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Title: The Taylor-Trotwood Magazine, Vol. IV, No. 5, February 1907
Author: Various
Release date: December 1, 2023 [eBook #72276]
Language: English
Original publication: Nashville: The Taylor-Trotwood Publishing Co, 1907
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TAYLOR-TROTWOOD MAGAZINE, VOL. IV, NO. 5, FEBRUARY 1907 ***
THE
TAYLOR-TROTWOOD MAGAZINE
SUCCESSOR TO
BOB TAYLOR’S MAGAZINE and TROTWOOD’S MONTHLY
PUBLISHED BY THE TAYLOR-TROTWOOD PUBLISHING COMPANY, 11, 13,
16, 19 VANDERBILT LAW BUILDING, NASHVILLE, TENN.
GOVERNOR BOB TAYLOR and JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE, Editors
$1.00 A YEAR MONTHLY 10c. A COPY
Contents for February, 1907
FRONTISPIECE—From a painting by Gilbert Gaul
THE JAMESTOWN EXPOSITION _James Hines_ 455
Illustrated.
ONCE MORE THE DREAM. (Poem) _W. M. Shields_ 462
GENERAL JOSEPH E. JOHNSTON _Robert L. Taylor_ 463
Illustrated.
LITTLE CITIZENS OF THE SOUTH 467
Illustrated.
HISTORIC HIGHWAYS OF THE SOUTH—CHAPTER XVII. _John Trotwood Moore_ 472
AMERICANS AT THE PEACE CONGRESS _Hayne Davis_ 483
Illustrated.
FREDERICK A. BRIDGMAN _Lillian Kendrick Byrn_ 489
Illustrated.
MEN OF AFFAIRS 493
Illustrated.
THE FIRST TWO GOVERNORS OF MISSISSIPPI _A. C. Chase_ 498
Illustrated.
HOW OLD WASH PLAYED SANTA CLAUS. (Story) _Old Wash_ 505
BECAUSE. (Story) _Catherine Carr_ 508
THE SHADOW OF THE ATTACOA. (Serial Story) _Thornwell Jacobs_ 511
HISTORY OF THE HALS—CHAPTER XVII. _John Trotwood Moore_ 523
A VALENTINE TOAST. (Poem) _Ethel Morrison Lackey_ 529
NAPOLEON—PART VI. _Anna Erwin Woods_ 530
THE MEASURE OF A MAN. (Serial Story) _John Trotwood Moore_ 535
MELLIE’S MAN. (Story) _William McLeod Raine_ 540
WITH BOB TAYLOR 545
SENTIMENT AND STORY.
THE PARADISE OF FOOLS.
WITH TROTWOOD 550
WHEN I WAKE UP IN THE MORNING. (Poem.)
TWO NOVELS OF THE YEAR.
WHAT CONSTITUTES A SURPRISE.
TWO WOMEN AND A HORSE.
LITTLE MISS FIDDLE. (Poem.)
SAMUEL SPENCER AS A FACTOR IN NATIONAL AFFAIRS _Ismay Dooly_ 554
Illustrated.
BOOKS AND AUTHORS _Lillian Kendrick Byrn_ 557
Copyright, 1907, by The Taylor-Trotwood Publishing Co. All
rights reserved. Entered as second-class matter, January 12,
1907, at the post-office at Nashville, Tennessee.
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[Illustration: “As they went out they saw some firemen trying to put out
the flames....”—_The Shadow of the Attacoa, page 511_]
THE TAYLOR-TROTWOOD
MAGAZINE
VOL. IV FEBRUARY, 1907 NO. 5
THE JAMESTOWN EXPOSITION
By James Hines
It would be impossible to estimate the loss to the world had the first
white English-speaking settlement, founded at Jamestown, Virginia,
in 1607, resulted in failure. Had it been abandoned, as was once the
intention of the surviving colonists, it would have had a deterrent
effect on similar and subsequent expeditions, and would have changed the
complexion of American history.
Those who comprised the first settlement encountered almost
insurmountable obstacles before reaching these shores. For months they
braved the perils of the sea, and were buffeted by storms, but their
heroism and tenacity of purpose never faltered. The real test, however,
of endurance was manifested after landing and in establishing the
settlement that definitely dates the United States.
During December, 1606, this history-making party sailed from England, and
on May 16, 1607, they landed on a peninsula which juts into the James
River. They named the place Fort James. Subsequently it was called James
City, and finally James Town. For nearly two centuries it has been an
island, and for more than two hundred years it has been abandoned. Two
fires destroyed the town, one during Bacon’s rebellion, in 1676, the
other an accident, twenty years later, after which the seat of government
was moved to Williamsburg. The ruins of the old church tower remain
on the site,—a crumbling monument of the first colonial settlement.
The excavations showing where the Governor’s mansion and the House of
Burgesses stood; the Ambler mansion, twice destroyed by fire, and the old
graveyard, with its historic tombs and inscriptions, are still to be seen.
The work of these hardy pioneers in establishing the colony was often
interrupted by savage attacks of Indians, and their energies were greatly
impaired by fever and lack of necessary sustenance. Indeed, so greatly
had their ranks been depleted that, when Newport arrived from England,
a few months later, with men and provisions, but thirty-eight of the
original party were alive. It was greatly due to John Smith, the heroic
leader, that the settlers held out as long as they did.
An untimely accident deprived the colony of the valuable services of
Smith, and caused it to come nearly to an end. Smith’s successor had
not the ability, courage or prestige to govern as he had done, and a
turbulent element began to assume an aggressive attitude toward the
Indians, who resented it. The result of this aggression was that trading
parties, bent on peaceful measures, were massacred, and, consequently, in
the spring of 1610 famine together with all its accompanying sufferings,
stared the colonists in the face.
They were a haggard, disheartened, miserable group of men and women. To
continue at James Town appeared impossible, and, by popular vote it was
decided, though the bravest could not restrain their emotion at failure,
that it must be abandoned. Accordingly, June 7, the dejected aggregation
boarded their ships and cleared for home. When they reached Hampton
Roads, a sail was observed, which proved to be the Governor’s boat. His
ships were in the Roads, and the settlers returned to their village,
and there enacted one of the most pitiful, yet dramatic, scenes in the
world’s history.
[Illustration: BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF JAMESTOWN EXPOSITION
_Copyright, 1906. Jamestown Official Photograph Corporation, Norfolk_]
The timely and unexpected arrival of the Governor was greeted with
frantic shouts of welcome and joy by the discouraged colonists. His
coming immediately infused new life, and their affectionate embraces of
one another gave way to fervent prayer. Their story was related to Lord
Delaware, and, as he landed, he fell upon the ground and offered thanks
to God that his arrival had saved Virginia.
Following that memorable day in 1610, there was never a question
concerning the continuance of the Virginia colony. Before the arrival
of Lord Delaware, the settlement had been ruled by more or less despotic
measures. Under Smith, the despotism had been beneficent, if not
benevolent. Following the rule of Delaware and Sir Thomas Dale, a more
liberal policy was inaugurated, with the administration of Yeardley, and
Virginia began to make gigantic strides. Cattle and sheep were raised;
crops were planted; poultry and domestic animals received attention;
horses were brought over and utilized for farming and travel. In addition
to these necessaries of life, tobacco, which was destined to become the
standard of value and exchange, was extensively cultivated. From out of
a condition of chaos, everything became plentiful, and Virginia began to
offer attractive inducements to immigrants. The pioneers had conquered
dangers and enjoyed comparative affluence.
Finally, the colonists insisted on the right of self-government, and
received limited recognition. In the old church, at James Town, June,
1619, Governor Yeardley summoned the first legislative body ever
assembled in America, and formally opened the General Assembly of
Virginia. It was modeled after the English Parliament, an upper and lower
house, called the House of Burgesses and the Council.
[Illustration: WESTERN VIEW OF COPPER, SILVER AND WOOD-WORKING SHOPS.
_Copyright, 1906. Jamestown Official Photograph Corporation, Norfolk_]
This legislative body had the effect of making the people proud of
their home and confident of themselves. From James Town grew all the
settlements that overspread Virginia, and its prosperity induced the
settlements which dotted the coast from Florida to Canada.
It is the great achievements intervening between the founding of this
settlement and the present period that the Jamestown Ter-Centennial will
commemorate by a historic, educational and industrial exhibition, in
conjunction with the greatest naval and military display ever witnessed
in the world, to be held this year on the waters and historic shores of
Hampton Roads, near Norfolk, Virginia.
The heroic deeds and collateral events in all the colonies will be fully
and faithfully portrayed, and place before the people a contrasting
picture of seventeenth century civilization with that of the nineteenth.
It will be a veritable epilogue of the nation’s development from the
little Virginia village to a republic of nearly one hundred million
people, stretched from ocean to ocean, and from the Great Lakes to the
Gulf, with insular possessions in both tropics, and an empire in the
frozen Arctic.
In observing the three hundredth anniversary of this important historical
event, the State of Virginia, very properly, took the initiative,
and, by a joint resolution of the General Assembly, provided that a
fitting ceremonial should attend the event. President Roosevelt issued
a proclamation inviting all the nations of the world to participate,
and declared that “The first settlement of English-speaking people
on American soil, at Jamestown, in 1607, marks the beginning of the
United States. The three hundredth anniversary of the event must be
commemorated by the people of our Union as a whole.”
Nearly every world-power has accepted this invitation, and will send
warships, soldiers and marines to take part in the greatest naval
rendezvous ever assembled, while the troops will unite in international
drills, maneuvers and demonstrations. Aside from this participation, many
foreign countries will be represented by industrial exhibits.
[Illustration: CORNER OF MODEL SCHOOL. SCHOOL GARDEN IN THE REAR CARED
FOR BY THE SCHOOL CHILDREN OF NORFOLK
_Copyright, 1906. Jamestown Official Photograph Corporation, Norfolk_]
It will be the most historical exposition ever attempted, the dominating
motive being to impress upon the visitor the history of this nation.
Situated in the most historic section of the country, amid the scenes
of great civil and naval conflicts, whose outcome have more than once
been decisive in national affairs, the very atmosphere is redolent
of the nation’s story. Congress has approved the exposition, and has
endorsed its purpose with splendid appropriations, exceeding those made
for any exposition, with the exception of the Chicago and St. Louis
World’s Fairs. Every executive department of the Government will make
an exhibit; the Smithsonian Institution and National Museum; Bureau of
American Republics; the Library of Congress, and the Fish Commission. The
Life Saving Service will give exhibitions, and a building is provided for
a separate negro exhibit. Alaska, Porto Rico and the Philippines will
also be represented in the Government display.
Nearly all of the states have joined in the celebration, and have made
liberal appropriations. In addition, others are expected to participate,
thus insuring a display of the resources of the states in such magnitude
as cannot fail to attract and interest all classes of visitors.
Within twenty minutes’ ride of Norfolk, Portsmouth, Hampton, Newport News
and Old Point Comfort is Sewell’s Point, the site of the exposition.
In this vicinity nature and man have combined to create a territory
supremely attractive and beautiful. The grounds face Hampton Roads, and
embrace more than four hundred acres in area, forming a beautiful setting
for the architecture of the exhibit buildings, which will be entirely
of the colonial period. The beautiful and commodious buildings under
construction are the Auditorium, History and Art, Education and Social
Economy, Manufactures and Liberal Arts, Virginia Manufactures, Medicine
and Sanitation, Machinery, Electricity and Ordnance, Transportation,
Marine Appliance, Foods, Agriculture and Horticulture, Forestry, Fish
and Game, Mines and Metallurgy buildings, aside from numerous special
buildings and pavilions. There are no less than six buildings devoted to
Arts and Crafts alone.
[Illustration: COMMEMORATIVE MONUMENT TO JOHN SMITH, ERECTED BY THE
UNITED STATES, AT JAMESTOWN, VIRGINIA.
_Copyright, 1906. Jamestown Official Photograph Corporation, Norfolk_]
The whole group will suggest the baronial structures of the seventeenth
century in England. With massive Corinthian columns, surrounded by
verdant trees, they will constitute an everlasting picture of grandeur
and beauty. Several enlarged replicas of old American homes will preserve
the identical outlines, and will conform in proportion. The Arts and
Crafts Village will be a scene of active interest, where skilled
hand-workers will display the possibilities of the finished products in
metals and wood, in which machinery has no part.
Within sight of the exposition are forts, a navy yard, and one of
the largest shipbuilding plants in the world; while on the banks of
the James river stand the finest examples of colonial architecture
in America. Hampton, just across the Roads, is the oldest continuous
settlement of Englishmen in America. The most famous naval encounter of
the Civil War, between the Monitor and Merrimac, took place within sight
of the exposition grounds. This naval duel revolutionized battleship
construction and naval warfare. Upon these same historic waters will
ride at anchor the greatest fleet of warships, representing every
type of fighting machine in the navies of the world. The evolution of
shipbuilding will be interestingly illustrated by the reproduction of
the three ships, _Susan Constant_, the _Godspeed_ and _Discovery_, which
brought the Jamestown colonists to this country. This display of marine
architecture of different periods makes possible a comprehensive study of
its development. The shores hereabout are crowded with earthworks erected
by Southern and Federal troops during the Civil War. There is hardly a
strategic position near these waters which does not bear evidence of
fortifications, and the final negotiations which ended the conflict were
concluded at a conference on Hampton Roads between President Lincoln,
Mr. Seward and Alexander Stephens. Hence, it is possible to traverse the
ground consecrated by those patriots whose names are household words in
American history; to view the monuments commemorative of events from the
first landing of the colonists in 1607, through the stirring events of
1776, through the later historical epoch of 1812 and 1860, Yorktown and
Great Bridge, and to 1865, when this section was enriched by the blood
of heroes who fought with Lee, Jackson and Grant in the most sanguinary
strife ever recorded.
Another distinguishing feature of the exposition will be the military
display of the United States, the troops of which, together with those of
foreign countries, will form a permanent encampment during the exhibition.
The horticultural and cut flower exhibit will surpass in design and
beauty all previous attempts along this line. Displays of flowers and
potted plants will be made in the Court of the States, where will be
shown in profusion of number and variety—asters, chrysanthemums, dahlias,
gladioli, peonies, rhododendrons, sweet peas, roses, etc. The work of
transplanting trees, plants and shrubs in the general decorative scheme
has been practically completed. A unique feature is the floral fence,
which forms a semi-circle around the exposition grounds. The frame
is of wire, upon which crimson rambler, honeysuckle and trumpet vine
intertwine in artistic effect. Monster oaks, tall pines, cedars, maples,
willows and elms are on the grounds to afford ample shade, while native
flower-bearing and evergreen shrubs and fruit trees will enter into the
general scheme of landscape beautification.
By comparison, from a monetary standpoint, with the St. Louis Exposition,
the management of the latter expended $50,000,000, while the Jamestown
will hardly exceed $5,000,000. But it must be remembered that the amount
spent at St. Louis produced everything at the fair by purchase. There
were no monuments of national or historic interest, hence, the wide
discrepancy in the amount invested. The sum expended by the Jamestown
Exposition will simply pay for the exhibit buildings, beautifying
the site and adorning the water front. An estimate by a competent
statistician places the money value to be represented at this exposition
at no time less than $150,000,000, while the foreign display on the water
will probably represent twice the sum, or $300,000,000, six times the
cost of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. The difference is at once
strikingly obvious.
The Jamestown Exposition will differ from the St. Louis Fair in that
it will be historic, while the latter was mainly industrial. Every
conceivable object of historic interest which can be secured will be on
view at the Ter-Centennial, and as the surrounding country is a prolific
source from which to gather this class of exhibits, it will far excel in
historic interest.
A few of the distinctive features of the exposition will include: the
first international submarine races; prize drills by regiments of all
countries; the largest motor boat regatta ever held; yacht races in which
all nations will compete; more naval and military bands than were ever
before gathered together; the highest tower ever erected in America, if
not in the world; the largest parade ground; sea bathing at the border
of the grounds; dirigible airships for commercial uses; an enclosed sea
basin with an area of 1,280,000 square feet; an exact reproduction of old
Jamestown; stupendous pyrotechnic reproduction of war scenes and unique
night harbor illumination.
Norfolk, the exposition city and “Golden Gate of the Atlantic,”
penetrated by the salt air of the ocean, is free from climatic
complaints. Its geographical location and the fortunes of war add to its
interest and prominence, and it is replete with reminiscent features. It
is a great commercial center, within twelve hours’ ride of more than
21,000,000 population, and within twenty-four hours’ ride of 39,000,000
people. Possibly its most historic structure standing, in a well
preserved condition, is old St. Paul’s Church, erected in 1739, twice
fired on by the British, and still retaining, imbedded in its walls, a
shell fired by Lord Dunmore’s fleet, January 1, 1776.
The descendants of hardy settlers contemporaneous with Captain John Smith
and his associates, followed by the cavaliers that settled Virginia, are
to be found now, as then, foremost in business, social, religious and
political affairs. From them have issued those who have made names that
are referred to with pride in the conduct of state and national affairs.
Although the “Mother of States,” and foremost in the making of American
history, all of her children did not yield to the temptation of forsaking
their birthright of fair lands, and it is the present generation that
has made possible the splendid celebration commemorative of the first
settlement of this country by their ancestors.
It is small wonder, then, that all roads this year will lead to Tidewater
Virginia and the Jamestown Ter-Centennial, which will throw open its
gates to the world April 26.
A PLEA
Take you such gold as I have, old Time;
’Tis a trifling thing that you win;
For what is gold but a sordid lure,
All blotched with the blood of men?
’Tis little I care for the filthy stuff,
And less is my need thereof;
Take you such gold as I have, old Time,
But leave me a little love!
Take you the cold world’s praise, old Time;
’Tis hollow and false, I know;
For Honor, at best, is an empty name,
And Fame but a trumpet the foolish blow;
Take them and bid them fly fast from me,
Fly fast as a homing dove;
Take you the cold world’s praise, old Time,
But leave me a little love!
Yea, leave me a little love, old Time,
And take you all else you prize;
For Love will sweeten the saddest heart
Like a blossom from Paradise.
’Tis the goodliest gift of God to man,
A treasure fine gold above;
So, take you all else you prize, old Time,
But leave me a little love!
_Hilton R. Greer._
ONCE MORE THE DREAM
By W. M. Shields
Once more the dream! Once more the dream!
That brings with undiminished gleam
The light that shone upon my youth
From regions of untarnished Truth.
Before this stoic mockery,
Called wisdom of maturity,
Could dim the luster of its glow.
Or ere its cares could stem the flow
Of love from thy great heart to me—
Thy heart of hills, my Tennessee.
Once more the dream! Once more the dream!
And all old things unaltered seem;
Restored are joys I counted lost
Beyond a time all worry-tossed.
The streams yet wear a silver sheen
Despite the years of change between;
The bird songs have their olden thrill,
The woods are cool upon the hill,
And partial Nature smiles on thee,
Who art her queen, my Tennessee.
Once more the dream! Once more the dream!
And floats to me upon the stream
From Memory’s generous spring some form
Or voice I loved beyond the storm.
And thus does Memory surely prove
Herself an angel, born of Love.
’Tis not a dead past that she brings,
For past is present when she sings.
And thus old joys once known with thee,
I live again, my Tennessee.
Thus let me dream! Thus let me dream!
Nor Time deprive me of a beam.
For, oh, that heart is happiest
Which dwells on pleasures past and best!
And that heart bides in saddest gloom
That broods upon some ill to come.
Let these old joys and loves be mine
Till life shall drift beyond the line
From heaven that is to heaven to be,
From thy warm heart, my Tennessee.
GENERAL JOSEPH E. JOHNSTON
Born at Longwood, Prince Edward County, Virginia, February 3, 1807
Died at Washington, District of Columbia, March 21, 1891
By Robert L. Taylor
When the restless spirit of Johnston took its flight from earth the
South bade farewell to as brave a knight as ever shivered a lance “when
knighthood was in flower.” His death following so quickly that of
William T. Sherman, was a dramatic coincidence. They had fought a long
and bloody duel—hilt to hilt and toe to toe, and the arena extended
from the Mississippi River to the Atlantic Ocean. Sherman advanced with
sword and torch in the hands of his splendid army; Johnston met him with
strategy and the stubborn resistance of his thin lines of gray; the duel
ended only when the resources of military art were exhausted and the
shattered remnant of Johnston’s weary columns was overthrown by Sherman’s
overwhelming numbers. When the conflict was ended and the battle flags
were furled, these two great captains met in the capital of the republic
and shook hands across the bloody chasm. Sherman died in February, 1891,
and Johnston, broken in health and feeble with age, was one of his
pall-bearers, an office which he had also performed at the funeral of his
friend, General Grant. A month later he joined the silent hosts to which
these antagonists on many a field of glory had preceded him.
Joseph Johnston was the eighth son of Judge Peter Johnston and Mary
Woods, of Virginia, whose Scotch ancestors had lived and prospered
and passed away on the old plantation at Osborne’s Landing. The boy
was a born soldier and foreshadowed his brilliant career, even when a
child at his mother’s knee. The story is told that his father took him
coon-hunting one night, and he became so interested in describing and
illustrating military tactics to the negro boy who attended him that
they became separated from the hunters, and fell so far behind that they
could not reach them with their voices. Jo made the boy dismount and
kneel on the ground with his gun presented, in imitation of a hollow
square of infantry. Then he withdrew and re-appeared as a regiment of
cavalry, charging down upon the hollow square; but his horse was not a
war-steed and was totally untrained in battle, and suddenly shying from
the squatted infantry, threw the cavalry regiment to the ground. His
biographer, Robert M. Hughes, says, “of course he was wounded—he always
was on every available occasion.”[1]
The growth and development of the lad increased his determination to be a
soldier. So marked was his predilection that his father, who had served
under “Light Horse Harry Lee” in the Revolution, gave him his sword,
although he was next to the youngest son. Young Johnston treasured it,
and kept it bright till 1861, when the tocsin of Civil War was sounded,
and, like Lee, he drew it in defense of his native State, although, like
Lee, he was opposed to secession.
[Illustration: GENERAL JOSEPH E. JOHNSTON]
The comparison of the characters of Johnston and Lee is most interesting.
Born in the same year, entering West Point at the same time and
graduating in the same class (that of 1829), they both saw their first
active military service under General Scott. Johnston accompanied
Scott on his arduous campaign in the Florida Indian war, and later to
Mexico. While Lee was engaged in boundary work in Texas, Johnston was
performing a similar work for his government on the Canadian line. From
early manhood they were fast friends and were bound together by the same
associations, the same surroundings and the same interests throughout all
their lives. Both came from the Mexican War with the title of colonel.
Both were opposed to secession, but both resigned their commissions in
the United States army and entered the service of the Stars and Bars
with the rank of colonel. Both supported, with consummate ability and
unfaltering courage, the cause they held dear, and when this cause
went down in defeat both met the verdict with quiet dignity. Both
refused safety and honors abroad, preferring to give their abilities to
rebuilding a united nation, and both lived to have abundant proof of the
respect and esteem in which all people held them.
It would be useless to seek to measure the relative capacity of these
two classmates. The circumstances surrounding their operations were not
the same, the generals opposing them were unlike and their methods of
campaign were necessarily different. It is safe to say that both applied,
as far as possible, the tactics and principles of war taught them at
their alma mater. “Johnston’s Narrative,” which he wrote and published
in 1875, explains his tactics and his reasons for adopting them and have
been held in high repute by students of military art on both sides of the
ocean ever since their publication.
Like Lee, Johnston never failed to gain the respect and confidence of his
men. “Although,” says Mr. Hughes in his admirable biography, “Johnston
was never allowed to retain command of one army long enough to achieve
the great results which only flow from long association ... he never
failed to win the love of his men. They trusted him because they knew
that their blood would not be wasted.... They admired him because they
knew he would not ask them to go where he would not go himself. His order
was ‘Follow,’ not ‘Go.’... They called him their Game Cock, because of
his gallantry and martial bearing, and strove to emulate him in courage
and coolness.”
“Farewell, old fellow,” was the parting salute of one of his men, “we
privates loved you because you made us love ourselves.”
Johnston’s personal character was no less admirable than his public
career. Unselfishness, modesty, purity, courtesy, charity, devotion to
home and family ties ever characterized him in public and in private.
After his surrender to Sherman at Durham’s Station, North Carolina, he
retired to Savannah, Georgia, putting the war and its issues behind
him, using his great influence to renew the national allegiance and to
cultivate a new patriotism that should embrace the whole country. In 1877
he returned to Richmond, and in the following year was elected to the
House of Representatives. On the expiration of his term he was appointed
Commissioner of Railroads by President Cleveland and continued to reside
in Washington until his death. He met here both Grant and Sherman, and,
as already said, became fast friends with his former foes and acted as
pallbearer at the funeral of each.
I sat with Jo Johnston in the Forty-sixth Congress of the United States.
I was young and he was ripe in years and experience. I sought him and
cultivated him and never tired of listening to the story from his lips
of his maneuvers in the last days of the Confederacy. He was small of
stature, square built, and straight as an arrow, with a big round
bald head and keen gray eyes that glittered like stars. Congress was
not congenial to him—he was not an orator but a soldier; he was not a
statesman, but a general. He knew how to wield an army but was helpless
on the battlefield of argument. During the fiercest fights of the two
great contending parties on the floor of the house, he daily walked to
and fro like a caged lion, his head up, his eyes sparkling and his whole
attitude one of excitement, yet taking no part in the struggle. But he
was a faithful representative of his people, and was loved by all who
knew him.
In 1887 he received a crushing blow in the death of his wife. Their
childlessness and her invalidism and the long years of army life had
drawn them together in an unusual degree, and he was never able to
recover his old time joy in life after his loss.
Naturally the distinguished veteran was in great demand on the occasion
of re-union and memorial exercises. Always averse to anything savoring of
publicity, he attempted to fill these engagements in an unobtrusive way,
but at times the enthusiasm of his old followers put all his efforts to
naught. This was shown at the memorial exercises at Atlanta in the spring
of 1890, of which an Atlanta paper gives the following account:
“As the last carriage drove away, the Governor’s Horse Guard came up the
street, forty strong, under command of Captain Miller. The company was
an escort to the hero of the day. With the Governor’s Horse Guard came a
carriage drawn by two black horses. In that carriage was General Joseph
E. Johnston. The old hero sat upon the rear seat, and beside him was
General Kirby Smith.... The carriage was covered with flowers. ‘That’s
Johnston! that’s Jo Johnston!’ yelled some one. Instantly the Governor’s
Horse Guard, horses and men, were displaced by eager, battle-scarred
veterans. The men who fought under the hero surrounded the carriage.
They raised it off the paved street, and they yelled themselves hoarse.
Words of love, praise, and admiration were wafted to the hero’s ears.
Hands pushed through the sides of the carriage and grasped the hands
of the man who defended Atlanta. The crowd grew and thickened. Captain
Ellis tried to disperse it, but could not. Then the police tried; but
the love of the old soldiers was greater than the strength of both
Captain Ellis and Atlanta’s police force. For ten minutes the carriage
stood still; then, as it began to move, some one called out, ‘Take the
horses away!’ Almost instantly both horses were unhitched, and the old
men fought for their places in the traces. Then the carriage began
to move. Men who loved the old soldier were pulling it. Up Marietta
street it went to the Custom-house, then it was turned, and back toward
the opera house it rolled. The rattle of the drum and the roll of the
music were drowned by the yell of the old soldiers; they were wild,
mad with joy; their long pent-up love for the old General had broken
loose. Just before the carriage reached the opera house door a tall,
bearded veteran on a horse rode to the side. Shoving his hand through
the open curtain, he grasped the hand of General Johnston just as a
veteran turned it loose. The General looked up. ‘General Johnston!’ cried
the veteran. General Johnston continued to look up. His face showed a
struggle. He knew the horseman, but he could not call his name. ‘Don’t
you know me, General—don’t you know me?’ exclaimed the horseman. In his
voice there was almost agony. ‘General Anderson, General,’ said Mrs.
Milledge. General Johnston heard the words, and, rising almost from his
seat, exclaimed, ‘Old Tige! Old Tige! Old Tige!’ The two men shook hands
warmly. Tears were flowing down the cheeks of each. ‘Yes, Old Tige it is,
General,’ said General Anderson, ‘and he loves you as much now as ever.’”
A simple headstone in the Greenmount Cemetery, at Baltimore, marks the
sleeping place of Johnston, beside his wife, who was Miss Lydia McLane,
of Baltimore.
[1] General Johnston. By R. M. Hughes, New York: D. Appleton & Co. Great
Commanders Series.
EVENING
Sunset; and purple mist
Upon the mountain’s crest,
And pale blue trails of smoke that slowly twist
Into the West.
Soft airs that whisper “Rest,”
And sunset clouds of gold;
A bird’s low murmur from its hidden nest
Across the wold.
Red rose leaves falling, falling,
’Neath swiftly fading skies,
The faint, far voices of dead summers calling,
All ghostly-wise.
Twilight and darkening woods;
Smell of the dew-drenched sod;
And over all, while perfect silence broods,
The peace of God.
_Allen Clark, Jr._
LITTLE CITIZENS OF THE SOUTH
[Illustration: MARGARET MCNUTT
Crossville, Tennessee
_Taylor, Nashville_]
[Illustration: CLAUDE DESHA ANDERSON, JR.
Memphis
HAMILTON PARKS, JR.
Nashville
JAMES HARBERT BENNETT
Trenton, Tennessee]
[Illustration: FLORENCE KENT WULFF
Louisville
_Standiford, Louisville_]
[Illustration: ALBERT STOCKTON LINDSEY, JR.
Jackson, Tennessee
_Strauss, St. Louis_]
[Illustration: WILLIAM STATES JACOBS, JR.
Houston, Texas
_Taylor, Nashville_
EDITH HOLT
McMinnville, Tennessee
_Southern School of Photography, McMinnville_]
HISTORIC HIGHWAYS OF THE SOUTH
By John Trotwood Moore
CHAPTER XVII—A BOY AT SHILOH
By John A. Cockerill
_Mr. John Trotwood Moore, Editor of_ TAYLOR-TROTWOOD MAGAZINE:
DEAR SIR: There are many persons who credit to the pen of Mr.
John A. Cockerill the best war story ever written. As you will
remember, Mr. John A. Cockerill was the distinguished editor
of the _St. Louis Post Dispatch_, also editor-in-chief of the
_Cincinnati Enquirer_. Later he was the editor-in-chief of the
_New York World_, and altogether was one of the most brilliant
descriptive writers this country has ever produced. He died a
few years ago in Cairo, Egypt, being at the time of his death
connected with the _New York Herald_.
At the outbreak of the war in 1861, John A. Cockerill was about
fifteen years old, and the recruiting officers had refused to
enlist him in the ranks of the fighting line by reason of his
youth, but accepted him as a drummer boy in the Twenty-fourth
Ohio Infantry, in which regiment his brother was then a first
lieutenant and later captain and colonel.
It is in no way surprising to the personal friends of John A.
Cockerill that anything written by him should be the best of
its kind. The best war story ever written is on the Battle of
Shiloh, as seen by John A. Cockerill, which story I send you
herewith, with the earnest request that you permit it to occupy
a place in your interesting and valuable Historic Highways of
the South.
Yours very truly,
THEODORE F. ALLEN,
Cincinnati, Ohio.
[The editor agrees with Mr. Allen that this story is above praise and
should find an abiding place in history.]
* * * * *
Shiloh Church, April 6th, 1862.
Here is a date and a locality indelibly burned into my memory. I was then
an enlisted fourth-class musician in the Twenty-fourth Ohio Regiment, in
which my elder brother was a first lieutenant, and afterwards captain and
colonel, successively. I had campaigned in Western Virginia, and had seen
some of the terrors and horrors of war at Philippi and Rich Mountain,
and some of its actualities in a winter campaign in the Cheat Mountain
district. During the winter of 1861, my command was sent to Louisville,
Kentucky, where General Buell was organizing his splendid army of the
Ohio for active operations against Bowling Green and Nashville. My
regiment was assigned to General Nelson’s command, and the early spring
found us on the left flank of the army, on the north side of Green River.
With unexpected suddenness Nelson’s division was sent back one day in
March to the Ohio River, where it was placed on transports and headed
for the Cumberland River to participate in Grant’s movement against
Fort Donelson. Before reaching that point, intelligence was received of
the capture of that stronghold, and our flotilla proceeded to Paducah,
Kentucky. At that point General W. T. Sherman was organizing his recruits
from Ohio, Indiana and Illinois for the forward movement up the Tennessee
River. I had been taken ill on the steamer _en route_, and my father,
who at that time commanded the Seventieth Ohio, stationed at Paducah,
took me in his personal charge. Two days later my regiment sailed up the
Cumberland River and was with the first brigade to enter Nashville.
When I had reached the convalescent stage, I asked permission to rejoin
my command, but General Sherman said the armies of Grant and Buell would
form a coalition somewhere up the Tennessee River, and I would be better
off in my father’s care than elsewhere.
Thus it happened that I was with the army of General Sherman when it
felt its way up the turbid Tennessee as far as Pittsburg Landing, and it
so happened that I was at Shiloh Church on the morning of that terrible
onslaught by General Johnston’s army on Sherman’s division, which held
the advance of Grant’s army.
I have often wondered what sort of a soldier I must have appeared at
that time. I can remember myself as a tall, pale, hatchet-faced boy, who
could never find in the Quartermaster’s department a blouse or a pair
of trousers small enough for him, nor an overcoat cast on his lines.
The regulation blue trousers I used to cut off at the bottom, and the
regulation overcoat sleeves were always rolled up, which gave them the
appearance of having extra military cuffs, which was a consolation to me.
The headquarters mess had finished its early breakfast, and I had just
taken my place at the table on Sunday morning, April 6th, when I heard
ominous shots along our adjacent picket lines. In less than ten minutes
there was a volley firing directly in our front, and from my knowledge of
campaigning I knew that a battle was on, though fifteen minutes before I
had no idea that any considerable force of the enemy was in the immediate
front of our cantonment. The Seventieth Ohio Regiment, and the brigade
to which it was attached, commanded by Colonel Buckland, of Ohio, formed
on its color lines under fire, and although composed of entirely new
troops, made a splendid stand. At the first alarm, I dropped my knife
and fork and ran to my father’s tent, to find him buckling on his sword.
My first heroic act was to gather up a beautiful Enfield rifle which he
had saved at the distribution of arms to his regiment because of its
beautiful curly maple stock. I had been carrying it myself on one or two
of the regimental expeditions to the front, and had some twenty rounds of
cartridges in a box which I had borrowed from one of the boys of Company
I. By the time I had adjusted my cartridge box and seized my rifle, my
father was mounted outside, and, with a hurried good-bye, he took his
place with his regiment. By this time the bullets were whistling through
the camp and shells were bursting overhead.
Not exactly clear in my mind what I intended to do, I ran across to the
old log Shiloh Church, which stood on the flank of my father’s regiment.
On my right the battle was raging with great ferocity, and stretching
away to my left and front one of the most beautiful pageants I have ever
beheld in war was being presented. In the very midst of the thick wood
and rank undergrowth of the locality was what is known as a “deadening,”
a vast, open, unfenced district, grown up with rank, dry grass, dotted
here and there with blasted trees, as though some farmer had attempted to
clear a farm for himself and had abandoned the undertaking in disgust.
From out of the edge of this great opening came regiment after regiment,
and brigade after brigade of the Confederate troops. The sun was just
rising in their front, and the glittering of their arms and equipments
made a gorgeous spectacle for me. On the farther edge of this opening,
two brigades of Sherman’s command were drawn up to receive the onslaught.
As the Confederates sprang into this field, they poured out their
deadly fire, and, half obscured by their smoke, advanced as they fired.
My position behind the old log church was a good one for observation.
I had just seen General Sherman and his staff pushing across to the
Buckland brigade. The splendid soldier, erect in his saddle, looked a
veritable war eagle, and I knew history was being made in that immediate
neighborhood. Just then a field battery from Illinois, which had been
cantoned a short distance in the rear, came galloping up with six guns
and unlimbered three of them between Shiloh Church and the left flank
of the Seventieth Ohio. This evolution was gallantly performed. The
first shot from this battery, directed against the enemy on the right
opposite, drew the fire of a Confederate battery and the old log church
came in for a share of its compliments. This duel had not lasted more
than ten minutes when a Confederate shell struck a caisson in our battery
and an explosion took place, which made things in that spot exceedingly
uncomfortable. The captain was killed, and his lieutenant, thinking he
had done his duty, and, doubtless, satisfied in his own mind that the war
was over so far as he was concerned, limbered up his remaining pieces,
and, with such horses as he had, galloped to the rear and was not seen at
any other time, I believe, during the two days’ engagement.
