The battle-steed that the beau sabreur loved perhaps better than any other of the many that he owned was Dandy, ridden by him on most of his Indian campaigns. He was purchased in Kansas after the war, and his story has been well told by Mrs. Custer in "Following the Guidon." The charger on which Custer appeared at the head of one-half of the Seventh United States Cavalry in his last battle at Little Big Horn, June 25, 1876, was a Kentucky thoroughbred sorrel called "Vic."

Comanche, a powerful gray horse, nearly sixteen hands, the only living thing that escaped the massacre in the Little Big Horn when Custer and his command were annihilated by the Sioux, died at Fort Riley, Kansas, November 9, 1891. He was more than thirty years old, and for nearly twothirds of that period he was on the retired list of the United States Army, drawing a pension. Comanche was the charger of Captain M. W. Keogh, who was killed by the side of his gallant commander in the "Last Rally." When found, Comanche was many miles distant from the battlefield and nearly dead from loss of blood, flowing from seven wounds. Major Reno's command cared for him as if he had been human, and after his recovery he accompanied the survivors of the Seventh Cavalry to various posts, being finally transferred to Fort Riley, Kansas, where he died of old age. Comanche was daily saddled and bridled and led out for inspection, but he never suffered the indignity of serving in the ranks. Captain Keogh,

General Orders,

No. 7.

1 Headquarters Seventh U. S. Cavalry, Fort A. Lincoln, D. T., April 10, 1879.

L-The horse known as "Comanche." being the only survivor or living representative of the bloody tragedy of the Little Big Horn, June 25, 1876, his kind treatment and comfort should be a matter of pride and solicitude on the part of every member of the Seventh Cavalry, to the end that his life may be prolonged to the utmost limit. Wounded and scarred as he is, his very existence speaks, in terms more eloquent than words, of the desperate struggle against overwhelming numbers, of the hopeless conflict, and of the heroic manner in which all went down on that tatal day.

-The commanding officer of Company I will see that a special and comfortable stall is fitted up for him, and he will not be ridden by any person whatever, under any circumstances, nor will he be put to any kind of work. Il-Hereafter, upon all occasions of ceremony, (of mounted regimental formation), "Comanche," saddled, bridled, draped in mourning, and led by a mounted trooper of Company 1, will be paraded with the regiment. By command of Brevet Major-General S. D. STURGIS, ERNEST A. GARLINGTON,

1st Lieut. and Adjutant Seventh Cavalry.

commanding Troop I, was the last man that ever mounted the interesting and historic old war-horse. Comanche, living and dead, was much sought after by enterprising showmen, but, to the credit of our Government be it said, unsuccessfully. He was skillfully mounted by the orders of the War Department, and was among the most interesting exhibits at the Chicago Columbian Exposition of 1893. Several thousand Sioux Indians celebrated the twentieth anniversary of the massacre of which Comanche was the sole survivor by various fantastic dances and ceremonies incident to their ancient traditions.

General Longstreet, alluding to the exaggerated number of horses said to have been killed under several of the most celebrated cavalry commanders engaged in the American Civil War, in a letter to the author of this article, dated September 22, writes: Referring to seventeen horses killed in battle under one rider reminds me of Mr. Greeley's visit to Texas just before he became a candidate for President of the United States in 1872. While passing through New Orleans I called to pay my respects. After leaving, on my return to my office, I met Major Thomas P. Ochiltree, who inquired if I was acquainted with Mr. Greeley, and upon learning that I was and had just seen him, requested me to return and introduce him. During the interview the Major was asked how many bushels of corn to the acre were grown in Texas, to which he promptly replied, 'Five hundred!' When we left, I said to Ochiltree: I am so much obliged by your reply to Mr. Greeley about the corn product of Texas. I was apprehensive, when the question was asked, that you might answer a thousand bushels !' The seventeen horses killed in battle can perhaps be accounted for when we reflect that the commander knew little of the power or importance of organization, and that in going into the cavalry fights his unorganized forces may have shot his horses instead of the enemy. If Major Ochiltree were writing for the cavalry chief (Forrest), I doubt if he would ask credit for seventeen horses killed."

