208 WALL STREET AND THE WILDS 



muffled churning of the big paddle wheels. I 

 was sitting on the deck with William D. O'Con- 

 nor, beside the chair of Mrs. Henry Ward 

 Beecher, whose husband up to almost the last day 

 had hoped to be with us. O'Connor was a bril- 

 liant magazine writer and author, of the sixties, 

 but at this time in Government employ where 

 earlier he had been one of a group of choice 

 spirits, the like of which have seldom been as- 

 sembled. There were Walt Whitman, John 

 Burroughs, W. D. O'Connor, Edmund Clarence 

 Stedman, Thomas Harland, and A. B. Johnson, 

 all of whom I am proud to say are or have been 

 my friends. 



It was during war days in Washington that the 

 group held frequent meetings at the room of one 

 of their number and for a time it chanced that 

 Harland was in weekly receipt of proof sheets 

 of Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables," then in 

 process of publication. Each member of the 

 group took the sheets in turn, translating from 

 the French as he read, but losing his turn when 

 he faltered or made a mistake. It is said of Walt 



