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P. BUCHSR GoHicNon

THE NEW BOOKS

OF THE SEASON

PUBLISHED BY

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MISS RAVENEL'S COxWERSION

SECESSIOiN TO LOYALTY.

By J. W. DE FOREST,

ArTHOR OF "EUROPEAN ACQUAIXTAN'CE," "SEACLIFF," ETC., ETC.

XEW YORK:

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,

FRAXKLIX SQUARE. 186 7.

Entered, according to J^t of Congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred and sixty-seven, by

HARPER & BROTHERS,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of l!sew York.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTKB PAGE

I. Mr. Edward Colbuvne becomes acquainted with Miss Lillie

Ravenel 7

II. Miss Eavenel becomes acquainted with Lieutenant Colonel

Carter 19

III. Mr. Colburne takes a Segar with Lieutenant Colonel Carter 31

IV. The Dramatic Personages go on a Picnic, and study the

Ways of New Boston 44

V. The Dramatic Pei'sonages get News from Bull Eun 59

YI. Mr. Colburne sees his Way clear to be a Soldier 71

VII. Captain Colburne raises a Company, and Colonel Carter a

Regiment 84

VIIL The Brave bid " Good-by" to the Fair 99

IX. Prom New Boston to New Orleans, via Port Jackson 112

X. The Eavenels find Captain Colburne in good Quarters.... 125

XI. New Orleans Life and New Orleans Ladies 142

XII. Colonel Carter befriends the Eavenels 159

XIII. The Course of True Love begins to run rough 175

XIV. Lillie chooses for herself 191

XV. Lillie bids "Good-by" to the Lover whom she has chosen

and to the Lover whom she would not choose 203

XVI. Colonel Carter, gains one Victory and Miss Eavenel an- other 218

XVII. Colonel Carter is entirely victorious before he begins his

Campaign 232

XVIII. Doctor Eavenel commences the Eeorganization of South- ern Labor 247

XIX. The Eeorganization of Southern Labor is continued with

Visor 261

IV

Contexts.

CHAPTEE PAGE

XX. Captain Colburne marches and figlits with Credit 275

XXI. Captain Colburne lias Occas-ion to sec Life in a llos-

jiital 289

XXII. Captain Colburne re-enforces the Ravcnels in Time to

aid them in running away 303

XXIII. Captain Colburne covers the Retreat of the Southern

Labor Organization 319

XXIV. A desperate Attack and a successful Defense 333

XXV. Domestic Happiness in spite of adverse Circumstances.. 34G

XXVI. Captain Colburne describes Camp and Field Life 3G0

XXVII. Colonel Carter makes an Astronomical Expedition with

a dangerous Fellow-traveler 371

XXVIII. The Colonel continues to be led into Temptation 385

XXIX. Lillie reaches the Apotheosis of Womanhood 401

XXX. Colonel Carter commits his first ungentlemanly Action iH

XXXI. A Torture which might have been spared 427

XXXII. A most logical Conclusion 440

XXXIII. Lillie devotes herself entirely to the Rising Generation.. 459

XXXIV, Lillie's Attention is recalled to the Risen Generation.... 473 XXXV. Captain Colburne as Mr. Colburne 489

XXXVL A Brace of Offers 503

XXXVII. A Marriage 517

MISS RAVENEL'S CONVERSION.

CHAPTER I.

MK. EDWAED COLBURXE BECOMES ACQUAINTED WITH MISS LILLIE EAYEXEL.

It was shortly after the capitulation of loyal Fort Siun- ter to rebellioils South Carolina that Mr. Edward Col- burne of New Boston made the acquaintance of Miss Lillie Ravenel of Xew Orleans.

An obscure American author remarks in one of his re- jected articles, (which he had the kindness to read to me from the manuscript) that every great historical event re- verberates in a very remarkable manner through the for- tunes of a multitude of private and even secluded individ- uals. Xo volcanic eruption rends a mountain without stirring the existence of the mountain's mice. It was un- questionably the southern rebellion which brought Miss Ravenel and Mr. Colbume into interesting juxtaposition. But for this gigantic political upturning it is probable that the young lady would never gave visited ISTew Bos- ton where the young gentleman then lived, or, visiting it and meeting him there, would have been a person of no necessary importance in his eyes. But how could a most loyal, warm-hearted youth fail to be interested in a pretty and intelligent girl who was exiled from her home because her father would not be a rebel ?

Xew Boston, by the way, is the capital city of the little Yankee State of Barataria. I ask pardon for this geogra-

8 Miss Rayexel's Conversion

phical impertinence of introducing a seventh State into New England, and solemnly affirm that I do not mean to disturb thereby the congressional balance of the repul)lic. I make the arrangement with no political object, but solely for my private convenience, so that I may tell my story freely without being accused of misrepresenting this pri- vate individual, or insulting that j^ublic functionary, or burlesquing any self-satisfied community. Like Sancho Panza's famous island of the same name, Barataria was surrounded by land, at least to a much greater extent than most islands.

It was through Ravenel the father that Colburne made the acquaintance of Miss Ravenel. In those days, not yet a soldier, but only a martially disposed young lawyer and wrathful patriot, he used to visit the New Boston House nearly every evening, running over all the* journals in the reading-room, devouring the telegraphic reports that were brought up hot from the newspaper offices, and discussing the great political events of the time with the heroes and sages of the city. One evening he found nobody in the reading-room but a stranger, a tall gentleman of about fifty, with a baldish head and a slight stoop in the should- ers, attired in an English moming-suit of modest snuff- color. He was reading the Xew York Evening Post through a rather dandified eyeglass. Presently he put the eyeglass in his vest pocket, produced a pair of steel-bowed spectacles, slipped them on his nose and resumed his read- ing with an air of increased facility and satisfaction. He was thus engaged, and Colburne was waiting for the Post, ragmg meanwhile over that copperhead sheet, The New Boston Index, when there was a jDleasant rustle of female attire in the hall which led by the reading-room.

" Papa, put on your eyeglass," said a silver voice which Colburne liked. " Do take off those horrid spectacles. They make you look as old as Ararat."

" 3Iy dear, the eyeglass makes me feel as old as you say," responded papa.

Fr. OM Secession to Loyaltt. 9

" Well, stop reading then and come up stall's," was the young person's next command. " I've had such an awful afternoon with those pokey people. I want to tell you-

Here she caught sight of Colburne regarding her fixedly in the mirror, and with another rustle of vesture she sud- denly slid beyond reach of the angle of incidence and re- fraction.

The stranger laid down the Post in his lap, pocketed his spectacles, and, looking about him, caught sight of Colburne.

" I beg your pardon, sir," said he with a frank, friendly, man of the world sort of smile. " I have kept the evening paper a long time. Will you have it ?"

To our young gentleman the civility of this well-bred, middle-aged personage was somewhat imposing, and con- sequently he made his best bow and would not accept of the Post until positively assured that the other had entire- ly done with it. Moreover he would not commence read- ing immediately because that might seem like a tacit re- proach ; so he uttered a few patriotic common-places on the news of the day, and thereby gave occasion for this history.

" Yes, a sad struggle, a sad struggle— especially for the South,'^ assented the imnamed gentleman. " You can't imagine how unprepared they are for it. The South is just like the town's poor rebelling against the authorities ; the more successful they are, the more sure to be ruined."

While he spoke he looked in the young and strange face of his hearer with as much seeming earnestness as if the latter had been an old acquaintance whose opinions were of value to him. There was an amiable fascination in the sympathetic grey eyes and the persuasive smile. He ckught Colburne's expression of interest and proceeded.

" Xobody can tell me anything about those unlucky, misguided people. I am one of them by birth — I have lived among them nearly all my life — I know them. They

A 2

10 Miss R a vex el's Conversion

are as ill-informed as Hottentots. They have no more idea of their relative strength as compared to that of the Unit- ed States than the Root-diggers of the Rocky Mountains. They are doomed to perish by their own ignorance and madness."

" It will probably be a short struggle," said Colbume, speaking the common belief of the North.

" I don't know — I don't know about that ; we mustn't be too sure of that. You must understand that they are barbarians, and that all barbarians are obstinate and reck- less. They will hold out like the Florida Seminoles. They will resist like jackasses and heroes. They won't know any better. They will be an honor to the fortitude and a sarcasm on the intelligence of human nature. They will become an example in history of much that is great, and all that is foolish."

" May I ask what part of the South you have resided in ?" inquired Colburne.

" I am a South Carolinian born. But I have lived in Xew Orleans for the last twenty years, summers excepted. A man can't well live there the year round. He must be away occasionally, to clear his system of its malaria phys- ical and moral. It is a Sodom. I consider it a proof of depravity in any one to Avant to go there. But there was my work, and there I staid — as little as possible. •! staid till this stupid, barbarous Ashantee rebellion drove me out."

" I am afraid you will be an exile for some time, sir," observed Colburne, after a short silence during which he regarded the exiled stranger with patriotic sympathy.

" I am afraid so," was the answer, uttered in a tone which implied serious reflection if not sadness.

He remembers the lost home, the sacrificed wealth, the undeserved hostility, the sentence of outlawry which should have been a meed of honor, thought the enthusias- tic young patriot. The voice of welcome ought to greet him, the hand of friendship ought to aid him, here among loval men.

Feo3i Secessiox to Loyalty, 11

" I hope you stay some time in New Boston, sir," he observed aloud. " If I can he of the slightest benefit to you, I shall be most happy. Allow me to offer you my card, sir."

" Oh ! Thank you. You are extremely kind," said the stranger. He bowed very politely and smiled very cor- dially as he took the bit of pasteboard ; but at the same time there was a slight fixity of surprise in his eye which made the sensitive Colburne color. He read the name on the card ; then, with a start as of reminiscence, glanced at it again ; then leaned forward and peered into the young man's face with an air of eager curiosity.

" Are you — is it possible ! — are you related to Doctor Edward Colburne of this place who died fourteen or fifteen years ago ?"

" I am his son, sir."

" Is it possible ! I am delighted to meet you. I am most sincerely and earnestly gratified. I knew your father well. I had particular occasion to know him as a fellow beginner in mineralogy at a time when the science was little studied in this country. We corresponded and ex- changed specimens. My name is Eavenel. I have been for twenty years professor of theory and practice in the Medical College of Xew Orleans. An excellent place for a dissectmg class, by the way. So many negroes are whipped to death, so many white gentlemen die in their boots, as the saying is, that we rarely lack for subjects. — But you must have been quite young when you had the misfortune — and science had the misfortune — to lose your father. Really, you have quite his look about the eyes and forehead. What profession may I ask ?"

"Law," said Colburne, who 'was flushed with pleasure over the acquisition of this charming acquaintance, so evi- dently to him a man of the world, a savant, a philosopher, and a patriotic martyr.

"Law — that is a smatteiing of it — just enough to have an office and do notary work."

12 Miss Ravenel's Coxveksiox

" A good profession ! A grand, profession ! But I should have expected your fathers son to be a physician or a min- eralogist."

He took off his spectacles and surveyed Colbume's frank, handsome face with evidently sincere interest. He seemed as much occupied with this young stranger's histo- ry and prospects as he had been a moment before with his own beliefs and exile.

At this stage of the conversation one of the hotel serv- ants entered the room and said, " Sir, the young lady wishes you would come up stairs, if you please, sir."

" Oh, certainly," answered the stranger, or, as I may now call him, the Doctor. " Mr. Colburne, come up to my room, if you are at leisure. I shall be most happy to have a longer conversation with you."

Colburne was in the usual quandaiy of young and mod- est men on such occasions. He wished to accept the invit- ation ; he feared that he ought not to take advantage of it ; he did not know how to decline it. After a lightning-like consideration of the pros and cons^ after a stealthy glance at his toilet in the mirror, he showed the good sense and had the good luck to follow Doctor Ravenel to his private parlor. As they entered, the same silver voice which Col- burne had heard below, exclaimed, " Why papa ! What has kept you so long ? I have been as lonely as a mouse in a trap."

"Lillie, let me introduce Mr. Colburne to you," an- swered papa. " My dear sir, take this arm chair. It is much more comfortable than those awkward mahogany uprights. Don't suppose that I want it. I prefer the sofa, I really do."

Miss Ravenel, I suppose I ought to state in this exact place, was very fau', with lively blue eyes and exceedingly handsome hair, very luxuriant, very wavy and of a flossy blonde color lighted up by flashes of amber. She Avas tall and rather slender, with a fine form and an uncommon Q^race of manner and movement. Colburne was flattered

Fkom Secessio:n- to Loyalty. 13

by tlie quick "blush and pretty momentary flutter of embar- rassment with which she received him. This same irre- pressible blush and flutter often interested those male indi- viduals who were fortunate enough to make Miss Eavenel's acquaintance. Each young fellow thought that she was specially interested in himself; that the depths of her womanly nature were stirred into pleasurable excitement by his advent. And it was frequently not altogether a mistake. Miss Ravenel was interested in people, in a con- siderable number of people, and often at first sight. She had her father's sympathetic character, as well as his graceful cordiahty and consequent chann of manner, the whole made more fascinating by being veiled in a delicate gauze of womanly dignity. As to her being as lovely as a houri, I confess that there were difierent opinions on that question, and I do not care to settle it, as I of course might, by a tyrannical afiirmation.

It is curious how resolutely most persons demand that the heroine of a story shall be extraordinarily handsome. And yet the heroine of many a love afiair in our own lives is not handsome ; and most of us fall in love, quite earnest- ly and permanently in love too, with rather plain women. Why then should I strain my conscience by asserting broadly and positively that Miss Ravenel was a first class beauty ? But I do affirm Tvithout hesitation that, like her father, she was socially charming. I go farther : she was also very loveable and (I beg her pardon) very capable of loving ; although up to this time she did not feel sure that she possessed either of these two qualities.

She had simply bowed with a welcoming smile and that flattering blush, but without speaking or ofiering her hand, when Colburne was presented. I suspect that she waited for her father to give her a key to the nature of the inter- view and an intimation as to Avhether she should join in the conversation. She was quite capable of such small forethought, and Doctor Ravenel was worthy of the trust.

" Mr. Colburne is the son of Doctor Colburne, my dear,"

14 Miss Raven el's Conversion

he observed as soon as his guest was seated. " You have heard me speak of the Doctor's premature and lamented death. I think myself very fortunate in meeting his son."

" You are very kind to call on us, Mr. Colburne," said the silver voice with a musical accent which almost amounted to a singsong. " I hope you don't hate South- erners," she added with a smile which made Colburne feel for a moment as if he could not heartily hate Beauregard, then the representative man of the rebellion. " We are from Louisiana, you know."

" I regret to hear it," answered Colburne.

" Oh, don't pity us," she laughed. " It is not such a bad 2:)lace."

" Please don't misunderstand me. I meant that I regret your exile from your home."

" Thank you for that. I don't know whether papa will thank you or not. He doesn't appreciate Louisiana. I don't believe he is conscious that he has suffered a misfor- tune in being obliged to quit it. I am. Xew Boston is very pretty, and the people are very nice. But you know how it is ; it is bad to lose one's home."

" My dear, I can't helj^ laughing at your grand misfor- tune," said the Doctor. " We are something like the He- brews when they lost Pharaoh king of Egypt, or like peo- ple who lose a sinking wreck by getting on a sound vessel. Besides, our happy home turned us out of doors."

The Doctor felt that he had a right to abuse his own, especially after it had ill-treated him.

" Were you absolutely exiled, sir ?" asked Colburne.

" I had to take sides. Those unhappy Chinese allow no neutrals — nothing but themselves, the central flowery peo- ple, and outside barbarians. They have fed on the poor blacks until they can't abide a man who isn't a cannibal. He is a reproach to them, and they must make away with him. They remind me of a cracker whom I met at a cross road tavern in one of my journeys through the north of Georgia. This man, a red-nosed, toba<jco-drizzling, whis-

Feo:m Secessio:n- to Loyalty. 15

key-jDerfumed giant, invited me to drink ^vitli him, and, when I declined, got furious and wanted to fight me. I told him that I never drank whiskey and that it made me sick, and finally succeeded in pacifying him without touch- ing his poison. In fact he made me a kind of apology for having ofiered to cut my throat. ' Wa'al, fact is, stran- ger,' said he, ' J,' (laying an accent as strong as his liquor on the personal pronoun) ' / use whiskey.' — You under- stand the inference, I suppose : a man who refused whiskey was a contradiction, a reproach to his j^ersonality : such a man he could not sufier to live. It was the Brooks and Sumner affair over again. Brooks says, ' Fact is J believe in slavery,' and immediately hits Sumner over the head for not believing in it."

" Somethmg like my grandfather, who, when he had to diet, used to want the whole family to live on dry toast," observed Colburne. " For the time being he believed in the universal propriety and necessity of toast."

" Were you in danger of violence before you left Xew Orleans ?" he presently asked. " I beg pardon if I am too curious."

" Violence ? Why, not precisely ; not immediate vio- lence. The breakmg-oft' point was this. I must explain that I dabble in chemistry as well as mineralogy. Now in all that city of raw materialism, of cotton-bale and sugar- hogshead instinct — I can't call it intelligence — there was not a man of southern principles who knew enough of che- mistry to make a fuse. They wanted to possess themselves of the United States forts in theu' State. They supposed that they would be obliged to shell them. The shells they had plundered from the United States arsenal ; but the fuses were wanting. A military committee requested me to fabricate them. Of course I was driven to make an im- mediate choice between rebellion and loyalty. I took the first steamboat to New York, getting off just in time to escape the system of surveillance which the vigilance com- mittees established."

16 Miss R a vex el's Coxyersion

It may seem odd to some sensible people that this learn- ed gentleman of over fifty should expose his own history so freely to a young fellow whom he had not seen imtil half an hour before. But it was a part of the Doctor's character to suppose that humanity took an interest in him just as he took an interest m all humanity ; and liis natu- ral frankness had been increased by contact with the pre- vailing communicativeness of his open-hearted fellow-citi- zens of the South. I dare say that he would have unfolded the tale of his exile to an intelligent stage-driver by whom he might have chanced to sit, with as little hesitation as he poured it mto the ears of this graduate of a distin- guished university and representative of a staid puritanical aristocracy. He had no thought of claiming admiration for his self-sacrificing loyalty. His story was worth tell- ing, not because it was connected with his interests, but because it had to do with his sentiments and convictions. Why should he not relate it to a stranger who was evi- dentl}' capable of sympathising with those sentiments and appreciating those convictions ?

But there was another reason for the Doctor's frankness. At that time every circumstance of the opening civil war, every item of life that came from hostile South to indig- nant Xorth, was regarded by all as a species of public property. If you put down your name on a hotel register as arrived from Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, Xew Or- leans, or any other pomt south of Mason & Dixon's line, you were immediately addressed and catechised. Peoj^le wanted to know how you escaped, and why you tried to escape ; and were ready to accord you any credit you de- manded for perilous adventures and patriotic motives ; and did not perceive it nor think a bit ill of you if you showed yourself somewhat of a romancer and braggart. And you, on the other hand, did not object to telling your story, but let it out as naturally as a man just rescued from drowning opens his heart to the sympathising crowd wdiicTi greets him on the river bank.

From Secessiox to Loyalty. 17

Kow Miss Ravenel was a rebel. Like all young people and almost all women she was strictly local, narrowly geographical in her feelings and opinions. She was colored by the soil in which she had germinated and been nur- tured ; and during that year no flower could be red, white and blue in Louisiana. Accordingly the young lady lis- tened to the Doctor's story of his self-imposed exile and to his sarcasms upon the people of her native city with cer- tam i^retty little starts and sniiFs of disapprobation which reminded Colburne of the counterfeit spittings of a kitten playing anger. She could not under any j^i'o^'ocation quarrel with her father, but she could perseveringly and energetically disagree with his opinions. When he had closed his tu-ade and history she broke forth in a defence of her darling Dixie.

" Now, papa, you are too bad. Mr. Colburne, don't you think he is too bad ? Just see here. Louisiana is my native State, and papa has lived there half his life. He could not have been treated more kindly, nor have been thought more of, than he was by those Ashantees, as he calls them, until he took sides agamst them. If you never lived with the southerners you don't know how pleasant they are. I don't mean those rough creatures from Ark- ansas and Texas, nor the stupid Acadians, nor the poor white trash. There are low people everywhere. But I do say that the better classes of Louisiana and ^lississipjn and Georgia and South Carolina and Virginia, yes, and of Tennessee and Kentucky, are right nice. If they don't know all about chemistry and mineralogy, they can talk delightfully to ladies. They are perfectly charming at re- ceptions and dinner parties. They are so hospitable, too, and generous and courteous ! Xow I call that ci^dlization. I say that such people are civilized."

" They have taught you Ashantee English, though," smiled the Doctor, who has not yet fully realized the fact that his daughter has become a young lady, and ought no longer to be criticised like a school girl. " I am afraid

18 Miss R a vex el's Co x version

Mr. Colburne won't understand what means."

