The Crisis

Gen. Grant Abroad.

New York Herald.

The incognito of Gen. Grant is one that no one will respect. He declines all honors and attentions, so far as he can do so without rudeness, and is especially indifferent to the parade and etiquette by which his journey is surrounded. It is amusing, knowing Gen. Grant's feelings on this subject, to read the articles in English and home papers about his caring for precedence and his fear lest he may not have the proper seat at table and the highest number of guns. Gen. Grant has declined every attention of an official character thus far, except those whose non-acceptance would have been misconstrued. When he arrives at a port his habit is to go ashore with his wife and son, see what is to be seen, and drift about from palace to picture gallery like any other wandering studious American. Sometimes the officials are too prompt for him; but generally, unless they call by appointment, they find the General absent. This matter is almost too trivial to write about, but there is no better business for a chronicler than to correct wrong impressions before creating new ones. Here, for instance, is an editorial article from an American newspaper which has drifted into our ward-room over these Mediterranean seas. The journal is a responsible newspaper, with a wide circulation. It informs us that Gen. Grant travels with a princely retinue; that he is enabled to do so because the men who fattened on the corruptions of his Administration gave him a share of their plunder. He went to the Hotel Bristol in Paris. He took the Prince of Wales' apartments. He never asks the cost of his rooms at hotels, but throws money about with a lavish hand. These are the statements which one reads here in the columns of an American journal. The truth is that Gen. Grant travels not like a Prince, but as a private citizen. He has one servant and a courier. He never was in the Prince of Wales' apartments in the Hotel Bristol in his life. His courier arranges for his hotel accommodations, as couriers always do, and the one who always does this office for the General takes pains to make as good bargains for his master as possible. So far from Gen. Grant being a rich man I think I am not breaking confidence when I say that the duration of his trip will depend altogether upon his income and his income depends altogether upon the proceeds of his investment of the money presented to him at the close of the War. The Presidency yielded him nothing in the way of capital, and he has not now a dollar that came to him as an official. By this I mean that the money paid Gen. Grant as a soldier and as a President was spent by him in supporting the dignity of his office. Everybody knows how much money was given him at the close of the War. All this was well invested and has grown; you may estimate the fortune of the General and about how long that fortune would enable him to travel like a Prince or a Tammany exile over Europe.