And enjoyed every hour, albeit senses less agreeably preoccupied might have detected the smell of gunpowder in the air.

I am often asked if we were not uneasy for the safety of the Union, while in the thick of sectional wordy strife, and how it was possible to enjoy visits when much of the talk must have jarred upon the sensibilities of loyal lovers of that Union.

The truth is that I had been used to political wrangling from my youth up. The fact that South Carolina and six other States had seceded in name from the control of the Federal government; that, in every county and “Cross-Roads” hamlet, from the Gulf of Mexico to Chesapeake Bay, bands of volunteers were drilling daily and nightly, and that cargoes of arms were arriving from the North and in distribution among the enlisted militiamen; that the Southern papers sounded the tocsin of war to the death, and “Death in the last ditch!” and “Down with the Yankees!” with every red-hot issue; that a convention had been solemnly summoned to meet in Richmond to decide upon the action of the Old Dominion at the supreme moment of the nation’s destiny—weighed marvellously little against the settled conviction, well-nigh sublime in its fatuousness, that the right must prevail, and that such furious folly must die ignominiously before the steadfast front maintained by the Union men of the infected section.

To my apprehension, so much that we heard was sheer gasconade, amusing for a time from its very unreason and illogical conclusions, and often indicative of such blatant ignorance of the spirit and the resources of the Federal government, that I failed to attach to it the importance the magnitude of the mischief deserved to have.

I refused stubbornly to let the clear joy of my holiday be clouded by the smoke from blank cartridges. So light was my spirit that I made capital for fun of bombastic threats and gloomy predictions, touching the stabling of Confederate cavalry in Faneuil Hall inside of three months from the day of the inauguration of the “Springfield Ape” at Washington. The Vice-President was a full-blooded negro, or, at the least, a mulatto, I was assured over and over. Wasn’t his name damning evidence of the disgraceful fact? What white man ever called his child “Hannibal”?

I supplied other confirmation to one fiery orator:

“‘Ham-lin’ sounds suspicious, too. I wonder you have not thought of the color that gives to your theory.”

The youth foamed at the mouth. He wore a Secession cockade on his breast, and proved, to a demonstration, that any Southerner over fourteen years old was equal, on the battle-field, to five Yankees. Why not seven, I could never ascertain.

Such funny things were happening hourly, and such funnier things were said every minute, that I was in what we used to call, when I was a child, “a continual gale.”

Let one bit of nonsense illustrate the frivolity that, in the retrospect, resembles the pas seul of a child on the edge of a reeking crater.

I was summoned to the drawing-room, one forenoon, to receive a call from the son of an old friend who had promised his mother to look me up, in passing through the city on his way to the “Republic of South Carolina.” That was the letter-head of epistles received from the Palmetto State.

In descending the stairs, I heard the scamper of small boots over the floor of the square, central hall, and caught the flash of golden curls through the arched doorway leading into the narrower passage at the rear of the house. Knowing the infinite capacity of my son for ingenious mischief, I stayed my progress to the parlor, and looked about for some hint as to the nature of the present adventure. Sofa and chairs were in place, as was the mahogany table at the far corner. On this was a silver tray, and on the tray the pitcher of iced water, which was a fixture the year through. Two tumblers flanked it on one side, and my visitor had set on the other the sleekest tall silk hat I had ever seen outside of a shop window. There was absolutely no rational association of ideas between the iced water-pitcher and that stunning specimen of head-gear. Yet I glanced into the depths of both. One was half-full; the other was empty. Clutching the desecrated hat wildly, I sped to the sitting-room. “Oh, mother, what is to be done? Eddie has emptied the water-pitcher into William M.’s hat!”

Whereupon, that gentlest, yet finest, of disciplinarians, who would have sent one of her own bairns to bed in the middle of the day, for an offence one-tenth as flagrant, dropped her sewing on her lap and went off into a speechless convulsion of laughter. A chuckle of intense delight from behind her rocking-chair, and a glimpse of dancing blue eyes under her elbow, put the finishing touches to a scene so discreditable to grandmotherly ideas of domestic management, that the family refused to believe the story told at the supper-table, when the culprit was safe in his crib.

