“‘_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!”