From the Easy Chair, Volume 2

by George William Curtis

If the faithful diary of any lecturer who went the grand rounds twenty-five years ago, from Maine to the Mississippi, could be published, it would be full of the most amusing stories. The lecturers all had them to tell, and they were all men of a singularly fine perception of humor. James T. Fields, the publisher in Boston, was the friend of all the lyceum orators, and towards the close of his life he was himself a popular and attractive lecturer upon literary subjects. His little cell or private office in the old corner book-store in Boston was an exchange of lecturers for that neighborhood, which teemed with lyceums, and no similar space has ever heard fresher stories better told, or has ever echoed with gayer laughter.

It was the pleasant company in that little retreat which first heard, the day after it occurred, the tale of the belated lecturer who, hurrying from the cars in a carriage to the hall in Boston, long beyond the hour, dinnerless, and with no chance to dress, opened his travelling-bag, and proceeded, to the consternation of the lady who had taken a seat in the same carriage, and whose pardon he politely and briefly invoked, to change his collar and his coat. As he began to pull off his coat, having pulled off his collar, his amazed and terrified fellow-passenger began to pull at the door, and to call loudly upon the driver, who was furiously whipping his horses into a pace that increased both the noise of the carriage and the conviction of the terrified lady that she was the victim of some dreadful conspiracy, or the hapless victim of a maniac. The maniac's earnest but interjectional explanation as he proceeded in his toilet, begging his companion to be pacified, as he was merely going to lecture, was an unintelligible asseveration, which only made his madness more indisputable and awful, and what might have befallen the poor lady, if the carriage had not suddenly stopped at the hall, and the lecturer, in his clean collar and black coat, had not begged her pardon for frightening her, with a fervor that frightened her all the more, and disappeared from the vehicle with his travelling-bag, shawl, and umbrella, he was not prepared to say. But the tale, as he told it the next morning with infinite humor in Fields's corner, was received, as he ruefully admitted, with louder shouts of laughter than had greeted the brightest witticisms of his lecture.

Fields is gone, and his old friend and neighbor Whipple, who was one of the earliest of the noted lyceum lecturers. The old corner in the old corner book-store is gone, and with it have vanished many of the happy company that gathered there, not only of orators, but of famous authors. The lyceum of the last generation is gone, but it is not surprising that those who recall with the Utica Herald its golden prime should cherish a kindly and regretful feeling for an institution which was so peculiarly American, and which served so well the true American spirit and American life.

TWEED.

HERE are many persons who wonder why Tweed did not evade justice by forfeiting his bail. He had every chance to escape, they say; why did he stay? His chief confederates are safe in Europe, where he might easily have been, yet he was foolish enough to take the risk of a trial, and he is imprisoned, probably for the rest of his life. The explanation, however, is very obvious. He did not believe there was any risk. Tweed was the most striking illustration of a very common faith—belief in the Almighty Dollar. He is the victim of a most touching fidelity to the great principle which every good American will surely be the last to flout. His creed was very simple: it was that money would buy everything, and he reposed upon his belief with the sweet security of the Mussulman who sees by faith a heaven of houris. Certainly his confidence was not surprising. He had proved his creed. He had seen money work miracles. He had seen himself, a man of no cleverness and of no advantages, rising swiftly by means of it from insignificant poverty to the control of a great party. It had made him master of one of the great cities of the world. It had secured for him Governors, Legislatures, councils, and legal and executive authorities of every kind. He invested in land and judges. He bought dogs and lawyers. He silenced the press with a golden muzzle, and money made his will law.

Here was a man who wanted nothing that money could not buy: was it strange that he had unbounded faith in it? Every form of virtue was to him mere affectation, a more or less ingenious and tenacious "strike" for money. If a man spoke of honesty, patriotism, self-respect, the public welfare, public opinion, truth, justice, right, Tweed smiled at the fine phrases in which the auctioneer, anxious to sell himself, cried, "Going! going!" Argument, reason, decency—they were meaningless to him. If an opponent held out, he simply asked, "How much?" The world was a market. Life was a bargain. He felt himself with pride to be the largest operator in his way, as Vanderbilt in his, or Stewart in his.

In Albany he had the finest quarters at the Delavan, and when he came into the great dining-room at dinner-time, and looked at all the tables thronged with members of the Legislature and the lobby, he had a benignant, paternal expression, as of a patriarch pleased to see his retainers happy. It was a magnificent rendering of Fagin and his pupils. You could imagine him trotting up and down in the character of an unsuspicious old gentleman with his handkerchief hanging out of his pocket, that his scholars might show their skill in prigging a wipe. He knew which of that cheerful company was the Artful Dodger and which Charley Bates. And he never doubted that he could buy every man in the room if he were willing to pay the price. So at the Capitol, where sits the Legislature of a noble commonwealth of four millions of souls, he moved about with an air of fat good-nature, like the chief shepherd of the flock. If he stood at the door of the Assembly looking in, it is easy to fancy him saying to himself, The State pays these men two or three hundred dollars for four months' service; I will give them better wages. He did not doubt that it was a fair transaction. What is the State? It is only four millions of people, he thought, who are all trying to be rich—struggling, cheating, by hook or by crook, every man for himself, and the devil take the hindmost, to be rich. These men would be fools not to take my money. And he smiled his fat smile, and paid liberally for all that was in market.

There were some papers, whose price he could not ascertain, which persisted in speaking ill of him and his pals. If the fools did not know their own interest enough to be content with a good price—say, of corporation advertising—they must be silenced. The conceit of virtue must not be pushed too far. So one day his Legislature passed a bill virtually giving his judges power to imprison editors at their pleasure. But virtue—that is, in the Tweed theory of life, obstinacy in holding out for a higher price—mustered such a really respectable protest that the public project of coercion failed, and private methods were tried. Tweed had no doubt that reputation could be bought as well as power. Peter Cooper builds an institute for the education of the poor, does he? You mean, said Tweed, a monument to his own glory. He pays a certain number of thousands of dollars for the reputation of philanthropy. And Mr. Stewart builds a working-woman's palace. Ah! And Mr. Astor founds a library. Indeed! And they are benevolent gentlemen and benefactors of their kind? Not at all. They merely invest money in a certain kind of fame. That pleases their taste, as fast horses and yachts and pictures please the taste of other people. I will show you how 'tis done, says the faithful believer in the Dollar. And he gives fifty thousand dollars to the poor just as winter is beginning. "Let the cavillers say what they will," exclaim a myriad voices, "that shows a good heart." Tweed, as it were, tips a wink. I told you how it was done, he seems to say: what is there that money will not buy?

Is it surprising that such a man did not try to evade justice? Justice in his view was a commodity like legislative honor, like newspaper independence, like the reputation of benevolence. The reform movement was to him a sudden and confusing flurry, in which strikers, to whose terms he would not yield, had somehow gained a momentary advantage. He had perhaps made a mistake in not buying them at their own price. Success had possibly put him off his guard. He was sure that if an indictment were found, that would be the end of it, and he had no feeling of shame. His friend Fisk had shown what lawyers were made of, and he himself would buy lawyers and judges, sheriffs and juries. He knew that the one thing that in a needy and greedy world cannot fail is money. He came to his first trial, and the jury disagreed: naturally, for he had bought some of them. The evidence is, of course, moral only, but it is conclusive. If justice, facetiously so called, wanted another bout, he would "come up smiling." There was no trick or quibble that lawyers could devise for which he had not made munificent preparation, even to asserting that the judge who obstinately refused to name a price was disqualified from sitting at the trial. Money had never failed before; it certainly would not at this last pinch.