THE RIVER
It yet lacked of six o'clock when the battle lines were finally formed.
Only the treetops of the Wilderness now were in gold, below, in the
thick wood, the brigades stood in shadow. In front were Rodes's
skirmishers, and Rodes's brigades formed the first line. The troops of
Raleigh Colston made the second line, A. P. Hill's men the third. A
battery--four Napoleons--were advanced; the other guns were coming up.
The cavalry, with Stonewall Brigade supporting, took the Plank road,
masking the actual movement. On the old turnpike Stonewall Jackson sat
his horse beside Rodes. At six o'clock he looked at his watch, closed
it, and put it in his pocket. "Are you ready, General Rodes?"
"Yes, sir."
"You can go forward, sir."
High over the darkening Wilderness rang a bugle-call. The sound soared,
hung a moment poised, then, far and near, thronged the grey echoes,
bugles, bugles, calling, calling! The sound passed away; there followed
a rush of bodies through the Wilderness; in a moment was heard the
crackling fire of the skirmishers. From ahead came a wild beating of
Federal drums--the long roll, the long roll! _Boom!_ Into action came
the grey guns. Rodes's Alabamian's passed the abattis, touched the
breastworks. Colston two hundred yards behind, A. P. Hill the third
line. _Yaaai! Yaaaiiih! Yaaaaaiiihh!_ rang the Wilderness.
Several miles to the eastward the large old house of Chancellorsville,
set upon rising ground, reflected the sun from its westerly windows. All
about it rolled the Wilderness, shadowy beneath the vivid skies. It lay
like a sea, touching all the horizon. On the deep porch of the house,
tasting the evening coolness, sat Fighting Joe Hooker and several of his
officers. Eastward there was firing, as there had been all day, but it,
too, was decreased in volume, broken in continuity. The main rebel body,
thought the Federal general, must be about ready to draw off, follow the
rebel advance in its desperate attempt to get out of the Wilderness, to
get off southward to Gordonsville. The 12th Corps was facing the "main
body". The interchange of musketry, eastward there, had a desultory,
waiting sound. From the south, several miles into the depth of the
Wilderness, came a slow, uninterrupted booming of cannon. Pleasanton and
Sickles were down there, somewhere beyond Catherine Furnace. Pleasanton
and Sickles were giving chase to the rebel detachment,--whatever it was;
Stonewall Jackson and a division probably--that was trying to get out of
the Wilderness. At any rate, the rebel force was divided. When morning
dawned it should be pounded small, piece by piece, by the blue impact!
"We've got the men, and we've got the guns. We've got the finest army on
the planet!"
The sun dropped. The Wilderness rolled like a sea, hiding many things.
The shaggy pile of the forest turned from green to violet. It swept to
the pale northern skies, to the eastern, reflecting light from the
opposite quarter, to the southern, to the splendid west. Wave after
wave, purple-hued, velvet-soft, it passed into mist beneath the skies.
There was a perception of a vastness not comprehended. One of the men
upon the Chancellor's porch cleared his throat. "There's an awful
feeling about this place! It's poetic, I suppose. Anyhow, it makes you
feel that anything might happen--the stranger it was, the likelier to
happen--"
"I don't feel that way. It's just a great big rolling plain with woods
upon it--no mountains or water--"
"Well, I always thought that if I were a great big thing going to happen
I wouldn't choose a chopped up, picturesque place to happen in! I'd
choose something like this. I--"
"What's that?"
_Boom, boom! Boom, boom, boom!_
Hooker, at the opposite end of the porch, sprang up and came across.
"Due west!--Howard's guns?--What does that mean--"
_Boom, boom! Boom, boom, boom! Boom, boom, boom!_
Fighting Joe Hooker ran down the steps. "Bring my horse, quick! Colonel,
go down to the road and see--"
"My God! Here they come!"