THE GLADSTONE ARMS

plate

CHAPTER I."THE GLEDSTANES" I think I may take it for granted that Mr. Gladstone is the greatest

English statesman who has appeared during the reign From Mr. Gladstone's First Book of Queen Victoria. This, indeed, seems to me a statement of fact and not a subject for criticism. We may all have our different opinions as to the policy involved at this time or that in the statesmanship of Mr. Gladstone. Some of us may admire him more in his earlier days, some of us in his later, or even his latest. He may be charged with inconsistency a charge which has naturally to be made against any great statesman, for the essence of statesmanship consists in the recognition of imminent tendencies and actual facts. Nobody can possibly be called a statesman who starts in life with a pack of political nostrums which he proposes to apply inveterately to the cure of every constitutional malady in the State. A mind like that of Mr. Gladstone inexorably compelled to go on studying the changing conditions of things, and is absolutely prohibited from applying remorselessly the remedies of the day before yesterday to the troubles of to-day. Many years ago John Bright said to me that Gladstone was "always struggling towards the light." Such might indeed be the statement of Gladstone's whole career. He has been "ever a

fighter," like Robert Browning's heroever struggling towards the light. propose to tell, as best I can, the story of his rich and noble life. Of course I can tell it only from the outsider's point of view; but I may perhaps say in excuse of my enterprise that I have followed and studied with the deepest interest, since I came to know anything of public affairs, the career of Mr. Gladstone that I sat in the House of Commons with him for many years, and that I was fortunate enough to have much Copyright, 1896, by The Outlook Company.

interchange of ideas with him—and I may perhaps say I was admitted to his friendship. William Ewart Gladstone is an Englishman only by birth. He was born on the 29th of December, 1809, in Rodney Street, Liverpool, one of the chief residential streets of the city-a street which was, and still is, much occupied by leading merchants, barristers, and physicians. But Mr. Gladstone's family came from Scotland. Many generations ago the family bore the name of Gledstane. My friend Mr. George W. E. Russell, in his monograph on Gladstone, which belongs to the series called "The Prime Ministers of Queen Victoria," a very delightful little book, explains the meaning of the name. The family had had their abode from very early times in Lanarkshire. "The derivation of the name," says Mr. Russell, "is obvious enough to any one who has seen the spot. Gled is a hawk, and that fierce and beautiful bird would have found its natural home among the stanes, or rocks, of the craggy moorlands which surround the fortalice of Gledstanes." "As far back as 1296," Mr. Russell tells us, "Herbert De Gledestane figures in the Ragman Roll as one of the lairds who swore fealty to Edward I." By degrees the family estates became less and less, and at last became practically nothing at all. The latest surviving son of the family removed into a neighboring town and set up in business as a maltster. By the time this man's grandson had been born the family name had been changed into Gladstones. Yet a little later and it became that which we all know as one of the most illustrious names in English history-Gladstone. By something like an accident, John Gladstone, then the eldest son of the house, having been sent to Liverpool on business, attracted the attention of a leading corn merchant of the town, and by his advice settled there for good. He became one of the great merchant princes of Liverpool, a member of Parliament, and a baronet. He was a pure Lowland Scotchman, and he married a Highland Scotch woman. The pair had six children, and the third son was William

61

THOMAS GLADSTONE Mr. Gladstone's Grandfather

Ewart Gladstone. John Gladstone was a man of great ability and energy-a man to make his way through any difficulties and to win the honor and respect of any community. In the public and political sense he stood in somewhat the same relationship towards his son William Ewart Gladstone that the first Sir Robert Peel occupied with regard to his son, the great Sir Robert Peel. One of William Gladstone's elder brothers I remember well in Liverpool, where as a very young man I spent several years. This brother, Mr. Robertson Gladstone, was a man of singular energy and force of character, of genuine ability both in politics and finance, a powerful and impressive speaker, a sort of rough-hewn model for his younger and much greater brother. He

was a man of somewhat uncouth appearance and eccentric ways. He was about six feet seven inches in stature, and people turned their heads to look after him in the streets of London, although, of course, in his native Liverpool he was too well known to be stared at. He had, as I have said, eccentric ways, but he had no ways that were ignoble or unmanly. He was straightforward a politician as ever lived. He had begun life as a Tory, but he gradually became a Liberal, and, indeed, an

