in New York and booked to speak in the Academy of Music in Brooklyn that evening. Mr. Beecher was to speak there also. Gilmore said to me:

“Major, do you know Mr. Beecher real well; I mean well enough to ask a favor? I want to get a seat on the stage to-night to hear him and Parnell, and it’s too late to think of securing a ticket.”

“Do I _know_ him?” I said.

Just then I saw Mr. Beecher coming up Broadway toward us. Our eyes met, but each pretended not to see the other, and we came together co-chunk! We squared off at each other, and so stood a few seconds, to the surprise of passers-by. Then came Mr. Beecher’s laugh of recognition, and I said:

“Mr. Beecher, to my surprise, _this man_, P. S. Gilmore, says he never met you and asks if I know you well enough to introduce him to you.”

“Well,” said Mr. Beecher, “I know Mr. Gilmore, but it’s quite evident that a man of his fair reputation and fame doesn’t know the company he is in.”

Mr. Beecher invited Mr. Gilmore to “come over early with Pond and take dinner, and if I get into the Academy you will.” So we were there at the great Parnell meeting, and Mr. Gilmore heard Mr. Beecher at his best, for that meeting is on record as an event in Mr. Beecher’s life.

I went home with Mr. Beecher, and he and I sat in his dining-room for some time over a light supper, I listening to his conversation on the topic of the evening just past. I left him at about eleven o’clock for my home at the Everett House, New York. Mr. Gilmore then resided in New York, at 61 West 12th Street. On my way home it occurred to me that possibly Mr. Gilmore had not yet finished his bottle of champagne, and so I rang his bell. It was just twelve o’clock. The colored boy opened the door and I asked if Mr. Gilmore were still up. He said, “Yes.” I walked back to the dining room, and there he stood, telling Mrs. Gilmore about his experiences of the evening. He turned to me, saying:

“Major, I’m glad you came in. I am telling Mrs. Gilmore that this evening has been the greatest of my life; that Mr. Beecher’s speech to-night should be carved in letters of gold and placed in every schoolroom throughout the entire land.”

Mr. Gilmore and I were fast friends up to the time of his death. He had many eccentricities, some of which retarded his success. He was the man and the only man who should have had the direction of the musical features at the Chicago Exposition. He was ignored, and the whole affair turned out a diabolical failure, as everybody at all versed in the management of musical affairs knew and felt at that time. It broke Mr. Gilmore’s heart to see so great an opportunity lost, and I believe that was one of the causes that hastened his death.

He left one of the finest musical libraries ever collected. I do not know who has it now. He had no successor. We have Sousa and his incomparable band, that is up to date and in keeping with the requirements of the time, but the two great leaders are not alike.

Gilmore, often seen plodding in the mud through the streets of Boston at the head of a score of musicians, then conceiving and carrying to successful termination the greatest musical jubilee ever known, and making Puritan Boston bow the knee to him, Irishman and Catholic though he was.

Sousa, an enlisted musician in the Marine Band at Washington, becoming its leader, then, through Mr. Gilmore’s former manager, starred with a band of his own, and rising year after year, through the popularity of his own compositions and charming personnel as a conductor, to the highest place as a musician, bandmaster, and composer--not like Gilmore, but like what he is, and no one else can be--Sousa.

Elbert Hubbard, editor of _The Philistine_, founder and owner of the Roycroft Shop in East Aurora, New York, is the most recent and unique development in the lecture field.

[Illustration]

I wish that I were able to write of Mr. Hubbard as I should like, but as I cannot, I shall say nothing. He says it himself. I have read so many nice things of him in _The Philistine_, a few of them reprints from other papers, that I think the entire eulogistic field is exhausted. I am one of the subscribers who pay for those puffs that he prints about himself.

Notwithstanding all that, he is doing a mighty good work, and he is also letting the public into the secret about himself for a consideration. Not long ago he wrote me: “If I get down to business here and cut off all distractions, I can make a name equal to John Ruskin’s or Thomas Carlyle’s. _I can do it_, but I must keep out of sight in order to succeed. To merely talk is not to succeed, and the public is only a devil that takes a man to the top of the mountain and then casts him on the stones beneath. So make no more lecture engagements for me.” And so the lecture-going public will never know what it has lost.

Good luck to you, Elbert! A high ambition is the chief spur to success.

Mr. Hubbard has received great praise for many of his “Little Journeys to the Homes of Famous People,” and many of them are truly delightful; but, of course, visiting so many of these, he has been obliged to travel in all sorts of weather and at all seasons of the year. He must have visited the home of Robert Burns just at the breaking up of a hard winter or the opening up of spring, else his tracks could never have thrown up so much mud.

The proportionate success of Hubbard to some of the other men of the platform may be inferred from _The Philistine_ for April, 1900, where he says:

“The week before I was in Des Moines, Dean Stubbs exploited an audience in the same church. Stubbs had one hundred people; I had a thousand, with just $500 in the box office, that’s all. About an hour after the lecture the chairman of the committee snipped a clove, and declared that Stubbs wasn’t in it with me--a proposition I did not argue.”

In a later number of _The Philistine_ Mr. Hubbard went on to say:

“I see that Dean Stubbs of Ely is out with a letter in the _Pall Mall Gazette_, denying that he ever said that Major Pond was the original David Harum. In this letter the Dean takes occasion to say his regard for the Major is very great, and further, that he fully endorses Hall Caine’s project of placing in Westminster Abbey a memorial tablet to Major Pond. The leading literary men of England and several American authors also have made contributions for the purpose mentioned. All those who contribute will have their names on the tablet, too, and beneath will be these words, ‘It is he that hath made us and not we ourselves.’”

I was so elated to hear that the Dean had made nice mention of me, that I wrote to him, asking him to send me a copy of the _Pall Mall_, and here is his reply:

“Of course I did not write a letter to the _Pall Mall_ at all--on that or any other subject. I have not written a line about my American impressions in any English papers since my return, nor do I intend to do so.”

With this letter from the Dean of Ely, how am I to realize my blasted hopes of being immortalized in Westminster Abbey?

I travelled with Mr. Hubbard on a little starring tour last spring (March, 1900). Everywhere we went he had something nice to say to the porters, to the baggagemen, the hackmen, the street-car conductors, and the waiters in the hotels. He seemed incapable of hurting any one’s feelings. Everybody was in love with him. His is a remarkable personality. But when he gets set down by himself with that caustic pen of his, the words of Scripture seem to take possession of him, and “Whom he loveth he chasteneth.”

I like the atmosphere of East Aurora and frequently visit the Roycroft Shop. It is an object lesson in industry, frugality, and nice manners. A common friend, writing from St. Louis, expresses a wonder that a man who naturally elicits so much adulation does not become conceited!

Hubbard had the largest money audience of any “one-man show” in New York last winter, and the readers of _The Philistine_ have been told all about it. That was his first New York audience.

When the Dean of Ely gave a course of five lectures in the Lyceum Theatre, New York, the first one was not very largely attended. The second audience was larger; the third larger still; and at the fifth, the capacity of the house was reached. This information I give here, as my friend Hubbard has never been furnished with box-office statements of that business. Yet, of the two, from a business standpoint, I would prefer the Roycroft man for a series of one-night stands over the country in cities where he has _never_ before appeared--and there are many such towns left.

Mr. Hubbard’s love of water and cleanliness is remarkable. Not satisfied with his daily morning baths, he wants them all through the day. As soon as he arrives at a hotel he must have his bath, and before starting out sight-seeing he wants another. Then on his return for luncheon he will take out his watch, and if there happens to be fifteen minutes to spare, he says, “Just time for a bath before luncheon,” and off he goes for his tub.

At the Roycroft Shop he has had a number of bathrooms built for the convenience of the employees. At first there was but one, and when Mr. Hubbard announced that any one could be excused from work, at any time, long enough to take a bath, the capacity of this one room was soon reached and the employees were found waiting in line for their turn. So this permission had to be withdrawn until additional bathrooms could be added. The supply of bathrooms is now adequate and appreciated, as well as remunerative, for it adds vigor and energy to the workers, and increases their earning capacity.

In a sequestered bend of the brook, a few hundred yards from the back door of the Roycroft Shop, is the Roycroft swimming hole, which reminds the passer-by of a frog pond on a spring day, for the male Roycrofters, old and young, can be seen and heard jumping into the water for the time being, until the curious visitor has passed beyond the range of view.

“Cleanliness is godliness,” says Hubbard. “This is part of our system of education.”

Mr. Hubbard is without question the most amphibious man I ever knew--a sort of human sea lion--and I must say that when I saw him plunging around in the swimming hole at East Aurora, I was struck with the resemblance of his eyes to the beautiful, large, mild, liquid eyes of the California sea lion.

AUTHOR READERS

[Illustration:

_COPYRIGHT, 1891, BY F. GUTEKUNST, PINX._

EDWIN ARNOLD]

Sir Edwin Arnold is only one of many notable people with whom I have enjoyed relations of a kindly and personal character, but the enduring friendship with which he has honored me has been one of the pleasantest features of my whole life.

Now that his public activity, in a personal sense, has ceased, one may measure his notable career by the large pathway it has blazed. He has had always the honors usually attendant upon an English literary career. Educated at two of the endowed schools, which in England are called “public,” and of a legal family, he won a scholarship to University College, Oxford, where he graduated in 1854, taking in 1852 the Newdigate prize for an English poem. He was a second master in King Edward VI. School at Birmingham, but was soon appointed Principal of the Government Sanscrit College at Roona, in the Bombay Presidency, and was also made a Fellow of the Bombay University. He remained until 1861, serving also as an editorial correspondent of English papers, when he returned to London as chief of the editorial staff of the London _Telegraph_, a position that he still holds (1900).

It is certainly true, and I have had many evidences of it, that Sir Edwin Arnold has been and still is a political writer, a power to be counted with in British affairs. To him, perhaps, as political writer and Asiatic scholar and poet, is far more due the beginnings of present British Imperialism as a political condition than to either Chamberlain, as statesman, or Kipling, as singer of the “Greater Englanders.” The leading articles of the _Telegraph_ have been a unique feature of that powerful journal, as much for the wide knowledge shown of imperial affairs as for the peculiarly rich and refulgent literary merit they display. English editorials, though keen and incisive in logic, are usually colorless as to rhetoric and illustration. Arnold’s leaders have been and continue the reverse of that.

His literary work and industry have also been as marked and extensive. His writings make a rich library, which covers much of Asiatic life. There are ten volumes dealing with Sanscrit, Hindoo, and Persian subjects. His output has not only been splendid, but great in quantity, and one wonders how, with his unremitting daily labors on the _Telegraph_ for the last forty years, he has been able to accomplish so much of permanent form and value.

The poet-editor, like all notable workers I have known, has orderly habits and hours. His editorial room at the _Telegraph_ office, Fleet Street, London, was a modest one, furnished in light oak and with walls of a soft gray tint. Sir Edwin has kept but few books there, because he needed them little for reference, his wonderful memory having always placed dates and facts at command.

Arnold has a contempt for fussiness and keeps the newspaper man’s faculty of being able to prepare copy under any circumstances. He was always at work during the period of my personal knowledge. When on his Japanese “vacation” he told me that he had “written some sixty-two columns in letters to the _Telegraph_, composed an epic poem longer than ‘The Light of Asia,’ and furnished articles besides for _Scribner’s Magazine_ that made a volume, learned to speak colloquial Japanese, and to write the Kata Kara character.” He added, “I was not so very idle, you will see, Major.” “The Light of the World” went to press without his reading the last proofs, and the correctness of copy this shows is characteristic of all his work. His editorial “leaders” went to the printer’s hand as he dropped his pen or ceased dictation.

He once said: “I do not at any time force poetry. I must be thoroughly in the mood. These moods come imperatively, but very irregularly. My method is this: either I write first, and roughly, on scraps of paper, or my daughter takes it down from my dictation--she is the only one who can do so for me--as I walk up and down the room and smoke. I put the rough notes in my pocket until the next day. Then I read the verse over and over, correct and copy all out myself, altering it very much, and filling it up. These scraps I enter into a sort of day book or ledger until the work is nearly finished. I treat the matter thus compiled as the rough draft. I go over it myself, polish it, and transcribe it into a second book, which may be called the poem itself, but still in a rough state. Then I copy it out again, and finally, in a fair manuscript for the printer. Every line of the poem, therefore, passes through my mind three or four times. Sometimes the lines are importunate and _will_ be at once registered. Reading, smoking, driving, dressing for dinner--it does not matter how I may be then engaged, the verses will haunt and fascinate me, dance before my imagination, demanding to be fixed; and I must catch them then and there or they will go. Sometimes the right ideas will come as suddenly as if by electric message.”

The popularity of Sir Edwin Arnold as a poet was more widespread in the United States than in his own country when, in 1886, I first approached him with the proposition to make a reading tour on this side of the Atlantic. It is quite singular to note how little personal and popular knowledge there is in Great Britain of the men who really mould intellectual thought. If we Americans do not personally know a man who has written books and sung poems for us, we do at least strive to know his face, by wide possession of a “counterfeit presentment.” In our land John G. Whittier’s portrait hangs on the walls of many thousands of what the English call “middle-class” homes; yet no English poet of equal rank finds such recognition in his own land. Tennyson and Browning are far more widely known among us by their pictures than they are in England. It was a constant surprise to Sir Edwin Arnold to find himself recognized and his poems so extensively known in the United States. When he left our shores for Japan, and later resumed his editorial and literary labors at home, he was not only better known and appreciated as a poet than he was when he came to us, but he was personally better known to more thousands of cultivated people here than he was to scores in England.

My earliest attempt to secure him for a lecture tour in this country was unsuccessful, as the following quotation from his first letter to me shows:

* * * * *

“42 DENMARK VILLA, WEST BRIGHTON, “December 31, 1886.

“I thank you for the compliment conveyed in your letter of the 25th, and it is my wish and intention to visit America. It would, however, be impossible for me to go there now.”

* * * * *

The poet-editor was familiar enough with the United States, by marriage tie and several visits here, to understand our lecture platform and audiences, as well as our habits of travel and our needs. Mrs. Arnold was a Miss Channing of Boston. The present Lady Arnold is a member of a prominent and cultured Japanese family, who has become one of the most popular hostesses in London.

After Stanley’s return to England at the conclusion of his most remarkable lecture tour (1890-91), the proposition to secure Sir Edwin was again broached, and was fully discussed between us, the Stanleys taking a very friendly interest in the matter and declaring that they would do all in their power to influence the poet’s decision. The accompanying letters show how thoroughly the great explorer fulfilled his promise, for under date of June 26, 1891, after writing relative to his pending lecture tour in Australia, he referred as follows to the Anglo-Indian poet, with whom I was then corresponding in relation to the proposed tour:

* * * * *

“I had Edwin Arnold to lunch the other day and we all did our best to induce him to make you his agent, but I find he has already engaged himself to another man--if he lectures, of which he is not assured yet.”

* * * * *

This was not very encouraging, but I am not easily discomfited. The negotiations proceeded, and an agreement was reached between the poet and myself. Stanley’s generous and constant interest is shown by this letter, written September 30, 1891:

* * * * *

“Yesterday Sir Edwin Arnold took tea with us, and naturally we talked of you and of his approaching departure for America. I do not think you need have any fear that he will fail. He has an unusually flexible voice, which is entirely at his command, admirably suited for the drawing-room or for the platform. It is at its best to-day. The way he manages it to attract, soothe, or excite, proves that were he not a first-class poet, he would make a first-class actor.

