text:
Love and Skates/Chapter IX

Peter Skerrett came sailing round the purple rocks of his Point, skating like a man who has been in the South of Europe for two winters.
 * Chapter IX. Love in the First Degree.

He was decidedly Anglicized in his whiskers, coat, and shoes. Otherwise he in all respects repeated his well-known ancestor, Skerrett of the Revolution; whose two portraits — 1. A ruddy hero in regimentals, in Gilbert Stuart’s early brandy-and-water manner; 2. A rosy sage in senatorials, in Stuart’s later claret-and-water manner — hang in his descendant’s dining-room.

Peter’s first look was a provokingly significant one at the confused and blushing young lady. Secondly he inspected the Dying Gladiator on the ice.

“Have you been tilting at this gentleman, Mary?” he asked, in the voice of a cheerful, friendly fellow. “Why! Hullo. Hooray! It’s Wade, Richard Wade, Dick Wade! Don’t look, Miss Mary, while I give him the grips of all the secret societies we belonged to in College.”

Mary, however, did look on, pleased and amused, while Peter plumped down on the ice, shook his friend’s hand, and examined him as if he were fine crockery, spilt and perhaps shattered.

“It’s not a case of trepanning, Dick, my boy?” said he.

“No” said the other. “I tumbled in trying to dodge this lady. The ice thought my face ought to be scratched, because I had been scratching its face without mercy. My wits were knocked out of me; but they are tired of secession, and pleading to be let in again.”

“Keep some of them out for our sake! We must have you at our commonplace level. Well, Miss Mary, I suppose this is the first time you have had the sensation of breaking a man’s head. You generally hit lower.” Peter tapped his heart.

“I’m all right now, thanks to my surgeon,” says Wade. “Give me a lift, Peter.” He pulled up and clung to his friend.

“You’re the vine and I’m the lamp-post,” Skerrett said. “Mary, do you know what a pocket-pistol is?”

“I have seen such weapons concealed about the persons of modern warriors.”

“There’s one in my overcoat-pocket, with a cup at the but and a cork at the muzzle. Skate off now, like an angel, and get it. Bring Fanny, too. She is restorative.”

“Are you alive enough to admire that, Dick?” he continued, as she skimmed away.

“It would put a soul under the ribs of Death.”

“I venerate that young woman,” says Peter. “You see what a beauty she is, and just as unspoiled as this ice. Unspoiled beauties are rarer than rocs’ eggs.”

“She has a singularly true face,” Wade replied, “and that is the main thing, — the most excellent thing in man or woman.”

“Yes, truth makes that nuisance, beauty, tolerable.”

“You did not do me the honor to present me.”

“I saw you had gone a great way beyond that, my boy. Have you not her initials in cambric on your brow? Not M. T., which wouldn’t apply; but M. D.”

“Mary ——?”

“Damer.”

“I like the name,” says Wade, repeating it. “It sounds simple and thorough-bred.”

“Just what she is. One of the nine simple-hearted and thorough-bred girls on this continent.”

“Nine?”

“Is that too many? Three, then. That’s one in ten millions. The exact proportion of Poets, Painters, Orators, Statesmen, and all other Great Artists. Well, — three or nine, — Mary Damer is one of them. She never saw fear or jealousy, or knowingly allowed an ignoble thought or an ungentle word or an ungraceful act in herself. Her atmosphere does not tolerate flirtation. You must find out for yourself how much genius she has and has not. But I will say this, — that I think of puns two a minute faster when I’m with her. Therefore she must be magnetic, and that is the first charm in a woman.”

Wade laughed. “You have not lost your powers of analysis, Peter. But talking of this heroine, you have not told me anything about yourself, except apropos of punning.”

“Come up and dine, and we’ll fire away personal histories, broadside for broadside! I’ve been looking in vain for a worthy hero to set vis-à-vis to my fair kinswoman. But stop! perhaps you have a Christmas turkey at home, with a wife opposite, and a brace of boys waiting for drumsticks.”

“No, — my boys, like cherubs, await their own drumsticks. They’re not born, and I’m not married.”

“I thought you looked incomplete and abnormal. Well, I will show you a model wife, — and here she comes!”

Here they came, the two ladies, gliding round the Point, with draperies floating as artlessly artful as the robes of Raphael’s Hours, or a Pompeian Bacchante. For want of classic vase or patera, Miss Damer brandished Peter Skerrett’s pocket-pistol.

Fanny Skerrett gave her hand cordially to Wade, and looked a little anxiously at his pale face.

“Now, M. D.,” says Peter, “you have been surgeon, you shall be doctor and dose our patient.

Now, then, — ‘Hebe, pour free! Quicken his eyes with mountain-dew, That Styx, the detested, No more he may view.’”

“Thanks, Hebe!” Wade said, continuing the quotation, — “I quaff it! Io Pæan, I cry! The whiskey of the Immortals Forbids me to die.” “We effeminate women of the nineteenth century are afraid of broken heads,” said Fanny. “But Mary Damer seems quite to enjoy your accident, Mr. Wade, as an adventure.”

Miss Damer certainly did seem gay, and exhilarated.

“I enjoy it,” said Wade. “I perceive that I fell on my feet, when I fell on my crown. I tumbled among old friends, and I hope among new ones.”

“I have been waiting to claim my place among your old friends,” Mrs. Skerrett said, “ever since Peter told me you were one of his models.”

She delivered this little speech with a caressing manner which totally fascinated Wade.

Nothing was ever so absolutely pretty as Mrs. Peter Skerrett. Her complete prettiness left nothing to be desired.

“Never,” thought Wade, “did I see such a compact little casket of perfections. Every feature is thoroughly well done and none intrusively superior. Her little nose is a combination of all the amiabilities. Her black eyes sparkle with fun and mischief and wit, all playing over deep tenderness below. Her hair ripples itself full of gleams and shadows. The same coquetry of Nature that rippled her hair has dinted her cheeks with shifting dimples. Every time she smiles — and she smiles as if sixty an hour were not half-allowance — a dimple slides into view and vanishes like a dot in a flow of sunny water. And, O Peter Skerrett! if you were not the best fellow in the world, I should envy you that latent kiss of a mouth.”

“You need not say it, Wade, — your broken head exempts you from the business of compliments,” said Peter; “but I see you think my wife perfection. You’ll think so the more, the more you know her.”

“Stop, Peter,” said she, “or I shall have to hide behind the superior charms of Mary Damer.”

Miss Damer certainly was a woman of a grander order. You might pull at the bells or knock at the knockers and be introduced into the boudoirs of all the houses, villas, seats, chateaus, and palaces in Christendom without seeing such another. She belonged distinctly to the Northern races, — the “brave and true and tender” women. There was, indeed, a trace of hauteur and imperiousness in her look and manner; but it did not ill become her distinguished figure and face. Wade, however, remembered her sweet earnestness when she was playing leech to his wound, and chose to take that mood as her dominant one.

“She must have been desperately annoyed with bores and boobies,” he thought. “I do not wonder she protects herself by distance. I am afraid I shall never get within her lines again, — not even if I should try slow and regular approaches, and bombard her with bouquets for a twelve-month.”

“But, Wade,” says Peter, “all this time you have not told us what good luck sends you here to be wrecked on the hospitable shores of my Point.”

“I live here. I am chief cook and confectioner where you see the smoking top of that tall chimney up-stream.”

“Why, of course! What a dolt I was, not to think of you, when Churm told us an Athlete, a Brave, a Sage, and a Gentleman was the Superintendent of Dunderbunk; but said we must find his name out for ourselves. You remember, Mary. Miss Damer is Mr. Churm’s ward.”

She acknowledged with a cool bow that she did remember her guardian’s character of Wade.

“You do not say, Peter,” says Mrs. Skerrett, with a bright little look at the other lady, “why Mr. Churm was so mysterious about Mr. Wade.”

“Miss Damer shall tell us,” Peter rejoined, repeating his wife’s look of merry significance.

She looked somewhat teased. Wade could divine easily the meaning of this little mischievous talk. His friend Churm had no doubt puffed him furiously.

“All this time,” said Miss Damer, evading a reply, “we are neglecting our skating privileges.”

“Peter and I have a few grains of humanity in our souls,” Fanny said. “We should blush to sail away from Mr. Wade, while he carries the quarantine flag at his pale cheeks.”

“I am almost ruddy again,” says Wade. “Your potion, Miss Damer, has completed the work of your surgery. I can afford to dismiss my lamp-post.”

“Whereupon the post changes to a teetotum,” Peter said, and spun off in an eccentric, ending in a tumbles.

“I must have a share in your restoration, Mr. Wade,” Fanny claimed. “I see you need a second dose of medicine. Hand me the flask, Mary. What shall I pour from this magic bottle? juice of Rhine, blood of Burgundy, fire of Spain, bubble of Rheims, beeswing of Oporto, honey of Cyprus, nectar, or whiskey? Whiskey is vulgar, but the proper thing, on the whole, for these occasions. I prescribe it.” And she gave him another little draught to imbibe.

He took it kindly, for her sake, — and not alone for that, but for its own respectable sake. His recovery was complete. His head, to be sure, sang a little still, and ached not a little. Some fellows would have gone on the sick list with such a wound. Perhaps he would, if he had had a trouble to dodge. But here instead was a pleasure to follow. So he began to move about slowly, watching the ladies.

Fanny was a novice in the Art, and this was her first day this winter. She skated timidly, holding Peter very tightly. She went into the dearest little panics for fear of tumbles, and uttered the most musical screams and laughs. And if she succeeded in taking a few brave strokes and finished with a neat slide, she pleaded for a verdict of “Well done!” with such an appealing smile and such a fine show of dimples that every one was fascinated and applauded heartily.

Miss Damer skated as became her free and vigorous character. She had passed her Little Go as a scholar, and was now steadily winning her way through the list of achievements, before given, toward the Great Go. To-day she was at work at small circles backward. Presently she wound off a series of perfectly neat ones, and, looking up, pleased with her prowess, caught Wade’s admiring eye. At this she smiled and gave an arch little womanly nod of self-approval, which also demanded masculine sympathy before it was quite a perfect emotion.