Down the Plank road, through the woods, back to Chancellorsville, rushed
the routed 21st Corps. Soldiers and ambulances, wagons and cattle,
gunners lacking their guns, companies out of regiments, squads out of
companies, panic-struck and flying units, shouting officers brandishing
swords, horsemen, colour-bearers without colours, others with colours
desperately saved, musicians, sutlers, camp followers, ordnance wagons
with tearing, maddened horses, soldiers and soldiers and soldiers--down,
back to the centre at Chancellorsville, roared the blue wave, torn,
churned to foam, lashed and shattered, broken against a stone wall--back
on the centre roared and fell the flanked right! Down the Plank road,
out of the dark woods of the Wilderness, out of the rolling musketry,
behind it the cannon thunder, burst a sound, a sound, a known sound!
_Yaaaai! Yaaaaaiih! Yaaiii! Yaaaaiiihhhhh!_ It echoed, it echoed from
the east of Chancellorsville! _Yaaih! Yaaaaiih! Yaaaaaaaiihh!_ yelled
the troops of McLaws and Anderson. "Open fire!" said Lee to his
artillery; and to McLaws, "Move up the turnpike and attack."
The Wilderness of Spottsylvania laid aside her mantle of calm. She
became a maenad, intoxicated, furious, shrieking, a giantess in action, a
wild handmaid drinking blood, a servant of Ares, a Titanic hostess
spreading with lavish hands large ground for armies and battles, a
Valkyrie gathering the dead, laying them in the woodland hollows amid
bloodroot and violets! She chanted, she swayed, she cried aloud to the
stars, and she shook her own madness upon the troops, very impartially,
on grey and on blue.
Down the Plank road, in the gathering night, the very fulness of the
grey victory brought its difficulties. Brigades were far ahead,
separated from their division commanders; regiments astray from their
brigadiers, companies struggling in the dusk through the thickets,
seeking the thread from which in the onset and uproar the beads had
slipped. They lost themselves in the wild place; there came perforce a
pause, a quest for organization and alignment, a drawing together, a
compressing of the particles of the thunderbolt; then, then would it be
hurled again, full against Chancellorsville!
The moon was coming up. She silvered the Wilderness about Dowdall's
Tavern. She made a pallor around the group of staff and field officers
gathered beside the road. Her light glinted on Stonewall Jackson's
sabre, and on the worn braid of the old forage cap. A body of cavalry
passed on its way to Ely's Ford. Jeb Stuart rode at the head. He was
singing. "_Old Joe Hooker, won't you come out of the Wilderness?_" he
sang. An officer of Rodes came up. "General Rodes reports, sir, that he
has taken a line of their entrenchments. He's less than a mile from
Chancellorsville."
"Good! Tell him A. P. Hill will support. As you go, tell the troops that
I wish them to get into line and preserve their order."
The officer went. An aide of Colston's appeared, breathless from a
struggle through the thickets. "From General Colston, sir. He's
immediately behind General Rodes. There was a wide abattis. The troops
are reforming beyond it. We see no Federals between us and
Chancellorsville."
"Good! Tell General Colston to use expedition and get his men into line.
Those guns are opening without orders!"
Three grey cannon, planted within bowshot of the Chancellor House,
opened, indeed, and with vigour,--opened against twenty-two guns in
epaulements on the Chancellorsville ridge. The twenty-two answered in a
roar of sound, overtowering the cannonade to the east of McLaws and
Anderson. The Wilderness resounded; smoke began to rise like the smoke
of strange sacrifices; the mood of the place changed to frenzy. She
swung herself, she chanted.
"Grey or blue,
I care not, I!
Blue and grey
Are here to die!
This human brood
Is stained with blood.
The armed man dies,
See where he lies
In my arms asleep!
On my breast asleep!
The babe of Time,
A nestling fallen.
The nest a ruin,
The tree storm-snapped.
Lullaby, lullaby! sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep!"
