Twenty Years in Europe

Оглавление

Samuel H. M. Byers. Twenty Years in Europe

CHAPTER I. 1869

CHAPTER II. 1869

CHAPTER III. 1870

CHAPTER IV. 1871

CHAPTER V. 1872

CHAPTER VI. 1872

CHAPTER VII. 1872

CHAPTER VIII. 1872

CHAPTER IX. 1873

CHAPTER X. 1873

CHAPTER XI. 1874

CHAPTER XII. 1875

CHAPTER XIII. 1876

CHAPTER XIV. 1877

CHAPTER XV. 1877

CHAPTER XVI. 1877

CHAPTER XVII. 1878

CHAPTER XVIII. 1878

CHAPTER XIX. 1879

CHAPTER XX. 1879

CHAPTER XXI. 1879

CHAPTER XXII. 1880–1881

CHAPTER XXIII. 1881

CHAPTER XXIV. 1882–1883

CHAPTER XXV. 1884

CHAPTER XXVI. 1884

CHAPTER XXVII. 1885

CHAPTER XXVIII. 1886

CHAPTER XXIX. 1887–90

CHAPTER XXX. 1891

Отрывок из книги

In the State Department at Washington, there is on file a plain little visiting card, signed by President U. S. Grant. That card was the Secretary’s authority for commissioning me Consul to Zurich. “I would much like to have that little card,” I said to an Assistant Secretary, long years afterward. “Most anybody would,” replied the official, smiling. “You may copy it, but it can not be taken from the files.”

That card, in its time, had been of consequence to me. It took me from a quiet little Western town to a beautiful Swiss city, where I was to spend many years of my life, and where I was to meet people, look on scenes and experience incidents worth telling about. And now it has led to my writing down the recollections of them in a book.

.....

August 10, 1870.-On this day I made the acquaintance of a remarkable man. It was Lorenzo Brentano of Chicago. He called at the consulate, and, after first greetings, I found out who he was. It was that Brentano who had been condemned to death after the Revolution of 1848 in South Germany. He had been more than a leader; he had been elected provisional president of the so-called German Republic. When the cause failed on the battlefield, he fled to America, and there, for many years, struggled with voice and pen for the freedom of the slaves, just as he had struggled in Germany for the freedom of his countrymen. The seed he helped to sow in Germany, at last bore fruit there, and he also lived to see American slavery perish. He was a hero in two continents. He had made a fortune in Chicago and was now educating his children in Zurich. His son is now an honored judge of the Superior Court of Chicago, a city Brentano’s life honored. He was also at this time writing virile letters for European journals, moulding public opinion in our favor as to the Alabama claims. We needed his patriotism. Americans will never know the great help Brentano was to us, at a time when nine-tenths of the foreign press was bitterly against us. I once heard a judge on the bench ask Brentano officially if he wrote the letters regarding America. “Yes,” said Brentano, who was trying a case of his own, and was a witness, “I wrote them.” “Then that should be reckoned against you,” said the judge, so bitter and unjust was the feeling abroad concerning our country, especially among Englishmen traveling or living on the Continent at this time. A kind word for America or Americans was rare.

Through Brentano’s friendship, I secured many notable acquaintances. The Revolution of 1848 in Germany was led by the brightest spirits of the country. Its failure led to death or flight. Many had crossed into the Republic of Switzerland and formed here in Zurich a circle of intellectual exiles. They were authors, musicians, statesmen, distinguished university professors. Brentano naturally stood high among them all.

.....