" Oh, yes he will. Do try to understand it, Mr. Col- burne," answers Miss Ravenel, coloring to her temples and fluttering like a canary whose cage has been shaken, but still smiling good-naturedly. Her ftither's satire, delivered before a stranger, touched her, but could not irritate a good temper softened by affection.

" I must be allowed to use those Ashantee phrases once in a while," she went on. " We learn them from our old mammas ; that is, you know, our nice old black nurses. Well, I admit that the mammas are not grammarians. I admit that Louisiana is not perfect. But it is my Louisi- ana. And, i^apa, it ought to be your Louisiana. I think we owe fealty to our State, and should go with it wherev- er it goes. Don't you believe in State rights, Mr. Col- burne ? Wouldn't you stand by Barataria in any and ev- ery case ?"

" Xot against the Union, Miss Ravenel," resj^onded the young man, unshaken in his loyalty even by that earnest look and winning smile.

" Oh dear ! how can you say so !" exclaims the lovely advocate of secession. " I thought Xew Englanders — all but Massachusetts people — would agree with us. Wasn't the Hartford Convention held in New England ?"

" I can't help admiring your knowledge of political his- tory. But the Hartford Convention is a byeword of re- proach among us now. We should as soon think of being governed by the Blue Laws."

At this declaration Miss Ravenel lost hope of converting her auditor. She dropped back in her corner of the sofa, clasping her hands and pouting her lips with a charming earnestness of mild desperation.

Well, the evenmg passed away delightfully to the young patriot, although it grieved his soul to find Miss Ravenel such a traitor to the republic. It was nearly twelve when he bade the strangers good night and apologized for stay-

Fkom vSecessiox to Loyalty. 19

ing so late, and accepted an invitation to call next day, and hoped they would continue to live in l^ew Boston. He actually trembled with pleasure when Lillie at partmg gave him her hand in the frank southern fashion. And after he had reached his cosy bedroom on the opposite side of the public square he had to smoke a segar to compose himself to sleep,- and succeeded so ill in his attempt to secure speedy slumber that he heard the town clock ring out one and then two of the morning before he lost his consciousness.

" Oh dear ! papa, how he did hang on !" said Miss Rav- enel as soon as the door had shut behind him.

Certamly it was late, and she had a right to be impa- tient with the visitor, especially as he was a Yankee and an abolitionist. But Miss Ravenel, like most young ladies, was a bit of a hypocrite in talking of young men, and was not so very ill pleased at the bottom of her heart with the hanorino- on of Mr. Colburne.

CHAPTER n.

:&nSS EAVEXEL BECOilES ACQUAESTED WITH LIEUTENANT- . COLONEL CAETEE.

Me. Colbuene was not tardy in callmg on the Ravenels nor careless in improving chances of encountering them by seemmg accident. His modesty made him afraid of being tiresome, and his sensitiveness of being ridiculous ; but neither the one terror nor the other prevented tiim from m- flictmg a good deal of his society upon the interesting ex- iles. Three weeks after his introduction it was his good fortune to be invited to meet them at a dmner party given ■ them by Professor Whitewood of his own Alma Mater, the celebrated Winslow University.

The "Whitewood house was of an architecture so com-

20 Miss R a ye x el's Cox version"

men ill Xew Boston that in describing it I run no risk of identifying it to the curious. Exteriorly it was a. square box of brick, stuccoed to rei:)resent granite ; interiorly it consisted of four rooms on each floor, divided by a hall up and down the centre. This was the original construction, to which had been added a greenhouse, mto which you passed through the parlor, carefully balanced by a study into which you passed through the library. Trim, regu- lar, geometrical, one half of the structure weighing to an oimce just as much as the other half, and the whole per- haps forming some exact fraction of the entire avoirdupois of the globe, the very furniture distributed at measured distances, it was precisely such a building as the Xew Bos- ton soul would naturally create for itself Miss Ravenel noticed this with a quickness of perception as to the rela- tions of mind and matter which, astonished and amused Mr. Colburne.

" If I should be transported on Aladdin's carpet," she said, " fast asleej), to some unknown country, and should wake up and find myself in such a house as this, I should know that I T^as in Xew Boston. How the Professor must enjoy himself here ! This room is exactly twenty feet one way by twenty feet the other. Then the hall is just ten feet across by just forty in length. The Professor can look at it and say. Four times ten is forty. Then the green- house and the study balance each other like the paddle- boxes of a steamer. Why will you all be so square ?"

" But how shall we become triangular, or circular, or star-shaped, or cruciform ?" asked Colburne. " And what would be the good of it if we should get mto those forms ?"

" You w8uld be so much more picturesque. I should enjoy myself so much more in looking at you."

" I am so sorry you don't like us."

" How it grieves you !" laughed the young lady. A flush of rose mounted her cheek as she said this; but I must beg the reader to recollect that Miss Ravenel blushed at anvthms: and nothinir.

Feom Secessiox to Loyalty. 21

" Xow here are buildings of all shapes and colors," she 13roceeded, turnmg over the leaves of a photographic album which contained views of Venetian architecture. " Don't you see that these were not built by Xew Bostonians ?"

They were in the library, whither Miss Whitewood had conducted them to exhibit her father's jfine collection of photographs and engravings. A shy but hospitable and thoughtful maiden, mcapable of striking up a flirtation of her own, and with not a selfish matrimonial m her head, but still quite able to sympathise with, the loves of others, jNIiss Whitewood had seated her two guests at their art banquet, and then had gently withdrawn herself from the study so that they might talk of what they chose without restraint. It was already reported, with or without rea- son, that Mr. Colburne was interested m the fascinating- young exile from Louisiana, and that she was not so indif- ferent to him as she evidently was to most of the New Boston beaux. This was the reason why that awkward but good Miss Whitewood, twenty-five years old and without a suitor, be it remembered, had brought them in- to the quiet of the study. Meantime the door was wide open into the hall, and exactly opposite to it was another door wide open into the parlor, where, in full view of the young people, sat all the old people, meaning thereby Doc- tor Ravenel, Professor Whitewood, Mrs. Whitewood, and her prematurely middle-aged daughter. The three 'New Bostonians were listening with evident delight to the flu- ent and zealous Louisianian. But, instead of enter mg up- on his conversation, wliich consisted chiefly of lively satire and declamation directed against slavery and its rebellious partizans, let us revert for a tiresome moment or two, while dinner is preparing and other guests are arriving, to the subject on which Miss Ravenel has been teasing Mr. Colburne.

New Boston is not a lively nor a sociable place. The principal reason for this is that it is inhabited chiefly by New Englanders. Puritanism, the prevailing faith of that

22 Miss Ravexel's Coxversiox

land and race, is not only not favorable but is absolutely- noxious to social gayejties, amenities and graces. I say this in sorrow and not in anger, for Xew England is the land of my birth and Puritanism is the creed of my pro- genitors. And I add as a mere matter of justice, that, de- ficient as the Xew Bostonians are in timely smiles and a]>- propriate compliments, bare as they are of jollities and an- gular in manners and ojmiions, they have strong sympa- thies for what is clearly right, and can become enthusias- tic in a matter of conscience and benevolence. If they have not learned how to loA'e the beautiful, they know how to love the good and true. But Puritanism is not the only reason why the Xew Bostonians are socially stiff and un- sympathetic. The city is divided into more than ihe ordi- nary number of cliques and coteries, and they are hedged from each other by an unusually thorny spirit of repulsion. From times now far beyond the memory of the oldest in- habitant, the capsheaf in the social pp-amid has been allot- ted by common consent, without much opposition on the part of the other inhabitants, to the president and profes- sors of T\^iuslow University, their families, and the few whom they choose to honor with their intimacy. In early days this learned institution was chiefly theological and its magnates all clerical ; and it was inevitable that men bear- ing the priestly dignity should hold high rank in a puritan community. Eighty or a hundred years ago, moreover, the professor, with his salary of a thousand dollars year- ly was a nabob of wealth in a city where there were not ten merchants and not one retired capitahst who could boast an equal income. Finally, learning is a title to con- sideration which always has been and still is recognized by the majority of respectable Americans. An objection- able feature of this sacred inner chcle of society is that it contains none of those seraphim called young gentlemen. The sons of the professors, excepting the few who become tutors and eventually succeed their fathers, leave Xew Boston for larger fields of enterprise ; the daughters of the

Feom Secession to Loyalty. 23

professors, enamored of learning and its votaries alone, will not dance, nor pic-nic, much less intermarry, with the children of shop-keepers, shippers and manufacturers ; and thus it hapf)ens that almost the only beaux whom you will discover at the parties given in this Upper Five Hundred are slender and beardless undergraduates.

From the time of Colburne's introduction to the Raven- els it was the desire of his heart to make ISTew Boston a pleasant place to them ; and by dint of spreading abroad the fame of then* patriotism and its ennobling meed of martyrdom, he was able, in those excitable days, to infect with the same fancy all his relatives and most of liis ac- quaintances ; so that in a short time the exiles received quite a number of hospitable calls and invitations. The Doctor, travelled man of the world as he was, made no sort of difficulty in enjoying or seeming to enjoy these at- tentions. If he did not sincerely and heartily relish the New Bostonians, so different m flavor of manner and edu- cation from the society in which he had been educated, he at least made them one and all believe that they were lux- uries to his palate. He became shortly the most popular man for a dinner party or an evening conversazione that was ever known in that city of geometry and puritanism. Except when they had wandered outside of Xew Boston, or rather, I should say, outside of Xew England, and got across the ocean, or south of Mason and Dixon's line, these good and grave burghers had never beheld such a radiant, smiling, universally sympathetic and perennially sociable gentleman of fifty as Ravenel. A most interesting spectacle was it to see him meet and greet one of the elder magnates of the university, usually a solid and sm- cere but shy and somewhat unintelligible person, who al- ways meant three or four times as much as he said or looked, and whose ice melted away from him leaving him free to smile, as our southern friend fervently grasped his frigid hand and beamed with tropical warmth hito his arctic spirit. Such a greeting was as exhilarating as a pint

24 Miss Kayenel's Conversion

of sherry to the sad, sedentary scholar, wlio liad just come from a weary day's grubbing among Hebrew roots, and whose afternoon recreation had been a walk in the city cemetery.

There were not wanting good people who feared the Doctor ; who were suspicious of this inexhaustible courtesy and alarmed at these conversational j^owers of fascination ; who doubted whether poison might not infect the pleasant talk, as malaria fills the orange-scented air of Louisiana.

" I consider him a very dangerous man ; he might do a great deal of harm if he chose," remarked one of those conscientious but uncharitable ladies whom I have regard- ed since my childhood with a mixture of veneration and dislike. Thin-lipped, hollow-cheeked, narrow-chested, with only one lung and an intermittent digestion, without a single rounded outline or graceful movement, she was a sad example of what the Xew England east winds can do in enfeebling and distortmg the human form divine. Such are too many of the New Boston women when they reach that middle age which should be physically an era of adipose, and morally of charity. Even her smile was a Avoful phenomenon ; it seemed to be rather a symptom of pain than an expression of pleasure ; it was a kind of gri- ping smile, like that of an mfant with the colic.

" K he chose ! What harm would he choose to do ?" expostulated Colburne, for whose ears this warning was intended.

" I can't precisely make out whether he is orthodox or not," repHed the inexorable lady. " And if he is hetero- dox, what an awful power he has for deceiving and lead- ing away the minds of the young ! He is altogether too agreeable to win my confidence until I know that he is o-uided and restramed by grace."

" That is the most unjust thing that I ever heard of," broke out Colburne indignantly. " To condemn a man because he is charming ! If the converse of the rule is true, Mrs. Ruggles — if unpleasant people are to be ad-

From Secession to Loyalty. 25

mired because they are such — then some of us New Bos- tonians ought to be objects of adoration."

" I have my opinions, Mr. Colburne," retorted the lady, who was somewhat stung, although not clever enough to comprehend how badly.

" It makes a great difference with an object wlio looks at it," continued the young man. " I sometimes wonder Avhat the ants think of us human beings. Do they under- stand our capacities, duties and destinies ? Or do they look upon us from what might be called a pismire point of view ?"

Colburne could say such things because he was a popu- lar favorite. To people who, like the Xew Bostonians, di%l not demand a high finish of manner, this young man was charming. He was sympathetic, earnest in his feelings, as frank as such a modest fellow could be, and among friends had any quantity of exj^ansion and animation. He would get into a gale of jesting and laughter over a game of whist, provided his fellow j^layers were in anywise dis- j^osed to be merry. On such occasions his eyes became so bright and his cheeks so flushed that he seemed lumin- ous with good humor. His laugh was sonorous, hearty, and contagious ; and he was not at all fastidious as to what he laughed at : it was sufficient for him if he saw that you meant to be witty. In conversation he was very pleasant, and had only one questionable trick, which was a truly American habit of hyperbole. When he was ex- cited he had a droll, absent-minded way of running his fingers through his wavy brown hair, until it stood up in picturesque masses which were very becommg. His fore- head was broad and clear ; his complexion moderately light, with a strong color in the cheeks ; his nose straight and handsome, and other features sufficiently regular ; his eyes of a light hazel, and remarkable for their gentleness. There was nothing hidden, nothing stern, in his expression — you saw at a glance that he was the embodiment of frankness and good nature. In person he was strongly

B

2fi Miss Ravexel's Conversion

built, and he bad increased bis vigor by systematic exer- cise. He bad been one of tbe best gymnasts and oarsmen in college, and still kej)t up bis familiarity witb swinging- bars and racing sbells. His firm wbite arms were well set on broad sboulders and a full chest ; and a pair of long, vigorous legs completed an uncommonly fine figure. Par- donably proud of the strength which he had m part cre- ated, he loved to exhibit gymnastic feats, and to talk of the matches in which he had been stroke-oar. It was the only subject on which he exhibited personal vanity. To ^um up, he was considered in his set the finest and most agreeable young man in Xew Boston.

Let us now return to the dinner of Professor "White- wood. The party consisted of eight persons ; the male places being filled by Professor Whitewood, Doctor Rav- enel, Colburne, and a Lieutenant-Colonel Carter ; the fe- male by Mrs. and Miss Whitewood, Miss Ravenel, and John Whitewood, Jr. This last named individual, the son and hcii- of the host, a youth of twenty years of age, was a very proper person to fill the position of fourth lady. Thin, pale and almost sallow, with pinched features sur- mounted by a high and roomy forehead, tall, slender, nar- row-chested and fi-agile in form, shy, silent, and pure as the timidest of girls, he was an example of what can be done with youthful blood, muscle, mind and feeling by the studious severities of a puritan university. Miss Ravenel, accustomed to far more masculine men, felt a contempt for him at the first glance, saying to herself. How dreadfully ladylike ! She was far better satisfied with the appear- ance of the stranger, Lieutenant-Colonel Carter. A little above the middle height he was, with a full chest, broad shoulders and muscular anns, brown curlins: hair, and a monstrous brown mustache, forehead not very high, nose straight and chm dimpled, brown eyes at once audacious and mirthful, and a dark rich complexion which made one think of pipes of sherry wine as well as of years of sun- burnt adventure. When he was presented to her he

From Secession to Loyalty. 27

looked her full in the eyes with a bold flash of interest which caused her to color from her forehead to her shoul- ders. In age he might have been anywhere from thirty- three to thii-ty-seven. In manner he was a thorough man of the world without the insinuating suavity of her father, but with all his self-possession and readiness.

Colburne had not expected this alarming phenomenon. He was clever enough to recognize the stranger's gigantic social stature at a glance, and like the Israelitish spies in the presence of the Amakim, he felt himself shrink to a grasshopper mediocrity.

At table the company was arranged as follows. At the head sat Mrs. Whitewood, with Dr. Ravenel on her right, and Miss Whitewood on her left. At the foot was the host, flanked on the right by Miss Ravenel and on the left by Lieutenant-Colonel Carter. The two central side places were occupied by young Whitewood and Colbunie, the latter being between Miss Whitewood and Miss Ravenel. With a quickness of perception which I suspect he would not have shown had not his heart been interested in the question he immediately decided that Doctor Ravenel was intended to go tete-a-tete with Mrs. Whitewood, and this strange officer with Miss Ravenel, while he was to devote himself to Miss Whitewood. The worrying thought drove every brilliant idea from his head. He could no more talk and be merry than could that hermaphrodite soul whose lean body and cadaverous countenance fronted him on the opposite side of the table. Miss Whitewood, who was nearly as great a student as her brother, was almost as de- ficient in the powers of speech ; she made an efibrt, first in the direction of the coming Presentation Day, then to- wards somebody's notes on Cicero, finally upon the wea- ther ; at last, with a woman's sympathetic divination, she guessed the cause of Colbume's gloom, and sank into a pitying silence. As for Mrs. Whitewood, amiable woman and excellent housewife, though an invalid, her conversa- tional faculty consisted in listening. Thus nobody talked

28 Miss Ravenel's Conversion

except the Ravenels, Lieutenant-Colonel Carter, and Pro- fessor Whitewood.

Colburne endeavored to conceal his troubled condition by a smile of counterfeit interest in the conversation. Then he grew ashamed of himself, and tearing off his ficti- tious smirk, substituted a look of stern thought, thereby exliibiting an honest countenance, but not one suitable to the occasion. There was sherry on the table ; not because wine-bibbing was a habit of the Whitewoods, inasmuch as the hostess had brought it out of the family medical stores Avith a painful twinge of conscience ; but there it was, in deference to the suj^posed tastes of the army gentleman and the strangers from the south. Colburne was tempted to rouse himself with a glass of it, but did not, being a pledged member of a temperance society. Instead of this he made a gallant moral effort, and succeeded in talking copiously to the junior Whitewood. But as what he said is of little consequence to our story, let us go back a few moments and learn what it was that had depressed his spirits.

" I am delighted to meet some one from Louisiana, Miss Ravenel," said the Lieutenant-Colonel, after the master of the house had said grace.

" Why ? Are you a Louisianian ?" asked the yoimg lady with, a blush of interest whicli was the first thing that troubled Colburne.

" Xot precisely. I came very near calling myself such at one time, I liked the State and the peo2:)le so much. I was stationed there for several years."

" Indeed ! At jS^ew Orleans ?"

" Not so fortunate," replied the Lieutenant Colonel with a smile and a slight bow, which was as much as to say that, if he had been stationed there, he might have hoj^ed for the happiness of knowing Miss Ravenel earlier. " I was stationed in the arsenal at Baton Rouge."

" I never was at Baton Rouge ; I mean I never "sdsited there. I have passed there repeatedly in going up and

From Secession to Loyalty. 29

down the river, just while the boat made its landings, you know. What a beautiful place it is ! I don't mean tbe buildings, but the situation, the bluffs."

" Precisely. Great relief to get to Baton Rouge and see a hill or two after staying in the lowlands."

" Oh ! don't say anything against the lowlands," begged Miss Ravenel.

"I won't," promised the Lieutenant Colonel. " Give you my word of honor I won't do it, not even in the strict- est privacy."

There was a cavalier dash in the gentleman's tone and manner ; he looked and spoke as if he felt himself quite good enough for his company. And so he was, at least in respect to descent and social position ; for no family in Virginia boasted a purer strain of old colonial blue blood than the Carters. In addition the Lieutenant Colonel was a gentleman by right of a graduation from West Point, and of a commission in the regular service which dated back to the times when there were no volunteers and few civilian appointments, and when by consequence army offi- cers formed a caste of aristocratic military brahmins. From the regular service, however, in which he had been only a lieutenant, his name had vanished several years previous. His lieutenant-colonelcy was a volunteer commission issued by the governor of the State. It was in the Second Barataria, a three-months' regiment, which was shortly to distinguish itself by a masterly retreat from Bull Run. Carter had injured his ancle by a fall from his horse, and was away from the army on a sick leave of twenty days, avoiding the hospitals of Washing- ton, and giving up his customary enjoyments in Xew York for the sake of attending to business which will transpii-e during this narrative. His leave had nearly expired, but he had applied to the War Department for an extension of ten days, and was awaiting an answer from that awful headquarters with the utmost tranquillity. If he found himself in the condition of being absent without leave,

30 Miss Rayexel's Coxveksiox

he knew liow to explain things to a military commission or a board of inquiry.

The Lieutenant-Colonel liked the appearance of the young person whom he had been invited to meet. In the first place, he said to himself, she had a charming mixture of girlish freshness and of the thorough-bred society air which he considered indispensable to a 'lady. In the second place she looked somewhat like his late wife ; and although he had been a wasteful and neglectful husband, he still kept a moderately soft spot in his heart for the memory of the departed one ; not being in this respect different, I understand, from the majority of widowers. He saw that Miss Ravenel was willing to talk any kind of nothing so long as she could talk of her native State, and that therefore he could please her without much in- tellectual strain or chance of rivalry. Consequently he prattled and made prattle for some minutes about Louis- iana.

