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AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND
REMINISCENCES OF
THEOPHILUS NOEL

Chicago:
Theo. Noel Coiwpany Print
1904

Copyright, 1904
By THEOPHILUS NOEL

oCJ^

CONTENTS

Preface ....
Introduction
Boyhood Days
Early Influences and Environments
The South in the Early 'Fifties
Secession and Its Victims
Sibley's Retreat from Santa Fe
Political and Otherwise
Campaigning in Louisiana
With Magruder at Galveston
Prison and Parole
The Taint of Rascality
Louisiana Rum, Rum, Rum
In Ante-Bellum Days
An Ex-Confederate Monument
Moral and Political
A Few Foundation Principles
Business Insight
Patriotism Versus Self-Interest
The Meaning of Success
Fish, Snake, and Other Stories
Some Insect and Other Truths
MEXICAN National Museum
Another War Chapter .
Mexico— Cuba
A ChapI'er for Young Men
England
California— West Coast

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None but the brave dare step
From custom's iron rule;
The common mind must follow it.
Or be esteemed a fool.

Had any considerable part of my life been spent in trying
to do as others have done or were doing — in other words,
aping, copying after or imitating — the world never would
have been benefited by my being born.
This volume is so different from any other you ever read,
as all else I have done has been, and is different from the
ordinary. To follow in the path and well beaten road, as others
love toi do, never had any charms for me.
The ways of others have never been my ways; and that
mine was popular is attested by the great number of thieves
and imitators, counterfeiters and apes, who have sought to
make — ^b'ecause I doi — by following on my trail, as the hyena
follows the trail of the lion, or the coyote that of the trapper
and guide.
It is to and from the criticism of the smart set, the
educated apes and baboons, that I owe the greater part of my
success in life, in all the many and varied paths and ways of
my own blazing in new and unexplored lands and enterprises
that have resulted in public benefaction.
Egotism came to me with old age and from loaking back
ward and seeing the thousands of favored and educated ones
I had deemed as being my superiors, left far in the rear in
the race of life.
Oftentimes I have thought, had I received even one-half
5

6 INT&ODUCTION.
of a common school education, the world would have been the
better; then I look around at the others who received all to
be had in that line, and methinks, and will die in the thought,
that it was well as it was.
I have written this book while traveling across and up
and down the continent, from shore toi shore, and all but from
pole to pole, and while crossing the ocean and traveling on the
continent, while others, and the very highest class, were
playing cards, reading trashy novels or engaged in other
brain-debasing amusements.
This work has all been talked over to my stenographer
while we were on the goi; for my life is yet and ever will
be a busy one, wherever my field of labor, whether it be in
the office, on the farm, or where else; and when all around
is still and others are enjoying themselves, my time is business.
The great American jurist — and soldier as well — Judge
Gen. Wallace, in rendering a decision in a case of great
importance to others than myself, said: "We whoi have
known Mr. Noel for years know that he talks out in plain
language and as he thinks, and talks to all as he does to' wife,
child, dear friend or most desperate foe." And this I have
done in this book; and I have nO' apologies to make, I fear
no criticism. I have scorn and contempt only for the low-lived ones who
assail mie on any point; for well I know that no honorable
one, who has done has best to leave the world better than he
found it, by making twoi blades grow where one formerly
grew, as I have, will find herein other than the truth told
in my own way. While I know more than one will find
thoughts and suggestions presented herein that will be a
benefit, I also know there are thousands whoi fail to see any
thing of great merit in any great book.

BOYHOOD DAYS.

It was in the middle of the year when the campaign cry
was hard cider and log cabins that I was born, iand for why
I ofttimes think I love apples and all other sorts of fruits that
will make as many good things as they do. I was born in a
log cabin on a puncheon floor, and was rocked in a sap trough.
That cabin has long since passed away, but not my remem
brance of it and oif its environments, the tall trees of the
southwestern part of the Wolverine State.
Why I should state any more than the above may never
be satisfactorily answered, though in doing what I am and
will continue to- doi ere this is put in cold type, I am doing that
which I have been requested tO' do> by many who, from having
known me to' have been engaged in many business enterprises
in many countries as well as my own, and that I had served
in the armies of more than one government, and more often
on the side that did not win out than on the one that did.
My early boyhood was spent on a stumpy, rooty farm in
the wilderness, as it was then, in the far West. Did I have
a gift to tell of things that occurred as they might be told
by a gifted writer, I could tell of things that occurred to me
when I was a boy that would be unbelievable by the boy of
this day. Few boys of my acquaintance had more varied
experiences than I.
There were hunters in those days, and about the first com
mercial transactions that I remember having been the promoter
of was the melting of my grandmother's A. B. C. pewter plates
and running them in elder joints that my older brothers had
used as popguns, and selling the bars for lead. I was possibly
the first smelter in all Michigan. 7

8 BOYHOOD DAYS.
The plates were not missed until I had to make a con
fession of what I had done by reason of my having more than
a quart cup of pins and half a cup of needles of all sizes and
sorts, which I had received in exchange for my bars at prices
of my own making. I had converted quite a large stock of
my goods into Barlow knives, and these gooHs were converted
into all sort of junk the, boys and my father's employees would
bring me, and never at their prices, but my own.
I need not tell what occurred, or the punishment I received,
when it was found out that a stack of eight-inch A. B. C.
pewter plates, fully ten inches high, had all been blown away
by forty-cent powder at squirrels, coons and deer, and was
not to be collected again. The punishment I received was a
lesson I never forgot. And I never afterwards took anything
from any one without due compensation, for I have found
that it is cheaper to pay a good round cash price for anything
than to just take it.
My stock of pins and needles was confiscated, and in those
days, when the postage on a letter from Virginia was twenty-
five cents, and when a man only got twenty-five cents for
splitting one hundred and twelve rails, pins were pins and
needles were needles. Onr mothers and sisters spun their own
thread. The confiscators did not secure my stock of cutlery, which
I was soon busy converting into two-inch in diameter two-
cent copper pieces of United States coinage. From sales made
and donations received, when the first county fair in Berrien
County was held, I was a capitalist, having forty-eight cents,
which was about forty cents more than any other boy living
in the "bend of the river" had.
This county fair was a great affair to me, and possibly
no other affair of my life was more deeply engraved on my
heart of steel. Before this occurrence the biggest crowd of
people I had ever seen was at a log-rolling or house-raising.

BOYHOOD DAYS. 9
where I, a boy, was kept busy providing water for the neigh
bors that had congregated doing the work, and when evening
came and the men were resting and telling old army stories,
and the young men were having a good time with young lady
acquaintances, I was still kept busy drawing water from the
bottom of that fifty-foot well with which the women were to
wash the dishes. After which the candy-stretching or apple-
paring commenced. For be it understood in those days, in
the parts where I was born, between Hard-shell Baptists,
Methodists, Presbyterians and Quakers, there was no dancing ;
nay, not even the sound of a fiddle. These were the biggest
crowds of people I had ever seen until the county fair came
off, and I shall never forget, though I should be as old as
Methuselah, how I wondered what all these people did to
make a living, and what an awful dish-washing night this
night of our Lord would be.
I may later on tell what my father was, for he was many
things, and among other things quite a farmer, horticulturist
and stock raiser, and the exhibit that was made froim our place
in all these lines was well along up in the front ranks for
premiums. Here I saw my first buffalo, my first beaver and my first
really sure enough Indian chief, my first threshing machine
and fanning mill, and the first pretty girl I ever saw in all
my life up to that time. I never saw her again.
I had been saving up my money for this occasion to make
an investment that would bring me larger dividends than
had my last, and something that might not be confiscated. I
tried to buy a pair of guinea fowls, the like of which I had
never seen before; but, there being a comer on guinea fowls,
the price was too high. I had to buy something of use to
any one besides myself and other boys of my own age. These
were happy days to me when I had but one garment, and it
had but one pocket in it, and that large enough tO' contain a

ID BOYHOOD DAYS.
first-class stock of everything, including, of course, a "hunk"
of maple sugar, marbles and what else might be given to me,
for I had been broken of taking anything.
The old store yet stands by the side of the road on the
bank of the old St. Joe River in Berrien Springs, where I
first made my greatest cash financial transaction. Forty-two
cents counted down in two^cent pieces, one by one, paid for a
two-blade buckhorn-handled knife, the big blade of which I
was able to open with the assistance of a four-penny nail I
found in my pocket. Not one of the boys knew of my pur
chase. On going home about sundown I poled myself tO'
the front ranks, and after much effort opened my knife, which
I exhibited much as the great financier exhibited his holdings
in bonds and stocks at a great banquet he gave in New York
a few years agoi. All of the boys wanted tO' handle it, but
that was what I had not yet done, soi, bending over a pawpaw
bush, manlike I undertook toi cut it, when with a sound peculiar
to knives made in those days the rivet broke and the blade
flew in the crowd to come down a short distance off. As the
howl went up my feathers went down. I had but four cents
left. The gunsmith in town charged me five cents for fixing
in the rivet again and kept the knife more than a month before
I was able to raise the other cent. That man died in the
poorhouse, and I helped him there by transferring all my trade
and influence to the gunsmith who aided me in telling what
a mean man "O-  C" was to treat a good henest boy as
he did me. I never treated boy, man, nigger or Indian that
way, which accounts for the large number of I O U's there
are out over the country in my favor, and always will be.
Though I have traveled the world over, so to say, and
been engaged in many enterprises and handled large sums of
money, some of it my own, I never was a gambler and not a
speculator in the sense the word implies nowadays. I have
never found one man so smart but that there was another a

SOYttOOD DAYS. II
little smarter than he, and it seems to me that few others
than this class have ever tried to make deals with me.
There is but one thing that I have lived toi perpetually
regret, and that is that I did not turn bad boy at twelve years
of age and run away from home, as I had resolved upon doing,
instead of staying there and being taken tO' Texas when I was
thirteen. Had I done so, I would have learned the black
smith's trade, and for my not having done so the world has
lost one of the best iron workers, smiths and machinists that
ever honored it, for from infancy I was a Tubal Cain man.
If this is beyond you I am sorry for it, for if you knew what
it meant it is possible that you could understand better what
I may hereafter in my own way relate.
My early religion- on the one side, my good mother's, was
of the Methodist persuasion; on the other side, Ol S. P.
Mother's religion was all right, and sO' was the other in its
way, but it either weighed nothing in my estimation or was
altogether too weighty to come within the sphere of my com
prehension, and this reminds me of a truth I might as well
narrate here as elsewhere.
I never went tO' school a day in my life, Sundays not
counted. I started in on a Cobb's Speller and Pike's Arith
metic, and but for the kindly act of an older half-brother, who'
brought me a Webster's Elementary Spelling Book, to which
I took with a boy's interest, from its not only having pictures
but also some good stories which he read to me, my education
might have been completely neglected. The old man — ^he was
a doctor, he was — said that I learned more of the lessons than
the children did who went to school from hearing them early
in the morning and late at night ; wherefore he kept me from '
my earliest remembrance mixing and rolling out Cook's pills,
i. e., calomel, ipecac, jalap and rhubarb, equal portions, war
ranted to do all sorts of devilment.
Well, I took to Webster's Elementary Spelling Book like

12 BOYHOOD DAYS.
I heard a neighbor say their sick cat took to a hot brick, and
I learned every letter, syllable, word, sentence, etc., etc. I
believe this book to have been the greatest educator of the
American people, and this from page to page. I learned and
comprehended all of its trite sayings as copy plates, such as :
"A man can gain nothing in the company of the vicious;"
"Birds of a feather flock together," etc., etc. I could at this
time repeat the fables and draw the pictures illustrating them
in that book, from the boy in the apple tree to the honest
farmer, and the judge to the milkmaid, and particularly the
two travelers and the bear. When I turned the last page of
this book I felt that my education was about completed, and
I was boastful, honestly conscious of the fact that I knew more
than any other boy of my acquaintance who had been going
to school and studying — Pike. I felt that I was prepared for
commencement day, but when on the last page of this ever-
dear-to-me volume I came across the two longest words of
seven and eight syllables then used in the English vocabulary,
methought, and I thought again, and I have been thinking
about it ever since, for I have run across them about every
day of my life. They were, they are: incompatibility and
incomprehensibility. In my day and time I have seen many strange things. I
never spent much time or money unraveling the mystery or
strangeness. Others who pay their own board and work
without wages or reward do it for me. While I have been a
great experimenter, it has been along lines somewhat as
Holmes' books were, "Patent medicine almanacs that cost
nothing," and yet I have sown seed that fell on stony places
and I have cast my bread on waters that may have gone to
the oth-er shore, but surely came not back to mine.
All men born into this world whoi seek to enjoy any of
its beauties and pleasures, first question themselves as' toi what
they were placed here for, and are like the girl who wanted a

BOYHOOD DAYS. 1 3
lover and went out at eventide to the woods near by and prayed
to God for one, when a hoot owl perched on a high tree cried,
"Whoo! Whooi!" and the maiden said, "Oh, anybody, good
God, so it is a man."
Many thousand people have I met, o'ertaken and passed
by in my journey through life, who imagined they were
"called" or put here for a great purpose, but whoi never made
two blades grow where one formerly grew, or in leaving the
world caused mourning for their departure.
I am now an old man, but I have never eaten idle bread
or lost time running after strange gods, yet if seriously asked
why and for what purpose I was placed on this earth, I would
have to declare it is for those whoi come after me tO' tell, for
I cannot, and they failing, the world will never know that I
was here. I believe in names; I believe also in signs and
omens ; in fact, I believe in about everything that men I have
met on earth — and women, too — believe in, but in names more
particularly ahd most emphatically. That my mother thought
well of me when I was boni there can be no question from
the name that she gave me. And there was no kicking on
my part when long years afterwards I found that it meant
"Loved of the Lord," and I read in holy writ that "He whom
the Lord loveth He chasteneth," or words to' that effect. If
it had only been the Lord that used the chastening rod upon
me, my griefs fromi losses, my -pains from bruises, my aches
from pounds and licks and kicks would not have been soi great
by many, many counts.
I sometimes think that there is not living mortal whoi has
gone through so many trials, disappointments, soul-felt and
heart-felt bereavements, deceptions and confidence games that
hurt, as I have — gone through, and yet I am still in the ring.
ready at any time for another turn.
We are told toi "Laugh and the world laughs with you,
weep and you weep alone." This accounts for my loneliness

14 BOYHOOD DAYS.
and ofttimes cast-downwardness, and yet I have had sugar in
my tea and cream in my coffee, and I have heard of people
who have said a good word about me and what I have done,
but they were so seldom, soi far apart and ones so little known
that they never made a fool of me.

EARLY INFLUENCES AND ENVIRONMENTS.

Those early boyhood experiences of mine on the farm in
Michigan were not so unlike those of other boys of that
period as to be worthy of any particular notice, as I now
consider it, though the boy oif that day, his surroundings and
his environments, were so different from those of today that
it would only give my reader another clue to question my
statements and doubt my entire efforts at enlightenment, were
I to fairly, honestly, correctly and uncoloredly give the same.
The family who left the eastern Alleghanies toi cross over
into the valley of what might be termed Death were it in
Central America or Africa, who penetrated the wilds of the
woody and woolly western wilderness of Ohio and Indiana
and came as far west as where I was born, were people who
were worthy of making noble empires; worthy descendants
of noble sires; the founders of this great and most noble of
countries. The boy born under the circumstances which at best existed
at that time, in a wilderness of woods, as I was, had many
sports of his own, but of a character that would be considered
droll and 'way back in these days.
It was from having been put to bed early by an industrious
mother, in order that she might do her work up before she
laid her tired body down to rest, and that I was induced to
sleep as long as possible until ^after I had acquired a certain
age, that gave me strength to do something for her. Upon
reaching this age I was awakened to tunes more loud than
charming, and sometimes both sounding and blistering. Early
habits are hard to get rid of, as I have found through life,
and "As the twig is bent, so shall the tree incline." I have
IS

l6 EARLY INFLUENCES AND ENVIRONMENTS.
always found myself in bed early at night, and there were but
few of the fowls that had come oft of their perches when I
was around looking after things.
My father was not much of a farmer. He did all this
sort of work by proxy while he "doctored" the people, giving!
them good old allopathic powders, and talked religion and
politics and — well — once in a while sold a horse and bought
something or took somebody's note for something they
thought more valuable than that which they gave. Really and
in fact, he knew about as much about farming as I ever did
about running an ocean greyhound or a naval fighting ma
chine. He did it all through a hired man and mother and
me, who from my earliest recollection had toi doi with cows
and with pigs and with chickens and with horses.
My lot was a hard one, for the old man came from that
old F. F. V. stock who believed in raising boys on the strap
route, and who, whether the boy needed it or not, would
administer a good thrashing on the proposition that he woiiid
need it sooner or later and when he did the gad might not be
handy or the old man might not be around. When he com
menced one of these operations, the louder the boy, that is ,
myself, cried and hollered, the better it pleased him. He got
mad if you didn't holler, so you were sure to catch refined
cruelty, jump as you might. Like the old Virginia nigger
who set a trap to catch a coon or possum, squirrel or rat,
and turning round to look at it after leaving it said : "Dar
den, I'se done and sot it to cotch him comin' or goin'," old
dad's trap was set for one of the boys all the while just that
way. There were many things that I learned on the farm, as
well as many things I learned abotit old dad, that I ne^ver
forgot. M,uch about plowing was taught me by a yoke of
old oxen, who when the dinner horn blew started for the house.
mattering not what part of the field they were in, taking me

EARLY INFLUENCES AND ENVIRONMENTS. I^
and the plow along, unless, after having given me a very short
space of time in which to unhitch, I had done so. Old Broad,
that was the nigh ox, used to kick -me with as much impunity
as old dad used to thrash me, only he was not mean about it,
for he always looked around and seemed to sympathize with
me and say as much as "Do not come too near next time."
Mentioning dinner horns reminds me that the same old
dinner horn which was left on the place when we moved away
did service in blowing the wolves, bears, panthers and wild
cats away froin the sheepfold which was very close to the
cabin, and when well sounded came near resembling a Missis
sippi calliope or an ocean foghorn as can be imagined.
Lanterns were used in those days to keep away the wild
animals, and the boy who could not make a pawpaw whistle
that would sound long and loud would never be able to take
an ax and an auger and draw-knife and go out in the woods
and cut down a tree and make a plow stock or an ox yoke,
which I have done more than once before I was twelve years
old. The boys in those days esteemed themselves valuable in
proportion to what they could do, and the ones who could
only look pretty and giggle and go with the girls, who always
petted them while they admired the other fellow, were the
ones who left no mark behind them in passing away; while
we — that is, I and my compeers — went out and conquered
the world, and by our brave, heroic, noble and enduring
unselfishness and faithful acts can look back — from 1904 —
and see what no ten thousand generations of men whoi have
lived, or may have lived since the birth of Adam, have lived
to see in the way of advancement of all that is noble and grand
and enduring in science and art, inventions and improvements
and all that brings man nearer his Creator, in the image of
whom he was created. We boys of the seventies and eighties
of winter-marks can point back and say, "There is our record,"
and with no small pride say, "If you would know more of us.

l8 EARLY INFLUENCES AND ENVIRONMENTS.
look around you." And if in bidding farewell to the world
you would be able to say that you left it better than you found
it, go ye and do likewise, and, like us, plant without pay or
the prospect of profit if you but know that in planting others
are to come after you and enjoy the fruits of your labor.
It is my belief that there never lived a race of people, or
any section of any race of people, that ever had such cause to
be thankful to their Creator and prouder of themselves, than
we, the first and second descendants of the founders of this
great government of liberty, have reason to be; and also
cometh our ever present adoration and gratitude, love and
remembrance of those who' made it possible for us to do what
we have done, by and from the foundation of a government
for the people and by the people, of human liberty and rights
that all might enjoy alike, and of a protection which said to
the man who had brains in that line. Go thou and invent, and
thou shalt have the reward of thy inventions; and to the
planter. Go thou and plant, and thou shalt have the reward
of thy reaping; and to the builder. Go thou and build, and
thy house shalt be thy castle; and to the preacher. Go thou
forth and preach, and according as thou teachest so be it unto
thee for weal or for woe. This Government of ours has
rewarded every man in proportion to his ability and honest
integrity, and it is only the ungrateful and the dullard and
the laggard who has not participated in its great benefits,
blessings and endowments.
My early religious training has been referred to before.
This training was of a dual character. Dad was an O'. S. P.,
who believed in infant damnation and the elect, aye, long
before birth, and, of course, of which he was one, and there
fore as king, prophet and priest to all under his power. Of
course the king, the prophet and the priest could do no harm
or wrong, and therefore was immune from all such as measles.
whooping cough, smallpox and yellow fever and anything in

EARLY INFLUENCES AND ENVIRONMENTS. I9
the way of the devil's temptations and trials. On the other
hand, my mother was a good old W. M., whoi with their
doctrine and belief made it possible for any one toi get there.
and put me as a boy to^ thinking, "Well, how will you get on
and how will you get off?"
One seemed to say:
"You'll be damned if you do and you'll be damned if you don't, f
You'll be damned if you will and you'll be damned if you won't.
You'll be damned if you can and you'll be damned if you can't,
You'll be damned if you shall and you'll be damned if you shan't;''
While the other seemed to say to me :
"There is a fountain filled with blood.
Drawn from an Emanuel's veins; * * *
The dying thief rejoiced to see
That fountain in his day;
-And there may I, though vile as he,
Wash all my sins away."
If a boy raised under these conditions failed to have any
religious convictions, it was not because the foundation was
not there for him to start on.
I might as well tell it now as to let it crop out against me
hereafter, that from rpy earliest infancy I was considered the
black sheep of the flock and soi treated, especially by the old
man, who found in me one who wanted to know the why and
the wherefore and the "thisly of the thusly" in all matters and
questions that either related tO' my future or with the inter
ference of my present peaceful, restful attitude.
I never believed in doing anything until it was necessary to
be done, and never starting at the job until after having thor
oughly considered all the points bearing on its conclusion at the
least possible expense of manual labor, and especially at the
expense of money already in the bank. From my earliest rec
ollection I saw fools fooling away their time, doing some^

20 EARLY INFLUENCES AND ENVIRONMENTS.
thing. Spending strength and energy, that could not possibly
bring them any returns. I have seen men in my day come
forth with their millions of money, "which they had aired,"
of course, and throw it away, just as I have seen Jack Wilson
make an ox of hiirtself by handling logs, clearing up ground
that would not sprout black-eyed peas or raise buckwheat after
he had cleared it off.
I well remember hearing the old Hard-shell Baptist min
ister tear off his sermons at the Reynold's schoolhouse, where
he orated once every moon and Brother McGill orated the
other moon, Methodist fashion. And then how the Dunk-
ards held forth, when nO' man orated, only as the spirit moved.
And how from hearing- these different people out in the coun
try talk in the schoolhouse, as well as from hearing the O. S. P.
"Doctor" talk from the high pulpit toi the high-backed pews,
ever less than one-half filled, that I became very much con
fused in my early theological professions, the more and more
that I, as a boy, thought of the different propositions, the
more and more I became convinced of /hypocrisy, and the
more I became convinced of the true light, that the truth was
more powerful than the king, man, wine or woman, and that
he who would ask for more light, and be governed by its
shedding and would live by the truth jthat that light gave
forth, would stand nearer that great Architect and Giver of
all good than would any caterwauling, hypocritical sycophant,
who, like a pauper and a beggar, was ever asking, forever
begging and praying for more and never giving thanks for
anything; while he who thanked or was truly thankful for
the little favors received, larger favors and blessings were
showered upon him as the years roll around.
It has been my firm religious belief that the great God
who ruleth all and made all has noi rewards for the praying
mendicant, no more than I have for the lazy beggar and
pauper who comes to my door time and again; but that

EARLY INFLUENCES AND ENVIRONMENT'S. 21
that great Creator has reward here on earth for him who re
turns thanks and asks himself .Where shall I spread it that
I may show yet my greater thankfulness? These are the
people who have made the world what it is in the last fifty
years. These are the ones whoi have never stopped to' ques
tion as to what the harvest would be, but they sowed and
toiled and reaped to be rewarded greatly.
I shall never forget, though my name be used in the Good
Book instead of Methuselah's because of my great age, my
first show, or rather P. T. Barnum's first exhibition in west
ern Michigan with Tom Thumb. Why the old man got so
good as to allow me to go to that show I never knew, and
he never knew one-half of what I found out, or of the
thoughts it gave me to think of when I was out in the field
hoeing corn, feeding the hogs or digging the potatoes.
This , show was an inspiration toi me. It was a whole
schoolhouse, academy and college combined, and told me
more than any person on earth ever learned from reading
Rollins' Ancient HistO'ry, Plutarch's Lives or the nine big
volumes of Scott's Commentaries on the Holy Bible and New
Testament, and was a greater aid than mother's Watt's Hymn
Book of good old W. M. meters in gi'ving me the true light
and telling me the truth. For there at this show I saw things
as they were and as I have seen heaven on earth many times,
and not as somebody described them to me.
I went there a capitalist. I had twenty-five cents
of my own good money and a good brother-in-law gave me
twenty-five cents extra, not thinking that dad's stingy old heart
had been opened to the amount, and whoi thought that I had
only been allowed to gO' to town that day with no spending
privileges. Well, I took in two or three of the ten-cent side
shows which were being "barked" by loud-mouthed individ
uals, who, like many others whom I have seen in this world,
painted the pictures bigger and better than my boyish im-

22 EARLY INFLUENCES AND ENVIRONMENTS.
agination admitted of being painted. However I was satis
fied in each and every case. When the big drum commenced
to beat and the big show gate began to open and the lions
commenced roaring and the tiger commenced howling and
other big noises sounded from within, in the rush I forgot the
ticket wagon and I think that this was the first time that I
ever got something for nothing, and P. T. Barnum did not
get my quarter.
The elephants and the zebras were near the door as I went
into the mammoth tent, which seemed to me to be as big as
our northwest cornfield in which I had been hoeing the day
before in the hot sun. However, I made the circuit of the
tent and took in everything. Nothing escaped my eye. I
ran up against the clown and he funnied so funny that I just
laid down on the ground and laughed and felt good all over
and was glad that I was a boy and was there. And then
I took in Tom Thumb playing the part of Napoleon, and the
man who had no: arms and played the fiddle and opened big
jackknives and threw them' out toi the farmer boys and who
cracked walnuts and did many other things with his toes that
others could not do' with their hands.
And then I ran up against the lemonade man, and if I
had ever heard of lemonade or the name I had forgotten
it, and to hear that man — his voice still rings in my earS' —
"Oh, ye farmer boys! Bring up your best gal, here, for a
glass of this ice-cold lemonade. Made a thousand feet under
ground, where it is lighted by diamonds, drawn up in golden
buckets hung on silver chains, and here I give it to you in
golden cups at only three cents a cup!" Well, as might be
expected of a capitalist like myself, of course I had to try the
lemonade. But I espied a young man whoi had recently come
to our neighborhood, named Hank Harris, who had in tow
Miss Liza Reynolds and her little sister Frances, who soon
thereafter and forever towed him. Hank yanked his gal up

EARLY INFLUENCES AND ENVIRONMENTS. 23
and asked for a glass of the beverage, with which went a
small-sized cake, a little larger than my two-cent copper piece.
Hank took a sup and Lize took a sup and Frances took a sup
and still there was some left, which Hank finished and, smack
ing his lips, said : "It is a perfect imposition ! It is one-half
water!" This set me to questioning that investment, for early in
life I abhorred "watered stock" or dilutions or substitutions
of any sort.
The pleasures of my boyhood days were few, but they
were great and lasting. The first that came was the sugar-
making season. Each tree was tapped by chopping a deep
notch slantwise in it and a spike was inserted which conveyed
the sap to a trough made by splitting a basswood log a foot
or more in diameter and scooping it out with an adz as a canoe
would be made. This trough — the sort which was my
cradle — was put under the spile and we boys and the young
men had to collect the sap night and day, while the men and
women attended to the boiling of the kettles, which were set
on the range, all of which was hard work. But the fun came
in when the boiling off season commenced. This was when
the molasses or syrup was boiled down to sugar and when
the young folks collected and made molasses candy, as it would
be termed in these days, the stretching or pulling of which
was fun which had no equal in all the country round.
This job over, the next would be when it came to making
cider, apple butter and having apple-paring bees. Then it
was that the young folks came together again and the sound
of merriment and joy and pleasure was heard in all the land.
Then came the corn husking, and finally, as a wind-up to the
season's joys, harvesting, reaping and threshing and the hog-
killing time, and with it soon after the joyous Christmas
times, for then, not as now. Thanksgiving Day was not much
observed.

24 EARLY INFLUENCES AND ENVIRONMENTS.
Between hard work and sound sleep the boys of those days
had but little time to go together, except on Sundays, when
we met at the local schoolhouse to hear so'me "sky pilot" ex
patiate on the beauties of a land and its inhabitants that we
know not more of than about the man and his wife in the
moon, and to tell us of that which no one could dispute.
Those who believed were unable to dispute anything.
The boys who went to school had a good time, but my
old dad thought he had wisdom, knowledge and schooling
enough for the whole family, who in his estimation needed
only to know the three R's. He thought the same way about
religion, but I thought different on both subjects, and for why
I got another black mark. And because he thought as he
did and taught as he did I took the contrary side on the ques
tion, and for why I am what I am and where I am.
I never in all my life had time enough to attend to other
people's business. As a general proposition I had enough
to do to attend to my own and I had so' much toi attend to that
I had to rely upon the aid and assistance of others who have
often betrayed me, who were often incompetent and who were
often absolutely unworthy of any sort of trust, else I might
have had some wealth today and not be compelled to travel
about this country in a common Pullman sleeping car, except
ing on extraordinary occasions a drawing-room. Yet, not
withstanding, nevertheless, I have been able to get there when
I wanted to go, and it never was from the advice, free counsel.
aid or assistance of any one else that I was able to do so.
Good counsel and good advice is a great, grand, good thing
to take, but unless you have very good brains and your com-
- pass box is right and can never be made to point wrong, you
will not be able to know which the good advice is. I have
often been given as much good advice as the common run of
bad boys, and I have listened to it as little as any good, sensi
ble boy would. I have found that these are the people who

EARLY INFLUENCES AND ENVIRONMENTS. 25
are always carrying coals to their own bins, and who listens
to them sooner or later finds himself in the condition of the
boy who was going to school and who met an old man with
a scythe blade who stopped him and told him that he was "a
good-looking boy, he was, and a nice boy, he was," and after
asking him his name told him that he remembered him and
that he had heard so many nice things about him and other
wise cajoled the boy into turning a grindstone while he ground
his scythe blade at the boy's muscular expense and great
labor — (did you ever turn a grindstone?)' — ^then turned upon
the boy and said : "Now, you little truant, you, run with all
your might to school or I will see that your teacher gives you
a trouncing for being late."
I never had but one such as this played on me and I have
never forgotten the Quaker's saying that "If a man fool thee
once it is his fault; if twice it is thy fault."
Whenever I have undertaken to attend tO' other people's
business I soon found myself in more business of an unpleas
ant nature than I could conveniently cast off. I once found
myself in the condition of the honest Dutchman, having agreed,
like him, to be the arbitrator between twO' neighbors having
a dispute, both threatening law. I was then a much younger
man than I am now and had more confidence in myself than
I have now. The neighborhood all congregated and I took
my seat as judge, umpire and arbitrator. After hearing one
side I was ready tO' give judgment; but when I heard both
sides, like the Dutchman I was prepared to say, "Now who
gives shugment, I vants to know ?"
Other people's perplexities have always been greater than
my o-wn, because by thought and deep meditation, coupled
with a desire to do right in all cases and even meet more than
on the half-way point, I could solve and settle my own dif
ferences and troubles, but not those of others, for I have found

26 EARLY INFLUENCES AND ENVIRONMENTS.
man a most unreasonable creature, imbued with such selfish
ness as to becloud his seeing the rights of others.
The first book I ever remember having read was "Weems'
Life of Washington." It filled my very young soul with
patriotic impulses, as it never failed to do to and with all others.
After having read it through, little snatches at a time, I was
asked by one of my neighbors which part of it I liked best and
I quickly told him, "That part where Washington was of
fered a crown and refused it."
This came from my natural inborn hatred to all kinds of
monarchs, despots and tyrants, and for why to this day I love
the honest, outspoken, free and noble American citizen.
My father was an old man when I was born; my mother
not a young woman. He had practically raised and set off
a family of older children before I came into' the world to make
trouble. The former he had given a good education and such
advantages as the schools of the day were able to give. In
1853 he became very much incensed at the tax laws and what
else I need not mention, and resolved upon going to Texas.
Having about the best property there was in that section of the
country, he was not long in disposing of it to a man who four
years before had been his chief wood chopper and rail split
ter, named Calvin Blake. Blake and his three grown up
boys came to my father's house in '48, I well remember the
time and place, and told him that they were going to Cali
fornia. At losing such a good servant the old man became very
much incensed, but it did not interfere with, Blake's going.
In September, 1853, a few days after the old man had adver
tised his holdings, my mother and I saw Blake and his three
boys coming down the lane to the house, and she called my
father out. I remember hearing the old man say, "They've
come back again and after a job and I won't let them have

EARLY INFLUENCES AND ENVIRONMENTS. 27
it. They were not governed by my advice and I won't give
them a job. "They'll have to hunt somewheres else."
The old man received them blindly, as he was capable of
doing, for he had that divine power that St. Paul speaks of :
"Be ye able to be unto all men all things at all times."
After the Blakes had been seated he commenced pumping
them about their trip tO' California and back, at which he made
slow progress, for the Blakes were like clams on all subjects
they know anything about or should have known anything
about and never thought of anything they cared nothing for.
After the old man had about exhausted his patience and time in
trying to find out something, Blake said: "Doctor, I see
that you have advertised your place for sale and I would like to
know what your price is."
Whereupon the old man replied : "It would be of little
interest to you."
"Well," said Blake, "some men came back with me who
want to buy a place like yours." (He referred to his sons.)
Dad said, "Well, well, whoever buys my place must buy
my other property and take all of my holdings in the State
of Michigan and pay spot cash down," and gave the figures.
"How much money do you want as earnest money to close
the bargain?"
"Five thoiusand dollars," old man Noel replied.
Whereupon he was told to draw up a receipt for that
amount, and in less time than it takes to tell it five thousand
dollars of new, pure, lately coined California gold was stacked
up and he was told that the balance would be at the bank in
the town as soon as he could make the deeds out.
"To whom shall the deeds be made?"
"To Calvin Blake!"
Old dad waked up to the realization of a changed condi
tion, for from being a wood chopper and rail splitter Calvin
Blake was the richest man in all southwest Michigan. Oft-

28 EARLY INFLUENCES AND ENVIRONMENTS.
times I have thought of this deal and the man whoi made it,
and ofttimes I have thought of how Calvin Blake was not
going to get a job and of how the other man got done out of a
home. The price named was about one-third more than the old
man really would have sold for. I never believed that up
to that time he ever intended, to sell, though I, a boy, like all
other boys, was keen to travel and wanted him to sell. Blake
got the place and with it all the stock and everything else that
the old man owned, including notes, mortgages, etc., and what
was always the most interesting part to me, he got ninety
acres of wheat which I had planted and drilled in myself.
With the place went the three years' crop of wheat in the bins
and two years' crop of oats and corn shelled and stored away.
We left Michigan for Texas on the twenty-third day of
November, 1853. Early in 1854 the Crimean War was de
clared. The wheat in the bins was sold for $1.75 per bushel.
and wheat which we had planted and which Blake harvested
was sold for $2.25 per bushel, corn, oats and hay at a propor
tionately large advancement, which realized enough to, pay
for the entire place and all that belonged thereto', since there
were four thousand bushels of wheat which Blake got on a
basis of forty-one cents per bushel.
When Blake closed the contract with the old man, then
his mouth opened and his tongue loosened up and he could
outtalk a New England maid. This was a great lesson to me
through life, and I never had a piece of property, house or
anything else to sell but that I wondered if Russia was going
to get into another difficulty.
If you have read this far in my book I can promise in ad
vance that you will read further. From now on my life com
mences, and I propose to tell of its first lessons and achieve
ments and failures as well, and to tell of it in such a way as
to be more instructive, possibly, than interesting, for I want

EARLY INFLUENCES AND ENVIRONMENTS. 29
my reader to understand that I am not writing this book and
going to the great expense of having it published for any self-
glorification or laudation, but with a view to benefiting those
who may read it, and especially the young man whom it may
cause to think. I cannot write of my o'wn acts and deeds as
I could of another's, and I feel myself unable to do the sub
ject justice without putting in a considerable amount of
egotism, do the best I may to prevent it.
I am not going to give you any blood-and-thunder, Indian
painted, scalping, romance lies, but I am going to narrate to
you things as they were and as I saw them, both as relates
to matters of business, war, science and all questions on in
ternal improvement as well as infernal rascalities. I feel that
in one sense I am competent to do justice on this score, for
there lives not a man on earth today — or woman either — to
whom I owe one cent of a debt that I cannot pay a million
for; that there has never lived on earth a man — or woman
either — to whom I owe or ever owed one iota of gratitude for
any acts of kindness of any sort of nature whatsoever but that
I have paid, not with compound interest, but with double prin
cipal. And there lives not a soul on earth today for whom
I have other than kind feelings ; and yet I have had in my days
some notable enemies, and some more than common, men of
the common sort who, like chaff, always went with the win
ning side or the way the wind blew.

THE SOUTH IN THE EARLY FIFTIES.
In going to Texas in November, 1853, we arrived in Chi
cago at four o'clock in' the morning, coming in on a long tres
tle-work through Lake Michigan to reach the foot of Ran
dolph street, which is now all settled and has been for many
years. Where that trestle stood now stands great sky-scrap
ping business buildings. We took breakfast at the Sherman
House, which is still doing business at the old stand — my first
in a first-class hotel where meals were served in courses. I
shall never forget how I thought, "Well, is this all we are
going to get?"
We left Chicago at seven-thirty in tlie morning on the
Rock Island Railroad, whose terminus was at La Salle, 111.
One train down and one train back per day, freight, passen
ger, baggage and mail, all pulled by one engine, which today
has no counterpart in existence, which today would compare
with the Mogul pulling this train that I am now traveling on
as this is being dictated, as a monkey might be compared to
a big mule both as to size and in strength. It took two' fire
men to fire that engine, an oiler and an engineer, and Mr.
Czar of Russia co'uld not put on more airs than that engineer
did, while the conductor of the train was bejeweled and be
dabbled with all sorts of pewter, brass and copper plates. We
children thought that they were immense.
Chicago was then but a small town of which I saw but
little, for we children were all anxious to see the great "Illi
nois Prairie and Mount Joliet in the Distance," which was
the title of a picture in our newly acquired school geography
and atlas, from which we expected to see something similar
to the mountains mother had described to us as. having crossed
30

THE SOUTH IN THE EARLY FIFTIES. 3 1
in coming from where our big oysters now come. Mount
Joliet proved to be about forty feet high, two or three hun
dred feet wide and a quarter of a mile long and O'f sand and
small pebbles. No man traveling over the same ground to
day can see a vestige of a sign of Mount Joliet.
The Illinois Penitentiary is not far from there and Joliet is
a great, thriving city, noted for its barbed wire fence factories.
I have lately and very often since traveled over this same Rock
Island Railroad. Now, instead of one train each way, there
are upward of one hundred freight and passenger trains. In
stead of one track there are two all the way and four part of
the way. Instead of only two' engines this system now has, I
am told, three thousand four hundred and twenty-six. In
stead of ninety miles of track this system now counts more than
nine thousand miles. And when I look back and see that it
is I and my compeers and associates who have brought about
this great change — incomprehensible to but few, and they only
who travel and see things grow and change, and grow and
change with what they see — why should I not be proud of the
company which I have been keeping for the more than half a
century ?
My boys and their associates and compeers will have to
look up in the air as they are already looking down in the
ground by means of the tunnels and excavations they are
making iinder the great cities. Methinks what a pleasure it
will be to live in this world fifty years hence if its improve
ments continue apace and keep abreast with those of the last
fifty years.
I am riding in an elaborately equipped Pullman palace car,
pulled by an engine capable of making seventy miles an hour,
on a train composed of fourteen other parlor mansions on
wheels such as this one is, and I am crossing a desert in south
ern Arizona at the rate of sixty miles an hour that I crossed
forty years ago on a jaded horse at the rate of two and one-

^2 THE SOUTH IN THE EARLY FIFTIES.
half miles an hour. Oh, what a change and what a pleas
ure it is to me to realize it in this substantial way!. Then it
would have taken me three long months tO' have heard from
my folks. This morning at six-thirty I started a message and
in less than one hour I heard from the loved ones at home.
Forty years ago I first drank the waters of the Rio- Bravo
Grande del Norte, which the first Spanish explorers of this
country reported to their king as the greatest river flowing
from the mountains of the North to the great Gulf of the
South, and I remember having seen an ancient map illustrat
ing it as being much larger than the Mississippi. At that
time my lips, parched from' thirst, were quenched at where
afterward Fort Quitman was placed and one hundred miles
south of what is now known as El PasO'. This river was then
three-fourths of a mile wide at that place and continued that
wide with but little variation to Santa Fe and above. It fur
nished water for the irrigation of millions of acres of land.
Tomorrow I will cross it at El Pasoi where it is confined to the
limits of a sluice box or drain that would not relieve an ordi
nary Louisiana swamp of its overflow.
The water has been taken out by the people on the upper
streams and tributaries of the river in Colorado' and even
above until there is none left to make glad the thirsty valleys
where once grew the largest grapes, the largest pears, the
largest crops of wheat and the largest onions that -were ever
grown on earth. Like the race that produced them^ — the Mex
icans — it has passed away. They are passing away, leaving
behind them little that the Anglo-Saxon and the true American
shall ever have occasion tO' honor or remember.
We left La Salle on the Illinois River, a stern-wheel
steamer, for St. Louis. The me consisted of dad, mother.
an older brother, a younger one, two' younger sisters and my
self, all of whom had a burden to bear, for in that day the
bank bills of one State would not pass in another — ^these were

THE SOUTH IN THE EARLY FIFTIES. 33
good old democratic days of State rights^ — and we each had
to carry our portion of old man Blake's California gold, which,
did I state the weight of it, some would question and others
doubt, and thus my honesty be brought into question early in
my history.
The Illinois River was then what it is now, since the Chi
cago Drainage canal pours into it. Lake Michigan waters at
the rate of little less than one million gallons per hour, but
not like it, has been since 1853, when the water was so low as
to give good ordinary sized catfish trouble in navigating it.
I get it from a State Fish Commissioner that in 1872 the Ger
man carp were planted in the Illinois River at Peoria, and for
eight or ten years nothing was heard from them, but that for
the last four years they have been a source of profit aggregat
ing two hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars per year to
the fishermen. Like eating grapes, eating carp to like them is
an acquired taste, and I would advise my friends not to try to
acquire the taste, but to eat mud suckers and turtles instead.
We were four days and nights in getting tO' St. Louis on
our stern- wheel steamer, which had stops to make at every
bend in the river to take on and put off freight and people.
And such people and such freight as I never befo're saw, but of
which I have seen millions since ! St. Louis of those days was
not the St. Louis of today. Then there was eighteen miles
of river front, both sides, against which there were tied steam
boats and floating craft, often three deep, the outside one un
loading over the other two. These boats plowed the waters
of all the streams, rivers, rivulets and tributaries that flow into
and make the mighty, muddy Missouri, and it, aided by such
tributaries as the Ohio, making the mighty Mississippi which
flows on to the Gulf.
So for thirteen hundred miles we steamed down from St.
Louis to New Orleans, taking thirteen days to make it on a
United States fast dispatch boat, that, of course, had to stop at

34 THE SOUTH IN THE EARLY FIFTIES.
every postoffice and take on and take off live and dead freight
of all imaginary sorts, including cattle, hogs, horses, mules,
chickens, ducks, geese, etc., while the boat would stop for
anything. There were no postal cards in those days, or I sup
pose the boats would have stopped for them.
The Mississippi River of those days was not the Missis
sippi River of today. The commerce that in those days floated
on its broad bosom finds other ways to the markets and to
the seas than by being floated down by steamers or by rafts
mostly. And now comes my time to tell what a raft was and
how it was made — ^this not for the benefit of the few old men
like myself who know, but for the boys. However, a little
looking backward will do no harm.
In order to describe this properly we will locate ourselves
somewhere on a little stream emp'tying into the Wabash River
in Indiana. We will say that there are fifty of us farmers whoi
have corn and wheat and oats and hogs and chickens and
turkeys and apples, dried and green, and hoop-poles and pump
kins. We all get together and cut down great big oak trees
that will square three by three feet, and we hew them out forty
or fifty feet long and plug them and pin them together on the
low ground in the summertime and fall of the year, and when
all around is dry. We put ten or fifteen of these side by side
and then we put four or five or six upon the side of the same
sort and dimensions, and then we fill up the ends. Then we
commence to collect our effects — like old father Noah, only we
do not take thiem in by pairs — and then we get together and
elect a captain, and we pick out the proper young men to go
with him, and when our flatboat is well filled up and the rains
commence coming down and the creeks commence coming
up, away we float and down we go on the old Ohio and at
Cairo we strike the Mississippi, Oh ! and down and down we
go with a little light in front and one in the rear. Jim at
the oar four hours in turn, and at the spring flowing season

THE SOUTH IN THE EARLY FIFTIES. 35
we are so thick on the river that steamboats have a bad time
pulling around us or pushing through us, going up stream.
It is a long fleet but a jolly one, and the refrains of the
songs sung by the float from away up the Ohio, or those from
the head waters of the Missouri or from the Illinois or from
the Cumberland and the thousand other smaller tributaries, is
soon picked up by our Wabash Indian crew, and loudly ring
the songs both day and night, which here commingle as does
the waters of the mighty rivers that make the mighty stream.
There is constant badinage day and night, such as : "Hello,
Brownie !" by reason of their boats being painted brown with
their native clay. "Where from?"
"Yellow Forks of Roaring River up Rogue's Hollow," or.
"Paradise Valley in the land of plenty," or similar names of the
localities from which they came, never giving the correct ones.
"What loaded with?"
"Fruit and lumber."
"What sort?"
"Hoop-poles and pumpkins."
"Got any apple jack ?"
"Naw, but if you have we will trade you some pure 'Oh
be joyful' for that or 'Old Flat,' " meaning tobacco which
has been pressed out in plugs as we see it nowadays, a trading
trick that the Indian Hoosier was the first to get on tO'.
Now, understand you that there is not one ounce of weight
on all of this boat or in it or of the boat itself but that is of
great value, and which is going to sell for a big price down in
New Orleans.
When we went down in November of 1853 we were never
out of sight of these rifts, and we were told that they were
much thicker in the springtime flow when the waters were
high in the up creeks from the melted snow. The float wo;uld
be met at from fifty to one hundred miles from New Orleans
by buyers. The competition was so great that good prices

36 THE SOUTH IN THE EARLY FIFTIES.
were always realized, and there was an honor among the
traders of the day which begat confidence, and everything was
bargained for and sold before New Orleans was seen and a
certain colored flag was put up on the southeast corner of the
flat that the tugboat belonging to the owner, the man who
had bought it, might come out and bring it to the landing.
where the Indiana boys were met by the cashier, who paid
them in gold and silver for their cargo. It was often the case
that the boat itself was worth more than the entire cargo, for
then as now there was great demand for oak lumber of all
sorts and building lumber of any sort.
New Orleans was very different from the New Orleans
of today. It required twenty-seven miles of river front for
its wharfage and at many places the boats were three and four
deep. There was more business done then in the City of New
Orleans in one day than there is now being done in one month.
or perhaps three of them, in the way of its being done by the
people. I have seen steamers unloading three or four thou
sand bales of cotton, which all had to be drayed to the com
press and from there again down to the ocean steamers which
took it abroad. I have seen more doing in one day on the
principal levee in New Orleans than is now done in the most
active part in a week.
Modern New Orleans is in no sense what the New Orleans
of fifty years ago was. Outside of the old French Quarters
and the French Markets the changes have been wonderful.
Where once one thousand or more steamers and ten times the
number of flatboats could be seen, now you may count them
on your hands. For I and my compeers have been working
in this direction, as well as in others, and we have made it pos
sible by improvements and inventions and the building of rail
roads and tramways for one man to do what ten or thirty
would do then. And what has become of the nine or

THE SOUTH IN THE EARLY FIFTIES. 37
twenty-nine we have been too busy to stop to ask. They may
be found along in the hovels cursing their fate.
For two hundred miles above New Orleans on both sides
of the Mississippi River there were sugar plantations after
sugar plantations which produced from eight hundred and
seventy-five to fourteen hundred dollars per hand, the hands
being valued at from nine to twelve hundred dollars, though a
good negro would bring as high as fifteen hundred dollars.
From the top of our boats we could see over the levees, and
the sugar mills in the distance, and never were we out of sight
of orange, lemon and banana trees.
New Orleans was a bower of blooming beauties, and orange
trees and fig trees and such like tropical fruits. Today they.
as well as the sugar plantations and the commerce of the
mighty Mississippi, have all passed away. The climatic
changes have been wonderful, but the political changes have
been as great. New Orleans was the most metropolitan or
cosmopolitan city on the globe at this time. On its streets
might be met more people of more different parts of the globe.
with different callings, trades, professions, avocations and
labors, than in any other- commercial city, we are told, on earth.
It was here, on the Mississippi River, that the commercial
gambler and the high roller lived, prospered and died, for he
is not there now.
It has been said that the highest stakes at cards that have
ever been played were played here in New Orleans and on the
Mississippi steamers. The average planter and his son were
natural born gamblers as well as thoroughly educated, refined.
polished, cultured gentlemen, who would ingratiate themselves
in any good society.
When I was a young man, soon after my first seeing New
Orleans, I had formed the acquaintance, in the up-country in
Texas, of a gentleman calling himself Col. Young, whom I
took to be a New Ofleans merchant or a Louisiana sugar

38 THE SOUTH IN THE EARLY FIFTIES.
plalnter, by the manner in which he threw himself around,
loose-like. He invited me very cordially when I came to New
Orleans to call and see him, and gave me his card, that he
might be of some assistance to me. About the first thing I did
was to hunt him up. I found his nuihber. I saw several gen
tlemen going in, none coming out, so I followed through a
spring trap-like door, entering an entry, and looking before
me on the wall I saw in large six-inch letters :
"THE HOOKING COOKING SOCIETY."
"Eat, Drink and Pay Nothing,
¦Walk out and Say Nothing."
I went through another trap door and entered a great din
ing-room and a negro came up to me and said :
"Massa, what'll you have to eat ? We have baked opo'ssunl
and we have turkey."
And he named all the costly foods of the day. I took my
piece of turke>' in order to be in keeping with others whom I
was taking as guides, and after drinking a cup of coffee Sambo
came up and said :
"Now, Massa, will you join the gentlemen in de room?"
The room in which I "joined the gentlemen" was fully
sixty feet square if not larger. There were as many faro
tables in there as could be placed, each seating about nine or
eleven people. It was not exactly my first appearance in a
gambling-room, so I sauntered around awhile but made no
inquiries for Col. Young, who I now found was a gambler's
drummer who traveled around as any other solicitor might.
hunting for suckers.
I found one stack of fifty-dollar gold pieces and it had in
it five thousand dollars, and there were ten stacks of them on
that table. There were twenty-two stacks of double eagles,
twenty-dollar gold pieces, and there were forty stacks o'f ten-

THE SOUTH IN THE EARLY FIFTIES. 39
dollar pieces. I saw no stacks of any less amount in gold
and there were but two tables in the house that had any silver
at all on them. I was told that it would infrequently be the
case that fifty thousand dollars were stacked up on the turn
of a card. I saw more grey-bearded men there than I did
young men. There is no such sight as this to be seen in that
city now ; yet that there is any amount of gambling going on
there now there can be no question.
Many years ago, about 1 851 or '52, if I have been cor
rectly informed, by voting all the boatmen and the lumbermen
and raftmen and other sort of men that could be carried to
the polls in the city of New Orleans, it was voted to widen
Canal Street and to place in what was then about the center
of it a monument of Henry Clay. The French population.
like all of their race, and the Spaniards, in America as well
as in their own country, were bitterly opposed toi all improve
ment, and especially to the widening of the street and the
building of a monument to the great American statesman.
I was told that the erection of a monument to' Andrew
Jackson years before the above occurrence cost many lives in
a riot raised by the French Creole people. I have been pointed
out Frenchmen who have always lived on the French side of
Canal Street, who have never crossed it and whoi would have
disowned their children had they gone across it. And such :s
the case today. I think it is a good thing for the other part
of the city that there is something to keep them from dis
gracing it by their presence. And so will all say who have
visited the French Quarters of New Orleans, which are iden
tical with those of the same class in Quebec, Canada. They
live in poverty, squalor and want in houses made of brick
mostly, filled and covered with filth, such as can be found in no
other American city, not even Chinatown of San Francisco.
You must not use the word "cagin," implying thereby that
there is any nigger blood in the party to whom you are talk-

40 THE SOUTH IN THE EARLY FIFTIES.
ing, any more tlian you must not speak in any way disrespect
fully of the Roman Catholic Church, unless you want tO' fill an
unmarked grave by the stilletto route. Nor must you under
take to explore that part of either of these cities, noi more than
you would the pagan Chinese quarters of San Francisco with
out a licensed guide.
Over in this section there were three long streets given
up to the social evil, and on which are many of the finest resi
dences in the city. Who visits that section of the city takes
his life in his own hands, and mind you, it is not a painted saint
who is telling you this, but an up-to-date all-around one, who
has in his day seen all that there was in this world to see and
feared nothing because he depended upon no' one but himself.
and who "always went heeled" and who' kept his eyes and his
ears opened and nev.er poisoned his senses by liquors or other
intoxicants. Doi you know, my friend, that there are worse
intoxicants than liquor in this world? And that there is not
a grog-seller on earth but that could if he would drug you with
out giving you liquor?
In those days the average Southern society man was a great
clown, a buffoon and a sycophant, very much as he is today.
He was a plaything for the Southern lady, who was above her
brother in every sense of the word, in beauty, in character, in
good sense, sound judgment, honesty and true nobleness. The
"lost cause" would not have been so reported to the world
around had it been for the women of the South instead of the
men. In these days of which I write it was the proper thing
for the Northern man to be good looking, liave good manners
and a strong character, coupled withi a natural bravery and
brains, and to take up a school at so much per head per month.
And he could just have his pick put of the flock of lambs
around him. The most amiable ones were also the most
wealthy planters' daughters. He soon became a planter in good
shape, and no matter what his former ideas on the subject of

THE SOUTH IN THE EARLY FIFTIES. 4I
slavery might have been, he also' became a pro-slavery man
and an uncompromising secessionist and "hooped it up" on
that line extensively, but never went to the war except in the
band wagon, quartermaster's department or in some branch of
the service which had no' fears of the battle-field. We will
come along over these questio'us of battle-fields later on.
From New Orleans we went to Galveston, which was then
a city Oif no small importance, but which never will be more
than what she was when it was said that the great pirate buc
caneer La Fitte made it his headquarters. But for its storms,
tornadoes and the plague visitations it might become a greater
city than only that of a switching station and a transfer depot
for the Southern Pacific Railroad. It surely is a delightful
city to visit in the winter season. It has the finest beach, next
to Atlantic City, on the face of the glo'be. It is a first-class
place to keep away from unless you have lots of money, and
if you have that and have not first-class sense you will not be
able to get away from there with it although you had it when
you came. In fact, coming right down to the plain, honest,
old-fashioned, unequivocal truth, this applies to all of the big
State of Texas, where in the last fifty years more goo'd people
have gone with their money toi afterward gO' back toi their
wife's folks in poverty or still live there in want.
Fifty years ago and previO'US to that time and date, back
possibly several hundred years, Texas was a great country.
And it may be a great country again, but it has not been in
my estimation in my day, and I know many great
and noble people who have the same opinion of the country
and climate.
We settled at Seguin, which was, fifty years ago, a beauti
ful place surrounded by a beautiful country. It would be a
foolish -waste of time and money toi put in cold type and print
incidents connected with our family and my own history at

42 THE SOUTH IN THE EARLY FIFTIES.
this place, so we will cut across lots and get out of the woods
as quickly as possible.
The year 1854 was a very fruitful one. In 1855 the
drought commenced, and for thirteen months we had noi dews
or Pentecostal showers. The earth dried up and the grass
dried up. The prairies were cracked in many places a foot
wide and thirty or forty feet down. Stock died by the millions
between the Coiloradoi and the Rio Grande and the people
moved out, and they who went never came back. There was
more wealth in the Guadalupe coiuntry fifty years ago twice
over than there is now or ever may be again, counting negroes
at New Orleans' slave pen prices. It is not in my power to
so tell it as to be interesting to any great number of people,
but I kno'w that, should I tell the truth, those living in that
section who may read these lines would become angry, for it
has been my observation, which also conforms toi the oibserva-
tion of many wise men who have gone before me, that the more
poor the country the more loiyal are its people.
Take a city in the prosperous State of Iowa or Kansas,
where the per capita bank account oi each individual citizen
is twice over greater than that of any other country on the face
oif the globe, and he takes no exception to what you might say
against his country, while the citizen of Texas or Georgia, who
never had a bank account and who never possibly had
a dollar ahead, -will bristle up for a fight the moment he hears
you say anything against the country in which he lives. I
find this to be the same with the poor, ignorant, down-trodden
Mexicans and Cubans ; the latter, however, has a country which
has no equal on the face of the globe in point of productiveness,
while the former has nothing that man respects or values.
The changes which have come over southwestern Texas in
the last fifty years is another one of these "incomprehensibili
ties" to even the native, must less the man whoi has lived in
the country for that length of time and has seen more wonder-

THE SOUTH IN THE EARLY FIFTIES. 43
ful changes in its climate, productions and people. To- illus
trate: In 1855 in twoi days' ride southwest from San Antonio
I saw in droves of forty and fifty each, possibly as many as
one hundred thousand, mustang ponies and as many more deer
and fully as many long-homed Texas steers. Who' has seen
anything of this sort since ? I saw from the range of moun
tains first west of the Rio Grande River, across a valley rang
ing from seventy-five to twoi hundred miles wide and three
hundred miles long, in the middle of which now runs the Mex
ican Central Railroad, more deer and antelope and cattle at one
sight than it would be prudent for me to number, but I be
lieve greater in number than all of the cattle in all the middle
Western States. Today this valley is a barren desert, except
ing in little spots hither and yon, like oases in a desert, around
and on which may be seen a few cattle, but no game of any
sort here or in the mountains.
In 1853 and '54 the ore from all the mines of North Mex
ico was hauled toi San Antonio', much of it on Mexican wooden-
wheeled carts, where it was taken by American Texas team
sters to Port Lavaca and thence to England for refinement.
None comes that way now, and when I drive through the
streets of this old city and think of what has occurred in the
way of changes in my own recollection and time I can but
wonder if the future has as great possibilities in it in the way
of changes for good as the past has for bad. If it has, this will
be a veritable paradise.
The springs from whence flows the San Antonio River, a
few miles north of the city, have all but dried up, and the flow
ing artesian wells furnish this element, which in tui-n may cease
to flow. The old Missions at this place have no history of
such droughts having ever occurred as have since 1854, and it
may be, and it is to be hoped that such will be, that the old,
old time conditions of nature will reappear — I mean in the way
oif flowing springs, rivers, rivulets and brooks — and, if it

44 THE SOUTH IN THE EARLY FIFTIES.
does, then this will be a delightful country again as it was be
fore. The possibility of this being the condition is too great
for me to advise any one to go there and wait for its coming,
and in the meantime take what is there and has been for the
past many years.
There is a disappointment in store for my readers if he
expects that I am going to tell of the different graveyards that
I have started in Texas in my day, or that I even started one.
or of the different Indian fights that I have been in and the
number of Indians that I have killed. It was as much as I
could do to keep from having one started by being planted
myself, and when I was in the Indian country it kept me very
busy keeping out of sight of any living Indians. They would
be doing the killing act, and I would be in the other end of the
game. I will illustrate my condition by giving a statement
which I know to be true :
A Col. W  '- and a Gen. G  , who were high rollers in
their way concluded to run for Congress in .their district.
They both had started graveyards in their day, and it was
well known by all the people. There was also a noted individ
ual, known all over Texas as "Three-Legged Willie," who had
had a foot shot off and a wooden stick put on at the knee, and
thus acquired the sobriquet. His proper name was Judge
Williamson. He was a great jurist and v/as eminently suc
cessful as a criminal lawyer, a wag and a joker, and when
filled up with sufficient barley-corn to get up steam on or with
he was a holy terror, but not dangerous unless some one made
him believe that he was in a dangerous condition. "Three-
Legged Willie" was what Sheridan Knowles would term "in
peace a lamb, in war a lamb-er."
Willie concluded to run for Congress against the Colonel
and the General, and it was decided upon that there should
be given a great barbecue, where the goat, and likewise the
calf, the lambs, the pig, the roasting ear and corn pome should

THE South in the early fifties. 45
be brought together, and all the good people of the district, in
cluding mothers and daughters and sons and small children
and the maid-servant and the man-servant, should congregate
and after eating all of these good barbecued meats, roasting
ears and corn pomes, and drinking, just as much good whisky
as every man pleased, then at the sound of a horn they would
congregate and listen to the candidates orate.
The Colonel referred to the number of men the General
had killed, never once intimating tliat he was a bad man there
for. When the General's time came to speak he referred in
a very touching way as to the number of men the Colonel had
killed. And thus the people were re-enlightened, and some
of the widows, no doubt, had an opportunity tO' dO' the mourn
ing act over again. It was getting late and along toward even
ing, for it seemed to have been understood between the.Colonel
and the General that they should talk "Three-Legged Willie"
out of time or leave him no time in which to tell of what he
might have to say. Finally he gained the platform and said
in substance — for neither Colonel, General or living mortal
could sling such words to convey an idea or give a decision as
Judge Williamson could :
"Gentlemen and Ladies : You have heard these two gen
tlemen tell you about the graveyards that they have started in
their day. Now I want you to remember and understand that
I have as many to my credit and a few over !"
And he sat down. The people commenced yelling, and it
is said that there was only one vote recorded against Judge Wil
liamson in the district. This story may not have a point or
nioral to many of my readers, but it will be plain to all who
understand me aright.
Speaking of droughts in Texas reminds me of an occur
rence of which I know well. In the country of the Wacos the
drought had been long and continued and the ground around
was parched and dry. The Brazos River was dry and there

46 THE SOUTH IN THE EARLY FIFTIES.
was a pool of water in the Tewa Kana Hills north of Waco
and another at Robinsonville, a few miles south. It was de
cided that all of the people, regardless of creed, should con
gregate at the Robinsonville pool and there petition Divine
power for rain, in a proper and befitting manner. They came
from long distances and in great numbers and it was said that
no one was left at home because there was nothing left at home
living that required attention. On the meeting ground there
was no dissention; all was humiliation and contrition, even
unto sackcloth and ashes. Prayers were started by first one
and then another, and they were long and zealous and fervent
and had been presented for many days, and yet the hot sun
poured down on a famishing people its scorching rays and no
relief seemed to develop in the way of clouds.
It seemed that one or two parties had taken control of mat
ters and wrote the names of the prayer-makers on the bulletin
board early in the morning. There was among the congrega
tion an old-school Hard-shell Baptist preacher; .a man well
along in years and of powerful physique and a voice that might
have been equaled but surely not surpassed. He was a man of
indomitable will power. He was a man of considerable wealth,
owned several negroes on a fine plantation, and was the father
of a very large family at home. Brother C  was out of
whack with the people for and by reason of what Brick Pome-
roy termed "clerical indiscretions." He had not been called
upon to pray and could no longer stand the strain. He pro
cured a chunk of chalk — he was a good writer — rubbed out
what was on the blackboard and wrote on it :
"This is Brother C  's day to pray."
At which all of the camp took a squint, and tongues began
to wag and some were against going under the arbor, but
finally better judgment prevailed and soon after the old horn
sounded the seats were filled and the ground was all covered
Brother C  commenced.

THE SOUTH IN THE EARLY FIFTIES. 47
(I have always wished that I could tell such as this and
use the party's actual words, but I cannot and I do not be
lieve a man ever lived who could have used Brother C  's
words at this time. I propose to only give a synopsis. )
"Almighty God, Thou knowest the wants of us. Thy men-
servants and Thy maid-servants, and we need not be telling
you. We have come on this ground to show Thee our pen
itence and how badly whipped we feel and how willing we are
to thank Thee for past blessings and prepare ourselves to thank
Thee for the blessings Thou art going to give us in the fu
ture. Now, Almighty God, Thou knowest how we are suffer
ing down here, and we want you to come to our relief. We
want you to come with no little sprinkle or Pentecostal shower,
but. Oh God in heaven, send down upon us an old-time, old-
fashioned gully-washer and root-soaker, and be quick about
it. Amen."
And so said all the people who arose and beheld in the
northwest a black cloud which rose higher and higher and
in a few hours the rain that was falling was something terri
ble to behold and in a very short time not only the cracks of
the earth were filled, the ravines and the gullies were washed
out and the Brazos came rushing down overflowing its banks
and there was water in all the land. There was great rejoic
ing and the rain continued and continued, and it was suggested
that Brother C  be importuned toi have another "heart-to-
heart talk" with Deity lest a second flood co'me.

