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A Kansan Abroad. 
 Pike of Pike's Peak. 
 
 The World a School. 
 
KANSAS ABKOAD 
 
 BY 
 
 NOBLE L. PBENTIS. 
 
 <*r 
 
 TOPEKA, KANSAS: 
 
 GEO. W. MARTIN, KANSAS PUBLISHING HOUSE. 
 
 1878. 
 
G * FT OF 
 
 Copyrighted, 1878, by Noble L. Prentis. 
 
PREFATORY. 
 
 The letters collected in this volume, under the general title 
 of A Kansan Abroad, appeared in the Topeka Commonwealth 
 during the summer and autumn of 1877. 
 
 The sketch, Pike of Pike's Peak, was first delivered at To- 
 peka, February 19th, 1877, under the patronage of the Kansas 
 State Historical Society. Afterward, in the cheerful month of 
 March, the author went around the country with his production 
 in the form of a "lecture." It was not as funny as was expected, 
 and, as a lecture, was not an overwhelming success. It now ap- 
 pears for the first time in print; and may it find more readers 
 than it ever did hearers. 
 
 The World a School, originally delivered as a commence- 
 ment-day address before the Kansas State Agricultural College, 
 was published in pamphlet form by order of the Board of Regents 
 of that institution, and, shortly after its delivery, it appeared in 
 several Kansas newspapers. It is believed that the pamphlets 
 and newspapers have all been used up by this time, and that there 
 are people who will welcome the address in a preservable form. 
 
 N. L. P. 
 Topeka, February, 1878. 
 
FROM SHORE TO SHORE. 
 
 COMING down town in New York on the morning of July 
 4th, 1877, at an early hour, there was not much bunting 
 visible flying from residences or public buildings, but when the 
 pier was reached from which the harbor could be surveyed, a dif- 
 ferent sight was presented. Everything afloat was gay with the 
 red, white and blue. A ship is always national. It is a fragment 
 of the country floating out to sea. In the most secluded harbor of 
 the most remote land, or in the midst of ocean, the hail is always 
 promptly responded to with " The American ship, John Smith," 
 and the "old gridiron" gracefully waves the same reply. 
 
 But it is severe on an American's feelings to cross to Jersey 
 City on such a morning, with his country's flag waving every- 
 where, and take passage on a British ship. It was doubly trying 
 for one among whose childish recollections was numbered the 
 launch of the magnificent Collins steamer Baltic, and who re- 
 membered the pride with which Americans looked on the Collins 
 line, now swept from the ocean. But there was no help for it. 
 Our marine has been protected too much, or too little — I do not 
 pretend to know which ; and if you wish to go abroad now from 
 New York, you must do so under the shadow of a foreign flag. 
 
 The Bothnia lay at her pier, long and huge and black, the lat- 
 est success in ship-building of the house of Cunard, for fifty years 
 the most successful of ship owners. Think of it — fifty years 
 
 (5) 
 
b A KAN SAN ABROAD. 
 
 sending ships to sea, and never yet with a vessel lost! Luck is 
 nowhere in comparison with this. And, by-the-way, if you wish 
 to go to England, you had better embark on a Cunarder. You 
 get there ten days earlier at least by the operation, for when you 
 step on deck in New York you are in Great Britain already. It's 
 all British, from the keel up. The massiveness and plainness of 
 everything about you, the ponderous wood-work and brass-work, 
 utterly destitute of ornament, show you that you are among 
 people who are all for solidity, and opposed to "flummery, you 
 know." 
 
 Like ship, like man. Whether the officers of the Cunard 
 ships are built on the Clyde, for the use of the company, I can- 
 not say, but I am inclined to think so. The commander of the 
 Bothnia, Capt. McMickan, a relative, perhaps, of the veteran ho- 
 tel navigator who walks the quarter-deck of the Tefft House, 
 was standing about when I reached the pier, and various sub- 
 ordinates were scattered around. They looked enough alike to 
 be cousins — big, bluff, red-faced fellows, with a width of shoulder 
 and a circumference of abdomen fearful for a small passenger to 
 contemplate. All of course wore the Cunard uniform, of solid 
 dark blue, and not unlike that of our naval officers. I do not 
 suppose a cannon ball could knock one of these officers over. 
 Yet, with all their mastiff-like looks, they are not bad fellows, 
 and certainly they know their business. 
 
 We were to start at ten o'clock, but we did not. There was a 
 great crowd of passengers to embark, and no end, it seemed, of 
 baggage, and there was hurrying to and fro. In the meantime, 
 having nothing else to do, I wondered whether the Bothnia pro- 
 posed to do anything about "the Fourth." In time she did. Bang! 
 
FROM SHORE TO SHORE. 7 
 
 went a gun, then another, and the white and crimson and azure of 
 the American ensign rose to the fore, and long lines of gay-col- 
 ored flags commenced rising higher and higher, creeping over the 
 ends of the yards to the mast-heads until they formed three lofty 
 arches of flags, and the great Bothnia was dressed like a hride. 
 
 The deck was crowded with passengers and their friends, but at 
 last the bell rang impatiently as a signal for the land's-people to 
 go ashore, and then the kissing — but it's of no use for one man to 
 try to describe everything. The deck was cleared of all save those 
 who were to go, a tug commenced puffing and laboring somewhere 
 about, and, backing nearly across the river, the huge mass swung 
 slowly about, and just as her prow faced seaward, it was noon on 
 the Fourth of July. A flash broke from the dark side of an 
 American man-of-war lying in the stream, there was a puff of 
 smoke and a crash, then came another tongue of fire and cloud of 
 smoke from the dark ports of Castle William, and then the boom 
 of a gun, and, looking down the harbor, a cloud of smoke was seen 
 rising about the forts at the Narrows. And so, greeted by the joy- 
 ful guns announcing the 101st anniversary of American Independ- 
 ence, the Bothnia went to sea. 
 
 I am not going to give a journal of the voyage. It was as un- 
 eventful as a trip from the corner of Sixth and Kansas avenues to 
 North Topeka. The ocean was, day after day, as calm' as a duck 
 pond. There was no rolling, no tumbling about, and the notes 
 which this author had prepared in advance, describing the hor- 
 rors of sea-sickness, proved of no use. There was little of it on 
 board, and the few sufferers retired to their state-rooms and there 
 remained. 
 
 Among three hundred passengers, all sorts of people were to 
 
8 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 be found. No very distinguished people, however, sailed in the 
 Bothnia. There was Mr. Abram S. Hewitt, looking round-shoul- 
 dered and haggard, after his tremendous exertions for Mr. Samuel 
 J. Tilden ; and there was Mrs. Hewitt, a daughter of Peter Cooper, 
 and Miss Hewitt, a nice girl, who played very well on the banjo. 
 There was Mr. Joseph Seligman, a portly old Hebrew of benev- 
 olent aspect, who was once refused admission to Mr. Hilton's 
 hotel, at Saratoga, whereat there was a great row; there was a big 
 fellow named Corbin, said to be a South Carolina Eepublican poli- 
 tician of eminence ; there was Mr. George Jones, of t^e New York 
 Times, whom nearly everybody on board supposed till the last 
 moment was a Scotchman returning to his native land ; and there 
 was Col. Chambers, U. S. A., going to Turkey. Of course, some- 
 body "formerly of Kansas" had to be on hand: the representative 
 this time was Gen. A. L. Lee, formerly of Doniphan county, and 
 known to all old Kansas citizens and soldiers. 
 
 Antipathies and friendships are formed very readily on ship- 
 board, and last for the voyage. The association at table usually 
 lays the foundation for acquaintance. At "our end" of our table 
 was Mr. Bobert Hemingray, of Covington, Kentucky, a brother 
 of Judge Hemingray, formerly of Leavenworth, and with him 
 his daughter, Miss Mintie Hemingray. There was a fine straight 
 German, with a white mustache and imperial, Mr. George Bitter, 
 of Vera Cruz, Mexico, who from over thirty years' residence in 
 that country, interspersed with many trips to all parts of the 
 world, had acquired the languages and the graces of half a dozen 
 peoples. To Herr Bitter, with his good stories, told in English, 
 interspersed with French, Spanish and German, the undersigned, 
 and the members of the late "Club Mexique," will always feel 
 
FROM SHORE TO SHORE. 9 
 
 indebted, and especially the member known in the society as 
 "Mr. Kansas." Then there was Mr. Jolly, a Scotchman, from 
 Tampico, Mexico, the most successful conundrum - maker on 
 board ; then there was the Fitzgerald family, from Toronto, 
 "douce honest" people; and occasionally there was talk from a 
 young lady, born in Switzerland, who had lived long in the 
 province of Courland, Russia, and who was voyaging to Sweden. 
 
 As I have said, the voyage was uneventful. The ocean was 
 quite tame. Occasionally a whale spouted ; occasionally a lot of 
 porpoises gambolled about the ship ; occasionally a sailing vessel 
 came into sight and faded out of it, or a steamer glided by — and 
 that was all. There were five meals a day, and some people de- 
 voured all of them ; there was a small library, but reading at sea 
 is not a success. They got up concerts in the saloon, and there 
 was divine service on Sunday. According to the regulations of 
 the Cunard line, the captain read the Episcopal service. I heard 
 the Queen and the Prince and Princess of Wales prayed for for 
 the first time ; a petition was also inserted for the President of the 
 United States. An American preacher followed, a good-natured 
 old gentleman, who seemed desirous of praising everything Brit- 
 ish, and who, figuratively speaking, took a seat between the hind 
 legs of the British lion, and wrapped the tail of that noble beast 
 about his neck. 
 
 It was to be only ten days at sea, but we longed for land. I 
 shall not soon forget when I saw it again. 
 
 It was on the morning of the 13th of July — in the early, misty 
 morning. Looking afar we saw something like a low-lying cloud. 
 They said it was Ireland. Then a little boat came dancing across 
 the waves with "Cork Pilot" on her sails. Then there was some- 
 
10 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 thing ahead that looked like a ship, but it did not move; the 
 mist came down and shut it out, then lifted again, and there, like 
 a great white uplifted finger, was Fastnet lighthouse, standing on 
 its gray rock in the midst of the waves. Then the curtain of mist 
 was uplifted everywhere, and we glided along in full sight of the 
 bold shores, purple and gray, crested with the green fields, bright 
 indeed as any emerald, of Ireland. So we passed the bold a 01d 
 Head of Kinsale," and off the entrance of Queenstown harbor 
 the ponderous engines of the Bothnia, for the first time in nine 
 days, stood still. Again we heard guns, but this time it was the 
 sullen roar of British cannon from the forts on the dark heights 
 at the harbor's mouth. A tender came off and took some passen- 
 gers and the mail. We could see little of Queenstown, and I 
 remembered little of it, save that here is buried an obscure Irish 
 clergyman, whose little poem, "The Burial of Sir John Moore," 
 has stirred the hearts of two nations. 
 
 The tender moved off, and the great engines heaved and 
 throbbed again. The next day at noon we saw a forest of masts; 
 great docks; miles of frowning warehouses; giant steamers plow- 
 ing to and fro, everywhere the marks of boundless wealth, iron 
 courage, immense mechanical skill, tireless industry — this was 
 Liverpool — this was England. 
 
SOME FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 
 
 IT is a solemn thing for a Kansas man to land in Liverpool on 
 a rainy day. Coming from an open country full of brightness 
 and lit up by a cloudless sun, the bigness and blackness, the inner 
 and outer darkness of Liverpool is well nigh appalling. A turbid 
 river, foaming and tossing like the sea ; steamers black as mid- 
 night plowing to and fro ; miles of low-lying warehouses, their 
 elate roofs gleaming dimly in the rain ; spires and chimneys 
 looming up spectrally in the mist ; docks that seem the work of 
 giants, skirting the stream as far as the eye can reach ; ships' 
 masts like the trees of a girdled forest; ship-yards a maze of 
 timbers; — these are the outlines of Liverpool as seen from the 
 steamer's deck. 
 
 The American republican realizes, too, that he has, in our par- 
 lance, "struck" a new sort of government. The tugs that circle 
 around bear such names as the " British King," the " Queen," the 
 "Koyal George," and the British lion ramps everywhere, and in 
 every color and attitude — with his head and tail up, and with both 
 those extremities down; on four legs, and two legs; having his 
 everlasting controversy with the unicorn, or "going it alone." 
 He can be spread out in more shapes than the American eagle, 
 and the British artists put him through more crookednesses than 
 were ever attained by a circus contortionist. 
 
 But there are familiar things everywhere. Leaving the land- 
 (11) ' 
 
12 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 ing stage and turning into Water street, the first thing this writer 
 saw was a poster announcing the virtues of Perry Davis's Pain 
 Killer. Was it not a noble thought? — America stretching out her 
 hand with a bottle of Perry Davis's Pain Killer to soothe the 
 anguished bowels of England! Gen. Grant did not need to come 
 to promote harmony between countries which cure the same kind 
 of stomach-ache with the same medicine. 
 
 Walking along the streets, one is impressed with the enormous 
 strength and solidity of everything — the pavements of great 
 stones ; the warehouses which look as if they had stood for all time 
 and were ready for eternity; the plate-glass windows; the enor- 
 mous amount of brass-work everywhere ; and the big knockers on 
 the doors, which would break in an American door. Everything 
 is in the same proportion : horses as big as elephants, shod with 
 high-corked shoes, hauling a load for a small locomotive, go clank- 
 ing up and down the rocky ways; and omnibuses are rolling about, 
 drawn by three great horses abreast ; and the street car, lately in- 
 troduced, is a huge, lumbering contrivance with a circular stair- 
 way for the people to climb up on top — for English people love 
 to ride outside in the rain. 
 
 The greatness of England extends even to these little things; 
 but the fierce pride of this people, their unconquerable bull-dog 
 courage in war, is commemorated everywhere in great works. The 
 docks, the like of which exist nowhere else, bear the names of Wa- 
 terloo, Trafalgar and Nelson. Wellington looks afar from the top 
 of an enormous pillar, and Nelson is everywhere in stone and 
 in bronze. Liverpool sprang from the sea, and the name of the 
 greatest of England's sea fighters is naturally the most prominent. 
 Next to Nelson and Wellington, the most frequent name is that 
 
SOME FIRST I3IPRESSI0NS. 13 
 
 of the statesman Canning, who was a Liverpool man. It is odd, 
 but a name quite as well known in America as any of these is 
 that of Mrs. Hemans, who was born here, yet she has no monu- 
 ment. 
 
 The public buildings are enormous, all of stone, and built 
 to last forever. I should imagine that no sensible earthquake 
 would presume to attack them. St. George's Hall, the Museum, 
 the new Art Gallery, the Exchange, the City Hall — all huge, and 
 all black. Take, for illustration, the capitol at Topeka, make it 
 four times as large, and then paint it all over with a mixture of 
 equal parts of soot and rain-water, and you have some idea of 
 Liverpool public architecture. I will not venture to go into de- 
 tails as to the expense of these things. It is safe to say that the 
 cost of the public buildings of Liverpool is equal to the annual 
 revenues of many a kingdom. 
 
 And yet they call this a new town. A Liverpool man apolo- 
 gizes for the youth and rawness of his town — it is only four or 
 five hundred years old, and you must make allowances. It is 
 not only a new town, but it is a growing town. Blocks on blocks 
 of new buildings are being built on what but a few years ago 
 were green fields. 
 
 American tourists do not, as a rule, I think, visit Liverpool. 
 It is only a stopping-place, and yet it seems to me that the second 
 city in the kingdom is well worth a prolonged visit. American 
 commerce has been a great stay of this city, and the intercourse 
 has left its trace. In my rambles about the town I met with 
 Washington street, Maryland and Baltimore streets, and other 
 traces of the influence of America. The American population 
 
14 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 must be considerable, and American goods are everywhere adver- 
 tised. 
 
 There is much to see in Liverpool — more than at first sight 
 would be suspected. I will now mention but one place of in- 
 terest, the free library and museum. 
 
 The American idea is, that the nobility of a country are a nui- 
 sance — a relic of a barbarous time; that an aristocracy grinds 
 down the people and wrings from them their hard earnings, and 
 is generally and specially a curse. In England, however, I am 
 inclined to think the people get their money back, and perhaps 
 a little more, and the museum is a case in point. There was 
 once a cock-fighting Earl of Derby — which you will understand 
 is not Derby, but "Darby." This old rooster had a passion for all 
 the fowl creation — beginning with game-cocks, and extending to 
 everything that wore feathers. He ransacked the world for birds, 
 and there is a story that when he was about to shuffle off this 
 mortal coil, he requested that a couple of game-cocks be pitted 
 on his bed where he could see them fight; and so he literally 
 "died game." His immense collection of birds was bequeathed 
 to the free library and museum of Liverpool, where it may now 
 be seen. I am free to say that I have never seen its like, and that 
 the Smithsonian collection at Washington is small in comparison. 
 The museum is very extensive in other departments, but I would 
 say to an American, don't forget to go to the museum and see the 
 birds. 
 
 I visited, also, the free library in search of some information 
 about the bloody British cavalryman, Banastre Tarleton, who 
 made us so much trouble in the Carolinas during the Revolution, 
 
SOME FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 15 
 
 and who after the war returned to Liverpool, and for years repre- 
 sented the borough in Parliament. I found his own account of 
 his campaigns, a straightforward, soldiery story enough, and quite 
 complimentary to Gen. Washington, but could find nothing about 
 the man himself; nor could I find a man in Liverpool who knew 
 anything about him, although Banastre and Tarleton streets are 
 ancient thoroughfares in the city. Such is fame on the different 
 sides of the Atlantic. 
 
 I think Liverpool is somewhat overlooked by American trav- 
 elers. Doubtless, a prejudice exists because Liverpool was so 
 strongly Southern in sympathy during the Eebellion, and the 
 name of the Alabama is associated with that of Birkenhead, just 
 across the Mersey. This should not, however, work injustice to 
 a really interesting place, and one of the great seaports of the 
 world. 
 
 It may be proper to say that I was placed under great obliga- 
 tions, while in Liverpool, to Mr. Joseph E. Worrall, a brother of 
 Prof. Henry Worrall, of Topeka. This gentleman exercised a hos- 
 pitality which could not possibly be exceeded on our side of the 
 Atlantic; and as a proof that good qualities run in families, the 
 writer will say that one of the brightest days of his life was spent 
 in the old town of Chester with Walter Worrall, the son of one 
 and nephew of the other of the Worralls aforesaid. 
 
VERY OLD ENGLAND. 
 
 TALKING with a friend in Liverpool, one day, I said, "I be- 
 lieve all Americans go to Chester?" "Yes," he responded, 
 with truly British directness; "all who have any sense do." Ac- 
 cordingly, I decided to go to Chester. 
 
 We crossed by the railway boat to Birkenhead, and by railway, 
 third-class, to Chester. It is time for some American tourist to 
 arise and confess that while in England he did ride third-class, 
 and did not stop at the Langham in London, and I will assume 
 the responsibility. 
 
 Eiding third-class, no "noble jukes" or members of the royal 
 family were found in the compartments, but several very respect- 
 able-appearing men, and among them a manufacturer from one of . 
 the suburbs of Liverpool, who had a melancholy interest, in 
 America, from the fact that he had not long before lost a son in 
 the wreck of the ill-fated Circassian, on the Long Island coast. 
 To this gentleman I was much indebted for information during 
 the first part of a long stroll in the quaint old town of Chester. 
 
 It is questionable if anybody knows the real age of Chester. I 
 am quite sure I do not. For all I know to the contrary, Adam 
 may have been one of the original town company. At any rate, 
 it is very, very old. The Saxons had a town on this pleasant spot 
 by the river Dee, and the Romans built a wall there, and the Nor- 
 mans came and ravaged around after their fashion; and all sorts 
 
 (16) 
 
VERY OLD ENGLAND. 17 
 
 of queer people, now happily dead, built queer houses for the 
 Americans, the last race of men made, to come and look at. 
 
 An odd old town is Chester, with streets that crook every way; 
 with black-faced old houses that lean over and look at you as you 
 pass; with a great square-towered cathedral that lifts its high- 
 shouldered roof above everything else ; and finally, with a famous 
 old wall which circles around, in and out and everywhere — cross- 
 ing the streets oh arches, keeping company for a while with a 
 slow-going canal, then crossing the railroad, then passing under 
 the walls of a castle, and so on " to the place of beginning." 
 
 Chester has three special objects of pride: "The Rows," the 
 cathedral, and the walls ; but before seeing any of these we went to 
 a place called the "Old Kitchen." It seems that Chester had the 
 bad taste to adhere to that "man of blood, Charles Stuart," who 
 lost finally a head which appears to have been of very little ser- 
 vice to him or to the kingdom. On the restoration of the Stuarts, 
 in the person of Charles II — that exceedingly frisky monarch — 
 there were " high jinks" in Chester, and the cavaliers met at this 
 "Old Kitchen" to sing profane catches and glees, greatly to the 
 disgust, doubtless, of the godly people who lived in a house not 
 far off", on the front of which may be seen to this day the words, 
 "God's Providence is Mine Inheritance." The room is sur- 
 rounded by high-backed oaken chairs, all side by side, where the 
 convivial sat and sang, probably till a late hour, as the chairs 
 are so contrived that it is difficult to fall out of them. 
 
 "The Rows" are a feature of Chester. For whole blocks the 
 
 j. upper stories of the houses project over, precisely like a Western 
 
 block-house. It is said that this style of building was adopted 
 
 by the worthy burghers of Chester in order that they might the 
 
 better pour down arrows, sticks, stones, hot water and other re- 
 
18 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 freshments on the heads of the invading Welsh. Under the 
 shadow of these overhanging houses you follow a wide stone 
 pavement, not on a level, but up and down at all sorts of angles. 
 The finest stores in Chester are situated along these arcades, and 
 in rainy weather you can walk all over town without getting wet. 
 Many of these houses are old, their beams black with time; others 
 have been restored in the old form, but of new material, and are 
 very handsome. There is an astonishing number of inns and 
 drinking-places in Chester, with old-fashioned names. Drovers 
 are invited by the sign of "The Pied Bull;" pork packers "pass 
 the rosy" at the "Pig and Whistle;" and there is a "White 
 Lion" and an "Old Nag's Head." 
 
 The wall was built first, they say, by the Romans, and a few 
 stones laid by them still remain ; but endless changes have been 
 made by subsequent builders, till it is like the famous American 
 gun that had a new lock, stock and barrel, but still remained the 
 same gun — in one particular. A broad stone walk runs around 
 the inside of the breast-high parapet, and this walk has been for 
 a long time the pride, the promenade and the play-ground of 
 Chester. The wall follows no grade; it goes up and down, in 
 and out; sometimes it runs under gnarled old trees, then it skirts 
 along the crest of black rocks high above the canal. Sometimes 
 you look down into people's chimneys, and green gardens, and 
 then you have a noble prospect of a fine undulating country for 
 many miles. For some distance it overlooks a broad, green 
 meadow, beyond which is the river Dee, and then it runs close 
 to the river and you look down at the brown and brawling stream. 
 
 An American friend — the sun — shone briefly on us, as we, 
 young Walter and I, made the circuit of this gray and green and 
 red old wall. How indescribably beautiful it was! No written 
 
VERY OLD ENGLAND. 19 
 
 description, no painter's brush, even, can give an idea of the 
 vivid, velvety green of an English rural landscape, seen through 
 an atmosphere, half sun, half haze. We passed by the tower from 
 whence Charles I saw his army defeated at Eowton Moor, but 
 near by a group of chubby English children were found in a state 
 of great commotion on the wall. Two little girls were weeping, 
 and several short-legged young Britons were running back and 
 forth in bewildered excitement. A little girl's hat had blown 
 "down and out" to the railroad track below, and nobody dared to 
 go down and get it, for the majesty of English law, which for- 
 bids walking on railroad tracks, stood between the lost hat and its 
 weeping little owner. I am free to say that I cared more for the 
 child and her lost hat than for Charles I and his lost battle. To 
 go on with our walk : we passed under the walls of the castle, and 
 looking up through the embrasures could see the red coats of Her 
 Majesty's 106th Regiment at their drill — but we will talk of sol- 
 diers some other time. We passed near this the green meadow 
 before mentioned, on which is situated the race-course of Chester, 
 one of the most famous in the kingdom. 
 
 The famous cathedral was twice visited — in the morning and 
 the evening. It has been or is being "restored." It is very old. 
 The Saxons furnished some of the work, and several saints with 
 barbarous names. The Normans added to the pile — probably 
 for piety and pillaging the Normans have never been surpassed. 
 Cromwell took no stock in saints not enrolled in his own regi- 
 ments. He preferred live saints in buff coats to saints in wood 
 and stone, so everything inside of the building was whitewashed 
 over ; but now the whitewash is being scraped off and the old 
 saints are coming up smiling. Many centuries of grease and 
 dirt had accumulated on the curious oaken carvings of the choir, 
 
20 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 and the wood was all boiled piecemeal in a solution of potash and 
 then put together again. The work has gone on under the super- 
 intendence of Dean Howson, by voluntary contributions — Dissent- 
 ers contributing with others — and has cost enormous sums. There 
 is a great chandelier costing a fabulous amount, which will never 
 be lighted again, on account of the tremendous heat of the burners. 
 It all forms a wilderness of carving and gilding. I walked about 
 with the verger the customary round, and then stepped alone into 
 the cloisters. Here was no "restoration." Here were pillars 
 gnawed nearly in two by the "corroding tooth of time;" here the 
 groined roof was black with the clouds of years. The cloisters in- 
 closed a little square of shrubbery, green as emerald; the ever old 
 and the ever new were here. Man's work falling to blackness and 
 decay ; God's work renewed by the perpetually-recurring miracle 
 of the spring-time. It was easy to people this shadowy place with 
 the dead and gone. Here paced the votaries of an ancient faith ; 
 here, under black cowl and gown, were hidden the lives of men ; 
 here, perchance, the ambitious dreamed their dreams of churchly 
 power; here, perchance, were quenched the longings of a vain 
 •world; here, it may be, some heart did break in solitude. 
 
 We attended the choral service in the cathedral in the evening, 
 we saw the procession of robed priests and choristers, and watched 
 the dim shadows gather in the lofty arches overhead, and the light 
 fading out of the gorgeous windows of blue and green and gold. 
 The organ roared like the wind in the tree-tops, and echoed far in 
 the dim and distant chapels, and the boys' voices rose high and 
 clear, or sank soft and low, as they sang of faith in better things 
 beyond ; of a temple not made with hands, greater than man has 
 ever builded. And, leaving them singing, we took our leave of 
 strange, beautiful old Chester. 
 
OLD SHREWSBURY. 
 
 "We fought a long hour by Shrewsbury clock."— Falsiaff. 
 
 MOST travelers going from Liverpool to London, take the 
 direct line through Birmingham and the "black coun- 
 try." But it occurred to me that manufacturing cities could be 
 seen in America, and that I had already seen Pittsburgh, the 
 American Birmingham, while, on the other hand, cathedrals and 
 castles a thousand years old could not be seen in my own, my 
 native land — at least, not without waiting until sometime in the 
 year 2776 ; and so I determined to journey the Severn Valley 
 route, which takes in its course several very old places, and, be- 
 sides, affords a panorama of the Welsh mountains. And so, jour- 
 neying through Chester and Wrexham, I came unto Her Majesty's 
 old town of Shrewsbury. 
 
 The first piece of fortune that befell me, was, that by pure 
 chance, I came upon a certain English inn, where I did " take 
 mine ease." Such a dignified and gracious landlady, or rosy 
 waiting-maid, or thoroughgoing "Boots," or snowy and mountain- 
 like bed, or pleasant dining-room, I did not expect to see again 
 in all the Queen's dominions, including Great Britain and Ireland 
 and the town of Berwick-on-Tweed. 
 
 The view from my bed-room window when I looked out early 
 in the morning, led across the red-tiled and black-slated roofs and 
 amid a little forest of chimney-pots to a green, which I think they 
 call in Shrewsbury the Kingsland, and beyond this was a high rise 
 
 (21) 
 
22 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 of ground and rows of poplars and scattered hedges, and beyond 
 these the sky. 
 
 Looking out the front windows into the street, the view was 
 shut in at a few yards by a curve in the street and the walls of a 
 gray old church, as if the street had politely gone around the 
 building out of respect for its old age. These old English streets do 
 not make abrupt angles, but wind along their narrow way, up hill 
 and down, as sinuous as a snake's track. "Lifting up mine eyes," 
 in scriptural language, I saw the red-sandstone towers of the an- 
 cient castle of Shrewsbury, founded a thousand years ago. 
 
 A gentleman from Sheffield sat opposite at table; in fact, there 
 was no one else in the room, for the Englishman loves to take his 
 meals as nearly alone as possible, and the table d'hote will be the 
 last thing introduced generally into conservative England. I 
 think he had business to attend to in the city, but if so, he neg- 
 lected it, for all that blessed forenoon we walked up and down, 
 in and out of all the narrow, shady streets of Shrewsbury, with- 
 out any definite purpose, talking of a hundred different things, 
 and stopping occasionally to look or to rest. 
 
 Shrewsbury is one of the famous old towns of England, really 
 more prominent four hundred years ago than now. In those 
 "good old times" we hear about, bloody work was done in the vi- 
 cinity. Here, on the 21st of July, 1403, King Henry IV met the 
 fiery-hearted Percy, better known by the name made famous by 
 Shakspeare — Hotspur. Here the battle raged all the summer 
 day, until 2,300 gentlemen and 6,000 common soldiers were killed. 
 The next morning, Worcester and two other noblemen captured 
 by the King's victorious forces were beheaded in Shrewsbury, 
 and afterward, the dead body of the gallant Hotspur having been 
 
OLD SHREWSBURY. 23 
 
 found, the senseless corpse was beheaded and quartered, and the 
 quarters fixed upon the gates of the town. Those were the "days 
 of chivalry." Into this same town, also, David of Wales, a 
 brother of the famous Llewellyn, was brought in chains and exe- 
 cuted with circumstances of horrible barbarity. For whole cen- 
 turies Shrewsbury was the scene of wars, tumults, skirmishes and 
 sieges. It is all over now, and Englishmen go far away from the 
 old town to die in battle, for, as we stepped into the new church 
 of St. Chad — so called to distinguish it from a very old church of 
 the same name — we came upon the monuments of the men from 
 the vicinity who fell in India during the great mutiny. It seems 
 strange that boys go from these green old fields and shady lanes 
 to lay their bones on the other side of the earth. But you see it 
 everywhere. There is not an old parish church in England that 
 does not contain the memorials of English soldiers who died in 
 Spain, in Belgium, in India, in America, everywhere. The most 
 prominent object in Shrewsbury is the immense column erected 
 in honor of Lord Hill, who fought all over Europe in the great 
 wars against Napoleon, carried on for many bloody years — for 
 what? 
 
 One of the glories of Shrewsbury is its grammar school, which 
 had 290 scholars three hundred years ago. Many men famous in 
 England have been educated at this school, but the only one 
 whose name is well known in America is, I regret to say, that 
 of the infamous Judge Jeffries. It seems strange that such a 
 bloody-minded beast could ever have been a school-boy with a 
 soft heart in such a quaint, quiet old town. 
 
 My Sheffield friend and I came at last to the castle. It is now 
 a private residence, and occupied by a family named Downward, 
 though it is the property of the Duke of Cleveland, who seldom 
 
24 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 or never visits it. We wandered into the court-yard, now devoted 
 to the greenest of grass and the brightest of flowers and clumps 
 of trees and shrubbery, before we were aware that we were on 
 private property. Apologizing to a lady in black whom we met, 
 for the intrusion, we were about to withdraw, when she politely 
 invited us to inspect the premises and enjoy the view from the 
 tower, and gave, beside, much information about the town and 
 vicinity. Standing on the tower we looked down upon the Severn, 
 which runs at the base of the mount on which the castle is built. 
 This was, then, the " gentle Severn with the sedgy bank," that 
 Shakspeare speaks of; and so came back to memory the old lines, 
 about the ashes of Wickliffe being cast into the Avon : 
 
 "The Avon to the Severn runs, 
 The Severn to the sea; 
 And Wickliffe's dust shall spread abroad, 
 Wide as the waters be." 
 
 Our walk was finished at noon, but in the evening I took a 
 long stroll alone, going to "the Quarry," a famous place in Shrews- 
 bury. It is not a quarry at all, but a piece of ground sloping to the 
 Severn, and surrounded on three sides by double rows of immense 
 lime trees, a tree resembling the American linn, but growing to a 
 great height. The trees, many of them planted in 1719, form an 
 archway of green over the path which the sun of noon can hardly 
 penetrate. Then I wandered through the old streets, across the 
 English bridge with its time-worn railing, to the old abbey with 
 a statue, supposed to be that of Edward III, high up in front, fac- 
 ing the sun and storm as it has done for many centuries. Then, 
 back again across the bridge and down some stone steps to a long 
 winding path beside the Severn, the evening promenade of the 
 Shrewsbury folks, and so along, watching the shadows of the even- 
 ing clouds in the placid waters till the day was done. 
 
WORCESTER. 
 
 LEAVING Shrewsbury, on the Severn Valley road, for Wor- 
 cester, one has along the way a pleasant view of the Welsh 
 Mountains, which are rather great blue hills, reminding one some- 
 what of the Blue Ridge in Virginia, as seen a long way off. The 
 country grows rougher as you journey on, but nothing grand. So 
 far, the open country I had seen in England reminded me of a 
 reduced copy of something I had seen in America; as, for in- 
 stance, on this road there is a precipitous town called Ironbridge, 
 which makes one think of Mauch Chunk on a small scale. Not 
 far from here I was pointed out the residence of a Mr. Whitmer, 
 an ironmaster, whose estate extends for miles in every direction. 
 His name was mentioned with more respect than I have noticed 
 used with regard to many noblemen, and I am inclined to think 
 that men like him, who are allied by birth to the middle, or even, 
 as in the case of the elder Stephenson, to the lower classes, are the 
 real leading men of England. 
 
 The agriculture of this region was indifferent ; the hedges were 
 untrimmed ; the fields were poor, and many of them were a per- 
 fect blaze of poppies, very ornamental, but quite the reverse of 
 useful. It reminded me of some old country in New England, 
 where all the young men have gone West, and left the old men to 
 knock about with a side-hill plow and a bush scythe. 
 
 Worcester, where we arrived in due but not very fast time, is 
 an ugly town, uglier even than Stratford -on -Avon, of which we 
 
 (25) 
 
26 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 shall speak by-and-by, because it is larger. It is known best in 
 history on account of Cromwell's fight there, the memory of which 
 is perpetuated in the Guildhall by a cannon and several suits of 
 armor, left by the king's forces when they retreated. 
 
 Every old English town has its peculiarities and its sights, or 
 some real or affected quality of its inhabitants. Thus, at Liver- 
 pool they still relate with infinite glee the story of a coachman in 
 the old coaching days, who described his load as "a gentleman 
 from Liverpool, a man from Manchester, and a fellow from Bol- 
 ton." Chester has, as I have said, three sights ; Shrewsbury has 
 a dozen little "lions;" but Worcester has but two sights, and no 
 more, to interest the traveler. These are, the cathedral and the 
 Eoyal Porcelain Works. 
 
 The cathedral has been restored, and is a fine building, with 
 a modern look. They say these restorations are necessary to pre- 
 serve antique buildings, and yet astonishing stories are told of the 
 solidity of old English structures. Eev. Moncure D. Conway 
 lives in Hammersmith, London, in a dwelling called Hamlet 
 House, which is over one hundred and fifty years old, and was 
 once the residence of Liston, the famous English actor ; yet Mrs. 
 Conway assured me that it did not need near the repairs of a mod- 
 ern London residence. They built well in the old time. But to 
 return to Worcester and its cathedral. Chester Cathedral is re- 
 markably destitute of monuments, but Worcester is full of them. 
 One erected to the memory of Lady Charlotte Digby ( the work of 
 Chantrey), is singularly beautiful — worthy of Powers, who, in my 
 perhaps not very valuable American opinion, was the greatest 
 sculptor since Phidias. It represents a partially-reclining female 
 figure, with her hands clasped and her eyes uplifted. The neck, 
 
WORCESTER. 27 
 
 arms and feet are bare, and the latter are the most marvelous 
 things I ever saw in marble. In this church is also buried the 
 wife of Izaak Walton, and there was a "touch of nature" in the 
 inscription in the words introduced in parenthesis, "Alas! that she 
 is dead." There are an abundance of monuments of ancient 
 knights and ladies, lying side by side on their tombs, their poor 
 stone hands clasped. The verger said the way in which a knight's 
 legs were crossed indicated the number of holy wars in which he 
 had been engaged; whereupon the idle and irrelevant reflection 
 occurred to me that an American editor lying on his tomb with 
 his legs crossed for each of his fights would be a fearfully twisted 
 object. 
 
 The gratuity nuisance, at which every American traveler has 
 waxed wrathful, exists in a particularly aggravated form at Wor- 
 cester Cathedral. Notices are everywhere posted, informing vis- 
 itors that the vergers are paid by the dean and chapter, and that 
 no gratuities are to be given them, but you are admonished that 
 you must give "at least sixpence" to the poor, and a verger stands 
 over you to see that you do it. This is too mean ; but the Houses 
 of Parliament are almost the only "show places" in England 
 where some such sixpenny dodge is not resorted to. 
 
 Speaking of cathedrals, they are grand structures; they are 
 history in stone; and I can sympathize with the feeling that leads 
 to their preservation and restoration — but they are unfit for Prot- 
 estant places of worship. As museums, they are a success ; as 
 churches, they are not. They were built for another age and an- 
 other faith. The ancient monkish carvings, for instance, would 
 by no means be introduced even into a modern Catholic church. 
 At Chester, the celibate artist has depicted the sorrows of matri- 
 
28 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 mony — we have a woman beating her husband with a broom, etc. ; 
 but at Worcester, the carved work is literally "red hot." All the 
 steps in the fate of the wooden impenitent are portrayed. Here 
 he is condemned ; here devils are tying sinners in convenient 
 bundles to burn ; here one unusually hard case is being treated to 
 a roast by himself; here one unlucky gentleman is boiling away 
 in a kettle of oil; and the procession of wooden horrors is closed 
 with the figure of a bishop, who, with uplifted finger, seems to be 
 saying to those who would get out for a drink of water or a breath 
 of fresh air, "No you don't." 
 
 I attended two choral services in cathedrals — one at Chester 
 and another at Worcester ; and notwithstanding the fine music, 
 scarcely anybody was present. Dean Stanley attracts a large con- 
 gregation on Sunday at Westminster Abbey, for he is one of the 
 greatest men in the Church of England; but the result is, that 
 with one of those great pillars between you and the preacher, you 
 cannot hear what he says. The humblest "meeting-house" in 
 America is preferable as a preaching -place to the proudest 
 cathedral. 
 
 The cathedral at Worcester does not prevent the Dissenters 
 from being the strongest. Such names as Milton street and Crom- 
 well street indicate the prevalence of the Eoundhead blood. I 
 noticed several temperance inns, and even a Temperance street; 
 and somehow I have associated teetotalism in England with lib- 
 eralism in politics and dissent in religion, while it seems as if the 
 Conservative party and the Establishment "took its tod." How- 
 ever, total abstinence in England is getting along very slowly, in 
 church or state. At the rate of present progress, I should judge 
 that about twenty thousand years would be required for the Inde- 
 
WORCESTER. 29 
 
 pendent Order of Good Templars to acquire a good_^and sufficient 
 foothold. 
 
 The Royal Porcelain Works are well worth a visit. The works 
 have been established about one hundred and fifty years, and 
 claim to make the finest goods in England. The curious in 
 pottery may have noticed the Worcester work at our Centen- 
 nial Exhibition. The processes by which what look like white 
 rocks and white sand are converted into the most delicate por- 
 celain wares, are very interesting. Nearly everything is done 
 by hand; and here, as in AmericR, it has been found that in 
 certain kinds of burnishing- work, women can alone be employed. 
 Here is one "field" where woman is preeminent. Agates are 
 used in burnishing, and I suggested Colorado as a good field 
 to supply the large amount of the stone required. There are six 
 hundred persons employed in the works — all save two of them 
 English. As a curious instance of the biblical truth, that there 
 is "nothing new under the sun," I was told that the favorite 
 ware now was of the same pattern as a set made for King George 
 III. If you go to Worcester, do not fail to visit the porcelain 
 works. You can get a pair of blue vases there for the sum of 
 one thousand guineas a pair. 
 
 At Worcester, it was my disgusting fortune to meet the first 
 ill-mannered Englishman. It was a youth with a scorbutic coun- 
 tenance, who sold tickets at the Great Western station. This 
 person not only refused to change a Bank of England note, but 
 genteelly intimated that I was a counterfeiter, or a burglar, or a 
 horse-thief for having such a note in my possession. As it was 
 train-time when I received this flattering testimonial to my char- 
 
30 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 acter, and there was no chance to get the note changed elsewhere, 
 I was obliged to remain several hours longer in Worcester. 
 
 I wandered into the Guildhall, where a court was in session. 
 It was a small affair, and the Justices had no wigs; but as it is 
 impossible to deal out justice in England without something un- 
 usual on your head, all the Justices had their hats on. It was 
 some case in which a "workus" was mixed up; and it struck me 
 that their worships looked uncommonly like the beadle in Oliver 
 Twist. 
 
 In accordance with the American custom, I went into a news- 
 paper office. The editor, I was sorry to learn, was dead. I trust 
 his life was insured, as otherwise his family were undoubtedly left 
 destitute. The business manager, a fat man with a gracious way, 
 who had worked on a London paper, was very civil. I went into 
 the composing room with him. It looked just as such an institu- 
 tion does in America. The foreman told me that the "tramping 
 jour." was a regular British institution; so my friend, and every- 
 body's friend, Mr. Peter Bartlett Lee, will find himself at home 
 should he choose to visit the shores of old Albion. I was shown 
 an old hand-press, and was astonished to see the American eagle 
 roosting thereon. "Hello, old bird," thought I; "what are you 
 doing here?" The matter was explained when I saw that it was 
 an old "Columbian" press, the "image and superscription" of 
 which may be seen in any history of typography. However, this 
 was not all : I found a new American jobber in operation in the 
 office. 
 
 Although I had had a sample of "Worcestershire sauce" from 
 the cub at the railroad station, I looked about for the manufactory 
 
WORCESTER. 31 
 
 of Lea & Perrin's "justly celebrated" article. The manufactory 
 was not as extensive as I expected ; and I fear that what is sauce 
 for Worcester is not sauce for America. 
 
 At 4 o'clock p. m. I wended my way to the station, where my 
 imperial friend was graciously pleased to accept a sum in copper 
 and silver in exchange for a ticket to Stratford-on-Avon — of 
 which I may use the entirely original and impromptu expres- 
 sion, "more anon." 
 
STRATFORD - ON -AVON. 
 
 w 
 
 ILLIAM SHAKSPEAKE, by merely being born, con- 
 ferred unmeasured honor on a very stupid, "stale, flat 
 and unprofitable" town — a town which it is a duty to visit and a 
 pleasure to leave; a town where the old houses are not picturesque, 
 and the new ones are not handsome. 
 
 The Stratford of Shakspeare's time was probably a cozy hamlet, 
 as comfortable as any English village could be in the "good old 
 time." It was nearer the Avon (which, by the way, is pronounced 
 A-von by those born on its banks), and there were trees and gar- 
 dens where there are now broad, flat yellow streets, lined with 
 ugly houses. 
 
 I reached Stratford a few hours "by sun," and looked about 
 for something that would bring back the old time. I found, in- 
 stead, the programme of a "praise meeting" such as my friend 
 the Rev. Mr. Blakesley holds at his church — though I venture to 
 say the birthplace of the "bard of Avon" does not furnish as 
 good music as Topeka; and also a handbill announcing that the 
 Methodists were going to hold a camp meeting soon. Here was 
 certainly one American institution at the start. While the relig- 
 ious exercises of the neighborhood savored of the modern, it 
 must be confessed that the amusements had a more ancient flavor. 
 For instance, it was announced that one of the sports at an ap- 
 proaching festival would be "walking across the river on a 
 
 (32) 
 
STRA TFORD - ON- A VON. 33 
 
 greased pole for a pig." This would have pleased Falstaff, and 
 doubtless that immoral old knight laughed at the same perform- 
 ance in his time. 
 
 It was sunset, or rather the long English twilight had com- 
 menced, when I wended my way to the church of the Holy Trinity, 
 where Shakspeare is buried. The church stands in the corner of 
 the town, and is shut in by garden walls and trees. It does not 
 seem a part of the modern town. A sound of music issued from 
 the gray old church, and a boy told me it was doubtful if I could 
 gain admission, as "choir meeting" was in progress. However, 
 yonder was the house of Mr. Butcher, the parish clerk, and I 
 might see him about it. Mr. Butcher came out of his respectable 
 mansion as I approached it. He was a man of decent and vener- 
 able aspect, with a Eoman nose large enough for two average Ro- 
 mans. He was somewhat round-shouldered, and had a rather sad 
 and wearied look. I felt that he thought this was a " mad world, my 
 masters," when people come across the ocean to ask him hundreds 
 of questions about a man who has been dead since 1616. He did 
 his duty, though, and we entered the church in which the shadows 
 had commenced to gather. The choir leader had his forces mar- 
 shalled, and was giving his orders in a loud and peremptory man- 
 ner. We passed through the choir and stood at the railing of the 
 chancel within which lies buried Shakspeare. The bust in the 
 niche in the wall above the chancel, is familiar to everyone from 
 engravings. It is colored, to make it appear life-like, I presume. 
 I trust it is a bad likeness; I hope that the artist who carved it 
 was a very bad one, for it would be a genuine affliction to believe 
 that Shakspeare looked like that. It is the beefy countenance of 
 a good natured- person who might possibly pay for a Falstaff's 
 
34 A KANSAN ABROAD. * 
 
 drinks for the sake of laughing at his talk, but who in no possible 
 juncture of circumstances could be supposed to take an active 
 part in the conversation. 
 
