''Jj'ft...^^, jJK^

' 'l^ilflaffi ¦¦ 'Elfey ¦' donntiliy

jL: /Qxjuu^-^^i

//^

CkAA^

0^ .

YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

1937

.s^^'

INGALLS
OF KANSAS
A CHARACTER STUDY

BY
WILLIAM ELSEY CONNELLEY
Author of *' Ing:all8 Memorial Volume," "The Heckewelder Narrative,'
"John Brown," "Wyandot Folk-Lore," "Doniphan's
Elxpedition," etc., etc.

TOPEKA, KANSAS
PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR
MDCCCCIX

Copyright, 1909,
By William Elsey Connelley

d!-^,::,-:

PRESS OF
THE HALL LITHOGRAPHING COMPANY
TOPEKA. KANSAS
1035

PREFACE
A bolt of lightning is described as of small
amperage (scarcely any dimensions), but of ter
rific voltage (foree, power).
Intellectually the late Senator John James
Ingalls was a dynamo of limited amperage and
unlimited voltage.
He could not become a consuming fire, but he
could sometimes annihilate the object of his
wrath with a flash of his genius.
WILLIAM ELSEY CONNELLEY.
Topeka, Kansas,
August 30, 1909.

DIGEST
In my former volume on the late Senator
Ingalls I attempted little beyond the collection
and preservation of material. In character-
analysis such a work must of necessity be unsat
isfactory. My object is to supply that deficiency.
Here I present brief studies of Senator Ingalls —
In his Home life —
In his attitude towards Eeligion —
In his achievements in Literature, Oratory,
Politics.
They make up the sum of what he did in this
life. Knowledge of him in these relations will
reveal traits sufficient for the basis of an esti
mate of his powers and his character.*
*The articles from which quotations are made are to be found en
tire in my first volume— published by the Franklin Hudson Publishing
Company, Kansas City, Mo.

SYNTAXIS
I. Kansas and the Coming of Ingalls.
II. Home Life —
a. Mrs. Ingalls.
HI. Home Life —
a. His Children.
rv. Eeligion.
V. Literature.
VI. Politics.
VII. Miscellany.

KANSAS AND THE COMING OF
INGALLS
Those who were so many years acquainted with
the late Senator Ingalls supposed they knew him.
They met him to discuss political situations, saw
him before throngs and audiences, were charmed
with his perfect rhetoric and matchless sentences,
met him on trains and at hotels, wrote him let
ters and received replies, but not a single one of
them knew him. They walked to and fro with
him, and, wandering up and down in the earth,
turned night into busy day that he might not be
cast from his brilliant course. And they wept
with him when he fell never to rise again. Even
then they did not know him.
It was the good fortune of many to sit in car
or lobby under the spell of his inimitable mono-
drama until, pointing to the east, he said,
"Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops".
Yet they knew him not.
Senator Ingalls came early to Kansas. Topeka
was then a frontier village of cottonwood cabins
3

KANSAS AND INGALLS
lost in prairie grass and hazel brush. There was
not a mile of railroad between Missouri and the
Pacific Ocean, and long after his rise to emi
nence the buffalo stalled trains on the old Kansas
Pacific. The domain of the wild denizens of the
Plains extended from the "Wakarusa into those
endless wastes beyond the head waters of the
Eepublican and the Smoky Hill. The commerce
of the prairies still rolled over the Old Santa Fe
Trail in those ships of the desert fashioned after
the design of the famous Conestoga. He saw the
wilds subdued, — the solitude, filled with homes
and cities, the seat of an intelligent constituency
that met him with enthusiastic acclaim in the
zenith of his course, with not a citizen of them
all who knew him.
Some knew him better than others, of course,
and some of his friends of longest standing be
lieved they knew him through and through. All
was not given, however, to the most devoted.
There were chambers of soul to whieh none were
admitted. But this was not by design. It might
be said that he was unconscious of it — that he
sometimes wondered why he was misunderstood.
The cause was mainly temperamental — con-
4

KANSAS AND INGALLS
ventional only by incident. To some he gave
more than to others. To all he gave as much as
in him lay. To one some depth of soul became
visible. To another some flash of genius revealed
a different attribute.
Calvinism found a congenial soil in New Eng
land. Its harsh and intolerant aspects were in
tensified by the stern and bleak features of that
rock-bound land. The nature of every man is
deep-rooted in the soil of his nativity. The back
ground of the life of Senator Ingalls was the
granite hills of New England perceived through
Puritanism of the severest sort. The mild cli
mate, the generous soil, the broad expanse, the
immense rivers, and the gorgeous autumns of the
Great Plains softened the austerity and set aflame
the imagination of this scion of the Puritans.
Kansas attracted Ingalls. The very word en
grossed the Nation's attention. It became the
talisman of the champions of human liberty and
that noble band of Americans who determined to
build a state where slavery should never set foot.
It poised as a nemesis above those who sought
to rivet perpetual shackles on a portion of man
kind. What manner of land can it be ?

KANSAS AND INGALLS
A noble expanse of endless undulations rising
and falling like the mighty swells of the rolling
ocean. Here, the far-off rim of the world where
the purple mist, like an amethyst crown, presses
gently down upon the brow of the lovely land
scape. There, where the sun falls like a golden
globe, "From out the rich autumnal west
There creeps a misty, pearly rest,
As through an atmosphere of dreams,
A rich September sunset streams;
Thy purple sheen.
Through prairies green
From out the burning west is seen".
Valleys adown whieh wind the silvery streams,
marked by the dark-green foliage of trees, lying
like broad ribbons flung carelessly athwart a
tinted carpet aflame with wild flowers. Herds of
lowing cattle on a thousand hills. Troops of
horses for the armies of all the nations of the
earth. Fields of alfalfa dew-gemmed and glit
tering in the morning sun. Golden harvests so
ample that a world may have bread. "Walls of
corn — unending walls of corn. Cities where
commerce moves with busy feet, and iron ways
along which pour the products of a prosperous
6

KANSAS AND INGALLS
and happy people. The gentle rise of rolling hills
where come the generations of children to school.
And overhead and above all, away up and up,
the broad reaches of iridescent skies. There
eome, too, the lazy days when
"The cottonwoods that fringe
The streamlets take the tinge;
Through opal haze the sumach bush is burning;
The lazy zephyrs lisp.
Through cornfields dry and crisp,
Their fond regrets for days no more returning".
That is Kansas.
Eoving bands of Indians. "Wigwam villages
where women screamed to the chorus of wolfish
dogs. Herds of buffalo that surged up to the
Eocky Mountains like the waves of the restless
sea. Prairie-dog towns marking the lonely emi
nence. Clouds of sand-hill cranes drifting gro
tesquely overhead. The prairie chicken rising
nervously with whirring wings from the brown
grass. The sluggish fish in the soil-stained
streams. The earth and all that live thereon
where the winds were fierce and the heavens
brass. Brown tangled grasses of never-tilled
lands. Shallow streams wandering aimlessly until
they frayed out and disappeared in thirsty sands.
7

KANSAS AND INGALLS
Gnarled shrubs twisted awry by never-ceasing
winds. Eanks of swaying cottonwoods with
bending willows at their feet. Sunrise and sun
set, but no seed-time and never a harvest. Burn
ing siroccos, consuming drouth, biting blizzard
decade after decade, age after age, and no change.
That WAS Kansas.
There beyond the Mississippi it lay, its western
confines indefinitely set by the imperceptible rise
which reaches up to the snowy ranges of rock-
ribbed mountains. The vast basins of great trib
utaries of the Missouri lay to the north ; and the
branches of the lower Mississippi stretched away
to the south. Inaccessible from the west and be
yond reach of the east, it was set aside for the
use of the Indian by those who awaited a time
opportune for the effort to plant there the in
stitution of slavery. And thus it spread its fer
tile and primitive limits outside the pale of civil
ization while history was recording pages of
events. It had no large rivers, no high mountains, no
lakes, no dense forests, no fertile meadows, ap
parently no natural wealth. Kansas was a wild
desert where General Pike believed future gen-
8

KANSAS AND INGALLS
orations might perhaps raise goats. But it was
a desert with the possibilities of redemption.
Then "Came the restless Coronado
To the open Kansas plain.
With his Knights from sunny Spain".
And like the other Spaniards of his day, he could
"Die for glory or for gold —
But not make a desert quieken".
The Spaniard could plant a flag but not an em
pire in North America. And so he passed.
Then came the volatile and ever restless
Frenchman. To find the "West he traversed Can
ada. Far and wide journeyed the stern old Jesu
its. They explored the dark and gloomy forest
and followed tiny streams until they became "the
mother of floods, the father of waters". "Wander
ing through the melancholy woods in which were
the villages of the Hurons, they crossed the
mighty rivers to the land of the Dakotahs and
tlie Osages. But they never took root in Kansas.
And, so, they passed.
The Mississippi remained the western bound
ary of our country until
"The blue-eyed Saxon race
Came and bade the desert waken"

KANSAS AND INGALLS
But before this hour of destiny struck the nine
teenth century was in swaddling clothes. From
a compact habitat along the Atlantic these Saxons
had battled with the Frenchman on the north, the
Spaniard on the south, and with savages up to
and beyond the AUeghenies. They had rebelled
against the mother-country and won for them
selves and their children liberty and self-control.
One of the historic business-ventures of this en
terprising people was the purchase of Louisiana.
Along with many other things came Kansas.
After preliminary processes it was defined — had
bounds set for it. Then the two ideas of our
national progress came with followers to contend
for supremacy, which, once attained in Kansas,
was to carry with it mastery of the Nation. With
those who came to build the temple of liberty
came Ingalls.
Those who break the wilderness are always
the stalwart and the brave — the courageous —
men with faith, foresight, fortitude. The men
and women who came to settle and redeem Kan
sas were themselves descendants of pioneers —
"Strong builders of empire".
On the 4th day of October, 1858, John J. Ingalls
10

KANSAS AND INGALLS
arrived at Sumner on the steamboat "Dunean S.
Carter". He came, it seems, in search of this
city, whieh had been "depicted in a chromatic
triumph of lithographed mendacity", and at the
instance of "the loquacious embellishments of a
lively adventurer who has been laying out town-
sites and staking off corner lots for some years
past in tophet".
Sumner was the Free-State rival of pro-slavery
Atchison. Albert D. Eichardson, later the author
of Beyond the Mississippi, was a resident of
the town when Ingalls arrived. The town was
a few miles below the pro-slavery metropolis, and
it extended to and beyond a bluff so steep and
high that the main street was said to be "ver
tical". This town was founded by John P. "Wheeler, a
surveyor described as "a red-headed, blue-eyed,
consumptive, slim, freckled enthusiast from Mass
achusetts". He also founded the town of Hia
watha. He named his river town not for Charles
Sumner, as one would be likely to believe, but
for George Sumner (brother), who was one of
the proprietors of the place. Wheeler was an
abolitionist, and his town was conceived in the
11
—2

KANSAS AND INGALLS
same spirit that gave the Territory old Quindaro.
When the Civil War began the pro-slavery
people generally left Kansas or changed political
faith. Atchison had the better location, and the
people of Sumner gradually went there to live.
In June, 1860, a tornado blew down most of the
houses left in Sumner, and from this catastrophe
its extinction is dated. Jonathan G. Lang (the
original of "Shang" in "Catfish Aristocracy")
continued to live there on a tract of land which
belonged to Ingalls, and was, in jest, called "the
mayor of Sumner". Ingalls followed the other
inhabitants of the defunct city of "Great Expec
tations" to Atchison.

12

HOME LIFE
MRS. INGALLS

HOME LIFE
MRS. INGALLS

Of domestic felicity an undue portion fell to
Ingalls. In combat with men and the struggle
to maintain himself in the world he was bold,
diffident, imperious. In his home he was not so,
although there his bearing was that of dignity.
His ideal of home was a place of "sweet de
lights" whence man "goes forth, invigorated for
the struggle of life". Man ean not make a home.
He can contribute something towards it. With
due deference to modern movements to bring
women into public life — into political life — it
must be said that a wise providence fixed bounds
and limitations beyond which she ean not prop
erly go. And this was the judgment of Ingalls.
The platform, the forum, the fierce competition
of market and mart, the rough grapple at the
polls — these are for men.
Only woman can make a home. That is her
domain. There she is supreme. There is the
15

HOME LIFE
place of "sweet delights" where man renews his
strength, conceives his ideals, resolves upon pat
riotism, gains aggressive vigor for the battles of
life. All social and political progress must ema
nate from the good home. Such can woman (not
every woman) create and maintain.
Ingalls assumed the bonds of matrimony with
deliberation. He was nearly thirty-two. The
effervescent enthusiasm of youth and immature
manhood had burned itself away. The day
wherein he might have flung himself at the feet
of a giggling damsel in imploring posture had
happily passed, and his proposal of marriage was
by formal, self-respecting, but sincere and candid
written instrument. The recipient of this remark
able hymeneal overture was Miss Anna Louisa
Chesebrough, like himself, a resident of Atchison,
and of New England ancestry. She was immedi
ately descended from a line of New Tork
merchants and importers. The wedding was 27
September, 1865. IL
To understand the home-life of Ingalls some
thing must be known of the temperamental ten-
16

HOME LIFE
dencies of himself and wife. She was stirring,
aggressive, persistent, ambitious. She was san
guine, mentally strong, slow to abandon a pur
pose, tactful, diplomatic. He was conscious of
his ability, but was the most indolent of men.
He was well-nigh devoid of ambition, the little
he had aspiring to nothing beyond a sufficient
maintenance, — the object of all his early political
activity in Kansas. He was impractical, but not
visionary, and all his early efforts, successful or
not, were followed by periods of inactivity, tor
por, apathy. While the lessee of a newspaper
in Atchison one of his diversions was the study
of the specimen-books issued by type-foundries.
These he would pore over by the hour, seemingly
wholly engrossed with their jingling paragraphs.
It was the ambition of Mrs. Ingalls that her
husband should become noted as an orator. To
this one purpose she bent every circumstance.
By the Eepublican convention at Lawrence soon
after his marriage, Ingalls was offered a nomina
tion for Eepresentative in Congress. He refused
the place at the instance of his wife. She did not
believe the House held adequate opportunity for
the development of his latent powers. When to
17

HOME LIFE
others there appeared little possibility that he
could ever attain the place in a state having the
fierce and warring factions existing in Kansas,
Mrs. Ingalls set her heart on the Senatorship for
her husband and refused to consider anything
else. That he attained that exalted place was
due to her judgment and discretion, by which he
was ever guided and controlled. He reposed per
fect faith in her ability and rarely acted outside
of her direction. She did not so much care for
the reputation he might make as a statesman,
which accounts for the absence of great effort in
that direction. Her ideal was that he become
the foremost orator of the Nation.
m.
So much has been said in order to show the
complete acquiescence of Ingalls to the ascend
ency voluntarily accorded his wife. Por, as his
career was political, subserviency there carried
to all inferior matters. It had nothing of the
nature of the compelling mastery of a superior
mind, but was founded in unlimited confidence,
complete devotion to his wife. She contributed
nothing to his intellect. The funeral of Senator
18

HOME LIFE
Sumner moved him to a sense of his loneliness in
her absence, and he wrote :
How full of mournful tragedies, of incomplete
ness, of fragmentary ambitions and successes this
existence is! And yet how sweet and dear it is
made by love. That alone never fails to satisfy
and fill the soul. Wealth satiates, and ambition
ceases to allure: we weary of eating and drink
ing, of going up and down the earth, of looking
at its mountains and seas, at the sky that arches
it, of the moon and stars that shine upon it, but
never of the soul that we love and that loves us,
of the face that watches for us and grows brighter
when we come. . . . You seem so precious
and delightful to me, that I can hardly restrain
my impatience to be with you and feel at rest.
In sending her some violets from the mass of
flowers sent to the Senate Chamber for the serv
ices in honor of Senator Sumner held there, he
wrote :
I woke at half past two this morning after bad
dreams, feverish and restless, and longing for you
and for Baby Constance, who has grown so ten
derly in my heart. Much of our united lives
came back to me, incidents forgotten, songs you
sung to Euth in winter midnights in the little
back room up-stairs so long ago ; looks, caresses ;
painful, sad regrets for the injuries inflicted upon
19

HOME LIFE
your love by my indifference and coldness and
unkindness ; wonder that your love had not ebbed
away from me and left me stranded in misery
forever; hopes that we might not either be left
long upon this desolate earth to mourn the other's
loss. Oh, my darling! my heart cries out for
you and will not be comforted. You must never
forsake me, here or hereafter. If you go before
me to the undiscovered country, guard me, and
wait for me. If I precede you, search for me till
you find me, with entreaties and importunities
that will permit no denial, but will rescue me,
though ages intervene, from the profoundest
abyss. Ingalls wrote his wife full descriptions of his
journeys, detailing the most minute and unim
portant incidents. It gave him pleasure to be
intrusted with shopping commissions, his dis
criminating taste enabling him to execute them
to her satisfaction. An example of these traits
is shown in the following letter:
Gov. Harvey met me at the depot, wanting to
see me on some matters of business, and osten
sibly bound to visit some friends in "Trenton,
Mo.", but on my suggestion that he had better
go to Washington, he said he would deliberate
till we reached Kansas City, where he informed
me he had concluded to go. I have no doubt he
20

HOME LIPE
intended to go all the time, and that he started
out with that purpose, but thought he would
conceal it from me and make it appear like an
extemporaneous hasty movement made on my
suggestion. I did not attempt to undeceive him.
Nothing keeps a man so well satisfied with him
self as the belief that all his little games suc
ceed without being detected by anyone. He went
down on the "North Missouri", while we con
tinued on the Missouri Pacific, reaching St. Louis
without adventure Thursday morning. Tough
was with me, and after breakfast at the "Plant
ers" we crossed the river in the early sunrise
and were soon rolling over the prairies of Illinois
at the rate of twenty-five miles per hour. The
day was cold and cloudy with occasional showers.
The season is fully as backward through the
whole country as in Kansas. Many fields were
unploughed, and in others the grain was yellow,
sparse and starved, as though it had passed a
troublesome winter. The trees had hardly bud
ded, and the forest looked as gloomy and black
as in January. Thursday night at nine we were
in Cincinnati. The train did not move till 11 :10,
and we walked up to the new "Grand Hotel",
and looked through its marble corridors. A sud
den shower drove me to the depot, and as soon
as the sleeper was on the track, I went to bed
and slept well till we reached Parkersburg the
21

HOME LIFE
next morning. The breakfast there was abundant,
but cold, nothing being eatable but the stewed
oysters, of which I ate two dishes. The morning
was cold and raw, and the porter gave me some
pillows and a red blanket under which I slept till
we reached Grafton, where we changed into a
' ' parlor car ' ' with revolving arm-chairs and plate-
glass windows which afforded us a fine view of
the romantic scenery through whieh we ascended
and descended tiU night dropped her curtain
upon the landscape at Harper's Perry.
Mrs. Fairchild of Leavenworth was on the train,
to meet her husband at Philadelphia, and through
her I made acquaintance with quite a party of
ladies and gentlemen whose peculiarities were
more or less entertaining. Notable among them
was a lady from Derby, Connecticut, whose af
fectations, airs and gestures, were as good as a
play. She evidently desired to produce upon me
the impression that she was learned in all arts
and familiar with the great of all lands. Every
lady of her acquaintance was superb, and every
gentleman was elegant and courteous beyond de
scription. She took a seat back of me while I
was reading and made several attempts to open
conversation by casual remarks about the scenery,
to which I responded in monosyllables, but at
last, having fimshed the "Popular Science Month
ly" and got enough of Tennyson, I submitted to
22

HOME LIFE
the inevitable hy a series of questions that en
abled her to tell me what she was burning to
disclose in regard to her wealth, associations,
grand acquaintances, &c., to each revelation of
which I accorded an undisguised tribute of re
spect. As we neared our journey's end I told
her how much gratified I was by the fortunate
accident of our acquaintance, how much I had
profited by her ideas and what an honor I es
teemed it to know her, whereupon she brought
her husband round and introduced him, and he
gave me a cordial invitation to visit Derby where
his horses and carriages were at my disposal and
his house should be my inn. I don't think I shall
visit Derby this month.
We rode to Willard's in a street car, and I told
the clerk if he could give me a well-lighted, sun
ny, commodious apartment for a few days I would
stay with him, but otherwise I would go else
where. He looked at the register, rattled round
the key-rack, consulted three or four volumes
and pulled his mustache as though it was a fear
ful problem to solve, and finally gave me a pri
vate parlor, and bed-room with bath, on the east
front, second floor. There are probably fifty
guests at the house, with accommodations for five
himdred, so you see how necessary it was to be
deliberate and profound in his cogitations. I ad
mire hotel clerks. If I had time, I would write
23

HOME LIFE
an essay on the subject, but the Indian problem,
the Louisiana questions, and the coming Presiden
tial campaign require attention first.
Yesterday (Saturday) was pleasant and ver
nal. The city does not yet wear its summer
garb. Spring is backward. The leaves are about
half out. The grounds have not yet been cleaned
much, and the general aspect is wintry. I was
at the Departments all day; fixed up some post-
office matters : got several land-sales postponed :
had several appointments made 0. K. There is a
great row about the Indian contract for supplies
this year, and some Kansas men think they have
been badly treated, and I must help them if pos
sible. The Commissioner is going to New York
to see whether it can be arranged and I shall wait
till his return. I hope to leave Monday or Wed
nesday but may be detained later. I have not
yet seen the Att'y Gen'l in relation to Tough's
case, but shall do so to-morrow. Harvey is here
at the Ebbitt House. I met Gen. Boughton at the
"Holly Free Lunch" yesterday where I was regal
ing myself with a bowl of oatmeal and milk, and
he invited me to dine with them at four this P. M.,
which I agreed to do. Shad are plentiful, and so
is asparagus, but in other respects the markets
and tables are like winter. Breakfast begins
with oranges au naturel. Last night I went to
the theater and was sorry I forgot to borrow your
24

HOME LIFE
opera glass, as the "peerless M'Ue. Morlacchi"
danced very much like the oranges above named,
in the spectacular drama of the "French Spy".
I will not forget your hat and the dresses nor
the pap spoon. You are the dearest of wives,
the best of mothers, as well as one of the noblest
of your sex, and I only regret that I cannot do
more for you, and be more to you than I am.
You have the entire admiration, confidence and
esteem, and the undivided love of your
Unworthy but affectionate Husband.
IV.
Ingalls saw everything. Little that he saw es
caped record in his letters to his wife and chil
dren. The old Episcopal church-building at
Alexandria has had many visitors. Few of them
ever wrote a better description of it than Ingalls
sent his wife:
Mr. Blackford and I have to-day been to Alex
andria to the old church formerly attended by
Gen. Washington. We took the F Street cars to
the ferry at the foot of Ninth, and started at ten.
A brisk wind was blowing from the north, but
the day was otherwise pleasant. The little voy
age of six miles was accomplished in about half
an hour, and we were moored at the crazy old
25

HOME LIFE
dock of what was once an important commercial
metropolis. It is now a queer old decayed, dilap
idated town with narrow, steep and ungraded
streets that are a mixture of irregular cobble
stones and the nastiest kind of black mud. All
the sewage of the city is discharged over the
sidewalks into the gutters, and the pedestrian is
continually stepping over picturesque little rivu
lets of dishwater, soapsuds, and viler fluids, mixed
with potato parings, coffee grounds and cabbage
leaves that trickle over the uneven brick of the
pavement and twinkle fragrantly in pools and
puddles in the sun of the Grand old Common
wealth whose proud boast is that it is the mother
of states and statesmen. Gen. Stringfellow once
told me he had some relatives there, but I had
forgotten their names, or I would have called
upon them.
The church is almost half a mile from the
river and fronts west. It is built of rough red
brick that were brought from England, and ought
to be immediately taken back to the kiln they
came from. It is about sixty feet long by forty
wide, with a hipped roof, and a double tier of
small-paned, heavy-sashed windows that are
enough to give permanent obliquity of vision to
any man who looks through them. The bell-
tower is low, inartistic and quaint, with a round
top. On one side is a wooden projection covering
26

HOME LIFE
the entrance to the church and the galleries. It
stands in a small plat of ground, perhaps half an
acre, planted with scraggly old trees that cast
their weird shadows upon the ancient graves
that have sunk to a level with the rich grass that
covers them. It seemed strange to think that
those forgotten sepulchres had once been newly
opened, with the fresh earth heaped by their
side, and that weeping, heart-broken mourners
had seen their friends lowered into their silent
depths, and that now the loving and the loved,
the mourners and the lost, were wrapped in a
common oblivion.
On the north side of the church is a glorious
growth of ivy almost like a tree, densely matted
to the brick-work, and covering the roof and wall
with its sturdy, defiant and luxurious verdure. I
send you a leaf that I plucked close by the
window that looks in upon Washington's pew.
Upon entering, a very pleasant lady asked if
we were looking for seats, and showed us to a
side pew to the right of the rector, where we had
a fine view of the congregation. It is a plain
room, with galleries on three sides, with a row
of wooden pillars beneath, which, with the rest
of the wood-work, are grained. The pews are
high and have solid doors with buttons. The
walls are whitewashed, and the cushions are
mostly red, faded and shabby. The chancel is
27

HOME LIFE
raised two feet and projects into the room like
a platform. It has a wooden fence around it,
and the furniture, desks and chairs are modern
walnut. The choir consisted mostly of boys who
were gathered round the organ that stands in the
gallery fronting the preacher. The singing was
glorious. The audience was a cheap-looking col
lection of low-browed, poorly dressed commoners
with some notable exceptions. Many of the girls
were of the Virginia Herndon type, with scollops
and "spit curls" plastered along their brows
and temples, in regular waves that are supposed
to be so bewitching. The rector is young, dark,
smooth-shaven, high-toned, with a dirty surplice.
He read and preached from Isaiah — "The ox
knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib,
— but Israel doth not know, my people doth
not consider."
Nearly opposite me was a lady who looked
so strikingly like you that my heart almost
stopped as I looked at her, and thought that
perhaps you had unexpectedly come on and fol
lowed me in my wanderings. She was about your
height and stature and complexion, though she
wore a dotted veil which makes all women look
more or less alike. She had the same low broad
forehead, the same dark intense look from the
eyes, and that indescribable something that we
call "resemblance", and more striking than all
28

HOME LIFE
she carried her head one side higher than the
other, as you always do when sitting still. I
forgot to look for her when the services closed,
so that I do not know whether it was a fancy
evoked by distance, or not.
The seat that Washington used to occupy was
pointed out to me, and the ghost of the old
warrior seemed to fill the room with its great
presence, as I pictured him moving down the
aisle in the costume of a century ago, with fat
old Martha, his wife, and a dozen relatives and
dependents, besides those who waited with the
chariot outside.
I do not know when I have enjoyed a day
so much. The service really seemed good and
pleasant, and I would like to join a church if it
were always so satisfactory as to-day. Blackford
is very quiet and unobtrusive, but at the same
time affords that feeling of society which is
always a relief in a strange crowd. I do not like
to be wholly alone, and yet I do not like to be
disturbed. I never like to travel now without
an attendant of some kind, knowing the dangers
which beset public men. While waiting for the
boat which runs every hour, we ate an oyster-
stew, and reached the Washington dock at three.
I wonder what makes me love you so much.
Why is it that out of all the millions of women
in the world I turn irresistibly to you? How
29

HOME LIFE
have you established such a tyranny over me?
AVhy am I sueh a slave? Others smile upon me,
but I heed them not. My sighs constantly ascend
for you. When I look at the window whence I
used to see you watching for my coming, my
heart swells with grief and your name bursts
from my lips as if I were a child. There is a
feeling of dependence upon you, as if you eould
protect and defend me from all the evil in the
world, and as if you eould save me from the
dangers of the great hereafter. Your love is so
strong, so pure, so faithful, that it gives me a
sense of infimte tranquillity and infinite peace and
rest. I think much of the children, but they seem
to be only incidents of our love, not a part of me.
They separate us for awhile — they educate and
develop parts of our nature that would sleep
otherwise — and then like sweet Euth they take
wings and fly away, or they grow up and have
children of their own, and forget us, and we
know them no more save as memories. So you
and I have become less and less to our parents,
and as our children leave us, we shall become
more and more I hope to each other, till our
union shall be complete and eternal. I can
imagine no destiny so delightful as unobstructed
companionship with your noble nature, with the
love of your tender and passionate soul.
30

HOME LIFE
So it was always. He ever turned to his wife.
His home was the
"Golden milestone:
Was the central point from which he measured every dis
tance
Through the gateways of the world around him"-
V.
Mrs. Ingalls heard, by letter when not in
Washington, of the doings and habits of his
colleagues in the Senate, as witness:
The Colorado millionaire, Tabor, took his seat
last week. A fouler beast was never depicted.
He is of the Harvey type, but indescribably lower
and coarser. Such a vulgar ruffianly boor you
never beheld: uncouth, awkward, shambling,
dirty hands and big feet turned inward: a huge
solitaire diamond on a sooty, bony blacksmith
finger: piratical features, unkempt, frowsy and
unclean : blotched with disease — he looks the
brute he is. He was stared at with curious but
undisguised abhorrence.
D  C  is going to the bad at a hand-
gallop. He has been drunk for the last ten days,
and is now threatened with delirium tremens.
His poor wife is in despair. It seems as if the
devil had broken loose lately. V — has taken to
drink again after a year's abstinence and has
31

HOME LIFE
been kept in durance by his friends. Beck, Voor
hees, Morgan and half a dozen more are either in
flamed or besotted with whiskey half the time. I
am not sure that prohibition is not salutary. It
is singular that I am not led into this temptation
myself. My grandfather Ingalls fell a victim to
the appetite in his later days, and I have often
wondered how I escaped. Sometimes I feel an
unappeasable craving for champagne or ale, but a
glass satisfies me.
Whether despondent or in ecstacy, he turned
always and ever to his wife:
This is an enchanting morning. The air is daz
zling, and filled with the floating down of some
tree or flower, which is thicker than snowflakes.
It moves through the silver flood of sunshine with
an indescribably lazy, graceful, undulating, hith-
er-and-thither motion, which fills the soul with
languor and stirs an impulse to wander without
end or aim.
I just telegraphed you that I could not leave
till the last of the week. I enclose you two tele
grams rec'd yesterday to show you how I am
beset. I hoped to be able to leave to-night, but
it will not be feasible. — Last night, as I wrote
you. Gov. H. and I went to see "Eousby". She is
too tall for my idea of beauty, and too slender,
and her nose is too narrow, and she shows her
32

HOME LIPE
white teeth too artificially, but she is unquestion
ably very lovely, and with that statement the
whole has been told. She is not an actress, but
has good clothes. One green velvet dress with
gold bands down the front was very effective.
I rose this morning at seven-thirty, lay ten min
utes in a warm bath, ate half a shad for break
fast, and shall proceed in a few moments to the
Departments. My best wishes and my tenderest love go to
ward you through the splendor of this summer
morning which shines upon the world like your
affection upon the life of your Faithful Husband.