“I have often heard him make after-dinner speeches, wherein he is different from most men. He always contrives to express graceful sentiments appropriate to the occasion, uttered in those benevolent tones which leave you most kindly disposed toward him. You find his speech seemingly unstudied--and spoken right on, pleasing to the ear, as his expression charms the eye. He appears to be following a cue, which is to make every one feel pleasant and agreeable, and bereave them of unkindness toward one another. At a dinner, for instance, you never detect in him a consciousness that he has something to say which must be said, and that he bides his time to say it, meantime silently revolving the subject. No, his speech drops sweetly on the hearing, smooth, bland, and the guests look up wistful for more, for it is so apt, so rich in thought and charity. His memory is stored with the flowers of literature and the sweetest blossoms of poesy, and they are presented to his hearers with the grace that marks the learned gentleman.

“From this rapid sketch of Sir Edwin you have enough to measure him by. While he is in America he will only deem what is best in it worthy of his regard. He cannot forget that human nature is weak and vain, but he has a knack of shutting out observation of failings.”

* * * * *

It will be remembered, in passing, that Henry M. Stanley was sent to Africa by Sir Edwin’s paper, the London _Daily Telegraph_, and by the New York _Herald_.

I copy the last letter received from Sir Edwin before he sailed for America, as evidence of the spirit in which he came:

* * * * *

“DAILY TELEGRAPH OFFICE, “September 23, 1891.

“MY DEAR MAJOR POND:

“I have just received your kind and pleasant letter, and rejoice at your renewed health. I replied to it by a telegram indicating that although I cannot write anything new in the way of lectures, it will be very easy to put together from my prose and verse interesting discourses with poetical illustrations of ancient and modern India, Japan, etc. I enclose a rough sketch of the topics I would treat in this way. You need have no fear but that I shall hold and please your audiences.

“Best thanks for your very hospitable invitations as regards Miss Arnold. But I shall come quite alone, and shall put up at the Everett House, and always when we travel, as far as possible, at hotels. I have written to accept the very courteous invitation of the Lotos Club, but, as far as possible, I wish in America to preserve my time free from social interruption, and I shall ask you to help me in this.

“Kindly arrange that we may commence as soon as possible. But all these matters I gladly leave in your good hands.

“There will be just time, I think, for you to send me before I start some little sketch of what you have already planned.

“Yours always sincerely, “EDWIN ARNOLD.”

* * * * *

The engagement was for fifty “readings,” a descriptive word inadequate to express what he gave. The term “lecture” certainly does not apply to the delightful entertainment that Sir Edwin Arnold presented. The descriptive talk which accompanied each reading was so fresh and varied, and so full of the charm of scene and intimate knowledge, that it had almost the air of personal and fireside talks with his varied and delighted audiences. The man was felt so in it all--as traveller, observer, teacher, and poet--that you realized the atmosphere in which he had written, as well as the spirit of the poems which were its product.

As he appeared to American audiences, Sir Edwin Arnold was of large frame and good stature, with an open face, strong features, expansive brow, and a broad, full, and well-rounded head, thickly covered with iron gray hair. His complexion was fair, his eyes blue, mild, and courteous in expression. His general air was one of kindness and good breeding. He was in personal manner quite free from self-consciousness, and on the platform was always absorbed in his task and by his audience. His speaking voice was melodious, excellent in compass and timbre. It was, in fact, among the very best for use and wear that the lecture audiences had heard during twenty years. He has shown himself the respect of securing a careful training for his voice, and he knows how to take care of it. It has much of the high-bred gentleness in it that made George William Curtis so great a favorite. In personal speech his English intonation was apparent, but when he read, it seemed as though the language lifted him above all such peculiarities. The modulation was perfect, and was indeed sometimes thrilling. He is one of the few poets that can both read and declaim their own poems. I was constantly reminded of Stanley’s expression that if Arnold had not been a great writer and poet, he would most assuredly have been a great actor, for at fitting times the delivery became animated and dramatic.

He usually held the book of selections in his hand, but seldom did more than glance at it; sometimes he laid it aside entirely, so that he could use gesture more freely. Occasionally he read from manuscript, but ordinarily he recited. The first line was enough to call up the entire poem from his phenomenal memory. He could repeat perfectly any poem that he had once heard. One evening in my library Sir Edwin was reclining on a lounge. I was holding a rare volume of Shakespeare, which he had been admiring and passed to me. “Now, Major,” said he, “give the first line from any scene at random, and I’ll give you the whole scene.” I gave him a line from one of the least known of the plays, and, to my astonishment, he recited the entire scene. He told me afterward that he could recite Shakespeare from beginning to end. I believe it. It was this gift that made his readings so complete, for no public reader has ever been a more complete success, personally and artistically, than Sir Edwin Arnold. No better description of the poet as a reader, or of his charm of voice and manner as a speaker, could be given than Stanley’s words convey. I felt certain on reading them that our tour would be a success, as it indeed proved to be. How heartily the poet entered on his delightful task!

It was, after all, a campaign of careful preparation and hard work, done assiduously and with the most distinct apprehension on his part of what was due to the cordial audiences which were to give him such hearty welcome and earnest attention. He was a model to those who were to follow him. Beginning November 4, 1891, the tour closed February 15, 1892. For seven weeks he filled completely the demands of the situation, working with unremitting patience and assiduity to make a complete success.

The 21st of October, 1891, when he reached New York, was not an auspicious day for his landing in America--wind and rain all day. Yet he appeared in excellent health and very jolly. My office was the scene of another remarkable interview. Representatives from all the daily papers were there, and never has there been a more fascinated lot of reporters than this crowd about Sir Edwin. For two hours he interested them, answering every conceivable question as promptly as though he had been prepared for it. He was interrogated upon all subjects, from the Whitechapel murders to the effect of the death of Parnell upon the status of the Irish factions. He discussed Kipling, “who has the magic secret of style”; James Russell Lowell, “the best judge of literature that he ever knew”; and Emerson, “the ablest American writer.” He discussed Japan and theosophy. The only subject he refused to touch upon was English politics. Richard Watson Gilder, who was there, asked Sir Edwin if he had any favorite American poem. He replied, “‘Airs from Arcady,’ but I do not know who is the author of it.” Mr. Gilder and Mr. Robert U. Johnson, his colleague, were much pleased with his answer, for the author was their friend, H. C. Bunner, editor of _Puck_.

When I went with Sir Edwin to Sarony’s to sit for pictures, Sarony was in his element, for he found in Sir Edwin a critic who thoroughly appreciated art. It was an interesting scene in that studio: the exhibition of Sarony’s fine black and white drawings and the intelligent discussion of them. We next visited Tiffany’s, and there Sir Edwin was again at home with Mr. George Kunz, the gem expert. I had to leave the two critics, scholars, and experts for two hours and return to my work.

A few days later Sir Edwin Arnold dined at our house, and after dinner entertained us with a reading from his “Light of the World,” and made a great hit. My predictions of success were again confirmed. He is one of the most lovable and entertaining men, always even-minded and agreeable; his tact is as invariable as his good humor, and both grow from temperament and quality rather than from habit or policy. On this occasion he presented Mrs. Pond with a copy of “The Light of the World,” bound in white seal, gold clasped, telling her that he had two copies bound alike, and that he had presented the other one to his queen. The inscription in the book reads:

“To Mrs. Pond, with warm regards of the author.”

Before beginning the series of public appearances, he gave several other private readings that were most enjoyable. One evening he read a chapter from “The Light of the World” in the Everett House dining-rooms, before a select circle of friends. On another day Joseph Jefferson, W. J. Florence, St. Clair McKelway, Murat Halsted, Sir Edwin Arnold, and some of our personal friends dined with us at our house in Brooklyn. Jefferson and Florence were playing at the Brooklyn Academy of Music that week, and in order that we might have plenty of time, and that they should not miss their usual afternoon nap before going to the theatre, we had dinner at noon. We had a good time together. Sir Edwin was at his best. He read selections from “Saadi in the Garden,” and some unpublished poems, to the delight of the two comedians, who enthusiastically declared that they had never enjoyed anything more in their lives. It was after six when they left us--no sleep that afternoon. In the evening our entire party were in the theatre to see Jefferson and Florence in “The Rivals.”

The Lotos Club, on the 31st of October, honored Sir Edwin and its own members, by giving a dinner which, from the number participating and the high character of the addresses made, was generally conceded never to have been surpassed in brilliancy in the history of the club. President Frank R. Lawrence occupied the chair, with the guest of honor on his right, and President Seth Low of Columbia College on his left. Among the other guests of the evening were George W. Childs, Richard Henry Stoddard, Edmund Clarence Stedman, Gen. Horace Porter, Paul Dana, Murat Halsted, E. B. Harper, W. H. McElroy, Arthur F. Bowers, Robert Edwin Bonner, Ballard Smith, Walter P. Phillips, H. L. Ensign, Col. Thomas W. Knox, William Winter, Gen. C. H. Collis, Richard Watson Gilder, Max O’Rell, St. Clair McKelway, and Col. E. C. James.

The walls and alcoves were hung with emblems indicative of the honors borne by the club’s distinguished guest. Siamese and Japanese flags predominated. On the wall at the poet’s right hung a full-sized portrait of himself, done in crayon by Sarony, and over the doorway which separated the parlors was draped a banneret showing the “Order of the White Elephant”--a Siamese decoration which had been conferred upon only four English-speaking persons: Queen Victoria, Sir Edwin Arnold, Gen. J. A. Halderman, and Col. Thomas W. Knox (the latter two, as it happened, being both members of the Lotos and present.) Sir Edwin wore on his breast his decorations, among which this order was conspicuous. Letters of regret were read from Oliver Wendell Holmes, Charles A. Dana, John G. Whittier, W. D. Howells, the Rev. John Hall, and George William Curtis.

President Lawrence, in presenting the guest of the evening, referred to his many titles to distinction. “If there be one thing more than another,” he said, in proposing Sir Edwin’s health, “which is worth preserving in connection with the Lotos Club, it is our boast, for more than a score of years, to strive to be among the first to welcome to New York men of genius from foreign lands. This joyous custom has brought to our club many happy moments--none more so than the present one. And so, when it became known that Sir Edwin Arnold was to visit our shores, it followed that the Lotos Club was to welcome him. As to his eminent graces of mind and heart, I need not remind you or any other English-speaking people thereof.

“He is, perhaps, best known to us as a poet. I should not say ‘perhaps,’ but that his many estimable qualities confuse me. He, more than any other man, has brought us near Asia--that Asia of which we know so little. We hear it said that the Laureate is in his declining days. We hear it asked, ‘Who is to succeed him?’ Yet we know that the high standard of English poetry will not die while the author of ‘The Light of Asia’ lives.

“But, gentlemen, it is not alone as a poet that we meet and greet him to-night; it is as a journalist as well. Well do we remember his services as a moulder of public opinion in England. It was he, on behalf of the London _Daily Telegraph_ and in connection with one of our own good Americans, who sent Stanley in search of Livingstone--all honor to that humane undertaking. As a poet, as a journalist, and as a scholar; as one who might talk to us, if he chose, in many mystical tongues, we welcome and we greet Sir Edwin Arnold.”

The health of the club’s guest was drunk, everybody rising and cheering. He showed the deep impression made upon him as he gracefully bowed in acknowledgment of the cheers. His speech was one long to be remembered, both for the pleasing manner of delivery and for the apt and eloquent appropriateness of its matter. He said in part:

“In rising to return my sincere thanks for the high honor done to me by this magnificent banquet, by its lavish opulence of welcome, by its goodly company, by the English so far too flattering which has been employed by the president, and by the generous warmth with which you have received my name, I should be wholly unable to sustain the heavy burden of my gratitude, but for a consideration of which I will presently speak. To-night must always be for me, indeed, a memorable occasion. Many a time and oft during the seven lustrums composing my life, I have had personal reason to rejoice at the splendid mistake committed by Christopher Columbus in discovering your now famous and powerful country.

“I have good reason to greet his name in memory owing, as I do, to him the prodigious debt of a dear American wife, now with God, of children, half American and half English, of countless friends, of a large part of my literary reputation, and, to crown all, this memorable evening, _Nox coenaque Deum_, which, of itself, would be enough to reward me for more than I have done, and to encourage me in a much more arduous task than even that which I have undertaken.”

Referring to America, he quoted the old poet, who sang:

“Her likeness and brightness do shine in such splendor, That none but the stars are thought fit to attend her.”

He spoke of the recent passage of our international copyright law, and half humorously suggested:

“Personally I was nearer a fanatic on the matter. I have always rather had a tenderness for those buccaneers of the ocean of books who, in nefarious bottoms, carried my poetical goods far and wide without any charge for freight.”

Two of the most striking portions of his speech were his eloquent references to our common language, and to the feeling of kinship and unity between the great branches of the English-speaking race. “Let us all try,” he said, “to keep in speech and in writing as close as we can to the pure English that Shakespeare and Milton, and in these later times Longfellow, Emerson, Whitman, and Hawthorne have fixed. It will not be easy. Lord Tennyson recently expressed similar opinions to me when he said: It is bad for us that English will always be a spoken speech, since that means that it will always be changing. The time will come when you and I will be as hard to read for the common people as Chaucer is to-day.’ He then quoted Artemus Ward on Chaucer, ‘The admirable poet, but as a spellist a decided failure.’

“To the treasure house of that noble tongue, the United States has splendidly contributed. It would be far poorer to-day without the tender care of Longfellow, the serene and philosophic pages of Emerson, the convincing wit and clear criticism of my illustrious departed friend, James Russell Lowell, the Catullus-like perfection of the lyrics of Edgar Allan Poe, and the glorious, large-tempered dithyrambics of Walt Whitman.”

As he closed his speech, he said:

“Between the two majestic sisters of the Saxon blood the hatchet of war is, please God, forever buried. We have no longer to prove to each other or to the world that Englishmen and Americans are high-spirited and fearless; that Englishmen and Americans alike will do justice, and will have justice, and will put up with nothing else from each other and from the nations at large. Heartily, gratefully, and with a mind from which the memory of this glorious evening will never be effaced, I thank you for the very friendly and favorable omens of this banquet.”

E. C. Stedman followed, paying a fine and appreciative tribute to his brother poet. President Seth Low referred to the connection of the guest of the evening with the cause of education, he having been at one time a college president. Paul Dana responded for the press. General Porter spoke as the all-round man of the world, soldier, statesman, and orator, in a speech full of wit, humor, anecdote, and hearty appreciation of the guest. St. Clair McKelway made one of his brilliant speeches, carrying the audience with him to the height of feeling and amusement rarely equalled. At the close of the banquet, Sir Edwin Arnold read his now-famous poem of “Potiphar’s Wife,” the manuscript of which he gave to the club as a souvenir of his visit. It is framed and hangs with his picture on the wall of the club house. This banquet will remain in the history of the literary events of New York one of the most notable; and as one of the brightest pages to be recorded in the annals of the Lotos Club.

When we went to Philadelphia we were met at the Lafayette Hotel by John Russell Young, Henry Guy Carleton, and a number of newspaper men, among whom was Clark Davis, editor of the _Public Ledger_. It was an interesting evening. Sir Edwin read several poems, to the delight of reporters and friends present.