By this time the enemy was pressing closely on my left flank, and
Shiloh Church, with its ancient logs, was no longer a desirable place
for military observation. I hurried over to my father’s camp, taking
advantage of such friendly trees as presented themselves on the line of
my movement, and there found a state of disorder. The tents were pretty
well ripped with shells and bullets, and wounded men were being carried
past me to the rear. As I stood there, debating in my mind whether
to join my father’s command or continue my independent action, three
men approached, carrying a sorely wounded officer in a blanket. They
called me to assist them, and as my place really was with the hospital
corps, being a non-combatant musician, I complied with their request.
We carried the poor fellow some distance to the rear, through a thick
wood, and found there a scene of disorder amounting to panic. Men were
flying in every direction, commissary wagons were struggling through the
underbrush, and the roads were packed with fugitives and baggage trains,
trying to carry off the impedimenta of the army. Finding a comparatively
empty wagon, we placed our wounded officer inside, and then, left at
liberty, I started on down toward the river. I had not proceeded more
than a mile when I encountered a brigade of Illinois troops, drawn up in
battle array, apparently waiting for orders. It was General McArthur’s
Highland Brigade, the members of which wore Scotch caps, and I must say
that a handsomer body of troops I never saw. These fellows had been at
Fort Donelson, and they counted themselves as veterans. They had their
regimental band with them, their flags were all unfurled, and they were
really dancing impatiently to the music of the battle in front of them.
As I sauntered by a chipper young lieutenant, sword in hand, stopped me
and said: “Where do you belong?”
“I belong to Ohio,” was my reply.
“Well, Ohio is making a bad show of herself here to-day,” he said. “I
have seen stragglers from a dozen Ohio regiments going past here for
half an hour. Ohio expects better work from her sons than this.” As
I was one of Ohio’s youngest sons, my state pride was touched. “Do
you want to come and fight with us?” he asked. I responded that I was
willing to take a temporary berth in his regiment. He asked me my name
and especially inquired whether I had any friends on the field. I gave
him my father’s name and regiment, and saw him make a careful entry in
a little pass book, which he afterward placed in the bosom of his coat,
as he rather sympathetically informed me that he would see, in case
anything should happen to me, that my friends should know of it. Thus I
became temporarily attached to Company B, of the Ninth Illinois Regiment,
McArthur’s brigade. Several other men from other regiments who had been
touched by this young officer’s patriotic appeals also took places in our
ranks.
Rather a strange situation that for a boy—enlisting on a battle field, in
a command where there was not a face that he had ever seen before; only
one face indeed, that had the least touch of sympathy in it, and that
belonging to the young officer who had mustered him.
We waited here for three-quarters of an hour before receiving the command
to move. During that time, one of the regimental bands played “Hail,
Columbia.” It was the first and only time that I heard music on a battle
field. Finally the order came to move to the front. By this time the
stream of fugitives on the road rendered it almost impassable, but we
forced our way through them, and in due time reached the point where our
men were being severely driven. At first we were sent to strengthen the
line from point to point, and twice that morning our brigade was moved
up to support field batteries, which service, I must say from my brief
experience, is the most annoying in modern warfare. These batteries drew
not only the artillery file of the enemy, but they furnished a point for
the concentrated fire of all the infantry in front. To be in supporting
position was to receive all the bullets that were aimed at the battery,
and which, of course, usually vexed the rear. The shells intended for the
battery in your front have a habit always of flying too high or bursting
just high enough in air to make it pleasant for the troops who are held
in comparative inactivity. Under these conditions, we hugged the ground
very closely, and fallen timber of every kind was most gratefully and
thankfully recognized. It is amazing how slowly time passes under these
circumstances. I am sure there were occasions that morning when twenty
minutes’ exposure to fire behind these field batteries seemed to me an
entire week. Everything looked weird and unnatural. The very leaves on
the trees, though scarcely out of bud, seemed greener than I had ever
seen leaves, and larger. The faces of the men about me looked like no
faces that I had ever seen on earth. The roar and din of the battle in
all its terror outstripped my most fanciful dreams of pandemonium. The
wounded and butchered men who came out of the blue smoke in front of
us and were dragged or sent hobbling to the rear, seemed like bleeding
messengers come to tell us of the fate that awaited us.
It was with the greatest sense of relief that we received orders to move
to the left, to face again that awful wave of fire which seemed to be
all the morning moving toward our flank. The Confederate divisions came
into action at Shiloh Church by the right, with a view to penetrating
to the river, and taking us in flank and rear. It was along in the
afternoon some time that we were pushed over to the extreme left of the
forward line. I had no watch, and could have no idea of the hour of the
day, except as I saw the shadows formed by the sun. Up to this time our
command had suffered but little, but a dreadful baptism of fire was
awaiting us. For a moment I realized that we were on the extreme left
of our army; that my regiment was the left of the brigade; that I was
temporarily attached to Company B of the regiment, which practically
placed me on the left flank of that heroic army. I know all this because
there was no firing in our front, and no sound of battle to our left,
but steady, steady, steady from the right of us rolled the volleys which
told us that the enemy was working around to our vicinity. I saw General
McArthur, our commander, at this point, and as I remember, his hand
was wrapped with a handkerchief, as though he had been wounded. By his
orders, we pushed across a deep ravine which ran parallel with our front,
and in five minutes we had taken up a position on its opposite bank,
facing the enemy. Everybody felt that the critical moment had come. The
terrible nervous strain of that day was nothing compared with the feeling
that now the time had come for us to show our mettle. The faces of that
regiment were worth studying at that moment. Not one that was not pale;
not a lip that was not close shut; not an eye that was not wild; not a
hand that did not tremble in this awful, anxious moment. Presently the
messengers came—pattering shots from out the dense growth in our front,
telling of the advance of the skirmish line. On our part, no response.
No enemy could be seen, but the purple wreaths of smoke here and there
told of the men who were feeling their way toward our lines. A nervous
man, unable to stand the strain, let off his musket in our line. This
revealed our presence. With a suddenness that was almost appalling,
there came from all along our front a crash of musketry, and the bullets
shrieked over our heads and through our ranks. Then we delivered our
fire. In an instant the engagement was general at this point. There
were no breech-loaders in that command, and the process of loading and
firing was tedious. As I delivered my second shot, a musket ball struck
a small bush in my front, threw the splinters in my face, and whistled
over my shoulder. I may say that I was startled, but I kept loading and
firing without any idea whatever as to what I was firing at. Soon the dry
leaves, which covered the ground about us, were on fire, and the smoke
from them added to the general obscurity. Two or three men had fallen in
my vicinity. At this moment the young lieutenant who had my descriptive
list in his coat bosom, and who was gallantly waving his sword in the
front, was struck by a bullet and fell instantly dead, almost at my feet.
Then it was that I realized my utter isolation and shuddered at the
thought of a fate impending—“_Dead and unknown._”
By this time the fire from the enemy in our front—it was the division
of General Hardee turning the flank of the Federal position—became
so terrible that we were driven back into the ravine. Here we were
comparatively safe. We could load our pieces, crawl up the bank of
the ravine, fire and fall back, as it were. But many poor fellows who
crawled up this friendly embankment fell back dead or wounded; and in one
instance, as I crouched down loading my piece, a man who had been struck
above me, fell on top of me and died by my side. It was here, in this
terrible moment, that I, boylike, thought of the peaceful Ohio home,
where a loving, anxious mother was doubtless thinking of me, and with the
thought that perhaps my father had been killed, came a natural desire
to be well out of the scrape. Notwithstanding, I kept firing as long as
my cartridges lasted. These gone, a fierce sergeant, with a revolver in
his hand, placed its muzzle close to my ear and fiercely demanded why I
was not fighting. I told him that I had no cartridges. “Take cartridges
from the box of the man there,” he said, pointing to the dead man who
had just fallen upon me. Mine was an Enfield rifle, and my deceased
neighbor’s cartridges were for a Springfield rifle. I had clung to this
beautiful Enfield, with its maple stock, which my father had selected,
and I was determined that it should not leave my hands. While this scene
was passing, the enemy came upon us full charge, and, looking up through
the smoke of the burning leaves and beyond a washout which connected with
our ravine, I saw their gray, dirty uniforms. I heard their fierce yells,
I saw their flag flapping sullenly in the grimy atmosphere. That was a
sight which I have never forgotten; I can see the tiger ferocity in those
faces yet; I can see them in my dreams. For what might they not have
appeared to me, terrified boy that I was!
It was at this point that our blue line first wavered. Out of the
ravine, over the bank, we survivors poured, pursued by the howling
enemy. I remember my horror at the thought of being shot in the back,
as I retreated from the top of the bank and galloped as gracefully as
I could with the refluent human tide. Just by my side ran a youthful
soldier, perhaps three years my senior, who might, for all I knew,
have been recruited as I was. I heard him give a scream of agony, and,
turning, saw him dragging one of his legs, which I saw in an instant
had been shattered by a bullet. He had dropped his rifle, and as I ran
to his support he fell upon my shoulder, and begged me, for God’s sake,
to help him. I half carried him for some distance, still holding to my
Enfield rifle, with its beautiful curly stock, and then, seeing that
I must either give up the role of good Samaritan or drop the rifle, I
threw it down and continued to aid my unfortunate companion. All this
time the bullets were whistling more fiercely than at any time during
the engagement, and the woods were filled with flying men, who, to all
appearances, had no intention of rallying on that side of the Tennessee
River. My companion was growing weaker all the while, and finally I set
him down beside a tree, with his back toward the enemy, and watched him
for a few moments, until I saw that he was slowly bleeding to death.
I knew nothing of surgery at that time, and did not even know how to
staunch the flow of blood. I called to a soldier who was passing, but he
gave no heed. A second came, stood for a moment, simply remarked “he’s a
dead man,” and passed on. I saw the poor fellow die without being able
to render the slightest assistance. Passing on, I was soon out of range
of the enemy, and in a moment I realized how utterly famished and worn
out I was. My thirst was something absolutely appalling. I saw a soldier
sitting upon the rough stump of a tree gazing toward the battle, and,
observing that he had a canteen, I ran to him and begged him for a drink.
He invited me to help myself. I kneeled beside the stump, and, taking
his canteen, drained it to the last drop. He did not even deign to look
at me during the performance, but he anxiously inquired how the battle
was going in the front. I gave him information which did not please
him in the least, and moved on toward the point known as the landing,
toward which all our fugitives seemed to be tending. But my friend on the
stump—I shall never forget him. How gratefully I remember that drink of
warm water from his rusty canteen! Bless his military soul, he probably
never knew what a kindness he rendered me!
A short distance beyond the place where I had obtained my water supply
I found a squadron of jaded cavalry drawn up, and engaged in the
interesting work of stopping stragglers. In the crowd of fear-stricken
and dejected soldiers I found there, I saw a man who belonged to my
father’s regiment; I recognized him by the letters and number on his
hat. Inquiring the fate of the regiment, he told me that it had been
entirely cut to pieces, and that he had personally witnessed the death of
my father—he had seen him shot from his horse. This intelligence filled
me with dismay, and I then determined, non-combatant that I was, that I
would retire from that battlefield. Watching my opportunity, I joined
an ambulance which was passing, loaded with wounded, and by some means
escaped the vigilance of the cavalrymen, who seemed to be almost too
badly scared to be on any sort of duty. When through this line, I pushed
my way on down past the point where stragglers were being impressed and
forced to carry sand bags up from the river, to aid in the construction
of batteries for some heavy guns which had been brought up from the
transports. I passed these temporary works, by the old warehouse, turned
into a temporary field hospital, where hundreds of wounded men, brought
down in wagons and ambulances, were being unloaded, and where their arms
and legs were being cut off and thrown out to form gory, ghastly heaps.
I made my way down the plateau overlooking the river. Below lay thirty
transports at least, all being loaded with the wounded. All around me
were baggage wagons, mule teams, disabled artillery teams, and thousands
of panic-stricken men. I saw, here and there, officers gathering these
men together into volunteer companies, and marching them away to the
scene of battle. It took a vast amount of pleading to organize a company
of even fifteen or twenty, and I was particularly struck by the number
of officers who were engaged in this interesting occupation. It seemed
to me that they were out of all proportion to the number of fugitives in
the vicinity. While sitting on the bank, overlooking the road below,
between the beach and the river, I saw General Grant. I had seen him
the day before review his troops on the Purdy road, while a company of
Confederate cavalrymen, a detachment of Johnston’s army, watched the
performance from a skirt of woods some two miles away. When I saw him
at this moment he was doing his utmost to rally his troops for another
effort. It must have been about half past four in the afternoon. The
General rode to the landing, accompanied by his staff and a bodyguard of
twenty-five or thirty cavalrymen. I heard him begging the stragglers to
go back and make one more effort to redeem themselves, accompanying his
pleadings with the announcement that reinforcements would soon be on the
field, and that he did not want to see his men disgraced. Again I heard
him proclaim that if the stragglers before him did not return to their
commands he would send his cavalry down to drive them out. In less than
fifteen minutes his words were made good. A squadron of cavalry, divided
at either end of the landing, and riding towards each other with drawn
sabres, drove away every man found between the steep bank and the river.
The majority of the skulkers climbed up the bank, hanging by the roots
of the trees, and in less than ten minutes after the cavalry had passed,
they were back in their old places. I never saw General Grant again until
I saw him as President of the United States.
While sitting on the high bank of the river I looked across to the
opposite side, and saw a body of horsemen emerging from the low cane
brakes back of the river. In a moment I saw a man waving a white flag
with a red square in the center. I knew that he was signalling, for I
had seen the splendid corps of Buell’s army, and I recognized that the
men with that flag were our friends. Sitting by me were two distracted
fugitives, who also saw the movement on the other side of the river. Said
one of them to his companion: “Bill, we are gone now. There’s the Texas
cavalry on the other side of the river!” The red square had misled him.
Fifteen minutes later I saw the head of a column of blue emerge from the
woods beyond and move hurriedly down toward the river’s edge. Immediately
the empty transports moved over to that side of the river, and the first
boat brought over a figure which I recognized. The vessel was a peculiar
one, belonging in Southern waters, and had evidently been used as a
ferry boat. On its lower forward deck, which was long and protruding,
sat a man of tremendous proportions, on a magnificent Kentucky horse,
with bobbed tail. The officer was rigged out in all his regimentals,
including an enormous hat with a black feather in it. I knew that this
was General Nelson, commonly known as “Fighting Bull Nelson.” I ran down
to the point where I saw his boat was going to land, and as she ran her
prow up on the sandy beach, Nelson put spurs to his horse and jumped
him over the gunwale. As he did this, he drew his sword and rode right
into the crowd of refugees, shouting: “_Damn your souls, if you won’t
fight, get out of the way and let men come here who will!_” I realized
from the presence of Nelson that my regiment (the Twenty-fourth Ohio)
was probably in that vicinity. I asked one of the boat hands to take me
on board, and, after some persuasion, he did so. The boat recrossed, and
as soon as I got on shore, I ran down to where the troops were embarking
to cross the river to the battlefield. I soon found Ammen’s Brigade,
and my regiment. Hurrying on board one of the transports, I climbed to
the hurricane deck and there found my brother with his company. He was
looking across the river, where the most appalling sight met his vision.
The shore was absolutely packed with the disorganized, panic-stricken
troops who had fled before the terrible Confederate onslaught, which had
not ceased for one moment since early that morning. The noise of the
battle was deafening. It may be imagined that my brother was somewhat
surprised to see me. I made a hurried explanation of the circumstances
which had brought me there, and gave him news of my father’s death. Then
I asked him for something to eat. Astonished, he referred me to his negro
servant, who luckily had a broiled chicken in his haversack, together
with some hard bread. I took the chicken, and as we marched off the boat,
I held a drumstick in each hand, and kept by my brother’s side as we
forced our way through the stragglers, up the road from the landing and
on to the plateau, where the battle was even then almost concentrating.
Right there I saw a man’s head shot off by a cannon-ball and saw,
immediately afterward, an aide on General Nelson’s staff dismounted by a
shot, which took off the rear part of his saddle and broke his horse’s
back. At the same time I did not stop eating. My nerves were settled, and
my stomach was asserting its rights. My brother finally turned to me,
and, after giving me some papers to keep, and some messages to deliver in
case of death, shook me by the hand and told me to keep out of danger,
and, above all things, to try and get back home. This part of his advice
I readily accepted. I stood and saw the brigade march by, which, in
less than ten minutes, met the advance of the victorious Confederates,
and checked the battle for that day. It was then that the gunboats in
the river, and the heavy siege guns on the bank above, added their
remonstrating voices as the sun went down, and the roar of battle ceased
entirely.
That night on the shore of the Tennessee River was one to be remembered.
Wandering along the beach among the rows of wounded men waiting to be
taken on board the transports, I found another member of the Seventieth
Ohio named Silcott. He had a harrowing tale of woe to relate, in which
nearly all his friends and acquaintances figured as corpses, and
together we sat down on a bale of hay near the river’s edge. By this
time the rain had set in. It was one of those peculiar, streaming,
drenching, semi-tropical downpours, and it never ceased for a moment
from that time until far into the next day. With darkness came untold
misery and discomfort. After my companion had related the experiences
of the day, I curled myself up on one side of the hay bale, while he
occupied one edge of it, and soon fell asleep. Every few moments I was
awakened by a terrible broadside, delivered from the two gunboats which
lay in the center of the river a hundred yards or so above me. They
were the _Lexington_ and the _A. O. Tyler_, I believe; wooden vessels,
reconstructed from western steamboats and supplied with ponderous
columbiads. These black monsters, for some reason, kept up their fire all
through the night, and the roar of this cannonading and the shrieking
of the shells, mingled with the thunders of the rainstorm, gave very
little opportunity for slumber. Still, I managed to doze very comfortably
between broadsides. And my recollection of the night is that from these
peaceful naps I was aroused every now and then by what appeared to be
a tremendous flash of lightning, followed by the most awful thunder
ever heard on the face of the earth. These discharges seemed to me to
lift me four or five inches from my water-soaked couch. To add to the
general misery the transports which were bringing over Buell’s troops
had a landing within twenty feet of my lodgment. All night long they
wheezed and groaned and came and went, with their freight of humanity,
and right by my side marched all night long the poor fellows who were
being pushed out to the front to take the places on the battle line for
the morrow. By this time the roadway was churned into mud knee deep, and
as regiment after regiment went by with that peculiar slosh, slosh of
marching men in mud, and the rattling of canteens against bayonets and
scabbards, so familiar to the ear of the soldier, I could hear in the
intervals the low complaining of the men and the urging of the officers:
“Close up, boys, close up,” until it seemed to me that if there was ever
such a thing as Hades on earth, I was in the fullest enjoyment of it.
As fast as a transport unloaded its troops, the gangway was hauled in,
the vessel dropped out, and another took the vacant place and the same
thing was gone over again. Now and then a battery of artillery would
come off the boat, the wheels would stick in the mud, and then a grand
turmoil of half an hour would follow, during which time every man found
in the neighborhood would be impressed to aid in relieving the embargoed
gun. The whipping of the horses and the cursing of the drivers was less
soothing, if anything, than those soul shattering gunboat broadsides.
There never was a night so long, so hideous, or so utterly uncomfortable.
As the gray streaks of dawn began to appear, the band of the Thirteenth
Regulars on the deck of one of the transports, came into the landing,
playing a magnificent selection from “Il Trovatore.” How inspiring that
music was! Even the poor, wounded men lying in front on the shore seemed
to be lifted up, and every soldier seemed to receive an impetus. Soon
there was light enough to distinguish objects around, and then came the
ominous patter of musketry over beyond the river’s bluff, which told
that the battle was on again. It began just as a shower of rain began
and soon deepened into a terrible hail storm, with the booming artillery
for thunder accompaniment. I was up and around and started immediately
toward the front, for everybody felt now that the battle was to be ours.
Those fresh and sturdy troops from the Army of the Ohio had furnished a
blue bulwark, behind which the incomparable one-day fighters of Grant and
Sherman were to push to victory. The whole aspect of the field in the
rear changed. The skulkers of the day before seemed to be imbued with
genuine manhood, and thousands of them returned to the front to render
good service. In addition to this, six thousand fresh men under General
Lew Wallace, who had marched from Crump’s Landing, ten miles away,
had arrived during the night, and the tide of battle was now setting
towards Corinth. I met a comrade drying himself out by a log fire, about
a quarter of a mile from the landing, who had by some process secured
a canteen of what was known as Commissary Whisky. He gave me one drink
of it and that constituted my breakfast. Cold, wet and depressed, as
I was, that whisky, execrable though it was, brought such consolation
as I had never found before. I have drunk champagne in Epernay, I have
sipped Johannisberger at the foot of its sunny mount, I have tasted the
regal Montpulsanio, but, by Jove, I never enjoyed a drink as I did that
swig of common whisky, on the morning of the 7th of April, 1862! While
drying myself by this fire I saw a motley crowd of Confederate prisoners
marched past, under guard. As they waded along the muddy road, some of
the cowardly skulkers indulged in the badinage usual on such occasions,
and one of our fellows called out to know what company that was. A proud
young chap in gray threw his head back, and replied, “_Company Q, of the
Southern Invincibles, and be damned to you._” _That was the spirit of the
day and the hour._
At 10 o’clock, the sound of the battle indicated that our lines were
being pushed forward, and I made up my mind to go to the front. I started
with my companion, and in a very short time we began to see about us
traces of the terrible battle of the day before. We were then on the
ground which had been fought over late Sunday evening. The underbrush
had literally been mowed off by the bullets and great trees had been
shattered by the terrible artillery fire. In places, the bodies of the
slain lay upon the ground so thick that I could step from one to the
other. This without exaggeration. The pallid faces of the dead men in
blue were scattered among the blackened corpses of the enemy. This to
me was a horrible revelation, and I have never yet heard a scientific
explanation of why the majority of the dead Confederates on that field
turned black. All the bodies had been stripped of their valuables,
and scarcely a pair of boots or shoes could be found upon the feet of
the dead. In most instances, pockets had been cut open, and one of the
pathetic sights that I remember was a poor Confederate, lying on his
back, while by his side was a heap of ginger cakes and sausage, which
had tumbled out of his trousers pockets, cut by some infamous thief.
The unfortunate man had evidently filled his pocket the day before with
the edibles, found in some sutler’s tent, and had been killed before he
had an opportunity to enjoy his bountiful store. There was something so
sad about this that it brought tears to my eyes. Farther on I passed by
the road the corpse of a beautiful boy in gray, who lay with his blonde
curls scattered about his face, and his hands folded peacefully across
his breast. He was clad in a bright and neat uniform, well garnished with
gold, which seemed to tell the story of a loving mother and sisters who
had sent their household pet to the field of war. His neat little hat
lying beside him bore the number of a Georgia regiment, embroidered, I
am sure, by some tender fingers, and his waxen face, washed by the rain
of the night before, was that of one who had fallen asleep, dreaming of
loved ones who waited his coming in some anxious home. He was about my
age. He may have been a drummer! At the sight of that poor boy’s corpse I
burst into tears, and started on. Here beside a great oak tree I counted
the corpses of fifteen men. One of them sat stark against the tree, and
the others lay about as though during the night, suffering from wounds,
they had crawled together for mutual assistance and there had died. The
blue and the gray were mingled together. This peculiarity I observed all
over the field. It was no uncommon thing to see the bodies of Federal and
Confederate lying side by side as though they had bled to death, while
trying to aid each other. In one spot I saw an entire battery of Federal
artillery, which had been dismantled in Sunday’s fight, every horse of
which had been killed in his harness, every tumbrel of which had been
broken, every gun of which had been dismounted, and in this awful heap
of death lay the bodies of dozens of cannoneers. One dismounted gun was
absolutely spattered with the blood and brains of the men who had served
it. Here and there in the field, standing in the mud, were the most
piteous sights of all the battlefield—poor, wounded horses, their heads
drooping, their eyes glassy and gummy, waiting for the slow coming of
death, or for some friendly hand to end their misery. How those helpless
brutes spoke in pleading testimony of the horror, the barbarism and the
uselessness of war! No painter ever did justice to a battlefield such as
this, I am sure.
As I pushed onward to the front, I passed the ambulances and the wagons
bringing back the wounded, and talked with the poor, bleeding fellows
who were hobbling toward the river, along the awful roads or through
the dismal chaparral. They all brought news of victory. Toward evening
I found myself in the neighborhood of the old Shiloh Church, but could
get no tidings of my father’s regiment. Night came on and I lay down and
fell asleep at the foot of a tree, having gathered up a blanket soaked
with water, which I could only use for a pillow. It rained all night.
The battle had practically ended at 4 o’clock that evening, and the
enemy had slowly and silently withdrawn toward Corinth. Next morning I
learned that my father’s regiment had been sent in pursuit of the enemy,
and nobody could tell when it would return. I found the camp, and oh,
what desolation reigned there! Every tent had been pillaged, and in my
father’s headquarters, the gentlemen of the enemy who had camped there
two nights before had left a duplicate of nearly everything they had
taken. They had exchanged their dirty blankets for clean ones, and had
left their old, worn brogans in the place of boots and shoes which they
had appropriated, and all about were the evidences of the feasting that
had gone on during that one night of glorious possession. I remained
there during the day, and late that evening the Seventieth Ohio came back
to its deserted quarters after three days and two nights of most terrible
fighting and campaigning.
At its head rode my father, whom I had supposed to be dead, pale, haggard
and worn, but unscathed. He had not seen me nor heard of me for sixty
hours. He dismounted, and, taking me in his arms, gave me the most
affectionate embrace my life had ever known, and I realized then how
deeply he loved me. That night we stayed in the old bullet ridden and
shot torn tent and told of our adventures, and the next day I had the
pleasure of hearing General Sherman compliment my father for his bravery,
and say, “Colonel, you have been worth your weight in gold to me.”
* * * * *
Many years after, speaking one day to General Sherman, I asked him,
“What do you regard as the bloodiest and most sanguinary battle of the
Civil War?”
“Shiloh,” was the prompt response.
And in this opinion I heartily concur.
NOTE—The killed and wounded in the two days’ Battle of Shiloh
numbered nearly twenty thousand Federals and Confederates,
or about thirty per cent of the entire number engaged. These
figures become the more significant when it is remembered that
a very large proportion of the troops engaged on both sides
were absolutely raw and were at Shiloh in their first baptism
of fire. These losses again become most significant when
compared with the losses in the world’s most noted battles.
Waterloo is considered one of the most desperate and bloody
fields chronicled in European history, and yet Wellington’s
casualties were less than twelve per cent. In the great battles
of Marengo and Austerlitz, sanguinary as they were, Napoleon
lost less than fifteen per cent, while at Shiloh, Americans
fighting against Americans, the killed and wounded numbered
more than twice the casualties of the Duke of Wellington’s Army
at Waterloo.
SATAN FISHING
Ole Satan went a fishin’ when de Lawd he fus’ made man,
En all de fish dat cum his way he never fail to lan’.
He had all diff’unt kind er bait to suit dey appetite,
En all de patience in de worl’ to wait fer dem to bite;
He cotch Eve wid a apple, en ole Adam wid de core,
Changed his bait en went on fishin’, en he kep’ a-ketchin’ more;
De sinners breed tremendous fas’ en cum a-swimmin’ by,
He drap de hook, dey dive en bite, he lan’ ’um high en dry.
En he sets dar still a-fishin’, wid a wicked, sinful look,
En des to hoodoo niggers, he hangs chickens on his hook,
Er a great, big watermelon, er a white man’s ’tater hill,
Er sump’n des ez certain ter be swallered pas’ de gill.
So mo’ners, turn yo’ haids away, keep lookin’ to de right,
Ef yo’ never fools aroun’ de bait you’ll never want to bite;
Turn f’um de things dat tempt de flesh en watch out fer yo’ souls
En yo’ won’t be ’mungst de suckers dat he fries upon de coals!
_W. M. Goodman._
AMERICANS AT THE PEACE CONGRESS
By Hayne Davis
Secretary of the American Delegation
The fourteenth Session of the Interparliamentary Union was notable in
many respects. First, it was held in the capital of the greatest country
in the world, not only in its area, but in the fact that it is the oldest
representative of the idea of Parliamentary Government. It was in the
year 1253 that the first Representative Parliament of England assembled
at London. This was the first appearance of this idea in the presence
of the royal families which were then reigning in Europe. Indeed, it
may be properly called the first appearance of this idea in the modern
political world, though of course parliaments have existed in other parts
of the world in previous centuries. But between those early efforts at
democratic government and the modern regime, a long period of darkness
came over the world, and it is perhaps safe to say that the modern era in
the political world began with the assembling of the first Representative
Parliament in England.
The fundamental idea of democracy is government in the affairs of
to-day by persons who are elected by the people of to-day, whereas the
fundamental proposition in all other forms of government is that the
people of the past have a right to impose their ideas upon the people
of the present, through the form of hereditary office-holding and
established religious organizations. This being true, it is nothing
but right that the United States should be strongly represented at
this great conference composed of the people’s representatives from
practically every nation in the world. The United States Congress has
been represented by a delegation at only three previous conferences of
the Interparliamentary Union, namely, the one at St. Louis, in 1904; the
one at Brussels, in 1905; and the present one. At each of these, except
this present one, the Democratic side of the American delegation has
been much weaker than the Republican side, there being as a rule only a
few Democrats in the delegation, and in no case a Democrat of national
reputation. The Democratic side of the delegation at this fourteenth
conference of the Interparliamentary Union was as large in numbers as
the Republican side, and contained the leader of the Democratic party
in Congress, Mr. John Sharpe Williams, and the leader of the Democratic
party in this country, Hon. W. J. Bryan. This fact is of great importance
to the cause of international arbitration, not only in the United States,
but also in Europe, because it has resulted in perfect unity between
Mr. Bartholdt, who is a Republican, and the leaders of the Democratic
party in the United States. Mr. Bartholdt has taken the lead in this
progressive movement, not only among the law-makers of the United States,
but of the whole world, by calling for a second conference at The Hague,
and by putting forward a proposition which has now received the express
approval of the ablest leaders of the Democratic party in the United
States. Both Mr. Williams and Mr. Bryan have expressly and powerfully
espoused the ideas which Mr. Bartholdt has put forward, and which
have now received the sanction of the Interparliamentary Conference.
Furthermore, both Mr. Williams and Mr. Bryan have come forward with
propositions of their own. With Mr. Roosevelt already committed to the
plans of the Interparliamentary Union, and with the probable Democratic
candidate at the next election committed even more strongly, the lovers
of peace and justice in the Old and in the New World have a right to
count absolutely upon the support of the next President of the United
States, not only for these progressive steps toward permanent peace which
have heretofore been advocated in Europe, but for more advanced steps
than were deemed practical at any time in the past, either in Europe or
America.
[Illustration: WILLIAM RANDAL CREWER
Originator of the Interparliamentary Union]
In the Interparliamentary Union we have an organization composed of the
most progressive statesmen in all the law-making bodies of the world,
and they have been guided with remarkable wisdom to the declaration of a
policy against which no sound argument can be raised, because it calls
for arriving at the ultimate aim of permanent peace, by walking in the
way that leads there, and by taking each step in due order. Thus no
existing condition is ignored, however much we may be opposed to it as a
permanent fact. Take, for instance, the question in regard to the arrest
or limitation of armaments, which was raised by Baron d’Estournelles. It
was inevitable that this should cause hostile comment from some quarter,
and the closing scenes of the conference brought out this comment. The
Duke of Argyll presided, and it was his privilege to respond to the toast
of all the nations represented in the Interparliamentary Conference. The
banquet was held in a hall decorated with flags of the various regiments
of the British army; and in various parts of the great building there
were figures of the men who had distinguished themselves in the countless
battles which have been fought by the British people, not only in these
islands, but in all parts of the world. The Duke of Argyll took advantage
of this ocular demonstration of the fact of war, in the distant and near
past, to express his belief that the people of England would see similar
occurrences in the future. He then proceeded to remark that perhaps it
might be better if the Interparliamentary people would fly nearer to
the ground. He did not use these words, but the idea was that there
was danger of getting in the clouds above the things that were capable
of realization. This thought is but natural when one considers more or
less carelessly the great questions which are being wrestled with by the
Interparliamentary Union, and by the various organizations which have
permanent peace as their ultimate aim. I believe, however, that a careful
consideration of the things advocated by the Interparliamentary Union
will prove that the Duke of Argyll has not differentiated between this
organization and some of the other organizations which have peace as
the object for which they struggle. Speaking from an American point of
view, it would seem as natural to say that the men who formed the United
States were idle dreamers seeking the impossible, because previous to the
organization of the United States there was no such body in existence, as
it is now to say that practical statesmen who can win and hold seats in
national parliaments and who can control the action of great political
parties are idle dreamers because they recognize the fact that existing
conditions are not right, and that there is a way out of these wrong
conditions, and that they propose to find that way. Everyone will admit
that it is not right for people on two sides of a stream ten miles wide
or twenty miles wide, or even a thousand miles wide, to continually go
to war with one another when they all know how to administer justice
through political institutions. Of course the question arises whether the
people can be induced to establish institutions on a world-wide scale,
such as have been established during past centuries, first on a small
scale, then on a comparatively large scale, and finally on a continental
scale. Passing from the abstract to the concrete, here we have in this
conference of the Interparliamentary Union two men who have held a seat
in the United States Congress for fourteen years, one a Republican and
the other a Democrat. The Republican, the Hon. Richard Bartholdt, has
proposed that an international deliberative body be formed as speedily as
possible, but without authority to enact law, in which all the nations
who have commercial dealings with each other shall have representatives.
His idea is that this body will be able to discover ways of improving the
law of nations, and the method of its administration, and that upon its
suggestions the several nations will give effect to these good ideas. He
believes also that in due time this international deliberative body will,
by the wisdom with which it acts, be able to satisfy the responsible
statesmen of all countries that they can safely trust to such a body
the declaration of general principles of law to govern the conduct of
the nations in their intercourse with each other. It is believed that
in due time, through the development of this body, the people of the
various nations will acquire the right to vote on international questions
by ballot instead of bullet. To regard this as impracticable or even
untimely is simply to ignore the essential facts of history during the
past centuries, and the speed with which good ideas can be made effectual
for large areas at the present time, on account of the great and valuable
discoveries which have been made and applied recently to the intercourse
between the people of the various nations.
Coupled with this proposition, Mr. Bartholdt has suggested as eminently
practical the formulation of a general Treaty of Arbitration, which gives
The Hague Court jurisdiction over the questions included in it, whether
there is only one or half a dozen classes of questions that are made
arbitrable according to its terms, or whether, as in the case of Denmark
and Holland, no reservation whatever is made. Mr. Bartholdt simply
proposes to let each nation designate the classes of questions which
it will consent to refer to arbitration, and to grant The Hague Court
jurisdiction over those questions, the treaty to become operative between
all nations ratifying and between each nation and all other nations, so
far as they designate the same classes of questions as arbitrable under
its terms. In the meantime all nations, according to his proposition,
shall remain free to arm themselves as heavily as they think their
interests may require.
[Illustration: LORD WEARDALE
President British Group, Interparliamentary Union]
Mr. John Sharpe Williams, who has succeeded in placing himself at the
head of the Democratic party in the Lower House in the United States
Congress, not only approves of these practical propositions made by Mr.
Bartholdt, but he proposes that the judges of The Hague Court shall be
paid ample salaries, coupled with a prohibition against their appearing
in any case that comes before this International Court, or acting as
counsel to any government in any international controversy. This will
enable these judges to devote themselves immediately to the task of
codifying the law of nations, which is certainly in a most confused
and unsatisfactory condition, owing to the fact that it contains many
contradictory doctrines announced by particular nations to fit their
interests at particular crises, and which have not received the approval
of other countries. Certainly a commission of competent jurists to codify
those principles of law which should be generally recognized by the
nations, and to bring into harmony with sound principles those doctrines
about which there is not a complete unity of opinion, can be counted upon
to do work of this kind as successfully as similar commissions for the
codification of national or State laws. Furthermore, the most capable
statesmen of the various countries can be counted on to protect their
countries’ interests as faithfully and effectually as if those gentlemen
were sent out at the head of an armed force.
[Illustration: CONGRESSMAN JOHN SHARPE WILLIAMS]
Mr. William Jennings Bryan, who has twice been the candidate of a great
political party for the highest and most responsible office in one of
the greatest countries in the world, and who has himself been one of
its national law-makers, can hardly be looked upon as too idealistic
for the practical affairs of the world. Mr. Bryan now comes forward and
places his unqualified, indeed, his earnest approval, upon this plan
for the earliest possible organization of the International Conference
at The Hague upon a firm and permanent foundation, without authority
at the beginning to enact their resolutions into laws binding upon the
nations, but with the right to assemble at stated intervals, upon their
own initiative, for the discussion of such international questions as the
current of events may make paramount, and for suggesting to the various
governments of the world suitable and timely amendments to the law of
nations, and in the present method of its administration.
