Pine to Potomac

by E. K. Cressey

They reach the great metropolis. Parliament is their objective point. Few will have more brains than they bring with them, or know more about their affairs of state; but the study is to be long and careful, and they are to know more fully the inner life and character of those who have made laws for half the world. Day after day, week after week, the great Head Centre in all its ramifications is studied at shortest possible range.

But Scotland and Ireland must be visited, for they are the home of his ancestors. He breathes the air, he sees the sky, he presses the sod, he touches the heather. He is really, truly there. The dream of boyhood days, when he stood by grandfather’s knee, and heard of the old clans, the blowing of the horn, and the echoes down the valleys, of the cows and sheep, and the tinkling of the bells, the clash of arms and the battles won; and now he is there, thrilled with the memories and the ancient scenes. The old castles, quaint, and moss-covered, and grand, and the people with their fresh look and fiery eye, vigilant ever to the end of time. What valleys and mountains and peoples are there; what rivers and lakes and loud-sounding sea! Surely nothing short of an affair of the Stuarts would compel them to quit their strongholds and their homes, their native heather, and flee to other lands, so far, so very far away as it was then, back in that olden time.

What events have transpired since that 1720, nearly one hundred and fifty years before. What events in Europe, England and America. What in India and the Orient; and yet the man of eighty had sat, a boy of five, upon his grandsire’s knee who had rounded out his four-score years, and a boy of ten had walked with him upon the highlands, and so could bring the messages of that far-off time to present generations.

As Mr. Garfield had “during his only visit to England busied himself in searching out every trace of his forefathers in parish-registries and ancient army-rolls,” so his inheritor of the nation’s honors traced back the stock from which he sprang to mountain, glen, and castle, which had rung with the name he bore. He too might say, sitting with a friend in the gallery of the House of Commons, “that when patriots of English blood had struck sturdy blows for constitutional government and human liberty, his family had been represented.”

But they continue their journey, and cross the English channel from Dover to Calais, and soon are in the capital of the French Empire. Napoleon III is there in his glory. Two years later his traveling companion, Hon. E. B. Washburne, is to be United States minister at his court, and not long after a prisoner in Paris during its siege in the Franco-Prussian war.

Mr. Blaine’s knowledge of French serves him, and enables him to secure all the general information he desired. He was not among free institutions now, and felt the keen chill in the very atmosphere. But in visiting the French Assembly there was a show of liberty, like an eagle in a cage. It was a noisy, tumultuous scene, with a jargon indescribable and largely unintelligible. Few things are wilder, except the ocean in a storm, than the deliberative assembly of the French nation when measures of special importance are pending. But the great city, with its multitudes of people, is full of attractions.

The Tuilleries is visited, and the Champs Elysées, the great armies so soon to reel in the shock of war, and learn a lesson of sobriety and contented home-life that shall give to the French of the future a greatness that has in it more of the element of stability and permanency, and so tone down their mercurial and volatile nature. The Rhine is visited, and Florence.

Relaxation and rest are great objects of the visit. The malaria of the Potomac at Washington, which gets into the bones of congressmen, and senators, and presidents, must be gotten out of him, and he made ready for greater service and larger conquests.

History is all about him; the nations of Europe are within his reach; their capitals are visited, and they are studied from life. Impressions deep, and strong, and lasting are made. Plutarch’s old method of comparisons and contrasts still serves him, and he gets his knowledge in classified, compact forms. The people and their condition, their rulers and the laws, interest him as much as the great, queer buildings, the splendid palaces, the magnificent cathedrals, the varied works of art, and the giant mountains, the beautiful villages, valleys, and lakes, and all that is picturesque in nature. Switzerland is a charm; Italy a delight, and the whole journey a joy. He returns a broader, deeper, wiser man, to live a stronger, richer life in a larger world.

He was in his seat at the beginning of congress in November. Eight men are there from Tennessee, whose right to seats is challenged. The impeachment question has gained prominence, and he joins in the search for evidence. He does not want hearsay, but official documents, and so he introduces a resolution, calling upon the general commanding the armies to communicate to the House any and all correspondence addressed by him to the president upon the removal of Secretary Stanton and General Sheridan, and General Sickles as well; and also with reference to the proposed mission of the general of the army to Mexico in 1866.