CHAPTER II.

DRIFTING FROM HOME.

A Student-Moot Courts—First Visit to New York-Notable Events and Persons of Half a Century Ago- Oneida InstitutePicture of Reformers and Orators, Gerritt Smith, Alvin Stewart, President Beriah Green.

THE death of my eldest brother at the South, not only brought a new burden of responsibility, but unsettled plans for the future. In 1840, I entered the Classical School of B. F. Allen, in the city. of Vergennes, but not to secure all the benefits of the closest application. The master was easy, classmates were jovial, added to which there were the dissipating allurements of mock courts at late hours. The young attorneys and their students and clerks could afford the recreation, but not so well could the candidate for admission to college. The farces of the time afforded entertainment, and gave practice in public speaking, but involved mental dissipation, rather than proper discipline. The next school engagement was a pleasant one, with good wages, in Middlebury. The term was sadly ended by the decease of my brother, Freeman, who died at the age of twenty-one, at Norfolk, Virginia. With the double. purpose of caring for his effects and entering Yale College, I left home, making a stay for several weeks in the great city of New York, a new world to the country boy.

It was a bright, spring morning when I stepped from the Hudson river steamboat upon the wharf; pushing my way in the crowd, amidst the howls of hackmen, I turned to purchase some tempting fruit, and discovered that my purse was gone. I had read of New York pickpockets, and the cold sweat stood on my brow at the thought of being, a stranger, penniless in a great city. Without a recollection of taking my pocketbook from under my pillow in the berth, I rushed back to find it undisturbed where I had left it. My gratitude was boundless, first lavishing a surprising sum upon the chambermaid, and then with an offer of a bank bill to the clerk,

who replied, "They wanted no bounty for being honest," which was a plea for human nature, I am sorry to say, not always truthfully in the line of some facts in my later experiences.

WHAT OF THE CITY OF FIFTY YEARS AGO?

Stages rumbling over the pavements of cobble-stones, seemed almost deafening. Then there was a stench from the gas, one of the most offensive of all odors known in human life or from the

laboratory of science. Water was drawn by wooden pumps from the city wells, (most detestable to one accustomed to the pure flow from the mountains), and in association with poor drainage by sewers, and the burial of the city dead- Greenwood and other cemeteries being but in incipient stages of their beauty.

During my stay in the city, I was not only cautious, but conscientious, and sought to heed the counsel on leaving home, which was "to be sure and hear Dr. Gardner Spring preach," the most noted divine in the city. Sunday morning, after a long hunt, I found the old brick church, since given way to the New York Times block. Gaily-caparisoned horses and elegant carriages were by the walk in charge of liveried coachmen, and, to be sure I was to find Dr. Spring, I asked if that was the church. "Does he preach to-day?" "Yes, this is his carriage." Yet, some in doubt, I said, "Why don't you hitch and go in?" This caused a laugh from the company of whips, their spokesman replying, "We don't go to church, we hold horses." A verse of the old song, ridiculing the President, came fresh to me, as sung in the Harrison campaign:

"Martin's steeds impatient wait

At the palace door,

Outriders behind the coach

And lackeys on before."

I attended the church service, and the doctor fell, in my judgment, below his reputation in the pulpit as a speaker. It was a sermon, I guessed, about the heathen, but not so sure as was Dr. R. S. Storrs forty years ago, who, when asked the subject of the sermon to which he listened in his own pulpit, said: "It was about the Jews; I know that was the subject, for the doctor told me so as we passed out of the church."

That company of carriage drivers, I mentioned when writing home, were perhaps as needy as the foreign heathen, and I wrote out the sarcastic reproof given by John Randolph, of Old Virginia. The planters' ladies were met to prepare clothing for the poor Revolutionary Greeks. Randolph declined to aid their object with his purse, and as he passed out espied a crowd of squalid negro children, when he pushed open the door, and shouted: "The Greeks! the Greeks! Ladies, they're at your door."

Charles O'Connor, the Irish lawyer, was rising to fame. I was fortunate in hearing him in able forensic arguments; tall, elegant in diction, with a dash of youth. Many years later, I heard him as the venerable advocate, in the Supreme Court of the United States, and at a dinner table socially, when I told him of my early admiration. "Ah!" he replied, "the change-my eye is now dim, and normal force wasted. Once they tried me by the press, and their praise was welcome, no doubt. Now I am before a bench on trial; not after cases, but anxious to win what I have. Dullness in court will be my role at the end of a brief pilgrimage." Of course, to this I did not in courtesy assent, in the presence of one so genteel and suave, much as I disliked his political Bourbonism.

name.

Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt was then pointed out, and at that day little above the rank of a "steamboat man." He had a striking face, a piercing eye, set off by a white, ministerial cravat, little consonant with the connoisseur of fast horses, and an adept with cards; yet loyal and liberal, presenting the government, in its need, with a steam vessel in war time, and endowing the Vanderbilt University at Nashville, Tennessee, bearing his Hon. John I. Blair tells me that in his early career, coming over to Staten Island from New Jersey, the Commodore would give him a boat ride to New York City early, for a silver quarter, that he might as a country merchant be the first on the market with butter and eggs, having called out to Bill to put out Mr. Blair's horses, and mother to get breakfast, which she did barefoot, and in an out-kitchen, innocent of any floor; glad to get up and get breakfast for a quarter, by the light of the moon. Then there was the unfortunate son, Cornelius (brother of the better known than all, the deceased William H. Vanderbilt), whom I knew as the Western traveling friend of Horace Greeley. He was great hearted, with sundry misfortunes, else Mr. Greeley would not have been, as was said, a foolish endorser in the sum of twenty-five

thousand dollars, which to the credit of the millionaire, let it be said, was paid in full to the family, on Mr. Greeley's decease. The unfortunate Cornelius spent an evening at my house in Iowa. What an elegant story-teller, and volatile spirit! "Everybody knows brother Bill, who got deep into dad's affection; I do. But suppose he don't like me. We had one mother who never forgot Cornele." His head dropped, the tears falling with a sigh, reminding me of Hamlet's words:

"One that was a woman;

But rest her soul-she's dead."

My emotional guest, stricken by a temporary fit, fell upon the floor. From him I turn with pleasure, reminded that William H. Vanderbilt, through Chauncey M. Depew, gave me a thousand dollars, and promised more, to repair our college, which was destroyed by a tornado. His son, Cornelius, is named the philanthropist, and his brothers promise, in munificent charities and service, to hold a higher rank than the historic founder of the family, whom I remember.

Far back then, in 1841, there was no Vanderbilt palace, nor bronze doors, as in 1889, leading to the famous Art Gallery. Now there is the delicate and double office in denial, as well as in dispensing charities. Is there a greater exemption from common frailties and ills in the envied palace, than that enjoyed by the masses? Not long ago, on New Year's Day, there was a long line of gaily-dressed grandchildren at the windows of the Vanderbilt mansion, witnessing a street pageant. My companion, an M. D., and President of the New York Art Club, took little interest in the juveniles, saying, "Dead Cornelius was princely, and the crowd envy the children; I don't. Even their money will keep them effeminate; they'll have the colic oftener than our children, and they won't look or feel any better in a shroud."

Burton's Theatre was only a name for Burton, the humorist, convulsing in laughter, in pantomime; and it was a popular resort for countrymen. His part in "Toodles" gave him fame and personality next to that of Edwin Forrest, the tragedian-the inspirer of a swarm of amateurs in "Richard the Third." Forrest was a star-Burton the idol of a good kind of play-goers fifty years ago, who always cheered the exploit of Mrs. Toodles in attending auctions, and buying a door-plate at a great bargain, since, with the

name of "Thompson" engraved, there was a possibility it would come in use, predicated on a daughter being born to them, growing up, and marrying a Thompson. It was a most convulsive story on the stage, and I have found the points often like handy change, in public speaking, on hits at foolish probabilities-not the weather.

THE AMISTAD STORY.

A black man -a real African I saw, and it was Martin Cinque, the slave mutineer. The slave vessel had been misguided by the overpowered owners to Montauk Point. On it were some fifty men who were kidnapped for the Cuban slave market. They had risen in mutiny, and after killing the captain and one of the crew, had trusted the threatened owners to return them to their country. When brought before one Judson, a United States District Judge, the verdict was, they were not to be sent to Cuba for trial as murderers and mutineers. An appeal was taken to the Supreme Court of the United States, where John Quincy Adams, "the old man eloquent," and Hon. R. S. Baldwin argued on the popular just side, and the prisoners were set free by the court. The case stirred our young blood, and the Amistad case came to be classed with Med, in an English slave trial; also with that of our Dred Scott and Judge Taney, years later.

At this time, the Tappans were famous in New York. Arthur, the silk merchant, as an abolitionist, called out a Southern reward of one hundred thousand dollars for his abduction, and was honored by a pro-slavery mob. He honored himself by the founding of professorships in Auburn Theological Seminary and in Oberlin, besides other great gifts for those days, akin to the aid in opening Broadway Tabernacle, a spacious building for popular and reform. meetings.

Lewis Tappan and Rev. Joshua Leavitt were said to have the Africans in charge, as they raised money for their defense. Mr. Tappan had brothers, Benjamin, senator from Ohio, and John Tappan, in Boston; the blood, with a personal knowledge of Louis in later years, won my admiration. If there was an escaping fugitive, he knew through Tappan where to find shelter. Such was the merchant who, for twenty years, was treasurer of the American Missionary Society (I think without pay), and who holds rightfully a higher place in our eventful annals than the great