With this charming gesture, the alert feather in her Amazonian hat nodded, too, as if it admired its lovely mistress.

Wade was thrilled. “Brava!” he cried, in answer to the part of her look which asked sympathy; and then, in reply to the implied challenge, he forgot his hurt and his shock, and struck into the same figure.

He tried not to surpass his fair exemplar too cruelly. But he did his peripheries well enough to get a repetition of the captivating nod and a Bravo! from the lady.

“Bravo!” said she. “But do not tax your strength too soon.”

She began to feel that she was expressing too much interest in the stranger. It was a new sensation for her to care whether men fell or got up. A new sensation. She rather liked it. She was a trifle ashamed of it. In either case, she did not wish to show that it was in her heart. The consciousness of concealment flushed her damask cheek.

It was a damask cheek. All her hues were cool and pearly; while Wade, Saxon too, had hot golden tints in his hair and moustache, and his color, now returning, was good strong red with plenty of bronze in it.

“Thank you,” he replied. “My force has all come back. You have electrified me.”

A civil nothing; but meaning managed to get into his tone and look, whether he would or not.

Which he perceiving, on his part began to feel guilty.

Of what crime?

Of the very same crime as hers, — the most ancient and most pardonable crime of youth and maiden, — that sweet and guiltless crime of love in the first degree.

So, without troubling themselves to analyze their feelings, they found a piquant pleasure in skating together, — she in admiring his tours de force, and he in instructing her.

“Look, Peter!” said Mrs. Skerrett, pointing to the other pair skating, he on the backward roll, she on the forward, with hands crossed and locked; — such contacts are permitted in skating, as in dancing. “Your hero and my heroine have dropped into an intimacy.”

“None but the Plucky deserve the Pretty,” says Peter.

“But he seems to be such a fine fellow, — suppose she shouldn’t —”

The pretty face looked anxious.

“Suppose he shouldn’t,” Peter on the masculine behalf returned.

“He cannot help it: Mary is so noble, — and so charming, when she does not disdain to be.”

“I do not believe she can help it. She cannot disdain Wade. He carries too many guns for that. He is just as fine as she is. He was a hero when I first knew him. His face does not show an atom of change; and you know what Mr. Churm told us of his chivalric deeds elsewhere, and how he tamed and reformed Dunderbunk. He is crystal grit, as crystalline and gritty as he can be.”

“Grit seems to be your symbol of the highest qualities. It certainly is a better thing in man than in ice-cream. But, Peter, suppose this should be a true love and should not run smooth?”

“What consequence is the smooth running, so long as there is strong running and a final getting in neck and neck at the winning-post?”

“But,” still pleaded the anxious soul, — having no anxieties of her own, she was always suffering for others, — “he seems to be such a fine fellow! and she is so hard to win!”

“Am I a fine fellow?”

“No, — horrid!”

“The truth, — or I let you tumble.”

“Well, upon compulsion, I admit that you are.”

“Then being a fine fellow does not diminish the said fellow’s chances of being blessed with a wife quite superfine.”

“If I thought you were personal, Peter, I should object to the mercantile adjective. ‘Superfine,’ indeed!”

“I am personal. I withdraw the obnoxious phrase, and substitute transcendent. No, Fanny dear, I read Wade’s experience in my own. I do not feel very much concerned about him. He is big enough to take care of himself. A man who is sincere, self-possessed, and steady does not get into miseries with beautiful Amazons like our friend. He knows too much to try to make his love run up hill; but let it once get started, rough running, gives it vim. Wade will love like a deluge, when he sees that he may, and I’d advise obstacles to stand off.”

“It was pretty, Peter, to see cold Mary Damer so gentle and almost tender.”

“I always have loved to see the first beginnings of what looks like love, since I saw ours.”

“Ours,” she said, — “it seems like yesterday.”

And then together they recalled that fair picture against its dark ground of sorrow, and so went on refreshing the emotions of that time until Fanny smiling said, —

“There must be something magical in skates, for here we are talking sentimentally like a pair of young lovers.”

“Health and love are cause and effect,” says Peter, sententiously.

Meanwhile Wade had been fast skating into the good graces of his companion. Perhaps the rap on his head had deranged him. He certainly tossed himself about in a reckless and insane way. Still he justified his conduct by never tumbling again, and by inventing new devices with bewildering rapidity.

This pair were not at all sentimental. Indeed, their talk was quite technical: all about rings and edges, and heel and toe, — what skates are best, and who best use them. There is an immense amount of sympathy to be exchanged on such topics, and it was somewhat significant that they avoided other themes where they might not sympathize so thoroughly. The negative part of a conversation is often as important as its positive.

So the four entertained themselves finely, sometimes as a quartette, sometimes as two duos with proper changes of partners, until the clear west began to grow golden and the clear east pink with sunset.

“It is a pity to go,” said Peter Skerrett. “Everything here is perfection and Fine Art; but we must not be unfaithful to dinner. Dinner would have a right to punish us, if we did not encourage its efforts to be Fine Art also.”

“Now, Mr. Wade,” Fanny commanded, “your most heroic series of exploits, to close this heroic day.”

He nimbly dashed through his list. The ice was traced with a labyrinth of involuted convolutions.

Wade’s last turn brought him to the very spot of his tumble.

“Ah!” said he. “Here is the oar that tripped me, with ‘Wade, his mark,’ gashed into it. If I had not this” — he touched Miss Damer’s handkerchief — “for a souvenir, I think I would dig up the oar and carry it home.”

“Let it melt out and float away in the spring,” Mary said. “It may be a perch for a sea-gull or a buoy for a drowning man.”

Here, if this were a long story instead of a short one, might be given a description of Peter Skerrett’s house and the menu of Mrs. Skerrett’s dinner. Peter and his wife had both been to great pillory dinners, ad nauseam, and learnt what to avoid. How not to be bored is the object of all civilization, and the Skerretts had discovered the methods.

I must dismiss the dinner and the evening, stamped with the general epithet, Perfection.

“You will join us again to-morrow on the river,” said Mrs. Skerrett, as Wade rose to go.

“To-morrow I go to town to report to my Directors.”

“Then next day.”

“Next day, with pleasure.”

Wade departed and marked this halcyon day with white chalk, as the whitest, brightest, sweetest of his life.

title: Love and Skates/Chapter IX


text:
Love and Skates/Chapter X

Jubilation! Jubilation now, instead of Consternation, in the office of Mr. Benjamin Brummage in Wall Street.
 * Chapter X. Forebodings.

President Brummage had convoked his Directors to hear the First Semiannual Report of the new Superintendent and Dictator of Dunderbunk.

And there they sat around the green table, no longer forlorn and dreading a failure, but all chuckling with satisfaction over their prosperity.

They were a happy and hilarious family now, — so hilarious that the President was obliged to be always rapping to Orderr with his paper-knife.

Every one of these gentlemen was proud of himself as a Director of so successful a Company. The Dunderbunk advertisement might now consider itself as permanent in the newspapers, and the Treasurer had very unnecessarily inserted the notice of a dividend, which everybody knew of already.

When Mr. Churm was not by, they all claimed the honor of having discovered Wade, or at least of having been the first to appreciate him.

They all invited him to dinner, — the others at their houses, Sam Gwelp at his club.

They had not yet begun to wax fat and kick. They still remembered the panic of last summer. They passed a unanimous vote of the most complimentary confidence in Wade, approved of his system, forced upon him an increase of salary, and began to talk of “launching out” and doubling their capital. In short, they behaved as Directors do when all is serene.

Churm and Wade had a hearty laugh over the absurdities of the Board and all their vague propositions.

“Dunderbunk,” said Churm, “was a company started on a sentimental basis, as many others are.”

“Mr. Brummage fell in love with pig-iron?”

“Precisely. He had been a dry-goods jobber, risen from a retailer somewhere in the country. He felt a certain lack of dignity in his work. He wanted to deal in something more masculine than lace and ribbons. He read a sentimental article on Iron in the ‘Journal of Commerce’: how Iron held the world together; how it was nerve and sinew; how it was ductile and malleable and other things that sounded big; how without Iron civilization would stop, and New-Zealanders hunt rats among the ruins of London; how anybody who would make two tons of Iron grow where one grew before was a benefactor to the human race greater than Alexander, Cæsar, or Napoleon; and so on, — you know the eloquent style. Brummage’s soul was fired. He determined to be greater than the three heroes named. He was oozing with unoccupied capital. He went about among the other rich jobbers, with the newspaper article in his hand, and fired their souls. They determined to be great Iron-Kings, — magnificent thought! They wanted to read in the newspapers, ‘If all the iron rails made at the Dunderbunk Works in the last six months were put together in a straight line, they would reach twice round our terraqueous globe and seventy-three miles two rails over.’ So on that poetic foundation they started the concern.”

Wade laughed. “But how did you happen to be with them?”

“Oh! my friend Damer sold them the land for the shop and took stock in payment. I came into the Board as his executor. Did I never tell you so before?”

“No.”

“Well, then, be informed that it was in Miss Damer’s behalf that you knocked down Friend Tarbox, and so got your skates for saving her property. It’s quite a romance already, Richard, my boy! and I suppose you feel immensely bored that you had to come down and meet us old chaps, instead of tumbling at her feet on the ice again to-day.”

“A tumble in this wet day would be a cold bath to romance.”

The Gulf Stream had sent up a warm spoil-sport rain that morning. It did not stop, but poured furiously the whole day.

From Cohoes to Spuyten Duyvil, on both sides of the river, all the skaters swore at the weather, as profane persons no doubt did when the windows of heaven were opened in Noah’s time. The skateresses did not swear, but savagely said, “It is too bad,” — and so it was.

Wade, loaded with the blessings of his Directors, took the train next morning for Dunderbunk.

The weather was still mild and drizzly, but promised to clear. As the train rattled along by the river, Wade could see that the thin ice was breaking up everywhere. In mid-stream a procession of blocks was steadily drifting along. Unless Zero came sliding down again pretty soon from Boreal regions, the sheets that filled the coves and clung to the shores would also sail away southward, and the whole Hudson be left clear as in midsummer.

