La Salle Corbell Pickett

“ To some the bells which rang out the tidings of the rising of the new star in the Southern flag were joy-bells of victory; to many they tolled the death-knell of a long, proud era. But the new banner floated gloriously to the breeze, huzzas rang out triumphantly and all was glowing to the vision of hope.
The fires of patriotism burned hotly in the heart of youth and there were Stars and Bars enough in Lynchburg Seminary to light a world of new-born nations to victory and set up invincible barriers to the universe. ”

“ We should like to think of life as flowing on serenely in that pretty cottage on Henderson Street, Columbia, its wide front veranda crowned with a combed roof supported by a row of white columns. In its cool dimness we may in fancy see the nature-loving poet at eventide looking into the greenery of a friendly tree stretching great arms lovingly to the shadowy porch. A taller tree stands sentinel at the gate, as if to guard the poet-soul from the world and close it around with the beauty that it loved. ”

“ A year later, when my Soldier went home and little Corbell was placed beside him, the children of this man came to me and said, "We are sorry Corbell is taken away, for we have been putting flowers on his grave every day, as our papa told us. But we can just as well put them here and on the General's grave, too."
The long Saturday passed and Easter Sunday came over the hills in the whiteness of its lilies and with melodious chimes rang out the blessed tidings that a Saviour had risen to bring Heaven to the world. ”

“ Ascending the James the traveller had a view of the best of the old Virginia life, its wealth of beauty, its home comfort, its atmosphere of serenity, of old memories, rich and vivid, like the wine that lay cob-webbed in ancestral cellars, of gracious hospitality, of a softly tinted life like the color in old pictures and the soul in old books. The gentle humorist lived to see that life pass away from the Old Dominion and all too soon he vanished into another world where, like all true Virginians, he expected to find the old home-life again. ”

“ I shall go a few miles further where I stop to see my baby," said my new friend. "This little boy who brought me back to life is older than yours. He is the child of my only son, whose young life ebbed out on the battlefield of Gettysburg, and whose sweet spirit has joined that of his noble father, my husband, which in his first battle was freed. This baby blesses our lives—the young mother's and the old mother's."
The cars were crowded with soldiers returning home, disbanded soldiers, soldiers on furlough, and released prisoners, with pale, cadaverous, unshaven faces and long, unkempt hair. ”

“ In my memory-gallery hangs a beautiful picture of the Lanier home as I saw it years ago, on High Street in Macon, Georgia, upon a hillock with greensward sloping down on all sides. It is a wide, roomy mansion, with hospitality written all over its broad steps that lead up to a wide veranda on which many windows look out and smile upon the visitor as he enters. One tall dormer window, overarched with a high peak, comes out to the very edge of the roof to welcome the guest. Two, smaller and more retiring, stand upon the verge of the high-combed house-roof and look down in friendly greeting. ”

“ We sat by the fire with rest, peace and wonder in our hearts, cracking nuts and roasting apples, the old silver punch-bowl of apple-toddy steaming on the table, while we listened to stories of olden times and of times that never were. My uncle in his cadet uniform, home for the holidays on furlough from the Virginia Military Institute, told us fascinating tales of soldier-boy life, sending delicious thrills of joy and terror through every nerve. ”

“ Life flowed on pleasantly at Woodlands from October till May in those idyllic years before death had made a graveyard of the old home and fire had swept away the beautiful mansion.
William Gilmore Simms first opened his eyes upon the world of men in Charleston, at a time when to be properly born in Charleston meant to be born to the purple. William Gilmore, alas! did not inherit that imperial color. He sprang from the good red earth, whence comes the vigor of humanity, and dwelt in the rugged atmosphere of toil which the Charleston eye could never penetrate. ”

“ The Philadelphia Brigade, that stood on Cemetery Hill and received the shock of that great charge which will live in history while our country stands, marched in a body to pay tribute to the great Southern soldier whose heart was filled with kindness, leaving no room for enmity. Officers of the old Army of the Forties and Fifties, who had loved my Soldier in those far-gone days, three of them members of that memorable class of 1846, were there, with the golden flames of old camp-fires yet burning upon the altar of the heart. ”

