University of Virginia Library

29. CHAPTER XXIX
AS COMMISSIONER TO THE PARIS EXPOSITION OF 1878

MY next experience was of a quasi-diplomatic sort, in connection with the Paris Exposition of 1878, and it needs some preface.

During the Centennial Exposition of 1876 at Philadelphia, I had been appointed upon the educational jury, and, as the main part of the work came during the university long vacation, had devoted myself to it, and had thus been brought into relations with some very interesting men.

Of these may be named, at the outset, the Emperor Dom Pedro of Brazil. I first saw him in a somewhat curious way. He had landed at New York in the morning, and early in the afternoon he appeared with the Empress and their gentlemen and ladies in waiting at Booth's Theater. The attraction was Shakspere's "Henry V,'' and no sooner was he seated in his box than he had his Shakspere open before him. Being in an orchestra stall, I naturally observed him from time to time, and at one passage light was thrown upon his idea of his duties as a monarch. The play was given finely, by the best American company of recent years, and he was deeply absorbed in it. But presently there came the words of King Henry—the noted passage:

Whereupon the Emperor and Empress, evidently moved by the same impression, turned their heads from the stage, looked significantly at each other, and his majesty very earnestly nodded to his wife several times, as if thoroughly assenting.

The feeling thus betrayed was undoubtedly sincere. His real love was for science, literature, and art; but above all for science. Some years before, at the founding of Cornell University, Agassiz had shown me private letters from him revealing his knowledge of natural history, and the same thirst for knowledge which he showed then was evident now. From dawn till dusk he was hard at work, visiting places of interest and asking questions which, as various eminent authorities both in the United States and France have since assured me, showed that he kept himself well abreast of the most recent scientific investigations.

On the following morning he invited me to call upon him, and on my doing so, he saluted me with a multitude of questions regarding our schools, colleges, and universities, which I answered as best I could, though many of them really merited more time than could be given during a morning interview. His manner was both impressive and winning. He had clearly thought much on educational problems, and no man engaged in educational work could fail to be stimulated by his questions and comments. In his manner there was nothing domineering or assuming. I saw him at various times afterward, and remember especially his kindly and perfectly democratic manner at a supper given by the late Mr. Drexel of Philadelphia, when he came among us, moving from group to group, recognizing here one old friend and there another, and discussing with each some matter of value.

Republican as I am, it is clear to me that his constitutional sovereignty was a government far more free, liberal, and, indeed, republican, than the rule of the demagogue despots who afterward drove him from his throne ever has been or ever will be.

Another very interesting person was a Spanish officer, Don Juan Marin, who has since held high commands both

in his own country and in the West Indies. We were upon the same jury, and I came to admire him much. One day, as we sat in our committee-room discussing various subjects brought before us, there appeared in the street leading to the main entrance of the grounds a large body of soldiers with loud drumming and fifing. On his asking what troops these were, I answered that they were the most noted of our American militia regiments—the New York Seventh; and on his expressing a wish to see them, we both walked out for that purpose. Presently the gates were thrown open, and in marched the regiment, trim and brisk, bearing aloft the flag of the United States and the standard of the State of New York.

At the moment when the standard and flag were abreast of us, Colonel Marin, who was in civil dress, drew himself up, removed his hat, and bowed low with simple dignity. The great crowd, including myself, were impressed by this action. It had never occurred to any one of the rest of us to show such a tribute to the flag under which so many good and true men had fought and died for us; and, as one of the crowd very justly remarked afterward, "The Spaniard cheapened the whole lot of us.'' With a single exception, it was the finest exhibition of manners I have ever seen.[11]

Still another delegate was Professor Levasseur, of the College of France and the French Institute. His quickness in ascertaining what was of value in a politico-economical view, and his discussions of geographical matters, interested and instructed all who had to do with him.

With him was Réné Millet, an example of the most attractive qualities of a serious Frenchman—qualities which have since been recognized in his appointments as minister and ambassador to Sweden and to Tunis. Both these gentlemen afterward made me visits at Cornell which I greatly enjoyed.

