We then AW end 6 Ov cpa AE Ad Put Ws Woe} Bae JAMES W. CHESHIRE HILLSBORO, N. CG Confederate States of America preston an nee lll ye tees en ya Ae ta NORTH CAROLINIANA COLLECTION a =e yen | . k io Ld BROKEN SWORD: fii eg ae . ? ites WW, Chitfiers a . WORTHINGTON. A PICTORIAL PAGE IN RECONSTRUCTION } 4 | 4 | | a si tcslainasctitn ct intact ail D. WORTHINGTON. WILSON, N. C.: P. D. GOLD & SONS, 1901. This work is respectfully inscribed to the Daughters of the Confederacy By the Author, Who followed, as their fathers did, the “Southern Cross.” Introductory. CHAP the bind apie cio he REET SORT cee EIS © T SitcsSvemeigh gear gh yond eed SRE Ee RET PACE T PRURRE T Il The Assassins of the Peace of the 221) MRE aie eh moe ATT! IIl il 4s erie ugg ncaiedeith chin TE de Oke een ee les an IV Patriotic Men CRONIN tote ni idntet inane hs ulead V The Mills Are SOIR A rs ile eee oe VI A Polttiotau. of the New Sehnol. oS VII MPINORTEE WAY os sryiwa gs serds' xever pede Sig Lhe as ee VIIL Lhiinthabdadatdedl ram Een Sere IX Proetlomi lh PeaWeess 5.03. yi arene cane oa x The Mojesty of the Law... iy. Renee oo cue XI secs Swope Seslah SREP REE TCC C eOT ee XIE A Knight of the White Camelia........................., XIIT Woiegdevcquotonerrp iL XIV TheiBtnok Diplowing 0:65 0) cule. si.4 slatues det ne XV Matar the Mammen... occ di 5.0 ois 0s saheecn cae XVI Ge PTVOOR WTI So 1S ioe seer dsc deles 4 ice a XVII BS lth ban oe secu, Se MRE SO NM MENS XVIII sheet Ah “eho cs pangs ERATE Te TRO PE a XIX ADaniel: Come tm dudgmentin. i). 60000 en XX An’ Unseen Hand Upon the Lever... ce wee XXI An Hoot With Dickens... scien SY XXIT The Absent Minded:Judge...... ........ Pinte Uae) ts eee ee XXIII The Dipping of the Red Stars................0cccsccse ess, XXIV The Parting of the Ways. ...0..6ce0ess0s cc oucae ee ANG. #4) ILLUSTRATED BY JAMES DEMPSEY BULLOCK. 4 | | | INTRODUCTION. “T have considered the oppressions that are done under the sun, and on the side of the oppres- sor there is power.” In the enforcement of the policy of Reconstruc- tion in the South, the evidences were from day to cis | aud, RIGHTS RESERVED. | day becoming so cumulative and decisive, that Payer al OY eae ae ti nothing but the discipline of an enraged party, coupled with the ‘‘spoils”’ principle, prevented the whole mass of the community from a universal expression of its desire to have it abandoned. Reasoning men everywhere felt that it must con- tinue to multiply its mischiefs. ‘‘But,’’ said its authors, ‘‘treason must be made odious, and the late insurrectionary States must feel that there is a higher law than that promulgated by their ordi- nances of secession.” The Spanish inquisition, now the abhorrence of all enlightened minds, was long sustained in many centuries by the tyrants’ plea of necessity. In the burning of a thousand heretics the religious zealot saw the hand of God; in the destruction of a thousand sorcerers, the fanatic discerned the ecom- monweal of the people; so in the whipcords with which the people of the South were so mercilessly scourged, there was found an antiseptic for the gangrenous wounds inflicted by the civil war. All these cruelties were legalized, while bleeding hu- manity was sinking under the burden of oppres- 1V sion. Inthe collision of exasperated passions, it is the temper of aggression that always strikes the first blow. The government of the South by car- petbaggers was essentially oppressive and inquisi- torial. It was, in its practical operation, a pure and unadulterated despotism, superseding the pro- tection guaranteed by the Federal Constitution to each and every State. It was under the dominion of an organized anarchy, with legislatures and courts of justice, subordinated to a lawless assem- blage of unprincipled men calling themselves the representatives and judges of the people. Among its necessarily implied powers was that of confisca- tion ; and numbered in its enumeration of brutali- ties, was a nameless crime that shocked the moral sense of mankind. Reconstruction came upon the South with fearful impulse. : Perhaps the ‘“‘hour is on the wing,’’ when a wor- thier hand will write the history of the institutional age that was sandwiched between the slavery civil- ization ante-dating the sixties, and that which minimized the pernicious power of manhood suf- frage at the close of the century; or perhaps when . that remnant that still survives in the weakness of age to **Weep o’er their wounds, o’er tales of sorrow