but old Bill entertained but one sentiment for her,--that of unqualified
admiration. As we only 'wrought' at the stranded schooner on the high
water,--some five hours out of the twenty-four,--he had plenty of
opportunity to dangle after his dearie, and did so unremittingly. While
the rest of us were either napping, dancing the lively 'straight four,'
hunting herns' eggs among the sand-hills, and so on, according to our
inclination, he, in far more romantic mood, seized all possible
opportunities to quickly gather fire-wood for his charmer, fill her
tea-kettle, open whatever clams and oysters she was about to cook, and,
above all, to recount for her delight one of those inimitable yarns of
his, at whose points he himself was sure to laugh till the rafters of
the house shook and the plates in the dresser rattled again. But this
was merely the first stage of his passion. Before long, as is not
unusual in such cases, it took another and more bodeful turn. That
inextinguishable laughter of his was heard no more, or at best gave
place to a feeble tittering; his stories dropped from his lips with but
flat pungency; and instead of performing his lady-love's 'chores' with a
mirthful readiness, he went through them in a heartsick way, the while
directing towards her furtive looks of supplication. The true state of
matters was now obvious to all Old Bill was another fatally-stricken
victim of that spooney archer-boy who next to death holds dominion over
men; and with his case, thus momentous, we could but feel a renewed
interest in his behalf, and busy our tongues about him. I, for my part,
thought that as he was a widower, and needful of a wife to comfort him
in his advancing age, and that as the present object of his affections,
if not a highly 'forcible' woman, seemed at all events to be one of whom
no great harm was to be feared, there could be no valid objection to his
being joined to her; particularly if nothing was divulged proving her to
be other than what she seemed. But this view I found to be on the whole
unacceptable to my auditory. Almost to a man they condemned the
propriety of the match. It could not actually be said that they disliked
Mrs. Hose, but they were jealous of her, as, in her manner and style of
array, she considerably dimmed the lustre of their own women; and they
distrusted her as she was a stranger; it being a marked habit with most
of our folks to distrust all strangers save those from whom they expect
pecuniary awards. But meanwhile, notwithstanding this criticism, the
little idyl in our midst was developing itself apace. On the afternoon
of one beautiful Sunday, a day in which we of course ordinarily did no
work, when the dinner-table had been well cleared away, what should we
see but old Bill swinging forth with his sailor gait from the house, and
arrayed as jauntily as his check shirt and pea-jacket (his only suit of
apparel at hand) would permit, to be speedily followed by Mrs. Rose, who
with one set of finger-tips held up the light folds of a sweetly blue
lawn skirt, and with the other bore aslant before her a bewitching pink
parasol. Undoubtedly there was a great indulgence in sly winks and
suppressed titterings on the part of such of us as chanced to be
witnesses of this at once festal and sentimental sally; but the twain
heeded naught whatsoever of these manifestations, but struck off along
the snow-white strand where the sea was droning its hymn so lazily that
it would have inevitably put itself to sleep, if the fish-hawks had not
so continually disturbed it by mischievously diving headlong into its
bosom. At last they returned again; and we soon became aware that the
stroll had not been without great results to both; since Mrs. Rose
affected to be laboring under a high degree of emotion, and retired to
the privacy of her apartment, while old Bill was by no means the
dolorous swain of a few hours before, but, making his way among us, with
his wide mouth stretching its best, proceeded formally to shake hands
with one and all as though he had finally got back from a long and
arduous voyage; and then, merrily calling for a certain brown jug which
was among our stores, removed the corn-cob which served as a cork, and
having wetted his great heart with a draught which I have no doubt
measured a full pint, fell, entirely regardless of the day, to
performing his most spirited hoe-down, while the most of us looked on
with a mirth that knew no bounds.
