[4]December 1862.
[4]December 1862.
Quite as notable a change has taken place in personal reputation. Many of the men on whom the country depended as most likely to prove able defenders in the day of need, have not only discovered to the world their worthlessness, but filled up the fable of the man who leaned upon a reed, by fatally piercing those whom they had betrayed to their fall. Bubble-characters have burst, and high-sounding phrases have been exploded. Men whose education and antecedents should have made them brave and true, have shown themselves false and cowardly—impotent for good, and active only for evil. Unconsidered nobodies have meanwhile sprung forth from the mass of the people, and equally astonished themselves and others by the power, wisdom and courage they have displayed. In cabinet and camp, in army and navy, in the editorial chair and in the halls of eloquence, the men from whom least was expected have done most, and those upon whom the greatest expectations had been founded have only given another proof of the fallacy of all human calculations. All has been change, all has been transition, in the estimation men have held of themselves and the light in which they presented themselves to each other.
Opinions of duties and recognitions of necessities have known a change not less remarkable. What yesterday we believed to be fallacy, to-day we know to be the truth. What seemed the fixed and immutable purpose of God only a few short months ago, we have already discovered to have been founded only in human passion or ambition. What seemed eternal has passed away, and what appeared to be evanescent has assumed stability. The storm has been raging around us, and doing its work not the less destructively because we failed to perceive that we were passing through anything more threatening than a summer shower. While we have stood upon the bank of the swelling river, and pointed to some structure of old rising on the bank, declaring that not a stone could be moved until the very heavens should fall, little by little the foundations have been undermined, and the full crash of its falling has first awoke us from our security. That without which we said that the nation could not live, has fallen and been destroyed; and yet we know not whether the nation dies, or grows to a better and more enduring life. What we cherished we have lost; what we did not ask or expect has come to us; the effete but reliable old is passing away, and out of the ashes of its decay is springing forth a new so unexpected and so little prepared for that it may be salvation or destruction as the hand of God shall rule. The past of the nation lies with the sunken Cumberland in the waters of Hampton Roads; its future floats about in a new-fangled Monitor, that may combat and defeat the navies of the world or go to the bottom with one inglorious plunge.[5]And this general transition brings us back to the negro, whose apotheosis is after all only a part of the inevitable, and may be only the flash before his final and welcome disappearance.
[5]Written three days before the foundering of the Monitor off Hatteras, Dec. 31st 1862.
[5]Written three days before the foundering of the Monitor off Hatteras, Dec. 31st 1862.
Our contraband is a woman, and she comes upon the scene of action in this wise, retrospectively.
Some three months before the events recorded in the preceding chapters, to wit about the middle of March, Egbert Crawford, Tombs lawyer, doing a thriving business in the line especially affected by such gentry, and not yet elevated to a Colonel's commission in the volunteer army by the parental forethought of Governor Edwin D. Morgan,—had occasion to visit that portion of Thomas Street lying between West Broadway and Hudson. The locality is not by any means a pleasant one, either for the eye or the other senses, and the character of the street is not materially improved by the recollection of the Ellen Jewett murder, which occurred on the south side, within a few doors of Hudson. Garbage left unremoved by Hackley festers alike on pavement, sidewalk and gutter; and a mass of black and white humanity (the former predominating) left unremoved by the civilization of New York in the last half of the nineteenth century, festers within the crazy and tumble-down tenements. Colored cotton handkerchiefs wrapping woolly heads, and shoes slouched at the heel furnishing doubtful covering to feet redolent of filth and crippled by disease—alternate with the scanty habiliments of black and white children, brought up in the kennel and reduced by blows, mud and exposure to a woful similarity of hue. The whiskey bottle generally accompanies the basket with a quart of decayed potatoes, from the grocery at the corner; and even the begged calf's-liver or the stolen beef-bone comes home accompanied by a flavor of bad gin. It is no wonder that the few shutters hang by the eye-lids, and that even the wagon-boys who vend antediluvian vegetables from castaway wagons drawn by twenty-shilling horse-frames, hurry through without any hope in the yells intended to attract custom.
Any observer who should have seen the neatly-dressed lawyer peering into the broken doors and up the black staircases of Thomas Street, would naturally have supposed his visit connected with some revelation of crime, and that he was either looking up a witness whose testimony might be necessary to save a perilled burglar from Sing Sing, or taking measures to keep one hidden who might have told too much if brought upon the witness-stand. And yet Egbert Crawford was really visiting that den of black squalor with a very different object—to find an old darkey woman who was reported as living in that street, and in his capacity as one of the eleven hundred and fifty Commissioners of Deeds of the City and County of New York, to procure her "X mark" and take her acknowledgment in the little matter of a quitclaim deed. A very harmless purpose, in itself, certainly; and yet the observer might have been nearer right in his suspicion than even the lawyer himself believed, when the whole result of the visit was taken into account.
One of the ricketty houses on the south side of the street, not far from the Ellen Jewett house, and not much further from the equally celebrated panel-house which furnished the weekly papers with illustrations of that peculiar species of man-trap a few years ago—seemed to the seeker to bear out the description that had been given him. The door was wide open, and all within appeared to be a sort of dark cabin out of which issued occasional sounds of quarrelling voices and continual puffs of fetid air foul enough to sicken the strongest stomach. He went in, as one of the lost might go into Pandemonium, impelled by an imperious necessity. He mounted the ricketty and creaking stair, with the bannister half gone and the steps groaning beneath his tread as if they contained the spirits of the dead respectability that had left them half a century before. He had been told that the old woman lived on the third floor, and though he met no one he concluded to dare the perils of a second ascent, in spite of the landing place being in almost pitchy darkness. Rushing along with a hasty step that even the gloom could not make a slower one, he felt something bump against his knees and the lower part of his body, and then something human fell to the floor with a crash that had the jingling of broken crockery blended with it.
"Boo! hoo! hoo! e-e-e-gh! Mammy! Mammy!" yelled a voice. "Boo! hoo! hoo! e-e-e-gh! Mammy! Mammy!" and Crawford could just discern that he had run over and partially demolished a little negro boy carrying a pitcher, the pitcher and the boy seeming to have suffered about equally. Neither of them had any nose left, to speak of; and the little imp did not make any effort to rise from the floor, but lay there and yelled merrily. The victor in the collision did not have much time for inspection, for the moment after a door at the back end of the passage opened hurriedly, and a hideous old negro woman came rushing out, with a sputtering fragment of lighted tallow-candle in her hand, and exclaiming:
"What's de matter, Jeffy? Here am Mamma!"
"Big man run'd ober me! broke de pitcher! Boo! hoo! hoo!" yelled the black atom in reply, without any additional effort at getting up.