done, Sboulder their crutch and show how fi-lds are won.”’ shall have ‘‘passed over the river;’ when the threnody of the ‘‘olden days’? which to us is like the musie of Carrol along the hills of Sli- mora, ‘‘pleasant, but mournful to the soul,’’ shall be forgotten, some ambitious youth will uplift the veil; will take a glance of the whole horizon, and the south will unbosom her griefs that have been so long concealed. It will not do fora hand that drew the sword to guide the pen. By a law of our nature all passive impressions impair our moral v sensibilities. Contact with misery renders us cal- lous to those experiences; a constant view of vice lessens its deformity. Ifany expression in this humble narrative shall appear ill-tempered, let me say in the language of Themistocles at the battle of Salamis, ‘‘Strike, but hear me.’’ The whole country has long since repudiated the dogma that ‘tall men are born free and equal’? and endowed with certain imprescriptible and inalienable rights. This heresy of course found its highest expression in the post-bellum amendments to the constitution, and the remedial statutes which made their effi- ciency complete. The war was the logical fulfill- ment of prophecies that had their forecast in the public councils before the nullification doctrine was forced upon, the Senate by Mr. Calhoun. It sprang without extraneous aid from uninterpretable ex- pressions in the organic law, which were finally ex- plained away in the effusion of blood. Recon- struction, in the conception of men who provided, the sinews of war, was the prolific aftermath; and in this harvest field, the gleaners plied their voca- tion with merciless activity, reinforced in their vil- lainies by the freedmen, who, in an experimental way, were publicly evincing their unfitness for cit- izenship. The Civil war gendered this brood that filled the South with horror, and their disorders and tumults precipitated a crisis that plunged the Southland into a paroxysm from the Potomac to the Rio Grande. There was no refuge from an evil that was all-pervasive. The great war with its pageants and sacrifices, its banners and gener- als, its storming soldiery and reservoirs of human blood was almost thrust out of the memory as the patriots of the sixties stood face to face to the all- encompassing perils of reconstruction. They saw the flag of the Union—the almost lifeless emblem of the genius of their liberties—frown feebly at the ii lal at eb cae A ee ee cil ce ENE YS Os a AE NOD Vi promulgation of a law that disfranchised 300,000 American citizens. The old banner seemed to turn her eye to the eagle at her staff-head and ask him to lend her his wide-spreading pinions, that she might bend the wing and fly away from the pollu- ted spot—from the embodied forms of evil and ruin. Almost every utterance of the complaining tongue that was syllabled into speech, was to this effect: ‘Will our country—our civilization—with- stand the shock?’ Our Southern characters had been enriched by an assemblage of all the treas- ures which refined intellect could accumulate; we had wisely built upon foundations of public vir- tue; our institutions had the permanency of age and respectability, and exhibited everywhere the fullest maturity of athletic vigor. The paroles of Southern soldiers amnestied them from arrest for past military offences, but the clothing which their poverty obliged them to wear marked the target at which the lawless and vicious shot at their will. Personal and State rights were abridged until noth- ing was left of the sovereignty of the barren com- monwealths or the enthralled individual. There were no juries of the vicinage but negroes; and daily the broken-hearted people were unwittingly aggrandizing rapacious officials. To the most de- praved of the negroes the carpet-baggers were con- stantly appealing with arguments that stirred their blood. This narrative will not in an historical sense deal with the subject of reconstruction; from its want of compactness and continuity it would prove inefficient asa lesson or a guide. We pre- sent, however, imperfect portraits of a few men and women who were unfortunately in the path- way of the storm that stripped the husbandman of the fruits of his labor, the Southron of his liberty, stifled the cries of the distressed, and rendered the tenures of property unstable and insecure. In no VII conjuncture in which this paroxysm of polities placed the former masters of slaves, did they