A Swiss paper had this little item the other day: “Among the crowd of fashionables at the resort of Ragatz, one does not notice a certain smallish, plain looking, sturdy man, who takes long walks alone, and who lives the simplest, least conspicuous life of any one there. No wonder few know who the quiet gentleman is. His name, possibly, is not even on the hotel register, but he is the first man in the great sister Republic beyond the sea. It is U. S. Grant.”
September 25, 1878.--Had another telegram from General Grant on the 22d, saying he would reach Zurich at 12:36 next morning. I took train and met him at Horgen. Mr. Corning, the Vice Consul, went with me. Mrs. Grant was with her husband. No one on the train seemed to know of their presence. We found them sitting alone in a little, first class coupé. I had flowers for Mrs. Grant, and they both received us very kindly. We rode together to Zurich and talked only about Ragatz and the pretty scenes they had just passed. Mrs. Grant was especially enthusiastic over the picturesque journey.
A great crowd assembled about the station where we entered. General Grant took my arm and walked to the carriage. Mr. Corning escorted Mrs. Grant. Just as the General was stepping into the carriage, a rough-looking fellow suddenly ran up, caught the General’s arm and cried out, “You are going to speak to me, hain’t you?” There was a momentary fright, and thought of assassination, among all of us. A policeman jumped forward, swinging a club, to arrest him. “Don’t you never mind,” the man cried out in English to the policeman. “I’m one of Grant’s old soldiers.” The policeman halted, seeing the General smile and reach his hand to the apparent ruffian. “Yes, General, I was with you and Johnny Logan at Vicksburg,” the excited man exclaimed, “and look here.” He commenced rolling up his sleeve and showed a wrist shot half in two. The sight of that soldier’s wound sent a quick thrill through every one of us. “The past of the nation was speaking there.”
The ceremony of the occasion was all forgotten. Had there been room, Mrs. Grant would have taken him into the carriage. For myself, I could have gladly walked, to let this wounded hero ride with his General. “Come and see me at my hotel,” said General Grant, “and we will talk it all over.” Again, he shook the stranger soldier’s hand, and the horses started.
“Three cheers for General Grant,” cried the soldier, swinging his hat to the crowd, that answered in a loud Swiss huzza.
In the afternoon, Mr. Nicholas Fish, the American Minister, who had come down from the capital to be at my dinner, went with me to the hotel, and we took the General driving about the town. Mrs. Grant preferred to rest. We went up on the terrace in front of the University, where is spread out to view one of the fairest sights in the world. The city lay below us, in front the chain of the Albis hills, to the left the blue lake, and beyond it the snow mountains.
The General was impressed with the view, but he was getting used to grand scenes in Switzerland; they are everywhere. He looked in silence. Shortly, he commenced talking about the spires and towers of the city below us; asked the name of almost every one of them, and spent a long time studying out the meaning of certain big, red letters on the roof of an orphan asylum under the terrace. He would not give that up. He asked the different German names for such things, how they were spelled, and finally guessed the riddle that neither I nor Mr. Fish (both knowing German) had been able to explain. This noticing everything and trying to solve it, is even to a greater extent a trait of General Sherman’s. May it not be genius’ method of intuitively making things its own?
He examined carefully the architecture of the University building, and talked with Mr. Fish about his father, the ex-Secretary of State. There was also a little reference to his own youth at West Point, not far away from the Fish’s country home.
We went down the terrace steps. Now I noticed that Grant was growing old. His elasticity of movement was all gone. He was getting stoop shouldered, too.
He told me of a stone quarry he had, I think in Jersey. “On the continued profits of that,” he said, “depends whether I shall stay very long abroad, or go back home.”