_An American arbutus bunch to be put in a little vase on the royal
breakfast table May 24th, 1890_.
Lady, accept a birth-day thought--haply an idle gift and token, Right
from the scented soil's May-utterance here, (Smelling of countless
blessings, prayers, and old-time thanks,)[45] A bunch of white and pink
arbutus, silent, spicy, shy, From Hudson's, Delaware's, or Potomac's
woody banks.
Note:
[45] NOTE.--Very little, as we Americans stand this day, with our
sixty-five or seventy millions of population, an immense surplus in the
treasury, and all that actual power or reserve power (land and sea) so
dear to nations--very little I say do we realize that curious crawling
national shudder when the "Trent affair" promis'd to bring upon us a war
with Great Britain--follow'd unquestionably, as that war would have, by
recognition of the Southern Confederacy from all the leading European
nations. It is now certain that all this then inevitable train of
calamity hung on arrogant and peremptory phrases in the prepared and
written missive of the British Minister, to America, which the Queen
(and Prince Albert latent) positively and promptly cancell'd; and which
her firm attitude did alone actually erase and leave out, against all
the other official prestige and Court of St. James's. On such minor and
personal incidents (so to call them,) often depend the great growths and
turns of civilization. This moment of a woman and a queen surely swung
the grandest oscillation of modern history's pendulum. Many sayings and
doings of that period, from foreign potentates and powers, might well be
dropt in oblivion by America--but never _this_, if I could have my way.
W. W.