Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Two).djvu/175

 because the accusation impugned the unselfishness of my motives, and thus the integrity of my public conduct. The truth is, that being called into the service of the cause I believed in, so often—almost year after year—and being thus obliged to give to that service no end of my time and labor, and my own financial resources being very limited, I had sometimes necessarily to accept compensation for my expenses, traveling fare, hotel bills, and incidentals—for without such provision I could not have served at all. But there was hardly a campaign from which I did not return more or less considerably out of pocket, not seldom finding myself seriously embarrassed, as I had been obliged to neglect my own interests altogether for long periods of time. In fact, I had to serve my cause as a public speaker on the whole at a heavy sacrifice, not only in the way of outlay in excess of reimbursements, but, far more seriously, because the time and labor required for the preparation of speeches, involving much research and study, and the constant travel from meeting to meeting, made regular work in the law office impossible, and finally obliged me to abandon it altogether, much to my material injury and mental chagrin. It happened to me not infrequently that, when I came home from a political campaign, tired and longing for rest or quiet work, I found myself, in consequence of the long neglect of my affairs, obliged to replenish the exhausted bank account in the shortest possible time by setting out again on lecturing tours, which, as I had come to be much in demand by lyceum societies, were quite remunerative, but sometimes excessively fatiguing. And, as the irony of fate would have it, the fees I earned by lyceum lectures to make up for the sacrifices incurred in my political agitation, were used by my detractors as proof of their charge—that is to say, they falsely but perseveringly asserted that the remuneration I received for lyceum lectures I had