SECESSION AND ITS VICTIMS.

My friends who are really responsible for this book, who
drove me to writing it, should bear with me in its many imper
fections, but as I know very well from past experiences they
will not, I am preparing to take it all on my own shoulders,
and, like the man who once thought he could insult me — he
was drunk, and a drunken man cannot insult me — and who
was making considerable noise in a berth opposite me in a
sleeper and keeping me awake, upon my remonstrating said:
"If you don't like my bacon you need not come to my
smokehouse any more."
At the age of about fourteen I concluded to go into busi
ness for myself and in another section of the State, for which
the old man seemed to be glad, for I had been a sore spot toi him
for many years because of my general independence and the
peculiar way I had of cropping to myself. I know that he was
delighted, because he gave me five dollars and a very fair rid
ing animal to go on. An older brother, who was about twen
ty-two, went with me, and he got no more than I did. We
landed up with a contract to cut railroad ties down on Green's
Bayou on the coast of souteastern Texas. We could cut and
hew ties, but when it came toi doing it for six and one-fourth
cents apiece and then giving three cents to have them landed
where we could get our pay, and when the thermometer would
stand at about one hundred and twenty in the woods, or rather
in the swamps, and when it came toi fighting mosquitoes both
day and night, we resolved toi jump the jo'b. It was like the
man who joined the Methodist Church on six months' proiba-
tion and declared that he had done so  well that they let
him out in less than one week. 48

SECESSION AND ITS VICTIMS. 49
We sold our axes and camp outfit for less than one-half we
had paid for them a few days before and headed our horses to
a higher land in quest of a job that would pay better and be
more lasting. We ran up against it in the Brazos River town
where there was a man who had a contract to furnish a large
number of bricks toi a builder, who in turn had a contract with
a rich planter to have the building completed against a cer
tain time, and we struck a job burning brick, and then we
struck a still better one putting them into a chimney, and when
we were paid off we were small-sized capitalists.
We elected to buy a bookstore and newstands which one
ran while the other went out selling to the people and drum
ming up customers. The climate was tooi muchi for him, and
my brother sickened and died, and was buried before I could
get back from where I was. In fact he was buried before I
heard of his sickness. This brought on me, or brought to me
a great change, for I had placed great confidence in his judg
ment and his ability. We had never been separated and no
ordinary tie bound us together. I launched out intO' other
enterprises, leaving a boy toi attend to the store while I went
after bigger game. I quit the business when the railroad quit
the town, and became, so' to say, a "floater." I had made
money and had acquired a reputation.
About this time the question of secession became so rife
that every county in the State of Texas had a Committee of
Public Safety, and in my town that Committee was composed
of the twelve meanest men I had ever had any contact with
in my life until they contacted with me. And now for an ac
count of my where-with-in.
I took one hundred and twenty-five copies of Harper's
Magazine every month. This Committee of Public Safety
took every copy of the magazine for the month of September,
i860, which contained a letter on "Squatter Sovereignty" by
the "Little Giant," Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois, and

50 SECESSION AND ITS VICTIMS.
burned them before my store door, attracting a great crowd,
a howling rabble. A few days thereafter I received twenty-
four copies of Dabney's Southern Botany, which had been
ordered by the professor of the academy in that place for a bot
any class he was starting. They took those costly volumes
and burned them up in front of my door and then came in a
body into my store and informed me in language more eni-
phatic, impressive and profane than eloquent and genteel, that
if I got any more of those abolition books and magazines
they would fix me as Fike had been fixed. (Fike was a mur
derer who had been hung that spring. ) And they showed me
a piece of rope which they said had been cut for my benefit.
I tried to plead my case by stating the truth, but they said
that the New York Day Book, which was taken by everybody
in the South and sworn to by all, was all that was necessary.
But, of course, it was a Yankee Democratic secessionist sheet
which was out-Heroding Herod. I sold out my store at about
twenty-five per cent, below cost and I left that part of the Lone
Star State, and had I left the State entirely both I and the
world would have been better off, but family ties kept me there.
It was this same Committee of Public Safety who arrested
two men, who were delivering M,onk's Map of North America
to subscribers I had procured in the adjoining country, named
Hughes and Parker. They had two fine, large mules and a
good ambulance which had cost them eight hundred dollars
in Houston only a few days previous. They had near four
hundred dollars in cash. There was nothing which could be
found against the men. One was from Missouri and the other
from Illinois. The mules and the ambulance were confiscated
for the benefit of the public — the thieving Committee in par
ticular — and Parker and Hughes were taken to Galveston and
put on a small brig -which happened to be sailing from there
to Baltimore. When they arrived North the papers were full
of it, and many live today who remember the circumstances.

SECESSION AND ITS VICTIMS. 5 1
Had I been in the town at the time I have no doubt but that
I would have been hung, and possibly all three of us. The
whole town got drunk on the ready cash.
It was thirty years after this that I went through that town.
There was not a member of this Committee but who died a
disgraceful death. Not one of them was ever in the Confed
erate army. They were all, without exception, brutal, bar
barous, sneaking cowards. The world knows who Stephen A.
Douglas was, but not a soul who lives can say the Harper's
Magazine containing his article should have been burned by
any class of people. Dabney, the author of the Southern Bot
any, was at that time Professor of the largest educational in
stitution in Alabama. He was born of royal blue blood, F.
F. V. stock, and he was the Chief of Staff of the world-re
nowned and Confederate worshiped General Stonewall Jack
son. He was the Author of the Life of Stonewall Jackson.
a book of which no man ever read but to have been made the
better thereby and therefrom. He died in Victoria, Texas, a
few years ago, not only honored and loved, but respected and
revered by every man, woman and child who had ever come
in contact with him.
From having done unto all as I would all should do to me
I thought I had friends in this city of Richmond, Texas, but
when the Committee of Public Safety talked as they did to
me I thought it was time to quit, and never since have I ever
calculated upon having any friends anywhere excepting the
material out of which they are made — from bulk — and were
duly run through the United States mint. And if I had one
impression which I could burn on the tablet of the heart of
every young man on earth today it would be this :
"Have compassion. Depend only upon what you have to
carry you through, and not on the promises of anybody. Keep
your money, and it will keep you from all harm. It will make
you brave and it will make you honest and it will make you a

52 SECESSION AND ITS VICTIMS.
good citizen, and in old age you will be happ'y from
being able to take care of yourself, ever bearing in mind that
as long as you have the bone the dog will follow you. Drop
it, and your bone and dog are both gone. 'Weep and you
weep alone,' but laugh with a full pocket and a good stiff bank
account, and the world will laugh with you and keep it up
all night while you are sound asleep and your interest is grow-
ing." My trunk was packed for a long sea voyage and my passage
was spoken for, but my heart failed me, for I commenced
reasoning with myself, and whenever a man commences this
he may set it down in advance that the devil is going to get
the best of him, just as he did with me when from reasoning
I changed my mind and became a soldier in a cause which
was lost solely because its underlying foundation, corner rock,
side structure and the key of the ark were all of an ilk and
sort tha't composed the Committee of Public Safety in Fort
Bend County, Texas.
I have found it true in life, and not as respects myself
personally but also all intimate friends whoi have made life a
success, that first impressions are the ones that should ever
govern in all matters of business, and particularly and espe
cially in affairs of the heart. Who stands by thein will have
less of grief in after life and more of joy to light his way than
will he who reasons with the devil, whO' may always change
his mind and lands the poor wretch on a desert or an iceberg.
I often think of the fable of the rnan, the boy and the ass
which they were driving, or rather leading. They met a man
who said:
"You old fool, why don't you ride that animal?"
Whereupon the man got upon the mule. Then they met
another man who said :
"You are a funny man, riding there and letting this boy

SECESSION AND ITS VICTIMS. 53
walk behind. That ass is plenty strong enough tO' carry you
both." And then up went the boy, and it was not long before down
went the poor ass, and that is what they got for listening to
other people.
We are told, if not in the Divine Book then in some other
good book, or perhaps it has been orally handed down to
me, that "the road to hell is paved with good intentions," and
I surely have found it so.
When a boy, twelve years old, I had a good coon dog. It
was not infrequent that I went out in the woods at night and
I and Ring (Ring was my dog) would come in with a couple
of big coons whose pelts were worth one dollar and fifty cents
each. It was my coon and pelt, but when it was sold it was
dad's money. I acquired the reputation of being the best coon
hunter there was in the country, which was challenged by a
boy living some distance off, and in a way and a place where
I could not resent it, being at a Sunday meeting. He was
bragging on his dog more than on the coons he had killed. I
blubbered out:
"You show your coon skins; let that tell what sort of a
dog you've got !"
I have made it a rule through life to take no one's advice
in any matter who had no coon skins to show. The poor but
well meaning mendicant who knocks at your door is as full
of good advice as an egg is of meat.
I went into the Confederacy because the devil persuaded
me to believe that the proper thing for me toi do was to go
with my people, right or wrong, to always go with the crowd.
The devil fooled me that time. An old Quaker proverb says :
"If a man fools thee once it is his fault, but if he deceives thee
twice it is thy fault."
The reason that the people of the South are so poor today
is the reason of the devil. They still kiss the hand that smote

54 SECESSION AND ITS VICTIMS.
them, the rod that struck them, the power that ruined them,
and they hug that old monster villain as all people are apt to
hug a delusion, snare and fraud.
It was the old Democratic party and its leaders who not
only robbed me of four years of the hardest service that a man
ever put in, but robbed me and my neighbors and my friends
of all that they had on earth in tlie way of property ; and still
the people of the South kiss the hand that smote them'. The
man down there who questions another's Democracy is in
danger of human wrath, and this reminds me of a speech I
once heard before a jury where a man was being tried for
having robbed a widow and her orphan of her dowry and
its patrimony. He stood in a dazed condition before the jury
for a moment, and then, springing forward, he said:
"I have been in hell, where they were holding an election
for Chief. The pirate of the high seas offered' himself and
told of his crimes. The robber of the land offered himself
and told of his crimes, as did the red-lfanded murderer, where
upon this defendant before you rose up and said : 'Make me
Chief of Hell, for I have robbed the widow and the orphap
of their heritage.' And he was elected."
And this stands in my estimation as good old-fashioned.
honest secession Democracy, which still lives in the South,
ready at any and all times to rear its hydro head to down any
cause that would benefit the South, crying "Negro equality,"
as though they were not the devils that brought it on the
South. The same men who led the cause which was lost continued
to lead the party, and make it impossible for the better element,
the old staunch Whig party, conservative, faithful, who never
betrayed a trust, to come to the front and in a measure at least
help the people out of their difficulties. I have recently read
a book entitled "The Leopard's Spots" — and my volume has
been read by a great number of my friends — ^which treats of

SECESSION AND ITS VICTIMS. 55
the days of reconstruction in the South, and in such a masterly
way and truthful manner as toi challenge the admiration of
every man who lives to remember that period, and who should
read this boo'k before he dies. The reading of this book served
to remind me that the worst radical scalawags, villains and
thieves the South had in the days of reconstruction were the
very devils who were the loudest-mouthed secession shouters,
who, like my Committee of Public Safety in Texas, evaded all
service and especially that where danger offered.
My first service was from Galveston in the McQoud expe
dition which went to the mouth of the Rio Grande River,
Brownsville, to receive the surrender of the United States
troops which had lined our frontier on the Rio Grande and
had protected our State from invasion and the settlers on the
frontier from Indians, and who had been commanded to
surrender without the firing of a gun by the General com
manding the District of Texas, namely, Twiggs. That is
enough, for even the old copperhead secessionist sympathizer,
James Buchanan, issued a proclamation branding General
Twiggs as a coward and a traitor and dismissing him from
the army of the United States with all the possible disgrace in
the power of the President of the United States.
It was in the month of April, 1861, that I stood in line on
dress parade in the Fort Brown drill-ground, together with
eight hundred other raw Texas troops that had been landed a
few days previous on the same spot where Taylor's army
landed, and who marched over the battlefields of Palo Alto
and Resaca de la Palma, where patriots' blood had been shed.
Standing in this dress parade on the banks of the Rio Grande
River we viewed another parade on the other side of the river.
which was that of the Mexican army. Four steamboats came
puffing around the bend in sight of and for six miles in sound
of us, all loaded down with United States dismounted dra
goons, dehorsed cavalry, artillerymen without cannon, and

56 SECESSION AND ITS VICTIMS.
infantrymen without guns. It was along about four o'clock
in the evening ; the scene, the event, shall never become effaced
from my memory.
It was our band, by command of the great, big, brass-
buttoned, hifalutin, pompous, big-I-little-you get-out-of-my-
way-dog-private. General McCloud, who sought to insulfthe
retiring representative of the United States Government by
playing "Dixie." The band on the other side of the river took
up the refrain and sent their most insulting song, to Texans as
well as to the United States army, to the tune of "The Maid
of Monterey." While the officers and soldiers were quietly
passing between our twO' parades, some wag on board of the
middle boat commenced singing:
" 'Tis the song, the sigh of the weary :
Hard times, hard times, come again no more,
Many days you have lingered, around my cabin door;
Oh ! Hard times, hard times, come again no more."
In an instant there was not a voice on board either of the
three boats, from: the coal heaver in the furnace-room below
to the pilot above, but was singing this refrain without the
help of the band. They were on their way home to a land of
plenty and p^ce from long years of hard times, trials and
service, and well might they sing the songs they did.
About this time a set of Southern renegades in California
and Oregon raised the secession cry and sent assurance to
the Confederacy — then in its swaddling clothes at Mont
gomery, Alabama — that if an army of Texans, three thousand
strong, were sent to Tucson, Arizona, that they would have
ten thousand men there with all sorts of provisions, and that
we would switch off down in and take Sonora, Chihuahua,
Durango and Tamaulipas in Mexico and add them to the
Confederacy. Whereupon Mr. Jefferson Davis commissioned
one H. H. Sibley — he of the Sibley tent fame, an old United

SECESSION AND ITS VICTIMS. 57
States dragoon officer, who for many years had served in North
Texas, Arizona and New Mexico — as a Brigadier General,
and to raise three full regiments of cavalry in West Texas and
proceed with all possible dispatch to meet these conditions and
events as well as Californians, and to proceed forthwith with
out the loss of time or failure to swipe the whole thing.
Now I had had some previous Indian experience and on
the frontier, and it was a snap to get into the Sibley Brigade
California deal, and being a desirable catch I had no difficulty
in getting in "Go'tch" Hardiman's Company A of the First
Regiment, which was formed by Colonel Riley, a grand and
noble man, and who fell at the head of his column at Irish
Bend, near Franklin, Louisiana. Of this I refer to later.
It was not long before we and our squadron company took
up the line of march toi grow with the great Northwest, of
which there were foiir thousand who followed our trail before
the last of the brigade left San AntoniO'. I believe that I state
the truth with, no fear of contradiction when I say that three
thousand five hundred of these men were the best that ever
threw leg over a horse or that had ever sworn allegiance to
any cause. All-around men, natural-born soldiers, they were
under twenty-five, with a liberal sprinkling of older ones who
had seen more or less service on the frontier.
I was never sworn intO' the Confederate service. I enrolled
as a scout and as one of special privileges, being a correspondent
of the Richmond Examiner, New Orleans Picayune and Gal
veston News. There was little going on or liable to go on at
headquarters, or, as for that matter, anywhere else close
around, but that I knew more or less of and about, and there
was no time but that I knew a great deal more than any one
man in the command for a momait thought that I did, and.
what is more, I knew that the less I knew when it came to
talking to the common herd or with any of the upper crust.

58 SECESSION AND ITS VICTIMS.
the better off I would be in the general round-up when all
cattle had to be branded.
The first difficulty that I got into was with twoi blow-hard
secession cowards, who, knowing somewhat O'f my position,
but of no' rank, interviewed me much as did the Committee
of Public Safety, to learn of my views as tO' the possibility of
our being able to reach New Mexico before the war ended,
and did I think that the Yankees were really going to fight,
and didn't I believe that any good Southern man could whip
four or five Yankees any time, anywhere? I answered them
very briefly, and time proved that I told them the truth only
in a measure, for I thought that there was more real backbone
in the South than I found to be the case, and I calculated upon
the war lasting at least eight years. One of these men said :
"If I thought as you do, I would cross the Rio Grande
River tonight and goi toi Mexico."
I only said, "No doubt you would." This worthy will be
referred to again when I get to telling of the Federal retreat
from Alexandria, Louisiana.
The next difficulty that I got into was the telling the officer
in command that I had interpreted a Concho Indian sign, which
means a sign which could be read and interpreted by the four
great Southwest tribes of Indians, the Comanche, the Apache,
the Gila and the Pawnee, and which sign read: "A joint
enemy approaches."
I knew that every Indian warrior within a radius of twelve
hundred miles knew that that night eight hundred armed Texas
Rangers would camp on the Rio Grande River at Fort
Quitman. I never in my life had been turned down by any
person as that commander turned me down, and in language
used by his sort, and which I largely afterwards acquired from
dealing with his sort and driving mules. He told me to attend
to my own business and to go back to my tent and not be
volunteering information to him. I found out that night

SECESSION AND ITS VICTIMS. 59
before going to bed that he was drunk on Kummel, a Dutch
drink that is guaranteed to convert a Christian into a pagan
in short order.
I asked permission from him the next morning to go to
General Sibley's headquarters, which were well back in the
rear, as was so often the case in our army when they should
have been along in the front ranks, but I was turned down
again. Unbeknown to the quick-made-big man, for he was
only a nigger driver at home, I wrote and put in a stick a
dispatch to General Sibley, telling him of the signs I had seen
flashed from the mountain tops first on the Mexican side of
the river, then oai ours, and lastly far off in the northeast
mountains. Sibley came closer up to the advance column and
sent for me.
I selected two men as my companions in the execution of
his request. In forty-eight hours' time I informed him of the
meeting of the Indians of New Mexico and Arizona, and gave
it as my opinion that it was a peace meeting and foreboded
us no harm, but that signals would have to be burned on the
mountains lying back of El Paso signifying that their previous
signals had been interpreted and as meaning peace. This
resulted in our army not being massacred in detail, for Sibley's
friendship with the Indians was very great, while that of his
brother-in-law, Canby, commander oif the Federal fo'rces at
Fort Craig, was nil.
But for Sibley's treaty with the Indians the battle of Val
Verde would never have been fought, and I doubt very much
whether one in the whole brigade would have ever returned
home, for with the Indians or with Canby, Kit Carson and
General Slough, coupled with the natural hatred that existed
with all the Mexicans living in Mexico and Arizona, and, as
for that matter, all of their relatives in the Republic of Mexico.
we would have fared much worse than did' the McQoud Santa
Fe expedition in 1840 of twelve hundred picked Texans under

6o SECESSION AND ITS VICTIMS.
this same General McCloud to whom I have referred, all of
whom were lost excepting the General and twenty-five or thirty
others in the rear-guard who escaped home down through the
"No Man's Land." They had reached the Rio Grande River
somewhere near Albuquerque. Those who were not murdered
were marched from there to the City of Mexico, sixteen
hundred miles. There was scarcely a day of the march which
did not mark the final departure of one from the torments of
the march.
General Sibley detailed my Colonel, Riley, to go and see
the Governor of Sonora on the subject of secession and annexa
tion combination and co-operation. Riley took some money
with him, came back without it and with a flea in his ear, and
we got no wheat, and but for the dried buffalo and antelope
meat that the Indians brought us later on, we would have
starved to death. The compact that those Indians made with
Sibley endured until the last. Canby could control them in
no way against their compact. Had they done what Canby,
Kit Carson and others offered all sorts of rewards to do, we
would never have reached the State of Texas again after the
battle of Glorietta Canyon, twenty-six miles northwest of Santa
Fe and near Fort Union, where Sibley's Brigade met its
Waterloo and commenced its rapid retreat. Every man for
himself, nothing on the order of things. The retreat of
Napoleon from Moscow would be about the only parallel in
history. We were now sixteen hundred miles, as the road mean
dered, from our base of supplies, San Antonio, Texas, with
naught but a desert and land of desolation lying between us,
with an enemy in front at Fort Craig, another pressing us in
the rear, while on both flanks hovered the most bloodthirsty
and warlike tribe of American Indians. Of this retreat my
next chapter will relate, and though I know that my power
to convey to the average reader a faint idea of our sufferings
will fall far short, yet I will make the attempt.

SIBLEY'S RETREAT FROM SANTA FE.

That man when first born is the most helpless of all
creatures of God's make, all know ; but that he is the toughest
animal after he has been sized up and given a few tough les
sons, and can stand more than any animal O'n earth, except it
may be the patient brute which bore our Savior out of
Jerusalem, none can deny.
There may have been an order issued by the General in
command for our retreat, pne thing sure, it was never read
out on dress parade. After the battle of Val Verde, on the
twenty-first day of February, 1861, the army of invasion
marched north, leaving General Canby in Fort Craig with
from four to six thousand troops in our rear and between us
and our supplies and reserves, reaching Albuquerque two days
afterwards, where there had been stored since the war with
Mexico, it has been estimated, more than six million dollars'
worth of commissary, quartermaster and medical supplies.
Why it should have been do'ue I never knew, nor did anyone
else, unless it was because our men were getting drunk on the
whisky and our commander had never been sober, but the
torch was applied to this immense storehouse of provisions and
supplies, and no man can describe the fury of that flame on
that dark night of the twenty-sixth of February.
Burning bacon, brandy and whisky and quartermaster's
supplies, with the bursting of bombs and the terrific explosion
of powder when the magazine was reached. The condition
of our army of independent Texans, the majority of whom
loved "red rye," can better be imagined than I can undertake
to describe and explain. And perhaps it is as well that the
veil of obscurity be drawn over it forever and a day.
61

62 SIBLEy's RETREAT FROM SANTA FE.
From this place we went to Santa Fe, where the same
burning act was repeated, and where in less than five days we
were suffering the agonies of starvation from our own acts
of vandalism!. There was no excuse for burning these sup
plies. It was the act of a maddened brain or brains. It was
a case of those whom the gods would destroy they first made
mad. '
We were advised that there was but a small Federal force,
one company of regulars, at Fort Union, thirty-five or forty
miles northeast of Santa Fe and at the head of Glorietta
Canyon. I have often thanked my Creator that I was not in
good repute with my commanding General as a scout at this
time, and therefore none of the murders could be laid at my
door, for it was no better than murder, the sending of eight
hundred men up Glorietta Canyon to attack Fort Union, where
General Slough and sixty-five hundred picked Northwest
plainsmen were waiting at the mouth of the trap for our
coming, and had been for many days.
The three hundred and eighty who had answered their
last roll call the day before, whose bodies and bones were left
near the mouth of this canyon, were just so many victims
who fell in front of General John Barleycorn. They were
soldiers who knew only how toi obey, to do and to die. The
commanding General of our forces was an old army officer,
whose love for liquor exceeded that for home, country or God.
AlO'Ug about this time I acquired considerable light, and it
seemed to me as though all my comrades and friends were
acquiring more and more of darkness. I shaped my course
accordingly, and without deserting the friends that I had
started in with, I drew into the background and, as the saying
is, "pulled the hole in after me," to come to the front again at
another time, when I know of my own knowledge that but
for the giving of a signal and those which followed, every
man of the brigade who sought to reach home over the route

SIBLEy's RETREAT FROM SANTA FE. 63
from Eagle Canyon, Eagle Springs, Van Horn's Wells and
the Dead Man's Water Holes by Fort Davis and Wild Rose
Pass down Olympia Canyon, would have been massacred.
The retreat of the Army of New Mexico, as we were
called, from Santa Fe down the Rio Grande to Socorro was
like that of the skedaddling of a crowd of urchins who had
been caught in a melon patch.
At Socorro we met Canby, who moved up from Fort Craig.
That night the torch was applied to every burnable article
that we had, and without guide or compass, track or trail, much
less a road, we started up over that tall mountain westward
towards Cook's Peaks, making a detour of two hundred miles
over that desert, striking the Rio Grande River again near
old Fort Thorn. It was here that I rejoined my companions,
and with them the mail from the loved ones in Texas and
sixty pack mules well loaded with dried buffalo meat, but for
which every one of the fourteen hundred men would have
perished in the next twenty-four hours. Should I tell how
this was procured and from whom and by whom and how paid
for, I would scarcely be believed, but it was by no act of
Divine Providence nor was it a miracle, as so many of my
old comrades seemed tO' think. The only thing I ever regretted
about it was that the drunken individual who was the cause
of all our misfortune was also kept from starving, but since
we are told in Divine Scripture that it rains on the unjust as
well as the just, we will let it go at that.
From this point toi El Pasoi, about three hundred and seven
ty-five miles, we walked and staggered along like the reeling,
hungry, thirsty wretches that we were, with nO' head, nobody
to direct or command, with the bloodthirsty Dog Canyon
Apache Indian following in our wake and scalping the poor
unfortunate boys whose blistered feet and enfeebled frame
made it impossible for them to march> farther. The memoiry
of those days and the next eight hundred miles' march before

64 SIBLEY-'S RETREAT FROM SANTA FE.
us could never be effaced. No army or body of men on the
American continent ever suffered as did the men on this
retreat, and which has never been told in song or story, because
of the reflections it might bring on the men whoi were at the
head of the lay-out. Such loyalty / never swore to and' never
will. It was on the twenty-sixth day of April, 1862, that the first
men took up the line of march from El Paso to San Antonio,
Texas, seven hundred and forty miles over the hot desert
country, with'seven and one-half pounds of unbolted flour and
nothing else. They had thrown away their guns. A few
carried their. six-shOoters. All hung on to their iron ramrods.
There were six or eight horses and a wagon with four mules
to the first party of six hundred men. It matters little the
part I played in this retreat from now on. I was with them
afoot where but a short time ago in a fine carriage I drove
over the old camp ground from whence we started. I call
back forty-one years ago, when, after a long and weary march
of nearly one hundred miles in the valleys of the Rioi Grande
River to Fort Quitman, we ascended tO' the plateau country up
Eagle Canyon, twenty miles to the old overland stage route
statio'n, which was in ruins, and stands there today, as I am
told, at Eagle Springs, where there was a well like Jacob's
well, forty feet deep, sixty feet in diameter, with circling steps
around. A live subterranean stream of pure water flowed through
a cavernous rock. Canby had employed the Indians to fill this
well full of sheep. Where they came from I never have been
able to find out, or whether it was the La Pan band of
Comanche Indians or the Do'g Canyon Apaches no one has
ever been able to tell, except General Canby's chief scout, Kit
Carson, the then terror of the plains.
We had no water kegs. We poled on twenty-two miles
to Van Horn's Wells, whichi was a similar well to that at Eagle

SIBLEY's RETREAT FROM SANTA FE. 65
Springs and which was also filled with sheep. How and by
whom this was done has been one of the mysteries of the war
that I have not been able to solve. From here it was thirty-six
miles to the Dead Man's Water Holes, sixteen miles northwest
of Fort Davis, making a distance of eighty-five miles that we
had to tramp afoot over this desert road under a hot burning
sun facing sirocco winds which blew from the southwest over
the parched plains with heat that, once felt, can never be
forgotten, but which cannot be described.
Twenty or a less number of Apache Indians could have
massacred the entire body of men. As I dictate this my pic
tures before me portray suffering, famishing, perishing men,
strung out for twenty miles on a level, flat desert road, crazed
with their condition, reeling like mad or drunk. The best
walkers were the first to reach the water, about midnight, and
pass the word back to the next and he to the next. By day
light all were supposed to be present, though be it understood
that there was no roll call, no fife or drum sounded, no guard
mounting or any sort of official appearances.
As each famishing individual quenched his thirst he would
go back and lie down across the road, the only place to lie, for
it was all cactus, cat-claw and sage brush on each side. My
two companions and I were among the first to reach the water
and were the first to lie down and take a nap. At sunrise I
started to the rear, where the wagon had been left and the
mules turned loose. In the wagon there was a pick, a spade
and a shovel, and the corpse of a young friend who had
perished on the road, which I had lifted into the wagon without
aid. I could have killed every man with that pickax as they lay
there, so sound asleep were they. And a more ghastly sight
I never beheld than those men lying on their backs, the sun
shining in their faces. For forty-eight hours we had had
nothing to eat. We had walked eighty-five miles without a

66 SIBLEY's RETREAT FROM SANTA FE.
drop of water. We had had noi salt in anything we had eaten
for nearly twenty days. Men whose ordinary weight was one
hundred and eighty-five pounds weighed less than one hundred
and fifteen, as was proven on the scales at Fort Davis the day
after the time of which I speak of our arriving at the Dead
Man's Water Holes.
At Fort Davis we found wood with which to build fires
to bake our unbolted flour, that we kneaded into a dough which
we wound around our iron ramrods and held over the fire.
We rested at Fort Davis that day and night. At three o'clock
in the morning. myself and two others, with whom I had had
much experience on the scout, started out to pick our way to
Wild Rose Pass to see if we could spy out anything in the
enemy's country in front of us.
We saw a smoke on Olympia Mountains in the northeast,
which on being interpreted said: "Pursue the enemy no
farther." Ellam, Burrows and myself were the three happiest mortals
on earth when we saw this smoke sign, and as it has always
proved to be the case that "Where ignorance is bliss 'tis folly
to be wise," we never told the boys of what we saw.
These were the last Indian signs that I ever saw, and this
was the last act of my life as an Indian scout in an Indian
country. A premonition seemed to tell me at the time that
it would be, and it is very possible that there never lived a
mortal on this great earth that felt so thankful as I did to feel
that it was the last.
In after years I came across old "Rip" Ford and Jack
Baylor and McNulty and a host of others whom I might name,
who had from the earliest days of the Texas republic up to
that time been engaged in Indian warfare, and from whom I
learned my early lessons, and particularly in Indian signs, and
I might say Indian astrology, for be it understood that all the

SIBLEY's RETREAT FROM SANTA FE. 67
Indian chiefs and medicine men liad an astrology that was
something fearful to behold when unfolded to a novice.
I might fill pages of solid printed matter recounting my
experiences on the frontier, and I might do as a great number
of others have done in recounting their experiences — tell a pack
of lies and give accounts of blood-curdling, Indian-killing,
single-combat fights. I believe that I can say truthfully that
my experience in this Indian warfare business was about second
or third only to others who went before me, but it was far
superior to any one who came after me, for when I quit the
trail there was none left on it except old Geronimo in New
Mexicoi. I have frequently listened to stories of men whom I knew
and who had even been with me in Indian hunts, that were so
unreal and foreign to the truth that I never afterwards thought
strange of God's having repented that He made man.
I have been in my day many things and in many places
and many conditions, under many circumstances, and when
cornered right down, as I have been on more than one occasion,
in order to save my life or that of my friends and the cause
I was serving, the greatest liar on earth could not have excelled
me in talking out of a bad- scrape, as scout and secret service
man for the cause that was lost. I don't say government,
because I have too much respect for my high opinion of
government to allow anyone to intimate tO' me that the Con
federacy was governed by a government, administered by men
who were made of that material my ancestors were, whose
blood marked other spots than those of Valley Forge.
I have been in a good many battles and a great number
of skirmishes where the random guns were fired, but it was
always my province and divine gift to smell danger afar, and
if ever I prayed to be "delivered from temptation" I never
failed to put in at the same time "and from all danger."
I may have been wOunded often, and certainly once was

68 SIBLEY's RETREAT FROM SANTA FE.
left on the battlefield toi be scalped by the accursed Comanche,
but I never was half as badly hurt as I was scared, and I know
that the man who says that he went into battle or a skirmish
with as much sang froid as he would goi into a banquet room
or take a seat in the midst of a Methodist camp meeting — he
is a liar and the truth is not in him.
I have been in battles where, after the first flash of fire and
graveyard sounds had passed over me, like others around I
became so badly scared — what else to call it I do not know —
that I became perfectly indifferent to the falling of dead com
panions around me. I could cite an instance of a battle into
which I was unluckily inveigled. My horoscope had got a
little out of whack and my compass pointed the wrong way, or
I am very sure I would not have been in there. After the
first onslaught I became so palsied that I became reckless, and
what I did I never would have remembered, though I was given
credit for the most strategic and heroic act of the season 'n
battles that were then about culminating, and for which I
received great honor.
It just came that way and I had nothing to do with it, few-
had I added the word "Yankee" toi m,y yell in crying out "Clear
the road for the cavalry!" the effect would have been very
different. This cry was taken up by all of the boys, and the
woods were made to ring with the sound. The Yankees were
pressing us to the wall — they were nine thousand strong — and,
thinking that we meant the Texas Cavalry, they commenced
forming solid squares and we commenced a real old-fashioned
Ranger nishi to the rear and got away.
This was at the battle of Irish Bend, near Franklin,
Louisiana, where the Federal General Grover went to the rear
of Taylor's army and came within an ace of cutting off our
retreat from. Bissland, and which would have been done but
for the cry we raised, after having been badly whipped and
had fallen back half a mile, of "Clear the road for the cavalry !"

SIBLEY^S RETREAT FROM SANTA FE. 69
General Grover, had no cavalry and he thought that he was
running up against the Texas Cavalry Division, and when they
heard this yell they thought their day had come. We thought
the same way about that time.
It was here that my beau ideal of a gentleman and officer.
Colonel James Riley, was killed. He was the very counterpart
both in looks and actions of General Robert E. Lee. He was
a great friend of mine; I had been of his. I felt his loss
keenly, not so muc'h for myself as for my comrades. His wife
was on the battlefield with him and drove the ambulance carry
ing his body to the rear. She was a woman who was adored
by every soldier of the old brigade.
I visited this battle-ground forty years afterwards, but
nothing was there to mark the spot, and no one there who had
been a participant in that fight that saved Dick Taylor's army
of Louisiana. The retreat of which I have been giving an
account was performed in two months' time. Much less than
one-half the number of men who had left San Antonio' for the
gold fields of California or the rich mines of Mexico ever
returned, and the larger half of those who did lived a life of
suffering because of their extreme hardships in this campaign.
I was officer of the guard one night at an outpost station
on the Del Murty Mountains, south of Fort Craig, a few days
before the battle of Val Verde. The twelve o'clock relief
came in and one of the boys crawled under my blankets v\'ith
me to sleep on the frozen ground, when he said, calling me
by my army nickname, which I will give to no man :
"We're going — to have — a fight — in the — mornin' !"
Thinking that he had seen something that should be
reported to headquarters, I said :
"Why SOI, Frank?"
"Well, I heard — them — Yankees — down there — cocking
their — cannons."
Frank had never seen a cannon. He had heard the stories

70 SIBLEY S RETREAT FROM SANTA FE.
of loading them by oxen pulling the balls in and being driven
out at the touchrhole, and he imagined that they wei-e cocked
as he cocked his doublenbarrel squirrel gun, which made a great
sound, and that of course the cocking of a cannon would make
a correspondingly loud sound. Frank was a great favorite in
the camp and had but little tO' say toi any one, and that only on
rare occasions. He was once asked toi come into: the tent and
have something good to. eat. He said : "It's — been so — long
— since I — had anything — toi eat — I think — I had — ^better have
— some filling — stuff first," supposing that he was going to get
pie and cake and that only.
Frank got drunk on Louisiana rum hot from the still, and
on being questioned afterwards how he felt, said: "At first
— felt — awful bad — and then — I felt — as though — I was —
going to die — and then — I felt — as though — I couldn't die."
Frank had a girl back home, but he could not write to her,
and had he been able to have written she could not have read
it. I did Frank's corresponding, as I did that of no few, to
say the least. I got my copy of love letters from a letter
writer's book, and I could turn them off with great rapidity,
but when seconds comimenced coming in, then I had to rub
my brain for originaHty along on this line, and I soon became
an expert, a proficient. I practiced on phrases and expressions
that would just make the girls come down off of their perches
whether or no. Half of the young ladies could not read them,
so they had to look to some one who would interpret the same,
and there's where all was lost, for love epistles second and third
hand become cold affairs. Anyway, when the girls got to
comparing and found out that there was one-man power behind
these gushing expressions, for I wrote a very marked hand,
trouble comm.enced with the boys for having let some one else '
find out their secret. I practiced along on this line so much
that when I got to doing the job for myself, I was afterwards
told, and many years afterwards, that it was done perfectly.

SIBLEY's RETREAT FROM SANTA FE. yi
I have listened to men recounting deeds of heroism, valor
and endurance in other branches of the service and in other
sections of the country, but I am confident that there was no
army in the Confederacy whose suffering, privations, hardships,
much less deeds of valor, would come up to, or that could in
any way compare with, that of the army of New Mexico.
By night and by day we were beset with an enemy from all
sides and all around, and we knew no rest day or night. We
were constantly on duty and on guard. Our rations were scant
and our clothing was yet more so'. Consider the conditio'n,
the clime from whence we came and the country in which we
were wintering, and an idea may be formed of our great
suffering from cold.
When it came to the actions and the deeds on the battle
field, we met an enemy with all the improvements in warfare,
as well as with the biow and arrow and the spear, and hand-to-
handr conflicts were more frequent than in any other battles
of the Confederacy. The Eastern armies had their graphic
correspondents, grafted and gifted liars, who magnified mole
hills into mountains and often made a ten-man skirmish a great
and bloody battle, where no one had been touched.
We went to our homes, those of us who had them, to
recuperate, remount and to rendezvous at different points in
different p'arts of the State. The Confederate Congress had
passed the Conscription Act, which took all from the cradle to
the grave, sixteen to sixty, unless he owned t-wenty negroes or
five hundred head of stock, and if he owned these and had
been fool enough to guarantee, he could get a discharge from
the army and go home and play gentleman. Many a fond
mother buf more dear fathers deeded their sons the required
number of negroes or five hundred head of cattle that- they
might be kept out of the army or be gotten out of it if they
were in. This was the first blow the cause received. It made
it a rich man's war and a poor man's fight and came very near

'J-2 SIBLEY S RETREAT FROM SANTA FE.
being tfie cause of the disbanding of the army through mutiny.
Large bounties were offered for free enlistment, but the money
was as near worthless as cracked marbles would beto' a school-
hoy. I saw at the battle of Bissland in Louisiana fifteen hundred
conscripts who had been armed with newly imported — ^via
Mexico — English Enfield rifles, throw their rifles over the
entrenchment and then jump over themselves. It boots noth
ing to say that they were Louisiana Creoles, for it was orlly
in other directions that thousands and tens of thousands of
full-blooded natives to the soil did practically the same thing
and for why the cause was lost without one single stipulation,
consideration or honor given to the bearers of its banners
except as that voluntarily given by General Grant at Appo
mattox Court House, which was in my opinion the most noble,
generous, greatest, grandest, bravest and chivalrous act ever
done by one conqueror to the defeated and vanquished. And
when methinks of how humiliating it must have been tO' that
great, good and noble Robert E. Lee and those who stood
beside him on the memorable day, my heart all but weeps.
The greatest officers and statesmen of the Confederacy were
those whose voices and counsels were never heard or heeded.
They were the ones who' were retired to the rear or put off
in obscure places of command, and others like Lovell and
Duncan and Pemberton were put in their places, that brought
the people of the South its greatest disgrace.
One of the greatest difficulties of the people of the South
was that they were tooi much disposed to be man worshipers,
and fro'm listening to the blatant demagoigues they were led
in the wrong direction from start to finsh. They were taught
by these worthies to place confidence and trust in men who,
had they as much patriotism as they had selfishness, might
have accomplished something -worthy of the people over whom
they forced themselves in command.

SIBLEY S RETREAT FROM SANTA FE. 73
The reason that about this time I received special prefer
ment and advancement and particular notice came from the fact
that there were but few young men who had the ability to
cover ground as fast or who had the brains to provide against
difficulties, and for why I was put on the Secret Service. I
was neither a spy nor a detective, but a bearer of dispatches,
and it often amused me toi see how little my immediate officers
and assocates knew what I was doing.
After the fall of Vicksburg, at Port Hudson, I made many
trips between Richmond, Virginia, and the Trans-Mississippi
Department, bearing dispatches, more often committed to
memory before I started and rewritten by me in the presence
of the commanding General, than I ever delivered written out
by the Secretary of War. I crossed the Mississippi River a
great number of times and seldom but that it was done by tak;
ing my life in my own hands. Ohce I came to Rodney, Mis
sissippi, when I was the bearer of one of the most important
dispatches that ever was sent from Richmond to the command
ing General, which must be delivered — the sooner the better.
My Cottonwood log was sunk in Cole's Creek, near Rodney,
Mississippi. I saw a negro in the road ahead of me. I hailed
him. He reluctantly came to. I said tO' him :
"My good man, do you know whether there are any Con
federates down here at Rodney or not?" trying to convey to
him that I was one O'f the other fellows. He looked square at
me and said :
"No, dars no Confederates down dar, but dar was a lot of
Yankees dar yesterday and dey interested a man about like you
and I believe dat if youse goes down dar dey will interest
youse." The old darkey could give me no further information, so
I poled on.
I found the town clear of any Federals and no gunboats in
sight. An old mulatto was sitting in a boat fishing, half asleep

74 SIBLEY S RETREAT FROM SANTA FE.
and the other half no more awake. I always went well armed.
I had two small two-inch derringers in my battery in those
days. I sprang into the boat and the sound of the cocking of
those pistols woke Sambo. I pointed to the other side of the
river and held my batteries down on his head. Yale or no
other college team ever turned out any men or set of men equal
to this very frightened darky for rowing, and I am sure that
I never crossed the Mississippi River soi quickly before. I
landed safely on the other side. That I might cover my tracks
well I gave the nigger a silver dollar and a silver half dollar.
His eyes shown like fresh casting plates and between thanking
me and saying, "Massa, Massa, I kin dO' it agin if youse will."
I made a fast friend there but for whose signaling I would
have been captured by a party of Wort Adams' Mississippi Con
federate Cavalry, who bore the same relation to- the Confed
erate army that Quantrell of Missouri did, and who was both
hawk and bussard taken dead or alive, and no more sure the
Grey than the Blue.
These Mississippians were of the best families of the State,
rich descendants of that class of people who were kinged over
by the world-noted robber and murderer, John A. Murrill, who
said that when he "robbed a man he killed him, because dead
men tell no tales." There are a great number of great people
in Mississippi, and there are good ones among them, but of
all fighting machines that ever walked commend me to a Mis-
sissippian and a gun-armed Apache Indian.
If I were writing a book to make myself popular with all
the people, regardless of the trutli, instead of writing a book to
tell the truth, I would hedge more than I have or ever would
or ever will. A lion was loo'king at a great oil painting where
an artist had painted a dead lion with a huntsman standing
over him resting on his gun, and the lion was growling. When
he was asked by the painter what he was growling at, and he
said:

Sibley's retreat from santa fe. 75
"If it had been the lion painting the picture it would have
been the man who was dead."
If a Wort Adams Mississippi cavalryman was telling this
instead of me, he would make it appear that he was a great
and valorous, noble and generous Confederate cavalryman, in
stead of a "Bushwhacker" and worse than a highwayman.

POLITICAL AND OTHERWISE.
An O. S. P. divine, who had preached many years without
any accessories to his church, met a Methodist preacher who
had had many new converts every quarter, and said: "Brother,
I want you to give me the secret of your success in preaching.
You know that I have studied divinity for years before I went
to preaching, while you did not know the A-B-C's. I write
out my sermons and make them most perfect. I read them
off to my congregation, which never increases. Now tell me
how I may, as you have yours, increase my congregation ?"
"I can tell you how it is," sair! the Methodist preacher.
"You sit down and write out a good sermon, full of the true
religion. The demon who sits on your right shoulder whispers
in your ear, 'Now, don't you know if you read that out from
your pulpit that Miss Wilson, John Doe, Richard Doe, Bob
Jones and Bill Smith will never come to hear you preach
again ?' Whereupon you scratch it all out and you commence
again and you write out another good sentence and then it is
that the devil pops up on the other side and says, 'How fool
ish it would be in you to read that out f ro'm your pulpit ; why,
all the business men in town would quit yO'U and pay noi more
pew rent, and, besides that, they would be getting a new min
ister,' whereupon you write off a long sentence of platitud
inous religious propositions and possibilities that nobody un
derstands or cares for, for it has nothing in it understand
able ; and then it is that the devil pats you on top of your head
and says, 'That's the sort of stuff to feed them on. That's
sense. You need have no fear about holding your job.' Now,
my. dear Christian brother, when I get up to preach, the devil
himself does not know what I am going to say."
76

POLITICAL AND OTHERWISE. "JJ
When I sit down to com'mence on a chapter I am like the
Methodist preacher.
I might live to be a very old, old man and my senses may
have all faded and passed away, yet among the few events of
my life I believe I would never forget my arrival in San An
tonio after the long march over the great Texas desert, Rio
Grande River valley sands, and hill climbing, on that long
and wearisome march of near eighteen hundred miles. More
barefoot than shod, more naked than clothed, with blood dried
up, muscles contracted and flesh shriveled, and there were nOne
to meet me there, yet I in common with my comrades was
made happy by and from receiving all the corn-meal, salt, half
ration- of rancid bacon and all the green ibeef we wanted.
There was noi clothing in the Quartermaster's Department and
there was noi store in all San Antonio that had anything in it
but old remnants and they had three prices in specie of five to
ten in such currency as we might have received for our services
under a government which was run by a set of men who cared
as much for the common soldiers as an ordinary huntsman
would care for his hounds.
We had never received a cent of pay and there had been
no provision made to pay us upon oofr return to San Antonio,'
where we were comforted with an order to proceed to our re
spective homes and remount ourselves with horses that would
be acceptable to the service, re-arm ourselves and re-clothe our
selves and after sixty days from date rendezvous at different
points' given, with no such expression as "if you p'lease."
Notwithstanding all this, we were called upon and expected
to admire, cherish and love all, from the latest appointed lance
corporal up to Jeff Davis himself. And a whole lot of them
did, I do believe, and a lot of them who didn't lived to forget
it and worship the rod and the handlers of the rod which smote
them. It is a fact, and I challenge any living mortal to dis
pute it, contradict it or prove anything to the contrary, that

78 POLITICAL AND OTHERWISE.
never on the face of God's green earth was a body of men
called soldiers, fighting for a cause esteemed by large num
bers of them as religiously just, who' were treated as cruelly,
as meanly, as ungratefully and as unchristianlike as were the
Confederate soldiers, and this applies to the armies from the
Potomac to the farthest West, that of New Mexico.
My reader may think that I am radical, but he would not if
he had tasted and drank of the bitter dregs of that damnable
and most bitter cup. Had the Confederate army been prop
erly oiKcered and supported by a proper, generous and brave
government, no army on earth could have conquered it. The
older I grow, as it surely is with you, my dear reader, the more
of a fatalist I become, and when methinks of the four years'
service I put in, the hardest that any man ever lived through,
in a good old democratic hard-time war, I can but think that
it was my fate and is made a decree of the powers that be be
yond the powers of man that it should be as it turned out to
be, and that the ruling spirits had been made mad unto de
struction. Ask me why I thus think? My reply will be, "Turn back
fifty years and see what the South was and see what the negro
was and see what the poor people of the South were, and see
what the artisan and the merchant were, and forget not the
tiller of the soil ; and then go, travel over the South* today, from
east to west and from north to south, as I have been doing in
the last few years and months, solely to see the people and how
they are, and compare their condition with what it was, rich
and poor, white and black alike, and then place yourself in my
fix, having, from good luck possibly more than from good
chance or management, acquired a competency of worldly
wealth — not in the South however — and then, not once a day,
nay, not five times a day for many days in succession, respond
to the rap and call to your door of a feeble and tottering- old,
old man who tells you that he was a Confederate soldier— who

POLITICAL AND OTHERWISE'. 79
tells you that he had suffered for something to^ eat for many
days, and whose appearance confirms what he says; and then,
if you have a heart and only a crust and you could refuse, you
have no soul that would fit you for anything better in your
old age than the soldier of the "Lost Cause" received in his
old age.
I have been in what they term Soldiers' Homes in other
States than the one whose banners I first bore, whose inmates
have begged of me to take them out of those worse than ac
cursed prison pens. Reader, if you will listen toi the accursed,
lying hypocrite, sycophant, place-hunting, office-holding, crib-
fed, fat, sleek politician, as did, as would my compeers in i860
and thereabout, you may be made to believe that these old
soldiers in these so-called Southern "Homes" have no wants
but that are bountifully provided for ; but go thou and see for
thyself that you may ever afterward hate a lying politician,
especially if he be of that tribe that only brought your country
ruin, misery, desolation, destruction and all else but peace,
comfort and happiness and all tO' the contrary of good govern
ment. The condition of affairs in the South are such that no in
telligent man — much less a fool who only gets his ideas from
reading over some prejudiced writings — can properly compre
hend until he shall have gone there and seen for himself, the
negro who is in a much worse condition than^ he was in the
days of slavery — now don't say that I am an old pro-slavery
man who is prejudiced against the negro, for you would be
telling yourself a lie — while the poor white man of today is so
much worse off than he was fifty years agoi that the difference
cannot be comprehended in other words than it is "incompre
hensible" to him or his visitor.
Compare any condition of affairs in the South today with
those of fifty years ago, and it will be like comparing the fruit
ful vineyards and gardens that were and that now is a lava

8o 'political AND OTHERWISE.
bed from great volcanic eruptions. Then say to yourself, as
I can, "Had the advice and the counsel of the South's great
patriots and statesmen been heeded and listened to instead of
that of the blackened demagogues, where might not the South
today be, when we look at the wonderful, indescribable ad
vancement of all human industries and interests of the North
ern and Western States of the Union?" Great statesmen, like
Alexander H. Stevens of Georgia, Sam Houston of Texas and
Bell of Tennessee, were relegated to the rear by the hpwling,
hissing, roaring, bellowing demagogues, whom the gods had
first made mad for destruction.
It is my belief that the man has not yet been born who may
suggest any possible solution of the negro question in the
South, and unborn millions, even for centuries hence, may find
the question as perplexing and insolvable as it is to the best
thing, good desiring Christian patriots, statesmen and sages
of today. Were it possible to enthrone and crown cotton king again
— ^which can never be — the negro question would only become
more and more perplexing. One of the great difficulties in the
South is that — do not say that this is a contradiction — the
great majority of the people are a noble, generous, open-
hearted, free and confiding people, who' from being so are easily
led, it would seem as though they actually prayed for a leader
— a king, as it were — and the more blatant, big-mouthed, the
sycophant, hypocrite, political demagogue who comes along,
the more these people swear by him. It is their nature to be
thus and, "as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall
be, world without end," as far as the better element in the
South is concerned.
I must now tell, to illustrate this last propositiO'U, of a slick,
cunning advertising villain — I will not give his name or p'lace of
residence, but will come as near telling all the points as public
policy will permit. It will, however, be recognized by tens

political and OTHERWISE. 8l
of thousands of my Southern readers, for I calculate that this
volume will be read by more people of the South than any other
book that has ever been written, not excepting the Bible and
Testament and Webster's Elementary Spelling Book, and' I
also calculate that from its being read great good is going to
come to the reader in all cases where the reader has sense
enough to keep his hands from being used as a catspaw, as
the monkey did the cat in the chestnut deal.
This cunning, slick, plausible, two-faced, stem-winding
Yankee advertised in all of the Southern papers and papers that
were circulated down South. It was only when he made a
mistake that his advertisem'ent was found in any paper pub
lished north of the Ohio River, except the paper that had cir
culated down South, as did the New York Day Book, the great
secessionist Democratic paper before the war. Van Avery,
Whorton & Co., every one of whom were cunning Yankees
playing on the Southern people's prejudices for so much — one
dollar and fifty cents per year.
His advertisement was short, pointed and sweet and in
substance said that he was the inventor, discoverer, o->»mer, and
absolute possessor of a divining rod, a magnetized-electro-
poised - ozone - fluted -pole-twisting-guaranteed-to-find-buried-
silver and gold, jewels, etc., secreted by anybody, anywhere.
Particulars furnished upon application.
Half of the white people of the South believed that their
daddies or their mammies or their uncles or their aunts each
buried more of the valuable coins of the realm and diamond
diadems than a fat government mule could pack. Nine out of
every ten negroes believed that their old massa had more than
their price ($i,ooo) hid away in more places than one on the
old plantation. Shortly after this advertisement appeared
there was an unheard of and unusual demand upon the postof
fice in Washington for stamps, for just about nearly everybody
down South wrote to this aforesaid stem-winding Yankee, in-

82 POLITICAL AND OTHERWISE.
closing the required "ten cents for further information." The
further information consisted of a lithographed letter, that of
itself would deceive the devil that wasn't up to Yankee tricks
in letter writing, which was published by the ton and that
netted each one eight and three-fourths cents apiece.
It went on to state that the writer was advised that the
planters in your section were very wealthy and had been in the
habit of burying large sums of money long before the war com
menced, and after the war buried all they had and could lay
hands on, and that, knowing what he did, it would not be right
for him to part with his valuable information without being
assured and secured by a liberal security of say one-third of
all that was discovered by reason of his rods, dips and needles,
and that upon your signing the inclosed bond with two secur
ity names attached thereto and sending with it ten dollars, you
would be sent a silver finding needle, conditioned upon receiv
ing a reply to this within fifteen days' time, for, as you know,
we do not want too many operating on the same ground.
Don't buy postoffice orders or checks, but send remittances in
registered letters, and above all things don't give yourself away
to the postmaster or the local bankers.
The money came, and why should it not? And the little
steel ring with the flap-doodle magnetized needle attachment
was sent in a little box about the size that my old dad made
me use in putting up one dozen of his old calomel, ipecac,
rhubarb and jalap — equal portions — anti-bilious compound,
double-acting, never-to-be-forgotten cathartic pills, guaranteed
to work both ways.
Upon receiving this letter our Southern cracker friend im
mediately proceeded to crawl around in the dark night close
up to his neighbors' lots, barns, houses and rose bushes, and not
infrequently ran up against another man on the same mission,
and possibly a nigger or twoi, and perhaps more niggers bit
at this swindle than whites.

POLITICAL AND OTHERWISE. 83
Ten days, t,wo weeks or a month would elapse, and the re
ceiver would receive a second epistle, which I will call stem-
winder number two. It went on to say that "I took you toi be
an honest man ; I received your bond in good faith ; the money
you sent me was nothing as compared with what my portion
should have been. Perhaps you think you are depriving me of
my just, legal and bonded rights, but unless I hear from you at
an early date you will be a very much disappointed co'mmunity
or your part of it will be."
With fear and trembling the "gull" answered that the ma-
cliine did not work, that he had spent five or ten or twenty
nights 'midst storms and rains and had not been able to locate
anything, and perhaps he put in that he knew that there were
lots of it buried around in the very ground he had,been over.
Soon the "gull" received stem-winder number three, wtiich
informed him that it was a silver finder that he had received,
but that what he needed now was a combined gold and silver
finder, the price of which was fifty dollars, and that he would
take back the ten-dollar machine, making forty dollars for the
new, and which, "now that I am thoroughly convinced that you
are an honest man, I will divide into payments. Twenty dol
lars cash and twenty dollars in sixty days, by which time no
doubt you will be in possession of wealth enough to ever aft
erward keep the wolf from the door and help me to keep the
one from mine."
This scarcely ever failed to draw twenty dollars, in receipt
for which the "gull' heard noi more from this man from this
place, but would soon afterward hear from him a long distance
from that spot, up in Canada, telling him that a friend of his,
"an old, true and trusted, friend of yours, whom I will not name
because of reasons that will present themselves to you, gave me
your name as a proper, honest, discreet man to this address.
"Recently a pal of mine was nipped by the United States
Government that would have given him lialf a million dollars

84 POLITICAL AND OTHERWISE.
for the plates he had used in putting out fac-simile ten, twenty
and fifty dollar bills, or whicli the United States Government
had redeemed many million dollars' worth. I have those
plates with me here in this 'way-off backwoods country, which
you will see by reference to the proper map is fifty miles from
any railroad," etc., etc., and a whole lot more of just such, stuff.
"I will sell you in lots of one thousand for so much, but
twenty th6usand for only a quarter more, and fifty thousand
for just double, and will send it to you, express paid, at the
second express office from where you live"- -very particu
lar he. It may be that seven out of ten who got the silver and then
afterward the gold needle sent fifty dollars to this same indi
vidual under another name for green goods.
These were two — ^by one man — of the worst swindles that
were ever perpetrated on the people of the South, and I was
told by one man whom I have never found reason to doubt, that
between the two schemes he cleared up more than eight mil
lion dollars inside of twoi years. Somewhat like the Los An
geles, California, oil scheme that cleared up eleven millions
inside of twelve months, and the Beaumont, Texas, oil schemes
that cleared up one-half as much, saying nothing of the clear
ances made by the biggest Hogg in Texas.
All sorts of get-rich-quick schemes and political knavery
tricks seemed to take with the people of the South, as with no
other people on the face of the gloibe. As an illustration of
the great worth and character of the people of the South I will
state that it is only necessary toi travel around through the
Northwest States and ih all of the Northern cities, where you
will find that the Southern boy, the Southern man has been
given preference over all other boys and men in all and in
every possible avocation and calling requiring skill as well as
indefatigable energy and unimipeachable honesty, and never
have I known of a Yankee who married down South and

POLITICAL AND OTHERWISE. 8$
brought his bride North but that he became a greater man than
there had ever been any hopes of his becoming before, and
she became respected of and by all.
But let a Yankee go down South and he is only a Yankee
and never will be anything else a,s long as he lives, though his
children may amount toi something.
Did I hear you say, reader, that I am away off from my
subject? Read the first paragraph of this chaptei* and get
right yourself; box your compass again and don't know what
to expect. I went from San Antonioi further east, and from having
a good reputation before I went west, I was refitted with a
good horse and saddle and accouterments on a transfer of my
pay account, twenty-five per cent to be added if -we were not
paid off in six months.
I thought about a year after this, when down on .Bayou
Lafourche in Louisiana, how much easier I could have got a
horse and an outfit had I belonged to the "craft," as they called
themselves, and this was the' way of it.
I with four or five others were picketing on our side of the
bayou, no wider than an ordinary Arkansas road, when we
espied a greater number of Yankees on the other side, just
about dusk. When darkness came on a man in my party hol
lared out :
"From whence do you come ?"
"From a camp of horse thieves on the Rio Grande."
"What came you here to doi?"
"To learn how to improve myself in horse thieving."
"Then you are a horse thief, I presume?"
"I am so taken and accepted by all the 'craft' on the Rio
Grande." "Horse Thief, can you advance and give the proper sign
and hailing words ?"
"Can you respond?"

86 POLITICAL AND OTHERWISE.
"Yes.""Give you."
"Coffee!""Tobacco!"
After this response our man started out down the bayou,
and the Yankee started out, and for two plugs of tobacco we
got about five pounds of parched coffee, and such a coffee
drinking time as we had ! It was like our eating corn dodgers
on the retreat.
It was after the close of the war that I was given to un
derstand all this horse thieving dialogue. Since then I don't
believe I would be found afoot in any country.
My great love, admiration and respect for the Southern
people, while not contending for the old times and conditions
of its "institutions," as slavery was considered, always caused
me to hate its enemies, and it was they who lived within its
confines and borders that I the most hated of all, and noi man
living has ever accused me of not being "true tO' Paul."
Though offered great rewards, I never turned "scallawag" nor
ever in any way went back on my report, while others who pro*-
fessed great Southern loyalty were all original secessionists,
and who promised to do up anywhere from five to ten Yankees
any morning before reveille was sounded, turned traitor,
traitor to every principle of manhood, and for the sake of of
fice or reward became the most loathsome and detestable of all
politicians, in my estamation, scallazvags.
It was the like of them; who brought on the Confederacy
its first misfortunes, and from thence on caused them to in
crease, and finally encompassed its downfall without any con
ditions or privileges, rents or remunerations excepting as were
voluntarily given by General U. S. Grant at Appomattoix.
Had statesmen and patriots been at the helm, even after
some of our gravest and greatest disasters had befallen us,
terms and conditions could have been negotiated and brought

POLITICAL AND OTHERWISE. 87
about that would have left the people of the South a free peo
ple, not beggars, and would have placed the negro question at
rest forever.
And the South today, instead of being solid Democratic,
would have been in the solid line of advancement and improve
ment.

CAMPAIGNING IN LOUISIANA.

A young lawyer, fresh from (pollege and with a new license
to practice, was sent by his old partner, who had examined the
jury and fixed it just right for an important criminal case, to
make the opening speech, which he did with a great amount of
flowery eloquence and the large use of legal expressions and
big words in general. The old lawyer saw that his case was
lost and beyond retrieve. After he had done his best in his
second speech he told the young man that the case was lost
because of his speech. "Instead of using common, plain,
everyday, good, solid, sensible English that every man O'f that
jury, that I had picked, could understand, you shot over their
heads with your big words and expressions, which none but
the judge himself understood."
He admonished the young man that the next time he un
dertook to make a speech he should use such language as the
most ignorant man before him could understand, and never
again use big words and technical expressions except as he ad
dressed college graduates.
I don't believe that I ever lost a case for the want of good
plain English, or from not being understood by the people
whom I addressed. I am not writing for that class of people
who want dictionary exercise — that is tO' say, who want words
that they would continually have to refer to the dictionary for
definitions. I believe in calling a spade a spade, and every
other implement or subject which I handle or to which I refer
by its proper and everyday common name. And I hope that
my reader will not consider me as having lived a life of labor
in trying to coin long sentences of long words, that may or

CAMPAIGNING IN LOUISIANA. 89
might mean more or less, just as the reader might choose to
make it.
/ Had my early life been spent in educational institutions, I
might be able to make a large volume and say less than this
volume will say before I get through with it, and yet not make
the volume so large as to be cumbersome.
After the reassembling of the brigade and its reorganiza
tion without the aid of a paymaster, and only a quartermaster,
who issued vouchers toi people in payment for mules and horses
and wagons and such like, that with a file of soldiers he took
from the possessor witho'Ut as much as tO' say "Thank you,"
we were ordered to southern Louisiana in the early spring of
1863, where we met face to face with Banks' army below
Franklin, going through a country that was three-fourths
marsh and one-eighth lagoons, bayous, overflowing creeks and
rivers. I can here truthfully say that no army ever marched
through any country under more difficulties, with such trials,
tribulations and sufferings as we did in going through south
eastern Texas and southwestern Louisiana.
We rendezvoused on Bayou Salle, Louisiana, hear Frank
lin, and who that is living today that was there with me can
think of our boggy, watery campi-ground but would in doing
so bring on rheumatic pains and all else which a. few weeks of
such life is guaranteed toi prod'\jce on any man before he ar
rives at the age of fifty, and from then on, all sorts of suffer
ing. Our horses were fed on half rations of com and shucks
and we were put on half rations of corn-meal and pickled
steers, called pickled beef, which had been packed the previous
winter in New Iberia, Louisiana, rock salt, which contained
enough saltpeter, naturally or artificially I shall never be able
to tell, to solidify this beef that after boiling it two or three
days it became still more solidified. The saltpeter gave us
all sore mouths and sore tongues and sorry souls, but a greater

90 CAMPAIGNING IN LOUISIANA.
love and a stronger hope of home and loved ones we had left
behind to be sent do'wn here in this land of alligators and other
crawling reptiles and winged birds called mosquitoes. We
had "water all around, but not a drop to drink," except that we
had green Louisiana rum, made of sour molasses, warranted
two doses to make a man fight his mother-in-law's rememr
brance. The 'guns that we had were of all sorts, sizes and com
plexions, ages and conditions, and the amm.unition we received
was nearly all a misfit. Our officers from the captains up
were quartered in the planters' mansions, while all the natives
had been quartered in the bams and sugar-houses, while we,
poor private soldier, trash from Texas, were sent out in the
swamps. After a stay here of days sufficient to have placed the great
majority of us in a hospital, only that we had no hos
pital or hospital supplies, we received' the welcome new's
that the Federal army under General Banks had crossed at
where Morgan City now stands and that he was sending his
gunboats and marching his army toward where we afterward
found out a fort had been built on Bayou Boef, on Bissland's
plantation, mounted with nine what was then and is yet known
as "Long Toms" (a six-inch smooth-bore eighteen-foot long
cast-iron cannon, cast when Thomas Jefferson -was President
of the United States, to be mounted at all ports of entry for
home protection), that, when charged with forty pounds of
powder and a six-inch cast-iron ball rammed home and -was
fired off, one could hear the wabblimg of the ball in tliat bore,
and death was the doom of the cannoneer who stoodi anywhere
near that infernal machine, which was sure to jump out of
its trunnions, especially if tlie piece -was in the least depressed.
From the fort across the large plantation three-fourths of
a mile a large embankment had been thrown up, behind which
three or four thousand Louisiana natives had been placed.

