← catalogue

McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 2, January, 1896

by Various · English · Gutenberg #13637 · 333,537 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 2, January, 1896
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 2, January, 1896

Author: Various


        
Release date: October 5, 2004 [eBook #13637]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13637

Credits: Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Richard J. Shiffer and the PG Online
        Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE, VOL. 6, NO. 2, JANUARY, 1896 ***

  Note: The Table of Contents and the list of illustrations were added
  by the transcriber.




  McCLURE'S MAGAZINE

  JANUARY, 1896

  Vol. VI, JANUARY, 1896, NO. 2




  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  ILLUSTRATIONS
  ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Edited by Ida M. Tarbell.
    Lincoln's First Experiences in Illinois.
    In Charge of Denton Offutt's Store.
    The Clary's Grove Boys.
    Lincoln Studies Grammar.
    A Candidate for the General Assembly.
    The Black Hawk War.
    Lincoln a Captain.
    The Black Hawk Campaign.
    Electioneering for the General Assembly.
  EUGENE FIELD AND HIS CHILD FRIENDS. By Cleveland Moffett.
  POEMS OF CHILDHOOD, By Eugene Field.
    With Trumpet and Drum.
    The Delectable Ballad of the Waller Lot.
    The Rock-a-by Lady.
    "Booh!"
    The Duel.
    The Ride to Bumpville.
    So, So, Rock-a-by so!
    Seein' Things.
  A CENTURY OF PAINTING. By Will H. Low.
  THE DEFEAT OF BLAINE FOR THE PRESIDENCY. By Murat Halstead.
  THE SILENT WITNESS. By Herbert D. Ward
  THE SUN'S LIGHT. By Sir Robert Ball,
  CHAPTERS FROM A LIFE. By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps,
    Life in Andover before the War.
  THE WAGER OF THE MARQUIS DE MÉROSAILLES. By Anthony Hope,
  MISS TARBELL'S LIFE OF LINCOLN.


  ILLUSTRATIONS

  ABRAHAM LINCOLN IN 1861.
  THE KIRKHAM'S GRAMMAR USED BY LINCOLN AT NEW SALEM.
  A CLARY'S GROVE LOG CABIN.
  NANCY GREEN.
  DUTCH OVEN.
  LINCOLN IN 1858.
  JOHN POTTER.
  JOHN A. CLARY.
  SITE OF DENTON OFFUTT'S STORE.
  ZACHARY TAYLOR.
  BOWLING GREEN'S HOUSE.
  THE BLACK HAWK.
  WHIRLING THUNDER.
  WHITE CLOUD, THE PROPHET.
  BLACK HAWK.
  LINCOLN IN 1860.
  BLACK HAWK WAR RELICS.
  MAJOR ROBERT ANDERSON.
  MONUMENT AT KELLOGG'S GROVE.
  JOHN REYNOLDS, GOVERNOR OF ILLINOIS 1831-1834.
  ELIJAH ILES.
  A DISCHARGE FROM SERVICE IN BLACK HAWK WAR SIGNED BY ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
  MAP OF ILLINOIS IN 1832.
  A FACSIMILE OF AN ELECTION RETURN WRITTEN BY LINCOLN.
  VIEW OF THE SANGAMON RIVER NEAR NEW SALEM.
  EUGENE FIELD TELLING A STORY.
  THE LAST PORTRAIT OF EUGENE FIELD.
  LUCY ALEXANDER KNOTT.
  JAMES BRECKINRIDGE WALLER, JR.
  KENDALL EVANS.
  WILLIAM AND KENT CLOW.
  ROSWELL FRANCIS FIELD, EUGENE FIELD'S YOUNGEST SON.
  ELIZABETH WINSLOW,
  IRVING WAY, JR..
  KATHERINE KOHLSAAT.
  PARK YENOWINE,
  THE SABINE WOMEN.
  JACQUES LOUIS DAVID AS A YOUNG MAN.
  MICHEL GÉRARD AND HIS FAMILY.
  POPE PIUS VII.
  JUSTICE AND DIVINE VENGEANCE PURSUING CRIME.
  THE ASSUMPTION OF THE VIRGIN.
  HECTOR AND ANDROMACHE.
  PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG MAN.
  PRUD'HON.
  THE PRINCESS VISCONTI.
  THE COUNTESS REGNAULT DE SAINT-JEAN-D'ANGELY.
  THE ARRIVAL OF A DILIGENCE.
  BRUTUS CONDEMNING HIS SONS TO DEATH.
  THE BURIAL OF ATALA.
  MADAME LEBRUN AND HER DAUGHTER.
  FRANCIS I., KING OF FRANCE, AND CHARLES V., EMPEROR OF THE HOLY
    ROMAN EMPIRE.
  JAMES G. BLAINE.
  MR. BLAINE IN 1891.
  MR. BLAINE AT HIS DESK IN THE STATE DEPARTMENT.
  FACSIMILE OF THE LETTER WRITTEN BY MR. BLAINE TO MR. HALSTEAD.
  BLAINE'S GRAVE AT WASHINGTON, D.C..
  STATUE OF WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON.
  ANNA SYMMES HARRISON,
  THE SILENT WITNESS.
  "MOVE ON, WILL YER!"
  "AM--I--IMPRISONED BECAUSE I AM FRIENDLESS AND POOR?"
  "OH, MY GOD!" HE SOBBED. "MY GOD! MY GOD!"
  THE SUN'S CORONA.
  ERUPTIVE PROMINENCE AT 10.34 A.M.
  ERUPTIVE PROMINENCE AT 10.40 A.M.
  ERUPTIVE PROMINENCE AT 10.58 A.M.
  THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY BUILDINGS, ANDOVER, MASSACHUSETTS.
  PROFESSOR AUSTIN PHELPS'S STUDY.
  VIEW LOOKING FROM THE FRONT OF ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS'S HOME.
  DR. EDWARDS A. PARK.
  THE PHYSICIAN RECEIVING THE PRINCESS IN THE MARQUIS'S SICKROOM.
  SHE STOLE UP AND SAW MONSIEUR DE MÉROSAILLES SITTING ON THE GROUND.
  LINCOLN IN 1863.
  LINCOLN IN 1854.
  LINCOLN IN FEBRUARY, 1860.




[Illustration: ABRAHAM LINCOLN IN 1861.--NOW FIRST PUBLISHED.

From a photograph owned by Allen Jasper Conant, to whose courtesy
we owe the right to reproduce it here. This photograph was taken in
Springfield in the spring of 1861, by C.S. German.]




MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE


VOL. VI. JANUARY, 1896. NO. 2.




ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

EDITED BY IDA M. TARBELL.

LINCOLN AS STOREKEEPER AND SOLDIER IN THE BLACK HAWK WAR.

_This article embodies special studies of Lincoln's life in New Salem
made for this Magazine by J. McCan Davis_.


LINCOLN'S FIRST EXPERIENCES IN ILLINOIS.

It was in March, 1830, when Abraham Lincoln was twenty-one years of
age, that he moved from Indiana to Macon County, Illinois. He spent
his first spring in the new country helping his father settle. In the
summer of that year he started out for himself, doing various kinds of
rough farm work in the neighborhood until March of 1831, when he went
to Sangamon town, near Springfield, to build a flatboat. In April he
started on this flatboat for New Orleans, which he reached in May.
After a month in that city, he returned, in June, to Illinois, where
he made a short visit at his parents' home, now in Coles County, and
in July went to New Salem, to take charge of a store and mill owned by
Denton Offutt, who had employed him on the flatboat.[A] The goods for
the new store had not arrived when Lincoln reached New Salem. Obliged
to turn his hand to something, he piloted down the Sangamon and
Illinois rivers, as far as Beardstown, a flatboat bearing the family
and goods of a pioneer bound for Texas. At Beardstown he found
Offutt's goods waiting to be taken to New Salem. As he footed his
way home he met two men with a wagon and ox-team going for the goods.
Offutt had expected Lincoln to wait at Beardstown until the ox-team
arrived, and the teamsters, not having any credentials, asked Lincoln
to give them an order for the goods. This, sitting down by the
roadside, he wrote out; and one of the men used to relate that it
contained a misspelled word, which he corrected.


IN CHARGE OF DENTON OFFUTT'S STORE.

The precise date of the opening of Denton Offutt's store is not known.
We only know that on July 8, 1831, the County Commissioners' Court of
Sangamon County granted Offutt a license to retail merchandise at New
Salem; for which he paid five dollars, a fee which supposed him to
have one thousand dollars' worth of goods in stock. When the oxen
and their drivers returned with the goods, the store was opened in a
little log house on the brink of the hill, almost over the river.

[Illustration: THE KIRKHAM'S GRAMMAR USED BY LINCOLN AT NEW
SALEM.--NOW FIRST PUBLISHED.]

The copy of Kirkham's Grammar studied by Lincoln belonged to a man
named Vaner. Some of the biographers say Lincoln borrowed [it,] but
it appears that he became the owner of the book, either by purchase
or through the generosity of Vaner, for it was never returned to the
latter. It is said that Lincoln learned this grammar practically by
heart. "Sometimes," says Herndon, "he would stretch out at full length
on the counter, his head propped up on a stack of calico prints,
studying it; or he would steal away to the shade of some inviting
tree, and there spend hours at a time in a determined effort to fix
in his mind the arbitrary rule that 'adverbs qualify verbs, adjectives
and other adverbs.'" He presented the book to Ann Rutledge [the story
of Ann Rutledge will appear in a future number of the Magazine], and
it has since been one of the treasures of the Rutledge family. After
the death of Ann it was studied by her brother, Robert, and is now
owned by his widow, who resides at Casselton, North Dakota. The title
page of the book appears above. The words, "Ann M. Rutledge is
now learning grammar," were written by Lincoln. The order on James
Rutledge to pay David P. Nelson thirty dollars and signed "A. Lincoln,
for D. Offutt," which is shown above, was pasted upon the front cover
of the book by Robert Rutledge. From a photograph made especially for
MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE.--_J. McCan Davis_.]

The frontier store filled a unique place. Usually it was a "general
store," and on its shelves were found most of the articles needed in a
community of pioneers. But to be a place for the sale of dry goods and
groceries was not its only function; it was a kind of intellectual
and social centre. It was the common meeting-place of the farmers, the
happy refuge of the village loungers. No subject was unknown there.
The _habitués_ of the place were equally at home in talking politics,
religion, or sport. Stories were told, jokes were cracked and laughed
at, and the news contained in the latest newspaper finding its way
into the wilderness was discussed. Such a store was that of Denton
Offutt. Lincoln could hardly have chosen surroundings more favorable
to the highest development of the art of story-telling, and he had not
been there long before his reputation for drollery was established.


THE CLARY'S GROVE BOYS.

But he gained popularity and respect in other ways. There was near the
village a settlement called Clary's Grove. The most conspicuous part
of the population was an organization known as the "Clary's Grove
Boys." They exercised a veritable terror over the neighborhood, and
yet they were not a bad set of fellows. Mr. Herndon, who had a cousin
living in New Salem at the time, and who knew personally many of the
"boys," says:

"They were friendly and good-natured; they could trench a pond, dig
a bog, build a house; they could pray and fight, make a village or
create a state. They would do almost anything for sport or fun, love
or necessity. Though rude and rough, though life's forces ran over
the edge of the bowl, foaming and sparkling in pure deviltry for
deviltry's sake, yet place before them a poor man who needed their
aid, a lame or sick man, a defenceless woman, a widow, or an orphaned
child, they melted into sympathy and charity at once. They gave all
they had, and willingly toiled or played cards for more. Though
there never was under the sun a more generous parcel of rowdies, a
stranger's introduction was likely to be the most unpleasant part of
his acquaintance with them."

[Illustration: A CLARY'S GROVE LOG CABIN,--NOW FIRST PUBLISHED.

From a water-color by Miss Etta Ackermann, Springfield, Illinois.
"Clary's Grove" was the name of a settlement five miles southwest of
New Salem, deriving its name from a grove on the land of the Clarys.
It was the headquarters of a daring and reckless set of young men
living in the neighborhood and known as the "Clary's Grove Boys." This
cabin was the residence of George Davis, one of the "Clary's Grove
Boys," and grandfather of Miss Ackermann. It was built seventy-one
years ago--in 1824--and is the only one left of the cluster of cabins
which constituted the little community.]

Denton Offutt, Lincoln's employer, was just the man to love to boast
before such a crowd. He seemed to feel that Lincoln's physical prowess
shed glory on himself, and he declared the country over that his clerk
could lift more, throw farther, run faster, jump higher, and wrestle
better than any man in Sangamon County. The Clary's Grove Boys, of
course, felt in honor bound to prove this false, and they appointed
their best man, one Jack Armstrong, to "throw Abe." Jack Armstrong
was, according to the testimony of all who remember him, a "powerful
twister," "square built and strong as an ox," "the best-made man that
ever lived;" and everybody knew the contest would be close. Lincoln
did not like to "tussle and scuffle," he objected to "woolling and
pulling;" but Offutt had gone so far that it became necessary to
yield. The match was held on the ground near the grocery. Clary's
Grove and New Salem turned out generally to witness the bout, and
betting on the result ran high, the community as a whole staking their
jack-knives, tobacco plugs, and "treats" on Armstrong. The two men
had scarcely taken hold of each other before it was evident that the
Clary's Grove champion had met a match. The two men wrestled long and
hard, but both kept their feet. Neither could throw the other, and
Armstrong, convinced of this, tried a "foul." Lincoln no sooner
realized the game of his antagonist than, furious with indignation,
he caught him by the throat, and holding him out at arm's length, he
"shook him like a child." Armstrong's friends rushed to his aid, and
for a moment it looked as if Lincoln would be routed by sheer force of
numbers; but he held his own so bravely that the "boys," in spite of
their sympathies, were filled with admiration. What bid fair to be
a general fight ended in a general hand-shake, even Jack Armstrong
declaring that Lincoln was the "best fellow who ever broke into the
camp." From that day, at the cock-fights and horse-races, which
were their common sports, he became the chosen umpire; and when the
entertainment broke up in a row--a not uncommon occurrence--he acted
the peacemaker without suffering the peacemaker's usual fate. Such was
his reputation with the "Clary's Grove Boys," after three months in
New Salem, that when the fall muster came off he was elected captain.

[Illustration: NANCY GREEN.

Nancy Green was the wife of "Squire" Bowling Green. Her maiden name
was Nancy Potter. She was born in North Carolina in 1797, and married
Bowling Green in 1818. She removed with him to New Salem in 1820, and
lived in that vicinity until her death in 1864. Lincoln was a constant
visitor in Nancy Green's home.]

Lincoln showed soon that if he was unwilling to indulge in "woolling
and pulling" for amusement, he did not object to it in a case of
honor. A man came into the store one day who used profane language
in the presence of ladies. Lincoln asked him to stop; but the man
persisted, swearing that nobody should prevent his saying what he
wanted to. The women gone, the man began to abuse Lincoln so hotly
that the latter finally said, coolly: "Well, if you must be whipped, I
suppose I might as well whip you as any other man;" and going outdoors
with the fellow, he threw him on the ground, and rubbed smartweed in
his eyes until he bellowed for mercy. New Salem's sense of chivalry
was touched, and enthusiasm over Lincoln increased.

[Illustration: DUTCH OVEN

From a photograph made for this Magazine.

Owned by Mrs. Ott, of Petersburg, Illinois. These Dutch ovens were in
many cases the only cooking utensils used by the early settlers. The
meat, vegetable, or bread was put into the pot, which was then placed
in a bed of coals, and coals heaped on the lid.]

His honesty excited no less admiration. Two incidents seem to have
particularly impressed the community. Having discovered on one
occasion that he had taken six and one-quarter cents too much from
a customer, he walked three miles that evening, after his store was
closed, to return the money. Again, he weighed out a half-pound of
tea, as he supposed. It was night, and this was the last thing he
did before closing up. On entering in the morning he discovered a
four-ounce weight on the scales. He saw his mistake, and closing up
shop, hurried off to deliver the remainder of the tea.

[Illustration: LINCOLN IN 1858.

After a photograph owned by Mrs. Harriet Chapman of Charleston,
Illinois. Mrs. Chapman is a grand-daughter of Sarah Bush Lincoln,
Lincoln's step-mother. Her son, Mr. R.N. Chapman of Charleston,
Illinois, writes us: "In 1858 Lincoln and Douglas had a series of
joint debates in this State, and this city was one place of meeting.
Mr. Lincoln's step-mother was making her home with my father and
mother at that time. Mr. Lincoln stopped at our house, and as he was
going away my mother said to him: 'Uncle Abe, I want a picture of
you.' He replied, 'Well, Harriet, when I get home I will have one
taken for you and send it to you.' Soon after, mother received the
photograph she still has, already framed, from Springfield, Illinois,
with a letter from Mr. Lincoln, in which he said, 'This is not a very
good-looking picture, but it's the best that could be produced from
the poor subject.' He also said that he had it taken solely for my
mother. The photograph is still in its original frame, and I am sure
is the most perfect and best picture of Lincoln in existence. We
suppose it must have been taken in Springfield, Illinois."]

[Illustration: JOHN POTTER.

From a recent photograph. John Potter, born November 10, 1808, was
a few months older than Lincoln. He is now living at Petersburg,
Illinois. He settled in the country one and one-half miles from New
Salem in 1820. Mr. Potter remembers Lincoln's first appearance in New
Salem in July, 1831. He corroborates the stories told of his store,
and of his popularity in the community, and of the general impression
that he was an unusually promising young man.]


LINCOLN STUDIES GRAMMAR.

As soon as the store was fairly under way Lincoln began to look about
for books. Since leaving Indiana, in March, 1830, he had had, in his
drifting life, little leisure or opportunity for study--though he had
had a great deal for observation. Nevertheless his desire to learn
had increased, and his ambition to be somebody had been encouraged.
In that time he had found that he really was superior to many of those
who were called the "great" men of the country. Soon after entering
Macon County, in March, 1830, when he was only twenty-one years old,
he had found he could make a better speech than at least one man who
was before the public. A candidate had come along where John Hanks and
he were at work, and, as John Hanks tells the story, the man made a
speech. "It was a bad one, and I said Abe could beat it. I turned down
a box, and Abe made his speech. The other man was a candidate--Abe
wasn't. Abe beat him to death, his subject being the navigation of
the Sangamon River. The man, after Abe's speech was through, took him
aside, and asked him where he had learned so much and how he could do
so well. Abe replied, stating his manner and method of reading, what
he had read. The man encouraged him to persevere."

He had found that people listened to him, that they quoted his
opinions, and that his friends were already saying that he was able
to fill any position. Offutt even declared the country over that "Abe
knew more than any man in the United States," and "some day he would
be President."

[Illustration: JOHN A. CLARY.

John A. Clary was one of the "Clary's Grove Boys." He was a son of
John Clary, the head of the numerous Clary family which settled in the
vicinity of New Salem in 1818. He was born in Tennessee in 1815 and
died in 1880. He was an intimate associate of Lincoln during the
latter's New Salem days.]

Under this stimulus Lincoln's ambition increased. "I have talked with
great men," he told his fellow-clerk and friend, Greene, "and I do not
see how they differ from others." He made up his mind to put himself
before the public, and talked of his plans to his friends. In order
to keep in practice in speaking he walked seven or eight miles to
debating clubs. "Practising polemics" was what he called the exercise.
He seems now for the first time to have begun to study subjects.
Grammar was what he chose. He sought Mentor Graham, the schoolmaster,
and asked his advice. "If you are going before the public," Mr. Graham
told him, "you ought to do it." But where could he get a grammar?
There was but one, said Mr. Graham, in the neighborhood, and that was
six miles away. Without waiting further information the young man rose
from the breakfast-table, walked immediately to the place, borrowed
this rare copy of Kirkham's Grammar, and before night was deep into
its mysteries. From that time on for weeks he gave every moment of his
leisure to mastering the contents of the book. Frequently he asked his
friend Greene to "hold the book" while he recited, and, when puzzled
by a point, he would consult Mr. Graham.

Lincoln's eagerness to learn was such that the whole neighborhood
became interested. The Greenes lent him books, the schoolmaster kept
him in mind and helped him as he could, and even the village cooper
let him come into his shop and keep up a fire of shavings sufficiently
bright to read by at night. It was not long before the grammar was
mastered. "Well," Lincoln said to his fellow-clerk, Greene, "if that's
what they call a science, I think I'll go at another." He had made
another discovery--that he could conquer subjects.

[Illustration: SITE OF DENTON OFFUTT'S STORE.

From a photograph taken for this Magazine.

The building in which Lincoln clerked for Denton Offutt was standing
as late as 1836, and presumably stood until it rotted down. A slight
depression in the earth, evidently once a cellar, is all that remains
of Offutt's store. Out of this hole in the ground have grown three
trees, a locust, an elm, and a sycamore, seeming to spring from the
same roots, and curiously twined together; and high up on the sycamore
some genius has chiselled the face of Lincoln.]

Before the winter was ended he had become the most popular man in New
Salem. Although in February, 1832, he was but twenty-two years of age,
had never been at school an entire year in his life, had never made a
speech except in debating clubs and by the roadside, had read only the
books he could pick up, and known only the men who made up the poor,
out-of-the-way towns in which he had lived, "encouraged by his great
popularity among his immediate neighbors," as he says himself, he
decided to announce himself, in March, 1832, as a candidate for the
General Assembly of the State.

[Illustration: ZACHARY TAYLOR.

At the breaking out of the Black Hawk war, Zachary Taylor, afterwards
general in the Mexican War, and finally President of the United
States, was colonel of the First Infantry. He joined Atkinson at the
beginning of the war, and was in active service until the end of the
campaign.]