 Very good people are sometimes troubled with doubts about 
 the doctrine of the Trinity, and ever since I first read of Miss 
 Bacon's theory, that Shakspeare did not write Shakspeare's plays, 
 but that he was merely a mask for Lord Bacon — intellectually 
 the greatest Englishman of his time — I have had spasms of infi- 
 delity about the "divine William." As I looked at his graven 
 image in Stratford church, and read the mysterious curse which 
 forbids any meddling with his bones, all my doubts returned. 
 How was it possible, thought I, that a drunken, dissolute youth, 
 educated in this out-of-the-way place, ever acquired the informa- 
 tion displayed in a long series of historical plays? How did 
 anybody, born in Stratford- on- A von, ever come to write any- 
 thing? I was glad to go out of the church; and as I went I 
 gazed again on the serious countenance of Mr. Butcher, and 
 wondered if he did not have his doubts, and if he did not have 
 to struggle with himself to keep from breaking out sometimes 
 before a party of American visitors, and telling them that they 
 were humbugged ; that there never was any Shakspeare ; that he 
 never was born — never died, and never wrote any plays. If Mr. 
 Butcher had any doubts, he kept them locked in his bosom by a 
 "combination" known only to himself. But he was not a Shak- 
 spearean enthusiast; for as we walked down the aisle, he called my 
 attention to some new stained-glass windows, and to the modern 
 arrangements for heating the church with hot-water pipes, for, 
 he remarked, it was a cold place in the winter-time; and so he 
 said "good night," and left me in the churchyard. 
 
STB A TFORD - ON- A VON. 35 
 
 It was a quiet place. The Avon flows at the foot of the stone 
 wall which forms one side of the churchyard. On the other side 
 of the narrow stream, which winds among sedgy islands, was a 
 broad, green meadow, but a few inches above the level of the 
 stream; and beyond that was a green embankment, and then a 
 line of scattered oak trees, and beyond them the evening sky. 
 Young people were walking arm-in-arm in the meadow, and some 
 boys were fishing from the stone wall, and some fresh-faced, hoy- 
 denish young girls were running and romping about among the 
 gravestones. It was possible here to believe in Shakspeare. It was 
 possible to suppose that he might have walked beside this stream, 
 and that his brilliant fancy might have here conjured up such 
 bits of melody as "Where the bee sucks," and "Come unto these 
 yellow sands." And yet, if history be true, all this was fancy. 
 The immortal plays were written in London, the London of nearly 
 three hundred years ago, a city of dirty, narrow streets and unsa- 
 vory smells. The chances are that "All the world's a stage" was 
 thought out, not under the blue sky at Stratford, but at the wings 
 and amid the smoke of the candles that lit the stage of the Globe 
 Theater, in London. Poets have lived in most unpoetical places, 
 and Shakspeare was not an exception. Stratford had nothing to 
 do with his genius. In the little town he was born, and passed a 
 not very reputable youth. He sought real life in London, and 
 passed his greatest days there, and retired at last with a not un- 
 common feeling of attachment to one's birthplace, to Stratford, to 
 die and be buried. His. family name is not an uncommon one. 
 There is a Shakspeare in the town now, who keeps a little shop ; 
 there is, or was not many years ago, a Captain Shakspeare in the 
 British army, who, Mr. Butcher told me, had visited Stratford; 
 
36 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 but no Shakspeare traces his descent from the one great man of 
 the name, and really but little is known of him, whose epitaph 
 might read: "He furnished the world with quotations." 
 
 It was quite dark when I got back to the inn. Bardolph, Pistol 
 and the rest kept up an awful noise in a tap-room near, singing 
 convivial songs, and occasionally I heard a female voice above 
 the din, which I suppose was that of Dame Quickly ; and to make 
 the illusion yet more perfect, I met Doll Tearsheet on the stairs 
 the next morning very drunk indeed. 
 
 On my way to the station, I stopped at the house where Shak- 
 speare was born. It is a "timber -and -plaster" house, with a 
 slightly-projecting upper story, such as are found all over Eng- 
 land. One may see a row of them in Gray's Inn Road, London. 
 I should judge this style of house was the ancestor of the "con- 
 crete" house — a variety of architecture unfortunately prevalent 
 in Kansas. The Shakspeare house is kept in excellent repair, 
 and the museum it contains is really interesting. I noticed the 
 trace of America all around. Washington Irving' s lines, "written 
 on the spot," are framed and hung up in a conspicuous place. 
 The fame of that excellent man and pioneer of American litera- 
 ture appears to be very well cared for in England. I saw among 
 the pictures a photograph of the "death mask" of Shakspeare, 
 found in Germany, but did not find in the library the copy of 
 "Scribner" containing a very interesting paper on the mask and 
 other portraits of Shakspeare. 
 
 It was very pleasant to see so many evidences of American 
 appreciation in this little interior town of England; it recalled 
 one of the singular facts of history. Four years after Shakspeare 
 died, the company of Puritans landed at Plymouth. In that 
 
STRA TFORD - ON- A VON 37 
 
 company there was not a man or woman, I venture to say, who 
 did not regard Shakspeare as "a maker of profane stage plays," 
 and a son of perdition; and I am equally confident that Shak- 
 speare, in his day, regarded the Puritans as a set of sour-faced 
 bigots, unworthy a place on the earth they darkened with their 
 gloomy presence. Yet in that new nation founded by these con- 
 temners of the vanities of the stage, the name of Shakspeare is 
 held in the greatest reverence. 
 
 "New Place," the site of the house where Shakspeare died, I 
 did not care to visit. We are told that the property fell into the 
 hands of a clergyman, who was bored by visitors, and who, more 
 anxious to have a comfortable place to die in himself, than to 
 preserve an old house, tore it down. The place is a sort of beer 
 garden now, I believe. 
 
 Further about Stratford, this deponent saith not. Were it ten 
 times as ugly, and, in itself, uninteresting as it is, it would always 
 be visited. Men cannot resist, after all the vanished years, the 
 spell of that mysterious genius which came like a meteor from 
 out the darkness; which passed over the earth like "the wind, 
 "but whence it cometh and whither it goeth, ye cannot tell." 
 
WARWICK AND ITS CASTLE. 
 
 AMOKNING ride from Stratford-on-Avon to Warwick is 
 not a particularly inspiriting operation, as the road leads 
 through an exclusively agricultural country. 
 
 Warwickshire, in its surface, is not unlike Dickinson and other 
 counties of Kansas in that region, but trees are very plentiful; 
 in fact, the country was, centuries ago, a forest. The trees some- 
 times cover the hillsides in groves, but oftener stand in the 
 hedge-rows which cut the country up into small fields. The haw- 
 thorn, by-the-way, is a much handsomer hedge-plant than the 
 Osage orange. The grain looked short; and they were cutting 
 the grass with little one-horse mowers, and the swaths looked 
 thin on the ground. I saw not a stalk of Indian corn ; nor did I 
 see an ear of it in England, except those exhibited in the British 
 Museum as curiosities. There were many fields of turnips, and 
 others of some plants that looked like milk -weed, but which, I 
 learned afterward, were horse beans. Where the land had been 
 rlcently plowed, it looked yellow and poor. It was evident 
 that the high cultivation, associated in our minds with modern 
 English farming, had not been tried in Warwickshire; or if so, 
 it had done but little good. Creeping around in these fields were 
 men in dingy white clothes, hoeing turnips and the like. The 
 American black slave was not, in his day, remarkable for the 
 celerity and suddenness of his movements, but he was a miracle 
 of activity compared with these Warwickshire serfs, who belong 
 
 (38) 
 
WARWICK AND ITS CASTLE. 39 
 
 to the constituency of Mr. Joseph Arch. In the early part of the 
 century, it was reported that every eighth person in Warwickshire 
 was a pauper. If agriculture is the only resource of the county, 
 the proportion ought to constantly increase. 
 
 In this region I saw for the first time numerous thatched cot- 
 tages. They look very romantic in pictures, and that is a very 
 pretty line about "The swallow twittering in the straw-built shed," 
 but practically and prosaically, a thatched roof is a great nuisance, 
 in perpetual danger of fire, and a harbor for uncounted rats. A 
 farm laborer's thatched cottage in England comes next to a Kan- 
 sag dug-out, which I have always maintained was the meanest 
 human habitation. The farm houses proper were substantial 
 structures, and the outbuildings usually formed quite a village. 
 
 In time, under a dim gray sky, we arrived at the mossy old 
 town of Warwick. The gentle reader will pause to be told here 
 that this word is pronounced Warrick ; in fact, the phonetic Indi- 
 anians once having occasion to name a county after an army offi- 
 cer named Warwick, spelled the name as it was pronounced, and 
 so it remains even unto this day. 
 
 Other old towns that I had seen in England looked as if they 
 had changed somewhat in the last thousand years or so, but not 
 so Warwick. As soon as the smart railroad station was out of 
 . sight, and the shady winding street shut one in, it was easy to im- 
 agine that Warwick town was still a dependency on the castle, and 
 that the warder still kept his watch on the castle walls. I re- 
 marked the image carved in stone of a very venerable-looking 
 goat, standing on his hind legs on top of an ivy-covered gate-post, 
 and was speculating as to the character of the old house, in front 
 of which this goat seemed to be a mute sentry, and whether the 
 
40 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 occupant was my Lord Neville, or, perhaps, Beauchamp, when I 
 saw the very common-place notice, "Boarding," in the window. 
 It was 1877, after all. 
 
 The castle is the great feature of Warwick. It is one of the 
 very few edifices of the kind in England, still kept up and occu- 
 pied as residences. 
 
 The plan of these old castles appears to have been substantially 
 the same. Elevated ground was selected — at Warwick, a cliff 
 high above the Avon. There the walls and towers were built 
 about an inclosure — the court-yard. At first, the structure might 
 be limited and rude, but successive occupants added towers and 
 battlements, till in time, as at Warwick, an immense collection of 
 buildings was the result*. A village grew up about the castle, and 
 in these latter days, the village, grown to a city, usually exists 
 still, while the castle is a mouldering ruin ; but at Warwick both 
 castle and village are in "full force and effect." The entrance to 
 Warwick castle is through a portion of the park, and the road at 
 one place goes through a cutting in the rock, which is so over- 
 hung with trees that it is twilight there at noonday. You emerge 
 into the midst of shrubbery and flowers, and, crossing the moat, 
 which is now dry and beautifully sodded, you enter the court- 
 yard, and the venerable walls of Warwick castle are about you. 
 
 A guide, for a shilling, will tell you in which century each 
 tower was constructed, but I forget what the guide said. I know 
 that there was a castle here when the robber William, known as 
 the Conqueror, took possession of the country. The Saxon owner 
 had sided with the Normans, or had remained neutral, and hoped 
 to retain possession, but was kicked out in due time, and the prop- 
 erty given to a gentleman named, I think, Newburgh. Then the 
 
WARWICK AND ITS CASTLE. 41 
 
 pleasant lords who occupied the castle, raided other lords, and 
 they returned the compliment by storming the castle and burning 
 it ; and then new towers and walls were constructed — and so the 
 castle grew to be the wonder it is. The towers, externally, seem 
 well preserved ; but when you climb the stone stairs, you see that 
 the steps have been worn thin by the feet of successive genera- 
 tions. The old guard-rooms in the tower are curious places, the 
 stone floors fairly hollowed by the wear of centuries. In these 
 rooms, the mail-clad warriors tramped about and looked out of 
 the narrow windows, and longed for a chance to get down and 
 out, and murder and plunder somebody. It is easy to be super- 
 stitious in these old places, and one gets to speculating who the 
 present lord of the castle may be, and thinks that he must be a 
 descendant of the haughty barons who domineered over these 
 premises and the surrounding region ; and who flung down their 
 gauntlets at the feet of kings, and made such remarks as, "Lord 
 Angus, thou hast lied!" and that he must inherit the fierce fea- 
 tures of his warlike ancestry ; but, in the case of Warwick castle, 
 this is the purest romance. The lord of the castle, and the ruler 
 of this "battled wall and donjon keep," is, or would be in Amer- 
 ica, Mr. George Guy Greville, a mild-mannered old gentleman of 
 sixty or thereabouts, who probably wears a tweed suit and an um- 
 brella and a silk hat ; who sits on a red cushion in the House of 
 Lords and seldom says anything, and who resides in a modern 
 house in London, instead of holding "high wassail" in his ban- 
 queting hall at Warwick, or storming about, shouting, "What, 
 warder, ho ! let the portcullis fall." The present Earl of Warwick 
 is not in the least a relative of the Nevilles or the Beauchamps, 
 the Warwicks of old. They are all dead, and the present earl is 
 
42 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 a descendant of a certain Sir Fulke Greville, who flourished not 
 longer ago than Queen Elizabeth's time. These Grevilles do not 
 appear to have been very distinguished as fighters, though Lord 
 Brooke, one of the family, was killed at the siege of Lichfield, in 
 the days of Cromwell. The present Countess of Warwick, I was 
 told, comes of a military family, being a sister of that dashing and 
 enterprising donkey, Lord Lucan, who ordered the Light Brigade 
 to death and destruction, at Balaklava. 
 
 As I have said, Warwick castle is one of the few old castles 
 still occupied as a residence. Although over thirty rooms were 
 destroyed by fire a few years ago, a considerable portion of the 
 residence part remained untouched ; and in turn we may say, that 
 the occupied portion of the castle comprises but a small portion 
 of the castle itself. Warwick castle is, then, partly a residence, 
 partly a picture gallery, and partly a carefully-preserved ruin. 
 
 The state rooms are open to the public on the payment, of 
 course, of one shilling. If heaven were under English manage- 
 ment, an entrance fee of one shilling — neither more nor less — 
 would be demanded. A noble suite of rooms, filled with costly 
 and beautiful objects, is traversed by the visitor. At Warwick 
 I first saw the original portrait of Charles I, by Van Dyke : as I 
 have seen this original several times since, I think Van Dyke 
 must have painted several pictures at once. It is this portrait, 
 Macaulay thinks, that makes people believe that Charles was a 
 "martyr." His Majesty struck me as having a long nose, and a 
 mean expression of countenance. Holbein's picture of Henry 
 VIII is also at Warwick. No engraving does this picture justice. 
 It must have been a most faithful portrait, for a more beastly 
 countenance cannot well be imagined. The finest picture, in my 
 
WARWICK AND ITS CASTLE. 43 
 
 opinion, in the collection, is a portrait of a Spanish embassador, 
 by Velasquez. I hope such of my friends as may hereafter visit 
 Warwick will not fail to look at it. I ought not to omit to men- 
 tion, also, Sir Joshua Reynolds's famous picture of Mrs. Siddons. 
 The greatest curiosity of the place is the suite of rooms devoted 
 to a display of ancient weapons and armor. These rooms are hol- 
 lowed out in the enormous thickness of the old castle walls, which 
 after, the process are still heavier than the walls of our strongest 
 houses. 
 
 In going to Warwick, I was moved in a great degree by a de- 
 sire to visit the Earl of Leicester's hospital, so pleasantly described 
 by Hawthorne, a description which will bear reading many times. 
 This asylum was founded by that Robert Dudley, Earl of Leices- 
 ter, the favorite of the " Virgin Queen," Elizabeth, for whose vir- 
 ginity we are indebted for the name of Virginia. Robert had his 
 faults — who has not? He poisoned one wife, dishonored another 
 before he married her, and disowned a third ; but his monument 
 in the church at Warwick bears the usual inscription : "A kind 
 husband, an affectionate father." However, to decidly alter Shak- 
 speare, the good that bad men do lives after them. The little boys 
 "of Warwick go to a school established by a bequest of murdering 
 old Henry VIII, and the provisions respecting the Earl of Leices- 
 ter's "bounty" are still carried out. He provided that twelve old 
 soldiers, to be selected from four parishes named, should be forever 
 sheltered at this hospital. The master at the hospital must be a 
 clergyman. Failing in finding soldiers, marines are eligible to 
 the bounty. The buildings are quaint old structures, of the tim- 
 ber-and-plaster order of architecture, like Shakspeare's birthplace 
 at Stratford. Each soldier has a little room of his own. The 
 wives of the old men are allowed to remain here also, and I saw 
 
44 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 red-faced old women who had followed the marchings of the Brit- 
 ish army for twenty-five years. There is a great hall, said once 
 to have been a splendid place, and in one end of the hall is this : 
 "Memorandum that King James the First was right nobly enter- 
 tained at a supper in this hall by the Honorable Sir Fulke Gre- 
 ville, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and one of His Majesty's Most 
 Honorable Privy Council, upon the Fourth Day of September, 
 Anno Domini, 1617. God save the King." Those who would 
 know how His Majesty munched, and romped, and joked, and 
 slobbered on that occasion, should read the "Fortunes of Nigel." 
 When I saw this sacred place it was partly filled with washtubs. 
 
 My guide was an old soldier with a fiery countenance, a red 
 wart on one eyelid, and a breath which I judge had been through 
 several wars and had assisted at the storming of several distil- 
 leries. He told me all about the establishment, and showed the 
 badge which each veteran must wear — the bear and ragged staff. 
 He said that but one of the badges had ever been lost, although 
 generations of old soldiers — the wearers thereof — have gone to 
 the "eternal camping-ground." He exhibited a piece of embroi- 
 dery, by the unfortunate Amy Robsart, and said that the hand- 
 some frame was purchased by an American gentleman, Mr. Charles 
 O' Conor, of New York. I was very anxious to see the master of 
 the hospital, Rev. Mr. Harris, and get from him some remi- 
 niscences of Hawthorne's visit, but was unable to find him "at 
 home." 
 
 I was curious to know how the gratuity business was to be man- 
 aged. It was very neatly done. My old military friend assured 
 me that he and his brethren wanted nothing; but that the late 
 Earl of Leicester had neglected to make any provision for the 
 widows of old soldiers ; that a fund was now being raised for that 
 
WARWICK AND ITS CASTLE. 45 
 
 purpose ; and if I would like to contribute a little something, etc. 
 I strongly suspect that my shilling went to keep up the fine old 
 military breath of my guide ; and if so, it is well. Long may it 
 be before he takes that jolly red nose out of a beer mug for the 
 last time, and long may the good bounty of the wicked Earl be 
 well dispensed, and the " broken soldier kindly bade to stay." 
 
 The sun scarcely shone while I was at Warwick, and the faint 
 gray sky seemed to harmonize with the gray walls of the hoary 
 castle; the quiet streets of the faded, aged town; the dim aisles of 
 old St. Mary's ; the brown flood of the gliding Avon. The town 
 crier, whom I met in a cocked hat and a long flaming red coat, 
 carrying his noisy bell, was quite out of character. Methought 
 he was far too gay for such a venerable and time-worn place, 
 where there should be nothing vivid in color, or more harsh in 
 sound than the mill-wheel's drowsy hum and the decorous singing 
 of staid and ancient birds. 
 
 The train bore me away in the early afternoon, to Leamington ; 
 to Banbury, famous in the nursery rhyme ; to Oxford, with its great 
 university; and so at last I saw shining in the distance, like the 
 Delectable Mountains in Bunyan's dream, the towers, the skirting 
 battlements, the great walls, white and fair, of Windsor castle. 
 Then, as one beholds at sea the crest of wave rising behind wave, 
 miles away to where the sky comes down, so I saw lines on lines 
 of roofs, red and black, one behind another, acres on acres of them, 
 to the right, to the left, to the front ; and over all hung a blue 
 smoke like that which rolls away from a battle-field when the day 
 is won and lost. 
 
 "Is that London?" said I to the man opposite. 
 
 "A part of it," said he. 
 
SOMETHING ABOUT LONDON 
 
 THEEE are several villages of considerable importance in 
 England, such as Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham, 
 but there is but one town, and that is London. To go to "town," 
 is to go to London ; and, no matter from what point of the com- 
 pass you start, it is always "up" to London. 
 
 People confuse and overwhelm themselves in trying to take 
 in the idea of London as a single city. The "City" proper, as 
 everybody is supposed to know, is a small spot in London com- 
 prising between three and four hundred acres; and from that 
 center London has spread like a prairie fire, until it is simply a 
 county covered with houses. I have never heard a man say how 
 many people there are in London; the usual expression is, "from 
 three and a half to four millions" — a few hundred thousand, 
 more or less, make but little difference. This immense popu- 
 lated region that we call London, is, however, easily traversed; 
 and it is no more difficult for a visitor to find any locality in Lon- 
 don, than it is for a Western man to find the "n.e.^ of the n. w.£ 
 of 6, 11, 15." There are many streets of the same name in Lon- 
 don, and it is somewhat important that you should know whether 
 you want to go to Queen street, Hackney, or Queen street, Ken- 
 sington, as they are some miles apart; but if you do know this 
 much, you can hardly go wrong, inasmuch as the city is also di- 
 vided into parts designated by initials, as W., west; W. C, west 
 central, and so on. 
 
 (46) 
 
. SOMETHING ABOUT LONDON. 47 
 
 The immense populated country, then, that we call London, is 
 geographically divided in a simple manner ; is admirably paved, 
 well lighted at night, and guarded by an army of perfectly-drilled, 
 neatly-uniformed, quiet, civil, intelligent police — the stranger's 
 best friends. 
 
 The growth of London in all directions, is shown by names 
 which have now lost their significance. There are "fields" where 
 there are no fields. Bunhill Fields, the Dissenters' cemetery, 
 where Bunyan is buried, is miles from anything resembling a 
 field ; so are the churches of St. Martin-in-the-fields, and St. Giles- 
 in-the-fields. These names once given, will, probably, always re- 
 main ; for in England things change, but names seldom or never. 
 
 London is really a modern city, and still a growing one. It is 
 true that a city called London has existed for very many centu- 
 ries, still but few traces of that old city remain. Nearly every- 
 thing one sees in London dates back not over three hundred 
 years. Westminster Abbey and the Tower are exceptions ; but 
 the Houses of Parliament are new; St. Paul's is not a very an- 
 cient edifice ; and in fact, an American is very apt to look with 
 great reverence on certain things in London which after all are 
 not much older than Boston. I believe the oldest equestrian 
 statue in London is one of Charles I, in whose days America had 
 already become a promising youth. The names of localities, as 
 they existed before modern London came into being, still remain. 
 Why a street should be called Old Jewry in a city where a Eoths- 
 child has been knighted, and in a country ruled by the son of an 
 Israelite, and himself called Disraeli, is a conundrum that must 
 be left to Dundreary. In the old time there was a thoroughfare 
 called Thieving Lane, near the palace of Westminster. If an 
 
48 A XANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 officer, in taking a thief through this locality, took him out of 
 certain bounds, the thief went free. Thieving Lane no longer ex- 
 ists, but Broad Sanctuary does, and may be seen by any visitor to 
 St. James Park. 
 
 Old London, now outgrown and overgrown, was a wretched 
 place, unpaved and unlighted, infested at night by robbers and 
 ruffians of all sorts. In fact, it is not so long ago that highway- 
 men stopped travelers in what is now London. Messrs. Turpin 
 .and others, who ended their days at "Xewgit," did a flourishing 
 business in its immediate neighborhood. 
 
 This huge monster of London must have breathing -places; 
 and they exist in the great parks in the west, and in the number- 
 less squares and crescents all over town. These little squares are 
 not, strictly speaking, public property, but are used by the people 
 living around them : it is a penal offense to unlock them without 
 a key issued by authority. These squares are, however, a thing 
 of beauty and a joy forever — to those who have keys. 
 
 To get about London you have the choice between the under- 
 ground railway, usually called the "Metropolitan;" several "day- 
 light" railways; the street railroads, called "tramways," and very 
 slowly coming into favor ; the omnibuses ; and a countless number 
 of vehicles, including that English institution, the "Hansom," in 
 which the driver rides behind the top in a trap that resembles 
 one of Faries' smoke-stacks. The London cabman, once a mir- 
 acle of extortion and impudence, is now pretty well subjugated ; a 
 table of distances is posted at all the cab stands, and there is no 
 absolute necessity for being bullied or cheated. Of course, a small 
 gratuity is allowable, and the cabman usually grins when you 
 alight, and observes that he "wouldn't mind 'avin' a glahss o' 
 
SOMETHING ABOUT LONDON. 49 
 
 beer." The quickest way to travel is the " underground," but you 
 must stand the gas and smoke. In the matter of cheapness, the 
 cars and 'buses rank about alike; the easiest and most stylish 
 mode is to take a carriage; but the best style of traveling for a 
 stranger is on top of an omnibus, if possible, with the driver. 
 These drivers " know the country." I rode once with a red-faced 
 old horse-pelter who was as original as Mr. Weller, the father of 
 "Samivel." The "basic" theory of this old gent was, that we are 
 creatures of circumstances, and are good or bad, "accordin'." 
 All men, he reasoned, were possible " raskills," and as to women 
 — but, I won't give his theory about them, for I don't believe it. 
 An omnibus driver, as far as he drives, is worth a dozen guide- 
 books. 
 
 There is another great thoroughfare in London, which I have 
 not mentioned : it is the Thames. To one who has seen the Mis- 
 souri, the Mississippi, the Hudson, and several other American 
 rivers I could name, it is rather fatiguing to hear an Englishman 
 speaking of the Thames as "a noble river," and even as "an enor- 
 mous stream." It is a very nice little river, is the Thames; but 
 it looks very small at first sight, and the bridges across it, though 
 very handsome as a rule, are nothing in the matter of engineering 
 to the Mississippi river bridge at St. Louis, or, in fact, any of the 
 great railroad bridges in America. I was disappointed in the 
 Thames and its shores. I had formed my ideas of it from Dora's 
 pictures, as published in Harper's Weekly some years ago. I im- 
 agined it a swift stream, black as ink, crowded with boats jostling 
 each other ; and that it was overshadowed by enormously high, 
 black warehouses. Instead, on a trip to Greenwich and back, I 
 saw a very cleanly, decent stream, not at all crowded with water 
 
 D 
 
50 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 craft of any sort ; and instead of the black castles of Dora's pic- 
 tures, there were rows of more or less rusty three-story buildings, 
 like those one sees along the levee of a Mississippi river town. 
 The Houses of Parliament, Somerset House, the Tower, and a 
 few others, break the monotony; but London from the Thames 
 looks commonplace, grimy and seedy. The river, however, forms 
 a pleasant thoroughfare, and the ugly little steamers are always 
 filled with people. Something is always happening on or about 
 the river to attract a crowd on the bridges. One day a crowd lined 
 the parapet of Westminster bridge. The "sight" appeared to be 
 a company of New York merchants and their wives and daugh- 
 ters on a boat, with a carpet and some gilded chairs forward, and 
 another boat lying alongside on which was a band of music. It 
 turned out that the first boat was the "royal" boat. I looked 
 over the bridge, and pushed and pulled and hauled for a place 
 with the rest — not, of course, because a republican American ever 
 cares to look at queens and noblemen and such small deer, but 
 merely to hear the music, you know. I don't suppose my Ameri- 
 can readers will take any interest in the "outcome" of this affair, 
 but I may remark, casually, that none of the royal family were on 
 board the "royal" boat. 
 
 According to Sir William Jones — I believe it is — it is not 
 "high-raised battlements" and the like that "constitute a State," 
 and so, after all, it is the people that make a city. London is a 
 very populous city ; by which I mean that, in spite of the immense 
 number of houses, there seem to be too many people for the resi- 
 dences. It certainly appears in London as if half the people 
 must walk about in the daytime while the other half slept. It is 
 not only on a few streets, as in New York, that one sees the crowd, 
 
SOMETHING ABOUT LONDON. 51 
 
 but on all the streets there is a moving swarm of people. There 
 seems to be no "business center" in London — it is business every- 
 where. Streets, miles from the Bank of England, are as crowded 
 as Threadneedle or Lombard streets. The first exclamation of 
 every visitor must be, "What swarms of people!" — and this by 
 night as well as day. Work on a morning paper has made me, 
 from force of habit, a discarder of the ancient maxim, "Early to 
 bed and early to rise," but I never walked the streets of London 
 late enough to find them empty. Ceaseless as the flood of a 
 mighty river is the everlasting flow of human life in the streets 
 of wondrous London. 
 
 In this mass of humanity that lives and moves and has its be- 
 ing in London, every variety of human condition may be found. 
 The peer, and the wretched old woman who sells matches, jostle 
 each other on the street. Sit on a chair in Hyde Park, and in an 
 hour's time will roll by in carriages the representatives of wealth 
 enough to buy Kansas — personal property, improved real estate 
 and all. A five-minutes walk will bring you into the midst of 
 wretchedness enough to chill the heart to look upon it, and vice 
 enough to sicken the " oldest inhabitant" of Sodom. Between these 
 are infinite grades. There are whole streets filled with people who 
 seem to be poor, but not beggars; rough, but not wicked. These 
 streets swarm with babies. I have looked down the vista of such 
 a street, and it seemed as if one could not walk through the mid- 
 dle without stepping on a baby. The street baby is usually in 
 charge of a little girl, but little bigger than a baby herself, who 
 carries her charge at all sorts of angles, as if it were a bag of old 
 clothes. The lighting of the gas — an excellent article in London 
 — is the signal for a general gathering in these streets of all the 
 
52 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 babies — enough in three or four blocks to furnish half a dozen 
 baby shows. "On such a night," as Shakspeare remarks, I wan- 
 dered into Ossulston street, a long, narrow thoroughfare branching 
 out of Euston Koad, not far from the great St.Pancras depot, and 
 there came that way an Italian gentleman with the national in- 
 strument of his country, a hand-organ. That organ was as Geo. 
 W. Martin would say, "a rattler." It was a Wild Bill, a "Rowdy 
 Jo." of an organ — it played none of Artemus Ward's "slow 
 moosic;" it took no note of "Hear me, Norma," but indulged 
 only in the most exhilarating jigs, the most maddening reels. A 
 company of stout, fresh-faced girls, whose social position it was 
 hard to guess — only that they did not seem bad — subsidized the 
 organ with half-pence and commenced to dance on the sidewalk. 
 Round and round they went; up the center and "hands across." 
 The hand-organ got excited and could hardly wait for the crank 
 to come around ; the girls went faster, balancing with their hands 
 upon their hips, and smiling from ear to ear; then the young 
 nurses caught the contagion; the babies were gathered up any- 
 where — by the arm, by the leg, by the neck, by the heels — and 
 joined, perforce, in the dance. The street was full of music and 
 motion ; the few dogs that the poverty of the neighborhood sup- 
 ported in ease and idleness, assisted, by barking, in the amuse- 
 ment ; it was a whirlpool of tangled hair, little bare legs, glittering 
 eyes, white teeth, and rags. It was literally "fun alive"— hearty 
 and innocent. It was one of the sights not described in the guide- 
 books. And so we will stop here, and leave other sights, palaces 
 and cathedrals, parks and pleasure-grounds, galleries and gardens, 
 to another chapter. 
 
MORE ABOUT LONDON. 
 
 It ~l TOW long did you stay in London?" said I, the other 
 
 -J — L day, to my fellow - passenger on the Bothnia, Mr. 
 McNally, of Eand, McNally & Co., of Chicago. " Two weeks," 
 he replied, "which was a week too long." 
 
 This little conversation was held in Paris, and it expresses the 
 sentiment of nearly every American — after he has seen Paris. 
 In what may be termed attractiveness, it is true that Paris main- 
 tains an immense superiority over London. The difference is as 
 great as that between a factory and a theater. If you wish to be 
 delighted and amused, go to Paris; if you wish to be instructed, 
 go to London. 
 
 The "great sights" of London are nearly the same that they 
 were fifty years ago. In my earliest youth, I heard of the Tower, 
 of Westminster Abbey, of St. Paul's, of the Zoological Gardens ; 
 and they are to-day, as they were in that remote period, the first 
 things seen by every visitor. They have been so often described, 
 that their appearance is familiar to every American — it only 
 remains for me to give personal impressions. 
 
 I came upon Westminster Abbey the first day I spent in Lon- 
 don, quite unexpectedly, and I was powerfully impressed by the 
 gloomy majesty of its exterior. Those two great towers seemed 
 to represent art defying time. Nothing can be grander in its way 
 than the great Abbey. It strikes you, it seems to me, in the same 
 
 (53) 
 
54 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 way that the Yosemite does, or, to use a humbler simile, one of 
 the great trees of California. 
 
 I visited the Abbey three times ; once on Sunday, to hear Dean 
 Stanley preach, in Avhich attempt I was unsuccessful. At a short 
 distance from the preacher, but hidden behind one of the great 
 clustered columns, it was impossible to catch a word or syllable. 
 In each of these visits — I may as well confess the truth — I was 
 disappointed. The interior of the Abbey, cut up into chapels, 
 lacks the imposing dignity of the exterior; many of the monu- 
 ments are in outrageous taste — many are defaced by time, and the 
 appearance of everything is rusty and dusty. The great names 
 that adorn the walls are the real glory of the Abbey. Take them 
 away, and you might as well raze the building to the ground, 
 for all the interest it would possess to a foreign visitor. 
 
 As an American, I was desirous of seeing the monument of 
 General Wolfe, who fell on the Heights of Abraham. I found a 
 huge pile of allegorical figures, in the midst of which, Wolfe was 
 depicted naked, in the same style that Nelson appears in a bronze 
 horror at Liverpool. In my experience, I have never known a 
 major general to go into action in that light array; and I can 
 conceive no reason why any officer of any army or navy should 
 be thus represented on a monument. Every American looks at 
 the monument of the ill-fated Major Andre. It at first seems 
 strange how fame preserves some comparatively humble names. 
 Andre was a young man, only a major in rank, and died 
 (justly, I think) as a spy; yet I have looked with emotion upon 
 memorials of him in two continents — at Philadelphia and at 
 London. But then, he was young, brave, handsome and unfor- 
 tunate — a combination that is not so easily forgotten in this world. 
 
MORE ABOUT LONDON. 55 
 
 Another monument that attracts trans- Atlantic attention, is that 
 of Oliver Goldsmith, whose name has been made near and dear 
 to us by the beautiful biography by Irving. His monument is 
 disfigured by a Latin inscription, written, in spite of a protest, by 
 that lumbering old pedant, Dr. Johnson. All that Latin is lost 
 to the ordinary visitor, whose heart is stirred by four English 
 words on another monument — "O, rare Ben Jonson." In the 
 shadow of the Temple church, in the heart of London town, there 
 is the real monument — a flat, low-lying slab, on which you may 
 read the words, "Here lies Oliver Goldsmith." 
 
 Most of the modern monuments in the Abbey are plain, but 
 elegant in design. This description applies particularly to the 
 monument to Sir John Franklin. 
 
 A very touching custom in the Abbey, and elsewhere in Eng- 
 land, is that of hanging over the resting-places of soldiers the 
 faded flags of their regiments. In the dim light, unstirred by any 
 passing breath of air, covered with gathering dust, faded and 
 worn, these banners hang as if they, too, were dead ; as if life had 
 departed from them, too, when it left the brave arms that could 
 no longer defend them. 
 
 I would advise the visitor oppressed by the memories evoked 
 by the Abbey, to visit the Houses of Parliament, close at hand. 
 This great edifice is modern, and harmonious and beautiful 
 throughout. The House of Lords is the finest room I have ever 
 seen, or expect to see. Ninety feet long, forty-five feet wide, and 
 high in proportion, its symmetry is perfect. Unlike our halls of 
 Congress, it is admirably ventilated, and the air is as pure and 
 sweet as that of spring in the country. 
 
 A curious compromise is seen in the paintings in one of the 
 
56 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 corridors. On one side are three pictures, portraying the valor 
 of the Cavaliers ; on the other side are three scenes from the his- 
 tory of the Puritans. One of these represents the departure of the 
 Pilgrim Fathers for America — one of the very few artistic recog- 
 nitions of the fact that the American Colonies were once "the 
 brightest jewel of the crown." 
 
 The Tower of London must of course be visited — but the 
 place smells of innocent blood. It is a dreadful thing to look 
 upon a block scored by the ax, where men were beheaded only a 
 few years before our own Revolution. A certain brass plate sick- 
 ened me more than all the wax horrors of Madame Tussaud's ex- 
 hibition, for it marked the spot where stood the scaffold on which 
 the slender necks of women were severed by the brutal ax ; where 
 the Countess of Salisbury was dragged by her gray hair to the 
 block — for so perished the last of the Plantagenets. The redeem- 
 ing feature of the Tower is the beautiful arrangement of the mod- 
 ern arms, and the devices formed of old bayonets, sabers, cutlasses 
 and the like. One of these, representing the Prince of Wales's 
 wedding cake, is a miracle of ingenuity. Speaking of cakes, the 
 cake-baker to the royal family of England heats his royal oven 
 at Chester. Then, of course, every one looks at the regalia room, 
 where the royal crowns, scepters, swords, etc., are kept. Looking 
 at the splendid crowns, one cannot help wondering at the poor 
 quality of the heads they usually cover. 
 
 I would advise every visitor to London to make much of the 
 British Museum. It is in a gloomy building on a side street, but 
 it is a constantly-growing wonder. I would advise reading peo- 
 ple who expect to stop in London to obtain access to the library, 
 which contains over one million volumes, any one of which will 
 
MORE ABOUT LONDON. 57 
 
 be handed you inside of ten minutes from the application. The 
 great circular room occupied by readers is a beautiful place, and 
 all the arrangements for reading and writing are perfect. There 
 are many thousands of volumes which you can take from the 
 shelves yourself — and if others are needed, the attendants are 
 uniformly polite and intelligent. A "liberal" education could 
 be acquired in the British Museum alone. It is an art school, 
 already. Many young persons may be seen copying the antique 
 statues. The young ladies thus engaged were the prettiest I saw 
 in England, and several of them were so handsome that they 
 abundantly justified the necessity of the posted notices, "Visitors 
 are requested not to crowd around the students." 
 
 In Paris all public rooms and buildings are bright with fres- 
 coes, mirrors and gilding, while the walls of the British Museum 
 are as plain as those of a Quaker meeting-house. A long step in 
 the direction of the ornamental has been made in the South Ken- 
 sington Museum, which is really a beautiful place. I was most 
 interested there in the manuscripts of Dickens's books. I thought 
 I saw a growing change, running through the successive volumes. 
 In "Oliver Twist," the handwriting was bold, full and free, while 
 "A Tale of Two Cities" was blotted, and full of interlineations 
 and changes. The man's mind was wearing out. 
 
 The old "city" of London is the gloomiest place on earth. 
 With the exception of St. Paul's, there is nothing that is not 
 either positively, comparatively or superlatively ugly. The mon- 
 ument "in honor" of the great fire, is situated in a sort of hole. 
 The top is surrounded by a railing, put there to check a growing 
 furor for jumping off (at which I do not wonder much), and the 
 bottom is covered with inscriptions, stating that you can go up for 
 
58 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 three-pence, and that the provisions of the penal code will be en- 
 forced against any persons beating carpets against the monument. 
 While in this neighborhood, and out of respect for my honorable 
 profession of journalist, I visited Billingsgate; but the place was 
 a disappointment, and furnished me no new ideas. It is now a 
 very commonplace fish market, where the language is up to the 
 average of that of an editorial association, and a good deal more 
 decent than that of an American newspaper fight. 
 
 St. Paul's cannot be described. It has all the majesty — and 
 more — of the old Catholic edifices, and is, withal, suited to Prot- 
 estant services. The only fault with this building architecturally 
 is the statues on the roof, which look like stone "hoodlums" who 
 have climbed up there without permission. 
 
 How dear to the youthful heart are the recollections of New- 
 gate ! How precious the spot to the readers of Mr. Ainsworth's 
 lurid works! It is but a step from St. Paul's — a powerful-looking 
 building, with a sweet festoon of shackles, handcuffs, balls, chains 
 and other jewelry over the main entrance. A few years ago, exe- 
 cutions took place in the open space in front of the prison. A 
 dense crowd filled this space, cursing and jostling all night long 
 prior to a hanging. A spectator of one of the last public enter- 
 tainments of this kind told me that the mob got to knocking off 
 the hats of the police officers, and that the hats rolled over the 
 heads of the mass like balls in a bowling alley. This is all over 
 now, and "Newgit," like many another institution of the "good 
 old times," is not " what it used to was." 
 
 The transition is a sudden and almost irreverent one, but it is 
 only a few steps from this dreadful old place to Bunhill Fields, 
 where some of the best men and women who ever lived and died 
 
MORE ABOUT LONDON. 59 
 
 are buried. This ground is a relic of the old times when the 
 Dissenter was allowed to carry his dissent to the grave, if not be- 
 yond it, and be buried separately from members of the Estab- 
 lished Church. It opens directly on the street, and is so crowded 
 with tombstones that you can hardly walk about. Here are the 
 monuments of Dr. Watts and other hymn-writers ; here is buried 
 the mother of the two great Wesleys; and "behold a greater than 
 these," for here is buried John Bunyan, who, though, as he tells 
 us, while he "walked through the wilderness of this world, 
 lighted upon a certain place where was a den," made for us all, 
 good and bad, a "dream" full of well-nigh unearthly brilliancy. 
 Here, too, is buried Daniel Defoe, who, as the author of Kobin- 
 son Crusoe, has sent more boys to sea than all the shipping 
 offices ; a man who was rewarded for his services to mankind by 
 mutilation and the pillory, and of whom the great Mr. Alexander 
 Pope was not too much of a gentleman to write, "Earless on 
 high sat unabashed Defoe." Of this old burial-ground, I ven- 
 ture to say that there is more scripture and hymn-book in Bun- 
 hill Fields than in all the other London cemeteries put together. 
 But one sees here no military or naval monuments, yet those 
 sleep here who have fought and have won. The inscription tells 
 us of one who, though living in a humble sphere, was yet a 
 worthy champion of honest government, and that he did not die 
 until he had seen his fondest hopes realized in the passage of the 
 Eeform Bill. Of victors there are many, being those, as the 
 gravestones tell us, who " achieved a signal triumph over death." 
 
 It is out-of-doors that the English display the finest artistic 
 qualities. The parks and pleasure-grounds are their finest pic- 
 tures, for they are wrought in the soil, which the Englishman 
 
60 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 loves. St. James Park, Green Park, Hyde and Eegents Parks, are 
 all near together, and all are lovely places. The scrubby trees 
 of the Champs Elysees do not compare with the noble oaks and 
 chestnuts in the great London pleasure-grounds. In fact, nothing 
 can be mentioned in comparison with them except the Central 
 Park of New York, which is unquestionably the finest park in 
 the world. 
 
 The attraction of Hyde Park is the fashionable drive, which 
 retains — because it happened once to get it — the detestable name 
 of Eotten Row. In Rotten Row you may see the aristocracy in 
 full feather in gorgeous equipages, and attended by the most im- 
 posing flunkeys. The two things which most impressed, me, were 
 first, the exceeding personal ugliness of the "hupper classes," and 
 second, the legs of the footmen. I may say under the first head, 
 that in my opinion the countesses and duchesses of England, in 
 the matter of beauty, cannot approach the barmaids and the 
 waitresses at the railroad stations. The aristocratic female in 
 England has a tendency either to grow thin — in which case her 
 countenance assumes all the angles of a gun-lock — or she gets 
 stout and red in the face, and becomes a burden. I saw in the 
 Row one day a lady clad in silks, who actually seemed a load for 
 a pair of horses. The English gentleman is generally fine look- 
 ing. The horsemanship displayed by him, though doubtless very 
 fine, looks odd to an American. The cavalier of Rotten Row rises 
 from his saddle at every step of his horse, affording the passer-by 
 a fine view between his legs of the country beyond. But while 
 I have been talking of this and that, I have forgotten Mr. Yellow- 
 plush and his calves. The male leg is not usually a matter of 
 interest, but the shanks of these high-bred minions greatly inter- 
 
MORE ABOUT LONDON. 61 
 
 ested me. Such development I never saw. I have no idea where 
 such a breed of legs originated. We have nothing like it in 
 America. 
 
 The attraction at Regents Park is the Zoological Garden. A 
 man can well afford, after visiting the "Zoo," to renounce all 
 future " animal shows." There is nothing else like it. Here are 
 literally droves of kangaroos; a barnyard full of giraffes; deer 
 of every description ; hippopotami, half a dozen of them; all sorts 
 of water fowl; a wilderness of monkeys; a houseful of lions; 
 the most gorgeous parrots and other tropical birds — and all in 
 the most elegant residences ever occupied by birds and beasts. It 
 would be delightful even if the monkeys were taken away. Lec- 
 tures are delivered here on the habits of the animals, even more 
 instructive than those I have heard from the lips of Major Tom 
 Anderson. On Saturdays a military band performs, and the 
 children ride the elephants, who start around, of course, "when 
 the band begins to play." 
 
