My husband found me "gloating" over a copy of Common Sense the week after it was published.

        "I verily believe," he said, wonderingly, "that you take more pride in that book than in all the rest you have written."

        I answered, confidently, "It will do more good than all of them put together."

        This was fifteen years after Emily's hand got out, and I knelt on the carpet in my bedroom to knead my trial batch of bread.

XXXV

THE STIRRED NEST AMONG THE OAKS -
A CRUCIAL CRISIS

"CHARLOTTE C. H., April 12th, 1857

        "MY STILL-REMEMBERED FRIEND, - It is a raw, cloudy Sunday afternoon; Mr. Terhune is suffering somewhat from a cold and is, moreover, fatigued by the labors of the day. I have persuaded him to take a siesta on the lounge. Even my birds are quiet under the drowsy influence of the weather, and only the fire and clock interrupt the stillness of my pleasant chamber. . . .

        "I have been on the point several times of writing to you (despite your broken promise of last September), begging you to visit us during the summer. Need I say how happy we should be to see you in our Home?

        "It is a sweet word to my ear, a sweet place to my heart, for a happier was never granted to mortals. I do not say this as a matter of course. You should know me too well than to suppose that. It comes up freely - joyously - from a brimming heart. My only fear is lest my cup should be too full, for what more could I ask at the hands of the Giver of mercies? I have a dear little home, furnished in accordance with my own taste; delightful society, and an abundance of it; perfect health, having scarcely seen a sick day since my marriage - and the best husband that lives upon the globe. . . .

        "This is a large and flourishing church, demanding much hard work on his part; but he is young and strong, and he loves his profession. We visit constantly together, and here end my out-of-door 'pastoral duties.' Within doors, my aim is to make home bright; to guard my husband from annoyance and intrusion during study-hours; to entertain him when he is weary, and to listen sympathizingly to all that

interests him. I shall never be a model 'minister's wife.' I knew that from the first, so I have never attempted to play the rôle. Fortunately, it is not expected, much less demanded.

        "We shall make a flying visit to Richmond in May. After that, we shall be at home, off and on, certainly until September. Our cottage parsonage - the 'little nest among the oaks,' as Alice calls it - is ever ready to receive you, and so are our hearts.

        "Were my other and very much better half awake, he would join me in love and good wishes, for I have taught him to know and to love you all."

        A year after my marriage, the friend of my childhood and the intimate correspondent of my girl-life, was married to Rev. William Campbell, the pastor of "Mount Carmel," the pretty country church in which my forebears and contemporaries had worshipped for generations, the church for which my great- grandfather gave the land; in which he was the first ordained elder, and in which my beloved "Cousin Joe" ("Uncle Archie") had succeeded him in the same office. In Mount Carmel I had taken my first Communion, and here the new wife of the pastor was to be welcomed into full fellowship with her husband's flock in November. My husband was invited by Mr. Campbell to take the service on that day, and I was warmly pressed to accompany him.

"CHARLOTTE C. H., November 8th, 1857.

        "MY OWN DEAR FRIEND, - A fact overlooked by Mr. Terhune and myself, occurred to me a little while ago - viz., that there is only a semi-weekly mail to Smithville. Therefore, to insure your reception of this in season at Montrose, it should go from this place to-morrow. It was Mr. Terhune's intention to drop a line to Mr. Campbell to-night; but I have begged that I might write to you instead.

        "I have many and bright hopes for you. Hopes, not 'as lovely as baseless,' but founded upon a knowledge of your

character and that of him whom God has given you as your other and stronger self. When I rejoiced in your union, it was with sincere and full delight. You have a mate worthy of you - one whom you love, and who loves you. What more does the woman's heart crave? You have chosen wisely, and happiness, such as you have never known before, must follow.

        "Will you not come up and see us this winter? Nothing would give me more pleasure than to see you in our dear little home.

        "Mr. Terhune is very anxious that I should accompany him to Powhatan, but I dare not suffer my mind to dwell upon a project so charming. He cannot, all at once, get used to visiting without me, but in the crib, over in the corner, lies an insurmountable obstacle - tiny to view, but which may not be set aside.

        "I wish you could see my noble boy, who will be two months old to-morrow! He is very pretty, says the infallible 'Everybody.' To us, he is passing dear. Already he recognizes us and frolics by the half-hour with us, laughing and cooing - the sweetest music that ever sounded through our hearts and home. Nothing but the extreme inconvenience attendant upon travelling and visiting with so young a child, prevents me from accompanying the Reverend gentleman. . . .

        I have no advice to give you except that you shall be yourself, instead of following the kind suggestions of any Mrs. Grundy who has an ideal pattern of the 'Minister's Wife' ready for you to copy. I am confident that you will be 'helpmeet' for the man, and since he will ask no more, his parish has no right to do it.

        "My warm regards to Mr. Campbell. When I see him I will congratulate him. You would not deliver the messages I would send to him. 'Eddie' seeds a kiss to 'Auntie Effie.' "

        In folding, almost reverently, the time-dyed letter and laying it beside the rest in the box at the bottom of which I found the sallowed "P. P. C." card, date of "September 2, 1856," I feel as if I were shutting the door and turning the key upon that far-away time; bidding farewell to a

state of society that seems, by contrast with the complex interests of To-day, pastoral in simplicity. In reviewing the setting and scenes of my early history, I am reading a quaint chronicle, inhaling an atmosphere redolent of spices beloved of our granddames, and foreign to their descendants.

        It is not I who have told the story, but the girl from provinces that are no more on earth than if they had never been. The Spirit of that Past is the narrator. I sit with her by the open "chimney-piece," packed as far as arms can reach with blazing hickory logs; as she talks, the imagery of a yet older day comes to my tongue. We knew our Bibles "by heart" in both senses of the term, then, and believed in the spiritual symbolism of that perfervid love-Canticle - the song of the Royal Preacher. I find myself whispering certain musical phrases while the tale goes on, and the story-teller's face grows more rapt:

        "Thy lips drop as the honey-comb; honey and milk are under thy tongue; and the smell of thy garments is like the smell of Lebanon;

        "Thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates with pleasant fruits; camphire, with spikenard;

        "Spikenard and saffron; calamus and cinnamon."

        It is not a mystic love-chant, or a dreamy jargon, that I recite under my breath. The sadly few (more sad and few with each year) who recall with me the days that are no more - and forever - will feel what I cannot put into words.

        Soon after the dawn of the year 1858, we had news of the death of my husband's youngest sister, a bright, engaging matron, of whom I had grown very fond in my visits to her New Jersey home. The happy wife of a man who adored her, and the mother of a beautiful boy, she had but one unfulfilled wish on earth. When a baby-girl

was put into her arms, she confessed this, and that now she could ask nothing more of heaven. The coveted gift cost her her life.

        In March, my dearest friend, Mary Ragland, paid a long- promised visit to the "nest among the oaks." She had not been strong all winter. She was never robust. I brought her up from town, in joyous confidence that the climate that had kept me well and vigorous would brace her up to concert pitch. For a few weeks she seemed to justify that belief. Then the languor and slow fever returned. She faded before our incredulous eyes as a flower droops on the stem. She had no pain, and so slight was the rise in temperature that made her thirsty by night that we would not have detected it had she not mentioned casually at breakfast that she arose to get a drink of water and chanced to see, through the window, a lunar rainbow. This led to the discovery that she always arose two or three times each night to quench her thirst. It was characteristic that she saw the rainbow, and was eager to report it next day. Beautiful things floated to her by some law of natural attraction. She never took to her bed. To the last, she averred, laughingly, that she was "only lazy and languid." She "would be all right very soon."

        As a sort of low delirium overtook her senses, her fantasies were all of fair and lovely sights and sweet sounds. She asked me "where I got the chain of pearls I was wearing and why she had never seen it before?" She exclaimed at the beauty of garlands of flowers wreathing pictures and window-cornices, invisible to our eyes. Music - a passion of her life - was a solace in the fearful restlessness of the dying hours. She would have us sing to her - first one, then the other, for an hour at a time - lying peacefully attent, with that unearthly radiance upon her face that never left it until the coffin-lid shut it from our sight, and joining in, when a favorite hymn was sung, with the

rich contralto which was her "part" in our family concerts.

        "She is singing herself away," said my husband, at twilight on the ninth of May - my mother's birthday.

        At nine o'clock that evening the swan-song was hushed.

        We carried her down to Richmond, the next day but one.

        I have said elsewhere that it is not given to one to have two perfect, all-satisfying, friendships this side of the Land that is all Love. She had gladdened our cottage for little over a month. It was never quite the same after she flew heavenward. Nor was my life.