VI.

Called once to Washington and detained be
yond the time he intended to remain, though but
a few days, he became petulant and impatient,
ending a letter to Mrs. IngaUs as follows:
I hope soon to hear from you here. It is but
little more than a week since I left home, but it
seems a month. I miss you more and more. It is
such a consolation to know that you are near me,
in the room, in the house, by my side in sleep, and
always loving me, always ready to help in time of
need. I kiss you good night.
33

HOME LIPE
Such fetters as he was bound with are never
broken. They become the mainspring of life's
actions, the foundation of devotion and reverence.
VII.
Ingalls owned a tract of land below Atchison.
Much of it overlooks the Valley of the Missouri.
Growing on it were groves of fine forest trees. It
was his wish to erect there a residence in which
to live. He despised "the foolish wrangle of the
market and forum". It was his inclination to
live apart from the world, an esthetic dreamer.
The gratification of this whimsical desire the good
sense of Mrs. Ingalls prevented. Had it not been
for the practical and stirring qualities of his wife,
Ingalls would have died an obscure country law
yer or editor, a real-estate agent, a petty and
unsuccessful tradesman, or an employe in some
department of government — and more than likely
without a dollar.

34

HOME LIFE

HIS CHILDREN

HOME LIFE
HIS CHILDREN I.
To Ingalls and his wife were born eleven chil
dren. They were a source of unending pleasure.
He was very proud of them. Once he caught
sight of one newly escaped from the nursery, all
washed, combed, and primped: he seized it and
carried it before his guest, Albert D. Eichardson,
and exhibited it with fond pride. The children
were an inspiration, and he wrote his Kansas
Magazine articles with them about his knees,
with, sometimes, one sitting on his table. He re
ferred to this feature of that work in his note
to Mrs. Ingalls written on a proof-sheet of "Blue
Grass" which by accident came into his hands in
Arizona :
Dearest Wife: "Blue Grass" seems to be one
of those compositions that the world will not
willingly let die.
Those were happy days when it was written,
in the little cottage on the bluff looking out over
the great river, with a room full of babies: ob-
37

HOME LIFE
scure and unknown, waiting for the destiny, so
soon to eome — (that was to make me one of the
conspicuous figures of the country for so many
years). How far away it seems !
Ingalls had great solicitude for the health of
these little ones, and believing prunes conducive
thereto, insisted on having a supply constantly
at his disposal : meritorious actions were rewarded
with prunes. He obtained much satisfaction and
great amusement in constituting himself a judge
to hear and determine the grievances the chil
dren might find against one another in their daily
intercourse. n.
IngaUs had much comfort from his correspond
ence with his children, especially his daughters.
He was paradoxical and eccentric. Men never
could understand him. But women could readily
comprehend his whims and his fancies. Perhaps
this is another instance of a strong masculine
character with feminine traits and tendencies of
thought. In a letter to Constance, away at school, he de
scribed an entertainment for young people then
38

HOME LIPE
in progress at home. "There is much wise, im
proving conversation accompanied by convulsive
giggling and shallow shrieks of laughter", he
says ; and he ends with a rhyming warning against
sweetmeats :
Beware of the sweet-press.
For demons untold,
In its secret recess,
Their revelries hold!
Dyspepsia, sick-headache,
And blaek molars are there,
Wliose pangs goad their victims
To unending despair !
Beware of the sweet-press, —
Cake, jelly, and jam,
Ice cream and fried oysters,
Pie, candy and ham
Rob the eye of its brightness,
The cheek of its bloom.
Make the liver inactive
And the stomach a tomb !
In the appreciative and delicately attuned mind
all the phenomena of nature find instant response.
The adequate expression of the emotion thus gen
erated is literature if written, music if sung, art
if painted. To Constance, after a period of very
cold weather, he wrote :
The cold wave seems to have passed off, though
39

HOME LIPE
I don't like to say much about it, for we had a
pleasant day some time ago, and talked consid
erably and chuckled over it, and that night the
temperature sank below zero and stayed there
for two weeks. It was a struggle for existence.
We closed all the doors, shut off the hall, cut off
the water, had fires in the grates, stuffed cotton
in all the crevices, and lived like Esquimaux in
their igloos.
But it really is lovely this morning. I went out
for a stroll, after breakfast, on the stone walk, in
the sun. Two fat brown birds hopped about in the
branches of one of the shrubs, and Jim Crow [one
of the family cats] kept me company, sometimes
Avalking alongside, and then going before and
rolling over a time or two to attract attention.
When I pulled his tail and ears he growled fero
ciously and hissed like a snake, and then rolled
over again.
As I stood by the gate looking down towards
Mrs. Crowley's cabin — she and Tim are both ill
with the grip, influenza, colds, rheumatism, an
tiquity, &e. — the pealing bells of St. Benedict
broke out into a swelling tumult of exalting mel
ody, vibrating and rising and falling, rolling north
and south and east and west, down the valley
and up to the shining zenith, and after an en
trancing interval, died away and were still. It
was quite incredible that some shock-headed Pad-
40

HOME LIPE
dy, who probably carries a hod or drives a dray
during the week, could, by puUing a rope a few
moments, produce such an ecstacy of sound on
Sunday, without any idea that I would write you
a letter concerning it. . . .
The mind has much influence, and a cheerful
spirit is better than medicine. Eesolve to be
well: don't brood upon dark thoughts: throw
open the windows of your soul to the sun: take
short views of life : get plenty of air, plain food
and sleep, with moderate exercise. Write to me
if there is anything you want. I should be your
friend, even if you were not my child.
The expression of the emotions aroused by any
odd occurrence, droll incident, or ridiculous cir
cumstance is humor. It is one of the most agree
able, valuable and effective forms of literature.
Ingalls was keenly sensitive to this literary qual
ity, and his best writing is but an exemplification
of it. There is much of it in his letters to his
children. Barly one March he wrote to Con
stance :
The wind is east, and has been in the same
quarter most of the time for several weeks, with
fogs, vapors, mists and dismal lamentations by
night, as if we were by the sea instead of five
hundred leagues inland. It has not been very
41

HOME LIPE
cold, and under the drenching humidity the grass
has grown green, and the lawn looks like April.
I have never seen such verdure so early, but the
constant cloudiness is depressing.
This morning at breakfast we had a cat fight.
Dandy was the aggressor. He pretended to be at
play with Mr. Crow, who was not in a humor
for mirth, and seemed rather to resent famili
arity. But Dandy kept at it, and finally they
laid their ears flat on their heads, and spat on
their hands and cuffed each other soundly, rolling
and tumbling over each other on the floor, till at
last Jim ignominiously retreated to the sitting-
room in a very bad humor indeed for the first
Sunday in Lent.
The Friday Afternoon Club met here on their
day last week: a very pretty, well-dressed, and
well-behaved lot of girls, who would be an orna
ment and a credit to any society. Their topic of
discussion was Louis XIV or XV of Prance.
What they said about him I don't know, but I
have no doubt they made his royal ears burn, or
would have, had they not been in a much hotter
place. A fine morning in spring and a view, from the
bluffs about Atchison, of the Valley of the Mis
souri always threw Ingalls into rapture. In this
condition he drank in the beauties of the land-
42

HOME LIFE
scape, and in writing never failed to enumerate
them. And if the grotesque appeared anywhere
in the picture it was certain to be portrayed.
See this April letter to Constance:
This is a day when it is a pleasure to be alive.
The sky is intensely blue, and cloudless save for
a few white woolly cumuli that lie piled idly
along the northern horizon, above the green hills
that divide the waters of White Clay and Inde
pendence creeks. A scarcely perceptible breath
blows from the west. The grass glitters in the
sun. Dimly visible beyond the great curves of
the shining river, veiled in amethyst, are the
bluffs of St. Joseph and the trailing plumes of
smoke from its towers. The hyacinths, red, white
and blue, dazzle the eye like flame on the eastern
lawn, and crimson tulips in another bed, emulate
their fragile glory. The cherry trees in the orch
ard are turning white with blossoms, and the
apple trees are fairly green with their infant
foliage. James Crow lies lazily on the veranda,
and Limpy, the spotted cow, grazes near the cot
tage, pausing occasionally to contemplate the
awkward antics of her new calf that prances on
the sward with tail high in the air, and an aspect
of surprise at the exhibition of its unwonted
powers. Bed-clothes, mattresses and blankets pro
trude from the wide-open doors and windows of
43

HOME LIFE
the cottage, and a smell also that is equaUy
noticeable. The dull alternate thud of the carpet-
pounders resounds from the sitting-room carpet,
suspended from a line near-by, and clouds of dust
float towards Eeresby where the oaks and hick
ories seem almost conscious of approaching sum
mer. Yes : it is a nice day. It reminds me of the
guide-board in Bill Nye's recent letter — "Go to
Foley's grove and have a good time while you
are alive, for you'll be a long time dead!"
And here is one written the following Thanks
giving :
It is a most entrancing morning. I have just
come in from a stroll in the sunshine to and fro
along the stone walk to the north gate. The sky
is cloudless and the wind just strong enough to
turn the mill slowly in the soft air. The smoke
from the chimneys rises straight to the zenith
and dissolves in the stainless blue. In the deep
distant valley the river glimmers through a dim
silver mist woven with shifting purple like the
hues which gleam on the breast of a dove. Un
dulating along the horizon the bluffs rise like
translucent crags of violet and indigo (blue,
green, yellow, orange, red!) and from the city
beneath, as from a gulf profound, columns of
vapor and fumes from engines and factories,
44

HOME LIPE
ascend accompanied by a confused and inarticu
late murmur, like whispers of protest and pain.
During the night it rained, and the grass of the
lawn is green. It glitters and scintillates with
the transitory gems of the frost. Here and there
are disappearing ridges of snow from the storm
of Monday, and in the hollows of the grove the
bronze leaves of the oaks are piled high, to be
dispersed by the next gale, like the ruined gold
of a spendthrift, or the vanishing hopes of men.
We had a lovely breakfast at eight, — an
"American hare", with chops, fried potatoes,
cakes, fruit, and — pie! — pumpkin pie, upon
which I fed with my eyes only. James Crow sat
in my chair, gravely gazing at the viands, and oc
casionally looking up at me with a mute mew,
opening his mouth piteously without noise or
sound. Three white hairs have appeared in his
whiskers, one of whieh stands perpendicularly in
the atmosphere above his right eye, giving him a
rakish and mephistophelian aspect. If he ex
hibited a disposition to encroach on the table I
rapped one of his ears, which he regarded appar
ently as an act of great contumely, and would
have resented had he not been restrained by tim
idity, or hope.
Adieu, my dear child, and may the Lord have
you in His holy keeping ! Be good, docile, obedi
ent, studious. Eemember that we all love you
45

HOME LIPE
and think of you hourly, with tender affection.
I enclose you a little Christmas gift, prematurely,
but you can retain it till the time comes, if you
choose, or not, as you will.
A December letter shows appreciation of the
wintry season.
The morning is still and gray with an over
cast sky, presaging rain or snow. The few past
days have been like a reminiscence or prophecy
of spring, as if Nature were in a penitential mood,
making reparation for past transgressions, or
were furtively preparing for new depredations.
Yesterday after luncheon I rode to Hamerwood.
It was like April save for the lingering patches of
snow in places sheltered from the sun, and the
mire of the roads. But EoUa picked his way by
the side of muddy ruts, and we got along very
well. In the woods it was lovely, so still, and
fragrant with the damp and decaying leaves.
The waters in the pool under the cliff by the cas
cade were bright and clear as glass, reflecting the
network of twigs and branches like an etching,
and a little solitary silent bird was the only ten
ant of the forest. I found the cows in a sheltered
glade looking as sleek and comfortable and con
tented as need be, and apparently glad to see me,
Ole especially. I took a chunk of rock-salt in my
pocket for them, which she took in her mouth
46

HOME LIFE
and vainly tried to ehew. Her efforts were pain
ful to behold, though she seemed to enjoy it,
judging from the way her mouth watered, as the
children say. The others gathered about her, wait
ing for their turn to attempt to masticate the
delicacy, which she was rolling as a sweet morsel
under her lips like a girl in a chewing-gum ec
stacy. The sun was descending as I approached
the city, gilding with transient luster the towers
of Midland and the spires of St. Scholastico, and
the windowed front of the Orphan's Home, dimly
discernible through the mists against the northern
sky. The interval between Thanksgiving and Christ
mas to me is the pleasantest of the year. The
days grow shorter and shorter and the earth more
homelike and habitable; shut in from the mys
teries of the sky, one can be lazy and useless with
out reproach. I know of nothing more indolently
delightful than a brief day of drifting snow, with
its late morning and early nightfall, and an in
teresting novel by the seclusion of a smouldering
fire of logs on the library hearth. And there is
nothing more dreary and desolate than the next
morning, when the sun from a cloudless east
shines cold and clear above a white and glittering
waste. The Honorable James Crow is in good health,
though disgracefully corpulent. His obesity af-
47

HOME LIPE
f ects his voice, which is wheezy like an accordeon
with a hole in it.
Ingalls could not escape the consequences of
vagrant, worthless, shiftless neighbors, as wit
ness this :
The only thing commendable about the season
so far is that it is splendid for the grass which
thrives luxuriantly in the cool humidity. It is
so much richer inside our gates that all the vag
rant horses and cows on the common sneak in
when we are not looking, and then rush tumult
uously out when they are shouted at, knowing
very well that they are trespassers. There is one
old, blind and crippled quadruped with a long
rope attached to a block of wood who seems par
ticularly fiendish in his invasions. I was nearly
choked with rage just after breakfast by find
ing him in again on my finest sward. I thought I
should have an apoplexy, and shouted to Ben to
capture him, and then call the City Marshal to
take the beast to the pound. Just then a bare
footed, bareheaded girl in a flapping pink calico
garment came running over the hill, and upon
inquiry informed me the animal was "ours", and
drove him away. I think some of having the
place fortified with a line of earth-works all
round, with bastions at the corners, and a draw
bridge and portcullis. Then with four pieces of
48

HOME LIFE
artillery, and a regiment of infantry armed with
magazine rifles, we can protect ourselves against
the incursions of our neighbors.
Last week when the weather was fair I spent
a day burmng the leaves and brush in the groves
and hollows in every direction about Oakridge.
The wind had brought in all the newspapers and
rags and debris of this part of the country and
lodged them against the trees and fences and
shrubs and in the ravines. The smoke of my con
flagration filled the whole valley of the Missouri,
and must have been visible as far as St. Joseph
and Leavenworth. It looked very black after
wards, but the new grass is growing, and it is
like a great park in every direction. The nodding
flowers of the dog-tooth violet deck the warm
slopes with their transitory beauty, and the dan
delions are preparing to star the verdure with
their vanishing gold.
This raking and burning on the first day pos
sible in the spring was a habit with Ingalls. The
day was regarded with something akin to terror
by the household, particularly the cook. She al
ways declared he would set the house on fire and
never failed to provide pails of water for that
emergency. But he was so much in earnest and
raked so vigorously and issued orders and gave
49

HOME LIFE
commands so grandly and took the whole matter
so seriously, that there was enjoyment in watch
ing him.
He never failed to describe in his letters the
country through which he passed nor the objects
of interest coming under his observation. He
wrote Constance of his visit to Springfield, Mo.,
noting the principal features of that fine town :
I returned last night from Springfield, Mo.,
where I spoke Monday night. Your Uncle Fran
cis, you remember, is President of a college there.
The town lies rather incoherently scattered along
the ridge of a stony hill, one of the spurs of the
Ozark Mountains, sloping towards abrupt and
picturesque valleys, shaded with forests of stunt
ed oaks, and bright with the purple of violets
and the gold of dandelions and other nameless
blooms. Tuesday afternoon we drove to the
Mysterious Spring from which the city is sup
plied with water. Descending a rugged decliv
ity, we emerged upon a little verdant plain, con
fronted on the north by a ledge of gray rock ris
ing perhaps fifty or sixty feet and wrinkled by
frost and rain and snow and heat like the bony
forehead of an aged hermit. It was overhung
by the branches and vines of a forest just touched
with the verdure of April, and in the crevices of
50

HOME LIPE
the cliff nodded precarious flowers in the soft sun
light. At the foot of this crag opens an arch
with regular curve perhaps twelve feet wide and
six feet high, the mouth of a cavern receding
into the rock, from which, like the fountain at
Horeb, emerges a strong bright clear stream of
water so copious and constant that it is more
like a subterranean river than a spring, and fur
nishes twenty thousand people with an abundant
supply for their kettles and coffee pots. By en
closing a space in front of the arch with a wall of
masonry a reservoir has been constructed in
which the waters are collected for distribution
by great pumping engines in a house near-by. It
makes a lovely pool like that of Siloam, trans-
lucently clear and pure like the hue of young
lettuce leaves, and the surplus falls in a musical
cascade over a dam and goes dancing and laugh
ing down the valley.
As to how Ingalls was affected by external
agencies he gives some insight in these letters
to Constance:
Vocal music is an accomplishment that never
appealed to me very strongly, except choirs of
men's voices singing simple chords and familiar
melodies. I have heard many of the best women
artists with no other emotion than that with
which one sees a performance on the trapeze.
51

HOME LIPE
But instrumental music moves me very power
fully, agitates me with uncontrollable and inde
scribable intoxication. The distant strains of a
martial band vanishing with the march: a quat
rain of negroes blowing "harmomcums" at night,
minor chords and nocturnes on a piano with low
notes and plenty of pedal for vibration lingering
on the sense : a bell faintly ringing beyond a for
est — such things sometimes move me even now,
old and tough and world-worn and weary as I am,
to tears. They summon spirits from the vasty
deep : the ghosts of hopes that are dead : of dreams
that have faded: of friends that are gone: of am
bitions that are quenched: of life's joy and bloom
and splendor that will return no more.
To me the loss of sight would be the greatest
affliction because my love of nature and physical
beauty is so strong. Hearing is limited. A short
distance, the loudest sounds are inaudible. So
with taste. It gives delight, but the body can be
nourished without the sensibility of the palate
and the tongue. If dumb we can still write and
read and hear. If we are unable to perceive the
fragrance of flowers we can yet be charmed with
the color and outline. If deaf we can communi
cate with the eye and the pen. But to be blind
is to be imprisoned in perpetual darkness: shut
out from the universe, from the aspects of the
earth, the sky, and the sea : unable to go or come :
52

HOME LIPE
compelled to be led and fed and dressed like an
infant, and denied the joy of beholding the faces
that we love. But after all we adapt ourselves to
these privations without much grief. I have seen
many blind persons, but they are generally cheer
ful enough and seem to enjoy life very well. The
soul is independent of the senses. These are the
avenues through which it communicates with
others temporarily, and are not necessary to its
existence. I have no doubt there are many senses
we do not possess : many properties of matter
with which we are unacquainted: many more
dimensions than length, breadth and thickness:
more colors than those which glow in the rain
bow and the rose : many conditions immediately
about and around and within, that we do not
perceive, any more than my horse understands
history and arithmetic, or the fish swimming in
the ocean comprehends the great steamships with
their cargoes of men and women and merchan
dise ploughing the waves which are his firmament.
It is an incomparable morning. The grass glis
tens with thick white frost, and the dense columns
of smoke and vapor from the town below, ascend
slowly toward the dazzling sky. The vibrations
of the convent bell, ringing for nine, linger for
an instant, cease and are still.

53

HOME LIPE
III.
Ingalls was able to put himself on a level with
the child in his correspondence • — to feel and
write like a child. He always had something to
say that would certainly interest the young mind.
To Marion he wrote of a trolley party :
Sheffield reports this morning that you had a
splendid trolley party last night, with many elec
tric lights, fine music and refreshments. Similar
splendor prevailed here. The grounds at Oak
ridge were illuminated by an unclouded moon
specially ordered for the occasion, several hun
dred thousand stars, and a million lightning-bugs.
During the intervals till midnight four thousand
bands composed of eleven hundred locusts, two
thousand katydids and 7,569 black crickets played
ragtime in the grass.
And see this: The
little Chester
White
Pig died
thismorningabout 54

HOME LIPE
eight
o'clock.
Thecalf
iswellandhappyand
so is
Papa.
Here is the fate of the gum-chewer cleverly
stated in what he terms —
THE SAD HISTOEY OF A LITTLE GIBL IN ALABAMA WHO
CHEWED GUM.

She got aboard at Pleasant Gap
To go to bus Colum*
And when the train-boy came she bought
Some Pepsin chewing gum. II
She chewed and chawed and chawed and chewed
And chewed and chawed and chewed
And chawed and chawed and chawed and chewed
And chewed and chawed and chewed.
?This should have been "Columbus" instead of "bus Colum", but it
wouldn't rhyme. 55

HOME LIPE
III
And when she climbed the golden stair
To go to Kingdom come,
She never laid her cud aside
But kept on chewing gum.
IIII
Saint Peter met her at the gate
A looking very glum:
She said "Oh, is my hat on straight?"
And kept on chewing gum.
IIIII
"Why do you work your jaws?" says he,
"From which no accents come?"
"Oh that's because I chews", says she —
"And wouldn't you like some?"
IIIIII
Whereat Saint Peter got very hot
And whacked her with his key,
And round she went, and down she went,
"You mean old thing", says she.
IIIIIII
Past sun and moon and stars she fell.
With terror stricken dumb:
But through the wreck and crash of worlds
She kept on chewing gum!
Nothing could be more droll and entertaining
than the following letter to his daughter Marion,
56

HOME LIPE
written in a serious vein, but in all kindness, and
evidently in amusement:
I received your letter yesterday, but it was so
hot, and I was so busy, that I could not go out
to get the gloves. I determined to rise early this
morning, and when I looked at my watch it was
a quarter before six. This was too soon to rise, so
I put my watch back under the pillow and took
another nap. When I looked again it was nearly
seven, and feeling that no time was to be lost,
I bathed, shaved and dressed as rapidly as pos
sible. Then I rung for breakfast. I had two
great plums, one purple and one yellow, three
slices of dry toast, an egg, breakfast bacon and
coffee. By this time it was nearly eight o'clock,
and I left the house. I was for some time in
doubt whether to take a herdic or a street-ear,
but finally concluded in favor of the car, and
turning slowly down New Jersey Avenue I waited
at the corner near the B. & 0. depot until an
open car came along. I took a front seat by the
side of a young man in a seersucker coat. When
the conductor appeared I handed him a dollar
bill. He gave me three quarters in silver and a
package of six tickets, from which he took one,
entitling me to a seat till the end of my journey.
We passed slowly westward along D Street, into
Indiana Avenue, past the City Hall and Police
Headquarters, into Fifth Street. Here the car
57

HOME LIFE
stopped to let off some passengers for the Pension
Office, and starting up again ran smoothly along
P Street, and paused at the corner of Ninth.
Some confusion occurred here, so many desiring
to leave and enter the car at the same time,
but at last we moved on, and arriving at the cor
ner of Eleventh, I rose and went to the rear plat
form. Fortunately a lady was waiting at that
place to take the ear, so I was not compelled to
have the car stopped on my account.
Entering the store, I inquired where kid gloves
for children could be found. A polite attendant
directed me through an arched opening to a dis
tant counter, where I found a homely young lady
with pimples and a pink cambric or gingham
dress. I made known my errand.
"What size?" said she.
"Five and five and a half," said I.
"One pair?" said she.
"One of each size," said I.
Turning to the case behind her, she took out
two packages carefully folded in white paper.
"Who are they for?" said she.
"For Marion Ingalls, of Oakridge, near Atch
ison, Kansas, and her little sister Muriel," said I.
"Has she any money to pay for these gloves?
They are a dollar and a quarter a pair, and we
sell only for cash," said she.
"She has between four and five dollars," said I.
58

HOME LIFE
"Where is it?" said she.
"In her bank at Atchison," said I.
"Why didn't she send it?" said she.
"She forgot it," said I, feeling so badly that I
thought I should weep.
She began to put the gloves back into the boxes
again, saying that Mr. Lathrop told her not to
sell kid gloves to little girls unless they sent the
money along to pay for them, but agreed at last
to let me have them if I would advance the
amount till she eould hear from you. This I did,
and you will find the gloves in this soap-box, the
fives for you and the five and a half for Muriel.
Another in the same vein was later written to
Marion and Muriel, from which the following is
taken :
I worked very hard all the forenoon, sitting in
the hammock while Warner pushed the lawn-
mower and George weeded the walks and flower
beds. They furnished the muscle and I supplied
the brain power. It was a great strain, but I kept
resolutely at my task, resisting all temptations to
idleness, and when it was over I felt amply re
paid for all my efforts by the consciousness of
duty performed and the smiles of an approving
conscience. Tag sat in the shade snapping at the
flies, and the birds sang now and then in the
branches. I was shocked by the selfish and in-
59
-5

HOME LIPE
considerate conduct of the bantam cockerel who
clucked whenever he found a fat bug, and as soon
as his family came up, ate it himself.
My labors were increased by a man who came
to make some repairs on the roof, and when Pul
len 's ice-wagon drove up, I began to think I
never should get through. Just as I began to
see the end of my toil, the carpenter appeared to
put a screen-door to Sheffield's room to keep the
mice from biting him in the night, and put a lock
on the sideboard. By the time the bell rang for
luncheon I was so exhausted that I could hardly
walk to the ice-water bucket, but the sight of
food revived me somewhat, and I was barely able
to eat two slices of cold lamb, three baked po
tatoes, two slices of bread and butter with cur
rant jelly, a spoonful of smearcase, a dish of
strawberries, a piece of cold apple pie, a slice of
cake, a peach and an apricot, with a glass of
water and a cup of tea, after which I felt re
freshed. The sensitive mind is started in a strain of
thought by mere suggestion. The mention of
golf by his daughter Muriel brought her the
following :
I had my hair cut this morning after breakfast
at the tonsorial parlors of Felix : price, thirty-five
cents. It is a great drain on my resources. My
60

