Recollections of a Varied Life Part 28

Loring became a private soldier in the United States Army while yet a boy. He so far distinguished himself for gallantry in the Florida War that he was offered a Presidential appointment to West Point, which he declined. He was appointed to a lieutenancy in the regular army, where he won rapid promotion and gained a deal of experience, chiefly in fighting Indians and leading troops on difficult expeditions across the plains of the far West. In the Mexican War he was several times promoted and brevetted for conspicuous gallantry, and he lost an arm at one of the gates of the City of Mexico, as he was leading his regiment as the head of the column into the town, seizing an opportunity without orders.

On that occasion General Scott visited him in hospital and said to him:

"Loring, I suppose I ought to court-martial you for rushing into that breach without orders; but I think I'll recommend you for promotion instead."

In the Confederate Army Loring became a Major-General, and a few years after the close of that struggle he was invited by the Khedive of Egypt to become his chief of staff. After a military service there which extended over a number of years, he returned to America and wrote a book founded upon his experience there and the studies he had made in Egyptian manners, history, archaeology, and the like. I was employed to edit that book, which was published by Dodd, Mead & Co., I think, and in the course of my work upon it Loring became not only a valued personal friend, but an easy-going intimate in my household. At first he came to see me only for purposes of consultation concerning the work. Later he used to come "just because he wanted to," he said. His visits were made, in Southern fashion, at whatever hour he chose, and he took with us whatever meals were served while he was there.

In conversation one day I happened to ask Loring something about the strained relations that frequently exist between commanding officers in the field and the newspaper war correspondents sent out to report news of military operations. I think my question was prompted by some reference to William Swinton's criticisms of General Grant, and General Grant's peremptory dealing with him.

"I don't know much about such things," Loring answered. "You see, at the time of the Mexican War and of all my Indian campaigns, the newspapers hadn't yet invented the war correspondent. Then in the Confederacy everybody was a soldier, as you know, and the war correspondents carried muskets and answered to roll calls. Their newspaper work was an avocation, not a vocation. You see I am learning English under your tuition."

This little jest referred to the fact that a few days before, in running through the ma.n.u.script of a lecture he was preparing, I had changed the word "avocation" to "vocation," explaining to him the difference in meaning.

[Sidenote: Concerning War Correspondents]

"Then in Egypt we were not much troubled with war correspondents--perhaps they had the bowstring and sack in mind--but I have an abiding grudge against another type of correspondent whom I encountered there. I mean the tourist who has made an arrangement with some newspaper to pay the expenses of his trip or a part of them in return for letters to be sent from the places visited. He is always an objectionable person, particularly when he happens to be a parson out of a job, and I always fought shy of him so far as possible, usually by turning him over to my dragoman, to be shown about and 'stuffed' as only a dragoman can 'stuff' anybody. You see the dragoman has learned that every Western tourist in the East is hungry for information of a startling sort, and the dragoman holds himself ready to furnish it without the smallest regard for truth or any respect at all for facts.

On one occasion one of these scribbling tourists from England visited me. One of the Khedive's unoccupied palaces had been a.s.signed to me for my headquarters, and I was exceedingly busy with preparations for a campaign then in contemplation. Stone Pacha and I were both up to our eyes in work, trying to mobilize an army that had no mobility in it.

Accordingly I turned the tourist over to my dragoman with orders to show him everything and give him all the information he wanted.

"The palace was divided as usual. There was a public part and a part called the harem--which simply means the home or the family apartments.

During my occupancy of the place that part of it was empty and closed, as I am a bachelor. But as the dragoman showed him about the tourist asked to see that part of the palace, whereupon the dragoman replied:

"'That is the harem. You cannot gain entrance there.'

"'The harem? But I thought Loring was an American and a Christian,' was the astonished reply.

"'He was--but he is a pacha, now,' answered the dragoman with that air of mysterious reserve which is a part of his stock in trade. Then the rascal went on to tell the tourist that I now had forty wives--which would have been a shot with the long bow even if I had been a born Mohammedan of the highest rank and greatest wealth.

"When I heard of the affair I asked the dragoman why he had lied so outrageously and he calmly replied:

"'Oh, I thought it polite to give the gentleman what he wanted.'