Yes, old Bill was now 'a happy man,' Mrs. Rose could but accept such a
suitor as he, if but from the fact that; his ardor and his pain were of
the freshest complexion, and of an amplitude fully proportioned to that
of his extraordinary physical bulk. As we tendered him our
congratulations upon his happy state, he received the courtesy with
extreme complacency. But, to tell the truth, those who did thus
congratulate him were but few. Most of the men remained of their old
mind as to the proposed match; indeed, I ere long found that they looked
upon it with less favor than ever. It appeared that they had been
inflamed with a rumor that Mrs. Rose intended to beguile her adorer to a
foreign shore, where a scion or two of her brilliant house found happy
sustenance; and that nothing but evil could accrue from such an act, was
of course as clear as noonday. Now, when I came to trace this rumor to
its source, I became apprised that it owed its publicity to an old man
of our number known by the nickname of 'Mister,' who was remarkable for
a rare amount of credulity, self-conceit, and obstinacy, and at the same
time for being the invariable butt of his company. This wiseacre averred
that he had succeeded in wringing from Mrs. Rose the confession that
directly she and old Bill were made man and wife, they were to depart
for Hatteras Inlet, on the coast of North Carolina, where the lady gay
possessed 'relations;' and this narrative, wofully muttered about among
our crew, and accompanied with a due amount of sighs and head-shakings,
had depressed them most fearfully, not withstanding the character of the
narrator.
The fact of the matter was, that most of the men were actually desirous
that a betrothal, contracted directly in the face of public opinion, and
without the smallest deference to anybody, as that of old Bill and Mrs.
Rose had been, should come to some kind of grief or other, and they were
fain to believe that it would do so. As for me, I was without true
concern on the subject, as I had ever been. If it should indeed fall out
that old Bill was to take a trip to Hatteras with his bride, I was
convinced that he would enjoy himself famously among the great abundance
of fish and game said to abound in that place, and that in the end he
would return to us again, to rule over us in greater splendor than ever;
as for his sweetheart or any of her like doing him any actual injury,
the idea seemed so preposterous to me, that whenever an opportunity
presented itself I did not fail to ridicule it to the utmost. Still, in
order to do my whole duty in the matter, I hastened to impress old Bill
with the importance of his becoming acquainted with the antecedents of
his lady-love, and thus saving himself from the possibility of a
misstep. But this counsel did no farther good than to bring a clouded
brow to my dear old friend, and so I did not persist in it. Indeed, we
communed together but little more in any way; for very shortly after he
resigned his place as our 'boss,' and left post-haste for the main-land.
Here, as was revealed to me in due season, he amazed the neighborhood by
incontinently renting his farmstead to a son with whom he had been on
indifferent terms for years; dispatching his daughter, who had
heretofore acted as his housekeeper, off to a distant town to become an
apprentice to a milliner's trade; and stowing his clothes and a shot-bag
of hard money which he was known to possess into a sailor's chest, with
which, together with his gun and a Methodist preacher, he again hurried
off for the asylum of his beloved. Arrived once more in the witching
presence, he waited till evening (yet how he was constrained so to do is
more than I can tell), and then, as we made it a duty to be gathered
about him once more, the wedding took place.
The occasion was one of such interest, that the preacher could but make
the most of it. After the nuptial benediction had been pronounced, he
straightway launched forth into a homily of such graciousness and force,
that but few of us missed being forcibly wrought upon, while Mrs. Rose
was stirred apparently to the depths of her being. On the day succeeding
the marriage, our light-hearted Benedict abandoned himself to another
jollification. But the next morning, a schooner headed in towards the
beach, and, slackening the peaks of her sails, sent ashore a yawl, whose
crew saluted Mrs. Rose as an old and familiar friend, and with whose
apparition, without the least regard as to what shift we wreckers were
to make, a great packing was begun in the house. Bedsteads were taken
down, beds were bundled up in sheets, crockery was thrust away in
barrels, and all borne one after the other to the yawl, where the bride,
with her potent parasol full spread, and pretending to shudder at the
sight of the gently heaving breakers through which she was soon to pass,
mincingly threw herself in the thick of the luggage, and old Bill
mounted the stern, with his huge palm extended for a good-by shake.
'Good-by, old chap,' said I, as I took his hand the last of all,
'good-by! You're not half mean enough to stay away from us forever; so
in the meantime do your best to show the Hatteras boys what a nice thing
it is to be somebody in the world!' And thus the boat put off, and,
reaching the schooner in a few moments, was hoisted to her decks. In a
few moments more the vessel had reset her sails, and, with a free wind,
bore straight to the southward out of sight.
Now comes the singular part of my story. In a few weeks from the time of
their sailing, we heard that old Bill and his wife had safely landed at
Hatteras Inlet, and rented a small house on one of the beaches there,
with the intention of opening a kind of tavern; but no sooner were they
fairly settled in their new abode than old Bill was found one morning
_dead in his bed_, with evident signs of having met with foul play;
though what kind of death these indications pointed at was very
uncertain.