 The flower-beds and the turf of these great parks are perfec- 
 tion ; they are the resort of rich and poor, and the parade grounds 
 of the military ; they are the beauty, the pride, and, in a sanitary 
 point of view, the salvation of London. 
 
 I have spoken of the minor squares of London, and it remains 
 to refer to the outdoor statuary, which is very plentiful, and also 
 very ugly. The great men of England glare at you in bronze or 
 marble at every turn. The sharp nose of the Duke of Welling- 
 ton points to every quarter of the horizon. In the matter of 
 hideousness, the bronze Achilles, in Hyde Park, unquestionably 
 leads. It looks like a big colored roustabout going up a gang 
 plank with a car wheel. This terror was erected by a subscrip- 
 tion of the ladies of England. The Duke of York column is 
 
62 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 another monstrosity. "Who was the Duke of York?" was my 
 first inquiry. He was a brother of King George IV, and so on, 
 was answered. But why he was placed on the column I never 
 knew, until a tailor informed me one day that it was to get him 
 out of the reach of his creditors. The Nelson monument, in 
 Trafalgar Square, is no better, and four more beastly lions never 
 were cast than those of Landseer, which form a part of the struc- 
 ture. The statues of Palmerston and others are better, and now 
 I come to speak of another, to me most interesting of all. 
 
 I lodged most of the time while I remained in London at a 
 house in Burton Crescent, and in the little square or crescent op- 
 posite was the statue of an old bald-headed man seated in a chair. 
 The last day of my stay, I went into the inclosure with my fellow- 
 lodger, Capt. Arthur Shaw, the brother-in-law of Thackeray, and 
 read for the first time the inscription. Ignoring the "break- 
 lines" of the epitaph, this is what it said: 
 
 " John Cartwright, born 25th Sept. 1740, died 23d Sept. 1824. 
 
 "The firm, consistent and unswerving advocate of universal suffrage, 
 equal representation, vote by ballot, and annual Parliament. 
 
 "He was the first English writer who openly maintained the inde- 
 pendence of the United States of America, and although his distinguished 
 merits as a naval officer, in 1776, presented the most flattering prospects 
 of professional advancement, he nobly refused to draw his sword against 
 the rising liberties of an oppressed and struggling people. 
 
 "In grateful commemoration of his inflexible integrity, exalted patriot- 
 ism, profound constitutional knowledge, and in sincere admiration of the 
 unblemished virtues of his private life, this statue was erected by public 
 subscription, near the spot where he closed his useful and meritorious 
 career." 
 
 With this notice of an old forgotten friend of ours, who car- 
 ried his wise old head far in the advance of the marching column 
 of humanity, we close these first impressions of London. 
 
PARIS AND THE PARISIANS. 
 
 TWO weeks in my own society at London had disgusted me 
 with my associate, and I resolved to abandon the solitary 
 system of traveling, try a "Cook" excursion ticket, and prepare 
 to answer affirmatively, in future, the first question of my travel- 
 ing fellow-countrymen, " Have you been to Parry ? " 
 
 I proceeded by rail to Newhaven, and thence by boat to 
 Dieppe. If any of my friends think of crossing there, I would 
 advise them to borrow Capt. Boyton's suit and swim, rather than 
 to take the steamer that I did. Not a fourth of the passengers 
 could get into the little cabin, and consequently they remained 
 on deck. I was one of those who thus had a "cold deck" "rung 
 in" on them. The sea was very smooth, and this was a crowning 
 mercy, for I know there was not room on deck for a wash-basin. 
 Had Jonah added himself to the passenger list, he would have 
 had to go overboard — not from any malice at all, but merely to 
 make room for the rest of us. 
 
 In the gray light of morning, we saw the coast of France, and 
 the town of Dieppe. It looked exactly — bluff, old houses, and 
 all — like the levee of a rather seedy town on the upper Missis- 
 sippi. It is really a watering-place of some note, and lately had 
 been visited by M. Thiers on an electioneering tour; but the 
 "watering" part does not show from the dock where we landed. 
 We saw some sad-looking men in uniform, and a very tall cruci- 
 fix, whereat several of the British, who live in mortal fear of the 
 
 (63) 
 
64 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 • 
 
 Pope, began to bewail themselves about the "superstition of the 
 country." In due time, we passed through the custom house. 
 There was nothing dutiable in my valise. If there had been, as 
 a measure of economy I should have handed over the "grip- 
 sack" to the officer, and have asked him to make a present of it, 
 with my compliments, to the French Eepublic. The officer in 
 charge of persons, as distinguished from property, was a young 
 man with fierce eyes and a mustache like two corkscrews. "Aire 
 you Ingleesh ? " he said ; to which I responded in excellent 
 French, "Oui." It was a dreadful thing for one to say whose 
 grandfather "fit in the Revolution," but it saved time at any 
 rate; and beside, the French think Americans are only a variety 
 of the beast "Anglais." 
 
 We took breakfast at what the British said was a "burly." 
 The practice of uselessly ill-treating the French language at once 
 commenced. The place was kept, I think, by an Englishman, 
 and all the waiters understood English ; but that did not prevent 
 their being assailed with such remarks as, "Garsong, wooly-woo 
 bring me some jambong?" The result was distraction. 
 
 We got into the cars at last, and started at a very moderate 
 pace for Paris. The French railroads are not very strong, in the 
 matter of speed, and the management lacks enterprise in the mat- 
 ter of ditching trains, running into open drawbridges, telescop- 
 ing other trains, and such-like — in which my own country can, 
 as in everything else, discount the world. The country presents 
 a great uniformity in this part of France, increasing, however, in 
 fertility and beauty as you get away from the coast. Mile after 
 mile you see rural villages with thatched roofs, and smart little 
 towns with white plastered houses and fire-red tile roofs, and in- 
 
PARIS AND THE PARISIANS. - 65 
 
 terminable long straight rows of tall straight poplars ; and little 
 fields about as big as a tarpaulin, unseparated by fences, of differ- 
 ent colors, and making the slopes of the hills look like vast 
 patchwork quilts. In a wide valley, or rather where several 
 valleys come together, you see the fine old city of Eouen, with its 
 cathedral in the midst, looking more like some hoary old cliff 
 than a house made with hands. You follow the windings of the 
 Seine, a bright stream, which, somehow, always makes me think 
 of a rosy old French gentleman when he feels good after dinner, 
 it is so smooth and clear, and agreeable. Very much of a gentle- 
 man is the Seine. 
 
 You see, before you have gone far, that you are in an industri- 
 ous country. You see countless tall chimneys, marking the sites 
 of manufactories. There are no loafers about the stations — you 
 understand how the French paid off the enormous war indem- 
 nity. 
 
 One comes upon Paris suddenly. But a few moments before 
 you pass the line of fortifications, you are in a wood, like those 
 around the towns of Indiana; but that is about the last "touch of 
 nature" you see, for Paris is the most artificial, as it is artistic, of 
 cities. As soon as you are at the station, you begin to note the 
 difference between London and Paris — the superior height of the 
 Parisian houses, their whiteness and brightness; and then they 
 are lit up by the sun, the same one we have in America, and 
 which has not yet been introduced into London. 
 
 Passengers traveling with Cook excursion tickets go to the 
 
 hotels designated, and I went thus to the Hotel Coquilliere, in 
 
 the Eue Coquilliere, not far from the Rue Jean Jacques Rous- 
 
 seau, which in its turn runs into Rue Montmartre, which — but I 
 
 E 
 
QQ A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 presume I have made the locality sufficiently clear to my readers, 
 and will not particularize further. I suppose the Hotel Coquil- 
 liere was a one-horse hotel, but I have gone farther to four-horse 
 establishments, and fared worse. The landlord spoke English 
 very well, though his name was Puisgasu, which the first class in 
 French may stand up and pronounce. The landlady was one 
 of the plumpest, and blackest-eyed of French women, and had 
 the sweet, coaxing voice, peculiar, I think, to the women of 
 France, for I have never heard it elsewhere, as a rule, and I have 
 listened attentively all my life. The chambermaids wore white 
 caps with frills, and were as ruddy as apples, and as stout as 
 horses, and could carry a Saratoga trunk to the top of the house, 
 without drawing a long breath. The table waiters spoke Eng- 
 lish, but pretended that they understood my French, which they 
 iid not; yet I could not help admiring their polite duplicity. 
 Such was the Hotel Coquilliere, and long may it exist. If my 
 country ever sends me to dream the happy hours away, save 
 when waked up to draw my salary, in the laborious position of 
 Minister to France, I shall transfer the flag of the American 
 Embassy to the Hotel Coquilliere. 
 
 During my stay the hotel was filled with English people — 
 most of them very pleasant associates. I think, however, the 
 English know the least about France of any people. I have 
 spoken of the British fear of the Pope. Another bugaboo among 
 the religious English is Voltaire. Why people should worry 
 about Voltaire, who cannot read his works in French, and who 
 have not read them in English, I do not know; and, besides, the 
 man has been dead some years. This I know, for I saw his tomb 
 in the Pantheon. Yet I was always hearing about the wickedness 
 
PARIS AND THE PARISIANS. 67 
 
 of the French, all somehow attributed to Voltaire, who believed 
 in nothing, while nothing was said about the historical influence 
 of the men who perpetrated the massacre of Saint Bartholomew — 
 men who believed a great deal. I sat next to an English parson 
 at table, who seemed very anxious to go to some bad place, not to 
 partake of the ungodliness thereof, but, as he said, to "see the 
 manners of a people unrestrained by Christian influences." It 
 occurred to me that, with a little exertion, he might see something 
 of the sort in London. Americans, with all their faults as travel- 
 ers, are not, I think, guilty of such Pecksniffism as this. There is 
 no earthly call for it from anybody. I presume there are sinners 
 in Paris; occasionally one straggles even into Topeka; but cer- 
 tainly a more decorous city than Paris externally does not exist. 
 I saw a dozen drunken men in London where I saw one in Paris, 
 and nowhere in the latter city did I see the noisy, struggling, ill- 
 smelling crowd that I have seen around the flaring gin-palaces in 
 London. This assumption of the superior morality of London 
 is stupid. 
 
 Before I speak of the great sights of Paris, I may begin at the 
 Hotel Coquilliere, and speak of familiar things thereabouts. To 
 begin with, there was, very near, a great market — the Halle Cen- 
 trale — which I never got tired of visiting. They dealt there in 
 butcher's meat and vegetables 3 and poultry and fish, and the same 
 articles that, save the addition of flowers, one sees in American 
 city markets; but it was the arrangement of the articles which 
 struck me. In the flower markets, the bouquets were very beau- 
 tiful, but so were the beefsteaks, in their department. The legs 
 of mutton were beautified and glorified, and liver and tripe suf- 
 fered a change into something new and strange. I have seen 
 
68 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 carrots and beets grouped with as much skill as ever were living 
 figures in a tableau. It was more than a market to me; it was a 
 museum — an art gallery — as much so as the Louvre, which was 
 not far off. The market artists were all women. In France, the 
 "gray mare is the better horse;" in Switzerland, she is all the 
 horse there is. The Parisian market-women were as polite as 
 duchesses — that is, as polite as duchesses are supposed to be, for 
 I cannot speak of them from personal acquaintance. In this 
 market, then, I saw much of France and of French people. Be- 
 fore I left the Hotel Coquilliere, I knew by sight all the shop- 
 keepers in the neighborhood, and established a "comment vous 
 portez-vous" acquaintance with a bakeress, who, with infinite pa- 
 tience and politeness, studied out what I was trying to say on the 
 " currency question," and explained to me the mystery of French 
 money — the sous, centimes and francs. 
 
 And in the desultory way in which I am writing this, I come 
 to another matter — that of language. I verily believe that many 
 people who would like to visit France, stay away because they 
 dread to go to a country where they are ignorant of the lan- 
 guage. A very little French is certainly a great help ; and how- 
 ever badly you may speak it, the French are too polite to laugh 
 at you, and make every effort to understand : but it is quite pos- 
 sible to get about and enjoy life without knowing a word of the 
 French language. An astonishing number of people, in Paris 
 at least, speak more or less English. You begin, ofttimes, in the 
 street, with fear and trembling, to put together French enough to 
 ask the way to this place or that, to be met with an answer in 
 your native tongue. I do not think that a Parisian ever failed to 
 recognize an American or an Englishman at a glance. 
 
PARIS AND THE PARISIANS. 69 
 
 In London you can see a great deal — by paying a shilling for 
 it — but Paris is a "free show." It is worth a journey there to 
 look at the shop windows. In London, I went to show places 
 and to parks ; in Paris, I never tired of walking about the streets. 
 I walked, I do not know how many times, along the great boule- 
 vards, to the arches called Portes, St. Martin and St. Denis; 
 and then there was the Champs Elysees, and a long walk in the 
 other direction, along the Seine. Of the rides taken, according 
 to programme, and which embraced most of the famous places, I 
 shall not speak here. 
 
 I know — now that we are speaking of externals — hardly a 
 handsome church in London, (St. Paul's being, of course, above 
 cavil or question,) and I do not know of an ugly one in Paris. 
 The statuary in public places in Paris is always fine ; in London, 
 as I have said, it is usually frightful. One wearies, however, of 
 the repetition, in Paris, of Louis XIV. That big wig of his 
 comes in everywhere, and yet he was not a very great man ; and 
 all the cunning of the painter and sculptor has failed in making 
 him look great. It is all wig and high-heeled shoes, after all. 
 The only one of the old kings, in stone or bronze, that people 
 take a second look at now, is Henri IV, who sits on his big 
 horse, as he has for a long time, on the Pont Neuf. 
 
 A great deal has been said about the improvements of Paris, 
 carried on in Napoleon Ill's time, under the direction of Baron 
 Haussman. The opening up of these immense avenues has in 
 many cases made the city handsomer, but not always. I do not 
 think the immense sweep of street-view that leads up to the Arc 
 de Triomphe is handsome. There is such a thing as overdoing 
 the wide-street business, and making a bleak, dreary perspective. 
 
70 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 Those who have seen Kansas avenue, in Topeka, know what I 
 mean. The only thing to do is to fill up these immense long 
 holes with rows of trees on each side and through the center, as 
 they do in Washington. 
 
 The great resort of Parisians, the Champs Elysees, owes very 
 little to nature. The trees look diminutive ; and there is a great 
 deal of gravel to very little grass; consequently it looks better at 
 night than by day. Then the almost blinding light of long rows 
 of gas lamps, all over the grounds, especially about the little thea- 
 ters, make the place quite brilliant. Gas is used without stint or 
 measure in Paris. The Frenchman loves light. 
 
 But I find myself drifting back in mind — not to Paris, but to 
 the people of Paris. The most prominent human beings every- 
 where in Paris are, first, soldiers, with their everlasting blue backs 
 and red legs ; but I do not wish to talk about soldiers now. Next 
 to the soldiers come the workmen — the men who wear the blue 
 blouses, and who have the reputation of throwing up barricades 
 on more or less provocation, and fighting behind them. They are, 
 physically, a fine lot of men — far superior, it seemed to me, to the 
 soldiers. They are always clean; as the English "navvy" is 
 always dirty. They are intelligent — you see a man with a blue 
 blouse quite as often reading a newspaper as the man in a black 
 coat and silk hat. After these, come the middle-aged business 
 men, such as you see at the Bourse, and it seemed to me that they 
 affected the style, or had it in some way, of Englishmen; but per- 
 haps men who make money have a family resemblance the world 
 over. I know that in Wall street, in the Exchange in London, 
 and in the Paris Bourse, you see faces very much alike. Young 
 Frenchmen, especially the students, with their fine, sharp features, 
 
PARIS AND THE PARISIANS. 71 
 
 made me often think of the best class of young Americans, and I 
 checked half-a-dozen times an inclination to speak to such on the 
 presumption that they were my countrymen. 
 
 My brief visit dissipated the last slight remains of the impres- 
 sions received in childhood — impressions probably inherited, for, 
 hundreds of years ago, the Englishman set up an imaginary 
 Frenchman, whom he dubbed "Johnny Crapaud," a meager, 
 black, thin-legged creature, who screamed and gesticulated like a 
 monkey, who did not believe in God, and who ate frogs. This is 
 the Frenchman of the old English comedies, and has been faith- 
 fully copied and reproduced on the American stage — and he is 
 just as natural, and no more so, than the stage Yankee, with his 
 "tarnal" and "tarnation," words that I, who spent my youth in 
 New England, have never heard seriously uttered in the whole 
 course of my life by anybody. 
 
 The Frenchman — the Parisian, at least — is as unlike this car- 
 icature as anything can be. In fact, it always appeared to me that, 
 while animated in conversation, the features of the men I met in 
 Paris, when in repose, possessed an expression of sadness. This 
 may be the effect of the overwhelming afflictions — the flood of 
 sorrows which has rolled over Paris within the last few years; 
 but I am inclined to think it is permanent and national. I never 
 saw a Parisian boisterously happy. I once saw, though, a very 
 happy company ; it was a wedding party at the little village of 
 Joinville-le-Pont, just outside of Paris, on the banks of the Marne. 
 Our party had finished their dinner, when the wedding party 
 arrived, and sat down to a long table under an arbor looking out 
 on the river. The table was neat and bright, and there was wine, 
 plenty of it. Not only the bridal party proper were on hand, 
 
72 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 but apparently all the relatives on both sides, from old people 
 down to children. The father of the bride was there — a noble- 
 looking man, with hair and mustache as fine as silk and white 
 as snow. They all drank the vin ordinaire, which forms a regular 
 part of the dinner as much as bread, and numerous bottles of 
 champagne besides; and when the dinner was over, the bride — a 
 sensible-looking but not pretty girl — made the entire circuit of 
 the table and kissed each of the gentlemen on both cheeks, while 
 the bridegroom extended the same courtesy to all the ladies. 
 This was the happiest lot of French people I ever saw, and there 
 was no noise, no vinous excitement — none of the features of the 
 American "tear," nor of the maudlin demonstrations that occa- 
 sionally come in at the close of a long series of New -Year's calls 
 in our country. 
 
 And I saw another and very different scene, in which the same 
 class of people took part. It was in the great Parisian cemetery, 
 the Pere la Chaise. As we were riding out — an English friend 
 and myself — we passed a humble funeral procession; the gentle- 
 men all on foot, and all walking bareheaded, in the burning sun, 
 as they had done, perhaps, for miles. Our cabman lifted his hat 
 as we passed. We happened to be near at hand when the com- 
 pany reached the grave-side ; and after the prayers were said, one 
 gentleman after another advanced and sprinkled holy water upon 
 the coffin. The principal, the only mourner, I thought, was a 
 young priest, who for a moment gave way to a burst of grief, and 
 it was a thing to look at and remember, the way in which, without 
 any demonstrativeness, each man advanced and gave his hand to 
 that lone mourner. 
 
 They say, notwithstanding all this, that the French are pro- 
 
PARIS AND THE PARISIANS. 73 
 
 foundly insincere. It may be, or it may not be. I am, it is true, 
 an American — one of a very talented and able race of men ; but it 
 has not been given me, the power of knowing the hearts and souls 
 of my fellow-creatures. Omniscience is not one of my specialties, 
 consequently I only judge by what I see and hear; and so, while 
 the French may be, as my clerical British neighbor remarked, 
 "unrestrained by Christian influences," it seems to me, using my 
 "lights," that the French are a gifted, a brave, a courteous, a 
 deeply -unfortunate and greatly-misunderstood people. 
 
THE SIGHTS OF PARIS. 
 
 TO attempt to see in a week a city to which six months might 
 be devoted, is a discouraging task, but it is a still more 
 hopeless undertaking to tell in one chapter what might well make 
 a volume. The reader will, therefore, be charitable enough just 
 to consider this, not as a description, but as a memorandum of 
 some few of the many things to be seen in Paris. 
 
 Most people feel a curiosity to know what traces remain of the 
 ravages of the Communists. I should say, very few. It is in- 
 deed astonishing how rapidly and thoroughly damages have been 
 repaired. The palace of the Tuileries is still a ruin, but one 
 hardly noticed in connection with the vast uninjured pile of the 
 Louvre. An immense scaffolding was already up preparatory to 
 rebuilding the Hotel de Ville. The Column Vendome is in place 
 again ; and there are, in the heart of the city at "least, no traces 
 of the destruction of private property. 
 
 I am at a loss which to place first among the attractions of 
 Paris. I suppose, however, that out of ten persons eight, at least, 
 would say the Louvre ; but the great historical edifice of Paris is 
 certainly Notre Dame. Its position is picturesque; its history has 
 formed a prominent feature in many romances; yet when I en- 
 tered it, by one of those unlucky mental impressions which strike 
 us at the most inopportune moments, there came to me, not the 
 visions of the earlier and more glorious days of the cathedral, 
 but the scene described in one of the bitterest passages in that 
 
 (74) 
 
THE SIGHTS OF PARIS. 75 
 
 exceedingly bitter book, "Kinglake's Invasion of the Crimea," in 
 which he describes Notre Dame as being lit up of a chill winter 
 morning by thirty thousand lamps, and resounding with a Te 
 Deum sung in honor of the author of the massacres of December 
 — Louis Napoleon. 
 
 The Invalides is a most interesting place, or seemed so to me at 
 least, on account of the old soldiers who live there. I noticed 
 that quite a number of the Englishmen in our party took their 
 hats off to these mutilated old veterans. The tomb of Napoleon 
 is worthy of the man whose ashes repose in it, but the Invalides 
 seems desecrated by being made the burial-place of the lesser 
 Bonapartes. The Napoleon was the only man of his family. 
 
 The Pantheon is a strange-looking building, on account of the 
 absence of any outside windows, which gives it a dead - wall ap- 
 pearance. We went down into the vaults, where the French offi- 
 cer in charge read in a high-pitched and most melancholy voice 
 the inscriptions on the tombs of Voltaire and Rousseau. This 
 was translated into English by the guide. A famous echo is con- 
 cealed about the premises, but I failed to hear it. 
 
 The Gobelin manufactory of tapestry is one of the wonders 
 of Paris — the surprise being that such marvelously beautiful 
 work should be produced by processes which look as simple as 
 those used by a Navajo Indian woman in weaving a blanket. It 
 is nearly all done by hand, and the results are pictures — copies 
 of the finest works in the Louvre, and hardly distinguishable 
 from the original. Bob Ingersoll once said that the tapestries he 
 saw in Europe reminded him of a tablecloth at Metamora, in the 
 second week of court; but I am afraid Robert hasn't a good eye 
 for tapestry. It is astonishing how the varying expressions of 
 
76 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 the human countenance can be woven. There are some tapestries 
 in Windsor Castle, from the Gobelin, depicting scenes from the 
 story of the Golden Fleece, in which the passions of love, joy, 
 grief and despair, are as faithfully portrayed as if done by the 
 greatest painter on earth. 
 
 The various arches and columns with which Paris abounds, 
 have been often described. The Arc de Triomphe is the most 
 magnificent; but one gets a trifle tired of military monuments. 
 The names of Napoleon's victories are repeated a thousand times 
 over — attached to streets, to boulevards, to bridges, and finally 
 affixed to all sorts of monuments. Of course I had sooner see a 
 thousand monuments to Napoleon than one to Louis XIY; but 
 one would like to be reminded occasionally of something besides 
 bloodshed. 
 
 I passed several times the Champ de Mars, the site of the 
 next international exhibition. The buildings, which were being 
 rapidly pushed forward, are situated on both sides of the Seine. 
 The art building is an immense affair, in the Trocadero, on a rise 
 of ground facing the river. The buildings for other purposes are 
 directly opposite, and connected by a bridge. These last-named 
 buildings are built of iron. The site is a magnificent one. 
 
 One of the pleasantest days of my life was spent in a little 
 trip which embraced the Bois de Boulogne, Longchamps, St. 
 Cloud, Versailles and Sevres, in the order named. The morning 
 was delightful, and the fair weather covered the expedition, with 
 the exception of that part of the "home stretch" between Sevres 
 and Paris, when it rained — not with the regular London drizzle, 
 but a genuine American shower — not, of course, as violent as we 
 have in Kansas, but such as would be considered a good rain in 
 
THE SIGHTS OF PARIS. 77 
 
 Pennsylvania and that region. One could spend a week at Ver- 
 sailles — not in the town, which is one of the dullest on earth — 
 but in what have been in turn the royal, the imperial, and are 
 now the "national" palaces and grounds. Common things, 
 with something uncommon about them, attract the most atten- 
 tion; and nothing, I believe, was looked at with more interest 
 than the state carriages and harness, which are kept near the pal- 
 ace of the Little Trianon. They were certainly very gorgeous, 
 and, shining in the sun, these moving masses of gold and purple 
 must make royalty for the time an attractive thing. We were 
 shown through the Little Trianon, and saw beautiful pictures, and 
 statues, and furniture; but, somehow, these empty state apart- 
 ments always impress me with a sense of dreariness and discom- 
 fort. I never saw a state bed that I thought I could sleep in, nor 
 an imperial chair that wouldn't make my back ache — but I sup- 
 pose kings have some kind of thrice-illustrious and most serene 
 backs adapted to the furniture. I believe I would rather "take 
 mine at ease at mine inn" than in any palace of them all. 
 
 The Palace of Versailles, a place famous in history, is most 
 remarkable for its immense collection of portraits — French, Eng- 
 lish, and even American. I actually saw what might be termed 
 an American historical picture; it represents Washington and 
 Rochambeau discussing the plan of attack at Yorktown. As a 
 rule, there is no recognition of the fact among European artists, 
 past or present, of the existence of the continent of North Amer- 
 ica. However, there is in the Palace of Versailles the picture I 
 have^mentioned, and several portraits, among them the iron face 
 and bristling white hair of old General Jackson. 
 
 The porcelain manufactory of Sevres is an interesting place: 
 
78 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 like the revised statutes of the Medes and Persians, it never 
 changes. It is a government institution, and every French gov- 
 ernment supports it. No matter what may happen in the revolu- 
 tionary way, they go on with their pottery at Sevres. A change 
 of government only produces a change in the initials on the tea- 
 cups and saucers. By looking at these, you can always tell who 
 was uppermost when the particular teacup in hand was manufac- 
 tured. In this manufactory may be seen some of the works of 
 Palissy, king of potters, whose brief biography by Lamartine is 
 one of the noblest tributes to a good and faithful man ever 
 written. 
 
 I have alluded to the Louvre, and with it may be mentioned 
 the Luxembourg. It would be idle to attempt any description of 
 these immense collections. In the Luxembourg may be seen a 
 very large number of pictures familiar to Americans through 
 copies, engravings, and even wood-cuts. Among these are several 
 of Eosa Bonheur's pictures, and Eegnault's great equestrian por- 
 trait of the famous Spanish general, Juan Prim. 
 
 One day was devoted to a visit to Champigny, the scene of the 
 terrific fighting of the 30th of November and the 2d of Decem- 
 ber, 1870. General Ducrot, with a force consisting of National 
 Guards and "Mobiles" — that is to say, comparatively raw troops 
 — attempted to force the investing lines of the Prussians, expect- 
 ing a similar attack on the other side by Gen. Bourbaki. We 
 drove out along the turnpike road by which Ducrot advanced, 
 and where he lost 1,200 men in going less than a mile. The vil- 
 lage of Champigny is on the lower slopes of a hill, the crest of 
 which was finally reached by the French. The hill is covered 
 with orchards, high stone garden-walls, and scattered houses. The 
 
THE SIGHTS OF PARIS. 79 
 
 narrow, steep streets of the little village were the scene of a 
 dreadful fight, and the plastered fronts of the houses to this day 
 are spattered all over with the traces of musket-shots. Most of 
 the houses were riddled with shell. The new tiles showed where 
 repairs had been effected in the shattered roofs, but many houses 
 are still in ruins. We see at Champigny, if not in Paris, what 
 war means. Much of the property is for sale. The ruined 
 owners cannot rebuild it. It was from this scene of desolation 
 that we went back to the little village and saw the wedding I 
 have described in a previous letter, where everybody seemed as 
 happy as if Bourbaki had helped Ducrot out, and as if Ducrot 
 had not been obliged to fall back with his half-frozen army to 
 starve in Paris. One of my companions in Champigny was a 
 Scotchman, many years a resident of South Carolina, who had 
 served in the Confederate army. He and myself, for the first 
 time, had the pleasure of inspecting a battle-field in which we 
 had no personal interest. 
 
 Of course I visited various places of amusement. I am 
 ashamed to tell how much I was affected — for that is the word — 
 by the beauty of the grand new opera house and the opera I 
 heard therein. Tastes differ, however, and an Englishman who 
 was present, and who I thought was a clergyman in thin dis- 
 guise, objected to the opera because there was "too much sing- 
 ing" — an objection which struck me as having a flavor of 
 freshness and originality about it. I afterwards heard a country- 
 man of his growling because there was no striking mountain 
 scenery in Holland — where, I presume, he had expected to find 
 it. The most "Frenchy" play I saw was the " Juif Errant" at 
 the Porte St. Martin theater — a dramatization of Eugene Sue's 
 romance, the "Wandering Jew." I occupied a seat in the par- 
 
80 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 terre, which, in consideration of two sous in hand paid to a bus- 
 tling French woman, had a cushion on it. The gentlemen around 
 me wore blue blouses and had a weakness for garlic, a vegetable 
 I do not "hanker" after as a rule. They also had a habit of 
 climbing over me and going out between acts, though I must 
 acknowledge, in justice to them, that they always said, "Pardon," 
 or "SHI vous plait," as they did it. Notwithstanding these draw- 
 backs, the play was very enjoyable on account of the excellence 
 of the acting. The part of Rodin, the Jesuit, was played by 
 M. Paulin-Menier, and was a wonderful piece of work. It was 
 easy to know the political sentiments of those about me, for 
 where Blanche inquires of the old soldier, " Count of the empire : 
 what is that, Dagobert?" and he responds, "Une betise," i. e., "an 
 absurdity," there was a general cheer and laugh. Besides this, I 
 went to the circus in the Champs Elys^es. I believe some of the 
 gentlemen in the ring were my countrymen; they spoke English, 
 at any rate. But one of the most astonishing incidents at this 
 circus was that I laughed at the clown. He did not say anything, 
 which, perhaps, was what made him so funny ; but, be that as it 
 may, I laughed till the tears ran from these aged eyes — for the 
 first time — at a circus — in these last fifty or sixty years. 
 
 There are a thousand other things which interested me, but 
 which I will not stay to describe, or attempt it. If any of my 
 readers ever go anywhere, they will go to Paris. That is one 
 of the things certain; and when they get there, they will be 
 charmed, and, if they will, instructed. I trust all will be able 
 to go, and with a somewhat higher motive than that avowed by 
 one of my fellow-citizens, who, in the midst of the Atlantic, ex- 
 pressed his anxiety to be in Paris, "for," said he, "there are five 
 or six places where they have American mixed drinks, and 
 they're waiting for me there." 
 
SWISS DAYS. 
 
 IT was "on a summer evening" that the Doctor and I bade 
 adieu to Monsieur and Madame and the concierge and the 
 chambermaids and the waiters and the bootblacks at the door of 
 the Hotel Coquilliere, and set out on a tour to and through 
 Switzerland. A man-of-all-work attached to the house of Puis- 
 gasu accompanied us to the station with the ostensible purpose 
 of attending to our baggage, or rather the Doctor's — a task for 
 which we feared our French inadequate. The waiter — in con- 
 nection with everybody attached to the station — contrived to go 
 raving mad for some minutes, during which interval the baggage 
 must have checked itself and got into the baggage-car of its own 
 accord, but at any rate it got there. 
 
 It was with a faint twinge of homesickness that we saw the 
 lights of Paris disappear. We had resided in that city for a whole 
 week, and felt like old residents. For my part, I had wandered 
 so much over the same ground, that it seemed as if the Street of 
 the Good Children, and the Street of the Dry Tree, to say nothing 
 of the Street of John James Kousseau, had been my play-ground 
 from infancy; I had grown attached to the young fellow who 
 hung about the great market near the Hotel Coquilliere with 
 "Pauvre Diable" in conspicuous letters upon his cap, and grieved 
 that I should look upon his face no more. However, the best 
 friends must part, and so we rolled away in the purple evening 
 from Paris, and the wide boulevards ; and Louis XIV with his 
 f , (81) 
 
82 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 high heels and big wig; and the groups in front of the cafe's, 
 with smiles on their faces and spoons in their hands; and the 
 glorious company of cab-drivers, with their glazed hats and red 
 vests; and the three armies that perpetually garrison Paris — the 
 army of workmen in blue blouses, the army of soldiers in red 
 trousers, and the army of priests in shovel hats. 
 
 No Pullman, no sleep, is the rule with your correspondent, 
 and so it was a pleasure to see daylight again, and with it came a 
 strange country, and a regiment of big men with helmets march- 
 ing along a turnpike with the ponderosity and solidity and accu- 
 racy of a steam-plow. We were out of France, and these soldiers 
 were Germans, and not many hours after we were at Bale, "which 
 the same" is in Switzerland. 
 
 An erudite gentleman of far-western origin long ago remarked, 
 that a man must be a startling case of fool who could not spell a 
 word more than one way, and Bale is one of the words he meant. 
 It is spelled Basle, Basel, and, I believe, in other ways. I have 
 selected the easiest — and, while the reader is at perfect liberty to 
 call the name what he likes, I would remark that many respect- 
 able people in the neighborhood pronounce it " Bawl." 
 
 At Bale, then, in Switzerland, we "struck" a new country, and 
 something new in the way of language. The people of Switzer- 
 land speak any language unknown to the particular traveler in 
 hand. When addressed in German, they answer fluently in 
 French. If you pride yourself on speaking the pure Ollendorf 
 French, you will awake a storm of German which fairly sweeps 
 you off your feet. The best way is to call two Swiss to your 
 assistance: one will certainly speak French and the other Ger- 
 man — then address them both in English. By following these 
 
SWISS DAYS. 83 
 
 directions, even a deaf-mute may travel all over Switzerland with 
 perfect safety. 
 
 Bale was "laid out" before that curse of our modern and arti- 
 ficial society — the "city engineer" — was invented. The word 
 "grade" was unknown in the infancy of Bale. The necessity of 
 digging down trees, and leaving some houses high and dry, and 
 others low and wet, for the sake of getting things on the "estab- 
 lished grade," was not apparent to the early Common Councils of 
 Bale. Where the Creator had made a hill, it was supposed to be 
 intended as a permanent arrangement, and has been suffered to 
 remain as such. If the hill ascends at an angle of forty-five de- 
 grees, that is the " grade." All the streets of old Bale are paved 
 with what are called "cobbles" in New England; and very steep, 
 and queer, and crooked, and "cobbly" are the streets aforesaid. 
 The roofs, also, of Bale are as high and steep as practicable, and 
 their surface is broken by numerous windows, which have steep 
 little roofs also. Sunlight is not much of an object, as it costs 
 nothing; and so there are many streets in the town that enjoy the 
 luxury only for a little while in the middle of the day. Some of 
 the houses are flanked with towers, and have a rusty and resolute 
 appearance, being relics of those charming old days when battle- 
 axes, crossbows, catapults, slings, and a kettle of Greek fire were 
 conveniences in every well-regulated family. 
 
 At Bale there is a famous minster, built heaven knows when, 
 and in it there was once held a council, which sat, I do not know 
 how many years, and decided I do not now remember what. I 
 think they "shipped" one Pope and elected another; but my 
 memory fails me now as to details. The minster is now in the 
 hands of the Protestants. The guide, who spoke Franco-Ger- 
 
84 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 man-English, was very courteous, and took us into the armory, 
 where are weapons from all the battle-fields in history. I in- 
 quired for relics of several lively conflicts, and he unhesitatingly 
 produced them. I believe if I had asked him for a shield and 
 javelin used at Bunker Hill he would have brought out the prop- 
 erty. The guide pointed out to us a curious wooden head, which, 
 if I correctly understood his polyglot remarks, was intended to 
 indicate to the preacher when the congregation had had about 
 enough. By concealed clock-work the eyes of the head are made 
 to swing around and the tongue to protrude in a manner suffi- 
 ciently awful, I should think, to make any preacher stop in the 
 middle of his discourse and get "leave to print." I remember 
 little of the minster of Bale except this wooden head, and a stone 
 knight carved on the front of the edifice, who had run his spear 
 lengthwise through a dragon . The dragon looked sick. 
 
 I should not omit to say that the Bale I have been describing 
 is the old town. There is a new town, as smart and handsome as 
 could be desired, with the usual boulevards and parks and statues ; 
 for Bale is a very rich town, made so, in part at least, by the 
 manufacture of ribbons. St. Elizabeth's, a fine modern church, 
 was erected at the expense of a single citizen. At Bale, one sees 
 the Rhone, the "blue and arrowy Rhone," a very fine stream, and 
 deserving of all the verses which have been written about it. 
 
 Leaving Bale, we went by rail to Lucerne; and on arriving 
 there, went to the Hotel des Cygnes, which hotel I selected because 
 the name reminded me of the Marais des Cygnes. It was ap- 
 proaching sunset, and a slight shower was falling, when I looked 
 out of a window and saw a rainbow which eclipsed all the other 
 rainbows of my life ; for it stretched like an arch from mountain 
 
SWISS BAYS. 85 
 
 to mountain, and the bright lake of the Four Cantons lay beneath. 
 The mountain of the neighborhood is Mount Pilatus, named in 
 honor of Pontius Pilate. It is a noble eminence, and why Pilate's 
 name should be conferred on it, is an unfathomable mystery. I 
 have known towns that might be named Pilateville, or ISTerosburg, 
 or New Sodom, with perfect propriety ; but why this fine moun- 
 tain should be named after a great historical criminal, is, as I 
 have said, quite a puzzle to me. 
 
 We reposed in peace at the Hotel "Marais des Cygnes," and 
 rose with the sun, the lark, the early bird that catches the wake- 
 ful worm, and all the other early-rising things, and looked out 
 upon Lucerne and the lake. The former is a handsome town, 
 and old, of course. In the old time, it was the gathering-place of 
 those Swiss mercenaries who sold their swords to foreign powers. 
 From thence they marched "over the hills and far away," to 
 fight — perchance to die. The virtue of these men was fidelity; 
 the bargain made, gold for blood, and they stood to the agree- 
 ment to the bitter end; and to this virtue of theirs is erected at 
 Lucerne the most poetical and impressive monument I have ever 
 seen. In a quiet spot, a little out of the town, arises in the midst 
 of surrounding trees a bold cliff, and in the face of this has been 
 carved a gigantic lion, designed by the great Thorwaldsen. The 
 poor brute has been mortally hurt — you see the broken spear in 
 his side — but in his death agony he rests his great head and one 
 mighty paw on the shield of the house of Bourbon, as if making 
 one last convulsive effort to defend it. Thus is preserved the 
 memory of the Swiss guards who were killed in Paris, upholding 
 the cause of their adopted sovereign. But poor lion — poor, brave 
 old lion ! thou mightst have found a better pillow for thy dying 
 head than the shield of that false house. 
 
86 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 We decided to take a voyage on the lakes — for what is really 
 the same body of water is called in different parts by different 
 names. I despair of giving any idea of the beauty of the 
 scenery. The only American lake scenery I have ever seen ap- 
 proaching it in beauty is that of Lake George, but there the 
 majestic mountains are wanting — at least such mountains. The 
 voyage was a continuous delight. The last few miles were upon 
 the waters of the Lake of Uri, famous for its connection with the 
 history of William Tell. Every headland has some story con- 
 nected with Tell — and yet people say there never was any Tell. 
 At Fluelen we left the boat, and proceeded to Altdorf. We 
 would like to hear anybody dispute the existence of Tell in Alt- 
 dorf, for here is his image in plaster, standing on the spot where 
 he stood when he let fly at the Ben Davis on his son's head, and, 
 to "make assurance doubly sure," the spot is marked where the 
 boy himself stood. A nice little village is Altdorf — Old Town — 
 and at the inn of the Golden Key you may get a dinner which 
 would have softened the heart of Gessler himself. The town is in 
 a very narrow valley, the great mountains stretching away on 
 either hand, and on one side the town has climbed up the hill a 
 little way, and there are little vineyards and orchards and gar- 
 dens, and the wood in which no man may cut a tree, because the 
 trees stand between the people and the dreadful avalanche which 
 would soon make an end of Altdorf; and high up amid the half- 
 hidden stone walls and the maze of green trees and vines, is the 
 monastery of the Capuchins. It was high noon when we clam- 
 bered up to the little retreat, and the mellow light of the sun 
 shone on all. No man greeted us when we entered the court 
 yard, but the black gowns of two of the monks lay on the wall, 
 as if their owners had hastily retreated on hearing approaching 
 
SWISS BAYS. 87 
 
 footsteps. In the plain chapel there was no occupant, and we 
 noted only a carved arm and hand projecting from the pulpit, 
 and holding out the cross. We went into the garden. It was 
 on the steep side of the mountain, and the earth was held in 
 place by terraces, against which pears were trained, and then 
 there were evergreens carved in fantastic shapes, and a fountain 
 that sang to itself all day and all night, and below, seen through 
 the trees, were the spire of the church and the roofs of Altdorf. 
 How old and still, and how far away from our New World it 
 seemed. One in this place might well believe there had never 
 been any trouble in the church, nor any Luther, and that there 
 was none now ; still, as I clambered down a narrow path to the 
 village, the Swiss guide asked me if I was from the United 
 States, and said that he had once lived in Peoria ! Yes, he had 
 lived in Peoria, and also in St. Louis, where he would like to 
 live still, but his health had failed him, and so he had to come 
 back to Altdorf. His heart was not, it seemed, in these moun- 
 tains, which I had come so far to see, nor did he care for the song 
 of the Capuchins' fountain which I had stopped to hear, but he 
 had rather be at Peoria, or perhaps St. Louis, which was larger, 
 a good deal, than Altdorf and Peoria put together. He talked 
 of America till we got to the church, which had a magnificent 
 altar, and pictures, which, the man from Peoria said, came from 
 Rome, and then he took us into a chapel, and there, on shelves, 
 were the skulls, the guide said, of the Swiss guards in whose 
 honor the great lion at Lucerne had been carved. 
 
 In this little voyage on the lake, and in the visit to Altdorf, 
 and for some hours after, the Doctor and myself had the benefit 
 of the society of Mr. Henry M. Knox, of St. Paul, an American, 
 
88 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 agreeable even in Europe. I inferred, from what this gentleman 
 told me, that while in London he did not stop at the Langham, 
 and yet he was indeed to me " a man and a brother," full of cour- 
 tesy and abounding in information. The American name would 
 be far more popular abroad were there more well-informed and 
 unpretending travelers like my St. Paul friend, and fewer loud, 
 bumptious, purse-proud ignoramuses. 
 
 Two things a man should never do if he can help himself: 
 firstly, he should never eat anything he don't like; and secondly, 
 he should never go anywhere merely because it is the fashion to 
 do so. The second of these rules I violated in ascending Eigi, 
 and remaining there to see the sun rise the next morning. The 
 ascent by railway was very pleasant, and the sunset view was 
 glorious. In remaining all night, however, my conduct is ex- 
 plainable only by the answer to Archbishop Whateley's cele- 
 brated conundrum, "Why does a donkey prefer thistles to hay?" 
 The hotel was the stupidest in Switzerland — one of those never- 
 sufficiently-abused places where they fire off the dish-covers, and 
 bring in the courses to the " Dead March in Saul." Then it was 
 cold — as it always is — and the humane proprietor has posted 
 notices that guests will not be allowed to carry off bed-clothes in 
 which to see the sun rise: in other words, no man is allowed to 
 "wrap the drapery of his couch about him." No, not if he 
 freezes his bunions off. Mr. Kirk, in his otherwise excellent his- 
 tory of Charles the Bold, says that, on Eigi at sunrise, "Succes- 
 sive groups of giant Alps rise out of the night and receive on 
 their icy brows warm kisses from the radiant dawn." As far as 
 my experience goes, I emerged from the gossamer sheets and 
 gauzy blankets of my Eigi bed at the first notes of the Alpine 
 
SWISS DAYS. 89 
 
 horn (gratuity fifty centimes). It was not a cloudy morning, as 
 is generally the case, but there was no "radiant dawn" — the sun 
 sneaked up from behind a mountain and kissed nothing. It was 
 cold, as well as " stale, flat and unprofitable." So much for sun- 
 rise on Eigi. 
 
 A pleasant sail in the bright morning brought us back to Lu- 
 cerne, and we went thence to Alpnacht and to Berne, and so on 
 to fair Geneva. 
 
SWISS DAYS. 
 
 BEFORE we proceed further on our travels through Switz- 
 erland, we will deal out a bit of general information on 
 the subject of Swiss tourists. Two kinds of people go to Switz- 
 erland: one goes to perform an operation called "doing" the 
 country, the others merely go to see it. The first class insist on 
 climbing the mountains, and go lugging about a lot of lumber in 
 the shape of alpenstocks, and wear all kinds of hideous gaiters, 
 and carry knapsacks, and try to look as nearly as possible like 
 Bunyan's Pilgrim before his burden of sins was removed. They 
 know all the ten thousand Swiss peaks by name; they have 
 "done" the Matterhorn, and intend to "do" the Wetterhorn and 
 a great many other horns beside. The English lead in this sort 
 of thing, and every summer a number of them are killed in 
 climbing the mountains. There is an organization called the 
 "Alpine Club," designed to encourage the idiotic destruction of 
 human life. It is quite successful in its ends and aims. 
 
