tiff? 
 
 
 

RECORDS OF FIVE YEARS, 
 
 GRACE GREENWOOD, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "HISTORY OF MY PETS," "RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 MY CHILDHOOD," " MERRIE ENGLAND," 
 
 ETC. 
 
 BOSTON : 
 
 TICKNOR AND FIELDS. 
 1867. 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1867, by 
 
 TICKNOR AND FIELDS, 
 in the Clerk s Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 
 
 UNIVERSITY PRESS : WELCH, BIGELOW, & Co. 
 CAMBRIDGE. 
 
TO 
 
 JOHN G. WHITTIER, 
 
 IN memory of the constant friendship of many years, and in 
 the memory of one very dear to us both, I venture to dedicate 
 this volume. 
 
 GRACE GREENWOOD. 
 
 M109417 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 IN PEACE. 
 
 PACK 
 
 THE BABY IN THE BATH-TUB 3 
 
 THE BABY IN THE PRISON 13 
 
 OUR LITTLE DAUGHTER S CAB 21 
 
 WORDS SPOKEN IN PRISON 30 
 
 A YEAR LATER 32 
 
 PICTURES OF TOWN AND COUNTRY. 
 
 SUMMER IN THE CITY 38 
 
 SUMMER ON THE MOUNTAIN . . . . 51 
 
 THE OVERFILLED NEST 59 
 
 THE HEARSE ON THE MOUNTAIN .... 67 
 
 SUNSET ON THE MOUNTAIN 73 
 
 AN INCIDENT 81 
 
 FARM-LIFE ON THE MOUNTAIN . . . .86 
 
 AUTUMN ON THE MOUNTAIN 93 
 
 IN WAR. 
 
 THE NORTHERN UPRISING 101 
 
 A FEW PLAIN WORDS ; ADDRESSED TO CERTAIN ENGLISH 
 
 FRIENDS . . . . .117 
 
 LIGHTS OF THE WAR-CLOUD 132 
 
 OUR HEROES 134 
 
 AN EXAMPLE . . 136 
 
vi Contents. 
 
 OUR WOMEN 138 
 
 A SOUTHERN UNIONIST 140 
 
 A GLANCE INTO THE FUTURE 141 
 
 A PATRIOTIC PARALLEL . . ... 143 
 
 OUR SOLDIERS 144 
 
 CHARITIES OF THE WAR 146 
 
 ENGLAND 148 
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE INSTITUTION . . . 150 
 
 PEACE AND FRATERNITY 155 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN . 158 
 
 HOME AND CAMP .161 
 
 EMANCIPATION 163 
 
 A TASTE OF CAMP LIFE 166 
 
 BON VOYAGE 213 
 
IN PEACE. 
 
THE BABY IN THE BATH-TUB. 
 
 " A NNIE ! Sophie ! come up quick, and see baby 
 -* in her bath-tub ! " cries a charming little maid 
 en, running down the wide stairway of an old country 
 house, and half-way up the long hall, all in a flutter 
 ing cloud of pink lawn, her soft dimpled cheeks tinged 
 with the same lovely morning hue. In an instant 
 there is a stir and a gush of light laughter in the 
 drawing-room, and presently, with a movement a little 
 more majestic and elder-sisterly, Annie and Sophie 
 float noiselessly through the hall and up the soft-car 
 peted ascent, as though borne on their respective 
 clouds of blue and white drapery, and take their way 
 to the nursery, where a novel entertainment awaits 
 them. It is the first morning of the eldest married 
 sister s first visit home, with her first baby ; and the 
 first baby, having slept late after its journey, is about 
 to take its first bath in the old house. 
 
 " Well, I declare, if here is n t mother, forgetting 
 her dairy, and Cousin Nellie, too, who must have 
 
4 Records of Five Years. 
 
 left poor Ned all to himself in the garden, lonely 
 
 and disconsolate, and I am torn from my books, and 
 
 Sophie fk)m 3ier. powers, and all for the sake of see- 
 
 ing -a nine-montris -iaid baby kicking about in a bath- 
 
 frfc tl?lte.V. fijnplptpijs* % are ! " 
 * Thfts"* Misfs * -frrtrfie," the pronde ladye of the fam 
 ily ; handsome, haughty, with perilous proclivities to 
 ward grand socialistic theories, transcendentalism, and 
 general strong-mindedness ; pledged by many a saucy 
 vow to a life of single dignity and freedom, given to 
 studies artistic, aesthetic, philosophic, and ethical ; a 
 student of Plato, an absorber of Emerson, an ex- 
 alter of her sex, a contemner of its natural enemies. 
 " Simpletons, are we ? " cries pretty Elinor Lee, 
 aunt of the baby on the other side, and " Cousin 
 Nellie " by love s courtesy, now kneeling close by 
 the bath-tub, and receiving on her sunny braids a 
 liberal baptism from the pure, plashing hands of 
 babyhood, " simpletons, indeed ! Did I not once 
 see thee, O Pallas-Athene, standing rapt before a 
 copy of the Crouching Venus ? and this is a sight 
 a thousand times more beautiful ; for here we have 
 color, action, radiant life, and such grace as the 
 divinest sculptors of Greece were never able to en 
 trance in marble. Just look at these white, dimpled, 
 shoulders, every dimple holding a tiny, sparkling 
 drop, these rosy, plashing feet and hands, this 
 
The Baby in the Bath-Tub. 5 
 
 laughing, roguish face, these eyes, bright and blue 
 and deep as lakes of fairy-land, these ears, like 
 dainty sea-shells, these locks of gold, dripping dia 
 monds, and tell me what cherub of Titian, what 
 Cupid of Greuze, was ever half so lovely. I say, 
 too, that Raphael himself would have jumped at the 
 chance of painting Louise, as she sits there, towel 
 in hand, in all the serene pride and chastened dig 
 nity of young maternity, of painting her as Ma 
 donna" 
 
 "Why, Cousin Nellie is getting poetical for once, 
 over a baby in a bath-tub ! " 
 
 "Well, Sophie, is n t it a subject to inspire real 
 poets, to call out and yet humble the genius of 
 painters and sculptors ? Is n t it an object for the 
 reverence of a glorious human creature, such a 
 pure and perfect form of physical life, such a starry 
 little soul, fresh from the hands of God ? If your 
 Plato teaches otherwise, Cousin Annie, I m glad 
 I Ve no acquaintance with that distinguished hea 
 then gentleman ; if your Carlyle, with his soul 
 above buttons and babies, would growl, and your 
 Emerson smile icily at the sight, away with them!" 
 
 " Why, Nellie, you goose, Carlyle is a man and 
 a brother, in spite of his Latter-Day Pamphlets, 
 and no ogre. I believe he is very well disposed 
 toward babies in general ; while Emerson is as ten- 
 
6 Records of Five Years. 
 
 der as he is great. Have you forgotten his Thren 
 ody/ in which the sob of a mortal s sorrow rises 
 and swells into an immortal s pean ? I see that 
 baby is very lovely ; I think that Louise may well 
 be proud of her. It s a pity that she must grow 
 up into conventionalities and all that, perhaps be 
 come some man s plaything, or slave." 
 
 " O, don t, sister ! sufficient for the day is the 
 worriment thereof/ But I think you and Nellie are 
 mistaken about the pride. I am conscious of no 
 such feeling in regard to my little Florence, but 
 only of joy, gratitude, infinite tenderness, and solici 
 tude." 
 
 Thus the young mother, for the first time speak 
 ing, but not turning her eyes from the bath-tub. 
 
 " Ah, coz, it won t go ! Young mothers are the 
 proudest of living creatures. The sweetest and saint- 
 liest among you have a sort of subdued exultation, 
 a meek assumption, an adorable insolence, toward 
 the whole unmarried and childless world. I have 
 never seen anything like it elsewhere." 
 
 "/ have, in a bantam Biddy, parading her first 
 brood in the hen-yard, or a youthful duck, leading 
 her first little downy flock to the water." 
 
 " Ha, blasphemer ! are you there ? " cries Miss 
 Nellie, with a bright smile, and a brighter blush. 
 Blasphemer s other name is a tolerably good one, 
 
The Baby in the Bath-Tub. 7 
 
 Edward Norton, though he is oftenest called "our 
 Ned." He is the sole male representative of a 
 wealthy old New England family, the pride and 
 darling of four pretty sisters, " the only son of his 
 mother, and she a widow," who adores him, "a 
 likely youth, just twenty-one," handsome, brilliant, 
 and standing six feet high in his stockings. Yet, in 
 spite of all these unfavorable circumstances, he is a 
 very good sort of a fellow. He is just home from 
 the model college of the Commonwealth, where he 
 learned to smoke, and, I blush to say, has a cigar 
 in hand at this moment, just as he has been sum 
 moned from the garden by his pet sister, Kate, half 
 wild with delight and excitement. With him comes 
 a brother, according to the law, and after the spirit, 
 - a young, slender, fair-haired man, but with an in 
 describable something of paternal importance about 
 him. He is the other proprietor of baby, and steps 
 forward with a laugh and a ".Heh, my little water- 
 nymph, my Iris ! " and, by the bath-tub kneeling, 
 catches a moist kiss from smiling baby lips, and a 
 sudden wilting shower on shirt-front and collar, from 
 moister baby hands. 
 
 Young collegian pauses on the threshold, essaying 
 the look lofty and sarcastic, for a moment. Then 
 his eye rests on Nellie Lee s blushing face, on the 
 red, smiling lips, the braids of gold, sprinkled with 
 
8 Records of Five Years. 
 
 shining drops, meets those sweet, shy eyes, and a 
 sudden, mysterious feeling, soft and vague and ten 
 der, floods his gay, young heart. He looks at baby 
 again. "T is a pretty sight, upon my word! Let 
 me throw away my cigar before I come nearer : it is 
 incense too profane for such pure rites. Now give 
 me a peep at Dian-the-less ! How the little witch 
 revels in the water ! A small Undine. Jolly, is n t 
 it, baby ? Why, Louise, I did not know that Floy was 
 so lovely, such a perfect little creature. How fair 
 she is ! Why, her flesh, where it is not rosy, is of 
 the pure, translucent whiteness of a water-lily." 
 
 No response to this tribute, for baby has been in 
 the water more than long enough, and must be taken 
 out, willy, nilly. Decidedly nilly it proves ; baby 
 proceeds to demonstrate that she is not altogether 
 cherubic, by kicking and screaming lustily, and strik 
 ing out frantically with her little dripping hands. 
 But Madonna wraps her in soft linen, rolls her and 
 pats her, till she grows good and merry again, and 
 laughs through her pretty tears. 
 
 But the brief storm has been enough to clear the 
 nursery of all save grandmama and Auntie Kate, 
 who draw nearer to witness the process of drying 
 and dressing. Tenderly the mother rubs the dainty, 
 soft skin, till every dimple gives up its last hidden 
 droplet ; then, with many a kiss, and smile, and coo, 
 
The Baby in the Bath-Tub . 9 
 
 she robes the little form in fairy-like garments of 
 cambric, lace, flannel, soft as a moth s wing, and 
 delicate embroidery. The small, restless feet are 
 caught, and encased in comical little hose, and shod 
 with Titania s own slippers. Then the light golden 
 locks are brushed and twined into tendril-like curls, 
 and lo !- the beautiful labor of love is finished. 
 Baby is bathed and dressed for the day. 
 
 "Well, she is a beauty! I don t wonder you and 
 Charles are proud of her. O, Louise, if your father 
 could have seen her ! She is very like our first 
 baby, the one we lost, at nearly yes, just about 
 her age." Here grandmama goes out, tearful, hav 
 ing sped unconscious her Parthian shaft ; while, 
 with a quick sob, which is neither for the father 
 long dead, nor the sister never known, the young 
 mother clasps her treasure closer, and murmurs, "O, 
 my darling, my love, my sweetest, sweetest one ! 
 stay with me always, always! O, I would that I 
 could guard and shield you from every pain, every 
 grief, make your sweet life all beauty, love, and 
 joy!" 
 
 Baby hardly understands this burst of sensibility, 
 but the passionate embrace reminds her of some 
 thing. She asks and receives. Like a bee on a 
 lily-flower, she clings to the fair, sweet breast, mur 
 muring contentedly now and then. Presently, the 
 
io Records of Five Years. 
 
 gurgling draughts grow less eager, the little hands 
 cease to wander restlessly over the smooth, un- 
 mantled neck. The little head is thrown back, the 
 blue eyes look with a satisfied smile into the brood 
 ing mother-face. 
 
 Next, her lips all moist with the white nectar, 
 baby is given, with many an anxious injunction, into 
 the eager arms of Auntie Kate, who, followed by a 
 supernumerary nurse, bears her in triumph down 
 hall and stairway, and out into a garden, all glori 
 ous and odorous with a thousand roses. 
 
 Here, on a shawl, gay-colored and soft, spread on 
 the grass, under an acacia-tree, the little Queen of 
 Hearts is deposited at last. Here she rolls and 
 tumbles, and sends out shrill, sweet peals of laugh 
 ter, as auntie and nurse pelt her with rose-buds and 
 clover-tufts. Sometimes an adventurous spirit seizes 
 her ; she creeps energetically beyond shawl-bounds, 
 her little province of Cashmere, makes a raid into 
 the tall, inviting grass, clutches ruthlessly at butter 
 cups, breaks into nunneries of pale pansies, and de 
 capitates whole families of daisies at a grasp. Some 
 times, tired of predatory incursions, she lies on her 
 back, and listens in a luxurious, lazy ecstasy to the 
 gush of the fountain and the song of the robin, or 
 watches the golden butterflies, coming from and go 
 ing to nobody knows where, as though they had 
 
The Baby in the Bath- Tub. 1 1 
 
 suddenly bloomed out of the sunshine, and died away 
 into it again. 
 
 Away down the garden, in the woodbine arbor, by 
 the little brook, sit the young collegian and fair Nel 
 lie Lee, talking very low, but very earnestly, on a 
 subject vastly interesting to them, doubtless, for they 
 seem to have quite forgotten baby. Yet her pres 
 ence in the garden hallows the very air for them, 
 gives a new joy and beauty to life, new sweetness 
 to love. 
 
 The golden summer morning wears on. Papa is 
 away with his fishing-rod ; mamma sits at a window 
 overlooking the garden, embroidering a dainty little 
 robe, and under her cunning fingers the love of her 
 heart and a thousand tender thoughts grow slowly 
 into delicate white shapes of leaf and flower ; grand 
 mamma is about her household duties, the tears of 
 sad memory wiped from her eyes, and the light of 
 the Christian s calm hope relit therein ; Annie is in 
 the library with Plato, but unusual softness lurks 
 about her mouth, and she looks off her book now 
 and then, and throws about her a strange, wander 
 ing glance, dreamy and tender to sadness; her sis 
 ters are in the drawing-room at their music, gay as 
 birds ; the lovers are we know where ; and baby is 
 still under the acacia-tree. But the white lids are 
 beginning to droop a little heavily over the sweet 
 
12 Records of Five Years. 
 
 blue eyes, and she will soon drop away into baby 
 dream-land. 
 
 All nature blooms, and shines, and sounds gently 
 and lovingly, to humor her delicate senses ; human 
 love the richest and tenderest is round about her, 
 within reach of her imperious little voice. God 
 breathes himself into her little heart through all 
 things, love, light, food, sunshine, fragrance, and 
 soft airs. All is well within and without the child, 
 as all should be for all children under the sun, 
 for every sinless, helpless little immortal, the like 
 of whom Christ the Lord took into his tender arms 
 and blessed. But how is it, dainty baby Floy, with 
 thousands of thy brothers and sisters, as lovely and 
 innocent as thou ? Are there not such, to whom hu 
 man love and care is denied, to whom nature seems 
 unkind, of whom God seems forgetful, for whom 
 even Christ s blessing is made of no avail? 
 
The Baby in the Prison. 13 
 
 THE BABY IN THE PRISON. 
 
 A FEW years ago I visited a grand model prison, 
 conducted on the solitary system. 
 Slowly we passed down the long, melancholy cor 
 ridors, now and then entering one of the cells, to 
 exchange a word of human cheer with its lonely in 
 mate, utterly lonely, but for the mute companionship 
 of his labor, that primal penalty of sin, transformed 
 into a consolation and a blessing. Occasionally, we 
 paused at a cell, but did not enter, being invited by 
 the warden to look in upon the prisoner through a 
 minute loop-hole in the heavy iron door. Thus I 
 gazed upon some of the most hardened and hope 
 less criminals in the Penitentiary, as they bent over 
 lapstone or loom, or stood at the carpenter s bench, 
 all unconscious that a human eye was dwelling on 
 them, watching the dull, gloomy face, the mechan 
 ical movements, with a sorrowful awe, a sombre cu 
 riosity, a shuddering yet yearning pity. The women 
 looked thinner, paler, more haggard and desponding 
 than the men, though some seemed making a des 
 perate effort at defiance. It is hard to defy soli- 
 
14 Records of Five Years. 
 
 tude, silence, and that dismal annihilation of iden- 
 
 
 
 tity, where one s very name is merged in the number 
 of a prison-cell. Evidently these things told more 
 upon their spirits than on those of the male prison 
 ers, and the more quiet and monotonous nature of 
 their occupations seemed to weary and wear upon 
 them. Their eyes met ours with a dull and stony 
 expression, or retreated with shy, evasive glances. 
 Yet the most sad or sullen among them followed us 
 to the cell door, with a look of longing and mourn 
 ful envy more touching than the wildest appeal for 
 freedom and human companionship. 
 
 On the floor of one of these cells we found a little 
 child, a baby-girl, somewhat less than a year old. 
 The sight surprised me, as the appearance of La 
 povera picciola, the poor little flower, springing up 
 from between the flagstones of his prison-yard, sur 
 prised the sad captive of Fenestrella. A pale and 
 sickly blossom this seemed, though not without a 
 certain plaintive beauty in her wan and wistful little 
 face. She was very fair, too fair. There seemed 
 no sunshine in her veins, no stir of life in the pale 
 golden hair which hung dejectedly about her waxen 
 forehead. The eyes were blue, but of the dull, uncer 
 tain hue of violets that have grown in deep shade. 
 I fancied they might have caught all they lacked of 
 light and color from the gleam of running waters, 
 
The Baby in the Prison. 15 
 
 or the rich depths of summer skies. They had, 
 too, a strange, blank look, from striking ever 
 against dull prison-walls, I thought. They certainly 
 had not the eager, distant reaches of expression, 
 flashing out from the eyes of happier children. Was 
 the infant s sight dwarfed, to suit the dimensions of 
 its mother s cell? 
 
 How strange and sad it seemed! The earth had 
 almost made its mighty revolution around the sun, 
 passing through all the wonderful changes of the 
 seasons, through the countless phenomena of nature, 
 since this baby was born in the prison ; and she knew 
 nothing yet of spring s fair bloom, of summer s glory, 
 of autumn s ripeness, of winter s splendor nothing 
 of winds, or waves, or woods, or birds, of skies, or 
 stars, or rain, or snow. I fear her little feet had 
 never been set in the grass, her little arms never 
 been thrown round a pet or a playfellow. I fear 
 she had never looked into the heart of a rose or 
 the face of a little child. Surely the sight of either 
 would have kindled a faint momentary flush in her 
 pallid cheeks. 
 
 It was a cloudy, showery day, and double gloom 
 pervaded the prison. Suddenly, the sun shone out, 
 and sent a glad beam through the high, narrow, 
 grated window, to fall on the prison-floor, beside 
 the child. For the first time, I saw the little crea- 
 
1 6 Records of Five Years. 
 
 ture smile, as she bent forward and clutched eagerly 
 at the dancing ray. It was a pretty, yet piteous 
 sight, that instinctive, hungry grasp at her small 
 ration of God s free sunshine, her crumb fallen 
 from the Master s table, while the whole outside 
 world were feasting half unconscious, and all too 
 unthankful, on the rich, life-giving bounty. 
 
 In another instant, a pitiless cloud swept over the 
 sun, and the radiant stranger was gone. Then the 
 bereaved baby cried, in a silent, old way, which 
 showed one that tears were more native to her than 
 smiles. The mother took her up, and strove to 
 comfort her with a few feeble love-words and a lan 
 guid caress. Then I regarded the mother. She was 
 little more than a child herself, "going on eighteen," 
 she said ; and looked a weak, inoffensive creature, 
 with no muscle or fibre, desponding, listless, a frail 
 and sorry thing for the law to wreak itself against. 
 The babe ceased weeping presently, but began again, 
 as we drew nearer, hiding her face against her child- 
 mother s breast. " Don t mind her, ladies," said the 
 mother; "she is a puny, scary thing. She ain t used 
 to strangers, and don t seem to take kindly to pris 
 on-life, for all she was born to it. I hope she will 
 be better when we get out, but I don t know. You 
 see, she did n t have a fair chance at the start, I 
 fretted so much fore she was born, and a good bit 
 
The Baby in the Prison. 17 
 
 after. She don t know what it is to be lively and 
 cheery, like other children. I think a little of the 
 fresh, open air would do her good, and she ought 
 to see more folks, especially young folks. I doubt 
 I am a poor hand at brightening her up, I feel so 
 old, and it s so dismal here." 
 
 "Could not some friend take the child away and 
 care for it till your term is out?" I asked. 
 
 " I have n t got any friends that know that I am 
 here but one, and he s in too," she replied, with a 
 faint flush. " Some of the prison visitors have offered 
 to take care of her, but I can t live without her. I 
 should fret myself to death in a little while, and I 
 ain t fit to die. I expect to have a hard time to live, 
 when I get out ; but if I don t go wrong again, it will 
 be because of baby. Tears to me God has got a 
 hold of me there." 
 
 Let us trust that he has, a sure, eternal hold ! 
 Let us hope that this sorrowful picciola^ this little 
 drooping flower, springing from a sinful love, be 
 dewed with tears of shame, nurtured in prison gloom, 
 may yet instruct the mother s simple heart in the 
 divine lesson of virtue, and breathe into it the balm 
 of God s peace. 
 
 This young mother, I was afterwards told, was 
 sent here for larceny, for a term of two years. She 
 had been a servant-girl, and had stolen from her mis- 
 
1 8 Records of Five Years. 
 
 tress a diamond brooch. Whether from the prompt 
 ings of evil counsel, or the sudden, wild temptation 
 of girlish vanity, or from an insane, inborn propen 
 sity for thieving, she committed this crime, I know 
 not. At all events the penalty was a hard one. Sure 
 the poor girl was too young to be beyond the hope 
 of reformation through milder means. For all the 
 diamonds in Victoria s crown, I would not deprive 
 an unfortunate sister, so young and but lately so 
 innocent, of God s free air and sunshine for two long 
 years, condemn her to meet her time of peril and 
 of pain, to bring forth her first baby, in a prison- 
 cell. 
 
 But a little while ago, a noble lady of France 
 robbed a jeweller of a set of costly diamonds, that she 
 might shine peerless at an Imperial fete ; and the 
 penalty which she has suffered (from society, not the 
 law) is banishment to her chateau in the country. 
 Here, though rage and mortification may gnaw at 
 her proud heart, her children will probably forget 
 her shame in their own freedom, and bless the ex 
 change from the tiresome splendors of Parisian high- 
 life. 
 
 Since the day of my visit, that great model pris 
 on, that imposing caravansary of crime, with its hun 
 dreds of unhappy inmates, representatives of almost 
 every conceivable offence toward God and man, has 
 
The Baby in the Prison. 19 
 
 for me no memory so pathetic as that of the baby 
 born under its vast roof. I often think of her, and 
 wonder, and conjecture many things. Did she con 
 tinue to droop and pine, with a strange, importunate 
 instinct for light and freedom, till one day sudden 
 darkness swept across that narrow grated window, and 
 the little faint sunbeam of joy that lit the cell was 
 withdrawn forever ? Had the poor picdola withered 
 among the prison-stones ? Had ever a little coffin 
 been carried through that low, dark doorway, and 
 down the long, silent corridor, with no mourner fol 
 lowing? Had God so loosened his hold on the 
 mother s heart, or tightened it? 
 
 Or had deliverance come otherwise ? Had she gone 
 forth, led by her mother s hand, clinging closely to 
 her mother s side, a white, shy, startled little crea 
 ture, out into the great, wide, bewildering world ? 
 Had Nature ministered kindly to her new-found child, 
 lighted her dull eyes with gleams of thought and 
 joy, kindled something like bloom in her wan cheeks, 
 burnished her pale hair with sunshine, and quick 
 ened her languid pulses with pure air? Had she 
 grown familiar with the starry sky and the grassy 
 earth ? Had she learned to play, and to laugh aloud, 
 unfearful of prison echoes ? 
 
 Must the shadow of that prison follow mother and 
 child through life, a cloud of shame and suspicion? 
 
2O Records of Five Years. 
 
 or will the world prove merciful and forgetful ? 
 Will virtuous, Christian people give them a chance 
 to live honestly and happily, and so redeem the past 
 error ? 
 
 Who can tell ? But in the memory of the poor 
 baby in the prison, let us pray that the fortunate, 
 the happy, the innocent, may learn to be wisely 
 charitable toward the errors of youth, tenderly help 
 ful toward the friendless and unfortunate, hopefully 
 toiling for the bringing in of the time for which the 
 great burdened heart of the world yearns unceas 
 ingly, the day of God, of the establishment of his 
 kingdom forever. Then human crime and wretch 
 edness shall cease, then chains and bolts shall grow 
 rusty with disuse, then Nature will fill the unroofed 
 prison-cell with exulting sunshine, and veil the crum 
 bling prison-turrets in a green oblivion of ivy. 
 
 Then every babe shall be born heir to the full 
 wealth of human love and care, to the full joy and 
 freedom of life ; then none shall rob the least of 
 Christ s little ones of its best inheritance, its share 
 in the blessing uttered ages ago in Judaea, for all 
 time and for all children of every land and race. 
 
Our Little Daughter s Cab. 21 
 
 OUR LITTLE DAUGHTER S CAB. 
 
 ON a certain morning, in the merry month of 
 May, an odd, irregular-shaped package, for our 
 little liege lady, was brought to our door by the ex 
 press wagon, that plain, business-like, rapidly driven 
 vehicle, whose coming never fails to create a sensa 
 tion among the juvenile members of a household, 
 and to send a thrill of something very like childish 
 eagerness and pleasure through the grave experi 
 enced hearts of the elders. 
 
 While the mysterious something was being released 
 from its bonds and wraps, our little one, " sole daugh 
 ter of our house," etc., danced about it in a wild 
 flutter and chatter of excitement. But when all was 
 revealed, it seemed for a moment that neither dance 
 nor song, chatter nor laughter, could express her 
 emotions. Like the farmer given to profane exple 
 tives, who all mutely and meekly regarded, from a 
 hill-top, the road behind him golden with his newly 
 gathered pippins, and his cart empty and minus an 
 end-board, she found herself for once "not equal 
 to the occasion." She stood in a motionless hush 
 
22 Records of Five Years. 
 
 of rapture, an infantine statue of joy, until Nature 
 had rallied her forces ; then she began to examine, 
 at first shyly, to admire and wonder at her treasure. 
 
 It was a miniature cab, perfect in finish and ap 
 pointments, beautifully painted, luxuriously lined, and 
 cushioned with a shining material of deceptive gor- 
 geousness, which the little lass took at once for pure 
 cloth of gold. The whole affair was doubtless as 
 magnificent in her eyes as would be the state car 
 riage of Victoria, were she a favored subject of that 
 exemplary potentatess to behold it, or the pleasure- 
 barge of Cleopatra, could it be fished up- from the 
 depths of time and the Cydnus. 
 
 Alas ! there is a bitter drop in every sweet draught 
 of human experience. Beholding its dainty dimen 
 sions and delicate workmanship, "7 can t ride in 
 it," she said, surveying for the first time regretfully 
 her own sturdy figure. But the next moment the 
 cloudy little face flashed into sunlight, the outshin 
 ing of a sudden comforting thought that it would 
 serve for her own first child, a certain interesting 
 little stranger of whom she ofttimes discourses, that 
 "real live baby" of the future, who shall come to 
 the overthrow and dispersion of all pets, and the 
 disjointing of all doll-noses, be they of wax, china, 
 or caoutchouc. This comforting thought she naively 
 expressed, seeming to consider her pretty little vehi- 
 
Our Little Daughter s Cab. 23 
 
 cle as a small variety of the "wonderful one-horse 
 shay." 
 
 But, meanwhile, an occupant of that inviting little 
 seat must be found. Miss Kitty, a doll of Brobdig- 
 nagian proportions, was first inducted therein; but 
 being a remarkably heavy-headed young lady, disas 
 trous consequences speedily followed, a backward 
 upsetting of the chariot. Master Bob was next tried ; 
 but he was evidently intended for a member of a 
 standing committee, or a car-driver, as no provisions 
 had been made for his sitting down, on any occasion 
 whatever. Had the cab been a coach, he would have 
 filled the footman s place to admiration, as he has a 
 jaunty air, his legs are surprisingly straight, and his 
 calves quite unexceptionable ; but wanting in hip 
 and knee-joints, he plainly can never be a gentle 
 man, bend before greatness, kneel to beauty, and 
 drive his own cabriolet, or dog-cart. 
 
 "Blue-eyed Mary," a stout little lady of China, is 
 similarly unfortunate. She was probably meant to 
 figure as a chorus-woman at the Opera, or to serve 
 some Queen Charlotte of Dolldom as maid-of-honor. 
 Then there was little Bessie, a wax crying-baby, in 
 long clothes, with a very bare head, that lopped about 
 in a limp and infantile way ; of course, she could n t 
 reasonably be expected to sit up alone in a carriage. 
 As for the whole set of mutilated china dollettes, 
 
24 Records of Five Years. 
 
 they were not to be thought of. One might suppose, 
 on seeing the seat filled with these unfortunates, that 
 it was bringing home the victims of some railroad 
 accident in Lilliput. The upshot was that an addi 
 tion to the play-household was urged and agitated 
 with such power, passion, and pathos, that all petty 
 pecuniary considerations gave way; the doll-mart 
 was visited, and a young damsel, evidently from her 
 fairness and plumpness a Circassian, was selected 
 to fill the place of honor in the little harem of mute 
 beauties, and to ride in the cab of state. 
 
 Since the eventful day of the expressman s visit, 
 through the lifetime of a moon, a small eternity of 
 child-constancy, that toy-cab has been the chief pride 
 and treasure of our little daughter ; but much as it 
 is to the child, it is more to the mother, for the toy- 
 cab has a history that is written in her heart. 
 
 A few bright days of last winter I spent in Colum 
 bus, Ohio, the guest of a friend, who is one of the 
 contractors in the State Penitentiary. In his house 
 I saw a pretty toy-cab, made in the prison, the prop 
 erty of his little daughter, and conceived an ardent 
 desire for one like it, for my darling at home. So I 
 gave an order to that effect ; but the fairy vehicle 
 came at last, as a gift from one little lady to another. 
 For the sake of the gentle, fair-haired child, and for 
 the sake of the parents, the little carriage is dear to 
 
Our Little Daughter s Cab. 25 
 
 me ; but it has other associations that touch yet ten 
 derer, because sadder chords in my heart. 
 
 This peculiar interest in a toy has its source in one 
 of the most interesting experiences of my life. 
 
 One Sunday morning, during the visit of which I 
 have spoken, at the request of the chaplain of the 
 Penitentiary, I read a lecture on "The Heroic in 
 Common Life," before the officers and convicts of the 
 prison. 
 
 Never before, when brought face to face with a 
 large audience, had I felt my heart stormed with 
 emotions so powerful, so painful, and so varied. As 
 I gazed about me, on those many hundred hapless 
 men, in their dreadful zebraic costume, with their 
 marked faces, dejected or sullen, brutally hard or 
 forlornly weak, despairing or defiant, passion-scarred 
 or unutterably sad, a sense of the humanity before 
 me, fallen, dimmed, but not lost, of the divinity 
 within, forever indestructible, came upon me with 
 almost overwhelming force. I never so deeply felt 
 the misfortune, the exceeding pitiableness of sin, 
 never felt my soul so yearn and brood over a great 
 multitude of my fellow-creatures, with sympathy, char 
 ity, commiseration, and a mighty voiceless prayer. 
 
 My thoughts swept back to the time when the 
 worst of these men were innocent babies, awaking 
 every morning from "milky dreams," to turn their 
 
26 Records of Five Years. 
 
 brave eyes upon the day and smile into the unknown 
 face of life, to the time when the perjurer s lips 
 were pure as a cherub s, when the counterfeiter s 
 cheek blushed with sweeter blooms than those deadly 
 roses of shame and consumption, when no lily-leaf 
 was fairer or softer than the burglar s blood-stained 
 hand. 
 
 Visions of their far-away homes, bereaved and des 
 ecrated, of groups of mourners who "would not be 
 comforted," seemed painted on the cold prison-walls, 
 and the air about me to grow heavy with the sobs of 
 wives and mothers, the moans of old men, and the 
 sighs of little children, the saddest sounds in all life. 
 Feeling thus, I could not speak coldly or ineffectively ; 
 my heart shook along my words ; and my lecture, 
 which in some respects was peculiarly suited to my 
 auditors, with an introduction expressly written for 
 them, was received with an interest and sympathy I 
 could not else have hoped for. 
 
 I think I gained the ears and reached the hearts 
 of these unfortunate m en and women simply by 
 speaking to, not at, them, from the level of our 
 common humanity, not from any arrogant height, 
 real or imaginary, of intellect, morality, and respecta 
 bility. 
 
 I have been told that some speakers have ad 
 dressed prison congregations much as they would 
 
Our Little Daughter s Cab. 27 
 
 address the pupils of an asylum for imbeciles, ignor 
 ing the fact that many of our very cleverest men are 
 housed in penitentiaries, bold speculators, shrewd 
 financiers, well-bred forgers, their wit, their resources, 
 their magnificent schemes all come to this dark 
 end. Other speakers, in remembering that their 
 hearers are criminals forget that they are men, 
 hurl heavy missiles of reproof and denunciation at 
 random among them, or ride with a ruthless and 
 rough-shod religious zeal over the most sacred mem 
 ories, the tenderest associations, the morbid sensibil 
 ities, of their natures. 
 
 At the risk of the charge of egotism, against which 
 I can only plead my intense interest in prisoners, 
 in the amelioration of their condition, in the sub 
 stitution of humane and Christian principles of in 
 struction and reform, for a system of revengeful, 
 humiliating, dehumanizing punishment, I shall ven 
 ture to quote from a letter received with the little 
 cab from my friend in Columbus. 
 
 " I send the toy-cab, made by our prisoners. They have been 
 a long time about it, but the delay has not been through want 
 of zeal on their part. Many of them have spoken gratefully of 
 you. They think the entertainment you gave them an epoch in 
 
 their prison -lives The writing on the bottom of the cab 
 
 is by a man by the name of Warren ; that on the under side of 
 the seat by our poet, Miles. They are both thieves, but amiable 
 men. I never have known persons more appreciative of kind- 
 
28 Records of Five Years. 
 
 ness than they. I shall have pleasure in showing them the like 
 ness of your little daughter, when it arrives." 
 