The following day Sir Edwin Arnold, John Russell Young, and I went to Camden to call on the picturesque old poet Walt Whitman, who was living there in his own house. We were shown up a flight of stairs by the mistress of the house, to the bare front room, where, in the midst of a heap of newspapers, magazines, books, kindling wood, lamps, and old pictures, from one to six feet deep, the poet sat, in a high-backed chair, over which was thrown a goatskin robe, once white. The long hair of the poet and of the robe, and his great wide open shirt collar, made a picture unique beyond description. Back of his chair was a heap of newspapers which suggested the pile of cornstalks at an old-fashioned husking, where, when you husked the corn, the stalks and husks were thrown back over your shoulders until they formed a big stack. Walt had been accustomed to reading his morning papers and then throwing them back on this stack, until they had accumulated in this enormous mass fully as high as the back of his chair. That pile must have been the accumulation of several years.

There was a different scene when the two poets, already known to each other by correspondence, exchanged greetings. They plunged into animated conversation at once, though the “good gray poet” was quite feeble. But his was a grand personality indeed, as he leaned back against the deep back of his huge old rush-bottomed, wide-armed chair. Something was said of Whitman’s poems, and Arnold took down “Walt Whitman’s Complete Poems and Prose,” a large octavo volume, from a nearby shelf. The volume was uncut, and Whitman began looking for a paper-knife, saying, “Let me get you something to cut the leaves with.”

“No, no. Never mind, Walt Whitman,” replied Arnold. “I have no need to cut these leaves. I can see the first lines in the index. What poem would you like to hear?”

A poem was named, and immediately the rich voice gave it vocal form, and that, too, with a perfection of rhythmic tone and shade which indicated the perfect mastery of a most difficult subject. We spent an hour and a half, Sir Edwin and Walt quoting and commenting. It was a great day.

In the afternoon we went to Bryn Mawr, and to Mr. George W. Childs’ home, where we dined and Sir Edwin planted a tree. Here we met Mr. Clark Davis of _The Ledger_, Mr. McAllister of Drexel Institute, Miss Thomas, dean of Bryn Mawr College, and Mrs. Childs. We then returned to the city, where the Penn Club gave Sir Edwin a grand reception.

In the Philadelphia Academy of Music Sir Edwin Arnold made his first appearance on any stage. Although it was the evening of a hotly contested election, and there were bonfires and bands of music outside, and the streets were packed with crowds of excited people, we had a large house. The gross receipts were $1,317. The readings were a great success; the audience was delighted. Arnold read two and a half hours, and held them all that time.

The Philadelphia papers were enthusiastic. One critic wrote: “A grace of manner, genial presence, and a mellow, full voice are notable characteristics of the poet-scholar; and the familiar poems which are not less known and loved in this country than in the poet’s home, acquired new beauty from the author’s wonderful reading of them. Without striving in the hackneyed way, Sir Edwin, by his expressive face and voice of many modulations, recites tales of love, pathos, or tragedy in a manner which many a trained actor might envy.”

The first New York reading, in Carnegie Hall, November 4th, was a tremendous success. I cannot recollect having ever before seen so large an audience in that hall and, for a reading, held so spellbound. The enthusiasm knew no limit. There had been a great demand for tickets for this performance, and as the house was sold for the benefit of St. Mark’s Hospital, Mr. A. B. de Frece, the vice-president of that association, decided upon an auction sale of seats and boxes, which occurred in the hall on October 26th. Twenty-six boxes brought about $1,500 premium. The great desire both to honor and to meet the poet was shown not alone in the sale of tickets, but even more in the eagerness of many people to be members of the committee of reception, which occupied seats on the platform. Such distinguished representatives of learning and of letters were present as Edmund Clarence Stedman, Richard H. Stoddard, Richard Watson Gilder, William Winter, William Dean Howells, George William Curtis, Brander Matthews, the Hon. Seth Low, President of Columbia University, and many others.

Chauncey M. Depew, as chairman, made one of his happy speeches, referring to the event as of international significance, for “an English audience applauding James Russell Lowell, and an American audience cheering Sir Edwin Arnold, present the unity in essentials of these great empires, and the possibilities which are before English-speaking peoples. Our language is conquering the earth. It is destined in the future to be for the East more than Buddha, ‘the Light of Asia,’ and to diffuse around the globe ‘The Light of the World.’

The genial orator, always himself a luminous personality, made other appropriate remarks, and when the poet rose from the remarkable group of celebrities who crowded the platform, he was cordially welcomed. His presence was a fine one for just such an occasion, and as he briefly thanked the introductory speaker, he expressed the wish that the audience would do him the honor of encouraging the ancient and classic custom of a poet’s reading selections from works of his own creation. Thus, from the first words, his appearance was a triumph. More than that, he was a delight. Remembering other “readers” I had known, Sir Edwin Arnold’s closing of the book he held in his hands, after one long and almost rapt glance at it, was, perhaps, the most delightful episode of the evening to me. He did not once refer to the book after that. He knew his own poems and was always accurate to the letter. He knew, too, the poems of other poets. His memory is remarkable, but his mastery of the words was no more complete than his absolute possession of the rhythm. His recitation was music itself. You felt the meaning in all the varying shades of that perfect modulation and intonation. I make no pretence to criticism, yet I think myself able to comprehend the capacity of a human voice. Sir Edwin Arnold’s voice was, for his purpose, a perfect instrument. The marvel was that only once before had he read in public.

The following evening Sir Edwin read in the Brooklyn Academy of Music before a magnificent audience, to which he was introduced by the Rev. Dr. Storrs. A Brooklyn critic wrote thus of his power of improvisation:

“Sir Edwin was not restrained by any idea of slavish fidelity to his own printed page. He gave himself up to the spirit of his poems and to the music of his verse, and his eyes were upon the audience rather than upon the book which he held. If one followed him in the text, it soon became evident that he had not prepared himself by committing the poems. There were hardly half a dozen lines in which the language was not varied. Once or twice he used a striking phrase too soon, and had to omit a line or two to avoid obvious repetitions. As he read, one wondered how a man could make the substitution he was making without breaking the rhythm or the sense, but he avoided any more serious entanglement than that of once or twice repeating a phrase.”

Our next point was Boston. Reporters of all the papers met us at the Parker House at about ten in the forenoon, and Sir Edwin entertained them with a delightful chat about Japan and India, closing the interview by reading a poem. He took well, and his reception by the Boston press was, in short, simply a repetition of the scenes in Philadelphia and New York, though enhanced, if possible.

Distinguished callers were constantly coming in, among whom were President Eliot of Harvard University, Edward Everett Hale, Oliver Wendell Homes, T. W. Higginson, John Holmes of the _Herald_, and Editor Clement of the _Transcript_. Dr. Edward Everett Hale introduced him at his first reading in Music Hall, and Col. T. W. Higginson at the second.

The _Herald_ critic grasped the true spirit of the occasion when he wrote:

“The acts and tricks of the trained elocutionist were lacking, but in their place were a divine earnestness, a sincerity and force which would be lacking in an elocutionist.”

The _Transcript_, at the end of a column and a half review, said:

“The audience was simply held entranced and spellbound by the recital of that impassioned ballad, ‘He and She,’ whose closing stanzas are:

“‘The utmost wonder is this: I hear And see you, and love you, and kiss you, dear,

And am your angel who was your bride, And know, though dead, I have never died.’

“The charm of presence is an especial gift of Sir Edwin’s, and the entertainment was one of the most delightful ever enjoyed in this city.”

His readiness, his anxiety even, to vary and brighten his programme is shown in the following letter, which I received after I left Boston. It illustrates his conscientious spirit and sincere desire to meet all proper demands--a spirit which, like Sir Henry M. Stanley, he had to a marked degree:

* * * * *

“PARKER HOUSE, Boston, Nov. 10, 1891.

“MY DEAR MAJOR POND:

“I miss you very much indeed, but Mr. Angleman is all that can be desired in the way of obliging and active friendship, and we had a splendid time in the City Hall, Springfield (see _Republican_). To-morrow I go at 10:15 A.M. to Wellesley College, having just arranged this with one of the ladies; and at night, to Smith College.

“It is very difficult to devise a programme which does not shut out something too good to lose. You see I must not quite fall into being merely a reciter of songs and ballads! I am a serious and solid poet, and the people themselves like some of my graver writings. Still, I know you are right about these mixed audiences, that pieces too long waste time and strength; so I have greatly cut down such items. The poems that always take are:

“1. ‘He and She.’

“2. ‘Egyptian Slippers.’

“3. ‘Rajput Nurse.’

“And the little beautiful Nume from ‘Pearls of the Faith.’ I will write on the other side my programme for to-night, and that for Wellesley College.

“For your unbounded kindness and dear Mrs. Pond’s, my grateful thanks. I am too much a Bohemian, I fear, ever to settle down again.

“Yours always, “EDWIN ARNOLD.”

* * * * *

As will be seen from the letter that I have just quoted, Sir Edwin lectured in Springfield on the evening of November 9th. A Springfield reporter wrote this striking review:

“When he [the poet] speaks in his own proper person, in preface to his poems, directly addressing his audience, the Englishman is recognized in his intonations; but as soon as he begins to recite, he renders the English language in very beautiful modulation, with fitness to the characters who are introduced, and with rare dramatic expression. It is seldom that a reader like him is heard. The tricks of elocution are not his; he often hesitates and pauses for a moment to recall the phrase, either from memory or from his text, but he puts the life of his deepest feeling into the recital, and the hearer drinks in the meaning with unalloyed content. The fervor of his declamation in certain passages of the talk of Pontius Pilate was thrilling; a better reading of tragedy than he gave to the story of the Rajput Nurse could hardly be expected, and perhaps above these would be put the picture of ‘Shah Jehan,’ when he resists the temptation of the flesh through his faithfulness to Arjuna, for whom he built the Taj-Mahal.”

Before returning to New York, Arnold lectured with great success in Cambridgeport, Lowell, Hartford, New Haven, Utica, and Syracuse.

One of the most effective descriptions appeared in a Syracuse daily, where the reporter said:

“The speaker uttered the more powerful passages with his head thrown back, his body erect, and his chest heaving. The book was held in the left hand, the right, and occasionally both, being used for gestures. When he spoke of sorrow, his voice was pathetic almost to tears; of joy, it thrilled with rapture; of power and victory, it rang like a clarion; and in poetic description, it was as when ‘the dewdrop slips into the shining sea.’”

I give these bits of evidence from time to time as proof of Stanley’s keenness of judgment, and in support of my own declaration that Sir Edwin Arnold was by far the best of author-readers that England has given for our delight. America has yet to produce his equal.

After returning to New York the Press Club of that city gave Sir Edwin a reception. Mr. Depew, a member of the club, in his spicy introduction, spoke of Sir Edwin as a fellow-journalist whom he was proud to welcome. Sir Edwin’s reply was one of the brightest speeches that he made in America, as those privileged to be present will always remember.

We were all much shocked when we learned of the death of W. J. Florence. Sir Edwin sent a wreath for his funeral, with the following words:

“Sans Adieu. EDWIN ARNOLD. “W. J. Florence, November 23, 1891.”

A new deal was made with Sir Edwin under which arrangement he was to continue one hundred nights, for which I was to pay him $20,000. He lectured in Albany, Rochester, Buffalo, Toronto, Detroit (twice), Grand Rapids, Pittsburg, Cleveland, Oberlin, Toledo, Cincinnati (twice), Louisville, St. Louis, and Chicago. Excellent reports came in from all along the line. The day of our arrival in Chicago was an eventful one. Representatives of the press thronged to see Sir Edwin all the morning at the Auditorium Hotel. He was in excellent condition. Although the weather was muddy, nasty, and foggy we visited the new _Herald_ building, declared by Chicagoans to be the finest printing-office in the world. Mr. Scott, president of the _Herald_ Co., introduced Sir Edwin to the compositors, and he made a little speech to them. Then a sumptuous lunch in Scott’s office, where Sir Edwin was introduced to the managing editors of each of the great Chicago daily papers. The party sat down to lunch at twelve. To everybody’s surprise it was six o’clock when they separated. In the evening a reception by the Chicago Press Club, where he made a handsome speech and read “Queen Arjamund and the Dagger.”

At his first public reading in Chicago--in Central Music Hall--the house was packed with a fine audience of Chicago’s best. President Harper of Chicago University presided. Sir Edwin was in excellent form and scored another success. The newspapers contained columns of favorable notices, and never was a visitor more heartily welcomed.

His whole Western tour was a series of triumphs. Milwaukee, Chicago (again), Evanston, Kansas City, St. Paul, Minneapolis, Janesville (Wis.), Rockford, Cedar Rapids, Des Moines, and Clinton, were all in the Western itinerary.

From Chicago I returned to New York. During the trip I received the following letter:

* * * * *

“MILWAUKEE, Dec. 17, 1891.

“MY DEAR MAJOR:

“Thanks, many and sincere, for your flying note, full of kindness, like everything you say and do. I am afraid if I let go my audiences from the fine and subtle spell of poetry, I might lose command of them, like the juggler who leaves off blowing his reed. But I will bear your valuable advice in mind, if again my voice feels at all in need of resting.

“I cannot thank you enough for the repeated kindness of your wish to keep me in America, and even under your own roof. I am touched to the heart by such generous friendship, which I heartily reciprocate; but, after this unwonted and difficult enterprise is concluded, let me fly away and find the repose and change for which I shall long with unspeakable desire. Perhaps after a period of quiet I shall feel even a strong wish to use again the experience acquired, and to do Australia with you, but my present feelings are concentrated upon getting through with this series in the very best manner I can, for your cause and my own, and then resting.

“My very warmest regards to dear Mrs. Pond. I wish I could make millions of dollars for her and you.

“Ever most sincerely yours, “EDWIN ARNOLD.”

* * * * *

I had arranged five matinees for Sir Edwin at Daly’s Theatre. He lectured here twice in the morning and in Philadelphia in the evenings of the same days. He was to lecture in Trenton on the following evening, but I was obliged to cancel this engagement because of his illness. This was the beginning of the end, as my diary shows. He was booked for Newark, Baltimore, Washington, Middletown, New York (four times), Brooklyn, Portland, Providence, Lakewood, Montclair, Orange, and Worcester. Owing to the superior knowledge of a learned doctor, he was obliged to be ill.

It came about in this way: Sir Edwin was sick with grippe at the Everett House, when his friend Andrew Carnegie called on him. The meeting was a very cordial one, as Sir Edwin declared that he was under everlasting obligations to Mr. Carnegie for the kindness he had shown to his son when on a visit to America. Mr. Carnegie insisted on Sir Edwin’s seeing his doctor, a learned young Scotch physician, with titles too numerous to mention. He was the man who could tone him up. Without waiting for Arnold to acquiesce, Carnegie sent him right around. The young physician told Sir Edwin that he was a sick man, that he had better have a nurse, that he must not appear on the platform the next day, and that he must cancel all his engagements. There was nothing for Sir Edwin to do but yield to whatever the physician prescribed, as his friend Mr. Carnegie had sent him. So the next day we were obliged to return about $1,800 at the box office at Daly’s Theatre to a disappointed public, telling them that undoubtedly Sir Edwin would be able to keep his next two engagements; but that there was no chance for those particular ticket holders to hear him, as the seats for the remaining readings had been sold out.

