I have a copy of it), and
circulated twenty thousand copies of it in Russia. The Czar read it.
Herzen wrote to me: "It will be pigeon-holed for forty years, and then
perhaps acted on. The Pacific will be the Mediterranean of the future."
With such ideas I did not believe in the dismemberment of the United
States. {237}

But Sumter was fired on, and the whole North rose in fury. It was the
silliest act ever committed. The South, with one-third of the votes, had
two-thirds of all the civil, military, and naval appointments, and every
other new State, and withal half of the North, ready to lick its boots,
and still was not satisfied. It could not go without giving us a
thrashing. And that was the drop too much. So we fought. And we
conquered; but _how_? It was all expressed in a few words, which I heard
uttered by a common man at a _Bulletin_ board, on the dreadful day when
we first read the news of the retreat at Bull Run: "It's hard--but we
must buckle up and go at it again." It is very strange that the South
never understood that among the mud-sills and toiling slaves and factory
serfs of the North the spirit which had made men enrich barren New
England and colonise the Western wilderness would make them buckle up and
go at it again boldly to the bitter end.

One evening I met C. A. Dana on Broadway. War had fairly begun. "It
will last," he said, "not less than four years, but it may extend to
seven."

Trouble now came thick and fast. _Vanity Fair_ was brought to an end.
Frank Leslie found that he no longer required my services, and paid my
due, which was far in arrears, in his usual manner, that is, by orders on
advertisers for goods which I did not want, and for which I was charged
double prices. Alexander Cummings had a very ingenious method of
"shaving" when obliged to pay his debts. His friend Simon Cameron had a
bank--the Middleton--which, if not a very wild cat, was far from tame, as
its notes were always five or ten per cent. below par, to our loss--for
we were always paid in Middleton. I have often known the clerk to take a
handful of notes at par and send out to buy Middleton wherewith to pay
me. I am sorry to say that such tricks were universal among the very
great majority of proprietors with whom I had dealings. To "do" the
_employes_ to the utmost was considered a matter of course, especially
when the one employed was a "literary fellow" of any kind or an artist.

I should mention tha