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Mathematical Wizardry
for a Gardner
Mathematical Wizardry
for a Gardner

Edited by
Ed Pegg Jr.
Alan H. Schoen
Tom Rodgers

A K Peters, Ltd.
Wellesley, Massachusetts
Editorial, Sales, and Customer Service Office

A K Peters, Ltd.
888 Worcester Street, Suite 230
Wellesley, MA 02482
www.akpeters.com

Copyright 
c 2009 by A K Peters, Ltd.

All rights reserved. No part of the material protected by this copy-

right notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form, electronic
or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any infor-
mation storage and retrieval system, without written permission
from the copyright owner.

“Martin Gardner and Paperfolding” copyright 

c David Lister.

Cover illustrations and design by Victoria E. Kichuk.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Mathematical wizardry for a Gardner / edited by Ed Pegg Jr., Alan H.

Schoen, [and] Tom Rodgers.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-56881-447-6 (alk. paper)
1. Mathematical recreations. 2. Gardner, Martin, 1914- I. Gardner,
Martin, 1914– II. Pegg , Ed, 1963– III. Schoen, Alan H. (Alan Hugh), 1924–
IV. Rodgers, Tom, 1943–
QA95.M3686 2008
793.74–dc22
2008032834

Printed in India
13 12 11 10 09 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents

Preface ix

In Memoriam xi
Frank Harary xiii
Gary Chartrand

Harary xvii
Jeremiah Farrell

I Spin a Tale 1
The Ig Nobel Prizes 3
Stanley Eigen

Martin Gardner and Paperfolding 9

David Lister

. . . Nothing but Confusion? Anamorphoses with Double Meaning 29

István Orosz

v
vi Contents

II Ponder a Puzzle 43
Peg Solitaire with Diagonal Jumps 45
George I. Bell

The Grand Time Sudoku and the Law of Leftovers 55

Bob Harris

Patulous Pegboard Polygons 59

Derek Kisman, Richard Guy, and Alex Fink

Beamer Variant 69
Rodolfo Kurchan

Packing Equal Circles in a Square 81

Péter Gábor Szabó

III Bring a Friend 87

Uncountable Sets and an Infinite Real Number Game 89
Matthew H. Baker

The Cyclic Butler University Game 97

Aviezri S. Fraenkel

Misere Play of G-A-R-D-N-E-R, the G4G7 Heptagon Game 107

Thane Plambeck

IV Play with Numbers 115

The Association Method for Solving Certain
Coin-Weighing Problems 117
Dick Hess

The Art of Ready Reckoning 127

Mogens Esrom Larsen

Spherical Algebra 139

Istvan Lenart
Contents vii

Mathematical Idol 155

Colm Mulcahy

The Elevator Problem 165

David Rhee and Jerry Lo

V Take a Shape 173

Jordan as a Jordan Curve 175
Robert Bosch

Wang Tiles, Dynamical Systems, and Beatty Difference Sequences 179

Stanley Eigen

The Trilobite and Cross 187

Chaim Goodman-Strauss

Orderly Tangles Revisited 193

George W. Hart

Quasi-Periodic Essays in Architectural and Musical Form 211

Akio Hizume

Ellipses 221
Robert Barrington Leigh, Ed Leonard,
Ted Lewis, Andy Liu, and George Tokarsky

Dances with Tangrams (and without Wolves) 235

Karl Schaffer

Two Special Polyhedra Among the Regular Toroids 245

Lajos Szilassi
Preface

Mathematicians, puzzlers, and magicians assemble in Atlanta ev-

ery two years or so to pay tribute to Martin Gardner, whose life-
long devotion to recreational mathematics and to magic is honored
throughout the world. The seventh of these “Gatherings for Gard-
ner,” G4G7, was held March 16–19, 2006. Most of the articles in
this volume, which is a companion to the recent Homage to a Pied
Puzzler, are drawn from oral presentations delivered at G4G7.
Mathematicians everywhere recognize that even though Martin
Gardner is not himself a professional mathematician, he has been
astoundingly effective in popularizing not just recreational mathe-
matics, magic, and puzzles, but also so-called serious mathemat-
ics. A number of professional mathematicians have acknowledged
that their passion for their subject was first kindled by one of Mar-
tin’s columns or essays concerning either a hoary old chestnut or
a brand-new problem. His columns in Scientific American, which
first appeared in 1956, earned him readers worldwide, and he con-
tinues writing to this day. His published writings are available in
both book form and on CD.
Martin’s unique influence has been the result of a refined taste
in subject matter combined with a famously clear and witty writing
style. His well-known addictions to magic and to word puzzles have
inspired countless others to attempt to emulate him in these arts,

ix
x Mathematical Wizardry for a Gardner

but he is still the undisputed master. Perhaps his most brilliant

invention is Dr. Irving Joshua Matrix, a proxy he used to spoof vir-
tually every known variety of charlatan, including—but not limited
to—Biblical cryptographers and numerologists.
The first two articles in this book are dedicated to the memory
of Frank Harary, mathematician extraordinaire, who died early in
2005. Frank was a welcome presence at G4G6, where—in spite of
his somewhat frail health—he succeeded in brightening the days of
the gatherers, especially with his affectionately warm wit. Those of
us who were lucky enough to count Frank as a friend sorely miss
him.
We also mourn the passing in 2008 of the breathtakingly en-
cyclopedic polymath Steve Sigur, whose contributions to geometry
are legendary. Steve, who participated in G4G8 just three months
before his death, was widely celebrated not only for the range and
depth of his knowledge, but also for his unusual generosity to his
students.
It was Tom Rodgers who in 1993 first thought of assembling
admirers of Martin Gardner for a few days of celebration. He has
hosted all of these gatherings since then, with the generous help of
Elwyn Berlekamp, Karen Farrell, Jeremiah Farrell, Scott Hudson,
Emily DeWitt Rodgers, Mark Setteducati, Stephen Turner, Thane
Plambeck, and the many G4G participants who volunteered at mo-
ments of need.
The editors are especially indebted to Charlotte Henderson, as-
sociate editor for our publisher, A K Peters, Ltd., for her patient
ministrations in the task of assembling and editing authors’ con-
tributions.
We hope that readers derive as much pleasure from this volume
and its companion volume as we have had in assembling them.

Ed Pegg Jr.
Champaign-Urbana, Illinois

Alan H. Schoen
Carbondale, Illinois

Tom Rodgers
Atlanta, Georgia
In Memoriam
Frank Harary

Gary Chartrand

I met Frank Harary at the University of Michigan in October 1963

while I was a graduate student at Michigan State University. This
visit led to my being invited to spend the academic year 1965–1966
to assist him while he was working on his classic textbook, Graph
Theory. I always felt, however, that he assisted me much more
than any help I may have given him. I saw how he did research
and I paid careful attention to the way he thought about and an-
alyzed mathematical problems. We became and remained friends
until the day he died. Although he ordinarily closed his emails
with “Best, Frank,” he would often end his emails to me with “Your
friend, Frank.” He was not only a friend to me; he became my
mentor. I sought his advice on many topics and I valued his opin-
ions. It seemed like whatever topic I discussed with him, he had
previously considered it and developed an opinion on it.
Frank had so many interests. He was a connoisseur of “good”
wine, he loved writing poetry, and he was an avid investor in the
stock market. I once asked him if he really understood what he
was doing when he invested in stocks, to which he answered “Not
at all but I enjoy it.” He said that he had become a millionaire on
three occasions but each time lost much of the money. He said
that if being wealthy was important to him, he would marry one of
his ex-wives.

xiii
xiv Mathematical Wizardry for a Gardner

It was impossible to turn down anything he would ask me to

do. Such a request would often start with “Could you do me a
favor?” In the fall of 1974, I received a phone call at home one
evening from Frank, who told me that he had been in discussions
with Wiley about developing a new journal that he was going to call
the Journal of Graph Theory. He said, however, that he wouldn’t
go ahead with his plans unless I agreed to be the managing editor.
Not that I really believed that but I remember telling him something
like: Frank, I’m teaching two classes, doing research, writing a
book, and directing doctoral dissertations. I don’t have the time
but, definitely, the answer is yes.
When I was the managing editor of JGT, I would often drive to
Ann Arbor to discuss the journal with him. At times, he would
meet me midway at a restaurant in Marshall, Michigan. It was
during these meetings that I really began to see and understand
his philosophy about research. He firmly believed that the journal
should contain and emphasize articles that dealt with BGT and
not just GT. He would write and say “BGT” for “Beautiful Graph
Theory.” He would often say, “Just because it’s true doesn’t mean
you have to publish it.”
He felt that research should concentrate on pretty concepts and
results, topics that would be fun and interesting to lecture on and
to listen to. Frank had such a fertile mind. I recall attending a
graph theory conference one Saturday at the University of Michi-
gan where after each talk, Frank would ask probing questions and
suggest new problems for the speaker to work on.
I remember saying to Frank that what constitutes interesting
mathematics is so subjective. His response to this was, “That’s why
we need to have good taste.” He said that doing good mathematics
relies on being able to ask interesting questions and to ask the
right questions. You only have so much time in your life and you
have to make decisions on how you intend to spend that time.
Even if you’re trying to prove a difficult result and you’re successful
but the result is boring, then what have you accomplished? So if
you’re faced with a result that you’re trying to prove and it appears
that it will be a time-consuming activity to prove it, then you have
to compare the time you would spend trying to prove the result
against the value of knowing that the result is true to see if this
would be a wise use of your time. Frank would say that such
decisions, although on a very small scale, are not unlike decisions
that scientists and other scholars must make on a regular basis.
Frank Harary xv

Even nonscholars are faced with making these kinds of decisions,

Frank would also say. A world leader has a major decision to make,
such as should the country go to war. What are the ramifications of
going to war or not going to war? And if the country does go to war,
then what are the consequences—politically, in terms of human
life, financially, the country’s reputation in the world? What are
the things that can (and probably will) go wrong and how will they
be dealt with?
Frank and I shared a love of music. Although his tastes were
more on the classical side and mine were for musical theater, he
enjoyed musical theater as well and would often send me programs
of shows and concerts he attended. We discussed the fact that
so many mathematicians enjoy music. There seemed to be some
similarity between creating mathematics and creating (composing)
music. Music has the edge, he would say, because it affects the
emotions, while mathematics usually does not. Also, good music
is appreciated by large numbers of people, while even good math-
ematics is appreciated by relatively few. When a mathematical
topic is being investigated and theorems are being discovered and
proved, in effect a mathematical story is being told. In musical
theater, there is also a story but songs are added. These songs
provide an emotional or comical way to tell the audience either
what someone is thinking or else to describe the personality of the
character. The closest thing to this in mathematics is when one is
talking about what has been discovered. Then humor and emotion
can (and probably should) play a role.
For Frank, it was not only important that the mathematics be
interesting, it was essential that it be presented (orally or in writ-
ing) in a clear and interesting manner. For example, although there
are grammatical rules for where commas and quotation marks
should be placed (should quotation marks follow or precede a pe-
riod?), he felt such decisions should be based on common sense.
He appreciated the care that Paul Halmos, Donald Knuth, and
other scholars took with their writing. Frank was annoyed when he
didn’t understand the mathematics he was reading. When some-
one then explained it to him, he would say, “So that’s what he
meant. Then why didn’t he say so?”
He often mentioned that garbled writing was commonly the re-
sult of people trying to say too much. He felt that it was always
better to keep things short and simple. His poetic reaction to this
was:
xvi Mathematical Wizardry for a Gardner

If confusion runs rampant in the passage just read

It may very well be that too much has been said.

No matter how clearly I felt that I had written mathematics, Frank

always found a way to make it even clearer. When I apologized to
him for not doing a better job, he came back with one of his most
commonly used phrases: “Not to worry.”
When things were not going well for me, I would invariably con-
tact Frank, as I knew he would be sympathetic and would offer
good advice. He would always respond by saying that things had
gone wrong often in his life. What he always did was turn to graph
theory because he knew that he could count on it. Frank had a
great love for graph theory. He thought it was important for oth-
ers to know how it developed and to be familiar with the people
responsible for this. He felt that the Journal of Graph Theory could
be used to disseminate this information. In his lectures, Frank
would often tell stories about mathematicians. In a lecture where
I was present, he once referred to the “top ten graph theorists.” At
the end of his talk, a member of the audience asked, “Who decides
who the top ten graph theorists are anyway?” Without a moment
of hesitation, Frank responded, “The ten of us!” In summary then,
wherever Frank Harary may fit in among the top graph theorists,
one thing remains indisputable: There was and will only be one
graph theorist like Frank Harary.
Harary

Jeremiah Farrell

The search for truth is the noblest occupation of man,

its publication a duty.
—Madame de Staël

“Here is another old poser,” he offered with a twinkle in his eye,

“Arrange the ten digits across two rows so that the sum of all of
the digits in each row has the same total.”
We were at the sixth Gathering for Gardner and, as was our
habit, we were having a private luncheon so that Frank Harary
could bring me up to date on his latest endeavors. I was always
a very willing listener and anxiously tried to solve his “old poser”
that was nevertheless new to me. I will give the reader my solution
(arrived at some time later) at the end of this tribute.