A CANDIDATE FOR THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY.

The only preliminary expected of a candidate for the legislature of
Illinois at that date was an announcement stating his "sentiments with
regard to local affairs." The circular in which Lincoln complied with
this custom was a document of about two thousand words, in which he
plunged at once into the subject he believed most interesting to his
constituents--"the public utility of internal improvements."

[Illustration: BOWLING GREEN'S HOUSE.

From a photograph taken for this Magazine.

Bowling Green's log cabin, half a mile north of New Salem, just under
the bluff, still stands, but long since ceased to be a dwelling-house,
and is now a tumble-down old stable. Here Lincoln was a frequent
boarder, especially during the period of his closest application to
the study of the law. Stretched out on the cellar door of his cabin,
reading a book, he met for the first time "Dick" Yates, then a
college student at Jacksonville, and destined to become the great "War
Governor" of the State. Yates had come home with William G. Greene
to spend his vacation, and Greene took him around to Bowling Green's
house to introduce him to "his friend, Abe Lincoln." Unhappily there
is nowhere in existence a picture of the original occupant of this
humble cabin. Bowling Green was one of the leading citizens of the
county. He was County Commissioner from 1826 to 1828; he was for many
years a justice of the peace; he was a prominent member of the Masonic
fraternity, and a very active and uncompromising Whig. The friendship
between him and Lincoln, beginning at a very early day, continued
until his death in 1842.--_J. McCan Davis_.]

At that time the State of Illinois--as, indeed, the whole United
States--was convinced that the future of the country depended on the
opening of canals and railroads, and the clearing out of the rivers.
In the Sangamon country the population felt that a quick way of
getting to Beardstown on the Illinois River, to which point the
steamer came from the Mississippi, was, as Lincoln puts it in his
circular, "indispensably necessary." Of course a railroad was the
dream of the settlers; but when it was considered seriously there was
always, as Lincoln says, "a heart-appalling shock accompanying the
amount of its cost, which forces us to shrink from our pleasing
anticipations." Improvement of the Sangamon River he declared the most
feasible plan. That it was possible, he argued from his experience
on the river in April of the year before (1831), when he made his
flatboat trip, and from his observations as manager of Offutt's
saw-mill. He could not have advocated a measure more popular. At
that moment the whole population of Sangamon was in a state of wild
expectation. Some six weeks before Lincoln's circular appeared, a
citizen of Springfield had advertised that as soon as the ice went
off the river he would bring up a steamer, the "Talisman," from
Cincinnati, and prove the Sangamon navigable. The announcement had
aroused the entire country, speeches were made, and subscriptions
taken. The merchants announced goods direct per steamship "Talisman"
the country over, and every village from Beardstown to Springfield was
laid off in town lots. When the circular appeared the excitement was
at its height.

[Illustration: THE BLACK HAWK.

From a photograph made for this Magazine.

After a portrait by George Catlin, in the National Museum at
Washington, D.C., and here reproduced by the courtesy of the director,
Mr. G. Brown Goode. Makataimeshekiakiak, the Black Hawk Sparrow,
was born in 1767 on the Rock River. He was not a chief by birth, but
through the valor of his deeds became the leader of his village. He
was imaginative and discontented, and bred endless trouble in
the Northwest by his complaints and his visionary schemes. He was
completely under the influence of the British agents, and in 1812
joined Tecumseh in the war against the United States. After the close
of that war, the Hawk was peaceable until driven to resistance by
the encroachments of the squatters. After the battle of Bad Axe he
escaped, and was not captured until betrayed by two Winnebagoes. He
was taken to Fort Armstrong, where he signed a treaty of peace, and
then was transferred as a prisoner of war to Jefferson Barracks, now
St. Louis, where Catlin painted him. Catlin, in his "Eight Years,"
says: "When I painted this chief, he was dressed in a plain suit of
buckskin, with a string of wampum in his ears and on his neck, and
held in his hand his medicine-bag, which was the skin of a black hawk,
from which he had taken his name, and the tail of which made him a
fan, which he was almost constantly using." In April, 1833, Black Hawk
and the other prisoners of war were transferred to Fortress Monroe.
They were released in June, and made a trip through the Atlantic
cities before returning West. Black Hawk settled in Iowa, where he and
his followers were given a small reservation in Davis County. He died
in 1838.]

[Illustration: WHIRLING THUNDER.

From a photograph made for this Magazine.

After a painting by R.M. Sully in the collection of the State
Historical Society of Wisconsin, and here reproduced through the
courtesy of the secretary, Mr. Reuben G. Thwaites. Black Hawk had
two sons; the elder was the Whirling Thunder, the younger the Roaring
Thunder; both were in the war, and both were taken prisoners with
their father, and were with him at Jefferson Barracks and at Fortress
Monroe and on the trip through the Atlantic cities. At Jefferson
Barracks Catlin painted them, and the pictures are in the National
Museum. While at Fortress Monroe the above picture of Whirling Thunder
was painted. A pretty anecdote is told of the Whirling Thunder. While
on their tour through the East the Indians were invited to various
gatherings and much done for their entertainment. On one of these
occasions a young lady sang a ballad. Whirling Thunder listened
intently, and when she ended he plucked an eagle's feather from his
head-dress, and giving it to a white friend, said: "Take that to your
mocking-bird squaw." Black Hawk's sons remained with him until his
death in 1838, and then removed with the Sacs and Foxes to Kansas.]


Lincoln's comments in his circular on two other subjects on which
all candidates of the day expressed themselves are amusing in their
simplicity. The practice of loaning money at exorbitant rates was then
a great evil in the West. Lincoln proposed a law fixing the limits of
usury, and he closed his paragraph on the subject with these words,
which sound strange enough from a man who in later life showed so
profound a reverence for law:

    "In cases of extreme necessity, there could always be means
    found to cheat the law; while in all other cases it would have
    its intended effect. I would favor the passage of a law on
    this subject which might not be very easily evaded. Let it be
    such that the labor and difficulty of evading it could only be
    justified in cases of greatest necessity."

A change in the laws of the State was also a topic which he felt
required a word. "Considering the great probability," he said, "that
the framers of those laws were wiser than myself, I should prefer not
meddling with them, unless they were attacked by others; in which case
I should feel it both a privilege and a duty to take that stand which,
in my view, might tend most to the advancement of justice."

[Illustration: WHITE CLOUD, THE PROPHET.

From a photograph made for this Magazine.

After a painting in the collection of the State Historical Society of
Wisconsin, and here reproduced through the courtesy of the secretary,
Mr. Reuben G. Thwaites. The chief of an Indian village on the Rock
River, White Cloud was half Winnebago, half Sac. He was false and
crafty, and it was largely his counsels which induced Black Hawk to
recross the Mississippi in 1832. He was captured with Black Hawk, was
a prisoner at both Jefferson Barracks and Fortress Monroe, and made
the tour of the Atlantic cities with his friends. The above portrait
was made at Fortress Monroe by R.M. Sully. Catlin also painted White
Cloud at Jefferson Barracks in 1832. He describes him as about forty
years old at that time, "nearly six feet high, stout and athletic." He
said he let his hair grow out to please the whites. Catlin's picture
shows him with a very heavy head of hair. The prophet, after his
return from the East, remained among his people until his death in
1840 or 1841.]

[Illustration: BLACK HAWK.

From a photograph made for this Magazine.

After an improved replica of the original portrait painted by R.M.
Sully at Fortress Monroe in 1833, and now in the museum of the State
Historical Society of Wisconsin, at Madison. It is reproduced through
the courtesy of the secretary of the society, Mr. Reuben G. Thwaites.]

[Illustration: LINCOLN IN 1860

From a photograph loaned by H.W. Fay of DeKalb, Illinois. After
Lincoln's nomination for the presidency, Alex Hesler of Chicago
published a portrait he had made of Lincoln in 1857. (See McCLURE'S
MAGAZINE for December, p. 13.) At the same time he put out a portrait
of Douglas. The contrast was so great between the two, and in the
opinion of the politicians so much in Douglas's favor, that they
told Hesler he must suppress Lincoln's picture; accordingly the
photographer wrote to Springfield requesting Lincoln to call and sit
again. Lincoln replied that his friends had decided that he remain
in Springfield during the canvass, but that if Hesler would come to
Springfield he would be "dressed up" and give him all the time he
wanted. Hesler went to Springfield and made at least four negatives,
three of which are supposed to have been destroyed in the Chicago
fire. The fourth is owned by Mr. George Ayers of Philadelphia. The
above photograph is a print from one of the lost negatives.]

The audacity of a young man in his position presenting himself as a
candidate for the legislature is fully equalled by the humility of the
closing paragraphs of his announcement:

    "But, fellow-citizens, I shall conclude. Considering the great
    degree of modesty which should always attend youth, it is
    probable I have already been more presuming than becomes me.
    However, upon the subjects of which I have treated, I have
    spoken as I have thought. I may be wrong in regard to any or
    all of them; but, holding it a sound maxim that it is better
    only sometimes to be right than at all times to be wrong, so
    soon as I discover my opinions to be erroneous, I shall be
    ready to renounce them.

    "Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it
    be true or not, I can say, for one, that I have no other so
    great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow-men by
    rendering myself worthy of their esteem. How far I shall
    succeed in gratifying this ambition is yet to be developed.
    I am young, and unknown to many of you. I was born, and have
    ever remained, in the most humble walks of life. I have no
    wealthy or popular relations or friends to recommend me. My
    case is thrown exclusively upon the independent voters of the
    county; and, if elected, they will have conferred a favor
    upon me for which I shall be unremitting in my labors to
    compensate. But, if the good people in their wisdom shall see
    fit to keep me in the background, I have been too familiar
    with disappointments to be very much chagrined."

[Illustration: BLACK HAWK WAR RELICS.

Tomahawk. Indian Pipe. Powder-horn. Flintlock Rifle. Indian Flute.
Indian Knife.

From a photograph made for this Magazine.

This group of relics of the Black Hawk War was selected for us from
the collection in the museum of the Wisconsin Historical Society by
the Secretary, Mr. Reuben G. Thwaites. The coat and chapeau belonged
to General Dodge, an important leader in the war. The Indian relics
are a tomahawk, a Winnebago pipe, a Winnebago flute, and a knife. The
powder-horn and the flintlock rifle are the only volunteer articles.
One of the survivors of the war, Mr. Elijah Herring of Stockton,
Illinois, says of the flintlock rifles used by the Illinois
volunteers: "They were constructed like the old-fashioned rifle, only
in place of a nipple for a cap they had a pan in which was fixed an
oil flint which the hammer struck when it came down, instead of the
modern cap. The pan was filled with powder grains, enough to catch the
spark and communicate it to the load in the gun. These guns were all
right, and rarely missed fire on a dry, clear day; but unless they
were covered well, the dews of evening would dampen the powder, and
very often we were compelled to withdraw the charge and load them over
again. We had a gunsmith with us, whose business it was to look after
the guns for the whole regiment; and when a gun was found to be damp,
it was his duty to get his tools and 'draw' the load. At that time the
Cramer lock and triggers had just been put on the market, and my
rifle was equipped with these improvements, a fact of which I was very
proud. Instead of one trigger my rifle had two, one set behind the
other--the hind one to cock the gun, and the front one to shoot it.
The man Cramer sold his lock and triggers in St. Louis, and I was one
of the first to use them."]

Very soon after Lincoln had distributed his handbills, enthusiasm
on the subject of the opening of the Sangamon rose to a fever.
The "Talisman" actually came up the river; scores of men went to
Beardstown to meet her, among them Lincoln, of course; and to him was
given the honor of piloting her--an honor which made him remembered by
many a man who saw him that day for the first time. The trip was
made with all the wild demonstrations which always attended the first
steamboat. On either bank a long procession of men and boys on foot or
horse accompanied the boat. Cannons and volleys of musketry were
fired as settlements were passed. At every stop speeches were made,
congratulations offered, toasts drunk, flowers presented. It was
one long hurrah from Beardstown to Springfield, and foremost in
the jubilation was Lincoln, the pilot. The "Talisman" went as near
Springfield as the river did, and there tied up for a week. When
she went back Lincoln again had a conspicuous position as pilot. The
notoriety this gave him was quite as valuable politically, probably,
as was the forty dollars he received for his service financially.

[Illustration: MAJOR ROBERT ANDERSON.

From a photograph in the war collection of Robert A. Coster.

Born in Kentucky in 1805. In 1825 graduated at West Point. Anderson
was on duty at the St. Louis Arsenal when the Black Hawk war broke
out. He asked permission to join General Atkinson, who commanded the
expedition against the Indians; was placed on his staff as Assistant
Inspector General, and was with him until the end of the war. Anderson
twice mustered Lincoln out of the service and in again. When General
Scott was sent to take Atkinson's place, Anderson was ordered to
report to the former for duty, and was sent by him to take charge of
the Indians captured at Bad Axe. It was Anderson who conducted Black
Hawk to Jefferson Barracks. His adjutant in this task was Lieutenant
Jefferson Davis. From 1835-37 Anderson was an instructor at West
Point. He served in the Florida War in 1837-38, and was wounded at
Molino del Rey in the Mexican War. In 1857 he was appointed Major of
the First Artillery. On November 20, 1860, Anderson assumed command
of the troops in Charleston Harbor. On April 14 he surrendered
Fort Sumter, marching out with the honors of war. He was made
brigadier-general by Lincoln for his service. On account of failing
health he was relieved from duty in October, 1861. In 1865 he was
brevetted major-general. He died in France in 1871.]

While the country had been dreaming of wealth through the opening of
the Sangamon, and Lincoln had been doing his best to prove that
the dream was possible, the store in which he clerked was "petering
out"--to use his own expression. The owner, Denton Offutt, had proved
more ambitious than wise, and Lincoln saw that an early closing by
the sheriff was probable. But before the store was fairly closed, and
while the "Talisman" was yet exciting the country, an event occurred
which interrupted all of Lincoln's plans.


THE BLACK HAWK WAR.

One morning in April a messenger from the governor of the State rode
into New Salem scattering a circular. It was an address from Governor
Reynolds to the militia of the northwest section of the State,
announcing that the British band of Sacs and other hostile Indians,
headed by Black Hawk, had invaded the Rock River country, to the great
terror of the frontier inhabitants; and calling on the citizens who
were willing to aid in repelling them, to rendezvous at Beardstown
within a week.

[Illustration: MONUMENT AT KELLOGG'S GROVE.

On June 24, 1832, Black Hawk attacked Apple River Fort, fourteen miles
east of Galena, Illinois, but was unable to drive out the inmates. The
next day he attacked a spy battalion of one hundred and fifty men
at Kellogg's Grove, sixteen miles further east. A detachment of
volunteers relieved the battalion, and drove off the savages, about
fifteen of whom were killed. The whites lost five men, who were buried
at various points in the grove. During the summer of 1886 the remains
of these men were collected and, with those of five or six other
victims of the war, were placed together under the monument here
represented.--See "The Black Hawk War," by Reuben G. Thwaites, Vol.
XII. in Wisconsin Historical Collections. This account of the Black
Hawk War is the most trustworthy, complete, and interesting which has
been made.]

The name of Black Hawk was familiar to the people of Illinois. He
was an old enemy of the settlers, and had been a tried friend of the
British. The land his people had once owned in the northwest of the
present State of Illinois had been sold in 1804 to the government of
the United States, but with the provision that the Indians should
hunt and raise corn there until it was surveyed and sold to settlers.

[Illustration: JOHN REYNOLDS, GOVERNOR OF ILLINOIS 1831-1834.

After a steel engraving in the Governor's office, Springfield,
Illinois. John Reynolds, Governor of Illinois from 1831 to 1834, was
born in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, February 26, 1788. He was
of Irish parentage. When he was six months old his parents moved to
Tennessee. In 1800 they removed to Illinois. When twenty years old,
John Reynolds went to Knoxville, Tennessee, to college, where he spent
two years. He was admitted to the bar at Kaskaskia in 1812. In the war
of 1812 he rendered distinguished service, earning the title of "the
Old Ranger." He began the practice of law in the spring of 1814. In
1818 he was made an associate justice of the Supreme Court; in 1826 he
was elected a member of the legislature; and in 1830, after a stirring
campaign, he was chosen Governor of Illinois. The most important event
of his administration was the Black Hawk War. He was prompt in calling
out the militia to subdue the Black Hawk, and went upon the field
in person. In November, 1834, just before the close of his term as
Governor, he resigned to become a member of Congress. In 1837, aided
by others, he built the first railroad in the State--a short line of
six miles from his coal mine in the Mississippi bluff to the bank of
the river opposite St. Louis. It was operated by horse power. He again
became a member of the legislature in 1846 and 1852, during the latter
term being Speaker of the House. In 1860, in his seventy-third year,
he was an anti-Douglas delegate to the Charleston convention,
and received the most distinguished attentions from the Southern
delegates. After the October elections, when it became apparent that
Lincoln would be elected, he issued an address advising the support
of Douglas. His sympathies were with the South, though in 1832 he
strongly supported President Jackson in the suppression of the South
Carolina nullifiers. He died in Belleville in May, 1865. Governor
Reynolds was a quaint and forceful character. He was a man of much
learning; but in conversation (and he talked much) he rarely rose
above the odd Western vernacular, of which he was so complete a
master. He was the author of two books--one an autobiography, and the
other "The Pioneer History of Illinois."]

Long before the land was surveyed, however, squatters had invaded
the country, and tried to force the Indians west of the Mississippi.
Particularly envious were these whites of the lands at the mouth of
the Rock River, where the ancient village and burial place of the Sacs
stood, and where they came each year to raise corn. Black Hawk had
resisted their encroachments, and many violent acts had been committed
on both sides.

Finally, however, the squatters, in spite of the fact that the line of
settlement was still fifty miles away, succeeded in evading the real
meaning of the treaty and in securing a survey of the desired land at
the mouth of the river. Black Hawk, exasperated and broken-hearted at
seeing his village violated, persuaded himself that the village had
never been sold--indeed, that land could not be sold:

    "My reason teaches me," he wrote, "that land cannot be sold.
    The Great Spirit gave it to his children to live upon, and
    cultivate, as far as is necessary for their subsistence; and
    so long as they occupy and cultivate it, they have the right
    to the soil, but if they voluntarily leave it, then any other
    people have a right to settle upon it. Nothing can be sold but
    such things as can be carried away."

Supported by this theory, conscious that in some way he did not
understand he had been wronged, and urged on by White Cloud, the
prophet, who ruled a Winnebago village on the Rock River, Black Hawk
crossed the Mississippi in 1831, determined to evict the settlers. A
military demonstration drove him back, and he was persuaded to sign a
treaty never to return east of the Mississippi. "I touched the goose
quill to the treaty, and was determined to live in peace," he wrote
afterward; but hardly had he "touched the goose quill" before his
heart smote him. Longing for his home; resentment at the whites;
obstinacy; brooding over the bad counsels of White Cloud and his
disciple Neapope, an agitating Indian who had recently been East to
visit the British and their Indian allies, and who assured Black Hawk
that the Winnebagoes, Ottawas, Chippewas, and Pottawottomies would
join him in a struggle for his land, and that the British would
send him "guns, ammunition, provisions, and clothing early in the
spring"--all persuaded the Hawk that he would be successful if he made
an effort to drive out the whites. In spite of the persuasion of many
of his friends and of the Indian agent in the country, he crossed the
river on April 6, 1832, and with some five hundred braves, his squaws
and children, marched to the Prophet's town, thirty-five miles up the
Rock River.

As soon as they heard of Black Hawk's invasion, the settlers fled in
a panic to the forts in the vicinity, and they rained petitions for
protection on Governor Reynolds. General Atkinson, who commanded a
company at Fort Armstrong, wrote the governor he must have help;
and accordingly on the 16th of April Governor Reynolds sent out
"influential messengers" with a sonorous summons. It was one of
these messengers riding into New Salem who put an end to Lincoln's
canvassing for the legislature, freed him from Offutt's expiring
grocery, and led him to enlist.

[Illustration: ELIJAH ILES, CAPTAIN OF COMPANY IN WHICH LINCOLN SERVED
AS PRIVATE IN BLACK HAWK WAR.

From a photograph made for this Magazine.

After a painting by the late Mrs. Obed Lewis, niece of Major Iles, and
owned by Mr. Obed Lewis, Springfield, Illinois. Elijah Iles was born
in Kentucky, March 28, 1796, and when young went to Missouri. There he
heard marvellous stories about the Sangamon Valley, and he resolved
to go thither. Springfield had just been staked out in the wilderness,
and he reached the place in time to erect the first building--a rude
hut in which he kept a store. This was in 1821. "In the early days in
Illinois," he wrote in 1883, "it was hard to find good material for
law-makers. I was elected a State Senator in 1826, and again for a
second term. The Senate then comprised thirteen members, and the House
twenty-five." In 1827 he was elected major in the command of Colonel
T. McNeal, intending to fight the Winnebagoes, but no fighting
occurred. In the Black Hawk War of 1832, after his term as a private
in Captain Dawson's company had expired, he was elected captain of a
new company of independent rangers. In this company Lincoln reenlisted
as a private. Major Iles lived at Springfield all his life. He died
September 4, 1883.]

There was no time to waste. The volunteers were ordered to be at
Beardstown, nearly forty miles from New Salem, on April 22d. Horses,
rifles, saddles, blankets were to be secured, a company formed. It was
work of which the settlers were not ignorant. Under the laws of
the State every able-bodied male inhabitant between eighteen and
forty-five was obliged to drill twice a year or pay a fine of one
dollar. "As a dollar was hard to raise," says one of the old settlers,
"everybody drilled."


LINCOLN A CAPTAIN.