A few days later Sir Edwin finally told me that he could not go any further, and I consented to cancel our agreement if he would give me six more readings in New York after the present course. I then arranged for this supplemental course at Daly’s Theatre. On the day before the readings were to be resumed, Sir Edwin seemed in good spirits, but his doctor forbade his reading the next day, and I was obliged to cancel all of his new dates. It made a difference of over $3,000 to me.

I could not win over the doctor. He worried Sir Edwin very badly. The latter said to me, “Oh, Major, if I don’t get out of this country soon I will never be able to go at all.” I know he frightened me too. If I had been in Sir Edwin’s place I should have thought myself about to die. He told me that Sir Edwin was in exactly the same condition as a man who was just convalescing from a run of typhoid fever.

When I gave back the money at Daly’s to a great crowd of New York’s best people, everybody expressed sympathy and regret that Sir Edwin was ill. I never witnessed a more pathetic scene around a box office, and I felt that the poet had a hold on New Yorkers that would surely last.

A day or two later, while calling on Sir Edwin, Mr. Carnegie came in, and when he congratulated the poet on his good fortune in having sent him a physician who unquestionably saved his life, Sir Edwin gave me a side wink and a smile at Mr. Carnegie’s absurdities. He then told Mr. Carnegie that he had decided to go to Japan, and should leave as soon as possible. He did not care to stay longer in America. He thought that an ocean voyage would cure him of the grippe. Mr. Carnegie expostulated with him, but Sir Edwin said his mind was made up. The next day he left the Everett House to visit Mr. Andrew Carnegie, during the remainder of his stay. I called on him there and found him not in the best of spirits. He was lonesome and homesick. He would have been better off to have kept on with his readings, he said.

On February 5th Sir Edwin gave the first of what promised to be a final series of four morning readings at Daly’s Theatre. The house was packed. Immediately after the reading the box-office was besieged, and I saw at once that there would be a fine business. The next three readings were already announced, but once more the doctor stepped in, and dates were cancelled. The Saturday before Sir Edwin was to sail, I called on him at Mr. Carnegie’s house. He said to me:

“Major Pond, I should like to tell the American people how much I think of them if you will give me a chance, but you have only from now until next Monday to do it in. Take all the receipts; I want nothing but the audience.”

“All right,” I said. “Please send me a letter to that effect.”

It was only a few minutes after returning to my office that I received a letter authorizing me to go ahead and book the reading for the Monday morning following. The letter was as follows:

* * * * *

“5 WEST 51ST STREET, NEW YORK, Feb. 8, 1892.

“MY DEAR MAJOR POND:

“If it were possible to arrange for one more of my public readings in New York, I should regard the opportunity as a pleasure and a privilege. I am reluctant to quit, even for a time, the land where I have met so many and such generous and enlightened audiences, without some sign of the delight with which I should have continued to meet them--some occasion permitting me to acknowledge their good will toward me, interrupted only by my illness. It may be, moreover, that there are those who would like to hear me for the first time, albeit in a farewell reading, and briefly if it can be compassed--you may count, before I leave New York, on the willing acceptance of

“Yours always most sincerely, “EDWIN ARNOLD.”

* * * * *

I had only Saturday night, Sunday, and Monday morning to advertise. The reading came off in Daly’s Theatre, Monday morning, February 15th, at eleven o’clock. It was Sir Edwin’s last appearance in New York, and the house was filled to its capacity. The audience was of the best, appreciative of all the poet’s efforts, and in touch with every shade of expression. He read the “Discourse of Buddha,” and, as a sequel, the conversation between Mary Magdalen and the Magi, from “The Light of the World.” “The Egyptian Slippers” was given from the manuscript copy. “The Renegade Lovers” was another of the poems not yet in print. The exquisite ballad of “He and She,” one of the favorites, was also given. Before the programme closed he gratified his audience by a brief address, which was not merely eloquent in words, but most effective by the earnestness of his delivery.

“I ask your permission, before I conclude this last of my readings with some verses from the Persian of Saadi, which explains and justifies my books, to offer first to you, and next, through you, to those sixty-five audiences which I have had the honor to address in various cities of the United States, my most respectful and heartfelt thanks for the grace and kindness of the reception which they have given me. I do not presume to praise--what is far above my praise--the large-minded enlightenment, the glad interest in great thought which I have found everywhere existing and active in this country, evidenced to me in many clear and remarkable ways. But I will dare say that here, if anywhere in the world, the poet whose credentials are honest good-will toward his kind and firm faith in their glorious destiny, may fearlessly speak what is in his heart and brain, and be sure of an attention as gentle and as generous as it is cultivated.

“I came to America her friend; I go away her champion, her servant, her lover. I have the deepest conviction that the future history of the human race depends for its happy development upon that firm and eternal friendship of the great Republic and of the British Empire which is at once so necessary and so natural. Resolve on your side of the Atlantic, along with us who know you on the other, to allow no ignorance, no impatience, no foolish transient passion to share that amity. The peace and progress of the earth are founded upon it, and those who would destroy it are guilty of high treason against humanity. Accept, I pray you, and allow me to express to others through this large and representative assemblage, the sincere gratitude I feel for the unbroken goodness, the incomparable patience, the quick appreciation, and the ‘sweet reasonableness’ which I have met with universally among American audiences.”

The reading closed with the lines from Saadi, entitled, “In Many Lands.” The enthusiasm was tremendous. People crowded around the stage to say good-by, and Sir Edwin was not able himself to carry away a tithe of the flowers that were heaped upon him.

The receipts were $1,851. I told Sir Edwin that there was $1,000 clear profit from the lecture, and I thought he was entitled to it. “Not a penny, Major Pond. You have been disappointed and obliged to return many hundreds of dollars to a disappointed public. I only wish it were $5,000 for you instead of one.”

That evening he spent with us, appearing well and in excellent spirits. The next day he left for San Francisco, by way of New Orleans. He spent several days in California, at the Lick Observatory, in San José and in San Francisco, and then sailed for Japan, where he remained a number of months. He returned homeward in September through the United States, accompanied by Miss Arnold, his daughter, and the Japanese lady who is now his devoted wife.

While in New York on this homeward trip he read in my office to a party of friends, principally connected with the New York newspapers, the greater part of a Japanese tragedy which he had written while in the Island Empire. It was entitled “Adzuma; or, the Japanese Wife.” Sir Edwin gave permission to publish but one passage, and that because it had previously been published in a Japanese newspaper. He dined at our house that evening, and the following day sailed for England. Friendly letters have passed between us at short intervals ever since. His letters to me are among my literary treasures.

In 1897 Mrs. Pond and I visited England to attend the Queen’s Jubilee. On our arrival in Glasgow, June 9th, I found a telegram from Sir Edwin Arnold, saying:

* * * * *

“Have good places for you and Mrs. Pond to see procession. Let me know when you will be in London.”

* * * * *

I wrote him the time we expected to arrive, and when we reached London I found another telegram reading as follows:

* * * * *

“You and Mrs. Pond breakfast with me at 225 Cromwell Road at twelve to-morrow.

EDWIN ARNOLD.”

* * * * *

My diary contains the following entry:

* * * * *

“LONDON, Saturday, June 19, 1897.

“Breakfasted with Sir Edwin Arnold at 225 Cromwell Road at twelve, and a delightful visit it was. Sir Edwin welcomed us in his characteristic genial manner, which made us feel that the entire establishment was ours. His son, a young physician, with his wife, was there, also the Japanese lady whom we met at his house in 1891, and who is now the head of his household. She has mastered our language and is very refined and intelligent. Her name is Antomesan.

“Sir Edwin presented me with a copy of his new book, ‘Wandering Words,’ and a guinea cigar. He also gave me two tickets on the first row of the Grand Stand in the tribune of St. Paul’s Cathedral, for the grand parade. They were hundred-guinea tickets.

“These seats were within fifty feet of where Her Majesty’s carriage stopped during the services. I could look down on the bishops, and after the impressive service I met our Bishop Potter.

“‘How came you in here?’ he exclaimed. ‘Are you one of the nobility?’

“I think I was the only untitled man in that assemblage of people.”

* * * * *

In the light of the intimate and most friendly relations that have existed between us, and my high appreciation of the friendship with which Sir Edwin Arnold honored me, I shall perhaps be pardoned for quoting a few of the letters which I have received from him, some being in reply to my efforts to induce him to return to the United States and others being more purely personal in character. They are of especial value, perhaps, in view of the fact that the poet and editor is now and has been for nearly three years past confined to his residence. Under the dates given he has some pleasant things to say in the following letters:

* * * * *

“225 CROMWELL MANSIONS, KENSINGTON, S.W., “July 11, 1894.

“MY EVER DEAR MAJOR:

“I am ashamed when I compare the date of your last kind letter with that of my reply. But one is borne in such a whirl of politics and society in this London season that much may be forgiven. I was rejoiced to hear of the well-being of dear Mrs. Pond, the boy, and yourself; and by no means surprised that you had developed as a great success upon the platform. Who, indeed, ought to understand that difficult business better than you, under the shadow of whose skill and kindness we have all graduated? I have no doubt you would succeed over here.

“As for Dean Hole, I have the highest opinion of him; and I believe he will delight his audiences. He is a genial Christian gentleman, whose piety is bright with gay humor and the love of nature--the best judge of roses in the world, and in every way a fine specimen of the English Dean.

“What a state you are in with your strikes and strikers!

“Give very kindest messages to Mrs. Pond and ‘Bim,’ and ever believe me,

“Yours most sincerely, “EDWIN ARNOLD.”

* * * * *

By his own permission, as with Henry M. Stanley, I was often privileged to ask questions relative to English gentlemen to whom attention was directed as available for our platform service. Here is a letter wherein a valuable suggestion was made, which could not be followed, however, in time:

* * * * *

“GRAND HOTEL, PARIS, Oct. 8, 1895.

“MY EVER DEAR MAJOR POND:

“In reply to your very kind letter from Paris--having just started for a little holiday trip to Spain, after a rather fatiguing spell of work in politics and literature. It delights me to hear that you and Mrs. Pond and the little one are all well. I note that you have been having a good time with Mark Twain, for whose misfortunes we have all--on this side--felt most deeply. I should think you could easily get Du Maurier, unless ‘Trilby’ has made him too rich. As for me, dear Major, it would be glorious to serve under your victorious flag again, but I must not encourage myself or you to expect that. However, I shall be back in England before Christmas and will write to you again. I thank you with all my heart for your friendly thoughts of me. Be sure they are cordially returned, and ever believe me,

“Sincerely and affectionately yours, “EDWIN ARNOLD.”

* * * * *

Again he declines my request for another tour, and in doing so gives a glimpse of his own busy hours:

* * * * *

“225 CROMWELL MANSIONS, KENSINGTON, S.W., “April 30, 1896.

“MY DEAR MAJOR:

“I have just returned from a month’s holiday in the Canary Islands. Hence the sad delay in replying to your kind and welcome letter of (alas!!) the 20th of March. It delighted me by its news that Mrs. Pond, and the ‘laddie,’ and yourself, were all well. So am I, but tremendously busy with politics, and also with preparations for a journey to Russia, whither I go to see the Tsar crowned.

“I am sorry to say that I don’t think Mr. Ingersoll would ‘catch on’ over here. I know and admire his great abilities and eloquence, but our public is religious, orthodox, and conservative--so far as the ‘paying’ part of it goes. Your own lectures would be far more attractive.

“For my humble self, I wish I could see my way to once more run round with you. At present I dream of being in India all next winter about some temple business and have declined some very honorable presidentships and appointments with that view. All the same, most heartily do I thank you for your kind proof of friendly opinion and confidence.

“Love to your home circle.

“Sincerely your very attached friend, “EDWIN ARNOLD.”

* * * * *

From the office of the _Daily Telegraph_, under date of August 4, 1896, this letter of introduction came to me:

* * * * *

“MY DEAR MAJOR POND:

“The bearer is our good and trusted colleague, Mr. Ellerthorpe, who goes to America to observe the social, political, commercial, and intellectual life of your great Republic, and to send letters to the _Daily Telegraph_ upon these topics. Be so good as to receive and, if you can, to help him with useful introductions. He is a most worthy gentleman and I know you will do what you can for him for ‘Auld Lang Syne.’

“Yours affectionately, “EDWIN ARNOLD.”

* * * * *

Later in April, 1897, comes a note introducing Mr. Edward Le Sage, son of the managing editor of the _Daily Telegraph_, who visited the United States as a representative of that paper. I am asked “to be as good as ever I can” to the gentleman. Then came a pleasant reminder in the form of wedding cards, with the following very pleasant epistle as a friendly accompaniment:

* * * * *

“31 BOLTON GARDENS, LONDON, S.W., “November 26, 1897.

“MY DEAR MAJOR:

“The enclosed card will tell you, what you probably have long ago heard, that I have married the gentle and faithful Japan lady whom you saw with us. We have settled down very quietly in this new and pleasant house and only wish that you and dear Mrs. Pond were here to have a chat sometimes.

“I have had lately a nasty bout of rheumatism, or gout, or something, which makes me a prisoner to my room, but am slowly getting better. I trust you are all very well. It is not impossible you may see me again in the States, for my doctor tells me to take rest and travel.

“Yours always affectionately, “EDWIN ARNOLD.”

* * * * *

This later letter I give explains itself, and refers to the pathetic physical condition which now afflicts Sir Edwin.

* * * * *

“31 BOLTON GARDENS, S. KENSINGTON, “LONDON, S.W., Jan. 2, 1898.

“MY DEAR MAJOR:

“Warmest thanks for your kind message, and most cordial returns of the same to you and yours!

“Your charming invitation is of course attractive, but at present I am the victim of some strange weakness of the lower limbs, which the doctors say may prove chronic, and which prevents me standing long or walking much. This will oblige me, I fear, to go into the East for sunshine, just before Lent, and at present I do all my daily work by carriage and driving. But I will write again and give you a later report.

“Kindest regards to Mrs. Pond and Bim, in which Lady Arnold joins.

“Ever yours affectionately, “EDWIN ARNOLD.”

* * * * *

[Illustration: _COPYRIGHT--ELLIOTT & FRY--LONDON._

DR. JOHN WATSON (“IAN MACLAREN”)]

The Rev. Dr. John Watson (“IAN MACLAREN”) made his first lecture tour in America between October 1 and December 16, 1896, and I think I saw more happy faces while accompanying him than any other man was ever privileged to see in the same length of time. During this period Dr. Watson had ninety-six as large audiences of men and women as could be crowded into the largest public halls in the principal cities of the United States and Canada. These great multitudes, with bated breath and outstretched necks, sat and listened to him with intermingled laughter and tears, like sunshine making the rain radiant.

Dr. Watson is a tall, straight, square-shouldered, deep-chested man of middle age, with a large, compact, round, and well-balanced head, thinly thatched with brown and grayish hair, well-moulded refined features that bear the impress of kindly shrewdness, intellectual sagacity, and spiritual clearness, tempered, too, with a mingled sense of keen humor and grave dignity. The eyes are open, fine, and clear in expression, and thoughtful and observant to a controlling degree.

He is sometimes called an Englishman, because he happened to be born in the county of Essex; but he himself says: “I am a pure Highlander. My mother was a Maclaren, and came from Loch Tay and spoke the Gaelic tongue. My father was born at Braemar, and Gaelic was the language of my paternal grandfather.” His father was a Free Church elder, and his mother a woman of strong religious character and great spirituality. He is himself a typical Scotch Highlander in appearance, with every movement indicating alertness and force.

