I was on the point of returning to the West when I received a message from Horace Greeley, the famous editor of the New York _Tribune_, asking me to take charge of the news bureau of that journal in Washington, as its chief correspondent. Although the terms offered by Mr. Greeley were tempting, I was disinclined to accept, because I doubted whether the work would be congenial to me, and because it would keep me in the East. But Mr. Greeley, as well as some of my friends in Congress, persuaded me that, since I had studied the condition of things in the South and could give reliable information concerning it, my presence in Washington might be useful while the Southern question was under debate. This determined me to assent, with the understanding, however, that I should not consider myself bound beyond the pending session of Congress. Thus I entered the journalistic fraternity. My most agreeable experience consisted in my association with other members of the craft. I found among the correspondents of the press a number of gentlemen of uncommon ability and high principle--genuine gentlemen, who loved truth for its own sake, who heartily detested sham and false pretense, and whose sense of honor was of the finest. This was the rule, to which, as to all rules, there were of course some exceptions; but they were rare. My more or less intimate contact with public men high and low was not so uniformly gratifying. I enjoyed, indeed, the privilege of meeting statesmen of high purpose, of well-stored minds, of unselfish patriotism, and of the courage of their convictions. But disgustingly large was, on the other hand, the number of small, selfish politicians I ran against--men who seemed to know no higher end than the advantage of their party, which involved their own; who were always nervously sniffing for the popular breeze; whose most demonstrative ebullitions of virtue consisted in the most violent denunciations of the opposition; whose moral courage quaked at the appearance of the slightest danger to their own or their party's fortunes; and whose littlenesses exposed them sometimes with involuntary frankness to the newspaper correspondent whom they approached to beg for a "favorable notice" or for the suppression of an unwelcome news item. They were by no means in all instances men of small parts. On the contrary, there were men of marked ability and large acquirements among them. But never until then had I known how great a moral coward a member of Congress may be. It is probably now as it was then. There were few places in the United States where the public men appearing on the national stage were judged as fairly and accurately as they were in Newspaper Row in Washington. [Illustration: HORACE GREELEY AT WHOSE REQUEST CARL SCHURZ BECAME THE CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT OF THE NEW YORK TRIBUNE IN 1865]