Note 192 — Chapter VII

A frequent and always welcome visitor at my father's house was this son of America—“the learned blacksmith,” as he was habitually called. He was one of the most interesting as well as most refreshingly unconventional of men, but was never offensively unconventional because he was one of “Nature's noblemen.” Sweet-tempered, gentle-mannered, and pure-minded, he won our regard—affection even—from the first. He could never have been guilty of uttering an unkind word to any one, not even to those who were lukewarm on the slavery question, who did not feel inspired to join the Peace Society, or who were languid in the cause of “ocean penny postage.” On the last-named subject he had, as an entire stranger, written to my father a long letter detailing his scheme, and urging the desirability of its adoption; and it was this letter which led to our making Elihu Burritt's acquaintance. He became a great friend of my elder sister, and maintained with her a many years' long correspondence. Once only do I remember seeing him angry, and then it was the righteous indignation which an honest man displays when confronted with a lie. It was when unto him had been attributed the authorship of my father's plan. He would have nothing to do with a fraudulent claim to which sundry other men have assented kindly enough, or have even, with unblushing effrontery, appropriated of their own accord. Elihu Burritt and Cardinal Mezzofanti were said to be the two greatest linguists of the mid-nineteenth century; and I know not how many languages and dialects each had mastered—the one great scholar a distinguished prince of the Roman Catholic Church, the other an American of obscure birth and an ex-blacksmith. Another trans-atlantic postal reformer, though one interested in the reform as regarded his own country rather than ours, was Mr Pliny Miles, who in outward appearance more closely resembled the typical American of Dickens's days than that of the present time. In his own land Mr Miles travelled far and wide, wrote much, spoke frequently, and crossed the Atlantic more than once to study the postal question here. He was an able man, and a good talker. I well remember his confident prophecy, some few years before the event, of a fratricidal war between the Northern and Southern States; how bitterly he deplored the coming strife; and how deeply impressed were all his hearers both with the matter and manner of his discourse. I believe he had “crossed the bar” before hostilities broke out.