Marse Henry | Page 2

Ochiltree, Senator Allison and
General Schenck
Chapter the
Twenty-Seventh
The Profession of Journalism--Newspapers and Editors in
America--Bennett, Greeley and Raymond--Forney and Dana--The
Education of a Journalist
Chapter the
Twenty-Eighth
Bullies and Braggarts--Some Kentucky Illustrations--The Old Galt
House--The Throckmortons--A Famous Sugeon--"Old Hell's Delight"
Chapter the
Twenty-Ninth
About Political Conventions, State and National--"Old Ben
Butler"--His Appearance as a Trouble-Maker in the Democratic
National Convention of 1892--Tarifa and the Tariff--Spain as a
Frightful Example
Chapter the
Thirtieth
The Makers of the Republic--Lincoln, Jefferson, Clay and

Webster--The Proposed League of Nations--The Wilsonian
Incertitude--The "New Freedom"
Chapter the
Thirty-First
The Age of Miracles--A Story of Franklin Pierce--Simon Suggs Billy
Sunday--Jefferson Davis and Aaron Burr--Certain Constitutional
Shortcomings
Chapter the
Thirty-Second
A War Episode--I Meet my Fater--I Marry and Make a Home--The Ups
and Downs of Life Lead to a Happy Old Age

Illustrations

Henry Watterson (About 1908)
Henry Clay--Painted at Ashland by Dodge for The Hon. Andrew Ewing
of Tennessee-The Original Hangs in Mr. Watterson's Library at
"Mansfield"
W. P. Hardee, Lieutenant General C.S.A.
John Bell of Tennessee--In 1860 Presidential Candidate "Union
Party"--"Bell and Everett" Ticket
Artemus Ward
General Leonidas Polk--Lieutenant General C.S.A. Killed in Georgia,
June 14, 1864--P. E. Bishop of Louisiana

Mr. Watterson's Editorial Staff in 1868 When the Three Daily
Newspapers of Louisville Were United into the Courier-Journal. Mr.
George D. Prentice and Mr. Watterson Are in the Center
Abraham Lincoln in 1861. From a Photograph by M. B. Brady
Mrs. Lincoln in 1861
Henry Watterson--Fifty Years Ago
Henry Woodfire Grady--One of Mr. Watterson's "Boys"
Mr. Watterson's Library at "Mansfield"
A Corner of "Mansfield"--Home of Mr. Watterson
Henry Watterson (Photograph Taken in Florida)
Henry Watterson. From a painting by Louis Mark in the Manhattan
Club, New York

"MARSE HENRY"
Chapter the
First
I Am Born and Begin to Take Notice--John Quincy Adams and
Andrew Jackson--James K. Polk and Franklin Pierce--Jack Dade and
"Beau Hickman"--Old Times in Washington

I
I am asked to jot down a few autobiographic odds and ends from such
data of record and memory as I may retain. I have been something of a
student of life; an observer of men and women and affairs; an appraiser

of their character, their conduct, and, on occasion, of their motives.
Thus, a kind of instinct, which bred a tendency and grew to a habit, has
led me into many and diverse companies, the lowest not always the
meanest.
Circumstance has rather favored than hindered this bent. I was born in a
party camp and grew to manhood on a political battlefield. I have lived
through stirring times and in the thick of events. In a vein colloquial
and reminiscential, not ambitious, let me recall some impressions
which these have left upon the mind of one who long ago reached and
turned the corner of the Scriptural limitation; who, approaching
fourscore, does not yet feel painfully the frost of age beneath the ravage
of time's defacing waves. Assuredly they have not obliterated his sense
either of vision or vista. Mindful of the adjuration of Burns,
Keep something to yourself, Ye scarcely tell to ony,
I shall yet hold little in reserve, having no state secrets or mysteries of
the soul to reveal.
It is not my purpose to be or to seem oracular. I shall not write after the
manner of Rousseau, whose Confessions had been better honored in the
breach than the observance, and in any event whose sincerity will bear
question; nor have I tales to tell after the manner of Paul Barras, whose
Memoirs have earned him an immortality of infamy. Neither shall I
emulate the grandiose volubility and self-complacent posing of
Metternich and Talleyrand, whose pretentious volumes rest for the
most part unopened upon dusty shelves. I aspire to none of the honors
of the historian. It shall be my aim as far as may be to avoid the
garrulity of the raconteur and to restrain the exaggerations of the ego.
But neither fear of the charge of self-exploitation nor the specter of a
modesty oft too obtrusive to be real shall deter me from a proper
freedom of narration, where, though in the main but a humble
chronicler, I must needs appear upon the scene and speak of myself; for
I at least have not always been a dummy and have sometimes in a way
helped to make history.
In my early life--as it were, my salad days--I aspired to becoming what

old Simon Cameron called "one of those damned literary fellows" and
Thomas Carlyle less profanely described as "a leeterary celeebrity."
But some malign fate always sat upon my ambitions in this regard. It
was easy to become The National Gambler in Nast's cartoons, and yet
easier The National Drunkard through the medium of the everlasting
mint-julep joke; but the phantom of the laurel crown would never