THE
TAYLOR-TROTWOOD MAGAZINE
SUCCESSOR TO
BOB TAYLOR’S MAGAZINE and TROTWOOD’S MONTHLY
PUBLISHED BY THE TAYLOR-TROTWOOD PUBLISHING COMPANY, 11, 13,
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GOVERNOR BOB TAYLOR and JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE, Editors
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Contents for January, 1907
FRONTISPIECE—Portrait of General Lee on Traveler
CAPABILITY. (Sonnet) _John Trotwood Moore_ 345
ROBERT EDWARD LEE _Robert L. Taylor_ 346
Illustrated.
HISTORIC HIGHWAYS OF THE SOUTH—CHAPTER XVI _John Trotwood Moore_ 354
Illustrated.
HOW OLE WASH GOT RID OF HIS MOTHERS-IN-LAW _John Trotwood Moore_ 364
SOME BEAUTIFUL WOMEN OF THE SOUTH 368
Illustrated.
COLONIAL FOOTPRINTS _J. K. Collins_ 373
Illustrated.
HISTORY OF THE HALS—CHAPTER XVI _John Trotwood Moore_ 379
THE MEASURE OF A MAN. (Serial Story) _John Trotwood Moore_ 384
MEN OF AFFAIRS 387
Illustrated.
SOME SOUTHERN WRITERS _Kate Alma Orgain_ 392
Illustrated.
TWELFTH NIGHT REVELS _Jane Feild Baskin_ 395
UNCLE ABRAHAM’S SERMON. (Story.) _John Marshall Kelly_ 398
THE STORY OF THE YEAR-GIFTS _Robert Wilson Neal_ 401
THE SHADOW OF THE ATTACOA. (Serial Story.) _Thornwell Jacobs_ 403
THE RACE PROBLEM _James H. Branch_ 415
REMUS. (Serial Narrative.) _Laps. D. McCord_ 423
NAPOLEON—PART V—Continued _Anna Erwin Woods_ 427
WITH BOB TAYLOR 430
SENTIMENT AND STORY.
THE PARADISE OF FOOLS.
WITH TROTWOOD 439
THE LAST DRIVE. (Poem.)
THE PROBLEM OF LIFE.
A QUAIL HUNT IN AN AUTOMOBILE.
BOOKS AND AUTHORS _Lillian Kendrick Byrn_ 450
Copyright, 1907, by The Taylor-Trotwood Publishing Co. All
rights reserved. ENTERED AT THE POST OFFICE AT NASHVILLE,
TENN., AS SECOND-CLASS MAIL MATTER.
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[Illustration: GENERAL LEE ON TRAVELER
_“Robert Edward Lee,” page 346_
_Photographed from life. M. Miley, Lexington, Virginia_]
THE
TAYLOR-TROTWOOD MAGAZINE
VOL. IV JANUARY, 1907 NO. 4
_CAPABILITY_
_A SONNET_
_BY JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE_
_God sends duties to those who show themselves capable of duty, and power
to those who are worthy of power._—Wm. McKinley.
_There comes a time to Nations, as to man,_
_When God shall test them with a furnace fire,_
_Shall weigh them in the scales of His desire—_
_Predestined law of long predestined plan._
_To him who measureth to the nobler span,_
_He maketh him a model and a chart,_
_Of all His ways a parcel and a part_
_Wherever Fate, His pulse of purpose, ran._
_But woe to him He weigheth and find not!_
_And woe to him that testeth not as gold!_
_His name shall be in blighting and in blot,_
_His fame the murk of mildew and of mold._
_He giveth power to him of power and beauty,_
_He addeth strength to him of strength and duty._
[Illustration]
ROBERT EDWARD LEE
_Born January 19, 1807. Died October 12, 1870_
By Robert L. Taylor
To write of Lee in the fulfilling of his manifold duties would be to fill
volumes. Lee as an intrepid young officer in the United States army; as
a practical military engineer; as a man among men; as a staunch patriot,
a brilliant commander and a magnanimous foe; a hero whose strength was
the might of gentleness and self-command; the chief of a vanquished
army, setting an example of noble submission; in the sanctity of his
home, consecrating his energies to the restoration of a prostrate and
desolate country; as the head of a great institution for the upbuilding
of character and scholarship; as parent, as husband, friend; and as a
modest, God-fearing gentleman—in all of these critical relations which
constitute the test of true greatness, the rich nature of Robert Edward
Lee shone with unfailing steadfastness and brilliancy.
I cannot attempt, in the limits of a magazine article, to do justice to
an inexhaustible subject. Why should I when the most eloquent tongues and
pens of two continents have labored to present, with fitting eulogy, the
character and career of our cavalier _par excellence_? It is the South’s
patent of nobility that he is to-day regarded, the world over, not only
as ranking with the greatest military geniuses history has known, but as
having less of the selfish littleness of ordinary humanity than any of
his compeers. I simply weave a wreath of memory to offer on his natal day.
That he was the son of Light Horse Harry Lee and Anne Carter, and was
born at Stratford, the Carter ancestral home in Westmoreland, Virginia,
the nineteenth of January, 1807, are well-known statistics. Miss Emily
V. Mason, in her “Popular Life of General Lee,”[1] gives the following
account of his early life:
When he was but four years of age, his father removed to
Alexandria the better to educate his children, and there are
many persons yet living in that old town who remember him at
that early age. From these sources we are assured that his
childhood was as remarkable as his manhood for the modesty and
thoughtfulness of his character, and for the performance of
every duty which devolved upon him.... At this period General
Harry Lee was absent in the West Indies in pursuit of health,
and he died when Robert was eleven years of age.... His mother
was also an invalid, and Robert was her devoted cavalier,
hurrying home from school to take her for her drive, and
assuming all the household cares, learning at this time the
self-control and economy in all financial concerns which ever
characterized him....
General Lee used to say that he was fond of hunting when a
boy—that he would sometimes follow the hounds on foot all day.
This will account for his well-developed form, and for that
wonderful strength which was never known to fail him in all the
fatigues and privations of his after life.
It was natural that the son of Light Horse Harry should desire to enter
the army, and he was doubtless also inspired to take this step by a
desire to relieve his mother of the expense of his maintenance and
education. “At West Point,” says General Fitzhugh Lee,[2] “he had four
years of hard study, vigorous drill, and was absorbing strategy and
tactics to be useful in after years. His excellent habits and close
attention to all duties did not desert him; his last year he held the
post of honor in the aspirations of cadet life—the adjutant of the corps.
He graduated second in a class of forty-six and was commissioned second
lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers. It is interesting to note that
his eldest son, George Washington Custis Lee, also entered the Military
Academy twenty-one years after his father, was also the cadet adjutant,
graduated first in his class and was assigned to the Engineer Corps.” Of
still greater interest is the graduation, in 1902, of his greatnephew,
Fitzhugh Lee, Jr., who, on his graduation, was appointed special aide to
Mrs. Roosevelt.
Lee’s first assignment to duty was at Fortress Monroe, where he remained
four years.
[Illustration: COLONEL R. E. LEE
About the time of the Mexican War]
“He went much,” continues his nephew biographer, “in the society of
ladies—always most congenial to him.... He was in love from boyhood. Fate
brought him to the feet of one who, by birth, education, position and
family tradition, was best suited to be his life companion. Mary, the
daughter of George Washington Parke Custis, of Arlington, and R. E. Lee
were married on the thirtieth of June, 1831.”
The modesty of the newly married couple was spared the modern newspaper
accounts of the bride’s wedding garments, her trousseau and trunks, the
gifts and other intimate details now demanded by an insatiate public.
Mrs. Lee was possessed of a strong intellect, charming person and
fascinating manners, being at the same time very domestic in her tastes,
and “such a housekeeper as was to be found among the matrons of her day,”
says her friend, Reverend J. W. Jones, who adds: “She was, from the
beginning, a model wife and mother.”[3]
A short account of the children of this exemplary couple may not be amiss
here. George Washington Custis Lee graduated, as has been said, first in
his class, and at the time of the secession of Virginia was an officer
in the Engineer Corps. He was appointed aide on President Davis’s staff,
became brigadier and then major-general, and after the close of the war
was made professor of engineering in the Virginia Military Institute and
succeeded his father as president of Washington and Lee University. This
position he held for twenty-six years, maintaining the high standards set
by his father. Since his retirement, in 1897, he has resided at Burke,
Virginia.
William Henry Fitzhugh, the second son, was a Harvard graduate and was
appointed lieutenant in the army on the special application of General
Scott, but had resigned and was living at home when the war came on, and
he raised a cavalry company, of which he was made captain. He had command
of two companies and was made major of the squadron. After the war he
served in the Virginia Senate and in Congress until his death.
Robert E. Lee, junior, was a student in the University of Virginia when
the war began, and promptly enlisted in the Confederate army. He served
on the staff of his brother, General W. H. F. Lee, and rose to the rank
of captain. Since the war he has been a successful planter, and in 1905
he completed the “Recollections of My Father,” truly a work of love.[4]
Miss Anne Carter Lee died during the war, and Miss Agnes shortly after
the death of her devoted father. Miss Mildred Lee died in 1905, and Miss
Mary Lee is still living, a prominent figure in all social and historical
matters in her state and the national capital.
The oldest son was born at Fortress Monroe, but the other children were
all born at Arlington, where Mrs. Lee passed much of her time when her
husband was sent to distant stations.
Of Lee’s work as military engineer, Mr. Jones says:
The system of river improvements devised by Lee at St. Louis
are still followed there, and to his next work, at Fort
Hamilton, the city of New York owes its perfect defenses to-day.
His campaign under General Scott, in Mexico, was his first taste of
actual service, and history has recorded his zeal, valor and undaunted
energy in that memorable conflict. He now entered upon his real career.
He was breveted major at Cerro Gordo, lieutenant-colonel at Churubusco,
and colonel at Chapultepec. General Scott testified his appreciation in
every report he made to the War Department, and Lee repaid the regard of
his beloved general with an extraordinary admiration and devotion.
He brought his son, Robert, a mustang pony from Mexico. “He was,” writes
Captain Lee, in his “Recollections,” “for his inches, about as good a
horse as I ever met with. While he lived ... he and Grace Darling, my
father’s favorite mare, were members of our family. Grace Darling was a
chestnut mare of fine size and great power. He bought her in Texas from
the Arkansas cavalry on his way to Mexico, her owner having died on the
march out. She was with him during all of the war, and was shot seven
times. As a little fellow I used to brag of the number of bullets in her,
and would place my finger on the scar made by each one.”
In 1852 he was appointed Superintendent of the United States Military
Academy at West Point, where he remained for three years, when he was
sent to Texas. His services on the frontier covered a period of five
years, with one furlough home, during which he was sent, in October,
1859, to capture John Brown, at Harper’s Ferry. In February, 1861, he was
recalled from Texas and ordered to report at Washington. He was not in
favor of secession, for he loved the Union strongly, and he clung fondly
to the hope that the breach might be closed, but he did not hesitate when
he saw that his state would secede. A New York banker, an intimate friend
of General Scott, asked him at this time, in the course of a conversation
on the art of war: “General, whom do you regard as the greatest living
soldier?” General Scott replied immediately: “Colonel Robert E. Lee is
not only the greatest soldier in America, but the greatest now living
in the world. This is my firm conviction from a full knowledge of his
extraordinary abilities, and if the occasion ever arises, Lee will
win this place in the estimation of the whole world.” Refusing the
supreme command of the United States army, he cast in his lot with the
Confederacy, and was placed in command of the troops of Virginia.
[Illustration: ARLINGTON, HOME OF THE LEES]
Much discussion has been held concerning the occupation of Arlington by
the Federal authorities, but it was claimed that this was a justifiable
act, in view of the commanding position of the property. The White House
and the department buildings near it were only two miles and a half from
the highest point on the Arlington grounds; the Capitol only three and a
half miles away, and Georgetown less than a mile. A battery established
on the heights would have had the whole of Washington at its mercy.
General Scott saw the importance of this position, and, reluctant as he
was to turn Mrs. Lee from the lovely home where he had so often received
her hospitality; deeply grieved as he must have been to humiliate by
his first move one who had been his cherished friend and trusted aide,
he sent General Mansfield to take it. “It is quite probable,” wrote the
latter in his report, “that our troops assembled at Arlington will
create much excitement in Virginia; yet, at the same time, if the enemy
were to occupy the ground there a greater excitement would take place on
our side.”
Without going into particular details of the four years of fighting, I
wish to quote Lord Wolseley’s beautiful tribute to Lee:[5]
It is my wish to describe him as I saw him in the autumn of
1862, when, at the head of proud and victorious troops, he
smiled at the notion of defeat by any army that could be sent
against him. I desire to make known to the reader not only the
renowned soldier, whom I believe to have been the greatest
of his age, but to give some insight into the character of
one whom I have always considered the most perfect man I ever
met....
Outsiders can best weigh and determine the merits of the chief
actors on both sides.... On one side I can see, in the dogged
determination of the North, persevered in to the end through
years of recurring failure, the spirit for which the men of
Britain have always been remarkable. It is a virtue to which
the United States owed its birth in the last century.... On
the other hand, I can recognize the chivalrous valor of those
gallant men whom Lee led to victory, who fought not only for
fatherland and in defense of home, but for those rights most
prized by free men. Washington’s stalwart soldiers were styled
rebels by our king and his ministers, and in like manner the
men who wore the gray uniform were denounced as rebels from the
banks of the Potomac to the headwaters of the St. Lawrence....
As a looker-on, I feel that both parties in the war have so
much to be proud of that both can afford to hear what impartial
Englishmen or foreigners have to say about it.
Describing Lee’s appointment to the command of the State Militia, he says:
General Lee’s presence commanded respect, even from strangers,
by a calm, self-possessed dignity, the like of which I have
never seen in other men. Naturally of strong passions, he kept
them under perfect control by that iron and determined will of
which his expression and his face gave evidence. As this tall,
handsome soldier stood before his countrymen he was the picture
of the ideal patriot, unconscious and self-possessed in his
strength.... There was in his face and about his expression
that placid resolve which bespoke great confidence in self, and
which in his case, one knows not how, quickly communicated its
magnetic influence to others.
Comparing Lee with the Duke of Marlborough, he says:
They were gifted with the same military instinct, the same
genius for war. The power of fascinating those with whom they
were associated, the spell which they cast over their soldiers,
... their contempt of danger, their daring courage, constitute
a parallel that it is difficult to equal between any two other
great men of modern times.
He repeats the following pleasantry overheard between two Confederates,
after Pope’s dismissal:
Have you heard the news? Lee has resigned!
Good God! What for?
Because he says he cannot feed and supply his army any longer,
now that his commissary, General Pope, has been removed.
A characteristic anecdote of Lincoln is also given. He was asked how
many rebels were in arms and replied that he knew the number to be one
million, “for,” said he, “whenever one of our generals engages a rebel
army he reports that he has engaged a force of twice his strength; now
I know we have half a million soldiers in the field, so I am bound to
believe the rebels have twice that number.” General Wolseley justly
criticises the lack of concerted action among our regiments.
No fair estimate of Lee as a general can be made by a simple
comparison of what he achieved with that which Napoleon,
Wellington or Von Moltke accomplished, unless due allowance
is made for the difference in the nature of the American
armies and of the armies commanded and encountered by those
great leaders. They were at the head of perfectly organized,
thoroughly trained and well disciplined troops, while Lee’s
soldiers, though gallant and daring to a fault, lacked the
military cohesion and efficiency, the trained company leaders
... which are only to be found in a regular army of long
standing.
The Englishman concludes:
Where else in history is a great man to be found whose whole
life was one such blameless record of duty nobly done? It was
consistent in all its parts, complete in all its relations.
... The fierce light which beats upon the throne is as that of
a rushlight in comparison with the electric glare which our
newspapers now focus upon the public man in Lee’s position.
His character has been subjected to that ordeal, and who can
point to any spot upon it? His clear, sound judgment, personal
courage, untiring activity, genius for war, and absolute
devotion to his state mark him as a public man, as a patriot to
be forever remembered by all Americans.... I have met many of
the great men of my time, but Lee alone impressed me with the
feeling that I was in the presence of a man who was cast in a
grander mould and made of finer metal than all other men. He
is stamped upon my memory as a being apart and superior to all
others in every way; a man with whom none I ever knew, a very
few of whom I have read, are worthy to be classed.
This was one of the popular songs current after the close of the war:
I followed old Marse Robert
For four years, near about;
Got wounded in three places,
And starved at P’int Lookout.
Why Marse Robert? Major Stiles gives the reason[6]:
The passion of soldiers for nicknaming their favorite leaders,
rechristening them according to their own unfettered fancy, is
well known.... There is something grotesque about most of them,
and in many seemingly rank disrespect.... However this may be,
“Marse Robert” is far above the rest of soldier nicknames in
pathos and in power.
In the first place, it is essentially _military_ ... it rings
true upon the elemental basis of military life—unquestioning
and unlimited _obedience_.... There never could have been a
second “Marse Robert,” and but for the unparalleled elevation
and majesty of his character and bearing, there would never
have been the first. He was of all men most attractive to us,
yet by no means most approachable. We loved him much, but we
revered him more. We never criticised, never doubted him; never
attributed to him either moral error or mental weakness; no,
not even in our secret hearts or most audacious thoughts. I
really believe it would have strained and blurred our strongest
and clearest conceptions of the distinction between right and
wrong to have entertained, even for a moment, the thought that
he had ever acted from any other than the purest and loftiest
motive.... The proviso with which a ragged rebel accepted
the doctrine of evolution, that “the rest of us may have
descended or ascended from monkeys, but it took a God to make
‘Marse Robert,’” had more than mere humor in it.... We never
compared him with other men, either friend or foe. He was in
a superlative and absolute class by himself. Beyond a vague
suggestion, after the death of Jackson, as to what might have
been if he had lived, I cannot recall even an approach to a
comparative estimate of Lee.
[Illustration: VALENTINE’S RECUMBENT LEE STATUE
At Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia]
Lee’s devotion to his soldiers and theirs to him are referred to by one
of Pickett’s captains[7]:
Many of those who had been wounded in the battle of the first
day went into the great charge on the third day with bandages
on their heads or arms, at sight of which the imperturbable Lee
shed tears.... Here was a devotion of which the Romans of old
had never dreamed; here was a holocaust of sacrificial victims
such as Greece had never known! The men who at Marathon and
Leuctra bled were not greater heroes than those who fell at
Gettysburg.
In a small volume of War Sketches, issued shortly after the war, I found
the following anecdote contributed to a Washington paper by Miss Woolsey,
a nurse sent to Gettysburg with the Sanitary Commission:
One of the Gettysburg farmers came creeping into our camp three
weeks after the battle. He lived five miles only from the town
and had “never seen a Rebel.” He heard we had some of them,
and came down to see them. “Boys, here’s a man who never saw a
Rebel in his life, and wants to look at you.” There he stood,
with his mouth wide open, and there they lay in rows, laughing
at him. “And why haven’t you seen a Rebel?” Mrs. ⸺ asked. “Why
didn’t you take your gun and help to drive them out of your
town?” “A feller might er got hit,” which reply was quite too
much for the Rebels; they roared with laughter up and down the
tents.