The smoke drifted toward the moon, the red gun-flashes showed the aisles
of pine and oak. Jackson beckoned imperiously to an aide. "Go tell A. P.
Hill to press forward."
The thunder of the guns ceased suddenly. There was heard a trample of
feet, A. P. Hill's brigades on the turnpike. "Who leads?" asked a voice.
"Lane's North Carolinians," answered another. General Lane came by,
young, an old V. M. I. cadet. He drew rein a moment, saluted. "Push
right ahead, Lane! right ahead!" said Jackson.
A. P. Hill, in his battle shirt, appeared, his staff behind him. "Your
final order, general?"
"Press them, Hill! Cut them off from the fords. Press them!"
A. P. Hill went. From the east, the guns upon his own front now having
quieted, rolled the thunder of those with Lee. The clamour about
Chancellorsville where, in hot haste, Hooker made dispositions, streamed
east and west, meeting and blending with, westward, a like distraction
of forming commands, of battle lines made in the darkness, among
thickets. The moon was high, but not observed; the Wilderness fiercely
chanting. Behind him was Captain Wilbourne of the Signal Corps, two
aides and several couriers, Jackson rode along the Plank road.
There was a regiment drawn across this way through the Wilderness, on
the road and in the woods on either hand. In places in the Wilderness,
the scrub that fearfully burned the next day and the next was even now
afire, and gave, though uncertainly and dimly, a certain illumination.
By it the regiment was perceived. It seemed composed of tall and shadowy
men. "What troops are these?" asked the general.
"Lane's North Carolinians, sir,--the 18th."
As he passed, the regiment started to cheer. He shook his head. "Don't,
men, we want quiet now!"
A very few hundred yards from Chancellorsville he checked Little Sorrel.
The horse stood, fore feet planted. Horse and rider, they stood and
listened. Hooker's reserves were up. About the Chancellor House, on the
Chancellorsville ridge, they were throwing up entrenchments. They were
digging the earth with bayonets, they were heaping it up with their
hands. There was a ringing of axes. They were cutting down the young
spring growth; they were making an abattis. Tones of command could be
heard. "Hurry, hurry--hurry! They mean to rush us. Hurry--hurry!" A dead
creeper mantling a dead tree, caught by some flying spark, suddenly
flared throughout its length, stood a pillar of fire, and showed redly
the enemy's guns. Stonewall Jackson sat his horse and looked. "Cut them
off from the ford," he said. "Never let them get out of Virginia." He
jerked his hand into the air.
Turning Little Sorrel, he rode back along the Plank road toward his own
lines. The light of the burning brush had sunken. The cannon smoke
floating in the air, the very thick woods, made all things obscure.
"There are troops across the road in front," said an aide.
"Yes. Lane's North Carolinians awaiting their signal."
A little to the east and south broke out in the Wilderness a sudden
rattling fire, sinking, rising, sinking again, the blue and grey
skirmishers now in touch. All through the vast, dark, tangled beating
heart of the place, sprang into being a tension. The grey lines listened
for the word _Advance_! The musket rested on the shoulder, the foot
quivered, eyes front tried to pierce the darkness. Sound was unceasing;
and yet the mind found a stillness, a lake of calm. It was the moment
before the moment.
Stonewall Jackson came toward the Carolinians. He rode quickly, past the
dark shell of a house sunken among pines. There were with him seven or
eight persons. The horses' hoofs made a trampling on the Plank road. The
woods were deep, the obscurity great. Suddenly out of the brush rang a
shot, an accidentally discharged rifle. Some grey soldier among Lane's
tensely waiting ranks, dressed in the woods to the right of the road,
spoke from the core of a fearful dream: "Yankee cavalry!"
"_Fire!_" called an officer of the 18th North Carolina.
The volley, striking diagonally across the road, emptied several
saddles. Stonewall Jackson, the aides and Wilbourne, wheeled to the
left, dug spur, and would have plunged into the wood. "_Fire!_" said the
Carolinians, dressed to the left of the road, and fired.