At this time, too, I made a friendship which became precious to me—that of Gardner Hubbard, one of the

best, truest, and most capable men, in whatever he undertook, that I have ever seen. The matter which interested him then has since interested the world. His son-in-law Mr. Alexander Graham Bell, was exhibiting what ap-peared to be a toy,—a toy which on one occasion he showed to Dom Pedro and to others of us, and which enabled us to hear in one of the buildings of the exposition a violin played in another building. It was regarded as an interesting plaything, and nothing more. A controlling right in its use might have been bought for a very moderate sum—yet it was the beginning of the telephone!

In connection with these and other interesting men, I had devoted myself to the educational exhibits of the exposition; and the result was that, during the following year, I was appointed by the Governor of the State of New York one of two honorary commissioners to the Paris Exposition; the other being Mr. Morton, afterward Minister to France, Vice-President of the United States, and Governor of the State of New York.

I was not inclined, at first, to take my appointment very seriously, but went to Paris simply to visit the exposition, hoping that my honorary function would give me good opportunities. But on arriving I found the commissioner-general of the United States, Governor McCormick, hard pressed by his duties, and looking about for help. A large number of regular commissioners had been appointed, but very few of them were of the slightest use. Hardly one of them could speak French, and very few of them really took any interest in the duties assigned them. The main exception, a very noble one, was my old friend President Barnard of Columbia College, and he had not yet arrived. Under these circumstances, I yielded to the earnest request of Governor McCormick and threw myself heartily into the work of making our part of the exposition a success.

The American representation at the Vienna Exposition a few years before had resulted in a scandal which had resounded through Europe, and this scandal had arisen

from the fact that a subordinate, who had gained the confidence of our excellent commissioner-general at that post, had been charged, and to all appearance justly, with receiving money for assigning privileges to bar-keepers and caterers. The result was that the commissioner-general was cruelly wounded, and that finally he and his associates were ignominiously removed, and the American minister to Austria put in his place until a new commission could be formed. Of course every newspaper in Eu-rope hostile to republican ideas, and they were very many, made the most of this catastrophe. One of them in Vienna was especially virulent; it called attention to the model of an American school-house in the exposition, and said that "it should be carefully observed as part of the machinery which trains up such mercenary wretches as have recently disgraced humanity at the exposition.''

To avoid scandals, to negotiate with the French commissioners on one side, and the crowd of exhibitors on the other, and especially to see that in all particulars the representatives of American industry were fully recognized, was a matter of much difficulty; but happily all turned out well.

Among the duties of my position was membership of the upper jury—that which, in behalf of the French Republic, awarded the highest prizes. Each day, at about nine in the morning, we met, and a remarkable body it was. At my right sat Meissonier, then the most eminent of French painters, and beyond him Quintana, the Spanish poet. Of the former of these two I possess a curious memento. He was very assiduous in attendance at our sessions, and the moment he took his seat he always began drawing, his materials being the block of letter-paper and the pencils, pens, and ink lying before him. No matter what was under discussion, he kept on with his drawing. While he listened, and even while he talked, his pencil or pen continued moving over the paper. He seemed to bring every morning a mass of new impressions caught during his walk to the exposition, which he made haste to transfer

to paper. Sometimes he used a pencil, sometimes, a quill pen, and not infrequently he would plunge the feather end of the quill into his inkstand and rapidly put into his work broader and blacker strokes. As soon as he had finished a drawing he generally tore it into bits and threw them upon the floor, but occasionally he would fold the sketches carefully and put them into his pocket. This being the case, no one dared ask him for one of them.

But one morning his paper gave out, and for lack of it he took up a boxwood paper-knife lying near and began work on it. First he decorated the handle in a sort of rococo way, and then dashed off on the blade, with his pen, a very spirited head—a bourgeois physiognomy somewhat in Gavarni's manner. But as he could not tear the paper-knife into bits, and did not care to take it away, he left it upon the table. This was my chance. Immediately after the session I asked the director-general to allow me to carry it off as a souvenir; he assented heartily, and so I possess a picture which I saw begun, continued, and ended by one of the greatest of French painters.

