mus_!

There was a morning paper in Philadelphia which grieved me sore by
pilfering my news items as I wrote them. So I one day gave a marvellous
account of the great Volatile Chelidonian or Flying Turtle of Surinam, of
which a specimen had just arrived in New York. It had a shell as of
diamonds blent with emeralds and rubies, and bat-like wings of iridescent
hue surpassing the opal, and a tail like a serpent. Our contemporary,
nothing doubting, at once published this as original matter in a letter
from New York, and had to bear the responsibility. But I did not invest
my inventiveness wisely; I should have shared the idea with Barnum.

There was in Philadelphia at this time a German bookseller named
Christern. It was the thought of honourable and devoted men which
recalled him to my mind. I had made his acquaintance long before in
Munich, where he had been employed in the principal bookseller's shop of
the city. His "store" in Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, became a kind of
club, where I brought such of my friends as were interested in German
literature. We met there and talked German, and examined and discussed
all the latest European works. He had a burly, honest, rather droll
assistant named Ruhl, who had been a student in Munich, then a
Revolutionist and exile, and finally a refugee to America. To this shop,
too, came Andrekovitch, whom I had last known in Paris as a speculator on
the Bourse, wearing a cloak lined with sables. In America he became a
chemical manufacturer. When at last an amnesty was proclaimed, his
brother asked him to return to Poland, promising a support, which he
declined. He too was an honourable, independent man. About this time
the great--I forget his name; or was it Schoffel?--who had been President
of the Frankfort Revolutionary Parliament, opened a lager-beer
establishment in Race Street. I went there several times with Ruhl.

George Boker and Frank Wells, who subsequently succeeded me on the
_Bulletin_, would drop in every day after the first edition had gone to
press, and then there would be a lively time. Frank Wells was, _par
eminence_, the greatest punster Philadelphia ever produced. He was in
this respect appalling. We had a sub-editor or writer named Ernest
Wallace, who was also a clever humorist. One day John Godfrey Saxe came
in. He was accustomed among country auditors and in common sanctums to
carry everything before him with his jokes. In half-an-hour we