Frank Harary, died at 83 in Las Cruces, NM, on Jan-

uary 4, 2005 after a brief illness. Dr. Harary was widely
recognized as the “father” of modern graph theory, a dis-
cipline of mathematics he helped found, popularize, and
revitalize. [2]

I first met Frank Harary some fifteen years ago when ten of my
students, on a very cold, dreary fall day, braved my driving them in

xvii
xviii Mathematical Wizardry for a Gardner

a rented van to hear him lecture at Indiana University, Kokomo. We

knew all about Harary, having read his 1969 classic book Graph
Theory [6] and we much anticipated his talk. We were not dis-
appointed. In walked the dapper Harary with his perfect posture
and short, deliberate steps, and he regaled us for an hour with a
brilliant introduction to Fatty, Skinny, Knobby, etc., his names for
the “animals” or polyominoes on which he played avoidance and
achievement games. Martin Gardner’s fine expository article “Gen-
eralized Ticktacktoe” [3] explores the deep recreational aspects of
this topic. Harary’s lecture was filled with humor. I remember es-
pecially his opening self-deprecating joke. “No matter which way I
turn, I am always facing the board.” We were definitely not bored.

Frank had a beautiful spirit! He had a great joie de vivre

which overflowed naturally and spontaneously. He had
a sweet heart and gentle disposition. He was a free spirit,
who walked to the beat of a different drummer. He loved
the arts and attended theater and concert performances
with great appreciation. He was fun loving, had a great
sense of humor and was a delight to be around. Dr.
Harary loved to travel all over the globe to spread the
gospel of graph theory—he delivered over a thousand
conferences and invited lectures in more than 87 coun-
tries in four different languages. [8]

Harary wrote, with over 250 coauthors, more than 700 articles
and books. I was privileged to be a Harary coauthor along with my
former student, Putnam Fellow, and Gathering attendee Christo-
pher Mihelich (who also was first-prize winner in the Westinghouse
Science Contest). Our article “The Elucidators” [1] was “Dedicated
to that great elucidator Martin Gardner—nulli secundus” and de-
scribed some new ways of looking at some puzzles common to both
Sam Loyd (1841–1911) and Henry Ernest Dudeney (1857–1930).
With the publication of this article, Christopher and I inherited an
Erdős number of 2 from Harary’s Erdős number 1. We were just
as pleased to become new holders of “Harary number 1s.”
I cannot resist mentioning some of Harary’s other, rather outré
articles. One he often joked about was “Is the Null Graph a Point-
less Concept?” [7] This included, labeled as “Figure 1. The Null
Graph,” a totally blank diagram! Yet it is not a completely frivolous
article but attempts to decide whether the introduction of the null
Harary xix

graph results in a simplification of the statement of several theo-

rems. In the end, however, “No conclusion is reached.”
Two of his early articles concerned applying directed graphs to
fields other than mathematics, something he was always anxious
to do. One, “Who Eats Whom?” [4], relates a previous sociological
model to a zoological setting. It provides a combinatorial formula
for the “status” of the power of each of 15 different animals. The
other article, “Cosi Fan Tutte—A Structural Study” [5], uses di-
rected graphs to study the stability of group structures in Mozart’s
1790 opera. The peripatetic Harary’s affiliation for this article
is listed as the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, London.
Three revealing footnotes enhance the article:

1. Performance at Sadler’s Wells, London, April 12, 1963.

2. This note was invited by the Editors and was not supported
in any way whatsoever.

3. The letters F1 and F2 were chosen to indicate females; it is

entirely coincidental that F is also the initial letter of “fickle.”

Frank Harary was always entertaining and very gracious to ev-

eryone. David Dillon, who now is a researcher in computer al-
gorithms, was one of the ten students that accompanied me to
Kokomo fifteen years ago and David also attended the sixth Gath-
ering where he was re-introduced to Harary. They started to ex-
change ideas for joint projects in the months following the Gather-
ing, and when Harary learned that David’s three-year-old daughter
was confused about his name, he composed for her this charming
poem:

For Bella . . .
There goes Harary
In His Ferrari
On a Safari

And signed it “Fondest regards, Frank.”

We will all miss Frank and I especially regret that he and I can
no longer have our informative luncheon tutorials. Perhaps I have
learned enough from him to continue to disseminate some of his
ideas by following the dictum of Madame de Staël as he himself
always so ably did.
xx Mathematical Wizardry for a Gardner

Answer to Poser
My answer to Harary’s opening poser is to “cross” the two rows
1,2,5,8,9 and 3,4,5,6,7 at the 5 for a sum of 25 in each row (the 0
can be placed anywhere). There are other solutions. For instance
the common sum of 23 may be obtained by crossing at the digit 1,
and crossing at 9 can yield the sum 27.

Bibliography
[1] J. Farrell, F. Harary, and C. C. Mihelich. “The Elucidators.” Word
Ways: The Journal of Recreational Linguistics 33:3 (August, 2000),
194–200.

[2] “In Memoriam.” Focus 25:3 (March, 2005), 21.

[3] Martin Gardner. “Generalized Ticktacktoe.” In Fractal Music, Hyper-

cards and More, pp. 202–213. New York: W. H. Freeman, 1991.

[4] Frank Harary. “Who Eats Whom?” General Systems 6 (1961), 41–44.

[5] Frank Harary. “Cosi Fan Tutte—A Structural Study.” Psychological Re-
ports 13 (1963), 466.

[6] Frank Harary. Graph Theory. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1969.

[7] Frank Harary and Ronald C. Read. “Is the Null Graph a Pointless Con-
cept?” Springer Lecture Notes (Math) 406 (1974), 37–44.

[8] “Obituary.” Las Cruces Sun-Times. January 7, 2005. (Available at http:

//www.cs.nmsu.edu/fnh/obit.html.)
Part I

Spin a Tale
The Ig Nobel Prizes

Stanley Eigen

The Ig Nobel Prizes have been given out every year since 1991
by the international science humor magazine Annals of Improba-
ble Research or AIR as it is more commonly known. The 2005
ceremony was held on October 6th at Harvard University’s his-
toric Sanders Theatre. It was attended by a live audience of 1,200
lab coat and sundry attired individuals who continuously flooded
the stage with paper airplanes and other ephemera. This was a
slight inconvenience as the ceremony’s traditional stage sweeper,
Harvard physics professor Roy Glauber, was not in attendance.
Two days before the Ig Nobel Ceremony, he received a telephone
call from Stockholm, informing him that he had been awarded a
Nobel Prize in physics. Eight of the ten Ig Nobel Prize winners
traveled to Harvard—at their own expense—to accept their prizes,
which were handed to them personally by Nobel Laureates Dud-
ley Herschback (Chemistry ’86), William Lipscomb (Chemistry ’76),
Sheldon Glashow (Physics ’79), and Robert Wilson (Physics ’78).
Wilson, by the way, was the prize in the annual Win-a-Date-with-a-

3
4 Mathematical Wizardry for a Gardner

Figure 1. The Ig Nobel prizes: For achievements that first make people
laugh and then make them think. (Courtesy of Marc Abrahams,  Im-
probable Research.)

Nobel-Laureate Contest. (A video is available at http://www.improb

.com—of the ceremony, not the date.)
A great deal of mathematics and calculations go into winning
some of these Gardneresque prizes. Here are a few winners from
previous years:

• The Southern Baptist Church of Alabama won for calculating

how many Alabama citizens will go to Hell if they don’t repent
[2]. Answer: 46.1

• Robert Faid of Greenville, South Carolina, won for calculating

the exact odds that Mikhail Gorbachev is the Antichrist [4].
Answer: 710,609,175,188,282,000 to 1.
The Ig Nobel Prizes 5

• Arnd Leike of the University of Munich won for demonstrating

that the mathematical Law of Exponential Decay applies to
beer froth [6].
• Jerald Bain of Mt. Sinai Hospital in Toronto and Kerry Simi-
noski of the University of Alberta won for their study “The
Relationship Among Height, Penile Length, and Foot Size” [1].
• K.P. Sreekumar and the late G. Nirmalan of Kerala Agricul-
tural University, India, won for their “Estimation of the Total
Surface Area in Indian Elephants (Elephas maximus indicus)”
[12].
• Bernard Vonnegut of the State University of Albany won for
“Chicken Plucking as Measure of Tornado Wind Speed” [13].
The Chicken Plucking problem goes back to 1842. The ques-
tion was, as stated, “to measure the wind speed of tornados”.
The issue was—at least in part—that the researchers could
not get to the scene until after a tornado passed. Fortunately,
they were able to identify an analog of sorts—plucked chick-
ens. For comparison purposes, chickens were shot out of a
cannon. Professor Vonnegut reviewed the research and con-
cluded it didn’t work.
Here are some of the winners from 2005:
• James Watson of Massey University, New Zealand, won the
Agricultural History award for his scholarly study, “The Sig-
nificance of Mr. Richard Buckley’s Exploding Trousers” [14].
• John Mainstone and the late Thomas Parnell of the University
of Queensland, Australia, won the Physics award for patiently
conducting an experiment that began in the year 1927—in
which a glob of congealed black tar has been slowly, slowly
dripping through a funnel, at a rate of approximately one drop
every nine years [3].
• Claire Rind of Newcastle University, in the UK, won the Peace
award for electrically monitoring the activity of a brain cell
in a locust while that locust was watching selected highlights
from the movie Star Wars [9].
• Gauri Nanda of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
won the Economics award for inventing an alarm clock that
6 Mathematical Wizardry for a Gardner

runs away and hides, repeatedly, thus ensuring that people

do get out of bed, adding many productive hours to the work-
day. (We saw the clock work.)
• Edward Cussler of the University of Minnesota and Brian Get-
telfinger of the University of Minnesota and the University of
Wisconsin won the Chemistry award for conducting a careful
experiment to settle the longstanding scientific question: can
people swim faster in syrup or in water? [5] (If you are like
me, you will be disappointed to learn the answer is neither.
They go the same speed. By the way, Isaac Newton tried his
hand at this problem—Cussler and Gettelfinger showed that
Newton got it wrong.)
• Benjamin Smith of the University of Adelaide, Australia, and
the University of Toronto, Canada, the Firmenich perfume
company, Geneva, Switzerland, and ChemComm Enterprises,
Archamps, France, and Craig Williams of James Cook Uni-
versity and the University of South Australia won the Biology
award; for painstakingly smelling and cataloging the pecu-
liar odors produced by 131 different species of frogs when the
frogs were feeling stressed. The prize was shared with the fol-
lowing who could not attend the ceremony: Michael Tyler of
the University of Adelaide, Brian Williams of the University of
Adelaide, and Yoji Hayasaka of the Australian Wine Research
Institute. [10, 11]
• Dr. Yoshiro Nakamatsu of Tokyo, Japan, won the Nutrition
award for photographing and retrospectively analyzing every
meal he has consumed during a period of 34 years (and count-
ing). (If you don’t know who Dr. Nakamatsu is—well, all I can
say is I was delighted to meet him and I recommend you look
him up on the web.)
The following winners could not attend but sent in video accep-
tance speeches:
• Gregg A. Miller of Oak Grove, Missouri, won the Medicine
award for inventing Neuticles—artificial replacement testicles
for dogs, which are available in three sizes and three degrees
of firmness (US Patent #5868140) [8].
• Victor Benno Meyer-Rochow of International University, Bre-
men, Germany, and the University of Oulu, Finland; and
The Ig Nobel Prizes 7

Jozsef Gal of Lorand Eotvos University, Hungary, won the

Fluid Dynamics award for their report “Pressures Produced
When Penguins Pooh—Calculations on Avian Defecation” [7].

Bibliography
[1] Jerald Bain and Kerry Siminoski. “The Relationship Among Height,
Penile Length, and Foot Size.” Annals of Sex Research 6:3 (1993), 231–
235.

[2] “Baptists Count the Lost 46% of Alabamians Face Damnation, Report
Says.” Birmingham News, September 5, 1993, PAGE.

[3] R. Edgeworth, B. J. Dalton, and T. Parnell. “The Pitch Drop Experi-

ment.” European Journal of Physics 5:4 (1984), 198–200.

[4] Robert Faid. Gorbachev! Has the Real Antichrist Come? Tulsa: Victory
House, 1988.

[5] Brian Gettelfinger and E. L. Cussler. “Will Humans Swim Faster or

Slower in Syrup?” American Institute of Chemical Engineers Journal
50:11 (2004), 2646–2647.

[6] Arnd Leike. “Demonstration of the Exponential Decay Law Using Beer
Froth.” European Journal of Physics 23:1 (2002), 21–26.

[7] Victor Benno Meyer-Rochow and Jozsef Gal. “Pressures Produced

When Penguins Pooh—Calculations on Avian Defecation.” Polar Biol-
ogy 27 (2003), 56–58.

[8] Gregg A. Miller. Going . . . Going . . . NUTS! Frederick, MD: Publish

America, 2004.

[9] F. C. Rind and P. J. Simmons. “Orthopteran DCMD Neuron: A Reeval-

uation of Responses to Moving Objects. I. Selective Responses to Ap-
proaching Objects.” Journal of Neurophysiology 68:5 (1992), 1654–
1666.

[10] Benjamin P.C. Smith, Michael J. Tyler, Brian D. Williams, and Yoji
Hayasaka. “Chemical and Olfactory Characterization of Odorous Com-
pounds and Their Precursors in the Parotoid Gland Secretion of the
Green Tree Frog (Litoria caerulea).” Journal of Chemical Ecology 29:9
(September 2003), 2085–2100.
8 Mathematical Wizardry for a Gardner

[11] Benjamin P.C. Smith, Craig R. Williams, Michael J. Tyler, and Brian
D. Williams. “A Survey of Frog Odorous Secretions, Their Possible
Functions and Phylogenetic Significance.” Applied Herpetology 2:1–2
(February 1, 2004), 47–82.

[12] K.P. Sreekumar and G. Nirmalan. “Estimation of the Total Surface

Area in Indian Elephants (Elephas maximus indicus).” Veterinary Re-
search Communications 14:1 (1990), 5–17.

[13] Bernard Vonnegut. “Chicken Plucking as Measure of Tornado Wind

Speed.” Weatherwise (October 1975), 217.