[Sidenote: A Scribbling Tourist's Mischief-Making]

"I dismissed the matter and thought no more of it until a month or so later, when somebody sent me marked copies of the _Manchester Guardian_, or whatever the religious newspaper concerned was called. The tourist had told the story of my 'downfall' with all the horrifying particulars, setting forth in very complimentary phrases my simple, exemplary life as an American soldier and lamenting the ease with which I and other Western men, 'nurtured in the purity of Christian family life,' had fallen victims to the l.u.s.tful luxury of the East. I didn't give the matter any attention. I was too busy to bother--too busy with plans and estimates and commissary problems, and the puzzles of transportation and all the rest of the things that required attention in preparation for a campaign in a difficult, inaccessible, and little known country. I wasn't thinking of myself or of what wandering scribes might be writing about me in English newspapers. But presently this thing a.s.sumed a new and very serious aspect. Some obscure American religious newspaper, published down South somewhere, copied the thing, and my good sisters, who live down that way, read it. It isn't much to say they were horrified; they were well-nigh killed by the revelation of my infamy and they suffered almost inconceivable tortures of the spirit on my account.

For it never entered their trustful minds to doubt anything printed in a great English religious paper over the signature of a dissenting minister and copied into the American religious journal which to them seemed an authoritative weekly supplement to the holy scriptures.

"I managed to straighten the thing out in the minds of my good sisters, but I have never ceased to regret that that correspondent never turned up at my headquarters again. If he had I should have made him think he had fallen in with a herd of the wild jacka.s.ses of Abyssinia."

LVII

Mention of Loring's experience reminds me of an amusing one of my own that occurred a little later. In the autumn of 1886 I made a leisurely journey with my wife across the continent to California, Oregon, Mexico, and all parts of the golden West. On an equally leisurely return journey we took a train at Marshall, Texas, for New Orleans, over the ruins of the Texas and Pacific Railroad, which Jay Gould had recently "looted to the limit," as a banker described it. Besides myself, my wife, and our child, the only pa.s.sengers on the solitary buffet sleeping car were Mr.

Ziegenfust of the San Francisco _Chronicle_, and a young lady who put herself under my wife's chaperonage. If Mr. Ziegenfust had not been there to bear out my statements I should never have told the story of what happened.

There was no conductor for the sleeping car--only a negro porter who acted as factotum. When I undertook to arrange with him for my sleeping car accommodations, I offered him a gold piece, for in drawing money from a San Francis...o...b..nk for use on the return journey, I had received only gold.

The negro seemed startled as I held out the coin.

"I can't take dat, boss," he said. "'Taint worf nuffin."

I made an effort to explain to him that American gold coin was not only the supreme standard by which all values were measured in this country, but that as mere metal it was worth the sum stamped upon it in any part of the earth. Mr. Ziegenfust supported me in these statements, but our combined a.s.surances made no impression upon the porter's mind. He perfectly knew that gold coin was as worthless as dead forest leaves, and he simply would not take the twenty-dollar piece offered him.

We decided that the poor fellow was a fool, and after a search through all the pockets on the car we managed to get together the necessary number of dollars in greenbacks with which to pay for my accommodations.

As for what we might want to eat from the buffet--for there were no dining cars in those days--the porter a.s.sured me he would "trust me"

till we should get to New Orleans, and call upon me at my hotel to receive his pay.

Next morning we found ourselves stranded at Plaquemine, by reason of a train wreck a few miles ahead. Plaquemine is the center of the district to which the banished Acadians of Longfellow's story fled for refuge, and most of the people there claim descent from Evangeline, in jaunty disregard of the fact that that young lady of the long ago was never married. But Plaquemine is a thriving provincial town, and when I learned that we must lie there, wreck-bound, for at least six hours, I thought I saw my opportunity. I went out into the town to get some of my gold pieces converted into greenbacks.

[Sidenote: "A Stranded Gold Bug"]

To my astonishment I found everybody there like-minded with the negro porter of my sleeping car. They were all convinced that American gold coin was a thing of no value, and for reason they told me that "the government has went back on it." It was in vain for me to protest that the government had nothing to do with determining the value of a gold piece except to certify its weight and fineness; that the piece of gold was intrinsically worth its face as mere metal, and all the rest of the obvious facts of the case. These people knew that "the government has went back on gold"--that was the phrase all of them used--and they would have none of it.

