xt7hhm52g42n https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7hhm52g42n/data/mets.xml Watterson, Henry, 1840-1921. 1906  books b92-129-29191540 English Duffield and Co., : New York : Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. United States Politics and government 1865-1933. Southern States. Compromises of life  : and other lectures and addresses, including some observations on certain downward tendencies of modern society / by Henry Watterson. text Compromises of life  : and other lectures and addresses, including some observations on certain downward tendencies of modern society / by Henry Watterson. 1906 2002 true xt7hhm52g42n section xt7hhm52g42n 
 
 






           The

Compromises of Life

   AND OTHER LECTURES AND
          ADDRESSES
   Including Some Observations on
   Certain Downward Tendencies
        of Modern Society



HENRY



ByTES
WATTERSON



      NEW YORK
DUFFIELD  COMPANY
        1906

 





















       Copyright,  903, by

FOX, DUFFIELD N COMPANY


     Pubfished, October, 1903






       Copyright, 9go6, by

   DUFFIELD  COMPANY


   Published, September, 1906



-Tbe Zratu Irr, JRm J'ark

 








             Publishers' Note

  In issuing this volume of "Lectures and Addresses"
the publishers are induced by many considerations to
believe that they meet a requisition of the reading pub-
lic. Few writers in the last three decades have been
more noted, few speakers heard by larger audiences,
than the editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal. As
he successor of Prentice, he carried forward the work
of that eminent and brilliant man to yet further
achievement; succeeding, before he was thirty years of
age, in combining the newspapers of the Kentucky
metropolis and in creating out of the union a journal
of national influence and celebrity.
  Although an untiring journalist, versed in the varied
lore of newspaper organism and management, Mr.
Watterson early became a favorite in political conven-
tions and on the hustings, a popular lecturer, and a
captivating occasional speaker.  He led the Southern
wing of the Liberal movement in 1872-a member
of the famous Quadrilateral, his colleagues being Mr.
Samuel Bowles, Mr. Murat Halstead, and Mr. Hor-
ace White whose labors, though not so designed, cul-
minated in the nomination of Horace Greelev for
President. Henceforward he occupied a conspicuous
position in the councils of the Democratic party,
largely its platform-maker from i876 to I892. He
wxras the close friend of Mr. Tilden, presiding over the
National Convention which nominated the Sage of
Greystone for President, and, later on, his personal
representative upon the floor of the Lower House of
                         V

 







Publishers' Note



Congress. He accepted this seat in Congress at Mr.
Tilden's urgency and against his own inclinations, de-
clining a re-election. With this exception, he has per-
sistently refused office. "I resolved," he said, on one
occasion, when offered a distinguished position, "when
a very young man, that I would not perpetrate the
mistake of Greeley and Raymond."
  A notable figure wherever he has appeared, Mr.
Watterson's relation to the public questions of his time
has been that of a leader, who, having reached his own
conclusions, took no thought of the consequences. He
stood for the pacification of the courtry and the rec-
onciliation of the sections upon the acceptance of the
three final amendments to the Constitution, which he
described as the Treaty of Peace between the North
and the South, when not another voice on his own
side of the line could be heard in his support, and lived
to see his policy universally accepted. He stood for
the public credit and a sound currency, with scarcely
any but a silent following in his own party, during the
Greenback craze and through the succeeding Free
Silver agitation, still living to see his course vindicated
by the results.  Mainly through his efforts the old
black-laws were removed from the statute-books of
Kentucky, and the Kentucky negro was invested, with-
out the violence which marked other of the old Slave
States, with his new rights of citizenship.
  Years before Lamar delivered his eulogy of Sum-
ner, and while Grady was a school-boy, Mr. Watter-
son was passing backward and forward between the
two embittered sections laying the foundation for the
epoch-making utterances of those great orators.
Through all his writing and speaking one dominant
note will be found-the national destiny and the
homogeneity of the people-charity and tolerance-
constituting a key to his life-long labor of love.
                          vi

 