 On further examining the cab, we found the in 
 scriptions referred to. Here they are : 
 
 " For the little branch off the Greenwood. May the winds of 
 adversity never deaden its growth." W. 
 
 " For little Annie. 
 " A model woman s darling, 
 Sweet child of innocence, 
 May thy life ne er be o ercast 
 By misfortune s wintry blast. 
 May the chill winds of adversity never blow 
 Across thy path, to mark it with grief or woe, 
 But may all these from thy path be driven 
 By God s pure light from heaven : 
 And may prosperity ever be thine, 
 And future nations call thee a Heroine. 
 
 "J. R. M." 
 
 A rough and inartistic strain surely, but there is 
 to me poetry beyond all words in the simple fact 
 of these poor, erring men beguiling their weary la 
 bor, and keeping dark recollections or sinful imagin 
 ings at bay, by cherishing and expressing such 
 kindly and gentle wishes as these, in the reflection 
 that the thought of a little child, whom neither had 
 ever beheld, could brighten the prison for them, for 
 a little space, like the glow of a sunbeam, or the 
 bloom of a flower, and stir in their sad hearts that 
 
Our Little Daughter s Cab. 29 
 
 sentiment which is the earnest of universal human 
 kinship and the twin principle of immortality, love. 
 This is the history of our little daughter s cab, 
 and this the reason why we mean to treasure it 
 carefully for years to come, possibly till the time 
 when the woman may see the child s forgotten proph 
 ecy fulfilled, and " a real live baby," with, perchance, 
 the family eyes or hair, may sit on the faded golden 
 cushion. 
 
3O Records of Five Years. 
 
 WORDS SPOKEN IN PRISON. 
 
 To THE INMATES OF THE STATE PENITENTIARY AT COLUM 
 BUS, OHIO. 
 
 I HAVE been requested by your chaplain to read 
 to you this Sabbath morning a lecture on Heroism 
 in Common Life. I willingly consent, for the reason 
 that I have always felt a deep, peculiar interest in 
 that class of men and women to which you for the 
 present belong. More than once, in the Old World, 
 I have turned from the palace to the prison, as pos 
 sessing for me the most human interest. I may say 
 here, that no foreign penitentiary which I visited 
 impressed me as conducted so humanely and justly 
 as the one in which we are to day. In the famous 
 prison of Pentonville, the convicts wore ugly masks, 
 which seemed almost to blot them from humanity. 
 It was banishment, added to incarceration. They 
 seemed no longer persons, but incarnated crimes ; 
 they were sombre mysteries, silent despairs. 
 
 But prison-life is at the best a sad and dreary 
 existence, a lot most hard and unnatural ; that can 
 not be denied. And yet, I venture to affirm that 
 
Words spoken in Prison. 31 
 
 it affords as grand opportunities for true heroism as 
 any earthly condition, however lofty or fortunate. 
 For such of you as have, under pressure of great 
 temptation, or the fierce impulse of misguided pas 
 sions, been guilty of grave crimes against God and 
 your fellow-men, there is the heroism of bravely yet 
 meekly submitting to the just penalty of your trans 
 gression, as a wholesome discipline for your good. 
 For such of you as may be innocent, the victims of 
 false testimony or strongly criminating circumstances, 
 to bear your unmerited misfortune manfully and pa 
 tiently, cherishing no revengeful spirit, were more 
 than heroic, it were living a martyrdom. 
 
 It may be, O friends, that, after all the weary zig 
 zag wandering in darkened ways, the stumblings and 
 fallings are over, from sunny resting-places in the 
 better land some of you may look back to this 
 gloomy building as the point where you took your 
 first feeble steps toward Christian manhood and wo 
 manhood. 
 
 You can have great help, if you will accept it. 
 Prison walls, bars, and bolts cannot shut out from 
 your souls the sweet and holy memories of home. 
 Every cell may be a portrait gallery, hung with pic 
 tures for you, invisible to other eyes, faces of 
 brothers and sisters and childhood s playmates, 
 faces of father and mother, sorrowful and worn, but 
 
32 Records of Five Years. 
 
 full of love and forgiveness, the pale, loving faces 
 of wives, and the dear little faces of children. All 
 these plead with you to lead better lives henceforth 
 for their sakes. Nor is this all : God s patient, im 
 partial love follows you within these prison-walls, 
 even as his beautiful sunshine finds its way through 
 these grated windows, and falls upon you like a 
 visible blessing. And even when you are shut into 
 your cells at night, the sullen clang of the iron 
 door smiting on your hearts, you are not alone. 
 God s pitying angels stand at your bedside, and 
 watch over you, poor stray children of the Father, 
 with yearning tenderness, patient, unconquerable. 
 They hear the low sobs of repentance, the inarticu 
 late murmurs of remorse, and translate them into 
 prayer and confession. O, take heart ! a pure and 
 honest life is possible for you all. Defiance and de 
 spair are the black and bitter dregs of sin ; fling them 
 away. God has not lost his hold on you yet. 
 
 A YEAR LATER. 
 
 SOME of those who listened to me last year 
 have gone forth from these walls into society 
 and freedom again, let us hope, penitent and re 
 joicing, bravely resolved to live henceforth just and 
 honest lives before God and man. 
 
Words spoken in Prison. 33 
 
 They will have to encounter peculiar temptations 
 and discouragements; but if they struggle on and 
 overcome, "great shall be their reward." They will 
 be set down among the heroes ; not in the world s 
 history perhaps, but in the great record of the All- 
 seeing and All-merciful One who is above the world. 
 
 To some of those who then heard me, deliver 
 ance has since come, not through the officer an 
 nouncing the close of their term of punishment, or 
 the pardon of a gracious governor, but through the 
 solemn Angel of Death. 
 
 There came a day when the strong head of the 
 poor convict grew dizzy, and the manly frame child 
 ishly weak; when the brawny arm failed, and the 
 hard hand dropped the workman s tool forever. Then 
 came the swift, fierce work of the fever, or the slow, 
 sure decline, and the prison shadows darkened, and 
 the prison air. grew closer hour by hour. No wife, no 
 mother, bent tearful over the sick man; no sister 
 clasped his hand, no child sobbed on his breast ; but 
 ever by his bedside waited, unseen, the solemn angel, 
 waited till the end came, in a wild, vain struggle, 
 like that of a strong swimmer against the rapids of 
 a cataract, or in a quiet unconscious drifting of the 
 soul out unto a misty, unknown sea. 
 
 Then the worn body, divested of its melancholy 
 uniform, was borne forth in a rude coffin, with no 
 2* c 
 
34 Records of Five Years. 
 
 mourners following, and laid in an unmarked grave. 
 But that poor body was not what the solemn angel 
 came for and waited for so patiently beside the 
 prisoner s bed. The soul which he took in charge 
 may have gone forth redeemed through divine mercy 
 from the darkness and captivity of sin, sorrow, and 
 shame. That deathless part, safe in the loving care 
 of the Saviour of the erring, and the comforter of the 
 sorrowful, it matters but little whether the body draws 
 its last breath in a ward of the hospital or on the 
 state-bed of a palace ; whether it be buried in a 
 prison-yard, or laid in the mausoleum of a king. 
 
 I have been gratified to hear that you still re 
 member me and the words I spoke to you, words 
 that came warm from a heart that felt for you only 
 the sad sympathy of a sister. And I have never 
 forgotten you. Through the lovely spring that fol 
 lowed my visit here, when all nature was rejoicing 
 in sunshine and freedom, I often thought of you, in 
 your shadowed, monotonous life ; none the easier to 
 bear that you have made it what it is. In my sum 
 mer home among the mountains, I thought of you, 
 and wished that you too might look on the vast, 
 green expanse of country around me, could drink 
 in the morning air of the great forests, fragrant with 
 pine odors and the breath of flowers. I would, if I 
 could, have sent our cool breezes to visit you in 
 
Words spoken in Prison. 35 
 
 prison, and painted our glorious sunsets on these 
 dull walls. 
 
 I would like to picture to you the splendor of 
 the outside summer and the fruitfulness of the au 
 tumn. 
 
 This has been a most eventful year politically. 
 Serfdom has been peaceably abolished in "barbar 
 ous Russia," and in civilized America a revolution 
 has been undertaken to perpetuate a worse system 
 of human bondage. I will not pain you by dwell 
 ing on the mad, destructive course of treason and 
 disunion. If you hear little of our national strife, 
 peril, and disgrace, you are more fortunate in your 
 seclusion than you are accustomed to think your 
 selves. 
 
 I would like to dwell on the noble revolution 
 in Italy, and the triumph of free principles there. 
 The tyrant King of Naples has been dethroned and 
 finally driven from his kingdom by the Italian peo 
 ple, led by Garibaldi, a brave soldier, who a few 
 years since was a poor exile in our country, and 
 gained an honest living by making candles on Staten 
 Island. 
 
 He is poor yet, a plain, simple-minded man. 
 When he entered Naples in triumph, he wore a 
 wide-awake hat, a pair of gray trousers, and a red 
 shirt, considerably the worse for wear. He placed 
 
36 Records of Five Years. 
 
 on the throne, which he might have filled, the King 
 of Sardinia, Victor Emmanuel, another plain soldier; 
 and having given everything into his hands, retired 
 to a farm on a little island in the Mediterranean, and 
 went to work like any other poor fellow. There is 
 a man for us ! God seldom sends a greater or a 
 better. 
 
 I think it would almost make you contented with 
 your lot, could you look into some of the fearful, 
 tomb-like dungeons of Palermo and Naples, into 
 which Garibaldi broke, like an angel of the resur 
 rection, to set free scores of men, imprisoned there 
 for years, for loving freedom and their country better 
 than they loved the Pope and the King. 
 
 Many of these dungeons were underground, pits 
 of darkness and noisome damps, close, filthy, and in 
 fested with vermin. 
 
 In such a place many a brave man, reared in 
 luxury, was confined ; half clad, heavily ironed, mis 
 erably fed on black bread and impure water; often 
 in utter, maddening solitude, with no books, writing, 
 or employment of any kind. Ah, my friends, he 
 would have prayed in agony for the most distasteful 
 work you are set to perform. 
 
 When the deliverer came to him, he was unable 
 to walk forth unassisted. The shouts of the people 
 stunned him, his own countrymen seemed to speak 
 
Words spoken in Prison. 37 
 
 a strange language to him, and the blessed light of 
 day smote on his weakened eyes like a sword-stroke. 
 
 Now all the Neapolitan prisons are empty of po 
 litical offenders, and the people are rejoicing in their 
 new freedom. 
 
 God grant that they may keep it ! We may want 
 Italy for a refuge yet. 
 
38 Records of Five Years. 
 
 PICTURES OF TOWN AND COUNTRY. 
 
 SUMMER IN THE CITY. 
 
 THE year is just entering upon its loveliest and 
 most triumphant season, and we with it, though 
 not as large participants in the beauty and glory, 
 not as full communicants in the sacrament of light 
 and bloom and song. 
 
 The green flood of advancing summer is setting 
 in upon us in every possible direction. The live 
 spirit of Nature cannot be kept down, even by the 
 mighty weight of brick walls, marble slabs, and pav 
 ing-stones. Wherever it finds an unguarded chink 
 and a handful of friendly earth, it creeps out in 
 moss, or pricks a passage forth by slender grass- 
 blades. Wherever stands a tree, it reaches it, through 
 the most noisome underground ways, climbs along 
 its roots, leaps up its trunk, laughs forth into the 
 air in blossoms, and quick unfurls a million of re 
 joicing banners to the sun. 
 
 In our public squares it has a grand outburst, a 
 glorious irruption of verdure and beauty, amid the 
 monotonous, rectangular waste, the "howling wilder 
 ness" of brick and mortar and endless traffic. 
 
Pictures of Town and Country. 39 
 
 In these squares the children "most do congre 
 gate," many of them the children of the poor, pale, 
 timid, ignorant little creatures, who know as little of 
 the country, of forests and streams and broad green 
 meadows, starred with buttercups and daisies, as of 
 heaven and the celestial fields. Here they come and 
 feast their starved hearts with wonder and innocent 
 delight. The green, overarching boughs and the 
 soft, luxuriant turf form for them " a new heaven 
 and a new earth." 
 
 It always seems to me that those grand old trees 
 are visible, conscious ministers of God to these poor 
 little ones ; that they stretch forth their arms benig- 
 nantly, and drop blessings with their sun-flecked 
 shade ; that their waving boughs carefully winnow 
 the air of all impurities ; that their very leaves ex 
 hale a breath of strength and healing. 
 
 It seems, too, that every violet that winks amid 
 the grass is colored purposely by the tender heaven, 
 to put celestial thoughts into their simple, untaught 
 souls ; that sunbeams plunge into the earth, and re 
 appear as buttercups and dandelions, to gladden 
 their weary eyes. For them the compassionate heart 
 of nature gushes forth in the fountain ; the waters 
 laugh and leap and make rainbows in the sun for 
 their refreshment and delight. For this they rose 
 among mossy mountain springs, dashed down rocky 
 
4O Records of Five Years. 
 
 ledges, and swept on through leagues of lonely wood 
 land and flowery meadow, green gorges and shadowy 
 valleys, and, leaving light and loveliness behind them, 
 suffered imprisonment in reservoirs, and groped their 
 way out, through dark leaden channels, to the glad 
 air and sunshine of the upper world. 
 
 Well, I would raftier be the enslaved, but benig 
 nant sprite of a city fountain, sprinkling cool, baptis 
 mal spray on the wan brows and fevered cheeks of 
 the forlorn children of poverty and sin, than the free 
 spirit of a mountain waterfall, dancing down the 
 rocks in careless gladness and beauty, royally clad 
 in rainbows and silver mist, with no human heart 
 to echo my laughter, or to ease its hot pantings of 
 weariness and pain, in the dewy coolness of my 
 presence. 
 
 Grander to me is the smallest jet-cTeau that springs 
 from a dull wayside wall, or amid the dreary square 
 of a crowded city, flowing daily for the poor, than 
 the mightiest fountain that adorns a palace garden, 
 and, on rare occasions, spouts for the pleasure of 
 kings. 
 
 It was beautiful to me to see how miraculously 
 the ancient "water privileges" of Rome had been 
 spared to the people, through the destructions and 
 tumults of a thousand wars. The stupendous and 
 luxurious baths of emperors and princes have fallen 
 
Pictures of Town and Countiy. 41 
 
 to ruins, but the Alban hills yearn toward the grand 
 old city yet, in a hundred street fountains, sending 
 into the most gloomy and decaying piazzas a voice 
 of cheerfulness, a sight of beauty, a pure, indestruc 
 tible element, the sweet, healthful lifetide of nature. 
 There are, in the very heart of our city, where 
 the land has risen to an enormous value, a few fine 
 old private gardens, where aristocracy and beauty 
 stand at bay, against the march of improvement and 
 the spirit of avarice, little isles of greenery and 
 bloom, around which sweep and surge the noisy bil 
 lows of traffic and travel. I bless the possessor of 
 every such garden, whenever I chance upon it. I 
 honor him for holding on to his birthright against 
 the most tempting mess of pottage which private in 
 terest or municipal enterprise can concoct. He may 
 be actuated by a spirit of patrician exclusiveness or 
 selfish indulgence ; but for all that his garden is a 
 public benefaction. His gates are of iron and firmly 
 bolted, but through the bars we catch inspiring 
 glimpses of a little domesticated paradise. His walls 
 are thick and high, but they are brimmed with bloom 
 and fragrance, and spill some over on to the busy, 
 toiling world without. The red May roses now 
 climbing up the walls, and hanging their bounteous 
 clusters over the sidewalk, drop more than perfumes 
 and loosened petals upon me as I pass, a sense of 
 
42 Records of Five Years. 
 
 joyful gratitude to Him who, from the infinite heights 
 of his Godhood, dropped upon our poor world ten 
 der, compassionate thoughts, which quickened into 
 roses, odorous with his love. 
 
 A few days since, we visited the lovely cemetery 
 of Woodlands, which occupies what long ago, in 
 "the good old Colony times," and for many years 
 after, was the park of " Hamilton House." That no 
 ble old mansion is standing still, and bids fair to 
 stand at least a hundred years longer. It is spacious 
 and stately, and reminds me somewhat of Washing 
 ton s head-quarters, at Cambridge, now Mr. Long 
 fellow s residence. It stands high and has a double 
 front. That toward the Schuylkill is very fine. From 
 a large piazza, with a tessellated marble floor and 
 lofty pillars, you look away, over beautiful rolling 
 grounds, and between grand old trees, to the river, 
 and across it, to the vast city. On this side is noth 
 ing of the cemetery. The grounds look wonderfully 
 like portions of an English park, and the house 
 would wear precisely its old aspect, patrician, yet 
 home-like, were it not that the windows about the 
 great hall door have been set with stained glass, 
 bearing certain pious and mortuary inscriptions, very 
 good in their place, on tombstones and chapel 
 windows, but it seems to me out of place here, in 
 a building which, with all its aristocratic and hospita- 
 
Pictures of Town and Country. 43 
 
 ble associations, can never, without ruinous I had 
 almost said sacrilegious remodelling, be solemnized 
 into a religious edifice. Surely it would have been 
 in better taste to have kept the old mansion as 
 much in statu quo as possible. Thus much of con 
 sideration was due to the very respectable manes of 
 those who builded and planted, enjoyed and suffered, 
 here in the olden time. When shall we realize that 
 human life is as solemn and sacred as death ? 
 
 The grounds are beautifully laid out, carefully cul 
 tivated, and thickly filled with tombs and monu 
 ments, some in excellent taste, and some, as is 
 always the case, unhappily, pretentious, bizarre, and 
 elaborately ugly. Among the epitaphs, as far as I 
 had time to examine, there was the usual doleful 
 uniformity of eulogy and moralizing. Why should 
 epitaph-writers be afraid of poetry, of fancy, of sim 
 plicity and heartiness ? Why should not the lov 
 ing, sorrowing heart speak over the grave its own 
 simple, passionate language? Why should not the 
 imagination of the Christian kindle into glorious 
 prophecy there ? Why should not the stricken soul 
 utter its grandest and sweetest thought there? as 
 the harp, heavily struck, sends out melodious wailing, 
 and the bruised herb complains in fragrance. 
 
 Many of the monuments to private individuals 
 seem to me too ponderous. The effect of such a 
 
44 Records of Five Years. 
 
 fearful weight of marble or granite piled upon graves 
 is disagreeable, even painful to me. I think monu 
 ments should always have an effect of lightness and 
 aspiration, should be something shaft-like or flame- 
 like in form. I like a single column, pure white, 
 and slightly ornamented, or a simple tablet, laid on 
 the grave, with a brief inscription, brief almost as 
 a heart-throb. 
 
 We found the whole cemetery gorgeous and re 
 splendent with flowers, and the air drunk with per 
 fumes. Now we came upon a flaming bush of red 
 roses, which seemed burning incense in pious masses 
 over the graves, so sweet and so glowing was it, 
 now upon a snowy monument of white roses, telling 
 the story of some baby s sweetness, of some maiden s 
 beauty, in fragrance and bloom. Now over a som 
 bre mourning railing swept a bounteous honeysuckle - 
 vine, overrunning the gloom of death with the joy 
 of heaven, a very cataract of creamy and crimson 
 bloom, a wild tangle of blossoms, which seemed ac 
 tually dripping with sweetness. Here a vine had 
 clambered up a tree, and hung out clusters of flow 
 ers, like chimes of tiny bells, which, as the wind 
 swung them to and fro, tolled their heavy perfumes 
 over the dead. 
 
 Nothing is so fit as flowers and trees for watchers 
 over the graves of our beloved. How they per- 
 
Pictures of Town and Country. 45 
 
 petuate their beautiful memory from year to year, 
 each keeping the sacred trust through its season, 
 and passing it on to the next. The violet wakes 
 with it in the spring, and looks up at us with the 
 smile of some tender blue eye, closed forever ; the 
 lilac and the snowball, dear homestead flowers, blos 
 som with their lost life ; the rose breathes forth their 
 love, and thoughts unspeakable of the beauty of 
 holiness and the glory of Him in whose presence 
 they dwell ; the white lily, most holy and virginal 
 of flowers, elect of Heaven, ever annunciative of the 
 divine, typifies their angelic purity and gracious love 
 liness ; the morning-glory kindles with their joy, is 
 streaked with the dawn of their paradise ; the mag 
 nolia drinks to their memory, in beakers of odorous 
 dew, held aloft in the summer morning air; while 
 the pansies in the grass are but pensees of them, 
 passed into flowers, transfigured remembrance and 
 sorrow; the last hardy chrysanthemum of Novem 
 ber only resigns the trust to the faithful cedar, who 
 keeps it green all winter. 
 
 Not only do flowers speak to us of the love and 
 loveliness of our lost, but, we may hope, to them of 
 our tender and constant affection. They are the 
 best interpreters between us and the angels. Doubt 
 less, had we the eyes to discern them, we should 
 often find the " shining ones " sitting within the 
 tomb and beside the grave. 
 
46 Records of Five Years. 
 
 I love to see bouquets of flowers laid upon mounds 
 or monuments, in seasons when few or none are 
 blooming around. It shows that human hearts are 
 even more fond and faithful than nature. I would 
 rather see them there even when faded, than a fade 
 less wreath of Immortelles, that most economical and 
 ugly of all mourning tributes. By the way, they have 
 got to making and selling these wreaths here, just 
 such as I saw hanging on the crosses, and piled on 
 the mounds, of Pere La Chaise. They are of a bright 
 yellow color, and painted in black, with various in 
 scriptions, as, " Mon ami," " Mon frere," " Ma mere." 
 
 I know they are esteemed very poetical offerings, 
 but I cannot like them. They seem to me not so 
 much flowers, as the mummies of flowers, and, even 
 when growing, dead. 
 
 This superseding the gloomy, confined old burying- 
 grounds of our cities with beautiful, extensive ceme 
 teries, is one of the happiest, most humanizing and 
 Christianizing improvements of the day. I long to 
 see it adopted in all country towns, where it were well 
 if people would " consider their latter end," in other 
 than the theological sense, and not neglect to pro 
 vide a decent resting-place for the body, while striv 
 ing to secure celestial housing for the soul. A more 
 kindly and liberal spirit toward the dead surely needs 
 to be cultivated in most of the rural districts. In 
 
Pictures of Town and Country. 47 
 
 how many country places do we find the grave, which 
 should be the beloved and oft-frequented shrine of 
 sorrowing affection, a neglected and an avoided spot ! 
 "God s Acre" often occupies some bare, bleak hill, 
 where the land is fit for nothing else, and the sur 
 roun dings are most forlorn. It is often utterly with 
 out trees, shrubbery, or a single garden-flower, with 
 no evidence of cultivation or care, except such as 
 the sexton, rude gardener, gives it, with a few stiff 
 tombstones, of a terrible sameness in form and in 
 scriptions, half overgrown with grass and weeds, some 
 broken and some awry, a dreary, desolate little set 
 tlement of the dead, which the most perturbed and 
 lugubrious of ghosts would forbear to haunt, and 
 which we may scarcely hope the happy souls of the 
 dead ever visit, banishing themselves from Paradise 
 to hold silent trysts with love and sorrow. Why 
 should they come ? The living are never here to meet 
 them, save on sad burial occasions, when a melan 
 choly duty calls them, when they weep and pray 
 beside the grave, and shudder at the sound of the 
 earth upon the coffin, and hurry away, feeling all 
 the awfulness and none of the beauty of death. 
 
 No bouquets, no wreaths, grace these unsightly 
 mounds. Homely Nature makes a kindly effort, and 
 does her best in the way of daisies and dandelions ; 
 sometimes her pity declares itself in a sweet-brier- 
 
48 Records of Five Years. 
 
 bush, sometimes she sighs in a wild violet, but oftener 
 she makes a harsh protest against man s neglect in 
 the form of thistles, and offers a stinging rebuke of 
 his carelessness and sloth in a mighty growth of 
 nettles and briers. 
 
 These ornamental cemeteries are having a beauti 
 ful and benignant influence upon us, in throwing a 
 brave and healthful cheerfulness about the grave, in 
 teaching the soul acquiescence and faith in the first 
 great hard condition of human existence, a grateful 
 acceptance of the radiant reality, life, with its dark, 
 cold shadow, death. 
 
 In causing the Memento Mori, the* skull and cross- 
 bones of old, to give place to a joyous Memento 
 Vita, written in flowers, we take nothing from the 
 real solemnity of death, but only rob it of some of 
 the terror and ghastliness attached to it by morbid 
 melancholy and superstition. 
 
 "A laughing light of flowers" around the dead 
 best speaks our resignation, while typifying their 
 blessedness. 
 
 I was struck by the effect which the brightness 
 and cheerfulness of Woodlands had upon my little 
 
 daughter, 
 
 " A simple child, 
 
 That lightly draws its breath, 
 
 And feels its life in every limb, 
 
 What can it know of death ? " 
 
Pictures of Town and Country. 49 
 
 She laughed and shouted, and raced up and down 
 the flowery walks, wild with delight. Some of the 
 monuments pleased her greatly, particularly one of 
 a Gothic form, which she called " a dear little house," 
 and evidently considered a very desirable residence. 
 She had, at first, been a little displeased that we 
 could not drive into the grounds, like some more 
 favored parties, and was for some time on the look 
 out for an empty carriage, which we could confis 
 cate. At length, she caught sight of a hearse, com 
 ing down the hill, and cried out, " O mamma ! 
 there s a nice carriage for us, stop the driver!" 
 
 I smiled, yet was touched to the heart by her 
 utter unconsciousness ; and, as her happy feet danced 
 past the graves, I prayed that it might be long ere 
 she should know the full, heavy meaning of the 
 word "death," and that the realization might not 
 come upon her abruptly, in any terrible way, but 
 be gradually and painlessly received. 
 
 Most tenderly and cheerfully, it seems to me, 
 should the whole subject of death be treated in 
 our talks with children. For them, the grave should 
 be covered, literally and spiritually, with flowers ; 
 for them the valley of the shadow of death should 
 be doubly illuminated, with the home-light of love 
 and faith, pouring through a door opening toward 
 heaven, and with sweet welcoming light, outshining 
 3 D 
 
5<D Records of Five Years. 
 
 from the windows of the Father s house, but a little 
 way off. 
 
 There were other children at Woodlands that day, 
 who knew what death was, yet who seemed happy 
 and tranquil, wandering about, as in some beautiful 
 flower-garden. How different, I remember, were my 
 feelings, as a child, when I visited the old country 
 burying-ground, on pilgrimages to the graves of my 
 brother and sister. How silently and softly I stole 
 along, as fearful of disturbing the dead ! How I shud 
 dered if my sacrilegious foot but touched a grave ! 
 What a fearsome sight was to me the last-made 
 mound, with fresh earth, stones, and straw scattered 
 around, with its faded turf, and the black bier, stand 
 ing over it like a grim watcher. " Nous avons change 
 tout cela," and a glorious change it is ; Heaven help 
 the good work forward, till "God s Acre" shall be 
 come everywhere a place of beauty and pleasantness, 
 where children and angels will love to come, and 
 where the aged and toil-worn will smile down on 
 the shaded couches of rest, waiting to receive them. 
 
Pictures of Town and Country. 51 
 
 SUMMER ON THE MOUNTAIN. 
 
 ONE night, on the hot edge of July, certain souls 
 yet in the body were caught up out of a close, 
 glaring city street, by mighty genii, breathing out fire 
 and smoke, and whirled away through clouds and 
 darkness, over torrents and deep gorges, and leagues 
 on leagues of land, and set down at morning amid 
 the mountains of a strange country. 
 
 Something very like a realization of Aladdin s 
 magical journeying seemed our family Hegira, from 
 
 our city to C , on the great Alleghany Mountain, 
 
 where we have taken up our abode for the summer, 
 at a lonely farm-house, a mile away from the little 
 town and the great hotel where fashionable visitors 
 "most do congregate." 
 
 It is a beautiful, quiet, rural spot, with the purest, 
 clearest air imaginable, long delicious twilights, nights 
 of autumnal coolness, and brilliant dawns. Grain- 
 fields stretch around us in goldening greenness, and 
 clover meadows, undulating in the wind, red seas of 
 fragrant bloom; while the horizon is a girdle of 
 mighty forest-trees, sentinel pines, and the grim old 
 hemlock warders of the hills, oaks, maples, chest 
 nuts, beeches, of every conceivable shade of sum 
 mer verdure. The mountain itself seems stretched 
 
52 Records of Five Years. 
 
 out lengthwise, in grand repose, being without the 
 bare, strongly defined summit and craggy peaks one 
 naturally looks for in ambitious elevations of the 
 kind. 
 
 No change in human living, breathing, surround 
 ings, and outlookings could be more complete. It 
 was like a translation to another planet. Like poor, 
 simple folk, suddenly fallen heirs to great posses 
 sions, we were bewildered at first by the grand 
 expanse of country around us. We were lost in 
 the lonely silent spaces, afloat amid the ocean of 
 greenery. 
 
 Why, sundown, which but yesterday we saw just 
 at the end of one of our straight city streets, was 
 now miles and mountains away ! And what a won 
 derful thing it was for the eye to be able to com 
 mand such an immensity of clouds and sky, the 
 full shining host, the starry encampment of heaven ! 
 And when the great wind blew upon us, in benefi 
 cent purity and strength, sweeping down the moun 
 tain-slopes, broad-winged and majestic, like descend 
 ing deity, bearing along with it the incense of earth, 
 in the breath of pine forests and flowery meadows, 
 we could hardly believe it kin to the languid breezes 
 that crept along our city streets, or shuddered fit 
 fully among the trees in our little parks, or to the 
 angry "gusts that sometimes howled around the cor- 
 
Pictures of Town and Country. 53 
 
 ners, in a whirling cloud of dust and powdered pav 
 ing-stones. 
 
 Though we were all to the country manner born, 
 had once been familiar with such scenes, we found 
 ourselves " ill at these pastoral numbers." We were 
 shamefaced before sheep and kine. We were star 
 tled out of our propriety by the defiant attitude of 
 watch-dogs, the sibilant salutation of ganders, and 
 the billingsgate of sitting hens ; we fled before the 
 red wrath of tl\e turkey-cock as parish children flee 
 before an angry beadle. 
 
 Even the kindly face of Nature looked strange to 
 us, as, weary with wandering and exile, we laid our 
 heads in her good old motherly lap once more. 
 
 But this state of bewilderment gradually passed 
 off: we were "wonted" at last, and began to won 
 der how we had ever felt at home and content in 
 the hard heart of a great city, where w r e only ob 
 tained the pure air of heaven by special excursions 
 and pious quests, where we took greenness in small 
 oases, moonlight in strips and patches, and sunsets 
 by the streetful. 
 
 On our little daughter, now sitting on the porch 
 below, pulling to pieces one of the roses of her 
 fifth summer, the effect of the change has been very 
 marked, and furnishes a study of no slight interest 
 to us. 
 
54 Records of Five Years. 
 
 Trusting that the little story of her transformation 
 may possess some significance, for other parents at 
 least, I will venture to give it. 
 
 For a while she too was ill at ease, looking back 
 from her state of freedom to the scene of her cap 
 tivity with ungracious repining, like a juvenile Israel 
 ite after the Exodus, or a small companion-piece of 
 the prisoner of the Bastille. She had fond recollec 
 tions of her sidewalk playmates, of rope-jumping, 
 and hoop-rolling, of street-life, with its organ-grinders, 
 ice-cream-venders, and strawberry-women. "Beauti 
 ful on the mountains " would have been the feet of 
 a penny-postman ; even the sight of an old clo man, 
 that terror of naughty children, would for once have 
 been welcome. She missed street-cries and sounds 
 in the still morning, and had, I believe, vague ideas 
 that the cock that crowed in the farm-yard had some 
 thing to sell, and that the robin that sung on the 
 peach-tree below our window should have copper 
 recompense for his song. 
 
 On the occasion of the first mountain shower she 
 touchingly remarked, with a pensive, far-away look 
 of the eyes, " Mamma, how full my gutter is now ; 
 it roars along like a river." 
 
 But all this passed quickly. She soon became 
 quite at home with Nature, and established friendly 
 relations with her dumb children, feathered and four- 
 
Pictures of Town and Country. 55 
 
 footed, though she made some slight mistakes at 
 first, such as taking the geese for swans, proposing 
 to ride a small colt, and to fetch her little bucket 
 and milk the young calves. 
 
 It is marvellous how easily she adapts herself to 
 the circumstances around her, and how rapidly she 
 accumulates knowledge of a practical and pastoral 
 character. She is especially and most seriously in 
 terested in observing tracks in the muddy road after 
 a shower. They are all, in a sense, "footprints of 
 the Creator" to her. One morning, on our walk, 
 she prattled along this wise : " How nice the coun 
 try is for tracks ! When we go before, we make 
 tracks behind. No animal can make tracks before, 
 only elephants. That s a cow s track, and here s its 
 calf s track trotting along behind ! O here s a colt s 
 track ! I know it is a colt s track, because it s little, 
 and its iron feet have n t grovved. What animal s 
 track is this, mamma?" 
 
 "That, my love, is a barefooted man s track," I 
 replied. She bent down and examined the vestige 
 with all the solemn curiosity and interest of an en 
 thusiastic geologist contemplating a trilobite of un 
 usual size and perfectness. " O yes," she said, with 
 a grave, sagacious look, " I see the toes and every 
 thing. He took off his stockings and shoes to make 
 it, didn t he?" 
 
56 Records of Five Years. 
 
 She dearly loves to go to the meadows for wild 
 strawberries ; and never do I so completely lose sight 
 of the weary years of toil, sorrow, and change that 
 intervene between to-day and the golden summer 
 days of my childhood, as when on one of these 
 pleasant quests. As a child I was a mighty hunt 
 ress of wild berries ; and now, crouched amid the 
 long grass, my eye on the keen look-out for the 
 shy, red game, my fingers stained with their odor 
 ous blood, the old, eager, ardent spirit comes back. 
 I forget all the grave, tiresome purposes of life, and 
 devote to the sport the long-misdirected energies 
 of mind and body. 
 
 One of the happiest discoveries made by our lit 
 tle daughter is of the immense difference between 
 cow s milk and milkman s milk. She always turned 
 with an instinct of honest protestation from the lat 
 ter. She quaffs the former with avidity, and Nature, 
 with her beautiful alchemy, turns the white draughts 
 into rich, red blood. The banished roses have re 
 turned to blush jubilant in her cheeks. In her mo 
 tion the child is fast catching the bound and frolic- 
 someness of colts and lambkins. Her spirits borrow 
 the soaring joyousness of birds. There seems already 
 a broadening and deepening of her nature ; she is 
 happier and, in the best way, quieter, more unselfish 
 and affectionate, than ever she has been in our city 
 
Pictures of Town and Country. 57 
 
 home. There the narrow limits that shut her in, 
 the restrictions that everywhere opposed themselves 
 to her restless, adventurous spirit, chafed and fretted 
 her; unconsciously she bruised herself against the 
 bars of her cage, and pined for she knew not what. 
 For several weeks her inveterate, defiant, and daily 
 increasing naughtiness had been the cause of much 
 parental anxiety and troubled consultation. 
 