        To everybody else, it seemed that the "stirring" of the nest began during the visit we paid to Northern friends that summer.

        Our vacation was longer than usual. It could not be gay, for our mourning garments expressed but inadequately the gloom from which our spirits could not escape, with the memory of two bereavements fresh in the minds of all.

        It was during this sojourn with the relatives, whose adoption of me had been frankly affectionate from the beginning of our association, that I learned of the desire of my father-in-law to have his son removed nearer to the rest of the family. The old Judge was proud and fond of the boy, and Virginia was a long distance away from New York - to him, and other loyal Middle Statesmen, as truly the Hub of Civilization as Boston to the born Bostonian. Moreover, the Village Church at Charlotte Court-House was a country charge, although eminently respectable in character, and honorable in all things pertaining to church traditions. Other men as young, and, in the father's opinion, inferior in talent and education, were called to city parishes. "It was not right for Edward to bury himself in the backwoods until such time as he would be too near the dead line, with respect to age, to hope for preferment."

        All this and more of the like purport fell upon unheeding ears, when addressed to me. I had but one answer to make after listening respectfully to argument and appeal.

        "I promised Edward, of my own free will and accord, before our marriage, that I would never attempt to sway his judgment in anything relating to his profession. Least of all, would I cast the weight of what influence I might have into either scale, if he were called upon to make change of pastorate. He must do as he thinks best."

        More than one church had made overtures to the rising man, and his kindred were hanging eagerly upon his decision. The initial "stir" had been given. It was a positive relief when we turned our faces southward.

        The nest was full that autumn. My husband's widower brother-in-law, crushed by his late bereavement, and compelled to resign the home in which his wife had taken just pride; helpless, as only a man of strictly domestic tastes can be in such circumstances, abandoned his profession of the law, and resolved to study divinity. My brother Herbert turned his back upon a promising business career and made the same resolution. Both men were rusty in Latin and Greek, and neither knew anything of Hebrew. My husband - ever generous to a fault in the expenditure of his own time and strength in the service of others - rashly offered to "coach" them for a few months. I think they believed him, when he represented that Latin was mere play to him, and that an hour or two a day would be an advantage to him in refreshing his recollection of other dead languages.

        Alice and I bemoaned ourselves, in confidence and privily, over the loss of the quietly-happy evenings when we sewed or crocheted, while the third person of the trio read aloud, as few other men could read - according to our notion. We grudged sharing the merry chats over the little round table with those who were not quite au fait to all our mots de famille,

and did not invariably sympathize with our judgment of people and things. Mr. Frazee was one of the most genial of men - good through and through, and as kind of heart as he was engaging in manner. My brother was a fine young fellow, and his sisters loved him dearly. It was ungracious, ungenerous, and all the other "uns" in the English language, to regret the former order of everyday life. We berated ourselves soundly, at each of our secret conferences, and kept on doing it. Home was still passing lovely, but the stirring went on.

        Is everything - moral, spiritual, and physical - epidemic? I put the question to myself when, less than a week after the arrival of an invitation to become the leader of the Third Presbyterian Church in Richmond, Virginia, and before a definite answer was returned, the mail brought an important document, portentous with signatures and seals official, requesting Rev. Edward Payson Terhune to assume the pastorate of the First Reformed Church in Newark, New Jersey.

        Here was a crucial test of my voluntary pledge never, by word, look, or deed, to let my husband suspect the trend of my inclinations with respect to any proposed change of clerical relations!

        For, as I am at liberty now to confess, I wanted to go to Richmond horribly! Family, friends, ties of early association, strengthened by nearly fifteen years of residence at the formative period of life; the solicitations of parents, brothers, sisters, and true and tried intimates, who wrote to say how delighted they were at the prospect of having me "back home" - tugged at my heartstrings until I needed Spartan firmness of will and stoical reticence, to hold me fast to my vow. Meanwhile, letters bearing Northern postmarks were fluttering down upon the one whose must be not the casting vote alone, but the responsibility of the decision of what he felt was one of the most momentous

problems he was ever to face. Fortunately, neither of us knew then the full gravity of the crisis.

        Looking back from the top of the hill, I see so clearly the working out of a benign and merciful design in what was then perplexity, puzzle, and pain, that I cannot say whether humility or devout gratitude has the ascendancy in my thoughts. Especially is this true when I reflect that strength was vouchsafed to me to hold my peace, even from what I conceived was "good," when my husband brought both calls to me, after four days of anxious deliberation, and bade me speak one word in favor of, or against, either.

        Side by side, they lay upon my table, and with them a paper upon which he had set down, clearly and fairly, the pros and cons of each.

        He read these aloud, slowly and emphatically, then looked up at me.

        "I am in a sore strait! Can you help me?"

        In my heart I thought I could, and that right speedily. With my tongue I said: "No one has a right to say a word. It is a matter between God and yourself."

        He took up the papers silently, and went to the study. And I prayed, with strong crying and tears, that God would send us to Richmond.

        An hour later he came back. The light of a settled purpose was in his face. All he said was:

        "I have decided to go to Newark. We will talk it over to-morrow morning."

        He slept soundly that night, for the first time in a week So did not I!

XXXVI

MIGRATION NORTHWARD - ACCLIMATION - ALBERT EDWARD,
PRINCE OF WALES, IN NEW YORK - POLITICAL PORTENTS

        ONE who had known my husband well for fifty years, wrote of him soon after his translation: "More than any other man I ever knew, he had a genius for friendship."

        This testimony is amply supported by the fact that he kept, to his journey's end, the friends whose loving confidence he gained during the five years of his Charlotte pastorate. Those who loved him in his youth loved him to the end - or so many of them as remained to see the beautiful close of his long day.

        We left our Parsonage home and the parish, which was our first love, laden with proofs of the deep affection inspired by devoted service in behalf of a united constituency, and the rare personal gifts of the man who suffered, in the parting, a wrench as sharp as that which made the separation a grief to each member of the flock he was leaving. It was a just tribute to his integrity of purpose and conscientiousness that the purity of his motives in deciding upon the step were never questioned. Leading men in the church said openly that they could not have hoped to keep him, after his talents and his ability to fill worthily a wider field were recognized in the world outlying this section of the Great Vineyard. They had foreseen that the parting must come, and that before long. He was a growing man, and the sphere they offered was narrow.

        It was in no spirit of Christian philosophy that I dismantled the nest among the oaks, and packed my Lares

and Penates with a fair show of cheerfulness. Inly, I was in high revolt for a full week after the die was cast. The final acceptance of the inevitable, and the steadfast setting of my face Northward, ensued upon the persuasion that the one and only thing for a sensible, God-fearing woman to do was to make the very best of what no human power could avert.

        It is a family saying, based upon the assertion of eldest daughter, that "if mother were set down in the middle of the Desert of Sahara, and made to comprehend that she must spend the rest of her days there, she would within ten minutes, begin to expatiate upon the many advantages of a dry climate as a residential region."

        By the time we stayed our flight in Richmond, where we spent our Christmas, I took from the worn and harassed man of the hour the burden of explanation and defence of the reasons for tearing ourselves up by the roots and transplanting the tender vine into what some of our best wishers called, "alien soil." I had worked myself into an honest defender of the Middle States in contradistinction to "Yankee land," before we departed, bag, baggage, and baby, for the new home.

        Mr. Terhune had preached twice in Newark, in December, after formally accepting the call. We removed to that city in February of 1859.

        With the Saharan spirit in full flow, I met the welcoming "people", settled in the house we bought in a pleasant quarter of the growing city - then claiming a population of less than seventy-five thousand - installed white servants; received and returned calls, and was, for the first time in my life, homesick at heart for three months.

        In the recollection of the eighteen years that succeeded that period of blind rebellion against the gentle leading which was, for us, wisdom and loving-kindness throughout,

I write down the confession in shame and confusion of face, and abasement of soul.

        I stay the course of the narrative at this point to record, devoutly and gratefully, that never had pastor and pastor's wife, in any section of our land, a parish in which "pleasant places" did more richly abound. I would write down, yet more emphatically and thankfully, the amazing fact that, in the dozen-and-a-half years of my dwelling among them, I never had a word of unkind criticism of myself and my ways; not a remark that could wound or offend was ever addressed to me.

        I wish I might have that last paragraph engraved in golden capitals and set to the everlasting credit of that Ideal Parish! To this hour, I turn instinctively in times of joy and of sorrow, as to members of the true household of faith, to the comparatively small band of the once large congregation who are left alive upon the earth.

        For eighteen years I walked up the central aisle of the church, as I might tread the halls and chambers of my father's house in that far Southern town, with the consciousness that we were surrounded by an atmosphere of affectionate appreciation, at once comforting and invigorating.