Leaving the dishonored “tile” to the merciful manipulations of the laundress, who begged me to “keep the pore young gentleman a-talkin’ ‘tell she could dry it at the fire,” I went to meet the unsuspecting victim.

It was not difficult to keep him talking, when once he was launched upon the topic paramount in the mind of what he denominated as “every truly loyal and chivalrous Son of the South.” He had a plan of campaign so well concerted and so thoroughly digested, that it could have but one culmination.

“But why Faneuil Hall?” I demurred, plaintively. “You are the sixth man who has informed me that your cavalry are to tie and feed their horses there. Why not the City Hall in New York? There must be stable-room short of Boston.”

He flushed brick-red.

“It is no laughing matter to us who have been ground down so long under the iron heels of Yankee mud-sills!”

I found his mixed metaphors so diverting that I was near forgetting the ruined head-piece, and the inexorable necessity of confession.

Sobering under the thought, I let him go on, lending but half an ear, yet, in seeming, bowed by the weight of his discourse. Moved by my mournful silence, he stopped midway.

“I beg your pardon if my feelings and patriotism have carried me too far. I own that I am hot-headed—”

Another such chance would not come in a life-time. I broke his sentence short.

“Oh, I am glad to know that! For my boy has filled your hat with iced water!”

Eheu! That night’s supper was the last merry meal the old home was to know for many a long month and year. For, by breakfast-time next day, the news had come of the bombardment of Fort Sumter, and men’s hearts were hot within them, and women’s hearts were failing them for fear of battle, murder, and sudden death to sons, husbands, and brothers.

One might have fancied that a visible pall hung over the city, so universal and deep was the agony of suspense.

While the recollection of suspense and agony was fresh in my mind, I wrote of the awful awakening from my fool’s paradise of incredulity and levity:

“For two days, the air was thick with rumors of war and bloodshed. For two days, the eyes and thoughts of the nation were fixed upon that fire-girt Southern island, with its brave but feeble garrison—the representative of that nation’s majesty—testifying, in the defiant boom of every cannon’s answer to the rebel bombardment, that resistance to armed treason is henceforward to be learned as one of the nation’s laws. For two days, thousands and hundreds of thousands of loyal hearts all over this broad land, cried mightily unto our country’s God to avert this last and direst trial—the humiliation of our Flag by hands that once helped to rear it in the sight of the world, as the ensign of national faith. And under the whole expanse of heaven, there was no answer to those prayers, except the reverberation of the cruel guns.

“On Saturday, April 14th, the End came!”

XXXVIII
THE FOURTEENTH OF APRIL, 1861, IN RICHMOND

We had planned to leave Richmond for home on Tuesday afternoon. At noon on Saturday, my husband asked me if I would not like to prolong my stay with my relatives, adding significantly:

“We do not know how long it may be before you can get South again. There is thunder in the air.”

I looked up from the letter I was writing to Newark:

“Thunder—alone—is harmless. I take no stock in gasconade that is only thunder. And if trouble is coming, it is clear that our place is not here.”

The letter-writing went on not uncheerfully. Far down in my soul was the belief that a peaceful issue must be in store for the land beloved of the Lord. Were we not brethren? When brought, face to face, with the fact that brothers’ hands must be dipped in brothers’ blood, reaction was inevitable.

So foolish was I, and ignorant of the excesses to which sectional fury can carry individuals and nations.

I was in my room, getting ready for our last walk among scenes endeared to us by thousands of associations, my husband standing by, hat in hand, when a terrific report split the brooding air and rent the very heavens. Another and another followed. We stood transfixed, without motion or speech, until we counted, silently, seven.

It was the number of the seceding States! As if pandemonium had waited for the seventh boom to die sullenly away among the hills, the pause succeeding the echo was ended by an outburst of yells, cheers, and screams that beggars description. The streets in our quiet quarter were alive with men, women, and children. Fire-crackers, pistols, and guns were discharged into the throbbing air.

“The fort has fallen!” broke in one breath from our lips. And simultaneously: “The Lord have mercy upon the country!”

We ran down-stairs and into the street.

My sister “Mea” was upon the front porch, and the steps were thronged by children and servants, wild with curiosity.

I have not mentioned that my sister had married, two years before, Mr. John Miller, a Scotchman by birth. He was much liked and respected by us all, and it spoke volumes for his breeding and the genuine good feeling prevailing among us, that although he was the only “original secessionist” in our household band, our cordial relations remained unbroken in spite of the many political arguments we had had with him.

