The Child's Book of American Biography Part 3

At Harvard College Aga.s.siz was made professor of natural history, and there is to-day at Cambridge a museum of zoology, the largest of its kind in the world, which Aga.s.siz founded and built. At his home in Cambridge the professor still kept strange pets, quite as he used to do when a boy. Visitors to his garden never knew when they might step on a live turtle, or when they might come suddenly upon an alligator, an eagle, or a timid rabbit.

The precious dream of going to Brazil came true when Louis Aga.s.siz was fifty years old. With a party of seventeen and his wife, he went on an exploring expedition to South America. It was a great adventure.

Aga.s.siz had been to many cold countries and had slept on glaciers night after night, with only a single blanket under him, but never in his life had he been in the tropics.

When Aga.s.siz arrived in South America, Don Pedro, the Emperor of Brazil, was glad to see the man who was known as a famous scientist and heaped all kinds of honors upon him. Better than all, he helped Aga.s.siz get into many out-of-the-way places.

If you want to know about a fish that has four eyes, about dragon-flies that are flaming crimson and green, and floating islands that are as large as a school playground, yet go sailing along like a s.h.i.+p, bearing birds, deer, and wild looking jaguars, read: _A Journey to Brazil_ by Professor and Mrs. Aga.s.siz.

When you have heard the story of all these strange things, you will agree that Louis Aga.s.siz did certainly know how to keep his eyes open.

DOROTHEA LYNDE DIX

Doctor Elisha Dix of Orange Court, Boston, was never happier than when his pet grandchild, little Dorothea Dix, came to visit his wife and himself. Every morning he had to drive about the city, in his old-fas.h.i.+oned chaise, to see how the sick people were getting along, and he did love to have Dorothea sitting beside him, her tongue going, as he used to declare "like a trip-hammer." She was a wide-awake, quick-motioned creature and said such droll things that the doctor used to shout with laughter, until the dappled gray horse which he drove sometimes stopped short and looked round at the two in the chaise as if to say: "Whatever in the world does all this mean?"

But when the time drew near for Dorothea to go back home, she always looked sober enough. One day she burst out: "Oh, Grandpa, I almost _hate_ tracts!"

Doctor Dix glanced down at her in his kind way and answered: "I don't know as I blame you, Child!"

You see, Joseph Dix, Dorothea's father, was a strange man. He had fine chances to make money because the doctor had bought one big lot of land after another and had to hire agents to look after these farms and forests. Naturally he sent his own son to the pleasantest places, but the only thing Joseph Dix, who was very religious in the gloomiest sort of a way, really wanted to do, was to repeat hymns and write tracts. To publish these dismal booklets, he used nearly all the money he earned, so that the family had small rations of food, cheap clothing, and no holidays.

Besides having to live in such sorry fas.h.i.+on, the whole household were forced to st.i.tch and paste these tracts together. Year after year Mrs.

Dix, Dorothea, and her two brothers sat in the house, doing this tiresome work. No matter whether, as agent, Mr. Dix was sent to Maine, New Hamps.h.i.+re, Vermont, or Ma.s.sachusetts; no matter whether their playmates in the neighborhood were berrying, skating, or picnicking; no matter how the birds sang, the brooks sparkled, the nuts and fruit ripened; the wife and children of Joseph Dix had no outdoor pleasures, no, they just bent over those old tracts, pasting and sewing till they fairly ached.

When Dorothea was twelve, she decided to stand such a life no longer.

Fortunately the family was then living in Worcester, near Boston, and it did not cost much to get there. Doctor Dix was dead, but Dorothea ran away to her grandmother, who still lived at Orange Court (now it is called Dix Place), and although Madam Dix was very strict, life was better there than with the tract-maker.

At Orange Court, Dorothea was allowed no time to play. She was taught to sew and cook and knit and was sometimes punished if the tasks were not well done. "Poor thing," she said in after life, "I never had any childhood!" But she went to school and was so quick at her lessons that in two years she went back to Worcester and opened a school for little children. She was only fourteen and rather small for her age, so she put on long dresses and piled her hair on top of her head with a high comb. I think people never guessed how young she was. Anyway, she proved a good teacher, and the children loved her and never disobeyed her.

After keeping this school for a year, she studied again in Boston until she was nineteen. Then she not only taught a day and boarding-school in that city, but looked after her brothers and opened another school for poor children whose parents could not afford to pay for their lessons.

She took care of her grandmother's house, too. While every one was wondering how one young girl could do so much, she made them open their eyes still wider by writing three or four books.

By and by her health broke down, and she began to think that she could never work any more, but after a long rest in England she came back to America and did something far greater than teaching or writing--she went through the whole country making prisons, jails, and asylums more comfortable. Up to the time of Dorothea Dix's interest, no one had seemed to bother his head about prisoners and insane people. Any kind of a place that had a lock and key was good enough for such to sleep in.