 It is quite unnecessary to say, that during my few days in 
 Switzerland I did not cooperate with the "Alpine Club." As John 
 A. Anderson would probably illustrate it, there is no ampelopsis 
 about me. I do not care to climb, and have always thought Mr. 
 Longfellow's young man "Excelsior" was a lunatic. The joys of 
 snow-blinded eyes, sore lungs, thumping hearts and blistered legs, 
 to say nothing of an involuntary trapeze performance over the 
 edge of a cliff four thousand feet high, have never impressed me. 
 
 (90) 
 
SWISS DAYS. 91 
 
 So I did not "do" Switzerland. And yet I would say for the 
 benefit of constitutionally timid and lazy persons like myself, that 
 a tour through Switzerland is not absolutely dreary and joyless, 
 even without an alpenstock or hob-nailed shoes, or a knapsack, or 
 a cane with the names of all the elevations in Switzerland in- 
 scribed on it. One can appreciate the "purple peaks that tear 
 the drifting skies of gold," though looking up from the green val- 
 ley that rests like a bird's nest amid the glorious mountains that 
 rise, first green, then purple, then gray, then white and shining 
 like the gates of the New Jerusalem. Not a charm of blue lake, 
 or white and waving, rainbow-girt waterfall, or mysterious gla- 
 cier, or winding road, or village set like a jewel in the brow of 
 the mountain, need be lost, even though the traveler be the very 
 quietest person in the world, and destitute of the least ambition 
 for "doing" anything. Having "unpacked my heart" of these 
 "views," I will begin our travels in another paragraph. 
 
 From Lucerne, we went by boat to Alpnacht. Here we were 
 to be transported by diligence *to Brienz. I believe there were 
 some diligences in the crowd of vehicles, yet due diligence had 
 not been used in getting enough of them ; but there was every- 
 thing else that goes on wheels. If "variety" is "spice," it was an 
 uncommonly well-seasoned lot. And horses were there, too, of 
 every variety of architecture — "Gothic," "Early English" (very 
 early), " Pre-Historic," and so on. Why any doubt should exist 
 about William Tell or Arnold Winkelried, I do not understand; 
 there were certainly horses there that remembered both those 
 gentlemen. 
 
 There was a very large number of passengers to be divided 
 around among these luxurious equipages. The assignment was 
 
92 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 effected by calling out the numbers, of which each passenger held 
 at least one, and the calling was done in German. Now I knew 
 but one German numeral, "zwei," which I had heard mentioned 
 in my native country in connection with "glass o' lager," and 
 how was my companion and myself to know when the numbers 
 24,877-8, respectively, were called? Here was a "language les- 
 son" indeed needed. It was "fixed" — a franc slipped into the 
 hand of the gentlemanly and urbane caller solved all difficulties. 
 Somehow, numbers made no difference after that. It was no ap- 
 preciable time till we were in our "kerridge," and rolling off, and 
 we had the pleasure of hearing the numeration table in German 
 going on as long as we could hear anything. It really does not 
 make much difference what is your vernacular in Switzerland, so 
 you speak franc-ly. 
 
 It was a long ride over a magnificent road — up, up, all the 
 way for miles — though at times the rise was imperceptible. We 
 passed from the shores of one little lake to those of another — a 
 sort of rosary of lakes. The mountains rose close on the one 
 hand, and just across the lake or the narrow green valley, on the 
 other. The base of the mountain is covered with pines or other 
 forest trees, and these are protected by law, as they protect the 
 country below from the avalanches. Nevertheless, you see the 
 long tracks of these descents, like a seam on the mountain-side, at 
 not infrequent intervals. It is astonishing at what angles trees 
 will grow. The pines stand thick where it seems as if the earth 
 must infallibly slip. Above the line of forest, extend in many 
 instances miles of pasture land ; for where the tree gives up the 
 attempt, the humble grass provokes grim nature to a smile. 
 Sometimes the grass grows to the very summit, but generally the 
 
SWISS DAYS. 93 
 
 sky-line is broken by a succession of sharp peaks, having that 
 saw-like appearance which in our mountains is indicated by the 
 word "sierra." These sharp points are called by the Swiss, 
 "needles," and it is said that they are crumbling and breaking 
 away ; and I have an idea that in the good time coming, say in a 
 billion years or such a matter, the face of nature will be calmer 
 and brighter and more peaceful ; rain will fall where is the burn- 
 ing desert now ; the volcanoes will be extinguished ; and in that 
 golden time, when earth is what Eden was, and even church 
 choirs have ceased to fight, the rugged outlines of the Alps will 
 have greatly changed, and the "needles" will have lost their 
 points, and the victorious grass will wave in triumph where now 
 is the bare and lightning-splintered rock. This description and 
 prediction applies only to the lower Alps; of Mont Blanc, the 
 Matterhorn, the Jungfrau, and that style of mountain, I have 
 little hope. Immense in surface, traversed by tremendous gorges, 
 the, dark shadows of which may be seen miles away, crowned with 
 eternal snow, cold, proud, and looking down on other mountains, 
 they will never be ameliorated, but will ever remain magnificent 
 solitudes, broken only by adventurous Englishmen with a passion 
 for breaking their necks. 
 
 Scattered over these lofty pastures of which I have spoken, are 
 the Swiss chalets — curious houses, which, perched in these lofty 
 places, look like martin boxes. How the people get up there, or, 
 having got there, get down again, this deponent knoweth not. 
 These pastures are roamed over by the famous Swiss cattle. One 
 authority says that there are a million cows in Switzerland, and 
 that they are valued at one hundred dollars each. I never saw 
 over a dozen of them ; but if you look up at the high pastures 
 
94 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 with a glass you will see dark specks — those are the cows. They 
 are in color very like the Jerseys, but larger, and have heavy 
 legs, produced, I suppose, by constant climbing. Swiss cheese 
 is found everywhere in Europe: it is quite palatable, though 
 it does not linger in one's memory like Limburg. 
 
 In the valley, as we journeyed toward the Brunig Pass, we 
 saw orchards and attempts at farming; but I think the crops 
 from one of the farms might be gathered in the pockets of a 
 good-sized Ulster. The people have other resources : wood carv- 
 ing is one of these, and the work done in this line is astonish- 
 ingly beautiful. All along the mountain roads women and 
 girls offer for sale fruits, flowers and cakes. In Switzerland the 
 "woman question" is settled by the supremacy of the female. 
 When we doubled our team to make the ascent of the pass, it was 
 a woman who hitched the horses and walked beside them with 
 even steps to the top of the hills. The women are the "business 
 men" everywhere. In the different cantons different female 
 costumes are worn, and photographs of the same pretty girls in 
 the same costumes are for sale everywhere. It would seem that 
 the artist used up the stock of female loveliness in Switzerland. 
 
 All this time we are journeying by the route through the Bru- 
 nig Pass. We reached the head of the pass at last; and you 
 would like to know what we saw? Then you must go and see for 
 yourself. Everything I ever saw in dreams of lofty mountains; 
 of "airy pinnacles that syllable men's names;" of cataracts 
 bounding in snowy whiteness into mid-air and passing away in 
 rainbow-tinted mist; everything I ever saw on canvas of flying 
 clouds or azure sky; everything I ever imagined in waking hours 
 of forest, dale or stream, was there. 
 
SWISS DAYS. 95 
 
 We looked our fill at this beautiful prospect, for our vehicle 
 made a long stop at a little inn just at the head of the pass, and 
 all the passengers save the Doctor and myself got out. Nothing 
 was wanting. It was evening, and it was still. 
 
 The road is very steep and very crooked down the descent, but 
 is an admirable specimen of engineering, and we went swiftly 
 and safely down to the lake, where the steamer was waiting. We 
 passed the last hours of daylight on the lake, fortunately having 
 light enough to see the cataract at Giessbach. 
 
 It was 9 o'clock at night when by boat and rail we arrived at 
 Interlaken, and here we realized the force of Bishop Heber's line, 
 "Where every prospect pleases, and only man is vile." A more 
 unaccommodating and insolent lot of brutes than those who 
 formed the "staff" of the Victoria Hotel at Interlaken, I never 
 had the ill-fortune to meet before or since. They were too much 
 for us, and we sought safety, "rest and a light, and food and fire," 
 at the Hotel Kitschard, where we were treated with the utmost 
 humanity. 
 
 First impressions, with me at least, settle the business, so I saw 
 nothing agreeable about Interlaken, left it as soon as possible, and 
 regretted that it was necessary to stay so long. The prettiest view 
 about Interlaken, as Dr. Johnson thought about Scotland, is the 
 road leading away from it. 
 
 Another little lake voyage on a lovely day brought us to Thun. 
 At this little town is located the artillery school of Switzerland, 
 and here Louis Napoleon, then a captain in the Swiss artillery, 
 passed several years. It was curious to think of a man for a time 
 so prominently before the eyes of the world as having once vege- 
 tated in this out-of-the-way place, and one wondered in what 
 
96 A KAJVSAir ABROAD. 
 
 dreams he may have indulged of future greatness when living his 
 hum-drum life among these mountains. 
 
 Evening brought us to Berne, a place which had for years pos- 
 sessed an interest for me, as having been the birth-place of a very 
 dear friend. A queer, Middle- Age sort of place is old Berne. I 
 never saw a town that seemed so full of, say the fourteenth cen- 
 tury. The names of the streets, and the aspect of the streets 
 themselves, as seen in the evening-time, all carried one back to 
 the old days. The promenade of the town is the Terrasse, or the 
 cathedral yard. It is surrounded by a parapet, over which you 
 look down a lofty wall into the chimneys of the houses of the 
 mouldy-looking streets along the river bank. An inscription, set 
 in the parapet, tells how a wild student jumped his horse over at 
 that point. The student escaped, became pious from the shock, 
 and was, in after-days, a clergyman ; but this did not essentially 
 benefit the poor horse, who was killed by the fall. 
 
 Berne is particularly rich ,in town pumps, or fountains, of 
 which there are enough to fill simultaneously all the iron tea-ket- 
 tles of all the Eussians in Kansas. Each of these fountains is or- 
 namented by a graven image of some kind. One represents a 
 fierce-looking reprobate devouring an armful of children. The 
 young ones who are waiting to hear the call of "Next," appear to 
 fully comprehend the horror of the situation. I suppose this 
 statue is intended to keep in order the young Bernese, but those 
 solid specimens of Swiss youth appeared quite indifferent. Com- 
 ing up street I saw a boy behind a tree with his eyes shut, count- 
 ing vigorously in German. I knew at once the game of "Hide 
 and seek," or, in my Western vernacular, "High spy." This boy 
 was the "blinder." I learned from the Doctor that, in his boy- 
 
SWISS DAYS. 97 
 
 hood in Scotland, the impressive formula of "Iry, ury, ickery, 
 ann," etc., was used in counting out the first "blinder," exactly as 
 in the United States. Men and nations may differ, but boys are 
 the same in every country and every age. I have no douht that 
 Jacob and Esau played "mumble-peg" according to the rules 
 governing the game in our time. 
 
 Berne has a famous clock. In the fullness of time a man hits 
 a bell with a hammer, a procession of bears march out and back 
 again, a cock crows twice, and a rummy-looking old king nods 
 his head, opens his mouth, and moves his scepter with each stroke 
 of the hour. Occasionally the king fails to perform his functions, 
 the bears do not appear, or the cock is out of order; but on the 
 occasion of our visit, man, bears, king and cock all went off with 
 charming regularity. 
 
 I think the original location of the story of "Go it husband, 
 go it bear," must have been Berne, for the town is not only full 
 of bears of wood, stone and metal, but several live bears have 
 been kept for ages in a pit for the benefit of the corporation. To 
 go to Berne and not see the bears would be unpardonable. The 
 bears were not as savage as I could have wished, and seemed sat- 
 isfied to eat carrots — though the inhabitants informed me, with 
 great pride and pleasure, that the bears had once eaten an English- 
 man who had tumbled into the den. 
 
 Berne derives its principal distinction from its bears and from 
 its being the capital of the Swiss Confederation. We visited the 
 "Capitol." The "Senate" and "House" were very neat, hand- 
 some rooms, though I saw there no such portraits as those which 
 adorn the legislative halls of Kansas ; in fact, I may say that I 
 have never seen pictures like those anywhere else ! 
 G 
 
98 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 The country between Berne and Freiberg is not very interest- 
 ing, as seen from the car windows. We stopped at Freiburg not 
 to see, but to hear its famous organ, which had been warmly com- 
 mended to us by Mr. Knox, whom I have mentioned in a previous 
 letter. Freiburg (this is only one way of spelling it) is a very 
 high, dry, rocky old place, inhabited by stolid, hard-working 
 people, who wear wooden shoes, and do not seem to be happy. 
 There is, in a rocky little plaza, a lime tree, which commemorates 
 the battle of Morat, in which the Freiburgers assisted the other 
 Swiss in routing and butchering the powerful army of Charles the 
 Bold. Morat is miles away, but a Freiburg boy ran all the way 
 to his town with a lime-tree branch in his hand as a symbol of 
 triumph, uttered the word "Victory," and fell dead in his tracks. 
 The lime branch was planted, and is now a wide-spreading tree, 
 with a great trunk. There are wooden seats around the tree, and 
 the limbs are held up by timbers. On the benches sat sundry 
 wooden-shoed Freiburgers, smoking long pipes, while a sort of fair 
 went on around about, the principal objects of traffic being red 
 handkerchiefs and old scrap iron. As the hour for the organ 
 playing had hot arrived, we spent some time, after the lime tree 
 was disposed of, looking at the carved work about the main en- 
 trance of the church of St. Nicholas. In connection with the 
 church of "Santa Claus," the patron of children, one had a right 
 to expect something benevolent in the way of sculpture, but "on 
 the contrary quite the reverse," the ornamentation was decidedly 
 fiendish. An angel was depicted weighing a lot of the good and 
 bad with a pair of old-fashioned balances ; the wicked, of course, 
 "kicked the beam," in spite of a devil who was trying to pull 
 them down. On the other side, a devil, every line of his coun- 
 
SWISS DAYS. 99 
 
 tenance marked by business energy, was carrying off a quantity 
 of children in a basket to a boiling cauldron, while another devil 
 was blowing the fire under this kettle with a hand-bellows. 
 
 Two score people were gathered in the church, when the ring- 
 ing of a bell announced that the organist had taken his place. 
 Outside was hot, toiling, dirty, commonplace, ugly Freiburg; 
 within was dimness and coolness and stillness, until the music 
 broke the silence and woke the echoes of the vaulted arches. 
 "With the first note, the outer world, so drear and hard, seemed 
 far away, and we were in the green valley amid the everlasting 
 mountains. It was sunshine and song for awhile, and we heard, 
 near or far, fall or faint, the notes of the Alpine horn. Then the 
 thunder muttered in the distance; then the pine tops shivered 
 and sighed ; then a mysterious wind seemed to sweep through the 
 space above our heads, and there was the sound of falling raku 
 Anon came the storm in all its fury, and the organ crashed and 
 roared till women turned pale; and then, most wonderful of all, 
 one heard above the fury of the storm, voices like the voices of 
 human beings, lost, calling, calling, calling in notes of entreaty 
 and despair. No other instrument made by man have ever I 
 heard, that had such ahuman voice as the great organ at Freiburg. 
 This wonderful performance lasted an hour, and closed with a 
 clangor, as of the shutting of silver doors upon music that had 
 come once and would never come again. 
 
 Everything had a new light after we left the church, and we 
 were miles away before we ceased to hear in our "mind's ear" 
 (for I suppose the mind has an ear as well as an "eye") the 
 music of the organ. It was a preparation for the beauteous sight 
 
100 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 when Lake Leman, shining in the sun, burst upon our vision, 
 skirted by the vine-clad slopes. We passed by Vevay, and that 
 reminded me how we read in our geographies that Switzers estab- 
 lished a town of Vevay in the United States, and entered upon 
 the cultivation of the vine; but the geographies did not tell how 
 they succeeded, and it is a long time since I have heard of them. 
 
 Now that I have reached Lake Leman, I might as well imi- 
 tate the laudable example of Captain Scott's coon and "come 
 down." The country is as well known to everybody in the 
 United States as "Down the Santa Fe road" is to the readers of 
 Topeka newspapers. From Byron, with his "Prisoner of Chillon," 
 down to "Joaquin Miller," every traveling poet has had his say 
 about Lake Leman and its shores. Lausanne and Geneva sound 
 to everybody like Mark Twain's "Lancaster" and " Centreville," 
 in the Holy Land. 
 
 There is such a thing as the "cream" of a journey, and it does 
 not take long to skim it off. This process was performed, as far 
 as Switzerland was concerned, by the time we reached Geneva. 
 We went to Chamouni, of course, and we looked attentively at 
 Mont Blanc, but it did not impress me as did a hundred other 
 views in Switzerland. I believe I would rather see Pike's Peak. 
 The ride from Geneva to Chamouni, by diligence, was rather in- 
 teresting, for one of our fellow-travelers was an American lawyer 
 who had traveled before ; knew French and German ; acted as in- 
 terpreter for all hands, and was a capital talker on any and every 
 subject. It did me good to feel that my fellow-citizen was the 
 brightest man in the diligence. 
 
 A few hours sufficed for Chamouni and Mont Blanc. I will 
 
SWISS DAYS. 101 
 
 return to Chamouni when the present village has been justly de- 
 stroyed by an avalanche for extortion, and will ascend Mont 
 Blanc when it can be done by railway. 
 
 These last words may seem to indicate that some feeling of 
 regret followed the little journey I made in Switzerland, but this 
 is not true. On the contrary, it left bright memories, which will 
 brighten, as do apples, when come the colder days. Should I live 
 to be very old — which heaven forbid — when the sun above is 
 no longer bright and warm; when the few faces of the dear ones 
 left shall be dim; when I shall forget the things of yesterday, 
 even names that I have repeated a thousand times; even in that 
 last scene, when the poor old faded curtain is about to fall, I be- 
 lieve that I shall live over again the days of my pilgrimage — 
 young days, bright days, "Swiss Days." 
 
BRUSSELS AND ITS BATTLE-FIELD. 
 
 GOING north from Paris I took the best railway, the Che- 
 min de Fer du Nord, and saw the best country that came 
 under my observation in France. After passing St. Denis there 
 seem to be no traces of the great war. The country lies open to 
 the eye, the fields are larger, the cultivation better, and the vil- 
 lages more prosperous-looking than in either eastern or western 
 France. 
 
 I had very few traveling companions. It seems to me that the 
 French are not great travelers. I never saw in France what 
 would be considered a full railroad train in England or America. 
 For some time before Mons was reached there was but one person 
 in the carriage with me — a portly old gentleman with a bald 
 head. He did not get out at the dining stations, but solaced him- 
 self with some bread, pears, and a bottle of wine which he had 
 with him. During his repast he remained as he had done be- 
 fore, silent; but as we passed the frontier, he pointed out the 
 window, uttered the solitary word "Beige," and commenced to 
 talk politics. 
 
 I am an indifferent talker about politics in English, and in 
 America, and it was certainly up-hill business to discuss French 
 politics in an "unknown tongue," in Belgium; but whether I suc- 
 ceeded in "defining my position" or not, my companion blew his 
 French horn with no uncertain sound. He was from Tours, he 
 said — a town overrun with priests and monarchists. He thought 
 
 (102) 
 
BRUSSELS AND ITS BATTLE-FIELD. 103 
 
 MacMahon was a numbskull, and as much of a tyrant as he knew 
 how to be ; Thiers ( since dead ) had been of some service, but was 
 no longer useful ; Gambetta was a firebrand ; but it was when he 
 spoke of the late L. Napoleon that the bald head of my vener- 
 able friend grew red as fire, and he denounced him as the 
 greatest criminal of the age. He said Charles X and Louis Phil- 
 lippe were good-enough men personally, but, like all other kings, 
 were "pretenders." Any man who set himself up as a king was 
 an impostor. When pressed for an answer as to his own favorite 
 statesman, he replied that men were nothing to him, that he went 
 for principle — a rather vague way of talking pending an elec- 
 tion. I mention this case because it was the only instance in 
 which I heard a Frenchman approach anything like a political 
 conversation ; and this was not in France, but Belgium. I fancy, 
 however, that the discontented tone of this old gentleman's talk 
 reflects the general feeling in France. The poor French — they 
 have struggled for liberty lo these many years ; have shed their 
 blood for it ; but they are as far from it as ever. It needs some- 
 thing besides taking down the word "Imperial" and substituting 
 for it the word "National;" it takes something besides the words 
 "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite," carved in cold, dead stone, to 
 make a people free. 
 
 The country in northern France, which, in real-estate agents' 
 parlance, would be called "gently rolling," becomes flat in Bel- 
 gium. The roads are lined with trees, fairer and larger than the 
 trim poplars that divide the landscape in France, and clouds of 
 smoke rising at different points along the horizon betoken the 
 presence of manufacturing towns, for Belgium is one of the great- 
 est producers of manufactured iron. 
 
104 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 Brussels at first struck me as a dreary town. Paris having set 
 the fashion, the rage in all European cities is now for boulevards: 
 these, in their newness and vastness, produce a Sahara-like im- 
 pression on the traveler. They will look better a century hence, 
 when their immensity is reduced by the now small trees. Brus- 
 sels, however, improves on acquaintance. The Hotel de Ville is 
 a fine old building, and the little square is of historical interest, 
 for in it Egmont and Horn were executed. The square is a mar- 
 ket-place now, and the day I saw it was flower day, and the whole 
 space was radiant, mostly with fuchsias, which appear to be a 
 favorite flower in the old country. Not far from the Hotel de 
 Ville is the house where was heard the "sound of revelry by 
 night." It is now a club house. My indignation was stirred, not 
 far from here, in visiting a famous lace manufactory. Here the 
 marvelously beautiful lace shawls, which sell almost for their 
 weight in gold, are made. The work is all done by hand, and so 
 slowly and painfully that it makes one's eyes ache to see the 
 women at their toil. The woman in charge told me that four or 
 five years is required to learn, during which the women receive 
 no wages, and that after they have acquired the art they receive 
 the munificent sum of two francs or about forty cents a day. 
 They wanted to sell me a pocket handkerchief, about the size of a 
 sheet of letter-paper, for thirty-five francs, but I declined. I was 
 unwilling to support such a system of extortion, and shall never 
 wear any Brussels lace as long as I live. 
 
 The cathedral of St. Gudule, in Brussels, is a very beautiful 
 building, and has an advantage, rare in these old edifices, of 
 standing on high ground. Notre Dame is on an island, and 
 Westminster Abbey in the Thames "bottom;" but St. Gudule is 
 
BRUSSELS AND ITS BATTLE-FIELD. 105 
 
 on the slope of a hill, and surrounded by a high platform, so wide 
 that carriages drive around it. The interior is filled with "the 
 dim religious light" so often spoken of — so seldom seen. The 
 carved wood-work of the pulpit is wonderfully fine; the figures, 
 life-size, representing the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the 
 Garden of Eden. There is a monument in this church, which is 
 surmounted by a figure of Charity giving a little child a piece of 
 bread, that is full of poetry and sweetness. 
 
 The public grounds of Brussels are not extensive, but very 
 handsome, and much resorted to. The city, of course, is full of 
 statues, the finest being that of Godfrey of Bouillon, king of 
 Jerusalem, who was born in the neighborhood. These old 
 Crusaders look well in bronze, but they were an uncomfortable lot 
 when alive. Few more bloody beasts have ever lived than the 
 adored Richard of the Lion Heart. I am glad he and his outfit 
 are all comfortably dead and buried. 
 
 Prior to going to Brussels, I had forgotten all about the battle 
 of Waterloo, but being so near the scene of that once-celebrated 
 action, my recollections being aroused by seeing the house where 
 "soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again," and hearing 
 also the "car rattling o'er the stony street," I resolved to go out 
 to the locality from whence the order for the "first four" to 
 "forward and back" was interrupted by the "cannon's opening 
 roar." 
 
 You go out to the field by an English coach, driven by an 
 English coachman, who assured me, however, that the horses 
 were not British, but a "bloody lot of old screws" of Belgian ex- 
 traction. All my fellow- voyagers were English, going out to 
 admire the field where some thousands of their countrymen got 
 killed for nothing. 
 
106 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 The road winds for some distance through the Bois de Cambre, 
 a very handsome pleasure-ground constructed from the natural 
 forest — just such as might be formed near almost every American 
 city. You then come out on a macadamized road, constructed 
 during the reign of Napoleon, to connect Brussels with Paris, and 
 passing through a succession of villages and fields, you finally 
 reach the ugly little village of Waterloo, which gave its name to 
 the battle. In the little Catholic church of the village are mon- 
 uments to many of the officers killed in the fight, and one slab 
 actually commemorates the fact that some private soldiers were 
 killed there also. On seeing this, the ladies of the party broke 
 into exclamations of delight at the noble spirit which prompted 
 this recognition of the bravery of mere common soldiers; where- 
 upon I quoted to them, with a feeling of calm and sweet satisfac- 
 tion, the well-known passage from their own historian, jSTapier, 
 how the "British soldier conquered in the cool shade of the 
 aristocracy." 
 
 A few more fields passed, and you are on the ground where, we 
 are told, was decided the ''destiny of Europe," which destiny has, 
 nevertheless, been "decided" several times since. A guide — a 
 sharp-looking young fellow in a blouse, who spoke English with 
 a strong French accent, and who had evidently learned his Eng- 
 lish from cockneys — started at the head of the party. There 
 were but two skeptics in the party, one of them being a young 
 Englishman, a conservative in politics at that, but who, for some 
 reason, disbelieved in the doctrine that Wellington made this 
 world and all that therein is. We walked together, and in the 
 rear of the rest of the party, so as not to interrupt them in their 
 "devotions." I think the guide regarded us as "separatists," and 
 added occasionally to his usual speech, for our benefit. 
 
BRUSSELS AND ITS BATTLE-FIELD. 107 
 
 The field of Waterloo has not been greatly changed in appear- 
 ance since the day of the battle. There are some lines of trees 
 where there were none then, and a bit of forest near the farm of 
 Hougoumont has been cut down, but the roads are on the same 
 lines, and the appearance of things generally, on the August day 
 when I beheld it, was essentially the same as on the June Sunday 
 when the armies met. It is in its outline very much like the 
 country lying around the north side of Burnett's Peak, near To- 
 peka, though in better cultivation : as a rule, a gently-undulating 
 region, covered with grain and grass fields, undivided by any 
 fences except scanty hedges, for the "herd law" prevails in Bel- 
 gium. 
 
 Looking over the field, it would be hard to see why it should 
 have been selected as a place to give battle, were it not for one 
 position, and that is the farm of Hougoumont, which was held by 
 the English from first to last. Imagine a farm-house in New 
 England with the old orchard adjoining it, and all the buildings, 
 house, barns and barn-yard surrounded by a heavy, solid brick 
 wall ten feet high and over a foot thick, and you have an idea of 
 this position. Against anything but artillery, the place, if reso- 
 lutely defended — as it was — ought to be held, one to four, as it 
 was. To add to the strength of the place, it was covered by Eng- 
 lish batteries further back in the " prairie," who could fire over it 
 into the timber — now gone — in which the French advanced, 
 pretty well covered, I should think, to a point close to the wall. 
 There appears to have been no attempt to breach the wall with ar- 
 tillery, the French finally contenting themselves with shelling the 
 interior, by which the little chapel was set on fire, partly burned, 
 and the wounded, who had been placed therein, suffocated. You 
 
108 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 can see the charred cross-beam over the door to this day. No 
 description ever conveyed to me, as did the sight of the place, the 
 savage nature of the fight. The French surged around this in- 
 closure and rushed for it like wild-cats. They penetrated to the 
 orchard, but were driven out. They found the barn -yard gate 
 open, and got inside a few feet, but were forced out; the gate was 
 shut in their faces by two men, and then one of the assailants 
 climbed to the top of the gate and fell riddled with musket balls. 
 The brick wall was loop-holed (the openings remain), and a 
 platform was built on which the English stood and fired over. 
 For the French, it was like charging the steep sides of a double- 
 decker with all her guns blazing. The outside of the wall looks 
 as if it had had the small-pox, but the French fire was thrown 
 away alike on the brick wall and the iron men who defended it. 
 The wall crumbled here and there, and here and there a soldier 
 fell, but neither the wall nor the British soldier gave way. That 
 brick wall stayed the onward progress of Napoleon. Against it 
 his eagle dashed himself and died; 
 
 The place is cursed, I think. The same family own it, I be- 
 lieve, that did in the days of Waterloo, but no longer reside there. 
 Traces remain of the formal old French garden, with its balus- 
 trades now fallen, and overgrown with grass. The old apple trees, 
 whose roots wind about the bones of dead men, have a .mourn- 
 ful look. It is a doleful place, which the summer sun cannot 
 brighten. We went away from there, and walked to the high 
 mound of earth erected to commemorate the victory. This is 
 ascended by a flight of steps, and from thence you can see every 
 part of the field — here yellow, here brown, here green, here 
 marked by the straight line of a dusty road, here traversed by a 
 
BRUSSELS AND ITS BATTLE-FIELD. 109 
 
 scrubby hedge-row, dotted at intervals with white-plastered farm 
 houses with red roofs. All the places, which on one Saturday 
 were nothing and on the evening of Sunday had gone into his- 
 tory, were in sight — La Haye Sainte, La Belle Allliance, and the 
 rest. When we got out into the open ground the guide grew ani- 
 mated. He described the charge of the Imperial Guard, the last 
 effort of the French. "Zey were command," said he, "by ze 
 Zheneral Cambronne. Zey call on him to surrendare, but he zay, 
 'Ze Guard die, he nevare surrendare.' " And then he added, look- 
 ing significantly at the Englishman and myself, "Victor Hugo 
 zay he zay somethings else." On top of the mound the guide 
 went over the story with all the animation of the "delineator" of 
 a panorama. " Vare you zee zose leetle black booshes," said he, 
 "stood ze Scot Grees and ze Enniskeeleners. Ven Napoleon he 
 saw 'em, he zay to Marshal Soult, "Ah zose gree horses, zose terri- 
 ble gree horses; if I had four such regiment I would take ze 
 vorld. But I take zem in zis time.' 'Mon Empereur,' zay 
 Marshal Soult, 'you no know zose English; you cut him in 
 pieces, but he nevare give up.'" As you stand on the mount 
 there stretches away, almost from beneath your feet, a straight 
 road apparently level with the surrounding surface. This was once 
 the "sunk road of Ohain," in which, according to Victor Hugo, 
 the head of the column of charging French cavalry was swal- 
 lowed up. It then ran along the bottom of a sort of trench, fif- 
 teen feet deep, but the removal of the earth to build the huge 
 mound has leveled one side of the trench. 
 
 Accustomed to the long lines of the great battles of our late 
 war, to an American the space in which the battle of Waterloo 
 
110 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 was fought seemed singularly limited. You can see from one end 
 of the field to the other without the aid of a glass. 
 
 The ground was more favorable for the Allies than the French, 
 owing, as I have said, to the possession of the farm of Hougou- 
 mont, and also to the fact that Wellington was able to keep a con- 
 siderable force sheltered behind what we would call in Kansas a 
 "roll" in the "prairie." The French, being the attacking force, 
 necessarily had to take more medicine than the Allies, or, I might 
 as well say, the British, who made the real fight. It was a field 
 where sheer courage and endurance had more to do with results 
 than strategy. The defeat of Napoleon was due to the stubborn 
 valor of the British soldier; it was not the "sunk road," nor the 
 arrival of Blucher. I firmly believe that the French would have 
 driven any other troops off" the ground long before sunset. 
 
 British pluck won Waterloo ; British gold paid for it : but what 
 England won by Waterloo I have never been able to discover. It 
 is pitiful to go into the church at Waterloo village and see the 
 monuments of mere boys who died on that dreadful day; to see 
 the monument of the "loved and gallant Howard," whose mem- 
 ory has been kept green by a single line of Byron. Why did 
 these men die ? It was to put back in a palace, from whence he 
 had recently shot out like beans from a scoop-shovel, a fat-headed 
 old Bourbon of a king, in whom no Englishman ought to have 
 taken the least earthly interest. The Englishman, lover of lib- 
 erty as he was, fought and died at Waterloo to keep in power a 
 lot of putrid people with crowns, who have since been ignomini- 
 ously kicked into the streets within my recollection. If the cause 
 was bad, what is to be said of the reward ? In the partitions which 
 
BRUSSELS AND ITS BATTLE-FIELD. Ill 
 
 followed, what did England get ? Nothing. The miserable Bour- 
 bons she bolstered up had nothing to give. What remains now of 
 the "state of Europe," as arranged after the battle of Waterloo? 
 Nothing. England, after hunting the great Napoleon to death, 
 found an ally, and was proud of him, in that miserable fraud, the 
 "nephew of his uncle." England, to crush Napoleon, allied her- 
 self with Russia, and to-day about half England thinks a bloody 
 war necessary to check the designs of that same Russia on the 
 British possessions in India. England fought at Waterloo to keep 
 up the ancient order of things — to support the "Dei gratia" style 
 of monarchy — and who now believes in that style of government? 
 Who reverences the "first gentleman in Europe" now? Who, 
 like the Englishman. Thackeray, has portrayed the idiocy or the 
 wickedness of the "Four Georges?" Everything that England 
 fought for at Waterloo is disreputable now. 
 
 If the design of the enormous expenditure of blood was to 
 obliterate Napoleon, it was not a success. The man who, from a 
 sub-lieutenancy, made his way, without one faltering or hesitat- 
 ing step, to the throne of empire, could not be extinguished by- 
 Waterloo, nor even by the practice of studiously calling him 
 "General" Bonaparte. Even the high road over which admiring 
 British tourists go to Waterloo is a monument to his energy. It 
 is but a step from Waterloo to Antwerp, and what says the local 
 chronicler there? 
 
 "That Napoleon caused millions of men to perish in his cause, that he 
 was ambitious and an egotist, what does it matter to us, who owe to him 
 our new existence? Our duty is to remember, not the man nor the des- 
 pot, but the second founder of our great city." 
 
 It is so everywhere — the monuments of the genius of Napo- 
 
112 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 leon are ineffaceable; but what monuments remain to the miser- 
 able French, Spanish and Neapolitan Bourbons, for whose sake 
 the young, the brave, the true-hearted agonized and died at Wa- 
 terloo? Had I been a Prussian or an Englishman, I suppose my 
 feelings at Waterloo would have been different; as an American, 
 an impartial judge, I came away from Waterloo with, it is true, 
 a great admiration of the fighting quality of the British soldier; 
 with more respect for the soldierly talent of Arthur, Duke of 
 Wellington, but, withal, infinitely more contempt for the British 
 statesman whose stupid and servile attachment to a despicable 
 herd of petty tyrants kept the world at war for years, only at last, 
 that, as a French picture of the time depicted it, a troop of pigs 
 should enter the Tuileries while an eagle flew away. 
 
ANTWERP AND ITS CATHEDRAL. 
 
 PAETLY from choice, partly through accident, I tarried 
 three or four days in the venerable city of Antwerp. In 
 that time I saw this quaint old place to its oldest and queerest 
 nooks and corners; I almost lived in its cathedral, and I wit- 
 nessed the pageants in honor of the three-hundredth anniversary 
 of the birth of the famous painter, Peter Paul Rubens. 
 
 Antwerp is a brave old town, one of the ancient "free cities," 
 or communes; where were invented and practiced arts of all 
 kinds; where, in their infancy in this world, flourished two 
 famous things, to wit, printing and liberty ; where the merchants 
 were princes; where every man labored faithfully in the calling 
 wherein God had placed him; where, when the tocsin sounded, 
 the burghers mustered, each man under the banner of his trade — 
 the draper under his, and the fuller under his, and did battle for 
 freedom ; for, in the thirteenth century, when the world was in 
 bondage, it was written in the city ordinances of Antwerp, "In 
 the town and liberty of Antwerp all men are free ; there are no 
 slaves." And besides, to make all this more interesting to an 
 American, the brave story of Antwerp has been told last and 
 best by our own countryman, the late lamented Motley. 
 
 When you go to Antwerp, it seems as if Alva and Farnese were 
 men of yesterday; as if the Emperor Charles had recently abdi- 
 cated ; as if the town had been just rebuilt after the destruction of 
 the "Spanish Fury." You meet the burghers on the street with 
 solid, sober faces, the exact counterparts of those you see in the 
 h (113) 
 
114 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 old Flemish pictures; old women wear head-dresses like those 
 worn three hundred years ago ; there are black old streets that 
 look as they did when Columbus sailed to discover America ; you 
 go into a certain old room, and see a printed proclamation from 
 William the Silent, looking as if the Lester Crawford of Antwerp 
 had just posted it there. The highest officer of the town is yet 
 called the burgomaster, just as he has been time out of mind. 
 They have a king in Belgium, but you hear but little about him 
 at Antwerp ; the burgomaster and the aldermen and the town 
 clerk rule there. 
 
 What makes this seem most strange is, that Antwerp is not a 
 decrepit or decaying town ; it is a nourishing seaport, and keeps 
 pace with the times, and has street railroads, and boulevards, and 
 a park, and gas, and daily papers ; yet, as I tell you, there are the 
 men and women with faces three hundred years old ; and there 
 are houses that have forgotten their own ages; and there is the 
 burgomaster as of old, and the narrow houses of the guilds, with 
 high gables coming up to a point by successive steps like stairs ; 
 and there are the old Dutch names for the streets and places — 
 everything queer and old and solid and Dutch, all mixed with 
 new things, as in the Grand Place, where is the Joiners' House, 
 the front covered with carvings showing how the carpenters and 
 joiners' trade was carried on centuries ago ; and near, on another 
 house, is the sign "Maehianen Howe," showing that the New 
 Man, the Yankee, has arrived with his sewing machine. And 
 speaking of America, one is carried back, when in Antwerp, to 
 the days when New York was not New York, but New Amster- 
 dam. You see names yet common in our greatest American city, 
 and Hoboken is a suburb of Antwerp. 
 
ANTWERP AND ITS CATHEDRAL. 115 
 
 In Antwerp most of the educated people speak French, but all, 
 high and low, speak "Flamand" — Dutch, in fact, differing little 
 from that spoken in Holland ; a language that looks like English 
 in print, and sounds like a mixture of German and English. 
 Though not as vivacious as the French, the Antwerpers are a 
 talkative people, and cheerful withal, and eat as if the safety of 
 the "town and liberty of Antwerp" depended upon it. 
 
 There is a modern park in the town, but the ancient "plats" 
 are the principal resorts ; these are paved with stone and sur- 
 rounded by high houses. Here the men and women of Antwerp 
 have gathered always. There are two great rallying-places, the 
 Grand Place in front of the town hall, surrounded by the 
 houses of the trades, and there is the Place Verte — though there 
 is nothing green there except some rows of young trees — and 
 towering above the Place Verte, and above the trees, and all the 
 houses, and looking down on all the green and flat kingdom of 
 Belgium, is the glory of the town, the cathedral of Notre Dame, 
 
 The tower, so the Antwerpers say, is the highest in the world, 
 I do not know ; I only know that it seemed to grow higher every 
 time I looked at it, and was highest when I saw it last. I wan- 
 dered down by the Steen — the old prison, where they show you 
 terrible dungeons where the Spaniards tortured prisoners and 
 killed them — and I went far out among the docks and ships, but 
 every time I turned about there was the great, gray, gothic spire, 
 all covered with carved and curious things in stone, rising story 
 on story, up and up like a flame of fire, till, when the day was 
 dull and the clouds hung low, the gray tower seemed to mingle 
 with the gray sky. Often and often I found myself standing in 
 front of the great portal, leaning over back to look up at that old 
 
116 A KANSAS ABROAD. 
 
 builder's miracle, and I looked until my head swam and it seemed 
 as if the spire might all at once come down with a crash. 
 
 The spire has a great clock, and it has, moreover, a chime of 
 bells, and there is the great bell " Carolus," named for the Em- 
 peror Charles V, who was the bell's godfather when it was bap- 
 tized; and there is the great bell "Maria," which rang first over 
 four hundred years ago. "Carolus" weighs 16,000 pounds, and 
 "Maria" 11,000 pounds; and he who hears those bells roaring 
 and clanging in the dim night-time will not forget it, no, not till 
 he dies, for their voice is like the voice of doom, and makes one 
 think of the Judgment Day. 
 
 When you look from the entrance of this church to the high 
 altar, it is like looking down a road in the woods, for it is more 
 than three hundred feet, and the six rows of pillars make one 
 think of a beech or oak forest. 
 
 There are in this cathedral countless pictures, some of them 
 worth their weight in gold. There are many altars, and so vast 
 is the edifice that several masses may be said at once before con- 
 siderable congregations without confusion. On Sunday, it seemed 
 that a service was held somewhere in the church at every hour. 
 You can walk around these congregations in the great space 
 without disturbing any one ; but coming in just as the church was 
 lighted, on a dim, rainy evening, I sat down and looked at the 
 priest, who spoke from the pulpit of carved wood, representing 
 human figures and birds, peacocks and doves and eagles, all 
 carved out of the heart of oak, and as natural as life. I looked 
 at the priest, though I understood not a word he said, for he spoke 
 in the tongue of the Low Countries, and as I looked I thought, 
 good Protestant as I am, that they have dim eyes to see and dull 
 
ANTWERP AND ITS CATHEDRAL. 117 
 
 ears to hear, who think that the Catholic church — the Koman 
 Catholic church, if you please — has fallen upon evil days, or 
 totters to its fall. 
 
 That "revolutions never go backward," is a comfortable doc- 
 trine for those who believe in revolution, but it is not always true. 
 This cathedral of Antwerp was ravaged by the iconoclasts, who, 
 in 1566, broke down the altars and the "images;" then, two hun- 
 dred years later, came the French infidel, and did the same thing ; 
 yet to-day the two great bells call the people to the worship of 
 the old faith. The waves of the Eeformation swept over the 
 Low Countries, but to-day scarce a trace of that great movement 
 remains in Belgium. If that revolution did not go backward, it 
 ceased to go forward. Twice, as I have said, has this great Catho- 
 lic church of Antwerp passed into the hands of aliens; more than 
 this, it has been three times ravaged by fire : yet the devotion to 
 the old church has been sufficient to rebuild it, and the same 
 spirit would, I believe, rear it again in strength and beauty, 
 though it were laid in ashes to-morrow. It is idle to say that the 
 religion which reared, all over Europe, these wonderful build- 
 ings ; which has cared for them during the vicissitudes of stormy 
 centuries; which guards and adorns them to-day as holy and 
 precious, is a fading and dying thing. Call it " mummery," this 
 worship, and "superstition," this faith — it is not my business to 
 call names, but to tell of things as I see them ; and I say, that, 
 however much consolation doctors skilled in prophecy may de- 
 rive from ingenious combinations of the horns and beasts of 
 Revelation, what I have seen with my merely unassisted human 
 vision, in these old countries, has convinced me that the Catholic 
 church is the most powerful organization on earth, and has the 
 
118 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 promise of countless centuries of vitality. We may laugh, us 
 Protestants, at the young mothers of Antwerp, who seek with great 
 reverence, after the birth of their babies, a particular wooden 
 statue of the Virgin in the church of St. Willibord, but our 
 merriment does not change their belief in the least; nor does it 
 abolish the fact that, as the mother believes, so the child, when 
 old and dying, is apt to believe. "I will shiver you as I do this 
 potsherd," said Napoleon, dashing a costly vase at the feet of the 
 Pope ; but at the last, he said, in dreary St. Helena, " I die in the 
 faith of the Holy Eoman Catholic church;" and again, "it is good 
 for a man to die in the faith of his fathers." 
 
 In Europe — even in Switzerland, once the home of Calvin, 
 the refuge of Knox — the symbols of the Catholic church are 
 everywhere. At every turn in the road you see the wayside 
 cross ; over the door of the modest inn is the Virgin and her 
 Babe ; and going through the dark streets of Antwerp, at night, 
 I have cast my eyes up to the only light — a lamp fastened to the 
 old wall — and saw, ghastly, and white and rigid, the dead Christ 
 on the cross, an object of devotion by night as by day. 
 
 All this, and more, came to me as I looked at the priest of 
 Antwerp, one of a mighty army of such, wearing different guises, 
 but all wearing the cross ; laboring in distant countries, but all to 
 the same end — the "propagation of the faith" as it has existed 
 for ages — and doing their work with a zeal, a patience, and 
 a courage as great to-day as it was in the days of Xavier or 
 Loyola. 
 