CAMPAIGNING IN LOUISIANA. 9 1
They had been armed with the very best modem man-killing
guns, English Enfield rifles, newly brought across the country
from Mexico.
The Federal boats were armed with thirty-twoi-pound rifled
steel-and-brass field pieces. They made a feint on the fort,
which was no more than open breastworks. The fort was
protected by the Texas cavalry, whose horses were a mile oi;
two in the rear. Shot and shell from the gunhoats went over
the fort, exploding and kicking up a furious noise among our
horse holdei's and our Texas mustang ponies, that had been
somewhat used to electric storms and possibly thunderbolts,
but kicked and otherwise raised thunder among themselves at
having all this come in on them when the sun was shining.
Our "Long Tonis" were fired and the Yankee gunboats re
tired. This gave us a chance toi remount our pieces, take off
the dead and look after our wounded, caused by the jumping
of our guns out of their bearings.
'While we were being held there by the Federals they ^ent
nine thousand infantry, without cavalry or artillery, under
General Grover, on transports i around to. our rear, eighteen
or twenty miles off, four miles west and north of Franklin,
where they landed in very good order, as I have been informed
and verily believe, at Irish bend. They had only four miles to
march to reach a point that would have completely cut O'ff the
Right Reverend General Dick Taylor's army and captured
everything including our brigade and all the other Texans who
were there.
Our scouts — if we had any, and if not our Generals
must have dreamed it — became wise and onto this move in
time to send the mounted men toi meet and repulse it. This
was done by ,an early morning battle with five pieces of ar
tillery and three thousand dismounted cavalrymen on our side.
The Federals, nine thousand strong, had driven us off the
field and had captured our battery. We had retreated tO' the

92 CAMPAIGNING IN LOUISIANA.
opposite side of a wood, through which and next to the bayou
a wide road meandered.
Colonel Riley, elsewhere referred to, who was in command,
was killed early in the action, as were also four or five hun
dred other men who had come through the swamps from
Texas. The Federals were marching on us through the woods
at a rapid rate, while we were grouped together like so many
badly scared boys, looking for a leader, whO' finally showed
up in the person of Major Hamilton, and who was sO' busy
trying to light his pipe while his horse was prancing round at
a furious rate that he did not recognize that he was the com
mander of the situation. I always shall believe that he was as
badly scared as I was.
I had been in prison in my day and calculated upon an
other term. Coming down the road a little way fro^m the
group of men I saw, by peeping ground' a clump of blackberry
bushes, the Federals limbering up our field battery and bring
ing the horses intO' proper line, whereupon I screamed so' loud
that my voice was heard by every Yankee and every Confed
erate on the other side: "Clear the road for the cavalry!"
which was re-shouted in an instant by the twelve or fifteen hun
dred men near, as only well-scared men can sho'Ut.
The Yankees knew that they had no cavalry and had been
told that they were going to face the terrific and terrible New
Mexico-Texan Sibley brigade of ferocious Rough Riders. I
heard a few horns toot down on the Yankee side. I went a
little farther and I never saw men running so in all my life,
forming in solid squares out in the canefield. I was afterward
told by the commander that he thought that there were ten
thousand Texas cavalrymen coming down the road. «
We retook our battery which the Yankees had so kindly
limbered up and made ready for use, and started double-quick
for our horses. It was four hours or more before the Federal

CAMPAIGNING IN LOUISIANA. 93
commander found that he had been bamboozled, fooled and
likewise deceived, and commenced the forward march.
In the meantime General Taylor and our other long-headed
and wise commanders (?) had retreated from the -Bissland
battle-field. Fort Bissland on the bayou referred tO' before, and
we all crossed over the long bridge in safety and' planted our
field batteries on the opposite side, when General Grover came
down with his boys in blue and General Franklin came rush
ing up with his flying artillery and mounted infantry from
Bissland. Night came on and we pulled out of the scene to
New Iberia, where three days afterward there might have been
a battle but that our ammunition, if not wet, at least was a
little moist, and we started for the rear ; those under command
toward Alexandria and those in desperate want of home com
forts toward Niblit's Bluff, Texas; very few of whom ever
afterward heard the sound of their own reveille toot-horns,
much less Yankee cannon or musketry.
I made a mistake and took the right-hand road instead
of the left one leading to Texas, and was a few days after
ward made a prisoner of war in the town of Washington,
where I had gone toi a hospital unable longer to go farther.
It was told the Federal commander that I was a man of
no rank but possessed of wonderful information. He sent
for me, thinking to gain thereby. I was in a dying condition,
so considered. General Banks ordered his chief surgeon to
come to me, and I believe that my life was saved thereby.
This doctor proved to be the father of the Rev. Mr. Rogers,
the presiding minister of the O. S. P. Church at Seguin.
Texas, to which my father belonged. He recognized my
name, having visited my folks. To him and to General Banks
I owe all, and no man can accuse me of ever being ungrateful.
I met them both after the war, and better and nobler and more
Christian men I never had the pleasure of becoming acquainted
with. The commander learned nothing from me, for I abso-

94 CAMPAIGNING IN LOUISIANA.
lutely knew as little as General Dick Taylor did himself or any
other of his officers.
Here at this time I quit the Confederate service for a good
long season, to be confined in the Belleville Iron Works in Al
giers, opposite New Orieans, with a mixed crowd of Louisi
ana natives and Texans. , After being in this prison a month
or more I was pickfed out as one of twenty of the most con
spicuous, and of course good loo'king. Confederates who were
to be sent to the Parish Prison in New Orleans and there held
in solitary confinement as hostages for the safe return of Capn
tain J. L. Dwight, who had been captured while acting as a
spy within the Confederate lines near Ojapolassas.
This affair was settled a few days thereafter, and as though
we had not seen enough of the dark holes of that damp
dungeon prison we were chained together two and two, my
companion being the noted Louisiana fighting scout, Bailey
Vincent, and I can show the marks of that handcuff on my
left wrist. We were put on board of a steamer and sent to
Ship Island, a verdureless sand dune near the mouth of the
Mississippi River, where we were huddled into close quarters
and unshackled and fed on as goo'd as the Federals had, and
were told that we were held as hostages for Major Montgom
ery of the First Texas Federal Cavalry, whoi had been cap
tured somewhere down near Corpus Christi Bay, and who,
we had been told, had been cruelly assassinated by the Texans
capturing him. He had lived for many years in and, if I mis
take not, was born in Texas. Many of his relatives, all of
whom, like himself, were Union men, had been captured and
hung in their efforts to leave the State of Texas, by Huff's
regiment of Texas murderers, just as the Committee of Public
Safety in Fort Bend County had threatened to do and would
have done with me had they have gotten on a big drunk the
night before I escaped, and of which I have told elsewhere.
The order came for our transfer back toi Algiers, and I

CAMPAIGNING IN LOUISIANA. 95
never did know, and never will, whether Major Montgomery
had been captured, killed or returned.
When we reached the prison in Algiers we were welcomed
by our old comrades, who had been told tliat we had been
deliberately shot. The Louisianans who were in prison with
us were afraid to communicate with their friends and rela
tives in the city of New Orleans, and it was but natural they
should be since of the tales that were told of the monstrous
cruelties that were being perpetrated on the citizens of New
Orleans of Confederate sympathies, and especially regarding
the treatment the fair daughters of New Orleans and the most
loved ones were receiving and had received at the hands of
Old Beast Butler, known also as "Spoon Butler," a cock-eyed,
bald-pated, beetle-browed, fox-faced, lizard-chinned mon
strosity, as well as Northern Democrat, and who many years
after this New Orleans affair was seriously discussed by the
Solid South Democrats as the possible winning candidate at
the time the Democrats nominated a yet worse old devil, of
whom I will have a page or more, if not a full chapter, to tell
hereafter — Horace Greeley,
How the mighty hath fallen, and how wonderfully they
have changed, and how quick they have been about both ! The
idea of a Southern gentleman licking the foul hands and em
bracing the accursed carcass of such as "Beast Butler" and
Horace Greeley, and call it Democracy !
That General Dick Taylor was the son of his father. Old
Rough-and-Ready General Zachary Taylor, of glorious mem
ory, was one reason why he was put in command of the Army
of Louisiana, and the other was for the same reason that
Lovell, Duncan and Pemberton superseded Southern generals
and patriots. General Dick Taylor was a brother-in-law of
the President of the Confederacy, who was mighty good to all
of his relations, near, distant or remote. I do not remember
of ever having heard of one who was not provided for with

96 CAMPAIGNING IN LOUISIANA.
some office at the expense of the Southern cause and South
ern people.
Oi my personal liking and experiences I shall refer in a
future chapter, and if what I may say shall make any of the
old Confederates wince and swear at the truth being told, as
has been in the past pages, "so mote it be," for I am not in
this game to advance and promote the interest of any knave
or fool or the descendant thereof, who in any manner, shape
or form is responsible for or aided the ruination and the dis
grace of the people of the South by bringing about a war and
handling it in such a way as to disgrace every man who had
anything to do with it's handling, except those who were re
tired by the Administration at Richmond, as they tried to do
with General Robert E. Lee after the battle of Gettysburg,
but stalwart patriotism and Southern chivalry of the grand
and noble sort and style, boldly proclaimed in the City of Rich
mond, that if Lee was forced to resign the head of the Admin
istration would roll as a football on Broad Street.
The feeling of the Confederate army which had done the
fighting and whoi had suffered the losses, against the Admin
istration was becoming soi bitter at the close of the war as to
all but invite revolt. On the nin^h and tenth of July, 1864, the
feeling was so intense in the City of Richmond against the
Administration that General Winder's Provost Guard dis
banded, and I with my own eyes saw, and with my own ears
heard that which all of the friends of the Administration have
assiduously sought to obliterate, kill and forever destroy.
I visited Castle Thunder and Libby Prison, and but for a
speech which was made by the Maine anti-liquor-white-liv
ered- Yankee-General Neal Dow, who had been convicted in
Alabama for stealing piano keys, while on a raid through a
portion of the State in which were nO' soldiers or home de
fenders, and had been sent to the penitentiary, and who had
been released by the Governor of Alabama upon the request

CAMPAIGNING IN LOUISIANA. 97
of the Administration in Richmond because eighty-five Con
federate officers of Johnson's Island had been put in solitary
confinement and held as hostages there until Neal Dow was
released, just as I had been put in solitary confinement in New
Orleans for Captain Dwight and afterwards in Ship Island
for Major Montgomery.
There was no guard around Castle Thunder or Libby
Prison neither. A Federal officer, whose name I never could
get, rose up and called for volunteers to follow him and to
take up arms and to go to Libby Prison and from there pro^
ceed to the Capitol and capture the Confederacy. He had
been out on the street as I had been and saw the situation —
utter demoralization, no order, no government. He created a
great enthusiasm, and I plainly saw right there the doom of
the Confederacy and the last of the Administration which had
brought on the doom, and I expected to see some hot times
that day in Richmond.
At this juncture the aforesaid Neal Dow rose up and ap
pealed to them not to do this but to wait, that possibly within
a few hours the sound of Mead's army would be heard on the
heights around Richmond. I was so incensed at the white-liv
ered old coward's talk that I felt like pulling my six-shooter
and killing him on the spot, for above all things on this earth
I hate a coward as I hate a hypocrite, and he was both, and
this, too, regardless as to which side he belonged.
My home was out at Camp Lee Prison parole ground,
where for three days and nights we received no rations, and
we poor Confederate devils, who' were under parole to not lift
up arms against the Federal Government until duly exchanged,
were really at the mercy of both sides. I shall never forget the
q)eech that General Roger A. Pryor made on a bridge which
spanned the street between two of the principal hotels, and
how the thousands whoi heard him applauded.
He pointed to a bulletin board on which was written a

98 CAMPAIGNING IN LOUISIANA.
dispatch from General R. E. Lee to J. Davis, Esq., President
of, etc., etc., who had held back an army which if Lee had,
and expected to have, and as had been ordered, might have
saved the battle of Gettysburg for the Confederacy, and who
had intimated that his resignation might be accepted. This
dispatch read in substance abo'Ut as follows :
"That if in the wisdom of the Government my resignation
-would be acceptable it shall be tendered forthwith, to take
effect immediately, or as soon as my successor shall be able to
take command in the field."
If Davis trembled when he was captured in his wife's
gown, when he and his surrounders and all arounders heard
the wild yell and the maddening hisses which all but split the
throats of every Virginian and all who had been true to the
cause; if he penned the dispatch himself which was sent
within five minutes after General Pryor had promised that his
head should play as a football on Broad Street and the original
could be produced, I would gamble all my earthly wealth that
it was written so tremblingly that he was glad when he got
done with it.
» Pryor called upon the Virginians to go back to their posts
and take up their arms and protect the city, which was
promptly done, and old General Winder, who, by the -way, was
not very distantly related to the family whose name I bear,
who a few days before had been all of a tyrant that he could
be, reassumed command like a little lost purring kitten or a
tender unmarked lamb, and reminded me of old Jacob Town-
send's patent medicine advertisement of two pictures, repre
senting one man then and now, or before and after taking
Bull's Sarsaparilla.
In order that my account shall properly chime -in, I shall
in the next chapter tell of what I left out, and which should
have preceded this one but for reasons known to myself, and
that may be guessed at by others why I do as I have.

WITH MAGRUDER AT GALVESTON.

The Brigade rendezvoused at Milican, Texas, in Novem
ber after our return from the disgraceful, because it was not
officered, and disastrous, because it was not properly provided
for, campaign of New Mexico. We came together with new
horses and quartermasters and commissary supplies as ordered,
bringing withi us fully one-half, in point of numbers, of Texas
conscripts, boys just out of the cradle, old men just ready to
step into the deep, dark beyond, filling our ranks to the orig
inal number and requirements.
There was coirn if no wine and milk in Egypt, and there
was more meat, both hog and beef, as well as com on the
Brazos, both sides up and down from where it empties into
the Gulf 'way up Waco way. Our horses and mules did fatten
amazingly, and we old boys and the conscripts did well, and
by drilling between the rains and storms, which I always con
sidered was done to show off the officers' new uniforms and
authority vastly more than for any good it did the men or the
service, we did enjoy ourselves the two months we were in
camp at Milican and Hempstead, and, as it was, we got along
fairly well.
What became of General Sibley along about this time no
one ever knew, but it was generally supposed that he crawled
into a jug hole and pulled the jug and hole in after him. Our
Brigade orders came signed by Colonel Green, he of the Sec
ond Regiment, and who was the senior officer at this time, by
reason of Colonel Riley's being called to Richmond to give an
account of his having failed to swipe off, by bamboozling or
otherwise, the four Northern Mexican States and to apologize
for Sibley's failure, and no' doubt tO' tell why Jack Hayes, an
99

lOO WITH MAGRUDER AT GALVESTON.
old Texan, and Judge Terry, another — he who killed Senator
Brodericks — and a lot of other similar Southern puffs in Cali
fornia, had not done as promised.
Colonel Riley was a man of deep patriotism and statesman
ship. He had noi equal in all the West. I was told by a man
near the "Crown Head" that his explanation did not suit the
Administration, but it had to go.
Colonel Green was a man who, when out of whisky, was
a mild mannered gentleman, but when in good supply of old
burst-head was all fight. He was like the fellow who was so
keen for a fight that he set a buzz saw in motion. Green vras
killed at Blair's Landing in Louisiana by a cannon shot from
a gunboat which was out in the river nearly on a level with
the levee, and which was ten feet higher than the field over
which Green charged with a raw Texas regiment (Wood's)
that had never been in a fight before. Green placed himself
at their head and withi a yell told them that he was going to
show them how toi fight, Had they had as much Louisiana
rum under their belts as Green had, my sympathies for the
dead would not have been soi great as they were.
Three hundred and more were killed in less time than it
takes me to tell it, while riding intO' the mouths of these death-
dealing, belching, grape-and-canister-loaded cannons from the
gunboats out in -the stream. Of all the fool acts of all the
Confederate history this excelled them all. Yet there are peo
ple in Texas today whoi believe that >vhen they die they will
go to Tom Green on the other side of the River. I hope that
my future Guide and Protector will not land me in that camp.
On the night of the twenty-seventh of December we re
ceived orders to leave our horses in charge of a detail and take
the train at Hempstead and Milican and goi to Houston ; no.
man knew why, but. it was believed that the Federals had
landed on the mainland from off Galveston and were marching
to Houston.

WITH MAGRUDER AT GALVESTON. lOI
General J. Bankhead McGruder, who had done some drink
ing and fighting down in Virginia and who had said some
thing which did not please the Administration, was sent out
and placed in command of the District of Texas, etc. I believe
that it was decided a draw as between McGruder and Sibley
and about all other old army officers, as to which one could
destroy the most whiskey, regardless of its brand, and mix it
up with gin, brandy and rum and even sour lager beer.
McGruder had an adjutant general who was a gentle
man and who never drank ; that is, I never saw him, and who
was always on guard. McGruder concluded toi show the Fed
erals, about twelve hundred strong in Galveston and with four
gunboats and a revenue cutter, the Harriett Lane, a combina
tion of a Virginian and Texas trick, and in furtherance of the
same had filled up some big flatboats with cotton all around
and a bow-and-aft chaser, six-pound brass piece, with Texas
Rangers packed in between. Three steamers that had plied
between Galveston and Houston for a generation or more were
baled all around with cotton and mounted with cannons and
aft chasers, with several nine-inch guns on each.
This flotilla, loaded with twelve or fifteen hundred men,
was moored in at Lynchburg and our land forces were held
back at Virginia Point on the mainland, calculating that when
the signal was given to move, the land forces could make the
center of the city simultaneously with the arrival of the flotilla,
the latter attacking the gunboats, and the foirmer the land
forces behind the cotton compress walls.
Exactly at twelve o'clock on the first day of January, the
very first minutes of the New Year's life, 1864, the signal for
an advance was sounded, and ' away went "Colly and the
wagon. Tray, Blanch and Sweetheart." At four oi'clock the
first shot was fired on the water. Then it was that the
"Rangers of 4he land greeted the Rangers of the sea" and the
fighting commenced, we double-quicking to our assigned posi-

I02 WITH MAGRUDER AT GALVESTON.
tion of assault. The Federal gunboats had no idea of an attack
from anything in the rear and they lined up to bombard the
city beyond the compresses, which were on the wharves, and
to otherwise discommode and make it unpleasant for "we-
uns." The gunboat Owassa lay at the foot of Tremont street,
down which about one thousand of the Old Brigade (the
others were on the flotilla or gunboats) was double-quicking
for position. A twelve-inch shot was fired which went about
ten feet over our heads and landed sonie-where towards the
middle of the Gulf of Mexico'. I never heard such a cyclone
of peculiar hospital feelings as that produced. The Federals
were on to us, and the next shot which came out of that same
¦gun just skimmed the face of the earth and, after rolling and
bouncing over the mile and one-half of street to the Gulf,
recherched, and the last I saw of it it was on its way to Tam-
picoi, Mexicoi.
We were rushed in behind the Custom House, a brick
building which had been erected only a short time before the
commencement of hostilities, and were ordered to be still. By
this time the ba,lls and shot and shell from the Federal fleet
was playing havoc with the brick and stone buildings that were
then on the island, and mortar and dust and brickbats and
pieces of shells were about as thick as anyone ever saw weasels
in a barnyard, and there we were in a very dilapidated if not
scared condition, for toi be placed in a positio'n where you can
not fight back is one of the dreadful things that a soldier has
no liking for.
In my company we had a fiddler, a song bird and all-
around jolly-maker, who did more to keep up the spirits of our
marching sufferers on the retreat, with his old fiddle and bow,
than all else. He weighed less than one hundred pounds, and
though little, was, like the Irishman's pig, old, and was always
giving us amusement and something to laugh at. He was in

WITH MAGRUDER AT GALVESTON. I03
the very middle of the twelve hundred soldiers, packed like
sardines, behind the Custom House, when he whispered in a
loud voice that all heard:
"Boys, be  still, for if them  Yankees
hear us and^ find out where we are they will bring out that 
gun they have got that shoots around the corners."
Such a laugh, as went up was only what might be expected
of men placed as we were. Soldiers on the eve of battle either
want to pray, cry or laugh, and if they can just get to laughing
you have got them ready for a fight. Treat is a sure winner.
We had scarcely beco'ine still again when bim — ! sounded
a ten or twelve-inch steel-pointed three-foot-long ball, fired
from a rifled piece. It struck the slanting railroad bars that
had been put in the structure as rafters, and it plowed the slate
roof in a most fearful way and pointed its nose straight up,
perpendicular, and it seemed to me — I saw it plainly — ^that it
went somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty-five hundred
feet in the air to get a sight of where we were and then it
turned around and came down, right in our midst, and I am
sure that it penetrated the earth one thousand feet or more.
It did not burst and this made the Federals on the Owassa turn
a broadside on us, and in a few minutes we were literally cov
ered with brick and mortar and were in a condition of collapse
when all of a sudden we heard a different sound.
Firing on us ceased and some men yelled out :
"Tom Green and his Rangers of the sea are in sight !"
_ No marine battle was ever fought from which a more beau
tiful sea engagement could have been painted. The boats on
both sides closed in and it became a hand-to-hand fight. We
captured the Harriett Lane after having jarred its larboard
wheel -with a solid shot; our men scaled the netting and the
fight became pirate-like, hand-to-hand. Its gallant com
mander. Captain Lee, fell dead on the bridge. We buried him
the next day with all the honors of war and by his side the

104 WITH MAGRUDER AT GALVESTON.
brave men whose blood painted the Harriett Lane's top, center
and bottom cabins red.
Wainright, commanding the fleet, blew his flagship, the
Westerfield, up. The engagement lasted perhaps an hour. The
land forces quickly surrendered and Galveston was again at
tached to the Confederacy. Our loss in this engagement was
not so great as might have been expected. We captured a
large amount of Government supplies, which were much
needed, for we had become tired of Texas beef and rancid
bacon and com dodger without coffee.
Before this time I had lost all hopes of the Confederacy
and I was not making myself very active. Yet I was always
to be found on duty and do not remember of ever having
shoWn the white feather. What I thought I told no man, but
it was in substance that if my record could be made clean I
would go to the rear and keep on going until I struck a coun
try where there was nq danger of its being invaded. I might
fill pages in telling of what occurred in Galveston and Ho'Uston
in the next few months, for we had lively times.
News of our Victory was conveyed to Nassau, N. P., with
all possible dispatch, from Galveston via Wilmington, North
Carolina, then and for a long time afterwards the center for
blockade runners, and "blockade-running" ships that were
loaded, intended for Wilmington, were sent to Galveston,
where in the course of a few months nearly twenty were un
loaded and reloaded with cotton, which paid for the ammuni
tion and ordnance, principally Napoleon brass pieces, which
were worked off on the Confederacy, and were as absolutely
worthless as were our old cast-iron "Long Toms."
France, Austria, Germany and England had a snap work
ing off on the Confederacy their old obsolete arms and ammu
nition, and of course our purchasing agents were not all fools
and not one of them ever returned to the Confederacy, and
why should they?

WITH MAGRUDER AT GALVESTON. IO5
It had always been my opinion that the cotton which was
shipped to England by and through the blockade runners and
through Mexico, and the many thousands of bales which were
taken down Red River and the Mississippi in broad daylight
and right before the eyes of us Confederate boys, called French
cotton, made up a balance of many and many millions of
dollars to the cerdit of the so-called Confederate States, but
which was drazvable by the same agents who deposited it, and
thus the incident was closed.
I was both on to and up to this job and would have been
one of them myself had not the Federal blockading fleet of
Galveston come in port and out the blockade runner "Lucy
Gwinne" from the wharf and taken it out to sea a prize. She
had only about forty bales of cotton on her. Had they waited
about ten or fifteen days longer they would liave gotten a
full cargo of compressed cotton and "me to," as Pratt said.
This cotton was ostensibly going out under the name of
the Confederacy arid to buy more old effete and worthless
French cannon, but I knew better, and so did the men who
put up the money to buy the cotton. They were middle-aged
men and surely never had the sad and sorrowful experience
that I have had with my fellow men and their foibles, frail
ties and all-around cussedness or they would not have tmsted
me as they did and were going to in this matter.
In those days the scramble was for a position that ga\'e a
man an opportunity to steal. I was not engaged in any stealing
business, and I know that if my life had been spared and I had
landed in the port to which we were to sail, every dollar would
have been accounted for and I would yet have had enough of
my own to have lived in all sorts of co'mfort on the other side,
and this all I knew as well as I knew that "the gal I left be
hind me" would have joined me on the Rhine.
But for the feeling which pervaded my breast, and, secret
though it was, pervaded the breast of every othei- intelligent

I06 WITH MAGRUDER AT GALVESTON.
man of the Confederacy, there might have been some show
for asking, demanding and receiving terms and conditions.
The man who declared that the Confederacy would win out
was looked upon as a liar or a fool, and noi remarks were
made by any intelligent person on hearing a fool or knave so
talk. The Conscript Act in its way was no worse tlian the Tith
ing Act, whichi took from ten toi fifty per cent of everything
that was raised and produced, from chickens up. Who raised
four bales of cotton had to give one to the Government, and
for the privilege of taking his three toi the market he was also
required to take the other, which was to be turned over to
the Government Agent, who was to see that it was shipped
to some agent in England designated by the Government in
Richmond. The part of the Government that did get over
were in clover — Jeff did not make it, and those who did sent
him none of the steal.
If you wanted to take six bales of cotton to Mexico to
buy supplies, you had to transport two for the Government,
and then you had to take one-fourth of your freight back to
Government account. There were places in the Confederacy,
like Jackson, Mississippi, which was the most notorious, where
a private Confederate soldier was not allowed to walk on the
sidewalk. This was in the days of Pemberton, whom the Gov
ernment had sent first to Charleston, South Carolina, which
they supposed was made impregnable by Beauregard, whom
they removed when it was thought he might have gained a
signal victory.
Beauregard was sent to Vicksburg and he was fixing up
the line of defense in a thorough manner when the Government
sent Pemberton from Charleston to take command at Vicks
burg, and Beauregard was laid on the shelf. I never met this.
Pemberton, but I was told by many that he was a lover of John
Barley-corn, was an autocrat and a great ladies' man, who,.

WITH MAGRUDER AT GALVESTON. IO7
instead of provisioning Vicksburg and attending to his duties,
was attending balls and big ovations given him by the ladies
of Mississippi, aided largely, I suppose, by Scott's and Wort
Adams' Cavalry, to which I have made reference before.
The loss of eight thousand men at Big Black, when Grant
started to invest Vicksburg, was, as I have always believed, the
fruits of inattention toi anything else but drinking whisky.
With these eight thousand men properly officered and handled
¦ — for they were the best that were ever marshaled in any cause
— Grant could not have invested Vicksburg as he did and
without ten times the loss he sustained.
The Confederacy sustained its first heavy loss in my opin
ion in the death of General Albert Sidney Johnston at Shiloh.
The fall of Fort Donelson was a foregone conclusion, as was
the capture of Arkansas Post toi all who knew of the situation
and the lay of the country. There never was marshaled in
battle array a braver soldiery than that of the Confederate
army, and in no one instance of the war can it be shown where
failure to hold their point or toi gain ground was attributable to
anything else than incompetency of their commanders, pos
sibly excepting the fights around Richmond, where Lee had
such a hold on his army that the Government could not dis
place him, and in whom his soldiers had the most wonderful
confidence. I look back at those days and am amazed at how the people
and the soldiery were kept from revolting and demanding a
new deal all around. We had many as great soldiers as Lee,
and as Joseph E. Johnson and Stonewall Jackson, but they
were handicapped and ordered back, as were the advancing
army at the battle of Manassas, when it as good as had the
city of Washington.
I am not saying but that the war ended as fate decreed it
should from the start, but I am saying that the man who spent
his time in the service, as I did, and who was willing at all

Io8 WITH MAGRUDER AT GALVESTON.
times to make any sort of sacrifice for his country, never has
said that it ended according to his liking and that he was
glad that it ended as it did.
I have heard men who professed to have been in more
battles than I ever could have lived through say to. Northern
gatherings. Grand Army of the Republic reunions and in
public places, that they were glad that it ended as it did. I
thought then, do yet, and will die so thinking, that the man
who believed that these men were telling the truth was too
big a fool to be a citizen of this great republic, much less a
soldier. I made a declaration of this nature to a considerable num
ber of men who were fighting Federals, and who without an
exception agreed with me, and they alsoi agreed with me that
the Southern man whoi took such a position became the more
loyal a citizen of the United States upon taking the oath of
allegiance than did those sycophants who had twoi ways of,
talking. I have found that this class of men whicn in a crowd
of Southern men were the ones who abused the Yankees the
most and who were the loudest Democrats when they were
anywhere down South, but who never failed to tell their
Northern neighbors that they always voted the Republican
ticket. For declaring as I did I was called upon and billed to
make a talk. Some people say that I have made some good
speeches or can make a good speech, but I have never thought
so, yet am conscious of the fact that I can make a good talk.
Before my time came to talk I had hired a man in the
crowd toi ask that I first tell how it was that I was here at
this great dedicatory occasion. After being introduced by a
toastmaster who pronounced a panegyric on me or over me,
this question was asked from the assembly, which I proceeded
to answer after having cautioned all old soldiers present not
to be surprised at the answer that I was going to give and

WITH MAGRUDER AT GALVESTON. IO9
telling all the ladies and young men and others who never
had seen service in the tented or battlefield that it was not their
"put" and that they must not express surprise at my explana
tion as to "why I was here to-night."
After thus talking to the audience until they had become
anxious to receive the answer to the question, in substance
I said: "Up to the close of the war with the States no Yankee
had been born who was able to make a powder that was quick
enough, that had strength enough to send a chunk of lead fast
enough to overtake me when I started for the rear, and that
I was like Jehu's horse, always able to sniff a battle from afar."
In the excitement, hollering and hurrahing, I got from the
platform and was never afterward seen in that place.
My contention has always been that had the people of the
South been led by competent leaders, terms could have been
secured that would have left the people, both white and black,
in altogether different and better circumstances. Every nig
ger in the South could have been paid for and sent to Africa or
some other country with far less money than was robbed from
them in the days of reconstruction, to say nothing of the losses
since. In my day and time I have had many different opinions,
but on this question I have never changed my mind and never
will, and no man who will go through the South and see, as I
have in the past few years, and who can remember of having
seen it fifty years ago, will say that I am wrong. The in
telligent man who knows the negro's character can never ex
pect the condition of affairs in the South' toi improve, but must
reasonably expect them toi grow worse. No intelligent, hon
est man dare say that the negro is capable of self-government,
and noi education will ever make him capable.
The negro's tmke-up an4 gbar^gter, as is the case of aU

I IO WITH MAGRUDER AT GALVESTOlif.
Southern races of off-color, has no more of the element of
gratefulness than there is to be found in a cat, a tiger or a
wolf. In this one particular point they differ so greatly from
the Anglo-Saxon race that it cannot be appreciated by people
who have not a thorough knowledge of the negro, from other
than absolute personal contact and experience.
I have O'bserved in the last few years that all the able-bodied
negroes, men and women, are flocking toi the cities and going
farther North in every move they make, and the effect it is
having in these cities. I recently passed through a neighbor
hood where a few years ago there were one hundred and sixty
negro vqters, that today has not a single voter in it, and only
about forty old, decrepit niggers live in the district. In the
large cities of the South, like Atlanta, Georgia, you can see
them by the hundreds standing around on the streets. Their
wives and daughters can get service in a kitchen in a private
house and can earn from one to ten times as much as they
could earn on the farm, and with their -wages they can sup
port a family of men folks in idleness.
The negro who once leaves a farm can never be induced
to return, except it may be to cut cane or pick cotton, and when
he has been paid for his day's labor there is no' assurance that
he will be found there at -work the next day. Tliey are rapidly
acquiring the ability of living for 'days at a time without any
thing to eat, and it is surprising to know on what a small
amount they can subsist. In the days of slavery a peck of
meal, two ounces of salt and two pounds of bacon were a nig
ger's weekly rations. I believe that there are thousands of
them today who are living on less than that. They rely upon
filling up whai they go to do a day's work spading in a garden.
It is a part of a nigger's natural make-up to be Indolent,
insolent and thievish. I am only one of the many who believe
that these traits cannot be educated out of them in many gen
erations of time. To the man who has traveled in Mexico and

Tl

{See Page 156.)

WITH MAGRUDER AT GALVESTON. Ill
Cuba, as well as in Egypt, India and the Orient, and has un
derstood the conditions of affairs with the people of these coun
tries, it will be perfectly plain that the negro question in the
United States is one that will not down and one that no legis
lation will benefit, change or alter.
That they are on the increase and have been since the war
one need only to look to the census reports to bcome convinced,
while on the other hand, taking out the emigration, the white
population in the South is on the decrease, and the products
of the country, excepting it be the spots where only vegetables
and fruits can be raised for the Northern markets, are on the
wane. Its tobacco and its once "King Cotton" are not what
they were even a few years ago; the soil has become so ex
hausted in the greater area of the Southern States that we can
only expect to see it become more and more depopulated.
The South is no country for the industrious young man to
go tO', unless he goes there in the employ of a railroad or some
banking institution, and it is a good co.untry for all men to
keep away from, excepting men whom nature calls to a warmer
climate in winter time and whoi have the wherewith toi live on
there without labor, coming from a dividend-paying source
in the North.

PRISON AND PAROLE.

After I had. been returned to the Iron Works at Algiers,
Louisiana — ^which is opposite the City of New Orleans — I re
joined a great number of my old Texas and Louisiana com
rades, who, like myself, had been captured along O'n the fir
ing lines. I was astonished at first that the Louisianans were
not making it known to the ladies of New Orleans or their
friends there that they were in prison. Remembering the
name of an old friend, I wrqte to her through the courtesy of
the Provost Marshal in co'mmand of the prison, whoi was. both
a gentleman, a Christian and a soldier. Colonel J. B. Robinson
of the Twenty-Sixth Massachusetts Infantry, and who was
still living in 1904. ,
That he was a brave man no one could dispute, for he
treated his prisoners as O'uly a brave man could. We were
fed on as good as the Federal soldiers were, which was about
one to. five hundred per cent better than what we had been ac
customed to having. Yet there were a great number who
complained who had not, as I had from the first, realized what
General Sherman said of war, that "it was hell."
I was sent in from the city baskets of good things to eat,
and it was but a few days before I was allowed to meet a num
ber of ladies in the Provost Marshal's office, who^ put no spy
over us, but gave us every liberty and privilege a brave man
could give a captive.
I told of the Louisianans who were in prison, and among
them quite a number of old citizens and planters who' were not
soldiers and should not have been there and would not have
been there 'but for the very reasons that abo'Ut all of the sugar

PRISON AND PAROLE. II3
houses and cotton plantations were destroyed by fire, of which
I will tell hereafter.
These old men had charges hatched up against them and
were made to suffer withoiit cause. Orally it had reached
New Orleans that at the battle of Irish Bend I had been the
means of saving the army of Louisiana, and I was unbe-
knownly lionized to an extent that surprised me and which
afterward brought me trouble in this way.
A cowardly ' Yankee cur was appointed Provisional Gov
ernor of the State of Louisiana and his name was Sharkey.
He took it into his head that a man of such prominence as I
must be an officer of high rank, and that I was lying when
claiming to be only a private soldier. He sent a file of sol
diers after 'me and I was brought into, his august presence in
the Custom House, where his office was., and he opened out
in a bombastic, domineering manner by telling me that I was
a lying rebel, and that he was going to put me in chains and
send me to the dungeon for misrepresenting my position in the
army. He would not allow me to. put in any sort of a plea
or statement, for he said from the start that he would not be
lieve me on oath. Though hot-headed and quick of temper, I
have always been fortunate enough to. keep cool under trying
circumstances, and this was not the first time, therefore I was
in a measure prepared.
This coward was cavorting around, damning and cursing
all rebels, and Texans in particular, when I espied General
Franklin, whom I did not know as such but who had the marks
of rank on his shoulders and collar, and I addressed him in
about this wise, pointing my finger to him :
"Sir, I appeal to you for protection. My name is Theo.
Noel. Will you carry a message to General Banks and Doc
tor Rodgers?"
He looked me square in the face and said : "I shall, sir."

114 PRISON AND PAROLE.
Whereupon the cowardly slink, Sharkey, called Governor,
flunked and said :
"I can send a message toi him. Why didn't you tell me
that you wanted to talk with the General in command?"
I said nothing in reply until after he had again commenced
swearing that he would get even with all the 
Texan Ranger rebels out of  .
The General, who recoignized my signature, sent his aid-
de-camp with all dispatch to General Banks, who sent his Act
ing Adjutant General with orders to release and send me to his
headquarters. I was given a parole of the city for twoi days,
and it was given out that Sharkey should not know but that
I was a secret service man, and in order to give him all sorts
of annoyance I would go into his office and room and sit down
there and listen and watch things, and the cowardly cur knew
better than to speak to me. * * *
He had a man before him one day on trial, when a news
boy came rushing by the window at which he was sitting,
screaming out something about "Jeff Davis in Pennsylvania,'"
"Era Extra, Lee and," etc. The room was full and Sharkey
was as "drunk as a biled owl." He hollered to the boy,
"What's that about Jeff Davis?"
The prompt reply came, "Played hell in Pennsylvania !"
Whereupon the whole crowd commenced laughing and
giggling and howling, and Sharkey picked up his hat and
walked out, and soi did everybody else, including the prisoner
and myself.
The ladies of New OWeans were then, and are yet, the
noblest set of grand, brave, self-sacrificing women that could
ever honor this earth. It was at the battle of Monsura that
the women of Louisiana .proved their valor, where more than
one hundred were on the battle-field while the battle was go
ing on, looking after the wounded and administering to the
dying. Such was a not infrequent occurrence on other battle-

PRISON AND PAROLE. II 5
fields, for the women of the South were nearly all alike, except
ing a large number if not a majority of the women in the State
of Mississippi, where Wort Adams' and Scott's cavalry dom
inated over even the wo.men, whom they made believe that they
were good Confederate soldiers.
In company with about fourteen hundred others from the
prison, we were sent on two transports to Port Hudson and
were given a parole. This was a Yankee trick that no brave
man could have sanctioned or have tolerated. The next day
we were landed in Port Hudson, that was then being invested.
General Auger with his division of twelve thousand negroes
made a land assault from below, while forty-two. Federal mor
tar-boats and six gunboats bombarded from yet below them
and attacked the land batteries from in front, and only a few
hours after we, paroled prisoners of war, were landed in the
fort. We, paroled boys, could doi nothing, nor could we leave
the fort, being informed that it was invested on the east and
north sides as well as below. We had only to stand and take
it, non-combatants that we were, not allowed toi lift a gun in
our own defense and expecting at any minute an assault that
would put to death every man found behind the breastworks.
Negroes fought only under the black flag. They expected no
quarter if captured, therefore gave none. It was universally
conceded and understood, throughout the Confederate army
that when the negro ever gained advantage in a battle he
spared no one's life, but massacred everything as they did at
Fort Donelson and at Melican Bend, and of which I shall tell
hereafter. I, in company with two comrades, went to the water bat
tery, which we were told was charged to fire on gunboats that
might attempt to pass the bluff. We peixhed ourselves on the
ramparts at the side of a Tredgar Iron Works cast cannon,
which was the largest piece that had ever been cast in the Con-

Il6 PRISON AND PAROLE.
federacy or the United States at that time. It was charged
and loaded with a fourteen-inch solid shot, and being depressed
to an angle of about twenty degrees the gun was filled all but to
the muzzle with Spanish moss to hold the ball in and keep it
from rolling out.
It required twenty-eight men to man the gun. When it
was fired it jumped back out of its trunnions, and twelve men
at its breach were killed instantly. I was watching the effect
of the shot. The ball landed near the opposite side of the river
and did not cO'me within one-fourth of a mile of hitting the
gunboat. This was about one o'clock in the morning. We
heard the musketry, first the random guns firing, next by com
panies, next by regiments and next by brigades, and next our
little artillery land batteries commenced firing.
The assault was being made by General Auger's nigger
division, which came on with rushing and yelling demoniac
impetuosity, and who gained the outer trench before they com
menced firing, when O'Ur artillery commenced to play on them
with canister, grape and chain. But few of them got in the
ditch, which was twenty feet deep, twenty feet wide at the
top and fifteen feet wide at the boom, solid pancake clay.
They were heaped up in winnows. It was estimated that four
thousand eight hundred were killed. Noi retreat was sounded
that I heard. I have believed that their officers, after starting
them in, retired to. the safe rear.
The mortar-boats stopped playing when the assault was
started. They had been playing for about three hours, land
ing ten-inch shells inside of the fo'rt every one and one-half
minutes during that time. It was a dark night. They were
below in a cove in a bend of the river. Whoever has witnessed
a vivid electric storm on a dark night can imagine the flashing
of those mortars, and then looking up in the air a mile or more
you could see the fiery tails, the burning fuse of those bombs
which fell with such force as to. make holes in that clay ground

PRISON AND PAROLE. II7
fifteen or eighteen feet, and when one bursted in the ground or
in the air before it reached the ground it brought about a con
fusion among us paroled prisoners of war that can better be
imagined than described.
This was one time in battle that I did not get badly scared,
for I made up my mind from the start to. take what came, and I
expected nothing short of death, for I had full knowledge of
the strength of the negro corps, and I had passed by the bat
teries and mortar fleets and I had seen the army go up on the
opposite side of the river and had heard of their landing on
the Hudson side twelve miles above Bayou Sara, and I knew
that the Federal force numbered nearly seventy-five thousand,
negroes not counted. They were provisioned and armed with
the latest death-dealing implements. I also knew that Gen
eral Gardner, who was in commandi at Port Hudson, had only
three months to fortify and prepare for an attack and to pro
vision the fort, and that he was short of ammunition, had no
field artillery and his cannon was worse than nothing — dum
mies made of big logs would have been better — had no. guns
or small arms and had but twenty-two hundred men, rank
and file, supers, business and all, with less than forty days'
rations, and they of the very poorest sort — just such as no
Yankee army would stand by for a dog.
That I was better advised as to. the strength of the enemy
and of the conditions than General Gardner was no one
doubted, but I never violated my parole and trusted only in God
that Gardner had a way out of it and that we, the non-com
batants, might be able to follow him.
The next morning after this first assault on Port Hudson
the Federal General was communicated with and requested to
go and bury his dead, to which he replied that "the dead might
bury the dead" ; and thus it was that the iikes of him uses the
negro as the Chinese use a stink-pot.
The Federal forces withdrew from above and below and

Il8 PRISON AND PAROLE.
there was no further effort made to assault Port Hudson for
some weeks, and we, the Confederate paroled prisoners, were
allowed to depart as we might, and but for the two days' ra
tions that the Yankees had given us there would have been
great suffering.
In those days I was what was termed a runner and there
were but few in the army who could walk toi keep up with
me, and when it came to a long-distance run no quarter horse
could out-travel me. I had a much better idea of the geog
raphy of the country than my compeers and comrades. I
made a rapid trip to and was the first one that crossed the Mis
sissippi westward, when I was retaken by a force of Federals,
who denied my parole and took it away from me and sent me
back down to New Orleans, where but for the influence I had
at headquarters I might have been shot for a spy. The of
ficer who arrested me was sent for, and the first question asked
was whether I had any arms or not, and he replied "No."
He had destroyed my parole, but he was required to tell
of and about it and identify a blank which was produced. I
believe that I could have shortened his days on this earth had
I had a chance, for I was calculating upon being with the girl
I had left behind me and the first one that I had up to that
time. This was a disappointment no one not similarly con
ditioned can appreciate. Love and war are not compatible.
This was my greatest disappointment and I was given the
privilege of either taking the oath of allegiance or being sent
to Fort Dry Tortugas. I elected the latter and was sent to this
prison post and my solitary den was a rampart, or rather a
casement, where I was placed alone to look through the port
hole on the bay and meditate on the past and plan on the fu
ture, if I had a future.
How to tell a good army story without putting in the nec
essary blanks to be filled up is more than I have ever hew able

PRISON AND PAROLE. 1 19
to do, and I prefer to tell it so that it may be understood, re
gardless of what some Miss Nancy may say.
I was given any amount of religious tracts to read and
temperance sheets and songs and such like, which to a soldier
of my condition of mind and temperament was all else but in
teresting and amusing.
I was sitting in the port-hole one morning when I heard a
voice I recognized, an old scout and an all-around desperado,
who years afterward died with his boots on. This was the
song he was singing :
"I don't care a — for nobody.
If nobody don't care a — for me;
The day may come when I'll be out.
And on a scout;
And I'll bet my dollars one by one,
I'll make some  Yankee tun."
I knew that if I undertook to reply he would know my voice
and get me in trouble, so I was mum. He was in the second
or third casemate from me. A man in the next one asked:
"Who are you?"
He replied that he was not telling who he was, and asked :
"Who are you?"
"No more than you," came the reply.
I afterward learned that this was Senator Gwinne from
California. On the third day of July, which, was my birthday, a ship,
the steamer Catawba, bound for New York, landed at the fort.
It had on board six hundred prisoners of war taken from New
Orleans, and on which I was placed and taken through to
Fortress Monroe, Virginia, and from there sent to City Point
and delivered under parole. We met as we were going up the
James River, Alexander Stephens, going to Washington with
two other Confederates of the Administration type, to treat
for peace. Stephens and his sort could not be trusted by Davis
and his "rule-or-ruin" crew, who did both.

I20 PRISON AND PAROLE.
This was the seventh of July. We were told by the Fed
erals who were guarding us that Lee had captured forty thou
sand of M,eade's soldiers at Gettysburg* and that President
Lincoln had sued President Davis for peace, and tliat was
Stephens' mission. Do not ask did we feel good at this news,
for words cannot tell how overjoyed we were.
When we got to Petersburg the other news reached us from
the Confederate side and told that Lee had lost the flower of
his army and was retreating with but a small portion of it;
that Vicksburg had fallen on the Fourth of July and that the
Confederacy had collapsed.
We were taken toi Camp Lee in Richmond, where we ar
rived about midnight, about twelve hundred in all, with noth
ing to eat and no water to drink and no. one to give us any in
formation. It was the next morning early that quite a num
ber of us went down into, the city, where and when we saw and
heard that of which I have given an account in a previous
chapter. That the Confederacy was "busted" no one seemed to ques
tion, but all seemed anxious to knO'W where we were going to
get something to eat. The stores and all houses were closed
and nothing but confusion and excitement and human wildness
prevailed on every side. My thirst was as great nearly as it was
when I reached the Dead Man's Water Holes on our retreat
from New Mexico'.
We were advised that the Commissary Department was
open to us. I drew my rations witho'Ut any questions, and it
consisted of twelve (all that I could carry) big sea biscuits.
They were about six inches in diameter and two inches thick,
made without salt or soda, kneaded and baked perfectly dry and
hard, each 'weighing about one-half pound or more. I lived on
these and nothing else for two days and made up for two days
for which I had had nothing toi live on, and methought and
thought of how my ancestors had suffered at Valley Forge.

PRISON AND PAROLE. 121
After what might be called the reorganization of the Con
federate army at Richmond, as related elsewhere, from having
some friends and distant relatives in Richmond, to whom I
made myself known and who were high in authority, I pro
cured transportation to the Mississippi River, and while in the
Quartermaster's Department at the capital getting this trans
portation I met a man whom I had knoiwii in Texas, Governor
Frank Lubbock, whoi was the confidential and private secre
tary of President Jefferson Davis. Lubbock had made a good
Governor in Texas and he was universally liked, for he was
really and truly a good man and never did an act which dis
graced his State.
He had a long talk with me and took me to his office. I
told him of the campaign of New Mexicoi and he was greatly
interested in what I told him. I told him of our campaign in
Lo'uisiana, of which he was greatly concerned. He made me
acquainted with the Secretary of War, Sedden, and by him I
was introduced to. President Davis. I was offered a commis
sion, the most responsible and trying that was to. be given to
any one. I told them I was under parole. I told them under
what circumstances I had refused to take the oath of allegiance.
that I could no more violate the one than the other, but that if
they could arrange a cartel of exchange by which I could be
liberated from this parole I would accept, but with the distinct
understanding that I was to- be given no commission as such.
I left the next day with the distinct understanding that a
special commissioner or dispatch should be sent to me in Texas
acquainting me of my exchange and ordering me to. duty.
This dispatch reached me many days too soon, for I was just in
my glory and was fixing myself tO' take on new obligations and
to change the name of one woman over to my O'wn. The
deal was deferred until a more auspicio.us condition offered.
It came and the deal was consummated.
We agreed to not make the change, for I told her that the

122 PRISON AND PAROLE.
war was not going toi last much longer and that I saw ahead
of me the chance of my life, which went under when the block
ade runner Lucy Gwinne, to which I have referred before, was
captured in Galveston by the Federal gunboats.
I went to McGruder's headquarters, where I made myself
known, and I was sent up to Shreveport, Louisiana, to the
commander of the Trans-Mississippi Department, General E.
Kirby Smith, than whom our great Creator may have made
others as good, but none ever better as a soldier and a gentle
man, and I believe as perfect a Christian as ever commanded
troops. I was sent from there to General Buckner, commanding the
District of Louisiana, then at Alexandria, and was given or
ders to cross the Mississippi with dispatches to. Richmond.
Travel in those days from Alexandria, Louisiana, would
baffle description, for it was go and get there, horseback if
you could, but go, footing it or swimming it, and lose no time.
I had no guide and only had a general idea as to where I would
strike the Mississippi and how I would cross it, and then how
to get from there' to Woodville, Mississippi, which was then
the terminus of our railroad and the end of our telegraph
lines, which had nine relays between there and Richmond.
I got my dispatches through by working with the operator
all night and the next evening received reply to wait where
I was twenty-four hours and not to come on farther east, but
to prepare to go back to Alexandria.
Scott's cavalry were thick in that country and I did not
feel myself safe, so I took to the woods, where I remained until
the messages were received. A good Confederate, for two hun
dred and fifty dollars of Confederate money, one dollar in
silver and a two-dollar greenback bill, brought me a good
horse, bridle and saddle. I always believed that he was one
of Scott's cavalry and that he had stolen the outfit, but I was
not asking questions in those days when the question of trans-

PRISON AND PAROLE. 1 23
portation came up, especially one in which I was so deeply in
terested as in this one.
That horse and I saw considerable service together, but
I lost him through the influence of the aforesaid Scott's cav
alry or some other thief, and, though I had money to. buy, none
was for sale, and I had to foot it and swim it and run it, but
always managed to get there on time.
While I had much to do with the secret service of the Con
federacy, I knew much more about it and about what was go
ing on than I ever thought it safe to tell any one. I never al
lowed myself to be inveigled into acting the part of a spy, for
I had learned to mistrust, doubt and suspect everybody.
I never would take a dispatch out of Richmond or receive
it from the Secretary of War until I had studied it and could
transcribe it verbatim, giving him tO' understand that his dis
patch, which was always written on onion sheet paper, would
be either burned or eaten up by me whenever I felt that I was
getting into close quarters.

THE TAINT OF RASCALITY.

When one loses all faith and hoipe in a cause that he has
been engaged in and it comes from his observing speculations,
peculations, fraud, deception, betrayal of trusts and con
fidences, as well as from incompetency and drunken neglect,
if that O'ue is made of the material or clay that good people are
created out of, he certainly becomes not only cold and indif
ferent, but all but vicious, and this was about truly my con
dition about this time, if not before.
The ignorant people of the South, at home as well as in
the army — ^people who read nothing, whoi heard no. one talk
except it be one as ignorant as themselves, who had no' knowl
edge of affairs, of the condition and situation of the Confed
erate cause — were the ones that the Administration depended
upon vastly more than upon the ones who could nbt be lied to
or deceived. I well knew that along to.ward the last there was
an effort made to. do away with me. Not that I had betrayed
any trusts or confidences, but that I knew too much for the
tottering dynasty, and, though I had not been making
any show of my knowledge, I was called toi account
on more than one occasion by whip.pers-in of those who began
to think that I might have my price, as they had, and sell out
to good advantage tO' the secret service men of the United
States, with whom they themselves had had me have confer
ences, and of a nature that, had a tenth part of the loyal fight
ing soldiers known, the army would have disbanded. The
double traitors tried to weave a web of their woof around me,
as I know they had around two' other scouts, but I knew the
villains and was on my. guard.
The women of the South were uncompromising in their
124

THE TAINT OF RASCALITY. I25
loyalty to the Confederacy. They were never allo.wed to know
the true condition of affairs. They were told and believed
that there were ten Federals in the field to our one; that we
never went into an engagement that there were not from two
to twenty times more men on their side. They listened to the
lying accounts given of skirmishes that were never known of
on any battle map, which were multiplied into, battles in which
hundreds were killed, according to the liars' lies, and in re
payment for these lies, told them more often by perambulating
soldiers of the Wort Adams and Scott's Mississippi Cavalry
sort than by their own brothers, they would give forth their
charity, in the way of clothing and mo'ney, if they had it, as
well as good victuals.
I remember one instance which I will relate : Weary and
tired from long riding, coming fro.m a point on the Mississippi
River going to a point on the Rio Grande, tO' do that which
it seemed that no other one could either be induced to do or had
sense enough to' do, I was traveling incO'g. I called at night
fall at a plantation house for accommodations. There were
six ladies on the porch and three men. They were busy talk
ing when I came up. I gave the negro a piece of flat tobacco
to attend to m.y horse well before I left him at the gate, and it
was done. I sat down on the porch, for I looked like a tough,
character and one incompetent and unable to entertain such
a beautiful array of ladies.
I sat down on the porch — was not invited toi a seat. I
reco'gnized the voices of the three men. I had met them in
prison and knew them well. They were paroled at the same
time I was and were still under parole. One of the men had
formerly been an editor of a Texas paper, printed in Bren-
ham, Texas. He was a cunning, slick har. One day in
prison I -was arguing a question with the Federal officer and
this sycophant came up and listened. The question we were
talking about was as to the representation in Congress the

126 THE TAINT OF RASCALITY.
lower house had for the slaves, the Federal contending that
every so many thousand gave us a Congressman. There were
no unpleasant words used in the conversation because I was
talking with a gentleman, who a few days afterward acknowl
edged that I was right.
This fellow, Ross (so he called himself, but I shall always
believe that he stole the name, which was a noble one in Texas,
to make people believe he was something) , came to me advis
ing me to "quit discussing this question with the Yankees,"
for, said he, "don't you know that the best way is to be goody-
goody God and also say goody-goody devil when you are in the
way of your enemy, be with him. That's the way I dot
Make them pay you more for what they want than they will for
what you may have, and when you cannot sing a song to suit
them tell them a story to suit," and a whole lot more of this
sort of two-faced, lying hypocrisy.
This man was the leader of the three in the talk with the
ladies, and he was a good one. He was telling them how the
Yankees fed us in prison and how they treated us. And the
lies he told were quite enough toi make any poor ignorant but
good-hearted woman cry. They swallowed in his lies with a
crazy avidity. He told them how it delighted the Yankees
to go around at roll call and make us all stand up under our
numbers against the wall and then make us face the wall and
jab us with bayonets, and then how they would make us stand
there for hours at a time until men fell down from actual
prostration, and how they kept us from gettin^g drinking water,
which was as free as the air. He told how we were chained
two and two together and marched between a file of soldiers
when they wanted to move us from one quarter to another,
and then told how the fine viands and provisions that had been
sent in by the ladies of New Orleans for the benefit of our sick
were eaten by the Yankee oMcers, It woiuld take a page toi tell
half of the lies he told these good, noble women.

THE TAINT OF RASCALITY. 1 27
Giving my name, he told how I had been taken out two or
three times and put in the Parish Prison and had been
"thumbed up" (tied up by the thumbs), but upon proving that
I was a relation of General Nathaniel P. Banks (a bigger lie
was never told) I was given every possible consideration and
attention, and by reason of this the ladies of New Orleans
sent me all of these fine things for our sick', which the Yan
kees, right before our face and eyes, spread out and ate up.
And there I sat on the porch, more like a poor, hungry, sore-
footed tramp, hearing all this talk from an infamous, lying
villain, who afterward at the close of the war turned "scalla
wag" and joined the Loyal League and was one of the part
ners of Major Smith when the town of Brenham was burned.
I held my mouth. After they had all taken their seats at
the table one of the women condescended to come out and ask
me if I would come in and have some supp'er. Fearing that
I would be recognized I thanked her very much, and would
she be so kind as to send me something out on a platter, which
she did in abundance, and my appetite and thirst were both well
satisfied, while I yet retained a position where I could hear all
that was going on at the table.
I had my saddle-bags, saddle and blankets brought on the
porch and I lay down to go toi sleep, while they occupied the
other end, listening toi the lies about the cruelty of the Yan
kees. The three men were put in the room right op'posite me
on the porch and I heard Ross say to Lewis, "Didn't I do' thera
up brown?" and ask if they hadn't better stay there a whole
week. This house belonged to, and two of the women belonged
to the family of Professor J. B. Law, who was the originator
and founder of the female seminary at Plantersville, Texas,
whom to know was toi honor and respect.
I traveled on the next morning and the next night or the
night after I stopped with a old friend and distant relative, a

128 THE TAINT OF RASCALITY.
man of affairs and a Christian, whom everybody loved and
whom everybody tO' this day who' was living then remembers.
I refer to Dr. Stone in Rrenham. I told him of- the incident
which occurred at Professor Law's place and that I wished that
he might bring it around in some way as to let Ross know that
it was I who was sitting on the porch steps. Whether Dr.
Stone did or not I do not know, but Ross found out all the
same. For this, and several other similar lying O'ffenses, as
well as joining the "Nigger Loyal League," he passed away
forever and forever from all good people's memory.
This man. Major Smith, to whom I have referred, the
"negro bureau agent" that burned Brenham, Texas, was sent
to Gonzales and Seguin. Down on Peach Creek in Gonzales
County some parties in perfect self-defense killed a negro..
Smith fined them fifteen hundred dollars, which they paid.
Other people who had been thrashing negroes were fined from
five to one hundred dollars, all of which Smith fobbed.
He came up to Seguin and did the same way. A friend of
mine, who. had gone through with me in New Mexico., by the
name of McLean, had a sawmill down on the San Marcus
River not far from Gonzales. He gave a negro man, who
had insulted his family a fairly good thrashing — ought to have
killed him. The negro went to Gonzales and saw Smith, who
promptly sent a file of soldiers after McLean. He was
brought in and fined five hundred dollars and told that he
would be kept in the guardhouse and not ahowed to talk to
any one except to send out word to. his friends until his fine
was paid. I was one of the first to whom he applied, though
he was oiwing me at that time. I wrote a letter down to the
banker in that place, a man by the name of Dillsworth, who
I knew as an ultra out-and-out secessionist and Southern man
to the core, one that to doubt, mistrust, or think could be a
traitor would be tO' sin.
In this letter, besides asking that he raise the money for

THE TAINT OF RASCALITY. 1 29
me O'n certain security offered, I let loose and told him about
what this Brenham house-burning-military-sapi-trap-Smith
(which were the very words I used) had been doing up in
Seguin, just as he had been doing down there — fining people
for killing and whipping negroes and putting all the money
in his own pocket. This villain Dillsworth had a few nights
before joined the Nigger Loyal League, and he turned my letter
over to this same house-burning, robbing, thieving villain,
who came back to Seguin the next day and I was sent for and
my letter was pro'duced and sho'wn to me, and I was p.ut un
der guard and given to understand that I was going to. be sent
to General Kidoo, then the commander at Houston, Texas.
I was plainly to'ld that if I wished to give up one thousand
dollars rather than to go I could do so, and that if ever I was
known to open my inouth again in this way death should be my
portion, and as a further evidence of good faith on my part
I was to parole myself to him not to go farther than six miles
from Seguin without his written authority. I had business
which called me to. all parts of the State. I did not go to Ki
doo, for I well felt that he was a full partner with whom
divvies were being made.
Now for any honest man to loO'k over this field with me
would be to agree that the people of the South are the most
imposed upon and long-suffering people on earth or they would
not have allowed such men as Dillsworth — and there were
thousands of this sort all through the country — to live a day in
the State after it was restored into the Union.
These very men are at the head of politics in the South
today. They own its wealth where they do not control its pol
itics. I made an estimate of the amount of money that these
"negro bureau Loyal League" agents took out of four counties
from fines imposed and it amounted to nearly three hundred
thousand dollars.
These were the days of the Reconstruction, when the negro

130 THE TAINT OF RASCALITY.
had been enfranchised and such thieves as Smith sent out by
the United States Government to organize them. Oh, it won't
do to say that the Right Rev. O'. Oi. Howard (he of the Negro
Bureau fame) knew anything about this (and I dO' not really
think he did) — into Loyal Leagues, charging them five dol
lars each for the same and making them pledge themselves to
stand by the bureau agents and toi report to them all acts of
disloyalty on the part of their late masters, and to. come with
all complaints as to bad treatment or mistreatment or whip
pings. When the negro saw his old master or his employer fined
from five to five hundred dollars, he naturally thought that he
was going to get some of it, but the bureau agent always told
him that that went intoi the Go'vernment fund to be divided out
among the negroes when they drew their forty acres and a
-mule. All of which the negro believed to such an extent that
many of them would have actually died for the belief.
I was running quite an extensive cotton plantation at this
time. Going home one morning about ten o'clock, from quite
a distance off on a hill, I saw that all of the plows were stand
ing in the fields when they should have been running. The
grass and weeds were getting away with the cotton very fast.
and not a hand was at work.
Every negro had unhitched the mules and, averaging two
on the back of each, went to the town, six miles off, to re
ceive new degrees in the "Loyalty League," as they called it.
and to be informed as to when, where and how they were go
ing to draw their "forty acres and their mule," My mules
were kept tied up to the fences and the trees in the town forty-
eight hours without anything to eat or drink, while these lying,
peculating, accursed "carpet-baggers" and "scallawags" were
lying to, deceiving and misleading the poor ignorant negro.
Here again I would suggest to every one of my readers to
buy a copy of "The Leopard's Spots" and. read it.

