I replied, “Vinum Rhenense decus et gloria mense.”
In the next we had Moselle wine. “And what of this?”
I answered, “Vinuin Moslanum fuit omne tempore sanum.”
And here I would say that every memory which I have of Missouri (and there are more by far than this book indicates), as of Missourians, is extremely pleasant. The State is very beautiful, and I have found among my friends there born such culture and kindness and genial hospitality as I have never seen surpassed. To the names of Mary A. Owen, [334] Blow, Mark Twain, and the Choteaus I could add many more.
So we jogged on homeward. I resumed my work. I had written out all the details of our trip in letters to the Press. They had excited attention. The Pennsylvania Railroad Company suggested that they should be published in a pamphlet. I did so, and called it “Three Thousand Miles in a Railroad Car.” They offered to pay me a very good sum for my trouble in so doing. I declined it, because I felt that I had been amply paid by the pleasure which I had derived from the journey. But I received grateful recognition subsequently in another form. The pamphlet was most singular of its kind. It was a full report of all the statistics and vast advantages of the Kansas Pacific Road. It contained very valuable facts and figures; and it was all served up with jokes, songs, buffalo-hunting, Indians, and Brigham. It was a marvellous farrago, and it “took.” It was sent to every member of Congress and “every other man.”
Before it appeared, a friend of mine named Ringwalt, who was both a literary man and owner of a printing-office, offered me $200 if I would secure him the printing of it. I said that I would not take the money, but that I would get him the printing, which I easily did; but being a very honourable man, he was led to discharge the obligation. One day he said to me, “Why don’t you publish your ‘Breitmann Ballads?’ Everybody is quoting them now.” I replied, “There is not a publisher in America who would accept them.” And I was quite right, for there was not. He answered, “I will print them for you.” I accepted the offer, but when they were set up an idea occurred to me by which I could save my friend his expenses. I went to a publisher named T. B. Peterson, who said effectively this—“The book will not sell more than a thousand copies. There will be about a thousand people who will buy it, even for fifty cents, so I shall charge that, though it would be, as books go, only as a twenty-five cent work.” He took it and paid my friend for the composition. I was not to receive any money or share in the profits till all the expenses had been paid.
Mr. Peterson immediately sold 2,000—4,000—I know not how many thousands—at fifty cents a copy. It was republished in Canada and Australia, to my loss. An American publisher who owned a magazine asked me, through his editor, to write for it a long Breitmann poem. I did so, making, however, an explicit verbal arrangement that it should not be republished as a book. It was, however, immediately republished as such, with a title to the effect that it was the “Breitmann Ballads.” I appealed to the editor, and it was withdrawn, but I know not how many were issued, to my loss.
I had transferred the whole right of publication in England to my friend Nicolas Trübner, whom I had met when he had visited America, and I wrote specially for his edition certain poems. John “Camden” Hotten wrote to me modestly asking me to give him the sole right to republish the work. He said, “I hardly know what to say about the price.
Suppose we say ten pounds!” I replied, “Sir, I have given the whole right of publication to Mr. Trübner, and I would not take it from him for ten thousand pounds.” Hotten at once published an edition which was a curiosity of ignorance and folly. There was a blunder on an average to every page. He had annotated it! He explained that Knasterbart meant “a nasty fellow,” and that the French garce was gare, “a railway station!” Trübner had sold 5,000 copies before this precious affair appeared. After Hotten’s death the British public were informed in an obituary that he had “first introduced me” to their knowledge!
Hans Breitmann became a type. I never heard of but one German who ever reviled the book, and that was a Democratic editor in Philadelphia. But the Germans themselves recognised that the pen which poked fun at them was no poisoned stiletto. Whenever there was a grand German procession, Hans was in it—the indomitable old Degen hung with loot—and he appeared in every fancy ball. Nor were the Confederates offended. One of the most genial, searching, and erudite reviews of the work, which appeared in a Southern magazine (De Bow’s), declared that I had truly written the Hudibras of the Civil War. What struck this writer most was the fact that I had opened a new field of humour. And here he was quite right. With the exception of Dan Rice’s circus song of “Der goot oldt Sherman shentleman,” and a rather flat parody of “Jessie, the Flower of Dumblane,” I had never seen or heard of any specimen of Anglo-German poetry. To be merely original in language is not to excel in everything—a fact very generally ignored—else my Pidgin-English ballads would take precedence of Tennyson’s poems! On the other hand, very great poets have often not made a new form. The Yankee type, both as regards spirit and language, had become completely common and familiar in prose and poetry, before Lowell revived it in the clever Biglow Papers. Bret Harte’s “Heathen Chinee,” and several other poems, are, however, both original