Little Sorrel, maddened, dashed into the wood. An oak bough struck his
rider, almost bearing him from the saddle. With his right hand from which
the blood was streaming, in which a bullet was imbedded, he caught the
bridle, managed to turn the agonized brute into the road again. There
seemed a wild sound, a confusion of voices. Some one had stopped the
firing. "My God, men! You are firing into _us_!" In the road were the
aides. They caught the rein, stopped the horse. Wilbourne put up his arms.
"General, general! you are not hurt?--Hold there!--Morrison--Leigh!--"
They laid him on the ground beneath the pines and they fired the
brushwood for a light. One rode off for Dr. McGuire, and another with a
penknife cut away the sleeve from the left arm through which had gone
two bullets. A mounted man came at a gallop and threw himself from his
horse. It was A. P. Hill. "General, general! you are not much hurt?"
"Yes, I think I am," said Stonewall Jackson. "And my wounds are from my
own men."
Hill drew off the gauntlets that were all blood soaked, and with his
handkerchief tried to bind up the arm, shattered and with the main
artery cut. A courier came up. "Sir, sir! a body of the enemy is close
at hand--"
The aides lifted the wounded general. "No one," said Hill, "must tell
the troops who was wounded." The other opened his eyes. "Tell them
simply that you have a wounded officer. General Hill, you are in command
now. Press right on."
With a gesture of sorrow Hill went, returning to the front. The others
rested at the edge of the road. At that moment the Federal batteries
opened, a hissing storm of shot and shell, a tornado meant measurably to
retard that anticipated, grey onrush. The range was high. Aides and
couriers laid the wounded leader on the earth and made of their bodies a
screen. The trees were cut, the earth was torn up; there was a howling
as of unchained fiends. There passed what seemed an eternity and was but
ten minutes. The great blue guns slightly changed the direction of their
fire. The storm howled away from the group by the road, and the men
again lifted Jackson. He stood now on his feet; and because troops were
heard approaching, and because it must not be known that he was hurt,
all moved into the darkness of the scrub. The troops upon the road came
on--Pender's brigade. Pender, riding in advance, saw the group and asked
who was wounded. "A field officer," answered one, but there came from
some direction a glare of light and by it Pender knew. He sprang from
his horse. "Don't say anything about it, General Pender," said Jackson.
"Press on, sir, press on!"
"General, they are using all their artillery. It is a very deadly fire.
In the darkness it may disorganize--"
The forage cap was gone. The blue eyes showed full and deep. "You must
hold your ground, General Pender. You must hold out to the last, sir."
"I will, general, I will," said Pender.
A litter was found and brought, and Stonewall Jackson was laid upon it.
The little procession moved toward Dowdall's Tavern. A shot pierced the
arm of one of the bearers, loosening his hold of the litter. It tilted.
The general fell heavily to the ground, injuring afresh the wounded
limb, striking and bruising his side. They raised him, pale, now, and
silent, and at last they struggled through the wood to a little
clearing, where they found an ambulance. Now, too, came the doctor, a
man whom he loved, and knelt beside him. "I hope that you are not badly
hurt, general?"
"Yes, I am, doctor. I am badly hurt. I fear that I am dying."
In the ambulance lay also his chief of artillery, Colonel Crutchfield,
painfully injured. Crutchfield pulled the doctor down to him. "He isn't
badly hurt?"
"Yes. Badly hurt."
Crutchfield groaned. "Oh, my God!" Stonewall Jackson heard and made the
ambulance stop. "You must do something for Colonel Crutchfield, doctor.
Don't let him suffer."