 Now it almost seems as though the sweet quie 
 tude of these primeval forests, of these wide mead 
 ows and slowly ripening fields, an influence which is 
 like a manifestation to the senses of "the peace of 
 God, which passeth all understanding," has sunk into 
 the soul of the child, for, with occasional brief back- 
 slidings into metropolitan immorality, she is really 
 very good and tractable, and already looks back 
 with something very like self-righteousness on the 
 naughty little city-girl of two weeks ago. 
 
 Her heart goes out in tender commiseration for 
 the playmates left behind. " O mamma, how I wish 
 all the children were here, in this beautiful green 
 world ! " she often says, and my heart ever responds 
 to the wish with a pang of sorrowful pity. 
 
 Painfully my mind goes back from these wide, green 
 
 expanses, these mighty, billowy swells of meadow 
 
 and woodland, these crouched mountain shapes, to 
 
 the long, narrow vistas of our city streets, crammed 
 
 3* 
 
58 Records of Five Years. 
 
 with life, with young life, grown pallid and nerveless 
 before its time. I see again the groups of little 
 children, restless, turbulent, petulant, now working 
 mightily at their monotonous round of sidewalk plays, 
 now yielding for a moment to the cruel fatigue that 
 trembles through every limb and fibre, sinking on 
 the glaring white steps, and sitting with drooping 
 hands and an absent, unsatisfied look of the eyes, 
 which seems to ask something better of life, yet to 
 expect nothing. 
 
 I see again sickly, hollow-eyed little ones, crawling 
 forth at evening, in the hope of meeting a cooling 
 breeze, which, coming from that beautiful green un 
 known, the country, and getting bewildered in the 
 vast city, may wander even down their narrow street, 
 and shake some life and freshness from his wings. 
 
 Ah ! if the spirits of the innocents ever walk, and 
 haunt the scenes of their suffering, pining, and slow 
 dying, a seer might often behold in the misty moon 
 light or dim starlight a group of pale little ghosts 
 sitting on every door-step of a narrow city street. 
 
 Had I the power, I would every year have a 
 grand irruption of the children of the poor from the 
 cities into the country. I would bring them from 
 their dreary exile in those sickly Cayennes of brick 
 and mortar; I would bring them down from their 
 lofty, perilous prisons of poverty, the crowded tene- 
 
Pictures of Town and Country. 59 
 
 ment-houses, I would bring them up from noisome 
 basement dungeons, and would lead them out be 
 yond the hot pavements, past factories, slaughter 
 houses, cemeteries crammed with little coffins, far 
 out, till the cool green of the country should close 
 around them, far down to the ocean-beach, where 
 the waves would lap their feet, and the sea-breeze 
 frolic with their hair, or far up, where the mountain- 
 winds would kiss their wan cheeks into unwonted 
 bloom. I would have Nature welcome home all her 
 little ones, for a grand summer festival, and minister 
 to them with all her strengthening, purifying, divinely 
 tender influences. 
 
 THE OVERFILLED NEST. 
 
 ON one of our walks in the wood, a while since, 
 we found, under a mossy bank, a ground-bird s 
 nest, from which the full-fledged birdlings were just 
 flitting. We lingered near, and quietly watched them 
 making their first eager, yet timid essays at flight ; 
 all the world before them, the world which doubt 
 less to their simple thought was comprehended in 
 their little forest glade : a marvellous chamber, pil 
 lared and arched by mighty trees, carpeted with green, 
 
60 Records of Five Years. 
 
 and roofed with blue. The father and mother bird 
 were there, supporting them in this trying hour, lead 
 ing them on with lively notes of encouragement. 
 Here and there the wee things fluttered, growing 
 bolder and wiser every moment, their little world 
 broadening around them and opening on all sides 
 in long, mysterious vistas. Now the parent birds 
 flew flaster and farther, calling back a cheery " Come 
 on ! " A spirit of emulative adventure seized on their 
 offspring ; the strong morning wind held up their 
 weak wings ; with chirps of shrill bravado they dashed 
 on, turned their tails on the little brown nest under 
 the moss-bank forever, and disappeared under the 
 arches of the forest. 
 
 After the flitting was completed, we took the lib 
 erty of looking into the empty house. Here, on a 
 close examination, we found, to our sorrowful sur 
 prise, a little dead bird, snugly imbedded in the 
 twigs and hair which formed the nest, and only re 
 vealed by the white feathers of its tail, which stuck 
 up like a memorial over the place of its singular 
 entombment. 
 
 It seemed to have early departed this life, as its 
 little mortal remains were now in a state of almost 
 perfect mummifaction. Had it died in tender in 
 fancy, of a poisonous insect, or an undigested worm? 
 and had its fond, afflicted mother, unable to part 
 
Pictures of Town and Country. 6 1 
 
 with the tiny corpse, sat upon it, like a coroner, in 
 indefinite inquest? Or had it been a good, exem 
 plary, provoking little fellow, for exceeding virtue 
 and exasperating meekness, foully pecked to death 
 by some Cain of a brother? and had the horrified 
 heads of the family purposely kept the murdered in 
 nocent where his accusing tail would ever come up 
 against the fratricide? 
 
 More likely this was the youngest and weakest 
 birdling of the brood, trodden down by lusty broth 
 ers and aspiring sisters, or smothered in an overfilled 
 nest If so, had an indolent mother, on discovering 
 the catastrophe, felt a pensive sense of relief at hav 
 ing one shivering little form the less to shelter from 
 the wind and rain ? Had an industrious father drawn 
 gloomy consolation from the thought that one bill 
 the less would henceforth be presented to him for 
 the hard-earned worm? 
 
 On another morning walk, as we passed under a 
 wild thorn-tree, we found on the ground a little, 
 partly-fledged robin. He was dead, and, guided by 
 a low murmur of bird-voices, our eyes soon discov 
 ered the nest from which he had fallen. " Rashly 
 importunate" to see more of the great green world, 
 he may have undertaken to fly without parental help 
 and counsel, and before Nature had completed her 
 avolationary arrangements ; but more probably he too 
 
62 Records of Five Years. 
 
 had been crowded out of an overfilled nest, - not, 
 we will trust, as a deliberate measure of domestic 
 economy, but as the unhappy result of narrow quar 
 ters and too many inmates. We can fancy his fright 
 ened brothers and sisters, peering over the edge of 
 the nest, and striving to make their little short vision 
 reach all the way down the dizzy spaces to the spot 
 where lay the unfortunate member of their family 
 circle, never more to crowd for his place among 
 them, or gape for his share of the frugal meal. 
 
 To our eyes he had fallen a very little way in 
 deed, but to him it was quite as disastrous a descent 
 as to the doomed aeronaut is his headlong plunge 
 earthward, from awful airy heights. It was, at all 
 events, enough to dash the faint principle of life 
 from his little breast forever, doubtless a serious 
 casualty to him, though, to the great, unfeathered 
 world, of the slightest possible moment. Yet the 
 world will be the poorer, by one robin song, for 
 that casualty. 
 
 The tiny body was yet warm. Our little daughter 
 took it, with tearful eyes, nested it in her soft hands, 
 murmured over it, and breathed upon it gently, striv 
 ing to win it back to life. Ah ! why could not the 
 child work a beautiful miracle of love, and recall 
 that tender little song-soul from the silent unknown? 
 
 She grew discouraged at last, but held the poor 
 
Pictures of Town and Country. 63 
 
 "baby-bird" long in her hand, mourning and moral 
 izing over it. And I, too, moralized, though in a 
 different and sadder way. 
 
 I thought of many a home of poverty and ill-paid 
 toil, to which the proverbial blessing of the poor, a 
 goodly flock of children, comes robbed of half its 
 joy and sacredness, each helpless new-comer adding 
 fearfully to the family cares and privations, and tak 
 ing from the scanty store of parental energy and 
 courage. I thought of households into which death 
 comes as the melancholy lightener of weary hands, 
 where even the undertaker is looked upon not un 
 kindly, as a grim friend, who bears away dead cares 
 and heart-wearing anxieties under small coffin-lids, 
 with shrunken little forms, that will never know 
 hunger or cold any more. 
 
 This train of thought brought back a long-forgot 
 ten experience of my early girlhood, the tending and 
 watching beside a child of some poor neighbors, a 
 puny babe, who, after many weeks of wailing and 
 languishing, moaned itself into the last rest, on its 
 mother s lap. After the release of the tired little 
 soul, I took the body, worn, emaciated, absolutely 
 aged with suffering, and prepared it for burial. When 
 at last it lay in its rude cradle, clad in its one de 
 cent white frock, its thin hands folded on its breast, 
 a little image of wearied rest and quieted pain, the 
 
64 Records of Five Years. 
 
 V 
 
 mother, a sickly, broken-spirited woman, the wife of 
 a worthless inebriate, said, gloomily : 
 
 " Well, there s one little body the less to provide 
 clothes for, and one little mouth the less to feed." 
 
 I thought her strangely hard and cold, that pa 
 tient, sad-eyed mother, but the next moment, her 
 arms were thrown around that still, wasted body, 
 her lips pressed against that pale little mouth. 
 
 " She was always a poor, puny thing ; but it s 
 hard to part with her, for all that," she said, half 
 apologetically. " She always had a grieved, pining 
 look, and never learned to smile ; but I loved her 
 dearly, better, husband says, than all the other six. 
 Yet I can t wish her back : it s better as it is, all 
 around." 
 
 One of the saddest thoughts we can have about 
 children, is of their being "in the way," in the crowded 
 homes of the poor. Every tenement-house overflows 
 with restless, uncared-for, impressible young creatures, 
 who throng out into alleys and courts, and become 
 ready pupils in vast shifting schools of immorality 
 and vice. The poor parents are by no means always 
 to blame for this. Their children cannot be caged 
 up like birds or wild beasts, nor always watched 
 over and guarded against moral infection. Animal 
 wants must be met, whatever the spirit s needs and 
 perils. 
 
Pictures of Town and Country. 65 
 
 Among the institutions most called for in our great 
 cities are temporary asylums for the young children 
 of working-people, where they can be kindly cared 
 for during the day, and where they can learn no 
 evil. "Ragged Schools," admirable institutions as 
 they are, only meet the wants of the lowest classes. 
 Relief is needed by respectable men and women, 
 whose children are too young to be sent to school 
 or put to regular tasks of any kind. That invention 
 of a benevolent Herod, the Infant School, was a des 
 perate effort to lighten the cares of the parents, at 
 the expense of the health and brains of the little 
 ones. Let us have no revival of that monstrosity j 
 but I should rejoice to see adopted in our cities 
 something like the German plan of Kinder- Garten, 
 gardens for children, where they could be amused 
 and taught, by means of organized plays, a charm 
 ing mode of disguised instruction, whose results could 
 only be happy and beneficent. 
 
 Here the children of the workingman, instead of 
 being penned up in narrow courts, or allowed to 
 range through unwholesome alleys, would enjoy some 
 of the most enviable luxuries of the rich, space, 
 cleanliness, fresh air, cool shade, the song of birds, 
 the beauty and fragrance of flowers. 
 
 Nature is a wonderful educator, and the best school- 
 house for the little ones is out of doors. Every tree 
 
66 Records of Five Years. 
 
 would tell to them enchanting stories of Divine good 
 ness and wisdom, through its unfolding and whisper 
 ing leaves, could they be brought quietly to listen, 
 and helped to understand ; every flower would blos 
 som for them, with a lesson of love and duty, could 
 they be brought to look upon it as something more 
 than a frail bawble, to be snatched at, smelled at, and 
 flung away. All nature might be made to minister 
 to the growth of their souls, so that not only should 
 " the heavens declare the glory of Qod," but birds 
 sing his praise, and insects mutely proclaim his prov 
 idence and power. The dark story of decay and 
 death could be tenderly told by the fading of foliage, 
 and the beautiful mystery of immortality revealed in 
 the radiant resurrection of the butterfly. 
 
 But our wise men of the West are so accustomed 
 to look upon German theories and systems of edu 
 cation as made up of poetry and moonshine, or 
 meerschaum smoke, that I fear it will be long ere we 
 have the Kinder-Garten naturalized in our towns and 
 cities. 
 
 Why will such multitudes of honest working-peo 
 ple, who might do well in country places, remain 
 packed in tenement-houses, layer on layer of stifled 
 humanity, where their children are always in the way, 
 at home and in the thronged streets, where there is 
 no room for them, on public promenade, in gardens 
 
Pictures of Town and Country. 67 
 
 or parks, not even space for their little coffins in 
 crowded cemeteries? 
 
 City life seems to have a horrible fascination for 
 the poor. They evidently prefer it, with all its gre 
 garious discomfort and unhealthiness, to the country, 
 with its space, cleanliness, pure air, quiet, and whole 
 some isolation. The city is a vast maelstrom, con 
 stantly drawing in from the country new life, ener 
 gies, and ambitions, and rendering little back; but 
 the most melancholy thought is of the helpless, hap 
 less childhood, forever whirling and sinking in the 
 dark vortex. 
 
 THE HEARSE ON THE MOUNTAIN. 
 
 ONE bright, still noon of last week, Death sud 
 denly descended upon our mountain, like a 
 thunder-bolt out of a clear sky. Our nearest neigh 
 bor, an old man of nearly seventy years, while har 
 vesting, was thrown down by his horses and mor 
 tally hurt by their trampling hoofs and the heavy 
 wheels of his wagon. He was lifted up by his sons 
 and carried into his house, murmuring, "Lord, have 
 mercy on my soul ! " Then some one dashed off at 
 mad speed for the doctor, who came, and, to the 
 
68 Records of Five Years. 
 
 joy of friends and kindred, pronounced an opinion 
 that the injuries were not so serious as had been 
 supposed, and that the patient would soon recover, 
 and perhaps be as hale and hearty as ever. For 
 the honor of science, the old farmer should have 
 rallied ; but, like the poor mother of little Paul Dom- 
 bey, he proved to be not equal to the effort. Ex 
 hausted by pain, he fell into a sleep, and did not 
 wake again. His kind old wife, who watched over 
 him, did not know when he ceased to breathe, so 
 softly and imperceptibly had life ebbed away in the 
 profound calm of that last earthly slumber. 
 
 The priest came too late to bid the hasting soul 
 God-speed ; it had gone forth unaneled, had touched 
 the eternal shore with unanointed feet. 
 
 Yet surely not alone had it gone. The mercy of 
 the Lord, so humbly invoked in the hour of ex- 
 tremest need, had not left it companionless and for 
 saken. All unconscious, perchance, it had passed 
 through the mighty change from the mortal to the 
 immortal, borne like a sleeping child in the arms 
 of a strong, benignant angel, through the valley of 
 shadows and mysteries, and over the fearful river, 
 to be laid softly down in the "green pastures" and 
 beside the " still waters " of the better land. 
 
 In primitive country-places people seem to be in 
 strange haste to " bury their dead out of their sight." 
 
Pictures of Town and Country. 69 
 
 That night there was a " wake " in the brown farm 
 house under the hill, and the next day, hardly twen 
 ty-four hours from the time when the news of the 
 fearful accident had struck a sudden horror through 
 our veins, we looked out upon a hearse, slowly mov 
 ing by, bearing the tired old laborer home, from the 
 harvest-fields he would reap no more. A long pro 
 cession followed that grim car of the great con 
 queror, country vehicles of every description, and a 
 large number of men and women on horseback. The 
 aged farmer had been much respected, and even in 
 this busy harvest-time friends and neighbors, for many 
 miles around, had gathered to do honor to his hon 
 est memory. 
 
 A little below us, at a cross-road, the train paused, 
 to say prayers, then crept on, along the pleasant 
 forest-way, up the mountain, to the summit, where 
 stands the cross-crowned church, and where in its 
 shadow lie clustered together an ever-growing flock 
 of the faithful, through balmy summers and stormy 
 winters sleeping the same deep, quiet sleep. 
 
 Strange it was that the passing of that hearse, 
 bearing by a stranger, whom we had but looked 
 upon casually once or twice in our walks, should 
 suddenly have clouded for us the radiant heavens 
 and shadowed the smiling earth. Nature, but a brief 
 while before so joyous and glowing, in her sumptuous 
 
7O Records of Five Years. 
 
 festive apparelling, crowned with her summer beauty 
 and flashing with a thousand ardent lights, seemed 
 mysteriously to sympathize with the sight. The regal 
 quietude softened into tender melancholy ; the clouds 
 of heaven seemed brooding over the sorrowful pro 
 cession ; the forest-trees gave forth awe-struck mur 
 murs as it passed ; the tall hemlocks bowed solemnly 
 before it ; the pines, those strange, sad trees, that on 
 the wild sea-shore catch up the moan of the great 
 deep, and pass it from mountain-top to mountain- 
 top around the world, seemed now to breathe a 
 human pity in their fragrant sighs. All else was 
 still ; no woodman s axe pained the religious silence 
 of the forest ; scarce a merry little bird offended by 
 the sweet heartlessness of its happy song. 
 
 Up the long ascent it moved, that shadow of our 
 mortal sorrow and perishable earthly estate, that 
 shadow of the dead man s hearse, along the way his 
 feet had often trod, past the spring over whose brink 
 he may have often bent with thirsting lip, past lovely 
 green glades, mossy banks, and fairy forests of wav 
 ing ferns, on which his eye had often dwelt with a 
 vague and soft delight, and so passed out of our 
 view. But its memory went not out of our hearts 
 that day. 
 
 In this pure, healthful region, where nature seems 
 so unworn, so youthful and vigorous, where dwell sim- 
 
Pictures of Town and Country. 71 
 
 plicity, humble comfort, and quiet happiness, death 
 has startled us as something strange and unnatural. 
 Here, where the physician has seemed to us as a 
 sort of elegant luxury, an undertaker seems a mon 
 strous anomaly. 
 
 How different is it in the city! There mourners 
 in their weeds, the sombre advertisement of their 
 sorrow, mingle everywhere with the gay promenaders 
 or busy crowds of our streets ; there in almost every 
 square one sees depending from the door and win 
 dows of some house the tell-tale crape, Death s 
 mournful pennons fluttering in the wind. There, on 
 many a corner, one is confronted with the black, 
 significant sign of the undertaker s " dreadful trade," 
 or comes upon some marble-yard, filled with a ghostly 
 assemblage of anticipatory gravestones and monu 
 ments ; graceful broken columns, which are to typify 
 the lovely incompleteness of some young life, now 
 full of beauty and promise; melancholy, drooping 
 figures, types of grief forever inconsolable, destined, 
 perhaps, to stand proxy for mourning young widows, 
 now happy wives ; sculptured lambs, patiently waiting 
 to take their places above the graves of little chil 
 dren, whom yet smiling mothers nightly lay to sleep 
 in soft cribs, without the thought of a deeper dark 
 and silence of a night not far away, or of the dreary 
 beds soon to be prepared for their darlings, "i* the 
 earth." 
 
72 Records of Five Years. 
 
 There we make magnificent provision for our dead. 
 No cathedral were vast enough to shadow their rest. 
 We appropriate acres of pleasant land, woods, river- 
 banks, hills, and quiet glens, to the goodly company \ 
 and every year the silent settlement widens and 
 thickens. Tombs, columns, lambs, mourning-figures, 
 weeping-willows, broken lilies and rose-buds mul 
 tiply. Soon every tree must shade a circle of graves ; 
 even now, the flowers on every bit of unbroken turf 
 seem to say to us, "We occupy till you come." 
 
 There a sadly familiar vehicle is the hearse, with 
 its black steeds and melancholy cortege. Some 
 times, while waiting at the corner of a street till 
 the way should be clear, we have indulged in pen 
 sive conjectures as to who or what was the still oc 
 cupant of the gloomy state-carriage in which sooner 
 or later we must all take a place. Sometimes, when 
 the coffin under the waving plumes was small, I 
 have clasped closer my little daughter s hand, and 
 quickly turned my eyes away, not daring to glance 
 into the mourning-coach that followed, where per 
 chance sat a mother, in the awful sacredness of her 
 sorrow ; but, ere the day was over, the incident was 
 forgotten. If it were not for the power to throw 
 off the sad impression of such sights, and to narrow 
 down our gentlest sympathies to the little circle of 
 immediate friends and acquaintances, our days at 
 
Pictures of Town and Country. 73 
 
 home would all pass like a funeral procession ; death- 
 knells would deaden our ears to the sweet home- 
 music of life ; ever would we " smell the mould above 
 the rose." 
 
 In the country the simple ties of human brother 
 hood are stronger. We take home the startling les 
 son of our neighbor s sudden death. In spirit, we 
 sit down with his stricken household, and put our 
 lips to their bitter cup, in sorrowful communion. 
 The mourning-clothes of his wife and children shadow 
 our thoughts, his funeral knell saddens for us the 
 summer air, our hearts echo the desolate sound of 
 the earth descending on his coffin, and at night, 
 when we lay ourselves down to sleep, we think of 
 him in his lowly bed, over which kindly Nature will 
 soon draw a coverlet of daisies. 
 
 SUNSET ON THE MOUNTAIN. 
 
 E Sirius days are come, the hottest of the 
 J- year! The golden summer-flood, which long 
 ago whelmed all the lowlands, has been steadily ris 
 ing for weeks past, and has at last submerged even 
 our Ararat of refuge. We have had a few days of 
 extreme, enervating heat, in which we have not felt 
 4 
 
74 Records of Five Years. 
 
 greatly disposed to exult over our stay-at-home fel 
 low-creatures, quietly undergoing the baking process, 
 in the great brick ovens of the city. Now, at high 
 noon, the fierce old sun seems to wreak himself upon 
 our mountain. The forest-trees stand still beneath 
 the chastening. That is a fine ear that can catch 
 a murmur even among the pines. Not a ripple runs 
 through the golden grain-fields, or the bronze mead 
 ows. All is breathless silence in the mighty amphi 
 theatre around us. On the hillside we hear no more 
 that most musical of rural sounds, the whetting of 
 the mower s scythe, nor the scythe itself " singing 
 through the grass." In the pastures the cattle lie 
 asleep in the shade, and flocks of sheep cluster to 
 gether among the daisies, panting under the burden 
 of their fleecy mortality. 
 
 But as day declines the winds will arouse, and 
 from their mountain caves sweep down the green 
 and fruitful slopes ; the forests will bow in joyful 
 recognition ; the grain-fields will bend beneath their 
 swift, invisible footsteps. A great tide of refresh 
 ment will be poured upon the table-lands, and faint 
 ing nature will drink as thirsting Israel drank when 
 the hard rock of the desert opened its secret heart 
 of pity, and gushed with Divine relenting. 
 
 With evening comes the sunset pageant, grander 
 and lovelier here than I have anywhere seen it, out 
 
Pictures of Town and Country. 75 
 
 of Italy, where, when near the coast, I used to 
 ascribe the endless changes of color, the exquisite 
 softness and marvellous richness of the purple, am 
 ber, and violet hues, in great part to the Mediter 
 ranean, over which the languid day declined. Here, 
 so similar are the brilliant and lovely cloud effects, the 
 delicious declensions of color, one could almost fancy 
 the blue Tyrrhenum just beyond those western pines. 
 
 A little way above our house there is a height, 
 from which we can best behold the wondrous spec 
 tacle, the lingering transfiguration of the day. Ev 
 ery evening we walk or ride to this spot. We feel 
 that "it is good to be here." It has almost become 
 to us a sacred mount, a shrine for unvoiced prayer, 
 for the unseen offerings of the heart, love, awe, 
 wondering and adoring thoughts. 
 
 As stood the Spanish adventurer, 
 
 " Silent upon a peak in Darien," 
 
 and " stared at the Pacific," we stand, watching the 
 sun, sinking in glory inexpressible, drowning in light ; 
 and when he is gone, we still gaze on, with infinite 
 yearnings in our eyes, as though the west heaven, 
 with its mysterious depths of splendor and its cloud- 
 hung vistas of purple and gold, were the majestic 
 abiding-place of Deity, the pavilion of God. 
 
 Though before such pictures as these all memory 
 
76 Records of Five Years. 
 
 of the masterpieces of human art grows dim in the 
 soul, yet are not these, the sublime prototypes of 
 nature, the divine authority and justification of imi 
 tative art, as the dome of Peter s church is sanc 
 tioned and sanctified by the immeasurable arch of 
 heaven ? 
 
 All truly great landscapes possess a mysterious 
 something of sublime expansiveness, bordering on 
 the illimitable. We say of Turner s sea, 
 
 " Lo, where it comes, like an eternity ! " 
 
 His sky seems broad enough to roof a continent. 
 Martin sunk in his canvas bottomless chasms of 
 blackness, and piled on it Himalayan heights of 
 grandeur. 
 
 We have in our city an artist, Mr. Hamilton, 
 whose pictures are marked by this indescribable 
 quality of airy infinitude, of vast depth and dis 
 tance, in sky and sea, of magic expansiveness under 
 the gaze. 
 
 There are marine views of his that almost cheat 
 the eye and ear with the fixed surge and silent tu 
 mult of their waters. There are sketches of desert 
 plains and dreary sedgy wastes, through which the 
 imagination wanders on and on, and loses itself in 
 loneliness profound ; and there are marvellous sun 
 sets, ever brightening circles of gorgeous light, which 
 
Pictures of Town and Country. 77 
 
 draw the spirit of the gazer into their golden deeps, 
 maelstroms of splendor and mystery. A true 
 poet-painter is he, with a whole Italy in his soul, 
 skies, waters, sunsets, aureate air, and all, though 
 his feet have never trod that promised land of art 
 ists. His genius is like the sea he loves so well, 
 affluent, fitful, ungovernable ; now revelling in storm, 
 shipwreck, and battle, now dreaming through the 
 starry calm of soft Venetian nights. 
 
 It has sometimes been objected that his coloring 
 is too intense, that his brush is dipped in too ar 
 dent dyes, his pencil tipped with light intolerable ; 
 but I every evening read his full justification in these 
 mountain sunsets. 
 
 One of the pictures of this artist, in the late exhi 
 bition of our Academy, impressed me deeply, though 
 perhaps more suggestively than directly. It was a 
 golden dream of the East, a sunset view on the banks 
 of the Nile. Far away stretches the historic and 
 mysterious river, its sacred waves transmuted into 
 gold. On its shore, amid the yellow sands, is a ma 
 jestic ruin, on which one mounts up to the time of 
 the Ptolemies, and in its shade reclines a group of 
 Arabs, the picturesque ruins of that Oriental human 
 ity whose ancient wisdom and power have shrunken 
 into the world s stale traditions. They look of the 
 past, like the massive architecture above them ; and 
 
7 8 Records of Five Years. 
 
 they would be missed as little from the world of to 
 day, should the great sand-waves arise and whelm 
 them and it together. But nature in the scene is 
 everywhere young and unworn ; toward the east the 
 sky is of a pure primal blue, and the west glows 
 with unwasted splendor, such as the watching angels 
 may have beheld from Eden gates. The hot sand 
 sparkles as once it sparkled under the feet of the 
 spice-laden camels of the Miclianites, bearing Joseph 
 into Egypt. The sunlight is the same that ripened 
 the dusky bloom of Pharaoh s daughter; the river 
 shines and ripples as on the morning when its waves 
 kissed the bare feet of the maid of that soft-hearted 
 princess ; and the sedges and flags on the margin 
 of the water grow as green and thick as grew 
 those of their kind that sheltered the ark of little 
 Moses. 
 
 This ever-renewed youthfulness, this immortal as 
 pect of nature, seems to me an earnest of the resto 
 ration, if not of the races, of humanity, to the old 
 places of prosperity and power. Nature is ever pa 
 tient, ever propitious, and waits on man through the 
 ages. 
 
 May we not hope that the region on which God s 
 smile rested first, and lingered longest, shall yet be 
 redeemed, and the wilderness be made " to blossom 
 as the rose " ? May not a nation of men, true chil- 
 
Pictures of Town and Country. 79 
 
 dren of the sun, ardent, and free, and wise, yet suc 
 ceed to the wild, nomadic tribes, and base, inhuman 
 Moslems that infest and desecrate those lands? a 
 people that shall cease to knock at the gates of 
 buried cities, to question obelisks and pyramids, those 
 sublime dumb witnesses of a mighty past, and begin 
 to build new cities and monuments. May not the slow 
 tide of Christian civilization, flowing westward, sweep 
 round the world at last? May we not hope, that, 
 when the reign of civil and religious liberty shall be 
 established in Italy, the faithful earth will render up 
 her dead beauty and glory? that all over the Cam- 
 pagna, that pathetic waste, buried villas will arise 
 from the dust, and forgotten gardens bloom anew, 
 till the Eternal City, instead of being islanded in des 
 olation, will be circled by fruitful fields and happy 
 homes, a nobler sight to be seen from one of her 
 seven hills than the armies of a Caesar returning 
 from the conquest of half a world, than even the 
 pompous procession of a Pope, coming back from 
 Gaeta, guarded by the bayonets of two kingdoms? 
 
 And Greece, will she not yet arise to a glorious 
 resurrection ? Will not a regenerate race some time 
 tread the soil so often sanctified by heroic blood, 
 and breathe the air in which once thrived all manly 
 and patriotic virtues, with Poetry, Art, and divine 
 Philosophy ? 
 
80 Records of Five Years. 
 
 Here, where our morning light gleams on no Par 
 thenon s marble front, yellowed with the suns of two 
 thousand years, where no Pyramid of Cheops blocks 
 up our sunset, it is difficult to believe that the earth 
 around us is as ancient as Greece or Egypt, to real 
 ize that the spark of fire struck by my horse s hoof 
 from the pebble in his path is older than the fable 
 of Prometheus, that the pebble itself may have been 
 smoothed by the attrition of subsided waters, long 
 ere the Sphinx was hewn from the eternal rock. It 
 is because nature here is yet unsubjugated by man 
 and his art, has not yet been made the mere ac 
 cessory of human history. These mountains have not 
 been used as the scenery of great national trage 
 dies. No outlaw s horn has awakened their wild 
 echoes, no conventicle s psalms consecrated their 
 solitudes. They have no Sempach and no Ther 
 mopylae. 
 
 The red men did not meddle with the works of 
 the great mother, or mar her awful loveliness. They 
 were content to live on her Spartan fare, and to 
 pass away in her august presence. They left few 
 monuments to sadden or puzzle their successors. 
 Nature hides the memory of these her wild children 
 deepest in her heart ; she covers their secret graves 
 with still shadows and tangled blooms, and smiles 
 on. 
 
Pictures of Town and Country. 81 
 
 " Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale 
 Her infinite variety." 
 
 The dew of every morning freshens her immortal 
 garlands ; she ever renews her primal vigor and joy ; 
 she drinks from the fountains of God. 
 
 AN INCIDENT. 
 
 DURING one of my morning rides, a week or 
 two ago, I was amused, or rather, I will own, 
 touched, by a little rural incident. A fine two-year- 
 old colt made her escape from a farm-yard, and went 
 madly galloping down the road before me, evidently 
 exulting in her freedom, and bent upon making the 
 most of it, evidently bound on an equine " bender " 
 of indefinite scope and duration. But suddenly catch 
 ing sight of a somewhat melancholy-looking old bay, 
 ploughing in single harness on the hillside near the 
 road, she paused in mid career, wheeled, and dashed 
 up on to a high, rocky bank. There, with arched 
 neck, dilated nostrils, tail erect and waving like a 
 signal, she saluted with a shrill, joyous neigh the 
 elderly bay, who responded with a mild, motherly 
 whinny. Then it became at once apparent that an in 
 cursion into the field was meditated. A farmer rushed 
 4* F 
 
82 Records of Five Years. 
 
 to the fence to prevent the threatened leap ; and 
 then began an animated contest, which lasted several 
 minutes. I checked my horse, and watched it with 
 eager interest. Again and again the colt reared her 
 self for the leap, now at one point, now at another ; 
 again and again was she driven back by the farmer s 
 shouts and blows. Sometimes she made a feint of 
 abandoning the enterprise altogether, but only to re 
 turn speedily and more gallantly to the attack. At 
 length, when the blows were falling heaviest on head 
 and neck, and barbarous oaths were added to an 
 gry shouts, there came again that mild, motherly 
 whinny, and the daring trespasser, gathering up all 
 her energies, strong in young blood and filly-al piety, 
 made one grand, successful vault over the highest 
 portion of the fence, and with a few quick bounds 
 was at the side of her dam. Rubbing her pretty 
 head against the arched maternal neck, she seemed 
 quietly to exult in the success of her bold yet vir 
 tuous undertaking, and the two seemed to exchange 
 glad and loving greetings. 
 
 The expression in the face of la mire would have 
 gone to any mother s heart. It was almost human 
 in its joy, pride, and placid content. 
 
 As I rode away, the thought struck me sadly, that, 
 after a year or two of separation, this devoted pair 
 might pass each other on the road without so much 
 as a tip of an ear by way of recognition. 
 
Pictures of Town and Country. 83 
 
 The transitory character of animal affection is a 
 singularly suggestive fact, on which I have often 
 speculated. Not the august mistress of Buckingham 
 Palace herself, in the midst of her young Guelphs, 
 is more exemplary in her maternal relations than her 
 neighbor of the Zoological Gardens, the captive Ben 
 gal lioness, watching with fiercely loving, vigilant 
 eyes over her tawny offspring ; nor can the motherly 
 Majesty of England regard with more fond and dot 
 ing pride that very interesting young gentleman, the 
 inheritor of her regal honors, than her leonine sister 
 the first-born and sturdiest of her whelps, beholding 
 his wild gambols with indulgent complaisance, bend 
 ing her great sullen head to regard and caress him. 
 Yet if, instead of suffering this scion of a race of 
 jungle-monarchs to tarry at Regent s Park till his 
 mane be grown, his keepers should remove him, for 
 a tour of premature lionization in foreign parts, 
 though his bereaved mamma might send forth at part 
 ing a roar of rage and grief that would be answered 
 by all the tigers, leopards, and hyenas of that ter 
 rible colony, it is doubtful whether, the grand tour 
 over, she would welcome his return with jubilant 
 wags of a constant tail, long dejected, or with one 
 eager, waiting glance recognize the "true prince." 
 
 The doe stands at bay, to protect her fawn, with 
 fierce, unnatural courage, her soft, melancholy eyes 
 
84 Records of Five Years. 
 
 blazing with anger or dropping great tears of agony ; 
 yet should both escape, by the time the fawn be full 
 grown, the heroic mother will scarcely be able to 
 distinguish the toss of his antlers from that of those 
 of any other gay young buck of the forest. 
 