THE TAINT OF RASCALITY. 131
The South, then more than now, was overrun with office-
seekers, a class of men who were too lazy to make an honest
living, and who, in fact, could not make an honest living for
themselves. By demagogism and talking to the people they
could get an office and then get it split so that they could make
a branch for their son and then get the Legislature to increase
taxation by urging them to draw high pay (back wages, if you
please) until today the South is paying anywhere from ten to
one hundred per cent more than they did fifty years ago.
The men whoi were elected to the Legislature in the South
in the days of the reconstruction were the ones who got the
piles of boodle, just as has many a Congressman made his stake
in Washington. Were the truth to be known as to. why the Panama Canal
scheme had not gone through twenty years ago, it would re
sult in so many good Democratic Co'ngressmen having to show
up that a revelation might be made to some people. The wise
man, however, would say, "What odds makes that? That
same man can go and talk to them and they will all vote for
him for office next time, and possibly half of all the voters
would say, 'He only did what I would have done had I been
there.' "
This state of affairs does not prevail anywhere in the most
prosperous States of the Union. The people would not sub
mit to it. For a while this class gained power in our larger
cities, but they were soon sent to the penitentiary and nothing
more heard of them.
The man who does not do. his own thinking on all matters
and subjects and questions, and especially on those respect
ing his Government, but allows another to think for him and
dictate to him, or at least tell him how to vote and act and who
to vote for, is, in my opinion, not a fit subject to be allowed to
live in O'Ur country and should be exiled to Russia.
Who that undertakes to tell me that it is the grog shop

132 THE TAINT OF RASCALITY.
that runs our politics makes a poor show for himself and his
neighbors. In days gone by, but in this respect I hope not be
yond recall, the men who sought an office was loo'ked upon as
little better than a pauper and was the very man who would
never get it. The day is again coming when the office is going
to seek the man, and when that day comes in the South then
affairs political, financial, social and religious down there are
going to so change that the old "scallawag" and office-seeking,
public-crib-eating, cunning ones will be relegated to the past,
and the sound of joy will be heard in all the land.
As an illustration of the average intelligence of the average
half negro and half white district in the South I will relate an
occurrence :
Some years back, when the question of the free coinage of
silver was all the goi, I was traveling in the South, noi matter
where — not that I am afraid to tell it, but because the same
Jack would again jump out of the pot, I don't. I was impor
tuned to make a speech, and I may acknowledge that I was
more of a silver man than I was a gold bug, but wishing to
size up my audience before starting out, I requested that the
bandmaster or the toastmaster, the presiding genius of the
meeting, should, first and before I spo'ke, explain to the people
what sixteen tO' one meant. I knew my old blatherskite, the
orator of the day, who was always either holding some little
office or running for some large one, would make the explana
tion the people wanted, at least as he understood they wanted
it. So. up he jumped and in substance said :
"More for the information of the gentleman who is our
visitor here to-night than any of you, I will explain that sixteen
to one means that every time the United States Government
mint coins one dollar in gold that it shall coin sixteen dollars in
silver." And down he sat.
And in rising what had I to say? My only reply was that
"I had come here to-night remembering the Scriptural injunc-

THE TAINT OF RASCALITY. I33
tion that I should not think of what I would say when I was
brought before the King, but that words would be put into
my mouth, and remembering this injunction, my fellow citi
zens, I have relied upon your President and Chairman to do so,
and he has done it so. effectually that I can say no more."
And I sat down and said no. more and that too amidst a shout
ing, hurrahing crowd. I might as well have undertakai toi talk
an Arabian of the desert away from the Mohammedian faith
as to enlighten the people before me, and had I started in I
would have been hissed down and called all sorts of bad names.
The people who were before me had been told of the mil
lions and millions of dollars in gold pieces produced by the
mines of the United States, and if I remember right they had
been told that it was something like eight hundred million
dollars a year. Now to multiply this eight hundred million
by sixteen, then the people would have one hundred and twen
ty-eight billion, besides the eight hundred million, which would
make one hundred and thirty-six billion each and every year
to distribute among the people of the United States, and this
was what killed the poor greenbackers and their craze, and
why we have never heard anything O'f it since.
Methought while I was facing this crowd of a fence I had
once built out of very crooked persimmon poles and was
brought to task by a man who. wanted to know how it was that
I had not built a fence out of straight rails. I asked him how
old he thought those poles were. He said they were a tree
of very slow growth and possibly they were three hundred
years old. I then asked that if it took God Almighty three
hundred years to. make them as crooked as they were, how
many years did he suppose it would take me to. make straight
rails out of them.
Now the proposition clearly before me in facing this audi
ence, which was the audience of the South at that time, and
it is no better at this time, was : A community of people of

134 THE TAINT OF RASCALITY.
such profound, dense, besotted and accursed ignorance, and
that too in -a free and enlightened country like this, what
could I or any one else do in the way of enlightening them?
Might as well undertake to turn the current of the mighty
Mississippi with a sail cloth.
These people had been educated by their political leaders,
who absolutely and practically made them believe anything
and kept them in this profound and dense ignorance in order
that they might handle them the better. Take the great public
educator, the newspapers, and especially the local ones in the
South. Ninety per cent of the reading is patent plate matter
that is printed in twenty or fifty thousand other papers just as
in it, and the other ten per cent made up of the most sillysally
dribble and patent medicine or whisky shop notices, while
the paper itself is filled up with all sorts of advertisements..
Fit food for the fools who. patronize it ! Of course these papers
are not read by the men' of affairs in the South, and very little
attention or consideration is paid them by the local politidal
"graft," and, thank God not all the people can or do read
them. No wonder that the South is always solid Democratic.
No more to be wondered at than that the ignorant, blood
thirsty, cruel Bazooks of the Arabian desert are Mohamme
dans, who insist that the more cruelly they treat a "Christian
dog," as all Christians are termed there, the more sure they
are of eternal rest in the land beyond. Noi Ephraim was more
joined to his idols than are the people of the South joined to
theirs and to the hand that smote them. And it is the same
hand which still smites them.
Many people of fairly good information have expressed
their surprise to me that the South, and especially Georgia and
Texas, had gone so overwhelmingly in favor of local option.
They supposed that this meant no zvhisky sold in the country,
and they are right, but you see it is this way: Some big

THE TAINT OF RASCALITY. 1 35
wholesale whisky dealers and distillers in Atlanta, Macon,
Augusta, and Savannah, and in Houston, Galveston, San An
tonio., Austin, Dallas and Marshall, co'uld well afford to. hire
all the big popgun preachers, temperance spouters, sky pilots
and influential politicians and noted windbags and other men
of influence to go and camp in a body in a country and whoop
it up to the dear people and the good women, and all being
done in the name of Democracy, local option and prohibition,
would Carry like a flash, for no Democrat would dare vote
against it.
Possibly there had been five, or for the mattet of that fifty,
saloons before, that had paid a State license of fifty dollars,
a county license of fifty dollars and possibly a corporation
license of one hundred dollars, which went to support the
Government and would to that limit relieve the burden of the
poor downtrodden tax-payer, the owner of small homes and
farms. Now what was the result? Mr. Wholesale Liquor
Man sold whisky whichi cost him seventy-five cents a gallon
for two dollars and fifty cents, adding twenty-five cents for
the jug and twenty-five cents to. the local express or railroad
agent for transportation to and empty jug back, and pay some
one else twenty-five cents extra — ^just as likely a magistrate
or co.nstable — for his trouble in handling the order, and the
result was that in these States to-day I give it as my honest
belief from questioning and from close observation, there are
from two to five times more and three times worse poisoned
whisky being drunk by the people than ever before. A whisky
trust is thus formed in states that declare the loudest against
trusts and monopolies.
The smart ones laugh at the fools and how cunningly they -
fooled the people and the poor ignorant people who never did
drink any whisky, for they never had any money to buy it,
and who didn't know anything that was going on, and didn't
care much anyhow, and made them think that they have done
a wonderful thing in making their country go temperance.

136 THE TAINT OF RASCALITY.
Some years ago I was largely interested in a mail order
medicine vending enterprise which sold anything from plasters
for the heel and for the head to pills that make the hair grow.
Our folks did a lot of advertising. I noticed that there were
certain sections of the United States where there was from one
to one hundred times more Jamaica ginger used than was
used in other sections. The reason was easy to be found.
They were all prohibition counties, and it was in these that
we sold the greatest amount of chlorides and other similar
make-drunk-slow-but-easy and brain-cursing health-destroyers
and slow death-dealing decoctions.
Rather than to be a party to the nefarious deal I quit the
business. I am a believer in fates and I believe that there
is a fate, fairly worse than any orthodox hell, which awaits
any man or woman — believe it, dear reader, as much or as
little as you may, but you may live to. believe it more than I,
if possible — whoi wo.uld for selfish gain do. that which would
bring injury to another. If there is noi fate which deals this
way, then I have lived a life of close observation to be wrongly
educated. I can look back from the mo.unt on which I now stand,
over and across the plains which I have journeyed, and I can
point out the unmoftrned and unmarked graves of tens and
tens of thousands of men who oibserved not the laws O'f God
or nature, but who by selfish gain prostituted manhood and
sold their souls for less than a mess of pottage. It is the ac
cursed soul destroyer, the polluter of our public morals and
integrity, either in the forum, the pulpit or the teacher's chair,
who will teach that all men whoi have acquired wealth have
done it through dishonest methods, through treachery or be
trayal of trusts, rascality, deceit or fraud.
This class of people whoi thus acquire wealth are the ex
ception to the rule, and only goes to. make the rule good. But
where one can be shown to have lived toi old age, enjoying his

THE TAINT OF RASCALITY. 1 37
accumulated wealth and leaving it behind him to a quiet family
, division, tens of thousands can be shown who .in dying curse
the world and all mankind, and whose curses stain the very
ground over which they had walked. And who dares to say
nay to this proposition?
The wealth of the South toi-day is in its institutions, largely
o.wned by Jews and foreign coirporations. It has been said that
scientists and statesmen and great men for ages have contem
plated how civilization might be advanced without making
the rich richer and the poor poorer. And we see this question
more practically answered in the Southern States where
Democracy rules supreme, than in any other part of our en
lightened and free Government, excepting in the dives and
dens and lowest, ignorant, depraved, vulgar and vicious parts
of our great cities where the same ilk of politicians doi their
fine work.
The man who brings intoi his family a vile political paper,
a paper full of insulting, ridiculous pictures. Police Gazette
sort, a paper which is full of accounts of scandals and rascali
ties, is a man whO' may well expect, if he lives to an old age, to
see its baleful influence upon those whom he has been instru
mental in raising and educating.
I have often said, and I now know it toi be true, that if any
man will talk with, me on any given subject for a short while,
I can tell what paper he reads, and it has always occurred to
me as being singular that any man will allow any other man
to make for him his decisio.ns and o.pinioins on any subject. I
have no more of a respectable opinion of such men in these
United States than I have for the low-down, depraved, igno
rant, vicious Mexican bull, cock and dog fighter.
These people were so. raised, so. educated and trained, and
so kept by their rulers. They are not allowed to know any
better, and they all belong to the same church, just as the poor.
deluded people of the South all belong toi the same political
party.

LOUISIANA RUM, RUM, RUM.

When one looks back at an event which occurred so nearly
half a century agoi, as did the things about which I am -writing,
and when writing from memory, as I do, at times many
notable occurrences become shady, foggy, and to be viewed
with doubt as to the actual dates.
After the battle of and the retaking of Galveston Island
and city, January first, 1864, we were marched back through ,
Texas, north, where on April fourteenth we rnet Banks' army
of invasion near Shrevesport. He came up Red River on all
sorts of crafts, sixty-five or seventy thousand strong. He
was weak in cavalry and not strong in field artillery. The first
battle had was at Mansfield, Louisiana, where we met his
advance division and after a first-class skirmish, our loss being
four hundred killed and nearly six hundred wounded, the
Federals retreated to Pleasant Hill, where on the evening of
the fifteenth of April we, forty thousand strong, being rein
forced by Churchill's Missouri Division, and Banks being
reinforced by the celebrated General A. J. Smith's fighting
corps from the Army of Tennessee, met in very earnest in
battle array.
The battle commenced about three o'clock p. m. I was
with the dismounted Texas Cavalry on our right. Our in
fantry had engaged the enemy on the main road, where the next
morning I rode over' the dead bodies of two hundred and
twelve of the three hundred and twenty New York Zouaves.
They were dressed in red and were a shining mark for our
riflemen. Few of them got within twenty paces of our rail
fence breastworks.
A. J. Smith's corps was sent to the left and faced the dis-
138

LOUISIANA RUM;, RUM, RUM. I39'
mounted Texas Cavalry, who were in a ravine behind a high
eight-rail staked and ridered fence. Churchill's Division of
Missouri Infantry, all stalwart men in size, were marched
through our ranks going to the front, we, for the first time,
playing the part of a support. They had come in from the In
dian Territory and stopped long enough in Shrevesport to
empty our quartermasters' supplies and had taken all of the
good clothing that was intended for our division of cavalry,
and which we needed very badly; for we never received a
stitch of clothing from that great, good and generous Con
federate Government that you may have, heard someone talk
about. These Missourians positively refused to go toi the
front unless our clothes were issued to them in Shrevesport,
both of which and whom arrived there the same day.
As these Missourians went through our ranks they were
feeling good. We were feeling tired and hungry and were all
but naked, and possibly someone had said something to them
as they came up to the effect that they had stolen our clothes.
Anyway they were loud-mouthed and were making all sorts of
fun of us lying down in a ravine which they had to cra,wl down,
crawl up and then crawl over to the higher fence along on its
bank. They were all armed with the best of new Enfield
rifles just received from England via Mexicoi. These they
would shake in the air and tell us in their own peculiar brag
gadocio way, "We'll show you Texans how to fight. We'll
show you how to doi up the  Yankees," and a thousand and
one similar expressions, while we looked on and listened!
knowing well that something was going toi be doing very soon.
They got over the fence and partly formed in line. There
was no enemy in sight. The order was given to. "Forward
march," and they started across the old field possibly six hun
dred yards up a gradual ascent. When they got about half
way up General A. J. Smith's twelve regimental flags were
raised and six bands commenced playing and some eight

140 LOUISIANA RUM., RUM, RUM.
thousand men marched upi, twelve pieces of artillery being
pushed in front of them. .It all came within half a minute's
time. Their bayonets and burnished armors looked like a million
mirrors reflecting from the hot and brightening sun, and bands
that sounded as never bands had ever before sounded to us
made one of the grandest battle scenes I had ever seen, and
I believe that no man ever saw a more striking one. The dis
play of men, their arms, their bright-shining cannon, the Hags,
the sound of that Yankee-doodle tune, made my heart fed
very queer.
Our Missouri men got about half way up, and I can hear
the sound ringing in my ears at this time, if it were possible,
repeating down the Federal lines, "Forward, march!" And
then came the word, "Fire!" The sound of that musketry
shook the earth, and it had scarcely died away when that same
voice, repeated over and by one hundred subalterns, com
manded, "Fall back!" And the artillery bugles sounded and
in an instant the fourteen pieces, ten twelve-pound guns and
four twenty-four pound howitzers, fired. The trees around us
quaked, the earth shook, the sunshine was dimmed by battle
smoke, and death seemed to be our doom.
The pieces of both infantry and artillery were elevated so
high as to go over the heads of the Missourians and landed in
our rear about one mile, where the shot fell in among our
horses. There were no orders given to the Missourians to
retire, nor had they been told to leave their guns on the battle
field. It was with only one spring that any Missourian suc
ceeded in getting over that fence. It was while they were doing
this that the Federals made a better aim and killed, as I remem
ber, about eighty and wounded about two hundred. The
Missourians went on over us and then it was our time.
We told them that they were not only thieves, but cowards,
and were running without firing their guns. We had reference

LOUISIANA RUM, RUM, RUM. I4I
to the clothing they had taken from us in Shrevesport, and not
to the greater theft they were about to. do. They ran on in
the direction they had started from and came to. our horses tied
in the woods, which they took — stole — from our guards, and
made fast time.
The Federals, not knowing that we were in the ravine,
drew back over the hill and we were ordered back to. where our
horses had been tied. We follo'wed the Missourians that night
fourteen or fifteen miles through the woods toward Mansfield,
where they had dismounted from off our horses and sought
to sleep and dream away their troubles. Possibly as many as
two hundred Missourians kept on going and were never heard
from again. The others were of no further use to the Govern
ment, for they had no guns.
The next morning I was found out and, quite contrary to
my own feelings and inclinatio.ns, was ordered to go to the
front with a flag of truce and overhaul the retreating Federals,
which I did sixteen miles off at what was known as the
"Double Bridges," near Grandicore. My message was deliv
ered to the commanding General, requesting ambulances, sur
geons and supplies, which were promptly sent. We had no
supplies ourselves and our surgeons were thus without power
of operating and rendering service to. the wounded. The Fed
erals brought back with them loads of everything needed in
this line.
We had captured, three days before at the battle of Mans
field, eighty or more well-loaded wagons of provisions, which
was a godsend to us. I remember that I was a little late at
the division, and when I got to the wagons all of the light and
good canned goods were gone. I fell back on a twenty-five-
pound keg of pickled pigs' feet and went partners with one of
my chums, who had got a twenty-five-pound box of crackers.
I always did like pickled pigs' feet and these were especially
spiced.

142 LOUISIANA RUM, RUM, RUM.
It was given out that I had captured a bale of greenbacks
from the quartermaster's or paymaster's wagon, and to this
day many believe that I did. It was only a ten-pound bale of
Killikinick smoking totecco. Years since this I ' was told by
a man who I knew was in the battle that he got away with the
tin safe of greenbacks, and he said it contained seventy-five
thousand dollars, but as he bore no' evidence of wealth about
him or around him I passed it up as a lie, though I well know
he was much above an ordinary thief.
The battles commenced again in a few days. Banks being
well supported by his flotilla of transports and gunboats, their
infantry being always covered and protected in their retreat to
Alexandria down through the Old River and Red River
country. We prepared to give battle, and did, though doing more
harm than good, before our left was turned and our right wii^g
was driven back and our center about-faced and sent to the
rear, leaving the field in possession of the Federals with twen
ty-six pieces of artillery. We drew back to what was known
as McNutt's Hills, northwest of Alexandria on the old road
that led from one side of our co'ntinent to the other by way of
Alexandria, Louisiana, Nacogdoches and San Antonio, Texas,
down to the City of Mexico.
The Federals fell back toi Alexandria, Red River having so
fallen that the boats could not shoot the rapids at that place.
By dismantling all of the cane mills and tearing down rnany of
the stone and brick buildings they built a dam in the river which
confined the channel to a narrow current, over which they shot
their boats. This was one of the greatest engineering feats
performed by either army during the entire war. The man
who engineered this dam construction afterward engineered the
construction of the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad through
Colorado, which up to this date is the greatest of its character
in the world.

LOUISIANA RUM, RUM, RUM. I43
The Federals were detained at Alexandria about six days.
They had plenty of provisions, but were kept in compact quar
ters and there was .but little fighting done.
It was during this retreat that Tom Green of the old
brigade, who had been made a brigadier " general, took the
Woods' Texas regiment of cavalry to the edge of an open field
and, after making a little talk to them about going to show
them how to fight Yankees, he pointed to two gunboats on the
river — ^this was at Blair's landing on Red River. The gun
boats had twelve cannon on each side. The water was on a
level with the top of the levee, which was about eight feet
higher than the field.
A charge on horseback was made across this field upon
these gunboats lying well out in the river. They opened fire
with grape and canister and only fired one side. Green was
killed well in advance, a cannon shot taking the top of his head
off. Three hundred riderless horses ran o.ff the field. Three
hundred Texans lay on the field to answer roll call noi more.
Four hundred escaped — ^rum, rum, rum. Green Louisiana rum,
rum, rum.
In the last year I have been asked to contribute money to
erect a monument to. the memory of this Tom Green, but no
one has ever suggested that the three hundred who were worse
than murdered that morning on that field, should ever be made
mention of on shaft or monument.
From McNutt's Hill on the morning that the Federal flotil
la went over the dam at Alexandria I counted nineteen sugar
plantations' burning, each of which when in running order cal
culating money on a basis of five per cent interest, would aver
age about from four to six hundred thousand dollars each.
There were sixty-four of these sugar plantations burning along
Red River arid the Tache which I counted myself, besides twice
as many more that I did not see, not one of which was fired by
a Yankee, but by natives whoi embraced this opportunity of

144 LOUISIANA RUM, RUM, RUM.
revenge on the rich planters and their cruel overseers, who had
fenced them off from water and had taken their cattle, as did
the lords in the feudal days of the dark ages.
Our cavalry — with whom 1 always preferred to stay rather
than be doing scO'Ut work in a country and for folks I had al
ready learned eno.ugh about' to know that no self-respecting
person could do himself justice, especially when it came to
giving information ^ I might have taken orders or obtained in
formation from Louisiana rum, rum, rum) — was kept con
stantly on the goi, that the Federals might not get scattered
over the country and lost.
I was with the Texas cavalry at Williams' plantation,
twenty-tv/o miles below Alexandria as the bird would fly, and
a much longer distance as the boats would have to go coming
around the bends. The river had so. fallen that its surface \yas
about forty feet below the top of the levee on its western bank,
behind which we ha,d taken temporary quafters. We had
brO'Ught the identical gun that had been captured on the Har
riett Lane in the battle of Galveston, the "bow chaser," a thir-
ty-twoi pound rifled piece. This was planted on the water level
near a short bend in the river. We had saved sixty- four shots
from the Harriett Lane for this gun, and this was the firs/ time
and opportunity that presented for it to make a showing, and
which it did in grand shape under the command of my old
chum and the best friend I ha.d in the army and the best man
there was in the Confederate army, not even excepting myself.
Lieutenant J. C. Cunningham, whoi was better qualified, able
and all-around gifted to have commanded the Trans-Missis
sippi Department than any of the men who. did command it,
but whoi took fiendish delight in turning Cunningham down,
as most of them did in dealing with me.
The Federal boats came down the'' river, one right close
behind the other, the first four in advance loaded down with
cripples, convalescents and sick, and the mail. It was a beau-

LOUISIANA RUM, RUM, RUM. 145
tiful sight to see those boats coming round the bend, decked
with the flags of our nation and well banded with good players
and blowers and horn-tooters. If ever there was any one
thing I did hate worse than another it was two toot-horns
worse than one.
We, about twelve hundred strong, lying behind the levee,
were a surprise to the Federals, who noi doubt thought that
when they got over the dam at Alexandria they were as good
as at home. We opened fire, which they were ill prepared to
receive, yet they did it in a most heroic and brave manner.
The Red River was but a ditch and the boats were right un
der us. We could have brickbatted them toi advantage. They
had scarcely got over their surprise at our appearing on the
levee above them when Cunningham let loose a blue whistler,
which struck the spot, plo-wing lengthwise through the fro.nt
boat, which was heading right toward the muzzle of his can-
no.n, bursting the boiler and creating havoc in all directions.
The boat swung round and of course blocked the stream, and
. the next boat ran against it, and by this time Cunningham, had
the piece loaded again and it belched forth and another boat
was busted upi, and th6n came the Hag of truce.
We ran the prisoners out toi the rear and captured a good
lot of needed supplies, for it must be borne in mind that we
Texans were always hungry. We captured twenty or more
dray loads of United States mail, which was sent to the rear.
Were I to undertake to tell of what these mail bags contained
people at this date would say, to make up for the lapse of my
memory I had made up a pack of lies. Before this time I did
not think there were so many little trinkets which could be
picked up around a house — many of little or noi value, which
could be^steemed as souvenirs. Pieces of silk and sometimes
whole dresses ; bits of linen and even Bibles and hymn books
were in this stolen pile ; ivoiry piano keys were a favorite. Per
haps there was two hundred and fifty thoiusand dollars' worth

146 LOUISIANA RUM, RUM, RUM.
of assorted silverware and ladies' jewelry. If asked what be
came of it I could not tell. We had "lifters" too.
Here at this battle (as some called it and as, all did who
wanted toi make it appear to the girls at home that they had
been in a great fight when in reality it was only a little skir
mish; my idea of a battle T early found was quite different
from that of most people, and is even yet ; but tO' my story)
we had two men, one of whom I have already mentioned —
the man who said that if he believed as I did he would cross the
Rio Grande that night when I told him that the war was going
to last eight years or longer and that he need not be afraid of
not being able to get intO' the battle, that the Yankees would
fight and that he would get his stomach full of them before the
thing ended. He was a meipber of a Committee of Public
Safety at home and was the biggest blue-eyed coward I ever
' saw, excepting one other.
The twoi men messed together, H  and B  (if I
spelled their names out it might be a reflection on brave men
bearing these names). B  was an old nigger-driver and
a thorough blow-hard, a brag, a white-livered cqward. These
two men had never been in a battle or an engagement of any
sort, but always after one was over turned up with wonderful
stories of where they had been, and on one occasion came in
with bullet holes shot through their coats and vests, which they
had hung up in a tree ; the range of the holes would have killed
them dead, and it was a give-away.
While we were lying down behind the levee waiting for the
Federal boats tc» come down, these two. men were lying close
together. A lot of the boys were watching them. When the
order came to fire, of course every man rose on top of the levee
and shot at an object, the boat at least, while these two. men lay
flat on their backs and elevated their guns, raising them as high
as their arms would reach, and fired on a level with the levee,
seeing which the boys who were watching them rushed on and

LOUISIANA RUM, RUM, RUM. I47
seized them, and running up to the top of the levee with them
in their arms, screaming and yelling at the top of their lungs
to the Federals, "Shoot them! Shoot them! Shoot them!"
Cunningham's big gun went off, and though bullets flew
like hail form the boats, not one of the party of ten was hurt.
It was said that the Federals ran up a white flag before Cun
ningham's second shot was fired, thinking that this running on
the ramparts with the men in their arms was a ruse.
It would have taken just such heroic strength as this to
have taken to battle any member of the Committee of Public
Safety, as both of these men were, and I never heard of any
member of the Committee of Public Safety in the South dying
an honorable death in war times, though many of them might
have died a natural death.
We had scarcely secured prisoners, mail and the provisions
off the boats, which were on fire, before the Federal infantry,
ten times our strength, came double-quicking down the wide
plantation road. Whoever tells you that any five hundred
cavalrymen were ever known to. stand up against any ten thou
sand infantry tells you a^lie, and don't you believe it. Horses
were not built for that purpose, and cavalrymen know it.
We went away from there. The Federals rigged up their
pulling machines and in less than twenty-foiur hours had the
ri-irer cleared of its obstruction and from then on down the
banks of the river were well guarded by both armies, we to
keep the Yanks from straying away and getting lost in the
swamps. After this we had many short engagements, and at the bat
tle of Yellow Bayou three hundred and eighty of our men of
Polanagac's infantry division were killed in an instant in a
hopeless assault in obeying an order emanating from Louisiana
rum, rum, rum, hot and steaming from the still. This Gen- ,
eral was shot in General McGruder's headquarters in Hous
ton, Texas, some months after this for his high-flying and do-

148 LOUISIANA RUM, RUM, RUM.
ing a great act of injustice to a man who was a fighter, a Chris
tian and a soldier, and of which I shall tell later.
At Mansura and Cherokee Swamps we engaged the enemy.
At the latter place we lost our heavy artillery, known to the
boys as the "bull battery," six sixty-four pounders pulled by
oxen — old siege guns that noi general worthy of the stars^
would think of wasting time with. Skirmishes and small bat
tles were every day occurrences all this summer in the La
Fourche country, and occasionally over on the Mississippi
River, two only of which I shall write of and about, and that
only to show "what fools these mortals be" who follow rum,
rum, rum.
One was the attack made by Louisiana rum, rum, rum, with
eight hundred as, good soldiers as ever shouldered a musket, on
a stockade of logs twelve feet high, double port-holed, situated
behind a big ditch and backed up by six thousand negro sol
diers armed with the latest implements of war, and whoi fought
under the black flag, to reach which we had to march across an
open field of six or eight hundred yards, every third man carry
ing an ax and a ladder. The man wjjo would undertake such
a fight as this should not be allowed to live one hour ; but "war
is hell" and soldiers are sworn to. obey. The man who or
dered the assault was too well rummed, rummed, rummed to
go along. Surely that would be the case. Three hundred
and forty men were killed in the twinkling of an eye. None
were wounded ; all were killed. We did not bury our dead.
The next was the most successful battle and raid that I
ever had anything to do with, and I only had to do with that
because I knew the man whoi commanded it and planned it and
that there was noi Louisiana rum about it, and I refer tO' Colo
nel J. C. Vincent of the Louisiana cavalry. We were up
Bayou Tache and La Fourche and getting very hungry. The
Federals had an immense supply depot on their side of Bayou
Atachafalia, known as Burwick's Bay, now as Morgan City.

LOUISIANA RUM, RUM, RUM. I49
We actually and absolutely needed those supplies, and some
heroic scouting done by parties I need not name settled the
fact that there were only about eight hundred Federals guard
ing them and that there were only six hundred Federals at La
Fourche. We collected all the "sugar coolers," troughs two feet deep,
six feet wide, eight feet long, with flat bottoms, in which the
molasses was poured toi cool and settle and sugar granulate.
Six men were put in each, each man with one paddle, canoe
fashion, when in the water, and carrying their cooler as though
they were carrying a coffin when "turtling" it overland. Only
side arms were carried. There was no moon on those nights
and the tide no. more waited then for men than now. Some
way above Morgan City we struck the falling tide and took to
the water like so many ducks, without making any noise, for
our paddles worked underneath as a duck's foot does.
We landed at the right spot, and without any sort of excite
ment or noise we deliberately pulled our boats up on the edge
of the bank above tide water and quietly walked up to say,
"Good morning, Mr Yankee!" They got up and beat their
reveille in our honor, it would seem, for a more surprised set of
men never lived on earth. We just simply told them that they
were ours, and putting the words to. action took their guns
and told them that we were after grub and that we had brought
no tobacco along to pay for it, and that we were not dealing in
Louisiana rum. In other words, we pointed down the rail
road toward La Fourche and told them to git, and they got
double quick, and a happier set of men I never saw. I refer
to the retreating Federals. Depend upon it, we were all right,
and furthermore know you that nothing went into our little
boats to the other side of the river in the nature of Louisiana
rum. But it was all good, solid, substantial, first-class edibles,
and like beavers we worked, and before night we had every-

150 LOUISIANA RUM, RUM, RUM.
think on the other bank that was worth moving, with a lot of
ammunition and twelve hundred stand of arms.
We spiked their cannon and dismantled a locomotive, while
our sappers and miners went back and destroyed a culvert or
two. We destroyed nothing and gave the citizens of the, place
to understand that we were "perfect Southern gentlemen."
Had the man "who. commanded this expedition commanded
the army of New Mexico, what a great difference there would
have been in the result! * * * fjad he have commanded
the Confederate army or any considerable portion of it, and
especially the Department of Louisiana, Banks never would
have gotten out of the State and we would not have lost O'Ue-
quarter of the men we did lose. Dick Taylor was General —
yes, indeed, no body doubted that surely he was. Was not he
a brother-in-law of our Government, Mr. JeffersO'U Davis?
And was it not a fact that he did not have any very extensive
acquaintance with people out of Mississippi from which to se
lect 'generals?
I knew Jeff Davis many times over better than tens of
thousands of people who had shaken hands with him in their
day, or than the millions or more who. were at all times ready
to fall down and worship him could have ever known hinx I
never knew of any one single public-spirited, really noble, char
itable act the man ever did, do you ? With him it was a case
of big me, little you all the time — a man of great ability 'in cer
tain lines; a worker of men who handled theiA as the potter
does clay; a hypnotizer of women.
That he was a great ladies' man no man who. ever knew
him will deny. I know that many people rate him as a states
man. On what they predicate their rating I have never been
able to see. He was a man of wonderful dislikes, and I never
knew him to have any great likes. He was no great thinker
on any subject, but did have a very good faculty for collecting
the thoughts of others that were good and matching them up

LOUISIANA RUiM, RUM, RUM. 151
and shaping them so that his fellows thought they were his
own children.
I saw considerable of him. I never saw a smile on his
countenance nor heard a kind word from him to any one. His
public documents and messages never had more than a passing
remark to make of any one, but from first to last were all filled
with I, I, I, or the Government, the Government, the Govern
ment, which was the same thing, as there was no. one around
or about him that ever undertook to suggest anything only as
it was done in a round-about, apparently careless way. He
was no conversationalist, yet a good entertainer when there
were ladies around, and a very good listener when he thought
that by listening he could hear something which could be put to
personal advantage.
Few men ever lived in a free country like ours, of free
people as we are supposed to be, who' had the power of over
awing and making others whoi came into his presence feel so
very small, and what was worse, make them keep that feeling
up all their lives. I never saw anything good in the man
though I tried toi time and again. He was largely the prime
mover of secession and possibly was the proper one to have
been selected as the President of the Confederacy, but I be
lieve that any common, honest, clodhop.per of a planter of the
South whoi made no pretensions tO' statesmanship could have
selected five hundred who' could have led the South with
greater honor and credit. No one, aye, no one else could have
done worse.
It is absolutely repellant to my idea of man's power to say
or believe that the South could have been conquered as it was
without being given one iota of terms or conditions except as
stated before were given by General Grant at Appomattox;
Now, reader, supposing you had been the President of the
Confederacy; when you plainly saw that it was all day with
your cause and you had seen extended to you an olive branch.

152 LOUISIANA RUM, RUM, RUM.
would youi have run away from your office and sought to. escape
out of the country and leave your people whom you had in
volved in such troubles toi their own wretchedness? Even
supposing that if you escaped to England you were going to
get all the money over there for Confederate cotton, estimated
at $22,500,000? Who did get it?
The man who places himself at the head of any sort of an
enterprise, be it ever so small or ever so large, should in doing
so say, "With it I rise ; with it I perish." Did Mr. Davis do
so in any one single instance? Can any one show where he
represented or in any way engaged in any sort of a move that
would alleviate the sufferings and the distress of the people at -
home, much less the Confederate soldier in the field ?
I know that there are a lot of men, worshipers and syco
phants in the South who think that because the women of the
South were so infatuated over Davis that they should make
and sing songs in his praise. The women of the South were
fooled in this matter, as in all others in which they were in any
way wrong. The great and noble people of the South, who
not only loved their country, but their neighbor, never swal
lowed Jeff Davis. He was forced on the people by a set of
ringsters, politicians, who' looked only for self and spoils, who
largely became "scallawags" after they had sold and betrayed
the South.
Once in about so often we see a piece going around in the
Southern papers under different heads, but all referring to the
prison life of Jeff Davis, told in such a way as to incite and
excite sympathy with the people of the South, regardless of
merit or truth. Elsewhere I have referred to the returning
soldier's playing on the 'sympathies of the poor women and
children at home.
That Jeff Davis tried to escape through and by or under
a woman's garment was nothing for the world to be surprised
at. In that way he was trying to get out of the Confederacy

LOUISIANA RUM, 'RUM, RUM. 1 53
and get away from the people of whose ruin he had been the
prime cause, instead of standing up like a noble, brave and
chivalrous man and saying to the enemy, "Here, take me!"
Even at the surrender of Lee's army at Appomattox he
could have called a halt and brought about a peace conference.
Would you undertake to. ask why he did i;iot do' it ? No' man
can answer and do it at all creditably tO' Jefferson Davis' name.
When I travel through the South, as I have in the last few
years, and see the condition of affairs down there, all brought
about by reason of the secessionists deceiving the people and
financially betraying them and selling them out — no other way
to account for it, for there is no man of common intelligence
today who will undertake to say that two' and one-half million
fighting free men, with two' and one-half million bread-pro
ducing slaves (the negroes at home) could ever be conquered,
could ever be whipped by any sort of numbers that might be
brought against them — I ask myself how. can any honest man
love a secession Democrat, and especially of the Jeff Davis
brand. The South had the advantage of people as well as of
ground. It had the advantage of climate as well as produc
tiveness of soil. Shall we say that it was a decree of our
Creator that negro slavery should be abolished, that all this
may be accounted for and the South beco'me reconciled to its
fate? Let the more rabid, deeprin-the-wool and skin-dyed ab
olitionist who ever lived go in the South today and say, if he
dares, but that the condition of the negro in the South today
is many times worse than it was in the days of slavery, while
that of the white people is actually deplorable in many parts
of what was once the most lovely of all the Southern land.
I care not who assails what I have written. Truth is
mighty and will prevail, and will stand when all falsehoods and
deceptions and villainies shall have passed away, and by it I
stand, caring not one iota for the opinion of young men who

154 LOUISIANA RU,M> RUM, RUM.
have not seen what I have seen, or of old men who', although
they lived in the same days with me, saw little and knew less.
Nor must it not be charged against me that I am sore because
any of my family owned negroes that were freed and other
property which was made valueless thereby, for such was not
the case. To the contrary, my ancestors emancipated their
slaves and settled them on Government land. Neither can it
be said that the woman who afterward became my wife owned
negroes. I was no abolitionist, yet I believed that slavery should be
confined tO' certain territory, and I further believe that had
the majority of the people of the United States come to vote
against slavery in a fair election, means for the gradual eman
cipation of the negroi should take place. Yet in those days I
was not a politician or a statesman and gave the matter but
little concern, excepting when I saw cruel punishment meted
O'Ut to a slave whoi would dare to. be free, by a cruel, barbarous,
cold-blooded, heartless overseer after the slave had been ironed
down, as was often the case on the large sugar and cotton plan
tations.

IN ANTE-BELLUM DAYS.
In the winter of '59 my business was to visit the sugar plan
tations on the lower Brazos River in Texas, many of which no
one was allowed to go into pr come out from excepting on a
pass from the owntfr or from the overseer from within, and re
port on things in general and check up accounts.
The  was one of these, and, armed with a pass from the
proprietor, I presented it to the overseer, who. looked at it
upside down and then at me, and said in substance : "If this
is all right, you're all right; but  if it ain't
right, I will make you wish that you were in hell or some other
place that burns not as hot as I will make this for you here."
This, coming from a cruel, monstrous looking, beast-like
being with snake-like eyes darting their flashings at me, made
me feel sort of tremulous. My horse was well nigh bro'ken
down from a long day's journey which I had made in order
to get to this place, for the proprietor told me that I would be
treated very nicely, and he was wanting more favors of the
bank which I represented as credit man.
The overseer carried a big six-shooter on one hip and a
bowie knife on the other and a great big blacksnake whip in
one hand and, if I am not mistaken, a pair of iron knuckles
under the glove on his left hand. He motioned for me to. fol
low him and he went down the road a way to a cabin, where
a white woman was standing on a porch. He gave her my
pass to read and she declared it all right, and, turning around,
he said, "Well, come on with me." The woman hollered to
icnow if we were not coming to supper. He yelled back,
"Send it down to us." So, we rode on to the sugar mill.
It was in the midst of the grinding season. I was told to
iSS

156 IN ANTE-BELLUM DAYS.
go and feed my horse and throw my saddle and stuff up in the
corn bin, but I could not trust my saddle-bags there, for in
them were many thousands of dollars' worth of notes that I
had taken and O'ther statements of account that had to be looked
over and approved by the overseer or owner of the plantation
I fed my horse, but kept my saddle-bags on my shoulders and
came back to the mill, going to the boiling room first, where
I had seen the overseer go.
I was standing looking on when he came up and said:
"If you want to find out anything you had better follow me."
He undertook to take my saddle-bags and throw them over a
beam, but I told him no, that I could not part -with them ; then
I got scared for a fact. He took me down to the furnaces
where six-foot wood was being thrown in under the boiler
which furnished steam to run the great grinders. The negro
whoi was doing this was about twenty-five years old, six feet
one inch tall, weighing about one hundred and ninety or two
hundred pounds. A more perfect nigger man I had never
seen. He had no clothes on whatever. A three-fourths by
three-inch band was riveted about his hips and another around
his neck, then a bar of iron one-half of an inch thjck and two
wide was riveted to the one on the hip and to the one on the
neck, leaving a projection two feet high, bending over on
which was hung a large-sized Kentucky cowbell. Around
his ankles a chain was riveted, and that back to a two hundred
and fifty or three hundred pound piece of iron.
In this condition this nigger was firing the furnace. How
long he had been there I never found out. He was still fir
ing there the next morning when I came down. The overseer
stepped up to within six or eight feet of him, raised his black
snake whip, twirling it around in the air full arm's length with
an oath which only demons could use, and with a swash of the
whip he screamed out, "You'll run away again, will you 
—  !" Six or eight powerful lashes were laid on the

IN ANTE-BELLUM DAYS. I57
negro in this condition, who was praying, "Oh,, Massa ! Oh,
Massa!" but that did no good. Turning around to me this
demon said, "That's the way we are going to treat every ab
olitionist who co.mes down in this country."
I followed the overseer up into the boiling room, carrying
my saddle-bags on my shoulders all the time. My only
weapons of defense was a pair of small Derringer pistols,
which I carried in my breeches pocket. He walked around,
slashing a nigger with his blacksnake whip here and there,
though all were hard at work, and this tO' both men and women
alike. I followed the brute around until finally we landed up
in a room in which there were several cots. There was a par
tition in the room, showing that it might be used by men and
women. I was told to take my pick among the cots and he
would send me something to eat directly, which came in the
shape of a big, chunk of corn dodger pome and boiled bacon on
an old tin plate, and with nothing else, and I did eat. I finally
found some drinking water and was offered some stuff they
called "metheglam," the smell of which was enough.
I went to bed early, for I was very tired, and fell fast asleep,
forgetting all of my troubles and fears. Shortly after I had
gone to bed a party of four or five young men and as many
young women came in. They were having a jolly big time,
of which I knew nothing, for I was sound asleep.. I wore
boots, which were standing at the head of my bed, which they
filled with boiling hot syrup and then jumped on my bed and
screamed, "Fire! Fire!" I grabbed my saddle-bags, my
pants and coat and started off without my boots to escape, as
I thought, a mill on fire, wh,en the men jumped and yelled,
"Your boots!" I shouted back, "I don't want them; where
will we go to get out of the fire ?"
They all, men and women, commenced to laugh. There
I was standing before them, under a dim light, with my clothes
and saddle-bags in my arms in my shirt tail, for up to that time

158 IN ANTE-BELLUM DAYS.
of life I never had worn a pair of drawers. They laughed fit
to kill themselves, and one broke, out and said with a profound
oath, "If he had only stuck his feet intoi his boots we would
have had fun." Whereupon I went back to my cot and there
were my boots filled full of hot syrupi, which would have ruined
me for life had I have stuck my foot into. it. Of course my
boots were ruined.
I sent for the overseer as early as possible in the morning,
fqr I knew better than to. leave the plantation without his send
ing a man toi the outer gate with me. He came out rubbing
his eyes and swearing that he did not want to be bothered by
people like me who came there seeing the niggers. I told him
that "I represented the banking and commission house of Mr.
So-and-Soi and Mr. Soi-and-Soi. The proprietor gave me the
note he did toi see you and said to have you check up this bill,
but you see I, have got noi boots and I have got to get away to
get something to eat, and I rtiay be back. With an oath he
told me to go, and that I had better not come back, and I did
not. I rode eighteen miles toi Columbia through the worst road
a man ever rode before I was able to get a pair of shoes.
Now you ask me of the change I have seen. It was less
than six years after this identical date that this same negro
was presiding over the lower House of the Texas Legislature
as its Speaker in the Twelfth Texas Legislature. And it was
he who passed upon more measures looking to the internal im
provement than all the Speakers who had filled the chairs in
the eleven previous Legislatures and all the Congresses of the
Republic of Texas. For many years afterward he was Pro
bate Judge of that very identical county, and is now, or was
a short time back. * * *
The owner of an adjoining plantation made a raid on this
plantation and on this overseer's wife. In defending her this
overseer was shot in a dozen or more places and then cut to
pieces with a bowie knife, and Jackson, the murderer, was

IN ANTE-BELLUM DAYS. 1 59
turned lobse by a jury of his peers two years afterward, and
twoi years after that was himself shot to pieces by a cowboy
whom he had insulted. The cowboy was never molested.
My business brought me in contact with all the largest cot
ton and cane plantations on the Brazos, Colorado, Guadalupe'
and Trinity Rivers of Texas, and I was drilled into my busi
ness and thoroughly instructed as to how to size up a planta
tion and its owners and overseers. Upon my report largely
depended the credit by the Houston, 'Galveston and New Or
leans factors and bankers.
In those days business was conducted on quite a different
plan from what it is now in any part of the world. The man
who owned a^ract of land, clear and unincumbered, and four
or five niggers, could usually procure credit to the full face
value of the niggers and the land, either in ready cash or in
goods furnished for plantation supplies. The rates were ten
per cent per annum interest, one year's time, renewable every
year, with two and one-half per cent for advancing, making
the interest equal to twelve and one-half per cent.
If the transaction was for ready money, it was to buy more
niggers. On a good plantation, under good management, and
cotton at five and six cents a pound, a negro was calculated to
pay for himself and mule and provisions for both in three
years' time on a cotton plantation and in two years' time on a
sugar plantation.
When an up-courttry planter opened an account with a com
mission merchant or banker in New Obrlearfs or any other city
he paid full retail price for all goods and two and one-half per
cent fo^ advancing. The contract virtually gave over tO' the
factor all of the planter's earthly possessions, and it was often
the case that the factor furnished the overseer for the place,
much as the courts of the country now appoint "receivers" for
lame ducks. A note given "for plantation supplies" covered
everything, no exceptions.

l6o IN ANTE-BELLUM DAYS.
The average cotton planter was a humane master, and I
have visited hundreds of plantations where the negroes on
them were treated with the greatest consideration and Chris
tian kindness, and they were treated just about as the home
folks were.
It was on the big sugar plantations and large Mississippi
cotton plantations that cruelty was shown to the slaves by the
barbarous, cruel overseer, the like of which I have described.
The owners were ih Europe or in some Northern summer re
sort or winter resort in the South, scarcely ever visiting the
plantation. The overseer was the goi-between for the sup
posed owner and the real owner, the banker or the commission
merchant. The average Southern planter of this class was
a bankrupt from the start. Money was furnished him by his
factor, very much as rich people or corporations furnish money
to pensioners, retired clerks, etc.
The negro by nature is indolent. He is impudent, sassy,
and if given an inch will take an ell at any time. He is a great
flatterer. In order to keep him straight the lash was neces
sary and has always been found necessary, more or less, in all
well-regulated families.
I have been in all of the great slave pens or marts in the
big cities like RichmO'nd, Mobile, New Orleans and Galves
ton, and I never saw anything so wonderfully out of the way or
more than might be expected by any sane person whoi looked
at the thing just as it was and had to be. Niggers were raised
in Kentucky and Tennessee and Virginia, just as horses and
mules were, for sale to the cotton and sugar ¦ planters of the
South, and just as they raised hemp, with which to bale the cot
ton, and just as cattle and horses and hogs are raised today for
sale or consignment to. the big markets.
I was never commissioned toi buy any negroes or to sell
any, but I will explain how the matter was conducted. A cofm-
mission house received an order to buy four or fifty, as the

IN ANTE-BELLUM DAYS. l6l
case might be, field hands, men under twenty, not over thirty.
He went to the mart and that number of hands were picked
out, or a less number or a larger number, or half a dozen girls
or half a dozen women for maid-servants, hotel servants or
house servants. They were brought forward for exhibition.
The purchaser had but a few questions to ask. No dickering
as to price was had. On the bulletin board were written words
to this effect, "On Next Wednesday (three or four days off
from the time they were selected) we will sell on the block
twenty abled-bodied young men, field hands. None under
eighteen, none over thirty."
On that day the agent came and the bidding commenced.
If there were one, two or three parties around there who wanted
that particular sort of a drove, possibly the bidding was live
ly and the man who' got that bunch of niggers paid a thousand
or twelve hundred dollars apiece for them. The separation
of families was not as frequent as many would think, for it
was not either good sense, public policy or financial interest to
do it. Then it made no great difference to the negroi. Very
few of them had anything like affections or attachments for
each other. The mother might cry and go on for a little while,
but with the coming of the morrow it was entirely gone out of
her mind, and so also with the father. Like cats, they have
little or no thoughts of the past and no gratitude in their
make-up. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" pictured forth some things in good
shape, and as a play toi catch the eye and senses of the masses
and also as an educator it was a great success. The people of
the North were educated to believe the hard stories which were
told of how the poor slave was treated down South, just as the
warm-hearted, noble-souled women of the South were edu
cated to believe in the cruelty of the Yankees, as I have set
forth and explained elsewhere, and in turn, just as the people

l62 IN ANTE-BELLUM DAYS.
of the North were educated to believe in the Andersonville
prison horrors.
I attended a reunion of the Grand Army of the Republic
where a man was selling pictures representing the prison hor
rors of Andersonville, and they were all on a par with the one
I will undertake to describe. This picture represented four
large mules dra-wing a modern four-wheeled truck wagon with
standards upon each end, six feet high, chained together on top.
This was filled crosswise with human bodies. The body of
the wagon was twelve feet long, six feet high and five feet
wide. These human bodies were laid crosswise and stacked
up, rounding on top, just as one may see a load of frozen hogs
stacked. These bodies were stacked up on top of one another and
were being driven to where a pile of human bodies one hun
dred feet long by fifty feet high were thrown together. No
intelligent man who looked at those pictures but knew that he
was looking at a lie, an impossibility ; that there were no such
mules in harness down there ; that there were no such wagons
made in those days ; that no bodies of dead human beings could
be piled up iri any such a way as that. If all the prisoners at
Andersonville had been dead and thrown in one big pile it
could not have made such a pile as the picture represented.
Notwithstanding all this, that fox-faced, cunning old limping
hypocrite was doing a big business, selling those lithoigraph
pictures to the soldiers' wives and daughters. I never was a
gambling man, but had I have been I would have bet one thou
sand dollars to one that the man who sold the pictures never
was in any sort of an army except an army of deceiving thieves
who are as bad as cutthroats. Oh, how the women would weep
over those pictures !
The worst feature of slavery that I saw was what was
termed "missignation," which word implies little or much to
different people, but to me it implies much. It was a growing

IN ANTE-BELLUM DAYS. 163
evil. It is not the case in the South now. The white and
black races are becoming more and more separated. One can
not see in the city of New Orleans today one octoroon, where
fifty years agoi he might have seen one hundred. There are
many less kinky headed white children born in the South now
than there were fifty years ago, and I may safely say fifty to
one less.
I have referred elsewhere to the migration of the negro
from the South, and I have thought that in consequence thereof
the race will be swallowed up., dried up, evaporated. While it
had been on the increase since the war, it was under conditions
that do not exist in their migratory state.
I was traveling with a gentleman through Arizona and was
asking him of the stock conditions. He told me that it had
been very profitable, but that in the past few years the range
had been over-fed and the grass was dying out, and he said ( I
am not Undertaking to repeat his exact words) : "Cows down
here evaporate and disappear, just like the niggers down South
in Georgia where I came from do, and no one can tell what
becomes of them." I believe that races have thus disappeared
from being swallowed up. Did you ever see a dead cat, a dea,d
wild goose or duck or humming bird ? I do not mean one that
has been killed or trapped.
The negro will never rule the United States again as in the
past, and his day of rule in the South has passed away never,
to return again, and the people of the North say, "It is well.*'

AN EX-CONFEDERATE MONUMENT.
I have been asked to give a history of the building of the
Confederate inonument in Chicago', how it was brought about,
its early inception, origination and completion, by people who
knew that I had done sonle early guiding and scouting in that
dir^tion. It is often the case that when a man undertakes tO' accom
plish, a great undertaking he must place dummies and work
from afar in the rear and through stool-pigeons and wooden
soldiers and decoys, and often not let his right hand know what
his left hand is doing.
The story has so many points of beginning and only one
ending that I scarcely know where tO' commence, but its first
inception was from the following little incident :
When Grant crossed down below Vicksburg and after the
battle of Big Black, where the Confederacy through Pember-
ton's drunken incompetency lost so many soldiers unneces
sarily (referred to in previous chapters) he came down to Jack
son, Mississip'pi, and Sent a "feeler" on do'wn toward Mobile on
the railroad leading in that direction. I was on my way from
Richmond to the Trans-Mississippi Department with the most
important dispatch 'which up toi that time it had been my mis
sion to bear.
I had on a light pair of pants, light shoes, one shirt, a Fed
eral blue blouse and what once was a Panama hat. I had my
Derringer pistols in my breeches pocket. The dispatch was
pinned on my blouse inside of the lapel. I had two packages
of five plugs each of the finest Gravely tobacco that ever was
sold in Richnioind, a package in each inside pocket. There was
method in my madness when I had this done. The heavy dis-
164

AN EX-CONFEDERATE MONUMENT. 165
patch paper which covered them, the heavy red seals placed at
each end would indicate that they were of extra value; and
so was Gra.vely in those days. Such toibacco is worth $3.00
per pound now.
These were my tubs that I carried along toi throw to the
whales. I had best tell this whale story that I may be the bet
ter understood. In the days gone beyond recall when whal
ing was a business followed by a large number of people, the
harpooner was a man unto, himself. He stood in the front of
the boat and cast his fluke irons in the best part of the whale he
could strike. To this harpoon would be attached three or five
hundred feet of rope coiled up in the boat, which would pay
out very fast when the whale got toi feeling the effects of the
flukes. He made thinks lively around there and when three or
five hundred feet of rope was played out the boat with the four
or five sailors in it bobbed around on the water lively. Wh,en
Mr. Whale came to the surface he broke for the boat and there
would be no chance of getting away from him. So. the boat-
.men were always provided with a few tubs which they threw at
the whale, and while the whale was demolishing the tub they
made good their escape. So my dispatch.-like packages of to
bacco' were my tubs.
The whale struck me about four O'' clock one evening. I
had no more idea of seeing Yankees down in that section thirty
miles south of Jackson on the Mobile road than I had of seeing
ghosts. I was right on th.em before I knew it. I was off
guard, not expecting danger. That is when we most often
get it to our heart's content, for, as Garfield said when he was
nominated, "It is the unexpected which occurs."
I had crossed a little stream and gone perhaps a mile when,
looking befo'i-e me in the big road, I saw quite a dust. It was
an open pine woods country. The next I saw was twenty-five
or thirty well-mounted, very dusty Yankees. I knew them

l66 AN EX-CONFEDERATE MONUMENT.
quicker than they knew who I was. I rode out to. the side of
the road to. let them pass, as though it were a matter of every
day occurrence, but the commander of the advance guard did
not see it that way, and yelled out, "Hey, Johnnie!" then I
knew that it was a Westerner, for that was what all Western
troopers called us rebels. "Hea-ve to here and tell us how far it
is to the next water." I turned my mule and said, "Oh, well,
I'll sho-w you. It is only do'wn here a mile." And he rode
toward me and I rode toward him, coming together slantwise-
like, and true to his Yankee instinct, and as I knew would be
the case, he reached down and took out of my pocket next to
him what he supiposed toi be what I wanted him toi think it was,
and then seeing the package in the other pocket, he took that
out, while I picked off and chewed up and swallowed Secretary
of War Sedden's autographed special order by command of
the President.
I saw that my captor felt happy when he told me, 'You
will consider yourself a prisoner of war and as such, sir, deport
yourself." "All right," says I.
We soon reached the creek, and then others reached it, and
soon others reached it, and then the infantry came up, and
there might have been twenty-five thousand live Yankees there
that night.
I saw a squad of cavalry coming and I looked at the chief
rider, whom I recognized from pictures I had seen of him. I
knew that it was General John A. Logan and that he was the
"Sancho Pansy" of the lay-out. Colonel Bolton of the Chi
cago -flying artillery was the man who' captured me. He
turned me and my dispatches, as he supposed, over to Logan,
who was tired and gave me no particular attention save to ask
where I was from., which I answered promptly and told the
truth. They paid no attention to me, nor did I much to them.

AN EX-CONFEDERATE MONUMENT. 167
They divided their crackers and coffee and bacon with me, and
soon all were laying down flat on the ground and sound asleep.
Logan called Bolton to him and said loud enough, for me
to hear, "That Johnnie has played a hell of a trick on you.
See here what he had in those papers." And out he drew my
ten plugs of highly prized and very valuable tobacco., a divisio'U
of which then commenced, when I walked up and asked if I
might not have a little piece of it myself, that I was carrying it
home to my old father in Texas from an old uncle who manu
factured it. The lie went, and so did I soon after.
Soon everything was still in camp and I did not ask,
"Where's your mule?" But I put to practice tactics which I
had learned in the Indian country, and soon on all fours I was
out of the dead line and by daybreak I was twenty-five miles
away and at Dr. Lyons' White Surphur Springs, Mississippi.
Sedden's dispatch was delivered in my hand writing and not
in his. The delay that was caused by my running up against
the' Federal army was more than made up by running "fer-
ninst" them.
Sixteen years after this date I went to the Chicago post-
office second-class division to pay postage on a paper that I
was then publishing in Chicago'. Colonel Bolton, for that was
he, looked at me as much as to say he wanted a drink from an
old acquaintance, and after eyeing me over and having his clerk
give me a receipt, he said: "Haven't I met you somewhere?"
"Yes, I have been there," was my reply ; "and I think from
the look of your jib you have either crossed my trail or I have
yours, and I suggest that we adjourn over to  ," well, it
was where liquid refreshments were dealt out.
He asked me what army I belonged to and then I caught
on. I recognized both the man and his voice, and said I, "Are
you ready to pay me for that tobacco, to say nothing about the
mule?" He jumped lip and grabbed my hand and I his. We had

1 68 AN EX-CONFEDERATE MONUMENT.
a drink or two and then he said, "Follow me. Now we will
have some fun."
He took me to the Grand Pacific Hotel, where General Lo
gan was in conference with "Long Jones," his party's State
Committeeman ; for Logan was hard run for one or two more
votes to return him to the United States Senate, and Jones "he
paid freight on all goods wanted." And Logan got there
again. Bolton bolted into the room with- me without ceremony, and
carrying me up in front of Logan said : "General, here's that
Johnnie rebel prisoner that you put me under arrest for for
two weeks. Now take him."
The first words that Logan said to me were: "That was
almighty good tobacco that your uncle was sending to your
dad." I replied, "It went, didn't it. General ?"
Turning around to Bolton he said: "It seems as though it
did with Bolton."
He wanted to know of me what dispatch it was that I car
ried. We laughed over the matter a little. He wanted to
know if I got through with it, and I said I did.
From that on Logan and I were great personal friends,
and there was nothing honorable in the power of men that I
would not have do.ne for him, and I esteem Mrs. Logan as one
of the grandest of American woman living today.
Grant had served his country eight years and was return
ing around the world and would soon reach San Francisco. I
had already made a few "extemporaneous remarks" before
large audiences in favor of a third term deal. It was Logan
who suggested to me to call the Confederates together in the
city of Chicago to welcome Grant, and making that a nucleus
organize, and he would see that the ground in which the Con
federates were buried in Chicago would be turned over to us to
decorate.

AN EX-CONFEDERATE MONUMENT. 169
I put advertisements in the Chicago, papers, calling for a
meeting of the ex-Confederates -in Chicago, to meet in the Tre
mont Hotel to form ourselves into a company to. welcome U.
S. Grant. There was no name signed to the advertisement,
but the boys came.
I was not acquainted with more than two or three. I had
one of my acquaintances nominate a chairman for the meeting
and another nominate a secretary. I was not known in the deal,
nor did I open my mouth in the meeting. Better men could
not have been selected than were. One, the secretary, turned
turtle after he had been presented with a fine silver service for
his efficiency as secretary, and solely because the boys would
not elect him president.
At the proper time I introduced a resolution for the meet
ing to have a committee of three appointed to correspond with
the Secretary of War with a view of obtaining the proper au
thority for the better care of the graves of the seventy-eight
hundred Confederate soldiers who died at Camp Douglas in
Chicago. I could get no second toi my resolution. All of the
boys were clerks and similarly conditioned, who were 'great
Confederates to hear them talk when there was no. one else
around, but who feared public opinion and sentiment and the
blue pendl of their bosses as a slave did the lash.
After assuring the crowd that I had the assurance O'f Sen
ator Logan and the then Secretary of War, Robert Lincoln,
there were half a dozen seconds and the committee was in
creased from my suggestion to nine, and I have often been
surprised that it had not been iiicreased toi the full number of
members who were there that night. These little clerkies gave
me a great deal of trouble and at one time I came very near
abandoning the undertaking.
Finally a scheme presented itself through General George
R. Davis, an ex-Congressman and manager of the World's
Fair undertaking in Chicago, who sent for me. He and I

170 AN EX-CONFEDERATE MONUMENT.
were old neighbors and friends. The conference ended in my
naming toi him six of the boys whose bosses would let them
go., he toi furnish the funds and all expenses, toi Atlanta,
Georgia, and interview Senator Gordon. I played 'way back
in the background. This little trip secured the World's Fair
for Chicagoi. But for it St. Louis would have carried the day.
When the boys returned I met them in the Grand Pacific
Hotel. They treated me as though I wasn't in the deal and
knew nothing of it. They were swollen up as big as such
characters could possibly swell. In a few days, however, they
were down toi their normal condition as clerks.
After this the association met without my knowledge and
made a deal with a Kentucky Colonel, who had never heard
the sound of a gun or smelled powder, and whoi, for all I know,
may have made a lot of money out of it. But the monument
was erected all the same, and it stands there today — a forty
thousand dollar monument, the finest up to its day that ever
marked a spot where a Confederate soldier lay, ninety-five per
cent of the cost of which was paid by the business men of Chi-
cagoi. I could name two or three men of the Camp in Chi
cago who are really worthy of esteem. The balance are all on
a parity with that class of people whoi, if you but stick a feather
in their hat and give them a few hot toddies and a few words
of flattery, away they go "bigger men than old Grant."
It has been my observation through life that the smaller
the man, the greater opinion he has of himself; and the less
he does for the world and for others, the more he becomes
exalted in his own opinion. Of all detestable things I ever
came across what could equal a negro baby whitewashed or
a white man black-washed, i, e., an old grizzly-bearded, gray-
haired fool and poppin-jay with his beard and hair dyed black?
The Mohammedan religion teaches that there are seven
grades in hell and each succeeding one is twice as hot as the
first or the one preceding it, to "let the punishment fit the

AN EX-CONFEDERATE MONUMENT. 171
crime," and that the seventh and hottest one is the hell of the
hypocrite. The man or woman who thinks that anything is
to be gained by lying, deceit and hypocrisy would think vastly
otherwise if he or she would but live a straightforward, honest,
faithful, virtuous and truthful life.
It is the pretender, the actor, the deceiver, the liar, the fallen
one in all things, who makes this world one of cruelty. It is
the truthful man or woman, and it is the truthful boy or girl
who makes these, who make this world all it is of bountifulness
and beauty. Like begets like in all things, was God's first
order, and as we sow so shall we reap. Whoi plants blessings
-will never reap thistles, and he who honestly and faithfully
and truly seeks to make all mankind with whom he comes in
contact better and more happy, and who seeks toi make two
blades grow where one formerly grew, it is that man or woman
who receives the first lessons in heavenly homeship here on
earth, to be made more bright and happy and perpetual in
that bourne from whence no traveler ever returns.
It is the lying, deceitful hypocrite and the coward who. has
made the Christian religion the derisio'n of soi many noble,
ho'nest people. The cowards of the church that wear the cloth
condone offenses against the tenets of the church until they
have disgraced the calling so that the average man of affairs,
of observation and business experiences, turns from the
preacher with, if not downright contempt and loathsomeness,
then with the same feeling that he would from a bad customer,
as from some one or any one who comes around him wanting
something for nothing, ever begging, ever praying for more
and more, never content and never giving thanks for what is
given or for what they receive.
It is part of my religion and belief — I teach it and practice
it — that God, my great Creator, has no use for the beggar, and
that He pays no attention to prayers. He knows in advance
our wants and, as I believe, it is an insult to Him to spend

172 AN EX-CONFEDERATE MONUMENT.
our time in suggesting what He should do. I mean by this
these beggarly prayers. The great. Creator knows all things,
provides all things, and He gives all things for good, and He
expects from His creatures here below the return of thanks,
expressions of gratefulness, and toi these all things are added.
I have never seen in my world-wide travels a prosperous,
contented, happy community but that the preponderant
peculiarity and characteristic was politeness, thankfulness,
kindness in all these things which make a sojourner or stranger
within their gates feel as though he had been promoted many
degrees heavenward.
I have never yet seen a first-class hypocrite but that he was
always wanting to pray with the family he visited. I have
saved more money in my life by playing shy of the man who
wanted toi make the women and children believe, through and
by his accursed hypocritical actions and pretensions, that he
was just a little better than the best man they had ever met be
fore, and that he was tooi utterly, utterly good to ever be bad in
anything. These are the very chaps who, when they goi toi a great city
like Chicago or New York, want to go- "slumming" and want
to go toi the theater, and who are many times over delighted
with a leg show than they are with any first-class perforrnance ;
and they are the men whoi, when they goi home, will tell, if
you are acquainted in that country, all the people around what
a powerful bad man, what a wonderfully wicked man you are,
and that you are all the while trying to pilot them into the dens
of iniquity. I have come across in my day noi few of this sort and have
found without exception the man who professes to be the most
sanctimonious at home is the most perfect "devilly bug" when
far enough away as to warrant him in thinking that no. one
will ever find him out.
A young man once asked a sage which way would he go

AN EX-CONFEDERATE MONUMENT. 173
to find room to advance. The sage pointed to the upper
shelves of his book case and said, "See, how emp'ty they are!"
It is thus to-day. Always was and always will be. The higher
we ascend, the fewer toi interfere with our spreading out. The
world to-day is more and more demanding nO'ble men, true
men, natural men, men of thought. And the world will re
ward this sort as it has been rewarding them in the last hun
dreds of years and especially since the foundation of this great
Government of human liberty, where all men are equal, except
that the energetic, industrious, truthful man — and he has but
few equals — has reached out and has great room in which to
rove. The teacher, the preacher, the lecturer of to-day who goes
out assailing wrongs and faults and the untruth is the one
who will be blessed in both, basket and store.
No man has a right to participate in any so'rt of charity or
the promotion of any sort in religion or politics who owes an
other man one cent. For the man whoi owes debts to give
money to any sort of an enterprise is like taking another man's
money without his consent. I know of a party, and there are
millions of them, who. tried to make his neighbors and people
believe that he is a very honest man and a good Christian. He
entertains the preacher and al-ways contributes largely in as
public a way as possible when the hat is passed around. This
man has worse than robbed foreign creditors to the tune of
thousands of dollars. His ability to successfully play the
hypocrite, to act the part, never fails to be sufficient to fool and
deceive any one having anything for sale, if the party co'mes
from a distance and relies upon the statement made by the
neighbors of this man, who in every instance has no> knowledge
or idea of his h,ypocritical way of making money, through
making them believe he is a saint, and they in turn giving it
that way to the salesman.
That I have paid dear for my experience in this line no one

174 AN EX-CONFEDERATE MONUMENT.
sho'uld doubt, and I only give my experience as I do in hope
that it may be of benefit only to those who like myself have
hearts that prompt desires to the accomplishment of good toi all.
Some years ago I traveled through Georgia and Florida
to administer on my own estate, in order that my grand
children, whom I love soi much, and who are toi receive it,
should not spend money to find out how that "Grandpap" was
an old fool and died, a pauper as far as his Southern invest
ments were concerned.
I had planted co'nsiderable money on the partnership plan.
I bet on the honesty of my men, mostly old Confederate sol
diers, but did not calculate upon the curses of Almighty God
which rested on the country. From frosts and unprecedented
freezes that came on the property every time the trees got old
enough to bear, and drouths when the cane needed rain to
mature it, but fro.m no fault of the men whom I "grub-staked,"
I lost my all. Just about as I did when I made a consignment
of valuable goods in an old rotten hulk of a ship and started
it through the Indian Ocean, and thus have a cause tO' charge
it up to the "acts of God," as my invoices and bills of lading
would provide for and against such accidents, and as did my
late contractor when he inserted in my contract the words,
"Strikes not preventing."
I was very much anno'yed one evening in m.y Camp when
there were present quite a numiber of my old partners — to
whom I was giving quit-claim deeds — and I was talking with
that free abandon which has always characterized me in my
intercourse with my fellowmen, and much as I might to an old
salt on the decks of a storm-tossed ship, when a lady "butted
in" and called me to taw for the use of language which, if not
elegant, was both, forcible and expressive, to whom I replied :
"I did not come down here to this country with a limiber-backed
Bible in my hands and a Gospel Hymn-book to rob and cheat
the people as they have been toi the extent of millions of dollars

AN EX- CONFEDERATE MONUMENT. I75
by that class of perambulating, hypocritical and homeless gyp
sies, and. Madam, in order that I might not be taken for that
class of thieves and demons I use language that will not admit
of any doubt or double construction on that score." Some one
suggested to the lady, would she now be good ?
I was traveling in this country in an ambulance which
would be a cross between a circus ticket wagon and a Pullman
palace car. For a fact it was a very gay thing on wheels —
sleeping apartment, kitchen and everything else combined —
the most perfect outfit of the sort that I or one in forty mil
lions ever saw, together with a finely harnessed, spanking span
of Kentucky mules. It attracted a great deal of attention.
It was in Griffith, Georgia, a "prescription town"— ^by this
is meant the county runs the grog shop, its profits helping the
tax-payer out (the best thing I ever saw in which any consid
erable amount of whisky entered). It was along toward late
in the evening and our commissary had been replenished at a
grocery store, while one by one of my five traveling com
panions, a nigger on the water wagon, a general on horseback,
and the other two in the van, went for the liquids. We had
pulled up to the corner of a prominent street and the law
wo'uld not allow the dispensers of whisky to sell less or more
than a quart to one man in one day. So we had to take it one
at a time in order toi get a supply to. last until we reached a
prohibition town below, where we had ordered sent' from At
lanta a supply. I have referred toi these prohibition towns
down South elsewhere already and may again further on.
I often take great pleasure in wearing a richly diamonded
jewel representing the degrees of honor I have taken in life,
which was presented to me by a body of men whoi may have
equals, but no superiors on earthi, and by a woman that ought
of right to stand first-class and does in my estimation.
Quite a number of men had collected around to see the
show and to ask where we were going to exhibit and all such

176 AN EX-CONFEDERATE MONUMENT.
offensive questions. Everybody, white or black, little or big,
old or young, took us to be traveling gypsies. I was holding
the lines, for my turn had not yet come to goi for John Barley
corn. A dozen or more schoolgirls of sixteen or eighteen
came prancing by. I heard one say to another, and they
passed it all around within my hearing, "Oh, Jane, he is the
Sancho Pansy Great Mogul King Bee of all the gypsies in all
the land. Just look at his diamond breast-plate."
There was quite a number of High Degree men around
my van admiring it and who read differently from my "breast
plate" than did the girls. I called to the young lady and beck
oned to her to come upi, which she did very reluctantly. I
said, "My young lady, I want toi tell your fortune. Let me
see your right hand." I knew about as much about palmistry
as I would about navigating an air ship. I looked at her face
and then at her hand and in substance said : "You are a great
and close observer. If you are not standing at the head of
your class it is because you do not want tO'. You have it in
your power to do as you may in this world and there is a bright
future before you. You come of a noble family. Be you
sure to be governed by your first impressions and you will
never go wrong." All around thought this to be "a free
sample," and it was another tub to a whale.
Her father unbeknown to me was standing close by and
he wore a "breast-plate" that would nearly match mine. About
this time a man came up who was known by everybody in the
city, who was looking for me and without further ado jumped
into the seat saying, "We will camp so-and-so to-night," a
very short distance from the city and a noted camp^ground,
and they took it for granted that I was a gypsy king — and
hither they repaired in great numbers.
It was two o'clock the next morning before we retired.
My negro cook had used up the five pounds of extra Java
ground coffee. My right hand man had emptied all the bottles.

