g severely reprimanded by the merchant and my father as a
mischief-maker. After a while this merchant was absolutely ruined and
bankrupted by his partner, as he himself declared to me, but, like many
men, still kept his _rancune_ against my poor brother. By this time the
eyesight and health of Henry quite gave out for some time. Every effort
which he made, whether to get employment, to become artist or writer,
failed. He published two volumes of tales, sporting sketches, &c., with
Lippincott, in Philadelphia, which are remarkable for originality. One
of them was subsequently written out by another distinguished author in
another form. I do not say it was after my brother's, for I have known
another case in which two men, having heard a story from Barnum, both
published it, ignorant that the other had done so. But I would declare,
in justice to my brother, that he told this story, which I am sure the
reader knows, quite as well as did the other.

He travelled a great deal, was eighteen months in Rome and its vicinity,
visited Algeria, Egypt, and Cuba and the West, always spending so little
money that my father expressed his amazement at it. I regret to say that
in my youth I never astonished him in this way. But this morbid
conscientiousness or delicacy as to being dependent did him no good, for
he might just as well have been thoroughly comfortable, and my father
would never have missed it. The feeling that he could get no foothold in
life, which had long troubled me, became a haunting spectre which
followed him to the grave. His work "Americans in Rome" is one of the
cleverest, most sparkling, and brilliant works of humour, without a trace
of vulgarity, ever written in America. It had originally some such title
as "Studios and Mountains," but the publisher, thinking that the
miserable clap-trap title of "Americans in Rome" would create an
impression that there was "gossip," and possibly scandal, in it, insisted
on that. It was published in the weary panic of 1862 in the war, and
fell dead from the press. Though he never really laughed, and was
generally absolutely grave, my brother had an incredibly keen sense of
fun, and in conversation could far outmaster or "walk over the head" of
any humorist whom I ever met. He was very far, however, from showing off
or being a professional wit. He was very fond, when talking with men who
considered themselves clever, of making jests or puns in such a manner
and in