abate their care and zeal for their betterment. Monnu- ments of brass and sculptured stone are not suffi- ciently enduring to memorialize the virtues of the negroes of the old plantations of the South, who watched and waited for the avenging arm of Provi- dence to right the wrongs of old master. May God’s mercy rest and abide upon this scattered remnant, that, like antumn’s leaves in the forest, have been blown hither and thither by the wraith of the tempest. nn ll i iii a tt ah nt it LOOKING BACKWARD. I have surrendered at discretion to vagrant thoughts. Just as the idle school-boy will pause beside the limpid stream to watch its eddying waters as they go on and on, ‘“‘never hasting, never rest- ing,” so I sit to-night in the haze of the years that are dead, with the mind sadly reminiscent, and I watch the shadows as they seem to sketch upon the memory the familiar faces of our loved and lost, and I hear their laughter and songs—grateful echoes from the realm of the long ago. Lam gazing again upon the sepulchre of the old South, after the plow-share of war and reconstruction had run the last furrow. In the garnering of the red har- vest did our men and women of the sixties main- tain themselves with a proper decorum? Were they less patriotic, less self-sacrificing, less ready with heart and hand to divert the destructive rev- olution of principle than their fathers of ’76, who in the up-building of republican institutions way- ered not intheir purpose; when the terror and ig- nominy of the scaffold were before them; when they knew their blood must cement the foundations of the structure they were rearing, and they them- selves become the first sacrifice in the temple of liberty, which they were dedicating? In that epoch £6 ‘ THE BROKEN SWORD. and since we have been making the grand experi- ment of self-government; not as Rome made it, when liberty there was only a name for licentious- ness; not as Greece made it, when a demagogue swayed the deluded masses and lacked only a throne to make him a king; but witha constitution that should deserve the encomium of the people, for the unutterable blessings it should bestow; a constitution impervious to unjust exactions and unpatriotic suggestions, we hoped for a_ poli- cy dictated in a spirit of compromise; but as I look back upon the eventful past, the first adven- ture of Gil Blas occurs tome. He~ had been fur- nished by his uncle with a sorry mule and thirty or forty pistoles, and sent forth to seek his fortune. He set out accordingly, but had not proceeded far from home, when, sitting on his beast counting his pistoles with much satisfaction, into his hat, the mule suddenly raised its head and pricked up its ears. Gil Blas looked around to see the cause of its alarm, and perceived an old hat upon the ground in the middle of the road, with a rosary of very large beads init. At thesame time he heard a voice addressing him ina very pathetic tone, ‘‘Good traveler, in the name of the merciful God, and of all the saints, do drop a few pistoles in the hat.”’ Looking in the direction from which these words proceeded, he saw to his dismay the muzzle ofa blunderbuss projecting through the hedge, and pointing directly at his head. Gil Blas, not much pleased with the looks of the pious mendicant, dropped a few pistoles in the hat and scampered away as fast as he could. This slight narrative presents to the mind of the writer the most perfect emblem of the pacific remedy of reconstruction in its beginning. To the contemplative mind there is a melancholy pleasure in looking backward; as shadows will en- THE BROKEN SWORD. 11 ter unbidden into the camera obscura, though every portal appears securely guarded; so memories will flit fantastically into the imagination when every approach seems closed against intrusion. I am looking backward, as it were, through a smoked glass, for a great sunburst is within the radius of vision, a sunburst that cheered our tired eyes with its thousand scintillant gleams in the hot days of August A. D. Nineteen Hundred. ; _ Looking backward upon a picturesque civiliza- tion—upon the old homesteads and plantations of the South, with their hallowed associations and ideals—with their impedimenta not of human chat- tels, but of compact masses of freed slaves, the underpinning of that civilization in its concrete form. I have asked the historian, the essayist, the chronicler, the clairvoyant, to aid me in the retro- Spection, but they answer dubiously. There is no trodden path that I may pursue. No friendly hand that I may clasp as I stride across fens and brakes, and morasses: even the echoes of receding footsteps, like the laughter of happy voices are hushed and dead “lang syne.’