[Illustration: COUNT ALBERT APPONYI
President Hungarian Group, Interparliamentary Union]
Furthermore, Mr. Bryan proposed at this conference and declared his
intention of hereafter throwing the full weight of his influence in favor
of an agreement between nations to refer all questions to arbitration
in the first instance, even though the several governments reserve the
right, in matters affecting their vital interests or national honor,
to appeal from the decision of the arbitrators to a conflict upon the
battlefield. Even if the nations of Europe found themselves unable at
this moment to agree to this proposition, there is certainly nothing in
the proposition that is unwise in the abstract, and if nothing is ever
proposed which the world is not ready at the instant to adopt, it is
utterly impossible to make any progress at all. But in the light of the
salient facts of history, Mr. Bryan’s proposition is certainly entitled
to the immediate consideration of every statesman in the world, and, in
my judgment, it can count on acceptance in a comparatively short time.
The people of England have probably not yet forgotten the fact that if
the Duke of Argyll had lived previously to the twenty-second day of June,
1819, he would have had the right, under the laws of England, to prove
that he owned the estate of which he is now the distinguished possessor,
by defeating any claimant to the same on the field of personal encounter
in the presence of the judges of this great nation. I do not happen to
know how long the family of Argyll has been taking account of itself,
but I venture to say that some of the ancestors of the present duke
were among those whose sentiment against the trial by jury of questions
affecting title to land made it impracticable to substitute judicial
decisions for wage of battle in such questions several centuries ago.
But opinions change—principles never. Therefore, it is eminently wise
and practical for the progressive statesmen of to-day to put forward the
idea of judicial decisions in the place of trials by battle, in those
controversies which are international in character; and those statesmen
who dare to do this are rendering to our day and generation a service
similar in character, but greater in value, to that which was rendered
in past ages by those noble men who dared to throw themselves against
anything that was wrong, however firmly established in the customs of
their country, and who gave over the struggle to substitute Right for
Might, even though the fruition of their labors did not come in their own
lifetime.
[Illustration: H. LA FONTAINE
Member Hungarian Group, Interparliamentary Union]
It is certainly a cause for congratulation throughout the whole world
that eminent and practical statesmen in both of the great parties in
the United States have declared that, so far as the United States are
concerned, the substitution of law for war is soon to be made a part of
the practical politics of their country.
This is the time, therefore, for all men who have their country’s welfare
at heart to come forward and labor for the present realization of these
practical plans, because they are right, because they are the only way
out of wrong conditions. The world will be brought to the adoption of
these ideas quickly or after a long delay, according to the action or
inaction of the men who have their hands upon the reins of government,
and who are influential in the formation of public opinion in their own
particular countries. Under such circumstances, the part of wisdom is to
join hands in the effort to travel the right road, instead of pausing to
consider the length of the journey or the obstacles to be overcome in
taking it.
Looking over the crises which have brought the world forward, and at
the conditions which surround us at the present time, it is plain that
the prospects for achieving what is now proposed are much better than
those which surrounded the men who achieved the best things in the
past, in every country which now has a part to play in the world’s
political drama. The prospects of peace and justice not only within
the existing political organizations, but in their relations with
one another, were never so good as to-day, because the principle of
Parliamentary Representative government has been applied during the past
few centuries, to a greater or less degree, in almost every nation of
the world, and this has prepared each of these nations to participate
more easily and more effectively in the application of this principle to
the affairs common to them all. While it is certainly true that under
existing conditions each nation must make such preparation for its own
preservation and the enforcement of its rights in the world as may seem
to it necessary, considering the dangers which surround it, and while
the Duke of Argyll is only stating the truth in saying that England
will probably have to add more flags to her present array of military
decorations, it is also true that the principle which can minimize
the danger of and in due time destroy the necessity for war, has been
discovered and is now in operation, to some degree, in almost every
nation in the world. This principle has been put forward for practical
application in the affairs common to all nations, has been accepted by
men who have heretofore been entrusted with the highest positions of
responsibility in the operation of their national government, who have
demonstrated that the confidence reposed in them was not undeserved. It
is, therefore, simply a question of working out the problem according to
a known rule, as truly as when the rule in mathematics is known and the
work of solving the problem according to it is all that remains to be
done.
FREDERICK A. BRIDGMAN
By Lillian Kendrick Byrn
Without the resolution in your hearts to do good work, so long
as your right hands have motion in them, and to do it whether
the issue be that you die or live, no life worthy the name will
ever be possible to you; while in once forming the resolution
that your work is to be well done, life is really won here and
forever.—_John Ruskin._
These words of the greatest art critic of modern times have been the
inspiration of Mr. Bridgman’s work ever since, as a youth of nineteen, he
commenced his artistic career as draughtsman in the American Bank Note
Company, of New York. After six months’ experience in this department he
was transferred to the vignette department, where he displayed the same
fidelity and ability which has ever characterized his work. His hours
were from nine until five, but he rose at four and painted until eight
each morning and each evening he returned to his home to paint until a
late hour. Occupying, as he now does, the enviable position of being a
medallist of the Paris Salon several times over, not to mention medals
from Münich, London and Berlin and the decoration of the Cross of the
Legion of Honor and similar honors, Mr. Bridgman owes his eminence as
much to his indefatigable work and his determination as to his talent.
There have been artists distinguished from the fact that their genius
was bizarre or their point of view extraordinary, and others preëminent
because they solved, with the ease of genius, the general problems
of their art. It is to the latter class that this Southern painter
belongs—the class which expresses clearly and forcefully the essential
life elements, in contradistinction to the eccentric, exaggerated
striving after the weird, which marks the work of the others, whose
success is at best, ephemeral.
There is contained in a picture nothing less than all that it is capable
of inspiring to our thoughts and imagination. Art, like nature, can only
show us what we are capable of seeing and it is this faculty for showing
not only the subtle sense of atmosphere to the critics but the beauty of
life to all observers, which marks Mr. Bridgman’s pictures.
Mr. Bridgman’s studies in Paris were made at the celebrated Suisse
atelier and at the Ecôle des Beaux Arts, under Gérôme. He painted in
Brittany several years, and in 1872 he went to Algeria, where the beauty
of the African scenes inspired him to write, as well as to paint. His
_Winters in Algeria_, illustrated with his own sketches, was brought out
by a leading American publishing house and was pronounced by Sir Lambert
Playfair, thirty years British Consul at Algiers, to be the best book
ever issued on this subject. His _Burial of a Mummy on the Nile_, painted
in Africa, is owned by James Gordon Bennett. It was this picture which
brought him the Cross of the Legion of Honor, as well as a medal, when
exhibited at the Paris Exposition, 1878. At the second Exposition, held
in 1889, he was made President of the American Section of Fine Arts.
Other paintings owned by Americans are _The Family Bath_, in Mrs. Ayres’
gallery in New York, and _The Procession of the Sacred Bull Apis_, in the
Corcoran Gallery, at Washington.
[Illustration: MR. F. A. BRIDGMAN]
The Bridgman studio is one of the most interesting in Paris. The door
is devoid of bell or knocker, but on pushing it open a zither-like
instrument is struck, producing vibrant chords of harmony. A small
ante-chamber containing a Renaissance marble and casts of Donatello’s
angels opens into the studios, which consist of three rooms, charmingly
surrounding an Oriental _patio_, with mosaic pavement and blue-tiled
fountain and walled in by lattice work from Cairo. Moorish and Arabic
mosque lamps and Persian and Indian tapestries give a complete Eastern
tone to the court. The principal room is ornamented quite to the lofty
ceiling with panels, hangings and furniture of the twelfth century, or
Renaissance period. The keynote of this room is dull green, mingled
with the brown of the old woodwork and the gold of its decorations.
From this room one passes by way of the fountain, whose gold fish and
lotus flowers tempt one to linger, to a quaint stairway of carved oak,
which leads to the Egyptian and Greek rooms above. The sanctuary of the
ancient Egyptian period is announced, so to speak, by the white lotus bud
columns, supporting bas-reliefs of flamingoes and a boat carrying twenty
donkeys and two men, crossing the Nile. At each side of the entrance
statues of Isis and Osiris, in green basalt, sit as placidly as four
thousand years ago.
[Illustration: IN A GARDEN OF MUSTAPHA, ALGIERS
Paris Salon, 1906]
While a large part of Mr. Bridgman’s furnishings have been collected
during his travels, they have been supplemented by friezes, furniture
and ornaments designed by the artist in keeping with his idea of giving
each room a complete and distinct individuality. This character note is
especially dominant in the Egyptian room, with its painted and gilded
cedar wood chairs and its bas-reliefs of Egyptian life. The coloring is
dark blue, relieved by gilding in the decorations and hieroglyphics, and
lighted by electric lotus flowers.
In the Greek room a frieze of black and terra cotta, reproduced from the
old Etruscan vases, runs round the ceiling. Over the mantel stands the
frontal of a temple, copied after the lines of the Parthenon. Minerva
presides in this shrine, guarded by small Tanagra figurines on the shelf
below. There are also some fragments of Etruscan ware. It is a wonderful
place to dream in, and a hard place to leave, the more so as Mr. Bridgman
exercises hospitality on a scale of typical Southern generosity. There
is something in the personality of the man himself—a certain candor or
simplicity which, in spite of the cosmopolitan finish of world-wide
travel and experience, in spite of honors and acclamation, remains
typical of his native section. Tuskegee, Alabama, is his birthplace, his
father being a physician of note throughout the state.
[Illustration: ARAB CAVALIERS, ALGIERS]
Besides _Winters in Algeria_, Mr. Bridgman has written several books in
French, among them _Anarchy in Art_ and _The Idol and the Ideal_, the
latter being a poem in blank verse, whose _dramatis personae_ are an
artist and a young girl.
Nor do painting and writing complete the list of the Alabamian’s talents.
He is a devoted musician, finding rest and inspiration in the study of
harmonic sound. He always carries with him a musical notebook, jotting
down, wherever he may be, any melody or detail of orchestration that
strikes him. He is now finishing a symphony, parts of which have been
played in classical concerts at Vichy and at Monte Carlo. With such
varied gifts it is not surprising that his pictures have a lyrical,
musical quality, pulsating with the rhythmical movement of life. He has
the supreme painter’s gift of conveying not only the effect of air and
sunlight, but also the psychic atmosphere of a scene, the glamor, the
romance of the Orient.
Mr. Bridgman says, and his views are indicative of that noble discontent
which incites artists to yet higher efforts, “The actual picture is never
the perfect one. It is always the _next_ undertaking in which shall be
realized the qualities so much sought after.”
[Illustration: MEN OF AFFAIRS]
Robert Joseph Fisher was born at Athens, Tennessee. His father, Richard
M. Fisher, was of German descent, and moved to Tennessee from Virginia.
His mother, Ann M. Gettys, is of Scotch-Irish descent, and was born at
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, which town was founded by, and took its name
from, her grandfather. Mr. Fisher received a collegiate education at
the East Tennessee Wesleyan University, at Athens, and while at school
stood at the head of his classes, showing a marked predilection for
mathematics. On account of business reverses sustained by his father, he
left school and began business life as a clerk in a store in his native
town. Subsequently he became teller in the Cleveland National Bank, at
Cleveland, in his native state. Upon the death of his father, in 1883,
Mr. Fisher returned to Athens and organized the First National Bank of
Athens, of which he was the cashier and principal executive officer for
about thirteen years. During this period Mr. Fisher promoted, and was a
leading spirit in, the organization of the principal industries of his
home town, which resulted in doubling the population of the place in a
few years.
[Illustration: ROBERT JOSEPH FISHER]
He was offered the position of cashier in national banks at Chattanooga
and Knoxville, but declined. In 1892 he conceived the idea of the Fisher
Book Typewriter and Billing Machine, for writing in bound books and for
billing in commercial houses. During the succeeding four years he devoted
every spare moment to improving his machine, to making his own drawings
therefor, to taking out numerous patents, and to overcoming the problems
and difficulties which only those who attempt to originate a machine
of more than two thousand parts can appreciate. In 1896 he resigned his
position in the bank, to devote his entire attention to his inventions.
The Fisher Typewriter Company was organized, and two years and one
hundred thousand dollars were spent before his first perfect machine was
produced. The machines were manufactured at Athens for several years,
notwithstanding Mr. Fisher was laughed at when he stated that he was
going to manufacture in the South a piece of mechanism as nice as a
watch, and in which measurements of one-half of one-thousandth of an inch
were common; but the machines were made in the South as accurately as
they could have been made anywhere.
After a few years, realizing that it would require a million of dollars
to successfully manufacture and introduce his machine, and that this
money could not be obtained in the South, he sold his stock and royalty
interests in the company to eastern capitalists. A large factory,
employing nearly one thousand skilled mechanics, now manufactures his
machines at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and several millions of dollars
have been invested in the business. The principal office of the company
is in New York, with branches in all of the principal cities of the
world. There is scarcely a large business in the North and East that does
not use his machine, one firm in Chicago alone using four hundred of
them. For several years after disposing of his interests in the company,
Mr. Fisher retained a connection with it as its inventor. After returning
to Athens, Mr. Fisher erected the Athens Hosiery Mills, of which he
is the sole proprietor, and which is the largest individual business
enterprise in his native county.
Although this business lays a heavy tax on his time and energy, it
does not prevent the continuance of his inventions. Over seventy-five
different patents, in this and foreign countries, attest his unabated
zeal in this work. In 1900 he was awarded the John Scott Medal for
meritorious invention by the city of Philadelphia, on the recommendation
of Franklin Institute.
The Fisher home, in Athens, is one of typical Southern comfort, Mrs.
Fisher, who comes from the prominent Gauche family of New Orleans,
delighting in the exercise of hospitality no less than in her devotion to
the welfare of her husband and two young sons.
* * * * *
To rise, in a few short years, by sheer force of character—by pluck and
brains—from a humble beginning as a clerk in a small retail business in a
country town to an eminence where one becomes the cynosure of all eyes
in business, is a rare experience, indeed.
And yet that has happened in the life of a citizen of New Orleans—William
Perry Brown, the Cotton King.
[Illustration: WILLIAM PERRY BROWN]
He was born on a farm, and lived there until well advanced in his teens.
When not at school, in his early years, the lad did chores about his
home, the Civil War having left his father, who was a Confederate soldier
of unblemished record, in reduced circumstances, as were all the people
of his section. Under such circumstances, young Brown’s training and
habits were on lines that tend to build character. They taught him, in
his youth, the obligations of duty, the essentiality of self-denial and
self-control, of faith in himself, and of hope for success. The lessons
were not unheeded.
In meeting difficulties and overcoming obstacles in business which
would paralyze an operator of less heroic mold, he is cool, collected,
resourceful. Neither by change of countenance, speech nor manner does he
ever betray any fear he may feel as to the outcome of the situation in
which he is placed.
He is practical, and does things in a common-sense way, avoiding the
spectacular as much as possible—his self-reliance and self-assertion
being less conspicuous in speech than action.
Mr. Brown’s faith in the idea that cotton has been selling too low is
not a thing of a day’s growth. He is an observer of men and a student of
events, noting causes and the effects produced. Therein lies the secret
of his success. He realizes that supply and demand regulate prices, when
market conditions are normal—free from manipulation to produce, by artful
management, deceptive situations.
In 1898-99 cotton was selling at and around 4¾ cents in New Orleans,
and at still lower figures at interior points—a price showing on its
face the staple was selling below the cost of production. The condition
was abnormal. Mr. Brown saw it, and realized it could not long endure.
Looking backward, he had the wisdom to perceive that for several
years preceding the production of cotton had not kept pace with the
consumption; that consumption was limited, not by the acreage, which,
under favorable circumstances, could be planted, but by the labor that
could be commanded to till the fields and gather the crop. He saw that
the prosperity of the country, the world over, was drawing laborers
from the cotton fields to furnish them more remunerative employment in
industrial pursuits and enterprises, where the profits on manufactured
products, and in their transportation and distribution, enabled capital
to pay bigger wages than could be earned on the farm. As “the stars in
their courses fought against Sisera” of old, so the sun and the seasons,
and the prosperity of the country, producing a scarcity of labor for farm
work, fought the bears, causing cotton production to lag while speeding
its consumption. The inevitable followed. The demand exceeded the supply,
and the natural tendency of prices was upward. Seeing the unusually
strong statistical position of cotton, and anticipating the inescapable
results that would follow such conditions, if the markets were
intelligently watched and artful manipulation to lower prices prevented,
Mr. Brown set himself to work legitimately to aid the staple to “corner
itself.” The management of the campaign for months was all that could
have been expected. The plan was happily conceived, and executed with
great courage and skill. Prices advanced until, in January, 1904, it
looked as though they would soar to the skies. The effort to punish the
Southern operators leading the fight—the men who were reared on cotton
plantations and sympathized with the producers, because brought up among
them, and who also knew the long suffering entailed by low prices—proved
unavailing, until Sully went by the board. The combinations of Wall
Street and wealthy Wall Street bears to lower prices and break down
the bull leaders so far succeeded, that, about February 1, 1904, Sully
was driven to the wall and prices sank so rapidly that plethoric purses
in a few seconds were reduced to aching voids. Excitement on the Cotton
Exchanges of New York and New Orleans ran to tidal wave proportions.
Seeing their fortunes melt like mist before the morning’s sun, men lost
their heads and the panic became appalling. It was like Bedlam broken
loose. Pandemonium reigned, and there is no telling where the decline
would have stopped had it not been for the iron nerve and reckless
indifference to the assaults of the enemy on the part of the Napoleonic
bull leader. It was seemingly a Waterloo, there is no doubt about that.
But the daring and intrepid leader rallied enough of the Old Guard to
escape Helena. By many, it was thought, and apparently with reason, the
day of his destiny was over with Captain Brown, but it proved not so.
He has gone right along bulling the market off and on from that day to
this, as though the dire day on which Sully’s sun went down was a mere
incident in his career.
The old-time speculators, as well as spinners, have been made since then
unwillingly to pay something like the prices which trade conditions
undisturbed justified. No trick or scheme or effort known to the smooth
manipulators to bring about the downfall of Brown, by a decline in
cotton, have been spared. So far, he has weathered every storm and bids
fair to continue to ride the gale.
* * * * *
Mr. Winston claims, with Patrick Henry, descent from the old Quaker
family of Winston, among the earliest settlers of Virginia. His
grandfather, Pleasant Winston, having married a Miss Clark, of Lynchburg,
and thus coming into possession of a number of slaves which his religion
forbade him to hold and the laws of his state forbade him to free,
sent them to Liberia to join the new colony founded there. His oldest
son, Bowling Henry Winston, on his graduation from the University of
Virginia, removed to Indiana and married there, becoming a farmer.
John Clark Winston was born here in 1856. He was educated in Virginia
and at Haverford College in Pennsylvania, graduating in 1881. It was
his intention to study law, but he accepted a tempting offer to take
charge of the Western branch of a Philadelphia publishing house, and the
fascination of this business so grew upon him that in 1884 he entered
it on his own account. His first venture was made in a small building
in Philadelphia, just opposite the imposing structure which now bears
his name. While devoting himself to business Mr. Winston has always
maintained an interest in religious, educational and civic affairs.
[Illustration: JOHN CLARK WINSTON]
As chairman of the Committee of Seventy, he has taken a prominent part in
the reform movement in Philadelphia which resulted in the overthrow of
the corrupt Republican organization. Although a Republican in National
affairs, he has steadily fought for non-partisanship in municipal
matters. The City Party was organized by the Committee of Seventy on the
platform that city officers should be chosen without regard to political
party, and solely in the interest of honesty and efficiency.
Mr. Winston was made Chairman of the Committee of Seventy at the very
beginning of the reform movement, and may be regarded as one of the
originators of the movement. His name was prominently mentioned in
connection with the nomination for governor, and again for that of mayor,
but he has steadily avowed his disinclination for holding office.
Mr. Winston was president of the Haverford Alumni Association for two
years and has also taken an active interest in the work of the Historical
Association and in several athletic clubs.
* * * * *
Dr. Charles Chassaignac was born, reared and educated, with the exception
of post-graduate work in European universities, in New Orleans. He
graduated in medicine in 1883 at the age of twenty-one. Since beginning
his practice Dr. Chassaignac has been identified with every movement
looking to the sanitary and hygienic improvement of his native city.
He was one of the founders of and a member of the first faculty of the
New Orleans Training School for Nurses, which was the first of its kind
established in the South. It is managed by the New Orleans Polyclinic, in
conjunction with the New Orleans Sanitarium, a private hospital which it
owns.
[Illustration: DOCTOR CHARLES CHASSAIGNAC]
The New Orleans Polyclinic, of which Dr. Chassaignac is president,
was the first post-graduate medical school in the South, having been
established twenty years ago. It draws students from all parts of the
union, but particularly from the South.
During the last epidemic of yellow fever the physicians of New Orleans
did noteworthy work all through the infected districts, stamping out the
scourge in a shorter time than has ever been done before. Dr. Chassaignac
was one of the promoters of the organized and systematic effort which
resulted so successfully, doing efficient work in the parish of Tallulah,
where the epidemic was stopped in two weeks. It is safe to say that
Louisiana’s doctors and State Board of Health have the situation too well
in hand to permit the dread disease to gain a foothold again.
In the midst of the multitudinous duties imposed by his lectures, his
public work and his large private practice, Dr. Chassaignac finds time to
act as co-editor of the _New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal_, one
of the oldest of its kind in the country. In addition, he has occupied
many of the prominent medical positions in the city and state, having
served as president of the State Medical Society, president of the
Charity Hospital Alumni Association and three times president of the
Orleans Parish Medical Society. Mrs. Chassaignac was Miss Jennie Morris,
a member of one of the oldest and most distinguished families in New
Orleans.
[Illustration]
THE FIRST TWO GOVERNORS OF MISSISSIPPI
By A. C. Chase
I. GOVERNOR WINTHROP SARGENT
The first governor of Mississippi Territory was Winthrop Sargent, a
New Englander, the record of whose administration lives in history
because of the discontent and even open dissensions that marked it. Your
true Mississippian has always been wont to hold this sour and selfish
Puritan—so characterized—who had been foisted upon the young territory
through the prejudice of President Adams, as solely answerable for all
these troubles. The leading historian of Mississippi, J. F. H. Claiborne,
has depicted Sargent as so lacking in the kindly virtues that the wonder
is, not that he was removed at the close of his third year of office, but
that he had not been sooner thrust forth through the just anger of the
people.
Recently the Mississippi Department of History has sent out the first
volume of “Territorial Archives,” containing the journals of the first
two executives of that state. These papers, now for the first time
printed, are important for the light which they throw upon Sargent’s
character and official record.
Winthrop Sargent was a native of Massachusetts, well born and college
bred, who achieved a good record as an officer of artillery during the
Revolutionary War. After the war he worked as a surveyor, until in 1787
he was made secretary of the Northwest Territory. In May, 1798, he was
made governor of the territory of Mississippi. He was in very poor
health at the time and when he at last reached Natchez, August 6, he was
so weak that he was taken to Concord House, the old home of the Spanish
Governors, to rest and recover his strength. Twelve days later, however,
he was able to make a brief address before a large assemblage of citizens
at Natchez. In this he assured the people of his solicitude for their
welfare, of his desire to so administer the government as to deserve and
retain their confidence, and he pledged himself to consider merit only in
his appointments to office.
It must be admitted that he showed a sincere desire to make a good
impression upon his new constituency, and the reason for his total
failure is not readily defined, from the evidence of the record.
The historian Claiborne ascribes the mistakes of Governor Sargent largely
to the influence of Andrew Ellicott. The latter, sent to the territory
in 1795 to lay out the boundary line under the Spanish treaty, applied
himself after he arrived there to everything but his business. He claimed
authority as a representative of the government which his commission in
no way warranted, established himself as a sort of adviser-in-chief of
all newcomers, and by ingratiating himself with the Indian tribes of
the territory, he made no end of trouble for the government by lavish
promises of gifts and privileges. It may well be that this man Ellicott
was by no means as black as he has been painted, but there is sufficient
contemporary evidence that he acted the part of a mischief-maker in
Mississippi. From the journals, however, no evidence can be obtained that
he had any particular influence with the governor. And before the close
of his first year in office, Sargent fully recognized the mischief that
the surveyor’s meddling in Indian affairs had caused.
[Illustration: WINTHROP SARGENT
Photographic facsimile of portrait by Gilbert Stuart, in the Mississippi
Hall of Fame]
It should be remembered that Sargent, having had a military training,
was disposed to expect more deference to law and order than could fairly
be looked for in a frontier community. The population of Mississippi
at that time was of a very mixed sort, being made up of Spaniards,
Frenchmen, Indians, negroes, half-breeds of all grades of parentage,
renegade Americans and British, and at the same time a ruling class
of exceptional uprightness and intelligence. The fact that the better
element was outnumbered by the heterogeneous class beneath them, fully
justified the governor’s apprehension of lawless outbreaks, which he
sought to forestall by urging the organization and arming of a strong
militia force. The opposition which he met with in this eminently wise
measure, is in itself proof that prejudice largely inspired the movement
against him.
Political feeling had a share therein, beyond a doubt, for Sargent
was a Federalist, the appointee of a Federalist President, whereas
Mississippians were, almost to a man, Jefferson Republicans. Affiliation
between them was impossible, even had it not been true that on one side
was the frank, easy-going, ardent temperament of those resident in a land
of torrid summers, and, on the other, the unbending austere, cold nature
that has its home in the land of ice and snow.
The administration of the Spanish governors had been very lax, but it had
been popular. There were no prisons in the territory when Sargent came
thither, a fact which Claiborne adduces to prove the high grade of morals
then prevalent, but which really recommend the territory no more than
the further fact that there were no judges and no courts. Three persons
had been named as territorial judges at the same time the executive
appointment was made, but one of these only, Judge Bruin, was a resident
of the territory. Judge Tilton did not arrive until January 10, 1799,
and Judge McGuire delayed his coming until the following September. How
the absence of these officials embarrassed the governor in his efforts
to organize his administration becomes plain when we remember that the
enabling act of the territory rested all legislative authority in the
governor and these judges. They and they only were empowered to draw up a
code of laws for the territory. These laws were imperatively needed, and
upon Sargent, harassed with a thousand tasks and cares at once, rested
the sole responsibility for their suitable nature and correct form. Bruin
was not a lawyer, nor was Tilton; only McGuire, who did not appear upon
the scene until the hard task was completed, possessed the necessary
legal knowledge therefor.
As soon as Tilton arrived in January, the legislative work of the
government was begun, and the first law of Mississippi Territory bears
date of February 28, 1799; others followed as soon as they could be
properly framed. Though the governor had declared, truthfully enough,
in December, when writing to the Secretary of State, that the want
of laws kept territorial affairs in a condition of absolute anarchy,
yet no sooner was the code drawn up than it was violently attacked
by the governor’s political opponents. They declared the laws to be
unconstitutional, a charge which Claiborne’s “History of Mississippi”
reiterates. But he also charges Tilton and McGuire with aiding the
governor in this concoction of laws in conflict with the Constitution of
the United States; whereas, McGuire did not arrive in the territory until
nearly all of these laws had been enacted. And it is worthy of note, that
notwithstanding all the outcry against them, only two of the Sargent laws
were set aside, subsequently, by Congress.
April 2, 1799, Governor Sargent established the first two counties of
Mississippi Territory, by proclamation, and provided a system of courts.
And if we judge him from his written word, his efforts during following
months to provide by careful appointments for worthy administration
in these courts, to promote order by the organization of an efficient
militia, to avoid conflicts with discontented Indians and disorderly
white men, were unceasing. And this is the more noteworthy, since during
this time, the political opposition to him was steadily growing, and,
in spite of his efforts, taking on daily a more bitter tone. That this
opposition was in a sense honest, cannot be doubted from the names of
many connected with it, but that its main impulse was political malice,
there is too much evidence to show; and that it was by no means warranted
in any lack of principle or dereliction from duty on the part of the
executive, the written record shows plainly.
July 6, 1799, a popular meeting was held under the Jeffersonian leaders,
to express disaffection toward the governor. At this a circular was drawn
up, which was printed and sent to each district urging the people to meet
and name delegates to bring their grievances before the governor and
before Congress. This committee drew up a letter to Governor Sargent,
the burden of which was a protest against the machinations of Andrew
Ellicott, which, it was alleged, had given rise to the many mistakes
made by the governor, and his misunderstandings with his people. It
further prepared a memorial to Congress, protesting against the laws
that had been framed by Sargent, and urging the setting aside of the
existing territorial government, and the substitution therefor of what
was then known as “the second grade of government,” to-wit, a legislative
assembly, chosen by the people. This petition laid before Congress in
January, was referred to a committee, which in due time reported thereon,
advocating the substitution of an elective general assembly for the
existing territorial government of Mississippi. March 18, 1800, the
House, in committee of the whole, voted upon this report, approving the
change by a vote of 54 to 37. With a few exceptions, this was a strict
party vote, the Federalists all voting against the measure, and the
Jeffersonian Republicans voting in its favor. This change, it might be
noted, was not desired by all Mississippians, as there accompanied it
increased expense, and a decided augmentation of the taxes levied on the
people. But it was an advance in the history of the territory that could
not be retraced, and besides, it was a triumph for the Jeffersonian party
not to be forgotten, especially as the great leader of this party had
just taken his seat in the White House at Washington.
The unfortunate Sargent, occupied deeply with questions of
administration, with preserving the true relations between the civil
and military forces, with watching out for Spanish schemes to win the
especial favor of the Indians, with expounding the details of the
new laws to the untried judges, seems not to have “caught on” to the
successful strategy of his enemies for some time. At last, June 15, a
package of papers received from John Marshall, Secretary of State, told
him the whole story. His long letter of reply to the secretary, intended
to vindicate himself in that official’s good opinion, betrays not a
little bitterness, which assures us that this austere, cold-blooded New
Englander had considerable human nature in him after all.
He claimed, and unquestionably with truth, that his duties had been
no light ones, saying: “To organize a new government upon the very
confines of the power and energy of the United States—amongst a people of
diversity of interests, sentiment and language—acknowledgedly unversed in
jurisprudence, and not all distinguished for their complacency—without
the aid of the territorial judges to a late period, in ill health and
under the apprehension of an attack from a foreign enemy, must be
confessed an arduous task; I draw not, however, upon the good nature of
my countrymen, ’tis justice only that I ask.”
He then proceeded to show how much malice and misinformation lay behind
the attacks upon him, showed that he had done the best that he could
under all circumstances, had made the most careful appointments in his
power, and had in no sense attempted to enrich himself at the expense
of the people. In a word, he made a good defense, and if it was quite
unavailing he was not to blame. The star of his party had come to its
setting time, and the orb of the Jeffersonians was in the ascendant.
During the Adams administration Sargent had been promised a leave of
absence when the general apprehension of trouble with France had passed
away, and this privilege he claimed soon after Jefferson’s inauguration.
He went to Washington early in April, 1801, desiring to vindicate the
course of his administration against the “mighty obloquy” that had been
cast upon it, and to seek the justification of re-appointment. His hopes,
however, were dashed to the ground by the receipt of a letter from the
President as soon as he reached the capitol, transmitted through James
Madison, Secretary of State. This declared: “That from various and
delicate considerations, which entered into the appointment of a governor
for the Mississippi Territory, it was expedient to fill the station with
another than himself, whose administration, with whatever meritorious
intentions conducted, had not been so fortunate as to secure the general
harmony, and the mutual attachment between the people and the public
functionaries, so particularly necessary for the prosperity and happiness
of an infant establishment.”
It was hard on Sargent, and I shall always think better of him that
instead of shaking Mississippi dust from his shoes, then and forever, he
returned to the territory a few months later, quietly took up the life of
a planter, and bore a not unworthy part in the task of building up the
new community, notably aiding in the establishment of the first banking
house in the territory in 1809. He endured much from the malice of
others, but gave none in return. He died while on a visit to New Orleans,
June 3, 1820, and his ashes sleep on the site of his old plantation home,
near Natchez.
II. GOVERNOR WILLIAM C. C. CLAIBORNE
Exit Sargent—enter Claiborne. Exit the man whose record as governor,
whether through native fault or inexorable fate, was a conspicuous
failure, and enter one whose story throughout was that of brilliant
success. In characteristics, the two men were the very antipodes, each of
the other. The one, of austere temperament, and stern, unbending manner;
the other of warm and genial nature, in demeanor gracious and inviting.
Claiborne possessed in preëminent degree the ready tact, the power of
always saying and doing the right thing, in which the other was so
noticeably wanting.
William Charles Cole Claiborne was a native of Virginia, born in Sussex
county. At the age of fifteen he went to New York, then the seat of
government, and there was given employment by the clerk of the Congress.
It was his good fortune while in that work to attract the attention of
a number of leading men, who became his friends for life. Jefferson
especially took him as a protégé, and gave him books to read and good
advice. He read law in his spare moments, went to Tennessee, was admitted
to the bar there, and took part in the first constitutional convention of
the state. He received appointment as Judge of the State Supreme Court,
by Governor Sevier, when he was in his twenty-second year, and a few
months later was elected to Congress.
Claiborne was in Congress as member from Tennessee when the petition
from Mississippi against Sargent was presented; was on the committee to
which it was referred, and strongly recommended the change of the form
of government in the territory. He is known to have censured Sargent’s
course, and there is proof that Sargent subsequently doubted whether his
motives in so doing were free from self-interest. It is not, however,
necessary to think of Claiborne as guilty of meanness of this sort.
He was no place-hunter, nor one who, at any time in his life, placed
self-seeking above principle. He was an ardent Jeffersonian, and his
sympathy was naturally with the party opposing the governor. He was
young, too, twenty years Sargent’s junior, and his rapid advancement had
doubtless rendered him a trifle “bumptious.” But from his standpoint,
the contentions between Sargent and his people were quite unnecessary,
and should not be tolerated.
[Illustration: WILLIAM C. C. CLAIBORNE
Photographic facsimile from the oil painting in the possession of W. C.
C. Claiborne, New Orleans]
I think that Jefferson commissioned Claiborne as governor of Mississippi,
not because he thought the young man wanted the place, or for the
adjustment of any political bargain. He named him because he was
convinced that such selection would prove to be the right man in the
right place, and so indeed it was.
Claiborne reached Natchez, November 23, 1801, and one of his first
official acts was a message to the first Legislature of Mississippi,
meeting a few days later. Records of the time assure us that his suavity
of manner and speech made him popular with all classes from the very
first. But his efforts to ensure perfect harmony between contending
factions of the people were not immediately successful, as is shown by a
most unworthy attack made by some members of the new Legislature upon the
justices of the Territorial Supreme Court. This came to nothing, however,
and at the election for representatives held in July, 1802, so many of
the contentious spirits were relegated to private life, that it might
have been well judged that the people at large were already ashamed of
their unfair actions toward the previous governor.
I like to think of Claiborne as becoming more charitable toward Sargent
as time went on and he learned the many difficulties of the situation;
less inclined to censure the “contumacy” of the older man in feeble
health, as he found the problems besetting him difficult enough to tax
the powers of his own vigorous strength. From his journals we learn that
the same hindrances which harassed Sargent tormented his successor—the
imperfect military equipment of the feeble garrisons, the need of a
trained militia, the interference of Spanish plotters, the tendency
of the floating population toward brigandage, the greed of the idle
Indians, and so on. One of his very first requests of the authorities at
Washington was that he be allowed the services of an interpreter, to aid
him in carrying on his dealings with the Indians, a privilege for which
Sargent had begged in vain.
Things, however, improved rapidly under the new incumbent, whose
talent for administration was the most remarkable, perhaps, of his
many gifts. Few men more richly endowed, not only in the line of pure
intellect, but also in that wisdom that guides toward the best in man’s
intercourse with his fellows, have figured in American history. During
his brief career as governor of Mississippi he ensured the construction
of a government fort near Washington, then the capital of the state;
established Jefferson College at Natchez, the first institution of
learning in the great Southwest; laid out roads; surveyed boundaries
and mail routes; prepared the new land, in fact, for the forces of
civilization on their way to enter it. His dealings with the robber bands
that infested river traffic and with the disaffected Indians was prompt,
decisive and thoroughly effective, compelling the order so essential to
the prosperity of a young community.
