Part 14 (1/2)
Joseph Pulitzer and I caether familiarly at the Liberal Republican Convention, which met at Cincinnati in 1872--the convocation of cranks, as it was called--and noate froan his English newspaper experience after a kind of apprenticeshi+p on a Ger character of those days It was froin and beginnings, for he never spoketo this story he was the offspring of a runaway e between a subaltern officer in the Austrian service and a Hungarian lady of noble birth In so in Boston, a wizened youth not speaking a word of English, he was spirited on board a warshi+p Watching his chance of escape he leaped overboard in the darkness of night, though it was the dead of winter, and swam ashore He was found unconscious on the beach by some charitable persons, who cared for him Thence he tramped it to St Louis, where he heard there was a Gere
It was here that the journalistic instinct dawned upon hian to carry river news items to the Westliche Post, which presently took hiular reporters
The rest was easy He learned to speak and write English, was transferred to the paper of which Hutchins was the head, and before he was five-and-twenty becaure
When he turned up in New York with an offer to purchase the World wethe interval between 1872 and 1883 we had had a runabout in Europe and I was able to render hi with Gould When this was completed he said to me: ”You are at entire leisure; you are worse than that, you are wasting your tiood for yourself, or anybody else I anization of the business end of it Here is a blank check Fill it for whatever ao upstairs and organize nantly I replied: ”Go to the devil--you have not h in the universe--to buy an hour ofwith his fareat stable of carriages and horses, living like a country gentle to the World office about ti away in the early afternoon I passed a week-end with him To me it seemed the precursor of ruin His second payment was yet to beon a cot in one of the editorial roo fifteen hours out of the twenty-four To hnuts that he would break down and go to smash But he did not--another case of destiny
I was abiding withpalace, the Liberty, he caht a shore palace at Cap Martin That season, and the next two or three seasons, we ether fro the islands, especially Corsica and Elba, shrines of Napoleon whoreatly admired
He was a model host He had surrounded hireeable retainers, and lived like a prince aboard His blindness had already overtaken him Other physical ailments assailed him But no word of complaint escaped his lips and he rarely failed to sit at the head of his table It was both splendid and pitiful
Absolute authority arded his newspaper ownershi+p as an autocracy There was nothing gentle in his doenerous either He seriously lacked the sense of hu his familiars could never take a joke His love of h not wastefully or joyously, for the possession of it rather flattered his vanity than rees he had, a veritable genius for journalisood account and liked to have the the early days of his success he was disposed to overindulgence, not to say conviviality He was fond of Rhine wines and an excellent judge of the a varied assortment always at hand
Once, upon the Liberty, he observed that I preferred a certain vintage
”You like this wine?” he said inquiringly I assented, and he said, ”I have a lot of it at hoet back I will send you sootten when, h to last me a life-ti I could recall ed and varied intiion of Paris e ca a piece called ”Les Brigands” It was melodraathered and glared about In those days, the ”indemnity”
paid and the ”ured hatred of the Gerands”Teuton; each hero a dare-devil Gaul; and, when Joan the Maid, heroine, sent Goetz von Berlichingen, the Vandal Chieftain, sprawling in the saw-dust, there was no end to the enthusiasands',” said Pulitzer as we ca to individual character, to race and pursuit Now, if I riting that play, I should represent the villain as a tyrannous City Editor, ardly proprietor”
”And the heroine?” I said
”She should be a beautiful and rich young lady,” he replied, ”who buys the newspaper and enius from poverty and persecution”
He was not then the owner of the World He had not created the Post-Dispatch, or even ster of five or six and twenty, revisiting the scenes of his boyhood on the beautiful blue Danube, and taking in Paris for a lark
III
I first met General Grant in my own house I had often been invited to his house As far back as 1870 John Russell Young, a friend from boyhood, came with an invitation to pass the week-end as the President's guest at Long Branch Many of s they played an infinitesiame of draw poker
”John,” my ansas, ”I don't dare to do so I know that I shall fall in love with General Grant We are living in rough tih presidential cao down to the seashore and go in swi and play penny-ante with General Grant I shall not be able to do one out of office and made the famous journey round the world, and had come to visit relatives in Kentucky, that he accepted a dinner invitation fromthese were Dr Richardson, his early schoolmaster when the Grant family lived at Maysville, and Walter Haldeman, my business partner, a Maysville boy, who had been his schoolmate at the Richardson Academy, and General Cerro Gordo Williaress, and erst his comrade and chum when both were lieutenants in the Mexican War The bars were down, the ere shut and there was no end of hearty hilarity Dr Richardson had been mentioned by Mr Haldeeneral proood old doctor said, ”No, Ulysses, I never did--nor Walter, either--for you tere the best boys in school”
I said ”General Grant, why not give up this beastly politics, buy a blue-grass far in Kentucky?” And, quick as a flash--for both he and the co question”--he replied, ”Before I can buy a farm in Kentucky I shall have to sell a far further to be said
There was so between him and General Williams over their youthful adventures Finally General Willia of talkers, returned one of General Grant's sallies with, ”Anyhow, I know of a man whose life you took unknown to yourself” Then he told of a race he and Grant had outside of Galapa in 1846 ”Don't you re ahead of me you came upon a Mexican loaded with a lot of milk cans piled above his head and that you knocked him over as you swept by him?”
”Yes,” said Grant, ”I believed if I stopped or questioned or even deflected it would lose ht of it since But now that you mention it I recall it distinctly”