        All this - and I understate, rather than exaggerate, the real state of circumstance and feeling I am trying to depict - was the more surprising, because I went to this people young, and with little experience as a clergyman's wife. In Charlotte, I had, as we have seen, done no "church work." I was petted and made much of, in consideration of my position as the wife of the idolized pastor, and my newness to the duties of country housekeeping and the nursery. In Newark, I was gradually to discover that I could not shirk certain obligations connected with parish and city charities. The logic of events - never the monitions of friends and parishioners opened my eyes to the truth. When, at length, I took charge of a girls' Bible

Class, and, some years after, worked up the Infant Class from tens to hundreds, there was much expression of unfeigned gratification and eager rallying to my help, not an intimation of relief that I "had, at last, seen my way clear to the performance of what everybody else had expected of a minister's wife."

        I have never had a higher compliment than was paid me by the invitation, a dozen years back, to address the Alumni of Union Theological Seminary in New York City upon the subject of "Ministers' Wives."

        I took occasion, in the presence of that grave and reverend assembly of distinguished theologues, to pay a brief tribute, as strong as words could make it, to that Ideal Parish. I could not withhold it then. I cannot keep it back now. I believe my experience in this regard to be highly exceptional. More's the pity and the shame!

        Five children were born to us in those happy, busy years. Each was adopted lovingly by the people, so far as prideful affection and generous deeds implied adoption. We were all of one family.

        Returning to the direct line of my narrative - the spring of 1860 found us well, at work, and contented. I had good servants, kindly neighbors, and a growing host of congenial acquaintances. Our proximity to New York was an important factor in the lives of both of us, bringing us, as it did, within easy reach of the best libraries and shops in the country, and putting numberless means of entertainment and education at our very door. There were two babies by now - healthy, happy, bright - in every way thoroughly satisfactory specimens of infant humanity. In the matter of children's nurses, I have been extraordinarily blessed among American women. In the twenty-one years separating the birth of our elder boy from the day when the younger was released from nursery government, I had but three of these indispensable comforts.

Two married after years of faithful service; the third retired upon an invalid's pension. All were Irish by birth. After much experience in, and more observation of, the Domestic Service of these United States, I incline to believe that, as a rule, we draw our best material from Celtic emigrant stock.

        So smoothly ran the sands of life that I recall but one striking incident in the early part of 1860. That was the visit of the Prince of Wales to this country. We witnessed the passage of the long procession that received and escorted him up-town, to his quarters at the, then, new and fashionable hostelry - the Fifth Avenue Hotel. My husband went down to the Battery to see the princeling's review of the regiments drawn up in line before him, as he rode from end to end of the parade-ground.

        Joining us at the window, from which we had a splendid view of the pageant, the critic, who was an accomplished horseman, reported disdainfully that "the boy was exceedingly awkward. He had no seat to speak of, leaning forward, until his weak chin was nearly on a line with the horse's ears, and sticking his feet out stiffly on each side."

        Our impression of the imperial youth was not more agreeable. He sat back in the open coach, "hunched" together in an ungainly heap, looking neither to the right nor the left, evincing no consciousness of the existence of the shouting throngs that lined the pavements ten deep, other than by raising, with the lifeless precision of a mechanical toy, the cocked hat he wore as part of the uniform of a British colonel.

        There was a big ball the next night, at which gowns of fabulous prices were sported, and reported by the newspapers, and Albert Edward flitted on to his mother's dominions of Canada, leaving not a ripple in the ocean of local and national happenings.

        That ocean was stilling and darkening with the brooding

of a threatening storm. Newspapers bristled with portents and denunciations; demagogues bellowed themselves hoarse in parks and from stumps; torchlight processions displayed new and startling features.

        "So much for so little!" sighed I, upon our return from a lookout at the nearest corner, commanding long miles of marching men. "It was ingenious and amusing; but what a deal of drilling those embryo patriots must have gone through to do it so well! And for what? The President will be elected, as other Presidents have been, and as maybe a hundred others will be, and there the farce will end. Does it pay to amuse themselves so very hard?"

        "If we could be sure that it would end there!" answered my husband, with unexpected gravity. "The sky is red and lowering in the South. Between politicians, and the freedom of the press to play with all sorts of explosives, there is no telling what the rabble may do."

        I looked up, startled.

        "You are not in earnest? The good Ship of State has been driving straight on to the rocks ever since I can recollect, and she has not struck yet. Think of the Clay and Polk campaign!"

        "Child's play compared with the fight that is on now!" was the curt retort.

        Something - I know not what - in his manner moved me to put a leading question.

        "Have you made up your mind how you will vote?"

        "Yes."

        "A month ago, you said you had not."

        "A good deal has happened in that month."

        It was not like him to be sententious with me, but I pushed the subject.

        "I have never interfered with your political opinions, as you know, and I don't care to vote, myself; but if I had a vote, I should be in no doubt where to cast it. Lovers

of peace and concord should unite upon Bell and Everett. That party seems to me to represent the sanest element in this mammoth muddle."

        He smiled.

        "To say nothing of your fondness for Mr. Everett. A charming gentleman, I grant. But the helm of state is not to be in his hands. Even, supposing" - grave again, and sighing slightly - "that they are strong enough to hold it in a storm."

        There was a boding pause. Then I spoke, and unadvisedly:

        "I ask no questions that I think you would not care to answer. But I do hope you are not thinking of voting for Abraham Lincoln? Think of him in the White House! Mr. Buchanan may be weak - and a Democrat. I heard father say, as the one drop of comfort he could express from his election: 'At any rate, he is a gentleman by birth and breeding.' Mr. Lincoln is low-born, and has no pretensions to breeding."

        "Then, if I should be so far lost to the proprieties as to vote for him, I would better not let either of you know." And he glanced teasingly at Alice, who had just entered the room.

        "I could never respect you if you did!" she said, spiritedly. "I am persuaded better things of you."

        A teasing rejoinder was all she got out of him. The matter was never brought up again by any of us. When Election Day came, I was too proud to seem inquisitive. But in my inmost soul I was assured that reticence boded no good to my hope of one gallant gentleman's vote for Bell and Everett.

        Months afterward, when we were once again of one mind with respect to the nation's peril and the nation's need, he told me that he had kept his own counsel, not only because the truth might grieve me, but that party feeling

ran so high in his church he thought it best not to intimate to any one how he meant to vote.

        "And, like Harry Percy's wife, I could be trusted not to tell what I did not know?" said I.

        "You might have been catechised," he admitted. "There are times when the Know-nothing policy is the safest.

XXXVII

PANIC OF '61 - A VIRGINIA VACATION - MUTTERINGS OF
COMING STORM

        BAYARD TAYLOR said to me once of a publishing house, "An honest firm, but one that has an incorrigible habit of failing!"

        The habit was epidemic in the first half of 1861. Among others who caught the trick were my publishers. Like a thunderbolt came the announcement, when I was expecting my February semi-annual remittance of fat royalties: "We regret to inform you that we have been compelled to succumb to the stringency of the times."

        The political heavens were black with storm-clouds, and, as was inevitable then, and is now, the monetary market shut its jaws tightly upon everything within reach. We could not reasonably have expected immunity, but we had. We had never known the pinch of financial "difficulties." Prudent salaried men are the last to feel hard times, if their wage is paid regularly. I had three books in the hands of the "failing" firm. All were "good sellers," and I had come to look upon royalties as my husband regarded his salary, as a sure and certain source of revenue.

        We had other and what appeared to us graver anxieties. My sister Alice had passed the winter with us, and the climate had told unhappily upon her throat. My husband had not escaped injury from the pernicious sea-fogs and the malarial marshes, over which the breath of the Atlantic flowed in upon us. He had a bronchial cough that defied

medical treatment; and March, the worst month of the twelve for tender throats and susceptible lungs, would soon be upon us. His physician, a warm personal friend, ordered him South, and the church seconded the advice by a formal grant of an out-of-season vacation. We did not change our main plan in consequence of the disappointment as to funds. Nor did we noise our loss abroad. Somehow, the truth leaked out. Not a word of condolence was breathed to us. But on the afternoon of the day but one before that set for our departure, the daughter of a neighborly parishioner dropped in to leave a basket of flowers and to say that her father and mother "would like to call that evening, if we were to be at home." I answered that we should be glad to see them, and notified my husband of the impending call. The expected couple appeared at eight o'clock, and by nine the parlors were thronged with guests who "dropped in, in passing, to say 'Good-bye.' " None stayed late, and before any took leave, there was the presentation of a parcel, through the hands of Edgar Farmer, a member of the Consistory, who, in days to come, was to be to my husband as David to Jonathan. He was young then, and of a goodly presence, with bright, kind eyes and a happy gift of speech. Neither Mr. Terhune nor I had any misgivings of what was in prospect, when he was asked to step forward and face the spokesman deputed to wish us Bon voyage and recovery of health in our old home. Mr. Farmer said this felicitously, and with genuine feeling. Then he asked the pastor's acceptance of a parcel "containing reading-matter for the journey."