The closest and shrewdest investigation failed to attach a well-grounded
suspicion to any one. Poor Bill was dead--and nothing more was ever
known. Singular enough, the conduct of his widow was such as to entirely
avert even from her enemies hints of complicity in the crime,--if crime
there was,--though none doubted that there had been a murder, and that
murder in a few attendant circumstances seemed to indicate female aid.
Shortly after this catastrophe, Madame Rose made 'a vendue' of her
deceased husband's gun and apparel, packed up her own worldly goods, and
vanished, to be heard of no more.
And so our shore lost its best 'soundser'--a man of mark in his way,
great of frame and heart, and one long to be recalled in our humble
annals of wrecking and of sport. He was one of those vigorous
out-croppings of sturdy Northern physique recalling in minute detail the
stories told of those giant children, the Vikings and Goths of the
fighting ages, and which the blood, though as healthy as ever,--witness
the glorious exploits of our soldiers even as I write,--produces less
frequently in these days of culture. Such as I have described was the
character of Bill the Soundser, and such was literally and truly his
mysterious death.
* * * * *
COLUMBIA TO BRITANNIA.
VIA SHAKSPEARE.
Thou cold-blooded slave,
Hast thou not spoke like thunder on my side?
Been sworn my soldier? bidding me depend
Upon thy stars, thy fortune, and thy strength?
And dost thou now fall over to my foes,
And wear a lion's hide? Doff it for shame,
And hang a calf's skin on those recreant limbs.
KING JOHN, III. 1.
* * * * *
GENERAL LYON.
To-day all the Northland shouts for joy, flashes its announcements of
victory along myriad leagues of wire, hurls them from grim cannon mouths
out over broad bays till the seas tremble with sympathy, huzzas in the
streets, flames in bonfires, would even clash the clouds together and
streak the heavens with lightning--and for what? The flag waves again in
Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, Arkansas, and the cause is safe! _The
cause_--have we all learned what that means, brother Americans?
Something broader than mere Union, the pass-word of so many thousands to
suffering and death, something more than the freedom of the press and
the ballot-box. It means Progress; and until we acknowledge this, all
freedom is a vast injustice, luring men on to Beulahs which Fate--the
fate they worship--will never have them reach. It would be little enough
to regain our foothold upon Southern territory, or repossess Southern
forts, even if forts and territory have been wrested from us by treason
and perjury, if with every mile of advance we did not gain a stronghold
of principle. We are not straining every nerve, struggling under immense
financial burdens, wrenching away tender household ties, sacrificing
cheerfully and eagerly private interests, brilliant prospects, and high
hopes, only to prove that twenty millions of men are physically stronger
than twelve. God forbid! This is no latter-day Olympic game, whoso
victors are to be rewarded with the applause of a party or a generation.
All the dead heroes and martyrs of the past will crowd forward to offer
their unheard thanks; all the years to come will embalm with blessings
the memory of the patriots who open the door to wide advancement,
prosperous growth, and high activity of a universal intelligence.
And among these brave men, whom the world shall delight to honor, let
our deepest grief and our justest pride be for LYON. We have given his
honest life too little notice;--this man whose sincerity was equalled
only by his zeal; who, in a rarely surpassed spirit of self-abnegation,
was content to lie down and die in the first heat of the great conflict,
and to leave behind for more favored comrades the triumphal arches and
rose-strewn paths of victory. The world has known no truer martyr than
he who fell at Wilson's Creek, August 10th, 1861.
'The history of every man paints his character,' says Goethe; and scanty
and imperfect as are the recorded details of General Lyon's life, enough
is known to prove him to have been high-minded and brave as a soldier,
with a perseverance and a penetration that analyzed at once the
platforms of contending factions, and read in their elements the
principles which are to govern the future of our nation.
