m, held him down by
what might be called brutal kindness, for I held his head down, while I
sat on his arm and throttled him _sans merci_--I avow it--and tore off in
haste his neckcloth (his neck was frightfully swelled), while Thomson
brought cold water from the "cooler," with which we bathed his face
freely, and chafed his pulse and forehead. Little by little he
recovered. The other passengers, as usual, did nothing, and a little old
naval officer, who had been fifty years in service (as Thomson told me),
simply kicked and screamed convulsively, "Take him away! take him away!"
The epileptic was George Christy, the original founder of the Christy
Minstrels. I can never think of this scene without exclaiming, "_Vive_
Thomson!" for he was the only man among us who displayed quiet
self-possession and _savoir faire_. As for me, my "old Injun" was up,
and I had "sailed in" for a fight by mere impulse. _Vive_ Thomson! _Bon
sang ne peut mentir_.

I went to Providence, where I was empowered to return to Cannelton to pay
Goshorn $5,000, and renew the leases on Elk River. I should have to
travel post to anticipate the Yankee. It was not concealed from me that
even if I succeeded, I had before me a very dangerous and difficult task.
But after what I had already gone through with I was ready for anything.
I was really developing rapidly a wild, reckless spirit--the "Injun" was
coming out of me. My old life and self had vanished like dreams. Only
now and then, in the forests or by torrents, did something like poetry
revisit me; _literature_ was dead in me. Only once did I, in a railway
train, compose the "Maiden mit nodings on." I bore it in my memory for
years before I wrote it out.

I arrived in Philadelphia. The next morning I was to rise early and fly
westward. No time to lose. Before I rose, my sister knocked at the door
and told us the awful news that President Lincoln had been murdered!

As I went to the station I saw men weeping in the streets, and everybody
in great grief, conversing with strangers, as if all had lost a common
relation. Everywhere utter misery! I arrived in Pittsburg. It was
raining, and the black pall of smoke which always clothes the town was
denser than ever, and the long black streamers which hung everywhere as
mourning made the whole place unutterably ghastly. In the trains nothing
but the murder was spoken of. There was a young man who had been in the
theatre and witnessed the m