[14] James Watson. “The Significance of Mr. Richard Buckley’s Exploding

Trousers.” Agricultural History 78:3 (Summer 2004), 346–360.
Martin Gardner and
Paperfolding

David Lister

Martin Gardner is best known for his long-running monthly col-

umn “Mathematical Games” in the venerable science magazine Sci-
entific American. As his column developed it embraced many top-
ics beyond the strict interpretation of its title, but even then the
column did not by any means exhaust the whole of Martin’s wide-
ranging interests. When David A. Klarner edited a volume of math-
ematical recreations in tribute to Martin Gardner in 1981, he pun-
ningly gave it the title The Mathematical Gardner, but he hoped that
it would later be accompanied by other volumes, such as The Mag-
ical Gardner, The Literary Gardner, The Philosophical Gardner, or
The Scientific Gardner, in tribute to Martin Gardner’s wide-ranging
interests. He did not suggest The Origami Gardner, but it is a
fact not often appreciated that paperfolding of a kind, though not
strictly mainstream origami, was the origin of Martin’s column in
Scientific American.
Some time during 1956, Martin Gardner submitted to Scien-
tific American a short article about “Hexaflexagons,” curious folded
paper devices, which had been discovered by chance by Arthur

9
10 Mathematical Wizardry for a Gardner

H. Stone, an English post-graduate student at Princeton Univer-

sity in 1939, and which were only now beginning to become more
widely known. Martin’s article appeared in the December 1956
issue of Scientific American, and the editorial board of the jour-
nal was clearly impressed because Martin Gardner was asked for
more articles. They followed without interruption from January
1957 until 1980. During 1981 he shared the column with Dou-
glas Hofstadter, before retiring at the end of 1981. Hofstadter was
the author of the very successful book Escher, Godel, Bach, which
had appeared in 1979. Martin finally retired from his column at
the end of 1981, apart from two further “surprise” columns in Au-
gust and September 1983. The year 1956 also saw the publication
of Robert Harbin’s Paper Magic, and the exhibition of the paper-
folding art of Akira Yoshizawa, arranged by Gershon Legman at
the Stedelyjk Museum in Amsterdam, took place in 1955. Sud-
denly paperfolding was in the air and the new initiatives quickly
led to the formation by Lillian Oppenheimer of the Origami Center,
in New York in October 1958.
Martin Gardner was not primarily a paperfolder, any more than
he was a mathematician or a scientist. His first enthusiasm was
conjuring, and it was out of this that his other diverse recreational
interests sprang, especially paperfolding.

Early Life
Martin Gardner was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma on October 21, 1914.
His father, a geologist, introduced him to magic when he taught
him the “Paddle Trick,” which employs a table knife and several
pieces of paper. Martin describes several versions in his Encyclope-
dia of Impromptu Magic. Before long he was inventing tricks of his
own, and he was only 16, and still in high school, when he began
contributing to the magic magazine, The Sphinx. His first article
was “New Color Divination” in May 1930. Already, his contribution
for the following August carried the somewhat precocious title “The
Best Pocket Tricks of Martin Gardner.” It included a version of the
knife paddle move he had learned from his father.
While a boy, Martin enjoyed Frank Rigney’s jokes in American
Boy’s Magazine. Frank Rigney was also a conjuror, but he is best
known to paperfolders as the illustrator and coauthor with William
D. Murray of Fun with Paperfolding, which was published in 1928.
Martin Gardner and Paperfolding 11

For many years, it remained the best introduction to paperfold-

ing in English and influenced many paperfolders who later became
well-known, including Lillian Oppenheimer. Far from being merely
the illustrator of Fun with Paperfolding, Frank Rigney was also the
creator of several of the folds it included. Later, when Frank be-
came the illustrator for Hugard’s Magic Monthly for which Martin
was contributing a regular column on magic, they became close
personal friends. That was, however, in the future. Martin en-
tered the University of Chicago where his principal studies were
in philosophy. He was a resident of Hitchcock Hall and became
a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He graduated with a Bachelor of
Arts degree in 1936 and for a time continued as a post-graduate
student.
In November 1935, while he was still an undergraduate, Martin
Gardner wrote Match-ic, the first of his many publications. This
was a slim booklet of tricks with matches. Match-ic contained
nothing about paperfolding, but his next booklet, After the Dessert,
which was first issued in a mimeographed version in 1940, and
published in a printed version in 1941, contained a number of
paper-related tricks. Not least of these tricks was the “Japanese
Paper Bird,” which Martin had found in Houdini’s Paper Magic of
1922 and traced back to the supplement to the second edition
of 1890 of Tissandier’s Scientific Recreations, translated from the
original French. There is a silly but baffling trick, whereby a dol-
lar bill is mysteriously turned upside-down, a trick which Martin
Gardner included in several subsequent publications. He also in-
cluded a stunt with a dinner napkin that he frankly described as
an “Improvised Brassiere.” It was an old trick popular with con-
jurors and often politely bowdlerized and placed on the head as
“Cat’s Ears.”
It appears that even at this age Martin Gardner envisaged a
journalistic or literary career. He had already written a short story
called “Thang” for his college literary magazine. After a short pe-
riod of research, he took a job as a reporter for the Tulsa Tribune
and also became a staff writer with the press relations department
of the University of Chicago. However, war intervened in 1941. He
joined the United States Navy and saw active service in a destroyer
escort in the North Atlantic. (More recently, destroyer escorts have
been reclassified as frigates.) A destroyer escort was a small ship
that could act as a scout for the fleet, searching out enemy sub-
marines. With the constant threat from Nazi U-boats and the fre-
12 Mathematical Wizardry for a Gardner

quent storm-force winds of the North Atlantic, it was far from being
a comfortable job. In his later book, Whys and Wherefores, Martin
gave a rare glimpse into his personal life when he wrote that his
destroyer escort was a “ship small enough so that a sailor could
really get to know the sea in a way quite different from that of the
tourist who floats gently on the ocean in a huge hotel.”

After the War

Following the War, Martin Gardner returned to Chicago to take up
research again. But in 1946 he was aged 32 and scarcely a young
post-graduate student. He resumed his writing and his short sto-
ries began to sell. Many appeared in Esquire magazine, and he
also wrote for Humpty Dumpty, a magazine for children, for which
he became contributing editor. In a short time he was able to de-
vote himself to his freelance writing. In 1947 he moved to New York
City, and for many years he lived in or near the city.
Martin Gardner married Charlotte Greenwald in 1952. They
enjoyed 48 years together until she died in December 2000. They
had two children: Jim, who became an assistant professor of edu-
cational psychology at the University of Oklahoma, and Tom, who
became a freelance artist in Greenville, South Carolina.
Martin’s book New Mathematical Diversions, which was pub-
lished in 1966, contains a cryptic dedication to his wife:
Evoly met
To L.R. AHCROF
emitero meno
In case anyone has tried unsuccessfully to translate it as Latin,
the simple solution is that backwards it reads: “One more time
for Charlotte my love.” (It was the second book that Martin had
dedicated to Charlotte, the first one being Great Essays in Science,
a collection of classic scientific essays that he had edited.) Equally
cryptic is the more straightforward dedication of his philosophical
book of 1983, The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener:
Why do I dedicate this book to Charlotte?
She knows.
For a time the Gardners lived at Hastings-on-Hudson in New York,
in a street very appropriately called Euclid Avenue. In 1982 they
Martin Gardner and Paperfolding 13

moved south to the warmer climate of Hendersonville in western

North Carolina. Martin Gardner and a new generation of grandchil-
dren have been able to share in his countless tricks and illusions
with mutual delight.

Conjuring
Martin Gardner’s interest in paperfolding is rooted firmly in his
earlier passion for conjuring. The association between the two is
a common one and countless leading paperfolders have also been
magicians. There is a sort of mind that is attracted to puzzles,
illusions, mathematical structures, patterns, unexpected transfor-
mations, linkages, and paperfolding. Martin Gardner has such a
mind, and intellectually it led him to wrestle with the awesome co-
nundrums of philosophy. But he never lost touch with those trivial
tricks and puzzles that lighten the burden of life.
One of the roots of modern paperfolding was in conjuring, and
it can be traced back well into the nineteenth century. Indeed,
“The Magic Fan” or “Troublewit,” as it is usually known in English,
is a kind of paperfolding that goes back much further than that.
The “Japanese Paper Bird” (now invariably known as “The Flapping
Bird”), which Martin Gardner included in After the Dessert was ap-
parently introduced to the West by traveling Japanese conjurors,
probably in the1870s. There is still, however, some uncertainly
about its true origin. In the 1920s, magicians like Will Blythe,
Will Goldston, and Houdini introduced magic using paper or “pa-
per magic” in their acts. Toward the end of the Second World War
the folding of dollar bills exercised a fascination for conjurors, and
instructions for tricks with dollar bills became a popular feature
of the numerous magical magazines of the time. In his preface
to Samuel Randlett’s The Best of Origami (1963), Martin Gardner
recalled attending a magic convention in the 1930s at which al-
most every magician present was wearing a finger ring with a large
rectangular “jewel” that he had folded from a dollar bill.
Martin Gardner always sought the company of other magicians.
While still at home in Tulsa, he had been a member of a group that
included Logan Wait and Roger Montandon, and as soon as he
moved to Chicago, he was able to attach himself to a very rich fra-
ternity of magicians. He joined the Chicago Magic Table and at
Christmas took a job in a department store demonstrating magic
14 Mathematical Wizardry for a Gardner

sets. Magic shops are always meeting places for conjurors, anx-
ious to find the latest tricks, and Martin has told how he hung
around Joe Berg’s and Laurie Ireland’s magic shops in Chicago.
Laurie Ireland’s shop was later to pass through his widow to Jay
Marshall, a good friend of origami, who renamed it Magic Inc. The
shop later became a meeting place for CHAOS, the Chicago Area
Origami Society. Another place of meeting for conjurors was the
Nanking Chinese Restaurant. During his time in Chicago, Mar-
tin’s idol was Werner Dornfield and he later dedicated one of his
books to “Dorny.” Yet another feature of magical life in Chicago was
the regular magical conventions. One wonders whether Martin had
not chosen his university for the richness of its magical culture!
As soon as Martin moved to New York, he found a similar scene
awaiting him. Lou Tannen’s Magic Shop was one of the meeting
places. Another was the apartment of Bruce and Bunny Elliott,
who frequently played host to meetings of magicians. Bruce was
the editor of The Phoenix, a magazine to which Martin Gardner be-
came a frequent contributor. Indeed he was a frequent contributor
to numerous magic magazines and inevitably became well-known
to the conjurors of his generation. Only when other pressures
built up did he relax his enthusiasm for practical magic, especially
when his Scientific American column made increasingly voracious
demands on him. It was, however, the move to North Carolina in
1982 that severely reduced his links with other magicians. De-
sirable though the move might have been for other reasons, there
was, unfortunately, no community of conjurors in Hendersonville.
After his move to Hendersonville and the conclusion of his col-
umn for Scientific American, Martin Gardner took up again the fal-
lacies perpetrated as science by self-appointed experts in many
strange areas. His book In the Name of Science was first published
in 1952 and in 1956 was republished as a paperback under the
name Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science by Dover Publi-
cations. In it he brought his rational thinking to bear to expose
the fallacies of such ideas as “Pyramidology” and the “Flat-Earth
Theory.” He became a fellow of the Committee for the Scientific In-
vestigation of Claims of the Paranormal and has written a regular
column for its journal The Skeptical Inquirer.
Martin Gardner’s line of practical magic was the uncomplex,
requiring the minimum of preparation. He eschewed elaborate me-
chanical illusions, and concentrated on tricks that made use of
everyday objects, which were exemplified in his Encyclopedia of Im-
Martin Gardner and Paperfolding 15

promptu Magic. This “encyclopedia” originally appeared as a long

series of short articles in Hugard’s Magic Monthly and was later
published as a book by Magic Inc. of Chicago in 1978. It proba-
bly gives an unbalanced view of Martin’s conjuring, for it excludes
card tricks and tricks that require practiced sleight of hand, but
the book gives a good general view of his approach. Separate from
this were Martin’s many articles on magic that constantly appeared
in several other magic magazines and that were later collected to-
gether and published in 1993 in Martin Gardner Presents, another
large book of the same size as the Encyclopedia of Impromptu Magic.