At Yonkers a down train ranged by the side of Wade’s train, and, looking out he saw Mr. and Mrs. Skerrett alighting.

He jumped down, rather surprised, to speak to them.

“We have just been telegraphed here,” said Peter, gravely. “The son of a widow, a friend of ours, was drowned this morning in the soft ice of the river. He was a pet of mine, poor fellow! and the mother depends upon me for advice. We have come down to say a kind word. Why won’t you report us to the ladies at my house, and say we shall not be at home until the evening train? They do not know the cause of our journey except that it is a sad one.”

“Perhaps Mr. Wade will carve their turkey for them at dinner, Peter,” Fanny suggested.

“Do, Wade! and keep their spirits up. Dinner’s at six.”

Here the engine whistled. Wade promised to “shine substitute” at his friend’s board, and took his place again. The train galloped away.

Peter and his wife exchanged a bright look over the fortunate incident of this meeting, and went on their kind way to carry sympathy and such consolation as might be to the widow.

The train galloped northward. Until now, the beat of its wheels, like the click of an enormous metronome, had kept time to jubilant measures singing in Wade’s brain. He was hurrying back, exhilarated with success, to the presence of a woman whose smile was finer exhilaration than any number of votes of confidence, passed unanimously by any number of conclaves of overjoyed Directors, and signed by Brummage after Brummage, with the signature of a capitalist in a flurry of delight at a ten per cent dividend.

But into this joyous mood of Wade’s the thought of death suddenly intruded. He could not keep a picture of death and drowning out of his mind. As the train sprang along and opened gloomy breadth after breadth of the leaden river, clogged with slow-drifting files of ice-blocks, he found himself staring across the dreary waste and forever fancying some one sinking there, helpless and alone.

He seemed to see a brave, bright-eyed, ruddy boy, venturing out carelessly along the edges of the weakened ice. Suddenly the ice gives way, the little figure sinks, rises, clutches desperately at a fragment, struggles a moment, is borne along in the relentless flow of the chilly water, stares in vain shoreward, and so sinks again with a look of agony, and is gone.

But whenever this inevitable picture grew before Wade’s eyes, as the drowning figure of his fancy vanished, it suddenly changed features, and presented the face of Mary Damer, perishing beyond succor.

Of course he knew that this was but a morbid vision. Yet that it came at all, and that it so agonized him, proved the force of his new feeling.

He had not analyzed it before. This thought of death became its touchstone.

Men like Wade, strong, healthy, earnest, concentrated, straightforward, isolated, judge men and women as friends or foes at once and once for all. He had recognized in Mary Damer from the first a heart as true, whole, noble, and healthy as his own. A fine instinct had told him that she was waiting for her hero, as he was for his heroine.

So he suddenly loved her. And yet not suddenly; for all his life, and all his lesser forgotten or discarded passions, had been training him for this master one.

He suddenly and strongly loved her; and yet it had only been a beautiful bewilderment of uncomprehended delight, until this haunting vision of her fair face sinking amid the hungry ice beset him. Then he perceived what would be lost to him, if she were lost.

The thought of Death placed itself between him and Love. If the love had been merely a pretty remembrance of a charming woman, he might have dismissed his fancied drowning scene with a little emotion of regret. Now, the fancy was an agony.

He had too much power over himself to entertain it long. But the grisly thought came uninvited, returned undesired, and no resolute Avaunt, even backed by that magic wand, a cigar, availed to banish it wholly.

The sky cleared cold at eleven o’clock. A sharp wind drew through the Highlands. As the train rattled round the curve below the tunnel through Skerrett’s Point, Wade could see his skating course of Christmas-Day with the ladies. Firm ice, glazed smooth by the sudden chill after the rain, filled the Cove and stretched beyond the Point into the river.

It was treacherous stuff, beautiful to the eyes of a skater, but sure to be weak, and likely to break up any moment and join the deliberate headlong drift of the masses in mid-current.

Wade almost dreaded lest his vision should suddenly realize itself, and he should see his enthusiastic companion of the other day sailing gracefully along to certain death.

Nothing living, however, was in sight, except here and there a crow, skipping about in the floating ice.

The lover was greatly relieved. He could now forewarn the lady against the peril he had imagined. The train in a moment dropped him at Dunderbunk. He hurried to the Foundry and wrote a note to Mrs. Damer.

“Mr. Wade presents his compliments to Mrs. Damer, and has the honor to inform her that Mr. Skerrett has nominated him carver to the ladies to-day in their host’s place.

“Mr. Wade hopes that Miss Damer will excuse him from his engagement to skate with her this afternoon. The ice is dangerous, and Miss Damer should on no account venture upon it.”

Perry Purtett was the bearer of this billet. He swaggered into Peter Skerrett’s hall, and dreadfully alarmed the fresh-imported Englishman who answered the bell, by ordering him in a severe tone, —

“Hurry up now, White Cravat, with that answer! I’m wanted down to the Works. Steam don’t bile when I’m off; and the fly-wheel will never buzz another turn, unless I’m there to motion it to move on.”

Mrs. Damer’s gracious reply informed Wade “that she should be charmed to see him at dinner, etc., and would not fail to transmit his kind warning to Miss Damer, when she returned from her drive to make calls.”

But when Miss Damer returned in the afternoon, her mother was taking a gentle nap over the violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, red stripes of a gorgeous Afghan she was knitting. The daughter heard nothing of the billet. The house was lonely without Fanny Skerrett. Mr. Wade did not come at the appointed hour. Mary was not willing to say to herself how much she regretted his absence.

Had he forgotten the appointment?

No, — that was a thought not to be tolerated.

“A gentleman does not forget,” she thought. And she had a thorough confidence, besides, that this gentleman was very willing to remember.

She read a little, fitfully, sang fitfully, moved about the house uneasily; and at last, when it grew late, and she was bored and Wade did not arrive, she pronounced to herself that he had been detained in town.

This point settled, she took her skates, put on her pretty Amazonian hat with its alert feather, and went down to waste her beauty and grace on the ice, unattended and alone.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Love and Skates/Chapter X


text:
Love and Skates/Chapter XI

It was a busy afternoon at the Dunderbunk Foundry.
 * Chapter XI. Cap’n Ambuster’s Skiff.

The Superintendent had come back with his pocket full of orders. Everybody, from the Czar of Russia to the President of the Guano Republic, was in the market for machinery. Crisis was gone by. Prosperity was come. The world was all ready to move, and only waited for a fresh supply of wheels, cranks, side-levers, walking-beams, and other such muscular creatures of iron, to push and tug and swing and revolve and set Progress a-going.

Dunderbunk was to have its full share in supplying the demand. It was well understood by this time that the iron Wade made was as stanch as the man who made it. Dunderbunk, therefore, Head and Hands, must despatch.

So it was a busy afternoon at the industrious Foundry. The men bestirred themselves. The furnaces rumbled. The engine thumped. The drums in the finishing-shop hummed merrily their lively song of labor. The four trip-hammers — two bull-headed, two calf-headed — champed, like carnivorous maws, upon red bars of iron, and over their banquet they roared the big-toned music of the trip-hammer chorus, —

 * “Now then! hit hard!
 * Strike while Iron’s hot. Life’s short. Art’s long.”

By this massive refrain, ringing in at intervals above the ceaseless buzz, murmur, and clang throughout the buildings, every man’s work was mightily nerved and inspired. Everybody liked to hear the sturdy song of these grim vocalists; and whenever they struck in, each solo or duo or quatuor of men, playing Anvil Chorus, quickened time, and all the action and rumor of the busy opera went on more cheerily and lustily. So work kept astir like play.

An hour before sunset, Bill Tarbox stepped into Wade’s office. Even oily and begrimed, Bill could be recognized as a favored lover. He looked more a man than ever before.

“I forgot to mention,” says the foreman, “that Cap’n Ambuster was in, this morning, to see you. He says, that, if the river’s clear enough for him to get away from our dock, he’ll go down to the City to-morrow, and offers to take freight cheap. We might put that new walking-beam, we’ve just rough-finished for the ‘Union,’ aboard of him.”

“Yes, — if he is sure to go to-morrow. It will not do to delay. The owners complained to me yesterday that the ‘Union’ was in a bad way for want of its new machinery. Tell your brother-in-law to come here, Bill.”

Tarbox looked sheepishly pleased, and summoned Perry Purtett.

“Run down, Perry,” said Wade, “to the ‘Ambuster,’ and ask Captain Isaac to step up here a moment. Tell him I have some freight to send by him.”

Perry moved through the Foundry with his usual jaunty step, left his dignity at the door, and ran off to the dock.

The weather had grown fitful. Heavy clouds whirled over, trailing snow-flurries. Rarely the sun found a cleft in the black canopy to shoot a ray through and remind the world that he was still in his place and ready to shine when he was wanted.

Master Perry had a furlong to go before he reached the dock. He crossed the stream, kept unfrozen by the warm influences of the Foundry. He ran through a little dell hedged on each side by dull green cedars. It was severely cold now, and our young friend condescended to prance and jump over the ice-skimmed puddles to keep his blood in motion.

The little rusty, pudgy steamboat lay at the down-stream side of the Foundry wharf. Her name was so long and her paddle-box so short, that the painter, beginning with ambitious large letters, had been compelled to abbreviate the last syllable. Her title read thus: —

 * I. AMBUSTer.

Certainly a formidable inscription for a steamboat!

When she hove in sight, Perry halted, resumed his stately demeanor, and embarked as if he were a Doge entering a Bucentaur to wed a Sea.

There was nobody on deck to witness the arrival and salute the magnifico.

Perry looked in at the Cap’n’s office. He beheld a three-legged stool, a hacked desk, an inky steel-pen, an inkless inkstand; but no Cap’n Ambuster.

Perry inspected the Cap’n’s state-room. There was a cracked looking-glass, into which he looked; a hair-brush suspended by the glass, which he used; a lair of blankets in a berth, which he had no present use for; and a smell of musty boots, which nobody with a nose could help smelling. Still no Captain Ambuster, nor any of his crew.

