The Broken Sword

and on, "never hasting, never resting," so I sit to-night in the haze of the years that are dead, with the mind sadly reminiscent, and I watch the shadows as th

s Rome made it, when liberty there was only a name for licentiousness; not as Greece made it, when a demagogue swayed the deluded masses and lacked only a throne to make him a king; but with a constitution that should deserve the encomium of the people, for the unutterable blessings it should bestow; a constitution impervious to unjust exactions and unpatriotic suggestions, we hoped for a policy dictated in a spirit of compromise; but as I look back upon the eventful past, the first adventure of Gil Blas occurs to me. He had been furnished by his uncle with a sorry mule and thirty or forty pistoles, and sent forth to seek his fortune. He set out accordingly, but had not proceeded far from home, when, sitting on his beast counting his pistoles with much satisfaction, into his hat, the mule suddenly raised its hea

ded; so memories will flit fantastically into the imagination when every approach seems closed against intrusion. I am looking backward, as it were, through a smoked glass, fo

outh, with their hallowed associations and ideals-with their impedimenta not of human chattels, b

faded letters however that I may read; broken swords and battered shields hanging upon decaying walls; moth eaten uniforms in garret and closet, that will guide me backward. The line of vision is traversed by unwieldy throngs of dilapidated men, in tattered gray clothes, without a federal head, without intelligent momentum, breaking up and dissolving like icebergs drifting so

r sleep and shine in His emitted glory. Looking backward over a strange realm, without boundaries or capitals, where there are no soldiers and no battle fields,

agems and treasons:" To us she was a Queen, still wearing the purple, still grasping the sceptre, as in past evolutions and crises. She was Our Queen when a full century ago, and before there was a cabin upon her plantations she pleaded for the emancipation of slaves and was insultingly asked to withdraw her petition by the Merchant Marine of Massachusetts. She was Our Queen when envenomed abolitionists were gathering the aftermath of the "Higher law proclamation;" she was Our Queen when Ossawattomie Brown unleashed his bloodhounds upon a fresher trail at Harper's Ferry; she was Our Queen when Sumpter ran up a flag that had never before fluttered in a gale, never before greeted a young nation with its maiden blushes, followed by the hopes, the prayers, the aspirations, faith and loyalty of ten million men, women and children; Our Queen when "old Traveler" was stripped of his dust covered housings and led ever so we

Marsa and Ole Misses" had laid them crosswise upon rigid, lifeless bosoms, that heaved not again with the pangs of suffering; and out yonder under the maples, hard by the little babbling brook, reverent and tender hands white and black had lowered the rude coffin and covered it up in "God's acre," and here around the little altar ole Marster, and Miss Alice and Mars Harry worshipped with them. No master, no mistress, no slave in this consecrated ground; no black, no white, in the invisible Presence; no hard times to come again; no tithing men, nor tax gatherers; no snarling, snapping wolf to snatch the gnawed bone from the hungry wife and her starving child. If the larder were empty the "great house" had an exhaustless supply. If clothes were rent there was "allus stuff in de loom;" If the clouds gathered for snow "ole marsa" would put on his great coat and knock at the doors and ask, "Boys, have you got plenty of good wood for the storm'?" If Joshua had the "rheumatics" or Melinda the "shaking ager," or little Jeff the hives, there were ointments and liquids, pills and lotions; and what physician was so kind; whose hands so soft and tender, whose voice so comforting and sympathetic as "ole missis's and young missis's?" There was the garden from which the negroes would market their vegetables; there was the little "water million" patch where little Jeff and Susan Ann would run out at midday, and thump and thump and thump and would as often run back with their mouths wide-open like a rift in a black cloud, "Mammy, oh! Mammy, dat great big water million is mo'est ripe-be ripe by Sunday sho," and their little black feet would knock off a jig on the bare floor; then there was the pig sty where Sukey the "sassy poker," in its sleekness and fatness, would grunt and frisk and cavort all the day long. Then there was "Ole Boatswain," the coon dog, lazily napping in the door-barkin

s golde

s, walls and corridors; no lecherous villains to accost and abuse defenceless and inoffensive women; no vigils to keep for fear of murders, burglaries and conflagrations; no angry forces and energies to