Preparations were quickly made, and by April 22d the men were at
Beardstown. Here each company elected its own officers, and Lincoln
became a candidate for the captaincy of the company from Sangamon to
which he belonged.

His friend Greene gave another reason than ambition to explain his
desire for the captaincy. One of the "odd jobs" which Lincoln had
taken since coming into Illinois was working in a saw-mill for a man
named Kirkpatrick. In hiring Lincoln, Kirkpatrick had promised to
buy him a cant-hook to move heavy logs. Lincoln had proposed, if
Kirkpatrick would give him two dollars, to move the logs with a common
hand-spike. This the proprietor had agreed to, but when pay day came
he refused to keep his word. When the Sangamon company of volunteers
was formed, Kirkpatrick aspired to the captaincy; and Lincoln, knowing
it, said to Greene: "Bill, I believe I can now pay Kirkpatrick for
that two dollars he owes me on the cant-hook. I'll run against him for
captain;" and he became a candidate. The vote was taken in a field,
by directing the men at the command "march" to assemble around the man
they wanted for captain. When the order was given, three-fourths of
the men gathered around Lincoln.[B] In Lincoln's curious third-person
autobiography he says he was elected "to his own surprise;" and adds,
"He says he has not since had any success in life which gave him so
much satisfaction."

[Illustration: A DISCHARGE FROM SERVICE IN BLACK HAWK WAR SIGNED BY
ABRAHAM LINCOLN, AS CAPTAIN.]

The company was a motley crowd of men. Each had secured for his outfit
what he could get, and no two were equipped alike. Buckskin breeches
prevailed. There was a sprinkling of coon-skin caps, and the blankets
were of the coarsest texture. Flintlock rifles were the usual arm,
though here and there a man had a Cramer. Over the shoulder of each
was slung a powder-horn. The men had, as a rule, as little regard for
discipline as for appearances, and when the new captain gave an order
were as likely to jeer at it as to obey it. To drive the Indians out
was their mission, and any orders which did not bear directly on that
point were little respected. Lincoln himself was not familiar with
military tactics, and made many blunders of which he used to tell
afterwards with relish. One of these was an early experience in
drilling. He was marching with a front of over twenty men across
a field, when he desired to pass through a gateway into the next
inclosure.

"I could not for the life of me," said he, "remember the proper word
of command for getting my company _endwise_, so that it could get
through the gate; so, as we came near the gate, I shouted, 'This
company is dismissed for two minutes, when it will fall in again on
the other side of the gate!'"

Nor was it only his ignorance of the manual which caused him trouble.
He was so unfamiliar with camp discipline that he once had his
sword taken from him for shooting within limits. Another disgrace he
suffered was on account of his disorderly company. The men, unknown to
him, stole a quantity of liquor one night, and the next morning were
too drunk to fall in when the order was given to march. For their
lawlessness Lincoln wore a wooden sword two days.

But none of these small difficulties injured his standing with the
company. Lincoln was tactful, and he joined his men in sports as well
as duties. They soon grew so proud of his quick wit and great strength
that they obeyed him because they admired him. No amount of military
tactics could have secured from the volunteers the cheerful following
he won by his personal qualities.

The men soon learned, too, that he meant what he said, and would
permit no dishonorable performances. A helpless Indian took refuge
in the camp one day; and the men, who were inspired by what Governor
Reynolds calls _Indian ill-will_--that wanton mixture of selfishness,
unreason, and cruelty which seems to seize a frontiersman as soon as
he scents a red man--were determined to kill the refugee. He had a
safe conduct from General Cass; but the men, having come out to kill
Indians and not having succeeded, threatened to take revenge on the
helpless savage. Lincoln boldly took the man's part, and though he
risked his life in doing it, he cowed the company, and saved the
Indian.

[Illustration: MAP OF ILLINOIS IN 1832, PREPARED SPECIALLY FOR
MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE.

[Transcriber's note: The map includes the following legend: The black
line indicates the route Lincoln is supposed to have followed with
the army as far as Whitewater, where he was dismissed. When the
army started from near Ottawa, after the 20th of June, to follow
the Indians up Rock River, Lincoln's battalion was sent towards the
northwest, and joined the main army near Lake Koshkonong early in
July. Soon after he went to Whitewater, where, about the middle of the
month, his battalion was disbanded, and he returned by foot and canoe
to New Salem. The dotted line shows the route he is supposed to have
taken. The towns named on the map are those with which Lincoln was
connected either in his legal or his political life.]


THE BLACK HAWK CAMPAIGN.

It was on the 27th of April that the force of sixteen hundred men
organized at Beardstown started out. The spring was cold, the roads
heavy, the streams turbulent. The army marched first to Yellow Banks
on the Mississippi, then to Dixon on the Rock River, which they
reached on May 12th. None but hardened pioneers could have
endured what Lincoln and his followers did in this march. They had
insufficient supplies; they waded in black mud for miles; they swam
rivers; they were almost never dry or warm; but, hardened as they
were, they made the march gayly. At Dixon they camped, and near here
occurred the first bloodshed of the war.

A body of about three hundred and forty rangers, not of the regular
army, under Major Stillman, asked to go ahead as scouts, to look for
a body of Indians under Black Hawk, rumored to be about twelve miles
away. The permission was given, and on the night of the 14th of
May Stillman and his men went into camp. Black Hawk heard of their
presence. By this time the poor old chief had discovered that the
promises of aid from the Indian tribes and the British were false,
and, dismayed, he had resolved to recross the Mississippi. When he
heard of the whites near he sent three braves with a white flag to ask
for a parley and permission to descend the river. Behind them he sent
five men to watch proceedings. Stillman's rangers were in camp when
the bearers of the flag of truce appeared. The men were many of them
half drunk, and when they saw the Indian truce-bearers, they rushed
out in a wild mob, and ran them into camp. Then catching sight of
the five spies, they started after them, killing two. The three who
reached Black Hawk reported that the truce-bearers had been killed
as well as their two companions. Furious at this violation of faith,
Black Hawk "raised a yell," and declared to the forty braves, all he
had with him, that they must have revenge. The Indians immediately
sallied forth, and met Stillman's band of over three hundred men,
who by this time were out in search of the Indians. Black Hawk, too
maddened to think of the difference of numbers, attacked the whites.
To his surprise the enemy turned, and fled in a wild riot. Nor
did they stop at their camp, which from its position was almost
impregnable; they fled in complete panic, _sauve qui peut_, through
their camp, across prairie and rivers and swamps, to Dixon, twelve
miles away, where by midnight they began to arrive. The first arrival
reported that two thousand savages had swept down on Stillman's camp
and slaughtered all but himself. Before the next night all but eleven
of the band had arrived.

Stillman's defeat, as this disgraceful affair is called, put all
notion of peace out of Black Hawk's mind, and he started out in
earnest on the warpath. Governor Reynolds, excited by the reports of
the first arrivals from the Stillman stampede, made out that night,
"by candle-light," a call for more volunteers, and by the morning of
the 15th had messengers out and his army in pursuit of Black Hawk. But
it was like pursuing a shadow. The Indians purposely confused their
trail. Sometimes it was a broad path, then it suddenly radiated to all
points. The whites broke their bands, and pursued the savages here and
there, never overtaking them, though now and then coming suddenly on
some terrible evidences of their presence--a frontier home deserted
and burned, slaughtered cattle, scalps suspended where the army could
not fail to see them.

This fruitless warfare exasperated the volunteers; they threatened
to leave, and their officers had great difficulty in making them obey
orders. On reaching a point in the Rock River, beyond which lay the
Indian country, a company under Colonel Zachary Taylor refused to
cross, and held a public indignation meeting, urging that they had
volunteered to defend the State, and had the right, as independent
American citizens, to refuse to go out of its borders. Taylor heard
them to the end, and then said: "I feel that all gentlemen here are
my equals; in reality, I am persuaded that many of them will, in a
few years, be my superiors, and perhaps, in the capacity of members of
Congress, arbiters of the fortunes and reputation of humble
servants of the republic, like myself. I expect then to obey them as
interpreters of the will of the people; and the best proof that I will
obey them is now to observe the orders of those whom the people have
already put in the place of authority to which many gentlemen around
me justly aspire. In plain English, gentlemen and fellow-citizens, the
word has been passed on to me from Washington to follow Black Hawk
and to take you with me as soldiers. I mean to do both. There are the
flatboats drawn up on the shore, and here are Uncle Sam's men drawn up
behind you on the prairie." The volunteers were quick-witted men,
and knew true grit when they met it. They dissolved their meeting and
crossed the river without Uncle Sam's men being called into action.

[Illustration: A FACSIMILE OF AN ELECTION RETURN WRITTEN BY LINCOLN AS
CLERK IN 1832. NOW FIRST PUBLISHED.

From the original now on file in the County Clerk's office,
Springfield, Illinois. The first civil office Lincoln ever held
was that of election clerk, and the return made by him, of which a
facsimile is here presented, was his first official document. The New
Salem election of September 20, 1832, has the added interest of having
been held at "the house of John McNeil," the young merchant who was
then already in love with Ann Rutledge, the young girl to whom Lincoln
afterwards became engaged. All the men whose names appear on this
election return are now dead except William McNeely, now residing at
Petersburg. John Clary lived at Clary's Grove; John R. Herndon was
"Row" Herndon, whose store Berry and Lincoln purchased, and at whose
house Lincoln for a time boarded; Baxter Berry was a relative of
Lincoln's partner in the grocery business, and Edmund Greer was a
school-teacher, and afterward a justice of the peace and a surveyor.
James Rutledge was the keeper of the Rutledge tavern and the father
of Ann Rutledge; Hugh Armstrong was the head of the numerous Armstrong
family; "Uncle Jimmy" White lived on a farm five miles from New Salem,
and died about thirty years ago in the eightieth year of his age;
William Green (spelled by the later members of the family with a
final "e") was the father of William G. Greene, Lincoln's associate
in Offutt's store; and as to Bowling Green, more is said elsewhere.
In the following three or four years, very few elections were held
at which Lincoln was not a clerk. It is a somewhat singular fact
that Lincoln, though clerk of this election, is not recorded as
voting.--_J. McCan Davis._]

The march in pursuit of the Indians led the army to Ottawa, where the
volunteers became so dissatisfied that on May 27th and 28th Governor
Reynolds mustered them out. But a force in the field was essential
until a new levy was raised; and a few of the men were patriotic
enough to offer their services, among them Lincoln, who on May 29th
was mustered in at the mouth of the Fox River by a man in whom, thirty
years later, he was to have a keen interest--General Robert Anderson,
commander at Fort Sumter in 1861. Lincoln became a private in Captain
Elijah Iles's company of Independent Rangers, not brigaded--a company
made up, says Captain Iles in his "Footsteps and Wanderings,"
of "generals, colonels, captains, and distinguished men from the
disbanded army." General Anderson says that at this muster Lincoln's
arms were valued at forty dollars, his horse and equipment at one
hundred and twenty dollars. The Independent Rangers were a favored
body, used to carry messages and to spy on the enemy. They had no
camp duties, and "drew rations as often as they pleased." So that as a
private Lincoln was really better off than as a captain.[C]

With the exception of a scouting trip to Galena and back, fruitful of
nothing more than Indian scares, Major Iles's company remained quietly
in the neighborhood of the Rapids of the Illinois until June 16th,
when Major Anderson mustered it out. Four days later, June 20th,
at the same place, he mustered Lincoln in again as a member of an
independent company under Captain Jacob M. Early. His arms were
valued this time at only fifteen dollars, his horse and equipment at
eighty-five dollars.[D] The army moved up Rock River soon after the
middle of June. Black Hawk was overrunning the country, and scattering
death wherever he went. The settlers were wild with fear, and most
of the settlements were abandoned. At a sudden sound, at the
merest rumor, men, women, and children fled. "I well remember these
troublesome times," says one old Illinois woman. "We often left our
bread dough unbaked to rush to the Indian fort near by." When Mr.
John Bryant, a brother of William Cullen Bryant, visited the colony in
Princeton in 1832, he found it nearly broken up on account of the
war. Everywhere the crops were neglected, for the able-bodied men were
volunteering. William Cullen Bryant, who travelled on horseback in
June from Petersburg to near Pekin and back, wrote home: "Every few
miles on our way we fell in with bodies of Illinois militia proceeding
to the American camp, or saw where they had encamped for the night.
They generally stationed themselves near a stream or a spring in the
edge of a wood, and turned their horses to graze on the prairie.
Their way was barked or girdled, and the roads through the uninhabited
country were as much beaten and as dusty as the highways on New York
Island. Some of the settlers complained that they made war upon the
pigs and chickens. They were a hard-looking set of men, unkempt and
unshaved, wearing shirts of dark calico and sometimes calico capotes."

Soon after the army moved up the Rock River, the independent spy
company, of which Lincoln was a member, was sent with a brigade to the
northwest, near Galena, in pursuit of the Hawk. The nearest Lincoln
came to an actual engagement in the war was here. The skirmish of
Kellogg's Grove took place on June 25th; Lincoln's company came up
soon after it was over, and helped bury the five men killed. It was
probably to this experience that he referred when he told a friend
once of coming on a camp of white scouts one morning just as the sun
was rising. The Indians had surprised the camp, and had killed and
scalped every man.

"I remember just how those men looked," said Lincoln, "as we rode up
the little hill where their camp was. The red light of the morning sun
was streaming upon them as they lay heads towards us on the ground.
And every man had a round red spot on the top of his head about as big
as a dollar, where the redskins had taken his scalp. It was frightful,
but it was grotesque; and the red sunlight seemed to paint everything
all over." Lincoln paused, as if recalling the vivid picture, and
added, somewhat irrelevantly, "I remember that one man had buckskin
breeches on."[E]

By the end of the month the troops crossed into Michigan
Territory--what is now Wisconsin--and July was spent in floundering
through swamps and stumbling through forests, in pursuit of the now
nearly exhausted Black Hawk. A few days before the last battle of
the war, that of Bad Axe on August 2d, in which the whites finally
massacred most of the Indian band, Lincoln's company was disbanded at
Whitewater, Wisconsin, and he and his friends started for home. The
volunteers in returning, in almost every case, suffered much from
hunger. Mr. Durly, of Hennepin, Illinois, who walked home from Rock
Island, says all he had to eat on the journey was meal and water baked
in rolls of bark laid by the fire. Lincoln was little better off. The
night before his company started from Whitewater he and one of his
mess-mates had their horses stolen; and, excepting when their more
fortunate companions gave them a lift, they walked as far as Peoria,
Illinois, where they bought a canoe, and paddled down the Illinois
River to Havana. Here they sold the canoe, and walked across the
country to New Salem.

[Illustration: VIEW OF THE SANGAMON RIVER NEAR NEW SALEM.

The town lay along the ridge marked by the star.]


ELECTIONEERING FOR THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY.

Lincoln arrived only a few days before the election, and at once
plunged into "electioneering." He ran as "an avowed Clay man," and
the county was stiffly Democratic. However, in those days political
contests were almost purely personal. If the candidate was liked
he was voted for irrespective of principles. Around New Salem
the population turned in and helped Lincoln almost to a man. "The
Democrats of New Salem worked for Lincoln out of their personal regard
for him," said Stephen T. Logan, a young lawyer of Springfield, who
made Lincoln's acquaintance in the campaign. "He was as stiff as a man
could be in his Whig doctrines. They did this for him simply because
he was popular--because he was Lincoln."

It was the custom for the candidates to appear at every gathering
which brought the people out, and, if they had a chance, to make
speeches. Then, as now, the farmers gathered at the county-seat or at
the largest town within their reach on Saturday afternoons, to dispose
of produce, buy supplies, see their neighbors, and get the news.
During "election times" candidates were always present, and a regular
feature of the day was listening to their speeches. Public sales also
were gatherings which they never missed, it being expected that after
the "vandoo" the candidates would take the auctioneer's place.

Lincoln let none of these chances to be heard slip. Accompanied by his
friends, generally including a few Clary's Grove Boys, he always was
present. The first speech he made was after a sale at Pappsville. What
he said there is not remembered; but an illustration of the kind
of man he was, interpolated into his discourse, made a lasting
impression. A fight broke out in his audience while he was on the
stand, and observing that one of his friends was being worsted, he
bounded into the group of contestants, seized the fellow who had his
supporter down, threw him "ten or twelve feet," mounted the platform,
and finished the speech. Sangamon County could appreciate such
a performance; and the crowd that day at Pappsville never forgot
Lincoln.

His appearance at Springfield at this time was of great importance to
him. Springfield was not at that time a very attractive place. Bryant,
visiting it in June, 1832, said that the houses were not as good as at
Jacksonville, "a considerable proportion of them being log cabins,
and the whole town having an appearance of dirt and discomfort."
Nevertheless it was the largest town in the county, and among its
inhabitants were many young men of education, birth, and energy. One
of these men Lincoln had become well acquainted with in the Black
Hawk War--Major John T. Stewart,[F] at that time a lawyer, and, like
Lincoln, a candidate for the General Assembly. He met others at this
time who were to be associated with him more or less closely in the
future in both law and politics, such as Judge Logan and William
Butler. With these men the manners which had won him the day at
Pappsville were of no value; what impressed them was his "very
sensible speech," and his decided individuality and originality.

The election came off on August 6th. The first civil office Lincoln
ever held was that of clerk of this election. The report in his hand
still exists; as far as we know, it is his first official document.

Lincoln was defeated. "This was the only time Abraham was ever
defeated on a direct vote of the people," say his autobiographical
notes. He had a consolation in his defeat, however, for in spite of
the pronounced Democratic sentiments of his precinct, he received two
hundred and seventy-seven votes out of three hundred cast.[G]

_(Begun in the November number, 1895; to be continued.)_

[Footnote A: The story of Lincoln's first seventeen months in
Illinois, outlined in this paragraph, is told in MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE
for December.]

[Footnote B: This story of Kirkpatrick's unfair treatment of Lincoln
we owe to the courtesy of Colonel Clark E. Carr of Galesburg,
Illinois, to whom it was told several times by Greene himself.]

[Footnote C: William Cullen Bryant, who was in Illinois in 1832 at the
time of the Black Hawk War, used to tell of meeting in his travels in
the State a company of Illinois volunteers, commanded by a "raw youth"
of "quaint and pleasant" speech, and of learning afterwards that this
captain was Abraham Lincoln. As Lincoln's captaincy ended on May 27th,
and Mr. Bryant did not reach Jacksonville, Illinois, until June 12th,
and as the nearest point he came to the army was Pleasant Grove, eight
miles from Pekin on the Illinois River, and that was at a time when
the body of Rangers to which Lincoln belonged was fifty miles away on
the rapids of the Illinois, it is evident that the "raw youth" could
not have been Lincoln, much as one would like to believe that it was.
See "Life of William Cullen Bryant," by Parke Godwin, vol. i. page
283. Also Prose of William Cullen Bryant, edited by Parke Godwin, vol.
ii. page 20.]

[Footnote D: See Wisconsin Historical Collections, vol. x., for Major
Anderson's reminiscences of the Black Hawk War.]

[Footnote E: Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln by Noah Brooks.]

[Footnote F: There were many prominent Americans in the Black Hawk
War, with some of whom Lincoln became acquainted. Among the best known
were General Robert Anderson; Colonel Zachary Taylor; General Scott,
afterwards candidate for President, and Lieut.-General; Henry Dodge,
Governor of the Territory of Wisconsin and United States Senator; Hon.
William L.D. Ewing and Hon. Sidney Breese, both United States Senators
from Illinois; William S. Hamilton, a son of Alexander Hamilton;
Colonel Nathan Boone, son of Daniel Boone; Lieutenant Albert Sydney
Johnston, afterwards a Confederate general. Jefferson Davis was not in
the war, as has been so often stated.]

[Footnote G: In the New Salem precinct, at the August election of
1832, exactly three hundred votes were cast. Of these Lincoln received
277. The facts upon this point are here stated for the first time.
The biographers as a rule have agreed that Lincoln received all of the
votes cast in the New Salem precinct except three. Mr. Herndon places
the total vote at 208; Nicolay and Hay, at 277; and Mr. Lincoln
himself, in his autobiography, has said that he received all but seven
of a total of 277 votes, basing his statement, no doubt, upon memory.
An examination of the official poll-book in the County Clerk's office
at Springfield shows that all of these figures are erroneous. The fact
remains, however--and it is a fact which has been commented upon by
several of the biographers as showing his phenomenal popularity--that
the vote for Lincoln was far in excess of that given any other
candidate. The twelve candidates, with the number of votes of each
were: Abraham Lincoln, 277; John T. Stewart, 182; William Carpenter,
136; John Dawson, 105; E.D. Taylor, 88; Archer G. Herndon, 84; Peter
Cartwright, 62; Achilles Morris, 27; Thomas M. Neal, 21; Edward
Robeson, 15; Zachariah Peters, 4; Richard Dunston, 4.

Of the twenty-three who did not vote for Lincoln, ten refrained from
voting for Representative at all, thus leaving only thirteen votes
actually cast against Lincoln. Lincoln is not recorded as voting. The
judges were Bowling Green, Pollard Simmons, and William Clary, and the
clerks were John Ritter and Mentor Graham.--_J. McCan Davis._]




[Illustration: EUGENE FIELD TELLING A STORY TO "SISSY" KNOTT AND
'LISBETH AND MARTHA WINSLOW.]




EUGENE FIELD AND HIS CHILD FRIENDS.[H]

BY CLEVELAND MOFFETT.