His voice is excellent, because its tones express the feeling to be conveyed. It is skilfully used, with fine inflections and tonal shadings that give emphasis and delicacy to his delivery. The doctor’s mobile mouth easily lends itself to vocal changes. He is not an orator in the usual sense of the word, but he is a speaker who readily holds an audience to the last moment. No one leaves while he speaks, and that is the finest test.

One day Horace Greeley, Henry Ward Beecher, and I were passing through Bridgeport. Mr. Greeley remarked: “This is Bridgeport. I had a successful lecture here once.”

Mr. Beecher said: “Greeley, what do you call a successful lecture?”

“Oh, more people stayed in than went out.”

Dr. Watson’s ten weeks were filled almost beyond belief. Yet his parting sermon at Plymouth Church was as fresh in matter and manner as when he began at New Haven with his famous Yale lectures on preaching given before the Divinity School.

In physique and in his mental spirit Dr. Watson recalls Mr. Beecher very distinctly. A broad sympathy with their fellows is their common inheritance. The rejoicing love of nature belongs to both lives. Dr. Watson illustrates, as Mr. Beecher did, in book, sermon, lecture, social intercourse, that he sees the best in all men, feels their moods, holds charity with errors, and joys with service, is touched by pathos and becomes tender with suffering. Dr. Watson brought a wholesome manhood as well as a gracious mind to the work he did, and has left a memory that all who heard him will continue to enjoy. America is richer by his visit, and he himself carried away the delight of sympathetic and genial associations.

It is probable that Dr. Watson, or “Ian Maclaren,” as he is more commonly called, would still have been nothing more than the pastor of a well to-do congregation in Liverpool if it had not been for one man.

For many years Dr. Watson had been intimately acquainted with Dr. Robertson Nicoll, editor of the _British Weekly_ and _The Bookman_, and the latter, who has a keen eye for literary ability, discovered in his conversations with the Scotch minister latent qualities which he determined to bring out. It happened that at this time Dr. Nicoll was on a hunt for genius. It had been through his instrumentality that both J. M. Barrie and S. R. Crockett had been brought before the public, but this same fickle public, having acknowledged the merit of these two writers, was already clamoring for something new. Dr. Nicoll realized that if he was to sustain his reputation he would be obliged to produce another genius without delay. Is it surprising, when he found in Dr. Watson what he was seeking, that he should pay no heed to either the man’s age, his peace of mind, or the wishes of his family, but should determine to launch him, whether he desired it or not, upon the sea of letters?

To this end the editor wrote to his intended victim, telling him of his unknown ability, and asking him to contribute to the _British Weekly_ a few short stories, especially dealing with Scotch character. But Dr. Watson at the time was deeply engaged in an analysis of the character of the Jebusites, and Dr. Nicoll’s request was unheeded. The latter, however, did not intend to forfeit his reputation for such a trifling cause. The letters and appeals which he sent to Liverpool gradually increased in number until Dr. Watson received one nearly every day. Before long letters were followed by telegrams, and the fate of “The Bonnie Briar Bush” was finally settled by the weary minister at last consenting to attempt a short story. This was forwarded to Dr. Nicoll, and was promptly returned, with the intimation that it was not what was desired, while at the same time more explicit directions were given. Dr. Watson made another attempt, and the next week the first story of “The Bonnie Briar Bush” series appeared in print.

The full significance of the title which Dr. Watson has given to his book is not generally understood. The Jacobites sang, “There grows a bonnie briar bush in our kailyard,” and wore the white rose as their emblem. A Highlander with Jacobite traditions, Dr. Watson has always loved the simple, beautiful flower, which is found in many country gardens in Scotland. When a title was needed for his volume, the author chose this because the suggestion of the book is that in every garden, however small and humble, there may be a flower. The whole idea of his writing, Dr. Watson says, “is to show the rose in places where many people look for cabbages.” His mission is to set forth what plain people, who do not analyze their feelings, really do and suffer.

From my very first meeting with him, as he landed at New York from the _Germanic_, I liked him even more than I had expected. He impressed me at once as strong, yet refined and very natural. He was dressed in a plain business garb--rather more like a Scotch merchant than a minister--and appeared a simple, delightful man in every sense the word implies. I liked him then; I love him now.

With Mrs. Watson--a frail, little body, with black hair and eyes, and very quiet--we drove at once to the Everett House, where pleasant rooms were waiting. They lunched with me. I ordered a large double sirloin steak and hashed brown potatoes with cream--just what never fails to catch an Englishman. My guests had never before seen the like. “A monumental steak,” said the doctor to his wife. “I’ve heard of your American beefsteaks. The stories have not been overdrawn.”

After luncheon Dr. Watson and I called on Mr. John Sloane, who had invited Dr. and Mrs. Watson to spend the Sunday following with him at his home in Lenox. After a delightful chat for a few minutes and the completion of arrangements for the Lenox visit, we returned to my office, where the reporters from the New York, Brooklyn, Boston, and Philadelphia papers were waiting for an interview. The group was gathered about the same round table where the two Arnolds, Stanley, Max O’Rell, and Conan Doyle had been interviewed. It did not take the reporters long to discover that they had an ideal target for their ingenuity, and for two hours the air was full of sharp and brilliant sayings from the lips of my star. It seemed more like the Stanley epoch than any other, and, next to Stanley and Sir Edwin Arnold, best of all. The symptoms were promising. I thought to myself that if he didn’t make a clean sweep, then no man could.

I went up to New Haven to hear him give the first of his course of lectures on “The Ethics of Preaching” before the Yale theological students. It was a delightful address. His manner and expression were elegant. He was magnetic, brimful of wit and sparkling with humor, and he couldn’t help it. I knew he would be a great go on the platform.

Applications were coming in from all parts of the country for “Ian Maclaren.” The doctor allowed me three evenings between his Yale lectures for trial readings, so we opened up at Springfield. I rented the theatre there and advertised in the newspapers only--used no posters or circulars and had no local society to back it.

I had not visited Springfield for some years, as nothing but a theatrical attraction seemed to draw there. The night of “Ian Maclaren’s” lecture, however, reminded me of the palmy days of Beecher and Gough. The theatre was full. President Gates and a large party of students from Amherst College were there, another party from Smith College, Northampton, besides Springfield’s best people. Dr. and Mrs. Watson were both very nervous, but he made a great hit. His entertainment was conversational and delightful. He had plenty of voice of a rich, carrying quality. After the reading the doctor seemed somewhat doubtful as to his success, but I was satisfied.

Next morning the Springfield papers contained elaborate and very enthusiastic notices of “Ian Maclaren’s” performance the previous evening. The doctor himself paid very little attention to his press notices, but Mrs. Watson read and enjoyed them, and instructed me to save a copy of each paper for her sons in Liverpool.

The second of the “trial performances” was given in Unity Hall, Hartford, which has only seven hundred seats. Every seat was sold and all the standing room occupied. The doctor gave a lecture here, not a reading, on “Certain Traits of Scotch Character.” Both audience and manager were delighted.

We had planned to return to New Haven the same night, but our plan failed through a misadventure that was somewhat amusing, although rather discomforting to me. We had boarded the New Haven train at about a quarter to eleven, and were very busily engaged in conversation. I was talking. The brakeman called out the name of a station, which I did not hear distinctly, but looking at my watch I saw it was a quarter to twelve--the time we were due at New Haven. I jumped up, saying, “This is New Haven?” and we all hurried out, and the train moved on. The depot did not look familiar to any of us, and we did not see Professor Fisher’s carriage, which we were expecting, to take Dr. and Mrs. Watson to his house, as they were his guests while in New Haven. There was no carriage and not a person to be seen. After some running about, I found a policeman and asked him where we were.

“You are in Meriden,” said the officer.

“In Meriden!” I exclaimed. “I thought this was New Haven. When does the next train go to New Haven?”

“About six in the morning.”

I can’t describe my feelings. Dr. and Mrs. Watson overheard the conversation, and I saw them look at each other and smile. I didn’t know what to say, but Dr. Watson said:

“Isn’t there a public house where we can get a bedroom?”

The policeman pointed out a hotel over the way, a good one, where we secured comfortable rooms. I sent a man out to bring in some oysters and sandwiches, and we all sat down to our late supper. Dr. Watson was never in better humor; he was full of laughter and apparently amused at my embarrassment. We sat and told stories until after one. I told the doctor that his taking the blunder so pleasantly had made me feel worse than if he had pitched into me. He bade me good-night, saying, “Major, you may have something worse than this to put up with before you are through with me.”

The doctor must have told this story to all of his friends in England, for a year later when over there, I was often slyly asked by friends of his if I knew a town in America called Meriden.

After the Yale lectures were completed I arranged to have the doctor give one public lecture in New Haven. The McKinley-Hobart campaign was on. Here and the next night at Bridgeport we had Tom Reed and his torchlight processions--which took two hours to pass a given point--against us, but it didn’t seem to have any effect on our business. What other man could have drawn full houses under such conditions?

Returning to New York, the doctor dined one evening with me and a party of friends at the Lotos Club. There were present Gen. Horace Porter, Seth Low, Frank R. Lawrence, William Winter, John Elderkin, and Hamilton W. Mabie. It was an enjoyable affair. There were bright sayings, good stories, and flashes of wit that only such an occasion could produce. It was one o’clock when Dr. Watson and I reached the Everett House, he declaring, “You Americans are really a wonderful people.”

On the day following, Dr. and Mrs. Watson were entertained by Frank H. Dodd, Bleeker Von Wagenen (of the firm of “Ian Maclaren’s” publishers), and the Rev. Dr. Lyman Abbott, and their wives, with an excursion up the Hudson to West Point. On their return the doctor came into my office fairly bubbling over with fun. He had been delightfully entertained and had enjoyed the magnificent scenery of “your beautiful Hudson River. It is grand.” He sat and chatted with me for an hour and charmed me with his description of the day’s outing. He saw the bright side of everything, and the humorous side too. He had brought with him and gave to me, fresh from the press, a copy of “Kate Carnegie,” his new book, telling me that this was the second copy out of the bindery; Mrs. Watson had the first copy. In the copy that he gave to me he wrote:

* * * * *

“TO MAJOR J. B. POND:

“The second copy of this book is given by the author after the week of his American tour, during which he has already come to consider the Major his friend.

“New York, October 10, 1896.”

* * * * *

One of the proudest days of my life was the following Sunday, when I accompanied Dr. and Mrs. Watson to Plymouth Church. I felt that the whole of that vast congregation must envy me. My star was the centre of all eyes until the sermon began. Dr. Abbott was at his best, and Dr. Watson enjoyed him. “That’s great preaching,” he said to me at the close. Friends crowded around us in great numbers, and “Ian Maclaren” must have “shaked hands” with hundreds.

“Ian Maclaren’s” American tour really began on the evening of October 12th, in the Academy of Music, Brooklyn, under the auspices of the Consumptives’ Home, and under the supervision of Mr. S. V. White. Before Dr. Watson went on the stage Deacon White handed me a check for $1,000--the fee for the lecture. The good old minister who introduced Dr. Watson took advantage of the occasion (it was probably the largest audience he had ever faced) to make a twenty-minute speech. The audience of highly bred ladies and gentlemen endured it heroically. Almost any other audience in any other city would have given vent to their pent-up feelings and called, “Maclaren, Maclaren!” but they patiently waited and suffered. Finally the speaker of the evening was introduced, and for an hour and a half more that audience sat in breathless suspense, listening to a man who gave them as much delightful pleasure as they had ever before enjoyed in that length of time. I saw that there was going to be lively work ahead of us for the next two months. The second lecture in America was in Carnegie Hall, New York, under the auspices of the St. Andrew’s Society. Sitting on the platform was a reception committee of over four hundred, including college presidents, clergymen, judges, statesmen, lawyers, and men of letters, besides other prominent men. Chauncey M. Depew introduced the doctor in one of his delightful speeches. Dr. Watson’s voice was distinctly heard in all parts of the great hall. He was a success in every way. The gross receipts were $2,455.50.

As the political cauldron was boiling in the States (the McKinley campaign), I chose to fill in the early portion of our tour in Canada, and on our way up there we made one stop, at Burlington, Vt. It was the first ride either Dr. or Mrs. Watson had taken in a drawing-room car, and they enjoyed it the more for having a sumptuous compartment all to themselves. The doctor appeared tired but cheerful. I found him an athletic man with a perfect physique and no fear of being overworked, but Mrs. Watson seemed delicate and hardly fitted for such a rush as we were about entering on.

Before reaching Burlington a committee of citizens came on board the train to welcome the doctor to Vermont. We arrived in the town at just eight o’clock in the evening, and were obliged to hurry from the hotel to the Opera House, where we found an immense jam in waiting. Even the stage was utilized by placing two hundred chairs there, which had been sold for a dollar apiece.

At Burlington it was the initial experience of my friends in a typical American hotel, the Van Ness. Mrs. Watson missed the bread plate and the two knives. She didn’t enjoy spreading butter with the same knife that she used to cut her meat. The doctor learned to his surprise that preserves and jam are one and the same, and he inquired if he were expected to spread his preserves on bread. If so, he wanted some bread.

Owing to the necessity of an early start, we got only an hour or two of sleep that night. The Watsons were up on time--2:30--and stood the unseasonable disturbance very gracefully and cheerfully. It seemed rough on the little lady, but she did not complain. All slept well into Montreal, where we enjoyed as good a breakfast at the Windsor Hotel as ever was set before hungry travellers. I noticed a look of pride and an at-home air about the Watsons as soon as they knew that they were in the Queen’s dominions, and it seemed to give a relish to their food when I exclaimed, “God save the Queen!”

At Montreal there was a delegation of representative Scotchmen waiting to do honors to “Ian Maclaren.” I don’t think there was a man in the city that day who hadn’t Scotch blood in him, at least I did not see one. The lecture was in the St. James Methodist church, an immense auditorium, with a seating capacity of about 2,300, but with reverberating acoustics that enabled a speaker to hear the echo of his words five times repeated. I don’t think very many could understand the reading, and it was about the stupidest audience I ever saw for one so numerous. The lecture, however, was a great financial success. The local manager who had engaged the doctor for the lecture was an insurance agent. He tried to keep possession of Dr. Watson and worried him all day long.

Dr. Watson was up very early the next morning and knocked at my door, saying:

“Major, are you up?”

“Come in,” I said, throwing open my door, ready to go to breakfast.

“Major, not a bad meeting last night. I see the papers are not unfriendly; but oh! that late supper. We will have no more of them.”

We went on to Ottawa by the Canadian Pacific Overland Express. The general manager of the road had set aside for Dr. and Mrs. Watson a drawing-room car containing more photographs of scenery along the Canadian Pacific route than I think they could possibly have examined in a month, even had they done nothing else. Dinner in the dining car pleased them. They declared it a most interesting way of enjoying a meal, and such a good meal, too! Where could it possibly be prepared?

There was a novel experience awaiting Dr. Watson in Ottawa. Mr. Knowles, the local manager, turned out to be a clergyman and rector of a church there. The lecture was in the Knox Presbyterian Church. Sir Wilfred Laurier, the Premier of Canada and a Roman Catholic, presided. He is Canada’s famous orator, and this was a great occasion for him. When the doctor was told that a Catholic would introduce him in a Presbyterian church, he was greatly surprised; but he was in for it and bore it heroically, and made a very pretty allusion to it in his introductory speech. Later in the evening he said to me:

“Major, isn’t this a wonderful country? Think of it; I, a Scotch minister, have given readings for a clergyman of the Church of England, in a John Knox Presbyterian church, introduced by a Roman Catholic!”

