Memoirs by Charles Godfrey Leland Part 23

The day after we had seen Mrs. Box come in, I was praising the braveness of Lieutenant Hesselberger in venturing to rescue her.

"It isn't all bravery at all," said Brigham. "He's brave as a panther, but there's more in it than _that_. There is about one man in a hundred, and not more, who can go among the most G.o.d-forsaken devils of Injuns and never get hurt. The Injuns take to them at a glance and love 'em. _I'm_ such a man, and I've proved it often enough, G.o.d knows! Lieutenant Hesselberger is one, and," he added abruptly, "Mr. Leland, _you're_ another."

"What makes you think so?" I said, greatly surprised.

"'Cause I've watched you. You've got Injun ways that you don't know of.

Didn't I notice the other day, when the gentlemen were buying the whips from the Kaws, that every Injun took a squint, and then came straight to _you_? Why didn't they go to one of the other gentlemen? Because they've got an instinct like a dog for their friends, and for such as _we_."

We were coming to Fort Harker. I forget how it all came about, but we found ourselves afoot, with a mile or two to walk, carrying our guns, carpet-bags, and _pet.i.tes bagages_, while about fifty yards ahead or more there was Brigham driving on merrily to the fort, under the impression that we had secured other conveyance.

Captain Colton fired his carbine. It made about as much noise as a percussion-cap, and the wind was from Brigham toward us. Carried away by an impulse, I caught Colonel Lamborn's light rifle out of his hand.

"Great G.o.d!" he cried, "you don't mean to shoot at him?"

"If you'll insure the mules," I said, "I will the driver." My calculation was to send a bullet so near to Brigham that he could hear it whizz, but not to touch him. It was not so dangerous as the shot I had fired over Sam Fox, and the "spirit" was on me!

But I did _not_ know that in the covered waggon sat Ha.s.sard talking with Brigham, their faces being, as Ha.s.sard declared, just about six inches apart. I fired, and the bullet pa.s.sed just between their noses!

Ha.s.sard heard the whizz, and cried, "What's that?"

"_Injuns_, by G.o.d!" roared Brigham, forgetting that we had left the Indian country two days behind us. "Lie down in the waggon while I drive." And drive he did, till out of gunshot, and then putting his face out, turned around, and gave in full desperate cry the taunting war-whoop of the Cheyennes. It was a beautiful sight that of Brigham's broad red face wild with rage--and his great gold earrings and Mexican sombrero--turning round the waggon at us in defiance like Marmion!

But when he realised that _we_ had fired at him, just as a pack of d---d Apaches might have done, for fun, to stop the waggon, his expression became one of utter bewilderment. As I came up I thought there might be a s.h.i.+ndy.

"Brigham," I said in Spanish, "_es la mano o el navajo_?" [Is it to be hand, or knife?]

Brigham was proud of his Spanish; it was his elegant accomplishment, and this was a good scene. Grasping my hand cordially, he said, "_La mano_."

Like a true frontiersman, he felt in a minute the _grandeur_ of the joke.

There was, if I may so vulgarly express myself, an _Indian-uity_ in it which appealed to his deepest feelings. There was a silence for several minutes, which he broke by exclaiming--

"I've driven waggons now this twelve years on the frontier, but I never heard before of tryin' to stop the waggon by shootin' at the driver."

There was another long silent pause, when he resumed--

"I wish to G.o.d there was a gulch (ravine) between here and the fort! I'd upset this crowd into it d---d quick!"

That evening I took leave of Brigham. I drank healths with him in whisky, and shook hands, and said--

"I did a very foolish and reckless thing to-day, Brigham, when I shot at you, and I am sorry for it, and I beg your pardon. Here is a dagger which I have had for twenty-five years. I carried it all over Europe. I have nothing better to give you; please take it. And when you stick a Greaser (Mexican) with it, as I expect you will do some day, then think of me."

The tears rose to his eyes, and he departed. I never met him again, but "well I wot" he ever had kindly remembrance of me. We were to be guests of General Custer at the fort, and I was rather shy of meeting the castellan after firing at his driver! But he greeted me with a hearty burst of laughter, and said--

"Mr. Leland, you have the most original way of ringing a bell when you want to call a carriage that I ever heard of."

As for Ha.s.sard, when he witnessed my parting with Brigham, he said--

"This is all mighty fine! daggers and whisky, and all kinds of beautiful things flying around for Brigham, but what am _I_ to have?"

"And what dost thou expect, son Ha.s.sard?" I replied.

Holding out both his hands, he replied--

"Much tobacco! much tobacco!"

This was in allusion to a story told us by Lieutenant Brown. Not long before, the Lieutenant, seeing, as he thought, a buffalo, had fired at it. But the buffalo turned out to be an Indian on a pony; and the Indian riding fiercely at the Lieutenant, cried aloud for indemnity or the "blood-fine" in the words, "Much tobacco!" And so I stood cigars.

