BLUE BONNETS OVER THE BORDER.
One morning, about the 1st of June, 1861, in the city of New York, two
men of the mercantile class came from a cross street into Broadway, near
what was then the upper region of its wholesale stores. They paused on
the corner, near the edge of the sidewalk.
"Even when the States were seceding," said one of them, "I couldn't make
up my mind that they really meant to break up the Union."
He had rosy cheeks, a retreating chin, and amiable, inquiring eyes. The
other had a narrower face, alert eyes, thin nostrils, and a generally
aggressive look. He did not reply at once, but, after a quick glance
down the great thoroughfare and another one up it, said, while his eyes
still ran here and there:--
"Wonderful street, this Broadway!"
He straightened up to his fullest height and looked again, now down the
way, now up, his eye kindling with the electric contagion of the scene.
His senses were all awake. They took in, with a spirit of welcome, all
the vast movement: the uproar, the feeling of unbounded multitude, the
commercial splendor, the miles of towering buildings; the long,
writhing, grinding mass of coming and going vehicles, the rush of
innumerable feet, and the countless forms and faces hurrying, dancing,
gliding by, as though all the world's mankind, and womankind, and
childhood must pass that way before night.
"How many people, do you suppose, go by this corner in a single hour?"
asked the man with the retreating chin. But again he got no answer. He
might as well not have yielded the topic of conversation as he had done;
so he resumed it. "No, I didn't believe it," he said. "Why, look at the
Southern vote of last November--look at New Orleans. The way it went
there, I shouldn't have supposed twenty-five per cent. of the people
would be in favor of secession. Would you?"
But his companion, instead of looking at New Orleans, took note of two
women who had come to a halt within a yard of them and seemed to be
waiting, as he and his companion were, for an opportunity to cross the
street. The two new-comers were very different in appearance, the one
from the other. The older and larger was much beyond middle life, red,
fat, and dressed in black stuff, good as to fabric, but uncommonly bad
as to fit. The other was young and pretty, refined, tastefully dressed,
and only the more interesting for the look of permanent anxiety that
asserted itself with distinctness about the corners of her eyes and
mouth. She held by the hand a rosy, chubby little child, that seemed
about three years old, and might be a girl or might be a boy, so far as
could be discerned by masculine eyes. The man did not see this fifth
member of their group until the elder woman caught it under the arms in
her large hands, and, lifting it above her shoulder, said, looking far
up the street:--
"O paypy, paypy, choost look de fla-ags! One, two, dtree,--a tuzzent, a
hundut, a dtowsant fla-ags!"
Evidently the child did not know her well. The little face remained
without a smile, the lips sealed, the shoulders drawn up, and the legs
pointing straight to the spot whence they had been lifted. She set it
down again.
"We're not going to get by here," said the less talkative man. "They
must be expecting some troops to pass here. Don't you see the windows
full of women and children?"
"Let's wait and look at them," responded the other, and his companion
did not dissent.
"Well, sir," said the more communicative one, after a moment's
contemplation, "I never expected to see this!" He indicated by a gesture
the stupendous life of Broadway beginning slowly to roll back upon
itself like an obstructed river. It was obviously gathering in a general
pause to concentrate its attention upon something of leading interest
about to appear to view. "We're in earnest at last, and we can see, now,
that the South was in the deadest kind of earnest from the word go."
"They can't be any more in earnest than we are, now," said the more
decided speaker.
"I had great hopes of the peace convention," said the rosier man.
"I never had a bit," responded the other.
"The suspense was awful--waiting to know what Lincoln would do when he
came in," said he of the poor chin. "My wife was in the South visiting
her relatives; and we kept putting off her return, hoping for a quieter
state of affairs--hoping and putting off--till first thing you knew the
lines closed down and she had the hardest kind of a job to get through."
"I never had a doubt as to what Lincoln would do," said the man with
sharp eyes; but while he spoke he covertly rubbed his companion's elbow
with his own, and by his glance toward the younger of the two women gave
him to understand that, though her face was partly turned away, the very
pretty ear, with no ear-ring in the hole pierced for it, was listening.
And the readier speaker rejoined in a suppressed voice:--
"That's the little lady I travelled in the same car with all the way
from Chicago."
"No times for ladies to be travelling alone," muttered the other.
"She hoped to take a steam-ship for New Orleans, to join her husband
there."
"Some rebel fellow, I suppose."
"No, a Union man, she says."
