“Zum Wald, zum Wald, steht mir mein Sinn.
So einzig, ach! so einzig hin.
Dort lebt man freundlich, lebt man froh,
Und nirgends, nirgends lebt man so.”
It does not come from reading or culture—it comes of itself by nature, or not at all; nor has it over-much to do with thought. Only in something like superstition can it find expression, but that must be childlike and sweet and sincere, and without the giggling with which such subjects are invariably received by ladies in society.
I went with my wife and her mother and sister to pass some time at Bethlehem, in Pennsylvania, which we did very pleasantly at a country inn. It is a very interesting town, where a peculiar German dialect is generally spoken. There was a very respectable wealthy middle-aged lady, a Pennsylvanian by birth, who avoided meeting us at table because she could not speak English. And when I was introduced to her, I made matters worse by speaking to her naturally in broad South German, whereupon she informed me that she spoke Hoch-Deutsch! But I made myself popular among the natives with my German, and our landlord was immensely proud of me. I wasn’t “one of dem city fellers dat shames demselfs of de Dutch,” not I. “Vy, I dells you vot, mein Gott! he’s proud of it!”
I ended the summer at beautiful Lenox, in Massachusetts, in the charming country immortalised in “Elsie Venner”; of which work, and my letter on it to Dr. Holmes, and my conversation with him thereanent, I might fill a chapter. But “let us not talk about them but pass on.” I returned to Philadelphia and to my father’s house, where I remained one year.
I had for a long time, at intervals, been at work on a book to be entitled the “Origin of American Popular Phrases.” I had scissored from newspapers, collected from negro minstrels and Western rustics, and innumerable New England friends, as well as books and old songs and comic almanacs
and the like, a vast amount of valuable material. This work, which had cost me altogether a full year’s labour, had been accepted by a New York publisher, and was in the printer’s hands. I never awaited anything with such painful anxiety as I did this publication, for I had never been in such straits nor needed money so much, and it seemed as if the more earnestly I sought for employment the more it evaded me. And then almost as soon as my manuscript was in the printer’s hands his office was burned, and the work perished, for I had not kept a copy.
It was a great loss, but from the instant when I heard of it to this day I never had five minutes’ trouble over it, and more probably not one. I had done my very best to make a good book and some money, and could do no more. When I was a very small boy I was deeply impressed with the story in the “Arabian Nights” of the prisoner who knew that he was going to be set free because a rat had run away with his dinner. So I, at the age of seven, announced to my father that I believed that whenever a man had bad luck, good was sure to follow, which opinion he did not accept. And to this day I hold it, because, reckoning up the chances of life, it is true for most people. At any rate, I derived some comfort from the fact that the accident was reported in all the newspapers all over the Union.
About the 1st of July, 1866, we left my father’s house to go to Cape May, where we remained for two months. In September we went to a very good boarding-house in Philadelphia, kept by Mrs. Sandgren. She possessed and showed me Tegner’s original manuscript of “Anna and Axel.” I confess that I never cared over-much for Tegner, and that I infinitely prefer the original Icelandic Saga of Frithiof to his sago-gruel imitation of strong soup.
VI. LIFE ON THE PRESS. 1866-1869.
I become managing editor of John W. Forney’s Press—Warwick the King-maker—The dead duck—A trip to Kansas in the old buffalo days—Miss Susan Blow, of St. Louis—The Iron Mountain of Missouri—A strange dream—Rattlesnakes—Kaw Indians—I am adopted into the tribe—Grand war-dance and ceremonies—Open-air lodgings—Prairie fires—In a dangerous country—Indian victims—H. M. Stanley—Lieutenant Hesselberger—I shoot a buffalo—Wild riding—In a herd—Indian white men—Ringing for the carriage with a rifle—Brigham the driver—General and Mrs. Custer—Three thousand miles in a railway car—How “Hans Breitmann’s” ballads came to be published—The publisher thinks that he cannot sell more than a thousand of the book—I establish a weekly newspaper—Great success—Election rioting—Oratory and revolvers—How the meek and lowly Republicans revolvered the Democrats—The dead duck and what befell him who bore it—I make two thousand German votes by giving Forney a lesson in their language—Freiheit und Gleichheit—The Winnebago Indian chief—Horace Greeley—Maretzek the Bohemian—Fanny Janauschek and the Czech language—A narrow escape from death on the Switchback—Death of my father—Another Western railway excursion—A quaint old darkey—Chicago—I threaten to raise the rent—General influence of Chicago—St. Paul, Minnesota—A seven days’ journey through the wilderness—The Canadian—Smudges—Indians—A foot journey through the woods—Indian pack-bearers—Mayor Stewart—I rifle a grave of silver ornaments—Isle Royale—My brother, Henry Perry Leland—The press—John Forney carries Grant’s election, and declares that I really did the work—The weekly press and George Francis Train—Grant’s appointments—My sixth introduction to the General—Garibaldi’s dagger.