as he felt the blood rising in his boot leg. “But don’t let them know;
don’t let them know,” he added fiercely.
Overton had walked back to Dickinson and now came up. He said quietly:
“We can retire now, General. He will not trouble you any more.”
They rode back to the Inn. A negro woman was churning in the yard
beneath the cool trees. Loss of blood made Jackson thirsty.
“Can you give me a dipper of buttermilk?” he asked her.
She pushed back with her dasher the forming globules of butter and dipped
for the milk. For the first time Jackson unbuttoned his top button and
looked at his shirt. It was crimson. The woman glanced up.
“My God, marster, are you hurt?”
Jackson smiled and drank the milk at a quaff. Then he walked into his
room with his surgeon.
He was badly wounded. The great ball had been put accurately, but his
loose coat had saved his life. The bullet struck his breast bone an inch
too far to the left, shattered it, two ribs, ploughed around his ribs and
came out at his back. His boot was nearly filled with blood.
Later, he sent his own surgeon with a bottle of wine to Dickinson with
instructions to do all he could for him. But Dickinson was past help.
He lingered all the afternoon in agony, cursing his fate, the ball that
killed him and begging for his wife to come. About nine o’clock he
suddenly raised up in bed and exclaimed: “Why—why—have—you—put—out—the
lights?”
But the lights were not out.
[Illustration: Photo by Julie Royster, Raleigh, N. C.]
“ORTERMOBULL”
Say, white folks, wid yo’ stench on steel,
Look twell yo’ h’arts am full;
No, dis heah ain’t no ortermobeel—
It’s jes my ortermobull.
—AUNT BETSY.
“Lorena,” and How It Came to Be Written
BY SUSIE GENTRY
Few songs in the world’s history ever had the hold on men’s hearts that
“Lorena” did during the war, and for more than a decade after.
Even now it has the power to make misty the eye and soften the
heart—particularly if sung by “The Southern Girl” of the war time period.
It is one of my earliest recollections, as sung by my mother to our
little, three-cornered family—she, my father and myself. Father had sent
it to her “enduring of the War.”
I suppose almost every soldier of the war, Confederate or Federal, who
had any sentiment sent his sweetheart a copy of this famous song.
How full of pathos are the several verses:
“The years creep slowly by, Lorena;
The snow is on the grass again,
The sun’s low down the sky, Lorena,
The frost is where the flowers have been.
But the heart throbs on as warmly now
As when the summer days were nigh;
Oh, the sun can never dip so low
Adown affection’s cloudless sky.
A hundred months have passed, Lorena,
Since last I held thy hand in mine,
And felt the pulse beat fast, Lorena,
Though mine beat faster far than thine;
A hundred months—’twas flowery May,
When up that hilly slope we climbed
To watch the dying of the day,
And hear the distant church bells chimed.
We loved each other then, Lorena,
More than we ever cared to tell;
And what we might have been, Lorena,
Had our lovings prospered well.
But then ’tis passed; the years are gone;
I’ll not call up their shadowy forms;
I’ll say to them: Lost years, sleep on;
Sleep on, nor heed life’s pelting storms.
The story of the past, Lorena,
Alas! I care not to repeat;
The hopes that could not last, Lorena,
They lived, but only lived to cheat.
I would not cause e’en one regret
To rankle in your bosom now,
For “if we try, we may forget”
Were words of thine long years ago.
Yes, these were words of thine, Lorena,
They burn within my memory yet;
They touched some tender chord, Lorena,
That thrills and trembles with regret.
’Twas not thy woman’s heart that spoke—
Thy heart was always true to me;
A duty, stern and pressing, broke
The tie that linked my soul to thee.
It matters little now, Lorena,
The past is in the eternal past;
Our heads will soon lie low, Lorena,
Life’s tide is ebbing out so fast.
There is a future! Oh, thank God!
Of life this is so small a part!
’Tis dust to dust beneath the sod,
But there—up there, ’tis ‘heart to heart.’”
These words were written by Rev. H. D. L. Webster, born in Stamford,
Conn., August 29, 1824; was educated in Columbus, Ohio, and preached at
Zanesville, Ohio for some years, leaving there in 1848. The music was
composed by J. P. Webster, but no relation.