as

ing in our time, he would be a powerful and uncompromising opponent of Jingoism. It was the common belief in Liverpool, and probably is the common belief there still, that Robertson Gladstone assisted his brother William in the preparation of his budgets when William was again and again Chancellor of the Exchequer. He was eloquent in a strong, unshapely sort of way, with a half-poetic gleam of feeling glancing every now and then through his speeches. The eldest brother, Sir Thomas Gladstone, passed through life without advancing from his old-world politics, and made no particular mark upon his time. I have often thought that nature resolved to make a decided advance in the family history by the creation of Robertson Gladstone, and that, not yet quite satisfied with her work, she tried again and gave William Ewart Gladstone to the world.

Sir John Gladstone, the father, was one of those men who, like his illustrious son, seem destined never to grow old. There is an interesting description given of his ways with his children which may perhaps help to account for the extraordinary aptitude for debate of William Ewart Gladstone. One of his friends has told us that nothing was ever taken for granted between Sir John Gladstone and his sons. He started and kept alive a constant succession of arguments on small topics and on large. His family circle appears to have been what the King of Navarre in Shakespeare's play says his court shall be "a little Academe." Every lad was put on his mettle to defend his own case or to damage the case of another. It was all done in the most perfect good humor and with the full and unflagging enjoyment of those who took part in it. It must have been capital preparation for the Oxford Union and for the debates in the House of Commons. Sir John Gladstone was a great friend and admirer of George Canning. Young William Gladstone was sent to begin his education at the vicarage of Seaforth, a place in the neighborhood of Liverpool. Here he had as one of his fellow-pupils the late Dean Stanley, of Westminster, a man who was well known to Americans, and whose

memory is highly honored in America. The friendship between these two lasted to the end of Dean Stanley's useful, refined, and gracious life. Gladstone did At the age not remain long at Seaforth. of eleven he was sent to Eton.

CHAPTER II.-ETON AND OXFORD

It would not, perhaps, be easy to convey to any untraveled American an idea of the glamour and the fascination which Eton exercises over the mind of a schoolboy who has any feeling for the picturesque, the venerable, and the poetic. Eton College stands within the very shadow of Windsor Castle. England has nothing to show more beautiful than the landscape which spreads around on every side. There is witchery in the river, in the woods, in the old historic Castle. One might almost say that the whole current of English history streams on with that noble river. I am not certain, so far as my travel goes, whether anything quite like those Windsor landscapes, including with them the historical memories and associations, can be found anywhere outside England. So far as one can judge, the whole effect impressed itself deeply on the mind of the school-boy William Gladstone. All through his life he could become fired with enthusiasm at the mere mention of Eton and its studies and its memories. He seems to have worked hard as a student, and, indeed, earned a certain amount of unpopularity by his persistence in regarding serious study as part of his business and his duty. He was untiring at Greek and Latin, and occupied his holiday time in studying mathematics.

He
never, I believe, became a great
classical scholar in the narrow and
pedantic sense. Probably no one
whose scholarship took that limited
and practical form ever really ap-
preciated the beauty of the great
authors whom he studied. You
cannot appreciate Shakespeare if
you are always occupied in trying
to parse him. Young Gladstone
soon came to have the most mag-
nificent appreciation of the soul
and spirit and form and phrase of
the great Greek and Latin authors

whom he loved. He persisted while at Eton in being an unostentatiously pious and reHe would not join in or ligious student. countenance any mockery or levity about things which he had been taught to regard as sacred. Yet there was nothing whatever of the "prig" about him, and his force of character even then was such that he compelled the most light-minded to respect him and his ways. any frolicsome cruelty to dumb animals. "He stood forth," says Mr. Russell," as the champion of some wretched pigs which it was the custom to torture at Eton Fair on Ash Wednesday, and, when bantered by his schoolfellows for his humanity, offered to write his reply in good round This is the sort hand upon their faces."

Nor would he stand

LADY GLADSTONE Mr. Gladstone's Mother