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The Continental Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, April, 1862

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Title: The Continental Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, April, 1862

Author: Various


        
Release date: February 15, 2005 [eBook #15065]
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Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CONTINENTAL MONTHLY, VOL. 1, NO. 4, APRIL, 1862 ***




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[Transcriber's note: All footnotes moved to end of document.]




THE

CONTINENTAL MONTHLY:

DEVOTED TO

LITERATURE AND NATIONAL POLICY.

       *       *       *       *       *

VOL. I.--APRIL, 1862.--No. IV.

       *       *       *       *       *

THE WAR BETWEEN FREEDOM AND SLAVERY IN MISSOURI.


It is admitted that no man can write the history of his own times with
such fullness and impartiality as shall entitle his record to the
unquestioning credence and acceptance of posterity. Men are necessarily
actors in the scenes amid which they live. If not personally taking an
active part in the conduct of public affairs, they have friends who are,
and in whose success or failure their own welfare is in some way bound
up. The bias which interest always gives will necessarily attach to
their judgment of current events, and the leading actors by whom these
events are controlled. Cotemporaneous history, for this reason, will
always be found partisan history--not entitled to, and, if intelligently
and honestly written, not exacting, the implicit faith of those who
shall come after; but simply establishing that certain classes of
people, of whom the writer was one, acted under the conviction that they
owed certain duties to themselves and their country. It will be for the
future compiler of the world's history, who shall see the end of present
struggles, to determine the justice of the causes of controversy, and
the wisdom and honesty of the parties that acted adversely. To such
after judgment, with a full knowledge of present reproach as a partisan,
the writer of this article commends the brief sketch he will present of
the beginning and military treatment of the great Rebellion in the State
of Missouri. He will not attempt to make an episode of any part of this
history, because of the supposed vigor or brilliancy of the martial
deeds occurring in the time. Least of all would he take the 'Hundred
Days,' which another pen has chosen for special distinction, as
representing the period of heroism in that war-trampled State. Any
'hundred days' of the rebellion in Missouri have had their corresponding
_nights_; and no one can be bold enough yet to say that the day of
permanent triumph has dawned. Humiliation has alternated with success so
far; and the most stunning defeats of the war in the West marked the
beginning and the close of the hundred days named for honor. This fact
should teach modesty and caution. For while justice to men requires us
to admit that the greatest abilities do not always command success,
devotion to principle forbids that a noble cause should be obscured to
become the mere background of a scene in which an actor and popular idol
is the chief figure. It is with a consciousness of such partialities as
are common to men, but with an honest purpose, so far as the writer is
able, to subordinate men to principles, that this review of the origin
and chief incidents of the rebellion in Missouri is begun.

The close connection of the State of Missouri with the slavery agitation
that has now ripened into a rebellion against the government of the
United States, is a singular historical fact. The admission of the State
into the Union was the occasion of vitalizing the question of slavery
extension and fixing it as a permanent element in the politics of the
country. It has continued to be the theatre on which the most important
conflicts growing out of slavery extension have been decided. It will be
the first, in the hope and belief of millions, to throw off the fetters
of an obsolete institution, so long cramping its social and political
advancement, and to set an example to its sister slave-holding States of
the superior strength, beauty, and glory of Freedom.

The pro-slavery doctrines of John C. Calhoun, after having pervaded the
democracy of all the other slave-holding States, and obtained complete
possession of the national executive, legislative and judicial
departments, finally, in 1844, appeared also in the State of Missouri.
But it was in so minute and subtle a form as not to seem a sensible
heresy. Thomas H. Benton, the illustrious senator of the Jackson era,
was then, as he had been for twenty-four years, the political autocrat
of Missouri. He had long been convinced of the latent treason of the
Calhoun school of politicians. He was able to combat the schemes of the
Southern oligarchy composing and controlling the Cabinet of President
Polk; unsuccessfully, it is true, yet with but slight diminution of his
popularity at home. Nevertheless, the seeds of disunion had been borne
to his State; they had taken root; and, like all evil in life, they
proved self-perpetuating and ineradicable. In 1849 the Mexican war,
begun in the interest of the disunionists, had been closed. A vast
accession of territory had accrued to the Union. It was the plan and
purpose of the disunion party to appropriate and occupy this territory;
to organize it in their interests; and, finally, to admit it into the
Union as States, to add to their political power, and prepare for that
struggle between the principle of freedom and the principle of slavery
in the government, which Mr. Calhoun had taught was inevitable. But the
hostility of Benton in the Senate was dreaded by the Southern leaders
thus early conspiring against the integrity of the Union. The Missouri
senator seemed, of all cotemporaneous statesmen, to be the only one that
fully comprehended the incipient treason. His earnest opposition assumed
at times the phases of _monomania_. He sought to crush it in the egg. He
lifted his warning voice on all occasions. He inveighed bitterly against
the 'Nullifiers,' as he invariably characterized the Calhoun
politicians, declaring that their purpose was to destroy the Union. It
became necessary, therefore, before attempting to dispose of the
territories acquired from Mexico, to silence Benton, or remove him from
the Senate. Accordingly, when the legislature of Missouri met in 1849, a
series of resolutions was introduced, declaring that all territory
derived by the United States, in the treaty with Mexico, should be open
to settlement by the citizens of all the States in common; that the
question of allowing or prohibiting slavery in any territory could only
be decided by the people resident in the territory, and then only when
they came to organize themselves into a State government; and, lastly,
that if the general government should attempt to establish a rule other
than this for the settlement of the territories, the State of Missouri
would stand pledged to her sister Southern States to co-operate in
whatever measures of resistance or redress _they_ might deem necessary.
The resolutions distinctly abdicated all right of judgment on the part
of Missouri, and committed the State to a blind support of Southern
'Nullification' in a possible contingency. They were in flagrant
opposition to the life-long principles and daily vehement utterances of
Benton--as they were intended to be. Nevertheless, they were adopted;
and the senators of Missouri were instructed to conform their public
action to them. These resolutions were introduced by one Claiborne F.
Jackson, a member of the House of Representatives from the County of
Howard, one of the most democratic and largest slave-holding counties in
the State. The resolutions took the name of their mover, and are known
in the political history of Missouri as the 'Jackson resolutions.' And
Claiborne F. Jackson, who thus took the initiative in foisting treason
upon the statute-books of Missouri, is, to-day, by curious coincidence,
the official head of that State nominally in open revolt. But Jackson,
it was early ascertained, was not entitled to the doubtful honor of the
paternity of these resolutions. They had been matured in a private
chamber of the Capitol at Jefferson City, by two or three conspirators,
who received, it was asserted by Benton, and finally came to be
believed, the first draft of the resolutions from Washington, where the
disunion cabal, armed with federal power, had its headquarters.

Thus the bolt was launched at the Missouri senator, who, from his
prestige of Jacksonism, his robust patriotism, his indomitable will, and
his great abilities, was regarded as the most formidable if not the only
enemy standing in the way of meditated treason. It was not doubted that
the blow would be fatal. Benton was in one sense the father of the
doctrine of legislative instructions. In his persistent and famous
efforts to 'expunge' the resolutions of censure on Gen. Jackson that had
been placed in the Senate journal, Benton had found it necessary to
revolutionize the sentiments or change the composition of the Senate.
Whigs were representing democratic States, and Democrats refused to vote
for a resolution expunging any part of the record of the Senate's
proceedings. To meet and overcome this resistance, Benton introduced the
dogma that a senator was bound to obey the instructions of the
legislature of his State. He succeeded, by his great influence in his
party, and by the aid of the democratic administration, in having the
dogma adopted, and it became an accepted rule in the democratic party.
Resolutions were now invoked and obtained from State legislatures
instructing their senators to vote for the 'Expunging Resolutions,' or
resign. Some obeyed; some resigned. Benton carried his point; but it was
at the sacrifice of the spirit of that part of the Constitution which
gave to United States senators a term of six years, for the purpose of
protecting the Senate from frequent fluctuations of popular feeling, and
securing steadiness in legislation. Benton was the apostle of this
unwise and destructive innovation upon the constitutional tenure of
senators. He was doomed to be a conspicuous victim of his own error.
When the 'Jackson resolutions' were passed by the legislature of
Missouri, instructing Benton to endorse measures that led to
nullification and disunion, he saw the dilemma in which he was placed,
and did the best he could to extricate himself. He presented the
resolutions from his seat in the Senate; denounced their treasonable
character, and declared his purpose to appeal from the legislature to
the people of Missouri.

On the adjournment of Congress, Benton returned to Missouri and
commenced a canvass in vindication of his own cause, and in opposition
to the democratic majority of the legislature that passed the Jackson
resolutions, which has had few if any parallels in the history of the
government for heat and bitterness. The senator did not return to argue
and convert, but to fulminate and destroy. He appointed times and places
for public speaking in the most populous counties of the State, and
where the opposition to him had grown boldest. He allowed no 'division
of time' to opponents wishing to controvert the positions assumed in his
speeches. On the contrary, he treated every interruption, whether for
inquiry or retort, on the part of any one opposed to him, as an insult,
and proceeded to pour upon the head of the offender a torrent of
denunciation and abuse, unmeasured and appalling. The extraordinary
course adopted by Benton in urging his 'appeal,' excited astonishment
and indignation among the democratic partisans that had, in many cases,
thoughtlessly become arrayed against him.[A] They might have yielded to
expostulation; they were stung to resentment by unsparing vilification.
The rumor of Benton's manner preceded him through the State, after the
first signal manifestations of his ruthless spirit; and he was warned
not to appear at some of the appointments he had made, else his life
would pay the forfeit of his personal assaults. These threats only made
the Missouri lion more fierce and untamable. He filled all his
appointments, bearing everywhere the same front, often surrounded by
enraged enemies armed and thirsting for his blood, but ever denunciatory
and defiant, and returned to St. Louis, still boiling with inexhaustible
choler, to await the judgment of the State upon his appeal. He failed.
The pro-slavery sentiment of the people had been too thoroughly evoked
in the controversy, and too many valuable party leaders had been
needlessly driven from his support by unsparing invective. An artful and
apparently honest appeal to the right of legislative instructions,--an
enlargement of popular rights which Benton himself had conferred upon
them,--and--the unfailing weapon of Southern demagogues against their
opponents--the charge that Benton had joined the 'Abolitionists,' and
was seeking to betray 'the rights of the South,' worked the overthrow of
the hitherto invincible senator. The Whigs of Missouri, though agreeing
mainly with Benton in the principles involved in this contest, had
received nothing at his hands, throughout his long career, but defeat
and total exclusion from all offices and honors, State and National.
This class of politicians were too glad of the prospective division of
his party and the downfall of his power, to be willing to re-assert
their principles through a support of Benton. The loyal Union sentiments
of the State in this way failed to be united, and a majority was elected
to the legislature opposed to Benton. He was defeated of a re-election
to the Senate by Henry S. Geyer, a pro-slavery Whig, and supporter of
the Jackson resolutions, after having filled a seat in that august body
for a longer time consecutively than any other senator ever did. Thus
was removed from the halls of Congress the most sagacious and formidable
enemy that the disunion propagandists ever encountered. Their career in
Congress and in the control of the federal government was thenceforth
unchecked. The cords of loyalty in Missouri were snapped in Benton's
fall, and that State swung off into the strongly-sweeping current of
secessionism. The city of St. Louis remained firm a while, and returned
Benton twice to the House; but his energies were exhausted now in
defensive war; and the truculent and triumphant slave power dominating,
the State at last succeeded, through the coercion of commercial
interests, in defeating him even in the citadel of loyalty. He tried
once more to breast the tide that had borne down his fortunes. He became
a candidate for governor in 1856; but, though he disclaimed anti-slavery
sentiments, and supported James Buchanan for President against Fremont,
his son-in-law, he was defeated by Trusten Polk, who soon passed from
the gubernatorial chair to Benton's seat in the United States Senate,
from which he was, in course of time, to be expelled. Benton retired to
private life, only to labor more assiduously in compiling historical
evidences against the fast ripening treason of the times.

The Missouri senator was no longer in the way of the Southern oligarchs.
A shaft feathered by his own hands--the doctrine of instructions--had
slain him.

But yet another obstacle remained. The Missouri Compromise lifted a
barrier to the expansion of the Calhoun idea of free government, having
African slavery for its corner-stone. This obstacle was to be removed.
Missouri furnished the prompter and agent of that wrong in David E.
Atchison, for many years Benton's colleague in the Senate. Atchison was
a man of only moderate talents, of dogged purpose, willful, wholly
unscrupulous in the employment of the influences of his position, and
devoid of all the attributes and qualifications of statesmanship. He was
a fit representative of the pro-slavery fanaticism of his State; had
lived near the Kansas line; had looked upon and coveted the fair lands
of that free territory, and resolved that they should be the home and
appanage of slavery. It is now a part of admitted history, that this
dull but determined Missouri senator approached Judge Douglas, then
chairman of the Committee on Territories, and, by some incomprehensible
influence, induced that distinguished senator to commit the flagrant and
terrible blunder of reporting the Kansas-Nebraska bill, with a clause
repealing the Missouri Compromise, and thus throwing open Kansas to the
occupation of slavery. That error was grievously atoned for in the
subsequent hard fate of Judge Douglas, who was cast off and destroyed by
the cruel men he had served. Among the humiliations that preceded the
close of this political tragedy, none could have been more pungent to
Judge Douglas than the fact that Atchison, in a drunken harangue from
the tail of a cart in Western Missouri, surrounded by a mob of 'border
ruffians' rallying for fresh wrongs upon the free settlers of Kansas,
recited, in coarse glee and brutal triumph, the incidents of his
interview with the senator of Illinois, when, with mixed cajolery and
threats, he partly tempted, partly drove him to his ruin. The
Kansas-Nebraska bill was passed. What part Atchison took, what part
Missouri took, under the direction of the pro-slavery leaders that
filled every department of the State government, the 'border-ruffian'
forays, the pillage of the government arsenal at Liberty, the embargo of
the Missouri river, and the robbing and mobbing of peaceful emigrants
from the free States, the violence at the polls, and the fraudulent
voting that corrupted all the franchises of that afflicted territory, do
sufficiently attest. It is not needed to rehearse any of this painful
and well-known history.

The Territory of Kansas was saved to its prescriptive freedom. The
slavery propagandists sullenly withdrew and gave up the contest. The
last days of the dynasty that had meditated the conquest of the
continent to slave-holding government were evidently at hand. The result
of the struggle in Kansas had reversed the relation of the contesting
powers. The oligarchs, who had always before been aggressive, and
intended to subordinate the Union to slavery, or destroy it, found
themselves suddenly thrown on the defensive; and, with the quick
intelligence of a property interest, and the keen jealousy of class and
caste which their slave-holding had implanted, they saw that they were
engaged in an unequal struggle, that their sceptre was broken, and that,
if they continued to rule, it would have to be over the homogeneous half
of a dismembered Union. From this moment a severance of the Slave
States from the Free was resolved on, and every agency that could
operate on governments, State and National, was set to work. It was not
by accident that Virginia had procured the nomination of the facile
Buchanan for President in the Baltimore Convention of 1856; it was not
by accident that Floyd was made Secretary of War, or that, many months
before any outbreak of rebellion, this arch traitor had well-nigh
stripped the Northern arsenals of arms, and placed them where they would
be 'handy' for insurgents to seize. It was not by accident that John C.
Breckenridge headed the factionists that willfully divided and defeated
the National Democracy, that perchance could have elected Judge Douglas
President; nor was it by accident that Beriah Magoffin, a vain, weak
man, the creature, adjunct, and echo of Breckenridge, filled the office
of governor of Kentucky, nominated thereto by Breckenridge's personal
intercession. And lastly, to return to the special theatre of this
sketch, it was not by accident that Claiborne F. Jackson, the original
mover for Benton's destruction, was at this remarkable juncture found
occupying the governor's chair, with Thomas C. Reynolds for his
lieutenant governor, a native of South Carolina, an acknowledged
missionary of the nullification faith to a State that required to be
corrupted, and that he had, during his residence, zealously endeavored
to corrupt.

We have now reached the turning point in the history of Missouri. The
State is about to be plunged into the whirlpool of civil war.
Undisguised disunionists are in complete possession of the State
government, and the population is supposed to be ripe for revolt. Only
one spot in it, and that the city of St. Louis, is regarded as having
the slightest sympathy with the political sentiments of the Free States
of the Union. The State is surely counted for the 'South' in the
division that impends, for where is the heart in St. Louis bold enough,
or the hand strong enough, to resist the swelling tide of pro-slavery
fanaticism that was about to engulf the State? Years ago, when it was
but a ripple on the surface, it had overborne Benton, with all his fame
of thirty years' growth. What leader of slighter mold and lesser fame
could now resist the coming shock? In tracing the origin and growth of
rebellion in Missouri, it is interesting to gather up all the threads
that link the present with the past. It will preserve the unity of the
plot, and give effect to the last acts of the drama.

The first visible seam or cleft in the National Democratic party
occurred during the administration of President Polk, in the years
1844-48. Calhoun appeared as Polk's Secretary of State. Thomas Ritchie
was transferred from Richmond, Va., to Washington, to edit the
government organ, in place of Francis P. Blair, Sr. The Jackson _regime_
of unconditional and uncompromising devotion to the 'Federal Union' was
displaced, and the dubious doctrine of 'States' Rights' was formally
inaugurated as the chart by which in future the national government was
to be administered. But the Jackson element was not reconciled to this
radical change in the structure and purpose of the National Democratic
organization; and, although party lines were so tensely drawn that to go
against 'the Administration' was political treason, and secured
irrevocable banishment from power, the close of Polk's administration
found many old Democrats of the Jackson era ready for the sacrifice. The
firm resolve of these men was manifested when, after the nomination of
Gen. Cass, in 1848, in the usual form, at Baltimore, by the Democratic
National Convention, they assembled at Buffalo and presented a counter
ticket, headed by the name of Martin Van Buren, who had been thrust
aside four years previously by the Southern oligarchs to make way for
James K. Polk. The entire artillery of the Democratic party opened on
the Buffalo schismatics. They were stigmatized by such opprobrious
nicknames and epithets as 'Barnburners, 'Free Soilers,'
'Abolitionists,' and instantly and forever ex-communicated from the
Democratic party. In Missouri alone, of all the Slave States, was any
stand made in behalf of the Buffalo ticket. Benton's sympathies had been
with Van Buren, his old friend of the Jackson times; and Francis P.
Blair, Sr., of the _Globe_, had two sons, Montgomery Blair and Francis
P. Blair, Jr., resident in St. Louis. These two, with about a hundred
other young men of equal enthusiasm, organized themselves together,
accepted the 'Buffalo platform' as their future rule of faith, issued an
address to the people of Missouri, openly espousing and advocating free
soil-principles; and, by subscription among themselves, published a
campaign paper, styled the _Barnburner_, during the canvass. The result
at the polls was signal only for its insignificance; and the authors of
the movement hardly had credit for a respectable escapade. But the event
has proved that neither ridicule nor raillery, nor, in later years,
persecutions and the intolerable pressure of federal power, could turn
back the revolution thus feebly begun. In that campaign issue of the
_Barnburner_ were sown the seeds of what became, in later nomenclature,
the Free Democracy, and, later still, the 'Republican' party of
Missouri. The German population of St. Louis sympathized from the start
with the free principles enunciated. Frank Blair, Jr., became from that
year their political leader; right honestly did he earn the position;
and right well, even his political foes have always admitted, did he
maintain it.

Frank Blair was a disciple of Benton; yet, as is often the case, the
pupil soon learned to go far ahead of his teacher. In 1852, there was a
union of the Free Democrats and National Democrats of Missouri, in
support of Franklin Pierce. But the entire abandonment of Pierce's
administration to the rule of the Southern oligarchs sundered the
incongruous elements in Missouri forever. In 1856 Benton was found
supporting James Buchanan for President; but Blair declined to follow
his ancient leader in that direction. He organized the free-soil element
in St. Louis to oppose the Buchanan electoral ticket. An electoral
ticket in the State at large, for John C. Fremont, was neither possible
nor advisable. In some districts no man would dare be a candidate on
that side; in others, the full free-soil vote, from the utter
hopelessness of success, would not be polled; and thus the cause would
be made to appear weaker than it deserved. To meet the emergency, and
yet bear witness to principle, the free-soil vote was cast for the
Fillmore electoral ticket, 'under protest,' as it was called, the name
of 'John C. Fremont' being printed in large letters at the head of every
free-soil ballot cast. By this means the Buchanan electors were beaten
fifteen hundred votes in St. Louis City and County, where, by a union as
Benton proposed, they would have had three thousand majority. But the
'free-soilers' failed to defeat Buchanan in the State.