"Were you acquainted with the McAllisters?" he wanted to know. " Very natural that you shouldn't be. They lived up the river, and seldom went to the city. They had such a noble plantation, though ! You could enjoy the true, old-style, princely Louisiana hospitality there. Splendid life, that of a southern planter. If I hadn't been in the army — or rather, if I could have done everything that I fancied, I should have become a sugar planter. Of course I should have run myself out, for it takes a frightful capital and some business faculty, or else the best of luck. By the way, I am afraid those fine fel- lows will all of them come to grief if this war continues five or six years."

" Five or six years !" exclaimed Professor Whitewood in astonishment, but not in dismay, so utter was his incre- dulity. "Do you suppose. Colonel, that the rebels can resist for five or six years ?"

" Why not ? Ten or twelve millions of people on their own ground, and difficult ground too, will make a terrific

From Secession to Loyalty,

31

resistance. They are as well prepared as we are, and bet- ter. Frederic of Prussia wasn't conquered m seven years. I don't see anything unreasonable in allowing these fel- lows five or six. By the way," he laughed, " I am givmg you an honest professional opinion. Talking outside—to the rabble— talking as a patriot," (here he laughed agam) " and not as an officer, I say three months. Do it m three months, gentlemen !" he added, setting his head back and swelling his chest in imitation of the conventional popular orator. .

Miss Pvavenel laughed outright to hear the enemies ot her section satuized.

" But how will the South stand a contest of five or six years ?" queried the Professor.

" Oh, badly, of course ; get whipped, of course ; that is, if we develope energy and military talent. We have the resources to thrash ^them. War in the long rim is pretty much a matter of arithmetical calculation. Oh, Miss Rav- enel, I was about to ask you, did you know the Slidells ?" " Very slightlv."

" Why slightly ? Didn't you like them? I thought they were very agreeable people; though, to be sure, they were parvenus.'^''

" They were very ultra, you know ; and papa was of the other party."

" Oh, indeed !" said the Lieutenant-Colonel, turning his head and surveying Ptavenel with curiosity, not because he was loyal, but because he was the young lady's papa. " How I regret that I had no chance to make your father's acquaintance m Louisiana. Give you my honor that I wasn't so simple as to prefer Baton Rouge to N'ew Orleans. I tried to get ordered to the crescent city, but the War Department was obdurate. I am confident," he added, with his audacious smile, half flattering and half quizzical, " that if the Washington people had known all that I lost by not getting to ^N'ew Orleans, they would have relented." "it was perfectly clear to Miss Ravenel that he meant to

32 Miss Ravexel's Conversion

pay her a compliment. It occurred to lier that she was i:)robably in short di-esses when the gallant Lieutenant- Colonel was on duty at Baton Rouge, and thus missed a chance of seeing her in Xew Orleans. But she did not allude to this ludicrous possibility ; she only colored at his audacity, and said, " Oh, it's such a lovely city ! I think it is far preferable to New York."

" But is it not a very wicked city ?" asked the host, quite seriously.

"Mr. Whitewood ! How can you say that to me, a na- tive of it ?" she laughed.

" Jerusalem," j^ursued the Professor, getting out of his scrape with a kmd'of ponderous dexterity, like an elephant backing ofP a shak}^ bridge, and takuig his time about it, like Xoah spending a hundred and twenty years m build- ing his ark — " Jerusalem j^roved her wickedness by casting out the prophets. It seems to me that your presence here, and that of your father, as exiles, is sufficient proof of the iniquity of Xew Orleans."

" Upon my honor, Professor !" burst out the Lieutenant- Colonel, " you beat the best man I ever saw at a compli- ment."

It was now Professor Whitewood's pale and wrinkled cheek which flushed, partly with gratification, partly with embarrassment. His wife surveyed him in mild astonish- ment, almost fearing that he had indulged in much sherry.

• The Lieutenant-Colonel, by the way, had taken to the wme in a style which showed that he was used to the taste of it, and liked the eflects. His conversation orrew more animated ; his bass voice rang from end to end of the table, startling Mrs. Whitewood ; his fine brown eyes flashed, and a few drops of perspiration beaded his brow. It must not be supposed that the sheriy alone could do as much as this for so old a campaigner. That afternoon, as he lounged and yawned in the readmg-room of the Xew Boston House, he had thought of Professor Whitewood's invitation, and, feeling low-spirited and stupid, had con-

Feom Secession to Loyalty. 33

eluded not to go to the dinner, althongli in the morning he had sent a not^ of acceptance. Then, feeling low-spirited and stupid, as I said, he took a glass of ale, and subse- quently a stiffish whiskey-punch, following up the treat- ment with a segar, which by producmg a dryness of the throat, induced him to try another whiskey-punch. Forti- fied by twenty-five cents' worth of liquor (at the then prices) he felt his ambition and industry revive. By Jove, Carter, he said to himself, you must go to that dinner- party. Whitewood is just one of those pious heavy- weio-hts who can biing this puritanical governor to terms. Put on your best toggery, Carter, and make your bow, and say how-de-do.

Thus it was that when the Professor's sherry entered in- to the Lieutenant-Colonel, it found an ally there which aid- ed it to produce the afore-mentioned signs of excitement. Colburne, I grieve to say, almost rejoiced in detecting these symptoms, thuiking that surely Miss Ravenel would not fancy a man who was, to say the least, uiordiaately convivial. Alas ! Miss Kavenel had been too much accus- tomed to just such gentlemen in Xew Orleans society to see anything disgusting or even surprising in the manner of the Lieutenant-Colonel. She continued to prattle with him. in her pleasantest manner about Louisiana, not in the least restrained by Colburne's presence, and only now and then casting an anxious glance at her father ; for Ravenel the father, man of the world as he was, did not fancy the bacchanalian Xew Orleans type of gentility, having ob- served that it frequently brought itself and its T\'ife and children to grief

The dinner lasted an hour and a half, by which time it was nearly twilight. The ordinary prandial hour of the Whitewoods, as well as of most fashionable Xew Boston people, was not later than two o'clock in the afternoon, but tliis had been considered a special occasion on account of the far-off* origin of some of the guests, and the meal had therefore commenced at five. On leaving the table the B2

34 Miss Ravexel's Coxversion

party went into the parlor and had coffee. Then Miss Ravenel thought it wise to propitiate her father's searching eye by quitting the Lieutenant-Colonel with his pleasant wordly ways and his fascinating masculine maturity, and going to visit the greenhouse in company with that pale bit of human celery, John White wood. Carter politely stood up to the rack for a while wdth IMiss Whitewood, but, finding it dry fodder to his taste, soon made his adieux. Colburne shortly followed, in a state of mind to question the goodness of Providence in permitting lieuten- ant-colonels.

CHAPTER ni.

MR. COLBURNE TAKES A SEGAR WITH LIEUTEXAXT-COLOXEL CARTER.

As Colbnrne neared his house he saw the Lieutenant- Colonel standmg in the flare of a street lamp and looking up at the luminary with an air of puzzled consideration. With a temperance man's usual lack of charity to people given to wine, the civilian judged that the soldier was disgracefully intoxicated, and, instead of thinking how to conduct him quietly home, was about to pass him by on the other side. The Lieutenant-Colonel turned and re- cognized the young man. Li other states of feeling he would have cut him there and then, on the ground that it was not binding on him to continue a chance acquaint- ance. But being full at the moment of that comprehen- sive love of fellow existences which some constitutions extract from inebriating fluids, he said,

" Ah ! how are you ? Glad to come across you again." Colburne nodded, smiled and stopped, saying, " Can I do anything for you ?"

FEOii Secession to Loyalty. 35

Will you smoke ?" asked the Lieutenant-Colonel, offer- " But how to light it ? there's the rub. I've just broken my last match against this ciirsed wet lamp- post— never thought of the dew, you know — and Avas stu- dying 'the machine itself, to see if I could get up to it and into it."

" I have matches," said Colburne. He produced them ; they lighted and walked on together.

Being a great fancier of good segars, and of moonlit summer walks under Xew Boston elms, I should like here to describe how sweetly the fragrance of the Havanas rose through the still, dewy air into the interlacing arches of nature's cathedral aisles. The subject would have its charms, not only for the great multitude of my brother smokers, but for many young ladies who dearly love the smell of a segar because they like the creatures who use them. At a later period of this history, if I see that I am likely to have the necessary space and time, I may bloom into such pleasant episodes.

" Come to my room," said the soldier, taking the arm of the civilian. " Hope yon have nothing better to do. We Avill have a glass of ale."

Colburne would have been glad to refuse. He was mod- est enough to feel himself at a disadvantage in the compa- ny of men of fashion ; and moreover he was just sufficient- ly jealous of the Lieutenant-Colonel not to desire to fra- ternize ^dth him. Finally, a strong suspicion troubled his mind that this military personage, indifferent to Xew Bos- ton opinions, and evidently a wine-bibber, might proceed to get publicly drunk, thus making a disagreeable scene^ with a chance of future scandal. Why then did not Col- burne decline the invitation? Because he was young, good-natured, modest, and wanting in that social tact and courage which most men only acquire by much in- tercourse with a great variety of theh fellow creatures. The Lieutenant-Colonel's, walk was the merest trifle un- steady, or at least careless, and his herculean arm, solid

36 Miss Ravexel's Conversion

and knotted as an apple-tree limb, swayed repeatedly against Colbnrne, eliciting from liim a stroke-oarsman's ap- probation. Proud of his own biceps, the young man had to acknowledge its comparative hiferiority in volume and texture.

" Are you a gymnast. Colonel ?" he asked. " Your arm feels Uke it."

"Sword exercise," answered the other. "Very good thing to work off a heavy dinner. What do you do here"? Boat it, eh ? That's better yet, I fancy."

'♦ But the sword exercise is just the thing for your pro- fession."

" Pshaw ! — ^beg pardon. But do you suppose that we m these times ever fight hand to hand ? Xo sir. Gun- powder has killed all that."

" Perhaps there never was much real hand to hand fightino'," suggested Colburne. " Look at the battle of Pharsaiia. Two armies of Romans, the best soldiers of an- tiquity, meet each other, and the defeated party loses fifteen thousand men killed and wounded, while the vic- tors lose only about two hundred. Is that fighting ? Isn't it clear that Pompey's men began to run away when they got within about ten feet of Cxesar's ?"

" By Jove ! you're right. Bully for you ! You would make a soldier. Yes. And if Caesar's men had had long- rano-e rifles, Pompey's men would have run away at a hundred yards. All victories are won by moral force — by the terror of death rather than by death itself"

" Then it is not the big battalions that carry the day," inferred Colburne. " The weakest battalions will win, if they will stand."

" But they won't stand, by Jove ! As soon as they see they are the weakest, they run away. Modern war is founded on the prmciple that one man is afraid of two. Of course you must make allowance for circumstances, strength of position, fortifications, superior discipline, and superior leadership. Circumstances are sometimes strong

From Secession to Lotaltt. 37

enough to neutralize numbers. — Look here. Axe you in- terested in these matters ? Why don't you go into the army ? What the devil are you staying at home for when the whole nation is arming, or will soon have to arm ?"

" I " — stammered Colburne — " I have thought of apply- ing for a quartermaster's position,"

" A quartermaster's !" exclaimed the Lieutenant-Colonel, without seekhig to disguise his contempt. " What for ? To keep out of the fighting ?"

" Xo," said Colburne, meekly. " But I do know a little of the ways of business, and I know nothing of tactics and discij)line. I coiild no more drill a company than I could sail a ship. I should be like the man who mounted such a tall horse that he not only couldn't manage him, but couldn't get ofl* till he was thrown off". I should be dis- missed for incompetency."

" But you can learn all that. You can learn in a month. You are a college man, aint you ? — you can learn more in a month than these boors from the militia can in ten years. I tell you that the fellows who are in command of compa- nies in my regiment, and in all the volunteer regiments that I know, are not fit on an average to be corporals. The best of them are from fair to middlins^. You are a colleo-e • man, amt you ? Well, when I get a regiment you shall have a company in it. Come up to my quarters, and let's talk this over."

Arrived at his room. Carter rang for Scotch ale and se- gars. Li the course of half an hour he became exceedingly open-hearted, though not drunk in the ordinary and disa- greeable acceptation of the word.

" I'll tell you why I am on here," said he. " It's my mother's native State — old Baratarian family — Standishes, you know — historically Puritan and colonial. The White- woods are somehow related to me. By the way, I'm a Virginian. I suppose you think it queer to find me on this side. Xo you don't, though ; you don't believe in the State Riaht of secession. Xeither do I. I was edu-

38 Miss Raven el's Conversion

cated a United States soldier. I follow General Scott. Xo Virginian need be ashamed to follow old Fuss and Feathers. TV"e used to swear by him in the army. Great Scott ! the fellows said. Well, as I had to give up my fa- ther's State, I have come to my mother's. I want old Bar- ataria to distinguish herself. Now's the chance. We are going to have a long war. I want the State to be pre- pared and come out strong ; it's the grandest chance she'll ever have to make herself famous. I've been to see the Governor. I said to him, ' Governor, now's your chance ; now's the chance for Barataria ; now's my chapce. It's going to be a long war. Don't depend on volunteermg — it won't last. Get a militia system ready which will classify the whole population, and bring it into the fight as fast as it's needed. Make the State a Prussia. If you'll allow me, I'll draw up a -plmi which shall make Barataria a military community, and put her at the head of the Union for moral and physical power. Appoint me your chief of stafi*, and I'll not only draw up the plan, but put it in force. Then give me a division, or only a brigade, and I'll show you what well-disciplined Baratarians can do on the battle-field. Xow what do you think the Gover- nor answered ? — Governor's a dam fool !"

" Oh, no !" protested Colburne, astonished ; for the chief magistrate of Barataria was highly respected.

" I don't mean individually — not a natural-born fool," explained the Lieutenant-Colonel — " but a fool from the necessity of the case ; mouthpiece, you see, of a stupid day and generation. What can he do ? he asks. I admit it. He can't do anything but what Democracy permits. Lose the next election, he says. Well, I suppose he would ; and that won't answer. Governor's wise in his day and gen- eration, although a fool by .the eternal laws of military reason. — I don't know as I talk very clearly. But you get at my meaning, don't you ? — Well, I had a long argu- ment, and gave it up. We must go on volunteering, and the rusty militia-men and greasy dema-

Feom Secession to Loyalty. 39

gogues who bring in the comi^anies. The rank and file is magnificent — can't be equalled — too good. But such an infernally miserable set as the officers average ! Some bright young fellows, who can be licked into shape ; the rest old deacons, tinkers, military tailors, Jew pedlars broken down stump orators ; wrong-headed cubs who have learned just enough of tactics to know how not to do it. Look at the man that I, a Virginian gentleman, a West Pointer, have over me for Colonel. He's an old bloat — an old political bloat. He knows no more of tactical evolu- tions than he does of the art of navigation. He'll order a battalion which is marching division front to break into platoons. You don't understand that? It's about the same as — well, never mind — it can't be done. Well, this cursed old bloat is engineering to be a General. We don't want such fellows for Generals, nor for Colonels, nor for Captains, nor for privates, by Jove ! If Barataria had to fit out frigates instead of regiments, I wonder if she would put such men in command of them. Democracy might de- mand it. The Governor would know better, but he might be driven to it, for fear of losing the next election.

"Now then," continued the Lieutenant-Colonel, "I come to business. We shall have to raise more regiments. I shall apply for the command of one of them, and shall get it. But I want gentlemen for my officers. I am a gentleman myself, and a West Pointer. I don't want tin- kers and pedlars and country deacons. You're a college man, aint you ? All right. College men will do for me. I want you to take a company in my regiment, and get in as many more of your set as you can. I'm not firing blank cartridge. My tongue may be thick, but my head is clear. Will you do it ?"

" I will," decided Colburne, after a moment of earnest consideration.

The problem occurred to him whether this man, clever as he was, professional soldier as he was, but aj^parently a follower of rash John Barlevcorn, would be a wiser leader

40 Miss Raven el's Conversion

in the field than a green but temperate civilian. He could not stop to settle the question, and accepted the Lieuten- ant-Colonel's leadership by imi^ulse. The latter thanked him cordially, and then laughed aloud, evidently because of that moment of hesitation.

" Don't think I'm this way always," he said. " Xever when on duty ; Great Scott ! no man can say that. Indeed I'm not badly off now. If I willed it I could be as logical as friend Whitewood — I could do a problem in Euclid. But it would be a devil of an eftbrt. You won't demand it of me, will you ?"

" It's an odd thing ui man," he went on gravely, " how he can govern drunkenness and even sickness. Just as though a powder-magazine should have self-control enough not to explode when some one throws a live coal into it. The only time I ever got drunk clear through, I did it de- liberately. I was to Cairo, caught there by a railroad breakdown, and had to stay over a Jiight. Ever at Cairo ? It is the dolefullest, cursedest place ! If a man is excusable anywhere for drinking himself insensible, it is at Cairo, Illinois. The last thing I recollect of that evening is that I was sitting in the bar-room, feet against a pillar, debating whether I would go quite drunk, or make a fight and stay sober. I said to myself, It's Cairo, and let myself go. My next distinct recollection is that of waking up in a raih'oad car. I had been half conscious two or three times previously, but had gone to sleep again, without taking notice of my surroundings. This time I looked about me. ]Mv carpet-bag was between my feet, and my over-coat in the rack above my head. I looked at my watch ; it was two in the afternoon. I turned to the gentleman who shared my seat and said, ' Sir, will you have the goodness to tell me where this train is going?' He stared, as you may suppose, but replied that we were going to Cincinnati. The devil we are I thought I ; and I wanted to, go to St. Louis. I afterwards came across a man who was able to tell me how I s^ot on the train. He said that I came down

From Secession to Loyalty. 41

at five in the morning, carpet-bag and over-coat in hand, settled my bill in the most rational manner possible, and took the omnibus to the railroad station. Xow it's my be- lief that I could have staved ofi" that drunken fit by obsti- nacy. I can stave this one off. You shall see."

He emptied his glass, lighted a fresh segar big enough to floor some men without other aid, and commenced walking the room, taking it diagonally from corner to cor- ner, so as to gain a longer sweep.

" Don't stir," he said. " Don't mind me. Start another segar and try the ale. You won't ? What an inhuman monster of abstinence !"

" That is the way they brmg us up m Xew Boston. We are so temperate that we are disposed to outlaw the rais- ing of rye."

" You mean in your set. There must be somebody in this city who gets jolly ! there is everywhere, so far as I have travelled. You will find a great many fellows like me, and worse, in the old army. And good reason for it ; just think of our life. All of us couldn't have nice 2:>laces in charge of arsenals, or at Xewport, or on Governor's Island. I was five years on the frontier and in Califor- nia before I got to Baton Rouge ; and that was not so very delightful, by the way, in yellow fever seasons. Xow imagine yourself in command of a comj^any garrisoniug Fort Wallah- Wallah on the upper Missouri, seven hun- dred miles from an opera, or a library, or a lady, or a mince j)ie, or any other civilizing iufluence. The Cap- tain is on detached service somewhere. You are the First Lieutenant, and your only companion is Brown the Second Lieutenant. You mustn't be on sociable terms with the men, because you are an ofiicer and a gentleman. You have read your few books, and talked Brown dry. There is no shooting within five miles of the fort ; and if you go beyond that distance, the Blackfeet will raise your hair. What is there to save you from suicide but old-rye ? That's one way we come to driuk so. You are lucky.

42 Miss R a yen el's Conversion

You have had no temptations, or almost none, in tliis lit- tle Puritan city."

" There are some bad places and people here. I don't speak of it boastingly."

" Are there ?" laughed Carter. " I'm delighted to hear it, by Jove ! When my father went through college here, there wasn't a chance to learn anythmg wicked but hy- pocrisy. Chance enough for that, judging from the sto- ries he told me. So old AYliitewood is no longer the exact model of all the New Bostonians ?"

" Xot even in the University. There used to be such a solemn set of Professors that they couldn't be recognised in the cemetery because they had so much the air of tomb- stones. But that old dark-blue lot has nearly died out, and been succeeded by younger men of quite a pleasant cerulean tint. They have studied in Europe. They like Paris and Vienna, and other places that used to be so wicked ; they don't think such very small lager of the German theologians; they accept geology, and discuss Darwin with patience."

" Don't get out of my range. Who the devil is Dar- wm ? l^ever mind ; PU take him for granted ; go on with your new-school Professors.

" Oh, I havn't much to say about them. They are quite agreeable. They are what I call men of the world — though I suppose I hardly know what a man of the world is. I dare say I am like the mouse who took the first dog that he saw for the elephant that he had heard of"

The Lieutenant-Colonel stopped his walk and surveyed him, hands in pockets, a smile on his lip, and a silent horse-laugh in his eye.