 There are a great many churches in Antwerp beside Notre 
 Dame. Of these the most splendid is that of St. Jacques. A 
 good -sized volume might be written descriptive of this church 
 
ANTWERP AND ITS CATHEDRAL. 119 
 
 alone. Its chapels are decorated with the most precious marbles. 
 In many instances the chapels are the gift of single families. 
 Among the saints whose names are most frequent in Antwerp 
 are St. Barbara, whose assistance is invoked to save from sudden 
 and unexpected death, and St. Roch, who aids in time of pesti- 
 lence. One of the latest saints canonized was an Antwerp mason, 
 St. Flores. Adjoining St. Andrew's church is one of the most 
 curious sights in the world. It is called "the Calvary." It is a 
 grotto or labyrinth, composed of coal cinders, gravel and broken 
 bottles. The place is full of caves and recesses, and crowded with 
 statues of prophets, saints, angels and devils. It is indescribable. 
 The most wonderful thing in all these churches is the wood-carv- 
 ing, of which there is an incredible amount. I could never have 
 believed, had I not seen it, the grace, beauty and majesty that the 
 artist's genius can bring out of blocks of wood. There are "an- 
 gels bright and fair," rank on rank, with their folded hands and 
 wings, so beautiful that they seem to have just alighted on this 
 poor world, and all made of oak wood — nothing more. 
 
 But the "event of the season" was the fetes in honor of the 
 three-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Rubens. The exer- 
 cises had been going on for several days when I arrived, though 
 greatly interfered with by rain during my stay. Bubens is the 
 god of Antwerp. His bronze statue stands in the Place Verte, 
 and, during my stay, I ate, drank and slept Rubens. His hand- 
 some features were displayed everywhere. Triumphal arches 
 were thrown across the principal streets — enormous affairs, won- 
 derfully constructed of painted canvas. There were flags enough 
 to have furnished forth a thousand Fourth -of- July celebrations. 
 The Belgian tri-color ( black, red and yellow ) covered the entire 
 
120 A KANSAN ABIZOAD. 
 
 town. Kubens photographs, Rubens cigar-cases, Rubens every- 
 thing, filled the shop windows. All the churches and the mu- 
 seum were thrown open that the people might see Rubens' pictures. 
 I had seen several of his gorgeous court pictures in the Louvre, 
 and greatly admired their richness and brilliancy. In Antwerp, 
 his pictures are religious, and I failed to appreciate them. I got 
 very tired of his Virgin, reproduced a score of times — a fat 
 young Flemish woman, with a low, oval forehead, very large 
 black eyes, an enormous bust, and a great, round, white, fat neck, 
 which dominated over everything else. In every picture the pose 
 was such as to give this neck the best possible showing — it was 
 "neck or nothing." The sameness of the pictures is accounted 
 for by the fact that Rubens took as a model his second wife, or, 
 perhaps, his first — I do not remember; but at any rate, when you 
 look at the Virgin Mary you are looking at Mrs. Rubens. In one 
 picture Rubens himself appears as St. George. I suppose it is 
 very presumptuous in me to say these things, but I believe them. 
 The pictures by Van Dyke, the pupil of Rubens, appear to me 
 infinitely finer. It seems to me that he was the greatest portrait 
 painter who has ever lived. 
 
 The fete, however, went on all the same, notwithstanding my 
 opinion. One night we had a great historical torchlight proces- 
 sion. All the costumes in the old pictures were faithfully repro- 
 duced ; rank on rank marched past in the armor or the dresses of 
 centuries ago ; burghers, soldiers, kings and bishops all moved by, 
 the light of the flaring torches falling on moving masses of color, 
 scarlet, yellow and purple. There were great cars representing 
 music, art, religion, printing, and so on ; an enormous organ 
 formed one of these moving structures. Rubens moved by on an 
 
ANTWERP AND ITS CATHEDRAL. 121 
 
 immense chariot, while young girls with trumpets were supposed 
 to sound abroad his fame. A great concourse of people witnessed 
 the procession, and when the cortege turned into one of the nar- 
 row, winding streets, completely filling it with the moving scene, 
 the light of the torches flashing up against the high houses, the 
 tossing of banners, the glitter of helmets and arms, and the " silver 
 trumpets snarling," as Keats has it, made a combination of sights 
 and sounds that at least one spectator will never forget. 
 
 The next night there was a concert in the Place Verte, by twelve 
 hundred singers. At the hour set all the streets around were filled 
 with people, although the air was filled with a misty rain. The 
 singers and orchestra occupied a platform built for the purpose. 
 A line of soldiers was drawn around this space, though it seemed 
 hardly necessary, so polite and good-humored was everybody. 
 That night will never be forgotten by me. I have lived long 
 and suffered much, but I had reached at last more than I had 
 dared to hope for — I was allowed, after so many years, to hear 
 some music out-of-doors, a privilege I think no one ever enjoyed 
 in my own dear country. The audience was attention itself. 
 The least disturbance in the rear of the crowd was met by low 
 hisses of disapprobation. Every note fell on every listening ear. 
 And what music it was! — at times a band of trumpets hidden in 
 the trees in a distant part of the park, answered the voices, and 
 at last the bells — not u Carolus" and "Maria" — but a silvery 
 chime, answered the trumpets as they sang with all the children's 
 voices — for boys and girls sang, too. At the close, voices, orches- 
 tra, trumpets and bells repeated over after each other, a simple 
 melody — a national air, and then the concert ended with hurrahs, 
 the soldiers opened their ranks, and the people rushed up to con- 
 
122 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 gratulate the conductor and his singers — and / heard it all! This 
 was the overwhelming fact — the great, indescribable surprise of 
 my life. 
 
 When the concert was over, the crowd broke up and wended 
 its way, by a score of crooked streets, to the river Scheldt, where 
 there were fireworks — "the bombardment of a Turkish fort" — 
 and in the meantime the two bells lifted up their great voices till 
 it seemed as if the earth jarred. 
 
 I saw no more of the fete, for I left Antwerp the next evening. 
 The sky was nearly overcast, save a bright silvery band where 
 the sun was sinking. I looked back once more at the town, and 
 there, cutting that band of bright sky across — no longer gray, but 
 robed in a violet light — was the mighty spire of Notre Dame. 
 
 The train sped away till the land, level and green before, 
 seemed to fairly sink. When it was growing dark we were in 
 Holland. The flat land stretched away to the level sea; nothing 
 rose to break the faint sky-line save a lonely wind-mill ; and 
 when the moon rose in a mist, and lights were seen in the dis- 
 tance, we could not tell whether they belonged to earth, or sea, or 
 sky — whether they shone in the homes of men, or in the rigging 
 of some ship at anchor, or were the bright glancing of some low- 
 hung star. And so we came to Flushing. 
 
LONDON KEVISITED. 
 
 AT Flushing I embarked on a steamer bearing a Dutch name, 
 - of which I have- forgotten half-a-dozen syllables, and so 
 will not undertake to give the balance. The destination of the 
 boat was Queenboro, a run of twelve hours, more or less, accord- 
 ing to wind, weather and other circumstances. 
 
 Some naval officer being asked what was the most awful thing 
 about a sea-fight, said it was seeing them sprinkle the deck with 
 sawdust to catch the blood, as yet unshed. I was reminded of 
 this on entering the cabin of the , on seeing certain om- 
 inous tin basins hanging opposite each berth. It was plain that 
 the tinware was not intended for ornament, but use. 
 
 The company was not large, the most conspicuous being a 
 young Japanese coming from school on the continent, and a 
 young woman of a remarkably sociable temperament, and who, 
 to use a seafaring expression, was " three sheets in the wind." The 
 boat soon left the pier, and considerable motion was perceptible. 
 It was surprising how soon conversation turned on the state of 
 the water, but nobody was afraid of seasickness ; none of the pass- 
 engers had ever been seasick or ever expected to be, and there 
 was a disposition to converse in a lively manner on the subject of 
 the dreaded malady. The young woman aforesaid appeared at 
 frequent intervals at her state-room door and laughed violently 
 at the gentlemen passengers. It was observed, however, that all 
 this hilarity did not materially check the rolling of the steamer, 
 
 and soon an old woman bowed her head on the table, and wept 
 
 (123) 
 
124 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 and moaned, and bewailed herself. The gentleman from the 
 Orient was next affected. He stopped talking, and turned first a 
 dark brown, then a deep yellow, then a light straw color, and fled 
 to his berth, from whence his slanting eyes glistened in the midst 
 of a countenance the color of a dirty white pocket handkerchief. 
 The state-room door opened once more, a hysterical laugh was 
 heard, and after that the young woman was heard but not seen. 
 One by one, the passengers about the table thought it was time to 
 turn in, and said they always went to bed early. One of the last 
 was this writer. He remembers that he lost his interest in every- 
 thing earthly, and felt no hopes, desires, emotions, ambitions or 
 wants, save an overwhelming anxiety to lie down somewhere. 
 The sensation was like being lowered by the heels and head first 
 into a barrel of moderately warm and very dirty water. There 
 was no local pain, no settled agony anywhere in particular, only 
 just a spreading, all-pervading, overwhelming sick. The man who 
 says that when you are seasick you should keep on deck and walk 
 about, is a liar and a horse-thief. This deponent did nothing of 
 the sort, nor would he to have saved the boat from instant de- 
 struction. So still did he lie, that he could have been carried 
 around with a show and exhibited as a mummy. The effect was 
 beneficial. In an hour the sea-sickness grew ashamed of attack- 
 ing a man who was down, and made no resistance, and so left; 
 and after that the motion of the vessel was not disagreeable. But 
 all night there were moanings and groanings all around the 
 cabin, and cries of "Stew — (whoop, whoop, whoop) — ard!!" So 
 passed the solemn hours away till daylight came, and stricken, 
 haggard wretches began to crawl on deck, and remark with wan 
 smiles, that "it was pretty rough last night." 
 
 The run from Queenboro to London was made in the dirtiest 
 
LONDON REVISITED. 125 
 
 railway car I ever saw in England, but the day was so fair that a 
 little discomfort was forgotten. Our way lay through the fair 
 county of Kent, in some respects one of the most beautiful of Eng- 
 lish counties, and we saw acres of its famous hop fields. Of the 
 towns along the way, I remember only Kochester, and that not 
 because of anything connected with its history, save that it was 
 the first stopping -place of Mr. Pickwick and his friends when 
 they started out on their tour of observation. 
 
 London looked natural enough, though perhaps a trifle uglier 
 after Paris ; but for all that it is a difficult town to get away from, 
 and I believe I could live there for six months, and take each day 
 a new and interesting tour of observation. 
 
 A day was devoted to Windsor Castle, easily and quickly 
 reached by rail from London. Like most historic places in Eng- 
 land, it is more interesting from past than present associations. In 
 the absence of the Queen ( who is generally absent ), admission is 
 obtained without difficulty, and "by the Queen's command" no 
 fees or gratuities are allowed. A few of the state apartments are 
 shown. They are handsome, of course, but with the furniture cov- 
 ered with linen, look dreary. These royal rooms did not seem to 
 me as fine as the halls of the Louvre, the people's palace, open to 
 the humblest French workman every day. There is a fine collec- 
 tion of portraits by Van Dyke, and a miscellaneous assortment of 
 royal portraits, one of the best, I think, being of George IV, 
 painted by Lawrence. Poor old George III was of course con- 
 spicuous, with his low forehead, his goggle eyes and his open 
 mouth. Looking at that face, one can readily imagine the august 
 monarch, as depicted by Peter Pindar, wondering how the apple 
 got inside the dumpling, no seam being visible. 
 
 While walking about the state apartments, an English gen- 
 
126 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 tleman said to me: "You must go on top of the great tower and 
 talk with the sergeant; he is as funny as your Artemus Ward." 
 I believe that is the highest praise that an Englishman can confer 
 on a humorist. No other American, great or small, ever made 
 such an impression in London as did poor Charley Browne. He 
 was a revelation. His like had never been seen before, as it 
 never will be again. His jokes were made the subject of critical 
 analysis in the English magazines. His "show" drew better in 
 London than even in " Baldinsville ; " and to this day he is used 
 as a sort of standard, and all other "funny men" are compared 
 with him. This does not arise from ignorance of what is called 
 "American humor" — the "nigger business" has had an estab- 
 lished home in England for years ; but it arises solely from the 
 honest truth that, in the matter of natural, original, perpetual 
 fun, America has produced but one Artemus Ward, the only one 
 of an army of our humorists who lived and died with his laurels 
 green. 
 
 But this is a digression. I took the gentleman's advice, 
 ascended the tower, and found the sergeant, a big, hearty soldier, 
 who had paced the tower for eighteen years. His blue eyes 
 twinkled with a merry light, and he had really a great store of 
 dry fun about him. He had a most interesting panorama, if that 
 be the proper expression, to exhibit. Close by is a little town ; it 
 is Eton, with the famous school, where many of England's greatest 
 men have been educated. In the far distance is Harrow, where 
 Byron was a scholar; the green spot by the gliding Thames is 
 Runnymede, where Magna Charta was wrested from King John, 
 whereby ( I believe) we obtained the privilege of being tried by 
 twelve men who never read the newspapers, and so have never 
 "formed or expressed an opinion;" a clump of houses is the vil- 
 
LONDON REVISITED. 127 
 
 lage of Datchet, where the Merry Wives of Windsor served Fal- 
 staff a bad trick; and the spire above the trees marks the site of 
 Stoke church, where the curfew tolled the knell of parting day; 
 and, concerning this, the sergeant was kind enough to tell me 
 that nearly every American who came to Windsor was able to 
 repeat Gray's Elegy. These are the real attractions of Windsor 
 Castle. We may forget what king built this tower or that, but 
 no one forgets the moment when he looked across the green coun- 
 try to where "the rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep." 
 
 Back in London by night, an opportunity was afforded to hear 
 the celebrated Spurgeon, who was to deliver a week-day evening 
 address at his tabernacle, on the Surrey side. It seems a little 
 odd, but a Londoner directing a stranger to this place of worship 
 will tell him that it is near a famous inn in old times, bearing 
 still its ancient name of the "Elephant and Castle." Going first 
 to the "Elephant and Castle," we had no difficulty in finding the 
 immense tabernacle. It is an excessively ugly affair outside, and 
 inside the effort appears to be to make it look as unlike a church 
 as possible. In shape, the interior (to use a familiar, though pos- 
 sibly an irreverent illustration) is like the race track at the 
 Topeka fair grounds. There are several galleries, and an im- 
 mense amount of room. Although it was a week-day meeting, a 
 large audience was present, and I noticed the red uniforms of 
 two soldiers lighting up the sober-colored mass. The pulpit is a 
 sort of small gallery. Mr. Spurgeon is a solid, heavy, muscular 
 man, with a thoroughly middle-class English look. Were he a 
 politician, I should take him for a popular speaker of the ad- 
 vanced radical party. His discourse, I am bound to say, seemed 
 to me far from striking; and I may as well add, that my observa- 
 tion leads me to believe that in the matter of pulpit eloquence 
 
128 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 America is far in advance of the other side of the Atlantic. Mr. 
 Spurgeon's sermon was a plain, matter-of-fact talk, rising nowhere 
 into the sublime, or even the poetical ; but his voice is a wonder- 
 ful one. He filled the great building without the slightest appar- 
 ent exertion, and his lower notes were singularly musical and 
 pleasing. I could, from hearing his voice, well believe all that is 
 said of his powers as a speaker when circumstances call for their 
 exertion. After the sermon a number of persons were baptized, 
 the officiating clergyman being (I was told) a brother of Mr. 
 Spurgeon's. The ordinance was conducted after the manner of 
 Baptist churches in America, save that all the lady candidates 
 wore white robes and caps. 
 
 The next day, at the instance of a Liverpool printer, I visited 
 the Caxton exhibition at the South Kensington Museum. There 
 was here a wonderful collection of everything relating to the past 
 or present of the art of printing in all its branches. Some speci- 
 mens of American work were on exhibition, though nothing near 
 as fine a show as could have been made. In the midst of a glass 
 case of cards I noticed one of "Haight & Taylor, Ellenville, 
 N. Y.;" and the names brought to my mind the recollection of 
 one whose death diminished the world's too slender stock of sin- 
 cere and honest men, the late K. B. Taylor, of Wyandotte. 
 
 There was a wonderful array of old books, particularly those 
 printed by Caxton himself. I looked even at the pages of the 
 first book printed in England. I suppose I ought to have burst 
 out in a torrent of eloquent and grateful eulogy on the "art pre- 
 servative of arts," the palladium of liberty, etc., etc., etc., and 
 have blessed the memory of William Caxton, but I did not. See- 
 ing his work, brought him very near to me. He looked at me, in 
 fact, from the open pages of his book, with the same provokingly 
 
LONDON REVISITED. 129 
 
 bland, innocent, benevolent expression he wears in Maclise's pic- 
 ture. It irritated me, and I felt as if, providing he could really 
 "materialize," I would have addressed him thus: 
 
 "Mr. William Caxton, you were originally a mercer, and you 
 were also an embassador, and one with just the statutory amount 
 of common sense would suppose that that was a sufficiently fat 
 take for you, but you must needs go into the printing business. 
 Now then, what for? You say that the Duchess of Burgundy 
 wanted you to print the 'Recueil of the History of Troye,' and 
 you did it ; yes, and Eve wanted Adam to eat the apple, and he 
 did it ; and Herodius had an anxiety for the head of John the 
 Baptist, and she got it; and Lady Macbeth wanted Mac. to give 
 old man Duncan a fatal prod, and he did it. He never even gave 
 'the old man a chance.' You didn't foresee the consequences, you 
 say, when you set up your book, newspaper and plain and fancy 
 job printing establishment in Westminster Abbey. You didn't 
 know, now honest? You didn't think there would ever be such a 
 thing as a tramping jour., did you? You didn't see the head of 
 the blooming old procession that has been about three hundred 
 years passing a given point? You wasn't prepared for that gay 
 old cortege, that innumerable caravan, were you? It didn't 
 occur to you about the 'banner,' and the very rum lot that 
 were to put in their time carrying it? Your prophetic eye did 
 not see the long string of red noses and sore eyes and sun-burnt 
 necks and blistered heels? You never thought of the fellows 
 who would sleep on the bank, and under the bank, and behind 
 the stove, and down in the press-room among the greasy rags and 
 wrapping-paper and strings, and also repose their old bones be- 
 times in the calaboose? No, you didn't think of any of these 
 
130 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 things, we may well believe. You never dreamed, Bill, that some 
 thousands of your fellow-creatures would put their eyes out, and 
 grow old before their time, and humpbacked in the flower of 
 their youth, sticking type on morning papers. You never imag- 
 ined how they would all stir the fire up; how the 'old man' 
 would blaspheme the foreman, and how the last named would 
 make even by calling the learned and accomplished compositors 
 a lot of goggle-eyed, slab-sided, knock-kneed blacksmiths. Bless 
 your simple-hearted, ink-smearing old soul, nothing appears to 
 have occurred to you! You didn't hear, sounding down the ages, 
 anything about 'a few cords of dry wood wanted at this office 
 immediately,' nor the loud and exceedingly bitter cry for ' any 
 kind of country produce.' You are responsible for all this, and 
 you say you didn't think! And in that connection, I may remark 
 that that is what every meddling, mischief-making lunatic says. 
 You didn't know the gun was loaded, and so you snapped it, and 
 that is the way some fool kills somebody every day in the week. 
 But you didn't think; you meant well, but you were just an idiot, 
 that was all. Probably if you had thought, you would have hung 
 the printing business on the dead hook; but you didn't, and it is 
 now too late. The line is hair-spaced now, and it can't be helped. 
 We are in the everlasting 'drag,' and are stuck for all night. 
 Oh, William! William!" 
 
 Queen Victoria, Spurgeon and William Caxton formed the 
 bill of fare at this last visit to London ; from thence my way led 
 into the "country," and away from the cities, into the heart of 
 that rural England referred to by an English poet as having been 
 made by God, while "man made the town." 
 
RURAL ENGLAND. 
 
 BEFOEE taking leave of England, I traversed the counties of 
 Lancaster, Chester, Salop, Warwick, Oxford, Middlesex, 
 Cambridge, Huntington, Kent, Bucks, Lincoln, York, Westmore- 
 land and Cumberland, and traveling leisurely, had a good oppor- 
 tunity of seeing the English country, east, west, north and south. 
 If I did not see the best, which most Englishmen insist is in Dev- 
 onshire, I think I saw the worst, in the moors of Yorkshire, and 
 plenty that was "fair to middling." 
 
 Of the beauty of Cheshire, where I first saw sunshine and green 
 grass in England, and of the comparative excellence of Shrop- 
 shire, I have already spoken, and I have alluded to the poverty of 
 Warwick and the country between Stratford and London. Had 
 I seen only that region, I should have come away with a poor 
 opinion of English groundand English farming. Fortunately, I 
 went farther and fared better. 
 
 The famous county of Kent I saw on a sunshiny morning, as I 
 have before stated, in coming from Queenboro to London. It is 
 a county of hills and dales, never monotonous on one hand, nor 
 striking on the other. Its hop fields are its most remarkable agri- 
 cultural feature. 
 
 It was September when I left London going north, and there 
 was a keen reminder of autumn in the air, and the trees had 
 already begun to dull and fade ; the summer had been an uncom- 
 monly wet one, even for England, and one was constantly re- 
 
 (131) 
 
132 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 minded by the temperature of an American October, although the 
 harvest was in progress. Keapers of a peculiarly lumbering pat- 
 tern were going in some fields, and in others I saw, for the first 
 time in my life, gleaners ; ragged, red-faced women, who, like 
 Eugene Ware's geese and cranes, were " picking up the golden 
 grains." To one who had seen ears of corn enough wasted along 
 the muddy roads of Illinois to feed England a week or so, this 
 gleaning business looked like the depth of poverty. To make the 
 "seeming" worse, I was told that gleaning was not as profitable as 
 formerly. I suppose in the old times a kind-hearted husbandman, 
 with a sickle or cradle, let fall a few stalks occasionally for pity's 
 sake ; but a reaping-machine has no bowels of compassion. 
 
 It happened that this very September, when this poverty- 
 stricken spectacle so impressed me, was the rich man's holiday, 
 for it was the opening of the shooting season, which the imposi- 
 tion of a new gun tax had made more genteel than ever. Bushes 
 were stuck up in some pastures to indicate that the ground was 
 reserved by Lord Somebodyorother, and that no other man, even 
 with a stamped shot-gun, might blaze away therein. I saw some 
 of this hunting. Four or five men moved in skirmishing order 
 across a turnip field, with a boy carrying a game-bag, and popped 
 away at birds which were as tame as cats. It was not nearly as 
 exciting as the boy's pursuit of the ground-hog, and it lacked his 
 excuse of dire necessity. 
 
 To get back to what I know about farming. The turnip fields 
 are a great English institution ; they seem to occupy the place 
 filled by corn in America. The undemonstrative, cold, hard, 
 solid, practical turnip is at home in England. I think it must 
 have been invented there. The landscape everywhere is broken 
 
RURAL ENGLAND. 133 
 
 by the pale, watery green of turnip fields, affording the greatest 
 possible contrast with the waving pomp of our Indian corn, hand- 
 somest of all agricultural productions. In England there is no 
 corn, but there are turnips and turnips. 
 
 In the pastures reside in ease and opulence the glory of Eng- 
 land, the cattle and sheep. Coming from a country where the 
 farmers prefer to raise dogs, I was greatly interested in the British 
 sheep, such great, white, broad-backed creatures were they. They 
 scarcely seemed of the same species as the American sheep. Per- 
 haps a republican form of government is not adapted to sheep- 
 raising; but certain it is, that under the British constitution, 
 mutton is mutton, such as no Yankee ever dreamed of. The 
 cattle in all the English counties all looked like the prize animals 
 at our State fairs. 
 
 A novel feature on the route from London to Cambridge was 
 the mustard fields, which comprised many acres. The great mus- 
 tard man of England is named Colman; his posters meet you 
 everywhere ; he is one of the largest advertisers in the kingdom, 
 and he lives in a palace. So much for smartness. 
 
 The succession of fields and pastures is often broken by the 
 parks of the nobility. A park is simply an inclosed wood, such 
 as cover about half of our Eastern States. These grounds were 
 originally kept for the deer they contained, but I think they are 
 now maintained for the enjoyment of that seclusion which an 
 Englishman associates with dignity, power, glory, self-respect, 
 and so on. A man's fortune or social position in England may 
 be known by the number of bolts and bars that shut him in. 
 When in merely comfortable circumstances, the man has between 
 him and the public a small door-yard and an iron fence, and 
 
134 A KANSAS ABROAD. 
 
 keeps his front door locked. A higher grade and a longer purse 
 are designated by a large yard so full of shrubbery that you cannot 
 see the house, and a lock and bell to the front gate, which opens 
 through a very high iron fence, suitable for a penitentiary. 
 Greater grandeur manifests itself in the shape of a high stone 
 wall around the premises, the top thereof bristling with broken 
 glass set in mortar, to prevent any one from climbing up and 
 looking over at the august owner; finally, a landed gentleman or 
 nobleman incloses all the ground he can get hold of with a prison 
 wall, devotes the ground to a wilderness, and lives in the middle 
 of his forest, as happy as a most imperial snail in his ancestral 
 shell. To get at him in this magnificent retreat, it is necessary 
 to apply at the lodge gate, and to go through as many formalities 
 as are requisite in order to see the Emperor of China, who is 
 brother to the sun, uncle to the moon, and attorney for the 
 planets generally. 
 
 Amid the expanse of pasture, field and park are scattered the 
 little villages, which are numberless, and which bear a family re- 
 semblance all over the country. You see the gray, square tower 
 of the village church above the trees, in whatever direction you 
 turn your eyes. Along the line of the railways are dull old places, 
 midway between a village and a town. They lack the life seen 
 about American railway stations, for the arrival of a train is not 
 much of an event where, as at Rugby Junction, for instance, four 
 hundred trains pass every twenty-four hours. But of these, and 
 more especially of rural villages, I shall speak further on. 
 
 It was a bright morning when I came to Cambridge, and 
 stopped off to look at the university. It is hard to tell which is 
 Cambridge and which is the university. Instead of the rows of 
 
RURAL ENGLAND. 135 
 
 educational barracks situated in a public square, with which we 
 are familiar in America, the colleges are scattered all over town, 
 and jammed in among the houses. Some are very old, and 
 lighted with latticed windows, the little three-cornered panes set 
 in leaden sashes; others are more modern in appearance, and 
 some are even now building — or being built — for I forget which 
 Mr. Kichard Grant White has decided upon. The old quadran- 
 gles, the inclosures of brightest turf shining in contrast with time- 
 blackened old walls, are lovely spots. Cambridge, too, is full of 
 grand old trees — nobody knows how old — under which succes- 
 sive generations of students have strayed. Cambridge is a sweet, 
 quiet old town, and doubtless is fondly remembered by men, in 
 blooming youth and wintry age, in every clime and by the shores 
 of every sea. 
 
 Once in Cambridgeshire, the country changes and spreads out 
 in great plains toward the sea. I looked over the low-lying coun- 
 try in the shimmering light of the afternoon, and it looked like 
 that land of which one says that "it seemed always afternoon." 
 Wide fields stretched away, and the sky-line was broken by white 
 wind -mills, like lighthouses for the land. And through this 
 smiling region, I came to St. Ives. 
 
 I had been followed all over England by scraps of nursery 
 rhymes, and St. Ives had long before been introduced to me by a 
 certain verse which records that, "As I was going to St. Ives, I 
 met seven wives, armed and equipped with seven cats, each with 
 seven kits." In respectful remembrance of the kits, cats and 
 wives, and also to deliver a letter intrusted to me, I, too, went to 
 St. Ives. 
 
 Huntingtonshire was one of those Puritan counties which sent 
 
136 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 out so many emigrants in the days when men departed from the 
 wrath present and wrath to come, from England to America. It 
 was Cromwell's county, his birthplace, and until he became a 
 prominent soldier, his residence. I thought I detected in the ac- 
 cent of the people some traces of that "Yankee twang" so much 
 laughed at by the English now-a-days, but which is said to have 
 been originally imported from England. St. Ives consists princi- 
 pally of one great, wide, stony street, which is used for a cattle 
 market. Along this are hitching-racks, mouldering with age, to 
 which the bullocks are tied. The street slopes to a still stream 
 bordered with great bulrushes. It is a soft-gliding, stealthy sort 
 of river, and called, I think, the Ouse. By the banks of the 
 stream, "where grow the rushes, oh," is the church of St. Ives, 
 very, very old. I found the owner of my letter after a while, an 
 astonishingly vigorous man of about eighty years. He skipped 
 along so fast that I had trouble to keep up with him, and he told 
 me all about St. Ives. He had that quickness of movement that 
 they call "being spry" in New England ; and the sharp glance of 
 his eye and his rapid speech, as well as the general business-like 
 character and shrewdness of his remarks, made me think of the 
 smart old Vermonters I knew when I was a boy. He was born in 
 Norfolk; and away back in the early part of the century his 
 brothers had stepped off without telling him, and had gone to 
 America. He had lived fifty years in St. Ives, and had done 
 well, reasonably well — pretty fair, at least. He had bought the 
 house in which Cromwell once lived, and of which he showed me 
 a drawing, and had built on it the site of his own house ; and he 
 owned all the houses on two sides of the little square, and he 
 called the locality Cromwell Place. He had stuck to business, 
 
RURAL ENGLAND. 137 
 
 and, God be praised, had got along comfortably, and was a little 
 ahead in fact. But he had no sons to inherit his name, though he 
 was the father of several daughters, and the rest of the old stock 
 having gone to America, the name of Climinson would die with 
 him in England, as far as he knew. Very friendly was the old 
 gentleman of St. Ives, and a prodigy of business knowledge. He 
 walked with me up to the station, and told me all about farming 
 in that region, giving the figures for everything ; and very aston- 
 ishing figures they were, to me. Land £60 an acre at the least, 
 and renting at £2 10s., and an outlay for stocking a tenant farm, 
 amounting to enough to buy a princely domain in Kansas. In 
 such talk passed pleasantly away two hours at the market-town of 
 St. Ives, a place so out of the high road of tourists that I could 
 well imagine myself the first American who had ever been there. 
 
 From this on, the country grew wider and more level, and 
 when I woke up next morning I was in Lincolnshire — at the 
 venerable city of Lincoln, where people every day go back and 
 forth under a Roman arch nearly or quite as old as Christianity. 
 From Lincoln I wished to go into the country, to the village of 
 Mareham-le-fen. It was astonishing how many people in Lin- 
 coln did not know where Mareham-le-fen was — a village heaven 
 knows how old, in their own county; but a gazetteer which I 
 found at the Blue Anchor told me at last that I must go to Tat- 
 tershall, on the railway to Boston, first, and thence across the 
 country. 
 
 Lincolnshire is a wet country, and when I first saw it, a rain 
 had been falling steadily for about twenty-four hours. It is, for 
 the most part, a low green plain, cut up by long, straight ditches 
 and canals. It is the native county of Tennyson, and if you would 
 
138 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 know how it looks through all the varying year, you should read 
 again the "Queen o' the May." Here I saw, all along the way, 
 stirred softly by the laggard wind and the slow-falling rain, 
 "The oat grass and the sword grass, and the bulrush in the pool." 
 
 On stepping out of the little station at Tattershall, the first 
 object one sees is a great brick tower, a hundred feet high, stand- 
 ing in the midst of the ruins of what must have been once a very 
 extensive building. The tower is a part of Tattershall castle, 
 and the only ruin I ever saw in England where brick had been 
 the material used in the structure. All the information that I 
 could gain from the "bystanders" was, that it had been reduced 
 to its present state by the cannon of Cromwell. According to 
 common report, all the ruins in England are the work of either 
 Henry VIII or Cromwell. Ruined castles and abbeys are a 
 feature of rural England. These, especially the abbeys, are 
 very numerous, and you come upon them in the most unexpected 
 places. One naturally looks to find these crumbling walls in soli- 
 tary valleys, but often as you fly past in the train, you catch a 
 glimpse of the broken, gray arches, adorned with that "rare old 
 plant," the ivy green, close beside the railroad track, while the 
 telegraph wires hum all day in the wind where once rose matin, 
 and even song. But to get back to Tattershall. The village is a 
 mile away from the railway, which, crooked as it generally is in 
 England, cannot go around to all the villages; and at the village 
 it was necessary to hire a trap at the inn — the Fortescue Arms. 
 Reader, if you ever visit England, stop, sometime or somewhere, 
 at a village inn like the Fortescue Arms. How cosy and clean it 
 looked on that rainy day ; how brilliant was the array of pewter, 
 silver and earthen ware on the dresser; how brightly shone the 
 
RURAL ENGLAND. 139 
 
 fire in the open grate ; how spotless as a lady's handkerchief was 
 the red brick floor; how capacious and comfortable was the arm- 
 chair in the "ingle nook;" how cheery was the landlord, with 
 his red cheeks and his frosty whiskers. Yes, reader, if thou art 
 a purse-proud and most obdurate donkey, thou wilt stop at the 
 "Imperial," or the "Victoria," but if thou, being a sensible man, 
 wouldst take thine ease at thine inn, thou wilt bestow thy weary 
 frame at the "White Bear," or the "Pig and Whistle," or the 
 "Bull and Mouth," or, perchance, at the "Elephant and Castle." 
 
 The landlord of the Fortescue Arms soon had a two-wheeled 
 vehicle at the door in charge of the "boy," a healthy kid of 
 about forty-five years, and so we journeyed to Mareham-le-fen. 
 The "section line" is unknown in England, and so the road does 
 not run on it, but zigzags, or rather winds about after a fashion of 
 its own. Each side of the way rise high and thick hedges, shut- 
 ting in the view at times; and along the hedges are great trees, 
 limes or elms, which lock their branches over your head; and 
 you may depend that as the road looks now, so it has always 
 looked, and so it always will. The "boy" was born in Tatter- 
 shall, and the road which he had known all his days had never 
 been changed in his time. I suppose all the crooks in it were 
 there when Cromwell's hoarse guns echoed over the fens two hun- 
 dred years ago. 
 
 Mareham-le-fen is a type of an English village when undis- 
 turbed by the railway — a single, crooked street, lined with one 
 and two-story houses, varying from the low-roofed thatched cot- 
 tage to the more modern brick house. There were the little 
 shops, where everything is sold from sugar to stockings, and the 
 "restored" parish church of the Establishment, originally built 
 
140 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 by the Saxons, and two Dissenting chapels, new and smart, and 
 frequented by the bulk of the villagers ; and near by is the park 
 and residence of the "gentleman" of the neighborhood — in the 
 case of Mareham-le-fen, a member of the family of Stanhope, 
 which once furnished a nobleman who invented a printing press, 
 and also that very singular being, Lady Hester Stanhope, who 
 turned Arab. 
 
 A village on the upper waters of the Solomon or Republican 
 would not have conveyed to me anything like the sense of seclu- 
 sion felt at this village on the border of the fens of Lincolnshire. 
 In Spreadeagleville, Kansas, we expect to be incorporated by the 
 next Legislature as a city of the second class; and we can almost 
 see the track-layers on the St. Augustine, Mound City & Van- 
 couver Railroad: but, at Mareham-le-fen, or other rural hamlet 
 in England, nothing is to be expected. As things have been, so 
 they are now and ever shall be. Human hearts, however, are the 
 same everywhere, and I met a kindly welcome at this out-of-the- 
 way spot in a strange country. We sat by the fire and heard the 
 rain outside, and, in return for talk about America, I was told all 
 about the fens. In the old time the ocean came in all along the 
 coast, and there was a vast country untilled by man; squatters 
 lived about in the "hammocks," as they say in Florida, and killed 
 moor-fowl and caught fish, and were half wild themselves. In 
 time, as land became worth more, embankments were constructed, 
 and when the ocean withdrew it could not get back except through 
 flood-gates. And so in the course of years the dreary fen became 
 pasture and wheat-fields, than which there are no finer in England. 
 Mareham-le-fen is, then, Mareham-of-the-fens, or was once, for it 
 is all dry ground thereabouts at present. The condition of the 
 
RURAL ENGLAND. 141 
 
 country and the general wealth of the people had greatly in- 
 creased with this improvement; yet withal, ever since the time 
 Boston, in Massachusetts, was named in honor of old Boston, in 
 Lincolnshire, people had been going thence to America. But 
 surely, thought I, none have found their way back to Mareham- 
 le-fen ; but I was mistaken, for there came in during the evening 
 a young fellow from Potosi, Missouri, who had moreover brought 
 with him a Texas cow-boy's saddle wherewith to astonish the na- 
 tives. My disappointment at not being the Columbus of the vil- 
 lage, did not prevent my sleeping soundly in a bed, the like of 
 which as to size has not been seen in America since the Revolu- 
 tion. The headboard made me think of the front of a Kansas 
 clapboard court house, while the bed was the public square. 
 
 The next stopping-place was York, a famous old place, where 
 is the great minster, nearly as familiar to Americans from pic- 
 tures as the capitol at Washington. I do not propose to describe 
 this wonderful building, as the purpose of this letter is more par- 
 ticularly to speak of the country, not the town. I may remark, 
 though, in passing, that York minster is built of magnesian lime- 
 stone, as is the capitol at Topeka ; and as the minster has lasted 
 some four or five hundred years, so we may hope that the present 
 wing of the Kansas State House will endure even till the comple- 
 tion of the Insane Asylum. In the heart of York, I saw a bit of 
 green grass inclosed by a high wall, which interested me. It is 
 the ancient burying-ground of the Friends, long deserted, and in 
 it is buried Lindley Murray. It would not take long to parse the 
 last simple sentence about the old grammarian, for, with Quaker 
 plainness, it only says, "that he was born, and that he died." It 
 does not even mention that a generation of Americans learned 
 
142 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 grammar out of his little book — a generation now gone, or going; 
 for of those who in so many country school houses, on so many 
 drowsy afternoons, said over and over, "I love," and "you love," 
 and "we love," most are gone away to another country, where 
 we would fain hope that He loves. The decent body who 
 showed me the place, knew nothing about the man of the old- 
 time grammar, but perhaps Mr. Pontefract, the grocer at the 
 corner, could tell me ; but Mr. P. knew very little about his co- 
 religionist who labored so zealously to convince men that the 
 personal pronoun, "you," should be used only in the second per- 
 son plural. But he knew, he said, a young man from America — 
 Lindley Murray Hoag. There is no getting away, you see, from 
 America — or from Kansas, for that matter. 
 
 In Yorkshire, I lived several days with the Doctor, and jour- 
 neyed about, visiting, among other places, that most graceful of 
 monastic ruins, Fountain's Abbey. I passed near, but did not 
 visit Knaresborough, the scene of "Eugene Aram." Yorkshire 
 is a very large county, and has a bolder and more impressive 
 landscape than Lincolnshire. It has those "voluptuous swells," 
 once spoken of by a Kansas Senator in connection with the Osage 
 ceded lands, and the horizon is usually skirted by brown hills, 
 where grows the heather, which, near at hand, reveals a little 
 pink flower, and in the distance shows in color from purple to 
 black. This applies to the country about Eipon; but in going 
 north, to Scotland from Leeds, you cross Blea moor, which is the 
 abomination of desolation; and it was in the moors that I saw 
 the last of rural England. I saw it in sunshine in Cheshire — 
 I left it in shadow in Yorkshire. 
 
 Such are a few impressions of the English country; and the 
 
RURAL ENGLAND. 143 
 
 idea that seems most vivid in closing is, that in America, Time is 
 a destroying radical — in England, an easy conservative. With 
 us, nothing will ever be old ; in England, few things seem young 
 or new. The perpetual moisture of which travelers complain so 
 much, keeps England — country England — cool and fresh and 
 gently fair. It robs tower and wall and bridge of the gloss of 
 newness, and gives, instead, the placid beauty of well-kept age. 
 Alien though I am, born in the land of the prairie and the sun ; 
 as different a country from England as can well be imagined, I 
 can well understand the sentiment which an Englishman feels for 
 his own, his native land. Not his country in an abstract sense ; 
 not her laws, her institutions, her history, but her very earth. 
 No turf is brighter and greener than the English sod, unbroken 
 by the plow since history began. Larger streams there are, but 
 none more beautiful than those which mirror the primroses and 
 the cowslips of England. Life runs with quicker flow in the 
 towns of the new world, which spring up in the sun-bright wilder- 
 ness in a day; but I can well understand how amid such, the 
 Englishman's heart may pine for the single winding street of his 
 native village, with its straw-thatched cottages; the stone cross in 
 the middle of the market-place ; the square-towered church, with 
 ivy overgrown; and the honest face of the village clock, which 
 told off the hours of his forefathers, and which he laid awake at 
 nights and listened to as it measured his own. Such are the scenes 
 which have inspired the noblest descriptive poetry in our lan- 
 guage ; such are the scenes amid which have been nursed souls, 
 brave, tender and true, which, going abroad into all the world, for 
 this two hundred years or more, have led mankind to a higher 
 and brighter destiny. 
 
FIRST HOURS IN SCOTLAND. 
 
 AT Leeds I made the acquaintance of the great Midland Eail- 
 - way, the most enterprising railroad corporation in Eng- 
 land — the first to introduce Pullman cars, the first to do away 
 with second-class carriages, making everybody ride "first" or 
 "third," and at the same time improving the "third" so as to 
 make it good enough for anybody — a step which has earned for 
 the Midland the name of the "Eadical Company." 
 
 It was raining heavily when we left Leeds, at 3 o'clock in the 
 afternoon, and the falling rain, mingling with the rising smoke 
 from the manufacturing towns we ran through, brought on a dark- 
 ness that might be felt. At Keighley, the hills just back of the 
 town could not be seen, and at this I felt sorry; for high up in 
 those hills is the dreary village of Haworth, where that strange 
 family, the Brontes, lived, suffered, achieved fame — one of them 
 — and died. It was not so much on account of "Jane Eyre" that 
 I wished to look, even afar off, at the scenes amid which it was 
 written, but to find some explanation for "Wuthering Heights," 
 as written by another sister, and which I firmly believe to be the 
 most blood - chilling book in existence. I wished to know if in 
 "Merrie England" there existed a region as desolate as that de- 
 picted in that book. I saw nothing at Keighley, but farther on 
 we came upon a "lone land," the Yorkshire "wolds," where a 
 solitary, sensitive woman might easily imagine anything. High, 
 woodless hills rise behind each other, strewn with patches of 
 
 (144) 
 
FIRST HOURS IN SCOTLAND. 145 
 
 brown heather, and great ledges of gray rock, patched with 
 mouldering moss. Here is no sight of spire nor sound of bell. 
 For miles there is not visible a furrow, and a few scattering sheep 
 seem the only inhabitants. The few houses that appear in this 
 solitude are shapeless structures, built of the gray rock, with an 
 outside stairway, built of rock also. They stand amid the moss 
 and rock and heather without even a bit of garden ground to 
 break the sullen waste. Take from this poor land the vanishing 
 brightness of the summer's green, fill it with drifting snow pur- 
 sued by the homeless wind, and you have the scene of " Wuther- 
 ing Heights." 
 
 Approaching Westmoreland, the country becomes, so to speak, 
 more "human." A depression amid the high hills, called the 
 "Vale of Dent," is quite a paradise, and by the time you reach 
 Carlisle you are in the midst of a level, pretty country again. 
 
 Darkness settled soon after the train sped away from Carlisle, 
 and little could be made out save that we were passing through a 
 hilly country. We made a few stops, one of them being amidst 
 the lights of a manufacturing town — Harwick — which the Scotch 
 people called "Hyke." Somewhere about 8 o'clock came Mel- 
 rose, and — bed. 
 
 Melrose, as seen in a morning with more rain than sun, looks 
 much like an English village, though not so well cared for. Near 
 by rise two high, bare eminences, the Eildon hills (there are three 
 of them, but two make themselves conspicuous). Somewhere in 
 the vicinity is the Tweed, and down street, a few steps away from 
 the station, is Melrose Abbey. 
 
 I realized, when I stepped into the inclosure about this old 
 
 K 
 
146 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 ruin, how wonderful is the spell of poetry when the magician is 
 Walter Scott. Melrose is a beautiful ruin, but neither in itself 
 nor in its situation does it possess the charm of Fountain's Abbey, 
 near Eipon — but Walter Scott did not live in Yorkshire. Mel- 
 rose being in the midst of human habitations, seems a living 
 thing: it has, in fact, been used in part as a comparatively modern 
 parish church; while Fountain's Abbey, standing in its lonely, 
 green valley, is in harmony with our idea of an abbey — a place 
 to which men, wearied with the strivings and sinnings of this 
 weary world, betook themselves away from its turmoil and bustle, 
 and busied themselves exclusively with prayer — perhaps. 
 
 The custodian, a very lady-like person, said many Americans 
 were visitors in July, but since then very few had been seen. 
 Among the later visitors at Melrose, however, had been General 
 Grant. 
 
 We soon got through with Melrose, and prepared to visit 
 Abbotsford, which is situated on the Tweed, three miles away. 
 It threatened rain, and, as I proposed to walk, the question of 
 " wherewithal shall we be clothed," was uppermost. I bethought 
 me of a certain long shawl, for which, in journeying many hun- 
 dred miles, I had never found any use. We were in a land of 
 ''plaids" — why not convert myself into a gentle shepherd, and 
 make a plaid of this Yankee shawl? In the Highlands this 
 would have been easy enough, but none of the Lowlanders to 
 whom I referred knew how the real plaid was folded and fastened. 
 The landlady, the chambermaid, the cook, and their male ad- 
 visers, aiders and abetters, insisted that a shepherd's plaid had a 
 "corner," which my shawl had not; the green-grocer next door 
 
FIRST HOURS IN SCOTLAND. 147 
 
 said it was "no blate," whatever that may mean; and finally the 
 shawl was put on " anyhow," and the march on Abbotsford com- 
 menced, under a lowering sky. 
 