A. P. Hill, riding back to the front, was wounded by a piece of shell.
Boswell, the chief engineer, to whom had been entrusted the guidance
through the night of the advance upon the roads to the fords, was
killed. That was a fatal cannonade from the ridge of Chancellorsville,
fatal and fateful! It continued. The Wilderness chanted a battle chant
indeed to the moon, the moon that was pale and wan as if wearied with
silvering battlefields. Hill, lying in a litter, just back of his
advanced line, dispatched couriers for Stuart. Stuart was far toward
Ely's Ford, riding through the night in plume and fighting jacket. The
straining horses, the recalling order, reached him.
"General Jackson badly wounded! A. P. Hill badly wounded! I in command!
My God, man! all changed like that? _Right about face! Forward! March!_"
There was, that night, no grey assault. But the dawn broke clear and
found the grey lines waiting. The sky was a glory, the Wilderness rolled
in emerald waves, the redbirds sang. Lee and the 2d Corps were yet two
miles apart. Between was Chancellorsville, and all the strong
entrenchments and the great blue guns, and Hooker's courageous men.
Now followed Jeb Stuart's fight. In the dawn, the 2nd Corps, swung from
the right by a master hand, struck full against the Federal centre,
struck full against Chancellorsville. In the clear May morning broke a
thunderstorm of artillery. It raged loudly, peal on peal, crash on
crash! The grey shells struck the Chancellor house. They set it on fire.
It went up in flames. A fragment of shell struck and stunned Fighting
Joe Hooker. He lay senseless for hours and Couch took command. The grey
musketry, the blue musketry, rolled, rolled! The Wilderness was on fire.
In places it was like a prairie. The flames licked their way through the
scrub; the wounded perished. Ammunition began to fail; Stuart ordered
the ground to be held with the bayonet. There was a great attack against
his left. His three lines came into one and repulsed it. His right and
Anderson's left now touched. The Army of Northern Virginia was again a
unit.
Stuart swung above his head the hat with the black feather. His
beautiful horse danced along the grey lines, the lines that were very
grimly determined, the lines that knew now that Stonewall Jackson was
badly wounded. They meant, the grey lines, to make this day and this
Wilderness remembered. "_Forward. Charge!_" cried Jeb Stuart. "Remember
Jackson!" He swung his plumed hat. _Yaaaii! Yaaaaaaaiihhh! Yaaaaaii!
Yaaaiiiihhh!_ yelled the grey lines, and charged. Stuart went at their
head, and as he went he raised in song his golden, ringing voice. "_Old
Joe Hooker, won't you come out of the Wilderness?_"
By ten o'clock the Chancellor ridge was taken, the blue guns silenced,
Hooker beaten back toward the Rappahannock. The Wilderness, after all,
was Virginian. She broke into a war song of triumph. Her flowers
bloomed, her birds sang, and then came Lee to the front. Oh, the Army of
Northern Virginia cheered him! "Men, men!" he said, "you have done well,
you have done well! Where is General Jackson?"
He was told. Presently he wrote a note and sent it to the field hospital
near Dowdall's Tavern. "_General:--I cannot express my regret. Could I
have directed events I should have chosen for the good of the country to
be disabled in your stead. I congratulate you upon the victory, which is
due to your skill and energy. Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
R. E. Lee._"
An aide read it to Stonewall Jackson where he lay, very quiet, in the
deeps of the Wilderness. For a minute he did not speak, then he said,
"General Lee is very kind, but he should give the praise to God."
For four days yet they fought, in the Wilderness, at Salem church, at
the Fords of the Rappahannock, again at Fredericksburg. Then they
rested, the Army of the Potomac back on the northern side of the
Rappahannock, the Army of Northern Virginia holding the southern shore
and the road to Richmond--Richmond no nearer for McDowell, no nearer for
McClellan, no nearer for Pope, no nearer for Burnside, no nearer for
Hooker, no nearer after two years of war! In the Wilderness and
thereabouts Hooker lost seventeen thousand men, thirteen guns, and
fifteen hundred rounds of cannon ammunition, twenty thousand rifles,
three hundred thousand rounds of infantry ammunition. The Army of
Northern Virginia lost twelve thousand men.