Paperfolding
Paperfolding and paper tricks fitted in well with this scheme of
things. Added to this, the basic geometry of folding paper fas-
cinated Martin Gardner, the mathematician. His long series of
contributions to Hugard’s Magic Monthly began in 1948 and his
contributions for February and September 1949 were on “Dollar
Bill Folds” and “Stunts with Paper,” respectively. For the “Dollar
Bill Folds,” Martin included a “Blowing Fish” that could be made
to blow out a candle, a method of reducing the size of a bill by
folding, and “the Mushroom,” two folds in a dollar bill that convert
George Washington into a mushroom. It was a popular trick of
Martin, for he has included it in several of his books. The article on
“Stunts with Paper” was less concerned with paperfolding as such.
It included a circle of paper-cut bunnies that was a simple device
for apparently changing the expression of a face drawn on paper,
named “Movies.” It also included a simple “Snapper,” an animal’s
head made from a small piece of card, which has the strength to
pick up quite large objects in its “jaws.”
Frankly, none of these tricks is very good paperfolding, or
“Origami” as it was later to be known through the founding of the
Origami Center in New York in October 1958. Yet it was probably
these articles that brought Martin Gardner to the attention of Ger-
shon Legman. Legman was then still residing in New York before
he moved to live in France in 1953. He had been avidly collect-
ing information about paperfolding from all possible sources since
1945, and he wrote to anyone he thought might be able to tell him
more about the subject or who might give him information for the
list of books and papers about it that he was compiling. Gershon
16 Mathematical Wizardry for a Gardner

Legman was not himself a magician, but he was acquainted with

many people who were conjurors, including Cy Enfield, the film
producer, with whom he had been at school. It was Cy Enfield
who taught Legman the “Bow Tie” or “Lotus,” which set him off on
his intensive quest for paperfolding in 1945. (By a curious turn of
events that amounted to a stroke of fate, it was Enfield who intro-
duced Robert Harbin to Legman.) But if Legman discovered that
Martin Gardner was interested in tricks and paperfolding, we may
be sure that through their acquaintance, Martin was introduced to
the wider knowledge of paperfolding being built up by Legman.
There was a marked increase in Martin’s paperfolding activity.
In 1952 he contributed three items, not to a magic magazine, but
to the Children’s Digest. These were “How to Make a Paper Boat,”
“Loop the Loop,” and “You’ll Get a Bang out of This!” I have not
seen these but the first two were probably some sort of boat and
a flying device and the third was the traditional banger. Then, in
September 1952, Martin contributed a glider to Parents’ Magazine.
But this was not quite the traditional paper glider folded from pa-
per, because it incorporated a modified nose that enabled it to be
propelled by an elastic band. The refinement was, in fact, a dis-
covery of Gershon Legman. Because Children’s Digest and Parents’
Magazine were not magic magazines, these articles were omitted
from the collection of Martin Gardner’s articles in Martin Gardner
Presents and it appears that they have never been reprinted.
Gershon Legman published a preliminary edition of his bibliog-
raphy in the magazine Magicol in May 1952, and his longer Bibli-
ography of Paper-folding in a slender booklet later in the year. In
the latter publication, he listed Martin Gardner’s two contributions
to Hugard’s Magic Monthly in February and September 1949 and
his three contributions to Children’s Digest between January and
May 1952. The contribution of Gershon Legman’s modified glider
by Martin Gardner to Parents’ Magazine in September 1952 was
pointedly not listed.
It would be wrong to imply that arising from these publications
was an immediate intensification of Martin Gardner’s interest in
paperfolding. For him it remained, as it always had been, just
an aspect of conjuring. We have noticed that some paperfolding
was already included in Martin Gardner’s early booklet After the
Dessert (1940–1941). After the War, in 1949, he published an-
other booklet in a similar vein called Over the Coffee Cups. This,
too, contained one or two paperfolding items. One was the no-
Martin Gardner and Paperfolding 17

torious folding of a dollar bill that brought together the words

“GAL TENDER AND PRIVATE” reputed to be used by a traveler
who was asking for company in his room. Another was a trick
by Samuel Berland. Once more, this was scarcely paperfolding,
but it employed a method of folding one dollar bill to look like
two bills, creating an illusion whereby the second bill was made to
vanish.
Another favorite paper gimmick of Martin Gardner’s was the
“Moebius Bands,” which he often presented under the mysterious
name of the “Afghan Bands.” This name had been used by the
famous Professor Hoffman as long ago as 1904, but its origin re-
mained a mystery. A version of the “Afghan Bands” by Martin
Gardner appeared in Hugard’s Magic Monthly in December 1949.
Moebius Bands are frequently made of paper, although they are
not in essence paperfolding, and Gershon Legman did not think it
appropriate to include the article in his bibliography. Rather, the
“Afghan Bands” portend the way Martin Gardner’s interest would
develop in the future. He was to include them in articles in Scien-
tific American and in later books written by him.
Hugard’s Magic Monthly quickly became a focus for much of
Martin Gardner’s work. After contributing some 32 articles be-
tween July 1945 and February 1951, he began a monthly column
that ran from March 1951 until March 1958. The articles reflected
Martin’s general and uncomplicated approach to conjuring. He
named the series the “Encyclopedia of Impromptu Magic.” I have
not examined the individual copies of the magazine, but it seems
that from the start they were envisaged as the basis for a compre-
hensive book of conjuring by the same name. As he came across
them, Martin made a practice of jotting down notes about conjur-
ing tricks on filing cards that he kept in shoe boxes. When he
wished to write an article, he rapidly recovered the information
from the filing cards. Martin originally hoped to revise the com-
pilation in light of published books in order to give acknowledg-
ments to inventors of ideas and to polish it up generally. But time
(as ever) would not allow and the collected articles were eventually
published by Magic Inc. of Chicago in 1978. For the most part the
articles were reprinted “raw.” There are a few revisions and added
notes but on the whole they are very limited and uneven.
Several of the headings in the book version of the Encyclopedia
of Impromptu Magic are relevant to paperfolding including those on
“Bill Folds,” “Handkerchief Folding,” “Magazine,” “Newspaper,” and
18 Mathematical Wizardry for a Gardner

a very long section headed simply “Paper.” This last heading falls
into various subsections, such as paper magic, paper stunts, pa-
per cutting, paperfolding, paper work, and geometrical curiosities.
Much under this heading is related in some way to paperfolding
in the wide sense of the term. Here, for instance, are a long sec-
tion on the Moebius Bands, a short one on geometrical folding,
and a section on hexaflexagons. Many of the items are very fa-
miliar and come from the international stock of traditional indoor
recreations.
The section on “Paper Folding,” as such, is eight pages long
and begins with a brief introductory history that mentions Japan,
Unamuno, and Froebel. There follows a short bibliography with
tribute paid to Gershon Legman’s longer bibliographies. It contains
just 16 items ranging from Will Blyth’s Paper Magic of 1920 to
Samuel Randlett’s The Best of Origami of 1963. Obviously the list
of books had either been updated or compiled specially for the book
form of the Encyclopedia. Nevertheless, it remains a very selective
list.
Martin frankly describes the folded paper figures that he in-
cludes as only a selection, chosen because they can be animated in
some amusing way. He freely acknowledges that figures of great re-
alism and beauty may be found in the Oriental and Spanish works
on paperfolding. (This statement is also dated in its curiously
restricted reference to the Orient and Spain, and it has clearly
not been updated to include reference to the Western creations in
Samuel Randlett’s Art of Origami (1961) and Best of Origami (1963)
or Robert Harbin’s Secrets of Origami (1963).
The models mentioned or reproduced include the bellows, the
“hopping” frog, a boat that floats on water, a “Pop Gun,” the “Paper
Cup,” the “Kettle” (in which water can be boiled), and the “Salt
Cellar” in its various forms of “bug catcher” and “fortune-teller.”
They are all very interesting and Martin throws considerable light
on each item. But what is significant is that it is merely a collection
of existing folds, and apparently it does not include any folds of
Martin’s own devising.
An interesting feature of Hugard’s Magic Monthly, and there-
fore of the Encyclopedia of Impromptu Magic, is that it was illus-
trated as a labor of love by Frank Rigney, previously mentioned as
the coauthor and illustrator of Fun with Paper Folding by William
D. Murray and Francis J. Rigney (1928). Martin pays a gracious
tribute to him in his introduction to the book version of the En-
Martin Gardner and Paperfolding 19

cyclopedia. It was an association that made them firm personal

friends.
The installments of “The Encyclopedia of Impromptu Magic” ran
in Hugard’s Magic Monthly until March 1958, although Martin con-
tinued to contribute a few articles until September 1961. By March
1958, however, changes were in the air. Another magician, Robert
Harbin, had published his book, Paper Magic, in England in 1956.
This book, despite its title, was unambiguously about paperfold-
ing and was not about paper magic in the sense of conjuring with
paper. Harbin, too, had only recently become acquainted by corre-
spondence with Gershon Legman. Then, in the summer of 1957,
Mrs. Lillian Oppenheimer, who had been greatly impressed upon
receiving a copy of Paper Magic, flew across the Atlantic to meet
Robert Harbin in London, but she failed to meet Gershon Legman
in France as she had hoped, because he was away from home. The
world of Western paperfolding was suddenly set alight and in Oc-
tober of the following year, Mrs. Oppenheimer unexpectedly (per-
haps not entirely unexpectedly) found herself the founder of the
Origami Center of New York and the editor of a new journal called
The Origamian.

The Origami Center

For such a spontaneous organization, the Origami Center was re-
markably well-organized. By the second issue of the Origamian
in November 1958, a long list of no less than 35 Honorary Mem-
bers had been appointed. All of them were issued special printed
membership cards. Among the list appears “Martin Gardner—
Paperfolder, Author.”
Clearly, for him to be chosen, Martin Gardner had made a sig-
nificant impact on the young world of modern Western paperfold-
ing. Up to 1958 his total achievements as an author about any
subject could scarcely be described as prodigious, although his
published books included In the Name of Science (debunking pseu-
doscientific notions), Mathematics, Magic and Mystery (on magical
tricks using mathematics), and Great Essays in Science (a collec-
tion of classic essays of which he was merely the editor). He had
not written a single book solely devoted to paperfolding. Lillian
Oppenheimer was, perhaps, generous with her Honorary Member-
ships (she had a shrewd head for publicity), and we can infer that
Martin Gardner had entered fully into that small circle that ex-
20 Mathematical Wizardry for a Gardner

changed information about paperfolding during the months that

preceded and followed the emergence of the Origami Center.
Martin Gardner was not the only magician to be chosen. Oth-
ers were Robert Harbin, Paul Duke, and Jay Marshall of Magic
Inc. Several other Honorary Members were not described as ma-
gicians, but, like so many paperfolders, they carried magic wands
in their knapsacks, including Guiseppi Baggi, Shari Lewis, Robert
Neale, and “Thok Sondergaard” of Denmark (who was no less than
Thoki Yenn). Another Honorary Member was Lester Grimes of La
Rochelle, New York, the doyen of paper magicians. Since before
World War II, he had been billed as “The Paper Wizard,” perform-
ing his act in a paper costume and using only paper equipment
and materials. He was surely a friend of Martin Gardner’s. Lester
Grimes played an active part in the early days of the Origami
Center.
There is no record that Martin Gardner attended any of the early
meetings of the Origami Center, and he is not mentioned again in
the five issues of the first volume of the Origamian that were pub-
lished between November 1958 and March 1959. In fact, apart
from occasional references to his books, he is seldom again men-
tioned in the many later issues of the Origamian after it resumed
publication in the summer of 1961. There is, however, a report
that Martin Gardner attended the Second Annual Origami Get-
together at the Origami Center (meaning Lillian Oppenheimer’s pri-
vate apartment) on November 2–3, 1963, one of the earliest origami
conventions to be held.
Another report in the Origamian for summer 1964 refers to Mar-
tin Gardner’s short article on origami in Encyclopaedia Britannica,
which first appeared in the edition published earlier in that year.
The Origamian reports that Martin was considerably upset that he
had written the article as long ago as 1959, but publication had
been delayed. Although he had repeatedly asked to revise the arti-
cle, the editors had adamantly refused to agree to this. As a result,
the article was out of date before it appeared and it contained no
mention of the distinguished American and other Western paper-
folders who had emerged since 1959, not least of them Fred Rohm
and Neal Elias. No doubt the editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
had their reasons, but Martin Gardner felt very embarrassed.
As it is, the article is interesting for a number of reasons. It
reveals that in 1959 Martin Gardner was considered a sufficient
authority on origami to be invited to write the article. The arti-
Martin Gardner and Paperfolding 21

cle mentions Akira Yoshizawa, Miguel Unamuno, and Vicente So-

larzano Sagredo, the three most distinguished paperfolders before
the formation of the Origami Center. Friedrich Froebel is men-
tioned in connection with the Kindergarten movement, and the
Bauhaus is mentioned in connection with training students in
commercial design. Arthur H. Stone is given credit for the discov-
ery of flexagons. Two modern folders who are named are George
Rhoads and Guiseppe Baggi. Altogether the article is a remarkably
comprehensive, but compact, summary of paperfolding as it was
in 1959. There is no mention of the Origami Center, but perhaps it
was too soon for that. One wonders how Martin would have revised
the article had he been allowed to do so in 1964, assuming that he
would have been allocated no increase in space.
Not directly linked to the Origami Center, but certainly associ-
ated with it, was the exhibition “Plane Geometry and Fancy Fig-
ures” held at the Cooper Union Museum, New York from the begin-
ning of June in the summer of 1959. The exhibition had already
been planned when the summer of 1958 suddenly brought origami
to the notice of the public in newspapers and on television. Be-
cause of this, Lillian Oppenheimer was invited to provide models
for a section of the exhibition to be devoted to origami. She gath-
ered models from the United States, Europe, and Japan. Martin
Gardner was invited to contribute, but the catalogue lists only one
model under his name, which was a flying bat. Although it was not
apparent from the static exhibit, Martin has revealed that his bat
had a secret. If its head was placed on one’s fingertip, it balanced
horizontally. The secret was a penny concealed in the tip of each
wing. Of course, Martin may have submitted other models that
were not selected for display by the Museum authorities. As befit-
ted a public museum, they were rigorous in their selection of mod-
els they considered suitable for exhibition and even included only
a fraction of the models by Yoshizawa that had been submitted to
them. Nevertheless, it seems fair to say that Martin Gardner’s very
limited contribution to the exhibition is confirmation that notwith-
standing his very creative contributions to card tricks and puzzles,
he was not a creative paperfolder.