Search in the unsavory kitchen revealed no cook, coiled up in a corner, suffering nightmares for the last greasy dinner he had brewed in his frying-pan. There were no deck hands bundled into their bunks. Perry rapped on the chain-box and inquired if anybody was within, and nobody answering, he had to ventriloquize a negative.

The engine-room, too, was vacant, and quite as unsavory as the other dens on board. Perry patronized the engine by a pull or two at the valves, and continued his tour of inspection.

The Ambuster’s skiff, lying on her forward deck, seemed to entertain him vastly.

“Jolly!” says Perry. And so it was a jolly boat in the literal, not the technical sense.

“The three wise men of Gotham went to sea in a bowl; and here’s the identical craft,” says Perry.

He gave the chubby little machine a push with his foot. It rolled and wallowed about grotesquely. When it was still again, it looked so comic, lying contentedly on its fat side like a pudgy baby, that Perry had a roar of laughter, which, like other laughter to one’s self, did not sound very merry, particularly as the north-wind was howling ominously, and the broken ice, on its downward way, was whispering and moaning and talking on in a most mysterious and inarticulate manner.

“Those sheets of ice would crunch up this skiff, as pigs do a punkin,” thinks Perry.

And with this thought in his head he looked out on the river, and fancied the foolish little vessel cast loose and buffeting helplessly about in the ice.

He had been so busy until now, in prying about the steamboat and making up his mind that Captain and men had all gone off for a comfortable supper on shore, that his eyes had not wandered toward the stream.

Now his glance began to follow the course of the icy current. He wondered where all this supply of cakes came from, and how many of them would escape the stems of ferry-boats below and get safe to sea.

All at once, as he looked lazily along the lazy files of ice, his eyes caught a black object drifting on a fragment in a wide way of open water opposite Skerrett’s Point, a mile distant.

Perry’s heart stopped beating. He uttered a little gasping cry. He sprang ashore, not at all like a Doge quitting a Bucentaur. He tore back to the Foundry, dashing through the puddles, and, never stopping to pick up his cap, burst in upon Wade and Bill Tarbox in the office.

The boy was splashed from head to foot with red mud. His light hair, blown wildly about, made his ashy face seem paler. He stood panting.

His dumb terror brought back to Wade’s mind all the bad omens of the morning.

“Speak!” said he, seizing Perry fiercely by the shoulder.

The uproar of the Works seemed to hush for an instant, while the lad stammered faintly, —

“There’s somebody carried off in the ice by Skerrett’s Point. It looks like a woman. And there’s nobody to help.”

title: Love and Skates/Chapter XI


text:
Love and Skates/Chapter XII

“Help! help!” shouted the four trip-hammers, bursting in like a magnified echo of the boy’s last word. “Help! help!” all the humming wheels and drums repeated more plaintively.
 * Chapter XII. In the Ice.

Wade made for the river.

This was the moment all his manhood had been training and saving for. For this he had kept sound and brave from his youth up.

As he ran, he felt that the only chance of instant help was in that queer little bowl-shaped skiff of the “Ambuster.”

He had never been conscious that he had observed it; but the image had lain latent in his mind, biding its time. It might be ten, twenty precious moments before another boat could be found. This one was on the spot to do its duty at once.

“Somebody carried off, — perhaps a woman,” Wade thought. “Not — No, she would not neglect my warning! Whoever it is, we must save her from this dreadful death!”

He sprang on board the little steamboat. She was swaying uneasily at her moorings, as the ice crowded along and hammered against her stem. Wade stared from her deck down the river, with all his life at his eyes.

More than a mile away, below the hemlock-crested point, was the dark object Perry had seen, still stirring along the edges of the floating ice. A broad avenue of leaden-green water wrinkled by the cold wind separated the field where this figure was moving from the shore. Dark object and its footing of gray ice were drifting deliberately farther and farther away.

For one instant Wade thought that the terrible dread in his heart would paralyze him. But in that one moment, while his blood stopped flowing and his nerves failed, Bill Tarbox overtook him and was there by his side.

“I brought your cap,” says Bill, “and our two coats.”

Wade put on his cap mechanically. This little action calmed him.

“Bill,” said he, “I’m afraid it is a woman, — a dear friend of mine, — a very dear friend.”

Bill, a lover, understood the tone.

“We’ll take care of her between us,” he said.

The two turned at once to the little tub of a boat.

Oars? Yes, — slung under the thwarts, — a pair of short sculls, worn and split, but with work in them still. There they hung ready, — and a rusty boat-hook, besides.

“Find the thole-pins. Bill, while I cut a plug for her bottom out of this broomstick,” Wade said.

This was done in a moment. Bill threw in the coats.

“Now, together!”

They lifted the skiff to the gangway. Wade jumped down on the ice and received her carefully. They ran her along, as far as they could go, and launched her in the sludge.

“Take the sculls. Bill. I’ll work the boat-hook in the bow.”

Nothing more was said. They thrust out with, their crazy little craft into the thick of the ice-flood. Bill, amidships, dug with his sculls in among the huddled cakes. It was clumsy pulling. Now this oar and now that would be thrown out. He could never get a full stroke.

Wade in the bow could do better. He jammed the blocks aside with his boat-hook. He dragged the skiff forward. He steered through the little open ways of water.

Sometimes they came to a broad sheet of solid ice. Then it was “Out with her. Bill!” and they were both out and sliding their bowl so quick over, that they had not time to go through the rotten surface. This was drowning business; but neither could be spared to drown yet.

In the leads of clear water, the oarsman got brave pulls and sent the boat on mightily. Then again in the thick porridge of brash ice they lost headway, or were baffled and stopped among the cakes. Slow work, slow and painful; and for many minutes they seemed to gain nothing upon the steady flow of the merciless current.

A frail craft for such a voyage, this queer little half-pumpkin! A frail and leaky shell. She bent and cracked from stem to stem among the nipping masses. Water oozed in through her dry seams. Any moment a rougher touch or a sharper edge might cut her through. But that was a risk they had accepted. They did not take time to think of it, nor to listen to the crunching and crackling of the hungry ice around. They urged straight on, steadily, eagerly, coolly, spending and saving strength.

Not one moment to lose! The shattering of broad sheets of ice around then was a warning of what might happen to the frail support of their chase. One thrust of the boat-hook sometimes cleft a cake that to the eye seemed stout enough to bear a heavier weight than a woman’s.

Not one moment to spare! The dark figure, now drifted far below the hemlocks of the Point, no longer stirred. It seemed to have sunk upon the ice and to be resting there weary and helpless, on one side a wide way of lurid water, on the other half a mile of moving desolation.

Far to go, and no time to waste!

“Give way, Bill! Give way!”

“Ay, ay!”

Both spoke in low tones, hardly louder than the whisper of the ice around them.

By this time hundreds from the Foundry and the village were swarming upon the wharf and the steamboat.

“A hundred tar-barrels wouldn’t git up my steam in time to do any good,” says Cap’n Ambuster. “If them two in my skiff don’t overhaul the man, he’s gone.”

“You’re sure it’s a man?” says Smith Wheelwright.

“Take a squint through my glass. I’m dreffully afeard it’s a gal; but suthin’s got into my eye, so I can’t see.”

Suthin’ had got into the old fellow’s eye, — suthin’ saline and acrid, — namely, a tear.

“It’s a woman,” says Wheelwright, — and suthin’ of the same kind blinded him also.

Almost sunset now. But the air was suddenly filled with perplexing snow-dust from a heavy squall. A white curtain dropped between the anxious watchers on the wharf and the boatmen.

The same white curtain hid the dark floating object from its pursuers. There was nothing in sight to steer by, now.

Wade steered by his last glimpse, — by the current, —by the rush of the roaring wind, — by instinct.

How merciful that in such a moment a man is spared the agony of thought! His agony goes into action, intense as life.

It was bitterly cold. A swash of ice-water filled the bottom of the skiff. She was low enough down without that. They could not stop to bail, and the miniature icebergs they passed began to look significantly over the gunwale. Which would come to the point of foundering first, the boat or the little floe it aimed for?

Bitterly cold! The snow hardly melted upon Tarbox’s bare hands. His fingers stiffened to the oars; but there was life in them still, and still he did his work, and never turned to see how the steersman was doing his.

A flight of crows came sailing with the snow-squall. They alighted all about on the hummocks, and curiously watched the two men battling to save life. One black impish bird, more malignant or more sympathetic than his fellows, ventured to poise on the skiff’s stem!

Bill hissed off this third passenger. The crow rose on its toes, let the boat slide away from under him, and followed croaking dismal good wishes.

The last sunbeams were now cutting in everywhere. The thick snow-flurry was like a luminous cloud. Suddenly it drew aside.

The industrious skiff had steered so well and made such headway, that there, a hundred yards away, safe still, not gone, thank God! was the woman they sought.

A dusky mass flung together on a waning rood of ice, — Wade could see nothing more.

Weary or benumbed, or sick with pure forlornness and despair, she had drooped down and showed no sign of life.

The great wind shook the river. Her waning rood of ice narrowed, foot by foot, like an unthrifty man’s heritage. Inch by inch its edges wore away, until the little space that half sustained the dark heap was no bigger than a coffin-lid.

Help, now! — now, men, if you are to save! Thrust, Richard Wade, with your boat-hook! Pull, Bill, till your oars snap! Out with your last frenzies of vigor! For the little raft of ice, even that has crumbled beneath its burden, and she sinks, — sinks, with succor close at hand!

Sinks! No, — she rises and floats again.

She clasps something that holds her head just above water. But the unmannerly ice has buffeted her hat off. The fragments toss it about, — that pretty Amazonian hat, with its alert feather, all drooping and draggled. Her fair hair and pure forehead are uncovered for an astonished sunbeam to alight upon.

“It is my love, my life, Bill! Give way, once more!”

“Way enough! Steady! Sit where you are, Bill, and trim boat, while I lift her out. We cannot risk capsizing.”

He raised her carefully, tenderly, with his strong arms.

A bit of wood had buoyed her up for that last moment. It was a broken oar with a deep fresh gash in it.

Wade knew his mark, — the cut of his own skate-iron. This busy oar was still resolved to play its part in the drama.