"Get out ob dar! d—n you, I run'd oberyou, mind dat!" screeched out the old woman, catching sight of the dark form of Crawford. "Hurtin' leetle boys!—I pay you for it, honey!"
"I hit him accidentally," said the lawyer, who had no intention of getting into a row in that "negro quarter." "It was dark, and I did not see him. I'll pay for the pitcher."
"Will you, honey?" said the old woman, mollifying instantly. "Well den, 'spose you couldn't help it. Get up, Jeffy."
"Can you tell me whether Mrs. —— lives on any of the floors of this house?" asked Crawford.
"Nebber mind dat, till you gib me de money!" answered the old woman, not to be diverted by any side-issues. "Dat are pitcher cost a quarter, honey!"
Crawford was feeling in his pocket for one of the quarters that yet remained in that receptacle, preparatory to going out of circulation altogether,—when the old crone, eager for the money, stuck her candle somewhat nearer his face than it had before been held. Instantly her withered face assumed a new expression of intelligence, and her hand shook so that she almost dropped the candle, as she cried:
"Merciful Lord and Marser! If dat are ain't young Egbert Crawford!"
"My name is certainly Egbert Crawford!" said that individual, very much surprised in his turn. "But who are you that knowme?"
"Don't know his ole Aunt Synchy!" exclaimed the old woman.
"Aunt Synchy! Aunt Synchy!" said the lawyer, trying to recollect the past very rapidly, and catching some glimmers. "What? Aunt Synchy that used to live at—"
"Used to live at old Tom Crawford's. Lor bress you, yes! Why come in, honey!" and before the lawyer could answer further, he was literally dragged through the dingy door by the still vigorous old woman, and found himself inside her apartment, Master Jeffy and his pitcher being left neglected on the entry floor.
Once within the door, and in the better light afforded even by the dingy windows, Crawford had a better opportunity to observe the old woman, and he now found no difficulty in recalling something more than the name. She might have been sixty-five or seventy years of age, to judge by the wrinkles on her face and the white of her eyebrows, though her hair was hidden under a gaudy and dirty cotton plaid handkerchief and her tall form seemed little bowed by age. Two coal-black eyes, showing no diminution of their natural fire, gleamed from under those white eyebrows; and on the portions of the cheeks yet left smooth enough to show the texture of the skin, there were deep gashes that had once been the tattooing of her barbarian youth and beauty. Her hands were withered, much more than her face, and seemed skinny and claw-like. Her dress, which had once been plaid cotton gingham, was fearfully dirty and unskilfully patched with other material; and the frayed silk shawl thrown around her old shoulders might have been rescued from a rag-heap in the streets to serve that turn.
The room, as Crawford readily noticed, was almost as remarkable in appearance as the old woman herself. There was nothing singular in the bare floor, the pine table and two or three broken chairs; for something very like them, or worse, can be found in almost every miserable tenement where virtue struggles or vice swelters, in the slums of the great city. Neither was there anything notable in the smoke-greased walls and ceiling, the miserable fire-place with one cracked kettle and a red earthen bowl, and the wretched bed of rags stuck away in one of the corners, on which evidently both the old crone and Master Jeffy made their sad pretence at sleep.
But what really was singular in the appearance of the apartment, and what Crawford noted at once, although he did not allude to it until afterwards, was—first, a ghastly attempt at painting, hanging behind the chimney, representing a death's-head and cross-bones, which might have been executed by an artist in whitewash, on a ground of black muslin. Second, a hanging shelf in one corner, with a dozen or two of dingy small bottles and vials, and a rod lying across it, apparently made from a black birchen switch, peeled in sections. Third, and most important of all, a string of twine suspended from one side of the room to the other, in front of the fire-place and near the ceiling, and hung with objects that required a moment to recognize. Among them, when closely examined, could be found two or three bats, dried; a string of snake's eggs, blackened by being smoked; a tail and two legs of a black cat; a bunch of the dried leaves of the black hellebore; a snake's skin—not the "shedder" or superficial skin, but the cuticle itself, peeled from the writhing reptile; two objects that might have been spotted toads, run over by wagons until thoroughly flattened—then dried; and one object which could not well be anything more or less than the hand of a child a few weeks old, cut off just above the wrist and subjected to some kind of embalming or drying process.
The purposes of this narrative do not require the recording of all the conversation which took place between the Tombs lawyer and Aunt Synchy, when the latter had dusted off one of the miserable chairs and forced the former down into it, taking another herself, sitting square in front of him, and thrusting her face so close into his that the withered features seemed almost plastered against his own. It is enough to say that that conversation corroborated the suspicion which the first words of the crone would have engendered—that Aunt Synchy, in her younger days, had been a slave in the Crawford family, in a neighboring State where the institution had not yet been entirely abolished—and that, at last manumitted by a mistaken kindness, she had finally wandered away to the crime and misery of negro life in the great city. She retained, as people of that feudal class always do, a vivid recollection of her early life and of all the residents of the section where she had lived; and Egbert Crawford, who was in the habit of putting many questions to others, was not in the habit of answering quite so many as the old woman put to him concerning the intermediate histories of the families of which she had now lost sight for more than a quarter of a century.
In this conversation it became apparent, too, that Thomas Crawford, the father of Egbert, had been the quasi owner of Synchy, and that she retained for the son something of that singular attachment which appears to be inseparable from any description of feudality. Thomas Crawford, it would appear, had had two brothers, Richard, the father of the present Richard Crawford and of John, the soldier, both Thomas and Richard being then dead and their families in the country broken up. Another brother, John, had become very wealthy, and appeared to be living, with Mary, an only daughter, at West Falls, in the Oneida Valley. Finally, it became quite apparent that the old crone, whatever her attachment to the family of Thomas Crawford, did not hold the same feudal regard for some of the other members of the family—in short, that she had retained the memory of certain supposed early slights and injuries, quite as closely as she had done the softer and more grateful sentiments towards others.
"So Dick am rich, am he, honey? an you am poor? Tut! tut! dat is too bad for de son of ole Marser Tom!" said the old crone, after the lapse of half an hour in which both tongues had been running pretty rapidly.
"He is," said Crawford, his face expressing no strong sense of satisfaction at the recollection. "He bought property in the new parts of the city, twelve or fifteen years ago, and the rise has been so great that it has made him rich. He is now living on Murray Hill, in style, though, d—n him!" and the face now was very sinister indeed, "he has been attacked with inflammatory rheumatism and confined for some weeks to his house, so that I don't think he enjoys it all very much."
"An Uncle John's big property," the old woman went on—"Dick is to have all dat, too, you tink?"
"Yes, and Mary," answered Crawford. "Mary is a pretty little girl, and worth as much as all the property. Dick has managed to get around the old man, somehow, and if I can't stop it—"
"Eh, yes, if you can't stop 'um!" said the old crone, rubbing her skinny hands together as if this, at least, pleased her. "Has you tried, honey?"