The form of the expressions of regard and regret called out on all
sides by the untimely death of Eugene Field, at his home in Chicago,
on November 4, 1895, makes clear that the character in which the
public at large knew and loved Mr. Field best was that of the poet of
child life. What gives his child-poems their unequalled hold on the
popular heart is their simplicity, warmth, and genuineness; and these
qualities they owe to the fact that Field himself lived in the
closest and fondest intimacy with children, had troops of them for
his friends, and wrote his poems directly under their suggestion and
inspiration. Mr. T.A. Van Laun of Chicago, who was one of Mr. Field's
closest friends, has kindly given me many reminiscences, and helped
me to much material, illustrating all sides of Mr. Field's life, among
others this fine relation with the children. A characteristic incident
occurred on Field's marriage day. The hour of the ceremony was all
but at hand, and the bridal party was waiting at the church for the
bridegroom to appear. But he did not come; and, after an anxious
delay, some of his friends went in search of him. They found him a
short distance away, engaged in settling a dispute that had arisen
among some street gamins over a game of marbles. There he was, down on
his knees in the mud, listening to the various accounts of the origin
of the quarrel; and it was only on the arrival of his friends that he
suddenly recollected his more pressing and more pleasant duties.

One day, as was often happening, Field received a letter written in
the scrawling hand of a child, which told him how the writer, a little
girl, had read most of his poems, spoke of the pleasure they had given
her, and said that when she grew up she intended to be just such a
writer as he was. Following his usual kindly custom, Field answered
this letter, telling the child of the beauties of nature that
surrounded him, of the twittering birds, and the lovely flowers he had
in sight from his window, and concluding: "Now I must go out and shoot
a buffalo for breakfast."

Dr. Gunsaulus of Chicago, who was one of Mr. Field's most intimate
friends, tells a story of Field's first visit to his house that shows
how quick the poet was to make himself at home with children. For
years the little ones in the Doctor's household had heard of Eugene
Field as a wonderful person; and when they were told that he had
come to see them their delight knew no bounds, and they ran into the
library to pay him homage. It was in the evening, and, presumably,
Field had already dined; but he told the children with his first
breath that he wanted to know where the cookery was. They, overjoyed
at being asked a service they were able to render, trooped out into
the kitchen with Field following. The store of eatables was duly
exposed, and Field seized upon a turkey, or what remained of one from
dinner, and carried it into the dining-room. There he seated himself
at table, with the children on his knees and about him, and fell to
with a good appetite, talking to the little ones all the time, telling
them quaint stories, and making them listen with all their eyes and
ears. Having thus become good friends and put them quite at their
ease, he spent the rest of the evening singing lullabies to them, and
reciting his verses. Naturally, before he went away the children
had given him their whole hearts. And this was his way with all the
children with whom he came in contact.

One day on the cars Mr. Field chanced to sit near a workingman who
had with him his wife and baby. The father, it seemed, had heard Field
lecture the night before, and had been deeply impressed. With great
deference he brought his child up to Field, and said: "Now, little
one, I want you to look at this gentleman. He is Mr. Field, and when
you grow up you'll be glad to know that once upon a time he spoke to
you." At this Field took the baby in his arms, and played with it
for an hour, to the surprise and, of course, to the delight of the
parents.

Of recent years Mr. Field rarely went to the office of the Chicago
"News," the paper for which during the last ten years he had written
a daily column under the title of "Sharps and Flats," but did most of
his work at his home in Buena Park, which he called the Sabine Farm.
Here he began his day about nine o'clock, by having breakfast served
to him in bed, after which he glanced through the papers, and then
settled himself to his writing, with feet high on the table, and his
pages before him laid neatly on a piece of plate glass. He wrote with
a fine-pointed pen, and had by him several different colored inks,
with which he would illuminate his capitals and embellish his
manuscript. The first thing he did was his "Sharps and Flats" column,
which occupied three or four hours, the task being usually finished
by one o'clock. His other work he did in the afternoons and evenings,
writing at odd hours, sometimes in the garden if the weather was
pleasant. He was much interrupted by friends dropping in to see him;
but, however busy, he welcomed whoever came, and would turn aside
good-naturedly from his manuscript to entertain a visitor or to hear a
story of misfortune. After dinner he retired to his "den" to read; for
he read constantly, whatever the distractions about him, and was much
given to reading in bed.

And of all his visitors the most constant and appreciative were
children. These he never sent away without some bright word, and
he rarely sent them away at all. Nowhere could they find such an
entertaining playmate as he--one who would tell them such wonderful
stories and make up such funny rhymes for them on the spur of the
moment, and romp with them like one of themselves. It was in the
homely incidents of these visits, and the like intimacy with his own
children, that he found the subjects for his poems. He could voice the
feelings of a child, because he knew child life from always living it.

On his own children he bestowed pet names--"Pinney," "Daisy,"
"Googhy," "Posey," and "Trotty;" and they almost forgot that they
had others. His eldest daughter, for instance, now a lovely girl of
nineteen, has remained "Trotty" from her babyhood, and "Trotty" she
will always be. At her christening Field had an argument with his
wife about the name they should give her. Mrs. Field wished her to be
called Frances, to which Field objected on the ground that it would
be shortened into Frankie, which he disliked. Then other names were
suggested, and, after listening to this one and that one, Field
finally said: "You can christen her whatever you please, but I shall
call her Trotty." "Pinney" was named from the comic opera "Pinafore,"
which was in vogue at the time he was born; and "Daisy" got his name
from the song, popular when he was born: "Oh My! A'int He a Daisy?"

A devotion so unfailing in his relations with children would,
naturally, show itself in other relations. His devotion to his wife,
for example, was of the completest. In all the world she was the one
woman he loved, and he never wished to be away from her. In one of his
scrap-books, under her picture, are written these lines:

  You are as fair and sweet and tender,
  Dear brown-eyed little sweetheart mine!
  As when, a callow youth and slender,
  I asked to be your valentine.

Often she accompanied him on his readings. Last summer it happened
that they went together to St. Joe, Missouri, the home of Mrs. Field's
girlhood. On their arrival, Mrs. Field's friends took possession of
her and carried her off to a lunch-party, where it was arranged that
Mr. Field should join her later. But he, left alone, was swept by his
thoughts back to the time when, a youth of twenty-one, he had here
paid court to the woman now his wife, then a girl of sixteen; and
so affected was he by these memories that, instead of going to the
lunch-party, he took a carriage, and all alone drove to the places
which he and she had been wont to visit in the happy time of their
love-making, especially to a certain lover's lane where they had taken
many a walk together.

[Illustration: THE LAST PORTRAIT OF EUGENE FIELD.

From a copyrighted photograph by Place & Coover, Chicago; reproduced
by permission of the Etching Publishing Co., Chicago.]

The day before Field's death the mail brought a hundred dollars in
payment for a magazine article he had written. It was in small bills,
and there was quite a quantity of them. As he lay in bed, Field spread
them out on the covers, and then called Mrs. Field. As she came in she
said: "Why, what are you doing with all that money?"

Field, laughing, snatched the bills up and tucked them under the
pillow, saying: "You shan't have it, this is my money." After his
death, the bills, all crumpled up, were found still under his pillow.

It was a common happening in the "News" office, while Mr. Field still
did his work there, for some ragged, unwashed, woe-begone creature,
too much abashed to take the elevator, to come toiling up the stairs
and down the long passage into one of the editorial rooms, where he
would blurt out fearfully, sometimes half defiantly, but always as if
confident in the power of the name he spoke: "Is 'Gene Field here?"
Sometimes an overzealous office-boy would try to drive one of these
poor fellows away, and woe to that boy if Field found it out. "I knew
'Gene Field in Denver," or, "I worked with Field on the 'Kansas City
Times,'"--these were sufficient pass-words, and never failed to call
forth the cheery voice from Field's room: "That's all right, show him
in here; he's a friend of mine." And then, after a grip of the hand
and some talk over former experiences--which Field may or may not have
remembered, but always pretended to--the inevitable half dollar or
dollar was forthcoming, and another unfortunate went out into the
world blessing the name of a man who, whether he was orthodox or not
in his religious views, always acted up to the principle that it is
more blessed to give than to receive.

[Footnote H: NOTE.--See a "Conversation" between Eugene Field and
Hamlin Garland, in which Mr. Field tells the story of his literary
life, McCLURE'S MAGAZINE for August, 1893. Also a series of portraits
of Eugene Field in McCLURE'S MAGAZINE for September, 1893. Price
fifteen cents.]




POEMS OF CHILDHOOD, BY EUGENE FIELD.


The choicest literary expression of Eugene Field's intimacy with
the children is found in four volumes published by Messrs. Charles
Scribner's Sons--"A Little Book of Western Verse," "Second Book of
Verse," "With Trumpet and Drum," and "Love-Songs of Childhood." It
is only a few years since the earliest of these was published; but no
books are better known, and they hold in the hearts of their readers
the same fond place that their author held in the hearts of the
children whose thoughts and adventures he so aptly and tenderly
portrayed. By the kind permission of the publishers, we reproduce
here a few of the best known of the poems, adding pictures of
the particular child friends of Mr. Field who inspired them. The
selections are from the last two volumes--"With Trumpet and Drum"
and "Love-Songs of Childhood." The pictures are from Mr. Field's own
collection, which chanced to be in New York at the time of his death;
and the identifying phrases quoted under several of them were written
on the backs of the photographs by Mr. Field's own hand.


WITH TRUMPET AND DRUM.

  With big tin trumpet and little red drum,
  Marching like soldiers, the children come!
  It's this way and that way they circle and file--
  My! but that music of theirs is fine!
  This way and that way, and after a while
  They march straight into this heart of mine!
  A sturdy old heart, but it has to succumb
  To the blare of that trumpet and beat of that drum!

  Come on, little people, from cot and from hall--
  This heart it hath welcome and room for you all!
  It will sing you its songs and warm you with love,
  As your dear little arms with my arms intertwine;
  It will rock you away to the dreamland above--
  Oh, a jolly old heart is this old heart of mine,
  And jollier still is it bound to become
  When you blow that big trumpet and beat that red drum.

  So come; though I see not _his_ dear little face
  And hear not _his_ voice in this jubilant place,
  I know he were happy to bid me enshrine
  His memory deep in my heart with your play--
  Ah me! but a love that is sweeter than mine
  Holdeth my boy in its keeping to-day!
  And my heart it is lonely--so, little folk, come,
  March in and make merry with trumpet and drum!


THE DELECTABLE BALLAD OF THE WALLER LOT.

  Up yonder in Buena Park
  There is a famous spot,
  In legend and in history
  Yelept the Waller Lot.

  There children play in daytime
  And lovers stroll by dark,
  For 'tis the goodliest trysting-place
  In all Buena Park.

  Once on a time that beauteous maid,
  Sweet little Sissy Knott,
  Took out her pretty doll to walk
  Within the Waller Lot.

  While thus she fared, from Ravenswood
  Came Injuns o'er the plain,
  And seized upon that beauteous maid
  And rent her doll in twain.

  Oh, 'twas a piteous thing to hear
  Her lamentations wild;
  She tore her golden curls and cried:
  "My child! My child! My child!"

  Alas, what cared those Injun chiefs
  How bitterly wailed she?
  They never had been mothers,
  And they could not hope to be!

  "Have done with tears," they rudely quoth,
  And then they bound her hands;
  For they proposed to take her off
  To distant border lands.

[Illustration: LUCY ALEXANDER KNOTT.--"HEROINE OF THE 'BALLAD OF THE
WALLER LOT'" (NOTE BY EUGENE FIELD ON PHOTOGRAPH).

From a photograph by Max Platz, Chicago.]

  But, joy! from Mr. Eddy's barn
  Doth Willie Clow behold
  The sight that makes his hair rise up
  And all his blood run cold.

  He put his fingers in his mouth
  And whistled long and clear,
  And presently a goodly horde
  Of cowboys did appear.

  Cried Willie Clow: "My comrades bold,
  Haste to the Waller Lot,
  And rescue from that Injun band
  Our charming Sissy Knott!
  "Spare neither Injun buck nor squaw,
  But smite them hide and hair!
  Spare neither sex nor age nor size,
  And no condition spare!"

  Then sped that cowboy band away,
  Full of revengeful wrath,
  And Kendall Evans rode ahead
  Upon a hickory lath.

  And next came gallant Dady Field
  And Willie's brother Kent,
  The Eddy boys and Robbie James,
  On murderous purpose bent.

  For they were much beholden to
  That maid--in sooth, the lot
  Were very, very much in love
  With charming Sissy Knott.

[Illustration: JAMES BRECKINRIDGE WALLER, JR.--"A 'WALLER LOT' COWBOY
OF RARE PROMISE" (NOTE BY EUGENE FIELD ON PHOTOGRAPH).

From a photograph by Gehrig & Windeatt, Chicago.]

  What wonder? She was beauty's queen,
  And good beyond compare;
  Moreover, it was known she was
  Her wealthy father's heir!

  Now when the Injuns saw that band
  They trembled with affright,
  And yet they thought the cheapest thing
  To do was stay and fight.

  So sturdily they stood their ground,
  Nor would their prisoner yield,
  Despite the wrath of Willie Clow
  And gallant Dady Field.

  Oh, never fiercer battle raged
  Upon the Waller Lot,
  And never blood more freely flowed
  Than flowed for Sissy Knott!

[Illustration: KENDALL EVANS.--"HE RODE A HICKORY LATH IN THE FAMOUS
BATTLE OF 'THE WALLER LOT'" (NOTE BY EUGENE FIELD ON PHOTOGRAPH).

From a photograph by Coover, Chicago.]

  An Injun chief of monstrous size
  Got Kendall Evans down,
  And Robbie James was soon o'erthrown
  By one of great renown.

  And Dady Field was sorely done,
  And Willie Clow was hurt,
  And all that gallant cowboy band
  Lay wallowing in the dirt.

  But still they strove with might and main
  Till all the Waller Lot
  Was strewn with hair and gouts of gore--
  All, all for Sissy Knott!

  Then cried the maiden in despair:
  "Alas, I sadly fear
  The battle and my hopes are lost,
  Unless some help appear!"

  Lo, as she spoke, she saw afar
  The rescuer looming up--
  The pride of all Buena Park,
  Clow's famous yellow pup!

[Illustration: WILLIAM AND KENT CLOW.--"TWO REDOUBTABLE HEROES OF 'THE
WALLER LOT'" (NOTE BY EUGENE FIELD ON PHOTOGRAPH).

  From a photograph by D.R. Coover, Chicago.]

  "Now, sick 'em, Don," the maiden cried,
  "Now, sick 'em, Don!" cried she;
  Obedient Don at once complied--
  As ordered, so did he.

  He sicked 'em all so passing well
  That, overcome by fright,
  The Indian horde gave up the fray
  And safety sought in flight.

  They ran and ran and ran and ran
  O'er valley, plain, and hill;
  And if they are not walking now,
  Why, then, they're running still.

  The cowboys rose up from the dust
  With faces black and blue;
  "Remember, beauteous maid," said they,
  "We've bled and died for you!

  "And though we suffer grievously,
  We gladly hail the lot
  That brings us toils and pains and wounds
  For charming Sissy Knott!"

  But Sissy Knott still wailed and wept,
  And still her fate reviled;
  For who could patch her dolly up--
  Who, who could mend her child?

  Then out her doting mother came,
  And soothed her daughter then;
  "Grieve not, my darling, I will sew
  Your dolly up again!"

  Joy soon succeeded unto grief,
  And tears were soon dried up,
  And dignities were heaped upon
  Clow's noble yellow pup.

  Him all that goodly company
  Did as deliverer hail--
  They tied a ribbon round his neck,
  Another round his tail.

  And every anniversary day
  Upon the Waller Lot
  They celebrate the victory won
  For charming Sissy Knott.

  And I, the poet of these folk,
  Am ordered to compile
  This truly famous history
  In good old ballad style.

  Which having done as to have earned
  The sweet rewards of fame,
  In what same style I did begin
  I now shall end the same.

  So let us sing: Long live the King,
  Long live the Queen and Jack,
  Long live the ten-spot and the ace,
  And also all the pack!


THE ROCK-A-BY LADY.

  The Rock-a-By Lady from Hushaby Street
  Comes stealing; comes creeping;
  The poppies they hang from her head to her feet,
  And each hath a dream that is tiny and fleet--
  She bringeth her poppies to you, my sweet,
  When she findeth you sleeping!

  There is one little dream of a beautiful drum--
  "Rub-a-dub!" it goeth;
  There is one little dream of a big sugar-plum,
  And lo! thick and fast the other dreams come
  Of popguns that bang, and tin tops that hum,
  And a trumpet that bloweth!

  And dollies peep out of those wee little dreams
  With laughter and singing;
  And boats go a-floating on silvery streams,
  And the stars peek-a-boo with their own misty gleams,
  And up, up, and up, where the Mother Moon beams,
  The fairies go winging!

  [Illustration: ROSWELL FRANCIS FIELD, EUGENE FIELD'S YOUNGEST SON
  AND THE INSPIRER OF "THE ROCK-A-BY LADY," "BOOH,"
  AND MANY OTHER POEMS IN THE VOLUME "LOVE-SONGS OF CHILDHOOD."

  From a photograph by Stein, Chicago.]

  Would you dream all these dreams that are tiny and fleet?
  They'll come to you sleeping;
  So shut the two eyes that are weary, my sweet,
  For the Rock-a-By Lady from Hushaby Street,
  With poppies that hang from her head to her feet,
  Comes stealing; comes creeping.


"BOOH!"

  On afternoons, when baby boy has had a splendid nap,
  And sits, like any monarch on his throne, in nurse's lap,
  In some such wise my handkerchief I hold before my face,
  And cautiously and quietly I move about the place;
  Then, with a cry, I suddenly expose my face to view,
  And you should hear him laugh and crow when I say "Booh!"

  Sometimes the rascal tries to make believe that he is scared,
  And really, when I first began, he stared, and stared, and stared;
  And then his under lip came out and farther out it came,
  Till mamma and the nurse agreed it was a "cruel shame"--
  But now what does that same wee, toddling, lisping baby do
  But laugh and kick his little heels when I say "Booh!"

  He laughs and kicks his little heels in rapturous glee, and then
  In shrill, despotic treble bids me "do it all aden!"
  And I--of course I do it; for, as his progenitor,
  It is such pretty, pleasant play as this that I am for!
  And it is, oh, such fun! and I am sure that we shall rue
  The time when we are both too old to play the game of "Booh!"


THE DUEL.

  The gingham dog and the calico cat
  Side by side on the table sat;
  'Twas half-past twelve, and (what do you think!)
  Nor one nor t'other had slept a wink!
  The old Dutch clock and the Chinese plate
  Appeared to know as sure as fate
  There was going to be a terrible spat.
  _(I wasn't there; I simply state
  What was told to me by the Chinese plate!)_

  The gingham dog went "bow-wow-wow!"
  The calico cat replied "mee-ow!"
  The air was littered, an hour or so,
  With bits of gingham and calico,
  While the old Dutch clock in the chimney-place
  Up with its hands before its face,
  For it always dreaded a family row!
  _(Now mind: I'm only telling you
  What the old Dutch clock declares is true!)_

[Illustration: ELIZABETH WINSLOW, TO WHOM THE POEM OF "THE DUEL" IS
DEDICATED.]

  The Chinese plate looked very blue,
  And wailed, "Oh, dear! what shall we do!"
  But the gingham dog and the calico cat
  Wallowed this way and tumbled that,
  Employing every tooth and claw--
  In the awfullest way you ever saw--
  And, oh! how the gingham and calico flew!
  _(Don't fancy I exaggerate--
  I got my news from the Chinese plate!)_

  Next morning, where the two had sat
  They found no trace of dog or cat;
  And some folks think unto this day
  That burglars stole that pair away!
  But the truth about the cat and pup
  Is this: they ate each other up!
  Now what do you really think of that!
  _(The old Dutch clock it told me so,
  And that is how I came to know.)_

[Illustration: IRVING WAY, JR., TO WHOM THE POEM OF "THE RIDE TO
BUMPVILLE" is DEDICATED.

From a photograph by Leonard, Topeka, Kansas.]


THE RIDE TO BUMPVILLE.

  Play that my knee was a calico mare
  Saddled and bridled for Bumpville;
  Leap to the back of this steed, if you dare,
  And gallop away to Bumpville!
  I hope you'll be sure to sit fast in your seat,
  For this calico mare is prodigiously fleet,
  And many adventures you're likely to meet
  As you journey along to Bumpville.

  This calico mare both gallops and trots
  While whisking you off to Bumpville;
  She paces, she shies, and she stumbles, in spots,
  In the tortuous road to Bumpville!
  And sometimes this strangely mercurial steed
  Will suddenly stop and refuse to proceed,
  Which, all will admit, is vexatious indeed,
  When one is en route to Bumpville!

  She's scared of the cars when the engine goes "Toot!"
  Down by the crossing at Bumpville;
  You'd better look out for that treacherous brute
  Bearing you off to Bumpville!
  With a snort she rears up on her hindermost heels,
  And executes jigs and Virginia reels--
  Words fail to explain how embarrassed one feels
  Dancing so wildly to Bumpville.
  It's bumpytybump and it's jiggytyjog,
  Journeying on to Bumpville;
  It's over the hilltop and down through the bog
  You ride on your way to Bumpville;
  It's rattletybang over boulder and stump,
  There are rivers to ford, there are fences to jump,
  And the corduroy road it goes bumpytybump,
  Mile after mile to Bumpville!

  Perhaps you'll observe it's no easy thing
  Making the journey to Bumpville,
  So I think, on the whole, it were prudent to bring
  An end to this ride to Bumpville;
  For, though she has uttered no protest or plaint,
  The calico mare must be blowing and faint--
  What's more to the point, I'm blowed if I ain't!
  So play we have got to Bumpville.