He came of the stout Knowlton stock of Connecticut, a family of whom
more than one served England in the old French war, and afterward
distinguished themselves against her in the Revolution. We hear of the
gallant Captain Knowlton at Bunker Hill, throwing up, in default of
cotton, the breastwork of hay, which proved such an efficient protection
to the provincials during the battle. Once more he appears as colonel,
at Harlem Plains, rushing with his Rangers ('Congress' Own') upon the
enemy on the Plains, and, cut off shortly from retreat by
reinforcements, fighting bravely between the foes before and their
reserves behind, and, falling at last, borne away by sorrowing comrades,
and buried at sunset within the embankments. 'A brave man,' wrote
Washington, 'who would have been an honor to any country.' With the
memory of such a hero engrafted upon his earliest childhood, we can not
wonder at the bent of the boy Lyon's inclinations. 'Daring and
resolute, and wonderfully attached to his mother,' it is easy to
imagine what lessons of endurance and decision he learned from her,
whose just inheritance was the stout-hearted patriotism that had
flowered into valorous deeds in her kindred, and was destined to live
again in her son. It was, an ordinary childhood, and a busy, uneventful
youth, passed for the most part in the old red farm-house nestled
between two rocky hills near Eastport, where he was born. In 1837 he
entered the Military Academy at West Point, and was a graduate, with
distinction, four years later. Of the years immediately following, we
have little information; but we can fancy the young soldier laying, in
his obscurity, the foundation for that practical military knowledge
which so eminently distinguished his late brilliant career. During his
years of service in the Everglades of Florida, and on our Western
frontier, he had ample opportunity to gain a thorough insight into his
profession.
He first appears in the history of the country in the Mexican war, is
present at the bombardment of Vera Cruz, dashes after the enemy at Cerro
Gordo, capturing on the crest of the hill a battery which he turns upon
the discomfited foe. At Contreras his command proves as impenetrable as
a phalanx of Alexander; and when at last the victorious Americans fight
their way into Mexico, the city of fabulous treasures and associations
well-nigh classical, for the first time he receives a wound. He was
breveted captain for his gallantry at Cherubusco, and at the end of the
war received the rank of full captain, and was ordered with his regiment
to California. No appointment could have been more felicitous. In the
guerilla mode of warfare demanded by the peculiar nature of the country
and its inhabitants, his habits of quick decision, and the experience of
a war with an enemy equally unscrupulous though less undisciplined, were
absolutely invaluable. Here was no scope for the conception and
excitation of deep-laid schemes; the movements of the enemy were too
rapid. Plans that would elsewhere have been matured only in the process
of a long campaign, were here often originated and completed in a single
night. Simple strategy was of more avail than the most intricate display
of military science, and the impulse of a moment more to be relied upon
than the prudent forethought of a month. He had to combat, in the
newly-acquired territory, the cunning of tribes whose natural ferocity
was sharpened into vindictiveness by the encroachments upon their soil
of a new and strange people; and every association with the intruders,
who were for the most part men of little reputation and less principle,
had developed in the Indians only the fiercest and most decided
animosity. To encounter their vigilance with watchfulness as alert, to
confound their swift counsels with sudden alarm, to penetrate their
ambuscades and anticipate their cunning with incessant activity, to be,
in short, ubiquitous, was the duty of Captain Lyon.
After years spent in the uncertain tactics of this half barbaric
warfare, he was removed, in the height of political strife in Kansas, to
its very centre. Here, while comparatively free from the wearisome
requirements of active service such as had been demanded in California,
and at a time when events the most portentous proved clearly to the
great minds of the country the advance of a political crisis whose
consequences must be most important, involving--should deep-laid
conspiracy be successful--the bankruptcy of principle and that
high-handed outrage, the triumph, of a minority,--Captain Lyon had full
liberty and abundant opportunity to settle for himself the great
questions mooted in the Missouri Compromises, the Lecompton
Constitutions and the Dred Scott decisions of the day. To a mind
unprejudiced, except as the honest impulses of every honest man's heart
are always prejudiced in favor of the right, there was but a single
decision. Disgusted with the heartless policy which democracy had for so
many years pursued, and which now threatened to culminate either in its
utter degradation at the North, or in the establishment in the South of
an oligarchy which would annihilate all free action and suppress all
free opinion, he severed his connection with that party,--a step to
which he was also impelled by the injustice that was then seeking to
force upon the people of Kansas an institution which they condemned as
unproductive and expensive, to say nothing of their moral repugnance to
the very A B C of its principles. It was at this time that Captain Lyon
contributed to the _Manhattan Express_, a weekly journal of the
neighborhood, a series of papers in which he took an earnest, manly and
decided stand in favor of the principles which his thoughtful mind
recognized as alone 'reliable,' and harmonious with the grand design and
end of the great Republic of the West. To these articles we shall
hereafter refer, at present hastening through the career, so striking
and so sad, which a few brief months cut short, leaving only the memory
of General Lyon as a legacy to the country his single aim and wise
counsels would have saved.