 The country along the Tweed — which in Marmion is "Tweed's 
 fair river broad and deep," (really about the size of the Grass- 
 hopper at Valley Falls) — may be described as "pretty." There 
 is a succession of high, grassy hills, covered at their bases with 
 groves of firs and birches, generally the result of planting. The 
 fine woods at Abbotsford were all planted by Sir Walter himself. 
 The openings in these woods display fine country-houses, the 
 residences of gentlemen, many of the owners, I presume, being 
 attracted hither by the charm which the genius of Scott has 
 thrown over this whole region. 
 
 I passed through a village called Darnick — I mean spelled 
 Darnick, for I despair of giving its pronunciation. I took in 
 my way a stone-cutter's yard, in which was a plaster model which 
 I recognized as "Old Mortality." Two men were at work on a 
 colossal figure in stone, but they had nothing to say, only that the 
 statue was going to "Stirlin'." Thinking this a dull shop for in- 
 formation, I kept along the shady road and overtook a fresh-faced 
 young Scotch woman, and an inquiry about the road led to a con- 
 versation which lasted for half a mile or so. She was born, she 
 said, in the neighborhood, and had never been out of it. She in- 
 formed me that the stone-cutter was quite famous, and had made a 
 statue of "Mr. Hogg," adding, "Maybe you've heard o' the 'Et- 
 trick Shepherd?'" I assured her that the "Shepherd" and all 
 the rest of the Scotch poets were well known in America. This 
 interested her, for she said she had a brother in America who 
 was a master stone-mason. It would be curious to know how 
 
148 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 many stone-masons Scotland has sent forth to all quarters of the 
 globe. Then the matter of the ignorance of the Melrose people 
 on the subject of plaids came up, and she said that before her 
 road diverged from mine she would fix the shawl "real Scotch 
 fashion." And she was as good as her word, and I had the satis- 
 faction, when I reached Abbotsford, of seeing that my plaid was 
 arranged about the shoulders in the same fashion as Sir Walter 
 Scott's, in Chantrey's bust. This affair of the plaid was an early 
 illustration of the kind-heartedness of the countrywomen of 
 Burns. 
 
 I had the road to myself after I left my Scotch female friend, 
 and arrived unexpectedly at the Abbotsford gate. You go through 
 passages lined with high brick walls, on which ivy has been 
 trained, before you come into the formal old garden, and through 
 it to the ante-room, where the guide waits. This room was hung 
 around with old engravings, representing the exploits of hussars, 
 possibly a relic of the time when Scott took a great interest in 
 cavalry matters. After a few moments the guide — an English- 
 man, I think — came in, and I made alone with him the circuit of 
 the apartments open to visitors. Fortunately for me, I read last 
 spring Lockhart's Life of Scott ( I borrowed it of Ward Burlin- 
 game, but you can find it in the State library), and this gave Ab- 
 botsford a greater interest. This great house was Scott's dream 
 by day and night, and it everywhere shows the absorbing interest 
 he took in it. Scotland appears to have been ransacked to furnish 
 it. To me the family portraits (which are engraved in Lockhart's 
 work) were most interesting. The marked likeness of Scott to 
 his mother struck me more forcibly than ever before. On the 
 other hand, the likeness of Scott's children to their mother was 
 
FIRST HOURS IN SCOTLAND. 149 
 
 quite as apparent, the only exception being Mrs. Lockhart. The 
 largest picture is young Walter Scott, in the old uniform of the 
 Eleventh Hussars. He has a weak face, and the guide said that 
 his brother officers, who had visited Abbotsford, did not speak 
 highly of him. Mrs. Lockhart was evidently the flower of the 
 family, and it seems poetic justice that Abbotsford should have 
 descended in her line, and not in that of the heirs male. 
 
 The armory is a famous room at Abbotsford. There you see 
 the dirk of Rob Roy, the pistols of Napoleon, the sword of Mont- 
 rose, and the pistols of the "bloody Claverhouse." There are two 
 portraits of Claverhouse at Abbotsford, one of which I saw — a 
 young and rather handsome face, with cold, cruel eyes. The ad- 
 miration Scott expressed for this man, while acknowledging his 
 wickedness, is to me unaccountable. To me, Claverhouse is one 
 of the most detestable characters in history — and I am no Cove- 
 nanter, either. 
 
 The magnificence of Abbotsford, notwithstanding all I had 
 read of it, astonished me. It seemed to me that many richer 
 men than Scott would have hesitated before commencing such a 
 costly structure. 
 
 After I had viewed the place, I walked back to Melrose under 
 the umbrella of an Englishman, a man of evidently high cultiva- 
 tion, who had traveled in the United States, Kansas included, and 
 who, although very quiet of manner and careful of speech, was 
 the most decided Radical I ever met in the British kingdom. I 
 remarked to him that I thought Scott was, up to the time of his 
 pecuniary troubles, the happiest of men. To my surprise, he ex- 
 pressed a different opinion. He, to be short about it, regarded 
 "Walter Scott as a flunkey and a snob. He said that he ( Scott ) 
 
150 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 was a Tory of Tories — a man who bowed down and worshipped 
 anything in the shape of a lord, who grieved that he himself was 
 not born a lord, who was full of self-esteem, and who was con- 
 sumed with jealousy when he failed to receive applause from 
 everybody. Such a man, he argued, could never have been very 
 happy. I did not indorse all this by any means, and I only men- 
 tion the conversation as an illustration of the adage, "Distance 
 lends enchantment to the view." It was odd, certainly, that this 
 opinion should have been expressed almost on the threshold of 
 Abbotsford. 
 
 And yet, how magnificent is the power of genius ! Scott has 
 thrown a wondrous light on every hill and dale and stream of his 
 native land. He has robed Scotland in such guise as we read of 
 in fairy tales. He has been in his grave for years, and yet the 
 spell is as powerful as when first it was laid upon the world. 
 Thousands of men and women alien to him in blood, in sentiment, 
 come as pilgrims to a holy shrine, to gaze reverently even upon 
 the clothes he wore. For me, I have forgotten many things, but 
 the day I first opened the pages of "Old Mortality," the first of 
 Scott's romances that fell into my childish hands, is as bright and 
 fresh as yesterday. And as I read, so I expect my children will 
 read, and their children, and so on to the end of days. 
 
 The life of Scott passed within a limited space. He was born 
 in Edinburgh, near by; he is buried at Dryburgh Abbey, some 
 seven miles from Abbotsford. And to Dryburgh I went, in the 
 afternoon. 
 
 To go to Dryburgh from Melrose, you take the railroad to the 
 next station, Newton St. Boswell's, and then, if you follow my ex- 
 ample, you walk one mile and a quarter to the abbey, crossing 
 
FIRST HOURS IN SCOTLAND. 151 
 
 the Tweed on a light suspension bridge. Dryburgh, unlike Mel- 
 rose, is a perfect ruin. Melrose seems like a ruin arrested in the 
 act of decay, but Dryburgh is old, very old, crumbling, fading. 
 The ivy is most beautiful. There is an old, pointed gable stand- 
 ing, of which the ivy hides everything except a Catharine win- 
 dow of elegant form. Not a stone is in sight; it is all one mass of 
 living green, broken only by this round window, through which 
 the light, be it sunlight or moonlight, falls on shattered column 
 and mossy stone and broken archway, and walls on which the 
 busy fingers of relentless time are working, working still. I do 
 not wonder that unlearned men are superstitious in these old 
 lands. It is easy to think that in night, darkness and storm, these 
 ruins are peopled with the pale ghosts of those who for centuries 
 have found a resting-place beneath. 
 
 I entered the ruined abbey entirely alone, and a sudden 
 shower coming on I took refuge in a sort of arbor, and sat and 
 looked through the "tangled skeins of rain." Before me rose a 
 fragment of the ancient building — some arches, and above, a wall 
 with some windows. This is St. Mary's aisle, and beneath the 
 arches lie the mortal remains of Walter Scott; his wife; and at 
 the feet of Scott, his "son-in-law, biographer and friend," John 
 Gibson Lockhart. 
 
 Soon the rain ended, and a guide, a thorough Scotchman, came 
 with a party of visitors. It will be remembered that Washington 
 Irving, in his story of his long-ago visit to Abbotsford, mentioned 
 the ancient family of "Haig of Bemerside" — kept in their an- 
 cient home by the power of a prediction that " whatever betide, 
 Haig shall be Haig of Bemerside." Behind the tomb of Scott, a 
 tablet in the wall bears an inscription, in Latin, stating that this 
 
152 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 is the burial-place of the "most ancient family" of Haig of Be- 
 merside. I asked the guide if the prediction was still being ful- 
 filled. He told me that the last of the Haigs, of the male line, 
 died some twenty-four years ago ; that he remembered the funeral, 
 and that when the body was placed in the ancient sepulcher there 
 came a very loud clap of thunder, which many people believed to 
 be an omen. He said that the name was now borne by a young 
 man who had been adopted. The family were not rich, or, as he 
 said, they "didna gather muckle gear." 
 
 Sunset found me back in the inn at Melrose, and, on my ask- 
 ing the lass who got my supper where were the cakes that had 
 given Scotland the name of the "land o' cakes," she disappeared 
 and returned again with veritable cakes of oatmeal — the first I 
 ever saw, and which I found answered the description the girl 
 gave me of Scotland, "She's little, but she's gude." And so, with 
 patriotism and oatmeal, I close these hurried impressions of first 
 hours in Scotland. 
 
THE LAND OF BURNS. 
 
 IN previous letters I have mentioned that various old rhymes, 
 nursery and otherwise, followed me all about in my travels. 
 So it was when I first saw the Severn ; so it was even at Ban- 
 bury ; and, going for the first time under that relic of old 
 London, I thought at once of the line in "Naseby": "Their 
 coward heads predestined to rot on Temple Bar." Likewise, on 
 entering Scotland, certain lines that I read at school took posses- 
 sion of me like a familiar spirit : 
 
 "The memory of Burns; a name 
 
 Which calls, when brimmed her festal cup, 
 A nation's glory and her shame 
 In silent sadness up." 
 
 It so happened that the first place I visited at Edinburgh was 
 the Burns monument. In the stately monument itself, is Scot- 
 land's "glory" in glorifying the memory of her son; but enter 
 and read the last of the letters of Burns, as they are framed and 
 hung on the wall, and you will read the story of a "nation's 
 shame." Never has there seemed to me anything so heart- 
 breaking as that letter — the handwriting tremulous with pain 
 and weakness — in which he begs the loan of ten pounds; are- 
 quest, as he says, made only under the pressure of "cursed neces- 
 sity," and in which he makes the pitiful confession, "The doctor 
 says that low spirits is more than half my disease." Well has it 
 been said that Burns did not die, but simply perished. 
 
 But, on the other hand, go about Edinburgh — go anywhere in 
 (153) 
 
154 A KANSAS ABROAD. 
 
 Scotland — and you will hardly be reminded that ever a poor, 
 miserable exciseman died at Dumfries. In the national art gal- 
 lery, is Flaxman's fine statue of Burns; on the wall is Nasmyth's 
 portrait, the one with which Americans are most familiar; and so 
 it is everywhere — in cheap prints, on canvas, in almost breathing 
 marble, is preserved the manly face and form of Burns, now a 
 national idol. 
 
 Of course, I went to Ayr, as I suppose every traveler does ; and 
 at Ayr I entered that little district which has come to be known, 
 the world over, as distinctively, "The land of Burns." It is a 
 small country. Burns was never as far from home as London in 
 his life, and he was born, lived, wrote, suffered and died, within 
 the space of one of our Western counties. 
 
 I reached Ayr in the decline of a September day, when the 
 sun shone, but with that solemn and subdued brightness which 
 seems peculiar to Scotland. I stopped at a hotel near the " Wal- 
 lace tower" — not the one mentioned in Tarn O'Shanter, but a 
 new one which occupies the old site, and which displays a lan- 
 tern-jawed statue of Sir William Wallace, by Thorn, a self-taught 
 sculptor, who afterwards, I am glad to say, wrought much better 
 things. 
 
 It is a pleasant walk of two or three miles to the birthplace 
 of Burns. In his time, the way was but a country road, but now 
 for the greater part of the distance it is a sort of street, lined by 
 the little parks of resident gentlemen, shut out from the thorough- 
 fare by those high stone walls of which I have spoken in a pre- 
 vious letter as being necessary to the dignity and happiness of 
 wealthy folks in this country. However, trees are not aristocratic 
 or unsocial, even when growing in parks, and all along the road 
 
THE LAND OF BURNS. 155 
 
 the huge beeches stretched their limbs over the walls and across 
 the road, as if in protection to poor folks, "tinklers," tramps and 
 dogs who might be toiling along the way. 
 
 In time, you get from between the walls and into a more open 
 country, where there are pastures and fields and "out-door" woods. 
 In passing, you catch a glimpse of the shining sea. I had for- 
 gotten that Ayr was a port. Burns was born in sight of the sea, 
 but he rarely mentions the waves in his poetry ; he was a thor- 
 ough landsman, and his genius spoke of the sod, and not of the 
 wandering and inconstant billows. 
 
 It has happened that I have seen many places of moment in 
 the evening. I saw the grave of Shakspeare in the twilight, and 
 it was nearly sunset when I came to the birthplace of Robert 
 Burns. I saw, what thousands of my countrymen had seen before 
 me, a long, low-walled, thatched cottage. Beside the open door, 
 one side, was a board, on which was stated, with what seemed to 
 me a stupid provincial pride, that Eobert Burns, the "Ayrshire" 
 poet, was born in the house, and on the other side was this in- 
 scription: "J. Boyd, licensed to sell spirits, wines and ales." 
 The birthplace of Burns is, as it has been for many years, a dram- 
 shop. More than sixty years ago, John Philpot Curran, a man 
 whose genius was akin to that of Burns, and whose great failing 
 was, alas, the same, visited the cottage, and said this of it : 
 
 "Poor Burns! his cabin could not be passed unvisited or unwept; to its 
 two little thatched rooms — kitchen and sleeping-place — a slated sort of par- 
 lor is added, and it is now an ale-house. We found the keeper of it tipsy ; 
 he pointed to the corner, on one side of the fire, and with a most mal- 
 apropos laugh, observed, ' There is the spot where Robert Burns was born.' 
 The genius and the fate of the man were already heavy on my heart, but 
 the drunken laugh of the landlord gave me such a view of the rock on 
 which he foundered, I could not stand it, but burst into tears." 
 
156 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 Matters were not in this miserable situation when I saw the 
 cottage. "J. Boyd" was sober, and the place was shown me by 
 a decent-looking woman. In one room a young lady was selling 
 little souvenirs, photographs and the like; in the other room, 
 where Burns first saw the light, a bright fire was burning, and 
 several bumpkins sat smoking long pipes. They looked like 
 stupid, well-meaning young men from town, who wished to go 
 away and tell their friends that they had drank "a glass o' bitter" 
 and smoked a pipe in the identical room where "Bobby Burns" 
 was born. 
 
 Alloway Kirk, where Tarn O'Shanter saw the devil and all, is 
 standing roofless, as it has for years. The bell is still in position, 
 as of yore, and all is venerable, but a very new-looking, stiff par- 
 ish church stands opposite, and near by I heard the noise of a 
 steam threshing machine. Progress, real and false, was there. I 
 could appreciate the threshing machine, but " Old Alloway," even 
 in ruins, looked more like a church to me than New Alloway. In 
 the kirk-yard of the old edifice is buried the father of Burns, 
 (whose name was always spelled Burness,) and the tombstone is 
 the second one erected to his memory, the first having been broken 
 to pieces and carried off by relic-plundering louts. One of the 
 singular results of the fame of Burns has been to make this church- 
 yard a fashionable place of sepulture. I believe it had fallen 
 into disuse at one time, but of later years many persons of quality 
 have been buried there. I saw the monument of a Mr. Broke, 
 who, if I mistake not, was the son of Captain Broke who com- 
 manded the Shannon in her encounter with the Chesapeake, where 
 we lost our Lawrence and our navy gained an everlasting watch- 
 word. 
 
 You go on from the church and down a slope, and you come to 
 
THE LAND OF BURNS. 157 
 
 the monument, and across the way there are some houses. One 
 of them is an inn, and displays the arms of Burns. These, of 
 course, are manufactured for the occasion, for Burns himself 
 said: 
 
 " I have not the most distant pretensions to assume that character which 
 the pye-coated guardians of escutcheons call a gentleman. When at Ed- 
 inburgh- last winter I got acquainted in the herald's office, and looking 
 through that granary of honors I there found almost every name in the 
 kingdom; but for me — 
 
 1 My ancient but ignoble blood 
 Has crept through scoundrels ever since the flood.' 
 
 Gules, Purpure, Argent, &c, quite disowned me." 
 
 The monument is a very elaborate and costly affair. Its erec- 
 tion was the result of a meeting held at Ayr, attended by but two 
 persons, one of whom was a Mr. Boswell, of the family who fur- 
 nished the biographer of Dr. Johnson. The monument is situated 
 in a garden filled with dahlias and other showy foreign flowers. I 
 would have built this monument where grows only the green 
 grass, the thistle, that " symbol dear " that Burns turned aside the 
 plow to spare, and here and there some "gowans fine." 
 
 from the monument you see the bridge crossed by O'Shanter 
 is flight, and where the gray mare was curtailed. Douglas 
 Graham, the original of " Tarn," is buried not many miles away, 
 and on his tombstone is sculptured his mare, sorrowful and tail- 
 less. 
 
 It is not without a little thrill that one hears that the brown 
 stream brawling close by among the trees, is the " bonnie Doon." 
 
 The lamps were lit in the streets when I got back to Ayr, 
 and after supper I went out and stood on the " auld brig." It is 
 indeed very old. The balustrade is worn away as if by the hands 
 that have rested on it during so many centuries. It was a dim, 
 
158 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 moonlit night ; the river shone, but it was with a cold and sullen 
 gleam. A chill wind crept down toward the sea. It was a ghostly 
 place, and made one think of the fate of the man who had 
 made it immortal. He saved others, himself he could not save. 
 But the words he made the "auld brig" speak have turned out a 
 prophecy. "I'll be a brig when ye're a shapeless cairn," said the 
 "auld brig" to the new one, and it is even so: the new bridge has 
 partially fallen, and has been condemned; the "auld brig," which 
 Burns evidently loved the most, still stands for the benefit of foot 
 passengers ; stands fast, not only in fair weather, but stands when 
 "Auld Ayr is just one lengthened, tumbling sea." 
 
 I saw Ayr by day and night, and it struck me unpleasantly. 
 Too many people of the poorer sort were drunk on the streets. 
 Possibly if they had been hilariously inebriated, I would have 
 liked them better; but these poor creatures were not "o'er all the 
 ills of life victorious," but simply dirty, disheveled, maudlin, des- 
 olately drunk. The old town looked poverty-stricken ; the new, 
 stiff, and — I use the word because I can think of no other — 
 hypocritical. I daresay Ayr is a good town enough ; Burns said 
 it was famous for "honest men and bonnie lasses;" but as to the 
 first, I had not time to make their acquaintance, and as to the 
 last, they certainly were not on the streets at the time of my visit. 
 It is but justice to say, that the only citizen of the town I had any 
 considerable talk with (the town clerk), was a civil-spoken and 
 intelligent gentleman. He spoke of a fact that I have often no- 
 ticed, that Burns is a favorite with men who know no other poet. 
 He told me that James Baird, an immensely wealthy iron-master 
 of the vicinity, not long since deceased — a man supposed to be 
 entirely devoted to business, and to know nothing else — once 
 
THE LAND OF BURNS. 159 
 
 astonished and electrified a company by repeating Tarn O'Shanter 
 from beginning to end. 
 
 In going by rail from Ayr to Dumfries, you pass through a 
 country covered all over, I may say, by the poetry of Burns. 
 These "banks and braes and woods around" all echo still his 
 verses. Little streams which but for him had never been heard 
 of, are now in men's mouths as commonly as the Mississippi or 
 the Amazon or the Ganges. Scotland has been happy in this, 
 that her rockiest hillsides have been made famous by the pen of 
 genius. Her humblest scenes have been ennobled ; and what is 
 stranger and greater still, her lowliest people have been made the 
 objects of the world's sympathy. A poor dairymaid will live for- 
 ever as "Highland Mary," and the world will never forget the 
 story of humble Helen Walker, the "Jeanie Deans" of Scott's 
 most touching story. The route I have spoken of leads through 
 Mauchline, near which Burns lived several years, and passes near 
 Tarbolton. You are scarcely ever out of sight of the waters of 
 the Nith, or some other of the winding streams along which the 
 poet wandered, and you pass in sight of Drumlanrig Castle, once 
 the property of a Duke of Queensberry, for whom Burns had an 
 especial dislike. A visit to this castle delayed me a day on my 
 way to Dumfries. 
 
 Sunshine does wonders in Scotland, but it could not brighten 
 Dumfries, where I passed an hour. There may be a clean street 
 in Dumfries, but I did not see it ; and, on this occasion, misery 
 was added to uncleanliness. It was the day preceding what is 
 called the "Kood Fair," and all the wretchedness of the surround- 
 ing country had collected at Dumfries. All the hoarse-voiced 
 ballad-singers, the one-legged pipers and blind fiddlers in Scot- 
 
160 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 land had apparently gathered in. I never saw together before 
 such a number of blind people. I hurried through this mass of 
 mendicant misery, to the churchyard, where is located the monu- 
 ment of Burns. It is a dome, supported by pillars, and they have 
 put in glass till it looks like a great lantern. You can flatten your 
 nose against the glass for nothing, or can pay threepence for 
 going in. How Burns would have despised all this, could he 
 have foreseen it! 
 
 I had intended to stay at Dumfries some hours. I was glad to 
 leave it by the first train, and did not feel relieved until I got 
 to where I could see for myself that "Maxwelton braes are 
 bonnie." 
 
 Scotland has changed in many things since the days of Burns. 
 The high farming of our day was something unknown when he 
 followed the plow ; for, as I noticed at Kirk Alloway, the thresh- 
 ing machine has taken the place of the "weary flingintree," yet 
 for all that, a copy of Burns' s poems may be taken for a guide- 
 book of the region in which he lived. One could, by taking 
 isolated lines and putting them together, write a description of 
 Ayrshire. You meet a witness to the faithfulness of Burns's 
 descriptions very often in the country: I speak of the Scotch 
 collie, or shepherd dog, the most kindly and useful dog in the 
 world, with an eye like a woman's. He it is that speaks for the 
 poor, in the dialogue of the " Twa Dogs." You recognize him by 
 
 — "His towzie back, 
 Weel clad wi' coat o' glossy black ; 
 His saucy tail, wi' upward curl, 
 Hangs o'er his hurdies wi' a swirl." 
 
 That, especially the last two lines, is as natural as life. It takes 
 a true poet to adorn a tale in that manner. 
 
THE LAND OF BURNS. 161 
 
 I commenced with a sorrowful verse about Burns; if I write 
 on, I shall close with yet more sorrowful prose. When you visit 
 the localities which will be forever associated with his name, you 
 see plainer than ever the man, with all his gifts and failings, his 
 sinnings and repentings, his high resolves and miserable defec- 
 tions, his greatness and his weakness. His faults were such as 
 cannot be glossed over, any more than his genius can be denied — 
 and he was so imprudent. Until within a comparatively recent 
 period, his memory has been contemned by a large body of the 
 clergy in Scotland, and by many religious people, not so much, I 
 am fain to believe, because he got drunk, or because he was, as an 
 old Scotch woman said to me in Edinburgh, "the father o' chance 
 children," as because he wrote slang about a lot of country clergy- 
 men and elders, who ought never to have been heard of outside 
 of their own parishes; and yet compilers of his poems have con- 
 tinually stained his fame ever since by preserving this pot-house 
 talk about the squabbles of a kirk session. Burns, like most of 
 us, knew the right and yet pursued the wrong, and fearfully he 
 atoned for it. The author of the finest religious poem I know, 
 "The Cotter's Saturday Night;" the giver of the best piece of 
 advice possible, the "Epistle to a Young Friend;" and the enun- 
 ciator of the world's political creed in the golden days that are 
 coming, in "A man's a man for a' that," perished at the age of 
 thirty-seven, a poor, broken, hopeless man. 
 
 I have an idea that, had Burns, with his talents not only for 
 poetical but prose composition, his liberal opinions, his courage 
 and his wit, been born in America, he would have found his way 
 into the field of journalism, where he would have filled a place 
 like that occupied so many years by George D. Prentice, and that 
 
162 A KANSAS ABROAD. 
 
 he would have lived to be an old and prosperous man. But had 
 this been his career, he would have been /forgotten at his death, 
 for we remember nobody. But it is all done, and well done, now. 
 The good he did lives after him ; his errors have been forgiven, 
 and his songs remain to be "the property and solace of man- 
 kind." 
 
MEMORIES OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 IT is in Scotland, I think, that Mr. Lemuel Gulliver might 
 have found his patriot, who, by causing two spears of grass 
 to grow where one did before, confers more essential service on 
 his country than the "whole race of politicians put together." 
 Scotch thrift, triumphant over all sorts of obstacles in all parts 
 of the world, has achieved its greatest triumph at home. The 
 Scotchman drives a great bargain with Dame Nature herself, and 
 forces her to give auld Scotia many things not laid down in her 
 original programme. The largest grapes I ever saw were not in 
 France, the land of grapes, but in Scotland, the land of oats. 
 They were raised under glass, of course, and it must be confessed 
 that grapes do not form the principal article of diet of poor peo- 
 ple in Scotland; but the great thing is, that grapes should be 
 made to grow in Scotland under any circumstances. 
 
 Forest-tree planting, which, in the United States, has scarcely 
 got beyond the point of oral and newspaper discussion — what 
 may be termed the wind-and-ink stage — is an accomplished fact, 
 an achieved succeas in Scotland. Hillsides, which at the begin- 
 ning of the present century were as bare as the back of your 
 hand, are now covered with beautiful belts of timber. The little 
 trees that Sir Walter Scott tended when he went to live at 
 Abbottsford, are now great trees, bright and ever green, like the 
 planter's fame. A certain Duke of Queensberry cut down the 
 woods of his estate of Drumlanrig, and was poetically cursed 
 
 (163) 
 
164 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 therefor by Burns, yet now no traces of the ravaging ax can be 
 seen. The Duke and Burns are gone; but trees care nothing for 
 us creatures of a day. Even the grass which we trample on, 
 creeps back when we are still, to give us kindly covering at last. 
 
 There is no natural reason why anything but thistles should 
 grow in Scotland ; for not only is the sky cold, and the soil as thin 
 as a hypocrite's prayer, but the sea, which loves not vegetation, 
 comes in everywhere in bays and friths, so that the salt wind 
 blows where it lists ; and yet those are fine fields one sees in Tevi- 
 otdale. I saw little better in England. 
 
 Scotch scenery, however, has never, even in the Lowlands, the 
 happy look that one sees in England. It seems as if there was a 
 snow-bank somewhere that chilled the air betimes. The land- 
 scape is always framed with high hills, on the tops of which the 
 patches of heather lie like shadows. I should think that in the 
 winter time the fierce, hungry wind, pursuing the snow over the 
 bare slopes, would make journeying over these hills a dreary, if 
 not a dangerous, business. The shepherd, following his toilsome 
 trade amid the drifting snows, is a common figure in Scotch poetry 
 and story. 
 
 The streams of Scotland are very different from the placid, 
 rush-bordered, pond-like English streams. The Scotch river is a 
 free, brown stream, that roars and rumbles and rushes along. 
 Such is the Doon ; such is the Tweed for many a mile ; such is 
 the Water of Fleet, the most charming of the minor streams 
 I saw. 
 
 Scotch towns are far from pretty. They are built of stone, and 
 look stiff and ugly and awkward, and the attempts at magnifi- 
 cence are not a success. They remind one of a lout in his Sunday 
 
MEMORIES OF SCOTLAND. 165 
 
 clothes. I do not know why the word "rawboned" should be 
 applied to a town, but it is the only word I can think of that con- 
 veys to my own mind the proper idea of a Scotch town. Melrose, 
 Jedburgh, Kelso, Ayr, Dumfries, all looked alike to me. The 
 same wide, cobble-paved streets; the same stiff stone houses and 
 Presbyterian churches ; and the same stiff-legged statue of some 
 hard-headed Scotch soldier, who smote the heathen hip and 
 thigh, in India and elsewhere. These old places are relieved 
 sometimes by the presence of something much older, as at Kelso, 
 where there are the ruinSj huge and square, of a very fine old 
 abbey, rising, ivy-covered, in the midst of the town; and at Kirk- 
 cudbright, where there is an old castle, which once belonged, I 
 believe, to the McLellans. 
 
 To the ugliness of the towns there is one exception, certainly — 
 Edinburgh — which town has not its like in the world. 
 
 I lived a week in Edinburgh, and walked every day with 
 McCarty, a Cork man, whose acquaintance I formed during my 
 first day in town. A jewel was McCarty — the best-natured, the 
 wittiest, and by far the most learned of all the McCartys. He 
 knew half-a-dozen modern languages. You should have heard 
 him recite the "Bells of Shandon" in Italian, giving that some- 
 what effeminate language the advantage of a fine brogue, or " Go 
 where Glory waits Thee," in French. Irish history, poetry and 
 romance he knew by heart. It was fine to hear him recite the 
 remarks of Curran to Lord Avonmore, in Judge Johnson's case ; 
 and one day he got to talking about French history, and it was 
 very affecting, indeed it was, to hear him describe his feelings on 
 looking at the slipper of Marie Antoinette. "I thought," said 
 McCarty, "how that little satin slipper felt the last thrill of her 
 poor body." 
 
166 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 But McCarty is not Edinburgh, though much mixed with all 
 my recollections of the town. It was with him that I went up 
 the winding street to the castle, and looked at those fine fellows, 
 the 78th Highlanders, who garrison it ; with him I looked at the 
 big, ugly old gun, Mons Meg ; and with him I leaned over the 
 battlement, and looked at the green park that lies at the foot of 
 the crags, and beyond at the New Town, and the blue, shining 
 waters of the Frith of Forth. One dim day we went to Holy- 
 rood together, and wandered through the bare, dismal rooms 
 where the cowardly, brutal murder of Kizzio was perpetrated. I 
 wonder Queen Mary did not go mad in such a pfctce, and sur- 
 rounded by such a people. It was McCarty who went with me 
 to Greyfriars churchyard, where is the holy shrine of the Cove- 
 nanters. It is a black slab, set in the gray wall, and surrounded 
 by clambering vines of a hard, stiff, thorny nature, not unlike 
 that of the Covenanters themselves, who stood at bay against the 
 wicked Claverhouse and his dragoons at Drumclog. There is a 
 long inscription in verse commemorating the virtues, sufferings 
 and death of the eighteen thousand martyrs of the Covenant. 
 Two old women from Glasgow stood by while I read aloud the 
 inscription, and one of the women wept. Then the four of us 
 wandered about in the churchyard, and read the inscriptions ; 
 and coming upon the tomb of the family of Dalzell, one of the 
 women told me a fearful story of the last moments of one Gen- 
 eral Dalzell, who was a bloody persecutor, and was himself tor- 
 mented before the time. It was like hearing a tale from Howie's 
 "Scots Worthies." But times change. This old woman, it is 
 true, kept her lamp trimmed and burning with the old-fash- 
 ioned oil ; but going on Sunday to Greyfriars Kirk, expecting 
 to receive more of the same kind of illumination, I was aston- 
 
MEMORIES OF SCOTLAND. 167 
 
 ished, not to say shocked. Service was read from a book; the 
 minister preached about his travels on the Continent, instead of 
 the pilgrimage to the New Jerusalem ; there was a pipe-organ, 
 and the leading soprano, whose face did not betray any deep 
 consciousness of personal guilt, threw back her bonnet and sang 
 with divers trills and flourishes, "Create in me a clean heart, 
 and renew a right spirit within me." 
 
 But I am in a fair way to add another volume to the books 
 that have been written about Edinburgh. What a queer place it 
 is, to be sure, with its two towns — the old and the new ; its heights 
 and its depths ; its broad squares and its narrow streets ; its won- 
 derful high houses, such as we dream of when we are sick unto 
 death ; houses which we fear are about to fall on us, or we are to 
 fall from. Edinburgh, with its street-sounds, which are all its 
 own — the drone of the bagpipes; the old Jacobite songs, sung 
 first by gallant men and lovely women who have been but dust 
 for a hundred years. Edinburgh, with its memories, dark and 
 bright — crusted with the blood of murder — radiant with the 
 light of love or heroism. Edinburgh, where the pale face of 
 Queen Mary looks out at the narrow window of the high tower; 
 where the Heart of Mid-Lothian looks up at you from the side- 
 walk. What town is like Edinburgh : the strange, the beautiful, 
 the indescribable? 
 
 Of Ayr, my next stopping-place, I have already spoken ; and 
 it does not matter how or why I went from Ayr to Kirkcud- 
 bright, and thence seven miles out among the sheep farms of the 
 parish of Borgue. It is sufficient that I went there. 
 
 A white stone cottage in the midst of green, broken pastures ; 
 all in hillocks, and diversified by clumps of low, ragged bushes, 
 which the people call "whins;" and this cottage the habitation of 
 
168 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 a shepherd's family : this was what I went out into the Scotch 
 wilderness "for to see," and I was content. The frith of Sol way 
 was at our back door, and the weather was fine for Scotland, and 
 it was enough. All the coast is full of cliffs, and the cliffs are 
 full of caves; and sometimes little Katie and I climbed down to 
 the caves, and peered therein, and sometimes we were content to 
 look over the edges of the cliffs, and watch the brown sea-weed 
 swinging, in its lazy way, in the still, green water. There are 
 stories and stories about these caves; and Scott has used one of 
 them in Guy Mannering. On the landward side, we walked 
 about the farms, where the pastures are full of the huge, black, 
 hornless Galloway cattle; and went to the village of Borgue r 
 which is a small affair, consisting of two churches, and the 
 manse, and the school house, and the "store," kept by a young 
 fellow who was born in America, and so will be called "Yan- 
 kee" to the end of his days. But America is no unknown country * 
 One of the light-house keepers at Little Koss told me he was a 
 printer, and had worked in Buffalo, New York; and from this- 
 cheese-making country young Scotchmen go to the United States, 
 to superintend cheese factories in the summer, and come back to 
 Scotland in the winter. 
 
 So passed, in wandering about the shore and hill and dale, the 
 peaceful days ; every hour was brightened by humble but hearty 
 hospitality ; every night the fire shone bright, and the songs of one 
 world were sung and the stories of two worlds were told ; here 
 battles were recounted, from Bannockburn to Gettysburg. So 
 passed these last days in Scotland, and so they will linger in 
 memory like the breathing of the gentle wind, the plashing of 
 the pleased and solaced wave. 
 
A GLIMPSE OF ULSTER. 
 
 "How is old Ireland ? — and how does she stand?" — Napper Tandy. 
 
 THE maxim that "half a loaf is better than no bread," has 
 been repeated so often that mankind has come generally 
 to believe it; but in the case of Ireland, I was obliged to "dilute" 
 the maxim by one-half, since my brief travels were confined to 
 Ulster alone, and Leinster, Munster and Connaught, three-fourths 
 of Ireland, were left untouched. 
 
 There are many ways of getting to Ireland, but the one 
 selected by myself was, though perhaps the shortest in use, not 
 the most frequented. It was from Stranraer to Lame. The gov- 
 ernment years ago expended a great deal of money at Portpatrick, 
 which is the point on the Scotch coast nearest to Ireland, but, like 
 many internal-improvement schemes in America, the port of Port- 
 patrick miscarried, and the business was transferred to Stranraer, 
 at the head of Loch Ryan. From here the boats run to Larne, 
 whence it is a brief trip by rail to Belfast, the " Liverpool of Ire- 
 land." 
 
 Stranraer is a dirty town, more Irish, I should judge, than 
 Scotch, at least the street music appeared to be entirely of the 
 shillelah and jig order. A few fishing vessels lay in the harbor, 
 the only steamer being the Larne boat. Altogether Stranraer is 
 a slow town — as slow as Artemus Ward's town in Indiana, where 
 the plank road came in three times a week. 
 
 The passage from Scotland to Ireland was effected on a bright 
 (169) 
 
170 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 day in about three hours. My traveling companions were a gen- 
 tleman and his wife from Girvan, and much talk was indulged in 
 about Scotland and the Scotch, more especially the Highlanders. 
 Eeference was made to the popular belief that a curse has followed 
 the descendants of the authors and perpetrators of the massacre 
 of Glencoe, and I was told, with every appearance of sincerity, 
 that the family of Stair, who reside near Stranraer, are to this 
 day regarded with aversion, their ancestor having ordered that 
 frightful butchery. This, considering that Stranraer is far distant 
 from the scene of the crime, and that two centuries have elapsed 
 since Lord Stair planned the extermination of the Macdonalds, is 
 certainly treasuring up wrong with a vengeance. My informant, 
 however, appeared to entertain no doubt as to the existence of the 
 feeling and its cause. 
 
 The coast of Ireland must, I believe, be one of the most uni- 
 formly beautiful in the world. It certainly looked very bright to 
 me when first I saw it in the south, and it was just as bright when 
 I came in sight of it in the north. The expression "Gem of the 
 Sea" is certainly not a great exaggeration when applied to Ire- 
 land as seen from the sea. 
 
 Lame is a small but well-built town, but nobody stops there, 
 it being merely a sort of side-door to Belfast. The last-named 
 town is exceedingly well built, and the use of red brick, as in 
 America, relieved the place of the heavy look of English and 
 Scotch cities of the same class. There was little in the town that 
 brought up the popular idea of Ireland, except the enormous 
 number of barefooted girls one met in the streets. I do not be- 
 lieve I ever saw the female foot in its natural form (except in the 
 case of two very young girl babies in whom I had an interest), 
 
A GLIMPSE OF ULSTER. 171 
 
 until I went to Ireland. Here are plenty of feet that have ap- 
 parently never known the weight of a shoe, and this illustrated 
 the great doctrine of compensation. The poor Irish people have 
 suffered from war, pestilence and politicians, but heaven has 
 mercifully preserved them from corns. 
 
 Belfast interested me as the capital of the Scotch-Irish, a race 
 of people who have left a deep mark on the United States. It 
 was odd, so far from home, to be constantly reminded of Western 
 Pennsylvania. Here were the same names — Antrim, Coleraine, 
 Sligo, and so on — and among the people are to be found the 
 same cast of features and the same accent, to say nothing of the 
 same Presbyterianism, that have existed in the country of which 
 Pittsburgh may be said to be the capital for I do not know how 
 long. Dwelling with these people is a very considerable Catholic 
 population, and the anniversary of the battle of the Boyne was 
 formerly celebrated by annual revivals of the case of Fist vs. 
 Skull, but I believe the fighting has lacked somewhat in live- 
 liness and interest of late years. I suppose the row in New York, 
 a few years since, over the same question, so far eclipsed the Irish 
 efforts that they were suspended. Thus does American enterprise 
 everywhere assert itself. At any rate, the only trace of the ancient 
 animosity I saw in Ulster was the sentence, "No Pope here," 
 scribbled on the ceiling of a railroad car. 
 
 I looked about Belfast four or five hours, and was greatly 
 pleased with the public buildings, evidently planned by a person 
 greatly needed by the Government of the United States, viz., an 
 architect. Belfast has a plentiful supply of churches, some of 
 them extremely handsome. There may have been monuments to 
 Nelson and Wellington, but, fortunately, if they existed, I failed 
 to see them, and enjoyed my meals better in consequence. 
 
172 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 In journeying from Belfast, I traveled with a car full of men 
 who might have been taken for residents of Blair county, Penn- 
 sylvania. One sandy-bearded young fellow devoted himself to 
 my instruction, but the amount of the remarkably robust Irish 
 whisky (which grows very large in Ulster) which he had con- 
 cealed about his person before leaving Belfast, somewhat inter- 
 fered with the clearness, order and lucidity of his remarks. I 
 gathered from him, however, that Ulster was the finest country in 
 the world, and that County Antrim was the finest part of Ulster. 
 This somewhat surprised me, for I had been led to believe, from 
 the statements of my old friend, Judge Christian, of Cowley, that 
 the Irish garden of Eden was located in County Down. 
 
 I regret that the scene before me did not justify my compan- 
 ion's encomiums. While Ireland — Ulster, at least — is not the 
 "most distressful country that ever yet was seen" — that spot be- 
 ing located in the Ozark Mountains — it is undoubtedly far from 
 rivaling England or even Scotland. It struck me as a naturally 
 good country, which had suffered from several centuries of care- 
 lessness. The land was cut up into numberless little patches, of 
 every conceivable size and shape, divided by hedges; and these, 
 unlike the almost painful trimness of English hedges, looked 
 broken and unkempt. I have seldom seen worse in Kansas, and 
 this is saying a good deal. The turf was a brilliant green, but it 
 was a sort of wild turf, and the frequent pools dug in the fields 
 for the purpose of soaking flax, the water gleaming dimly in the 
 light of the sinking sun, conveyed a desolate feeling. Bogs were 
 passed at frequent intervals, where the peat, black as ink, had 
 been excavated to a considerable depth, and was piled in great 
 stacks here and there. There were potato-fields, of course, the 
 potatoes being planted in a fashion new to me, in what looked 
 
A GLIMPSE OF ULSTER. 173 
 
 like long, narrow garden beds, separated by trenches, and in these 
 trenches there were rows of cabbages. The grain harvest was in 
 progress, and the majority of the laborers appeared to be women 
 and girls. The pastures were small, and filled with cattle which 
 did not appear to have the least trace of blood, as unlike the 
 English and Scotch cattle as possible. Nevertheless, the Irish cat- 
 tle trade is important, and the boats which run to Liverpool are 
 always full of these four-footed "exiles of Erin." 
 
 The towns Antrim, Ballymena, Coleraine, and several smaller 
 places, appeared more thrifty than the country about them. The 
 linen industry is very considerable, and builds up the towns. 
 There are few prettier little sights than a bleaching-green, with 
 the long strips of white linen extended line after line on the bril- 
 liant turf. All these towns have a history, a part of the long and 
 troublous story of Ireland. At Antrim was fought one of the 
 most destructive engagements in the rebellion of 1798 ; but it's a 
 long story, and everybody is referred to Mr. Froude and Father 
 Burke, who, from the two extremes of the "Irish Question," have 
 battled over it with rare learning, ingenuity and force. 
 
 The people in the cars seemed of one sort — simply Scotch- 
 Irish — sturdy, Presbyterian sort of men, with one exception. At 
 one station, there hopped into the car a man who actually seemed 
 of another race. His long hair hanging on his shoulders, his 
 sharp black eyes, his thin features, the complicated mass of rags 
 that extended from his neck to his bare feet, fitted him to go on 
 the stage and play the " Shaughraun " without any further "mak- 
 ing up." If he spoke English, it was after a fashion unintelli- 
 gible to me. His movements were as agile as those of a cat, and 
 as he rode from one station to the next, I had abundant occupa- 
 
174 A KANSAS ABROAD. 
 
 tion in studying him. Except in Boucicault's plays, I never saw 
 his like. 
 
 At last hedges, bleaching -greens, potato - fields, peat -stacks, 
 bogs and the "Shaughraun" were, if not out of mind, out of 
 sight; and I found "rest and a light, and food and fire" at Cole- 
 man's Hotel in Portrush. The fire was welcome in this northern- 
 most spot of north Ireland; and as ruddy as the firelight and 
 stalwart as a "bold dragoon" was my fireside companion, Mr. 
 Anthony O'Neil, who is connected with all my memories of the 
 place and its vicinity. Mr. O'Neil, a Dublin man by birth, and a 
 town councillor of his native place, belonged, as may be sup- 
 posed, to the old religion and the old race. His recollection 
 went back to the days of O'Connell and "repeal;" and very 
 interesting were his reminiscences of the great agitator, who, in 
 my judgment, was possessed of more practical sense than all the 
 rest of the Irish politicians before or since. 
 
 Morning dawned on Portrush with a wind and sky that beto- 
 kened rain; but the councillor was up early, and we inspected 
 Portrush quite thoroughly before breakfast. It is a little town 
 built on a sandy shelf above a very beautiful beach. In a waste 
 spot of ground is the one monument of the place, commemorat- 
 ing the life and services of Dr. Adam Clarke, the commentator, 
 who was "brought up," the inscription says, at Portstewart, a 
 little town a few miles away. Most of the houses of Portrush are 
 let for the accommodation of people who come to the place to 
 bathe; to enjoy the sea-water, to wade in it and swim in it, and 
 soak in it, and even as my friend observed, to "ile their hair wid 
 it." We had no use for any brine, and accordingly after break- 
 fast we set out for the Giant's Causeway in a jaunting car. 
 