There were cheers and handclapping during the entire evening, closing with a motion for a vote of thanks, seconded by a speech, then a vote of thanks to the chairman and another eloquent speech, after which the doctor read “McClure’s Last Ride,” as an extra. What enthusiasm! I had hardly seen the doctor since our arrival. Friends had taken possession of him and he had done the town between 2:30 and 6.

When we got back to our hotel, the Russell, we met Mr. Isaac Campbell and Hon. John Cameron, two prominent politicians and thoroughbreds of Winnipeg, who had come all the way to see and hear “Ian Maclaren.”

In company with Premier Laurier and Mr. Knowles, we went up to their rooms and spent about as interesting an hour as Dr. Watson experienced during the entire tour. It was a revelation to him; but he had been a boy himself once, and he learned one fact, that in the great and new West the boy nature predominates among the men to the end of their lives. These men were leading Canadian politicians, and the affairs of Canada were largely in the control of the set to which they belonged. There was a pretty intense political campaign on in Canada just at this time over the school question, and there was a desire on the part of the different partisans to explain to Dr. Watson why their particular party was right and how the salvation of the country depended upon the election of their man. He enjoyed it.

We were obliged to start very early next morning for Kingston, and were glad to leave the old Russell House. The dull porter directed us wrong, so that we were obliged to change cars twice, when we might have come direct in a parlor car. My travelling companions had a chance to experience the inconvenience of riding in the common day coaches of Canada, and for a short distance we were obliged to ride in the caboose of a freight train. It was not a delightful experience, but I heard not the slightest complaint. The doctor really got fun out of it.

At Kingston we were met by Principal Grant, of Queen’s College, who entertained the Watsons over Sunday. There was a very large audience that evening at the Kingston Opera House, which made the local managers happy. Principal Grant presided at the lecture and afterward asked me if it were not possible to secure Dr. Watson to address the students at the college next morning. I told him the doctor had agreed to lecture twice a day for me if I would release him from preaching, so I could not insist, though I thought he might have been willing to address the college to please a thousand students, many of whom had given up their hard earnings to hear him at the Opera House. But he is Scotch, and having said “no,” he did “no,” although he worshipped with the students at the college in the morning.

The next day (Monday) we were due at Toronto. I drove a mile in a carriage to Principal Grant’s home at the college at about 1 A.M., found Dr. and Mrs. Watson waiting, and we drove out to Kingston Junction to get our train. It was an uncomfortable ride in a rickety old hack, with the thermometer at zero. I know that Mrs. Watson and I didn’t enjoy it, but the doctor was as beaming as though he had had a normal night’s sleep.

“Jannie,” said he, “I guess the boys are not thinking of where we are just now. If we hadn’t promised them those bicycles we wouldn’t be here.” And so he kept the chilly air out by making sunshine at midnight. The fire had gone out in the stove in the station waiting room, and all the coal was locked up in the shed outside. The train was forty minutes late. It seemed the longest forty minutes of my life. A more unendurable position I never knew than waiting in a cold railway station at 2 A.M., in Canada, for a late train. “Ian Maclaren” found enjoyment in it. But when the train came we had a comfortable ride into Toronto, and were none the worse for our rough experience of the middle of the night.

Here the Scotch were out in force again. Badges and insignia of different societies were much in evidence. They all wanted to see “Ian Maclaren,” and he was unable to see any of them. He accepted an invitation to lunch with Mr. E. Gurney, a prominent citizen and an old friend of Mr. Beecher’s and mine, and then he and Mrs. Watson were driven about the city all the rest of the day until it was time to lecture. Lord Aberdeen presided, and it is a matter worthy of record that the largest audience that ever attended any one-man entertainment in Massey Hall, Toronto, and paid high prices, was the one drawn to hear “Ian Maclaren’s” readings. A more enthusiastic demonstration of welcome one seldom sees, especially in America. It was more like Welsh enthusiasm.

We were booked for Detroit the following day at eleven o’clock, and Grand Rapids at eight in the evening, so I had a lively time hustling the doctor from Massey Hall on board the sleeping car. We reached Detroit at 8 A.M. and breakfasted at the Russell. The doctor gave his reading at eleven to an opera house full of Detroit’s most select citizens. Colonel Livingstone, editor of the Detroit _Journal_, had arranged a luncheon party for the doctor at the Detroit Club at 12:30, and we were to leave at 1:20 for Grand Rapids. A carriage was engaged during our stay in Detroit. Dr. Watson hurried from the hall over to the club. The luncheon was a magnificent affair. About two hundred of Detroit’s best men were there and made it a pretty lively thirty minutes for the Scotchman. I took a special carriage and hurried to the station and persuaded the conductor to hold the train five minutes for us. Finally the doctor and Colonel Livingstone came. We jumped on the train just as it was starting and went bounding over the country for Grand Rapids.

At Jackson we took on a special train carrying the generals of the army, who had enlisted in the Presidential campaign and were on their way to Grand Rapids for a grand mass meeting. As we entered that city there were brass bands playing, fireworks, and all sorts of demonstrations. I assured Dr. Watson they were not intended in his honor, and he quickly found out that he was a mighty small affair in the minds of that excited populace. It was “McKinley and Hobart” everywhere, and everybody was in some kind of uniform carrying a torch.

In due time my correspondent there appeared with a carriage and drove us to the Baptist Church, where a great crowd was waiting to welcome “Ian Maclaren.” It surprised the doctor. The lecture over, we went direct to the sleeping car, which we boarded at 11 P.M. for Chicago. We had been on the move at a very lively rate all day, but Dr. Watson’s ability to see everything from the brightest side kept us all jolly.

We had a very early breakfast in the Auditorium Hotel, in the first sky dining room the Watsons had ever seen. Unfortunately, Lake Michigan, once to be seen only a short distance away, was completely hidden by the smoke.

“How do you like this, Dr. Watson?” I asked.

“Wait until I get my breakfast and I will tell you, Major,” he said.

Reporters came early and kept the doctor under cross-examination for some time, not, however, to his discomfort. He enjoyed them, and they knew it, and helped to make things lively. The Rev. Dr. Gunsaulus was the first minister to call. He drove the doctor out to the Armour Institute, where he addressed the students that morning, and in the afternoon he took him for another drive to see Chicago. On his return his enthusiasm and wonder could hardly be expressed.

“Major, these big stories we read about your Chicago and the West are not big stories at all. I have seen thirty miles of parks to-day, and I am told that not one of them is over twenty-five years old.” In the evening he spoke before the Twentieth Century Club.

At noon the next day the doctor lunched at the Union League Club with a party of leading spirits. The round table, with twenty-four men sitting about it, had been placed in the main dining room, where the distinguished party could be viewed from all sides. I noticed that Dr. Watson was disturbed. He was not very sociable, either, under the gaze of so many starers. It was an elaborate lunch, but there were glasses for water only. After we went out, Dr. Watson asked me if gentlemen were in the habit of lunching distinguished parties without wine. A friend of mine who was present assured the doctor that the absence of wine was entirely on account of the presence of a distinguished minister. Had he (Dr. Watson) been absent it would have been very different. That evening the lecture was in Central Music Hall, which was crammed.

My Minneapolis correspondent, who had bought a single lecture for that city, was one of the doctor’s enthusiastic auditors in Chicago. I had originally planned that Dr. Watson should have an open date in Minneapolis for rest, as a neighboring minister in Liverpool had written: “Watson, poor fellow, is not strong. He has had severe hemorrhages.” But when I found that he was an athlete, with the power of endurance of a gladiator, and when he offered to keep all dates I made if I would release him from preaching, I decided to fill in three more readings in Minneapolis and St. Paul. I felt all the more warranted in doing so as all the auditoriums in which Dr. Watson had spoken up to this time had been crowded to their full capacity. So I told my Minneapolis man that either he must arrange to fill in two matinées and the open evening, or I must buy him off and go back East, where we were sure of a much larger business. He demurred, but “it was to be,” so he finally assented.

Looking up my dates, I found that the day before election was open in Central Music Hall, Chicago, and I decided to place two return readings there for the afternoon and evening of that day. The local manager refused to have anything to do with it, so I did it myself, and enjoyed seeing him quite demoralized because he had not accepted my offer. That afternoon and evening Dr. Watson gave two readings, the gross receipts for which were over $4,000.

What a delightful ride we had the next day on the fast express from Chicago to Milwaukee, where I once worked as a printer on the _Sentinel_. At that time (1857-58) Milwaukee was the metropolis of the State; now it is a suburb of Chicago. I called Dr. Watson’s attention to the beautiful brick which is used here, and makes such handsome buildings. He thought them inferior in quality to the Scotch bricks, and I think he was right.

He lectured here in Plymouth Church, where I had been with Mr. Beecher and other stars. The church was crowded, and I was told that there had been no such enthusiasm since the palmy days of John B. Gough. A supper after the lecture was attended by the leading minds of the city and State, among whom was my old friend F. N. Finney, son of the late Charles G. Finney of Oberlin. The Woman’s Club, which had secured Dr. Watson for Milwaukee, entertained our entire party the next morning, showing us the sights of the city, including a first-class art gallery and the largest, best-equipped brewery in the world.

We pushed on to Appleton, Wisconsin, where nearly the whole town was in waiting at the depot. The rest of the townspeople met us on the train before reaching the city. At the lecture that evening, the Congregational Church held the biggest crowd it ever had held up to that time. The next day (Sunday) was a proud day for me. “Ian Maclaren” preached for one in my father and mother’s old church, in order that my friends might hear him. It was a great sermon and a great crowd, too. People came over two hundred miles to hear him, and filled the church both morning and evening, and all the surrounding streets as well. It was my second great triumph in Appleton. On a former occasion I had introduced Henry Ward Beecher to the same public, and Dr. Watson’s reception was just as hearty as Beecher’s. In the evening I gave my Beecher lecture. Dr. Watson was a listener and gave me inspiration. I talked Beecher for an hour and a half, and was attentively listened to.

The next day we went to Madison, Wisconsin, where Dr. and Mrs. Watson were the guests of President Adams of the Wisconsin State University. Mrs. Watson was unable to sit up. The doctor addressed the students of the University in the afternoon, and lectured in the First Congregational Church in the evening--the same place where, in 1879, Mr. Beecher had drawn exactly $1,200. The legislature was in session then, but now it was autumn, and no legislature. Dr. Watson drew just $1,000 even money.

We were obliged to take the midnight train from Madison to Minneapolis. When we went on board poor Mrs. Watson was almost broken down, but never a murmur escaped her. Dr. Watson nursed and cared for her all night on the cars as gently as a mother could have done. Still he couldn’t help saying funny things. As she lay in agony in her berth, he said: “Jannie, you must not forget; the boys may get their wheels yet. The audience was not hostile.”

By the time we reached Minneapolis, Mrs. Watson was so feeble that she could hardly bear to be lifted from the car to a carriage; still she did not complain. At the West Hotel we called in a physician, who declared that she was threatened with pneumonia. Colonel West and his daughters were very kind and attentive and relieved the doctor as much as possible. The Caledonian Society and the St. Andrew’s Society were in waiting to show honors to the distinguished visitor, and many other Scotch institutions were out in great force. The lobbies of the hotels were jammed. “Ian Maclaren” was the name on everybody’s lips.

He amused the audience at the beginning of one of his lectures by telling of a letter he had received, asking whether the first name of his pseudonym was pronounced Ian, Eean, Yan, Yon, Yane, John, Jan, or Jane. “In answer to this question,” said Dr. Watson, “I would say that if you want to pronounce it like an Englishman, you will say I-an; if like a Scotchman, Ee-an; and if like a Highlander, Ee-on.”

A luncheon was given him by one society, and after the reading in the evening he had a banquet. I absolutely believed the doctor must be bewildered from so much increasing attention. The smart reporters here got hold of him. His keen discernment enabled him to detect a different atmospherical condition about these and our Eastern newspaper men. There was a freshness and a keen assurance about the Minneapolis reporters that rendered them irresistible. He saw and enjoyed everything. Everybody was in love with him, and everybody wished to do something for him.

Judge Gilfillan, of the United Scotch Societies, introduced him at the first reading by declaring that it had been left to the lion of the evening “to show us the lights and shadows of Scottish character as they are exhibited in the simple, everyday scenes of life.” The doctor stepped forward amid a wave of lasting applause. “It is my duty,” he said, “to notice with a glow of heart the Scottish tone of this introduction, for, as I sat listening, I could scarcely realize that I was in the far Northwest and not in my own country.” Wherever he went he met Scotch people--some by descent, some by marriage, and one by virtue of the fact that her sister had been tended by a Scotch nurse.

We gave three readings in Minneapolis, instead of one, as originally planned, and two in St. Paul. The afternoon in St. Paul was marked by almost as terrific a rain-storm as I ever remember witnessing. The water absolutely piled up in the streets for two or three hours. Through the invitation of Mr. I. W. Whitney of the Great Northern R.R. Co., Dr. Watson visited the residence of Mr. James Hill, president of the railroad, who has the finest collection of pictures west of New York. Dr. Watson, who is an art critic and has seen all the famous collections of Europe, declared this the best-selected and choicest private collection of paintings that he knew of.

We found Mrs. Watson more comfortable on our return, but the physicians said that she had a slight touch of pneumonia and must not be moved for a week, so we were obliged to leave her behind and go on to Des Moines without her. I feared that the tour was about finished. I didn’t see how the doctor could give his readings under such conditions, but he insisted that “Jannie” was a woman of wonderful will power and he was sure she would come through all right. To leave her among strangers, in a strange land, nearly five thousand miles from home, was not a cheering prospect, but Colonel West, owner of the West Hotel, and his daughters were very kind to her, and she was heroic and brave as well. “Good-by, Jannie. The boys will get their wheels,” were the doctor’s last cheering words as he came from her room and we took a carriage for the depot to go to Des Moines.

We left Minneapolis at about seven o’clock, having a Pullman sleeping car all to ourselves. The weather was the most disagreeable possible--a cold, sleety rain, which later changed to a gale so severe as to impede the progress of the train. We lost time all day. When the conductor told the doctor that we were losing time on account of the wind, he exclaimed: “How absurd! Do you mean to tell me that any wind can retard the speed of a heavy locomotive and train like this?” The conductor assured him that nothing else had caused the lateness of the train. He insisted that it was ridiculous, and wouldn’t listen to it; but I have known a gale to lift a locomotive and whole train off the track. Little he knows of the Iowa and Kansas zephyrs.

When I saw that we were bound to be late, I telegraphed my correspondent in Des Moines that the train was losing time. All day we travelled over the boundless prairie, thickly dotted with frail frame houses that appeared hardly able to withstand the gale. This was the first real prairie country the doctor had ever seen, and it was a surprise to him.

As there were no eating stations along the line and no food to be had on the train, we were obliged to go without eating all day, which the doctor did not relish, and declared that this was the last time he would be caught on a long journey without food. I told him that we would go right to the hotel as soon as we arrived and get something. He was obliged to dress on the sleeper, and was very much worried, because he was afraid he would have to lecture without his supper. I began to fear that he was right when he told me in Meriden I might sometimes have to put up with some very disagreeable things.