HOME LIPE
hair requires cutting once every three weeks at
least, sometimes oftener, or it becomes ragged
and bummy. Call it five dollars a year, for fifty
years, and there you have two hundred and fifty
dollars, and the hair gone also. Supposing the
hair to grow a foot a year, my tresses by this
time would have been fifty feet long, so that
when I got to the bottom of the stairs the ends
would just be dragging out of my chamber door.
One year in college, however, I let my hair grow
and hang down on my shoulders in curls like a
sissy boy, so you might leave off one foot.
So, golf has struck Atchison at last ! It has
been a long time coming, but I have no doubt it
is good healthy recreation. It is odd that the
entire human race spends most of its time knock
ing little balls about. The baby has a rubber
ball. The boy plays marbles, and as he gets
older, plays base ball and football. Then he
knocks balls with a stick about the billiard tables.
Then he takes larger sticks and hits little balls
in polo and golf. When children get angry they
throw spit-balls, and if men are mad they shoot
pistol-balls. As soon as a girl grows up, she im
mediately wants to go to balls — (Loud cries of
" Oh ! oh ! — Sneak ! — Come off ! — What ye giv
in' us!" etc.) So I desist, except to say that the
Creator has filled the Universe of space with balls
of different sizes which He spins and whirls about
61

HOME LIPE
in all directions, and that we have a good ex
ample.
I omitted to bring in fish-baUs, and the bawls
of the brat that stubs his toe and falls down, but
these and many others will naturaUy occur to you
without being specifically mentioned.
Ingalls did not, however, always write humor
ously to his children. Concerning her approach
ing marriage he wrote his daughter Ethel a beau
tiful and affectionate letter:
We are not, as a family, very effusive, nor much
given to demonstration. We do not "wear our
hearts upon our sleeve for daws to peck at",
though I have no doubt we feel as deeply as
those who profess more profusely.
I have thought much during the solitude of
my voyage, while looking at the incessant fluctu
ations and vague horizon of the sea, of an ap
proaching separation, with the regrets that al-
wajs accompany sueh epochs, for the delinquen
cies and errors that are irreparable, and which
we deplore when it is too late to make amends.
While on some accounts I am sorry that you have
concluded to marry, on others I perhaps should be
glad : for while no station is exempt from sorrows
which are inseparable from human life, a happy
marriage no doubt has a preponderance of bless
ings, and the character and conduct of the man
62

HOME LIFE
you have chosen are such as to justify any rea
sonable anticipations of felicity. No choice could
have been more acceptable to me, since a choice
had to be made, and I am sure that it will be a
consolation to you to know that my judgment and
my affection approve the dictates of your own.
You have been a good child, and none can ever
have a higher or more tender appreciation of
your personal charms, and the graces of your
life and demeanor than your mother and myself.
I regret that on account of the misfortunes and
burden of these troublous times, I shall not be
able to do as much for you as I could wish, but
fortunately your aspirations have never been ex
travagant, so that we shall, I hope, be able to
meet your reasonable expectations.
Of his mother he wrote Marion from Tucson
not long before his death, saying:
Your grandmother was born March 15, 1812,
and will be eighty-eight years old in a few weeks.
She is a very remarkable woman physically and
mentally. She never had much strength, and
her health always seemed fragile. She suffered
greatly in her earlier life from sick headaches
and sleeplessness. She ate but little and never
took much exercise. She was always slight and
delicate, and had none of the indications of long
life. So, it would seem that longevity is an in-
63

HOME LIPE
heritance. rather than an attainment, and de
pends little upon habits and conduct and ways of
living. Her mind is quite as extraordinary, and
her memory, perceptions, and interest in life have
been preserved without abatement. While not
highly educated, nor a great reader, nor in any
sense a student, she has always kept acquainted
with what was going on in the world, and her
recollection of recent events is quite as acute as
that of the affairs of her distant childhood and
youth. Nothing can be more instructive and en
tertaining than her descriptions of the dress, aud
housekeeping, and habits of people seventy-five
3'ears ago, before there were any railroads, or
steamboats, or telegraph, or telephones, or sew
ing machines, or electric lights, or friction
matches, or photographs, or street cars, or any
of the conveniences now considered so indispens
able in modern life. She thinks there was quite as
much happiness and more contentment then than
now. She was a very kind and faithful mother
to us all, but never affectionate nor demonstra
tive, though no doubt she felt quite as deeply
as those who make more fuss. I don't think she
was very "religious" as that word is commonly
used, though she "belonged to the church", and
attended worship regularly till recently. She
was very ambitious and "practical". She Uked
wealth, and success, and rank, and station, and
64

HOME LIFE
good clothes, but she has the philosophic spirit,
and never to my recollection, found fault with
fortune, nor complained because any of her
wishes were not gratified.

65

RELIGION

RELIGION

IngaUs, like Omar, believed that no man ever
pierced the secret, — that no man ever drew aside
the veil of fate. With Taine, he was of the
opinion "that primitive religions are born at the
awakening of human reason, during the richest
blossoming of human imagination, at a time of
the fairest artiessness and the greatest credulity,
— that whatever develops credulity side by side
with a poetical conception of the world engen
ders religion".
To the bold and independent intellect of In
galls these principles appealed. The origin of
religions and the development of deities, as stated
by Eenan, appeared reasonable to Ingalls. He did
not, however, accept fully the views of these
brilliant Frenchmen.
To him the fact that the soul was prone to
grope in the obscurity veiling the purpose and
destiny of man was proof that there was some
attribute in his spiritual nature which compelled
69

EELIGION
the birth of primitive religions at the awakening
of human reason, — a cause lying behind the
unrent veil, an inherent desire for immortality,
a profound aspiration.
Upon this attribute, dimly discerned, faintly
felt, feebly manifested, man reared such rude
systems as his environment enabled him to evolve.
These conceptions did not carry IngaUs into
the hopeless fields of materialism. Beyond the
position that our knowledge is not sufficient to
warrant any definite determination of the su
preme problems of man's existence here he did
not go. Standing back in that era of "the awak
ening of human reason" to which this process
carried him, he could see what our progenitors,
for want of human experience, could not discern,
— the wrecks of numberless systems abandoned
along the course over which mankind had taken
way. Seeing these, he realized the futility of
formulating metaphysical schemes.
To sustain his "profound aspiration" to im
mortality he, like Plato, had recourse to reason.
"Inasmuch," he says, "as both force and matter
are infinite and indestructible, and can neither be
added to nor subtracted from, it follows that in
70

EELIGION
some form we have always existed, and that we
shall continue in some form to exist forever."
This lacks only the principle of evolution to
constitute a basis for endless progress. But this
essential he seems to reject. "Evolution, metemp
sychosis, reincarnation, are not beliefs. They are
parts of speech, interesting only to the compiler
of lexicons."
His strongest terms of disapprobation became
a confession to lack of knowledge. He did not
deny nor condemn, — his position forbade that.
He did not know. Beyond that he could never
go. "Whence we came into this life no one
knows," he exclaims. Perhaps the most deflnite
and confident utterance of IngaUs on this point
is to be found in his oration delivered in the
Senate on the death of Senator Hill, of Georgia.
He was then at the zenith of his intellectual
power, and what he said in that period of his life
must be regarded as his settled conviction:
Ben Hill has gone to the undiscovered country.
Whether his journey thither was but one step
across an imperceptible frontier, or whether an
interminable ocean, black, unfluctuating, and
voiceless, stretches between these earthly coasts
and those invisible shores — ^we do not know.
71

EELIGION
Whether on that August morning after death
he saw a more glorious sun rise with unimagin
able splendor above a celestial horizon, or whether
his apathetic and unconscious ashes still sleep in
cold obstruction and insensible oblivion — we
do not know.
Whether his strong and subtle energies found
instant exercise in another forum; whether his
dexterous and disciplined faculties are now con
tending in a higher Senate than ours for suprem
acy; or whether his powers were dissipated and
dispersed with his parting breath — we do not
know. Whether his passions, ambitions, and affections
still sway, attract, and impel ; whether he yet re
members us as we remember him — we do not
know. These are the unsolved, the insoluble problems
of mortal life and human destiny, which prompted
the troubled patriarch to ask that momentous
question for which the centuries have given no
answer: "If a man die, shall he live again?"
Every man is the center of a circle whose fatal
circumference he cannot pass. Within its nar
row confines he is potential, beyond it he perishes ;
and if immortality be a splendid but delusive
dream, if the incompleteness of every career, even
the longest and most fortunate, be not supple
mented and perfected after its termination here,
72

EELIGION
then he who dreads to die should fear to live, for
life is a tragedy more desolate and inexplicable
than death.
These principles were reiterated by Ingalls less
than four months before his death in his article
—"The Immortality of the Soul". That he died
immovable in their truth there can be no doubt.

II.

Of Jesus of Nazareth, Ingalls said, "He is the
central character of human destiny, the one colos
sal figure of human history." But in this he is
not to be understood as subscribing to the plan of
redemption of souls said by His followers to have
been proclaimed by Him. Eather, His teachings
are to more and more prove the germs from
which political progress and higher civilization
must develop.
The central idea of Christianity, as now pro
mulgated, is the resurrection. "If Christ be not
raised, your faith is vain," wrote Paul to the
Corinthians, and, he continues, "they also which
are fallen asleep in Christ are perished." "If
in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are
73

RELIGION
of all men most miserable," he warns the world
ly-minded. "I am the resurrection and the life,
saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though
he were dead, yet shall he live : and whosoever
liveth and believeth in me shall never die,"
wrote the Beloved Disciple. The resurrection of
the dead, as held by the Church, rests mainly on
the utterances of the great apostle to the Gentiles.
But for himself, Ingalls swept this away with a
stroke of his pen, — "Saint Paul, the greatest of
the teachers of Christianity, could only respond
by a misleading analogy. He knew the wheat
which is reaped is not that which is sown. The
harvest is a succession, not a resurrection."
But even here Ingalls did not lapse into the
despair of atheism. Writing to his father of the
death of his son Addison, he said: "His sweet
soul vanished into the Unknown. Yesterday be
neath the clear sky that brooded above us like
a covenant of peace, we laid him to sleep beside
his sister, to wait the solution of the great mys
tery of existence when earth and sea shall give
up their dead. That I may meet him again in
the great Hereafter is a profound aspiration
rather than a living faith, but if eternity will
74

EELIGION
release its treasures, sometime I shall claim my
own." He regarded the question of Job, "If a man die,
shall he live again?" the everlasting interrog
atory. A Supreme Being, Ingalls seemed to admit, but
of what order, nature, degree, glory, he did not
affirm. "Faith in a Supreme Being," he said, "in
immortality and the compensations of eternity
conduces powerfully to social order by enabling
men to endure with composure the injustice of
this world in the hope of reparation in that which
is to come."
The position finally assumed by Ingalls was
due somewhat to a revulsion from the harsh the
ology of Calvin, at one time so deeply rooted in
New England. He was to some extent a disciple
of Carlyle, though he could never have been pre
vailed upon to admit it, and life became a matter
of wonder and increasing mystery. "After all,"
he wrote his father, "whether well or ill, the long
est life is but a brief pulsation, like the momen
tary flash of a firefly in a garden at night: and
whether its transitory torch is to be extinguished
forever or to be relighted and burn eternally, we
hope and dream, but know not."
75
—6

RELIGION in.
In the contemplation of immortality and the
inscrutable mystery of human life Ingalls said
that: Our appearance here is not voluntary. We
are sent to this planet on some mysterious er
rand without being consulted in advance. Many
of us would not have come had the opportunity
to decline, with thanks, been presented.
To multitudes life is an inconceivable insult
and injury, an intolerable affront; torture and
wretchedness indescribable from poverty, disease,
grief, Fortune's slings and arrows; wrongs de
liberately inflicted by some unknown malignant
power, as Job was tormented by the devil, with
the consent of God, just to try him, till at last
the troubled patriarch cursed the day he was
born. Worst of all, we are sent here under sentence
of death. The most grievous and humiliating
punishment man can inflict upon the criminal is
death. Human tribunals give the malefactor a chance.
His crime must be proved. He can put in his
defense. He can appear by attorney and plead
and take appeal. But we are all condemned to
death beforehand. The accusation and the ac
cuser are unknown. An inexorable verdict has
76

EELIGION
been pronounced and recorded in the secret coun
cils of the skies. We are neither confronted with
the witness nor allowed a day in court. From
the hour of birth we are beset by invulnerable
and invisible enemies, the pestilence that walketh
in darkness and the destruction that wasteth at
noonday. Fatal germs, immortal bacilli, heaven
sent microbes, inhabit the air we breathe, the food
we eat, the water we drink, poisoning where they
fly and infecting where they repose.
Science continually discloses malevolent agen
cies, hitherto undetected, which we vainly try to
extirpate, or to build frail and feeble barriers
against their depredations.
Theology complacently announces that for the
majority of the human race this tough world is
the prelude to an eternity in hell. . . .
Nature, like a witness in contempt, stands mute.
Science returns from the remotest excursions,
shakes its head, and, smiling, puts the question
by. Christ contented Himself with a few vague
and unsatisfactory generalities. . . .
The evidence of a superintending moral pur
pose and design in the affairs of men are faint and
few. The wicked prosper, the good suffer. The
problems of sin, pain, and evil are insoluble.
Visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children
to the third and fourth generation, making the
innocent suffer for the offences of the guilty, is
77

EELIGION
an unjust and cruel law that ought to be repealed.
Civilization has long since rejected the principle
from human jurisprudence. Even treason, the
highest crime known to its code, no longer works
corruption of blood or forfeiture of estate.
Unless man is immortal, the moral universe, so
far as he is concerned, disappears altogether. If
he does not survive the grave, it makes no differ
ence to him whether there be God or devil, or
heaven or heU. And it must be not only a sur
vival, bu.t a continuity of consciousness as well, if
the evil are to be punished and the good rewarded
hereafter. Ingalls believed mankind was making progress
in the science of religion — in the science of god-
making. He knew what every priest is anxious
that his parishioner shall never know — that the
term "religion" is of universal application, and
that it embraces the crude incantations and de
ceptions of the Medicine Man as well as the ten
ets of Christianity. Savage practices no more
condemn the one than do refined cruelties and
polished amenities establish the other:
There was a profound truth in the declaration
of Voltaire, that if there was no God, it would
be necessary for man to invent one. God is indis
pensable [to man]. As the race advances, it
78

RELIGION
clothes God with higher attributes and dignifies
Him with more lofty functions. The gloomy and
inexorable God of the Puritans has disappeared.
He has been succeeded by a Supreme Being of in
finite mercy, tenderness, and goodness; a ruler, a
law-maker, subject to limitations and restraints
imposed by His own perfections.
Opposition to Christianity, or any other re
ligion, is no indication of infidelity, he argued,
"but rather the strongest evidence of the relig
ious spirit of the times, . . . the hunger and
thirst for knowledge about what can never be
known". So impenetrable did he regard the veil whieh
hides the future that he expected another Christ
and new revelations. But even these will prove
insufficient and unsatisfactory, as have all others,
for in this field alone has no progress been made,
as witness his belief declared in his estimate of
the book of Job :
The book of Job is the oldest, and in my judg
ment, the highest production of the human intel
lect. It is especially interesting because it shows
that humanity at the dawn of history was en
gaged in considering the same problems that per
plex us now — immortality, the existence of evil,
79

EELIGION
the afflictions and misfortunes of the good in this
world, and the prosperity of the wicked. We
have made no progress in solving these problems.
The barriers are insurmountable. The centuries
are silent. The soul struggles, aspires, beats its
wings against the bars, fiutters, and disappears.
All this is grounded in human experience —
nay, more than that, — -in the inherent qualities
of the nature of man. And, Ingalls believed —
rightly — that sin, wickedness, wretchedness are
necessary to our progress — indispensable to our
very existence:
Poverty will never be abolished, nor misery, nor
pain, nor disease. They are inseparable from
humanity. Were all men contented and secure,
progress would cease and the race would expire.
This, in a more delicate and cautious way, is
the ruthless trampling under foot of temporary
systems and agreed conventionalities so extens
ively practiced by Carlyle. Completed and sta
tionary institutions for man's redemption Ingalls
regarded with that independence and that reck
less scorn peculiar to his Scandinavian-Germanic
ancestry.

80

RELIGION IV.
The contemplation of the mystery of this life
did not react upon Ingalls to produce melancholy
or misanthropy. In a letter to his wife, he said,
"Life to me is so vivid and intense, like an eager
flame, that pain, disease, weakness, annihilation
seem monstrous and intolerable."
He loved life. Its enjoyment was precious to
him, some expression of which we find in his
writings. As early as 1872, in a letter to his
father on a Thanksgiving anniversary, he said:
I have thought much to-day of the long career
of my life, which has been extended so long be
yond my early anticipations, and rendered con
spicuous by so many blessings which I am con
scious I have not deserved and which I never
hoped to enjoy. Standing upon the uplands of
middle life, my childhood and youth seem like
the experiences of another planet, and though I
have suffered much from the tortures of dis
turbed functions, diseased nerves, sensibilities un
naturally acute, the war in my members between
the spirit and the flesh, the agonies of conflict be
tween unconquerable appetites, passions, impulses
and ambitions, and a conscience too sensitive to
submit to moral anodynes, yet I have much to
81

RELIGION
recall with gratitude to some Benign Power that
has given me a moderate measure of worldly
success, a modest competence, and a reasonable
assurance of the esteem of my fellows; a happy
home, and hopeful children whom it shall be my
chief care to teach to shun the errors that have
been my bane.
I have thought much also of that benevolent
destiny that has protracted an existence as a
family, unbroken through so many years; that
gave to us in our early years the benefit and
advantage of parental restraint and care, and has
given to you the opportunity of seeing the prac
tical result of your anxiety and toil, and the es
tablishment of your children in reputable posi
tions in widely disassociated spheres of life.
As time passes on, the burden of existence be
comes more grievous : these anniversaries, once
so bright and festal, grow ominous with shadows,
and have a deep, sad and solemn significance.
Laden with the inexpressible pathos, the yearning
regrets, the farewells of the past, its melancholy
and its external pain, they also point with pro
phetic augury to the future, near or far, when
anniversaries shall be no more. How happy they
who live so that they are not afraid to die ! — I
trust that we may know many returns of this
ancient festival, but more than that, I hope that
when on some future Thanksgiving, the last sur-
82

EELIGION
vivor of us all recalls the vivid memories of
those who have gone before, no grief may dim
his vision save that which separation always
brings, and that he may confidently and grate
fully anticipate the hour which shall summon
him to join a reunited family in a brighter world
than this: a world which shall seem as the glori
ous wakening from a fevered dream, where sor
row has no dominion, where distance cannot sep
arate, where time cannot chill, and the tragic
limitations of earthly being are forever unknown.
The references here to "a reunited family in a
brighter world, where sorrow has no dominion",
and "time cannot chill", are reversions to the
Calvinistic sermons impatiently heard on Thanks
givings in youth in New England, and must not
be taken as expressing his own state or belief.
The death of Garfield, his kinsman, aroused in
Ingalls the realization of the futility of earthly
power and grandeur. In a letter to his father
were these expressions penned:
To one unaware of the tragedy of July, it would
seem incredible that within three months, the
chosen ruler of a great nation had been buried
amid the grief of all the civilized world, and
that the trial of his assassin was proceeding in
sight of the Capitol from which the remains of
83

RELIGION
the victim were so lately borne to their last re
pose. The moralist and the philosopher might
find abundant food for thought, nor could the
cynic restrain his sneer at the spectacle presented
by the thoughtless theory of ambitious aspirants
who have so readily transferred their allegiance
to the new President who sits in the Council
Chamber so lately vacated by the dead. The
emptiness of fame, the hollow mockery of friend
ship, the vanity of ambition, the worthlessness of
power, the insignificance of man, never had a
more striking iUustration. "The King is dead!
Long live the King 1 ' ' — And yet, notwithstanding
the wretchedness of humanity, and the evils of
human life, there is something attractive about
existence. When digestion is good and the nerves
neither too lax nor too tensely strung, it is pleas
ant to eat a good dinner, to get a little drunk, to
smoke a good cigar, to talk with bright men and
women, to drive in the woods, to stroll in the sun,
to get into a row occasionally if you can be on
top, to sleep and wake, to play with children, to
read good books, and wonder what life means,
and to what it leads, how we got here and where
we are going; a perplexing riddle which has not
been solved.
This was the blind beating of the immortal in
man against the bars of the earthly prison of this
84

RELIGION
life with its vexing and distracting limitations. Of
the same nature is the "everlasting interroga
tory" of Job. The same problems troubled the
Preacher of Wisdom, who saw "in human en
quiry no attainment, in the succession of events
no advance, in the succession of human genera
tions no continuity", and who saw the tragedy
of Life in the "Coming of the Evil Days", when
"The years draw nigh.
When thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them:
Or ever the sun
And the Hght,
And the moon,
And the stars.
Be darkened,
And the clouds return after the rain:
In the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble,
Aud the strong men shall bow themselves,
And the grinders cease because they are few,
And those that look out of the windows be darkened.
And the doors shall be shut in the street;
When the sound of the grinding is low.
And one shall rise up at the voice of a bird.
And all the daughters of music shall be brought low;
Yea, they shall be afraid of that which is high.
And terrors shall be in the way:
And the almond tree shall blossom,
And the grasshopper shall be a burden.
And the caperberry shall burst: 85

RELIGION
Because man goeth to his long home.
And the mourners go about the streets:
Or ever the silver cord be loosed,
Or the golden bowl be broken,
Or the pitcher be broken at the fountain.
Or the wheel broken at the cistern:
And the dust return to the earth.
As it was;
And the spirit return unto God
Who gave it".*
* Dr. Moulton's version. Quoted from his Kcclesiastes.

As his years increased a sense of death abode
with Ingalls. And so it does with every reflect
ing man. It is said that Egyptians of the upper
class kept memory and thought of death ever
present by the exhibition at feasts of a human
skeleton. To the Anglo-Saxons death is the King
of Terrors, but to that people has been given
that fortitude with which death is contemplated
in quiescence and with tranquillity. In this mood
Ingalls wrote his wife near the close of the year
1890 :
The clouds are steamy and still. The world is
so lovely at its best, and life so delightful, that I
dread the thought of leaving it. I have seen and
86

RELIGION
experienced so little of what may be seen and
known that it seems like closing a volume of
which I have only glanced at the title-page. But
so many are taking their leave, and I have al
ready survived so large a number of my contem
poraries, that I must contemplate my departure
with the rest. I thought as I lay in bed this
morning, having waked early, what an uncivil
host life is, to invite us to an entertainment which
we are compelled to attend whether we like it or
not, and then to unceremoniously take us by the
arm and bow us out into the night, stormy and
dismal, to go stumbling about without so much as
a lantern to show us the way to another town. —
To continue in the same strain of reflection, our
ground in the cemetery should have a "Monu
ment". I hate these obelisks, urns, and stone
cottages, and should prefer a great natural rock
— one of the red boulders — known as the "lost
rocks" of the prairie — porphyry from the North
— • brought down in glacier times — with a small
surface smoothed down — just large enough to
make a tablet in which should be inserted the
bronze letters of our name — "Ingalls" — and
nothing else.
And, so, this man of dilatory habit, but of mind
acute and sensitive, tensely-strung and cast of
the genius of the Saxons, of whom he came, went
87

RELIGION
down to the grave without fear — in reverence
and in agnosticism. With Omar of old, he be
lieved "this world's phantasmagoria is a vision,
which rises from a boundless ocean, and sinks
again into the same ocean from which it arose".

88

LITERATURE

LITERATURE

IngaUs did his best literary work before his
election to the Senate. After that other matters
occupied his time and diverted his attention.
But for many years it was his cherished ambi
tion to retire from politics and lead a sort of soli
tary secluded life, the details of which were vague
and indefinite in his own mind. Portunately this
longing of the soul was never gratified. Life has
its times and its seasons, the mind its epochs and
its eras. What a man may excel in at one period
he may not be able to achieve in another, even
though his powers be not abated nor his intellect
diminished. Emotion depends much on precari
ous circumstance, and the capacity for its expres
sion may be lost or smothered by baser things.
The mind treasures former joys, and as age creeps
on reversion to them increases. Man becomes
reflective, and the contemplation of the events of
early life becomes his chief pleasure. Pancy flat
ters him with the delusion that former achieve-
91
—7

LITERATUEE
ments could be successfully repeated, though the
black raven of experience croaks the hoarse and
disconsolate note — Nevermore !
The literary reputation of Ingalls must rest
mainly upon his writings known as the "Kansas
Magazine Articles," a series of essays written for
a chance publication of the prairies, a brilliant
child of Kansas, of birth premature by a fuU
half-century. The inspiration for these charming productions
Ingalls found in Kansas. He had previously writ
ten much, but it was flat and stale, — nothing that
the world cares to see or preserve. He had not
then been stirred. But, standing on the rugged
bluffs of the winding Missouri he was powerfuUy
moved. The vast expanse of rolling prairie and
woodland, the illimitable azure reaches where
"Triangles of wild geese harrowed the blue fields
of the skj'", the purple haze mellowing the hori
zon into an amethyst ocean, aroused in him emo
tions whicll he described and made immortal.
Combined with the glory of the landscape were
the rattle of steel and the clash of civilizations.
The Puritan and the Cavalier, in their migra
tions westward, met at the cross-roads of Kansas.
92

LITEEATUEE
Men marched and fought, slew one another and
devastated fields, pulled down houses and ruined
homes. Flames rolling red against the midnight
sky told of towns sacked and settlements de
stroyed. In the scathing arraignment of border-
ruffians Ingalls perched on crags of sarcastic de
nunciation inaccessible to any coming after him.
The first of these graphic delineations he termed
"Catfish Aristocracy". Only in one instance did
he ever surpass it. Its scene was laid on one of
those temporary and precarious flats cast up by
the Missouri River, the building of which no
other writer need now ever attempt to describe:
Born of a snag, a wreck, an adverse gale, a
sunken floater, anything that ean afford brief
ledgment for accumulation, these accretions may
dissolve and vanish with the next "rise", or they
may mysteriously elevate themselves above the
level of the water, give root to wind-sown willows,
cottonwoods, elms, and sycamores, an anonymous
growth of feculent herbage and festering, crawl
ing weeds, but never a bright blade of wholesome
grass, a lovely bud or flower.
Malarious brakes and jungles suddenly exhale
from the black soil, in whose loathsome recesses
the pools of pure rain change by some horrible
alchemy into green ooze and bubbly slime, breed-
93

LITEEATUEE
ing reptiles and vermin that creep and fly, infect
ing earth and air with their venom, fatal alike
to action and repose. Gigantic parasites smother
and strangle the huge trunks they embrace, turn
ing them into massive columns of verdure, chang
ing into crimson like that of blood when smitten
by the frosts of October. Pendulous, leafless vines
dismally sway from the loftiest trees like gallows
without their tenants. Deadly vapors, and snaky,
revolting odors, begotten of decay, brood in the
perpetual gloom.
If not too soon undermined by the insidious
chute gnawing at its foundation of quaking quick
sands, this foul alluvion becomes subject to local
government, and, under a mistaken idea that it is
a component part of this sure and flrm-set earth,
is surveyed and taxed. Its useless forests are
deadened, and the ruined boles stand like grizzly
phantoms in the waste. A zig-zag pen of rotten
rails creeps round a hovel of decayed logs with
mud-daubed interstices that seem to spring like
a congenial exhalation from the ground. In the
uncouth but appropriate phraseology of its deni
zens, it is "cleared bottom", and has become the
abode of the catflsh aristocrat. It was amid
such surroundings that I first met Shang, the
Grand Duke of this order of nobility. Thus he
had always lived; thus his ancestors, if he had
any; and thus he and his successors, heirs, and
94