When, in October, 1802, the port of New Orleans was closed, by the
Intendant there, against foreign commerce and the American right of
deposit, much feeling was aroused in Mississippi, since the injury
thereby caused to American trade was great. Governor Claiborne, in
his letters to the President and others, advocated stern measures of
retaliation, which indeed would doubtless have been tried, had it
not been generally known that Spain was negotiating for the sale of
Louisiana. Indeed, there was more than a suspicion current as early
as 1801, that the sale had been secretly consummated. In 1803, when
the purchase of this territory by the United States from France was
announced, it was known that no further fear of our encroaching neighbors
need be cherished; they were now at our mercy.
One of the most important acts of Claiborne’s administration was the
collection, at the request of James Madison, Secretary of State, of
facts relative to land claims in Mississippi, and conflicting titles
thereto. These included, Mr. Madison noted, not only claims grounded
upon two grants of land made by Georgia to Mississippi, but also claims
under the French government prior to 1763, those derived from the
British and Spanish governments previous to the Spanish treaty of 1795,
and those under Spanish title subsequent to this treaty. On all these
items Governor Claiborne made a most exhaustive report, which became the
foundation on which Congress based all future measures for the settlement
of local land titles not only in Mississippi, but other Southern states
as well.
November 9, 1803, Governor Claiborne received notification of his
appointment as commissioner, associated with General James Wilkinson, to
receive from France the Louisiana Purchase, and to succeed the Spanish
governor provisionally, until a government for the new territory should
be established. This transfer was received with all due ceremony, in the
building known as the Cabildo at New Orleans, December 20, 1803.
Claiborne, though still nominally governor of Mississippi, exercised no
further the functions of that office, these devolving on his secretary,
Cato West. But he fulfilled the duties of provisional governor of the
newly acquired province until October 2, 1804, when he was made governor
of the “Territory of Orleans.” He served in this capacity until this
territory was admitted to the Union as the State of Louisiana, when he
was elected governor of the new state. He held this office for two terms,
after which he was elected to the United States Senate, January 13,
1817. He did not live to take his seat in the Senate, dying November 3,
following. Thus passed away, at the early age of forty-two, one who had
already given a long life of active effort to his countrymen. Had he been
spared for twenty years longer, his would surely have been one of the
grandest national careers of America’s first century of history.
HOW OLD WASH PLAYED SANTA CLAUS
By Old Wash
“No, no, Marse John,” said the old man, as he staggered in the other
night, “don’t git excited, it ain’t de kuklux done it. I ain’t seed eny
o’ dem sense I tried ter be smart an’ own a few po’ white fo’ks arter de
war. No, sah, it ain’t kuklux,” and he tried to sit down, but gave it up
and held on to the arm of a chair.
I was horrified, for I had never seen the old man look like that. His
head was bandaged in cotton batting and the eye he had left was trying to
look at me through a slit in an arnica poultice.
“Sit down,” I cried, reaching for a bottle of horse-medicine I kept for
him in the sideboard.
“I can’t, Marse John, I ain’t got a spot lef’ to res’ on. I’m branded
on bofe hips wid de bar o’ de cannon cracker. If I tries to recumber
longerturdernal I lays on de bran’ o’ de sky-rocket, an’ if I goes in fur
horizontal recumbrance I gits on de spot lef’ by torpedoes. Dar ain’t
but one spot lef’ for me to res’ on. If dars a iron hook in de wall jes’
hang me up on it by de coat collar. I’ve be’n playin’ Sandy Claws,” he
groaned—“tryin’ to do lak white fo’ks an’ lak de mos’ of dem kerried my
religgun too fur.”
I did what I could to help him.
“Ah, boss, didn’t you put a leetle too much turbentine in dat whiskey?
Lord, but I’m a wrick o’ myself.
“If I had it my way,” he went on, as he adjusted himself to a soft spot
on the sofa, “dar jes’ nurver would be ernuther Kris’mus. We niggers
copies ev’y thing frum de white fo’ks, even borrowin’ dey religgun. But
I’m blest ef it fits us eny mor’n it fits some o’ dem, an’ dis Kris’mus
is jes’ a nuessence an’ a nonsense. Why, boss, de gloomes’ time o’ dey
year is jes’ arter Kris’mus. When de foolishness and de fiahwucks is all
over dar ain’t nuffin lef’ but tucky feathers, taxes and a tired stumic!
You owe ev’ybody from de grocer’s lergitermates to de ole-skin nabur dat
saunt you a cyard headed, “De Foot-paths ob Peace,” an’ spen’s de res’ ob
de year scrappin’ wid you, kase you furgot to sen’ him a fat pullit in
return. Yo’ taxes is due, yo’ wood is out, yo’ stumic is de only thing
you knows you own, kase you kin feel dat’s in revolt, an’ you spen’s de
res’ ob de year takin’ to cal’mel an’ tall timber.
“When you look ’roun’, sah, it’s jes’ awful—twixt dried holly hung
around, orange peelin’, dirt, chicken feathers an’ fish bone, de home
looks like a wolf-den at weanin’ time, de chillun ruint fur wuck an’
school, an’ dey cough and cut up like distempered colts. Yo’ wife’s made
pincushens an’ Kris’mus gif’s till she broke you, and her constertushun
an’ gone to bed, dey cows got garget when dey oughter hab milk, an’ de
cat you be’n tryin’ to git rid of all de year bobs up wid a basketful o’
kittins.
“Ain’t it strange, sah, dat we celerbrates de buff-day of sech a man in
sech a way? He cum to tell us to be meek, an’ we starts in fur mischief;
he tells us to git religgun, an’ we all git drunk; he tells us to gib,
an’ we do it wid de hope o’ gittin’ mo’ in return; he say be temprit, an’
we start in to stuff. His whole life wuz to entice us to heaven, an’ we
gits so happy at de very thought dat we ’megiately starts off to hell wid
a pocket full o’ fiahwucks fur fear de Debil didn’t hab enuff of his own
down dar!
“Hold on, old man,” I cried, “you have expressed just what I have been
wanting to say all my life, but didn’t have your flow of language!
Excuse me while I go to my iron safe and get a bottle of Frank Chaffin’s
twenty-year-old—that horse medicine is not good enough for such
sentiments. I’ve got the other in my safe and I am the only man who
knows the combination.”
“Ah, dat’s better, Marse John,” he said a moment afterwards—“I’ve jes’
be’n scorin’ now—jes’ watch me pace.
“An’ swappin’ dese Kris’mus gif’s, Lord, it do make me tired! It’s like
de time ole Marster tole ole Miss he sold his fine hound fur a thousand
dollars, an’ ole Miss wuz so glad, kase she hated dat hound, he sucked
her eggs. But she wuz hot when she found out ole Marster had jes swapped
him fur two five hundred dollar pups.
“Dat’s Kris’mus givin’ all over.
“Kris’mus gif’s now is jes’ Kris’mus gittin’, an’ ev’y man is jes tryin’
to git his piece on earth an’ de good will o’ de other man long enuff to
skin him endurin’ de year.
“Now, dar’s Dinah. She starts in right after Jinuary an’ spen’s de
res’ o’ de year gittin ready fur Kris’mus, an’ no heathen in Aferca
spen’s a year of harder wuck, whittlin’ his god out o’ a gum-stump wid
a clam shell, den my ’liggus ole ’oman does fixin’ fur Kris’mus. ‘Save
it fur Kris’mus, Wash,’ is whut she chirps on frum Jinuary to Jinuary.
She’s tuck down de good ole sign I useter hab up in de house, ‘_Save a
nickel and own a dime_,’ an’ now all she’s got up is, ‘_Save it all fur
Kris’mus!_’ She drilled dis so in our chillun dat it liketer led to a
’vorcement wid our oldes’ gal, Sally. Sally she married a nice nigger,
but I soon seed sumpin’ wuz wrong. De nigger got mad an’ started for a
’vorcement, an’ when I gits to de bottom of it, he said Sally nurver had
kissed him yit. I gin dat gal a strappin’ an’ she ’fessed up and sed she
lubbed de nigger, but she lubbed ’im so hard she wuz savin’ de fust kiss
fur Kris’mus!
“I tell you, sah, it’s jes got redikerlus de way we go on. Now heah’s de
way it wucks wid me:
“We spen’s de summer an’ fall raisin’ a flock o’ tuckies es Kris’mus
gif’s fur our frien’s. Fur dese we gits back a armful ob ‘Foot-paths ob
Peace’ cyards, a few po’ pullits an’ a lot o’ candy made in Black Bottom
an’ painted by dat Irish Dago you calls Mike Angelo. Fur de fall lambs
er two we sen’s out mos’ly to de preachers, we gits back sumpin’ dat
looks like wool, but it ain’t, on de painted toys de chillun can’t eat;
an’ fur de good garments Dinah makes an’ distrubutes ’mong her frien’s,
she gits back cobweb collars dat you can’t wear an’ hankerchefs dat you
wouldn’t no mo’ think o’ blowin’ your nose in den you would in a sifter.
“An’ some fool ’oman had spent a half a year a-makin’ ’em.
“O, we gits cyards a plenty. But I’ve noticed dat de ones dat sen’s me de
‘Foot-paths ob Peace’ is allers in a scrap er fuss wid us, an’ de very
nigger dat led de prayer-meetin’ an’ sent us dat framed card, ‘Our Faith
is Our Fishiency,’ ’loped wid our darter an’ tuck all de blooded chickens
wid him dat night. Eny way, he didn’t leab us a fishiency—no, not eben a
minnery.
“But I got enuff now sense I played Sandy Claws last week.”
“You played Santa Claus after all you have said?” I asked.
“Yes, boss, I played Sandy Claws, an’ God knows I find his claws an’ his
paws, an’ heah I pause,” he winked, looking toward the sideboard.
“Now, boss,” he said, after he tapped the bottle, “I didn’t wanter play
dat Sandy Claws, but de church saunt a committee of one—a mighty hansum
an’ hefty ’oman to see me—Sis Tilly—an’ she begged me to do it jes’ fur
her sake. Now, es I sed she wuz hansum an’ Dinah wuz bizy makin’ Kris’mus
gif’s outen cotton battin,’ dog hair an’ exselsor, dat I knowed she
wouldn’t kno’ a side-steppin’ waltz from a breakdown, so I ’cided to he’p
Sis Tilly out. Dis led to a lot o’ practicin’ twixt me an’ Sis Tilly at
de church, an’ by de time dat Kris’mus night cum I wuz fitten an’ good.
All de sisterin he’p fix me up wid whiskers an’ a pillar stumic an’ a big
pack o’ fiah-wucks an’ things on my back, an’ when I wuz finished dey
said I wuz hansumer den dey eber seed me befo’, an’ I had ’em, boss, whar
I could er started a church o’ my own wid all dem sisterin es charter
members. Two o’ de bes’ lookers kissed me kase dey said dey nurver had
kissed Sandy Claws in dey life. When it comes to inventin’ a reason fur
eatin’ furbiddin’ fruit don’t ole Eve’s gals all over de wourl’ sho’ dey
pedigree? But Sis Tilly wuz de one I wuz arter, an’ she sed she wuz gwine
ter kiss me arter de ball ef I acted ole Sandy well.
“De sisterin’ had spent a week on de tree an’ it looked mighty putty all
lit up, new candles all ober it an’ in de house. De leetle niggers sot
in de front pew waitin’ fur ole Sandy lack dey knowed him all dey life
an’ de church wuz full an’ all o’ dem happy an’ me de biggest man in de
bunch, prancin’ behind de stage wid Kris’mus in my bones an’ feelin’ like
ole Tom Hal at de fust signs of blue grass in de spring. Brer Jones, de
preacher, wuz makin’ a leetle talk an’ tellin’ de chillun de usual lies
about ole Sandy, an’ what a mighty man he wuz, an’ heah I cum prancin’
out, like a blin’ horse over potato rows. I wuz so dazed when I cum out I
couldn’t see nuffin but holly an’ wool all ober de house. But I seed Sis
Tilly on de fus’ bench wid a big smile on reddy to vote in de affermative.
“‘Dar’s old Sandy! Dar’s ole Sandy!’ dey all shouted, an’ sech a hurow!
“It wuz up ter me to act, boss, an’ I done my bes’, but I’ve reached dat
stage, like all ole men, when I thinks I wants a whole lot mo’ than I do,
an’ I out-acted myself. I ripped an’ I r’ared, I pranced an’ I prared an’
shuck my head at de chillun like a billy goat, whilst ev’ybody howled an’
de organ struck up.
“I’ve heerd, boss, dat Marse Horris Greely sed dat ef our foresight wuz
es good es our hin’sight we’d be better off by a dam sight, but dat is
whar Marse Horris wuz wrong—it wuz my hin’sight dat went back on me, fur
in prancin’ an’ backin’ aroun’ I backed dat pack o’ fiahwucks into a
lighted candle an’ jes es de congregashun struck up dat good ole hymn,
‘_Shell I be kerried to de skies on flowery beds o’ ease_,’ I heerd
sumpin’ goin’ off in my rear like de parked guns at Shiloh an’ I started
to de skies sho’ nuff, an’ nuffin but de cealin’ kept me frum gwine
on! It looked like ter me fur ten minets I rid de air on fiahwucks. Two
cannon crackers tuck off my boots, my pants went out de winder actin’ as
de tail ob a skyrocket, a torpedo scattered my stumic till de feathers
looked like sno’ fallin’, I wuz sot afiah from my shurt to my whiskers,
an’ ef I hadn’t lit in de baptismal pool when I fell, God knows I
wouldn’t a bin heah to-night.
“I’d bin baptized twice befo, but I nurver seed any candidate go into
de water so willing agin. I’ve allers sed emershun wuz de only way o’
salvashun’, an’ now, thank God, I kno’s it!
“But so he’p me, boss, dem fiahwucks wuz so spiteful dey eben kep’ a
poppin’ under de watah. Dey sed it wuz a sight ter see dey blue balls
an’ yaller balls an’ high balls cum bilin’ outen dat baptismal pool an’
sprinklin’ Baptis’ niggers wid Presbeterian dictrine.
“When I got up near ’nuff to peep ober de brim, de mos’ o’ de
congregashun wuz under de benches, but Br’er Jones had be’n blowed up
a-straddle de stove pipe an’ de benzine and bar’s oil dat he’d greesed
his hair wid wuz a-fiah. One o’ my boots, wid a skyrocket in it, had
caught Sis Tilly in de mouf jes es she opened it to lead in de singin’.
She couldn’t talk, but she wuz gwine ’round makin’ signs fur sumbody to
git a boot jack an’ pull it out. Nearly eber nigger dar had caught a red
ball or a yaller ball an’ wuz bilin’ out o’ doors an’ winders cussin’
Sandy Claws an’ all his kin.
“By dis time I wan’t lookin’ fur yellow balls nor black balls, but I sot
up to my neck in de watah beggin’ fur a high ball. Some still had sense
enuff lef’ to put out de fiah wid watah frum de pool, an’ when dey pulled
me out I didn’t hab on nuffin but a dough face, some burnt whiskers an’
patches o’ chicken feathers an’ a leetle skin in spots.
“No, boss, nobody b’leeves in Sandy Claws dar now, nor in de preacher dat
lied to ’em, nor in me, dat tried to find Sandy an’ found his claws. De
fac’ is, de plan ob salvashun is mighty nigh blowed up in dat chu’ch.”
BECAUSE
By Catherine Carr
They were preëminently suited to each other, The Bachelor and The Single
Lady. All the other boarders saw that, and they marveled among themselves
at the blindness of the two.
They were most excellent friends, The Bachelor and The Single Lady, their
work forming community of interest. He was an instructor of mathematics
at the college and she the teacher of a heterogeneous mass of foreign
youth in the public school. They had the same tastes in books and
pleasures—either preferred a botanizing excursion to the theater—and
they were agreed on such homely but vital questions as grape fruit for
breakfast, and the rareness of beef. It was an affinity of heaven’s own
making, The Girl Who Sang declared.
The Girl Who Sang was particularly impatient with them. She considered
that they had wasted quite enough time already. She had romantic ideals
and was rather intense about things. It was this, perhaps, which gave her
songs such charm.
The Bachelor and The Single Lady were indulgent toward the intensities of
The Girl Who Sang, though they did not in the least understand them or
her. They had no youthful memories to help them to such comprehension,
for life had not been kind to the days of their youth. They had been
dull and gray, and their present congenial tasks had been achieved
through many struggles and much self-denial; but neither had been
embittered by their trials, and The Single Lady’s brown eyes were still
bright and The Bachelor was still a fine figure of a man.
Three years of placid companionship brought them to a night in May.
A notable night in May. The air was soft and rich with sweet scents
and the moon was at its full. The Bachelor and The Single Lady sat
side by side on the gallery, talking of vacation plans with obvious
matter-of-factness. The young boarders sat about also on the steps and
the gallery railing, laughing and talking, and saying things with their
eyes, for it was springtime and life and the world were very fair. And,
by-and-by, The Girl Who Sang went into the house and seated herself at
the piano.
And very soon the young people had strolled away in pairs to the
summer-house and the shaded places of the yard, and only The Bachelor and
The Single Lady remained on the gallery, talking still of commonplace
affairs.
Then the arc-light swaying before the house flared up and flickered and
went out, and the moonlight reigned supreme. On the flood of golden
moonlight floated the flood of golden melody which was the singing of The
Girl.
She sang of love, as was natural with one who was romantic and intense
about things.
A gay _chanson_ at first, with a waltz refrain which sent even sedate
pulses to beating the time. Presently The Bachelor’s geological
intentions were being presented to the accompaniment of its measure
tapped out by The Single Lady’s unconscious shoe-toe. And then came a
little thing all about kisses and bliss. Such a silly little trifle it
was, yet gradually it overcame the commonplace designs in The Bachelor’s
mind with subtle suggestion of the delights it celebrated. To kiss
now—might it not indeed be a pleasing experience? It had never occurred
so strongly to him before. He found his imagination quite touched by the
idea. His recollections furnished only kisses bestowed upon sisters and
an aunt or two, and they were suddenly inadequate.
It was a lilting lay, this, where lovers kissed and were glad, and
it quite got into the blood and set pictures before the eye—vague,
elusive and yet of singular vividness. And now the rhythm changed and
The Girl sang of love that had lost and was sad. A tender cry of heart
yearning—and this, too, was very sweet. Better, far better, the grave of
love to hallow the past than the lean memory-spaces of one who had never
loved. The Bachelor involuntarily cast about in his mind for scraps of
verse which said this very well, but he had no storehouse of such things
and he could only go on feeling the spirit of it all—intangibly, still
with distinct longing and desire.
And The Girl sang on—a varied repertoire. A song of home—and life in a
single room and with meals at a crowded table was no longer satisfying.
Home surely meant the place apart which was one’s own—small, even humble,
as the heart-song of the world tells it—but one’s own, and—“cozy.” It was
an admirably descriptive word, “cozy.” The early death of The Bachelor’s
mother had deprived his heart of this rhythm of remembrance, too—but he
knew quite well now how it should be. And he knew, too, that the center
of it all should be a well-loved woman. Was not indeed the very spelling
of home, woman? The Bachelor taught “math” and was not bothered by
phonetics. His conviction became entire while The Girl sang a lullaby.
Certainly, in the last analysis, home was the woman who was also mother.
The whole picture was easily encompassed—the hearthfire and the keeper of
it—a woman of tender eyes crooning to the wee bundle of life whose head
rested in the hollow of her arm. It was so clear—so clearly to be seen,
however strange a vision for bachelor fancy, and The Bachelor saw it in
alluring detail—and—all at once—with personal application.
He turned and looked long at The Single Lady, and the sight of her filled
all these places—and more.
She, too, had been silent for some time, and her face was tender with
thought. Could it be that her thoughts had been of like tenor to his own?
The corners of her mouth were bent into a reflective smile that was very
sweet, and the light in her eyes was soft—the light o’ dreams. If it
could only be that her thoughts were as his thoughts—and of him! If only
it could be! The Bachelor’s blood quickened and ran toward the hope, and
he knew that the worth of the world lay in this balance.
And then the honey-sweet tones of The Girl rippled out the familiar
strains of “Because I Love You.” Surely it was the cause of life’s
mysteries and their solution, and the delving of scientists was
altogether unnecessary. All of The Bachelor’s pulses proclaimed it—and
were glad.
“My only one regret—
Since then we never met,”
sang The Girl, and fear struck him chill.
Not that—not that! The mere suggestion emptied his life. The Bachelor
impulsively reached out and closed his hand over his companion’s, which
was resting on the bench between them.
“Dear”—he breathed rather than spoke, and The Single Lady turned her
eyes from their dreamy contemplation of something far away, to his, but
they did not look startled. It was easily supposed that she, too, had
listened to the music which was as the music of Isolde—“strangely-gentle,
love-persuading”—and had also seen visions. Yet they remained silent,
harkening to the melody, which was “saying all things” so immeasurably
well. It ceased, but the spell still held them. The arc-light came on and
disputed the reign of the moonlight with its cold white glare, but the
illumination of their world was still rose.
The Girl Who Sang came out on the gallery, a frivolous whirlwind of
frills and furbelows, humming the end of her song, “Because I love you,
dear, because I love you.” It was adequate phrasing of the story of life.
The Girl halted before them and swept them with comprehensive eyes.
“Oh—” she said, her tone mischievous, daring, “o-h!”
The Single Lady looked down at their clasped hands with a sudden sensing
of the conventions. She made a movement of withdrawal, but The Bachelor
held her slender fingers fast. She looked up and met his eyes. She saw in
them a compelling force strangely mingled with pleading and question.
“Yes—why—yes,” The Single Lady said, in happy confusion.
“Yes. Of _course_!” said The Bachelor, in happy decision.
THE SOUTH WIND’S SONG
Sweet and low, upon the wings of morn I come,
And bring to you fond mem’ries of the days gone by;
The fragrance of the rose, the drowsy bee’s low hum;
All these, and more, I weave for you in lullaby.
Upon the canvas stretched by the new-born sun
I paint quaint scenes of times both sad and gay;
Of dreary days, misspent when scarce begun;
Of happier times and scenes I sing my lay.
Soft and sweet and low, I sing my lullaby,
Soothing the tired soul to slumber and repose;
And bring to it, ’mid sounds of rarest melody,
The peace of mind, the calm, that waking, no one knows.
_Susie Cornelia Connolly._
[Illustration: The Shadow of the Attacoa
By Thornwell Jacobs]
SYNOPSIS OF PRECEDING CHAPTERS
Commenced in the April number.
Ervin McArthur, bearing the nickname of “Satan” on account of his
ungovernable temper, learns printing at the office of the _Dunvegan_
(N. C.) _Democrat_ and loves Colonel Preston’s daughter. The colonel,
objecting to a love affair between his aristocratic daughter and a
son of “poor whites,” shifts the youth to a place on the _Charleston
Chronicle_. Here, the Civil War coming on, he distinguishes himself
by his journalistic ability and by his inventions of war-engines. In
these last he is ably assisted by Helen Brooks, a Boston girl visiting
Charleston relatives. She learns to love the inventor and his cause,
and he struggles between his allegiance to Helen Preston and his newly
awakened love. He returns to Dunvegan on furlough and in an altercation
with his old time chum, Henry Bailey, the latter meets his death. Ervin
escapes, and another friend, Ernest Lavender, is tried and convicted.
Ervin confesses and is tried, but cleared on proof discovered by Helen
Preston that the crime was committed by Mack Lonovan, who, wishing to
marry Helen Brooks, destroys the only living witness to his secret
marriage with half-witted Nance West.
Ervin returns to Charleston and invents the ironclad torpedo, destined,
when copied by the Federals, to destroy the Confederate Navy. He also
constructs a submarine torpedo boat, and while preparing for his initial
trip has an interview with Helen Brooks.
He decides to attack the _Housatonic_ instead of the _New Ironsides_,
as Helen has confessed that one whom she loves is on the latter. The
_Housatonic_ is sunk, also the torpedo, Ervin alone being rescued and
captured. Sent to the stockade on Morris’ Island, he finds Tait Preston,
who is about to be exchanged on account of a wound. Ervin determines to
escape.
After some weeks he does so, being wounded in the flight. At this time
his dragoon pigeon being accidentally loosened by Mrs. Adams, returns
to Dunvegan and Helen Preston leaves her father, who is at home on sick
leave, to nurse her lover. Arriving at Charleston, she learns that his
friends there suppose him to have been destroyed in the sinking of the
_Housatonic_, but the faithful girl continues her search until she finds
him on James’ Island and nurses him back to health. In the meantime Mrs.
Corbin and her family have fled to Columbia, on the news of the approach
of General Sherman.
CHAPTER XLIII
For the second time in his life, Ervin McArthur was nursed back to health
by the gentle hands of the maid of Sunahlee. By day her slim fingers
wrought incessantly for his comfort, by night she rested in a rudely made
arm chair by his cot.
To Captain Dillard and the surgeon the air of order, of complete
sufficiency in the rough cabin was a miracle, daily enacted. Was
a bandage necessary? Helen produced it. Barley water? Broth? They
had merely to announce Ervin’s needs and shortly she would be found
administering to them. Often he was restless at night. Tossing uneasily
he would mutter—always of Helen. Now he would speak with the old-time
winning raillery the girl remembered so well, now seriously of his
inventions, astonishing her with references to details which were beyond
her understanding.
“How little we know of the mental processes of those we love!” she mused.
“While I mourned over the infrequency of his letters, he was making me
his hourly companion and confidante.”
“It is Helen, dearest. Be calm now, and sleep,” she would tenderly adjure
him, bringing the burning eyes searching to hers.
“It is my little Helen,” he would breathe in relief, and drop into
slumber.
There were times when his delirium became stormy. Raving, he would
denounce her fickleness, her rapacious coquetry and her assumed sympathy.
At such times her loving coaxing would fail to soothe him. “False!
Fickle! You merely want to add another scalp to your belt! Oh, I could
turn savage, too, and bear you away by force and keep you for my own in
some wild spot—ah, go away! Go away!”
Helen, smoothing back the dark locks, now dry with fever, felt a
superstitious fear in the presence of such pronounced delirium.
“Ervin, your own Helen is here! You know your own little Helen!”
“Heartless girl! I know you at last! I never want to see you again.”
* * * * *
At last the fever abated, the wound began to heal and one lovely morning
the dark eyes looked clearly into the blue ones of his devoted nurse.
Repressing her tears of joy, she told him of his illness, leading
his mind back to the circumstances of his escape. Then, with gentle
insistence, she forced him to close his eyes and, holding her hand, he
fell into rational sleep. Then the little maid might have been seen
slipping to her knees and weeping, as she poured out her gratitude and
joy to the Divine Physician.
* * * * *
In the evening she sat by his side again and told him all the news the
camp knew. He lay quietly regarding her from his pillows.
“Helen,” he asked, “how long have you been here?”
“To-morrow will be six weeks,” she replied.
“You have lived in this rough camp all that time and nursed me. You
have endured privation and provided me with comforts—I know no hospital
in the world has snowier sheets than these. Ah, Helen, what do I not owe
to your precious hands and your loving heart? If you knew, if you only
knew, little girl, how you bring home to me my utter unworthiness—fill my
inmost soul with burning remorse—”
“Hush, darling, do not excite yourself.” She wiped away the tears that
trickled down the white cheeks and took his head on her breast as a
mother takes her child to rest.
“My darling boy,” she crooned. “I know you have been in the world and
have lived as a man lives, while I have been sheltered in my little nook,
loving as a woman loves, and trusting as a woman must. I have fretted
sometimes, Ervin—I would not have you believe me more patient than I
deserve. But, dearest, I have seen more of your heart and mind since I
have been here than I ever knew before. In your delirium—”
“My delirium?” he interrupted. “What did I rave about?”
“About me, you precious silly, and about your work. You told me more
about your inventions than my poor little head could ever understand, but
it showed me your feeling, dear. Sometimes,” she went on, chidingly, “you
were harsh to your poor Helen and denounced her as a heartless coquette,
and you wouldn’t be soothed. But of course it was only delirium—I had
found the portrait in your pocket, and I _knew_, dear.”
The sick man groaned and Helen hastened to lay him back upon his pillow.
She bade him be quiet and close his eyes.
“Helen,” he persisted, “how did you know I was sick?”
“The dragoon came home—do you remember our compact? I don’t know what
happy chance freed it, but I took its return as a message from you and
sought until I found you.”
“You have always been my guardian angel, haven’t you, dear? Even when we
were little you always shielded me from the consequences of my own folly
and loved me through all my meanness. And then that trial—oh, I can
never, never make it up to you! My love and devotion the rest of my life
is yours, sweetheart, but it can never repay you.”
“I am repaid now, Ervin,” she responded, the quick tears dropping on his
forehead, as his thin hand drew her face to his own.
* * * * *
The next morning Ervin woke to find a twisted note in the rude arm chair
which had formerly held the slim figure.
“Dear Ervin,” it ran. “Doctor Gray says you are out of danger now, and I
must go back to my father. I have just had a note from your mother and
she says he grows feebler every day. Your mother will be in Charleston
by the time you can be moved, and so I know my dear boy’s recovery is
assured.
“I am slipping away to spare you the pain of parting, but I shall carry
away the memory of our sweet talk of last night and my prayers for you
will go up night and day. Always your loving
HELEN.”
* * * * *
It was well that she hurried home swiftly, for an enemy more fearful
than minie balls had attacked her. Ere she left the city by the sea, her
lips were parched, and her tongue in the glass looked like brick dust.
Feverish and dizzy, she left the little train at the Dunvegan station
and tried to make her way as best she could through the village. None
knew she was coming, and none met her. Some girls saw her in the distance
and wondered if that reeling figure could be Helen Preston returned to
Dunvegan. Out and over the old road she struggled until the long hill
must be climbed that led up to Sunahlee. She remembered vaguely how, in
her childhood days, she used to run up its steepness with Ervin—she would
be brave and try it now. At the first step, she stumbled and fell in
the rhododendron bushes by the wayside. “O God—” she murmured, “I think
I—am—going—to—faint—. Keep—Ervin—well—for Jesus’—”
Uncle Ben had seen her fall, and found her there unconscious. Faithful in
all things, he bore her to the great house, his dogs pulling loyally at
their traces.
The physician came in due time, and looked grave. Doctor Allerton was
there also. When he saw Doctor McIntyre’s lips quiver he went to the
window and looked out past the ivy-covered cabin, past the blue-peaked
Wahaws, past the gate of Heaven.
Each day found the blazing fever stronger and its victim weaker.
One day she begged piteously for water, and whispered, excitedly:
“He loves me; he told me he loved no one else! He is coming back—”
The delirium that had once befriended had now come to murder.
When another week had passed, the Death-wind blew softly. From the tomb
of Tawiskara he came, and each violet in the Silver Creek Valley knelt
humbly before him. The honeysuckle nodded reverently as he passed, and
the soughing pine murmured a requiem.
He stopped at the wistaria that clung round the porch and trembled at his
touch, and then passed onward through the open window, and played with
the fair curls he had come to claim. She seemed to hear his call and to
follow.
Down the great, wide steps she went, in a snowy gown with sprays of
gentian that made it all the whiter, down through the door to welcome
him, and on out into the moonlight. By the wistaria she stood and smiled
at him.
He looked down into her face, and his words were sweet. How love had
witched his features in answer to a woman’s prayer!
He reached forth his hands to her, and his summons seemed compelling.
With lissome grace she moved toward his arms. His hand touched her
breast, his dark eyes enraptured her, the burning passion of his soul
thrilled each cord of her responsive heart into ecstasy.
Then the watchers at the bedside, who did not know that she had gone down
to meet her lover again under the moonlit wistaria, saw the smile on her
face, watched the pale lips purse winsomely and heard her whisper softly:
“Dare you!”
CHAPTER XLIV
For four long years the unconquerable Sumter had battled with the
powerful Federal navy, and for two hundred and eighty days the iron had
hailed steadily upon her. Her defense during the Great Rebellion of
1776-1783 had been glorious, but these tired men in gray had far excelled
that record of bravery. In the first war the heaviest cannon used was a
twenty-four pounder; in this, the lightest was a twenty-four pounder, and
the heaviest went far into the hundreds. When her walls were battered
down her garrison burrowed in the sand, and they kept back the great
ironclads that would have done harm to the cradle of secession.
But at last the day came when men saw that the end was near, and General
Beauregard issued orders for the evacuation of the city.
Grant and Thomas and Sherman had each in his own way saved the Union.
General Lee, whom Europe was comparing with Napoleon for generalship, and
Gustavus Adolphus for religion, could not with a few thousands any longer
beat back the multitude of his enemies. So Charleston knew that she had
striven and lost.
Colonel Masters, sitting in his office on the evening of that fateful
seventeenth of February, 1865, was taking up the foundations of his soul
and repairing each worn and battered stone. His eyes were fixed with a
look of infinite sadness on the battle flag of the Confederacy, and his
thoughts were on the Great Cause. It was not the question of surrender or
not surrender that had made his eyes fade so during the last two years
of woe just passed; nor was it any sharp animosity against the Federal
government or the Stars and Stripes. These were both parts of him, the
first and greater part, and only because they symbolized the things he
loved had he dethroned them in his heart. Neither had he forgotten how,
beneath the great eagle, he had led the Palmetto boys at Churubusco, nor
how long men had called him the beloved president of the New England
Society. Nor had he been turned aside by any love for slavery, which he
had considered, since first he left fair Sudbury and looked last upon the
Wayside Inn, as both morally and economically injurious. Nevertheless he
loved the Great Cause.
Men’s hearts had grown bitter in that struggle, but with it all he had
been calm, and he had been one of the few who had seen beneath the waves
the deep current of the ocean that was bearing both North and South to a
common danger. He knew how the hearts of men had been changed, and how
soldiers who had come South at first, being reproached, would reply: “We
came to save the Union; damn the niggers!” But the government and some
of the people, grown bitter from suffering loss, would not array black
against white, and back the African with Union bayonets. Long ago, led
by the foresight of the departed Petigru, he had seen the danger to the
white race of a Union victory. Ah, Petigru! On whose grave was written
the words: “Unawed by opinion; unseduced by flattery; undismayed by
disaster!” He could see him now, swinging his green bag full of books, on
his way to the courtroom. And now, just as clearly, he knew that above
all things else the North and South must be one; that the bickering jars
of discord must be stopped forever; that white, hand in hand with white,
might look upon the impending danger without malice and without reproach.
So he asked himself that night: “What is a man’s part?”
He had loved the Union and he had loved the Confederacy, and he had loved
them both because they had both loved liberty, for the basal passions of
each soul are made as distinct as the shades of the blackjack leaves
when the autumn of their lives has come, and in some hearts, as often as
may be seen on one gum tree, the colors vary widely—half the leaves are
of a bright, yellow color, and half a dark purple—but the branch that
bears the yellow and the limb that lifts the purple are but parts of the
trunk of life.
But more than either Confederacy or Union, he loved his race; and as he
sat there looking into the shadowy faces of the coming years, he saw a
new thing in history; as he saw it he shuddered, and the cold sweat stood
out in beads on his brow.
A mulatto people! Good God, it must not be so! “They have saved the
Union; now they must help us save the race.”
Then, as though there were a ring in the words that might mean something
to coming generations, he repeated softly: “We saved the Union, now save
the race.”
So, his heart still bursting with bitter sadness, he walked out in the
cool air toward the Battery. It was the night Fort Sumter was to be
evacuated, and he could see the lights of the transports bearing the
heavy-hearted garrison to the mainland. Surely the end had come at last.
Then he looked toward the west. Was the sun rising again as though he
would come back to watch what men would do that night? Then why was that
glow, deep, red, sullen in the land of the sunset, and this full ten
o’clock in the night? Then suddenly, as if a poisoned arrow had pierced
his bosom, his heart quivered with pain.
“Camellia!”
The great flames were leaping upward toward the sky. The marble Artemis
would lift her snowy white arms to hide her face from the sight. The
little wet violets at her feet would droop in prayer. The olive tree by
the window, the little orange grove of which Mrs. Corbin was so proud,
the well appointed premises filled with slaves and buildings, all of
these were gone forever. And the black faces of slaves were peering in
terror from the darkness. Camellia-on-the-Ashley had perished as the
horse of the Indian is slain when his master dies.
Then to the right and west there was another glow, but that he knew well.
It was the bridge of the Charleston and Savannah Railway over the Ashley.
And lo, in the very harbor itself a bright light began to glow! The
gunboats were burning!
Then he turned, sick at heart, and walked back through the deserted
city, back to the office; this sad-hearted man whose dearest friend had
perished in the blowing up of the _Housatonic_.