The round little skiff just bore the third person without sinking.

Wade laid Mary Damer against the thwart. She would not let go her buoy. He unclasped her stiffened hands. This friendly touch found its way to her heart. She opened her eyes and knew him.

“The ice shall not carry off her hat to frighten some mother, down stream,” says Bill Tarbox, catching it.

All these proceedings Cap’n Ambuster’s spy-glass announced to Dunderbunk.

“They’re h’istin’ her up. They’ve slumped her into the skiff. They’re puttin’ for shore. Hooray!”

Pity a spy-glass cannot shoot cheers a mile and a half!

Perry Purtett instantly led a stampede of half Dunderbunk along the railroad-track to learn who it was and all about it.

All about it was, that Miss Damer was safe, and not dangerously frozen, — and that Wade and Tarbox had carried her up the hill to her mother at Peter Skerrett’s.

Missing the heroes in chief, Dunderbunk made a hero of Cap’n Ambuster’s skiff. It was transported back on the shoulders of the crowd in triumphal procession. Perry Purtett carried round the hat for a contribution to new paint it, new rib it, new gunwale it, give it new sculls and a new boat-hook, — indeed, to make a new vessel of the brave little bowl.

“I’m afeard,” says Cap’n Ambuster, “that, when I git a harnsome new skiff, I shall want a harnsome new steamboat, and then the boat will go to cruisin’ round for a harnsome new Cap’n.”

And now for the end of this story.

Healthy love-stories always end in happy marriages.

So ends this story, begun as to its love portion by the little romance of a tumble, and continued by the bigger romance of a rescue.

Of course there were incidents enough to fill a volume, obstacles enough to fill a volume, and development of character enough to fill a tome thick as “Webster’s Unabridged,” before the happy end of the beginning of the Wade-Damer joint history.

But we can safely take for granted that, the lover being true and manly, and the lady true and womanly, and both possessed of the high moral qualities necessary to artistic skating, they will go on understanding each other better, until they are as one as two can be.

Masculine reader, attend to the moral of this tale: —

Skate well, be a hero, bravely deserve the fair, prove your deserts by your deeds, find your “perfect woman nobly planned to warm, to comfort, and command,” catch her when found, and you are Blest.

Reader of the gentler sex, likewise attend: — All the essential blessings of life accompany a true heart and a good complexion. Skate vigorously; then your heart will beat true, your cheeks will bloom, your appointed lover will see your beautiful soul shining through your beautiful face, he will tell you so, and after sufficient circumlocution he will Pop, you will accept, and your lives will glide sweetly as skating on virgin ice to silver music.

title: Love and Skates/Chapter XII


text:
Author:Samuel Butler (1612-1680)

Works

 * Hudibras (1663–1678)
 * The Rehearsal (1672), co-authored with the Duke of Buckingham, Martin Clifford and Thomas Sprat.
 * The Genuine Remains in Verse and Prose of Mr. Samuel Butler (1759), in 2 vols.

Poems

 * Cynarctomachy
 * The Elephant in the Moon
 * The Turn-Coat (1661)

Works about Butler

 * "Butler" in The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets (1794), by Samuel Johnson, pp.255-279.

title: Author:Samuel Butler (1612-1680)


text:
Talk:Love and Skates

This short story is a part of the anthology Life in the Open Air and other papers. See Talk:Life in the Open Air and other papers for information on this edition.

title: Talk:Love and Skates


text:
Talk:Life in the Open Air

This story is a part of the anthology Life in the Open Air and other papers. See Talk:Life in the Open Air and other papers for information on this edition.

title: Talk:Life in the Open Air


text:
Page:Best Russian Short Stories.djvu/132

112 "Yes, very right."

"Good. But then arises a new question: Why do they deserve reverence?"

"Because of their greatness."

"Ah, that's more like it. Perhaps I will soon be agreeing with you. It only remains for you to tell me wherein their greatness consists. That's a difficult question, isn't it? Let us seek the answer together. Homer says that the impetuous Ares, when stretched flat on the ground by a stone thrown by Pallas Athene, covered with his body the space that can be travelled in seven mornings. You see what an enormous space."

"Is that wherein greatness consists?"

"There you have me, my friend. That raises another question. Do you remember the athlete Theophantes? He towered over the people a whole head's length, whereas Pericles was no larger than you. But whom do we call great, Pericles or Theophantes?"

"I see that greatness does not consist in size of body. In that you're right. I am glad we agree. Perhaps greatness consists in virtue?"

"Certainly."

"I think so, too."

"Well, then, who must bow to whom? The small before the large, or those who are great in virtues before the wicked?"

"The answer is clear."

"I think so, too. Now we will look further into this matter. Tell me truly, did you ever kill other people's children with arrows?"

"It goes without saying, never! Do you think so ill of me?"

"Nor have you, I trust, ever seduced the wives of other men?"

"I was an upright tanner and a good husband. Don't forget that, Socrates, I beg of you!"

"You never became a brute, nor by your lustfulness gave your faithful Larissa occasion to revenge herself on women whom you had ruined and on their innocent children?"

"You anger me, really, Socrates."


text:
The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Hardie, Robert Gordon

HARDIE, Robert Gordon, American portrait painter: b. Brattleboro, Vt., 29 March 1854; d. Brattleboro, Vt., 9 Jan. 1904. He studied drawing at the Cooper Union Institute, the Academy of Designs and the Art Students' League, N. Y., and at Paris became a pupil of Gérôme. He exhibited at the Salon in 1880 and following years, and in 1882 studied under Cabanel. A picture of his appeared at the Exhibition of the National Academy of Design in 1888, and he exhibited a portrait of his wife at the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893.


text:
The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Hardie, James Keir

HARDIE, James Keir, British politician and labor leader: b. Scotland, 1856; d. Glasgow, 26 Sept. 1915. He worked in a coal mine as a boy till 1880, when he was elected secretary of the Lanarkshire Miners' Union. From that period be devoted himself to political and labor agitation. Entirely self-educated, he possessed a ready flow of language — not infrequently of the violent demagogue type. He made his first attempt for Parliament as a Labor candidate in 1888, but was defeated. In 1892 he was returned for West Ham, and made his first arrival at the House in circumstances which led to police intervention. He lost his seat in 1895, but returned in 1900 for Merthyr Tydvil, which he represented (with another member) till his death. He was one of the founders of the Independent Labor Party in 1892, of which he was chairman for many years. He was proprietor and editor of The Labor Leader from 1887 to 1903. In 1906, when the Labor party became a distinct group in the House was elected its first chairman. He visited India in 1907 and created considerable disturbance with his inflammatory speeches. Hardie traveled the British colonies and the United States on lecturing tours. He was the most extreme of British politicians; his gloomy views on the state of society placed him among a minority during most of his stormy political life. Though his socialistic principles never found much sympathy even among his own following, he performed valuable service to the cause of labor.


text:
The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Hardie, James Allen

HARDIE, James Allen, American soldier: b. New York 5 May 1823; d. Washington, D. C., 14 Dec. 1876. He was graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1843, entered the artillery, during the Civil War served on the staffs successively of Generals McClellan and Burnside, was judge-advocate-general of the Army of the Potomac on Hooker's staff, became brigadier-general of volunteers in 1862, and inspector-general with rank of colonel in 1864. He was brevetted major-general, United States army, in 1865. His writings are largely confined to military reports.


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Page:More Tales from Tolstoi.djvu/239

 "Well, if we must go, it's high time," she said, looking at her watch, a gift from her father, and smiling at her young man with a scarcely noticeable significant look, which he alone understood, and she stood up rustling her dress.

Then they all stood up, said good-bye, and went away.

When they had gone out, Ivan Il'ich felt a little easier; the lie was no longer there, it had gone out with them, but the pain remained. The same continual pain, the same continual terror had this effect, that nothing was heavier, nothing was lighter, everything was for the worst

Again, minute after minute, hour after hour, passed by; it was the same thing over and over again, and there was no end to it, and more terrible than all was the inevitable end.

"Yes, send Gerasim here," he replied to a question from Peter.

Late at night his wife returned; she came in on tiptoe, but he heard her, opened his eyes, and quickly closed them again. She wanted to send away Gerasim and sit with him herself. He opened his eyes and said: "No, go away."

"You are suffering very much, eh?"

"Much the same as usual."

"Take some opium."

He consented, and drank it. She went out. For about three hours he was in a tormenting

title: Page:More Tales from Tolstoi.djvu/239


text:
New York Seventh Regiment

Contents

 * Through the City
 * Philadelphia
 * The “Boston”
 * Annapolis
 * What the Massachusetts Eighth Had Been Doing
 * Our Morning March
 * On Guard with Howitzer No. 2
 * The Bridge
 * The Night-March
 * Morning
 * Washington

title: New York Seventh Regiment


text:
Talk:New York Seventh Regiment

This story is a part of the anthology Life in the Open Air and other papers. See Talk:Life in the Open Air and other papers for information on this edition.

title: Talk:New York Seventh Regiment


text:
Page:Examiner, Journal of Political Economy, v2n12.djvu/3

 coast." [See Drayton's Memoirs, vol. 2, page 186.]

In 1778, South Carolina formed another independent Constitution; and in 1790, another, (which is the one now in force.)

In May, 1775, the people of North Carolina in Mecklenburg county adopted, for that county, a Declaration of Independence which is the first on the records of our History, and by the terms of which they solemnly abjured all allegiance to the British Crown.

In June 1776, Virginia declared herself Independent, and adopted her Bill of Rights and first Constitution.

On 2d July, 1776, New Jersey adopted a separate and independent Constitution—and in December, 1776, North Carolina did the same.

On the 4th of July, 1776, the Thirteen States, or Colonies, in General Congress assembled, solemnly published and declared that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be Free and Independent States,—which Declaration was ratified and signed by the Representatives of each State, under the name of their respective States—and was merely a formal Annunciation or Proclamation to the world of the existing fact that these States had achieved their Independence. This Proclamation had, of itself, no power or efficacy to render them independent, if their own courageous love of liberty and invincible hatred of oppression had not enabled them to effect this glorious object. Had they been destitute of these exalted and efficient virtues all the parchment Declarations in the world, (however sacred they may be as records,) would have been but vain and empty boastings.