Egbert Crawford, Tombs lawyer, as has before been said, was much more in the habit of putting others under close cross-examination, than allowing himself to be subjected to the same sifting process. But whether he had his own motives for telling the old woman the truth, or whether he saw that those coal black old eyes were looking through him and divining all that he wished or intended—he certainly submitted to the question and told the truth, in the present instance:
"Yes, d—n him once more!"
"You want Mary and de property bofe?" asked the old woman again.
"Both!" answered the lawyer, after one more instant of hesitation and one more glance into the coal black eyes. "I don't care if you know all about it—youdaren'tbetray me, for your life!"
"Don'twantto, honey!" was all the old woman's reply; and the lawyer went on:
"I have been twice up at West Falls since Dick was taken ill, and I think I have set some reports in circulation there, that may make Miss Mary hesitate, if they do not change the old man's will. How will that do, Aunt Synchy—you old black anatomy? Eh?"
"Spose I am an 'atomy," said the old woman, apparently rather pleased with the epithet than otherwise. "But Lor' bress you, chile, dat won't do at all! You ain't ole enough yet!" and there was an unmistakable sneer on the withered black face, to think that any body could be so verdant.
"Ah!" said Egbert Crawford, who neither liked the sneer nor the intimation. "What more could I do, I should like to know?"
What was it that Jeremy Taylor said—that old silver-tongued Bishop of Down, Connor and Dromore, in Ireland?—"No disease cometh so much with our breath, drinking from the infected lips of others, as with the vessels of our own bodies that are ready to receive it." Shakspeare says the same thing of mirth, when he records that
"A jest's prosperity lies in the earOf him that hears it, never in the tongueOf him that makes it."
Artemus Ward, when he sets whole audiences into broad roars of laughter over his odd conceits of "carrying peppermint to General Price" or "going to be measured for an umbrella," may doubt the truth of this assertion; and Lester Wallack or Ned Sothern, when inspiring chuckles that almost threaten the life, may share in the infidelity: but let all these remember that their audiencescometo be amused, and that their best drolleries might fall very flat indeed at a Quaker meeting or in a hospital devoted to men with the jumping tooth-ache! The conditions of Crime are like those of Disease and Mirth—the patient must be ready before the inoculation can take place. Eve was unquestionably wishing for a break in the already dull routine of her life in Eden, before the Serpent dared to make his appearance; and Arnold had some treason crudely floating through his mind, even if not that particular treason, before the overtures of the British commander led him to the attempted betrayal of the Key of the Highlands. Egbert Crawford, Tombs lawyer, when he said to Aunt Synchy, "What more could I do, I should like to know?" meant to be understood as asserting that nothing more was in his power; but there was really in his heart the wish for aid in some higher crime to effect his purposes; and the tempter came!
"All dat goin' away from you, and nobody in de way but dat miserable chile!" was the only comment of the old woman on Crawford's last question.
"So I suppose," was the puzzled answer.
"Why don't you have a good doctor for him, honey!" asked the old woman, next.
"A good doctor?" queried Crawford, still more puzzled. "Why curse it, woman, what are you talking about? Won't he get well too soon, now, and perhaps be up at West Falls before I am more than half ready for him?"
"Oh, you poor chile—you don't half understan' dis ole woman!" chuckled the crone, delighted to find that she had puzzled the lawyer. "Spose de good doctor so good that he nebber get well? Eh, honey?"
"What? poison?" broke out the lawyer, catching at the old woman's meaning so suddenly that he could not quite control his voice.
"Hush-h-h! you fool!" hissed the old woman, rising at once, hobbling to the door and opening it suddenly—then closing it and returning to her chair. "You call yourself a lawyer, honey, and do such things as dat 'are? Done you know dem policers are sneakin' aroun' ebberywhere, up de stairways as well as ebberywhere else? An if one of dem happened to hear you speak such words, dis ole woman take a ride up to de Islan' in de Black Maria, and you go to de debbil, sure! Know all about 'em, honey—been dare afore!"
"Humph!" said the lawyer, nevertheless using lower voice even for the disclaimer. "No danger, Aunty, I guess! There are no policemen now-a-days—only Provost-Marshal Kennedy's spies, looking for traitors. But what do you mean?—that I should get a doctor to—to—put him out of the way?"
"Dats jes it, honey!" said the old woman, again rubbing her hands. "He is in de way—put him out and have de ole man's money."
"Impossible!" spoke Egbert Crawford, in a tone which would have told a close observer—and probably told the old woman—that he only meant: "I do not see how to do it."
"Give um somefin," graphically said the crone.
"What!" spoke the lawyer, almost in as loud a tone as he had before used, and rising from his chair in apparent indignation.
"Sit down, honey," said the old woman, with the same sneer in her voice that had before been apparent. "Oh, I know you is a good man and wouldn't do nuffin to hurt Cousin Dickey. Didn't kill his dog, nor nuffin, did you, honey, a good wile ago, jes because you didn't likehim. Don't do nuffin now, if you don't want to! Let him have de girl, an de ole man's money, an—"
"Woman!" said Egbert Crawford, rising altogether this time, and pacing the floor like a man a good deal unquieted. "I hate Dick Crawford, and you know it. I want Uncle John's money and I want Mary, and he is in my way in both cases. You may as well know the whole truth—I hate him enough to 'put him out of the way,' as we have both called it, but the thing is impossible. Any doctor to whom I should speak would have me arrested at once, for though they poison they do not wish to be suspected of such operations; and there is no other way. He will get well and go up to West Falls, and then all is over!" and the lawyer sunk his head on his breast as if he had been the most ill-used of individuals.
"Not while your ole Aunty libs, Marser Egbert, if you dar do what she tells you!"
The words struck some chord previously active in the brain of Crawford. He glanced up at the string of articles on the line of twine, then stopped short in his walk, before the old woman.
"Well?"
"Oh, you see dem tings, and you is coming to it, is you, honey!" chuckled the crone. "You 'member what Aunt Synchy is, now?"
"Yes, I remember," said Crawford, "though I forget the name. You are an O—Ogee—Odee—no, O—"
"An Obi woman!" said the crone, rising and stretching herself to her full height, with a look that was commanding in spite of her squalor. "You 'member somefin, but not much. We be great people in Jamaica. Up in de hills 'bove Spanish Town, we are de kings and de queens. De great Obi spirit come down to us, when de moon am at its last quarter, an he tell us how to cure and how to kill. We mix de charm at midnight, wid de great Obi 'pearin' to us all de time in de smoke dat rises from de kettle, an de secret words all de time a mutterin'; and de charm works, an kills or cures 'way off hunerds of miles, 'cordin' as we want um for our friens or our enemies. Does you hear, honey?"
