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. Cambridge : Stereotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co. 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