Here by the laboring highway With empty hands I stroll: Sea-deep, till doomsday morning Lie lost my heart and soul. _From "A Shropshire Lad."_ MY ELECTION TO THE SENATE BY CARL SCHURZ ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS When I arrived in the United States again, the impeachment trial was over and President Johnson had been acquitted. There had indeed not been any revolutionary disturbance, but the public mind was much agitated by what had happened. I had, since I left Washington, been quietly engaged in editing the Detroit _Post_, when one day in the spring of 1867 I received, quite unexpectedly, a proposition from the proprietors of the _Westliche Post_, a daily journal published in the German language in St. Louis, Missouri, inviting me to join them, and offering me, on reasonable terms, a property interest in their prosperous concern. On further inquiry I found the proposition advantageous, and accepted it. My connection with the Detroit _Post_, which, owing to the excellent character of the persons with whom it brought me into contact, had been most pleasant, was amicably dissolved, and I went to St. Louis to take charge of the new duties. A particular attraction to me in this new arrangement was the association with Dr. Emil Preetorius, one of the proprietors of the _Westliche Post_. He was a native of the Bavarian Palatinate, the same province in which in 1849 the great popular uprising in favor of the National Constitution of Germany had taken place, and of the town of Alzei, which, according to ancient legend, had been the home of the great fiddler among the heroes of the Nibelungenlied--"Volker von Alzeien," grim Hagen's valiant brother in arms. The town of Alzei still carries a fiddle in its coat of arms. Mr. Preetorius was a few years older than I. He had already won the diploma of Doctor of Laws when the revolution of 1848 broke out. With all the ardor of his soul he threw himself into the movement for free government and had to leave the Fatherland in consequence. But all the idealism of 1848 he brought with him to his new home in America. As a matter of course, he at once embraced the anti-slavery cause with the warmest devotion and became one of the leaders of the German-born citizens of St. Louis, who, in the spring of 1861, by their courageous patriotism, saved their city and their State to the Union. He then remained in public life as a journalist and as a speaker of sonorous eloquence. _The Convention of 1868_