"I hear!" said Egbert Crawford, for the moment absorbed if not fascinated by the developments of this real or affected superstition; but not carried away, it may be believed, from the influence which this hideous old woman might be able to exert on his own fortunes.
"Mammy—you don't 'member ole Mammy?"—the old woman went on. "Captain Lewis brought Mammy an me from Jamaica more'n fifty years ago. She mus' have died when you was a little picanninny. She was de great Obi woman, de queen of dem all; and she tole me afore she died, so's I could do mos' as much. Many's de lub potion Mammy an me has mixed up, dat has made some ob de wite bosoms fuller afore dey was done workin; and many's de charm—"
"Poh! nonsense! don't say 'charm'; call it 'dose'!" broke in the lawyer, at last impatient. "I believe you can kill, whether you can cure or not, Aunt Synchy; but I am a man, with some experience in the world, and I don't believe in your Obi. All your dead cats and babies' hands and snakes yonder, are just so many tricks to influence the superstitious.Iknow better, and they don't influenceme!"
"Oh, dey doesn't, eh, honey? You is too smart an don't believe in de Obi?" For the moment her face was lowering and threatening—then it changed again to the same wrinkled Sphynx as before. "Nebber mind—you is my boy, an I lubs you, an so you 'sult de ole woman widout de Obi payin' you for it! Call it 'dose,' then, honey—many's de dose dat dese hans have mixed, dat has made de coffin-maker hab somefin to do and sent de property where it belonged."
"I believe you!" was the laconic comment of Egbert Crawford, when the crone, spite of his interruptions, had finished her long rigmarole. What followed may quite as well be imagined as described. Richard Crawford was doomed to be operated upon by one of those insidious and deadly vegetable poisons, outwardly applied, in which none have such horrible skill as the crones of the African race who have derived their knowledge from the West India Islands. Whether it should be brought near the head by concealment in a pillow, or near the more vital portions of the body itself through use of a bandage worn near the skin,—the effect would be the same—insensible debilitation, decline, death! But the latter plan would be much the more rapid; and in neither event, when the deed was done, would there be one mark, perceptible even to the dissecting surgeon, telling that other than natural decay had brought about dissolution.
Ten minutes afterwards, Aunt Synchy was busy compounding ablack paste, from various preparations which she found among the vials on the shelf and under one corner of the heap of rags which she called her bed—crooning all the while a dismal attempt at a tune which made even the not-over-sensitive lawyer shudder, and putting the mixture at last into his hands with a "Lor' bress you, honey!" which might have madeany oneshudder if he had understood the connection. Fifteen minutes later, the Tombs lawyer left Thomas Street, without the information of which he had originally come in search, but his mind now full of other things, and bearing in his mind the mental label of the prescription: "to be used as directed."
So vice buds into crime whenever opportunity offers, and the Hazaels of the world, who have believed that they never could be brought to "do this thing," pursue it with an energy and determination shaming the efforts of older offenders. Yesterday only an illicit lover: to-day the destroyer of children unborn! Yesterday only anordinaryscoundrel: to-day the worst and most deadly of all murderers—thepoisoner!
Three months later—to wit, toward the close of June—that state of affairs was existing at the house of Richard Crawford, which has before been indicated. What was it, indeed, that Josephine Harris had dimly discovered?
The Two Rivals at Judge Owen's—A Combat a La outrance between the Bancker and the Wallace—Almost a Challenge, and a Trial of Every-day Courage.
Return we now to the somewhat too-long neglected Miss Emily Owen and the other inmates and intimates of Judge Owen's pleasant house near the Harlem River.
Some days had elapsed after the conversation between Emily and Aunt Martha, bringing the time to the first of July and the commencement of that fire-cracker abomination that was to culminate on the Fourth in a general distraction. Some days had elapsed—as has already been noted; and judging by the person who sat nearest to Miss Emily Owen in the faintly-lighted parlor, at about half past eight in the evening, the Judge's praises of Col. Bancker and animadversions of Frank Wallace had not been without their effect on the young girl. Both the rival suitors were present, and so was Aunt Martha; but Frank Wallace made a somewhat dim and undefined picture as he sat near one of the front windows, apparently observing the boys deep in the mysteries of fire-crackers and torpedoes; while the Colonel was in altogether a better light as he sat near Emily and nearly under the half-lighted chandelier. Emily was indulging in the peculiarly American vice of rolling backward and forward in a rocking-chair; the Colonel had one leg over the other and was drumming with the opened blade of his penknife on the cover of the book he held in his hand; and Aunt Martha was ruining what eyes she had left, by some kind of crochet-work in cotton that may possibly have been a "tidy."
Frank and the Colonel had come in very nearly together, yetnottogether, about half an hour before. Some little conversation had ensued, but very little, for the rivals instinctively hated each other, and Wallace could not manage to string ten words in his rival's presence without throwing hits at him in a manner decidedly improper. Perhaps Emily had taken the Colonel's part a little, spite of her aversion to him; and the result was that Master Frank had fallen partially into the sulks and gone off to the end of the room—quite as far as he intended to go at that juncture, however.
The young man might be pardoned if he felt for the moment a little vexed. Though not forbidden the house of Judge Owen, and treated with cold politeness when he entered it (of course withoneexception)—he knew very well that he was an object of dislike to the portly Judge, and he always endeavored so to time his visits that he might avoid that parental potentate. That afternoon he had accidentally seen the Judge (who had anticipated his summer vacation) step on board the Hudson River cars, with Mrs. Owen, for a day or two somewhere up the Hudson; and he had very naturally made his calculations upon a quiet evening with Emily. And now to find the Colonel dividing the opportunity with him—nay more, to find Emily even siding a little with the valorous Colonel!—itwastoo bad, was it not?
Perhaps the young lover would not have fallen into his partial sulks quite so easily, had he been aware that Col. Bancker had announced his intention of being at the house in the evening (ashehad not), and that Emily had begged her aunt to come down from her room and sit with her in the parlor, on purpose to prevent the expected Colonel having an opportunity for one word with her in private. But these men are so unreasonable as well as so blind! There is no satisfying them, especially with the amount of attention shown them by a woman whom they happen to fancy that they love. Perhaps men do not grow actually jealous any more easily than women, but they grow "miffed" and "hurt" a thousand times easier—let the fact be recorded. There is one instance on legendary record, of a woman who divided her husband with another, at the time of the chivalrous adventures of the Crusaders; but the instance has not yet come to light of the man who so divided hiswife. Mormonism at the present day shows the pitch even of fanatical tolerance to which the female mind can be wrought in this direction; while we have yet to look for the corresponding instance on the other side, in which the women of a community appropriate to themselves half a dozen or fifty husbands each, and the men consent to the division.