His wife was holding aloft her baby boy, a pretty year-old, in her arms. A Secession cockade was pinned upon his breast; in his chubby hand he flourished a rebel flag, and he laughed down into her radiant face.

We feigned not to see them as we hurried past. But a gulf seemed to open at my feet. As in a baleful dream, I comprehended, in the sick whirl of conflicting sensations, what Rebellion, active and in arms, would mean in hundreds of homes on both sides of the border.

“Is the world going mad?” muttered my husband, between his teeth, and I knew that the same horror was present with him.

Secession flags blossomed in windows and from roofs; were waved from doors and porches by girls and women; were shaken in mad exultation by boys on the sidewalks; hung upon lamp-posts, and were stretched from side to side of the street. It was like the magical upspringing of baneful fungi. Where had they all come from? And at what infernal behest had they leaped into being?

The living stream poured toward the Capitol Square, and it swept us with it. The grounds were filled with a tumultuous crowd. Upon the southern terrace was the park of artillery that had fired the salute of seven guns. As we entered the upper gate a long procession of men issued from the western door of the Capitol, and descended the steps.

“The convention has adjourned for the day,” remarked Mr. Terhune. We were at the base of the Washington monument, and he drew me up on the lower step of the base to avoid the press.

The delegates streamed by us in groups; some striding in excited haste; talking gleefully, and gesticulating wildly. Others were grave and slow, silent, or deep in low-toned conversation; others yet—and these were marked men already—walked with bent heads, and faces set in wordless sadness. One of these, recognizing Mr. Terhune, approached us, and with a brief apology to me, drew him a few paces apart.

Three years before, I had seen the ceremonies by which this monument—Crawford’s finest work in marble—was uncovered and dedicated. On the next day, Mr. Everett had repeated his oration on Washington in the Richmond theatre. The silver-tongued orator had joined hands, then and there, with Tyler, Wise, and Yancey, in proclaiming the unity of the nation. General Scott had sat in the centre of the stage, like a hoary keystone in the semi-circle of honorable men and counsellors.

Was it all a farce, even then, this talk of brotherhood and patriotism? And of what avail were wisdom and diplomacy and the multitude of counsels, if this were to be the end?

I was saying it to myself in disgustful bewilderment, when the crowd cheered itself mad over a fresh demonstration of popular passion. The rebel flag had been run up from the peak of the Capitol roof!

My husband came back to me instantly. He was pale, and the lines of his mouth were tense.

“Let us get out of this!” he said. “I cannot breathe!”

On the way to Gamble’s Hill—a long-loved walk with us—I heard how Sumter had fallen. We were not hopeless, yet, as to the final outcome of the tragical complication that had turned the heads of the populace. The outrage offered the Flag of our common country must open the eyes of true men, and all who had one spark of patriotism left in their souls. We could have no longer any doubt as to the real animus of the Rebellion. One thing was certain: To-day’s work would decide the question for Virginia. She could not hang back now.

Thus reasoning, we took our last look of the lovely panorama of river, islets, and hills; of the city of the dead—beautiful in wooded heights and streams and peaceful valleys, on our right—while on the left was the city of the living, noble and fair, and, in the distance, now as silent as Hollywood.

My companion lifted his arm abruptly and pointed northward.

A long, low line of cloud hung on the horizon—dun, with brassy edges—sullen and dense, save where a rainbow, vivid with emerald, rose-color, and gold, spanned the murky vapor.

“Fair weather cometh out of the North,” uttered the resolute optimist. “With the Lord is terrible majesty. After all, He is omnipotent. We will hope on!”

We were measurably cheered on our way back to the heart of the city by the sight of the Flag of Virginia flying serenely from the staff where had flaunted the Stars and Bars, an hour ago. At supper, my father related with gusto how a deputation of Secessionists had waited on the Governor to offer congratulations upon the Confederate victory. How he had received them but sourly, being, as the deputation should have known, an “inveterate Unionist.” When felicitated upon the result of the siege, he returned that he “did not consider it a matter for any compliments.” At that instant he caught sight of the flag hoisted to the roof of the Capitol, demanded by whose order it was done, and straightway commanded it to be hauled down and the State flag, usually sported when the Legislature was in session, to be run up in its stead.

