About this time—I think it was about this time (my
memory is not failing me, but I am much occupied of late,
and besides, the chronological order of my benefactions
or non-benefactions is not so important after all)—I was
approached by a large delegation composed of some of

[figure description] Page 061.[end figure description]

the leading men of Richmond and, indeed, of the whole
State. I could see by the way they took off their hats
that they wanted money.

“Gentlemen,” said I, testily, without waiting for the
spokesman to open his mouth, “Gentlemen, you cannot
be ignorant of the fact that Mr. Binford is the proper person
to apply to. My time is val—”

“Strike, but hear us,” pompously interrupted Mr. Felix
Pigskin, principal citizen of the period.

“Say on,” was my submissive answer, as I settled myself
back in my arm-chair and adjusted my trumpet.

“You desire to do good to Virginia?” inquired Mr. P.
I nodded assent.

“And have been uniformly thankful for suggestions
looking to that end. Your patience and humility—”

“Come to the point without compliment, Mr. P.”

“Well, then, sir, being for the time being the honored
voice of Virginia, I am requested, and in fact instructed,
to say, that in no manner whatever can you so well
serve the State whose soil your birth has hon—”

“Oh, pish!”

“—ored, as by aiding and abetting with your ample
means the cause of immigration.”

“And that is the object of your visit?”

“It is.”

“Then, gentlemen, let me say, in all kindness and
frankness, that your mission is a vain one. If Mr. Binford
has a few thousands to spare, you are most heartily
welcome to them, but the matter rests absolutely with him,
not with me. Anxious as I have proved myself to be to
serve the State—indeed, I have little else to live for—I
am still constrained to think that money will be wasted in
the attempt to transplant full-grown trees or men to wornout
soil.”

“But the deep plowing of stalwart Yankee-British arms
will bring up new soil.”

“True, quite true; but perfect candor compels me to
say that the real Virginian, being a product of slave society,
and of slave society only, cannot be reproduced under any
other conditions whatsoever, and it is not my desire, however
much it may be to the interest of land-owners, to see

[figure description] Page 062.[end figure description]

the few remaining Virginians supplanted any quicker than
they would be and ought to be by the natural course of
events. That another and a very different race (perhaps
very much better race, but not better to me) will in time
reclaim our lapsed lands, and that the day will come when
the shores of our American Mediterranean, the Chesapeake
Bay, will teem with cities and population I make no doubt,
but the first indispensable step to that result is the removal
from the settler of an incubus that weighs down to the
earth every inhabitant, native or foreign-born, of Virginia.
I mean the State debt. Get that paid by the central government,
accept the fact of empire with all its unpleasant
consequences to us of this generation, and then, but not
till then, will it be worth your while to incite immigration
by solicitation—not the best way any way. If you have
so very good a thing in this climate, soil, latitude, proximity
to the sea, etc., the world, I should think, would
not be slow to find it out. In this day of telegraphs, light
cannot be hid under a bushel. But until the debt is assumed
by the true debtor, and the only one able to pay
it, money spent for immigration purposes will be money
thrown away. Good-morning, gentlemen.”

They withdrew, not in the best of humors.

Binford, if I can be certain of the fact, gave them a
trifle of ten or twenty thousand dollars, but no one has
yet told me that much good came of it.

“Conceited old ass, he thinks because he's got money
that he's got more sense than all the world put together.
By George! don't I remember the day, here in Richmond,
when, by universal acknowledgment, he was regarded as
the most active, intransitive fool in Virginia!”

So said one of the delegates as they left my office; and
his opinion, I had too much reason to know, was for a long
time the general opinion in the State. Men, feeling the
weight of my wealth, did not give open expression to their
opinions, but I could see it in their eyes; the newspapers
had got after me, too, and I suffered. Living, and desiring
only to live in order to give pleasure to my brother-Virginians,
I could not bear their ill will, even when I knew
that they were wrong and I was right.

But the delegate was not wrong in his assertion. I was

[figure description] Page 063.[end figure description]

conceited, and my money had made me so in spite of
myself. General deference to my opinions and the power
of carrying out my views at times elevated my self-esteem
to an inordinate degree, I doubt not. Very often I could
not dispossess myself of the belief that I had made my fifty
millions with my own hands or by my own sagacity; at
any rate I felt that I deserved them, being such a good
man, and that uplifted me mightily in my own eyes. It
took visit after visit to the woods to cure and humble me.
The measureless and inexhaustible force of nature, its utter
indifference (in the midst of great love) to what we call
great or small, finally brought me back again all safe, simple,
and unconceited.

[I now think I ought to have given a couple of hundred
thousand towards immigration; funds were getting low,
considering what remained to be done, but I could have
better stood the loss of ten times that amount than the
averted look of one unfriendly eye. I care too much for
public opinion.]

As when the State declined to accept my proposition to
build a new capitol, so now, when I felt constrained to
decline giving money to promote immigration, I considered
that I had added just that much more to my principal,
and accordingly proceeded to spend it with a good
deal of glee, as a poor fellow often does when a windfall
of a few dollars comes to him. The scheme was not
wholly my own, but was suggested to me by one of my
most trusted and sensible agents. It was, in a few words,
to give in fee simple ten thousand dollars cash to each of
fifteen hundred girls (so many to each county, city, and
town) on the day they got married to some strong, healthy,
handsome, sensible, good-natured, sober, industrious
young man, who had proved himself to be a good son and
brother—the girls to be just as healthy, sweet, well formed,
pretty, modest, and dutiful as the boys. The proposition,
as soon as its sincerity became known beyond all cavil,
produced an excitement the like of which was never, as I
honestly believe, witnessed in any part of the civilized
world—no, not even in time of war. Words quite fail
me to describe it. “What is healthy?” “Who is
pretty?” “What does he call good-natured?” “Who

[figure description] Page 064.[end figure description]

is to decide about being well formed?” etc., etc., etc.,
etc.