At my left was Tresca, director of the French National Conservatory of Arts and Trades; and next him, the sphinx of the committee—the most silent man I ever saw the rector of the Portuguese University of Coimbra. During the three months of our session no one of us ever heard him utter a word. Opposite was Jules Simon, eminent as an orator, philosopher, scholar, and man of letters; an academician who had held positions in various cabinets, and had even been prime minister of the republic. On one side of him was Tullo Massarani, a senator of the Italian kingdom, eminent as a writer on the philosophy of art; on the other, Boussingault, one of the foremost chemists of the century; and near him, Wischniegradsky, director of the Imperial Technical Institute at Moscow, whom I afterward came to know as minister of finance at St. Petersburg. Each afternoon we devoted to examining the greater exhibits which were to come before us in competition for the grands prix on the following morning.

At one of our sessions a curious difficulty arose. The committee on the award of these foremost prizes for advanced work in electricity brought in their report, and, to my amazement, made no award to my compatriot Edison, who was then at the height of his reputation. Presently Tresca, who read the report, and who really lamented the omission, whispered to me the reason of it. Through the negligence of persons representing Edison, no proper exhibition of his inventions had been made to the committee. They had learned that his agent was employed in showing the phonograph in a distant hall on the boulevards to an audience who paid an admission fee; but, although they had tried two or three times to have his apparatus shown them, they had been unsuccessful, until at last, from a feeling of what was due their own self-respect, they passed the matter over entirely. Of course my duty was to do what was possible in rectifying this omission, and in as good French as I could muster I made a speech in Edison's behalf, describing his career, outlining his work, and saying that I should really be ashamed to return to America without some recognition of him and of his inventions. This was listened to most courteously, but my success was insured by a remark of a less serious character, which was that if Edison had not yet made a suffi-cient number of inventions to entitle him to a grand prize, he would certainly, at the rate he was going on, have done so before the close of the exposition. At this there was a laugh, and my amendment was unanimously carried.

Many features in my work interested me, but one had a melancholy tinge. One afternoon, having been summoned to pass upon certain competing works in sculpture, we finally stood before the great bronze entrance-doors of the Cathedral of Strasburg, which, having been designed before the Franco-Prussian War, had but just been finished. They were very beautiful; but I could see that my French associates felt deeply the changed situation of affairs which this exhibit brought to their minds.

In order to promote the social relations which go for

so much at such times, I had taken the large apartment temporarily relinquished by our American minister, Governor Noyes of Ohio, in the Avenue Josephine; and there, at my own table, brought together from time to time a considerable number of noted men from various parts of Europe. Perhaps the most amusing occurrence during the series of dinners I then gave was the meeting between Story, the American sculptor at Rome, and Judge Brady of New York. For years each had been taken for the other, in various parts of the world, but they had never met. In fact, so common was it for people to mistake one for the other that both had, as a rule, ceased to explain the mistake. I was myself present with Story on one occasion when a gentleman came up to him, saluted him as Judge Brady, and asked him about their friends in New York: Story took no trouble to undeceive his interlocutor, but remarked that, so far as he knew, they were all well, and ended the interview with commonplaces.

These two Dromios evidently enjoyed meeting, and nothing could be more amusing than their accounts of various instances in which each had been mistaken for the other. Each had a rich vein of humor, and both presented the details of these occurrences with especial zest.

Another American, of foreign birth, was not quite so charming. He was a man of value in his profession; but his desire for promotion outran his discretion. Having served as juror at the Vienna Exposition, he had now been appointed to a similar place in Paris; and after one of my dinners he came up to a group in which there were two or three members of the French cabinet, and said: "Mr. Vite, I vish you vould joost dell dese zhentlemen vat I am doing vor Vrance. I vas on de dasting gommittee for vines und peers at Vien, and it 'most killed me; and now I am here doing de same duty, and my stomach has nearly gone pack on me. Tell dese zhentlemen dat de French Government zurely ought to gonfer ubon me de Legion of Honor.'' This was spoken with the utmost seriousness, and was embarrassing, since, of all subjects,

that which a French minister least wishes to discuss publicly is the conferring of the red ribbon. {1}