“Governor Letcher has a rough tongue when he chooses to use it,” commented my father. “He is honest, through and through.”

The talk of the evening could run in but one channel. Our nerves were keyed up to the highest tension, and the day’s events had gone deep into mind and heart. Two or three visitors dropped in, and both sides of the Great Controversy were brought forward, temperately, but with force born of conviction. If I go somewhat into the details of the conversation, it is because I would make clear the truth that each party in the struggle we feared might be imminent, believed honestly that justice and right were at the foundation of his faith. I wrote down the substance of the memorable discussion, as I recorded and published other incidents of the ever-to-be-remembered era, while the history of it was still in the making. I am, then, sure that I give the story correctly.

John Miller opened the ball by “hoping that the North was now convinced that the South was in earnest in maintaining her rights.”

I liked my Scotch brother-in-law, and we bandied jests safely and often. But it irked me that we should have a Secessionist in a loyal family, and I retorted flippantly, lest I should betray the underlying feeling:

“There has been no madness equal to Secession since the swine ran violently down a steep place into the sea. The choking in the waves will come later.”

“Let wise men stand from under!” he retorted, smiling good-humoredly. “As to the choking, that may not be such an easy job as you think.”

A visitor took up the word, and seriously:

“The dissatisfaction of the South is no new thing. It is as old as the Constitution itself. John Randolph said of it: ‘I saw what Washington did not see. Two other men in Virginia saw it—the poison under its wings.’ Grayson, another far-sighted statesman, prophesied just what has come to pass. He said of the consolidation policy taught in the Constitution: ‘It will, in operation, be found unequal, grievous, and oppressive.’ He foresaw that the manufacturer of the North would dominate the agriculturist of the South; that there would be burdensome taxation without adequate representation; in short, that there would be numberless encroachments of the North upon the prerogatives of the Southern slaveholder.”

“He said nothing of the manifest injustice in a republic, of the election of a candidate by the votes of a petty faction, dominant for the time, because the other party split and ran several men?”

This was said by a young man who had not spoken until then.

My father replied: “Suppose Breckenridge had been elected? Would that have been the triumph of a faction?”

“Circumstances alter cases,” said my brother Horace, dryly.

Everybody laughed, except the man who had quoted Grayson and Randolph.

“It is not easy for the Mother of Presidents to submit to the rule of those whom, as Job says, they would have scorned to put with their cattle,” he said, with temper.

I saw the blue fire in my husband’s eyes before he spoke; but his voice was even and full; every sentence was studiedly calm.

“For more than seventy years, the South has prospered under the Constitution, which, according to the renowned authorities cited just now, had poison under its wings. Hers have been the chief places in our national councils, and the most lucrative offices in the gift of the government. It is her boast, if we are to believe what this one of your leading papers says”—unfolding and reading from the editorial page—“that ‘since the organization of the Union, she has held the balance of power—as it is her right to do—her citizens being socially, morally, and intellectually, superior to those of the North.’”

My father filliped his cigar ash into the fire.

“Now you are improvising?”

“Not a word! Our editor goes on to say further: ‘Our whilom servants have lately strangely forgotten their places. They now aspire to an equal share in the administration of the government. They have presumed to elect from their own ranks an illiterate, base-born, sectional tool, whom they rely upon to do their foul work of subverting our sovereignty. It is high time the real masters awoke from their fatal lethargy, and forced their insubordinate hinds to stand once more, cap in hand, at their behest.’”

The stump of my father’s cigar followed the ash.

“Come, come, my dear boy! it isn’t fair to take the ravings of one fool as the sentiment of the section in which that stuff is printed. I could quote talk, as intemperate and incendiary, from your Northern papers. You wouldn’t have us suppose that you and other sane voters indorse them?”

“I grant what you say, sir. And, as I long ago affirmed, the shortest and best way to put out the fire that threatens the integrity of the government, would be to muzzle every political ranter in the country, and suppress every newspaper for six months. The conflagration would die for want of fuel.”