After the surrender at Appomattox General Lee joined his family at
Richmond for a short period of rest before taking up the “burdens of life
again.” “There was,” writes General Long,[8] “a continuous stream of
callers at the residence ... upon every hand manifestations of respect
were shown him.” General Long gives some touching incidents:
One morning an Irishman who had gone through the war in the
Federal ranks appeared at the door with a basket well filled
with provisions, and insisted upon seeing General Lee....
The general came from an adjoining room and was greeted with
profuse terms of admiration. “Sure, sir, you’re a great
soldier, and it’s I that know it. I’ve been fighting against
you all these years, an’ many a hard knock we’ve had. But,
general, I honor you for it; and now they tell me you’re poor
an’ in want, an’ I’ve brought this basket an’ beg you to take
it from a soldier.”
Two Confederate soldiers, in tattered garments and with bodies
emaciated by prison confinement, called upon General Lee and
told him they were delegated by sixty other fellows around
the corner “too ragged to come themselves.” They tendered
their beloved general a home in the mountains, promising him a
comfortable house and a good farm.
“Great and star-like as was the warrior,” says Dr. Shepherd, “the man is
greater.”[9]
It is said that General Lee was offered estates in England and in
Ireland; also the post of commercial agent of the South at New York, and
many other tenders of a home or livelihood. All of these he declined and
accepted the presidency of Washington College, at Lexington.
Founded in 1789 under the name of “Augusta Academy,” the name was changed
in 1782 to “Liberty Hall Academy,” from which was sent a company of
students into the Revolution. Washington, who had accepted from the
new State of Virginia 100 shares of the James River Company only on
condition that he might give them to some school, chose this academy for
beneficiary, and the name was changed in 1798 to “Washington College.”
The buildings, library and apparatus had been sacked during the Federal
occupancy, and the country was able to furnish only forty students at
the opening of the term of ’65-’66. Nothing daunted, the new president
gathered around him an able faculty, raised the standard of scholarship,
renovated the old buildings and secured funds for new ones. He introduced
the “honor system” and knew every student’s name, as well as his class
and deportment record. Asked, at a faculty meeting, for a plan to induce
students to attend the chapel, he advised: “The best way that I know of
is to set them the example,” which he invariably did. This gives the
keynote to his remarkable influence.
The effect of his principles was all-powerful. It is doubtful if any
other college in the world could show such a high average of morals and
scholarship which obtained at Washington College during Lee’s presidency
of five years.
I cannot resist relating an anecdote given by another of our
soldier-authors, John Esten Cooke:[10]
Coming upon the chieftain conversing cordially with an humbly clad man,
he supposed that it was, of course, an old Confederate, the more so as
the general, looking after the retreating figure, said kindly:
“That is one of our old soldiers who is in necessitous circumstances.”
Questioned, however, he admitted that the soldier had fought on “the
other side, but we must not think of that,” was his verdict.
The death of General Lee, on October 12, 1870, brought forth more
encomiums from the press, personages of exalted rank, and from the people
generally than has ever been accorded any man who died in private life
since Washington. “I do not exaggerate,” says Dr. Jones, “when I say
that many volumes would not contain the eulogies that were pronounced,
for I undertook to make a partial collection of them and have a trunk
full now.” In the cemetery near him at Lexington bivouacs his great
lieutenant, Stonewall Jackson. They were born in the same month, the one
on the nineteenth and the other on the thirty-first of January. It is
fitting that they should lie near together. “I know not,” further and
most fittingly continues Mr. Jones, who was chaplain of the University,
“how more appropriately the tomb of Lee could be placed. The blue
mountains of his loved Virginia sentinel his grave. Young men from every
section throng the classic shades of Washington and Lee University, and
delight to keep ward and watch at his tomb.”
[Illustration: MERCIE’S MONUMENT, LEE CIRCLE, RICHMOND]
I sing the hymn of the Conquered who fell in the battle of life,
The hymn of the wounded, the beaten, who died overwhelmed in the strife;
Not the jubilant song of the Victors for whom the resounding acclaim
Of nations was lifted in chorus, whose brows wore the chaplet of fame.
While the voice of the world shouts its chorus, its paeans for those who
have won,
While the trumpet is sounding triumphant, and high to the breeze and the
sun
Gay banners are waving, hands clapping and hurrying feet
Throwing after the laurel-crowned victors, I stand on the field of
Defeat.
Speak, History! Who are Life’s victors? Unroll thy long annals and say;
Are they those whom the world called the victors, who won the success of
a day?
The Martyrs or Nero? The Spartans who fell at Thermopylae’s tryst,
Or the Persians and Xerxes? His judge or Socrates? Pilate or Christ?
—_W. W. Story._
[1] Popular Life of General Lee. By Emily V. Mason. Baltimore: John
Murphy & Co.
[2] General Lee. By Fitzhugh Lee. New York: D. Appleton & Co. (Great
Commanders Series.)
[3] Life and Letters of Robert Edward Lee. By Rev. J. William Jones, D.D.
New York and Washington: Neale Publishing Company.
[4] Recollections of My Father. By Captain Robert E. Lee. New York:
Doubleday, Page & Co.
[5] General Lee. General Viscount Wolseley. Rochester, N. Y.: George P.
Humphrey.
[6] Four Years under Marse Robert. By Major Robert Stiles. New York and
Washington: Neale Publishing Company.
[7] Gettysburg: A Battle Ode Descriptive of the Grand Charge of the Third
Day, July 3, 1863. By R. W. Douthat. New York and Washington: Neale
Publishing Company.
[8] Memoirs of Robert E. Lee: His Military and Personal History. By
General A. L. Long and General Marcus J. Wright. New York, Philadelphia
and Washington: J. M. Stoddart & Co.
[9] Life of Robert Edward Lee. By Henry E. Shepherd, M.A., LL.D. New York
and Washington: Neale Publishing Company.
[10] Robert E. Lee. By John Esten Cooke. New York: G. W. Dillingham & Co.
HISTORIC HIGHWAYS OF THE SOUTH
By John Trotwood Moore
CHAPTER XVI—THE SECOND DAY AT SHILOH
By Lewis M. Hosea
[We give way in this issue to Judge Lewis M. Hosea, Judge of
the Superior Court of Cincinnati and late Brevet Major U. S.
Army, 16th U. S. Infantry, who gives us the viewpoint as seen
by Buell’s army. In this paper by this distinguished gentleman,
appears the best description of how it feels to be under fire
and how the Confederate columns appeared that we have ever seen.
That particular description deserves to live as a classic and
no one may read it without afterwards seeing “the surging line
of butternut and gray moving rapidly across our front” and
“the accompaniment of a leaden blast of hell sweeping into
one’s face as though it were a sort of fierce and deadly wind
impossible to stand against.”
It will also be observed that Judge Hosea takes decided issue
as to certain facts published in the History of the Shiloh
Battlefield Commission which we take pleasure in publishing and
will accord the same privilege to any one who cares to reply,
as it is by this kind of personal testimony that the truth of
history is eventually established.
To the readers of TAYLOR-TROTWOOD we wish to state that these
Historic Highways of the South have been running serially
through Trotwood’s Monthly for fifteen months and include The
Hermitage, The Creek War Highways, New Orleans, Battle of
Franklin, Ft. Donelson, Shiloh and others.—THE EDITOR.]
The two days’ battle at Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee River, fought
on Sunday and Monday, April 6th and 7th, 1862, viewed from the standpoint
of forty years later, looms up as one of the most significant contests of
the great Civil War. The entire battlefield was a wilderness of scrub oak
and kindred growths, unbroken save by a few settlers’ clearings located
at random upon a plain traversed only by irregular “woods-roads,” and by
drainage ravines leading by winding courses into the two creeks bounding
the field of operations on the north and south—these discharging into the
Tennessee River behind the Union Army.
The troops were for the most part new and untried, and the conditions of
the ground made the transmission of orders difficult and uncertain. It
was impossible for commanders of large bodies to obtain a comprehensive
view of the field so as to perceive and provide intelligently for the
varying exigencies of the battle as it progressed. They could only guess
the swaying movements of the fight by sounds of musketry and by the
chance reports of messengers who could locate nothing by fixed monuments.
Nor could the men in ranks, or even regimental officers, see beyond a
limited distance; and the direction of enfilading or turning movements
could be discovered only by the course of bullets among the trees or the
tearing of the ground by solid shot or shell.
These things made the battle a supreme test of the quality of the
individual units of the army rather than of any directing skill of its
higher commanders. The bulldog courage of individual groups of men who
hung on and fought “to a finish,” or who, like Prentiss, sacrificed
themselves where they stood because of no order to withdraw, delayed
the general advance of the enemy and thus saved the first day from
overwhelming and complete disaster. It became a case of “night or
Blücher;” and when, toward evening, the leading regiments of Buell’s
army arrived upon the field and interposed a fresh line of resistance,
the Union troops had been driven from the field and huddled as a mass of
disorganized fragments in a semicircle of half a mile radius about the
landing.
But the Confederates drew off flushed with the spirit of victory and
ceased fighting only to prepare for an expected certain and triumphant
finish in the morning. Knowing that they had the Union forces hemmed
in the semicircle of their lines extending from river to river, every
Confederate soldier fully believed that surrender or annihilation of the
Union forces would be easy of accomplishment.
This was the spirit and purpose that animated the Confederate forces on
Monday when they began to attack soon after daylight on that second day.
To the forces of Buell, arriving during the night on transports from
Savannah (on the river twenty miles below), and marching up the bank in
the dim light of dawn to form a cordon around the fragments of Grant’s
army, the scene was dismal and discouraging in the extreme. Making our
way through the thousands of men huddled on the bank, hearing at every
step the doleful prognostications of defeat, the wooded plain above
presented to us visible proof of the disastrous conflict of the day
before in the dead and wounded who lay unattended, and the broken and
discarded arms and equipments that strewed the ground. These were the
sights and sounds that greeted us as we marched to our place in line of
battle on the second day; and they fully justified the compliment paid us
by our brigade commander, General Lovell H. Rousseau, who says, in his
official report of the battle in substance: “Seldom have men gone into
battle under such discouraging circumstances, and never have they borne
themselves more gallantly.”
In the personal reminiscences that follow I shall speak more particularly
of the part taken by Rousseau’s brigade of McCook’s division.
I was personally present throughout the second day, as Adjutant of the
First Battalion, Sixteenth U. S. Infantry—which, with similar battalions
of the Fifteenth and Nineteenth Infantry, and the First Ohio, Fifth
Indiana, and Sixth Kentucky Volunteers—constituted Rousseau’s brigade
(4th) of McCook’s division (2d) of the Army of the Ohio commanded by
General Buell.
My position as adjutant gave me a somewhat wider range of observation
than that of a line officer on duty with a company, and I retain some
very distinct recollections of the battle, which I will briefly state in
so far as they bear upon the movements of Rousseau’s brigade; but I shall
leave others to speak of the severity of the fighting, and leave to you
to estimate the quality of the service the brigade rendered the Union
cause.
Rousseau’s brigade reached Pittsburg Landing during the night of the
6th of April, 1862, by steamers from Savannah, and disembarked just
before day. On the level just back of the landing, in the dim light of
the coming dawn, we deposited knapsacks and advanced in a southwesterly
direction through the woods, passing through camps (probably Hurlbut’s)
where our dead lay unburied as they had fallen the day before. After
a short halt we were advanced and deployed to the right and front at
the hither edge of a broad and shallow depression, where a small brook
coursed on to our right through a comparatively open forest without any
visible clearing. Here we were halted, muskets loaded, and, in a short
time, at a little after six o’clock, we heard firing toward our right
rear, and almost immediately our own skirmishers were driven in and we
were engaged with a battle line of the enemy. Then followed a steady and
vigorous “stand-up” musketry fight which lasted the greater part of an
hour, when the enemy drew off, but soon renewed the attack with greater
vigor, only to be again repulsed.
This position was probably on Tilghman’s Creek, shown on the map of the
Shiloh Battlefield Commission to which I shall refer; but the hour stated
on the map as eight o’clock is wrong and should be six o’clock. By eight
o’clock we had been baptized with fire and blood. Here Captain Acker of
the Sixteenth was killed, and a number of other officers and men were
killed and wounded.
It is an old story, perhaps, to most of you—this first experience of
actual battle; yet, even now, dimly remembered through the intervening
years, it seems to me the most horrifying experience that can possibly
fall to the lot of man.
First came the startling report of a musket fired by one of our own
skirmishers out in our front; then a crackling of responses from the
woods beyond, but we could see only a little blue smoke rising above
the undergrowth—for it was early spring and the green leaves were just
beginning to appear—and hear the skipping of stray bullets through the
branches with a whirr of spent force. A stir went through the lines and
faces grew pale, for we knew that the battle was sweeping toward us and
that these shots were the first sprinkle of the coming storm. The quiet
command of “Attention!” was obeyed ere it was uttered; but the climax of
first impressions came with the order to “load.” That order, like the
jarring touch upon the chemist’s glass, crystallized the wild turmoil of
thoughts and focalized all upon the actual business of war. I can realize
now how important a thing in war is the musket as a steadying factor
for overwrought nerves; and how that first order to “load!” brought the
panicky thoughts of men back with a sudden shock to the realization that
they were there upon equal terms with the enemy to do and not alone to
suffer. I remember the “thud” of the muskets as they came down upon the
ground almost as one,—for our men had been well drilled,—and the confused
rattle of drawing ramrods, and their ring in the gun barrels as they
rebounded in ramming the charges home. Every movement and every sound
was an encouragement; and in the reaction of feeling the interchange of
boastful speech almost ripened into cheers. But, meantime, the fire of
skirmishers increased to an almost continuous rattle and grew closer,
until—for all this was a matter of minutes only—our skirmishers could
be seen coming in, firing as they came, and half carrying two or three
wounded men. This, of course, again deepened the tension of nervous
expectation, and faces took on a look of grim determination, as eyes
peered forward to catch the first glimpse of the approaching enemy. As
our skirmishers came into the lines, there went a hoarse whisper down
the ranks, “There they are!”—and looking out through the woods I saw the
flutter of battle flags and beneath them a surging line of butternut and
gray moving rapidly across our front just beyond the shallow ravine,
perhaps fifty or seventy-five yards away. In a moment, as it seemed,
there burst forth a rattle of musketry that almost drowned the command of
our officers to “fire at will!”
The first shock of battle is appalling. The rattle deepens into a roar
as men get down to the work of loading and firing rapidly; but it is not
alone the _noise_ of firing that appals, the vicious “whizz,” and “zip”
past the ears; the heavy “thud” of bullets that strike the tree-trunks
with the force of sledge-hammer blows,—all these make up a horrible din
that has no parallel on earth. But with it all is the realization that
this is but the accompaniment of a leaden blast of hell sweeping into
one’s face as though it were a sort of fierce and deadly wind impossible
to stand against; and the rain of leaves and twigs cut from the trees,
and the occasional fall of larger branches, heightens this impression of
a raging storm. After a little the smoke obscures everything and the
battle goes on in an ever-increasing acrid fog that would make breathing
impossible were it not for the frenzy of battle that seizes upon every
other faculty, physical and mental, and makes one oblivious to all other
surroundings.
Here and there a man drops his musket, throws up his hands and falls
backward dead; or another lunges heavily forward on hands and knees,
mortally wounded; and no one who has seen it will ever forget that look
of agony unspeakable on the faces of those stricken by sudden death in
battle.
For what seemed an interminable time the angry buzz of bullets clipped
by our ears and overhead; and I remember, that, as I passed up and down
the line assisting the commanding officer of the battalion in encouraging
the men to take time in loading carefully and aiming low, a bullet struck
a musket in the hands of a young Irishman of my own company, just as
he was about to bring it to his shoulder, and the force of the impact
shattered the stock and turned him partly about and almost threw him
down. I saw the blood spurt from his arm, for he had in the excitement
rolled up his sleeves to handle his piece the better. I sprang forward to
assist him; but with a cry of rage he stripped off his sleeve, and with
the assistance of a comrade, bound up his wound, which proved to be not
serious, and seized a dead comrade’s musket beside him and went on with
the fight.
But after a time the whirr and hiss of the bullets slackened and
finally ceased; finally, skirmishers were ordered out to reconnoiter,
while disposition was made of the dead and wounded. Soon, however
the skirmishers came hastily back and reported new and heavier lines
advancing, and again we saw the battle-flags among the trees, nearer than
before. This time, however, the fight opened with the thunder of field
guns whose missiles went shrieking overhead with a horrible sound that
made the blood run cold. Then came the order to hug the ground and fire
at will; and the fight went on as before except that as we had advanced
a few rods down the gentle declivity of the ravine, and the line of the
enemy was at a relatively higher level, the majority of bullets and the
cannon shots passed above us and but few came dangerously close.
But the success of our first experience seemed to tell upon the ranks,
and the coolness and deliberation of both men and officers were
noticeable thenceforward; and soon the artillery discharges ceased,
and after a time we knew, as before, by the lessening of the whizz of
bullets, that the enemy had again yielded the ground in our front.
As I look back upon it, it seems astonishing how soon all the natural
feelings of apprehension and fear give way to what has been aptly termed
the “battle rage” which lifts a man up to a plane where the things of the
body are forgotten. Amid the roar and din of musketry and the horrible
swish and shriek of shells, the intellect seemed to be disembodied, and,
while conscious of the danger of being hurled headlong into eternity at
any moment, the pressure upon the brain seemed to deaden the physical
senses—fear among them. Fear came later when the fight was over, just as
in the waiting moments before it began; but throughout the day while the
battle was on I remember having a singular feeling of curiosity about
personal experiences. I seemed to be looking down upon my bodily self
with a sense of impersonality and wondering why I was not afraid in the
midst of all this horrible uproar and danger. I suppose this was the
common experience of soldiers, for if it were not so, battles could not
be fought.
[Illustration: GENERAL FORREST AND HIS CAVALRY GOING OUT TO FORT DONELSON
From “Life of General Nathan Bedford Forrest.” Copyright, 1899, by Harper
& Brothers.]
After repulsing the second attack, at about eight o’clock, we moved
forward slowly across the brook, with skirmishers advanced, fighting at
intervals, for the enemy stubbornly contested the ground. On reaching a
clearing (probably the Duncan field) in the line of our advance we were
met by an opposing concentration of the enemy in great force at the far
side of it, who attempted a desperate charge upon us. This was met by
a steady fire and an unswerving line; and the fighting that ensued is
described by Judge Force, in his account of the battle published in the
“Campaigns of the Civil War” by the Scribners (p. 171), as a “desperate
struggle”—and indeed it was! Guenther, with a section of Terrill’s
battery, arrived upon the scene, coming in upon our right, which was
unprotected, at the crisis of this fight, and, as the enemy gave way at
our front and ran together in a mass to pass through a gate or break in
a fence in the rear, he directed his rapid discharges of canister to
the same point. The effect upon the enemy was appalling and horrible
beyond all description. Among our killed were Lieutenant Mitchell, a most
gallant officer of the Sixteenth, and it was here also that Wykoff, then
a captain of the Fifteenth, lost his eye.