Embarrassing also was the jubilation of some of our American exhibitors at our celebration of the Fourth of July in the Bois de Boulogne. Doubtless they were excellent citizens, but never was there a better exemplification of Dr. Arnold's saying that "a traveller is a self-constituted outlaw.'' A generous buffet had been provided, after the French fashion, with a sufficiency of viands and whatever wine was needed. To my amaze-ment, these men, who at home were most of them, probably, steady-going "temperance men,'' were so overcome with the idea that champagne was to be served ad libitum, that the whole thing came near degenerating into an orgy. A European of the same rank, accustomed to drinking wine moderately with his dinner, would have simply taken a glass or two and thought no more of it; but these gentlemen seemed to see in it the occasion of their lives. Bottles were seized and emptied, glass after glass, down the throats of my impulsive fellow-citizens: in many cases a bottle and more to a man. Then came the worst of it. It had been arranged that speeches should be made under a neighboring tent by leading members of the French cabinet who had accepted invitations to address us. But when they proceeded to do this difficulties arose. A number of our compatriots, unduly exhilarated, and under-standing little that was said, first applauded on general principles, but at the wrong places, and finally broke out into apostrophes such as "Speak English, old boy!'' "Talk Yankee fashion!'' "Remember the glorious Fourth!'' "Give it to the British!'' "Make the eagle scream!'' and the like. The result was that we were obliged to make most earnest appeals to these gentlemen, begging them not to disgrace our country; and, finally, the proceedings were cut short.

Nor was this the end. As I came down the Champs élysées afterward, I met several groups of these patriots, who showed by their walk and conversation that

they were decidedly the worse for their celebration of the day; and the whole thing led me to reflect seriously on the drink problem, and to ask whether our American solution of it is the best. I have been present at many large festive assemblages, in various parts of Europe, where wine was offered freely as a matter of course; but never have I seen anything to approach this performance of my countrymen. I have been one of four thousand people at the Hôtel de Ville in Paris on the occasion of a great ball, at other entertainments almost as large in other Continental countries, and at dinner parties innumerable in every European country; but never, save in one instance, were the festivities disturbed by any man on account of drink.

The most eminent of American temperance advocates during my young manhood, Mr. Delavan, insisted that he found Italy, where all people, men, women, and children, drink wine with their meals, if they can get it, the most temperate country he had ever seen; and, having made more than twelve different sojourns in Italy, I can confirm that opinion.

So, too, again and again, when traveling in the old days on the top of a diligence through village after village in France, where the people were commemorating the patron saint of their district, I have passed through crowds of men, women, and children seated by the roadside drinking wine, cider, and beer, and, so far as one could see, there was no drunkenness; certainly none of the squalid, brutal, swinish sort. It may indeed be said that, in spite of light stimulants, drunkenness has of late years increased in France, especially among artisans and day laborers. If this be so, it comes to strengthen my view. For the main reason will doubtless be found in the increased prices of light wines, due to vine diseases and the like, which have driven the poorer classes to seek far more noxious beverages.

So, too, in Germany. Like every resident in that country, I have seen great crowds drinking much beer,

and, though I greatly dislike that sort of guzzling, I never saw anything of the beastly, crazy, drunken exhibitions which are so common on Independence Day and county-fair day in many American towns where total abstinence is loudly preached and ostensibly practised. Least of all do I admire the beer-swilling propensities of the German students, and still I must confess that I have never seen anything so wild, wicked, outrageous, and destructive to soul and body as the drinking of distilled liquors at bars which, in my student days, I saw among American students. But I make haste to say that within the last twenty or thirty years American students have improved immensely in this respect. Athletics and greater interest in study, caused by the substitution of the students' own aims and tastes for the old cast-iron curriculum, are doubtless the main reasons for this improvement.[12]

Yet, in spite of this redeeming thing, the fact remains that one of the greatest curses of American life is the dram-drinking of distilled liquors at bars; and one key of the whole misery is the American habit of "treating,''—a habit unknown in other countries. For example, in America, if Tom, Dick, and Harry happen to meet at a hotel, or in the street, to discuss politics or business, Tom invites Dick and Harry to drink with him, which, in accordance with the code existing among large classes of our fellow-citizens, Dick and Harry feel bound to do. After a little more talk Dick invites Harry and Tom to drink; they feel obliged to accept; and finally Harry invites Tom and Dick, with like result; so that these three men have poured down their throats several glasses of burning stimulants, perhaps in the morning, perhaps just before the midday meal, or at some other especially unsuitable time, with results more or less injurious to each of them, physically and morally.