        The reading-matter was bank-bills, the amount of which made us open our eyes wide when the company had dispersed and we undid the ribbons binding the "literature."

        That was their way of doing things in the "Old First." A way they never lost. In a dozen-and-a-half years we should have become used to it, but we never did. Each

new manifestation of the esteem in which they held their leader, and of the royally generous spirit that interfused the whole church, as it might the body and soul of one man, remained to the last a fresh and delicious surprise.

        Ten days out of the six weeks of our vacation were spent in Charlotte. Mr. Terhune's successor was Rev. Henry C. Alexander, one of a family of notable divines whose praise is in all the Presbyterian churches. He was a bachelor, and the "nest among the oaks" was rented to an acquaintance. I did not enter it then, or ever again. I even looked the other way when we drove or walked past the gate and grove. To let this weakness be seen would have been ungracious, in the face of the hospitalities enlapping us during every hour of our stay. We dined with one family, supped with another, spent the night and breakfasted with a third, and there was ever a houseful of old friends to meet us. My husband wrote to his father:

        "Swinging around the circle at a rate that would turn steadier heads. And talk of the fat of the land and groaning tables! These tables fairly shriek, and the fat flows like a river Heaven send we may live through it! We like it, all the same!"

        And enjoyed every hour, albeit senses less agreeably preoccupied might have detected the smell of gunpowder in the air.

        I am often asked if we were not uneasy for the safety of the Union, while in the thick of sectional wordy strife, and how it was possible to enjoy visits when much of the talk must have jarred upon the sensibilities of loyal lovers of that Union.

        The truth is that I had been used to political wrangling from my youth up. The fact that South Carolina and six other States had seceded in name from the control of the

Federal government; that, in every county and "Cross-Roads" hamlet, from the Gulf of Mexico to Chesapeake Bay, bands of volunteers were drilling daily and nightly and that cargoes of arms were arriving from the North and in distribution among the enlisted militiamen; that the Southern papers sounded the tocsin of war to the death and "Death in the last ditch!" and "Down with the Yankees!" with every red-hot issue; that a convention had been solemnly summoned to meet in Richmond to decide upon the action of the Old Dominion at the supreme moment of the nation's destiny - weighed marvellously little against the settled conviction, well-nigh sublime in its fatuousness, that the right must prevail, and that such furious folly must die ignominiously before the steadfast front maintained by the Union men of the infected section.

        To my apprehension, so much that we heard was sheer gasconade, amusing for a time from its very unreason and illogical conclusions, and often indicative of such blatant ignorance of the spirit and the resources of the Federal government, that I failed to attach to it the importance the magnitude of the mischief deserved to have.

        I refused stubbornly to let the clear joy of my holiday be clouded by the smoke from blank cartridges. So light was my spirit that I made capital for fun of bombastic threats and gloomy predictions, touching the stabling of Confederate cavalry in Faneuil Hall inside of three months from the day of the inauguration of the "Springfield Ape" at Washington. The Vice-President was a full-blooded negro, or, at the least, a mulatto, I was assured over and over. Wasn't his name damning evidence of the disgraceful fact? What white man ever called his child "Hannibal"?

        I supplied other confirmation to one fiery orator:

        " 'Ham-lin' sounds suspicious, too. I wonder you have not thought of the color that gives to your theory."

        The youth foamed at the mouth. He wore a Secession cockade on his breast, and proved, to a demonstration, that any Southerner over fourteen years old was equal, on the battle-field, to five Yankees. Why not seven, I could never ascertain.

        Such funny things were happening hourly, and such funnier things were said every minute, that I was in what we used to call, when I was a child, "a continual gale."

        Let one bit of nonsense illustrate the frivolity that, in the retrospect, resembles the pas seul of a child on the edge of a reeking crater.

        I was summoned to the drawing-room, one forenoon, to receive a call from the son of an old friend who had promised his mother to look me up, in passing through the city on his way to the "Republic of South Carolina." That was the letter-head of epistles received from the Palmetto State.

        In descending the stairs, I heard the scamper of small boots over the floor of the square, central hall, and caught the flash of golden curls through the arched doorway leading into the narrower passage at the rear of the house. Knowing the infinite capacity of my son for ingenious mischief, I stayed my progress to the parlor, and looked about for some hint as to the nature of the present adventure. Sofa and chairs were in place, as was the mahogany table at the far corner. On this was a silver tray, and on the tray the pitcher of iced water, which was a fixture the year through. Two tumblers flanked it on one side, and my visitor had set on the other the sleekest tall silk hat I had ever seen outside of a shop window. There was absolutely no rational association of ideas between the iced water-pitcher and that stunning specimen of headgear. Yet I glanced into the depths of both. One was half-full; the other was empty. Clutching the desecrated hat wildly, I sped to the sitting-room. "Oh, mother,

what is to be done? Eddie has emptied the water-pitcher into William M.'s hat!"

        Whereupon, that gentlest, yet finest, of disciplinarians, who would have sent one of her own bairns to bed in the middle of the day, for an offence one-tenth as flagrant, dropped her sewing on her lap and went off into a speechless convulsion of laughter. A chuckle of intense delight from behind her rocking-chair, and a glimpse of dancing blue eyes under her elbow, put the finishing touches to a scene so discreditable to grandmotherly ideas of domestic management, that the family refused to believe the story told at the supper-table, when the culprit was safe in his crib.

        Leaving the dishonored "tile" to the merciful manipulations of the laundress, who begged me to "keep the pore young gentleman a-talkin' 'tell she could dry it at the fire," I went to meet the unsuspecting victim.

        It was not difficult to keep him talking, when once he was launched upon the topic paramount in the mind of what he denominated as "every truly loyal and chivalrous Son of the South." He had a plan of campaign so well concerted and so thoroughly digested, that it could have but one culmination.

        "But why Faneuil Hall ?" I demurred, plaintively. "You are the sixth man who has informed me that your cavalry are to tie and feed their horses there. Why not the City Hall in New York? There must be stable-room short of Boston."

        He flushed brick-red.

        "It is no laughing matter to us who have been ground down so long under the iron heels of Yankee mud-sills!"

        I found his mixed metaphors so diverting that I was near forgetting the ruined head-piece, and the inexorable necessity of confession.

        Sobering under the thought, I let him go on, lending but half an ear, yet, in seeming, bowed by the weight of his discourse. Moved by my mournful silence, he stopped midway.

        "I beg your pardon if my feelings and patriotism have carried me too far. I own that I am hot-headed - "

        Another such chance would not come in a life-time. I broke his sentence short.

        "Oh, I am glad to know that! For my boy has filled your hat with iced water!"

        Eheu! That night's supper was the last merry meal the old home was to know for many a long month and year. For, by breakfast-time next day, the news had come of the bombardment of Fort Sumter, and men's hearts were hot within them, and women's hearts were failing them for fear of battle, murder, and sudden death to sons, husbands, and brothers.

        One might have fancied that a visible pall hung over the city, so universal and deep was the agony of suspense.

        While the recollection of suspense and agony was fresh in my mind, I wrote of the awful awakening from my fool's paradise of incredulity and levity:

        "For two days, the air was thick with rumors of war and bloodshed. For two days, the eyes and thoughts of the nation were fixed upon that fire-girt Southern island, with its brave but feeble garrison - the representative of that nation's majesty - testifying, in the defiant boom of every cannon's answer to the rebel bombardment, that resistance to armed treason is henceforward to be learned as one of the nation's laws. For two days, thousands and hundreds of thousands of loyal hearts all over this broad land, cried mightily unto our country's God to avert this last and direst trial - the humiliation of our Flag by hands that once helped to rear it in the sight of the world, as the ensign of national faith. And under the whole expanse of heaven, there was no answer to those prayers, except the reverberation of the cruel guns.

        "On Saturday, April 14th, the End came!"

XXXVIII

THE FOURTEENTH OF APRIL, 1861, IN
RICHMOND

        WE had planned to leave Richmond for home on Tuesday afternoon. At noon on Saturday, my husband asked me if I would not like to prolong my stay with my relatives, adding significantly:

        "We do not know how long it may be before you can get South again. There is thunder in the air."