In vain I protested that I had nothing on earth to do
with defining or deciding anything. The State was in an
inconceivable ferment. I was bedeviled almost to death,
and finally had to run away to Canada to get rid of the
clamor; and even there I was beset. “Let the girls in
each county call a convention, and leave it to the county
judge, a board of physicians, the overseers of the poor,
the county surveyor, anybody, anybody, Lord, for the
sake of peace.”

No, they wouldn't hear to that—they wouldn't hear to
anything, until at length Governor Kemper,† being appealed
to, decided that there was but one way to settle it,
and that was by lottery in each county, etc. But then
the money was not to be paid till the day of marriage—
how about that? It was even so—that was in the bond.

Well, such a demand for young men, such attention to
even decently respectable young men, on the part of impecunious
parents, such beautiful eyes cast at young men,
such running away to distant States of young men who
didn't want to marry anybody, such indignation and
drawing back of young ladies who wanted neither money
nor husbands, but wanted to do just as they pleased and
marry just when it suited them, such fun, excitement,
bickerings, jealousies, fights, and family quarrels when
the marriages did take place, were never seen, heard, or
dreamed of. Virginia was a most unhappy State until
the thing played out and the money set apart was expended
to the very last dollar. It was a sad ending of
what I thought a good scheme. Old people sometimes
allude to it as the run-mad scheme, but it has been generally
forgotten.

I am glad, though, that I tried it. It satisfied me that
the plan I had been practicing, from the time I got my
fifty millions, of helping deserving young couples in the
quietest possible manner, was the best, indeed the only
practical plan. But some of the wilder young fellows did

[figure description] Page 065.[end figure description]

have what they called a high old time, and certainly if
there is fun in excitement there was excitement enough in
Virginia for about two and a half years.

[The State hasn't yet recovered from the furious family
feuds occasioned by my well-meant, but ill-judged, action
in this matter, and never will in my day. The worsthated
man in Virginia, by fully two-thirds of the people,
is myself.]

But to return to my building.

My wife, the most sensible woman I ever knew (my
acquaintance is limited), soon after my good fortune came
from heaven, said to me,—

“Moses, because we are rich that's no reason we should
be fools.”

“W-e-ll, I don't know about that.”

“Come, don't try to be sarcastic, or I'll say something
presently that'll make you wish you had never
married—”

“I often wish that.”

“a woman that isn't quite as big a ninny as you are.
But what I mean is this: that there is no sense in our
building a huge brick advertisement of the fact that we
have money. Every rich man does that. My idea is to
have two spare chambers for our friends—I suspect we'll
have a good many now—and that's all. Of course the
house will be as well furnished, tasteful, and comfortable
as possible. A small, perfectly equipped house, that's
what we want. The more house the more servants and
trouble about cleaning and keeping clean—don't you
think so?”

“Yes'm,” said I, meekly.

“You are such a goose! But I certainly—no, Virginia
says `certainly' all the time—I do really like you as much—
as much—as much as you liked me the day cousin Susan
Brown sent me fifty dollars.”

The upshot of it was that we bought the house that
Rev. Dr. Minnegerode lived in in 1874—on Clay Street,
I rather think (but the fact is, my memory for names,
dates, places, and things never was good), modernized
and mansarded it (Mrs. Johnson Jackson assured me that
no respectable person from the upper ends of Franklin

[figure description] Page 066.[end figure description]

and Grace would ever visit me if I did not mansard it),
and made it snug in every way. It became a pleasant
place to visit about dinner-time. I insisted on buying
this particular house, because I had often picked it out in
my days of poverty as perhaps the only place in which a
man could find a home and at the same time repose from
the women and children. This I got by building a two-story
office at the lower end of the garden, where I could
be out of the reach of feminine and juvenile jargon and
intrusion, and where I could have at any time what Dr.
Howland (a scientific lecturer of the period) would call
“a general view of the valley”—the vale of Butchertown,
to wit.

We did have a good deal of company. People seemed,
for some reason or other, to be fond of us. Often, a little
too often I thought, my wife and myself were forced to
ascend to the mansard and swelter there, which made
me bless the mansard and wish I could have my family to
myself as in the days when, perhaps owing to my poverty,
people were not so fond of us. However, it was a great
delight to have those we really loved (my wife had a prodigious
width as well as depth of affection) with us, to
make them as comfortable as kings and queens, and to
give them dinners that were fit for something a great deal
better than gods. Jupiter never ate a good dinner in his
life, the truth being that J. was not born in Lynchburg.
The dinners were so delightful that I look back to them
as the happiest hours of my life. Happiest! no; I will
tell you ere long what hours were really the happiest of
all. To be sure, I could retreat to my office at night,
when the house was full, and enjoy the moonlit valley
aforenamed to the full. But this was not being at home.
Finally, my wife bought a couple of houses in the neighborhood
and placed them at the service of surplus and
not agreeable company. This was all very well; it relieved
the pressure without touching too deeply on my privy
purse (Binford, his female coadjutor, and my public
enterprises having cut me down to less than half a million
a year for individual and household expenses), but when,
day after day, I came home only to find my house a
livery-stable, as it were, or hack-stand, my wife having

[figure description] Page 067.[end figure description]

ordered, in addition to our private vehicles, from six to
eight others daily, to be sent hither and thither for the
use of this or that sick friend, or for some friend who was
not sick, but would “enjoy a ride so”—. When I saw
this I got mad, as husbands will do, and determined to
make her sick of the carriage business. Accordingly, I
bolted off in hot haste, fully bent on buying every carriage,
hack, buggy, and thing of the kind in town; but as I
walked on I cooled down a little and contented myself
with the purchase of one hundred and seven hacks, carryalls,
rockaways, phætons, coupes, drags, buggies, gigs,
single-chairs, drays, tumbril carts, etc., etc., including
sixteen omnibuses, four furniture-wagons, a milk-cart,
and two wheelbarrows, with horses and mules to match,
goats also for the wheelbarrows, and ordered them all to
assemble simultaneously at my front door the next day at
twelve o'clock.