? There are faded letters however that I may read; broken swords and battered shields hanging upon decaying walls; moth eaten uniforms in garret and closet, that will guide me backward. The line of vision is traversed by unwieldy throngs of dilapidated men, in tat- tered gray clothes, without a federal head, with- out intelligent momentum, breaking up and dissol- ving like icebergs drifting southward; they are coming back home where there is neither grain for the sickle, nor hope for the husbandman: coming back to little cottages where lights in the windows kept burning for dear papa flickered and spum- ed, then died down into the rustic candlesticks, when the little watchful eyes so tired and weary, ii sl Alita i aiid a i i 12 THE BROKEN SWORD. closed upon the moonlight that shimmered within the humble chamber. Looking back over grave yards, where we rever- ently laid away our jewels to be placed by the Great Lapidary in His Crown by and by, when we shall all rise from our sleep and shine in His emitted glory. Looking backward over a strange realm, without boundaries or capitals, where there are no soldiers and no battle fields, and where every thing is so fragrant and ethereal. Here we may fashion pictures and weave around them gossamer draperies as insubstantial as this golden twilight. Hard-hitting, rough-riding moss-troopers rode over the subjugated domains of the bewildered South, with swords that flashed and turned every way like Alaric’s; rode hither to obliterate the past, its monuments, its shrines, its traditions; to scarify the old south with harrows and bayonets; its altars, its homes, its civilization, and to fetter with chains a great warlike people, with a purpose as fatuous as ever animated the swart maid of Philistia. Against this senseless vengeance, the South rebelled again with the same old defiance, the same old man-hood. You may prod the wounded lion with pikes and sabres, but you cannot tread upon it with iron heels without hearing its roar and feeling its fangs. To these marauders, the old South was but a moor fowl to be plucked and eaten. To us she was dynastic, like Hapsburg, Plantagenet or Hohenzollern. To them the South was a huge in- cubator, out of which was hatched ‘‘Stratagems and treasons:’? To us she was a Queen, still wear- ing the purple, still grasping the sceptre, as In past evolutions and crises. She was Our Queen when a full century ago, and before there was a cabin up- on her plantations she pleaded for the emancipa- tion of slaves and was insultingly asked to with- draw her petition by the Merchant Marine of Mas- THE BROKEN SWORD. i sachusetts. She was Our Queen when envenomed abolitionists were gathering the aftermath of the “Higher law proclamation; she was Our Queen when Ossawattomie Brown unleashed his blood- hounds upon a fresher trail at Harper’s Ferry; she was Our Queen when Sumpter ran up a flag that had never before fluttered ina gale, never before greeted a young nation with its maiden blushes, followed by the hopes, the prayers, the aspira- tions, faith and loyalty of ten million men, women and children; Our Queen when ‘old Traveler’? was stripped of his dust covered housings and led ever so weary back into Old Mars. Bob’s stables; Our Queen when the last cavalier wiped the blood from his sabre and scabbarded it forever. God grant she may always be Our Queen that we may be her liegemen, leal and right trusty in all catastrophes! Hence we go back to think of her, to write of her, though a widow bereaved of her husband, anda mother who has buried her first born. There is no sword now to gleam like a flash of light over the plumes of charging squadrons: there is no guidon to mark the line of direction through defile and mountain pass: no call of the bugle “to saddle and away,’ no thanksgiving like that of Jackson; ‘“‘God crowned our arms with Victory at McDowell yesterday;’? No smile like that of Lee as the Army of the Potomac with trailing banners was double quicking back to Washington. Ah! no, but the old South through her blinding tears is smiling still; her dear old face re-lighted by a fresher inspiration. A trifling dash of time between 1860 and 1870, but events have been packed away within that de- cade, that would