My mother interposed here:

“Good people, don’t you think there is ‘somewhat too much of this’? I, for one, refuse to believe that anything but smoke will come of the alarm that is frightening weak brothers out of their wits. The good Ship of State will ‘sail on, strong and great,’ when our children’s children are in their graves.”

She changed the current of talk, but not of thought. After the rest had gone, there lingered a young fellow whose case was so striking an example of a host of others, who were forced into the forefront of the battle, that I take leave to relate it.

He still lives, an honored citizen of the State he loved as a son loves the mother who bore and nursed him. Therefore I shall not use his real name. Eric S., as I shall call him, was an intimate friend of my brother Herbert, and as much at home in our house as if he were, in very deed, one of the blood and name. He had visited us in Newark, and made warm friends there, during the past year. Mr. Terhune had had long and serious consultations with him since we came to Virginia, and, within a few days, as the war-cloud took form, had urged him to accompany us to New Jersey, or, at least, to promise to come to us should hostilities actually begin between the two sections. The lad (scarcely twenty-one) was an ardent Unionist, and, although a member of a crack volunteer company in Richmond, had declared to us that nothing would ever induce him to bear arms under the Rebel government. Mea and her spouse went up-stairs early, and the rest of us were in hearty sympathy with our guest. He had not taken an active share in the discussion, and his distrait manner and sober face prepared us, in part, for the disclosure that followed the departure of the others.

He had been credibly and confidentially informed that a mighty pressure would be brought to bear upon the convention, at their next sitting, to force the Ordinance of Secession. If it were carried, by fair means or foul, every man who could bear arms would be called into the field.

While he talked, the boy stood against the mantel—erect, lithe, and handsome—the typical mother’s and sister’s darling, yet manly in every look and lineament. The thought tore through my imagination while I looked at him:

“And it is material like this that will go to feed the maw of War!—such flesh and blood as his that will be mangled by bullet and shell!”

I had never had the ghastly reality brought so near to me until that moment.

“Oh-h!” I shuddered. “You won’t stay to be shot at like a mad dog!”

The first bright smile that had lighted his face was on it. “It isn’t being shot at that I am thinking of.” The gleam faded suddenly. “I don’t think I am a coward. It doesn’t run in the blood. But”—flinging out his arm with a passionate gesture that said more than his words—“I think that would be paralyzed if I were to lift it against the dear old flag!”

Before he left it was agreed privately, between him and my husband, that he would try his fortune on the other side of Mason and Dixon’s line, should the axe fall that would sever Virginia from the Union her sons had been mainly instrumental in creating.

Sunday came and went. Such a strange, sad Sunday as it was! with the marked omission, in every pulpit, of the prayer for the President of the United States and others in authority; with scanty congregations in the churches, and growing throngs of excited talkers at the street corners, and knots of dark-browed men in hotel lobbies, and the porches of private houses.

In the length and breadth of the town but one Union flag was visible. Nicholas Mills, a wealthy citizen of high character and fearless temper, defied public opinion and risked popular wrath, by keeping a superb flag flying at the head of a tall staff in his garden on Leigh Street. We went out of our way, in returning from afternoon service, to refresh eyes and spirits with the sight.

On Monday, the mutterings of rebellion waxed into a roar of angry revolt over the published proclamation of the President, calling for an army of seventy-five thousand men to quell the insurrection. The quota from Virginia was, I think, five thousand.

“A fatal blunder!” said my father, in stern disapproval.

My husband’s answer was prompt:

“To omit her name from the roll would be an accusation of disloyalty.”

The senior shook his head.

“It may have been a choice of evils. I hope he has chosen the less! But I doubt it! I doubt it!”

So might Eli have looked and spoken when his heart trembled for the ark of the Lord.

That afternoon, the flagstaff in the Mills garden was empty. The Stars and Stripes were banned as an unholy ensign.

Eric S. paid us a flying visit that evening. His parents urged his going. The father was especially anxious that he should not risk the probability of impressment, and, should he refuse to serve, of imprisonment. Already Union men were regarded with suspicion. The exodus of the disaffected could not be long delayed. He had influential family connections at the North who would see to it that he found occupation. When we parted that night, it was with a definite understanding that he would be our travelling companion.

Tuesday noon, he appeared, haggard and well-nigh desperate. Going, like the honorable gentleman he was, to the Colonel of his regiment early in the day, to tender his resignation and declare his intentions, he was stricken by the news that the State had seceded in secret session Monday night.