Publishers' Note



  In this volume the publishers reproduce only such
political expressions as seem to be historic and are in
a sense non-partisan, omitting merely campaign and
convention speeches, which, however striking, relate to
contemporary interests.
  The lectures show for themselves. The addresses,
beginning with the memorial to Prentice, delivered
upon the invitation of the Legislature of Kentucky in
i870, to the "Ideal in Public Life," delivered in 1903,
on the occasion of the Emerson centenary, including
the dedication of the Columb'an Exposition, in I892,
the Cross-swords speech of 1877 in the National
Cemetery at Nashville, and the many intermediate
contributions to the patriotic spirit of the time, notably
the Grand Army reception upon its first encampment
on Southern soil in i895, will need no word of in-
troduction to appreciative Americans.
  In the form of an "Appendix" the publishers add
to these addresses a series of articles from the Courier-
Journal which seem to have more than ephemeral in-
terest. These relate to "certain downward tendencies
in what is known as the Smart Set of Fashionable So-
ciety." They created a prodigious sensation when
they appeared, hardly less in London than in New
York and Newport and other seats of the mighty
Four Hundred, being translated into French and Ger-
man, and made the text in Paris and Berlin for a
critical revival among both the lay-preachers of the
press and the leaders of the pulpit and the schools.
The first of these articles was drawn out by a lamen-
table tragedy, and they grew into a series, under the
provocation of the newspaper criticisms which followed.
Although more than a year has passed, they continue
to be made the subjects of comment and controversy
among those who delight to moralize on this particular
theme; yet nothing was further from their author's
                         vii

 







             Publishers' Note
purpose, Mr. Watterson declares, than a social or
ethical crusade, his sole aim being, in the discharge of
his daily newspaper duties, "to take account of passing
events and to shoot folly as it flies."



ViiR


 











                CONTENTS



              I. IN MEMORIAM

GEORGE DENNISON PRENTICE



II. LECTURES



THE COMPROMISES OF LIFE
THE SOUTH IN LIGHT AND SH
MONEY AND MORALS
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
JOHN PAUL JONES



                   . 29
LADE        ..     . 59
                   . 102
                   137
        ...    .   . 181



III. ADDRESSES



THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER
A PLEA FOR PROVINCIALISM
THE NATION'S DEAD
THE NEW SOUTH
LET Us HAVE PEACE
OUR EXPANDING REPUBLIC
A WELCOME TO THE GRAND ARMY.
THE PURITAN AND THE CAVALIER
                       ix



       . 225
       . 260
       . 276
       . 288
       . 294    -
       . 300
  .   313
       . 318



PAGE
  3

 












Contents



THE REUNITED SECTIONS.
FRANCIS SCOTT KEY
GOD'S PROMISE REDEEMED
THE MAN IN GRAY .
HEROES IN HOMESPUN
THE HAMPTON ROADS CONFERENCE
THE IDEAL IN PUBLIC LIFE



             PACS

   .      . 32(I
    . .  33'
          344
           348
            .356
            . 363
    .  .   . 370



IV. SPEECHES



THE ELECTORAL COMMISSION BILL
ENGLAND AND AMERICA .
RECIPROCITY AND EXPANSION
FAREWELL TO THE KENTUCKY TROOPS
BLOOD THICKER THAN WATER
THE CONFEDERATE DEAD
FAREWELL TO AMBASSADOR PORTER
"HOME-COMING "
"Go SOUTH, YOUNG MAN"
APPENDIX



 385
. 406
. 412
. 428
.438
 452
 458
.464
. 475
 487


 


















     I

IN MEMORIAM

 This page in the original text is blank.


