in French, German, trigonometry, stenography, and engineering; there were pastimes by way of chess, the titular dignitaries with rank duly inscribed and made of beef bones, button checkers, and every known game of cards. Moot courts were now and then held, the sentences of which partook of a Draconian severity-one poor fellow was exiled from Libby for having rehearsed his experience at Delmonico's, but heed was given to his appeals to remain. Sometimes an aide on General Fremont's staff regaled us with an air upon his violin. We thought him an Ole Bull, and his instrument a Cremona. He was a Hungarian by birth, and his strains were weirdly startling. There were some three or four quartettes who supplied the vocal music on national holidays, under imputations of attempts at riot and acts of insubordination toward the Jeff. Davis Government. At nine o'clock, when the few candles of the short-six brand were lighted, the fun began in earnest, and woe to the man of peculiarities, or as we would now call him, the crank! An ever ready source of amusement was a lieutenant of Ohio, who was exceedingly irascible and consequently the victim of every practical joke. Every night he was stumbled over by a misdirected stranger, and his barrel which he kept for his dead line was toppled down! Then would he make the air blue! For his credit I had better not say how, and the whole floor would break out into a pandemonium of most vociferous laughter. A ventriloquial voice would ask, "Who is the meanest man in Libby?" The honors were usually divided or answers varied by caprice. "Who thinks himself the handsomest man in Libby?" "McFadden," would respond a tremendous chorus. "Who greases his mustache with ham fat?" "McFadden." Now McFadden was voted vain, and worst of all, good looking. For a long time after his release he hailed on all hotel registers as from Libby Prison, Richmond.

At length the tormenting rumors of exchange which daily floated around the prison merged into reality, and the fiat of "Doctors, fall in," went forth. Need I say that every interested person found his place and that the valuables taken from us were only of secondary consideration in our minds? We went out in the next batch after the chaplains, and antedated the escape of the one hundred and fifteen through the tunnel, or the "Great Yankee Wonder," as it was afterwards known, when for a short time on exhibition. Of this daring exploit I know nothing personally. The painstaking operations must have been going on for weeks, and of course during our stay. Yet so well kept was the dangerous secret that literally no one knew of it but the workmen, and they communicated the fact only to their most intimate comrades. Once in the open air we breathed more freely, but still had our misgivings that something might

occur to mar our good fortune-most of all lest letters under our shoulderstraps and in our metallic buttons might be discovered. But matters went on smoothly for us until, after a somewhat bewildering march along docks and a river-front, we at last found ourselves under the hatches of the Schultz, a spiteful, noisy little craft used for the exchange of prisoners. Commissioner Robert Ould of the Confederacy accompanied us to our. destination, but we saw nothing of him until the gang-plank connected us with the City of New York in Hampton Roads. He was dignified, suave, and courteous. He requested of us " John Brown," which was effectively rendered with a full chorus, as well as other army melodies. In the fullness of our joy, we really thought that he sympathized with us in our hilarity. He and Major Mulford talked over affairs in an official way, chatted with each other pleasantly, and then we learned that we were safe at last.

And with what grateful hearts did we once more behold that flag so lately scorned, mocked, derided, and execrated, now glorious with an effulgent halo! How brightly beamed its stars! How fervidly burned its crimson! How purely showed its white, and how bonny was its blue! To us, then, what an emblem of majesty it seemed. As the shipwrecked mariner drifting aimlessly upon an ungovernable raft greets a sail, as the invalid, wearied by the vigils of the night, hails the morn which exchanges bustle for monotony, as staggers the dazed culprit forth into liberty, so felt we when we clumsily clambered over into our boat as it rocked in the misty, moonlit sea. I would that the reader could have heard the jocund shout, the robust cheer, have seen the trickling tears of joy upon that night of nights, for were we not free? How some danced, how some turned somersaults, how some made a new theme of home, how some rolled out into space the marching soul of "John Brown's Body," how some proclaimed "the Year of Jubilee," and how some shouted their "Coming way down to "Father Abraham" in Washington! Can it be told how clamor murdered sleep? How all forgotten were wails, shrieks, and moans, "the quick prayers of sudden deaths," the gleaming blade, the crashing bullet, the screaming shell, for were we not beneath scudding clouds, splashing through the foaming waves of the Chesapeake? And were we not singing, as we may never so lustily sing again, that old, old melody of "Home, Home, Sweet Home?"

VOL. XVI.-No. 1.-7

John Shrady MD.

west.

AN OLD MORMON CITY IN MISSOURI

Old Far West, formerly a thriving and busy city, and the Mormon Mecca in Missouri, which is now reduced to meadows, pastures, and corn-fields, and known only in history, was founded in 1836, and for three years, up to autumn of 1839, occupied by the Mormons. It was a prosperous city, with a population at one time reaching into thousands. Substantial frame and log dwellings and a schoolhouse were built, and mills, shops, and stores were erected and opened, and there pervaded the settlement an air of industry and thrift never before known so far Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, and the recognized head of the Church of Latter Day Saints, came out from the Mormon colony of Kirtland, Ohio, and assumed control and government of this settlement early in the spring of 1838, but during the summer of that year disturbing quarrels arose among the Mormons themselves. These were first produced by the actions of the so-called prophet Smith and his immediate circle of counselors, who made pretended divine revelations an excuse and shield for many licentious and immoral acts of their own and their friends. These controversies waxed warmer, until finally two of the ablest men and most righteous citizens of the colony, David Whitmer and Oliver Cowdery, who were also two of the three "original witnesses to Smith's "Book of Mormon," and of the delivery to him of the sacred plates by an angel of God, withdrew from the settlement at Far West, and removed to Richmond, Ray County, Missouri, where Cowdery died in 1850, and where Whitmer resided until the time of his death in 1885, a leading and respected citizen of his county and State, and a lawyer of considerable prominence and ability, having, at different times, filled the positions of judge and district attorney very satisfactorily to his constituents.

