JAMES ALEXANDER HENSHALL 
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE APOSTLE OF THE BLACK BASS. 
FATHER OF THE GRAYLING AND DEAN OF AMERICAN ANGLERS 
I HAD followed and practised the art 
of Guttenberg and Franklin for two 
years, when I feared that the confine- 
ment and leaning over the type cases 
was somewhat detrimental to my health ; 
accordingly, after due consideration, I 
reluctantly gave it up and returned to 
Baltimore, where I had been offered a 
position in the counting-house of a large 
mercantile firm. My new work was 
quite congenial, but not nearly so inter- 
esting as typography. 
Johnnie was delighted to see me back 
on the old stamping ground. He was 
an assistant bookkeeper in a house en- 
gaged in the West Indies trade. He had 
enlarged the circle of his friends, and 
among others, were the “Stuart boys.” 
They were four somewhat remarkable 
young men. Originally from Annapolis, 
they resided several years in Washing- 
ton City, where their father was engaged 
in one of the departments, and finally 
they drifted to Baltimore, where I first 
knew them. 
The Stuarts occupied a house on Gar- 
den street, presided over by a colored 
factotum who was cook and major domo. 
The house was the headquarters of a 
coterie of congenial young fellows who 
foregathered with the Stuart boys sev- 
eral nights a week. The oldest brother, 
John Nelson Stuart, was a provincial 
lecturer on electro-biology and mesmer- 
ism, now known as hypnotism. William 
Brewer Stuart, the balance-wheel of the 
family, was bookkeeper for Poole & 
Hunt, a large iron concern. Hem-y Wa- 
ters Stuart was a printer, and the young- 
est brother was a card writer. 
There were eight of us all told, from 
eighteen to twenty-two years of age, who 
were frequenters of the Stuart domicile, 
and among us we organized a dramatic 
club, a glee club and a minstrel club, 
which kept us pretty busy practising our 
various roles. We were said, by our 
friends, to have achieved considerable 
merit in the several clubs. The dramatic 
club eventually turned out two or three 
professional actors, one of whom, Henry 
Waters Stuart, became one of America’s 
best eccentric commedians under the 
stage name of “Stuart Robson.” Two 
more from the minstrel club became 
burnt cork professionals, one of whom. 
Nelson Sanderson, a son of the sheriff of 
Baltimore county, was afterward known 
for many years as “Nelse Sejonour” of 
Bryant’s Minstrels. 
Henry Waters Stuart, or Stuart Rob- 
son, as I may as well designate him, was 
bom in the same year as myself. When 
a lad he was a page in the U. S. Senate. 
One of his fellow pages was Arthur Pue 
Gorman who afterward became a U. S. 
Senator from Maryland. While a pa?e, 
Stuart Robson set up and printed a lit- 
tle four-page paper called The Joker, 
which circulated among the members 
SEVENTH PAPER 
of Congress. Stuart Robson was the 
heavy man, or leading man, of our dram- 
atic club, and aspired to melodrama and 
tragedy; his favorite character was 
Claude Melnotte in “The Lady of Lyons.’' 
He took things very seriously, for there 
seemed to be no humor in his composi- 
tion; I was the commedian of .the club. 
Old John Weaver, proprietor of the 
Walnut Street Theater of Philadelphia, 
came to Baltimore about that time, and 
Stuart applied for a position in his 
company, then on a provincial tour. 
“What can you play?” asked Weaver. 
“Juvenile business and melodrama,” 
replied Stuart. 
“Oh, no,” rejoined Weaver, “not with 
that voice.” 
That “voice” as many may remember, 
was somewhat peculiar. Weaver en- 
gaged him as second commedian, as it 
was called at that time, and Henry 
Waters Stuart as “Stuart Robson” made 
good. 
Shortly after this the three other 
brothers went to Shreveport, Louisiana, 
■ and engaged in the cotton business. 
