_Around my fire an evening group to draw,
And tell of all I felt and all I saw._

Something like this occurs to me upon a reperusal of the unfinished memoirs
of my old and dear friend, Carl Schurz. Assuredly few men had better
warrant for writing about themselves or a livelier tale to tell than the
famous German-American, who died leaving that tale unfinished. No man in
life was more misunderstood and maligned. There was nothing either erratic
or conceited about Schurz, nor was he more pragmatic than is common to
the possessor of positive opinions along with the power to make their
expression effectual.

The actual facts of his public life do not anywhere show that his politics
shifted with his own interests. On the contrary, he was singularly
regardless of his interests where his convictions interposed. Though an
alien, and always an alien, he possessed none of the shifty traits of the
soldier of fortune. Never in his career did he crook the pregnant hinges of
the knee before any worldly throne of grace or flatter any mob that place
might follow fawning. His great talents had only to lend themselves to
party uses to get their full requital. He refused them equally to Grant in
the White House and the multitude in Missouri, going his own gait, which
could be called erratic only by the conventional, to whom regularity is
everything and individuality nothing.

Schurz was first of all and above all an orator. His achievements on the
platform and in the Senate were undeniable. He was unsurpassed in debate.
He had no need to exploit himself. The single chapter in his life on which
light was desirable was the military episode. The cruel and false saying,
"I fight mit Sigel und runs mit Schurz," obviously the offspring of