 







GEORGE DENNISON PRENTICE 



  George Dennison Prentice was born in a little, old-
fashioned New England cottage on the outskirts of the
village of Preston, in Connecticut, December i8,
1802, which came that year, as I find by reference
to a chronological table, on a Saturday, and was at-
tended by a north-east gale that swept down the coast
and over the country far and near. He died in a Ken-
tucky farm-house, on the banks of the Ohio River, ten
miles below the city of Louisville, just before the
break of Saturday, January 22, i870, while an un-
toward winter flood roared about the lonely spot. Be-
twveen the tempest of his coming and the tempest of his
going flowed a life-current many-toned and strong;
often illuminated by splendid and varied achievements,
and sometimes overcast by shadowy passions, struggles,
and sorrows; but never pausing upon its journey dur-
ing sixty-seven years, nor turning out of its course; a
long life and a busy, joining in uncommon measure
thought to action, and devoting both to the practice of
 A Memorial Address delivered by invitation of the Legislature of
Kentucky, in the Hall of the House of Representatives, at Frankfort,
February 2z, 1870.
                          3

 







      The Compromises of Life
government, the conduct of parties, and the cultivation
of belles-lettres. For this man was a daring partisan
and a delighttul poet; the distinguished advocate of a
powerful political organization; a generous patron of
arts; a constant friend to genius. In violent and law-
less times he used a gun with hardly less effect than a
pen, being regarded at one time as the best pistol-shot in
Kentucky. By turns a statesman, a wit, a poet, a man
of the world, and always a journalist, he gave to the
press of his country its most brilliant illustrations, and
has left to the State and to his progeny by all odds the
most unique, if not the largest, reputation ever achieved
by a newspaper writer. You recognized these things,
and the Legislature of Tennessee recognized them,when
his death was described in the resolutions of both assem-
blies as a "public bereavement." Such an honor was
never paid the memory of any other journalist; and,
although you have signalized yourselves no less than
him, it is my duty, and I assure you it is a very great
satisfaction, to thank you on behalf of the profession
which owes this, among so many obligations, to the
genius of Prentice.
  There are some names that have a mysterious charm
in them-that go directly from the ear to the heart like
echoes from a world of beauty and enchantment-that
whisper to us somehow of song and blossom-whose
very shadows are fragrant and seductive. Rupert and
Tasso and Diderot, Richter and Schiller and Chateau-
                          4

 







     George Dennison Prentice
briand, Sheridan and Byron and Maurice of Saxe, are
of this nature, and represent, in one sort and another,
what might be called the knight-errantry of civilization.
Prentice belongs to the same class. What Rupert was
in the saddle, and Diderot and Richter were in the
fight for free opinions; what the friend of Madame
Recamier was in letters and diplomacy; what Sheridan
was in the Commons; what Byron and Tasso and Mau-
rice of Saxe were in the airy world of adventure, half
actual and half myth-Prentice was to the press. But
mention of his name, like mention of the others, does
not recall the broils and battles in which he engaged;
nor does it suggest those hard and dry realities, which,
in common with his fellow-men, he had to encounter
and endure.  Much the reverse.   It tells us of the
princely and the splendid, the pleasant and the fanciful;
and because of this many persons have erroneously con-
ceived his work to have been as the play of others,
idealizing him as one whose genius was so scintillating
and abundant that its flashes fell from him in spite of
himself, like the stars that were cast from the armor of
the magic buckler in the legend.   Scintillant and
abundant he was, but also a rare scholar and a pro-
digious drudge-overflowing with both the energy and
the poetry of life-admirably poised and balanced by
the two forces which we understand as imagination
and intellect. Burke's description of Charles Townsend
seems a not inept sketch of George D. Prentice. I am
                         5

 







      The Compromises of Life
using Burke's own language: "There certainly never
arose in this country a more pointed or a more finished
wit, and, where his passions were not concerned, a more
refined, exquisite, and penetrating judgment."  Dur-
ing a third of a century he was, as Hazlitt said of Cob-
bett, a sort of fourth estate in the politics of America.
Whatever cause he espoused he defended by a style of
argument that was never trite nor feeble, nor muddy
nor complex, but was luminous and strong, enriched
by all that was necessary to establish it and decorate it,
and suited exactly to the temper of the times and the
comprehension of the people, which he rarely failed to
hit between the acorn and the hull. In considering
his career, however, I shall ask leave to speak of him
rather as I knew him in his own person than as he was
known to the public through the transactions in which
he bore a part. I take it for granted that you are not
at all curious to learn what opinion I or any man
may entertain of this or that political event; and, at
the very best, opinions will differ on these points, leav-
ing us in the end nothing assured or distinct. If we
would understand history, we must study the men who
made it; and, in order to get a clear notion of their
characters and motives, we need take rather the spirit
than the record of their lives. I shall detain you, there-
fore, neither by a moral upon the political experience of
Kentucky, nor a narrative of the ups and downs of a
bygone political generation. I wish to give you instead
                         6