Scientific American
As the world of paperfolding was beginning to change in 1956
with the publication of Robert Harbin’s Paper Magic, Martin Gard-
22 Mathematical Wizardry for a Gardner

ner’s own world was also changing. At the time it did not seem
significant—just one more magazine article among so many. Yet
in retrospect it was the turning point in his life. Martin Gardner
can have had no idea of the consequences of that first article that
he wrote for Scientific American in December 1956, of the delight it
would bring to millions of people worldwide, of the fame (and, let it
be said, financial reward) it would bring, of the broadening of his
own interests, or of the demanding challenge of writing a monthly
column of such quality for 25 years. It is tempting to speculate
about how many young people have been inspired by his column
to take up mathematics as a career, or what advances in serious
mathematics may have been stimulated by its regular disclosure
of offbeat ideas in recreational mathematics.
The first of Martin Gardner’s articles for Scientific American ap-
peared in the issue for December 1956, with the title “Flexagons.”
It was about hexaflexagons in particular. An article about Moebius
Bands appeared in June, 1957 and another about tetraflexagons
in May, 1958. The article on “Origami” did not appear until July
1959. By then Martin had become so involved with his regular
column in Scientific American, that he gave up his contributing
editorship of Humpty Dumpty.
Hexaflexagons straddled the two realms of paperfolding and
mathematics. They were discovered in 1939 by Arthur J. Stone,
then a 23-year-old British research mathematician at Princeton
University. He had trimmed the wider American file paper that
he had bought to fit into his narrower British files. Then, he be-
gan to play with the excess strips of paper. After creasing them at
60-degree angles and interweaving them, he discovered that they
formed flat hexagons that could be “flexed” to bring different faces
of the paper successively into view. The Princeton mathematics de-
partment experienced a craze for what came to be named flexagons
(obviously derived from the word hexagons) and Arthur Stone be-
came the focus of a small group of fellow students who were fas-
cinated by the mathematics of the new devices. Stone was joined
by Bryant Tuckerman, John W. Tukey, and, not least, Richard P.
Feynman, a genius who later achieved fame as a brilliant physicist.
Together they analyzed the mathematics involved in flexagons and
set out their theories in a comprehensive paper, which is said to
have been a complete exposition of the subject. For some reason
that has never been explained, this paper has never been pub-
lished, and it has been left to others to publish analyses of their
Martin Gardner and Paperfolding 23

own. Martin Gardner’s own account of hexaflexagons in his first

article for Scientific American was not intended in any way to be
comprehensive, but it is wonderfully informative and succinct.
Moebius Bands share an article with other curious topological
models but the article has little to do with paperfolding. The bands
are presented from the point of view of topology and as the basis of
magical tricks.
Tetraflexagons are much less well-known than their cousins,
the hexaflexagons, but Arthur Stone was interested in them, too.
In another article, Martin Gardner points out that they have been
known as a “double-action hinge” for centuries and toys based on
the principle were marketed in the 1890s. He also mentions a
tetraflexagon in the form of a puzzle that was copyrighted in 1946
by Roger Montandon of The Montandon Magic Company of Tulsa,
Oklahoma. It was called “Cherchez la Femme,” the puzzle being to
find the picture of the young lady behind the facade of a grinning
sailor. It was only in 1993, with the publication of the book, Martin
Gardner Presents, that it was disclosed that the originator of this
puzzle was Martin Gardner himself. Perhaps his reticence about
the puzzle and its publication is explained by the fact that when
eventually the lady is found, she is discovered to be au naturel!
The article on tetraflexagons also contains a full explanation
and diagrams for a variant of the “Flexatube” puzzle in which a
square tube of paper is turned inside-out by successive folding
steps alone. It is revealed that this, too, was discovered by Arthur
Stone while working on flexagons. No paperfolder fails to be fasci-
nated by this magical folding device.
Martin Gardner’s article on origami in Scientific American for
July, 1959, gives a brief outline of the subject, describing it as “the
ancient Japanese art of paper folding.” In a few brief sentences, the
article manages to mention Mrs. Oppenheimer, the Cooper Union
Exhibition, the accomplishments of refined Japanese ladies, Lewis
Carroll, and Miguel Unamuno, the Spanish philosopher, who wrote
a mock-serious treatise on paperfolding. These are followed by the
pentagonal knot in a strip of paper that conceals within it a mys-
tical pentagram and by the far-from-simple-scientific problem of
why, when we fold a sheet of paper, the crease is a straight line.
Although less related to classic paperfolding, Martin also demon-
strates how a parabola may be formed by successively folding one
edge of a square of paper to a selected point that becomes the focus
of a curve formed by the creases. Martin could not resist conclud-
24 Mathematical Wizardry for a Gardner

ing his article with instructions for the “Flapping Bird.” Written in
1956, the method was the old one of pre-creasing and crunching
the points together, which was used by Tissandier and Houdini.
Even though, at that time, Yoshizawa’s scheme of different dotted
lines to distinguish mountain and valley folds had not yet reached
the West, nevertheless, Martin Gardner’s diagrams are remarkably
clear.
An article in Scientific American dated June 1960, which is enti-
tled “Paperfolding and Papercutting,” is mainly about dissections,
but it also touches on papercutting or “kirigami,” and it includes
the famous dissection puzzle usually known as “Heaven and Hell.”
After 1960, there was a long wait before Martin Gardner in-
cluded anything more related to paperfolding in his Scientific Amer-
ican column. His column was changing, too. His earlier articles
dealt with comparatively simple puzzles, tricks, and phenomena
which, even if they might conceal hidden mathematical mysteries,
were within the scope of understanding of any reasonably educated
person. However, his later articles began to delve deeper, reflecting
the growing appreciation that the playful exploration inspired by
recreational mathematics could occasionally open up new vistas
in advanced mathematics that were entirely unexpected and yet
that sometimes unexpectedly proved to be of great value in newly
emerging branches of science.
In April 1968, Martin reverted to play and wrote about “Puzzles
and Tricks with a Dollar Bill.” For these he went back to the begin-
ning of his magical career, and included the trick of inverting a dol-
lar bill and even the two folds that convert George Washington into
a mushroom. There are also several mathematical tricks based on
the serial number of a dollar bill. All of these are tricks that occur
several times in different books of Martin Gardner’s puzzles.
The following December, Martin turned again to another of his
favorite subjects, Moebius Bands. His article reproduces two prints
by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher and throws several new beams of
light on an old subject, but there is little for paperfolders. Mar-
tin does, however, point out that a hexaflexagon is an interwoven
Moebius band, something that is not immediately self-evident.
In May and September of 1971, Martin Gardner introduced two
new paperfolding topics. The article for May 1971 is entitled “The
Combinatorial Richness of Folding a Piece of Paper.” It reveals the
unexpectedly difficult mathematical problem of determining the
number of ways in which a map, or for that matter a single strip
Martin Gardner and Paperfolding 25

of stamps, can be folded up. However, the article suddenly trans-

forms itself into an account of the work of Robert Neale, a fellow
magician and inventor of many paperfolding devices, most of which
have an unusual “twist.” Included are Robert Neale’s “Beelzebug
Puzzle,” an ingenious puzzle based on a tetraflexagon, and the fa-
mous “Sheep and Goats” paperfolding puzzle. Robert Neale’s best-
known trick, “Bunny Bill,” is merely mentioned, but the address
from which it can be obtained is given as Magic Inc. of Chicago.
“Plaiting Polyhedrons,” which appeared in September 1971, out-
lines the absorbing method of folding the Platonic solids from strips
of paper. It is a subject that has been investigated from various an-
gles by several paperfolders, and Martin Gardner’s account whets
the appetite. So far as is known, a comprehensive book on this
far-from-negligible subject remains to be written.
One of the new mathematical topics that has emerged since
World War II is that of fractals and one of Martin Gardner’s last
articles in Scientific American related to paperfolding is about the
“Dragon Curve,” which is a kind of fractal. Apparently this article
was included in a series of “Nine logical and illogical problems to
solve” in November 1967, but I have not seen the series. The part
of the article about the “Dragon Curve” is reprinted in Mathemati-
cal Magic Show, published ten years later in 1977. Martin Gardner
demonstrates the method of creating the “Dragon Curve” by repeat-
edly folding a piece of paper in half. There are, of course, physical
limitations which, in practice, restrict this process to about seven
folds, but the general theory of the “Dragon Curve” as a fractal is
not invalidated.
Virtually all of Martin Gardner’s articles in Scientific American
have been reproduced in his volumes of scientific recreations. De-
pending on which of Martin’s books are included in the list, there
are 15 or 16 collections of the Scientific American articles that were
published over a period of 38 years by a variety of publishers in
the United States and England. The first collection was The Scien-
tific American Book of Mathematical Recreations, which appeared
in 1959. In England it was published in 1961 with the title Math-
ematical Puzzles and Diversions from Scientific American. The last
volume in the series is The Last Recreations of 1997. Paperfolding
is embedded in the books in just a few chapters. However, they
demonstrate that just as Martin Gardner’s own interests widened,
so paperfolding has broadened its horizons, something that has
been startlingly demonstrated by the recent explosion of interest
26 Mathematical Wizardry for a Gardner

in the mathematics of paperfolding in books and articles, in uni-

versities, and by the three international conferences devoted to the
mathematics and science of paperfolding that have taken place so
far in Italy, Japan, and California.

Some Other Interests

But Martin Gardner’s interests have always spread far beyond con-
juring, paperfolding, and mathematics. Sometimes his books on
the most unlikely subjects have overtones of paperfolding. He has
remained a philosopher all his life and, his book The Whys of a
Philosophical Scrivener is an absorbing apology for his own per-
sonal philosophy. In it, he displays an unexpected appreciation of
Miguel Unamuno, the great Spanish philosopher, poet and paper-
folder, who died on New Year’s Eve, 1936 to 1937, at the beginning
of the Spanish Civil War. Martin is said to have been influenced
in his ideas on theism by Unamuno, and we may wonder whether
Martin and Unamuno shared a common way of thinking.
In the very different field of literary criticism, Martin Gardner
annotated several popular classics, including the poems “The An-
cient Mariner” and “The Night before Christmas.” As might be ex-
pected, he was very attracted by the work of Lewis Carroll and
made annotated editions of Alice in Wonderland and Alice through
the Looking Glass, which have since been combined in a single vol-
ume. In them, Martin did not fail to refer to Lewis Carroll’s own
interest in paperfolding. However, he made sure that he took his
information from Lewis Carroll’s own diaries (which mention paper
boats and bangers) and that he did not make Lewis Carroll into
a “great and enthusiastic paperfolder” as some overenthusiastic
commentators have done.
When we come to assess Martin Gardner’s place in the history
of paperfolding, we, too, must be careful not to exaggerate. He
was not a creative folder, and he did not write a single book solely
about paperfolding. Had he not achieved fame through his column
in Scientific American, our perception of his part in the growth of
Western origami is likely to have been much less.
Yet, Martin Gardner certainly did play an important part in the
development of origami. In the 1930s and 1940s, he was one of
the magicians who helped to build up the popularity of paperfold-
ing stunts and tricks. He played a part in the swelling interest in
Martin Gardner and Paperfolding 27

paperfolding in the West after 1957 when Gershon Legman, Robert

Harbin, and Lillian Oppenheimer linked up to form a firm inter-
national base for future development. Martin added a note of aca-
demic respectability to paperfolding through his article for Ency-
clopaedia Britannica, despite the undue delay in its publication.
Above all, it was Martin Gardner’s handful of paperfolding ar-
ticles in Scientific American, which were later reprinted with ad-
ditions in his subsequent books, that brought paperfolding as a
mixture of play, art, and mathematics to the notice of a new audi-
ence and that demonstrated once and for all that paperfolding was
much more than a children’s pastime.
Martin Gardner’s supreme achievement was his ability to com-
municate difficult and often profound subjects with a few deft, but
human, strokes of his pen. He removed fear from our approach to
mathematics and science. We can be grateful that he grew up sur-
rounded by the humble art of paperfolding and that he was able to
show that it is not only fun to do, but that it, too, has its place in
the greater world of mathematics and science and is not unworthy
of our time and our interest.

Acknowledgments. This article first appeared in 1945 in the late and

much lamented private magazine FOLD.
I express my deep gratitude to Martin Gardner, to whom I have
submitted this article. He has graciously given it his approval and
has suggested some minor additions and corrections that I have
incorporated in the revised edition.
I also thank Mick Guy for reviewing this article and for suggest-
ing corrections of some of the typographical errors of which I had
inevitably fallen victim.
I, alone, remain responsible for the content and for all inaccu-
racies.
I shall welcome any corrections to this article and also any fur-
ther information or anecdotes about Martin Gardner’s involvement
with paperfolding.
. . . Nothing but Confusion?
Anamorphoses with Double
Meaning

István Orosz

Anamorphosis is the Greek term for retransformation. In art his-

tory it is used for those works of art that were made distorted
and unrecognizable through clever geometrical constructions. But
when viewed from a certain point or through a reflecting object
placed upon it, the hidden image appears in its true shape, that is,
it goes through retransformation. Depending on which of the two
ways of retransformation that is used, there are two main types
of anamorphosis. The first is perspective anamorphosis (or oblique
anamorphosis), which was already in use during the early Renais-
sance (the fifteenth century). The second is called mirror anamor-
phosis (or catoptric anamorphosis), which appeared at the same
time as the mannerisms of the baroque era (the sixteenth century).
Hans Holbein’s painting, The French Ambassadors, is perhaps
the most famous example of anamorphosis. In it, a distorted shape
lies diagonally across the bottom of the frame. Viewing this image
from an acute angle transforms it into the plastic and almost three-
dimensional image of a skull.