[Illustration: KATHERINE KOHLSAAT. "TO HER," WROTE MR. FIELD ON THE
PHOTOGRAPH, "THE HUSH-A-BY SONG ENTITLED 'SO, SO, ROCK-A-BY SO,' IS
DEDICATED."]


SO, SO, ROCK-A-BY SO!

  So, so, rock-a-by so!
  Off to the garden where dreamikins grow;
  And here is a kiss on your winkyblink eyes,
  And here is a kiss on your dimpledown cheek,
  And here is a kiss for the treasure that lies
  In a beautiful garden way up in the skies
  Which you seek.
  Now mind these three kisses wherever you go--
  So, so, rock-a-by so!

  There's one little fumfay who lives there, I know,
  For he dances all night where the dreamikins grow;
  I send him this kiss on your droopydrop eyes.
  I send him this kiss on your rosyred cheek.
  And here is a kiss for the dream that shall rise
  When the fumfay shall dance in those far-away skies
  Which you seek.
  Be sure that you pay those three kisses you owe--
  So, so, rock-a-by so!

  And, by-low, as you rock-a-by go,
  Don't forget mother who loveth you so!
  And here is her kiss on your weepydeep eyes,
  And here is her kiss on your peachypink cheek,
  And here is her kiss for the dreamland that lies
  Like a babe on the breast of those far-away skies
  Which you seek--
  The blinkywink garden where dreamikins grow--
  So, so, rock-a-by so!

[Illustration: PARK YENOWINE, "THE YOUNG GENTLEMAN," WROTE MR. FIELD
ON THE PHOTOGRAPH, "TO WHOM 'SEEIN' THINGS AT NIGHT' IS DEDICATED."

From a photograph by Stein, Milwaukee.]


SEEIN' THINGS.

  I ain't afeard uv snakes, or toads, or bugs, or worms, or mice,
  An' things 'at girls are skeered uv I think are awful nice!
  I'm pretty brave, I guess; an' yet I hate to go to bed,
  For when I'm tucked up warm an' snug an' when my prayers are said,
  Mother tells me "Happy dreams!" and takes away the light,
  An' leaves me lyin' all alone an' seein' things at night!

  Sometimes they're in the corner, sometimes they're by the door,
  Sometimes they're all a-standin' in the middle uv the floor;
  Sometimes they are a-sittin' down, sometimes they're walkin' round
  So softly an' so creepy-like they never make a sound!
  Sometimes they are as black as ink, an' other times they're white--
  But the color ain't no difference when you see things at night!

  Once, when I licked a feller 'at had just moved on our street,
  An' father sent me up to bed without a bite to eat,
  I woke up in the dark an' saw things standin' in a row,
  A-lookin' at me cross-eyed an' p'intin' at me--so!
  Oh, my! I wuz so skeered that time I never slep' a mite--
  It's almost alluz when I'm bad I see things at night!

  Lucky thing I ain't a girl, or I'd be skeered to death!
  Bein' I'm a boy, I duck my head an' hold my breath;
  An' I am, oh! _so_ sorry I'm a naughty boy, an' then
  I promise to be better an' I say my prayers again!
  Gran'ma tells me that's the only way to make it right
  When a feller has been wicked an' sees things at night!

  An' so, when other naughty boys would coax me into sin,
  I try to skwush the Tempter's voice 'at urges me within;
  An' when they's pie for supper, or cakes 'at 's big an' nice;
  I want to--but I do not pass my plate f'r them things twice!
  No, ruther let Starvation wipe me slowly out o' sight
  Than I should keep a-livin' on an' seein' things at night!




[Illustration: THE SABINE WOMEN. FROM A PAINTING BY DAVID.

The legend of the Sabine women is familiar. In the early days of Rome,
Romulus, the city's founder and first king, finding his subjects much
lacking in wives, invited the Sabines, a neighboring people, into the
city for a feast and games; and in the midst of the sport, he and his
followers seized the Sabine mothers and daughters by force of arms,
and married them out of hand. David's picture represents the seizure.
Classical subjects were especially preferred by David and his school.]




A CENTURY OF PAINTING.

NOTES BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL.--THE ART OF FRANCE IN THE BEGINNING
OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.--DAVID AND HIS FOLLOWERS.

BY WILL H. LOW.


When the potter's daughter of remote antiquity first drew the incised
line around her lover's shadow cast upon the wall by the accomplice
sun, art had its birth. Before that time primitive man had
endeavored--with who knows what desire to leave behind him some trace
of his passage upon earth--to make upon bones rude tracings of
his surroundings. The proof of the universality of art is in these
manifestations, of which the logical outcome was the complete and
splendid art of Greece. Through the sequence of Byzantine art we
come to Giotto, who, a shepherd's son under the skies of Italy, was
reinspired at the source of nature, and became the first painter as
we to-day know painting. From Giotto descends in direct line the great
family of artists who, in the service of the spiritual and temporal
sovereigns of the earth, shed illustration upon their craft and
undying lustre on their names until the old order, changing, giving
way to the new, enfranchised art in the great upheaval of the latter
part of the eighteenth century.

It is well, in order to understand the position in which this great
revolution left art, to briefly consider the conditions preceding
it. Painting, up to the end of the seventeenth century, had been
essentially the handmaiden of religion; and religion in its turn had
been so closely allied to the state that, when declining faith let
down the barriers, art took for the first time its place among the
liberal professions whose first duty is to find in the necessities
of mankind a reason for their existence. Small wonder, then, that,
accustomed to be fostered and encouraged, to be held aloof from the
material necessity of earning their daily bread, the artists of this
period sought protection from the only class which in those days
had the leisure to appreciate or the fortune to encourage them. The
people, the "general public," as we say to-day, did not exist, except
as a mass of patient workers in the first part, as a clamorous rabble
demanding its rights in the latter part, of the century. Hence the
patronage of art, its very existence, depended on the pleasure of the
nobility, and naturally enough its themes were measured according to
the tastes of its patrons. Much that was charming was produced, but
never before did art portray its epoch with such great limitations.
The persistent blindness to the signs and portents gathering thick
about them which characterized the higher classes of the time, may be
felt in its art; of the great outside world, of the hungry masses so
soon to rise in rebellion, nothing is seen. One may walk through the
palaces at Versailles, may search through the pictures of the epoch in
the Louvre, or linger at Sans Souci in Potsdam--where Frederick filled
his house with sculptured duchesses in classical costume playing
at Diana, and covered his walls with Watteaus and his ceilings with
decorations by Pesne, a less worthy Frenchman--and remain in complete
ignorance of hungry Jacques, who, with pike-staff and guillotine, was
so soon to change all that and usher in the period of the Revolution,
Before the evil day dawned for the gilded gentry of France, however,
the British colonies in America, influenced by the teachings of the
precursors of the French Revolution, and aided by their isolation,
were to establish their independence.

[Illustration: JACQUES LOUIS DAVID AS A YOUNG MAN. FROM A PAINTING BY
HIMSELF.

The exact date of this picture is unknown; but it was, presumably,
painted before 1775, when David, having received the Prix de Rome,
went to Italy for the first time. It was given to the Louvre, where it
now is, by the painter Eugene Isabey in 1852; David had presented it
to the elder Isabey, also a painter.]

It was undoubtedly at this time, when revolt was in the air and man
was preoccupied with his primal right to liberty of existence, that
art was given the bad name of a luxury. Until its long prostitution
throughout the seventeenth century, its mission had been noble; but
now, coincident to the fall of the old _régime_, the people, from an
ignorance which was more their misfortune than their fault, confounded
art with luxuries more than questionable, in which their whilom
superiors had indulged while they lacked bread. With the curious
assumption of Spartan virtue which rings with an almost convincing
sound of true metal through so many of the resolutions passed by the
National Convention of France, in the days following the holocaust of
the Reign of Terror, there was serious debate as to whether pictures
and statues were to be permitted to exist or their production
encouraged.

This debate must have fallen strangely on the ears of one of the
members of the Convention, who had already made his power as an artist
felt, and who was from that time for more than forty years to be the
directing influence, not only of French art, but of painting on the
Continent in general. This man, Jacques Louis David, in point of fact
was soon practically to demonstrate to his colleagues that art had
as its mission other aims than those followed by the painters of the
preceding generations. It fell that Lepelletier, one of the members of
the Convention, was assassinated, and David's brush portrayed him as
he lay dead; and the picture, being brought into the legislative hall,
moved the entire assembly to a conviction that the art of the painter
struck a human chord which vibrated deep in the heart of man.

[Illustration: MICHEL GÉRARD AND HIS FAMILY. FROM A PAINTING BY DAVID.

Michel Gérard was a member of the National Assembly, the body which
ruled France in the first years of the Revolution, from 1789 to 1791.
The picture represents him in the midst of his family, attired with
the simplicity affected by the Revolutionary leaders at that time.]

But a little later, when Marat, "the Friend of Man," was stricken
down, a voice rose in the Convention, "Where art thou, David?" And
again, responding to the call, he painted the picture of the dead
demagogue lying in his bath, his pen in hand, a half-written screed on
a rude table improvised by placing a board across the tub; and again
the picture, more eloquent, more explanatory of character and of
epoch than any written page of history, was a convincing argument that
painting was not a plaything.

Born August 21, 1748, a man over fifty years of age when this century
commenced, David may yet be considered entirely our own; for the ideas
of his country, despite minor influences that have affected modern
art, have prevailed in the art of all other countries, and these
principles were largely formulated by him. France has been throughout
this century the only country which has steadfastly encouraged art,
with a system of education unsurpassed in any epoch, and by the
maintenance of a standard which, however rebellious at times, every
serious artist has been and is obliged to acknowledge. A cousin--or,
as some authorities have it, a grand-nephew--of Boucher (the artist
who best typifies the frivolity of the art of the eighteenth century,
so that there is grim humor in the thought that this iconoclast was of
his blood), David was twenty-seven years of age when, in 1775, he won
the Prix de Rome, which enabled him to go to Italy for four years at
the expense of the government. He was the pupil of Vien, a painter
whose chief merit it was to have inspired his pupil with a hatred of
the frivolous Pompadour art of the epoch; and David only obtained the
coveted prize after competing five successive years. It is instructive
to learn that of this first sojourn at Rome almost nothing remains in
the way of painting; for the young artist, endowed with the patience
which is, according to Goethe, synonomous with genius, devoted all his
time to drawing from the antique.

It was here and during this time, doubtless, that he formed his
conviction that painting of the highest type must conform to classical
tradition--that all nature was to be remoulded in the form of antique
sculpture. But it was also at this time, and owing to his stern
apprenticeship to the study of form, that he acquired the mastery of
drawing which served him so well when in the presence of nature; and
with no other preoccupation than to reproduce his model, he painted
the people of his time and produced his greatest works. For by a
strange yet not unprecedented contradiction, David's fame to-day
rests, not upon the great classical pictures which were the admiration
of his time and by which he thought to be remembered, but on the
portraits which, with his mastery of technical acquirement, he painted
with surprising truth and reality.

The time was propitious, however, for David. France, the seeds of
revolution germinating in its soil, looked upon the Republic of Rome
as the type from which a system could be evolved that would usher in
a new day of virtuous government; and when, after a second visit to
Rome, David returned home with a picture representing the oath of the
Horatii, Paris received him with open arms. The picture was exhibited,
and viewed by crowds, burning, doubtless, in their turn to have
weapons placed in their hands with which to conquer their liberties.
This was in 1786; but years after, in the catalogue of the Salon
of 1819, we read this note: "The Oath of the Horatii, the first
masterpiece which restored to the French school of painting the purity
of antique taste."

At the outbreak of the Revolution David abandoned painting; and
on January 17, 1793, as a member of the Convention, voted for the
execution of Louis XVI. It was during this period that were painted
his pictures of Lepelletier and Marat, in which his cold, statuesque,
and correct manner was revivified and warmed to life--paradoxically
enough, to paint death. A friend of Robespierre, he was carried down
at the overthrow of the "little lawyer from Arras," and imprisoned
in the Luxembourg. His wife--who had left him at the outset of his
political life, horrified at the excesses of the time--now rejoined
him in his misfortune; and inspired by her devotion, David made the
first sketch of the Sabine women.

Released from prison October 26, 1795, he returned to his art; and
in 1800 the Sabines was exhibited in a room in the Louvre, where it
remained for more than five years, during which time it constantly
attracted visitors, and brought to the painter in entrance fees more
than thirteen thousand dollars. Early in the career of Napoleon, David
had attracted his attention; and he had vainly endeavored to induce
the artist to accompany him on the Egyptian campaign. On the accession
of Napoleon as Emperor, therefore, we find in the Salon catalogues,
"Monsieur David, first painter to his Imperial Majesty," in place of
plain "Citizen David" of the Revolutionary years.

Napoleon ordered from David four great paintings. The Coronation and
the Distribution of Flags alone were painted when the overthrow of the
Empire, and the loyalty of David to his imperial patron, caused him to
be exiled in 1816. He went to Brussels, where, on December 29, 1825,
he died. The Bourbons, masters of France, refused to allow his body to
be brought back to his country; but Belgium gave him a public funeral,
after which he was laid to rest in the Cathedral of Brussels.

[Illustration: POPE PIUS VII. FROM A PAINTING FROM LIFE BY DAVID, NOW
IN THE LOUVRE.

Pius VII. was the Pope who, in 1804, consecrated Napoleon I. as
Emperor of France. Later he opposed Napoleon's aggressions, and was
imprisoned for it, first in Italy and afterwards in France. In 1814
he recovered his freedom and his dominions, temporal as well as
spiritual. The above picture is, perhaps, the best example of what may
be termed the official portrait (as the preceding picture is of the
familiar portrait) of David. It was painted in 1805, in the apartment
assigned to the Pope in the Tuileries.]

This dominant artistic influence of France in the first quarter of
this century is not entirely extinguished to-day. The classical spirit
has never been entirely absent from any intellectual manifestation of
the French; but in David and his pupils it was carried to an extremity
against which the painters of the next generation were to struggle
almost hopelessly. Time, which sets all things right, has placed
David in his proper place; and while to-day we may admire the immense
knowledge of the man as manifested in the great classical pictures,
like the Horatii, the Sabines, or the Leonidas at Thermopylæ,
we remain cold before their array of painted statues. His
portraits--Marat, the charming sketch of Madame Recamier, his own
portrait as a young man, the group of Michel Gérard and his family,
and the Pope Pius VII.--give the touch of nature which is needed to
kindle the fire of humanity in this man of iron.

[Illustration: JUSTICE AND DIVINE VENGEANCE PURSUING CRIME. FROM A
PAINTING BY PRUD'HON.

This picture was painted for the Criminal Court of the Palace of
Justice in Paris. At the time of the Restoration in 1816 the picture
was replaced by a crucifix, and removed to the Luxembourg gallery,
where it remained until 1823, when it was placed in the Louvre. It is
considered Prud'hon's masterpiece.]

It is as though nature had wished a contrast to this coldly
intellectual type that there should have existed at the same time
a painter who, seeking at the same inexhaustible fountain-head of
classicism, found inspiration for an art almost morbid in excess of
sentiment. Pierre Prud'hon was born at Cluny in Burgundy, April 4,
1758, the son of a poor mason who, dying soon after the boy's birth,
left him to the care of the monks of the Abbey of Cluny. The pictures
decorating the monastery visibly affecting the youth, the Bishop of
Macon placed him under the tuition of one Desvoges, who directed
the school of painting at Dijon. Here his progress was rapid, but at
nineteen the too susceptible youth married a woman whose character and
habits were such that his life was rendered unhappy thenceforward.

In 1780 Prud'hon went to Paris to prosecute his studies; and there,
two years after, was awarded a prize, founded by his province, which
enabled him to go to Rome. It is characteristic of the man that, in
the competition for this prize, he was so touched by the despair of
one of his comrades competing with him that he repainted completely
his friend's picture--with such success that it was the friend to
whom the prize was awarded, and who, but for a tardy awakening of
conscience, would have gone to Rome in his place.

The judgment rectified, Prud'hon went to Rome, where he stayed seven
years, studying Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, and above all Correggio,
whose influence is manifest in his work, and returned to Paris in
1789. Unknown, and timid by nature, he attracted little attention, and
for some years gained his living by designing letter-heads, visiting
cards, which were then of an ornate description, and the many trifles
which constitute a present resource to the unsuccessful painter even
to-day.

[Illustration: THE ASSUMPTION OF THE VIRGIN. FROM A PAINTING BY
PRUD'HON.

This picture was ordered by the Emperor Napoleon for the chapel of
the Tuileries. It was exhibited in the Salon of 1819, and, after the
Revolution of 1848, was removed from the Tuileries to the Louvre,
where it has since remained.]

It was not until 1796 that some of the charming drawings which he had
made commenced to attract attention. A series of designs illustrating
Daphnis and Chloe, for the publishing house of Didot _ainé_,
were particularly noticeable; and through this work he made the
acquaintance of M. Frochot, by whose influence he received a
commission for a decoration for the palace of St. Cloud, which is now
placed in the Louvre.

[Illustration: HECTOR AND ANDROMACHE. FROM A DRAWING BY PRUD'HON.

This charming drawing, which forms part of the collection in the
Louvre, is a study for a projected painting, and is, by its grace of
line and composition, peculiarly typical of the painter. Hector, about
to depart for his combat with Ajax, and having bidden farewell to
Andromache, his wife, desires to embrace his son. But the child,
frightened at the emotion of which he is witness, takes refuge in his
mother's arms.]

Life now became somewhat easier, and in 1803--having long been
separated from his wife--a talented young woman, Mlle. Mayer, became
his pupil, and relations of a more tender character were established.
The pictures of Mlle. Mayer are influenced by her master to a degree
that makes them minor productions of his own; and her unselfish,
though unconsecrated, devotion to him makes up the sum of the little
happiness which he may have had.

In 1808 Prud'hon's picture of Justice and Divine Vengeance pursuing
Crime was ordered for the Palace of Justice, and was shown at the
Salon of that year, where the presence of David's Sabines and its
influence as shown in many of the productions of his pupils were not
enough to rob Prud'hon of a legitimate success, and the cross of the
Legion of Honor was accorded him. The Assumption of the Virgin was
exhibited in 1819; but before that Prud'hon had been made a member of
the Institute, and (it passed for a distinction) drawing-master to the
Empress Marie Louise.

Many pictures, all characterized by a subtile charm, were produced
during this happy period; but in 1821 Mlle. Mayer, preyed upon by her
false position, committed suicide, and Prud'hon lingered in continual
sorrow until February 16, 1823, when he died. The work of Prud'hon
covers a wide range, of which not the least important are the drawings
which he made with a lavish hand. As has been observed, he was a true
child of his time, and the classic influence is strongly felt in his
work; but translated through his temperament, it is no longer lifeless
and cold. It is eloquent of the early ages of the world, when life was
young and maturity and age bore the impress of a simple life, little
perplexed by intricate problems of existence. Throughout his work,
in the recreation of the myths of antiquity or in the rarer
representation of Christian legend, his style is sober and
dignified--as truly classic as that of David; but permeating it all
is the indescribable essence of beauty and youth, the reflection,
undoubtedly, of a man who, rarely fortunate, capable of grave
mistakes, has nevertheless left much testimony to the love and esteem
in which he was held.

François Gérard, one of the many faithful followers of David, was born
May 4, 1770, at Rome, where his father had gone in the service of the
ambassador of France. He went to France in his twelfth year, and at
sixteen was enrolled in the school of David. As a docile pupil he
entered the competition for the Roman prize in 1789; but Girodet
having obtained the first place, a second prize was awarded, and the
next year the death of his father prevented him from finishing his
competition picture; so that he is one of the exceptions amongst
David's pupils, inasmuch as he did not obtain the Prix de Rome. In
1790, however, he accompanied his mother, who was an Italian, to
her native country. But his sojourn there was short, as in 1793
he solicited the influence of David to save him from the general
conscription; which was done by naming him a member of the
Revolutionary tribunal. By taking refuge in his studio and feigning
illness, he avoided the exercise of his judicial functions; and the
storm passing away, he exhibited in 1795 a picture of Belisarius which
attracted attention.

[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG MAN. FROM A PAINTING BY PRUD'HON,
IN THE LOUVRE.]

In 1806 Napoleon made him the official portrait painter attached
to his court, and ordered the picture of the battle of Austerlitz,
finished in 1810. This and indeed all of Gérard's pictures are marked
by all the defects of David's methods, and lack the virile quality of
his master. His portraits, however, have many qualities of grace and
good taste, and his success in France was somewhat analogous to that
of Lawrence in England. Under the Restoration his vogue continued; in
1819 he was given the title of baron; and, dying in Paris on January
11, 1837, he left as his legacy to the art of his time no less
than twenty-eight historical pictures, many of great dimensions,
eighty-seven full-length portraits, and over two hundred smaller
portraits, representing the principal men and women of his time. The
portraits of the Countess Regnault de Saint-Jean-d'Angely and of the
Princess Visconti are both excellent specimens of the work of this
estimable painter.

[Illustration: PRUD'HON. FROM A PEN DRAWING BY HIMSELF.]

Of the pictures which testify to the industry and talent of
Louis-Léopold Boilly, who was born at La Bassée, near Lille, on July
5, 1761, the Louvre possesses but one specimen; namely, the Arrival of
a Diligence before the coach-office in Paris. This is undoubtedly due
to the fact that with the preoccupation of the public mind with the
events of the time, and the prevailing taste for great historical
pictures, Boilly's art, so sincere and so intimate in character, was
underestimated. It is certainly not due to any lack of industry on the
part of the painter. Even at the age of eleven years he undertook to
paint, for a religious fraternity of his native town, two pictures
representing the miracles of St. Roch. These still exist, and they are
said to be meritorious. His facility in seizing the resemblance of
his sitter was evidently native, for when only thirteen years of age,
without instruction of any kind, he left his parents, and established
himself as a portrait painter first at Douai and afterwards at Arras.
In 1786 he went to Paris, where he lived until his death. Here
he painted a great number of pictures of small size, representing
familiar scenes of the streets and of the homes of Paris, and an
incredible number of portraits.