overlap the four corners of any other century in thecalendar. Within those years were compounded somewhere in laboratories all the combustible elements of war and pillage; the cast- ing the projectiles that would destroy a hemis- | ; 1 | Ii , i \ 14 THE BROKEN SWORD. phere. Broken hearts—crushed hopes—desolated homes, an enslaved country, wrongs, indignities, outrages, oppressions, all, all wrought by the cruel instrumentalities of great masters of tragedy. Here isan old mansion with turrets and esplanades and terraces long neglected and sadly out of repair. Here are great oaks of a century’s growth planted and pruned by hands that have long since forgotten their cunning. Here are lapping waters singing in low sweet octaves as they did when poured out of the hollow of His Hand. Here is the old rookery out of which are ricochetting birds almost of every voice and plume. Here are cattle, red and dap- pled, cropping the meadow grass. Here are vast expanses clad in the refreshing drapery of nature, upheaving their grassy billows. Here are the crumb- ling cabins of the old slaves, in silent platoons that flank the old mansion, the earmarks of a pic- turesque civilization abused and denounced. Slaves, many of whom like the paintings of Titian and Mu-. rillo and Correggio in the great mullioned halls have come down from former generations. In yonder clump of soughing pines stood the little meeting house of the ‘‘cullud folks’’ on ‘‘Old Marsa’s plan- tation.”’ Here for decades they worshipped In the little brook that glides along so cheerily singing as it goes, they had baptized adult ‘‘bredrin and sisterin.’? Here many of them had felt the toach of the Master upon the emancipated souls, and heard His voice in their spiritual uplifting, tenderly call~ ing, and there when the gnarled and knotted hands had ceased their toil ‘Ole Marsa and Ole Misses”’ had laid them crosswise upon rigid, lifeless bosoms, that heaved not again with the pangs of suffering; and out yonder under the maples, hard by the little babbling brook, reverent and tender hands white and black had lowered the rude coffin and covered. it up in ‘‘God’s acre,” and here around the little THE BROKEN SWORD. 15 altar ole Marster, and Miss Alice and Mars Harry worshipped with them. No master, no mistress, no slave in this consecrated ground; no black, no white, in the invisible Presence; no hard times to come again; no tithing men, nor tax gatherers; no. snarling, snapping wolf to snatch the gnawed bone from the hungry wife and her starving child. If the larder were empty the ‘“‘great house’? had an ex- haustless supply. If clothes were rent there was allus stuff inde loom; If the clouds gathered for snow “‘ole marsa’’ would put on his great coat and knock at the doors and ask, ‘‘Boys, have you got plenty of good wood for the storm?” If Teale had the -‘rheumaties”’ or Melinda the ‘‘shaking ager,” or little Jeff the hives ro: watelall 5 _ Ol ° lives, there were ointments and liquids, pillsand lotions; and what physican Was SO kind; whose hands so soft and tender, whose voice so comforting and sympathetic as ‘‘ole missis’s and young missis’s?’’ There was the garden from which the negroes would market their vegeta- bles; there was the little ‘water million’? patch where little Jeff and Susan Ann would run out at midday, and thump and thump and thump and would as often run back with their mouths wide open like a rift in a black cloud, ‘‘Mammy, oh! Mammy, dat great big water-million is mo’est. ripe—be ripe by Sunday sho,’ and their little black feet would knock off a jig on the bare floor; then there was the pig sty where Sukey the ‘‘sas- sy poker,’’ in its sleekness and fatness, would grunt and frisk and cavort all the day long. Then there was ‘‘Ole Boatswain,’’ the coon dog, lazily napping in the door—barking at the treed coon in his sleep; then there were the ‘‘tater ridges’? and the pumpkins and the cotton patches; then there were the cackling hens and the pullets, the ducks and geese and guinea-fowls; the eggs that Hannah and Clarissa and Melinda had counted a nein at es an aaah ai a 16 THE BROKEN SWORD. score of times, and knew to a four pence a’ penny how much they would fetch in the town; and ‘‘dere was de wagin wid ole Bob an’ ole Pete wid pinted yeares, chawin’ de bit same as it were fodder, ready to dash off fore dey wus ready ;’’ and there were the inventoried assets in trade, ‘‘free forfs Han- na’s and two forfs Melinda’s and seben forfs Cla- rissy’s,’’ all tumbled in disorder, live stock and dead stock. And then ‘‘dere was Melinda and Judy a settin’ a middle ships into de wagin, all agwine to de town.’