AN EX-CONFEDERATE MONUMENT. I77
Several of the ladies insisted in declaring that such coffee they
had not tasted in years, and Sambo, nigger like, had sliced
up my choice Cincinnati sugar-cured ham and the ladies were
loud in declaring it the best they had ever tasted. Man never
lived who enjoyed himself more than I did that night.
I was taken for a Yankee and was so talked to, having
previously cautioned my men and traveling coimpanions not
to give me away. After my visitors had said about all they
had to- say about Yankees coming do.wn South, etc., etc., it
was agreed that if they all came down like I did they would be
voted as good people notwithstanding the results of their first
visit in force, for I was then in th,e center of what was Sher
man's March to the Sea. None but the men whoi had said
nothing knew who. I was and what I was.
I asked the attention of all while I told them that I was an
old Confederate soldier, and that when I was lying for dead
on the battle-field no. doubt many of those whoi were standing
there were playing in the band wagon, as I found that class
the most disposed to insult visitors from the North. This
changed the talk quickly, and then we had to go all over the
field again and my commissary supplies and my hospital
"doin's" were all gone.
When the citizens of Chicagoi joined together to build and
erect an equestrian statue toi General John A. Logan in Chi
cago, which now stands on the Lake Front, a monument not
only to the heroi and statesman it represents, but toi the great
ness of the people of Chicagoi as well, I decided that the ex-
Confederates in Chicagoi should turn out in good force at the
unveiling of this monument, and though I was opposed by
several of .the "clerky" element in the association, who are
always prepared to say that they were glad that the war ended
as it did, my efforts were crowned with success, for we had in
line that day a greater num.ber of ex-Confederate soldiers and

178 AN EX-CONFEDERATE MONUMENT.
people of Southern birth than ever before on any occasion, not
excepting the unveiling of the Grant monument in Lincoln
Park. This was largely from the fact that I gave a banquet at
the Tremont House. When one wants to draw a crowd he
needs only toi give something good to eat and drink.

MORAL AND POLITICAL.
Though always a busy man, and boy too, rarely was I
so engaged but that I could stop to admire a rose and smell
its perfume or linger around a bed of flowers, listen to good
singing, sto.p to play with the children, eat a red apple or
listen to a good story if briefly and pointedly told, and I have
flattered rhyself that the best people I ever knew were made
and constructed along on the same lines and after the same
pattern. The stories of the war will live forever and as long as
a noble race of people lives to honor the earth. Near Gren
ada, Mississippi, lived a plantei-, whom we will call Rice,
but that was not his name. He was a tax-and-debt-paying,
good, noble citizen, — there are a number of such in Mississippi.
The Confederates had taken the first nibbling at his chickens,
ducks and geese. Then came the Federals, when his niggers
flew away and left his many cabins vacant, and they took,
without permission, of course, what the Confederates had left
and went into his smoke-house and took all that there was
in there, and then burnt up all of his fences, etc. After
the main army had moved on a compa.ny of Wisconsin troops
came up.
The old gentleman and his wife were sitting on their porch,
or veranda, as some prefer to call it. The troopers asked,
"What chance is there for us to get something to- eat here?"
To which the old gentleman replied : "First my own peo
ple took nearly all and then yoii'iins came along and all my nig
gers left, and yous took my cows and my mules and my horses
and went into my smoke-house and took all that I had there,
and then yous went into my storehouse and took all I had there,
179

l8o MORAL AND POLITICAL.
and then yous burnt all my fences, and here me and my old
wife are left alone without a morsel to eat or a soul on earth
fo administer to our wants and toi bring us consolation,, and
God only knows what may befall us before night." But rais
ing up in his chair he said : "Thank God, you can't take away
from us our hopes of everlasting salvation !"
To which the Federal replied: "Just hold on, old gent,
the Thirteenth Maine is right behind us !"
This was Neal Dow's temperance regiment that left their
slimy trail wherever they crawled through the South. They
delighted in taking the ivory keyboards off the pianos they
found in the Southern residences, and finger rings off the
ladies' hands and ear-rings out of their ears, and other sim
ilar little light-weight things which would sell for a good price.
They were of the sort that "carpet-baggers" were made of and
were good associates and companions to our Southern "scalla
wag." I had much experience with the "carpet-baggers" and, as
my reader must know from my past remarks, with the "scalla
wag" as well. Looking back to the same from this distance,
I having had a watchful eye on all of them, I am free to say
that I never knew one of either who was not a liar, a thief and •
a hypocrite, and in the interest of public welfare, and if an
executive of the great Government, did I have the power, I
would have wiped from, the face of the earth the last vestige of
both. I would have made it a criminal O'ffense for any one to
have mentioned their names afterwards.
My mother gave nie early in life a guide, which has gov
erned me largely through life. It was : "Justice and judg
ment are more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifices."
And another : "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, and
I will repay."
I have always aimed to do justice and differentiate in favor
of the public, and it would have been but justice to the people

MORAL AND POLITICAL. l8l
to have ended the existence of such a brood of "hellions" as
were all "carpet-baggers" and "scallawags."
-And again, always considering myself — though a light
weight — a servant of the Lord here on earth, as such I was
always up in arms to play a part in the vengeance question,
and always in the name of the great I. Am, for it is one of
my cardinal beliefs that a good citizen should evei" be ready to
execute good laws, not only of the land but of morality.
I was once called upon toi make an anti-secession speech,
and that man who had the credit of firing the first gun on Fort
Sumter was the orator of the day, at a Democratic barbecue.
I argued that if each State had a right to draw out of the
Union, then each district in the State had a right to withdraw
from the county, and the county in turn from the district,
and the precinct in turn from the county, and finally the in
dividual from the precinct, and thus we would have no govern
ment or society and become savage pagans.
Wigfall replying, pointed to an old secession slave-holder,
who never had paid an honest debt and never was accused of
doing an honest act, and asked him if he needed law or govern
ment, and was he not able to protect himself? Such I have
always found ruled all communities where no law or order
existed. The preacher in Leadville, Colorado, when that city was in
the hands of a murderous, thieving mob, thought that he would
preach from the text, his own coining, "God's need of men."
I had in my charge an O. S. P., a pillar of the church in his
town and I showed him the notice. He declared that the man
ought to be run out of town, that the proposition was sacrileg
ious, worse than profanity, it was contrary to all orthodoxy.
I told him that I was going to hear that sermon and that
he would go along with me — I knew he would, because he was
afraid to stay' with himself. That preacher was going to tell
us just exactly what was needed. Mr. C  went with me.

1 82 MORAL AND POLITICAL.
The church was croiwded. The sermon was a success and my
old friend C  rushed through the crowd to congratulate the
minister, who had made it so clear to the people that had come
to his church that God needed men in Lea,dville just then more
than in any other spot on earth. From this sermon in less than
forty-eight hours a vigilance committee was formed, and in less
than forty-eight hours more nearly one thousand of the worst
characters who had ever flocked to a mining camp "hoofed it"
over the ten thousand five hundred foot elevation of a moun
tain to other places.
This Lewis T. Wigfall, referred to abo've (who, Sam Hous
ton said, was in such haste to get out of Arkansas that he
sunk the books of a bank in which he was interested in White
River) on this occasion quoted from a speech that William H.
Seward of New York had made in the United States Senate,
replying to what some "fire eater" had said as to there not
being any coercive power in the Constitution of the United
States by which the Southern States could be whipped back
into the Union, to which Seward replied, "If there be no such
law, then we will ap'peal unto a higher law!"
It was then and there that I became a great believer in and
friend of the people who were oppressed, a believer of an
appeal unto a higher law. It is what we are trying to do all
the while, and when the laws of our country, or rather their
execution by the office-seeker, office-holder, public crib pauper,
fails in execution, then should the community appeal unto a
higher law.
Be it unto "the court arms" or be it in solemn compact to
stand each by the other through weal or woe in punishing
crime or wreaking vengeance on the perpetrators of crime and
the violators of the most sacred laws and rights of the people.
I sometimes think that there are about as many criminals
holding office in some States of the United States as there are
violators of the law in the penitentiary, and I have never

MORAL AND POLITICAL. 183
expressed this opinion publicly but that it received warm accla
mation. I was once horrified by the proposition in effect that
"there are more people who pray for an appetite to eat some
thing than there are who pray for something to eat."
Then I was a hale, hearty young man and knew not what
derangements of the digestive organs, either by dyspepsia or
from middle age or old age could be brought about.
Another proposition which horrified me was that it was
much easier to corrupt a judge of the Supreme Court by
bribery than it would be to bribe a newly elected or appointed
justice of the peace; that it was more easy to reach a United
States Congressman and yet easier a United States Senator
than it was to reach a newly elected State Legislator or
Senator. I never lost sight of these propositions, and after years of
experience in nearly all sorts of callings and business and with
a personal acquaintance second to no man in the Union among
politicians as well as the common people, millionaires and
others, the propositions are not so horrifying as when I was a
boy, when, being sincere and honest myself, I so considered
everybody else.
I have had dealings with people, a great number of them,
who were incorruptible — ^people beyond a price, who were
honest in all they did and thought. Yet many of these were
wrong in no inconsiderable part of their thoughts. They were
right in that they would have died for their beliefs. Such
men are to be respected, honored and revered. They are more
plentiful in some countries than in others. I have never heard
of one living in Spain or Mexico, excepting it was on the ques
tion of religion, solid Roman Catholic. The Anglo-Saxon
race produces more of them than all the other races on the
earth combined, and it is therefore that we are ruling the
world, and as our sphere of usefulness becomes larger and
larger by our ever expanding, there will be more and more

184 MORAL AND POLITICAL.
demand for upper-case, truthful, honorable, noble, just men,
and women too, for "she who rocks the cradle rules the world,"
but it is not she who rocks it through a wet nurse or a kinder
garten, but the mother Who was raised by a mother and there
fore knows how to raise men, manly men, men who' will never
spell their middle names out or part their hair in the middle or
spend hours before a glass like a Miss Nancy dressing and
primping to catch the eye, men who aspire to gO' higher and
shed more light on the world and make it possible for more
to ascend higher on the scale of human greatness.
Our country today has more calls for men of this class
than before. While we are sending school teachers out to the
Philippines and to San Domingo, and those whom we are send
ing may be able to answer back in the course of an age or two
whether the "Constitution follows the flag" or not, if the
teachers whom we are sending as aids of our Government to
teach the people the good Anglo-Saxon three R's, law and
order are doing this, they are doing much better than our
religious denominations have done in ninety .cases out of one
hundred in sending out their missionaries to pagan lands. If
they are not, they had better be recalled and another army
of soldiers sent there who will execute the demands of the
age, which as I read them' will eradicate all ignorance, super
stition, barbarous paganism and deviltry or "meanness, and
clear the face of the earth for a higher and better people.
as was done by the founders of this great Government.
In the next fifty years the goody-goody element in the
United States will be counted with the things that have passed
beyond recall, and, like the blue laws of our Puritanic New
Englanders of old, be pointed to with "was it possible?"
One in this enlightened age and day can read over these
New England blue laws but to question the sanity of the people
or to doubt their leaders' accursed hypocrisy ; one of the two

MORAL AND POLITICAL. 1 85
always follows. Yet those laws, brutal as they were, evolved
into the better and more just ones.
The goody-goody people of the period in .which lived
better than thou element of part-the-hair-on-the-side women
and in the middle men have been a great schooling for the
thinking people. The thoughts they are thinking are fast
evolving into practical shape, as may be seen by any observ
ing, intelligent citizen in the organization of civic federations
and similar Societes and Associations all over our land wherein
no office-seeking hypocrite can become a member, but only men,
tax and debt payers, people who ever stand ready for better
and more honest government but who could not be induced
to run for office.
Men who pledge one and each to the other to ferret out,
expose and oppose and by word and deed, and money as well,
defeat the unworthy place-seeking men or party ; to expose the
past history and record of all the bribe-takers and boodlers and
grey wolves and grafters — ^these associations and clubs are
being formed 'all over the land, and it will not be many years
before the false teacher and preacher and foxy, crafty poli
tician will no. longer live at the public crib, and honest laws
will be enacted and dishonest ones will be repealed, and the
judge on the bench will decide by them and not from and by
the influence and bribes that he may have received before he
was elected by corporations.
What chance has any honest litigant in any court before
any judge who., before being nominated for the office — which
pays a salary of five thousand dollars a year — was required to
pay twenty-five hundred dollars to his party ringsters for a ¦
no'mination, party slush fund, then after his nomination five
thousand more to the pa,rty managers to be divided out among
the local bosses, and they in turn to the gin-mills for booze?
Then on top of this an additional and in advance ten per cent

l86 MORAL AND POLITICAL.
of his first two years' salary, o.ne-half for the State party or
ganization and the other half for the Natio.nal party ?
My readers must not say that it was only Democrats who
did this, or only Republicans, for there is not a man who reads
this book so accursed ignorant as not to know that the worst
trust in the United States is the trust which was formed and
exists between the party managers, who get together to formu
late their plans to plunder the people. Could any one expect
to gO' before this judge and get ho'uesty in any case against
a corporation or concern which had furnished him the money
tO' pay those different assessments ?
The delay in the execution of the laws is the greatest of
crimes. The judges are responsible for this more than the
lawyers are who come before him. All judges are lawyers,
but not all lawyers are thieves or rascals. Those who. are not
never hold office, but are in the employ of rich people and cor
porations who employ them to watch their interests and keep
them from harm or trouble.
I know several lawyers who receive from twenty-five to
one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars a year salary as
chief counsel who earn their salary several times over each
year. This may sound strange to some people and especially
to those who know little of commerce or trade and its im
mensity. If I were to state here the amount of dollars earned per
mile by the railroads of the United' States, the man who thinks
that he is doing a big business in picking berries to. pick the
little ones and the rotten ones first and put them in the bottom
of the basket, and then the big ones on the top, would say that
I was prevaricating. The figures would astonish even thous
ands who are engaged in commercial pursuits. Go inquire for
yourself, by writing to the editor of your best paper and ask
him : i . How many miles of railroad are there in the United

MORAL AND POLITICAL. 187
States ? 2. What are the average gross receipts per mile per
year? The intelligence of the average men of the United States is
very small indeed as co'mpared with the volume of business
done therein. If you would, see how little the man of average
intelligence knows about the commerce of the United States,
propO'Und this sort of a question to any of your acquaintances.
Start out by asking him if he knows anything about the Suez
Canal, which connects the Mediterranean Sea (near where
Moses played an early Yankee trick on a Mr. Pharaoh for hav
ing made his people make brick without straw) and of the
wonderful commerce that must naturally pass through it be
tween the Orient and the West.
Then ask him if he has any knowledge of the Soo Canal
which connects Lake Superior with Lake Huron.
Be sure now to get your man to decide that he has a knowl
edge of these canals. Aid him to a better knowledge by sho'W-
ing him the map O'f the countries and then ask him point blank
what he would suppose the relative tonnage that passes
through these two would be, and considering that the Soo
Canal was only open to navigation five months of the year,
while the Suez is open the year round. Have him co'mmit
himself well so that he can't go back on his knowledge when he
gets wise.
Then ask him. as to the relative value of this tonnage each
and every year. After getting answers from a few of your
best informed people then sit down and write to some editor
and propound the -questions to him and don't be surprised if
the answer co.mes back that the tonnage of the Soo Canal is ten
times greater, though much less than half the time in use, and
that its value was twenty times greater and that the ratio, was
growing more and more every year.
It is possible for men who begin to think themselves old to
live to see such a revolution in the politics of our country

1 88 MORAL ANp POLITICAL.
brought about by such influences as I have cited, that the courts
of our country will not have one-tenth to attend tO' that they
have now, and that bribery and wrong will never be heard of
again. The age may be upon us when all of our best captains of
industry and of every interest of man, will think in the direc
tion of better government, of a more honest execution of the
laws, and it is the belief of many that taxation may be reduced
one-half or even more.
In my day I have heard much of "civil service," which is
labeled in some way in my mind as "civil robbery." It was a
"carpet-bag" scheme to keep in office their accursed villains
down So'Uth and afterwards played up North toi keep' old sol
diers in good jobs at the expense of the taxpayer. The reason
why the South is so badly governed and cursed in its gov
ernment is more largely frorii the fact that it has but one party
than from any other cause that I know. Where twO' parties
exist in any state or community, one watching the other, cor
ruption never enters until the party trust is formed as referred
to before. Since the party trusts were formed, the man of
affairs has found that general cormption ensued, and unless the
taxpayer and the business man organized the self-protecting
associations and vigilance committees the country was doomed.

A FEW FOUNDATION PRINCIPLES.

Lord Chesterfield was applied to by Dr. Johnson, the first
Englishman to think of making a dictionary, asking the Lord
to patronize him, in other words to aid him financially. Lord
Chesterfield turned him down sharply. Dr. Johnson went on
with his work and in a short time was able to. present to. the
public proof sheets of his great and master work. He sent
one to Chesterfield, who promptly wrote to him — now that he
saw it was a success — that he would be pleased to aid him,
and intimated that he might dedicate the work to him, the
aforesaid Chesterfield, the leader of the four hundred of Eng
land at that time.
Dr. Johnson promptly replied to. himi in substance :
"Dear Sir: (It is said that he did not even call him 'Dear
Lord' ) when I needed you, you did not patronize me. Now I
don't need you, and you shall not patronize me nor I you !"
When I started out in the world for myself and needed
patronage, aid and assistance, none was given me, and but for
that possibly I might have been as no account to myself and
the world as the tens and tens of thousands that I have passed
on the road in my journey through life have proved to be.
I have often found myself in a condition that it was more
pleasant and decidedly more pro'fitable for me to fight my O'wn
battles and way through, than it was to bribe or feed my way
through the army of leeches, dead-beats and villains that stood
before me ready either tO' oppose or applaud just as the wind
blew and pay was in it for them.
In the sense the wO'rd is usually used I never was a poli
tician. Being an American born, a descendant from a noble
stock of grand government founders, I am a politician, and
189

190 A FEW FOUNDATION PRINCIPLES.
especially on National affairs and questions of importance, and
no o.ne has ever accused me of being cowardly or in any way
backward about expressing my honest American opinion on
any and all subjects— excepting at the time I was being han
dled by the Secession Committee of Public Safety down in Fort
Bend County, Texas. Then I did not show the white feather,
but played the part of a dissembler; not that I had one drop of
abolitionist blood in my veins, but that I hated thar methods
a^mucli as I hated the men themselves and a thousand times
more than I hated the abolition cause.
I had been called upon often to take the lead in perilous,
doubtful and very dangerous undertakings, and I have more
often declined than accepted ; the latter only when I was satis
fied in my own mind that the people who came to me were as
honest and would prove themselves as brave as I was and
might prove myself, when the time of trial carrie.
I never yet have lost a cause, a move or measure that I have
championed and was the leader of or in, and I can truthfully
say, defying contradiction, that I never yet financed a great
undertaking but that it resulted in success, save and excepting
when the acts of God interfered and prevented or the acts of a
set of hypocrites and confidence men betrayed.
My name has been connected with many gigantic enter
prises in all sections of the Western and Southern portions of
the Union, and but for the absolute necessity of my having to
play dummy like and remain in the rear and not co.me to the
front myself, I might have been more extensively known than
I am. There are but few localities in the United States but
where I have been tolerably well kno'wn for the last many
years, and in quite a number of them I am glad to kno'W that I
have been known and talked of and preached about as being
quite a different man to what the' majority of people in that
locality were.
My life has been an open book, the pages of which have

¦ A FEW FOUNDATION PRINCIPLES. I9I
been filled with honest effort, indefatigable energy and indus
try, and not like the finger-board on the roadside, always point
ing, but never going.
An editor of a Texas paper, who was afterwards elected
to the State Senate and then to a judgeship in his district
called me the "indefatigable and irrepressible T. N." Had he
lived he might have gone higher, for he always served me
nobly and met the people's wants most grandly.
It was "Beast Butler" of New Orleans who said that: "The
people had called him everything but a fool."
I might say that I have been called everything in turn by
people, and that I have been called a fool too, and it was then
that I made the most money, for I have never made money out
of any man that thought I was smarter than he, or in other
words, thought that I was too smart for him to deal with.
I never made a horse trade — I have bought and sold many
horses — and I never got the better of a jockey only as he
thought that I was a "know nothing" regarding horse flesh.
In my day I have heard much about "worthy people" and
especially about the "worthy poor." I early set in life as a
rule that nothing was worth more than it would bring. When
one talks to me abo.ut "worthy people," I ask, What is their
worth? What has been their worth? What have they done
to coiutribute to the wealth and worth of the world? Have
they been industrious ? Honest? Have they brought joy and
gladness to any ? Have they paid their debts ? Have they be
come of little value by reasons of wear, as gold pieces and
silver pieces will become? Then, if yes, they are worthy; but
if they are rusty from disuse, if they have done no one good,
if they have not improved, beautified and advanced the world
and made efforts toi make two blades grow where one formerly
grew, then let them go. "over the hill to the poorhouse" and see
that no honest taxpayer is required to pay for more than very
cheap rations for them.

ip2 ' A FEW FOUNDATION PRINCIPLES.
The cry of "pity the poor and aid the needy and distressed,"
in about ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, is a cry emanating
from an accursed muUifaced hypocrite, who is working the
people, being too lazy to work him or herself, office^seeking,
public crib-feed politician like.
I at one time had a large business in the City of Chicago
(and I never lost interest in anything that is or was good),
and there, as everywhere else that I had lived, it soon got out
that I was "easy to work," that I was a "shining ma.rk," that
I was "a soft snap," and in a very short time the dead-beats
and the paupers and the beggars and the liars and the thieves
and the hypocrites and the confidence men commenced coming
in great numbers and it being good old Democratic hard times
there; was considerable excuse for such conditions.
I provided myself with a rock crusher, turned by hand, for
the able bodied, and other contrivances for the less able, and I
gave employment and work to every caller, and I made them
earn all they got from me, and in a very short time there were
but few that came around me, and those that stayed around- me
were of the "worthy poor and needy," and I provided for them
and aided them and I am happy today to know that I can point
out not just one or two but many, who are today in good cir
cumstances, that I aided to an honest living, and when they
were being chased by hungry wolves my cable-tow pulled them
away from the hungry beasts' grab.
I am no more of an enemy to charitable institutions than I
am to foreign missionary societies, and I am not half so great
an enemy to these as would be ninety per cent of my fellow
men who know as much about them as I do and who have come
across and in contact with them not only here at home but in
foreign countries.
I often think of "John Randolph of Roanoke," whose his
tory and record sho'Uld be known by eyery American, and is if
that American is worthy of citizenship. Mr. Randolph was a

A FEW FOUNDATION PRINCIPLES. 193
great admirer of fine horses (I never knew a good and noble
man who did not love women and horses, and too often good
wine). He was at a race when Smith came up to him and
said: "Mr. Randolph, you want to bet on the brown horse; I'll
bet O'U the black, and my friend Jones will hold the stakes."
Mr. Randolph looked around, first at Smith and then at
Jones, and then asked :
"Who in — will hold your friend Jones?" Who holds
the missionaries and the collectors for the poor the worthy
poor? I know that many of my readers will object to the dashes
I use in recording the correspondence and conversations with
many people. An old Methodist preacher down in Texas
refused to have anything further to do with me and my cause
because the printer accidentally put in a long half inch dash
instead of a word and that old preacher said that I meant to
say "damn it." The world is full of his sort, who' judge all
by themselves, and whose mind is so full of guile and evil that
it is but natural for them to think ditto of all others.
I was happy to know always afterward during my life
that the old preacher lost more than I did and that through the
negligence of the printer for once in life I lost but very little
as compared with what I would have lost had he put in the
two proper words instead of a long dash.
I was once called upon to introduce to an audience a man
whom the world knows only in part and to. whom I have been
frequently likened and compared. I refer to the late George
Francis Train. I have been considered a good toast-master
by people who have not come across better, as I have.
After introducing my friend and making as much of a
panegyric as I could, he told them in substance that when he
was a baby his mother died leaving him to be reared by his
old grandmother, a New Englander of Puritanical descent

194 A FEW FOUNDATION PRINCIPLES.
who was so straight up that she leaned back a little, very
religious and very exacting. She thought too much of George
to send him to the little "red schoolhouse," but employed a
governess, who taught him all there was to be taught from,
in and out of that great American educational work that I
have heretofore referred to, "The Webster Elementary Spell
ing book," after which George had a preceptor and a tutor
imported from New York, sent by the old lady's commission
merchant, who attended to the receiving of and the selling of
her San Domingo sugar and rum, and no doubt slaves from
Africa in her earlier life.
This man was a thorough up-to-date "all-rounder," the
best that Train had ever seen in all his life. He was a first-
class hypocrite and made the old lady believe that he was a
Christian per-se, rather than a Pharisee.
This good grandmother told George, and that with the full
consent and approval of the "ah-rounder," that if he wanted
to be a good man and a great man like George Washington
and Clay and WelDster and Otis a,nd all the other great men
who were then prominent before the American people, he must
not use tobacco, chew or smoke, that he must not drink
whisky, rum, wine or beer, that he must not use any cuss
words, that he must not play cards or know o.ne fro'm the
other, that he must go to church every Sunday, and that he
must at all times conform to the customs and nabits of the
old lady's ideas and ideals, etc.
All of which young George took in as Bible tmths. When
he arrived at the age of eighteen his grandmother thought
that it was time for him to go out and see the world and get
in touch with those great men, and he was fitted out in a
style befitting his ppsition and standing with the world as
being, and as he was, the wealthiest heir O'U the American
continent. Vanderbilts were not in it at that time, nor were
there any Rockefellers.

A FEW FOUNDATION PRINCIPLES. I95
His guide, conductor, educator and pilot the "all-rounder"
was at home on this sort of a trip, and George said that there
was nothing that so surprised him as to find out when he got
to Washington that not a single one of these great men that
his grandmother had held up to him but what chewed, and
smoked and drank whisky and used all sorts of patent cuss
words, gambled and got drunk and did everything that his
grandmother told him great men never did.
My experience with the world has been just about the
same as was Mr. Train's. I never pained my old mother by
telling her that she knew nothing about the world and what
sort of people the so-called great people of the world were,
both as respects their habits, religion and morals.
The young man who starts out in this world thinking that '
the people elsewhere and everywhere else are any better than
those of his own community will be greatly disappointed, and
his disappointment will be in proportion as to how honest and
great and noble he was esteemed and thought of in his birth
place. Often I have thought that most young men failed in
making a success of life from having gotten off on the wrong
track in this respect.
Never have I seen a young man who amounted to much
in this world but whose father, or the one responsible for his
raising, had taken great pains in showing him the world and
all therein just as it was, and when he went out for himself
he found that his parents or guardians had not lied to him,
but had told him the truth, and therefore he lived to honor
and respect them.
A gentleman who owned a fine rig, had a beautiful woman
for a wife, and a three-year-old boy. They had been promis
ing the boy, "Well, the next time we will take you. Bob,"
over and again. One morning they made the same promise
and drove off, when the boy said to the nurse :
"There goes two of the biggest liars that ever lived."

196 A FEW FOUNDATION PRINCIPLES.
Nothing that that father or mother could ever do for that
boy could change his first impressions, which, as all must
know, are the impressions that- foUo'W us thro'Ugh life.
We need have no fears of the boy not being able to hold
his own and bring honor 'to his family and name who has.
beeri properly raised, but we could have all sorts of fears, in
fact knozv of the bad future in store for the boy who has been
falsely raised, that in his education he had been deceived by
parents or teachers who concealed the truth and falsified and
discolored facts.
We know that an old adage says : "As the twig is bent
so will the tree incline," but if the twig is bent against the
high and prevailing winds that it will have to grow against,
one will always be safe in knowing that the tree will grow in
an opposite lean from the way it was planted.
I think that it was from viewing these facts that some
sage originated the saying: "The road to hell is paved with
good intentions."
Had I taken the best advice that was ever given me, many
times I would have gone to ruin in a jiffy.
The father and. mother of a little four-year-old girl of my
acquaintance, who had been very careful in her associations
were horrified to hear her using the very worst of bad
boy's street slang phrases and could not account for it. It was
in the air — "The bed bug has no wings at all but it gets there
just the same."
The Vendome Column in Paris, which was being con
structed for three hundred years, costing millions and millions
and representing all that was noble, grand and magnificent of
the French people and of France, was utterly destroyed by an
anarchist of the Cummune order and at a less expenditure for
dynamite than it would cost to get a satisfying dinner for one
person in the dining-car of this train, and still there are people
who prate about their religion and who are of the "better than

A FEW FOUNDATION PRINCIPLES. I97
thou" class who will say they pray for such and will carry
roses to the murderers in our jails.
We may plan dnd we may plant and plow and toil, and we
may garner great harvests and in the garner all the fruits of
a year's toil, labor and great money outlay may be found, yet
a playing urchin with a friction match may destroy all, and
that too not intentionally. Eternal vigilance is no more the
price of liberty than it is of wealth.
Water never runs up stream, nor do straws fly against the
wind, and no man need expect profit and reward frcm any sort
of dissipation or neglect of duties.
The commercial agencies report that there are only three
successes O'Ut of one hundred starts in commercial life. This
can be read as to. say that in one hundred efforts that we may
make to rise we must expect to be knocked down ninety-seven
times. Thus it is only the brave and persistent who succeed.
It is not the number of times that one is knocked down that
makes the man, but the number of times he gets up.
I have many acquaintances in this world who would have
been surrounded with wealth in their old age if that wealth
could have been acquired by a few days', a few weeks' or even
a few months' hard, patient toil, economy and thought, but the
idea of years and years of such made their hearts sick. It is
very possible that a greater per cent of failures than has been
estimated would be true if we all knew what was in store for
us. That ho.pe deferred maketh the heart sick no one can
doubt but it is only from ever hoping, ever striving and look
ing for a reward from a source we kno'W not whence it cometh,
for duty well done and a life justly lived that success comes.
The one who upon rising in the morning shakes hands with
the devil first of all other acts need expect but little else but
devilish deeds all day. It calls for a brave heart and a strong
will to refuse this shake, for when saints are asleep the devil
is aroun(i seeking for the early bird, who is often caught by

iq8 A FEW FOUNDATION PRINCIPLES.
him instead of the early bird catching the worm. The devil
very often catches the early bird, but more often the late one.
When only a boy I was asked by an elder one morning to
take a drink with him. My -reply was :
"I make it a rule not to shake hands with the devil the first
thing I do upon getting up in the morning."
We walked on and he did not take a drink. Fates and
fortunes of war separated me from this young man, and I had
lost all sight of him for thirty-five years, when we came to
gether in a foreign city where he was traveling with his wife
and family. He made himself known to me and after intro
ducing me to not only his family but the friends who were trav
eling with him, said, pointing to me :
"All this and all that I am and possess on this earth I owe
to him." He then told the circumstance and place and said that from
not shaking hands with the devil the first thing in the morn
ing in the way of taking a "cocktail" or some other "bracer" he
had become the man that he was.
I would not have my reader believe that I am a goody-
goody man from having preached this little sermon, for I am
like the professor of medicine before his graduating class. He
was asked by one of the young students :
"Professor, you have told us about this 'pathy and that
'pathy and all the different 'pathies, now will you tell us what
'pathy to use to cure ?"
The professor looked up, and laying down his specs on the
table said :
"Young men, never undertake to drive a tack with a sledge
hammer, never undertake to drive a spike with a tack hammer,
but when you come up against a case that is perplexing use
anything from an aurora borealis to hell's blazes."
It has not been seldom in my day that I have been compelled
to paint the air so blue a buzzard could not fly in it, and fill it

A FEW FOUNDATION PRINCIPLES. I99
with fumes that a saint could not live in, in order to get rid
of devils and bring about a harmonious and profitable adjust
ment of affairs.
I have found through life, not only from my own per
sonal experience, but that from all others whose confidence and
business relations I have found worthy of cultivating, that
the honest, outspoken, candid, correct, but positive man who
never deviates from the truth, though he may see many oppor
tunities whei"e by lying he could make a "pretty penny," is the
man who succeeds in life; he is the man who sleeps well at
night, has good neighbors and is the man who is always pre
pared to do a good turn for another.
My life has not been the success it might have been had my
sympathies for the poor and unfortunate been less than they
were. I have spent too much time and hard-earned money
trying to do the impossible thing with that class of people who
are on the beg, the sponge and the dead-beat.
The impossible things are the impossible, and here comes in
my good old Webster Spelling Book words I referred to early
in this volume of "incompatibility" and "incomprehensibility."
My mother was a devotit woman, as has been before re
lated. I had two marriageable sisters. One was being ad
dressed by a very worthy and acceptable young man whose
father was a "Hard-shell" Baptist preacher. Mother thought
that it was her duty to inquire into the young man's religious
belief. It was about like my own, and the young man was
feeling good, and without any idea of being impertinent or dis
respectful he remarked that "there are some things impossible
to God Almighty."
The old lady drew back in amazement and was too awe
struck to think of making a reply and the young man continued
and said :
"Now, how would He go about making two mountains
without having a valley between ?"

I
200 A FEW "FOUNDATION PRINCIPLES.
This "cooked the young man's goose" to all intents and
purposes. There are other things that our Creator would not under
take to do.
"Don't lose a cent on any person that won't lose a cent on
themselves."

BUSINESS INSIGHT.
The agricultural industry was never patronized until Sir
Robert Peel, the great artist and painter, took hold of it, and it
is said that he got his tenants and farm hands iron plows.
After an absence of a few months he returned to his estate, to
find that the peasants had thrown all the plows under the hedge
and had used none of them, but had planted the crops with
the old-way forked stick for a plow, and as do the pagans and
the dark-age people in all other lands and countries yet.
He called up his foreman and asked for an explanation,
which was given in a series of resolutions adopted by his ten
ants in substance setting forth that:
"Whereas, We, the tenants and peasants of his lord
ship's estate, have found that the weeds do grow more prolific
and the crops that are planted grow less fruitful and abundant
in ground that has been plowed by an iron plow ;
"Therefore, Be it resolved that we will no. longer use
them." The facts were that the pagan fools had not used them at
all, but had thrown them under the hedges.
I have come across more of this sort of people in the world
than it is possible for me to convey a correct idea of to any
one. There are people today who are following their fathers'
avocations — farmers, who are so absolutely ignorant of all
the laws of plowing, planting, production, cultivating and har
vesting, that no one should be surprised at their disgraceful
poverty from a free and enlightened American standpoint.
Here these same men talk politics and religion, and they "beat
the band."
I am old enough to recollect the time when our shoes were

202 BUSINESS INSIGHT.
all made on one last, rights and lefts and big and little, and
when the cobbler taught me how to make shoes and boots
at our old farmhouse told me that there was a Yankee inven
tion that made shoes rights arv& lefts I did not know what he
was talking about.
I am old enough to remember the time when we pulled the
hemp and the flax that we rotted, that we hackled and that we
shackled and that we spun on the old spinning wheel that oc
cupies the most honored place in my private office today, and
with this home-made hand-spun flaxen thread we made our
shoe leather thread and bristled the point from our home-
raised hog bristles.
I am old enough to know and toi well recollect what life
was when one guit of jeans that was woven at our home and
cut and made by our mothers and sisters was quite good
enough for a twelve-year-old boy for one year's wear, and
when "drawers" had never been hard of, much less used, by
our elders.
I can remember when hog and hominy and corn bread with
New Orleans molasses were luxuries. These were "the good
old days of the past" that we often hear, people croak about.
They are the days from which the ignorant farmer and poor
cuss referred to above came and have not improved upon.
When I meet a man of my age and older, and see by his
gait that he was raised on a farm, and tell by the cut of his
clothes that he has not only added to the world's wealth, but to
his own advancement and power for pleasure and enjoyment,
methinks of those good old times; but when I in traveling
through the country of my birth pass by the places of those
poor farmers, my very spirit revolts and my mother's religion
somewhat goes back on me, for I see close by the old "little
red schoolhoilse" that proved of no benefit to those poor
farmers. In traveling in foreign parts of the world I am a close ob-

BUSINESS INSIGHT. 203
server, and I have made it a rule through life that when I ar
rive at a new town or city, even in my own country, but espe
cially in foreign lands, to rise early — at four or five a. m. — and
go direct to the market place, where I see brought for sale by
the farmers, horticulturists and hucksters the best the country
can produce, and a glance tells me what sort of people that
country produces.
It was a Frenchman who said : "Show me the songs of a
people and I will tell you who and what they are."
I need only to be told of what the people live on to tell you
what that people are, whom they are, and what they will be in
generations to come.
In making man God created him out of more of his most
precious previous creations than He used in the fabrication,
construction or make of any other animal, fish or fowl ; where
fore the man of God's creation requires a greater variety of
eatables than any other animal, and just in proportion as he is
restricted to only a few, and they possibly of the most worth
less in nutrition, blood, brain and brawn-giving qualities, man
becomes degenerate and like begets like or loss in all things.
As a farmer I was a success when it rained as much as it
should or when it did not rain to make a flood and wash me
out. As a merchant I was a success because I never, lied to the
people and told them that I was selling goods below cost. I
have never found it necessary, as I have found it the case with
so many others, to tell a lie and continuously lie to sell my
goods, and I have often' thought that it was because my goods
were always good goods and the people knew good from bad.
The "want-something-for-nothing" man is a poor wretch who
never is able to pay his debts and who never wears a suit of
good clothes or in any way seems at ease or to have comfort
and never enjoys ife.
That "all things come to him who waits" is as true as
Holy Writ, but most people are too impatient. I can tell as

204 BUSINESS INSIGHT.
many good fish stories as any man, but I never made a good
fisherman; my patience would not admit of it. I like to act
the host and have my friends dine with me, but I never would
have made a "waiter." I have never waited for any one and
never will. When one tells me he will be at a certain place at
a certain time and is not there I set him down as a liar and
would never trust him again for any amount or for any small
sum. It is a fact, dispute it as you may, that a man who will
steal a pin will steal a horse if he can only keep from being
detected. The man who' is a good citizen only from fear of going to
the penitentiary is not to be depended upon any more than is
the man who is a good Christian only from fear of going to
hell. There are people in the world who cannot refrain or
keep from doing evil, as much as there are other people in this
world who have no desire to commit any' sort of evil. The
man who has no desire to drink whisky and get drunk or gam
ble or other unlawful and immoral acts is entitled to no credit
as compared with the poor unfortunate misborn people who
naturally incline that way.
Men's ideas of right and wrong are at great variance, and
he who sets himself up to be the judge in many matters that
would seem of trifling importance is the one who the most
often is entitled to ridicule.
It is the thoughts of a moment that are worth a life of toil'
and these thoughts come but once or twice in a man's lifetime,
and it was the poet sage, and he was a poet no more than a
sage, who declared that :

"There is a tide in the affairs of men,
¦Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries."
It is the impressionable man, the one who acts on first im-

BUSINESS INSIGHT. 205
pulses and impressions, all other things being equal, that is the
successful man. He who goes blindly at work without having
first calculated where to put his best licks so that he can accom
plish the most is little better than a blind man casting about in
a wilderness for an open field.
When I was a young man and was striving for a start in
the world I figured out how that when I had made my first
thousand dollars I would be able to do something; when I had
made that I found that it would take ten, and the world kept
on moving in advance of me so rapidly that when I had made
several times that amount I found that I yet had but little to do
with and then soon I found that it was harder to keep what I
had made than it had been to make it, which has often made
me think that blessed is he who hath nothing for he shall have
nothing to lose.
The young man of today may not have as many opportuni
ties to go forth and win his way in the world as I had with an
undeveloped country before me, but he has many and better op
portunities, since all that I and my compeers have done, look
ing at it from my standpoint, has only been to make it possible
for others to do and make more rapidly than we did.
The man who went and opened up a home in the wilder
ness of the West had more to contend with than he who comes
to the developed West today. When I think of the men who
came to Ohio, Michigan and Indiana with little or no means
to attack the great forests and spend a life in opening up a
farm, that man stands in my estimation as being a braver man
than he was who faced an enemy on a battle-field.
My father sold a man forty acres of land near-by where I
was born. He had been a good, faithful laborer and the
"forty" was heavily timbered. Davis bought him an ax and
started out one morning to slash a ten-acre tract and worked
manfully for a day or two, when he came back and rescinded
the deal, saying that there was an easier life for him than to

206 BUSINESS INSIGHT.
spend it in cutting down a forest and clearing it up and wait
ing for years to roll by before he opened up a farm. That
man had an idea, he carried it out, and with only a few dollars
in his pocket started to the prairies of the West, where all he
had to do was to plow and plant and without fencing, much
less clearing off the ground, grow a crop the first year which
brought him returns. He was a thinker and an actor on first
principles, thoughts and inspirations.
After having planted his twenty acres in corn he planted
it all down in pumpkins. His farm was twenty miles from
what is now the great city of Chicago, that was then booming
He hired a team and wagon and hauled his pumpkins to mar
ket, realizing enough therefrom to pay for the one hundred
and sixty acres that he had bought. He sold his corn in the
field and bought more ground, and instead of planting it in
pumpkins, as all of his neighbors did, from seeing what he had
done, he sowed a large proportion of it to turnips and nearly
an acre in onions. He hauled his turnips and more than five
hundred bushels of onions off the land, which sold at great
prices in Chicago., and with the proceeds bought more ground.
He sold the corn, as he had done the year before, in the field.
His neighbors who had planted pumpkins so glutted the market
that they brought nothing, and he hauled them off their
ground, paying next to nothing for them, and hired the people
to help him turn their pumpkins into pumpkin butter, and he
made another fortune out of their misfortune. The next year
many of them sowed onions and turnips as he had the year be
fore. The turnips did well but the onion crop failed. The
turnips brought nothing, while this Mr. Davis had planted all
of his ground in the castor oil beans and flax, both of which
were a success and sold at a large price, which enabled him
to buy more ground, but further west where ground was
cheaper. He was a leader; he thought and never followed
other people.

BUSINESS INSIGHT. 207
He finally went into the hog business, and of course his
neighbors all followed him as fast as they could get hogs to
raise from, but he always had a superior and better breed of
hogs, which always brought a superior and better price, and
finally when he got all the people to raising hogs he went into
the pork packing business and found that still more profitable
than either raising pumpkins, turnips, onions or hogs to. sell to
his neighbors for breeding purposes.
Davis went tp California and engaged in the gold wash
ing business. He soon found that he could make more money
selling the gold washers "horn spoons," and he went into the
"horn spoon" business, having previously bought up all the
horns there was in the country, and in a few years' time came
back East, where he largely increased his pork packing facili
ties and soon became a beef packer. Davis died a multi
millionaire, leaving behind him a family who had about all of
their father's leading characteristics in their make-up.
Now had Davis worked out his original purpose of mak
ing a farm on the forty acres of timber land in Michigan, he
never would have contributed to this world's great advance
ment; he neyer would have been able to have promoted the
building of railroads and the upbuilding of the country gen
erally. Now this man's name was not Davis, but a rose, as all
know, would smell just as sweet under another name.
My father sold a forty-acre tract to another man, whom
we will call Jackson, but that was not his name. Jackson mar
ried and with the aid of his neighbors and friends who came
to his "log roUings" and "house raisings" managed to piece out
a living. He worked from "early morning until dewy eve"
and at fifty was a broken-down old man, though he owned a
half section of good farm land. He died only a few years
ago, leaving behind neither "kith nor kin," but a property
worth enough to make three smart lawyers comfortably well
off from the litigation that distant relatives brought about try-

2o8 BUSINESS INSIGHT.
ing to get "something for nothing." The lawyers did the
thinking; it was the other fellows who did the fighting and
got nothing for it.
This man was a much abler and smarter man than my so-
called Davis was, and the difference between him and Davis
was in that the latter improved on the thoughts of a moment
and allowed no one to be his monitor or director.
I knew another man, while I was yet a boy and had not
been to P. T. Barnum's show, referred to in a previous chapter,
whom I one day met going to my father's house to borrow
forty dollars to pay a note due on goods which he had bought,
who, not kno'wing me, asked the way to our house. I looked
him over and thought to myself, "Would I ever be rich enough
to wear such fine store clothes and own such a horse and such
a buggy and wear a watch like he did ?" It was a steel chain
on the outside that showed, worth now about ten cents a yard.
This man had a store in our town and was on his last legs.
He came from somewhere in York State and insisted upon
stocking up his store with goods that were not in demand
among the people in our section at that time. His stock of
ribbon and finery was' greater than his stock of substantial nec
essaries. He went into the insurance business and became
an agent for the steamboats and the keel boats, and for many
years had hard work making ends or buckle-and-tongue meet.
By some accident — for it was not by design on his part — he
was forced to take a tract of land, that was located up in the
Upper Peninsula, for a debt. It was represented as being
good timber land, but timber in those days was not what it
became in later years.
Wilson we will call him, but that was not his name, became
very despondent and was considered a very poor man, but he
and his noble wife worked on and for several years just fairly
lived, when in 1853 Russia got into trouble with Turkey, Eng
land and France and what other powers I now disremember,

BUSINESS INSIGHT. 209
and the Crimeari war was declared, and wheat went up from
nothing to two dollars and twenty-five cents per bushel, and
everything else in proportion (I refer back now to a previous
chapter), and the copper mines of Lake Superior were being
worked with great success. Some geologist or prospector dis
covered iron ore east of the copper mines, and, as Samantha
Alleri always said, "Low and behold," Wilson's land was the
keystone to the arch of the iron ore region of the Upper Penin
sula. In three years' time Wilson was a millionaire and from
royalties on the iron ore became a multi-millionaire and died
one ,of the wealthiest men in all the country round about.
He was never noted for anything good but good luck,
though it was a long time coming his way, but it came and it
stayed, for the Wilson family have all proved good keepers,
who' understand that part of the arithmetic which applies to
addition but not to division or had any suggestion to silence.
Not like the politician who was the author of the expression,
"addition, division and silence," that had reference toi some^
thing that had to do with my friend, Mr. George Francis
Train's (referred to before) "Credit Mobilier" transaction
that built the Union Pacific and helped in "at least the Central
Pacific Railroad, which made the first great number of multi
millionaires in the United States.
Now, as to which I or you had rather be, Davis, Jackson
or Wilson, might be a question, but as to the one who did the
greatest good and was the greatest public benefactor Wilson
led them all, though the "Credit Mobilier" folks were world-
beaters in their way. I will tell it in my way so that my read
ers will understand that I am not going to tell it as it was, for
that would be too long a story.
These Mobilier fellows got twenty sections of land to the
mile, much of which now cannot be bought for one hundred
dollars an acre, and forty thousand dollars a mile first mort
gage bonds for building a railroad that cost only on an average

2IO BUSINESS INSIGHT.
twenty thousand dollars a mile, and there was more than one
thousand miles of it and there was twenty thousand dollars
clear profit in every mile they built for the purpose of "di
vision" and the land was all free and paid for that dividended
up "incomprehensibly" to a peanut stand vender or the poor
farmer I have before referred to.
I was not fortunate enough to get into these good rich deals
that were being made in those days, for I was so unfortunate
as to have followed Jeff Davis down South, and was equally
as unfortunate afterward in being fool enough to think that
railroad building in Texas, backed by good subsidies would be
as profitable as it was to those who crossed and then checked
up the great middle West and North with them.
If I have been foi'tunate in some few things I have been
unfortunate in so many that at times I feel like a thirty-cent
piece when I look back and see "what might have been."
I became somewhat notorious down in the Lone Star State
from ha-ving taken a great interest in legislation that was nec
essary to bring prosperity to my beloved land — legislation
which looked itoward the promotion of internal improvements,
and but for drouths and overflows and storms and tornadoes
and all else that ever befell an unfortunate man in an unfor
tunate cO'Untry I might have been a gatherer in of the sheaves.
I have thought more of my misfortunes and disasters than
I have of my successes because the former left more and larger'
sore spots than the latter had been able to heal up, and no-w I
must tell of one of my most sore of disasters.
I had succeeded in accomplishing that which no other man
or set of men had been able to accomplish, and that which all
those I talked with thought was impossible of accomplishing
with, by or through the Texas Legislature. The International
Railroad had built a long line through a desolate and no-ac
count country that commenced at nowhere and ended at ditto.
It had a great future before it at both ends ; it was one of my

BUSINESS INSIGHT. 211
first-born; it -was to have received ten thousand dollar thirty-
year eight per cent state bonds for each mile built, and it was
contemplated to build about five thousand miles from first to
last, for we had provided for our grandchildren to have some
thing to do on this mundane sphere after we had quit doing for
them. This long stretch of road built through "nowhere," paying
for possession of course, in order that we might build at both
ends, we called upon the State Controller for the bonds due us
on the hundred and more miles built. I might be sued for
criminal libel if I were to say that there was any such thing
as "graft" with anybody down in Texas in those days, for it
was just after the people had somewhat gotten out of the
clutches of the accursed carpetrbaggers, nigger rule and scal-
lawagers' control.
The bonds- were printed and taken to the Controller of the
State, who had to certify to them, but who instead all in cm
instant and zsnthout notice found out that the law was uncon
stitutional and refused to sign the bonds; The courts were ap
pealed to, he was served with a mandamus to do so, and like
St. Paul he appealed to Caesar, i. e., the Supreme Court, that
agreed with him. How wicked it would be for me or any one
else to say that there was any "swag" in the matter at all, but
"alle samee" there was something doing and our one hundred
and forty or fifty miles of railroad, built at an enormous
expense through "nowhere," was brought to a standstill for
the want of these bonds, to lengthen it at both ends so that it
might reach "somewhere."
The Houston and Texas Central Railroad, that had been
built on its own earnings for more than one hundred and fifty
miles (so the people then thought but found out years after
wards it was from robbing the State school fund, of which I
shall tell hereafter, and which will make mighty interesting
reading for some people yet alive), did not approve of "division

212 BUSINESS INSIGHT.
and silence," that is, dividing up their territory with a Northern
corporation, and I gave it as my belief then and now and will
believe until my dying day, had seen Mr. Controller before
we did.
We had to go to the people and elect a new Legislature
and also a new Governor, requiring two years' time. Before
that Legislature met there was lots of money in the shape of
crisp new greenback bills floated all over the State. No mat
ter who was the author of the scheme. I will be more happy
no doubt in the hereafter if Beelzebub does not recognize me
as having had so'mething to do with it, for I had rather be on
an ice wagon at any time than in his clutches.
The scheme was this, that all statesmen and politicians in
the State should be educated to the proposition that any man
or set of men who- would co.me intoi the State with ten thou
sand dollars wo'Uld be given one section of Texas State lands
out on the State plains "not otherwise appropriated ;" for
every ten thousand dollars he invested in any sort of internal
improvements such as iron furnaces, copper smelters, cotton
mills, woolen mills, refineries, and especially in digging ditches
for navigation or irrigation purposes, and for any and for
every other purpose that could be named, thought of or sug
gested. It was the two last propositions that were the draw
ing cards of the whole scheme.
Besides the gift of this land they were to be exempt for
twenty-five years from taxation of any nature whatso'cver, cor
poration, county or State, and that the land should not be
taxed for twenty-five years after the State had transferred it
to the individual or company investing the money. Who
could go back on such a proposition as that, made as it was
by some pf the best and leading Democrats in the State?
This bill was duly introduced in the Legislature and
referred to the Committee on Internal Improvements, but not
before the bill was introduced praying for the relief of the

BUSINESS INSIGHT. 213
International Railroad, which was practically the same bill
that had given its charter and that had been the means of
inveigling the investment of many millions of dollars in the
State to build that one hundred and fifty miles of railroad
from "nowhere" through "nowhere" toi "nowhere," i. e., from
Longview toi Hearne.
This bill was discussed pro and con, as was the general
Internal Improvement bill, first one and then another, day in
and day out, giving the "Third House" members an opportu
nity to get in their good work finding out the "lame ducks"
and using a liberal mixture of adhesive plasters that were
always green on the back but expressed big value on the face.
Finally it came to a show-down after many resorts to "ways
that were dark and tricks that were vain." We had two
majority in the lower house and one majority in the upper.
Old Beelzebub won't charge up to. me all of these tricks, nor do
I know very much of them; yet were I to tell what I do know,
people yet living, in self-defense would say all sorts of bad
things about me.
The Governor of the State was a man above guile. He
was a lawyer, a jurist of great ability, a man who was all
self and never let a good opportunity pass. Our bill went
through and it came to him for his approval. A sly foxy cuss ¦
whispered in the Governor's ear how to kill two. birds with
one stone, hold himself with the people by vetoing the Inter
national Railroad bill, which would make him O. K. with the
"grangers," and then recommend that the Legislature give to
the International Railroad twenty-five sections of land in solid
blocks, not alternate blocks but solid blocks, and exempting
the land for twenty-five years from all taxation and likewise
exempt the railroad and its rolling stock — mind you not for
that part already built but to include future buildings as well —
for twenty-five years alsO'.

214

BUSINESS INSIGHT.

A ten-year-old schoolboy can figure out the difference
between what we got and what we started in to get on the basis
of six hundred dollars per section for the land and two hun
dred and fifty dollars per year per mile in taxes for the road
for twenty-five years. Texas is a great big and rich State
and it can afford to stand all such losses as this in the interest
of people that it tried to "repudiate" and worse than blackmail.
A worse deal than this was the Houston and Texas Central
Railroad borro'wing from the State of Texas four and one-
half million dollars of United States fifty-year eight per cent
Government Bonds that had been given to the State in part,
tO'gether with all of its lands, for a strip of wealthy country
in the Northwest that Texas had a-bout as much claim to as
she had to the Northeast corner of the Kamchatka Peninsula,
and which had been set aside as a special school fund labeled
most sacredly and branded most fervently for the benefit of
future born Texans, t a school fund.
The railroad folks had a clause inserted allowing them to
pay off the bonds at any time. The war came, it charged one
hundred dollars per mile for transporting a Confederate soldier
and twice that amount for a horse and everything else in like
' proportion, and the reader must not think that the passenger
and freight agents did not know their business then any
less than they know it now. Its earnings were immense; it
took several carloads of these Confederate pro'mises to redeem
these bonds. There was only one party in Texas.
The question of abinitio and anti-abinitio government was
not discussed in the election first preceding the reconstruction.
The Republican element, the carpet-baggers and the scalla-
wagers were on the right side of the question, and that was
enough for the Democrats, as the former had soi disgraced
themselves as to. make it impossible for the peo'ple tO' believe
that they would be right in anything. The Democrats started'
a friendly suit against the railroad for the bonds, and by an

BUSINESS INSIGHT. 215
accident it was decided in the Supreme* Court against the rail
road, who appealed it to the United States Supreme Court,
where the case was decided after Grover Cleveland had
appointed a Democratic Chief Justice, who of course threw
Tefxas down.

PATRIOTISM VERSUS SELF INTEREST.
The greatest concern of an American is the proper execu
tion of just and proper laws, and the American who takes no
interest in what has passed and knows nothing of it is not a
good citizen, cannot be, for it is only by the past that we can
judge the future, and it is for this reason that I refer to past
histO'ry, giving a truthful account as it was and as no politician
or bribe taking so-called statesman would give it. Why I so
often refer to the past, n^y reader of old and middle age will
more appreciate than the young man, but the time will co'me
when he will view it from a different light.
Govemm.ent was inaugurated for the good of the weak,
for their protection against the strong. If the Government
is corrupt it comes fro'm the fact that the people are either
more or less so or that they are ignorant and can be swayed
to and fro, hither and yon, just as the interest of the party-
seeking power may demand.
Elsewhere I have referred to. the day and date I left my
birth-place in Michigan. Three nights before that day, in
company with several other neighbor boys, whoi were visiting
around with me and my brother, I went to a "free nigger
lecture" at a log schoolhouse which stands where Galien,
Michigan, now stands. It was then a wilderness of a forest
thereabout. There were perhaps as many as fifty grown people
there and as many more boys like oursdvesj The white-
headed and white-bearded negro came in, a personification of
the "old blind Joe" of today. He went direct to. business and
I never have forgotten the first two lines of the song he sang :
"I am bound for Canada, that cold and barren land;
The horrors of slavery I can no longer stand."
5!l6

PATRIOTISM VERSUS SELF INTEREST. 2I7
This affected me, for we were going away from the North
to a Southern country to. get away from cold lands, and the
nigger was headed in another direction. His song was full
of pathos and rCcO'Unted of how his wife and children had
been sold in slavery, and then in his lecture he set forth how
they belonged toi a good humane master who would sell them
for a given price, and he was lectijring to get money to buy
them. I was a capitalist at that time, having several dollars
but more copper cents. Tliat was the first and the only time
in my life that I invested in even a small part of a nigger, and
I believe that I gave as much money as any other person pres
ent. Just as the lecture was being concluded a band of what
would be called Ku Klux in those days, from the pro-slavery
neighborhood where I had lived, rushed in, but old Uncle Ned
escaped unhurt.
.At any time five years before the Committee of Public
Safety of Fort Bend County burned my Harper's Magazine
and Dabney's Southern Botany and gave me notice to. quit,
as related elsewhere, a piece of Horace Greeley's New York
Tribune as big as my hand found in my store or in my pos
session would have hung me. To have found a copy of Uncle
Toim's Cabin in any man's possessio.n would have hung him
without the benefit of bell, book or Bible, for any man to have
taken out of the postoffice or even for any postmaster to have
delivered tO' any man a Congressional document bearing the
name of any Republican Congressman or United States Sena
tor would have hung that postmaster as Well as the man.
The Committee of Public Safety opened letters, as they
did in the case of Hughes and Parker, related in a former
chapter, and evil befell the man whose mother, sister, sweet
heart or wife wrote intimating that they were not prcx-slavery-
ites. This man Horace Greeley, of whom all have heard, was the
father of the Abolition party, and no man was looked upon

2l8 PATRIOTISM VERSUS SELF INTEREST.
with as much hatred as he was by the people of the South.
To have intimated that there was any honor or good in Horace
Greeley would have quickly ended the intimator's life. To
have told a man that in less than ten years the Democrats of
the South, the old original secessionists, would be shouting
themselves hoarse and running themselves lame huzzaing for
Horace Greeley and carrying a black Republican banner
would have cost the life of any one.
I was appointed a delegate to the Crittenden Peace Con
vention, that had been called by the Union people of the South
to meet at Chattanooga, Tennessee, and we met in Governor
Sam Houston's office in Austin, where we received a telegram
from Alexander H. Stephens, Senator from Georgia, after
wards Vice-President of the Confederacy through the grace
of Jeff. Davis, that Horace Greeley's Tribune of recent date
editorially — double-leaded leader — stated that it was a well
settled fact, or words to that effect, that there was no coercive
power in the Constitution of the United States by which the
North could coerce the Southern States back into the Union
after they had seceded, etc., etc. i
There were twenty-two delegates present. It was left to
the youngest, and that was I, to vote first as to whether, in
view of this statement, we should go with the South or still
hold on to the Union, and these were my reasons for casting
my vote to go with the South and which were accepted by
two-thirds of those present.
That Horace Greeley was the originator and father of the
black Republican party, that he made Abraham Lincoln Presi
dent of the United States, that he had made the Republican
platform, that he had defeated William H. Seward in his own
State by the nomination of Abraham Lincoln, that Abraham
Lincoln was but clay in the potter's hands, that Horace Greeley
could not possibly say this but that a council of the black
Republican party leaders had authorized him to say it ; that in

PATRIOTISM VERSUS SELF INTEREST. 2I9
saying this he was oiiiy saying and affirming what all the
Democrats and secessionists of the South had been declaring
over and over again, and this being the case there would be no
war, that all would be peaceably adjusted, and that in time,
as Horace Greeley suggested, when we got tired of being out,
we could come back into the Union, and further t:han this I
was a peace man and would always be found arrayed on the
side of the peace-maker.
With these sentiments, as before said, two-thirds of the
Committee agreed. Little did I or any one else in that room
know that Horace Greeley, like James Gordon Bennett of the
Herald, was a commercial editor who, for so much per line of
eight words agate measure, would say anything and promise
anything for any party who had the price. I was afterwards
told, and as I firmly believe was true, and no man had ever
yet undertaken to deny, nay, not even Sidell or Davis ever
dared deny, that eighty-five thousand dollars in the Bank of
England notes was paid for this one editorial leader and that
the covenant was that he should never again be called upon to
defend it in any way, and he did not.
This editorial was the cause of the formation of the Hueff
regiment of Texas cavalry, composed of the members of the
Public Safety Committee from different parts of the State,
and who hung and otherwise murdered and assassinated more
than one hundred and twenty Union men who were leaving
the State inside of the prescribed time given them to leave by
the Governor's proclamation.
This man Horace Greeley (whose name did I have the
power I would make it a penitentiary offense for any one to
mention except in derision and contempt) went right on advo
cating in his paper all sorts of prescriptive measures looking
to the conquering of the South, and no other paper published
in the North had one-tenth the po'wer that his paper had in
this direction.