Nothing discouraged by this result, Blair resumed the work of organizing
for the future. The Fillmore party gave no thanks to the free-soilers
for their aid in the presidential election, nor did the latter ask any.
They had simply taken the choice of evils; and now, renouncing all
alliances, Blair became the champion and leader of a self-existing,
self-reliant State party, that should accomplish emancipation in
Missouri. He again established a newspaper to inculcate free principles
in the State. By untiring effort, he revived and recruited his party. He
gave it platforms, planned its campaigns, contested every election in
St. Louis, whether for municipal officers, for State legislature, or for
Congress; and always fought his battles on the most advanced ground
assumed by the growing free-soil party of the Union. The powerful and
rapidly-increasing German population of St. Louis responded nobly to his
zeal and skillful leadership. Soon a victory was gained; and St. Louis
declared for freedom, amid acclamations that reverberated throughout the
States that extended from the Ohio to the lakes, and from the
Mississippi to the Atlantic. But, having wrenched victory from a people
so intolerant as the pro-slavery population of Missouri, it was not to
be expected that he would retain it easily. He was set upon more
fiercely than ever. The loss of the city of St. Louis was considered a
disgrace to the State; and the most desperate personal malignity was
added to the resentment of pro-slavery wrath in the future election
contests in that city. The corrupting appliances of federal power were
at last invoked, under Buchanan's administration; and Blair was for the
moment overwhelmed by fraud, and thrown out of Congress. But, with a
resolution from which even his friends would have dissuaded him, and
with a persistency and confidence that were a marvel to friend and foe,
he contested his seat before Congress, and won it. And this verdict was
soon ratified by his brave and faithful constituency at the polls. Such
was the Republican party, such their leader in St. Louis, when the black
day of disunion came. And in their hands lay the destiny of the State.

As soon as the presidential election was decided, and the choice of
Abraham Lincoln was known, the disunionists in Missouri commenced their
work. Thomas C. Reynolds, the lieutenant-governor, made a visit to
Washington, and extended it to Virginia, counseling with the traitors,
and agreeing upon the time and manner of joining Missouri in the revolt.
The legislature of Missouri met in the latter part of December, about
two weeks after the secession of South Carolina. A bill was at once
introduced, calling a State convention, and passed. The message of
Claiborne F. Jackson, the governor, had been strongly in favor of
secession from the Union. The Missouri _Republican_, the leading
newspaper of the State, whose advocacy had elected the traitor,
declared, on the last day of the year, that unless guaranties in defence
of slavery were immediately given by the North, Missouri should secede
from the Union. And so the secession feeling gathered boldness and
volume.

Candidates for the State convention came to be nominated in St. Louis,
and two parties were at once arrayed--the unconditional Union party, and
the qualified Unionists, who wished new compromises. Frank Blair was one
of the leaders of the former, and he was joined by all the true men of
the old parties. But the secessionists--they might as well be so called,
for all their actions tended to weaken and discredit the
Union--nominated an able ticket. The latter party were soon conscious of
defeat, and began to hint mysteriously at a power stronger than the
ballot-box, that would be invoked in defence of 'Southern rights.' To
many, indeed to most persons, this seemed an idle threat. Not so to
Frank Blair. He had imbibed from Benton the invincible faith of the
latter in the settled purpose of the 'nullifiers' to subvert and destroy
the government. And in a private caucus of the leaders of the Union
party, on an ever-memorable evening in the month of January, he startled
the company by the proposition that the time had come when the friends
of the government must arm in its defence. With a deference to his
judgment and sagacity that had become habitual, the Unionists yielded
their consent, and soon the enrolment of companies began; nightly drills
with arms took place in nearly all the wards of the city; and by the
time of election day some thousands of citizen soldiers, mostly Germans,
could have been gathered, with arms in their hands, with the quickness
of fire signals at night, at any point in the city. The secessionists
had preceded this armed movement of the Union men by the organization of
a body known as 'minute-men.' But the promptness and superior skill that
characterized Frank Blair's movement subverted the secession scheme; and
it was first repudiated, and then its existence denied. The day of
election came, and passed peacefully. The unconditional Union ticket was
elected by a sweeping majority of five thousand votes. The result
throughout the State was not less decisive and surprising. Of the entire
number of delegates composing the convention, not one was chosen who had
dared to express secession sentiments before the people; and the
aggregate majority of the Union candidates in the State amounted to
about eighty thousand. The shock of this defeat for the moment paralyzed
the conspirators; but their evil inspirations soon put them to work
again. Their organs in Missouri assumed an unfriendly tone towards the
convention, which was to meet in Jefferson City. The legislature that
had called the convention remained in session in the same place, but
made no fit preparations for the assembling of the convention, or for
the accommodation and pay of the members. The debate in the legislature
on the bill for appropriations for these purposes was insulting to the
convention, the more ill-tempered and ill-bred secession members
intimating that such a body of 'submissionists' were unworthy to
represent Missouri, and undeserving of any pay. The manifest ill feeling
between the two bodies--the legislature elected eighteen months
previously, and without popular reference to the question of secession,
and the convention chosen fresh from the people, to decide on the course
of the State--soon indicated the infelicity of the two remaining in
session at the same time and in the same place. Accordingly, within a
few days after the organization of the convention, it adjourned its
session to the city of St. Louis. It did not meet a cordial reception
there. So insolent had the secession spirit already grown, that on the
day of the assembling of the convention in that city, the members were
insulted by taunts in the streets and by the ostentatious floating of
the rebel flag from the Democratic head-quarters, hard by the building
in which they assembled.

Being left in the undisputed occupancy of the seat of government, the
governor, lieutenant-governor, and legislature gave themselves up to the
enactment of flagrant and undisguised measures of hostility to the
federal government. Commissioners from States that had renounced the
Constitution, and withdrawn, as they claimed, from the Union, arrived at
Jefferson City as apostles of treason. They were received as
distinguished and honorable ambassadors. A joint session of the
legislature was called to hear their communications. The
lieutenant-governor, Reynolds, being the presiding officer of the joint
session, required that the members should rise when these traitors
entered, and receive them standing and uncovered. The commissioners were
allowed to harangue the representatives of Missouri, by the hour, in
unmeasured abuse of the federal government, in open rejoicings over its
supposed dissolution, and in urgent appeals to the people of Missouri to
join the rebel States in their consummated treason. Noisy demonstrations
of applause greeted these commissioners; and legislators, and the
governor himself, in a public speech in front of the executive mansion,
pledged them that Missouri would shortly be found ranged on the side of
seceded States. The treason of the governor and legislature did not stop
with these manifestations. They proceeded to acts of legislation,
preparatory to the employment of force, after the manner of their
'Southern bretheren.' First, it was necessary to get control of the city
of St. Louis. The Republican party held the government of the city,
mayor, council, and police force--a formidable Union organization. The
legislature passed a bill repealing that part of the city charter that,
gave to the mayor the appointment of the police, and constituting a
board of police commissioners, to be appointed by the governor, who
should exercise that power. He named men that suited his purposes. The
Union police were discharged, and their places filled by secessionists.
Next, the State militia was to be organized in the interests of
rebellion, and a law was passed to accomplish that end. The State was
set off into divisions; military camps were to be established in each;
all able-bodied men between the ages of eighteen and fifty were liable
to be called into camp and drilled a given number of days in the year;
and, when summoned to duty, instead of taking the usual oath to support
the Constitution of the United States, they were required only to be
sworn 'to obey the orders of the governor of the State of Missouri.'
These camps were styled camps of instruction. One of them was
established at St. Louis, within the corporate limits of the city, about
two miles west of the court-house, on a commanding eminence.

Thus the lines began to be drawn closely around the Unionists of St.
Louis. The State convention had adjourned, and its members had gone
home, having done but little to re-assure the loyalists. They had,
indeed, passed an ordinance declaring that Missouri would adhere to the
Union; but the majority of the members had betrayed such hesitancy and
indecision, such a lack of stomach to grapple with the rude issues of
the rebellion, that their action passed almost without moral effect.
Their ordinance was treated with contempt by the secessionists, and
nearly lost sight of by the people; so thoroughly were all classes
lashed into excitement by the storm of revolution now blackening the
whole Southern Hemisphere.

The friends of the Union could look to but one quarter for aid, that was
Washington, where a new administration had so recently been installed,
amid difficulties that seemed to have paralyzed its power. The
government had been defied by the rebellion at every point; its ships
driven by hostile guns from Southern ports; its treasures seized; its
arsenals occupied, and its abundant arms and munitions appropriated.
Nowhere had the federal arm resented insult and robbery with a blow.
This had not been the fault of the government that was inaugurated on
the fourth of March. It was the fruit of the official treason of the
preceding administration, that had completely disarmed the government,
and filled the new executive councils with confusion, by the numberless
knaves it had placed in all departments of the public service, whose
daily desertions of duty rendered the prompt and honest execution of the
laws impossible. But the fact was indisputable; and how could St. Louis
hope for protection that had nowhere else been afforded? The national
government had an arsenal within the city limits. It comprised a
considerable area of ground, was surrounded by a high and heavy stone
wall, and supplied with valuable arms. But so far from this
establishment being a protection to the loyal population, it seemed more
likely, judging by what had occurred in other States, that it would
serve as a temptation to the secession mob that was evidently gathering
head for mischief, and that the desire to take it would precipitate the
outbreak. The Unionists felt their danger; the rebels saw their
opportunity. Already the latter were boasting that they would in a short
time occupy this post, and not a few of the prominent Union citizens of
the town were warned by secession leaders that they would soon be set
across the Mississippi river, exiles from their homes forever. As an
instance of the audacity of the rebel element at this time, and for
weeks later, the fact is mentioned that the United States soldiers, who
paced before the gates of the arsenal as sentinels on duty, had their
beats defined for them by the new secession police, and were forbidden
to invade the sacred precincts of the city's highway. The arsenal was
unquestionably devoted to capture, and it would have been a prize to the
rebels second in value to the Gosport navy-yard. It contained at this
time sixty-six thousand stand of small arms, several batteries of light
artillery and heavy ordnance, and at least one million dollars' worth of
ammunition. It was besides supplied with extensive and valuable
machinery for repairing guns, rifling barrels, mounting artillery, and
preparing shot and shell. The future, to the Union men of St. Louis,
looked gloomy enough; persecution, and, if they resisted, death, seemed
imminent; and no voice from abroad reached them, giving them good cheer.
But deliverance was nigh at hand.

About the middle of January, Capt. Nathaniel Lyon, of the Second
Infantry, U.S.A., arrived in St. Louis with his company; and his rank
gave him command of all the troops then at the arsenal and Jefferson
Barracks, a post on the river, ten miles below, the department being
under the command of Brigadier General Harney. Capt. Lyon had been
garrisoning a fort in Kansas. He was known to some of the Union men of
St. Louis; and his resolute spirit and devoted patriotism marked him as
their leader in this crisis. Frank Blair at once put himself in
communication with Capt. Lyon, and advised him fully and minutely as to
the political situation. He exposed to him the existence of his
volunteer military organization. At his request Capt. Lyon visited and
reviewed the regiments; and it was arranged between them that if an
outbreak should occur, or any attempt be made to seize the arsenal,
Capt. Lyon should receive this volunteer force to his assistance, arm it
from the arsenal, and take command for the emergency. It should be
known, however, to the greater credit of the Union leaders of St. Louis,
that they had already, from private funds, procured about one thousand
stand of arms, with which their nightly drills, as heretofore stated,
had been conducted. As soon as Capt. Lyon's connection with this
organization was suspected, an attempt was made to have him removed, by
ordering him to Kansas on the pretext of a court of inquiry; but this
attempt was defeated. Thus matters stood for a time, the Union men
beginning to be reassured, but still doubtful of the end. After a while,
Fort Sumter was opened upon, and fell under its furious bombardment. The
torch of war was lit. President Lincoln issued his proclamation for
volunteers. Gov. Jackson telegraphed back an insolent and defiant
refusal, in which he denounced the 'war waged by the federal government'
as 'inhuman and diabolical.' Frank Blair instantly followed this
traitorous governor's dispatch by another, addressed to the Secretary of
War, asking him to accept and muster into service the volunteer
regiments he had been forming. This offer was accepted, and the men
presented themselves. But Brig. Gen. Harney, fearing that the arming of
these troops would exasperate the secession populace, and bring about a
collision with the State militia, refused to permit the men to be
mustered into service and armed. This extraordinary decision was
immediately telegraphed to the government, and Gen. Harney was relieved,
leaving Capt. Lyon in full command. This was the 23d of April. In a week
four full regiments were mustered in, and occupied the arsenal. A
memorial was prepared and sent to Washington by Frank Blair, now colonel
of the first of these regiments, asking for the enrolment of five other
regiments of Home Guards. Permission was given, and in another week
these regiments also were organized and armed. The conflict was now at
hand. Simultaneously with this arming on the part of the government for
the protection of the arsenal, the order went forth for the assembling
of the State troops in their camps of instruction. On Monday, the 6th of
May, the First Brigade of Missouri militia, under Gen. D.M. Frost, was
ordered by Gov. Jackson into camp at St. Louis, avowedly for purposes of
drill and exercise. At the same time encampments were formed, by order
of the governor, in other parts of the State. The governor's adherents
in St. Louis intimated that the time for taking the arsenal had arrived,
and the indiscreet young men who made up the First Brigade openly
declared that they only awaited an order from Gov. Jackson--an order
which they evidently had been led to expect--to attack the arsenal and
possess it, in spite of the feeble opposition they calculated to meet
from 'the Dutch' Home Guards enlisted to defend it. A few days
previously, an agent of the governor had purchased at St. Louis several
hundred kegs of gun-powder, and succeeded, by an adroit stratagem, in
shipping it to Jefferson City. The encampment at St. Louis, 'Camp
Jackson,' so called from the governor, was laid off by streets, to which
were assigned the names 'Rue de Beauregard,' and others similarly
significant; and when among the visitors whom curiosity soon began to
bring to the camp a 'Black Republican' was discovered by the
soldiers,--and this epithet was applied to all unconditional
Unionists,--he was treated with unmistakable coldness, if not positive
insult. If additional proof of the hostile designs entertained against
the federal authority by this camp were needed, it was furnished on
Thursday, the 9th, by the reception within the camp of several pieces of
cannon, and several hundred stand of small arms, taken from the federal
arsenal at Baton Rouge, Louisiana, which was then in the possession of
the rebels. These arms were brought to St. Louis by the steamboat _J.C.
Swon_, the military authorities at Cairo having been deceived by the
packages, which were represented to contain marble slabs. On the arrival
of the _Swon_ at the St. Louis levee, the arms were taken from her, sent
to Camp Jackson, and received there with demonstrations of triumph.

When Capt. Lyon was entrusted with full command at St. Louis, President
Lincoln had named, in his orders to him, a commission of six loyal and
discreet citizens with whom he should consult in matters pertaining to
the public safety, and with whose counsel he might declare martial law.
These citizens were John How, Samuel T. Glover, O.D. Filley, Jean J.
Witsig, James O. Broadhead, and Col. Frank P. Blair. The last
mentioned--Colonel Blair--was Capt. Lyon's confidential and constant
companion. They were comrades in arms, and a unit in counsel. Their
views were in full accord as to the necessity of immediately reducing
Camp Jackson. Defiance was daily passing between the marshalling hosts,
not face to face, but through dubious partisans who passed from camp to
camp, flitting like the bats of fable in the confines of conflict. Capt.
Lyon's decision, urged thereto by Col. Blair, was made without calling a
council of the rest of his advisers. They heard of it, however, and,
though brave and loyal men all, they gathered around him in his quarters
at the arsenal, Thursday evening, and besought him earnestly to change
his purpose. The conference was protracted the livelong night, and did
not close till six o'clock, Friday morning, the 10th. They found Capt.
Lyon inexorable,--the fate of Camp Jackson was decreed. Col. Blair's
regiment was at Jefferson Barracks, ten miles below the arsenal, at that
hour. It was ordered up; and about noon on that memorable Friday, Capt.
Lyon quietly left the arsenal gate at the head of six thousand troops,
of whom four hundred and fifty were regulars, the remainder United
States Reserve Corps or Home Guards, marched in two columns to Camp
Jackson, and before the State troops could recover from the amazement
into which the appearance of the advancing army threw them, surrounded
the camp, planting his batteries upon the elevations around, at a
distance of five hundred yards, and stationing his infantry in the roads
leading from the grove wherein their tents were pitched. The State
troops were taken completely by surprise; for, although there had been
vague reports current in camp of an intended attack from the arsenal,
the cry of the visitors at the grove, 'They're coming!' 'They're
coming!' raised just as the first column appeared in sight, found them
strolling leisurely under the trees, chatting with their friends from
the city, or stretched upon the thick green grass, smoking and reading.

       *       *       *       *       *

BEAUFORT DISTRICT,--PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE.


The sovereign State of South Carolina seems from the beginning to have
been actuated by the desire not only to mold its institutions according
to a system differing entirely from that of its sister States, but even
to divide its territory in a peculiar manner, for which reason we find
in it 'districts' taking the place of counties. The south-west of these
bears the name of its principal town, 'Beaufort.' It is bounded on the
west by the Savannah River, and on the south by the Atlantic. Its length
from north to south is fifty-eight miles, its breadth thirty-three
miles, and it contains about one and a quarter millions of acres of land
and water. Considered geologically, Beaufort is one of the most
remarkable sections of the United States. As recent events have brought
it so prominently before us, we propose to consider its history,
capacities, and prospects.

From its proximity to the Spanish settlements in the peninsula of
Florida, its beautiful harbors and sounds were early explored and taken
possession of by the Spaniards. It is now certain they had established a
post here called 'Fort St. Phillip,' at St. Elena,[B] as early as
1566-7; this was probably situated on the south-western point of St.
Helena Island, and some remains of its entrenchment can still be traced.
From this fort Juan Pardo, its founder, proceeded on an expedition to
the north-west, and explored a considerable part of the present States
of South Carolina and Georgia.

How long the Spaniards remained here is now uncertain, but they long
claimed all this coast as far north as Cape Fear. The French planted a
colony in South Carolina, and gave the name Port Royal to the harbor and
what is now called Broad River; but they were driven off by the
Spaniards, and history is silent as to any incidents of their rule for a
century. In 1670 a few emigrants arrived in a ship commanded by Capt.
Hilton, and landed at what is now known as 'Hilton's Head,' the
south-western point of Port Royal harbor, which still perpetuates his
name. The colony was under the management of Col. Sayle; but the
Spaniards at St. Augustine still claimed the domains, and the settlers,
fearing an attack, soon removed to the site of Old Charleston, on Ashley
River. In 1682, Lord Cardoss led a small band from Scotland hither,
which settled on Port Royal Island, near the present site of Beaufort.
He claimed co-ordinate authority with the governor and council at
Charleston. During the discussion of this point the Spaniards sent an
armed force and dislodged the English, most of whom returned to their
native country. A permanent settlement was finally made on Port Royal
Island in 1700. The town of Beaufort was laid out in 1717, and an
Episcopal church erected in 1720. The name was given from a town in
Anjou, France, the birthplace of several of the Huguenot settlers.

For many years the Spaniards threatened the coast as far north as
Charleston, but the settlement increased, and extended over St. Helena
and other islands. Slavery was here coeval with settlement, and the
peculiar institution was so earnestly fostered, that in 1724 it was
estimated that South Carolina contained 18,000 slaves to only 14,000
whites. The slaves were mostly natives of Africa of recent importation,
and were poorly adapted to clear up the forests and prepare the way for
extensive plantations, but their cost was small, and every year they
improved in capacity and value. In the succeeding half century were laid
the fortunes of the prominent families who have controlled the district,
and often greater interests, to our day. Grants of land could be had
almost for the asking, especially by men of influence; and fertile
islands were given, containing hundreds and sometimes thousands of
acres, to a single family, who have here been monarchs of all they
survey, including hundreds of slaves, till _the Hegira_ or _flight_ A.D.
1861.