“Now, old lady,” thinks I, “if you don't get your
digestive apparatus full of wheeled vehicles for poor-folks,
then I'll agree to eat all the omnibuses, and half the
goats.”

The scene next day was a refreshing one. For several
squares the street was blocked up with carriages and
things, and an immense crowd of wondering people
gathered immediately to see what the matter was.

“It can't be a funeral,” said the people, “for there
is the milk-cart. Whoever heard of a milk-cart at a
funeral?”

As driver after driver came up, knocked, and announced
that his vehicle had been bought and paid for,
and ordered to come at twelve o'clock for Mrs. Adams's
commands (I poked my head out of a mansard room,
where I had hid myself, and watched the whoel affair),
the state of that good woman's mind may be imagined.
She sent for twenty policemen to disperse the vehicles
and the mob, but the policemen, finding that there had
been a bona fide purchase of the vehicles, and that the
drivers had actually received orders to assemble, could
do nothing. Mrs. A. was in despair. She sent for the
Mayor, but he too was powerless. Made desperate by
the frightful aspect of affairs, for the mob had now in

[figure description] Page 068.[end figure description]

creased to many thousands, she said to the Mayor, “If
these drivers have been directed to obey my commands,
will you see that my commands are executed to the
letter?”

“Most assuredly, madam.”

“Then I command these drivers to drive their vehicles
to the nearest auction store, and there sell the vehicles,
horses, etc., immediately to the highest bidder, and you,
Mr. Keiley, are to receive the proceeds of the sale, and
turn them over in full to Dr. Peterkin's* fair, now being
held at No.—, Main street.”

It was done, and I never got mad with my wife any
more—at least not to that tune. I think she told me
that the church realized some eleven thousand dollars
from the sale.

Of all the vehicles, she reserved but one—a choice
dray, thirty feet long, and drawn by seven tomato-catsup-colored
mules; so convenient, she said, for moving at
one haul all the furniture of any poor friend who wanted
to move.

And a shave-tail mule, from that day to this, gives me
facial neuralgia, accompanied by symptoms of trichina
spiralis.

[Other men have confessed to me that they, too, have
often wished to pile bonnets, boas, redingotes, or other
special weaknesses of their wives, upon their heads until
they were suffocated, or nearly so. But being men of
feeble feelings and little money, they could not vent
such rage as mine with the pecuniary violence exhibited
above. They have the venom, but not the spondulics.
Perhaps it is well.]

p457-070 NINTH INSTALLMENT.

Sad Results of an Explosion—Drs. Cullen and McGuire—Happy Resection
of a Steeple—Burwell Music Hall—Great Fiddling Festival—A
Treat for Pretty Girls—Happiest Time of Old Adams's Life—Gen.
Richardson and Col. Sherwin McRae—Adams's Patent Lecture-Halls—
Judge Waller Stapler—“Johnny Reb.”

[figure description] Page 069.[end figure description]

[From this point onward the old man's style, rough at
best, gets more and more incoherent; he repeats himself,
and is utterly regardless of the rules of construction—his
interpolations and foot-notes increase in number, and become
almost vexatious, indicating the inevitable decay
of the powers of mind and body.—Ed. Whig.]

It was a well-timed thing in me to buy the City Hall,
Dr. Preston's Church, etc., just when I did. The people
had entertained much unamiable emotion in regard to
the edifice first named, which had been reported to be
unsafe. Judge Guigon* they said was inclined to be,
not severe—that would be too strong a word—but a little
brash; the Common Council exhibited the usual, but
not more than the usual, defectiveness of common sense,
and an odor approximating the job-stench pervaded the
atmosphere.

When I attempted to pull down the walls of the said-to-be-unsound
City Hall, nitro-glycerine had to be used,
and with most disastrous results. The Broad Street Methodist
Church steeple was completely skinned of its slate
scales, and so badly cracked that it was carried at a right-shoulder
shift for nearly eighteen months. Architects
having given it up as a hopeless case, Drs. Cullen and
McGuire were called in, and after a vain attempt to reduce
the luxation, flooded the body of the building with
chloroform, and performed the operation of resection
with the happiest results. The explosion also produced
a violent irritation of the neck of the pool or baptistery

[figure description] Page 070.[end figure description]

of Dr. Burrows's church, which caused it to leak unhealthily
until sugar-of-lead pipes were introduced. A
cure soon followed. Thereupon everybody admired his
own wisdom, and said, “Didn't I tell you so—didn't I?
I knew what I was talking about; and I always said that
five thousand dollars would make the City Hall bran
new, and strong enough to last a thousand years.”

But as everybody had said that, nobody, not even the
councilmen, felt badly.

It will be recollected that in the Valentine House
Square the Virginia Historical Society building stood,
and Ford's Hotel Square was occupied by Brice Church,
enough space being left in both squares for green sward
and a number of graceful trees. In the Central Square,
after the City Hall was blown down, and the other buildings
removed, rose the massive and beautiful Music Hall,
also with its green sward and trees. I did not call it an
Academy of Music, because it was not, and was never intended
to be an academy. Music was not taught there,
nor had the building any connection near or remote
with Academus, after whom so many Northern musical
shebangs were in my day strangely and unwittingly misnamed—
a fact which wholly escaped the notice of the
Richmond Dispatch. There was simply what its name
implied, a hall for popular concerts of vocal and instrumental
music. In planning the hall, I was greatly aided
by Mr. N. B. Clapp, and a few other gentlemen of taste;
in truth, after giving them an outline of my ideas, I left
the matter wholly in their charge. The public and myself
were well pleased with their work. The room is
noble in the best sense of the term—lofty, airy, frescoed
with exquisite taste, ornamented with busts and statues
of the greatest composers, placed at appropriate intervals
in niches, with abundant light by day, and glorious at
night with jets and chandeliers. No handsomer building,
until my cathedral was finished, ornamented the
city. It was named Burwell Hall, in honor of my
friend, Miss Kate Burwell,* a charming musician.

