rent expenditures. My successive applications to the editors of the Tribune, Times, and Herald resulted in nothing, although I saw them more than once. The sole encouragement I received was from the editor of the Evening Post, John Bigelow, afterwards Consul-General and Minister to France, but he only offered to pay me twenty dollars a letter for what I wrote.
I was very loath to give up my plan, and for weeks taxed my wits for means to raise the needed funds.[1] The only result was that, in the latter half of October, I found my self penniless and without any prospect of work in the great city, which was swarming with tens of thousands of idle men and women, the victims of the crisis. I was finally obliged to put up in a German boarding-house in Jersey City, and to appeal for help to a former female servant of my parents, whom I accidentally found to be living there. Her husband, whom I had also known in my youth, was a skilful journeyman stone-cutter, and had saved a little money from his earnings. These good people gladly provided for my wants, which did not exceed five dollars a week. In my subsequent prosperity I had the satisfaction of being able to manifest to them my grateful appreciation of their kindness.
I prepared a number of articles, both in German and in English, on various subjects, and every few days went to New York and visited the newspaper offices to find a market for them. But all through October I managed to sell only two German articles, for which I received ten dollars. While in a German office one day, I accidentally picked up the Reading (Pa.) Adler, the well-known principal paper of the Pennsylvania Germans in the eastern counties of the State, printed in the singular jargon spoken in those parts. Glancing over the advertising columns, I noticed quite a number of short advertisements for teachers in Berks and Bucks and Lebanon Counties. Being very much discour-
- ↑ One illusive opening was the Government's military expedition against the Mormons in the autumn of 1857.