The European, more sensible, takes with his dinner, as a rule, a glass or two of wine or beer, and is little, if

at all, the worse for it. If he ever takes any distilled liquor, he sips a very small glass of it after his dinner, to aid digestion.

It is my earnest conviction, based upon wide observation in my own country as well as in many others during about half a century, that the American theory and practice as regards the drink question are generally more pernicious than those of any other civilized nation. I am not now speaking of total abstinence—of that, more presently. But the best temperance workers among us that I know are the men who brew light, pure beer, and the vine-growers in California who raise and sell at a very low price wines pleasant and salutary, if any wines can be so.

As to those who have no self-restraint, beer and wine, like many other things, promote the "survival of the fittest,'' and are, like many other things, "fool-killers,'' aiding to free the next generation from men of vicious propensities and weak will.

I repeat it, the curse of American social life, among a very considerable class of our people, is "perpendicular drinking''—that is, the pouring down of glass after glass of distilled spirits, mostly adulterated, at all sorts of inopportune times, and largely under the system of "treating.''

The best cure for this, in my judgment, would be for States to authorize and local authorities to adopt the "Swedish system,'' which I found doing excellent service at Gothenburg in Sweden a few years since, and which I am sorry to see the fanatics there have recently wrecked. Under this plan the various towns allowed a company to open a certain number of clean, tidy drinking-places; obliged them to purchase pure liquors; forbade them, under penalties, to sell to any man who had already taken too much; made it also obligatory to sell something to eat at the same time with something to drink; and, best of all, restricted the profits of these establishments to a moderate percentage,—seven or eight per cent., if I rememeber

rightly,—all the surplus receipts going to public purposes, and especially to local charities. The main point was that the men appointed to dispense the drinks had no motive to sell adulterated drinks, or any more liquor than was consistent with the sobriety of the customer.

I may add that, in my opinion, the worst enemies of real temperance in America, as in other countries, have been the thoughtless screamers against intemperance, who have driven vast numbers of their fellow-citizens to drink in secret or at bars. Of course I shall have the honor of being railed at and denounced by every fanatic who reads these lines, but from my heart I believe them true.

I remember that some of these people bitterly attacked Governor Stanford of California for the endowment of Stanford University, in part, from the rent of his vineyards. People who had not a word to say against one theological seminary for accepting the Daniel Drew endowment, or against another for accepting the Jay Gould endowment, were horrified that the Stanford University should receive revenue from a vineyard. The vineyards of California, if their product were legally protected from adulteration, could be made one of the most potent influences against drunkenness that our country has seen. The California wines are practically the only pure wines accessible to Americans. They are so plentiful that there is no motive to adulterate them, and their use among those of us who are so unwise as to drink anything except water ought to be effectively advocated as supplanting the drinking of beer poisoned with strychnine, whisky poisoned with fusel-oil, and "French claret'' poisoned with salicylic acid and aniline.

The true way to supplant the "saloon'' and the barroom, as regards working-men who obey their social in-stincts by seeking something in the nature of a club, and therefore resorting to places where stimulants are sold, is to take the course so ably advocated by Bishop Potter: namely, to furnish places of refreshment and amusement which shall be free from all tendency to beastliness, and

which, with cheerful open fireplaces, games of various sorts, good coffee and tea, and, if necessary, light beer and wine, shall be more attractive than the "saloons'' and "dives'' which are doing our country such vast harm.

My advice to all men is to drink nothing but water. That is certainly the wisest way for nine men out of ten —and probably for all ten. Indeed, one reason why the great body of our people accomplish so much more in a given time than those of any other country, and why the average American working-man "catches on'' and "gits thar'' more certainly and quickly than a man of the same sort in any other country (and careful comparison between various other countries and our own has shown that this is the case), is that a much larger proportion of our people do not stupefy themselves with stimulants.

In what I have said above I have had in view the problem as it really stands: namely, the existence of a very large number of people who will have stimulants of some kind. In such cases common sense would seem to dictate that, in the case of those who persist in using distilled liquors, something ought to be done to substitute those which are pure for those which are absolutely poisonous and maddening; and, in the case of those who merely seek a mild stimulant, to substitute for distilled liquors light fermented beverages; and, in the case of those who seek merely recreation after toil, to substitute for beverages which contain alcohol, light beverages like coffee, tea, and chocolate.