 Among the multitudinous members of the family 
 of a patriarchal rabbit, we can hardly suppose that 
 the tie of blood is long or profoundly regarded. 
 Separated and scattered like the children of our first 
 parents, they who at different seasons may have lain 
 in one burrow, lined with soft hair torn from one 
 maternal breast, may meet as strangers in some 
 neighboring warren s " land of Nod," and there mate, 
 in innocent transgression of the statute against con 
 sanguineous marriage. 
 
 The amiable cow gloats with large-eyed love over 
 her leggy offspring, and when she sees him borne 
 away to execution, on the butcher s rude tumbril, 
 makes night melancholy with her sorrowful moo ; 
 yet, ere many days are past, forgetfulness descends 
 upon her patient spirit, and she chews her cud in 
 peace. 
 
 What fondness can be more intense and absorbing 
 than that of Grimalkin for her young; yet how in 
 variably lovingest cats and kits exemplify in their 
 family relations what Coleridge calls " their little 
 short memories." Nor is the canine race much more 
 
Pictiires of Town and Coimtry. 85 
 
 constant to itself. We read of faithful dogs dying 
 on the graves of their masters, but who has ever 
 heard of Bruno or Maida putting themselves on short 
 diet and slowly pining to death for the "untimely 
 taking off" of their pups? We have heard of Arab 
 and Tartar horses making haste to follow their slain 
 riders to the shades, but never of the noblest Nejid 
 or Ukraine of them all sinking into a decline or 
 going off in " a galloping consumption " for the loss 
 of his mate. 
 
 Thus, does it not seem that the affection of ani 
 mals for man partakes in a measure of the dignity 
 and immortality of its object? 
 
 Certainly it needs no argument to prove that the 
 fleeting nature of their attachment to their kind is 
 one of the wisest and most beneficent provisions of 
 Providence. What a world of suffering it saves for 
 the whole subjected animal kingdom. Were it other 
 wise, every household puss would be a feline Rachel, 
 every farm-yard would be a scene of desolation and 
 grieving, every stable and dog-kennel a house of 
 mourning, and many a bird-cage swinging in the 
 summer air would send forth the cries of orphans 
 and the lamentations of widows. 
 
 In view of their "manifest destiny," does it not 
 seem that it would have been well had the sad 
 children of Ethiopia been gifted with a like conven- 
 
86 Records of Five Years. 
 
 ient faculty of " shuffling off the mortal coil " of 
 natural obligations and affections, a like happy obliv- 
 iousness of the heart? Was here an oversight in 
 Providence? or was the mercy purposely withheld, 
 lest the edge should be taken from the curse of 
 Ham? Profound moral questions these, which I 
 humbly submit to my superiors in wisdom and grace. 
 
 FARM-LIFE ON THE MOUNTAIN. 
 
 IN the peculiar incidents and phases of farm-life 
 we have found, during our summer rustication, 
 a pure and quiet enjoyment, which, like Nature her 
 self, is " new every morning." It is a life that never 
 wearies, yet never distracts, having, under its seeming 
 monotony and repose, infinite action and change. 
 
 More than the children have found delight in the 
 coming home of the cows at evening, to be lightened 
 of their sweet burden, white nectar, mysteriously 
 distilled from greenest grass and reddest clover-blos 
 soms, lazily descending the hillside, the rude jangle 
 of their bells softened to a rural harmony in the 
 breezy stillness of the twilight, their breath scenting 
 all the air with the fragrance of the flowery fields. 
 
 Day after day we have watched the crimson of the 
 
Pictures of Town and Country. 87 
 
 blooming clover die out like a slow sunset, and a 
 rich brown hue creep over the fields, like an even 
 ing cloud. We have seen vast star-like multitudes, 
 milky-ways of daisy-blooms, those poetic pests of 
 pastures and meadows, after smiling in the vexed 
 face of the farmer month after month, in the meek 
 insolence of their beauty, put out their little lights 
 and die down into dull, dun, indistinguishable forms 
 of seeming death. 
 
 When we came here, roses in full bloom were 
 sweetening earth with the breath of Paradise ; now 
 golden-rods bow before the autumn winds, and pale 
 asters glimmer along the forest paths ; now the ma 
 ple, Cassandra of the trees, is flaming forth her 
 prophecies of the sure destruction that cometh in 
 the cold fire of the frost. We have watched out 
 the brief bright reign of the garden beauties, and 
 violets are getting scarce in the woods. We have 
 seen the yellow dandelions, that lit up the grass 
 like so many miniatures of the sun, 
 
 Into something new and strange," 
 
 into the very ghosts of those cheery wayside flow 
 ers, white ethereal shapes, floating away upon the 
 breeze. 
 
 Nature s plain, plodding work among potatoes and 
 
88 Records of Five Years. 
 
 turnips, and her delicate fine-art operations in the 
 orchard, tinting the tiny green globes of the apple- 
 tree with the hues of morn, painting a sunset on the 
 cheek of a peach, the goldening of grain-fields, the 
 bronzing of meadows, the tasselling of corn, the bios- 
 soming of the buckwheat, fragrant expanses, gleam 
 ing silvery white, like a resurrection of last winter s 
 snow, all to us have been incidents, interests, and 
 delights, by which we have marked off the pleasant, 
 tranquil time. 
 
 All varieties of wild berries grow in profusion upon 
 the mountain, ripening in close succession, a regular 
 course of primitive dainties, " linked sweetness long 
 drawn out." How beautiful are they all, in their full, 
 luscious perfection, growing in jewel-like clusters and 
 pendants, dissolving rubies, amethysts, and jets! 
 
 The oldest and gravest of us have sought and 
 gathered these wild bounties of heaven with almost 
 childish eagerness and emulation, and more than 
 once when, tired by the unusual sport, we wooed 
 sweet sleep, it would not come, for a spectral dance 
 of tempting fruit, mocking the " inward eye." 
 
 Our little daughter was never weary of these in 
 nocent raids, bravely climbing most formidable fences 
 and sturdily tramping through meadow-grass in places 
 where it grew so high that her joyous little face 
 scarce rose above it, and she seemed to be swim- 
 
Picttires of Town and Country. 89 
 
 ming through the billowy greenness. Now and then 
 her feet would get entangled, and she would sud 
 denly disappear below the surface, going down amid 
 clover-tufts and daisies, with a drowning shriek of 
 helpless laughter. 
 
 On one of these excursions, the little maid gave 
 an example of a child s intuitive faith in special 
 providences. Coming on a tiny bush of red rasp 
 berries, quite loaded with ripe fruit, she exclaimed, 
 " O mamma ! see this darling little bush, that just 
 growed here on purpose for me ! " 
 
 At another time she administered a reproof, in 
 her quaint little way, for a lack on my part of 
 proper reverence for past use and beauty. Finding 
 in our way a scraggy, superannuated bush, bearing 
 only sour and stunted fruit, I said, in reply to a 
 look of disappointment in her face, " It is no longer 
 worth anything : it had better be cut down, had it 
 not?" 
 
 " O no " ! she cried, in a shocked and sorrowful 
 tone ; " don t cut down the poor old bush ! God 
 made it to grow here, and he will be displeased. 
 // was a pretty thing last year." 
 
 Harvest-time, which comes much later here than 
 in the lowlands, gave us a series of rural pictures, 
 ever-varied, fresh, and charming. We were never 
 tired of watching the mower s scythe gleam across 
 
90 Records of Five Years, 
 
 the meadow, or the gallant sweep of the harvester s 
 cradle in the ripe wheat-field, skimming the golden 
 cream of the summer, or the process of raking and 
 gleaning the grain, the binding into sheaves, the 
 tossing up on to the great farm-wagon, the bringing 
 in and the storing away in the old brown barn. 
 
 One of the pastoral pictures of this season I shall 
 long remember. Near the close of the last day s 
 work in a wheat-field opposite the house, a sudden 
 thunder-storm came on, heralded by a mighty, roar 
 ing wind. A heavy black cloud, which seemed ready 
 to burst in a deluge of rain, came swooping down 
 upon the field just as an immense load of grain, 
 drawn by four horses, went dashing out of it. The 
 team was presided over by a son of our host, a 
 handsome, spirited young fellow, who drove postil- 
 ionwise, seated on one of the wheel-horses, gal 
 lantly cracking his long whip in the face of the 
 lowering heavens. Nothing could be finer than that 
 gallop across the stubble and over the road, the 
 sharp whirl around the corner, the run down the 
 lane, and the plunge into the barn, a rattling sheet 
 of rain shutting down like a portcullis behind. 
 
 The scene was, in truth, exceedingly striking and 
 picturesque. The hurried retreat of the harvesters, 
 "a white-sleeved row," casting startled glances at the 
 portentous thunder-cloud, a thick blanket of black- 
 
Pictures of Town and Country. 91 
 
 ness, ripped through here and there by a sharp 
 blade of lightning, the furious wind whirling off frag 
 ments from the well-packed load, tossing the curl 
 ing dark hair about the face of the bold rider, and 
 seeming to sway and bend his lithe and graceful 
 figure. 
 
 Our young farmer rode in the free and dashing 
 style of an artilleryman, and his triumphant exploit 
 reminded us of the evolutions of flying artillery. 
 Yet did this very resemblance suggest the infinite 
 moral distance between the harvest-field and the 
 battle-field. The young farmer came joyously gal 
 loping before the rain, outracing the thunder-cloud, 
 from a plain, sown in hope and reaped in peace ; 
 and piled high behind him, in the form of a goodly 
 portion of a bounteous harvest, he brought the tran 
 substantiated sunshine and dew of the whole pleasant 
 summer, the uncoined gold of heaven s largess, the 
 favor and blessing of Providence, bound in sheaves. 
 
 The artilleryman rides under a cloud of his own 
 raising, the sulphurous smoke of carnage, over a 
 plain wet with blood-rain, intent on a mission of 
 murder, with horror and destruction thundering at 
 his heels. 
 
 Our host has an older son, who, in some features, 
 or rather in the feature, bears a singular resemblance 
 to the Duke of Wellington. He is a well-built, pow- 
 
92 Records of Five Years. 
 
 erful man, and swings a scythe in an absolutely 
 magnificent style. A natural soldier, a commander, 
 one would say, by right of his firm stride, his strong 
 arm, and the determined, indomitable, old-Roman 
 cut of his countenance ; yet, as I watched him at 
 his most manly toil, absolute in the harvest-field, 
 the grain going down swiftly and submissively before 
 him, I thought how much better and nobler it was 
 to wreak the strength of a stalwart arm on bearded 
 legions of wheat and rye, and phalanxes of corn 
 stalks, than to mow down with broadsword and mus 
 ket-shot ranks of Mahrattas and battalions of French 
 men. Who would not rather in death " babble of 
 green fields " than of trampled and gory plains ? 
 Who would not rather be visited by memories of 
 meadows, new-mown, or of hillsides of golden grain, 
 undulating in the winds of morn, than by ghastly 
 visions of an Assaye or a Waterloo? 
 
 Surely no life is capable of such dignity, tranquil 
 lity, and purity as that of the farmer ; and how sad 
 it is, that it is so often bare of all the finer beauties 
 and graces of life, commonplace, sordid, " of the 
 earth earthy"! How sad it is, that he who might 
 be deep in the counsels of Nature, familiar with her 
 ancient and august secrets, her divinest aspects, is 
 so often a stranger to her wisdom, her loveliness, 
 and her priceless peace ! 
 
Pictures of Town and Country. 93 
 
 AUTUMN ON THE MOUNTAIN. 
 
 OCTOBER has made a pentecostal descent upon 
 the mountain, upon its great, solemn assembly 
 of forest-trees, apostles of beauty and grandeur, touch 
 ing their majestic heads with sacred flame. 
 
 Day after day, the autumnal glories have grown 
 more intense and all-pervading, and now they wrap 
 the tallest trees, from summit to base, making them 
 to stand like pillars of fire, temples of gold, towers 
 of bronze and amber. 
 
 In all our walks and rides of late, we have sought 
 the high points in our vast landscape, that we might 
 revel in beauty, fill our souls with its divine intoxi 
 cation. Deep gorge and mountain ridge lie before 
 us, abysses and seas of splendor. It seems as though 
 the great forests were giving up the ghosts of all the 
 sunsets we have watched and wondered at through 
 the last three months. 
 
 Like islands in those radiant seas of color stand 
 the groups of hardy pines and hemlocks, looking al 
 most surly in their uncompromising greenness, seem 
 ing to be bearing a grim testimony against the de 
 generacy, fast-changing fashions, and extravagance 
 of these times. 
 
 On a hill, in sight of my window, stands an old 
 
94 Records of Five Years. 
 
 stone-pine, surrounded by maples and beeches. I can 
 fancy his immutable highness looking down scorn 
 fully upon their newly-donned robes of frail magnifi 
 cence, from which every lightest wind steals a shred. 
 When in midwinter he shall behold them bare and 
 forlorn, I can fancy him exulting over their sad 
 estate, all unknowing of the life hid in their con 
 stant hearts, little guessing how in secret and dark 
 ness they are nursing a new summer, which shall 
 erelong burst forth in bloom and verdure, hiding 
 all of him from view, save his tall, imperial head, 
 and drowning his melancholy droning in the flutter 
 of young leaves and outbreaks of bird-song. 
 
 How gently the still frost does its cruel "spirit 
 ing ! " how it tempers its stern work with soft relent 
 ing ! It is like the pitying displeasure of the Lord. 
 
 The beech showers radiant largess on the ground, 
 the maple glimmers and glows with many-hued 
 flames, every humblest, gnarliest sumac is trans 
 formed into "a burning-bush," has suddenly donned 
 regal splendors, and crowned himself with glory in 
 conceivable ; so that it may be said of him, as of 
 the Thane of Cawdor, " Nothing in his life became 
 him like the leaving it." 
 
 The hickory malgre his heroic reputation suc 
 cumbs at once to the general foe, strikes his brave 
 green colors, and goes off dolefully in shabbiest 
 
Pictures of Town and Country. 95 
 
 brown. But many another tree " makes a good end " 
 and a glorious, dies royally, sumptuously, like Cleo 
 patra, or the Elizabeth of Delaroche. 
 
 Some genuine mountain storms have of late made 
 furious inroads upon our forests. The fierce, ma 
 rauding wind has broken into many a sweet little 
 sheltered nook, scattering torn branches, and piling 
 withered leaves over the bright mossy beds and 
 violet-banks. The keen light rushes in where the 
 languid shadow slept through the long summer days ; 
 and down through the half-dismantled branches, be 
 tween which the timid sunbeams softly slid, the chill 
 rain tears its rude way. 
 
 But we have had some days of indescribable beauty, 
 perfect days, when the whole earth seemed repos 
 ing in a dream of heaven, when the air, balmy 
 and soft, seemed to taste of the divine, when the 
 mountain became holy as Sinai, with the presence 
 of God, revealed not in terrors of thunder and fire, 
 but in a great, voiceless peace, in the lovely flowers 
 of this vast autumnal holocaust, in benedictions of 
 beauty. 
 
 On such days I have ridden again along many 
 of the wild-wood paths I explored in the summer. 
 Beautiful are they yet, but with a soft, pathetic love 
 liness that can only be regarded through a mist of 
 tears. The rustle of the fallen leaves and fading 
 
96 Records of Five Years. 
 
 ferns under my horse s feet pains my ear, the fare 
 well chirp of the flitting bird wounds my heart. 
 
 These lovely, lonely paths, which vein the woods 
 in every direction, were my "forest sanctuaries," in 
 which I daily sought refuge from the heat and glare 
 of July and August mornings. Whenever I sought 
 them alone, I had them all to myself. Never did I 
 chance to meet a single stroller, come forth from 
 the great caravansera beyond the little valley to wor 
 ship Beauty in her most secret temples. It seemed 
 that the fashionable hundreds over there sought the 
 mountain for pleasure of quite another sort. Though 
 leafy bower and rocky glen knew them not, though 
 the green alleys of the wood received them not, the 
 ball-room, the billiard-saloon, the bowling-alley were 
 less unfortunate. Though Nature failed to draw 
 them to her feasts of loveliness, through a divine 
 hunger of the heart, the table d^hbte never appealed 
 to a neighboring organ in vain. 
 
 There were points so marvellously picturesque, 
 spots of such exquisite sylvan beauty along these un 
 suspected bridle-paths, that I never came upon them 
 without pausing and resigning myself to a fit of de 
 licious contemplation. My horse learned in time to 
 recognize these points, and without check or bid 
 ding would stop to rest and humor my fit of roman 
 tic sentiment. He evidently believed in encouraging 
 
Pictures of Town and Country. 97 
 
 such things, as harmless to womankind, and bene 
 ficial to horse-flesh. 
 
 Each of these lovely spots was for me a sacred 
 temple of thought and aspiration. All here was 
 peaceful and primitive as a new Eden. Leagues on 
 leagues away seemed all the destructions and deso 
 lations of enterprise and improvement, the demoral 
 izations of trade and fashion. In the midst of that 
 fragrant, green silence, all memory of the stifling, 
 unsavory atmosphere, the glare and noise of cities, 
 faded away, like a distasteful dream ; simple, child 
 like raptures shook my heart, even while the spirit 
 of worship exalted it. Like the soul of Nature, I 
 adored in gladness. 
 
 For the last month our mornings and evenings 
 have been chill, but we have had our compensation 
 in a cheerful open fire. From our walks I have 
 occasionally carried home fragments of some mossy 
 old fallen tree, the mighty ruin of another age. Much 
 of such decayed wood is embalmed in delicious 
 odors. Laying my fragment on the fire, I have sat 
 by the hearth, and fancied that I smelled in its 
 smoke the fragrance of a hundred summers. Some 
 times I have dreamed out the life of the old tree, 
 from the time when, a tiny shaft of green, it bent 
 beneath the ground-squirrel s tread, to that when, 
 towering high above its fellows, the lightning singled 
 
98 Records of Five Years. 
 
 it out as a worthy mark, or the tempest caught it 
 in a mad whirl, wrestled with it in wild play for a 
 moment, then hurled it to the ground, where it lay 
 till the earth claimed it for her own, bound it to 
 her bosom with clinging vines and softly embracing 
 mosses, till silvery lichens clambered over it, and 
 ferns nestled up against it, till the trees around had 
 put forth great branches, and filled up the place 
 where it stood, till a sea of greenery had closed 
 over it as waves close over the drowned mariner. 
 
 Last week the young Prince of England was whirled 
 through these gorgeous forests, marvelling much, it 
 is said, at a display before which all municipal illu 
 minations, pyrotechnic shows, and torchlight proces 
 sions might "pale their ineffectual fires." It was a 
 beautiful day, and the mountain showed magnifi 
 cently on the august occasion, yet not more so for 
 the royal party than for the next emigrant-train, 
 when the weary, wondering eyes of Dennis or Hans, 
 Norah or Gretchen, stared forth on a wild, new world. 
 Nature is no flunky. 
 
 It is well that our noble visitor has seen some 
 thing distinctively American. Two sights he has be 
 held which not England, not all Europe, can paral 
 lel, the sunset of a glorious day on the prairie, and 
 this great sunset of the year on the Alleghanies. 
 
IN WAR. 
 
THE NORTHERN UPRISING. 
 
 [Written in the summer of 1861.] 
 
 IN the year 1318 Leopold of Austria invested the 
 free imperial town of Soleure. For ten long 
 months the siege continued, during which time the 
 brave Swiss endured great hardships and privation. 
 Then came an interposition of Providence. The arm 
 of the Lord was stretched from the clouds. "The 
 rains descended and the floods came." The Aar 
 overflowed a portion of the Austrian camp, and the 
 besiegers, in attempting to escape over the river, to 
 higher ground, bore down the bridge and were 
 plunged into the boiling torrent. Then the gates, 
 that had remained so long closely shut against the 
 thunders of war and the howl of the wolves of fam 
 ine, flew open at the divine call of humanity ! The 
 Swiss came forth with boats and cables, and at the 
 peril of their own lives saved the lives of their ene 
 mies. Not only this, but they sent them back to the 
 Austrian camp, demanding no ransom. The haugh 
 ty Leopold, touched by that act of Christian mag 
 nanimity, at once raised the siege. 
 
^ R&drds of Five Years. 
 
 In the year of our Lord 1861, in a country ocean- 
 clivided from Switzerland, part of a world unknown 
 and unsuspected at the period when the battle of 
 Morgarten was fought, and the town of Soleure in 
 vested, there occurred a famous siege. A lonely 
 fortress, in a Southern bay, defended by less than a 
 hundred half-starved men, was attacked by thousands 
 of infuriated foes, directing upon it the storm of eleven 
 batteries. 
 
 The holy quiet of the early dawn was broken by 
 the thunder of artillery. All day long the sweet, 
 sunny air was tainted and darkened by the smoke 
 of combat ; all night long across the bay travelled the 
 swift ball and the murderous shell, arching the sky 
 with threatening and horror. 
 
 On the second day, a bursting shell set fire to the 
 wooden barracks of the soldiers. The besieged were 
 obliged to contend with a more terrible element than 
 that which came against the besiegers of Soleure. 
 When the flames raged fiercely and the white smoke 
 rose and floated over the fortress, Nature s flag of 
 distress, " Surely," said the brave defenders, " our 
 chivalric and magnanimous enemies will now cease 
 their fire, perchance will assist us to master this 
 new foe. They need no such ally. They would 
 scorn to take us at such a disadvantage." 
 
 But, lo ! at the sight of the smoke and the flames, 
 
The Northern Uprising. 103 
 
 the foe sent up mighty shouts of exultation, and re 
 doubled the fire of their batteries, till the gallant 
 little garrison, starved, scorched, suffocated, aban 
 doned their fiery furnace, and marched forth under 
 the banner which for thirty hours had been the target 
 of mad disloyalty and impious rebellion. 
 
 Have civilization and Christianity gone backward 
 since the fourteenth century ? The Swiss of Soleure 
 rushed as one man to save a foreign and detested 
 foe j but the citizens of Charleston, the soldiers of a 
 free Christian Republic, had no like impulse to 
 succor or spare their brothers in blood, name, and 
 heritage. 
 
 No ! the great ranks of humanity have not fallen 
 back in virtue, in magnanimity, in any knightly 01 
 Christian quality. The march of the hosts of free 
 dom is ever onward and upward, toward the heights 
 of God. 
 
 Over the siege of Soleure presided the Genius of 
 War, terrible but grand. On the side of the Swiss 
 stood also the steadfast Angel of Liberty, mail-clad 
 but benignant. Over the bombardment of Sumter 
 presided the Demon of Slavery, dark, mean and 
 malignant. Mercy, magnanimity, Christian manliness 
 had clearly no place under him ; nobleness of any 
 kind was simply impossible to those who fought 
 under his "vile reptile blazon." 
 
IO4 Records of Five Years. 
 
 All the while, unseen by the assailants, drunk with 
 their easy victory, on the battered ramparts, under the 
 tattered banner, in the midst of the smoke and the 
 flame, moved the solemn Angel of Liberty ; unseen 
 she went forth with that little band, comforting them 
 like the Spirit of God. 
 
 Behold she shall come again to the stolen strong 
 holds of her foes, to the land of her scorners. No 
 smoke of treason, no mist of lies, can veil her then. 
 She shall come blazing in majesty and might, "fair as 
 the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army 
 with banners." 
 
 Not in vain were the sufferings of our modern St. 
 Lawrence and his devoted band in the burning fort 
 ress. The fire that drove them forth kindled the 
 whole Northland. It was as though a shot from 
 Moultrie or Morris Island had been levelled at every 
 homestead and church-spire in the land. Stately city 
 mansion, lowly brown farm-house, factory, foundry, and 
 shop, sent forth their armed men till the ground trem 
 bled with their tread ; the drum-beat sounded through 
 the land, as it were the audible heart-throb of a nation ; 
 thousands of banners flashed into the light, so sud 
 denly that they seemed born out of the air, or show 
 ered down from heaven. 
 
 Yet amid all the heat and hurry of the time, the 
 great movement has been marked, in some portions 
 
The Northern Uprising. 105 
 
 of the country at least, by a peculiar religious solem 
 nity. We have in truth a " revival " of the religion of 
 patriotism, "a powerful awakening " of the old heroic 
 spirit, which we thank God to know, through all these 
 cold, compromising, money-getting years, has not been 
 dead, but " sleeping." Camp-meetings have been 
 established through the whole country, conferences 
 and assemblies held. Marvellous have been some of 
 the convictions and conversions, great has been the 
 ingathering of unbelievers and transgressors, and the 
 restoration of those who have fainted by the way. In 
 many of our churches have gathered by night strange 
 congregations of rough, armed men, breaking the 
 stillness of the sanctuary with heavy footsteps, loud 
 voices, and the clang of steel, or stretched on the 
 cushioned seats prepared for the Sabbath ease and re 
 pose of pious worshippers. But as they slept, dream 
 ing, perchance, of happy homes behind them, and of 
 fierce conflicts before them, over them have bent as 
 beneficent angels as ever waited there to bear heav 
 enward the prayers and praises of Sabbath worship. 
 The church that houses the rudest of our country s 
 defenders, so far from suffering a desecration, is thus 
 consecrated anew. The pulpit is made all the more 
 sacred by being shadowed by their ensign and stacked 
 round with their bayonets ; the organ well might an 
 swer with an anthem the beat of their morning drum. 
 5* 
 
106 Records of Five Years. 
 
 Nowhere could the awakening of the people have 
 been more amazing and universal than in my own city 
 of Philadelphia, the city of the First Congress, of 
 the Declaration, of Franklin s grave ; the city that 
 burned Pennsylvania Hall, that has rendered up fugi 
 tive after fugitive ; the city that first stoned, then re 
 jected, George William Curtis, the eloquent young 
 advocate of freedom, who joins to the elegance of 
 the Greek orator the fervor of the Christian apostle, 
 whose sternest rebukes are sun-tipped with charity, 
 whose bitterest satire has a touch of sweetness, in 
 whose sharpest invective lingers a tone of " the low, 
 sad music of humanity." 
 
 The entire city seemed poured into the streets. It 
 was as though the ghost of the old Liberty Bell had 
 pealed an alarum from the steeple of Independence 
 Hall. The sudden enthusiasm was tumultuous, but 
 not violent, fierce, or bloodthirsty. True, we had 
 some small mobs, but they were, I was told, as quiet, 
 well-behaved Quaker mobs as one would wish to see ; 
 not at all like the pro-slavery demonstrations of old. 
 No torches were applied ; no halters prepared ; no 
 bowie-knives brandished ; no vitriol was thrown. 
 Large banners waved from all public edifices, little 
 flags fluttered from shops, and blossomed out of the 
 windows of private houses. They were for a token 
 and a defence, like the red sign of the Passover, on 
 
The Northern Uprising. 107 
 
 the lintel and side-posts of the houses of the Israelites. 
 Simultaneously with the unfurling of the stars and 
 stripes on the church of Archbishop Hughes of New 
 York, a national flag was flung to the breeze from the 
 dome of our new Catholic Cathedral. How, at sight 
 of that standard in blessed companionship with the 
 cross, the Catholic Church of the North wheeled into 
 line for the Union ! We were ready to say, God bless 
 it, for humanity s sake ! Though the old mother-vine 
 at Rome sicken to death in the shadow of despotism, 
 the Transatlantic branch shall flourish graciously, 
 while it makes liberty its support, and grows toward 
 the light and the advancing day. 
 
 Those visible manifestations converted many with 
 whom the calm spirits of Justice and Truth, the ap 
 pealing angel of Humanity, the souls of the martyrs, 
 had been vainly striving for many years. We had 
 been " faithless and unbelieving," all, save a few 
 high hearts, whom God had fed with the daily bread 
 of hope and patience. As for me, I had, I confess 
 with humiliation, fallen into a state of dull despair for 
 my country. I thought that the God of freedom had 
 utterly turned away from us, in our degeneracy ; that 
 he was in Italy, Hungary, Russia, anywhere but here. 
 For a brief while he seemed to be revealed in fear 
 and horror, in blood and vengeance, through the trag 
 edy of John Brown at Harper s Ferry, and then to 
 
io8 Records of Five Years. 
 
 withdraw himself into inaccessible distance and dark 
 ness. 
 
 I could not see how the ignominious hanging of 
 that one mad old man had in it any good, or promise 
 of good, for humanity. Beyond the simple heroism 
 that moved the world, and the bitter joy which I knew 
 his great soul tasted in dying for the poor and the op 
 pressed, I could see nothing but piteousness and hor 
 ror in his death. In the shadow of his body, swinging 
 in the sunny air, I saw the curse, not the blessing, of 
 the God of freedom, on the soil of the Old Dominion. 
 About his gray head I saw rather the aureole of affec 
 tion than the halo of a great, necessary, inevitable 
 martyrdom. I can now see how old John Brown, of 
 Ossawatomie, was divinely maddened for a great 
 work. I can now see that, from the spot where he 
 perished, has arisen a ghostly, gigantic gallows, on 
 which slavery itself shall expiate, in sight of the na 
 tions, its unspeakable crimes against humanity and 
 God. I can now see that the spirit of freedom they 
 sought to strangle with his halter came from their sac 
 rilegious hands with a new and awful beauty, and 
 sprang from that scaffold to the throne of the world. 
 
 Vesuvius, seething under his sunny slopes, has been 
 less dangerous to the country round about him, for the 
 two years past, than that lonely grave at North Elba 
 has been to far-off Virginia. The places that once 
 
The Northern Uprising. 109 
 
 knew the grim hero shall know him once more. The 
 brave soul defeated at Harper s Ferry, and strangled 
 out of sight and hearing at Charlestown, shall return at 
 the head of battalions, under a surge of banners, amid 
 the blaze and thunder of battle. 
 
 How much unbelief in man, which is but a meaner 
 form of infidelity toward God, we have cherished ! 
 We talked of the dreary lack of patriotism, of the 
 decay of enthusiasm, of the rarity of uncalculating 
 devotion and self-sacrifice ; and brave men by the hun 
 dred thousand have risen up to rebuke us. 
 
 We said of the sons of New England even that they 
 kept the traditions, without the brave, high spirit of 
 their fathers ; and Massachusetts men washed out the 
 imputation with their blood. Warm, rich, and red, it 
 flowed forth on the stones of Baltimore, as, eighty-six 
 years before, Massachusetts blood had gushed over the 
 roadside turf at Lexington. Ah ! not in vain they 
 perished so early, at the hands of treachery .and brutal 
 violence. Our cause needed the baptism of their 
 blood, and the sombre inspiration of their sacrifice. 
 Over their graves New England shall perpetually re 
 new her vows. 
 
 Not in vain fell Ellsworth, the second Warren of the 
 Republic. The cry of his blood, in the hearts of his 
 followers, will be more effectual than the shout of com 
 mand, or the wild cheer of the Zouave. Not in vain 
 
no Records of Five Years. 
 
 has fallen one poor fellow, by camp sickness or acci 
 dental shot. Not in vain are the tears of mothers, 
 wives, sisters, and children. Every mourner s sob 
 helps to consecrate our cause. 
 
 Into thousands of homes have entered shadows 
 of bereavement and dread ; thousands of once happy 
 hearts lie hushed in awful waiting, hanging, childlike, 
 on the supreme providence of God. 
 
 Nothing in all this time of fiery trial has been 
 grander than the brave devotion of those loving hearts. 
 Many of our women seem suddenly to have come into 
 conscious possession of their noblest birthright, a 
 high-hearted courage, that can endure for those who 
 dare ; that joys in bitter abnegation, and triumphs in 
 the midst of tears. Souls more true and heroic 
 never looked out of the calm eyes of the women of 
 76 ; hands more firm and ready never helped to 
 buckle on the sword and the knapsack, when the news 
 of the battle of Lexington thrilled through the land. 
 No mother of those days, no Roman matron, ever 
 said a grander thing than is reported of our noble 
 Elizabeth Stanton, who, on sending two sons to the 
 war, expressed regret that a third was too young 
 to go with his brothers ; and this, though her fore 
 boding mother heart must already have seen in each 
 boy s vacant seat a pale shade, a dim and mournful 
 likeness of the beloved, with the frozen pain of the 
 
The Northern Uprising. in 
 
 death-struggle, the seal of the dread sacrifice on his 
 brow. 
 
 Among the marvellous features of the time is the 
 general acceptance of the necessity, of the irrepressi- 
 bility, of the conflict. This, with a recognition of the 
 moral and religious elements of the struggle, is often 
 shown in the dmeanor of our volunteers. They go 
 forth with stern, sad, faces, as to a grand and awful 
 work, and there is a steady gleam in their eyes which 
 shows that the fire burns deep. They follow their 
 country s standard, wherever it may lead, with manful 
 and devout obedience, as it were the visible sign of 
 the Lord s presence, a moving pillar of cloud or fire. 
 
 With what new splendor and sacredness has that 
 banner been invested since its transfiguration in the 
 flame and smoke of Sumter ! We had grown indiffer 
 ent to the emblem of our nationality, as something 
 seldom to be seen, except in tiresome Fourth-of-July 
 parades, seldom to be heard of, except in inflated 
 Fourth-of-July orations. True, when in some foreign 
 land it gleamed in our eyes, our hearts leaped at the 
 sight, as though its every fold had held a picture of 
 home. But even there would come the intrusive 
 thought that fifteen of its stars were in eclipse, or the 
 ugly suggestion that its stripes stood for the marks of 
 the lash on our slaves. Now it is everywhere beheld, 
 everywhere a welcome sight. Now it is a visible proc- 
 
112 Records of Five Years. 
 
 lamation and prophecy of freedom. Treason and Re 
 bellion may trample on this standard, as Oriental hea 
 thenism has trampled on the banner of the Cross, but 
 they can no more degrade it than they can dishonor 
 its celestial prototypes, the serene, eternal stars, 
 azure skies, the red lights of sunset, or the white high 
 way of heaven, paved with worlds. 
 
 We pray God that every man of our vast Northern 
 army may know with what he is to fight, a monster 
 darker, deadlier, mightier than any Gorgon of old, 
 the dragon of national sin, the foul chimera of na 
 tional shame, Slavery. Every fair young volunteer, 
 fresh from a quiet village home, under the shadow of 
 school-house and church-spire, and with lips yet dewy 
 with home kisses, must beard him in his fastnesses and 
 feel his noisome breath in the close conflict. Every 
 dainty Fifth Avenue soldier must look to close with 
 him in a death-grapple. 
 
 Vainly, ever since the fatal compromises of the Con 
 stitution, have we cried, " Peace ! peace ! " The mon 
 ster we spared had infused a subtle poison, a taint of 
 shame and peril, into every vein of our body politic. 
 There could be no peace or security, with such ele 
 ments of discord and destruction at work in our 
 national life. We lived a great lie before the peoples 
 of the earth. Our national banner repeated it on every 
 sea, flashed it in the face of the day, and signalled it 
 to the stars. 
 
