It was not until long after the discovery of gold in California had set us all to thinking that I was reminded of the strange story of the old German, Von Rittenhofen, of finding some pieces of gold while on one of his hunts for butterflies.  I followed out his vague directions as best I might.  We found gold enough to make us rich without our land.  That claim is staked legally.  Half of it awaits an owner who perhaps will never come.

There are those who will accept always the solemn asseverations of politicians, who by word of mouth or pen assert that this or that party made our country, wrote its history.  Such as they might smile if told that not even men, much less politicians, have written all our story as a nation; yet any who smile at woman’s influence in American history do so in ignorance of the truth.  Mr. Webster and Lord Ashburton have credit for determining our boundary on the northeast—­England called it Ashburton’s capitulation to the Yankee.  Did you never hear the other gossip?  England laid all that to Ashburton’s American wife!  Look at that poor, hot-tempered devil, Yrujo, minister from Spain with us, who saw his king’s holdings on this continent juggled from hand to hand between us all.  His wife was daughter of Governor McKean in Pennsylvania yonder.  If she had no influence with her husband, so much the worse for her.  In important times a generation ago M. Genet, of France, as all know, was the husband of the daughter of Governor Clinton of New York.  Did that hurt our chances with France?  My Lord Oswald, of Great Britain, who negotiated our treaty of peace in 1782—­was not his worldly fortune made by virtue of his American wife?  All of us should remember that Marbois, Napoleon’s minister, who signed the great treaty for him with us, married his wife while he was a mere charge here in Washington; and she, too, was an American.  Erskine, of England, when times were strained in 1808, and later—­and our friend for the most part—­was not he also husband of an American?  It was as John Calhoun said—­our history, like that of England and France, like that of Rome and Troy, was made in large part by women.

Of that strange woman, Helena, Baroness von Ritz, I have never definitely heard since then.  But all of us have heard of that great uplift of Central Europe, that ferment of revolution, most noticeable in Germany, in 1848.  Out of that revolutionary spirit there came to us thousands and thousands of our best population, the sturdiest and the most liberty-loving citizens this country ever had.  They gave us scores of generals in our late war, and gave us at least one cabinet officer.  But whence came that spirit of revolution in Europe? Why does it live, grow, increase, even now? Why does it sound now, close to the oldest thrones? Where originated that germ of liberty which did its work so well?  I am at least one who believes that I could guess something of its source.