        I looked up from the letter I was writing to Newark:

        "Thunder - alone - is harmless. I take no stock in gasconade that is only thunder. And if trouble is coming it is clear that our place is not here."

        The letter-writing went on not uncheerfully. Far down in my soul was the belief that a peaceful issue must be in store for the land beloved of the Lord. Were we not brethren? When brought, face to face, with the fact that brothers' hands must be dipped in brothers' blood, reaction was inevitable.

        So foolish was I, and ignorant of the excesses to which sectional fury can carry individuals and nations.

        I was in my room, getting ready for our last walk among scenes endeared to us by thousands of associations, my husband standing by, hat in hand, when a terrific report split the brooding air and rent the very heavens. Another and another followed. We stood transfixed, without motion or speech, until we counted, silently, seven.

        It was the number of the seceding States! As if pandemonium had waited for the seventh boom to die sullenly

away among the hills, the pause succeeding the echo was ended by an outburst of yells, cheers, and screams that beggars description. The streets in our quiet quarter were alive with men, women, and children. Fire-crackers, pistols and guns were discharged into the throbbing air.

        "The fort has fallen!" broke in one breath from our lips. And simultaneously: "The Lord have mercy upon the country!"

        We ran down-stairs and into the street.

        My sister "Mea" was upon the front porch, and the steps were thronged by children and servants, wild with curiosity.

        I have not mentioned that my sister had married, two years before, Mr. John Miller, a Scotchman by birth. He was much liked and respected by us all, and it spoke volumes for his breeding and the genuine good feeling prevailing among us, that although he was the only "original secessionist" in our household band, our cordial relations remained unbroken in spite of the many political arguments we had had with him.

        aloft her baby boy, a pretty year-old, in her arms. A Secession cockade was pinned upon his breast; in his chubby hand he flourished a rebel flag, and he laughed down into her radiant face.

        We feigned not to see them as we hurried past. But a gulf seemed to open at my feet. As in a baleful dream, I comprehended, in the sick whirl of conflicting sensations, what Rebellion, active and in arms, would mean in hundreds of homes on both sides of the border.

        "Is the world going mad?" muttered my husband, between his teeth, and I knew that the same horror was present with him.

        Secession flags blossomed in windows and from roofs; were waved from doors and porches by girls and women; were shaken in mad exultation by boys on the sidewalks; hung upon lamp-posts, and were stretched from side to

side of the street. It was like the magical upspringing baneful fungi. Where had they all come from? And at what infernal behest had they leaped into being?

        The living stream poured toward the Capitol Square, and it swept us with it. The grounds were filled with tumultuous crowd. Upon the southern terrace was the park of artillery that had fired the salute of seven guns. As we entered the upper gate a long procession of men issued from the western door of the Capitol, and descended the steps.

        "The convention has adjourned for the day," remarked Mr. Terhune. We were at the base of the Washington monument, and he drew me up on the lower step of the base to avoid the press.

        The delegates streamed by us in groups; some striding in excited haste; talking gleefully, and gesticulating wildly. Others were grave and slow, silent, or deep in low-toned conversation; others yet - and these were marked men already - walked with bent heads, and faces set in wordless sadness. One of these, recognizing Mr. Terhune, approached us, and with a brief apology to me, drew him a few paces apart.

        Three years before, I had seen the ceremonies by which this monument - Crawford's finest work in marble - was uncovered and dedicated. On the next day, Mr. Everett had repeated his oration on Washington in the Richmond theatre. The silver-tongued orator had joined hands, then and there, with Tyler, Wise, and Yancey, in proclaiming the unity of the nation. General Scott had sat in the centre of the stage, like a hoary keystone in the semi-circle of honorable men and counsellors.

        Was it all a farce, even then, this talk of brotherhood and patriotism? And of what avail were wisdom and diplomacy and the multitude of counsels, if this were to be the end?

        I was saying it to myself in disgustful bewilderment, when the crowd cheered itself mad over a fresh demonstration of popular passion. The rebel flag had been run up from the peak of the Capitol roof!

        My husband came back to me instantly. He was pale, and the lines of his mouth were tense.

        "Let us get out of this!" he said. "I cannot breathe!"

        On the way to Gamble's Hill - a long-loved walk with us - I heard how Sumter had fallen. We were not hopeless, yet, as to the final outcome of the tragical complication that had turned the heads of the populace. The outrage offered the Flag of our common country must open the eyes of true men, and all who had one spark of patriotism left in their souls. We could have no longer any doubt as to the real animus of the Rebellion. One thing was certain: To-day's work would decide the question for Virginia. She could not hang back now.

        Thus reasoning, we took our last look of the lovely panorama of river, islets, and hills; of the city of the dead - beautiful in wooded heights and streams and peaceful valleys, on our right - while on the left was the city of the living, noble and fair, and, in the distance, now as silent as Hollywood.

        My companion lifted his arm abruptly and pointed northward.

        A long, low line of cloud hung on the horizon - dun, with brassy edges - sullen and dense, save where a rainbow, vivid with emerald, rose-color, and gold, spanned the murky vapor.

        "Fair weather cometh out of the North," uttered the resolute optimist. "With the Lord is terrible majesty. After all, He is omnipotent. We will hope on!"

        We were measurably cheered on our way back to the heart of the city by the sight of the Flag of Virginia flying serenely from the staff where had flaunted the Stars and

Bars, an hour ago. At supper, my father related with gusto how a deputation of Secessionists had waited on the Governor to offer congratulations upon the Confederate victory. How he had received them but sourly, being, as the deputation should have known, an "inveterate Unionist." When felicitated upon the result of the siege, he returned that he "did not consider it a matter for any compliments." At that instant he caught sight of the flag hoisted to the roof of the Capitol, demanded by whose order it was done, and straightway commanded it to be hauled down and the State flag, usually sported when the Legislature was in session, to be run up in its stead.

        "Governor Letcher has a rough tongue when he chooses to use it," commented my father. "He is honest, through and through."

        The talk of the evening could run in but one channel. Our nerves were keyed up to the highest tension, and the day's events had gone deep into mind and heart. Two or three visitors dropped in, and both sides of the Great Controversy were brought forward, temperately, but with force born of conviction. If I go somewhat into the details of the conversation, it is because I would make clear the truth that each party in the struggle we feared might be imminent, believed honestly that justice and right were at the foundation of his faith. I wrote down the substance of the memorable discussion, as I recorded and published other incidents of the ever-to-be-remembered era, while the history of it was still in the making. I am, then, sure that I give the story correctly.

        John Miller opened the ball by "hoping that the North was now convinced that the South was in earnest in maintaining her rights."

        I liked my Scotch brother-in-law, and we bandied jests safely and often. But it irked me that we should have a

Secessionist in a loyal family, and I retorted flippantly, lest I should betray the underlying feeling:

        "There has been no madness equal to Secession since the swine ran violently down a steep place into the sea. The choking in the waves will come later."

        "Let wise men stand from under!" he retorted, smiling good-humoredly. "As to the choking, that may not be such an easy job as you think."

        A visitor took up the word, and seriously:

        "The dissatisfaction of the South is no new thing. It is as old as the Constitution itself. John Randolph said of it: 'I saw what Washington did not see. Two other men in Virginia saw it - the poison under its wings.' Grayson, another far-sighted statesman, prophesied just what has come to pass. He said of the consolidation policy taught in the Constitution: 'It will, in operation, be found unequal, grievous, and oppressive.' He foresaw that the manufacturer of the North would dominate the agriculturist of the South; that there would be burdensome taxation without adequate representation; in short, that there would be numberless encroachments of the North upon the prerogatives of the Southern slaveholder."

        "He said nothing of the manifest injustice in a republic, of the election of a candidate by the votes of a petty faction, dominant for the time, because the other party split and ran several men?"

        This was said by a young man who had not spoken until then.

        My father replied: "Suppose Breckenridge had been elected? Would that have been the triumph of a faction?"

        "Circumstances alter cases," said my brother Horace, dryly.

        Everybody laughed, except the man who had quoted Grayson and Randolph.

        "It is not easy for the Mother of Presidents to submit

to the rule of those whom, as Job says, they would have scorned to put with their cattle," he said, with temper.

        I saw the blue fire in my husband's eyes before he spoke; but his voice was even and full; every sentence was studiedly calm.

        "For more than seventy years, the South has prospered under the Constitution, which, according to the renowned authorities cited just now, had poison under its wings. Hers have been the chief places in our national councils and the most lucrative offices in the gift of the government. It is her boast, if we are to believe what this one of your leading papers says" - unfolding and reading from the editorial page - "that 'since the organization of the Union she has held the balance of power - as it is her right to do - her citizens being socially, morally, and intellectually superior to those of the North.' "

        My father filliped his cigar ash into the fire.