Whereupon the Colonel had offered the services of his regiment to the authorities of the Confederate States. They were accepted.

“You are now in the Confederate army,” added the superior officer, “and, from present indications, we will not be idle long.”

“But,” stammered the stunned subaltern, “I am going North this very afternoon with friends, and I shall not consent to serve.”

“If you attempt to leave, you will be reckoned as a deserter from the regular army, and dealt with accordingly.”

I do not attempt to estimate what proportion of men, who would have remained loyal to flag and government if they could, were coerced, or cajoled, into bearing arms under a government they abhorred. I tell the plain facts in the instance before me.

Eric S. fought in fifteen general engagements, and came out with his life when the cruel war was over. He told with deep satisfaction, in after-years, that he had never worn the Confederate uniform, but always that of his own regiment.

It is easy for us to prate, at this distance from those times of trial to brave men’s souls, of the high and sacred duty of living and, if need be, of dying for the right. From our standpoint, it is as clear as the noonday sun, that allegiance to the general government should outrank allegiance to the State in which one has chanced to be born and to live. We have had an awful object-lesson in the study of that creed since the day when the Virginian, who saw his native State invaded, believed that he had no alternative but to “strike for his altars and his fires.”

Upon the gallant fellows who, seeing this, and no further, risked their lives unto the death, fell the penalty of the demagogues’ sin.

We may surely lay the blame where it belongs.

XXXIX
“THE LAST THROUGH TRAIN FOR FOUR YEARS”

I copy in substance, and sometimes verbatim, the account written in 1861, and published later, of our journey northward in the last train that went through to Washington before the outbreak of hostilities.

I preface the narrative by saying that, by the merciful provision of the Divine Father, Who will not try us beyond our strength, we, one and all, kept up to our own hearts the sanguine incredulity in the possibility of the worst coming to pass, which was characteristic of Union lovers at the South, up to the battle of Manassas.

After that, the scales fell from all eyes. Had not my mother hoped confidently that the war-cloud would blow over, and that, before long, she would not have allowed Alice to go back to Newark with us? My place was with my husband, but this young daughter she had the right to keep with her.

Had I not hoped for a peaceful solution of the national problem, if only through the awakening of the fraternal love of those whose fathers had fought, shoulder to shoulder, to wrest their country from a common oppressor, I could not have said “Good-bye” smilingly to home and kindred. When I said to my mother: “We shall have you with us at the seashore, this summer,” it was not in bravado, to cheat her into belief in my cheerfulness.

Our party of Mr. Terhune, Alice, our boy and baby Christine, with their nurse and myself, was comfortably bestowed in the train that was to meet the boat at Acquia Creek. Luggage and luncheon were looked after as sedulously as if there were no superior interest in our minds. The very commonplaceness of the details of getting ready and sending us off, exactly as had been done, time and time again, were in themselves heartening. What had been, would be. To-morrow should be as to-day.

When we and our appurtenances were comfortably bestowed in the ladies’ car (there were no parlor cars or sleepers, as yet), I had leisure to note what was passing without. The scene should be that which always attends the departure of a passenger train from a provincial city. Yet I felt, at once, that there was a difference.

I noticed, and not without an undefined sense of uneasiness, the unusual number of strollers that lounged up and down the sidewalks, and loitered about the train, and that some of these were evidently listening to the guarded subtones to which the voices of all—even the rudest of the loungers—were modulated. With this shade of uneasiness there stole upon me a strange, indescribable sense of the unreality of all that I saw and heard. The familiar streets and houses were seen, as through the bewildering vapors of a dream; men and women glided by like phantoms, and there was a shimmer of red-and-orange light in the air—the reflection of the glowing west—that was vague and dazing, not dazzling.

The train slid away from the station. My father and my brother Horace lifted their hats to us from the pavement; we held the children up to the open window to kiss their hands to them; I leaned forward for one last, fond look into the dear eyes, and our journey had begun.

Not a word was exchanged between the members of our party, while we rumbled slowly up Broad Street toward the open country.

I was unaccountably indisposed to talk, and this feeling seemed to pervade the company of passengers. The dreamy haze enveloped me again. The car was very full and very quiet. The languorous hues of the west swooned into twilight, and here and there a star peeped through the gray veil of the sky.