It was after eight when we reached the hotel. The clerk told us that we could get nothing to eat, as the dining-room closed at eight (it is so with all provincial hotels), but the doctor rushed to the dining-room and made a loud noise on the door, which was opened by a man in evening dress. He proved to be the head waiter.

“I want some food immediately,” said the doctor. The man stood paralyzed.

“I must have some food right away,” the doctor repeated, and rushed by the man to a table where were the remains of the dinner of the latest comer. He attacked it, and the head waiter tried to stop proceedings, but the doctor kept right on. He managed to get part of a meal, and hurried out, the man following him. In the carriage on the way to the Opera House the doctor told me that he hoped he had not permanently injured that man who persisted in trying to prevent him from eating what he could find. I think I never experienced a more amusing incident. It was nearly nine o’clock when Dr. Watson stepped upon the stage. I’ll let the Des Moines _Leader_ tell the story:

“At five minutes before nine o’clock the lecturer came around the flies. During the long wait the audience was entertained with a violin solo and a piano solo. An impromptu choir on the stage started ‘America,’ and four verses were sung. Then came ‘Annie Laurie,’ and it was during the singing of that that Dr. Watson took his seat. ‘How appropriate,’ every one said to his neighbor, and the tedium of the long delay was forgotten. It was a gathering of which any person might be proud, and evinced extraordinary interest concerning the new star in the literary firmament, unknown except in his clerical capacity two years ago.”

The president of the Woman’s Club, under whose auspices the lecture was given, introduced the speaker in a very few words of eulogy on the man and his work. She said, “The long-anticipated hour has come,” and Dr. Watson stood up before the audience. He said that no one could convey a reproach so delicately as a woman, and that when he heard the words “long-anticipated hour” combined with what was complimentary, it reminded him of his childhood days when medicine was administered in sweets. “Only the other day,” he continued, “I was congratulating myself on never being late, either for pulpit or platform, but now the boast has come home to me, as such things usually do.”

At 11:30 we were again on board the sleeper bound for Galesburg. Our journey was interrupted by an enforced long wait at Rock Island--from 8 A.M. to 2:40 P.M.--but it proved a very delightful wait. We took a carriage and drove about the town, visiting the United States Arsenal, where arms and war equipments are manufactured. Through the politeness of the commanding officer, Colonel Buffington, Dr. Watson was most graciously entertained all the forenoon.

At Rock Island, President John Finley of Knox College (then the youngest college president in America) met us with the private car of the superintendent of the road, to convey us to Galesburg. The college students, male and female, had turned out en masse to meet “Ian Maclaren” at the station, and behind a band of music and the students our carriage was escorted to President Finley’s house. Here was a telegram from Mrs. Watson telling her husband that she was much improved and would meet us in Chicago the next morning.

“Astonishing,” said the doctor, his face fairly beaming. “Can I send a telegram right away?” he asked.

“I’ll take it,” said I, for I wanted to do something.

He wrote a telegram after the English manner--as few words as possible--and this is the way it read:

* * * * *

“MRS. WATSON, WEST HOTEL, MINNEAPOLIS.

“Much lifted.

WATSON.”

* * * * *

I made a copy of it, which I handed in at the office, retaining the original. I have never parted with a word of his or Mr. Beecher’s manuscript.

After dinner, Dr. Watson visited the rooms of the new “Abraham Lincoln Memorial to Art and Science.” About a hundred young ladies were in waiting, dressed in white, with a little green ribbon about their necks and each one wearing a white rose. The doctor christened the new society, “Circle of the Order of the White Rose,” and the occasion inspired him to make one of the sweetest addresses I ever heard. I did not know of a man since Mr. Beecher had gone who could rise to such an occasion as Dr. Watson did.

The lecture that evening was to help establish a fund to aid in the objects of the new society. The Knox College students completely filled the Opera House from floor to ceiling. As the doctor stepped upon the stage he was greeted with a Western college cheer, given with a vigor that could not be excelled for volume. It seemed to inspire him for the evening’s work. This was one of the most hearty receptions he had in America. After the lecture we returned to Dr. Finley’s home, where flashlight pictures were taken of the party.

By 11:30 we were on the train for Chicago, Dr. Finley with us, arriving at 6:30 Sunday morning. Our entire party were guests of my old friends, Mr. and Mrs. C. H. McConnell, on the South Side. Although it was such an unseasonable hour to disturb friends, Mr. McConnell met us at the door and welcomed Dr. Watson with heart and hand in such a manner as to cause him to say before we fairly got into the house:

“Major, I’m very glad we’re here.”

At 8:30 A.M., Mrs. Watson arrived from Minneapolis. I met her at the train. She did look feeble, but she insisted on carrying her handbag to the carriage, and was very cheerful and anxious to know how everybody had gotten along without her. I assured her that she had been very much missed, and that from now on we were all right.

That afternoon Dr. Watson preached in the Chicago University for President Harper, and when he returned with Mr. and Mrs. McConnell, found Mr. Lyman Gage (later Secretary of the Treasury) waiting to escort him to his house to dinner. I suppose they went to Mr. Gage’s and waited until the Sabbath was over and then had a good time, because the doctor never visits on Sunday excepting on parishional work, and I heard him say on Monday morning at breakfast, “I’ve already given one reading this morning.”

This Monday was our red-letter day in Chicago, when we took in over $4,000, at the matinée and evening reading; this, too, notwithstanding it poured all day and the audience came in carriages and under umbrellas, or dressed in waterproofs, and giving the lobby of Central Music Hall the appearance of a small river.

Mrs. Watson was improving all the time, but we left her and Mrs. Pond in Chicago with our friends the McConnells, to join us in Niagara Falls the following Saturday night, where we would spend Sunday and see the falls. Dr. Watson and I went on to Oberlin, Pittsburg, and Cleveland.

The strange old Lyceum course in Oberlin is one of the oldest in America, and the Park Hotel is the same old barracks that I have visited year after year with John B. Gough, Beecher, Twain and Cable, Gilmore’s band, Clara Louise Kellogg, and many others. The people of Oberlin gave “Ian Maclaren” a grand ovation. It was the evening of election day, and some of the early election returns were announced at the lecture. It is a time-honored custom in Oberlin that lectures begin at 6:30 in the evening, and invariably open with prayer.

“I never before met a people who would pay an admission fee to hear a long prayer,” said the doctor to me after the lecture.

Dr. Watson was the guest of the college dean. I would not attempt to describe the impressions made on him while in Oberlin. It is an absolutely teetotal town and all dinners are dry. The election returns had brought the news of a McKinley landslide, and the students’ enthusiasm knew no bounds. They surrounded the dean’s house, where Dr. Watson was stopping, built a number of bonfires, and remained there most of the night, shouting, “What’s the matter with McKinley? _He’s all right!_” Dr. Watson never got over that.

The day after the election, when we reached Cleveland, which is only seven miles from McKinley’s home, I doubt if there could be found a person there that day who was not hoarse. I never saw such a litter of débris before or since. The streets were covered with papers, old box and barrel hoop irons, ashes, and embers of bonfires, and hardly a soul was to be seen at ten o’clock in the morning. They were used up. It did look like the break up of a hard winter or the ruins of a burned district. In registering, Dr. Watson asked the clerk of the hotel, “What’s the matter with McKinley?” and he got it good and strong: “_He’s all right!_” Everybody in the room and vicinity shouted. He certainly had entered into the spirit of that contest. Notwithstanding all this excitement, the people had roused up in the evening, and we had about $1,100 in cash in the big Music Hall there.

There was no lack of excitement on this tour. The next day the doctor was down for two entertainments in Pittsburg, besides a luncheon and a dinner. We took an early morning train, reaching Pittsburg at noon, where we were met by a delegation of ministers and business men, with Andrew Carnegie at the head. They had planned a luncheon for Dr. Watson, which was waiting, and then to lecture at two o’clock! I looked after the business while the doctor was entertained by his friends. We were getting nearly all we wanted of luncheons. One gentleman had assured Dr. Watson that Major Pond had made a great mistake in placing a matinée lecture, for the new Carnegie Hall could accommodate all the people, and as there was not a soul to be seen when the doctor and Mr. Carnegie drove up to the Opera House, the doctor said to me:

“Major, you have made a great mistake here. One reading is enough. You have the obstinacy of a Scot.”

“Have I?” I replied. “Well, all you will have to do is to give your ‘small audience’ a better lecture this afternoon.”

When he got around on the stage and faced the crowd, he found the most select audience Pittsburg could possibly muster. There was not a vacant seat, and “Standing Room Only” was on the signs in the lobby. We took in $1,800 that afternoon. He went to dinner with Mr. Carnegie, who introduced him to another audience that evening of over three thousand people.

At the eating station in Oil City, the next day, while on our way to Jamestown, the doctor left his hat. I had to go into the baggage car and get his hat box, and he went all the way into Jamestown and Buffalo wearing his silk hat. We had one lecture at Jamestown, with no particular incident except that the President of the Y. M. C. A. kept the audience in agony fifteen minutes with his introductory speech.

The next day, in Buffalo, there were two lectures, a club luncheon, and a supper, after which we went by trolley to Niagara Falls, where our wives were soundly sleeping at 1:30 A.M. Sunday. I don’t believe Dr. Watson had had ten spare minutes during the two weeks previous to that time.

We saw the falls through disagreeable mist and cold drizzly rain. A more uncomfortable day out of doors could not be, but Mr. Isaacs’s cosy Prospect House was unalloyed comfort. Once Mr. Beecher wrote me from this hotel: “Good room, good bed, good table, and good host. What a cluster of blessings! Next to being at home is the blessedness of being away from home in a good hotel.”

Two performances were given in Rochester, and here I succumbed. I could stand it no longer, but went to bed and sent for a physician. The ladies went directly to New York from the Falls, and the doctor “managed” for me, which kept him pretty busy. He came to my room after the evening performance and wished to nurse me during the night. My physician declared me in a serious condition and ordered me to take the first train home. Dr. Watson insisted that under such conditions I was too feeble to move, and ruled against the physician; so I stayed in bed and left for New York the next morning, leaving the doctor in Syracuse to fill two engagements there.

He spoke to two unusually large crowds in Syracuse; at Ithaca the following noon, at Elmira in the evening, and then back to New York. Twice a day he had been keeping up his readings while I dragged and pushed him along, and a better-natured, more delightful spirit never was known. My business was to make the work as easy for him as possible, no matter what fatigue it caused the “manager.” What else is a “manager” for?

I was side-tracked at home two days. I had planned for several readings in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. The biggest business was yet to come. The Watsons were our guests for a couple of days while I was laid up. One must entertain and house Dr. Watson under one’s roof to know what a buoyant, soul-reviving, happy spirit he possesses. He was in excellent humor and entertained us all day long with whimsical descriptions of cranks who visit him--crank preachers from foreign lands who get their living by appeals in all directions for collections and opportunities to preach. It was certainly the most remarkable, inimitable, and side-splitting facial display of serio-comic genius I ever saw or heard. What an actor he would have made!

Our next stand was Philadelphia, November 14th, where Mr. Harold Pierce, the gentleman who had the doctor in charge for that Saturday afternoon and Sunday, prior to the doctor’s lecture the Monday following, met us and took absolute charge of the doctor and his party. Pierce is a hero-worshipper, but a splendid fellow.

Mr. John Russell Young gave the doctor a luncheon at the Union League Club at one o’clock, at which were a number of Philadelphia’s most distinguished men as guests. At the right of Mr. Young at the table was Dr. Watson; at his left, Archbishop Ryan. Next to Dr. Watson was John Wanamaker. I don’t think that any party has ever been privileged to listen to a more delightful theological discussion than that which took place between the Catholic archbishop and the Presbyterian Scotch minister. It was quite a display of wit and historical knowledge, which made the occasion intensely interesting. It was a protracted luncheon. We did not get up from the table until half-past three. Then the doctor went to the New Century Club for a reception. At least Pierce called it a reception. There was a large auditorium, every seat of which was occupied. The doctor was led out upon the stage and introduced to the audience. He gave there one of the brightest and most interesting lectures of his whole tour, not finishing until five o’clock. He was unprepared for a speech and was obliged to work out his salvation by thinking on his feet. He was equal to the occasion, and made his best speech in America there. He took a carriage direct to the station and went out to Pottstown, where he gave a lecture under the auspices of the Hill School, returning at midnight to Philadelphia. The following Sunday he preached in Germantown, Philadelphia, in the morning. In the afternoon, with John Wanamaker, he was introduced to many Sunday schools and saw the working of John Wanamaker’s famous system for the Sunday religious instruction of the young. In addition to these duties the doctor had been interviewed by all the reporters in Philadelphia, and his face and his name were the prominent features in all the daily papers.

At one of his interviews, speaking of the manner in which his short stories were written, Dr. Watson said:

“Each one was turned over in my mind for months before I put pen to paper. It took a prodigious amount of mental labor before I even had a story formed in my head. Then I blocked it out at one sitting. Then the thing was put aside, while I went over and over in my mind each detail,--each line of dialogue, each touch of description,--determining on the proper place, attitude, share, color, and quality of each bit, so that the whole might in the end be a unit, not a bundle of parts. By and by came the actual writing, with the revision and the correction which accompanies and follows. The actual composition of ‘The Bonnie Briar Bush’ stories occupied fifteen months. They were the more difficult, because in every case the character is revealed in dialogue exclusively. It is different where the writer has a plot--a murder, for instance--because then there is something definite to hold the attention, and one can dash ahead compared with the slow progress I was forced to make.”

The lecture in Philadelphia, in the Academy of Music, on Monday, was attended by the largest and best-paying audience up to date, the gross receipts being $3,009.50 for a single night.

Next came our visit to Washington, on which I had counted much, being well acquainted with nearly all the heads of departments, as well as with President Cleveland and every member of his cabinet. The Doctor was the guest of the Rev. Dr. McKaye Smith, a clergyman of much distinction and social influence, who is a relative of the Vanderbilts, and whose home in Washington is in keeping with the wealth at his command. I had suggested to Dr. and Mrs. Watson that I hoped to show them the Capitol that morning, and get some good snap-shots, as they had engaged to lunch early with the President. There were to be two lectures, afternoon and evening. He informed me that he had accepted an invitation from another--a gentleman who knew everything and who had come from Philadelphia on purpose to show them the sights of Washington. I was disappointed, for I knew the _gentleman_ to be one of the small class of hero followers that pursue celebrities and in many instances succeed in hypnotizing them to that extent that they can believe no one else, not even their well-known friends. This man turned out to be exactly what I tried to intimate to my friends, in as delicate a way as possible and not offend them, what he really was. He has since fled the country, and I doubt if there is a pleasant recollection of him anywhere.

Dr. and Mrs. Watson lunched at the Executive Mansion with President and Mrs. Cleveland, Secretary of State Olney and Mrs. Olney, Mr. H. T. Thurber, private secretary to the President, and Mrs. Thurber. In order to show further his admiration for the great Scotch writer, the President engaged seats for himself and his family, and the entire party attended Dr. Watson’s lecture that evening.

From Washington we went to Baltimore, where the doctor lectured under the auspices of the Peabody Institute and was the guest of President Gilman of Johns Hopkins University. As we had spent the day sight-seeing in Washington, we did not arrive in Baltimore until a quarter after eight, and the doctor proceeded at once to the great hall. We found a man at the door waiting to admit “Ian Maclaren” to the platform. He insisted that it was impossible for me to get inside the door, as there was not a place for me to stand; and it proved absolutely true that every inch of available room was occupied by people standing as thick as they could be crowded in the aisles, around the platform, and against the door. The jam was so solid that it was all Dr. Watson could do to squeeze himself in and get to the rostrum. I did not see the audience or hear him that night. While standing outside, two well-dressed young ladies came up to me and asked if I were not Major Pond.