When the civil war broke out all three 
enlisted in the Washington Artillery of 
New Orleans, a famous local organiza- 
tion, and all three were subsequently 
killed in action. 
I WAS sometimes sent on business trips 
by my firm to various southern cities. 
On one occasion I was sent to Nor- 
folk, Va., during an epidemic of yellow 
fever in that city and Poi'tsmouth across 
the bay. I took passage on the steamer 
Pocahontas. Among the passengers was 
an acquaintance, a young physician. Dr. 
Walters, Who had recently received his 
diploma. He had volunteered his serv- 
ices during the epidemic and was on his 
way to the afflicted cities. As I was to 
be in Norfolk about a week, I said I 
would be glad to render what assistance 
I could, as I intended to become a phy- 
sician some day, and had been reading 
anatomy and physiology for a year or 
two. During my stay in Norfolk I tried 
to make myself useful in various ways, 
mostly in the hospitals. The disease was 
very fatal, the mortality being more than 
four thousand in the two cities. Many 
of the dead were buried in long trenches 
for lack of time and scarcity of help. 
I became acquainted with a young na- 
val officer, an ensign, from Tennessee, 
who was on leave of absence in order 
to be with his fiancee, a young lady of 
the city, who had been stricken down 
with the dread disease end finally died 
a few days before I met him. He went 
to the cemetery every night to place 
flowers on her grave. The cemetery was 
several mi^cs from town, and thereafter 
I accompanied him. It was a pleasure 
to breathe the fresh air of the country 
after being subjected to the pestilential 
atmosphere of the city. I would sit on 
a tombstone and light a cigar while he 
visited the grave of his loved one. By 
the time he returned my cigar was fin- 
ished, and we walked back to town, si- 
lently, each busy with his own thoughts. 
I never saw him again after leaving 
Norfolk, but in time he rose to the rank 
of commander before he died. 
There were frequent fires at night 
during my sojourn in the city, caused by 
ignorant and superstitious people setting 
fire to houses where fever patients had 
died, with the view of burning out the 
disease. One night a hotel that was be- 
ing utilized as a hospital was burned 
in this way. Fortunately the patients 
were removed to a place of safety, and 
many of the mattresses and cots were 
stored, temporarily, in a vacant fire-en- 
gine house. 
The next night Dr. Walters and I 
were taking a stroll, and on passing 
this building we discovered smoke issu- 
ing through a wide crack where the 
double doors met. We threw open the 
doors, which were not locked, and as 
the Doctor ran for the nearest fire-en- 
gine I rushed into the room. The air 
blowing in through the open doors fan- 
ned the smoldering fire into a blaze. I 
began throwing the mattresses and cots 
about to extinguish the flames. The fire 
had apparently been smoldering for sev- 
eral hours in the beds saturated with 
the perspiration and emanations from 
fever-stricken patients, rendering the 
dense smoke exceedingly fetid and nau- 
seous, which I was compelled to breathe. 
I worked fast and furiously for awhile 
until I began to feel faint and dizzy and 
bewildered, with a feeling akin to that 
when I was smothered in the old oak 
chest of childhood daj’s. I suppose I 
became unconscious for a few moments, 
for I found myself on the floor, where 
the air was better. I began to look about 
me trying to locate the entrance. Then 
I saw a lighted lantern and crawled 
toward it. It was in the hand of a 
fireman, who with another one was drag- 
ging in a hose. I was helped to my feet 
and out into the open air where I found 
Walters, and feeling better, though a 
bit shaky, we went to our hotel. 
O N another occasion I was sent to 
Charleston, S. C., and when my 
business was finished the junior 
member of the firm took me out to see 
the sights of the town.. Passing by the 
market-house I was interested in the 
colored venders of fish, crabs, vegetables 
and fruits. But a matter of more in- 
terest was a flock of twenty or thirty 
buzzards perched on the ridge of the 
market-house roof. Buzzards were the 
Fcavangers in s'uthern cities. When any 
of the market-house contingent spied 
something in the street, cast aside from 