We had cleared the city limits, and the blending of daylight and the falling darkness were most confusing to the eye, when I became aware that the train was slowing up where there was no sign of a switch or “turn-out.” If it actually halted, it was but for a second, just long enough to enable two men, standing close to the track, to board the train. They entered our car, and my husband pressed my arm as they passed down the aisle to seats diagonally opposite to us.

Under cover of the rattle and roar of the speeding train, he told me presently—after cautioning me not to glance in their direction—that they were Messrs. Carlisle and Dent—well known to visitors to the convention as most prominent among the leaders of the Union party.

On through the gathering gloom rolled the ponderous train—the only moving thing abroad, on that enchanted night. Within it there was none of the hum of social intercourse one might have expected in the circumstances. Adult passengers were not drowsy, for every figure was upright, and the few faces, dimly visible in the low light of the lamps overhead, were wakeful—one might have imagined, watchful. I learned subsequently that the insufficient light was purposely contrived by conductor and brakemen, and why. But for the touch of my husband’s hand, laid in sympathy or reassurance upon mine, and the sight of my babies, sleeping peacefully—one in the nurse’s arms, the other on the seat beside her, his head in her lap—I might have believed the weird light within, the darkness without, and the motionless shapes and saddened faces about me, accessories to the fantasy that gained steadily upon me.

The spell was broken rudely—terribly—at Fredericksburg. We steamed right into the heart of a crowd, assembled to await the arrival of the train, which halted there for wood and water. It was a tumultuous throng, and evidently drawn thither with a purpose understood by all. The babel of queries and exclamations smote the breezeless night-air like a hail-storm. It was apparent that the railway officials returned curt and unsatisfactory replies, for the noise gathered volume, and uncomplimentary expletives flew freely. All at once, a rush was made in the direction of the ladies’ car. Eager and angry visages, dusky in shadow, or ruddied by torch-light, were pressed against closed windows, and thrust impudently into the few that were open.

“Three cheers for the Southern Confederacy!” yelled stentorian tones.

Three-times-three roars of triumph deafened us.

“Three cheers for Jefferson Davis—the savior of Southern liberties!” shouted the fugleman.

Again a burst of frenzied acclamation that made the windows rattle.

I could see the leader of the riot—a big fellow who stood close to our window. He was bareheaded, and he rested one hand on the side of the car, swinging his hat with the other, far above his head.

“Three groans for Carlisle!”

Nothing else that has ever pained my ears has given me the impression of brute ferocity that stopped the beating of my heart for one awful moment.

From the mob went up a responsive bellow of execration and derision.

“All aboard!” shouted conductor and trainmen.

The hoarse call and the shriek of the engine were welcome music to the travellers.

My husband’s eyes met mine.

“What Eric S. told us was then true,” he said, without forming the words with his lips. “Virginia has joined her sisters. And the people have got hold of the news. Are they blind, not to see that their State will be the battle-ground, if war should be declared?”

How dearly and for how long she was to pay for her blindness, let the history of the next four years say!

Leaving the boat at Washington, we were conveyed by stages across the city to the Baltimore station. It was two o’clock in the spring morning, when we passed the Capitol. It was lighted from basement to roof, but, to passers-by, as still as a tomb. Nothing had brought home to us the fact and the imminence of the peril to our national existence, as did the sight of that lighted pile. For, as we had been informed, it was filled with armed men, on guard against surprise or open attack. On the train, we heard how troops had been hurried from all quarters of the still loyal States into Washington. The war was on!

Full appreciation of what the Great Awakening was, and what it portended, came to us in Philadelphia. I had not known there was so much bunting on this side of the Atlantic as fluttered in the breeze in the city of staid homes and brotherly loves. It was a veritable bourgeoning of patriotism. From church-spires; from shop-windows; from stately dwellings, and from the lowliest house in the meanest street—they

“All uttered forth a glorious voice.”

Successful rebellion seemed an impossibility in the face of the demonstration.

Every village, town, and farm-house along the route proclaimed the same thing. So convinced were we that the mere knowledge of the strength and unity of the North, East, and West would carry conviction to the minds of the led, and strike terror to the hearts of the leaders in the gigantic Treason, that we rallied marvellously the spirits which had flagged last night.