Ohio claims the writer and the song, but it is known and regarded as a
Southern song, having been so extensively sung below Mason and Dixon’s
line.
“Lorena” was Miss Ella Blocksom, of Zanesville, Ohio. She was a member of
Mr. Webster’s church—the Universalist—also a leading member of the choir,
with a beautiful and highly cultivated voice. She was as lovely in face
and person as her voice was sweet and touching; and it was but natural
that the fine-looking, intelligent young divine should be attracted to
that face that was each Sunday opposite him and listened so interestedly
to his preaching.
One describes her as “nineteen,” short in stature and petite, with blue
eyes and light brown hair and features that took hold upon “the poetry of
heaven.”
She was the sister-in-law of one of the “pillars of the church,” a
successful manufacturer, and of course the preacher found he often must
consult this brother about ecclesiastical matters and see his pretty,
charming sister-in-law.
What real love affair ever ran smoothly? This one did not, for Lorena’s
sister had better “game” for her to bring down than a poor, though
handsome, intellectual preacher; so, like many another worldly-wise elder
sister, she, after repeated efforts, made “Lorena” see that she and “Paul
Vane,” as Mr. Webster called himself in one of his songs, must part.
On a certain cloudless Sabbath in May these two lovers walked after the
morning service, to Hamline Hill and lingered until twilight was closing
her wind in the west, and “Lorena” told “Paul Vane” farewell.
The next day she wrote him a letter, in which she said, “if we try, we
may forget,” and he knew “’twas not thy woman’s heart that spoke,” but
her sister’s through her.
Finding that this world was a blank world to him without “Lorena’s”
loving look and smile, he resigned his charge, where, as a minister, he
had been so successful and, as a lover, such a failure, and left for
parts unknown.
Time went by and he was heard of in the West. He developed the “poetic
fire,” and, in 1860, his song “Lorena,” appeared—one hundred months after
his farewell to Ella Blocksom.
The song was almost famous before she realized it was a tribute to her
from her old and loyal lover. She is accused of having no sentiment, or
of being a “namby-pamby,” as she never wrote him one line of thanks for
the song, or for his constancy to her, as he had a right to expect. Three
years later, he wrote “Paul Vane”—the answer one would think a “Lorena”
would have made:
“The years are creeping slowly by, dear Paul,
The winters come and go;
The wind sweeps past with mournful cry, dear Paul,
And pelt my face with snow.
But there’s no snow upon the heart, dear Paul.
’Tis summer always there;
Those early loves throw sunshine over all,
And sweeten memories dear.
I’ve kept you ever in my heart, dear Paul.
Through years of good and ill;
Our souls could not be torn apart, dear Paul,
They’re bound together still.
I never knew how dear you were to me
’Til’ I was left alone;
I thought my poor, poor heart would break the day
They told me you were gone.”
“Lorena” married a young lawyer of Ironton, Ohio, who later on became a
Supreme Judge. He died, full of honors, March 2, 1887.
“In the city of Zanesville, surrounded by the scenes of her girlhood
days, still lives Lorena in her widowed age. The hill she climbed in that
flowery May of long ago is now hidden from sight by the intrusive growth
of the flourishing city. She alone remains of her little family.” Her sun
is slowly declining toward the horizon and she will soon meet her two
lovers, “Paul Vane” and her husband.
The Muskingum, turbid and historic, flows on as in the days when “Lorena”
and her lover “when up that hilly slope.” Through the changing panorama
of its banks a steamer comes and goes, often filled with merry-makers,
laughter and song, and this vessel wears proudly a name ever linked with
the River—“Lorena.”
Rev. H. D. L. Webster married February 14, 1850, Sarah L. Wilmot. They
had two children, both of whom are living. After the death of his first
wife, he married at Racine, Wis., December 31, 1867, Mary M. Skinner. The
two children of this union are still living.
Mr. Webster commenced preaching when twenty-two years of age and was
greatly beloved, as he was devoted to his work. He organized the first
Universalist society, at Tarpon Springs, Fla., and preached there without
pay until his health began to fail. He died in Chicago, November 4, 1896.