Life is worth living for--or it would be--if it abounded more in such types as Mrs. General Custer and her husband. There was a bright and joyous chivalry in that man, and a n.o.ble refinement mingled with constant gaiety in the wife, such as I fear is pa.s.sing from the earth. Her books have shown that she was a woman of true culture, and that she came by it easily, as he did, and that out of a little they could make more than most do from a life of mere study. I fear that there will come a time when such books as hers will be the only evidences that there were ever such people--so fearless, so familiar with every form of danger, privation, and trial, and yet joyous and even reckless of it all. Good Southern blood and Western experiences had made them free of petty troubles. The Indians got his scalp at last, and with him went one of the n.o.blest men whom America ever brought forth. {333}

That evening they sent for a Bavarian-Tyroler soldier, who played beautifully on the cithern. As I listened to the _Jodel-lieder_ airs I seemed to be again in his native land. It was a pleasure to me to hear from him the familiar dialect.

At St. Louis we were very kindly entertained in several distinguished houses. At one they gave us some excellent Rhine wine.

"What do you think of this?" said Ha.s.sard, who was a good Latinist.

I replied, "Vinum Rhenense decus et gloria mense."

In the next we had Moselle wine. "And what of this?"

I answered, "Vinuin Moslanum fuit omne tempore sanum."

And here I would say that every memory which I have of Missouri (and there are more by far than this book indicates), as of Missourians, is extremely pleasant. The State is very beautiful, and I have found among my friends there born such culture and kindness and genial hospitality as I have never seen surpa.s.sed. To the names of Mary A. Owen, {334} Blow, Mark Twain, and the Choteaus I could add many more.

So we jogged on homeward. I resumed my work. I had written out all the details of our trip in letters to the _Press_. They had excited attention. The Pennsylvania Railroad Company suggested that they should be published in a pamphlet. I did so, and called it "Three Thousand Miles in a Railroad Car." They offered to pay me a very good sum for my trouble in so doing. I declined it, because I felt that I had been amply paid by the pleasure which I had derived from the journey. But I received grateful recognition subsequently in another form. The pamphlet was most singular of its kind. It was a full report of all the statistics and vast advantages of the Kansas Pacific Road. It contained very valuable facts and figures; and it was all served up with jokes, songs, buffalo-hunting, Indians, and Brigham. It was a marvellous farrago, and it "took." It was sent to every member of Congress and "every other man."

Before it appeared, a friend of mine named Ringwalt, who was both a literary man and owner of a printing-office, offered me $200 if I would secure him the printing of it. I said that I would not take the money, but that I would get him the printing, which I easily did; but being a very honourable man, he was led to discharge the obligation. One day he said to me, "Why don't you publish your 'Breitmann Ballads?' Everybody is quoting them now." I replied, "There is not a publisher in America who would accept them." And I was quite right, for there was not. He answered, "I will print them for you." I accepted the offer, but when they were set up an idea occurred to me by which I could save my friend his expenses. I went to a publisher named T. B. Peterson, who said effectively this--"The book will not sell more than a thousand copies.

There will be about a thousand people who will buy it, even for fifty cents, so I shall charge that, though it would be, as books go, only as a twenty-five cent work." He took it and paid my friend for the composition. I was not to receive any money or share in the profits till all the expenses had been paid.

Mr. Peterson immediately sold 2,000--4,000--I know not how many thousands--at fifty cents a copy. It was republished in Canada and Australia, to my loss. An American publisher who owned a magazine asked me, through his editor, to write for it a long Breitmann poem. I did so, making, however, an explicit verbal arrangement _that it should not be republished as a book_. It was, however, immediately republished as such, with a t.i.tle to the effect that it was the "Breitmann Ballads." I appealed to the editor, and it was withdrawn, but I know not how many were issued, to my loss.

I had transferred the whole right of publication in England to my friend Nicolas Trubner, whom I had met when he had visited America, and I wrote specially for his edition certain poems. John "Camden" Hotten wrote to me modestly asking me to give _him_ the sole right to republish the work.

He said, "I hardly know what to say about the price. Suppose we say _ten pounds_!" I replied, "Sir, I have given the whole right of publication to Mr. Trubner, and I would not take it from him for ten thousand pounds." Hotten at once published an edition which was a curiosity of ignorance and folly. There was a blunder on an average to every page. He had annotated it! He explained that _Knasterbart_ meant "a nasty fellow," and that the French _garce_ was _gare_, "a railway station!"

Trubner had sold 5,000 copies before this precious affair appeared. After Hotten's death the British public were informed in an obituary that he had "_first_ introduced me" to their knowledge!