This difference goes much farther even than the regulation (can such a thing be regulated?) of jealousy. Where no jealousy exists, exclusiveness and the sense of propriety comes into the account—again on the male side of the calculation. Jones and his wife being both wall-flowers at any evening party, Mrs. Jones did not feel aggrieved, but rather proud, at Mrs. Thompson's re-union, that Jones went off for an hour to pay the usual flirting attention to the wives of half a dozen of his acquaintances; while Jones colored to the eyes and could scarcely be restrained from making a fool of himself, because Robinson sat down in the vacant chair beside his wife, and tried to be agreeable. And when the Emperor and Lady Flora were at Niagara last summer, it is not upon record that the lady made any objection to the gentleman lingering an hour too late upon Goat Island with that blonde-haired English girl who was such an unmistakeable flirt,—while the gentleman went on like a madman on the balcony of the Cataract, because Lady Flora ran away for half an hour in broad daylight, to Prospect Point, with an old friend of her father's,œlatfifty and incurably an invalid. Ah, well—so it has been from the days of the first flirtation (alwaysexceptthat of Adam and Eve, when there was neither male nor female rival in the neighborhood), and so it will be to the last—with those arrogant, unreasonable, unsatisfied "lords of the creation."
A word of description of the two rivals, as yet unintroduced, who on that occasion sunned themselves in the eyes of Emily Owen, though at such different distances from the luminary.
Lt. Colonel John Boadley Bancker (let him have his full name once more, for the honor of the service—be the same more or less!) was a rather tall and slight man, gentlemanly in appearance and action, but with an occasional dash of swagger that somehow did not indicate courage, and the undefinable impression of the "old beau." His face was well-formed, except that the nose was too large and too prominently aquiline. He had faultlessly black side-whiskers and hair correspondingly black—tooblack, Frank Wallace said—not to have been "doctored" by Batchelor or Cristadoro, at least. The dark eyes were a little faded, and there were crows-feet at the corners of the same eyes, for age has its own way of telling its story, and not all of us who wish to be young can alter the record in the old family Bible. In dress Colonel Bancker presented no variation from the other colonels of the volunteer service—wearing the full blue uniform, shoulder-straps and belts, with the number of his regiment wrought in gold on the front of a broad brimmed hat lying on a book-table near him. Not an ill-looking man by any manner of means, in spite of the violent antipathy for him which Miss Emily had managed to transmute out of her regard for Wallace.
"Age before beauty!" is a motto somewhat popular, so the Colonel has had the preference. Frank Wallace, proprietor of a small but thriving job-printing establishment before spoken of, and would-be proprietor of the heart and hand of Miss Emily Owen—was altogether a different style of man from the puissant Colonel. As he lounged at the window in his suit of loose-fitting gray Melton, he looked very young indeed and created rather the impression of a "little fellow." He probably fell at least three or four inches short of the romantic six feet, in reality; but was the owner of a fine erect and well-rounded gymnastic form, not a little improved by frequent visits to the Seventh Regiment Gymnasium. A jolly round face with very fair complexion, a merry blue eye, short, curly brown hair and a full moustache somewhat darker,—made up the ensemble of the particular person destined to be the torment of Judge Owen—and of others. For Frank Wallace, be it understood, had other penchants besides his attachment to pretty Emily—fun being the other and leading propensity. He was a capital mimic, an incorrigible banterer, and in any other company than that of the woman he loved, and her family, the merriest and most jocular soul alive. Sometimes when alone with her, and with the "spooniness" which will attach to male courtship before twenty-five, fairly shaken off, he could be a gay, dashing and even a presuming lover. Just now he was unamiable—not to say wicked, and ready for any use of his glib tongue which could send the blue coat out of the house at "double-quick."
It could not have been malice—it certainly must have been want of thought—that induced Aunt Martha to break the temporary silence with the remark, addressed to the Colonel:
"It is a funny question I am going to ask, I know, Colonel, but I suppose I have an old woman's privilege. Mrs. Owen and myself were talking about ages a day or two ago, and she thought you were more than thirty-five. How oldareyou?"
If half a paper of pins, with all the points upward, had suddenly made their appearance in the bottom of the Colonel's chair, he probably could not have been more discomfited. What reason he had to be unquiet, will be more apparent at a later period. He fidgetted a little and hemmed more than once, before he replied:
"Humph! hum! Well, Madame, to tell you the truth, Iama little on the shady side of extreme youth—old enough to be through with my juvenile indiscretions—ha! ha!" (The laugh decidedly forced and feeble). "I am a little over thirty-two—was thirty-two in March last."
"I thought so! I was sure you could not be older than that!" said Aunt Martha, in the most natural way in the world, while Emily took a quick look round at the Colonel, which said, much plainer than words: "Oh, what a bouncer!"
"No, Madame," added the Colonel, perhaps aware that fibs require to be told over at least twice before they acquire the weight of truths toldonce. "No, Madame, a fraction over thirty-two, as I said."
At that moment the invisible influences, if they have good ears, may have heard Frank Wallace getting up from his chair, and muttering between his teeth something very like:
"Humph! well, I cannot standthisany longer! If I do not succeed in making the house too warm to hold that respectable individual, within ten minutes, I shall certainly leave it myself!" Just then the words "thirty-two," from the Colonel's lips, met his ear, and though he did not catch the context, so as to know what it was all about, the spirit of malicious (and it must be said, reckless) mischief, prompted him to lounge leisurely forward and take a share in the conversation, although uninvited.
"Ah, Colonel, did I understand you to say thirty-two?"
"Yes, I said thirty-two!" said the personage addressed, with a stiffness contrasting very forcibly with the suavity of his speech to Aunt Martha. Emily, who, as may be supposed, knew Frank Wallace better than any other person in the house, at that moment caught a glimpse of his face under the chandelier, and saw that trouble was brewing. Thesulkhad gone, and thebadger, a much more dangerous devil in society, had taken its place. Two antagonistic acids were certainly coming together, and an explosion was very likely to be the result. Yet what could the poor girl do, except to wait the crash and be ready to act as peacemaker when the worst came to the worst? The one thing she would have liked to do, was precisely the thing she dared not do for her life—that was, to spring up, catch her young lover by the arm, drag him out into the garden, pet him a good deal and kiss him a very little, and send him home doubtful whether he was walking on his head or his heels—while her old beau might spend the whole evening, if he liked, with Aunt Martha. Millie would give her bright eyes to be able to do the same thing with Tom, stately Madamemere, when all she dares do in your presence is to sit still, answer in monosyllables, steal sly glances when you are not looking, and be generally dull and stupid. Would it not be well to let them out occasionally, Madamemere, for half an hour's play, with full consent and confidence, as they let out the colts in the country? Who knows but they might behave the better for it, when out of your sight altogether? Think of it, Madamemere, and make public the result of your experiment! But all this is grossly irrelevant, and springs out of the fact that Emily, who wished to drag Frank Wallace out of the danger of an approachingmelée, had not the power to do so.
