THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
him by his nomination for the presidency should have obliged him to “put on dignity” among his neighbors. Those neighbors who, from the windows and the sidewalks on that hot afternoon, watched and cheered him as he walked by in the procession behind the brass band, may have regarded him, the future President, with a new feeling of reverential admiration, or awe; but he appeared before and among them entirely unconcerned, as if nothing had happened, and so he nodded to his acquaintances, as he recognized them in the crowd, with a: “How are you, Dan?” or “Glad to see you, Ned!” or “How d'ye do, Bill?” and so on-just as he had been accustomed to do. Arrived at the place of meeting, he declined to sit on the platform, but took a seat in the front row of the audience. He did not join in the applause which from time to time rewarded me, but occasionally he gave me a nod and a broad smile. When I had finished, a few voices called upon Mr. Lincoln for a speech, but he simply shook his head, and the crowd instantly respected the proprieties of the situation, some even shouting: “No, no!” at which he gratefully signified his assent. Then the brass band, and the committee, and the Wide-Awakes, in the same order in which we had come, escorted us back to his house, the multitude cheering tumultuously for “Lincoln and Hamlin,” or more endearingly for “Old Abe.”
A large part of my work, my specialty, consisted in addressing meetings of German-born voters in their and my native language. This took me into the States of Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York—not only into the large cities, but into small country towns and villages, and sometimes into remote agricultural districts, where I found my audiences in schoolhouses and even in roomy barns or in the open air; and these were the meetings that I enjoyed most of all. It was a genuine delight to me thus to meet my country-
[ 197 ]