Hans Breitmann became a type. I never heard of but one German who ever reviled the book, and that was a Democratic editor in Philadelphia. But the Germans themselves recognised that the pen which poked fun at them was no poisoned stiletto. Whenever there was a grand German procession, Hans was in it--the indomitable old _Degen_ hung with _loot_--and he appeared in every fancy ball. Nor were the Confederates offended. One of the most genial, searching, and erudite reviews of the work, which appeared in a Southern magazine (De Bow's), declared that I had truly written the Hudibras of the Civil War. What struck this writer most was the fact that I had opened a _new_ field of humour. And here he was quite right. With the exception of Dan Rice's circus song of "Der goot oldt Sherman shentleman," and a rather flat parody of "Jessie, the Flower of Dumblane," I had never seen or heard of any specimen of Anglo-German poetry. To be _merely original_ in language is not to excel in everything--a fact very generally ignored--else my Pidgin-English ballads would take precedence of Tennyson's poems! On the other hand, very great poets have often not made a new _form_. The Yankee type, both as regards spirit and language, had become completely common and familiar in prose and poetry, before Lowell revived it in the clever _Biglow Papers_. Bret Harte's "Heathen Chinee," and several other poems, are, however, _both_ original and admirable. Whatever the merits or demerits of mine were--and it was years ere I ever gave them a thought--the public, which is always eager for something new, took to them at once.

I say that for years I never gave them a thought. All of the princ.i.p.al poems except the "Barty" and "Breitmann as a Politician," were merely written to fill up letters to C. A. Bristed, of New York, and I kept no copies of them--in fact, utterly _forgot_ them. _Weingeist_ was first written in a letter to a sister of Captain Colton, with the remark that it was easier to write such a ballad than any prose. But Bristed published them _a mon insu_ in a sporting paper. Years after I learned that I published one called "Breitmann's Sermon" in _Leslie's Magazine_.

This I have never recovered. If I write so much about these poems now, I certainly was not vain of them when written. The public found them out long before I did, and it is not very often that it gets ahead of a poet in appreciating his own works.

However, I was "awful busy" in those days. I had hardly begun on the _Press_ ere I found that it had a weekly paper, made up from the daily type transferred, which only just paid its expenses. Secondly, I discovered that there was not a soul on the staff except myself who had had any experience of weekly full editing. I at once made out a schedule, showing that by collecting and grouping agricultural and industrial items, putting in two or three columns of original matter, and bringing in a story to go through the daily first, the weekly could be vastly improved at very little expense.

Colonel Forney admired the scheme, but asked "who was to carry it out." I replied that I would. He remonstrated, very kindly, urging that I had all I could do as it was. I answered, "Colonel Forney, this is not a matter of time, but _method_. There is always time for the man who knows how to lay it out." So I got up a very nice paper. But for a very long time I could not get an agent to solicit advertis.e.m.e.nts who knew the business. The weekly paid its expenses and nothing more. But one day there came to me a young man named M. T. Wolf. He was of Pennsylvania German stock. He had lost a small fortune in the patent medicine business and wanted employment badly. I suggested that, until something else could be found, he should try his hand at collecting "advers."

Now, be it observed, as Mozart was born to music, and some men have a powerful instinct to study medicine, and others are so unnatural as to take to mathematics, Wolf had a grand undeveloped genius beyond all belief for collecting advertis.e.m.e.nts. He had tried many pursuits and failed, but the first week he went into this business he brought in $200 (40 pounds), which gave him forty dollars, and he never afterwards fell below it, but often rose above. "Advers." for him meant not adversity.

It was very characteristic of Colonel Forney, who was too much absorbed in politics to attend much to business, that long after the _Weekly Press_ was yielding him $10,000 a year _clear profit_, he said to me one day, "Mr. Leland, you must not be discouraged as to the weekly; the clerks tell me in the office that it _meets its expenses_!"

There was abundance of life and incident on the newspaper in those days, especially during election times in the autumn. I have known fights, night after night, to be going on in the street below, at the corner of Seventh and Chestnut, between Republicans and Democrats, with revolver shots and flashes at the rate of fifty to a second, when I was literally so occupied with pressing telegrams that I could not look out to see the fun. One night, however, when there were death-shots falling thick and fast, I saw a young man make a most _incredible_ leap. He had received a bullet under the shoulder, and when a man or a deer is. .h.i.t there he always leaps. I heard afterwards that he recovered, though this is a vital place.

It happened once that for a week the Republicans were kept from resisting or retaliating by their leaders, until the Democrats began to disgrace themselves by excesses. Then all at once the Republicans boiled over, thrashed their foes, and attacking the Copperhead clubs, threw their furniture out of the window, and--inadvertently perhaps--also a few Copperheads. Just before they let their angry pa.s.sions rise in this fas.h.i.+on there came one night a delegation to serenade Colonel Forney at the office. The Colonel was grand on such occasions. He was a fine, tall, portly man, with a lion-like mien and a powerful voice. He began--