One day Ned Farrer and I were wandering around Chevy Chase, just outside the city, when we casually ran across a fine old type of a Southern gentleman. Entering into conversation he told us we were on historic ground; it was here a group of Confederate soldiers during the Civil War gathered, coming by way of Georgetown, with the avowed purpose of making a quick dash on the White House, kidnapping President Lincoln, and hurriedly carrying him away. That night was a misty one, and the scouts sent out mistook the haycocks, which were in plenty, for the tents of the northern soldiers. Imagining that their venture could not be successfully carried out, they quickly retreated, and sadly said our new-found friend: “I don’t understand how we ever made such an awful blunder.”
He had been one of the foiled Southern troops and a Colonel at that.
Some Anecdotes
A warm personal friend, who had been reading these reminiscences, very kindly writes me his appreciation of them, and adds a few incidents which he thinks I had forgotten. Here they are in all their glory and exaggeration. He says:
“I ran across an American mining man, Col. Jack Ormsby, in Toronto, who told me a typical ‘George Ham Story.’ It appears that the two colonels were travelling together from New York to Washington. Never having met up before, they introduced each other in Western fashion. And after having said: ‘Well, what do you say if we have another one?’ which they had, the American colonel loosened up and explained that he had just come from Arizona to report to J. Pierpont Morgan on a mining proposition, (this was in 1905) and the ‘Old Man’ was so pleased that when his report was handed Mr. Morgan, and passed, Mr. Morgan presented the Colonel (not George) with a cheque for $15,000, the larger portion of which was given as a bonus.
“ ‘I showed Mr. Ham the cheque,’ said Colonel Jack, ‘and he asked me if he might tear a small piece off the corner, and when I enquired what for?’ he said: ‘Well, if that whole bit of paper is worth $15,000, a small piece of it must surely be worth a few thousands—and I need the money.’
“The American colonel who told me this story added: ‘Now that struck me as a funny thing; but not any funnier than the mild and innocent expression on Mr. Ham’s face when he made the droll remark’.”
And another one:
“Here is something which you have probably forgotten. Robert Lincoln O’Brien, of the Boston Herald, is responsible for it. You were ‘meeting’ Theodore Roosevelt in the White House, the morning after the Gridiron Club dinner, back in 1904, I think. ‘Teddy’ was then President, and was in a very talkative mood, standing outside his office in the ante-room addressing his remarks especially to you, stating that when he got clear of his present ‘job,’ he intended to take a trip through Canada.