LITEEATUEE
assigns wiU continue to live till education, relig
ion, and development shall render him and his
congeners as impossible as the monsters that tore
each other in the period of the Jurassic group.
"Shang, the Grand Duke" of catfish aristoc
racy, was representative of a type of border char
acters. Of this type Ingalls continues :
Perhaps the most marked and ineradicable out
ward distinction is the manner in which they re
spond to a question imperfectly understood. The
one, squirting a gourdful of tobacco juice into the
jimson-weeds, with a prolonged, rising inflection,
drawls out, "Whi-i-ich?" The other stops whit
tling, or lays down The Kansas Magazine, and
jerks out, "Haouw?"
Beware of the creature that says "Which?"
and shun the vicinage wherein he dwells ! He
builds no school-house. He erects no church. To
his morals the Sabbath is unknown. To his in
tellect the alphabet is superfluous. His premises
have neither barn, nor cellar, nor well. His crop
of corn stands ungathered in the field. He
"packs" water half a mile from the nearest
branch or spring. His perennial diet is hog,
smoked and salted in the summer, and fresh at
"killin' time". He delights in cracklins and
spare-ribs. Gnashing his tusks upon the impene
trable mail of his corn-dodger, he sighs for the
95

LITEEATUEE
time of "roas'n-eers". He has a weakness for
"cowcumbers" and " watermel'ns " ; but when he
soars above the gross needs of his common nature
and strives to prepare a feast that shall rival the
banquets of Lucullus, he spreads his festive cot
tonwood with catfish and pawpaws.
Prom such a protoplasm, or physical basis of
life, proceeds an animal, bifid, long-haired, unac
customed to the use of soap, without conscience
or right reason, gregarious upon bottom lands,
where they swarm with unimaginable fecundity.
In time of peace they unanimously vote the Demo
cratic ticket. During the war they became guer
rillas and bushwhackers under Price, Anderson,
and Quantrill ; assassins ; thugs ; poisoners of
wells; murderers of captive women and children;
saekers of defenseless towns; house-burners;
horse-thieves ; perpetrators of atrocities that
would make the blood of Sepoys run cold.
The catfish aristocrat is pre-eminently the sa
loon-builder. Past generations and perished races
of men have defied oblivion by the enduring
structures which pride, sorrow, or religion have
reared to perpetuate the virtues of the living or
the memory of the dead. Ghizeh has its pyra
mids ; Petra its temples ; the Middle Ages their
cathedrals ; Central America its ruins ; but Pike
and Posey have their saloons, where the patrician
of the bottom assembles with his peers. Gathered
96

LITEEATUEE
around a rusty stove choked with soggy drift
wood, he drinks sod-corn from a tin cup, plays
"old sledge" upon the head of an empty keg, and
reels home at nightfall, yelling through the tim
ber, to his squalid cabin.
A score of lean, hungry curs pour in a canine
cataract over the worm-fence by the horse-block
as their master approaches, baying deep-mouthed
welcome, filling the chambers of the forests with
hoarse reverberations, mingled with an explosion
of oaths and frantic imprecations. Snoring the
night away in drunken slumber under a heap of
gray blankets, he crawls into his muddy jeans at
sun-up, takes a gurgling drink from a flat black
bottle stoppered with a cob, goes to the log-pile
by the front door, and with a dull ax slabs off an
armful of green cottonwood to make a fire for
breakfast, which consists of the inevitable "meat
and bread" and a decoction of coffee burned to
charcoal and drank without milk or sugar. An
other pull at the bottle, a few grains of quinine
if it is "ager" day, a "chaw" of navy, and the
repast is finished. The sweet delights of home
have been enjoyed, and the spiritual creature goes
forth, invigorated for the struggle of life, to re
peat the exploits of every yesterday of his ex
istence. Ingalls knew more of his hero than he revealed,
and admitted, long afterwards, that he was bright
97

LITEEATUEE
and extremely interesting. He had been a dra
goon in the Mexican War. He became "a private
in that noble army of chivalry which marched to
Kansas to fight the Puritan idea" in border-ruf
fian days. At Marysville, December 21, 1857, he
voted twenty-five times for the Lecompton consti
tution before noon. His "frame was of unearthly
longitude and unspeakable emaciation", and these
qualities fastened on him the sobriquet of "Shang
hai", whence Ingalls derived "Shang", though
he says he could never discover its origin. His
name was Jonathan Gardner Lang. He was "jug-
fisherman, melon-raiser, truck-patch farmer, and
town-drunkard", a later biography says. He
lived at Sumner, and Ingalls never tired of hear
ing his stories, going with him sometimes in his
boat to "jug" for catfish. He gives us this de
scription of his "typical grandee":
I have heretofore alluded to Shang as the
typical grandee of this ichthyological peerage.
Whence he derived the appeUation by which he
was uniformly known, I could never satisfactor
ily ascertain. Whether it was his ancestral title,
or merely a playful pseudonym bestowed upon
him by some familiar friend in affection's most
endearing hours, was never disclosed. Of his
98

LITEEATUEE
birth, his parentage, his antecedents, it were
equally vain to inquire. He was unintentionally
begotten in a concupiscence as idle and thought
less as that of dogs or flies or swine. It has been
surmised that he was evolved from the minor con
sciousness of his own squalor, but this must al
ways remain a matter of conjecture.
To the most minute observer, his age was a
question of the gravest doubt. He might have
been thirty, he might have been a century, with
no violation of the probabilities. His hair was a
sandy sorrel, something like a Rembrandt interior,
and strayed around his freckled scalp like the top-
layer of a hayrick in a tornado. His eyes were
two ulcers half filled with pale-blue starch. A
thin, sharp nose projected above a lipless mouth
that seemed always upon the point of breaking
into the most grievous lamentations, and never
opened save to take whiskey and tobacco in and
let oaths and saliva out. A long, slender neck,
yellow and wrinkled after the manner of a liz
ard's belly, bore this dome of thought upon its
summit, itself projecting from a miscellaneous as
sortment of gents' furnishing goods, which cov
ered a frame of unearthly longitude and unspeak
able emaciation. Thorns and thongs supplied the
place of buttons upon the costume of this Brum-
mel of the bottom, coarsely patched beyond recog
nition of the original fabric. The coat had been
99

LITERATUEE
constructed for a giant, the pants for a pigmy.
They were too long in the waist and too short in
the leg, and flapped loosely around his shrunk
shanks high above the point where his fearful feet
were partially concealed by mismated shoes that
permitted his great toes to peer from their gaping
integuments, like the heads of two snakes of a
novel species and uncommon fetor. The princely
phenomenon was topped with a hat that had
neither band nor brim nor crown;
"If that could shape be called which shape had none".
His voice was high, shrill, and querulous, and
his manner an odd mixture of fawning servility
and apprehensive effrontery at the sight of a
"damned Yankee Abolitionist", whom he hated
and feared next to a negro who was not a slave.
Contemplating with horror the possibility of
the victory of Shang in the Kansas conflict, In
galls exclaims :
It is appalling to reflect what the condition of
Kansas would have been to-day had its destiny
been left in the hands of Shang and those of his
associates who first did its voting and attempted
to frame its institutions. A few hundred mush-
eating chawbacons, her only population, would
still have been chasing their razor-backed hogs
through the thickets of black-jack, and jugging
100

LITEEATUEE
for catfish in the chutes of the Missouri and the
Kaw. Shang was not wholly illiterate, for he read
the brilliant article of which he was the hero.
His indignation was great ; his wrath was kindled
against the author. He resolved to "have the
law" on his traducer, having been advised there
to by that tout of the law known as the "jack-
leg", denominated in these degenerate days by
the purulent epithet of "snitch". In his copy of
the Kansas Magazine, Ingalls made notation of
the settlement with Shang, as follows :
This delineation was popularly supposed to be
drawn from life. Its original was alleged to be
Jonathan G. Lang, a resident of Sumner, Atchi
son Co., since 1858. He was a native of Kentucky
(Carroll Co.), and was commonly known as
"Shanghai", from the longitude of his neck and
legs. The sketch can hardly be called an exag
geration, though it has some of the elements of
caricature. Lang thought it was intended for
him, and I finally restored the entente cordiale
by presenting him with a sack of flour and some
"side meat".

101

LITEEATUEE n.
Of the prose compositions of Ingalls, "Blue
Grass ' ' is gradually taking first place — rightly
so. Its inspiration was the same that brought
forth "Catfish Aristocracy". Indeed, it is but
a different side of the same subjeet.
The intellect of Ingalls was restricted, but in
tense. In "Blue Grass" we have only the land
scape of Eastern Kansas and the sarcastic cruci
fixion of the Missourian. But by his powerful
inteUectual alchemy, Ingalls produced from these
the most astonishing scenes and the most beau
tiful figures:
Attracted by the bland softness of an afternoon
in my primeval winter in Kansas, I rode south
ward through the dense forest that then covered
the bluffs of the North Pork of WUdcat. The
ground was sodden with the ooze of melting snow.
The dripping trees were as motionless as gran
ite. The last year's leaves, tenacious lingerers,
loath to leave the seene of their brief bravery,
adhered to the gray boughs like fragile bronze.
There were no visible indications of life, but the
broad, wintry landscape was flooded with that
indescribable splendor that never was on sea or
shore — a purple and silken softness, that half
102

LITEEATUEE
veiled, half disclosed the alien horizon, the vast
curves of the remote river, the transient archi
tecture of the clouds, and filled the responsive
soul with a vague tumult of emotions, pensive and
pathetic, in which regret and hope contended for
the mastery. The dead and silent globe, with all
its hidden kingdoms, seemed swimming like a
bubble, suspended in an ethereal solution of ame
thyst and silver, compounded of the exhaling
whiteness of the snow, the descending glory of
the sky. A tropical atmosphere brooded upon an
arctic scene, creating the strange spectacle of
summer in winter, June and January, peculiar to
Kansas, which cannot be imagined, but once seen
can never be forgotten. A sudden descent into
the sheltered valley revealed an unexpected cres
cent of dazzling verdure, glittering like a meadow
in early spring, unreal as an incantation, surpris
ing as the sea to the soldiers of Xenophon as they
stood upon the shore and shouted "Thalatta!"
It was Blue Grass, unknown in Eden, the final
triumph of nature, reserved to compensate her
favorite offspring in the new paradise of Kansas
for the loss of the old upon the banks of the
Tigris and Euphrates.
Next in importance to the divine profusion of
water, light, and air, those three great physical
facts which render existence possible, may be
reckoned the universal beneficence of grass. Ex-
103

LITEEATUEE
aggerated by tropical heats and vapors to the
gigantic cane congested with its saccharine se
cretion, or dwarfed by polar rigors to the fibrous
hair of northern solitudes, embracing between
these extremes the maize with its resolute pen
nons, the rice plant of Southern swamps, the
wheat, rye, barley, oats, and other cereals, no less
than the humbler verdure of hillside, pasture, and
prairie in the temperate zone, grass is the most
widely distributed of all vegetable beings, and is
at once the type of our life and the emblem of
our mortality. Lying in the sunshine among the
buttercups and dandelions of May, scarcely higher
in intelligence than the minute tenants of that
mimic wilderness, our earliest recollections are of
grass ; and when the fitful fever is ended, and the
foolish wrangle of the market and forum is closed,
grass heals over the scar which our descent into
the bosom of the earth has made, and the carpet
of the infant becomes the blanket of the dead.
In the following paragraph Ingalls ascended to
his greatest height. It is his best, — the supreme
effort beyond which he could, in prose, never go:
Grass is the forgiveness of nature — her con
stant benediction. Fields trampled with battle,
saturated with blood, torn with the ruts of can
non, grow green again with grass, and carnage is
forgotten. Streets abandoned by traffic become
104

LITEEATUEE
grass-grown like rural lanes, and are obliterated.
Forests decay, harvests perish, flowers vanish, but
grass is immortal. Beleaguered by the sullen
hosts of winter, it withdraws into the impreg
nable fortress of its subterranean vitality, and
emerges upon the first solicitation of spring. Sown
by the winds, by wandering birds, propagated by
the subtle horticulture of the elements which are
its ministers and servants, it softens the rude out
line of the world. Its tenacious fibers hold the
earth in its place, and prevent its soluble compo
nents from washing into the wasting sea. It in
vades the solitude of deserts, climbs the inacces
sible slopes and forbidding pinnacles of moun
tains, modifies climate, and determines the his
tory, character, and destiny of nations. Unob
trusive and patient, it has immortal vigor and
aggression. Banished from the thoroughfare and
the field, it abides its time to return, and when
vigilance is relaxed, or the dynasty has perishedT,
it silently resumes the throne from which it has
been expelled, but which it never abdicates. It
bears no blazonry of bloom to charm the senses
with fragrance or splendor, but its homely hue
is more enchanting than the lily or the rose. It
yields no fruit in earth or air, and yet should its
harvest fail for a single year, famine would de
populate the world.
From this sublime height he descends to the
105

LITEEATUEE
Missourian, whose degradation he delineates and
whose redemption he proclaims :
A more uninviting field for the utilitarian can
not be imagined than one of the benighted border
counties of Missouri, where climate, products, la
bor and tradition have conspired to develop a race
of hard-visaged and forbidding ruffians, exhibit
ing a grotesque medley of all the vices of civiliza
tion unaccompanied even by the negative virtues
of barbarism. To these fallen angels villainy is
an amusement, crime a recreation, murder a pas
time. They pursue from purpose every object
that should be shunned by instinct. To the igno
rance of the Indian they add the ferocity of the
wolf, the venom of the adder, the cowardice of
the slave. The contemplation of their deeds
would convince the optimist that any system of
morals would be imperfect that did not include a
hell of the largest dimensions. Their continued
existence is a standing reproach to the New Tes
tament, to the doctrines of every apostle, to the
creed of every church.
But even this degradation, unspeakable as it is,
arises largely from material causes, and is sus
ceptible of relief. In the moral pharmacy there is
an antidote.
The salutary panacea is Blue Grass.
This is the healing catholicon, the strengthen-
106

LITEEATUEE
ing plaster, the verdant cataplasm, efficient alike
in the Materia Medica of Nature and of morals.
Seed the country down to blue grass and the
reformation would begin. Such a change must
be gradual. One generation would not witness
it, but three would see it accomplished. The first
symptom would be an undefined uneasiness along
the creeks, in the rotten eruption of cottonwood
hovels near the grist-mill and the blacksmith's
shop at the fork of the roads, followed by a "tot
ing" of plunder into the "bow-dark" wagon and
an exodus for "out West". A sore-backed mule
geared to a spavined sorrel, or a dwarfish yoke of
stunted steers, drag the creaking wain along the
muddy roads, accelerated by the long-drawn
"Whoo-hoop-a-Haw-aw-aw" of "Dad" in butter
nut-colored homespun, as he walks beside, crack
ing a black-snake with a detonation like a Der
ringer. "Mam" and half a score of rat-faced
children peer from the chaos within. A rough
coop of chickens, a split-bottom "cheer", and a
rusty joint of pipe depend from the rear, as the
dismal procession moves westward, and is lost in
the confused obscurity of the extreme frontier.
Some, too poor or too timid to emigrate, would
remain behind, contenting themselves with a sul
len revolt against the census, the alphabet, the
multiplication table, and the penitentiary. Dwell
ing upon the memory of past felonies, which the
107

LITEEATUEE
hangman prevents them from repeating, they
clasp hands across the bloody chasm. But the
aspect of Nature and society would gradually
change — fields widen, forests increas ; fences are
straightened, dwellings painted, schools estab
lished. It is no longer disreputable to know how
to read in words of one syllable, and to spell one's
name. The knowledge of the use of soap imper
ceptibly extends. The hair, which was wont to
hang upon the shoulders, is shorn as high as the
ears. The women no longer ride the old roan
"mar", smoking a cob-pipe, with a blue cotton
sun-bonnet cocked over the left eye, but assume
the garb of the milliner, and eome to the store
with their eggs and butter in a Jackson wagon.
Pistols are laid aside. Oaths and quarrels are
less frequent. Drunkenness is not so general, and
the indiscriminate use of illicit whiskey partially
yields to the peaceful lager and cheering wine,
although in his festive hours the true son of the
soil cannot forbear to occasionaUy kill a teacher,
burn a school-house, or fiay a negro, by way of
facetious recreation. The second generation
would probably discard butternut and buttermilk,
and adopt the diet and habit of the lower classes
in New England. The third might not be dis
tinguishable, without close inspection, from the
average American gentleman.
The only adequate characterization of the ex-
108

LITEEATUEE
treme climatic range of the prairies of Kansas
is found here. And no better description of a
Kansas thunderstorm was ever written:
Kansas is all antithesis. It is a land of ex
tremes. It is the hottest, coldest, dryest, wettest,
thickest, thinnest country in the world. The
stranger who crossed our borders for the first
time at Wyandotte and traveled by rail to White
Cloud would with consternation contrast that un
interrupted Sierra of rygose and oak-clad crags
with the placid prairies of his imagination. Let
him ride along the spine of any of those lateral
"divides" or water-sheds whose
"Level leagues forsaken lie,
A grassy waste, extending to the sky",
and he would be oppressed by the same melan
choly monotony which broods over those who
pursue the receding horizon over the fluctuating
plains of the sea. And let his discursion be
whither it would, if he listened to the voice of
experience, he would not start upon his pilgrim
age at any season of the year without an over
coat, a fan, a lightning-rod, and an umbrella.
The new-comer, alarmed by the traditions of
"the drought of '60", when, in the language of
one of the varnished rhetoricians of that epoch,
"acorns were used for food, and the bark of trees
for clothing", views with terror the long success-
109

LITEEATUEE
sion of dazzling early summer days ; days without
clouds and nights without dew; days when the
effulgent sun floods the dome with fierce and
blinding radiance; days of glittering leaves and
burnished blades of serried ranks of corn; days
when the transparent air, purged of all earthly
exhalation and alloy, seems like a powerful lens,
revealing a remoter horizon and a profounder
sky. But his apprehensions are relieved by the un
heralded appearance of a cloud no bigger than a
man's hand, in the northwest. A huge bulk of
purple and ebony vapor, preceded by a surging
wave of pallid smoke, blots out the sky. Birds
and insects disappear, and cattle abruptly stand
agazed. An appalling silence, an ominous dark
ness, fills the atmosphere. A continuous roll of
muffled thunder, increasing in volume, shakes the
solid earth. The air suddenly grows chill and
smells like an unused cellar. A fume of yellow
dust conceals the base of the meteor. The jag
ged scimitar of the lightning, drawn from its
cloudy scabbard, is brandished for a terrible in
stant in the abyss, and thrust into the affright-
ened city, with a crash as if the rafters of the
world had fallen. The wind, hitherto concealed,
leaps from its ambush and lashes the earth with
scourges of rain. The broken cisterns of the
clouds can hold no water, and rivers run in the
110

LITEEATUEE
atmosphere. Dry ravines become turbid torrents,
bearing cargoes of drift and rubbish on their
swift descent. Confusion and chaos hold undis
puted sway. In a moment the turmoil ceases. A
gray veil of rain stands like a wall of granite in
the eastern sky. The trailing banners of the
storm hang from the frail bastions. The routed
squadrons of mist, gray on violet, terrified fugi
tives precipitately fly beneath the triumphal arch
of a rainbow whose airy and insubstantial glorj
dies with the dying sun.
For days the phenomenon is repeated. Water
oozes from the air. The strands of rain are woven
with the inconstant sunbeam. Eeeds and sedges
grow in the fields, and all nature tends to fins,
web-feet, and amphibiousness. III.
"Eegis Loisel" is an account of a Prench trap
per and fur-trader of that name, who lived in
Upper Louisiana just prior to its acquisition by
the United States. Ingalls believed it his best ef
fort, another instance tending to show that an
author is not always the most competent judge
of the merits of his own productions. It is, in
deed, an exceptional composition, but its excellent
passages are much of the same nature found in
111

LITEEATUEE
all his writings — the mystery and profound
beauty of the Valley of the Missouri. Here is a
splendid paragraph:
The sullen gray bars of the river were vocal
with sonorous flocks of brant, halting for a night
on their prodigious emigrations from the icebergs
to the palms. Triangles of wild geese harrowed
the blue fields of the sky. Eegiments of pelicans
performed their mysterious evolutions high in air
— now white, now black, as their wings or their
breasts were turned to the setting sun. The sand
hill crane, trailing the ridiculous longitude of his
thin stilts behind him, dropped his gurgling croak
from aerial elevations, at which his outspread
pinions seemed but a black mote in the ocean of
the atmosphere. In all the circumference of the
waste wilderness beneath him, he saw no tower
or roof or spire upon the hills of Atchison, no
cabin on the prairie, no hollow square cleared in
the forests of Buchanan and Platte; heard no vi
bration of bells, no scream of glittering engine,
no thunder of rolling trains, no roar of wheels, no
noise of masses of men like distant surf tumbling
on a rocky shore; no human trace along the
curves of the winding river, save the thin blue
fume that curled upward through the trees at the
base of the bluff from the camp-fire of Eegis
Loisel. 112

LITEEATUEE
The skeleton in the closet of one of the first
families of St. Louis is thus brought to public
view by the deft rhetoric of Ingalls :
Laclede, the projector of the enterprise, was a
mercantile adventurer of noble descent from Bor
deaux, long domiciled in New Orleans, where he
had fallen a victim to the voluptuous charms of
Madame Chouteau, the wife of a baker of bread
and pies for the hungry, and a vendor of ale
and wine for the thirsty villagers. Monsieur
Chouteau, the baker, was presumably a crusty
fellow, neither weU bread nor in the flour of his
youth; a dough-faced loaf-er and a pie-biter of
the deepest dye. Be this as it may, Madame pre
ferred the plume and sword of her dashing lover
to the paper cap and rolling-pin of her liege lord,
and "lit out" in the summer of 1763 with the
expedition for Ste. Genevieve, arriving on Novem
ber 3d, where they went into winter quarters.
After a careful examination of the topography of
the surrounding country, Laclede selected the
present site of St. Louis, and established a trading-
post February 15, 1764, erecting a large house
and four stores on the levee. In due time he died,
bequeathing his name to a street and a hotel in
the city he founded. Madame Chouteau long sur
vived him, residing in St. Louis till her death,
leaving a numerous progeny of Chouteaus, and a
113

LITEEATUEE
name that smells sweet and blossoms in the dust.
She was a woman of great strength of character
and marvelous personal beauty, and ruled St.
Louis with despotic sovereignty.
Loisel secured a grant of land from his govern
ment which the United States finaUy recognized
and confirmed to the amount of 38,111 acres,
warrants for which were laid on the public
domain in Kansas. In the litigation for the
possession of this land which ensued Ingalls was
retained as attorney. At the final disposition of
the matter he was present and participating. His
description of the proceedings must be accepted
as one of the best accounts of frontier courts
extant :
And thus at last, in the strange vicissitude and
mutation that accompanies human affairs, it
chanced that the protracted strife finally closed in
the courts of Nemaha, and it was there determined
who were the "heirs of Eegis Loisel".
Had the bandage been removed from the eyes
of the Goddess of Justice upon that wintry day,
she would have dropped the idle scales and brand
ished the avenging sword. They have built her
a stately temple since, whose harmonious and
symmetrical mass is the poem of a landscape that
was enchanted before a cheap railway had span-
114

LITEEATUEE
ned the Nemaha with its skeleton truss, and
dumped its black grade diagonally across the
great military road that trailed westward through
the village and over the level prairie toward Salt
Lake and the Pacific Ocean. But upon the day
aforesaid, the goddess dwelt like the apostle in
her own hired house, a chosen sanctuary of cotton
wood that stood four-square to all the winds that
blew. Here were the aegis, the palladium, the
forum, the ermine, the immortal twelve, and all
the paraphernalia inseparable from the admin
istration of law in its most primitive form —
essential to its sanctions, the staple of its orators ;
without which, we are assured by its ministers, the
proud edifice of our liberties would incontinently
topple and fall headlong from turret to founda
tion-stone. The two windows rattling in their rude case
ments were curtained with frost of the thickness
and consistency of tripe. Between them, with his
head dangerously near the rough mortar of the
ceiling, sat his honor the judge, surveying the
scene from an inverted packing-box, his boots
interrupting his vision, and his chair inclined
against the wall. The harangues of the advocates
were enlivened by the musical clinking of glasses,
the festal notes of the rustic Cremona, and the
boisterous bursts of inebriated laughter from the
doggery beneath. Planks of splintered pine, sus-
115

LITEEATUEE
tained by a beggarly account of empty boxes, soap
and cracker, spice and candle, from adjacent gro
ceries, afforded repose to a group of dilapidated
loafers who crouched and shivered around the
smoking stove. As they masticated their "flat
tobacker", they meditatively expectorated in the
three-ply saw-dust that carpeted the floor, and
listened to the will of Eegis Loisel.
The subtle potency of the soul of the bold
adventurer spoke imperiously from the abyss of a
forgotten past. His voice emanated from an un
known grave, across the interval of three-quarters
of a century. His restless and uneasy ghost ani
mated the mysterious syllables at whose utterance
arose the phantom of the Law, whieh irresistibly
forbade intrusion upon sixty square miles of Kan
sas prairie, in the name and by the will of Eegis
Loisel. Nothing could be more beautiful than the clos
ing paragraph. Its splendor arises from the rever
sion of the author once more to the mysterious
Missouri winding its way to the sea — an object
of his inspiration, a manifestation of nature that
held always for him the profoundest fascination:
And so the drama ended. Three generations
had passed away. The squalid hamlet had ex
panded into an opulent metropolis, of which his
116

LITERATUEE
descendants are eminent and honored citizens.
States had sprung like an exhalation from the wil
derness. An intense civilization pervaded the pro
foundest solitudes. Nothing remained unchanged
in the wild world of his brief life save the impas
sive and desolate river which wears as then, and
will forever wear, the impervious mask of its sul
len mystery ; which bears as then, and will forever
bear, the burden of its secret unrevealed, yielding
no response to the living who tempt its inconstant
wave, nor the dead who sleep by its complaining
shore. IV.
In the category of writings formerly specified
we find "The last of the Jayhawkers". What his
tory says and what it might say eould not be
better stated than in this production:
Had an irreverent Athenian ventured to doubt
Silenus or denounce Priapus, he would probably
have been received with a stormy outcry like that
which greeted Bancroft when he ventured to dis
close the truth about some of the paragons of
early American history. And yet it cannot be
denied that the popular notion of the founders of
the Government is as purely mythological as the
Grecian dream of Jupiter and Minerva. With
what awe in our boyhood do we contemplate the
117

LITEEATUEE
majestic name of Washington ! That benign and
tranquil, although somewhat stolid visage, looks
down upon us from a serene atmosphere un
stained with earthly passion. That venerable
fame bears no taint of mortal frailty save in
the juvenile episode of the hatchet, in which the
venial error is expiated by the immortal candor of
its confession. To our revering fancy, the massive
form wrapped in military cloak stands forever at
midnight upon the frozen banks of the Delaware,
watching the patriot troops cross the icy current
in the darkness before the grand morning of
Trenton; or else, arrayed in black velvet small
clothes, resigning his commission to the Conti
nental Congress at Annapolis. We learn in riper
years, with grief not unmingled with incredulity,
that this great man was subjeet to ungovernable
outbreaks of rage, that he swore like a mule-
driver, and that he was not only the Father of his
Country, but also of Governor Posey of Indiana.
No highwayman ever had published a more
satisfactory statement of his person and objects
than this last Jayhawker:
At this time patriotism and larceny had not
entirely coalesced, and upon the debatable fron
tier between these contending passions appeared
a race of thrifty warriors, whose souls were rent
with conflicting emotions at the thought of their
118

LITERATUEE
bleeding country's wrongs and the available
assets of Missouri. Their avowed object was the
protection of the border. Their real design was
indiscriminate plunder. They adopted the name
of "Jayhawkers".
Conspicuous among the irregular heroes who
thus sprang to arms in 1861, and ostensibly their
leader, was an Ohio stage-driver by the name of
Charles Metz, who, having graduated with honor
from the penitentiary of Missouri, assumed from
prudential reasons the more euphonious and dis
tinguished appellation of "Cleveland". He was a
picturesque brigand. Had he worn a slashed
doublet and trunk hose of black velvet, he would
have been the ideal of an Italian bandit. Young,
erect, and tall, he was sparely built, and arrayed
himself like a gentleman in the costume of the
day. His appearance was that of a student. His
visage was thin, his complexion olive-tinted and
colorless, as if "sicklied o'er with the pale cast
of thought". Blaek piercing eyes, finely cut fea
tures, dark hair and beard correctly trimmed,
completed a tout ensemble that was strangely
at variance with the aspect of the score of dis
solute and dirty desperadoes that formed his
command. These were generally degraded ruffians
of the worst type, whose highest idea of elegance
in personal appearance was to have their mus
taches dyed a villainous metallic black, irrespec-
119

LITEEATUEE
tive of the consideration whether its native hue
was red or brown. It is a noticeable fact that a
dyed mustache stamps its wearer inevitably either
as a pitiful snob or an irreclaimable scoundrel.
The conclusion of this article has had wide cur
rency, which, in fact, it deserves :
He [the last of the Jayhawkers] continued his
exploits for some months, but \vas finally driven
to bay in one of the southern counties, and, at
tempting to let himself down the side of a pre
cipitous ravine, was shot by a soldier from
above, the ball entering under his arm and passing
through his body. His temporary widow took his
sacred clay to St. Joseph, where its place of inter
ment is marked by a marble headstone bearing the
usual memoranda, and concluding with the fol
lowing : "One hero less on earth,
One angel more in heaven!"
The unreliable character of grave-stone litera
ture has been the theme of frequent comment, but
unless this ostensible eulogy was intended as a
petrified piece of jocularity and gratuitously in
scribed by the sculptor, it may, perhaps, be justly
considered the most liberal application of the
maxim, "Nil de mortuis nisi bonum", to be
found in any American cemetery.