On the fifth of May Stonewall Jackson was carefully moved from the
Wilderness to Guiney's Station. Here was a large old residence--the
Chandler house--within a sweep of grass and trees; about it one or two
small buildings. The great house was filled, crowded to its doors with
wounded soldiers, so they laid Stonewall Jackson in a rude cabin among
the trees. The left arm had been amputated in the field hospital. He was
thought to be doing well, though at times he complained of the side
which, in the fall from the litter, had been struck and bruised.
At daylight on Thursday he had his physician called. "I am suffering
great pain," he said. "See what is the matter with me." And presently,
"Is it pneumonia?"
That afternoon his wife came. He was roused to speak to her, greeted her
with love, then sank into something like stupor. From time to time he
awakened from this, but there were also times when he was slightly
delirious. He gave orders in a shadow of the old voice. "You must hold
out a little longer, men; you must hold out a little longer!... Press
forward--press forward--press forward!... Give them canister, Major
Pelham!"
Friday went by, and Saturday. The afternoon of this day he asked for his
chaplain, Mr. Lacy. Later, in the twilight, his wife sang to him, old
hymns that he loved. "Sing the fifty-first psalm in verse," he said. She
sang,--
"Show pity, Lord! O Lord, forgive--"
The night passed and Sunday the tenth dawned. He lay quiet, his right
hand on his breast. One of the staff came for a moment to his bedside.
"Who is preaching at headquarters to-day?" He was told, and said, "Good!
I wish I might be there."
The officer's voice broke. "General, general! the whole army is praying
for you. There's a message from General Lee."
"Yes, yes. Give it."
"He sends you his love. He says that you must recover; that you have
lost your left arm, but that he would lose his right arm. He says tell
you that he prayed for you last night as he had never prayed for
himself. He repeats what he said in his note that for the good of
Virginia and the South he could wish that he were lying here in your
place--"
The soldier on the bed smiled a little and shook his head. "Better ten
Jacksons should lie here than one Lee."
It was sunny weather, fair and sweet with all the bloom of May, the
bright trees waving, the long grass rippling, waters flowing, the sky
azure, bees about the flowers, the birds singing piercingly sweet,
mother earth so beautiful, the sky down-bending, the light of the sun so
gracious, warm, and vital!
A little before noon, kneeling beside him, his wife told Stonewall
Jackson that he would die. He smiled and laid his hand upon her bowed
head. "You are frightened, my child! Death is not so near. I may yet get
well."
The doctor came to him. "Doctor, Anna tells me that I am to die to-day.
Is it so?"
"Oh, general, general!--It is so."
He lay silent a moment, then he said, "Very good, very good! It is all
right."
Throughout the day his mind was now clouded, now clear. In one of the
latter times he said there was something he was trying to remember.
There followed a half-hour of broken sleep and wandering, in the course
of which he twice spoke a name, "Deaderick." Once he said "Horse
Artillery," and once "White Oak Swamp."
The alternate clear moments and the lapses into stupour or delirium were
like the sinking or rising of a strong swimmer, exhausted at last, the
prey at last of a shoreless sea. At times he came head and shoulders out
of the sea. In such a moment he opened his grey-blue eyes full on one of
his staff. All the staff was gathered in grief about the bed. "When
Richard Cleave," he said, "asks for a court of enquiry let him have it.
Tell General Lee--" The sea drew him under again.
It hardly let him go any more; moment by moment now, it wore out the
strong swimmer. The day drew on to afternoon. He lay straight upon the
bed, silent for the most part, but now and then wandering a little. His
wife bowed herself beside him; in a corner wept the old man, Jim.
Outside the windows there seemed a hush as of death.
"Pass the infantry to the front!" ordered Stonewall Jackson. "Tell A. P.
Hill to prepare for action!" The voice sank; there came a long silence;
there was only heard the old man crying in the corner. Then, for the
last time in this phase of being, the great soldier opened his eyes. In
a moment he spoke, in a very sweet and calm voice. "Let us cross over
the river, and rest under the shade of the trees." He died.