[Illustration: THE PRINCESS VISCONTI. FROM A PAINTING BY
FRANÇOIS-PASCAL-SIMON (BARON) GÉRARD.

The picture gives an interesting study of the costume of the First
Empire, and is a work conceived in the style of the time when the
recent publication of "Corinne" by Madame de Staël had influenced the
popular taste. The original painting is now in the Louvre.]

A valiant craftsman, happy in his work, following no school but that
of nature, careless of official honor (which came to him only when,
late in life, on the demand of the Academy, the government accorded
him the cross of the Legion of Honor in 1833), his life was
uneventful. But his little pictures pleased the people who saw
themselves so truthfully depicted, and to-day they are more highly
esteemed than are the works of many of his at-the-time esteemed
contemporaries. He painted for seventy-two years, produced more
than five thousand portraits, an incredible number of pictures and
drawings, and died, his brush in hand, on January 5, 1845. The
little picture of the Arrival of a Diligence presents, with exquisite
truthfulness, a Paris unlike the brilliant city of our day, the
Paris where Arthur Young in his travels in 1812 notes the absence of
sidewalks; a city inhabited by slim ladies dressed _à la Grecque_, and
by high-stocked gentlemen content to travel by post. It is a canvas of
more value than the pretentious and tiresome historical compositions
of the time, and suggests the reflection that many of the David pupils
might have been better employed in putting their scientific accuracy
of drawing to the service of rendering the life which they saw about
them, instead of producing the arid stretches of academy models posing
as Hector or Romulus.

Guillaume-Guillon Lethière, a painter in whose veins there was an
admixture of negro blood, would hardly have echoed the sentiments
of this last paragraph, as he lived and worked in the factitious
companionship of the Greeks and Romans. So clearly, however, does the
temperament of a painter inspire the character of his work that we
may be glad that this was the case; for, of his school, Lethière alone
infuses into his classicism something of the turbulent life which
marked his own character.

[Illustration: THE COUNTESS REGNAULT DE SAINT-JEAN-D'ANGELY. FROM A
PAINTING BY BARON GÉRARD, IN THE LOUVRE.]

Born in Guadeloupe January 10, 1760, coming to Paris when very young,
he took the second prize of Rome in 1784, with a picture of such merit
that the regulation was infringed and he was given leave to go to Rome
at the same time as the winner of the first prize. His first picture
was exhibited in the form of a sketch in the Salon of 1801; and not
until eleven years after was the great canvas of Brutus Condemning his
Sons to Death shown at the Salon of 1812. The other picture by which
he is best known, the Death of Virginia, is, like the preceding, in
the Louvre; and though the sketch of this was exhibited in 1795, the
picture only took definite form in 1828.

[Illustration: THE ARRIVAL OF A DILIGENCE. FROM A PAINTING BY
LOUIS-LÉOPOLD BOILLY.

This picture, now in the Louvre, is the only example of this artist's
work shown there, and is particularly interesting as showing the Paris
of 1803, when the streets had no sidewalks. The scene is laid at
the place of arrival and departure of the coaches which from Paris
penetrated into all parts of France, and were the only means of
transport or communication.]

Meanwhile Lethière had travelled much in England and Spain, and had
been for ten years director of the French School of Fine Arts in Rome.
His life was adventurous, and it is told of him that he was often
involved in quarrels, and fought a number of duels with military
officers because, humble civilian that he was, he yet dared to wear
the mustache! In 1822 he returned definitely to Paris, where he was
made a member of the Institute and professor in the School of Fine
Arts, and where he died April 21, 1832. The quality of his work is
well characterized by Charles Blanc, who writes of it "as producing
the effect of a tragedy sombre and pathetic."

The picture of the Burial of Atala, from Châteaubriand's well-known
story, is interesting as showing the methods of the David school
applied to subjects of less heroic mould than the master and his
disciples were wont to treat. Anne-Louis Girodet de Roucy Trioson,
born at Montargis January 3, 1767, was one of the most convinced
adherents of his master David; and while competing for the Prize
of Rome, which he won in 1789, was accustomed each morning before
beginning his work to station himself in front of David's picture of
the Horatii as before a shrine, invoking its happy influence. Such
devotion received its official reward, and after five years spent
in Rome his great (and tiresome) picture of the Deluge met with
the greatest favor, and in 1810 was awarded the medal for the best
historical picture produced in the preceding decade. The Burial of
Atala, painted in 1808, is, however, a work of charm in composition
and sentiment; and though in color it is dry and uninteresting, is
not unworthy of the popularity which it has enjoyed from the vantage
ground of the Louvre for more than four-score years. Girodet died in
Paris, December 9, 1824, after having received all the official honors
which France can award to a painter.

The charming face of Marie-Anne-Elizabeth Vigée-Lebrun, who, with
the arms of her daughter encircling her, smiles on us here, was
undoubtedly not painted in this century, as the painter was born
in Paris April 16, 1755, and it is as a young mother that she has
represented herself. But as its author lived until March 30, 1842,
she should undoubtedly figure among the painters of this century. From
early girlhood until old age,

    "_Lebrun, de la beauté le peintre et le modèle._"

as Laharpe sang, was, though largely self-taught, a formidable
concurrent to painters of the sterner sex. Married when very young
to Lebrun, a dealer in pictures and critic of art, a pure marriage of
convention, she left France shortly before the Revolution, and went
to Italy. Before her departure she was high in favor at the court, and
painted no less than twenty portraits of Marie Antoinette.

[Illustration: BRUTUS CONDEMNING HIS SONS TO DEATH. FROM A PAINTING BY
LETHIÈRE.

Brutus led in overthrowing the tyranny of Tarquin the Proud and
establishing a republic in Rome. He was then elected one of the
two consuls. His two sons were detected in a conspiracy to restore
Tarquin, and he, as consul, himself condemned them to death.]

[Illustration: THE BURIAL OF ATALA. FROM A PAINTING BY GIRODET, IN THE
LOUVRE.

Atala, the heroine of a romance by Châteaubriand, was the daughter of
a North American Indian chief, passionately in love with the chief
of another tribe, with whom she fled into the desert. But having been
religiously vowed to virginity by her mother, she remains faithful to
the vow, and finally in despair poisons herself.]

[Illustration: MADAME LEBRUN AND HER DAUGHTER. FROM A PAINTING BY
MADAME LEBRUN HERSELF.

This picture, painted for a private patron, passed, at the period of
the French Revolution, into the possession of the French nation, and
is now in the Louvre. There is in the Louvre also another by Madame
Lebrun, representing herself and her daughter, one which the artist
bequeathed to the Louvre at her death, in 1842. Of the two, while
both are charming, the one here printed represents the painter at her
best.]

Fortune favored her in Italy, whence she went to Vienna, Prague,
Dresden, and Berlin. In each and every capital the same success,
due to her talent, beauty, and amiability, followed her; and at last
arriving in St. Petersburg, she remained there until 1801, when she
returned to Paris. Some time after, she visited England, where she
remained three years, and then returned by way of Holland to France
in 1809. The Academy of France and the academies of all other European
countries admitted her to membership.

Indefatigable as a worker during her long career, she produced an
immense number of portraits; and while she painted comparatively few
subject pictures, she arranged her models in so picturesque a fashion
that, as in the example here given, her portraits have great charm of
composition. With a virile grasp of form, tempered though it be with
grace, Madame Lebrun offers an interesting example of woman's work
in art; and, while she has nothing to concede to the painters of her
time, is no less interesting as showing that by force of native
talent the woman of the early part of the century had in her power the
conquest of nearly all the desired rights of the New Woman. She has
left extremely interesting memoirs of her life, written in her old
age, and there are many anecdotes bearing testimony to her wit. One of
these goes back to the time when Louis XVIII., then a youth, enlivened
the sittings for his portrait by singing, quite out of tune. "How do
you think I sing?" inquired he. "Like a prince," responded the amiable
artist.

With Antoine Jean Gros we come to the last and the greatest of the
pupils of David. Born in Paris March 16, 1771, he competed but once,
in 1792, for the Prix de Rome, was unsuccessful, but undertook the
voyage thither on his own slender resources the next year. Italy was
in a troubled state--he who troubled all Europe in the early years
of the century being there at the head of his army; and in 1796, at
Genoa, Gros attracted the attention of Madame Bonaparte. It was she
who proposed that Gros should paint Napoleon; and Gros consequently
went to Milan, and after the battle of Arcole painted the hero
carrying the tricolor across the bridge at the head of his grenadiers.
The picture pleased Bonaparte, who had it engraved, and gave Gros a
commission to collect for the Louvre the chief artistic treasures of
Italy. These functions occupied him until 1801, during which period,
however, he executed a number of successful portraits.

Returning to Paris after nine years, he painted the Hospital at
Jaffa, representing Napoleon visiting the fever-stricken soldiers.
The success of this picture, exhibited in 1804, was very great; and
it remains Gros's best title to remembrance. In it is something of
the reality poetized and seen through the eyes of an artist which
characterizes the work of Eugene Delacroix.

The force of David, however, was too great for Gros; at fifty years of
age we find him demanding counsel of the master, who sternly bids him
leave his "futile subjects," and devote his time to great historical
epochs of the past. When David was sent into exile in 1816, it was to
Gros that he confided the direction of his school; and this task, and
the production of immense canvases like the Battle of the Pyramids,
filled his life. The picture here reproduced, the Visit of Charles the
Fifth and Francis the First to the Tombs of the Kings in the Cathedral
of St. Denis, was painted in 1812.

[Illustration: FRANCIS I., KING OF FRANCE, AND CHARLES V., EMPEROR OF
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE, VISITING THE TOMBS OF THE FRENCH KINGS AT ST.
DENIS. FROM A PAINTING BY BARON GROS, IN THE LOUVRE.

Between 1520 and 1545 all Europe was kept in distress and turmoil by
a quarrel between Francis I. and Charles V., the chief subject of
contention being the duchy of Milan, which Charles held and Francis
claimed. Four separate wars were waged by Francis against Charles,
all of them unsuccessful. But their majesties had intervals of outward
friendship, and in one of these Francis invited Charles, then setting
out from Spain for the Low Countries, to pass through France and visit
him. The visit was duly paid, was one of great state and ceremony,
and from it is derived the incident portrayed in the above picture.
Francis is the figure in the centre; Charles, suited in black,
standing at his right.]

The revolt which was already making itself felt in French art was
a thorn in the flesh of the sensitive Gros. In vain were all the
artistic honors showered upon him. In 1824 he was made a baron; since
1816 he had been a member of the Institute; and the crosses of most of
the orders of Europe, and the medals of all the exhibitions were his.
Nevertheless, about him younger painters revolted. In his secret soul,
doubtless, he felt sympathy with their methods. But the commands of
the terrible old exile of Brussels were still in his ears.

Finally a portrait of King Charles X., the decorations in the Museum
of Sovereigns, and a picture exhibited in the Salon of 1835 were in
turn harshly criticized by the press, which looked with favor on the
younger men; and Gros, full of years, and of honors which had brought
fortune in their train, was found drowned in a little arm of the Seine
near Meudon, June 26, 1835. In despair he had taken his own life. With
him died David's greatest pupil and a part of David's influence. But
that portion of the teachings of the master most consonant with
French character is not without effect to-day. Less strong than in the
generation following David, absolutely extinct if we are to believe
the extremists among the men of to-day, it yet remains a leaven to the
fermenting mass of modern production. Perhaps its healthy influence
is the best monument to the man who "restored to France the purity of
antique taste."




[Illustration: JAMES G. BLAINE.

From a photograph by Handy, Washington.]




THE DEFEAT OF BLAINE FOR THE PRESIDENCY.

BY MURAT HALSTEAD.


The fame of Blaine does not decline, but increases and will endure.
It was not his destiny to fill the greater office created by our
Constitution, but with a distinction exceeding that of the majority of
Presidents, he is enrolled, with Clay, Webster, and Seward, among the
illustrious Secretaries of State. The defeat of James G. Blaine for
the Presidency in 1884 will rank among the memorable disappointments
and misfortunes of the people with that of Henry Clay, forty years
before.

Late in the week before the meeting of the Chicago National Republican
Convention in 1884, I received in Cincinnati a telegram from Mr.
Blaine requesting me to call on him in Washington, where he lived on
the opposite side of Lafayette Square from that of the celebrated
old house where he spent his last days. He was engaged on his "Twenty
Years in Congress." I called on him the day after his despatch reached
me, making haste, for I was about to go to Chicago; and he first said
he feared he had sent for me on an insufficient errand, and after
a moment's pause began to speak of the approaching convention, and
quickly used the expression--"I am alarmed."

[Illustration: MR. BLAINE IN 1891.

This is accounted one of the best portraits of Mr. Blaine in
existence. It is from a photograph taken at Bar Harbor in the autumn
of 1891 by Mr. A. von Mumm Schwartzenstein, then _Charge d'Affaires_
of the German Empire at Washington, and is here reproduced by the kind
permission of Mr. W.E. Curtis.]

"Concerning what are you frightened?" I inquired; and added: "You
surely are not afraid you are not going to be nominated?"

He responded with a flash of his eyes and a smile: "Oh, no; I am
afraid I shall be nominated, and have sent for you for that reason,
and want you to assist in preventing my nomination." I shook my head,
and Mr. Blaine asked: "Why not?"

I said I had not been so long in his confidence and known by his
friends to be of them, to venture upon such an enterprise as working
in opposition. If I should appear actively against him, no matter how
I presented the matter, the easy answer to any argument of mine would
be that I had relapsed into personal antagonism to him. I then said:
"I have not heard of this;" and asked: "Are there many who know that
you are against your candidacy?" He said he had talked freely to
that effect, and mentioned William Walter Phelps as one who was fully
acquainted with his views, and also Colonel Parsons, of the Natural
Bridge, Virginia, then in the house. I said: "Mr. Blaine, I think
it is too late. I have looked over the field, and your nomination is
almost certain--the drift is your way. Why precisely do you object,
and what exactly do you think should happen?" He replied in his
rapid way with much feeling, and I believe his very words were: "The
objection to my nomination is that I cannot be elected. With the South
solid against us we cannot succeed without New York, and I cannot
carry that State. There are factions there and influences before
voting and after voting, such that the party cannot count upon
success with me. I am sure of it--I have thought it all over, and my
deliberate judgment is as I tell you. I know, too, where I am strong
as well as where I am weak--and we might, if we should get into the
campaign with my name at the head of the ticket, think we were going
to win. We would get to believing it, perhaps, but we should miss it
in the end, if not by a great deal, just a little. With everything
depending on New York," he continued, "it would be a mistake to
nominate me. This is not new to me--I have weighed all the chances.
Besides"--and here he kindled--"why should we let the country go into
the hands of Democrats when we can name a ticket that is certain to be
elected--one that would sweep every Northern State?"

"What is it?" I asked.

The answer came with vivid animation: "William T. Sherman and Robert
T. Lincoln." This idea was instantly amplified. "The names of Sherman
and Lincoln put together would be irresistible. That ticket would
elect itself. We should have a campaign of marching and song. We need
the inspiration, and 'Marching Through Georgia' and 'We Are Coming,
Father Abraham,' would give it. We must not lose this campaign, and I
am alarmed by the prospect of losing it in my name."

"But," I interposed, "it is the report and the public opinion that
General Sherman would not consent to be a candidate; that he would
throw the party down that would nominate him. Why not try the other
Sherman?"

Mr. Blaine's response was that John Sherman would have the like
difficulty in carrying New York that he would have himself. The
element of military heroism was wanting. He had written to General
Sherman on the subject, and of course the General thought he could
not consent to be President--for that was what it amounted to--but his
reasoning was fallacious. If General Sherman had the question put to
him--whether to be President himself or turn the office over to the
Democratic party, with the Solid South dominant--he would see his duty
and do it, though his reluctance was real.

I said General Sherman could not consent to appear in competition with
his brother John at Chicago, though he had a funny way of looking
on John in West Point style as a "politician," and that was an
insuperable difficulty; and that, Mr. Blaine did not seem to have
thought of as a serious element in the case, but he realized the force
of it. I was anxious to hear more about the correspondence between
Blaine and General Sherman; but was only told that the letter to the
General was a call to consider that circumstances might arise, and
should do so, in which the General's sense of duty could be appealed
to, and be as strong as that to take up arms had been when the Union
demanded defenders.

[Illustration: MR. BLAINE AT HIS DESK IN THE STATE DEPARTMENT.

From a photograph by Miss F.B. Johnston.]

Arrived at Chicago, I soon ascertained that Mr. Blaine had been doing
a good deal of talking of the same kind I had heard, but he had
not been able to impress the more robust of those favorable to his
nomination with the view that he should be heeded. They insisted that
he was not wise, but timid; that he did not like war and would do too
much for peace; that he especially miscalculated when he said he could
not carry New York, for he was the very man who could carry it;
that his personal force was far beyond his own estimation; that his
intuitions were like those of a woman, but were not infallible; that
his singing the campaign was a fancy; that "Marching Through
Georgia" would wear out, and was of the stuff of dreams. Mr. Blaine's
accredited friends felt that things had gone too far to permit a
change to be contemplated. They were half mad at Blaine for his
Sherman and Lincoln proposal, which was confidentially in the air,
regarding it as not favorable to themselves. They said they could
carry the country more certainly with Blaine than Sherman, for Sherman
was an uncertain political quantity, and might turn out to be almost
the devil himself. Some of them said he would proclaim martial law and
annihilate the Constitution! They were sure the force of the celebrity
of General Sherman in a campaign had been overestimated by Blaine, who
had the caprice and high color in his imagination that produce
schemes too fine for success. In a word, Sherman and Lincoln were not
practical politicians. Blaine's idea was not politics, but poetry.
What they wanted was the magnetism and magic of Blaine. The country
was at any rate safely in the hands of the Republican party. They had
nearly lost the election because they had not nominated Blaine eight
years before, and won with Garfield because he was a Blaine man. The
wisdom of the Republican politicians was thus against Blaine's ticket
so far as it was known; and those favorable to President Arthur, John
Sherman, John A. Logan, and George F. Edmunds did not give the least
credit to the statement that Blaine did not want the nomination. His
rumored objection to making the race--of course the real reasons
were not known--was regarded as a mere "play" in politics, if not
altogether fantastic; and they pursued their own courses heedless of
the real conditions. There was a singular complication of errors of
judgment in the Blaine opposition. The friends of Arthur took the
complimentary resolutions from a majority of the States to mean his
nomination. In truth, the significance of that unanimity was quite
otherwise. Ohio was not solid for Sherman. It is a State that has been
very hard to manage in national conventions--was so in the time when
Chase was the Republican leader--divided in '60, nominating Lincoln,
and rarely presented a front without a flaw for a national candidate.
The energy of Logan's friends was not sufficiently supported to give
confidence. The reformers by profession and of prominence were for
Edmunds; and they were a body of men who had force, if judiciously
applied, to have carried the convention, provided they divested
themselves of the peculiarities of extreme elevation that prevent
efficiency. While they assumed to have soared above practical politics
and to abhor the ways of the "toughs" in championing candidates, they
subordinated their own usefulness to a sentiment that was limited to
a senator--Mr. Edmunds. It was clear at an early hour that the
nomination of Mr. Edmunds was impossible. He was put into the combat
by Governor Long with a splendid speech, and the mellow eloquence of
George William Curtis was for him, and Carl Schurz was a counsellor
who upheld the banner of the lawyer statesman of Vermont. The
conclusion was to stick to Edmunds; and they stuck until the last, and
frittered away their influence. They were in such shape they might,
by going in force, at a well-selected time and in a dramatic way, have
carried the convention with them. They could not, however, get their
own consent to go for Logan, or Arthur, or either of the Shermans; and
so Blaine was overruled and nominated.

He did a wonderful work in the campaign, and was himself apparently
satisfied at last that his apprehensions as to New York had been
unwarranted. Still his words came back to me often during the heat of
the summer and the fierce contest. "I cannot carry New York; we shall
lose it, perhaps by just a little--but we shall lose it;" and so we
did. As the vote was counted the plurality of Mr. Cleveland over Mr.
Blaine in the decisive State was one thousand and forty-seven. Gail
Hamilton says, in her "Life of Blaine," of the New York election, that
there was a plurality claimed on election day for Cleveland of
fifty thousand, and "the next day the figures came down to seventeen
thousand; then to twelve thousand; the next day to five thousand, and
at length dwindled to four hundred and fifty-six." The election was on
the 4th, and it was nearly two weeks before a decision was announced.
General Butler "openly proclaimed that the New York vote for himself
was counted to Cleveland." The "just a little" by which Blaine was
beaten was on the face of the returns one thousand and forty-seven,
and John Y. McKane was ten years afterward convicted of frauds that
were perpetrated as he willed, that amounted to thousands. There was
a fraud capacity in the machines of many times the plurality by which
Blaine was defeated, and there never was a rational doubt that it was
exerted. A change of six hundred votes would have given the Plumed
Knight the Presidency, and outside the Solid South he had a popular
majority, "leaving out the protested vote of New York and Brooklyn, of
nearly half a million." Mr. Blaine, when it became known that the New
York vote was held to be against him, and civil war was threatened
if the returns were rectified, telegraphed to friends asking their
opinion of the New York situation; and I had the honor to be one
consulted. My reply was that the New York influences that had
prevailed to cause the declaration of a plurality for Cleveland
would be sufficient to maintain that determination. Then came the
opportunity of those unkindly toward Mr. Blaine to charge him with
forcing himself on the Republican party and ruining it with his
reckless candidacies, and I thought the facts within my knowledge
should be given the public, and wrote to General Sherman, asking him
to allow me to publish the correspondence between himself and Blaine,
proving that the nomination, instead of being forced by Blaine for
himself, was forced upon him; and I wrote to Blaine also, to the same
effect. I received from the General the remarkable letters following:

GENERAL SHERMAN TO MR. HALSTEAD.

