Memoirs of an editor : fifty years of American journalism / Edward P. Mitchell.

24

MEMOIRS OF AN EDITOR

of the sidewalk crowd, clutching a branch with one hand
and my dagger, through two thicknesses of cloth, with
the other. The band boomed by, then the escort and
the carriages; just as I have since seen numberless approaches of distinguished visitors to the place of municipal
welcome. The young Albert Edward, travelling in America under the style of Baron Renfrew, like his grandson
sixty and more years after, rode in a barouche and graciously dispensed smiles and bows in acknowledgment of
the plaudits. To my eight years his nineteen seemed to
make a full-grown monarch. Facing him, if memory
serves, was the Prince's mentor, the Duke of Newcastle,
bearded, of serious visage and wearing a plumed chapeau.
Of course I did not know, up in my tree, that, as Lord
Lyons wrote to Secretary Cass a few weeks later, Queen
Victoria had sent over her son and heir for the express
purpose of proving "to the President and citizens of the
United States the sincerity of those sentiments of esteem
and regard which her Majesty and all classes of her subjects entertain for the kindred race which occupies so distinguished a position in the sovereignty of nations."
New York outdid itself on that occasion; and yet, when
the official historian of the journey, Newcastle's private
secretary, came to publish his diary this sentiment was
revealed: "The Bostonians were anxious that their entertainment should be in better taste than that of the New
Yorkers, and they evidently succeeded."
To me the great event of the day was my own achievement in descending the tree accompanied by the hidden
blade without exciting the least suspicion on the part of
the police. Newcastle got the Garter; I lost my most
prized decoration.

Ignoble, so far as is known, was the end of the bowieknife's career. In a moment of indiscreet ostentation it
was displayed to Jim, our furnace-tender, after pledging
him in the privacy of the coal-chute not to inform either