"Indeed I always thought there were thirty-nine!" said the young scamp, in the most natural tone of surprise imaginable, and in response to the Colonel's last "thirty-two."
"Thirty-ninewhat, sir?" asked the Colonel, with the same sign of intense disgust upon his face that we have sometimes seen on Harry Placide's, when playingSir Harcourt Courtleyand uttering the words: "Good gracious! who was addressingyou?"
"Oh, I really beg pardon," replied the young man, in a tone which meant that he did nothing of the kind. "I thought I heard Mrs. West and yourself speaking of the religious aspects of the country, and that you were enumerating the articles of faith."
"Oh no, you were quite mistaken, Mr. Wallace!" said Aunt Martha, very calmly, while Emily directed an appealing look at the scapegrace, which might as well have been a putty pellet fired at the brown-stone Washington in the Park, for any effect it produced.
"No sir, we were talking of nothing of the kind!" said the Colonel, with that kind of severe dignity intended to convey: "This closes the conversation."
"Then of course it is my duty to beg pardon once more," said the incorrigible. "But youmighthave been talking on that subject, you know, without any impropriety. The religious aspects of the country are deplorable!" throwing up his hands and eyes in no bad imitation ofAminadab Sleek. "Do you not think so, Colonel?"
"Sir!" said the Colonel, still more severely, "I had not been thinking of the subject at all!"
"Oh yes," the scapegrace went on—"deplorable! War desolating the country—all the restraints of society removed or weakened—no Sabbath at all—gambling and libertinism in the army and infidelity among the officers—Colonel, I really hope you will excuse me! of course I do not mean to make any allusion to the present company—but I repeat that the present religious aspects of the country are deplorable."
"AndIrepeat, sir," spoke the Colonel, with even more severity than before, while Aunt Martha's face began to assume an expression that might easily have deepened into a smile, and Emily had serious trouble to keep from a broad grin—"Irepeat, sir, that we were not speaking of the religious aspects of the country at all!"
"Pshaw! of course not! How stupid I am!" said the tormentor, who had by this time dropped into a chair a little behind the Colonel's left shoulder, where he could literally talk into his ear. "It was the number that deceived me, as I heard it from the window. Ishouldhave known what you were saying, at once. You are right in the remark that had we had only thirty-two States instead of thirty-four, this rebellion might never have occurred. Had South Carolina, with its rampant Calhounism, and Massachusetts with its anti-slavery fanaticism, both been left out of the compact—"
"Imust beg pardon, now, for interruptingyou, Mr. Wallace," said Aunt Martha, with the calmest of voices and the smile all smoothed away from her face. "You are mistaken again. We were neither discussing religious nor national affairs, when you were sokindas to come down and join us." (Emphasis on the word "kind," which made the young man wince a little and for the moment predisposed the Colonel to a chuckle.) "Colonel Bancker was saying—"
"Really, my dear Madame," put in the Colonel, "it is scarcely necessary to repeat—"
"Oh, we have had quite enough of misconceptions," said that estimable lady, with what appeared to be another shot at Wallace. "Let us have the truth at last. I had the impoliteness to ask Colonel Bancker his age, and he had the courtesy to say that he was just turned of thirty-two."
"Ph-ph-ph-ph-ew!" came in a long whistle from the lips of the tormentor. The Colonel sprung to his feet in an instant, and looked angrily around. Frank Wallace was quite on the other side of the room, examining a pastel over the mantel, and whistling very slightly, but he was certainly whistling the serenade from "Pasquali."
"Sir!" said the Colonel, rage in the word.
"Meaningme?" asked Wallace, turning around.
"Was that whistle intended forme, sir?" demanded the Colonel, tragically.
"Certainly not," answered Wallace. "I was directing my whistle, which is not a good one, and certainly impolite in company—at the cornice. The cornice is a handsome one, you will notice, Colonel, and I think by Garvey. Those festoons of roses—"
"Mr. Wallace, you shall answer to me for this!" broke out the Colonel, now no longer master of himself.
"Gentlemen! gentlemen!" said Aunt Martha, rising.
"Don't, Frank! for heaven's sake don't torment him any more!" plead Emily, passing rapidly before her lover and speaking in a low tone. Whether he understood her is a question to be settled between them at some future time. "Don't!" is a very easy thing to say, when Niagara is pouring or a herd of wild buffaloes sweeping down; but if the imploration is addressed to either of the moving bodies, it may not win quick obedience. As the human temper is a combination of the torrent, the herd, and all the other unmanageable things in nature and beyond, "Don't!" even from a voice that we love, with right and reason behind it, is sometimes painfully powerless. There is no intention, on the part of the narrator, of defending the previous or subsequent action of Mr. Frank Wallace on this occasion; but actual events must be recorded.
"Well sir, and what am I to answer?" asked the young man, without a quiver in his voice, but with much more earnest in it than it had before manifested.
"You made an offensive comment on my veracity, by whistling, a moment ago."
"And what then, sir?"
"That offensive comment shows that you doubt my veracity!"
"Gentlemen! gentlemen!" again spoke Aunt Martha; and poor Emily, now half frightened out of her wits, made one more attempt at imploring her lover to be quiet. This done, and both now aware that the tide, on one side at least, had overflowed the bounds of all prudence, they desisted, stepped back from between the rivals, and allowed the quarrel to take its own course.
"And suppose Idodoubt your veracity!" answered Wallace to the last remark of the Colonel. "You call yourself thirty-two! Bah! you are fifty, if you are ten!" The obvious rage on the countenance of the Colonel did not stop the torrent, now, nor even check it! "Such fine crows'-feet under the eyes, as those of yours, never come much before fifty, except in case of a nice round of brandy-smashes, late hours and general dissipation, or—"
"Well, sir, what is theor?" broke out the Colonel, still more furious.
"A severe course of early piety!" concluded the young man, throwing a terrible sting into the tail of his sentence, not less by the manner than the voice.
"You should answer for this, Mr. Wallace, as you call yourself," foamed the Colonel—"but—"
"Butwhat, Lieut. Colonel Bancker—as youtryto call yourself?" thundered the young man, in reply.
"Oh, gentlemen! gentlemen! do stop, for the sake of the house!" imploringly put in Aunt Martha at this period; while Emily, seriously frightened, indulged in a few tears that were no doubt set down to the account of her brute of a lover, by the over-watching intelligences. But the quarrel ceased not, even yet, at the bidding of either; and, marvellous to relate, though the front windows were open and they were speaking in a tone altogether too loud for the amenities of society, a crowd hadnotgathered around the area railing in front.