The town site of Far West was one mile square, and located five miles northwest of Kingston, the present county seat of Caldwell County, and was situated in a magnificent prairie country, diversified and made more beautiful and habitable by scattering groves of fine oaks and walnuts near the streams and springs, and covered with wild flowers of every hue, loading the air with their fragrance. Game was abundant and various; the streams were filled with fine fish; the soil was fertile and the climate pleasant. Is it to be wondered that the poor deluded followers of the crafty Smith and his cunning associates, many of whom had come from the cold and unproductive countries of Northern Europe, thought they had indeed arrived in "the promised land of God." The city was laid out in blocks, three hur dred and ninety-six feet square, with broad streets and grand avenues, the four principal ones being one hundred and thirty-two feet in width, and all others nearly one hundred feet wide. A public square was laid out in the center of the town, and dedicated as the chosen spot on which to build a magnificent temple, which Smith claimed he was, by divine command, ordered to erect.

Work was begun on this temple in the summer of 1838, and an excavation was

made for a basement under the contemplated structure, one hundred and twenty feet due east and west by eighty feet north and south, and five feet deep. Between five and six hundred men were engaged in this work, which was all done by hand, the dirt being removed on wheelbarrows, and was accomplished in a few hours. The corner-stones of the temple were laid with solemn and impressive ceremonies on July 4, 1838, and the walls were built to a height of about two or two-and-ahalf feet above the level of the ground, but here, as at the building of the Tower of Babel, the work was interrupted by dissensions among the builders, and but little more was done-as, soon after this, in 1839, the Mormon war broke out, and Far West was depopulated and its inhabitants driven from the country on account of their immoral practices and petty depredations, by the indignant Missourians.

All that to-day remains of this temple, thought by the Latter-Day Saints to be the appointed work of the Deity, is a depression in the earth three or four feet deep, about the size of the original excavation, and some fragments of crumbling walls, all covered with "blue" grass, weeds, and loose stones. Only one building remains of this once, in the day in which it flourished, considerable city, with its hundreds of buildings. This house is said, by some of the older settlers here, to have been occupied by the prophet, Joseph Smith, and his first or true wife. It is situated on a slight eminence, fronts the South, is a one-and-a-half story log and frame building of four rooms, and has a capacious fire-place and chimney of red home-made bricks, at either end. This house is now occupied as a farm-house. Two or three of the buildings of Far West were hauled to Kingston after they were abandoned by the Mormons, and are still in use for shops and dwellings.

Notable among the residents of Far West at the time of which we write were John D. Lee, the leader of the brutal Mountain Meadow massacre in Utah several years ago; Mrs. Morgan, whose husband was, it is claimed, abducted and murdered by Masons, in 1826, for his so-called exposure of the mysteries of the craft to which he belonged; and Brigham Young, the ablest ruler this peculiar sect has ever had. A few of the inhabitants of Far West refused to go with the Mormons to Salt Lake, withdrew from the Church of Latter-Day Saints, and renounced its tenets and practises, and they and their descendants have since been honorable and wellesteemed citizens of Caldwell and neighboring counties in Missouri. The postoffice at Far West, discontinued about forty years ago, was recently re-established and named Kerr, in honor of the husband of a niece of David Whitmer, beforementioned, a prosperous farmer of the vicinity, and it is kept in a farm-house located on the old town site.

William A. Hood
Hood

KINGSTON, MISSOURI, June 11, 1886.

MINOR TOPICS

DANIEL WEBSTER

The March Century, 1885, contained an article, "Reminiscences of Daniel Webster," by Stephen M. Allen, the first president of the Webster Society. It is interesting, as is all that relates to the great statesman who filled so large a space in the minds of his contemporaries, and whose fame, unlike that of most public men, seems to increase with time. It is to be regretted, however, that Mr. Allen should have thought fit to mention as probable the story that Webster tore up his diploma on the day of graduation, saying he did not need it to make a man of himself. Connected with that is the story that he was an idle student in college. These stories have no evidence to support them, have often been denied, and, like the Washington hatchet story, are simply the creation of some one's imagination. I remember once while a Dartmouth student having a long talk about Webster's college days with the venerable Professor Shurtleff, who was in college with him, and who spoke of him as a hard student, and, I think, denied this very story about the diploma. All the probabilities are against it. He was a poor boy, and he would not have paid the required fee for the sake of tearing it up, and it was not characteristic of him to make such a foolish display. Curtis, in his admirable "Life of Webster," speaks of this story, and quotes the opinions of several of Webster's classmates in regard to it. Dr. Merrill, the best scholar of the class, and a tutor at Dartmouth for three years after graduation, had never heard of it till a quarter of a century afterward; and another classmate, Rev. Elihu Smith, was by his side when he received his diploma with a graceful bow, and would have known if he had destroyed it. This foolish story has no claim even to be called a tradition, and should not be dignified by repetition.

Professor Shurtleff told me he slept in the same room with Webster the first night the latter spent at Dartmouth, and he was a tall, spare, dark, awkward boy, dressed in homespun.

A native of the same State, though I never spoke with him, he was the object of my boyish admiration. When very young, listening one evening to the conversation of some guests at my father's fireside, who were discussing the trial of the White murderers, one said: "Mr. Webster is the smartest man in the United States." It struck me as a wonderful thing to be the smartest man in the country, and my curiosity was aroused to know all about him, and I read everything where his name was mentioned, and he became my hero. Though a boy, I attended the great Harrison Convention on Bunker Hill, September 10, 1840, mainly to see this man, and I well remember every feature of his as he was first pointed out to me. He presided at that convention which was called to order by Robert C. Winthrop,