The Kansas Monthly du lieu suivant : Lawrence, Kansas • 2

THE KANSAS MONTHLY. From the New York Sun. JOHN BROWN'S LIEUTENANT. The Suicide of Eichard Realf, Poet and Kansas Ranger. A very Strange Career.

A dispatch from San Francisco announces the suicide of Col. Richard Realf. He took morphine, at the Windsor House, in Oakland, the cause of the act being, it is said, ill health and domestic trouble. The career of Richard Realf was a strange and romantic one. In the year 1856, when the war against slavery had begun in the Territory of Kansas, and the struggle between the Border Ruffians" and the "Free State" men was in active progress, a young man, who made his appearance in Lawrence among the multitude of adventurers and champions of liberty who then gathered in that wild region, attracted notice.

He was at that time possessed of rare personal attractions, and whispers of mystery and romance soon arose in association with his name. The remarkable beauty of his face, the softness and delicacy of his expression, the charm of his manner, the exceptional culture of his mind, his poetical qualities, and his large knowledge of English society and literature, added attraction to his courage and heroic conduct. He was evidently an Englishman, perhaps 30 years of age, and his resemblance to the portraits of Lord Byron in early life, together with the peculiarities of his mind, and his tendency to romantic and chivalrous poetry, gave color to fanciful stories that soon got afloat, to the effect that he was related by blood or very nearly connected with the hero of Missolonghi and the author of Childe Harold." It was believed by many, even, that he was an illegitimate child of Lord Byron, and the likelihood of his connection with the poet was increased, in that he was in receipt, from time to time, of remittances from England, which were sent, it was alleged, part in such a warfare. Finally, when John Brown had drawn up his scheme of government, and chosen his officers of State for the administration of a new condition of affairs in Virginia, he appointed Realf to the position of Secretary of State in his remarkable cabinet. About the time that Brown disappeared from Kansas, on his way to Virginia, Realf, as well as Brown's other followers, also disappeared from Kansas, and those who were behind the scenes supposed he would be a participant in the conflict as well as an adjudicant of the government.

News came of John Brown's fight against Gen. Robert E. Lee, at Harper's ferry, and among the names of those who in the first dispatches were reported to be killed, was the name of Realf. His body could not be found, and it was reported that he had been pursued by some of the Virginia troops, wounded, and driven into the Potomac, where he was drowned. As time passed on, however, it was learned to a verity that Realf had not perished in the fight, had not been with John Brown at Harper's Ferry, and though expected to join him there, had somehow failed to do so.

The suspicions of the Free State men of Kansas were aroused, and charges were everywhere made that Realf had turned traitor to John Brown, had sold out to the Virginia State government or the Federal government, and had all along been nothing but a spy in the camp of the invaders. Such was the view taken of the romantic young English poet, who so often, on the plains of Kansas, had risked his life for the principles of John Brown. Years passed away, and stories were from time to time circulated that Realf had been seen here, had been heard of there, had sailed for England, had buried his treason in suicide, or had fled in self-upbraiding despair to the uttermost ends of the earth. The stories of him among his friends were almost as numerous as those about Charlie Ross or John Wilkes Booth. It must have been four or five years after Harper's Ferry, in 1859, that it was reported that Realf was in Texas, and that he was somehow connected with the press there and this, of course, added color to the charges of treason to the Free State cause which he had borne.

In course of time, however, these charges were taken up by Realf, who gave reasons for his disappearance which led his friends to believe that he had not been in his sound mind after the attempt at Harper's Ferry, and disposed of his alleged culpability. Leaving Texas, he was next heard of in Washington, where he turned up as a broken-down man, all his physical attractions gone, cadaverous, impoverished, and soliciting employment. He obtained a humble place in one of the departments. From there he came to this city, hung around the outskirts of several newspapers, and got, perhaps, some remuneration for poems and other literary work. Falling into some financial difficulty here, he was arrested, taken to the Tombs, and here he was so along well together.

He applied for a divorce, and was successful in the lower courts, but the Supreme Court, on a technicality, set aside the decree and ordered a new trial. This occurred almost on the eve of a day appointed for his marriage with a young lady in Utica, N. proved a terrible blow to him. He wrote an epitaph," which he sent to the Pittsburg Dispatch, and which lead his friends to suspect that he at that time contemplated suicide He was one of the first to join Francis Murphy in the temperance revival, and soon became one of the agitator's most ready and efficient allies. At this work he had been engaged for the past two years, and had had all the engagements he could fill in Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York and elsewhere.

Subsequently journeying to California, it is said that the wife, from whom he was unable to obtain a divorce, followed him, and demanding an alimony which he was unable to pay, took out a warrant for his arrest. Frequently, while doing service in the ways that have been mentioned, Realf sent to the magazines poems of great beauty and transfused with the spirit of grief and loss, very subtile in their metaphysics and very transcendental in their thought. One of his poems appeared in the October number of Harper's Monthly. INDIRECTION Fair are the flowers and the children, but their subtle suggestion is fairer Rare is the roseburst of dawn, but the secret that clasps it is rarer Sweet the exultance of song, but the strain that pre-codes it is swc6tcr And never was poem yet writ, but the meaning out mastered the metre. Never a daisy that grows, but a mystery guideth the growing Never a river that flows, but a majesty aceptres the flowing; Never a Shakspeare that soared, but a stronger than he did enfold him Nor ever a prophet foretells, but a mightier seer hath foretold him.

