A presidential election was near, and negotiations were initiated between Kossuth and the party leaders for his influence on the foreign vote, and, pending these, he could decide nothing as to his future movements.  I was in the habit of going to see him at night, and sometimes waited for the departure of the committees of the politicians who were in discussion with him.  One night, when I went in, I found him in a state of nauseated irritation, and he broke out, saying, “Mr. Stillman, if your country does not get rid of these politicians it will be ruined in fifty years.”  He had just received a Democratic committee, which had formally promised him, in return for the influence he might exert in favor of their candidate, two ships of war ready for service, and a sum of money, the exact amount of which I cannot now remember, but I think it was half a million dollars.  Naturally he did not tell me if he had closed with the proposition, but the making of it by the committee was a revelation as to the purity of American politics which he fully understood.  This committee had presented itself with the authority of Franklin Pierce, Democratic candidate for the presidency.

The scheme in which he at first proposed to utilize my services was the formation of a deposit of arms and materials of war at a point in the Mediterranean from which he could descend promptly on the coast of Croatia, and this indicated that the two men-of-war of the committee entered into his plans.  The desired point he found in the little island of Galita, south of Sardinia, unoccupied and apparently unclaimed by any power, but on which, he told me, the flag of the United States had been hoisted some years before by one of our cruisers; evidently as a joke on the part of some of our sailors.  I was to visit it and report on its fitness for his purpose; but negotiations dragged, or there was some hitch, nothing was concluded until Kossuth’s departure for Europe became necessary, and Pulzsky, his alter ego, was given full instructions concerning me.  I was to follow when affairs were in a certain state of readiness; and, in fact, after a few weeks, I was summoned to London.  I received from Pulzsky the clue to Kossuth’s quarters, in a quiet street, Bayswater way, if I remember rightly, to which I was to go only late at night, and by some roundabout road, as the Austrian spies were always watching him.

I had a letter to a Madam Schmidt, a German refugee, and an advanced republican, at whose house I used to meet a little assembly of refugees,—­German, French, Russian, etc.  Every Sunday night we used to meet and discuss the politics of Europe.  Of my friends of this circle I remember only one,—­a Mr. Norich, a young Russian, with whom I contracted a close friendship, never since renewed.  Nothing more was said of the Galita plan, which seems to have depended on the success of the political negotiations with the Americans, and it was finally decided that