When we take into account the salubrity of the climate and the fertility
of the soil, we must allow that this district has many natural
advantages which can not be excelled by any section of the same extent
in this country. A considerable part of the district is composed of
islands, which are supposed to be of a comparatively recent formation,
many of them beautiful to the eye, and rich in agricultural facilities;
they are in number upwards of fifty, not less than thirty of them being
of large size. Upon the sea-coast are Reynolds, Prentice, Chaplins,
Eddings, Hilton Head, Dawfuskie, Turtle, and the Hunting Islands. Behind
these lie St. Helena, Pinckney, Paris, Port Royal, Ladies', Cane,
Bermuda, Discane, Bells, Daltha, Coosa, Morgan, Chissolm, Williams
Harbor, Kings, Cahoussue, Fording, Barnwell, Whale, Delos, Hall, Lemon,
Barrataria, Lopes, Hoy, Savage, Long, Round, and Jones Islands. These
are from one to ten miles in length, and usually a proportional half in
width. St. Helena is over twenty miles in extent, and could well support
an agricultural population of twenty thousand. Port Royal is next in
size, but, being of a more sandy formation, is not so fertile. These
islands are all of an alluvial formation,--the result of the action of
the rivers and the sea. There is no rock of any kind, not even a pebble
stone, to be found in the whole district.

The soil of these islands is composed mostly of a fine sandy loam, very
easily cultivated. In most of them are swamps and marshes, which serve
to furnish muck and other vegetable deposits for fertilizing; but the
idea of furnishing anything to aid the long over-worked soil seems to
these proprietors like returning to the slave some of the earnings taken
from him or his ancestors, and is seldom done till nature is at last
exhausted, and then it is allowed only a few years' repose. Situated
under the parallel of 32 deg., there is scarcely a product grown in our
country, of any value, that can not be produced here. Previous to the
Revolution the principal staple for market was indigo, and that raised
in this district always commanded the highest price. It was from the
proceeds of this plant that the planters were enabled for a long period
to purchase slaves and European and northern American productions. Soon
after the Revolution their attention was turned to cotton; but the
difficulty of separating it from the seed seemed to make it impossible
to furnish it in any profitable quantity, for so slow was the process
then followed that, with the utmost diligence, a negro could not, by
hand labor, clean over a few pounds per day. The genius of Whitney,
however, opened a new era to the cotton planters, who were much more
eager to avail themselves of his invention than to remunerate him. It
was soon perceived that the cotton raised on these islands was far
superior to that produced in the interior, which is still called Upland,
only to distinguish it from the 'Sea Island.' It was also noticed that
while the common variety produced a seed nearly green with a rough skin,
the seed of the islands soon became black with a smooth skin; the effect
entirely of location and climate, as it soon resumes its original color
when transported back to the interior. The cultivation of this variety
is limited to a tract of country of about one hundred and fifty miles in
length, and not over twenty-five miles in breadth, mostly on lands
adjacent to the salt water, the finest 'grades' being confined to the
islands within this district. It is true that black-seed cotton is
cultivated to some extent along the coast from Georgetown, S.C., to St.
Augustine, but a great part of it is of an inferior quality and staple,
and brings in the market less than one-half the price of the real 'Sea
Island.' This plant seems to delight in the soft and elastic atmosphere
from the Gulf Stream, and, after it is 'well up,' requires but a few
showers through the long summer to perfect it. It is of feeble growth,
particularly on the worn-out lands, and two hundred pounds is a good
yield from an acre. An active hand can tend four acres, besides an acre
of corn and 'ground provisions;' but with a moderate addition of
fertilizers and rotation of crops no doubt these productions would be
doubled. If the yield seems small, the price, however, makes it one of
the most profitable products known. The usual quotations for choice Sea
Islands in Charleston market has been for many years about four times as
great as for the middling qualities of Uplands,--probably an average of
from thirty-five to forty-five cents per pound; and for particular
brands[C] sixty to seventy cents is often paid. The writer has seen a
few bales, of a most beautiful color and length of staple, which sold
for eighty cents, when middling Uplands brought but ten cents per pound.
It is mostly shipped to France, where it is used for manufacturing the
finest laces, and contributes largely to the texture of fancy silks,
particularly the cheaper kinds for the American market. After passing
above the flow of the salt water, but within the rise of the tide, there
is a wide alluvial range along the rivers and creeks, which, by a system
of embankments, can be flowed or drained at pleasure. This is cultivated
with rice, and, if properly cared for, yields enormous crops, sometimes
of sixty bushels to an acre. The land is composed of a mass of muck,
often ten feet deep and inexhaustible, and never suffers from drought.
This land is very valuable, one hundred dollars often being paid per
acre for large plantations. Much rice land, however, remains uncleared
for want of the enterprise and perseverance necessary to its
improvement.

Farther in the interior the land is principally of a sandy formation,
most of it underlaid with clay. Very little effort is, however, made by
planters to cultivate it, although it is very easily worked, and with a
little manuring yields fair crops of corn and sweet potatoes. The cereal
grains are seldom cultivated, but no doubt they would yield well. A
large portion of the main-land is composed of swamps, of which only
enough have been reclaimed to make it certain that here is a mine of
wealth to those gifted with the energy to improve it. The soil is as
fertile as the banks of the Nile, and nowhere could agricultural
enterprise meet with such certainly profitable returns. Recurring again
to the agricultural capacity of the islands, it is certain that good
crops of sugar-cane can be grown on them. During the war of 1812, the
planters turned their attention to it, and succeeded well, since which
time many of them have continued to plant enough for their own use; but
this plant soon exhausts such a soil, unless some fertilizer is used,
and they therefore prefer cotton, which draws a large part of its
sustenance from the atmosphere alone. The sweet and wild orange grows
here, and some extensive groves are to be seen. Figs are produced in
abundance from September till Christmas. Gardens furnish abundant
vegetables, yielding green peas in March and Irish potatoes in May,
while numerous tribes of beautiful flowers hold high carnival for more
than half the year.

This seems to be the true home of the rose, which is found blooming from
March until Christmas. Many of the rare climbing varieties of this
flower, which we see at the North only as small specimens in
green-houses, grow here in wild profusion. The grape is represented by
many species indigenous to this State alone, and could, no doubt, be
cultivated and produced in greater variety and perfection than elsewhere
on this continent, as the climate is more equable. A species of Indian
corn, called 'white flint corn,' and which when cooked is very
nutritious and white as snow, seems indigenous to these islands. It is
much superior to the common varieties.

Of the sylva we will only say, it is equal in value and variety to that
of any section of our country. Here is the home of the palmetto[D] or
cabbage tree, the only palm in our wide country. The live oak, once so
abundant, has, however, been largely cut off, mostly to supply our
navy-yards, and some of the ships built from it are now blockading the
very harbors from which it was carried. The pitch pine is the common
growth of the interior, and under a new system would form a valuable
article of commerce as lumber, and as yielding the _now_ so much
required turpentine. Of wild animals and birds, here are to be found a
large variety. The Hunting Islands and others are well stocked with
deer. During the winter wild, geese and ducks abound, and a variety of
fish, with fine oysters, can be had at all seasons.

We now come to consider the present inhabitants of this district. The
whites are almost entirely the descendants of the earliest settlers of
this State, who were English,[E] Scotch, and Protestant Irish, with a
slight infusion of the Huguenot and Swiss elements. A century and a half
has rendered them homogeneous. As there has never been any interest here
other than agriculture, and as every man may be said to own the
plantation he cultivates, there has been as little change of property or
condition as possible, and therefore the same land and system of
cultivation has passed from father to son through four or five
generations. Had there been any emigration or change of population, some
alterations, and most likely new enterprise and vigor, would have been
infused, and more modern and national feeling have been instituted for
their narrow and sectional prejudices. No doubt our national character
has been much influenced by the division of land. Where this has been
nearly equal, as in our New England towns, a republican form of
government has been almost a necessity. But at the South an entirely
different arrangement has prevailed. Land was at first distributed in
large bodies fitted to accommodate a state of slavery; and the
consequence was that a feudal system was inaugurated from the
settlement, which has continued with increasing power. This has been one
of the permanent causes of Southern pride and exclusiveness.

The inhabitants of South Carolina and Virginia previous to the
Revolution were very supercilious towards the North, and even to their
less opulent neighbors of Georgia and North Carolina; a feeling which
was often the cause of much antagonism among the officers and soldiers
during the war. Charleston and Williamsburg gave the tone to good
society, and it was haughty and aristocratic in the extreme. While
Virginia has for the last half century been in a state of comparative
decay, South Carolina has, by its culture of cotton and rice, just been
able to hold its own; but the pride and exclusiveness of its people have
increased much faster than its material interests. Although the
Constitution of the United States guarantees to every State a republican
form of government, no thinking person who has resided for a single week
within the limits of South Carolina can have failed to see and feel
that a tyranny equal to that of Austria exists there. The freedom of
opinion and its expression were not permitted. Strangers were always
under espionage, and public opinion, controlled by an oligarchy of
slave-holders, overruled laws and private rights. Nowhere, even in South
Carolina, was this feeling of _hauteur_ so strong as in that portion of
the State which we are describing. On the large plantations the owners
ruled with power unlimited over life and property, and could a faithful
record be found it would prove one of vindictive oppression, productive
oftentimes of misery and bloodshed. Most of the wealthier planters in
the district have residences at Beaufort, to which they remove during
the summer months to escape the malaria arising from the soil around
their inland houses. This place may be considered the home of the
aristocracy. Here reside the Barnwells,[F] Heywards, Rhetts[G](formerly
called Smiths,) Stuarts, Means, Sams, Fullers,[H] Elliots,[I] Draytons
and others, altogether numbering about fifty families, but bearing not
more than twenty different names, who rule and control the country for
forty miles around. This is the most complete and exclusive approach to
'nobility' of blood and feeling on our continent. Nowhere else is family
pride carried to such an extent. They look with supercilious disdain on
every useful employment, save only the planting of cotton and rice.
Nothing in any of our large cities can equal the display of equipages,
with their profusion of servants in livery, exhibited on pleasant
afternoons, when the mothers and daughters of these cotton lords take
their accustomed airing. So powerfully has this feeling of exclusiveness
prevailed that no son or daughter dares marry out of their circle. For a
long series of years has this custom prevailed, and the consequence is
that the families above named are nearly of a common blood; and it needs
no physiologist to tell us the invariable effect arising from this
transgression of natural laws, on the physical and mental faculties of
both sexes. In such a state of society is it strange that the present
generation should have grown up with ideas better suited to the castes
of India than to those of republican America? As a consequence they
consider their condition more elevated than that of their neighbors in
the adjoining States, and of almost imperial consideration. But no
language can express their bitter contempt for the people of the North,
more particularly for those of New England birth.

In perusing the history and progress of any portion of our country, the
statistics of population become an interesting study. Let us glance over
a brief table, showing what the increase has been in this district for
the past forty years, and its miserable deficiency in physical means of
strength and defense. In 1820 the district contained 32,000 souls, of
which there were 4,679 whites and 27,339 slaves, and 141 free blacks. In
1860 there were 6,714 whites and 32,500 slaves, and 800 free blacks,
making a total of 40,014,--an increase of whites of 2,035, of slaves
5,161, of free blacks 650:--total increase 7,855 in forty years. Here we
have nearly the largest disproportion of whites to slaves in any part of
the South. Of the 6,714 whites, about 1,000 are probably men over
twenty-one years of age, and it is not to be presumed that an equal
number are capable of bearing arms. Is it possible to find anywhere a
community more helpless for its own protection or defense? It is one of
the truths of science and philosophy that nature, when forced beyond its
own powers and laws, will react, and again restore its own supremacy. So
we here find a magnificent space of country, rich in all natural
requisites, and unsurpassed in its capabilities of producing not only
the necessaries of life, but its luxuries, having an exclusive right to
some of the most valuable staples of the world, which has been for a
century and a half the abode of an imperious few, who have, by
tyrannical power, wrung from the bones and muscles of generations of
poor Africans the means to sustain their luxury, power, and pride. They
have also robbed from the mother earth the fertility of its soil to its
utmost extent, leaving much of it completely exhausted. This state of
things has reacted on them; it has made them proud, domineering,
ambitious, and revengeful of fancied injuries. It has hurried them into
rebellion against the best government the world ever saw,--and this has
at last brought with it its own punishment and retribution. It has
placed their soil, their mansions, their crops and poor slaves in the
possession of the hated men of the North, and under the laws and control
of the government they affected to despise. When the last gun had
sounded from the ramparts at Port Royal, and the Stars and Stripes again
resumed their supremacy on the soil of South Carolina, a new era dawned
over these beautiful islands and waters, and the day that witnessed the
retreat of the rebel forces should hereafter mark, like the flight of
Mahomet, the inauguration of a new dispensation for this land and its
people. Let us, therefore, in continuing our chronicles, cast the
horoscope, and, without claiming any spirit of prophecy, show the duties
of our nation in this contingency, and the beneficial results that must
flow from it, if carried out with the energy, perseverance, and
practical Christianity due to our country and the age in which we live.

The accession to any government of new territory brings with it new
duties, which it is always important should be performed with energy and
decision, so that the greatest good, to the greatest number, may be the
result. A good Providence has placed the domain under consideration in
our possession. Its political condition is to us unique, and almost
embarrassing. If the question is asked, 'Can we hold and dispose of a
part, or whole, of a sovereign State as a conquered province?' the
answer must be in the affirmative. Government is supreme, and must be
exercised, particularly to protect the weak, and for the general good of
the whole nation. Here is a region, as fair as the sun shines upon, now
in a great measure deserted and lying waste. What is to be done with it?
and what is our duty in this exigency? The first want is a government,
for without a proper one no progress can be made. Let Congress then at
once establish a territorial government over so much of the State as we
now have in our possession, and over what we may in future obtain;--not
a government to exhibit pomp, and show, but one practical and useful,
with a court and its proper officers. Let every large unrepresented
estate be placed in the hands of a temporary administrator, who should
be a practical and honest man, and held to a strict account for all
properties entrusted to his keeping, and who should act also as guardian
to the slaves belonging to the estate. Then enforce the collection of a
tax; and if the owner comes forward within sixty days, pays the tax,
takes the oath of allegiance, and agrees to remain in the territory and
assist in enforcing and executing the laws, during that and the
succeeding year, let him resume his property, and be protected in all
his rights. But in default of any loyal response from the proprietor,
the property should be disposed of, in moderate quantities, to actual
settlers, who should be bound to do duty for its defense, whenever
called upon.

But then comes the great difficulty, the disposition of the slaves,--the
great question which has so long been discussed as a theory, and which
now has to be met as a practical measure. Let us meet it as men and
patriots, and, rising above the clamor of fanatics, or the proclamations
of new-fangled and demagoguing brigadiers, look at the permanent result
to our whole country, and the real good of the African race.

Humanity, society, and property, all have claims and acknowledged
rights; let them all be considered. It is well known that the slaves on
these islands have always been kept in a state of greater ignorance of
the world and all practical matters than those inhabiting the border
States, or where there is a larger proportion of whites, with whom they
often labor and associate. To emancipate them at once would be to do a
great wrong to the white man, to the property, in whatever hands it
might be, and a still greater injury to the slave. There can be but one
way of disposing of this question which will satisfy the nation, and
quiet the fears of the conservative, and preserve the hopes of the
radical, which is, to pursue a _middle_ course--a policy which shall as
nearly as possible equalize the question to all parties. Let the slave
be retained on the plantation where he is found; and, as no race are so
much attached to their own locality, so let them remain, place them
under a proper system of APPRENTICESHIP, with a mild code of laws, where
every right shall be protected, where suitable instruction, civil and
religious, shall be given, and where the marriage rite shall be
administered and respected. Under such laws and beneficent institutions,
this territory would soon be settled by men from the West, the North,
and from Europe, intelligent, enterprising, and industrious, who would
retrieve its worn-out fields, and introduce new systems of culture, with
all the modern labor-saving utensils. With kind treatment and new hopes,
the simple sons of Africa would have inducements to labor and to await
with patient hope the future and its rewards. Then would Beaufort
District become what the Giver of all good designed it to be--the abode
of an industrious, peaceful, and prosperous community. The production of
its great staple, 'Sea-Island cotton,' would be immensely increased, and
its quality improved, till it rivaled the silks of the Old World. The
yield of rice would be doubled, and its gardens and orchards would
supply the North with fruits now known only to the tropics.

So soon as the new government was fairly inaugurated, and the condition
of the land and its future cultivation settled, a movement would of
necessity be made to found here a city which would be the great
commercial metropolis of the South.

Charleston was 'located' at the wrong place, simply with the object of
being as distant as possible from the Spanish settlements, and has
always suffered from an insufficient depth of water on its bars to
accommodate the largest class of merchant ships. It has barely sixteen
feet of water at high tide, and ships loaded as lightly as possible
have often been obliged to wait for weeks to enter or leave the port. A
decrease of one or two feet in its main channel would, in its palmiest
days, have been fatal to its prosperity. The sinking of a dozen ships
loaded with stone has no doubt placed a permanent barrier to the
entrance of all but a small class of vessels. The ships themselves may
soon be displaced or destroyed by the sea-worm, but the New England
granite will prove a lasting monument to the folly and madness of the
rebellion. The destruction of the best part of the city by fire seems
also to show that Providence has designed it to be ranked only with the
cities of the past.

The productions of South Carolina have always been large and valuable,
and since the completion of their system of railroad facilities they
have greatly increased; therefore a commercial city is a necessity, and
Port Royal must be its locality. Here is the noblest harbor south of the
Chesapeake, with a draught of water of from twenty-five to thirty feet,
enough for the largest-sized ships, and sufficient anchorage room for
all the navies of the world. Our government should here have a naval
depot to take the place of Norfolk, since there is no more suitable
place on the whole coast. In this connection the name, Royal Port, is
truly significant.

The precise locality for the new city can not now be indicated, but we
would suggest the point some two miles south-west of Beaufort, which
would give it a position not unlike New York. It would have the straight
Broad River for its Hudson, with a fine channel on the south and east
communicating with numerous sounds and rivers. Its situation on an
island of about the same length as Manhattan completes the parallel.

The value of the produce conveyed over the sounds and rivers connecting
with Port Royal, by sloops and steamers, must be counted by millions of
dollars. We may estimate the crop of Sea-Island cotton at about fifteen
thousand bales, or six millions of pounds, and of rice about fifty
million pounds. Yankee enterprise would soon double the amount, and add
to it an immense bulk of naval stores and lumber.

But this is but a moiety of what the exports would be. A branch railroad
only ten miles long would connect this port with all the railroads of
South Carolina and Georgia, which, diverging from Charleston and
Savannah, spread themselves over a large part of five States. This road
would make tributary to this place a vast district of country.

Savannah, which has for the last few years competed with Charleston for
this trade, will soon feel the power of the government, and it must
yield up a large part of its business to the more favorable location of
the new city.

A few short years, and what a change may come over these beautiful
islands and the waters that hold them in its embrace! A fair city,
active with its commerce and manufactures, wharves and streets lined
with stores and dwellings, interspersed with churches and schools,
inhabited by people from every section of our country, and from every
part of Europe, all interested to improve their own condition, and all
combining to add strength and wealth to the Union which they agree to
respect, love, honor, and defend!

       *       *       *       *       *

THE ANTE-NORSE DISCOVERERS OF AMERICA.


I. THE MYTHICAL ERA.

Who were the first settlers in America?

Within a few years our school-books pointed to Cristoval Colon, or
Columbus, and his crew, as the first within the range of history who
'passed far o'er the ocean blue' to this hemisphere. Now, however, even
the school-books--generally the last to announce novel truths--say
something of the Norsemen in America, though they frequently do it in a
discrediting and discreditable way. However, the old Vikings have
triumphed once more, even in their graves, and Professor Rafn can prove
as conclusively that his fierce ancestry trod the soil of Boston as that
the Mayflower Puritans followed in their footsteps. It is a dim old
story, laid away in Icelandic manuscripts, and confirmed by but few
relics on our soil; yet it is strong enough to give New England a link
to the Middle Ages of Europe, with their wildest romance and strangest
elements. It is pleasant to think that far back in the night there
walked for a short season on these shores great men of that hearty
Norse-Teuton race which in after times flowed through France into
England, and from England through the long course of ages hitherward.
Among the old Puritan names of New England there is more than one which
may be found in the roll of Battle Abbey, and through the Norse-Norman
spelling of which we trace the family origin of fierce sea-kings in
their lowland isles or rocky lairs on the Baltic.