120

LITEEATUEE V.
Perhaps the best book-review ever published in
Kansas was that written by Ingalls of The Sons
cf the Border, by James W. Steele, "Deane
Monahan". Steele was a contemporary and one
of the editors of the Kansas Magazine, and his
book remains one of the most charming and use
ful volumes dealing with the Great Southwest.
Here Ingalls became an iconoclast with profound
contempt for the conventionalisms we call civili
zation :
Civilization is a veneer. The gentleman is a
varnished savage. The haughty dame, the lan
guishing belle, are lacquered squaws. The insti
tutions of society are stucco upon an edifice of
barbarism; plaster ornaments that continually
peel and crumble, revealing through the rude
windows of crime, disorder and violence, the
rough frame-work of brutality and ruffianism.
The unwritten life of every man is a continual
protest against education, law, refinement, culture
and obedience. Grudgingly and with reluctance
we surrender that portion of our natural rights
which constitutes our individual contribution to
that fund of force which is called government.
Children are born barbarians. The struggle for
life develops into an intense truculence, innocent
121

LITEEATUEE
because involuntary, and often attractive because
accompanied by the splendid bloom of intelli
gence, but as relentless and careless of carnage as
the contests of buU-dogs and wolves.
Habit accustoms us to many limitations, but
there are seasons to all when the restraints of
civilization seem intolerable : when the veneer and
the varnish crack, and the unconquerable im
pulses of the underlying nature demand expres
sion : when the daily paper, polished boots, tailor's
garments, gauzy conversation, books, politics, in
trigues, the routine of domestic life, seem detest
able. Some, unable to endure the restraint and unable
to burst the bonds that confine them, live tragic
lives and die tragic deaths : others resort to the
temporary alleviations of whiskey and keno :
others again seek relief in communion with
nature's visible forms, touch the earth and return
refreshed to the repulsive strife : many abandon
the arena and vanish into the wilderness, sail the
sea, climb mountains, penetrate forests, inhabit
mining camps, and participate in the turbulent
agitation of the frontier ; exhausting the sad pain
of existence in the superior stimulus of adventure,
privation and random energy.
To those whom fate, timidity, avarice, weak
ness, or the dominion of passions, render escape
from civilization impossible, the story of these
122

LITEEATUEE
wild lives absolved from the corrosion of care,
with their happy exemption from fortune's
fluctuations, brings an irresistible pathos, an un
definable regret, and a conviction that the re
finements of culture are purchased at too high a
price, and that we have bartered for civilization
something better than it brings. Perhaps it may
be a reminiscence distilled through ancestral
brains, like the murmur in the shell, of the time
when we were all children of nature, and wan
dered in her leafy solitudes and slept upon her
grassy breast, untroubled with the griefs, the
depressing diseases that afflict our waking hours,
the dreams that murder sleep.
Perhaps it may be a conviction that it is better
not to need a thing than to have it ; that strength
is better than shelter; that immortality is better
than love ; that insensibility to cold is better than
fire; that health is better than the most skilful
physician and the most seductive drugs; that life
devoid of temptations is better than religion ; that
the frigate-bird, poised on tireless pens above
the ocean at midnight, in the fury of the storm,
a thousand leagues from shore, has a more envi
able existence than that of the petted canary, in
its gilded cage. The higher, the more refined the
civilization, the more intense this protest becomes.
It is stronger in the patrician than in the serf, but
common to both, and to all grades between. The
123

LITEEATUEE
earliest forms of literature are but a transcript of
the communion of man with nature; but as he
rises from the earth and tempts the abyss, the
troubled yearning seeks utterance in vague cries,
finding its highest expression in the "Manfred" of
Byron; its lowest in "Ned Buntline 's Own", Syl
vanus Cobb and the swarm of subterranean
vermin that infest the basement-story of litera
ture. The paroxysmal energy of American life,
and the vast solitudes that stretch boundlessly
away from the centers of its grandest activity,
have developed under anomalous circumstances,
both the evil and its remedy, and afforded peculiar
scope for the exhibition of the sentiment to which
we have alluded. Those writers, both in prose
and poetry, have been most successful who have
given voice to these vague emotions, and recalled
man to the contemplation of the monotonous vast
ness of the prairies ; the stupendous elevations of
the mountains, in whose fastnesses are born the
mysterious rivers that crawl from horizon to
horizon, through their dull circumference of sand,
and the strange, wandering, nomadic lives that
seek in these melancholy wastes, refuge from
themselves, the balm for unspoken grief, sure
medicine for the diseased soul.
Thus he marshals the facts and analyzes the
principles underlying the elegant literary strue-
124

LITEEATUEE
ture erected by Steele. Having done this with a
skill rare indeed, Ingalls exhibits to us the means
employed by the author in constructing his temple.
No master ever declared more correct principles
than those laid down in this review. No rhetor
ician ever gave clearer or more accurate direc
tions for writing pure English, for none was ever
better qualified to direct in that matter:
There is a vast difference between seeing a
thing and being able to make others see it. The
geographer can define boundaries, name streams,
give the altitude of mountains and the number
of inhabitants; the geologist can describe the
rocks; the draughtsman ean furnish outlines and
lights and shadows; but beneath all these is that
subtle something which defies analysis; which
cannot be described or painted or defined ; which
individualizes every landscape, every person and
every habit, and distinguishes it from all which
it resembles; which makes a portrait different
from a photograph, and a face different from
both ; which makes a mountain more than a cata
logue of its physical traits; whieh for want of
a better word is called "expression", but which
is really the reflex of the soul. To capture this
evasive but omnipresent spirit and imprison it
in words upon the printed page, in colors on the
125

LITEEATUEE
canvas, in tones upon the musical score, is the
task of genius, in which success is partly the gift
of nature, partly the work of art. It is not enough
to reproduce the impressions made upon the eye
or the ear : the vision must be introverted and de
pict the images cast through the senses upon the
curtain in the darkened chamber of the brain.
This, in an eminent degree, has been accomplished
by Mr. Steele.
Of the excellent delineation made by Steele of
the coyote Ingalls takes special notice, and he
made it serve him as a figure of speech with
which to give an old-time political enemy, Horton,
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, a left-handed
compliment that was none the less blistering be
cause brief and indirect:
For a cruel, merciless portraiture of a thievish,
cowardly enigma in animalism, commend us to
"Coyotes". It is as clear as a cameo. Literature
is done with this varmint. Nothing more can be
said about him. There is one human coyote at the
present time in Kansas polities who could main
tain libel on this monograph were it not for the
constitutional provision allowing the truth to be
given in evidence.

126

LITEEATUEE VL
OPPOETUNITY.
His Sonnet "Opportunity" is the chief stone,
the "head of the corner", in the monument of
literary fame builded by Ingalls. Indeed, alone,
it would entitle him to immortal glory and
renown. In discussing it, the charge that he copied it
from a similar effort by an Italian must be con
sidered. Dr. NicoU Gigliotti, an inhabitant of Erie, Pa.,
set up claim to this poem, saying that he wrote
the original of it in Italian in 1887, and pub
lished it in La Sveglia and Mignon, of Naples,
Italy; in Flora Mirabilis, of Turin; and in Le
Conversazioni Della Domencia, of Milan. He also
claims to have published it in La Giustizia,
Denver, Colorado. After the last publication he
sent, so he says, a copy of his poem to Ingalls,
together with a translation into English made by
Martin Battle, a disciple of Henry George. Dr.
Guiseppo Coloni, editor, furnished a certificate to
the effect that he had published "II Fato", the
poem of Gigliotti, in Flora Mirabilis, in 1887.
127

LITEEATUEE
Dr. Gigliotti published three volumes of poems,
but his "II Fato" is not found in them. As a
reason for this strange omission the learned
doctor says that he was not satisfied with the
form of the poem. If even this were true it is
difficult to understand why he sent a copy of
it to Ingalls. And it fails to appear that he was
an acquaintance of Ingalls. To his most intimate
friends Ingalls never spoke of an acquaintance by
the name of Gigliotti. It is very improbable that
he ever heard of the Italian poet.
The matter was the subject of much newspaper
controversy, and the foregoing is written mainly
from a statement of the case made by the Kansas
City Star at the time.
The poem which the Italian claims to have
published in 1887 is given:
IL FATO
Arbito io sono dell' uman destino,
Fama, grandezza, amor mi son vassalli.
Per campagne e citta folle cammino,
Batto a ogni porta, e corro nuovi calli.
Se in letargo, ti desta. Se nel vino
Le cure affoghi e ti son dolci i falli,
T'alza e mi segni. II fato son. Meschino
Chi, non viene con me. Gli do cavalli.
128

LITEEATUEE
Gioie, grandezza, onor, donne e piacere.
Tutto gli obbedira men che la morte.
Vieni. Approfitta del mio buon volere.
Solo una volta io batto alle tue porte.
Io NoN Ti Seguo — rispos' io — Il Pensiebe
Sol rendd 1' uomo awenturato e forte!
The English translation which Dr. Gigliotti says
he furnished Ingalls follows:
THE FATE.
Master I am of human destinies.
Fame, greatness, love are my servants.
Cities and fields Foolishly I walk.
I knock at every door but once, and I run to new pathways.
If sleeping, wake. If feasting
You try to kill your troubles with wine and sin:
Rise and follow me. I am the fate. Woe
To whom does not follow me. I give him [who does]
horses,
Gold, fame, honor, women and pleasure. ,
He will conquer every foe save death.
Rise; hang to the opportunity which I offer to you.
I am revengeful. I knock unbidden but once at every door.
I stay here. "Leave me alone", I answered, "Thought
And thought alone makes every man happy and strong".
Ingalls was accused in the public prints un
friendly to him of plagiarism on another occasion.
Senator Vest of Missouri and others interested
in the justice or injustice of such a charge against
129

LITEEATUEE
a publie man of brilliant parts gave the subject
much attention. All acquitted Ingalls. They
could detect no literary theft by comparison of
the Ingalls production with the original from
which his detractors alleged it was taken; and
Senator Vest said so over his signature.
Now, the truth is, IngaUs never was guilty of
plagiarism. If his compositions bore resemblance
to the east of another it arose from the fact that
human expression is limited in form. Philosophic
contemplation of the mysteries of our existence
begets emotions whicii must reveal themselves
along only certain lines. Similarities must often
occur in productions of this nature.
Many of the friends of Senator Ingalls were
perturbed when Dr. Gigliotti made his claim,
some believing that the Italian had made his
case — at least that Ingalls had seen the poem,
"II Fato", before giving final form to his "Oppor
tunity". This did not imply that the brilliant
sonnet was not the product of the genius of
Ingalls, but only that the power of suggestion is
sometimes sufficient to be responsible for the un
intentional use of an alien expression for an idea
in the most honest and original of men. Dr. Gigli-
130

LITEEATUEE
otti was of this opinion, and he distinctly says
that he does not accuse Ingalls of plagiarism. For
a time the writer held this to be the reason for
the resemblance to be found in the two poems.
But notes in reference to conversations had with
Ingalls in 1884 when we were thrown much to
gether in an exciting political campaign in Wyan
dotte County bring to memory that even at that
time he had in mind the composition later
expressed in elegant and perfect diction. He had
reduced it to writing, but it is not recalled that
it was in the form of verse — rather, that it was
not. Doubtless many of his friends saw it as
early as that, for opportunity was a favorite
topic with him. Such a poem is not struck off at
a sitting, but is the result of years of meditation
and experience. The author remembers to have
taken issue with the Senator as to the sentiments
of his production. Mrs. Ingalls says he wrote it
and re-wrote it for years before its publication
over his signature in Truth in 1891. And this
agrees with his known habit. He was, in literary
work, ever over-cautious. This was shown in the
preparation of his Kansas Magazine articles,
which he re- wrote many times. His standard was
131

LITEEATUEE
the unattainable, and nothing was put forth as
worth while until it was polished and perfect.
"Opportunity" is the only thing Ingalls pro
duced in later life at all creditable or that
posterity will care to save. And its conception
belongs to his earlier days. Its development was
his life's experience misinterpreted. It was sug
gested to him by his fortunate and unexpected
election to the United States Senate. But that
was an event of consecution. It was his wife's
ambition for him — not primarily his ambition.
His marriage was the turning-point in the life
of Ingalls, and with him, as with most men hap
pily married — who secure the highest blessing
and greatest treasure in matrimony — the poetical
effusion celebrating that event would have to
bear the title of "Importunity".
Of all men of his time Ingalls turned his back
on Opportunity oftenest. She hung desperately
on his neck and entreated him with tears many
times, but he did not rise before she turned away.
It is not, however, the province of this paper to
indicate the occasions.
As a literary production, nothing in the English
language surpasses "Opportunity". It will live
132

LITEEATUEE
as long as man is charmed with the beautiful in
any form. It is a diamond of purest water per
fectly cut: OPPORTUNITY.
Master of human destinies am I!
Fame, love and fortune on my footsteps wait.
Cities and flelds I walk; I penetrate
Deserts and seas remote, and passing by
Hovel and mart and palace, soon or late
I knock unbidden once at every gate!
If sleeping, wake: if feasting, rise before
I turn away. It is the hour of fate,
And they who follow me reach every state
Mortals desire, and conquer every foe
Save death: but those who doubt or hesitate.
Condemned to failure, penury and woe.
Seek me in vain and uselessly implore.
I answer not, and I return no more!
The sentiment of this poem is not universally
accepted. Efforts to controvert its teaching were
early made. None of them compare with it in
genius of conception or skill of construction.
Some of these responses are here shown:
OPPORTUNITY.
By Walter Malone.
They do me wrong who say I come no more
When once I knock and fail to find you in;
For every day I stand outside your door.
And bid you wake, and rise to flght and win,
133

LITEEATUEE
Wail not for precious chances passed away.
Weep not for golden ages on the wane;
Each night I burn the records of the day;
At sunrise every soul is born again.
Laugh like a, boy at splendors that have sped.
To vanished joys be blind and deaf and dumb;
My judgments seal the dead past with its dead.
But never bind a moment yet to come.
Tho' deep in mire, wring not your hands and weep;
I lend my arm to all who say "I can!"
No shamefaced outcast ever sank so deep
But yet might rise and be a man again.
Dost thou behold thy lost youth all aghast?
Dost reel from righteous retribution's blow?
Then turn from blotted archives of the past
And find the future's page as white as snow.
Art thou a mourner? Rouse thee from thy spell;
Art thou a sinner? Sins may be forgiven;
Each morning gives thee wings to fiee from hell.
Each night a star to guide thy feet to heaven.

OPPORTUNITY
By F. O'Neill Gallagher.
One searched the towa and couutry through,
In winter's snows and summer's heat.
Nor was there any path but knew
The pacings of his weary feet.
He watched through the lingering night
With lamp well-filled and door ajar,
And listened lest some footfall light
Should hint the freakish god afar.
134

LITEEATUEE
The god came not. But there was one
Who recked not of the flitting days.
Nor any thought of deeds undone
Disturbed the tenor of his ways.
He toiled not, sought no goodly prize;
E'en as he slept the god came there
And poured before his dream-dimmed eyes
His store of treasure, rich and fair.
OPPORTUNITY
By Edward Rowland Sill.
This I beheld, or dreamed it in a dream:
There spread a cloud of dust along a plain;
And underneath the cloud, or in it, raged
A furious battle, and men yelled, and swords
Shocked upon swords and shields. A Prince's banner
Wavered, then staggered backward, hemmed by foes.
A craven hung along the battle's edge.
And thought, "Had I a sword of keener steel —
The blue blade that the King's son bears — ^but this
Blunt thing!" he snapped and flung it from his hand.
And lowering crept away, and left the field.
Then came the King's son, wounded and sore bestead.
And weaponless, and saw the broken sword
Hilt-buried in the dry and trodden sand.
And ran and snatched it, and with battle shout
Lifted afresh he hewed his enemy down
And saved a great cause that heroic day.
As compared to the poem of Ingalls these fall
to the place of the glow of the firefly at midnight
when compared to the sun in the splendor of
135

LITEEATUEE
noonday. As to the sentiment of the one and that
of the others — aye, there 's the rub ! As to these
sentiments no agreement or determination can
ever be made. The difference is that between
fatalism and hope.

136

POLITICS

POLITICS I.
It is not the design to present here any con
nected or complete record of the political career
of Ingalls. Instances will be adduced showing
him in those crises of his course best exhibiting
his powers and his eccentricities.
IngaUs sought political preferment from his
arrival in Kansas. His object at first was nothing
more than to provide means for a very modest
and economic subsistence.
He was engrossing clerk of the Territorial
Council in 1859. The same year he was elected
a member of the convention which formed the
present state constitution. In 1860 he was again
clerk of the Council; also in 1861. He was a
member and secretary of the Eepublican conven
tion whieh met at Lawrence in 1860 to select
delegates to the National Eepublican convention
at Chicago. In 1861 he was secretary of the
State Senate, and in November of that year was
elected from Atchison County to fill a vacancy in
that body. September 17, 1862, he was defeated
139
-10

POLITICS
in the Eepublican convention by Thomas A. Os
born for Lieutenant Governor; and on the 29th,
was nominated for that place by the "Union"
or bolting faction of the Eepublican party, com
bined with Democrats. In the election he was
defeated, the vote being 9,023 for Osborn, and
5,685 for Ingalls. He was associated with this
faction until the close of the Civil War, being
defeated for Lieutenant Governor a second time,
in 1864, by James McGrew, of Wyandotte
County, the vote being, for McGrew 12,064; for
Ingalls 8,493. The "Union" faction charged,
perhaps very justly, corruption in the regular
Eepublican organization, and demanded reforms
doubtless much needed. The "Unionists" gave
full sanction and support to the National Admin
istration in the effort to end the war, charges to
the contrary notwithstanding. In 1864 Ingalls
was made a member of the staff of Major-General
George W. Deitzler, Kansas State Militia, with the
rank of Major, and served through the two-weeks
campaign to drive General Price out of Missouri
and Kansas. He was assigned the duties of Judge
Advocate during his brief military service.

140

POLITICS II.
The influence of Mrs. Ingalls on the political
fortunes of her husband has been already referred
to. In compliance with her wishes and judgment
he became a candidate for United States Senator
in 1872. The term of Senator Pomeroy was near
ing its close, and a successor was to be chosen
by the Legislature which assembled in January,
1873. Pomeroy was a candidate to succeed him
self, and but for one of those unexpected and en
tirely unforeseen occurrences incident to corrupt
politics would have been re-elected.
All through the preliminary period of his cam
paign Ingalls was of the opinion that Pomeroy
could not be defeated. Not so with Mrs. Ingalls.
A woman will undertake the most desperate en
terprises with sanguine composure and faith in
final triumph. The peculiar quality of her men
tality called intuition enables her to detect com
ing events which men declare impossible and the
expectation of which preposterous. Mrs. Ingalls
was confident of her husband's success, although
she was wholly unable to give any satisfactory
reason for her faith.
Among the supporters of Ingalls there was
141

POLITICS
a shrewd man of affairs who kept his own coun
sel. He knew that Pomeroy ought to be beaten,
and he also knew that, pursuing ordinary political
methods, the opposition could not defeat him. He
alone conceived the plot and laid the snare which
accomplished the downfall of Pomeroy. York
acted entirely under his directions, and well did
he play the part assigned him. Genius often
consists of the ability to select suitable subordi
nates. Every step in the destruction of Pomeroy
was planned with cool deliberation and executed
with grim and relentless determination. Neither
Ingalls nor the supporters of his aspirations knew
the origin of the catastrophe that crushed Pom
eroy, and they, one and all, were as completely
surprised at his spectacular annihilation as was
"Old Beans" himself. York did not know what
he was doing, and never dreamed that his action
was to elect Ingalls.
Perhaps there never was a more profound sen
sation in any deliberative body than that pro
duced in the Kansas Legislature when York, pale
and trembling, placed on the Speaker's table
$7,000 which he said Senator Pomeroy had paid
over to him on the bargain for his vote. Not that
142

POLITICS
it was held improbable, for no doubt many others
present were in possession of similar or larger
sums procured in the same way. In a majority of
the elections for United States Senator the suc
cessful candidate wins by bribery, direct or in
direct — often by both in their most vile and
degrading forms.
The consternation and dismay created by the
dramatic course of York resulted largely from
the knowledge of Pomeroy 's most ardent sup
porters that he and themselves were guilty. Had
they not been, they would have risen to denounce
as a political trick his tragic story. Had they
done so, and had Pomeroy appeared then before
the Assembly in magnificent wrath at the out
rage upon his honor, he might even then have
prevailed. But only few men have such audacity.
Chaos had come. The old regime had ended
in an explosion entirely unexpected. There ex
isted no body or faction with even an adequate
preliminary organization to take its place. Kan
sas politicians were dazed and at sea, and that
is saying much, for no politicians in the world
are more crafty, unprincipled, harder to daze and
put at sea, brazen, or eager for the corrupting
143

POLITICS
carrion of graft and spoils than is the average
Kansas politician. Ingalls had just previously
published his Kansas Magazine articles. They
stamped him a genius. Their subject-matter ap
pealed to Kansas, for the old animosity towards
Missouri was not yet quenched. In the demoral
ization prevailing he kept his head, said little,
and stood immovable and aloof from hastily-
formed cliques which were no sooner formed than
they dissolved into thin air, and steadily gained
ground. Sentiment for his election grew from the
close of York's speech, and within thirty minutes
it crystallized, consolidated, became an aggressive
demand, and his success was assured. Men voted
for him because they had read "Catfish Aristoc
racy", and some had no other reason. His elec
tion was practically unanimous. III.
At the end of his term Ingalls was a candidate
for re-election. The Legislature to choose his
successor was elected in 1878. Strong opposition
to IngaUs developed, and his election was se
cured with difficulty, but he finally prevailed.
Charges of bribery and corruption were preferred
144

POLITICS
against him, and the whole matter was trans
ferred to the United States Senate for adjudica
tion. There the charges fell to the ground. They
had grown largely from personal hatred and old
political feuds, and that principle in Kansas pol
itics that no man shall be allowed to hold a place
if he can be defeated, no matter what his worth
to the State or Nation. The famous interview in
which Ingalls said the purification of politics was
an iridescent dream was a plain statement of fact
about the conditions in Kansas applied to the
politics of the country at large.
The victory of Ingalls was complete, and in
the exultation consequent upon his vindication
he came home and delivered the most remarkable
speech ever heard on Kansas soil. Its delivery
was set for a certain day, and extensive arrange
ments were made to have a large attendance.
Special trains from various points carried thou
sands to Atchison. Flambeau Clubs marched by
the Ught of red fire, and "Glee Clubs" and "Mo-
docs" sang like larks. The streets were con
gested with the throngs that gathered. All these,
however, were trifiing incidents. The main event
was the speech of Ingalls. It was known that
145

POLITICS
he intended to flay his adversaries, and nothing
gives the true Kansan more pleasure than to see
a politieal adversary dissected alive. In Kansas,
politics are always and altogether personal mat
ters. Principle is rarely involved. Blind adher
ence to national party platitudes is the only
guiding-star, in most instances, of the factions of
all political parties. And these weak utterances
are interpreted by each fellow and his faction to
suit their own interests, the bosses swearing that
they alone can properly construe them, and the
boss-busters swearing by the Great Horn Spoon
that the bosses are grafters, robbers and traitors.
In this they are usually nearly right, the only
delinquency being their failure to include them
selves in the same category, which is always
remedied by the retaliating bosses. These con
ditions have always prevailed in Kansas, and this
is why Kansas politics have always been rotten
and corrupt, and why they have always borne a
spectacular aspect.
In this address to his constituency Ingalls had
designed to speak from a manuscript which he
had prepared with care. But the great demon
stration in his honor carried him off his feet.
146

POLITICS
In no other place in the world is the "band
wagon" in sueh demand as in Kansas politics. In
the hosts passing in review before Ingalls were
hundreds of obscure and forsworn culprits who
burrowed like rats in filth to effect his defeat,
but now hilariously demonstrative in their allegi
ance, each detailing how he had labored dili
gently in season and out of season for the election
of the man in whose interest they were assembled
and how he had aided in the downfall of the base
calumniators, thieves and traitors, as he was
pleased to denominate his former friends and co
workers, — because they had failed.
Ingalls threw his set speech to the winds and
became the incarnation of burning, corroding,
blistering sarcasm and scathing denunciation.
The scimitar of his wrath glittered and flashed
and his foes fell — many never to rise again po
litically in Kansas. Only the manuscript speech
survives. It bears no more resemblance to the
one delivered than does the baleful light of a
tallow candle to the lightning-flash that illumines
the midnight heavens. But the best that can be
done is to set it out here:
There are probably one million people in Kan-
147

POLITICS
sas. I should be unjust to the bravest, noblest
and most intelligent constituency that ever
honored a public servant with their confidence,
if I did not avail myself of the earliest oppor
tunity afforded me to declare, with emphasis, my
belief that there cannot be found one hundred
reputable citizens of the state, black or white,
Democrats or EepubUcans, male or female, who
have credited the accusations, or certainly sym
pathized with the nefarious proceedings against
me. Those who have prosecuted the charges and
contributed the thousands of dollars required to
carry on the conspiracy are less than a score. I
know them all from the poor catspaws, Eggers
and Stumbaugh, down through Martin, Cross,
Leland and Martindale, to Horton, Guthrie, Pom
eroy and Clarke.
The majority of those who opposed my elec
tion acquiesced in the result. Many who were
borne along by the cyclone of malice, hatred and
perfidy that raged against me, regretted their
action, and would have recalled it if possible.
The courage, the conscience, the convictions of
the people irrespective of the party, were with
me from the outset. The Eepublican press had
always been largely in favor of my return to the
Senate, and the more reputable organs of the
Democracy preferred me to any of my rivals.
Arrayed against me from the beginning have been
148

POLITICS
the degraded elements in our politics, the debris,
the outcasts, the machine men, the implacables ;
reinforced by two pretended newspapers in Mis
souri ; one edited in his brief and casual intervals
of sobriety by a drunken political tramp from
Kansas ; the other by a long-haired hermaphrodite,
who has as much idea of decent journalism as the
scarlet woman of Babylon would have of the im
maculate conception.
These are the creatures that have revolted at
the immoralities of my campaign ; the insects
that have buzzed, and bit and stung. They are
the vermin of politics; like the noxious parasites
that prey on the human frame. I have seen it
intimated in some quarters that I had returned to
Kansas on a mission of vengeance and retribution.
Sensible men never get angry with flies and mos
quitoes. The only emotions that animate me are
those which inspire the affectionate mother, who,
having found in the tresses of her offspring the
pediculus. humanus, cracks it on her thumb-nail,
or the prudent husbandman who sifts Paris green
on the Colorado beetles and squash bugs that in
fest his vines, or the vigilant housewife who pur
sues that enemy of repose, the cimex lectularius,
into the crevices of the couch with corrosive sub
limate and a feather!
The character of a cause may be judged and
measured by the character of its advocates. To
149