This is a long digression, but liberavi animam meam, and now I return to my main subject.

The American commissioners were treated with great kindness by the French authorities. There were exceedingly interesting receptions by various ministers, and at these one met the men best worth knowing in France: the men famous in science, literature, and art, who redeem France from the disgrace heaped upon her by the wretched creatures who most noisily represent her through sensational newspapers.

Of the men who impressed me most was Henri Martin, the eminent historian. He discussed with me the history of France in a way which aroused many new trains of thought. Jules Simon, eminent both as a scholar and a statesman, did much for me. On one occasion he took me about Paris, showing me places of special interest connected with the more striking scenes of the Revolutionary period; on another, he went with me to the distribution of prizes at the French Academy—a most striking scene; and on still another he piloted me through his beautiful library, pointing out various volumes in which were embedded bullets which the communards had fired through his windows from the roof of the Madeleine just opposite.

Another interesting experience was a breakfast with the eminent chemist Sainte-Claire Deville, at which I met Pasteur, who afterward took me through his laboratories, where he was then making some of his most important experiments. In one part of his domain there were cages containing dogs, and on my asking about them he said that he was beginning a course of experiments bearing on the causes and cure of hydrophobia. Nothing could be more simple and modest than this announcement of one of the most fruitful investigations ever made.

Visits to various institutions of learning interested me much, among these a second visit to the Agricultural College at Grignon and the wonderful Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers, which gave me new ideas for the similar departments at Cornell, and a morning at the école Normale, where I saw altogether the best teaching of a Latin classic that I have ever known. As I heard Professor Desjardins discussing with his class one of Cicero's letters in the light of modern monuments in the Louvre and of recent archæological discoveries, I longed to be a boy again.

Among the statesmen whom I met at that time in France, a strong impression was made upon me by one who had played a leading part in the early days of Napoleon III, but who was at this time living in retirement, M. Drouyn de Lhuys. He had won distinction as minister of foreign

affairs, but, having retired from politics, had given himself up in his old age to various good enterprises, among these, to the great Reform School at Mettray. This he urged me to visit, and, although it was at a considerable distance from Paris, I took his advice, and was much interested in it. The school seemed to me well deserving thorough study by all especially interested in the problem of crime in our own country.

There is in France a system under which, when any young man is evidently going all wrong,—squandering his patrimony and bringing his family into disgrace,—a family council can be called, with power to place the wayward youth under restraint; and here, in one part of the Mettray establishment, were rooms in which such youths were detained in accordance with the requests of family councils. It appeared that some had derived benefit from these detentions, for there were shown me one or two letters from them: one, indeed, written by a young man on the bottom of a drawer, and intended for the eye of his successor in the apartment, which was the most contrite yet manly appeal I have ever read.

Another man of great eminence whom I met in those days was Thiers. I was taken by an old admirer of his to his famous house in the Place St. Georges, and there found him, in the midst of his devotees, receiving homage.

He said but little, and that little was commonplace; but I was not especially disappointed: my opinion of him was made up long before, and time has but confirmed it. The more I have considered his doings as minister or parliamentarian, and the more I have read his works, whether his political pamphlet known as the "History of the French Revolution,'' which did so much to arouse sterile civil struggles, or his "History of the Consulate and of the Empire,'' which did so much to revive the Napoleonic legend, or his speeches under the constitutional monarchy of Louis Philippe, under the Republic, and under the Second Empire, which did so much to promote confusion and

anarchy, the less I admire him. He seems to me eminently an architect of ruin.

It is true that when France was wallowing in the misery into which he and men like him had done so much to plunge her, he exerted himself wonderfully to accomplish her rescue; but when the history of that country during the last century shall be fairly written, his career, brilliant as it once appeared, will be admired by no thinking patriot.

I came to have far more respect for another statesman whom I then met—Duruy, the eminent historian of France and of Rome, who had labored so earnestly under the Second Empire, both as a historian and a minister of state, to develop a basis for rational liberty.

Seated next me at dinner, he made a remark which threw much light on one of the most serious faults of the French Republic. Said he, "Monsieur, I was minister of public instruction under the Empire for seven years; since my leaving that post six years have elapsed, and in that time I have had seven successors.''