But there are older links existing between America and Europe than this
of the Norseman. Of these the first is indeed buried in mystery--leading
us back into that sombre twilight of 'symbolism,' as the Germans
somewhat obscurely call the study of the early ages whose records are
lost, and which can only be traced by reflection in the resemblances
between mythologies which argue a common origin, and the monuments
remaining, which seem to establish it. Yes, America has this in common
with every country of Asia, Europe, and Africa: she has relics which
indicate that at one time she was inhabited by a race which had perhaps
the same faith, the same stupendous nature-worship, with that of the Old
World, and which was, to reason by analogy, _possibly_ identified by the
same language and customs. What _was_ this race, this religion, this
language? Who shall answer? Men like Faber, and Higgins, and Lajard,
with scores of others, have unweariedly gathered together all the points
of resemblance between the religions and mythologies of the Hindus and
Egyptians and Chinese, the Druids and the Phenicians, the Etruscans and
the Scandinavians, and old Sclavonic heathen, and found in and between
and through them all a startling identity: everywhere the Serpent,
everywhere the Queen of Heaven with her child, everywhere the cup of
life and the bread and honey of the mysteries, with the salt of the
orgie, everywhere a thousand fibres twining and trailing into each other
in bewildering confusion, indicating a common origin, yet puzzling
beyond all hope those who seek to find it. So vast is the wealth of
material which opens on the scholar who seeks to investigate this common
origin of mythologies, and with them the possible early identity of
races and of languages, that he is almost certain to soon bury himself
in a hypothesis and become lost in some blind alley of the great
labyrinth.

Certain points appear to have once existed in common to nations on every
part of the earth previous to authentic history, and in these America
had probably more or less her share, as appears from certain monuments
and relics of her early races. They are as follows:--

1. A worship of nature, based on the inscrutable mystery of generation
with birth and death. As these two extremes caused each other, they were
continually _identified_ in the religious myth or symbol employed to
represent either.

2. This great principle of action, developing itself into birth and
death, was regarded as being symbolized in every natural object, and
corresponding with these there were created myths, or 'stories,' setting
forth the principal mystery of nature in a thousand poetic forms.

3. The formula according to which all myths were shaped was that of
transition, or _the passing through_. The germ, in the mother or in the
plant, which after its sleep reappeared in life, was also recognized in
Spring, or Adonis, coming to light and warmth after the long death of
winter in the womb of the earth. The ark, which floats on the waters,
bearing within it the regenerator, signified the same; so did the cup or
horn into which the wine of life was poured and from which it was drunk;
so too did nuts, or any object capable of representing latent existence.
The passing into a cavern through a door between pillars or rocky
passes, or even the wearing of rings, all intimated the same
mystery--the going into and the coming forth into renewed life.

4. But the great active principle which lay at the foundation of the
mystery of birth and death, or of action, was set forth by the
serpent--the type of good and evil, of life and destruction--the first
intelligence. It is the constant recurrence of this symbol among the
early monuments of America, as of the Old World, which proves most
conclusively the existence at one time of a common religion, or
'cultus.' It was probably meant to signify water from its wavy curves,
and the snake-like course of rivers, as inundation seems to have been,
according to early faith, the most prolific source of the destruction of
nature, and yet the most active in its revival.

There are in Brittany vast lines of massy Druidic stones, piled
sometimes for leagues in regular order, in such a manner as to represent
colossal serpents. Those who will consult the French _Dracontia_ will be
astonished at the labor expended on these strange temples. Squier has
shown that the earth-works of the West represent precisely the same
symbol. Mexico and South America abound, like Europe and the East, in
serpent emblems; they twine around the gods; they are gods themselves;
they destroy as Typhon, and give life in the hands of Esculapius.

In the United States, as in Europe and in the East, there are found in
steep places, by difficult paths, always near the banks of streams,
narrow, much-worn passages in rocks, through which one person[J] can
barely squeeze, and which were evidently not intended for ordinary
travel. The passing through these places was enjoined on religious
votaries, as indicating respect for the great principle of regeneration.
The peasants of Europe, here and there, at the present day, continue to
pass through these rock or cave doors, 'for luck.' It was usual, after
the transition, whether into a cave, where mysteries, feasts, and orgies
were held, significant of 'the revival,' or merely through a narrow
way,--to bathe in the invariably neighboring river; the serpent-river or
water which drowns organic life, yet without which it dies.

In England, at a comparatively recent period, and even yet occasionally
in Scandinavia, the peasantry plighted their troth by passing their
hands through the hole in the 'Odin-stones,' and clasping them. Beads
and wedding rings and 'fairy-stones,' or those found with holes in them,
were all linked to the same faith which rendered sacred every
resemblance to the 'passing through.' The graves of both North and
South America contain abundant evidence of the sacredness in which the
same objects were held. I have a singularly-shaped soapstone ornament,
taken from an Indian grave, whose perforation indicates the
'fairy-stone.' The religious legends of Mexico and of Peru are too
identical with many of the Old World to be passed over as coincidences;
the gold images of Chiriqui, with their Baal bell-ringing figures, and
serpent-girt, pot-bellied phallic idols, are too strikingly like those
of _Old_ Ireland and of the East not to suggest some far-away common
origin. I have good authority for saying that almost every symbol,
whether of cup or dove, serpent or horn, flower or new moon, boat or
egg, common to Old World mythology, may be found set forth or preserved
with the emphasis of religious emblems in the graves or ruined temples
of ancient North America.

The mass of evidence which has been accumulated by scholars illustrative
of a common origin of mythologies and a centralization of them around
the serpent; or, as G.S. Faber will have it, the Ark; or, as some think,
the heavenly bodies; or, as others claim, simply a worship of paternity
and maternity,--is immense. Why they should claim separate precedence
for symbols, all of which set forth the one great mystery how GOD
'weaves and works in action's storm,' is only explicable on the ground
that 'every scholar likes to have his own private little pet
hypothesis.' Enough, however, may be found to show that this stupendous
nature-worship _was_ held the world over,--_possibly_ in the days of a
single language,--in America as in ancient Italy, or around the sacred
mountain-crags of India; in Lebanon as in Ireland, in the garden-lands
of Assyria, and in the isles of the South.

Yet all this is as yet, for the truly scientific ethnologist, only
half-fact, indefinite, belonging to the cloud-land of fable. The poet or
the thinker, yearning for a new basis of art, may find in the immense
mass of legends and symbols an identification between all the forms of
nature in a vast harmony and mutual reflection of every beautiful
object; but for the man of facts it is unformed, not arranged, useless.
We know not the color of the race or races which piled the Western
mounds; their languages are lost; they are vague mist-gods, living in a
dimmer medium than that of mere tradition. So ends the first period of
intercommunication between Asia--the probable birthplace of the old
mythology--and America.


II. THE CHINESE DISCOVERERS OF MEXICO IN THE FIFTH CENTURY.

But there is a second link, ere we come to the Norsemen, which is strong
enough to merit the favorable consideration of the scientific man, for
it rests on evidence worthy serious investigation. I refer to the fact
that the Chinese-Annals, or Year Books,--which, according to good
authority, have been well kept, and which are certainly prosaic and
blue-bookish enough in their mass of dry details of embassies and
expenditures to be highly credible,--testify that in the fifth century
the Chinese learned the situation of the great peninsula Aliaska, which
they named Tahan, or Great China. Beyond this, at the end of the fifth
century,--be it observed that the advances in discovery correspond in
time in the records,--they discovered a land which Deguignes long after
identified with the north-west coast of America. With each discovery,
the people of these new lands were compelled, or were represented at
court as having been compelled, to send ambassadors wife tribute to the
Central Realm, or China.

But there had been unofficial Chinese travelers in Western America, and
even in Mexico itself, before this time. Those who have examined the
history of that vast religious movement of Asia which, contemporary with
Christianity, shook the hoary faiths of the East, while a higher and
purer doctrine was overturning those of the West, are aware that it had
many external points or forms in common with those of the later Roman
church, which have long been a puzzle to the wise. To say nothing of
mitres, tapers, violet robes, rosaries, bells, convents, auricular
confession, and many other singular identities, the early Buddhist
church distinguished itself by a truly catholic zeal for the making of
converts, and, to effect this, sent its emissaries to Central Africa and
Central Russia; from the Sclavonian frontier on the west to China,
Japan, and the farthest Russian isles of the east. On they went; who
shall say where they paused? We know that there are at this day in St.
Petersburg certain books on black paper taken from a Buddhist temple
found in a remote northern corner of Russia. It was much less of an
undertaking, and much less singular, that Chinese priests should pass,
by short voyages, from island to island, almost over the proposed
Russian route for the Pacific telegraph to America. That they _did so_
is explicitly stated in the Year Books, which contain details relative
to _Fusang_, or Mexico, where it is said of the inhabitants that 'in
earlier times these people lived not according to the laws of Buddha.
But it happened in the second "year-naming" "Great Light" of Song (A.D.
458), that five beggar monks, from the kingdom Kipin, went to this land,
extended over it the religion of Buddha, and with it his holy writings
and images. They instructed the people in the principles of monastic
life, and so changed their manners.'

But I am anticipating my subject. In another chapter I propose, on the
authority of Professor Neumann, a learned Sinologist of Munich, to set
forth the proofs that in the last year of the fifth century a Buddhist
priest, bearing the cloister name of Hoei-schin, or Universal
Compassion, returned from America, and gave for the first time an
official account of the country which he had visited, which account was
recorded, and now remains as a simple fact among the annual registers of
the government.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

       *       *       *       *       *

THE SPUR OF MONMOUTH.


  'Twas a little brass half-circlet,
    Deep gnawed by rust and stain,
  That the farmer's urchin brought me,
    Plowed up on old Monmouth plain;
  On that spot where the hot June sunshine
    Once a fire more deadly knew,
  And a bloodier color reddened
    Where the red June roses blew;--

  Where the moon of the early harvest
    Looked down through the shimmering leaves,
  And saw where the reaper of battle
    Had gathered big human sheaves.
  Old Monmouth, so touched with glory--
    So tinted with burning shame--
  As Washington's pride we remember,
    Or Lee's long tarnished name.

  'Twas a little brass half-circlet;
    And knocking the rust away,
  And clearing the ends and the middle
    From their buried shroud of clay,
  I saw, through the damp of ages
    And the thick disfiguring grime,
  The buckle-heads and the rowel
    Of a spur of the olden time.

  And I said--what gallant horseman,
    Who revels and rides no more,
  Perhaps twenty years back, or fifty,
    On his heel that weapon wore?
  Was he riding away to his bridal,
    When the leather snapped in twain?
  Was he thrown and dragged by the stirrup,
    With the rough stones crushing his brain?

  Then I thought of the Revolution,
    Whose tide still onward rolls--
  Of the free and the fearless riders
    Of the 'times that tried men's souls.'
  What if, in the day of battle
    That raged and rioted here,
  It had dropped from the foot of a soldier,
    As he rode in his mad career?

  What if it had ridden with Forman,
    When he leaped through the open door,
  With the British dragoon behind him,
    In his race o'er the granary floor?
  What if--but the brain grows dizzy
    With the thoughts of the rusted spur;
  What if it had fled with Clinton,
    Or charged with Aaron Burr?

  But bravely the farmer's urchin
    Had been scraping the rust away;
  And cleansed from the soil that swathed it,
    The spur before me lay.
  Here are holes in the outer circle--
    No common heel it has known,
  For each space, I see by the setting,
    Once held some precious stone.

  And here--not far from the buckle--
    Do my eyes deceive their sight?--
  Two letters are here engraven,
    That initial a hero's might!
  'G.W.'! Saints of heaven!
    Can such things in our lives occur?
  Do I grasp such a priceless treasure?
    Was this _George Washington's spur_?

  Did the brave old _Pater Patrioe_
    Wear that spur like a belted knight--
  Wear it through gain and disaster,
    From Cambridge to Monmouth flight?
  Did it press his steed in hot anger
    On Long Island's day of pain?
  Did it drive him, at terrible Princeton,
    'Tween two storms of leaden rain?

  And here--did the buckle loosen,
    And no eye look down to see,
  When he rode to blast with the lightning
    The shrinking eyes of Lee?
  Did it fall, unfelt and unheeded,
    When that fight of despair was won,
  And Clinton, worn and discouraged,
    Crept away at the set of sun?

  The lips have long been silent
    That could send an answer back;
  And the spur, all broken and rusted,
    Has forgotten its rider's track!
  I only know that the pulses
    Leap hot, and the senses reel,
  When I think that the Spur of Monmouth
    May have clasped George Washington's heel!

  And if it be so, O Heaven,
    That the nation's destiny holds,
  And that maps the good and the evil
    In the future's bewildering folds,
  Send forth some man of the people,
    Unspotted in heart and hand,
  On his foot to buckle the relic,
    And charge for a periled land!

  There is fire in our fathers' ashes;
    There is life in the blood they shed;
  And not a hair unheeded
    Shall fall from the nation's head.
  Old bones of the saints and the martyrs
    Spring up at the church's call:--
  God grant that the Spur of Monmouth
    Prove the mightiest relic of all!

       *       *       *       *       *

THE FATAL MARRIAGE OF BILL THE SOUNDSER.


Reader, possibly you do not know what a 'Soundser' is. Then I will tell
you. In the coastwise part of the State of New Jersey in which I live,
numerous sounds and creeks everywhere divide and intersect the low,
sea-skirting lands, wherein certain people are wont to cruise and delve
for the sake of securing their products, and hence come to be known in
our homely style as Soundsers. The fruitage afforded by these sounds is
both manifold and of price. Throughout all the pleasant weather, they
yield, with but little intermission, that gastronomic gem, the terrapin;
the succulent, hard-shell clam, and the 'soft' crab; the deep-lurking,
snowy-fleshed hake, or king-fish; the huge, bell-voiced drum, and that
sheen-banded pride of American salt-water fishes, the sheepshead. During
the waning weeks of May, and also with the continuance of dog-days, this
already profuse bounty receives a goodly accession in the shape of vast
flocks of willets, curlews, gray-backs, and other marine birds, which,
with every ebb tide, resort to their shoaler bars and flats, to take on
those layers of fat which the similarly well-conditioned old gentleman
of the city finds so inexpressibly delicious. When the summer is once,
over, and while the cold weather prevails, they furnish another and
quite new set of dainties. Then the span-long, ripe, 'salt' oyster is to
be had for the raking of their more solidly-bottomed basins; and all
along their more retired nooks and harbors, the gunner, by taking proper
precautions, may bring to bag the somewhat 'sedgy' but still
well-flavored black duck, the tender widgeon, the buttery little
bufflehead, the incomparable canvas-back, and the loud-shrieking,
sharp-eyed wild goose. All this various booty is industriously secured
by the 'soundsers,' to find, ere long, a ready market in the larger
inland towns and cities. But united to this shooting, fishing, and
oyster-catching, they have another 'trade' whose scene is on the waters,
though it connects itself with the sea, rather than the sounds, and
_this_ is 'wrecking.' They are prompt for this service whenever the
occasion requires; indeed, I sometimes think they prefer it, dangerous
though it be, before all others. Inured as they are to every sort of
exposure, they are of course a tough and rugged race; and what with
their diversity of occupation, calling, as it does, for a constant
interchange of the use of the gun, net, boat, fishing line, and some one
or other arm or edge tool, they are usually, nay, almost invariably,
handy and quick-witted.

By far the most notable 'soundser' our neighborhood ever bred was my
hero, BILL. Physically, at least, he was a true wonder. He stood full
six feet two, weighed eleven score pounds, and at the same time carried
no more flesh than sufficed to hide the exact outline of his bones.
Another man so strong as he I have never seen. I have repeatedly known
him to lift and walk off with anchors weighing five and six hundred
weight; and those big, thick hands of his could twist any horseshoe as
if it were a girl's wreath. Certainly he was not in the least graceful;
that 'ponderosity' of his could in no way be repressed. But he was still
of rude comeliness, his shape being squarely fitted and tolerably
proportioned, while his broad, red-maned visage wore a constant glow of
plain, though sincere, kindliness and good-humor.

As his physical man was uncommon, so he had uncommon mental endowments.
He was the only 'soundser' I ever knew who understood farming. He had
inherited a farmstead of some twenty-five or thirty acres, and this he
soon had blooming as the rose. When occasion required, he wrought on
it, day and night. He divided it, with truest judgment, into proper
fields, experimented successfully with various kinds of novel manures
(most of which he obtained from the sea), grew stock, planted, in
rotation, and, with only here and there a sympathizer, gave in his full
adherence to the theory of root culture. And he was a mechanic. He could
build house or barn to the last beam, and ship or boat to the last
joint; nay, he once devised the model of a self-righting life-boat,
which I have often heard shipmasters, and even real shipwrights, descant
upon in the highest terms of praise. Moreover, I can affirm that he was
a navigator. It is true that the _science_ of seamanship, as set forth
in books, he had never mastered. But he knew right well what winds of a
certain force and direction foretold, what waves of a certain height and
aspect meant; and this knowledge, combined with a squint, now and then,
at his pocket compass, sufficed to enable him to take a vessel with
safety anywhere along our coast.

But while my old pal showed high abilities in other arts, as a
'soundser' and wrecker he was not to be matched. He brought to the first
of these pursuits a clearness of observation which would have met the
approbation of many an acknowledged man of science. He knew every sort
of food which bird and fish fed upon, where it was to be found, and the
circumstances favorable to its production. He knew why the game resorted
to certain spots yesterday, and avoided them to-day; what
circumstances--and they are very many--impelled it to joyousness or
quietude; and what were most of its minor instincts. And all this was
done _thoroughly_, withal. There was no haphazard or uncertainty in any
of his conclusions. Taking thought of sundry conditions, he could tell
at any time when such a thing was applicable; how many sheepsheads one
could catch in the sounds; whether the _honk_ of the wild goose, flying
overhead, announced that he was on his way to a fresh-water pool or a
bar of gravel; whether the black ducks were cooling their thirsty
gizzards in a woodland pond, sitting scattered about the marshes, or
huddling together on the bosom of the sea. In a word, his mind had
gathered unto itself every law, of the least importance, affecting the
existence of such wild creatures about us as cost any pains to bring to
hand; and thus he was literally master over them, and held their lives
subject to his will. That this power was really surprising, will hardly
be disputed; and since we, his associates, could in no way possess
ourselves of the like, it passed among us for something almost
miraculous.

Still, brilliant 'soundser' as old Bill was, he was far greater as a
wrecker; since I am now about to relate an occurrence in the line which
proves him a veritable hero. As is perfectly well known, our American
coast is often the scene of fearful storms, which deal out wide-spread
destruction to mariners. With us, these gales are commonest in February,
and hence this month is held in marked dread. Some years ago, in the
season referred to, a storm burst upon our shores, whose like only a few
of the older among us had ever known. After fitfully moaning from the
northward and eastward for a day or two, the wind, one morning, finally
settled due north-east,--thus sweeping directly upon the land,--and blew
a hurricane. It was excessively cold, too, yet not so cold but that a
fine, dry snow was falling, though from the fury of the wind this could
settle nowhere, but was driven, whirling and surging, before the blast
in dense clouds. In short, it was a time of truly unearthly wildness;
and our hearts sank the deeper in us, since we knew what ere long must
inevitably occur. At last, within an hour or two of nightfall, the sound
of a ship's bell, rung hurriedly, pealed towards us along the uproar of
the tempest, and by this we were made aware that a vessel had been
wrecked on a certain shoal rising up in the ocean, about two miles from
that part of the beach nearest our village. To go to the rescue of this
vessel, at this time, was absolutely impossible. For, to say nothing of
the wrath of the winds, the air was so thick with snow that, in the
speedily advancing hours of darkness, in which we should not fail to be
entrapped, we would be powerless to find our way at sea a foot. There
was no help for it; the poor victims of the shipwreck must that very
night know death in one or another most terrifying shape, 'if it was the
will of the Lord.' With this mournful conviction, about twenty of us
gathered at old Bill's house with the closing in of a darkness as of
Tartarus, and kept its watches. The anger of the storm abated in no way
whatever till morning, and then the sole change that took place was a
somewhat thinner aspect of the driving snow. Yet, even when this was
discerned, every man of us hastened to draw over his ordinary winter
garb an oil-cloth suit which enveloped him from head to foot, and
soberly announced himself ready to do his duty in the strait. That we
should be exposed to the greatest dangers was absolutely certain; and
whether a single survivor of the terrors of that awful night yet clung
to the few frail timbers in the sea, for us to rescue, none but Heaven
knew; still, the manhood of each demanded that what was possible to be
done in the matter we should at least attempt.