? And when the heavy wheels would rattle with its human freight over the hard ground of Ingleside, as the moon was dipping its nether horn below the line of vision, and Clara Bell and. Melinda ‘‘a singin’ de ole ship of Zion,’’ ‘ole Marster an’ Missisan’ Miss Alice would run outen de great house jes to see if Ned had fotched us all back safe an’ sound. An’ den when Christ- mas would come, de ole turkey gobbler would be turnin’ an’ twistin’ roun’ and roun’ fore de fire drappin’ gravy in de dish, and de barbeku would be brownin’ and de lasses a stewin out de taters in great big ubbens, fo de flambergasted cookin’ stobes cum about to pester folkes. And den dere would be ole Cesar a shufflin’ towards ole Marser’s room, and little Jeff a sneakin’ on tip-toe to ketch ole Marser’s Christmas gift fore he seed em, an’ Mary an’ Polly creepin’ like cats in Miss Alice’s cham- ber, to get their stockins that Santy Claus had stuffed from top to toe; and den de clatter in de great dinin’ room, when wid bowls of cream, and flagons of mellow ole rye, Clarissa and Melindy would be makin’ egg-nog fur de fokeses, white and cullud, on de plantation.’’ Oh! this golden prime! There were no black soldiers in greasy uniforms a hep, hep, hepping about the plantation; no firing of guns by riotous negroes on the roadside; no THE BROKEN SWORD. 17 drunken, revelling wretches to slash and deface portraits, walls and corridors; no lecherous vil- lains to accost and abuse defenceless and inoffen- sive women; no vigils to keep for fear of murders, burglaries and conflagrations; no angry forces and energies to quicken and compound; no wife to say to her husband, ‘Have you fotched any wittles back from the conwenshun? ’Fore God de chillun haint had narry moufful o’ nuffin to eat dis bless- ed day, nor me nuther.”’ Ah, no! the blessing that was vouchsafed unto Israel, despite its rebellion, was all bountiful in this land. ‘I will give thee peace in the land, and ye shall lie down, and there shall be none to make thee afraid.”’ Then war came with its unutterable horrors and tumults. The old tallow candles were snuffed out, and there were fears and alarms in the mansion and the cabin; the thoroughbred was brought out of the stable with yellow housings on, like the gelding of a knight errant, and the young soldier, dressed all in gray with buff revers, rushed out of the house and vaulted into the saddle. There were kisses and good byes—lost echoes now—as the cav- alier, young and happy and handsome, rode away. Yes, rode away in the descending shadows, over the hills, through the glades, to Manassas and to death. Yes, rode away to the death wrestle—to where the guns were spitting fire. ‘“‘Bress yo souls, fokeses,’’ said Uncle Ned one day, as he leaned upon his staff like a sheik of the desert, ‘I looks back now und den, und peers lak I kin see ole missis way back yan- der in de war times, when de kannon wasa plow- in’ froo de trees ober at Manassy, same as a sho nuii harrykin, und killin’ a million of our fed- erick soldiers at wun time. I seed her und Miss Alice cum outen de grate house, a fairly toting 2 18 THE BROKEN SWORD. i rry dat rainy day he rid off to de war, und pad funy he ea same as a gineral in all dem stripes und fedders, und Nelly she wuz jesta chompin’ de bit und er pawin’ de yurth lak she wuz moes afeerd de war want er gwine to hole out twell she und Mars Harry got dar; und den ole missis looked up in Mars Harry’s face, und I seed © her laf, do she wuz crying tu, und den I heerd hur say, ‘My brave boy, how kin I ever giv yu up! Will yer git er furlow und cum home arter de battle?) Und den Mars Hurry he larfed too, und den I heerd him say, ‘Oh mother don’t hea childish, I’m jest er gwine off fer my helth. I’m gwine to bring yer a yankee sord when we whups em apd drives um tuther side o’ de Pokomuce river.’ Und den ole missis she put her pendence in every word Mars Harry tole her, kase when he rid off E heerd her tell Miss Alice dat her boy want agwine to be gone long, and dat de ages Salon agwine to give up fore dey fit ary battle; but Janu by, when ole missus seed dat Mars Harry mou not git a furlow, she jest gin herself up to die. All de day long pore old missis would walk up und down de piazzy a peekin’ froo de trees und axin’ me ef I spishioned he was gwine to git kilt, und d-n when she heerd dat our fokeses had fit de batt'e of Manassy, me und ole missis sot up all night long, jes a watchin’ fer Mars Harry t. ride back lak he rid off; but no Mars Harry neber didn’t come back twell one rainy, grizzly night me und ole missis heerd a clatter down de road, und den we heerd somebody say, ‘Wo! und den a passel ov soldiers cum up to missis easy like, and axed her if Mr. Seymo’ lived dere; und when ole mis- sis heerd dat word und seed de kivered wagin, she jes drapped downinto de road dead. Pore ole mis- sis! De soldiers took her up in dere arms und toted her into de ‘grate house,’ und dere was her THE BROKEN SWORD. 19 and pore Miss Alice in hysteriks, and ole marser not a sayin’ ary wurd butachokin ’mos to def 4 und den de soldiers went back to de kivered wagin’,. and I heered’em a draggin’ outen it a great big box, and I seed dem totin it to de ‘grate house’ jes. as easy and slow, wid dere milinterry hats offer dere heds in de rain, und den I node it was Mars: Harry. When ole missis cum to, she made de sol- diers take de led offen de coffin, und dere was Mars Harry a lyin’ dere wid his eyes shot right tight, a smilin de butifullest al) to hissef. Ole missis sot dere all dat nite lak a grate big statu, a rnnnin her fingers fru his hair an’ a talkin’ to him jes de same as if Mars Harry had rid back frum de war lak he rid off. An’ den ole marsa he cum in und looked at Mars Harry a smilin’ to bissef, an’ I could see ole marsa shake an’ shake, but he didn’t say narry awurd,an’ he tuck Mars Harry’s sord out of de coffin; den bimeby I heerd him say he was agwine to venge his death. Ole missis soon pined erway, cause Mars Harry was her eye-balls, I tells ye fokeses, dat was de most solemcholly site I ever seed in my born days. Poor ole missis didn’t stay long arter- Mars Harry died; she dun gon home too, an’ I specks Mars Harry dun tole ole missis all erbout de battle of Manassy, an’ how he fit an’ how he got kilt; und erbout dat yankey sord he nebber- didn't fotch back.’? To a paternal ancestor of Colonel John Walter Seymour has been ascribed this prayer in battle, “Oh Lord, thou knowest how busy I must be this: day. IfI forget Thee, do not Thou forget me.’” Then rising, he gave the command, ‘‘Forward,, march! On, my lads!”’ At eight o'clock on the morning of the 23rd of’ October, King Charles was riding along the ridge: of Edgehill, and looking down into the valley of the Red Horse, a beautiful meadow, broken here as usta “f i st i allt ns da site IS a ia eli anh tgs i 20 THE BROKEN SWORD. and there by hedges and copses, he could see with his glasses the parliamentary army as they march- ed out of the town of Kleinton and aligned. their forces in battle array. “JT never saw the rebels in a body before,’’ said the king. ‘‘I will give them battle here.’’ There were hot words around the royal standard. Rupert, a dashing young general, who had seen the swift, fiery charges of the fierce troopers in the thirty years war, was backed up by Patrick Lord Ruth- ven and Sir Walter Seymour, among the many Scots who had won renown under the great Augus- tus Adolphus and opposed fiercely by Lord Lind- sey, an old comrade of the Earl of Essex, com- mander-in-chief of the rebel forces, who swore by all the saints in the calendar that he would not serve again in an army under a boy, referring to Prince Rupert, who was assigned by the king to command the army at Edge Hill that day. It was to this circumstance that the country was indebted for the prayer aforesaid. The brave sol- dier, unyielding in his loyalty to the king, resign- ed his command as a general to command his com- pany, andin so doing gave affront to Lord Lindsay and the king; but subsequently, at Scone, the king said to him, ‘‘You shall accompany me to London as a privy counsellor.”’ It was from this doughty ancestor of blessed memory that John Walter Seymour lineally de- scended. Ihave seen the old corselets, shackbolts, shields and trefoils of that chivalric era that be- longed to the old baronet. Colonel Seymour had interested himself greatly in the literature of that institutional era that had so close a connection with power of the -Feudal system. He spoke learnedly too of the ideal purity of the social and moral code of the age. The Colonel himself was no ignoble scion of so THE BROKEN SWORD. 