The train ran into Newark at eight o’clock that evening. By the time it stopped, we had a glimpse of familiar and anxious faces. We stepped off into the arms of four of our parishioners, all on the alert for the first sight of the man of their hour. They received us as they might welcome friends rescued from great and sore perils.

Carriage and baggage-wagon were waiting. We were tucked into our seats tenderly, and with what would have been exaggerated solicitude in men less single of heart and motive.

“But you knew that we would surely come back?” I said to Mr. Farmer, at the third repetition of his—“Thank Heaven you are here!”

The quartette of heads wagged gravely.

“We knew you would, if you could get here. But there is no telling what may not happen in these times.”

Their thanksgivings were echoed by ourselves, when, that very week, a Massachusetts regiment, en route for Washington, was assailed by a Baltimore mob, several killed and more wounded, and the railway tracks torn up, to prevent the progress of troops to the national capital.

We laughed a little, and were much moved to see a handsome flag projecting from a second-story window of our house, as we alighted at the door. It was a mute token of confidence in our loyalty. Smiles and softness chased each other when the proud cook, left in charge during our absence, related how the “beautiful supper,” smoking hot, and redolent of all manner of appetizing viands, was the gift of two neighbors, and that pantry and larder were “just packed full” of useful and dainty edibles, sent and brought by ladies who had forbidden her to tell their names.

Thus began the four years of separation from my early home and those who had hallowed it for all time. That eventful journey was the dividing line between the Old Time and the New. With it, also dawned apprehension of the gracious dealings of the All-wise and All-merciful with us—His ignorant, and ofttimes captious, children. It would have been impossible for my husband, with his staunch principles of fidelity to the government, and uncompromising adherence to what he believed to be the right in the lamentable sectional strife, to remain in the seceding State. Dearly as he loved Virginia—and romantic and tender as was his attachment to the brave old days that were to him the poetry of domestic and social life—he must have severed his connection with a parish in which he would have been accounted a “suspect.” Before the storm broke, we were gently lifted out of the “nest among the oaks” and established, as tenderly, in the “pleasant places” the Father—not we—had chosen.

XL
DOMESTIC SORROWS AND NATIONAL STORM AND STRESS—FRIENDS, TRIED AND TRUE

We were to need all the fulness of consolation that could be expressed from divine grace and human friendships, in the years immediately succeeding the events recorded in the last chapter.

The Muse of American History has set a bloody and fire-blackened cross against 1861. To us, it was darkened, through three-quarters of its weary length, by the shadows of graves. One death after another among the friends to whom we clung the more gratefully, because of the gulf—fast filling with blood—that parted us from kindred and early companions, followed our home-coming. In the last week of August, my husband recorded, in his pastor’s notebook, that he had stood, in fourteen weeks, at the open graves of as many parishioners, among them some who had been most forward in welcoming him to his new field, and most faithful in their support of him in it.

“It is literally walking in the valley of the shadow of death!” he sighed, closing the melancholy pages. “I ask myself tremblingly, after each funeral—Who next?”

At noon on September second—the fifth anniversary of our wedding-day—our boy came home from a drive with his father, feverish and drowsy, and fell asleep in my arms. On the fourteenth of the same month, he was folded in an embrace, yet more fond and safe, beyond the touch of mortal sorrow.

My bonnie, bonnie boy! who had never had a day’s illness until he was stricken by that from which there was no recovery! Diphtheria was comparatively new at that time, even to the able physician who was our devoted personal friend. The boy faded before it, as a lily in drought. Four days before he left us, his baby sister was smitten by the same disease. Two days after the funeral, their father fell ill with it. Why neither Alice, I, nor the faithful nurse who assisted us in the care of the three patients, did not take the infection is a mystery. There were no quarantine regulations to prevent the spread of what is now recognized as one of the most virulent of epidemics. We took absolutely no precautions; friends flocked to us as freely as if there were no danger. Our fearlessness may have been a catholicon. We nursed the sufferers back to health, and, looking to God for strength, took our places again in the ranks.

Such a trite, every-day story as it is! To the soul for which the task is set, it is as novel and crucial as death itself. It is not the young mother who finds comfort and tonic in the inspired assurance: