y very fine. But I know a finer,
which goes more nearly to the heart, and with which I can move you more
deeply."

"And what is that?" cried the great artist astonished.

"It is," I replied, in her native tongue, "_Bohemian_. That is the
language for me."

Madame Janauschek was so affected that she burst out crying, though she
was a woman of tremendous nerve. We became great friends, and often met
again in after years in England.

I have seen Ristori play for thirty nights in succession, {346} and
Rachel and Sarah Bernhardt; but as regards true genius, Janauschek in her
earlier days was incomparably their superior; for these all played from
nerves and instinct, but Janauschek from her brain and intellect. I
often wondered that she did not write plays. It is said of Rachel that
there was once a five-act play in which she died at the end of the fourth
act. After it had had a long run she casually asked some one _how it
ended_. She had never read the fifth act. Such a story could never have
been told of Janauschek.

In the summer there were one or two railroad excursions to visit new
branch roads in Pennsylvania. While on one of these I visited the
celebrated Mauch Chunk coal mines, and rode on the switchback railway,
where I had a fearfully narrow escape from death. This switchback is a
_montagne Russe_ coming up and down a hill, and six miles in length. Yet,
though the rate of speed is appalling, the engineer can stop the car in a
few seconds' time with the powerful brake. We were going down headlong,
when all at once a cow stepped out of the bushes on the road before us,
and if we had struck her we must have gone headlong over the cliff and
been killed. But by a miracle the engineer stopped the car just as we
got to the cow. We were saved by a second. Something very like it had
occurred to my wife and to me in 1859. We were going to Reading by rail,
when the train ran off the track and went straight for an embankment
where there was a fall of 150 feet. It was stopped just as the
locomotive protruded or looked over the precipice. Had there been the
_least trifle_ more of steam on at that instant we must all have
perished.

In November of this my second year on the _Press_ my father died. One
thing occurred on this sad bereavement which alleviated it a little. I
had always felt all my life that he had never been satisfied with my want
of a fixed career or position. He did not, I think, _very_ m