[figure description] Page 071.[end figure description]

While the hall was in process of construction, I entered
into negotiations with Theodore Thomas with the view
of engaging him and his orchestra to reside permanently
in Richmond; but this could not be done, the field being
too small for him. Nor would he agree to come more
than twice during the winter, that is to say, the first week
in December and the last in February, and even then he
would not consent to remain more than three days each
time, although I was willing to pay him any sum within
reason for doing so. But before the hall was completed,
arrangements had been made by which concerts, and occasionally
operas, of the first order of merit, should be
given every fortnight during the winter, all the expenses
of which were paid out of the endowment. I made but
one stipulation with the management, and that was that
the programmes should invariably be so arranged as to
please the audiences and gradually to elevate their musical
taste—the rule theretofore being to make out the programmes
in New York, with selections adapted to a very
few well-educated musical people, while the mass were
compelled to sit by and pretend to enjoy what they could
not possibly comprehend. The sight of these anxious
fools (of whom I was one) looking into the faces of
educated musicians to find when the time came to be
in raptures, had so often made me sick that I was determined
to do away with it forever, at Burwell Hall, anyhow.

[I recall now with grim delight the fury into which the
virtuosi were thrown when the hall was inaugurated with a
real old-fashioned Virginia fiddling jubilee—not intended
as any reflection upon the Peace (accurately peace) Jubilee
in Boston—which lasted five days. Curdsville College
came down in a body, President George Walker at the
head; all the famous white and black fiddlers in the State
attended and made exhibition of their skill; and such a
riproarious time was had as was never had in Richmond
before or since. The people got blind drunk with jigs
and reels and whisky. Many marriages occurred soon
afterwards. The solos by Mr. James A. Cowardin, Mr.
Henry Lubbock, and Mr. Arthur Gooch, were pronounced
not inferior to the best Curdsville performances; and the

[figure description] Page 072.[end figure description]

memorial ode to Ruffin's band, recited by Mr. Henry
Hudnall, set to music by Madison Chamberlayne, was
sung throughout the State for years afterwards. The inaugural
address was made by Mayor Keiley.*]

Music being heaven itself, or the nearest thing to it,
except, perhaps, a sweetheart's first kiss, I always intended
that the concerts at Burwell Hall should be as free as
heaven's air. But this I soon found would never do.
The vulgus had to be kept out. The price of admission,
therefore, was fixed at a sum sufficient to effect that end—
say seventy-five cents—and the money thus obtained was
devoted to the education of poor youth of both sexes who
showed decided musical talent. But whenever there was
a pretty, sweet girl, or a girl that was sweet and not pretty,
who wanted to go to the concerts, and didn't have the
seventy-five cents, you may be sure she not only went but
got one of the best seats in the house. And inasmuch as
girls (until they get married, after which they are apt to
be a shade stingy to everybody but their husbands and
children) are naturally generous and do not like to be receiving
all the time, even from their beaux and fathers, I
provided that they should always select their own escorts,
who went in free of charge also. The trouble was to distribute
the tickets so as not to give offense. Remembering
the dowry business, and unwilling to incur any more
odium than I already endured, I intrusted the distribution
to two excellent old gentlemen, in whose generosity and
discretion I had all confidence, and whose uniform courtesy
and uprightness (brought down from a better age) I had
long secretly but greatly admired—I mean General W. H.
Richardson and Col. Sherwin McRae. As it was a ticklish
business, I paid them largely for it. They did their duty
faithfully and thoroughly well, avoiding the breakers on
which I had been wrecked in the matter of dowries. How
the young girls did love them! Unwilling to limit their
tickets to the City of Richmond, they requested permission
to send them to the country, and that the editors of

[figure description] Page 073.[end figure description]

the country papers should be the medium through which
the tickets should go. I readily accepted so sensible a
proposition. An increase in the circulation of country
papers was soon observable, and we had at the concerts
some such girls as grow in no other part of this world but
in old Virginia—dear, gentle, sweet, pure lily-buds and
blush-roses of life, sinless as children or angels. Ah, my
God! how they enjoyed the music. Sitting at my place
in the parquette, I would look up into their faces glorified
with delight, and—yes, these were the happiest hours of
my life. General R. and Colonel McR. never allowed
one of them or their lovers or attendants, whoever they
might be, in coming to, staying in, or going from the
city, to pay a cent; everything was paid for them. Most
of the editors sent down delightful girls. But Sandy
Garber, from time to time, by way of variety, transmitted
some mountain specimens that were—were—I be dog if I
know how to tell what they were. It was a treat, though,
to the rest of the audience to behold them and watch
their bewilderment.

The pleasure which General Richardson and Colonel
McRae* derived from their new occupation prolonged
their lives to an indefinite period. My memory is a little
treacherous, and my books of reference not accessible,
and so I will not undertake to say precisely how long they
lived. Never before in the history of the world, I dare
be sworn, were ticket agents so universally beloved.

About this time Judge Staples,† of the Court of Appeals,
came to me and said,—

“Moses, it does seem hard that with all your money

[figure description] Page 074.[end figure description]

and your lavish generosity, you have never thought of
doing anything for the Court of Appeals.”

“Judge,” said I, “you are out of your reckoning. I
have thought about the Court of Appeals, thought a great
deal—thought so much that I am inclined to say outright
that the court ought to have the whole capitol to itself.”

“What!” exclaimed the judge, opening his eyes wide,
“what do you mean by that?”