“Yes,” I said.

“We must see and hear Dr. Watson. Is it not possible?”

“I cannot possibly get in myself,” I said. “There is no earthly use for you to try.”

“Can’t you crowd that door open so we can get inside?”

I said, “I’ll try.”

I made an effort, and managed to squeeze them inside, and the door was pressed against me. I never saw them afterward and never knew whether they were able to see and hear the doctor, but such was the intense interest to hear him. He did not see his host until after the lecture, and it was past midnight when he arrived at President Gilman’s house to have a late supper and a chat, and then to be called at 6:30 the following morning in order to lecture in Philadelphia at noon.

The doctor stood the crowds and endured the high pressure very heroically, occasionally intimating to Mrs. Watson that “the boys’ bicycles are pretty safe,” and remarking to me from time to time, as we left one city for another, “The people are not unfriendly, Major.”

We still had ahead of us Boston and New England, which I believed would surpass everything else. At Providence we had two great crowds, afternoon and evening. The people were simply in love with “Ian Maclaren”; somehow he takes hold of all hearts.

Crowds followed him to the station, and the interest grew more intense as he neared Boston.

In Boston, Dr. Watson was the guest of Mrs. James T. Field.

The crush at the box office had been unbroken for a week. The advance sales were nearly $10,000. It was in Tremont Temple, Wednesday afternoon, November 25th, at two o’clock, that he made his first bow to a Boston audience, and the great house was overflowing with people who came to see and to hear--who remained to laugh and cry; and, when the lecture was at an end, to stand in their places for many minutes with eyes and opera glasses levelled upon the tall and kindly visaged Scotchman. He bore well the scrutiny of those thousands, for there were thousands present, as he shook hands with his brethren of the ministry who occupied the platform seats. For three-quarters of an hour before two o’clock two solid masses of humanity wrestled for admission. Men and women, but mostly women, crowded up the two stairways, an eager, expectant throng. Presently all the seats on the floor and in the balconies were filled, and the Rev. George A. Gordon of the New Old South, the Rev. Dr. Cuckson, the Rev. Alvah Hovey of Newton, and many other ministers of Boston and vicinity took seats on the platform. “Ian Maclaren” was among them, but was not immediately recognized, as he kept well in the background. The Rev. Dr. Gordon stepped forward, and in his strong, sonorous voice, which reverberated to the farthest portion of the great Temple, introduced the lecturer with these words:

“_The hour--the expected moment--is come--and now is_--when we are to listen to him whose coming we have awaited expectantly--_Ee-on Maclaren!_ John Watson!”

Applause and cheers, waving of handkerchiefs and pealing of the organ were kept up, with now and then a fresh augmentation from some seemingly impossible source, until the full limit and capacity of the audience was exhausted. Then the doctor began:

“You will understand me when I say no English-reading man can approach your city without pleased expectancy. Since our fathers taught us to read, we have known this city of Boston, and we have become familiar with many of the scenes and places of which your people have written. During the few days of my stay here I shall try to identify all the places the Autocrat has told us about, only sorrowing because I cannot see his well-beloved face.”

Then he referred to his intention to say something of the traits of his countrymen, of “an almost inarticulate nation,” and the audience laughed, knowing now that it had come to hear a man of genial nature say things genially.

“A recent writer, whom I cannot identify and whose name I do not want to know, denies that there is anything in our humor that is light in touch, delicate, and graceful. He asserts instead that there is much that is austere and awkward, tiresome and unpleasant. Now each nation takes its humor in its own way, and, as might be expected, the Scotchman, on the surface, does take his seriously, severely, and austerely. None take humor so carefully and conscientiously as the Scotchman.

“Whenever a humorous situation presents itself to the Southern mind it is embraced on the instant, and it is taken home for the enjoyment of the family, and perhaps the neighbors hear it through the doors. Then for days afterward the man who captured it shares it with his fellow-passengers in conveyances, possibly impressing it forcibly upon them.

“In the Scotch mind, when a jest presents itself, the question arises, ‘Is it a jest at all?’ and it is given a careful and analytical examination; and if, after twenty-four hours, it continues to appear to be a jest, it is accepted and done much honor.”

His final lectures in Boston were Saturday afternoon and evening, November 28th. Not even standing room was to be had at either of them.

When the readings were over and Dr. Watson had taken his seat, the audience would not release him without a personal word. In response to the Chautauqua salute he made a pleasant little speech. He had dreaded to come to Boston--he had heard so much of the city, its high standards, its severe judgment. But having come here he could say that nowhere that he had lectured had he been more cordially and sympathetically received, and he would return to his home across the sea with brightest memories of Boston and its neighborhood.

From Boston we returned to New York, where, on the 30th of November, I opened the first of a course of five readings at the Waldorf-Astoria, at eleven o’clock in the morning. At two in the afternoon Dr. Watson delivered the lecture on “Robert Burns” in the Empire Theatre before an immense crowd. The evening of the same day he was the guest of the St. Andrew’s Society, at their dinner at Delmonico’s, where he made a great speech.

We were in Troy and Albany on the 1st of December; had two immense audiences and a private luncheon with the Rev. Dr. and Mrs. Hall, the former an old classmate of Dr. Watson’s in Scotland. That evening at Albany the lecture was in Odd Fellows’ Hall, a new magnificent lecture hall after the style of the former lyceum halls in New England. It was refreshing and delightful to hear the speaker in this immense room, with its perfect acoustics and a large audience all apparently clustered around him. That evening the St. Andrew’s Society gave him a decoration; then, in company with a party of friends, we visited the Orange Club, where we had supper and stories until after midnight.

Then on to Schenectady, where, at one o’clock the next day, the doctor was introduced to a Union College audience by President W. V. Raymond. He lectured in Utica in the evening. Everywhere the crowds were limited by the capacity of the auditoriums. We returned to New York, where on the following morning Dr. Watson lectured at the Waldorf and in the evening at Flushing, L. I. On Saturday, the 5th, he lectured at the Waldorf at eleven, and at Jamaica, L. I., at 2:30. That evening occurred the Lotos Club dinner, which is still regarded as one of the greatest events in the history of the club. When introduced by President Frank R. Lawrence, Dr. Watson said:

“Mr. President, and Gentlemen of the Lotos Club:--“Your president has referred to Bohemia and has indicated that he thinks there will be struck up an alliance between Scotland and Bohemia--on first sight, one of the most unlikely alliances that ever could be consummated. (Laughter.) The president no doubt has many things in his eye, and when we remember the careless garb of a Bohemian and the kilt of Scotland; when we remember a Bohemian’s tendency to live, if he can, in a good-natured way upon his neighbors, and the tendency of my respected ancestors to take any cattle that they could see; and when also we remember that a Bohemian’s sins are all atoned for by his love of letters, and that all the hardness and uncouthness of Scotland may well deserve to be passed over because no country has ever loved knowledge or scholarship more than Scotland--I declare the president is predicting a most harmonious marriage. (Applause.)

“Your kindness, gentlemen, is only crowning the great kindness which I have received during the past months--a kindness which I never expected, and a kindness which I am fully conscious I have never merited. Were I a lad of twenty-five, I declare it would be dangerous, for after the audiences that have been good enough to listen to me, and the favor I have received, also, at the hands of the distinguished men of letters, I declare, if I were twenty-five I might be confused about my position. But, gentlemen, when one receives as much kindness as one has in America, it doesn’t--if you will excuse in this most cultured club an expression not quite within the range of literature--it doesn’t swell one’s head. (Laughter.) But, gentlemen, it does something better; it swells one’s heart. (Applause.)

“Any man who has only entered the republic of letters within a few years, and who is fully conscious of his imperfections and has never counted on attaining to any great standard of art, through his slowness in beginning and through the exigencies of his position, can yet obtain the favorable ear of the public simply because he deals with humanity. Humanity will add what is not possible to men richly endowed with the spirit of letters alone; it will add to such an accomplishment a grace that no recent recruit, no amateur writer, ever can. (Applause.)

“I am convinced, Mr. President, that if those men whom, we look up to and who sit in high places, whose witchery of style and magnificent genius we all respect, could withdraw themselves from the study of certain mottoes which they believe are fantastic, and certain sides of humanity confined only to literary coteries and to great cities, the triumph they have won in the world of letters would be as nothing compared to the triumph they would win if, with all their genius, they laid their hand upon the heart of the common people. (Loud applause.)

“During these months it is impossible that one should travel to and fro without having formed impressions; and it is pleasant to go back with such entirely friendly and kindly impressions of the nation whose best thought and feeling are represented in this room. One thing that profoundly impressed me--I am speaking in perfect seriousness--was the courtesy of your people. (Hear! Hear!) Without any question--and I am not saying this for the saying’s sake--your people are the most courteous people one could meet, whether he be travelling on the road or engaged in ordinary intercourse. Courtesy may be tried by various standards, and possibly the highest form of courtesy is respect to women. I have never seen anywhere, and certainly not among continental nations, who rather boast of their courtesy in this direction--I have never seen such genuine, unaffected, and practical courtesy paid to the weaker and gentler sex as I have seen in America. (Applause.)

“Courtesy also can be tried by general agreeableness. During my tour--and owing to the arduous exercise of my friend, Major Pond, I have never stayed long in one place--I have travelled far and wide and haven’t always been able to ride in parlor cars. I have, consequently, seen a great deal of people; but with the exception of one single person, and she was an immigrant, and, I have no doubt, a delightful woman, although somewhat indifferent as to her personal appearance, with the exception of that single individual, I have met no woman and no man in the cars with whom I would not be willing to sit in the same compartment or the same seat of the car during a day’s journey. That seems to me a remarkable thing, but it may seem to you nothing. To us, from an European standpoint, it means a great deal. It means the comfort of your people; it means the self-respect of your people; it means the manners of your people; it means many things on which I congratulate you as a nation. (Applause.)

“And, sir, what has interested me deeply is that while you are contending with the difficulties which fall to the lot, not only of a new and growing people, but of a nation into which is flowing the very refuse of Europe, there is throughout your people a great love of letters and of art. I have seen again and again in the houses of men who are, as they say in Europe, self-made, great evidence that their love is not set merely on the things that a man holds in his hand, but on the means of culture through which we see into the unseen and the beautiful. Some of the most lovely pictures which can possibly be obtained now are contained in the houses of those men. They do not have their pictures, gentlemen, merely as pieces of furniture, which they have bought for so much money, but the men who have them, as I can bear testimony, are men who can appreciate the beauty of those pictures and who are in no mean degree art critics. On the other side I have been assured that if a bookseller has a rare book, one of those lovely books that we all like to have, with a creamy and beautiful binding like that of the past, and marked, perhaps, with a king’s or a pope’s arms, it is not in England that he finds a purchaser, but in America. And, Mr. President, I would congratulate you on the fact that to your high spirit and great enterprise you are also adding a love of the past, and especially that love of letters and art which are surely the height of perfection. (Applause.)

“I would only add, Mr. President, one other thing, and it is this, that while the good will between the old country and yours can be maintained and is going to be maintained by honorable international agreement, we are encouraged to cherish the hope that the two nations will be bound more and more closely together, until at last the day comes when from Washington to London may go forth a voice on the great international question of righteousness that no nation will dare to pass by. (Applause.) While that can only be secured, and is being secured by the agreement of eminent statesmen, yet surely, gentlemen, the coming and going of individuals treated kindly and hospitably after a most friendly fashion on this side, and I trust also treated after the same fashion on the other side, will weave together many bonds that will not only unite men of letters and men of grammars, but will also unite our two great nations with silken cords that can never be broken. (Applause.)”

The speech by William Winter which followed Dr. Watson’s on this occasion is also well worth being recorded here nearly in full. He said:

“You, my hearers, fortunate children of the lotos flower, have had the singular happiness to come into personal communion with some of the foremost men of your time, whether in action or in thought; with Froude, who depicted so royally the pageantry and pathos of the past; with Grant, who led so superbly the warrior legions of the present; with Mark Twain, the best of modern humorists; with Irving, the prince of actors, and with many more. I need not name them. You will recall them, you will remember them all with deep affection; and I am sure you will agree with me that in every case when the generous heart has paid its homage to a great man, the impulse is not that of adulation, but that of gratitude. (Applause.)

“Such is the feeling of this hour when now you are assembled to pay honor to the finest literary artist in the art of mingled humor and pathos that has come into literature since Sir Walter Scott. (Applause.)

“There are two canons of criticism to which I have fixed my allegiance--that it is always better to show mankind the things which are to be imitated, rather than the things which are to be avoided; and since the moral quality is present in everything, whether as morality or immorality, penetrating all subjects and everything that can be imagined, no work of art should have any avowed and fixed moral. Those principles are imitated in the writings of Dr. Watson. He has himself told you that it is impossible to analyze a spiritual fact. We all know that his race are noble in their influence, that they have exerted a noble influence upon society. We do not know the secret of his charm. I cannot tell it to you; I wish I could. I think perhaps it is that same inaccessible magic which I find in ‘King Lear,’ which I find in the death speech of Brutus:

“‘Night hangs upon mine eyes; my bones would rest, That have labor’d to attain this hour.’

* * * * *

“‘This day breathed first; time is come round, And where I did begin there shall I end.’

“I find it in Robert Burns when he sang of the cavalier who ‘turned his charger as he stepped upon the Irish shore, and gave his bridle rein a shake with adieu forevermore, my love, adieu forevermore.’ (Applause.) I have felt it in many of the stories, the matchless American stories of Bret Harte. I feel it in that talk of poor old Bowes, the fiddler, when standing on the bridge in the evening; I feel it in the Colonel’s response when the chapel bell rings in the old Charterhouse, and I say that there is but one step from the death-bed of William Lucian to the death-bed of William Maclure. All through literature runs that plaintive note, ‘So from hand to hand the divine torch of genius has passed along.’ When Robert Burns died, in 1796, it might have been thought that the voice of poetry was done, but at that time Byron was playing along the banks of the Dee. Any one might have thought that all was ended; but then others were ripening for the work of generations to come. So when we look about us and see what has been done; when we see Dr. Watson, and Barrie, and Hardy, we feel that the time of mourning for Dickens, and Thackeray, and George Eliot has come to an end.

“I am not surprised to find that this voice comes from Scotland. When I have stood on the old Calton hill under a blue and black sky, and seen the drifting smoke from a thousand chimneys fall over Edinburgh; when from the height of the necropolis I have looked down upon old Glasgow and the grim figure of Drumtochty; when from the slopes of Ben Cruachan 1 have seen the sunsets fade and darken in the valleys; when just before the dawn I have looked down upon the town slumbering in darkness; when I have been in the old broken cathedral of Iona and have heard there the swashes of the murmuring sea, I have not wondered that Scotland has all the poetry, and that deep in the heart of every Scotchman there is a note which thrills to the melodies of Burns, of Hogg, Ramsay, and to the eternal memories of Scott. (Great applause.) Scotland, its beauties, its glories, and its loves! I will read a few verses of mine, unknown, I think, to you, descriptive of my feelings when I parted from the most sacred of its shrines:

“FAREWELL TO IONA.