 







     George Dennison Prentice
a homely, and, as far as I may be able, a graphic picture
of George D. Prentice as he was known to his familiars;
for I suppose I need not tell you that he was a man of
many marked traits and peculiarities of manner, of
voice, of appearance, and even of gait, as well as of
genius.
  The newspapers have already acquainted you with
the leading points in his career. That he was born, as
I have stated, in I802; that he was taught by his
mother to read the Bible with ease when a little over
three years of age; that he studied under Horace Mann
and Tristam Burges at Brown University, where he
became a famous Latin and English scholar, reciting
the whole of the twelfth book of the iEneid from
memory for a single lesson, and committing, in like
manner, such books as Kames's "Elements of Criti-
cism" and Dugald Stuart's "Philosophy"; that he be-
gan as an editor in Hartford, coming thence to Ken-
tucky to write a life of Henry Clay, and remain-
ing here to establish the Louisville Journal, in i830;
and that he made it the most celebrated and popu-
lar newspaper in America, and himself the most con-
spicuous journalist of his time, are matters of fact
which need not be elaborated. They belong to biog-
raphy.  Of his marriage, after his wife had been
taken from him, he was himself not averse to speak-
ing, and dwelt upon her memory with a self-ac-
cusing sorrow, which was sincere and touching. I
                         7

 







      The Compromises of Life
had never the happiness of knowing her, but from the
representation of those who had reason to remember
her hospitality or to bless her bounty, there can be no
doubt that she was a most charming woman. He
loved to refer to her as a girl, and it is curious that she
is the only woman I ever heard him speak of with
genuine warmth and tenderness, although there were
many good and gentle women who had been his lfe-
long friends. "I have not had credit," he said, on one
occasion, "for being a devoted husband; but, if I had
my life to go over, that is the only relation I would not
alter; she was the wisest, the purest, the best, and the
most thoroughly enchanting woman I ever. knew."
Most persons will call to mind the verses which he ad-
dressed to her. Verses are not always truth-tellers,
but in this instance they expressed the impulses of a
nature which, readily impressed by all things agreeable,
could not be drawn out to the full by one of less grace
of mind and heart. His affection for his children was
likewise intense, and the loss of his elder son he never
recovered from. I know of nothing more affecting than
his fondness for a little, fair-haired, bright-eyed boy, a
grandson, who bears his name, and who used often to
come and visit him and spend whole afternoons in his
room; for you will understand that he lived in the office
-slept and ate and worked there seldom quitting it.
Strangers supposed that he was decrepit, and there
existed an impression that he had resigned his old place
                          8

 







     George Dennison Prentice
to a younger and more active spirit. He resigned noth-
ing. I doubt whether he ever did more work, or bet-
ter work, during any single year of his life than dur-
ing this last year. He said, on January i, I869,
"I will make the last years of my life the best years of
my life, and I shall work like a tiger ;" and he did work
like a machine which seemed to have no stop in it. In
a note to Mr. Haldeman, two or three months ago, he
wrote: "I work twenty-four hours a day, and the rea-
son I do not work any more is because the days are no
longer." I have had some personal knowledge of the
working capacity of the two newspaper writers in this
country who have been reputed the readiest and most
profuse; but I never knew anyone who could write as
much as Prentice in a given time, or sustain the quan-
tity and quality of his writing for so long a time. Mr.
Raymond used to run abroad when fagged out, and
Mr. Forney takes frequent recreative intervals. Pren-
tice was unresting. He actually averaged from fifteen
to eighteen hours a day, and kept this up month after
month, turning out column upon column of all sorts of
matter, "from grave to gay, from lively to severe."
The only testiness he ever exhibited was when his work
was interrupted; and yet, withal, he had leisure for
abundant intercourse with his yoke-mates, and would
every now and then appear like a sudden apparition, to
one or another, with something curious or comical to
say. But he never laughed at his own conceits. He
                        9