"Oh, of course!" said the sharp-eyed one, sceptically. "Well, she's
missed it. The last steamer's gone and may get back or may not." He
looked at her again, narrowly, from behind his companion's shoulder. She
was stooping slightly toward the child, rearranging some tie under its
lifted chin and answering its questions in what seemed a chastened
voice. He murmured to his fellow, "How do you know she isn't a spy?"
The other one turned upon him a look of pure amusement, but, seeing the
set lips and earnest eye of his companion, said softly, with a faint,
scouting hiss and smile:--
"She's a perfect lady--a perfect one."
"Her friend isn't," said the aggressive man.
"Here they come," observed the other aloud, looking up the street. There
was a general turning of attention and concentration of the street's
population toward the edge of either sidewalk. A force of police was
clearing back into the by-streets a dense tangle of drays, wagons,
carriages, and white-topped omnibuses, and far up the way could be seen
the fluttering and tossing of handkerchiefs, and in the midst a solid
mass of blue with a sheen of bayonets above, and every now and then a
brazen reflection from in front, where the martial band marched before.
It was not playing. The ear caught distantly, instead of its notes, the
warlike thunder of the drum corps.
The sharper man nudged his companion mysteriously.
"Listen," he whispered. Neither they nor the other pair had materially
changed their relative positions. The older woman was speaking.
"'Twas te fun'est dting! You pe lookin' for te Noo 'Leants shteamer,
undt me lookin' for te Hambourg shteamer, undt coompt right so togeder
undt never vouldn't 'a' knowedt udt yet, ovver te mayne exdt me, 'Misses
Reisen, vot iss your name?' undt you headt udt. Undt te minudt you
shpeak, udt choost come to me like a flash o' lightenin'--'Udt iss
Misses Richlin'!'" The speaker's companion gave her such attention as
one may give in a crowd to words that have been heard two or three times
already within the hour.
"Yes, Alice," she said, once or twice to the little one, who pulled
softly at her skirt asking confidential questions. But the baker's widow
went on with her story, enjoying it for its own sake.
"You know, Mr. Richlin' he told me finfty dtimes, 'Misses Reisen, doant
kif up te pissness!' Ovver I see te mutcheenery proke undt te foundtries
all makin' guns undt kennons, undt I choost says, 'I kot plenteh
moneh--I tdtink I kfit undt go home.' Ovver I sayss to de Doctor, 'Dte
oneh dting--vot Mr. Richlin' ko-in to tdo?' Undt Dr. Tseweer he sayss,
'How menneh pa'ls flour you kot shtowed away?' Undt I sayss, 'Tsoo
hundut finfty.' Undt he sayss, 'Misses Reisen, Mr. Richlin' done made
you rich; you choost kif um dtat flour; udt be wort' tweny-fife tollahs
te pa'l, yet.' Undt sayss I, 'Doctor, you' right, undt I dtank you for
te goodt idea; I kif Mr. Richlin' innahow one pa'l.' Undt I done-d it.
Ovver I sayss, 'Doctor, dtat's not like a rigler sellery, yet.' Undt
dten he sayss, 'You know, _mine_ pookkeeper he gone to te vor, undt I
need'"--
A crash of brazen music burst upon the ear and drowned the voice. The
throng of the sidewalk pushed hard upon its edge.
"Let me hold the little girl up," ventured the milder man, and set her
gently upon his shoulder, as amidst a confusion of outcries and flutter
of hats and handkerchiefs the broad, dense column came on with
measured tread, its stars and stripes waving in the breeze and its
backward-slanting thicket of bayoneted arms glittering in the morning
sun. All at once there arose from the great column, in harmony with the
pealing music, the hoarse roar of the soldiers' own voices singing in
time to the rhythm of their tread. And a thrill runs through the people,
and they answer with mad huzzas and frantic wavings and smiles, half of
wild ardor and half of wild pain; and the keen-eyed man here by Mary
lets the tears roll down his cheeks unhindered as he swings his hat and
cries "Hurrah! hurrah!" while on tramps the mighty column, singing from
its thousand thirsty throats the song of John Brown's Body.
Yea, so, soldiers of the Union,--though that little mother there
weeps but does not wave, as the sharp-eyed man notes well through his
tears,--yet even so, yea, all the more, go--"go marching on," saviors of
the Union; your cause is just. Lo, now, since nigh twenty-five years
have passed, we of the South can say it!
"And yet--and yet, we cannot forget"--
and we would not.