" Men of the world, are they ? By Jove ! Well ; per- haps so ; I havn't met them yet. But if it comes to pointing out men of the world, allow me to indicate our Louisiana friend, Eavenel. There's a fellow who can do the universally agreeable. You couldn't tell this even- ing which he liked best, Whitewood or me ; and I'll be

Feo:m Secession to Loyalty. 43

hano-ed if tlie same man can like both of us. When lie was^talking with the Professor he seemed to be saying to himself, '''Whitewood is my blue-book;" and when he was talking with me his whole countenance glowed with an expression which stated that ' Carter is the boy.' What a diplomatist he would make ! I like him immense- ly. He has a charmmg daughter too ; not beautifol ex- actly, but Yery charming."

C'olburne felt an oppression which would not allow him to discuss the question. At the same time he was not m- dignant, but only astonished, perhaps also a little pleased, at "the tone of indifference with which the other spoke of the young lady. His soul was so occupied with this new tram of thought that I doubt whether he heard und^r- standingly the conversation of his uiterlocutor for the next few minutes. Suddenly it struck him that Carter was en- tirely sober, in body and brain.

" Colonel, wouldn't you like to go on a pic-nic ?" he asked abruptly.

" Pic-nic ?— political thuig ? Why, yes ; thmk I ought to like it ; help along our regiment."

" No, no ; not poUtical. Pm sorry I gave you such an exalted expectation ; now you'll be disappomted. I mean an affair of young ladies, beaux, baskets, paper parcels, sandwiches, cold tongue, biscuits and lemonade."

" Lemonade !" said Carter with a grimace. " Could a •fellow smoke ?"

" I take that liberty."

" Is Miss Ravenel going ?"

" Yes."

" I accept. How do you go ?"

" In an omnibus. I will see that you are taken up— say at nuie o'clock to-morrow morning."

44 Miss Ravexel's Conversion

CHAPTER IV.

THE DRAMATIC PERSONAGES GO ON A PIC-NIC, AND STUDY THE WAYS OF NEW BOSTON.

When the Lieutenant-Colonel awoke in the mornmg he did not feel much like going on a pic-nic. He had a slight ache in the top of his head, a huskiness in the throat, a woolliness on the tongue, a feverishness in the cuticle, and a crawling tremulousness in the muscles, as though the molecules of his flesh were separately alive and intertwin- ing themselves. ' He drowsily called to mind a red-nosed old gentleman whom he had seen at a bar, trying in vain to gather up his change with shaky fingers, and at last exclaimmg, " Curse the change !" and walking off hastily in evident mortification.

" Ah, Carter ! you will come to that yet," thought the Lieutenant-Colonel. — "To be sure," he added after a moment, " this sobering one's self by main strength of ^dll, as I did last night, is an extra trial, and enough to shake any man's system. — But how about breakfast and that confounded pic-nic ?'* was his next reflection. " Carter, tem- perance man as you are, you must take a cocktail, or you won't be able to eat a mouthful this morning."

He rang ; ordered an eye-opener, stiff; swallowed it, and looked at his watch. Eight ; never mind ; he would wash and shave ; then decide between breakfast and pic-nic. Thanks to his martial education he was a rapid dresser, and it still lacked a quarter of nine when he appeared in the dining saloon. He had time therefore to eat a mutton chop, but he only looked at it with a disgusted eye, his stomach being satisfied with a roll and a cup of coffee. In the outer hall he lighted a segar, but after smoking about an inch of it, threw the rest away. It was decid-

From Secession to Loyalty. 45

edly one of his qualmish mornings, and he was glad to get a full breath of out of door air.

" Is my hamper ready ?" he said to one of the hall-boys.

"Sir?"

" My hamper, confound you ; " repeated the Lieutenant Colonel, who was more irritable than usual this morning, " The basket that I ordered last night. Go and ask the clerk."

" Yes, su'," said the boy when he returned. *' It's all right, sir. There it is, sir, behind the door."

The omnibus, a little late of course, appeared about a quarter past nine. Besides Colburne it contained three ladies, two of about twenty-five and one of thirty-five, ac- companied by an equal number of beardless, slender, jauntily dressed youths whom the Lieutenant-Colonel took for the ladies' younger brothers, inferring that pic-nics were family aflaii*s in Xew Boston. Surveying these juvenile gentlemen witli some contempt, he was about to say to Colburne, " Yery sorry, my dear fellow, but really don't feel well enough to go out to-day," when he caught sight of Miss Ravenel.

" Are you going ?" she asked with a blush which, was so indescribably flattering that he instantly responded, " Yes, indeed."

Behind Miss Ravenel came the doctor, who immediately inquhed after Carter's health with an air of friendly m- terest that contrasted curiously with the glance of sus- picion which he bent on him as soon as his back was turned. Libbie hastened into the omnibus, very much afraid that her father would order her back to her room. It was only by dint of earnest begging that she had ob- tained his leave to join the pic-nic, and she knew that he had given it without suspecting that this sherry-loving army gentleman would be of the party.

" But where are your matrons, Mr. Colburne ?" asked the doctor. " I see only young ladies, who themselves need matronizing."

46 Miss Rave x el's Conversiox

The beauty of thirty-five looked graciously at him, and judged*!iim a perfect gentleman.

" Mrs. AYhitewood goes out in her own carnage," an swered Colburne.

The Doctor bowed, j^rofessed himself delighted with the arrangements, wished them all a pleasant excursion, and turned away with a smilmg face which, became exceed- ingly serious as he walked slowly up staii's. It was not thus that young ladies were allowed to go a pleasuring at Xew Orleans. The severe proprieties of French man- ners with regard to demoiselles were m considerable favor there. Her mother never would have been caught in this way, he thought, and was anxious and repentant and an- gry with, himself, until his daughter returned.

In the omnibus Colburne did the introductions ; and now Carter discovered that the beardless young gentlemen were not the brothers of the ladies, but most evidently their cavaliers ; and was therefore left to infer that the beaux of Xew Boston are blessed with an immortal youth, or rather childhood. He could hardly help laughing aloud to thuik how he had been caught in such a nursery sort of pic-nic. He glanced from one downy face to another with a cool, mocking look wliicli no one understood but Miss Ravenel, who was the only other person in the party to whom the sight of such juvenile gallants was a rarity. She bit her lips to repress a smile, and desperately opened the conversation.

" I am so anxious to see the Eagle's Xest," she said to one of the students.

" Oh ! you never saw it ?" he replied.

There were two things in this response which surprised Miss Ravenel. In the first place the young gentleman blushed violently at being addressed ; in the second, he spoke in a A'ery hoarse and weak tone, his voice being not yet established. Unable to think of anything further to say, he turned for aid to the maiden of thirty-five, be- tween whom and himself there was a tender feeling, as

Fko:m Secession to Loyalty. 47

appeared openly later in the day. She set him on his in- tellectual pins by commencing a conversation on th6'wood- en-spoon exhibition.

" What is the wooden-spoon ?" asked Lillie.

" It is a burlesque honor in college," answered the youth. " It used to be given to the stupidest fellow in the gradu- ating class. Xow it's given to the j oiliest fellow — most popular fellow — smartest fellow, that doesn't take a real honor."

" Allow me to ask, sir, are you a candidate ?" inquu-ed the Lieutenant-Colonel.

Miss Ravenel cringed at this unprovoked and not very brilliant brutality. The collegian merely stammered " Xo, sir," and blushed immoderately. He was too much puz- zled by the other's impassable stare to comprehend the sneer at once ; but he studied it much during the day, and that night writhed over the memory of it till towards morning. Both Carter and the lady of thirty-five ought to have been ashamed of themselves for taking unfair advan- tage of the simplicity and sensitiveness of this lad ; but the feminine sinner had at least this excuse, that it was the •angelic spirit of love, and not the demonaic spirit of scorn, which prompted her conduct. Perceiving that her boy was being abused, she inveigled him into a corner of the vehicle, where they could talk together without mterrup- tion. The conversation of lovers is not usually mteresting to outsiders except as a subject of laughter ; it is frequent- ly stale and flat to a degree which seems incomprehensible when you consider the strong feelings of the interlocutors. This is the ordinary sort of thmg, at least in ISTew Bos- ton : —

Lady, (smiling) Did you go out yesterday ?

Gent, (smiling) Yes.

Lady. Where ?

Gent. Only down to the post-oflice.

Lady. JMany people in the streets ?

GGUt. Not very many.

48 Miss Ravexel's Conversion

And all the while the two persons are not thinking of the walk, nor of the post-office, nor of the people in the streets, nor of anythmg of which they speak. They are thinking of each other ; they are prattling merely to be near each other ; they are so full of each other that they cannot talk of foreign subjects interestingly ; and so the babble has a meanmg which the unsymi^athetic bye- stander does not comprehend.

After circulating through the city to pick up the vari- ous mvited ones, the omnibus was joined by a second om- nibus and two or three family rockaways. The little fleet of vehicles then sailed into the country, and at the end of an hour's voyage came to anchor under the lee of a wood- ed cliff called the Eagle's Xest, which was the projected site of the j^ic-nic. Up the long slope which formed the back of the cliff, a number of baskets and demijohns were carried by the youthful beaux of the party with a child- like zeal which older gallants might not have exhibited. Carter's weighty hamper was taken care of by a couple of juniors, who jumped to the task on learning that it be- longed to a United States army officer. He offered repeat- edly to relieve them, but they would not suffer it. In a* roundabout and marticulate manner they were exhibiting the fervent patriotism of the time, as well as that perpet- ual worshi]) which young men pay to their superiors in asje and knowledo^e of the world. And oh ! how was vir- tue rewarded when the basket was oj^ened and its contents displayed I It was not for the roast chicken that the two frohcsome juniors cared : the companion baskets around were crammed with edibles of all manner of flesh and fowl ; it was the sight of six bottles of cham- pagne which made their eyes rejoice. But with a holy horror equal to their wicked joy did all the matrons of the party, and indeed more than half of the younger peo- ple, stare. Carter's champagne was the only spirit of a vinous or ardent natm*e present. And when he produced two bunches of segars from his pockets and proceeded to

From Secession to Loyalty. 49

distribute them, the moral excitation reached its height. Immediately there were opposing j^artisaus in the pic-nic : those who meant to take a glass of champagne and smoke a segar, if it were only for the wicked fun of the thing; and those who meant, not only that they would not smoke nor drink themselves, but that nobody else should. These last formed little groups and discussed the aiiair with conscientious bitterness. But what to do ? The atrocity puzzled them by its very novelty. The memory of woman did not go back to the time when an aristocratic Xew Bos- ton pic-nic had been s6 desecrated. I say the memory of vaoraan advisedly and upon arithmetical calculation ; for in this party the age of the males averaged at least five years less than that of the females.

" Why don't you stop it, Mrs. Whitewood ?" said the maiden of thirty-five, with gu'lish enthusiasm. " You are the oldest person here." (Mrs. Whitewood did not look particularly flattered by this statement.) " You have a perfect right to order anything." (Mrs. Whitewood looked as if she would like to order the young lady to let her alone.) " If I were you, I would step out there and say, Gentlemen, this must be stopped."

Mrs. Whitewood might have rej^lied. Why don't you say it yourself? — you are old enough. But she did not ; such sarcastic observations never occurred to her good- natured soul ; nor, had she been endowed with, thousands of similar conceits, would she have dared utter one. It was impossible to rub her up to the business of confront- ing and puttmg down the adherents of the champagne basket. She did think of speaking to Lieutenant-Colonel Carter privately about it, but before she could decide in what terms to address him, the last bottle had been cracked, and then of course it was useless to say anything. So m much horror of spirit and with many self-reproaches for her weakness, she gazed helplessly upon Avhat she considered a scene of wicked revelry. In fact there was C

50 Miss Ravexel's Con version

a good deal of jollity and racket. The six bottles of champagne made a pretty strong dose for the unaccus- tomed heads of the dozen lads and three or four young ladies Avho finished them. Carter himself, cloyed with the surfeit of yesterday, took almost nothing, to the ^von- der, and even, I suspect, to the disappomtment of the temperance party. But he made himself dreadfully ob- noxious by urging his Sillery upon every one, including the Whitewoods and the maiden of thirty-five. The latter declmed the profiered glass with an air of viituous mdig- nation which struck him as uncivil, more particularly as it evoked a triumphant smile from the adherents of lem- onade. With a cruelty without parallel, and for which I shall not attempt to excuse him, he immediately offered the bumper to the young gentleman on whose arm the lady leaned, with the observation, " Madam, I hope you will allow your son to take a little."

The unhappy couple walked away in a speechless con- dition. The two juniors heretofore mentioned burst into hysterical gulphs of laughter, and then pretended that it was a smiultaneous attack of coughmg. There were no more attempts to put down the audacious army gentle- man, and he was accorded that elbow-room which we all grant to a bull in a china-shop. He was himself somewhat shocked by the sensation which he had produced.

" TVhat an awful row !'' he whispered to Colburne. " I have plunged this nursery into a state of civil war. When you said i:)ic-nic, how could I suppose that it was a Sab- bath-school excursion ? By the way, it isn't Sunday, is it ? Do you always do it this way m Xew Boston ? But you are not immaculate. You do some things here which would draw down the frown of society m other places. Look at those couples — a young fellow and a girl — stroll- ing off by themselves among the thickets. Some of them have been out of sight for half an hour. I should think it would make talk. I should thmk Mrs. Whitewood, Avho seems to be matron in chief, would stop it. I tell you, it

FE0 3r Secessiox to Loyalty. 51

wouldn't do iii XewYork or Philadelphia, or any such place, except among the lower classes. You don't catch our young Louisianienne making a dryad of herself. I heard one of these lads ask her to take a walk in the grove on top of the hill, and I saw her decline with a blush which certainly expressed astonishment, and, I think, mdignation. ]^ow how the devil can these old girls, who have lived long enough to be able to put two and two together, be so dem'd inconsistent ? After regarding me with horror for offering them a glass of champagne, they will commit im- prudences which make them appear as if they had drunk a bottle of it. And yet, just look. I have too much deli- cacy to ask one of those young ones to stroll off with me in the bushes. — Won't you have a segar ? I don't believe Miss Ravenel objects to tobacco. They smoke in Louisia- na ; yes, and they chew and di-ink, too. Shocking fast set. I really hope the child never will many down there. I take an mterest in her. You and I will go out there some day, and reconquer her patrimony, and put her in possess- ion of it, and then ask her which she will have."

Colburne had already talked a good deal with Miss Ra- venel. She was so discouraging to the student beaux, and Carter had been so general in his attentions with a view to getting the champagne into circulation, that she had fallen chiefly to the young lawyer. As to the women, she did not much enjoy theu' conversation. At that time everybody at the Xorth was passionately loyal, especially those who would not m any chance be called upon to fight — and this loyalty was expressed towards i^ersons of se- cessionist proclivities with a frank energy which the lat- ter considered brutal incivility. From the male sex Miss Ravenel obtained some compassion or polite forbearance, but from her own very little ; and the result was that she avoided ladies, and might perhaps have been driven to suffer the boy beaux, only that she could make sure of the society of Colburne. Important as this young gentleman was to her, she could not forbear teasmg him concerning

52 Miss Ravexel's Conversion

the local j^eculiarities of Xew Boston. This afternoon she was satirical upon the juvenile gallants.

" You seem to be the only man in New Boston," she said. " I suppose all the males are executed when they are found guilty of being twenty-one. How came you to es- cape ? Perhaps you arc the executioner. Why don't you do your office on the Lieutenant-Colonel ?"

" I should like to," answered Colbume.

Miss Ravenel colored, but gave no other sign of com- prehension.

" I don't like old beaux," persisted Colburnc.

" Oh ! I do. When I left Xew Orleans I parted from a beau of forty."

" Forty ! How could you come away ?"

" Why, you know that I hated to leave Xew Orleans."

" Yes ; but I never knew the reason before. Did you say forty ?"

"Yes, sir; just forty. Is there anythmg strange in a man of forty being agreeable ? I don't see that you Xew Bostonians find it difficult to like ladies of forty. But I havn't told you the worst. I have another beau, whom I like better than anybody, who is fifty-five."

" Youi' father."

" You are very clever. As you are so bright to-day perhaps you can explain a mystery to me. Why is it that these grown women are so fond of the society of these students ? They don't seem to care to get a word from Lieutenant-Colonel Carter. I don't think they are crazy after you. They are altogether absorbed in makmg the time pass pleasantly to these boys."

" It is so in all little university towns. Can't you un- derstand it ? When a girl is fifteen a student is naturally a more attractive object to her than a mechanic or a shop- keeper's boy. She thinks that to be a student is the chief end of man ; that the world was created in order that there might be students. Frequently he is a southerner ; and you know how charming southerners are."

From Secession to Loyalty. 53

" Oh, I know all about it."

" Well, the girl of fifteen takes a fancy to a freshman. She flu-ts with, him all through the four years of his under- graduate course. Then he departs, promising to come back, but never keeping his promise. Perhaps by this time she is really attached to him ; and that, or habit, or her orio-inal taste for romance and strano-ers, oives her a cant for life ; she never flirts with anything but a student afterwards ; can't relish a man who has'nt a flavor of Greel? and Latin. Generally she sticks to the senior class. When she gets into the thirties she sometimes enters the theo- logical seminary m search of prey. But she never likes anything which hasn't a student smack. It reminds one of the story that when a shark has once tasted human flesh he will not eat any other unless driven to it by hun- ger."

" What a brutal comparison !"

" One consequence of this fascination," continued Col- burne, " is that Xew Boston is full of unmarried females. There is a story in college that a student threw a stone at a dog, and, missmg him, hit seven old maids. On the other hand there are some s^ood results. These old o-iris are bookish and mature, and their conversation is im- proving to the under-graduates. They sacrifice them- selves, as woman's wont is, for the good of others."

" If you ever come to Xew Orleans I will show you a fascinating lady of thirty. She is my aunt — or cousin — I hardly know which to call her — Mrs. Larue. She has beautiful black hair and eyes. She is a true type of Louis- iana."

" And you are not. What right had you to be a blonde ?"

" Because I am my father's daughter. His eyes are blue. He came from the up-country of South Carolina. There are plenty of blondes there."

This conversation, the reader j^erceives, is not monu- mentally grand or important. Xext in flatness to the ordinary talk of two lovers comes, I think, the ordinary

54 Miss Raven el's Coxyeusiox

talk of two young persons of the opposite sexes. In the first place they are young, and therefore have few great ideas to interchange and hut limited ranges of experience to compare ; in the second place they are hampered and embarrassed by the mute but potent consciousness of sex and the alai-ming possibility of mamage. I am inclined to give much credit to the saying that only married people ancl vicious people are agreeably fluent in an assembly of ^DOth sexes. When therefore I report the conversation of these two uncorrupted young persons as bemg of a moder- ately dull quality, I flatter myself that I am publishing the very tmth of nature. But it follows that we had best finish with this pic-nic as soon as possible. We will sup- pose the chickens and sandwiches eaten, the champagne drunk, the segars smoked, the party gathered into the om- nibusses and rockaways, and the vehicle in which we are chiefly interested at the door of the Xew Boston House. As the Lieutenant-Colonel enters with Miss Ravenel a waiter hands him a telegraphic message.

" Excuse me," he says, and reads as they ascend the stairs together. On the parlor floor he halts and takes her hand with an air of more seriousness than he has yet exhibited.

" Miss Ravenel, I must bid you good-bye. I am so sorry ! I leave for Washington immediately. My application for extension of leave has been refused. I do sincerely hope that I shall meet you again."

" Good bye," she simply said, not unaware that her hand had been pressed, and for that reason unable or un- willing to add more.

He left her there, hurried to his room, packed his valise, and was oft" in twenty minutes ; for when it was necessary to move quick he could put on a rate of speed not easily equalled.

jNliss Ravenel walked to her father's room in deep medi- tation. Without stating the fact in words she felt that the presence of this mature, masculine, worldly gentleman

From Secession to Loyalty. 55

of the army was agreeable to her, and that his farewell had been an unpleasant surprise. If he was inebriate, dis- sipated, dangerous, it must be remembered that she did not know it. In simply smelling of wine and segars he had an odoi of Louisiana, to which she had been accus- tomed from childhood even in the grave society of her father's choice, and whicli was naturally grateful to the homesick sensibilities of the exiled girl.

For the last hour or two Doctor Ravenel had paced his room in no little excitement. He was a notably indus- trious man, and had devoted the day to writmg an article on the mineralogy of Arkansas ; but even this labor, the utterance of a life-long' scientific enthusiasm, could not divert him from what I may call maternal anxieties. Why did I let her go on that silly expedition ? he repeated to himself It is the last time ; absolutely the last.

At this moment she entered the room and kissed him with more than ordinary efl:usion. • She meant to forestall his expected rej^roof for her unexpectedly long absence ; moreover she felt a very little lonely and in need of unus- ual affection in consequence of that farewell.