And so we started; the leader being old Bill, who to some end, that I
could not then divine, bore a boat-sail bundled on his back. Our first
business was to make way to our surf or life boat. This lay about three
miles from the village, reckoning as the crow flies, and was sheltered
under a rude house which stood on the shores of a bay opening by an
inlet into the sea. Our common way of gaining this house was through a
circuitous passage of the sounds; but these we soon discovered, in
consonance with a previous prediction of old Bill's, were entirely
frozen over save in certain parts of their channels; and hence, this
route being unnavigable for such boats as were at hand, which, without
exception, were light gunning and fishing skiffs, we were forced to
avail ourselves of a barely practicable land track of which we knew, and
which, as it led about among the marshes, was also circuitous. And the
necessity of choosing this land path added to our difficulties, in that
we were forced to provide ourselves with a small batteau and drag it
behind us, to be able to cross many ditches and sloughs with which it
was barred, and which, particularly along their edges, were never really
frozen. After toiling and battling for a long period, and at the same
time having to face the most painfully cutting wind that burst
unobstructedly over the level area of the marshes, we at last reached
the house wherein the life-boat lay, and when old Bill had scrutinized
its oars, and stored it with a mingled collection of cordage, canvas and
spars, we ran it into the water. But now another trouble arose. The bay,
like the sounds of which indeed it formed a part, was covered with
ice,--either in solid sheets, or that thick slush, peculiar to ocean
estuaries, which is chiefly known as 'porridge ice,'--and, from its
comparative shallowness, covered so densely, too, that if we had trusted
to getting our boat out of it by sheer rowing, it would have taken us
the entire day so to do. In this emergency nothing would serve but that
we must advance bodily into the water, and, crushing and clearing away
the ice with our feet, drag the boat, in a depth at least sufficient for
her to float, to the entrance of the inlet, where the current ran so
strongly that no ice could gather. After a severely trying amount of
labor, this point was finally gained, and we stood fairly in front of
the tall, thundering breakers; whereupon each man nimbly jumped to his
place in the craft, that of steersman being the post of old Bill.

As we gave way on our oars, we shot along the inlet without much
difficulty; and presently old Bill announced that, he caught a faint
sight of the wreck in the distance--to all appearance 'most all gone but
the hull.' But we had little or no opportunity to indulge in speculation
or remark on the discovery, for in a moment or two we began to oppose
the wildness of the open main, and the hour of our real trial set in.
For the first time we could now appreciate the full force of the gale.
Good Heavens, how it blew! The waters seemed alive and in direst
convulsion. Everywhere huge walls of breakers were constantly upheaved
to be felled and shattered with a roar as of some terrific cannonade;
while the air became the arena for a helter-skelter tossing of sheets of
spray, clots of froth, and spirts of brine, which plentifully assailed
our poor boat in their madness, and, besides partially filling her with
slush, encased every man in a complete coating of ice. If our craft had
not been modeled with the very highest degree of skill, and if our
steersman had not been one of a thousand, we could have made no headway
at all in this appalling tumult. As it was, our advance was of the
weakest, and its success seemed very doubtful, let our efforts be what
they might. Not but what we could sufficiently hold our own in the swirl
of the vanquished waves; but when they swooped upon us in their full
stature, they not only sent the boat back as if she had been a mere
feather, but with a second's awkwardness on the part of old Bill they
would have flung her clean over from stem to stern, and our places among
the living would have been vacant. Having strained every nerve for
nearly two hours, we were still but part way through the breakers, while
some of the men began to complain of fatigue; with which old Bill seized
a favorable opportunity to put the boat about, and we were swept ashore
on the beach as in the twinkling of an eye. Here, we secured our boat by
hauling her high and dry on the strand; freed her from the slush and
water which had gained in her bottom; and then retired to the leeward of
a range of sand hills near by, to recruit our energies.

With full leisure to ponder over the difficulties confronting our
expedition, some few of the crew now began to 'speak it foully,' and
even to emit gruff proposals to return homewards. But to these waverers
old Bill at once administered the sternest rebuke; and, as they at last
held their peace, he averred with a gay smile (for he dearly loved the
presence of danger, and could never be brought to look on it other than
as a rough sort of irresponsible horse-play, over which he was sure in
one way or another to gain the mastery), that he had now weighed all the
conditions of the pass, and that the next time we attempted it we should
assuredly prevail. This assertion, coming from such a source, encouraged
one and all very greatly; and ere long we cheerfully launched our boat
once more, and again began to tug at the quivering oars. In a very
little while it became apparent enough that the tactics that Bill
intended to adopt in our present venture were very different from those
put in practice with the last. Instead of boldly facing the breakers as
he had heretofore done, he now began his maneuvering by laying us
directly in the trough of the sea,--planting the boat a little
crosswise, however, so as to prevent an untoward swell from riding over
her side and thus filling her,--and the instant he saw an advancing
breaker beginning to fracture, as a prelude to its downfall and
destruction, he boldly sped us, when the thing was at all practicable,
straight in the teeth of the gap, and as it proceeded to widen, we shot
through it, with the surf leaping and tossing on either hand high above
our heads. This stroke could have been possible only to a steersman
possessed of herculean strength, combined with the rarest daring and
coolness; and, as the result of these qualities, it was exceedingly
effective. It lessened the danger of our being capsized almost entirely.
Indeed, the sole mishap that was threatened by so doing, was the
liability to being swamped by the falling fragments of the breakers;
but this peril old Bill declared we might safely trust he would also
avert. It being the nature of humanity to experience a mood of high
exaltation with the surmounting of any serious obstacle, we now worked
our way with minds light and cheery, and with all thoughts of anything
like fatigue completely forgotten. Though our course was on the whole a
zigzag one, and though we certainly met with one or two serious rebuffs,
we were constantly gaining headway, and in something over an hour forced
the last line of the breakers, and stemmed what on ordinary occasions
would have been simply the blue body of the Atlantic. But even here a
huge commotion was reigning, though our progress was far less tedious
than it had previously been; and with about another hour's labor we were
alongside the wreck, and had climbed to her deck.

The plight of the vessel was mournful enough. She had evidently been
built for a three-masted schooner, but, as Bill had observed when he
first obtained a view of her, everything about her was well-nigh gone
save her hull. Her bulwarks had been thoroughly crushed, and so the sea
had successively torn away her boats, shivered her galley and
wheelhouse, and filled her cabin and hold. Her masts were also
destroyed, the fore and mizzen masts being carried away from their
steppings, and the main-mast broken completely in twain just above the
cross-trees. But a sight still more desolate, as well as harrowing, yet
awaited us, as, in overhauling the sail-encumbered shrouds of the
partially standing mast, we discovered several ice-bound figures rigidly
hanging therein, which, being cut away and lowered to our boat, proved
to be the body of a negro perfectly stark and dead, and three most
pitiable white sailors, whose life was so far extinguished that they
could neither move hand nor foot, nor utter more than the feeblest
moans.

When we had covered the face of the dead and sheltered the well-nigh
dead as best we could in the bottom of our boat, of course our chief
thought was to return to the shore as swiftly as possible. But on this
head there was no call to entertain the smallest solicitude; for after
old Bill, from a motive that we could not yet name, had 'stepped' a mast
through one of the foremost thwarts of the boat, and rigged a sail all
ready to be spread, we cast off from the wreck, and presently, dropping
into the full strength of the wind, were swept onward like an arrow,
with scarce the least use of any other oar than that in the hands of our
stalwart steersman. Speedily crossing the outer waters, we leaped and
bounded over the breakers; and when old Bill, as we were rushing along
the inlet, gave orders for the hoisting of the sail, we not only
hastened to obey him, but immediately saw an all-important reason for
the command. For we were now about entering the ice of the sounds; and
as the boat flew in its midst, her stiff, tight sail drove her through
the stubborn obstruction as easily and in much the same manner as the
steam plow rips up the matted bosom of the prairies. In due season we
reached the landing where we usually disembarked from the sounds, and
where we found a wagon awaiting us, to which we bore our sad freightage,
and led the way for old Bill's house. On arriving, we laid the corpse in
an outbuilding and carried the sailors into a bedroom. But what was to
be next done? To tell the truth, most of us knew no more than so many
children. But here our leader again showed his knowledge. Strongly
condemning the lighting of a fire in the apartment,--which some one was
about to do,--he set us busily at work bringing him a good supply of
tubs, and buckets of cold water, into which he dipped the naked persons
of the sufferers; and as this treatment, combined with a patient, gentle
chafing, which was also administered, at last restored the flow of their
vital forces, he gave them a few spoonfuls of broth apiece, and, while
they looked a gratefulness they could nowise express, lifted them like
babes with his giant arms to warm beds, where they fell into what was
at first a fitful, broken slumber, but finally a childlike, placid
sleep. They were saved!

If the reader is now curious to know why a man like old Bill was not a
patrician and captain in the campaign of life, rather than the mere
private and plebeian he was, I can answer that there were several things
which impeded that consummation. His character, though of wonderful
height and force in some respects, was, after all, without true
discipline, and presented many glaring incongruities. Thus, whatever he
had of what could really be named ambition was satisfied when he had
surprised us 'soundsers;' and our praise--and we lavished it upon him in
full measure, as we knew he liked it--was all the praise he seemed to
desire. Then, he was altogether one of us in his notions of pleasure and
recreation. Like the rest of us, he cordially appreciated the sparkling
product of the New England distilleries, and far more than any of us--to
such a pitch did his animal spirits rule--he relished our broad sea-side
jokes and songs, and as well our rattling jigs and hornpipes. As for
others attempting to elevate him to a more exalted station, the thing
was simply impossible. When led of his own accord to seek other society
than ours, he could by no means content himself with the companionship
of staid practical persons, who on account of his latent worth would
have readily countenanced, and with the least opportunity even served
him, but he invariably paid his court to adventurers; such creatures,
for instance, as seedy 'professors' of one kind or another, who, in the
inevitable shawl and threadbare suit of black, were constantly
dismounting at the village tavern, with proposals either to 'lecture' on
something, or 'teach' somewhat, as the case might happen to be, and who,
having no affinity whatever with the brawny, awkward Viking who fondly
hung on their shabby-genteel skirts, amused themselves at his greenness,
or pooh-pooh'd him altogether, as they saw fit. And when, as it not
unfrequently happened, official and influential individuals at a
distance were moved by the story of his renown to pay him their respects
in person, and listen courteously and gravely to his opinions, his
discrimination stood him in no better stead, for as soon as he possibly
could he bent the conference towards a sailor's revel, and astonished
his stately visitants by singing the spiciest songs, and sometimes even
by a Terpsichorean display in full costume; for he was excessively proud
of his accomplishments in this line, and implicitly believed that the
shaking of his elephantine limbs, and the whirling of his broad,
coatless flanks, formed a spectacle so tasteful and entertaining, that
no one could fail to enjoy it to the utmost. Assuredly I have now said
enough as to old Bill's incapacities for a grander role in life. In
reality that part of a lofty manhood to which he at first sight seemed
fitted, was not his; for, properly speaking, he was not an actual man,
but a boy--a grand and glorious boy, if you will, but yet a very boy;
and at length he met the fate of a boy, as we shall learn.

Once more we were engaged upon a wreck. But this time it was in no
hyperborean tempest that we were called forth, but when the very
sweetest airs of June were blowing. The case demanding our aid was that
of a wrecking schooner which had gaily left her moorings in New York
harbor to pick up a summer's living along the coast, but had
inadvertently cut up some of her capers rather too near our beach, and
so with one fine ebb tide found herself stranded. As it was an instance
of sickness in the regularly graduated and scientific college itself,
our whole shore was intensely 'tickled' at the accident. And again, as
this doctress, like many another ailing leech, was quite incapable of
curing her own suffering, her toddy-blossom-faced bully of a New York
captain was pleased to salute old Bill with cup high in air, and beg
that he would take a sufficient force and heave the distressed craft
into deep water. Thus a crew of us were called together and set to work
at the vessel. As the weather was so warm and beautiful, and as bed and
board were at this time to be had on the beach, we agreed among us that
our convenience would be the better served by taking up our temporary
quarters near the scene of our labors. Now, the place where we were
offered the necessary accommodation consisted of an ancient plank-built
tenement, which stood behind a sand-ridge that a far younger Atlantic
than ours had piled up, and then, retreating, abandoned. In winter this
rude domicile was bare and tenantless; but in the summer months it was
usually occupied by some thriftless gammer or gaffer from the main-land,
who, having stocked it with a few of the coarsest household goods, and
whatever provisions came to hand, offered entertainment to such wreckers
and 'soundsers' as happened to be in its vicinity. The present incumbent
of the hostel was a woman, claiming to be a widow, of the name of Rose;
bearing in most respects no resemblance whatever to any of her
predecessors. Where she was born, or had hitherto resided, none of us
knew: all that gossip could, gather was that she had unexpectedly
descended from a passing vessel with her effects and entered directly
the abandoned house. When questioned as to the scene of her earlier
life, she vaguely gave answer that she had disported herself largely in
'Philadelphy;' but as no 'Philadelphy' woman that ever walked through a
doorway was or is able to compound a chowder or bake a clam pie worthy
of the name, and as Madame Rose understood how to prepare both these
luxuries to a charm, her statement must have been false; she was,
undoubtedly, a 'coast-wise' lady, and one who knew who Jack was as well
as he himself did. Her appearance was, on the whole, agreeable. She was
tall, slender, of regular features, and, though indisputably on the
shady side of forty, was still free from any signs that would proclaim
her charms to be on the wane. I remember in particular that she had
long, white and regular teeth, thereby strongly contrasting with our
native women, who as a rule lose their teeth early. Her manners were
very novel to us. She was invariably of a simpering, ducking turn, and
interlarded her curt speech with curiously hard words. In dress she
carried matters with an incomparably high hand. She wore hoops 'all day
long,'--a freak then never even so much as thought of in our
village,--adorned her fingers with many rings, and her throat with large
florid brooches, and in the evening, after having brought her household
duties to a close, sat here or there with her sewing, in silks (though
perhaps not of the newest), or other highly-civilized stuffs.

Most of our crew regarded their hostess with greatly mingled feelings;
but old Bill entertained but one sentiment for her,--that of unqualified
admiration. As we only 'wrought' at the stranded schooner on the high
water,--some five hours out of the twenty-four,--he had plenty of
opportunity to dangle after his dearie, and did so unremittingly. While
the rest of us were either napping, dancing the lively 'straight four,'
hunting herns' eggs among the sand-hills, and so on, according to our
inclination, he, in far more romantic mood, seized all possible
opportunities to quickly gather fire-wood for his charmer, fill her
tea-kettle, open whatever clams and oysters she was about to cook, and,
above all, to recount for her delight one of those inimitable yarns of
his, at whose points he himself was sure to laugh till the rafters of
the house shook and the plates in the dresser rattled again. But this
was merely the first stage of his passion. Before long, as is not
unusual in such cases, it took another and more bodeful turn. That
inextinguishable laughter of his was heard no more, or at best gave
place to a feeble tittering; his stories dropped from his lips with but
flat pungency; and instead of performing his lady-love's 'chores' with a
mirthful readiness, he went through them in a heartsick way, the while
directing towards her furtive looks of supplication. The true state of
matters was now obvious to all Old Bill was another fatally-stricken
victim of that spooney archer-boy who next to death holds dominion over
men; and with his case, thus momentous, we could but feel a renewed
interest in his behalf, and busy our tongues about him. I, for my part,
thought that as he was a widower, and needful of a wife to comfort him
in his advancing age, and that as the present object of his affections,
if not a highly 'forcible' woman, seemed at all events to be one of whom
no great harm was to be feared, there could be no valid objection to his
being joined to her; particularly if nothing was divulged proving her to
be other than what she seemed. But this view I found to be on the whole
unacceptable to my auditory. Almost to a man they condemned the
propriety of the match. It could not actually be said that they disliked
Mrs. Hose, but they were jealous of her, as, in her manner and style of
array, she considerably dimmed the lustre of their own women; and they
distrusted her as she was a stranger; it being a marked habit with most
of our folks to distrust all strangers save those from whom they expect
pecuniary awards. But meanwhile, notwithstanding this criticism, the
little idyl in our midst was developing itself apace. On the afternoon
of one beautiful Sunday, a day in which we of course ordinarily did no
work, when the dinner-table had been well cleared away, what should we
see but old Bill swinging forth with his sailor gait from the house, and
arrayed as jauntily as his check shirt and pea-jacket (his only suit of
apparel at hand) would permit, to be speedily followed by Mrs. Rose, who
with one set of finger-tips held up the light folds of a sweetly blue
lawn skirt, and with the other bore aslant before her a bewitching pink
parasol. Undoubtedly there was a great indulgence in sly winks and
suppressed titterings on the part of such of us as chanced to be
witnesses of this at once festal and sentimental sally; but the twain
heeded naught whatsoever of these manifestations, but struck off along
the snow-white strand where the sea was droning its hymn so lazily that
it would have inevitably put itself to sleep, if the fish-hawks had not
so continually disturbed it by mischievously diving headlong into its
bosom. At last they returned again; and we soon became aware that the
stroll had not been without great results to both; since Mrs. Rose
affected to be laboring under a high degree of emotion, and retired to
the privacy of her apartment, while old Bill was by no means the
dolorous swain of a few hours before, but, making his way among us, with
his wide mouth stretching its best, proceeded formally to shake hands
with one and all as though he had finally got back from a long and
arduous voyage; and then, merrily calling for a certain brown jug which
was among our stores, removed the corn-cob which served as a cork, and
having wetted his great heart with a draught which I have no doubt
measured a full pint, fell, entirely regardless of the day, to
performing his most spirited hoe-down, while the most of us looked on
with a mirth that knew no bounds.

Yes, old Bill was now 'a happy man,' Mrs. Rose could but accept such a
suitor as he, if but from the fact that; his ardor and his pain were of
the freshest complexion, and of an amplitude fully proportioned to that
of his extraordinary physical bulk. As we tendered him our
congratulations upon his happy state, he received the courtesy with
extreme complacency. But, to tell the truth, those who did thus
congratulate him were but few. Most of the men remained of their old
mind as to the proposed match; indeed, I ere long found that they looked
upon it with less favor than ever. It appeared that they had been
inflamed with a rumor that Mrs. Rose intended to beguile her adorer to a
foreign shore, where a scion or two of her brilliant house found happy
sustenance; and that nothing but evil could accrue from such an act, was
of course as clear as noonday. Now, when I came to trace this rumor to
its source, I became apprised that it owed its publicity to an old man
of our number known by the nickname of 'Mister,' who was remarkable for
a rare amount of credulity, self-conceit, and obstinacy, and at the same
time for being the invariable butt of his company. This wiseacre averred
that he had succeeded in wringing from Mrs. Rose the confession that
directly she and old Bill were made man and wife, they were to depart
for Hatteras Inlet, on the coast of North Carolina, where the lady gay
possessed 'relations;' and this narrative, wofully muttered about among
our crew, and accompanied with a due amount of sighs and head-shakings,
had depressed them most fearfully, not withstanding the character of the
narrator.

The fact of the matter was, that most of the men were actually desirous
that a betrothal, contracted directly in the face of public opinion, and
without the smallest deference to anybody, as that of old Bill and Mrs.
Rose had been, should come to some kind of grief or other, and they were
fain to believe that it would do so. As for me, I was without true
concern on the subject, as I had ever been. If it should indeed fall out
that old Bill was to take a trip to Hatteras with his bride, I was
convinced that he would enjoy himself famously among the great abundance
of fish and game said to abound in that place, and that in the end he
would return to us again, to rule over us in greater splendor than ever;
as for his sweetheart or any of her like doing him any actual injury,
the idea seemed so preposterous to me, that whenever an opportunity
presented itself I did not fail to ridicule it to the utmost. Still, in
order to do my whole duty in the matter, I hastened to impress old Bill
with the importance of his becoming acquainted with the antecedents of
his lady-love, and thus saving himself from the possibility of a
misstep. But this counsel did no farther good than to bring a clouded
brow to my dear old friend, and so I did not persist in it. Indeed, we
communed together but little more in any way; for very shortly after he
resigned his place as our 'boss,' and left post-haste for the main-land.
Here, as was revealed to me in due season, he amazed the neighborhood by
incontinently renting his farmstead to a son with whom he had been on
indifferent terms for years; dispatching his daughter, who had
heretofore acted as his housekeeper, off to a distant town to become an
apprentice to a milliner's trade; and stowing his clothes and a shot-bag
of hard money which he was known to possess into a sailor's chest, with
which, together with his gun and a Methodist preacher, he again hurried
off for the asylum of his beloved. Arrived once more in the witching
presence, he waited till evening (yet how he was constrained so to do is
more than I can tell), and then, as we made it a duty to be gathered
about him once more, the wedding took place.

