lating for him
German letters, &c., and he in return revised my pamphlet on
Centralization _versus_ State Rights in 1863. H. C. Baird, a very able
writer of his school, was his nephew. The latter had two or three
sisters, whom I recall as charming girls while I was a law-student. There
were many beauties in Philadelphia in those days, and prominent at the
time, though as yet a schoolgirl, was the since far-famed Emily
Schaumberg, albeit I preferred Miss Belle Fisher, a descendant maternally
of the famous Callender beauties, and by her father's side allied to Miss
Vining, the American Queen of Beauty during the Revolution at
Washington's republican court. There was also a Miss Lewis, whose great
future beauty I predicted while as yet a child, to the astonishment of a
few, "which prophecy was marvellously fulfilled." Also a Miss Wharton,
since deceased, on whom George Boker after her death wrote an exquisite
poem. The two were, each of their kind, of a beauty which I have rarely,
if ever, seen equalled, and certainly never surpassed, in Italy. How I
could extend the list of those too good and fair to live, who have passed
away from my knowledge!--Miss Nannie Grigg--Miss Julia Biddle!--_Mais ou
sont les neiges d'antan_?

Thus far my American experiences had not paid well. I reflected that if
I had remained in Paris I should have done far better. When I left, I
knew that the success of Louis Napoleon was inevitable. Three newspapers
devoted to him had appeared on the Boulevards in one day. There was
money at work, and workmen such as lived in the Hotel de Luxembourg,
gentlemen who could not only plan barricades but fight at them, were in
great demand, as _honest_ men always are in revolutions. Louis Napoleon
was very anxious indeed to attach to him the men of February, and many
who had not done one-tenth or one-twentieth of what I had, had the door
of fortune flung wide open to them. My police-_dossier_ would have been
literally a diploma of honour under the new Empire, for, after all, the
men of February, Forty-eight, were the ones who led off, and who all bore
the highest reputation for honour. All that I should have required would
have been some ambitious man of means to aid--and such men abound in
Paris--to have risen fast and high. As it turned out, it was just as
well in the end that I neither went in as a political adventurer under
Louis Napoleon, nor wrote the Life of Barnum. But no one knew in those