“ I did not know there was a witness to all my bitterness till I heard a smothered chuckle and, looking up, saw my Soldier and his friend, General Rufus Ingalls, standing over me. With a twinkle in his eye, and in a voice full of suppressed laughter, General Ingalls said, as he patted me on the head:
"I don't blame you one bit, little woman—not a damn bit. I should feel just as terrible about it as you do if I were in your place. It's all different with Pickett and me, you see. We don't mind. ”

“ At that time in the old city was another picturesque home that harked back to Colonial days—stately, veranda-circled, surrounded by that fascinating atmosphere of history and poetry known to those old dwellings alone of all the structures of the New World: the home of the Southern poet of Nature, Paul Hamilton Hayne. Its many-windowed front looked cheerfully out upon a wide lawn radiant with flowers of bygone fashion, loved by the poets of olden times, and bright with the greenery that kept perpetual summer around the historic dwelling. ”

“ If we should give up there are many who would feel that we had sold the South—many of our Southern States would think so, for even they have no idea that we have come to the last of our resources and no realization of how starving and poor we are, and, alas, gentlemen, too much of the best blood of the land is being spilled, too many homes being despoiled and made desolate, too many mothers with broken hearts."
Solemnly they shook hands and General Lee and his companions galloped off, my Soldier and I standing in the doorway listening. ”

“ Had the beauty of old Charleston produced the same negative effect, Southern literature would have suffered a distinct loss—if that may be regarded as lost which has never been possessed. For centuries the Queen of the Sea stood in a vision of splendor, the tumultuous waves of the Atlantic dashing at her feet, eternal sunshine crowning her royal brow. Her gardens were stately with oleanders and pomegranates, brilliant with jonquils and hyacinths, myrtle and gardenia. Roses of the olden time, Lancaster and York and the sweet pink cinnamon, breathed the fragrance of days long past. ”

“ In all the days of our beautiful married life cheer after cheer had always greeted us wherever we had gone—salute from soldier or sailor, whether on or off duty. This morning these honors were replaced by stares of surprise, of mingled curiosity and hate. Dr. Suckley recognized this feeling at once, and, with a quizzical smile at my caged-tigress expression of rage, put his arm in that of my Soldier, and with a haughty glance at the men, walked boldly on board. I was shown into the surgeon-general's stateroom, in which there were many evidences of thoughtful care for my comfort. ”

“ But it cannot be demanded of a poet that he should explain himself to anybody, least of all to himself. To his view, the shadow of the raven upon the floor was the most glaring of its impossibilities. "Not if you suppose a transom with the light shining through from an outer hall," replied the ingenious Susan.
When Poe left the Talley home he went to Duncan Lodge, a short distance away, and spent the night. The next night he was at Sadler's Old Market Hotel, leaving early in the morning for Philadelphia, but stopping in Baltimore, where came to him the tragic, mysterious end of all things. ”

“ Sidney Lanier said of his experience at Fort Boykin, on Burwell's Bay, that it was in many respects "the most delicious period" of his life. It may be that no other young soldier found so much of romance and poetry in the service of Mars or put so much of it into the lives of those around him. There are old men, now, who in their youth lived on the James River, in whose hearts the melody of Sidney Lanier's flute yet lingers in golden fire and dewy flowering. ”

“ One morning I had mechanically dressed baby George and had taken him to the window to hear the spring sounds and breathe the spring balm and catch the sunshine's dripping gold wreathing the top of the quivering blossoms of the magnolia and tulip-trees.
It was the time when the orchestra of the year is in perfect accord, when all the world is vocal, when the birds sing of love, the buds and blossoms of joy, the grains and grasses of hope and faith, and when each rustle of wind makes a chime of vital resonance. ”

“ One soldier rushed to Colonel Phillips shouting, "Say, Colonel, say; can't we do something? Can't we help? For God's sake, let us do something to help them!"
Fortunately there was no bridge from the shore to the scene of action. Otherwise every man, woman and child among that seething crowd might have rushed into the fight, to the embarrassment of the plucky little Virginia. We could do our part only by going into paroxysms of patriotism, in which we all excelled. ”