A GLIMPSE OF ULSTER. 175 
 
 I do not know who invented the jaunting car, but he was an 
 original genius, and succeeded in constructing a vehicle which 
 looks unlike anything else that runs on wheels. At the first 
 glance a jaunting car seems to be all springs; but really accom- 
 modates four persons beside the driver; and between the seats 
 whereon the passengers sit, or rather cling, or perch, is a sort of 
 box, or chest, which may be made to hold jugs and other bag- 
 gage. It was in a jaunting car, then, that we went to the Cause- 
 way, along the coast road; and a fine road it is. And all along 
 on one side was the sea, whereof an Irish poet sings — 
 
 "The breakers lap and curl below; 
 And sea-birds poised on wings of snow 
 Whirl fitfully in-shore and fro, 
 
 And soar, and dip, and skim. 
 To east and north, a waste of waves, 
 From Antrim's coast of cliffs and caves, 
 
 Blends with the blue sky's rim." 
 
 The cliffs are frequently of snowy white limestone, and the 
 constant hammer and chisel of those steady workers — the 
 waves — has wrought in them arches of wondrous grace and 
 beauty, through which the waves run to and fro continually, 
 as if looking after their work. The beach forms a succession of 
 amphitheaters all the way to the Causeway, as if the shore-line 
 was like that of an army driven back in places and holding its 
 original position at others. 
 
 The country along the coast, though much better cultivated 
 than the country elsewhere, is not thickly settled. We passed 
 through but one village — Bush Mills — famous for its whisky in 
 a country which certainly knows good whisky when it is visible. 
 Here we took up a guide, and thereby saved ourselves from being 
 
176 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 torn to pieces by the gang of guides who lie in wait for travelers 
 at the Causeway. 
 
 At last we came to another Coleman's Hotel, and after waiting 
 an hour or so for the rain to let up, started to look at an object I 
 had speculated about ever since I first saw its picture in the 
 geography — the Giant's Causeway. 
 
 We clambered down a steep bluff to the water's edge, and got 
 into a boat rowed by four stout men, who were none too many, 
 for it is a restless sea that has been trying for ages to beat down 
 these cliffs. We rose, and fell, and swung, with the great swirling 
 waves, which charged in a mass of white and green up to the top 
 of the low, black rocks, and then came rushing and roaring back, 
 quite in a foam with the exertion, only to try it again and again 
 — the old play of rock and wave, old as time. The men rested on 
 their oars in the midst of one of the amphitheaters I have men- 
 tioned, and the guide called our attention to the surrounding 
 scenery. There was nothing there except a gray cliff, and the 
 water at its feet. One might as well look at Calhoun's bluff. 
 But we went farther, into another little foaming bay, and looked 
 again, and there was, not the bare, common cliff, but two rows of 
 columns, thousands of columns side by side, yet each distinct. In 
 one place, it seemed as if the weight placed on the columns had 
 been too heavy for them, and they were bent, not broken — all 
 still side by side, twisted over in the same direction. This was 
 better, but not yet the Giant's Causeway. Then we came to the 
 black opening of great caves running far under the cliffs, and 
 the boat shot into them. Wondrous caves were these, whereof the 
 floor is the green and shifting sea. As regularly as beats the 
 pulse in one's wrist, the wave came rushing in, and seemed as if 
 
A GLIMPSE OF ULSTER. 177 
 
 it would shut the boat in with a wall of water, but then seemed 
 to change its purpose, sank, and glided under us, rose after it had 
 passed, and went on to the end of the cave to hurl itself against 
 the wall in foam and thunder. The ceiling of the cave was a 
 mass of black — they say it was lava once, and rushed and hissed 
 and burned — but this I do not know; it is cold enough now. 
 Next to the water-line was a vein of some mineral of a delicate 
 pink, which blended with the water all around. The guide kept 
 up a jargon about "haymetite," and "conghlomerate," and "ox- 
 hide," that he did not understand, to say nothing of his auditors. 
 I would rather he had dropped geology and told us some lies 
 about the giant who built the Causeway. And after all this, we 
 rowed to the Causeway itself. It did not realize my expectations 
 in the matter of height above the water, but it is a growing 
 wonder. 
 
 I suppose all my readers are familiar with the machine called 
 a pile-driver, and if so, they will please keep it in mind while I 
 try to explain the Giant's Causeway. Suppose a party started to 
 build a bridge, or rather, road, of piles across an arm of the sea. 
 He drives several hundred feet from the shore out before he gives 
 up the undertaking. Those nearest the shore are the highest, 
 and thence the piles grow shorter as the work advances into the 
 water, till the last are almost even with the surface. Now sup- 
 pose he has driven forty thousand of these piles ; suppose, farther, 
 that all the piles before being driven were dressed, so that their 
 sides matched ; suppose that some had five, some six, some* seven, 
 some eight sides; but out of the forty thousand, only one had 
 three sides, and only three had nine sides. Suppose that, after 
 all these hewed, jointed and matched piles had been driven, they 
 
178 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 were instantaneously, separately and collectively turned into 
 stone — and you have the Giant's Causeway. The piles are, 
 moreover, all of the same kind of stone. If you would like to 
 make one of the piles or columns, I can give you the recipe : Take 
 twenty-five parts of clay, twenty-five parts of lime, twenty-five 
 parts of iron, and twenty-five parts of flinty earth, and you have 
 the ingredients — they "can be procured at any drug store." You 
 will understand that the iron is used for coloring matter. The 
 columns are about the hue of dark iron ore. 
 
 Of course we landed at the Causeway, and walked all about 
 over the tops of the pillars, and saw the four eccentric ones that 
 stood out from the others on the question of shape. We were 
 beset by two old women, who followed us about, telling, in a most 
 lamentable voice, a story of poverty, to which their countrymen 
 responded only with a sarcastic, "Oh, murther!" However, I 
 invested a coin of the realm in photographs and benedictions, the 
 latter of which I regarded as having been bought at a very hand- 
 some figure. Laden with blessings, photographs and general in- 
 formation, we climbed the bluff again and wended our way back 
 to Portrush, stopping on the way to look at the ruins of Dunluce 
 Castle — a mass of broken walls standing on a crag that goes down 
 sheer to the water — and when you look over the brink you can 
 see the breakers springing up at you like a drove of white wolves. 
 I suppose there has been as much crime, suffering, sin and blood 
 in the past of Dunluce as in that of the other old castles, which, 
 thank Heaven, have had their day. There are no tenants now 
 except the peaceful sheep that graze in the old court-yard. The 
 watchman of these walls now is the wind, that wanders about day 
 and night, and with its invisible fingers keeps the floor of one 
 
A GLIMPSE OF ULSTER. 179 
 
 little tower always clean. But the people thereabouts say the 
 sweeper is the Banshee. 
 
 Going back toward Belfast, I parted with my old friend of 
 some thirty-six hours at Coleraine, as he was going on to Dublin. 
 But I had business elsewhere, as I will explain. 
 
 One of the early contractors on that singularly ill-constructed 
 job, my education, was an Irish priest. I remember very little of 
 the labors of Father Flaherty (that was not his name), save that 
 he was accustomed to stand me up in a corner and try to teach 
 me to speak in the florid Irish manner, "There was a sownd of 
 rivelry bee noight ; " but I remember finding in his library a thin 
 book with a flaming orange cover — of which I did not then un- 
 derstand the significance. It was a poem — or rather a rhyme — 
 about the "Siege of Derry." How such a work ever found its 
 way into the collection of his reverence, I have no idea, for it was 
 the most ferociously Protestant publication I have ever read. 
 How it did go on about King James and the rest ! But I remem- 
 ber, bitter as it was, it had a good word for one of the "opposi- 
 tion," the subject of the melancholy couplet: 
 
 "Brave Patrick Sarsfield, one of King James's best commanders, 
 Now lies, the food for crows, in Flanders." 
 
 This little but savage poem, perhaps, led me to go to London- 
 derry. At any rate I went there. 
 
 The road from Coleraine runs most of the way along a plain 
 by the sea, though sometimes under the shadow of high moun- 
 tains. Of the points of the road, I remember for one, Ballyrena ; 
 for in the waste plain, wet, ill-cultivated, miserable, I saw the 
 Irish "cot" — a pretty word in poetry, a beastly thing in reality. 
 The low walls, the thatched roof patched with turf, the little 
 
180 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 stack of peat, the dunghill in front of the door — all combined to 
 make a most God-forsaken human habitation. I understand they 
 have refused to canonize Christopher Columbus. He ought to 
 have been made a saint of the first magnitude, for he gave to man- 
 kind a new world, where men have got away from such squalid 
 places as these Ballyrena huts, not only in Ireland but all over 
 Europe. 
 
 With Limavady, or Limavady Junction, more pleasant recol- 
 lections are connected. It was here, or near here, that Thackeray 
 met "Peg of Limavady." He celebrated her charms in many 
 glowing verses, but we will all rise and sing this one: 
 
 "This I do declare. 
 
 Happy is the laddy, 
 "Who the heart can share 
 
 Of Peg of Limavady. 
 Married if she were, 
 
 Blest would be the daddy 
 Of the children fair 
 
 Of Peg of Limavady. 
 Beauty is not rare 
 
 In the land of Paddy: 
 Fair beyond compare 
 
 Is Peg of Limavady." 
 
 Derry is a rusty old town, and it is interesting only in what it 
 has been. It has its wall yet, and I walked all around it and 
 looked at the old iron guns which banged valorously at King 
 James's army. Each gun bears the date 1642, and the name of 
 some one of the London companies, the "Vintners" or the "Mer- 
 chant Taylors," and so on. On a high pillar is Walker, the Epis- 
 copal clergyman who nerved up the starving garrison till help, 
 long delayed, came. Poor Walker ! — he lived too long. For a 
 while he was regarded as a hero ; then he was brought into a long 
 
A GLIMPSE OF ULSTER. 181 
 
 and aggravating war of pamphlets; then, not satisfied with being 
 a hero once, he, notwithstanding his clerical office, fought as a 
 volunteer at the battle of the Boyne and was killed, and his death 
 only drew from King William, in whose cause he fell, the remark 
 that he had no business there. And this was the end of it all, "a 
 most lame and impotent conclusion." 
 
 Derry has greatly changed since the days of the siege, and ex- 
 tends far outside of the Walls. The old arm of the Foyle, that 
 then encircled it on one side, is dry land now, and covered with 
 houses. It was strange to stand on ground where men, emaciated 
 with hunger, worn with watching and fighting, clung to their old 
 guns to the last, rather than yield to a Roman Catholic enemy, 
 and look across to the old lines of King James's army, and see ris- 
 ing there the finest church in Derry, a Roman Catholic church. 
 Walker's old foes had come again, and this time to stay. Time, 
 more powerful than armies, had done what the sword could not 
 do. . The priest, the minister of peace, had succeeded where the 
 soldier had failed. 
 
 I could not find in the town a local guide-book, but was told 
 by some one that I might meet on the wall an old man who for 
 many years had lingered about, and who was a repository of the 
 history and traditions of Derry. I looked for him, and made in- 
 quiries, but found him not ; and they said, carelessly, that he had 
 not been seen for some months, and was probably dead. It 
 affected me deeply, this thought of the poor old fellow, haunting 
 the old wall, reciting to strangers for year after year with honest 
 pride the glories of his town ; and at last suffered to drag himself 
 away in a corner and die and be forgotten. Such is the fate of 
 the world's humble historians. 
 
182 A KANSAN ABROAD. 
 
 In the evening, I went away from Deny by the road I came, 
 past Limavady, past Ballyrena, past Downhill, where the waves 
 nearly meet the mountain, and so to Coleraine again. It was 
 dark when I reached Belfast, where I took the steamer — and that 
 is all I know about Ireland. 
 
Pike of Pike's Peak. 
 
PIKE OF PIKE'S PEAK. 
 
 THOSE who happened to be on the Plains in the old days, 
 when the "star of empire" was on wheels — wagon wheels; 
 when California was known as the land of gold, the North Amer- 
 ican Eldorado, must have noticed on the broad, white, sun-baked 
 highway, the passage of a team, the beasts being called, by a con- 
 struction of the plural peculiar to their owner, "oxens." The 
 wheelers were known as "Buck" and "Bright;" the leaders as 
 "Tige" and "Golden" — the former as an allusion to his supposed- 
 to-be ferocious and untamable disposition ; the latter possibly out 
 of compliment to the destination of the outfit, or their prospects, 
 but probably on account of the dull -yellow color of his hide, 
 which was supposed to resemble the metal which had led his 
 human friends to undertake the long and toilsome journey. 
 
 Beside the oxen walked a man, who, in his length, his loose- 
 ness, his "batteredness," and the hue. of his outer garments, re- 
 minded one of an illy-jointed stovepipe in a country school house. 
 He indulged in no fancy colors. His tone was dim, not to say 
 subdued. The shock of hair which straggled from beneath his 
 
 An Address delivered before the Kansas State Historical Society, at 
 Topeka, February 19, 1877. 
 
 (185) 
 
186 PIKE OF PIKE'S PEAK. 
 
 slouch hat extended to the upper boundary of a coat, called, from 
 the principal dye-stuff used in coloring it, "butternut." The coat 
 extended to pantaloons of the same color, which were finally lost 
 in tremendous boots — enormous piles of rusty leather — red from 
 "long travel, want and woe." The man's countenance, painted 
 by the hand of the "ager," was of a dull-yellow hue, not unlike 
 the complexion of the ox, "Golden." From one corner of a 
 gash in this attractive visage called by courtesy a mouth, trickled 
 a fluid called "ambeer," which word I take to be a corruption of 
 amber. The man carried no weapons except a whip, with a hick- 
 ory handle long enough for a liberty-pole, with a lash in propor- 
 tion. The whole thing was lamentably slow. The man shambled 
 along as if his boots were made of lead, his loose joints threaten- 
 ing to dissolve their union and erect several separate confedera- 
 cies. The oxen jogged along like machines, with the exception 
 of an occasional dash of enterprise on the part of "Tige." Yet 
 the man kept up a constant, rambling, loud-voiced, complaining 
 conversation with the oxen, the words varying only in the stress or 
 accent, as: "You, Buck!" "You, Bright/" rising into an angry 
 snarl when addressed to the Ishmael of the team, "You, TIGE!" 
 Occasionally, when the wagon slid down a declivity, or had to be 
 dragged up an ascent, the round-shouldered driver seemed to grow 
 taller. He drew himself out like a spy-glass, and swinging the 
 long lash around, gave it a crack that sounded like the report of 
 a rifle, at the same time projecting from his leathern lungs the 
 ejaculation, "Whoa! Haw!" that rang far out over the plain, and 
 nearly took the oxen off their feet. 
 
 So far we have said nothing about the wagon or its contents. 
 It is only by the novel-writer's license that we can see most of the 
 
PIKE OF PIKE'S PEAK. 187 
 
 latter, hid from view as they are by the wagon-sheet. The prin- 
 cipal figure in sight is, of course, the "old woman," an angular 
 being who sits in front smoking a cob pipe, distributing fragments 
 of conversation all around — now to the tow -headed children, 
 who seemed to fill all the space in the wagon not occupied by 
 the old woman; now in a querulous voice to her liege lord, who 
 is driving the team, and now to the landscape generally, which 
 the woman appears to regard with dislike, if not malevolence. 
 A tall, slim girl, apparently about sixteen, whose attire consists 
 of a sun -bonnet and a long, narrow -skirted, dark -blue calico 
 dress, which does not hide her bare feet, trudges beside the 
 wagon — the only living creature in the caravan who betrays 
 even the faintest trace of possible prettiness or actual vivacity. 
 
 These people pursue their journey, day after day, mile after 
 mile. Every night the blaze of their camp-fire rises beside the 
 stream ; every morning they leave a little heap of ashes. There 
 they go, up hill and down dale ; they disappear in the passes of 
 the Eocky Mountains, and there seems borne from them on the 
 wings of the western wind, a sound — the echo of an echo — it is, 
 "Whoa! Haw!" 
 
 To these people thus described, and to all who bore to them 
 a family resemblance, and who in 1849, and in subsequent years, 
 crossed the Plains to California, came to be applied, by whom 
 originally I know not, the general name of "Pikes." Various 
 explanations have been given of the origin of the name. The 
 most reasonable one is, that, there are in Missouri and Illinois 
 two large counties named Pike, and separated from each other by 
 the Mississippi river. In 1849 an immense emigration set in 
 from these counties to California. In consequence, the traveler 
 
188 PIKE OF PIKE'S PEAK 
 
 bound for the States, meeting teams, and asking the usual ques- 
 tion, "Where are you from?" was answered, frequently, with 
 "Pike county," meaning in some cases one Pike county, and in 
 some cases the other. This led to the general impression that 
 everybody on the road was from Pike county, or that the inhab- 
 itants of Pike had all taken the road. Hence the general name 
 of " Pikes," as applied to emigrants, especially to those traveling 
 from Missouri, and, generally those migrating from southern 
 Illinois and southern Indiana. Thus the popular song — the only 
 poetry I ever heard of applied to this class of "movers," com- 
 mences: 
 
 "My name it is Joe Bowers, 
 
 I've got a brother Ike; 
 I'm bound for Calaforny, 
 
 And I'm all the way from Pike." 
 
 The impression conveyed by all this, that the two Pike coun- 
 ties mentioned are semi-heathen regions, is certainly not correct 
 at present. Pike county, Missouri, is one of the most flourishing 
 of the Mississippi river counties — remarkable for the number and 
 eminence of its politicians and lawyers ; while of the general ele- 
 vation and excellence of that section of Illinois of which Pike 
 county forms a part, it is only necessary to say that the author of 
 this address was born in the adjoining county. 
 
 But how did it come about that not only these two counties, 
 but in the United States ten counties and twenty-odd townships 
 and towns bear the name of Pike? I venture to say there are 
 some even in this intelligent audience who cannot readily answer 
 the question. There are doubtless hundreds of Pike county 
 school -children who do not know. To answer this question, 
 among others ; to recall, if but for a brief moments, the name of a 
 
PIKE OF PIKE'S PEAK. 189 
 
 half-forgotten hero — interesting to Kansas people as the first in- 
 telligent American explorer of their State — is the object of this 
 address. 
 
 Zebulon Montgomery Pike was born a long time ago, as is 
 evidenced by his name. I suppose it is forty years, at least, since 
 any father or mother in this country has called a son by the 
 Old-Testament name of "Zebulon." He was, in fact, born in 
 Lamberton, New Jersey, April 27th, 1779. He was born amid 
 the scenes of Washington's brilliant victory over the Hessians, 
 (for Lamberton is now a part of Trenton,) and but three years 
 after that event. "When Washington received his famous ovation 
 at Trenton, in 1788, it is possible that the baby Pike was held in 
 arms to see the hero pass under a triumphal arch, while the 
 youthful beauty of New Jersey strewed his way with flowers. If 
 ever a man was born a soldier, Pike was. His father was an 
 officer in the revolutionary army, and was retained or recom- 
 missioned in the regular army after the close of the war. Of the 
 boyhood of our hero, little has been preserved. He was, how- 
 ever, we know, a bright, courageous, studious boy, and when but 
 little more than a boy was commissioned an ensign in his father's 
 company of infantry. He was born, we may say, on a battle- 
 field. His first serious work in life was to assume the duties of 
 an officer in the army of his country; in that service he lived, 
 and in that service he died. 
 
 While Pike's narratives are spiritedly written, and in good 
 English, they betray no evidence of very great literary attain- 
 ments. He was, however, for the young army officer of his time, 
 well educated. He early acquired a knowledge of Latin, French 
 and Spanish and mathematical attainments certainly sufficient for 
 the purposes of a military explorer. 
 
190 PIKE OF PIKE'S PEAK. 
 
 One day in April, 1803, Mr. Barbe* Marbois, at that time at the 
 head of the French treasury department, took a walk in a garden 
 in Paris. Mr. Livingston, who was dining with Mr. Monroe, 
 asked him ( Marbois ) to come into the house. After coffee, the 
 French secretary of the treasury asked Mr. Livingston to step into 
 another room a moment. The two gentlemen had a conversation. 
 It was one of several such. Sometimes they were at St. Cloud; 
 sometimes Talleyrand was a party; sometimes the First Consul, 
 Bonaparte : and the result of these various chats was, that on the 
 30th of April, 1803, was definitely settled the greatest land trade 
 on record. So big was it, that the American Government did not 
 know, nor did it realize for years afterward, how much land it had 
 bought, or really where it was located. That accurate scholar, 
 Senator Ingalls, says we bought Louisiana at the rate of a hundred 
 acres for a cent. As we paid, in principal and interest, before we 
 got through, $23,500,000, those who are quick at figures may be 
 able to form some idea of the extent of the purchase. We bought 
 it in good time. The English were ready to take New Orleans, 
 and, during the closing days of the Spanish occupancy, we our- 
 selves were about ready to take it by force. Not three weeks 
 before the First Consul signed the treaty of cession, Talleyrand 
 told Mr. Livingston 'that Louisiana was not theirs to cede. Mr. 
 Livingston smilingly responded, that he (Mr. L.) knew a great 
 deal better. Talleyrand still persisting, Mr. Livingston, still 
 smiling, I suppose, remarked, that he was pleased to learn that 
 Louisiana still belonged to Spain, as in that event we should take 
 possession of it anyhow. This is supposed to have accelerated 
 matters considerably. At any rate, we got Louisiana for money, 
 and without a fight ; hence the Nebraska bill, hence Kansas, and 
 
PIKE OF PIKE'S PEAK. 191 
 
 the State Historical Society, and other things too numerous to 
 mention. 
 
 But what had we got? That was the question. The Span- 
 iard, unfortunately for mankind, was not cleaned off the face of 
 this continent. He fell back into Mexico. And where and what 
 was Mexico? The Mexican war was waged, more than forty 
 years afterward, to find out. You can imagine how uncertain 
 things were in 1806. We scarcely knew where the Pacific ocean 
 was, and Lewis and Clarke were sent to find out. They discov- 
 ered Nebraska, Dakota and Oregon. We owned the Mississippi 
 river, and we knew where the lower end of it was ; but we had 
 no official knowledge of its source. And this brings our friend 
 Pike on the scene of action. 
 
 At the time Pike was selected to explore the sources of the 
 Mississippi, he was twenty-six years old. He had no commis- 
 sioned officer associated with him, and the official labor and 
 responsibility of the expedition fell on him alone. He had 
 under his command, one sergeant, two corporals and seventeen 
 privates. He left St. Louis, August 9th, 1805, in a keel-boat sev- 
 enty feet long. It was a slavish trip, though the country was not 
 entirely a wilderness. The French for years had known all about 
 the river. The amusement of the voyagers was fishing; their 
 diet, I judge, principally catfish and whisky. There were 
 American traders among the Sacs and other Indians. Pike says- 
 they were great rascals. I presume it is not profitable to stop and 
 argue the point. Pike was kind to the Indians, and always gave 
 them all the whisky he could spare. He was very popular with 
 them, I think. The party were going north, and it kept con- 
 stantly getting colder. The powder fell into the river, and had 
 
192 PIKE OF PIKE'S PEAK 
 
 to be fished out. In undertaking to dry it in pots, an explosion 
 occurred. Lieut. Pike remarks "that it had nearly blown up a 
 tent, and two or three men with it." Poor Pike — he was yet to 
 experience a greater and more fatal explosion. The party went 
 on — north all the time. The river froze up, and then they 
 dragged their outfit on the ice. They reached the Sioux country, 
 and spent much time with that deeply-interesting people. One 
 of the chiefs was called The -Wind -that -Walks. I judge from 
 the name that he was a great politician. 
 
 Pike spent the winter among the frozen lakes, the snowy prai- 
 ries and hemlock swamps of the far North, and collected a vast 
 amount of information about the country and the numerous In- 
 dians who inhabited it. In reading his narrative, you find tribes 
 spoken of as numerous and powerful, that have now faded, not 
 only from the face of the earth, but from the memory of man. 
 
 After this toilsome trip, it would seem that our young officer 
 ought to have been allowed to rest awhile in comfortable quarters 
 at St. Louis, to which place he returned, April 30, 1806. But it 
 is doubtful if Pike wished to rest ; in fact, it is almost certain that 
 he did not. 
 
 The military officer in charge of the Western country at that 
 time was General James Wilkinson, a restless, bombastic, fussy 
 old gentleman, with a rare faculty for getting into difficulties. As 
 an officer in the Revolutionary army, he was concerned in the 
 Conway cabal, a plot to supplant Washington, and place in his 
 stead General Gates, an officer who afterwards got beautifully 
 thrashed by the British at Camden. He turned up in the army, 
 after being for awhile a merchant at Lexington, Kentucky, in 
 1791 ; received Louisiana from the French in 1803, and contrived 
 

 PIKE OF PIKE'S PEAK. 193 
 
 to get mixed up in the Burr business to such an extent that no- 
 body knows to this day, I believe, which side he was on. He was 
 investigated, court-martialed, and acquitted ; went into the war of 
 1812; served on the Canada frontier; was a conspicuous failure; 
 was court-martialed again, and again acquitted; and finally, there 
 being no opportunity in those days to enter the lecture field, he 
 wrote his memoirs, and retired to the City of Mexico, where he 
 died. 
 
 Gen. James Wilkinson in his day was probably the subject of 
 more uncomplimentary remarks than any man of his caliber in 
 the country, and I deem it no more than justice to say for him, 
 that, with all his faults, he was the steadfast friend of Zebulon M. 
 Pike. 
 
 It was in obedience to General Wilkinson's orders that Pike 
 started on his second expedition — the tour to Kansas. Pike left 
 Belle Fontaine, a little town near the mouth of the Missouri, July 
 15, 1806. He had with him a party of Osages who had been re- 
 deemed from captivity among the Pottawatomies. His instruc- 
 tions were to take these back to their friends on the headwaters of 
 the Osage river, on the border of what is now Kansas; then to 
 push on to the Pawnee republic, on the upper Republican river, 
 on the way interviewing the Kaws; then to go south to the Ar- 
 kansas and Ked rivers and try to find the Comanches. On arriv- 
 ing at the Arkansas, Lieut. Wilkinson (a son of the General ) and 
 a party were to be detached and sent down that stream to Fort 
 Adams, on the Mississippi, while Pike was to make his way to 
 the Red river and descend it to Natchitoches, Louisiana. 
 
 I have spoken of the uncertainty that prevailed in regard to 
 the extent of our purchase from France, in the vast, vague region 
 
 N 
 
194 PIKE OF PIKE'S PEAK. 
 
 known as Louisiana. In consequence of this uncertainty, Pike 
 was warned not to encroach upon the limits of New Mexico, or 
 New Spain. As we shall see, this is precisely what he did. 
 
 Pike ascended the Osage river in accordance with his instruc- 
 tions. The Osage is a now half-forgotten thoroughfare. Within 
 forty years, however, it has been an important highway (if that 
 term may be applied to a river ) of commerce. In the old time it 
 was a traveled road. The Catholic missionary on his way to the 
 Osages, followed the stream; trappers and traders innumerable 
 crossed and re-crossed it, and worked their way up and down it. 
 It was the road from southern Kansas, and what is now the In- 
 dian Territory, and even Texas, to the great trading-post of St. 
 Louis — the religious, commercial and political capital of upper 
 Louisiana. 
 
 The Osage, the continuation of our own Marais des Cygnes, is 
 a lovely stream; a succession of placid reaches of deep water, 
 separated by rippling, shoaly shallows. On the one bank or the 
 other for miles, rise cliffs, sometimes to the height of two hundred 
 feet; sometimes as smooth and uniform as the wall of a house, 
 dropping sheer from the dark cedars that crown their crest to the 
 water, but oftener worn in fantastic shapes, jutting over at the top 
 like the leaf of a table ; stained brown and red and yellow by the 
 iron within and the weather without; their bases hid in fallen 
 masses of rock and the narrow belt of green trees that grow to the 
 edge of the bright water. The windings of the stream are contin- 
 uous ; a few strokes of the oar bringing the voyager in view of an 
 entirely new prospect. The shadow of the cliffs sometimes hides 
 the darkling stream on the one side, sometimes on the other, and, 
 rowing by moonlight, your boat is now in the midst of a lake of 
 
PIKE OF PIKE'S PEAK. 195 
 
 burnished silver, the drops from the dripping oars sparkling like 
 diamonds, and in a moment, turning a point, you seem entering 
 one of those mysterious streams that flow through caverns. The 
 river winds through a thinly-settled country, and for miles the 
 solitude of cliff and forest is unbroken. It often seems as if, at 
 the next turn, you would come upon a grassy point with an In- 
 dian encampment, with its curling smoke and "its young barba- 
 rians all at play." You half expect to see, darting across the 
 stream in your front, the canoe filled with its blanketed and 
 painted crew ; and this impression of the presence of a vanished 
 race is strengthened by seeing on the rocks the vermilion-hued 
 symbols and signs, bows, arrows and buffaloes, painted by some 
 savage artist long ago. May the day come when some abler pen 
 than mine shall write thy story, fair Osage, from green Marais du 
 Cygne, the "Marsh of the Swan," to where the Missouri rolls its 
 devouring flood over the site of the once gay French frontier vil- 
 lage of Cote Sans Dessein. 
 
 Pike is accused by his biographer, Whiting, of indifference to 
 the charms of natural scenery : he slightly berates him for speak- 
 ing of some picturesque eminences on the upper Mississippi as 
 "prairie knobs;" yet Pike remarked the beautiful cliffs of the 
 Osage, and even the French trappers, rudest of men, designated 
 one point as "La Belle Koche" — the beautiful rock. 
 
 In the last days of August, the journey by water was ended, 
 by the arrival of the party at the Osage villages, situated on a 
 beautiful prairie. Here they had much to do with a chief named 
 White Hair, whose name has descended to our times. Where the 
 villages were located, it is hard to ascertain by Pike's map, but 
 they were probably not far from the eastern line of Linn county. 
 
196 PIKE OF PIKE'S PEAK 
 
 The Osages were found to be greatly under the influence of the 
 then and now powerful commercial house of Chouteau. As an 
 evidence of the early influence of the French over the Western 
 Indians, Pike was told by Chtoka (possibly Chetopa) that he, 
 a Little Osage, was in the action known as " Braddock's Defeat," 
 in 1755, and that the Kaws arrived after the battle; that they 
 were absent from their villages seven months, and were obliged 
 to eat their horses on their return. This is a specimen of early 
 Kansas enterprise. 
 
 Leaving the Osage villages with horses procured there, Pike's 
 party, consisting of himself, Lieut. Wilkinson, Doctor John H. 
 Kobinson, Sergeants Ballenger and Meek, Corporal Jackson, six- 
 teen private soldiers and Baroney Vasquez, interpreter, and a 
 number of Osage Indians, started on a journey destined to be 
 much longer than they expected. The course of the party was 
 generally to the south and southwest, till Pike arrived on the 
 summit of a high ridge, which he describes as a dividing line 
 between the waters of the Osage river and the Arkansas, (the 
 final syllable of which word Pike invariably spells saw.) He 
 says, what many people have said since: "The prairie, rising 
 and falling in beautiful swells, as far as the sight can extend, 
 presented a very beautiful appearance." Marching westward, 
 the party reached the Neosho, then called Grand river. This 
 crossed, they followed up the stream, keeping on the divide as 
 Pike says, between the Verdigris and the Neosho. An immense 
 amount of game was seen. Pike says that, standing on a hill one 
 day, he saw in one view, buffaloes, elk, deer and panthers. The 
 country is described as dry and rocky, and water scarce. 
 
 On the 17th of September, Pike reached, going northwest, 
 
PIKE OF PIKE'S PEAK. 197 
 
 what he describes as the main southwest branch of the Kansas 
 river. It was the Smoky Hill. Two days after, they crossed a 
 large branch of the Kansas, strongly impregnated with salt. It 
 began to rain, and Pike says, that while in camp, "we employed 
 ourselves in reading and in pricking on our arms with India ink 
 some characters which will frequently bring to our mind our 
 forlorn and dreary situation, as well as the happiest days of our 
 lives." One source of the trouble which oppressed Pike, was the 
 conduct of the Osages who formed part of the expedition, and 
 whom he describes as a "faithless set of poltroons, incapable of a 
 great and generous action." On the 23d, a stream was reached 
 which Pike believed to be the Solomon. 
 
 About this time, Pike discovered something that must have 
 astonished him as much as did the footprints in the sand the 
 worthy Robinson Crusoe. It was the trail of three hundred 
 Spanish troops. It was even so. The Spanish authorities in 
 New Spain, hearing from St. Louis of the departure of Pike's 
 expedition, had sent Lieut. Malgares, a distinguished officer, with 
 one hundred dragoons and five hundred mounted militia, from 
 Santa F£, and led animals to the number of two thousand and 
 seventy -five, to intercept him on the Red river. Malgares 
 marched down Red river, then north to the Arkansas, and there 
 leaving his used-up animals, marched north to the Saline, where 
 he met the Pawnees and the Iatans, or, as we call them, the Co- 
 manches. These last, Malgares received with great ceremony. 
 He sallied forth with five hundred men, all on white horses, 
 except himself and two principal officers, who were mounted on 
 black ones, and was received on the plain by fifteen hundred of 
 the savage chivalry in their gayest robes. 
 
198 PIKE OF PIKE'S PEAK 
 
 Malgares did not intercept Pike; but they met afterwards, as 
 we shall see. 
 
 The expedition reached the Pawnee village, high up on the 
 Kepublican, on the 25th of September. Then there was an im- 
 mense amount of riding around in circles, and smoking of pipes 
 between Pike and his Osages, and the Kaws and Pawnees. Pike 
 found that the Spaniards had left several flags in the village, and 
 the banner of Spain was floating from a pole in front of the head 
 chief's lodge. Pike had twenty white men against the Pawnee 
 nation; but he ordered the Spanish flag hauled down and the 
 American colors run up — and it was done. Pike took possession 
 of the Spanish flag; but the chief seeming grieved about it, Pike 
 gave it back to him, with strict injunctions not to raise it again — 
 and so the stars and stripes first kissed the breezes of the Kepub- 
 lican valley. While at the Pawnee village, Pike heard that 
 Lewis and Clarke had safely descended the Missouri river on 
 their return. The star of empire was up and shining. 
 
 I may say in passing, that this village, according to tradition, 
 was on the present site of Scandia. 
 
 The Pawnees became insolent and thievish; but Pike over- 
 awed them by his bearing. He never yielded anything to an 
 Indian. 
 
 From the Pawnee town the route bore southwest to the Arkan- 
 sas. Pike describes the place where he reached the river, as a 
 swampy, low prairie on the. north side, and on the south a sandy, 
 sterile desert. The river he describes as five hundred yards wide 
 from bank to bank, the banks not more than four feet high, and 
 thinly covered with cottonwoods. 
 
 On the 28th of October the party divided. Lieut. Wilkin- 
 
PIKE OF PIKE'S PEAK. 199 
 
 son and party in one canoe, made of four buffalo skins, and two 
 elk skins, and a wooden canoe made of green cottonwood, set sail 
 down the Arkansas. Lieut. Wilkinson took with him four sol- 
 diers and two Osages. He had not gone far till he was obliged to 
 abandon the canoes and march on foot, suffering greatly from 
 cold. Lower down, he made some wooden boats, and with great 
 trouble from floating ice and sand-bars, pursued his journey. He 
 reached Arkansas Post on the 9th of January. The navigation 
 of the Arkansas, in winter, is not a success. 
 
 Our traveler is now on the shores of the Arkansas, It is the 
 last of October, and snow is falling almost every day. The party 
 has been weakened by the departure of the second in command 
 and a considerable portion of the force. If Pike goes south, he 
 will obey his instructions, and will reach Red river. But he does 
 not go south, but turns his face to the west, and follows the Ar- 
 kansas. He is going to leave Kansas for Colorado. 
 
 Before he goes, let us sum up his opinion of Kansas. He had 
 visited the "Border Tier;" he had seen the valley of the "Great 
 Neosho;" he had crossed the Smoky Hill, and visited the valleys 
 of the Solomon and Republican ; and at this present moment, was 
 in the western portion of the great Arkansas valley. And this is 
 what he wrote : 
 
 "In this western traverse of Louisiana, the following general observa- 
 tions may be made. From the Missouri to the head of the Osage river, a 
 distance in a straight line of probably three hundred miles, the country 
 will admit of a numerous, extensive and compact population ; from thence, 
 on the rivers La Plate, Arkansaw and Kansas, and their various branches, 
 it appears to me only possible to introduce a limited population. The in- 
 habitants would find it most to their advantage to pay their attention to 
 the raising of cattle, horses, sheep and goats, all of which they can raise in 
 
200 PIKE OF PIKE'S PEAK 
 
 abundance, the earth producing spontaneously sufficient for their support, 
 both in winter and summer, by which means their herds might become im- 
 mensely numerous; but the wood now in the country would not be sufficient 
 for a moderate population more than fifteen years, and then it would be 
 out of the question to think of using any of it in manufactories, conse- 
 quently their houses would be built of mud bricks (like those in New 
 Spain); but possibly time may make the discovery of coal mines, which 
 would render the country habitable." 
 
 The proud Kansan of 1877 living in a "dobe" hut and tend- 
 ing goats! How was that for a prophecy? 
 
 Pike, though not a very devout person, saw something provi- 
 dential in this. He says: 
 
 "From these immense prairies may arise one great advantage to the 
 United States, viz., the restriction of our population to certain limits, and 
 thereby a continuation of the Union. Our citizens being so prone to ram- 
 bling, and extending themselves on the frontiers, will, through necessity, be 
 constrained to limit their extent on the west to the borders of the Missouri 
 and Mississippi, while they leave the prairies, incapable of cultivation, to the 
 wandering aborigines of the country." 
 
 If Pike were alive now, he might ask himself the question, 
 "Does restriction restrict?" 
 
 It must be remembered, however, that Pike was a soldier, not 
 a farmer. That he came into the country directly from the heavy 
 woods of the Osage, which made the prairie seem more desolate; 
 that in marching he kept the high and dry divides ; and, further- 
 more, that nothing could be more monotonous than his method of 
 traveling — creeping along all day between the green earth and 
 the blue sky, or the brown earth and the gray sky, as the case 
 might be, with but two men in the party with whom he could 
 converse on terms of familiarity; harassed by anxiety; frequently 
 at a loss as to his course, and finally lost altogether. It is not 
 
PIKE OF PIKE'S PEAK. 201 
 
 strange that Pike did not indulge in the "gentle zephyr" line of 
 remarks entirely proper to a Kansas real-estate agent of our time. 
 
 As Pike is now leaving Kansas, we might now take leave of 
 him, but his brave young life, so quickly sped, was so crowded 
 with incident, that I crave your patience while I mention as 
 briefly as possible what further befell him. 
 
 It kept growing colder as he approached the mountains, follow- 
 ing, as he did, the course of the Arkansas. He saw, for the first 
 time, wild horses; he saw Indians frequently, and occasionally the 
 trail of the Spanish expedition; and on the 15th of November he 
 saw something else. 
 
 "At two o'clock in the afternoon," says he, " I thought I could 
 distinguish a mountain to our right, which appeared like a small 
 blue cloud; viewed it with a spy-glass, and was still more con- 
 firmed in my conjecture, yet only communicated it to Dr. Robin- 
 son, who was in front with me ; but in half an hour it appeared in 
 full view before us. When our small party arrived on the hill, 
 they, with one accord, gave three cheers for the Mexican moun- 
 tains." 
 
 What was before and around Pike at that moment, is thus de- 
 scribed by a Kansas writer, once known to us as "Deane Mona- 
 han:" 
 
 "If you stand upon a certain bluff on the Purgatoire, you will be a 
 spectator of a scene not easily forgotten in future wanderings. Eastward 
 stretches dimly away the winding, sedgy valley of the dreariest river in 
 the West — treeless, sandy, desolate. All around you are the endless un- 
 dulations of the wilderness. Westward is something you anticipate rather 
 than see — vague, misty forms lying upon the horizon. But while the world 
 is yet dark around and below you, and there is scarce the faintest tinge 
 of gray in the east, if you chance to look northward you see something 
 crimson, high up against the sky. At first it is a roseate glow, shapeless 
 
202 PIKE OF PIKE'S PEAK. 
 
 and undefined. Then it becomes a cloud castle, battlemented and inac- 
 cessible, draped in mist, and with a hovering curtain of changing purple. 
 But as it grows whiter and clearer, the vague outlines of a mighty shape 
 appear below it, stretching downward toward the earth. What you see 
 is "the lofty pinnacle which has gleamed first in the flying darkness, sun- 
 kissed and glorified in the rosy mornings of all the centuries. It is Pike's 
 Peak, sixty miles away." 
 
 Pike measured the altitude of the mountain afterwards named 
 in his honor. He made out its height ahove the level of the 
 prairie, to be 10,581 feet, and 18,581 feet above the sea. The jour- 
 nal says: "In our wanderings in the mountains from the 14th of 
 November to the 27th of January, it was never out of our sight, 
 except when we were in a valley." Pike, whose nearest approach 
 to the Peak was fifteen miles, believed it to be inaccessible, but 
 climbing it has been an everyday matter since a Kansas woman, 
 Mrs. Julia Archibald Holmes, the first lady who ever attained the 
 summit, set the brave example. 
 
 We will not dwell upon the days of cold and hunger which 
 followed, when the emaciated men, clad only in summer clothes, 
 dragged their frosted limbs through the gathering snow, while the 
 poor starved, bruised horses, fell senseless in their tracks. Pike 
 had wandered far from Red river, and pushing to the southwest, 
 reached not that stream, but the Rio Grande del Norte. On the 
 west fork of this stream he erected a stockade according to the 
 principles of military art, for Pike was a soldier in everything, 
 and here he was eventually captured by a force of Spanish troops, 
 being informed that he was in Spanish territory. The party were 
 marched in the direction of Santa Fe. The New-Mexican people 
 were kind to the poor frozen, famished soldiers. At every house 
 the women invited the party to stop and eat, and the old men 
 
PIKE OF PIKE'S PEAK. 203 
 
 caused their daughters to dress the frozen feet of the northern 
 strangers. 
 
 Mexico was then a splendid despotism. The blue-blooded 
 Spaniard does not work himself, but he has great executive abil- 
 ity in making other people work. The Indians were reduced to 
 slavery, the lower order of white people were but little better off, 
 and all worked beneath the vigilant eye of the priest and soldier. 
 Yet the country prospered. Those who know Mexico as it is 
 now, can scarcely believe the stories Pike tells of its richness. 
 His story must have sounded like an Arabian tale, in 1806, for at 
 that time Mexico was farther off than Australia is now. Pike 
 saw, at Santa Fe, James Pursley, said to be the first American 
 who had penetrated to that point by way of the great Plains. 
 
 Pike was virtually a prisoner, his papers and instruments were 
 taken from him, but he was kindly treated. He was escorted 
 from place to place by a company of dragoons, the detachment 
 being commanded for some time by Lieut. Malgares, who some- 
 time before had been looking for him in Kansas. Of this officer, 
 Pike speaks in terms of admiration and affection. Pike never 
 compromised his dignity. As an American soldier, he believed 
 himself the peer of His Most Catholic Majesty the King of Spain. 
 He was met as an equal by the Spanish officers; and so the little 
 party of Americans marched from town to town along the sunny 
 highways of Mexico. Pike received all sorts of presents. The 
 Governor of one province sent him a shirt and neckcloth, with 
 his compliments, wishing him to accept them, as they were made 
 in Spain by his, the Governor's, sister, and had never been worn 
 by any person. Pike and his men, after their terrible sufferings 
 in the mountains, must have hugely enjoyed their trip in Mexico; 
 and our gallant Captain, though said to be indifferent to the 
 
204 PIKE OF PIKE'S PEAK. 
 
 beauty of mountain, vale and stream, appears to have had a good 
 eye for female loveliness. He invariably notices the ladies he 
 met; his general comment being, that, though a trifle too heavy 
 as to weight, they certainly had the finest eyes in the world. 
 Pike seems to have been a great favorite also with the worthy 
 padres of the country, who labored many a time and oft for his 
 conversion to the Catholic religion. 
 
 It was on the first day of July, 1807, when, all his wanderings 
 and sufferings and delays past, Pike reached Natchitoches, Lou- 
 isiana, the point for which he had set out a year before. Here 
 he closes his journal with the words: 
 
 " Language cannot express the gayety of my heart when I once more 
 beheld the standard of my country waved aloft! All hail! cried I, the ever- 
 sacred name of country, in which is embraced that of kindred, friends, and 
 every other tie which is dear to the soul of man." 
 
 In a letter to General Wilkinson, Pike once said : 
 
 "Did not an all-ruling passion sway me irresistibly to the profession of 
 arms and the paths of military glory, I would long since have resigned my 
 sword for the rural cot, where peace, health and content would at least be 
 our inmates." 
 
 His desire for advancement was gratified, and he was soon pro- 
 moted to be major of infantry. 
 
 In 1812, five years after Pike's return from the West, the war 
 with Great Britain broke out. It was a stupid war, brought about 
 by the insufferable bullying of the British government, which at 
 that time seemed determined to mix in everybody's affairs, and 
 provoke the united hostility of all creation. We were illy pre- 
 pared for war. Our leading military men were a lot of old 
 humbugs left over from the Kevolution: such was Hull, who 
 surrendered at Detroit; such was Wilkinson, who mismanaged 
 
PIKE OF PIKE'S PEAK. 205 
 
 everything. As a result, the enemy burned our capital, while 
 Admiral Cockburn ravaged the hen-roosts of the Chesapeake. On 
 the water we had generally good success, and modified consider- 
 ably the opinion that "Britannia rules the waves." On land, our 
 men sometimes stood, as at New Orleans, and sometimes they 
 scampered off, as at Bladensburg. We succeeded in making some 
 generals out of young men like Winfield Scott before the war was 
 over, and so saved ourselves from total disgrace. 
 