The Northern Uprising. 113 
 
 Now, few are so dull as not to feel amaze that 
 Liberty has so long allowed her fair temple to be 
 profaned by Slavery, ministering at her altar with 
 unclean hands and serving her with oblations of blood 
 and tears. Now, few are so blind as not to see that 
 Slavery s day of doom, fixed in the eternal councils of 
 God, draws near. On the final battle-fields of this 
 war he shall be called to his last judgment. Victori 
 ous freemen shall be his judges, and a great crowd of 
 the living and the dead shall witness against him. 
 Not a murder, not a martyrdom, not a brutal insult, 
 shall be forgotten then. Not a groan of a scourged 
 bondman, not a tear of a slave-woman, not a sob of a 
 mother-sick negro child, but shall be expiated in that 
 great day of reckoning. 
 
 At last we believe it has come, the mighty issue 
 thrust upon us by the laws of Nature and of Heaven, 
 the dread, yet sublime hour of decision and destiny. 
 The storm has broken upon us in great fury, with 
 heavy blackness and bewildering mists ; but even by 
 the lightnings of God s wrath we may see where we 
 stand ; even in the thunder we can hear his voice, say 
 ing, "This is the way, walk ye in it " ; even through 
 the ghastly vista of fratricidal strife we may catch 
 glimpses of the day fairest blossom on the tree of 
 time when " every bond shall be broken and the op 
 pressed shall go free," when the accursed traffic in the 
 
114 Records of Five Years. 
 
 bodies and souls of men shall cease forever in our 
 land. 
 
 With all Europe standing aloof, who are our allies in 
 this fearful contest ? 
 
 It is affirmed that many of our New England soldiers 
 are men of prayer, who, like their Puritan forefathers, go 
 into the conflict doubly armed, with spiritual weapons 
 drawn from the great armory of the Bible, invoking 
 not alone " the God of battles," but the God of freedom, 
 mercy, and justice, believing that the hosts of Heaven 
 are arrayed on the side of the right, that the very- 
 stars in their courses will fight against tyranny, 
 that " the sword of the Lord and of Gideon " is to be 
 unsheathed once more to lighten in the van of the 
 battle. 
 
 The shades of our fathers heroes of Bunker Hill, 
 Monmouth, and Valley Forge are with us, turning 
 on the unnatural foes of the Republic looks of sad 
 wonder and austere rebuke. His living spirit is with 
 us, whose dust alone has served to keep sweet and 
 holy one spot of degenerate Virginia. 
 
 " How long shall we see the standard, and hear the 
 voice of the trumpet ? " 
 
 As we look over the vast area of the Rebellion, it 
 seems that we must prepare for a struggle such as the 
 world has not seen for centuries. It may be that, with 
 the vast granaries of the Northwest closed against the 
 
The Northern Uprising. 115 
 
 South, Nature will be our stern ally. Even South 
 ern valor must yield before the slow, deadly advance 
 of starvation ; and it will be with our enemies as it was 
 prophesied of a people of old, " And it shall come 
 to pass when they shall be hungry, they shall fret 
 themselves, and curse their king and their God, and 
 look upward." 
 
 Yet the Red Sea must be passed through. We can 
 not doubt but that the reckless leaders and fiery young 
 captains of the South will fight to the last with all the 
 fury of desperation and inextinguishable hate. The 
 strife may go on till the broad breast of the Old Do 
 minion be thickly scarred with graves, till Southern 
 rivers shall run to the sea stained with carnage, till 
 mountain courses shall be clogged with slain men, 
 till corn-fields and cotton-plantations shall be enriched 
 with a strange, dark rain, and the flowers of fair sa 
 vannas shall drip with a ghastly dew, till there 
 shall be vast funerals by night, where no mourners are 
 seen and no prayers are said, till there shall be a 
 sound of weeping in countless homes, where young 
 hearts have been made desolate, and the joy of old 
 eyes has been taken away. 
 
 Ah, who save God can measure the guilt of the 
 chief conspirators and traitors who have brought sor 
 row, ruin, and a thousand horrors on the innocent 
 and the helpless, who have invited the thunderbolt 
 and the rain of fire ? 
 
1 1 6 Records of Five Years. 
 
 Fearful will be the anger of a spoiled and out 
 raged people when these men shall have finished 
 their desolating course, when " the iron hail shall 
 sweep away their refuge of lies," and their " cove 
 nant with death shall be disannulled." I, as a woman, 
 desire not their blood. It would not buy back the 
 least precious life we have lost, could not bring 
 peace to one mourner s heart. I would not have 
 them die in battle, or on the scaffold, as heroes 
 and martyrs have died. I would have them live, to 
 sound the darkest depths of their defeat and de 
 spair, given over to the torment of quiet, and a 
 brooding horror of memory. I would have them 
 live, to hear in still midnights the gasps of dying 
 men, the sobs of widows,, the piteous crying of or 
 phan children. I would have them live to take their 
 appointed places in the pillory of history, to guess 
 their infamy from the averted faces of the world. 
 
A Few Plain Words. 117 
 
 A FEW PLAIN WORDS; 
 
 ADDRESSED TO CERTAIN ENGLISH FRIENDS. 
 January, 1862. 
 
 IT has been said that, since the landing of 
 the Pilgrims, there have been many good 
 things lost between our two countries, ships, 
 merchandise, treasure, precious lives, but no love. 
 Yet your utter want of sympathy with us of the 
 North, in our great struggle, has taken us some 
 what aback. We are even shocked to know that 
 you make grim sport of that awful life-and-death 
 struggle as "a war for an idea," as though a war 
 without an idea were anything better than a mon 
 strous prize-fight. From the first, there was evidence 
 of sufficient bad blood between us. We were kept 
 smarting under what the "London Star," putting 
 rather a fine point upon it, calls " unsympathizing 
 criticism," and you angered by our indignant and 
 defiant protest against a neutrality "of the letter" 
 only. Then came the ugly "Trent" affair, and we 
 saw your ready reinforcements poured into the Can- 
 adas, led by gallant young heroes who came to 
 
1 1 8 Records of Five Years. 
 
 fight, and remained to skate. Volunteering and drills 
 became the order of the day and night in your prov 
 inces. The red irruption ran over the whole face 
 of the country, a scarlet-fever of loyalty and Yan 
 kee-phobia. Pacific Jones, the child of civil life, 
 metamorphosed en militaire, went through the Man 
 ual before breakfast, called the roll of young Jones 
 es at night, rattled his cartridge-box to please the 
 baby, and pillowed his head on his knapsack for 
 martial dreams. 
 
 It is evident that in this contest you regard us 
 of the North very much as in the Italian struggle 
 you regarded the Austrians. Now, we deny " the 
 soft impeachment." We do not feel in the least like 
 Austrians, nor do we admit that the Hay nan style 
 of morals and moustaches prevails among our army 
 leaders ; and surely you can never seriously com 
 pare the Southern States striking for slavery to 
 Italy striking for liberty. If we of the North are 
 too undecidedly against human bondage, our oppo 
 nents are decidedly for it. They boldly champion 
 the monstrous tyranny in the fearful lists, they have 
 flung down their gage, in the face of the world. 
 And they dare to look to you for knightly alliance. 
 If the famous threat of one of their leaders, to call 
 the roll of his slaves at the foot of Bunker Hill 
 Monument, be ever executed, it must be under the 
 
A Few Plain Words. 119 
 
 interlapping folds of the British and Confederate 
 flags. Shall the lash and the chain go with the 
 sword of St. George and the battle-axe of Richard? 
 Shall the lion lie down with the bloodhound? 
 
 I belong to a small class of anti-slavery North 
 erners, who in the first of this contest desired that 
 the Slave States should be allowed to have their 
 own mad will, to separate from the Free States, and 
 go in such peace as they could have among them 
 selves, while the North should become in regard 
 to slavery a second Canada. But after Sumter was 
 captured, Washington beleaguered, and Baltimore 
 made the scene of a treacherous massacre, we ac 
 cepted the awful issue, believing that to yield then 
 were utter dishonor, if not ruin, that only by a 
 brave and victorious struggle could we secure our 
 national existence, and incidentally the freedom of 
 a yet more unfortunate people. 
 
 We have been dissatisfied that our government 
 did not from the first take high and fearless ground 
 against the one great cause and object of this in 
 iquitous Rebellion ; that it has turned its face from 
 the real foe, and fought only with its shadow. But 
 we do not think any good can come from a counter 
 rebellion. We wait. Though you charge us with 
 "mulish obstinacy" in prolonging the struggle, we 
 have not yet held out seven years, as you English 
 
I2O Records of Five Years. 
 
 did against us. "Wait a little longer." Patience 
 and faith are godly virtues. You, from the first, 
 have believed the revolted portion of our country 
 gone beyond redemption, that our government in 
 persisting that it still holds it, "peculiar institution" 
 and all, labors under a delusion, similar to that 
 sometimes experienced by one who, having had a 
 limb amputated while under the influence of chloro 
 form, persists in fancying that he feels the lost foot 
 in its place, with its familiar bunions and its chronic 
 agony of gout. We believe that the diseased limb 
 is to be restored by a dip into Freedom s Holy 
 Well, delivered from its unsightly infirmities forever. 
 
 Two incompatible charges you make against us : 
 that we carry on the war in a barbarous spirit, 
 that we are not enough in earnest in dealing with 
 the Rebels. 
 
 English friends have asked if I do not think it 
 barbarous in our soldiers "wantonly to destroy the 
 houses and grounds of disaffected Southern gentle 
 men." I admit such cases look a little hard ; but 
 if I mistake not, our commanders could plead some 
 illustrious British examples. It is rather in the Elgin 
 style of warfare, is it not ? War, at the best, is a 
 rude, unceremonious business, even when waged for 
 the real good of a misguided enemy. You find that 
 the Chinese will not take civilization and opium, 
 
A Few Plain Words. 121 
 
 save at the point of the bayonet, and at the peril 
 of sacking and burning. 
 
 To me it seems that we have thus far conducted 
 our civil war with the least possible incivility. What 
 knightly courtesy could exceed that of some of our 
 Federal officers in promptly returning the migratory 
 property of Rebels in arms ? We actually hope for 
 a ruder style of warfare. 
 
 The London "Times" sneers at our government 
 for accepting so readily the military services of for 
 eigners of distinction, and expresses astonishment 
 that the Orleans princes, accustomed as they have 
 been to the society of gentlemen, could stoop so low 
 as to join the staff of McClellan. Louis Philippe 
 was not so fearful of degrading democratic associa 
 tions when, an exile, he sought the protection and 
 received the hospitalities of the United States ; and 
 his grandsons, in wishing to pay the family debt, 
 prove that they are princes, and not snobs. 
 
 You prejudge our family quarrel and predetermine 
 its issue. You are au fait of the counsels of Provi 
 dence. You see the end that " is not yet." You al 
 ready hear the sullen tolling of the bell of doom, 
 "ringing out " the old Union, and the peal of joy-bells 
 " ringing in " a new empire. For our army you 
 prophesy only a doleful repetition of the Bull Run 
 disaster and humiliation. You evidently believe that 
 6 
 
122 Records of Five Years. 
 
 when not standing still it must run. There does, I ad 
 mit, seem to have been some martial degeneracy since 
 1776 and 1812. Around their firesides our fathers 
 told of Bull Runs somewhat less discreditable to our 
 arms. Burnside and McClellan may delay unaccount 
 ably, but Paul Jones and Ethan Allen were " on time." 
 Wilkes may miss fire, but Perry did not. 
 
 Said a distinguished English gentleman to me the 
 other day, "Madam, do you honestly believe the 
 North is to be victorious in this struggle ? " " Most 
 assuredly," I replied. A look of amaze, an uplifting 
 of the hands, " O woman, great is thy faith ! " 
 
 Yet the miraculous possibility of our success has 
 been admitted, and such questions as these proposed 
 to me : " What will your government do with the 
 Confederate leaders, if you capture them ? It surely 
 will not venture to put them to death." 
 
 I am not authorized to answer for my government. 
 Death is, I believe, the penalty for treason and rebel 
 lion the world over. Our Rebels may have to abide by 
 it. Yet I hardly think they will be drawn and quar 
 tered, after the good old English custom ; nor do I 
 believe that our government will adopt for them the 
 more expeditious style of military execution inaugu 
 rated at Peshawar. 
 
 " Should you conquer the Confederates, and should 
 President Davis surrender himself to your govern- 
 
A Few Plain Words. 123 
 
 ment, would Mr. Lincoln be magnanimous and wise 
 enough to grant him a free pardon, or would he ex 
 ecute him as a criminal ? " 
 
 I can only reply, I have faith in our President, and 
 believe that in such a contingency he will neither out 
 rage justice nor humanity, be neither weak nor vin 
 dictive. On second thoughts, however, I will venture 
 to suggest the possibility that Mr. Lincoln may pro 
 pose to Lord Lyons to rent St. Helena, and rebuild 
 Longwood for Mr. Davis. 
 
 " What do you think of the stone blockade atrocity ? " 
 In the first place, we don t call it by any such ugly 
 name. No government exists which has not been 
 accused of some arbitrary acts, when in the great 
 straits of its destiny. Certain it is we should never 
 have had that famous blockade, had we waited for a 
 nation " without sin " to " cast the first stone." 
 
 As to the " Trent " affair, before the roar of the 
 British lion came across the water, and the snows of 
 Canada were reddened by reinforcements, many 
 thoughtful Northern people condemned the act as im 
 politic, and inconsistent with the principles for which 
 we contended in 1812. I am old enough to remember 
 the excitement on our side, when you took the Caro 
 line from one of our docks and sent her over Niagara 
 Falls. The act has been justified as " a military 
 necessity," and as a warning to those who were giving 
 
124 Records of Five Years. 
 
 " aid and comfort " to your " rebels " ; but it would 
 hardly bear repetition. 
 
 I have seen it stated that, shortly after the battle of 
 Waterloo, an American vessel on the high seas was 
 brought to by the guns of two English men-of-war, 
 boarded and searched for the Emperor Napoleon, 
 who it \vas feared might be thus making his escape to 
 America. You know you did n t find him ; but if you 
 had found him, you would n t have taken him, would 
 you ? And if you had been rash enough to take him, 
 you would have given him up, without waiting for a 
 requisition from Washington, would n t you ? 
 
 I do not give these old by-gones as justifications, 
 though we are accused of an undemocratic weakness 
 for aristocratic precedents ; but when we think of 
 them, and of the many impressments of our seamen 
 long ago, we seem to see virtuous Britannia emerging 
 from her great glass house at Sydenham to throw 
 stones at poor, erring Columbia. 
 
 I think people over the water are mistaken in 
 believing a state of riot the normal condition of 
 American society. One would suppose, from certain 
 London journals, that mobs are as plenty as organ- 
 grinders in the streets of a Northern city, that the 
 chief employment of the mayor is the reading of the 
 " Riot Act," that he usually attends to a mob before 
 breakfast, and invariably returns from a mob to the 
 bosom of his family at night. 
 
A Few Plain Words. 12$ 
 
 The " Times " doubted whether Mr. Lincoln would 
 dare, " against the menaces of an infuriated mob," to 
 give back the Rebel commissioners. It was surprised 
 let us hope agreeably so when news came that 
 the surrender was made without any popular disturb 
 ance ; that Apsley I should say the White House 
 was not stoned ; that our army was not called from the 
 Potomac, where all is so " quiet " and peaceful, to do 
 perilous police duty in our Northern cities ; that the 
 French princes were not sworn in as special consta 
 bles ; that there was not even a tempest in that tradi 
 tional old teapot, Boston Harbor. 
 
 We did not perhaps, in our hospitality, perfectly 
 obey the good old injunction. Though we welcomed 
 " the coming," we did not "speed the parting" guests. 
 Yet we shall probably not invite them back. We hope 
 the air of England will agree with them, though it is 
 not apt to agree with traitors ; that they will prolong 
 their foreign residence, as did one of our Revolution 
 ary generals, whose little affair at West Point termi 
 nated unfortunately. 
 
 It seems that the anti-slavery people of the North 
 counted too securely on English sympathy. We have 
 rather lost faith in Exeter Hall of late. The philan 
 thropic Earl of Shaftsbury speaks of the fall of our 
 Republic as a " consummation devoutly to be wished." 
 As Mrs. Jelleby s poor neglected family had occasion 
 
126 Records of Five Years. 
 
 to wish themselves natives of Borrioboola-Gha, so we 
 might wish ourselves a ragged school, that we might 
 come within the pale of his Lordship s Christian chari 
 ties. Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton has expressed similar 
 sentiments, but we are not surprised at that. We 
 never looked for Christian charities from that quarter. 
 Charles Mackay we hear of as the chairman of a 
 Secession meeting. So a slavery Confederacy is "the 
 good time coming." Harriet Martineau scolds us 
 fearfully. Straws and play-actors show which way the 
 wind blows ; Dion Bourcicault changes the sad denoue 
 ment of the " Octoroon," and runs up the " Stars and 
 Bars" on the London boards. Dickens et tu Brute! 
 turns the cold shoulder on us and we wait in dread 
 expectation for a castigation, at least fifty verses long, 
 from Mr. Tupper. Heaven grant us grace to bear it ! 
 
 On the other hand, sainted Elizabeth Barrett Brown 
 ing, noble Mary Howitt, " Tom Brown " Hughes, John 
 Bright, Richard Cobden, Stuart Mill, George Thomp 
 son, Charles Gilpin, Argyle, Stanley, have spoken 
 words of fairness and good cheer for us, in our time 
 of sore trial. The London " Post," in declaring that 
 " the North has no man s good word/ chooses to ig 
 nore these friendly utterances. 
 
 In spite of a large infusion of French blood and 
 a Yankee education, I have always loved and honored 
 old England. While in the mother-land I was quite 
 
A Few Plain Words. 127 
 
 overwhelmed with kindness. True, in gay London 
 society I sometimes fancied I was looked upon as a 
 sort of unheroic Pocahontas, just civilized enough to 
 be wanting in romantic interest, wild flavor, and wam 
 pum ; but I did not care for that. The highest com 
 pliment I ever received in England was from a gentle 
 man, who declared that I " deserved to have been an 
 Englishwoman." Perhaps he was right. This is a 
 world in which few of us get our deserts. I did not 
 return the compliment in kind. Though a stanch 
 republican, I was not a political propagandist ; and 
 had I been, the thought of American slavery would 
 have sealed my lips there. At the best, I could but 
 have said, "Would you were not almost, but altogether 
 such as we are, except these bonds" 
 
 I found that good English people of the common 
 class had a compassionate feeling toward us, joined to 
 some bewilderment as to our geography, national 
 habits, and customs. I got the impression that the 
 map of the United States was left out of the English 
 school atlas, from patriotic principles. The question 
 was once gravely put to me, " Has not civilization ad 
 vanced further in the New England States than in the 
 other States of the Union ? " In reply I was obliged 
 to acknowledge myself " an outside barbarian," having 
 been born in the wild State of New York, though of 
 missionary parents from Connecticut. 
 
128 Records of Five Years. 
 
 Said a London shopman, on the 5th of November, 
 to a Yankee girl, " Do you keep Guy Fawkes s day in 
 America, miss ? " " No," she replied. " Do you keep 
 the Fourth of July in England ? " 
 
 I found that stanch English monarchists were unable 
 to realize that we could actually be attached to our 
 form of government, as the best thing for us. They 
 seemed to think it a sort of " Hobson s choice." I 
 recollect a friend once saying to me, in a gallery 
 where there were several royal portraits, " Do not you 
 Americans love and honor our Queen ? " " Yes, truly ; 
 how could we do otherwise?" "Then, are you not 
 sorry you rebelled ? You might now be living under 
 her reign." For reply I ventured to point to a picture 
 of George IV., whom Thackeray had been telling 
 us such pretty stories about, and to say, " O mad 
 am, you forget that this prince reigned before the good 
 queen. It may be that nature has not broken the 
 mould." " But are not some of your Presidents bad 
 men ? " " O yes ; some have abundantly disgraced 
 themselves and their country ; but we have a way 
 of getting rid of such, without resort to the painful 
 process of beheading. We prefer the ballot to the 
 axe." 
 
 I must admit, however, en passant, that to my mind 
 it is an open question, whether it be not better, in the 
 course of some half-dozen centuries, for a king to 
 
A Few Plain Words. 129 
 
 suffer decapitation, than for a whole nation to go 
 through the agonies of a presidental election every 
 four years. 
 
 I doubt not, after this war is over, bur great men at 
 Washington and in the army will be immensely pop 
 ular. We might, I suppose, change our President into 
 an emperor, with the title of Abraham the First, or 
 begin a line of Georges with McClellan. But I don t 
 think we shall do either. It seems to me that our vast 
 and varied country must either be ruled by a strong 
 military despotism or a really free republican govern 
 ment. We have never yet tried the latter. We intend 
 to try it. We expect you to stand by and see fair 
 play. 
 
 Why should you wish us any further humiliations or 
 disasters ? True, we are a boastful and belligerent 
 people, especially the more savage tribes of Congress 
 men and editors. These be grave faults, but they do 
 not lead me to quite despair of my country. Surely 
 an enlightened humanity teaches us to be especially 
 charitable toward unfortunate inherited tendencies. 
 
 If we bow in servile homage before the " almighty 
 dollar," in "Albion s favored isle" the guinea hath 
 its worshippers, nor is even the " bob " without its vota 
 ries ; we speak the same language as you, though now 
 and then sharpened into a twang, or lengthened into 
 a drawl. If the Queen s English be murdered in 
 6* i 
 
130 Records of Five Years. 
 
 Massacnusetts, it is first robbed of its /$ s in London, 
 and severely maltreated in Yorkshire. We can under 
 stand Shakespeare tolerably, with notes, though better 
 without. We can read Macaulay and Addison without 
 a dictionary, and Carlyle with only two or three. It 
 is generally conceded that we worship the same God 
 that, Republicans and Democrats as we are, we try, 
 some of us, to be loyal to the King of kings. We 
 use the same grand old Litany and Church-service ; 
 though while you pray for a Queen, who doubtless 
 deserves your prayers, we pray for a President, who 
 certainly needs ours. 
 
 After all, I have faith enough in England to believe 
 that, if we but show our true colors, run up a new 
 banner with emancipation written on it in letters of 
 light, she will be with us, at least, will never fling 
 her sword into the scale against us. We admit all you 
 say of the apparent inconsistency and fatal hesitancy of 
 our government. We admit that a broken Union, ce 
 mented by fraternal blood, and enclosing the slave 
 anew as in a living tomb of bondage and despair, 
 would be despised and abhorred of men and accursed 
 of God. But we cannot contemplate an end to our 
 struggle so full of misery and unspeakable shame. 
 We believe that the hour of the great decision is at 
 hand. We trust there is no need to hurry the impend 
 ing avalanche. In the mean time we hold that you, in 
 
A Few Plain Words. 131 
 
 simple honesty and good faith, are bound to obey the 
 injunction of the Prophet Isaiah, " Say ye not a con 
 federacy to all to whom this people say a Confederacy " ; 
 and to respect the prophecy of Jeremiah, " The cities 
 of the South shall be shut up, and none shall open 
 them." 
 
132 Records of Five Years. 
 
 T 
 
 LIGHTS OF THE WAR-CLOUD. 
 
 1864. 
 
 HE war-cloud which has hung over us so long is 
 not a heavy pall of utter blackness, shutting us 
 down with night-damps and death, out of sight of the 
 beauty of nature and the glory of heaven. It shadows, 
 but does not utterly envelop us. It has brought tem 
 pest and terror and fiery retribution in its dark bosom, 
 but not national destruction, not the awful, unappeasa 
 ble wrath of Divine justice. Through the cloud shine, 
 star-like, countless examples of patriotism, heroism, 
 martyr-like endurance and sacrifice ; and, most beauti 
 ful and cheering of all, we see that it is fringed with soft 
 auroral gleams, that presage the fair morning of a 
 great deliverance, the perfect day of freedom and 
 equality, the day which shall witness the laying of 
 the foundations of a fair temple of Peace, not like that 
 of old, on the treacherous sands of wrong and injustice, 
 but on the eternal rock of righteousness. 
 
 It is cheering, in these troublous times, to think on 
 what good has been wrought for us out of evil, what 
 power out of disaster, what courage out of humiliation, 
 what victory out of defeat. How evident it is now, that, 
 
Lights of the War- Cloud. 133 
 
 for a time, God suffered us to plunge into pitfalls, be 
 cause we were in the wrong way; how evident that 
 our first misfortunes resulted from our failing to com 
 prehend the mighty nature of the task before us. We 
 thought to work only for ourselves : God meant that 
 we should work for all the peoples of the world, and 
 their eternities. Who cannot now see, that, if the armies 
 of the Union had been victorious in all the first battles 
 of the war, had speedily overwhelmed or scattered the 
 insurgent forces, they would only have " scotched the 
 snake, not killed it." They would but have driven the 
 fell witches Secession, Rebellion, and Slavery back 
 to their secret cave to continue their " double, double, 
 toil and trouble," over the caldron of treason, and 
 brew their " hell-broth " for future generations. Now 
 the Army, the Navy, Emancipation, Allied Powers 
 have those " secret black and midnight hags " by the 
 throat, and one of them, the mother-witch of all, 
 Slavery, has almost ceased to writhe, and begins to 
 stiffen in death. 
 
 The experiences of the last three years should have 
 taught us a lesson of patience, when great national un 
 dertakings are in hand. We should not forget that no 
 war was ever fought over so stupendous an area, or 
 had such mighty questions and interests at stake. It 
 is perhaps the most tremendous undertaking of all 
 time. It is like the final struggle out of chaos of a 
 new heaven and a new earth. 
 
134 Records of Five Years. 
 
 OUR HEROES. 
 
 IT is well for us to pause, now and then, and count 
 over our heroes who have fallen in their armor, 
 with the red dew yet fresh on their laurels, to 
 count them over, though we may exclaim, with Mac 
 beth, - 
 
 " What ! will the line stretch to the crack of doom ? " 
 
 Already far in the past seems the hour when the 
 murder of gallant Ellsworth sent a shudder of horror 
 and a pang of anguish through the land, the hour 
 that crowned Lyon s glorious manhood with a heroic 
 death, the days of the ghastly blunders of Great 
 Bethel and Ball s Bluff, when the starry life of 
 Winthrop went out, when the eloquent lips of Baker 
 were hushed, when the chivalrous heart of Putnam 
 grew still. Then were taken from us Mitchell, the 
 astronomer, whose rapt soul came down from tracing 
 the starry paths of God to follow the starry flag of his 
 country to battle and to death ; and Lander, the 
 lion-hearted, and Bayard, worthy of the name, and 
 sturdy Richardson, and gallant Reynolds, and Kear 
 ney, our one-armed Murat, and grand old Sumner, and 
 Foote, the Christian soldier, and Dahlgren, that fiery, 
 electrical young spirit, born to flash in the van of 
 battle. He went down in the tempestuous night of 
 
Lights of the War-Cloiid. 135 
 
 war, as a thunderbolt is quenched in a stormy sea, 
 leaving all wilder and darker for the brief gleam. And 
 later, Sedgwick, truest of men and bravest of lead 
 ers, older in honors than in years, " he should have 
 died hereafter"; Wadsworth, first of citizens and of 
 soldiers in his native State ; gallant Hays and faithful 
 Stevenson ; and Rice, who, like a Roman soldier of 
 the grand old time, said with his dying breath, " Turn 
 me over, that I may die with my face to the enemy "; 
 and McPherson, whom Grant and Freedom wept for. 
 But who shall number and name the great host of 
 fiery young leaders, and the glorious thousands of the 
 rank and file, the mighty, melancholy multitude of 
 brave men slain in battle, buried from hospitals, mar 
 tyred in prisons ! Ah ! the soul faints under the awful 
 thought of all they have suffered and sacrificed for us. 
 God give us grace to prove worthier their sublime self- 
 devotion ! God sanctify to us this mighty national 
 affliction ! It is well with them. They have chosen 
 the good part. They are safe and sacred forever. 
 Their memory is as immortal as the spirit of freedom. 
 
136 Records of Five Years. 
 
 AN EXAMPLE. 
 
 WE are beginning to realize that we live in an 
 age as heroic as any the world ever knew. God 
 seems to have rained heroes and heroines upon us. 
 Out of the humblest farm-houses and workshops have 
 come examples of chivalrous honor and of the noblest 
 aspiration ; out of the homes of luxury and refine 
 ment have come the virtues of hardy valor and Spar 
 tan self-sacrifice. 
 
 Some ten years ago, one delicious afternoon in May, 
 I drove along a lovely, lonely part of the shore of the 
 Mediterranean, returning to Naples from a visit to the 
 ancient temples of Psestum. By my side sat a beloved 
 friend, one of the grandest women in character and 
 intellect I have ever known. During this drive we 
 talked of the men and women of ancient Italy, of 
 the Romans in especial, of the grand old Roman 
 virtues which have been the political salt of the world 
 for so many centuries ; and in this connection, I think, 
 my friend spoke of her son, then a lad at school in 
 Switzerland, her one brave boy, who she said, 
 laughingly, was "the light of her eyes." She ex 
 pressed the noblest maternal hopes for him, that he 
 should grow up good and true and pure, with a more 
 than Roman devotion to country, with a heart for any 
 
Lights of the War-Cloud. 137 
 
 fate in the service of freedom. She knew he would 
 have wealth, culture, high social position, and hosts of 
 friends, but she uttered no aspirations for him more 
 worldly than these. That conversation by the shore 
 of the solemn Mediterranean has often recurred to 
 my heart of late, for my friend was the mother of 
 Colonel Robert G. Shaw, the young hero of Fort 
 Wagner. 
 
 In his home, I am not surprised to hear, there is 
 exultation in the midst of agony. The loving hearts 
 there are upborne by a lofty joy that they have been 
 counted worthy of making so costly a sacrifice to free 
 dom. There death has not extinguished that pure young 
 life, the light of a mother s eyes ; it has only dropped 
 over it, as it were, an alabaster shade that softens and 
 diffuses its rays, and they love to sit in the tender ra 
 diance and talk of the beautiful past and of the great 
 future, of things heroic and divine. 
 
 The time shall come when a monument, fair and 
 symmetrical as his young life, shall mark the spot 
 where he fell, with his dark brothers round him, 
 where with theirs his body rests, whence with theirs his 
 faithful soul ascended. Already has the ignominy 
 changed to honor, and the burial-pit become as holy 
 as a Mount of Transfiguration. And when the spring 
 times of peace come round, and the little wild-flowers 
 grow up over the spot, will mortal eye be able to tell 
 
138 Records of Five Years. 
 
 by their color whether they were nourished by the 
 blood of the fair young hero, or by that of the black 
 soldier ? With equal pangs the brave hearts sent it 
 forth ; with impartial readiness the earth drank it up ; 
 without favor or prejudice Heaven accepted the sac 
 rifice. 
 
 OUR WOMEN. 
 
 EXAMPLES of the patriotic devotion of the 
 women of our country are countless as the stars 
 of a winter s night ; but we know, that, while together 
 they illumine our time, each one shines with a sepa 
 rate, beautiful radiance in the sight of God. 
 
 An incident that occurred at one of the recruiting 
 stations of Illinois is worthy of being made the sub 
 ject of a ballad by a great poet. A young girl, sweet 
 and modest looking, but with an expression of lofty 
 devotion in her steadfast eyes, led forward her lover, 
 and, solemnly kissing him before the whole crowd, 
 placed his hand on the register, that he might sign 
 away to his country the life he had vowed to her ! 
 Now if this had happened away back in the time of 
 those old humbug Crusades, how beautiful and brave 
 it would look to us ! 
 
 I know of a more than Spartan mother who has 
 
Lights of the War-Cloud. 139 
 
 given to the service of her country six sons, her all, 
 for she is a widow. In this instance we may spell 
 the "widow s mite," m-i-g-h-t. 
 
 We may picture this mother holding in her trembling 
 hand, a day or two after a great battle, the newspaper 
 containing a list of the killed and wounded. She dare 
 not read, yet she cannot put it away unread. She lifts 
 her eyes and heart to God, and reads till she reaches 
 one name ; then a great darkness falls upon her. 
 Yet, perhaps, a little way further on, another dear 
 name is there. 
 
 It may be that one of her darlings will be brought 
 home wounded, to be nursed back to life, only to rush 
 again into the deadly breach. It may be one comes 
 home, only to have her dear hand close his eyes. It 
 may be one will fall and be buried on the battle-field, 
 far away. Some day, perhaps, the young captain s 
 trunk will come home ; and it will be like that dread 
 ful list of killed and wounded. She will fear to look 
 into it, yet she cannot put it away unopened. She will 
 find his cap ; ah! where are the dark curls it used to 
 crown ? and the suit of blue in which he looked so 
 handsome when he went away ; and the sword, never 
 dishonored, found tightly grasped in his dead hand ; 
 and the sash, stained, it may be, with his dear life- 
 blood. And, kneeling by that trunk as by his coffin, 
 she will know how grievous, yet how grand, a thing it 
 
140 Records of Five Years. 
 
 is to be the mother of heroes and patriots in our 
 day. 
 
 Yet more precious than ever to such bereaved hearts 
 will be the country and the cause to which so much 
 has been given. We love most that for which we suf 
 fer and sacrifice most. May we not believe that to our 
 risen Lord our earth is all the dearer for the memory 
 of Calvary ? 
 
 A SOUTHERN UNIONIST. 
 
 NOT all among us who have shown the true Union 
 spirit are " to the manner born " ; and double 
 honor belongs to those whose native States are in 
 revolt, yet whose warm Southern blood has not caught 
 the contagion of treason. Of such is the rector of 
 St. Peter s Church at Perth Amboy, N. J., the Rev. 
 Alexander Jones. Let us reverence the name as 
 chief among ten thousand Joneses ! This clergyman 
 a native of Charleston, and long a resident of Rich 
 mond had at the beginning of the war the misfor 
 tune to have six sons in the Rebel service. Yet he 
 stood out stanch and true, still loyal to his country 
 and his God. From his pulpit he uttered, with fervent 
 feeling, these memorable words : " May the star- 
 spangled banner wave over every part of this land, 
 
Lights of the War-Cloud. 141 
 
 even though it should float over the field where my six 
 sons are lying." 
 
 There spoke the heroic patriotism of a Lucius 
 Junius Brutus, and of a Titus Manlius, touched with 
 a diviner element, the spirit of Christian resigna 
 tion. 
 
 A GLANCE INTO THE FUTURE. 
 
 IT is a great thing to be living at this time, to 
 have our lives moulded into the grand and terrible 
 history of the age, to bear a part, however humble, 
 in the mighty, momentous struggle which convulses 
 the continent. It may be grievous to us now, but the 
 grievousness shall not last. Back on these troublous 
 times shall our children look, with reverence and awe. 
 The sons of our brave soldiers will date their patents 
 of nobility from grander fields than Agincourt or 
 Bannockburn, such patents of nobility as no royal 
 Heralds Office has symbols sufficiently glorious for. 
 Many a coat-of-arms in those days will have one 
 sleeve hanging empty. Honor and loving pride will 
 make up for many a sad physical loss. Glory is the 
 best balsam for the wounds of heroes. The young 
 captain will cease to regret the cruel sword-slash across 
 his brow, a few years hence, when soft, childish fingers 
 
142 Records of Five Years. 
 
 will glide over the scar with tender touches, and a 
 sweet, childish voice will say, " Papa, tell me again 
 about that great battle in the Wilderness, when the 
 Rebel soldier gave you that dreadful wound, and how 
 you fought till the blood blinded you." We may pic 
 ture to ourselves a group of noble young lads, the 
 nation s charge, some ten years hence, thus proudly 
 accounting for their orphanage. Says one, " My father 
 fell in beating back the invader at Gettysburg " ; says 
 another, " My father fell on Lookout Mountain, fight 
 ing above the clouds ! " says a third, " My father 
 suffered martyrdom in Libby Prison " ; says another, 
 " My father went down in the Cumberland " j and yet 
 another, " My father was rocked into the long sleep, 
 below the waves, in the iron cradle of the Monitor." 
 
