My Life

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Flynt Josiah. My Life

DEDICATION

INTRODUCTION

I

II

FOREWORD

CHAPTER I. EARLIEST REMINISCENCES

CHAPTER II. YOUTHFUL DAYS AT EVANSTON

CHAPTER III. REST COTTAGE

CHAPTER IV. EARLY COLLEGE DAYS

CHAPTER V. MY FIRST IMPRISONMENT

CHAPTER VI. IN A REFORM SCHOOL

CHAPTER VII. EARLY TRAMPING EXPERIENCES

CHAPTER VIII. MY VOYAGE TO EUROPE

CHAPTER IX. UNTER DEN LINDEN

CHAPTER X. BERLIN UNIVERSITY

CHAPTER XI. WANDERINGS IN GERMANY

CHAPTER XII. A VISIT TO LONDON

CHAPTER XIII. THE BLOOMSBURY GUARDS

CHAPTER XIV. SOME LONDON ACQUAINTANCES

CHAPTER XV. TWO TRAMPING EXPERIENCES

CHAPTER XVI. SWITZERLAND AND ITALY

CHAPTER XVII. A VISIT TO TOLSTOY

CHAPTER XVIII. SOME ANECDOTES OF TOLSTOY

CHAPTER XIX. I MEET GENERAL KUROPATKIN

CHAPTER XX. IN ST. PETERSBURG

CHAPTER XXI. I RETURN TO AMERICA

CHAPTER XXII. NEW YORK AGAIN

CHAPTER XXIII. RAILROAD EXPERIENCES

CHAPTER XXIV. TRYING TO LIVE BY MY PEN

CHAPTER XXV. WITH THE POWERS THAT PREY

CHAPTER XXVI. HONOR AMONG THIEVES SO CALLED

JOSIAH FLYNT – AN APPRECIATION. By Alfred Hodder

JOSIAH FLYNT – AN IMPRESSION. By Emily M. Burbank

A FINAL WORD2. By Bannister Merwin

Отрывок из книги

It seems a long time since the day when Josiah Flynt came to me in the Temple, with a letter of introduction from his sister, whom I had met at the house of friends in London. The contrast was startling. I saw a little, thin, white, shriveled creature, with determined eyes and tight lips, taciturn and self-composed, quietly restless; he was eying me critically, as I thought, out of a face prepared for disguises, yet with a strangely personal life looking out, ambiguously enough, from underneath. He spoke a hybrid speech; he was not interested apparently in anything that interested me. I had never met any one of the sort before, but I found myself almost instantly accepting him as one of the people who were to mean something to me. There are those people in life, and the others; the others do not matter.

The people who knew me wondered, I think, at my liking Flynt; his friends, I doubt not, wondered that he could get on with me. With all our superficial unlikeness, something within us insisted on our being comrades. We found out the points at which undercurrents in us flowed together. Where I had dipped, he had plunged, and that aim, which I was expressing about then, to "roam in the sun and air with vagabonds, to haunt the strange corners of cities, to know all the useless, and improper, and amusing people who are alone very much worth knowing," had been achieved by him. I was ready for just such a companion, hesitating on the edge of a road which he had traveled.

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To live in a celebrity's home of this character was a privilege which, I fear, we children did not appreciate. It was a Mecca for reformers of all shades and grades from all over the world, and we children grew up in an atmosphere of strong personalities. The names of many of the men and women who visited our house have escaped me, but I recall very distinctly John B. Gough. On this occasion he was entertained by my mother, my aunt being absent from home. He was an old man with white hair and beard, and was in charge of a niece, if I remember correctly, who tended him like a baby. A local organization had hired him to speak for them in the "Old First." His speech was as successful as usual, and the church was crowded, but the old gentleman was tired out when he got back to the house, and was rather querulous. My mother had prepared a light supper for him of milk, bread and butter and the like, but it was not to his taste. "I need tea," he declared in no uncertain tones, and tea had to be made, the delay increasing the old agitator's impatience. On getting it, he found it too weak, or too strong, or too hot, and the upshot of the affair was that he left us rather out of sorts, but not before receiving $200, his fee for the lectures. He tucked the roll carelessly into a small overcoat pocket, and then took his leave. Old age had begun to tell on him very plainly, and not many years after he died.

Francis Murphy, John P. St. John, nearly all the later candidates for the Presidency on the Prohibition ticket, and of course the prominent women agitators of the time, found their way to "Rest Cottage," sooner or later. The place itself, although comfortable and cozy, was very modest in appearance, but it probably sheltered at one time or another during the last fifteen years of my aunt's life, more well-known persons than any other private home of the Middle West. My aunt also kept in touch with a great many people through her correspondence. She believed in answering every letter received even if the reply were shipped back with deficient postage, and she knew by letter or personal acquaintance all the great men and women of her day, that I have ever heard of. If an author's book pleased her, she wrote him to that effect, and often vice versa. On the appearance of Edward Bellamy's "Looking Backward" she was distressed that he had not eliminated alcoholic beverages from the programme of his Utopia, and wrote him to this effect. He replied, very simply, that the thought had not occurred to him, which must be his excuse, if excuse were necessary, for overlooking the matter.

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