        "Now you are improvising?"

        "Not a word! Our editor goes on to say further: 'Our whilom servants have lately strangely forgotten their places. They now aspire to an equal share in the administration of the government. They have presumed to elect from their own ranks an illiterate, base-born, sectional tool, whom they rely upon to do their foul work of subverting our sovereignty. It is high time the real masters awoke from their fatal lethargy, and forced their insubordinate hinds to stand once more, cap in hand, at their behest.' "

        The stump of my father's cigar followed the ash.

        "Come, come, my dear boy! it isn't fair to take the ravings of one fool as the sentiment of the section in which that stuff is printed. I could quote talk, as intemperate and incendiary, from your Northern papers. You wouldn't have us suppose that you and other sane voters indorse them?"

        "I grant what you say, sir. And, as I long ago affirmed, the shortest and best way to put out the fire that threatens the integrity of the government, would be to muzzle every political ranter in the country, and suppress every newspaper for six months. The conflagration would die for want of fuel."

        My mother interposed here:

        "Good people, don't you think there is 'somewhat too much of this'? I, for one, refuse to believe that anything but smoke will come of the alarm that is frightening weak brothers out of their wits. The good Ship of State will 'sail on, strong and great,' when our children's children are in their graves."

        She changed the current of talk, but not of thought. After the rest had gone, there lingered a young fellow whose case was so striking an example of a host of others, who were forced into the forefront of the battle, that I take leave to relate it.

        He still lives, an honored citizen of the State he loved as a son loves the mother who bore and nursed him. Therefore I shall not use his real name. Eric S., as I shall call him, was an intimate friend of my brother Herbert, and as much at home in our house as if he were, in very deed, one of the blood and name. He had visited us in Newark, and made warm friends there, during the past year. Mr. Terhune had had long and serious consultations with him since we came to Virginia, and, within a few days, as the war-cloud took form, had urged him to accompany us to New Jersey, or, at least, to promise to come to us should hostilities actually begin between the two sections. The lad (scarcely twenty-one) was an ardent Unionist, and, although a member of a crack volunteer company in Richmond, had declared to us that nothing would ever induce him to bear arms under the Rebel government. Mea and her spouse went up-stairs early, and the rest of us were in

hearty sympathy with our guest. He had not taken an active share in the discussion, and his distrait manner and sober face prepared us, in part, for the disclosure that followed the departure of the others.

        He had been credibly and confidentially informed that a mighty pressure would be brought to bear upon the convention, at their next sitting, to force the Ordinance of Secession. If it were carried, by fair means or foul, every man who could bear arms would be called into the field.

        While he talked, the boy stood against the mantel - erect lithe, and handsome - the typical mother's and sister's darling, yet manly in every look and lineament. The thought tore through my imagination while I looked at him:

        "And it is material like this that will go to feed the maw of War! - such flesh and blood as his that will be mangled by bullet and shell!"

        I had never had the ghastly reality brought so near to me until that moment.

        "Oh-h!" I shuddered. "You won't stay to be shot at like a mad dog!"

        The first bright smile that had lighted his face was on it. "It isn't being shot at that I am thinking of." The gleam faded suddenly. "I don't think I am a coward. It doesn't run in the blood. But" - flinging out his arm with a passionate gesture that said more than his words - "I think that would be paralyzed if I were to lift it against the dear old flag!"

        Before he left it was agreed privately, between him and my husband, that he would try his fortune on the other side of Mason and Dixon's line, should the axe fall that would sever Virginia from the Union her sons had been mainly instrumental in creating.

        Sunday came and went. Such a strange, sad Sunday as it was! with the marked omission, in every pulpit of

the prayer for the President of the United States and others in authority; with scanty congregations in the churches, and growing throngs of excited talkers at the street corners, and knots of dark-browed men in hotel lobbies, and the porches of private houses.

        In the length and breadth of the town but one Union flag was visible. Nicholas Mills, a wealthy citizen of high character and fearless temper, defied public opinion and risked popular wrath, by keeping a superb flag flying at the head of a tall staff in his garden on Leigh Street. We went out of our way, in returning from afternoon service, to refresh eyes and spirits with the sight.

        On Monday, the mutterings of rebellion waxed into a roar of angry revolt over the published proclamation of the President, calling for an army of seventy-five thousand men to quell the insurrection. The quota from Virginia was, I think, five thousand.

        "A fatal blunder!" said my father, in stern disapproval.

        My husband's answer was prompt:

        "To omit her name from the roll would be an accusation of disloyalty."

        The senior shook his head.

        "It may have been a choice of evils. I hope he has chosen the less! But I doubt it! I doubt it!"

        So might Eli have looked and spoken when his heart trembled for the ark of the Lord.

        That afternoon, the flagstaff in the Mills garden was empty. The Stars and Stripes were banned as an unholy ensign.

        Eric S. paid us a flying visit that evening. His parents urged his going. The father was especially anxious that he should not risk the probability of impressment, and, should he refuse to serve, of imprisonment. Already Union men were regarded with suspicion. The exodus of the disaffected could not be long delayed. He had influential

family connections at the North who would see to it that he found occupation. When we parted that night, it was with a definite understanding that he would be our travelling companion.

        Tuesday noon, he appeared, haggard and well-nigh desperate. Going, like the honorable gentleman he was, to the Colonel of his regiment early in the day, to tender his resignation and declare his intentions, he was stricken by the news that the State had seceded in secret session Monday night.

        Whereupon the Colonel had offered the services of his regiment to the authorities of the Confederate States. They were accepted.

        "You are now in the Confederate army," added the superior officer, "and, from present indications, we will not be idle long."

        "But," stammered the stunned subaltern, "I am going North this very afternoon with friends, and I shall not consent to serve."

        "If you attempt to leave, you will be reckoned as a deserter from the regular army, and dealt with accordingly."

        I do not attempt to estimate what proportion of men, who would have remained loyal to flag and government if they could, were coerced, or cajoled, into bearing arms under a government they abhorred. I tell the plain facts in the instance before me.

        Eric S. fought in fifteen general engagements, and came out with his life when the cruel war was over. He told with deep satisfaction, in after-years, that he had never worn the Confederate uniform, but always that of his own regiment.

        It is easy for us to prate, at this distance from those times of trial to brave men's souls, of the high and sacred duty of living and, if need be, of dying for the right. From our

standpoint, it is as clear as the noonday sun, that allegiance to the general government should outrank allegiance to the State in which one has chanced to be born and to live. We have had an awful object-lesson in the study of that creed since the day when the Virginian, who saw his native State invaded, believed that he had no alternative but to "strike for his altars and his fires."

        Upon the gallant fellows who, seeing this, and no further, risked their lives unto the death, fell the penalty of the demagogues' sin.

        We may surely lay the blame where it belongs.

XXXIX

THE LAST THROUGH TRAIN FOR FOUR YEARS"

        I COPY in substance, and sometimes verbatim, the account written in 1861, and published later, of our journey northward in the last train that went through to Washington before the outbreak of hostilities.

        I preface the narrative by saying that, by the merciful provision of the Divine Father, Who will not try us beyond our strength, we, one and all, kept up to our own hearts the sanguine incredulity in the possibility of the worst coming to pass, which was characteristic of Union lovers at the South, up to the battle of Manassas.

        After that, the scales fell from all eyes. Had not my mother hoped confidently that the war-cloud would blow over, and that, before long, she would not have allowed Alice to go back to Newark with us? My place was with my husband, but this young daughter she had the right to keep with her.

        Had I not hoped for a peaceful solution of the national problem, if only through the awakening of the fraternal love of those whose fathers had fought, shoulder to shoulder, to wrest their country from a common oppressor, I could not have said "Good-bye" smilingly to home and kindred. When I said to my mother: "We shall have you with us at the seashore, this summer," it was not in bravado, to cheat her into belief in my cheerfulness

        Our party of Mr. Terhune, Alice, our boy and baby Christine, with their nurse and myself, was comfortably

bestowed in the train that was to meet the boat at Acquia Creek. Luggage and luncheon were looked after as seddously as if there were no superior interest in our minds. The very commonplaceness of the details of getting ready and sending us off, exactly as had been done, time and time again, were in themselves heartening. What had been, would be. To-morrow should be as to-day.

        When we and our appurtenances were comfortably bestowed in the ladies' car (there were no parlor cars or sleepers, as yet), I had leisure to note what was passing without. The scene should be that which always attends the departure of a passenger train from a provincial city. Yet I felt, at once, that there was a difference.