“Ah, McArthur, I loved you,” the old man said, as the tears sprang to his
eyes.
Then, ringing weirdly through the streets, he heard a cry:
“We slew them, we conquered them! Brave men! Five hundred thousand men
died in five minutes. Hurrah!”
The voice was familiar and the man who spoke was coming toward him, his
long hair streaming in the wind. He came nearer.
“Ah! friend, have you heard the news? They have killed every man in the
South. We showed them how to cut off their necks, a million at a time.
Then said I, ‘Behold victory on a white horse, and his rider is black!’”
It was Sam Tillett, who had borne the flag when General Anderson
surrendered Sumter.
“Poor fellow,” said the colonel sadly, passing him by. “A raving
lunatic.” And in the darkness the man ran on, shouting:
“Victory! Victory! We have slain! We have slain! Behold victory on a
white horse, and his rider is black—black—black!”
“And yet,” the colonel added, “it is as he says.”
Then the editor went back to the office and sat long and lonely in the
darkness. Automatically, he took a sheet of writing paper and wrote the
heading for to-morrow’s editorial:
A MAN’S PART.
And all night long he sat and thought, only somehow the charge at
Churubusco would come back, and the violets of Sudbury, and a face that
he had long ago told himself that he must never think of again, but
which had a way of coming in moments like this, like the scent of roses
from some far-off garden of joy. Once he was on the point of laying down
the pen and giving all up forever, but when he saw the headlines of his
editorial he began again to ponder. The face came back, the face he
loved, and smiled at him from behind the Stars and Bars.
And somehow he could not think of her, or her home, but his heart went
back to the old days and the Union he loved. After all, was it not one
land, one race, one history, one hope? So his eyes brightened and he
wrote a line beneath the caption:
WE MUST BE ONE.
Then the faces of five million slaves, dark, passionate, yet humble; five
million black men and women who loved their masters and constituted a
laboring class free from crime, penury and jealousy. “They have served us
well,” he said. “New England brought them here, we bought them here, and
God sought them here.”
He wrote a second sentence:
WE MUST BE FAIR.
Then the faces of the men at Bunker Hill and Lexington and Yorktown
and King’s Mountain; those who wrote the Mecklenburg Declaration of
Independence, and those who, two years later, wrote the declaration of
the American nation, the faces of the myriads of the men of the great
white race, and with them, one whom he knew had loved him once by the
golden rice fields of Ashley, and he wrote another line:
WE MUST BE WHITE.
“These three things,” said he, “constitute what I want to say to my
people.”
His heart was full, and his pen moved swiftly over the paper. He told
the people of how they had once loved the Union, how there was not one
who would read his words but whose father would have died for the Stars
and Stripes. Then he spoke in tender words of their long struggle for
independence, and how it could be won only in the Union. He led them
gently to the Stars and Bars, and let them kiss it as they laid it away
forever, and bade them try in the future as they had in the past to play
a masterful part in the greater nation. Then he broached the Great Cause,
and closed, saying:
“They are here and we are here and God is here. Only one thing is clear,
and that is that we must love mercy and do justice and walk humbly before
our God. The darker the clouds grow, the more we are persuaded that the
two races must separate, that the negro may grow to complete manhood,
that the white may be saved from mulattodom. This is the great war. In
the unity of the white race is our hope.”
There were many men and women, worn with care and gray with sorrow, who
would read those words to-morrow, and then, with closed eyes, bow their
heads in thought; and there were many men and women with the weight of
the great defeat upon their shoulders, who, in stubborn courage and
infinite pain, would restore the long-lowered symbol of the Union to
their hearts and homes. Then the colonel took the Stars and Bars that
hung above his desk and kissed it and threw it into the fire, and from a
drawer underneath a mass of rubbish drew forth the great eagle over whose
breast was the American eagis, and over whose young waved the Stars and
Stripes. The snows of the North were upon her neck, and the fire of the
South flashed in her eye, and he hung it again above his desk and said:
“My country—my flag—my all!”
There was a hurried trampling of feet on the stairway, and looking up he
saw a squad of men in blue entering his office.
“Hello, here he is!” said the leader, advancing. “Is this here where the
damned rebel sheet is bein’ published?” He held in his hand a copy of the
_Chronicle_.
“This is the office of the _Charleston Chronicle_, sir.” The colonel’s
control was complete.
“Well, who are you?”
“I am Charles W. Masters, the editor.”
“Editor of the worst sheet of infamy and rebellion in the cradle of it
all. Damn you, we have come in here to publish a Union paper! Here, read
this.”
The editorial the colonel had written had fallen to the floor and floated
to the fire, where one corner began to crumple in the heat.
The colonel read the order:
OFFICE PROVOST MARSHAL, GENERAL D. S.,
Charleston, S. C., Feb. 20, 1865.
SPECIAL ORDER NO. 1.
The _Charleston Chronicle_ office is hereby taken possession of
by the military authority of the United States. All materials
and property of said newspaper of every kind will be turned
over immediately to Messrs. Gen. Whipple and J. W. Jackson, who
are hereby authorized to issue a loyal Union paper. They will
report to Lieut.-Col. Woodford, Provost Marshal Gen. D. S., for
all property taken possession of by them under this order. They
will keep possession of this building now used for the paper.
By command of Maj. Gen. Q. A. Gilmore,
Lieut.-Col. 127th N. Y. Volunteers,
Provost Marshal, Gen. D. S.
“Get out, old man! You may thank your stars we don’t set the niggers on
you.”
And as the lonely man walked down the long-trodden steps he seemed to
see below him on the stairway one who had welcomed him at Camellia long
years ago. Her eyes looked up to his as of yore, and the same sweet smile
parted her lips. But now her arms were outstretched to him, and she
seemed to be trying to tell him something that made her bosom heave and
her eyes fill with tears.
CHAPTER XLV
The women and old men left in the city, and the entire Union army of
occupation, read with avidity the first issue of the _Chronicle_ under
its new management.
Things in the office were necessarily in a jumble, so there was no
original editorial work to do. The news columns told how the _Palmetto
State_, the ironclad Ervin had devised, had been blown up, and how the
dense volumes of smoke had risen emblematically and by some weird chance
had formed themselves into a symmetrical palmetto tree, its leaves and
branches perfectly distinct; some had even seen the rattlesnake coiled
about the body. There were tidings, too, of the great fire at the
Northeastern railway depot, and of the explosions of gunpowder there,
killing more than a hundred men, women and children. But most readers
looked eagerly for the editorial page and found there a clipping from the
_New York Independent_.
“BABYLON IS FALLEN.”
So at last Charleston has fallen, plucked like the golden
apple of the fable that turned to ashes in the grasp. The
great news is like wine to the pulse. The early telegrams were
thought too good to be true. What a picture was that which the
_Tribune’s_ correspondents presented to us on Tuesday morning,
of the flag hoisted once again upon Fort Sumter, even though
waving from an oar blade for lack of a flagstaff. The rebellion
is humbled in the city of its first haughtiness. Boastful,
braggart Charleston skulks away from itself, and surrenders
without firing one shot in its own defense. The only heroism of
the retiring traitor was in exploding powder for the horrible
burning of their old women, children and old men. Having lately
robbed both the cradle and the grave, they make a strange
variety in their barbarous custom by now heaping the cradles
into the graves.
What a hideous sight saluted the eyes of the Union troops as
they entered the city—helpless human beings, scalded, burned,
mutilated by those who ought to have been their protectors; a
city set on fire by its own garrison when not a flame could
touch its enemy’s head, but only singe and roast its own
inhabitants. Terrible is the self-inflicting retribution which
an all-wise Providence has decreed against this cockatrice’s
den. Except for Charleston, the rebellion would never have
been, and except Charleston had been terribly scourged by the
war, poetic justice would have failed. But “vengeance is mine,
I will repay, saith the Lord.” No battle and praises—worthy
defeat! No stout defense and honorable capitulation! Nothing
but the hanging of a hound’s tail between his swiftly running
legs! Oh, shame, where is thy blush? Was there any city in
the South that specially boasted its chivalry? That city was
Charleston! Oh, fallen Babylon! Oh, elegant city of splendid
lies! Rear now a monument to thy shame and inscribe the obelisk
with the wisdom of Solomon: “Pride goeth before destruction,
and a haughty spirit before a fall!” Now comes the question,
will it ever be worth while to rebuild Charleston? Is her name
worth saving? Is her site worth a memory on the maps? Is her
sin less guilty than Sodom’s and her punishment to be less
heavy than Gomorrah’s?
And underneath it his many friends read with some surprise a note from
Bob Dingley, whom the new management styled “a distinguished Union
citizen who is now free to express his sentiments.”
The rebellion is at an end, and now why not discard old,
worn-out theories? Let every good citizen take the oath of
allegiance. These good Union men are our best friends. See
how they supply bread to our citizens. What more is there to
hope from the flying rebels? Let every true man acknowledge
allegiance to the best government that ever was.
Yours for Liberty and Union,
BOB DINGLEY.
There was a great gathering of abolitionists in the fallen Babylon, and
William Lloyd Garrison came to see how abolition prospered, and Colonel
Charles Anderson, brother of Major Anderson, arm in arm with Dr. Theodore
Tilton, editor of the _New York Independent_. Two ministers were recorded
as being present. Dr. Henry Ward Beecher and Dr. R. S. Storrs, Jr., and
many others were in the company. They said brave things over Sumter and
raised the flag in triumph.
In those days, too, St. Michael’s saw strange things done within her holy
walls. One morning at eight o’clock John Beesley, the sexton, who loved
the church as the colonel loved a face of the long ago, came through
the north door and found a gathering of men, women and children doing
things the like of which had never been done before in those aisles. The
old wrought iron hinges that were brought from England in the eighteenth
century, were being knocked off the doors of the pews, and the handsome
carved work of the pews themselves broken off as souvenirs. Upon the
breast of the high and holy pulpit, where men had preached in the days
of the Lord Proprietors of the colonies, there was an ancient I. H. N.
monogram done in choice inlays of rare woods. The sexton saw with horror
that it had been knocked out of its place by someone who had ascended the
pulpit of God to do it. These men and women carried away their plunder.
Nor would it be permissible, save to one who would make his story whole,
to leap in a sentence the two years of horror and add that the I. H. N.
panel was returned to the rector of St. Michael’s some years afterwards
by a clergyman whose name is not to be told, with the remarkable
statement that he returned the monogram, as there was no place in his
church for it.
There were two men who walked in sadness through the deserted city and
came at nightfall to the old graveyard of St. Michael’s and entered. It
was the hour when the worshippers gathered, a little family band in their
home, for the weekly prayer meetings, and the shadows would fall around
the old church and rest upon the graves of the departed. Then, while they
lingered there with their God and their dead, sometimes the spirits of
their fathers would come and join in the service and sprinkle incense
upon the fire of their hearts; and the sunbeams would linger a little
longer to bear the messages with them before they sped away to their
homes beyond the mountains. Thus at the gloaming, when lovers used to
meet, would the bridegroom of the Heavens come to prepare the church as a
bride adorned for her husband.
It was an old burying ground and many men whom the South loved were
buried there. The deepest passion of the ancient city’s soul was her
love for her dead. One of the men led the other to where lay the
eloquent Hayne, whose silver tongue had brought the great Webster up to
his greatest effort. The other was Senator Wilson, Webster’s successor
in the Senate. They looked at the graves grown over with weeds, for men
had gone rabbit hunting in the shelled districts, and owls filled the
offices. The two men were silent, nor could they find words fit for the
scene. Their thought was of the great statesman, loved of all men, yet
whose doctrines had brought such woe and destruction upon his city. And
now the weeds were covering the grave of the apostle of secession and
the owls and the bats inhabited the city of his love. With bared heads,
in silence they paused while the tears welled into their eyes, then the
senator said to his companion, in a broken voice:
“There is a way that seemeth right unto man, but the end thereof are the
ways of death.”
The other answered: “If I had the power of a great painter, I would paint
this scene—this ruined city under the heel of the conqueror, this temple
defiled by vandals, and I would inscribe it: ‘The successor of Webster at
the tomb of Robert Y. Hayne.’”
* * * * *
There was a band of soldiers that heard the ringing words of Henry
Ward Beecher when the old flag was raised again on the walls of Fort
Sumter, and shouted with the rest when he charged the war upon a proud
and impatient aristocracy. These remembered that one was buried in St.
Phillips graveyard, the proudest, most dashing of them all. So when there
was a respite from duty they turned into the Western Cemetery and were
seen by the simple grave of Carolina’s hero. Not a tuft of grass seemed
misplaced about it.
“The arch-enemy!” one cried. “Damn—” but he stopped suddenly, like the
boys of Dunvegan who must needs go over the hill out of sight of the
moss-covered manse and the little red church in under the oaks before
they could have heart to swear.
“John Caldwell Calhoun,” another read. “It’s a wonder some of the boys
haven’t torn him out of there.”
“The old snook was a slick talker, but he had more sentiment than sense.
None of those crazy loons down in here could see that it was too late in
the day for slaves.”
It was heartlessly said, yet he, too, had omitted his usual profane word,
like the little boy who drops the stolen apple when he sees his mother’s
grave.
“Some night someone is going to mistake his grave for hidden treasure
and open things up a bit, don’t you think?” the second remarked, with a
glance they all understood.
But it had already been done, and by those who had long mistaken John C.
Calhoun for hidden treasure. In the deepest quiet of the night, before
the heel of the conqueror should tread on hallowed ground, they had come,
loosing the sandals from their feet as though God were in every bush in
the Western Cemetery; and fearful lest an enemy should touch his holy
dust for desecration—tenderly, reverently, they had lifted their hero’s
ashes and borne them away in secret till the storm should be overpast.
CHAPTER XLVI
Early in February of ’sixty-five, at the home of Mrs. Liddell, in
Columbia, Jack Corbin and his wife and Helen Brooks were sitting round
the open fire in the living room. The glow of the firelight on the hearth
threw fantastic shadows over the rich furnishings and lit up the forms
of the three who sat almost mournfully by his side. The darkness of the
evening was made more dreary by the falling rain, through which, in a few
minutes, the young captain must go to join his command. His suit of gray
was worn and faded, and his felt hat that hung outside was full of holes.
“I am glad,” he was saying, “that old Joe is here. It was good of the
colonel to send him. I saw him as I came, dressed up in a suit of Colonel
Masters’, and new shoes and hat—”
“Yes, Jack, and I am so glad that Major Goodwin has said he will get us a
guard for this house if Sherman comes.”
“He is coming, Bessie.”
“And you think there is no danger, Jack, dear?”
“I should certainly think not, with the examples the other generals
on both sides are setting. Grant would not harm women, nor Thomas,
nor Meade, nor Lee. Why, Bessie, my darling, Lee would hang a man who
insulted a woman or destroyed private property. You remember when General
Gordon captured the city of York just before the Battle of Gettysburg,
and the inhabitants were scared lest he should burn the town, he said: ‘I
beg you to rest assured that the troops behind me, though ill-clad and
travel-stained, are good men and brave—that beneath their rough exteriors
are hearts as loyal to women as ever beat in the breasts of honorable
men; that their own experience and the experience of their mothers,
wives and sisters at home have taught them how painful must be the sight
of a hostile army in their town; that under the order of General Lee,
non-combatants and private property are safe; that the spirit of lust
and rapine has no place in the spirits of those dust-covered men.’ He
pledged the head of any soldier under his command who destroyed private
property, disturbed the peace of a single home, or insulted a woman.
And not a person was harmed, nor a dollar’s worth of private property
destroyed. Surely, if a half-starved Confederate force could be so
knightly, the great army of Sherman, backed by unlimited supplies, will
be as honorable.”
“I hear General Sherman says the Emancipation Proclamation was only a war
act, and that he expects to own a hundred slaves after the war is over,”
said Bessie, reassured.
“I met him over at Camellia before the war,” Helen remembered; “he was
a polished gentleman, remarkably impressed, with Southern hospitality.
Surely he will not forget the many times he has broken bread with the
Carolinians. Barbarians do not forget that, and if he cannot be as
chivalrous as Gordon he can at least be as honorable as Morgan.”
They sat for a moment in silence.
“Jack, come up stairs with me before you go,” Bessie murmured at last.
They went out together, and Helen sat and looked into the firelight and
dreamed of fires that never fail.
The brave wife, leaning upon her strong husband’s shoulder, led him to a
little room and stood with him by a bed all covered with little garments.
She lit a candle, and its glow showed him more of his wife’s heart than
he had ever before seen.
There, each in its place on the white spread, were more than a full
score of little prophecies of a woman’s love and joy and hope—a dainty
cap intertwined with pink ribbons and another with blue; a tiny dress
all stitched and sewn with silk, and others just as beautiful by it;
some little coats of softest flannel and silken braidings, and a pair of
tiny socks all crocheted in pink and white, so small that Bessie looked
quaintly into her husband’s face and said:
“Jack, dear, do you think anything could be so tiny as to get into those?”
“Where did you get them, Bessie, in this poor land of fire and poverty?”
“From Helen, the sweet girl. I told her about it at the first, and she
had her brother smuggle them to her. Oh, she is so lovely! And see
the little basket all covered with dotted swiss and little ribbons
intertwined in it; and the soft little brush with ivory handle, as soft
as the silken hair it will touch; and the tiny comb. And do you see the
little gold pins and the silver powder box and the puff? And she put in a
dozen of the softest little undervests. Jack, I love Helen.”
“And I do too.” The strong man’s eyes looked suspiciously moist.
“Poor girl! When she gave them to me last night she looked at them so
long and wistfully, and I knew she was thinking about Ervin.”
“Sad, sad, Bessie; but his death was the death of a hero.”
“I know it, darling, but—a woman—a true woman—wants—a—a son of her
love—and life is a mockery without it.”
Then they were silent for a moment, and each deep in thought, until
Bessie said slowly, looking at the tiny garments before her:
“Jack, do you think that is what Jesus meant when He said He would go and
prepare a place for us?”
He kissed her then, and said a soldier’s farewell, leaving her standing
at the bedroom door. When he had descended the steps, Helen was still
looking into the fire.
“Helen,” he said, “we owe you much already, but I want to ask another
favor.”
“What is it, Jack?”
“Sherman is coming, and I am afraid he will burn Columbia. They say he
is going to throw the Fifteenth Corps into the city—the corps that fills
its tracks with blood and covers them with ashes. The prisoners we have
taken all say so. Bessie is here alone. Will you protect her? Here,” he
said, drawing from his pocket a small, ivory-handled pistol, “take this
and promise me to do all to protect her, if she needs it. You may need
it, too.” Then he walked out into the night and looked up to the window
of the little room; Bessie was still standing with the candle in her left
hand, looking lovingly down at the tiny garments spread out on the bed,
and Helen was sitting in the room below, recalling the face of the past,
letting the memories trip with light steps over her soul, and listening
to the vibrating of the chords that had lain sore and silent for so long.
It was a cozy little living room, and the wind and the rain outside only
made it the cozier. Belated travelers were still hurrying home on the
streets below, in the mud and rain. Every now and then one of them looked
in at the window whence came the cheery rays of light and thought as he
saw it of his own home and loved ones.
So Helen sat, and sitting, mused.
That fire, how brightly it glowed! What a world of poetry and beauty
there was in it, from the deep, velvety coals to the dark, gray ashes.
And that tiny, blue flame, how young it looked! That was youth. The coals
in the full glow were impetuous manhood, and the dark, somber ashes told
her of a life buried away, and reminded her that dust shall return to the
earth as it was, and the spirit—the bright, pure, flaming spirit, had it
not already vanished into the presence of the God who gave it?
Then, too, the long, dark shadows cast fitfully across the room by the
irregular bursts of flames, and the occasional crackling of the good
natured logs, and, yes, there surely was a cricket on the hearth. There
are many Helens, and readers will see the one who sat by the fire that
winter’s night in the fated city, but each looks upon his own Helen and
the fire glows upon his own hearthstone. One looks at her and she at the
fire, and the light falling over her is bathing her beautiful face till
every feature is radiant with its divine glow, and the most fascinating
tints seem to tinge each ringlet of her hair, and to sleep and dream in
those dark, brown eyes. She, too, was dreaming—though none gazed at her
there—of life and love, memories which only they could bring, filling her
soul and steadying her nerves for life’s actions.
Gazing, she dreamed of the glowing embers, and they told her of life’s
struggle, fierce, hot and fiery, and their crackling spoke of sharp
surprises, and every falling coal of losses and separations. She watched
the leaden ashes gather over the bright embers, and thought how she, too,
would some day return to the dust, after her forehead was wrinkled with
age, as the fires of youth slowly burned out, just as every seamed log
before her was seamed and scarred by the flames. But these thoughts were
only for a moment, for the fire had just been kindled in her heart, and
she would have to sit and watch it glow and flicker and flame for a long
time yet. Oh, that the kind Father of all spirits had granted that the
leaden ashes should have gathered at the same time on her life-hearth as
on his, and that their fires might have died out together! It was so
hard to outlive those she loved!
During the days that followed, wild rumors came of fires and murder and
pillage; and the women and children who would be left in Columbia after
Hampton’s cavalry had evacuated the city trembled as they saw the nightly
glow in the southeast growing brighter and the smoke growing daily
denser. Till at last on the memorable fifteenth of February the men in
blue appeared on the Lexington side of the Congaree and fiery shells fell
without warning into the city.
Helen, standing by the white pillars of the old colonial porch, saw Major
Goodwin riding rapidly down the street. He noticed her, too, and called,
“I will get you a guard—am going now to see General Sherman.”
Then the bluecoats appeared here and there in the outskirts of the city,
and Hampton’s cavalry hovered on the north to see that all was well
before the evacuation. Soon the mayor returned and brought with him four
Union soldiers.
“The general readily granted me the guard for you, Miss Brooks,” he said.
“In fact, a regiment is to be marched into the city to be used for guards
by those who want them. I surrendered the city unconditionally, and I do
not fear much danger, as he promised me that all would be as safe in his
hands as if I myself were in command.”
“And they will not fire it? Oh, how good of them!”
“He asked me about our waterworks and I told him they were in good
condition. He was pleased at that, and said that he would be obliged to
burn the public buildings, but not to-night, as it was too windy.”
“And there is no danger?”
“I don’t know—I don’t know. The soldiers all say—that is, some of them
have told me that they would burn Columbia; that it has been the common
talk around the camp fires for a long time. Somehow, one of them said,
they had taken the idea that Columbia accidentally fired would be a
particularly pleasant sight to General Sherman. The Fifteenth Corps is in
the city; but you are safe. Your guard will protect you, and I am glad,
for Bessie’s sake.
“And there is one other good thing about it, Miss Brooks,” he continued.
“General Hampton very sensibly ordered that no cotton be fired on the
streets and so far there is not a flame in the city except the railway
station a mile away from town.”
So Helen went quietly back to Bessie’s bedside and told her what the
Major had said, and the girl was glad that her first-born could be born
in peace. The afternoon wore slowly on, and the night began to cover the
city.
Helen was sitting in the doorway and the four guards were near. Knowing
the critical condition of her friend, she ventured again to remark as to
the safety of the city.
“I wish I was as sure of getting home safe as this house is to-night,”
said one of the soldiers, whose face Helen could not like.
Then, as they looked toward the northeastern part of the city, a blue
rocket shot high into the air. A moment, and then a white one, followed
by a red. Helen turned and looked at one of the guards, a gentlemanly
fellow, whom she had heard the others call “Old Secesh.”
“My God!” he exclaimed, “they are going to do it!”
The other three men rose and went up stairs, taking lighted candles.
“Madam,” said “Old Secesh,” “that signal you saw means that Columbia is
to be fired immediately. If you want to save anything you had best do it.
It is a hellish outrage, but the men want it, and they believe General
Sherman won’t mind it. I will help you all I can.”
Even as he spoke a bright light shot up in the northeast and down the
streets Helen could see men lighting camphene balls and throwing them at
houses. She arose quickly to go to Bessie’s bedside, and as she reached
the landing Mrs. Liddell suddenly appeared, crying:
“Fire, fire! The guards are setting fire to the lace curtains in their
rooms!”
“God save Sherman the record of this outrage!” said the guard, who had
followed her. “Madam, may I help you take the sick lady out? There is no
use in our trying to put the fire out—the city is doomed.”
“What’s that, ‘Old Secesh?’ Can’t you keep your mouth shet once?”
“Shame on you, men—you are not worthy of the blue!”
But the men only laughed and stood on the steps while the fire burned
above them.
“If Thomas or Grant only commanded us, madam!” old Secesh said, “this
black chapter would not be written this night.”
So he helped Helen and Mrs. Corbin and Mrs. Liddell lift the fainting
woman in a blanket from the burning house, and they bore her as gently as
they might down the street. As they reached the gate, the flames burst
from the windows of the house, and the street below was crowded with men
and women and children. Everywhere balls saturated with turpentine were
being hurled at the houses. As they went on they saw some firemen trying
to put out the flames, but the soldiers, with their bayonets, punched
holes in the hose and slashed it with sword and axe.
[_To be continued._]
HISTORY OF THE HALS
CHAPTER XVII
By John Trotwood Moore
THE FOUR HUNDRED AT THE HORSE SHOW
Now I’m forcibly reminded,
When I see them riding there,
One moment in the saddle
And the next one in the air,
That the saddest sham in nature
That I ever came across
Is a hundred-dollar saddle
On a twenty-dollar horse!
And again I’m just reminded,
When I see their tandem teams
And all the traps and trappings
Of their wildest English dreams,
That you’re always sure to notice
In their heavy, rumbling gigs,
The homeliest looking women
In the foreignest-looking rigs!
And yet again I notice,
With a mild, complacent smile,
That th’ eternal laws of fitness
Are at work there all the while.
And I grant them due forgiveness,
Let them rip it as they be—
For they dock their horses’ tails
To match the owner’s pedigree!
THE GRAVE ON THE BLUFF
The most beautiful of all beautiful rivers—bold-bluffed and crooked,
darkening in shadow or shimmering in sunlight, and never yet desecrated
by the touch of a wheel of commerce—is the Duck, rising among the
foothills to the east and flowing through the blue limestone of this
Niagara period, like the Hudson, to the Cumberland. It flows through
middle Tennessee and past the town I call my home.
Many are the picturesque spots on its banks. My favorite one is a huge
projecting rock, protected by large upright ones nearly as immense, and
shooting out over tier upon tier of rocks, down a hundred feet below, to
where the river runs like life—now in sunshine, now in shadow. On this
rock, sheltered by others which form a kind of background, I love to take
the lap-robe from the buggy, spread it out, stretch out and enjoy the
scenery beyond—the valley rolling away, the bend after bend of the river,
with the water flashing between the iron bridge that spans from rock to
rock, the everlasting hills and the eternal skies.
There is only one thing to mar the beauty of this place. In ten feet of
my rock is a neglected grave. The mound is sunken around it, clearly
defining the outlines. Even the bluegrass refuses to grow on it, it is so
uncanny. I had often wondered whose grave this was, neglected, unkept,
forgotten.
“Perhaps,” I said, often to myself, “it is the grave of some Federal
soldier, buried far away from home. No doubt he fell in Hood’s raid, when
that soldier turned his back on Atlanta and struck out for Tennessee,
sweeping everything before him to Nashville. Somewhere in the North there
is an unknown grave in a human heart. Or, it is just as apt to be,” I
would add, “one of those half-clad, half-fed Johnny Rebs, frozen in that
November’s sleet, and thawed out in the withering fire of Franklin.
Foot-sore, heart-sore, wounded and sick, he straggled forty miles from
Nashville, trying to follow Hood’s forlorn hope back to the Tennessee
River, and died here. Poor fellow, whoever he was!”
But not long ago an old darky whom I sometimes saw wandering around in
the neglected graveyard near, told me better. It is an old graveyard, now
full and neglected. Under a big tree I can see the square tombs of the
father and mother, sisters and brothers of James K. Polk.
I say graveyard purposely. Nowadays, it is true, they call it cemetery.
Cemetery is Frenchy, from Latin, and I suppose the name has been adopted
because it sounds better than the Saxon graveyard. That other Saxon word,
God’s Acre, sounds better. As if we could tone down the hideousness of
skeleton death with a French cutaway! And I hope you will pardon this
digression when I tell you I hate everything American that patterns
after French, and I love everything English that clings to Anglo-Saxon.
William the Norman was a free booter, a robber and a bully, and for my
part I am sorry that old Saxon Harold did not wipe the face of the earth
up with him and his parley-vouzing crowd of rakes at Hastings. England
has never had a king since that was half the man Alfred was. We should
have missed all the mean and villainous Johns and Richards, the devilish
Henrys, the profligate Charleses and the pigheaded, blood-pudding and
brainless Georges. And I would not allow a foreign grammar of any kind to
be taught in our public schools. For is it not ideas which count, and not
words? One flag and one language, and the man who tried to pull either of
them down I would—well, you have heard the rest. Lord help us! Starving
out the most glorious, the most beautiful, the strongest and the grandest
language in the world, the language of Chaucer, Milton, Burns and Byron,
of Emerson and Carlyle, to teach our children a mongrel mixture that
tends to mongrel morals!
But, as I was saying, the old darky told me about a year ago who the
lonely occupant of the neglected grave was. “Boss,” he said, as he sat
up against the slab that answered for a headboard, “I thou’t eberybody
knowed dis grabe was de grabe of de man dat was kicked to deff by a
stallion on de public square sixty years dis spring. Dat’s all I knowed
about him, an’ dey buried him heah.”
After that I would often find myself thinking of the unknown being who
slept there. Did he have a family, and what became of them? What strain
of horse could in those days have been so vicious? What stallion kicked
him? Stump-the-Dealer? No; Stump was too lazy to kick. Kittrell’s Hal? He
was a baby. Could it have been—ah, yes, happy thought! I have it. It was
one of those new trotting St. Lawrences, or Messengers, that Major Andrew
Polk introduced in the country about that time. The major was showing him
off the first Monday on the square; a crowd of rustics gathered around,
thinking he was gentle, like our Hals; one got too close to his heels—a
flash of a leg—a crash—a bursted skull—a forsaken grave—and the world
moves on.
No doubt of it. And the lonely occupant really holds a state record and
doesn’t know it: “First man in Tennessee to be kicked to death by a
trotter!”
“This thing is getting interesting,” I say to myself, “and I’ll romance
on that man a little—make him up a pretty history in my mind.” I draw my
lap robe a little further in the sun. How pleasant and delightful it is!
How sweet the spring breeze comes from the South, and how the water, from
a fisherman’s paddle, sparkles like diamonds far below.
On a sycamore tree that has grown from the river bottom up opposite my
bluff, a crow suns himself and eyes me foolishly. I never see a crow but
I think of Poe, the weird, wild genius, and his heavenly rhythm. I don’t
exactly fancy that bird, and if I were not too lazy I’d throw a pebble at
him.
But let me go on with the history of the man who was kicked to death.
“Shall I make him young or old?” I asked myself. “Young. Why? Because
an old horseman would have had better sense than to get too close to
a strange horse’s kicking end.” Again: “Ten to one an old horseman
would have had the best horse in the world himself and would have been
staying with him, telling everybody so, and proving it by his pedigree,
instead of running around examining the hind legs of some other fellow’s
worthless beast!
“Why, how nicely it all ravels out,” I laughed. “This reminds me of
Conan Doyle. It must be so easy to write a catchy little book, without a
line of literary merit in it, in which having the causes all in your own
mind, you can reason back so glibly to effect and make it sound so real
to thoughtless people. ‘Trilby,’ ‘Sherlock Holmes!’ Lord, where are we
at that this kind of stuff can live in the same age with the ‘Vicar of
Wakefield’ and ‘Lorna Doone’?
“A young horseman,” I continued; “ah, then, there is more of it. Perhaps:
“‘A nearer one still,
And a dearer one yet
Than all others.’”
The crow turned ’round and deliberately winked his left graveyard eye at
me. The villain! He knows the human heart. How fine the sunshine feels!
“What would I not give,” I said aloud, “to know all that poor fellow’s
history!”
The sycamore bowed its limbs; the crow gravely nodded his head. They
would like to hear it, too.
A shadow darkened my rock. I glanced up, half frowning at being
interrupted just as I was making up such a nice romance—with Poe’s
raven helping me, too! A man sat down beside me. I didn’t notice him
particularly, because I didn’t want to. I have a nasty habit of refusing
to talk when I want to think. I never could do both at the same time.
Indeed, I think the working of the lower jaw is fatal to the minds of
most men. Besides, this is my rock. This hour is a slice of my time-cake
(there are just so many slices in it before Waiter Death calls for the
plate), and I have the right to eat it without the help of every loafing
glutton who does not know the difference between the husks of idleness
and the cake of labor.
Talk about woman’s rights! Let the men get theirs first—the right to call
certain hours of their time their own, without bowing, nodding, shaking
hands, joking, laughing, lying and talking weather to every loafing
acquaintance whom idleness sends along. Oh, Horace of my school days!
Oh, great master of satire, how I wish I had remembered what you said to
the loafing bore who ran upon you when you sat sweetly dreaming out your
work in the garden of Maecenas! How I would feed that sarcasm to this old
loafer!
I glanced at this fellow as he sat down. He was gray and grizzled. He
wore an old suit of jeans dyed with copperas. On his head was an old wool
hat of many, many years ago. Such clothes! I knew none such had been
in Tennessee “since the war.” “He came,” I mentally said, “either from
Sleepy Hollow or—”
“Hello-o!” said the old chap, provokingly taking the word out of my
mouth. I feigned sleep.
“I heard you say,” he went on, “that you would like to know the history
of the man who sleeps in that grave yonder.”
“Yes,” I growled, “but I was only romancing. You see, I love to get off
here, away from everybody—especially weather wizards and people that know
it all” (and I looked sternly at him) “and think about life and the fool
things we are and do.”
“I can tell you that man’s history,” he said, without noticing my
remarks, “and he knew more about the horses of Tennessee than any man
living to-day. He raised Stump-the-Dealer and—”
I sat upright.
“Just reach around under that rock there in the shade, Colonel,” I said;
“yes, that’s it—Lincoln County, made in 1877—help yourself. Don’t mind
the rock candy, the dried bit of lemon and orange peel and the roasted
slice of East Tennessee peach in the bottom. It is all right in spite of
the flavor. You see,” I continued, “lying in the early spring on this
clammy rock, right over a muddy, half-frozen river, is liable to give one
a cold. I don’t touch it often myself—just keep it for my friends and—”
The crow laughed out loud and winked both eyes alternately.
“Never mind,” said the old fellow, drinking it all at a mouthful, to my
astonishment and consternation, and tossing the bottle over the bluff,
“that’s good. Count me as one of your friends hereafter, won’t you? You
see, I haven’t had a drink for sixty years. Been out of the state. Shut
up in a dungeon, as it were; been—”
“Oh, you are one of those Tennesseans that migrated to Texas,” I said,
laughing. “But go on with your history of the man.”
The old fellow did not laugh. He grimly stroked his long, grizzled
beard, and said: “I used to live here—right here in this county. That
was sixty years ago. I was a horseman—I knew a good one when I saw him.
By the way, I owned the best horse that ever stood on iron. I owned old
Stump-the-Dealer.”
“What?” I cried excitedly; “you owned old Stump? Heaven be praised! I’ve
been looking for you for years. Tell me all about him!”
“Gently, gently,” he said; “that’s what I want you to tell me. You see
I haven’t heard a man say ‘horse’ for sixty years. In fact, you are
the only horseman I’ve spoken to for that time. I seem to have lost my
head—been in a trance. Tell me what became of old Stump.”
I looked at him in astonishment. “How quickly that Lincoln County acts,”
I thought, and then aloud: “Oh, Stump died forty-odd years ago.”
“Dead forty years,” he exclaimed; “and what killed him?”
“Oh, I don’t know. It’s been so long, but it seems I’ve heard he died
trying to pace over a row of salt barrels and not break his gait.”
“And did he do it? Old Stump? Did he break his gait?” he questioned,
excitedly.
“No—broke his neck,” I replied.
“Good,” was his verdict. “I knew he’d break his neck before he’d break
his gait. Gone at last! Poor Stump! And what became of Major Kittrell’s
colt? Hal they call him. I knew him, too.”
“Died years ago,” I said. “Got lost in the woods. Went out in the
wilderness to hunt for his pedigree and never came home any more.”
“Well, well, that’s sad,” he muttered. “I swapped a colt to Major
Kittrell for a black and measley jack—Simmons’ Jack by Leiper’s Creek.
Can you tell me what became of him?”
“Why, yes, I’ve heard of that chap all my life. He took many premiums and
died years ago, but he left a numberless progeny.”