On the 9th of July, 1778, "Articles of confederation and perpetual Union" were adopted, "between the States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, &c.," to the number of thirteen States—which articles commence thus: "The style of this confederacy shall be the United States of America.

"Each State retains its Sovereignty, Freedom and Independence, and every power, jurisdiction and right, which is not, by this Confederation expressly delegated to the U. States in Congress assembled."

There had been since the year 1774, and annual Congress of Deputies from the Colonies held in Philadelphia, first (like the original Congress at New York in 1765) to remonstrate, and afterwards to concert measures of Defence. But none for the purposes of Government until the Confederation was formed in 1778.

The Congress of the old confederation soon finding itself put to great inconvenience and embarrassment for the want of a power to regulate the external relations—especially the commerce—of the country [which power was at that time under the almost entire control of the States individually,] made repeated representations to the State Legislatures of the necessity of enlarging their powers on these subjects by amendments of the Articles of confederation. In consequence of these applications, and under a conviction of their reasonableness and importance, several of the State Legislatures as early as the year 1786 recommended the holding of a general convention to consider these representations, and to "revise and amend the Articles of Confederation"—and a few of the States actually appointed Delegates to meet those of other states "that might be appointed" for this purpose, some time before the Federal congress passed the resolution calling for, and authorising the meeting of the said convention.

Thus, we find that Virginia (who appears to have been the first to adopt measures on the subject) recommended the holding of a convention first at Annapolis, "to consider the state of trade,"—at which (in Sept. 1786) only five of the States attended, to wit, Virginia, New York, Maryland, New Jersey, and Delaware. Finding, however, that their deliberations would be of little importance without a more general action of the states, Virginia again recommended a convention of all the states, "to revise and amend the Articles of confederation," to be held at Philadelphia the ensuing year. In pursuance of which on the 16th of October, 1786, the Virginia Legislature passed an Act for the "appointment of seven deputies by joint ballot at both Houses of Assembly" "to meet such deputies as may be appointed by other staets, to meet in Philadelphia, for the purpose of revising the Federal constitution"—(See the Act, Elliot's Debates, vol. 4, p. 30.) Which deputies were accordingly so appointed on 4th Dec. 1786.

So also the Pennsylvania Legislature on the 30th Dec. 1786, passed an Act appointing Deputies to the convention intended to be held in the city of Philadelphia, "for the purpose of revising the Federal constitution,"

So also the New Jersey Legislature appointed delegates for the same purpose on the 23d November, 1786.

So also the Delaware Legislature appointed delegates on 3d Feb. 1787.

On the 21st Feb. 1787, the Congress of the Confederation adopted the resolution which recommended and authorized the meeting of the said convention at Philadelphia.

The resolution is in these words: "Whereas, there is provision in the Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union for making alterations therein, by the assent of a Congress of the United States, and of the Legislatures of the several states; and whereas experience has evinced that there are defects in the present confederation; as a mean to remedy which several of the States, and particularly the state of New York, by express instructions to their Delegates in Congress, have suggested a convention for the purposes expressed in the following Resolution; and such convention appearing to be the most probable mean of establishing in these States a firm National Government.

"Resolved, That in the opinion of Congress it is expedient that on the second Monday in May next, a Convention of Delegates, who shall have been appointed by the several States, be held at Philadelphia for the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation, and reporting to Congress and the several Legislatures, such alterations and provisions therein, as shall, when agreed to in Congress, and confirmed by the States, render the federal constitution adequate to the exigencies of government, and the preservation of the union."

In conformity with the Resolution, the States, which had not previously done so, appointed, by their Legislatures, Delegates to attend the said convention (except Rhode Island, who refused to appoint) each appointing separately as a State, without any rule, or standard, as to the number of Delegates, which was wholly immaterial as each was to be represented but as a State, and to have one equal vote, the smallest with the largest. Hence we find that whilst New York appointed but three delegates, Delaware appointed five.

The Credentials of each of these Delegates consisted of attested copies of the Acts of their several legislatures, so appointing them. Many of which Acts recite, or refer to, the terms of the said Resolution of the old congress; and all of them are similar in purport. The Act of Delaware, however,


text:
Page:Child's picture book.djvu/16

Rh Gathering Grapes

title: Page:Child's picture book.djvu/16


text:
New York Seventh Regiment/Through the City

At three o’clock in the afternoon of Friday, April 19th, we took our peacemaker, a neat twelve-pound brass howitzer, down from the Seventh Regiment Armory, and stationed it in the rear of the building. The twin peacemaker is somewhere near us, but entirely hidden by this enormous crowd.
 * Through the City.

An enormous crowd! of both sexes, of every age and condition. The men offer all kinds of truculent and patriotic hopes; the women shed tears, and say, “God bless you, boys!”

This is a part of the town where baddish cigars prevail. But good or bad, I am ordered to keep all away from the gun. So the throng stands back, peers curiously over the heads of its junior members, and seems to be taking the measure of my coffin.

After a patient hour of this, the word is given, we fall in, our two guns find their places at the right of the line of march, we move on through the thickening crowd.

At a great house on the left, as we pass the Astor Library, I see a handkerchief waving for me. Yes! it is she who made the sandwiches in my knapsack. They were a trifle too thick, as I afterwards discovered, but otherwise perfection. Be these my thanks and the thanks of hungry comrades who had bites of them!

At the corner of Great Jones Street we halted for half an hour, — then, everything ready, we marched down Broadway.

It was worth a life, that march. Only one who passed, as we did, through that tempest of cheers, two miles long, can know the terrible enthusiasm of the occasion. I could hardly hear the rattle of our own gun-carriages, and only once or twice the music of our band came to me muffled and quelled by the uproar. We knew now, if we had not before divined it, that our great city was with us as one man, utterly united in the great cause we were marching to sustain.

This grand fact I learned by two senses. If hundreds of thousands roared it into my ears, thousands slapped it into my back. My fellow-citizens smote me on the knapsack, as I went by at the gun-rope, and encouraged me each in his own dialect. “Bully for you!” alternated with benedictions, in the proportion of two “bullies” to one blessing.

I was not so fortunate as to receive more substantial tokens of sympathy. But there were parting gifts showered on the regiment, enough to establish a variety-shop. Handkerchiefs, of course, came floating down upon us from the windows, like a snow. Pretty little gloves pelted us with love-taps. The sterner sex forced upon us pocket-knives new and jagged, combs, soap, slippers, boxes of matches, cigars by the dozen and the hundred, pipes to smoke shag and pipes to smoke Latakia, fruit, eggs, and sandwiches. One fellow got a new purse with ten bright quarter-eagles.

At the corner of Grand Street, or thereabouts, a “bhoy” in red flannel shirt and black dress pantaloons, leaning back against the crowd with Herculean shoulders, called me, — “Saäy, bully! take my dorg! he’s one of the kind that holds till he draps.” This gentleman, with his animal, was instantly shoved back by the police, and the Seventh lost the “dorg.”

These were the comic incidents of the march, but underlying all was the tragic sentiment that we might have tragic work presently to do. The news of the rascal attack in Baltimore on the Massachusetts Sixth had just come in. Ours might be the same chance. If there were any of us not in earnest before, the story of the day would steady us. So we said good-by to Broadway, moved down Cortlandt Street under a bower of flags, and at half past six shoved off in the ferry-boat.

Everybody has heard how Jersey City turned out and filled up the Railroad Station, like an opera-house, to give God-speed to us as a representative body, a guaranty of the unquestioning loyalty of the “conservative” class in New York. Everybody has heard how the State of New Jersey, along the railroad line, stood through the evening and the night to shout their quota of good wishes. At every station the Jerseymen were there, uproarious as Jerseymen, to shake our hands and wish us a happy despatch. I think I did not see a rod of ground without its man, from dusk till dawn, from the Hudson to the Delaware.

Upon the train we made a jolly night of it. All knew that the more a man sings, the better he is likely to fight. So we sang more than we slept, and, in fact, that has been our history ever since.


text:
The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Hardhack

HARDHACK, or STEEPLE-BUSH, an erect species of American Spiræa (S. tomentosa), common in pastures and low grounds, and celebrated for its astringent properties, which cause it to be used medicinally. It is

distinguishable by the dense woolly tomentum, which covers its stem and the underside of its leaves; and bears in late summer “a compact, steeple-shaped panicle of peach-blow pink.”


text: Index:Hudibras - Volume 1 (Butler, Nash, Bohn; 1859).djvu


text:
New York Seventh Regiment/Philadelphia

At sunrise we were at the station in Philadelphia, and dismissed for an hour. Some hundreds of us made up Broad Street for the Lapierre House to breakfast. When I arrived, I found every place at table filled and every waiter ten deep with orders. So, being an old campaigner, I followed up the stream of provender to the fountain-head, the kitchen. Half a dozen other old campaigners were already there, most hospitably entertained by the cooks. They served us, hot, and hot, with the best of their best, straight from the gridiron and the pan. I hope, if I live to breakfast again in the Lapierre House, that I may be allowed to help myself and choose for myself below-stairs.
 * Philadelphia.

When we rendezvoused at the train, we found that the orders were for every man to provide himself three days’ rations in the neighborhood, and be ready for a start at a moment’s notice.

A mountain of bread was already piled up in the station. I stuck my bayonet through a stout loaf, and, with a dozen comrades armed in the same way, went foraging about for other vivers.

It is a poor part of Philadelphia; but whatever they had in the shops or the houses seemed to be at our disposition.

I stopped at a corner shop to ask for pork, and was amicably assailed by an earnest dame, — Irish, I am pleased to say. She thrust her last loaf upon me, and sighed that it was not baked that morning for my “honor’s service.”

A little farther on, two kindly Quaker ladies compelled me to step in. “What could they do?” they asked eagerly. “They had no meat in the house; but could we eat eggs? They had in the house a dozen and a half, new-laid.” So the pot to the fire, and the eggs boiled, and bagged by myself and that tall Saxon, my friend E., of the Sixth Company. While the eggs simmered, the two ladies thee-ed us prayerfully and tearfully, hoping that God would save our country from blood, unless blood must be shed to preserve Law and Liberty.