" My dear ! how late you are !" said the unappeased Doctor. " How could you stay out so ? How could you do it ? The idea of staymg out till dusk ; I am astonished. Really, girls have no prudence. They are no more fit to take care of themselves amid the dangers and stupidities of society than so many goslings among the wheels and hoofs of a crowded street."

Do not suppose that Miss Ravenel bore these reproofs withL the serene countenance of Fra Angelico's seraphs, softly beaming out of a halo of eternal love. She was very much mortified, very much hurt and even a little an- gry. A hard word from her father was an exceeding great trial to her. The tears came into her eyes and the color into her cheeks and neck, while all her slender form trembled, not visibly, but consciously, as if her veins Avere filled with quicksilver.

50 jM I s s 11 A V K X el's C O X V E R S I O X

" Late I AVhy, no papa !" ( Running to the window and pointing to the crimson west.) " Why, the sun is only just gone down. Look for yourself, papa."

" Well ; that is too late. If for nothing else, just think of the dew, — the chill. I am not pleased. I tell you, Lillie, I am not pleased."

" Xow, papa, you are right hard. I do say you are right cruel. How could I help myself? I couldn't come home alone. I couldn't order the j^ic-nic to break up and come home when I pleased. How could I ? Just tliink of it, i:)apa."

The Doctor was walking up and down the room with his liands behind his back and his head bent forward. He had hardly looked at his daughter : he never looked at her when he scolded her. He gave her a side-glance now, and seeing her eyes full of tears, he was unable to answer her either good or evil. The earnestness of his affection for her made hini very sensitive and sore and cowardly, in case of a misunderstandmg. She was looking at him all the time that she talked, her face full of her troubled eagerness to exculpate herself; and now, though he said not a word, she knew him well enough to see that he had relented from his anger. Encouraged by this discovery she regained in a moment or two her self-possession. She guessed the real cause, or at least the strongest cause of his vexation, and proceeded to dissipate it.

" Papa, I think there must be something important go- ing on in the army. Lieutenant-Colonel Carter has received a telegraph, and is going on by the next train."

He halted in his walk and faced her with a childlike smile of pleasure.

" Has he, indeed !" he said as gaily as if he had heard of some piece of personal good fortune. Then, more gravely and with a censorious countenance, " Quite time he went, I should say. It doesn't look well for an officer to be enjoying himself here m Barataria when his men may be fiorhtinoj in Yii'ginia."

From Secessiox to Loyalty. 57

Miss Ravenel thouglit of suggesting that the Lieu- tenant-Colonel had been on sick leave, but concluded that it would not be well to attemjDt his defence at the present moment.

" Well Lillie," resumed the Doctor, after takmg a cou- pleof leisurely turns up and down the room, " I don't know but I have been unjust in blammg you for coming home so late. I must confess that I don't see how you could help it. The fault was not yours. It resulted from the very nature of all such expeditions. It is one of the m- conveuiences of pic-nics that common sense is never in- vited or never has time to go. I wonder that Mrs. Whitewood should permit such iiTational procedures."

The Doctor was somewhat apt to exaggerate, whether in j)raise or blame, when he became interested in a subject.

" Well, well, I am chiefly in fault myself," he concluded. " It must be the last time. My dear, you had better take ofi* your things and get ready for tea."

While Lillie was engaged on her toilette the Doctor co- gitated, and came to the conclusion that he must say some- thing against this Carter, but that he had better say it in- directly. So, as they sauntered down stairs to the tea- table he broke out upon the bibulous gentry of Louisiana.

" To-day's Herald will amuse you," he said. " It con- tains the proceedings of a meeting of the planters of St. Dominic Parish. They are opposed to freedom. They object to the nineteenth century. They mean to smash the United States of America. And for all this they pledge their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. It sur- passes all the jokes in Joe Miller. To think of those whiskey-soaked, negro-whipj)ing, man-slaughtering ruffi- ans, with a bottle of Louisiana rum in one hand and a cat- o'-nine-tails in the other, a revolver in one pocket and a boAvie-knife in the other, drunken, swearing, gambling, depraved as Satan, with their black wives and mulatto children — to think of such ruffians prating about their sacred honor ! Whv, they absolutely don't understand * • C2

58 Miss Rayexel's Conversion

the meaniiig of the words. They have heard of respectable communities possessing such a quality as honor, and they feel bound to talk as if they possessed it. The pirates of the Isle of Pines might as well pledge their honesty and humanity. Their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor ! Their lives are not worth the powder that will blow them out of existence. Their fortunes will be Avorth less in a couple of years. And as for their sacred honor, it is a pure figment of ignorant imaginations made deliri- ous by bad whiskey. That drinkmg is a ruinous vice. When I see a man soaking himself with sherry at a friend's table, after having previously soaked with whis- key in some groggery, I thmk I see the devil behind his chair putting the mfernal mark on the back of his coat. And it is such a common vice in Louisiana. There is hardly a young man free from it. In the country districts, when a young fellow is paying attention to a young lady, the parents don't ask whether he is in the habit of gettmg drunk; they take that for granted, and only concern themselves to know whether he gets cross-drunk or amia- ble-drunk. If the former, they have some hesitation ; if the latter, they consent to the match thankfully."

jNIiss Ravenel understood perfectly that her father was cutting at Lieutenant-Colonel Carter over the shoulders of the convivial gentlemen of Louisiana. She thought him unjust to both parties, but concluded that she would not aro-ue the question ; being conscious that the subject was rather too delicately near to her feelings to be discussed without danger of disclosures.

" "Well, they are rushing to their doom," resumed the Doctor, turning aside to general reflections, either because such was the tendency of his mind, or because he thought that he had demolished the Lieutenant-Colonel. " They couldn't wait for whiskey to finish them, as it does other barbarous races. They must call on the political mount- ains to crush them. Their slaveholding Sodom will perish for the lack of five just men, or a single just idea. It must

Fko^c Secession to Loyalty. 59

be razed and got out of the way, like any other obstacle to the progress of humanity. It must make room for somethuig more consonant with the railroad, electric-tel- egraph, priating-press, inductiYe philosophy, and practical Christianity."

CHAPTER Y

THE DRAMATIC PEESOXAGES GET XEWS FEOil BULL EUN.

" Papa, are we gouig to stay in New Boston forever ?" asked Miss Ravenel.

" My dear, I am afraid we shall both have to die some day, after which we can't expect to stay here, pleasant as it might be," replied the Doctor.

" ISTonsense, papa ! You know what I mean. Are you o-omg to make Xew Boston a pemianent place of resi- dence ?"

" How can I tell, my dear ? We can't go back to New Orleans at present ; and where else should we go ? You know that I must consult economy in my choice of a resi- dence. My bank deposits are not monstrous, and there is no tellmg how long I may be cut off from my resources. New Boston presents two advantages ; it gives me some employment and it is tolerably cheap. Through the friendliness of these excellent professors I am kept con- stantly busy, and am not paid so very badly, though I can't say that I am m any danger of growmg suddenly rich. Then I have the run of the university library, which is a great thmg. Finally, where else m the United States should we find a prettier'or pleasanter little city ?"

" The people are dreadfully poky."

" Mj daughter, I wish you would have the goodness to converse with me m EngHsh. I never became thoroughly

00 Miss Ravenel's Con version

familiar with the Gohl Coast dialects, and not even with the court language of Ashantee."

" It isn't Ashantee at all. Everj^body says poky ; and it is real poky in you to pretend not to understand it; don't you think so yourself now? Besides these Xew Bostonians are so ferociously federal ! I can't say a word for the South hut the women glare at me as though they wanted to hang me on a sour apple tree, like Jeff Davis."

" My dear, if one of these loyal ladies should say a word for her own lawful government in New Orleans, she would be worse than glared at. I doubt Avhether the Avild-mannered cut-throats of your native city would let her oif with plain hanging. Let us thank Heaven that we are among civilized people who only glare at us, and do not stick us under the fifth rib, when we differ with them in opinion."

" Oh papa ! how bitter you are on the southerners ! It seems to me you must forget that you were bom in South Carolina and have lived twenty-five years in Louisiana."

" Oh ! oh ! the beautiful reason for defendmg organized barbarism ! Suppose I had had the misfortune of being born in the Isle of Pines ; would you have me therefore be the apologist of piracy ? I do hope that I am perfectly free from the prejudices and trammels of geographical morality. My body was born amidst slavery, but my conscience soon found the underground raihoad. I am not boasting ; at least I hope not. I have had no plantations, no patrimony of human flesh ; very few temptations, in short, to bow down to the divinity of Ashantee. I sin- cerely thank Heaven for these three thmgs, that I never owned a slave, that I was educated at the north, and that

1 have been able to visit the free civilization of Europe."

" But why did you live in Louisiana if it was such a Sodom, papa ?"

" All ! there you have me. Perhaps it was because I had an expensive daughter to support, and could pick up four or five thousand dollars a vear there easier than anv-

Fp. OM Secession to Loyalty.

61

where else. But you see I am suffering for having given my countenance to sin. I have escaped out of the burning city, like Lot, with only my family. It is my daily won- der, Lillie, that you are not turned into a pillar of salt. The only reason probably is that the age of mh*acles is over."

" Papa, when I am as old as you are, and you are as young as I am, I'll satirize you dreadfully.— Well, if we are gomg to live m Xew Boston, why can't we keep house ?"

"It costs more for. two people to keep house than to board. Our furniture, rent, food, fiiel, lights and servants would come to more than the eighteen dollars a week which we pay here, now that we have given up our par- lor. In a civilized country elbow-room is expensive."

" But is it exactly nice to stay forever in a hotel ? English travellers make such an outcry about American families living in hotels."

" I know. At the bottom it is bad. But it is a sad necessity of American society. So long as we have un- trained servants — black barbarians at the South and mu- tinous foreigners at the Xorth — many American house- keepers will throw down their keys in despair and rush for refuge to the hotels. And numbers j^roduce respectability, at least in a democracy."

" So we must give up the idea of a nice little house all to ourselves."

" I am afraid so, unless I should haj^pen to find diamonds in the basaltic formation of the Eagle's Xest."

The Doctor falls to his writing, and Miss Ravenel to her embroidery. Presently the young lady, without having anythmg m particular to say, is conscious of a de- sire for further conversation, and, after searching for a sub- ject, begins as follows.

" Papa, have you been in the parlor this mornmg ?"

" Yes, my dear," answers papa, scratching away des- perately with his old-fashioned quill pen.

62 Miss R a y e x e l ' s Conversion

" Whom did you see there V"

" See ? — Where ? — Oh, I saw Mr. Andrew Smith," says the Doctor, at first absent-minded, then looking a little quizzical.

" What did he have to say ?"

" Why, my dear, he spoke so low that I couldn't hear what he said."

" He did !" responds Miss Ravenel, all interest. " What did that mean ? Why didn't you ask him to repeat it ?"

" Because, my dear, he wasn't talking to me ; he was talking to Mrs. Smith."

Here Miss Ravenel perceives that her habitual curiosity is beino: made fun of, and replies, " Papa, you ought to be ashamed of yourself."

" My child, you must give me some chance to write," retorts the Doctor ; " or else you must learn to sit a little in your own room. Of course I prefer to have you here, l)ut I do demand that you accord me some infinitesimal de- gree of consideration."

Father and daughter used to have many conversations not very dissimilar to the above. It was a constant prat- tle when they were together, unless the Doctor raised the standard of revolt and refused to talk in order that he mio-ht work. Ever since Lillie's earliest recollection they had been on these same terms of sociability, companion- ship, almost equality. The intimacy and democracy of the relation arose partly from the Doctor's extreme fondness for children and young people, and partly from the fact that he had lost his wife early, so that in his household life he had for years dej^ended for sympathy upon his daughter.

Twice or thrice every morning the Doctor was obliged to remonstrate against Lillie's talkativeness, something after the manner of an afiectionate old cat who allows her pussy to jump on her back and bite her ears for a half hour together, but finally im2D0ses quiet by a velvety and harmless cufling. Occasionally he avenged himself for

Feom Secession to Loyalty. G3

her untimely demands on his attention by reading to her what he considered a successful passage of the article Tvliich he might then be composing. In this, however, he had not the least intention of j^nnishment, but supposed that he was conferring a pleasure. It was an essential element of this genial, social, sympathetic nature to be- lieve that whatever interested him would necessarily in- terest those whom he loved and even those with whom he simply came in contact. When Lillie offered corrections on his style, which happened frequently, he rarely hesi- tated to accejit them.. Yanity he had none, or at any rate displayed none, except on two subjects, his daughter and his scientific fame. As a proof of this last he gloried in an extensive correspondence with European savants, and made Lillie read every one of those queer shaped letters, written on semi-transparent paper and with foreign stamps and postmarks on their envelopes, which reached him from across the Atlantic. Although medicine was his profession and had provided him with bread, he had lat- terly fallen in love with mineralogy, and in his vacation wanderings though that mountainous belt which runs from the Carolinas westward to Arkansas and Missouri he had discovered some new species which were eagerly sought for by the directors of celebrated European collections. Great was his delight at receiving in Xew Boston a weighty box of specimens which he had shipped as freight from Xew Orleans just previous to his own departure, but which for two months he had mourned over as lost. It dowered him with an embarrassment of riches. During a week his bed, sofa, table, wash-stand, chau's and floor were littered vrith the scraps of paper and tufts of cotton and of Spanish moss which had served as wrappers, and with hundreds of crystals, ores and other minerals. Over this confusion the Doctor domineered with a face wrinkled by happy anxiety, laying do^vn one queer-colored pebble to pick up another, pronouncing this a Smithite and that a Brownite trying his blowpipe on them alid then his

64 Miss Ravexel's Coxveesiox.

hammer, and covering all the furniture ^vith a layer of learned smudge and dust and gravel.

" Papa, you have puckered your forehead up till it is like a baked apple," Lillie would remonstrate. "You look more than five thousand years old ; you look as though you might be the grandfather of all the mummies. Now do leave off bothering those poor Smithites and Hivites and Amelekites, and come and take a walk."

" 3Iy dear, you havn't the least idea how necessary it is to push one's discoveries to a certainty as quickly as possi- ble " would answer the Doctor, meanwhile peering at a specimen through his magnifymg glass. "The world won't wait for me to take your time. If I don't work fast enouo'h in my researches, it will set somebody else at the job. It makes no allowance for Louisiana ideas of leisure and," — ^here he suddenly breaks off his moralizing and exclaims, " My dear, this is not a* Brownite ; it is a Robinsonite — a most unquestionable and superb Robin-

sonite."

" Oh papa ! I wish I was an unquestionable Robin- sonite ; then you would take some sort of interest in me," says Jkliss Lillie.

But the Doctor is lost in the ocean of his new discovery, and for fifteen minutes has not a word to say on any sub- ject comprehensible to the young lady.

Two hours of every afternoon were devoted by father and daughter to a long walk in company, sometimes a mere shcTpprng or calling tour, but generally an excursion into the pure country of fields and forest as yet so easily reached from the centre of Xew Boston. The Doctor pre- served a reminiscence of his college botany, and attemj^ted to impart some of his knowledge of plants to Lillie. But she was a hopeless scholar ; she persisted in carmg for little except human beings and such literature as related directly to them, meaning thereby history, biography, novels and poetry; she remained delightfully innocent of all the ologies.

From Secession to Loyalty. 65

" You ouglit to have been born four thousand years ago, Lillie," he exclaimed in despair over some new in- stance of her incapacity to move in his favorite grooves. " So far as you are concerned, Linnaeus, Humboldt, Lyell, Faraday, Agassiz and Dana might as well not have lived. I believe you will go through life without more knowl- edge of science than just enough to distinguish between a 2)lant and a pebble."

" I do hope so, papa," replied the incorrigible and de- lightful ignoramus.

When they met one of their acquaintance on these walks the Doctor would not allow him to pass with, a nod and a smile, after the unobtrusive Xew Boston fashion. He would stop him, shake hands cordially, inquire earn- estly after his health and family, and before partmg con- trive to say something personally civil, if not compli- mentary ; all of which would evidently jflatter the iS^ew Bostoniau, but would also as evidently discompose him and turn his head, as being a man unaccustomed to much social incense.

" Papa, you trouble these people," Lillie would some- times expostulate. " They don't know where to put all your civilities and courtesies. They don't seem to have pockets for them."

" My child, I am nothing more than ordinarily polite." " Kothmg more than ordinary in Louisiana, but some- thing very extraordinary here. I have just thought why all the gentlemen one meets at the South are so civil. It is because the uncivil ones are shot as fast as they are dis- covered."

"There is something in that," admitted the Doctor. " I suppose duelling has something to do with the super- ficial good manners current down there. But just consid- er what an impolite thing shooting is m itself To knock and jam and violently push a man into the other world is one of the most boorish and barbarous discourtesies that I can imagine. How should I like to be treated that way !

66 Miss Ravexel's Conversion

I think I never should be reconciled to the fact or its au- thor." '

" But these New Bostonians are so poky — so awfully serious."

"I have some consideration for anti-jokers. They are not amusing, but they are generally useful. It is well for the race, no doubt, to have many persons always in solemn earnest. I don't know what the world would come to if every body could see a joke. Possibly it might laugh itself to death."

Frequently on these walks they were met and joined by Mr. Colburue. That young gentleman, frank as his clear hazel eyes and hearty laugh made him appear, was awk- wardly sly in bringing about these ostensibly accidental meetmgs. Xot that his clumsy male cunning deceived Miss Ravenel : she was not by any means fond enough of him to fail to see through him ; she knew that he walked in her j^aths with malice aforethought. Her father did not know it, nor suspect it, nor ever, by any innate con- sciousness or outward hint, feel his attention drawn toward the circumstance. And, what was most absurd of all, Mr. Colburne ^^ersisted m fearing that the Doctor, that travelled and learned man of the world, guessed the secret of his slyness, but never once attributed that degree of sharp-sightedness to the daughter. I sometimes get quite out of patience with the wglj sex, it is so densely stupid with regard to these little social riddles. For example, it haj^pened once at a party that while Colburne, who never danced, was talking to Miss Ravenel, another gentleman claimed her hand for a quadrille. She took her place in the set, but first handed her fan to Colburne. Xow every lady who obser^^ed this action understood that Miss Rav- enel had said to Colburne as j^lainly as it was possible to express the thing without speakmg or usmg force, that she wished him to return to her side as soon as the quadrille was over, and that in fact she preferred his con- versation to that of her dancing admirer. But this mas-

Fkom Secession to Lot alt y. 67

culine blunderer comprehended nothing ; he grumbled to himself that he was to be put oiF with the honor of holding a fan while the other fellow ran away with the owner ; and so, shoving the toy into his ^^ocket, he absented him- self for half an horn*, to the justifiable disapprobation of Miss Ravenel, who did not again give him any thing to hold for many evenings.

But this was an exceptional piece of stupidity in Col- burne, and probably he would not have been guilty of it but for a spasm of jealousy. He was not grossly deficient in social tact, any more than m natural cleverness or in acquired information. Conversation, and very sensible conversation too, flowed like a river when he came into confluence with the Kavenels. The prevailing subject, as a matter of course, was the rebellion. It was every body's subject ; it was the nightmare by night and the delmum by day of the American people ; it was the one thing that no one ignored and no one for an hour forgot. The twenty loyal millions of the Xorth shuddered with rage at the insolent wickedness of those conspirators who, merely that they might perpetuate human bondage and their own po- litical supremacy, proposed to destroy the grandest social fabric that Liberty ever built, the city of refuge for op- j^ressed races, the hope of the nations. For men who through such a glorious temple as this could rush with destroying torches and the cry of " Rule or rum," the North felt a horror more passionate than ever, on any oc- casion, for any cause, thrilled the bosom of any other peo- ple. This indignation was earnest and wide-spread in pro- portion to the civilization of the century and the intelli- gence of the population. Tlie hundreds of telegraph luies and thousands of printing presses in the United States, sent the knowledge of every new treason, and the rever- beration of every throb of patriotic anger, in a day to all Americans outside of nurseries and lunatic asylums. The excitement of Germany at the opening of the Thirty Years' War, of England previous to the Cromwellian

G8 Miss Rayexel's Conversion

struggle, was torj^id and j^artial in comparison Avith this outburst of a modern, reading and swiftly-informed free democracy. As yet there was little bloodshed ; the old respect for law and confidence in the processes of reason could not at once die, and men still endeavored to con- vince each other by argument while holding the pistol to each other's heads ; but from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf there was a spiiitual preparedness for slaughter which was to end in such murderous contests as should make ensanguined Europe rise from its thousand battle- iields to stare m wonder.