    912 GARRISON AVENUE,

    ST. LOUIS, MO., _November 17, 1884._

    DEAR HALSTEAD:--After my former letter, when I went to put the
    newspaper slip into my scrap-book, I discovered my mistake
    in attributing the article to the "Louisville" instead of the
    "London Times." My opinion is nevertheless not to contest the
    matter, as the real truth will manifest itself.[I]

    I think Arthur could have carried the Republicans past the
    last election[J]--but no man can tell what issues would have
    been made in case of his nomination. So the wisest conclusion
    is to accept gracefully the actual result, and to profit
    by the mistakes and accidents sure to attend the new
    administration, handicapped as it will surely be by the hot
    heads of the South. Truly yours,

    W.T. SHERMAN.


    912 GARRISON AVENUE,

    ST. LOUIS, MO., _November 21, 1884._

    DEAR HALSTEAD:--I have yours of the 19th. The letter of Blaine
    to me was meant as absolutely confidential, and of course I
    would not allow any person to see it without his consent. I
    am not sure that I would, even with his consent, because
    I believe the true policy is to look ahead and not behind.
    Blaine's letter without any answer would be incomplete, and
    surely I will not have my letter published, as it contained
    certain points purely personal which the public has no right
    to. New questions will arise, and these will give you plenty
    of occupation without raking up the past.

    Wishing you always all honor and fame, I am,

    Truly yours,

    W.T. SHERMAN.

The letters that passed between Blaine and Sherman have appeared
in Gail Hamilton's "Biography of Blaine," but have not commanded
attention according to their interest, because they have not
been framed by the relation of the circumstances that gave them
significance and that are supplied in this article.


MR. BLAINE TO GENERAL SHERMAN.

    (Confidential.)

    Strictly and absolutely so.

    WASHINGTON, D.C., _May 25, 1884._

    MY DEAR GENERAL:--This letter requires no answer. After
    reading it carefully, file it away in your most secret drawer,
    or give it to the flames.

    At the approaching convention in Chicago it is more than
    possible--it is indeed not improbable--that you may be
    nominated for the Presidency. If so you must stand your hand,
    accept the responsibility, and assume the duties of the place
    to which you will surely be chosen if a candidate. You must
    not look upon it as the work of the politicians. If it comes
    to you, it will come as the ground-swell of popular demand;
    and you can no more refuse than you could have refused to obey
    an order when you were a lieutenant in the army. If it comes
    to you at all, it will come as a call of patriotism. It would,
    in such an event, injure your great fame as much to decline it
    as it would for you to seek it. Your historic record, full
    as it is, would be rendered still more glorious by such an
    administration as you would be able to give the country. Do
    not say a word in advance of the convention, no matter who may
    ask you. You are with your friends, who will jealously guard
    your honor.

    Do not answer this.

    JAMES G. BLAINE.


GENERAL SHERMAN TO MR. BLAINE.

    ST. LOUIS, _May 28, 1884._

    HON. J.G. BLAINE.

    MY DEAR FRIEND:--I have received your letter of the 25th;
    shall construe it as absolutely confidential, not intimating
    even to any member of my family that I have heard from you;
    and though you may not expect an answer, I hope you will not
    construe one as unwarranted. I have had a great many letters
    from all points of the compass to a similar effect, one or
    two of which I have answered frankly; but the great mass
    are unanswered. I ought not to subject myself to the cheap
    ridicule of declining what is not offered; but it is only fair
    to the many really able men who rightfully aspire to the high
    honor of being President of the United States to let them know
    that I am not, and must not be construed as, a rival. In every
    man's life there occurs an epoch when he must choose his
    own career, and when he may not throw the responsibility,
    or tamely place his destiny in the hands of friends. Mine
    occurred in Louisiana when, in 1861, alone in the midst of a
    people blinded by supposed wrongs, I resolved to stand by the
    Union as long as a fragment of it survived to which to cling.
    Since then, through faction, tempest, war, and peace, my
    career has been all my family and friends could ask. We are
    now in a good home of our choice, with reasonable provision
    for old age, surrounded by kind and admiring friends, in a
    community where Catholicism is held in respect and veneration,
    and where my children will naturally grow up in contact
    with an industrious and frugal people. You have known and
    appreciated Mrs. Sherman from childhood, have also known each
    and all the members of my family, and can understand, without
    an explanation from me, how their thoughts and feelings should
    and ought to influence my action; but I will not even throw
    off on them the responsibility. I will not, in any event,
    entertain or accept a nomination as a candidate for President
    by the Chicago Republican convention, or any other convention,
    for reasons personal to myself. I claim that the Civil War,
    in which I simply did a man's fair share of work, so perfectly
    accomplished peace, that military men have an absolute right
    to rest, and to demand that the men who have been schooled in
    the arts and practice of peace shall now do their work equally
    well. Any senator can step from his chair at the Capitol into
    the White House, and fulfil the office of President with more
    skill and success than a Grant, Sherman or Sheridan, who were
    soldiers by education and nature, who filled well their office
    when the country was in danger, but were not schooled in
    the practices by which civil communities are, and should be,
    governed. I claim that our experience since 1865 demonstrates
    the truth of this my proposition. Therefore I say that
    "patriotism" does not demand of me what I construe as a
    sacrifice of judgment, of inclination, and of self-interest.
    I have my personal affairs in a state of absolute safety and
    comfort. I owe no man a cent, have no expensive habits
    or tastes, envy no man his wealth or power, [have] no
    complications or indirect liabilities, and would account
    myself a fool, a madman, an ass, to embark anew, at sixty-five
    years of age, in a career that may, at any moment, [become]
    tempest-tossed by the perfidy, the defalcation, the
    dishonesty, or neglect of any one of a hundred thousand
    subordinates utterly unknown to the President of the United
    States, not to say the eternal worriment by a vast host of
    impecunious friends and old military subordinates. Even as it
    is, I am tortured by the charitable appeals of poor distressed
    pensioners; but as President, these would be multiplied beyond
    human endurance. I remember well the experience of Generals
    Jackson, Harrison, Taylor, Grant, Hayes and Garfield, all
    elected because of their military services, and am warned, not
    encouraged, by their sad experiences. No--count me out. The
    civilians of the United States should, and must, buffet with
    this thankless office, and leave us old soldiers to enjoy the
    peace we fought for, and think we earned.

    With profound respect, your friend,

    W.T. SHERMAN.


[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF THE LETTER WRITTEN BY MR. BLAINE TO MR.
HALSTEAD JUST AFTER MR. BLAINE'S DEFEAT FOR THE PRESIDENCY IN 1884,
AND NEVER BEFORE PUBLISHED--THE SAME LETTER THAT IS EMBODIED IN THE
TEXT OF THIS ARTICLE ON PAGE 169.]

[Illustration: CONTINUATION OF FACSIMILE OF LETTER.]

[Illustration: CONTINUATION OF FACSIMILE OF LETTER.]

There is intrinsic evidence that these letters were not written with a
thought of possible publication. That which General Sherman says
about Catholicism could only have been told to a close and sympathetic
friend. Mrs. Sherman and Mr. Blaine were cousins, and their mothers
were Catholics. Mrs. Sherman was one whose devotion to the Church was
intense; and General Sherman could not endure the thought that her
religion should be subjected to such discussions as were certain to
arise in a Presidential campaign. She was a very noble and gifted
woman, and the happiness of herself and husband in their domestic life
was beautiful and elevated.

James G. Blaine was nearer the Presidency than any other man who did
not reach the office. It was by a very narrow margin that he
missed the nomination in Cincinnati in 1876; and the opposition he
encountered there from Republican editors was regretted by all of
them, because they believed when the storm ceased that he had been
accused excessively, sensationally, and maliciously, and condemned--by
those who did not appreciate his vindication--on evidence that was
indicated but not presented--on letters supposed to have been taken
from the original package, and that were not produced because they
never existed. The investigations were largely instigated and carried
on to continue agitation with the purpose to strike down a brilliant
man whose genius gave him almost incredible promotion, and to assail
him because he was lofty and aspiring. The personal fight that he made
in Congress when cruelly set upon was one of the most effective that
ever took place in a public body. A competent observer, who was a
spectator of the scene in the House when the Mulligan letters were
read, said as Blaine came down the aisle, the letters in his hand,
and called upon all the millions of his countrymen to be witnesses: "I
thought his fist was going right up through the dome." Unhappily, his
exciting experiences in the course of these fierce controversies, with
the conduct of his Cincinnati campaign, and the sultry weather, caused
his prostration, attended with hours of unconsciousness, just at
the critical time when the delegates were assembling in national
convention. The local influences; the Republican editorial antagonism;
the enthusiastic efforts for Bristow; the strenuous perseverance of
Morton of Indiana; the prestige of Conkling, backed with the high
favor of Grant; the solidity of Ohio for Hayes--all would have been
overwhelmed but for the incident of the fall of Blaine in a swoon at
the door of the church which he was in the habit of attending and that
he was about to enter with his wife. It is reasonable to believe,
if he had been the candidate that year, he could have carried the
election unequivocally, and that his administration would have vastly
strengthened the Republican party. It is due President Hayes, however,
to say that his administration of the great office was an era of good
for the country, and that he was succeeded by a Republican; but the
fact of a disputed Presidency had a far-reaching evil influence, and
prevented showing fair play in New York in 1884. Blaine lost in his
illness coincident with the Cincinnati convention the confidence of
the country in his firm health and strength, and that handicapped him
to his grave. Perhaps it is even more important that he lost faith
in himself as a strong man, and had almost a superstition that if he
became President it would be for him personally a fatality. And yet
he was intellectually a growing man for fifteen years after his
Cincinnati defeat. His greater works, his most influential ideas, the
full fruition of his gifts, were after that catastrophe.

Mr. Blaine was so strong and so weak, so delicate and so tenacious,
that he was as constant a puzzle to those who loved him as to his
enemies, to the best-informed as to the most ill-informed. Those
very near to him took the liberty of laughing at him about his two
overcoats, and his going to bed and sending for a doctor in the
afternoon, and getting off with gayety to the opera in the evening;
about an alleged indigestion followed by eating a confection that
would have tested the hardihood of a young candy-eater. One who
studied him with affection wrote of him that he had an association
of qualities giving at once sensitiveness and endurance, and we were
indebted to this for the faculties, the capacities, that made up
the man whose influence had been so remarkable and his popularity a
phenomenon. He was of fine sensibilities, and there was nothing on
earth or in the air that did not tell him something. He was like an
instrument of music that a breath would move to melody, and that was
ever in tune for any wind that blew, and yet had patient strength, and
wore like steel. He had a rare make-up of refinement and power, and
life was sweeter and brighter and more costly far to him than to the
ordinary man.

It was after his first and, as it turned out, final defeat for the
Presidency, in his earliest effort for the office, that his fame grew
splendid. His campaigning was fascinating, and his speeches, as the
years passed, took greater variety. In his tour when a candidate in
1884, his addresses were marvellous in aptitude and in a thousand
felicities. There was much said of the fact that he was not a lawyer,
and an affected superiority to him by gentlemen whose profession
permitted "fees," and there was a system of deprecation to the effect
that he only harangued, that he had neither originality nor grace. But
after Garfield's death and the retirement of the Secretary from the
Cabinet, he turned to writing history "as a resource," and his great
work is of permanent value to the country, while his Garfield oration
is one of the masterpieces of the highest rank; and there came
straight from his brain two far-flashing ideas--that of the union
of American nations, and to protect the policy of protection with
reciprocity--and in the two there is the manifestation of that
crowning glory of public life which enters the luminous atmosphere
of immortality--statesmanship. That he had not the opportunity of the
execution of these policies--of guiding and shaping their triumph--was
not his fault but his fate. Their time may be coming but slowly,
yet it surely will come. His zeal in behalf of making the protective
principle irresistible by associating it intimately with reciprocity,
was so strong that he grew impatient when others were tedious in
comprehension; and there was a story of his concluding a sharp
admonition to the laborers on the tariff schedules by "smashing his
new silk hat on a steam-heater in the committee-room." He was asked by
a friend who rode out with him to see the statue that he thought the
most accurate and impressive of all the likenesses of Lincoln and was
fond of driving to see, located in a park east of the Capitol--that
by Story--whether he had "smashed a new silk hat" on a steam-heater
on behalf of reciprocity; and he softly responded, "It was not a new
hat."

That Mr. Blaine was keenly disappointed when defeated for the
Presidency at Cincinnati, there is no doubt; and that he began then to
see that it was not his destiny to be President, is certain.

There is a great contrast in his favor in his manner of bearing this
disappointment with that of Clay and Webster under somewhat similar
circumstances. Clay was furious at the nomination of General William
Henry Harrison, and greeted with unmeasured denunciation those
responsible for that judicious act; and Webster was bitter when Taylor
and Scott were nominated in the first instance, but came, after a
time, grandly out of the clouds. It is an interesting coincidence that
Webster when Secretary of State was a candidate for the Presidential
nomination against his chief, President Fillmore, and died, on the
24th of October, 1852, a few months after Scott's triumph at Baltimore
and a few days before the popular election of Pierce. The enduring
memory of Mr. Blaine appeared in the last October he lived, in the
precise remark, when something was said of the death of Webster, "Ah!
day after to-morrow it will be forty years since Webster died." The
news of the nomination of Hayes, Blaine received serenely, and before
the vote was declared in the convention sent the nominee a cordial
telegram of congratulation. When he knew at Augusta in 1884 that he
was beaten, he said: "Personally I care less than my nearest friends
would believe, but for the cause and for many friends I profoundly
deplore the result." And that was the entire truth. He felt that he
had not been fairly beaten, but he gave utterance only to the public
wrong done in the unfairness, and left that expression as a warning to
the country. He did not, as we have seen, follow the example of Clay,
who persistently favored his own candidacy. On the contrary, Blaine
did not covet the Presidency, and tried to avoid the personal strife
of 1884, and not for any of the apprehensive motives attributed to
him by those who acted upon the feeling in his case that the spirit of
justice was malevolent.

I feel that I should not now deal fairly with the public if I did
not give here the letter from Blaine in my possession, that more
completely than any published gives expression to his personal bearing
when defeated.


LETTER FROM MR. BLAINE TO MR. HALSTEAD.

    (Personal.)

    AUGUSTA, MAINE, _16th Nov., '84._

    DEAR MR. HALSTEAD:--I think there would be no harm to the
    public and no personal injustice if you should insert the
    three enclosed items in your editorial columns.

    I feel quite serene over the result. As the Lord sent upon us
    an ass in the shape of a preacher, and a rainstorm, to lessen
    our vote in New York, I am disposed to feel resigned to the
    dispensation of defeat, which flowed directly from these
    agencies.

    In missing a great honor I escaped a great and oppressive
    responsibility. You know--perhaps better than any one--how
    _much I didn't want_ the nomination; but perhaps, in view of
    all things, I have not made a loss by the canvass. At least I
    try to think not. The other candidate would have fared hard in
    Maine, and would have been utterly broken in Ohio.

    Sincerely,

    JAMES G. BLAINE.

    Of course all this is private.

    _P.S._--This note was written before receipt of yours. Pray
    publish nothing of the kind you intimate unless you first
    permit me to see the proof. Don't be afraid of the enclosed
    items. They are rock-ribbed for truth and for a good rendering
    of public opinion.

Mr. Blaine refers in the closing paragraph to the proposition I made
to him to publish the true story of his candidacy--substantially the
same pressed upon the attention of General Sherman. Between them they
suppressed me, but it is due them that this chapter of history should
be known now that they are gone.

I had the privilege of walking with Mr. Blaine in the beautiful and
fragrant parks at Homburg, in Southern Germany, in the summer of 1887,
and discussing with him the question whether he should be a candidate
for the Republican nomination the next spring. He then seemed to be
very well, but exertion speedily fatigued him. He was on sight a very
striking personage, and always instantly regarded with interest by
strangers. His personal appearance was of the utmost refinement and of
irreproachable dignity. His absolute cleanliness was something dainty,
his dress simple but fitting perfectly and of the best material. His
face was very pale, but his sparkling eyes contradicted the pallor.

His form was erect, and his figure that of youth. His hair and beard
were exquisitely white. His mouth had the purity of a child's, and
he never had tasted tobacco or used spirituous liquors, save when his
physician had recommended a little whiskey, and then not enough to
color a glass. He drank sparingly of claret and champagne, caring only
for the flavor. He was gentle, kindly, genial, and in a manly sense
beautiful. There are many distinguished English people at Homburg in
the season, and they were gratified to meet Mr. Blaine, and charmed
with him. It required no ceremony to announce him as a personage--a
man who had made events--and he never posed or gave the slightest
hint, in his movements, of conscious celebrity. I never saw him
bothered by being aware of himself but once, and that was when, across
the street from the Fifth Avenue Hotel, in the dusk of an evening, he
shaded his face with his hand, and looked curiously at ten thousand
people who were gazing at the house, and shouting madly for him,
expecting that he would appear at a window and make acknowledgment of
their enthusiasm. Suddenly he saw in the glance of one beside him that
he was curiously yet doubtfully regarded, and hastened away in fear of
his friends, who in their delight at discovering him would have become
a mob.

In Homburg he seemed to care for others' opinions about the proper
course for him to take; and the substance of that which I had to
say--and he seemed to think me in a way representative--was that he
alone must decide for himself, as he only knew all the circumstances
and elements that must be considered in a decision. Once we walked
the main street of the town in the night--and it is then a very lonely
place, for it is the fashion to get up in the morning at six o'clock,
and take the waters and the music--and that time I was impressed, and
the impression abided, that the inner conviction of Mr. Blaine was he
had not the vitality to safely take the Presidency if he held it in
his hand; that he believed the office would wear him out--that it was
a place of dealing with persons who would worry away his existence;
that he felt he could not endure the wear and tear and pressure of
the first position, and preferred the Secretaryship of State, with
the hope of going on with his South American policy, which he had
developed in Garfield's time, brief as that was; and I conjectured
that all this had been in his mind when he wanted Sherman and Lincoln
to be the ticket in 1884. And it occurred to me with so much force as
the logic of many things he said, that I accepted it as true, and was
reminded of his weary exclamation once of a good friend whose moods
were changeable: "Now that he is right, stay with him. He takes the
health out of me with his uncertainties."

The Secretaryship of State he cared for; in that office the world was
all before him, and he was fully himself, and was not fretted by
a perpetual procession of favor-seekers. The argument his urgent
admirers used with him was that it would be easier to make up his mind
than to convince a President, and that as the Chief of State he could
throw the work on the Cabinet; but he was not satisfied. The Florence
letter to me seemed familiar, for it was a reminder of Homburg, and
its sincerity was in all the lines and between the lines; and it was
addressed to a friend in Pittsburg, that it might not be suppressed in
New York. He had very close and influential friends who did not divine
his true attitude, or would not admit that they had, and insisted that
he was really well and strong and tough, better than he had been, and
that he should not be humored in his fancy that he was an invalid.
This feeling continued even to 1892, though he had been meantime
painfully broken by a protracted illness. It will be remembered that
in the correspondence between General Harrison as President-elect and
Mr. Blaine, when the Secretaryship of State was offered and accepted,
there appeared harmony of views concerning Pan-Americanism; that Mr.
Blaine enjoyed the office and that his official labors during the
Harrison Administration were of the highest distinction, showing
his happiest characteristics. The difference as to duties that arose
between the President and the Secretary was forgotten, and their
mutual sympathies abounded, when there came upon them, in their
households, the gravest, tenderest sorrows.

[Illustration: BLAINE'S GRAVE AT WASHINGTON, D.C. THE TREE AT THE LEFT
MARKS THE HEAD OF THE GRAVE, AND THE FIRST OF THE THREE LOW STONES IN
THE FOREGROUND, NUMBERING FROM THE LEFT, MARKS THE FOOT.

From a photograph by Miss F.B. Johnston.]

When Mr. Blaine was for the last time in New York on his way to
Washington, stopping as was his habit at the Fifth Avenue Hotel,
he asked me to walk with him to his room, fronting on Twenty-third
Street, on the parlor floor; and he slowly, as if it were a task,
unlocked the door. There was a sparkle of autumnal crispness in
the air, and he had a fire, that glittered and threw shadows about
fitfully. There was not much to say. It was plain at last that Mr.
Blaine was fading, that he had within a few weeks failed fast. His
great, bright eyes were greater than ever, but not so bright. His face
was awfully white; not that brainy pallor that was familiar--something
else! He seated himself in the light of the fire, on an easy-chair.
There was a knock at his door, and a servant handed him a card, and
he said: "No;" and we were alone. I could not think of a word of
consolation; and in a moment he appeared to have forgotten me, and
stared in a fixed, rapt dream at the flickering flame in the grate.
It occurred to me to get up and go away quietly, as conversation was
impossible--for there was too much to say. It came to me that I ought
not to leave him alone. Something in him reminded me of the mystical
phrases of the transcendent paragraph of his oration on Garfield,
picturing the death of the second martyred President, by the ocean,
while far off white ships touched the sea and sky, and the fevered
face of the dying man felt "the breath of the eternal morning."