I recall one striking incident of a personal character connected with
this part of the battle. A sergeant of C Company, which I had commanded,
was wounded in the shoulder and disabled though not vitally hurt. A
moment later, as the sergeant was making his way to the rear, I was
knocked down by an exploding shell, whose fragments relieved me of one
boot-leg and left one leg of my pants in shreds, but fortunately left
the leg intact, except for a wrench and a few bruises of no serious
consequence. It so happened that my sergeant saw me fall, and, as he was
among the first of the wounded taken to Cincinnati, he reported me as
killed, to the great distress of my family at home. My brother, who came
down a few days later, found me very much alive, though very ragged,
very dirty, and very thankful that the shell that took my boot-leg took
no more. I was thankful even for the limp that made me the subject of
good-natured derision for some days as I performed my duties as adjutant
on one leg.
We immediately followed in pursuit, after this last fight, capturing
two field-guns from the enemy, and continued the advance until we had
repossessed General McClernand’s headquarters of Sunday, beyond which we
again met a determined resistance, but eventually drove the enemy back
through a large open field into what has been termed the “water oaks
thicket.”
The enemy seemed to be massed in great force at and beyond this point
to oppose our further progress, and a heavy line of battle occupied the
woods beyond the clearing on the hither edge of which we were halted to
replenish our exhausted ammunition.
Our advance, though slow, had been continuous and resulted in projecting
a sort of wedge into the enemy’s lines, of which wedge we seemed to be
the apex. It resulted, therefore, naturally and necessarily that the
enemy concentrated more and more in our immediate front to break the
force that was gradually splitting them in two and endangering their
communications in rear. Firing still continued toward the rear on both
flanks, for we had considerably outstripped the general advance. Our
men fixed bayonets and lay down under orders to hold the position, if
attacked, at all hazards. The firing against us grew quite heavy, but no
reply was made, although some were killed, among them Lieutenant Keyes,
a splendid officer of the Sixteenth, with whom I was standing arm in arm
at the time his summons came,—for among the regulars it was not then
considered “good form” for officers to take shelter.
I have before spoken of the impact of a minie bullet against a tree
as like the blow of a sledge hammer. The Keyes incident gives a very
realistic illustration. As I have mentioned in another place, Lieutenant
Keyes and I were standing arm in arm—my right interlocked with his
left,—in rear of his company. We were, as I recall, just exchanging
sorrowful remarks over the death of a Sergeant Baker—a fine man—who
received a bullet through the forehead just a moment before, while Keyes
was exchanging words with him. Just then the sledge hammer struck one
of us—for a moment I did not know which—and hurled us both to the ground
backwards. As I scrambled to a footing I saw Keyes’ blanched face and the
torn garment showing the passage of the bullet through the left shoulder
joint where a hasty examination showed that the bony structure of the
vicinity had been shattered. He was taken to the rear and died the second
day after.
Here, after a long wait, General Sherman came, and I saw him for the
first time. I will let him tell you what next occurred. General Sherman
is describing, in his official report of the battle, his own movements as
he came up on our right; and is speaking of a battery that had reached
him at the rear. He says:
“Under cover of their fire we advanced until we reached the point where
the Corinth road crosses the line of McClernand camp, and here I saw for
the first time the well ordered and compact columns of General Buell’s
Kentucky forces whose soldierly movements at once gave confidence to our
newer and less disciplined men. Here I saw Willich’s regiment advance
upon a point of water oak and thicket, behind which I knew the enemy was
in great strength, and enter it in beautiful style.”
(The thicket described by General Sherman, I may remark, was just beyond
the field on the edge of which we were lying and through which it was
necessary to pass. The Thirty-second Indiana was regarded as the crack
German regiment of our western army.)
General Sherman continues:
“Then arose the severest musketry fire I ever heard, and lasted some
twenty minutes when this splendid regiment had to fall back.”
(The Thirty-second, let me explain further, had passed around our left
and formed in our front, in the open, in column of companies—“double
column to the center,” as the formation is described by its commander in
his report. The absurdity of this formation seemed to strike even the
rank and file, for it drew a direct and enfilading fire from the extended
line of the enemy in front that reached even the rear companies and gave
rise to the claim on their part that they had been fired upon by the
troops in their own rear. This claim was and is, of course, ridiculous.
The regulars were at that moment engaged in replenishing their cartridge
boxes in the rear of Kirke’s brigade which had been in reserve and had
taken our position temporarily for this purpose. The claim was made as
an excuse for a most unmilitary blunder in placing a column formation in
the open in the face of a battle line, and, as it naturally resulted in
a complete rout of the regiment, some excuse was sought as a salve for
wounded pride).
General Sherman continues:
“This green point of timber is about five hundred yards east of Shiloh
meeting house, and it was evident here was to be the struggle. The enemy
could be seen also forming his lines to the south.... This was about
2 p.m. The enemy had one battery close by Shiloh and another near the
Hamburg road, both pouring grape and canister upon any column of troops
that advanced upon the green point of water oaks. Willich’s regiment
had been repulsed, but a whole brigade of McCook’s division advanced
beautifully, deployed, and entered this dreaded wood.... This I afterward
found to be Rousseau’s brigade of McCook’s division.
“Rousseau’s brigade moved in splendid order steadily to the front
sweeping everything before it; and at 4 p.m. we stood upon the ground of
our original front line, and the enemy was in full retreat....
“I am ordered by General Grant to give personal credit where I think it
is due, and censure where I think it merited. I concede that General
McCook’s splendid division from Kentucky drove back the enemy along
the Corinth road, which was the great center of the field of battle,
where Beauregard commanded in person, supported by Bragg’s, Polk’s and
Breckinridge’s divisions.”
General Sherman lived many years in the belief that he had fully and
truly stated the facts in this matter, but we now know from a veracious
history to which I shall refer, “compiled from the official records upon
the authority of the Shiloh Battlefield Commission,” that what Sherman
supposed to be a concentration of the Confederate army under Beauregard,
including many divisions under distinguished leaders, was only Colonel
Looney, of the Shiloh Battlefield Commission, with his regiment
“augmented by a few detachments” from others, “driving back the Union
line to the Purdy road” and enabling the Confederate army to “leisurely”
walk away unmolested without our even suspecting it!
At the time Sherman came to us, Willich, with his large regiment, was
just going into the open field and our reserve brigade—Kirke’s—was taking
our position while we retired to the road to get a supply of ammunition
which had come forward meantime; so that Sherman saw the advance and
repulse of Willich, and the re-forming, deploying and advance of
Rousseau’s brigade that so favorably attracted his attention as to merit
official praise.
Between three and four o’clock in the afternoon we had pushed the enemy,
still fighting, back to the vicinity of Shiloh Church. This, as afterward
appeared, was Beauregard’s headquarters which he vacated about two
o’clock, from prudential motives, and, manifestly by an afterthought,
sought to minimize the fact of his own defeat by making it appear that
an order to withdraw his army had been given long before. As a matter of
fact, we know now from the records that the only order given was an order
to the extreme wings of his army to fall back to this very point as a
concentration of his forces against the center of our army.
Rousseau’s brigade continued its slow but relentless advance until we
reached and passed the church itself, when the forces immediately
in our front in the vicinity of the road broke in disorder, leaving,
however, a considerable body of the enemy on our right against whom the
regular battalions right-wheeled and whom we pursued half way through the
former camps of Sherman’s troops lying parallel with the Shiloh branch,
completing the rout of all the enemy’s forces in sight. They fled in
disorder across the branch, and we were ordered to rejoin the brigade.
At the final rout of the enemy at 4 o’clock p.m., we were astraddle of
the camps of McDowell’s brigade of Sherman’s division, and this is what
General Sherman refers to when he says in his report:
“At 4 p.m. we stood upon the ground of our original first line and the
enemy were in full retreat.”
In this final movement the troops of Sherman took no part, nor was the
division of General Lew Wallace or that of McClernand in sight. And this
is what General Sherman admits by his frank confession that:
“General McCook’s splendid division drove back the enemy along the
Corinth road which was the great center of the field of battle.”
This crisis of the battle really lasted from about noon, when we faced
the point of water oaks, until four o’clock, when the enemy were routed
and fleeing in confusion across Shiloh branch. If there was any rallying
force at all on the other side of this branch, it made no demonstration
and certainly it was not a battle line of the enemy as represented on the
map of the commission. The only rear-guard stand mentioned in the reports
was at a point two miles further on and a final stand by Breckinridge’s
division at Mickey’s still further toward Monterey.
A few of the Confederate authorities place their final “withdrawal” at
two o’clock, and a few others at three, but the overwhelming consensus of
testimony of the reports place the final and complete rout of the enemy
beyond the Shiloh Church at and after four o’clock; and Sherman again in
his report particularizes 4 p.m. as the close of the engagement (p. 254).
After the fighting was over, General Sherman came over to us in his camps
of the day before, and, speaking to Major Carpenter (of the Nineteenth),
complimented most highly the work of the brigade and particularly of the
regular battalions.
It was about this time also that General Thomas J. Woods arrived at the
front, at the head of a brigade of his division, and, as Major Lowe
reminds me, demanded in no “Sunday school language” to be allowed to go
forward in pursuit of the enemy. But the darkness was approaching, and
the impossibility of handling new troops in the dark in a wilderness of
black jack was manifest, and the pursuit was given over for the night.
The map of the commission shows Wood’s entire division in line with us
and taking part at 2 p.m. in the great and final crisis of the day, in
which the musketry fire was, as described by General Force, “more severe
than any that occurred on the field in either of the two days of the
battle.” _Wood’s division was not there._ One brigade came upon the
field _just as the fighting was over, at about four o’clock_, and the
other did not leave the landing until dark. General Force’s statement,
substantially to the same effect in his history of the battle (p. 177 in
the Scribner’s Series) is:
“Wood’s division, arriving too late to take part in the battle, pushed to
the front and engaged his skirmishers with the light troops covering the
retreat.”
General Buell’s report states the fact as I give it from my recollection.
[Illustration: A TYPE OF TABLET SHOWING SHAPE ADOPTED FOR SECOND DAY’S
BATTLE. THIS PARTICULAR ONE MARKS A POINT ON “HORNET’S NEST”]
In the year 1901, I addressed a letter to the Shiloh Battlefield
Commission, at the invitation of its chairman, stating the substance of
the personal recollections herein given, with a view to the correction
of some very serious errors in its official blue print maps. In this
letter I referred to between thirty and forty official reports of
field organizations engaged in the battle, all showing that the errors
complained of existed; but from that day to this no notice whatever has
been taken of the letter.
I had not then the slightest idea that the commission intended to
constitute itself the official historian of the Battle of Shiloh—for
certainly the law of its appointment contemplates no such thing. But,
during the year 1903, there appeared from the press of the Government
Printing Office, Washington, an innocent looking work bearing on its
title page the following:
“Shiloh National Park Commission. The Battle of Shiloh, and the
Organizations Engaged. Compiled from the Official Records by Major D. W.
Reed, Historian and Secretary, under the Authority of the Commission,
1902. Washington, Government Printing Office, 1903.”
There follows, on a subsequent page, a preface addressed by the Chairman
of the Commission—
“To Shiloh Soldiers”—in which, referring to the intent of the statute
establishing the Shiloh National Military Park to perpetuate the history
of the battle on the ground where it was fought, he expresses the desire
of the commission that “this history” (meaning this publication) “shall
be complete, impartial, and correct,” etc. He then states, that, “to
ensure this accuracy, _all reports have been carefully studied and
compared. The records at Washington have been thoroughly searched and
many who participated in the battle have been interviewed._... It is,
therefore, desired that the statements of the book be earnestly studied
by every survivor of Shiloh and any errors or omissions be reported to
the commission with a view to the publication of a revised edition of the
report.”
This so-called official “history” of the battle contains in permanent
form the same erroneous maps put forth as blue prints in 1901. The
history proper devotes about sixteen pages to a description of the first
day’s operations of the Army of the Tennessee, and one page to those
of the second day covering the participation of the Army of the Ohio.
Short as is the latter portion of the history, we learn that the weight
of numbers really decided the issue before the fight began; and, while
Beauregard made a show of resistance for a while, along about dinner
time he sent Colonel Looney (of the Shiloh Battlefield Commission) with
his regiment “augmented by detachments from other regiments,” who charged
and “drove back the Union line,” and enabled Beauregard to safely cross
Shiloh branch with his army and leisurely retire to Corinth thirty miles
away! So skillfully was all this done, we are told, that the Confederate
army “began to retreat at 2.30 p.m. _without the least perception on the
part of the enemy_” (the Union forces) “that such a movement was going
on”—and this is put forth as “history!”
When we look at the maps to which we are referred in connection with
this account of the second day’s battle, the astonishing accuracy and
completeness of this contribution to history begins to dawn upon us.
There we find that the Union troops, after a late breakfast, came upon
the field and did a little skirmishing with the enemy, who, as the
odds were against them, could not be expected to stay in the game, and
withdrew while the Union forces were at dinner, without letting us know
anything about it. And we are told that this is real history, based upon
an exhaustive search and comparison of all the records, compiled by a
distinguished official body, assisted by a “historian,” and this is
published by the Government of the United States!
Lest it be thought that I exaggerate, let me here quote the principal
portion of this veracious history of the second day’s battle. Beginning
with the statement that the battle of the second day was opened by Lew
Wallace attacking Pond’s brigade, it continues:
“The 20,000 fresh troops in the Union army made the contest an unequal
one, and though stubbornly contested for a time, at about two o’clock
General Beauregard ordered the withdrawal of his army. To secure the
withdrawal he placed Colonel Looney of the Thirty-eighth Tennessee, with
his regiment, augmented by detachments from other regiments, at Shiloh
Church, and directed him to charge the Union center. In this charge
Colonel Looney passed Sherman’s headquarters and pressed the Union
line back to the Purdy road; at the same time General Beauregard sent
batteries across the Shiloh branch and placed them in battery on the high
ground beyond. With these arrangements Beauregard at _four o’clock safely
crossed Shiloh branch with his army_ and placed his rear guard under
Breckinridge in line upon the ground occupied by his army on Saturday
night. The Confederate army _retired leisurely_ to Corinth, while the
Union army returned to the camps that it had occupied before the battle.”
The final touch—“the Union army returned to the camps it had occupied
before the battle”—shows how negligible a quality, in the mind of these
able historians, was the contribution of Buell’s fresh troops who seem to
have been spectators but nothing more.
HOW OLE WASH GOT RID OF HIS MOTHERS-IN-LAW
By John Trotwood Moore
I was telling ole Wash the other night that I thought the President was
a great man and that if he didn’t make any break from now on, as for
instance about knocking out states’ rights and undue blowing about the
devilish little Japs who are itching to scrap with us, he would rank
among the great presidents.
The old man was thoughtful for awhile, looking into the fire.
“Wal, boss, he sho’ is got all the year-marks—a senserble, dermestic wife
an’ no signs of a muther-in-law. Now, sah, befo’ eny man kin be great
he must fus’ ax his wife an’ arter he gits her consent he mus’ ax his
muther-in-law. Now, sah, no man kin be great, don’t keer how much ’bility
he’s got, if his wife is in society an’ his muther-in-law is in de house.
You can look all down de line, sah, an’ when you finds dat combinashun
you’ll find a man whose growin’ gourd of greatness is liable to wilt eny
day, like Job’s, at de fus’ good jolt it gits. Wid both of ’em in society
an’ both in de’ house, why, Lord, boss, his gourd will nurver even sprout!
“Did I urver tell you ’bout my ’sperience in dat line an’ how nigh I cum
to missin’ greatness, all on account of a few muther-in-laws? It wuz a
close shave an’ if I hadn’t seed de way de ship wuz headed an’ steered
out from dat combernashun, instead of bein’ de gent’man an’ floserpher
whose ’pinions you so highly values,” he chuckled modestly, “you’d a had
a ole nigger fit only fur de woodpile an’ de blackin’ bresh.
“Boss,” he laughed as he bit off a chew of Brazil Leaf Twist, bred in
the hills of Maury, “did you kno’ the ole man am a Only? The only man
dat ever lived dat had fo’ muther-in-laws at unct—driv’ a fo’-in-han’ of
’em, so to speak! Oh, I kno’ what you ’bout to say, sah,—but mine wuz
legitermates, de actu’l product of de law an’ matremony.”
“Nonsense,” I said, “you couldn’t have been married to four women at
once, as sly an old coon as you are. Though I did hear Marse Nick Akin
say that he knew of his own knowledge that you once had three wives but
gave two of them to the preacher if he would make you an elder in his
church, which bargain was duly consummated. Oh, I knew you were driving a
very long string of tandems, old man, but four abreast? Tell about it.”
He laughed so loud the pointer jumped up from his bed on the rug and
barked.
“Did Marse Nick vi’late de conferdence I composed in his veracity?” he
laughed again. “Wal, I jis’ well tell it fur you’ll nurver guess how it
wuz.
“Long in de fifties I spliced up wid a likely young widder dat wuz de
sod-relic of Brer Simon Harris, a ’piscopal brudder up at Nashville.
Befo’ dat she had been de relic of several gent’men of color. Fur a week
or so I wuz so busy co’rtin’ her dat I wa’n’t very ’tickler jis’ whut
her entitlements an’ habilerments wuz, nur jis’ whut mineral rights an’
easements went wid de property.
“I’ve allers noticed it’s dat a way in de co’rtin’ stage an’ hits a
wise dispensashun of ole Marster to trap us all into matremony an’ make
us blin’, like snakes in August; an’ eb’ry one of us, when he gits his
seckin’ sight arter de entrapment, wakes up to fin’ dat in de deed
to de state of matremony dar has been passed wid de free-hold a few
hererditerments dat he didn’t cal’late went wid de lan’.
“Sum of us, of co’rse nurver gits dey seckin’ sight at all.
“But I ain’t talkin’ of dem. I’ve nurver writ a fool’s almernac yit!
“But I claims I am de only man dat urver got fo’ muther-in-laws, when I
didn’t ’spec’ to git eny!
“Arter a breef but very pinted co’rtship, in which I done de usual
close-settin’, low-layin’ an’ tall lyin’, I hitched up my team an’ driv’
up to Nashville an’ married Sally. Arter de circus I driv’ de team ’round
to de door fur to carry her home an’ I went in fur to pack up her things.
I got ’em all in one big box, fur Brer Simon hadn’t been very felicertus
in passin’ round de hat, an’ when I tuck it out to de wag’n dar sot Sally
an’ fo’ uther ladies all es cheerful an’ happy as fo’ ole tabby-cats in a
hay loft.