And what did it matter if a wicked man or a crazy man _was_ cold or hungry? But it mattered very much to Dorothea Dix that human beings were being ill-treated, and she meant to start a reform. She talked with senators, governors, and presidents. She visited the places in each State where prisoners, the poor, and the crazy were shut up. She talked kindly to these shut-ins, and she talked wrathfully to the men who ill-treated them. She made speeches before legislatures; she wrote articles for the papers, and begged money from millionaires to build healthy almshouses and asylums. This was seventy years ago, when traveling was slow and dangerous in the west and south. She had so many delays on account of stage-coaches breaking down on rough or muddy roads that finally she made a practice of carrying with her an outfit of hammer, wrench, nails, screws, a coil of stout rope, and straps of strong leather. Some of the western rivers had to be forded, and many times she nearly lost her life. Once, when riding in a stage-coach in Michigan, a robber sprang out of a dark place in the forest through which they were pa.s.sing and demanded her purse. She did not scream or faint. She asked him if he was not ashamed to molest a woman who was going through the country to help prisoners. She told him if he was really poor, she would give him some money. And what do you think?

Before she finished speaking, the robber recognized her voice. He had heard her talk to the prisoners when he was a convict in a Philadelphia prison! He begged her to go on her way in peace.

For twelve years Miss Dix went through the United States in the interests of the deaf and dumb, the blind, and the insane. Then she went to Europe to rest. But she found the same suffering there as here. In no time she was busy again. She tried to get audience with the Pope in Rome to beg him to stop some prison cruelties but was always put off. Any one else would have given up, but Dorothea Dix always carried her point.

One day she met the Pope's carriage in the street. She stopped it, and as she knew no Italian, began talking fast to him in _Latin_. She was so earnest and sensible that he gave her everything she asked for.

It was not long after her return to America before the Civil War broke out. She went straight to Was.h.i.+ngton and offered to nurse the soldiers without pay. As she was appointed superintendent, she had all the nurses under her rule. She hired houses to keep supplies in, she bought an ambulance, she gave her time, strength, and fortune to her country. In the whole four years of the Civil War, Dorothea Dix never took a holiday. She was so interested in her work that often she forgot to eat her meals until reminded of them.

After this war was over, the Secretary of War, Honorable Edwin M.

Stanton, asked her how the nation could show its grat.i.tude to her for the grand work she had done. She told him she would like a flag. Two very beautiful ones were given her, made with special printed tributes on them. In her will Miss Dix left these flags to Harvard College. They hang over the doors of Memorial Hall.

n.o.body ever felt sorry that Dorothea ran away from those tiresome tracts. For probably all the tracts ever written by Joseph Dix never did as much good as a single day's work of his daughter, among the wounded soldiers. And as for her reforms--they will go on forever. She has been called the most useful woman of America. That is a great name to earn.

ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT

Once upon a time, at Point Pleasant, a small town on the Ohio River, there lived a young couple who could not decide how to name their first baby. He was a darling child, and as the weeks went by, and he grew prettier every minute, it was harder and harder to think of a name good enough for him.

Finally Jesse Grant, the father, told his wife, Hannah, he thought it would be a good plan to ask the grandparents' advice. So off they rode from their little cottage, carrying the baby with them.

But at grandpa's it was even worse. In that house there were four people besides themselves to suit. At last, the father, mother, grandfather, grandmother, and the two aunts each wrote a favorite name on a bit of paper. These slips of paper were all put into grandpa's tall, silk hat which was placed on the spindle-legged table. "Now," said the father to one of the aunts, "draw from the hat a slip of paper, and whatever name is written on that slip shall be the name of my son."

The slip she drew had the name "Ulysses" on it.

"Well," murmured the grandfather, "our dear child is named for a great soldier of the olden days. But I wanted him to be called Hiram, who was a good king in Bible times."

Then Hannah Grant, who could not bear to have him disappointed, answered: "Let him have both names!" So the baby was christened Hiram Ulysses Grant.

While Ulysses was still a baby, his parents moved to Georgetown, Ohio.

There his father built a nice, new, brick house and managed a big farm, besides his regular work of tanning leather. As Ulysses got old enough to help at any kind of work, it was plain he would never be a tanner. He hated the smell of leather. But he was perfectly happy on the farm. He liked best of all to be around the horses, and before he was six years old he rode horseback as well as any man in Georgetown. When he was seven, it was part of his work to drive the span of horses in a heavy team that carried the cord-wood from the wood-lot to the house and shop.

He must have been a strong boy, for at the age of eleven he used to hold the plow when his father wanted to break up new land, and it makes the arms and back ache to hold a heavy plow! He was patient with all animals and knew just how to manage them. His father and all the neighbors had Ulysses break their colts.