220 PATRIOTISM VERSUS SELF INTEREST.
There live but two m'Cn today, 1904, who could tell of the
amount. of Confederate cotton money, estimated at from eigh
teen to twenty-four million dollars, that was over in England
and that the agents of the Government "fobbed" (or stole, is a
better word), and what amount was paid over to Horace
Greeley to secure the bail bonds of Jeff. Davis and to release
from prison four other noted Confederates, among them ex-
Postmaster General Regan, who was confined in Fort Warren,
and who from writing there to his friends in Texas to accept
negro emancipation as a finality and furthermore be prepared
for their enfranchisement — and this too after all Confederates
had been paroled and taken the oath of allegiance — was burned
in effigy in all parts of the State, ajid none was so brave as to
do him honor for telling the truth,.
This Horace Greeley kept on publishing in his Tribune
the most vile, slanderous articles on the people of the South,
against their honor, and against ' their liberties, though he
secured the bail bonds for Jeff. Davis, and I have challenged
in my day any man to sho-w' that any reader of the one hun
dred and twenty-five thousand circulation of the New York ,
Tribune in the Northern States ever read in that paper that
Horace Greeley had admitted the right of the South to secede,
much less that he had secured the bail bonds of Jeff. Davis.
For doing these two things the leaders of the Southern
Democracy took him up and nominated him, as the champion
Democrat, for President of the United States and made the
solid South support him ; and yet there live men who say there
is honor and principle and nobleness in the Southern Demo
cratic leaders.
Old Horace Greeley died a poor man, as he justly should.
I believe God intends all two-faced men like him must live on
poor pickings on the other side and in cahoots and companion
ship with such men as made the Southern Public Safety Com
mittees and managed the affairs of that Government. Old

PATRIOTISM VERSUS SELF INTEREST. 221
Greeley was a very profane man. It was said that he could
write a captivating abolition article and swear like a fish
monger at the same time. When he died W. R., his right hand
"con man," was present, and while gasping his last breath, he
had a very pointed talk with the old devil, stating that "I will
be with you down in hell soon, and I'll give you the run of
your life for the next election for master-in-chief of the fiery
regions." And while having this talk with old Beelzebub,
Greeley's life went O'Ut.
One of his family was out West and telegraphed back to
W. R. to know what "father's last words were."
His reply was, "I know that my Redeemer liveth."
There may be many people in the United States, even at
this late date, who think that Horace Greeley was a great,
good and honest man, but these people should not be allowed
the right to vote. According toi my idea there should be a
mental qualification for any one to become a citizen and enjoy
this great privilege of voting at our elections.
When I was a boy my father was a subscriber toi the
National Intelligencer, published in Washington by Gales and
Seaton, a paper that was as far above guile and deceit,
hypocrisy and wrong, as the sun's light is above that made by
a tallow dip. He also was a subscriber to the New Yo'rk
Express, a staunch old line Whig paper that believed in preach
ing and taught protection for everything that was of American
birth or make, to which of course the party that was "feminst"
the Government op'posed.
An Irishman landing in New York fresh from the old sod
was asked by another lately therefrom':
"Pat, and what party are you going to belong to?"
"V/hich party is ferninst the Govemment?"
"The Democratic party."
"Well, thin, I'll be a Dimocrat."
The South is solid for the same reason that at a time in

222 PATRIOTISM VERSUS SELF INTEREST.
the past the Catholic Church ruled the world, and, as with it,
there is coming a time when there will be a break up of the
solid South, and then there will be a day of prosperity and
happiness there.
When such men as Bailey and Hogg of Texas car be ,
pushed forward and pointed to as ideal men and good presi
dential timber, old-timers like myself look back and then think
how most all things are possible with the devil, as we are told
all things are possible with God.
The establishing of civic federations in the South, referred
to elsewhere, in which no ignorant man or politician can gain*
admittance, composed of men who pay taxes and are the cap
tains of industry in their localities, men who live for those
who come after them, as do all great and good men, will soon
bring about a reaction in the political affairs of the South that
may or may not benefit the poor white trash or the nigger
element. An old friend to whom I had been telling of the rascallity,
trickery and deceit of the politicians in the city in which I
lived, declared that the time was fast coming when this anarchy
elen;ient would rise and destroy all that was esteemed as val
uable, good and great by good people. He seemed to be very
much quieted when I told him that he was wrong, for with
the money in my hand I could hire the crowd in this saloon
to go fight and annihilate the cro'wd in the other saloon ; that
money talks, and, when controlled by brain and power, will
always, and there need be no fears or doubts.
The day of blind prejudice, ignorant superstition and false
preaching has passed, and its first knell was sounded when this
great Government- of ours was inaugurated by as brave a set
of grand and no.ble men as God ever convened in noble assem
bly. It was the Declaration of Independence of the United
States that was the first knell of the bell that since sounded
around the world, and the man of intelligence, the man who

PATRIOTISM VERSUS SELF INTEREST. 223
had contributed to the great prosperity of this country in the
last fifty years, sees with glory in his soul the coming yet of a
Still brighter day.
I hope that no man will read my book that would ask
here for me to say or point out where these great shocks of
golden sheaves are to. be seen, for such a person would not
have sense enough to determine the difference in point of good
ness between the rot-gut grog that he has been accustomed to
drink and the good old-fashioned apple jack or hand-made
sour mash that the founders of this Government drank in their
day. I have frequently had occasion for the good of the com
munity in which I live to. break into politics, but never from a
party line, and I never would in my life take up the cause of a
man who had been a traitor to. any cause, wherefore I opposed
the Horace Greeley scheme of Southern disgrace and became
very much disliked for so doing. I have since that day and
time talked with intelligent people of the North on this sub
ject, and never have I known a man whoi had ever seen the
article in Greeley's paper as to there being no coercive power
in the Constitution of the United States.
One dark and dismal night, by previous appointment, near
Natchez, Mississippi, in obedience to orders from the Govern
ment, after having concealed my body guard o.f six fighting
machines in the persons of as many Texas Ranger friends
that I could depend upon, even risk my life in the hands of,
I submitted toi an interview of several ho'Urs' duration with
one of, if not the chief of the Secret Service of the United
States Government, and there was no one but he and I any
where near, as he supposed. I was no- more discreet then than
he, for, like myself, he came prepared for a melee in case of an
attempted a,bduction or kidnaping.
No more than I would violate my most solemn tie and
obligation would I tell of the interview that we had, a correct

224 PATRIOTISM VERSUS SELF INTEREST.
report of which I gave to my chief in Richmond. The matter
relating to and of concern in this interview could have muth
better been attended to and conducted somewhere O'U the
Potomac. Why it should have been 'way out West, and why I
should have been selected to be the party to conduct it, I never
could understand and would not question the party I met, on
that score.
Ever after this I felt that my life was in danger, and I
was warned on two occasions, both of which compelled nie to
disobey orders from the Government. I would not be writing
this book today had I obeyed either one of these orders. I
am not such a coward and poltroon as to send a substitute,
nor was I ever questioned as to why I disobeyed the orders
emanating from the office of the Secretary of War but not
signed by the Secretary of War. The Secret Service of the
Government in those days was conducted on quite a different
plan or line from what it is now between any Government;
now such work is done by properly paid attorneys or by detec
tive associations.
The nearest I ever got to the truth of this secret mission on
which I was sent was several years afterwards. I was in Wash
ington, D. C, when a gentleman called on me at my hotel
and wanted to know if I was not at one time in the employ
of the Confederacy in the Signal and Secret Service. I lied
out of it, and asked, "Why do. you ask?"
He said that his memory told him that I was the man who
had met another man that he was greatly interested in near the
bank of the Mississippi River' above Natchez in the "dark of
the moon." I told him that it was very possible that if he
persevered in his proposition that his false conception of faces
might bring him in great trouble, and to. the demand that I
made upon him as to who he was, he replied :
"It is none of your business since you are not the party that
I am hunting for."

PATRIOTISM VERSUS SELF INTEREST. 225
I told him that there was such a mystery that I would like
information, that it was interesting to me. I spent some
money "shadowing" this man, but the detective who did the
work for me and who. followed him "turned turtle" and could
give me no report, by this I mean he sold out to the other
fellow, who was backed by much more money than I could
command, if not by some arm of the Government Service of
the United States, or once was.
From my earliest infancy, when I was put to bed early,
and from thence on all through life I retire to my apartment
seldom later than eight P. M., and it is possible that there is
not a man living today of my age and travel and experience
who has seen. as little of this world by gaslight or any other
sort of light by night as I have seen. I have, however, been
inveigled into "gun dances," which for the edification of my
reader I will explain.
An urgent call came to me one evening to the room of a
hotel where I was stopping, near by where, as I supposed, I
had a millionaire's interest in a hole in the ground called a
mine. Feeling good and apprehending no danger I told the
messenger that I would join them in a few minutes. When
I did so, in a side room between the office of the hotel and the
bar-room, three highwaymen leveled their six-shooters at my
head and told me to drink from the bottle of whisky sitting
on the table and to drink with them. This was a time when
the thoughts of a moment are worth a life of toil, to which I
have previously referred, and my wits were with me. Bowing
I said :
"Surely, gentlemen, after you."
They drank first, and I drank with them, and looking at
them I said : "Now, gentlemen, are you satisfied?"
The majority were; one wanted more fun, but the majority
prevailed, and I never have been caught napping again — ^that
was the first time in my life.

226 PATTRIOTISM VERSUS SELF INTEREST.
Some years ago-, from having participated in the organiza
tion of the Patriotic Sons of America in the City of Chicago,
I was prevailed upon to accqat their nomination for the Legis
lature on the little "Red Schoolhouse" proposition. I lived in
a strong Republican district of the strongest Republican ward
in the City of Chicago.. The sons of the Emerald Isle, who
were very numerous in the lower part of my district — all
Democrats — sought to make capi^tal by having a "fracas" at
my expense, and having heard that I was a stranger to fear,
sent me a challenge to speak in a noted public hall, the rent of
which they would pay if I would come there and make one of
my "know-nothing" speeches.
The idea of my being backed out never entered my head,
and I knew that I knew Irish character well enough to accept
the challenge — -it was no invitation but a right down defi.
The Chief of Police happened to be an American and a per
sonal friend of mine, but this was not known to all people.
I accepted the challenge and had the Chief of Police send
fifteen or more "all-aroianders" in citizens' plothes, in other
words a lot of picked policemen, who were the first to get into
the hall and the nearest to the platform. At an early hour the
hall was packed, and not with voters alone, for Bridget and
Mollie and Mary and all of the others of that gender or sex
who loved fracases were there also. Of course, Mike, late
from the "Old Sod," and all of his "hairy teeth" co.mpanions
were well up in the front, and though I had a silk hat, I did
not wear it that night.
I shoved and pushed and worked my way through the
densely packed crowd of Irish humanity, and crawled up as
best I could on the platform, where there was no one to intro
duce irie to the assemblage. I never was a good copyist, never
could tell a thing twice alike, therefore I will not vouch for
the following words as being the ones I said, but they came
the next thing to. it. After walking across the platform a time

PATRIOTISM VERSUS SELF INTEREST. 227
or two, Apparently to collect my thoughts, I went to the front
bf the platform, took off my hat and made the most profound
bow of which I was capable and said :
"Fellow Citizens, Gentlemen and Ladies : I recognize the
faces before me as being largely from the 'Old Sod.' I want
you to look at me in the face and in my eyes, look at voff
tongue and see if it is forked [extending my licker as far out
as possible] and [drawing myself up with as much force as I
could] see if any of you wo'uld take me to be a coward or
spalpeen, as you tei'm them. Now give me five minutes to talk
to you and then if you do. not prove my friends I will submit
myself to be quartered and drawn.
"There is but one thing in the character of an Irish man
or woman that I do hate, and now listen to me while I tell you
what that one thing is. I am the grandson of one of the
founders of this great nation, whose liberty you enjoy, and the
thing above all things and the only thing I hate an Irishman
for is that he does not hate the Englishman enough to suit me."
In an instant the house was in an uproar and such yelling I
never heard come from the throats of three or four thousand
Irish men and women. A thousand hands rushed up towards
me and voices shouted, "Good boy, he!" When the noise had
subsided the balance of my remarks were somewhat on this
line; they were short:
"You would never have become the good citizens o.f this
country that the majority of you are, did you not love above all
things on the earth, saving the love of a mother and the reli
gion you embrace, the sod and soil and land your eyes first saw-
after birth, and no Irishman worthy the name and honor of that
race should be tolerated on this land who would allow living
mortal to say aught against the Green Isle!"
This brought the house in another uproar, and I had in
walking across the platform found the secret exit, which I
took in double-quick.

228 PATRIOTISM VERSUS SELF INTEREST.
There were two. English Orangemen organizations o'"
lodges in my district and their voting strength was two hun
dred and eighty. I was defeated for the Legislature by thirty-
six votes. I do not know that an Irishman voted for me, but
I do know that there was not an Englishman in the district
but who peddled tickets against me.
A few days after the election I received an invitation, all
properly engrossed, as an unsuspicious person would naturally
suppose, from one of these Orangemen Lodges, inviting me
to meet them at a certain point 'way out on Blue Island ave
nue. I read it over, and it occurred to me that I did not
want to. be there. I had previously taken a great interest in
the prosecution of the Dr. Cronin murderers, for which no
few of the Clan-na-gael members held daggers up their sleeves
for me. Armed and with six very substantial friends I was
near about where the supposed meeting was to take place and
with us were two newspaper reporters.
We watched from a secreted spot the men who came in and
went out and counted their number. It was just about such
another lonely spot as where Dr. Cronin had been murdered.
We waited and watched and saw the crowd disperse in time
for the reporters to fill the next morning's big daily papers
with several colupins of scare matter under big scare headlines
and I was again made notorious and in a way that I did not
much like.
That I have always had a guardian angel who has pro
tected me from wrong and harm is not more true than that I
have been conscious for these many years that a dark shadow
has at times got very near to me. Eternal vigilance has been
no more the price of liberty than it has been my salvation.
I could fill several more pages of my book telling of simi
lar encounters .but will close with but one more.
I had a difficulty with a man down in the Lone Star St?*^'^

PATRIOTISM VERSUS SELF INTEREST. 229
who at short range emptied his revolver at me and was then
coming with a "tooth pick," thinking that I was unarmed.
That was his mistake. He quickly learned better and has
been a much better man ever since. I was taught early in life
that it was only the good Indians that were dead.

THE MEANING OF SUCCESS.
Often we meet people who, judging from their actions,
imagine they are something above the ordinary. No one has
ever yet seen the man or the woman who uses the looking-
glass much but that he sees a fool, made so from the poisoning
of his brain through self-conceit. When persons become more
familiar with and accustomed to their own faces and looks
than with those of others, they become conceited and vain
and foppish and grow into dudes and dudeens. When doubt
sets in wisdom commences, but the self-conceited Jack never
has doubts as to his being the most beautiful, and therefore
the wisest, of all men of his acquaintance, and it is only from
the world's not knowing him that it fails to. esteem him as
such. We come across these people at every turn in life. They
are the weasels in the barnyard that give the man of affairs
so much trouble. In my day and time I have given employ
ment to a great number of people, and I have done my part
in the way of educating and fitting a great number of young
people for business and proper lives, and I have never yet
given employment to a man or woman who kept a looking-
glass in front of them all the while, and who are constantly
fixing their collars and primping, or who spend more time
in twisting their mustaches and pompadours than would be
required to educate a baboon, but that I was left in some
way, and as I trusted such I was left badly.
It is the plain, everyday, meet-him-every-time-always-the-
same man that this world loves the most and rewards the
greatest. The actor and the dissembler to me proves the one
who is self in nothing but all deceit, who is the curse of this
230

THE MEANING OF SUCCESS. 23 1
earth and makes the bountiful soil grow with thistles and
thorns. "All the world loves a lover," and it also lo.ves a
fighter, but not a lover of self nor a fighter who attains pro
ficiency in deceit.
The more one sees of the world and mankind in it, and
the more mankind hears of the deceit, the more he is prone
to. think of dogs, and from so thinking the best of all great
people become recluses and draw in unto themselves and away
from the world. "Disappointment maketh the heart sick,"
and from what deceives and disappoints in our fellow men
the best of us become tired and want to travel, and if, when
we shall have traveled to that bourne from which no traveler
e'er returns, we find there in the shady nooks on the banks
of the babbling brooks the same that has made this earth so
tireso'me to us, then there is no truth in the Holy Writ, and
not until then shall we be prepared to say that "Life was not
worth living."
Three men were traveling on the top of an open .stage
coach. One was admiring the grandeur of the scenery and
the magnificence of the great forest through which they were
passing, and the country viewed from the .mountain peaks
over which they were traveling. The other had nothing to
say. The third, a Yankee, declared that he believed that it
was worth twenty-four cords to the acre. To. the admirer
of the beautiful iri nature all things are added. A contented
mind is a continual feast. The selfish calculator has nothing
added unto him except as it comes by his o.wn hard licks.
The native of a beautiful country with beautiful surround
ings has little appreciation of them until he shall have been
cast away upon a desert land, and possibly it never comes to
him until it is too. late to enjo'y them. We "never miss the
water till the well runs dry," and the water that has passed
the wheel grinds no more corn, and as an illustration of the
effect of our coming into this world, as well as our going

232 THE MEANING OF SUCCESS.
out, if one should go to a mill pond and stick his finger in it,
he will note the effect which will represent his coming into,
and pulling his finger out of the water will note the effect
which will represent his going out of the world.
If one woyld leave a record behind to show that he had
been here, he must not only build a dam and make a mill
pond and build a mill which will grind corn, but he must
plant trees around the margin close to the water and trees
which will bear fruits and nuts and give shade to the weary
traveler and the boy bathing, or the fisherman seeking sport,
and though not one in tens of thousands who may enjoy the
fruits of his planting will ever stop to ask, "Who did this that
I might enjoy these blessings and pleasures and comforts?"
yet the planter will obtain his reward in the fair beyond where
pleasures come from having pleasures done.
A party of men in the East had bought a large tract of
timber land out West, and they sent a man, in whom they had
great confidence, out to. build a sawmill, etc. After sending
him much money they sent another man to see what was
the matter and he reported back in writing: "I have found
a dam by a mill site, but no mill by a dam site."
It is much easier for a mian to have a thing done by proxy,
but when it comes to getting it done right he will find it much
easier to. do it himself.
When a boy but eighteen I made my first mining invest
ment, with twelve others, of one thousand dollars each. The
man who presented the scheme was of that sort that Saint Paul
ran up against some time before he wrote his statement respect
ing such men, referring to them as being able to "deceive the
very elect." The property that we invested in was in the
center of Mexico and near the Gaudalahara Mining Camp,
which had an undisputed record of having produced nearly
four hundred million dollars in gold and silver in the past

THE MEANING OF SUCCESS. 233
two hundred years and was not yet lifting ore from its largest
and richest zone.
We went in on a drainage scheme more than that of min
ing. It was so forcibly and convincingly presented to us that
it was plain to see there was millions in it. We only had to
make a tunnel from the base of the mountains below and, as
the map showed, only a short distance to. tap the vein two
thousand or more feet below the lowest workings of the mine
which was then sixteen hundred feet down. It was at that
time costing the miners four times more to keep the water out
than it cost to take the ore out, and it was plainly shown to
us by this lightning calculator, hypnotizing, mesmerizing, map-
making, rapid-talking mining expert that the laws of old Spain
and Mexico absolutely gave us all the advantage should we
drain the property, as this tunnel was bound to do, then three-
fourths or more of all those valuable lodes and veins and
mines would be ours.
We were shown how each of our one thousand dollars
would grow into anything from five to one hundred millions
of dollars long before the time our first-born's children would
call us "grandpap." For nearly forty years I nursed this delu
sion 'and lost several more thousands of dollars feeding the
villains that my nursing nourished, and one by one I bought
out the interests of estates by permission of the Probate Courts
and when old age commenced driving her silver spikes in my
black hairs and the frost of many winters had changed the
raven locks to frosty hues I concluded to. go and see about it.
In getting there, after leaving the railroad there were sev
eral places which I passed where had my mule or horse stum
bled no enterprising buzzard would ever have bothered our
carcasses in the chasm or canyon below the trail. I did the
inspection act and lost no time getting out of the country, fear
ing that I might be waylaid by the accursed brigands in the
employ of the descendants of the aforesaid mining expert.

234 THE MEANING OF SUCCESS.
,The mountain was there, the mine was there, the wealth
was there and the water was there and the vast plain at the
foot of the mountain more than two thousand feet below the
first workings of the mine was there, but it was fourteen miles
away, and to have built a tunnel that would have tapped the
vein to the depth that was illustrated in the map shown us
would have cost twice more than all the money that had ever
been taken out of the Luntz lode, first discovered by some of
Cortez' men in 1462.
I could have sold my interest in this enterprise after I had
gone and made the investigation to others interested in it with
me on the strength of the report that was made in 1859 for a
price that would have made me a well-to-do man, and I did sell
to one who, when I reported to him, accused me of lying in
order to buy up the property cheap. He paid dear for his
questioning my honesty and died in grief from his loss and is
in the hands of the devil to-day because he judged me by him
self. As many know without my telling them again, I have had
more experiences over vast territory in mining and have
financed several large deals, and up to within a very few years
there were but few tricks in the trade that I was not up to. I
have made a greater number of enemies from not robbing them
of all they had than I have from ever having taking any one's
money that failed to pay them a dividend. My experience in
the deals in this part of my life will be of very little value to
others, so I shall not relate many of them.
I grub-staked three men. They went into the region that
promised great mining possibilities and made a location and
did the required assessment work, tried to sell and could get
nothing. I came the next year and saw that the prospect bid
fair, but it would be in the deep before anything of a wealth-
producing nature was brought to the surface. I wanted them
to put up. They had practiced before the bar that had bottles

THE MEANING OF SUCCESS. 235
instead of legal tomes behind it, and had put all of their wealth
up to the grog dealer and they were thirsty and were behind
in their board bill and I bought them out at their own price.
I went to the claim and commenced digging and driving
the drill aided by three men who belonged to the union and
who struck on me because I insisted upon working more than
eight hours a day. In the twelve or fourteen that I would
work I did more than both of them would do in their sixteen.
1 was not long there by myself until I became convinced that
others might see greater wealth in the future in that hole in
the ground than I could see and there had been a big strike of
rich ore in a near-by claim.
The men who struck me for a deal thought that I knew
nothing about the business I would not be digging myself
and had not heard of the big strike, and therefore imagined
that they -were getting the advantage of me when they made
me an offer that would have bought a big farm in Iowa. I
smelled a rat. It was a surprise to me and I felt my blood
thickening up in an instant and thought of what might be in
store for me in the future, and putting my thoughts into action
I pulled the lids of my eyes down and asked them, "Do you
see anything green?" ,
In twenty-four hours time the offer was trebled, and having
been one of a party on many occasions where two fools met
I said, "Yes," and I had soon placed to. my bank account more
money than I ever again had placed there through any mining
transaction, and had I quit the business then I surely must
have been much better off than I was in six years afterwards
from having gone into it deeper than ever.
I became the possessor of a property that bid fair to be a
great dividend producer, but having no money to work it,
organized a company. I offered shares for sale to my friends
in the East and all around, which were taken on my reputation
and word without question. This money was judiciously

236 THE MEANING OF SUCCESS.
invested and after spending nearly one-fourth of a million dol
lars the property proved worthless. The vein, instead of
widening out and becoming richer, narrowed in and became
poorer. It was wedge shaped, but instead of the point being
up it was down. The walls were there, both hanging and
foot, and every mark of what Freiburg mineralogists and min
ing experts' told us could not fail to be a great wealth producer.
Seeing that to go any further would only be like the man
sinking in quicksand, I made an outcry and told the truth by
saying that the property was not worth a canceled postage
stamp, and that all of our investments were lost and that I
was going to quit and make no further efforts, but that since
the investments were made upon my recommendation I would
return every man his money in a product of a mine of which
I had great quantities of shares and which they could sell, for
it was selling freely then and in still greater quantities now. I
sent to each stockholder the names and addresses of all the
stockholders, giving them an opportunity to correspond with
each other and sixty days' time to determine whether they '
would take my offer or not, not for a moment thinking that
they would do otherwise.
A bright idea struck a New England Yankee, who had a
good lot of money gained from deals in stocks and Board of
Trade transactions, that I was just as he would be and was
doing only what he would do. He wrote me a letter in sub
stance saying that he did not propose to accept any such offer,
that I had got his and other people's money and now wanted
to rob them by getting back all the stock for a song and that
he did not propose to be "yanked" in that way and dared me to
name a price I would receive for my stock, which was consid
erable over a majority of all the shares.
I struck while the iron was hot and telegraphed him that
if in thirty days he would pay each and every stockholder the
original amount they had paid in that I would sell him my

THE MEANING OF SUCCESS. 237
holdings for one-fourth of what he had paid for the stock
standing out. I published his letter and my telegraphic rq^ly
and mailed them to every stockholder. In thirty days' time
they all had their money and I had my price. Out of more
than three hundred men who had invested with me upon my
representation there were but ten who stayed by me and judged
me to be honest like themselves. I did well by them, the
.others not only lost what they paid in, but the sharp man who
accused me of being a rascal lost his money and twice as much
more, amounting in all to half a million dollars, trying to prove
to the world that I was a sharper seeking to defraud people
who had placed confidence in me. My conscience was clear
and I had more money than any or all who had followed the
lead of the sharper.
I found that the mining business was so alluring as to
attract most of the get-rich-quick people, as well as all of the
sharpers and unprincipled ro^n from all parts of the world,
and I began to believe that, were I endowed with twice my
natural wisdom and cunning, there was no money in the min
ing business for me unless I threw honesty to the winds and
went in on general principles in rascality and robbery.
When the oil excitement struck Texas I owned a large
mineral rights claim in a so.uthern county, and not far from
where the big gushers had been struck, and for which I was
offered all sorts of prices. I told the company that offered
me the biggest of any that that amount of money was so
much greater than I had been accustomed tO' that it might
make me crazy; that I had been used to. getting along on
smaller amounts and that I could continue to do so', and besides
I had so many poor kin that the amount offered would not
make them all as rich as myself ; that I could bore a few holes
myself, and if the oil was on the property I had ways and
means of taking care of it.
I knew with next to a certainty that there was no oil

238 THE MEANING OF SUCCESS.
underneath the Damon Mound, yet as a flyer I sent out to
my many friends, patrons and poor kin a prospectus, tell
ing them of what other people claimed I had; that I was
going to divide the six hundred acres into five-acre lots ; that
1 was going to bore on four of them, and if oil was found I
would then sell stock on the basis of forty-five thousand dollars
for each five-acre tract, I taking fifty-five thousand myself;
that this would be divided into ten-dollar shares, making a
million-dollar corporation for each five acres. I sent toi each
an option they were to sign and return to me, they agreeing
in sixty days' time from the date I struck oil on the four dif
ferent five-acre tracts to take and pay for the number of shares
subscribed for.
They sent in nearly two million dollars' worth of options
on this basis in a very short time. The oil schemers and
swindlers were advertising at a terrific rate in all papers
throughout the land, and the people, including the hired girl
and the jehu, were -^ell up on oil investing schemes, and it
did seem more madness not to invest than to invest.
I spent no money in boring, but the wildcats did, and
some of them up to within a few feet of my side lines, and
they bored and bored, and it turned out just as I expected ; in
fact, just as I knew it would, and the territory was quickly
abandoned after perhaps a million or more dollars had been
expended in boring there and from five to fifty times the
amount lost by people who invested in wildcat stocks, issued
based on the oil's being there.
At a cost of several hundred dollars I sent back tO' all who
had sent me their options, the same, stamping on the face of
them, "Null and void and of no' value." There might have
been upwards of ten thousand or more of these options. Not
less than five hundred or pei-haps O'ue thousand wrote to me
accusing me of being all sorts of a swindler, yes, as I could see
it, for no other reason than that I had not swindled one of

THE MEANING OF SUCCESS. 239
them out of one cent of their money — would scorn toi doi such
a thing — and because I was the only honest man they had had
dealings or corresponded with. These letters would have
made me feel very bad but for the fact of my receiving thous
ands and thousands containing expressions in the very opposite
direction. Experiences of this sort in great nurnbers have
taught me to believe that there are numbers of people who
have only evil thoughts, and those continually, and the num
ber of people who want to be humbugged are even greater than
P. T. Barnum estimated them.
A club was formed by a college graduating class, prom
ising each other to come together every year and give their
experieiTces during the interim. Among other conditions in the
b3r-laws was this : "That no one should lie in making a deal,
they would go out of business first." At the first annual there
was not a single man there who was in business, and it was
then that the question was propounded : "What shall we do- to
make an honest living?" And it has been the question ever
since at each successive annual meeting for fifty years; yet
each member for and during all that time had money enough
to attend the annual meeting at no inconsiderable expense, and
some of them took their wives and families and some their
grandchildren with them.
The wisdom developed in the discussion of the original
question by this club enabled them all to go back wealthy,
and who shall say but that "in the multitude of counsel there is
wisdom ?"
It is not true that all tradesmen are liars and cheats. The
most successful merchant and dealer is the one who will not
deal in goods he has to lie about to sell. He is the farmer
who never puts all the little, faulty berries or fruit at the bot
tom of the box or basket or barrel and who does not try to sell
guinea eggs at hens' sgg prices.
It is the cheat of cheats who' says that there is no honesty

240 THE MEANING OF SUCCESS.
in trade and business, and I have never yet come across a
man or woman who was all the time on the lookout for being
cheated but that they would cheat every time they got a chance.
The man who buys a basket of peaches that is bushed with a
pink muslin cover is a fool if he expects not toi be cheated
both in false packing and false bottom. The more beautiful
the doll's dress the more frail the doll, was impressed upon
me by a little girl for whom I bought a beautifully dressed
doll, which she let fall upon the floor, whereupon some of its
anatomy was smashed. Upon my saying: I'That was too
bad," though the child was only four years old she said:
"You ought to have better sense than to buy a doll already
dressed. Mamma never done that."
We buy a wagon not so much because of its highly colored
paint as on the reputation of the man who. built the wagon. We
expect to be cheated every time we deal with a horse-trading
deacon, and noi matter how cheap goods may be offered us
by a cheap Jo'hn dealer, the man whoi buys knows that he has
thrown half of his money away as comipared with what he
would have done had he bought the goods of an honest man.
One would much prefer to trade with another in whom he
had unlimited confidence, is the reason why all ho.nest dealers
p.rosper and have new customers who stay to become old.
When the first man who' commenced the express business
in the United States had built quite a business carrying pack
ages between Boston and Lowell, he established an agent in the
latter town, who in a short time and at the very first oppor
tunity that he had ran away with a considerable amount of
money. The owner stopped his express business and spent all
of the money he had and borrowed more tracking the thief
up and finally landed him in the penitentiary, where he was
given a good long term. The owner then went back to his
business and all of the farmers and merchants patronized him.

THE MEANING OF SUCCESS. 241
and from that on his business grew until today it reaches
more than twice around the world.
First convince the public that you are a man of your word
and the public will place confidence in you, but not before.
Education as co'uducted in the last generation or two since
public school teaching has beco.nie a trade, a graft or pull, has
not been conducive to either public morals or the diffusion of
kno.wledge, though it may be said it has given an opportunity
for the "survival of the fittest," but to no greater extent than
it has given an opportunity for the young natural born thief to
develop into perfection in that line.
Our public school system, as I view it, is wrong in many
respects, and particularly in that moral economy is not taught
in the first grades. I believe that the only book leading in
this direction, that of psychology, can be credited to a sermon
delivered by the great and noble Dr. Thomas of Chicagoi on
the subject, "The Importance of Moral Economy Being
Taught in the Public School," and of which I had printed an
edition of twenty-five thousand, which were sent to all the
principal educators in the United States and were also dis
tributed at the National Educational Convention held in 1883
in Mo'ntreal, Canada.
This Dr. Thomas was the man who was turned out of the
Methodist Church the next year after this for having preached
that God was a God of love and not a God of vengeance. All
the good people who belonged to the Methodist Church at
that time have wept bitter tears of sorrow, and today, as fast
as those who were at that Rockford (Illinois) Conference
who voted him out, step over the line, they are em'braced by
old Beelzebub for the reason, as I see it, that like begets like;
that it was God's first law, and never is it more sure, in
my estimation that the man or woman whoi is always thinking
that God is a cruel, unrelenting, pain-pleasing God of ven-

^4^ THE MEANING OF SUCCESS.
geance and no mercy, just as the heathen pagan make their
God — those people will be received by just such a God.
Just so with him who looks upon his great Creator as being
one of love and kindness, of goodness and of grace, and is
.ever ready to adore and return thanks to that great Creator for
all the beauty and joy and pleasure that He has given us on
this earth, that person is sure to be a partner with that sort of
a Creator when he crosses over the line, and there will be no
Beelzebub bubbling and smoking hell.
"According to thy faith so be it unto thee," was enunciated
by the Babe in the manger whose star the wise men saw, which
causedthem to journey to the WEST, which was nothing won
derful to my compeers in this life where all wise men, be they
in the East or in the West, at all times see the star of great
ness rising as its need is demanded. He who. has faith in
evil, the like shall he receive. Unto the evil all things are evil,
and the pure in heart that sees no. guide shah inherit everlast
ing pleasure and enjoyment. Nothing is more sure than that
we shall leave the fruit of our sowing, and nothing is more
sure than that like will beget like. It is a Bible truth ; it is a
truth that has stood in all the past and will never be departed
from. The father who teaches his son from his earliest infancy
to speak the truth with an open eye and to. fear not, and who
departs not from this line of teaching iri anything, is the father
who may expect in old age to be glorified and surrounded with
joy and pleasure, while the one who. is negligent toi this great
truth may expect to go to his grave with sorrow and regret
and leave behind him nothing worthy of a name, and as this
is a truth as respects boys, it is doubly true as respects girls.
for "she who rocks the cradle rujes the nation."
This reminds me that we no longer hear the good old lullaby
cradle songs that the great men of ipiy age were rocked to sleep
by; and why is it that the public schools, the corner-stone of

THE MEANING OF SUCCESS. 243
which is the Bible, has departed from its teachings, and
instead of home, life and love the opposite has come to us?
It was not long ago that I was expected to. make a talk
before a large body of men belonging to an order that perhaps
has done more to elevate the human race than all the other
societies on earth, and when going to the stand — I knew the
hall — I stumbled on and kicked off the lights, and, command
ing silence, I repeated :
"Rock-a-by, baby, on the tree top.
When the -wind blows the cradle will rock.
When the bough bends the cradle will fall;
And down will come baby, cradle and all."
Throwing the light on and facing my audience, I discov
ered there was not a dry eye there that had seen the light of
day thirty-five years, and then I addressed myself to those who
had never heard this song, and in doing so was wildly
applauded by all.
If to-day I were going out in the world to conquer with
an army of invincibles I woiuld doi as the founder of the Roman
Catholic Church, adopt songs that were popular with the old
¦ peo'ple, and I would destroy all but a few that were popular
with the young of to-day.
To make a comparison between the songs of fifty years ago
and those of to-day would be like comparing good Christian
doctrine with paganism. The songs of the Anglo-Saxon race
fifty years hence will have as little of the "Frenchy" and the
"Dutchy" and the "Dago" in them as did the songs of fifty
years ago. In the next fifty years there are going to be more
revolutions looking to the advancement of the human race
in every line that can be advanced upon, than there have been in
the last three hundred years or more. The great scholars of
the day and the great lawmakers of the land and the great
business interests and the captains of industry are combining

244 THE MEANING OF SUCCESS.
looking to this end, and though fierce be their fight with the
saloon and the dago element and the ignorant and the indiffer
ent, the bright line of truth is going to win out, and when it
once shines upon this earth, as it will, life will then be worth
living. That such a man as Horace Greeley could return now and
be considered a reputable citizen by the respectable element in
the United States, no man of common intelligence will dare
affirm. The pulse and brain of this great United States is not to
be controlled by perfidy, falsehood, fraud, deceit or knavery.
Where some see only misfortune and ill omens in the organi
zation of our laboring classes, I see a bright star beyond that
will light the way of a people that heretofore have been con
trolled orily by the blind leading the blind and by the dema
gogue of the pulpit as well as of the rostrum, for gain, pander
ing to their ignorance, as well as indulging in their wrongs and
vices. No such man as he of yellow jo'Umalism can buy his way
to any place of great prominence, though he may be able to
create a storm in centers where the vile, ignorant and unpa
triotic are the greatest in numbers and where rum money
never fails to bring applause. So long as there is an element
that can be appealed to by the designing demagogue in politics
as well as by the hypocritical preacher in religion, there will
be trouble, for when the rabble hiss patriots tremble.

FISH, SNAKE AND OTHER STORIES.

Fish, bear and snake stories are always in order, because
they always have been and always will be. From the days of
Nimrod and Samso.n with his jawbone, and Jonah smoking a
cigar in the whale's belly, and every one having experiences in
this line will tell of them, and they are not supposed to lose
anything by their telling and being retold.
My first fish story wO'Uld start with the catching of a very
small minnow, in a spring-house brook, that grew and grew
and still grows, for it is not many moons ago that I saw from
my home on the Pacific Coast a sight in the Bay of Monterey
that, had I been able to photograph it, people would say it was
fishy, just as thoiisands will say my telling of it is, notwith
standing I promised this should be a book of truths.
A school of one hundred or more spouting whales came in
the bay, and I was astonished at no one's being surprised so
much as myself, though history tells that this was the great
est whaling statio.n on the Pacific Coast up to within the rec
ollection of men now living. This Bay of Monterey, Califor
nia, on which Santa Cruz is situa,ted, was, since the whales
were created, their breeding grounds. I am told that the
cypress that grows on the point overlooking this bay is of the
same variety that is found only in the Holy Land and is spoken
of in the Scriptures. This I believe no one will question or
doubt who has e^'cr driven through them, for a more beauti
ful drive cannot be found on the American continent, as I
have heard thousands of greater globe-trotters than I pro
claim. There are many fish stories that have been relegated to the
past since the Pacific Coast and its tributary country have been
245

246 FISH, SNAKE AND Other StorIES.
explored and the fish found therein told of. Few who have
not studied or visited the fishing waters of the Pacific Coast
know much of or about them, only as they learn through a
tin can, and the can only teaches of the salmon that in point of
numbers and the wealth that they have brought to the world
would compare with the' cod of mackerel of the Atlantic as
would Barnum's lilliputian Tom Thumb with his eight-foot
giant. "What a lie!" some one will say, but he who inves
tigates the matter will find that my comparison is tame instead
of being excessive. This is not the biggest fish story that I have
in store if you will but read more.
A few years ago I was visiting my birthplace and I went
at four A. M. down to the Dowagiac Creek, if not to catch,
then to see the fish and to see if there was any evidence left
of what I had once seen at this point upon the steel bridge;
while standing cogitating upon the past and seeing no
fish going up the stream as then, an old man came walking
down the road who resembled Father Time somewhat. He
seemed timid and somewhat afraid of me, as he might be of a
ghost. I spoke to him in as clever a way as I could command
and asked if he was an old settler. He said he was, but I did
not recO'gnize his face. I asked:
"Do the sturgeon ever come up this st'-eam any more at
this season of the year to their spawning ground above?"
He looked at me in wonder and amazement and said :
"I never heard of them doing so."
"Then you are not an old settler?"
"I am so taken" was his reply.
I then told him that I had seen this stream, when there
was more water in it than now at this season of the year, so
filled with sturgeon going up that one could hardly see the
water; that I had seen a wagon so loaded, scooped up as it
were with a pitchfork and hooked up by pothooks, that the
horses were unable to pull the wagon up that bank. The old

FISH, SNAKE AND OTHER STORIES. '• 247
man looked at me with wide-open eyes and commenced shying
off towards the grocery, which was a mile away in the town
of Niles. I felt that I had done my good work and that I
would hear from it again soon.
That day I was visiting with some friends, when one pres
ent, and who was as ignorant as the old man was himself, told
the ten or fifteen present about what he had heard that morn
ing down-town, the biggest fish story of his life and he was
asked to repeat it. He said:
"This morning as old Mr.  was going toi town
he met a tramp in store clothes, who held him up on the
bridge, and after not being able toi get anything from him
told him — ^that is, the tramp told him — ^that he had seen the day
when the people round about here drove their wagons in the
middle of this stream and fihed them so full of fish that their
horses could not pull them up the bank on the other side unless
they doubled their teams, and that the people here had in this
way provided themselves with fish for the year, pickling and
afterwards drying them."
The question was asked, "Who could the tramp have
been?" An old man present who knew my early habits and who
also knew of the truth of my fish story said : "I can tell you
who the tramp was."
Upon being requested to do so he pointed to me and then
said, "There he is ; and he told the truth."
But for the verification by the old citizen, who. was held in
high esteem in the church circles, my name would have been
Dennis from telling the truth about my own birthplace tO' men
and women above middle age.
There is no longer a sturgeon to be found in all Lake
Michigan, where in my memo.ry millions and millio'ns were to
be found, as I have seen the buffalo on the Western plains.
I have lived to see the two pass away.

248^ FISH, SNAKE AND OTHER STORIES.
Permit a little digression, reader. This chapter is being-
taken down by my stenographer from a seat in a buggy while
I am driving through this land, a veritable paradise, driving as
I am over roads that were but blazed ways and trails in the
great forests of trees that have passed away in my time.
Paradise, ask you? "Yes!" And I would ask back, "Does
civilization civilize?"
From this very spot I can look over a land that within
my recollection was inhabited by the Indians, who lived without
care and with but little fear and without toil. When they
wanted fish they went to the streams and the lakes lying all
throiugh this land, and without baiting a hook or losing time
picked out of the water just the size fish they wanted and of
the sort their fancy called for. When they wanted meat they
could go to the marshes nearby in any direction and kill a
deer without arrow or spear and as you might walk in your
sheepfold and take a mutton or a spring lamb. When they
wanted a bird they only had to wait until the wild turkey
went to roost, like the darkey down South to-day would
do if your chickens were not under lock and key. When
they wanted fruit, each and, all in their seasons, be it the wild
strawberry, the dewberry, the blackberry, the rasp'berry or the
grape which grew in great clusters all around, or the wild haw
or the wild crabapple, which, when it ripened, fell on the
ground and was covered by leaves and then by snO'W, which
preserved it all the winter for next spring and summer use.
Would that not make a paradise of any country?
And what can be said of this locality, my birthplace, can
be said yet to a greater extent of the other sections of this
land, of God's blessing that I know of, and I believe that
greater and still better was to have been found in the latitudes
of Kentucky and Tennessee.
Tell me that Cortez brought a better civilization or. Chris
tianity than he found in Mexico? I say no ; the people there to-

FISH, SNAKE AND OTHER STORIES. 249
day are degrees worse off than when that pirate landed on the
shores of America.
Answer the question to suit yourself whether civilization
civilizes or not, but I believe that you will agree with me in my
doubts the more you may see and know and cannot say that
I am only dealing in fish stories and raising "fishy" questions.
Years ago, and after Tom Bridger, the great Western
scout and a great American .character, in whose honor Fort
Bridger was named, had made the YellowstO'ne Park some
what notorious among those who became wise as to our coun
try's greatness more through oi-al than through books or news
paper reports.
The American scout and trapper from the earliest days
of our country's history was a peculiar character unto him
self. What one knew the other found out even in the remot
est parts of our country by transmission through word of
mouth and never through letter or print. No character was
more repulsive or more shunned than a newspapei- reporter
or an editor would be. I knew years and years before any
considerable portio'U of the public knew, nearly all about Yel
lowstone Park, and years before the Government set it aside
as a national park, and it should have been called "Bridger's
Land" for he more than any other was its explorer, guide,
scout and defender.
He was a man of indomitable perseverance, self-educated,
self-made and self-willed, and a truer man never looked
another square in the face. He was one who exemplified the
truth of the assertion that "truth is stranger than fiction."
He had told of the geysers and waterfalls and lakes and other
wonderful things in nature's field of wonders that were to
be seen in that co.untry. His descriptions were always found
good. He told of the wonderful fish that were to be found up
there and the Avonderful beavers and the immense bear, both
as to size and number, and that no Indian came within its

250 FISH, SNAKE AND OTHER STORIES.
sacred precincts for they considered it a spirit or ghost land.
He told of the wonderful elk, both as to size and number. He
would go in there in the monthof June and come out early in the
month of September, at the same season of the year that the
big elk and the big bear came there to enjoy the beautiful
scenes of nature as well as the rich grasses, and just as the
wealthiest and greatest men of our nation and of the world
in general go there now at the same season of the year.
Therefore Bridger came in contact with not the ordinary
of any race or species but the extraordinary of all. He was
a man who could tell a story and, doubt it who might, no one
dared to snicker or squint his eye. To be questioned in what
he told was a mortal insult, and Jim Bridger never brooked
anything of that sort.
He told how one day he was out hunting in the Park with
his favorite and always to be relied upon rifle and bowie knife,
and he noticed a herd of elk a very short distance away, and,
being in need of that sort of meat, fired away at an elk whose
antlers would measure not less than twelve or fifteen feet from
tip to tip. His gun went off all right, but the elk never moved
or seemed to notice it, and he fired again and again with ditto
as a result each time. He clubbed his gun and stole up towards
the elk to kill it in that way, when he ran up against a glass
¦mountain and hurt himself and was asto'nished to find that that
elk was twenty-five miles away beyond a great and almost
impassable canyon.
The Absedian mountain in the Yellowstone Park which
is passed by all tourists, would, but for the color of the glass,
sanction Bridger's story.
He told of how you could catch beautiful one-and-one-half-
pound mountain trout with an unbaited hook in a bubbling
broo'k or mountain stream and throw it ovei- on the other side
of the rock or ground o.n which yo.u stood, and, without tak
ing it off his hook, cook it in the hot spring just below; and

FISH, SNAKE AND OTHER STORIES. 25 1
of another place where the hot spring broke out from the side
of the mountain and ran over the deep cold water from the
mountain stream, and that he only had to drop an unbaited
hook down through the four feet of two hundred degrees hot
water and catch a mountain trout in the cold strata below and
pull it up through the hot well cooked and ready for the mouth.
These pass as fish stories, but I have done the same as
Bridger said might be done and so can any one else who will
go there. I was giving my experiences and telling my best fish sto
ries, all truths, before a body of gentlemen, the American Hay
Fever Club, at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, where
we would meet to exchange experiences with hay fever cures,
and after mixing drinks tell fish, bear and snake stories, all
of which had to be vouched for in some way. Several good
ones had been told and I told the above. A new comer or two
joined the party and I was requested to tell it again, but being
wise I declined and said I was too much a lover of Shakespeare
tO' do anything of that sort. Of course I was asked what he
had to do with it. My reply, "He never repeats."
Another undertook to repeat it but hearsay stories would
not go. Quite a commotion was being created because I would
not reaffirm my story, when the president of the club, who was
an "all-rounder" came in. After speaking to all of the boys
he wanted to know the cause of the laughter and commotion.
They then insisted that I should repeat my story to the new
arrival. I knew my man as well as I knew what was in the
air. This being his first season, he was not up to the new
by-laws adopted for the season's recreation. I retold the fish
story, to which he said :
"That is all right ; I have been there and done it myself."
An immediate adjournment was taken to the hall below,
where several had previously adjourned to play billiards. It
cost that man what would have been a young fortune to me in

252 FISH, SNAKE AND OTHER STORIES.
my day in wines and high-brand champagnes for being a wit
ness to a first-class fish story.
Two days after this at the same place I started out to the
Snow Islands on a fishing excursion with four southern Illi
nois gentlemen and their wives. I having previously told them
that I would carry them to a place where they would catch more
fish in one day's time than they had ever seen caught, prom
ising that I would pay the expenses of the entire party, them
selves and wives, if I did not prove what I said.
The understanding was that all of the fish that we caught
were to be brought to the hotel, and that they were to be
brought there cleaned, and that they were to be cooked, that it
was false economy and not the proper thing to do to catch fish
and bring them o.ut for the women to clean. One of the party
volunteered to "clean all the fish that we will catch," and he
was the best Nimrod of the party and the man who would
rather do anything else than perform the self-imposed duty.
When we started, unbeknown to them, I hired a negro, fish
cleaner, who brought with him two or three twenty-five pound
sacks of salt. The darkey came up to me and said :
"Boss, whar shall I put de salt?"
I said, "Go down stairs and ask the steward."
My friends looked at me and then at one another, and I
said: This is going to be a day for fish deals and I will teach you
how dangerous it will be to question any of my fish stories
again as you have in the past."
The boat we had was in good command and under charter
for the day. We ran into a good cove between twoi of the
many hundreds and thousands of islands up there and the
wheel quit turning and we were told to go fishing. In four
hours' time one man had caught three hundred and twelve,
another had caught two hundred and eighty, another had
caught two hundred and sixty, and I from having two

FISH, SNAKE AND OTHER STORIES. 253
hooks on my line had caught four hundred and nine, and our
judge was working with the nigger cleaning the fish and salt
ing them down in a box and he declared it was fun and would
not allow any of us to interfere. He was a man of wealth
as well as humor and legal learning and moved that we
adjourn and go home that night, which we did.
He paid every cent of the expenses and "set 'em. up" in
good style besides, and the last I ever heard of him was declar
ing that though I was the greatest fish liar on earth I dealt in
the most remarkable fish truths he ever heard.
In my day I have seen many strange things and in consid
erable numbers that no one else or but very few ever saw.
I have seen a scow, thirty feet long, fourteen feet wide and two
feet deep, moored in a school of mullet at night when all
around was dark, in Corpus Christi Bay, when by the raising
of a lantern in the center of the boat and hitting the side
with the oars, in five minutes the boat would be filled, and in
ten minutes be sunk by the mullets jumping into, it if the light
was not lowered. This boat load of mullet would be oared
or pushed to the shore where the people of Live Oak and
adjoining counties (the hog counties of Texas) had driven
thousands of hogs there to be fattened on the mullet that were
thrown out as the high tide receded.
Now the man living on the west coast down in Florida
or three hundred miles north of there in Georgia and South
Carolina, must not confound these Texas mullet with, that of
their sort that are caught by the millions in the seine on the
coast down there, dry salted and sold to the farmers who come
from two to three hundred miles in their one-horse, two-
wheeled and their twoi-horse and four-horse rigs for these
salted mullets, for which they pay two cents apiece and which
they sell for "three for a quarter" and take pay in country
produce or live on the wagon load themselves the year through.
I have seen at one time as far as the eye could reach and

254 FISH, SNAKE AND OTHER STORIES.
could have been measured one hundred and eight or fifteen
miles in distance, one and a quarter miles wide, on the beach of
Corpus Christi Island, Texas (representing the high and low
tide) millions of sea turtles that would average from three to
six hundred pounds each and possibly more millions than there
ever were of buffalo, on the great American plains.
These turtles came here from the mighty deep and the
islands of the sea beyond to deposit their eggs in the sandy
seashore, coming with high tide, and as the tide receded the
turtles would slide in under one another so as to look like
shingles on a roof. They would deposit from nine to twenty
eggs in a hole they made in the ground, how I cannot tell you,
and when high tide came they floated out and other millions
would come. The turtles only came there about six days in
the year to lay their eggs. Where they went no' man knoweth.
In twenty-one days' time the toip eggs in the turtle's nest of
eggs hatched and a turtle about the size of an ordinary man's
thumb commenced moving around and by millions they would
dazzle the eye, confuse the vision and craze the comprehension.
The high tide came in and they, the young turtles, floated
out with it to go no man knoweth no more than he doth where
the wind listeth, and in a very few minutes after the receding
of that tide other millions were hatched that went out o.n the
next high tide, and thus for six or eight days the turtle hatch
ing business continued.
It was near this place that the great Gail Borden of Fort
Bend County, Texas, before he had made himself famous as
the inventor of condensed milk, established his turtle can
ning factory, that failed to pan dividends from the fact that
the turtles only came a few days in the year.
I have but one more fish story that I will tell, and that
will end it, not but that I could fill a book bigger than this
will be all relating to fish. It will be located between the sur
face and three hundred or a thousand feet in the deep of the

PISH, SNAKE AND OTHER STORIES. 255
sea — live fish of all sizes and colors in their native state,
viewed from a glass-bottomed boat near the Catalina Islands
in the Pacific Ocean off the California coast, which no one will
view but to ever afterwards think of with surprise, wonder
and delight.
The man of brains and level-headedness who will go there
and see that sight will come away with more to think of and
about than any one other sight he might see in a generation
of time. To my reader I will say. Do not go on a boat where
there is a babbling crowd of girls, boys and women who must
talk, but pick your crowd or charter a boat and go by your
self with pusher and guide. The man of o^bseiwation and
brains will be so absorbed by what his guide will tell that he
will be very apt to use curse words if women and children
from their incessant babbling keep him from hearing the story
of that peculiar fish that he sees down in the deep, that he
knows no other man could ever hook, and if he hooked he
would not know how to unhook, but would be very like the
man who caught a bear and who ap'pealed to his neighbors
to come and help him let loose.
I have been high up in the air ballooning and I have been
at great depths in mines and in many peculiar conditions and
positions viewing the world from high mountain tops, etc., but
never before have I felt such peculiar unrealistic conditions
and feelings as I did looking downwards through this glass-
bottomed boat for hundreds and hundreds of feet as we floated
over mountain peaks and across great chasms, as one might
float over the Rocky mountains in a balloon and look down
wards. So transparent is the water that at times you can
see six or eight hundred feet to the botto.m as easily as you can "
see only a few in broad daylight. Not until you have seen
this sight will you become a past master in the art of telling
fish truths.
Now as to snakes. I was once running a line through the

256 FISH, SNAKE AND OTHER STORIES.
San Jacinto swamps in Texas where the switch cane was some
taller than my head, and here and there mammoth oak trees
grew. The line passed through a swamp'y country, with every
now and then a bayou from six to ten feet wide and t-yventy
or thirty- feet deep, the surface of the water coming near to
that of the land. My eye was fixed on the object my com
pass had directed, and using the Jacob staff as a parter of the
hard switch cane which I commenced going through, my com
pass under my arm, old surveyor fashion, my chain man close
in the rear, I came to one of these little bayous, in the middle
of which and filling about one-half of the water space, lay
\\'liat I supposed to be an old log. Not looking at it carefully
1 made a step, and in half a second more of time my feet would
have been on the back of an alligator, that as I remember now
from first sight was several times longer than the longest fence
rail I ever saw and about the size of a large saw-log. In an
instantj on seeing me its head and tail were in the air. No
man should ask why I so early had grey hair.
Previous to this experience, myself and brother, whoi were
strangers in that part of Texas and were on the lookout for
a good country to settle in, concluded toi camp at Hodges Bend
in Fort Bend County — this was only a few weeks before our
taking the railroad tie contract referred to elsewhere. We
staked our West Texas bronchos, who had never heard, seen
or thought of an alligator, much less one thousand of them,
on the prairie while we fixed ourselves to. have a good sleep,
barring the mosquitoes, under the wide spreading limbs of
the majestic live oaks that lined the lake. Fortunately we
had thrown our saddles down on the ground under a limb,
which we reached by springing at a moment of great peril.
We made our coffee and broiled our bacon and had eaten
our supper, in fact had made our beds down when we heard a
noise that was somewhat of a mixture between the bellowing
of a mad bull, the lowing of a stampede of wild Texas steers.

FISH, SNAKE AND OTHER STORIES. 257
the roaring of a lion and the growling of a hyena, all com
bined in one. We never had heard before that an alligator
was capable of making any sort of a noise, in fact we had
heard very little about alligators and knew next to nothing
about them. We were quickly educated and were wonderfully
wise before the next morning. In less time than it takes to tell
it we were up in that live oak tree, springing froim the ground
to the limb, which we reached, and if there were fifty there
were five hundred alligators rolling over O'ue another to get
the bread and bacon that we had, and when they quit the
ground and went back to the water there was so little left
of our bridles and saddles, and nothing at all of our blankets,
that we were happy to have anything of ourselves left. Our
saddle-bags and contents were all riddled. We went to. Hous
ton, a distance of twenty miles or more, across a trackless
prairie, never daring to tell our alhgator experience to any one.
A few years back I was in the smoking department of a
sleeper going westward over the "Sunset Route" between New
Orleans and Burwick's Bay, now Morgan City, La. There
were several gentlemen present and I never have been back
ward in coming forward in any sort of a congregation of men.
I asked if there was any man present whoi could remember
when this road was built, and there was none. Taking them
all in as being under thirty-five, I told them that I was going
to tell them a truth in the way of what might be termed a
snake, fish or alligator story.
In 1857 when this road was built by the Harris Morgan
Company to shorten their line between New Orleans and Gal
veston — by four hundred miles — I was on the first train that
passed over it with passengers, in charge of the Express Com
pany's safe. At places on the road where the filling had to be
brought a long distance there were anywhere from one to a
thousand alligators for each railway tie, and it frequently
required two engines to take a train of twelve cars through
on this level road, the cow catcher on the front engine being

258 FISH, SNAKE AND OTHER STORIES.
so loaded down as to all but scrape the rails. The alligators
came from the swamps on both sides tO' sun themselves on
the track and I have seen them rolled off O'U both sides of the
train passing, as many as five hundred or ten thousand on
each side of the road twice a day in a distance of twenty miles.
No headlight on the front of an ordinary bicycle could
shine as did the eyes of the people in that smoker, looking at
each other as well as at me, when a gentleman said :
"Yes, sir, I believe it. My father was a locomotive engi
neer who ran on this road at that time and he told me as much."
It was suggested to the gentleman that it was his turn to
produce, but he happened to be one of that sort that does not
believe in paying for truths.
When leather became scarce and it was found that alligator
hides were valuable, the hunter and the trapper of the North
and West soon played havoc with the alligators from the
Rio Grande and up all around the Gulf Coast, and today it
would be no easy matter to see one though you spent weeks
trying. Like the buffalo and the sturgeon and other disap
pearances that I have referred to in the past, the alligator is a
back number — once was, is not now, never will be again, and
nobody is going to cry because they will not reappiear.
That great American hunter and trapper as well as guide
and scout has disappeared fro mall but the memory of old
timers like myself, and where they have gone there is none
to answer back. The beaver, the bear, the otter and the wolf,
the bison and the buffalo, the elk and the deer, the antelope
and the mountain sheep have all disappeared in the last few
years of my recollection, and now finally and at last their
enemy the trapper, the hunter and the scout, has disappeared
also and who has ever read that matchless poem :
"Oh why should the spirit of mortal be proud?"
but that is reminded of the past and ages past, that
"The thoughts that we are thinking our fathers did think,
From the death that we are shrinking our fathers have shrunk."

FISH, SNAKE AND OTHER STORIES. 259
Reader, if you have never read this poem ask your nearest
editor to republish it that others besides yourself may be most
nobly impressed.
Many an old man have I asked, "Are there many rattle
snakes in this country now ?" who wo'uld rep'ly, "No', I have
not seen one for years. I do not know what became of them."
The old trapper, scout, guide and hunter could tell you
and you may yet see marks of it in the curio stores. When
I travel in that part of our country that in the past was noted
for its skunks, and can hear of none having been seen or smelt
in the past several or many years, I know that the trapper has
been there. Hunt as I may in the few remaining wooded belts
in my native State for my old friend, the ring tailed coon, the
black or fo.x squirrel, and I will find none, for the trapper has
been there and has done his good work. Go. to those forests
where but a few years ago wild turkeys by the thousands
roosted, and more from because his feathers were valuable
than all else, no wild turkey is to be found, the trapper has
been there.
Some years ago I was a guest at a Governor's mansion in
Mexico, where were congregated many high state officials,
who wore badges of high degrees, as I did, and wishing not
only to sound the intelligence and the beliefs of the people, I
asked if the burro', the same beast of burden that our Savior
rode, was a native of Mexico, and all with one voice seemed to
say "Yes," and "Is it so that what is known in Texas as the
mustang pony was a native of this land?" And as with one
voice they said ditto, but not one could reply to the question,
"What bird of the greatest no.toriety was a native of this
country?" Some said one, some said another, when in fact the wild
turkey is a native of Mexico and was driven North by the
Spanish invasion, and it is related that the Indian inhabitants
and natives tell that the wild turkey was a new bird in the New

26o FISH, SNAKE AND OTHER STORIES.
England regions only a few years previous to the landing of
the Mayflower at Plymouth Rock.
The burro was imported into Mexico by the Spaniards, as
was the horse, and as were they both to all lands the Spanish
ever invaded and conquered, and no four-footed animal of the
buffalo sort was found west of the Rio Grande. The deer
was of a diminutive size there, as was the elk and the ante
lope, as compared with the antelope of the northern Rocky
Mountain plains. The snakes in that country were, in times
beyond recall, something fearful and terrible to behold or
encounter. They have been exterminated by the Mexican
trapper; while the birds noted for their plumage and none
for their song have been slaughtered to decorate the bonnets
of our fair sex, who thus wear evidence of murder, and which
custom is fast disap.pearing.
The worst snake story that I can give a personal experience
of I will relate, and then another, and we will turn to bears.
I was hunting for quail in a rocky and hilly country in
coimpany with a few friends. On passing near by a laige
bowlder a rattlesnake sprang at me and fastened his fangs in
my coat-tail, seeing which I flew screaming, the snake hold
ing on. I looked around and saw him streaming out to the
rear, a distance that to my eye measured somewhere in the
neighborhood of fifteen hundred feet. I ran out of my coat
and, arming myself with my gun, went back to kill a fifteen-
inch rattlesnake that had but two rattlers on his tail.
The largest rattlesnake to be found anywhere in the United
States that I have knowledge of was in the lower Rio Grande
River country in Texas and Mexicoi. They came from the
Colorado country floating down with the springtime freshets
on logs and driftwood, and when striking salt water got back
to land, and true to the laws of nature they were seldom found
crawling in any other direction than northward. The largest

EISH, SNAKE AND OTHER STORIES. 261
I ever saw measured fourteen inches in circumference and
eight feet nine inches long, having thirty-two rattles.
The rattlesnake that divides home with the owl and the
prairie dog in the northwest Texas plains is a small affair
but is a fighter and, next to the gila monster, the most poison
ous of all snake tribes found in the \Vestern countries. I am
told that they, as well as the prairie dog, have about all dis
appeared, their hides being tanned.
There is a snake in Texas called the coach whip that lives
in the ground in the prairie country. You may sneak up on
him with a club to hit his head, and before the club reaches
the ground he is ten feet away, so quick is he in his actions.
They and the bird of paradise go together, why I cannot tell.
I have seen a snake of this sort cross the road a few rods ahead
of my horse, one or more of the birds of paradise following
like a streak, and from their peculiar drumming sound and
the throwing out of their feathers and the raising of their
tails would scare any horse or living mortal on earth out of
their wits, and in an instant they were gone. It was all done
so quickly one cO'Uld not realize what had occurred.
From an early age I was my father's "runner" or errand
boy, taking medicine to his patients for miles around. It com
menced at an age when I was barely old enough to follow a
blazed trail through the dark forest that surrounded our ho.me
in all directions, and, rain, snow or sunshine, the sick had to
be attended to, and I rather liked it, for in this way I received
many tips in the way of big red apples, pieces of pie, mostly
mince, "made last winter at hog-killing time," doughnuts and
whatever else the good woman I came in contact with thought
a boy was most apt to like.
I was on to my job better even than many a Pullman car
porter, hotel bellboy or waiter is up to this date on to his,
equally as good anyway to the best of them.
One evening when the sun was barely one hour high I

262 FlSH, SNAKE AND OTHER SfORIEg.
was dispatched with quite a number of little powders done up
in white paper with a string tied around them to a neighbor
living more than a mile away, the greater distance through
a thick forest. About half way through this forest a large
black walnut tree had been felled and the butt cut sawed oft'
and rolled a few feet beyond its cut. By this tree my trail
went, and it was here that I got my first lessons in scouting.
Passing by the end of the log, possibly whistling boy fashion,
I encountered a good-sized black bear, which was as surprised
as I was. He was standing in the trail, but raised on his
hind feet, "Adam Zad" fashion. I was but a few feet from
him, but I did not take time toi look at his teeth and thereby
judge of his age pr accurately measure the distance. I whirled
homeward and forgot the powders in my hand and they were
scattered. I do not remember climbing the fence. When I came to
I was panting "Bear! Bear!" all that I could say until I got
a fresh supply of wind. Old dad was a cruel old Virginian
master who had no faith in what boys might say, but was
always ready to use the strap, generally a hickory gad about
four feet long. He was a man of his word on this score as
well as others, and saying, "I'll show you what a Bear is!"
he commenced to apply his gad, and I broke loose and he after
me in the direction of the bear. He went to the fence of the
outer field and I hollered to him," "Come on," and he came.
and it required a little manoeuvering on my part to get around
to his rear while his head was yet turned in the direction 1
wanted him to go. This I did by jumping behind a big maple
tree. With that peculiar grunt that the old man had when
he was stirred up or mad at a boy, he came to the log and I
was a close observer of what was going to take place, fearing
that my interviewer, the bear, had gone away.
Dad passed the log and had but fairly done so when up
went a scream, the old man whirled and I flew if ever a bov

FISH, SNAKE AND OTHER STORIES. 263
did fly. Those peo'ple did without their medicine that night,
and perhaps wO'Uld have done better had they never received it.
I never got that thrashing and I knew better than to tell any
one else just th,eii, as dad told me to let it be a closed incident,
and he never told anybody. I told our hired man, who from
my earliest infancy placed great confidence in me, for I never
repeated any thing they told me about that was going on in
the neighborhood, unlike my other two brothers, who were
blabs from 'way back.
I was perhaps the best informed lad in that country about ;
what I did not know as to the doings and happenings of all
sorts and characters would not have made an A-B-C prim.eT
and was not worth knowing. My mother was not much of a
gossip, but yet we had some good- ones in the neighborhood,
and I contrived always to be near where mother and they were
after the dishes were washed up, and I nearly always had
verified the stories I had heard previously out in the barnyard
or hoeing corn or piling wood.
I was a grown-up young man and living in Southern
Texas when I had my next bear experience. I had read Davy
Crockett when a boy and imagined that I never would be a
bear hunter. I had heard many Indian stories and had read a
few, and, strange as it may appear tO' some, a natural born cow-
- ard as I was from my earliest recollections, I wanted to see an
Indian on his native heath in battle array; and I did meet
them, but I never read or heard told an acount of an Indian
fight that was anything like the ones that I have experienced.
Perhaps the difference was that my Indians were on horse
back and the other fellow's Indians were afoot, and that my
Indians never got behind a tree to do their fighting in the day
time though they might crawl with a sage brush "top-knot"
to get between me and my horse. The devils could do it only
once, however, for after that my hind-sights worked as well

264 FISH, SNAKE AND OTHER STORIES.,
as my front ones, and when in an Indian country I was loo'k-
ing all around at the same time.
The wolf stories told by the old grandmothers of the neigh
borhood, who made our home theirs alternately in the winter
time, so scared me that I was afraid to goi in the dark room
upstairs after the ladder had been let dO'wn— which signified
that it was the ho'ur for the boys to gO' to bed in the loft.
There were wolves in those days and of the worst sort in
Michigan ; I saw some dead as well as live ones before leav
ing there.
Notwithstanding this cowardice, I was classed as one of
the best coon hunters and killers in the "bend of the river,"
and,, at an age when I had to get on a chair toi load the long-
stocked Virginia rifle. I Could save the meat of a squirrel by
shooting his head off, though he was in the tallest tree. The
ground hogs I killed with that rifle were past numbering.
With a party of young men, who promised tO' be tetter
huntsmen than they were, with a pack of hounds and a large
number of other breeds of dogs, we started out for a bear hunt
in the Brazos bottoms lying off to. the west of where Pittsfield
was then located. We were not long in starting a bear and
killing him. Not one of us had ever had experience in skin
ning a bear. Skinning a hog would be easier than a bear. We
went further O'n and made O'Ur camp and, tying up our dogs,
we started out with a few coon dogs tO' catch opossums, and
got badly lost and tangeld up in the woods, cane-brakes,
sloughs, swamps, etc. ,
After having spent the night rambling around our dogs
ran into a bunch of Mexican hogs, otherwise known as the
peccary, of which we had heard and well knew that if we
crippled one we had to save ourselves by climbing a tree, and
if we failed to take our guns with us we would be starved
to death there, as many a hunter had been. Fortunately for
us it was good daylight and we saw the situation and got our

FISH, SNAKE AND OTHER STORIES. 265
guns and ammunition, and more fortunately still there were
only sixteen in the pack, the last of which we killed in short
order. Years afterwards I learned that this was the last drove
ever seen in that "bend of the river." We killed a few bears
and then went home all voting that we would never go. bear
hunting again, and I never did. I ran upon several afterwards
that I had not lost and was not hunting.
My next bear experience was when scouting with a party
of two others southeast of the Ogon Mountains in New Mexico
about twenty-five miles east of Los Vegas and in a very dan-
geroiis hostile Indian country. We were cooking our bacon
and making our coffee in a concealed place, smudging O'Ur
fires. Our horses were grazing close by, bridles hanging on
the saddle pommels; the girths had been loosened and the
saddles set back to rest their withers, an old Ranger's way of
treating his horse whenever any sort of an O'pportunity would
permit. Bill Bowen was on guard, while Elam and I were doing the
cooking act. Bill stammei-ed, and when a little excited stam
mered still more, and when badly excited beat the Jews. We
heard him making a noise and trying to say "Bear! bear!"
He came running with a map of scare painted Oin his face that
was so terrible to behold that I believe it would have fright
ened a regiment of wildcats. We looked in the direction
whence the noise came and we all sprang to our horses, leav
ing our guns, cook pots and all and not taking time toi "cinch"
the saddles on our horses at the sight of the ferocious animal
that by this time was close by, not fifty yards away, and our
demoralization may be judged from the way the horses ran
and from the actual description given by the other two scouts,
who like myself had never before seen a grizzly bear, except
as pictured in our geo'graphy and as printed on the label which
was pasted on the bottle of hair oil we youngsters used to

266 FISH, SNAKE AND OTIiER STORIES.
grease our pates with and prized more highly when perfumed
with the oil of cinnamon or burgundy.
First impressions, as I have often said, are always the best
and it is well for us that we act upon them. The first glimpse
that I got of that bear made him somewhere in the neighbor
hood of thirty-five or forty feet high and eighty feet long with
a head and mouth big enough to have taken in two of us at'
a time. The brute was detained in investigating and shaking
up our camp equipments left behind, and in this way we got a
few hundred yards the start of him but had not gained time
enough, to bridle our horses or settle our saddles in a proper
position. Horses never ran faster, and, tho'Ugh he looked to
be only ambling along a ,t e ase, it seemed as though or many
miles and more than a two hours' run we had gained but little
on him, rather the count was in his favor when he gave up
the chase, and we did not return to it but to our camp and
headquarters, where we turned in our report verbally and
asked for reinforcements to regain our lost guns and camp
equipments, and well it was that our general had been drink
ing a superior quality of whisky and was therefore in a good
mood, for he told us to take as many volunteers as we wished,
for, had we started out there with a less number than the
eighty who followed us, the Muscalero Apaches, who were
lying in wait for us, would have ended our existence.
The red devils were in ambush, but by so.me Divine guid
ance we lost the regular trail and came in between them and
the mountains, and but for our having the advantage in the
lay of the land and they only having bows and arrows, we
might not have got away with so many of them, sending them
to their happy hunting-grounds, where all good Indians are,
and they might have interfered with the circulation of the
blood of no few of us. Several of our horses were hit with
their arrows. They got over it soon and we returned to camp
with the scalps of a few of the braves together with their

FISH, SNAKE AND OTHER STORIES. 267
trappings. We also returned with our guns and what of the
camp outfit was left, for the brute returned and demolished
everything, but did not touch the three guns and the two six-
shooters that were left lying on the ground.
The track this bear made showed that his right fore paw
had three claws cut off and two of his left hind foot claws also
showed that he had been in a trap in his day and time. This
bear measured fourteen feet from tip, to the left hind paw.
He was killed fourteen years after above interview, by a party
of surveyors of the Atchison, Topeka, Santa Fe, and I trav
eled nearly fifteen hundred miles to offer one thousand dollars
for that pelt. It was the property of an Englishman who gave
eighteen hundred dollars for it and who gave me a photograph
for nothing.
The history of this animal as orally given by the Indians
and Mexicans of that country was one of great length, not
only of the story, but in the period of time that it covered.
This animal had depopulated the ranch that had been estab
lished at the base of this mountain and near where we camped
at the foot of the pass between the Oregon and the Dog
Mountains, the ruins of which are still there. His range was
from the Guadalupe Mountains in Texas to the Socoro Mo'Un-
tains in New Mexico. As near as could be ascertained, he was
more than one hundred years old and had killed more than
three hundred Mexicans and frontiersmen. I was told that
though he would kill a Mexican, he would not eat him, because
of the red pepper in the Mexican's make-up.
It was said that the reason that the herd of antelope which
ranged between the Ogon and Guadalupe Mountains in Texas
to the Rio Grande River and Pacos River was larger and more
fleet than any other ever known of on the American continent,
was owing to this bear keeping all the hunters and trappers
a-way. There were but few other bears in all this range.