lion, was all bountiful in this land. "I will give thee peace in the la

sings on, like the gelding of a knight errant, and the young soldier, dressed all in gray with buff revers, rushed out of the house and vaulted into the saddle. There were kisses and good byes-lost echoes now-as the caval

her, kase when he rid off I heerd her tell Miss Alice dat her boy want agwine to be gone long, and dat de yankeys was agwine to give up fore dey fit ary battle; but bimeby, when ole missus seed dat Mars Harry mout not git a furlow, she jest gin herself up to die. All de day long pore old missis would walk up und down de piazzy a peekin' froo de trees und axin' me ef I spishioned he was gwine to git kilt, und den when she heerd dat our fokeses had fit de battle of Manassy, me und ole missis sot up all night long, jes a watchin' fer Mars Harry to ride back lak he rid off; but no Mars Harry neber didn't come back twell one rainy, grizzly night me und ole missis heerd a clatter down de road, und den we heerd somebody say, 'Wo! und den a passel ov soldiers cum up to missis easy like, and axed her if Mr. Seymo' lived dere; und when ole missis heerd dat word und seed de kivered wagin, she jes drapped down into de road dead. Pore ole missis! De soldiers took her up in dere arms und toted her into de 'grate house,' und dere was her and pore Miss Alice in hysteriks, and ole marser not a sayin' ary wurd but a chokin 'mos to def; und den de soldiers went back to de kivered wagin', and I heered 'e

in battle, "Oh Lord, thou knowest how busy I must be this day. If I forget Thee, do

down into the valley of the Red Horse, a beautiful meadow, broken here and there by hedges and copses, he could see wit

the thirty years war, was backed up by Patrick Lord Ruthven and Sir Walter Seymour, among the many Scots who had won renown under the great Augustus Adolphus and opposed fiercely by Lord Lindsey, an old comrade of the Earl of Essex, co

oyalty to the king, resigned his command as a general to command his company, and in so doing gave affront to Lord Lindsay

oils of that chivalric era that belonged to the old baronet. Colonel Seymour had interested himself greatly in the literature of that institutional era that

and deepening lay athwart heart and home, the old man was still muttering curses long, loud and deep. He had fully assimilated the indignant spirit of Coriolanus. "I would they were barbarians (as they are though in Rome littered), not Romans as they are not though calved in the porch of the capitol." His only surviving child Alice was now in her twenty-third year. Harry, a princely fellow, a young lieutenant of cavalry, had fallen at the battle of Manassas and ever since that day the mother had steadily declined until now the end had almost come. The likeness of the dead boy was photographed

hey are," repl

her face to him, "I have been gr

e was agwine to war-his eyes fairly a sot in his head lak a craw-fish and a tarryfying me to def and hollering 'fire! fire!' and a foaming at the mouf lak a mad dog, und duz yu know what I dun ole missis? when dat drotted nigger hollered fire! fire! I jes r

exceedingly tolerant toward Clarissa with her little vagaries and superstitions. What the dream of the

ed daisies in the meadow would turn up their tiny faces to greet her with smiles as she would pass them day after day with the little basket upon her arm; God had put her here among these poor people-among the deluded negroes as his missionary, and I am quite sure He was pleased with her work. I cannot describe her beauty and grace of person better than in the natural and characteris

he freed slaves that made captive to her will almost all the stubborn and rebellious negroes. Old Ned would have plucked out his eyes for her and cast them at her feet; so would Clarissa, so would Clarabel; so would old Caesar and Hannah and Joshua. Only these rebelled against her influence, to wit: Aleck, Miles and Ephraim. Clarissa would say to her young mistress so inquisitively, "Miss Alice, why don't yu git married? Peers like child yer is too sweet and pretty to live allus by yer lone, lorn self. Yer aint allers gwine to be 'ticin an butiful like yer is now. By and by de crow's foot is agwine to cum into yer lubly face and dere is gwine to be kurlikus and frowns in yo eyes jes lak yo mammy's; she used to be pretty und lubly jes' lak you, and whar is she now? De boys aint gwine to brak their necks over you when yer gets ole an' ugly, nuther. Now dey is lak a pa

e there were nothing but soulless effigies, so faded and old and lifeless that they recalled only battle-fields and sepulchres. "Will her prince never come, into whose eyes she can see mirrored he

hild and he

ingdom b

th a love that wa

d Arthur