"Butwhat?" demanded the younger combatant.
"But that my sword, sir—" began the elder.
"Oh, youhavea sword, then!" sneered Wallace. "I thought it was allbelts!"
"I would chastise you for this, sir, severely," said the officer, "but that my sword is sacred to the cause of the Union. When with my regiment, sir—"
"Yes, I know," again interrupted Wallace, who had his own reasons for believing that the Colonel's regiment was altogether a myth, as so many others have been—"Yes, I know—the Eleven hundred and fifty-fifth Coney Island Thimble-rig Zouaves!"
Human patience could stand this no longer. With one dash for his hat and a surly "Good night, ladies!" coupled with an intimation to Wallace: "You shall hear from me, sir!" Lt. Colonel John Boadley Bancker (let him once more have the full benefit of the name!) strode out of the parlor into the hall, and was about to vanish from the field. But as he passed into the hall the hand of Aunt Martha was laid upon his arm, and her voice—so much pleasanter than that of the tormentor—sounded in his ear. The good aunt, whatever might have been her wish to rid her niece of a match so repugnant, certainly did not wish to produce the riddance in this manner and to send the Colonel out of the house under a sensation of outrage which could not fail to come to the ears of her "big brother." So she passed into the hall with the Colonel, leaving the young people behind her,—and managed to detain the enraged man in the hall and on the piazza for several minutes. It was not the first time, beyond doubt, that she had made peace for others, however she might have martyred her own.
"Oh, Frank! what have you done!" exclaimed the young girl, the moment they had passed out into the hall, her eyes yet dim with the tears of anxiety she had been shedding; but in spite of her fear and even her mortification, laying her hand in that of the reckless young scapegrace whom she truly loved. "Father will hear of this—we shall be separated altogether!" And again she repeated the expostulation of all dairy-maids to all cats or children that have upset pans of milk—"What have you done!"
"What have I done!" echoed the culprit. "Why merely roasted a cowardly humbug who deserves nothing better, and who has not spunk enough to resent it—that is all!"
"But besides my father's anger—I am afraid hemay, Frank," said the young girl, looking into her lover's face with real anxiety.
"I only wish he would!" was the reply.
"Why, you do not mean to say that you would fight him?"
"With the sword, if he has one—no!" he said. "Not with anything more dangerous than a piece of rattan. I would not mind polishing off his dainty hide withthat! Besides, if I quarrelled with him, who made me? You! He sat too near you, and you not only talked with him butlookedat him. What business had you to look at him? Eh?"
"Oh, you cruel fellow!" said the young girl, not disposed to scold more sharply, even atfolly, when it had such a sediment of true love lying beneath the froth.
"Oh, you handsome torment!" was the reply of the lover, as he took that one auspicious moment to enfold the young girl in his arms and give her half a dozen warm, close, voluptuous kisses full on the lips—such kisses as people should never indulge in who do not know exactly the haven toward which they are sailing.
"What are you doingnow, impudence!" uttered the thoroughly-kissed girl, making just so much resistance as seemed becoming, and yet meeting her lover nearly enough half-way to make the exercise rather exhilarating.
"What am I doing? 'Locking up' a 'form'—you know I am a printer!" said the young man, taking yet another "proof" of affection. But here the alarmed reader will be spared the succession of bad puns, peculiar to the printing-office, with which this specimen was followed, and which has probably been to some extent indulged in by every disciple of Faust more or less in love, since Adam worked off the first proof of his breakfast bill-of-fare, on the original hand-press, in one corner of the Garden of Eden.
The young man was yet standing with his arm around the waist of Emily, just within the door leading from the parlor into the hall, and yet other farewell kisses and reproaches might have been on the possible programme,—when both were startled by a sharp scream from Aunt Martha, who was yet standing on the piazza with the Colonel near her.
"Ough-ough-oh!"
Wallace and Emily at once rushed to the front door, under the belief that some sudden accident had befallen the lady; but at that moment there was a loud crash, followed by other voices screaming; and in the street, almost in front of the door, a painful and threatening spectacle presented itself.
As afterwards appeared, when the various parties became sufficiently collected to ascertain what had really happened—a carriage had been coming along the street from the left, driven rapidly, but with the pair of fine horses under good command. Just before it reached the house of Judge Owen, one of those troublesome boys who ought all to be sent to Blackwell's Island from the twenty-fifth of June until the tenth of July, had thrown a lighted "snake," or "chaser," under the belly of the near horse as he passed. The animals had already become sufficiently frightened by the fire-crackers thrown under them and the pistols exploding at their ears; and at this crowning atrocity they became altogether unmanageable. Spite of the exertions of the practised driver, they shied violently to the left, breaking into a run at the same moment, and the next instant one side of the carriage was whirled upon the curb, so that the hind axle and wheel caught in the lamp-post, happily not tearing apart or overturning the vehicle, but bringing-up with such a shock that the driver was hurled from his seat and thrown to the pavement between the maddened horses.
This state of affairs had drawn the scream from Aunt Martha, and at the instant when Wallace reached the door the people in the carriage were screaming but incapable of getting out, the horses were plunging to such a degree that they must have broken loose in a moment, after making a wreck of the carriage and trampling to death the poor fellow who lay senseless under their feet. At the same time it seemed worth a dozen lives to plunge into that storm of lashing hoofs and do anything to rescue driver and riders from their peril.
"Help! help! oh, save them!—save the poor man—somebody!" cried both the women on the piazza, at a breath; and "Help! help!" rung in a woman's voice from the inside of the carriage. Fifteen or twenty persons had already rushed up, but no one seemed disposed to risk his own life to save others. The Colonel yet stood on one of the steps of the piazza, apparently spell-bound.
"Colonel Bancker, you wanted to try courage with me a little while ago: take hold of those horses, if youdare!" cried Frank Wallace, rushing to the edge of the stoop. The Colonel neither spoke nor stirred. "Coward!" they heard the young man cry, and the next instant—how, none of them knew—he had rushed in upon the horses' heads, spite of their lashing hoofs, had one or both by the bridles, and in an instant more both horses were flung prostrate and helpless. The imminent danger over, some of the bystanders rushed in to assist, the horses were more firmly secured, and the poor driver was dragged out, bloody and half insensible, but not seriously injured. One ready and daring hand had prevented the certain loss of one life, and the probable loss of more. Fire-crackers, pistols and other abominations had vanished from the street as if by magic; the noise over, the horses came again under command; they were raised, and horses, harness and carriage all found comparatively uninjured; the disabled driver was taken to a neighboring drug-store; one of the bystanders volunteered to drive the carriage to its destination, and took his seat on the box; the owner droned out his thanks from the inside of the carriage, in a fat, wheezy voice, mingled with the sobs of a woman in partial hysterics; and the equipage rolled away almost as suddenly as it had come—perhaps not five minutes having been consumed in the whole affair.