“I'll tell you fifty years hence.” [His opinion seems
to have been that the legislature should be abolished, and
the affairs of the State intrusted solely to the courts—
all legislation for Virginia and the other States, especially
of the South, being transferred to Washington.—Ed.
Whig.] “All I can now say is that, much as the legislature
has abused me for offering to build a new capitol, there
are too many good and sensible fellows in that body to
refuse to put at no distant day you, the Circuit Court, and
the two libraries in the enlarged, mansarded, fire-proof,
and glass-domed governor's house.”

“Ah, my dear boy,” said the judge, with a sigh, “that
is a long time off, I fear. Come, plank down twenty or
twenty-five thousand.”

“No, judge; I've literally not one dollar to spare, nor
has Binford. But you'll get your new court-room sooner
than you fancy.”

[So it turned out. Before the fall of 1877, on the site
of the old executive mansion, there was a very admirable
edifice containing the Supreme and Circuit Courts, the
law and literary libraries, a room for the Virginia Historical
Society, etc., etc., which was a comfort and convenience
to everybody in and out of the General Assembly, and
a most elegant addition to the architectural beauties of the
Capitol Square.]

Underneath Burwell Hall was another hall nearly as
large, which I devoted to the use of wandering lecturers
and readers who had neither the means of paying rent nor
the reputation to insure paying audiences. Although
there were not many of these creatures left (a fortunate
thing for the human race), I regarded them as a greatly
afflicted and afflicting set, and peculiarly in need of my
care. Therefore I caused to be made a most ingenious

[figure description] Page 075.[end figure description]

series of screens, which, being touched with a spring,
moved swiftly and silently up to and around the audience,
so that no matter how small it might be, even if it consisted
of only two people, the house should appear to be
crowded to suffocation. This proved to be a great comfort
to me and my fellow-lecturers and readers. Letters
of thanks poured in upon me from all parts of the civilized
world, Richmond was never without a lecture or a reading
even in midsummer, and I felt that I had done a good
thing.

So excellent was the screen scheme that I caused similar
lecture-halls to be erected in all the cities, towns, and
county court-houses, and places where there seemed to be
any apprehension of a lecture or like infliction. These
halls were built mostly for the benefit of Johnny Reb*
and myself, particularly of the latter, who had gradually
played himself out to the finest dead-head point. By not
charging anything for admission, not having anything to
pay for rent, lights, or fuel, and by allowing ourselves
(out of a fund for that purpose) fifty cents a head for every
fellow who could be induced or bullied into coming in,
Johnny and I, and others managed to make lecturing pay
fairly well. [I remember to have cleared four dollars and
a half on one occasion in the village of Izzardville, but
that great success was due in part to the fact that the
lecture was for a charitable or religious purpose.]

p457-077 TENTH INSTALLMENT.

Cremation of Piano Advertisers—Wisdom of Roman Catholics—The
Addie Deane House—University of Virginia—Judge William Robertson,
Dr. Maupin, etc.—Editorial Academy—Asylum for Worthless Young
Men—Parke Park—Richmond Boulevard—Matthews & Matthews—
Life's Appomattox—Semi-Phalansterian Squares, etc.

[figure description] Page 076.[end figure description]

[A scrap of paper which was overlooked when the last
installment was printed contained the following regulation
in regard to the management of Burwell Music Hall. It
is out of place here, but ought not to be omitted.—Ed.
Whig.]

When concert troupes insisted upon having their own
pianos, and displaying the name of the piano-maker in
large letters, as Chickering, Steinway, Knabe, etc., no
opposition whatever was made or even meditated, but as
soon as the performer had hitched up his stool, adjusted
his coat-tail, twiddled his preparatory twiddle, and banged
his preliminary bang, a tall man in a black visor walked
quietly out from behind the scenes with a sledge-hammer,
brained the performer, smashed the piano, threw the
pieces out of the window, and burnt player and pieces up
together; and the performance went on without further
interruption.

[What these people will do when they get to a world
where there is no chance, and will not be through all
eternity, of advertising themselves and their wares, I do
not know. It distresses me, but I don't know, and am
afraid I never will know.]

It should be borne in mind that the appearance of Richmond
in the vicinity of the Capitol Square was pretty
much this: a dilapidated Capitol, bound together with
grapevines and hoop-iron, and propped by long, North
Carolina whitewashed pine-trees. But on the three squares
extending from Ninth to Twelfth, that is to say from Bob
Scammell's oyster saloon to Judge Crump's, on what was
once called Governor Street, was first, on the Valentine
Square, the Virginia Historical Society building, a noble

[figure description] Page 077.[end figure description]

structure; next, on the City Hall Square, Burwell Music
Hall, a superb edifice (far finer, architecturally, than any
academy of music in the country), with its flexible screen
lecture-room beneath; and third, on Ford's Hotel Square,
the massive and imposing, though not beautiful, circular
walls of Brice Church.

The environment of these noble buildings was not in
keeping—more money, of course—more money everywhere
and all the time. And yet I was not so loath to
spend as you might suppose. Old Dodson,* when I was
sick in 1872 at the Monumental Hotel, had been kind to
me (indeed, the poor man had no better sense than to be
kind to everybody), and accordingly I determined to do
something for Dodson, and for somebody I liked even
better than Dodson; I mean myself. Fact is, I tried to
please myself generally, almost alwaysly; it gave me much
pleasure to please myself.

Not to digress a bit.

The Catholics are a wise people. Their priests I like
prodigiously, their tenets I don't. But for all that, they
are wise enough, I tell you; i.e., when they have got a
good thing they know it just about as well as you or any
other man knows it. What is more, they find out the
good thing, get hold of it and keep it, long before you,
with your weak, Protestant mind, have any idea of it.