* * * * *
The bells tolled, the bells tolled in Richmond, tolled from each of her
seven hills! Sombre was the sound of the minute guns, shaking the heart
of the city! Oh, this capital knew the Dead March in Saul as a child
knows his lullaby! To-day it had a depth and a height and was a dirge
indeed. To-day it wailed for a Chieftain, wailed through the streets
where the rose and magnolia bloomed, wailed as may have wailed the
trumpets when Priam brought Hector home. The great throng to either side
the streets shivered beneath the wailing, beneath the low thunder of the
drums. There was lacking no pomp of War, War who must have gauds with
which to hide his naked horror. The guns boomed, the bells tolled, the
muffled drums beat, beat! Regiments marched with reversed arms, with
colours furled. There was mournful civic pomp, mournful official. There
came a great black hearse drawn by four white horses. On it lay the body
of Stonewall Jackson, and over it was drawn the deep blue flag with the
arms of Virginia, and likewise the starry banner of the eleven
Confederate States. Oh, heart-breaking were the minute guns, and the
tolling, tolling bells, and the deep, slow, heroic music, and the
sobbing of the people! It was a cloudless day and filled with grief.
Behind the hearse trod Little Sorrel.
Beneath arching trees, by houses of mellow red brick, houses of pale
grey stucco, by old porches and ironwork balconies, by wistaria and
climbing roses and magnolias with white chalices, the long procession
bore Stonewall Jackson. By St. Paul's they bore him, by Washington and
the great bronze men in his company, by Jefferson and Marshall, by Henry
and Mason, by Lewis and Nelson. They bore him over the greensward to the
Capitol steps, and there the hearse stopped. Six generals lifted the
coffin, Longstreet going before. The bells tolled and the Dead March
rang, and all the people on the green slopes of the historic place
uncovered their heads and wept. The coffin, high-borne, passed upward
and between the great, white, Doric columns. It passed into the Capitol
and into the Hall of the Lower House. Here it rested before the
Speaker's Chair.
All day Stonewall Jackson lay in state. Twenty thousand people, from the
President of the Confederacy to the last poor wounded soldier who could
creep hither, passed before the bier, looked upon the calm face, the
flag-enshrouded form, lying among lilies before the Speaker's Chair, in
the Virginia Hall of Delegates, in the Capitol of the Confederacy. All
day the bells tolled, all day the minute guns were fired.
A man of the Stonewall Brigade, pausing his moment before the dead
leader, first bent, then lifted his head. He was a scout, a blonde
soldier, tall and strong, with a quiet, studious face and sea-blue eyes.
He looked now at the vaulted roof as though he saw instead the sky. He
spoke in a controlled, determined voice. "What Stonewall Jackson always
said was just this: _'Press forward!'_" He passed on.
Presently in line came a private soldier of A. P. Hill's, a young man
like a beautiful athlete from a frieze, an athlete who was also a
philosopher. "Hail, great man of the past!" he said. "If to-day you
consort with Caesar, tell him we still make war." He, too, went on.
Others passed, and then there came an artilleryman, a gunner of the
Horse Artillery. Grey-eyed, broad-browed, he stood his moment and gazed
upon the dead soldier among the lilies. "Hooker yet upon the
Rappahannock," he said. "We must have him across the Potomac, and we
must ourselves invade Pennsylvania."
* * * * *
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE. MASSACHUSETTS
U. S. A
* * * * *
THE RIGHT STUFF
By IAN HAY
"Those who love the companionship of people of fine fibre, and to whom a
sense of humor has not been denied, will make no mistake in seeking the
society open to them in 'The Right Stuff.'"
_New York Times._
"Hay resembles Barrie, and, like Barrie, he will grow in many
ways."--_Cleveland Leader._
"A compelling tribute to the homely genuineness and sterling worth of
Scottish character."