The occasion was one of such interest, that the preacher could but make
the most of it. After the nuptial benediction had been pronounced, he
straightway launched forth into a homily of such graciousness and force,
that but few of us missed being forcibly wrought upon, while Mrs. Rose
was stirred apparently to the depths of her being. On the day succeeding
the marriage, our light-hearted Benedict abandoned himself to another
jollification. But the next morning, a schooner headed in towards the
beach, and, slackening the peaks of her sails, sent ashore a yawl, whose
crew saluted Mrs. Rose as an old and familiar friend, and with whose
apparition, without the least regard as to what shift we wreckers were
to make, a great packing was begun in the house. Bedsteads were taken
down, beds were bundled up in sheets, crockery was thrust away in
barrels, and all borne one after the other to the yawl, where the bride,
with her potent parasol full spread, and pretending to shudder at the
sight of the gently heaving breakers through which she was soon to pass,
mincingly threw herself in the thick of the luggage, and old Bill
mounted the stern, with his huge palm extended for a good-by shake.
'Good-by, old chap,' said I, as I took his hand the last of all,
'good-by! You're not half mean enough to stay away from us forever; so
in the meantime do your best to show the Hatteras boys what a nice thing
it is to be somebody in the world!' And thus the boat put off, and,
reaching the schooner in a few moments, was hoisted to her decks. In a
few moments more the vessel had reset her sails, and, with a free wind,
bore straight to the southward out of sight.

Now comes the singular part of my story. In a few weeks from the time of
their sailing, we heard that old Bill and his wife had safely landed at
Hatteras Inlet, and rented a small house on one of the beaches there,
with the intention of opening a kind of tavern; but no sooner were they
fairly settled in their new abode than old Bill was found one morning
_dead in his bed_, with evident signs of having met with foul play;
though what kind of death these indications pointed at was very
uncertain.

The closest and shrewdest investigation failed to attach a well-grounded
suspicion to any one. Poor Bill was dead--and nothing more was ever
known. Singular enough, the conduct of his widow was such as to entirely
avert even from her enemies hints of complicity in the crime,--if crime
there was,--though none doubted that there had been a murder, and that
murder in a few attendant circumstances seemed to indicate female aid.
Shortly after this catastrophe, Madame Rose made 'a vendue' of her
deceased husband's gun and apparel, packed up her own worldly goods, and
vanished, to be heard of no more.

And so our shore lost its best 'soundser'--a man of mark in his way,
great of frame and heart, and one long to be recalled in our humble
annals of wrecking and of sport. He was one of those vigorous
out-croppings of sturdy Northern physique recalling in minute detail the
stories told of those giant children, the Vikings and Goths of the
fighting ages, and which the blood, though as healthy as ever,--witness
the glorious exploits of our soldiers even as I write,--produces less
frequently in these days of culture. Such as I have described was the
character of Bill the Soundser, and such was literally and truly his
mysterious death.

       *       *       *       *       *

COLUMBIA TO BRITANNIA.

VIA SHAKSPEARE.


                  Thou cold-blooded slave,
  Hast thou not spoke like thunder on my side?
  Been sworn my soldier? bidding me depend
  Upon thy stars, thy fortune, and thy strength?
  And dost thou now fall over to my foes,
  And wear a lion's hide? Doff it for shame,
  And hang a calf's skin on those recreant limbs.

KING JOHN, III. 1.

       *       *       *       *       *

GENERAL LYON.


To-day all the Northland shouts for joy, flashes its announcements of
victory along myriad leagues of wire, hurls them from grim cannon mouths
out over broad bays till the seas tremble with sympathy, huzzas in the
streets, flames in bonfires, would even clash the clouds together and
streak the heavens with lightning--and for what? The flag waves again in
Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, Arkansas, and the cause is safe! _The
cause_--have we all learned what that means, brother Americans?
Something broader than mere Union, the pass-word of so many thousands to
suffering and death, something more than the freedom of the press and
the ballot-box. It means Progress; and until we acknowledge this, all
freedom is a vast injustice, luring men on to Beulahs which Fate--the
fate they worship--will never have them reach. It would be little enough
to regain our foothold upon Southern territory, or repossess Southern
forts, even if forts and territory have been wrested from us by treason
and perjury, if with every mile of advance we did not gain a stronghold
of principle. We are not straining every nerve, struggling under immense
financial burdens, wrenching away tender household ties, sacrificing
cheerfully and eagerly private interests, brilliant prospects, and high
hopes, only to prove that twenty millions of men are physically stronger
than twelve. God forbid! This is no latter-day Olympic game, whoso
victors are to be rewarded with the applause of a party or a generation.
All the dead heroes and martyrs of the past will crowd forward to offer
their unheard thanks; all the years to come will embalm with blessings
the memory of the patriots who open the door to wide advancement,
prosperous growth, and high activity of a universal intelligence.

And among these brave men, whom the world shall delight to honor, let
our deepest grief and our justest pride be for LYON. We have given his
honest life too little notice;--this man whose sincerity was equalled
only by his zeal; who, in a rarely surpassed spirit of self-abnegation,
was content to lie down and die in the first heat of the great conflict,
and to leave behind for more favored comrades the triumphal arches and
rose-strewn paths of victory. The world has known no truer martyr than
he who fell at Wilson's Creek, August 10th, 1861.

'The history of every man paints his character,' says Goethe; and scanty
and imperfect as are the recorded details of General Lyon's life, enough
is known to prove him to have been high-minded and brave as a soldier,
with a perseverance and a penetration that analyzed at once the
platforms of contending factions, and read in their elements the
principles which are to govern the future of our nation.

He came of the stout Knowlton stock of Connecticut, a family of whom
more than one served England in the old French war, and afterward
distinguished themselves against her in the Revolution. We hear of the
gallant Captain Knowlton at Bunker Hill, throwing up, in default of
cotton, the breastwork of hay, which proved such an efficient protection
to the provincials during the battle. Once more he appears as colonel,
at Harlem Plains, rushing with his Rangers ('Congress' Own') upon the
enemy on the Plains, and, cut off shortly from retreat by
reinforcements, fighting bravely between the foes before and their
reserves behind, and, falling at last, borne away by sorrowing comrades,
and buried at sunset within the embankments. 'A brave man,' wrote
Washington, 'who would have been an honor to any country.' With the
memory of such a hero engrafted upon his earliest childhood, we can not
wonder at the bent of the boy Lyon's inclinations. 'Daring and
resolute, and wonderfully attached to his mother,' it is easy to
imagine what lessons of endurance and decision he learned from her,
whose just inheritance was the stout-hearted patriotism that had
flowered into valorous deeds in her kindred, and was destined to live
again in her son. It was, an ordinary childhood, and a busy, uneventful
youth, passed for the most part in the old red farm-house nestled
between two rocky hills near Eastport, where he was born. In 1837 he
entered the Military Academy at West Point, and was a graduate, with
distinction, four years later. Of the years immediately following, we
have little information; but we can fancy the young soldier laying, in
his obscurity, the foundation for that practical military knowledge
which so eminently distinguished his late brilliant career. During his
years of service in the Everglades of Florida, and on our Western
frontier, he had ample opportunity to gain a thorough insight into his
profession.

He first appears in the history of the country in the Mexican war, is
present at the bombardment of Vera Cruz, dashes after the enemy at Cerro
Gordo, capturing on the crest of the hill a battery which he turns upon
the discomfited foe. At Contreras his command proves as impenetrable as
a phalanx of Alexander; and when at last the victorious Americans fight
their way into Mexico, the city of fabulous treasures and associations
well-nigh classical, for the first time he receives a wound. He was
breveted captain for his gallantry at Cherubusco, and at the end of the
war received the rank of full captain, and was ordered with his regiment
to California. No appointment could have been more felicitous. In the
guerilla mode of warfare demanded by the peculiar nature of the country
and its inhabitants, his habits of quick decision, and the experience of
a war with an enemy equally unscrupulous though less undisciplined, were
absolutely invaluable. Here was no scope for the conception and
excitation of deep-laid schemes; the movements of the enemy were too
rapid. Plans that would elsewhere have been matured only in the process
of a long campaign, were here often originated and completed in a single
night. Simple strategy was of more avail than the most intricate display
of military science, and the impulse of a moment more to be relied upon
than the prudent forethought of a month. He had to combat, in the
newly-acquired territory, the cunning of tribes whose natural ferocity
was sharpened into vindictiveness by the encroachments upon their soil
of a new and strange people; and every association with the intruders,
who were for the most part men of little reputation and less principle,
had developed in the Indians only the fiercest and most decided
animosity. To encounter their vigilance with watchfulness as alert, to
confound their swift counsels with sudden alarm, to penetrate their
ambuscades and anticipate their cunning with incessant activity, to be,
in short, ubiquitous, was the duty of Captain Lyon.

After years spent in the uncertain tactics of this half barbaric
warfare, he was removed, in the height of political strife in Kansas, to
its very centre. Here, while comparatively free from the wearisome
requirements of active service such as had been demanded in California,
and at a time when events the most portentous proved clearly to the
great minds of the country the advance of a political crisis whose
consequences must be most important, involving--should deep-laid
conspiracy be successful--the bankruptcy of principle and that
high-handed outrage, the triumph, of a minority,--Captain Lyon had full
liberty and abundant opportunity to settle for himself the great
questions mooted in the Missouri Compromises, the Lecompton
Constitutions and the Dred Scott decisions of the day. To a mind
unprejudiced, except as the honest impulses of every honest man's heart
are always prejudiced in favor of the right, there was but a single
decision. Disgusted with the heartless policy which democracy had for so
many years pursued, and which now threatened to culminate either in its
utter degradation at the North, or in the establishment in the South of
an oligarchy which would annihilate all free action and suppress all
free opinion, he severed his connection with that party,--a step to
which he was also impelled by the injustice that was then seeking to
force upon the people of Kansas an institution which they condemned as
unproductive and expensive, to say nothing of their moral repugnance to
the very A B C of its principles. It was at this time that Captain Lyon
contributed to the _Manhattan Express_, a weekly journal of the
neighborhood, a series of papers in which he took an earnest, manly and
decided stand in favor of the principles which his thoughtful mind
recognized as alone 'reliable,' and harmonious with the grand design and
end of the great Republic of the West. To these articles we shall
hereafter refer, at present hastening through the career, so striking
and so sad, which a few brief months cut short, leaving only the memory
of General Lyon as a legacy to the country his single aim and wise
counsels would have saved.

The guns of Fort Sumter had flashed along our coast an appeal whose
force no words can ever compute. The days had been busy with the
assembling of armies, the nights restless with their solemn marches, and
forge and factory rang with the strokes of the hammer and the whirr of
flying shafts, whose echoes seemed measured to the air of some new
Marseillaise. From our homes rushed forth sons, husbands, brothers,
fathers, followed by the prayers and blessings of dear women, who
yielded them early but willingly to their country. And while regiments
clustered along the Potomac, and Washington lay entrenched behind white
lines of tents, we find our soldier, fresh from Kansas strifes, in
command of the United States Arsenal at St. Louis; and to his prompt
action and decided measures at this important juncture the early success
of the Union cause in Missouri is to be attributed. For a time St. Louis
was the theatre of action. The police commissioners, backed by Governor
and Legislature, in the demanded the removal of the Union troops from
the grounds of the arsenal, claiming it as the exclusive property of the
State, and asserting that the authority usurped by the general
government as but a partial sovereignty, and limited to the occupation,
for purposes exclusively military, of the certain tracts of land now
pending in this novel court of chancery. This highly enigmatical
exposition of State rights, pompous and inflated though it was, failed
to convince or convert Captain Lyon, who, being unable to detect, in his
occupancy of the arsenal, any exaggeration of the rights vested by the
Constitution in the general government, declined to abandon his post,
and proceeded to call out the Home Guard, then awaiting the arrival of
General Harney, and temporarily under his command. His little army of
ten thousand men was then drawn up upon the heights commanding Camp
Jackson, then occupied by the Missouri militia under Col. Frost, whoso
command had been increased by the addition of numerous individuals of
avowed secession principles. Uninfluenced by the reception of a note
from this officer asserting his integrity and his purpose to defend the
property of the United States, and disavowing all intention hostile to
the force at the arsenal, Captain Lyon replied by a peremptory summons
for an unconditional surrender. He found it incredible that a body
assembled at the instigation of a traitorous governor, and acting under
his instructions and according to the 'unparalleled legislation' of a
traitorous legislature, receiving under the flag of the Confederate
States munitions of war but lately the acknowledged property of the
general government, could have any other than the as most unfriendly
designs upon its enemies. The force of Camp Jackson (which
notwithstanding its professed character, boasted its streets Beauregard
and Davis) being numerically inferior, and perhaps not entirely prepared
to do battle for a cause whose legitimacy must still have been a
question with many of them, decided, after a council of war, to comply
with the demands of Capt. Lyon, and became his prisoners. A few days
afterward General Harney arrived, and Captain Lyon was elected Brigadier
General by the 1st Brigade Missouri Volunteers.

Convinced of the imminence of the crisis and the peril of delay, Gen.
Lyon immediately commenced active operations against the secessionists
at Potosi, and ordered the seizure of the steamer which had supplied the
offensive army with material of war from the United States property at
Baton Rouge. In the meantime, Gen. Harney, with a culpable blindness,
had made an extraordinary arrangement with Gen. Price, by which he
pledged himself to desist from military movements so long as the command
of Gen. Price was able to preserve order in the State. Upon his removal
by the authorities at Washington, nine days later, Gen. Lyon was left in
command of the department. At this time the rebel general took occasion,
in a proclamation to the people of Missouri, to feel assured that 'the
successor of Gen. Harney would certainly consider himself and his
government in honor bound to carry out this agreement (the Harney-Price)
in good faith.' But his assurance was without foundation. The temper of
the new commander had been tried in the Camp Jackson affair, and an
interview between Price, Jackson and other prominent secessionists and
Gen. Lyon, resulted, after a few hours' consultation, in the declaration
of the Union general that the authority of his government would be
upheld at any cost and its property protected at all hazards. Three days
later, Jackson fled to Booneville, fearing an attack upon Jefferson
City, which was immediately occupied by Gen. Lyon, who was received with
acclamation by the citizens. Unwilling to grant by delay what he had
refused to an underhand diplomacy,--opportunity to the enemy to possess
the government property, or entrench themselves strongly in their new
quarters,--the general, with characteristic promptness, ordered an
advance upon Booneville. The rebel force was stationed above Rockport,
but retreated, after a skirmish which did not assume the proportions of
a battle; and the Union army, two thousand strong, entered the town,
where the national colors and the welcomes of the inhabitants testified
their joy at the change.

The army of General Lyon, amounting at one time to ten thousand, had
decreased by the first of August--the term of enlistment of many of the
soldiers having expired--to six thousand; and it was with this number
that, having swept the south-west, and believing the enemy intended to
attack him at Springfield, he advanced to meet them at Dug Springs. The
army of the enemy was larger and their position a strong one, but they
were unable to hold it, and, after a sharp skirmish, fled in disorder,
while Gen. Lyon continued his march toward Springfield. His situation
had now become a critical one. The reinforcements for which he had
telegraphed in vain, and in vain sent messengers to entreat from the
chief of the department, Gen. Fremont, then in St. Louis, did not
arrive. His army was subsisting on half rations, and wearied with
exhausting marches over the uneven country in the extreme heat of
midsummer. And now, for the first time, hope seemed to desert the
general. Under his direction the cause had hitherto triumphed in
Missouri. Now, with zeal unabated and courage unflinching, he must fall
before the enemy he had so successfully opposed, or retreat where
retreat was disaster, disgrace, and defeat. No wonder that, as from day
to day he looked for the expected aid as men in drought for the clouds
that are to bless them, he grew restless and perplexed and despairing;
no wonder that the face that had never before worn the lines of
indecision, should now lose its accustomed cheerfulness and glance of
calm purpose, and challenge sympathy and pity for the heart that had
never before asked more than admiration and respect. He felt that the
hour had its demands, and that they must be met. Action, even in the
face of disaster, was less a defeat than an inglorious retirement. The
public, surely unaware of the fearful odds against him, clamored for an
engagement; the State expected it of its hero; the government awaited
it, and with a brave heart, but no hope, Gen. Lyon prepared for the
attack. The result all the world knows. Was it a victory where the
conquerors were obliged to retire from the field, and carry out their
wounded under a flag of truce? Was it a defeat where the enemy had been
thrice repulsed, once driven from the ground, had burned their baggage
train, and made no pursuit of the retreating army?

But most mournful are those last moments of the faithful soldier's life;
most solemn those last tones of his voice as his orders rang out on that
misty morning amid the smoke and shouts of the battle-field. He stands
here bare-headed, the blood streaming from two wounds which he does not
heed, the cloud of perplexity settling over his face like a pall, his
troubled eyes fixed upon the enemy. He turns to head a regiment which
has lost its colonel--"Forward! men; I will lead you!" A moment, and he
lies there: no more striving for victory here; no more anxious hours of
weary watching for the succor that never came; no more goadings from an
exacting public, nor any more appeals to an unheeding chief. Even the
triumphant hush of life could not smooth out those lines cut by unwonted
care upon his face, or answer the mute questioning of that painful
indecision there. So from the West they brought him, by solemn marches,
to the East, and colors hung at half-mast, and bells were tolled as the
flag-draped hero was borne slowly by. And to the music of tender dirges,
he, whose whole life had been, inspired by the whistling of fifes and
rolling of drums, was laid to rest. A handful of clods falling upon his
breast, their hollow sound never thrilling the mother heart that lay
again so near her son's, a volley fired over the grave, and all was
over. Of all the brave men gone, no fate has seemed to us so sad.
Winthrop, young and ardent, with the tide of great thoughts rashing in
upon his princely heart, died in the flush of hope with the fresh
enthusiasm of poetry and undimmed patriotism shining in his eyes, and we
laid our soldier to sleep under the violets. Ellsworth fell forward with
the captured flag of treason in his hand, and the whole nation cheering
him on in his early sally upon the 'sacred' Virginia soil. Brave and
honorable, with fine powers cultured by study and earnest thought, death
took from him no portion of the fame life would have awarded him. Baker
rode into the jaws of death in that fatal autumn blunder; but the
ignominy of defeat rested upon other shoulders. His only to obey, even
while 'all the world wondered.' But he did not fall before the honor of
a country's admiration and the meed of her grateful thanks were his.
Soldier, orator and statesman, he had gained in a brilliant career a
glory earned by few, and could well afford to die, assured of a memory
justified from all reproach. But to Lyon, whom there were so few to
mourn, death in the midst of anticipated defeat was bitter indeed. No
time to retrieve the losses and disasters the cruel remissness of others
had entailed upon him; the fruit of the anxious toil of months wrested
from him even as it began to ripen; all his glad hopes chilled by
suspicion, but his faith, we may well believe, still strong in the
ultimate success of the cause he loved. A whole life he had given to his
country, and she had not thought it worth while to redeem it from
disgrace with the few thousands that he asked. He had outlived the
elasticity of youth, when wrongs are quickly remedied, and new impulses
spring, like phoenixes, from the ashes of the old. Uncertain whether he
were the victim of a conspiracy, the tool of a faction, or the martyr to
some unknown theory, he died, and as the country had been to him wife
and children, he left her his all.