“’Dese am my muthers, Wash,’ sez Sally sweetly, ’an’ of co’rse dey am all
gwine to lib wid us.’”
“‘Look heah, gal,’ sez I sorter faintly, ‘I ain’t nurver heerd of enybody
havin’ mor’n one muther.”
“‘Dese other three am jes’ as dear,’ seys she, p’intin’ to de three ole
ladies, ‘dat’s Simon’s muther, dat’s mine, an’ dem two ober dar—’
“Boss, I nearly had a fit! Do you kno’ dat gal had de muthers of ebry one
of her fus’ husbands dar an’ claimin’ dey wuz mighty nigh to her?
“Dar wa’n’t nothin’ to do but to git a divorcement an’ as I wa’n’t quite
ready fur dat yit, I made de bes’ of it an’ driv’ off; but I knowed if
dar wuz ever a day when I needed sum brains now wuz de time. An’ de three
sod muthers,—dat wuz de entitlement I gib to de three muthers of Sally’s
dead husbands,—dey wuz jes’ plain ole grannies, wid de usual tongue an’
de perviserty fer huntin’ up trouble dat wuz natu’lly predistined fur
sumbody else.
“But Sally’s muther she wuz a fine lookin’ ’oman, jes a shade heftier
an’ handsumer than Sally so I teched her mighty tenderly an’ gin her to
onderstan’ dat I fully intended to fulfill to de letter de scrip’tul
injunshuns of filial affecshuns. She wuz a hefty ’oman, boss, but she wuz
es bossy es she wuz hansum, es I found out. De day she landed at home,
sah, I seed she’d sot in to own de place an’ in two weeks, sah, sides
ownin’ Sally an’ de sod-muthers, she owned de mules, de cow, de pigs an’
de farm, me an’ my ’ligious convicshuns an’ perlitical preferment.
“But es I wuz sayin’, boss, she wuz a han’sum ’oman!
“Now I’m allers willin’ to be bossed fur a while by a handsum ’oman, but
when it comes to dat batch of ole sod-muthers dat looked like busted bags
of dried apples, dat wuz a nurr thing. But I’ve noticed dar is allers a
kin’ of communercashun ’mong women folks es to de bossin’ of a man. It
jis’ travels by grapevine, or dis here wireless business in de air, to de
end dat when one ’oman kin boss a man all of ’em think dey can do it.
“An’ dey think right, only in dis case de thinkin’ hadn’t all ben dun
yit. So dey all jes’ put me down as dead easy.
“I let ’em hab free han’ till de honeymoon wuz over. I didn’ think I
orter mix eny vinegar wid dat; but by dat time de whole tribe of ’em
wuz needin’ sum of de salt dat Lot’s wife got, an’ mebbe sum of de fire
an’ brimstone dat wuz de ’casion of her saltin’. Wal, sah, dey sot in
fur infairs an’ didn’t do nuthin’ but eat fur two weeks. I had to give
’em three infairs myself an’ then they gin to nose aroun’ an’ git my
naburs to have infairs. Fur two weeks mo’ dar wa’n’t nuffin but infairs
fur de bride, an’ groom, fur my naburs wuz polite, all wucked up by dese
sod-muthers, till dey wuzn’t a chicken or shote left in five miles of
my home, an’ if dar had been a hard winter an’ de white folks’ chickens
had-roosted high, we would a had a hard time of it.
“Wal, I stood dat, ’caze dar wuz a honeymoon an’ good eatin’ gwine on wid
it, but ’long ’bout de thud week when de sod-mammies gin to tell me how I
orter roach my hair an’ run my farm I gin to lay my plans fur acshun.
“Dey wuz all ’piscopaliuns, boss, es I wuz sayin’, an’ dey bleeved
tarible in Good Friday; an’ ev’ry Friday wuz Good Friday wid dem when it
come to eatin’. When I seed my chickens all gwine an’ de pigs an’ sich, I
got so disgusted wid dese Good Fridays dat I wanted to be a jay-bird fur
a while so I cud git off to hell ebry Friday myse’f! Frum dat dey begin
to rub it in to me ’bout baptism an’ so forth an’ dat didn’t tend to make
me change in de resolushuns I had fixed up. I went on fixin’ my plans an’
layin’ low, meek as Moses outwardly but inwardly full of wrath.
“By dis time dey gin to ax in all de bredderin of de chu’ch to he’p ’em
eat an’ settin’ up by moonlight wid ’em a holdin’ han’s an’ prayin’. Now,
boss, de hefty one nurver mixed up in dese small things—she wuz layin’
fur bigger game. She seed de sod-muthers wuz managin’ it all right an’ as
she knowed she owned dem an’ Sally an’ dey all owned me, why she let it
res’ at dat.
“Sides dat, as I sed, she wuz a han’sum ’oman!
“I let it run on till de time whut dey call Ash We’nesday come, when
dey all had a feast an’ special prayers fur de souls of all who had
died frum de beginnin’ of de worl’ till den,—or sumpin’ nurr like it.
I had already spent all my money an’ dey had ordered lumber fur a new
house, ’sides orgernizin’ a society to build de nigger preacher in town a
rookery. Dey called it a pay supper—an’ I did all de payin’! It wuz all
to cum off de night of Ash We’nesday.
“Now dat Ash biziness sot me to thinkin’. Here wuz my home turned into
a karnival of noise an’ carousin’ an’ drinkin’ an’ hoodoo’in’, an’ me
payin’ fur it.
“‘Wal,’ sez I to myse’f, ‘I’ll jes’ turn dis thing into a Ash We’nesday
sho’ nuff, so I goes out an’ cuts down a ash tree an’ makes me a good,
lithe stick dat would knock a bull down, an’ den bounce back into yo’
han’s. Dat wuz fur de bredderin. Den I broke up a good ash-bar’l an’ made
de paddles handy fur de sisterin, an’ I sot ’em in de corner behin’ de
cup’ard.
“De night cum, but by dat time dey didn’t keer enuff fur me to ax me into
de feast. I wuz jes’ a common ole Baptis’ nigger. I waited till dey wuz
all dar, de sod-muthers in white apruns, candles burnin’ an’ dude niggers
an’ niggeresses frum town and ev’ry whar, all s’posin’ to be payin’ fur
a thing dat finally cum outen my pocket. I walked in an’ sot down by de
fire, but befo’ I got sot good, one of dem dude niggers put a insultment
on me.
“Dat suit me all right. I didn’t want to start de fight in my own
house—dat wa’n’t good manners—but soon es dat nigger put de insultment on
me, I wuz reddy.
“‘Frien’s, sez I, ‘I am a plain ole Baptis’ nigger, but es I onderstan’
it, dis am Ash We’nesday.’
“‘You bet it am, ole Moses,’ sez one of de dudes, ‘an’ it ain’t a good
place fur Baptists to eat—dey am liabul to hab de collect!’
“I didn’t see de p’int, but dey did, an’ all laf’d.
“‘Yes,’ sez I, ‘he mout, but he is mor’n apt to hab stumic enuff left
to read de burial sarvices over a few dudes,’ an’ I lit in. I’d locked
de do’ but fergot de winder; but I hearn tell arterwards dat only two
niggers got out of dar wid a soun’ head, an’ dey didn’t stop runnin’ till
Easter mo’nin’!
“I lit on de sod-muthers early in de game wid de staves of de ash bar’l
till dey wuz meet fur repentunce, an’ de nex’ mo’nin’ I sent ’em back
to town whar I foun’ dey all had husban’s livin’ dat dey had quit fur a
easier job. Wal, dey had to take ’em back.
“Now, boss, I wuz keerful not to hurt Sally an’ her mammy—dey wuz both
han’sum women, es I wuz sayin’.
“I wuz now rid of de sod-muthers, but how to git rid of Sally’s mammy wuz
de nex p’int. I’d figured dat out too, case es I said, she wuz a han’sum
’oman. De tacticks I used, boss, is whut’ll s’prize you.
“Bout de thud night when I had her alone for a while on de little porch
an’ we wuz waitin’ fur Sally to git supper, fur she had gone to wuck in
earnest arter she seed how handy I wuz wid de ash bar’l, sez I:
“‘A good meny men hab muther-in-laws dat am homely. I’m mighty proud of
mine,’ sez I, ‘she is so han’sum.’
“‘Why, Washin’tun!’ she sez, ‘does you really think so?’
“I seed it tickled her, an’ arter a while I slipped over closer an’ sed:
“‘An’ I nurver seed a muther-in-law wid sech b’utiful eyes as you is
got,’ an’ I took her han’.
“Dat wuz mor’n she cu’d stan’ on a col’ collar an’ you orter seed her
light out—light out an’ he’p git supper, too!
“I let it res’ at dat. I’ve noticed dat too many fo’ks plants dey truck
too fas’ in de spring. An’ at de same time I’ve nurver let a late frost
keep me frum believin’ it’ll be summer by an’ by.
“De nex’ night I sot out on de po’ch ag’in arter a hard day’s wuck an’ I
tuck my stan’ whar I wuz de night befo’ fur I knowed de ole doe allers
crosses de creek at de same place. Sho ’nuff, by an’ by heah she cum
_tipperty-tip—tipperty-tip_.
“An’ all she wanted wuz to ax me if I thought de weather wuz gwine ter
change! I sot up close ag’in an’ sed:
“‘Sum times a man makes a great mistake by marryin’ in too big a hurry.’
“‘How’s dat?’ she sed, tickled to death an’ nestlin’ up to me.
“‘Why,’ sez I, ‘he marries de gal an’ den he fin’s out dat whut ’ud suit
him bes’ wuz de muther-in-law—shoots at de doe an’ kills de fawn,’ sez I,
slippin’ my arm aroun’ her wais’.
“Up she jumps ag’in an’ goes up mad lak an’ big es a balloon.
“‘Ain’t you ’shamed of yo’se’f?’ sez she. ‘I’m gwine right in an’ tell
Sally.’
“I knowed she wouldn’t an’ I set back an’ chuckled. It wuz all wuckin’ to
suit me an’ I seed dar would soon be a complete separashun of de chu’ch
an’ de state.
“Now, boss, you’ll wonder des why I’d play es hefty an’ han’sum a ’oman
es she is sich a trick, but I ’cided dat one wife in de house am enuff in
dat place.
“De thud night I had it fixed. I knowed she’d gone off mad, but I knowed
a ’oman, arter one huggin’, is like a dog burryin’ a bone—he’ll leave it
fur awhile, but he’s sho to cum back to it ag’in! I jes’ waited an’ let
her cum back, fixin’ my plans. I tole Sally to set down in one corner of
de po’ch in de dark an’ keep quiet—dat I had a s’prize fer her to sho’
how her virtuous husban’ wuz bein’ inticed by de Philistine.
“Dat wuz enuff—she sot.
“I waited till dark fore I cum an’ den I stomped aroun’, washed my face
an’ han’s, an’ lit my pipe. An’ heah she cum _tipperty-tip_ an’ all she
wanted to kno’ wuz, _if de moon had riz_!
“Boss, I let her do de talkin’, fur she wuz ripe fur it, an’ ’bout de
time she tole me dat she lubbed me frum de fus’ an’ dat I orter married
her stead of Sally, I heerd a scufflin’ in de co’ner,—Sally riz up, dar
wuz much excitement an’ scatterment of hair an’ when it wuz over dar wuz
nobody on dat place but me an’ Sally, _an’ I owned her_.”
SOME BEAUTIFUL WOMEN OF THE SOUTH
[Illustration: MRS. PAUL LANSING
Versailles, Kentucky
_Buck, Washington_]
[Illustration: MISSES THEODORA AND MARGUERITE SHONTS
Twin daughters of Theodore P. Shonts, of Daphne, Alabama, Washington and
Panama]
[Illustration: MRS. WILLIAM BAILEY LAMAR
Monticello, Florida]
[Illustration: MISS OLIVE WIGGINS
Daughter of F. Lafayette Wiggins, Nashville
_Turner, Nashville_]
[Illustration: MRS. SYDNEY JOHNSTON BOWIE
Anniston, Alabama
_Buck, Washington_]
COLONIAL FOOTPRINTS
By J. K. Collins
“Ring down the curtain of to-day
And give the past the right of way,
Till fields of battle red with rust
Shine through the ashes and the dust,
Across the age and burn as plain
As glowing Mars through window pane.
How grandly glow like grenadiers,
These heroes of a hundred years!”
[Illustration: MARY WASHINGTON]
Our forefathers were great fighters and excelled the world as makers of
history, but unfortunately for us, they were not writers of it. When
a duty was done or a great victory gained it seemed not to demand the
attention from them that we of the present day think it deserved, but was
set aside with perhaps a brief record. It had to make way for new duties
demanded by the exigencies of the times.
While they carried the weight of the nation on their young shoulders,
they have left us only “shreds and patches” from which to deduce anything
like specific exactness of the manners and customs of those early days
of our great country. It is, therefore, difficult to elaborate the
conditions of the country and particularly the distinctive qualities
which made up the social life of those who evolved and produced, to us,
the best government in all the world.
The peculiar conditions of early times invest our greatest leaders with
additional interest and make the fact of their greatness stand out all
the more clearly. Schools were few and travel much restricted. Only
about thirty families had good libraries. To the women of that day
has been ascribed the honor of training the great men of the nation.
George Washington was only eleven years old when his father died. His
mother daily taught him from a manual of maxims which he preserved and
often consulted in after life. A French general, after a visit to Mary
Washington, said, “No wonder America produces such great men when they
have such mothers.”
Thomas Jefferson’s father died when he was fourteen. His mother was said
to have been unusually refined and intellectual, evincing much literary
taste in the art of letter-writing. This was the only field open to
a woman with literary proclivities at that time. It was from her he
inherited his intellect, and in the training of her boy all that was
best and noblest in her was brought to bear upon the formation of his
character. These two mothers of great men are not exceptions. History
records the names of many noble women who have devoted their lives to
their children, not only in Virginia, but elsewhere.
Virginians admired the king and the nobility but liked their own rights
better. They loved the pride and pomp of aristocracy, but this was only a
matter of taste. When it came to losing a freeman’s right they relegated
their aristocratic tastes to the background. They loved the solemn ritual
of the church. Governor Spottswood describes the Virginians of his time
as “living in gentlemanly conformity with the Church of England,” and
the famous old chapel, built in 1632, now familiarly called Old Bruton
Church, is consecrated by many hallowed associations. Here worshiped
the dauntless Spottswood, himself, as well as Lord de Botetourt, Lord
Dunmore and many others in a pew elevated from the main floor and richly
canopied. And here worshiped many men whose names are indissolubly bound
up with the conception of this grand commonwealth. The churchyard is the
place of sepulture of some of Virginia’s most distinguished men.
[Illustration: WILLIAM AND MARY COLLEGE]
Nearly all the great Virginians were descended from the Cavaliers.
Washington was the great-grandson of one of them, and Madison, Monroe,
the Randolphs, Richard Henry Lee, and others were also descendants of
royalists. Virginia succeeded in keeping out the importation of felons.
A number of redemptioners, or political prisoners, who were sold by the
English government to speculators, were traded in the colonies, but
misfortune being their only crime, they became in most cases useful
citizens.
The men of that time were fond of sport. Washington was ever an
enthusiastic fox hunter. Patrick Henry was devoted to the woods,
fields and streams; he also played the fiddle and danced with keenest
zest. Social life was ideal at that time. Each plantation was a small
principality and they vied with each other in hospitality. It was not
unusual for a carriage full of guests to arrive without warning, and
the visitors and their retinue were the recipients of the most lordly
hospitality for days and sometimes weeks. Card playing was much in
vogue, and under great provocation an oath or two was sometimes found to
be the only expression that could do the situation justice. It is said
Washington swore heartily at General Stephens for losing the battle of
Germantown on account of drunkenness.
The dance after supper went without saying, to the music of “the fiddlers
three.” It was a delight in which the stately Washington often indulged,
with, it may be shrewdly guessed, the belle of the ball for a partner. In
the hall of William and Mary College hangs a picture which represents him
dancing the minuet with Mary Cary. The Virginia Reel called for the whole
company. Flushed and breathless, full of laughter and fun they threaded
its mazes in the wee sma’ hours.
“Oh, the instruments are shattered and the strings are snapped in twain,
And the fiddles are forgotten and will never play again.
But above the stars eternal in their faded pinks and blues,
With the powder on their ringlets and the buckles on their shoes,
I shall see the beaux and sweethearts in the long procession kneel,
And their harps will play the music of the Old Virginia Reel.”
[Illustration: TAZEWELL HALL]
William and Mary College, the oldest of the American colleges except
Harvard, is situated in the old colonial capital, Williamsburg, sometimes
called The Middle Plantation. Before the college was burned the first
time it had many rare volumes marked with the coats of arms of royalty
and noblemen whose names were connected with its early days. Within
its walls were trained the youth of the eighteenth century who were to
consecrate their lives to the cause of liberty. The Reverend James Blair
was its founder and its first president. He went to London and unfolded
his scheme of Christianizing the Indians and educating the youth of
America. Queen Mary warmly approved of his plan. King William was equally
agreeable and gave an order for two thousand pounds sterling to be used
in the erection of the buildings. But when Seymour, the Attorney-General,
received the order to draw up the charter and pay the money, he was
enraged. The nation was engaged in an expensive war, he said, and
needed the money for other and better purposes—why was a college wanted
in Virginia, anyhow? Mr. Blair explained its purpose as being that of
preparing young men for the ministry, adding that the people of Virginia
had souls to save as well as the people of England. The idea struck
Seymour as particularly absurd and maudlin; his retort, historically
recorded, was: “Souls! ⸺ your souls! Make tobacco!”
[Illustration: BASSETT HALL]
The Phi Beta Kappa Society, the first fraternal society in this country,
was organized at William and Mary December 5th, 1776, and the first
meeting was held in the Apollo room at the Raleigh tavern.
Jefferson, the first Democrat, was in 1764, five years after Washington
had been happily married to Martha Custis, a gay young student at
Williamsburg, or “Devilsburg,” as he wrote of it, in a letter to a
friend, expressing himself as being “as happy last night as dancing with
Belinda in the Apollo room” could make him.
How close it brings our heroes, to know intimately their youthful
loves and pleasures! “One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.”
To the same chum, who seems to be in a like manner transfixed with
Cupid’s dart, he writes later: “Have you any glimmering of hope? How
does ⸺ do? Had I better stay here and do nothing or go down there and
do less? Inclination tells me to go, receive my sentence and be no
longer in suspense; but reason says, ‘If you go and your attempt proves
unsuccessful you will be ten times more wretched than ever!’——I hear Ben
Harrison has been to Wilton. Let me know his success.” Ben Harrison’s
success at Wilton, where he was courting Anne Randolph, a cousin of
Jefferson, was greater than his own, for she married him and had the
honor of being the wife of a signer of the Declaration of Independence
and a governor of Virginia. Jefferson’s sweetheart might have sat in like
high places if she had only smiled a little more. “Cupid lacks the gift
of prophecy and Fame will not tell her secrets till the time comes, for
the sweetest lips that ever smiled.” Lucy Grymes, a cousin, is said to
have been one of his sweethearts, also beautiful Mary Coles, the mother
of Dolly Madison. It is told of Washington that before he arrived at
wealth and distinction, he went courting Mary Cary and was asked out
of the house by her father, the old colonel, on the ground that his
daughter had been accustomed to ride in her own coach.