21 at Waivers is bud us ine aeaiie ot een he had covered the faded ace eater satis é : his coll i 8 —— handkerchief until snaheoreed aie ew ee ont by one and trample them under shat-creriaid him Uka-n ehrond, ben Mecoment passed out of his hands hilt tor ti aoe tox. He had taken the beautifal Ali era! eat from a neighboring estate a lager onto noe 880, and now in the year 186-, try ~ ae ted lig ipa and deepening lay athwart heart and bp pgp man was still muttering curses long loud and deep. He had fully assimilated the in- cael aa fa rit of Coriolanus. ‘I would they were stony ake (as they are though in Rome littered) porch of the bs then Hisonly pees a pane _ ue was now in her twenty-third 1 ae 7 — ly fellow, a young daiaiane t avalry, baa Ga en at the battle of Manassas cba erat Gaal ri sine f ya ape or nie a Beene be until ian ads ‘ome. The likeness of the dez = peel cesta ge gry vividly upon her Nace from the presence of saci harap noe eerie ¢ grief, that recreated, fanci wot mr age that brought back to her chee eee r ~~ 7 ite Ss peace had settled upon the old isis ' its earth stones, one beautiful Sabbath aie Bae: as the Colonel, his daughter and old Clar- aK Se in Mrs. Seymours’s bed cham- oy e light of the morning sun shimmered watgee open. windows, and the shadows of the 7 oughs like imprisoned fairies danced in co- nse upon the polished floor. ‘The birds are sing- i sweetly to-day,’’ observed the sick lady. Hg indeed, they are,’ replied her husband. My dear,’’ she said as she turned her face to ictal 22 THE BROKEN SWORD. him, ‘“‘I have been greatly troubled by a horrid dream.”’ ‘‘Land sakes alive ole missis,”’ interrupted Clar- issa, ‘‘don’t yu pester yoursef to def erbout dreams these outlandish times. Dey is bad enuff goodness nose widout dreaming dreams. Ned he jumped clean outen de bed tother nite hollering for his ole muskit lak he was agwine to war—his eyes fairly a sot in his head lak a craw-fish and a tarryfying me to def and hollering ‘fire! fire!’ and a foaming at the mouf lak a mad dog, und duz yu know what I dun ole missis? when dat drotted nigger hollered fire! fire! I jes retched ober de table an’ got de pale of water an’ I put out dat fire fore Ned skover- ed whay hit war. Dat fool nigger walks perpen- ‘dikler, now yu heers my racket.’’ She laughed again and again as she continued: ‘‘And Ned he wanted to fight; he was most drounded.”’ There was little of sentiment and less of diplo- macy in the character of Colonel Seymour; though he was exceedingly tolerant toward Clarissa with her little vagaries and superstitions. What the dream of the good lady was has never been known -—the narrative was rudely broken off by the inter- ruption of Clarissa. Would you know sweet Alice more intimately? I -cannot portray her as she deserves; her heart was like so many little cells into which were unceasing- ly dropping the honey of blue thistle blossoms of charity. In every den of wretchedness; in every hovel where squalor and disease disputed all other -dominions, she was a beam of sunshine, giving warmth and cheer and joy. The little star-eyed “daisies in the meadow would turn up their tiny faces to greet her with smiles as she would pass them day after day with the little basket upon her arm; God had put her here among these poor people—among the deluded negroes as his missionary, and I am THE BROKEN SWORD. 23 quite sure He was pleased with ber work. I can- not describe her beauty and grace of person better than in the natural and characteristic language of Clarissa ‘‘Miss Alice,’ she would say, ‘Yu is the most butifullest white gal I ever seed in de wurrel; yer cheek is jes lak mellow wine-sop apples, und yer eyes is blu und bright lak agate marbles, und yer teeth as white as de dribben snow, und when yer laffs, pen pon it, even de birds in de trees stops to lisen; und yu is jes as suple und spry as de clown in de show.’’ Golden tresses like a nimbus of glory adorned her queenly head. Eyes of blue graduated to the softest tint; cheeks that transfered the deep blush from tender spring blossoms. Something in her there was that set you to thinking of those “strange back-grounds of Raphel—that hectic and deep brief twilight in which Southern suns fall asleep.”’ With Alice in her presence, Clarissa felt no evil; when the storm came with blinding fire, its fierce thunders, her refuge was by herside. She was her inspiration, her providence. The gentle hand upon the hot brow and there came relief; an old fashion- ed lullaby from her sweet lips and the fevered pickaninny in the cradle would turn upon his side and fall into a grateful slumber.