The unknown
youth, living once on bread and tea, and too poor to possess a bed, was
now a foreign minister; had an Italian count for his _chef de cuisine_;
and drew a salary which enabled him to return, some years afterward, to
the United States with savings amounting to $30,000.
It was a contrast to his past. The sallow youth was _M. le ministre_!
The garret in Richmond had been turned into a marble palace in Turin.
He had a nobleman for a cook, instead of making his own tea. And the
_Examiner_ had done all that for him!
When war became imminent, he returned to Virginia, and resumed control
of the _Examiner_. With the exception of brief military service with
General Floyd, and on the staff of A.P. Hill, in the battles around
Richmond, when he was slightly wounded in the right arm, he remained in
editorial harness until his death.
As soon as he grasped the helm of the _Examiner_ again, that great
battleship trembled and obeyed him. It had been powerful before, it was
now a mighty engine, dragging every thing in its wake. Commencing by
supporting the Government, it soon became bitterly inimical to
President Davis and the whole administration. The invective in which it
indulged was not so violent as in the past, but it was even more
powerful and dangerous. Every department was lashed, in those brief,
terse sentences which all will remember--sentences summing up volumes
in a paragraph, condensing oceans of gall into a drop of ink.
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