[Illustration: MONUMENT AT YORKTOWN]
The Duke of Gloucester Street in Williamsburg still holds much that is
interesting. The foundation of the old Capitol lies at one end and one
mile away at the other end still flourishes the old college, William
and Mary. The courthouse, designed by Sir Christopher Wren, bids fair
to last for generations yet. Across the green stands Tazewell Hall,
with its “ghost rooms high up under the eaves.” This was the home
of the Randolphs. Bassett Hall is on the other side and is noted as
having entertained Lafayette within its walls. Thomas Moore was also
entertained here. It was at this house he first saw the fireflies, which
he immortalized in his poem on the Dismal Swamp.
“And all night long by her firefly lamp,
She paddles her white canoe.”
Martha Washington’s kitchen is yet to be seen not far from Governor
Spottswood’s old Powder-Horn. Governor Dunmore’s ice house is still shown
to strangers. Dunmore was the last of the royal governors. Patrick Henry,
as was fitting, was the first American governor to take his seat in the
vice-regal palace which has now entirely disappeared to make way for a
model school.
YORKTOWN
There are two monuments at Yorktown to commemorate the surrender of
Cornwallis, and the old customhouse still stands, with moss-peaked roof,
thick walls, massive oaken doors and shutters. It is said to have been
the first customhouse erected in America.
In the colonial period, says a popular writer, it was the rendezvous
of the gentlemen of the town and country surrounding it. It was there
that the haughty young aristocrats took snuff, fondled their hounds
and probably talked over the last Assembly ball, and, mayhap, laughed
about the conquests made of their colleagues by the bright eyes of the
country-side belles.
There still stands an old weather-boarded mansion whose antique roof and
fireplaces set across the corners demand for it the reverence inspired
in us by a relic of bygone days. Here in the sitting room were drawn up
the articles of capitulation and surrender. It was historical long before
that, as being the country residence of Governor Spottswood. Here he held
his mimic court, entertaining in the most lavish and ostentatious manner
his knights of the Golden Horse Shoe. Not far away is the foundation
of a curious building said to have been a temple of worship built by
Governor Spottswood. The spectacular taste of the governor gives this
an appearance of truth which is borne up by the name of the surrounding
plantation. It is called Temple Farm.
PITHY POINTS FOR PONDERING PEOPLE
By William J. Burtscher
A dishonest man doesn’t care for honest criticism.
Don’t _stop_ to think if you can think without stopping.
Energy keepeth her eyes open twenty-four hours every day.
Life is a chain of duties. Discharge one, and another looms up ahead.
Do as you please as long as you please, as long as you please to do right.
It is hard for a man to hang to the religion that he hangs on the outside
of himself.
While the lazy man lies in bed dreaming of success, energy gets up and
hustles for it.
Some people are so busy grieving over being poor that they have no time
to begin to get rich.
Some men are so liberal in their criticism that they forget to compliment
the deeds that please.
It is easy to follow the path of an optimist on account of the sunshine
he leaves behind him.
Work is a lazy man’s enemy. So long as he loves not his enemy religion
abideth not with him.
When in Rome do as Rome does—not want you to do. Do as Rome ought to do,
or as right requires.
The rich man is seldom as thankful for his wealth as the hungry tramp
always is when a morsel of bread comes his way.
While some men are waiting for a rich relative to die and leave them a
fortune they could attend to business and make one.
A little man brags of his bravery when the danger is past. The man who is
really brave doesn’t need to brag. His friends do it for him.
HISTORY OF THE HALS
CHAPTER XVI
By John Trotwood Moore
[NOTE.—The History of this remarkable family of horses was begun in the
first number of _Trotwood’s Monthly_, and has proven to be so popular
that nearly all of the back numbers of the magazine have been bought up
and bound by the admirers of this great family of horses. Orders are
coming in daily, often as many as ten to twenty, for a complete set of
last year’s _Trotwood_. We regret, therefore, that we will be unable to
furnish back numbers much longer. This History will be continued during
the year, including the story of Brown Hal, Star Pointer, Mattie Hunter,
Hal Dillard, Old Brooks, Star Hal, Hal B., and many others now known to
fame. It will close with a beautiful tribute to the life and the career
of Edward F. Geers, the “Silent Man from Tennessee,” who is to the turf
world what Napoleon was to war.—Pubs. TAYLOR-TROTWOOD.]
THE REVERY RACE
Quadrupe dante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum.—_Virgil._
In days agone,
Upon that shore which mortals call the Unreturning Past,
What bursts of speed from gallant steed have come like bugle blast!
What battles have been fought and won, what names to fame been given,
What mighty shout has put to rout the thunder notes of heaven,
When, coming in his pride and scorn
The old horse won in days agone!
In days to come,
Upon that shore where Memory’s twilight skies hang o’er,
Oft will the old horse race as he has never raced before!
His silent ghost will come to post while spectral grandstands listen
To the noiseless beat of his phantom feet—as the silver moonbeams
glisten
On the gray-haired horseman who tells it o’er—
How the old horse won in days of yore!
—_John Trotwood Moore._
“Seeing an article in a turf paper about pacing horses being natural
swimmers,” remarked a friend to Trotwood a few days ago, “reminds me of
an experience I had a dozen years ago down in the piney woods of Alabama,
that convinced me that whether a pacer is a born swimmer or not, one
thing is certain, the trotting horse I was driving that February day
didn’t act like he was a South Sea Islander, by any means.
“You see,” he said, as a companionable crowd of horsemen gathered around
him, and passed around the cigar box, as a sign that a story was about
to begin, “I had been courting down in that state and made up my mind
that I wanted to marry a blue-eyed, pretty daughter of old Major Blank,
and I had about half way convinced the girl that she wanted to marry me,
when this infernal non-swimming horse had about upset the whole thing. I
hadn’t seen the girl for about a month, so I boarded the cars one bright
day in February for a short visit. I took precaution to get the best ring
I could find in Nashville within my means—I knew the fit of her finger
pretty well—and I was as dead certain of leaving that ring in Alabama on
the fourth finger of a dimpled hand as I am to-day that little Robert J.
could pace round a draft horse.
“I stopped at a small town, ten miles from where she lived in the
country, at the house of a friend of mine, for I had to hire a buggy and
drive through to the Major’s, as he lived off the railroad. According to
agreement, the young lady had written me a letter to that point, telling
me how glad they all would be to see me, accenting the “all,” and ending
up with a message that made my heart beat like a thumped horse, and
enclosing a bunch of violets tied with a few _deshabille_ strands of her
own sunset hair. By the way, this was in February as I remarked, but what
was the name of that poet that said, ‘love comes like a summer’s sigh?’
“Well, that letter made it July with me.
“I would have been a married man with an interesting family to-day,”
he remarked after a pause, with a sigh, “if that friend of mine hadn’t
been so everlastingly clever. He had a dish-faced trotter he had bought
up in Kentucky, at one of Shanklin’s sales, that could go a mile in
that Alabama sand in about five minutes, and do it with such a rip
and tear and splutter and dirt throwing that you would think he was
trotting ’round the world in eighty days. I had often bragged on the
beast, just to please my clerking friend, who thought I knew every
trotting horse personally, in the world, and now I got in to it by being
so complimentary. Nothing would do but I must drive that old, shying,
crow-hopping fool. And I had it to do. After I got him out of town he
quit shying at the tree shadows and the black-jack stumps on the road
side, and I thought I was getting along pretty well. Considering the fact
that I was looking into a pair of blue eyes all the way, and putting a
ring on an imaginary finger every mile I went, while the trusting hand to
which it was attached nestled coyly between my two big ones, and I smelt
the sweet perfume of violets in a wavy mass of auburn hair that nestled,
in my mind’s eye, on my breast, I got along without any other accident;
but was about to drive into a pretty rapid sheet of water in my dreaming,
and perhaps end my own and Old Crow’s—the horse’s—career at the same
time, when I heard a gruff voice with true Southern accent and a native
nonchalance, say:
“‘You doan’t wanter go in washin’ this early in the season, do you, sah?”
“Well, I didn’t, and I waked up in time to stop the fool horse and back
him out. The stranger watched me get out and then proceeded to tell me
what I hadn’t had sense enough to see before—that Raccoon Creek was on a
boom and Dead Deer Slough, into which I was driving, would swim a horse
most anywhere. Now, a slough, in the far South, is a low, marshy place
near the borders of a creek or lake, and, while generally dry in summer,
in winter it manages to get plenty of water from the overflowing creek or
lake nearby. This one ran directly across the road leading up to the foot
of the bridge spanning Raccoon Creek beyond, and, though the bridge was
partly under water, I could see it was all right and fully half of it, on
the highest curve, was clear of water. Moreover, the other part was built
on the bluff side of the creek and seemed to be entirely clear. So if I
could only get to the bridge I would be all right.
“‘You had better give it up to-day, sah, and wait till mornin’,’ said the
stranger, who appeared much interested in my movements. ‘The slough will
run down by then, and you can get on the bridge easy. If there are no
stoops in it’—I afterwards learned that stoops meant holes washed out by
the water—‘you will find no trouble getting over. I’ll take keer of you,
sah,’ he added, with true Southern hospitality, ‘for I want somebody to
play euchre with to-night. It’s been raining for five days, and I knew
old Rack would be scudding along, so I just rode down here to watch her,
sah.’
“I thanked him, but told him I was going over. I was young, boys, and the
picture of the old Major’s parlor with the big wood fire sending sparks
up the chimney and then dying down to adjust the shadowy light necessary
for the ring scene and the tableau act, was too much for my youthful head.
“‘But can that horse there swim?’ said the Southerner, with a more
serious expression. ‘It isn’t every horse that can, my young frien’, an’
you had better know what he can do before you go into this mud-hole, sah.’
“‘Oh, I’ll soon teach him,’ I said, with one of those laughs that a man
with more brass than sense is frequently caught indulging in. ‘He’ll have
to swim or drown and you know he’ll swim before he’ll do that.’
“But right there is where I failed to size up that slanting-headed
descendant of old Messenger.
“Well, the Southerner was very quiet and did not intrude his opinion
on me further. He sized me up about right and decided to let me go it.
The buggy was out of the question so I took old Crow out. Stripped him
of everything but the bridle and put the lap robe on his back to help
break the angularity of my seat. By the Southerner’s advice I pulled off
my pants and underclothing, tying them around my shoulders, thrust my
stockings in my upper coat pocket to keep them dry, tied my shoestrings
together and threw my shoes over my shoulders, mounted my steed and
spurred him with my trembling heels—for I was beginning to shake a
little—into the slough. The stranger told me to let the horse have the
bit and keep him to the right of a line of willows which he said skirted
the road. By no means was I to jerk the beast, but guide him gently to
right or left with the line.
“Right here, I want to explain to you that that horse had been listening
to us and had decided that now was the time for him to suicide—a thought
he had had in his mind for a year or two, I am sure. By doing the job
now he expected to kill two birds with one stone, and I was the other
bird—a jay at that—for, looking back at that roaring flood from the
standpoint of fifteen years’ more sense, I am sure nobody but an idiot
would ever have tried it. Well, we went in and I headed him for the
willows, and the water crept up to my feet, then to my knees and was soon
on the horse’s withers. Right here I expected to see him sail off with
me on his back, his tail streaming out, his head on the wave, his ears
laid back and his nostrils dilated and sending his steamy breath right
and left; but not much of a sail he made. I forgot to tell you he had
the longest neck I ever saw on a horse, but I didn’t know it was as long
as it was, or I’d never have gone in that slough. Why, that neck was a
telescope, and after he got me in up to the armpits he just lengthened
it out a notch or two above the waves whenever he wanted to. I am not
much on mathematics, but I saw that, as he then held it, it was fully six
inches higher than the top of my hat, and I imagined I saw the faintest
trace of a satanic grin on his under lip as he let her out another link
and looked back at me, as much as to say:
“‘Well, how do you like swimming?”
“I reached for my pocket knife to cut his throat, but found I didn’t even
have on my drawers, and just then the water gurgled up under my chin
and splashed in my ears and that brute winked his left eye as he let
out another notch in that old telescopic neck of his and walked along
like he was on dress parade. By this time we were half-way across, and
nothing but my nose was out. I was just thinking of getting up on his
back on my knees, when he stepped in a little washout and my head went
under like a cork. I turned loose everything to get air again, and was
swept off before I could say ‘Scat.’ I grasped a willow just as I heard
the stranger, who had been sitting on a big, sloping-shouldered gray Hal
pacer, hello to me to hold on, and his horse soon swam out to the willow
as naturally as if he had done it every day for a year. He circled in
about forty feet of water before reaching me, and, telling me to catch
his horse by the tail, he swam quietly by and I lost no time in doing as
he said and getting back to land. I lost my ten-dollar pants, but this
was more than offset by the hundred-dollars’ worth of common sense I had
tucked away in my head on the different ways in which horses swim.
“And that horse—well, we sat on the bank and watched that head go
leisurely across, lengthening out when it struck a washout and
contracting on the ridges, with that same ironical grin part—the ugliest
mouth I ever saw on a horse. At last he struck the bridge, clambered up,
shook himself like a wet dog, looked back to see if I was taking it all
in, and struck out to the Major’s on his own hook.
“But the worst was yet to come. Just as I landed I heard a buggy turn a
sharp bend in the road, drive up to where the Southerner and his horse
were pulling me out and—great Caesar!—there sat in the buggy old Major
Blank and the angel of my dreams. The girl shrieked and ducked her head
under the lap robe, while I jumped back in that slough to hide the
southern half of me, and tried to commit suicide by drowning, but my
youthful head was so corky I couldn’t keep it under water long enough.
The old Major drove off and started to his home by another route, the
kind gentleman fished me out again, more dead than alive and I went
home, with my new friend just in time to have a hard chill. I was sick
two weeks, during which time I got it pretty straight that my clerking
friend had been courting my blue-eyed beauty for six months himself, and
I will always believe that he loaned me that horse just to get me out of
the way. Anyway, three days afterwards he went down to the Major’s to get
the old horse, stayed all night and fixed the wedding day, while I was
swimming imaginary sloughs with my pulse at 105½.
“I got back home as quickly as I could, and now, when I go to buy a
horse, I never ask, ‘How fast can he go?’ but ‘How far can he swim?’”
And my bachelor friend struck up a whistle which sounded like “After the
Ball” and walked off.
* * * * *
“Very few people”, said Capt. Robert D. Smith, of Columbia, Tenn.,
“know that the late Gen. Wm. B. Bate, who died United States Senator
from Tennessee, told one of the most pathetic horse stories of the
war. General Bate was here before his death, attending the Confederate
reunion, and I reminded him of the incident and got him to relate it
again as it happened. I never saw him so much touched as when he told
again of the attachment of his horse, Black Hawk, for him, and the
animal’s pathetic death at Shiloh. General Bate is very modest and no
braver man ever lived; but I was there and saw the incident and can tell
you how it was. At the battle of Shiloh General Bate was then colonel of
the Second Tennessee. He had two horses which he used; one, an ordinary,
everyday horse which he rode on the march and other rough service; the
other was a magnificent black stallion—a thoroughbred and Hal horse—black
as a crow and as beautiful as you ever saw. He was a very stout horse,
not leggy as some thoroughbreds are, but symmetrical and shapely, and as
the General always took a lively interest in horses, this one had been
selected for him with great care and at a good deal of expense. By the
way, General Bate says he has since heard of a number of Black Hawk’s
sons and other descendants making most creditable races. This horse was
splendidly equipped and used by Colonel Bate only for parades, long
marches where stamina was needed and for battle. The night before the
battle of Shiloh the commoner horse was stolen, and the next morning at
daylight I remember what a superb looking object our colonel presented
on this magnificent animal, who looked fit to race for a kingdom or
charge over the guns of Balaklava.
“Men may talk about Gettysburg, Franklin and other battles of the war,
but I want to see no stubborner or bloodier fight than we had down
there amid the woods, around that little church and on the banks of the
Tennessee. You may know what kind of company we had to entertain us, when
I say that we struck Sherman’s line first. Time and again we drove them
back and as often they reformed and stubbornly contested every foot of
the way. The usual position of a colonel is thirty feet to the rear of
his regiment, and it was in that position that Colonel Bate first went
into the fight. The enemy gave way after the first hard fight—in fact,
I will always think we took them a little unawares, though I know that
both Generals Sherman and Grant did not think so, probably owing to the
fact that they were not at the front when we began the fight, not having
anticipated it to begin so soon—but arriving soon after they heard the
guns. At the next stand they gave it to us hot, and it was here our
lines were nearly broken and it was here that Colonel Bate had to put
himself in front of his regiment before they would charge with enough
determination to drive the boys in blue again. All this time the battle
was raging everywhere. We had driven the Federal army past Shiloh church,
and towards the river, where they finally made the desperate stand that
stopped us the next day after Buell’s arrival.
“Time and again Colonel Bate led us against Sherman’s brave boys—that
thoroughbred horse and rider always in front. Once he made us a short
speech just before we had to charge again, having been repulsed at the
first attempt. He said he wanted us only to follow him and he would not
take us where he would not go himself. This last fight was terrible.
Before we struck the enemy Colonel Bate was shot out of the saddle, the
men fell around us right and left and we charged on leaving all as they
fell.
“Now the remarkable thing was that horse. When Colonel Bate fell the
horse seemed to be at a loss what to do. But as the regiment swept on,
he quickly fell into his place just in the rear of the regiment and
followed us on into battle. We must have fought on for a half mile after
that, and it was a strange sight to see that horse following the regiment
as stately as if on dress parade, and it touched every man to see him
riderless.
“At the first opportunity an ambulance was sent back to find the colonel
and take him to the field hospital, some three miles in the rear. In the
confusion no one had thought of Black Hawk, but it seemed he had not
forgotten his brave rider, for he actually followed the path made by his
colonel, or rather those who carried him to the hospital—almost tracking
him by his blood—straight up to the hospital tent, and to the surprise of
Colonel Bate, who had been badly but not seriously wounded in two places,
one ball going through his shoulder, he poked his head in the tent door
and affectionately whinnied to his master while the surgeon was dressing
his wound. The next instant he walked a few paces in the weeds, staggered
and fell down dead. An examination showed what no one had noticed: he had
been badly wounded in several places, one of which proved fatal. General
Bate says he can still see that almost human look Black Hawk gave him and
that last pathetic whinny as he walked off to fall down and die.”
[Trotwood has heard Senator Bate relate this incident himself and
the last time he met the old warrior at dinner at the Maxwell House,
Nashville, Senator Bate related the above incident and discussed very
fondly the pedigree and value of the Southern breed of horses that could
produce such intelligent animals as Black Hawk.]