Back of the canvas that throbs, the painter is hinted and hidden Into the statue that breathes, the soul of the sculptor is bidden Under the joy that is felt lie the infinite issues of feeling Crowning the glory revealed is the glory that crowns the revealing. Great are the symbols of being, but that which is svmboled is greater Vast the' create and beheld, but vaster the inward creator Back of the sound broods the silence back of the gift stands the giving. Back of the hand that receives thrill the sensitive nerves of receiving. Space is as nothing to spirit the deed is outdone by the doing The heart of the wooer is warm, but warmer the heart of the wooing And up from the pits where these shiver, and up from the nights where those shine, Twin voices and shadows swim starward, and the essence of life is divine. In regard to Mr.

Realf 's affiliation with Lord Byron or with the Byron family, nothing definite is known to the present reporter. The different circumstances that led to this belief in Kansas were not sufficiently definite to base a judgment upon. The fact that at the age of 27 or 28 he bore a striking resemblance to Lord Byron at the same period of his life, the reports that he received remittances from the Byron Homestead, the fact that he knew a great deal of English high life, and had been most carefully educated in the literary line, the fact that he wrote poetry which his friends thought, to be Byronic, the fact that he was an adventurer in the name of liberty, and that his campaign in the Free State war of Kansas was considered to by one or the then denizens of Newstead Abbey. He was regarded as one of the mosts heroic spirits, and most intellectual young men on the Free State side. He took part in scores of warlike adventures against the "Border Ruffians," was always ready for a foray or a song, flitted from part to part of the newly-organized Territory, wherever danger was to be encountered, associated with John Brown in his adventures at Osawatomie and along the line of the Osa-watomie river, campaigned with Jim Lane, on horseback and on foot, whenever that wild and haggard and dare-devil frontiersman found a foe, and often and again was he seen, in uncouth uniform, with a Sharp's rifle over his shoulder, a smile on his face, and a chanson on his lips, gay as the troubadour touching the guitar of the romanzii.

One of his many exploits was at the defense of Mount Oread, in the vicinity of Lawrence, which all through that time was the center of battle and danger for the Free State men, when, with a few kindred spirits, looking from the rude fort on the top of the hill, he saw the red-shirted Missourian enemy approaching from the river. The song with which he commemorated that exploit thus opened All night within our gu irdcd tents, Until the moon was slow, Wrapt round as with Jehovah's smile, We waited for the foe. His intimacy with John Brown led that stern old ironside to take him into his confidence when preparing the Virginia adventure that culminated at Harper's Ferry and on the gallows-tree at Richmond. He was one of the conspirators who, wilh Kagi, formed at Osawatomie the plan of campaign in the Virginia mountains, by which the Southern slaves were to be armed as a preliminary to their rising in bloody hostility to their masters. While engaged with Brown in this work, he traveled from one place to another, providing ways and means, seeing the friends who could be relied upon, and guarding the secret the revelation of which would be ruin.

He was so gentle in his manners and so kindly in his ways, that he was the last man who would be regarded as bearing harshly treated by the police that his life was despaired of; and a letter written by him from the Tombs, was as pathetic a thing as misery ever launched upon the world. He disappeared here, and disappeared from here as he had disappeared at and from so many places, and the next heard of him was seven years ago, when he turned up as an applicant for work on the newspapers. His life as a frontiersman and soldier had told upon his constitution, and domestic trouble had come to him, and weighed heavily upon his mind. Still he was capable of exercise of his brilliant mental powers, and a few sketches printed in the Pittsburg papers, upon various topics of local interest, elicited notice, and led to his regular employment upon the staff of the Pittsburg Cmmercicd. His brilliant talents and his gentle manners made him friends on every hand, and he soon became assistant editor.

He held his position until the Qimmercial was consolidated with the Gazette, in the early part of 1877. While attending to his editorial duties, Realf made also a reputation as an orator, speaking on the stump for the Republican, in several campains, and delivering occasional lectures. About 1865 he had married a woman who was hia senior in years, and whose tastes were so far from harmonizing with his thai they never got I lmnr a vnamnVil nns tn Ttvrnn'a ramnaiirn frr the liberties of Greece, are poor evidences of relationship to Byron by blood, and are made poorer by the fact that in 1856 Realf could hardly have been more than 26, whereas Byron's death occurred 32 years before that time. Realf himself never made allusion to the subject, and no one else could have alluded to it in his presence, so reserved was he in his manner. It was a strange and adventurous and unhappy life, lit up with gleams of romance, poetry, heroism, and exalted self-sacrifice, and ending with.