TTomen and children were as wild with the patriotic excitement as men. Some of the prettiest and gentlest- born ladies of Xew Boston waited m a mixed crowd half the night at the railroad station to see the first regiments pass towards Washington, and flung their handkerchiefs, rings, pencil-cases, and other trmkets to the astonished country lads, to show them how the heart of woman blessed the nation's defenders. In no society could you be ten minutes without hearing the words war, treason, re- bellion. And so, the subject being every body's sulyect, the Ravenels and Colburne frequently talked of it. It was quite a sad and sore circumstance to the two gentlemen that the lady was a rebel. To a man who prides himself on his superior capacity and commanding nature, (that is to say, to almost every man in existence) there can be few greater grievances than a woman whom he cannot convert ; and more particularly and painfully is this true Avhen she bears some near relationship to him, as for in- stance that of a wife, sister, daughter and sweetheart. Thus Ravenel the father and Colbunie the admirer, fret- ted daily over the obstinate treasonableness of Miss Lillie. Patriotism she called it, declaring that Louisiana was her country, and that to it she owed her allegiance.

It is worthy of passing remark how loyal the young are to the prevailing ideas of the community in which they are nurtured. You will find adult republicans in

From Secession to Loyalty

69

England, but no infant ones ; adults monarchists in our own country, but not in our schools and nurseries. I have known an American of fifty whose beliefs, prejudices and tastes were all European, but who could not save his five children from being all Yankee. Accordingly this young- lady of nmeteen, born and nurtured among Louisianians, held firm for Louisiana in spite of the arguments of the adored papa and the rather agreeable admirer.

The Doctor liked Colburne, and respected his intellect. He rarely tired of talking with him on any subject, and concerning the war they could go on interminally. The only point on wliich they disagreed was the probable length of the contest ; the southerner prophecyuig that it would last five or six years, and the northerner that the rebels would succumb in as many months. Miss Ravenel sometimes said that the Xorth would give up in a year, and sometimes that the war would last forty years, both of which opinions she had heard sustained in Xew Or- leans. But, whatever she said, she always believed in the superior pluck and warlike skill of the peojole of her own section.

" Miss Ravenel," said Colburne, "I believe you thm]: that all southerners are giants, so tall that they can't see ;i Yankee without lymg down, and so pugnacious that they never go to church without praying for a chance to fight somebody."

She resented this satii'e by observing, " Mr. Colburne, if I believe it you ought not to dispute it."

I am inclined to thmk that the young man in these days rather damaged his chances of winning the young lady's kind regards (to use a hackneyed and therefore decorous phrase) by his stubborn and passionate loyalty to the old starry banner. It was im^Dossible that the two should argue so much on a subject wliich so deeply interested both without occasionally coming to spiritual blows. But why should Mr. Colburne wm the kind regards of Miss Ravenel ? If she were his wife, how could he support her ?

70 Miss Ravexel's Conversion

He had little, and she had notlimg.

While they were talking over the war it went on. One balmy summer day our little debating club of three sat in one of the small iron balconies of the hotel, discussing the great battle which had been fought, and rumor said won, on the heights around Manassas Junction. For a week the city had been Avild about the ' on to Richmond' movement ; and to-day the excitement culminated in a general joy which was impatient for official announcements, flags, bells and cannon. It was true that there was one susincious cu'cumstance ; that for twenty-four hours no telegrams concernmo; the fis-ht had come over the wires from Wash- ington ; but, excepting a few habitual croakers and secret copperheads, who were immediately frowmed into silence, no one jn-edicted evil tidmgs. At the last accounts " the grand army of the Potomac " was dri\'ing before it the traitorous battalions of the South ; McDowell had gauicd a great victory, and there was an end of rebellion.

" I don't believe it — I don't believe it," Miss Ravenel repeatedly asseverated, until her father scolded her for her absurd and disloyal incredulity.

" The telegraph is in order again," observed Colbunie " I heard one of those men who just passed say so." Here comes somebody that we know. "VMiitewood I — I say, Whitewood ! Any thing on the bulletin-board ?"

The pale young student looked up with a face of des- 2)air and eyes full of tears.

" It's all u]}, Colburne," said he. " Our men are running, throwing away their guns and every thmg."

His trembling voice hardly sufficed for even this short story of shame and disaster. Miss Ravenel, the desperate rebel, jumped to her feet with a nervous shriek of joy and then, catching her father's reproving eye, rushed up stairs and danced it out in her own room.

" It's impossible !" remonstrated Colburne in such excite- ment that his voice w^as almost a scream. "Why, by the last accounts — "

Fbom Secession to Loyalty. 71

" Oh ! that's all gone up," groaned Whitewood, who was in such a state of grief thatjie could hardly talk m- telligibly. " We've got more. We've got the end of the battle. Johnson came up on our right, and we are whipped all to pieces."

" Johnson ! Why, where was Patterson ?"

" Patterson is an old traitor," shouted Whitewood, pushing wildly on his way as if too sick at heart to talk more.

" It is very sad," observed the Doctor gravely. The thought occurred to him that for his own interests he had better have stayed m 'New Orleans ; but he lost sight of it immediately in his sorrow for the seeming calamity which had befallen country and liberty and the human race.

" Oh ! it's horrible — horrible. I don't believe it. I can't believe it," groaned Colburne. " It's too much to bear. I must o-o home. It makes me too sick to talk."

CHAPTER yj.

MR. COLBUENE SEES HIS WAY CLEAR TO BE A SOLDIER.

Stragglers arrived, and then the regiments. People were not angry with the beaten soldiers, but treated them mth tenderness, gave them plentifal cold collations, and lavished indignation on their ragged shoddy uniforms. Then the little State, at first pulseless with despair, took a long breath of relief when it found that Beam-egard had not occupied Washington, and set bravely about pre- paring for far bloodier battles than that of Bull Run.

Lieutenant-Colonel Carter did not return with his regi- ment ; and Colburne read with a mixture of emotions that he had been wounded and taken prisoner while gallantly leading a charge. He marked the passage, and left the paper with his compliments for the Ravenels, after debat- ing at the door of the hotel whether he should call on them,

72 Miss R a v e n e l ' s C o n t e n s i o x

and deciding in the negative. Xot being able as yet to apjH'eciate that blessing m disguise, Bull Run, his loyal heart was very sad and sore over it, and he felt a thrill of something like horror whenever he thought of the joyful shriek with which Lillie had welcomed the shocking tid- ings. He was angry with her, or at least he tried to be. He called up his patriotism, that strongest of Xew Eng- land isms, and resolved that witli a secessionist, a woman who wished ill to her country, he would not fall in love. But to be sure of this he must keep away from her ; for thus much of love, or of perilous inclination at least, he already had to acknowledge ; and moreover, while he was somewhat ashamed of the feeling, he still could not hearti- ly desire to eradicate it. Troubled thus concerning the aftairs of the country and of his own heart, he kept aloof from the Ravenels for three or four days. Then he said to himself that he had no cause for avoiding the Doctor, and that to do so was disgraceful treatment of a man who had proved his loyalty by taking up the cross of exile.

This story will probably have no readers so destitute of sympathy with, the young and loving, as that they can not guess the result of Colburne's internal struggles. Aft- er two or three chance conversations with Ravenel he jumi3ed, or to speak more accurately, he gently slid to the conclusion that it was absurd and unmanly to make a distinction in favor of the father and against the daughter. Quarrel with a woman ; how ridiculous ! how unchival- rous ! He colored to the tips of his repentant ears as he thought of it and of what Miss Ravenel must think of it. He hastened to call on her before the breach which he had made between her and himself should become untraversa- ble ; for although the embargo on their intercourse had lasted only about a week, it already seemed to hun a lapse of tune measureable by months ; and this very naturally, inasmuch as during that short interval he had lived a life of anguish as a man and a patriot. Accord- ingly the old intimacy was resumed, and the two young

■/r

E^BOM Secession to Loyalty. 73

people seldom passed forty-eight hours apart. But of the rebellion they said little, and of Bull Run nothing. These were such sore subjects to him that he did not wish to speak of them except to the ear of sympathy ; and she, divining his sensitiveness, would not give him pain not- withstanding that he was an abolitionist and a Yankee. If the Doctor, ignorant of what passed in these young- hearts, turned the conversation on the war, Lillie became silent, and Colbume, appreciating her forbearance, tried to say very little. Thus without a compact, without an expla- nation, they accorded in a stram of mutual charity which predicted the ultimate conversion of one or the other.

Moreover, Colburne asked himself, what right had he to talk if he did not fight ? If he wanted to answer this woman's outcry of delight over the rout of Bull Run, the place to do it was not a safe parlor, but a field of victor- ious battle. AYhy did he not act in accordance with these truly chivah-ous sentiments ? "Why not fall into one of tlie new regiments which his gallant little State was organiz- ing to continue the struggle? Why not march on with, the soul of old John Brown, joining in the sublime though quaint chorus of, " We're coming. Father Abraham, thi-ee hundred thousand more ?"

He did talk very earnestly of it with various persons, and, among others, with Doctor Ravenel. The latter ap- proved the young man's warlike inclinations promptly and earnestly.

" It is the noblest duty that you may ever have a chance to perform during your life," said he. " To do something personally towards upholdmg this Union and striking down slavery is an honor beyond any thmg that ever was accorded to Greek or Roman. I wish that I were young enough for the work, or fitted for it by nature or educa- tion. I would be willing to have my tombstone set up next year, if it could only bear the inscription, " He died in gbmig freedom to slaves."

" Oh I do stop," implored Lillie, who entered m time to D

74 Miss Ravenel's Conversion

hear the conchidmg sentence. " What do you talk about your tombstone for ? You will get perfectly addled about abolition, like all the rest. Now, papa, you ought to be more consistent. You didn't use to be so violent against slavery. You have changed since five years ago."

" I know it," says the Doctor. " But that doesn't prove that I am wrong now. I wasn't infallible five years ago. Why, my dear, the progress of our race from barbarism to civilization is through the medium of constant change. If the race is benefited by it, why not the mdividual ? I am a sworn foe to consistency and conservation. To stick obstinately to our old opmions, because they are old, is as Ibolish as it would be in a soldier-crab to hold on to liis shell after he had outgrown it instead of picking up a new one fitted to his increased size. Suppose the snakes per- sisted in gomg about in their last year's skins ? Xo, no ; there are no such fools m the lower animal kingdom ; that stupidity is confined to man."

" The world does move," observed Colbume. " We consider ourselves pretty strict and old-fashioned here in New Boston. But if our Puritan ancestors could get hold of us, they would be likely to have us A\-hipped as heretics and Sabbath-breakers. Very likely we would be equally severe upon our own great-great-grandchildren, if we should get a chance at them."

" Weak spirits are frightened by this change, this growfh, this forward impetus," said the Doctor. " I must tell you a story. I was travelling in Georgia three years ago. On the seat next in front of me sat a cracker, who was e\i- dently making his first railroad experience, and in other respects learning to go on his hind legs. Presently the train crossed a bridge. It vras narrow, uncovered and vrithout sides, so that a passenger would not be likely to see it unless he sat near the window. Now the cracker sat next the alley of the car, and away from the Tsmidow. I observed him give a glare at the river and turn away his head suddenly, after which he rolled about in a queer

Miss Ravexel's Coxveesion 15

way, and finally went on the floor in a heap. We picked him up ; spirits were easily produced, (they always are down there) ; and presently the cracker was brought to his senses. His first worcls were, 'Has she lit' — He was under the impression that the tram had taken the river at a running jnmj). Xow that is very much like the judgment of timid and ill-infi^rmed people on the -pro- gress of the nation or race at such a time as this. They don't know about the bridge; they think we are flymg through the air ; and so they go ofi" in general fainting-fits." Colbunie laughed, as ' many another man has done be- fore him, at this good old story.

" On our train, " said he, " on the train of human pro- gress, we are parts of the engine and not mere passengers. I ought to be revolving somewhere. I ought to be at work. I want to do something — I am most anxious to do something — ^but I don't know precisely what. I suppose that the inability exists in me, and not in my circum- stances. I am like the gentleman who tired himself out with jumping, but never could jump high enough to see over his own standing-collar."

" I know how you feel. I have been in that state my- self, often and in various ways. For instance it has oc- cui'red to me, especially in my younger days, to feel a strong desire to write, vdthout having anything to say. There was a burning in my brain ; there was a sentiment or sensation which led me to seek pens, ink and paper ; there was an imj)atient, uncertain, aimless efibrt to com- mence ; there was a pause, a revery, and all was over. It was a storm of sheet-lightning. There were glorious gleams, and far ofi* openings of the heavens ; but no sound, droppings, no sensible revelation from the uj^j^er world. — However, your longings are for action, and I am con- vuiced that you will find your opportunity. There will be work enough m this matter for all."

" I don't know," said Colburne. " The sixth and sev-

^6 Miss Ravexel's Conveksion

enth regiments are full. I hear that there isn't a lieiiten- antcy left."

" You will have to raise your own company."

" Ah ! But for what regiment ? We shan't raise another, I am afraid. Yes, I am actually afraid that the war will "be over in six months."

Miss Ravenel looked up hastily as if she should like to say " Forty years," but checked herself by a surprising effort of magnanimity and good nature.

" That's queer patriotism," laughed the Doctor. But let me assure you, Mr. Colburne, that your fears are ground- less. There will be more regiments needed."

Miss Ravenel gave a slight approving nod, but still said nothing, remembering Bull Run and how provokingly she had shouted over it.

" This southern oligarchy," continued the Doctor, " will be a tough nut to crack. It has the consolidated vigor of a tyi-anny."

" I wonder where Lieutenant-Colonel Carter is ?" queried Colburne. " It is six weeks since he was taken prisoner. It seems like six years."

Miss Ravenel raised her head with an air of interest, glanced hastily at her father, and gave herself anew to iier embroidery. The Doctor made a grimace which was as much as to say that he thought small beer or sour beer of Lieutenant-Colonel Carter. ^ " He is a very fine officer," said Colburne. " He was highly spoken of for his conduct at Bull Run."

"" I would rather have you for a Colonel," replied the Doctor.

Colburne laughed contemptuously at the idea of his fitness for a colonelcy.

" I would rather have any respectable man of tolerable intellect," insisted the Doctor. " I tell you that I know that type perfectly. I know what he is as well as if I had been acquainted with him for twenty years. He is what we southerners, in our barbarous local vanity, are accus-

From Secession to Loyalty. 77

tomed to call a sontliern gentleman. He is on the model of the sugar-planters of St. Dominic Parish. He needs somebody to care for him. Let me tell you a story. TThen I was on a mineralogical expedition in Xorth Carolina some years ago, I happened to be out late at night looking for lodgings. I was apj^roaching one of those cross-road groggeries which they call a tavern down there, when I met a most curious couple. It was a man and a goose. The man was drunk, and the goose was sober. The man was staggering, and the goose was waddling perfectly straight. Every few steps it halted, looked, back and quacked, as if to say. Come along. The moon was shining, and I could see the whole thing plainly. I was obliged to put up for the night in the groggery, and there I got an explanation of the comedy. It seems that this goose was a pet, and had taken an unaccountable affection to its owner, who was a wretched drunkard of a cracker. The man came nearly every night to the groggery, got drunk as regularly as he came, and generally went to sleep on one of the benches. About midnight the goose would ap- pear and cackle for him. The bar-keeper would shake up the drunkard and say, ' Here ! your goose has come for you.' As soon as the brute could get his legs he would start homeward, guided by his more mtelligent compan- ion. If the man fell down and couldn't get up, the goose would remain by him and squawk vociferously for assist- ance.— Xow, su', there was hardly a sugar-planter, hardly"* a southern gentleman, in St. Dominic Parish, who didn't need some such guardian. Often and often, as I have seen them swilling wine and brandy at each other's tables I have charitably wished that I could say to this one and that one. Sir, your goose has come for you."

"But you never have seen the Lieutenant-Colonel so badly off," answered Colburne, after a short meditation.

" Why no — not precisely," admitted the Doctor. " But I know his type," he presently added with an obstmacy which Miss Ravenel secretly thought very unjust. She

78 Miss Kavenel's Conversion

thought it best to direct her spirit of censure in another direction.

" Papa," said she, " what a count ryfied habit you have of telling stories !"

" Don't criticise, my dear," answers papa. " I am a high toned southern gentleman, and always knock people on the head who criticise me."

The question still returns upon us, why Mr. Colbume did not jom the army. It is time, therefore, to state the hitlierto unimportant fact that he was the only son of a widow, and that his life was a necessity to her, not only as a consolation to her loneliness, but as a support to her declming fortunes. Doctor Colbume had left his wife and child an estate of about twenty-five thousand dollars, which, at the time of his death was a respectable fortune m New Boston. But the mflux of gold from California, and the consequent rise of 2:)rices, seriously dimmif^hed tlie value of the family income just about the time that Ed- ward, by growmg mto manhood and entering college, ne- cessitated an increase of expenses. Therefore Mrs. Col- bume was led to put one half of the joint fortime into cer- tain newly-organized manufacturmg companies, which promised to increase her annual six per cent to twenty-four — nor was she therem'exceedmgly to blame, being led away by the example and advice of some of the sharpest New Boston capitalists, many of whom had their experienced pinions badly lamed in these joint-stock adventurings.

" What you want, Mr. Colburne," said a director, " is an investment which is both safe and permanent. Now this is just the thing."

I can not say much for the safety of the investment, but it certamly was a permanent one. Durmg the first year the promised twenty-four per cent was paid, and the widow could have sold out for one hundred and twenty. Then came a free-trade. Democratic improvement on the tarifi"; the manufacturing interest of the country was paralyzed, and the Braggville stock fell to ninety. 3Irs. Colburne

Fkom Secession to Loyalty. 79

might still have sold out at a profit, counting in her first year's dividend ; but as it was not in her inexperience to see that this was wisdom, she held on fi^r a — decline. By the opening of the war her certificates of manufacturing stock were waste paper, and her annual mcome was re- duced to eight himdred dollars. Indeed, for a year or two previous to the commencement of this story, she had been forced to make inroads upon her capital.

Of this crisis in the family affairs Edward was fully aware, and like a true-born, industrious Yankee, did his best to meet it. From every lowermost branch and twig of his profession he plucked some fruit by dint of constant watchfulness, so that during the past year he had been very nearly able to cover his own conscientiously econom- ical expenditures. He was gaining a foothold m the law, although he as yet had no cases to plead. If he held on a year or two longer at this rate he might confidently ex- pect to restore the family income and stave off the threat- ened sale of the homestead.

But this was not all which prevented him from going forth to battle. The cry of his mother's heart was, " jVIy son, how can I let thee go ?" She was an abolition- ist, as was almost every body of her set in New Boston ; she was an enthusiastic patriot, as was almost every one in the north during that sublime summer of popular enthusiasm ; but this war — oh, this strange, ferocious war ! was horrible. Her sensitively affectionate nature, blinded by veils of womanly tenderness, folded in habits of life- long jDcace, could not see the hard, inevitable necessity of the contest. Earnestly as she sympathised with its loyal and humane objects, she was not logical enough or not finn enough to sympathise with the iron thing itself. Lapped in sweet influences of peace all her loving life, why mast she be called to death amid the clamor of murderous contests ? For her health was failing ; a painful and fatal disease had fastened its clutches on her ; another year's course she did not hope to run. And if the hateful strug-

80 Miss Ravenel's Conversion

gle must go on, if it mii^t torment licr last few days with its agitations and horrors, so much the more did she need her only child. Other women's sons — yes, if there was no help for it — but not hers — might put on the panoply of strife, and disappear from anxiously following eyes into the smoke and flame of battle. Edward told her every day ■■ the warlike news of the journals, the grand and stern -pnt- ting on of the harness, the gigantic plans for crushing the nation's foes. She could take no interest in sueh tidings but that of aversion. He read to her in a voice which thrilled like swellings of martial music, Tennyson's Charge, of the Six Hundred. She listened to the clarion-toned words with distaste and almost with horror.

"Well, the summer wore aAvay, that summer of sombre preparation and preluding skirmishes, whose scattering musketry and thin cannonade faintly prophecied the or- chestral thunders of Gettysburg!! and the Wilderness, and whose few dead preceded like skirmishers the massive columns which for years should firmly follow them into the dark valley. Its forereaching shadows fell upon many homes far away from the battlefield, and chilled to death many sensitive natures. Old persons and mvalids sank into the grave that season imder the oppression of its straining suspense and j^reliminary horror ; and among these victims, whom no man has counted and whom few have thought of collectively, was the mother of Colbume.

One September afternoon she sent for Edward. The Doctor had gone ; his labors were over. The clergyman had gone ; neither was he longer needed. There was no one in the room but the nurse, the dying mother and the only child. The change had been expected for days, and Edward had thought that he was prepared for it ; had in- deed marvelled and been shocked at himself because he could look forward to it with such seemmg composure ; for, reason with his heart and his conscience as he might, he could not feel a fitting dread and anguish. In the common phrase of humanity, when numbed by unusual

FROii Secession to Loyalty. 81

sorrow, he could not realize it. But now, as, leaning over the footboard and looking steadfastly upon his mother's face, he saw that the final hour had come, a sickness of heart fell upon him, and a trembling as if his soul were bemg torn asunder. Yet neither wept ; the Puritans and the children of the Puritans do not. weep easily ; they are taught, not to utter, but to hide their emotions. The nurse perceived no signs of unusual feeling, except that the face of the strong man became suddenly as pale as that of the dying woman, and that to him this was an hour of anguish, while to her it was one of unspeakable joy. The mother knew her son too well not to see, even with those failmg eyes, into the depths of his sorrow.