 Pike hailed the war with enthusiasm. In 1810 he had been 
 placed in command of a regiment of regular infantry, which he 
 drilled after a fashion of his own, in three ranks — the third rank 
 being armed with short guns and pikes, an idea their commander 
 probably got from the lancers he saw in Mexico. 
 
 In a short time, though only thirty-four years of age, he was a 
 brigadier-general on the northern frontier. 
 
 If you go to the Kansas State library you will find in the 
 dingy, narrow pages of old Hezekiah Niles's Eegister for the year 
 1813, the following dedication : 
 
 IN TESTIMONY 
 
 OF 
 
 RESPECT TO THE MEMORY 
 
 OF 
 
 ZEBULON MONTGOMERY PIKE, 
 
 BRIGADIER GENERAL, 
 
 WHO FELL GLORIOUSLY BEFORE YORK, IN UPPER CANADA, 
 
 AND 
 
 JAMES LAWRENCE, 
 
 CAPTAIN IN THE NAVY, 
 KILLED ON BOARD THE CHESAPEAKE, FIGHTING THE SHANNON, 
 
 THIS VOLUME OF THE WEEKLY REGISTER IS DEDICATED. 
 
 The former happily expired on the conquered flag of the foe : the 
 
 latter died exclaiming, " Don't give up the ship ! " 
 
206 PIKE OF PIKE'S PEAK. 
 
 The story is soon told. 
 
 Our troops and fleet, the latter under command of Commodore 
 Chauncy, lay at Sackett's Harbor. On the 25th of April, 1813, 
 the fleet took on board 1,700 men, and sailed for York (now To- 
 ronto), a fortified post commanded by Gen. Koger H. Sheaffe, 
 who, by-the-way, was a native of Boston. Pike was in imme- 
 diate charge of the troops, and, on the morning of the 27th, 
 watched their debarkation from the deck of one of the vessels. 
 Our men, on landing, were met by a sharp fire from a body of 
 British riflemen and Indians. Pike, witnessing the fray, said, 
 "I can't stand this any longer," jumped into a boat, ordering his 
 staff" to come on, and pulled for the shore amid a shower of shot. 
 As soon as he reached the shore he formed his line and drove the 
 enemy before him, demolishing a portion of the Eighth Gren- 
 adiers, who formed to check him. In a little while Pike re- 
 formed his line, and moved on the outer line of works. A heavy 
 battery in front was carried at once. In the meantime a British 
 battery further back was giving some annoyance, and Pike or- 
 dered his men to lie down until a couple of light guns could be 
 brought up to silence the enemy's fire. This was done in a few 
 moments, and everything was quiet, awaiting the surrender of the 
 place. Pike had j^st aided in removing a wounded man, and 
 was seated conversing with a prisoner, when there was a tremen- 
 dous explosion ; the light of day was shut out by a pall of smoke, 
 and the air seemed to rain missiles. The British magazine had 
 been fired. Pike was crushed to the earth by a huge stone; his 
 aid, Capt. Nicholson, was killed by his side, and the forms of 232 
 dead and wounded men strewed the ground when the smoke had 
 lifted. 
 
PIKE OF PIKE'S PEAK. 207 
 
 Pike, horribly crushed, but conscious, was taken on board one 
 of the vessels of the American fleet. In time, the British garri- 
 son flag, which had been hauled down, was brought to him. He 
 motioned to have the conquered banner placed beneath his head. 
 It was done, and in a moment, the brave young fellow, who first 
 in a Kansas wilderness flung the bright flag of his country to the 
 breeze, and bade a horde of savages to know it and respect it, had 
 passed away. 
 
 He was buried with every demonstration of grief and respect, 
 at Sackett's Harbor. 
 
 And now, having finished his brief story, let us turn to the 
 wilderness he traversed, and of the future of which he had so 
 little hope, and mark the successive steps of empire. 
 
 Pike had lain in his quiet grave six years when the wild 
 woods of the Missouri were startled by a new sound, and the 
 turbid waters of the sullen stream parted before the prow of 
 the first steamboat. Five years more, and as waters rush in when 
 a mill-gate is lifted, the trains moved out on the great road, eight 
 hundred miles long and two hundred feet wide, leading from the 
 Missouri to Santa Fe\ Then the wilderness began to blossom, not 
 with roses but with men, soldiers, hunters, explorers, teamsters. 
 In 1827 the drums of the Third Infanty greeted the sun on the 
 beautiful bluff at Leavenworth. Pike's flag had come to stay; 
 and from Fort Leavenworth, like Roderick Dhu's fiery cross, it 
 was carried over the Plains in every direction, by Leavenworth, 
 by Dodge, by Riley, and many more whose names now dot the 
 Western country. In 1842 came Fremont, the Pathfinder, and to 
 the southward the flag rose, a silent reminder to the Osages, at 
 Fort Scott. After the flag came the cross, borne by the Jesuit 
 
208 PIKE OF PIKE'S PEAK 
 
 fathers, even now quiet old men, spending the evening of their 
 days at Osage Mission. Then came '49, the rush for California; 
 ^amp-fire answered to camp-fire for a thousand miles, and with 
 the moving throng came Mr. Pike and Mrs. Pike and the chil- 
 dren, and "Buck" and "Bright," and "Tige" and "Golden"— 
 and you know the rest. 
 
 I cannot close without saying a word more about my hero. 
 His was a most heroic soul. The day before he sailed across 
 Lake Ontario to meet his fate, he wrote to his father : 
 
 "I embark to-morrow in the fleet at Sackett's Harbor, at the head of 
 1,500 choice troops, on a secret expedition. Should I be the happy mortal 
 destined to turn the scale of war, would you not rejoice, oh, my father? 
 May heaven be propitious, and smile on the cause of my country. But if 
 I am destined to fall, may my fall be like Wolfe's — to sleep in the arms 
 of victory." 
 
 A writer who has visited that quiet spot on the lake shore, 
 where so many years ago they laid him down to sleep, describes 
 the wooden monument erected to his memory and the memory of 
 those who died with him, as a worn, defaced, shattered, broken 
 and forgotten thing. And yet he has another monument, an 
 eternal monument, erected by the hand of God; and may we 
 not hope that in our day, when old stories are being retold ; 
 when men are recalling the brave days of old; when history is 
 being written as it never was before, that the name of Pike may 
 emerge from the mists of forgetfulness, even as comes at sunrise 
 from out the darkness, the brightness and the whiteness, the 
 beauty and the glow of the Peak that bears his name. 
 
The World a School. 
 
THE WOELD A SCHOOL. 
 
 IN a State which had elections before it had legal voters ; rail- 
 roads before it had freight and passengers for them; and 
 newspapers before it had printing offices ; a State which one of its 
 gifted and honored sons described in a magazine (which rose, fell 
 and faded because it was published before it had readers), as the 
 "hottest, coldest, driest, wettest, thickest, thinnest country in the 
 world," there can be nothing surprising or worthy of apology in 
 the fact that, on an occasion like this, an individual should be se- 
 lected to speak to classical scholars, who does not himself know 
 one Greek letter from another; and who, so far from knowing 
 anything of the Latin particles, does not know a particle of 
 Latin ; that one should be chosen to address, with an implied obli- 
 gation to instruct, gentlemen who are proficient in the mechanic 
 arts, yet who himself could not construct a symmetrical toothpick, 
 even with the plans and specifications before him ; nor that there 
 should be delegated as the "guide, philosopher and friend" of 
 teachers and students of the science of Agriculture one who, 
 should there arise in future times a contest like that which has 
 
 Annual Address, delivered before the Kansas State Agricultural Col- 
 lege, at Manhattan, May 26, 1875. 
 
 (211) 
 
212 THE WORLD A SCHOOL. 
 
 raged over the authorship of the "Letters of Junius," might be 
 put forward as the probable writer of that singular compendium 
 of ignorance, "What I Know About Farming," instead of the 
 late Horace Greeley. 
 
 While thus disclaiming any necessity for an apology, your ora- 
 tor will not, however, avail himself of ten thousand time-honored 
 precedents, and, after first announcing that he is " entirely unpre- 
 pared to make a speech," proceed to demonstrate the truth of 
 that preliminary remark to the absolute conviction of everybody; 
 but, avoiding educational bays and inlets which he has "never nav- 
 igated, will head out to the sea which no man owns ; which has 
 no beaten paths; over which the man who sails, though it be for 
 the thousandth time, still sails a discoverer — a ten-thousandth 
 edition of Christopher Columbus; and, instead of speaking of 
 this man's books, and of that professor's school, he will speak of 
 a book which no man wrote, and which is not yet completed ; he 
 will discourse of a University for which men's schools and col- 
 leges and universities are, at the very best, but a slight prepara- 
 tion : and these thoughts and suggestions will be brought together 
 under the general title of " The World a School." 
 
 Possibly some may inquire by what process a speaker, con- 
 fessedly ignorant of many valuable things found in books, and 
 deprived by chance, circumstances, and, in early life, want of in- 
 clination to acquire what is commonly called an education, has 
 obtained the knowledge which he proposes to impart; from what 
 store-house, they may ask, does he propose to draw his facts and 
 inferences? The reply is, that this qualification and these facts 
 and applications are obtained through what is itself an educa- 
 tional process, although it is never mentioned in the educational 
 
THE WORLD A SCHOOL. 213 
 
 journals, or discussed at the teachers' institutes, or supervised by 
 that oppressive mystery, the Bureau of Education at Washington; 
 and this sort of education is called in America and by Americans, 
 "Knocking About." 
 
 The course varies with every scholar, and occupies various 
 periods of time. With most Americans it lasts from early man- 
 hood, sometimes from early boyhood, to the end of life. It is 
 the fate of very few to graduate early; to find some sailor's 
 snug-harbor where they may ponder over what they learned, and 
 be knocked about no more. The students of Knock About Uni- 
 versity cannot locate on the map the seat of that institution; 
 it has no special post-office address. Like love, it is found in 
 the camp, the court, the field and the grove. The student 
 resides at no particular boarding-house; and, as I have said 
 before, the course varies with each student, though the course is 
 by no means optional, since the student frequently pursues 
 branches which he does not fancy; and, indeed, instances are 
 of record where the course has suddenly ended at the branch 
 of a tree. In the course of his studies the student may be 
 transported from the banks of the Ohio to those of the Sacra- 
 mento, and thence to the James. He may be transferred from 
 the society of students of the Septuagint to that of the professors 
 of the seven-shooter. He may become in turn, or be all at once, 
 a preacher, a newspaper correspondent, and a soldier. He may 
 be at the same time a member of a presbytery and of a general's 
 staff, and perform at once, and in different ways, the functions of 
 an embassador of Heaven and of the Sanitary Commission. To- 
 day he may be learning to set type, and to-morrow building a 
 church ; to-day he may be fearlessly denouncing sin and wicked- 
 
214 THE WORLD A SCHOOL. 
 
 ness, and day after to-morrow fighting a narrow-gauge railroad. 
 In none of these pursuits is he adhering to what I am informed is 
 called a "curriculum;" and in the prosecutions of these various 
 labors he may not open a text-book for weeks together. And 
 yet, he is all the time acquiring knowledge which mortal man 
 never yet extracted from between the covers of any book ever 
 written by man. In these years his hands are hardening for the 
 work they have yet to do; his shoulders are widening for the bur- 
 den they have yet to bear; his sinews are strengthening for the 
 race he has yet to run; his heart is enlarging for those he has yet 
 to embrace in its sympathies; and his mind is acquiring that 
 breadth and force, vigor and clearness which will at last be re- 
 quired in the instruction of — it may be you, young ladies and 
 gentlemen ! It is hardly necessary for me to say that the rough 
 sketch I have just drawn is not intended as the outline of an 
 autobiography. Far less useful and brilliant has been the career 
 of your fellow-student of the evening. And yet it may be, that 
 even in the experience of years spent in the enforced wanderings 
 of a common soldier ; of other years passed even in the humbler 
 walks of a profession created within a century or two, specially to 
 record day by day the progress of this busy world ; of years filled 
 in with a mass of reading, even though careless and unsystematic ; 
 it may be that, in all these years, some knowledge which may be 
 imparted to others has been acquired of that world which Shak- 
 speare says is all a stage, but which, for this evening, we will con- 
 sider is all a school. 
 
 If there is any one thing that there has been a settled endeavor 
 to impress upon the minds of the students of this Kansas State 
 Agricultural College, it is, that neither at this nor any other insti- 
 
THE WORLD A SCHOOL. 215 
 
 tution of learning, neither at Manhattan, nor at Gottingen, nor 
 Tubingen, nor at any other place that ends in "ingen," can be 
 acquired what some people are pleased to call a "finished" edu- 
 cation. This institution does not, if I correctly understand its 
 purposes, teach the young idea how to shoot. It merely endeav- 
 ors to furnish him with powder and shot, and expects him to do 
 his own shooting ! All that is learned here is, as I understand it, 
 only intended as a preparation for the student who is going out to 
 become a gownsman, as the English would say, in that great uni- 
 versity, the World. 
 
 I say "going out into the world," and I use the expression 
 advisedly. The young man or woman who has passed twenty 
 years of life, who has known something of struggle and toil, 
 incurred possibly to avail himself or herself of the advantages of 
 this very institution, may think that he or she is already in the 
 midst of the great world ; but this is hardly the case. New York 
 harbor is a part of the ocean; the water is salt and sometimes 
 rough, and the breeze that blows over it is fresh and strong, and 
 the tide rises and falls ; but no ships are ever seen under full sail 
 in its waters. They are towed about by steam tugs, and it is only 
 when you are outside of the Narrows, and the tug has cast off and 
 the pilot is gone, that you are at sea ; and the difference is, that 
 from that time, on her journey through light and darkness, 
 through sunshine and storm, near the low reef or sunken rock, 
 for thousands of miles, until the once familiar stars are gone and 
 even the heavens are strange, the good ship must care for herself 
 alone. For days she sails the lonely deep, nor sees the faintest 
 glimmering of a friendly sail. When the sky grows black, the 
 waves grow white, and the vessel rolls and groans like a sick man 
 
216 THE WORLD A SCHOOL. 
 
 in his sleep, she cannot run into a friendly harbor ; her salvation 
 depends on her keeping off-shore. If there are defects in her 
 construction, if she is ill-manned, or if her rigging is worn when 
 she leaves port, she cannot return to mend these defects. Cour- 
 age and skill on the part of the officers must repair damages and 
 provide against calamity. But there is no going back. She is 
 at sea. 
 
 And this it is that makes going out from an institution like 
 this really going out into the world, because it marks the limit 
 between dependence and self-help. The student here obeys rules 
 and regulations prescribed by others; he reads books placed in 
 his hands by others ; he receives opinions, to some extent, because 
 they are promulgated by authority: but when he steps out of 
 these bounds, all this ceases. He is his own man then. A 
 Frenchman, relating an experience in England, and illustrating 
 the omnipresence of the English officers of the law, said: "I was 
 alone with God — and a policeman." And so the newly-gradu- 
 ated is alone in the world — with a diploma. 
 
 That diploma is a good thing. Your speaker wishes he 
 possessed one: he would prize it, even though it were written 
 in newspaper English. But, after all, the parchment only tells 
 what has been done— and it does not always tell the whole truth 
 about that. In a healthy soldier's discharge from the service are 
 the words, "No objection to his being reenlisted is known to ex- 
 ist." I imagine that sentence might be written with propriety on 
 an occasional diploma. The graduate might go back and go 
 through the course again, without injury. But, admitting that 
 the diploma has been well and fairly earned, it is only an evidence 
 of work worthily done, so far — of a good beginning. It is, at 
 
THE WORLD A SCHOOL. 217 
 
 the best, a certificate that John Smith or Jane Smith, as the case 
 may be, has made a good start toward acquiring an education, 
 and is prepared, as far as the institution conferring the diploma 
 can furnish a preparation, for entrance in that greater, higher 
 school, the World. 
 
 And right here, over the question what sort of preparation 
 should be furnished, has been fought the battle of the educators. 
 It is over this that the great educational gods have kept "this 
 dreadful pother o'er our heads;" it is over this that it has 
 thundered all around the sky ; it is over this that usually 
 mild-mannered men have shot wrathful glances through their 
 gold-bowed spectacles, while every fold of their white neckcloths 
 swelled with indignation. The result of the battle has been the 
 establishment of two varieties of colleges: one teaching the 
 classics, and conferring the information that "Achilles's wrath" 
 was "to Greece the direful spring of woes unnumbered," and 
 also furnishing the truly gratifying information that Major 
 General Xenophon, with ten thousand men, has fallen back 
 from Eichmond to the Chickahominy, and now has the enemy 
 just where he wants him; and the other variety teaching the 
 modern languages, natural sciences, agriculture and the trades. 
 Possibly this may not be an exactly accurate statement of the 
 case, but it must be taken as the account given by a passing 
 reporter who took no part in the row himself. 
 
 But, seriously, men must take the world as they find it, and 
 what kind of a world does the graduate find when he leaves the 
 halls he has paced so long? Is it like an old-fashioned college? 
 The sinking heart of many a young man as he has stood in the 
 midst of the surging, careless, seemingly selfish, rude, well-nigh 
 
218 THE WORLD A SCHOOL. 
 
 merciless crowd for the first time, has told him that the world is 
 no green college campus ; that the men he must meet day in and 
 day out, with whom and from whom he must earn his daily bread, 
 are not professors or students; are not men of culture; that they 
 are not interested in the woes of Greece, but are vastly concerned 
 about their own woes, their own business and their own dinners. 
 Stand where meet the thronged ways in a great city, and notice 
 what men carry in their hands, under their arms, or in their 
 breast pockets, and you will find out something about this world. 
 Here goes a painter with his bucket of white lead ; there goes a 
 carpenter with his square ; here passes an Italian with a board on 
 his head, covered with plaster-of-Paris figures; here, one after an- 
 other, pass a dozen clerks with pencils over their ears, and bits of 
 paper in their hands and papers sticking out of their pockets; 
 shop-boys pass repeatedly with bundj.es; here walks a round- 
 shouldered chap with the end of his right thumb and finger dis- 
 colored and worn off* a little — he is a printer, and takes a brass 
 composing-rule out of his pocket and puts it back again; men 
 pass with hods, with mortar-boards, with trowels ; there may pass 
 once in a while a young gentleman, a smile irradiating his class- 
 ical features — that is a reporter, going to congratulate with the 
 coroner over an approaching inquest. 
 
 This little panorama shows how men live ; how you, my friend, 
 with the bright and shining diploma, must live. Suppose you 
 wish to find out what these men know. Quote, if you please, 
 something from Homer, in the original Greek; something affect- 
 ing; the best thing there is in the book about Achilles's wrath and 
 the woes of Greece. Try this on the most intelligent-looking man 
 who passes, and if he is a Kansas man — as he probably will be, 
 
THE WORLD A SCHOOL. 219 
 
 if he looks uncommonly intelligent — he will look at you in a 
 pitying way, and remark that it is a burning shame that the In- 
 sane Asylum at Osawatomie was not enlarged, or a new one built, 
 years ago. It is evident that the gentleman does not know Greek. 
 And if you will look further, you will find before long a man in 
 the crowd who cannot translate the simplest Latin sentence, who, 
 nevertheless, has a diploma at home written in that language. 
 But the trouble is, that shortly after his graduation, the exigencies 
 of life obliged him to cease to trouble his head about how long 
 Cataline intends to abuse our patience, and, abandoning all con- 
 cern about the woes of Greece, he went into the soap-grease line 
 of business. A few moments, then, passed where men may be 
 seen about their ordinary vocations, shows us that the world, 
 which we have said is a school, is likewise an Industrial School. 
 A vast majority of men are engaged in industrial pursuits, and 
 this, too, without regard to the circumstances of their early educa- 
 tion. To this complexion men must come at last. 
 
 Admitting this to be true, and it most certainly is true, what 
 sort of preparatory school is the best for a young man or young 
 woman who must, in time, enter this great industrial school, the 
 World? The question is easily answered. The preparatory 
 school should be the same, in kind, as the advanced department. 
 It should be what the Boston Latin school has so long been to 
 Harvard. Common sense, to be plain about it, indicates that 
 the transfer should be from the primary industrial school. 
 
 But some people say the office of colleges and universities is 
 not to prepare young men and women for the rugged vocations of 
 life, but to impart to them mental culture. Culture is good; but 
 the question arises, What is the best culture? A man might 
 
220 THE WORLD A SCHOOL. 
 
 take a quarter-section of raw prairie, break it, harrow it, and 
 finally seed it down to marigolds; and that would be culture. 
 The result would be beautiful. A thing of beauty and a joy, till 
 frost comes, would be that field of marigolds. What eye would 
 not kindle when "jocund day stood tiptoe on the misty mountain- 
 tops," pointing with rosy fingers to those one hundred and sixty 
 acres of glowing, golden marigolds? But the man owning the ad- 
 joining quarter breaks up the prairie sod and puts the entire tract 
 in onions — and that would be culture, too. The onion is not an 
 aristocratic vegetable; it is not admitted into good society. When 
 the opera house is a blaze of light ; when the wealth of empires 
 glitters in diamonds on necks of snow ; when the echoes of deli- 
 cious music fill the high hall, and the vast drop-curtain as it falls 
 trembles responsive to the applause that swells from parquet, 
 boxes and galleries, no admirer ever throws at the feet of the 
 child of genius, the embodiment of beauty and melody, a dewy 
 bouquet of fresh-culled onions. And yet, to return to the kind of 
 culture in the prairie, public sentiment, leaning over the rail 
 fence and commenting on the two quarter-sections, goes with the 
 raiser of onions; applauds the thoroughness of his culture; re- 
 marks the admirable condition of the ground and the absence of 
 weeds: and the man of onions goes down to his house justified 
 rather than the other. I confess that I am a partisan as between 
 marigolds and onions. I am an ultra onion man, myself. 
 
 But, leaving this discussion, it is to be taken for granted, stu- 
 dents of the Kansas State Agricultural College, that you have 
 made up your minds to cast in your lot with an institution which 
 can say to you when you leave it for the last time: "Go, my son, 
 go, my daughter ; I have done all I could for you : would that it 
 
THE WORLD A SCHOOL. 221 
 
 were more. I do not send you forth filled with dreams and 
 visions. The world is a working world, as I have told you often, 
 and I have fitted you as best I could to begin that work. You, 
 my son, may not rise to what the world calls distinction. It may 
 not be yours, the 'applause of listening Senates to command,' but 
 you may, please God, live honestly and worthily, and eat the 
 bread your own hands have earned. And you, my daughter, go 
 hence, freed from woman's bane and curse — an ignorant helpless- 
 ness; you go with skillful, trained fingers, and an honest heart, 
 into a world that has need of you and such as you." 
 
 Graduated from this school and entered upon that other 
 school, the World, who, what, where, are the teachers? They 
 are around, above, beneath you ; they are yourself, man and na- 
 ture. He who hath ears to hear, let him hear in the world the 
 myriad voices that speak to him. Let him find the "tongues in 
 trees, the books in running brooks, the good in everything," of 
 which the self-taught Shakspeare wrote. But time passes; we 
 cannot call the roll of the faculty of the University of the World, 
 and so I make a few suggestions addressed more particularly to 
 the graduating class, and those who are soon to follow them. 
 There is a phrase, I believe it is called a "slang phrase" — though 
 whose function it is to say what is slang and what is not, I do not 
 know — but the phrase runs this way: "Be good to yourself." It 
 is not an exhortation to selfishness — men don't need that. It 
 means respect yourself, take care of and do not squander yourself. 
 You will find that if you are not good to yourself, no one else will 
 be good to you. You owe no apology to anyone for being here. 
 You have as good a natural right to a front seat as any boy or 
 girl who goes to the World's School. 
 
222 THE WORLD A SCHOOL. 
 
 This institution, I am informed by the President and members 
 of the Faculty, is not intended for the exclusive production of 
 Presidents of the United States, nor does it guarantee to its grad- 
 uates situations in the United States Senate; but it is well enough 
 for young gentlemen to remember that genuine distinction is to be 
 attained in the line of agriculture and the mechanic arts. As an 
 illustration of the dignity of agricultural pursuits, you often hear 
 the quotation, that "he who makes two blades of grass grow where 
 one grew before, is a public benefactor." The whole paragraph, 
 which may be found in Gulliver's Travels, is still more striking. 
 It reads: "And he gave it for his opinion, that whosoever could 
 make two ears of corn or two blades of grass to grow upon a spot 
 of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of 
 mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the 
 whole race of politicians put together." 
 
 You see, then, that the raising of two blades of grass will make 
 you of more value than the whole race of politicians; and, in my 
 opinion, if you raise but one blade the result will still be the 
 same. But, indeed, in the field of agricultural discovery there 
 still seems to be boundless room. The books say that neither 
 Indian corn, potatoes, squashes, carrots nor cabbages were known 
 in England until after the sixteenth century. Who knows how 
 many new vegetables are yet to be invented or improved? Fame 
 may have something in store for you in that line. Your name 
 may yet be carved on the perfect watermelon of the future. Old 
 men can remember the advent of nearly every improved agricul- 
 tural implement which we now consider indispensable. It is the 
 happy combination of farmer and mechanic who is yet to achieve 
 triumphs in the field of agricultural invention. Then, there is 
 
THE WORLD A SCHOOL. 223 
 
 the great vocation of teaching agriculture and the mechanic arts, 
 in schools established for that purpose. This is new ground. 
 The school established in Switzerland by Fellenberg, counted the 
 first, or among the first, agricultural schools, was founded in 1806, 
 less than seventy years ago; and most of the work in that line has 
 been done since 1844 — and still the surface of the ground has 
 only been scratched. To those who have a genuine literary talent, 
 a readiness in the use of written words, an ability to tell things so 
 that people will read them, and, combined with this, have a prac- 
 tical knowledge of the subject of agriculture, I can say that, in 
 the opinion of those who do not write on agricultural subjects, 
 there is much to be done. A great deal is written on agricultural 
 questions which is regarded by a careless and hard-hearted world 
 as the perfection of balderdash — the sublimated quintessence of 
 moonshine. But is there not some one to be for this country and 
 this time what Arthur Young was for England at the close of the 
 last century? A bold and bright man was Arthur Young. His 
 account of a tour in France, prior to the outbreak of the French 
 Revolution, is quoted, by every historian of that struggle, as a 
 most faithful picture of the brutalized and degraded condition of 
 the oppressed French peasantry, which led to the final explosion. 
 Said Young, in the account of his tour: "The fields are scenes of 
 pitiable management, as the houses are of misery. To see so 
 many millions of hands that would be industrious, all idle and 
 starving. Oh, if I were legislator of France, for one day, I would 
 make these great lords skip again." Thus wrote Arthur Young, 
 farmer, reporter of the Morning Post, tourist, political writer, and 
 correspondent of Washington. He wrote many books, among 
 them a work on Ireland and its agricultural condition and re- 
 
224 THE WORLD A SCHOOL. 
 
 sources. The material for a portion of this work was collected in 
 1776, just one hundred years ago, and it is still quoted by the 
 latest writers on Ireland. Young wrote, not only what he knew 
 himself, but what others found out. The cattle-breeding experi- 
 ments of Robert Bakewell, who was not himself a writer, were 
 described and commended by Young. Who of the graduates of 
 this institution will be our Arthur Young, to write agricultural 
 books to be read a hundred years hence, and have it said of him, 
 "He will be illustrious in all succeeding days, as long as the profit 
 of the earth is for all, and the king himself is served by the field"? 
 
 To those who propose to follow the mechanic arts, it is unneces- 
 sary to say that it is the skillful mechanic rather than the soldier 
 who now goes where glory waits him. This is the mechanic's 
 age. He is the reigning monarch now, and we all take off our 
 hats to him. He is the Prospero of this our island, and steam is 
 the monster Caliban that does his bidding. I doubt if there is a 
 man before me who would not rather wear the laurels of Capt. 
 Eads, the designer of that wonderful bridge at St. Louis, than to 
 be President of the United States. 
 
 You enter the World's School, then, under favorable auspices, 
 and it remains only that you improve your opportunities; and 
 let me say that you cannot always tell from appearances who is 
 capable of instructing you. The teachers of the World's School 
 are not always in uniform. For instance: your orator undertook, 
 one day, to air the nautical knowledge he had obtained by a 
 study of Mr. Fennimore Cooper's sailors, who are only equaled 
 in naturalness by his Indians, and, in about five seconds, had his 
 ignorance set in order before his face by the gentleman he was 
 /kindly endeavoring to instruct. But who would have thought 
 
THE WORLD A SCHOOL. 225 
 
 that the quiet gentleman in a frock coat, writing in an office, with 
 a pencil over his ear, had really followed the sea for years? Such, 
 however, happened to be the exact situation. You will find that 
 rough-looking men, illiterate men, in fact, are often exceedingly 
 well posted on some one or two things. If you ignore such you 
 will lose something. And this you will discover : that men and 
 women with naturally good minds, but who, from ignorance of 
 writing, are unable to keep a diary, journal or memoranda of any 
 kind, have frequently a very tenacious memory of matters which 
 have come under their personal observation. The true method 
 of investigation is that pursued by the newspaper reporter, who 
 forms no theory in advance, but, on his arrival at the scene of a 
 fire or a fight, takes the statements of all within reach, without 
 regard to "age, sex, or previous condition of servitude." In the 
 World's School, unless you are willing to accept all available 
 information from all possible sources, you will never be a good 
 scholar. 
 
 There is a maxim, often quoted in connection with education, 
 viz.: that "half a loaf is better than no bread;" but I may also 
 be allowed to remark that one blade of a pair of scissors is pre- 
 cious little better than no scissors at all, and so it is not well in 
 this world to devote a year of precious time to a study which can- 
 not be mastered in twenty years. Take, for instance, phonography, 
 one of the many systems of short-hand. A knowledge of this art 
 — by which I mean the art of verbatim reporting and nothing 
 else — while doubtless a good thing to have, is not a prime neces- 
 sity to one man or woman in ten thousand. The mass of reporters 
 and writers for the press get along without it, and many of the 
 best reporters who have ever lived were unacquainted with it. 
 P 
 
226 THE WORLD A SCHOOL. 
 
 Yet how many thousands of people, who really had no occasion 
 to study it, have wasted time and money in the attempted acqui- 
 sition. How many thousands, deceived hy the ease with which 
 the theory of phonography is understood, have gone far enough 
 to discover that they could not get practice enough in all the 
 leisure hours of Methusaleh to make them good short-hand re- 
 porters. A pile of double-ruled paper as large as this room could 
 be constructed of the note-books of people who, after months of 
 practice, have found they could not report even the slowest ser- 
 mon, and on trying it found themselves struggling with the pot- 
 hooks which represent "My beloved brethren and sisters" when 
 they should have been making a crooked mark for "Amen." 
 These people have simply tried to make a century plant bloom 
 at two years old, that's all. Had they been wise they would have 
 devoted their two years to something that can be learned reason- 
 ably well — well enough to be used — in two years. Newspaper 
 men, who really may be supposed to need phonography, as I have 
 said, get along without it. They find it easier, in many instances, 
 to sit comfortable while the entirely original, unpremeditated and 
 impromptu discourse is being delivered, and then, approaching 
 the speaker after he has concluded his remarks, hear him say, 
 "Why, my dear sir, I was not expecting to have my hasty re- 
 marks appear in print, but if it would be an accommodation to 
 you, I can let you have the heads of my address — just a synopsis, 
 you know." Whereupon he proceeds to draw from his right-hand 
 coat-tail pocket the complete manuscript. 
 
 The remarks made on the subject of phonography apply also to 
 ineffectual or insufficient efforts to acquire a knowledge of the 
 violin, and especially the flute. In regard to the latter instrument 
 
THE WORLD A SCHOOL. 227 
 
 especially, not only self-interest but humanity to the neighbors 
 demands that you should not waste your time in abortive tootings. 
 If you feel it your duty to retire for a season from the haunts of 
 men, and, forsaking everything else, cleave only to the flute until 
 you become its master, it is well; but do not under any other cir- 
 cumstances touch that instrument. 
 
 Having warned you not to attempt the mastery of really de- 
 sirable accomplishments unless you are sure that you have the 
 aptitude and the leisure for their perfect acquirement, let me 
 earnestly entreat you not to commit the great error of wasting 
 golden hours in the discussion of matters which are of no vital 
 importance. Beware of societies for the diffusion of useless 
 knowledge ; assemblages of people who know nothing, to discuss 
 matters of which nobody knows anything. Remember that the 
 Almighty is the only being who is omniscient, the claims of vari- 
 ous learned societies to the contrary notwithstanding. There are 
 some things you will never know, and it is a good plan not to 
 rack your brains over those things. The exact age of this world, 
 for instance, can never be ascertained. Do not worry your mind 
 by efforts to fix the precise hour in the forenoon at which the 
 process of creation began. In these days when "science" is 
 talked about by gentlemen whose knowledge of the correct spell- 
 ing of the word science is a recent acquirement, I know it is dan- 
 gerous to disparage what is called " scientific investigation." To 
 speak lightly of such, exposes the speaker to the danger of being 
 called "ignorant" by people who spell it with two g's; but still I 
 will risk this frightful calamity by expressing the conviction that 
 years devoted to labor which results at last, not in the discovery 
 of a fact in nature, but merely in the elaboration of a theory, are 
 
228 THE WORLD A SCHOOL. 
 
 wasted years. "What shall it profit a man?" is, after all, the 
 question. What does it profit a man to handle over a large num- 
 ber of skulls, and shout with rapture when he finds a monkey's 
 skull which resembles his own ? He cannot know, after all, that 
 that particular monkey was his relative. The glow of family 
 pride which comes over him at first is soon dampened by the 
 dreary reflection that there may be a mistake somewhere; that the 
 depression in the monkey's forehead which gives it its startling 
 resemblance to his own may be exceptional, may have been the 
 result of accident in youth, a blow from a cocoanut in the hands 
 of an irate parent, or something of the kind. 
 
 "The paths of glory lead but to the grave," 
 
 and the paths of this sort of "scientific investigation" lead us into 
 the mazes of painful uncertainty. Our ancestral gorilla eludes 
 our grasp like the air-drawn dagger of Macbeth. And if he did 
 not, what then? Is there any present or practical good to be 
 attained by dwelling on his merits or demerits, or in tracing pain- 
 fully the line which leads from us to him, realizing, perhaps, 
 that of late years the family has degenerated? 
 
 But somebody, not a scientist, may ask, "Do you declaim 
 against all investigation of the mysteries of Nature ? " Certainly 
 not. Consider the grasshopper, how he grows. He is a mystery. 
 Whence he cometh and whither he goeth, we cannot tell. Find 
 out, if you can, why a miserable insect which a child can crush 
 beneath its foot ravages whole States, while man, with all his 
 boasted resources, seems powerless to resist him. Mysteries! 
 secrets ! if you would investigate them, the world is full of them. 
 The forces of nature, electricity and the rest, have existed from 
 
THE WORLD A SCHOOL. 229 
 
 the beginning, but how long has man known of their power? — 
 how much does he know now? The lightning flashed before the 
 blinded eyes of Adam, but how long since the electric spark 
 became not the terror but the friend of man? Steam curled up 
 from the kettle of Tubal Cain, but how long since man knew how 
 strong were the shoulders of the prisoned vapor which now bears 
 so many burdens? Charcoal lay in the ashes of the first fire 
 kindled by man on the earth; nitre formed on the walls of the 
 cave, and sulphur lurked in the earth: but how long since 
 man knew that these substances, harmless apart, were, linked 
 together, a black conspirator who without warning can tear a city 
 or a mountain to fragments? No man can say that further inves- 
 tigation on these lines will reveal nothing. How long is it since 
 gunpowder, supposed to be the most powerful of all explosive 
 substances, was found to be to nitro- glycerine what a boy's 
 strength is to a man's ? Investigation ! there is room for enough 
 of that to fill the next thousand years, during which the question 
 of our primitive gorilla-hood can be suffered to rest. 
 
 In the World's School, as in the district school, a great hin- 
 drance to study is too much whispering, too much noise, too much 
 talk. The present age demands and admires action — not words. 
 Said an intelligent gentleman, speaking the other evening of the 
 British House of Commons : "A great orator is a great nuisance 
 and a great bore." It will, I think, be so considered in this coun- 
 try some day. It is certainly a consummation devoutly to be 
 wished. If any of these young ladies or gentlemen have a habit 
 of keeping still until they have something to say, they can rest 
 easy in the belief that the world is coming round to their fashion. 
 
230 THE WORLD A SCHOOL. 
 
 I think even now if Demosthenes were living, and were to repeat 
 his experiment of the pebbles, he would meet with little sympa- 
 thy. At this time, and I may remark, in this State, where we 
 are so little advanced in the practice of Agriculture — the oldest 
 of human vocations — that the failure of a single crop reduces us 
 to the condition of Indians when the buffalo fails to put in an ap- 
 pearance, and a piteous cry for "aid" goes up from one end of the 
 State to the other — in such a State there is little time for speech- 
 making. The world needs, nay more, will have, men, of action, 
 not of mere words, either spoken or printed. A volume of 
 speeches is not a very enduring monument, generally a fading 
 and perishable one ; a fine bridge, a noble aqueduct, a row of ten- 
 ement houses, built by generosity, not avarice, a beautiful farm- 
 house — such are the monuments men should leave behind them. 
 It is the impatience of the world with talk that leads to Carlyle's 
 "Hero Worship," and such grim books as his Cromwell and 
 Frederick; and who that reads these books does not imbibe a 
 feeling of respect for men of action, rather than the men of pam- 
 phlets, speeches and proclamations? Who, whatever may be his 
 idea of the career, as a whole, of the first Napoleon, does not, in 
 reading that last chapter save one in Carlyle's "French Revolu- 
 tion," stand an admirer of that young artillery officer, Bonaparte 
 by name, as he stands amid his guns at four o'clock in the after- 
 noon of that October day, waiting the approach of that bloody 
 mob of Paris who succeeded as rulers those "great lords" whom 
 Arthur Young hated ? They are moving forty thousand strong ; 
 their stray shot rattle on the staircase of the Tuileries ; they are 
 very near. "Whereupon, thou bronze artillery officer? 'Fire!' 
 
THE WORLD A SCHOOL. 231 
 
 say the bronze lips." Koar and roar again go his great guns, and 
 " it was all over by six" said citizen Bonaparte in his report. The 
 mob which had cut off the heads of many speech-makers had met 
 at last a man of action. 
 
 And yet, what is called a "talent for affairs" is not inconsistent 
 with the possession of a kindly spirit, manifesting itself outwardly 
 and visibly in perfect courtesy. Some of the busiest men I have 
 known always found time to be civil. In the World's School 
 you will find that your progress and happiness depend much upon 
 your treatment of your fellow-students. The nineteenth is a good 
 century for firm men ; it is a bad one for bullies — even of the 
 pious variety. Lord Chesterfield was never wiser than when he 
 exhorted his son always to be the friend, but never the bullyj of 
 virtue. This you may depend upon, that you may lead your 
 class but you will never drive it, except, perhaps, after the man- 
 ner of the Irishman's horse, of which his enthusiastic owner ex- 
 claimed, " Bedad, he's driving everything before him ! " As you 
 cannot safely domineer over your fellows, so you may be sure you 
 cannot long deceive them. The stolen composition will be found 
 in your desk; the plagiarized speech will be detected. Blinder 
 than the blindest bat that fluttered in dark Egypt's deepest dark- 
 ness are those who put not their trust in God or man, but in 
 tricks. Little traps, set by little men, are daily knocked to pieces 
 beneath the very noses of their sagacious contrivers, and the 
 world's derisive laughter rings out at " Strategy, my boy ! " 
 
 This, then, in your intercourse with your fellow-students of 
 this world, is the chief end of life : to be a gentleman ; and this 
 includes the ladies, for a lady is but the feminine of a gentleman. 
 To be a gentleman you have the world's encouragement, nay 
 
232 THE WORLD A SCHOOL. 
 
 more, you have an angelic warrant ; for what says Thackeray in 
 
 the "End of the Play:" 
 
 "A gentleman, or old or young! 
 (Bear kindly with my humble lays,) 
 The sacred chorus first was sung 
 Upon the first of Christmas days. 
 The shepherds heard it overhead, 
 The joyful angels raised it then; 
 Glory to Heaven on high, it said, 
 And peace on earth to gentle men." 
 
 But I must not keep you here listening to words which, after 
 all, may not be worth your remembrance, and which, in the hurly- 
 burly of that world which soon, very soon, will open up before the 
 youngest here, you will scarcely find time to remember; and yet 
 the blessing and benediction of any human being, even that of 
 the sightless beggar by the wayside, is worth the having. 
 
 Young men, young women, crowding forward from the byways 
 into the broad highway of life, may you do well the work that is 
 waiting for your hands, realizing the obligation spoken of by Lord 
 Bacon : " I hold every man a debtor to his profession ; from the 
 which as men of course do seek to receive countenance and 
 profit, so ought they of duty to endeavor themselves by way of 
 amends to be a help and ornament thereunto." 
 
 May your lives resemble not the desert's bitter stream, which 
 mocks the cracked and blistered lips of the fainting, dying trav- 
 eler ; which but adds horror to the fiery desert, and sinks at last 
 into the burning sands, to which it brought no verdure, no glad- 
 ness — from which it received nothing but poison and a grave. 
 
 May the course of your lives find no counterpart in the sluggish 
 course of the dull bayou, a fungus among streams, which winds and 
 doubles and winds again through miles of rank vegetation, which 
 
THE WORLD A SCHOOL. 233 
 
 curtain its dark course, and shut out from its sullen waters the 
 gladsome light of day; a waveless, tideless stream, in which rep- 
 tiles of hideous shape crawl and glide and swim, and which at 
 night seems to lie still in the darkness and listen to doleful and 
 mysterious voices. May none of you ever live isolated from your 
 kind, like those lakes which lurk amid dark, once-volcanic moun- 
 tains, with no visible inlet or outlet; deep, self-contained, solitary, 
 giving back no reflection save the dim images of scorched and 
 barren rocks, and splintered peaks ; lakes on which nothing lives 
 or floats, which hide forever in their dark bosoms everything cast 
 into them. 
 
 But may your lives be like the river which rises amid the pure 
 snows of the bold mountain ; which, hurling itself over the cliffs, 
 answers back the wild, free eagle's scream; which forces its way 
 through the rocks that would impede it in its search for the val- 
 ley ; which slakes as it goes the thirst of the deer, and washes the 
 roots of the pine tree from which the flag of the far-sailing mer- 
 chantman is yet to fly ; which turns the rude wheel of the moun- 
 tain mill, and whirls in its eddies the gathering sawdust as it 
 speeds from under the whirring, glittering teeth of steel it has 
 bidden to rend the logs it has brought them. It grows wider and 
 deeper, and more silent and yet stronger, as it flows between smil- 
 ing farms and thrifty villages which owe their existence to the 
 bounteous river. At night it sends its mist over all the valley 
 and half way up the hills, like sweet Charity, who silently wraps 
 in her sheltering mantle all the sons of men. It carries on its 
 bosom all floating craft — the light canoe, the slowly-drifting raft, 
 the arrow-like steamer. In time, its wavelets give back at night, 
 in dancing gleams, the thousand lights of the great cotton mill, 
 
234 THE WORLD A SCHOOL. 
 
 and, anon, its waters part before the prow of the new-built ship, 
 as she glides down the ways to the element which is henceforth to 
 bener home. Thus goes the shining river, the ever-useful, ever- 
 blessed river; best friend of toiling man; fairest thing from the 
 creative hand of God; — thus goes the river to mingle at last for- 
 ever with the sun-lit sea. 
 
ik: a. jst s a. s 
 
 Educational Publications 
 
 By S. A. FELTER, A. M. 
 
 FELTER'S ILLUSTRATED TABLE BOOK. 
 
 Sample copies, by mail, 15 cents. 
 
 FELTER'S PRIMARY ARITHMETIC. 
 
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 especially for schools, by mail, postpaid, 10 cents. 
 
 For wholesale or introductory rates of the above publications, address 
 
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 Kansas Publishing House, Topeka, Kansas. 
 
THE 
 
 Kansas Publishing House, 
 
 TOPEKA, KANSAS. 
 
 The Only Award to a Kansas House. 
 
 The undersigned, having examined the product 
 herein described, respectfully recommends the same 
 to the United States Centennial Commission for 
 award, for the following reasons, viz.: A' seven-quire 
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 printed, and binding and ruling faultless. 
 
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 Edward Conley. C. O. Chapin. 
 
 A true copy of the record. 
 
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 JOB PRINTING and MISCELLANEOUS BINDING in Splendid Style. 
 
 The Annals of Kansas. 
 
 A Dictionary of Kansas. Muslin, 691 pp., price $5.00. 
 
 Felter's Improved School Records. 
 The Educational Calendar. 
 
 Price, twenty-five cents per annum. 
 
 A Kansan Abroad, by Prentis. 
 
 Price, $1.25. And other publications. 
 
 Address, GEO. W. MARTIN. 
 
 

 
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