On another occasion he discoursed with me about the special difficulties of France; and as I mentioned to him that I remembered his controversy with Cardinal de Bonnechose, in which the latter tried to drive him out of office because he did not fetter scientific teaching in the University of Paris, he spoke quite freely with me. Although not at all a radical, and evidently willing to act in concert with the church as far as possible, he gave me to understand that the demands made by ecclesiastics upon every French ministry were absolutely unendurable; that France never could yield to these demands; and that, sooner or later, a great break must come between the church and modern society. His prophecy now seems nearing fulfilment.

Among the various meetings which were held in connection with the exposition was a convention of literary men for the purpose of securing better international arrangements regarding copyright. Having been elected a member of this, I had the satisfaction of hearing most

interesting speeches from Victor Hugo, Tourgueneff, and Edmond About. The latter made the best speech of all, and by his exquisite wit and pleasing humor fully showed his right to the name which his enemies had given him— "the Voltaire of the nineteenth century.''

The proceedings of this convention closed with a banquet over which Victor Hugo presided; and of all the trying things in my life, perhaps the most so was the speech which I then attempted in French, with Victor Hugo looking at me.

There were also various educational congresses at the Sorbonne, in which the discussions interested me much; but sundry receptions at the French Academy were far more attractive. Of all the exquisite literary performances I have ever known, the speeches made on those oc-casions by M. Charles Blanc, M. Gaston Boissier, and the members who received them were the most entertaining. To see these witty Frenchmen attacking each other in the most pointed way, yet still observing all the forms of politeness, and even covering their adversaries with compliments, gives one new conceptions of human ingenuity. But whether it is calculated to increase respect for the main actors is another question.

The formal closing of the exposition was a brilliant pageant. Various inventors and exhibitors received gifts and decorations from the hand of the President of the Republic, and, among them, Dr. Barnard, Story, and myself were given officers' crosses of the Legion of Honor which none of us has ever thought of wearing; but, alas! my Swiss-American friend {1} who had pleaded so pathetically his heroic services in "Dasting de vines und peers'' for France did not receive even the chevalier's ribbon, and the expression of his disappointment was loud and long.

Nor was he the only disappointed visitor. It was my fortune one day at the American legation to observe one difficulty which at the western capitals of Europe has become very trying, and which may be mentioned to show

what an American representative has sometimes to meet. As I was sitting with our minister, Governor Noyes of Ohio, there was shown into the room a lady, very stately, and dressed in the height of fashion. It was soon evident that she was on the war-path. She said, "Mr. Minister, I have come to ask you why it is that I do not receive any invitations to balls and receptions given by the cabinet ministers?'' Governor Noyes answered very politely, "Mrs. —, we have placed your name on the list of those whom we would especially like to have invited, and have every hope that it will receive attention.'' She answered, "Why is it that you can do so much less than your predecessor did at the last exposition? Then I received a large number of invitations; Now I receive none.'' The minister answered, "I am very sorry indeed, madam; but there are perhaps twenty or thirty thousand Americans in Paris; the number of them invited on each occasion cannot exceed fifty or sixty; and the French authorities are just now giving preference to those who have come from the United States to take some special part in the exposition as commissioners or exhibitors.'' At this the lady was very indignant. She rose and said, "I will give you no more trouble, Mr. Minister; but I am going back to America, and shall tell Senator Conkling, who gave me my letter of introduction to you, that either he has very little influence with you, or you have very little influence with the French Government. Good morning!'' And she flounced out of the room.

This is simply an indication of what is perhaps the most vexatious plague which afflicts American representatives in the leading European capitals,—a multitude of people, more or less worthy, pressing to be presented at court or to be invited to official functions. The whole matter has a ridiculous look, and has been used by sundry demagogues as a text upon which to orate against the diplomatic service and to arouse popular prejudice against it. But I think that a patriotic American may well take the ground that while there is so much snobbery

shown by a certain sort of Americans abroad, it is not an unwise thing to have in each capital a man who in the intervals of his more important duties, can keep this struggling mass of folly from becoming a scandal and a byword throughout Europe. No one can know, until he has seen the inner workings of our diplomatic service, how much duty of this kind is quietly done by our representatives, and how many things are thus avoided which would tend to bring scorn upon our country and upon republican institutions.