The guns of Fort Sumter had flashed along our coast an appeal whose
force no words can ever compute. The days had been busy with the
assembling of armies, the nights restless with their solemn marches, and
forge and factory rang with the strokes of the hammer and the whirr of
flying shafts, whose echoes seemed measured to the air of some new
Marseillaise. From our homes rushed forth sons, husbands, brothers,
fathers, followed by the prayers and blessings of dear women, who
yielded them early but willingly to their country. And while regiments
clustered along the Potomac, and Washington lay entrenched behind white
lines of tents, we find our soldier, fresh from Kansas strifes, in
command of the United States Arsenal at St. Louis; and to his prompt
action and decided measures at this important juncture the early success
of the Union cause in Missouri is to be attributed. For a time St. Louis
was the theatre of action. The police commissioners, backed by Governor
and Legislature, in the demanded the removal of the Union troops from
the grounds of the arsenal, claiming it as the exclusive property of the
State, and asserting that the authority usurped by the general
government as but a partial sovereignty, and limited to the occupation,
for purposes exclusively military, of the certain tracts of land now
pending in this novel court of chancery. This highly enigmatical
exposition of State rights, pompous and inflated though it was, failed
to convince or convert Captain Lyon, who, being unable to detect, in his
occupancy of the arsenal, any exaggeration of the rights vested by the
Constitution in the general government, declined to abandon his post,
and proceeded to call out the Home Guard, then awaiting the arrival of
General Harney, and temporarily under his command. His little army of
ten thousand men was then drawn up upon the heights commanding Camp
Jackson, then occupied by the Missouri militia under Col. Frost, whoso
command had been increased by the addition of numerous individuals of
avowed secession principles. Uninfluenced by the reception of a note
from this officer asserting his integrity and his purpose to defend the
property of the United States, and disavowing all intention hostile to
the force at the arsenal, Captain Lyon replied by a peremptory summons
for an unconditional surrender. He found it incredible that a body
assembled at the instigation of a traitorous governor, and acting under
his instructions and according to the 'unparalleled legislation' of a
traitorous legislature, receiving under the flag of the Confederate
States munitions of war but lately the acknowledged property of the
general government, could have any other than the as most unfriendly
designs upon its enemies. The force of Camp Jackson (which
notwithstanding its professed character, boasted its streets Beauregard
and Davis) being numerically inferior, and perhaps not entirely prepared
to do battle for a cause whose legitimacy must still have been a
question with many of them, decided, after a council of war, to comply
with the demands of Capt. Lyon, and became his prisoners. A few days
afterward General Harney arrived, and Captain Lyon was elected Brigadier
General by the 1st Brigade Missouri Volunteers.
Convinced of the imminence of the crisis and the peril of delay, Gen.
Lyon immediately commenced active operations against the secessionists
at Potosi, and ordered the seizure of the steamer which had supplied the
offensive army with material of war from the United States property at
Baton Rouge. In the meantime, Gen. Harney, with a culpable blindness,
had made an extraordinary arrangement with Gen. Price, by which he
pledged himself to desist from military movements so long as the command
of Gen. Price was able to preserve order in the State. Upon his removal
by the authorities at Washington, nine days later, Gen. Lyon was left in
command of the department. At this time the rebel general took occasion,
in a proclamation to the people of Missouri, to feel assured that 'the
successor of Gen. Harney would certainly consider himself and his
government in honor bound to carry out this agreement (the Harney-Price)
in good faith.' But his assurance was without foundation. The temper of
the new commander had been tried in the Camp Jackson affair, and an
interview between Price, Jackson and other prominent secessionists and
Gen. Lyon, resulted, after a few hours' consultation, in the declaration
of the Union general that the authority of his government would be
upheld at any cost and its property protected at all hazards. Three days
later, Jackson fled to Booneville, fearing an attack upon Jefferson
City, which was immediately occupied by Gen. Lyon, who was received with
acclamation by the citizens. Unwilling to grant by delay what he had
refused to an underhand diplomacy,--opportunity to the enemy to possess
the government property, or entrench themselves strongly in their new
quarters,--the general, with characteristic promptness, ordered an
advance upon Booneville. The rebel force was stationed above Rockport,
but retreated, after a skirmish which did not assume the proportions of
a battle; and the Union army, two thousand strong, entered the town,
where the national colors and the welcomes of the inhabitants testified
their joy at the change.