In recognition of the superior liberality of mind concerning financial matters that distinguishes the barkeeper from all other small tradesmen, I went into the saloon of the princ.i.p.al hotel of the town, and said to the man of mult.i.tudinous bottles:

"It's rather early in the morning, but some of these gentlemen," waving my hand toward the loafers on the benches, "may be thirsty. I'll be glad to 'set 'em up' for the company if you'll take your pay out of a twenty-dollar gold piece and give me change for it."

There was an alert and instant response from the "gentlemen" of the benches, who promptly aligned themselves before the bar and stood ready to "name their drinks," but the barkeeper shook his head.

"Stranger," he said, "if you must have a drink you can have it and welcome. But I can't take gold money. 'Taint worth nothin'. You see the government has went back on it."

I declined the gratuitous drink he so generously offered, and took my departure, leaving the "gentlemen" of the benches thirsty.

Finally, I went to the princ.i.p.al merchant of the place, feeling certain that he at least knew the fundamental facts of money values. I explained my embarra.s.sment and asked him to give me greenbacks for one or more of my gold pieces.

He was an exceedingly courteous and kindly person. He said to me in better English than I had heard that morning:

"Well, you may not know it, but the government has gone back on gold, so that we don't know what value it may have. But I can't let a stranger leave our town under such embarra.s.sment as yours seems to be, particularly as you have your wife and child with you. I'll give you currency for one of your gold pieces, and _take my chances of getting something for the coin_."

I tried to explain finance to him, and particularly the insignificance of the government's relation to the intrinsic value of gold coin, but my words made no impression upon his mind. I could only say, therefore, that I would accept his hospitable offer to convert one of my coins into greenbacks, with the a.s.surance that I should not think of doing so if I did not perfectly know that he took no risk whatever in making the exchange.

In New Orleans I got an explanation of this curious scare. When the Civil War broke out there was a good deal of gold coin in circulation in the Plaquemine region. During and after the war the coins pa.s.sed freely and frequently from hand to hand, particularly in cotton buying transactions. Not long before the time of my visit, some merchants in Plaquemine had sent a lot of this badly worn gold to New Orleans in payment of duties on imported goods--a species of payment which was then, foolishly, required to be made in gold alone. The customs officers had rejected this Plaquemine gold, because it was worn to light weight.

Hence the conviction in Plaquemine that the government had "went back"

on gold.

[Sidenote: Results of a Bit of Humor]

At that time the princ.i.p.al subject of discussion in Congress and the newspapers was the question of free silver coinage, the exclusive gold standard of values, or a double standard, and all the rest of it, and those who contended for an exclusive gold standard were stigmatized as "gold bugs."

I was then editor-in-chief of the _New York Commercial Advertiser_, and in my absence my brilliant young friend, Henry Marquand, was in charge of the paper. Thinking to amuse our readers I sent him a playful letter recounting these Plaquemine experiences, and he published it under the t.i.tle of "A Stranded Goldbug."

The humor of the situation described was so obvious and so timely that my letter was widely copied throughout the country, and a copy of it fell into the hands of a good but too serious-minded kinswoman of mine, an active worker in the W. C. T. U. She was not interested in the humor of my embarra.s.sment, but she wrote me a grieved and distressed letter, asking how I could ever have gone into the saloon of that Plaquemine hotel, or any other place where alcoholic beverages were sold, and much else to the like effect. I was reminded of Loring's experience, and was left to wonder how large a proportion of those who had read my letter had missed the humor of the matter in their shocked distress over the fact that by entering a hotel cafe I had lent my countenance to the sale of beer and the like.

I had not then learned, as I have since done, how exceedingly and even exigently sensitive consciences of a certain cla.s.s are as to such matters. Not many years ago I published a boys' book about a flat-boat voyage down the Mississippi. At New Orleans a commission merchant, anxious to give the country boys as much as he could of enjoyment in the city, furnished tickets and bade them "go to the opera to-night and hear some good music." Soon after the book came out my publishers wrote me that they had a Sunday School a.s.sociation's order for a thousand copies of the book, but that it was conditioned upon our willingness to change the word "opera" to "concert" in the sentence quoted.