" Don't be grieved for me, Edward," she said. " I am sustamed by the faith of the promises. I am about to re- turn from the place whence I came. I am re-entermg with peace and with confidence into a blessed eternity."

He came to the side of the bed, sat down on it and took her hand without speaking.

" You will follow me some day," she went on. " You will follow me to the place where I shall be, at the right hand of the Lord. I have prayed for it often ; — I was praying for it a moment ago ; and, my child, my prayer will be granted. Oh, I have been so fearful for you; But I am fearful no longer."

He made no answer except to press her hand while she paused to draw a few short and wearisome breaths.

" I can bear to part with you now," she resumed. " I could not bear it till the Lord granted me this full assur- a^ice that we shall meet again. I leave you m his hands. I make no conditions with him. I have been sweetly brought to give you altogether up to one who loves you better than I know how to love you. He gave me my love, and he has kept more than he gave. Perhaps I have been selfish, Edward, to hold on to you as I have. You have felt it your duty to go into the army, and per- haps I have been selfish to prevent you. Now you are D2

82 Miss Rayenel's Conversion

free ; to-morrow I shall not be here. If you still see that to be your duty, go ; and the Lord go with you, darling, and give you strength and courage. I do not ask him to spare you, but only to guide you here below, and restore

you to me above. And he will do it, Edward, for his

OAVTi sake. I am full of confidence ; the promises are sure. For you and for myself, I rejoice with a joy unspeakable and full of glory."

While thus sj^eakmg, or rather whispering, she had put one arm around his neck. As he kissed her wasted cheek and let fall his first tears on it, she drew her hand across his face with a caressing tenderness, and smiling, fell back softly on her i)illow, closing her eyes as calmly as if to sleep. A few broken words, a murmuring of unutterable, unearthly, ir.finite happiness, echoes as it were of greetings far away with welcoming angels, were her last utterances. To the young man, who still held her hand and now and then kissed her cheek, she seemed to slumber, although her breathing gradually sank so low that he could not per- ceive it. But after a long time the nurse came to the bed- side, bent over it, looked, listened, and said, " She is gone !"

He was free ; she was not there.

He went to his room with a horrible feeling that for him there was no more love ; that there was nothing to do and nothhig to expect ; that his life was a blank. He could fix his mind on nothing past or future ; not even up- on the unparalleled sorrow of the present. Taking uj) the Bible which she had given }^im, he read a page before he noticed that he had not understood and did not remember a smgle passage. In that vacancy, that almost idiocy, which beclouds afflicted souls, he could not recall a dis- tiuct impression of the scene through which he had just passed, and seemed to have forgotten forever his mother's dying words, her confidence that they should meet again, her heavenly joy. With the same perverseness, and m spite of repeated efibrts to close his ears to the sound,

Feo^j: Secession to Loyalty. 83

some inner, wayward self repeated to him over and over again these verses of the unhappy Poe —

" Thank Heaven ! the crisis,

The danger is past,

And the lingering ilhiess

Is over at last,

And the fever called Living

Is conquered at last."

The sad words sounded wofully true to him. For the time, for some days, it seemed to him as if life were but a w^earisome illness, for which the grave was but a cure. His mind, fevered by night watcMng, anxiety, and an unac- customed grapplmg with sorrow, was not in a healthy state. He thought that he was willing to die ; he only de- sired to fall usefully, honorably, and in consonance with the spuit of his generation ; he would set his face hence- forward towards the awful beacons of the battle-field. His resolution was taken with the seriousness of one, who, though cheerful and even jovial by nature, had been per- meated to some extent by the solemn passion of Puritan- ism. He painted to himself in strong colors the risk of death and the nature of it ; then deliberately chose the part of facing this tremendous mystery in support of the right. * All this while, be it remembered, his mind was somewhat exalted by the fever of bodily weakness and of spiritual sorrow.

84 Miss Ravexel's Cox version

CHAPTER Vn.

CAPTAIN COLBUEXE RAISES A C03IPAXT, AXD COLOXEL CARTER A REGIMEXT.

The settlement of his mother's estate and of his own pecuniary aifau'S occupied Colburne's time until the early- part of October. By then he had invested his property as well as might be, rented the much-loved old homestead, taken a room in the Xew Boston House, and was fully prepared to bid good-bye to native soil, and, if need be, to life. Miss Ravenel was a strong though silent tempta- tion to remain and to exist, but he resisted her with the heroism which he subsequently exhibited in combating male rebels.

One morning, as he left the hotel rather later than usual to go to his office, his eyes fell upon a high-colored face and gigantic brown mustache, which he could not have foiled to recognize, no matter where nor when encount- ered. There was the wounded captive of Bull Run, as big chested and rich complexioned, as audacious in eye and haughty in aii", as if no hurt nor hardship nor calamity had ever befalle^ him. He checked Colburne's eager advance with a cold stare, and passed him without speaking. But the young fellow hardly had time to color at this rebuff, when, just as he was opening the outer door, a baritone voice arrested him with a ringing, " Look here !"

" Beg i^ardon," continued the Lieutenant-Colonel, com- mg up hastily. " Didn't recognize you. It's quite a time smce our pic-nic, you know."

Here he showed a broad grin, and presently burst out laughhig, as much amused at the past as if it did not con- tain Bull Run.

" What a jolly old pic-nic that was !" he went on. " I

Feom Secession to Loyalty. 85

have shouted a himdred times to think of myself passing the wine and segars to those prim old virgins. Just as though I had bowsed into the House Beautiful, among Bunyan's damsels, and offered to treat the crowd !"

Again the Lieutenant-Colonel laughed noisily, his inso- lent black eyes twinkling with merriment. Colburne looked at him and listened to him with amazement. Here was a man who had lately been in what was to him the terrible mystery of battle ; who had fallen down wounded and been carried away captive while fighting heroically for the noblest of causes ; who had witnessed the greatest and most humiliating overthrow which ever befel the ar- mies of the republic ; who yet did not allude to any of these things, nor apparently think of them, but could chat and laugh about a pic-nic. Was is treasonable indifference, or levity, or the sublimity of modesty ? Colburne thought that if he had been at Bull Run, he never could have talked of any thing else.

" Well, how are you ?" demanded Carter. " You are looking a little pale and thin, it seems to me."

" Oh, I am well enough," answered Colburne, passing- over that subject with modest contempt, as not worthy of mention. " But how are you f Have you recovered from your wound ?"

" Wound ? Oh ! yes ; mere bagatelle ; healed up some time ago. I shouldn't have been caught if I hadn't been stunned by my horse falling. The wound was nothing,"

" But you must have suffered in your confinement," said Colburne, determined to appreciate and pity.

" Suffered ! My dear fellow, I suffered with eating and drinking and making merry. I had the deuce's own time in Richmond. I met loads of my old comrades, and they nearly killed me with kindness. They are a nice set of old boys, if they are on the wrong side of the fence. You didn't suppose they would maltreat a brother West Point- er, did you ?"

86 Miss Ravexel's Coxversiox

And the Lieutenant-Colonel laughed heartily at the civ- ilian blundej'.

" I didn't know, really," answered the puzzled Col- burne. " I must say I thought so. But I am as poor a judge of soldiers as a sheep is of catamounts."

" Why, look here. When I left they gave me a supper, and not only made me drunk, but got drunk themselves in my honor. Opened their purses, too, and forced their money on me."

All this, it will be noted, was long previous to the time when Libby Prison and Andersonville were deliberately converted into pest-houses and starvation pens.

" I am afraid they wanted to bring you over," observed Colburne. He looked not only suspicious, but even a little anxious, for in those days every patriot feared for the faith of his neighbor.

"I suppose they did," replied Carter carelessly, as if he saw nothing extraordinary in the idea. " Of course they did. They need all the help that they can get. In fact the rebel Secretary of War paid me the compliment of making me an offer of a regiment, with an assurance that promotion might be relied on. It was done so delicately that I couldn't be offended In fact it was quite natural, and he probably thought it would be bad taste to omit it. I am a Yii'ginian, you know ; and then I was once engaged in some southern schemes and diplomacies — before this war broke out, you understand — oh, no connection with this war. However, I declmed his offer. There's a patriot for you."

" I honor you, su*," said Colbume with a fervor which made the Lieutenant-Colonel grm. " You ought at be re- warded."

" Quite so," answered the other in his careless, half-jok- ing style. " Well, I am rewarded. I received a letter yesterday afternoon from your Governor offering me a re- giment. I had just finished an elegant dinner with some good fellows, and was going in for a roaring evening. But

From Secession to Loyalty. 8*7

business before pleasure. I took a cold plunge bath and the next tram for Xew Boston, getting here at midnight. I am off at ten to see his Excellency."

" I am sincerely delighted," exclaimed the young man. " I am delighted to hear that the Governor has had such good sense."

After a moment's hesitation he added anxiously, " Do you remember your mvitation to me ?"

" Certainly. What do you say to it now ? Will you go with me ?"

" I will," said Colburne emphatically. " I will try. I only fear that I can neither raise nor command a compa- ny."

" ^ever fear," answered Carter in a tone which pooh- poohed at doubt. " You are just the man. Come round to the bar with me, and let's drink success to our regiment. Oh, I recollect ; you don't imbibe. Smoke a segar, then, while we talk it over. I tell you that you are just the man. Noblesse ohlige. Any gentleman can make a good enough company officer in three months' practice. As to raising your men, I'll give you my best countenance, whatever that may amount to. And if you actually don't succeed in getting your quota, after all, why, we'll take somebody else's men. Examinations of officers and consol- idations of companies biing all these things right, you know."

" I should be sony to profit by any other man's influ- ence and energy to his harm," answered the fastidious Colburne.

" Pshaw ! it's all for the good of the service and of the country. Because a low fellow who keej^s a saloon can treat and wheedle sixty or eighty stout fellows into the ranks, do you suppose that he ought to be commissioned an officer and a gentleman ? I don't. It can't be in my regiment. Leave those things to me, and go to work with- out fear. Write to the Adjutant-General of the State to- day for a recruiting commission, and as soon as you get it,

88 Miss Rayexel's Coxversiox

open an office. I guarantee that you shall be one of the Captains of the Tenth Barataria."

" Who are the other field officers ?" asked Colburne.

" Not appointed yet. I am alone in my glory. I am the reo-iment. But the Lieutenant-Colonel and Major shall be of the right stamp. I mean to have a word to say as to the choice. I tell you that we'll have the bulliest regiment that ever sprang from the soil of Xew England."

" Well, I'll try. But I really fear that I shall just get my company recruited in time for the next war."

" Xever fear," laughed Carter, as though war were a huge practical joke. " We are in for a four or five years' job of fighting."

" You don't mean it !" said the young man in amaze- ment. " Why, we citizens are all so full of confidence. McClellan, every body says, is organizing a splendid ar- my. Did Bull Run give you such an opmion of the supe- rior fighting qualities of the southerners ?"

" Xot at all. Both sides fought timidly, as a rule, just as greenhorns naturally would do. The best description of the battle that I have heard was given in a single sentence by my old captain, Lamar, now in command of a Georgia regiment. Said he, ' There never was a more frightened set than our fellows — except your fellows. — Why, we out- foucrht them in tlie morning ; we had them fairly whipj^ed until Johnston came up on our right. The retreat was a mathematical necessity ; it was like saying. Two and two make four. When our line was turned, of course it had to retreat."

" Retreat !" groaned Colburne in bitterness over the re- collection of that calamitous afternoon. " But you didn't see it. They ran shamefully, and never stopped short of Washington. One man reached Xew Boston mside of twenty-four hours. It was a panic unparalleled in his- tory."

" Xonsense ! Beg your pardon. Did you never read of Austerlitz and Jena and Waterloo? Our men did pretty

Feom Secession to Loyalty. 89

well for militia. I didn't see the panic, to be sure; — I was picked up before that happened. But I have talked with some of om* officers who did see it, and they told me that the papers exaggerated it absnrdly. Newspaper corresj^ondents ought not to be allowed in the army. They exaggerate every thing. If we had gained a victory, they would have made it out something greater than Waterloo. You must consider how easily inexperience is deceived. Just get the story of an upset from an old stage- driver, and then from a lady passenger ; the first will tell it as quite an ordinary aflair, and the second will make it out a tragedy. Now when some old grannies of congress- men and some young ladies of newspaper reporters, none of whom had ever seen either a victory or a defeat before, got entangled among half a dozen disordered regiments they naturally concluded that nothing like it had happen- ed in history. I tell you that it wasn't unparalleled, and that it ought not to have been considered surprising. Whichever of those two green armies got repulsed was pretty sure to be routed. That was a' very pretty manoeuvre, though, that coming up of Johnston on our right. Patterson ought to be court-martialed for his stupidity."

" Stupidity ! He is a traitor," exclaimed Colburne.

" Oh ! oh !" expostulated the Colonel with a cough. " If we are to try all our dull old gentlemen as traitors, we shall have our hands full. That's somethins: like hanging homely old women for witches. — By the way, how are the Allstons ? I mean the — the Ravenels. Well, are they ? Young lady as blooming and blushing as ever ? Glad to hear it. Can't stop to call on them; my train goes in ten minutes. — I am delighted that you are going to fall in with me. Good bye for to-day."

Away he went, leaving Colburne in wonder over his contrasts of slanginess and gentility, his mingled audacity and insouciance of character, and all the picturesque ms and outs of his moral architecture, so different from the

90 Miss Ravexel's Coxyersiox

severe plainness of the spiritual temples common in Xew Boston. The young man Avould have preferred that liis future Colonel should not drmk and swear ; but lie would not puritanically decide that a man who drank and swore could not be a good officer. He did not know aimy men well enough to dare judge them witli positiveness ; and he certainly would not try them by the moral standards according to which he tried civilians. The facts that Carter was a professional soldier, and that he had shed his blood in the cause of the country, were sufficient to make Colburne regard with, charity all his frank vices.

I must not allow the reader to suppose that I present Carter as a type of all regular officers. There were men in the old army who never tasted liquors, who never blasphemed, who did not waste theii* substance in riotous livmg, who could be accused of no evil practices, who were models of Christian gentlemen. The American ser- vice, as well as the English, had its Havelocks, its Ileadly Yicars, its Colonel ISJ'ewcomes. Xevertheless I do ven- ture to say that it had also a great many men whose moral habits were cut more or less on the Carter pattern, who swore after the fashion of the British army in Flanders, whose heads could carry drink like Dugald Dalgetty's, and who had even other vices concernmg which my dis- creet pen is silent.

Within a week after the conversation above reported Colburne opened a recruiting office, advertised the " Put- nam Rangers" largely, and adorned his doorway with a transparency representmg Old Put m a bran-new uniform riding sword in hand down the stone steps of Horse- neck. His company, as yet in embryo, was one of the ten accepted out of the nineteen offered for Carter's regiment. It was supposed that the name of a West Point colonel would render the organization a favorite one with the en- listing classes ; and accordmgly all the chiefs of incomplete companies throughout the State of Barataria wanted to sieze the chance for easy recruiting. But Colburne

From Secession to Loyalty. 91

soon found that the dulhiess of a young lawyer's office was none too prosy an exordium for the dullness of a re- cruitmg office at this particular period. Passed was that springSde of popular enthusiasm when companies were raisecl m a day, when undersized heroes wept at being re- jected by the mustermg officer, when well-to-do youths paid a hundred dollars to buy out a chance to be shot at. Bull Run had disenchanted some romantic natures con- cerning the pleasures of war, and the vast enlistments of the summer had di'awn heavily on the nation's fighting material. Moreover, Colbm-ne had to encounter obstacles of a personal nature, such as did not trouble some of his competitors. A student, a member of a small and shy so- cial circle, neither business man nor one of the bone and sinew, not having belonged to a fire company or militia company, nor even kept a bar or billiard-saloon, he had no retainers nor partisans nor shopmates to call upon, no rum- my customers whom he could engage in the war-dance on condition of unlimited AvHskey. He had absolutely no personal means of influencing the classes of the community which furnish that important element of all militiiry or- ganizations, private soldiers. For a time he remamed al- most as solitary in his office as Old Put m the perilous glory of his breakneck descent. In short the raismg of his company proved a slow, vexatious and expensive busi- ness, notwithstandmg the countenance and aid of the Col- onel.

Miss Ravenel was much spited m secret when she saw his advertisement ; but she was too proud to expose her interest in the matter by opposition. What object had she in keeping him at home and out of danger? More- over after the fashion of most southern women, she be- Heve'd in fio-htino-, and respected a man the more for draw- in- the sword, no matter for which party. After a while when his activity and cheerfulness of spirit had returned to hun, she began to talk with her old freedom of expi-es- sion, and indulged in playful prophecies about the Bull

92 Miss Ravenel's Coxyersiox

Runs he avouIcI figlit, the masterly retreats he Avoiild accom- plish, and the captivities he would undergo.

" When you are a prisoner in Richmond," she said, " I'll write to my Louisiana friends in the southern army and tell them what a spiteful abolitionist you are. I'll get them to put a colored friend and brother into the same cell with you. You won't like it. You'll promise to go back to your law office, if they'll send that fellow to his planta- tion."

The Doctor was all sympathy and interest, and brim- med over with prophecies of Colburne's success. He judged the people of Barataria by the people of Louisiana ; the latter preferred gentlemen for officers, and so of course would the former. Notwithstanding his hatred of slavery he was still somewhat under the influence of its aristo- cratical glamour. He had not yet fully comprehended that the war was a struggle of the plain j^eople against an oligarchy, and that the plain people had, not very under- standingly but still very resolutely, determined to lead the fighting as well as to do it. He had not yet full faith that the northern working-man would beat the southern gentleman, without much guidance from the northern scholar.

" Don't be discouraged," he said to Colburne. " I feel the utmost confidence in your prospects. As soon as it is generally understood who you are and what your char- acter is, you will have recruits to give away. It is impos- sible that these bar-tenders and tinkers should raise good men as easily as a gentleman and a graduate of the uni- versity. They may get a run of ruft-scuff, but it won't last. I predict that your company will be completed sooner and composed of better material than any other in the regunent. I would no more give your chance for that of one of these tmkers than I would exchange a meteorite for its weight in old nails."

The Doctor abounded in promising but unfruitful schemes for helpiug forward the Putnam Rangers. He

Feoxi Secession to Loyalty. 93

proposed that Colburne should send a cii-cular to all the clergymen and Sabbath-school superintendents of the county, callhig upon each parish to furnish the subscriber with only one good recruit.

" If they do that," said he, " as they unquestionably will when the case is properly presented to them, why the company is filled at once."

He advised the young man to make an oratorical tour, delivermg patriotic speeches in the village lyceums, and circulatmg an enlistment paper at the close of each per- formance. He told him that it would not be a bad move to apply to his professional brethren far and near for aid in rousing the popular enthusiasm. He himself wrote fa- vorable notices of the captain and his company, and got them prmted in the city journals. One day he came home in a hurry, and with, great glee produced the evening edi- tion of the New Boston Patriot.

" Our young friend has hit it at last," he said to Lillie. " He has called the muses to his aid. Here is a superb patriotic hymn of his composition. It is the best thing of the khid that the literature of the war has produced." (The Doctor was somewhat given to hyperbole in speak- ing well of his friends.) " It can't fail to excite popular attention. I venture to predict that those verses alono will bring him hi fifty men."

" Let me see," said Lillie, making an impatient snatch at the paper ; but the Doctor ctrew it away, desirous of en- joying the luxury of his own elocution. To read a good thing aloud and to poke the fire are sunple but real pleas- ures, wliicli some people cannot easily deny themselves — and which belong of right, I thmk, to the head of a fami- ly. The Doctor settled himself in an easy chair, adjusted his collar, put up his eyeglass, dropped it, put on his spectacles in spite of Lillie's remonstrances, and read as follows—

94 Miss Rayenel's Conveesion

A NATIONAL HYMN.

Tune : America.

Be thou our countr3''s Chief Id this our )-ear of grief,

Allfather great ; Go forth with awful tread, Crush treason's serpent head, Bring back our sons misled,

And save our State.

Uphold our stripes and stars Through war's destroying jars

With thy right hand ; Oh God of battles, lead *^ Where our swift navies speed,

Where our brave armies bleed

For fatherland.

Break every yoke and chain, Let truth and justice reign

From sea to sea ; Make all our statutes right In thy most holy sight ; Light us, O Lord of light. To foUow Thee.

God bless our fatherland, God make it strong and grand

On sea and shore ; Ages its glory swell. Peace in its borders dwell, God stand its sentinel

For ever more.