I am indebted to my friend, Capt. Nelson W. Evans, of Portsmouth, Ohio,
for the data of this story, he being a personal friend of “Lorena” and
her husband—was a pall-bearer at the Judge’s funeral.
Franklin, Tenn.
A Poem That Will Live
There are poems not written in verse, and this one, the dying request of
Ex-Governor Hogg, of Texas, is the greatest poem that has been written
this century:
“I want no monument of stone, but let my children plant at the head of my
grave a pecan tree and at the foot of my grave a walnut tree, and when
these trees shall bear, let the pecans and walnuts be given out among the
plain people of Texas, so that they may plant them and make Texas a land
of trees.”
Agriculture the Basis of All Wealth
BY WILLIAM DENNISON, FARGO, N. D.
Agriculture is the basis of all wealth. It is the foundation upon which
rests all the vast wealth which has been acquired in this country to-day.
It is also the buttress which protects, supports and defends all this
acquired wealth. Without agriculture all this wealth would crumble
away. Yet, is it not sad to contemplate that, while the tillers of the
soil have been building such a gigantic structure that they have not
received a fair share of the spoils? They have been sowing while others
reaped the reward. Presumably the farmers were to blame themselves for
the unequal division of the profits. It is a well-known fact, that
cannot be controverted, that ever since the Pilgrim Fathers and the
Scotch-Irish landed on these shores they have been exploiting the land,
taking all they could get out of it and putting nothing back in return.
They surely could not expect that such conditions could last forever,
but that there would come a reckoning day sooner or later. That period
of an accounting is long past due with the original settlers and is
past due with more recent ones. That is, if we take into consideration
the great amount of knowledge which has been acquired agriculturally
during the last half of the nineteenth century, and with all the aids
of fifty or more agricultural colleges scattered all over this great
country. Yet nine-tenths of the tillers of the soil are still going on
exploiting their land, and when failure comes they wonder why their land
does not yield like it used to when they first broke it up and started
to cultivate it. These agricultural colleges are grand institutions, and
their object and aim is a noble one, that of helping the farmer, and
cannot be too highly praised for their efforts. However, I am afraid that
a great majority of our farmers have received little or no benefit from
them. They are too scientific and technical for the average farmer to
understand and derive any benefit therefrom. The average farmer wants it
in simple language, in primary lessons, so that he can grasp it and then
put it to the test. They know nothing about the chemical nomenclature
which they use in expounding things. It is all Latin to them. What the
tillers of the soil want is information on these subjects, in plain
Anglo-Saxon, and as plain as possible even then.
It would be well for them to know what constitutes fertility, generally
speaking. There are three constituent elements of fertility, namely:
nitrogen, phosphate and potash. The first element, nitrogen, is what
may be termed the motive power in the growing of the crops. There are
inexhaustible supplies of this element in the atmosphere, and it only
needs to be brought down. It costs you nothing. Help yourself. But it
is a very costly element if you have to purchase it as a commercial
commodity. Nitrogen, like the air we breathe, we can only use as we need
it. It is a substance that cannot be cornered or there would have been
trusts formed in the country, making every farmer in the land pay tribute
to them. The second member is a mineral element, phosphate. The first
condition necessary for the activity of a living organism is food. The
food of plants and animals, in some respects, is different, but both
are alike in requiring a supply of certain mineral substances for their
nourishment. One of the most essential constituents of this mineral
food is phosphoric acid. Without phosphates there can be neither growth
nor life. This is why phosphates are so essential to worn-out land,
especially where wheat has been grown continuously.
The third is also a mineral element, which completes the trine in
fertility. Such crops as the cereals draw mostly on the phosphates within
the soil; but a crop of potatoes draws mostly on the potash contained
in the soil. You cannot go on indefinitely raising potatoes on the same
land without furnishing potash. If you do, the tubers produced will
be entirely lacking in starchy matter and altogether too much gluten.
When these three constituent elements of fertility are in the land
and rightly balanced, then your land is in the highest condition of
fertility. But if one of these elements is taken out by poor methods
of farming, then your land, to use a horseman’s phrase, is said to be
out of fettle. But in the next twenty-five years, when the farmers of
this country get down to hardpan, when the yield of their crops has
deteriorated to such a degree not only in the quantity of the product,
but also in the quality of the product, which is more important than
quantity, in other words, when necessity compels them, then I look
for the fruits of the labors of the agricultural experiment colleges.
