Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Two).djvu/68

 Philadelphia, had already told me of his tantrums. Thus cautioned, I entered the log-house and found myself in a large room very scantily and roughly furnished. Hecker was sitting on a low couch covered with a buffalo skin.

“Hello,” he shouted in a husky voice. “Here you are at last. What in the world brought you into this accursed country?”

“Do you really think this country is so very bad?” I asked.

“Well—well, no!” he said. “It is not a bad country. It is good enough. But the devil take the chills and fever! Only look at me!”  Then he rose to his feet and continued denouncing the chills and fever in the most violent terms.

Indeed, as he stood there, a man little over forty, he presented a rather pitiable figure. As a young lawyer at Mannheim and deputy in the legislative chamber of Baden, he had been noted for the elegance of his apparel; now he wore a gray woolen shirt, baggy and shabby trousers, and a pair of old carpet slippers. Mrs. Hecker, who noticed my look of surprise whispered to me with a sigh, “Since we have lived here I cannot get him to make himself look decent.” I had always heard that Hecker was a handsome man. And he might have been, with his aquiline nose, his clear blue eyes, his finely chiseled features, and his blonde hair and beard. But now that face looked haggard, sallow, and weary, and his frame, once so elastic, was drooping and hardly able to bear its own weight.

“Ah,” said he, “you see what will become of an old revolutionist when he has to live on quinine pills.” Then again he opened the vast resources of his vituperative eloquence on the malarial fever, calling it no end of opprobrious names. Gradually he quieted down, and we began to discuss the political situation. His wrath kindled again when speaking of slavery and the iniquitous attempt of Douglas to permit slavery