II
The office of the Evening Times was a queer old curiosity shop. I set to and turned it inside out. I had very pronounced journalistic notions of my own and applied them in every department of the sleepy old money-maker. One afternoon a week later I put forth a paper whose oldest reader could not have recognized it. The next morning's Cincinnati Commercial contained a flock of paragraphs to which the Chattanooga-Cincinnati-Rebel Evening Times furnished the keynote.
They made funny reading, but they threw a dangerous flare upon my "past" and put me at a serious disadvantage. It happened that when Artemus Ward had been in town a fortnight before he gave me a dinner and had some of his friends to meet me. Among these was a young fellow of the name of Halstead, who, I was told, was the coming man on the Commercial.
Round to the Commercial office I sped, and being conducted to this person, who received me very blandly, I said: "Mr. Halstead, I am a journeyman day laborer in your city--the merest bird of passage, with my watch at the pawnbroker's. As soon as I am able to get out of town I mean to go--and I came to ask if you can think the personal allusions to me in to-day's paper, which may lose me my job but can nowise hurt the Times, are quite fair--even--since I am without defense--quite manly."
He looked at me with that quizzical, serio-comic stare which so became him, and with great heartiness replied: "No--they were damned mean--though I did not realize how mean. The mark was so obvious and tempting I could not resist, but--there shall be no more of them. Come, let us go and have a drink."
That was the beginning of a friendship which brought happiness to both of us and lasted nearly half a century, to the hour of his death, when, going from Louisville to Cincinnati, I helped to lay him away in Spring Grove Cemetery.
I had no thought of remaining in Cincinnati. My objective was Nashville, where the young woman who was to become my wife, and whom I had not seen for nearly two years, was living with her family. During the summer Mr. Francisco, the business manager of the Evening Times, had a scheme to buy the Toledo Commercial, in conjunction with Mr. Comly, of Columbus, and to engage me as editor conjointly with Mr. Harrison Gray Otis as publisher. It looked very good. Toledo threatened Cleveland and Detroit as a lake port. But nothing could divert me. As soon as Parson Brownlow, who was governor of Tennessee and making things lively for the returning rebels, would allow, I was going to Nashville.
About the time the way was cleared my two pals, or bunkies, of the Confederacy, Albert Roberts and George Purvis, friends from boyhood, put in an appearance. They were on their way to the capital of Tennessee. The father of Albert Roberts was chief owner of the Republican Banner, an old and highly respectable newspaper, which had for nearly four years lain in a state of suspension. Their plan now was to revive its publication, Purvis to be business manager, and Albert and I to be editors. We had no cash. Nobody on our side of the line had any cash. But John Roberts owned a farm he could mortgage for money enough to start us. What had I to say?
Less than a week later saw us back at home winnowing the town for subscribers and advertising. We divided it into districts, each taking a specified territory. The way we boys hustled was a sight to see. But the way the community warmed to us was another. When the familiar headline, The Republican Banner, made its appearance there was a popular hallelujah, albeit there were five other dailies ahead of us. A year later there was only one, and it was nowise a competitor.
Albert Roberts had left his girl, Edith Scott, the niece of Huxley, whom I have before mentioned, in Montgomery, Alabama. Purvis' girl, Sophie Searcy, was in Selma. Their hope was to have enough money by Christmas each to pay a visit to those distant places. My girl was on the spot, and we had resolved, money or no money, to be married without delay. Before New Year's the three of us were wedded and comfortably settled, with funds galore, for the paper had thrived consumingly. It had thrived so consumingly that after a little I was able to achieve the wish of my heart and to go to London, taking my wife and my "great American novel" with me. I have related elsewhere what came of this and what happened to me.