268 FISH, SNAKE AND OTHER STORIES.
Besides being a man-eater he was a cannibal as respected his
own race.
A schoolboy once told me that the reason that a man could
handle an elephant arid the reason why a tiger and a grizzly
bear were afraid of nothing was because the elephant's eyes
were like field-glasses that magnified, while the eyes of a tiger
were like the field-glasses being reversed, making everything
look small. If this be so, it accounts for my eyes having been
reversed on that bear, and therefore multiplied his height and
length, but I lost nothing in getting away from his strength.
I never lost any bears, so I have never gone out hunting
after any, and I have only come across a few since this occur
rence and I whistled to keep up courage and looked the other
way in order that the ,bear might do the same, and he did it
and we went further apart instead of coming closer together.
Years ago there was a large silver-tip bear that weighed
over eleven hundred pounds in Union Park in Qiicago behind
two-inch steel bars and they protected again by a strong iron
, fence six feet away. Though the sign was up,
"DO NOT FEED OR POKE THE BEAR,"
I found great amusement in going down there and seeing the
"greenies" from the country and the smart young ladies try
ing to amuse the bear by letting him smell and amble with their
umbrella and parasol tips. He only needed about half an inch
of the end of them between his teeth tO' wrest a crooked cane
out of the hand of the stoutest man that ever looked at that
bear, and I have been told that he had destroyed on an average
one hundred dollars' worth of umbrellas, parasols and canes
per day during the season the most strangers visited the park.
This bear was a cunning old cuss, as all bears are. He
never took anything away fro.m any one but that he put it in
a dark room in the rear of his cage that the next sucker that

FISH, SNAKE AND OTHER STORIES. 269
came up would not see what he had been doing in the way of
having fun for himself as well as the people on the outside
who saw the other fellow lose his cane or umbrella.
My New Mexico bear weighed thirteen hundred and eighty
pounds net. I heard of one that was killed in Idaho, near
Jackson's Hole, east of the Teuton Mountains that weighed
sixteen hundred pounds and he was a man-killer and would
have ended the existence of the greatest criminal lawyer of
Chicago but for a shot fired, after eighty had been poured into
him, by a personal friend of mine, who in his day had been
a great scout, guide, trapper and hunter. Dr. Bullen, who died
only a few years ago and who was offered two thousand dol
lars for this bear's skin. Singularly his fore paw and hind
foot was marked the same as was the one killed in New Mex
ico. It is possible to locate every grizzly and silver-tip bear
on the American continent today, as it also is the buffalo. I
saw four of the former, six of the second and eighty of the
latter in Yellowstone Park recently.
Every traveler in the Yellowstone Park may see the bear
any evening about sundown going to the hotel after his
rations, and though very gentle in appearance, woe always
befalls the unfortunate fool that gets between him and his
den back in the woods. The Government protects them,, as
well as they do. the buffalo, elk, deer, and beaver. They are all
on the increase and the order went forth from Washington
in 1903 that the larger and older bears should be killed and
that the beaver should be thinned out.
I was authorized for myself and a few friends to offer
twelve hundred dollars for the largest bear skin, one thousand
each for the next three largest, seventy-five apiece for ten
beaver skins with the tails and castors preserved, and fifty
dollars each for ten of the largest elk antlers. Some one else
came along and left a higher bid, for we never heard from

270 FISH, SNAKE AND OTHER STORIES.
the skinning and were told at the time by a curio dealer that
we might stand a better chance if we doubled our offer.
I make these statements in order that men of my age may
the more properly realize the wonderful changes that have
taken place in our day. From where I am now sitting writing
this the sun was darkened for three days from the wild pigeons
migrating south, the limbs of great forest trees were broken '
down by their weight — they were by the millions and millions.
Where came they from? Where have they gone? Lived
there an age of people on earth that has seen such wondrous
changes as I and my age have seen? Has it been for the
best? Let time answer.
I have seen when a boy more than O'ue hundred Indian
canoes drawn out of the river on the flat here at my feet.
They came here loaded with beaver, otter, fox and lynx fur
(muskrats and coons were then considered valueless) that
were sold by the Indians who had brought them here from
up the St. Jo River and its tributaries. They were paid for in
Spanish quarter and half dollars or English shillings, red
beads, trinkets and whisky. An Ai beaver skin would bring
about two dollars and an otter one dollar. Today they would
bring from one hundred and twenty-five dollars to three hun
dred each.
The fur bought here from the Indians was shipped by
sailing canoes to John Jacob Astor's principal fur depot located
on Mackinac Island, and from which the furs collected on the
Columbia River in the West and as far north as his more than
three thousand hunters, trappers and scouts operated, were
shipped, and the curious may see today in the old Astor House,
now one of the leading hotels on Mackinac Island, not only
the old storehouse but the books and correspondence and bank
checks that to look over carries one back into the histoiry of
the past as nothing else will.
In the past few years I have paid considerable attention

FISH, SNAKE AND OTHER STORIES. 27I
to the collection of cUrios and wondei's of the world, art, etc.,
in the museums of our land, notably the Field Columbian
Museum in Chicago. As now conducted and managed (by a
directory of college professors with all sorts of letters after
their names signifying all sorts of degrees bestowed on them),
all of these museums are little better than dens for professors
' who live on the donors' money, just as do the missionaries sent
to foreign and pagan countries by the contributions made from
our good mothers, wives and sisters and a few of the goody-
goodies of the other sex who want tO' stand in with the preacher
and the women and who do not have sense enough to differ
entiate between a baboon fight and a couple of lusty mules
kicking each. other.
These wise men and professors make me sick every time
I come in contact with them, and when I fail to provide myself
with smelling salts I can only find relief by the immediate
application of the mouth of a bottle labeled "Old Crow" to
mine. If Mr. Field of Chicago sho.uld ever take it into his head
to change the management of the Field Columbian Museum
in the City of Chicago and have it run on the same basis and
the same brain-like way that his world wondrous mercantile
establishment is — and God grant that he may before he dies — ¦
then the world will rise up and call him blessed, and this is
no fish story but a truth that will burn the man or woman
who undertakes to assail it.
If some great editor like Joe Medill were toi rise up in
Chicago and, defying all criticism and opposition for a season,
take hold of this matter as it should be taken hold of, the
rising generation and those following them will forever embalm
the name of that editor.

SOME INSECT AND OTHER TRUTHS.

While fish, bear and snake stories have at all times and
will at all times to come be interesting, amusing and enter
taining, I must depart from the usual line and devote at least
a chapter to insect truths.
Few men know what an "Arkansas bee course" is. An
expression made use of very often when we want to compare
the value of something to nothing. When the bees quit mak
ing honey and are to be found around carcasses or water pools
the trapper or hunter collects four or five in a gourd, and,
going off a distance, turns one loose. The bee soars around
and around in a circle until he attains a sufficient altitude,
when it will strike off in a straight direction towards its home
in a hollow cypress tree, perhaps five or six miles away, and
in which there may be from one to. five hundred gallons of
honey. The trapper takes this course and follows it as long as he
can see the bee, blazing his way ,on the trees and the under
growth he passes with his scalping knife. After going as far
as prudent he turns loose another bee, which takes the same
course the former one did, and the trapper runs following the
course as it may fly in another direction to another tree and
if so the trapper then has two bee courses. He, perhaps, may
not be able to find either tree this season. He has blazed his
courses, however, which consist of twO' hacks or an X hack
or an I X hack, which is recognized and respected by all other
trappers. He returns to. his course the next season and it is
probable that he has many cO'Urses.
The bee for its industry and great wisdom has been noted
272

SOME INSECT AND OTHER TRUTHS. 273
from all time. There are three different bees that I have come
across in my day. There is O'ne that burrows in the chalk
rock and lives on the honey-dew that settles on the live oak
and willow leaves in the droughty seasons in West Texas
and Mexico. The largest hive of which I have knowledge is
on the Devil's River a few miles above where the S. P. Rail
road crosses the same. It reaches up a cliff for nearly one
hundred feet from fifty to sixty feet above high water mark.
The bee burrows in this rock and makes its cell therein, much
as the yellow jacket or bumble-bee does on the level ground.
Its honey is not palatable and the trapper lets that bee severely
alone. The bat caves in the center of northwest Texas are one
of the wonders of this world that I have seen. We established
niter works there during the war. They are one of the "in
comprehensibilities" to even those who have seen them, much
less those who have never seen or heard of them. The
entrance to the cave is quite large; how many miles back in
the mountain it extends no one knows. In the first cave it
is from one to three hundred feet to the dome. The manure
in the cave is from eighty to one hundred feet deep and is
as rich as any Peruvian guano that is imported intoi the
country for fertilizing purposes.
There are three entrances to the cave, O'ue much larger
than the other two. combined. Abo'Ut four o'clock in the
evening the bats commence flying out, and their noise is some
thing terrific, like the approaching of a tornado, for more
than a mile from the cave. They obscure the sky from view,
likewise the moon and stars. They come out in countless
millions, I may say trillions, and fly off in the air in every
direction. They go out this way every evening and night
until ten and eleven o'clock. When they go back or how they
get in the cave no one knows or can tell. They hang on one
another like bees that are swarming, and it was no uncom-

274 SOME INSECT AND OTHER TRUTHS.
mon thing toi see in the cave bodies of them hanging together
reaching down fifty or seventy-five feet.
On entering the cave in the morning these pendant domes
of bats were all gone. When we quit work of an evening,
which we had to do, they would be hanging there by the
millio'ns, but no one could ever detect a bat going in the cave
entrance, which seemed to be only a place of exit for them.
The grasshoppers that have covered bloody Kansas and all
but depopulated Texas at four different times within my recol
lection, are another of the wonders of the world that I have
seen. They come only with the north winds called "northers ;"
in the latter part of September or the first of October
they reach the Texas coast, and if they were divided off into
battalions of a trillion in each there would be countless
trillions of battalions. To more thoroughly comprehend,
imagine that for three days and three nights the sun, moon
and stars were obscured from, your vision and the ground
around you was covered from one to five inches deep., and
that every sprig of green vegetation on the globe around had
disappeared in the twinkling of an eye.
This grasshopper comes with the wind. His wings can
keep him in the air, but he cannot fly against it or in any
other direction than with the wind. The first three days of
the "norther" bring him, the next three days' "norther"
— that may or may not come for a week or two — pick him up
and carry him on. There was enough of him with the first
"norther" to paste or cover the country from five to ten inches
deep from all the way, away up north in Alberta land to the
Gulf of Mexico and for a width of more than three hundred
miles. From whence they came no man knoweth, but we do
know that nothing but boiling or cold salt water will kill
them; freezing does not feaze them.
I have had half a dozen for three years under a glass,
without anything to eat, in a cool, dark place, and when

SOME INSECT AND OTHER TRUTHS. 275
the glass was remo'ved they were as chipper as they were the
day they came from whence no man shall ever tell.
The grasshopper deposits its eggs in the ground, just like
the mammoth sea turtle deposits hers in the sandy beach, as
is elsewhere narrated, and it journeys on southward with the
next north wind. Its dumping place and final end is in the
Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. The instant that it
strikes salt water it dies. If high up he is carried farther
south and until he strikes the counter current or trade winds
from the southi, when he falls into the Caribbean Sea, while
those in the lower strata of the "norther" drop into the Gulf
of Mexico. We have a report of three ships having been sunk in the
Caribbean Sea and in the Gulf of Mexico in 1857 from the
grasshoppers alighting and falling on them. The steamer
General Rusk, of the Harrison-Morgan line of steamers from
New Orlrans, that plied between the mouth of the Rio Grande
River and New Orleans, loaded with freight and passengers,
in November, 1857, was saved from sinking only from its
having been but a few miles from the eastern limit of the
grasshopper army being blown so'Uth.
The early warm spring days would commence hatching
the grasshopper eggs that were laid from the most northern
limits of Alberta down to the sea coast of the Gulf, and they
would be carried north with the south winds that prevailed
at that season of the year, and after twenty-one days of age
they would be able to attain an altitude and fly back or be
carried back toi that country from whence their progenitors
came and that no man can tell of, no more than can any
man, astrologer or who. not, tell when they will come again.
When I contemplate, for even a few moments of time,
the wondrous creations of my great Creator, methinks how
infinitely ignorant and perhaps happier must be the man who
knows so little of God's creation as to be surprised at what I

276 SOME INSECT AND OTHER TRUTHS.
may have related herein or at what I may hereinafter nar
rate, and considering this, I am not surprised that there are
so many people' on this earth that live without toil only as
they find labor in working fools who believe only that which
their leader, teacher, preacher or politician tells them, and who,
are like the goldfish, in the glass globe that swims around and
sees all the globe, and seeing no other fish, thinks that he
is the only fish in the globe.
Somewhere in Holy Scripture we are advised to go and
take lessons fro.m the bee and the busy ant; and now for an
ant truth.
There is a section of country in Texas, about four
hundred miles in extent in each and either direction, and there
are two other similarly sized sections, one in central and the,
other in the most southern part of Mexico, where the same
ant with all the same peculiarities are to be found. They are
particularly fond of the leaves of peach trees and of willows
and of all other leaves containing a particle of prussic acid
in their make-up. , They are fond of the Spanish moss that
grows on the great trees in the swamps and on the river
courses in the South. These ants make great excavations in
the ground, carrying the dirt to the top. I have seen several
cavities that would measure from eighteen to twenty feet in
diameter and twenty feet in depth, coming to within ten feet
of the surface, and frequently over which grew great mats of
hackberry trees all entwined and covered with mustang grape
vines. Sometimes a live oak thicket wo.uld grow over the
beds and in Atascosa and Guadalupe countries in Texas I
have seen live oak trees that would measure six feet in diameter
that had grown on these beds; the estimated age of a tree
of that size is nearly eight thousand years.
These cavities reach out in every direction and at a great
depth in the earth, often covering more than an acre of
ground, and are filled with rotted peach leaves if they could

SOME INSECT AND OTHER TRUTHS. 277
be had, or moss or such other leaves as would offer, afford
ing nourishment in the sap to be fOund in them, then leaving
a perfect frame-work, preserved by the prussic acid in the
same in which frame work the larvae or eggs are laid by
a queen, just as the eggs of a hive of bees are laid.
The queen ant is from ten tO' fifteen times larger than
the largest overseer ant, and is generally twice the size of
the cutter or of the O'ue that brought the earth to the sur
face. An ant bed covering an acre of ground on a knoll
where there is good drainage would feed from the country
round for a distance of many miles.
I have traced an underground road tunnel which they had
dug for six miles. It wO'uld be three-fourth of an inch high,
three inches wide, and never goi under twoi feet below and
never come within eighteen inches of the surface, and was
as straight in its course as any surveyor could run a line.
One of these tunnels went down below two' never-drying
creeks. They are, when passing through light soil, made as
impervio'us from above or below as any hydraulic cement pipe
could be made. The casing would be only one-fourth of an
inch or less in thickness. From this tunnel side tunnels would
be sent out to a live oak grove, a mile or more off and to the
right or left, and from, those side tunnels laterals would be
sent out to the right and left coming up in the center of a
newly planted peach orchard or whatever the farmer had
planted that they liked.
They would often make a road on the top of the ground,
and especially so over rocky grounds to a willow thicket, a
peach orchard or a clump of trees that had Spanish moss in
abundance on them. This trail, twoi inches wide, would be as
straight as an arrow ; on the right side the goers on the left
the comers passed with pieces of moss an inch long or the
fourth or eighth of a peach leaf. The comers and goers on
a trail three hundred yards long were so numerous that

-278 SOME INSECT AND OTHER TRUTHS.
they could strip a large peach orchard in one night. If this
is "incomprehensible" to you do not read further for I am
going to carry you into such deep water that you will drown,
as I am not yet through with the ant truths, and there are
other ants besides these that are called the cutting ants, of
which I am going to tell more.
These ants would not strip a peach orchard more than
twice a year, for they know that if they did they would not
have any leaves next year. Their cunning and wisdom is
beyond the ken of man. No flowers or shrubbery or fruits
could be grown where they were, and they would seen go to
any place where these things were planted. They never work
in the daytime, excepting in the fall of the year, when it is
pleasant, or in the spring of the year, when their fences need
repairing by reason of the freshets and the washouts, when
they work both night and day, and the amount that they
can do passes the comprehension of man. An old man got
on to a poison, cyanide of potash, with which he poisoned all
of his family, and from which I have suffered from that day
to this with what the doctors call tonsilitis that never fails
to tonsil when I over-exert myself or from exposure take cold.
and I beheve that there are thousands of others whoi suffer as
I have from the same cause, for I smell the accursed stuff in
about every drug store I goi into.
Neither the water nor the poison diminished the number
of the ants or protected the foliage on the old man's trees. I
was the first one to discover that these ants never built a bed
on ground that had any water anywhere near around that
was higher. »
Our well was sixty feet deep; in this we put a force
lift pump driven by a powerful windmill and a one-inch hose,
the end of which I inserted in an ant tunnel, and the water
ran in there continuously for three days and three nights
before it overflowed from the top cavity through a tunnel that

SOME INSECT AND OTHER TRUTHS. 279
was cut by the well diggers many years before, and the well
was filled up with ants and the pump quit pumping and the
mill quit milling, and by this I demonstrated that ants could
be drowned out but not scalded or poisoned. I further found
that by forcing sulphuric acid gas in their tunnels by powerful
blowers no ant could live therein, and I was not long in
putting this find to all possible financial account, and had I
been living in a land not subject to droughts and dis- <
asters in the way of tornados and cyclones and cotton worms
and bowl worms and corn weevils and every other curse God
could visit on any country, I would have become a millionaire
from destroying this pest, and as it was, I made a little but
came near being irretrievably ruined from having organized
and. backing up the Oriental Ant Exterminating Company,
with a view of going to South America, where these same
ants make it impossible to populate the country and also to
Syria and the Holy Land and to parts of Africa where
branches of this ant family have possession of all the better
land and keep the people in great want and poverty.
It is said that "fortune favors the brave" and that "all
things come to him who waits." I always did like old General
Braxton Bragg of the Confederate army, who was known
from the day of the battle of Buena Vista as "a little more
grape and canister. Captain Bragg." I went on East and
negotiated with my friend General Bragg, and was to have
paid him a large salary per annum and all expenses to go
to Palestine and the East generally. He came to Galveston
on his way to my place in the interior and took a rest there
for a few days, when he was lionized by the good people
of that city and the ladies in particular.
General Bragg was one of the few real up-and-down
fighting, planning, sober and industrious generals that there
were in the Confederate army, tho.ugh the two. Johnstons and
General Lee were world favorites, Yet I would at any time

28o SOME INSECT AND OTHER TRUTHS.
rather have trusted the fate of the country toi General Bragg
than toi them, as in my opinion he had more statesmanship
in his makeup and equally as much of military acumen.
Bragg told no one what his mission was and the schemers
and promoters and mo.neyed men behind the Gulf, Colorado
and Santa Fe Railroad made him an offer to take charge of
their Third House members and see that the proper legisla
tion was had; which, he did and where I was very glad to
meet hini, as I needed his services in matters heretofore
related. In this way my ant speculation fell through as far as
I was concerned, saving and excepting that I came across a
man, the like of whom I have always been hunting, who knew
more about my business than I did and wliO' had the required
amount of money to run it, and I sold out, and in this case,
as in about all others where the man having the money had
less sense, the business went under.
No ant ever worked in the bed where I had done my work,
yet I know of where they returned years afterwards where
others did the work. In this same country in which these
ants are located there is another ant, which I will call the
sugar ant.
He works only by night and burrows deep in the ground
and seems to pull the hole in after himi. He is found only
where there are trees and preferably grape vines, and is in
numbers by the trillions; is between one-half and three-
fourths of an inch long, of a pale red color, and neither bites
nor stings. He is the best engineer of all insects or little
animals in God's creation, not excepting .man. He has no eye
to see or nose to smell, but a brain to divine and locate — a
power beyond comprehension. Nothing I ever met in life
equals this ant's ability to do real cussedness.
We had lost one-half of three barrels of sugar — the
ordinary old fashioned brown — and could find no trace of how.
I always had a sweet tooth (being racked in infancy in a

SOME INSECT AND OTHER TRUTHS. 281
maple sap trough had something to do with this). Coming
home one night from a coon hunt, I concluded toi goi intoi the
smoke-house and get some sugar toi eat with my corn pome.
I lit a candle to see my way more clearly. I ran up against
somewhere frO'm between twenty-twoi million, five hundred
and ninety-six thousand and twice that number of ants, every
one of the little red devils having a chunk of sugar on his
shoulder. In half a minute's time the last O'ne had gone down
underneath the ground sills of the smoke-house and into their
holes. Though I knew ill would come to me if I reported my
find, yet I told it at the breakfast table and but that the
old man was not as able to thrash me as he once had been,
he might have thrashed me for going toi the smo.ke-house after
sugar. However, the next night by going there as I had done,
my ant truth was confirmed. It was decided toi run ropes
down from the beams above, making a swinging platform., and
put the sugar thereon. I went O'Ut there at two' o'clock the
next morning with a candle and the ants had gone up the
side of the smoke-house on toi the ceiling, down the rafters
to the cross beams, down these to the sugar barrels, and when
my light flashed on them they all dropped off the platform and
scampered into their holes, but not one dropped the chunk of
sugar it was carrying.
We then tarred the ro'pes and before midnight they had
the tar all covered with sand and gravel and were at work
on the sugar. We then made a table out of the platform and
put the posts down in the center of pans that held ten gallons
of water; the water was eight inches deep, between the rims
of the can, and the posts were ten inches apart. In three
night's time they had six passageways covered and filled and
they were sugaring their nests. The Union Pacific Railroad
filling in the cut-oiff from Salt Lake City West recalled to my
mind these sugar ants. When we put the sugar in tin cans

282 SOME INSECT AND OTHER TRUTHS.
or glass jars the ants bothered it no more. They had no drills
to bore holes through the glass.
The other ants, called grain ants, will depopulate great dis
tricts of country in the sections bounded as before described
unless they are exterminated, and this cannot be done by
scalding, by killing from poison or by water, and, if I were
to tell thie people how it can be done and "publish it toi the
world free, it would be so simple that no one would do it
and would question where I get on and where I get off. By
covering these ant beds with a heavy mulching of straw, so
heat may not hatch the eggs, the job is done.
If I were to fill my book with other strange things that
I have seen in my day, I fear that my reader would be weary.
One more and I will quit. To have printed this book on the
old Washington press, as printing was done when I was a boy,
and toi have done it in the time the man who did the work con
tracted toi do it in, would require nearly one h,undred thousand
dollars' worth of presses and three tho,usand men and women.
There are millions of people who consider themselves intel
ligent who would -not believe the statemient I would make
respecting the time taken for the publication of this book. I
own an interest in a press that, worked by a man and a boy,
turns out more work per hour than any three thousand men
on earth could have turned out when I was a boy.
I stand with a noble compeer, a worthy associate, com-
panioin and friend on this plane' and looking back yonder fifty
years, called leagues ago, I see what I and they had toi do
in order to make a living, and such a living as it was! and
then look on all the trails and byways and avenues and roads
that lead to where we now stand. Would anybody be sur
prised at our looking at each other with most wonderful
admiration, esteem and respect, each for the other, considering
that it was we who did it? And then, turning round, we
look at that higher beacon of fam.e, of honor and of glory.

SOME INSECT AND OTHER TRUTHS. 283
shining plainly to our vision less than fifty leagues or years
beyond, all of which can only be attained by and from the
possibilities that we have planted and established, and we look
around to our right and left and see our noble sons storming
those heights, carrying on and forward the banner that we
brought here, going as bravely on and forward in their work
as we did in ours ; lives there one to doubt that truly heavenly
joy permeates our very hearts' fiber?
"If such there be, go mark him well.
For him no minstrel raptures swell."
Most of my book has been written near my birthplace;
all of it has been inside of a few weeks and while traveling
on the plains from ocean to ocean and from the Gulf to the
Lakes, denominated by Proctor Knott as being the "unsalted
seas of America," and while crossing the Atlantic and doing
the Continent, and it has all been written from recollection
and not from notes or books of reference, therefore it can be
properly called by the name that I have given it. Nothing is
more natural than that the carping critic, the suck-egg hound
who is good for nothing else than to make a noise and to
attract attention, the educated ape, the trick-taught baboon or
the kicking mules that have noi pride of ancestry and no hope
of a descendant, should assail me, and that such as these will
I well know and I would be a fool to doubt, but when me
thinks they are the sort who devastate a country, burning
down the ancestral log cabin and leaving nothing but -waste
and desolation behind them, I am more happy in knowing
that I have been a constructor, a builder, a blazer of the way
and a John the Baptist in the wilderness, preparing for the
one who comes after me, the latchets of whose shoes I may be
unworthy to unbtickle, I am more happy for I know that if
there is no future, no hereafter, and noi reward for me, and
that there is no world to go to, yet have I made this world

284 SOME INSECT AND OTHER TRUTHS.
the better by* having been in it; and if there is a brighter
future, of which I have noi doubt,* then I will be there at
the harvest time, and though there, like here, I may not be
able to whistle or sing a tune, I will bring water and flowers
to those whoi do and are, and will in the h,app.y hunting-
ground find fields of pleasure vastly more extensive than I
have found in this earth, in ministering to the wants of those
whoi are with me, as well as providing for the wants of those
who come after me, for truly I have found it more pleasur
able on this earth tO' give than toi receive.
As there is a strain or train of mirth and fun that per
vades every soul on earth, there is in me, and that I have
had sugar in my tea and coffee, and at times also cream", in
other words my pleasures and enjoyments and sweets as well
as sours, be there none to doubt.
From my earliest infancy it was my habit to "butt in,"
the first report of which was left when I was a boy four
years old, when I told a wonian, who had told my mother in
my hearing, of her misfortunes from having gone to a place
when she did : "If you had stayed at home like mother does,
it would not have happened." And for which mother gave
me a slap and the old man would have given me a tanning had
he have been told.
I heard an older hlalf brother say when I was five years
old that "the fools are not all dead yet," which I thought was
uncommonly smart and repeated it to an old man, a neighbor,
who was telling my father how he had sowed his wheat in the
wrong phase of the moon and for which in common parlance
I soon thereafter caught  .
That I have been more pulled up and kicked up than I
have been brought up and educated, and that what I have
learned as well as what I have acquired in a wordly way was
from some sort of painful and costly personal experience, no
one will question whoi has even known me. I never could

SOME INSECT AND OTHER TRUTHS. 285
sing a song, paint a picture or tell a stoiry as any one else
could, or would, and I never have had toi carry a branding
iron and firepot around with me to brand anything of my
own, though I often have had to appeal to the law for the
recovery from thieves of that which I had made, built or
invented. Often have I thought that I should have been a lawyer,
then I would not have had to pay such fees to the profes
sion as I have paid in my day. Thai again I have thought
that I should have been a physician that I might have been
able to save from the clutches of quacks more than I have.
I might have been a preacher but for truths that I have here
tofore stated in this my book. I could easily have been a
leader but fro.m having seen the dema.goigism and hypocrisy
of the great majority of leaders whom I have analyzed in
my life. Any man bom of ordinary foxy cunning and with
a gift of gab can easily become a leader in any community
in which he has lived and by resorting to cunning can live
along and lead the masses of ignorant mortals who are too
lazy to think, toi plan and to work for themselves.
Things have changed in every respect and in all direc
tions and in every way and in all fashions within my recol
lection and I have not been slow in changing with them,
wherefore I often in looking back see the fool acts -in my past
life and find consolatio.n only in the fact that my compeers
and associates were as great fools or even worse than I was.
Well can I say fools as well as misery love company.
I believe that he who cannot see the fool in himself in
the past never builds even a log cabin or a hut for the want
of wisdom, which in mortals like myself can only be acquired
by experiences, though dear be the schooling. I o.ften find
great pleasure in associating and commingling with people
whoi have lived a life of toil, trouble and anxieties without
accomplishing any good purpose on earth. They come and

286 some' INSECT AND OTHER TRUTHS.
they go and leave no trace or trail behind them save and
accept that it may be seeds of weeds like purslane, toi tor-ment
the tiller of the grounds that they have cleared.
Who plants but to be planting without regard as to the
harvest is the mortal who has no aim in life and can be com
pared only to the "drone" in the busy hive which is said to
be there only to eat the over-supply of honey the busy bee
brings in, and we are told — ihow true it may be I know not,
because I never could have to doi with bees but that I was
stungr-;-the drones are killed off when the supply of honey
becomes normal. If the human race would only kill off their
drones at the proper time, I might have been able to have
had honey on my plate through life more often than I have
had and would not always have had toi eat my buckwheat
without it.
It has been the desideratum- of scientists, of statesmen and
of great men since time that histoiy gives no report of how
civilization could be advanced without making the rich richer
and the poor poorer. I have lost noi time trying to. fathom or
elucidate this proposition. The question with me has always
been how I could become richer without robbing some one
of his riches, but rather by increasing the same, and if I have
been a failure on this line it was because the men that had
the riches may have believed in silence but not in division,
no more than he believed in division after multiplication.
A common swindler and wag behind the bars was asked,
"Why are you there?"
"For drying snow and selling it for salt," was the rep'ly.
And again, "For having rented my ground out to a man who
planted it in vegetables and I turned it up on edge and planted
the other side in onio.ns."
A judge before passing sentence on a criminal asked him
how he came to take the watch. He said :
"I -was sick and the doctor gave me some medicine and

Some iNsecT and other truths. 287
told me if I would take time it would cure me, soi I took the
watch." He got further time from the judge.
Elsewhere in my book I told how I was cured from taking
things without asking for them, and through life I have never
sought to get something for nothing, as so. many of my fellow
men that I have distanced in the race of life have ever been
on the lookout for.
Some years back I was promoting an enterprise that, to
be successful, must reach all the people — the gro,und sill folks,
if you please, in all the land from shore to shore and as high
up the mountain as I could reach. I was offered the names
of the Louisiana Lottery Company's patrons that were classi
fied by the postoffices th,roughout the whole United States
and Canada. Thinking that they were the sort of cattle that
would nibble at my grass and that even before the seed was
sown, I got, and most naturally, the lists, in the State where
I had the greatest number of acquaintances.
However my scheme turned out and what there was of
"sheaves" in it for me in the way of dividends need not be
told here. In looking over this list I found that in th,e town
not many leagues away from where I was born the names
in the club formed there, who paid their five dollars every
month over to the agent of the Lottery Company in their
place and had so paid for four years, included the names of a
number of my early day acquaintances and I found similar
lists and names in every place that I had become acquainted,
and I made it a business toi go and see how many of these
club members were men of affairs and had wealth either at
home or in the shape of a bank account, and I found on inves
tigation not a single one but that was just such a
farmer and hard-worker as I have described elsewhere in my
book, and I further found that there was not one of them
that knew more about the history of the country and theology

288 SOME INSECT AND OTHER tRUTHS.
and politics and science and geology and medicine and rail
road building and how to raise a family and how to raise big
crops than I ever hope to know about any or either, and that
there was not one of the entire crew that I would have loaned
a dollar to on the best security that they could have offered,
not even excepting that which they the most prized.
They lived like paupers, year in and year out, but they
never failed to get the five dollars a month for the Louisiana
Lottery swindlers who traveled the wide world over in
elegance, ease, comfort and grandeur, while their poor dupes
toiled on and on; and thus it was from the beginning, ever
has been and ever will be, and I give it as my candid opinion
that he who tries to change this conditio.n of affairs is the
one whoi will die poor if not repentant. Because George
Washington could not lie, in my opinion, be is entitled to
1101 great amount of credit; but he who can lie and will not
is. I have never claimed any credit in this deal, for I am
reminded by the presence of a gaitleman who, years ago, on
hearing me tell a great truth] said, "Nothing is lost from
Theo's telling it."
When a boy about fourteen. General Sam Houston, of
whom I had read — and wh,oi had not in the times of my boy
hood days — was billed toi make a speech in our town, Seguin,
Texas, at a great barbecue that -was being given in his honor
— he was then United States Senator. My "old man" was
opposed to everything on earth that gave pleasure to boys,
therefore precious little of my time was spent in fishing, and
nothing that I received in the way of pleasures came by his
consent. We kept from our younger brother and sisters and
from the "old man" all knowledge of the coming of Sam
Houston, and we planned a scheme that won by which we
were enabled toi see as well as hear his great speech and fill
up at the great barbecue.
We had toi deceive the "old man" and we did it in good

SOME INSECT AND OTHER TRUTHS. 289
style by bribing a cowboy to tell him that "Bessie Brown,"
an old cow which had been lost nearly a year, an animal that
he put great value on, though only a Texas scrub', had been
seen at a certain place about fourteen miles off, a watering-
place where the cattle came but once a day to drink. With
this information we two boys were told toi saddle our horses
and start out in th,e morning early, taking with us a day or
t-^o's supply of "corn dodger," rancid bacon and coiffee. We
lost no time in getting off.
Our only trouble now was that two of our neighbors who
were on intimate terms with dad and particular "blabbers"
would see us at the barbecue and become informers. We
watched for them and kept away from where we thought
they might be. Perhaps it will be interesting to. tell what
a Texas barbecue was and how condutced.
A ditch sixty feet long, four feet wide and as deep was
filled with live oak wood and fired and burned down to coals,
then clean poles were laid across over the embers, and on
these were spread quarters of beeves, mutton, pigs, turkeys
and chickens, and fish if any could be caught. The meats
were turned over and over again, on this occasion by half a
dozen or more stalwart negro, men with pitchforks, while as
many more came along basting it with well-spiced, what one
man calls, "wallering stuff." I pity the boy who never had
a chance to get a good day's work in at one of these barbe
cues where such meat as this was served. On this occasion
it took twenty beeves, sixty muttons, two or three hundred
chickens, haJf as many turkeys, besides corn pO'mes by the
wagtm-load and green corn and new sweet potatoes by the
bushel. The tables were long and quite sufficient to accommodate
fifteen hundred people, who, when the master of ceremonies
blew that long tin horn that had done service at many a
Methodist camp-meeting, rushed as for dear life. We two

290 SOME INSECT AND OTHER TRUTHS.
had played for position and got there, and though we had
contributed nothing to its get up, we got our part of some
one's else contribution, and ever afterwards blessed the man
who invented the barbecue.
I had seen only a very few great men, though I had read
about many. General Sam Houston came up to his picture
recommendation in every respect and his speech was in keep
ing with what I had expected of him from a boy's standpoint.
Of the many men of my acquaintance. General Sam Houston
was "the noblest Roman of them all." No truly good men,
in my opinion, ever became acquainted with him but to
respect him, as all good men should be respected. There are
few men on this earth whoi come as far from being a man-
worshiper as I am, and as a general proposition I have no
use for a man whoi is in any sense an idolizer of any human,
living or dead.
General Sam Houston's speech on this occasion was that
of a soldier, statesman and patriot, and few were his equal
when it came to dealing out left hand blows to his enemies,
for he had themi in Texas and they were of a class that
added honor toi any man whoi had their enmity, because he
was no boodler or grafter.
A few years after this I became personally acquainted with
the General, and while he was Governor of the State, I might-
say, in one sense at least, I was his protege. He was a Union
man and thereby brought down upon himself the hatred of
all such as composed the Committee of Public Safety, of
which I have previously given an account, and a good account
of one Committee of Public Safety in one county stands for
all others in all counties in the State. These Committees of
Public Safety were quite a different class of men and of alto
gether different characters as compared with those great and
noted committees that promoted the Revolutionary War and
that were organized in all communities from Maine to South

SOME INSECT AND OTHER TRUTHS. 291
Carolina. They ha;d what was called "traveling teachers" in
those days, who rode from station to station, going North,
telling the different co'inmunities of how the spirit was spread
ing in communities that they had passed through. One or
more of these "outriders" started from the north end at the
same time an equal number started from the south end, and in
this way the spirit of the Revolution was kept up among our
forefathers, which resulted in the establishment of this nation
of nations, the outrider and teacher, guide and director, and
may I not say, sponsor of all nations on earth today.
An old uncle who had served under the flag and at York-
town, told me when a boy this narrative or history : "An 'out
rider' from North Carolina who was on his return from a
trip away up in Maine, told of the battle of Bennington,
where the Green Mountain Boys met the red coats, as fol
lows : 'These New Englanders, these round-heads and Puri
tans' said he, 'got into battle. with a Bible. They first sing
and then pray, and O God! how they fight.' "
Not so with any of the Texas Committees of Public
Safety. When the Secession Convention was called in Aus
tin and met in the hall of the Lower House and everything
was primed and ready for the vote. General Houston, the
Governor of the State, was invited in to see the State voted
out of the Union. He was given a seat below the President
of the Convention (O'. M. Roiberts, an original secessionist
and possibly the greatest jurist that ever lived in America, the
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, not only in the State but
of the Republic, up to that time the author of thirty-two
volumes, and more since, that is quoted from more extensively
than any State or United States Supreme Justice is cited),
not by his side as a mark of honor, but at his feet as a mark
of disrespect, and there this old patriot, sage, statesman and
noble Roman sat leaning oh his cane.
The crowd hissed when Thockmorton of Collen rose and

t>

292 SOME INSECT AND OTHER TRUTHS.
voted "Nay," the first vote polled for the Union after three
hundred had responded "Aye" to their names as they were
called, which hissing continued for many minutes without an
effort being made on the part of the President to stop it.
When the noise had abated Thockmorton rose in his seat
and said :
"Mr. President : Patriots tremble when the rabble hiss."
And it was said that the first tears that had ever been
seen in Sam Houston's eyes were O'bserved. Thockmorton had
been a member of Congress and was again after the war and
never filled a public position or station but that it reflected
honor, not only on himself, but his constituents as well.
We twoi boys spent two days away from home having a
good rest from the toil of the farm and came home without
the cow. It had rained heavily and we told father that the
water was soi plentiful around over the prairie and in "Ro'gue's
Hollow" that she did not need toi come toi the pool for watei'.
When it dried upi we had another three or four days' rest from
toil and from work that never brought recoimpense. The cow
originally cost twenty dollars, and we boys got more than
one thousand dollars' worth of rest and information from
hunting that cow, which was never found.
The habits of some people are wonderfully illustrated in
a truth I must now relate of the Texas stock long-horned steer
and his relatives. The average cows would goi about two
miles from a watering-place for grass, which would become
eaten off. Salt was a scarce article in any of the soils or
streams in the principal ranges of the southwest and nothing
would more entice a cow or Texas steer from his accustomed
beat than salt. Knowing this we would take a forty or fifty
foot Cottonwood log and haul it away out in the prairie and
half a mile beyond where the cattle usually ranged and then
ro.pe a few of the oldest cows, whose children unto the third
and fourth generation would always follow her, tagging along

SOME INSECT AND OTHER TRUTHS. 293
behind to -see what was going to be done with "grandma,"
and sometimes a four-or-five-year-old descendant would show
up for fight. These cows would be pulled and dragged to
where the log had been hauled and where with an ax we had
boxed holes two feet apart and filled them with salt.
However much the cow was excited and made mad by
the treatment she was receiving, and her descendants ditto,
when her nose was pushed down on to the salt she bellowed for
joy, and so did the rest of the herd that quickly found the
salt in the other boxes in the log. In this way we got our
herds on pastures new and green.
We called them the licking logs, and every man had his
licking log and in this way taught his cattle to bunch together
and watched their increase and multiplication, and should an
unbranded yearling get in that ground a second or third time,
the brand iron that belonged to that licking log band made
him bellow frO'm the burn on his hip. When the grass h,ad
been eaten out around the hacking log it would be hauled a
quarter of a mile further out on the paririe, where there
was new, fresh and untrodden grass. When the cattle came
from the creek or watering-place two. or three miles off and
found the log had been taken away, then we boys saw fun,
for it would seem that all the old steers and cows turned in
and accused each other for having been the cause of its dis
appearance, and from lowing and pawing the earth and bel
lowing and bawling, fearful was the scene tO' behold and not
until we had roped another cow and pulled her away, as on
the first occasion, to the licking log beyond, would this bel
lowing and pawing cease.
Now I have seen in my day thousands of men who', if
you would just remove their licking log, would goi on just as
Oiur wild Texas steers did, and who', like wild Texas steers,
were of noi account to the earth only as they were brought
to the shambles and used for the good of mankind in general.

294 SOME INSECT AND OTHER TRUTHS.
In my day and time I was considered a good horseman and
had some experience on the ranch, quite enough tO' satisfy
me that I was not cut for a Texas stockman, and when satis
fied on any subject I never failed to change my course, posi
tion, undertaking or business. I believe that yet I could doi
many things thousands of people that I have seen going to
a base or foot ball team -would think impossible.
Buffalo Bill has given exhibitions that received great
applause, which I have seen more than excelled by common
cowboys. The man or boy whoi has not had an opportunity
to see Buffalo Bill's exhibition or the great play entitled "The
Texas Steer," by Hoyt, has missed seeing the most realistic
of all exhibitions or plays, not even excepting P. T. Barnum's
Original Shows.

MEXICAN NATIONAL MUSEUM.

In the National Museum in the City of Mexico is to be
seen, to me at least, more wonderful things than I have seen
in that of the British in London. There, in Mexico, can be
seen evidences in abundance of the existence of a civilization,
love of art, knowledge of astrology as well as of astronomy —
and other, to us, lost arts, that place the exhumed antiquities
of Ancient Chaldea, of Greece, of Egypt, and of all our old
world ideas far beyond the worthiness of computing or recall.
The invader Cortez and all his followers since, and up to
within the past thirty years, spent the force of their energies in
destroying and obliterating every and all evidences of there
having been a civilization in Mexico and Peru that was greater,
better, more noble and Christian than was that they, the cut-
thro'ats, robbers, pirates, brigands and invaders, brought. Who
that reads Prescott's "Conquest of Mexico," if not a 'bigoted
Romanist, let alone the mountains of matter he dared not
have refered to, and that has since been brought to light can.
and fails to see therein the truth of the above, is not of whom
God expects much. One race of people with one belief has
from creation's first day been engaged in pulling down another,
and so with civilizations, and thus it is even unto this day,
though the battle is not as fierce as it has been in the past, even
within the recollection of man now living.
The man who undertook to "read in the rocks' records of
ages that existed more than six thousand years ago was called
an infidel, a deist, an unbeliever; for the church's chronologist
had written it ; two thousand years from creation tO' the flood ;
two thousand more to the birth of Christ, and then on, and
when two thousand more revoluted then would cohie the end ;
295

296 MEXICAN NATIONAL MUSEUM.
and the church worse than crucified, if such thing could be, all
who questioned not only the chronology of Usher but many
other more absurd and by far more disgraceful, ignorant, selfish
and accursedl}^ superstitious propositions. Usher, noi do'ubt,
was a fairly intelligent man of his day, but in point of general
information the fifteen-year-old schoolboy of this day knows
more than Usher and all of his associates could have possibly
known. In this museum, among the surprises in store for the one
who has been taught to believe that our fathers and brothers
who have delved into the ruins of ancient cities, know and have
found out all as respects the peoples who inhabited this globe —
for aught you and I know — ten millio'ii years before Moses
wrote or had written of the birth or making of Adam.
The Aztec Calendar stone, weighing more than twenty
tons, has engraved on its face, dial shaped, all but two. of the
signs of the zodiac and all of the astronomical indications and
calculations, and so perfect is their division of time that not a
moment is missing. Our Julian Calendar is the work of a
schoolboy in comparison.
The man who thinks our churches are any more forward
in promulgating truths being revealed by explorers than were
those of our fathers does not weigh aright the spirit of man
when once in power. The teacher, the preacher of today is no
more apt to tell the truth, and teach it than was the ofd monk
who mav have been burned at the stake for teachins: and
preaching a doctrine he was willing to sacrifice his life for,
though false it may have been. '
It is one's belief — faith — that will land him in the happy
hunting-ground, even though, as I believe, there were no. truth
in that belief — faith.
"Paul, thou art beside thyself; much learning hath made
thee mad,"- comes to every man who has a clear perception and
an opportunity to observe.

MEXICAN NATIONAL MUSEUM. 297
Standing at a certain point in Yellowstone Park, can be
seen stratifications representing nine epochs and eo'us of time,
each separate and distinct from the other, and each represent
ing a cycle of time perhaps, and no one can deny or dispute
that I am correct in stating it, of ten million years each. The
man who professes to know the most is often the most ignorant
of all professors. The learned idiot that teaches medicine or
theolo'gy or any other science of the day is a dolt at anything
else you may put him at, and, therefore, why have confidence
or respect in his theories or judgments ?
When a boy I had to attend, every fourth Sunday, old man
Terry's harangues about hell and heaven, and there I would
have to sit on a puncheon bench without a back for as long as
four hours at a time listening to that old ignoramus tell the
other ignoramuses what was no better than lies, for he could
prove nothing that he said ; and why should I not have had a
prejudice all my life against such would-be "sky pilots," and
doubly so in view of the fact that I never have in all my life
seen, one single instance of their fo retellings or promises com
ing true.
It is my opinion, grounded upon experiences and from
close observation, that as a people we read too much. We
imbibe the thoughts and theories, the notions and unconsciously
the villanies and schemes of the writer and educator we read
after. We think too little for ourselves; we allow others to
furnish us ready-made plans they keep in stock on shelves for
us as the merchant does hats, shoes and ready-made clothing.
The great masses of people think only of som.ething toi eat, of
beer, booze and a place to sleep, and therefore are only crea
tures of and for the designing hypocrite and deniagoigue.
In our great cities there are three classes which I will term
the workers, the clerkers and the shirkers. The workers go
down town with the rising of the sun or before, and you will
see nine-tenths of those who are reading, are devouring some

298- MEXICAN NATIONAL MUSEUM.
Police Gazette or yellow journal that is profusely illustrated
with mind-debauching, soul-degrading, vile, vulgar, suggestive
pictures. They all carry their tin buckets filled with the cheap
est provender that can be bought in the market. When they
draw their pay Saturday night they repair to a nearby saloon,
where they would stay all night and Sunday toO' but that the
law requires the saloons to close at twelve o'clock at night.
They reach home some time in the morning in a maudlin,
drunken condition and sleep all day. They have brought home
no money with them, therefore the wife and mother has tO' take
in washing to support the children, and the brute and beast of a
husband returns to his work Monday morning to spend another
week as he did the last, and thus on and on through his life,
and his children who come after him are, if possible, one or
two degrees yet lower than he is.
They all belong to the union and never fail to vote with
the party that gives them the most money for their votes.
They believe in their walking delegates, just as did the poor
down-trodden, besotted, deceived Mexicans and Spaniards in
their priest and preacher. Try you to make anything out of
this class of people?
The second class, which follows along an hour or more
later, are the clerkers. They are better dressed but no better
informed. They are just as ignorant and fuUy as vicious.
You will see eight-tenths of them reading the base political
news and the sporting columns of the paper, where, the results
of the horse races of the day previous are reported. There
is nothing to be told of or about from the papers they may be
reading, for they are as liable to be reading a first-class, respect
able paper as they are a Police Gazette yellow journal sheet.
This class is not so well paid as the former. They have
their likes and dislikes, but they are a sorry set to depend upon
and out of which to make anything good. The boss whoi over
looks th,em is not quite so cruel as was the Southern negro

MEXICAN NATIONAL MUSEUM. 299
overseer, but he would be all the same if the law allowed
him. The third class, the "shirkers," who come along down in
banking hours, are the ones who do the thinking and who,
when they work with their hands and brains, will doi more in
one hour's time than either of the other twoi classes will do in
their way in half or a full day. These are the men whoi are the
great captains of industry, who keep the world moving on,
providing means and ways for the other twoi classes and who
act on the thoughts of a moment and first impressions and are
very seldom wrong in their conclusions.
The average merchant of the day is no longer a merchant
in the sense that he was when I was a boy. He may know
something about hardware or so'me lines of dry goods or of
groceries, and is sound as to his general information as to the
commercial world and where this, that, and the other is pro
duced and by whom and how. He is as ignorant as the farmer
who .sells his corn for thirty cents a bushel, because he is too
ignorant and lazy to have hogs and get sixty cents for it.
The average merchant of today is run by the commercial
traveler called a "drummer," who tells him what to buy and
how to sell, and if he deviates f ro'm the instructions the whole
sale house shuts down on him and his door is closed. When I
was a boy I could be sent to the store for any article and there
would be no cheating in the transaction. The average mer
chant then was a man whose word was his bond and the goods
that he sold were just as he represented them to be. The sugar
that he sold at ten cents a pound did not have fifteen or twenty
per cent of adulteration in it as did the villain's across the way
who sold at nine and one-half.
Today a man's eyes must be his merchant, and when you
find that you have been cheated and by your own judgment
there being no redress, try toi seek an honest dealer in the next
deal. He may cheat you worse than the other and thus on

30O ¦ MEXICAN NATIONAL MUSEUM.
because there may be no honest man in business in your town.
This is the reason wh,y the great mail order houses in our
great cities, notably in Chicago, have forged ahead and have
been the means of closing up many thousands of little establish
ments around in the country and to. the benefit of the people
therein, for did these great mail order houses fail toi protect
their name and reputation by sending good goods as well as
cheap goods to their customers they would soon go by the
board. I am personally acquainted with several fruit growers in
different States in the Union, whoi in packing a barrel of apples
put no better at'the bottom or at the top than is in the middle
and the same with all else that they sell. They sell through
only one commission house in a city and their brand on a
barrel of apples, peaches or what not is a guarantee that they
are worth from ten to as high as fifty per cent more than any
other fruit of the same class or character.
A SO'U, the successor of one of these men, two years ago
killed the goose that had laid his father's golden eggs continu
ously, by doing as did his father's slipshod, briar-in-the-fence-
corners, rotting-down-barn and weedy-grounds neighbors, i. e.,
putting good ones on top of the barrel or basket.
No man today buys fruit from that orchard, nor would
those who had been his father's patrons for more than a fourth
of a century buy fruit from him at any price; and now the
briars are growing in the old man's fence corners, and the
weeds are gro'wing in from all sides, and the caterpillar's nest
is in abundance all over the orchard, and the last time I saw
the son, a man forty-five years old, he was throwing dice for
the drinks in a low down groggery.
I have spent some little time figuring out the increase and
consumption of fruits, berries and vegetables in the last twenty-
five years in proportion to the population of the United States,
and I am satisfied that it has been more than twenty per cent.

MEXICAN NATIONAL MUSEUM. 3OI
that it will be more than twenty per cent in the next ten years,
and that in the next twent}'-five years the people of the United
States will live on one-half of the meats that they are now
living on, and one-fourth of the amount they were living on
fifty years ago.
That the average .American farmer eats one-third to one-
hkli less than he did thirty or forty to. fifty years agO' and
that we as a people are eating in point of cost twenty-five per
cent less than we did twenty-five years ago is a generally con
ceded fact. However strange this may appear to my reader, I
hazard little in saying that .if he will but stop and think and
then talk with his most intelligent friends, my statement wih
be confirmed by his own sphere of observation.
I have elsewhere stated as to the decrease in the productive
ness of the soil within the last fifty years. I am satisfied that
in the Northern States the decrease in the last fifty years has
been more than forty and possibly above fifty per cent in all
manner of farm products and that this decrease will continue
while the products of the orchard, though they have decreased
in the last fifty years, will greatly increase.
The intrinsic value O'f the farm products has also decreased.
The value of a bushel of corn is estimated by the amount of
whisky that can be made from it, more than by the
pounds of fat it will make in a hog or beef. In wheat there
is a less depreciation in its fattening and no.urishing qualities
than in any other cereal.
The potato is larger and more of them are raised in the hill
when properly planted in good soil, but the power of strength-
giving food is less. If yo.u could dig back down in the cellar or
orchard and find some good old Louisiana or Jamaica sugar
that was made fifty years ago and then go and have a good
chemist analyze it and compare its saccharine fo'rce with that
of the bleached white beet sugar of today, the party doing it
would doubtless be so surprised at the result as to fear to tell

302 MEXICAN NATIONAL MUSEUM.
the truth to his neighbors, less they should say that he was a liar
and that there was no truth in him.
The fool — and I have been he as many times as I have
hairs — ^who buys a bottle of some well advertised bitters or
patent medicine because he has been told^ or has seen printed
in some advertisement that it contains twenty-five or fifty per
cent alcohol, thinking thereby, that he is getting whisky and
medicine combined for the price of one, no doubt would con
tinue to be the fool he is if he were told the truth and enlight
ened on the subject of what twenty-five or fifty per cent of
alcohol in a patent medicine or bitters means, and it is very
possible that there is not one in fifty that would believe the
truth. I will wager that there is iiot one in five thousand of the
drinkers and users of this stuff who understand the meaning of
the expression that accompanies the analysis of all this accursed
poison, "twenty-five per cent in volume."
If I undertook to explain I would be laughed at and I always
prefer to have the laugh on the other fellow ; therefore, if you
would be made wise write to your educator and ask him what
this means and toi explain it so that you can understand it.
I will volunteer to say this much, howe\'er, which may be an
eye opener to my reader and of benefit to. him. When you buy
a stuff said to contain twenty-five per cent alcohol, do not think
that you would have to buy four bottles to get one bottle of
alcohol, but know you that you would have to buy twenty-five
bottles to get one bottle of alcohol, and thus "in volume" you
get it and not in quantity.
People are deceived often in a way that is beyond the ken
of man to solve and explain. Many years ago, when I was a
man of affairs in more schemes than one in the Lone Star State,
I thought to do my people a great good and benefit the public
at large. I comm'cnced a fight on the Galveston Wharf Com-
paiiy. This I did not do because I was interested in building a
railroad from the North, but to tell the honest truth about it.

MEXICAN NATIONAL MUSEUM. 3O3
I did it in order that when the roads were completed from the
North the cereals of the Northwest might reach Europe
through Galveston which it could not do and pay the wharf
age at that time exacted.
Every barrel of flour that came to Texas by way of the
Galveston port, no matter whether it touched the wharf or
not — it might be lightered into another boat that took it on
up to Houston or other inland points — paid wharfage of twenty
cents all the same. Forty cents for every barrel of whisky or
barrel of pork and proportionate charges for everything that
came in or out. This was better than a tub mill to the man
who owned the wharf franchise which was first owned by the
great highwaym.an of the sea, buccaneer and pirate. La Fitte,
who in his day owned Galveston Island.
The expose I published in a paper which I controlled and
that had the largest circulation of any in the State. was the
sensation of the day and great interest was taken therein and
greater excitement was created iii Galveston than was ever
known before. I held my own in the discussion and during the
fight as I had calculated upon holding it.
There was a guttersnipe newspaper man in Galveston, the
like of whom would find ready employment on the yellow
journals and Police Gazettes of today. He was a sarcastic
writer and an illustrator in the way of caricature pictures that
was not to be despised. He always had to. be settled with and
pulled off by so much solid cash. The wharf people employed
him to do me up and paid him for it in good shape, all of which
he proceeded to do at so much per do. Money was no object to
the Philistines of the wharf company and they paid this man a
big price for what he did in making up the Thunderbolt, as the
paper was termed.
He had two woodcut engravings representing me as a
carpet-bagger. The head and face were absolutely perfect, but
the fingers and feet and all the limbs were hideous. The in-

304 MEXICAN NATIONAL MUSEUM.
scriptions on the carpet-bag which I carried in my left hand
and on my cane and umbrella in my right hand were provoking.
All in all the two cuts were the best that the brainy sketch artist
and wood engraver could produce, and the twenty-five thousand
co'pies of the Thunderbolt with this in it made me an object of
laughter and sympathy more than one to be despised, because
ninety-nine per cent of the people were with me in the fight.
I knew the man who' did the work and lost no time in sending
my "good man Friday" to see him apd within twenty-four
hours after the Thunderbolt came out I owned the woodcut en
gravings. I called on all of the members of the Galveston Wharf Com
pany with whom I was acquainted, each of whom upO'U seeing
me wanted to know if I had seen the Thunderbolt. With an
indifferent nonchalant air I said :
"Yes, and I am surprised at the interest you people take in
that paper and especially in that edition."
They looked surprised, but when I piulled out of my pocket
the two woodcut engravings and flashed them before their faces
and said with all the expression I could use : "I paid for this
work, not you." The editor of the Thunderbolt and the en
graver as well had urgent business out of the City of Galveston
and they left on that night's boat. The man who. undertakes
to win out by fight and fight only, whether it be a battle in
the field of horticulture, agriculture, in the forum or faqing a
cannon; and who uses not brains, is the man who al-v(rays
loses. The power of mind over matter (now do not raise your
hands up and shout that I am a Christian Scientist or Spiritual
ist) is not properly understood and appreciated by the great
masses of intelligent people. That mind controls all matter and
all things or the direction thereof few could question. Dr.
Messmer first proved this to all thinking people. It is a force
to be calculated upon and which none but fools will question.

MEXICAN NATIONAL MUSEUM. 305
The greatest inventors and statesmen that I have ever had
the pleasure and honor of becoming acquainted with, as well
as the great jurists and lawyers and the most noted disease-
curing physicians that I have ever read of and about, do as did
Moses the leader of the Jews when he went unto the Mount,
and did as our Savior when He went unto the Mount. They
are those who commune with nature and with themselves and
in that way become of good mind and are enabled to control
matters, measures and men.
The unthinking blatherskite can harangue a crowd of little
thinking blatherskites, but when it comes to the directing of
great affairs, the inaugurating of great enterprises, the devel
oping of great plans, the inventing of great machinery, it
takes thought, reflection, meditation and much of it. The man
who works to work and without an object in view is a dullard
and never makes two blades grow where one formerly grew.

ANOTHER WAR CHAPTER.

In July, 1864, I bore messages from President Davis in
Richmond to the commander of the Trans-Mississip.pi Depart
ment at Shreveport, La. I was detained by General Josep'h E.
Johnston in Atlanta, Ga. He, without knowing the import
ance of the dispatch, told me bluntly that I co'uld goi noi farther
until he so ordered. I knew that Mr. Davis had decided
already upon removing him, though I dared not tell it. I co'uld
easily have gone on, but he was advised the Federals had
turned his left flank and that I could not get through. I made
myself as comfortable as I could in his office, when at a late
hour in the night a party of ladies called on him and very
bluntly demanded to kno.w whether he was going to evacuate,
fall back, retreat and let the Yankees come in and burn the
city, as they had all other towns on their march to the sea so
far. He listened to their talk very patiently, and pointing to his
hat on the far end of the table, said : "Ladies, if my hat knew
what I was going to do, I would burn it." They retired with
out any further adieu, or without scarcely bidding the general
good-night. General Joseph E. Johnston was one of the great men of
the Confederacy, and but for Mr. Davis' ambition to be the
"whole thing" and nothing short of "it," Sherman would not
have reached the sea when he did or in the way he did. John
ston had been pulled back and transferred and superseded so
often that the people had lost confidence in the President, as
much as had the soldiers lo'St all sorts of respect for him. I
well know that this will not sound good to. many of the stay-at-
homes and the encumbrances and other degenerated descend
ants of today who have been made to believe that Mr. Jeff
306

i.

