Part 3 (1/2)

Joseph Lane--the Lane of the Breckenridge and Lane ticket of 1860--had brought the territory of Oregon in as a state

I have often thought just where I would have coht have happened to rown to manhood on the Pacific Coast As it was I attended a school in Philadelphia--the Protestant Episcopal Academy--came home to Tennessee in 1856, and after a season with private tutors found myself back in the national capital in 1858

It was then that I began to nurse soreatto write histories and dramas and romances and poetry But as I had set up for

III

I take it that the early steps of everyht work in New York with indifferent success Mr Ray me play the piano at which froavethe absence of Mr Seyular critic

I must have done my work acceptably, since I was not fired It included a report of the debut of irl companion, Adelina Patti, when she made her first appearance in opera at the Acade is, I did not ”catch on” There ton, and thither I repaired

The Daily States had been established there by John P Heiss, ith Thoton Union Roger A Pryor was its nominal editor But he soon took hiress, and the editorial writing on the States was being done by Col A Dudley Mann, later along Confederate co Mr Slidell

Colonel Mann wished to work incognito I was taken on as a kind of go-between and, as Ientleet my newspaper education in point of fact as a kind of fetch-and-carry for Major Heiss He was a practical newspaper man who had started the Union at Nashville as well as the Union at Washi+ngton and the Crescent--maybe it was the Delta--at New Orleans; and for the rudiments of newspaper work I could scarcely have had a better teacher

Back of Colonel Mann as a leader writer on the States was a remarkable woe Casneau, of Texas, who had a claih she was unknown to fame, Tho and ending the Mexican War than anybody else

Soone with her needded husband, an adventurous Yankee by the name of Storle Pass Stor as driven back to San Antonio, where she met and married Casneau, one of Houston's lieutenants, like herself a New Yorker She was sent by Polk with Pillow and Trist to the City of Mexico and actually wrote the final treaty It was she who dubbed Williaray-eyed man of destiny,” and put the nickname ”Old Fuss and Feathers” on General Scott, whom she heartily disliked

[Illustration: Henry Clay--Painted at Ashland by Dodge for the Hon

Andreing of Tennessee--The Original Hangs in Mr Watterson's Library at ”Mansfield”]

A braver, more intellectual woman never lived She must have been a beauty in her youth; was still very comely at fifty; but a born insurrecto and a terror with her pen God made and equipped her for a filibuster She possessed infinite knowledge of Spanish-American affairs, looked like a Spanish woe fluently Her obsession was the bringing of Central America into the Federal Union But she was not without literary aspirations and had so these was Mrs Southworth, the novelist, who had a lovely hoetown, and, whatever may be said of her works and articles, was a lovely woman She used to take me to visit this lady With Major Heiss she dividedpart Whatever I ely owe to her She took great pains with me andbeen her very dear friend To get rid of her, or rather her pen, Mr Buchanan gave General Casneau, when the Douglas schis out, a Central American mission, and she and he were lost by shi+pwreck on their way to this post, somewhere in Caribbean waters

My ie, ”Jack,” as he was commonly called; a brilliant Irishman, ith Devin Reilley and John Mitchel and Thoher, his intiood Irishifts of one sort and another, who certainly helped o far enough to influenceenthusiasment, ripe for adventures and ready for any enterprise that proe and Mrs Casneau I had the constant spur of commendation and assistance as well as affection I passed all ements at least as well as Mr Meehan, the librarian, and Robert Kearon, the assistant, much to the surprise of Mr Spofford, who in 1861 succeeded Mr Meehan as librarian

Not long after ton Col John W Forney picked me up, and I was employed in addition to my not very arduous duties on the States to write occasional letters froton to the Philadelphia Press Good fortune like ill fortune rarely coly Without anybody's interposition I was appointed to a clerkshi+p, a real ”sinecure,” in the Interior Departue in Congress When the troubles of 1860-61 rose I was literally doing ”a land-office business,” with alore and to spare Soh I had no vices, and worked like a hired ations

Life in Washi+ngton under these conditions was delightful I did not kno my heart rapped up in it until I had to part froh in public esteem My mother was a leader in society All doors were open toback to Tennessee in the h and Cincinnati, there happened a railway break and a halt of several hours at a village on the Ohio

I strolled down to the river and sat h heartbroken--when I began to feel an irresistible fascination about the swift-flowing stream I leaped to ht of suicide that I can recall

IV

Mrs Clay, of Alabaraphic picture of life in the national capital during the administrations of Pierce and Buchanan The South was very much in the saddle Pierce, as I have said, was Southern in temperament, and Buchanan, who to those he did not like or approve had, as Arnold Harris said, ”a winning way ofhimself hateful,” was an aristocrat under Southern and feminine influence

I was fond of Mr Pierce, but I could never endure Mr Buchanan His very voice gave offense to me Directed by a periodical publication to , I did my best on it

Jacob Thompson, the Secretary of the Interior, said to n appointh and my attempt to play the courtier clumsier still Nevertheless, as a friend of ht have been a littleto please and do him honor I came away froh I had not far to go went straight into the Douglas ca nearly sixty years to think it over I have reached the conclusion that Mr Buchanan was the victim of both personal and historic injustice With secession in sight his one aian He was of course on terms of intimacy with all the secession leaders, especially Mr Slidell, of Louisiana, like himself a Northerner by birth, and Mr Mason, a thick-skulled, ruffle-shi+rted Virginian It was not in him or in Mr