“Where are they? I must have one,” he added, “when I start in again.”
“You’ll find them nearly all in the last Congress,” I said, “if it hasn’t
adjourned yet.”
The old fellow smiled for the first time. “Now tell me,” he said, “when I
left here in 1845 a chestnut gelding named James K. Polk held the world’s
pacing record. They rode him a mile in 2:27; was that ever beaten?”
The crow laughed so loud I thought he’d fall off his perch.
“Not till last summer,” I said, with a wink. “A Hal horse called Star
Pointer, a great grandson of the Kittrell colt, paced a mile in a little
better than two minutes—”
“Look here, young man,” he broke in, “I want the truth! You know no horse
ever did that. That’s flying. Who rode him?”
“Why, we don’t ride horses now in harness races. He was driven to a
bicycle sulky. A 2-year-old has paced in 2:07¾, and there are more Hals
that have paced better than 2:10 than you could count up in an hour.”
“What’s that?” he said, jumping up. “Don’t you know we never break a
horse till he’s three? I can’t sit here, young man, and have you tell
me them yarns any longer. Sixty years ago I was a horseman. I told
yarns, too, and swapped horses and lied, and bragged, and run down other
people’s stock, and well—I came to grief. And if you had been where I
have been for sixty years you would be more careful what you say. Tell me
the truth about some of them.”
“Why, I thought everybody knew them,” I said. “I can’t imagine where you
have been. There was the first great Hal racer, Little Brown Jug. His
three-heat record of 2:11¾, 2:11¼, 2:12½, was, for nearly ten years,
unbeaten.”
“What!” he cried, “done that three times? Who rode him?”
“Why, hang it,” I cried, impatiently, “nobody rode him! I told you they
quit that before I was born. And Mattie Hunter and Bonesetter—they were
great racers. Mattie Hunter was a little mare that was one of the Big
Four. Then there came later old Hal Pointer—the greatest race horse of
them all. Why, he had a record of 2:04½ in a race—”
“Nearly two minutes in a race! Phew!” he cried, blowing vigorously
through his long, thin, gray whiskers. “Phew! What a lie!” and something
flew out of his dry lips and rattled on the rocks.
I jumped back in astonishment.
“Excuse me,” he said, “them’s three of my front teeth—they’ve been dry
for sixty years and hanging loose in the jaw bone, like. I forgot myself
and blew too hard—”
He caught at his eye just in time and put that back: “But go on, I never
heard anything as interestin’ as them Hals.”
But I had forgotten the story, and was watching him. Never had such an
uncanny feeling come over me. I reached around under the rock for the
bottle.
“I got all of that at first,” he said. “Now, look here—you go right on
with that story and don’t you move or something might happen to you.”
I tried to laugh, but the cold sweat stood on my face. I shook,
trembling, and looked to see how far it was to the water.
“Go on.” He glared. “Go on, or I’ll throw one of my eyes at you. Tell me
the rest.”
“I—ah—ah—oh; well, there was a Brown Hal, the champion sire of his day,
and he’s still living. He has more 2:10 race records to the credit of
his get than any horse living or dead. Here is his 2:10 list.” I rattled
along, trying to brace up and talk fast enough to think of something
else except the uncanny thing before me. “Let me see: Star Pointer,
Hal Dillard, Star Hal, Hal Chaffin, Elastic Pointer, Hal Braden, New
Richmond, Storm, Brown Heels, Laurel and Silver Hal, and he sired the dam
of—”
“That’s a damn lie!” he snorted; “no hoss could ’a’ done that!”
“Pardon me, Colonel,” I said, “and if you’ll excuse me a minute I’ll step
up town and fetch a little more of that—.”
“Set down,” he said, “and go on with your lies.”
It was over eighty good feet to the water over that bluff, but for a
moment I thought I’d try it.
“Look! Look!” he cried, pointing down the Nashville pike, way below
us—“what’s that going along there without hosses?”
“That’s a hoss-scarer,” I said, “an automobile—a gas buggy—run without
horses. That crowd have run out from Nashville in perhaps about two
hours. That blue line of smoke,” I said, “away off yonder is the ten
o’clock express. It makes the run in an hour and—”
He jumped up. “I don’t believe any of your hoss lies, your gas-waggin
lies nor your express lies!” he cried. “Why, didn’t I see General Jackson
when he went to Washington to be inaugurated President of the United
States, moving in his own carriage through the country? And Jeems K.
Polk, why he lives right yonder,” he said, pointing up the street. “He is
my lawyer and was elicted President jes’ the other year, and I saw him
take the stage for Nashville. It’s all a lie you’ve made up.”
“I am telling you the truth. But where have you been?” I asked.
He looked at me sorrowfully. “Sixty years ago I was a horseman, telling
lies like the rest of you, swapping yarns, bragging, boasting, owning all
the fast ones, and having a mortgage on the future speed of the universe.
But one day something happened to me; one day, on the square, I got too
close to a horse’s heels, trying to show his owner an imaginary curb.
He kicked me. I’ve been dead for sixty years. I’m the young man whose
history you’ve been so anxious to learn,” he said, with a diabolical
grin. “Keep your seat,” he added, as he saw I was edging away. “I haven’t
told you that history yet. Don’t be in a hurry.”
The blood froze in my veins. He had blocked my path up and nothing
remained but for me to jump over the precipice. I rushed to the edge and
was just taking a farewell view of the earth when the report of a gun,
almost in my ear, awoke me.
“Sorry to disturb you,” said a small boy, as he lowered a single-barrel
gun from a rest he had on my rock, “but I couldn’t help shootin’ that
crow in the sycamore there. He was jabbering and acting like he had
hydrophobia. Did the old gun sound loud? It liked to kicked me over. I
forgot I loaded it yesterday, and loaded it again to-day. My!” and he
rubbed his shoulder and whistled through his fingers.
“It didn’t sound too loud for me, Sonny,” I said. “An earthquake would
have been welcome then. You just about saved me from jumping over that
rock. Take this dollar, get you all the ammunition you want, and kill all
the infernal crows you can. And if ever anybody calls here to inquire
for me, just tell them I have found another beautiful place out in a
hundred-acre field in a deep valley, and five miles from any unknown
graves on lonely bluffs,” and I went after a hot lemon punch to bring me
back from the weird land I had been in.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: A Valentine Toast
By Ethel Morrison Lackey]
Here’s to the King of an Empire,
Who rules with an absolute sway!
With never a fear that Pretenders
Are scheming his kingdom away!
His sceptre is only an arrow,
His crown but a small, curvéd bow,
Yet his subjects do yield such devotion
As no other monarch can know.
For the empire he rules with such power
Is the world of Fond Lovers, and they
Are pledging their faith and allegiance
On this, their King’s own, sacred day.
And so, with this host of true subjects,
’Tis fitting his praises we sing,
And drink, in joy’s wine, the glad toast
“To Cupid—Long live the King!”
NAPOLEON
PART VI—LOUIS NAPOLEON
By Anna Erwin Woods
He wrote to the Minister of the Interior: “I come, M. Minister, to
declare to you that if the French Government will permit me to go to
Florence and perform a sacred duty, I promise, upon honor, to return and
become a prisoner again whenever the Government expresses its desire that
I shall do so.” He also addressed a letter to the king: “Sire, it is
not without keen emotion that I come to ask Your Majesty, as a benefit,
for permission to leave France, even momentarily; I, who have for the
last five years found an ample recompense for the torments of captivity
in the air of my fatherland. But, at present, my sick and infirm father
demands my care. In order to obtain my freedom he has addressed himself
to persons known for their devotion to Your Majesty; it is my duty, on
my part, to do all that depends upon me to reach him. The Ministerial
Council, not thinking it within its competence to grant the request I
have made to go to Florence, promising to return and to become once more
a prisoner when the Government shall manifest its desire for me to do so,
I come, Sire, with confidence, to make an appeal to Your Majesty’s humane
sentiments, and to renew my request by submitting it, Sire, to your high
and generous intervention. Your Majesty, I am convinced, will appreciate
as it deserves a step which pledges my gratitude in advance; and touched
by the isolated position in a foreign land of a man who, on the throne,
merited the esteem of Europe will hear the prayers of my father, and
my own. I beg Your Majesty to receive the expression of my profound
respect.”
The Council of Ministers thought this letter insufficient to permit the
exercise of clemency by the king. The leader of the Opposition went, in
a private capacity, to plead the situation of the aged, infirm, solitary
father, comparing it with that of the king, who was surrounded by a
numerous family. The government, however, would not allow the petition to
be considered.
When Prince Louis Napoleon became convinced that all his efforts were
unavailing, he took a resolution which he afterwards described in a
letter as follows: “The desire to see my father once more in this world
urged me to the most audacious enterprise I ever attempted; one that
demanded more courage and determination than Strasbourg or Boulogne,
since I was resolved not to endure the ridicule attaching to a man
arrested under a disguise, and a failure would have been insupportable.”
He confided his scheme to two persons only, Dr. Conneau and Charles
Thelin. The doctor had carried his devotion to such lengths that, even
during the previous year when it was proposed that he should leave the
prison, he had declared: “I have elected my domicile in the prison of
Ham and submit to all conditions which the authorities have seen fit to
impose upon me.” Charles Thelin was fully determined never to quit his
master and, as his captivity was entirely voluntary, he was treated in a
special manner, and allowed to leave the fortress at times and go about
the town. But for this fact, and one other, the escape of the Prince
would have been impossible. Charles Thelin bought in Ham the clothes in
which his master was disguised and arranged all the details of the flight.
General de Montholon was not told of the plan. The general had
disapproved of the Boulogne expedition, of which he had been kept in
ignorance until the very moment of landing. The prince well knew that he
would oppose the plan of escape, considering it a fatal absurdity and
folly. When the prince acquainted Dr. Conneau with his plans the latter
made every effort to dissuade him. Failure seemed inevitable; indeed, so
rash seemed the attempt that the most unheard-of audacity and coolness
alone could have rendered possible the miracle of success. But the
improbable is sometimes true, and history furnishes greater surprises
than romance.
To glance at a plan of the fortress of Ham it would be hard to realize
that any man had even been rash enough to make such an attempt, and
without the connivance of a single jailor or soldier. The prison of the
prince was on the side of the barracks near the dungeon, at the back of
the court. To go out of the only door of the fortress it was necessary,
in the first place, to pass in front of two jailors, cross the entire
length of the court, go under the windows of the commandant who lodged
near the drawbridge, then through the wicket where there was an orderly,
a sergeant, a gate-keeper, a sentry, and last, a post of thirty men.
That the Prince should conceive the idea of going out alone, in broad
daylight, in sight of everybody, was a contingency so strange, so
incredible, that not even the most suspicious jailor would have admitted
its possibility. That the prisoner himself should have thought of it was
due, altogether, to a peculiar condition of circumstances. The commandant
of the fortress had asked for and been granted a sum of money for the
purpose of making some indispensable repairs in the apartment of the
prince and the stairway leading to it. There was a continual coming and
going of workmen in the court and the prince remarked that they were
very carefully searched on coming in but much less so on going out.
This was an illumination to him and he determined that, disguised as a
workman, he would, in the presence of all, leave the fortress in open
daylight.
That a man who had for five years, on this very spot, been subjected to
the closest scrutiny; whose every look, movement, expression, had been
closely studied, should undertake to challenge the alert watchfulness
of this strict guard, certainly indicated a daring self-control which a
writer of romance would scarcely expect thoughtful readers to accept as
a characteristic of even a very daring knight of the middle ages, a hero
of marvelous and incredible adventures. That this should have occurred
within our own prosaic generation, that many of those still living should
have looked upon this man of gentle, quiet dignity, brings to mind how
immeasurably below the strong realities of truth fall the portrayals of
romance upon the mimic stage.
The dress of a workman was secured by Charles Thelin and successfully
brought into the fortress; a blue blouse soiled with plaster; a black wig
with long hair, a peaked cap rubbed threadbare with pumice stone, a pair
of wooden sabots to make the prince look taller.
Many years afterwards when the splendors of the second empire, no longer
a dream but a magnificent pageant, had dazzled mankind; after the fatal
day of Sedan and the revolution of September which drove the lovely
Eugenie from Paris, among the papers found at the Tuileries was a bill
for the articles used in this disguise. It amounted to twenty-five
francs. Upon so small a sum rested an empire. Through all those years
of imperial magnificence, this man, with a heart full of sentimental
longings, preserved in his palace this little paper memento of the hour
which tried his soul.
On May 26th, the workmen would have completed their task; it was settled
that on the 25th the attempt should be made. On the 24th, in bidding
General Montholon and his wife good night, the prince embraced them with
an emotion which came near betraying him; but neither of them suspected
what was going on.
The day dawned on the 25th of May. The curé of Ham was to say mass at the
fortress, in the chapel on the ground floor. Very early in the morning
the prince wrote this note to him: “M. Dean, I should be glad to have you
put off until to-morrow or the next day the mass you were to celebrate
to-day at the chateau; for, as I suffered great pains on rising, I am
obliged to take a bath to alleviate them.” This curé of Ham under the
reign of Napoleon III was made a bishop and almoner of the Tuileries. At
half-past six o’clock in the morning the workmen were already at work
renewing the paint on the staircase. The captive abandoned himself to
his destiny and assumed his disguise. The future emperor darkened his
complexion and shaved off his mustache. Superstitious, and a fatalist,
he concealed, under his apparel, a portfolio containing two letters,
one from his uncle, the great Emperor, and the other from the Empress
Josephine, his grandmother. These letters he regarded as talismans.
It was a grave imprudence to take them, for if the fugitive had been
arrested on his way they would have betrayed him.
His disguise accomplished, Prince Louis Napoleon put a pipe between his
teeth and a plank on his shoulder. This plank, inscribed with the letter
“N,” was one of his library shelves; he believed it would bring him good
luck—it was the plank of his salvation. “If the escape is a failure,”
he says, “I will not survive; if it succeeds I shall become master of
France.” Romantic and eager for emotion, this man of calm and gentle
manner delighted in thus braving fortune.
Charles Thelin asked the workmen to take a drink; they accepted and
followed him into a room on the ground floor. Two wardens, however, were
on duty; the prince passed down the stairs putting the plank before
his face as he met one of the wardens at the foot. He passed the whole
length of the court, keeping the plank constantly between himself and the
sentinels. In passing the first sentry he let his pipe fall, stooped to
pick up the pieces and then walked on. He met the officer of the guard
who happened to be reading a letter and did not notice him. He passed
under the commandant’s window to the only door of the fortress; the
soldiers at the guard-house looked carelessly at the workman as he came
near them; the drums rolled several times; the orderlies opened the door;
the fugitive was outside the fortress. Just then, two workmen looking at
him attentively, he shifted his plank to the shoulder next to them and
heard one of them say: “It is Bertrand.”
In the meantime, Thelin, unrestricted, to a certain degree, in his
comings and goings, had been talking to the soldiers and remarked, as he
passed out of the fortress, that he would not be back until quite late.
As soon as he was out of their sight he sped to Ham for a cab which he
had engaged the day before, and hurried to overtake the prince on the St.
Quentin road. A few days after, Louis Napoleon wrote to a friend: “When
about half a league from Ham, while awaiting Charles, I found myself
opposite the Cemetery Cross and fell on my knees before it and thanked
God—ah, do not laugh at it! There are instincts that are stronger than
all philosophic arguments.”
The prince hid his plank in a ditch, and sitting down on the side of the
road, counted the minutes while he waited for Thelin. At last he saw
him coming, and in about an hour they reached St. Quentin. Outside the
city the prince alighted, leaving Thelin to go on alone; he removed his
workman’s dress, hiding that also in a ditch, and then walked on to
where he was to meet Thelin on the Valenciennes road.
Thelin had taken another carriage at St. Quentin, and overtaking the
prince, they arrived at Valenciennes about 3 o’clock. Here they had to
wait two interminable hours for the train to Brussels. While they were
waiting, Thelin heard a loud voice calling him by name. Their hearts sank
in despair. It proved, however, to be a former _gendarme_ of Ham, who was
now employed on the railroad. He asked for news of the prince and had a
long conversation with Thelin but did not observe his companion.
The railway train at last drew up, they entered, and soon passed the
boundary. The government of King Louis Phillippe had lost its captive.
Eight hours after putting the plank on his shoulder, Louis Napoleon was
in Belgium; twelve hours later he was in England.
Just as he arrived in London he passed an English acquaintance (Lord
Malmesbury) who was on horseback and merely bowed in passing, without
having an opportunity to speak. That evening Lord Malmesbury met at
dinner an attaché of the French Embassy. “Have you seen him?” said he.
“Seen whom?” asked the attaché. “Louis Napoleon; he has just arrived in
London.” The diplomat left the table at once and went to communicate the
news to his chief.
All day long Dr. Conneau had experienced almost as much emotion as
the fugitive himself. He well knew how essential it was that several
hours should elapse before his flight should be suspected; the
slightest suspicion would cause telegrams to be sent to St. Quentin and
Valenciennes for his arrest. The great thing was to gain time and to
prevent any one from entering the empty apartments. He made a report
that, after a sleepless night, the captive had suffered so much pain that
he (the doctor) had administered a medicine which caused him to sleep;
and he requested that his patient should remain undisturbed.
The doctor had put a manikin in the bed, made of a cloak and a silk
handkerchief. At seven o’clock in the evening the commandant said to Dr.
Conneau: “If the prince is suffering make your report. He has not been
seen all day. This is the third time I have come here and asked to see
him. Now I wish to see him.” As he opened the door the drums commenced
to roll and he remarked: “That will awaken the prince; I think I saw him
turn in the bed.” He approached and leaned over. “It seems to me I do not
hear him breathe.” Looking more closely, in a moment he perceived the
manikin. He exclaimed angrily, “What does this mean? Are you playing a
trick on me? Where is the prince?”
“_Mon ami_,” said Dr. Conneau, “it is useless to conceal it from you any
longer. The prince is gone.”
“Gone!” cried the commandant, “How? When? Where?”
“Excuse me,” said Dr. Conneau, “but that is my secret. I have done my
duty; do yours and search.”
“But, at least, tell me at what hour,” insisted the commandant.
“At seven o’clock this morning,” replied Dr. Conneau.
“Very well, sir,” sternly said the commandant, “re-enter your prison.”
When Count de Montholon, who, with his wife, had been the companion
of the prince in his captivity for six years, found that he had left
the fortress without bidding him adieu, he was not only surprised, but
offended. The following letter from the prince, however, was placed in
his hands:
My Dear General: You will be much astonished by the decision
I have taken, and still more so that having taken it I did
not inform you of it sooner. But I thought it was better to
leave you in ignorance of my plans, which date only a few days
back; and besides I was convinced that my escape could not be
otherwise than advantageous to you and to other friends whom I
leave in prison. The government only detains you on my account;
and when it sees that I have no intention of using my liberty
against it it will, I hope, open the doors of all the prisons.
Believe, dear general, that I greatly regret having been unable
to see you and press your hand before departure; but that
would have been impossible; my emotion would have betrayed
the secret I wished to keep. I will write you as soon as I
have reached a place of safety. Adieu, my general; receive the
assurance of my friendship.
The commandant and two jailors were charged with complicity in the
escape of the prince. Judgment was rendered the next day and they were
acquitted. Dr. Conneau was condemned to six months’ imprisonment and no
one ever saw a more cheerful condemned man. Charles Thelin was condemned
in default to six months’ imprisonment.
The prince wrote at once:
London, May 27th, 1846.—My Dear Father: The desire to see you
again made me attempt what otherwise I should never have done.
I have eluded the vigilance of four hundred men and arrived
in London safe and sound. I have powerful friends here and I
am going to put them in use in trying to reach you. I entreat
you, my dear father, to do all in your power in order that I
may speedily rejoin you. My address is Count d’Arenenberg,
Brunswick Hotel, Jermyn Street, London.
Every effort was made by the prince to reach his dying father; but at
every embassy he met refusal. King Louis, counting the days and hours,
watched for the coming of his son. Alas! in vain. Without having been
granted his prayer to see and bless his only child, he died sad and alone
in Italy, July 25th, 1846. If to-day all men go freely everywhere it is
due to the suffering caused Louis Napoleon at this time. He resolved
that if ever he should come into power, he would at once suppress all
such impediments as had caused him such torture. He kept his resolution;
other governments were brought to act like his; and now travelers may go
without passports.
Few destinies have been so melancholy as that of Louis Bonaparte,
former King of Holland. Against his own inclinations he yielded to his
brother’s will and contracted a marriage with Hortense Beauharnais, the
stepdaughter of his brother; and yielding to the same powerful will he
became most reluctantly, King of Holland. Upon the downfall of the great
emperor, he began, at the age of thirty-one, a life of exile in foreign
countries. He was absolutely unlike his great brother. His expression was
kindly; his eyes were full of gentleness and in this his son resembled
him, as well as in a propensity to melancholy, a blending of coldness
and affability, and a taste for literature and humanitarian dreams. He
was, however, far more ardent, more ambitious, more daring than his
father. His personal charm was greater; he knew how to attract and win
attachment; and he had a confidence in his star which was entirely
wanting in King Louis. Indeed, in the year 1846, there seemed but one
person in the world who believed in the star of Louis Napoleon; and that
person was himself. Calmly and patiently he waited for the moment when
it should rise above the horizon, as yet absolutely hazy. Who could have
predicted that in less than two years he would be, by legal means, the
head of the French Government? And what imagination could have pictured
the triumphal entrance into London of the Emperor of the French, Napoleon
III, the great ally of England in whose honor all the pomp and pageantry
of the British Empire was displayed? Let writers of romance look always
to the truths of history for the wonderful.
His cousin, the daughter of the Grand Duchess of Baden, said to him one
evening in London: “Now that you are at liberty, will you resign yourself
to repose? Will you give up these illusions which have cost you so dear
and whose cruel deceptions have been so keenly felt by all who love you?”
“My cousin,” replied the prince, “I do not belong to myself but to my
name and my country. Although fortune has twice betrayed me, my destiny
will be accomplished all the more speedily.”
And, indeed, the hour expected by this man of destiny was about to strike.
[_To be continued._]
THE MEASURE OF A MAN
By John Trotwood Moore
CHAPTER VI
The Hermitage of 1814 did not look like the Hermitage of to-day. Not
until later did the hero of New Orleans erect the substantial home
which for many years was the Mecca of those who believed in Jacksonian
Democracy. At the time of this story it was a plain but comfortable log
structure, differing but little from similar ones built by the pioneers
of that age in their efforts to establish homes in the wilderness.
But even as it stood it was no ordinary home, sitting back from the pike
near the stone spring dairy, the castle of hundreds of acres of as good
lands as ever the wilderness gave to civilization.
To-night it was lighted up and ablaze with youth and gaiety. It was a
farewell party for Juliette Templeton, and the youth of the land were
there. Out in the yard bonfires burned, tended by negro slaves, whose
dusky forms, slipping like shadows here and there, were silhouetted
against the dark background, huge giants of the night. The fires lighted
the lawn and the ancient trees; above, a half moon was rising, and the
lighted lawn and moon-lighted woods made a typical scene of beauty and
romance. Within the house hundreds of candles were stuck about in every
conceivable nook and corner, on window sill, on shelf and on the huge
logs themselves. Upon the lawn were clusters of horses tied to the limbs
of trees, and carriages in groups around them.
Within, the long dining tables gleamed in linen and silver.
The dancing had already begun, opening with a Virginia reel, in which
General Jackson led his fair guest down the line with all that courtly
grace he could command when he wished. And, indeed, there was incentive
for this gallantry, for never had the old soldier led so stately a beauty
down the cotillion line, though in his younger and cock-fighting North
Carolina days he had danced with some beautiful women—and some who were
not!
He was smiling good-naturedly; evidently he was thinking of them
to-night. “I have danced with some famous ones in my youth, my dear,” he
said, bowing low over her hand, “but never any that could compare with
you.”
She laughed, twinkling: “Tell me, General, how old must a man be before
he quits giving the girls his sweet talk?”
“Ah! that depends on the girl. Now, in your case I would say about the
age of Methuselah.”
They were standing at the head of the line waiting for their turn again.
Some one began to talk to her partner, giving Juliette a chance to run
her eyes quickly down the room full of the Hermitage neighbors and
friends. Neither Bristow nor Trevellian was there. She was not surprised,
for she never expected to see Trevellian again, and Bristow had not come
back since that night at the supper table when he had dropped a careless
remark about Trevellian and met such a subdued but pointed rebuke that it
took all of Aunt Rachael’s good nature and Juliette’s tact to prevent an
open rupture. Yet, since then, in every other way had Bristow shown his
attention—flowers, notes and all the lover’s resources which his shrewd
nature could command.
But as for Trevellian—the shock of that day had never left her. She had
put him resolutely aside; and yet, often since then, in the night when
alone with her thoughts, she had begun to doubt and to wonder—and then to
weep.
To weep. Ah, then it was she knew she loved Trevellian! But that had only
been at night. In the day, never had any one carried herself with more
dignity and poise.
She was glad that he was not here.
There was a hubbub around her. It was their time again and the General
was tapping her on the arm. Again they went down the line beneath the
eyes of an admiring crowd, and then he gallantly led her to a seat.
“Now, Juliette,” he said, “I must leave you to a younger and handsomer
beau, but while I have this chance, there is something I must tell you,
because you will know of it soon enough.”
He took his favorite seat. They were alone in the corner of the room, and
the rough floor was shaking with the boisterous dancing of healthy and
hilarious yeomanry.
“You are going to New Orleans to-morrow and you will stop at Natchez a
day or two to catch the boat there. We are sending you under the escort
of an old friend and his wife—Captain Royston and wife—but the Captain
will report for duty there. I do not know how the situation is at the
front. It is possible that you may have to stop at Natchez for awhile,
which brings me to the point I wish to impress upon you.”
She looked up at him quickly.
“The British,” he continued, “will be on us very soon.”
“Not at New Orleans?” she paled. “Everybody says at Pensacola or Mobile,
if at all.”
“Everybody knows but little,” said the General, quietly. “My dear, I am
going to have to whip them at New Orleans, and that before anybody dreams
of.”
“Oh, General—my mother—”
“Now if I had my way,” he went on, “I would rather you stay here
awhile, for the British, whom I shall have to fight, are the same
that are beating Bonaparte allies in Spain, and the depredations they
have committed there have been notorious. But you must, of course, go
on to your mother—but for that Mrs. Jackson and I should not think of
permitting you to leave us, for it will be a fight to the finish at New
Orleans and—”
“I thank you so much for telling me this, General. I shall tell mother as
soon as I arrive, and we shall pack up everything so as to be prepared
for flight.”
The General rose quickly, his keen eyes flashing and his face purpling
with rage.
“Prepare for flight? Do you think I have told you my official business
to scare you? Do you think those damned ruffians will ever get to New
Orleans except over the dead bodies of me and my troops? I’ll drive them
into the river, what is left of them, and you shall be there to see it.
By the Eternal, I swear it, and you shall see the river red with their
bloating carcasses! I’ll pay off the score they have piled on us on the
lakes and at Washington and on the sea. Prepare for flight!” he said,
cooling down, “why, my dear, and you old Joe Templeton’s daughter!”
He sat down, blowing his nose vigorously. He looked around half shamedly.
She could almost see the purple anger retiring before the mastery of a
mind whose first great instinct was unmeasured calmness—a calmness which,
in spite of his nature, he could command when he wished at all times. A
man who could both bluff and fight.
“No,” he went on, after awhile, “prepare to stay. I hate to see you
go, but aside from the fact that there will be some very extraordinary
fighting, which you will have nothing to do with, and need not see, New
Orleans will be as safe as the Hermitage.”
“Oh, General,” she apologized, “please forgive me, I did not understand
you.”
His good nature returned, even his jollity. It was his way—a thunderbolt
one moment, the next Jupiter himself in all his calmness. He went on
talking to himself more than to her.
“A thousand of my Tennesseans have started to-day. Let me see—they should
be at Ditto Landing by—”
There was a volley in the yard and loud cheers.
The General sprang up and went quickly out. The dancers flocked to
windows, doors and out into the yard. When Juliette went out she saw the
General surrounded by a strange crowd. A glance told her it was troops on
their way to the front, and Mrs. Jackson, who stood at her side, said:
“Captain Trevellian’s company going South, dear.”
The crowd had surged out into the lawn where General Jackson had gone to
greet them, and Juliette found herself also in the crowd, while around
her flocked the dancers to see their friends and neighbors off once more
to the war.
Their commander had drawn them up in line of battle, a gaunt, sinewy,
tanned and splendid sight under the flaring lights of the bonfires. It
was not a very straight alignment as it surged forward on both flanks,
half surrounding General Jackson and their captain, both of whom they
idolized. They had given the General a volley and salute, and now surged
forward to hear what he and their captain had to say.
It was a picturesque sight and one never to be forgotten. They were
dressed in typical costume of their time, and yet there was a liveness
and manliness about it which stirred the deeper emotions. Long hair above
swarthy, sunburnt faces, heavy coon skin caps, hunting coats and buckskin
trousers, ending in the top of rawhide boots. Powder horns, some of
gourds, but nearly all of buffalo horns, hung over their shoulders by a
thong of deer hide. In their hands they held, with butts on the ground,
the tall Decherd rifle, often taller than the man behind it. In their
belts was a weapon no other army since the days of Rome and Britain had
ever carried into war. It was a heavy bear knife, often a foot or more
long, some of them two-edged, enclosed in a holster of buckskin or calf.
In the faces themselves there dwelt a strange mixture of fun and fight,
of strange horse talk and stranger horse plays. And so they stood up,
a grand and picturesque sight, under the glare of the lights, a more
formidable and savage foe than any they had ever driven from the land.
There was another yell and volley of huzzahs as General Jackson came
forward. The line was now broken and they thronged around him. It was
Bill, Tom and Jim to him as he clasped the hands that shook his. They
were friends of his, they loved him and that was enough. The regiment had
camped for the night not far off after their first day’s march.
“We hurd you was ginnin’ a treat, Gin’ral,” shouted a long-haired,
buckskin-clad fellow in the line, “and we ’lowed we’d gin you a s’prize
party.”
There was a roar at this hint and another yell from the crowd, and in the
midst of it a negro came up with two buckets full of whiskey, and tin
dippers, which General Jackson had ordered from the smokehouse near the
kitchen.
“Attention, there, men! Ground f’lock and get into line!” said their
captain.
The line surged back; the butts of the rifles rested on the ground.
“Pass that whiskey down the line, there,” said General Jackson to his
servants, and as the blacks started, one at each flank, there was a deep
silence. They drank from the tin dippers as indifferently as if it were
water. Jackson and Trevellian drank last, touching their dippers “to
health and a good fight,” as the General said, at which there was a cry
from the line from a swarthy sergeant:
“And a quick one—b’ar or British! Lead us ag’in’ everything!”
It was indeed the sentiment. Arms were now stacked and they broke into
groups, thronging around their commanders as they talked to them, man to
man and face to face.
There was nothing concealed. It was a big family of yeomanry, brave
and bent on ridding their country of any foe their leaders pitted
them against. And General Jackson was their father. Around him they
gathered, proud, trustful, with all the confidence of big children and
all the daring, strong love of big men. And their hearts were hot and
vengeful—for they were children in their tenderer natures and saw things
with the eyes of children.
And the things they had seen had stirred them to their fierce, quick
fighting depths. Cut off from the rest of the world, wedged in between
the mountains, which barred them from the east, and the savages on the
south and west, their government had neglected them, left them to fight
their own battles against savage foe and savage nature.
But they had fought, and now they had followed Jackson from the Tennessee
to the Horse Shoe Bend—they had swept a goodly land of a savage foe,
opened it for the white race, destroyed their hated enemy’s most
formidable ally, and had an open and unmolested road to the sea.
This they had done and asked nothing from their country. This they had
done on acorns and parched corn, in pestilence and swamp, in deadly
savage-brooding woods—fighting famine and foe alike.
And now a greater fight was on. Their country, she who had counted them
as naught until now, who had paid no heed to their wants and their
sufferings, was now in a death struggle with her ancient and bitterest
foe. And that foe had walked through the land above them with rifle,
torch and tomahawk until it seemed that nothing could stand up before
them. They had whipped the American army and scattered her few weak,
little ships and now scoffed and derided her army to the nations of the
earth.
And though their country had forgotten them, in the hearing of it
all their hearts burned but for vengeance, and they forgot all their
injustice when they remembered it was their country and that they, too,
were Americans.
And then had come Jackson, and his call to arms and his fierce fighting
spirit and the fiercer fighting love they bore him.
“B’ar or British, Indian or devil, lead us ag’in’ ’em, General!” they
kept shouting, again and again.
Juliette felt someone touch her arm. It was Mrs. Jackson:
“Come, Juliette, all you girls—we are going to hand them out the cakes. I
heard a hint of this—in fact, I was warned, and Aunt Hannah, I think, has
baked them cakes enough.”
There was another shout from the lines when great waiters of sliced cake
were brought out, and with the buckets not yet empty and the tin dippers
in demand, there was a roar of jollity and laughter and jokes.
As Juliette passed in among them with a hamper of cake, a respectful
silence fell. Never had they seen such a beautiful being as she. They
were backwoodsmen, and she from another land. At first they stood back.
Their roughness and coarseness was only skin deep—in their hearts was
chivalry. At last one reached out his hand to help himself under the
tactful smile and reassuring nod of invitation and the tie was broken by
a loud banter at his elbow:
“Stop right thar, Bill; you can’t reach out an’ take poun’ cake from an
angel an’ me not be in it!”
In the roar of this sally they all thronged round her to get some of that
cake from an angel. She was passing around among them when someone seized
her by the shoulder and brought her about face with:
“Come, fair waitress; forget not your humbler friends.”
And she stood facing Trevellian and General Jackson, who had thus called
her. Her heart pounded, the color, despite her efforts at calmness, left
her cheeks; her knees trembled and she almost dropped the waiter in his
hands. She saw his agitated but reserved bearing, his hand going up
nervously to his hat, and in her confusion she pushed forward her cake:
“Please have some.”
“I thank you, madam,” he replied as indifferently as if she were an
unknown person to him and he reached out to take it from the tray. But
two slices were uncut, and in her effort to help him her hand touched his
and she felt the hot blood surge in her cheeks. Looking up she met his
eyes, resigned, sad, but hotly determined in the old flash that dared
all, hoped all and was afraid of nothing.
She read a thousand things in that brief look, while her own heart all
but burst within her and her knees trembled in feminine weakness.
And that which she read above all else was that he had put her out of his
life.
Indignant—hurt—crushed by the look, her pride stirred to madness with
herself and the world, with fierce hatred of herself that she should care
at all, she pushed madly into the crowd and away. Then she heard the
General calling her impatiently:
“Juliette, Juliette, my dear, you have forgotten me.”
In shame and confusion she turned again, though she felt that she should
die if she looked again into Trevellian’s face.
And then she almost fell when she did see. She stiffened frigidly and
hot, cruel anger swept over her as her flashing eyes fell on William
Trevellian.
The boy had ridden up as she turned to go away. And now, on the small,
sinewy pony, which she remembered too well, he sat his horse just behind
General Jackson, looking at her with eyes that spoke as much admiration
as any old soldier in the group.
General Jackson himself had forgotten her as he turned in laughing
enthusiasm to the boy and his pony. Grasping him by the shoulder, he
cried:
“Why, little Ireland, you game little devil, how came you here? And Paddy
Whack—ha—ha!”
The boy sat proud and beaming. To his saddle was strapped a kettle drum.
He also was clad in buckskin and carried a smaller rifle, while the big
hunting knife in his belt brought another smile from the General.
“He ran off from school, General,” she heard Trevellian saying; “came
into our camp to-night just as we were leaving. He wants to go, and I
haven’t the heart to send him back.”
“General, don’t say I cannot,” pleaded the boy. “I can shoot better than
I can ride. Let me go.”
General Jackson glanced up into the little, excited face, the determined
eye. How handsome he was, and as he turned his thoughts flashed, how like
Trevellian!
“General, General,” came again, “we need a drummer, and I want to fight
them, too. I am a Trevellian; didn’t you know it?”
“There is no doubt of that, boy. Yes, go if you want to.” He turned to
Trevellian:
“By the Eternal, Trevellian, how can the British expect to whip a people
whose very children beg to go out and fight them?” He turned to the boy:
“Yes—go, boy; go fight the invaders of your country, and God bless and
preserve you!”
Pale, trembling and with a bursting heart which hated itself for her
weakness, Juliette slipped away and into the house. From her own room
she heard the huzzahs, the rattling volley of parting salute, and
Trevellian’s command of “fall in!” She heard the soft tread if moccasined
feet going into the wooded night. Then there was wafted faintly the
uncouth, broken notes of a tune that somehow held together till it
reached her:
“The girl I left behind me.”