 And there may be hapless lads who will listen in 
 mournful envy, saying in their secret hearts, " Alas ! 
 we have no part nor lot in all this glorying, our 
 fathers were Rebels ! " and here and there a youth yet 
 more unfortunate, who will steal away from his com 
 rades, and cover his face, and murmur in bitterness of 
 soul, " Ah ! God help me / my father was a Copper 
 head!" 
 
Lights of the War-Cloud. 143 
 
 A PATRIOTIC PARALLEL. 
 
 HOW noble a spirit of patriotism and faith has 
 been shown by the people, from the first, in 
 loyally submitting to the decrees and measures of the 
 administration. How calmly they endured the humil 
 iation of yielding up the Rebel Commissioners at the 
 threatening demand of England, when, in spite of the 
 ingenious argument of Mr. Seward, " spermaceti for 
 our inward bruise," they believed they were surren 
 dering with those Rebels national dignity, if not 
 national rights. Ah ! Britannia has a long arm, but 
 Columbia has a long memory ! 
 
 How quietly the Army of the Potomac, that "noble 
 army of martyrs," saw removed from his high position 
 the young commander on whose shoulders had fallen 
 that splendid embarrassment, the gigantic mantle of 
 Scott, the leader whose strategy may be one of the 
 problems of history, and whose engineering the won 
 der of future agriculturists, but who had at least " the 
 genius to be loved " by his men ! 
 
 How quietly a large portion of the Republican party 
 saw superseded, at what seemed a cruelly critical mo 
 ment in his career, a gallant general and a political 
 representative, gravely accused of issuing untimely 
 proclamations, of expending too large sums in fortifi- 
 
144 Records of Five Years. 
 
 cations and gunboats of problematical necessity, of 
 keeping exceptionable subordinates about him (Caesar s 
 contractors should be without reproach), of having a 
 Slavonic body-guard, that would shout for him in dis 
 located English, and of wearing his hair parted in the 
 middle ! 
 
 OUR SOLDIERS. 
 
 "COMMON soldier," the old English term for the 
 ^~s private, should never be adopted by us, ours 
 are such ?/;zcommon soldiers. I have a profound 
 respect for them, when they respect themselves, and a 
 warm feeling of personal gratitude. I am bringing up 
 my daughter to look on the men in blue coats as her 
 best friends and benefactors. Rebel sympathizers say 
 we are spoiling the soldiers by too much praise and 
 petting; but I would rather have on my conscience 
 every " spoiling " sin of the Sanitary Commission than 
 one " sin of omission " toward the soldier. Certain 
 journals, of South-side proclivities, make much of 
 every quarrel or street disturbance in which a blue 
 coat figures. They unconsciously pay a compliment to 
 the soldier, in demanding that he shall behave better 
 than other men. And they are right. He should. He 
 bears in his uniform the dignity of the United States 
 on his back. 
 
Lights of the War-Cloud. 145 
 
 I have seen much of the soldiers during the past 
 three years, in camp and in hospitals ; I have travelled 
 in cars crowded with them. I like to watch them and 
 listen to them, when they do not make too much of 
 their expletive and expectorative privileges. 
 
 Soldiers are a hearty, jolly, generous, irrepressible 
 set of fellows, with something grand about the hardest 
 of them. A cause like ours would kindle a soul under 
 the ribs of moral death. They give a dash, a fire, an 
 impetus, and a picturesqueness to our national life, 
 which it has lacked hitherto. Ah ! " the pity of it," 
 that they should pass away so fast ! In sorrowful awe 
 have I ever passed down the sad aisles of the hospi 
 tal, beholding its glorious untitled sufferers, scarred, 
 maimed, disabled by sickness, the mournful wit 
 nesses of Liberty s struggle with Oppression, grand 
 memorials of our national valor and glory, pale as 
 monumental marble, pathetic as broken columns. 
 But to me there is not in the wide world so melancholy, 
 so unspeakably pathetic a place as the hospital bury- 
 ing-ground. There is no grave there by which I can 
 not kneel in tears, and forget that the poor fellow 
 lying below used perhaps to swear, and drink bad 
 whiskey, and confiscate chickens, and break the Sab 
 bath, and light his pipe with the chaplain s tracts. 
 For the soul of me, I can only think how bravely he 
 fought and how uncomplainingly he died ; how, per- 
 7 J 
 
146 Records of Five Years. 
 
 haps, an old mother or a young wife mourned for him, 
 or poor little children cried bitterly because papa 
 would never, never come home from the war. 
 
 CHARITIES OF THE WAR. 
 
 VOLUMES could be written wonderful vol 
 umes on the heroisms of our hospitals ; not 
 alone recording the grand endurance, courage, cheer 
 fulness, and sublime faith of our wounded, maimed, 
 fever-stricken and dying soldiers, but the tireless 
 devotion of countless high-hearted women and ten 
 der-hearted men, who have left homes of comfort and 
 ease for those sad abodes of pain and weariness, to 
 minister to the brave sufferers who bleed and die 
 for the redemption of our land. 
 
 Were ours a Catholic country, the time would come 
 when shrines would be erected to the blessed mem 
 ory of these saints, where such poor sinners as 
 we might offer prayers, and worship relics of their 
 holy lives, such, perhaps, as a white linen apron, 
 a night-lamp, a lint-box, a phial, or a bowl and 
 spoon. 
 
 How wonderful, how passing all historical prece 
 dent, is the beneficence of this time ! All give : the 
 
Lights of t/ie War-Cloud. 147 
 
 poorest finds that he has something to spare ; the 
 rich feel in the closest human, I had almost said 
 divine, fellowship with suffering and poverty, but 
 give like emperors. Ah, " all things are possible with 
 God." The camel is making his way through the 
 eye of the needle, the rich man is entering into 
 the kingdom of heaven. 
 
 The grand charities of the war, under whatever 
 name they are known, testify to a profound general 
 sentiment of humanity and piety. They are flowers 
 of divine beauty and sweetness, springing up in the 
 very footsteps of Jesus. 
 
 I do not believe that the world ever knew so 
 beneficent and efficient an organization as the Sani 
 tary Commission. The noblest charitable associa 
 tions of Catholic countries fall short of it in scope 
 and power. The ancient pious institution of Flor 
 ence, the Brotherhood of Mercy, most worthily fore 
 shadowed it But ours takes in the sisterhood, and 
 so is almost omnipotent. With its vast resources, 
 its sleepless activity, and its great soul of pity, it is 
 like a supplementary Providence to our poor sol 
 diers, " an ever-present help in time of need." 
 
 Associated with the noble history of the Sanitary 
 Commission must ever be the dear memory of 
 Thomas Starr King, a king of the Lord s anoint 
 ing, a priest who preached loyalty as an essen- 
 
148 Records of Five Years, 
 
 tial part of religion, and freedom as the very out 
 going of God. From ocean to ocean, across a 
 continent, thrilled the sad tidings that his tran- 
 scendently noble and lovable nature, that lofty, 
 clear, and guiding soul, was withdrawn from us. The 
 star of the Pacific has passed from our view ; but 
 it has left, all silvered with its pure light, the very 
 clouds which veil from us its new and higher orbit 
 in the infinite deeps of heaven. 
 
 ENGLAND. 
 
 ONE of the great good things which have come 
 out of this war is the lesson we of the North 
 have learned of self-respect and self-reliance. Eng 
 land, our ungracious step-mother, by the fair, cold 
 shoulder she turned on us in the early part of 
 our struggle, has, it would seem, made flunkyism 
 toward her an impossible vice for our future. If, 
 five years hence, Albert Edward shall come over 
 here to see how much is left of us after the war, 
 and shall bring Alexandra and the children, I doubt 
 much if the whole family will be received with half 
 the enthusiasm that greeted the bachelor prince alone. 
 He will even find that a change has come o er the 
 
Lights of the War-Cloud. 149 
 
 spirit of the dream of the fair republicans who once 
 swept with him round the ball-room, in a dizzy, pal 
 pitating whirl of undemocratic delight. 
 
 Yet it is to be hoped that we are not all of the 
 unsanctified spirit of a certain eminent and vener 
 able statesman of New England, who lately, in re 
 ferring to his advanced age, expressed a pensive 
 regret that, in tne ordinary course of nature, he 
 could not live long enough to hate England as much 
 as he wanted to. 
 
 Thank Heaven, there is an England, " the better 
 part which cannot be taken from us," the ideal 
 England, the England of Hampden and Milton 
 and Russell and Sidney, the sound, sweet core of 
 the old Commonwealth, which must ever be dear to 
 our hearts. This England sustained our eloquent 
 apostle of freedom, Henry Ward Beecher, when he 
 so grandly pleaded the cause of the Union in Lon 
 don and Birmingham. This England is represented 
 by such men as Cobden, Bright, Mill, Spencer, 
 George Thompson, Goldwin Smith, and those noble 
 operatives of Manchester, who have sent their sym 
 pathizing cheers to us across the water. The voices 
 of these workingmen were a little weakened by 
 starvation, but they reached us. With these nobles 
 and gentry of God on our side, why should we fret 
 ourselves about the opinions of the lower orders of 
 
150 Records of Five Years. 
 
 Englishmen, the Lairds and Lindsays, and all the 
 slavery-loving lordlings and titled snobs of Parlia 
 ment ? We surely can afford to be snubbed by such 
 Englishmen as recently so unceremoniously shuffled 
 Garibaldi out of England, because the hearts of 
 the people leaped to him, because the Sphinx of 
 the Tuileries frowned on him. Long ago, in the 
 time of the Chartist disturbances, Louis Napoleon 
 acted as special constable for the English govern 
 ment; and perhaps it is but fair that, in return, the 
 English government should act as special constable 
 for Louis Napoleon. 
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE INSTITUTION. 
 
 THAT the old spirit of concession to slavery 
 has been cast out of the great Church of the 
 North few will deny, though it still lingers here 
 and there on crimson cushions and under stained 
 windows. Sunday-school books and the publications 
 of tract societies are no longer sifted with pious 
 care, lest some small grain of hard anti-slavery 
 truth shall grit in the teeth of Southern Christians. 
 Bibles and Prayer-books may be issued now illus 
 trated with the whole group of Schaeffer s picture of 
 
Lights of the War-Cloud. 151 
 
 Christus Consolator, not as of old, with the figure 
 of the kneeling, manacled Ethiop left out. A whole 
 bench of bishops would not now dare to shut the 
 slave away from his Lord. 
 
 An officer, lately from the Department of the Gulf, 
 described to me the other day an incident which he 
 witnessed on an expedition up the Teche. As the 
 Union gunboats, loaded with troops, passed up the 
 river, the slaves on the plantations would run down to 
 the banks, to hail with joy the Federal flag, and to 
 cheer onward the Yankee soldiers. 
 
 One morning, on passing very near the shore, a 
 group of men, women, and children were seen standing 
 on a bluff, hailing " the invaders " with unusual demon 
 strations of enthusiasm. Suddenly out in front of the 
 group there stepped a black woman, of almost gigan 
 tic stature, straight, symmetrical, and peculiarly grand 
 in air and movement. She stretched her great, bare 
 arms, like polished ebony, toward the gunboats, then 
 lifted them heavenward, clasped her hands and sunk 
 upon her knees. It was " Ethiopia stretching out her 
 hands to God," to that God who is " no respecter 
 of persons," and has no prejudice against color. The 
 crowd behind her grew utterly still, and evidently 
 joined in her silent, solemn invocation. The soldiers 
 on the gunboats for the time seemed awe-struck ; 
 then, as the prayer ceased, they broke into a hearty 
 
152 Records of Five Years. 
 
 cheer. All reverently accepted the poor slave-woman s 
 blessing, and many vowed themselves anew to that 
 cause whose triumph should liberate her and all the 
 oppressed of our land. 
 
 I think I should like to see that black Unionist of 
 Louisiana confronted with the venerable bishop of the 
 white souls of Vermont, who lately seized on his spir 
 itual arms, and came so manfully up to the help of the 
 mighty against the Lord. I should like to hear him 
 attempt to argue her into the belief that slavery is her 
 rightful, God-appointed condition ; because, forsooth, 
 away back in the misty morning of the world, poor 
 Canaan was cursed. 
 
 May we not hope that we have heard the last of 
 that tiresome cant that has vexed our ears so long in 
 defence of slavery as a civilizing and Christianizing 
 institution ? 
 
 I once heard an anecdote of a pious little girl, who 
 was observed one rainy morning standing at a window 
 coolly exterminating flies. With her small hand hov 
 ering over an unconscious victim, she was heard to 
 say, " Little fly, do you want to go to God ? Then go ! " 
 
 So, at the best, slavery sacrifices the certain earthly 
 to the possible heavenly welfare; and crushes, to 
 Christianize. 
 
 As for me, I would rather trust myself to the mercy 
 of God in heathenism, than to the mercy of any 
 
Lights of the War-Cloud. 153 
 
 slave-owner in Christendom. I would rather hear 
 God s voice in the winds, breathing among the palms 
 of the desert, in thunder, in tempest, than hear his 
 name in the oaths of the slave-driver or in the hypo 
 critical prayers of a slaveholding preacher. I would 
 rather rove at will, in " a state of sin and misery," on 
 the banks of the Niger or amid the mountains of 
 Abyssinia, than toil in the same state among the sugar- 
 canes of Louisiana or the rice-swamps of Alabama. 
 I would rather be ignorant of the marriage rite in Tim- 
 buctoo, than subject to the divorce of the auctioneer s 
 hammer in Tennessee. I would rather hold my child 
 in barbarism, than have her sold away from my arms 
 in a land of " Gospel privileges." 
 
 O God ! what must it be not to own the child which 
 thou hast given ! 
 
 The children, they often make the ties which bind 
 the slave to the old plantation in a mock contentment, 
 which is only the still despair, the slow, bitter mar 
 tyrdom of love. 
 
 A gentleman of Washington tells me that he last 
 autumn met, on one of the roads leading to the city, a 
 sad, stern-looking black woman, bearing on her head 
 a heavy basket of pears. Entering into conversation 
 with her, he found that she had walked fifteen miles 
 that morning to bring those pears to market for her 
 master. 
 
 7* 
 
154 Records of Five Years. 
 
 "Well," said my friend, "now you are here, why 
 don t you stay ? " 
 
 " Stay ! I Ve got a lot of chil en back dar on de 
 ole plantation. Ah ! my ole massa knows what 11 
 fotch me back, better dan bloodhounds." 
 
 "Well, if you must go back, I hope you have a 
 good master." 
 
 " Good ! he GOOD ! ! A little piece of hell, massa ! " 
 
 And with this terse summing up of her master s 
 character, the faithful and attached bondswoman 
 strode on. 
 
 We may thank God that, through this war, the last 
 silvery veil has been torn from the Mokanna of slav 
 ery, and he stands forth in all his hideousness and 
 horror. He has assumed new names, Secession, 
 Revolution, Southern Confederacy, but he is the 
 same old monster that the fanatics and Quakers have 
 been battling with for more than a quarter of a cen 
 tury. The ball that killed Lovejoy, the cane that 
 struck down Sumner, the rope that strangled grand 
 old John Brown, the shells of Charleston batteries, the 
 paving-stones of Baltimore, the slug that tore into the 
 heart of Ellsworth, every shot and sword and bayo 
 net that has laid low our heroes from the beginning of 
 the war to this day, the bludgeons and firebrands of 
 New York and Detroit rioters, were all drawn from 
 his infernal armory. 
 
Lights of the War-Cloud. 155 
 
 The same old monster has stripped our dead, and 
 bayoneted our wounded, and fired at half-drowned 
 men, struggling to escape from burning ships. The 
 same old monster has all along been robbing and 
 chilling and stifling and starving and killing with 
 slow torture our brave men in his noisome prisons. 
 O God ! hasten the time when a living, surging tide of 
 freemen may sweep against those prison-walls and 
 through them, and overthrow them, till not one stone 
 shall remain upon another ! 
 
 PEACE AND FRATERNITY. 
 
 AN INCIDENT. 
 
 WHEN this fearful monster is dead beyond doubt 
 or peradventure, and buried in the great cross 
 roads of our armies, like the suicide he is destined to 
 be, and transfixed forever with the stake of a world s 
 condemnation, when a mighty cairn of freedmen s 
 votes shall have made resurrection impossible, then, 
 and not till then, may we look for peace. When the 
 long strife is thus over, I doubt not we -shall enjoy 
 with our surviving brothers of the South better, be 
 cause sounder and more honorable, relations than 
 those of the past. They will never despise us as they 
 
156 Records of Five Years. 
 
 have despised us of old, and not without reason. We 
 know the exceeding fierce heat of their hatred, but we 
 cannot think it is quite of the nature of " the fire that 
 is never quenched." It will blaze itself out. If we 
 steadfastly stand by the right, they will come round to 
 us, and perceive that, in the darkness of a great error, 
 they have been firing on their friends. Folly and 
 frenzy are never immortal, and " eternal hate " is a 
 term fit only for the infernals. Many touching inci 
 dents of this war, soft gleams of light thrown across 
 the dark and lurid canvas, have proved that we were 
 not made to be at enmity forever, that in the hot, 
 angry blood of the combatants thrill kindred pulses 
 of indestructible brotherhood, that, underneath the 
 boiling surface of the mad strife, the shock and repulse 
 of contending currents, swells-the great solemn tide of 
 a common Christianity. 
 
 At the siege of Port Hudson, where the war-work 
 was most fierce and bloody, occurred several incidents 
 that proved that not all the fiends of rebellion and 
 fratricidal strife have been able to strangle the pleasant 
 old memories and the kindly impulses of humanity. 
 An anecdote related to me by an officer who served 
 during the siege illustrates this, and also the wonder 
 ful cheerfulness and even gayety, under extreme priva 
 tion, of Southern gentlemen reared in ease and luxury. 
 
 The pickets of the two armies often agreed among 
 
Lights of the War-Cloud. 157 
 
 themselves upon short, informal truces, and conversed 
 and jested together with the utmost apparent good 
 feeling. Sometimes the officers followed their exam 
 ple, and had pleasant social chats across ravines and 
 ramparts. One day, toward the last of the siege, a 
 Federal officer was rallying a Confederate on the 
 proverbial deficiencies in the Commissary Depart 
 ment of Port Hudson. The Rebel officer insisted that 
 they got along very well, but readily assented to the 
 Federal s proposition for an exchange of dinners on 
 the following day. 
 
 The Union officer took pains to have an uncom 
 monly good dinner prepared, and at the appointed 
 time and place appeared with it, neatly packed in a 
 basket. The Confederate officer was also punctually 
 at his tryst, and handed to his Yankee foeman an 
 ominous-looking bundle. Then both retreated within 
 their picket lines. Our officer unfolded wrapper after 
 wrapper, till he came to the Rebel s dinner, three ears 
 of dry corn. Some days previous our guns had de 
 stroyed the mill that furnished meal for the garrison, 
 so that each soldier, officer as well as private, had to 
 crush and prepare as best he could his own ration of 
 corn. It was positively all they had to subsist on at 
 the time, with the exception of a relish of mule-meat 
 now and then. By the way, may not those mule-meat 
 rations account, in part, for the obstinate resistance 
 of that garrison? 
 
158 Records of Five Years. 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 ANOTHER happy feature of this sad time is our 
 possession of that rare good thing for which a 
 heathen philosopher once searched vainly through 
 Athens with a lantern, an honest man. 
 
 We have been accused of dwelling too much on 
 the homely virtue which distinguishes our President. 
 Doubtless certain Athenians were immensely bored by 
 hearing Aristides called " the Just," so they banished 
 him into immortality. 
 
 Our President may have made some grave mis 
 takes, may have erred here and there, through the 
 " multitude of counsellors "; we do not claim for him 
 Papal infallibility, though he may issue " bulls." Some 
 of us, in the fiery impatience of our anti-slavery zeal, 
 felt that he was too long in recognizing the full claims 
 of Freedom, his rightful Sarah, and in sending the 
 Hagar of Slavery into the wilderness. But he packed 
 her off at last. Ever since his Proclamation of Eman 
 cipation I have possessed my soul in patience. Then 
 through him the nation declared for justice and free 
 dom, and I knew that thenceforth the God of justice 
 and freedom would be on our side ; that, though he 
 might yet lead us through clouds and thick darkness, 
 he would surely bring us up on to the heights of vic 
 tory at last. 
 
Lights of the War-Cloud. 159 
 
 If Abraham Lincoln does not lead like a Tell, or 
 drive like a Cromwell, he stands shoulder to shoul 
 der with the masses of the people, which is per 
 haps better for our times. He lifts his foot slow 
 ly, it is not a small foot ; but he sets it down 
 hard, it is not a light foot, and it never takes a 
 step back. 
 
 I know that it is objected to him, that, while the 
 ship of state is laboring in the breakers of dis 
 union, or passing through the " Hell-gate " of trea 
 son, he sits in the cabin, and tells stories. Well, they 
 are mostly very good stories, packed with shrewd, 
 suggestive common-sense ; and if he neglects no duty 
 to tell them, where s the harm ? I really think that 
 Mr. Lincoln s propensity for story-telling has been 
 exaggerated by his enemies. I had once the honor 
 of conversing with him, or rather of hearing him 
 converse, for several minutes, and in all that time 
 he only told four little stories. 
 
 This was on an august occasion, an occasion 
 which seemed like a chapter out of a fairy-book. 
 The east room might have been the audience-cham 
 ber of King Arthur s court, and our President might 
 have stood for King Arthur, barring crown and scep 
 tre, for he graciously received that night a famous 
 and terrible ogre, and the prince of all the dwarfs, 
 General Butler, just from New Orleans, and General 
 Tom Thumb, with his fair young bride. 
 
160 Records of Five Years. 
 
 The great bend accomplished by our President, in 
 acknowledgment of the salutations of his pygmy guests, 
 was something well worth seeing ! I had not before 
 realized to what lengths of Lincoln Nature had gone 
 in the one case, nor how short she had cut her 
 work in the other. I thought then, as I had often 
 thought before, that Washington was the place to go 
 to, if one would see extremes meet. 
 
 As the bridal pair walked about the drawing-room, 
 or took their wine and cake off a chair, I fancied 
 the little bridegroom glanced apprehensively now and 
 then up at General Butler, as though fearing he 
 might be moved to pounce upon and devour that 
 dainty morsel of flesh and blood at his side. But 
 the ogre had evidently dined, or perhaps did n t 
 consider the fair Lavinia "contraband of war." 
 
 Mr. Lincoln was evidently amused by the incon 
 gruous scene, and a look of quaint humor illumined 
 his craggy face, as his eye followed the queer little 
 folk, moving with "pigeon-like stateliness" out of 
 the executive presence. It may be that I have a 
 weakness for story-telling people, but I must say 
 that, when I came to look into the pale, care-worn 
 face of the President, and into his kindly dark eyes, 
 which, when not smiling, were sufficiently sad, I 
 thanked God for him, that he was able to tell and 
 enjoy a good story. This hearty love of fun and a 
 good conscience are all, it seems to me. that save 
 
Lights of the War- Cloud. 161 
 
 him from breaking down under the mighty cares of 
 his office. His humor keeps his nature genial and 
 juicy, helps to keep his large heart patient and 
 forgiving toward insubordinate generals and desert 
 ers, and possibly repentant Rebels. 
 
 Of course we women know nothing about political 
 matters, but we generally make up our minds, 
 such as they are, about public men and things; and 
 / think that Abraham Lincoln s enemies will yet 
 know him for something more than the President, 
 who has told the most stories and commissioned the 
 most brigadiers. 7 think that, more than any Presi 
 dent since Washington, he possesses the love of the 
 people, especially of the women and children and 
 soldiers and freed slaves ; and whoever has the 
 love of these, has the blessing of Almighty God. 
 
 HOME AND CAMP. 
 
 ONE beautiful result of our great national trial 
 is the deepening and intensifying of home 
 affections. An ever-present sense of the perils that 
 surround the soldier husband, father, son, or brother, 
 gives him a new dearness and sacredness. If the 
 young wife never prayed before, she will pray for 
 her hero in the field. And to the soldier, on the 
 
 K 
 
1 62 Records of Five Years. 
 
 march, or by the camp-fire, or on the eve of con 
 flict, or down among the wounded, or, worse than 
 all, in a Southern prison, how sweet and beautiful 
 beyond words to tell is the memory of the hum 
 blest home. If he never prayed before, he will pray 
 for the dear ones there. And when he comes back 
 on furlough, how delicious is the brief home rest ! 
 How grateful he is for every care and comfort, once 
 taken as a matter of course ! How loving and help 
 ful he is toward the wife, how tender toward the 
 children, how gentle and considerate to everybody ! 
 And what a heroic preciousness there is about him ! 
 How he is doubly ours, for having given himself to 
 his country ! How we count every hour of his leave ! 
 and, O Heaven, how hard it is to give him up again ! 
 But he goes back to his dreadful duty mailed in the 
 pure influences of home, while its blessedness fol 
 lows him in love and prayers. And even on the 
 battle-field, in the maddest carnival of Hate and 
 Murder, moves the sweet angel of Love. Brothers 
 shake hands and embrace, before plunging into the 
 thick strife, and estranged friends are reconciled. 
 Who has forgotten that lovely incident of Antietam, 
 when noble old Sumner, before sending his son on 
 an errand of great peril, put his arms about his neck 
 and kissed him (perhaps seeing a look of his dear 
 mother in the young man s eyes), and said, "Good 
 by, Sammy ! " 
 
Lights of the War-Cloud. 163 
 
 EMANCIPATION. 
 
 BUT the best, the divinest thing evolved from 
 this war is the quickening of the religious faith 
 of the people. If, as the poet sings, " an undevout 
 astronomer is mad," how madder than the maddest 
 is he who can look on the wonderful portents and 
 providences of this time, and not believe that God 
 is working mightily in our affairs ! 
 
 In this matter of emancipation, and in the ele 
 vation of chattels into soldiers, how signally has 
 Providence overruled and overturned the plans of 
 politicians and the programmes of major-generals ! 
 How has he rebuked our national pride by making 
 our national salvation hinge on the recognition of 
 the human rights of this poor, oppressed race. 
 
 When General Banks gave the footsore little fugi 
 tive slave-girl of Virginia a ride on one of his can 
 non, he unconsciously gave to the world a symbol 
 of the deliverance of her people, which we are work 
 ing out in defending our own freedom and nation 
 ality. Though he was in retreat, little Ethiopia rode 
 on to victor} 7 . 
 
 So it has been from the beginning : from our defeats 
 and disasters have arisen the hopes and opportuni 
 ties of the slave. Our necessities have been his gain. 
 
164 Records of Five Years, 
 
 After having been hurled back from fort and strong 
 hold again and again, you gave the black man a 
 place in your ranks. In your extremity you cried, 
 " Come over and help us ! " 
 
 So wherever our cannon move, dashing toward 
 the enemy on the morning of a great battle, or 
 lumbering sullenly along in the midnight retreat, 
 little Ethiopia rides on to victory. Ubiquitous and 
 irrepressible, she has been with us from the first 
 She was starved and smoked out of Sumter with 
 Anderson. She moved with our grand army on 
 toward Richmond, and fell back with it from Bull 
 Run. She crept up to the side of our chief 
 Butler, and whispered into his ear the immortal 
 word " contraband." She was with Baker in the 
 mad, vain fight of Ball s Bluff. She was with Lyon 
 and Fremont in Missouri. She was perched be 
 hind Zagoni, in his wild charge at Springfield. She 
 climbed over the earthworks into Donelson. She 
 sailed into Norfolk and New Orleans. She trudged 
 into Nashville. She was with Sigel at Pea Ridge. 
 She witnessed the rain of fire at Hilton Head and 
 Fort Pulaski. She rode amid the smoke and slaugh 
 ter of the battles before Richmond. She changed 
 base with McClellan. She felt the mighty shock of 
 battle at Antietam. She crossed and recrossed the 
 Rappahannock with Hooker and Burnside. She was 
 
Lights of the War-Cloud. 165 
 
 with Rosecrans on Stone River. She chased Lee 
 into Pennsylvania, and chased him out again. She 
 was with Meade on the glorious hillsides of Gettys 
 burg. In the Southwest, she panted after Grant as 
 he marched on with giant strides, every stride a 
 battle, and every battle a victory. She walked ex 
 ultant into Vicksburg and Port Hudson. She was 
 at the storming of Fort Wagner. She bled there, 
 and wept, but lifted her little dark face very proudly 
 when she stood on the battered ramparts. And she 
 will clamber up over the ruins of Sumter yet, she 
 will roll in triumph through the streets of Charles 
 ton, she will help to storm the Bastiles of Rich 
 mond. Ay, wherever our flag floats in victory or 
 droops in defeat, there will be little Ethiopia under 
 its starry folds. We cannot be rid of her, if we 
 would. Even England has recognized the tired and 
 trembling, yet patient and trusting little dusky figure, 
 riding on our cannon, and for her sake is repent 
 ing of that first harsh judgment of our cause. For 
 her sake, all the true souls of Christendom are with 
 us. As we deal with her, so shall God deal with 
 us. If we are just and merciful, he, the God of 
 the helpless and the poor, will" bless our arms and 
 crown our struggle with victory and peace. 
 
1 66 Records of Five Years. 
 
 A TASTE OF CAMP LIFE. 
 
 SOME time in the winter of 1864, while in the 
 West, I received from an old friend, an officer 
 in service, a somewhat startling communication, run 
 ning thus : 
 
 CAMP, NEAR STEPHENSBURG, VA. 
 DEAR MADAM : Will it be agreeable and pos 
 sible for you to give some lectures this season be 
 fore the Lecture Association of the First Division 
 (General Caldwell s), Second Army Corps ? We have 
 a fine hall, built for this purpose, and have a number 
 of distinguished gentlemen engaged for the course. 
 There are now a large number of ladies visiting in 
 the division, and you could not fail to be interested, 
 as well as to interest, should you accept our invitation. 
 If it be in your power to come, and you come, 
 you will be the guest of General Caldwell and lady 
 during your stay in camp. 
 
 It is the desire of the officers, ladies, and men of 
 this command, as well as of the society, that your ser 
 vices may be secured for one, two, or three evenings. 
 I am, dear madam, very respectfully, 
 
 L. D. B , Pres t Association. 
 
A Taste of Camp Life. 167 
 
 I could hardly have been more astonished and 
 taken aback had I been honored by a royal com 
 mand to read before his serene Majesty Valoroso 
 XXIV., King of Pafflagonia, his brilliant court, and 
 his illustrious guest, Bulbo, Crown Prince of Crim 
 Tartary. It seemed so unreal, so bizarre, so " pass 
 ing strange." The fact of those grand old fighters 
 and fiery young captains lying on their arms, in the 
 enforced idleness of winter quarters, being ready and 
 willing to receive such half-rations of wisdom, wit, 
 and logic as I could serve up for them, astounded 
 and touched me. I had had no idea to what ex 
 tremities of ennui they were reduced. For lack of 
 the stormy music of battle, they would hear the 
 chirpings of the " swallow flying South," in the 
 pauses of the baying of "the dogs of war," they 
 would e en listen to the cricket on the hearth. 
 
 The idea of a lecture association in camp seemed 
 to me in itself eminently novel and progressive. I 
 had heard of concerts and balls, of amateur theat 
 ricals, even of debating-clubs, wherein young sol 
 diers, mostly of the old New England stock, rest 
 less, inquiring, enterprising spirits, who abhor all 
 idleness physical and mental, as Nature abhors a 
 vacuum, turned from felling forests to "chopping 
 logic," from laying down corduroy roads to laying 
 the premises of an argument, from "pounding" the 
 
1 68 Records of Five Years. 
 
 enemy to expounding political principles, from blow 
 ing up fortifications to exploding false theories and 
 untenable moral positions. But a literary lecture 
 association an association that so gallantly recog 
 nized a woman s right to be heard on the platform 
 (without having been tried by military commission), 
 a platform encompassed by thinking and voting bay 
 onets was a step, a seven-league-boot stride further. 
 Was it a " Boston notion " ? It had an Athenian 
 flavor about it; it smacked of Music Hall and 
 Tremont Temple. Yet I must confess I was almost 
 terrified by my privilege. I knew not how I could 
 ever summon courage to appear before an audience 
 whose deeds outvoiced the grandest eloquence, whose 
 campaigns were epic poems, whose marches were 
 stately orations, who were writing momentous his 
 tory in earthwork hieroglyphics, in Cyclopean letter 
 ing that the blind of future ages may read, and 
 graving it into the soil in burial-trenches. But 
 womanly curiosity and patriotic enthusiasm got the 
 better of modesty and timidity, and I finally went, 
 in the month that takes its name from the god of 
 war. 
 
 I went not alone and unattended to encounter 
 the " pomp and circumstance " that Othello speaks 
 of. I had for my guard of honor an older brother, 
 who had stood by me on many trying occasions, 
 
A Taste of Camp Life. 169 
 
 such as having my first teeth pulled and reading 
 my first school essays, and my one little daughter, 
 who was wild with excitement at the prospect of 
 seeing real camp life, the play of war, with the 
 Rebels left out. 
 
 Passes obtained in due form from the War Depart 
 ment, we found ourselves, one cold, bright morning, 
 "frosty but kindly," off for the front. We began to 
 " rough it " a little from the first, the car in which 
 we travelled being a rude affair, with narrow, uncush- 
 ioned seats, very like an English second-class rail 
 way carriage. But it was little we heeded the slight 
 discomfort, almost every mile of our way being 
 through country that had been surged over again 
 and again by the tide of war, past battle-fields 
 that rendered it a via sacra of heroic contest and 
 conquest. 
 