 







     The Compromises of Life
would sit at a table dictating the drollest things in a
slow, precise, subdued tone of voice, unmoved and grave
of aspect, while subdued laughter went round the room.
I heard him once say to an amanuensis whom he had
newly engaged, "Now, all I ask of you is write down
what I tell you, but above all don't you watch my
mouth like a cat watching a rat-hole." He was a care-
ful as well as a voluminous writer; set great store by
accuracy of expression and exactness in marks of punc-
tuation, and was an erudite grammarian, versed in all
the schools, though wedded to his own. He invariably
revised the manuscript of his amanuensis, and read his
own proof-sheets. And yet, except to have his matter
appear correctly, he was indifferent to it. He used to
say, "Use no ceremony with my copy. A man who
writes as much as I do cannot expect to hit the nail
alwavs on the head."  But he did hit it nearer and
oftener than anybody else. He was much attached to
Mr. Shipman, and had perfect confidence in the taste
and judgment of that able writer and scholar. Some-
times he would scribble a paragraph, not over nice, but
always funny, intended to be struck out by Shipman.
Not infrequently the wit got the better of Shipman's
scruples, and the paragraph went in, which seemed to
amuse Prentice vastly. He was by no means sensitive
to what we call the "proprieties," and regarded many
of the conventional notions of society as affected and
absurd, and entitled to scant respect. He once told me
                         10

 







     George Dennison Prentice
a story of his having horrified the steady old Whigs of
Louisville soon after he began to edit the Journal, and
in the midst of the Clay and Jackson war, by riding to
the race-course in an open carriage with Mrs. General
Eaton, who happened to be passing through the city
just after the notable scandal at Washington. At that
time he was full and erect, rosy-cheeked and brown-
haired, with an eye which at sixty-seven was still mar-
vellous for its beauty and brightness, beaming with a
clear, warm, and steady light.
  Prentice was twenty-seven years old when he came to
Kentucky.   He was obscure and poor.  The people
were crude and rough.   The times were boisterous.
Parties were dividing upon measures of government
which could not, in their nature, fail to arouse and em-
bitter popular feeling, and to the violence of conflicting
interests was added the enthusiasm which the rival
claims of two great party chieftains everywhere excited.
In those days there was no such thing as journalism as
we now understand it and pursue it. The newspaper
was but a poor affair, owned by a clique or a politician.
The editor of a newspaper was nothing if not personal.
Moreover, the editors who had appeared above the
surface had been men of second-rate abilities, and had
served rather as squires to their liege lords, the politi-
cians. This latter at least Prentice reformed at once
and altogether. He established the Louisville Journal;
he threw himself into the spirit of the times as the pro-
                         I I

 







      The Compromises of Life
fessed friend of Mr. Clay and the champion of his prin-
ciples; but he invented a warfare hitherto unknown,
and illustrated it by a personal identity which very soon
elevated him into the rank of a party leader as well as a
partisan editor. I fancy that the story of giants, which
has come down to us through the nursery, illustrates the
suggestion that in the early days of the world there was
room for the play of a gigantic individuality, which
population and civilization exclude from modern life.
Originally men went out singly in quest of adventure,
and a hero was, in faith, a giant; then they moved in
couples, next in clusters. We now travel in circles.
Combinations are essential. One mar, is nothing by
himself. Our very political system is an organism of
"rings"; and the journal of to-day no longer represents
the personal caprices and peculiarities of its editor, but
stands as the type of a class of public opinion quite apart
from the reach of individual influence. Personal jour-
nalism is a lost art. Journalism is now a distinct pro-
fession to which the individual editor holds the relation
which the individual lawyer holds to the courts; and as
oratory is becoming less and less essential to the practice
of lawv, so mere literary skill is becoming less and less
essential to the practice of journalism. Mr. Prentice,
the most distinguished example of the personal journal-
ism of the past, leaves but one other behind him, and
when Greeley goes there will be no one left, and we
shall hardly see another. As Shakespeare said of the
                          12