She ran to the bed and buried her head in the pillow. Was she the girl he
had left behind him? Would she ever see him again? He hated her now; she
knew it, and yet she was so weak as to love him. Why did she not hate him
also? Hate him as he deserved to be for—
The rattle of a kettle-drum burst into the music. Then cheers faint and
far-off, but saying: “Hurrah for the drummer boy of the First Tennessee!”
She buried deeper her head and sobbed louder.
[_To be continued._]
MELLIE’S MAN
By William McLeod Raine
“Why don’t you-all git a man, Mellie?”
Mrs. Chunn waited impatiently for an answer, her potato knife poised in
air. She was a sallow lath of a woman, dry and hard, with piercing little
black eyes that bored like gimlets. Efficiency of management was the
dominant note of the widow. She ruled like an autocrat, a kindly one if
people submitted gracefully, but a firm one in any event. Three deceased
husbands had endured her sway not unhappily. Each of them had fortunately
possessed the requisite sense of humor.
Just now the gimlet eyes were turned on the slim, fair girl who sat
shelling peas on the porch steps at her feet. Mellie stirred uneasily,
as under compulsion, but offered no answer in words. From her childhood
she had been much given to silence, an unconscious refuge from the
commonplace world of Cache Bayou that misunderstood her of necessity.
A sweet, shy creature with a rare color easily moved to paint charming
pictures of maidenly embarrassment, one might well wonder how this
daughter of the swamps had come to be endowed with so alien a beauty.
She suggested a native refinement foreign alike to her training and her
environment.
Her stepmother repeated the question with exactly the same inflection as
before.
“Don’t yo’, please,” implored the girl, the color sweeping into her face.
Then, as if feeling the futility of protest, she added, “I cayn’t, Maw.
Yo’ know I ain’t that-a-way.”
“I reckon yo’ kin if yo’ try. You-all air turned nineteen now. Do
yo’ ’low nevah to marry? Trouble is, you-all air so meachin’ an’
touch-me-not. Hit don’t do to be dumb’s a wild hawg the whole enjurin’
time when men folks is ’round. Yo’ got to brisk up an’ be peart.”
The widow’s experience entitled her to speak with authority. “Gittin’
a man” had become almost a habit with her. It spoke volumes for her
efficiency that men naturally gravitated her way, despite her lack of
feminine graces. Temporarily, by reason of a dispensation of Providence,
she happened to be husbandless, but it was a condition she expected to
change as soon as she could decide on a suitable successor for the late
Shep Chunn. To this selection she was giving her judgment with cool
detachment, quite unhampered by the superfluous baggage of sentiment. As
a preliminary she purposed to do her duty by her stepdaughter and make
her happy whether she wanted to be or not.
“Co’se hit stands to reason that a gyurl’s gotten to git a man or be
plumb looked down on,” she continued, a note of finality in her voice.
“Yo’ hain’t aimin’ to be a’ ol’ maid, air yo’, Mellie? Well, yo’ shorely
air hailed that-a-way. Me’n Dave Wilson was ma’ied befo’ I was sixteen.
When he up’n died I mo’ned a fittin’ time and then tuk yo’ paw. I met
up with Shep ayfter yo’ po’ paw died. All told I haint be’n a widow
more’n fo’ years.” The pardonable complacency of success voiced itself in
Mirandy Wilson-Briscoe-Chunn’s recital. “This yere kentry’s full of men
an’ taint no trick to make ’em think this yearth won’t turn ’f they-all
don’t git you. But yo’ cayn’t do hit by folding yo’ hands in yo’ lap
and actin’ like men folks plumb skeer yo’ to death. Yo’ got to show ’em
yo’re right smart partial to ’em. An’ yit yo’ got to keep ’em jubious.
Naow the’ was Jim Dascom, jes’ possessed to git you-all. He plumb thought
the world an’ all of yo’. Him a-comin’ yere an’ a-comin’, slickin’ up
to go co’tin’ ever’ last night, an’ yo’ takin’ on like he was p’isen.
Consequence is, he up an’ tuk Seliny. ’N she c’udn’t hold a candle to
you-all fer looks.”
The averted eyes of the slim, young thing looked wistfully across the
slash to the bayou beyond. A poignant shame flooded her, the sense of
sacred things profaned. Oh, if only her mother had lived, the girl mother
who had died at her birth! Surely she would have understood! Or even the
quiet slow-speeched father who had petted and “muched” her in secret.
Since his death, ten years before, she had been terribly alone. She had
only Jed—Jed Wilson, her stepmother’s boy, the magnificent big brother of
her youth, who could do everything well and yet condescended to like her
and be her comrade. But Jed was in far-away Texas somewhere and had been
for four years.
“So I jes’ natchelly makes up my mind to help yo’. I ’low to do by
you-all like yo’ own maw would. Air yo’ near through with them peas? I
want ’em done right spank at twelve. Mose Hughey’s a-comin’ to dinner.”
Mellie turned a startled face on her stepmother. Her lips parted for
speech, but the protest died unvoiced. What she had feared had come at
last. A kind of terror surged through her. She was being prepared for the
inevitable. If Mrs. Chunn had set her iron will on her marrying Hughey
there would be no escape for her. Yet she knew she would rather die.
“I don’t want to—to marry,” she besought. “I druther stay with yo’, Maw.”
The girl’s sweet, slow voice seemed to caress the dialect and make it
lovable. “You-all have always be’n so good to me sence I was a little
trick. Don’t yo’ make me marry ary man, Maw Chunn.”
“Hit ce’tainly riles me to hear you-all talk that-a-way. Hit’s plumb
foolish. I reckon yo’ got to do like other folkses, Mellie Briscoe. But
yo’ ain’t time to talk about that naow. Yo’ run along an’ slick up. I’ll
’tend to the dinner.”
Hughey’s narrow little shifting eyes gloated on the girl’s dainty youth
and ravished the innocence of her pure outline, even while he ate
voraciously of the food before him. A wolf were as fit to be mated with
a lamb as the long-jawed, yellow-toothed usurer’s cunning with her fine
maiden reserve. Even to Mellie’s stepmother his outstanding merit was the
forty acres of rich cotton land he owned.
That he had an understanding with Mrs. Chunn was apparent, not less clear
than that he counted the girl already his and the wooing a mere formality.
“Seems like nobody nevah cooked sweet taters an’ co’n pone like you’uns
Miz Chunn. I ’low o’ co’se yo’ done learned Miss Mellie haow.” His
wolfish little eyes leered at the girl.
Mrs. Chunn tossed the ball back, to cover her stepdaughter’s silence.
“Mellie’s a mighty good cook, Mistah Hughey, an’s yo’ say, I kin
recommend her pone.”
“Tha’s good. I’m a steady man an’ don’t go devilin’ ’round none. ’F I
ma’ied again,”—he was talking pointedly at Mellie—“I druther have a woman
that c’d work an’ keep her mouth shet than anything else. Kin you-all
tell me where I c’n git one that-a-way, Miz Chunn?”
Mellie waited on him with a padlocked tongue. When he had gorged himself
she slipped away and fled to the hickory lead at the edge of the bayou.
In the heavy shade of the forest she buried herself, trying to hide from
the shame and the horror of it all. What could she do? How could she
escape the net which enmeshed her? To whom could she turn for help? Her
throat ached with the intensity of the passion of despair that swept her.
Jed would have known what to do. Jed would have saved her. But he was
a thousand miles away on some unknown ranch. His mother’s domineering
temper had driven him away from home in anger. They had heard of him
just once in the four years. That was when the editor of their country
paper, stopping at Mrs. Chunn’s over night, had mentioned that her son
was still one of the subscribers to the _Beebee Bee_.
“Texas is a mighty big place, an’ a mighty fine country I’ve heard, but
I reckon, Madam”—with a courtly bow to Mrs. Chunn—“be it nevah so humble
the’s no place like home!”
“I ’low that’s why he makes out without evah seeing it,” Jed’s mother
had returned dryly to the burst of editorial oratory. Her boy was the
one weak spot in her inflexible armor of autocracy. To have had him home
again she would willingly have made him an exception to her own rule,
though she never admitted it even to herself.
It was to Jed’s strength that the girl’s weakness went fluttering out
in her hour of need. He would have understood, as nobody else could.
The indolent, masterful force of him would have won her battle for her.
But without him—fear rose in her throat and choked her. She could not
hold out—she knew she could not hold out against the quiet, steadfast,
terrible pressure her stepmother would bring to bear.
Texas was a big country and far away. The paper man from Beebee had said
that. But he had said, too, that he sent his paper to Jed. If so, he must
know where he was living. In the midst of the desert of her despair there
began to rise a tiny wellspring of hope. She would write to Jed.
As it happened, Buck Drumley was going to Beebee next day. Buck rented
on shares the west bottom from Mrs. Chunn and worked it in cotton.
No faintest accent of intelligence disturbed the blur of his vacant
features, and he got along very comfortably without a chin. But Mellie
could depend upon the loyalty of this lank, tow-headed product of the
bayous even if she could not upon his wisdom. Her letter to the editor
made verbal explanations unnecessary.
Buck was delighted to oblige her, and he swore himself to secrecy with
an air of conspiracy so patent that the contorted winks he attempted just
before setting out threatened to disclose everything to Mrs. Chunn.
“What in time’s ailin’ with yo’, Buck Drumley?” demanded the widow.
Buck’s jaw fell. It was Mellie who suggested neuralgia.
“Tha’s hit, Miz Chunn, this yere neuralgatism. Hit keeps a-devilin’
around me wuss’n toothache.”
He had to take half a cup full of vile tasting “yarb” medicine, but he
got away at last with his secret still undivulged. Fifty yards away
he slewed round in his seat to call back with a fatuous smile, “I’ll
sho’ly be back by evenin’, Miss Mellie—three o’clock at the furdest.”
Fortunately Mrs. Chunn had returned to her soapmaking at the back door.
Mellie took the precaution to meet her messenger down the road lest
he should blow up prematurely with his information in the presence of
her stepmother. Buck fished, with much difficulty, a slip of paper and
a quarter from the pocket of his jeans. The girl selected them from a
promiscuous collection of buttons, strings, peppermints and chewing
tobacco.
“This yere’s the place where Jed lives, leastways he useter,” pointing to
the address on the slip—“’n it didn’t cost but six bits to put the piece
in the paper. Hit’s done fixed to go ever week for a month.”
When Buck next went to town he carried with him a letter addressed to Jed
Wilson, 99 Ranch, What Cheer, Texas. A copy of the _Beebee Bee_ came back
in his pocket. Mellie hid the paper hurriedly, and waited to look at it
till she could get away to the shadows of the hickory lead at the edge of
the bayou.
Among the advertisements she found what she was seeking. A chance copy of
a New York paper, flung from a train window by a traveling man, had given
her a model for her first appearance in type.
“If this should meet the eye of Jed he will know that the girl who
hunted ’possums with him six years ago is in great need.”
Hughey pushed his curious wooing persistently. Nearly every evening now
he squirted tobacco juice from the porch and bragged of himself and his
possessions at Mellie _via_ Mrs. Chunn. His greedy, cruel smile filled
the girl with a sick fear. Divining the repulsion he inspired in her,
he offered no chance to give expression to it. That the pressure of her
environment would wear out her will he was confident, and he could afford
to wait till he was sure before he punished her for her detestation of
him. But he scored it up against her none the less.
His approaches were no more obtrusive than those of a spider, but they
were just as certain. Mellie felt herself being taken for granted. He
said no word of love and asked none of the privileges usually accorded
the successful wooer. None the less he obsessed her every waking moment.
She was never oblivious of the encroaching web he spun about her. The
time came when he and Mrs. Chunn could discuss before her the details of
his marriage to her without spoken protest on her part. She sat in an
unconsenting silence that became passionate protest when she was alone
with her stepmother.
But she knew that she fluttered in vain and that every passing week
brought her nearer the inevitable sacrifice. If she could only die—but
it takes more than a breaking heart to kill a healthy young woman! Her
misery could steal the roses from her cheeks, could keep her tossing
through the long nights in an agony of sleepless horror, but in the
daytime she dragged herself listlessly about her work as usual.
“Mose ’lows he won’t be yere to-night. He’s done gone to Beebee,” Mrs.
Chunn explained one evening.
Mellie faintly sighed her relief.
Mrs. Chunn laid her string of peppers on the table and began on another.
She was watching the girl without appearing to do so. “Ain’t you-all
keerin’ what fer he’s gone?”
Her stepdaughter’s hands fell into her lap. She looked up with a face out
of which the color had been suddenly driven.
“Yo’ gump, he’s aimin’ to git the license to-morrow.”
Everything went black before Mellie’s eyes. She caught at the arms of the
rocking chair and gripped them desperately. Presently the blood beat back
to her heart.
Mrs. Chunn’s dry voice—miles away in the haze—came to her distantly.
“’N’s I say, a gyurl that gits fohty acres of good Arkinsaw bottom land
with her man is mighty lucky. I reckon I done mighty well by you-all,
Mellie. Yo’ hadn’t ought to be so ill and ongrateful.”
Mellie hurried out into the quiet night. She was stifling, oppressed by a
deadly choking at her throat. She fled through the slashed field, as if
driven by some impotent instinct to attempt escape from the evil fate.
Habit led her to the big tree in the hickory lead where she and Jed used
to play. Her despair was long past tears. She could only lean her head
against the bark and give herself to long, dry sobbing till her passion
of self-pity had spent itself.
Not till the man was almost beside her did she hear the approaching
footsteps deadened by the soft carpet of moss. Wheeling, she stood poised
for flight, an arrested picture of youth far gone in grief.
Then, “Jed!” she cried, and he, “Mel!”
It was too good to be true. The girl’s voice quavered her doubt.
“Is it really you, Jed?”
“Hit shorely is, Mel. I seen yo’ advertisement three days ago in an old
paper. I be’n away off on the roundup and jest got back. Co’se I burnt
the wind back to help you-all out. I seen someone slippin’ acrost the
slash an’ I suspicioned it might be my little sis Mellie.”
She began to sob. “Oh, Jed, yo’ don’t know haow bad I be’n feelin’! Yo’
can’t think haow often I be’n wishin’ I was dead!”
His indolent, good-looking face took on the dark expression she had seen
only once or twice.
“If anybody’s done you-all any meanness, sis—”
The blood surged into her cheeks. “Maw’s bound an’ ’termined that I’ll
ma’ie Mose Hughey. He’s gittin’ the license to-day.”
“Mose Hughey?” The loose, graceful Southern figure stiffened. “Maw must
be crazy!”
“He’s be’n a-pesterin’ me fer nea’ly two months—an’ I hate him wuss than
a rattlesnake,” she flamed.
“He won’t pester yo’ any more, sis,” said Jed grimly, and laid a
caressing arm across her shoulders.
Mellie moved out of the shadows into the moonlight and instantly Jed’s
arm fell to his side. He stared at her in dumb surprise. The thin,
awkward child of angles he had left had gone forever, and in her place
stood a graceful creature of pliant curves. Never had he seen so sweet
and lovable a face as the one upturned to him with such frank confidence.
No need to question his heart. He had loved her as a child, as a woman
he loved her still. That first, long look surprised the truth from them
both, made it clear first to themselves and then to each other.
* * * * *
Mrs. Chunn came out from the wide gallery to the porch and peered into
the night. Two figures were moving slowly toward the house along the
cedar shadowed path.
“Mellie, is that you?”
“Yes, Maw.”
“Who’s that with you?”
“It’s me, Mother. I’ve come home—to stay.”
A sudden joy flashed into the hard eyes of the mother, but she instantly
hid her tenderness as if it had been a vice.
“Hit’s time,” was her grim comment.
He kissed her gaily. “That’s what I thought, Mother.”
“Did Mellie tell you-all that she’s a-goin’ to git married to-morrow?”
“Yes, we be’n talkin’ about it.”
“She’s a-gittin’ a good man,” defiantly.
Jed laughed. “He ain’t good enough fer her.”
“Don’t yo’ put sech notions in her head,” his mother told him sharply.
“No, Maw,” answered Jed with unwonted humility. “Co’se I want her to
think she gits a good man when she gits me.”
Mrs. Chunn’s beady eyes fastened on him. Instantly she recognized a
defeat that was sweeter than victory, but she was not yet prepared to
admit it. “Oh, she gits you-all, does she? Well, I ’low she don’t git
much ’f yo’ don’t make a better husban’ than yo’ do a son.”
She turned on her heel and went into the house without more words.
Another woman stood first with her boy now. Her jealousy was bitter.
But it was for the moment only, and beneath it was to grow a deep
satisfaction that Jed had at last come to anchorage near her.
Mellie followed her timidly into the house. She found her stepmother
stringing peppers with an impassive face. Kneeling down beside the older
woman, she slipped an arm round her.
“I jes’ cu’dn’t help loving Jed, Maw. I reckon I always have, but I
didn’t know hit till I seen him so sudden-like in the hickory lead.
We’uns are goin’ to be good child’en to you-all and obedient.”
Mrs. Chunn gave a parched little laugh. “Yes, hit looks like it.”
An impressionist’s sketch of a smile touched Mellie’s lips.
“I done like yo’ said. I got a man, Maw.”
[Illustration]
[Illustration: With Bob Taylor]
SENTIMENT AND STORY
In an article accredited to my pen, in the December number of this
magazine, the types had me telling a curious tale of the singing of a
whippoorwill, on a certain joyous night in the blessed Christmas of the
sweet long ago, and the question is raised by certain ornithological
experts whether that doleful bird does its warblings in the winter. It is
best to copy what the _Washington Herald_ says under the heading:
“SWEET BELLS OUT OF TUNE.”
Senator-elect Robert Love Taylor in one of his famous lectures
describes Christmas in the mountains of his native state, and
says:
“When I was a young man in my teens and twenties, the Christmas
season was the brightest of the year. I used to take my fiddle
under my arm at evening, when the whippoorwill began to
sing and the stars began to twinkle, and hie me away to the
merrymakings in the mountains.”
To this statement the _Nashville American_ takes exception, and
declares that no one ever heard a whippoorwill singing in the
mountains of Tennessee during the latter part of December. The
_American_ hints that Mr. Taylor has tuned his instrument to an
unheard-of pitch, and that the music he makes is discordant and
badly out of gear.
This treason right at the future Senator’s very front door is
hard for outsiders to understand. It is very much to be feared
that the _American_ has failed to measure fully up to the
opportunities offered for intimate personal relations with the
foremost fiddler of the age. Perhaps the _American_ never heard
a whippoorwill singing in December, but that does not prove
that “Bob” Taylor hasn’t. Where “Bob” Taylor is, there, also,
are the whippoorwills, the mockingbirds, the catbirds, and all
the sweet and soulful singers known to Dixieland. It matters
not the season, nor the hour, we take it. Song birds hover ever
in his wake, and music hangs upon the lightest trembling of his
bow. Flowers have their hours to fade, and the sun has its time
to set, but for “Bob” Taylor’s fiddle, all hours and times are
the same.
But even were it possible to believe that whippoorwills came
not to the melodious pleadings of his bow, as a matter of
cold and prosaic fact, nevertheless, by reason of the license
granted all poets, this music master of the hills and dales of
Tennessee would still have the right to claim their presence.
Why should the _American_ be captious about a little thing like
that; especially when the sentimental nature of the state’s
favorite son is so inevitably interwoven with the warp and woof
of the argument? A prophet may be without honor save in his own
country, but a fiddler of “Bob” Taylor’s fame deserves loyalty
and cordial praise from all.
Let the _American_ cease from troubling, and concede that the
Senator-to-be has “rings on his fingers and bells on his toes,
and that he shall have music wherever he goes!”
It must be remembered, at the very outset of this discussion, that the
incident happened in the days of my callow youth, when all sorts of
melodies and things were buzzing in my head, and life itself was one
sweet song of tuneful melody; that I was in love and had a fiddle under
my arm, alone in a moonlit mountain cove on my way to a dance, with a
heart throbbing in happy expectancy. It was just at this excruciatingly
delightful junction that the twittering occurred which constitutes the
bone of this contention (if a twitter can be called a bone) and to that
I deem it important to add some observations by way of explanation,
refutation, and extenuation.
Observe, no man has ever heard me say that it was in the nature of a
whippoorwill to sing at any season, but if one lone bird upon a frozen
limb away up the mountain gorge in the dead silence of a moonlit winter’s
night, should choose to violate its nature and change its graveyard
croakings into purling song in harmony with the melodies so sweetly and
vociferously vibrating in the heart of its lone, love-lorn auditor,
where is the harm? My critics limit their denial to the time of year,
and I call my biographers’ attention to the implied admission that the
whippoorwill _does_ sing at some other season. I leave them suspended
upon the horns of this dilemma of their own brewing (horns are sometimes
brewed) and bid them extricate themselves if they can, for I shall not
lend a hand, while I pass on to graver meditations.
That there were sweet and heavenly harmonies hovering and quavering in
that mountain cove that ever-blessed night in the happy long ago, is
certain, but whence came they? Was it really the whippoorwill? And even
if it were, and its song was of that doleful, screeching soul-rending
stridulance that startles ghosts and gives haunts the creeps was it not
sweet music to the only ear that heard it?
Might it not have been the soul of the fiddle stirred by a mountain
breeze to life, getting itself in tune with the frantic transports of the
heart against which it lay? They say a soundpost sometimes comes to life,
and that all the tuneful sprites that burrow and buzz in the vibrant
caverns of a fiddle are set a-humming and a-thrumming when Cupid peeps in
at the slit. Who can tell but that this might have been the mellifluous
sound that ravished my ear then and is raising such a hullabulloo now?
That there was heavenly music in the air that night I take it none will
dare dispute, and that the heart of that care-free swain trudging up the
echoless cove to swing corners with love the live-long night and lave and
slosh his soul in rapturous revels, was tuned to catch its faintest twang
and magnify into pealing orchestras of roaring symphonies, and whooping,
heavenly harmonies, all living souls will surely admit. What wonder then,
that in the tumultuous union of chromatic confusion, when all the lyrics
were raving mad with ecstasy, that the croaking of a whippoorwill might
have been taken for an angel’s harp or the twittering of a catbird?
Thus much for speculation! Thus much in tribute to the harmonies! And
now I come to hurl the cold truth slap into the faces of my critics and
bid them make the most of it!
The types did do me wrong, aided by some unmeant pencil slip along the
line between this cushioned sanctum and the cobwebbed den where sits and
broods and rends his hair, a careworn proofreader with genius in his
dreamy eye and smut upon his classic nose. What I did write was changed,
transmogrified, warped, varied, and subverted.
I mentioned not the whippoorwill. I never heard one sing then, since,
or before; at any season, time, or place. I heard a ravishing song that
might have wrought my very soul to ecstasy, but as plain as pen can make
it, I wrote it then and there, “raccoon.”
* * * * *
I am a King. My realm hath no boundary lines; the world is my kingdom. I
stamp my foot upon the earth and jostle the universe. The sun gives light
for my pleasure, and the timid stars tremble in my presence. The oceans
are my highways, and the mountains are my temples on whose purple domes I
love to stand and throw kisses at the angels, or look down and view with
rapture, the peaceful flocks that graze and sleep on a thousand sunny
hillsides. All the fruited and flowered landscapes that swing between the
seas are my royal hanging gardens, and I walk in the glow of their glory,
and rest in the gloam of their sweet solitudes. All the springs that
bubble there are mine, and all the bright streams that leap from cliff to
crag, and from crag to shadowy gorge are my wandering minstrels singing
to me of flowers born to blush unseen, and speckled trout that glint and
glance in a thousand brimming pools. All the wild deer that spring from
shady copse and tangled coverts at the sound of the hunter’s horn are
my imperial game, and for my princely sport. The sly old fox in his red
uniform gaily leads the royal band, and plays drum major for my bellowing
hounds and for me. The glossy herds come lowing from green pastures,
fragrant with the breath of clover blossoms, burdened with milk for me,
and the bees sweeten my lips with honey, stolen from the lips of the
flowers. The hills unfold their purple mysteries to herald my glory, and
the valleys flaunt their banners of gold and shout, “Long live the King!”
I love to while away the dreamy summer hours in the cool, green groves
that curtain the glimmering fields, where all the joyous wings that brush
the air come fluttering to my leafy bowers, and all the birds that sing
warble their sweetest notes for me.
I am a King. I dwell in the palace of love, by the brawling brook of
laughter, on the brink of the river of song. And so are all the sons
and daughters of Adam equal Kings and Queens with me, whose hearts beat
time to nature’s music, and whose souls are in love with the beautiful.
There is a crown of sunshine for every brow by day; a coronet of stars
by night. The angels of light hover above us all, and arch the heavens
with the rainbow of hope for all, and bring from the vapory vineyards
of the clouds, the sparkling champagne of pure crystal water to bless
the lips of all. All the delightful dreams that spread their wings above
the horizon of the heart, all the glorious thoughts that fly out from
the heaven of the brain, all the jubilees of joy that crowd the circling
hours of mortal life are the regal gifts of God to mankind—the royal
heritage of all. There are songs sweeter than were ever sung; there is
beauty which defies even the brush of a Raphael, for you and for me, and
for us all.
* * * * *
On May 13, 1607, three boats anchored off a peninsula which jutted into
Powhatan’s River, and there set up a stockaded place of defence, which
they called James Fort. One hundred and five settlers were left by the
ships; among these was John Smith, a wonderful genius and adventurer, a
man destined to carry the infant colony through perilous trials.
Smith and his men and those who followed them made out of the fort a
town which they called James City, and later Jamestown. From Jamestown
grew Virginia, and from Virginia, these United States.
The Jamestown Ter-Centennial Exposition will celebrate from the last of
April to the last of November, the three hundredth anniversary of the
nation’s nativity. The beautiful waters and the historic shores will
witness a magnificent tribute to those faithful pioneers who with their
energies, aye with their very life-blood, laid the foundation of our
greatness.
It will be impossible to fail of gaining information by a visit to the
Exposition, it matters not what the extent of a man’s knowledge may
be. Every department of our national government will be represented in
miniature, complete in every detail. Every state will be represented by
a reproduction of some building connected with its formative history,
and the whole will form an object lesson in the history and development
of our country that will surpass any means of teaching and interest ever
before seen. Nearly every state in the Union is already at work upon its
special buildings, and of the Southern states, all (at this writing)
have commenced work except Mississippi, Texas, Alabama and Tennessee. It
is certain that these states will fall into line and their respective
legislatures ought not to fail to make immediate appropriations in order
that the work may be worthily and adequately completed by the opening
of the Exposition. Some of the states whose legislatures could not be
awakened to sufficient patriotic pride to make an appropriation, have
made up a fund by the efforts of their public-spirited citizens, but
Tennessee will not need to resort to such methods. The Volunteer State,
whose affiliations with Virginia, both in past history and in present
commercial development are of the closest, will not fail to help make
this enterprise a shining success. In view of the abundance of her
resources she cannot afford not to make a showing of her phenomenal
growth from a struggling and neglected mountain settlement to her
present proud position among the galaxy of states. We have contributed
leaders and men, and the bone and sinews for every movement which has
resulted in our national progress and our supplies for future development
are unrivalled and inexhaustible, and we cannot afford to be absent when
the showing of the states is made.
THE PARADISE OF FOOLS
PART XI
I sat in a great theater at the National Capital. It was thronged with
youth, and beauty, old age, and wisdom. I saw a man, the image of his
God, stand upon the stage, and I heard him speak. His gestures were the
perfection of grace; his voice was music, and his language was more
beautiful than I had ever heard from mortal lips. He painted picture
after picture of the pleasures, and joys, and sympathies, of home. He
enthroned love and preached the gospel of humanity like an angel. Then
I saw him dip his brush in ink, and blot out the beautiful picture he
had painted. I saw him stab love dead at his feet. I saw him blot out
the stars and the sun, and leave humanity and the universe in eternal
darkness, and eternal death. I saw him like the serpent of old, worm
himself into the paradise of human hearts, and by his seductive eloquence
and the subtle devices of his sophistry, inject his fatal venom, under
whose blight its flowers faded, its music was hushed, its sunshine was
darkened, and the soul was left a desert waste, with only the new-made
graves of faith and hope. I saw him, like a lawless, erratic meteor
without an orbit, sweep across the intellectual sky, brilliant only in
his self-consuming fire, generated by friction with the indestructible
and eternal truths of God.
That man was the archangel of modern infidelity; and I said: How true is
holy writ which declares, “the fool hath said in his heart, there is no
God.”
Tell me not, O Infidel, there is no God, no Heaven, no Hell!
“A solemn murmur in the soul tells of a world to be,
As travelers hear the billows roll before they reach the sea.”
Tell me not, O Infidel, there is no risen Christ!
When every earthly hope hath fled,
When angry seas their billows fling,
How sweet to lean on what He said,
How firmly to His cross we cling!
It is in the desert of evil, where virtue trembles to tread, where hope
falters, and where faith is crucified, that the infidel dreams. To him,
all there is of heaven is bounded by this little span of life; all there
is of pleasure and love is circumscribed by a few fleeting years; all
there is of beauty is mortal; all there is of intelligence and wisdom is
in the human brain; all there is of mystery and infinity is fathomable
by human reason, and all there is of virtue is measured by the relations
of man to man. To him, all must end in the “tongueless silence of the
dreamless dust,” and all that lies beyond the grave is a voiceless shore
and a starless sky. To him, there are no prints of deathless feet on its
echoless sands, no thrill of immortal music in its joyless air.
He has lost his God, and like some fallen seraph flying in rayless night,
he gropes his way on flagging pinions, searching for light where darkness
reigns, for life where death is king.
What intelligence less than God could fashion the human body? What motive
power is it, if it is not God, that drives that throbbing engine, the
human heart, with ceaseless, tireless stroke, sending the crimson streams
of life bounding and circling through every vein and artery? Whence,
and what, if not of God, is this mystery we call the mind? What is this
mystery we call the soul? What is it that thinks and feels and knows
and acts? Oh, who can comprehend, who can deny, the Divinity that stirs
within us!
I have wondered a thousand times if an infidel ever looked through a
telescope. There is our mighty sun, robed in the brightness of his
eternal fires, and with his planets forever wheeling around him. Yonder
twinkle Mercury and Venus, and there is Mars, the ruddy globe whose poles
are white with snow and whose other zones seem dotted with seas and
continents. Who knows but that his roseate color is only the blush of
his flowers? Who knows but that Mars may now be a paradise inhabited by
a blessed race, unsullied by sin, untouched by death? There is the giant
orb of Jupiter, the champion of the skies, belted and sashed with vapor
and clouds; and Saturn, haloed with bands of light and jeweled with eight
ruddy moons; and there is Uranus, another stupendous world, speeding on
in the prodigious circle of his tireless journey around the sun. And
yet another orbit cuts the outer rim of our system, and on his lonely
pathway the gloomy Neptune walks the cold, dim solitudes of space. In
the immeasurable depths beyond appear millions of suns, so distant that
their light could not reach us in a thousand years. There, spangling the
curtain of the black profundity, shine the constellations that sparkle
like the crown jewels of God. There are double and triple and quadruple
suns of different colors, commingling their gorgeous hues and flaming
like archangels on the frontier of stellar space. If we look beyond the
most distant star the black walls are flecked with innumerable patches
of filmy light like the dewy gossamers of the spider’s loom that dot our
fields at morn. What beautiful forms we trace among those phantoms of
light! Circles, ellipses, crowns, shields and spiral wreaths of palest
silver. And what are they? Did I say phantoms of light? The telescope
resolves them into millions of suns, standing out from the oceans of
white-hot matter that contain the germs of countless systems yet to be.
And so far removed from us are these suns that the light which comes
to us from them to-day has been speeding on its way for more than two
million years.
What is that white belt we call the Milky Way, which spans the heavens
and sparkles like a Sahara of diamonds? It is a river of stars, it is
a Gulf Stream of suns; and if each of these suns holds in his grasp a
mighty system of planets, as ours does, how many multiplied millions of
worlds like our own are now circling in that innumerable concourse?
Oh, where are the bounds of this divine conception? Where ends this
dream of God? And is there no life or intelligence in all this throng of
spheres? Are there no sails on those far-away summer seas, no wings to
cleave that crystal air, no forms divine to walk those radiant fields?
Are there no eyes to see those floods of light, no hearts to share with
ours that love which holds all these mighty orbs in place?
It cannot be! It cannot be! There is a God! “The heavens declare His
glory and the firmament showeth His handiwork.”
[Illustration]
[Illustration: With Trotwood]
WHEN I WAKE UP IN THE MORNING
When I wake up in the mornin’, in the laughin’, smilin’ mornin’,
With my soul keyed like a fiddle an’ my heart keyed like a lute,
An’ memory-maids come trippin’, an’ a-slidin’ an’ a-slippin’,
An’ floodin’ all my heart house with the faint notes of their flute—
Then my lips jus’ longs to utter little songs that kind o’ flutter
’Round the earthly cage that coops them, an’ would fly up in the light,
An’ to my soul a-yearnin’, little firefly thoughts come burnin’
An’ bringin’ spirit-lanterns that would lead it out of night—
When I wake up in the mornin’.
When I wake up in the mornin’, in that solemn, silent mornin’,
After long, long years of slumber, an’ long, long years of sleep,
When my spirit’s bird has rested in the heavenly air it breasted
An’ its golden pinions tested for their flight across the Deep—
Lord, I know my soul will flutter up to heaven, an’ will utter
In a clearer note the songs it only tried to sing below;
An’ these fitful, fiery flashes from the pale hope of my ashes
Will be altars of star incense in the glory of Thy glow—
When I wake up in the mornin’.
_John Trotwood Moore._
TWO NOVELS OF THE YEAR
I read two novels by two women not long ago. I believe I should say what
my critical deductions were:
Too many novels are a dangerous thing and two a year are pabulum enough
for a man. For men must fight the life around them. Women may dream,
thank God, and right beautifully do they dream.
These novels were “The Awakening of Helena Richie,” by our country-woman,
Mrs. Margaret Deland, and “Fenwick’s Career,” by Mrs. Humphry Ward, an
Englishwoman. There are two kinds of writers: one is retrospective and
gets his food from without—absorbs from what is seen, heard, copied;
what others say and do; creates, but the creation is imitative; there is
lacking the great, broad highway of initiatory genius. It may be clever
but it is never genius—versatile, but never great.
The other is introspective—grows from within. The best definition of it,
is, I love to think, _God-given_; and its genius is limited only to what
God has put there in the beginning. It copies from no man—it is Master.
Its flow is limitless, like the great tides of the greater ocean, and,
like them, it grows as it goes. It does nothing twice the same way—every
book is different, every poem, every mood.
For books and poems are merely the moods of Genius.
There is no place in literature for the practical, the poised, the
balanced, the consistent, the saving, the so-called sound men and women
of the world. To these God gave the all-sufficient talent of taking care
of themselves. To Genius he gave the greater gift of caring for all
humanity.
“Helena Richie” is introspective. “Fenwick’s Career” is retrospective,
and between them is a gulf boundless.
Woman, by nature, writes the spiritual novel. Men write the novels which
_do_.
Neither of the novels above, in the man-sense, _do_. Because they were
not written by men.
Compare “The Awakening of Helena Richie” with “The Scarlet Letter.”
Hawthorne’s woman and her preacher _did things_—people did things all
through his masterpiece. And they reaped all the infamy and anguish of
it—the illegitimate child, the pillory—death. And yet Hester Prynne and
her preacher-lover had more excuse for their real wrong-doing than the
business love-pair who set up their convenient and quasi establishment
in the village of Dr. Lavendar. For the Puritan people had the excuse of
youth—of passion—and the greater man-excuse of nature and by them called
_nature-given_. But they forget that since the beginning God has been
improving on nature. Helena and her lover merely played with passion; the
others were passion. In Mrs. Deland’s people the fires were out—it was a
weak, sordid, dissatisfied, half revengeful spoiled child determination
to be naughty for naughty’s sake. They were a materialistic pair of
polite adulterers, doing no harm to society, for they left no scarlet
track, and none to themselves, for they were incapable of being hurt.
No man writer would care to have picked up their miserable and naughty
little affair; and instead of ending as it did, they might as well have
been permitted to go on into the society of some city near them among
those of their kind and claimed they had been married.
And not a gossiper of their set, had she found it out, would have gone
two blocks to tell it to another.