" Let ine see it," persisted Lillie, making a second and more successful reach for the paper. She read the verses to herself with a slight flush of excitement, and then quietly remarked that they were pretty. It has been sus-

Feom Secession to Loyalty. 95

pected that she kept that paper ; at all events, when her father sought it next mornuig to cut out the verses and paste them in his common-place book, he could not find it ; and while Lillie pretended to take an interest in his search, she made no distinct answer to his inquiries. I am told by persons wise in the ways of young ladies that they sometimes lay aside trifles of this sort, and are afterwards ashamed, from some inexplicable cause, of having the fact become patent even to their nearest relatives. It must not be understood, by the way, that Mss Ravenel had lost her slight admii-ation for that full-blown specimen of the male sex, Colonel Carter. He was too much in the style of a Louisiana j^lanter not to be attractive to her homesick eyes. She welcomed his rare visits with her mvariable but nevertheless flattering blush, and talked to him with a vivacity which sent flashes of pam into the soul of CoV burne. The young man admitted the fact of these spasms, but tried to keep up a deception as to their cause. Li his charity towards himself he attributed them to an unselfish anxiety for the happmess of that sweet gu-1, who, he feared, would find Carter an unsuitable husband, however grand- iose as a social ornament and accomplished as an officer.

In spite of these sentimental possibilities of disagree- ment between the Colonel and the Captain, their friend- ship daily grew stronger. The foi-mer was not in the least influenced by lovelorn jealousy, and set much store by Colburne as being the only officer in his regiment who was precisely to his taste. He had desired, but had not been able to obtam, the young gentlemen of N'ew Boston, the sons of the college professors, and of the city clergy- men. The set was limited in number and not martial nor enthusiastic in character. It had held aristocratically aloof from the militia, from the fire companies, from personal interference in local politics, from every social enterprise which could bring it into contact with the laboring masses. It needed two years of tremendous war to break through the shy reserve of this secluded and almost mon-

96 Miss Rayenel's Conversion

astic little circle, and let loose its sons upon the battle- field. The Colonel was disgusted with his raft of tmkers and tailors, as he called his officers, although they were mostly good drill-masters and creditably zealous in learn- ing the graver duties of their new profession. The regu- lar army, he said, had not been troubled with any such kmd of fellows. The brahmmism of West Point and of the old service revolted from such vulgar associations. It required the fiery breath of many fierce battles, in which the gallantry of volunteers shone consj^icuous, to blow this feeling into oblivion.

One day the Colonel related in confidence to the Doctor a chcumstance which had given him peculiar disgust. The Governor having permitted him to nominate his own Lieutenant-Colonel, he had selected an ex-officer of a three months' regiment who had shown tactical knowledge, and gallantry. The field position of Major he had finally re- solved to demand for Colburne. Hence an interview, and an iinj^leasant one, with the chief magistrate of Barataria.

" Gov^-nor," said Carter, " I want that majority for a particular friend of mine, the best officer m the regiment and the best man for the place that I know in the State."

The Governor was in his little office reclining in a high- backed oaken chau-, and toasting his feet at a fire. He was a tall, thin, stooping gentleman, slow in gait because feeble in health, with a benign dignity of manner and an unvarying amiability of countenance. His eyes were a j^ale blue, his hah a light chesnut slightly silvered by fifty years, his complexion had once been freckled and was still fair, his smile was frequent and conciliatory. Like Presi- dent Lincoln he sprang from the plain people, who were to conquer in this war, and like him he was capable of intel- lectual and moral growth in proportion to enlargement of his sphere of action. A modest, gentle-tempered, oblig- ing man, patriotic in every impulse, devout m the severe piety of New England, distinguished for personal honor

From Secession to Loyalty. 97

and private virtues, he was iu the main a credit to the State which had selected him for its loftiest dignity.

He had risen from his chair and saluted the Colonel with marked respect. Although he did not like his moral ways, he valued him highly for his jDrofessional ability and courage, and was proud to have him in command of a Baratarian regiment. To his shy spirit this aristocratic and martial personage was m fact a rather imposmg phe- nomenon. Carter had a fearful eye ; by turns audacious- ly haughty and insolently quizzical ; and on this occasion the Governor felt himself more than usually discomposed under its wide open, steady, confident stare. He seemed even a little tremulous as he took his seat ; he dreaded to disagree with the representative of West Point brahmui- ism ; and yet he knew that he must.

" Captain Colburne."

" Oh — Captain Colburne," hesitated the Governor. " I agree with you. Colonel, in all that you say of him. I hope that there will be an opportunity yet of pushing him forward. But just now," he continued with a smile that was apologetical and almost penitent, " I don't see that I can give him the majority. I have promised it to Cap- tain Gazaway."

" To Gazaway !" exclaimed Carter. A long breath of an- gry astonishment swelled his broad breast, and liis cheek would have flushed if any emotion could have deepened the tint of that dark red bronze.

" You don't mean, I hope. Governor, that you are re- solved to give the majority of my regiment to that 1)oor."

" I know that he is a plain man," mildly answered the Governor, who had begun life himself as a mechanic.

" Plain man ! He is a plain blackguard. He is a tod- dy-mixer and shoulder-hitter."

The Governor uttered a little troubled laugh ; he was clearly discomposed, but he was not angry.

" I am willing to grant all that you say of him," he an- swered. " I have no personal Hking for the man. Indi- E

98 Miss Ravenel's Conversion

vidually I should prefer Caj^tain Colburne. But if you knew the pressure that I am under — "

He hesitated as if reflecting, smiled again with his hab- itual gentleness, folded and unfolded his hands nervously, and proceeded with his explanation.

" You must not expose our little political secrets, Col- onel. I am obliged to permit certain schemes and j^lots which personally I disaj^prove of. Captain Gazaway liVes in a very close district, and influences a considerable num- ber of votes. He is popular among his class of peoj^le. as vou can see by the ease with which he filled his company. He and his friends insist upon the majority. If we refuse it Ave shall probably lose the district and a member of Con- gress. That is a serious matter at this time when the administration must be supported by a strong house, or the nation may be shipwrecked. Still, if I were left alone I would take the risk, and appoint good officers and no others to all our regiments, satisfied that success in the field is the best means of holding the masses firm in support of the Government. But in the meantime Bur- leigh, who is our candidate m Gazaway's district, is de- feated, we will suppose. Burleigh and Gazaway under- stand each other. If Gazaway gets the majority, he promises to insure the district to Burleigh. You see the pressure I am under. All the leading managers of our party concur in urging upon me this promotion of Gaza- way. I regret extremely that I can do nothing now for your favorite, whom I respect very much. I hope to do something for him in the future."

" When an election is not so near at hand," suggested Carter.

" Here," continued the Governor, without noticing the satire, I have been perfectly frank with you. All I ask in return is that you will have patience."

" 'Pon my honor, I can't of course find fiiult with you personally, Governor," replied the Colonel. " I see how the cursed thino; works. You are on a treadmill, and

From Secession to Loyalty. 99

must keep steiDping according to the machinery. But by — ! sir, I wish this whole matter of appointments was in the hands of the War Department."

" I almost wish it was," sighed the Governor, still without a show of wounded pride or impatience.

It was this conversation whicli the Colonel repeated to the scandalized ears of Doctor Ravenel, when the latter urged the promotion of Colburne.

" I hope you will inform our young friend of your efforts in his favor," said the Doctor. " He will be exceeduigly gratified, notwithstanding the disappointment."

" No," said the Colonel. " I beg your pardon ; but don't tell him. It would not be policy, it would not be soldierly, to inform him of any thing likely to disgust him with the service."

CHAPTER YIII.

THE BEAVE BID GOOD-BYE TO THE FAIE.

Another circumstance disgusted Colonel Carter even more than the affair of the majority. He received a com- munication from the War Department assigning his regi- ment to the Xew England Division, and directmg him to report for orders to 3Iajor-General Benjamin F. Butler. Over this priper he fired off such a volley of oaths as if Uncle Toby's celebrated army in Flanders had fallen in for practice in battalion swearing.

" A civilian ! a lawyer, a political wire-puller ! a militia- man!" exclaimed the high-born southern gentleman. West Point graduate and ex-ofiicer of the regular army. " What does such a fellow know about the organization or the command of troops ! I don't believe he could make out the property returns of a company, or take a platoon of

100 Miss Ravenel's Conversion

skirmishers into action. And I must report to him, in- stead of he to me !"

Let us sujDpose that some inconceivably great power had suddenly created the Colonel a first-class lawyer, and ordered the celebrated Massachusetts advocate to act un- der him as junior counsel. We may conjecture that the latter might have been made somewhat indignant by such an arrangement.

" I'll make official application to be transferred to some other command," continued Carter, thmking to himself. " If that won't answer, I'll go to the Secretary myself about it, irregular as personal application may be. And if that won't answer, I'll be so long in getting ready for the field, that our Major-General Pettifogger will probably go without me."

If Carter attempted to carry out any of these plans, he no doubt discovered that the civilian General was greater than the West Pomt Colonel in the eyes of the authorities at Washington. But it is probable that old habits of sol- dierly obedience prevented him from ofiering much if any resistance to the will of the War Department, just as it prevented him from expressmg his dissatisfaction in the presence of any of his subordinate officers. It is true that the Tenth was an unconscionable long time in getting rea- dy for the field, but that Avas owing to the decay of the enlistmg spirit in Barataria, and Carter seemed to be as much fretted by the lack of men as any body. Meantime not even Colburne, the officer to whom he unbosomed him- self the most freely, overheard a syllable from him in dis- paragement of General Butler.

During the leisurely organization and drilling of his re- giment the Colonel saw Miss Ravenel often enough to fall desperately in love with her, had he been so minded. He was not so minded ; he liked to talk with pretty young ladies, to flirt with them and to tease them ; but he did not easily take sentiment au grand serieux. Self-conceit and a certain hard-hearted indiffierence to the feelmgs of

From Secession to Loyalty. 101

others, combined with a love of fun, made him a habitual quiz. He acknowledged the charm of Lillie's outlines and manner, but he treated her like a child whom he could pet and banter at his pleasure. She, on the other hand, was a little too much afraid of him to quiz in return ; she could not treat this mature and seemingly worldly-wise man with the playful impertinence which sometimes marked her manner towards Colburne.

" Miss Ravenel, have you any messages for Xew Or- leans ?" said the Colonel. "I begm to thmk that we shall go just there. It will be such a rich pocket for Gen- eral Butler's fingers."

In speakuig to civilians Carter was not always so care- ful of the character of his superiors as m talking to his subordinate ofiicers.

"Just think of the twelve millions of gold in the banks," he proceeded, " and the sugar and cotton too, and the wholesale nigger-stealing that we can do to varnish over our robberies. It grieves me to death to thmk that the Tenth will soon be street-firmg up and down New Or- leans. We shall make such an awful slaughter among yonr crowds of old admirers !"

" I hope you won't kill them all."

" Oh, I shan't kill them all. I am not going to commit suicide," said the Colonel with a flippant gallantry which made the young lady color with a suspicion that she was not profoundly appreciated.

" Do you really think that you are going to Xew Or- leans ?" she presently mquired.

" Ah ! Don't ask me. You have a right to command me ; but don't, I beg of you, order me to tell state se- crets."

" Then why do you introduce the subject?" she replied, more annoyed by his manner than by what he said.

" Because the subject has irresistible charms ; because it is connected with your past, and perhaps with your fu- ture."

102 31iss Ravexel's Conversion

N'ow if Carter had looked in tlie least as he sjioke, I fear that Miss Lillie would have been flattered and grati- fied. But he did not ; he had a quizzing smile on his auda- cious face ; he seemed to be talking to her as he would to a child of fourteen. Being a woman of eighteen, and sen- sitive, she was not pleased by his confident fiimiliarity, and in her inexperience she showed her annoyance perhaps a little more plainly than was quite dignified. After watching her for a moment or two with his wide-open, unwinking eyes, he suddenly changed his tone, and ad- dressed her with an air of entirely satisfactory respect. The truth is that he could not help being at times semi- impertinent to young ladies ; but then he had delicacy of breeding enough to know when he was so ; he did not quiz them in mere boorish stuiDidity.

" I should be truly delighted," he said, " I should con^ sider it one of the greatest honors possible to me — if I could do somethmg towards opening your way back to your own home."

" Oh ! I wish you could," she replied with enthusiasm. " I do so want to get back to Louisiana. But I don't want the South whipped. I want peace."

" Do you ? That is a bad wish for me," observed Car- ter, with his characteristic frankness, coolly wondering to himself how he would be able to live without his colonelcy. As to how he could pay the thousand or two which he owed to tailors, shoemakers, restaurateurs and wme merchants, that was never to him a matter of marvel or of anxiety, or even of consideration.

In obedience to a cm'ious instinct which exists in at least some feminine natures, Miss Ravenel liked the Colonel, or at least felt that she could like him, just in proportion as she feared him. A man who can make some women trem- ble, can, if he chooses, make them love. Pure and modest as this girl of eighteen was, she could, and I fear, would have fallen des2:)erately in love with this toughened world- ling, had he, with his despotic temperament, resolutely

Feom Secession to Loyalty. 103

willed it. In justice to her it must be remembered that she knew little or nothuig about his various naughty ways. In her presence he never swore, nor got the worse for liquor, nor alluded to scenes of dissipation. At church he decorously put dowTi his head while one could count twenty, and made the responses with a politeness meant to be complimentary to the parties addressed. Her father hmted ; but she thought him unreasonably preju- diced; she made what she considered the proper allow- ance for men who wore uniforms. She had very little idea of the stupendous discount which would have to be admitted before Colonel Carter could figure up as an an- o-el of light, or even as a decently \drtuous member of human society. She thought she stated the whole sub- ject fairly when she admitted that he might be " fast ;" but she had an mnocently inadequate conception of the meanino' which the masculiue sex attaches to that epithet. She applied it to him chiefly because he had the mu- mental self-possession, the graceM audacity, the free and easy fluency, the little ways, the general au-, of certam men in Xew Orleans who had been pomted out to her as " fafl^" and concernuig whom there were dubious Avhisper- ingsamong elderly dowagers, but of whom she actually knew little more than that they had good manners and were favorites with most ladies. She had learned to con- sider the type a satisfactory one, without at all appreci- ating its moral signification. That Colonel Carter had been downright wicked and was still capable of being so under a moderate pressure of temptation, she did not be- lieve with any reahzing and savmg faith. Balzac says that very corrupt people are generally very agreeable; and it may be that this extraordiuary fact is capable of a simple and sufficient explanation. They are seared and do not take thing seriously ; they do not contradict you on this propriety and that belief, because they care noth- ing about proprieties and beliefs ; they love nothiug, hate nothiao-, and are as easy to weai* as old slippers. The

104 Miss Ravexel's Conversion

strict moralist and j^ietcst, on the other hand, is as hard and unyielding as a boot just from the hands of the maker ; you must conform to his model, or he will consci- entiously pinch your moral corns in a most grievous man- ner ; he cannot grant you a hair's-breadth "without burst- ing his uppers and endangermg his sole. But j^leasant as our corruj^t friends are apt to be, you must not trust your affections and your happiness to them, or you may find that you have cast your j^earls before the unclean.

These reflections are not perhaps of the newest, but they are just as true as when they were first promulgated.

Concerning the i^ossible flirtation to which I have al- luded Doctor Ravenel was constauly ill at ease. If he found on returning from a walk that' Lillie had received a call from the Colonel during his absence, he was secretly worried and sometimes openly peevish for hours afterward. He would break out uj^on that sort of people, though al- w^ays without mentioning names ; and the absent Carter would receive a severe lashing over the back of some gen- tleman whom Lillie had known or heard of in Xew Orleans.

" I don't see how I ever lived among such a disre2:)utable population," he would say. " I look upon myself IMne- times as a man who has just come from a twenty-five year's residence among the wealthy and genteel pirates of the Isle of Pmes. I actually feel that I have no claims upon a decent society to be received as a respectable character. If a Xew Boston man should refuse to shake hands with me on the ground that my associations had not been what they should be, I could not find it m my heart to disagree with him. Among that people I used to wonder at the j^atience of the Almighty. I obtained a conception of his long-suffermg mercies such as I could not have obtained in a virtuous community. Just look at that Colonel McAllister, who used to be the brightest ornament of New Orleans fashion. A mass of corrujDtion ! The immoral odor of him must have been an offense to the heavens. I can imagme the angels and glorified spirits

From Secessions' to Loyalty. 105

looking down at him witli disgust, and actually holding their noses, like the kmg in Oreagna's picture when he comes across the dead body. There neyer Avas a subject brought into our dissecting room so abominable to the physical senses as that man was to the moral sense."

"Oh, i^apa, don't!", implored Miss Lillie. "You talk most horridly when you get started on certam subjects."

" My conversation is'nt half pungent enough to do jus- tice to the perfume of the subject," insisted the Doctor. " When I speak or try to speak of that McAllister, and of similar people to be met therp and everywhere, I am obliged to admit the inadequacy of language. ^NTothing but the last trump can utter a sound appropriate to such personages."

" But Colonel McAllister is a very respectable middle- aged planter now, papa," said Lillie.

" Respectable ! Oh, my child ! do not persist m talking as if you were still in the nursery. Samt Paul, Pascal, Wilberforce couldn't have remained respectable if they had been slaveholding planters."

To Colonel Carter personally the Doctor was perfectly civil,^as he was to every one with whom he was obliged to come in contact, including the reprobated McAllister and his similars. Even had he been of a combative dis- position, or been twice as prejudiced against Carter as he was, he could not have brought himself in these days and with his present loyal enthusiasm, to discourteously en- treat an officer who wore the United States uniform and who had bled in the cause of country against treason. Moreover he felt a certain degree of good-will towards our military roue, as being the patron of his particular friend Colburne. Of this young man he seemed almost as fond as if he were his father, without, however, entertain- ing the slightest thought of gainmg him for a son-in-law. I never knew, nor read of, not even in the most unnatural novels, an American father who was a matchmaker.

So the autumn and half the winter passed away, with- E 2

106 Miss R a vex el's Conversion

out any one falling in love, unless it might be Colburne. It needed all his good sense to keep him from it ; or rather to keep him from paymg Miss. Ravenel what are called significant attentions ; for as to his being in love, 1 admit it, although he did not. To use old-fashioned language, alarming m its directness and strength of meaning, I sup- pose he Avould have courted her if she would have let him. But there was something m the young lady's manner to- wards him which kept him at arm's length ; which had the charm of friendshii), indeed, but no faintest odor of even the possibility of love, just as certain flowers have beauty but no perfume ; which said to liim very gently but also very firmly, " Mr. Colbm-ne, you had better not be iQ a hurry."

At times he was under sudden and violent temptation. The trustmg Doctor placed Lillie under his charge to go to one or two concerts and popular lectures, following therein the simple and virtuous ways of Xew Boston, where young ladies have a freedom which in larger and wickeder cities is only accorded to married women. On the way to and from thes^ amusements, Lillie's hand resting lisihtly on his arm, and the obscurity of the streets veiling T^-hatever reproof or warning might sparkle m her eyes, his heart was more urgent and his soul less titnid than usual.

• "I have only one subject of regret in going to the war," he once said ; " and that is that I shall not see you for a long time, and may never see you agam."

There was a magnetic tremulousness in his voice wliich thrilled through Miss Ravenel and made it difficult for her to breathe naturally. For a few seconds she could not answer, any more than he could continue. She felt as we do in dreams when we seem to stand on the edge of a gulf- wavering whether we shall fall backward into safety or forward into the unknown. It was one of the perilous and decisive moments of the young lady's life ; but the end of it was that she recovered self-possession enough to

Feom Secession to Loyalty. 107

speak before he could rally to pursue Ms advantage. Ten seconds more of silence might have resulted in an en- gagement ring.

" What a hard heart you have !" she laughed. " INT o greater cause of regret than that ! And here you are, go- ing to lay waste my country, and perhaps burn up my house. You abolitionists are dreadful."

He immediately changed his manner of conversation with a painful consciousness that she had as good as or- dered him to do so.

" Oh ! I have no sort of compunction about turning the South mto a desert," he said, T\TLth a poor attempt at mak- ing merry. " I mean to take a bag of salt with me, and sow all Louisiana with it."

And the rest of the dialogue, until he left her at the door of the hotel, was conducted in the same style of la- borious and painful trifling.

As the day aj^proached for the sailing of the regiment, Colburne looked forward with dread yet with eagerness to the last interview. At times he thought and hoped and almost expected that it would bring about some decis- ive expression of feeling which should give a desirable di- rection to the perverse heart of this inexplicable young- lady. Then he reflected during certain flashes of pure reason, how foolish, how cruel it would be to win her af- fection only to quit her on the instant, certainly for months, probably for years, perhaps for ever. Moreover, suppose he should lose a leg or a nose in his first battle, how could he demand that she should keej) her vows, and yet