Renewing the soil is analogous to the redemption of the soul of man.
We have the Word for it, and the promises are sure and steadfast; yet
we may have all the knowledge on the subject, but that will not obtain
eternal life. The Lord cannot save us unless we co-operate with him and
do our part. While I am, and always have been, an earnest advocate of the
greater use of legumes in restoring the fertility of our land, I am fully
alive to the importance of putting back all the manure from the farmyard
onto the land. I was raised on an extensive truck garden, and there is no
reason to doubt the capacity of the soil to yield a product to which no
one can yet forecast the limit. As an instance of the possibilities of
the land under intensive culture, the Long Island market gardeners apply
from seventy to eighty tons of stable manure to their early cabbages
per acre, and as the plants are much closer and are much more sure to
head universally, a yield of fifty tons to the acre is not an excessive
estimate. The above will show what can be done with a liberal supply of
stable manure.
But why waste our time on what can be done with manure? Why, nine-tenths
of the farmers in the United States don’t make any manure. Their stock,
what they have, are all out on the run all, or nearly, the whole of the
year. I have come to the conclusion that to advocate intensive farming
under existing circumstances is not practical at the present time, when
we take into consideration the vastness of this country and likewise the
remoteness of the great majority of the farmers from a home market. A
good home market is a great desideratum for our American farmer. Andrew
Carnegie saw the paramount importance of a good home market when he was
making his millions. But this idea alone does not show fully the sagacity
of Andrew. It was when he discovered how he could perpetuate this good
home market when he overproduced his product, which was the case all
of the time. He shipped his surplus product to foreign markets and
sold it for about half what he was charging us at home. By this clever
stroke he was enabled to make of non-effect the great law of supply and
demand. But in order to accomplish this Andrew had a high tariff on his
product, and presumably he was smart enough to get rebates from the
railroad companies. But the farmers haven’t any tariff on the product
they raise and when they ship their products by railroads they have to
pay schedule rates and pay the entire freight to destination, no matter
where the destination may be. But in the near future, when the population
is largely increased and more evenly distributed, when the exodus will
be from the cities to the country, and not, as it is now, from the farm
to the cities; when the smaller towns in every State have become towns
and cities teeming with thousands of inhabitants, making a home market
for the farmers where they can sell, not only the cereals they raise,
but also milk, cattle, sheep, hogs, horses, hides, eggs and vegetables,
then will be the time to begin intensive farming and also the proper
observance of the rotation of their crops.
But it is the intervening time between now and then that we want to
bridge over; but this period is going to be the crucial time for our
farmers. However, it is not going to be a situation without hope if the
tillers of the soil do their part, but they have got to do that if their
environment compels them to still keep on raising cereals. Now that the
United States has taken the lead as a wheat raising country, I regret to
state that I can see no better way out of it than for them to still keep
on raising this cereal. But what we want to consider is how that can be
done and maintain the fertility of the land for some years to come.
This, I believe, is possible to every one who is willing to avail
himself of the means at hand. The experiments carried on at Rothamsteed
show conclusively that “continuous wheat-growing is, from a natural
point of view, an extravagant mode of farming, only justifiable, like
other extravagances, under the pressure of a more or less artificial
environment, for the wheat crop has completed its growth and is harvested
long before nitrification has ceased in the soil, and there is no crop
to take up the balance formed after the active growth of the wheat is
over, and these nitrates pass away in sub-soil drainage in mild, genial
climates, during the winter.” Under these circumstances, as soon as the
wheat is harvested, then should we put in a catch crop, a legume suitable
to the latitude, which would not only take up the balance of nitrates
unused by the wheat crop, but would put a new supply of nitrogen into the
soil for the succeeding crop. The above applies to the latitudes where
they have long seasons and a moist, mild climate. This would not apply to
those latitudes where the seasons are short and exposed to long winter
frosts. To the wheat growers of the Northwest, where their seasons are
short, there is no time for a catch crop for them. I would advise to
fallow their land as soon as the wheat crop is harvested. This would stop
the loss of nitrates and exterminate the great crop of weeds which takes
possession after the wheat crop is harvested.
