Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Two).djvu/35

 toleration and of buoyant cheerfulness which made everybody feel comfortable and at home. When some years later I was, with many others, Mr. Cooke's guest at his country seat “Ogontz,” I saw him one morning in the large hall devoutly kneel down with his family and household to lead in prayer, and then, as soon as the prayer was over, jump up, clap his hands with boyish glee, and cry out in his most jovial tones: “Now let's be jolly!” There was a sort of rustic heartiness in his looks and his whole being which appeared quite genuine and endeared him much to his friends. It is generally recognized that, as a financier, he rendered very valuable service to the country during the Civil War, and I do not think anybody grudged him the fortune he gathered at the same time for himself. When, in 1873, he lost that fortune in consequence of his altogether too sanguine ventures in the Northern Pacific enterprise, and many others lost their money with him, he had much sympathy, and there was a widespread confidence that he would faithfully pay all his honest debts, which he did.

During our sojourn in Philadelphia our social intercourse was necessarily limited. But I availed myself of every opportunity of talking with people of various classes and of thus informing myself about their ways of thinking, their hopes and apprehensions, their prejudices and their sympathies. At the same time I industriously studied the political history and institutions of the country, and, as to current events and their significance, my newspaper reading soon went beyond the columns of the Ledger. The impressions I received were summed up in a letter which at that period I wrote to my friend, Miss Malwida von Meysenbug. I had long forgotten it when years afterwards it turned up in her “Memoirs of an Idealist,” an exceedingly interesting book which has so well held its place in literature that but recently, more than a quarter of