29
Other documents randomly have
different content
makes no difference, if it is only a good man. Would you not invite a
black man to your table? I am sure I would, and did; and once,
when a diplomat who was dining with me also, objected a little to
my courtesy to a ‘negro,’ as he called him, I gave him quickly to
understand that possibly the negro was better than he was.”
Then she talked to Miss Sherman (now Mrs. Fitch) about her
mother, of whose Catholic zeal and perpetual charity to the poor she
had heard so much.
To each one in turn she addressed some pertinent word, and
then, laughing, turned to me as a representative of my country, and
exclaimed numerous things not very complimentary to our system of
high tariff.
“Why, we make the most beautiful things in the world in Paris;
you Americans all say so, and yet you won’t let your people buy
them without paying twice what they are worth, by your fearful
custom-house rules.
“Americans are so clever; they ought to know they hurt their
own people, and they hurt us in Paris, too. Our poor work for such
small wages, and would always be happy, if you would only let them
sell to you; and, after all, your rich importers just add your tariff fees
on to the price of our goods, and who has the benefit?”
I answered: “Ours is a prosperous country, with our protective
tariff system.” “Yes, I know, in spite of your tariff. I have heard that,
a hundred times. Some day, you will be just like us, and get where
you can get the cheapest. You don’t think making things dear helps
anybody, do you?” Politeness prevented much discussion. It was all
one way. Besides, was it not to hear her talk, not ourselves, that we
were there?
She went back to the black man, or the black woman rather. “I
had a good laugh on my dear husband, the Emperor, once. He lived
in your country awhile, you know, and he was always fancying your
pretty women. One day at New Orleans he saw a beautiful female
form ahead of him in the street. It was all grace of movement, and
elegance of apparel. He was struck by the figure. I think he was half
in love. ‘I must see her face,’ he exclaimed to his companion. ‘I must
see her. She is my divinity, running away.’ He hurried his pace,
passed her, and the moment politeness would permit, glanced back.
It was a ‘mulatto.’ I don’t think he always regarded black people
quite in the light I did.”
Shortly we proposed to go, though she made no sign that the
interview was at an end. “No,” she said. “Wait; I have leisure,
nothing but leisure and rheumatism.” But she had no rheumatic
look; a more charming-looking woman of fifty, I never saw. Her
bright eyes were as blue as the sky, her complexion exceeding fair,
her hair still golden, her vivacity of manner and cleverness of speech
surprising beyond measure; and then her kindness made us feel that
we were talking with a friend. All of us were led on to say much, and
the visit lasted for two hours. Much of the talk was about
Switzerland and health resorts, and so much at random as not to be
remembered or noted down.
When at last we arose to go, she again came to the middle of
the room and took us each by the hand. And then I asked her a
word about her future plans. “There are none,” she said. “All is over.
I have only my son, and he and I will spend our lives in quiet and
peace.” Alas! only a few years went by and that son was lying dead
in an African cornfield, his body pierced by Zulu lances.

* * * * *

In June General Sherman has written again about Miss S.’s

travels, and also something about the French Republic, and the
Modoc War:

“Washington, D. C., June 9, 1873.

“Dear Byers: I am just in receipt of your letter of May 20.
Mr. Rublee was here not long since en route for Rome, and
from what he said I think he has made no business
arrangements, and that he will stay there his full term.
“We have letters from Minnie up to May 20, at Rome, at
which time she had joined the Healys, and will accompany
them to Venice, Milan, Nice and Pau, France, a route that
takes her well away from Zurich, but she begs to be allowed
to remain abroad longer, say till next spring, so as to enable
her to have more time to stay with you and to visit England
and Ireland. I suppose she ought to reach Switzerland in July
or August and stay with you a month or more. I have given
her my consent, and hope before she reaches you you will
have all our letters on the subject. If she stays beyond
October, she had better not attempt a winter passage, but
wait till April or May. This will make a long visit, but I suppose
it will be the only chance she will ever have, and she might as
well profit by it.
“Mrs. Sherman did intend to take the family to Carlisle for
the summer, but the season is so pleasant here that she has
almost concluded to remain at home and make short
excursions. So that we will be here in Washington all summer.
“I rather like the change in France, and I think General
McMahon will make a better president than Thiers, for he can
keep out of the corps legislatif, which Thiers could not do. If
France can stand a republic she must endure such presidents
as time offers. It is easier to get a good president than a
good dynasty.
“Our Modoc war is over, and soon the principal chiefs will
be hung by due course of law (military), and the balance of
the tribe will be dispersed among other tribes easily watched.
We always have something of this sort every spring. Give my
best love to Mrs. Byers, and believe me always your friend,
W. T. Sherman.”
 CHAPTER X
1873

THE SOURCE OF THE RHINE​--​STRANGE VILLAGES THERE​--​A

REPUBLIC FOUR HUNDRED YEARS OLD​--​THE “GRAY LEAGUE”​--​
“THE LEAGUE OF THE HOUSE OF GOD”​--​LOUIS PHILIPPE’S
HIDING PLACE​--​A TOUR IN THE VALLEY OF THE INN​--​LETTER
FROM GENERAL SHERMAN​--​REGRETS HIS CAREER SEEMS
OVER.

This summer we determined to see the source of the River

Rhine. For all that tourists seemed to know, it was only a mist
among the clouds. It was far away in the upper and unfrequented
Alps. We went on foot, and found all the upper Rhine scenery ten
times as grand as anything below Schaffhausen and the Falls. Except
the classic scenery from Bingen to Coblenz no scene there is to be at
all compared with a hundred places on the Rhine, among the Swiss
Alps. What is called the German Rhine, is far less striking. It is the
Swiss Rhine, far above where it flows through Lake Constance, that
is truly picturesque. At Chur, we turned to the right, into the
mountains, and followed up the branch known as the “Vorder Rhine.”
Every morning at the sunrise, we were trudging along the way
with our knapsacks and staffs, with the wildest mountain scenery all
about us. We passed many ruins of castles, and numerous
picturesque little villages​--​Reichenau, Ilianz, Trois, Disentis.
We always rested a few hours in the middle of the day, slept
awhile, and had simple dinners of trout and bread, with honey and
wine.
 Rich Peasant’s House.​--​Page 89.

Right and left the scenery is gorgeous, certainly, but this grand
nature is also man’s enemy in these higher Alps. Flood and
avalanche are forever threatening; the fields produce little, the
villages are poor and wretched, and we ask ourselves, why do
people seek such places to live in?
 The answer is, they can’t get away; they are too poor. Besides,
here is where their ancestors lived always; why should they not live
here, too, they answer. Years later, a girl from one of these places
came and lived in our home as a domestic; but she was forever
lamenting her mountains and her wretched village, spite of the fact
that it had been three times overwhelmed by avalanches. That was
the town of Selva.
Near to this Selva, is the hamlet of Gesten, and there eighty-four
souls were lost by an avalanche in a single night. The big grave
containing them all was shown to us, outside of the village.
Tourists who travel by coach and railway in Switzerland, have
little conception of what real, Swiss, Alpine scenery or Alpine life is
like. It is just judging the moon by looking through a telescope. Life
in these almost unknown valleys, differs from all the rest of
Switzerland. Here the commune is the government. Of national laws,
or presidents and parliaments, the people know nothing. The village
mayor is the king. Not many years ago, these mayors and their
village advisers in the Vorder Rhine countries, could hang men and
women of their own accord.
The people are a species of Italian and speak an Italian dialect.
Five hundred years ago, they had petty republics up here. Here were
the “Gray League,” the “Ten Jurisdictions” and the “House of God.”
In 1396, the liberty-loving people of the high Rhine valleys
fought for liberty, and founded a little nation called Rhaetia, that
lasted four hundred years, when it became united to Switzerland.
Ilanz, their old capital, stands here still, a novel picture of past ages.
The snow-capped mountains, the fine forests, the picturesque river
Rhine, are there as they were then, and the sons and daughters of
these old liberty athletes have changed almost as little as the scene
of their fathers.
We walked on to Selva and spent the night. I could have thought
myself living among Roman peasants in the time of Julius Cæsar.
Everything was antique, simple, different from the nineteenth
century. Corn grows up there, but the people live mostly from their
flocks. I noticed the men wore earrings, and men and women, with
their ruddy, brown faces and black hair, look like a better class of
Southern gipsies. They have almost no books, few schools, and only
a single newspaper in the whole valley. No human being, outside of
the Upper Rhine, would think of calling that journal a newspaper.
The houses are built of hewn logs, turned brown as a Cincinnati
ham, and the clapboard roofs are held on by big stones.
Spite of their surroundings, these peasants and villagers are
happy, and sing and dance as did their ancestors on the plains of
Tuscany.
They fear the avalanches every night. They call them “The White
Death,” and look on them as sent by spirits.
They know little, and care less, about what is going on in the
world, and would give more to wake up any morning, and find a new
kid or lamb born, than to hear of the discovery of a new continent.
Their only ambition is to get their cribs full for the winter, and at last
to mix their bones with the dust of their fathers, beyond the village
church.
Near to one of these villages, and farther down the valley, is the
tiny lake of “Tama,” and there the river Rhine begins. The natives
here call it “Running Water.” The stream is dark and green, and the
lake is surrounded by dreary rocks and ice-clad mountains. It is
7,690 feet above the sea. Tourists on the palace steamers of the
Rhine, down by the sands of Holland, should see the historic river at
its cradle, if they would have memories to last forever.
We followed another branch of the Rhine that joins this one at
Reichenau. It, too, is born among the grand mountain scenes, and
sweeps through deep gorges, among them the famous Via Mala.
Here at Reichenau, too, is the first bridge over the united Rhine. It is
of wood, eighty feet high and 238 feet long, in a single arch.
Near it, we were shown a little, old castle that has become
historic. There was a school kept there upon a time. One October
evening of 1793, a wandering pilgrim, with a pack on his back,
knocked at the door and begged the old schoolmaster to give him
work. He could cipher and talk French, and write a decent hand. For
many months, the humble stranger helped to teach the boys, and
earned his daily bread. No one troubled himself to find out who he
was. He signed his name Chabourd Latour. One evening, the boys
saw the undermaster in tears. He was reading a newspaper, wherein
was the account of his father’s being beheaded on a Paris scaffold.
The secret of the poor teacher was soon out. It was not Latour, but
Louis Philippe, a coming king of France. He had wandered
everywhere in disguise, for after his escape from banishment, no
nation had dared give him a resting place.
This little Rhine valley had no more romantic story.

* * * * *

One evening after we were back at Zurich a kindly faced

gentleman called at the consulate. The fatal card hung on the door,
“Office closed till 9 to-morrow.” I was in the court below, with just
ten minutes between me and train time. I was to hurry out home to
a party by the lake. I saw the look of disappointment on the man’s
face, and something told me I ought to stop. The gentleman was a
traveling American. Some papers of importance had to be signed by
him immediately before a consul. Of course I missed the party, but I
made a friend. It was Mr. A. D. Jessup, a Philadelphia millionaire. He
lingered about Zurich a few days, and we met and talked together
often. Sometimes we had our lunch and beer together at the famous
little café Orsini. Then Mr. Jessup said good-by and left on his
travels. A month from then a telegram came from him at Paris. It
was an invitation to be his guest on a ten days’ drive in the Austrian
Tyrol, with a wind-up at the World’s Fair in Vienna. He was a friend
of President Grant’s, the message continued, and he could arrange
for my leave of absence.
A few mornings later a four-horse carriage halted by the
consulate and we started for the Engadine, that lofty Alpine valley
that is coursed for a hundred miles by the river Inn. This is not a
valley of desolation. It is broad and productive, and once had many
people and a little government of its own. To-day there are pretty
villages at long distances and Insbruck is a picturesque and historic
town. But the Inn valley is sky high compared with other rich valleys
of Europe. We had bright sunshine and a delicious mountain air all
the way. The Inn is rapid and beautiful, and right and left, for twenty
miles at a stretch, rise high green hills, or else abrupt and lofty
mountains, with sometimes bold and almost perpendicular crags. If
we saw a rock that looked extraordinarily picturesque, away up
toward the blue sky, there were sure to be also there the romantic
ruins of some old castle. It seemed that we passed a hundred of
these lofty ruins, with broken towers and fallen walls, through whose
tall arches we sometimes saw patches of blue sky. Eagles soared
around many of these lofty and deserted ruins. As we two drove for
miles and miles along the white winding road by the river we
constantly looked up at the romantic heights, and in our minds re-
peopled the gray old castles and thought of the time, a thousand
years ago, when all the peasantry of the rich valley were the serfs of
masters who reveled in these castles built with the toil of the poor. A
time came when the enslaved rose and all these castles were
overthrown or burned and left as they are to-day. There are ruins
high up above this Inn valley that, doubtless, have not been visited
by a human footstep in a hundred years. Most of them are
inaccessible. The former roads cut up the rocky mountain sides to
them, are gone and forgotten, and the heights with their awful
ridges against the sky look as desolate as the desert.
We closed our delightful journey with a visit to the World’s Fair
at Vienna. Barring the Swiss National Exhibition, I have never seen
anything so fine.
On my return I found this letter from General Sherman waiting
me. In it, he expresses regret that his active career seems over:

“Washington, D. C., July 14, 1873.