Nothing definite from Baltimore when we returned to the station. We stood by, waiting orders. About noon the Eighth Massachusetts Regiment took the train southward. Our regiment was ready to a man to try its strength with the Plug Uglies. If there had been any voting on the subject, the plan to follow the straight road to Washington would have been accepted by acclamation. But the higher powers deemed that “the longest way round was the shortest way home,” and no doubt their decision was wise. The event proved it.

At two o’clock came the word to “fall in.” We handled our howitzers again, and marched down Jefferson Avenue to the steamer “Boston” to embark.

To embark for what port? For Washington, of course, finally; but by what route? That was to remain in doubt to us privates for a day or two.

The Boston is a steamer of the outside line from Philadelphia to New York. She just held our legion. We tramped on board, and were allotted about the craft from the top to the bottom story. We took tents, traps, and grub on board, and steamed away down the Delaware in the sweet afternoon of April. If ever the heavens smiled fair weather on any campaign, they have done so on ours.

title: New York Seventh Regiment/Philadelphia


text:
User talk:77.191.221.154

Hi! The pages to be proofread can be found here: Category:Index Not-Proofread. You will notice that the category contains Index Pages, which link to all the pages within a work. The index page can be returned to by clicking on the "up arrow" link next to the forward and back arrows. Also, you can ask any questions at WS:S, the community discussion page, which is well-watched by other users here.

You may want to consider creating a user account. For one, it improves anonymity by hiding your public IP address. Also, a user page is a permanent point of contact, while your IP may change from time to time. In any case, I hope you have a better experience here after a rocky start! --Eliyak T · C 22:03, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

title: User talk:77.191.221.154


text: Index:Hudibras - Volume 2 (Butler, Nash, Bohn; 1859).djvu


text:
New York Seventh Regiment/The “Boston”

Soldiers on shipboard are proverbially fish out of water. We could not be called by the good old nickname of “lobsters” by the crew. Our gray jackets saved the sobriquet. But we floundered about the crowded vessel like boiling victims in a pot. At last we found our places, and laid ourselves about the decks to tan or bronze or burn scarlet, according to complexion. There were plenty of cheeks of lobster-hue before next evening on the Boston.
 * The “Boston”.

A thousand young fellows turned loose on ship-board were sure to make themselves merry. Let the reader imagine that! We were like any other excursionists, except that the stacks of bright guns were always present to remind us of our errand, and regular guard-mounting and drill went on all the time. The young citizens growled or laughed at the minor hardships of the hasty outfit, and toughened rapidly to business.

Sunday, the 21st, was a long and somewhat anxious day. While we were bowling along in the sweet sunshine and sweeter moonlight of the halcyon time, Uncle Sam might be dethroned by somebody in buckram, or Baltimore burnt by the boys from Lynn or Marblehead, revenging the massacre of their fellows. Every one begins to comprehend the fiery eagerness of men who live in historic times. “I wish I had control of chain-lightning for a few minutes,” says O., the droll fellow of our company. “I’d make it come thick and heavy and knock spots out of Secession.”

At early dawn of Monday, the 22d, after feeling along slowly all night, we see the harbor of Annapolis. A frigate with sails unbent lies at anchor. She flies the stars and stripes. Hurrah!

A large steamboat is aground farther in. As soon as we can see anything, we catch the glitter of bayonets on board.

By and by boats come off, and we get news that the steamer is the “Maryland,” a ferry-boat of the Philadelphia and Baltimore Railroad. The Massachusetts Eighth Regiment had been just in time to seize her on the north side of the Chesapeake. They learned that she was to be carried off by the crew and leave them blockaded. So they shot their Zouaves ahead as skirmishers. The fine fellows rattled on board, and before the steamboat had time to take a turn or open a valve, she was held by Massachusetts in trust for Uncle Sam. Hurrah for the most important prize thus far in the war! It probably saved the “Constitution,” “Old Ironsides,” from capture by the traitors. It probably saved Annapolis, and kept Maryland open without bloodshed.

As soon as the Massachusetts Regiment had made prize of the ferry-boat, a call was made for engineers to run her. Some twenty men at once stepped to the front. We of the New York Seventh afterwards concluded that whatever was needed in the way of skill or handicraft could be found among those brother Yankees. They were the men to make armies of. They could tailor for themselves, shoe themselves, do their own blacksmithing, gun-smithing, and all other work that calls for sturdy arms and nimble fingers. In fact, I have such profound confidence in the universal accomplishment of the Massachusetts Eighth, that I have no doubt, if the order were, “Poets to the front!” “Painters present arms!” “Sculptors charge bagonets!” a baker’s dozen out of every company would respond.

Well, to go on with their story, — when they had taken their prize, they drove her straight downstream to Annapolis, the nearest point to Washington. There they found the Naval Academy in danger of attack, and Old Ironsides — serving as a practice-ship for the future midshipmen — also exposed. The call was now for seamen to man the old craft and save her from a worse enemy than her prototype met in the “Guerrière.” Seamen? Of course! They were Marblehead men, Gloucester men, Beverly men, seamen all, par excellence! They clapped on the frigate to aid the middies, and by and by started her out into the stream. In doing this their own pilot took the chance to run them purposely on a shoal in the intricate channel. A great error of judgment on his part! as he perceived, when he found himself in irons and in confinement. “The days of trifling with traitors are over!” think the Eighth Regiment of Massachusetts.

But there they were, hard and fast on the shoal, when we came up. Nothing to nibble on but knobs of anthracite. Nothing to sleep on softer or cleaner than coal-dust. Nothing to drink but the brackish water under their keel. “Rather rough!” so they afterward patiently told us.

Meantime the Constitution had got hold of a tug, and was making her way to an anchorage where her guns commanded everything and everybody. Good and true men chuckled greatly over this. The stars and stripes also were still up at the fort at the Naval Academy.

Our dread, that, while we were off at sea, some great and perhaps fatal harm had been suffered, was greatly lightened by these good omens. If Annapolis was safe, why not Washington safe also? If treachery had got head at the capital, would not treachery have reached out its hand and snatched this doorway? These were our speculations as we began to discern objects, before we heard news.

But news came presently. Boats pulled off to us. Our officers were put into communication with the shore. The scanty facts of our position became known from man to man. We privates have greatly the advantage in battling with the doubt of such a time. We know that we have nothing to do with rumors. Orders are what we go by. And orders are Facts.

We lay a long, lingering day, off Annapolis. The air was full of doubt, and we were eager to be let loose. All this while the Maryland stuck fast on the bar. We could see them, half a mile off, making every effort to lighten her. The soldiers tramped forward and aft, danced on her decks, shot overboard a heavy baggage-truck. We saw them start the truck for the stern with a cheer. It crashed down. One end stuck in the mud. The other fell back and rested on the boat. They went at it with axes, and presently it was clear.

As the tide rose, we gave our grounded friends a lift with a hawser. No go! The Boston tugged in vain. We got near enough to see the whites of the Massachusetts eyes, and their unlucky faces and uniforms all grimy with their lodgings in the coal-dust. They could not have been blacker, if they had been breathing battle-smoke and dust all day. That experience was clear gain to them.

By and by, greatly to the delight of the impatient Seventh, the Boston was headed for shore. Never speak ill of the beast you bestraddle! Therefore requiescat Boston! may her ribs lie light on soft sand when she goes to pieces! may her engines be cut up into bracelets for the arms of the patriotic fair! good by to her, dear old, close, dirty, slow coach! She served her country well in a moment of trial. Who knows but she saved it? It was a race to see who should first get to Washington, — and we and the Virginia mob, in alliance with the District mob, were perhaps nip and tuck for the goal.

title: New York Seventh Regiment/The “Boston”


text:
New York Seventh Regiment/Annapolis

So the Seventh Regiment landed and took Annapolis. We were the first troops ashore.
 * Annapolis.

The middies of the Naval Academy no doubt believe that they had their quarters secure. The Massachusetts boys are satisfied that they first took the town in charge. And so they did.

But the Seventh took it a little more. Not, of course, from its loyal men, but for its loyal men, — for loyal Maryland, and for the Union.

Has anybody seen Annapolis? It is a picturesque old place, sleepy enough, and astonished to find itself wide-awaked by a war, and obliged to take responsibility and share for good and ill in the movement of its time. The buildings of the Naval Academy stand parallel with the river Severn, with a green plateau toward the water and a lovely green lawn toward the town. All the scene was fresh and fair with April, and I fancied, as the Boston touched the wharf, that I discerned the sweet fragrance of apple-blossoms coming with the springtime airs.

I hope that the companies of the Seventh, should the day arrive, will charge upon horrid batteries or serried ranks with as much alacrity as they marched ashore on the greensward of the Naval Academy. We disembarked, and were halted in line between the buildings and the river.

Presently, while we stood at ease, people began to arrive, — some with smallish fruit to sell, some with smaller news to give. Nobody knew whether Washington was taken. Nobody knew whether Jeff Davis was now spitting in the Presidential spittoon, and scribbling his distiches with the nib of the Presidential goose-quill. We were absolutely in doubt whether a seemingly inoffensive knot of rustics, on a mound without the enclosure, might not, at tap of drum, unmask a battery of giant columbiads, and belch blazes at us; raking our line.

Nothing so entertaining happened. It was a parade, not a battle. At sunset our band played strains sweet enough to pacify all Secession, if Secession had music in its soul. Coffee, hot from the coppers of the Naval School, and biscuit were served out to us; and while we supped, we talked with our visitors, such as were allowed to approach.

First the boys of the School — fine little blue-jackets — had their story to tell.

“Do you see that white farm-house, across the river?” says a brave pigmy of a chap in navy uniform. “That is head-quarters for Secession. They were going to take the School from us, Sir, and the frigate; but we’ve got ahead of ’em, now you and the Massachusetts boys have come down,” — and he twinkled all over with delight. “We can’t study any more. We are on guard all the time. We’ve got howitzers, too, and we’d like you to see, to-morrow, on drill, how we can handle ’em. One of their boats came by our sentry last night,” (a sentry probably five feet high,) “and he blazed away, Sir. So they thought they wouldn’t try us that time.”