 Over the Long Bridge we went ; past Soldiers 
 Rest, that vast encampment of the dead ; through 
 Alexandria, so indissolubly associated with the mem 
 ory of Ellsworth, the first martyr of the war, so 
 beloved by him who was to be the last ; past forts 
 and intrenchments and vast military depots, and so 
 out into the open desolate country. I could recog 
 nize nothing in the landscape so familiar in years 
 gone by. All was desolation and gloomy waste. 
 At all exposed points along the road were picket 
 
170 Records of Five Years. 
 
 guards or intrenched winter quarters. Blue coats 
 in profusion and big guns in position, standing like 
 black, deep-mouthed Thessalian hounds, kept off all 
 fear of guerillas and Rebel raiders, even when, at 
 Manassas Junction, we were almost in sight of the 
 awful battle-field of Bull Run. O, if the Republic 
 had died after that sore defeat, would not the Eng 
 lish and French surgeons, who would have conducted 
 the post mortem, have found that ugly name stamped 
 into her poor heart ? as Queen Mary said Calais 
 would be found imprinted on hers. Doubtless all 
 national as well as individual chastisements are benef 
 icently intended, really meant for our best good, 
 and not as outpourings of Divine vengeance ; but 
 so signal a mark of the fiery favor of Heaven as 
 that shameful rout is something appalling. It was 
 a blessing in a horrible disguise, that only Time 
 could strip away ; it was a victory, sepulchred as a 
 defeat, let down into a pit of dishonor. But there 
 was repeated a miracle of old : as it touched the 
 bones of our dead glories and liberties, it was quick 
 ened into life. 
 
 Brandy Station, at which we were directed to halt, 
 was, I believe, the first stopping-place north of Cul- 
 peper. There was, of course, no station-house proper ; 
 but a deserted and dismantled Virginia mansion was 
 doing duty in that capacity. While waiting for the 
 
A Taste of Camp Life. 171 
 
 slightly belated ambulance coming to meet us, we 
 warmed at a blazing wood-fire in a dilapidated fire 
 place, and wondered if the household gods had fled 
 with the family, if the Banshee or family ghost had 
 decamped, if any faithful swallows nested in the 
 chimney or under the eaves, if any cricket came 
 out o nights and chirped on the lonely hearth. 
 
 The fancy of little A was caught by a sin 
 gularly handsome young officer, booted and spurred, 
 with a dainty riding-whip in hand, who eyed us rather 
 narrowly ; then doffing a jaunty military cap, he in 
 troduced himself as Captain W , the avant-cou- 
 
 rier of the party in the ambulance. Very soon that 
 majestic military vehicle appeared, lumbering and 
 crashing over the frozen ground, drawn by two stu 
 pendous red roans, each fit to have carried Guy of 
 Warwick into battle. They had need of all their 
 strength. Our driver afterwards informed me that, 
 in the best of times, it needed but a short rain on 
 that Virginia soil "to make the bottom drop out." 
 
 Our good friend, Lieutenant B , came to meet 
 
 us, and, to give us feminine aid and comfort, brought 
 with him a charming young lady visiting at head 
 quarters. So we set out for the camp in fine spirits, 
 Captain W galloping before us, as gay and gal 
 lant a cavalier as ever caracoled over Old Dominion 
 soil in the days of the Fairfaxes and Berkleys. But 
 
172 Records of Five Years. 
 
 there was much that was saddening on the ride, 
 the wide sweep of open, uninhabited country, de 
 nuded, peeled; the desecration, the lonesome bar 
 renness, the unspeakable desolation of war. 
 
 Scarcely a house met the eye, but many a black 
 ened, tottering chimney and crumbling fireplace, 
 around whose hearths generation after generation 
 had gathered. I remember one stately old mansion, 
 however, the quarters of some general officer, that 
 seemed in tolerable preservation ; but up to it led, 
 from two white gate-posts, still standing like the 
 skeleton sentinels of Pompeii, a long avenue of 
 stumps. I had but to close my eyes to see the 
 ghosts of those stately old trees arise, to see a 
 venerable old family coach, with liveried coachman 
 and footman, go swinging and creaking toward the 
 mansion, or a gay cavalcade of pre-Revolutionary 
 knights and ladies galloping forth, bound for the 
 races, encompassed at starting by a black "cloud 
 of witnesses." 
 
 The camp of the First Division, Second Corps, 
 was the most picturesque I saw in Virginia. The 
 conformation of the country was very beautiful, and 
 it was beauty unadorned by agriculture or architec 
 ture. Scarcely a building except of military con 
 struction was to be seen, not a scrap of woodland 
 short of the mountains and the banks of the Rapi- 
 
A Taste of Camp Life. 173 
 
 dan, save a small grove of cedars, a lovely oasis, in 
 which we found the head-quarters of General Cald- 
 well, then commanding the division. 
 
 We were greeted by a burst of noble music from the 
 fine band of the division, in front of the hall, and, 
 what was better, with a cordial, friendly welcome from 
 the General and his lovely young wife, who had 
 brought home, with all its charms and solaces, into 
 war s deadly arena, all saw-dusted and raked for the 
 coming combat, under the imminent cloud of bat 
 tle. 
 
 Ah ! if Andromache could have persuaded Hector 
 to discontinue his lively sallies upon the Greeks, aban 
 don the field, and take up winter quarters in " Ilion s 
 steepy tower," to defend " the important post," she 
 pointed out to him, and if she could have joined him 
 there, and taken little Astyanax with her, and some 
 worsted-work, and a crochet-needle, and some canned 
 peaches, and a backgammon-board, and the last Re 
 views, and Tennyson s Poems, and Les Miserables, she 
 might never have had that sad parting over which so 
 many loving wives have wept and translators agonized. 
 But the gods willed it otherwise ; Homer had need 
 of her, and Flaxman Designs upon her. 
 
 The General conducted myself and little one to a 
 charming tent, obligingly placed at our disposal by one 
 of his aids, who had just gone North on leave. As 
 
Records of Five Years. 
 
 our host left us to our toilet devices, he kindly 
 remarked, " If you chance to want anything, you have 
 only to sing out, Orderly ! There will always be one 
 within call." 
 
 " Why is it necessary to sing his name, mam 
 ma ? " queried little A . " Is that the military 
 
 way ? " 
 
 As I looked around me, it seemed that there would 
 be small need of any such vocal exercises. There 
 seemed to be everything that reasonable heart could 
 wish in those luxurious bachelor quarters. Imprimis, 
 a fragrant, crackling fire, in an open fireplace, sup 
 ported by fire-dogs of the domestic breed, and flanked 
 by tongs and pokers, which, though standing with mil 
 itary erectness, had, like some of our generals, a de 
 lightfully familiar air of civil life. The tent itself was 
 snugly ceiled up with pine more than, half-way ; and 
 it had a tight-fitting door, with a window in it, shaded 
 by a white muslin curtain. It was neatly carpeted 
 with army blankets ; it contained a wash-bowl, set in 
 ingenious framework, and supplied from a perennial 
 spigot and a miniature tank ; an escritoire, deftly fash 
 ioned of virgin pine, sentinelled with tall tapers of the 
 material recommended to Hotspur for " an inward 
 bruise," and covered with elegant stationery and the last 
 novels and magazines. It was furnished with camp- 
 stools of the most comfortable pattern, to my mind 
 
A Taste of Camp Life. 175 
 
 far more luxurious seats than drawing-room chairs and 
 sofas, and garnished by a mirror, the " Mirror of 
 Chivalry." If there had been room for a cheval-glass, 
 I have no doubt it would have been there. Pictures 
 there were, and wreaths of evergreen and dried wild- 
 flowers, yet smelling of Christmas. But how shall I 
 approach the subject of the bed, the immemorial 
 hard couch of the soldier ? I had looked forward to 
 this with some unpatriotic misgivings. The best I had 
 hoped for was a generous pile of evergreen boughs, 
 ameliorated with blankets. But here was (tell it not 
 to Grant ! publish it not in the Tribune !) a veritable 
 feather-led, with feather pillows, with the snowiest of 
 linen, the softest and warmest of covering ! And this 
 was camp life. 
 
 When summoned from our dainty domicile to dinner, 
 I began to see a little of the roughness I had counted 
 on. The General and his staff messed in a log-house 
 
 O 
 
 of the rudest construction. Firelight and candlelight 
 laughed out through many a chink, and illumined the 
 canvas roof in a peculiarly festive way. The fireplace 
 took up the greater part of one side of this primitive 
 " banquet hall," a monster with an insatiable maw, 
 only equalled by an oil-well, devouring vast quantities 
 of fuel and returning very slender dividends of heat. 
 The fare was not exactly of the Spartan type, 
 scarcely such as Pyrrhus, the great Fritz, or Stonewall 
 
176 Records of Five Years. 
 
 Jackson would have approved. It was neither " hard 
 tack " nor salt-pork, nor was the coffee, poured strong 
 and pure by a Celtic Ganymede, called " Curly," with 
 out the amenities of lump-sugar and milk ; for among 
 the Lares and Penates of the General was a cow, who 
 chewed her cud in peace among the cedars. After 
 dinner, apples, nuts, and raisins helped in their little 
 way to make military life tolerable. 
 
 That evening, I must confess, I ascended the plat 
 form somewhat as though it were a scaffold, with an 
 unpleasant premonitory choking. Unlike poor Louis 
 XVI., I should have been greatly obliged if some San- 
 terre had shouted out to the band behind me, "JBeat 
 the drums /" when I essayed to speak. An audience 
 so illustrious I had surely never confronted before. 
 Groups of young officers sparkled around their gen 
 erals like planets about their central orbs ; in front was 
 a starry sprinkling of ladies ; and here and there 
 through the hall were scattered civilians, looking 
 remote, dim, and nebulous. 
 
 Immediately in front of the platform sat the brave 
 young general who has so nobly proved to the world 
 that neither the name nor the spirit of Warren perished 
 at Bunker Hill, a spare, well-knit figure ; a strong 
 head, well carried ; a pale, serious, Roman face. Be- 
 side him shone softly from out a cloud of mourning 
 his beautiful young wife. General Owen, commanding 
 
A Taste of Camp Life. 177 
 
 the Irish brigade, with a frank, genial face, radiating 
 heartiness and humor a soldierly presence withal, and 
 with good fighting blood in his veins, the blood of 
 John Paul Jones. Caldwell, the quiet, courteous 
 gentleman, bred to letters, not to arms, but gracing 
 the latter profession even more than it has honored 
 him. Kilpatrick, then just back from his bold raid 
 against Richmond, with his slender, alert, springy fig 
 ure, his blonde hair and whiskers, his pale, sharply cut 
 features, his keen, cold gray eye, his firm, determined, 
 remorseless mouth, with its thin lips and gleaming 
 white teeth, that one could imagine, in moments of 
 fierce excitement, clashing together like the steel teeth 
 of a wolf-trap, a face of intense, concentrated force. 
 These, with their attendant colonels, majors, captains, 
 and lieutenants, what a brave display of " stars and 
 bars," and glorious manhood, they made ! 
 
 Surely there is not only a singular becomingness, 
 but a charm quite beyond sparkle and jingle, in mili 
 tary decorations. I, for one, am free to confess that I 
 have not " a soul above buttons." Said a distinguished 
 English authoress to me, one day, with characteristic 
 frankness, " Theoretically, I am a democrat ; practical 
 ly, I am a snob. I like an agreeable gentleman all the 
 better if he is a lord." / like a true gentleman all the 
 better if he is a soldier. It is an added grace, poetic 
 and heroic, that associates him with no, not the 
 8* L 
 
178 Records of Five Years. 
 
 eternal Sidney and Bayard, but with Wallace and 
 Montrose and Hampden. 
 
 There was small need of the unheroic fright that 
 shook my voice into a pathetic tremble, clutched at my 
 throat, and ran in shivers to the very tips of my fin 
 gers ; for never reader had a more gracious, indulgent 
 hearing ; not one of those humbug " appreciative audi 
 ences " lecture-managers talk about when you have had 
 a small, dispirited house, and know the whole thing is 
 a failure ; but one kindly demonstrative and inspiring. 
 They received the patriotic passages with loyal ap 
 plause ; they "laughed at little jests" with the most 
 benignant good-humor ; and they only did not weep 
 over the pathetic pictures, because, as soldiers, they 
 could n t consistently do so much for me. 
 
 The lecture was followed by a " hop," a compen 
 sating finale to the evening. The hall, cleared of its 
 benches, made a very cheerful ball-room. It was well 
 lighted, and warmed by means of two immense rapa 
 cious fireplaces, constructed on the principle of wasting 
 by fire the little of poor old Virginia spared by the 
 sword. 
 
 There I saw Glory and Valor disporting themselves ; 
 Achilles without his invulnerable Vulcanized armor; 
 Mars without his dazzling cuirass and his Argive 
 shield. 
 
 I, for one, did not respect our heroes any the less 
 
A Taste of Camp Life. 179 
 
 for finding that they knew so well how to wheel in the 
 waltz, change base in the quadrille, deploy in the 
 lancers, charge in the polka, and execute flank move 
 ments in the Virginia reel. 
 
 Little A , with a child s intuitive wisdom, 
 
 thought this decidedly better than all mamma s reading. 
 Her little organ of veneration was active on shoulder- 
 straps and sashes. The jingle of sword-belts and the 
 click of spurs were sweet to her ears, her soul exulted 
 in the swell and throb of martial music, and her whole 
 frame quivered with the joy of the dance. But she 
 bowed with the same shy smile when the lieutenant 
 asked her to be his small partner, as when the gen 
 eral bent to take her hand, casting upon her all the 
 effulgence of his stars. 
 
 Single-barred, double-barred, leaved, eagled, starred, 
 double-starred shoulder-straps were all the same to 
 her ; buttons singly posted, buttons in groups, alike 
 warmed her heart, if they bore the sacred eagle and 
 glittered on the breasts of brave men. She was too 
 young to have known much of those quiet times on 
 the Potomac. She had always thought of our soldiers 
 as up to their ears in fight, and was innocently glad to 
 find that there were breathing-spells in the great con 
 test. " How nice it is," she said, " that soldiers can 
 stop and rest between the battles in bad weather, 
 and have a good time like other folks." Ah, little one, 
 Grant did n t think so ! 
 
180 Records of Five Years. 
 
 A marked man among the dancers that night, for 
 manly beauty, for symmetry of form and grace of 
 movement, and for boyish abandon to enjoyment, was 
 
 Captain W , the young officer who had first met 
 
 us at the station. The toss of his dark, profuse hair, 
 those light tendril-like curls, such as the old 
 painters gave to the youthful Bacchus, the flash of 
 his smile, the intense, full life, the dashing, debonair 
 expression of his whole face and figure, as he whirled 
 round the ball-room, vividly recalled to my mind that 
 charming picture of " The Merry Chasseur," by 
 Sidney Dobell : 
 
 " O, a gallant sans peur 
 Is the merry Chasseur. 
 
 O, to see him blithe and gay, 
 From some hot and bloody day, 
 Come to dance the night away, till the bugle blows ait rang. 
 
 With a wheel and a whirl, 
 
 And a wheeling, waltzing girl, 
 And his bold place au dames ! and his oath feu et sang! 
 
 And his hop and his fling, 
 
 Till his gold and silver ring 
 
 To the clatter and the clash of his sword, cling-clang ! " 
 
 
 
 It was true to the last stanza also ; for the time 
 came when our merry Chasseur was 
 
 "In 
 
 Among the din, 
 Steel to steel, cling-clang ! " 
 
A Taste of Camp Life. 181 
 
 And when, alas ! he was down among the wounded, 
 the mortally wounded. He died in the hospital, soon 
 after the battle of the Wilderness. The news of his 
 death, along with that of hundreds as brave, as young, 
 as dearly beloved, yet struck a strange chill to my 
 heart. But I was almost reconciled when I was told 
 that, had he survived, it must have been as a cripple, 
 terribly maimed. Ah ! how could he, who so rejoiced 
 in his strength, who " felt his life in every limb," 
 such a rider, and dancer, and fencer, how could he 
 have endured existence so robbed of physical freedom 
 and joy ! " After the amputation he failed to rally," 
 they said. The daring, ardent young spirit was de 
 feated and driven back. Passions, hopes, ambitions, 
 energies, lost step, straggled, and fell away from the 
 weary march. Life struck her colors in his cheeks ; 
 her signal-lights went out in his eyes ; the careless, 
 courageous heart saddened, fainted, and grew still. 
 
 Never did sweeter sleep visit my tired eyelids than 
 on that first night in camp. . Lulled by the soft sighing 
 of the cedars over my tent, I soon ceased to be con 
 scious of the ringing tramp of the sentinel before head 
 quarters, or to be startled by distant challenges and 
 replies, or to listen for the bugle-calls and drum-beats 
 of night-alarms. The clear, cold March air sifted 
 through the canvas, pure, but not chill. There were 
 no draughts : it was perfect ventilation. 
 
1 82 Records of Five Years. 
 
 With my little damsel on my arm, my dreams were 
 only of peace and rural quiet, not a vision of the sul 
 len old lion of Rebellion lying couchant on the other 
 side of the Rapidan came to disturb me. I awoke with 
 a sense of marvellous refreshment, of exuberant vi 
 tality, in the white still light of the early morning, to 
 respond to the rap of the attentive orderly, coming to 
 build our fire. 
 
 The band was playing "St. Patrick s Day in the 
 Morning," for it was the festa of that saint whose 
 memory is as green as the shamrock of his native isle. 
 The Irish brigade, true to the traditions of mother- 
 church and mother-country, were to celebrate the day 
 long life to it ! with races and good old Irish 
 games ; and at breakfast arrangements were made for 
 all General Caldwell s happy family, military and civil, 
 to attend. The day could not have been finer, sunny 
 and spring-like it was, but fresh and clear. The scene 
 of the festivities was to be a plain, some three or four 
 miles distant, the old county race-course, I believe. 
 The family ambulance was brought into requisition, 
 but most of our party rode, forming rather a motley, 
 but a very merry cavalcade. My improvised riding- 
 habit, a triumph of combined feminine ingenuity, 
 proved upon trial to be, like " the Union as it was," 
 too much inclined to disintegration ; and my saddle, 
 an ancient F. F. V. relic, seemed to have been invent- 
 
A Taste of Camp Life. 183 
 
 ed by some perfidious woman-hater, for the malicious 
 purpose of reducing female equestrianism from a fine 
 art to a torture. It was quite impossible for one to 
 keep in the place appointed for one to sit in ; any 
 where but there ! One would have been more com 
 fortable between the horns of the famous dun cow of 
 Dunsmore Heath, provided she had stepped as lightly 
 and been as bridle-wise as the beautiful bay I rode. 
 
 The ride was one of intense, peculiar interest. It 
 was through a despoiled Arcadia, all boundaries 
 swept away, all cultivation blotted out. History had 
 taken it for her field of instruction, a vast Champs 
 de Mars. 
 
 The country reminded me constantly of the Cam- 
 pagna in winter. There were the same undulating 
 wastes, the same rich brown tints. Seen at a dis 
 tance, the blackened walls and tottering chimneys 
 looked almost as picturesque as the ruins of old 
 Roman tombs and villas. In sight were mountains as 
 lovely as the Alban Hills, and over all bent a sky 
 every whit as blue and tender as that of Italy. But 
 O, the difference, after all ! Here and there on the 
 Campagna you come upon a little cultivated plot, or 
 a humble farm-house, or a herdsman s hut, with a 
 contadina spinning in the low doorway, and merry, 
 dark-eyed children playing in the sunshine ; or you 
 encounter the herdsman himself, tending his little 
 
184 Records of Five Years. 
 
 flock, dressed in skins and piping like a faun. But 
 no such sights met us here. 
 
 This country seemed absolutely emptied of rural 
 life. We heard not even the chirp of a snow-bird on 
 our way. Alas ! there was scarce a spray large enough 
 for one to rest his tired little feet upon. Yet birds we 
 saw, if such winged horrors and aerial ghouls can 
 be called birds, monstrous turkey-buzzards, as sol 
 emnly busy as undertakers, and crows, like the dismal 
 mutes of English funerals, striding over and hovering 
 about the carcasses of army horses and mules whose 
 stout hearts had broken in the harness. O that un- 
 soundable Virginia mud! what death-agonies has it 
 caused, what profanity has it provoked, what treas 
 ure and major-generals has it engulfed ! It clogged 
 the chariot-wheels of Victory, and some say even 
 Peace dabbled her white wings and stained her golden 
 sandals in it. 
 
 Now and then we came upon a group of soldiers 
 graves, rudely fenced in, spots as lonely as those 
 little desert islands on the coast of Africa, at which 
 vessels sometimes touch to bury their dead. 
 
 In the wastes of God there is ever something grand 
 and inspiring, filling one with a sense of infinite afflu 
 ence and power : in the mighty stretch of oceans, lap 
 ping on the two sides of the world, in the wide sweep 
 of prairies, over which the splendid summer wades 
 
A Taste of Camp Life. 185 
 
 deep in flowers, in the lush expanse of tropical for 
 ests, all murmurous and tremulous with life, in the 
 white Alpine solitudes, where avalanches are cradled 
 and glaciers chronicle the ages, even in the shift 
 ing sands of the desert, which, like yellow, crystalline 
 seas, have overswept provinces and engulfed cities; 
 but in the wastes made by man there is something op 
 pressive, stifling. It is the banishment of humanity, 
 it is the murder of nature. Fruitful orchards have 
 gone to feed the fires of bivouacs, harvests have 
 been trodden into the earth by the tramp of armies, 
 hearthstones have become like gravestones, the way 
 side spring is choked with bitter weeds, every soli 
 tary garden flower seems like a pale messenger of evil 
 tidings to say, " I only am left to tell the tale." The 
 very heavens seem dumb and strange above such a 
 waste, the stars look blank and cold, and down the 
 wind comes a wild shudder of sound, the voice of 
 the desolation, a mighty death-sigh, that seems to 
 murmur, of all the life that has been, " It is finished." 
 But such sad reflections were forgotten when we 
 reached the race-course, and, dismounting, took our 
 places on the large stand where all the ladies and 
 many of the officers were congregated. What a won 
 derful scene met my eyes as I looked around me ! 
 The plain seemed to have been intended by benefi 
 cent Nature for a grand playground. It was an im- 
 
1 86 Records of Five Years. 
 
 mense amphitheatre, overlooked by hills, gentle ele 
 vations, rising above the vast arena like the galleries 
 of the Colosseum. Within this arena were thousands 
 of soldiers and hundreds of mounted officers, all in 
 holiday trim, and gay as the morning. 
 
 The Irish brigade, as the heroes of the day, were 
 duly " happy and glorious," bubbling over with old 
 Irish jollity, proving that they were equal to any 
 occasion, whether of fighting or frolic. They were 
 mostly posted about the stand, the starting-point for 
 the races, the place of awful decision, where tow 
 ered the greased, or rather soaped pole, from whose 
 summit fluttered a ten-dollar greenback, and where 
 was to be let loose the greased pig, to run his short 
 public career. 
 
 Those merry groups, with their thorough Milesian 
 abandon to fun and frolic, careless of to-morrow, 
 skimming the cream of the hour as it rose, with their 
 jokes, their jaunty airs, their bulls, their brogue, would 
 have reminded one of the merry-makers of old Donny- 
 brook, had they not worn, instead of the garb of the 
 " finest pizantry of the world," the uniform of Ameri 
 can soldiers. " The boys of ould Ireland " were our 
 boys now, by honorable adoption, bound to us by 
 the solemn oath of loyalty, rechristened in tempests, 
 made brothers of our heroes in suffering, and coheirs 
 in glory. 
 
A Taste of Camp Life. 187 
 
 The commander of the Irish brigade, General 
 Owen, presided, as sole manager and umpire. He 
 made an admirable judge. Woman s-rights woman 
 though I am, I doubt whether her honor, Deborah of 
 Israel or Judge Advocatess Portia of Belmont could 
 have done better. 
 
 The climbing of the soaped pole and the capture of 
 the pig presented some delicate points for judicial 
 decision. 
 
 The first aspirant for the greenback was a comical, 
 clumsy-looking young Celt, with a huge shock of yel 
 low curling hair, which had somehow eluded military 
 regulations, and a moony face, which a certain expres 
 sion of cunning and obstinacy only saved from utter 
 blankness and stupidity. A shout of good-humored 
 derision went up about the pole as he entered the lists. 
 But he put his whole soul into the work. No Raleigh 
 was he, who " fain would climb, but that he feared to 
 fall." He made, with astonishing contortions, good 
 headway at first ; but presently his high-strung ener 
 gies flagged, the look of rigid determination melted 
 out of his face, his tense hold relaxed, and with a 
 pathetic glance of renunciation at the greenback, 
 "the far-off, unattainable, and dim," he slid to the 
 earth. 
 
 He was " relieved " by a tall countryman, who made 
 a little better demonstration, accomplishing perhaps a 
 
1 88 Records of Five Years. 
 
 third of the distance, then halted, reconnoitred, and 
 fell back to the old base, a wiser and a soapier man. 
 Then came a third, nothing daunted by the failure of 
 those who had gone before, but destined, like them, to 
 succumb to fate, soap, and gravitation. At last there 
 stepped forward a spare, springy figure, with a cool, 
 quiet, self-assured face, the elect man, the Grant 
 of climbers. We recognized the true stuff at once, and 
 did him instinctive homage. 
 
 Laughter ceased and derisive shouts. We were si 
 lent. Our hearts bounded with every upward leap. He 
 ascended like wing-footed Mercury, easily, gracefully ; 
 gravitation seemed "no let" to him. But after he 
 had reached a height unattained by his comrades, he 
 paused, and, clinging with his feet, took a bandanna 
 from his pocket, and deliberately wiped the soap from 
 the pole above him. This he continued to do till he 
 reached the summit, and caught the fluttering green 
 back in his teeth. But when he slid to the earth 
 in triumph, there were those who would have robbed 
 him of his reward, " in spite of his teeth." They de 
 clared that the use of the handkerchief was an unfair 
 "dodge," and appealed to the judge. He decided, 
 that, as there had been no stipulation against the use 
 of bandannas, the prize had been fairly won. 
 
 The chase and capture of the greased pig was a 
 performance more exciting than picturesque. The 
 
A Taste of Camp Life. 189 
 
 Irish soldiers went into it with a peculiar national 
 zest. In the wild melee the illusive little animal was 
 quite lost sight of; we only followed his course by 
 the shrill squeals piercing through the uproar of laugh 
 ter and shouts. At last a frantic Celt rushed up to 
 the stand with the poor pig in a state of syncope in 
 his arms. Again envious unsuccess protested. The 
 pig had been caught by the leg, not by the tail, as 
 the rules of sport prescribed. 
 
 " How is this ? " asked the gallant Owen, with an 
 awful judicial frown. " I said by the tail, man ! the 
 ancient laws of the game must be respected." 
 
 " Ah, then," said the captor, still affectionately hug 
 ging his prize, "may it plase you, General, the pig 
 has no tail to speak of. See, now, how is a man to 
 howld on to a thing like this?" exhibiting a very slen 
 der and stunted tail, doubly coated with grease, with 
 out twist or twirl, or other "coin of vantage." 
 
 In view of such caudal insufficiency, the stern judge 
 relented, Patrick bore off the pig, and the chase for it 
 was soon forgotten in " the sack race." 
 
 This was ludicrous beyond all imagining. A dozen 
 or twenty soldiers, with sacks tied about their waists, 
 their feet enclosed, their hands pinioned behind, 
 started together for the goal, the first ditch on the 
 course. Several were down before making a rod, 
 tumbling like bags of corn, and rolling over and over 
 
IQO Records of Five Years. 
 
 on the ground. A few hopped a little way farther, 
 but only two made the entire course, and returned to 
 claim their reward. 
 
 Only officers rode in the races. Among these were 
 some admirable riders, superbly mounted, all gal 
 lant, dashing, sport-loving young soldiers, whose camp 
 life hung so heavy on their hands they " needs must 
 play such pranks as these." 
 
 The sport seemed to me sufficiently spiced with 
 danger. The half-mile course was broken by four 
 wide ditches and as many hurdles. They took them 
 all gallantly, and nobody was killed or even seriously 
 hurt. I concluded that the track, after all, was safer 
 than a Harlem, a New York and Erie, or even a Cam- 
 den and Amboy Railroad. 
 
 What intense, boyish enjoyment they had in the 
 emulation, the peril, the swift course, the mad leaps ! 
 What glorious excitement it was ! How forgetful they 
 seemed of the wary, desperate foe, watching them from 
 his signal-towers ; how careless they seemed of the 
 impending last struggle, doubtful, not indeed for 
 the nation, but for each individual life in the great, 
 brave army, most doubtful. I shuddered as I thought 
 of all this, and the sudden tears blinded me. They 
 seemed like children, sporting on the sands of a lonely 
 shore, unmindful of the rising of the tide and the com 
 ing on of the wild night; or like Hamlet s players, 
 
A Taste of Camp Life. 191 
 
 diverting an idle crowd, while the awful tragedy 
 waited and lowered in the background, and made the 
 very air heavy with unspoken horrors. 
 
 This splendid divertisement was succeeded by a lu 
 dicrous burlesque, a mule-race over the same course. 
 None of our brave riders thought to look to their laurels, 
 for it was deemed utterly impossible for mule-flesh to 
 take the leaps. But it was done. A countryman, suspi 
 ciously secesh in air and garb, claimed and received 
 the prize. His mule had actually cleared every ditch 
 and hurdle ! The winning horses at the stand looked 
 askance at their poor relation, with the asinine bar 
 sinister, but he held up his ears among the best of 
 them. 
 
 After a gallop back to camp in the freshening 
 evening air, we were quite in condition for the grand 
 dinner at the hall, also in memory of the excellent 
 saint whom Erin delighteth to honor. 
 
 It was a brilliant entertainment. There was set be 
 fore us, with lavish Irish hospitality, every luxury and 
 dainty obtainable at that grand army base of supplies, 
 Washington. There was champagne and sherry and 
 the immemorial bowl of punch ; there were ices and 
 fruits and candies and delicate cakes. And this was 
 camp life. Ah, these " dogs of war " are luxurious 
 dogs after all ! 
 
 There were, of course, sentiments and patriotic 
 
192 Records of Five Years. 
 
 speeches and songs, very pertinent sentiments, very 
 good speeches, very funny songs. Saint Patrick was 
 complimented at the expense of Saint George and the 
 Dragon ; rhetorical powder was flashed under the nose 
 of the British lion ; the neck of the Gallic cock was 
 wrung by implication ; the green flag and the starry 
 banner were exalted together ; the eagle soared aloft 
 with a sprig of shamrock in his talons ; brogue fra 
 ternized with twang, the Blarney Stone "dipped" to 
 Plymouth Rock, and all went as merry and peaceful 
 as an evening s games among the "children of one 
 family." 
 
 And so ended our second day in camp. 
 
 After that brilliant entertainment, at which Young 
 America engaged, Hercules-like, in strangling the 
 great Southern Crotalus durissus, and in "mash 
 ing " the head of the Trigonocephalus Contortrix of the 
 North (I like these high-sounding Latin names : 
 they give dignity to creatures that sorely need it), 
 paused to tip his chapeau across the centuries, to the 
 holy serpent-exterminator of Ireland, at which Erin 
 and Columbia were cheek and jowl over the punch 
 bowl, E. singing " Hail Columbia," and C. return 
 ing the compliment with " Erin-go-bragh," we sub 
 sided into the hum-drum ways of ordinary camp life, 
 messed, rode, watched artillery practice, the young 
 
A Taste of Camp Life. 193 
 
 officers fencing, the soldiers at drill, read a little, wrote 
 a little, and played whist a great deal. 
 
 The morning after the festa we visited one of the 
 hospitals, and talked with the poor boys who had lain 
 on their backs through all that sunny holiday, slowly 
 sipping their gruel while we were feasting. There I 
 found, as at every other military hospital I had visited, 
 a cheerful, sturdy courage, a quiet, unconscious hero 
 ism, as pathetic as inspiring. I almost felt that I 
 stood on holy ground : indeed, that rough, low build 
 ing housed in a moral grandeur not always felt in the 
 dim arches and incense-laden air of great cathedrals. 
 
 Strolling about the canvas-town, we were drawn into 
 an ambrotype establishment, where, Peter Schlemil- 
 like, we parted with our shadows. All around us 
 hung the " counterfeit presentments " of our heroes ; 
 some in modest undress, some in full military toggery, 
 with stars and bars bedight. To Rebel eyes, methought, 
 this little tent were peopled with more awful shades 
 than the marquee of Richard at Bosworth. 
 
 After this I should not have been surprised had I 
 been ushered into a sculptor s studio, or a museum of 
 art, or a furniture warehouse. Nothing would have 
 struck me aback short of a young ladies seminary, 
 or a hoop-skirt manufactory. 
 
 My second reading was scarcely so severe a trial to 
 me as the first. The faces of my audience had grown 
 9 M 
 
194 Records of Five Years. 
 
 familiar. I breathed freely the air of the camp. I 
 was less oppressed by a sense of the nothingness of 
 speech, especially such hesitating speech as mine, in 
 the presence of men who had listened to the grand 
 declamation of columbiads, and the majestic dia 
 logues of opposing batteries. 
 
 After the reading, came again music and dancing, 
 stately marches and delightful measures. I never 
 enjoyed watching dancers so well as in that rude hall. 
 They seemed to give themselves up so unhesitatingly 
 to the pleasure of the hour, body and soul. It was 
 unconditional surrender, and it did them no harm I am 
 sure. I doubt not the gay young soldiers who figured 
 in that memorable ball in " Belgium s capital " fought 
 all the better for it the next day at Waterloo. I doubt 
 not they were always vis-h-vis with their brave ene 
 mies, never dos-a-dos. 
 
 On Saturday morning we drove out a mile or two, 
 to witness the execution of a sentence found by the 
 court-martial of the division. A soldier was to be 
 drummed out of his regiment for the crime of theft. 
 
 The culprit was a tall, powerful man, young and 
 rather handsome, but with a -head that would have 
 been the despair of philanthropy. It was of villanous 
 conformation, as one with half a phrenological eye 
 could see : one hemisphere being closely shaved, bold, 
 bad bumps and dreary depressions were all in full 
 view. 
 
A Taste of Camp Life. 195 
 
 On his back was strapped a board, bearing the word 
 "Thief" in horrible black lettering. Ah, surely never 
 had the soldier s knapsack weighed so heavily as that 
 square of pine board ! A slab of marble for his own 
 grave would have sat more lightly on his shoulders. 
 Yet he walked very coolly and sturdily, though he was 
 deadly pale, stepping to the " Rogue s March " just in 
 front of a file of his old comrades, with fixed bayonets, 
 up one long line and down another. Aside from the 
 music that preceded him, all on the field was utter, 
 solemn silence. As far as I observed, his grotesque 
 appearance produced no laughter. It was sadder than 
 a funeral. 
 
 It did seem rather hard, for this was only part of 
 the punishment ; it was to be followed by two years in 
 the Penitentiary. Think of Edward Ketchum being 
 placarded with his character in full, and drummed 
 down Wall Street, preparatory to his departure for 
 Sing-Sing ! Many an army contractor, if punished 
 proportionately to that poor soldier, should wear a 
 necklace of such placards, and be drummed around 
 the continent 
 
 That afternoon we dined with the officers of the 
 Twenty-Sixth Michigan. That was a dinner-party to 
 teach one how little essential to real enjoyment are the 
 elegancies and ceremonies of polite life. It was a 
 picnic, in-doors, and out of season. 
 