 







     George Dennison Prentice
players, "they die and leave no copy." Prentice, like
Greeley, knew nothing and cared less for the machinery
of the modern newspaper; its multitude of writers, re-
porters, and correspondents to be handled under fixed
laws known to a common usage; its tangled web of
telegraphy; its special departments and systematic
mechanism. For details of this sort he had no concern.
TI hey belonged to a journalism very different from that
in which he had made his fame. But he adapted himself
to their needful exactions with cheerfulness; and he
wrote as readily and vigorously in an impersonal char-
acter as he had done, when he was not only writing
solely in his own person, but when there was no know-
ing at what moment he might not be called upon to
back his bon mot by a bullet.
  From I830 to i86I the influence of Prentice was
greater than the influence of any political writer of the
time; and it was an influence directly positive and per-
sonal. It owed its origin to the union in his person of
gifts which no one had combined before him. He had,
to build upon, an intellect naturally strong and practi-
cal, and this was trained by rigid scholarship. He pos-
sessed a keen wit and a poetic temperament. He was
brave and aggressive; and, though by no means quarrel-
some, he was as ready to fight as to write, and his lot
was cast in a region where he had to do a good deal of
both. Thus, the business of an editor requiring him
to do the writing and fighting for his party, he did not
                         13

 







     The Compromises of Life
lack opportunities for manly display; and be sure he
made every occasion tell for its full value. It is now
generally admitted that he never came off worsted in
any encounter, physical or intellectual. In his combats
he displayed parts which were both signal and showy;
overwhelming invective, varied by a careless, off-hand
satire, which hit home; or strong and logical, or plausi-
ble and pleasing argument, that brought out the salient
points of his subject and obscured the weak ones; or nip-
ping, paragraphic frost that sparkled and blighted; or
quiet daring that was over-reckless of consequences.
Who can wonder that he became the idol of his party
Who can wonder that he was the darling of the mob
But with these great popular gifts, he was a gentleman
of graceful and easy manners, genial among men, gal-
lant among women, a sweet poet, a cultivated, chival-
rous man of the world. I am not making a fancy sketch,
although it looks like one; because where will you go to
find the like It is easy enough to describe second or
third-rate abilities. They belong to a class, and may
be arrayed under a standard. But it is impossible to
compare Prentice with any man. He was as great a
partisan as Cobbett; but Cobbett was only a partisan.
He was as able and as consistent a political leader as
Greeley; but Greeley never had Prentice's wit or ac-
complishments. I found in London that his fame is
exceeded by that of no American newspaper writer;
                        14

 







     George Dennison Prentice
but the journalists of Paris, where there is still nothing
but personal journalism, considered him a few years
ago as the solitary journalist of genius among us. His
sarcasms have often gone into Charivari, and several of
his poems have been translated.  The French adore
l'esprit. They admire that which is abusive and brave.
How could they fail to put a great estimate upon Pren-
tice, who might have ranked with Sainte-Beuve as a
critic, and certainly surpassed Rochefort as a master of
invective.
  For five and thirty years his life marked an uninter-
rupted success. He cared not at all for money, but
what he needed he had, and there was no end to the
evidence of his fame and power which constantly
reached him.  His imagination, nevertheless, took a
melancholy turn, and threw out, in the midst of wild
and witty partisan bursts, flashes of a somewhat morbid
kind. It is not strange that, as he aged, he withdrew
himself from very close and active human intercourse.
His ambition, fitful at most, deserted him. His domes-
ticity, to which he was attached, was gone.  Society
bored him. All his faculties remained clear and full;
but the motive for effort was wanting, and he worked
because it was his nature to work. He would have
died else. He once quoted a verse of a fine poem of
Mangan's, which reflected his mood and Nsued to rep-
resent his condition:
                         15

 







     The Compromises of Life
  "Homeless, wifeless, flagonless, alone;
     Not quite bookless though, unless I choose,
   With nothing left to do except to groan,
     Not a soul to woo except the muse.
   Oh, this is hard for me to bear,
     Me, that whilom lived so much en haut,
   Me, that broke all hearts, like chinaware,
     Twenty golden years ago."