It was plain that these young souls had been well tried by the treachery about them. They, too, had felt the pang of the disloyalty of comrades. Nearly a hundred of the boys had been spoilt by the base example of their elders in the repudiating States, and had resigned.

After the middies, came anxious citizens from the town. Scared, all of them. Now that we were come and assured them that persons and property were to be protected, they ventured to speak of the disgusting tyranny to which they, American citizens, had been subjected. We came into contact here with utter social anarchy. No man, unless he was ready to risk assault, loss of property, exile, dared to act or talk like a freeman. “This great wrong must be righted,” think the Seventh Regiment, as one man. So we tried to reassure the Annapolitans that we meant to do our duty as the nation’s armed police, and mob-law was to be put down, so far as we could do it.

Here, too, voices of war met us. The country was stirred up. If the rural population did not give us a bastard imitation of Lexington and Concord, as we tried to gain Washington, all Pluguglydom would treat us à la Plugugly somewhere near the junction of the Annapolis and Baltimore and Washington Railroad. The Seventh must be ready to shoot.

At dusk we were marched up to the Academy and quartered about in the buildings, — some in the fort, some in the recitation-halls. We lay down on our blankets and knapsacks. Up to this time our sleep and diet had been severely scanty.

We stayed all next day at Annapolis. The Boston brought the Massachusetts Eighth ashore that night. Poor fellows! what a figure they cut, when we found them bivouacked on the Academy grounds next morning! To begin: They had come off in hot patriotic haste, half-uniformed and half-outfitted. Finding that Baltimore had been taken by its own loafers and traitors, and that the Chesapeake ferry was impracticable, had obliged them to change line of march. They were out of grub. They were parched dry for want of water on the ferry-boat. Nobody could decipher Caucasian, much less Bunker-Hill Yankee, in their grimy visages.

But, hungry, thirsty, grimy, these fellows were.

Massachusetts ought to be proud of such hardy, cheerful, faithful sons.

We of the Seventh are proud, for our part, that it was our privilege to share our rations with them, and to begin a fraternization which grows closer every day and will be historical.

But I must make a shorter story. We drilled and were reviewed that morning on the Academy parade. In the afternoon the Naval School paraded their last before they gave up their barracks to the coming soldiery. So ended the 23d of April.

Midnight, 24th. We were rattled up by an alarm, — perhaps a sham one, to keep us awake and lively. In a moment, the whole regiment was in order of battle in the moonlight on the parade. It was a most brilliant spectacle, as company after company rushed forward, with rifles glittering, to take their places in the array.

After this pretty spirt, we were rationed with pork, beef, and bread for three days, and ordered to be ready to march on the instant.

title: New York Seventh Regiment/Annapolis


text:
New York Seventh Regiment/What the Massachusetts Eighth Had Been Doing

Meantime General Butler’s command, the Massachusetts Eighth, had been busy knocking disorder in the head.
 * What the Massachusetts Eighth Had Been Doing.

Presently after their landing, and before they were refreshed, they pushed companies out to occupy the railroad-track beyond the town.

They found it torn up. No doubt the scamps who did the shabby job fancied that there would be no more travel that way until strawberry-time. They fancied the Yankees would sit down on the fences and begin to whittle white-oak toothpicks, darning the rebels, through their noses, meanwhile.

I know these men of the Eighth can whittle, and I presume they can say “Darn it,” if occasion requires; but just now track-laying was the business on hand.

“Wanted, experienced track-layers!” was the word along the files.

All at once the line of the road became densely populated with experienced track-layers, fresh from Massachusetts.

Presto change! the rails were relaid, spiked, and the roadway levelled and better ballasted than any road I ever saw south of Mason and Dixon’s line. “We must leave a good job for these folks to model after,” say the Massachusetts Eighth.

A track without a train is as useless as a gun without a man. Train and engine must be had. “Uncle Sam’s mails and troops cannot be stopped another minute,” our energetic friends conclude. So, — the railroad company’s people being either frightened or false, — in marches Massachusetts to the station. “We, the People of the United States, want rolling-stock for the use of the Union,” they said, or words to that effect.

The engine — a frowzy machine at the best — had been purposely disabled.

Here appeared the deus ex machina, Charles Homans, Beverly Light Guard, Company E, Eighth Massachusetts Regiment.

That is the man, name and titles in full, and he deserves well of his country.

He took a quiet squint at the engine, — it was as helpless as a boned turkey, — and he found “Charles Homans, his mark,” written all over it.

The old rattletrap was an old friend. Charles Homans had had a share in building it. The machine and the man said, “How d’y’ do?” at once. Homans called for a gang of engine-builders. Of course they swarmed out of the ranks. They passed their hands over the locomotive a few times, and presently it was ready to whistle and wheeze and rumble and gallop, as if no traitor had ever tried to steal the go and the music out of it.

This had all been done during the afternoon of the 23d. During the night, the renovated engine was kept cruising up and down the track to see all clear. Guards of the Eighth were also posted to protect passage.

Our commander had, I presume, been co-operating with General Butler in this business. The Naval Academy authorities had given us every despatch and assistance, and the middies, frank, personal hospitality. The day was halcyon, the grass was green and soft, the apple-trees were just in blossom: it was a day to be remembered.

Many of us will remember it, and show the marks of it for months, as the day we had our heads cropped. By evening there was hardly one poll in the Seventh tenable by anybody’s grip. Most sat in the shade and were shorn by a barber. A few were honored with a clip by the artist hand of the petit caporal of our Engineer Company.

While I rattle off these trifling details, let me not fail to call attention to the grave service done by our regiment, by its arrival, at the nick of time, at Annapolis. No clearer special Providence could have happened. The country-people of the traitor sort were aroused. Baltimore and its mob wore but two hours away. The Constitution had been hauled out of reach of a rush by the Massachusetts men, — first on the ground, — but was half manned and not fully secure. And there lay the Maryland, helpless on the shoal, with six or seven hundred souls on board, so near the shore that the late Captain Rynders’s gun could have sunk her from some ambush.

Yes! the Seventh Regiment at Annapolis was the Right Man in the Right Place!


text:
New York Seventh Regiment/Our Morning March

Reveille. As nobody pronounces this word à la française, as everybody calls it “Revelee” why not drop it, as an affectation, and translate it the “Stir your Stumps,” the “Peel your Eyes,” the “Tumble Up,” or literally the “Wake”? Our snorers had kept up this call so lustily since midnight, that, when the drums sounded it, we were all ready.
 * Our Morning March.

The Sixth and Second Companies, under Captain Nevers, are detached to lead the van. I see my brother Billy march off with the Sixth, into the dusk, half moonlight, half dawn, and hope that no beggar of a Secessionist will get a pat shot at him, by the roadside, without his getting a chance to let fly in return. Such little possibilities intensify the earnest detestation we feel for the treasons we come to resist and to punish. There will be some bitter work done, if we ever get to blows in this war, — this needless, reckless, brutal assault upon the mildest of all governments.

Before the main body of the regiment marches, we learn that the “Baltic” and other transports came in last night with troops from New York and New England, enough to hold Annapolis against a square league of Plug Uglies. We do not go on without having our rear protected and our communications open. It is strange to be compelled to think of these things in peaceful America. But we really knew little more of the country before us than Cortés knew of Mexico. I have since learned from a high official, that thirteen different messengers were despatched from Washington in the interval of anxiety while the Seventh was not forthcoming, and only one got through.

At half past seven we take up our line of march, pass out of the charming grounds of the Academy, and move through the quiet, rusty, picturesque old town. It has a romantic dulness, — Annapolis, — which deserves a parting compliment.

Although we deem ourselves a fine-looking set, although our belts are blanched with pipe-clay and our rifles shine sharp in the sun, yet the townspeople stare at us in a dismal silence. They have already the air of men quelled by a despotism. None can trust his neighbor. If he dares to be loyal, he must take his life into his hands. Most would be loyal, if they dared. But the system of society which has ended in this present chaos has gradually eliminated the bravest and best men. They have gone in search of Freedom and Prosperity; and now the bullies cow the weaker brothers. “There must be an end of this mean tyranny,” think the Seventh, as they march through old Annapolis and see how sick the town is with doubt and alarm.

Outside the town, we strike the railroad and move along, the howitzers in front, bouncing over the sleepers. When our line is fully disengaged from the town, we halt.

Here the scene is beautiful. The van rests upon a high embankment, with a pool surrounded by pine-trees on the right, green fields on the left. Cattle are feeding quietly about. The air sings with birds. The chestnut-leaves sparkle. Frogs whistle in the warm spring morning. The regiment groups itself along the bank and the cutting. Several Marylanders of the half-price age — under twelve — come gaping up to see us harmless invaders. Each of these young gentry is armed with a dead spring frog, perhaps by way of tribute. And here — hollo! here comes Horace Greeley in propria persona! He marches through our groups with the Greeley walk, the Greeley hat on the back of his head, the Greeley white coat on his shoulders, his trousers much too short, and an absorbed, abstracted demeanor. Can it be Horace, reporting for himself? No; this is a Maryland production, and a little disposed to be sulky.

After a few minutes’ halt, we hear the whistle of the engine. This machine is also an historic character in the war.

Remember it! “J. H. Nicholson” is its name. Charles Homans drives, and on either side stands a sentry with fixed bayonet. New spectacles for America! But it is grand to know that the bayonets are to protect, not to assail, Liberty and Law.

The train leads off. We follow, by the track. Presently the train returns. We pass it and trudge on in light marching order, carrying arms, blankets, haversacks, and canteens. Our knapsacks are upon the train.

Fortunate for our backs that they do not have to bear any more burden! For the day grows sultry. It is one of those breezeless baking days which brew thunder-gusts. We march on for some four miles, when, coming upon the guards of the Massachusetts Eighth, our howitzer is ordered to fall out and wait for the train. With a comrade of the Artillery, I am placed on guard over it.