It was known to but few that the soldier, whose career had been rather
useful than brilliant, had, when the scheming of politicians and their
doubly-refined arguments threatened to deceive and ruin the country,
put by his sword and taken up the pen. In a series of articles, short,
concise, and to the point, he effectually canvassed the State. They are
addressed to thinking men everywhere. Free from all trickery, strictly
impartial, relying entirely upon the soundness of his premises for
success,--for elegance of diction he had not, and he was too honest even
to become a sophist,--these papers manifest at once the true patriot and
the intelligent man. Thousands of adherents the Republican cause had in
1860, but not one more indefatigable or more heartily in earnest than
Lyon. Outside the limits of party interests, and uninfluenced personally
by the predominance of either faction, he had worked out in his own way
the problem of national life, and now spread its solution before his
readers. 'Our cause,' said he, 'is to honor labor and elevate the
laborer.' Here we have the kernel of the whole matter; the spirit, if
not the letter, of the whole republican system of government. The secret
that philosophers have elaborated from the unconquerable facts of
physics, ethics, and psychology, that men of genius have evolved with
infinite difficulty from the mass of crude aesthetic associations that
cluster around every object of nature or of art, Lyon, working and
thinking alone as a citizen, has discovered, with the sole aid of common
sense and the habit of practical observation. Carey and Godwin have
proved by statistics for unbelievers the reasonableness of the doctrine
enunciated by Lyon. Now, thanks to the untiring efforts of a few
stout-hearted patriots, it is no new one to the North; but in the late
presidential contest it was a strange weapon glittering in strong hands.
Our society, diluted and weakened by the Southern element, revolted at
first from the creed that is to prove its salvation. Not alone in our
border States had the dragon crept, searing our fair institutions with
his hot breath, but even upon the sturdy old Puritan stock were
engrafted many of the petty notions that pass for 'principles' in Dixie.
True, we were educated, all of us, into a sort of decent regard for the
good old element of labor,--we call it industry,--more antique, since
antiquity is a virtue, than aristocracy, for it began in Paradise. But
this was a feature of our Northern character that was to be hurried out
of sight, ignominiously buried without candle or bell, when the giant of
Southern chivalry stalked across our borders. The bravado and
gentlemanly ruffianism of youthful F.F.V-ism at college, and the
supercilious condescension of incipient Southern belledom in the
seminary, impressed young North America with a respect that was indeed
unacknowledged, but that grew with its growth and strengthened with its
strength. But this mock romance of ancestry, this arrogant assumption by
the South of all the social virtues and courtesies of which the nation,
or indeed the universe, could boast, was like the flash of an expiring
candle to Lyon. He had little to do with first families North or South;
his mission was to the _people_. His practical mind gathered in, sheaf
after sheaf, a whole harvest of political facts. He saw that the
government of the United States, originally intended to be administered
by the people, had been for years in the power of the minority. Against
this perversion of the purpose of the founders of the republic, this
outrage to the memory of men who labored for its defense and welfare, he
entered his earnest protest. The shallow effort of the Democratic party
to establish upon constitutional grounds the monstrous phantom of
justice they called government, was met by his hearty indignation. He
says, 'With the artfulness of a deity and the presumption of a fiend,
our own Constitution is perversely claimed by the Democracy as the aegis
for the establishment of a slave autocracy over our country.'

No element more fatal to our growth or freedom could Lyon conceive than
this slave autocracy. It sapped the very foundations of republicanism,
and, stealthily advancing to the extreme limits of the law, enjoyed the
confidence of the people, while it plotted their subjugation. All the
varied machinery of the new social system, falsely styled government,
had for its object the extinction of individual rights and the
deification of capital. Church and state united in the unholy effort to
Crush the masses, and intriguing politicians, by dint of dazzling
rhetoric and plausible promises, lured the people on to secure their own
downfall at the polls. The only remedy for this Lyon saw in the
elevation of the masses. 'It is the greatest political revolution yet to
be effected,' he says, 'to bring the laboring man to know that honest
industry is the highest of merits, and should be awarded the highest
honor; and, properly pursued, contributes to his intelligence and
morality, and to the virtues needed for official station.' 'The
calamity,' says an eminent writer from his far Platonean heights, 'is
the masses;' but liberty is a new religion that is to sweep over the
world and regenerate them. And to this end Lyon boldly advocated
emancipation for the sake of the white man. If to-day, when patriotism
is at a premium, men tremble before the acknowledged necessity of this
measure, and are either too cowardly or too indolent to meet the demands
of the times, it required no little boldness in 1860 to advance a theory
so decided, even in a Kansas newspaper. But Lyon knew the inefficiency
of half-way measures, and the moral degradation they inevitably entail
upon the community so weak or so deluded as to adopt them. The hue and
cry of abolitionism did not disturb him; he was not afraid of names.
Conservatism that sat in state at Washington, and pulled the wires all
over the country,--a tremendous power, none the less fearful in that it
was only a galvanized one,--was a dead letter to him, its dignity
departed with the age that had demanded it. Conservatism would have
resented no impositions, established no new landmarks, asserted no
independence; would carry its mails on horseback, creep over the ocean
in schooners, fight by sea in piked brigantines, and by land with spear
and battle-axe; it would have emancipated no slaves in Great Britain and
France, and no serfs in Russia. But if freedom means anything, it means
_Progress_,--liberty to advance, never to retrograde. 'Nothing in the
world will ever go backward,' said the old lizard to Heine. All the
authority of a new Areopagus could never sanction that; and yet this
liberty the South claims, nay, has already acted upon, so that the world
may see the result of the experiment, and against its continuance Lyon
protests. In the long silent years of preparation for the fray he has
nursed strange thoughts on the ultimate destiny of man. He has seen in
dreams, prophetic of a mighty accomplishment, his country growing great,
and vigorous, and powerful, extending to struggling humanity everywhere
the protection of her friendship, building up noble institutions,
encouraging science and the useful arts, and leading the van in the
world's great millennial march; and this not through any miraculous
interposition of Providence, but by means of an exalted intelligence and
the power of thought stimulating to action, and that of the noblest
kind.

But you argue the unfitness of the masses for this destiny. Lyon
answers,--not in any musically-rounded sentences, in phrases nicely
balanced; the man is plain and outspoken,--'This is a truth of
philosophy and political economy, that man rises to a condition
corresponding to the rights, duties and responsibilities devolved upon
him; and therefore the only true way to make a man is to invest him with
the rights, duties and responsibilities of a man, and he generally rises
in intellectual and moral greatness to a position corresponding to these
circumstances.' It is a mistake to suppose the great body of the people
ignorant of their position, or unconscious of their growing importance
and dignity as representatives of a mighty empire. Vice and poverty have
indeed well-nigh quenched humanity in thousands in our great cities,
but these are but a drop in the ocean. Behind lies our vast West, with
its teeming population, sturdy, active and energetic. All our mountain
districts are alive with men who, thanks to the press, are beginning to
feel their power. Every advantage of physical development their hardy
life gives them, and the growing consciousness and comprehension of
freedom, blooming under a munificent free-school dispensation, will do
the rest. Our internal manufacturing and agricultural elements at the
North, already powerful and irrepressible, will soon exercise a
tremendous influence in our government. Shall it be the influence of
ignorance played upon by the sophistry of demagogues and helping to
rebuild the vicious doctrines that have stood firmly for so many years,
or the healthful influence of intelligent industry tending to our
greatness and prosperity? This our war is to decide. No peaceful
solution of the great question could be made. This Lyon foresaw in the
truckling of politicians North to win the unit of Southern political
sympathy: the main end and aim of the South being the appointment of
Southern men to the Presidency, 'as security on the one hand against
unfavorable executive action toward slavery, and on the other against
executive patronage adverse to its interests, the democratic party North
succeeded, by trimming party sails and decking party leaders, in suiting
their fastidious Southern leaders.' The question once at issue, even a
peaceful separation was impossible, though an amendment of the
Constitution should sanction it. War was inevitable. The great bugbear
of slavery would still exist; fugitive slave laws be forever upon the
political carpet; formidable jealousies spring up between two nations
founded upon such diverse principles, yet united by very natural
circumstance of language and climate; internal wrangling would destroy
all unity, conspiracies give the death-blow to all prosperity and all
hope of advancement. All this if there were no great party at the North
to rise upon the vast ground of humanity, claiming for its millions the
privilege of an unfettered life, for its children a fair start in the
future. Only one remedy Lyon knew, and he stood there, the early apostle
of Emancipation, and preached it. His doctrine was not accepted then, it
is not accepted now; but the time must come, when millions shall have
been expended, and blood shall have flowed like water only to delay it,
when we will fly to it for salvation. Let those who still cry 'Peace,
peace,' when there is no peace, learn what is to be its
price--Emancipation. It will be a bitter draught; well, so was the
independence of her colonies to England. And every day makes it more
bitter; the gall in the cup rises to the brim; a few more months and it
will overflow; the people will take the matter into their own hands and
legislate slavery into the swamps of Florida.

It is a lame and blind philanthropy that cries for a respite. 'A little
more sleep, a little more slumber. After us the deluge.' And meanwhile
the damnable lies gain ground, and a new generation is lost to its due
development. Have we yet to learn that we are no longer individuals, but
parts of a mighty nation, and responsible in some sort, every one, women
and men, for its destiny? Poland has learned this lesson. Her eyes are
upon us now. Shall she, still struggling, find that blood and treasure,
and all the thousand dear blessings of peace, have been sacrificed in
vain? If you cry 'War is an evil!' we grant it; but is it reserved for
the nineteenth century to discover a creed for which there shall be no
martyrs? What great gift has the world ever won that was not bought with
blood? When has independence of action or thought been purchased
otherwise than at the cost of persecution,--more revolution? Then let us
not slander revolutions. They are the throes of nature undergoing her
purification; if it is as by fire, oh! let us have courage and stand
beside her in her hour of trial. St. George will not fight forever; the
dragon of oppression is dying.

  'Yes, although so slowly, he _is_ dying;
  Many thousand years have fled in darkness,
  Since the sword first cut his scaly armor,
  And the red wound roused him into madness;
  But the good knight is of race immortal,
  Ever young, and passionate and fearless;
  And the strength which oozes from the dragon,
  Blooms reviving in the glorious warrior.'

And, after all, the demon of war is not so black as we have painted him.
We do not shudder to-day as we read of the siege of Troy or the downfall
of Carthage, or the Romance of the Cid. The song of Deborah, 'of the
avenging of Israel _when the people willingly offered themselves_,' is
one glorious burst of praise to God and gratitude to the martyrs. There
was war in heaven when ambition was cast out:--what quiet pastoral
appeals to our noblest impulses as Paradise Lost does? Wisely and well
speaks the English clergyman when he says:--

'But the truth is that here, as elsewhere, poetry has reached the truth,
while science and common sense have missed it. It has distinguished--as,
in spite of all mercenary and feeble sophistry, men ever will
distinguish--war from mere bloodshed. It has discerned the higher
feelings which lie beneath its revolting features. Carnage is terrible.
The conversion of producers into destroyers is a calamity. Death, and
insults to women worse than death--and human features obliterated
beneath the hoof of the war-horse--and reeking hospitals, and ruined
commerce, and violated homes, and broken hearts--they are all awful. But
there is something worse than death: cowardice is worse. And the _decay
of enthusiasm and manliness is worse_. And it is worse than death, aye,
worse than one hundred thousand deaths, when a people has gravitated
down into the creed, that the "wealth of nations" consists, not in
generous hearts, "fire in each breast, and freedom on each brow," in
national virtues, and primitive simplicity, and heroic endurance, and
preference of duty to life--not in _men_, but in silk and _cotton_, and
something that they call "capital." Peace is blessed--peace arising out
of charity. But peace springing out of the calculations of selfishness
is not blessed. If the price to be paid for peace is this, that wealth
accumulate and men decay, better far that every street, in every town of
our once noble country, should run blood.'[K]

As we write, every telegram proves the vaunted unity of the South a
sham, a visionary political bugbear, no longer strong or hideous enough
to frighten the most inveterate conservative dough-face. But a few
victories do not end the war; still earnestness and effort and
sacrifice, for the sick man of America will fight even when his 'brains
are out.' Not until we have proved to Breckenridge, the traitor, that we
are not 'fighting for principles that three-fourths of us abhor,' and
that the Union is not only 'a means of preserving the principles of
political liberty,' but that in it is irrevocably bound up every living
principle of all liberty, social, religious and individual; that in its
shelter only we have security against wrong at home and insult from
abroad; not until Emancipation has instituted a new order of things in
society as well as in politics, will the death of the out-spoken patriot
and brave man, Lyon, be avenged, and the Struggle be at an end. 'Genius
is patient,' but patience has had her perfect work, and the days of
Rebellion are numbered. On with the crusade!

       *       *       *       *       *

MACCARONI AND CANVAS.


II.

The voice of Rome is baritone, always excepting that of the Roman
locomotive,--the donkey,--which is deep bass, and comes tearing and
braying along at times when it might well be spared. In the still night
season, wandering among the moonlit ruins of the Coliseum, while you
pause and gaze upon the rising tiers of crumbling stone above you,
memory retraces all you have read of the old Roman days: the forms of
the world-conquerors once more people the deserted ruin; the clash of
ringing steel; hot, fiery sunlight; thin, trembling veil of dust pierced
by the glaring eyes of dying gladiators; red-spouting blood; screams of
the mangled martyrs torn by Numidian lions; moans of the dying; fierce
shouts of exultation from the living; smiles from gold-banded girls in
flowing robes, with floating hair, flower-crowned, and perfumed; the hum
of thrice thirty thousand voices hushed to a whisper as the combat hangs
on an uplifted sword; the--

Aw-waw-WAUN-ik! WAW-NIK! WAUN-KI-w-a-w-n! comes like blatant fish-horn
over the silent air, and your dream of the Coliseum ends ignominiously
with this nineteenth-century song of a jackass.

At night you will hear the shrill cry of the screech-owl sounding down
the silent streets in the most thickly-populated parts of the city. Or
you will perhaps be aroused from sleep, as Caper often was, by the
long-drawn-out cadences of some countryman singing a _rondinella_ as he
staggers along the street, fresh from a wine-house. Nothing can be more
melancholy than the concluding part of each verse in these rondinellas,
the voice being allowed to drop from one note to another, as a man
falling from the roof of a very high house may catch at some projection,
hold on for a time, grow weak, loose his hold, fall, catch again, hold
on for a minute, and at last fall flat on the pavement, used up, and
down as low as he can reach.

But the street-cries of this city are countless; from the man who brings
round the daily broccoli to the one who has a wild boar for sale, not
one but is determined that you shall hear all about it. Far down a
narrow street you listen to a long-drawn, melancholy howl--the voice as
of one hired to cry in the most mournful tones for whole generations of
old pagan Romans who died unconverted; poor devils who worshiped wine
and women, and knew nothing better in this world. And who is their
mourner? A great, brawny, tawny, steeple-crowned hat, blue-breeched,
two-fisted fish-huckster; and he is trying to sell, by yelling as if his
heart would break, a basket of fish not so long as your finger. If he
cries so over anchovies, what would he do if he had a whale for sale?

Another _primo basso profundo_ trolls off a wheelbarrow and a fearful
cry at the same time; not in unison with his merchandise, for he has
birds--quail, woodcock, and snipe--for sale, besides a string of dead
nightingales, which he says he will 'sell cheap for a nice stew.' Think
of stewed nightingales! One would as soon think of eating a boiled
Cremona violin.

But out of the way! Here comes, blocking up the narrow street, a
_contadino_, a countryman from the Campagna. His square wooden cart is
drawn by a donkey about the size of, and resembling, save ears, a singed
Newfoundland dog; his voice, strong for a vegetarian,--for he sells
onions and broccoli, celery and tomatoes, _finocchio_ and mushrooms,--is
like tearing a firm rag: how long can it last, subjected to such use?

It is in the game and meat market, near the Pantheon, that you can more
fully become acquainted with the street cries of Rome; but the Piazza
Navona excels even this. Passing along there one morning, Caper heard
such an extraordinary piece of vocalization, sounding like a Sioux
war-whoop with its back broken, that he stopped to see what it was all
about. There stood a butcher who had exposed for sale seven small stuck
pigs, all one litter; and if they had been his own children, and died
heretics, he could not have howled over them in a more heart-rending
manner.

About sunrise, and even before it,--for the Romans are early
risers,--you will hear in spring-time a sharp ringing voice under your
window, '_Acqua chetosa! Acqua, chetosa!_' an abridgment of _acque
accetosa_, or water from the fountain of Accetosa, considered a good
aperient, and which is drank before breakfast. Also a voice crying out,
'_Acqua-vi-ta!_' or spirits, drank by the workmen and others at an
expense of a baioccho or two the table-spoonful, for that is all the
small glasses hold. In the early morning, too, you hear the chattering
jackdaws on the roofs; and then, more distinctly than later in the day,
the clocks striking their odd way. The Roman clocks ring from one to six
strokes four times during the twenty-four hours, and not from one to
twelve strokes, as with us. Sunset is twenty-four o'clock, and is noted
by six strokes; an hour after sunset is one o'clock, and is noted by one
stroke; and so on until six hours after, when it begins striking one
again. As the quarter hours are also rung by the clocks, if you happen
to be near one you will have a fine chance to get in a muddle trying to
separate quarters from hours, and Roman time from your own. Another
noise comes from the game of _morra_. Caper was looking out of his
window one morning, pipe in mouth, when he saw two men suddenly face
each other, one of them bringing his arm down very quickly, when the
other yelled as if kicked, '_Due!_' (two), and the first shouted at the
top of his lungs, '_Tre!_' (three). Then they both went at it, pumping
their hands up and down and spreading their fingers with a quickness
which was astonishing, while all the time they kept screaming, 'One!'
'Four!' 'Three!' 'Two!' 'Five!' etc., etc. 'Ha!' said Caper, 'this is
something like; 'tis an arithmetical, mathematical, etcetrical school in
the open air. The dirtiest one is very quick; he will learn to count
five in no time. But I don't see the necessity of saying "three" when
the other brings down four fingers, or saying "five" when he shows two.
But I suppose it is all right; he hasn't learned to give the right names
yet.' He learned later that they were gambling.

While these men were shouting, there came along an ugly old woman with a
tambourine and a one-legged man with a guitar, and seeing prey in the
shape of Caper at his window, they pounced on him, as it were, and
poured forth the most ear-rending discord; the old lady singing, the old
gentleman backing up against a wall and scratching at an accompaniment
on a jangling old guitar. The old lady had a bandana handkerchief tied
over her head, and whilst she watched Caper she cast glances up and down
the street, to see if some rich stranger, or _milordo_, was not coming
to throw her a piece of silver.

'What are you howling about?' shouted Caper down to her.

'A new Neapolitan canzonetta, signore; all about a young man who grieves
for his sweetheart, because he thinks she is not true to him, and what
he says to her in a serenade.' And here she screechingly sung,--

  But do not rage, I beg, my dear;
  I want you for my wife,
  And morning, noon, and night likewise,
  I'll love you like my life.

  CHORUS.

  I only want to get a word,
  My charming girl, from thee.
  You know, Ninella, I can't breathe,
  Unless your heart's for me!

'Well,' said Caper, 'if this is Italian music, I don't _see_ it.'

The one-legged old gentleman clawed away at the strings of the guitar.

'I say,'_llustrissimo_,' shouted Caper down to him, 'what kind of
strings are those on your instrument?'

'_Excellenza_, catgut,' he shouted, in answer.

'_Benissimo!_ I prefer cats in the original packages. There's a _paolo_:
travel!'

Caper had the misfortune to make the acquaintance of a professor of the
mandolin, a wire-strung instrument, resembling a long-necked squash cut
in two, to be played on with a quill, and which, with a guitar and
violin, makes a concert that thrills you to the bones and cuts the
nerves away.

But the crowning glory of all that is ear-rending and peace-destroying,
is carried around by the _Pifferari_ about Christmas time. It is a
hog-skin, filled with wind, having pipes at one end, and a jackass at
the other, and is known in some lands as the bagpipe. The small shrines
to the Virgin, particularly those in the streets where the wealthy
English reside, are played upon assiduously by the _pifferari_, who are
supposed by romantic travelers to come from the far-away Abbruzzi
Mountains, and make a pilgrimage to the Eternal City to fulfil a vow to
certain saints; whereas it is sundry cents they are really after. They
are for the most part artists' models, who at this season of the year
get themselves up _a la pifferari_, or piper, to prey on the romantic
susceptibilities and pockets of the strangers in Rome, and, with a pair
of long-haired goat-skin breeches, a sheepskin coat, brown rags, and
sandals, or _cioccie_, with a shocking bad conical black or brown hat,
in which are stuck peacock's or cock's feathers, they are ready equipped
to attack the shrines and the strangers.