Some weeks earlier Mr. Blaine and I had had a deep talk about men and
things, and he was very kind, and his boundless generosity of
nature never revealed itself with a greater or sadder charm. He now
remembered that conversation--as a word disclosed--and said: "I could
have endured all things if my boys had not died." The door opened,
and his secretary walked in--and I took Mr. Blaine's hand for the
last time, saying, "Good-night," and he said, with a look that meant
farewell--"Good-by."

His grave is on a slope that when I saw it was goldenly sunny, and
the turf was strewn by his wife's hand with lilies--for it was Easter
morning! Close at his left was a steep, grassy bank, radiantly blue
with violets, and there was in the shining air the murmurous hum
of bees, making a slumbrous, restful music. Blaine's monument is a
hickory tree whose broken top speaks of storms, and at his feet is
a stone white as new snow, and on it only--and they are enough--the
initials "J.G.B.," that were the battle-cry of millions, and are and
shall be always to memory dear.

[Footnote I: This related to a matter General Sherman had mentioned in
another letter, and did not refer to the subject I was trying to get
him to consider.]

[Footnote J: General Sherman differed in this judgment with Blaine and
many Republicans who were not unfriendly to Arthur.]




THE NEW STATUE OF WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON.

BY FRANK B. GESSNER.


The erection of an equestrian statue of General William Henry
Harrison, in Cincinnati, Ohio, is a fitting but also a tardy
commemoration of a man who rendered his State and the nation most
distinguished services. For fifty years there has been talk of doing
him honor in some such fashion, and even the statue which as this
Magazine goes to press is being formally dedicated in Cincinnati
(in the presence of a grandson of the subject who is himself an
ex-President), has been completed for some years, and has been stowed
away in dust and darkness because there was not public interest enough
in the matter to meet the cost of setting it up.

Although now almost a forgotten figure, General Harrison was one
of the ablest and worthiest of our public men. Born in Berkeley,
Virginia, February 9, 1773, he grew to manhood with the close of
the Revolution and the establishment of the national government. His
father was the friend of Washington, and when the son went into the
Western wilds he held a commission as ensign signed by the first of
the Presidents. At the age of thirty he was a delegate in Congress
from the Northwest Territory. For a succeeding decade he was governor
of that wide stretch of country which in time he saw carved into
States all owing much to his genius as warrior and statesman. In the
second war with Great Britain he commanded the Western armies, and won
the notable victories of Tippecanoe and the Thames. The first gave him
a name which became the slogan of the Whigs in the memorable campaign
of "Tippecanoe and Tyler too." At the battle of the Thames fell
Tecumseh, whose death broke the Indian power east of the Mississippi.
After the war of 1812 General Harrison was successively Congressman,
Senator of the United States, and Minister to Colombia.

[Illustration: STATUE OF WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON, MADE FOR THE CITY OF
CINCINNATI BY MR. L.T. REBISSO.

From a photograph by Landy, Cincinnati.]

Returning in 1830 to his home at North Bend, on the line between
Indiana and Ohio, he lived more or less in retirement until 1836, when
he was made the Whig candidate for President. He was defeated; but in
1840 he was again the nominee, and, after the greatest campaign of the
century, was elected, defeating Martin Van Buren. The campaign of 1840
was called the "log-cabin and hard-cider" campaign, though the
reputed log-cabin home of the Whig candidate was in reality a spacious
mansion. General Harrison was inaugurated March 4, 1841, and on April
4, a month later, he died in the White House, a victim of exposure and
the wearing importunities of office-seeking constituents. Something of
the character of the man is disclosed in his last words, spoken four
hours before his death. To whom he thought himself speaking can only
be conjectured--Vice-President Tyler, some authorities claim; but he
was heard by his physician to say: "Sir, I wish you to understand
the true principles of the government. I wish them carried out. I ask
nothing more."

Physically, General Harrison has been described as "about six feet
high," straight and rather slender, and of "a firm, elastic gait,"
even in his last years. He had "a keen, penetrating eye," a "high,
broad and prominent" forehead, and "rather thin and compressed lips."

[Illustration: ANNA SYMMES HARRISON, WIFE OF PRESIDENT WILLIAM HENRY
HARRISON, AND GRANDMOTHER OF PRESIDENT BENJAMIN HARRISON.

From a painting in possession of the Harrison family.]

Mrs. Harrison was not with her husband at his death, and never became
an inmate of the White House. For that reason there hangs on its walls
no portrait of her, among those of the various ladies of the mansion.
She was the daughter of John Cleves Symmes, a scion of the Colonial
aristocracy. She loved better than the excitement of social life in
Washington the domestic peace of her North Bend home and the society
of her thirteen children, growing up in usefulness and honor. In her
youth she had been a great belle, and she remained a beautiful
woman even in her declining years. She was educated in that first
fashionable school for young women in America founded by Isabella
Graham in the city of New York. A sister, Polly Symmes, was also a
famous beauty. They went together to share their father's fortunes
in the unsettled West, and both found their fates in the hand of the
Miamis. Polly married Peyton Short, who became a millionaire.

Mrs. Harrison had been detained by illness from going with her husband
to witness the proudest event of his life, his inauguration; and she
had purposed following him to Washington later in the spring, when the
weather should be more favorable for the long, wearisome journey by
stage-coach. But, alas! before the spring fully opened, instead of
following him to Washington she was following his body to its silent,
stone-walled tomb, overlooking the wide sweep of the Ohio southward.
This noble woman lived to be eighty-nine and to see her grandson,
Benjamin Harrison, now ex-President, a general in the Union army.
She retained to the last much of her beauty and that sweetness of
disposition which has endeared her memory to those of her blood who
knew her best. She sleeps by the side of her husband in the old vault
at North Bend.

The Cincinnati statue of General Harrison is the work of L.T. Rebisso,
who made the statue of General McPherson which stands in one of the
circular parks in Washington, and the equestrian statue of General
Grant for the city of Chicago. Its cost, which, exclusive of the
pedestal, is twenty-seven thousand dollars, is paid by the city.
Mr. Rebisso has given a portrayal of Harrison unlike any of the more
familiar pictures. These usually present a decrepit old man, from
whose eye have vanished that fire of youth and flash of soul which
made Harrison a leader of men. The Rebisso statue, as will be seen by
the reproduction of it given herewith, presents a soldier in the full
flower of vigorous manhood. And this conception is no mere ideal of
fancy, but is taken from a portrait painted in 1812, which now hangs
in the house of a grandchild of General Harrison near the old North
Bend homestead.




[Illustration: THE SILENT WITNESS.]




THE SILENT WITNESS

BY HERBERT D. WARD


There are many hamlets in New Hampshire, five, ten miles or even more
from the railroad station. To the chance summer visitor the seclusion
and the rest seem entrancing. The glamour of mountain scenery and
trout effectually obliterates the brave signs of poverty and struggle
from before the irresponsive eyes of the man of city leisure. He
carelessly gives the urchin, mutely pleading in front of the unpainted
farm-house, a few cents for his corrugated cake of maple-sugar, and
asks the name of a distant peak. If he should notice, how would he
know the meaning of the scant crops of hay and potatoes, or of the
empty stall? Sealed to him is the pathos in the history of the owners
of the stone farm. His thoughts scarcely glance at the piteous wife
plaiting straw hats; the only son, whose rare happiness consists in
a barn dance in the village three miles below, and whose large eyes
contract with increasing age, and lose all expression except that of
anxiety.

There was a time perhaps when the backbone of the New World used to
be straightened by men of a mountain birth. The question whether the
hills of Vermont and New Hampshire produce giants of trade or law
to-day as they did fifty years ago, is an open one. So the grand
old stock is run out of the soil? And is it replaced by the sons and
grandsons of those sturdy farmers themselves, who buy back the rickety
homesteads, and remodel them into summer cottages?

Michael Angelo said that "men are worth more than money," and if what
was an axiom then is true in these fallen days of purse worship,
Mrs. Abraham Masters was the richest woman under the range of Mount
Kearsarge. For her son Isaac was the tallest, the strongest, the
tenderest, and truest boy in the county; but her farm of a hundred
acres, the only inheritance from a dead husband, was about the
poorest, most unprofitable, and most inaccessible collection of
boulders in the mountains.

It was situated upon the cold shoulder of a hill, sixteen miles from
the nearest station. The three-mile trail which led from the village
would have been easier to travel could it have boasted a corduroy
road. What a site for a hotel! Yet the hotel did not materialize, and
the "view" neither fed nor warmed nor clothed the patient proprietors
of the desolate spot.

"Never mind, I reckon we'll pull through," Isaac used to comfort his
mother.

"You're a good boy, Ikey. If the Lord is willin', I guess I am," she
answered with quaint devoutness.

But the Lord did not seem to be willing, and one spring He caused a
late frost in June to kill most of the seed, and a drouth in July and
August to wither what was left, and starvation stared in the faces of
the widow and her son. At this time, Isaac began to "keep company,"
and to talk of getting married in the next decade. He was twenty-two,
and had a faithful, saving disposition, when there was anything to
save. And whether he became engaged because there was nothing but love
to harvest, or whether, woman-like, Abbie Faxon loved him better than
she did her other suitors because of his poverty and misery, and was
willing to tell him so, I cannot pretend to decide. At any rate, Isaac
brought Abbie one afternoon from the village, three miles below, and
the two women kissed and wept, and Isaac went out and stood alone
facing the view; the apple in his throat rose and fell, and great
tears blinded his sight.

We can make no hero of Isaac, for he was none. His heart was as simple
and as clean as a pebble in a brook. Country vices had not smirched
him. He had a mind only for his mother, and the farm, and earning a
living--and a heart for Abbie. Great thoughts did not invade his head.
But this afternoon, as he stood there on the gray rock, his heart
bursting with his happiness, which was made perfect by his mother's
blessing, an apprehension for the future--bitter, breathless, began
to arouse him. The promise of the horizon suddenly became revealed to
him. The distant line of green, now bold, now sinuous, now uncertain,
had never asked him questions before, had never exasperated him with a
meaning.

But now he saw the tips of spires flecking the verdure of the far-off
valleys. He saw the hurrying smoke of a locomotive. He saw with
awakening vision, starting from that dead farm of his, the region of
trade and life. A film had fallen from his eyes. The energetic arrow
of love had touched his ambition, and his round, rosy face became
indented with lines of resolve. He turned and walked with a new tread
into the house.

"Mother! Abbie!" he blurted out, "I'm going away. I'm going to
Boston." He stopped and stammered as he saw the horror-stricken faces
before him.

"Lord a-mercy!"

"Ikey! Air you teched?"

"No," he resumed stoutly, "I be'ant. There's Dan Prentiss--he
went--see what he done; and Uncle Bill, he--"

"We hain't heard nothing from your Uncle Bill since he sot out. That
was twelve years ago, the spring your father built them three feet on
the shed." Mrs. Masters spoke firmly.

"Never mind, mother, I'm going to Boston, and I will come back. I'm
going to earn my livin'. I'm strong and willin', and as able as Dan
Prentiss. Ye needn't be scared, I ain't going yet. I'll finish up the
fall work fust. I'm going for the winter anyway, and Abbie'll come an'
live with you, mother--won't you, Abbie, dear? She's the only mother
you've got now. Your folks can spare you."

Here Abbie announced bravely, "I will, Ikey, if you must go."

She blushed deeply as she said it, and the sight of her pretty color
so moved the young man that, having the bashfulness of his native
crops, he rushed out into the glory of the sunset, and sat upon the
granite boulder watching until the gray, the purple, and then the
black had washed out the white steeples from the distant valley.

Isaac Masters was of the boulder type. How many decades was the
smooth, worn rock in front of his house riding on the crest of a
glacier until it reached its halt? But now it would need a double
charge of dynamite to shake it from its base. It generally took the
mountain lad days, perhaps weeks, to make up his mind, even upon such
a simple problem as the quantity of grain his horse should have at a
feed when the spring planting began; but when once his intention was
fixed it withstood all opposition. But this time he was astonished at
his own temerity of mind, as his mother and sweetheart were; and the
more profoundly he pondered over the gravest decision of his life,
the more did it seem to him an inspiration, perhaps from the Deity
himself.

But Isaac was formed in too simple and honest a mould to delude the
two women or himself with iridescent dreams of success. He had worked
on the ragged farm bitterly, incessantly. He had fought the rocks, and
the weeds, and the soil, the frost and the drouth, as one fights for
his life, and never had a thought of food or of comfort visited him
unaccompanied by the necessity for labor.

"I can work fourteen hours a day, mother, and live upon pork and
beans, as well as the next man." He stood to his full height,
displaying to the pale woman the outlines of massive muscular
development. His hands were huge and callous, their grip the terror of
his mates after a husking bee. He had measured his great strength but
once; that was in the dead of winter, with the snow drifted five feet
deep between the barn and the house. A heifer, well grown, had been
taken sick, and needed warmth for recovery. Isaac swung the sick beast
over his shoulders, holding its legs two in each hand before his head,
and strode through the storm, subduing the battling snow with as much
ease as he did the bellowing calf. His mother met him at the woodshed
door. Behind the gladiator rose the forbidding background of a stark
mountain range; but to her astonished and unfocussed sight, her son
seemed greater than the mountain, and more compelling than its peaks.
From that hour his whisper was her law; and from that day--for how
could the adoring mother help telling her quarterly caller all about
the heifer?--Isaac had no more wrestling matches in the valley.

August burned into September, and September, triumphant in her
procession of royal colors, marched into October, the month of months.
Mrs. Masters had already completed her pathetic preparations for her
son's departure. There, in the family carpet-bag, which his father had
carried with him on his annual trip to Portland, were stowed a half
dozen pairs of well-darned woollen stockings, the few decent shirts
that Isaac had left, his winter flannels, which had already served
six years, his comb and brush, a hand mirror that had been one of his
mother's wedding presents, likewise a couple of towels that had formed
a part of her self-made trousseau; and we must not forget the neckties
that Abbie had sewed from remnants of her dresses, and which Isaac
naïvely considered masterpieces of the haberdasher's art.

At the mouth of the deep bag Mrs. Masters tucked a Bible which fifty
years ago had been presented to her husband by his Sunday-school
teacher as a prize for regular attendance. This inscription was
written in a wavering hand upon the blank page:

    "_In the eighth year of the reign of Josiah, while he was yet
    young, he began to seek after the God of David his father_.--
    2 Chron. xxxiv. 3."

"For," said Mrs. Masters softly to Abbie, after she had read the
inscription aloud, and had patted the book affectionately, "this is
the first prize my Josiah ever had, an' the Lord knows he thought more
on it than he did of Lucy, his mare. An' if there should happen any
accident to Isaac, they'd find by opening of his bag that ef he
was alone in a far country he was a Christian, nor ashamed of it,
neither."

Isaac had only money enough saved up to take him as far as Boston, and
to board him in the cheapest way for several days.

"If I can't work," he said proudly, straightening to his full height,
"no one can!"

It is just such country lads as this--strong, self-reliant,
religious--who, when poverty has projected them out of her granite
mountains upon granite pavements, each as hard and bleak as the other,
by massive determination have conquered a predestined success.

Too soon, for those who were to be left behind, the day of separation
came. Mrs. Masters's haggard face and Abbie's red eyes told of
unuttered misery.

But Isaac did not notice these signs of distress. He was absorbed in
his future. The last bustle was over, the last breakfast gulped down
amid forced smiles and ready tears, the last button sewed on at the
last moment; and now Mrs. Masters's lunch of mince pie, apples, and
doughnuts was tenderly tucked into the jaws of the carpet-bag; thereby
disturbing a love letter that Abbie had hidden there. A young neighbor
had volunteered to drive Isaac down the mountain to the station.

[Illustration: "MOVE ON, WILL YER!"]

"All aboard! Hurry up, Ike!" cried this young person, consulting his
silver watch, and casting a look of mingled commiseration and envy
upon the giant, locked in the arms of the two women, who hardly
reached to the second button of his coat. Isaac caught the glance,
and started to tear himself away. But his mother laid her gnarled hand
gently upon his arm, and led him into the unused parlor.

"Just a minute, Abbie dear, I want to be alone with my boy," she waved
the girl back. "Then you can have him last. It's my right an' your'n!"

She closed the door, and led him under the crayon portrait of his
father, framed in immortelles. She raised her arms, and he stooped
that they might clasp about his neck.

"Isaac," she said hoarsely, "I ain't no longer young nor very strong.
Remember 'fore you go away from the farm that you're the son of an
honest man, an' a pious woman, and"--dropping with great solemnity
into scriptural language--"I beseech you, my son, not to disgrace your
godly name."

With partings like this the primitive Christians must have sent their
sons into the whirlwind of the world.

Then Isaac broke down for the first time, and with the tears
streaming, he lifted his mother bodily in his arms, and promised her,
and kissed her. "Mother trusts you, Ikey," was all she could say. But
his time had come. There was a crunching of wheels.

"Now go to Abbie. Leave me here! Good-by; you have always been a good
boy, dear." Mrs. Masters's voice sank into a whisper; the strong man,
moved as he was, could not comprehend her exhaustion.

Abbie was waiting for him at the door, and he went to her. The
impatient wagon had gone down the road. They were to cut through the
pasture, and meet it at the brook. There they were to part.

They clasped hands. Isaac turned. A gaunt, gray face, broken,
helpless, hopeless, peered out beneath the green paper shade of the
parlor window. If he had known--a doubt crossed his brain, but the
girl twitched his hand, and the cloud scattered. Down the hill they
ran, down, until the brook was reached. There they stood, panting,
breathless, listening. There were only a few minutes left, and they
hid behind an oak tree and clasped.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was long after dark when the train came to its halt in its vaulted
terminus. It was due at seven, but an excursion on the road delayed it
until after nine. However, this did not disconcert Isaac Masters.
He hurried out to the front of the station, where the row of herdics
greeted him savagely. Carrying his father's old carpet-bag, he looked
from his faded hat to his broad toes the ideal country bumpkin; yet
his head was not turned by the rumbling of the pavements, the whiz
of the electrics, the blaze of the arc lights, nor by the hectic
inhalations that seem to comprehend all the human restlessness of a
city just before it retires to sleep. His breath came faster, and
his great chest rose and fell; these were the only indications of
acclimation. Isaac had started from home absolutely without any "pull"
or introduction but his own willingness to work. Utterly ignorant of
the city, and knowing no one in it, on the way down in the train he
had marked out a line of conduct from which he determined not to be
swerved.

To the mountain mind the policeman becomes the embodiment of a
righteously executed law. At home, their only constable was one of the
most respected men in the community. Isaac argued from experience--and
how else should he? This was his syllogism:

A policeman is the most respectable of men in my town.

This man before me is a policeman.

Therefore he must be the most upright man in the city. I will go to
him for advice.

The city casuist might have smiled at the major premise--and laughed
at the ingenuous conclusion. Yet if brass buttons, a cork hat and a
"billy" are the emblems of guardianship and probity, the country boy
has the right argument on his side, and the casuist none at all.

It never occurred to Isaac that the policeman could either make a
mistake of judgment, or meditate one. Therefore he approached the
guardian of the peace confidently.

This gentleman, who had noticed the traveller as soon as he had
emerged from the depot, awaited his approach with becoming dignity.
The patronage and disdain that the metropolis feels for the hamlet
were in his air.

"Excuse me, sir--I want to ask you--" began Isaac, after a proper
obeisance.

"Move on, will yer!"

"But I wanted to ask you--"

"Phwat are ye blockin' up the road fur, young man?"

"I want you to help me!"

"The ---- you do!" He looked about ferociously. "Look here, sonny, if
ye don't move along, an' have plenty of shtyle about it, I'll help ye
to the lock-up--so help me--!"

Isaac looked down upon the man, whom he could have crushed with
one swoop of his hands. The consternation of his first broken ideal
possessed his heart. With a deadly pallor upon his face, he hurried up
the clanging street, and the coarse laughter of brutes tingled in his
ears. He swallowed this rough inhospitality, which is the hemlock that
poisons country faith. Take from the pavement enough dust to cover
the point of a penknife, and insert it in the arm of a child, and in a
week it will be dead with tetanus. After this first encounter with the
protectors of the people, Isaac felt as if his soul had been bedaubed
with mud. He experienced a contracting tetanus of the heart. Had he
not planned all the lonesome day to cast himself upon the kindness
of the first policeman whom he saw? What other guide or protector
was there left for him in the strange city? The rebuff which he had
received half annihilated his intelligence.

[Illustration: "AM--I--IMPRISONED BECAUSE I AM FRIENDLESS AND POOR? IS
THIS YOUR LAW?"]

Isaac could no more put up at the great hotel he saw on his right than
the majority of us can take a trip to Japan. Isaac hurried on. Why
did he leave home? The fear of a great city is more teasing than the
terror of a wilderness or of a desert. There the trees or the rocks or
the sand befriends you. But in the city the penniless stranger has no
part in people or home or doorsteps. Every one's heart is against him.
It is the anguish of hunger amid plenty, the rattling of thirst amid
rivers of wine, the serration of loneliness amid humanity thicker than
barnacles upon a wharf pile. Such a terror--not of cowardice, but of
friendlessness--seized Isaac Masters, and a foreboding that he might
possibly fail after all made his spine tingle. Still he drove on.
He had passed through the main street--or across it--he did not
know--until the electric lights cast dim shadows, until stately banks
had given way to unkempt brick fronts, until the glittering bar-rooms
had been exchanged for vulgar saloons--until--

Masters came to a sudden halt, and dropping his bag, uttered a loud
cry. The curtained door of a grog-shop opened upon him. A hatless man
dashed out, swearing horribly, and all but fell into Isaac's arms.
With a cry of terror the runner dodged the pedestrian, and bolted down
the street. Not twenty feet behind him bounded his pursuer.

By this time the country boy had slipped into the shadow of the
building, where he could see with

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/13637