POLITICS
conduct this moral movement these apostles of
purity selected W. C. Webb, who resigned his
seat in the Wisconsin Legislature to escape ex
pulsion for forgery and peculation; S. A. Eiggs,
who left the office of U. S. District Attorney under
charges of fraud and incapacity; and P. S. Stum
baugh, a recent resident of Chambersburg, Pa.,
whose eharacter for truth and veracity was suc
cessfully impeached in September last in a law
suit in that city, many of his neighbors swearing
that they would not believe him under oath, in a
community where he had resided for thirty years.
Had the bar of the state been polled, three men
more highly qualified by nature and education for
the filthy task could not have been discovered.
Their stupidity, ill temper, ignorance and in
competence were monumental. Their capacity for
blundering was superhuman. For their dull mis
raanagement, for the discredit they brought upon
themselves and their cause by the want of
courtesy and of the knowledge of the time and
place, I owe them a debt of gratitude which it
gives me sincere pleasure in this public manner
to acknowledge.
The title by which I hold my seat in the Sen
ate of the United States has been five times vin
dicated. In the last popular eleetion, the only
question before the people was who should be my
successor. It was discussed in the newspapers, on
150

POLITICS
the stump, in the school-houses, at the cross-roads,
by every fireside in Kansas. There is not a can
did man in the state who does not know that
three-fourths of the Eepublican members elected
to that Legislature were originally favorable to
my return. Long before the final ballot, I had
received a majority of the votes of the Republi
cans in both houses of the Legislature, and under
the common law of politics was thus entitled to
the unanimous support of my party. Seeing that
my election was inevitable unless my forces could
be broken, my adversaries, who had been for years
attempting to saturate the public mind with the
most infamous and odious calumnies, suddenly let
loose a tempest of furious defamation, under cover
of which, by threats, promises, and purchases, they
formed the most formidable coalition ever known
in Kansas politics. No such adulterous alliance
was ever made before. Ex-Senators and members
of Congress, Marshals and ex-Marshals, the Chair
man of the Central Committee, the Speaker of the
Plouse, veterans and raw recruits, disappointed
aspirants for office, inveterate enemies of twenty-
one years' standing, EepubUcans, Democrats and
Greenbackers, all assembled under the leadership
of the venerable and saintly Pomeroy in one heroic
struggle of devoted self-abnegation to redeem and
regenerate the state.
They selected as their facile instrument the
151

POLITICS
Chief Justice of the State, a man who began his
political career by writing editorials in favor .sge-
ccssion and drinking toasts to the health of Jef
ferson Davis. Persuaded to become a Eepublican
by the promise of preferment, he has been con
tinuously in office with an accidental hiatus of one
year from 1860 to 1880. During this long period
he has habitually trafficked in justice, defrauded
his clients, basely plundered his partner, and in
sulted society by his degraded and flagrant im
morality. He has never made a promise he did
not break nor had a friend whom he was not will
ing to betray.
In this political judge these frenzied conspir
ators found a willing accomplice.
Feebly protesting that he was not a candidate,
though every one knew that for five years he had
trodden every devious path that led toward the
Capitol, that he took his seat on the bench merely
as a steppingstone to the Senate, he descended
into the mire of personal politics, accepting the
nomination in a calumnious speech, and then at
tempted to secure success by the open purchase
of votes. Much has been said about the purity of
the ermine. That traditional fur was never
dragged through a fouler puddle. The very seat
on the bench that was to be vacated was promised
to two anxious aspirants, and the entire political
wardrobe of the state was divided in anticipation
152

POLITICS
of my defeat, like the apparel of Joseph among
his brethren. My election was the triumph of
decency over disorder. It was a victory of the
people over the machine politicians. It was
achieved against tremendous odds and in the face
of obstacles almost insurmountable. It ought to
have ended there, but the discomfiture of the op
position was too complete, and their baffled rage
found vent in an investigation before a Committee
of the Legislature, which was packed by a per
jured Speaker, for the purpose of convicting me.
This so-called investigation was a flagrant bur
lesque of justice, a prodigy of partizan unfairness.
The hostile tribunal, organized to find me guilty,
sat for weeks with closed doors, without attorneys
or spectators, no witness knowing what had been
testified, without notice to those whose rights and
reputations were thus brutally assailed, and finally
exonerated me in a majority report which was
adopted by the Legislature. The Chairman of the
Committee, a weak but not wicked man, who has
been rewarded for his violation of his promise to
vote for me by the office of Eeporter of the Su
preme Court, revolted at the injustice that he had
been selected to do.
Thus, having been endorsed by the people,
elected by the Legislature, and vindicated by the
Committee, I had reasonable ground to anticipate
immunity from annoyance. 153

POLITICS
Had the United States Senate been Republican,
no further effort against me would have been
made. But the Senate was Democratic, and as I
was a John Brown, bloody shirt, stalwart, anti-
administration Eepublican, these shallow Me
morialists reasoned that the Democrats Avould
eagerly snatch at any opportunity to destroy me.
Extracts from my speeches at Osawatomie and
elsewhere were reprinted and sent to Democratic
Senators, and Eggers and Stumbaugh, like a
couple of Scarabaei trundled their feculent orb
of ordure, with its egg of malice, along the dusty
highways to Washington.
I have on occasion hitherto criticised the De
mocracy with candor. I shall do so without re
serve hereafter. But I shall never forget that
they dealt fairly with me ; and that they refused
to become allies of my enemies ; that they were in
capable of personal injustice for the sake of real
or fancied political advantage.
When the evidence taken by the Legislative
Committee, with the Memorial asking for further
investigation, was laid before the Senate and
referred to the Committee on Privileges and Elec
tions they refused to entertain it, holding that the
decision of the Legislature was satisfactory, in the
absence of additional allegations.
Whereupon was filed a supplemental Memorial
alleging that ten members of the Legislature,
154

POLITICS
naming them, had been induced to vote for me
by corrupt payments of money or promises of
office. The investigation was then ordered, and a
sub-Committee of five assembled at Topeka in
September and sat three weeks, taking several
hundred pages of printed testimony.
When the sub-Committee convened, the Mem
orialists promptly withdrew the charges against
seven of the gentlemen named in the second
Memorial, and offered nothing but vulgar gossip
and rumor about the other three. This supple
mental Memorial was a deliberate fraud and im
position on the Senate, entirely without evidence
to support it, known to be false by the parties
who signed it, fabricated for the sole purpose of
procuring an investigation that would not other
wise have been ordered. It was a foul and cruel
calumny against ten eminent citizens of high
character, and the creatures who made it, by the
subsequent withdrawal of its statements, stand
before the world as self-convicted libelers, slan
derers and liars.
During the pendency of these proceedings I
have invited the widest and minutest scrutiny. No
objections to evidence have been interposed, how
ever frivolous and incompetent and irrelevant it
might be. I visited New York and personally im
portuned the President of the Telegraph Company
to produce all messages without hesitation or
155
-11

POLITICS
delay. The books and vaults of the banks have
been opened for inspection, and private corres
pondence has been freely disclosed.
Conscious of rectitude, and confiding in the
justice of the lofty tribunal before which I was
arraigned, I stood silent amid calumnious clamors.
Preferring that the decision should not be biased
by personal considerations, I made no statement
and gave no testimony before the Committee in
refutation of the idle inuendoes that were digni
fied by the name of evidence. I attended strictly
to my public duties, asking no quarter, ready to
meet every accusation, exhibiting no hesitation,
concealing nothing, shielding myself behind no
technicalities nor presumptions.
The conduct of the prosecution was inconceiv
ably brutal and cowardly. Not content Math the
opportunity afforded them to defeat me before the
people in the canvass of 1878, before the Legis
lature that elected me, before the Investigating
Committee of the House at Topeka, before the
Committee on Privileges and Elections, and before
the Senate, they habituaUy resorted to the indus
trious circulation of newspaper calumnies, the in
vention of slanders and lies, to prejudice my char
acter and standing before the Committee and the
Senate. One of the counsel for the Memorialists
prepared and published a pamphlet, purporting to
be a statement of the evidence in the "Ingalls
156

POLITICS
Case" taken before the sub-Committee at Topeka,
which was forwarded, while the case was still
pending and undecided, to every member of the
Committee and to each Senator and Eepresenta
tive in Congress, the President and each Cabinet
Officer, and to all the leading newspapers of the
country ! Comment is unnecessary. A lawyer who
in the trial of a hog case before a country justice,
would resort to such attempts to influence the
magistrate or the jury, would justly be regarded
as having poor judgment, a bad case, and a char
acter worse than either.
And since the proceedings have ended, the Hon
orable Member of Congress from this District has
been sending bushels of the scurrilous "brief"
of the Memorialists to Kansas under his frank, in
direct violation of the laws of Congress, and de
frauding the revenues of the Postoffice Depart
ment of two cents upon each copy. They are not
public documents, they are not published by au
thority of Congress. They were printed at the
expense of the Memorialists.
Like all apostates who abandon religion for pol
itics, this eminent Eepresentative is another illus
tration of the fact that because a man is a poor
preacher he is not necessarily a great statesman.
Garbage must be removed, but it is not often that
a man can be found to act as scavenger. I com
mend to the reverend gentleman the eontempla-
157

POLITICS
tion of the text that will be found in the 22d
verse of the Second Chapter of the Second Epistle
general of Peter. [But it is happened unto them
according to the true proverb. The dog is turned
to his own vomit again; and the sow that was
crashed to her wallowing in the mire.]
But at last after many weary months, after
my conduct had been scrutinized with the tele
scope and the microscope, the investigation that
had been so eagerly coveted came to its close.
It was another iUustration of the "Knavish engi
neer hoist by his own petard". It was like the
gun of Hudibras which
"Aimed at duck or plover.
Recoils and kicks its owner over".
It was a weapon that hit everybody but the man
it was fired at; a boomerang that returned and
slew the hurler.
All the principal candidates against me felt
called upon to offer themselves as witnesses to
explain their behavior and clear themselves of
criminal complicity and bribery and overthrow.
After hearing all the evidence the Committee
unanimously decided without a dissenting opinion
that the charges and allegations against me were
not sustained, and they were discharged from
further consideration of the subject. . . .
The magnificent demonstration of this day has
been wholly unexpected to me, and on that ac-
158

POLITICS
count, perhaps, the more gratifying, especially as
I am led to believe that it emanates spontane
ously, without respect to party, from the people
of Kansas, as a manifestation of the approbation
and good will of this grand Commonwealth for
which I have so long labored and where so many
years of my life have been spent. It would be
hollow affectation were I to deny that I have
been profoundly moved by what I have seen and
heard to-day; by the great multitudes that have
thronged the streets ; by the enthusiasm ; the tri
umphant music; the transitory splendor of rock
ets and torches; the acclamation that has rent
the sky.
I am not unconscious that this pageant means
vastly more than a mere personal tribute to me.
It comes from the Anglo-Saxon instinct of justice
and fair play. It is a protest against brutal,
cowardly and malignant detraction. It is a re
buke to a most perfidious and detestable plot con
ceived by a wretched cabal of implacable enemies,
who having failed to defeat, conspired to destroy,
and who were willing in order to accomplish their
sinister designs to degrade their party and defile
and dishonor their state. I have endured much,
but life is full of compensations, and the occur
rences of this day convince me that I can confi
dently accept the verdict of the people for my
final and triumphant vindication. 159

POLITICS IV.
The uncomplimentary reference to the inves
tigation of his election by Senator Voorhees
brought upon him the full measure of the wrath
of Ingalls. The Hoosier was vanquished at every
point and was led out of the Senate Chamber
like a whipped lion wounded in every muscle.
And politically he never recovered. The press
account of the affair was as follows :
Senator Voorhees, of Indiana, was not in his
seat to-day. It was reported that he was confined
to his room by an attack of rheumatism.
Mr. Ingalls, however, was in the Vice-presi
dent's chair bright and early, and throughout the
entire session he presided over the deliberations
of the Senate with his usual gravity and grace.
The Ingalls-Voorhees encounter of yesterday in
the Senate was the sensation of the hour to-day.
It was discussed by statesmen and pseudo-states
men in the halls and corridors of the Capitol and
by the great public in the streets and in the
lobbies of the hotels. Democrats and EepubUcans
universally agreed that the Indiana Senator had
been badly worsted; in fact that Mr. Ingalls had
literally mopped up the earth with Mr. Voorhees.
Eugene P. Ware, the Paint Creek poet, of Port
Scott, Kansas, expressed it in the following verse
160

POLITICS
which he telegraphed to Senator Ingalls this
morning : Cyclone dense.
Lurid air ;
Wabash hair.
Hide on fence.
The shrewdness of Mr. IngaUs' plan of attack
is universally complimented. His speech, which
began at two o'clock and closed at four, was bril
liant, able and pointed, but it was mild as com
pared with the second edition. His grape and
cannister was in reserve, and Mr. Voorhees didn't
expect it. The Kansas orator had carefully pre
pared himself with the documentary evidence
against the Tall Sycamore of the Wabash, and
he was thrice armed with the language necessary
to rhetorically skin him alive. When at four
o'clock Mr. Ingalls had concluded his set speech,
Mr. Voorhees blandly supposed that the ammu
nition was all gone and that he would proceed to
thrash his unarmed adversary. He entered upon
his excoriation of Mr. Ingalls in apparent glee.
He felt that it would be an easy task to demoral
ize the Kansas Senator and put him utterly to
rout. He became sarcastic and then tried to be
funny. He wept for McClellan and Hancock, and
his sympathetic nature even went out to the man
he was about to slay.
The opportimity which Mr. Ingalls anticipated
161

POLITICS
came, and he interrupted Mr. Voorhees with a
question which disturbed his equanimity, then
annoyed him, then angered him, then enraged
him. He plunged about in his madness until he
clumsily fell into the pit Ingalls had warily pre
pared for him, and from that moment he was at
the mercy of the Kansan. Mr. Voorhees lost his
temper, and Mr. IngaUs' remarkable coolness and
smiling serenity only exasperated him the more.
He was defiant at first, and it was only when Mr.
Ingalls began reading the rebel letter whieh Voor
hees believed until that moment was out of ex
istence and forever beyond reeaU, that Mr. Voor
hees cowered. At the first sentence he whitened
with the startling knowldge that after a quarter
of a century his sins of treason had found him
out, and when the letter was fibiished the Hoosier
was white and trembling. Prom that moment
all he could do was to shout "liar" and "dirty
dog", and abuse and villify everything and every
body concerned.
It was dramatic to the end, and Mr. Voorhees
left the Senate chamber more thoroughly whipped
than ever before in his life. To-day he was con
spicuous for his absence, and it is reported that
he will remain away for some days. Democratic
Senators say he ought to have kept his mouth
shut when Ingalls closed his speech at four
o'clock, but he didn't. They are therefore not
162

POLITICS
very regretful that he got the drubbing he
courted. To-day Senator Ingalls was the recipient of con
gratulatory telegrams from every quarter of the
Union. All of them were complimentary, many
of them unique. The Governors of no less than a
dozen Eepublican states sent their congratula
tions, and complimentary telegrams came even
from Indiana. Kansas was evidently overjoyed
by the victory of her senior Senator, for there
were telegrams patriotic, enthusiastic, and full of
all the eloquence the wires could transmit from
every portion of the Sunflower State.
It was more a passage at arms than a speech.
The scene in the Senate and the words of the
controversy are preserved in the Congressional
Record, from which the following is quoted:
Mr. Voorhees. Now, if the Senator from Kan
sas ean find any adjutant-general's report of the
State of Kansas where his name ever appeared as
a warrior, even in the diluted and dilapidated
form of judge-advocate [laughter], I wiU let up
on him. I say here that the American Army has
but three names of Ingalls in it. Eufus Ingalls,
and I speak his name with honor, the old Quarter
master-General, the old reliable friend of Grant,
was one Ingalls. There was another Ingalls, who
commanded a regiment from New York, and when
163

POLITICS
we go out towards Kansas there was another
Ingalls, by the name of Pearl P. Ingalls, who was
chaplain of an Iowa regiment. I wUl ask the
Senator from Iowa about him. He prayed and
preached. That is the nearest that the name of
Ingalls is found in the United States Army in the
records of the War Department. Being pious,
perhaps he was a cousin of the Senator, but I do
not know how that may be. There was none
other. All this, Mr. President, is not much to the
American people. The Senator from Kansas and
myself know how little it counts, and all that
justifies me in bringing it forward is that that
Senator on such a slender foundation sees fit to
appear as the censor of George B. McClellan and
General Hancock.
I ask him if I am not fair in presenting the
reasons why somebody else ought to discuss the
military aspects of this question besides him. He
may say that somebody ought besides me. I will
answer, yes, but, sir, I will say that he has no
greater claims than I; and here, once for all,
whatever shortcomings I may have had, I will
stand with him on a popular vote before the
soldiers of Indiana or the soldiers of Kansas, and
leave this body if I am not approved by them over
him. If that is arrogance, it is justified by the
provocation. 164

POLITICS
The Senator from Kansas has alluded to Gen
eral Hancock's celebrated Order No. 40, issued
while he was at New Orleans, issued in the blaz
ing spirit of civil liberty, the supremacy of civil
government over the military. It spoke the voice
of the fathers and rang out over the country as
a bugle-call back to the foundations of the Gov
ernment. The Senator saw fit to denounce it. I
have simply to answer in response that the Su
preme Court of the United States, composed of
men of the Senator's own political persuasion,
construed that order to be constitutional and
founded upon the eternal principles of liberty.
Mr. President, I have occupied the floor as
long as I designed to do so. I spoke, as I said,
a week ago for the truth of history, and here in
my heart I reassert and reaffirm what I then said.
I am willing that the figures in regard to pen
sions be summed up as between those stated by
the Senator from Kansas and myself. I will not
open that question and go into detail now. As
to the history of the South and the history of
reconstruction, I stated the true scenes through
which I lived, through which I passed, and which
I know. I know that the Eepublican party in its
dominancy and supremacy spoliated the South of
over $200,000,000, broke in dishonor her civil
governments, and but for the fact that she is com
posed of a people born of self-reliance, born to
165

POLITICS
civilization and the higher arts and walks of life,
they would have been destroyed from the earth.
In addition to what I said last week I will say
here now that the annals of mankind furnish no
other instance where the system of labor, social
organization was torn up and turned upside down,
slaves set free (which I was glad of), where so
ciety held together as it did in the South. You
may attack, you may denounce, you may make
war on such a people, but the end is their tri
umph and your defeat. [Applause in the gal
leries.] Mb. Ingalls. It is not my purpose, Mr. Presi
dent, to prolong the debate. I regret exceedingly
that the Senator from Indiana has thought best
to refer to personal matters in connection with
my history, to which I do not propose now to
advert. My military service was inconspicuous
and obscure, and no one is more conscious than
I am of the debt that I owe my country, and of
the unpaid obligation of gratitude which I am
under to those who did what I might under other
circumstances have done.
But inasmuch as the Senator from Indiana has
seen fit to invite comparison between his record,
his history, and his relation and mine to the great
questions that have for the past twenty-five years
attracted the attention of the country, I feel it
to be my duty, in the defense of the truth of
166

POLITICS
history, to put on the record the information in
my possession, and I have it in shape I think that
he will not deny. I shall refer only to public
matters in public records, and I shall venture the
affirmation that whatever may have been my own
relation to the great struggle between the North
and the South, and for constitutional liberty, the
Senator from Indiana was from the outset the
determined, outspoken, positive, aggressive, and
malignant enemy of the Union cause.
Mr. Voorhees. I pronounce that deliberately
false. Mr. Ingalls. Well —
Mr. Voorhees. It is absolutely false. I voted
for every dollar that was paid to the soldier, for
every suit of clothes he wore, and for every pen
sion that he has ever had, and for every land
warrant. A proper statement —
Mr. Ingalls. I did not interrupt the Senator
from Indiana. The Senator from Indiana took
seven weeks to reply to my speech of March 6.
He came in here with a pile of manuscript bigger
than a Hebrew Talmud — sweltering venom sleep
ing got. I can excuse unpremeditated assaults.
There is something in chance medley and hot
foot that is excusable, but the deliberate, premed
itated preparation of malignant, unfounded at
tack is to my mind entirely incompatible with a
noble nature. When the Senator from Indiana
167

POLITICS
sat down in the privacy of his closet and called
me a Tbersites and referred to me as a "judge-
advocate", peevish and paltry politician, as one
who, like Job's war-horse, had smelt the battle
afar off, if he thinks that is not a personal assault,
or if that is his idea of the observance of the com
ity that ought to prevail among gentlemen, weU
and good.
My relations with the Senator from Indiana
for many years have been those of cordiality and
friendship, and never was I more surprised than
when my attention was called to the vindictive,
unfounded, malevolent, and unjustifiable asper
sion with which he assailed me in manuscript. 1
could have borne it if an enemy had done it, but
it was, as the Psalmist said, "my own familiar
friend". I was unconscious of ever having ut
tered a word in derogation of the Senator from
Indiana. We have agreed on many questions,
and in the supreme crisis of my fortunes to which
he has referred, unjustifiably referred, referred
to me as having been "whitewashed", I had his
avowed and express sympathy; and when I es
caped from the conspirators who had followed me
from the State Capitol to the doors of this Senate
Chamber the Senator from Indiana was the very
first man to write me a note of congratulation
and sympathy.
Yet he comes in here to-day and says : "Thank
168

POLITICS
God, he never had been followed here by a com
mittee that questioned his right to his title to his
seat", and with much diffuseness of illustra
tion, for the purpose of casting aspersion and
belittling and humiliating me in the eyes of the
American people, when I had only referred to his
public utterances given in debate, his speeches,
which he did not deny.
Mr. Voorhees. I did.
Mr. Ingalls. The Senator from Indiana did
not deny the veracity of the publication that I
read. Mr. Voorhees. I did.
Mb. Ingalls. He could not do so. It was a
verbatim stenographic report, and was certified
to by the man who made it.
Me. Voorhees. I do not want to interrupt the
Senator —
Mr. Ingalls. Yes ; I shall be very glad to hear
the Senator, because I would not do him an in
justice. Mr. Voorhees. I say that not a word or syl
lable read by the Senator is true, or believed to
be true in Indiana. I have met those accusations
and trampled them under foot. I would say fur
ther that the Senator's insinuation that I was
ever a member of the secret society of the Knights
of the Golden Circle is so base and infamously
false that I do not know how to choose language
169

POLITICS
to denounce it. I am not so held in my own
State. [Applause in the galleries.]
The Presiding Officer. The Chair will remind
the persons in the galleries that they are here by
the courtesy of the Senate and are its guests.
They have been reminded more than once that
the rules of the Senate do not allow any manifes
tations of satisfaction with or disagreement to
what is said in the Senate ; and while it would be
a harsh measure, as has been suggested, and it
would be much regretted, to clear the galleries, if
it is necessary for the purpose of enforcing the
rules of the Senate it will have to be done.
Mr. Ingalls. The Senator from Indiana has
just said that he was in favor of the destruction
of slavery and that he was opposed to secession,
and yet in the published volume of his own
speeches there is a reprint of an address delivered
by him in Virgima shortly before the war in
which he advocates both.
Me. Voorhees. Now, will the Senator pardon
me a moment?
Me. Ingalls. Certainly.
Mb. Voorhees. I will be perfectly candid. I
did not say that I was in favor of the destruction
of slavery in connection with the war, but I did
say I was glad that it took place. Now, make
the most of that.
Mr. Ingalls. I will say further than that, that
170

POLITICS
the Senator from Indiana at the time when he de
livered that speech had two editions of it pre
pared, one of them for circulation in the North
and one in the South.
Mr. Voorhees. That is not true.
Mr. Ingalls. Not true ! Why, they are ac
cessible to-day, just as much so —
Mr. Voorhees. Get them and show them.
Me. Ingalls. They are just as accessible as
the Statutes of the United States.
Mr. Voorhees. Get them and show them. I
say it is not true. I have met that on the stump.
I have heard campaign falsifiers before.
Me. Ingalls. The Senator pleases to call these
campaign rumors because he has heard them for
the last fifteen years, and therefore they are not
true. In 1860, after the Senators from South Carolina
had withdrawn from this Chamber, and when
preparations for war were rife all over the South,
and everybody knew that secession was to be, so
far as the South could make it, an accomplished
fact, the Senator from Indiana wrote a letter,
which I shall read. Perhaps he will deny that.
It is a letter to Mr. Francis A. Shoup, that he
took South with him and filed in the Confederate
war department in support of his own application
for appointment as a brigadier-general in the
Confederate army. The man who received it was
171
-12

POLITICS
appointed a brigadier-general in the Confederate
army, and he is now an ecclesiastic in Alabama
or somewhere in one of the Southern States. I
will read what the Senator from Indiana wrote.
Anybody can see it, and anybody who knows his
handwriting can identify it. This is the letter:
Indianapolis, Ind., December 12, 1860.
My friend, Capt. Francis A. Shoup, is about visiting the
South with his sister, on account of her health.
I have know Captain Shoup since our boyhood; we were
schoolmates. He is a graduate of West Point, and was
in the Army as a, lieutenant four years. No more honor
able or upright gentleman exists. On the disturbing ques
tions of the day his sentiments are entirely with the
South, and one of his objects is a probable home in that
section. I take this occasion to say that his sentiments and my
own are in close harmony, D. W. Voorhees.
I suppose the Senator will say that that is a
campaign slander, the vile calumny of the oppo
sition press.
Mr. Vooehees. Mr. President, that is not a
campaign slander, but it is —
Mr. Ingalls. He has trodden it under foot and
spat on it.
Mr. Voorhees. Will the Senator pardon me a
moment ?
Mr. Ingalls. Certainly.
Mr. Voorhees. I say it is not a campaign
172

POLITICS
slander, but it is one of those things the people
of Indiana have passed on for now nearly thirty
years. Me. Ingalls. The Democratic party of Indi
ana have passed upon it, I dare say. [Laughter.]
Mr. Voorhees. They have passed upon it by
a very large majority and no —
Mr. Ingalls. Oh, I know the Knights of the
Golden Circle have passed upon it.
Mr. Vooehees. No colporteur or missionary
from Kansas can give it any more respectability
than the fellows in Indiana have heretofore. I
have disposed of them. There was no war when
the letter was written; there was not for nearly
a year afterwards.
Me. Ingalls. Sumter fell ninety days after
wards. Me. Vooehees. No, it did not.
Me. Ingalls. Let me look at the date.
Me. Vooehees. In December.
Me. Ingalls. December 12, 1860. When did
Sumter fall?
Me. Vooehees. In April.
Me. Ingalls. In April, 1861?
Me. Vooehees. Yes.
Me. Ingalls. December, January, February,
March — four months afterwards.
Me. Vooehees. Yes; inaccuracy is written on
your face. 173

POLITICS
jMe. Ingalls. Within four months from the
time the letter was written Sumter had fallen,
and yet the Senator from Indiana says :
I take this occasion to say that his sentiments and my
own are in close harmony.
That is something I suppose that the Senator
regards as the vile expectorations of a partisan
press. He spits on it and treads it underfoot
and kicks it out of sight. I will say to the Sena
tor from Indiana that that paper was very im
portant and influential in securing Mr. Shoup
the appointment of brigadier-general in the Con
federate army. When the archives of that gov
ernment were captured it was sent here to the
War Department, and the original is on file
to-day. Jesse D. Bright, from Indiana, was expelled for
as small an offense as that from this body, yet the
Senator from Indiana ventures to criticise my
military record and my right to speak of the
relations of George B. McClellan and Hancock
to the Democratic party. The Senator from Indi
ana says that the accusation that he called Union
soldiers hirelings and Lincoln dogs, that he said
they ought to go to the nearest blacksmith shop
and have a collar welded around their necks on
which should be inscribed, "My dog. A. Lin
coln", is a campaign calumny and slander which
174