Finally, to all, in whatever latitude you are situated, I would suggest
that you start in and treat your wheat land to an application of one
thousand pounds of raw ground phosphate rock per acre. (It is cheap—it
only costs about four dollars per ton f. o. b. cars at the mine.) After
spreading the phosphate on the land, plow and prepare your seed bed.
In the North sow your wheat and your red clover. The application of
phosphates will give the legume a good start, and the following year a
luxuriant growth of the legume may be expected, which will exterminate
all weeds. Then, in the following spring break up your legume land,
the soil of which will be full of fiber, and receive the reward of
three continuous crops of wheat, greatly enhanced, both in quantity and
quality. Then, on the fourth year another application of raw ground
rock phosphate and a legume crop with it, followed by three years of
continuous wheat again. During this time if you will add all the manure
you can, either a stable manure or ammonium salts, then I think you can
go on indefinitely raising wheat.
For confirmation of the merits of ground phosphate rock for worn-out
wheat lands, consult Prof. Cyril G. Hopkins, director of the Illinois
Experimental Station, Urbana, Ill.
The Wooing of Bessy
BY L. M. MONTGOMERY
When Lawrence Eastman began going to see Bessy Houghton the Lynnfield
people shrugged their shoulders and said he might have picked out
somebody a little younger and prettier—and then, of course, Bessy was
well off. A two hundred acre farm and a substantial bank account were
worth going in for. Trust an Eastman for knowing upon which side his
bread was buttered.
Lawrence was only twenty, and looked even younger, owing to his smooth,
boyish face, curly hair, and half-girlish bloom. Bessy Houghton was in
reality no more than twenty-five, but Lynnfield people had the impression
that she was past thirty. She had always been older than her years—a
quiet, reserved girl who dressed plainly and never went about with other
young people. Her mother had died when Bessy was very young, and she had
always kept house for her father. The responsibility made her grave and
mature. When she was twenty her father died and Bessy was his sole heir.
She kept the farm and took the reins of government in her own capable
hands. She made a success of it, too, which was more than many a man in
Lynnfield had done.
Bessy had never had a lover. She had never seemed like other girls, and
passed for an old maid when her contemporaries were in the flush of
social success and bloom.
Mrs. Eastman, Lawrence’s mother, was a widow with two sons. George, the
older, was the mother’s favorite, and the property had been willed to him
by his father. To Lawrence had been left the few hundreds in the bank. He
stayed at home and hired himself to George, thereby adding slowly to his
small hoard. He had his eye on a farm in Lynnfield, but he was as yet a
mere boy, and his plans for the future were very vague until he fell in
love with Bessy Houghton.
In reality nobody was more surprised over this than Lawrence himself.
It had certainly been the last thing in his thoughts on the dark, damp
night when he had overtaken Bessy walking home alone from prayer meeting
and had offered to drive her the rest of the way.
Bessy assented and got into his buggy. At first she was very silent,
and Lawrence, who was a bashful lad at the best of times, felt
tongue-tied and uncomfortable. But presently Bessy, pitying his evident
embarrassment, began to talk to him. She could talk well, and Lawrence
found himself entering easily into the spirit of her piquant speeches. He
had an odd feeling that he had never known Bessy Houghton before; he had
certainly never guessed that she could be such good company. She was very
different from the other girls he knew, but he decided that he liked the
difference.
“Are you going to the party at Bailey’s to-morrow night?” he asked, as he
helped her to alight at her door.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “I’m invited—but I’m all alone—and parties
have never been very much in my line.”
There was a wistful note in her voice, and Lawrence, detecting it, said,
hurriedly, not giving himself time to get frightened: “Oh, you’d better
go to this one. And if you like I’ll call around and take you.”
He wondered if she would think him very presumptuous. He thought her
voice sounded colder as she said: “I am afraid that it would be too much
trouble for you.”
“It wouldn’t be any trouble at all,” he stammered. “I’ll be very pleased
to take you.”
In the end Bessy had consented to go, and the next evening Lawrence
called for her in the rose-red autumn dusk.