Part 20 (2/2)
While I sat, Mrs. Bancroft came to me, caressed me, and said:
”Old things have pa.s.sed away, and all things have become new.”
CHAPTER XLVII.
OUT INTO THE WORLD AND HOME AGAIN.
In my first lecturing winter I spoke in the Hall of Representatives, St.
Paul, to a large audience, and succeeded past all my hopes. I spoke there again in the winter of '61 and '62, on the anti-slavery question, and in a public hall on ”Woman's Legal Disabilities.” Both were very successful, and I was invited to give the latter lecture before the Senate, which I did. The hall was packed and the lecture received with profound attention, interrupted by hearty applause.
The Senate was in session, and Gen. Lowrie occupied his seat as a member. It was a great fall for him to tumble from his dictators.h.i.+p to so small an honor. He sat and looked at me like one in a dream, and I could not but see that he was breaking. I hoped he would come up with others when they began to crowd around me, but he did not.
I had come to be the looked-at of all lookers; the talked-of of all talkers; was the guest of Geo. A. Nurse, the U.S. Attorney, dined with the Governor, and was praised by the press. I was dubbed the ”f.a.n.n.y Kemble of America,” and reminded critics of the then greatest Shylock of the stage. A judge from Ohio said there was ”not a man in the State who could have presented that case (Woman's Legal Disabilities) so well.”
Indeed, I was almost as popular as if I were about to be hanged!
A responsible Eastern lecture-agent offered me one hundred dollars each for three lectures, one in Milwaukee, one in Chicago and one in Cleveland. I wanted to accept, but was overruled by friends, who thought me too feeble to travel alone, and that I would make more by employing an agent. They selected a pious gentleman, whose name I have forgotten, and we left St. Paul at four o'clock one winter morning, in a prairie schooner on bob-sleds, to ride to La Crosse.
One of the pa.s.sengers was a pompous Southerner, who kept boasting of the ”buck n.i.g.g.e.rs” he had sold and the ”n.i.g.g.e.rs” he had caught, and his delight in that sort of work. His talk was aimed at me, but he did not address me, and for hours I took no notice; then, after an unusual explosion, I said quietly:
”Can you remember, sir, just exactly how many n.i.g.g.e.rs you have killed and eaten in your day?”
He looked out on the river and seemed to begin a calculation, but must have found the lists of his exploits too long for utterance, for he had spoken not another word when we reached La Crosse, where we took cars for Madison, Wisconsin.
We reached that beautiful city of lakes in time to meet news of the Ft.
Donelson fatal victory; that victory made so much worse than a hundred defeats by the return to their masters of the slaves who remained in the fort and claimed the protection of our flag--the victory which converted the great loyal army of the North into a gang of slave-catchers. Alas, my native land! All hope for the preservation of the government died out in my heart. What could a just G.o.d want with such a people? What could he do but destroy them?
That victory was celebrated in Madison with appropriate ceremonies. Men got drunk and cursed ”n.i.g.g.e.rs and abolitionists,” sat up all night in noisy orgies drinking health and success to him who was the synonym of American glory.
The excitement and sudden revulsion against abolitionists with the total incompetence of my agent, caused a financial failure of my lecture, but I made pleasant friends.h.i.+ps with Gov. Harvey, Prof. Carr and their wives.
I started along the route we had come, and everywhere, in cars, hotels, men were hurrahing for Grant and cursing ”n.i.g.g.e.rs and abolitionists.”
The hero had healed the breach between the loving brothers of the North and South, who were to rush into each others arms across the prostrate form of Liberty. Thank G.o.d for the madness of the South; for that sublime universal government which maketh ”the wrath of man to praise him.” Even in that hour of triumph for despotism, I did not doubt but Freedom would march on until no slave contaminated the earth; but before that march this degraded government must share the fate of that other Babylon, which once dealt ”in slaves and souls of men.”
My first small town lecture was another financial failure, and in the hall I paid and dismissed that highly respectable incubus--my agent.
That night I slept in a hotel, and going to a bed which had not been properly ventilated, wondered if it could be my duty to breast that storm of popular frenzy. Could I at any time be required to drink tea out of a coa.r.s.e delf cup and sleep in such a bed? Luxuries I wanted none; but a china cup, silver spoon and soft blankets were necessaries of life. As I lay, uncertain always whether I slept, I seemed to sit on a projecting rock on the side of a precipice draped with poisonous vines. There was no spot on which I could place my feet, while out of holes, snakes hissed at me, and on ledges panthers glared at me with their green fiery eyes, and the tips of their tails wagging. Far below lay a lovely green valley, walled on both sides by these haunted precipitous banks, but stretching up and down until lost in vista. I knew that to the right was north--the direction of home; and to the left, south--the way out into the great unknown. If I could only reach that lovely valley and the clear stream which ran through it; but this was a vain longing, until there appeared in it a young man in a grey suit and soft broad-brimmed black felt hat. He came up the precipice toward me, and a way made itself before him, until he held up his hand, and said:
”Come down!”
I saw his face, and knew it was Christ. After seeing that face, all the conceptions of all the artists are an offense. Moreover, the Christ of to-day, in the person of his follower, has often come to me in the garb of a working man, but never in priestly robes. He led me down the precipice without a word, pointed northward and said:
”Walk in the valley and you will be safe.” He was gone, and I became conscious that I had been seeking popularity, money, and these were not for me; I must go home, but first I would try to repair the loss incurred by that agent. I lectured in a small town, a nucleus of a Seven Day Baptist settlement, and was the guest of the proprietor, who had built a great many concrete walls. Coming out into a heavy wind, I took acute inflammation of the lungs. My hostess gave me every attention; but I must go home for my symptoms were alarming, so took the train the next morning, with my chest in wet compresses, a viol of aconite in my pocket, and was better when by rail and schooner I reached the house of the good Samaritan, Judge Wilson, of Winona.
Here I was made whole, lectured in Winona and other towns, and got back to St. Paul with more money than when I left. I started for home one morning in a schooner. At one the next morning our craft settled down and refused to go farther. The snow was three feet deep; it had been raining steadily for twelve hours, and when the men got out to pry out the runners, they went down, down, far over their knees. The driver and express agent were booted for such occasions, but the two Germans were not. Myself, ”these four and no more,” were down in the book of fate for a struggle with inertia. It was muscle and mind against matter. To the muscle I contributed nothing, but might add something to the common stock of mind. The agent, and driver concluded that he should take a horse and go to the nearest house, two miles back, to get shovels to dig us out. I asked if there were fresh horses and men at the house.
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