 “Dear Byers: I received your letter some days ago and
sent it from my office to the house, for the perusal of Mrs.
Sherman, therefore it is not before me now. I take it for
granted that Minnie is, or must be, at Zurich or near there.
Since she has been traveling from Italy her letters have been
less frequent, and I fear some of our letters to her have
miscarried, or been delayed. It is now pretty well determined
that she will remain over the winter, so that she will have
plenty of time to see all things that can be of interest. I hope
that she will give Switzerland a good long visit, and that from
there she will make the excursions that are so convenient. We
all write to her often, so she must feel perfectly easy on our
behalf. Instead of going to Carlisle, as Mrs. S. first intended,
the family have remained here in Washington, and I see no
cause to regret it, for we have had but little oppressive
weather, and our house is so large and airy that I doubt if any
change would be for the better. Of course, all the fashionable
people, including most of the officers, have gone to the
seashore or mountains, so that Washington is comparatively
dull, but the many changes here in the streets, and
abundance of flowing water have added much to the comfort
of those who remain and can’t get away.
“Elly and Rachel, the two smaller girls, who were at
school when you were here, are now at home, and are busy
all day with their companions, playing croquet in our yard.
Tom is putting in his vacation by riding horseback with two of
his companions up through Pennsylvania. At last date he was
near Altoona, and will be gone all of July and part of August.
I suppose the return of Minister Rublee to his post has
disappointed you, but you must have patience and do well
that which is appointed for you, leaving for time that
advancement which all ambitious men should aim for. I
sometimes regret that I am at the end of my rope, for it is an
old saying that there is more real pleasure in the pursuit than
in reaching the goal. Although you may hear of cholera in this
country, I assure you that it is not serious. I suppose the
same is true of Europe, though it is reported the Shah of
Persia declined to visit Vienna on account of cholera. I think
Minnie ought to visit Vienna, if only for a week, to see that
really beautiful city, and to visit Mr. Jay’s family. My best love
to Mrs. Byers. Truly your friend,
W. T. Sherman.”
 CHAPTER XI
1874

SHERMAN ON CUBA​--​VISIT ITALY​--​GARIBALDI’S WONDERFUL

RECEPTION AT ROME​--​THE ARTIST FREEMAN​--​FIRST
AMERICAN PAINTER TO LIVE IN ROME​--​ROME IN 1840​--​SEE
VICTOR EMMANUEL​--​JOAQUIN MILLER​--​HIS CONVERSATION
AND APPEARANCE​--​NEW SWISS CONSTITUTION​--​MORE
LETTERS FROM GENERAL SHERMAN​--​TOO MANY
COMMANDERS IN WASHINGTON FOR HIM​--​WILL GO TO ST.
LOUIS​--​HIS VIEWS OF WAR HISTORIES.

A hint once that if I preferred to be in the Army instead of the

Consular service the matter could be arranged, led me to think of
one of the Paymasterships then being created by Congress. The
General wrote me as to these plans. His letter has value only
because of the prophecy as to Cuba.

“Washington, D. C., Nov. 28, 1873.

“Dear Byers:​--​I was very glad to get your letter of
November 12th this morning, as it reminds me of a duty
neglected to write you, renewing my thanks to you for your
extreme kindness to Minnie. She arrived home about the 1st
of November perfectly well, and she has been quietly at home
ever since. The winter season is about to begin, and she must
do her share in society. We begin to-night by a large
reception at Mr. Fish’s, and I suppose must keep it up through
the winter. I suppose that Mr. Rublee will remain where he is,
 and the Department regarding you as fixed, will not
voluntarily promote you to a larger Consulate.
“As to the Army, things are somewhat confused. There is
a law forbidding any appointments or promotions in the staff
corps and Departments, including the Paymasters. Of these
there are for duty about forty-seven, and I understand the
Paymaster-General, Alvord, says he must have fifty-three to
do the necessary work. And in his annual report to be
submitted to Congress next Monday he will ask for that
number, and I believe the Secretary of War and the President
both approve, but for these six places there are more than a
hundred conspicuous applicants. Yet I will submit your letter,
or so much of it as refers to that subject, to General Belknap,
who knows you and whose recommendation will be
conclusive. Of course I, too, will endorse. But don’t build any
castles on this, for I know what a rush there will be on the
first symptom of Congress opening the subject. Everybody
here is on the qui vive for Cuba, but I don’t get excited, for I
believe the diplomatists will settle it, but sooner or later Cuba
will cause trouble in that quarter. I will give your message to
Mrs. Sherman, to Lizzie, Minnie, etc., and will always be glad
to hear such good news of the baby and Mrs. Byers. Give
them my best love, and believe me,
“Truly, etc.,
W. T. Sherman.”

March, 1874.​--​Went to Italy for a month, via the Mont Ceni. I

was surprised at the beauty of the river boulevard in Pisa, for
travelers rarely mention it. To my mind, it is finer than the Lung Arno
of Florence. Besides, it is something to see a big bridge made wholly
of marble.
The one man of all men in Italy I hoped to see, was Garibaldi,
the Ulysses of the modern world.
 He was not to be seen; but I tried to console myself by looking
over to his little island of Caprera, near the Sardinian coast. Dumas’
Life of Garibaldi set my mind on fire with the story of this man. My
inn-keeper at Naples, too, had been with the patriot in all his
campaigns. Listening to him talk was as entertaining as reading
Homer.

Garibaldi.​--​Page 96.
 King Victor Emmanuel.​--​Page 96.

The scene, when Garibaldi came to Rome from the solitude of

his little island, to enter parliament the next year, was worthy the
brush of a great artist. The Italy that he had made, and presented to
Victor Emmanuel, had seemed to have forgotten the old man of
Caprera. He was feeble and poor and rheumatic. Suddenly all Italy,
his Italy, remembered him. The King sent a gilded chariot drawn by
six white horses, to take him through the streets of Rome. As the old
cripple, wearing his Garibaldi mantle, limped into the Parliament
house, every member rose to do him honor. I would rather have
been Garibaldi in Rome that day, than to have been Cæsar, riding
along the same streets, with slaves and subjugated peoples in his
train.
March 5.​--​Looked at numbers of the historic Roman palaces. The
one that affected me most was the dingy and neglected old building
in the Ghetto, where the Cenci lived. This immense and half-empty
pile, in an obscure part of Rome, would attract nobody, save for the
story of a beautiful girl, immortalized by the pencil of Guido Reni. All
the time I was within the building, my mind was on a scene in a
prison, where this same girl hung in torments before her cruel
tormentors, crying to be let down, and she “would tell it all”​--​the
killing of her own father.
And then came that morning before daylight, the morning of her
execution. Herself and an artist are in a cell. A little candle burns,
the executioners wait outside the door, and Guido Reni, to make her
picture striking, drapes a sheet about her head and shoulders, while
all the time she is waiting there for death. Saddest tale of Rome!
Next morning I called at the American Legation. Mr. W----, the
secretary, affected the utmost ignorance and indifference as to who I
was, or whether my card would finally reach Mr. Marsh, our Minister.
I asked him to hand the card back to me, and walked over to the
Rospigliosi palace, where Mr. Marsh promptly received me, and in
the kindest manner. I was in the presence of a statesman and a
scholar​--​not a snob.
Mr. Marsh had followed the Italian court all about Italy​--​to Turin,
Florence, Rome. He stood high in the estimation of the Italian court
and foreign diplomats. His genius and scholarship were now casting
luster on the American name.
“Don’t tell anybody at home what a palace I live in,” he said to
me, jocosely. “They will think me an aristocrat over there, whereas I
am the plainest of republicans. Here in Rome a palace is just as
cheap as anything. Everybody lives in a palace here.”
In another part of the palace, I saw Guido’s great picture of
Aurora. I noticed the mark of the French cannon ball that went
through it when Garibaldi was defending Rome.
Bought a copy of Guido’s Cenci, and then went and looked at the
Angelo bridge, where they cut off the head of Beatrice.
I went often to Mr. Freeman’s studio. He was the first American
painter to live in Rome. He was, too, the first U.S. Consul to Italy,
and he it was who protected Margaret Fuller, on a time, from the
danger of a mob. It was at the time the French forced their way into
Rome. He planted the Stars and Stripes on her balcony, and the mob
fell back. That was in 1849.
Freeman painted a picture for me that has inspired a poem by J.
Buchanan Read. It was “The Princess.” The model was a blonde,
with hair like gold. Freeman corrected my notion that there were no
blondes in Italy. There are many, just as there were in the time of
the earlier masters. Yellow was Titian’s favorite color.
Freeman told me much of Rome, as it was when he first went
there, in 1840. He lived there under three popes, Gregory, Pius IX
and Leo XIII.
Rome was entirely different from to-day. The houses had open
entrances, or, where there were doors, they swung outward to the
street, like American barn doors. There were almost no sidewalks,
and the few seen were only wide enough for one person. The streets
were dimly lighted by occasional oil lamps, great distances apart. Of
course, assassination in such streets was of common occurrence.
The water spouts of the houses were so projected as to empty
themselves in cataracts on the heads of passers-by.
The pavements were made of cobble stones, that had to be
covered with straw or earth when the Pope went abroad in his
grandeur.
 The city was full of foreign artists, along in the fifties, as now.
Among them were Crawford and Greenough, Story and West, whom
Byron called “Europe’s worst painter and poor England’s best.”
The fact is, West was a Pennsylvania Quaker, though he became
King George’s court artist, and at last got buried in St. Paul’s
Cathedral.
I went often to the Vatican, not to see the palace itself, for that
impressed me not at all, or only as a great and miscellaneous pile,
but to see a certain picture there. The artist who made it was but
thirty-seven years old when he died. Yet, it has been said that in the
“Transfiguration” one sees “the last perfection of art.” This picture
seems to be one of those things that no one ever thinks to try to
emulate. Like the Iliad and Paradise Lost, nothing of their kind came
before them, and nothing is looked for to follow them.
One morning I was drinking my coffee in a little den in the Via
Condotti. A very singular-looking man came in and sat down at the
little table next to mine. Hearing me speak English with a friend, he
addressed me. “You are the Consul at Zurich, are you not? You were
pointed out to me the other day in the street. I am Joaquin Miller of
California. Let us get acquainted.” I moved my chair and coffee over
to his table. I was greatly gratified at meeting a poet who seemed to
me to have some of the genius of Byron. His “Songs of the Sierras”
have the ring of the master. Last summer I read them in
Switzerland. Their freshness, their flavor of the prairie and the
mountain, their passionate utterance, took me by storm. What the
English said of him, in their extravagant joy at “discovering” a live
genius in the wilds of the United States, did not affect me, it was the
stirring passion of the verse itself. The buffalo, the Indian scout, the
burning prairie, the people of the desert, the women with bronzed
arms and palpitating hearts, the men in sombreros, with brave lives,
and love worth the dying for​--​that was what he was writing about,
and they were all alive before me.
Sitting here at the little white marble table of an Italian café, he
seemed all out of place. There was nothing in the surroundings of
which this half-wild looking poet-scout of the prairies was a part. His
yellow locks, flashing blue eyes, stormy face, athletic form, careless
dress, and broad-brimmed hat on the floor by his feet, all told of
another kind of life.
Much of his talk was cynical in the extreme. He was ridiculing
everything, everybody, even himself, and he looked about him as if
constantly thinking to grab his hat, bound for the door, and rush
over the Tiber with a yell. He hated restraint of any kind whatever​--​
dress, custom, language.
Miller was now writing in some little attic in Rome, but none of
his friends knew where. He would not tell them; he wanted to be
alone.
A boy brought us the morning journal, and we talked of
newspapers. I asked him what English and American papers he
read. He smiled, and answered ironically: “When I want seriousness,
I read the London Punch, and for truth, I take the New York Herald.”
There was no talk that morning with him about poetry, but he
was jocose and cynical.
He asked me what I was doing. I told him I was getting ready to
try my hand at a drama. “Don’t do it​--​all damned nonsense!” he
cried. “Dramas worth anything are not wanted, and if you write in
blank verse, as you say you propose, not one actor in five hundred
knows how to recite the lines. It must be mighty plain prose for
these wind sawyers.”
Just then a tall, fine looking young man came and sat down by
our table. Mr. Miller nudged me, and whispered, “Bingen on the
Rhine.” “That is young Norton, son of the woman who wrote ‘Bingen
on the Rhine.’” I looked at him with interest; but he was English, and
I was a stranger, so conversation at that particular table suddenly
stopped.
It was on this visit to Rome that I often saw Victor Emmanuel,
Italy’s first King. Every Sunday afternoon he drove on the Pincian
Hill. The extreme Catholics of Rome, the Pope’s party, paid him little
or no attention, and scarcely greeted him when he passed; but all
the rest of Rome and all Italy nearly worshiped the “Re
Galantuomo.” He was a stout, dark looking man, with black eyes and
a mustache like a horse’s mane. He was fifty-six years old then, and
had been twelve years King of Sardinia, and sixteen years King of
Italy.
At this time our Minister, Mr. Marsh, arranged to have a friend
and myself presented to Pope Pius IX, but a sudden attack of Roman
fever deprived me of the pleasure.
Two men have existed in my life-time whom I should have given
much to know,​--​Mr. Gladstone and Abraham Lincoln. Once I was a
bearer of dispatches to Mr. Lincoln, but illness led me to hurry away,
after giving the trust to General Grant. It has been the regret of my
life that I missed grasping the hand of, possibly, the greatest man
that ever lived.
Back in Switzerland. Great excitement on this May Day, 1874, for
on the 19th of last month, by a popular vote, the people changed
the Swiss Constitution. Instead of twenty-two little cantons, doing
just as they pleased, they will now have a centralized republic, more
like the United States.
Some interesting features of the new Swiss system are these:
The President is chosen for but a year, and can not succeed himself
in office. No military surrender is allowed. The post and telegraph
and telephone belong to the government, which also controls all
railroads and owns some. Schools are free and compulsory. Salt and
gunpowder are government monopolies, and factories are under
national control or regulation. Abuse of the freedom of the press
may be punished by the general council. Supreme Court Judges are
elected, but from the legislative body. National laws must be
submitted to popular vote if demanded by 30,000 people. The
President must be chosen by the Assembly from among its own
members. Members of the Cabinet have seats and votes in the
Assembly.
 August 18, 1874.​--​Had a long letter some time since from
General Sherman. He says: “Don’t rely too much on my influence
here in Washington. Privately, we feel here that President Grant has
somewhat gone back on his old friends, in trying to make alliances
with new ones. Besides, I am compelled to endorse a good many on
their war record, and would not like to be found to choose among
them.” He also says that this fall he will probably move to St. Louis.
“There are too many commanding officers here in Washington.”
On the 7th he writes interestingly about the histories of the war.