“ Leading up to it through brilliant blossoming was a white path between sentinel lines of oak trees that reached out friendly hands to clasp each other above the broad footway. Amid such beauty one felt lost in a mystic world of which he had never dreamed and revelled in a vision from which he might hope that there would be no waking.
Augusta Jane Evans was born May 4, 1835, near Columbus, Georgia. "The Queen City of the Chattahoochee" is enthroned in a pine forest amid a range of hills that form a semi-circle about the city with its fine wide streets and magnificent shade trees. ”

“ It was in Easton that she began to write in any serious and purposeful fashion, the result of her semi-blindness, as, but for that, she would have devoted her life to painting, for which she had decided talent. In the beautiful environment of Easton the young soul had found the poetic glow that tinged its early dawn. Hills crowned with a wealth of forests, fields offering hospitality to the world, glimmering of the Delaware waters rippling silverly along their happy way, auroral dawns and glorious sunsets, all inspired the youthful poet's imagination to melodious effort. ”

“ As soon as we could make our plans we returned to our ruined home on Turkey Island by the James River, where we built a small cottage in the place of the colonial mansion which had been burned by Butler.
The ancestral trees had all been cut, even the monuments in the family cemetery had been broken, but it was home and we loved it. The river and the woods and our own garden supplied our table. We planted vines to wind lovingly around the melancholy stumps of the old oaks and elms which had fallen victims of the vandalism of war. In our own flowers my Soldier found the perfumes that he loved. ”

“ The building is on a narrow side street filled with small houses and shops crowded up to the sidewalk. But the interior offered a peaceful home for which the world-weary heart of the Poet-Priest was grateful. From a balcony where he would sit, breathing in the cool air and resting his soul in the unbroken silence, he looked across the courtyard shaded by beautiful trees, filled with flowers and trellised vines, his heart revelling in the riot of color, the wilderness of greenery, all bathed in golden floods of sunshine and canopied with an ever-changing and ever-glorious stretch of azure sky. ”

“ Baby and my little brother, Johnny, had made friends of them all for us. Baby knew no difference between those who wore the blue and those who wore the gray, and some of them had little ones at home. We said good-bye, with many a regret, to our kind friend and benefactor, Dr. Suckley, and to the sailors and officers, and this time cheer after cheer went up for my noble hero Soldier, as the little steamer hauled in the lines and puffed away, and more names were added to the list of Yankees for baby not to hate. ”

“ On the grounds east of the college buildings stands the Tulip Tree which sheltered the first settlers of Annapolis in 1649, and may have hidden away in the memory-cells of its stanch old heart reminiscences of a time when a bluff old Latin sailor, with more ambition in his soul than geography in his head, unwittingly blundered onto a New World. Whatever may be its recollections, it has sturdily weathered the storms of centuries, surviving the tempests hurled against it by Nature and the poetry launched upon it by Man. ”

“ A man, not a soldier I think, for brave soldiers are magnanimous and generous always, stood up in a seat opposite mine and said:
"When I think of the horrors of Libby and Andersonville and look at these poor sufferers I not only want to invoke the vengeance of a just God but I want to take a hand in it myself. Quarter should be shown to none; every man, woman and child of this accursed Southern race should be bound to their own slaves for a specified length of time, that they, too, might know the curse of serfdom. ”

“ There are tall trees in the yard, bending a little to touch the old house lovingly.
Far away stretched the old oaks that girdled Macon with greenery, where Sidney Lanier and his brother Clifford used to spend their schoolboy Saturdays among the birds and rabbits. Near by flows the Ocmulgee, where the boys, inseparable in sport as well as in the more serious aspects of life, were wont to fish. Here Sidney cut the reed with which he took his first flute lesson from the birds in the woods. Above the town were the hills for which the soul of the poet longed in after life. ”

“ Going down the river one day with my Soldier, his brother Charlie, and their sister, in a boat rowed by the overseer, I had what I thought an interesting illustration of the tenacity of childish habits of thought. Mr. Sims had been overseer on the Pickett plantation in the childhood of the two sons of the family, who used to follow him around and absorb knowledge from what they looked upon as fathomless depths of intellect and experience. They were catching terrapin and my Soldier looked at the catch in the bottom of the boat. ”

“ MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON
"Whoever has the good fortune to follow its trails and shimmering waters is already half a poet," wrote Professor Harris of the road that leads down from the verdant hills of the Alleghanies over picturesque gorge and crag and fissure into the quiet of the valley and brings us by exquisite stages to the beautiful town of Lexington, Virginia. Making that journey in taking my boy, fourteen years old, to the Virginia Military Institute, I entered at once two charming regions—Lexington with its romantic environment, and the heart of Margaret Junkin Preston. ”

“ All the world is witness to his patriotism and unselfishness, as he offered his life for the success of the cause in which he had faith. He was never disheartened by the most complicated difficulties. Unspoiled by fame, just and loyal, he deserved the love he received, for he was worshipped by his family, idolized by his soldiers, honored by all parties and all nations—my brave warrior, as simple as a child, as high-minded as he upon whom the word-magician said, "Every god did seem to set his seal, to give the world assurance of a man." ”

“ Girt by noble trees, the old mansion, built of brick that came from England in the days when the New World yet remained in ignorance of the wealth of her natural and industrial resources, stood in the middle of the spacious lawn which afforded a beautiful playground for little Francis Scott Key and his young sister, who lived here the ideal home life of love and happiness. Among the flowers of the terraced garden they learned the first lessons of beauty and sweetness and the triumph of growth and blossoming. ”

“ My Soldier's grandmother was a victim of the fire, as were the Governor of Virginia and more than sixty of Richmond's best known citizens. The fire and the long funeral procession had been described to him by those who held in memory the mournful cortège darkening the streets of the beautiful city as Death had clouded the lives of the thousands who followed their loved ones for the last time on earth. ”

“ At the close of the war, wrecked in health, with only the memory of his beautiful home and library left to him, with not even a piece of the family silver remaining from the "march to the sea," Hayne went to the pine-barrens of Georgia, eighteen miles from Augusta, to build a new home.
When the first man and woman were sent out from their garden home, it was not as a punishment for sin, but as an answer to their ambitious quest for knowledge and their new-born longing for a wider life. ”

“ My Soldier did not like to fight his battles over. He said that the memories they revived were too sacred and sorrowful for utterance. The faces of the dead and dying soldiers on the field of battle were never forgotten. The sorrow of widows and orphans shadowed all the glory for him. In the presence of memory he was silent. The deepest sorrow, like the greatest joy, is dumb. ”

“ In Wilmington, North Carolina, Lanier served as signal officer until he was captured and taken to the prison camp at Point Lookout, in which gloomy place was developed the disease which in a few years deprived literature and music of a light that would have sparkled in beauty through the mists of centuries. Imprisonment did not serve as an interruption to the work of the student, for even a prison cell was a shrine to the radiant gods of Lanier's vision. ”

“ She loves music, she loves the beautiful sky, she loves the flowers, the ocean, and she loves you both. Lying here thinking about it, I feel that if she went to her own people they would remind her all the time of her grief, because it will be a grief to her, and it would be the same way if she went to mine. With you there is nothing that will make the sorrow keener. ”

“ But if ever, forgetful of her past and present glory, she shall cease to be "the land of the free and the home of the brave," and become the purchased possession of a company of stock-jobbers and speculators; if her people are to become the vassals of a great moneyed corporation, and to bow down to her pensioned and privileged nobility; if the patriots who shall dare to arraign her corruptions and denounce her usurpations are to be sacrificed upon her gilded altar,—such a country may furnish venal orators and presses, but the soul of national poetry will be gone. ”

“ The shadowy ghost of despair vanished with my entreaties, as we stood at the window and watched the soldiers, keeping time with them to step and tune outwardly, while hiding the muffled sound within, each playing we were enjoying it, without one marring thought of the crumpled-browed past, trying to fool each other till we really fooled ourselves. It was with thankfulness that I saw my Soldier watch with unfeigned interest the maneuvers of the troops day after day, and pleasantly welcome reveille and tattoo. Our baby learned to march almost before he walked. ”