THE MEASURE OF A MAN
By John Trotwood Moore
[NOTE.—This story was begun in the November number of _Trotwood’s
Monthly_. It opened with a pioneer horse race at the Hermitage, in
Tennessee, in which Jack Trevellian, General Jackson and others had
entered their horses. Trevellian was a young captain who had been in the
Creek wars with General Jackson, and whom the old soldier loved very
much. Trevellian was in love with Juliette Templeton, a guest of General
Jackson. She had not promised to marry him, but was in love with him. She
came to the race accompanied by Colonel Bristow, also in love with her.
In the very graphic account of the race, the horse of an unknown boy,
the son of an outcast woman, won, for which he was about to be beaten
by those who had bet on the other horses, when Trevellian came to his
rescue, claiming the boy was a Trevellian. “It is his son!” said someone
to Juliette Templeton, and almost fainting she rode away from the field.]
CHAPTER V
An hour afterwards there was a halloo at the lower gate. It was answered
by the dogs, who rushed out, barring the way, and stopping the newcomer
at the entrance. According to pioneer custom, he sat on his horse till
the dogs had been called in by their master.
At a word from Trevellian they slunk back to their kennels.
“Good evening, Jack—you were not expecting me, eh?”
“I am just as glad to see you, General—ride in,” and he opened the gate
with a quick, nervous jerk. “I was just about to have the blues,” he
added—“yes, we all have them at times.”
The older man seemed to have guessed this, for he had dismounted and
hitched his horse, and, arm in arm, they walked up the path to the house.
“I promised Mrs. Jackson I’d not stay long, Jack, but as much as we love
them, boy, there are times when a man must talk to a man. Nothing else
will do,” and he slapped the other affectionately on the shoulder.
Both, for a while, were constrained, and each knew it. Trevellian knew
what the older man had come for, and the other knew that Trevellian had
guessed.
In endeavoring to be natural, the General was slightly embarrassed, a
thing so unnatural with him that he worried more as he recognized it.
But it convinced him how deeply interested he was in the affair before
him—how much he cared for the future of the young man at his side.
“That tobacco they raised at the Hermitage while I was away this year is
not the best in the world, Jack,” he said, passing his buckskin pouch to
the other, “but it will help us out.”
The two were soon smoking. It was plain that the older man had plans, and
that he would soon unfold them. Under any other circumstances his talk
would have been different—the day’s racing, the banterings, the jokes,
the oft-repeated tales of it, the speculation on this and that event, the
praise or condemnation of horse or jockey.
To-night it was different. They smoked in silence, and after a while the
General said:
“I heard from Washington to-day.”
Trevellian looked up quickly—expectantly.
“Not about Pensacola,” went on the other, “but the treaty with the
Creeks. I am directed by the Secretary of War to conclude it, and I will
soon meet them at Ft. Jackson. I’ll want you to go with me—of course—and
the First Regiment.” He stopped and tapped the young man lightly on the
arm:
“And that’s not all the troops I’ll slip into that vicinity. I’ve a good
excuse—there has been no reply to my letter concerning the landing of
British troops at Pensacola, and the treachery of Spain in permitting it,
and I’ll take silence for consent, and with the troops in the forts and
on the frontier I’ll order your regiment in and hold all in good striking
distance of that nest of Spanish snakes. And we’ll strike, Jack—we’ll
strike!”
He arose and began to pace the room.
“I’ll not stay tethered while Spain permits our enemy to use her harbor
to shelter them. What do they know at Washington, a thousand miles away,
with their ears sealed for fear they’ll have another war on their hands?
The government—all governments are abstract things, at best. It is the
men in them that count—the concrete agents who carry out the things
to be done, and there are things every man is called on to solve for
himself, both in war and in life—there are times when the general is the
government, and if he fails to rise to the occasion he is a flunk and a
failure.”
He was still walking around the room, talking more to himself than to
Jack.
“Now, the situation is this: I know. The government doesn’t want to
know. It’s my business to fight and whip the foes of my country. It’s
my government’s to keep out of more than one fight at a time. That’s
all right—but when I can kill two bears with one ball, it’s better than
killing one of them and wounding the other. The British are swarming in
Pensacola. They are our enemy, and once securely entrenched there they
will entrench from the Rio Grande to Mobile Bay. Then it will be too
late. In driving them from Pensacola I’ll drive out Spain at the same
time and hold it so securely that Spain may bluff for a while, but will
finally give in—and Florida will be ours.”
And so he smoked and walked, planning it all out, and in an hour it was
arranged, and the General grew calmer and sat down again.
“Now, while we are gone, the election will come off. To-day you had
Bristow beat—”
“_You_ had him beat, General,” the younger man smiled for the first time.
The General gave his first chuckle. The ice was broken.
“But now—” began the General.
“I am out of the race, sir,” said Trevellian, rising. “I shall so
announce it to-morrow. I am going with you and fight,” he added.
The General arose quickly: “No, you are not out of it, Jack—not while I
am about.”
“What do you mean, General?” He came over and stood face to face with the
older man.
“Let us be seated,” said the other. “I will go into detail. Bristow
remained with us for supper to-night—”
The younger man was still silent.
“But first, Jack, shall I tell you all?”
Jack nodded.
“It was a little thing—perhaps I should not speak of it. Mrs. Jackson
says”—and he smiled—“that for an old Indian fighter I am taking on a lot
of romance since I returned, and that you two have caused it. Well, my
heart is in this thing, and you know it. But I loved Templeton and I love
you, my boy.”
The other bowed his head reverently.
“The girl loves you, Jack; I know it. I know when a woman loves. She is
wretched to-night. Why, didn’t I see her when she came home—in spite of
Bristow, everybody—everything—with her face set like a flint monument in
grief. To-night she was weeping in her room. Mrs. Jackson told me—by God,
but you have broken her heart, and you must tell me, Jack.”
Jack arose hastily and walked the room in silent agitation. At last he
stopped and stood before the other.
“I cannot, my General—my God, I cannot! Blame me, cut me off from your
esteem and friendship as I am already cut off from hers. This thing is
between me and my Maker.
“No man,” said the General, rising, “has the right to ask of you things
which are between you and your God. I do not want to know—and this —is—”
“And I cannot tell you anything, my friend—my more than friend.”
He stood before his father’s picture—the Trevellian portrait that hung
above them on the wall. He bowed his head in the agony of it all.
“I have never kept anything from you before, and you know how hard it is
for me to do this, but—”
The other man was walking the room. He turned and said:
“Well, then, I will tell you what happened. Bristow has said enough for
me to challenge him—said it at my table,” and his face flushed with the
purpling rage which could so quickly mount to it. “My friends’ fights are
my own, Jack—you know that—”
“You have not challenged him, General?” and Jack paled suddenly.
“I will to-morrow—as soon as Patton Anderson can take him a note. I’ll
challenge him, and I’ll kill him.” He came up closer to Jack.
“It’s not you and what he said I’m thinking of. You only give me the
chance. I’ve been wanting to kill him ever since that cowardly night.”
“You could not prove it before a court-martial, General.”
“No, d—n him—no—I wish I could. But there are things a man knows he
cannot prove by the red-tape letter of the law which—no—no—he is too
smart to be caught. But I know it and you know, and every man of sense,
that he treacherously instigated and led the mutiny of those starved and
homesick troops in the Creek wilderness. When—ha, Jack, you know it was
he!”
The General was getting hot.
“But you—you stopped it,” smiled the other.
“Yes—with a rifle in their path, and I wish I had shot him then. No, I
am not fighting your battles, young man. You may take care of yourself,
as I said to him—I am going to kill him for instigating that mutiny when
the life of the army and the fate of the war hung on our fighting it to a
finish.”
“But you will not challenge him, General—you must promise me you will
not.”
The General turned purple with anger—his eyes flashed indignantly into
those of the younger man. He stuck his bony finger in Jack’s face and
fairly shrieked:
“D—n you, Jack, and your sissy, foolish silence! Yes, sir, I will, unless
you tell me you are guilty—that you are not worth Juliette’s love—that
the boy is your son. And if you are silent, why then—”
“And if I am silent, General, why then you will believe I am guilty and
let this thing pass?”
The General nodded.
“General, I must—I must—I cannot—I must be silent.”
The General looked up.
Jack’s eyes were wet. The General grasped his hand silently.
“By God, you are not guilty, Jack—you will tell me in your own time. I
said I’d kill him, but—well, you’ve spoiled my plans. I’ll let him go for
your sake.”
“For my sake, General, and I swear to you you shall one day know. Let him
have the office—let him have the girl. I’ll have my sacred promise to the
dead and my manhood left—that I’ll never part with.”
[_To be continued_]
[Illustration: MEN OF AFFAIRS]
It is quite fitting that the author of _Makers of Virginia History_
should be chosen as Director of the Division of History, Education and
Social Economy of the Jamestown Exposition. Mr. Julian Alvin Carroll
Chandler brings to his work also an experience of more than thirteen
years’ work in the educational field, having been instructor at William
and Mary College, Richmond College, Morgan College, Baltimore, and
president of the Woman’s College, Richmond. Mr. Chandler holds degrees
from William and Mary, Richmond College and Johns Hopkins and has
long been an authority on Southern history, being an active member of
the Virginia Historical Society, American Historical Association and
Society for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities; and having written
_Representation in Virginia_, _History of Suffrage in Virginia_, _Makers
of Virginia History_ and _Makers of American History_ (joint author).
Since the year 1904 he has been editor for the publishing house of
Silver, Burdett & Co.—the only Southern man who is editor of a New York
publishing house.
[Illustration: J. A. C. CHANDLER]
Mr. Chandler’s interest in the work of the Jamestown Exposition and his
thorough knowledge of the ground and departments covered led to his
being asked to take charge of a special department and he received a
year’s leave of absence from his publishing house in order to accept the
position. His plans include a splendid historical exhibit of the sources
of history as shown in rare documents and letters, valuable relics,
oil paintings and statuary relating to the beginnings of our country;
an educational exhibit, showing the best in our schools throughout
the country, with especial stress upon the schools of the South.
Consolidation of schools; grading of rural schools; the establishment of
county high schools and county agricultural schools, teaching of manual
training and domestic science will be fully brought out in this exhibit
and will contain much of practical assistance to teachers in all parts
of the country. Mr. Chandler’s indefatigable efforts and tireless energy
will make this department a thoroughly interesting one. He is a young
man, having been born in Guineys, Virginia, in 1872.
* * * * *
Joseph Forney Johnston, who was elected Alternate United States Senator
in the Democratic Primary in Alabama, in August last, was born in Lincoln
county, North Carolina, in 1843. He entered the Confederate Army, as a
private, in April, 1861, served until the war closed, was wounded four
times, and rose to the rank of captain. After the war closed, he returned
to Alabama, where he had been studying law when the war commenced. On
being admitted to the bar in 1866, he practiced law at Selma until he
removed to Birmingham, in 1884, to accept the presidency of a bank. He
continued in the banking business until he was elected governor in 1896.
[Illustration: JOSEPH F. JOHNSTON]
Whilst in Selma, he lead the movement which overthrew Republican rule,
and served his party many years as chairman of county, congressional and
state committees. He never held any office, and never sought any, until
he became a candidate for governor.
In the panic of 1893, he was one of the factors that averted financial
disaster to Birmingham. He was one of the organizers and first president
of the Sloss Iron & Steel Company; so that when he became governor he
had behind him large business experience, and a wide knowledge of the
conditions and resources of Alabama.
He was nominated for governor in 1896, in one of the most exciting
campaigns the state ever witnessed, and in spite of the opposition of the
railroads, great corporations and money power.
When he became governor he found a large deficit in the state treasury,
the public schools languishing and the public credit impaired. When he
quit office, after serving two terms, the deficit had been wiped out, the
terms of the public schools largely extended, more competent teachers
secured by wise laws compelling examinations, the credit of the state at
the highest point ever reached, and the public service the most efficient
in the history of the state. Every department of the state government had
lasting impression made upon it by the firmness of his grip; the laws and
policies he established, though severely criticised at the time, have
remained, through adverse administrations, untouched, and stand yet as
monuments to his justice and sagacity. We find from his record that he
began ten years ago the fight on graft that is now sweeping the country;
that he has a mailed fist that does cheerful and effective battle with
corrupt interests and all interests that conflict with the laws and with
the rights of the public, and that he can serenely stand under fire until
an ultimate victory appears out of the smoke of battle.
When we consider Mr. Johnston’s past services, his indomitable spirit,
his unvarying regard for the public interest throughout his entire
career, his fearlessness, aggressiveness and candor, his large experience
in practical affairs, as well as American politics, it is not difficult
to see why the people have chosen him for successive honors.
It is rare that dominant qualities of the kind possessed by Governor
Johnston are coupled with a personality so genial and winning and so rare
a faculty for attaching warm friendships. The boy released from the Army
of Northern Virginia, with his five scars, courageously leaving the home
of his fathers to begin life in Alabama with a capital stock consisting
of a mule and wagon and a box of tobacco, was no more friendly, no more
kind-hearted and approachable than is now this man of affairs and broad
renown, who has been chosen by the democrats of Alabama for succession to
the United States Senate.
* * * * *
One of the heroes of the battle of San Jacinto, that victory won by sheer
force of despair, was General Edward Burleson, who commanded the center
at that famous encounter with the blood-thirsty Santa Anna. Subsequently,
when the little republic of the Lone Star was added to the gallery of
nations General Burleson was made Commander-in-Chief of the army and
was one of the early vice presidents of the republic. Originally from
North Carolina, General Burleson removed in early youth to Tennessee and
followed Jackson on his campaign which ended at New Orleans, serving as
one of “Old Hickory’s” lieutenants. This experience made him immensely
valuable to Sam Houston. The last legislature of Texas placed a handsome
portrait of this pioneer public servant upon the walls of its magnificent
capital amidst a goodly array of great and good men whose efforts lifted
Texas to her present proud position among the commonwealths of the union.
[Illustration: A. S. BURLESON]
General Burleson’s son, Major Edward Burleson, was also a soldier of
the young republic and helped to frame its constitution. He settled at
the head of the lovely San Marcos river and there the subject of this
sketch, Albert Sidney Burleson, was born on the third of June, 1863. His
father was away fighting for the Confederate cause at that time, as were
five of his mother’s brothers—one, Fergus Kyle, a captain in the Terry
Rangers. It would seem that young Burleson was pre-ordained to be either
a soldier or a statesman, with chances more in favor of the former than
the latter. After graduating from the State Agricultural and Mechanical
College and from Baylor University (founded by his cousin, Reverend
Rufus C. Burleson), he decided on the law, taking his degree at the
State University, and serving as Assistant City Attorney at Austin for
six years. He next served four years as District Attorney and was then
elected to Congress. He is now serving his fourth term at Washington,
where he has served his state ably and well.
Last winter Mr. Burleson was put on the appropriation committee and
has secured important appropriations for his state, among them being
appropriations for experiments in exterminating Johnson grass and the
boll weevil; experimental stations for the cultivation of tobacco and
tea; an allowance of ten thousand dollars yearly for the maintenance of
a School of Mines at the State University; laws enabling Confederate
Veterans who took part in the Mexican and Spanish wars to enter National
Soldiers’ Homes; dam at El Paso (secured in conjunction with the efforts
of Congressman Smith), thereby making Texas a participant in the
appropriations for the reclamation of arid lands; the reimbursement of
nearly half a million dollars for monies expended by Texas in protecting
her frontier from Indian depredations.
Mr. Burleson is an expert on agricultural matters and was a member of
the agricultural committee for two terms. He is also the author of the
Cotton Statistics Law, by which the control of the cotton market has been
wrested from the stock exchange, and the regulation of prices placed
in the hands of the farmers. It is natural and right that this law, so
far-reaching in its benefits, should be enacted through the efforts of a
representative of our leading cotton state.
It is unnecessary to add that Mr. Burleson is possessed of a wonderful
persistence and tireless energy which enable him to accomplish everything
he undertakes. He takes his politics seriously and he never stops
working. He is a forceful debater and makes a dramatic speech, having
the eloquence of a man who believes what he says. He is noted not only
for this convincing earnestness, but for the absolute accuracy of all
his statements and his thorough mastery of every point he presents. He
has, withal, a vast store of characteristic Western stories and his jolly
wit, coupled with his loyalty to his friends, makes him one of the most
popular of congressmen.
TRANSITION
The rose leaves fall on Summer’s pulsing breast,
In crimson showers they’re lightly blown along;
The south winds rock the blue bird’s dainty nest
Filled to the brim. Glad is the streamlet’s song.
An empty nest sways on a leafless bough;
Hushed is the gurgling laughter of the stream;
And by the garden path a folded rose
Shuts closely in its heart an unborn dream.
_Beth Slater Whitson._
FOREST FALLS
By C. D. Robinson
Nature shows her power in the waterfall, just as in the daisy and violet
she shows her grace and beauty.
One of the several objects of curiosity and admiration to those who visit
South Georgia is Forest Falls, near Whigham, a town on the Atlantic Coast
Line Railway, in the new county of Grady. A stream of clear, sparkling
water rushes over a cliff and falls into a huge sink nearly a hundred
feet below, where, instead of flowing on in its precipitated direction,
it immediately steals away into the earth as if endowed with life and
seeking refuge beneath monstrous rocks and in the depths of a bed of sand
washed white by the water’s continual dash in shouts of victory.
[Illustration: FOREST FALLS]
A few hours at Forest Falls is a midsummer dream whose refreshing
delights last indelibly. The walls of the sink are splendid transcendent
beauties, robed in richest green, with which nature decks her favorites.
The only way to reach the foot of the falls is adown the walls of this
immense lime sink by following artificial foot-paths, clinging to trees
and roots until the cool, refreshing spray of the falls defies your
approach, which defiance is really a temptation on a warm summer day.
The riotous music of the falls, mingling with enraptured cadence of
singing birds, swinging branches and rustling leaves overhead would alone
charm and enchant the spectator, but the rocks and cliffs and their
delicate draperies of ferns and vines outstrip the imagination.
The most appropriate time to enter the sink is at the noon hour, when old
Sol hangs a bow of richest colors in the falls, when the observer stands
in a ray of sunlight that floods the deep, verdant well from the bottom
of which he peers upward at the swaying branches of trees that lean over
the edge of this strange receptacle.
SOME SOUTHERN WRITERS
IRWIN RUSSELL
By Kate Alma Orgain
This poet was born in Port Gibson, Mississippi, and was among the first
of the Southern writers to recognize the possibilities of negro dialect
and character in poetry and fiction, and to picture in poetry the unique
relation between the Southern slave and his master.