“Washington, D. C., August 7, 1874.

“Dear Byers:​--​I was glad to receive your letter of the 19th
of July, and, with you, think the Centennial of Philadelphia will
prove a lamentable failure. Congress will not probably adopt it
as a national affair, and it will degenerate into a mere state or
city affair.
“Economy is now the cry here, and it may be that it is
forced on us by the vast cost of the Civil War, which was
bridged over by paper money, that now calls for interest and
principal. As in former years, the first blow falls on the Army
and Navy, that are treated as mere pensioners, and every
cent is begrudged.
“No one who was an actor in the Grand Drama of the Civil
War, seems willing to risk its history. I have endeavored to
interest Members of Congress in the preliminary steps of
preparing and printing in convenient form the official
dispatches, but find great opposition, lest the task should fall
on some prejudiced person who would in the preparation and
compilation favor McClellan or Grant or some one party.
“All histories thus far, of which Draper’s is the best, are
based for facts on the newspaper reports, which were
necessarily hasty and imperfect. Till the official reports are
accessible, it would be unsafe for any one to attempt a
narration of events beyond his personal vision, and no single
person saw a tenth part of the whole. I have some notes of
my own part in manuscript, and copies of all my reports and
letters, but am unwilling to have them printed lest it should
involve me in personal controversies.
“Minnie will be married Oct. 1st, and we will all remove to
St. Louis soon thereafter.
“All send you and Mrs. Byers the assurance of their
affection. Believe me always your friend,
“W. T. Sherman.”
 CHAPTER XII
1875

LETTERS FROM MRS. SHERMAN AND THE GENERAL​--​HE TELLS ME

HE IS WRITING HIS LIFE​--​THE NEGRO QUESTION​--​A CHATEAU
BY LAKE ZURICH​--​I WRITE A BOOK ON SWITZERLAND​--​ALSO
WRITE A PLAY​--​A CITY OF DEAD KINGS​--​GO TO LONDON​--​
MEET COLONEL FORNEY​--​DINNER AT GEO. W. SMALLEY’S​--​
KATE FIELD​--​VISIT BOUCICAULT​--​CONVERSATIONS WITH THE
NEWER SHAKESPEARE​--​THE BEAUTIFUL MINNIE WALTON​--​
BREAKFAST AT HER HOME​--​PROF. FICK​--​HIS HOUSE BUILT IN
THE OLD ROMAN WALL​--​LECTURES​--​HOLIDAYS AT THE
CONSULATE​--​MRS. CONGRESSMAN KELLEY​--​A STUDENT
COMMERS​--​BEER DRINKING​--​DUKES OF THE REPUBLIC​--​
DUELS​--​LETTER FROM GENERAL SHERMAN​--​PRUSSIAN ARMY
MANEUVERS.

March 24, 1875.​--​Received a welcome and gossipy letter from

Mrs. General Sherman. It reads:

“St. Louis, Mo., March 12, 1875.

“My Dear Major:​--​Your welcome letter would have been
answered immediately, but I have not been well. My general
health is very good, but the weather this Winter has been
exceptionally cold.
“Minnie and her good husband, with whom she is very
happy, live a few squares from us, and we see them every
day; Minnie having learned to be a great walker, during her
sojourn in Europe. We find our circle of friends and
acquaintances very large, and we find that almost as much
time has to be devoted to visiting here as in Washington. We
are delightfully situated in the home we occupied for several
years, before we removed to Washington, and which belongs
to us. We have plenty of spare room for friends, and shall
certainly claim a good, long visit from you and Mrs. Byers and
the children, when you return to your own country. Should
the next Administration be Democratic, that may not be very
long hence. Pray remember that I shall expect you.
“I have seen, and admire very much, your poem on ‘The
Sea’ in the ‘Navy Journal.’
“I am very glad you were gratified to receive the pretty
copy of your grand song, ‘When Sherman Marched Down to
the Sea.’ I shall have something else to send you soon. The
General’s Memoirs are in the hands of the publishers,
Appleton & Co., of N. Y., and will be out in May. It will be in
two volumes, excellent print, and I am sure you will find it
entertaining. I will see that you get an early copy. Please
write to me when you receive it, without waiting to read it,
because I shall be anxious to know if it has gone safely.
Should you not receive it by the last of May, let me know. Do
not buy a copy, for I wish to send you one. The book begins
in 1846 and extends to the close of the war. The chapters
that I have read are highly interesting.
“The General seems to be growing older in appearance,
but his health is good, and his spirits are the same; his
vivacity has not sensibly diminished. To-night he is off to the
theater, to see Charlotte Cushman, who makes her last
appearance in St. Louis to-morrow. We have had a great
many attractive actors and actresses here this Winter, and we
have yet in store a greater treat than all. Ristori is playing in
New York and will be here some time during the Spring. The
General and Lizzie both admired Albani exceedingly, and think
her a superior actress to Nielson and as good a singer. I did
 not see her, as the weather was bad and my cold was severe
during her stay here.
“St. Louis is a city of great commercial enterprise and has
a wonderful future before her. Perhaps you will select this as
a place of residence on your return home. We would be very
glad to have you here.
“I hope Mrs. Byers and the children are well and that your
own health grows stronger. Lizzie joins me in best love to all.
She and I are alone to-night. Elly and Rachel are away at
school, Minnie in a home of her own, and Cumpsy in bed.
“Believe me very truly and warmly your friend,
“Ellen Ewing Sherman.”

I find this in my diary. On returning from Italy, we went over to

“Wangensbach” by Kussnacht, on Lake Zurich, to live for a Summer
or two. Wangensbach is an old chateau, or half castle-place, built by
the Knights of St. John in the long, long ago. The walls are three
feet thick, in places more, and there are all sorts of vaulted wine
cellars and mysterious, walled-in places, under the building. The
view from the windows and terrace, of blue lake and snowy
mountains, is superb in the extreme. The chateau is now owned by
Conrad Meyer, the Swiss poet and novelist. It is six miles to my office
in the city, and I walk in and out daily, though I could go on the
pretty steamers for a sixpence. Here, on a May day, “Baby Hélène”
came into the world, to gladden eight sweet years for us.
 Wangensbach.​--​Page 106.

Spite of Joaquin Miller’s prognostications at Rome about plays, I

was foolish enough to go ahead, and write a melodrama in blank
verse. Schultz-Beuthen, a friend of Liszt and follower of Wagner,
wrote delightful music for its songs. I went up to Mannheim, and
attended the plays in the old theater where Schiller was once a
director, and where some of his best plays were brought out.
Miller wrote me about this little play of mine as follows:

“N. Y. Hotel, N. Y., U. S. A., Feb. 11, 1879.

“My Dear Mr. Byers:​--​I remember you with pleasure,
remember the compliment you paid me in preferring a visit to
me before the good Pope.
“I have read your pretty play with pleasure, and have the
opinion of able managers. And I am bound to say, my dear
boy, that it is for the leisure, not for the stage. Like all your
work, it is well done, verses especially, but how on earth do
you expect to present five scenes in one act in this swift
 modern day? All modern plays have, as a rule, but one scene
to the act. Then you have almost altogether omitted humor.
Try again. By the by, I last night brought forth a play. See
enclosed bill. It was most emphatically damned. Write me if I
can do ought for you, and believe me
Truly yours,
J. W. Miller.”

My libretto and the music had pleased Minnie Hauk, the singer,
and she herself thought of using it, but the objection to the Wagner
kind of music came up. Her husband, Count Wartegg, wrote me
from Paris: “The libretto is very interesting, so original, and so well
written that its success is assured.”
 Minnie Hauk.​--​Page 107.

Minnie Hauk was just now at the height of her fame. In Scotland
and England she was very popular. At Edinburg the college students
one night, at the close of the opera, unhitched the horses from her
carriage and pulled her to the hotel themselves. I knew her quite
well in Switzerland. In fact, her secret marriage with Count Wartegg
had taken place in my office, and I had been a part of the little
adventure. She was a wife for years before the public found it out.
Her husband had an historic old castle over in the mountains of the
Tyrol.
In the meantime I had prepared another little play, and Miss
Kate Field had given them both to Genevieve Ward, who sent me
this about them:

“232 Rue de Rivoli, Paris, 26 Dec., 1875.

“Dear Sir:​--​I received the plays you confided to Miss Field,
and read them with much pleasure. Pocahontas should be
very popular in America, and I trust you will be fortunate in
having it well produced. The sympathies of the public should
also be warmly enlisted for the ‘Princess Tula,’ a charming
character, which requires delicate handling. Miss Clara Morris
would personate it most charmingly. I regret that they are
both lighter than my line of business, which is the heaviest. I
feel none the less honored that you should have sent them to
me, and again thanking you, and wishing you every success,
I remain
Yours truly,
“Genevieve Ward.”

The second drama was not offered to the managers at all, and
the two plays were laid away forever.
While on the Rhine I also visited Speyer, “The City of Dead
Kings.” In one crypt seven German monarchs lie side by side. Next
to Westminster Abbey in London, and the Capuchin Church in
Vienna, no one spot can show so much royal dust, and nowhere on
earth can one feel so much the fleeting littleness of man as in these
three places.

* * * * *

I had spent much time in preparing my book, called “Switzerland

and the Swiss.” Now when I asked permission of our State
Department to print it they promptly telegraphed me a refusal.
A Consul, not long before, had published a book on Turkey that
was not liked by some of the satraps of the Sultan. So a veto was
put on all books by Consuls.
My book was then printed anonymously, but received most
favorable comment. “Whoever the author is,” said the “Zurcher
Zeitung,” the principal Swiss journal, “he has shown more thorough
knowledge of the Swiss people than any foreigner who has written
about us.” The large edition was sold, spite of its being published
3
anonymously.
The London papers have much to say now about the mixed
condition of party affairs in America. Yesterday I had a letter from
General Sherman bearing on the same subject. It also tells me he is
writing a history of his life. It also gives his views of negroes voting.

“St. Louis, Mo., Jan. 26, 1875.

“Dear Byers:​--​Your letter of Nov. 21st, sending a copy of
the London Saturday Review, has been in my pigeon hole ‘For
answer’ so long that I am ashamed. I have always intended
to avail myself of the opportunity to write you a long, gossipy
letter, but have as usual put it off from day to day, so that
now I hardly know what to tell you. We are now most
comfortably established in St. Louis, a large, growing and
most dirty city, but which in my opinion is a far better place
for the children than the clean and aristocratic Washington.
Minnie, also, is domiciled near us in a comfortable home,
whilst her husband seems busy on his new work in
connection with a manufactory of wire.
“I have no doubt that General Grant and the Cabinet
think me less enthusiastic in the political management than I
ought to be. And they may be right. In some respects they
have been selfish and arrogant, and are fast losing that hold
on public respect they used to enjoy, and there is now but
 little doubt but that they have thrown the political power into
an opposition that the old Democratic party will utilize for
itself. The mistake began in 1865 when they gave votes to
the negroes, and then legislated so as to make the negro
dominant at the South where the old Rebel whites represent
eight millions to the four of the blacks, and the first have
united solidly into a dangerous opposition. In our form of
Government, when the majority rules in local Government, it
is hard for the National Government to coerce this majority to
be docile and submissive to a party outside, however
respectable.
“I had seen that article in the Review, as also many
others of mine which, on the whole, are flattering. I have,
after considerable hesitation, agreed to publish the whole, of
which that one was the conclusion. The book, still in
manuscript, is estimated to make two octavo volumes of
about four hundred pages each, and I have given the
manuscript of the first volume to the Appletons of New York,
and will send the balance this week. The whole should be out
in about three months, when I trust it will afford you a couple
of days of pleasant reading. Thus far the public has no
knowledge of this thing, but I suppose I can not conceal it
much longer.
“We are all well. Give our best love to Mrs. Byers, and
believe me truly your friend,
“W. T. Sherman.”

After a while the book appeared, and again the General wrote
about it.

“St. Louis, Mo., Aug. 31, 1875.

“My Dear Friend:​--​I have received your welcome favor of
July 31st. Mrs. Sherman has since got one of later date, in
which you acknowledge the receipt of the Memoirs. I am
 glad, of course, that they pleased you in form and substance.
Such is the general judgment of those who embraced the
whole book, whilst others, picking out a paragraph here and
there, find great fault. When I had made up my mind to
publish, I prepared myself for the inevitable consequences of
offending some. I tried to make a truthful picture of the case,
as it was left in my mind, without fear, favor or affection, and
though it may cause bad feelings now, will in the end be
vindicated. I want no friend to eulogize or apologize, but
leave the volumes to fight out their own battle.
“We are all now at home except Minnie, who has her own
home not far from us. Her baby is growing and beginning to
assume the form of humanity, recognizing objects and
manifesting a will and purpose of his own.
“Early in September all the children will resume their
schools​--​Tom at Yale, Elly at Manhattanville, N. Y., the rest
here in St. Louis. With the exception of some minor
excursions I will remain close at home. Our annual meeting of
the Army of the Tennessee will be at Des Moines this year​--​
Sept. 29–30. We don’t expect much, only to keep it alive. We
look for a stormy political Winter, and next year another of
the hurricanes that test our strength every four years.
“My best love to Mrs. B. and the children.
“Yours,
W. T. Sherman.”

January, 1875.​--​I went to London to see about my play. Stopped

at 10 Duchess Street. General Schenck was our Minister then, and
he and Colonel John W. Forney gave me letters to theatrical people.
Mr. Geo. W. Smalley was also polite to me.
It was a nice American dinner-party I participated in at Mr.
Smalley’s home, and while there was a little air of stiffness in the
white-gloved, side-whiskered waiters, it was a hospitable, jolly
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