Unfortunately for Caper there was a shrine to the Virgin in the
second-story front of the house next to where he lived; that is,
unfortunately for his musical ear, for the lamp that burned in front of
the shrine every dark night was a shining and pious light to guide him
home, and thus, ordinarily, a very fortunate arrangement. In the
third-story front room of the house of the shrine dwelt a Scotch artist
named MacGuilp, who was a grand amateur of these pipes, and who declared
that no sound in the world was so sweet to his ear as the bagpipes: they
recalled the heather, haggis, and the Lothians, and the mountain dew, ye
ken, and all those sorts of things.

One morning at breakfast in the Cafe Greco he discoursed at length about
the pleasure the pifferari gave him; while Caper, taking an opposite
view, said they had, during the last few days, driven him nearly crazy,
and he wished the squealing hog-skins well out of town.

MacGuilp told him he had a poor ear for music: that there was a charm
about the bagpipes unequalled even by the unique voices of the Sistine
Chapel; and there was nothing he would like better than to have all the
pipers of Rome under his windows.

Caper remembered this last rash speech of Master MacGuilp, and
determined at an early hour to test its truth. It happened, the very
next morning at breakfast, that MacGuilp, in a triumphant manner, told
him that he had received a promise of a visit from the Duchess of ----,
with several other titled English; and said he had not a doubt of
selling several paintings to them. MacGuilp's style was of the
blood-and-thunder school: red dawns, murdered kings, blood-stained
heather, and Scotch plaids, the very kind that should be shown to the
sweet strainings of hog-skin bagpipes.

In conversation Caper found out the hour at which the duchess intended
to make her visit. He made his preparations accordingly. Accompanied by
Rocjean, he visited Gigi, who kept a costume and life school of models,
found out where the pipers drank most wine, and going there and up the
Via Fratina and down the Spanish Steps, managed to find them, and
arranged it so that at the time the duchess was viewing MacGuilp's
paintings, he should have the full benefit of a serenade from all the
pifferari in Rome.

The next morning Caper, pipe in mouth, at his window, saw the carriage
of the duchess drive up, and from it the noble English dismount and
ascend to the artist's studio. The carriage had hardly driven away when
up came two of the pipers, and happening to cast their eyes up they saw
Caper, who hailed them and told them not to begin playing until the
others arrived. In a few moments six of the hog-skin squeezers stood
ready to begin their infernal squawking.

'Go ahead!' shouted Caper, throwing a handful of _baiocchi_ among them;
and as soon as these were gathered up, the pipers gave one awful,
heart-chilling blast, and the concert was fairly commenced. Squealing,
shrieking, grunting, yelling, and humming, the sounds rose higher and
higher. Open flew the windows in every direction.

'_C'est foudroyante!_' said the pretty French _modiste_.

'What the devil's broke loose?' shouted an American.

'_Mein Gott im himmel! was ist das?_' roared the German baron.

'_Casaccio! cosa faceste?_' shrieked the lovely Countess Grimanny.

'_In nomine Domine!_' groaned a fat friar.

'_Caramba! vayase al infierno!_' screamed Don Santiago Gomez.

'_Bassama teremtete!_' swore the Hungarian gentleman.

Louder squealed the bagpipes, their buzz filled the air, their shrieks
went ringing up to MacGuilp like the cries of Dante's condemned. The
duchess found the sound barbarous. MacGuilp opened his window, upon
which the pipers strained their lungs for the Signore Inglese, grand
amateur of the bagpipes. He begged them to go away. 'No, no, signore; we
know you love our music; we won't go away.'

The duchess could stand it no longer, her Servant called the carriage,
the English got in and drove off.

Still rung out the sounds of the six bagpipes. Caper threw them more
_baiocchi_.

Suddenly MacGuilp burst out of the door of his house, maul-stick in
hand, rushing on the pifferari to put them to flight.

'_Iddio giusto!_' shouted two of the pipers; 'it is, IT IS the
_Cacciatore_! the hunter; the Great Hunter!'

'He is a painter!' shouted another.

'No, he isn't; he's a hunter. _Gran Cacciatore!_ Doesn't he spend all
his time after quails and snipe and woodcock? Haven't I been out with
him day after day at Ostia? Long live the great hunter!'

MacGuilp was touched in a tender spot. The homage paid him as a great
hunter more than did away with his anger at the bagpipe serenade. And
the last Caper saw of him he was leading six pifferari into a wine shop,
where they would not come out until seven of them were unable to tell
the music of bagpipes from the music of the spheres.

So ends the music, noises, and voices, of the seven-hilled city.


SERMONS IN STONES.

One bright Sunday morning in January, Rocjean called on Caper to ask him
to improve the day by taking a walk.

'I thought of going up to the English chapel outside the Popolo to see a
pretty New Yorkeress,' said the latter; 'but the affair is not very
pressing, and I believe a turn round the Villa Borghese would do me as
much good as only looking at a pretty girl and half hearing a poor
sermon.'

'As for a sermon, we need not miss that,' answered Rocjean, 'for we will
stop in at Chapin the sculptor's studio, and if we escape one, and he
there, I am mistaken. They call his studio a shop, and they call his
shop the Orphan's Asylum, because he manufactured an Orphan Girl some
years ago, and, as it sold well, he has kept on making orphans ever
since.

'The murderer!'

'Yes; but not half as atrocious as the reality. You must know that when
he first came over here he had an order to make a small Virgin Mary for
a Catholic church in Boston; but the order being countermanded after he
had commenced modeling in clay, he was determined not to lose his time,
and so, having somewhere read of, in a yellow-covered novel, or seen in
some fashion-plate magazine, a doleful-looking female called The Orphan,
he instantly determined, cruel executioner that he is, to also make an
orphan. And he did. There is a dash of bogus sentiment in it that passes
for coin current with many of our traveling Americans; and the thing has
"sold." He told me not long since he had orders for twelve copies of
different sized Orphans, and you will see them all through his asylum.
Do you remember those lines in Richard the Third,--

  '"Why do you look on us, and shake your head,
  And call us orphans--wretched?"'

They found Chapin in his shop, alias studio, busily looking over a
number of plaster casts of legs and arms. He arose quickly as they
entered and threw a cloth over the casts.

'Hah! gudmornin', Mister Caper. Glad to see you in my studiyo. Hallo,
Rocjan! you there? Why haven't you ben up to see my wife and daughters?
She feels hurt, I tell you, 'cause you don't come near us. Do you know
that Burkings of Bosting was round here to my studiyo yeserday: sold
_him_ an Orphan. By the way, Mister Caper, air you any relation to Caper
of the great East Ingy house of Caper?'

'He is an uncle of mine, and is now in Florence; he will be in Rome next
week.'

A tender glow of interest beamed in Chapin's eyes: in imagination he saw
another Orphan sold to the rich Caper, who might 'influence trade.' His
tone of voice after this was subdued. As Caper happened to brush against
some plaster coming in the studio, Chapin hastened to brush it from his
coat, and he did it as if it were the down on the wing of a beautiful
golden butterfly.

'I was goin' to church this mornin' long with Missus Chapin; but I guess
I'll stay away for once in me life. I want to show you The Orphan.'

'I beg that you will not let me interfere with any engagement you may
have,' said Caper; 'I can call as well at any other time.'

'Oh, no; I won't lissen to that; I don't want to git to meeting before
sermon, so come right stret in here now. There! there's The Orphan. You
see I've made her accordin' to the profoundest rules of art. You may
take a string or a yard measure and go all over her, you won't find her
out of the way a fraction. The figure is six times the length of the
foot; this was the way Phidias worked, and I agree with him. Them were
splendid old fellows, them Greeks. There was art for you; high art!'

'That in the Acropolis was of the highest order,' said Rocjean.

'Yes,' answered Chapin, who did not know where it was; 'far above all
other. There was some sentiment in them days; but it was all of the
religious stripe; they didn't come down to domestic life and feelin';
they hadn't made the strides we have towards layin' open art to the
million--towards developing _hum_ feelings. They worked for a precious
few; but we do it up for the many. Now there's the A-poller
Belvidiary--beautiful thing; but the idea of brushin' his hair that way
is ridicoolus. Did you ever see anybody with their hair fixed that way?
Never! They had a way among the Greeks of fixing their drapery right
well; but I've invented a plan--for which I've applied to Washington for
a patent--that I think will beat anything Phidias ever did.'

'You can't tell how charmed I am to hear you,' spoke Rocjean.

'Well, it _is_ a great invention,' continued Chapin; 'and as I know
neither of you ain't in the 'trade' (smiling), I don't care but what
I'll show it to you, if you'll promise, honor bright, you won't tell
anybody. You see I take a piece of muslin and hang it onto a statue the
way I want the folds to fall; then I take a syringe filled with starch
and glue and go all over it, so that when it dries it'll be as hard as a
rock. Then I go all over it with a certain oily preparation and lastly
I run liquid plaster-paris in it, and when it hardens, I have an exact
mold of the drapery. There! But I hain't explained The Orphan. You see
she's sittin' on a very light chair--_that_ shows the very little
support she has in this world. The hand to the head shows meditation;
and the Bible on her knee shows devotion; you see it's open to the book,
chapter, and verse which refers to the young ravens.'

'Excuse me,' said Caper, 'but may I ask why she has such a _very_
low-necked dress on?'

'Well, my model has got such a fine neck and shoulders,' replied Chapin,
'that I re-eely couldn't help showing 'em off on the Orphan: besides,
they're more in demand--the low neck and short sleeves--than the
high-bodied style, which has no buyers. But there is a work I'm engaged
on now that would just soot your uncle. Mr. Caper, come this way.'

Caper saw what he supposed was a safe to keep meat cool in, and
approached. Chapin threw back the doors of it like a showman about to
disclose the What Is It? and Caper saw a dropsical-looking Cupid with a
very short shirt on, and a pair of winged shoes on his feet. The figure
was starting forward as if to catch his equilibrium, which he had that
moment lost, and was only prevented from tumbling forward by a bag held
behind him in his left hand, while his right arm and hand, at full
length, pointed a sharp arrow in front of him.

'Can you tell me what _that_ figger represents?' asked Chapin. As he
received no reply, he continued: '_That_ is Enterprise; the two little
ruts at his feet represent a railroad; the arrow, showin' he's sharp,
points ahead; Go ahead! is his motto; the bag in his hand represents
money, which the keen, sharp, shrewd business man knows is the reward of
enterprise. The wreath round his head is laurel mixed up with lightnin',
showin' he's up to the tellygraph; the pen behind his ear shows he can
figger; and his short shirt shows economy, that admirable virtoo. The
wings on his shoes air taken from Mercury, as I suppose you know; and--'

'I say, now, Chapin, don't you think he's got a little too much legs,
and rather extra stomach on him, to make fast time?' asked Rocjean.

'Measure him, measure him!' said Chapin, indignantly; 'there's a string.
Figure six times the length of his foot, everything else in proportion.
No, _sir_; I have not studied the classic for nothin'; if there is any
one thing I am strong on, it's anatomy. Only look at his hair. Why, sir,
I spent three weeks once dissectin'; and for more'n six months I didn't
do anything, during my idle time, but dror figgers. Art is a kind of
thing that's born in a man. This saying the ancients were better
sculpters than we air, is no such thing; what did they know about
steam-engines or telegraphs? _Fiddle!_ They did some fustrate things,
but they had no idee of fixin' hair as it should be fixed. No, sir; we
moderns have great add-vantagiz, and we improve 'em. Rome is the Cra--'

'I must bid you good-day,' interrupted Caper; 'your wife will miss you
at the sermon: you will attribute it to me; and I would not
intentionally be the cause of having her ill-will for anything.'

'Well, she is a pretty hard innimy; and they do talk here in Rome if you
don't toe the mark. But ree-ly, you mustn't go off mad (smiling). You
must call up with Rocjan and see us; and I ree-ly hope that when your
uncle comes you will bring him to my studiyo. I am sure my Enterprise
will soot him.'

So Chapin saw them out of his studio. Not until Caper found himself
seated on a stone bench under the ilexes of the Villa Borghese, watching
the sunbeams darting on the little lizards, and seeing far off the
Albanian Mountains, snowcapped against the blue sky--not until then did
he breathe freely.

'Rocjean,' said he; 'that stone-cutter down there--that Chapin--'

'_Chameau!_ roared Rocjean. 'He and his kind are doing for art what the
Jews did for prize-fighting--they ruin it. They make art the
laughing-stock of all refined and educated people. Art applied solely to
sculpture and painting is dead; it will not rise again in these our
times. But art, the fairy-fingered beautifier of all that surrounds our
homes and daily walks, save paintings and statuary, never breathed so
fully, clearly, nobly as now, and her pathway amid the lowly and homely
things around us is shedding beauty wherever it goes. The rough-handed
artisan who, slowly dreaming of the beautiful, at last turns out a stone
that will beautify and adorn a room, instead of rendering it hideous,
has done for this practical generation what he of an earlier theoretical
age did for his cotemporaries when he carved the imperial Venus of
Milos. Enough; _this_ is the sermon _not_ preached from stones.'


A BALL AT THE COSTA PALACE

One sunlight morning in February, while hard at work in his studio,
Caper was agreeably surprised by the entrance of an elderly uncle of
his, Mr. Bill Browne, of St. Louis, a gentleman of the rosy, stout,
hearty school of old bachelors, who, having made a large fortune by
keeping a Western country store, prudently retired from business, and
finding it dull work doing nothing, wisely determined to enjoy himself
with a tour over the Continent, 'or any other place he might conclude to
visit.'

'I say, Jim, did you expect to see me here?' was his first greeting.

'Why, Uncle Bill! Well, you are the last man I ever thought would turn
up. They didn't write me a word of your coming over,' answered Caper.

'Mistake; they wrote you all about it; and if you'll drop round at the
post-office, you'll find letters there telling you the particulars. Fact
is, I am ahead of the mail. Coming over in the steamer, met a man named
Orville; told me he knew you, that he was coming straight through to
Rome, and offered to pilot me. So I gave up Paris and all that, and came
smack through, eighteen days from New York. But I'm dry. Got a match?
Here, try one of these cigars.'

Caper took a cigar from his uncle's case, lit it, and then, calling the
man who swept out the studios, sent him to the neighboring wine-shop for
a bottle of wine.

'By George, Jim, that's a pretty painting: that jackass is fairly alive,
and so's the girl with a red boddice. I say, what's she got that towel
on her head for? Is it put there to dry?'

'No; that's an Italian peasant girl's head-covering. Most all of them do
so.'

'Do they? I'm glad of that. But here comes your man with the liquor.'

And, after drinking two or three tumblers full, Uncle Bill decided that
it was pretty good cider. The wine finished, together with a couple of
rolls that came with it, the two sallied out for a walk around the
Pincian Hill, the grand promenade of Rome. Towards sunset they thought
of dinner, and Uncle Bill, anxious to see life, accepted Caper's
invitation to dine at the old Gabioni: here they ordered the best
dishes, and the former swore it was as good a dinner as he ever got at
the Planter's House. Rocjean, who dined there, delighted the old
gentleman immensely, and the two fraternized at once, and drank each
other's health, old style, until Caper, fearing that neither could
conveniently hold more, suggested an adjournment to the Greco for coffee
and cigars.

While they were in the cafe, Rocjean quietly proposed something to
Caper, who at once assented; the latter then said to Uncle Bill,--

'You have arrived in Rome just at the right time. You may have heard at
home of the great Giacinti family; well, the Prince Nicolo di Giacinti
gives a grand ball to-night at the Palazzo Costa. Rocjean and I have
received invitations, embracing any illustrious strangers of our
acquaintance who may happen to be in Rome; so you must go with us. You
have no idea, until you come to know them intimately, what a
good-natured, off-hand set the best of the Roman nobility are. Compelled
by circumstances to keep up for effect an appearance of great reserve
and dignity before the public, they indemnify themselves for it in
private by having the highest kind of old times. They are passionately
attached to their native habits and costumes, and though driven, on
state occasions especially, to imitate French and English habits, yet
they love nothing better than at times to enjoy themselves in their
native way. The ball given by the prince to-night is what might be
called a free-and-easy. It is his particular desire that no one should
come in full dress; in fact, he rather likes to have his stranger guests
come in their worst clothes, for this prevents the attention of the
public being called to them as they enter the palace. After you have
lived some time in Rome you will see how necessary it is to keep dark,
so you will see no flaring light at the palace gate; it's all as quiet
and common-place as possible. The dresses, you must remember, are
assumed for the occasion because they are, or were, the national
costume, which is fast disappearing, and if it were not for the noble
wearers you will see to-night, you could not find them anywhere in Rome.
You will perhaps think the nobility at the ball hardly realize your
ideas of Italian beauty and refinement, compared with the fine specimens
of men and women you may have seen among the Italian opera singers at
home: well, these same singers are picked specimens, and are chosen for
their height and muscular development from the whole nation, so that
strangers may think all the rest at home are like them: it is a little
piece of deception we can pardon.'

After this long prelude, Rocjean proposed that they should try a game of
billiards in the Cafe Nuovo. After they had played a game or two, and
drank several _mezzo caldos_, or rum punches, they walked up the Corso
to the Via San Claudio, No. 48, and entered the palace gate. It was very
dark after they entered, so Rocjean, telling them to wait one moment,
lit a _cerina_, or piece of waxed cord, an article indispensable to a
Roman, and, crossing the broad courtyard, they entered a small door, and
after climbing and twisting and turning, found a ticket-taker, and the
next minute were in the ball-room.

Uncle Bill was delighted with the excessively free-and-easy ball of
Prince Giacinti, but was very anxious to know the names of the nobility,
and Rocjean politely undertook to point out the celebrities, offering
kindly to introduce him to any one he might think looked sympathetic;
'what they call _simpatico_ in Italian,' explained Rocjean.

'That pretty girl in _Ciociara_ costume is the Condessa or Countess
Stella di Napoli.'

'Introduce me,' said Uncle Bill.

Rocjean went through the performance, concluding thus: 'The countess
expresses a wish that you should order a _bottiglia_ (about two bottles)
of red wine.'

'Go ahead,' quoth Uncle Bill; 'for a nobility ball this comes as near a
dance-house affair as I ever want to approach. By the way, who is that
pickpocket-looking genius with eyes like a black snake?'

'Who is _that_?' said Rocjean, theatrically. 'Chut! a word in your ear;
that is An-to-nel-li!'

'The devil! But I heard some one only a few minutes ago call him
Angelucio.'

'That was done satirically, for it means big angel, which you, who read
the papers, know that Antonelli is _not_. But here comes the wine, and I
see the countess looks dry. Pour out a half-dozen glasses for her. The
Roman women, high and low, paddle in wine like ducks, and it never
upsets them; for, like ducks, their feet are so large that neither you
nor wine can throw them. I wish you could speak Italian, for here comes
the Princess Giacinta _con Marchese_--'

'I wish,' said Uncle Bill, 'you would talk English.'

'Well,' continued Rocjean, 'with the Marchioness Nina Romana, if you
like that better. Shall I introduce you?'

'Certainly,' replied the old gentleman, 'and order two more what d'ye
call 'ems. It's cheap--this knowing a princess for a quart of red
teaberry tooth-wash, for that's what this "wine" amounts to. I am going
to dance to-night, for the Princess Giacinta is a complete woman after
my heart, and weighs her two hundred pound any day.'

The nobility now began begging Rocjean and Caper to introduce them to
his excellency _Il vecchio_, or the old man; and Uncle Bill, in his
enthusiasm at finding himself surrounded with so many princes,
Allegrini, Pelligrini, Sapgrini, and Dungreeny, compelled Caper to order
up a barrel of wine, set it a-tap, and tell the nobility to 'go in.' It
is needless to say that they _went_ in. Many of the costumes were very
rich, especially those of the female nobility; and in the rush for a
glass of wine the effect of the brilliant draperies flying here and
there, struggling and pushing, was notable. The musicians, who were
standing on what appeared to be barrels draped with white cloth, jumped
down and tried their luck at the wine-cask, and, after satisfying their
thirst, returned to their duties. There was a guitar, mandolin, violin,
and flute, and the music was good for dancing. Uncle Bill was pounced on
by the Princess Giacinta and whirled off into some kind of a dance, he
did not know what; round flew the room and the nobility; round flew
barrels of teaberry tooth-wash, beautiful princesses, big devils of
Antonellis. Lights, flash, hum, buzz, buzz, zzz--ooo--zoom

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