^<^^

!/¥;

il

Captured by Scott's Mississippi Brigands.

ANOTHER WAR CHAPTER. 307
Davis was a second George Washington. But for General
Miles having ordered shackles on him in his prison in Fortress
Monroe, Davis would have passed away and beyond recall.
The indignities that were heaped upon him on this occasion
made out of him a new man in the hearts of all men wor
shippers of the opposite sex. Davis was a man that could appear
in a room of fifty women who. had their fifty sweethearts with
them, all of whom would be dismissed in favor of Mr. Davis.
He was, to. me, one of the most peculiar and unpleasant
loo.king men I ever had to do. or deal with. This General Miles
proved to be a great Indian fighter and came very near proving
that about a dozen or more connected with the War Department
in Washington shO'Uld have been taken out and shot for feeding
the soldiers in Cuba on embalmed beef. This might have been
done but for the fact that the Southern Demo.crats hated Miles-
so badly they would rather have seen all the soldiers in Cuba
sacrificed to Mammon and the greed of the commissary officers
and contractors than to have seen Miles credited with having
done for the soldiers as he aimed to. The Democrats talked of
making Miles president, as they did of Ben Butler and as they
tried to do with Horace Greeley, but the ironing of Jeff Davis
"cooked his goose" and in my mind should have been the cause
of his disgraceful dismissal from the United States service.
Not being allowed to proceed with my dispatches to the
Trans-Mississippi Department, I followed a reconnoitering
party, and soon found myself in the midst of the hottest battle
that I had ever been in, and though badly hurt, I was much
worse scared.
I was permitted to proceed the next day aftei- the battle at
Atlanta, Ga., in a very badly crippled condition, however, and
after so long a time the greatly delayed dispatches were received.
Though important, I knew when I took them that they were of
no value, for the orders given could not be executed, and
though several attemp'ts were made, all resulted in failure, since

308 ANOTHER WAR CHAPTER.
the people living west of the Mississippi had about come to the
conclusion and settled upo.n it as a fact that we had sent enough
soldiers east and that what we had were needed at home; and
besides all this, it had somehow gotten into the heads of a great
number that so long as Mexico lay west of us, west of the Mis
sissippi River was a much better place or country to move from
than anywhere east of it would be. An attempt was made to
move six thousand infantry across the Mississippi River ; they
revolted. A cavalry division was brought to the field of action
and was encamped along side of the infantry that had refused
to move further towards the Mississippi River. That night no
cavalryman was supposed to be off duty, yet when daybreak
came and orders were given to mount, not a cavalryman's sad
dle had a girth, and this was the condition of every soldier from
General Wharton down to the lowest private. The Federals
got wind of the situation and they were concentrating a force
that, but for our very rapid retreat, would have resulted in
not only the capturing of the six thousand infantry and the
three thousand cavalrymen, but also, the four thousand Texas
beeves that had been driven nearby and were being herded close
by. I am yet very well acquainted with a man who was offered
more solid gold than any five stout negroes could carry if he
would guide the advance division of the Yankee army that
started in to capture this entire army of poo-r, hungry and
almost naked Confederates, who were practically out of am
munition and were as near a disheartened and whipped crowd
of men as ever assembled or were called an army. I started to
Richmond, Va., with a report from the general commanding,
accompanied by reports made to him from his six subaltern
commanders. I saved my scalp, which all should know is a
very precious, valuable and highly prized piece of property to
any scout, guide or courier, by forwarding the report on and in
the regular way ; for at this time I was apprised of what was in

.\NOTHER WAR CHAPTER. 3O9
store for me, which I have referred to in another part of my
book. I heard on the day of the battle of Atlanta, Ga., this story ;
I give it for what it was worth :
An old negro slave who had joined the Yankee army was
sent to an outpost and was in a fence corner as the random
guns commenced firing. As the fire kq)t growing more and
more rapid, the darky thought it was time toi pray, which he
did as follows : "Now, O Massa God, if you ain't wid us,
don't be agin' us, but, Massa God, set on this fence and see the
almightiest fight that was ever fought and then when we whip
them rebels for you, we know thou wilt be with us, as thou art
always with the winning side."
I have always thought this was true, because it was told by a
Yankee prisoner that was tak'en that day. Years after this bat
tle I visited this place and without guide or the aid of anyone,
I located all the most hardly contested points in the two days'
fight, and I must say that the most heroic, valorous and bravely
conducted artillery fight I had ever seen was that done by
Howell's battery in this little battle near Atlanta, Ga.
General Joseph E. Johnston was removed soon enough so
as not to interfere seriously with the further advance of Sher
man in his march to the sea. General Hood, who, by the way,
was a brave man and a great leader of men when he was on the
trail of a great director and general, but a failure when it came
to generalship, was sent to the rear to molest and interfere with
the tail end of Sherman's army, a move which cost the lives of
5,800 as noble, brave and chivalrous soldiers as ever obeyed
orders. It is but proper for me to refer to a general whoi but recently
passed away, than whom there never lived a nobler man, a
grander, more self-sacrificing, pure Christian statesman and
general, and whose bravery was equal to that of the most heroic
that commanded any corps of the Confederate army — General

3IO ANOTHER WAR CHAPTER.
Longstreet. He may have equals, but no peers or superiors.
None enjoyed the esteem, confidence and love of the people of
the South more than he.
But for the perfidy, the lying deceit, the rascality and
treachery of the editors of three Southern journals that I will
not name, Longstreet would have died with as much glory as
Lee, and perhaps infinitely greater. He was a better man than
Lee ever was or could be.
When General Grant sought to more thoroughly reunite
the people than he did by his masterly stroke at Appomattox,
where he gave Lee such terms and conditions under such cir
cumstances and surroundings as never on earth did any con
quering general give a fallen foe, by appointing to the most im
portant offices in the Southern States the reconstructed generals
and officers of the late "Lost Cause," his first selection fell on
Longstreet, who asked the President for a few days to consider,
which he did by communicating with not only Lee, Beauregard,
Johnston, Bragg, E. Kirby Smith and more than twenty other
prominent generals and many politicians, all of whom, without
one single exception, advised him to take the position, and
that they would stand by him. They knew Grant's policy and
knew something was coming to them as well as to Longstreet.
Longstreet did not think it was necessary for him to take into
his confidence the three leading Southern editors who had not
smelled gunpowder in the war, zvho were bribed, bought up by
the carpet-bag ring of theives to thus oppose the appointment
of Southern Generals to ofiice, and who should have been shot
the morning after their papers came out in shch terrific edi
torials as to cause all of those generals and statesmen to desert
Longstreet, and, like cowards that they were, in this respect at
least, feared the swinish rabble's hissing more than they had
bravery and honor to stand out nobly in his defence. Thus it
was that Longstreet was made to bear the burden of false accu
sation and was classed with that class of thieves and villains

ANOTHER WAR CHAPTER. 3H
that the people of the So'Uth knew as "scallywags," who in the
most part were members of the committees of public safety
that were organized in all districts in the South. I know very
well that there are thousands of people in the South who have
abused Longstreet only from the fact that they did not know-
why he was induced to accept the office he did. Longstreet
would have fared much worse than he did at the hands of the
people — the rabble — of the South,, but for an order from Gen
eral Grant sent to the different department commanders in sub
stance :
"You shall detail a competent officer, whose duty it shall
be to cause a copy of every paper published in your district to
be sent to your headquarters. These papers shall be carefully
scanned by such officer and all articles of a seditious and rebel
lious nature shall be marked and sent to these headquarters."
The three papers above referred to became lamb-like. In
Texas we had sixty-four papers published, and though I had,
in common with all others that had served in any capacity in
the Confederate army, taken the oath of allegiance and thought
war was over, to read anyone of these sixty-four papers, a man
fresh down from the clouds would imagine that Lincoln, the old
rail splitter, and Grant, the butcher and the drunkard and the
fool, and all other Federal officers and men in position, had
been not only whipped, but killed or driven out of the country.
When these papers received this order from Grant, they turned
around and faced the other way and became truly loyal and
penitent lickspittles. The people of the South to this day are
dominated more than any other people on earth by that class
of editors who have much fun with themselves when they get
together and recount how they have fooled the poor fools that
believe all they say, or any considerable part of what they
say. I was prominently brought before the people of the State
of Texas by reason of having been a great advocate of all

312 ANOTHER WAR CHAPTER.
manner and sorts of internal improvements. There were only
two papers in the State at that time that had much influence
with the people and they were not purchasable with the price
that I had to give, but when the parties in the interest purchased
up all the local papers in the State, then numbering more than
a hundred, it naturally followed that these two papers had to
follow suit. I remember in fixing the price of the different men
who ran papers that I made a great fool of myself, for the
money was appropriated and another man disbursed it and he
showed us that he had bought them for less than one-half the
estimate I had placed on them. He pocketed the difference.
It was necessary at one time that the interest I represented
should have about one-third of the lawyers in the State of
Texas in its employ and this was all done for less than one-
third of my estimate, and they were all happy. The parties
that paid the money in both cases lost all they had invested.
If asked why and how, I would reply that it came from the
fact that our great Creator never yet created one man so smart
but that there was another created a little smarter and more
clever, and thus it has been from the beginning, ever has been,
"is now, and ever shall be." Say you that this is but the
"survival of the fittest?" Then may the friend at your side
ask, "Which, God or the Devil ?"
I am not the only man that discovered in old age that it
was a much harder matter to keep money after one had made
it than it was to make it, and that to keep a reputation unsoiled
and spotless before the world is one of the impossible things
that God did not intend a man should aim at and accomplish
after Lucifer was cast out of heaven. So long as his Majesty
the Devil reigns so supremely in many communities and indi
viduals as he does, the man who makes money and keeps it or
dies leaving behind an unsoiled reputation is a very fortunate
being, and his memory deserves embalming.
The Confederate Government (so-called) confiscated all

ANOTHER WAR CHAPTER. 3I3
effects, estates and holdings of any person who lived with or in
any way aided and encouraged its enemies, and the extent of
the property thus passed over to those who were able to buy
was beyond computing. When Uncle Sam got in the saddle
again, he did some confiscating, and in order to relieve the indi
gent condition of the people in the South as much "as possible,
he passed what was known as a General Bankruptcy Law. All
the politicians down South denounced it and all the papers
counseled their readers not to pay any attention to it. Now, I
know, dear reader, that if I were to tell you that these very
devils had been paid by wealthy, moneyed syndicates to pro
nounce against this law, you would all say that I was a cruel
and bad man, so I will leave it to you to figure out to suit your
self when I state that the property sold by the United States
Marshal under both the Confiscation Act and the General Bank
ruptcy Act did not, on a average bring O'ne-twentieth part of
its value, because the papers and the politicians had told the
people both laws were unconstitutional, and the people did not
attend the sales, and there was only one man there to do any
bidding, and- he, at one sale in Texas, bought lands at ten cents
an acre that had sold for as much as one hundred dollars, and I
know one very near and dear friend who bought lands at from
three to ten cents an acre that he sold a few years afterwards,
some as high as fifty dollars an acre, and none for less than
two dollars. He took advantage of the peo'ple's false education,
that if you do not believe the politicians and editors were paid
to give out, I surely would hate to become your guardian, for
I have had eno-ugh to do with fools in my day to make my heart
ache. There are millions of people who from being honest in all
their acts, deeds and thoughts, judge all others to be sol We
are told in the holy book that justice and judgment is more
acceptable than sacrifice. The judging of others by yourself
and what I would do if I were in the other fellow's place has

314 ANOTHER WAR CHAPTER.
cost me more than sacrifice. Few people are capable of judg
ing the average man who have not had much experience with
him. "Hope deferred maketh the heart sick," and who lives
over that sickness is apt to have the stone heart ailment.
The "carpet-bagger" referred to as haying bribed the three
editors — as Greeley says — were Yankees who came South for
no other purpose than to hold office and run out all who,- like
Longstreet, had been in the Confederate service. They had
money and cunning, and the South had just such traitors as
were needed to do their devilish work.

MEXICO— CUBA.

My first experiences in Mexico were in 1861, after serving
six months as a Texas ranger under Colonel Ford in the Rio
Grande country. Having become convinced I was not cast for
a soldier, I crossed the river for pastures green on the other
side and Southwest beyond the mountains. I felt that my
knowledge of the Mexican character with the power to "abolo
spaniolo" would enable me to make a "go." I had not pro
ceeded on my journey many leagues when I was overhauled
by a band of Greaser brigands, who divested me of my all,
excepting very scant raiment. They overlooked a gold ring
on my middle finger, but for which I must have starved before
reaching the place whence I had started, Brownsville, where,
through the kindness of a friend, I was re-horsed and outfitted
for any sort of service, even be it that of the devil, just so I
was given an opportunity to square myself with the race of
brown hellions that had robbed me of my all. I found no diffi
culty in procuring a job in the expedition to California via
New Mexico and Arizona, of which I have already written.
I started for Mexico, intending to. make my way down
south a thousand or more miles to where the properties were
situated in which I had made an investment four years previ
ous, that were to have made me a multi-millionaire, and of
which I have written in the past pages, which see and read
for the balance of this story, told forty-two years afterwards.
At that time little did I think myself unable to cope with any
sort of obstacles, difficulties or the device of devils that might
-be lying in wait for me. My mind was soon disabused and
fixedly and very permanently settled on this score, when I
awoke to find a dozen or more snake-eyed, yellow Mexican
31S

3l6 MEXICO  CUBA.
demons over me. I had had Indian experiences, had read all
sort of brigands', pirates' ro'bbers' and highwaymen's histories,
but this knocked all that sort of stuff out of my mind quicker
than thoughts otherwise might or will come to me under any
other conditions. I left all I had with the brigands, and when
they left I felt much as did a corpse who, in dying, left all he
had. After walking and running! — because I could not fly —
over a road I had traveled on horseback three days in O'ue day's
time, I reach a town where my gold ring, duly pawned with
the three-ball broker, soon brought my empty and famishing
stomach relief; first by devouring a watermelon and some
jerked dried meat that had been drying a few years and that
was as hard as a bone. I then tackled a hot tamale, hot from
pepper more than from any fire it had ever come in contact
with. I had nearly two hundred miles yet to make before
reaching the border of, as I have always since termed it, God's
country, though it was in the southwestern corner of Texas. I
was six days going on horseback and had reached a distance
equal to about three hundred of our miles. I was about three
days and a half returning on foot. I have come across but
few men in my day since who could have made such a dis
tance over such a country in any shorter time. The longest
continuous distance, however, that I ever made, was from
Waterproof o.n the Mississippi River to Alexandria on the Red
River in Louisiana, which I covered in less than twenty-three
hours on foot, a distance of more than ninety miles. From
fearing that it would be considered a disposition on my part to
quit the country and the noble cause that soon afterwards
became the "lost cause," I told no one of my rencountei- in the
land of the Aztecs, Spaniards, negroes, Indians, and all else
in human form having all of the 'hellish disposition of old
Beelzebub himself.
Brigandage has been ended in that country in a way
peculiar to descendants of the Spanish Latin races, and particu-

MEXICO  CUBA. 317
larly so, when the breed of cutthroats and' cruel, bloodthirsty,
pagan barbarians are mixed up with the native Aztec, Indian,
negro, and what else that could be lower and more degraded.
Up to that time and for some years afterwards, the country
was overrun by bands of cutthroats who. did with all they
came in contact as Joshua told the children of Israel to do with
the people he found possessing so valuable a country as to
incite his covetousness. These brigands were not always Mex
icans, and I have been told by people who ought to know that
they were, for the most part, officered by people formerly fro.m
the States. If 1 were to stop here and devote pages to what I
have been told about Mexican brigands and what I know to be
true, people reading would say that it was impossible that any
race of people on earth could treat a fellow man as they often
treated their victims. No account ever published of cruelty
could come up to that perpetrated by these Mexican brigands.
In Fox's Book of Martyrs we see pictures of how the Chris
tians of an early day were treated on the rack and by all
methods and modes of torture that devils could devise, all of
which was copied after and improved upon by these accursed
land pirates. I saw at one place seven of their victims
hanging up by the heels under who.m had been built a slow
fire, and who had been tortured in every manner and conciev-
able way. I have seen other sights too horrible, too soul-sicken
ing for me to undertake to describe.
The church, the priests, monks, and what else you may be
pleased to call them, owned nearly all the lands and valuable
holdings in Mexico acquired by their selling through tickets to
heaven to the thieves and cutthroats after death. Many will
say there never was such a thing as indulgences granted by the
church in America. I know better. A full, free pardon, operat
ing in the name of the great God and the further consideration
that they also lifted their dead ancestors from all time past out
of purgatory, was granted all who had the wherewith to enrich

3l8 MEXICO  CUBA.
the church, and especially the priests who., in a large measure
and to a great extent, were priests here today but brigands
yonder tomorrow. Nothing belo.nging to the church or to a
priest could be taxed ; therefore, there was no money to. pay
for government, and there being noi government but such as
above described, there was nothing left but devil meet devil.
There was nothing O'wned in Mexico, but what was the prop
erty of either the church or brigands, and having nothing else
to conquer, they turned to conquering themselves, by fighting
each other, which they did to a finish.
"Know-nothingism" had its run in the States between 1854
and '57, and accomplished all therein that God had intended it
should. The Mexican brigands took the same question up,
only in another form, and under the leadership of an Irishman
educated for the priesthood, but who, by some hook or crook,
acquired the title of general, a revolution was brought about
in the northern states of the republic, which resulted in the
confiscation of all church property, and, for a time, the exiling
of all O'f several orders of Romanists. This General Comer-
fort was a highly educated, refined and cultured gentlemen
who had, in a very satisfactory way, captured a large amount
of coin of the realm that answered him to good purpose in his
rebellion. The property confiscated from the church and taken
from the priesthood was divided amongst the people in all
sorts of ways, and that which would not be taken by anyone
was sold afterwards to people who. came to Mexico, thinking
all Greasers were fools. This rebellion grew, and all Mexico be
came a unit on the church confiscation scheme, and the priests,
bishops, etc., skedaddled. The conquest of Cortez was, in a
measure, repeated over again, only in another form. It was the
Spaniards that were catching it this time. This spirit of con-
fiscatio'U grew so as to include everything the thieves wanted,
and as the wild, mad mob of one locahty, city or district in
vaded another, that which could not be taken away was burned,

MEXICO — CUBA. 319
and those who did not join were massacred. Not being satis
fied, they turned to confiscating the mines, a great majority of
which were owned by English, German, Dutch,, Austrian and
French investors. This they did with a high hand, massacreing
the operators in true Spanish, Indian, barbarian style. The
truth has never been told respecting the crimes committed by
these wretched hellions. In the mining districts where they
overpowered all opposition all were killed that could not flee
away to the mountains. Vandalism prevailed on all sides and
a regin of terror existed all through Mexico. This brought
about foreign intervention in quick order. The United States
would have asserted the Monroe doctrine by adopting the pro
tectorate resolution introduced by Senator Sam Houston, oif
Texas, and thereby have kept out foreign invasion, but the
Yankee abolitionists feared least it be turned in as so much
more slave territory, as Texas had been. The powers waited
for the United States to act, but, thanks be to our Divine Di
rector, it did not act, so they joined hands and feared no harm
from the United States because of the war of secession that had
just started between the States. The foreign powers agreed
upon Maxm.ilian, an Austrian prince, whom they endowed with
imperial power and sent with an army to Mexico to do the re
storation act and set up a more stable government. He accom
plished the former, and would have been successful at the lat
ter but from his having placed confidence in the Mexicans whom
he elevated to high place, power and position — ^just as we are
told in the Bible God trusted his chief lieutenant, Lucifer, who
betrayed and sold him out in a most cruel and wicked way.
He was shot and his government overthrown ; all its belongings
— and it was rich — were seized, and the mines would have been
re-confiscated by the Mexicans but for the United States step
ping in and at a time when she had just completed a big job
was doubly ready to engage in another. The war had just
ended and forty thousand troops were rendezvoused near the

320 MEXICO — CUBA.
border ready for a forward movement, in command of whom
was placed General Phil. Sheridan, whom the Mexicans hated
worse than the devil ever hated holy water.
About sixteen thousand deserters from the Confederate
army had joined Maxmilian's colors and as more — not quite
so bad, for they did not start to join Maxmilian until after
Lee had surrendered — were on their way south in Mexico.
Had Maxmilian been able to have held out one week longer, he
would have been relieved by the advance division of the 3000
fighting machines from Missouri and -with three times more to
follow, he could have whipped all Mexico, and but for a
"hitch" in the proceedings and a delay in the movement made by
a drunken Confederate general, to whom this move was en
trusted. Emperor Maxmilian would not have been shot at
Quentril, Mexico. Had this drunken Confederate not spent
two weeks at the Menger House in San Antonio instead of
pushing forward, quite another chapter would have been writ
ten in history. I believe that I may say that the devil has ac
complished more in this world through rum, and I ofttimes
think for good, than people think.
When the news reached the ex-Confederates from. Mis
souri that Maxmilian had been captured, bag, baggage, army
and all, and that he had been shot, they soon repented of their
ways and joined the so-called Mexican government 1 under
promise of big pay. This settled the matter as to a govern
ment, and in the spirit of come and be good like us, the Mexi
can Czar— for so he is unto this day — issued an amnesty, free
forgiveness and pardon to all brigands for all past acts dat
ing from the birth of Adam, and, of course, carrying with it
future ones if not caught in their perpetration — if they would
come in and take the oath of allegiance and join the Mexican
army and receive a commission in the army insuring them big
pay. An thus ended the old-fashioned brigandage in Mex
ico, which Oinly stepped aside to give way for the coming of

MEXICO  CUBA. 321
another to play upon the world in the name of government.
But for the ex-Confederates that joined the army first, no
Mexican brigand would have come in. They saw their finish.
The billions and billions of money that have been sent to
Mexico in one way and another in the past fifty years, 'ten
times over exceed all that ever was or ever will be taken out of
, it, and this I say notwithstanding one mine is credited with
having produced more than seven hundred million dollars since
1847. When I read of or hear anyone say anything good of
Mexico, I set him down as a "decoyed duck," the victim of
so'me designing "promoter," like the billy-goat in the Chicago
stock yards that has led sheep and lambs by the millions into
the slaughter pens and always turns around on the flock and
bleats "You fools" back to the "con'd" sheep that see their
end, the door through which all go., none to return.
There are large areas in Mexico where agriculture pays
great dividends, where they can irrigate, but the dividends all
go for the water rights; there are also boundless extents of
grazing lands that, if the grass only grew, would be wealth-
producing ranches. Thousands of mines could be made to
pay, but two conditions prevent, the \\'ant of government be
ing the chief one. Mexicoi, Cuba and all other countries on
this globe that I have visited and am acquainted with are in
the same condition that God found existing when he gave
Noah a pointer on the flood propositio.n by which he destroyed
the human races. All countries originally settled or colonized
by the Latin races, and especially the Spaniards, as I have be
fore said, have no future before them, and to the intelligent,
honest man, as well as the ignorant that knows a little, the
question must ever co'rrie why the United States should, with
out any recompense whatsoever for the cost of the war, pay
Spain $20,000,000 for the Philippine Islands and then give
$3,000,000 to $30,000,000 besides to Cuba. Why was this
thus ? Who dare undertake to say or explain it away any more

322 MEXICO  CUBA.
than can the military authorities explain away the embalmed
beef fraud perpetrated upon the American army by contractors
and those connected with the quartermaster's department ? The
Anglo-Saxon who in any way mixes up with the mo'Ugrel races
of the earth or throws his life away going tO' any country peo
pled by these breeds, has scant chance of reaching heaven
when he dies.
When the War of the Rebellion, or between the States, as
it is called by many, ended, I thought much of the New South,
as it was termed by all Northern writers, and it was noi trick
at all for me to put money into a monthly magazine published
in Baltimore, entitled "The New South." Harper's and all the
great magazines were teeming brimful of New South articles
and money by the millions was being brought to all parts of
the recently reconstructed section. I went into the deal with
all my power and force, but came out worse than a pauper,
which would not have been the case had I read an article writ
ten by an old-fashioned, level-headed, wise, close-observing
Southern gentleman and general from Georgia, Hill by name.
Some Yankee had written to say in substance that in a few
years all that was in the South in the way of character, man
ners, methods and ideas, etc., would soon disappear, forever
and a day, never to return. General Hill jumped on the writer
as a terrier dog would on a rat, and when he got through with
the subject, there was nothing left to say, and even a fool would
not question his conclusions. He reviewed history from the
most remote times, and from that plainly showed that no con
queror ever changed the conquered in all or any considerable
number of their ways, customs, habits, characters, etc. ; that cli
mate, conditions and products made the people what they were,
that even extermination had not in many instances changed the
habits, manners and customs of the people from what they
were. He stated that ten or fifty newcomers might settle in
any town in the South where one or two natives lived.

* , MEXICO  CUBA. 323
and it would not be a generation of time before all became like
the natives, be it'for good or for bad. He wound up his article
by illustration so forcible and clever as to convince me for all
time. In substance it was that a young ox or mule when first
hitched up, wanted to gO' but was not long in exhausting his
strength and power in trying to go at a faster gait than the
old one at the tO'Ugue or in the lead would allow him to go, and
soon he settled down to the slow, easy-going gait of the ox or
mule working at the tongue of the wagon or in the lead of the
team. When one contemplates making another country or peo
ple over, changing the leopard's spots, the hog's propensities or
the dog's ways, a little quiet voice, that of reason and good
sense, ought to whisper in his ear, "Don't."
The only way is by the fire, flame, and sword route, that
leaves no track, trace or bridge behind, as St. Patrick did, it
is said, with the saiikes in old Ireland. The commencing with
the grandp'arents to raise a boy aright is too slow a process to
bring dividends for one of this century. Work on good ma
terial with good stock is the only way to do, if one may expect
to die happy. The unexpected often comes, sometimes for
good, more often for bad. Trying to do the impossible has
caused more grief to good people than is possible for the aver
age man to believe. The Mexican, no matter what his people
be they Negro, Indian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Dutch,
(phinese, Japanese or what-not— you will never see an English
Mexican for the Anglo-Saxons are not a race that mixes up
with the lower and inferior — is a bigoted, superstitious, ignor
ant, vicious, cruel and 'doubly mean type of humanity. They
are capable of deceiving the elect of God. I was talking to an
army officer who was showing me — for so much per show,
for they, like all old country natives and our own Pullman
porters, are up to tips — ^the battlefield of ChepultqDcc, and in
pointing out to me the position of General Scott's assaulting

324 MEXICO  CUBA. /
party, said, "if it had not been for the Texanians, United
States never could have conquered Mexico. Both they and all
the United States could not do it now." The man actually be
lieved what he said.
A governor of one of the wealthiest States told me that "but
for the love of peace (?) Mexico would invade the United
States and take possession of Canada and all North America."
The bigoted fool believed that he was talking sense.
Mexico is fast ripening for another uprising, revolt or revo
lution', and when it comes., there will be no mercy shown to any
foreigner. They are a mercurial race and as treacherous as
they are volatile. When the news was received in the City of
Mexico that Dewey's fleet had been sunk in Manila Bay, in
much shorter time than a similar demonstration could have
been gotten up in any of our great cities, the City of Mexico
was lighted up with bonfires, as was also, every other city in
the republic, and every one of the accursed breed was out, re
joicing that Spain had sunk the American fleet and had whip
ped the United States, and also threatening massacre to every
American and foreigner in the city. They were wild and doub
ly wild, and there was not a government officer from the Presi
dent down to the lowest "flunk" but was in the rejoicing. This
was a trick played on Mexico by our government to test their
sentiments of friendship and fealty to us. When the news came
twelve hours after the first was received, that the whole Span
ish fleet had been destroyel, and coupled with it, a large list of
other disasters that had befallen the Spaniards, the bonfires
were quickly quenched, and in a few minutes' time not" a Mexi
can could be seen. They all ran to their holes like rats, weasels
or snakes, and when they came out again it was with loud pro
testations of friendship and expressions of glory, etc., for the
United States. The disposition to be a lying hypocrite is so in
born in the races going to make up a Mexican that actually no
amount of education in any country wO'uld wash it away.

MEXICO  CUBA. 325
In the past few years "wildcat" New Jersey corporations
have robbed the poorer and more ignorant people of the United
States, mostly servant girls, Swedes, and Norwegians, and
even the Dutch and Germans more largely than any other
people, out of millions and millions of dollars inducing them
to invest in their coffee, banana, vanilla and stock-raising
schemes that had no foundation whatever. The lies that were
told in their prospectuses were greater than ever were told by
the Prince of Hades. Ten dollar shares were sold for fifty
cents and two dollar shares for ten cents. The big daily papers
throughout the United States that are ever ready to advertise
any swindle, pocket a few millon dollars for advertising these
Mexican wild catamounts. The villains pocketed many mil
lions, while the suckers pocketed all the losses. No intelligent
man would travel over Cuba but to return to say that he could
not have been made toi believe that there was any spot of earth
or island on the globe capable of producing so much, excepting
it may be wheat, rye and clover, of which to make brain, brawn,
blood, and bank account, as Cuba was capable of being made
to bring forth. Java may be its equal, but not its superior.
Cuba will never be any better than she is to-day, and may in a
very short time become a great deal worse, and will continue
to grow worse. It is my belief that the United States will even
tually have tO' make the thirty million loan good, and after years
of trying to make something out of the island will have to
abandon all efforts. The Spaniards in first conquering the
country found in the West India Isles a veritable paradise, a
Garden of Eden, a happy and Christian-like people, and when
we read of the crimes co.mmitted on these people by the ac
cursed invader, the least one can say will be that
"God moves in a mysterious way his -wonders to perform ;
He plants his footsteps on the sea and rides uponthe storm."
and that it is "incomprehensible."
Civilization and Christianity, if I may be excused and par-

326 MEXICO — CUBA.
doned for using the expressionj go in belts around this world
from east tO' west. The wise men , that saw the star over
Bethlehem came f ro.m the east. There is a limit for its growth
North as well as South. There is no hope for its growth
anywhere near the Equator upon either side. If I were writ
ing a book for the degenerate races of God's creation, if I were
seeking favor from any one man, or party, or race of people, if
I were a lying, caterwauling sycop'hant and hypocrite instead
of being what I am and seeking toi leave the world better than
I found it, I would not write as I have and told the truth, as I
started out to do in this book.
I have all my days sought to benefit the community in
which I lived. I never invested a dohar or engaged in any en
terprise that was entirely and purely selfish. The first ques
tion with me has been, "Whom will it benefit?" And I can
now look back and see where my bread was cast upon waters
in which foul fish devoured it and on stony places and on des
ert lands, but by persevering and ever looking forward to
the better time coming, I have lived to reach an old age, as
compared with thousands of my compeers, and have lived so
long as to be daily receiving expressions of thanks from all
parts of the world for the good that I have done the expres-
sors and from my having done as no other man in my day has
do'ue in balking wrong and evil and from knowing that "Truth
is mightier than fiction," making it my standard and armor,
as well as my flag.

A CHAPTER FOR YOUNG MEN.
In India they have a proverb that in the valley the roads
travel in many deviations ; as they come to the hills and moun
tains they course one way, all meeting at the top of the moun
tain; and in Italy it was taught that "Ignorance is the mother
of veneration." An Anglo-Saxon has told us that "a little
learning is a dangerous thing," and Agrippa said, "Much
learning hath made thee mad."
In my day I have had some experience with the good
advice giver, as I have with the other two confidence men —
the testimonial good character letter collector and the religious
hypocrite. Some people may think an intelligent business man
may be deceived by the first, but not sol Who undertakes to
give advice is a busybody planning trouble for others. Let
him alone. When you want advice, when you really feel you
need counsel (this condition indicates that you have good
sense), pick you out a man who' has experience in that you
would become wise on and don't go to him as a beggar, and
much less if you were going to start something, but square
yourself up and say : "Mr. Jones, I am in the dark ; I want
ligtit, and I know you can give it to me, and I want to pay
you for your time and consideration, if not in ready cash in
hand paid, then in some other way as may present." Then
state your case, and if he takes the matter in hand you can
soon see whether he talks honest talk, and if he does, do' you
stand by him like a brother and a friend and show him that
you are worthy of his good opinion. Making friends and
keeping them, is the secret of success ; know and perform that
and the milestones to honor, glory, wealth and true happiness
will ever column your way. Never undertake to ingratiate
327

328 A CHAPTER FOR YOUNG MEN.
yourself in any one's good graces by exhibiting letters given
you by your old neighbors, etc., until you have become well
acquainted with the party, and then don't tell him that you
had asked for themL Every tub now-a-days stands on its own
bottom, for every one of us is his own maker of name, fame
and fortune. If you have a matter at law, don't go to a cheap
old chap or a political lawyer, and don't think that because the
best lawyer in your place has received a few five, ten or fifty
thousand dollar fees, that he is too high-priced for you, but tell
him you want him as a co'unselor, and that you are not now
but may be rich, and you want him to put you on the road, or
perhaps keep you off one that is going the wrong direction.
Never think that because you are ignorant — for we are all
that — or that you are poor, you should go. to. ignorant or poor
lawyers, and be it the same with doctors ; rather consider that
the smart and the rich ones are your best friends.
Ever remember it's not so much the price you pay for
advice that counts fiypocrites, but they don't "cut much ice."
It's the church-house hypocrite that you're "looking O'Ut
after" who -will bring you the best dividends. Watch
the man who in any way professes tO' be better than any other
man is, and never credit beyond one meal, not another until
that has been paid for — the converted, reformed, gambling,
low-down drunkard, thief and highwayman! So sure as you
do you will repent after losses never to be made good. Let
the othiCr fellow look after that sort of cattle; don't you if
you expect to die happy and leave behind a good name, and
those who will revere and honor you for good deeds.
I have lost more mO'ney, time and patience trying to do
with "devily-bugs" than ten million good people should,
judged by results. If a man meets me or says by his dress and
appearance as well as by words — or more so — that he has
been all sorts of bad men, I take him at his word and never
ask him to bring me any proof. God "could raise up seed

A CHAPTER FOR YOUNG MEN. 329
unto Abraham from the stones" said our Savior, but don't get
into, the fool way of thinking that you are a God of any sort.
Those who know me know that life to me has been a battle,
with but few skirmishes, and that I have never reniged — have
ever been the same, never was of moods. Though often cast
down and darkness appeared all around, my everday, common
friends knew it not; I went to a friend that I knew to. be i
friend, and for whom I'd do. unto, as he had unto me. All men
in difficulties and troubles naturally want to coinfide in and look
for consolation from some one in whom they place coinfidence.
The difficulty is in your placing confidence in the wro.ng one.
Ask yourself. Would I know an angel from a devil? and don't
be toO' easily satisfied in an answer.
The foiUo'wing letter will explain itself, and will also' serve
to notify all of my future intenttions. The Great Creator and
Director of all good has not given me the trials and experi
ences, and finally the accumulation of worldly goods, but to
enjoin upon me as did our Savior in illustrating the parable
of giving the shekels of silver, and as unto him that has been
freely given much is required, there is yet in store for me work,
work while it is day.
My business experience teaches that when undertaking any
enterprise of moment calculated to bring on public good, one
must enhst young men as soldiers for the fight, and have old
ones enough to do guard duty and counsel with. I shall not
engage in this work for self-glory, fame, name or wealth, for
I have of all three all I want. I want to. teach truth to the
young men of America. Chicago, III., August 19, 1904.
Miss  ' — • — • —
Woman's T'emple, City.
Esteemed Madam:
I have yours of last Tuesday on my table on my return. I
see by yesterday's Inter Ocean that Mr.  has been struck

33^^ A CHAPTER FOR YOUNG MEN.
again in a way that that I do not altogether approve of. In
order to make myself clear with you and your friends, I beg
to make a statement that you shall be at liberty to use in any
manner whatsdever you please. The newspapers have pub- ^
lished statements that were not correct, and one or two as
having come from me, and I am all but positively sure that
some of them could not have come from Mr.  , however
much indisposed he rnay have been. Years ago I knew Mr.
— ¦ — well. It is false that he ever sang any song or preached
any sermon that ever converted me, or could have done so.
My attention was first attracted to. him when, at a great
Masonic banquet in aid for the Calvert sufferers, then but a
boy, he recited a poem.
"He heard my cry of distress,"
Mr.'  converted, remodeled, reformed, re-born, came
nearer reaching my heart of hearts than any other living mor
tal on earth. He came of a good family — none better. His
mother, as I remember her very distinctly, was a queenly and a
saintly woman. I have formed many acquaintances in my life,
but never have I yet kno'wn a man the equal of Mr. — • — and
had his reformation and re-birth been different fro'm what I
for years feared it was, and as I made up my mind to thor
oughly test before entering into any great and long business
coonnections, then I know that I should have accomplished the
aim of my life before my passing away and would have made
it possible for others that followed me toi accomplish a greater
good than all other agencies combined are accomplishing to
day, and this I say with all due respect to' the noble and grand
work that your life's best efforts have been given tot
A new day brings new duties, and I saw in the coming of
that day — now well on us — how, with the all but matchless
ability of Mr.  , backed by the proper wherewithal, a last-

A CHAPTER FOR YOUNG MEN. 33 1
ing and durable public good could be accomplished as in no
other way. My aim has been, for many years, to reach the
boys as they leave the common schools of the country. Some
wise old teacher has said that if he were given the boy until
he was fourteen years old, y'ou might have him afterwards.
I have found that at that age the devil is out snaring for boys
and the good people are letting the boy take care of himself.
If I were to. be asked to. what I gave the greatest credit for the
little of good that I have been to this world, I would reply
that it came from a small volume entittled "Graham's Lec
tures to Young Men," twelve in number, as I remember, and,
looking forward to the greatest possible good I could do my
fellow men for all time to come, I have aimed to place these
and similar lectures fitted for this age in which we live, in the
hands of every well-born American boy. When Mr. 
came to me recently, knowing as he did my general character
and wants, and stated that he was sick of politics and editorial
work and that he wanted to engage with me if I could so
shape affairs, I was greatly delighted, because I saw in him
the "Herald," the "Tribune" this great move I long years
have co.ntemplated. Every arrangement had been made for
his immediate engaging in the work on lines that I had care
fully drawn fro.m' years of surveying. It was not that I 'gave
the plan away, or who stated the amount I had agreed to put
out; quite on the other hand, it was I who charged him, as
well as my son, to let no one know what we were going into.
With a heart all but bowed down with grief and sorrow
at this failure, and with a feeling of the greatest sympathy for
the man who has brought it about. I still stand on deck pre
pared at the proper time to proclaim to the world that if God
spares my life, the boys of America, its rising manhood, shall
yet be told that which the vile politician, the harpy of destruc
tion, the accursed quack doctor, and the hellions on high-

332 A CHAPTER FQR YOUNG MEN.
ways and byways, fear to h,ave them told. They shall be
told that which the average father or preceptor and the good,
sanctimonious pulpit occupant will never tell themL In my
opinio'U — and tO' me that is great — there lives noi man on
American soil toi-day so capable for this work as Mr.  ,
if the proper person could only be fo.und strong enough to
point, to guide and direct him in its accomplishment. Finding
that I was not that man, I declared all deals off, to retire once
again in the private shades of life, where I may enjoy those
com,forts and blessings thousands and millions have been
deprived of from intemperances of more sorts than that of
drinking rum, and where, in days to come, millions more may
enjqy their old age, if, like me, they be taught in their early
manhood days those simple, innocent, henest, self ^presenting
laws of God in nature, the observance of which never fails
to. bring a hap.py final.
Th.e successes of my life, as compared with the number of
failures, have been few, but they have come more from the
want, or rather inability to. find faithful, noble, honest, sober
executives of my plans. I have never been able to teach old
dogs new tricks, and I never intend to. throw away good
money or precious time trying. If it is the will of my Creator
that I should spend of my worldly gains in this line. He will
direct me one who is reliable.
From my earliest days I have always had a poor opinion of
reformed and re-born men, and had I this day in bank the
money that I have lost in dealing with that class of people,
I could place a copy of the book I contemplate in the hands of
every fifteen, twenty-year-oild boy in the United States and
yet have a little left. I never yet have undertaken to aid a
degenerated being or to lift and upbuild a fallen person, but
that I received the same treatment the fabled farmer did who
brought the frozen adder home, which, when thawed, bit

A CHAPTER FOR YOUNG MEN. 333
and killed his only son. You, my dear madam, are on the
right track. My only fears are that you are not starting with
the boy quite young enough on the one hand, and that on the
other, the boy's mother is not strong to aid you in your great
and noble undertaking. My life has been more beset by cater
wauling, lying, two-faced, Beelzebub hypocrites than that of
any other of my acquaintances. This has been so to such an
extent that my soul cries out for relief. To be betrayed in
ordinary business transactions, and likewise deceived, is the
business man's every-day expectancy, but when the livery of
heaven is used as a mantle to deceive, and when the high God
has been called upon to witness promises made before vast
assemblies in order to obtain fame, name and money, and the
holy name is blasphemed, could our God have invented a more
terrible deom than a never-ending, unquenchable fire of hell
for such, the hypocrites? We must, ere many generations,
either become a more God-loving, God-respecting nation and
people, or we will become a people of no Godly marks about us.
The two-faced, lying hypocrite is the one who will bring about
the latter more rapidly than will, all cigarettes ever made, or
ever to be made, than all the whisky ever distilled, ever to be
distilled, and all the curses of hell besides can, will or may.
The scheme that I had of reaching the boys of America,
can o.nly be properly brought about from its being dealt to him
by clean hands, by spo'tless characters, by noble men, by those
who when they leave the wo'rid, shall leave it better than they
found it, and withal, by men of wealth, and I may say that I
know of many who woiuld have joined me in this work with
their money, who, like myself, now stand idle, thinking, reflect
ing and calculating upon the new day with its new duties that
is fast coming to. us all.
I am now engaged in writing a book that I faithfully
believe will be read by millions, and that will do its good in its
way, and in its preparation I have no Small, Large, Long or

334 A- CHAPTER FOR YOUNG MEN.
Short to aid me, but it is not the book that I am determined
upon publishing for the young men and boys of the age. In
conclusion, dear madam, permit me to say that your rejoicing
shall be mine, and mine shall be at all times, when I shall hear
of your progress in the noble work you are engaged in, and
believe me, madam, with sentiments of the highest esteem.
Yours truly,
THEOPHILUS Noel.

ENGLAND.

An American got drunk over in England and tjiey wrapped
him up in a white sheet and placed him in a graveyard. When
he came to he exclaimed, "Resurrection morn, by gum and an
American first up!"
I was reminded of this on my first trip to England, when
arising at my usual hour in the morning, 5 A. M., and gO'ing
out on the street, I saw no o.ne moving. I had tO' walk more
than an hour before meeting a policeman, who- seemed as
badly frightened at me as I was "skeered" at him, not that he
was a bad looking man, but that awful "His-Royal-Majesty's-
Highness King Edward- VII-by-the-Grace-of-God-King-of-
England-Scotland-Ireland-Wales-and-Emperor of all the-
Indies" look of that official was enough to "skeer" any good,
innocent, liberty-loving Yankee.
Politeness is more universal over there than with us, at
first appearance, if not to the end — the end will come if you
fail to "tip" the man or woman. Money makes the horse go
there, as nothing else will. Money will not go as far there as
with us ; so don't go there expecting to be respectable on less
than is required ^f guests av or in all first-class conditions in
our Country, then add twenty-five per cent for "tips," and
remember should you be introduced — not very likely — to his
"August Highness," much less any of his flunkies, not to for
get to "tip" the right party, having no fears as to results, save
and except you don't.
I never saw in al! my acquaintance with negro slavery in
the South such servility and slinking to master and overseer,
as the Englishman displays to his superiors, a servility that
an American loaths and abhors. There is no sociability
3.35

336 ENGLAND.
amongst the people. They may be honest one with another;
they have no chance to prove otherwise.
The rich are mighty rich and the poor are degradingly
poor. Think of three sets of tenants occupying the same house,
each eight hours, and this for all life. Noi negro cabin down
South in the days of slave ly was ever so wrcj^chedly lone
some as are the tenements from one end of the land tO' the
other — agricultural and factory districts alike. The houses
have no porches; windows, no curtains; no yards, no grass,
no trees. The country is all fenced off into small and all-
shaped fields, by rock walls. There is but little else than grass
grown— some potatoes, scarcely any fruit; cattle small, sheep
large, horses big, lubberly and awkward.
Few people cultivate their own soil, or live in their O'wn
houses. The average farmer is an ignorant, slow going, poky
dullard that has no ideas of a future and cares nothing for
others. Two American farm hands with a light eight-hun
dred-pound pony and a light wagon will haul more hay and
stack it in ten hours than six Englishmen, a big wagon, three
eighteen-hundred-po'Und horses will haul in a day's time, which
is fourteen hours.
The laboring classes all belong to unions, which teach them
that the proper thing to do is not to do what the employer
wants done. This has driven capital to America and to. Ger
many, for which reason one sees little on sale there but that it
comes from one of these countries. The farm renters reaso'ued
thusly: "If I raise a crop worth twenty-five dollars per acre,
the lord gets twelve and a half, soi if I raise a crop only half
that value, 'his nibbs' will only have half as much, to spree and
gamble away." The factory, hand reasons the same way, and
as a consequence the w,orkers of England, ScO'tland, Wales
and Ireland are the poorest paid workers on earth of the
Anglo^-Saxon race. The low-down serfs have no rights or
property that his lord, much less his king, in any way respects.

ENGLAND.

337

They are taught to and do believe that their lord, and espe^
cially their king, nor any of his family, can do no wrong, and
that whatever they do is right. To illustrate: From the car
window I saw a party of fifty or more well-mounted men and
women chasing after a pack of twenty or more hounds which
were chasing a fox or deer — more likely nothing, for I could
see no animal in front of the dogs. They jumped over the rock
walls in good style, through the fields where the farmers were
haying, who, like serfs, fairly flew to the right and the left
out of the way, as did the cattle, hogs, sheep, chickens and chil
dren, while the chasers plunged over the fences, through the
fields, scattering the hay that was already in shocks and win-
rows, destroying patches and gardens, growing crops, much
more than a hurricane would. I remarked toi the gentleman,
fellow traveler (prisoner), who had been locked up in the car
compartment with me, that, "if a deer, it would be costly by
the time all damages were paid." His reply was in effect,
"That is Lord  's estate — ^his park" — that the serfs
would receive no damages, for the lord can do noi wrong. He
did not say "serfs," for that is my name for all people that
stand such treatment. A lord's estate may be a few hundred or
many thousand acres, all of which may be and generally is
under the highest possible state of cultivation ; it is his for him'-
self and friends and to run over when and as often as he
pleases. The estates are often large. We read of the one our get-
rich-quick Carnegie bought in Scotland, containing sixty thou
sand acres of land, which would be nearly thirty-six miles
across either way if a square body. Now on this estate there
may be five, ten or twenty thousand farm tenants living, none
of whom are any more considered when it comes to the ques
tion of the "lord's" will, wishes, pay, profits or pleasures than
my coach dog Dewey is consulted as to my carriage drive, or
the road I may take. I was told that where the lord received

338 ENGLAND.
an annual rental of from ten to thirty dollars per acre, up to
ten years ago, they now receive only from two to eight which
pays only from two to five per cent on their properties, taxed
value — wherefore the lords, earls, dukes and princes are form
ing a union — a league — to force the Government to buy their
land holdings, as it has done in Ireland, pay for the same in
forty years two per cent bonds, then sell the land in small lots
to the peasantry (serfs). This would be the means of elevat
ing England, if the poor, long oppressed and downtrodden
serfs could O'uly be educated up toi the religion of personal
O'wnership of home, land and cattle. This I do not believe is
fiossible any more with the English than with the Mexican,
the greatest difficulty being in the fact that for many 'genera
tions, the first born, the best and brightest of all the land, left
home early for service in othei lands and countries, for other
kings and princes, leaving only the old, feeble in mind and
body, at home whose progeny for the past several generations
has greatly fallen off from what it was in times beyond
recall. An old man (92), born in Ireland, returned on the ship
with me. He came to America in 1848, after helping in the
building of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, settled near St.
Louis and grew up with the country and from being an hon
est, industrious and sober man, a close O'bserver, accumulated
great wealth. In his manners and habits he was as plain as
an old shoe and Irish to the backbone — a man who made
friends, and money as well. He had spent five months in vis
iting his old horne and in traveling all over the Isle, allowing
nothing to escape his observation. He had been away for
more than half a century. That I and his other fellow pas
sengers became interested and instructed by his recounting
his experience, his disappointments and his funs, puns and
jokes may well pass without saying.
He told us that noi one would have made him believe as to

ENGLAND. 339
the great changes that had overcome and come over his country
and people. The boy of his day and country was as the boy of
my day and country ; where, then, a boy's or man's ration was a
boiled potato or twoi with a cup of milk, now it (the ration)
came out of a tin can, the empties making a pile larger than the
old cabin, that was built by honest hands. The result being that
the Irishman of today was becoming more and more of a poor
consumptive weakling, a Miss Sissy, a degenerate of spring oc
once noble stalwart, generous and pure people. This he said in
his way — I'm telling it in my way — was the case in England,
Scotland and Wales as well as in Ireland.
He told of the people's abject poverty as compared with
fifty years ago, and of the departure of all that grand old style,
generous hospitaUty, and it seemed to me that he was talking
of my people , of the South and their changes from riches,
grandeur, nobility and hospitality to the very opposite.
He told of how the rich had growti richer and the poor
poorer, the wise more wise and the ignorant more benighted ;
and thus I came to realize more fully the changes that are tak
ing place the world over, day by day, that but few people make
note of, or profit by. One race, nation, or people rise to rule
for a time and then its time cofnes to pass away, to be suc
ceeded by the very one it most despised. Talk we as we may
about the Paganism of the past and of the present and of the
r'eligions and faiths people love to die by, but when we look
to the West to see what our fathers, and we in our own short
recollection, looked to the East to see, and there viev; half
a million men in battle array, we hear in its din, and see in its
dark smoke the Pagan's rapid approach to all that Christian
civilization has brought to the Anglo-Saxon and vastly more.
It was but as yesterday that the Russians were not considered
quite half civilized — a barbarian, worse than a Roman Pagan
race ; while the young man of today can tell of what his teacher

340 ENGLAND.
taught as to the uncivilized, worse than jungle barbarian,
human-sacrificing, devil-born Pagan, was the Japanese.
What conditions and what peoples preceded the dark ages ?
What peoples may succeed our age of enlightenment ?
With the influx of emigrants from all the hell holes of the
earth, and with it the spirit of anarchy, the disregard of all
laws, and rights of man, who may not have fears as to who
will be our successo'rs ?
A great national event — a live stock show — was o.n when I
first visited London, and, though I had telephoned for one, no
room was to be had at the holel. By "tipping" a lackey with
a half sovereign ($2.50) I procured a room in "a private
hotel," where I had to pay dcnible rates because of "necessity,"
as the keeper fold me. I was the first American or statesman,
as they called me, who had ever slept in the house, that had
been "a private hotel" for more generations than th^re are peas
in a pod, and kept continuously by the sam_e family descendants
of perhaps some Roman invader. I was an object of all sorts
of attention and soon found myself on good terms with six
gentlemen, the youngest over sixty-five, with their wives ; one
a rector O'f a nearby church of ten thousand communicants.
He was aided by eleven assistant rectors. He had been rector
for forty-six years. I was the first "statesman" he had ever
had the honor and pleasure of knowing. These were his words.
It was less than three miles to the world-wide known, "Billings
gate" fish market, where I had supposed every one of the seven
million inhabitants of London had been often. He told me
he had never been there or to the meat market or the vegetable
or fruit market that lay between him and the fish market. He
had a relative in the States and told me his name and asked if
I knew him. The other four gentlemen and their wives had
lived there all their lives, each rearing large families, all grown
up, gone away, and it seemed not to concern them as to where
they had gone or what they were doing. But two of these four

ENGLAND. 34I
— eight — had never»been out of the city of London. One had
been on an excursion up. the Thames forty year§ ago ; another
had been on a voyage to India and back. Not one of the ten
or twelve had been inside of Hyde Park, or any of the great
public buildiiigs or churches, except the church they belonged
to. They were of the well-to-do class between the aristocracy
and the drawers of water and hewers of wood. They had
books, magazines and papers in numbers. I told them a few
mild ones about my country so as to draw them out about
theirs. I found out that they did not know as much about
their own country as a ten-year-old bootblack born in Greece,
shining boots and selling papers on the streets of Chicago,
knows of his adopted land. I lost no time in giving them a
few liner's, that established my reputation beyond recall, or the
envy of any one who cares a cuss for such people's opinions.
These people were representatives of the Enghsh better
class, between the two lower and the three or four upper" ones
that look do'wn upon them, as they do on the two lower. It
was worse, if not greater than sacrilegious for me to refer to
their king as being one of the millio.ns that were as good if not
better, and when in bidding therp farewell, a hope that some
day we might meet in a country — the United States — where
they would feel themselves just as good, if not vastly superior
to any prince, king or potentate, they drew the line, and in
such a way as to show me how true the scriptures are in the
hog, dog and leopard parables.
My one-day traveling companion was a barrister, an
English lawyer, a man of culture and much travel, a close
observer, who knew a thing or two and was not afraid to tell
it when satisfied, as he soon was, that I was not a Scotland
Yards man, who are to be found wherever one may go. They
are the king's detectives, and woe befall the man, be he from
any land or country, who is heard to make a remark that can
be construed in the least disrespectful to his Royal Majesty's

342 ENGLAND.
rights of 'eminent domain over land, sea,« man or brute. In
this matter every subject is a policeman to. report what he may
hear said derogato.ry to any satrap or underliilg in the pay or
favor of the one who can do no wrong.
That there is a degeneracy rapidly growing on the great
masses of the subjects of Great Britain no. one will question
who has sprung from the race of Britons, as I did, and who
has learned to admire their great valor, nobleness of character
and love for human liberty in ages past, and will then see it as
it is today, I could not have believed from hearsay. The student
of politics would find no richer fields to. explore or dig into., if,
after the study of all that is foxy, cunning and wickedly cruel
in perverted h,uman nature, he should take in England.
That the Isles of Briton have given to the world its greatest
workers in all lines that have tended to the uplifting of the
human race, none will question, and if the same freedom was
given to. its people today that we enjoy, we would not be so
near being the whole thing a? we are.
Elsewhere I have told of how the northern slave holding
states of the South, produced such stout and healthy negroes
and mules for the cotton ancj cane fields, and ho'W they have
furnished this Government with its most brainy, noble patriots
and statesmen, and so with the British Isles as to the world.
A voyage to England, "F.urop'C, Asia and Africa should
never be taken alone, or by anyone who' has little means. If
the ticket seller or excursion man tells you five hundred dol
lars, you say fifteen, and then if you don't gamble or get drunk
and locked up, you may not have toi weep alone in a friendless
foreign country until friends from home send you good words
in the way of cash,.
"Who travels in Eastern countries and fails to bring back
lots of things and of all sorts, fails only from not having the
money to buy.
I have often pitied fellow travelers — and the more so that

ENGLAND. 343
I have been there myself, oftener than otherwise — who felt
like a thirty-cent piece from not having the wherewith to buy
the soul-captivating toy, ay ! a good, square, hungry-stomach-
satisfying meal. In traveling the old country, no matter how
smart your mother has made you believe yourself to be, just
put it down so as not toi forget it even for a moment, that you
are less than half way smart enough to deal with the fakirs
lining the way and all the way. The best way is to travel with
no smart woman. A little boy was asked if he did not wish
that he could have all the ice cream he could eat, and he
answered, "It was never made." Just so, the man who can
travel with a smart woman and hold his own, he was never
' made. I was made soi as to profit by the experience of others,
wherefore I am able to give the above advice with emphasis.
Women make a better job out of it traveling alone than men do.
It is easier for them to find fools than it is for men. Mark
Twain says, "Be good and you wih be lonesome." Toi travel
alone in foreign countries you are apt to be the latter and very
devilish. '

CALIFORNIA — WEST COAST.
From reading Lezvis and Clark's Journal, as well as from
being so inplined by birthright, my eyes, thoughts and hopes
were turned Westward, and its star has been my guiding way
often into trials, troubles and tribulations mountains high.
Years agoi the great people of Missouri erected in St. Louis
an heroic bronze statue to the honor and memory of one who
was not only their greatest statesman, but one of our entire
nation's as well — ^the Hon. Thomas H. Benton, who served his
State in the United States Senate for more than thirty years
consecutively. His "thirty years in the United States Senate"
has no equal in any volume published giving the history of
events so interwoven in the rapid growth of our country from
Ocean to Ocean, and especially the great West. Noi warrior or
statesman has ever had erected to. his memory a monument the
equal of this, as all say who have seen the most of them'.
Benton it was whoi did more than any one for the education
of the people of the world respecting the West and in the face
of an opposition that at times was terrific, waged by the con
tractors in the interest of Eastern enterprises that wanted it
all. General Fremont, the "Pathfinder," was Benton's son-in-
law and had for a wife one t.f the most noble and brainy
women — a worthy descendant of as noble a sire as God has
graced this world with. This monument represents Benton
speaking in the United States Senate in 1832, holding in his
left hand a scroll map, pointing with his right to the West and
toward the setting sun, saying, "This is the way to the East,"
or this is the way to India. This speech struck the people of
our country as did St. Paul's to the Athenians, when he told
them that he came to make known to them "the unknoznm God
\ 344

CALIFORNIA  WEST COAST. 345
that ye ignorantly worship." I see in a paper of today that
the largest commercial steamship ever built is now being
finished to take freight and passengers from our west coast via
Benton's route to the East, China, Japan, India and even
Africa, and it is but one O'f many more being built for this
route. Methinks it's next to Joshua's ordering the sun to stand
still — any way one loses a d-iy by going that way, as did his
enemies, as related in the Bible.
I've crossed this trail and then the rail tracks time and
again going West to reach the East, and did I have the power
to write of the wonderful transformation it has brought to the
people of this world in all that they o.nce thought impossible,
I would devote pages to. so. doing, that my readers might again
be impressed — as I have elsewhere sought to. — with the wond
rous world's works I and my associates in our age and genera
tion have done, a story, a truth, a song no American will ever
be tired of hearing. As an illustration as to my part in the
work I may cite that on my return home frO'm a long voyage,
my friends and neighbors gave a banquet and reception, and
after replying to speeches of welcome my little tot of a grand
daughter came toddling up with an armful of roses. Taking
her on my lap, she said in a whisper, "I done something too.,
didn't me grandpap?"
The millions and billions and trillions of wealth the West
in general and particularly the Cahfornia coast has added to
the world with its millions of happy homes is too well known
of to need enlarging upon by me. Its great future can only
be surmised by the Bentons of today.
I might fill pages of matter relating to the West of today,
but why should I in view of the fact that all having a desire
to know of it can go and see for themselves with but a tithe of
the exertion and a fraction of cost as compared with my first
visit ? And now for a few pertinent and practical words to
the reader that will be of future use and value in exact pro-

346 CALIF0RNL\ — WEST COAST.
portion as he may have good sense to. judge the good from
the bad, and that no one but real estate men and ticket agents
will cuss at. When you read of any country offering great
inducements to immigrants, don't believe a word, but go. and
see before selling out, as my father did, then don't believe a
thing you see until you have both and all sides of the thing.
Don't think you are even half smart enough tO' judge of any
countr}'^ or place by what you see at first, much less by what
you hear. Stay for at least one year, so. as to see all the seasons
before parting with one cent of yO'Ur money more than enough
to keep from hunger and want. Few have had more expe
rience than I along on this line and thousands have come to
grief and want whom I have advised as above, and who were
told by the "agent" that I was a chronic sorehead, kicker,
Anocker, was interested in some other place, in fine, that I
was a prevaricator and might have said a liar — for I was not
present, and the fools believed it, and in many cases they wrote
me for aid and assistance to. get back to their wives' folks.
Ignorance is no excuse at law ; one that has been swindled
out of his holdings cannot reco'ver it on the plea of being a
fool. The baby act never wins back lost money, betrayed
confidence or sympathy. I know it is a happy thought to think
of others as being as good, truthful arid honest as we our
selves are ; but to put it toi practice is the surest way of bring
ing double refined sorrow, grief, want and misery.
When a boy I was taught how tO' make all sorts of traps
for various kinds of birds, animals and fish — this by a hired
man who had spent years trapping and exploring in the then
far Northiwest. He also taught me ho'W toi make chimes
sticks and all sorts of puzzles, etc. This he did while the other
hired men played cards or pitched horseshoes at a pin driven
in the ground. He told me of his trappings for beaver, bear
and all other animals whose fur was valuable, and he told
me of the then far away wonderland now known as the Yel-

CALIFORNIA — WEST COAST. 347
lowstone National Park, of his guiding and scouting and
fighting with Indians, and though he could not read or write,
when I showed hini the large maps of the lands he had
described to. me he instinctively placed his finger on the spot
where events had occurred. I felt at home when, forty years
afterwards, I visited many of the sections he had told me of
and about and recognized them from his descriptions. He
knew no river or lake by any name our geographers have given,
but called them by the name known to the Hudson Bay and
Astor Fur Companies' emplq)'es which they had derived from
the natives. The Columbia v,'as "Flow with the sun;" the
Snake of Idaho, "High bank;" Lake of the Woods, "Many
fish water." He was a quaint genius with a fieart as large
as an ox. I had found in a fence corner a roosting of quails ;
he helped me make a trap that bagged the co'vey of fifteen.
He went with me early in the morning, and after telling all
about the birds' life and habits, asked me if I did not think
it would be wrong tO' kill such a beautiful family. I said yes;
then he told me to turn them loose, and that some day I might
be liberated myself from captivity, repeating to me these
lines which have followed me thrO'Ugh life:

"The mercy I to others show,
That mercy show to me."

That I shall meet this old teacher, trapper, guide and
explorer in the far away land of the soul I have no more doubt
than I have a right toi doubt my own existence.
Some days before writing these last pages of my book I
met an old time friend who, like myself, has been trying to
retire from active life after having raised a family, all well
provided for, and who had been seeking peace of mind and
comfort of body from- not planning, pushing, rushing, driving
late and early, but was making a failure of it. He told me,
as I could have told him was my case, that he could not be

348 CALIFORNIA  WEST COAST.
idle, that he was casting about to g6 into business again, that
he was satisfied it would be easier and better toi wear out than
to rust out. I advised him toi do as I had been doing the. past
few months, i. e., write a histpry of his life, an autobiography.
for the benefit of his friends, to give them something toi laugh
about, criticize, s-wear over and to say, "what an old fool!"
I told him that thereby he would have a chance to. live life over
again and also to see and know how little of his life was worth
the living; that what a fool for a fact he had been; that not
to tell everything he knew or had done or vvanted to do but
failed in ; that he would soon find all he wanted to keep his
body and mind entirely engaged. He sends me word that
he is going to take my advice and wants a copy of my book-
to read before he starts. Not much, Mr. Jones, I am going to
see to it that you write your own book first, lest you have
the laugh all on me.
In India there is a proverb to the effect that before one
becomes a man he must marry a«wife, build a house and write
a book. I've done all three twice, whether a man or not. I
often think I might have made a better idiot than husband,
builder or author, and though through life I have always had
little regard for the opinions of others respecting my acts, I
cannot help wishing to know how this, my last effort, will be
received, by those whom I have always regarded as my friends,
and this feeling is not prompted by vanity or egotism, but
comes from the fact that all other efforts of my life have been
so acceptably received and considered that today I am classed
amongst the heavy taxpayers in many places, which in my
mind is the greatest possible evidence of worthiness of respect,
— doubly so in view of the further fact that I enjoy noi ill-got
ten gains.

With an

inspiration

born

of

love for the

•woman 'who after'wards

became his happy

and cherished 'wife

Theo.

Noel,

in

j8j6.

made his jirst

{and

last) essay

at poetry

the

result being

sho'wn

in the

folloiuing, the

ortgtt

al manuscript, faded and torny

having

been

found among old papers

after

many years

]

I love thee because thou hast ever
A smile and a kind word for me,
When those who should cherish me, nevei
Can aught but my foibles see.
I'll quench not the flame that arises
From perishing hopes of my youth,
If reason the weakness despises.
At least 'twill be counseled by truth.
Thy love o'er my sad spirit beameth
Like the moon on the dark brow of night,
Till again in its glory it seemeth
That even its shadows are bright.
How sacred the hope I have cherished
That still in some region divine.
When all which is earthly has perished
My spirit shall mingle with THINE.