In the winters Ulysses went to school, but he did not care for it as much as he did for outdoor life and work with his hands. Still he usually had his lessons and was decidedly bright in arithmetic. Because he was not a s.h.i.+rk and always told the truth, his father was in the habit of saying, after the farm ch.o.r.es were done: "Now, Ulysses, you can take the horse and carriage and go where you like. I know I can trust you."

When he was only twelve, his father began sending him seventy or eighty miles away from home, on business errands. These trips would take him two days. Sometimes he went alone, and sometimes he took one of his chums with him. Talking so much with grown men gave him an old manner, and as his judgment was pretty good he was called by merchants a "sharp one." He would have been contented to jaunt about the country, trading and colt-breaking, all his life, but his father decided he ought to have military training and obtained for him an appointment at West Point (the United States' school for training soldiers that was started by George Was.h.i.+ngton) without Ulysses knowing a thing about it. Now Ulysses did not have the least desire to be a soldier and did not want to go to this school one bit, but he had always obeyed his father, and started on a fifteen days' journey from Ohio without any more talk than the simple statement: "I don't want to go, but if you say so, I suppose I must."

He found, when he reached the school, that his name had been changed. Up to this time his initials had spelled HUG, but the senator who sent young Grant's appointment papers to Was.h.i.+ngton had forgotten Ulysses'

middle name. He wrote his full name as Ulysses Simpson Grant, and as it would make much trouble to have it changed at Congress, Ulysses let it stand that way. So instead of being called H-U-G Grant (as he had been by his mates at home) the West Point boys, to tease him, caught up the new initials and shouted "Uncle Sam" Grant, or "United States"

Grant--and sometimes "Useless" Grant.

But the Ohio boy was good-natured and only laughed at them. He was a cool, slow-moving chap, well-behaved, and was never known to say a profane word in his life. At this school there was plenty of chance to prove his skill with horses. Ulysses was never happier than when he started off for the riding-hall with his spurs clanking on the ground and his great cavalry sword dangling by his side. Once, mounted on a big sorrel horse, and before a visiting "Board of Directors," he made the highest jump that had ever been known at West Point. He was as modest as could be about this jump, but the other cadets (as the pupils were called) bragged about it till they were hoa.r.s.e.

After his graduation, Grant, with his regiment, was sent to the Mexican border. In the battle of Palo Alto he had his first taste of war. Being truthful, he confessed afterwards that when he heard the booming of the big guns, he was frightened almost to pieces. But he had never been known to s.h.i.+rk, and he not only rode into the powder and smoke that day, but for two years proved so brave and calm in danger that he was promoted several times. But he did not like fighting. He was sure of that.

At the end of the Mexican War, Ulysses married a girl from St. Louis, named Julia Dent, and she went to live, as soldiers' wives do, in whatever military post to which he happened to be sent. First the regiment was stationed at Lake Ontario, then at Detroit, and then, dear me! it was ordered to California!

There were no railroads in those days. People had to go three thousand miles on horseback or in slow, lumbering wagons. This took months and was both tiresome and dangerous. Every little while there would be a deep river to ford, or some wicked Indians skulking round, or a wild beast threatening. The officers decided to take their regiments to California by water. This would be a hard trip but a safer one.

It was lucky that Mrs. Grant and the babies stayed behind with the grandparents, for besides the weariness of the long journey, there was scarcity of food; a terrible cholera plague broke out, and Ulysses Grant worked night and day. He had to keep his soldiers fed, watch out for the Indians, and nurse the sick people.

Well, after eleven years of army life, Grant decided to resign from the service. He thought war was cruel; he wanted to be with his wife and children; and a soldier got such small pay that he wondered how he was ever going to be able to educate the children. Farming would be better than fighting, he said.

He was welcomed home with great joy. His wife owned a bit of land, and Grant built a log cabin on it. He planted crops, cut wood, kept horses and cows, and worked from sunrise till dark. But the land was so poor that he named the place Hardscrabble. Even with no money and hard work, the Grants were happy until the climate gave Ulysses a fever; then they left Missouri country life and moved into the city of St. Louis.

In this city Grant tried his hand at selling houses, laying out streets, and working in the custom-house; but something went wrong in every place he got. He had to move into poorer houses, he had to borrow money, and finally he walked the streets trying to find some new kind of work.

n.o.body would hire him. The men said he was a failure. Friends of the Dent family shook their heads as they whispered: "Poor Julia, she didn't get much of a husband, did she?"

Then he went back to Galena, Illinois, and was a clerk in his brother's store, earning about what any fifteen-year-old boy gets to-day. He worked quietly in the store all day, stayed at home evenings, and was called a very "commonplace man." He was bitterly discouraged, I tell you, that he could not get ahead in the world. And his father's pride was hurt to think that his son who had appeared so smart at twelve could not, as a grown man, take care of his own family. But Julia Dent Grant was sweet and kind. She kept telling him that he would have better luck pretty soon.