It is not surprising that there is no general knowledge of this gifted
writer, for he passed away after a brief struggle with life, leaving
only one collection of poems, which was published after his death by the
Century Company, in 1888. Irwin Russell’s grandfather was a Virginian,
who moved west to Ohio. Here the father of Irwin was born. He married a
New York lady, and going South he settled in Port Gibson, where Irwin
and two other children were born. At the outbreak of the Civil War,
Irwin’s father cast his lot with the Confederacy, and after the war sent
the boy to St. Louis University in St. Louis, conducted by the Jesuit
Fathers. Here he became a diligent student, and his young friends called
him a “walking encyclopedia.” He also gave evidence of fine mathematical
powers. After graduation he returned to Mississippi and began the
practice of law. He was in Port Gibson during the yellow fever epidemic
in 1878, and he remained through the whole dreadful tragedy of sickness,
serving everywhere as needed, a devoted nurse. He never fully rallied
from the fearful strain and the harrowing scenes through which he passed,
for he was, says W. W. Baskerville, “that rare union of bright mind with
frail body through which the keenest appreciation and most exquisite
sensibility are developed.”
[Illustration: IRWIN RUSSELL]
His father, Dr. William Russell, who had also remained in Port Gibson
during the scourge, staying nobly at his post of duty, sank under the
strain and died.
This left young Russell entirely dependent upon himself. Joel Chandler
Harris says: “Russell always had warm personal friends from whom he could
command everything that affection could suggest.” Going to New York, he
took some literary matter to Charles Scribner’s Sons, who received him
with great personal kindness and encouraged him to adopt the profession
of authorship.
The climate, however, was too severe to allow him to work in New York
and he fell ill with a low fever. He determined to return to the South
and before he was quite recovered, set out to work his passage on a boat
bound for New Orleans. He arrived in port very weak and almost penniless,
but secured employment on the _Times_, and with characteristic disregard
of health or personal comfort, threw himself, heart and soul into his
work.
Although young, Russell gave remarkable evidence of training in the best
of literature. He gave his work hard, painstaking study, and his insight
into the peculiarities and pathos and poetry of the negro character was
truly wonderful.
Thomas Nelson Page says: “Personally I owe him much. It was the light of
his genius, shining through his dialect poems that led my feet in the
direction I have since tried to follow.”
Dr. C. A. Smith says: “The appearance of ‘Christmas Night in the
Quarters’ meant that Southern literature was now become a true
reproduction of Southern conditions.”
Joel Chandler Harris says: “Irwin Russell’s negro character studies rise
to the level of what, in a large way, we term literature. I do not know
where there could be a more perfect representation of negro character
than his operetta, ‘Christmas Night in the Quarters.’ It is inimitable.”
Beginning with the arrival of the negroes who are coming to “Uncle Johnny
Booker’s Ball,” this poem says:
“Some take the path with shoes in hand,
To traverse muddy bottom-land:
Aristocrats their steeds bestride—
Four on a mule, behold them ride.
And ten great oxen draw apace
The wagon from ‘de oder place,’
With forty guests, whose conversation
Betokens glad anticipation.”
Arrived at the scene of merriment the dance is preceded by a prayer by
“Brudder Brown,” who takes the middle of the floor to “beg a blessin’ on
dis dance.”
“O Mahsr! let dis gath’rin’ fin’ a blessin’ in yo’ sight!
Don’t jedge us hard fur whut we does—you knows it’s Chris’mus night;
An’ all de balunce ob de yeah we does as right’s we kin.
Ef dancin’s wrong, O Mahsr; let de time excuse de sin!
“We labors in de vineyard, wu’kin’ hard an’ wu’kin’ true;
Now, shorely you won’t notus, ef we eats a grape or two,
An’ takes a leetle holiday—a leetle restin’ spell,—
Bekase, nex’ week, we’ll start in fresh an’ labor twicet as well.
“Remember, Mahsr,—min’ dis now,—de sinfulness ob sin
Is ’pendin’ ’pon de spirit whut we goes an’ does it in:
An’ in a righchis frame ob min’ we’s gwine to dance an’ sing,
A feelin’ like King David, when he cut de pigeon-wing.
...
“You bless us, please, sah, eben ef we’s doin’ wrong to-night;
Kase den we’ll need de blessin’ more’n ef we’s doin’ right;
An’ let de blessin’ stay wid us, until we comes to die,
An’ goes to keep our Chris’mus wid dem sheriffs in de sky!”
...
“The rev’rend man is scarcely through,
When all the noise begins anew.
And with such force assaults the ears,
That through the din one hardly hears
Old fiddling ‘Josey’ sound his ‘A’,
Correct the pitch, begin to play.”
Then the dance begins.
“_S’lute yo’ pardners!_—scrape perlitely—
Don’t be bumpin’ ’gin de res’—
_Balance all!_—now, step out rightly;
Alluz dance yo’ lebbel bes’.
_Fo’wa’d foah!_—whoop up, niggers!
_Back ag’in!_—don’t be so slow!—
_Sw-i-i-ing cornahs!_—min’ de figgers!
When I hollers, den yo’ go.
_Top ladies cross ober!_
Hol’ on, till I takes a dram—
_Gemmen solo!_—yes, _I’s_ sober—
Cain’t say how de fiddle am.
_Hands around!_—hol’ up yo’ faces,
Don’t be lookin’ at yo’ feet!
_Swing yo’ pardners to yo’ places!_
Dat’s de way—dat’s hard to beat
_Sides fo’w’d!_—when yo’s ready—
Make a bow as low’s you kin!
_Swing acrosst wid opp’site lady!_
Now we’ll let you swap ag’in:
_Ladies change!_—shet up dat talkin’;
Do yo’ talkin’ arter while!
_Right an’ lef’!_—don’t want no walkin’—
Make yo’ steps, an’ show yo’ style!
“And so the ‘set’ proceeds—its length
Determined by the dancers’ strength;
And all agree to yield the palm
For grace and skill to ‘Georgy Sam,’
Who stamps so hard, and leaps so high,
‘Des watch him!’ is the wond’ring cry—
‘De nigger mus’ be, for a fac’,
Own cousin to a jumpin’-jack!’
On, on the restless fiddle sounds,
Still chorused by the curs and hounds;
Dance after dance succeeding fast,
Till supper is announced at last.
That scene—but why attempt to show it?
The most inventive modern poet,
In fine new words whose hope and trust is,
Could form no phrase to do it justice!
When supper ends—that is not soon—
The fiddle strikes the same old tune;
The dancers pound the floor again,
With all they have of might and main;
Old gossips, almost turning pale,
Attend Aunt Cassy’s gruesome tale
Of conjurers, and ghosts, and devils,
That in the smoke-house hold their revels;
Each drowsy baby droops his head,
Yet scorns the very thought of bed:—
So wears the night, and wears so fast,
All wonder when they find it past,
And hear the signal sound to go
From what few cocks are left to crow.”
In the wee sma’ hours near daylight Uncle Booker sings the story of the
first banjo.
“‘Dar’s gwine to be a’ oberflow,’ said Noah, lookin’ solemn—
Fur Noah tuk de ‘_Herald_,’ and he read de ribber column—
An’ so he sot his hands to wuk a-cl’arin’ timber-patches,
An’ ’lowed he’s gwine to build a boat to beat de steamah _Natchez_.
Ol’ Noah kep’ a-nailin’ an’ a-chippin’ an’ a-sawin’;
An’ all de wicked neighbors kep’ a-laughin’ and a-pshawin’;
But Noah didn’t min’ ’em, knowin’ whut wuz gwine to happen:
An’ forty days an’ forty nights de rain it kep’ a-drappin’.
Now, Noah had done cotched a lot of ebry sort o’ beas’es—
Ob all de shows a-trabelin’, it beat ’em all to pieces!
He had a Morgan colt an’ sebral head o’ Jarsey cattle—
An’ druv ’em ’board de Ark as soon’s he heered de thunder rattle.
“Den sech anoder fall ob rain! it come so awful hebby,
De ribber riz immejitely, an’ bu’sted thro’ de lebbee;
De people all wuz drownded out—’sep’ Noah an’ de critters,
An’ men he’d hired to work de boat—an’ one to mix de bitters.
...
“Now, Ham, de only nigger whut wuz runnin’ on de packet,
Got lonesome in de barber-shop, an’ c’u’dn’t stan’ de racket;
An’ so, fur to amuse he-se’f, he steamed some wood an’ bent it,
An’ soon he had a banjo made—de fust dat wuz invented.
“He wet de ledder, stretched it on; made bridge an’ screws an’ aprin;
An’ fitted in a proper neck—’twuz berry long an’ taprin’;
He tuk some tin, an’ twisted him a thimble fur to ring it;
An’ den de mighty question riz: how wuz he gwine to string it?
“De ’possum had as fine a tail as dis dat I’se a singin’;
De ha’rs so long and thick an’ strong,—des fit for banjo-stringin’;
Dat nigger shaved ’em off as short as washday dinner graces;
An’ sorted ob ’em by the size, f’om little E’s to basses.
“He strung her, tuned her, struck a jig,—’twuz ‘Nebber min’ de wedder,”—
She soun’ like forty-lebben bands a-playin’ all togedder;
Some went to pattin’; some to dancin’; Noah called de figgers;
An’ Ham he sot and knocked de tune, de happiest ob niggers!
“Now, sence dat time—it’s mighty strange—dere’s not de slightes’ showin’
Ob any ha’r at all upon de ’possum’s tail a-growin’;
An’ cur’i’s, too, dat nigger’s ways: his people nebber los’ ’em!—
Fur whar you finds de nigger—dar’s de banjo an’ de ’possum!”
...
The night is spent; and as the day
Throws up the first faint, fresh flash of gray,
The guests pursue their homeward way;
And through the field beyond the gin.
Just as the stars are going in,
See Santa Claus departing—grieving—
His own dear land of cotton leaving.
His work is done; he fain would rest
Where people know and love him best.
He pauses, listens, looks about;
But go he must: “his pass is out.”
So, coughing down the rising tears,
He climbs the fence and disappears.
Regarding the merits of Irwin Russell’s verses one critic says: “They
have all a swinging gait, and you can hear the rythmical pattering of the
feet, and see the swaying of the darky figures in the walk round as you
read.”
Russell declared the pathos and humor in the character of the real
old-fashioned negro of the South afforded an inexhaustible amount of
material for both prose and poetry.
Like Sidney Lanier, Russell was passionately fond of music, and became a
remarkably skillful performer on the banjo.
He died at the early age of twenty-six: suffering and sorrow and poverty
were his till the last. The brief struggle ended in New Orleans, leaving
his beautiful contributions to Southern dialect poetry for our heritage.
TWELFTH NIGHT REVELS
By Jane Feild Baskin
Of all the so-called lighter plays of Shakespeare, there is none,
perhaps, which has a greater charm of its own than “Twelfth Night; or,
What You Will.” There is in its droll humor a spiciness, a piquancy,
unsurpassed by any of the great dramatist’s own productions or those of
his contemporaries. Open the volume where you will, and mingle for a time
with the fantastic revelers of the play—what mirth, what laughter, what
drollery is here! The spirit of the “Twelfth Night” is rampant. But we
can better appreciate the aptness of the title if we see for ourselves
the merry-making which of old universally prevailed at that season. In
the modern work-a-day world of the present, but scant time is allotted
that highest and holiest joy of the Christmastide, and long before
“Twelfth Night,” which falls upon the sixth of the new month, we have
soberly resumed the accustomed round of daily duties. From the busy,
bustling world of to-day it is refreshing to turn back to the past again,
and lose ourselves in the joyous abandon of the old-time festival.
It is “Twelfth Night” in “Merrie England” in the days of the long ago,
and the Christmas festivities have lingered on to find their culmination
in the revels of this night. Truly we find here none of our modern haste
in returning to the prosaic realities of life, and unconsciously we
imbibe some of the mirth-prevailing spirit. How gay the shops in their
holiday garb, and what a goodly store of frosted cakes the confectioner
displays! It fairly makes one’s mouth water to see them, and catch a
faint whiff of their spicy fragrance, for these are the “Twelfth Night”
cakes of all sorts and sizes that will find their way into every home
from the highest to the lowest. That little lad turns away regretfully
from the huge frosted creation of the baker’s skill to the wee modest one
of which his few jingling pence will soon make him the proud possessor,
and then gives way good-naturedly to the bustling dame who makes a
judicious selection from the varied assortment; and so the happy throng
moves in and out, for “Twelfth Night” would scarce be “Twelfth Night”
without the cake, the crowning glory of the feast.
The season brings a strange mingling of mirth and superstition and
reverence. The smallest lad is familiar with its origin, and can tell
the story of the three wise men who journeyed from afar over plain and
mountain, until, led by the wondrous star in the East, they knelt beside
the cradle of the infant King and worshiped Him. The wealthier class
bring their gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh to place upon the
altar, as did those wise men of old, and the humble rustic invokes a
blessing upon his harvest fields.
At dusk the farmer gathers around him his friends and servants, and
together the strange little procession makes its way across the freshly
turned sod to where the young wheat is beginning to spring up. Here, on
the highest part of the ground, twelve small fires and one large one
are kindled. Cider circulates freely while they drink to the health of
the company and to the success of the future harvest, and a fantastic
circle gathers around the larger fire to shout and halloo until the
welkin rings, and the answer is borne back on the night wind from all the
neighboring hillsides where similar fires glimmer dimly in the distance.
This ceremony completed, the merry company return home again, where the
housewife and her maids have been busily preparing for the evening’s
festivities. The table fairly groans under its weight of meats and
puddings, and cakes with caraways, and pitchers of sparkling cider and
ale, while a huge frosted cake with a hole through the center occupies
the position of honor. After supper a queer ceremony takes place. The
company follow the bailiff, or keeper of oxen, to the wain-house, where
the master fills a cup with strong ale, and, standing before the finest
and largest of the oxen, pledges him a curious toast. He then produces
the big cake with the hole in the center, and places it upon the ox’s
horn. The ox is tickled to make him toss his head, and if he throw the
cake behind him, it is considered the mistress’ perquisite, but if
before, the bailiff claims the prize. More sport of the same kind follows
amidst the laughter and shouts of the rustics assembled, and then the
boisterous crowd returns home once more to find the doors fast-barred;
nor can they gain admittance from the fair ones within until they have
earned it with rollicking song and jest. Once inside a scene of mirth
and jollity ensues, and all too quickly the moments speed, for care is
forgotten in the joyous abandon of the present.
In the southern villages a friendly, jovial crowd make their way to the
orchard and encircle the best-bearing tree. In sparkling ale they drink a
toast, chanting in joyous unison,
“Here’s to thee, old apple tree,
Whence thou mayst bud and whence thou mayst blow,
And whence thou mayst bear apples enow.
Hats full! Caps full!
Bushel, bushel, sacks full,
And our pockets full, too. Huzza!”
How lustily the shout rings out on the evening air, and then the merry
company return with empty pitchers, only to be greeted by shouts of
laughter from behind the fast-closed doors. Just a faint whiff of the
goodly store within, and the tantalizing demand to guess what is on the
spit. This, of course, is some bit or dainty not likely to be thought
of, and when, after many random hits and freely interchanged jests, it
is guessed at last, the doors are thrown open, and the lucky clodpole is
rewarded with the much-prized tidbit, amid the congratulations of his
less fortunate companions. So with mirth and wassail speeds the night
away, for truly “care’s an enemy to life.”
The simple-hearted rustic firmly believes that by these timely ceremonies
and invocations he has helped to keep the blight from his rye, and to
insure a goodly return from the well-laden orchard trees. But “Twelfth
Night” festivities are by no means confined to the simple, free-hearted
sports of field and farm. In palace and mansion the feast is observed
with great splendor, with masque and pageant, with rollicking song and
mirth. Thousands of pounds are spent in preparing for the revels of a
night. The long table spread for the feast is a wonder of art fresh from
the hands of the pastry cook and confectioner. There are pasteboard
castles to be blown up in jest, the rarest of old claret flowing like
blood from the side of a wounded stag, with all sorts of curious and
dainty conceits set forth amid sparkling glass and silver, while the
guests playfully pelt one another with eggshells filled with rose-water.
The cake, huge and shining in its frosty whiteness, and wrought in
elaborate design, seems to tower over the rest of the feast with a sort
of proud and smiling benignity, for reposing in its capacious depth lies
the fateful prize of the evening, the bean which proclaims the lucky
finder king over the evening’s festivities. The guests cut for this amid
good-natured laughter and merriment, and when someone more fortunate than
the rest has discovered it, they declare him with one accord “king of the
bean,” and cheer him right lustily. The newly crowned monarch is raised
aloft to the ceiling to mark a white cross upon one of the great oaken
beams, for thereby will evil spirits be warded off for the evening and
through all the year to come. The others then draw lots and assume their
parts of lords or ministers of state, and each sustains his character
with mock dignity throughout the revels. This quaint old ceremony is
observed in palace and mansion and humbler household as well, and a sort
of good-natured fellowship reigns supreme. The story is told of how Mary,
Queen of Scots, when her maid was chosen queen, lent her own royal robes,
that the part might be sustained with proper dignity.
“Mirth and revel, jest and play,
Quickly wears the night away.”
The candles have sputtered and burnt out, the tawdry tinsel is thrown
aside for the soberer garb of the real, and Sir Francis Flatterer and
Sir Randle Rackabite have passed into the ranks of everyday life. The
laughter and mirth are but a memory, and we come back with a start to the
daylight and the present, with its unfinished duties ever pressing for
completion.
And Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” lies open before us. From its pages
arise, through the master’s art, the living forms of Sir Toby and
Malvolio, Viola and the Duke. “Grave and gay, the lovers, the laughers,
and the laughed-at, are made to harmonize in one scene and one common
purpose.” We can well imagine that Twelfth Night in the Middle Temple
in the days of the long ago, when the happy company of barristers and
students gathered to hear for the first time, the drama fresh from the
master’s hand, when its exquisite poetry charmed with new grace and
melody the ear of some secluded scholar, and the antics of its revellers
brought a smile even to the lips of that grave and formal dispenser of
justice. One commentator tells us that the title was probably suggested
by this, the first night of its performance, but do we not find a subtler
significance in its embodiment of the spirit of the season? Is not the
mirth and jest of those old-time sports and festivities aptly repeated
here in this crowd of revelling, laughter-creating personages, in the
drollery of Sir Toby Belch and his comrades, and the fantastical vanity
of Malvolio? And as, in the midst of those old-time Twelfth Night revels,
with their care-free abandon and joy, we catch now and then the sub-tone
of the minor, and the richer harmonies of life, a mere glimpse of the
simple love and faith of those lives of the long ago, so it is that we
look past the boisterous merriment of these jesting revellers of the play
to discern the true beauty of the characters who stand in the half-light
behind. Then we become conscious of a quiet harmony of color and form,
and we feel anew the poet’s close touch with life and nature.
UNCLE ABRAHAM’S SERMON
THE SEANCE
By John Marshall Kelly
Author of “The Resurrection,” “The Tempered Wind,” “The Christmas Tree,”
etc.