196 Records of Five Years. 
 
 The quarters of Major S , our pleasant host, 
 
 were in a very comfortable log-house, in the principal 
 apartment of which we dined. At one end roared a 
 generous fire, in a fireplace, like all of military con 
 struction, of devouring depth. In severe weather, one, 
 to keep warm, would need to revolve before it, like a 
 fowl on a spit. How simple and unostentatious, and 
 yet how well ordered, was everything in that military 
 menage. How utterly at ease we felt. How freely 
 everybody laughed at little anomalies and short-com 
 ings. We had wine, but only the ladies were furnished 
 with wine-glasses ; the gentlemen sipped from tumblers 
 and teacups, and made the best of their privation. 
 Little A s fork decidedly belonged to the " Inva 
 lid Corps," and my knife bore traces of many a hard 
 combat with tough army beef and inflexible bacon. 
 
 We were very merry ; though, as the great coming 
 campaign was discussed, shadows of what might be 
 would creep up and fall upon our hearts for a moment. 
 
 One incident of that party I shall always remember. 
 Over our dessert every one was required to sing a 
 song or tell a story ; and the duty was met with more 
 readiness and spirit than are usual on such occasions. 
 
 At length it was the turn of Lieutenant B . " I am 
 
 not much of a singer or story-teller," he said. "I 
 cannot now think of a song or a good anecdote. I 
 can only remember a Methodist hymn or two I learned 
 at home." 
 
A Taste of Camp Life. 197 
 
 I believe we were all very willing to hear a hymn, 
 and he sung, with a truly loyal and devout expression, 
 a tribute to the bravest as well as the meekest of 
 men, the great Captain of our salvation. 
 
 This may seem, as told, something incongruous, but 
 it did not so appear to us at the time ; and we honored 
 our friend for the simple, manly way in which he re 
 minded us of the fealty we all owed to our Divine 
 Commander. It takes more than a soldier s courage 
 to do a thing like that. 
 
 Opposite me that day sat the young commander of 
 
 one of our Philadelphia regiments, Colonel McK , 
 
 a gentleman of noble feeling, of refined taste, and 
 scholarly culture. 
 
 A few months later I chanced one day to be passing 
 a house not far from my own home, while a military 
 funeral procession was forming before it. I saw the 
 coffin, draped with the national flag, borne from the 
 doorway. I knew that another patriot martyr had fal 
 len, that this was his " body broken for us," and the 
 old cry rose from my heart, " How long, O Lord, how 
 long ! " But I did not know till later that he who 
 slept so well, like a true soldier, under the stars, was 
 my pleasant acquaintance of that camp dinner-party, 
 he whose fine face lighted up at every true thought 
 or quaint saying, gay fancy or happy jest. 
 
 That evening I repeated before the enlisted men my 
 first lecture, read to officers and civilians. 
 
198 Records of Five Years. 
 
 The hall was filled with our glorious rank and file, 
 " unnamed demigods," as Kossuth called the common 
 soldiers of Hungary. 
 
 My kind friends, the young officers of the associa 
 tion, acted as ushers, in no case taking a seat from a 
 private soldier. 
 
 Never did I have a more courteous and attentive 
 audience. There was in the lecture a strong radical 
 element ; there were ideas that must have seemed to 
 many of them novel and startling, points on which 
 they must have disagreed with me ; but not one word 
 or movement of displeasure or dissent did they give. 
 They heard me out calmly and most good-humoredly. 
 They evidently went in for " fair play for woman." 
 
 It was a strange experiment, which, I venture to 
 say, could be successfully tried with the private sol 
 diers of no other army in the world. Fancy Welling 
 ton s beef-eaters or Enniskilleners listening for an hour 
 and a quarter to Maria Edgeworth or Hannah More. 
 
 At one time during that evening, a spell of dark 
 prophecy seemed to fall upon my spirit, almost com 
 pelling me to utter wild words not set down on the 
 page before me. Yet I read on, mechanically, though 
 for the moment, instead of that quiet assemblage of 
 " blue-coat boys," dreaming themselves away home, on 
 a woman s voice, I saw a lurid battle-scene, charge and 
 repulse, smoke and blood and tumult ; hosts of brave 
 
A Taste of Camp Life. 199 
 
 men rolled in red heaps of carnage, dripping stretch 
 ers, ambulances more ghastly than the tumbrils of 
 the guillotine, long burial- trenches, transports freighted 
 with agony, the white, dim vistas of hospitals, graves 
 on graves, and where were my soldiers ? 
 
 Then into their places seemed to steal pale women 
 in mourning, so many, so many ! and with them 
 came little children, that clung to them, sobbing pite- 
 ously. 
 
 And when these visions passed, oh ! the horror of 
 the realization, that for the men before me, sturdy 
 and brave and true, for these lives about which so 
 many tender ties entwined, for these earnest, devoted 
 hearts, strong to love and to serve, all fearful engines 
 and agents of destruction have been prepared, the 
 masked battery, the treacherous torpedo, the slow- 
 match of the secret mine, thirsty sword-blades, cannon 
 crammed with death, the condensed hell of the bomb 
 shell, hedges of bayonets, and ditches ablaze with 
 rifles. 
 
 Were, then, these forms so grandly and cunningly 
 fashioned, nursed and guarded by Nature, ministered to 
 by the seasons, ripened and welded and hardened by 
 the elements, to be stricken and trampled, and blasted 
 out of all likeness to their kind ? to be felled like 
 forest trees ? to be piled, all rent and dismembered, a 
 ghastly human abatis, before impregnable intrench- 
 
2OO Records of Five Years. 
 
 ments ? to be laid in long swaths across the horrible 
 harvest-field of death ? 
 
 At the close of the reading, after the customary 
 salvo of applause had rolled around the hall, an officer 
 who had heard me say I should like to hear "the 
 tiger," in his regular, old Peninsular roar, made known 
 the little feminine fancy to the men. Springing to 
 their feet, and getting " a good ready," with three cu 
 mulative cheers, they gave it, with seven-hundred-sol 
 dier power. I looked to see the windows shattered, 
 and the rafters lifted from their places. It was some 
 thing fearful, yet inspiring. It was an onslaught, a 
 battle, and a victory in itself. So united were those 
 voices that they seemed as one voice, fierce, exult 
 ing, terrible, the cry of the avenging genius of a 
 nation. 
 
 One of the most interesting of camp sights to us 
 was the morning inspection of the picket-guard. 
 
 They were halted for a while before head-quarters, 
 all equipped for their hard and perilous duty, a 
 cheery, determined-looking set of fellows. They car 
 ried several days rations ; some, I noticed, had loaves 
 of bread stuck on their bayonets. A good way that 
 would have been of carrying the assault of Port Hud 
 son. By the way, what a chance we had there for 
 a philanthropic bombardment, a Quaker siege, which 
 
A Taste of Camp Life. 201 
 
 might, after all, have proved a paying investment. 
 Suppose, instead of expending on that sickly and half- 
 starved garrison so many rifle-barrels of hot lead, we 
 had sent them a few barrels of anti-scorbutics ? For 
 " grape " we might have given them boxes of " hard 
 tack" and strings of onions, and poured into them 
 " shrapnel " of corn and beans. Sausage-links would 
 have made excellent "chain-shot." Tea and coffee 
 would have gone well in "canister," and oysters in 
 the " shell " ; and so we would have poured Gospel 
 " Greek fire " on their heads. 
 
 But to return to our brave pickets. After the in 
 spection, they marched off to their lonely posts, into 
 peril, solitude, storm, and cold, sturdily, cheerily, 
 
 " Over the hills and far away," 
 
 the morning sunlight glinting on their burnished steel, 
 as they parted to the right and to the left, and swept 
 forth in long, wavering lines, the great, strong 
 arms of the Republic, stretched out for our protection 
 and defence. My heart followed them with gratitude 
 unspeakable, and I said to the child at my side, 
 " There go our best friends ; you must pray for them 
 to-night." 
 
 On Sunday we drove to Pony Mountain, and as 
 cended to the signal-station, from which windy perch 
 we spied out the land of the Confederate Canaanites, 
 9* 
 
2O2 Records of Five Years. 
 
 and the tents of their men of war beyond the Rapi- 
 dan. From that point we could overlook a wide 
 sweep of dreary, desolated country, and could only 
 cry, " From Dan to Beersheba, all, all is barren ! " 
 The most picturesque and cheering point in the land 
 scape was Culpeper. Its spires reminded one of a 
 past civilization. 
 
 One of our party that day was Colonel C , of 
 
 New York, formerly of that splendid vanguard of 
 freedom, the Seventh Regiment, a most courteous 
 gentleman, an interesting companion, but with a face 
 shadowed by a peculiar, haunting sadness. This pen 
 sive expression hung about his mouth, even when he 
 smiled at the prattle of the child he led up the rocky 
 path of the mountain, and brooded in his heavy- 
 lidded eyes. Speaking of it to a brother officer of 
 his, a day or two later, he said : " Yes, I think he is 
 rather depressed. He has had for some time a pre 
 sentiment like that with which Colonel Baker went 
 into the Ball s Bluff fight ; he says he shall be killed 
 in the first battle of the next campaign. He is ut 
 terly certain of it ; but of course he is none the less 
 determined to do his duty." 
 
 When the news of the first fighting under Grant 
 came, and the tamed lightning gave us, in flash after 
 flash, vivid and terrible, the names of the killed, I 
 instinctively looked for that of this brave young 
 
A Taste of Camp Life. 203 
 
 officer, and I found it heading the melancholy glorious 
 list. So that pleasant day every day after he 
 was riding down to " the valley of death," not in a 
 magnificent charge, like one of the historic five hun 
 dred of Balaclava, but just as consciously, just as 
 heroically. 
 
 The next day there was an alarm in camp, a 
 sort of smothered alarm, however. We civilians felt 
 that something mysterious and momentous was astir, 
 but just what it was we were not at first informed. 
 Mounted orderlies dashed hither and thither ; an 
 eager light kindled in the eyes of young staff officers ; 
 generals looked thoughtful and smoked defiantly. 
 Wary, ready, they yet made no startling preparations 
 for combat, as prudent housekeepers hesitate to call on 
 the fire department for what may be but a kitchen- 
 chimney conflagration. A party of our wayward 
 brothers had really crossed the Rapidan, at one of the 
 fords nearest us, but probably had intended only a 
 " scare," for they recrossed without further demonstra 
 tion. I cannot say that I was on the whole sorry 
 that, in this instance, they manoeuvred according 
 to the tactics of that indefinite king of France, who 
 " marched up the hill, and then marched down again." 
 
 They had created a sensation in our quiet camp 
 like that excited in a proper New England village 
 when a piece of scandalous news is fired into it like a 
 ten-pound shot, ricochetting from house to house. 
 
2O4 Records of Five Years. 
 
 Another pleasant drive across the campagna, to 
 visit General Kilpatrick, who was quartered in a 
 house of the Ashby family, at Rose Hill. This place 
 must once have been rather pretty. The house, a 
 very simple domicile of itself, stands high, and there is 
 the map of a garden, with some fossil remains of 
 ancient arbors and summer-houses, but 
 
 " Where, O where, are the lilies and roses 
 
 Bathed in the dawn s early smile ? 
 Dead, as the bulrushes round little Moses, 
 On the old banks of the Nile." 
 
 Since the military occupation of the premises, I 
 heard the Ashbys had been sent to the rear, were 
 then residing in the back part of the house, living on 
 what their Vandal tenants allowed them. This was 
 keeping a boarding-house under aggravating and com 
 pulsory circumstances. 
 
 In the little parlor we found a piano of primitive 
 make, spared, I have no doubt, by the spoiler, in pity 
 for its feeble old age. Like the Confederate treasury, 
 its notes were nearly played out. There were two or 
 three venerable chairs, that had borne their part, with 
 the "peculiar institution," in supporting the chivalry 
 in days agone ; there was a sofa also ; but that, since 
 it had been made the seat of war, had been actually 
 skinned, or rather the epidermic horse-hair had been 
 
A Taste of Camp Life. 205 
 
 removed, leaving visible the white muslin cutis. A 
 ghostly thing it was, fit only to be sat on by the coro 
 ner. The windows were hung, with a dismal attempt 
 at festive effects, with curtains of pink and blue chintz. 
 The carpet had gone to blanket Rebellion beyond the 
 Rapidan. 
 
 But the hearty hospitality of General Kilpatrick 
 soon made us forget the lack of upholstery. The visit 
 was full of interest, as much of the time we were 
 listening to an account, from the fiery General s own 
 lips, of his raid against Richmond, the gallant but 
 fatal enterprise in which poor Dahlgren fell. 
 
 We were shown by the General a beautiful banner, 
 which had gone with him on that raid, and has since, 
 doubtless, signalled the way of many a bold em 
 prise, and fluttered through many a hot storm of 
 battle. It was of white silk, bordered with the names 
 of the battles in which Kilpatrick had been engaged, 
 embroidered in bright colors. It was the work of his 
 young wife. Alas ! the hands that had so deftly 
 wrought were now folded still and cold over the heart 
 that had exulted and feared while they wrought ! 
 
 On this drive we passed through Stevensburg, a 
 village which, in its palmy days, contained, says the 
 Gazetteer, " a store, a tavern, and one or two church 
 es." Now there remain the shells of several edifices, 
 but which sacred and -which profane it were hard to 
 
206 Records of Five Years. 
 
 tell, as our soldiers have done their best to equalize 
 conditions. 
 
 Another dinner-party. This time at the pleasant 
 
 quarters, the cottage orne, of Captain C , the 
 
 commissary. This was really a love of a military 
 cabin, for our commissary was of somewhat Sybaritic 
 tastes. There was an evergreen hedge in front of it, 
 and a walk leading up from the gate, bordered with 
 evergreens, as real as the bounteous back-hair of 
 belles now-a-days, or as the Birnam wood that came to 
 Dunsinane. 
 
 The commissary evidently believed in the Scriptural 
 injunction, " Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the 
 ox that treadeth out the corn " ; and, luckiest of 
 heroes self-exiled from refined life, he had discovered 
 buried in the ranks, had exhumed and secured for 
 his own mess, that last result of civilization, a French 
 cook. 
 
 His cuisine was the envy of messes less fortunate ; 
 it was enough to madden a Richmond editor afresh, 
 and " fire the Southern heart " anew. This was a de 
 licious dinner, daintily served. Over it memory caught 
 faint, fragrant whiffs of long-gone dinners in cafes on 
 the Boulevards, and in imitative institutions on Broad 
 way : it had a savor of Soyer ; it was a tender re 
 minder of Delmonico. 
 
 It was followed by a concert, given by four or five 
 
A Taste of Camp Life. 207 
 
 admirable minstrel performers, who, though of different 
 regiments, had somehow floated together in camp. 
 One touched the banjo delectably ; one rang a thou 
 sand changes on the triangle ; one merrily rattled his 
 bones. Another, with marvellous ventriloquial powers, 
 gave an imitation of a venerable Teutonic hurdy-gurdy 
 woman, in a way to bring back to one s mind the 
 passes of the Tyrol and the gardens above old Inn- 
 spruck. As we sat in that quaint little cottage, tapes 
 tried with " Harper s Weekly," some of us on camp- 
 stools, some on boxes, one or two on the bed, and 
 listened to those merry fellows, reviving their old 
 songs and resuscitating their old jokes, I suddenly 
 remembered a grand London party, at which the 
 guests were entertained by the last great singers from 
 La Scala and the San Carlo. I thought of the diamonds 
 and imposing busts of the English ladies, of the 
 exquisite neckties and the mutton-chop whiskers of 
 the gentlemen. I thought of the starred breast of the 
 French marquis, and the fierce moustache, wax-ended 
 after the Emperor, for these were all there was of 
 him ; I thought of the nobler unstarred poets and 
 painters, of the overpowering powder and plush of 
 the footmen ; and, comparing them together, I pro 
 nounced this to be the more novel, memorable, and by 
 far the jollier entertainment of the two. 
 
 From joys like these I was torn to give my last 
 
2o8 Records of Five Years. 
 
 " big talk " in camp. Not being quite in time, I 
 found, to my relief, that an unknown friend had con 
 sented to " occupy " till I came. He was a quondam 
 juggler, and had been amusing my audience with a 
 series of novel and astonishing performances with 
 lighted cigars. He would smoke four or five at a 
 time, five, I think, but we will say four, then, open 
 ing his lips, would gather them all in, shut his mouth 
 upon them for a moment, then, opening it, show them 
 all gleaming there like torches in a cavern ; then thrust 
 them out into position, like the guns of a battery. 
 
 After Herr Salamander came I, to talk of home, to 
 poor boys who might behold it never again, of chil 
 dren, to fathers who might look on their faces no 
 more, and to speak to all my regretful farewell. As 
 they passed quietly out of the hall, I gazed after them 
 with a strange feeling of tenderness and awe. They 
 seemed to me to be passing away into ghostly mists 
 and shadows. The austere angel of Patriotism, so 
 strangely like the angel of Death, seemed to be beck 
 oning them, as they went, the picked men of destiny, 
 the sacrificial souls. 
 
 The next day was bitter, biting cold. We set out 
 to make some morning calls, but only got as far as 
 the cosey quarters of General Warren, who was one of 
 our nearest neighbors. How thoroughly domesticated 
 he seemed in a little brown nest of a house, from 
 
A Taste of Camp Life. 209 
 
 which the old birds had conveniently seceded. He 
 had with him his lovely wife and sister ; so there 
 was an indescribable charm of feminine presence 
 about the place. There was a glowing fire, and I 
 think a tea-kettle over it. I am not sure but that they 
 had set up a cricket. 
 
 In the afternoon it began to snow furiously. We 
 waded to mess that night, thinking, shudderingly, of 
 poor fellows on picket-duty. The lights of the camp 
 blinked fitfully through a fleecy veil ; the burdened 
 tents looked like huge snow-drifts. 
 
 That last night of ours in camp, a merry party were 
 met in General Cald well s capacious Sibley tent, his 
 family, staff officers, and guests. How well, how 
 kindly, I remember them all. There was Colonel 
 W , of General Warren s staff, whose gentle man 
 ner and refined culture gracefully draped, but could 
 not hide a fearless, inflexible spirit. Lieutenant C. H. 
 
 B , "of ours," genial, kindly, whose brave, frank 
 
 smile might almost have disarmed a Rebel guerilla, 
 who would have been "jolly" under the incredibly 
 " creditable circumstances " of a Rebel stockade. Cap 
 tain D , young and " ruddy " as David when he 
 
 " enlisted for the war " against the Philistines, win 
 ning all regards by his open, ingenuous ways, a boy 
 still in heart, but not a whit the less the brave soldier. 
 I heard of him afterwards, poor soul ! as in one of 
 
 N 
 
2IO Records of Five Years. 
 
 the Dantean hells of Libby Prison. Captain F , 
 
 Judge Advocate, sunniest and kindliest of natures. 
 How he could banish the smile from his lip and the 
 merry sparkle from his eye long enough to perform 
 with fitting dignity his duties on the awful court-mar 
 tial I could not imagine. Lieutenant B , my old 
 
 friend and the true-hearted Christian soldier, for 
 whom the war was a holy crusade of freedom, the 
 great " flank movement " of Christian civilization, 
 which should secure and hold the field against all 
 the barbarisms of the world. 
 
 What a quiet, happy circle we were, " enclosed in 
 a tumultuous privacy of storm," and with the great, 
 troubled, uncertain future darkling in the horizon. 
 How strange it seemed, this light and warmth of 
 merry companionship softening the "winter of our 
 discontent," this grace and glow of social life flower 
 ing out on the " blasted heath " of war. this core of 
 sweetness in a rough and bitter rind, this peril-en 
 compassed security, this valor-guarded repose ! 
 
 It was Social Order invading the realm of Ruin, 
 the household gods displacing the Furies, Comedy 
 smiling in the dark face of Tragedy, Hope bearding 
 Despair. It was Love sleeping on a caisson^ Peace 
 walking, Christ-like, on the sullen surges of Revolu 
 tion. It commemorated past home communion, it 
 promised future peaceful joys, it was both a sacra- 
 
A Taste of Camp Life. 211 
 
 ment and a prophecy. It seemed like a home already, 
 a home of singular pleasantness and refinement, 
 with a certain gypsyish, nomadic charm about it, quite 
 indescribable. I can see it now, with its crackling, 
 aromatic fire, its blanket-covered floor, its comfortable 
 camp-stools, all filled, its wide settee, draped with a 
 huge buffalo-robe, its pine card-table, its primitive 
 book-shelves, with the sweet Madonna-like face of 
 our hostess, beaming with a stilly softness, a cool, 
 pensive purity, and our host himself, benignest of brig 
 adiers, with his ever-ready wit and culture, his ster 
 ling manliness, his irresistible bonhomie. What a fine 
 central figure he made in the rosy fire-light, with the 
 blonde head of my little liege lady pillowed on his 
 shoulder, as much " among the stars " as it would be 
 now that he is bre vetted major-general, and her ear 
 nest eyes fixed on his face, as he talked over the inci 
 dents of our visit with the fancy of a poet and the 
 happy perception of a humorist. 
 
 Will he pardon me for sketching this "interior," as 
 it glows in my mind, a picture charming, unique, and 
 never to be lived again ? 
 
 The morning broke upon us in blinding effulgence 
 over a deep, sparkling waste of snow. The old cedars 
 bent under it, like Richelieu under his ermine ; the 
 shelter-tents looked like Esquimaux huts. The Sibley 
 tent in which my brother slept had fallen with the 
 
2 1 2 Records of Five Years. 
 
 snow-weight in the night. It settled down upon him 
 as coolly as a stout dowager with expanded crinoline 
 seats herself on a drawing-room sofa, but fortu 
 nately more lightly. It was an avalanche in petticoats ! 
 He managed to prop up the canvas with some article 
 of furniture, and slept soundly till morning, blank 
 eted with a fleece whiter than the lambs of St. Agnes, 
 brooded under celestial down. 
 
 Glad to escape before this lovely landscape should 
 dissolve into slush and blacken down into abyssmal 
 deeps of mud, and yet grieving to say farewell to 
 friends so gracious, we went. The stout ambulance 
 plunged and floundered over the corduroy road to 
 Brandy Station, where we turned our faces north 
 ward. 
 
 On our way we met a special train, bearing, it was 
 said, Grant and his fortunes. Over what highway of 
 the world journeyed that day prince or emperor, with 
 such mighty national destinies confided to him, as our 
 modest hero bore, locked in his close, silent heart ? 
 
 And so ended our week in camp. 
 
Bon Vogage. 2 1 3 
 
 BON VOYAGE. 
 
 A DAY or two since I went in the storm to say 
 adieu and ban voyage to some happy friends, on 
 the eve of setting out for a tour of Europe. 
 
 I think I have never envied them their beautiful 
 town house, their noble country-seat, their horses and 
 carriages, conservatories, pictures, statuary, china, Paris 
 upholstery, not even their library, not even the solemn 
 footman nor the nice lady s-maid. But I must confess 
 to something very like envy when I saw them amid all 
 the pleasant excitement and bustle of preparation for 
 their first foreign tour, that palpitating joy of expecta 
 tion I so well remembered. My heart fluttered sor 
 rowfully, with wild, vain longings, like a bird lying 
 with a broken wing, in a dreary autumn wood, watch 
 ing its companions flying south. 
 
 But I soon ceased to rebel against Fortune, who, on 
 the whole,* has not treated me shabbily ; and, while my 
 body walked homeward through the chill rain, my 
 fancy, Puck-like courier, who needed no outfit, no 
 passport, no bills of exchange, went with those happy 
 tourists to revel in all the fine delights and splendid 
 
214 Records of Five Years. 
 
 marvels of the wondrous old world. Over the sea I 
 pass thus in the spirit, without a pang of sickness 
 or a shrug of ennui. We slide into port, into the 
 arms of mother-country. We roll through England in 
 a luxurious railway carriage, and realize how grand it 
 is to be a " nob," and the roar of London is about 
 us like a sea ! For a few days we flounder through 
 the fog, and make St. Paul s, the Abbey, the Tower, 
 the British Museum ; and now we plunge into the 
 pleasures and marvels of Paris as into a carnival- 
 shower of bouquets and bonbons, snatching to the 
 right and to the left. Now we wander through the old 
 park of Versailles, where every bosquet is a romance 
 and every fountain spouts history. We journey 
 through the long galleries of the old palace, and read 
 the splendid and terrible story of France, her kings 
 and her heroes, through pictured centuries. Again I 
 bask in the soft sunshine of Vaucluse and Avignon ; 
 again I journey along the enchanting coast road of the 
 Mediterranean, where Italy first reveals herself in 
 clefts of bloom and sweetness, like the bursting heart 
 of a pomegranate. Italy ! Holy land of beauty and 
 art, of sorrow and song ! land which the sun greets 
 with rapture and leaves with tender reluctance, with 
 caresses of light and embraces of all-pervading glory ! 
 What mysterious charms hast thou, by which to enchant 
 the children of other lands, making them thine by 
 
Bon Voyage. 215 
 
 loving adoption, so that returning home is like going 
 into exile ? 
 
 Dear and grand as Italy has ever been to the 
 student of history and art, the lover of heroes and 
 poets, she has, in these last great years, taken to her 
 self new dearness and grandeur, and now few are the 
 hearts so narrow and so cold as to refuse to do her 
 reverence. She has aroused from her long torpor of 
 despair, she has thrown off the nightmare of supersti 
 tion, she has aspired, she has struggled, she has 
 achieved. By mighty unsuspected forces she has been 
 lifted to a place among the nations, as Monte Nuove 
 was upheaved by an earthquake in a single night. 
 
 Twelve years ago I knew that there was hope for 
 Italy ; that Liberty was not lying dead at Novara, not 
 imprisoned for life in the dungeons of the Inquisition, 
 or the criminale of St. Elmo. I felt its great, sorrow 
 ful, immortal presence everywhere. It thrilled in the 
 voices of women, and shone prophetic in the eyes of 
 children. It brooded over the lonely Campagna, over 
 the silent Forum. It lingered under the arches of the 
 Colosseum. From the walls of the Vatican it looked 
 forth in the pale agony of martyrs. It wailed in the 
 miserere of the Sistine Chapel. It breathed in the 
 song of the Neapolitan fisherman and the Venetian 
 gondolier. It sighed in the orange-blossoms of Sor 
 rento, in the roses of Florence, in the violets of Par- 
 
216 Records of Five Years. 
 
 ma. It was throned on the snowy Cathedral of Milan. 
 It ripened with the harvest and the vintage ; it bided 
 its time with the volcano and the avalanche. 
 
 Now what a joy to hail a regenerated Italy ! To 
 hail as its king one every inch a man, Victor Eman- 
 uel. The very name is a crown ! To hail as its 
 king-maker that splendid revolutionary leader, that 
 matchless hero of his time, whose great intrepid heart 
 seemed destined to beat down all the Bastiles and 
 despotisms of Europe ; whose royal red shirt shall be 
 as famous in history as the white plume of Henry of 
 Navarre. A Miltiades in generalship, a Cceur de Lion 
 in valor, a Bayard in purity, a Bruce in patience, a Tell 
 in daring, and, God grant, yet to be a Washington 
 in success, Garibaldi ! 
 
 Forgetting for a moment our own later and grander 
 contest, let us recall the startling career of this incom 
 parable soldier. How he shook the land of earthquakes 
 with the hurried march of his little liberating army ! 
 How he poured over the old tyrannies of the land of 
 volcanoes the lava of a just and awful vengeance, 
 nursed through long, dark years in the fiery hearts of 
 the people ! 
 
 Does the history of his land present a grander 
 picture than his peaceful entry into Naples, a city 
 carried by the storm of a great name, bombarded by 
 free ideas ? Did ever hero receive such a welcome ? 
 
Bon Voyage. 2 1 7 
 
 Noble lords and ladies, turning joyfully from the king, 
 less than a man, to honor the man greater than a king. 
 Wretched, long-degraded lazaroni, feeling for the first 
 time that they were men, thronging out to greet their 
 benefactor, a moral resurrection scarcely less wonder 
 ful than would have been the coming forth of musty 
 deputations of the ancient citizens of Pompeii and 
 Herculaneum. 
 
 In his modest retirement in Caprera he should 
 never be forgotten by us. His electric words and 
 deeds charged the hearts of our own young soldiers 
 with a chivalric heroism. They fought the better for 
 having heard his name. It shone, a beacon-light of 
 patriotism, steady, pure, persistent, a star of general 
 ship. He has taught the world, this simple soldier, 
 that nothing is so frail and rotten as an ancient des 
 potism. He has taught us all that courage and pa 
 tience will conquer misfortune, that fate itself is but 
 the great " I WILL " of a great soul. 
 
 But the revolutionary leader has led me far away 
 from my fellow-travellers. At Rome we meet, and go 
 the old rounds over the grand stepping-stones of his 
 tory, from Colosseum to Capitol, from Forum to Pan 
 theon, from Thermae and Columbaria to Catacombs 
 and Basilicas. I find that even the " Eternal City " 
 moves, though with much creaking and groaning of 
 church machinery ; for the streets are now lit with gas, 
 
 10 
 
218 Records of Five Years. 
 
 and there is a railroad to Civita Vecchia. When 
 Rome stretches out iron arms of brotherhood toward 
 the outer world, and sends forth electric thrills of sym 
 pathy with liberty and progress on telegraphic wires, 
 let us thank God and take courage. 
 
 I am bewildered again with the double life one lives 
 at Rome, the great simple life of Paul s days and 
 Caesar s days, and the poor, pretentious life of Pio 
 Nono s days and Caesar s biographer s days. In my 
 " mind s eye," the old city is always a grand Carnival 
 masquerade scene. August Roman shades and priests 
 in the flesh (very much in the flesh) jostle each other. 
 Caesar s cohorts and a procession of monks meet in 
 the Forum. Stately Roman matrons and white-robed 
 vestals gaze with horrified astonishment on gay dames 
 from Paris and belles from New York. The deities of 
 Olympus and the saints of the Quirinal wrestle in the 
 arena of the Coliseum. Pagan shades heave vainly at 
 Christian statues, perched on their columns, and 
 haunt old sarcophagi, emptied of their dust. We 
 promenade over the Via Sacra, beloved by Horace, 
 and often tripped over by little Virginia, and on the 
 Appian Way, whose stones were pounded down by 
 the tramp of old Rome s conquering legions. We 
 lunch among the tombs of the Scipios and the Ser- 
 vilii, and call on the shade of Caecilia Metella at her 
 country mausoleum. We brush the dust of dead 
 
Bon Voyage. 219 
 
 empires from our skirts every day. Some " imperious 
 Caesar, dead and turned to clay," may form the soil 
 from which we pluck the first crocus, beside the Via 
 Salara. 
 
 We stand in tearful silence over the dust of Shel 
 ley s mighty heart, in the shadow of the pyramid of 
 Caius Cestius, and over a green billow of earth, 
 beneath which lies John Keats, poor tired swimmer 
 against life s " angry Tiber," who sunk here. 
 
 We veturino-ize to Naples, and sun ourselves at 
 Sorrento and Capri, and see Paul s Pozzuoli, and that 
 vacated crater the Solfatara, like a purgatory " to let," 
 and look into the internal economy of Vesuvius, and 
 look up the cities whose little lights he put out eigh 
 teen centuries ago. Back to Rome for the Holy Week 
 and the illumination of St. Peter s, the sight of sights 
 for unimagined beauty and splendor. 
 
 Now away to Florence ! Ah, it is good to be here 
 with Liberty ! We gaze on the dome so loved of Mi 
 chael Angelo, on the churches, towers, and palaces so 
 beautiful in Dante s eyes ; we look down on the glori 
 ous old city from San Miniato. We linger before that 
 Casa Guidi, sanctified by the beautiful life and more 
 beautiful death of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. I 
 cannot bear to enter the rooms wherein I once spent 
 such golden hours ; but I go to the spot where they 
 have laid her, and place above her heart the flowers 
 
22O Records of Five Years. 
 
 she loved, lilies of the valley ; so like to her, sweet 
 flower of womanhood, meek, delicate, pure, and 
 breathing of heaven. 
 
 Near her lies our Theodore Parker. How consol 
 ing to think that this great toiling heart, to whom free 
 dom was so infinitely dear, sunk into his last and first 
 real rest in a free land ! How sweet to think that 
 over his grave young Italy may sing the long-forbidden 
 
 song, 
 
 " Libert^, bella Liberti." 
 
 How sweet to think that he slept well through all 
 the tempest of our civil war ; that he went to meet the 
 peace that was so long in coming to us ! 
 
 To Pisa we will go, as I have a leaning toward its 
 tower. There is a mutual inclination, I believe. We 
 enter on fairy life on Maggiore and Como. Milan we 
 must see for its Cathedral. It is the poetry of relig 
 ion, and the religion of architecture. 
 
 Through the Stelvio Pass we reach Munich, and we 
 see Strasburg, which means its Cathedral ; and we 
 do the Rhine, and think of " Brown, Jones, and Rob 
 inson," and the " Kickleburys " ; and flit back to 
 England and catch her in her early summer glory. 
 We visit her lovely ruins and her grand castles, his 
 tory s mighty landmarks ; we journey past battle 
 fields, where the carnage and blood of old wars ripen 
 into harvests, and blossom into " daisies pied " ; where 
 
Bon Voyage. 221 
 
 Anglo-Saxon liberties were " sown in corruption " to be 
 "reaped in incorruption," Cromwell s and Hamp- 
 den s battle-fields. Over the wild Yorkshire moors, 
 Charlotte Bronte s moors ; through lovely Berkshire 
 lanes, Mary Russell Mitford s lanes ; up among 
 the lakes, Wordsworth s lakes ; up into the High 
 lands, Scott s Highlands ; over Burns s Ayrshire, 
 through Rob Roy s land, and over Bruce s Bannock- 
 burn and Mary Stuart s Holyrood. I marvel to find 
 so little change in half a score of years. A while ago 
 I remember I put to a friend, just from Edinburgh, 
 Macduff s question, " Stands Scotland where it did ? " 
 So difficult is it to realize that the old mother-land has 
 remained anchored in peace, while we have been 
 driven, through storm and lightnings, down the wild 
 seas of war ; that she has remained stationary, while 
 we have plunged forward into another century. 
 
 Now we tread the lovely valley paths of Wales, and 
 hear the cascades shouting above us ; now we stand 
 on the purple mountain-tops, and see the sun sink 
 slowly over the sea, and cannot make him the same 
 old sun that hurries down just beyond the Schuylkill 
 at home. We wander about the lakes and over the 
 heathery hills of old Ireland, and quote Tom Moore, 
 and read " The Collegians " ; and now it is midsum 
 mer, and Switzerland woos us with sighs of eternal 
 coolness. Alas! I must leave my friends here to 
 
222 Records of Five Years. 
 
 enjoy their ices, for I am brought up standing before 
 a familiar city-door. My dream of foreign travel is 
 ended, for this door shuts out Italia, Gallia, Germania, 
 Britannia, Helvetia, but, thank God ! shuts in 
 home. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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