  He let his hair and beard grow long, and was careless
in his dress. People thought him thoroughly broken
down as they saw him on the street heedless, as he
always had been, of passers-by, or in his room wearing
his brown and tattered robe. They should have seen
him enlivened by a glow of work or feeling, and in his
shirt-sleeves, as lithe of limb and jaunty of carriage as
a boy; no man of his age was ever more active. He
once assured me that he had never had a headache in
his life. It was not the infirmity of age which carried
him off, but a disorder which a younger man might have
resisted as feebly as he did.
  Prentice appeared as an author twice only.  His
biography of Henry Clay is a clever piece of political
special pleading.  The narrative, however, is meagre
and rather turgid. It was not the story, but the argu-
ment, which he had at heart; for the book was written
to serve a campaign purpose.  His little volume of
witticisms from the Louisville Journal is more repre-
sentative. In his preface he expressed a doubt whether
                        i6

 







      George Dennison Prentice
such a republication would bear the test of time. "I
know," he said, "that such things do not keep well."
But they have kept pretty well so far. I can recall no
book of wit and humor, not even the collections of
Hook and Jerrold, in which the salt is fresher or more
savory; and the student of that brevity which is the soul
of wit can hardly find a better model of all that is neat,
racy, and concise. Of these paragraphs most are good,
but the best are those which were cracked over the head
of poor Shadrach Penn. Prentice in his last days spoke
of Penn as an able and sincere man, but wanting sadly
in nerve and humor. "In six months," said Prentice,
"I pelted him out of his senses and into a libel suit." It
must have been terrible, indeed, upon Penn, and did
finally drive him away from Louisville to St. Louis,
where he died.  Penn could say nothing-could not
write a sentence-that Prentice did not seize upon it
and turn it to his own account.  Penn unguardedly
speaks of "lying these cold mornings curled up in bed."
Prentice retorts that "this proves what we've always
said, that 'you lie like a dog.'"  Penn comes back
angrily with something about Prentice's setting up a
"lie factory," to which Prentice rejoins, "if we ever do
set up a lie factory, we will certainly swing you out for
a sign." Penn says he has "found a rat-hole." Pren-
tice says, "that will save you your next year's rent."
Penn says he has met one of Prentice's statements
squarely. "Yes," said Prentice, "by lying roundly."
                         '7

 







      The Compromises of Life
Then. Penn, wearied out, says he will have no
more to do with Prentice.  "WTell," says Prentice,
tauntingly, "if he is resolved to play dummy we will
torture him no longer. We never could be cruel to
dumb animals." Finally, when Penn was driven from
the field, Prentice wrote: "The Advertiser of yesterday
contained a long valedictory from Shadrach Penn, its
late Editor.  Shadrach, after a residence of twenty-
three years in this city, goes to spend the rest of his life
and lay his bones in St. Louis. Well, he has our best
wishes for his prosperity. All the ill-will we ever had
for him passed out long ago through our thumb and
forefinger. His lot, hitherto, has been a most ungentle
one, but we trust his life will prove akin to the plant
that begins to blossom at the advanced age of half a
century. May all be well with him here and hereafter!
We should, indeed, be sorry if a poor fellow whom we
have been torturing eleven years in this world should
be passed over to the devil in the next." Rough joking
this, but characteristic of the times. The Journal was
crowded with it, along with a deal that was neither
rough nor humorous. That, for example, was a neat
reply to Dickens's complaint that at Louisville he was
not able to find water enough to clean himself. "And
the great Ohio River," said Prentice, "right at hand."
And to the young lady who threatened to stamp on his
paper: "She had better not; it has little eyes in it."
                         i8

 







     George Dennison Prentice
The sewing-girls of New York devoted one day to sew-
ing for the benefit of the Polish exiles. Prentice said
this was a beautiful instance "of the needle turning to
t