POLITICS
has been spat on and kicked out and trodden
under foot. I will say to the Senator from Indi
ana that the averment that he made that state
ment ean be substantiated by as credible a witness
as there is in this city at this time.
Mr. Vooehees. It is false, and even if the
Senator said it it would be utterly false — just
as false coming from the Senator as from the
greatest liar ever in the country.
Me. Ingalls. If this were a police court the
Senator from Indiana would be sent to the rock-
pile for being drunk and disorderly.
Sullivan, Ind., September 28, 1868.
We, the undersigned citizens of Sullivan County, Indi
ana, were present at a public speaking held in Sullivan
August 5, 1862, when Hon. D. W. Voorhees, said, speaking
in reference to the Union soldiers, that they should go
to the nearest blacksmith shop and have an iron collar
made and placed around their necks, inscribed thereon in
large letters, "My dog. A. Lincoln", and at the same
time he referred to the Union soldiers as Lincoln's dogs
and hirelings. Valentine Hick. Richard Dodd.
James J. Laudermilk. Jacob B. Miller.
Warden Williams. Isaac Hilderbrand.
Lafayette Hartley. Margaret Hereford.
Philip W. Beck. Mary Hereford.
Helen Hereford. Nelson Burton.
Mrs. M. E. Earl. Seth Cushman.
Thomas Bulton. Owen Adams.
John W. Hawkins. J. H. Ridgeway.
175

POLITICS
I suppose those are reputable citizens of Indi
ana. They are not ashamed of their names or
their residence. They give their home and their
designation. The Senator from Indiana can settle
the question of the truth or falsehood with them
and not with me. And when the Senator from
Indiana states that he has been endorsed by his
own party, that all these accusations have been
trod on and contumeliously spat upon by the
people of Indiana, I say to him that that has only
been done by the Democratic party of Indiana.
We all know what business the Democratic party
of Indiana were engaged in during the war.
Seventy thousand of them were Knights of the
Golden Circle, conspiring against this Union.
They entered into combinations, as General Holt
states in his report on that subject, for the pur
pose of —
1. Aiding soldiers to desert, and harboring and pro
tecting deserters.
2. Discouraging enlistment and resisting the draft. '
3. Circulation of disloyal and treasonable publications.
4. Communication with, and giving intelligence to, the
enemy. 5. Aiding the enemy by recruiting for them, or assist
ing them to recruit within our lines.
6. Furnishing the rebels with arms, ammunition, etc.
7. Co-operating with the enemy in raids and invasions.
8. Destruction of (Jovernment property.
9. Destruction of private property and persecution of
loyal men.
10. Assassination and murder. 176

POLITICS
And it is susceptible of proof that they did
conspire to murder Governor Morton, to overturn
the State government and put it in the possession
of the rebels; and this organization, to which
the Senator from Indiana says he never belonged,
had a ritual and organization of which 112 copies
were found in his office — in the office of the
Senator from Indiana — at the time when Han
cock was at the bloody angle. In that same
office was found correspondence between the Sen
ator from Indiana and a Senator from New Jersey
for the purpose of furnishing arms, 20,000 stand
of them, not to the National Government, for the
Senator from Indiana was not in sympathy with
that at that time; not to the State government
of Indiana, because that was in other and loyal
hands; but for the purpose, as may be imagined,
of carrying out the objects and purposes of this
organization. I am aware that the Senator from Indiana
states and has stated that although these papers
were found in his office, it was not then occupied
by him. He is entitled to the benefit of the
doubt. He states that he had abandoned the
practice of law and was not intending to resume
it; but I have here a list of what was found in
his office at the same time when these 112 copies
of the ritual and rules of organization of the
Knights of the Golden Circle were found there,
177

POLITICS
and he never denied it. He afterwards said that
there had been an unwarrantable search of his
private papers. General Carrington is a well-
known man, and has stated publicly what was
found in the office of the Senator from Indiana
that did belong to him at the time when "these
papers" were found.
The papers referred to are 112 copies of the
ritual of the 0. A. K., a treasonable order, aiming
to overturn the Government of the United States,
of whose Congress you are a member.
Your law library and office furniture were in
the office where "these papers" were found.
You had declined renomination for Congress
and the office was not for rent as late as April,
1864. The ritual had been issued in the autumn of
1863. Your Congressional documents were in the
office where "these papers" were found.
Your speeches, up to March, of your entire
Congressional career, with the "John Brown"
speech, were in the office where "these papers"
were found. The correspondence of Senator
WaU, of New Jersey, under his frank, indorsing
a proposition to furnish you with 20,000 stand
of Garibaldi rifles, just imported, "for which he
could vouch", was in the office where "these
papers" were found.
The correspondence of C. L. VaUandigham,
178

POLITICS
from Windsor, Canada West, assuring you "our
people will fight", and that "he is ready", and
fixing a point on the "Lima road" at "which
to meet you", was in the office where "these
papers" were found.
There is a little more historical information on
that subject which I think may be valuable. In
the rebel archives was found a letter from Mr.
Clement C. Clay, dated Welland Hotel, St. Cath
erine's, July 11, 1864, addressed to Hon. Jacob
Thompson, Montreal. Lest I may seem inaccurate
I believe I will have the whole letter printed. I
take an extract from it. It is full of confidential
communications to Mr. Thompson as an agent of
the rebel Confederacy, tells him what is being
done by the Sons of Liberty and the Knights
of the Golden Circle, advises methods for the pur
pose of releasing Confederate prisoners, and he
says: The only fear is, they will not be prepared for it, and
will be surprised and stupefled without notice. You need
not fear, as they are of the sworn brotherhood. Voorhees
is to be here on Monday or Tuesday, and perhaps Ben Wood.
July 11, 1864, "Voorhees is to be here on Mon
day or Tuesday, and perhaps Ben Wood". What
was Voorhees "to be here" for in Canada to see
C. C. Clay, and why was Jacob Thompson, of the
Southern Confederacy, advised of it?
179

POLITICS
The correspondence of Joseph Eistine, auditor
of state, declaring that "he would like to see all
Democrats unite in a bold and open resistance to
all attempts to keep ours a united people by
force of steel"; and that "this was a war against
Democracy, and our only hope was a successful
resistance of the South", was in the office "where
these papers" were found.
The correspondence of E. C. Hibben, who as
sures you that "the Democracy are fast stiffening
up when this war is to be openly declared as
being waged for the purpose of freeing the
negro", "which will arouse another seetion of
the country to arms", and declaring "that Lin
coln bayonets are shouldered for cold-blooded
murder", was in the office "where these papers"
were found.
The correspondence of J. Hardesty, who "wants
you to have that one hundred thousand men
ready, as we do not know how soon we may
need them", was in the office where "this Eitual"
was found.
And I have the letter of Hardesty here in whieh
he calls on the Senator from Indiana to have
the one hundred thousand men in readiness.
There is a curious explanation about that letter,
which is that when the Senator from Indiana, just
previous to the breaking out of the war, was in
180

POLITICS
Virginia making addresses in favor of slavery
and secession, he made a speech at a serenade or
on a public occasion in which he said that if any
attempt was made to coerce the South one hun
dred thousand Democrats in Indiana would come
down to resist the effort. My informant says
that they did come, but their guns were pointed
the wrong way.
The correspondence of J. J. Bingham, who asks
you "if you think the South has resources enough
to keep the Union forces at bay", and says that
"you must have sources of information which he
has not" was in the office where "these papers"
were found.
The eorrespondence of John G. Davis informing
you that a certain New York Journal ' ' is wonder
fully exercised about the secret anti-war move
ments" and "tremble in their boots in view of
the terrible reaction which is sure to await them"
was in the office where "these papers" were
found. The correspondence of U. S. Walker, who
"keeps out of the way", because they are trying
to arrest him for officiating in secret societies, in
closing the oath of the K. G. C's prior to that of
the 0. A. K, was in the office where "these
papers" were found.
The petition of C. L. Vallandigham, D. W.
181

POLITICS
Voorhees, and Benjamin Wood in favor of two
republics and a United South was in the office
where "these papers" were found.
The correspondence of Campbell, E. Etheridge,
George H. Pendleton, J. E. McDonald, W. B.
Hanna, and others, Mr. Carrington says, are some
of the "circumstances" that led me to believe
that "these papers" the ritual of the 0. A. K.,
were found in your office.
I looked upon these circumstances as a plain
juror might be supposed to do, and not as a
statesman, and innocently supposed that such
papers as these, if spared from the fire, would
be in possession of the owner, and that the office
of the owner would be the place where "these
papers" would be found.
And yet, with Colonel Thompson, I cheerfuUy
accepted your denial, and so respond as you re
quest "that the people may know the truth".
The Senator from Indiana in response to this
wrote a letter three columns long that was pub
lished in the Democratic papers and printed in
the Eichmond Enquirer in Virginia, with praise
of the Senator from Indiana.
A letter from J. Hardesty, of Harrisonburgh,
Va., to his nephew, Daniel W. Voorhees, dated —
182

Addressed -

POLITICS
Harrisonburgh, December 17, 1862.

My Dear Nephew: We want you to hold that 100,000
men in readiness, as we do not know how soon we may
want them. J. Hardesty.
Addressed on envelope :
Hon. Daniel W. Voorhees,
Terre Haute, Ind.
Senatoe Wall, of New Jersey, to Dan Vooehees.
Long Branch, August 21, 1863.
My Dear Sir: I inclose you two letters from a. man by
the name of Carr, in reference to arms. A letter directed
to him simply Philadelphia will reach him. I can vouch
for the excellent quality and great efiiciency of the rifles.
Yours in haste, James W. Wall.
And another from Carr to Wall, dated August
14, 1863, on the same subject, giving the price
at which these arms could be purchased, which
was $14 apiece, saying there were about twenty
thousand of them in all. For what purpose they
were wanted is left to the imagination to disclose.
With regard to the question as to the side on
which the sympathies of the Senator from Indiana
were — I suppose the Senator from Indiana will
deny this also and say it was mere campaign
calumny cast out and trodden under the feet of
men — on the 5th day of March, 1864, he spoke
183

POLITICS
of Vallandigham as "that representative Ameri
can patriot, who, with Hendricks and Seymour
and Eichardson, had done so much to uphold the
hands of the American public and had preserved
so far the guaranties of constitutional liberty",
a man who was tried and banished from the
country for being a traitor, and justly banished;
and yet the Senator from Indiana said on the 5th
of March, 1864 :
Will some poor, crawling, despised sycophant and tool
of executive despotism —
That sounds very much like the Senator from
Indiana. If that is a fabrication it is a very
ingenious one —
Will some poor, crawling, despised sycophant and tool
of executive despotism dare to say that I shall not pro
nounce the name of Vallandigham? The scandal and stigma
of his condemnation —
The scandal and stigma of Vallandigham's con
demnation —
and banishment have filled the civilized world, and the
Lethean and oblivious wave of a thousand years can not
wash away the shame and reproach of that miserable
scene from the American name. Some members have at
tacked with fierce clamor the great American statesman
and Christian gentleman who suft'ers his exile in the
cause of liberty on a foreign soil. So the basest cur
that ever kenneled may bay, at "the bidding of a master,
the aged lion in the distance". 184

POLITICS
His opinion of Mr. Lincoln was contained in
the same speech —
Genghis Kahn and Tamerlane, preserved by the pen of
the historian for universal execration, found no pursuit
so pleasant as calling for more men for the harvest of
death, and, like our present Executive, snufi'ing with
jests and ribaldry the warm taint of blood on every gale.
Oh, bitter mockery, justice has been dethroned and the
blessings of liberty annihilated.
Because four millions of slaves were set free,
apparently. There is not one square mile of free soil in the Ameri
can Republic.
The Senator from Indiana was also a member of
Congress in the early days of the war, and he
made some speeches upon the subjects that were
then agitating the country. In an address to his
constituents in April, 1861, — I hope I am not
inaccurate about that — he declared that he
would never vote a single dollar or a single man
for the prosecution of the war, and he never
did so long as he was in Congress.
He constantly and persistently voted against
every measure for upholding the Union cause and
re-inforcing its armies, voted against all the con
stitutional amendments, and finally declared by a
nay vote that he would not hold that the amend
ments were constitutional or binding upon the
conscience of the American people. And yet the
185

POLITICS
Senator from Indiana, who I think deserves char
ity more than any man that I know upon this
floor, and who has received it at the hands of
his associates, and who can less afford than any
man of my acquaintance to invite a scrutiny of
his war record with anybody, with playfulness
and hilariousness refers to the fact that I served
during the war as a judge-advocate with the rank
of major and subsequently of lieutenant-colonel.
I have this to say; That however obscure or in
efficient my services may have been, they were
always on the side of my country, and not as
his has been, always against it.
Mr. Vooehees. Mr. President, if the Senator
from Kansas, to just take a matter of fact, will
find one single vote that I have east against the
payment of soldiers for their pay, for their sup
plies, for their bounties, or appropriations for
their pensions, I will resign my seat in the Sen
ate. Every word that has been stated on that
subject is absolutely false by the record — abso
lutely. I measure my words as I stand here. If I am
an object of his charity, he is an object of my
contempt. He says I issued a proclamation to my
constituents in April, 1861, that I would not vote
for men or money. That is false. I never did
anything of the kind; never in the world. I was
a pretty hard fighter during the war in political
186

POLITICS
campaigns. The party then in power gave it out
that there should be no parties, that we should
not contend as parties ; but I did not accept that,
and I fought my battles in my own way. I fought
for free speech and a free press; but the soldiers
of Indiana know, and they will measure and hear
what I am now saying, that I voted for every
dollar that ever fed them, that ever clothed them,
and the man who says otherwise is a falsifier
and a slander, and I brand it on him.
I can go home to my people on that statement.
In 1864 I was in a bitter, hard canvass for Con
gress. The Senator from Kansas has announced
that I had quit practicing law. That is not true.
There is not a word of truth in it. I had gone
from one office to another. Some papers that
belonged to me were left in the office, and others
put up a job on me in political campaigns, and
put things there which were found there and
were published as found there. I denied then,
as I deny now, that I was ever a member of any
secret political society in my life.
Oliver P. Morton, a brave man, not, like the
Senator from Kansas, small and active, but great
and strong, and who believed that there was a
secret organization in Indiana menacing the
safety of the Eepublic, never pretended that I
was connected with that organization. There
has never been a man in public life, until the
187
-13

POLITICS
Senator from Kansas here persuades himself to do
it, who ever alluded to the pretended fact that
I belonged to such an organization. There was
a gentleman from New Hampshire once, a member
of the House, who inadvertently, in a sort of
hurried way, alluded in a general manner to me
as a member of a secret organization in Indiana ;
and the next day I took the floor for a personal
explanation. I remember the House gathered around me, and
among the rest General Schenck, who was the
leader of the house on the opposite side. He
came close to me. I explained all these things,
and that was the last of them. Now the Senator
from Kansas sees fit, nosing around in a low, little
way, to bring up these things which are stale,
putrid, cast off, and the offal of years gone by.
When the matter that he speaks of as to my
office was brought out by General Carrington I
was in a hard canvass for Congress. I carried the
district by nearly 800 majority. As my friend, the
Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Dawes] , remem
bers, they contested my seat, and threw me out
because the EepubUcans needed two-thirds major
ity to fight Andrew Johnson then, and for no
other reason in the world. I went back to a
changed district, where they put 1,500 majority
upon me, and I beat them in that district with
the soldiers all at home. 188

POLITICS
Now, if the Senator from Kansas thinks he is
making respectability or honor or even courtesy
by reviving these things which have been passed
upon by a jury of my peers — a good deal more
than his peers, but a jury of my peers in Indiana
— he is mistaken. I have had several elections
to Congress since all this poor old stuff was pub
lished, and then I have been four times commis
sioned a Senator. I have been elected three times
by the Legislature, and I have carried the State
twice, by from 25,000 to 30,000 majority. If the
Senator from Kansas in his miserable condition
attempting to extricate himself from the disgrace
of assailing McClellan and Hancock, sees fit to
assail me, he is welcome to do so. A man who
has aspersed the fame of McClellan, and says that
he had fought two years trying to make the war
a failure, and that Hancock was an ally of the
Confederacy, and that Hancock and McClellan
and Horace Greeley all belonged to the worst ele
ments of the North, I feel his abuse as a compli
ment, and I thank him for the aspersions and
respond to him accordingly. [Laughter and ap
plause.] So far as the old stuff about my denouncing
the soldiers of Indiana is concerned, the soldiers
will take care of that, and there is only a miser
able set of people who were never soldiers, or
if they were were sutlers most likely or sutlers'
189

POLITICS
elerks, ever allude to anything of that kind, and
I can only say — I do not want to be offensive to
the Senator from Kansas, and do not much care
whether I am or not [laughter] — I can only say
(because he has thrust these matters upon me),
as I have said, that the people whose names he
reads there do lie and do not tell the truth, nor
does the Senator when he repeats what they say
tell the truth either. I have not the slightest
concern, not the slightest feeling, not the slightest
irritation upon this matter. It has been passed
upon time and again.
As for the letter for Captain Shoup I wrote
the letter for Frank Shoup. I knew him well.
We were boys at school together. He was going
down South with his sister, who was dying of
consumption. It was in December, before a single
state had seceded, before the war had broken out,
and I did sympathize with the feelings of the
South that there ought to be a compromise at that
time. The Crittenden compromise was pending,
and the Peace Congress was called. I had no
favors to ask; and as to charity, as I said, I
respond with contempt.
That is all I have to say.
Me. Eustis. Mr. President —
Me. Ingalls. Will the Senator from Indiana
allow me to ask him whether the soldiers of Indi
ana did not threaten to hang him with a bell-rope
190

POLITICS
on a train between New Castle and Terre Haute
after he made that "Lincoln dog" speech?
[Laughter.] Mb. Vooehees. Mr. President, the Senator is
a great liar when he intimates such a thing — a
great liar and a dirty dog. ["Order!" "Order!"]
Such a thing never occurred in the world. That
is all the answer I have to make.
The Peesedinq Officer. The Senator is hardly
in order. Personal discussion is not proper. The
Chair hopes Senators will be in order.
Mr. Vooehees. I pass it back to the scoundrel
behind him who is instigating these lies.
Me. Ingalls. Mr. President, there is a very
reputable gentleman in the Chamber, a citizen of
Indiana, who informs me that the signers of the
certificate about the "Lincoln dog" speech are
entirely reputable inhabitants, male and female,
of Sullivan County, and that he knows fifty people
there who heard the speech made and can swear
to it.
Mr. Vooehees. I say he is an infamous liar
and scoundrel who says I did. I say so.
The Peesiding Officee. The Senator will be in
order. At this point the friends of Senator Voorhees
led him from the Senate Chamber. He was pale
and trembling. He tried to hold up his head and
191

POLITICS
look defiant — an effort that was a miserable
failure. Outside the door he burst into tears and
cursed his fate, saying that his career was run
and his reputation for patriotism blasted. He was
in despair. And he was desperate. His friends
kept him concealed several days. Prom that day
he did not have his old bearing in the Senate.
His demeanor was apologetic and conciliatory.
In fact, his public career may be said to have
ended that day. V.
IngaUs secured a third term as United States
Senator without trouble. This term expired at
a sorry time for the brilliant Senator. That
grotesque political movement known as populism
was in full blast. Nothing like it was ever seen
in America.
The populist uprising was a politieal revolution
that failed. It was begotten of oppression and
born of an appeal for justice. It was a protest
against gross and long-continued usurpation of
the rights of the people by lawless and predatory
combinations of criminals and freebooters in
trenched in all the departments of the govern-
192

POLITICS
ment. It was conceived in righteousness, but born
to misfortune. Its sansculottic wet-nurses proved
self-seeking vagabonds with confiscatory procliv
ities. Wild-eyed, abnormally bearded, peculiarly
garbed, they went forth proclaiming preposterous
remedies for a sick nation. These political street
walkers sacrificed the revolution for the spoils of
office, to obtain which they "fused" with the
very principles against which their party had
risen. Many of the reforms sought by the honest
minority have, happily, been incorporated in state
and national statutes. The blatant demagogues,
the criminals, the blackmailers of insurance com
panies and other business institutions found to
be at their mercy, held high carnival over their
carrion for a season, then slunk back into that
obscurity from which they had emerged.
The movement became a contagious psychologi
cal disorder. Women loud of mouth and brazen
of face became political crusaders and paraded
up and down the land in frenzy and dishabille.
Tribunes were raised, and from these a succession
of bewhiskered orators poured a continuous
stream of monotonous balderdash which was her
alded by waiting multitudes of mediocre rustics
193

POLITICS
and devotees as the gospel of human rights and
political freedom — that is, the New gospel. The
tail of some crazy comet must have beclouded the
earth. The rankest demagogue was acclaimed the
greatest patriot. Indians joined in the frenzy and
set to ghost-dancing and the practice of incanta
tion to restore their lost domains and bring back
the buffalo — a course far more intelligent and
reasonable than that of the hypnotic pale-face he
imitated. Coxey armies marched thousands of
miles to Washington to protest against fancied
invasions of man's primitive liberties only to be
ordered off the grass by truckling English menials
and lawn-cutters with exaggerated notions of
their functions. One slatternly jade announced
that she had been made a Freemason, and in a
feast at the close of the Eed Cross work in a
lodge in Kansas City, Kansas, the following toast
was proposed by a waggish member: "Here's to
Mary YeUin, the Knight of the Eed C  ¦ !" Of
her Ingalls wrote to Ware "I have never men
tioned that female's (?) name, and I suspect this
silence irritates her perhaps more than speech,
and then, too, a man is always at great disad
vantage in any altercation with any person
194

POLITICS
wearing feminine garb, no matter what the sex
may be".
Ingalls saw the rising cloud when it was no
bigger than a man's hand. His friends also saw
it and entreated him to lead in a movement to
confine it to a faction of his party — something
which might have been accomplished. So far
did he heed these admonitions as to prepare an
address to be delivered at some proper place in
the April before the election of the Legislature.
But he was in doubt and hesitated until the
psychic moment had passed — one instance where
not only Opportunity but his friends hung on him
for weeks, but he did not rise. Writing to Ware
he said:
I suppose I ought to be grateful to the cabal
of Democrats, Greenbackers, political cl — p-doc-
tors, and bunco-steerers, for being the first to
formally nominate me for a fourth term in the
Senate ! That they did not represent the senti
ments of the Eepublican farmers of Kansas in
their fulminations against me I have already
many gratifying assurances. Of course nobody
can predict, I mean foretell, what will happen
politically, but I shall be greatly surprised if the
people of Kansas stultify themselves by deliber-
195

POLITICS
ately adopting such prescriptions as these quacks
and SarsapariUa physicians have written. With
many demands of the Alliance I sympathize —
Silver, more currency, cheaper transportation,
tariff revision, and the suppression of the trusts,
monopolies, grain gambling, &c., but I pause at
the frontier.
When hope of election was well-nigh gone he
delivered that address in the Senate and labeled
it "The Image and Superscription of Caesar".
It excited derision only, when, if it had been pro
claimed in time, it might have turned the tide.
But in this crisis of his affairs Ingalls bore
himself weU. He did not fail to see the ridicu
lous, as he always did, writing to Ware concern
ing a "terrifying letter from an agitated person"
at Fort Scott: "I should say on general princi
ples that any man who asserted that there was
not a 'vertious' woman in the land deserved to
be knocked down in Topeka or anywhere else.
The battery could be justified by an appeal to
Lindley Murray".
Over-zealous friends urged him to the use of
money, but the day when York dramaticaUy
placed $7,000 on the Speaker's desk stood out
196

POLITICS
clearly in his mind and memory, and he forbade
absolutely what he was not inclined to do in any
event. Ingalls met the situation with courage and dig
nity. The night before the election he addressed
a splendid audience at the Grand Opera House in
Topeka. He had a keen appreciation of dramatic
effect. Before it was expected that he would be
gin his speech the auditorium was flooded with
light, and he appeared on the stage, hat in hand,
in faultless attire, and said.
Whether in the battle to-morrow I shall survive
or not, let it be said of me, that to the oppressed
of every clime ; to the Irishman suffering from the
brutal acts of Great Britain, or to the slave in the
bayou of the South, I have at all times and places
been their advocate ; and to the soldier, his widow
and orphans, I have been their protector and
friend. But he was beaten.
An old-time friend living in Wyandotte County
telegraphed Mrs. Ingalls :
Madam :
The leaf in the book upon whieh is written
Ad astra per aspera has been temporarily turned
down. 197

POLITICS
Your husband does not need sympathy — it is
the people of Kansas.
The light has gone out.
History has not yet dealt with those times.
Indeed, it is scarcely necessary that it should.
Ware embalmed them in the verse of his
genius. Through his "The Kansas Bandit, or the
Pall of Ingalls", the people a thousand years from
now will be familiar with those disjointed days.
This brief study is closed with extracts from that
splendid poem. It discloses and preserves the
well-known fact that even in its incipiency the
revolution was the prey of unprincipled men ; and
these finally wrecked it.
THE KANSAS BANDIT:
OR.
THE FALL OF INGALLS.
[Alonzo, the Bandit, is seen walking wp and
down the road, near Yellow Paint Creek,
Kansas.']
Alonzo. Here I parade the banks of classic
Paint, while
Poverty doth like a setting hen upon me
Fortunes brood. 198

POLITICS The times were once when from
Gigantic war recovering, the currency was to
the
Wants of business equal. With scanty rites.
Economy, the sickly child of poverty, was then
in
Graveyard buried. Apace the times have
changed.
Drawpoker for the last four years remunera
tion
Hath not yielded. Me constitution doth the full
Assimilation of me normal rum refuse. No
longer
Will the credulous "bootlegger" accept me
Promises. While upon the street women of
Doubtful reputation snub me. The avenues of
Honest labor all seem closed. The preachers on
The roof do jeer at me doAvn on the pavement.
The times, the times are like a mule-kicked
lantern
Shattered: and all because the people do not
rule.
Now on the banks of classic Paint I stand.
With deathless nerve I clutch this trenchant
brand.
And now and here, importunate and rash
I face the world — exclusively for cash.
199

POLITICS
[A stranger appears. Alonzo draws a sigh
and a scythe, and cries:]
Halt. Stand. Ducats or blood.
\_The stranger strikes an attitude and replies:]
My sir — I am in occupation holy,
I am a follower of the meek and lowly ;
Do not detain me. Ducats are a fiction ;
I give thee all I have — a benediction.
Before I got in politics, dear Bandit,
I had a pulpit, and right well I manned it.
I used to tell the story of the cross.
But now I just talk politics and hoss.
I 'm down on Ingalls now, for his position
I do not think real sound on prohibition.
And many things he says doth much displease
us;
McGrath says In-galls wants another Jesus.
Then Ingalls talks of "iridescent dreams," —
That government is force.
Alonzo. Give me thy cash — I fight not Ingalls,
But poverty.
Stbangee. I have not cash.
Alonzo. Pass on.
lEnter tall stranger, with spectacles.]
200

POLITICS
Alonzo. Bullion or blood, of which
Art thou most scanty?
I'm the Kansas Bandit,
Stand and ante.
Strangeb. Art thou the Paint Creek Bandit ?
Alonzo. I are.
Strangeb. Do you believe in the purification
Of Kansas politics and in the decalogue?
Alonzo. Distract me not with thy pale cast
Of thought : what man art thou.
And where thy cash?
Stbangee. I am the Buck of Duke-ing-ham ;
I'm fighting Ingalls every day,
I'm fighting Ingalls every way.
Alonzo. Art thou a farmer?
Stbangee. No, I am an agriculturist.
Alonzo. What is the difference?
Stbangee. The farmer works the soil.
The agriculturist works the farmer.
Down in thy bootleg now thy cornknife sheath,
While I of deep damnation tell to thee
A tale of misery that far beneath
That of thine own hath happened unto me.
Perhaps you know me by my late biography —
I am the author of that late Geography.
I wanted to collect the revenue.
I went to Atchison, and then and there
201

