traits of myself, I have yielded my own
opinion, which was opposed to it, to that of the publishers and my
friends, who urged it. To me it seemed a vanity for one almost unknown
to assume that a public would care what manner of man he might be, and
that such an assumption should follow an expressed general desire; but
the views of the publishers are imperative, and those of my friends
weightier than my own.

The drawing by Rowse was done about 1856, so that the interval between
its doing and that by my daughter in 1900 included all the active
period of my life, unless I except the Hungarian expedition. When the
Rowse drawing was executed, Lowell said of it, "You have nothing to do
for the rest of your life but to try to look like it." Since that time
every friend I then had, except Rowse and Norton, is gone where I must
soon follow.

DEEPDENE, FRIMLEY GREEN, Surrey, England.

CONTENTS

CHAP.

I. A NEW ENGLAND MOTHER AND HER FAMILY.

II. NATURE WORSHIP--EARLY RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCES.

III. AN AMERICAN EDUCATION.

IV. COLLEGE LIFE.

V. ART STUDY IN AMERICA.

VI. ART STUDY IN ENGLAND.

VII. ON A MISSION FOR KOSSUTH.

VIII. AN ART STUDENT IN PARIS.

IX. SPIRITISM.

X. LIFE IN THE WILDERNESS.

XI. JOURNALISM.

XII. CAMBRIDGE.

XIII. THE ADIRONDACK CLUB--EMERSON AND AGASSIZ.

XIV. LOWELL.

XV. THE ADIRONDACKS AND FLORIDA.

XVI. ENGLAND AGAIN.

XVII. SWITZERLAND.

XVIII. PARIS AGAIN--THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA.

XIX. MY ROMAN CONSULATE.

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A JOURNALIST

CHAPTER I

A NEW ENGLAND MOTHER AND HER FAMILY

A theory is advanced by some students of character that in what
concerns the formation of the individual nature, the shaping and
determination of it in the plastic stage, and especially in respect to
the moral elements on which the stability and purpose of a man's life
depend, a man is indebted to his mother, for good or for ill.
The question is too abstruse for argument, but, so far as my own
observation goes, it tends to a confirmation of the theory. I have
often noticed in children of friends that in childhood the likeness
to the mother was so vivid that one found no trace of the father, but
that in maturity this likeness disappeared to give place to that of
the father. In my own case, taking it for what it is worth, I can only
wish that the mother's part had been more enduring, not that I regret
the effect of my father's influence, but because I thin