        I noticed, and not without an undefined sense of uneasiness, the unusual number of strollers that lounged up and down the sidewalks, and loitered about the train, and that some of these were evidently listening to the guarded subtones to which the voices of all - even the rudest of the loungers - were modulated. With this shade of uneasiness there stole upon me a strange, indescribable sense of the unreality of all that I saw and heard. The familiar streets and houses were seen, as through the bewildering vapors of a dream; men and women glided by like phantoms, and there was a shimmer of red-and-orange light in the air - the reflection of the glowing west - that was vague and dazing, not dazzling.

        The train slid away from the station. My father and my brother Horace lifted their hats to us from the pavement; we held the children up to the open window to kiss their hands to them; I leaned forward for one last, fond look into the dear eyes, and our journey had begun.

        Not a word was exchanged between the members of our party, while we rumbled slowly up Broad Street toward the open country.

        I was unaccountably indisposed to talk, and this feeling seemed to pervade the company of passengers. The dreamy haze enveloped me again. The car was very full and very quiet. The languorous hues of the west swooned into twilight, and here and there a star peeped through the gray veil of the sky.

        We had cleared the city limits, and the blending of daylight and the falling darkness were most confusing to the eye, when I became aware that the train was slowing up where there was no sign of a switch or "turn-out." If it actually halted, it was but for a second, just long enough to enable two men, standing close to the track, to board the train. They entered our car, and my husband pressed my arm as they passed down the aisle to seats diagonally opposite to us.

        Under cover of the rattle and roar of the speeding train, he told me presently - after cautioning me not to glance in their direction - that they were Messrs. Carlisle and Dent - well known to visitors to the convention as most prominent among the leaders of the Union party.

        On through the gathering gloom rolled the ponderous train - the only moving thing abroad, on that enchanted night. Within it there was none of the hum of social intercourse one might have expected in the circumstances. Adult passengers were not drowsy, for every figure was upright, and the few faces, dimly visible in the low light of the lamps overhead, were wakeful - one might have imagined, watchful. I learned subsequently that the insufficient light was purposely contrived by conductor and brakemen, and why. But for the touch of my husbands hand, laid in sympathy or reassurance upon mine, and the sight of my babies, sleeping peacefully - one in the nurse's arms, the other on the seat beside her, his head in her lap - I might have believed the weird light within, the

darkness without, and the motionless shapes and saddened faces about me, accessories to the fantasy that gained steadily upon me.

        The spell was broken rudely - terribly - at Fredericksburg. We steamed right into the heart of a crowd, assembled to await the arrival of the train, which halted there for wood and water. It was a tumultuous throng, and evidently drawn thither with a purpose understood by all. The babel of queries and exclamations smote the breezeless night-air like a hail-storm. It was apparent that the railway officials returned curt and unsatisfactory replies, for the noise gathered volume, and uncomplimentary expletives flew freely. All at once, a rush was made in the direction of the ladies' car. Eager and angry visages, dusky in shadow, or ruddied by torch-light, were pressed against closed windows, and thrust impudently into the few that were open.

        "Three cheers for the Southern Confederacy!" yelled stentorian tones.

        Three-times-three roars of triumph deafened us.

        "Three cheers for Jefferson Davis - the savior of Southern liberties!" shouted the fugleman.

        Again a burst of frenzied acclamation that made the windows rattle.

        I could see the leader of the riot - a big fellow who stood close to our window. He was bareheaded, and he rested one hand on the side of the car, swinging his hat with the other, far above his head.

        "Three groans for Carlisle!"

        Nothing else that has ever pained my ears has given me the impression of brute ferocity that stopped the beating of my heart for one awful moment.

        From the mob went up a responsive bellow of execration and derision.

        "All aboard!" shouted conductor and trainmen.

        The hoarse call and the shriek of the engine were welcome music to the travellers.

        My husband's eyes met mine.

        "What Eric S. told us was then true," he said, without forming the words with his lips. "Virginia has joined her sisters. And the people have got hold of the news. Are they blind, not to see that their State will be the battle-ground, if war should be declared?"

        How dearly and for how long she was to pay for her blindness, let the history of the next four years say!

        Leaving the boat at Washington, we were conveyed by stages across the city to the Baltimore station. It was two o'clock in the spring morning, when we passed the Capitol. It was lighted from basement to roof, but, to passers-by, as still as a tomb. Nothing had brought home to us the fact and the imminence of the peril to our national existence, as did the sight of that lighted pile. For, as we had been informed, it was filled with armed men, on guard against surprise or open attack. On the train, we heard how troops had been hurried from all quarters of the still loyal States into Washington. The war was on!

        Full appreciation of what the Great Awakening was, and what it portended, came to us in Philadelphia. I had not known there was so much bunting on this side of the Atlantic as fluttered in the breeze in the city of staid homes and brotherly loves. It was a veritable bourgeoning of patriotism. From church-spires; from shop-windows; from stately dwellings, and from the lowliest house in the meanest street - they

                        "All uttered forth a glorious voice."

        Successful rebellion seemed an impossibility in the face of the demonstration.

        Every village, town, and farm-house along the route proclaimed the same thing. So convinced were we that

the mere knowledge of the strength and unity of the North, East, and West would carry conviction to the minds of the led, and strike terror to the hearts of the leaders in the gigantic Treason, that we rallied marvellously the spirits which had flagged last night.

        The train ran into Newark at eight o'clock that evening. By the time it stopped, we had a glimpse of familiar and anxious faces. We stepped off into the arms of four of our parishioners, all on the alert for the first sight of the man of their hour. They received us as they might welcome friends rescued from great and sore perils.

        Carriage and baggage-wagon were waiting. We were tucked into our seats tenderly, and with what would have been exaggerated solicitude in men less single of heart and motive.

        "But you knew that we would surely come back?" I said to Mr. Farmer, at the third repetition of his - "Thank Heaven you are here!"

        The quartette of heads wagged gravely.

        "We knew you would, if you could get here. But there is no telling what may not happen in these times."

        Their thanksgivings were echoed by ourselves, when, that very week, a Massachusetts regiment, en route for Washington, was assailed by a Baltimore mob, several killed and more wounded, and the railway tracks torn up, to prevent the progress of troops to the national capital.

        We laughed a little, and were much moved to see a handsome flag projecting from a second-story window of our house, as we alighted at the door. It was a mute token of confidence in our loyalty. Smiles and softness chased each other when the proud cook, left in charge during our absence, related how the "beautiful supper," smoking hot, and redolent of all manner of appetizing viands, was the gift of two neighbors, and that pantry and larder

were "just packed full" of useful and dainty edibles and brought by ladies who had forbidden her to tell their names.

        Thus began the four years of separation from my early home and those who had hallowed it for all time. That eventful journey was the dividing line between the Old Time and the New. With it, also dawned apprehension of the gracious dealings of the All-wise and All-merciful with us - His ignorant, and ofttimes captious, children. It would have been impossible for my husband, with his staunch principles of fidelity to the government, and uncompromising adherence to what he believed to be the right in the lamentable sectional strife, to remain in the seceding State. Dearly as he loved Virginia - and romantic and tender as was his attachment to the brave old days that were to him the poetry of domestic and social life - he must have severed his connection with a parish in which he would have been accounted a "suspect." Before the storm broke, we were gently lifted out of the "nest among the oaks" and established, as tenderly, in the "pleasant places" the Father - not we - had chosen.

XL

DOMESTIC SORROWS AND NATIONAL STORM AND STRESS -
FRIENDS, TRIED AND TRUE

        WE were to need all the fulness of consolation that could be expressed from divine grace and human friendships, in the years immediately succeeding the events recorded in the last chapter.

        The Muse of American History has set a bloody and fire-blackened cross against 1861. To us, it was darkened, through three-quarters of its weary length, by the shadows of graves. One death after another among the friends to whom we clung the more gratefully, because of the gulf - fast filling with blood - that parted us from kindred and early companions, followed our home-coming. In the last week of August, my husband recorded, in his pastor's notebook, that he had stood, in fourteen weeks, at the open graves of as many parishioners, among them some who had been most forward in welcoming him to his new field, and most faithful in their support of him in it.

        "It is literally walking in the valley of the shadow of death!" he sighed, closing the melancholy pages. "I ask myself tremblingly, after each funeral - Who next?"

        At noon on September second - the fifth anniversary of our wedding day - our boy came home from a drive with his father, feverish and drowsy, and fell asleep in my arms. On the fourteenth of the same month, he was folded in an embrace, yet more fond and safe, beyond the touch of mortal sorrow.