POLITICS
I stayed with Ingalls for a week or two.
He put in Leland, and it made me swear.
Then Ingalls said, in words that seemed so real,
"Dear General, won't you proceed to sheol."
Alonzo. Thy tale is short, and yet it doth un
man me.
Thou has more poetry than picayunes,
More spondees than spondulics —
Pass on thy way — pass on — thou need'st not
Ante, for in the game of life none
But the dealers ante.
[Exit stranger.]
The People's Party, to
Which me native instinct draws me because it
Loves the rule of mediocrity, is now on top. I
Love the rule of Ignorance. I love to see a
granger
Who doesn't know a pine refrigerator from a
legal
Maxim, discourse on finance, whittling on a
store box. [Enter stranger.]
Alonzo. What, hoe ! Stand and deliver.
Stbangee. Who art thou? Speak!
Alonzo. I am a Bandit. Disgorge.
Stbangee. I also am a kind of Bandit. I run
An anti-Ingalls newspaper. I have no cash.
202

POLITICS
I take up a collection as I go, to pay
My operating expenses — including my
Fixed charges.
Alonzo. Thou dost prevaricate. Thou are not an
Editor of the People's Party. Thou hast
On a clean shirt.
Stbangee. But a dirty undershirt — an awful
dirty one.
Alonzo. 'Tis well — but then — I want no shirt.
Wealth must I have — disgorge.
Stbangee. I have no wealth.
AijOnzo. What hast thou, then?
Stbangee. I have intellect — lately discovered —
But still I've got it.
Alonzo. All that thou needst is thy
Cere-bellum in these post-bellum days.
A howler of calamity,
He needs no brains, for damit 'e.
Can work on cheek and vanity.
Big whiskers and inanity.
[Exit Stranger.]
Alonzo. Ha! I'll let him go.
I love calamity. I love to howl it
And to hear it howled.
[Enter lawyer.]
Alonzo. Pause! Gold or gore.
203
—14

POLITICS
Lavhtee. I defy thee.
Alonzo. Defy me not.
My motto:
Coin or Carnage.
Lawyeb. I am a lawyer, and I stand undaunted.
Art thy name Alonzo?
Alonzo. It art, but thine the duty not to stand a
Gasing, but aghast. Eliminate thy wealth.
I cannot stand and dicker
Now with thee,
But with a snicker
Draw my snickersnee.
Lawyeb. Thou art of no more force than a last
Year's chattel mortgage.
Alonzo, dost remember erst-
While before a Bourbon county jury when Jim,
With Ciceronian voice and gesture, thee of mule
Abduction did accuse, and prove it by some
Dozen witnesses, although thou sworest thou
wert
In Emporia? And reckest thou not how thou
thy
Grip didst lose, and how, with white lips, thou
Saidst — "Save me from hard labor," until I
told
Thee that I had Jim foul ? And dost thou not
Eemember how that jury had been carefully
204

POLITICS
Selected from sympathetic granger statesmen
who
Only read the "Union Labor" papers, and how
With brilliant panegyric I thy honest brow
Applauded, and how I called thee a hard-fisted
Yeoman — victim, I said, of prostrate labor and
Contraction, seeking for bread amid the ruins of
Chaotic finance, — victim, I said, of insufficient
Circulation, buffeted by rent and sleepless
usury.
How with quixotic rhetoric I did fight the gilded
Vampires in the ambient ether, and how that
Granger jury was so poUy-foxed that they did
Find a verdict of "not guilty"?
Alonzo. 'Tis true — pass on — but stay. Hast
Thou the due-bill that I gave thee for thy
Effort?
Lawyee. I have-est. Behold it !
Alonzo. I know thou hast no money.
StiU I can't
Do business here for nothing.
I now
Take hold and freeze onto this due-bill.
{Takes bill.) Git! [Exit lawyer.]
He's gone. — Behold, the sun is slowly setting.
Why did I take this note? It's only "fiat."
It isn't worth the trouble of the getting.
I can't hypothecate the thing for diet.
205

POLITICS
But it is good. The penmanship's proficient —
It must be good — the paper's white and tough.
"Due on demand" — that ought to be
sufficient.
And certainly the sum is large enough;
And why the thing won't buy a loaf of bread
Is a conundrum that just knocks me dead.
It seems to me that borrower and lender
Have neither rights the other should respect —
That each man's note should be a legal tender.
Abolishing all methods to collect.
Yet, 'mid all this calamity, there 's Ingalls —
What hath he done for Kansas ? He doth fiaunt
His brains around, and with the nation
mingles, —
But it is cash, not brains, the people want.
Down, down with Ingalls! brains don't
represent
The people now in Kansas worth a cent.
[Tears up the note and throws it away.]
The sun has set. The road no victim offers.
I'm catching cold. Business is awful dull.
[A barefooted person, with spectacles, is seen
coming.]
Alonzo. Halt ! Who comes there ? Art thou a
Moundbuilder, or a Troubadour? 206

POLITICS
Stbangee. I am a friend with the countersign.
Alonzo. Advance, friend, and give the
Countersign.
Stbangee. Down with Ingalls.
Alonzo. The sentiment thou hast, but not the
Words. The words are: Soc et tuum.
As Elder says, — ' ' them words is Latten. ' '
Stbangee. Sock me no socks. Did not I upon
The field of battle meet Prince Hal.?
Where now is Hal.? In those pathetic
Words of poetess : ' ' The bark that held the
Prince peeled off." When the 7th Dist.
Did my sockless fibula behold, they yelled
Por me, and it was good-bye Hal. I know
These people. Brains they do not want.
For if they did, I'd give it to them.
Hal. did not know what beat him — 'Twas
Lack of moisture in the atmosphere. He
Was the victim of climatic scarcity. My
District expects me to produce territorial
Humidity, and divide the rain-belt with
the sea-board States. Ingalls could not
Accomplish it. He therefore failed to be a
Statesman. What has he done for Kansas?
All she needs is rain. She having rain
Has grain, and having grain had Ingalls.
He could not make it rain, hence naught
For Kansas had he done. Of course he
207

POLITICS
Made some reputation for himself and
State, and all the Union rang with Kansas
And with Ingalls. And in the Senate,
Leaning up against his own backbone, he
Sat and ruled most royally, as to the
Intellectual purple born. But still he
Couldn't make it rain, and now we've got
Him down!
As to the earth the royal rain falls.
We'll jeer at Ingalls.. — Accent on the "galls".
[He passes on.]
[Alonzo, frightened.]
Ha! What is that coming up the road?
It has a most peculiar aspect.
I'll speak to it. What art thou?
An adverb?
Thing. No. A high moral plane.
Alonzo. Thou art a strange thing. Thy object?
H. M. P. The object of a high moral plane is to
Get a reputation for being better than any
Other thing. Not to be better, but to get the
Eeputation. Climb on; our object is to purify
Politics by running it ourselves. To banish
"Iridescent dreams." To take up prohibition.
Female suffrage and the so-called "moral" isms
That we can handle. We stuck a man in
Wichita for selling beer one afternoon
Seventy years in jail, with 27,000 dollars fine.
208

POLITICS
We 're down on Ingalls for another reason —
He's an agnostic and blasphemer. His
Speeches show he don't believe that there's
Another happy world where he can go and
Live forever with us moralists. Then
He is vain, and vanity is what high moral
Planes abhor. He lacks that
Element of Christian humility that should
Say unto the nearest Presiding Elder — thy
Will in politics, not mine, be done. We
Think morality requires a change, and that
His vanity should be let down. We think
That on the tombstone of his politics the
Epitaph should be:
Up was he stuck,
And in the veey upness
Of his stucktitude
He fell.
[H. M. P. passes on.]
Alonzo. I don't believe I want to climb
Up on that thing. It holds a tough-looking^
But congenial crowd. Prohibition was
Once the thing to win with, but it ain't so
Any more. Calamity is what now goes.
Prohibition is now the last hope which
Weak minds have for getting into office.
But Where's my cash upon this lonesome
209

POLITICS
Eoad? There's no free silver. — Ho!
AVho comes here, in the twilight gloom ?
Stbangee. A "noble granger," who with lung
Voluminous would fain be heard. My
Name is Calamity Bill. I have a way of
Beating mortgages.
Alonzo. Art thou armed?
Stbangee. Yes — with campaign documents.
Alonzo. If thou hast any gold or silver, extract
It from thy clothing. I am a hard-money
Bandit. My demands are now payable in coin.
Stbangee. I have none.
Alonzo. Greenbacks or national-bank notes?
Stbangee. None.
Alonzo. Bonds, coupons, or silver certificates?
Stbangee. None.
Alonzo. Notes, mortgages, securities?
Stbangee. None.
Alonzo. Checks, drafts, bills of lading, or
Negotiable paper?
Stbangee. None.
Alonzo. Hast anything within thy pockets?
Stbangee. Only tobacco.
Alonzo. Pine-cut or plug?
Stbangee. Plug. 210

POLITICS
Alonzo. I chew not plug.
Hast thou good clothes?
It's dark — I cannot see.
Stbangee. I have at home, not here.
Intending to address the sturdy
Yeomanry and whoop them up from an
Industrial standpoint, I this night did don
A suit of jeans for the oecasion, such
As I husk corn in.
Alonzo. Art thy boots good?
Stbangee. Out at the toes and minus soles.
I borrowed them.
Alonzo. Thy hat?
Stbangee. I punched a hole a few yards back.
And through the crown a matted lock
I pulled. It's gayly waving through
The orifice, although thou seest it not.
I had to-night intended to explain
Unto the bone and sinew of our country
How Sherman and McKinley of a wealthy
People made a nation full of paupers.
How the Government should issue
Money at one per cent, on farms, and
Should build vast warehouses, wherein
The products of the country can be stored
And chattel-mortgaged to the Government.
And how the way to make a dollar is
211

POLITICS
To stamp a piece of paper and then
Call it one. Language, not cash,
Is all I have just now.
Alonzo. Condemn the luck ! There is
No scope for honest labor. Every avenue
Is walled. See
The depression that me present business
Now endures. Oh, desperation! Say!
See here. I must make business lively.
I cannot wait the slow and tedious
Eestoration of those days when no man
Worked yet everything was had.
Prepare for death! I think that I can turn
An honest penny by finding thee when
A reward is offered. If all were idle,
Business won't revive. Something
Accomplished, something done, must earn
A night's repose. I have within my heart
Hot cells —
Stbangee. Shut up ! Hear me, thou victim
Of commercial chaos. — Down at
A school-house there expectant waits
A Union Labor and Alliance caucus.
The P. M. B. 's are coming in, and we
Will talk of Ingalls and of money,
Ocala, and the platform of St. Louis.
I go to tell how laws must needs be
Most imjust that wiU not let a
212

POLITICS
Person beat a creditor. I have
A money scheme, most noble Bandit,
That beats two of yours. I can rob more
Men in fifteen minutes than you can in years.
With dangers yours is fraught, with mine
Is none. Shall I reveal?
Alonzo. Go on.
Stbangee. Thy style is antiquated. Men with
Views like yours both schemes have tried.
And the reflecting light of his 'try hath
Taught that one can rob more people ten
To one by the new process than the old.
First. — Ingalls must be beaten. In his stead
A man of the Alliance must be placed, here
And elsewhere — a man of hair. We must
Have Peffer or a mattress. Then we will
Take the printing-presses, and make money.
Loan to farmers at a nominal per cent, on
Land by farmers valued. Make the money
Legal tender, then we'll scoop 'em in.
When onee we get the timid, invalid and
Weak to lose their faith in a metallic
Currency, we've got 'em. They are left.
We cannot reach the man who pins
His faith to coin, except to blackguard him.
And then he only laughs. But the great
Masses with our doctrine stuffed, under
Delusion give us property for paper. Of
213

POLITICS
Honesty it hath a certain glamour. We
Hold the truck the paper represents.
They hold the paper, waiting its redeemer.
Like Job of old did his, till time hath
Worn them out and made them toss the
Sponge. Thy name would give addition
To our ranks. Come, go with me and
Make thine opening exhortation. Be no
Longer a Dime Novel Bandit, clad in plume
And bootlegs. — But — shout "Calamity."
[Tableaux. — Alonzo seen struggling with his
conscience; at last he yields, and speaks.]
This recent scheme, I hardly understand it ;
There 's much more to it than I first surmised.
It must commend itself to any bandit.
Although, perhaps, it's somewhat civilized.
But it's deficient in one thing I prize —
To wit: a healthy outdoor exercise.
Here in the raging Paint my blade I throw.
And to the anti-Ingalls caucus go.
Let's howl sub-treasury — free cash — and
Peffer ;
Let's go back on our mortgages — of course —
While through our statesman's whiskers the
wild zephyr.
The Kansas zephyr, skips with solemn force.
214

POLITICS
We'll down 'em, and we'll keep 'em down,
that's plain;
We'U keep 'em down as long as it don't rain.
With flashing speed the pulse of evening
tingles,
Lo ! in the East comes the "free-silver" moon;
Come on, come on — we'll whoop it up to
Ingalls.
We are all statesmen — let us all reune ;
To this Alliance caucus let us go.
Ha! Ingalls, ha! thou meet'st thy overthrow.

215

MISCELLANY

MISCELLANY
John James Ingalls. The first-born of Elias
Theodore Ingalls and his wife Eliza Chase.
Of Puritan ancestry.
Born at Middletown, Massachusetts, December
29, 1833.
Was United States Senator from Kansas eigh
teen years — from 1873 to 1891.
Died of bronchitis, at Las Vegas, New Mexico,
August 16, 1900. Is buried at Atchison.
Statue placed in HaU of Fame, Washington, by
act of the Kansas Legislature.

Ingalls was fond of walking. He loved to wan
der solitary and alone. About Atchison he
strolled over prairies, along bluffs, through fields,
under the trees of forest and orchard.
When he was made Chairman of the Senate
Committee on the District of Columbia, he walked
about Washington constantly, and made himself
familiar with its every feature and want.

Ingalls wrote the Kansas Magazine articles
219

—15

MISCELLANY
in his home on a small table in the living-room.
The children were all about him, but seemed not
to annoy him or distract his attention. He wrote
slowly — • that is, composed slowly. Mrs. Ingalls
says he "wrote and tore up" his articles until
they conformed to the requirements of his exact
and discriminating taste.

One competent to speak said of Ingalls :
He knew language as the devout Moslem knows
his Koran. All the deeps and shallows of the
sea of words were sounded and surveyed by him
and duly marked upon the chart of his great
mentality. In the presence of an audience he
was a magician; under the power of his magic,
syllables became scorpions — an inflection became
an indictment. And with words he builded
temples of thought that excited at first the won
der and at all times the admiration of the world
of literature and statesmanship. He was emperor
in the realm of expression.

That IngaUs was an acute observer of men
and events is shown by his analysis of the char
acter of the Kansas man:
It has been sometimes obscurely intimated that
the typical Kansan lacks in reserve, and occasion-
220

MISCELLANY
ally exhibits a tendency to exaggeration in dwell
ing upon the development of the state and the
benefits and burdens of its citizenship. Censor
ious scoffers, actuated by envy, jealousy, malig
nity, and other evil passions, have intimated that
he unduly vaunteth himself; that he brags and
becomes vainglorious; that he is given to bounce,
tall talk, and magniloquence.
There have not been wanting those who affirm
that he magnifies his calamities as well as his
blessings, and desires nothing so much as to have
the name of Kansas in any capacity in the ears
and mouths of men.
Such accusations are well calculated to make
the judicious grieve. They result from a mis
conception of the man and his environment.
The normal condition of the genuine Kansan is
that of shy and sensitive diffidence. He suffers
from excess of modesty. He blushes too easily.
There is nothing he dislikes so much as to hear
himself talk. He hides his light under a bushel.
He keeps as near the tail-end of the procession as
possible. He never advertises. He bloweth not
his own horn, and is indifferent to the band
wagon. Ingalls was epigramattic. He said of Garland,
Attorney-General of the United States under
Cleveland: "General Garland is a great lawyer
221

MISCELLANY
among Arkansaw men and a great Arkansaw
man among lawyers. ' '
Describing his impressions of the Missouri
Eiver on his journey to settle in Kansas he said
the steamboat was days and days ascending to
Sumner, and that he was always in sight of tall
cottonwoods and broad sandbars on one side of
the river, or broad sandbars and tall cottonwoods
on the other side of the river.
He could descend from the stars and manifest
interest in the most trivial household affairs. He
had a clever turn, and in the first years of his
home-life often mended gates and the sidewalk.
With hammer and saw he constructed about the
house convenient shelves and corners. And he
was no indifferent workman.
At home he always blacked his own boots.

He would contemplate the valley of the Mis
souri for hours at a time. He seemed never to
tire of the view. He studied the moods of the
river, and days of bluster when sand-clouds
drifted over it, it had a fascination for him. His
first home was on a bluff in South Atchison com
manding an extensive view of river, bottoms and
222

MISCELLANY
bluffs. Standing by this old house in after life,
he wrote this idyl:
Was it on this planet we lived alone, and loved
in youth's enchanted kingdom amid the forests
and by the great lonely river, looking with min
gled gaze at the eastern bluffs purpled by the
autumnal sunset, or at the face of the moon
climbing with sad steps the midnight sky; or was
it on some remote star in some other life, recalled
with rapture and longing unutterable and un
availing ?
"Oh, death in life; the days that are no more!"
The crumbling excavation scarce discernible
among the vines and weeds and brambles, de
serted and inaccessible, ancient as Palmyra or
Persepolis in seeming — was this the theatre
whereon was enacted the intoxicating drama, the
sweet tragedy of human passion, grief, joy, and
endless separation? Since then, what devious
wanderings of the soul, what darkened vistas,
what trepidation, what struggle and solace, what
achievements and defeat — what splendor and
what gloom! The river flows, and the landscape
is unchanged. Nature mocks with her perma
nence the mutability of man ; and the steadfast
presence recalling life's vanished glory and bloom
and dew of morning — how worthless and empty
appear all that time gives, compared with what
223

MISCELLANY
it takes away! How gladly would we exchange
the prizes of ambition and fame and wealth for
the splendid consecration of youth and —
"Wild with all regret — the days that are no more".

IngaUs loved red as a color in his apparel.
His flaming red ties became famous in Kansas;
they were frequently a brilliant scarlet. In the
days of his first residence in Atchison it was fash
ionable for men to wear in winter very heavy
shawls. Ingalls exhibited his individuality and
gratified his taste by wearing a red and gleaming
blanket. He liked to be droll, even eccentric and gro
tesque, on occasion. In the last days of his resi
dence at Sumner he arrayed himself in a long
linen duster, reaching to his heels. He stretched
his enormous straw hat upward into a long peak.
He was very tall and extremely slender, anyway,
and thus clad he seemed of extraordinary height.

It was, sometimes, with difficulty that Ingalls
could be prevailed on to deliver his addresses
and orations. Once he was to address some gath
ering in the East. He made excuses for remain-
224

MISCELLANY
ing at home, but Mrs. Ingalls insisted that he
should go. On the day he should have appeared
before his audience she heard from him at St.
Louis, where he said he was ill. In a few days
he returned home, having cancelled his engage
ments. Mrs. Ingalls could not discover that he
was ill, and was certain that his course resulted
from reluctance to then go on with his work.
This may have been in some degree due to his
horror of speaking in public. On one occasion his
fright was so great that he could not proceed with
an address, and he had to stop and admit his
failure. I have Ware's account of it. As the
hour for the meeting approached Ingalls became
more and more perturbed. He requested that
Ware speak first. Ware agreed to speak five
minutes. Ingalls urged him to make it fifteen
minutes — then an hour. Ware spoke thirty min
utes. When Ingalls rose cold perspiration beaded
his forehead. He stammered and halted and
blundered for fifteen minutes, then quit. Years
after, in a letter to Ware, he recalled the incident :
I am glad to know that I have established any
claim to the good will of the people of Port Scott.
I have not hitherto been able to disguise from
225

MISCELLANY
myself the fact that I had few friends in that
locality. I tried to make a speech there once,
but the reception I met with "froze the genial
currents of my soul ! " It gives me the rigors to
recall that polar evening. A declamation from
the apex of an iceberg in the silence of an arctic
midnight, would have been hilarious midsummer
bacchanalian revelry by comparison.
His frigid reception was altogether an illusion.
Ware stopped talking for the reason that the
audience was impatient and eager to hear Ingalls.
Another illusion was manifest, for Ingalls had
many friends in Port Scott, — warm and faithful
friends whose devotion has outlived the tomb.
But remarkable delusions come to men of genius.

The feud between Ingalls and Cleveland was
not of the President's seeking. He had, in fact,
counted on a sort of alliance with Ingalls. Of this
intention the Senator had no intimation, and he
was vitriolic in his references to the new incum
bent of the White House and his administration.
Justice Field was a Democrat. Ingalls was a
member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. By
that maze of formal social precedents known as
official etiquette in Washington, Mrs. Ingalls sat
226

MISCELLANY
beside Justice Pield at White House dinners for
years. Her daughter Marion was so disgusted
with the failure of the Eepublican party to nomi
nate Arthur for President that she avowed herself
a Democrat, which avowal she steadily held to.
At a dinner given soon after the inauguration of
Cleveland, Mrs. Ingalls mentioned this fact to
Justice Field. So remarkable did he consider it
that he, later in the evening, informed the Presi
dent, who went at once to Mrs. Ingalls and re
quested her to bring her Democratic daughter to
see him at the White House.
Within a fortnight Mrs. Ingalls, in her daily
drive about the city, passed the White House.
Marion — then but a child — was with her, and
it occurred to Mrs. Ingalls to stop and see the
President. Cleveland was beset with many difficulties in
getting his administration under way. He had
little knowledge of the details of executive usage.
The hungry and thirsty spoilsmen besieged him.
He did not know whom to trust, and he reviewed
all applications for office himself. This required
much time, to secure which he excluded all callers
during some hours other Presidents had been ac-
227

MISCELLANY
cessible to the public. When Mrs. Ingalls ap
peared in the reception-room she was told that
she could not see the President at that hour. She,
however, added "and Marion" to the inscription
on her card and had it carried to the President
who directed that she be admitted at once. Mr.
Cleveland met her cordially and expressed pleas
ure at seeing someone who did not come seeking
an office. He was delighted to see Marion, en
gaged her in conversation, gave her flowers, and
inquired who had given her her beautiful name.
To this question she replied by naming the Ingalls
family physician at Atchison. "Why", said the
President, "he is one of the fellows wanting to
be postmaster there." Mrs. Ingalls was surprised
at what he said, thinking it wonderful that in
such short time he had so familiarized himself
with affairs as to be able to recognize an applicant
for postmaster in a country village upon the mere
mention of his name by a child. This introduced
the subject of patronage, and Mr. Cleveland men
tioned the embarrasment under which he was
laboring. He wished to appoint only the best
men, but he knew that political endorsements did
not usually fall to the best men. He spoke kindly
228

MISCELLANY
of Senator Ingalls, and Mrs. Ingalls knew when
she left that he would not be averse to having the
judgment of her husband on the applications for
office from Kansas. When she went home she
learned that he had that day spoken with such
bitterness of the new President and his adminis
tration that no such relation as had been sug
gested by Mr. Cleveland could ever be possible.
Ill-feeling between these two great men in
creased from that day and grew into one of the
most famous and most bitter official feuds in the
history of our government.

Mrs. Ingalls was in the galleries and heard the
famous passage at arms between her husband and
Senator Voorhees. She saw the tall Hoosier led
vanquished from the Senate chamber. Later she
and a party of friends went into the Senate res
taurant and ordered refreshments, and sent for
Ingalls but were told that the Senate had ad
journed and that the Senator had gone immed
iately home.

The extreme bitterness between Ingalls and
Chief-Justice Horton as a result of the contest of

229

MISCELLANY
the second election was a feature in Kansas poli
tics for years. But these two great Kansans
were brought to a reconciliation through the
efforts of Bailie P. Waggener, the friend of both.
The meeting was in the office of Waggener in
Atchison. It had been previously arranged, and
was set for a late hour in the evening. Horton
arrived promptly, but Ingalls was late by a quar
ter of an hour, as was his habit. He came in with
an apology for his tardiness. He was faultlessly
attired and perfectly composed. When he en
tered the room Waggener said that he supposed
they would prefer to be alone and offered to
withdraw, but was urged to remain by both,
which he did.
Ingalls began the advances necessary to the
matter by saying that he regretted the famous
Atchison speech more than he could tell. Horton
came forward with words of apology for his
course. Amends were made and perfect harmony
secured before midnight. Of this event very few
people were ever informed. Horton and Ingalls
had been associated a long time in the publication
of the "Atchison Champion" in the absence of
John A. Martin, the proprietor, in the army.
280

MISCELLANY
Bailie P. Waggener is one of the foremost
lawyers of the West. He is General Solicitor for
the Missouri Paciflc Eailway, in the service of
which he has been for many years. He is a Demo
crat, and has long been prominent in Kansas
public affairs. As State Senator from Atchison
County he secured the passage of a bill giving
one of the places at the disposition of Kansas in
Statuary Hall at Washington to Ingalls; also an
appropriation to pay for the statue of the famous
Kansan. This statue has been placed in the Hall,
and it is by far the finest and most striking to be
seen there.

Of mountains, Ingalls said :
What an immortal fascination there is about
mountains! Their solemnity, their silence, the
grandeur of their outlines, the unspeakable glory
of their lofty crags and "snowy summits old in
story ' ', and their splendid inutility !
When you look upon the vague and troubled
immensity of the ocean, you think of commerce
and codfish and whales. When you contemplate
the grassy waste of prairies, expanding to the
skies, you think of wheat and corn and pigs and
steers. But Pike's Peak and Sierra Bianca and
Trenchery and Culebra and the Tetons are good
231

MISCELLANY
for nothing except adoration and worship. Man
does not profane their solitudes where the un
heard voices of the winds in the forests, of waters
falling in the abyss, and the eagle's cry have no
audience nor anniversary.

And of the sea Ingalls wrote :
The ancients had a saying that those who
cross the sea change their sky, but not their
minds, — "Qui trans mare current coelum non
animam mutant". No man can escape from
himself. The companionship is inseparable.
But there is something more than change of
locality in the isolation of a long ocean voyage.
When the last dim headland disappears, and the
continent vanishes in the deep, the separation
from the human race is complete. All the accus
tomed incidents and habits of life are suspended,
and those who are assembled in that casual
society might be the solitary survivors of man
kind. Wars and catastrophes and bereavements may
shock the world, but here they are unheard and
unknown. Suns rise and set and rise again, but
the great ship makes no apparent progress. She
remains the centre of an unchanging circum
ference. The vast and sombre monotony is un
broken. Above is the infinite abyss of the sky
232

MISCELLANY
with its clouds and stars. Beneath is the infinite
abyss of the sea with its winds and waves. Some
times the faint phantom of a sail appears above
the vague fluctuating horizon and silently fades
away, or a stain of smoke against the distant
mist discloses the pathway of some remote and
unknown tenant of the solitude.
The moods of the sea are endless, but it has
no compassion. It glitters in the sun, but its
smile is cruel and relentless. It is eager to de
vour. Its forces are destructive. Each instant is
fraught with peril. Its agitation is incessant, and
it lies in wait to engulf and destroy. Eesisting
every effort to subdue its obstacles, when its baf
fled billows are cleft, they gather in the ghastly
wake, and rage at their discomfiture.
In the presence of this implacable enemy, whose
smiles betray, whose voice is an imprecation,
whose embrace is death, meditation becomes
habitual and the mind changes like the sky.

In the famous interview on politics, Ingalls
said: The purification of politics is an iridescent
dream. Government is foree. Polities is a battle
for supremacy. Parties are the armies. The
Decalogue and the Golden Eule have no place
in a political campaign. The object is success. To
233

MISCELLANY
defeat the antagonist and expel the party in
power is the purpose. The EepubUcans and Dem
ocrats are as irreconcilably opposed to each other
as were Grant and Lee in the Wilderness. They
use ballots instead of guns, but the struggle is
as unrelenting and desperate and the result
sought for the same. In war it is lawful to de
ceive the adversary, to hire Hessians, to purchase
mercenaries, to mutilate, to destroy. The com
mander who lost the battle through the activity
of his moral nature would be the derision and
jest of history. This modern cant about the
corruption of politics is fatiguing in the extreme.
It proceeds from tea-custard and syllabub dilet-
tanteism and frivolous sentimentalism.

234

3 9002 00805 8803

\' \

\

.Nv^%

\\

\\

.¦^v^

.,.^X\X-.