The day after my arrival in New York, in July, '56--I had been away since February, '53--the Herald had sixteen columns, about three pages, from me in one issue, an amount of space I think that no correspondent before or since has had--either from India, China, or Japan. I had arrived ahead of my own mail. The members of the present staff of the Herald have no idea that the man whom they have looked upon as a lunatic was sufficiently sane to make a big sensation in their paper in July, '56. The present James Gordon Bennett was then only fifteen years old. Frederick Hudson had entire charge of the paper under the elder Bennett. Mr. Bennett, wishing to put his son ahead, pensioned Mr. Hudson, who went into the country to live, and, in crossing a railway track, was killed. Mr. Bennett gave me a very kind reception. He asked if I desired to go to Congress. "No," I said. "Don't you want to publish books?" "Yes, but I am going abroad now, as I am not through with my business in Australia."
Here, at twenty-seven years of age, I had traveled over the world, and had had these great business experiences. I had been called, as a sneering term, "Young America." I kept the name, and used it afterward in all my newspaper work. But Freeman Hunt, of the Merchants' Magazine, who edited my books, changed it to An American Merchant in Europe, Asia, and Australia, thinking the title Young America not dignified enough. This book was a series of letters from Java, Singapore, China, Bengal, Egypt, the Holy Land, the Crimea, England, Melbourne, Sydney, etc. It was published in '57 in New York and London.
From New York I went to Boston, and escaped my first opportunity of going to jail by giving bail bond for $80,000. George B. Upton represented my house in Boston and was in Europe. He was traveling at the time, and his people instructed him to have me arrested for any interest the Barings might have, through open credits, in our firm. Colonel Enoch Train and Donald Mackay signed the bond. The claim was that I had made a lot of money, and had not given to others what was their due. I had never used the Barings' credit out in Australia, and returned to them $50,000. So far as Upton was concerned, I had paid my partner, Captain Caldwell, $8,000 in cash, when he went home in the Red Jacket only a few months after his arrival in Melbourne. This was my first false arrest and legal prosecution. From this time for many years I kept getting into jail, for no crime whatever.