        My bonnie, bonnie boy! who had never had a day's illness until he was stricken by that from which there was no recovery! Diphtheria was comparatively new at that time, even to the able physician who was our devoted personal friend. The boy faded before it, as a lily in drought. Four days before he left us, his baby sister was smitten by the same disease. Two days after the funeral, their father fell ill with it. Why neither Alice, I, nor the faithful nurse who assisted us in the care of the three patients, did not take the infection is a mystery. There were no quarantine regulations to prevent the spread of what is now recognized as one of the most virulent of epidemics. We took absolutely no precautions; friends flocked to us as freely as if there were no danger. Our fearlessness may have been a catholicon. We nursed the sufferers back to health, and, looking to God for strength, took our places again in the ranks.

        Such a trite, every-day story as it is! To the soul for which the task is set, it is as novel and crucial as death itself. It is not the young mother who finds comfort and tonic in the inspired assurance:

                        "For while we bear it, we can bear;
                        Past that - we lay it down!"

        For four months, we had not a letter from Richmond. The cordon was drawn closely about the chief seat of the Rebellion - now the capital of the Confederacy. It was hard to smuggle private letters through the lines. We wrote by every possible opportunity, and were certain that my family were as watchful of chances, likely and improbable. At Christmas, we had a packet that had been run through by way of Kentucky, by a man who wrote to say that he had been ill in a Richmond hospital and received great kindness from my mother. When he was well enough to rejoin his regiment, he had offered to get

her letters to me, if it were in the power of man to do it. His plan, he said, was to entrust the parcel to a trusty negro, who would swim the Ohio River on horseback at a point where the stream was narrow, and post letters on the other side. If I should receive them, I might know that he had fulfilled his pledge to my mother. If I did not get them, I would never know how hard he had tried to keep his word.

        I have often wondered if he received the answers we dispatched to the post-office from which our precious letters were mailed. I never heard from him again.

        Home-bulletins brought the news of the death of my stern old grandmother at the advanced age of eighty-four. She had never given her sanction to the war, disapproving of military operations with the whole might of her rugged nature. On a certain Sunday in June, news was brought by fast express, while the people were in church, that the war-vessel Pawnee was on its way up the river to bombard the town. Owing to the old lady's deafness, she did not fully comprehend why the services were closed summarily, and the streets were too full of people hurrying to and fro, for my father to explain the state of affairs on the way home. On the front steps they met my brother Horace in the uniform of the Richmond Howitzers, to which he belonged. They had been ordered summarily to repair to the point from which the expected attack was to be repelled. A few hasty sentences put her into possession of leading facts; the boy kissed her; shook hands with his father, and ran down the street.

        The old Massachusetts dame, whose father and husband had fought in the Revolutionary War, stood still and looked after him until he was out of sight.

        He was her favorite of the boys - we fancied because he resembled the Edwin she had wished to adopt, and who died in her arms.

        The lad she followed with puzzled and griefful eyes was of a goodly presence, and never goodlier than in his uniform. Did she bethink herself of the probability that she might never see him again? What she thought, and what she felt, will never be known. When my father addressed her, she gazed at him with uncomprehending eyes, turned and walked feebly up the stairs.

        "I am afraid mother is not well," said my father to my mother, after they had talked a few minutes of the alarm and Horace's departure. "She looked shaken by the boy's going. Will you go up and look after her?"

        She had undressed and gone to bed. She had taken her seat in church that morning, a fine-looking dame of the old school; erect and strong; alert of wits and firm of purpose. My mother looked into the face of a shrunken, dull-eyed crone, who asked, in quavering accents, "Who she was, and what was her business?" Then she began to moan and beg to be taken "home." That was her cry, whenever she spoke at all, all summer long. But once did she quit her bed. That was when the nurse left her, as they supposed, sleeping, and discovered her half an hour later, fumbling at the lock of the front door, and in her nightgown. She "wanted to go home! she would go home!" She went on September 5th, while we, hundreds of miles away, were watching over our sick boy.

        "The war killed off most of our old people," said an ex-Confederate officer once to me. "Almost as many died of sheer brokenheartedness, as on the battle-field! That's an account somebody has got to settle some day, if there is any justice in heaven."

        In the autumn of 1862, the state of my sister Alice's health demanded a change of climate so imperatively that we had no option in the consideration of the emergency Her throat was seriously affected; she had not spoken above a whisper for six months. To keep her in Newark

for another winter was not to be thought of. Our parents were writing by every available flag of truce strenuous orders that she should "come home." In early October, Mr. Terhune took her down to an obscure village in Maryland directly upon Chesapeake Bay. It was, in fact, a smuggling-station, from which merchandise of various sorts was ferried into Virginia, in direct violation of embargo laws. Southern sympathizers, whom loyalists were beginning to brand as "Copperheads" - a name that stuck fast to them throughout the war - ran the enterprise and profited by it. Through one of these, information sifted to us of which we made use. When necessity drives, it will not do to be fastidious as to instruments that will save us.

        At dead of night my young sister was put into a boat, warmly wrapped from the river-fogs, and, in charge of a Richmond gentleman who was returning home, sent across the unlicensed ferry. Her father awaited her on the other shore. A mile above and a mile below, lurid gleams, like the eyes of river-monsters watching for their prey, showed where United States gunboats lay in midstream to intercept unlawful commerce and to arrest offenders. My husband did not impart to me the details of the adventure until we had heard of the child's restoration to her father's arms. Then he told of the fearful anxiety with which he waited on the Maryland shore, under starless skies, scanning the menacing lights up and down the river, and straining his ears for the ripple against the sides of the boat making its way, cautiously, with muffled oars, across the watery track. To deflect from the viewless course would be to awaken the sleeping dogs of war. The lonely watcher feared every minute to see from either of the gunboats a flash of fire, followed by the boom of a cannon, signalling the discovery of the attempt to evade the embargo.

        "The dreariest vigil imaginable!" he said. "I stayed

there for two hours, until I was sure the boat must have made the landing. Had it been intercepted, I should have seen some change in the position of those red eyes and heard a shot."

        Before she embarked he had given the fugitive a self- addressed envelope enclosing a card, on which was written "Arrived safely." She pencilled below - "Alice," and sent it back by the boatman. It was a week old when he got it and creased and soiled by much handling.

        Then fell silence, that was felt every waking hour, and lasted for four long months. On the first day of February, my husband being absent from home, I walked down to the city post-office with Mrs. Greenleaf, my eldest sister-in-law, who was visiting us, and took from our box a thin letter addressed in my mother's hand, and stamped "FLAG OF TRUCE."

        It was but one page in length. Flag-of-truce communications were limited to that. The first line branded itself upon my brain:

        "I have written to you several times since our precious Alice's death!"

        She had rallied finely in her native air, and was, apparently, on the highroad to health when smallpox broke out in Richmond military hospitals. It spread to the citizens. The town was crowded, and quarantine laws were lax. Dr. Haxall called and insisted that the entire family be revaccinated. He had his way with all save one. Alice put him off with a jest, and my mother bade him "call again, when she may be more reasonable." I fancy none of them put much faith in the honest physician's assertion that the precautionary measure was a necessity. In those days a "good vaccination scar" was supposed to last a lifetime. My sister fell ill a fortnight afterward, and the seizure was pronounced to be "varioloid."

        A girl's wilful whim! A mother's indulgence! These may, or may not, have been the opening acts of the tragedy. God knows!

        Alice was in her twenty-second year, and in mind the most brilliant of the family. She was an ardent student for learning's sake, and an accomplished English scholar; wrote and spoke French fluently, and was proficient in the Latin classics. The one sketch from her pen ever published appeared in The Southern Literary Messenger while she was ill. It proved what we had known already, that her talent for composition was of a high order. Had she lived, the reading world would have ratified our judgment.

        On March 7th of that dark and bloody year, the low tide of hope with the nation, our home was brightened by the birth of a second daughter - our first brunette bairnie. Her brother and sister had the Terhune blue eyes and sunny hair. She came on a wild, snowy day, and brought such wealth of balm and blessing with her as seldom endows parents and home by reason of a single birth. From the hour of her advent, Baby Alice was her father's idol. Why, we could not say then. The fact - amusing at times - always patent - of the peculiar tenderness binding together the hearts of the father and the girl-child - remained, and was gradually accepted, without comment, by us all.

        It was an unspeakable comfort to be able once more to talk of "the children." One never divines the depth of sweetness and significance in the term until one has been robbed of the right to use it, through months of missing what has been.

        Other, if minor, distractions from personal sorrow and public solicitudes were not wanting that year. I had been drawn into charitable organizations born of the times. Our noble church was forward in co-operation with municipal and State authorities in relieving the distress of the