I’se be’n heahin’ some quare talk erbout yoah doin’s dis pas’ week an’
some yuther times, my heahers. I’se be’n telled erbout some uv dem
_sayoncies_ you niggahs hev be’n holdin’, same’s lak dey do up tuh Kunnel
Simpson’s house, an’ dat dar triflin’ yalleh house gal uv his’n an’ dat
mottled yahd boy be’n lahnin’ you, my belubbed flock, de wiles uv de
debbil an’ claimin’ dey’s meejums an’ claihvoyans, an’ hev be’n holpin’
you-alls talk wif spookses an’ hobgoblins an’ onfamiliar sperits.
Now, my chillen, bein’ as I is yoah pasture an’ is set oveh you tuh gyahd
yoah morils an’ luk afteh yoah etehnal welfaih, as I hev be’n put heah
tuh guide yoah tottehin’ feets in de paf uv de wuhld, I’se boun’ tuh
wahn you-alls dat all sich things am onrighteous an’ sinful an’ am tuh
be ’voided an’ kep out uv de way uv, an’ dat you am temptin’ fate er de
debbil in all sich puhfo’mances.
You-alls ought tuh know, my brudderns an’ sisterns, dat dere ain’ no
comin’ back f’om de sperit wuhld, an’ dat any ’tempt tuh prove dat dey
is am a vexation uv sperit, an’s gwine bring its own results. I wan’
you-alls tuh ’membeh dis tex’, an’ ’membeh hit well, dat w’en Divehs went
tuh hell an’ raised up he eyes in tohment an’ seed Lazarus in ol’ Fatheh
Ab’aham’s buzzum, he axed tuh hev him sont foh er speshil wahnin’ tuh he
brothehs on yea’th, tuh tell ’em tuh gib all dey money tuh de Chu’ch an’
de poah, an’ tuh git some sores foh de dogs tuh lick an’ go beggin’ an’
eat crum’s wif de pupses so’s dey could be in glory bimeby.
Well, now, you ’membeh dat, an’ you ’membeh lakwise dat he wuz tol’ dere
wuz fixed er unpassable gulf ’twixt an’ between an’ dat no one could
cross hit, an’ de people would’n’ heed no wahnin’ ef dey did hev one; he
say’d hit did’n’ mek no diff’unce ef dey wuz tuh sen’ er dead man tuh
come back, dey would’n’ keer, ’cause Lazarus he done riz once, jis’ tuh
try ’em, an’ dat afteh he be’n dead foah days.
Now, you-alls ’membehs all dis, my onrighteous travelehs tuh de bah
uv Gawd, an’ ’membehs dat ef sperits could er come back dat ol’ money
grubbeh Divehs would er come back an’ tol’ de little Divehs, an’ ol’
Mizziz Divehs an’ de whole Divehs fambly, ’bout de trubble he wuz hevin’
down dere an’ tuh wahn dem an’ caution dem ’bout de way dey handled de
propehty w’at dey wuz spendin’ so free.
Lazarus he hed no call tuh come back, kaze he’d done shed he sores an’
wuz in good comp’ny at las’, an’ ’sides afteh de sperimen’ he made onc’t
dey ain’ neveh gwine let _no_ man come back tuh wahn de people. Lazarus
he could’n’ an’ would’n’, an’ Divehs he could’n’ an’ did’n’, an’ dat’s de
way wid all de res’.
Now, den, w’at’s all dis I heahs ’bout dem triflin’ niggahs callin’ up
ol’ Job Mixon an’ hevin’ him tell de folkses w’at dey done es little
chillen, an’ tellin’ dem w’at dey done es grown folkses, an’ doin’
uv hit in sich er foolish way? Who eveh knowed ol’ Job tuh do sich
foolishness ez bumpin’ er table, hey?
Jis’ ’magine ol’ Job, w’at wuz hung foh muhdeh an’ w’at hed be’n a thief
all he life, gwine erbout dis wuhld es er spook, follehin’ afteh dem puny
little house sehvants, rappin’ on tables an’ bumpin’ de floor w’en dey
say so!
“_Dat you, Unc’ Job? Ef so, please knock._”
Table raps; he mean yes.
“_Is you happy oveh theah, Unc’ Job? Rap onc’t ef you is, an’ twic’t ef
you ain’._”
Den dey git two raps, strong an’ hahd, ’cause nobody’s fool ’nough tuh
’spect ol’ Job bein’ wheah he happy less’n he could steal er kill.
Den some trim’lin’, puny little niggah w’at won’ pass de graveyahd at
night, he say: “_Ax him ’bout my mammy; wheah she?_” an’ den dat fool
meejum go th’oo some jinnyfluxins, _one rap A, two rap B, three rap C_,
an’ spell out er whole lot en passel uv trash w’at nobody kin dispute,
an’ den dey say de sperit done answeh!
Yas, I know he tol’ erbout things some uv you-alls done, an’ w’at you
thought nobody knowed, an’ you say dat proof ernough. Proof ernough! You
need no proof! You guv hit yoah own se’f.
“_Mist’ Job, you knows uv anything we-alls done w’at nobody else knows in
dis wuhld?_”
_Do_ he know anything you-alls done? He doan’ need know; you-alls knows
yoah-selves, an’ yoah feah meks yoah heaht palpehtate so foh feah dat
somebody’ll know, an’ yoah body ’gins tuh quake an’ shake so dat you-all
jis’ nachelly meks de little raps in yo’ agertations an’ yoah shivehin’
nervousness jis’ raps “_One rap A, two rap B, three rap C_,” an’ spells
out de deeds you’ve done foh dat meejum in yoah feah.
You does hit yoahself, you frazzled idjits! You tells uv yoah own sin!
You sits dere quakin’ in yoah shoes or wif yoah bare toes rattlin’ on de
boahds, wif de trimble in you answehin’ evehy call uv dat finicky dun
gal, “_One rap A, two rap B, three rap C._”
Job, he mighty fine man tuh be ahbitratin’ uv you-alls fate; mighty fine
man, an’ one w’at ought tuh mek betteh folkses outen you.
He wa’nt no good man on yearth; he wa’nt good foh nuffin in dis life—but
he’s er mighty good wahnin’ dead, an’ I hope he stay a good wahnin’, an’
stay dead. De Lawd knows He need him foh a wahnin’. He ought tuh git some
good outer Job, kaze He sho’ got none heah, foh uv all de liverashous
coons w’at eveh lived he wuz de liverashousest an’ de leas’ account an’
de hahdest tuh kill.
He wuz a scand’lous niggah, Job wuz, an’ no respecteh uv pussons, an’
no regahdeh uv uthority; he didn’ keer no moah foh er man’s ufficial
puhsition ner his sperityil capacity ’n nothin’.
Why, I ’membehs jis es if hit war yistiddy, how he hed de affront’ry tuh
offeh me a drink uv whisky onc’t! Me, his pasture, an’ de watcheh oveh
his soul. I rebuked him, my heahehs, an’ rebuked him seveahly, an’ he
neveh insulted me dat way erg’in. Yas, suh! I gib him a lesson he neveh
fohgot, foh I tuk de whole quaht an’ didn’t gib him er drop uv hit an’ he
didn’t hev no moah.
Heah, oveh theah! You needn’ snicker! I knows w’at tuh do in er
’mehgency, an’ I won’ tek no levity ner laughin’ at my sperityil methods,
an’ I’d do any uv you-alls de same way; yas, I would, ’n you knows hit!
Job hed de ’dacity tuh ’vite me tuh he house tuh er tuhkey dinneh onc’t,
too. _Tuhkey_, w’en he neveh raised a tuhkey ’cept offen some w’ite man’s
roost, ner hed nothin’ but w’at he stole. Dat sho’ wuz er fine tuhkey,
an’ I gib Job er nuther lesson an’ showed him dat stolen goods profiteth
little.
Dat tuhkey wuz er big gobbleh, an’ dere wuz nobody but me an’ Job
dere, an’ I seasoned dat buhd wif de good wine w’at Job hed stole, an’
admonishuns tuh be good an’ wahnin’s f’om de wrath tuh come. Hit wuz
er hahd pull, but I finished dat tuhkey in spite uv Job’s hints dat
he ’spected hit tuh las’ him er week. Hit sho’ly would hev tasted good
if hit hadn’t b’en stoled an’ I hed tuh drink up de wine w’at he hed
’prop’iated f’om somewhere, but de sauce uv a deed well did an’ a sinneh
rebuked, almos’ made hit relish, an’ I held out tuh de end.
Now I’s told you-alls ’bout dis tuh show you how tuh meet de tempteh,
an’ if Job wuz er comin’ back heah in de sperit an’ you-alls treated him
severe he’d go back tuh de place wheah de Lawd put him, an’ let you-alls
alone.
Think uv ol’ Job Mixon as er angel uv light, ol’ thief Job sent back heah
tuh talk tuh you folkses an’ tell you w’at you-alls done did an w’at you
gwine tuh do! Yas, I sees hit, I sees hit! Ol’ Job, w’at man hed tuh keep
in jail mos’ uv de time, an’ w’at wuz a debbil in de flesh. De Lawd tried
tuh kill him time Kunnel Simpson shot him in he henhouse; an’ tuk ’nutheh
tuhn at him de time he got dat whisky. De Lawd knowed he wuzn’t fit foh
dis wuhld w’en He made dat wild mule w’at Job stole fall on him an’ den
tromp on him, an’ if hit hed be’n anybody but Job, he’d hev died.
A angel uv light, an’ foh fohty yeahs de Lawd tried tuh git him erway
f’om you chillen, tuh gib you-all a chanst foh glohy! An’ he’d ’a be’n
alive now if hit hadn’t be’n foh shootin’ at a w’ite man an’ hangin’
three days ’foah anybody foun’ him. Yas suh, no ord’nary hangin’ would
hev killed dat niggah, an’ de Lawd knowed w’at He ’bout keepin’ any uv us
f’om findin’ him afteh he wuz hung.
Claihvoyins! Meejums! Sayoncies! Sperits an’ table rappin’s, an’ “_One
rap A, two rap B, an’ three rap C!_” Sperityilizzum, an’ nex’ thing
Christian Science an’ some uv you advanced niggahs will be goin’ ’round
heah wid yoah jaw tied up, groanin’ wid de toofache an’ sayin’ dey
ain’ no sich thing es pain; some uv you-alls wid razur blades in yoah
annatohmmy a-gnawin’ at yoah vitals, sayin’ hit am ’maginary; dat de will
rules an you kain’t hurt de flesh!
Listen tuh me, you niggahs! Heah yoah pasture! Keep ’way f’om sich
contrapshuns uv de debbil! Sen’ ol’ Job back tuh hell wheah he belong
an’ keep ’way f’om de w’ite folkses’ fads! Go on wid yoah conjurin’, if
you mus’ hev er rickreation, an’ weah yoah graveyahd rabbit feets, an’
yoah little bags uv niggah wool; but keep ’way f’om sperityilizzum an’
Christian Science an’ all dere attendant evils; eschew, as de poet say,
dey alluremen’s, ’less some uv yoah wives an sistehs an’ daughters tuhn
out er Mizziz Eddy an’ tries teh lead you in pashtuhs new er indulges in
holy ghos’ chillen—dey’s nuff not ’counted foh ’thout that.
Go on, my people an’ be yoahselves, an’ hev pains an’ ha’nts, an’ leave
de painless dentistry uv life an’ de ’lightened sperits tuh a w’ite an’
idle an’ moah civilized people; ’membeh dat you hev er neveh-dyin’ soul
teh save, an’ beah in min’, night an’ day, de feelin’ uv de song we is
now gwine teh sing:
I’se gwine tuh be a angel,
A long, tall angel;
I’se gwine be a angel, bye ’n bye!
A w’ite-robed angel,
A charcoal angel;
I’se gwine be a angel, bye ’n bye!
THE MISANTHROPE
He supped on sorrow till his soul
Was sated with the noxious fare;
But not one drop of Love’s pure wine
Could his repleted spirit bear.
_Clara Dargan Maclean._
THE STORY OF THE YEAR-GIFTS
TO BE TOLD TO THE CHILDREN ON NEW YEAR’S EVE
By Robert Wilson Neal
There was an old man, and he was very old indeed—so old that he did not
know his own age, though he knew the age of every boy and girl, and every
man and woman, and every city, and every country, in the world—so old
that he had seen the mountains rise out of the land and the continents
out of the great oceans. He was very, very old indeed, you see; the
oldest man that ever was. He had long, white hair and a long, white beard
that fell quite down to his waist.
But though he was so very old, he was very strong and healthy, so that no
one ever thought that he would die. And because he was so, he was able
to accomplish everything. He was never idle and never had been—no, not
for one minute. He worked while people slept and while they played; no
one ever knew him to stop. That is why he had done so very, very much.
For he had formed great peoples so long ago that nobody but he knows
anything about them; and many, many centuries ago had written wonderful
stories that we still read; and had built great churches and palaces, and
painted beautiful pictures, and carved beautiful statues, and composed
wonderful music, and had discovered wonderful new ways of doing things
and wonderful elements in earth and air that nobody had thought of, and
had done so many things that ought to be done, that I believe a thousand
men could not tell all of them if they wrote all their lives.
He was very good, too, for he meant that everything he did should make
people happier. But oftentimes he made mistakes, and did things wrong, or
seemed to, and then people suffered—sometimes only a few people for a
little while, and sometimes many people for years and years. But as soon
as he saw that he had done wrong or that things were not going as they
should, he set to work to undo his mistake and make things come right;
and he never stopped until he did this, so that people came to say that
he would bring everything right in the end if only it were left to him.
And though he was so busy and so old, he was always glad when he had done
good and was always happy with people he had helped.
He had millions of children, too—millions alive and millions dead. All
the people in the world were his children. If there were a baby Hottentot
born, it was his; and if there were a little Greenlander born, that
was his, too. Even the greatest man that ever lived, whom we all love,
whether we think or not that he was just a man, like others, was his
child, and knew it; for this is what he meant when he said, “The hour is
come.”
Now you may be very sure that this kind, strange old man loved his
children or he would not have worked so very long and hard for them. So
every twelve months he gave each of them a wonderful present; not one
kind of present for one and another for another, but just the same thing
for everybody. The little beggar-boy, standing on his frost-nipped feet
by the king’s road, got just the same as the king who rattled past in his
chariot and never gave him even a copper; the poor Indian squaw, with
nothing to wear but an old wolf skin, got just the same as the beautiful
lady who had wonderful silken dresses and diamond necklaces and shoes
with golden buckles. Yet everybody got just what he wanted, and would
not even think of trading off his present for anything else in the world.
There never has been and never will be anything worth so much as a single
one of these presents. If a boy, or a girl, or a man either, had all the
silver mines of Mexico, and all the gold mines of the Yukon, and all the
diamond fields of South Africa, they would not be worth as much as just
one of these presents, for the presents could be used in any way and for
anything. Yet all that this kind old man asked of people was, please
to use the gifts the best they knew how. If they did so, they were all
happier, but if they did not, they became very miserable, and even the
gifts themselves were a sorrow to them.
Now there was a man and his wife who had a son they loved greatly; and
they had made good use of their presents and were happy. But one day the
boy said, “I want to take my presents now and go to college.” The mother
was glad, but the father said, “The way to use them is the way I tell
you. Then I’ll put mine with yours, and we will use them both together.”
“I cannot, father,” the boy said. “Mine were not meant to be used that
way.”
Then the boy left home so that he could use his presents; and his mother
died: and his father was angry towards him. The boy used as well as he
knew how the presents he received, but he did not know well at first how
to use them (though he learned after awhile), and he was very unhappy
and his life was almost ruined. And his father continued angry with him,
and misused all his presents after that, and was very miserable until he
died; for he saw that what his son had done was right, yet he would not
forgive when he was asked, and all the gifts he had received only made
him feel the sadder.
Again, there was an old man who used his presents to make money. He had
always used them so, and he meant always to use them so. He would not
use them to help people who did not know how to use their own, no, not
even to help a friend. But he could not do that, for nobody would be
friends with such a man. He would not even use any part of them to serve
his country when it was at war and needed him. And every twelve months he
was more miserable, and swore he would give all the money he had made,
just for a little happiness; yet every time he used his gifts in the same
selfish way.
At last the old, old man sent word to this old man (who was nothing but
an hour-old babe beside the other), that he might take back the next gift
at any time. The money-lover trembled and shook; but in a little while
he had forgotten all about his warning and was misusing the gift as he
had done with all he ever had. Then came the old man one dark night, and
snatched back the present from the miser. And the old man who had never
used his presents well, screamed in his terror and fell back dead.
This stern, kindly old man gave his gifts to nations, too, for the
nations were his children just the same as the boys and girls. Now one
time, in midsummer, word was brought him that he had a new nation child.
“I declare,” he exclaimed, “I’ve only a piece of a present left for it.
That will be enough, though; the child won’t live.”
But that was once the old man was wrong, for the child did live; and it
made such good use of its present that he gave it another, and another,
and another. And the nation kept growing, for it used his gifts wisely,
and helped him to do away with many things that were not good; and at
last it used his gifts to save weaker people from hunger, and sword, and
what is worse than either.
And if there be such an old man now (I hope there is, don’t you?), I hope
he has already taught us how to use his gifts; and if there be such a
nation, the child of Father Time, I pray that God has made it wise enough
so that the gifts of years will make certain centuries of existence.
[Illustration: The Shadow of the Attacoa
By Thornwell Jacobs]
SYNOPSIS OF PRECEDING CHAPTERS
Commenced in the April number.
Ervin McArthur, bearing the nickname of “Satan” on account of his
ungovernable temper, learns printing at the office of the _Dunvegan_
(N. C.) _Democrat_ and loves Colonel Preston’s daughter. The colonel,
objecting to a love affair between his aristocratic daughter and a son of
“poor whites,” shifts the youth to a place on the _Charleston Chronicle_.
Here, the Civil War coming on, he distinguishes himself by his
journalistic ability and by his inventions of war-engines. In these last
he is ably assisted by Helen Brooks, a Boston girl visiting Charleston
relatives. She learns to love the inventor and his cause and he struggles
between his allegiance to Helen Preston and his newly awakened love. He
returns to Dunvegan on furlough and in an altercation with his old time
chum, Henry Bailey, the latter meets his death. Ervin escapes and another
friend, Ernest Lavender, is tried and convicted. Ervin confesses and is
tried but cleared on proof discovered by Helen Preston that the crime was
committed by Mack Lonovan, who, wishing to marry Helen Brooks, destroys
the only living witness to his secret marriage with half-witted Nance
West.
Ervin returns to Charleston and invents the ironclad torpedo, destined,
when copied by the Federals, to destroy the Confederate Navy. He also
constructs a submarine torpedo boat and while preparing for his initial
trip has an interview with Helen Brooks.
He decides to attack the _Housatonic_ instead of the _New Ironsides_,
as Helen has confessed that one whom she loves is on the latter. The
_Housatonic_ is sunk, also the torpedo, Ervin alone being rescued and
captured. Sent to the stockade on Morris’ Island, he finds Tait Preston,
who is about to be exchanged on account of a wound. Ervin determines to
escape.