"Farewell! a word that must be, and hath been;
A sound that makes us linger; yet farewell."
The summer being ended, we visited the friends of Mr. Arms in Wisconsin,
after which he went to Grinnell, Iowa, in pursuit of his usual avocation.
My own delicate health made it necessary for me to be again winging my way
southward. Going to Atlanta, Ga., and making that my headquarters, I
visited with marked success all the towns of importance on the various
railroad routes diverging from this centre. I then made Macon another
headquarters, after which I canvassed the greater part of the State.
The forests were filled with flowering shrubs and trailing vines, the
towering trees hung with the wild, weird drapery of the southern moss, and
the mocking birds sang their sweet songs from "early morn 'til dewy eve."
These scenes "vibrate in memory" with quivering, throbbing power, and come
back like odors exhaled from fading flowers or "music when soft voices
die."
Selma, Alabama, became my third headquarters, where I boarded with Mrs.
Cooke, a lovely woman of the purely southern type, who, before the great
conflict, was a millionaire, and was afterward forced for her own support
to convert a large mansion into a huge boarding house, which, with its
hundred guests, was a cheerful, happy home; permeated as it was by the
sunshine she diffused, and lighted by the fairy face of her lovely
daughter, who was named for her native State, Alabama.
As in the aboriginal tongue this signifies "here we rest," and it became
to us a name deeply fraught with significance, for in this pure untainted
heart we found "rest! sweet rest!"
"En route" to Rome I met with my usual good fortune in finding another
friend in a lady resident of the country, who fondly urged me to leave the
hotel and make my home with her, where she lavished upon me every luxury
and kindness. Her husband was the only man in that region of country who
voted for Abraham Lincoln; and when General Sherman made his "March to the
Sea," she concealed none of her stores or treasures, but went to him and
asked protection for her property and home, when a guard was immediately
furnished her by the commander.
She afterward married an officer of this guard, in consequence of which
she was disowned by her family and associates, but in the noble and
sterling qualities of her husband found ample compensation as well as a
subsequent reconciliation with friends.