Monumental Hotel Square was the place for a hotel—
better, much better, I thought, than the site of the Shields
House, admirable as that undoubtedly was. But the
Catholics wouldn't sell their church, their bishop's house,
or the Virginia House—which was mean of them, in my
humble opinion. So I did the best I could. On all the
space I could purchase, from Grace to Broad, including
Blair's† drug store on the latter street, I built the most

[figure description] Page 078.[end figure description]

magnificent granite hotel, ten stories high, that is in this
world. I challenge all comparison. A minute description
of the house will be found in the twenty-fifth thousand of
Græme's* Handbook of Richmond. Outside and inside
it is as near perfection as one could expect. Some of its
peculiar features will be given in my forthcoming work on
the American Hotel. Dodson has been keeping it for
the last ten years, and keeping it well, although people
said Dodson couldn't keep a house as big as that. It is a
superb ornament to the city, and makes St. Paul's Church
look rather small-potatoish. I doubt if there is on the
globe a pleasanter home for the traveler than Deane†
House.

“Doctor”—

In my time the Southern people had a ridiculous habit
of putting a handle to everybody's name—clerks were
colonels or majors, and corn-cutters professors. This
habit, silly as it was, was due, I think, to the innate hatred
of the Southern people for the word “Mister,” which is
abominable, in spite of Mrs. Browning's effort to make it
otherwise. Of course a man of my wealth could not remain
a plain Mister, and inasmuch as an academy in East
Tennessee had conferred upon me the title of LL.D. (in
return for which I endowed the institution with a postal
order for ten dollars), I was generally called Doctor, and
got to feel badly if everybody didn't call me Doctor.

“Doctor,” said Judge Robertson,‡ “your money is
going fast. Have you forgotten the University of Virginia?”

“Why, Judge, what am I to do? The whole world
wants me to do something for everything. Here is John
Tinsley contending that I ought to do something to commemorate
Mann Page, Mont. Miller, Lyttleton Tazewell,
and all the bright fellows that boarded at Mrs. Mosby's,

[figure description] Page 079.[end figure description]

corner of Ninth and Franklin, before the war; my Academy
for Editors, my Asylum for Worthless Young Men,
my Cathedral, my Richmond Park, my semi-Phalansterian
Square, etc., haven't even been begun—just put yourself
in my place, Judge.”

“Well, well,” said the judge, “I give up; I let you
off.”

“Strikes me, Judge, that the Miller fund ought to have
gone to the University.”

“Too late, now; too late. That's long past; we look to the present and the future—have to look to them.”

“Yes; but did it never occur to you that if the people
of the South and of Virginia really did want to build up
the University they would be sure to find a way; would
go earnestly to work about it, as Washington and Lee has
done, and that if they do not ardently desire to build it
up, it ought not to be built up?”

“Right enough; but have you forgotten Dr. Maupin?”

“No,” said I warmly, “and never will or can. Neither
have I forgotten Stephen Southall (how I enjoyed his editorials
in the Whig in Ridgway's time!), nor Prof. Gildersleeve
(of the Bema), nor Prof. Minor, nor any of them.”

The allusion to Dr. Maupin overcame me. I handed
the judge a check for half a million, and away he went.

My Academy for Editors was established at Standards-ville,
in the county of Greene. Its main object was to
teach editors to kneel down and pray for some sense,
some diminution of self-sufficiency, some ability to see
both sides of a subject; in a word, some wisdom from on
high, before they wrote their editorials. Particulars will
be found in the paper marked Z. [No such paper is dis-cerned
in the bundle of MSS.—Ed. Whig.]

My Asylum for Wuthless Yung Menn was built on a
beautiful plot of ground of five acres, about half-way between
Richmond and Ashland. Its object was to rescue
society from the Wuthless Yung Mann, and no one was
sent there who was not an incurably Wuthless* Yung

[figure description] Page 080.[end figure description]

Mann—a person much more deserving of protection and
tender isolation from the vain world than the worthless
old man. (Particulars will be found in the paper marked
ZZ.) [Greatly to our regret, this paper is also missing.—
Ed. Whig.]

A suggestion thrown out in the Dispatch some time in
1873 materially modified my views about a park for Richmond.
My first idea was to buy ten thousand acres of
land on both sides of the river, above the city, and to
have a park surpassing Laura Park in Lynchburg. This
was done in part only, as will be told.

As a rule, parks are built on this or that side of a city,
accessible enough to some, but out of the reach of the
bulk of the population, except at a cost either of time or
money, or both, which few, if any, of the poorer classes
can afford. Why not have a park accessible to everybody?
This was that great work which my agents, Williams
& Apperson (Grubbs having retired on a huge fortune),
accomplished for me within six months,—the most
signal real-estate triumph ever achieved.

They bought for me a strip of ground varying from an
eighth to a quarter, and in some places half a mile in
width, and extending entirely around the city, including
Manchester, which had been consolidated with Richmond.
At the upper end of the city, above the reservoir, it
swelled out into a park proper, presenting in bird's-eye
view the appearance of an irregular ring with a large set
on the southwestern side. A good broad street ran
through the centre of the ring, and at suitable intervals,
not too close together, a few public and private houses,
with gardens attached, were allowed to be built. From
the Capitol to the Boulevard, as it was called, the distance
varied from a mile to a mile and a half, or two miles—the
city extending a goodly distance beyond the Boulevard.
This arrangement secured to the children of all classes
easy access at any time to fresh air, grass, flowers, trees,
fountains, birds, squirrels, deer (these last protected from

[figure description] Page 081.[end figure description]

dogs by reason of the growing common sense of the people,
who ordered all dogs not properly trained, to be shot
by policemen), and a thousand other pleasures (aquaria
here and there and the like) and health-insurements for
the little people, ay, and for the big ones, too.

The loss of so much good building-ground was a terrific
blow to land-owners. When they saw the city progressing
square after square beyond the Boulevard, and remembered
the comparatively trifling price they had received
for their property, they cursed Apperson, and
Williams, and myself till we would have been black in
the face if we had only heard them. Suit after suit was
instituted to set aside, recover, what not. No use. My
agents were not slouches by a long ways. They knew
their business. The infernal gods alone know the amount
of litigation that ensued, and has been kept up to this day.
My attorneys, Matthews & Matthews,* who have been
worked nearly to death, tell me they see no end to the
trouble. As it doesn't trouble me, and gives them some
fifty thousand dollars each a year, I don't care how long
the suits continue.

The park proper is called Parke† Park. It contains
only three thousand acres, but is as highly and beautifully
ornamented as it is possible for landscape gardening to
go. With the islet-studded river, crossed by numbers of
elegant bridges, running through its midst, its scenic
surprises at almost every turn, its statues,‡ its bowers,

[figure description] Page 082.[end figure description]

kiosks, conservatories, etc., etc., many think it equal to
Chatsworth, and very much superior to Laura Park, in
Lynchburg. I cannot think so. The little mountains
embraced in the latter park, and the admirable advantage
taken of them by Jones, who made every inch tell in art
effects, and, above all, the magnificent views obtainable
from the mountain roadways and towers, make it, in my
candid estimation, superior to any park in this country
or in Europe. Both are good enough and beautiful
enough, in all conscience. Their relative merits afford
a subject of continued amicable quarrels between the
Lynchburg and Richmond papers.

Life, as it is known to most of us, is like the upper
part of the Appomattox River,—a narrow stream, muddy
more than half the time, full of snags, hammocks, and
sand-bars, with only here and there a good fishing-hole.
When the boys come back from the academic and collegiate
ridges, provided, as they and their fond, foolish
parents (who, being in business, ought to have more
sense) fancy, with the best tackle in the world, they find
Tom, Dick, and Harry, who have been raised to the
work on the spot, and never quitted it, already squatted
down by the holes, with the plainest poles, and the
meanest-looking cymlins, and the morest fish, and with
no more idea of quitting “them holes” in favor of the
college boys till death do them dislodge, than they have
of going to heaven to cook the fish or spend the money
they acquire in this earthly vale. [By the way, I wish I
had told Judge Robertson that one good primary school,
based upon a proper knowledge of human nature and the
human mind, and in which the knowledge that is of most
immediate use to most people (there was not such a
school, nay, not the approach to it, in Virginia in my
time) should alone be taught, would, in my judgment,
outweigh all the universities on earth. How many
parents know and feel restive under this, and yet sit
quiet! Poor parents! But, after all, the practical

[figure description] Page 083.[end figure description]

school of the shop, the factory, the store, the printing-office,
etc., is and must long remain the best school.
How to make money honorably and to save it, in other
words, how to support yourself and family, that is the
best, the indispensable education (for how can you and
family so much as live if you do not acquire a knowledge
of self-maintenance?), to which even reading and writing
are secondary.]

A consequence of this false system of education is that
as civilization advances there is a continuous increase of
educated men and women with refined tastes who do not
know how to get along, or, if they do, find all the fishingholes
in life's Appomattox full,—Rob and Tom having
learned how to make money while Edward and Fitzhugh
were grubbing up Greek roots. This being the case, the
educated men and women sink into clerkships and secondary
places, with salaries of from five hundred to two
thousand dollars—there being a limit and a decennially
lessening limit to the relative numbers of doctors, lawyers,
and preachers. No provision is made for these clerks
and minus quantities in the sum of social life. They ought
to be content to live as cheaply as mechanics who earn
double their salary, but they are not. They cannot be;
the education which ought never to have been given to
nine-tenths of them has unfitted them for cheap living.
Little builders, grog-shop and corner-grocery sharks,
whose greed for money is ravenous and cruel as the
grave, build for the multitude who are content to live
anyhow, and the big builders build for the rich merchants,
eminent doctors, great lawyers, and fashionable
preachers. The educated, cultivated incapable no human
being considers.

I, being better than a human being, and having no desire
to “git my rent,” did consider him, and built in the
upper part of the city a dozen or two squares of houses
for him and his kind. They were built with every conceivable
labor-saving convenience, required little fuel to
heat them, were inexpensively lighted, and needed scarcely
any furniture,—wardrobes, bureaus, presses, etc., being
in the very structure of the houses themselves. (I was
sick unto death of seeing my wife's thirty-feet dray run

[figure description] Page 084.[end figure description]

ning like mad from end to end of the city.) The rent
for each house covered the taxes (they were high—taxes
are always high) and repaired the annual wear and tear—
that was all. Mr. R. D. Ward* attended faithfully
to this business for me. The houses were not crammed
down upon the ground as close as they could set, but
were separated by a space of twelve to fifteen feet, and
in the middle of each side of each square was a house
built expressly for the accommodation of young men and
bachelors,—my object being to give them better quarters
than they got in the down-town dens, and to have them
so close to the neighboring families as to offer them every
incentive to visit the ladies, brighten up the evening (so
often so dull for the want of young company), fall in love
with the girls, marry early, help the minus-quantity
fathers, and so help society onward. I also encouraged
many polished gentlemen to remain bachelors, but at the
same time to be true to their social duties, and to make
themselves (what they can do, and the worn-down husbands,
too often cannot) the very life and charm of the
households that are happy enough to call them friends.

I doubt if I ever did a better or a wiser thing than the
building of these same squares. They were not all
lumped together in a single district of the city, but were
interspersed among other squares, and gave to the town
a tone which otherwise it could never have had. The
houses were eagerly rented by clerks, accountants, editors,
and insurance agents, and the rooms in the bachelors'
homes were just as eagerly sought by unmarried men.
To be sure there were certain young men who preferred
to remain down-town, as near as possible to their beloved
bar-rooms and bagnios, but this could not be helped.
No one, not even their own mothers, could wish such
beasts turned loose in a decent man's family. A snug

[figure description] Page 085.[end figure description]

wing-room in each of the bachelor's homes was set apart
for the matron, a sort of concierge who kept the house in
order and attended to the sewing of the young men, or
matronized the young ladies of the vicinity whenever the
former gave a party, dancing or other, to the latter.
From time to time some one or other of these old widows
or maids destroyed the peace of mind of some of their
old bachelor tenants, an infliction which, however deserved,
would soon have driven the bachelors away but
for the timely interference of the married ladies of the
neighborhood. After all, things regulated themselves
pretty well, without the aid of police. A great point
was gained in giving numerous old ladies the occupation
they most delight in—keeping house, their own house, as
it were, and in ministering exclusively to male tenants;
and another great point was the putting of bachelors old
and young in close proximity to the ladies. You may
love all the ladies in the world with the maddest devotion,
but if they live so far away from you that you can
never lay eyes on them or have their pretty palms in
yours, the chances are that you will marry very few of
them at one time. Proximity is the great thing; it is
next to certainty in matters of the matrimonial kind. I
forgot to say that little by little the bachelors learned
that nothing sweetened and enlivened their parties half
so much as a fine sprinkling of married ladies. Occasionally
the bachelors took breakfast and tea at home, but
they were so often invited out to these meals that the
matrons seldom had the opportunity of turning an additional
honest penny by feeding them,—which made them
indignant quite frequently. Women past the marrying
point, and without daughters or female pets of their own,
soon take a proprietary interest in their masculine tenants,
and object to their marrying anybody. It is hard, but I
have found that there is no way of making everybody
happy all the time,—not even old bachelors, old widows,
or old maids.*

[figure description] Page 086.[end figure description]

Auxiliary to the family squares were the semi-phalansterian
squares, based upon Chas. Fourier's excellent but
excessively-carried-out idea, and designed to rescue decent
people from the fangs of ruthless cooks, maids, and other
domestic servants, black or white, who had long ruled the
roast in a savagely tyrannical manner. They were built
precisely like the family square, the houses twelve to thirteen
feet apart, with a bachelor's home in the middle of
each side of the square, only the lots were not so deep,
leaving a large quadrange in the centre of the square, on
which was erected a large building containing all the
appliances for cooking, washing, ironing, etc., for all the
families residing in that square; also servants' rooms in
abundance. Except in case of sickness, or when there
were very young children, servants were wholly dispensed
with; kitchens and laundries were unknown; marketing
was unknown, groceries even were supplied by the man
in charge of the central hall, who, getting things by
wholesale, and having but one fire to keep up, fed his
customers more cheaply than they could have fed themselves,
hired servants and furnished them just when they
were needed and no longer, and in fine carried out the
idea of the Fourierite phalanstery in such a way that the
families who patronized him were enabled to live hotelfashion
in their private houses—an admirable good thing,
I promise you. I built twelve dozen of these squares in
various parts of Richmond, and now the Semi-Phalanstery
is the rule rather than the exception in all the great cities
of Christendom, and in many small ones also.

p457-088 ELEVENTH INSTALLMENT.

Black Crook Club Monument—Dr. Leigh Burton—Nat. Sturdivant
Terrace—Hermann Garden—Louis Euker—Cornelia Cathedral—
Worship Purely Musical—Leo Wheat—Major Burr Noland—Diseased
Germans—Midnight New Year Services—Our Saviour—Mary Davidson—
General Mahone—Elder, Fisher, and Sheppard—G. Watson
James, etc.

[figure description] Page 087.[end figure description]

In order to quiet the public mind and to relieve the
city from a task too onerous for its weak exchequer, I
swept away all the houses from Gamble's Hill and converted
it into one of the prettiest little terraced parks
imaginable. Near the centre of the grounds, a little to
the west of the former site of Pratt's Castle, and on the
highest point of the hill, arose an immense monument to
the Black Crook Club: Jonah White, in the costume of a
Roman Senator, on top, and beneath and around him all
the members of the club, life-size and accurate likenesses
every one, grouped together, hand in hand, with their
mouths wide open and singing at the full pitch of their
voices,—

At a little distance from the main group (the figures
were carefully cast of hematite iron at Tanner's foundry)
stood my friend Dr. W. Leigh Burton,* attired as Orpheus,
with a fiddle in one hand and a forceps in the
other, leading the chorus. The little park, known as Nat.
Sturdivant Terrace, was a great place of resort for strangers
and for nurses with babies in baby-carriages. Strangers
always burst into roars of laughter, and complained that
looking at the monument made them thirsty.

[figure description] Page 088.[end figure description]

This reminds me of a fact which I had entirely overlooked,
viz., the completion of the Hermann Garden by
Louis Euker* and myself simultaneously with the completion
of the Shields House. The square between Seventh
and Eighth on Broad was equally divided between the
hotel and the garden. The latter was beautifully laid out,
the fine holly-tree on Dr. Trent's lot being religiously
preserved, other trees, shrubs, vines, etc., being added,
together with two fountains as graceful in design as any I
ever saw; indeed, the whole place was made as attractive
as possible. My object in establishing the garden was to
prepare the way for that excellent European custom of
associating the sexes in all enjoyments whatsoever, even
in conviviality. Why make human animals cannot get
along without drinking I simply do not know, but the
majority of them either cannot or will not; at all events
they do not, and the only method yet discovered of toning
them down, of stopping them from swilling, boozing,
and guzzling to excess is to associate the female animal
with them, so that even in their cups her benign influence
is exerted over them. “But this lowers the female
animal.” I don't know about that. In Holland, Germany,
France, and Italy the plan seems to have worked well,
made races eminently temperate and healthy as compared
with the English and American, and substituted mild for
strong drinks—the entering wedge to no drinks at all, if
that time is ever to come. I am told that the plan succeeded
so well at Hermann Garden that in the course of
a few years cold tea in summer and hot coffee in the
winter became the favorite drinks. “But surely the ladies
did not go there in winter?” Yes, they did. By a simple
arrangement of iron columns, ribs, etc., which could
be quickly put up and taken down, Louis converted his
garden about the first of December into a crystal palace,
more attractive in some respects than it had been during
the summer.

[figure description] Page 089.[end figure description]