_St. Louis Post Dispatch._
"Mr. Hay has written a story which is pure story and is a delight from
beginning to end."
_San Francisco Argonaut._
"It would be hard, indeed, to find a more winning book."--_New Orleans
Times-Democrat._
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JOHN WINTERBOURNE'S FAMILY
By ALICE BROWN
"A delightful and unusual story. The manner in which the hero's male
solitude is invaded and set right is amusing and eccentric enough to
have been devised by the late Frank Stockton. It is a story that is well
worth reading."--_New York Sun._
"Is to be counted among the best novels of this entertaining writer ...
written with a skilful and delicate touch."--_Springfield Republican._
"In its literary graces, in its portrayal of characters that are never
commonplace though genuinely human, and in its development of a singular
social situation, the book is one to give delight."--_Philadelphia
Press._
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ENCHANTED GROUND
An Episode in the Life of a Young Man
By HARRY JAMES SMITH
"An absorbing, dramatic, and sweet story ... a problem novel--with a
solution."--_New York Times._
"One of the strongest American novels that has appeared in several
seasons.... The whole story is on a far higher plane than the ordinary
novel of American life. The main characters are real, but they are
touched with the fire of the spirit."--_San Francisco Chronicle._
"It has a strong vein of sentiment, a flexible and kindly humor, a plot
directly concerned with a pair of young lovers, and a vigorous
style."--_The Nation._
"That it will be a favorite seems to us a safe prediction.... There is
no part of it which, once begun, is likely to be left unread."--_The
Dial._
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LEWIS RAND
By MARY JOHNSTON
"One of the strongest works of fiction that has seen the light of day in
America."--_New York Times._
"In 'Lewis Rand' we have historical fiction at its very best, and Miss
Johnston also at the highest point of her inventive, her pictorial and
her constructive skill."--_Boston Transcript._
"The story is a strong one. It provides a vivid presentation of a
deeply interesting period of our national annals, and it throbs with
real life."--_Chicago Dial._
"Aside from its high dramatic quality and tense dramatic interest 'Lewis
Rand' portrays admirably the manners and customs of an important
historical epoch."--_Philadelphia North American._
Illustrated in color by F. C. Yohn.
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THE SIEGE OF THE SEVEN SUITORS
By MEREDITH NICHOLSON
"It is not often that one comes upon so clean a farce, so delightful,
good-humored satire."--_Chicago Evening Post._
"He has woven wit and humor and clever satire into this airy fantasy of
twentieth century life in a way that should add to his literary
fame."--_Indianapolis Star._
"For sheer cleverness of invention and sprightly wit this story has had
no peer in recent years."--_New York Press._
"Just the sort of book which will delight those seeking clean, wholesome
entertainment."--_Boston Globe._
"Meredith Nicholson's is a delightful book, witty, epigrammatic,
flavorsome ... recalls Frank Stockton's bewitching foolery and perennial
charm."--_Milwaukee Free Press._
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HUMAN BULLETS
By TADAYOSHI SAKURAI
"'Human Bullets' is the most remarkable book, in a literary and
psychological way, brought out through the war clash of Russia and
Japan. It is the revelation at once of the soul of a soldier and the
moving spirit of a people."--_New York World._
"The book as a whole is a singular and strikingly valuable work, not
only by reason of its vivid descriptions of the stern side of war, but
for its revelation of Japanese ideals of patriotism and military
duty."--_Brooklyn Eagle._
"The story is told simply, but with such a touch of realism that his
word-pictures are distinctly picturesque.... The author has shown rare
literary skill, and the translator and editor have not permitted the
narrative to lose anything of technical value."--_Transcript, Boston._
"It is an illuminating exposition of the Japanese mind, in war and in
peace.... The book furnishes a striking picture of what war actually is,
even under its most humane aspects."--_Bookman, N. Y._
With frontispiece in color by the author
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