Mrs. Deland is not Hawthorne, it is true, but she is great—her novel is
great. It is introspective, virile, uplifting, beautiful. Some of its
characterization is superb and one of its characters, that of the old
man who _knew things_, who spotted character when he smelt it as a setter
dog the unseen quail, is the best drawn of any book of the year. The
idiosyncratic mood of the author—the only mood by which genius may be
known—for it alone makes clear the line between man and men—that cosmic
idiosyncratic insolence which stamps individual authorship—if it be real
authorship—in this, no woman writer of the year has approached her.
In the glow of the warmth of this house of her soul genius, “The House
of Mirth” is a brilliant ice-castle in the Klondike, and “A Fighting
Chance,” that mongrel thing brought to life by the union of “Lady Rose’s
Daughter” and “The House of Mirth”—a thing so clearly marked in its
genealogy that one can easily trace each separate lineament of its doughy
countenance to either parent who is responsible for its existence—this
thing of cigarette-smoking, russet-legged quail-hunting, burning women,
and drunken, lewd-doped society adulterers with not a real man or woman
in its pages, is the Dakota sod-hut of novel houses.
But if “Helena Richie” suffers in comparison with its great prototype,
Mrs. Ward’s book is wiped off the map. In her book nobody does anything
and the years of marvelous anguish they go through doing it should give
the sweet-sixteen readers who glory in it enough sniffle-nose sufferings
to last them till next vacation.
This author glories in heroines a little off-color in their moral make-up
with an over-weening desire to do something naughty but never game enough
to score down to it. We would love every silly one of them more had they
sinned and been sorry. For the sack-clothed sins of real men and women
add most to their growth and bigness.
OUR SINS MAKE US.
Mrs. Ward’s books are all alike, with a little variation in plot and
people. She cannot get away from the illegitimate cross in her moral
pedigree. Her people are oftener paste-boards, her characters the
half-harmonized personalities of incongruous vaporings and she has made
her literary fame and money on the sad but decadent frailty of that
large, honest, well-meaning, but common lot of us who “do dearly love a
lord.”
And these are my deductions: Between Mrs. Deland’s and Mrs. Ward’s
novels have we not greater geniuses at home? And between the unspeakable
Castellane and Marlborough—haven’t we—honest now, ladies! better husbands
here?
JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE.
WHAT CONSTITUTES A SURPRISE
Trotwood loves to take as well as to give and the following letter is too
rich to go into any waste basket. I do not know the writer, but it has
been sent by an esteemed friend, a colonel of an Ohio regiment who was
on the firing line at Shiloh, the letter having been written to him by a
comrade now living in California. Of him our correspondent writes:
“He spent four years in the Civil War, and when he came home to Ohio at
the termination of the war he was not yet old enough to vote.” But here
is his letter:
“My dear Colonel: I am enjoying every inch of the text work in
_Trotwood’s_—and especially that part that deals with the blue and gray
paladins that wrestled for a time on the flanges of hell—in order to
become better _acquainted_.
“Sometime, when you meet our friend Trotwood, tell him you once knew a
trembling country boy, with calliper legs, who enlisted in the earliest
earlies, and really thought for a time that he was a quarter section of
Mars, until he hit Shiloh—and he has never fully recovered confidence
in himself since. Even to this day, that boy needs no map of the ‘high
places’ between Shiloh Church and the river bluffs. If there was a
_sunken road_, it was so far below the level of the chain of pinnacles
that youngster made use of in ‘promoting’ distance between _section_
lines, that he only knows of it by hearsay and tradition, and that vortex
called the ‘Hornet’s Nest’ was omnipresent in that lad’s ears until the
following June. So far as that youth remembers, the “Purdy Road” only had
_one end_ leading in a bee-line to the steamboat landing, and he well
remembers that large stocks of cannon balls were bursting in job lots as
he crossed that open furnace known as the ‘Jones Field.’ For a number
of days after the carnage at Shiloh this stripling of the tented field
had no appetite for the ordinary rations, and it is doubtful if the best
vaudeville extant could have made him sit up and take notice. He was
much like Artemus Ward’s baby bear that straddled a buzz saw—_willing
to quit_. Printer’s ink has been ladled out by the pailful to show that
Shiloh was not a surprise; but the young truthful James of this sketch
says that it was a ‘23’ for him—a powder and ball—before-breakfast
surprise, accompanied by demoniacal yells that frayed the atmosphere and
loosened the tent-pins of Sherman’s entire lines. If the loss of tents,
luggage, arms, munitions, keepsakes, love letters, confidence, pride
and self-respect was not enough to constitute evidences of a full-grown
surprise, there was certainly nothing additional to throw in _unless it
might be the epiglottis and the back teeth_. The youthful scion of this
preachment says he has no doubt but the worthy men who wore the gray
have had many a hearty laugh at the Herculean efforts of the North to
show that Shiloh was not a surprise. Apropos of this, we are reminded of
Len Wardlow, who was hurled from a sixth-story apartment during the San
Francisco earthquake and lit in fifteen feet of water in an open cistern;
Len says he was not one whit surprised, but for a very few minutes he was
d—d badly startled.
“About the best definition of a ‘surprise’ is that it’s the unexpected;
now, if, to drop into the language of Old Wash, our hosts, Grant and
Sherman wuz expectin’ Deacons Johnsing and Booragard to come over real
airly on dat Sunday mornin’ bringin’ dar Hornet’s Nests and bloody
anglers erlong wid em, why in de name ob common eruptions didn’t dey fix
for em? Put de house in order, have de different parts layin’ on de music
rack and put all de perrotecknix whar de performers could stick er match
to ’em? Stid ob dat, we all was a-actin’ as if no visitors was gwine
to call on us dat Sunday mornin’ sure enough! Kase Grant was trimmin’
his korns way down at Savannah and Sharmin had put on no biled shirt to
welcome de visitors. Ebber since dat Shiloh reception de rank and file,
de real workers, hab all s’posed dat dey was sartinly not fixed for de
influx ob callers—and ’specially not so tarnal airly. But de leaders,
dem as was not dar to hear de knockin’ on de front door, and usher in
Brer Johnsing, hab all erlong said dat de kyards had been out and de
punch hole a simmerin’ for jist sech a quiltin’ and we are willin’ to
’serverate de leaders ought to know.”
TWO WOMEN AND A HORSE
Dear Trotwood: Knowing your fondness for satirizing women who drive
horses, I am sending you this little true bill.
I was riding along the other week near a small city when a hard shower
came up suddenly. Just before me I noticed two ladies driving a very
spirited horse to a buggy. They were evidently just from the town.
Instead of putting up the buggy top or drawing out the rain cloth when
the shower came up, they each gave a little feminine shriek and both
grabbed at once an umbrella, paying no attention whatever to the lines,
and bent way over holding it over the rear end of the horse, the rain
pouring down on them all the time. I followed them, looking on in
amazement—there they were bending over the dashboard catching a hard
rain on their graceful backs and well-fitting, new gowns and holding an
umbrella half way over the southern half of a horse who was going along
well enough and perfectly indifferent to the weather. For a mile they
drove thus, and I followed, wondering. Finally, as I rode up to them, my
curiosity was so great that I asked:
“Ladies, pardon me, but will you tell me why you are holding that
umbrella over your horse and not protecting yourselves?”
“Why—yes,” one of them faltered, “we are scared nearly to death. You see,
it is a hired horse, and we don’t know much about him, and when we hired
him the liveryman told us to be very careful not to let him get the rain
under his tail or he would kick us out and run away!”
C. R.
LITTLE MISS FIDDLE
Dar now, Banjo!—t’ek yo’ sign in,—
Let Miss Fiddle sing her song.
O my h’art—I’m jes’ a pinin’—
Come, Miss Fiddle, come along—
Wid yo’ gleam of sun in show’rs,
Nights so sweet an’ days so ca’mful—
Wid yo’ birds an’ bees an’ flowers,
Fetchin’ music by de armful!
_John Trotwood Moore._
SAMUEL SPENCER AS A FACTOR IN NATIONAL AFFAIRS
By Ismay Dooly
In the office of the general counsel of the Southern Railroad in
Washington is a frame containing a newspaper article relative to a recent
railroad trial, wherein the case was one of national import.
An incident described in the article relates to that lion of financial
power, Pierpont Morgan, who, after he had given sworn testimony of vital
importance, was asked if he gave the facts of his own knowledge.
“No,” was the reply, “not on my own knowledge, but the information was
given to me by Samuel Spencer, and I would swear to anything he stated as
a fact.”
This single tribute to the accuracy of the late Samuel Spencer, president
of the Southern Railway, who was one of the greatest men the South has
given to the nation’s productive machinery, illustrates but one of the
many qualities of a man who for the past ten years has been among the
foremost in the public eye of the republic.
He was a man whose career in public and private life was the expression
of an accuracy proceeding not alone from a sense of truth and justice,
but from a thorough and proficient knowledge of any subject of which he
was in any way the exponent.
He was the highly educated man, whose mental and almost instantaneous
grasp of people and things was demonstrated in an adaptability that
served him in every relation and situation.
He possessed as well a wonderful power of perspective—the power to
discriminate between the worthy and the little things, and to economize
and conserve his forces, to that extent when he was equal to direct
action whenever the occasion demanded. Poise and balance completed his
equipment for a life of great action.
LOYALTY TO SOUTHERN INTERESTS
He was one of the most successful railroad men and promoters of
industrial institutions in the South, and one who, from the first days of
his public career, has justly and fully presented the claims of the South
in her higher achievement along every line.
In his splendid leadership of movements entrusted to his guidance he
quickly demonstrated the ability expressive, not alone of his loyalty
to the interests of the South, but his broader aspiration that these
interests become national, and become so a part of the forces upon which
the nation as a whole would find a common interest, that he became one of
the men looked to by his fellow countrymen to solve the great problems of
our complex twentieth century activities.
The expression of this broader aspiration by which he made the
interests of his section the interests of the nation illustrated one
of the essential principles of the highly evolved man—the constructive
principle—the one that draws man to the building up of big movements that
the smaller ones may be inspired to grow and become a part.
HIS NATIONAL SPIRIT
That Mr. Spencer was an exponent of this spirit was given national
recognition in the responsibilities that have been thrust upon him, no
greater example of which could be given than in his part in the recent
rate bill agitation in the United States Congress. He was selected by
the railroad systems of the country as their representative before the
national body and was entrusted with the responsibilities of personally
presenting their side of the question.
[Illustration: SAMUEL SPENCER]
His ready appreciation of the influences necessary to bring to bear
upon the present status of problems in which certain forces of the
nation are retarded in their processes of solving has been seen in his
personal alliance with movements or organizations standing for peace and
arbitration and conciliatory measures.
He was an influential member of the National Civic Federation and his
opinions were no more highly regarded by the president, August Belmont,
than by the vice president, Samuel Gompers, the two men representing at
present the two great conflicting national interests of capital and labor.
A recent incident, widely discussed at the time when Mr. Spencer’s ready
appreciation and acceptance of justice, indicated his ability to assume
great responsibilities, was when the National Civic Federation was agreed
upon as the medium of arbitration in the machinists’ strike on the
Southern Railway system in Knoxville.
Mr. Spencer, as president of the Southern Railway, and other officials
of the road, including the vice president and general manager, met James
O’Connell, the president of the International Association of Machinists,
and the local officials of that organization concerned along the line.
The federation was represented by the chairman of the conciliation
committee, Hon. Seth Low; V. Everet Macy, a capitalist; Ralph M. Easley,
chairman of the executive council, and Samuel B. Donnelly, one of the
labor members representing the Typographical Union. This resulted in the
settlement of the controversy through an agreement reached by both sides
in conference.
POWER IN ORGANIZATION
In reference to the incident a member of the federation in discussing it
with a Georgian said:
“I must tell you of the fine impression made by your fellow Georgian,
Mr. Samuel Spencer, in the strong, impassioned address he made to the
labor representatives at the conciliation meeting. What he said was noble
and stirring, and the expressions of Mr. Samuel B. Donnelly, one of our
labor members representing his side of the controversy, and finally, the
decision of the presiding officer, Hon. Seth Low, the Civic Federation
representative, made the occasion one fully demonstrating the greatness
of the co-operative spirit for which the National Civic Federation stands
in uniting in its membership men representing the forces of the nation.”
These few incidents illustrate the appreciation with which Mr. Spencer
was held by men representing great national questions; the responsibility
thrown upon him by the railroads of the country as their representative
in the House of Congress; his readiness to assume the individual
responsibility thereof; his factorship in national organized effort are
many incidents that entitle him to a position of Napoleonic ascendency in
the history of railroad construction and development; to an everlasting
monument in the hearts of the people of his native Southland, and to
a position of national recognition among men standing for the highest
civilization making now the history of the twentieth century.
Mr. Spencer was born in Columbus, Georgia, in 1846. He went from the
military school of Marietta, Georgia, into the Civil War, and served
gallantly under General Forrest’s command. After the war he graduated
from the University of Georgia, and subsequently from the University of
Virginia.
Soon afterward he became interested in the construction work of Southern
railroads, and died president of one of the greatest railroad systems in
the world.
THE OBSTACLE
’Twas but a little thing that lay
Athwart my path that long-gone day,
And yet I weakly let it lie,—
Just turned aside and passed it by,
Nor thought what the result might be.
Then others came who saw my track,
But no one moved the hindrance back,
So they, too, stepped out on the sod;
And many a weary foot has trod
The devious way first traced by me.
We reach at last the self-same goal,
But oh! the heaviness of soul
That overwhelms me when I look
On those who chose the path I took.
Lord, from the burden make me free!
Nay, son; in weakness thou didst turn;
And ever those who duty spurn,
Who clear not obstacles away,
Who cause men from the right to stray,
The influence of their acts must see.
_Ida Louise Reveley._
[Illustration: BOOKS AND AUTHORS]
LILLIAN KENDRICK BYRN
WHISPERING SMITH. By Frank H. Spearman. New York: Chas. Scribner’s Sons.
Price, $1.50.
Although his previous books have shown Mr. Spearman as an observant
student of human nature, an excellent story teller and a literary artist
of ability, the reader who picks up “Whispering Smith” will lay it
down with the verdict that this character is a genuine contribution to
literature. Without departing from the rules of literary construction
Mr. Spearman has described scenes so far from hackneyed that they seem
absolutely new in every element of their creation. Whispering Smith is
a secret service agent for a Rocky Mountain railroad and his business
is to defend the enterprise against all sorts of enemies and rough and
lawless characters which abound in that region. He owes his sobriquet to
a certain softness of voice, to which he adds a simple, straightforward
and unaffected integrity. This is the principal character in the story,
beside the heroine, a breezy, yet thoroughly feminine girl brought up on
a ranch. The rest of the dramatis personae are the cowboys, railroad men,
bandits and other types characteristic of the frontier, all depicted to
the life by one who knows his subject.
RICH MEN’S CHILDREN. By Geraldine Bonner. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co.
Price, $1.50.
Miss Bonner’s previous California romances, “To-morrow’s Tangle” and
“The Pioneer,” have made for her a wide circle of readers. “Rich Men’s
Children” is even stronger and more thrilling in interest than its
predecessors. The conflicts of two generations and the bold passions of
the far West are delineated with courageous directness and dramatic
vigor. The whole story is absorbing and fascinating, yet the author does
not allow the reader to lose sight of the purpose, which is adhered to
with remarkable sincerity and fidelity.
THE HEART AND THE CROWN. By H. Rhea Woodman. New York and Washington:
Neale Publishing Co. Price, $1.25.
This little volume contains fifty-one sonnets, arranged under the
sub-titles of “The King’s Heart” and “The Queen’s Crown.” The two
themes love and grief, are treated with a sustained purity and artistic
restraint that will give this poetry high rank. The heart verses, of
which there are twenty-five, are passionate and tender, instinct with
deep feeling, vividly expressed. There are twenty-six of the crown
sonnets. These tell of a great sorrow, now expressed in rapid, incisive
words and now reiterated in graceful, musical measure. The volume is a
beautiful example of the bookmaker’s craft, in soft morocco binding,
highly ornamented with gold, deckle-edged, tinted paper, printed in two
colors.
THE VOICE OF THE THIRD GENERATION. By Henry Peck Fry. Chattanooga:
MacGowan-Cooke Printing Co. Price, 25 cents.
The author of this sketch, a prominent member of the Chattanooga bar, has
worked out a logical solution of the race problem, which he presents in
a clear and concise way to his readers. There have been many discussions
of this important question, but few which are so clearly and logically
expressed, so dispassionately proven and so well connected as Mr. Fry’s
views.
THE DISTRACTIONS OF MARTHA. By Marion Harland. New York: Chas. Scribner’s
Sons. Price, $1.50.
The publication of Mrs. Terhune’s last novel added a pleasant feature to
the celebration of the author’s golden wedding. An authority on household
matters of all kinds, this talented Virginian selected for her latest
theme the experiences of a newly married young couple, who move into a
little house in the suburbs and plunge at once into housekeeping. It is
the simplest kind of housekeeping, and yet to Martha—full of theories and
ideas as she is—it quickly becomes very complicated. Her struggles with
seemingly simple recipes, and the extraordinary food that is produced
by an apparently exact following of the rules, are told in a brightly
humorous way that is irresistible. Later, when increased prosperity
brings Martha face to face with the servant problem, her difficulties
are equally grave. The way in which she triumphs, however, will be an
inspiration to everyone struggling with the same difficulties.
DADDY’S DAUGHTERS. By Marion Ames Taggart. New York: Henry Holt & Co.
Price, $1.25.
“Daddy” is an amiable, patient, literary man, who, like many of his
kind, finds it difficult to make both ends meet. His four daughters
are distinct individualities, each with a separate charm, which is
brought into play in the course of the account of the family happenings.
Another family of girls, with three brothers, lives on the other side
of the garden hedge, and their joint excursions and adventures form the
incidents of this very readable juvenile.
POLLY OF THE PINES. By Adele E. Thompson. Boston: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard.
Price, $1.25.
Miss Thompson is notable among authors for the young for her
understanding of youthful character and the sustained interest of her
plots. Polly is a revolutionary heroine, a little rebel among the loyal
Scots of the Carolinas. She leaves her own home and finds refuge with an
uncle and does her best for the colonies. The ubiquitous Tarleton plays
the villain royalist and is completely outwitted when he encounters the
ready and brave little Polly.
ANIMAL SERIALS. By Edwarde Blaisdell. New York: T. Y. Crowell & Co.
Price, $1.
One of the most interesting of the nonsense jingles offered for the
holiday trade is “Animal Serials.” The rhymes are clever and amusing and
the illustrations are exceedingly apt. The humor in each so thoroughly
corresponds to the other that they can be appreciated by all youngsters.
THE SPIRIT OF THE ORIENT. By George William Knox. New York: T. Y.
Crowell. Price, $1.50.
Professor Knox has spent many years in the East and in his beautifully
illustrated work on the manners and customs of that part of the world he
has given us a valuable and interesting picture of the awakening of the
spirit of progress there. This has been especially noticeable since the
Russo-Japanese War; and the rapid increase of our own holdings in the Far
East intensifies the profound import of this problem. The author defines
sharply the difference between the Eastern and the Western character in
the following paragraph: “Man ... seems overpowered by nature in the
East, but he attempts to conquer it in the West.”
PLANTATION SKETCHES. By Margaret Devereux. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
This collection of delicate sketches of antebellum Southern life gives
the experiences of a Southern gentlewoman who loves the old South and who
has the power to make others know and love it. The reminiscences possess
the blended humor and pathos which characterize the best descriptions of
plantation life, and bring clearly before us the scenes of those times.
The manner of their telling is finished and most readable, apart from the
interest attaching to the incidents narrated.
COZY CORNER CONFIDENCES. By Walter Pulitzer. New York: Dodge Publishing
Co. Price, 75 cents.
Mr. Pulitzer’s sparkling cynicisms are so well-known that readers pick up
his work with the certainty of enjoyment. In these little “confidences”
we have a varied assortment of neatly-turned maxims, perverted mottoes,
and sage, though sarcastic, advice. The publishers have given the text
a most inviting cover and the marginal decorations are especially
attractive.
BOOK TREASURES OF MAECENAS. By John Paul Bocock. New York: The
Knickerbocker Press.
In the richest of morocco bindings this memorial volume attracts the
eye at once. The forty poems are representative specimens of the work
of the gifted author, who died recently. A Virginian and a graduate of
Washington and Lee University, Mr. Bocock first practiced law, but having
from his earliest youth had a passion for the pen, he definitely entered
journalism in 1883. His newspaper work covered a wide range but his
best-known work shows his love for the classics, which the present little
volume also clearly reveals. The little quatrain on “Oblivion” will show
the delicate charm of his poesy:
Sweet lotos-orbed, velvet-footed maid,
That slippest o’er the wrinkled ocean’s brim,
Garlanded with blue flowers of distance dim—
Is death the passport to thine Isles of Shade?
AUGUSTINE THE MAN. By Amélie Rives. (Princess Troubetzkoy). New York:
John Lane Company. Price, $1.25.
It is a far cry from “The Quick or the Dead?” to “Sélene” and “Augustine
the Man,” but Amélie Rives has made the transition without apparent
effort. In the form of a stirring drama she traces the emotions and
spiritual throes of the Numidian bishop, the poet, the lover, the father
and afterwards the saint. The work is indeed notable, carrying the reader
with irresistible interest through Augustine’s changes of philosophy
and arousing the keenest sympathy for the human side of the man. The
publishers in addition to a binding charming in its simplicity, have
added an exquisitely etched portrait of the author.
THE COUNT AT HARVARD. By Rupert Sargent Holland. Boston: L. C. Page & Co.
Price, $1.50.
There is a perennial fascination in college stories. Even to the
uninitiated the atmosphere of athletic sport, of chaff and slang and
frank absence of interest in lectures is most alluring. Mr. Holland has
given us, in the adventures of “The Count,” a thoroughly interesting
picture of life among that class of students whose object is merely to
pass some years of agreeable leisure at Harvard. The afternoon teas, the
musical evenings, the “proms” and the games are all attractively set
forth.
UNCLE CHARLIE’S POEMS. By Charles Noel Douglas. New York: J. S. Ogilvie
Publishing Co. Price, 50 cents.
Many who are familiar with Mr. Douglas’ poems in _St. Nicholas_, _Judge_
and other periodicals will be surprised to learn that he has been a
“shut-in” for ten years. His poems all show the unfailing cheerfulness,
the genial wit and irresistible gayety which marks the born optimist. He
is equally at home in children’s dialect and coon songs. In addition to
his magazine contributions Mr. Douglas manages a “Sunshine” department in
a number of periodicals, a league of young readers, everyone of whom is
pledged to make this world a better place to live in.
CLIFTON AND WAYNE COUNTY, TENNESSEE
By W. O. Thomas
The resources of Wayne County are multiplex. Many counties may claim
special consideration because of fertility of soil, or this one thing or
that one thing; but the varied resources of Wayne County invite every
line of human endeavor. Here may be found profit for the husbandman,
the lumberman, the iron-monger, the artisan who would work in wood, the
artificer who deals with metallic substances, the capitalist who invests
in nature’s inexhaustible storehouse. For this is yet a virgin country,
and nature, fresh, virile and vigorous, awaits the magic wand of Midas.
Wayne County has seven hundred square miles of land, two hundred square
miles of which are underlaid with iron deposits, almost all in sufficient
quantities and of a quality that would justify actual investment and
operation. Indeed, in point of natural wealth it would be hard to find
a county that surpasses Wayne. Timber, iron ore, marble, building
rock, phosphate, kaolin, cement rock, mineral paint, fertile valleys,
sturdy, God-fearing, liberty-loving people—what more do you want—where
else can you find such a plethora of good things? As we write, an
endless procession of wagons is passing, bearing cross-ties, telegraph
and telephone poles, cotton and other farm products, all consigned
to merchants here or to be shipped direct by way of the Tennessee
river—nature’s great highway—for Clifton is a mighty part of commerce,
and is the entrepot for a vast extent of territory.
For half a century the mainstay of this section has been the timber and
tie industry. Yet in all this time the timber has only been exhausted
from a ten or twelve mile fringe fronting the Tennessee river. Some
idea may be gained of the immensity of this industry when it is stated
that there are shipped annually from Clifton alone 3,000,000 feet of
lumber and 300,000 cross-ties. The principal woods are oak, poplar, ash,
hickory, chestnut and pine. There are several hundred thousand acres of
fine timber lands in Wayne County that are yet untouched.
Wayne County unquestionably possesses fine advantages for the farmer,
the stock man and the lumberman. But it is as a mineral section its
advantages are so apparent and overwhelming that the wonder grows that a
second Birmingham does not mark the site where Clifton now stands. It may
all be explained in one phrase—lack of railroad facilities. Clifton has
magnificent river facilities, and they will be measurably increased when
the government work on Colbert Shoals is completed. At present Clifton
is at the head of deep water navigation. Straight through to St. Louis
the traffic is unimpeded the year round, and boats touch at this point
every day. Yet, while this service is admirable, it cannot altogether
compensate for the lack of railroad facilities. However, the time is near
at hand when this deficiency will be remedied. For some time a movement
has been in progress which it is believed will eventuate in the building
of the Tennessee Industrial Railroad. The road as surveyed will run from
Fox Bluff to Florence, Ala., a distance of nearly two hundred miles.
Clifton is only forty-two miles east of Florence, and that enterprising
little city is making every effort to get into the Wayne County ore
fields. It is generally believed that the Frisco System is behind this
project. This would give the Frisco an almost direct line from the
Birmingham and Wayne County iron districts into St. Louis and Chicago and
open a great section of country not now traversed by any road.
[Illustration: I. G. RUSS
A prominent capitalist of Clifton, Tennessee]
The only iron furnaces operated at present in this county are two at
Allen’s Creek, a point on a branch of the N., C. & St. L. Ry., about
thirty miles from Clifton. They are operated by the Bon Air Coal &
Iron Company, and have a daily output of about ninety tons each. In
the earlier days of its history, however, many charcoal furnaces were
scattered throughout the county. In those days no iron ranked higher than
the Brownsport pig. Because of its remarkable tensile strength it was
listed several dollars higher than other pig. Take an ordinary pig and
strike it a sharp blow with a heavy hammer, and it will snap like glass.
A bar of the Brownsport pig would bend in the shape of a crescent before
it would break.
The mineral field has long been regarded as among the best in the South.
The ore occurs in banks and pockets. At several places the banks have
developed a thickness of 110 feet. The material associated with the ore
is a red clay. It constitutes by weight one-third of the mass, leaving
two-thirds ore. These ores are the brown hematite. The analysis is not
variable, as in many sections of the country, rarely running below 45 or
above 55 per cent metallic iron. The percentage of this ore runs higher
and it is capable of being much more easily and cheaply handled than the
deposits in the famous Birmingham district. One lump of brown hematite
iron ore measuring sixty tons has been taken from the Wayne County ore
field. The average analysis of this lump was 57 per cent metallic iron
and less than 1 per cent phosphorus.
[Illustration: BEECH RIVER PHOSPHATE PROPERTY]
Allen’s Creek, a town of 1,500 inhabitants, deserves special mention here
because of the fact that the furnaces and iron mines of the Bon Air Coal
& Iron Company are located there. This company operates two furnaces at
Allen’s Creek, and mine both iron ore and limestone. The concern also
manufactures a very high and superior grade of silicon iron, which is
used all over the United States as a softener by foundries and machine
shops, and for all purposes where a fluid iron is required. Extensive
plants have been constructed for washing the ore and preparing it for the
furnaces. Probably the largest deposits of brown ore to be found in the
South are near Allen’s Creek and are the property of the Bon Air Company.
At one point as much as 100,000 tons of the ore is known to have been
taken from one acre of land. The management of the plant at Allen’s Creek
is in the hands of Mr. G. W. Bragg, a very worthy and capable man, who
appears to have the interest of the company at heart at all times. The
capacity of the furnaces is 200 tons of pig iron per day.
The coal mines of the Bon Air Company are situated in Cumberland and
White counties, where three collieries and two hundred coke ovens are in
operation. This is where all the celebrated grades of Bon Air coal and
coke are mined and made ready for market. The daily output is about 2,000
tons of coal and coke.
The Bon Air Coal & Iron Company is one of the largest companies in the
South and its extensive business interests are managed by the following
gentlemen: John P. Williams, president; J. M. Overton, vice president;
W. C. Dibrell, treasurer, and C. Cooper, secretary. The main business
office is in the Arcade Building, Nashville.
Here are inexhaustible deposits of the Florida white rock, the best
phosphate known to commerce. A field of it is being developed in the
adjoining county of Decatur, near Parson’s. It runs from 75 to 83
per cent B. P. L. It is far superior to the Mt. Pleasant phosphate,
containing as it does but little deleterious substance. This land is
controlled by the Beech River Phosphate Company. T. S. Hughes, Clifton,
Tenn., is secretary, and Jno. A. Pitts, of Nashville, is president.
The lands of this company, consisting of 9,261 acres, are situated in
Decatur county, Tennessee, just west of the Tennessee river, and from
two to seven miles distant from that stream, and lie along both sides of
Beech river, a tributary of the Tennessee, and the Perryville Branch of
the Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Railway—(originally the Tennessee
Midland).
The best rock as found analyzes as follows:
Per cent
Moisture 50.
Mixed oxides, iron and aluminum 1.38
Bone phosphate 84.89
The composite analyses of twenty different samples selected at random
from various parts of the property, showed:
Per cent
Moisture 40.
Bone phosphate 74.98
Mixed oxides, iron and aluminum 2.49
These analyses were made by Prof. J. C. Wharton, of Nashville, Tenn.
The location of the property is especially favorable to transportation. A
large part of it is immediately on the railroad, and all of it is easily
accessible by spur track; while if desired, tramway could easily be
provided for carrying the output to Tennessee, Ohio and Mississippi river
points. It is a difficult matter to make a computation on the tonnage,
but it has been estimated by experts at from ten to fifteen million tons.
From the developments as made, and the rock exposed, a conservative
calculation places 500,000 tons in sight.
It has been demonstrated that the rock can be prepared for market and
loaded on cars at Parsons, Tenn., for $1.25 to $1.50 per ton, including
all expenses.
Underlying Clifton and adjacent to it are inexhaustible beds of the best
hydraulic limestone cement-making rock. This section also abounds in
acres for the manufacture of paints and the finest of lithograph stone.
One mile from Clifton there is an immense deposit of kaolin or Chinese
clay. It is a valuable constituent, largely used in the manufacture of
pottery and the enameling of book paper.
Eleven miles southeast of Clifton, near the Waynesboro pike, between
Eagle and Hardin Creeks, are 1,225 acres of land on which are a fine
deposit of manganese. The analysis shows 39.31 per cent manganese. The
veins run from five to fifteen feet on the surface.
On Factor’s Fork is a great deposit of building rock of peculiar and
marvelous quality. When first mined it is so plastic that it may be
easily fashioned into any desirable shape, but a few days exposure to the
air hardens it into the consistency of adamant. In the same section has
been found a fine quality of lithographing stone. Concerning phosphates,
it may be added that within the corporate limits of Clifton may be seen a
nine foot face of the Mt. Pleasant phosphate.
It has been known for many years that this section has shown evidence of
the presence of both oil and gas. In his geology of Tennessee the late
Professor Killebrew showed that this point shows the first indications
of these constituents south of the Cincinnati uplift. Wayne County is in
the direct geological line with the oil fields of Pennsylvania and Texas.
At Cincinnati the oil region stopped abruptly. The next point where it
was taken up was in the Beaumont fields. It is reasonable to suppose,
however, that oil exists somewhere on this line nearer Cincinnati than
Beaumont. It is confidently predicted by experts that oil will be found
here at a depth of less than one thousand feet.
[Illustration: FRANK HUGHES COLLEGE]
Some very fine mineral and timber property in the vicinity of Clifton
is owned by Mr. I. G. Russ. This land is now on the market. It consists
of 5,000 acres known as the Old Shannonville or Bob Property; 2,000
acres known as the Walker Furnace property; and 1,200 acres known as the
Carrollville or Glen Kirk property. Part of these lands are now under
option and every indication points to a rapid development of these and
other similar properties in the near future.
The Bob property is situated on the east side of the Tennessee river, six
miles below Clifton. The land lies in the big bend of the river and is
two miles wide at the narrowest point, while it is sixteen miles around
by water. The elevation is high, making it one of the healthiest points
in the state. Regular lines of steamboats from St. Louis and Paducah,
making connections with all the railroad points from Cairo, Ill., on
the Ohio river, to Florence, Ala., on the Tennessee, pass this property
at all seasons of the year. The summers are delightful, the winters are
mild. The erosion of limestone and iron has given this land a strong soil
and fitted it well for grains, fruits, grasses, etc. A more suitable
piece of property for colonization purposes cannot be found in the
United States. For this purpose it has been subdivided into tracts of
about one hundred acres each.
There are 560 acres of bottom land, 1,507 acres of flat land, and 3,376
acres of hill land. There is enough red and white oak and pine to make
500,000 cross-ties. It is estimated that there are about two million
feet of hickory, one-half million feet of ash, two hundred thousand feet
each of elm and gum, and three to five hundred thousand feet of saw oak,
poplar and pine. There is also a large amount of cedar and a vigorous
growth of young hickory.
[Illustration: RUSS HOTEL]
The Walker Furnace property comprises 2,000 acres, and lies between
Clifton and Hardin’s Creek. It is finely timbered and contains phosphates
and iron ore. In addition to its other timbers it has a fine body of
chestnut, estimated to cut between eight and ten thousand telegraph poles.
The Carrollville or Glenkirk property consists of 1,200 acres. It is
historic ground, as once upon a time the old town of Carrollville came
within one vote of being made the capital of the state. It embraces the
site of Glenkirk, one of the best shipping points on the river. The land
has a phosphate deposit that fertilizes and enriches it to such a degree
that it annually produces a heavy yield of cotton, corn, fruit, grain and
grass. It also contains inexhaustible deposits of cement and marble of a
superior grade.
Overland, Clifton is twenty-five miles from Maury, the nearest railway
point. Direct by water it is eighty-five miles from Johnsonville. A
splendid line of packets plies the Tennessee, operated by the St. Louis
& Tennessee River Packet Company, with headquarters in St. Louis. The
steamers include the _Clyde_, _Kentucky_, _Shiloh_, _Memphis_, _Savannah_
and _Saltillo_. Recently the _Chattanooga_, an independent boat, has been
put in commission by the enterprising citizens of that city. Clifton is
served by all of these boats, thus giving a magnificent service. The
_Shiloh_ is a mail packet, and makes three round trips a week between
Danville and Savannah. It is the fastest boat on the river, and because
of the regularity of its schedule enjoys a large passenger traffic.
The overland trip from Allen’s Creek takes one through Waynesboro, the
county seat of Wayne County. This is a town of about eight hundred
people. Its newest acquisition is a splendid court house, recently
finished at an expense of $25,000. Waynesboro is also situated in the
midst of a great iron region and its best days are yet to come.
Clifton has a population of 1,200 souls; for unlike some places, every
man, woman and child in Clifton has a soul of rare quality. In all the
essentials that go to make good citizenship Clifton is in the front
ranks. The people are earnest and conscientious, have a firm grip on
life, and live it with unvarying fidelity to high ideals.
[Illustration: WHARF SCENE AT CLIFTON, TENNESSEE]
Clifton is the only town on the Tennessee river between Florence and
Paducah that has an electric light and ice plant. To go further than
this, it has the best equipped and most luxuriously appointed hotel
within the same limits. It was built four years ago by Mr. I. G. Russ
at a cost of $25,000, and is known far and wide for its comfort and
hospitality.
Three other things the town is noted for—its newspaper, its bank building
and its college. The _Clifton Mirror_ is a co-operative institution,
owned by the business men of the town. It is edited by one of the
stockholders—H. M. Jackson. As a consequence the _Clifton Mirror_
scintillates with both original and reflected brightness, and is doing a
great work in pushing this section to the front.
The People’s Bank of Clifton is steam heated and lighted by electricity
and possesses every modern convenience.
Probably the greatest institution in Clifton is the Frank Hughes College.
The college was only completed last summer and the first term is now
being taught. Rev. J. Thompson Baker, B.L., Ph.M., is the principal of
the college and he has gathered about him a faculty of earnest, ambitious
educators. The school has met with phenomenal success. The enrollment for
the first term is over two hundred.
The building is a splendid structure. It was erected at a cost of
$15,000. It is steam-heated and lighted by electricity, and possesses
every modern convenience. The money to build it was raised by private
subscription, and it is a grand monument to the generosity and faith and
love of a noble people.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TAYLOR-TROTWOOD MAGAZINE, VOL. IV, NO. 5, FEBRUARY 1907 ***
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