Short as was the time occupied, the Colonel had disappeared. When the trouble was over he was no longer standing on the piazza. Frank Wallace had apparently been once beaten down, and had some soiled spots on his Melton, and a few bruises, but he had received no injury of any consequence. For what violent and even dangerous exertion he had undergone, he was unquestionably more than repaid when Aunt Martha caught him by one hand and said fervently, "God bless you!" and when Emily Owen took the other hand with a warmer and fonder pressure than she had ever given it before, and said—so low that probably not even Aunt Martha heard her: "Good—brave—generous Frank!—I won't scold you again in a twelvemonth!"
All that Frank Wallace replied to both these generous outbursts, was comprised in a snap of his fingers in the direction supposed to have been taken by the Colonel, and the words:
"Bah! I told you that man was a coward and wouldn't fight! If he had not pluck enough to risk the feet of those two horses, what would he do in the face of a charge of rebel cavalry!"
The First Week of July—A Chapter that should only be read by Those Who Think—The Despair of the Seven Days Battles—Shoulder-straps and Stay-at-Home Soldiers—An Incident of the Second.
The first week of July, eighteen hundred and sixty-two. What a time it was!—and who that took part in it, in any portion of the loyal States to which the telegraph and the newspaper had reached, can ever forget it? Everything was hopeless, blank despair—dull, dead desolation. Not even the fatal Monday following the defeat of Bull Run, when we believed that all our New York troops had been cut to pieces or fled ingloriously, produced the same total discouragement in the great city. Bull Run was our first signal reverse—the first blow from the rod of national chastisement, that was afterwards to cut so deeply. Though that stroke pained, it also fired and awakened; and repeated blows had not yet produced that weakness and exhaustion so difficult to arouse to any further effort. And we had not, at the same time, passed through the repeated disasters of the few months following, which stunned and hardened while they pained. We were quite unprepared for the disaster, coming as it did after several months of continued comparative victory (the Austerlitz, Jena and Friedland period of the Lincoln Empire, if it has had one); and the country felt it most keenly.
The heart of the nation had been bound up in McClellan. The confidence and love reposed in him may have been man-worship, without ground or reason, but it was no less real and positive. While in the Command-in-Chief, everything had gone well, and the Butler and Burnside expeditions, the two great successes of the war, had been planned and executed. On the Army of the Potomac the people had looked as the bulwark of the country—the central force that should in good time take Richmond and give the last blow to the rebellion. The miserable bickering and paltry fears which had detached McDowell's division from the grand army, to defend Washington when never threatened, had been comparatively unknown or little understood. Many and disastrous months were yet to elapse, before the letters of the Orleans Princes could tear away the curtain of mystery and show the official action in its naked deformity of malice and misjudgment. McClellan had left Manassas with a gallant army of immense force, whose numbers had no doubt been all the while exaggerated to the popular ear. They had proved themselves soldiers and heroes, and had won whenever and wherever brought to the test. The young commander had had the Command-in-Chief taken from him, at the moment when he first moved forward; but it was believed that the change had been made with his consent if not at his own request, so that he might be the more unhampered in the field. We did not know the chain which had been cruelly locked around his strong limbs, and which he had been dragging through every mile of that long march. He had complained, it is true, from Williamsburgh, of the insufficiency of his force for the great end in view; but he was known to be a cautious man, and when he had won Williamsburgh, forced the evacuation of Yorktown and afterwards won Fair Oaks, all fears for him and for the army had been gradually dismissed.
He had been set down to win—to take Richmond: that had formed the great culmination of the programme—the red fire and flourish of trumpets on which the curtain of the rebellion was to go down. If any one had spoken disapprovingly or doubtfully of his long delay in the swamps of the Chickahominy, the reply had been: "Wait patiently! McClellan is slow, but sure. He will take Richmond before he ends the campaign, and that is enough!" Such had been public confidence—the confidence of a public who perhaps did not know the General, but who certainly did not know the government directing and overruling his every action. At last even the time of the great capture had been fixed. Officers leaving on short furlough had been admonished to return quickly, "if they expected to take part in the capture of Richmond." What else could this mean, than confidence on the part of the commanding general, that the approaches to the rebel capital had been made sufficiently close to ensure its capture, and that the prize was at length in his grasp? Then the Fourth of July had been seized upon as the auspicious period, and the whole country had grown ready to celebrate the National Anniversary in the loyal cities, simultaneously with the shouts and bonfires of the Union Army that should then be treading the streets of the conquered capital and opening the prison-doors of the loyal men who had been suffering and starving in the tobacco-warehouses.
Such had been the supposed aspect of affairs in the field, up to the last week of June, and young orators preparing their Fourth of July orations had introduced rounded periods referring to the added glory of the day and the new laurels wreathing the brows of the Union commanders. Those who contemplated speaking on the great day, and had not made any allusion to the fall of Richmond in their prepared orations, had already seen cause to repent the omission. One, who had incautiously mentioned in a city passenger-car that "he hoped Richmond would not be taken until after the Fourth," and who had lacked time to give as a reason that "if it should be taken before, he would be obliged to write his oration all over again"—had been assaulted for the offensive expression, and only escaped after a hard fight, with a black eye and a sense of damaged personal dignity. It had been settled that Richmond was to be in possession of the Union troops on the Fourth—wo to him who doubted it!
Hark! was there muttering thunder in the heavens?—thunder from a sky hitherto all bright blue? Business men, going down town on the morning of the twenty-eighth of June, found that "fighting had commenced before Richmond," and that "McClellan was changing his front." That "change of front" looked ominous. A few read the secret at once—that heavy reinforcements had come into Richmond from the half-disbanded rebel army Halleck had checked but not defeated at Corinth; and coupled with strange rumors of this came hints about "Stonewall Jackson," which indicated to the same persons that that rebel officer had advanced from the North-west and made an attempt to take McClellan's right wing in flank, necessitating a retrograde movement of that wing to bring him in front. Still, confidence was not lost, in McClellan or in the army. While his right wing fell back before an attack in force, his left might swing in towards Richmond and even take the city—who could say?
Then the telegraph closed down, and the morning papers contained "no later intelligence" from the field before Richmond. This was "the feather that broke the camel's back" of the national spirit. The government had no confidence in the people—it dared not trust them with the truth—it dared conceal! Our army was being cut to pieces, and we were permitted to know nothing of the calamity except the dreadful fact. No development could have been so injurious as this concealment—no stroke at the national confidence so deadly as the want of reliance shown by the government censors. The nation's heart went down beneath the blow: to this day[6]it has never risen to the same proud and courageous determination shown through all previous disasters.