George A. Lawrence

“ I see rich men casting down their gold, and strong men casting down their lives, as if both were dross, in the cause they have sworn to win; I see Sybarites enduring hardships that un vieux de la vieille would have grumbled at, without a whispered murmur; I hear gentle and tender women echo in simple earnestness the words that once were spoken to me by a fair Southern wife—"I pray that Philip may die in the front, and that they may burn me in the plantation, before the Confederacy makes peace on any terms but our own." ”

“ So the way did not seem so long that brought us through the straggling, dim-lighted streets of Grantsville, up to the porch of its single hostelry, where, after some parley, I found a fair chance of supper and bed, and a heavy-handed Orson to help me in racking up Falcon.
It would be very unfair to draw a comparison between an ordinary roadside inn in England and its synonym up in the country of America; a better parallel is a speculative railway tavern verging always on bankruptcy. There is an utter absence of the old-fashioned coziness which enables you easily to dispense with luxuries. ”

“ If he should inaugurate his command with the shadow of a success, the Government organs chant themselves hoarse in praise and prophecy. But the popular hero knows right well, that the ground is already mined under his feet; the first reverse will drag him down into a pit of obscurity, if not of odium, deep and dark as Abiram's grave. Of all taskmasters, a Democracy is the most pitilessly irrational; it were better for an unfaithful or unlucky servant to fall into Pharaoh's hands, than to lie at the mercy of a free and enlightened, people. ”

“ The last-named spot is especially picturesque, standing on a promontory washed on either side by the Potomac and Shenandoah, with all the natural advantages of abrupt rocks, feathery hanging woods, and broken water. Thenceforward there is little to interest or to compensate for the sluggishness of pace and frequency of delays. The track winds on always through the same monotony of forest and hill, plunging into the gorges and climbing the shoulders of bluffs, with the audacity of gradient and contempt of curve that marks the handiwork of American engineers. ”

“ I went through many introductions that evening; and, in the next fortnight, received ample and daily proofs of the proverbial hospitality of Baltimore. There are residents—praisers of the time gone by, who cease not to lament the convivial decadence of the city; but such deficiency is by no means apparent to a stranger.
If gourmandize be the favorite failing in these parts, there is surely some excuse for the sinners. Probably no one tract on earth, of the same extent, can boast of so many delicacies peculiar to itself, as the shores of the Chesapeake. ”

“ The steam-signals are very peculiar; the engine never whistles, but indulges in a prolonged bellow, very like the hideous sounds emitted by that hideous semi-brute, yclept the Gong-Donkey, who used to haunt our race-courses some years ago—making weak-minded men start, and strong-minded women scream with his unearthly roaring. When I first heard the hoarse warning-note boom through the night, a shudder of reminiscence came over me, for I used to shrink from that awful creature with a repugnance such as I never felt for any other living thing. ”

“ The old hunter had not boasted too much of his local knowledge. He led on, through winding byways and forest paths—sometimes striking straight across the clearings—till the lights of Oakland glimmered in our rear, and the cordon of pickets was threaded; nor did he leave us till we had reached a point whence a straight track—well known to Shipley—would bring us down on the north branch of the Potomac. Thenceforward, my guide and I rode on alone: the moon shone out, broad and bright, in a cloudless sky, as we climbed the wooded spurs that lie as outworks before the main range of the Alleghanies ”

“ The wedges that will keep the South apart from the North, forever, were moulded and sharpened long before they were driven home. For years far-seeing men, especially on the Border States, had provided, in their financial and domestic arrangements, for a certain disunion: not for the first time in history has an aristocracy grown up in the centre of a democracy, and, while the world shall last, such a state of things can never long endure without a collision, involving temporary subjugation or permanent disruption. ”

“ At last we had the satisfaction of seeing both animals feed, with an appetite that I, for one, could not but envy. Our hosts were so cordial in their honest hospitality, that one felt ungrateful in being so wearily bored. In the afternoon we had a visit from a neighboring farmer, who, I believe, had been summoned with the benevolent intent that he should enlighten or entertain the stranger. He was one of those stout, elderly men, who, by dint of a certain portliness of presence, gravity of manner, and slowness of speech, acquire in their own country much honor for social or political wisdom. ”

“ The vintages of Portugal and Hungary are thin and tame beside the puissant liquor that, after half a century's subjection to southern suns, enters slowly on its prime, with abated fire, but undiminished strength. Drink it then, and you will own, that from the juice of no other grape can be drawn such subtlety of flavor, such delicacy of fragrance, passing the perfume of flowers. Climate of course is the first consideration. I believe Baltimore and Savannah limit, northward and southward, the region wherein the maturing process can be thoroughly perfected. ”

“ Now, an up-country pasture, freshly cleared, is a most unpleasant place to cross, after nightfall: the stumps are all left standing, and felled trees lie all about—thick as boulders on a Dartmoor hillside; then, however, a steady moon was shining, and Falcon picked his way daintily through the timber, hopping lightly, now and then, over a trunk bigger than the rest, but never losing the faint track: we got over the high bars, too, safely, hitting them hard. ”

“ No one, that has sojourned in Washington, can be ten minutes in Baltimore without being aware of a great and refreshing change. You leave the hurry and bustle of traffic behind at the railway station, and are never subjected to such nuisances till you return thither. Even in the exclusively commercial squares of the city there reigns comparative leisure, for, except in the establishments of government contractors, or others directly connected with the supply of the army, business is by no means brisk just now. ”

“ Putting these two points aside, I believe that the condition of the slave—especially where the "patriarchal" system prevails—is infinitely better than that of the coolies: the unutterable horrors and waste of life in the Chincha Islands have never been matched in Kentucky or Louisiana. I believe that the whole roll of authenticated cruelties exercised on the negroes in any one year would be outnumbered and outdone by the brutalities practiced within the same time upon the apprentices in our own coast trade, and upon seamen—white and colored—in the American merchant-service. ”

“ Thrice the good horse made a desperate attempt to stand up, and thrice he sank back again with the hoarse sigh, between pant and groan—half breathless, half despairing—that every hunting man can remember, to his cost. It was impossible to clear the saddle-bags without cutting them; I had drawn my knife for this purpose, when a fourth struggle (in which his fore-hoofs twice nearly struck me down) , set Falcon once more on his feet—trembling, and drenched with sweat, but materially uninjured. ”

“ If a traveler were to enter a drawing-room here, expecting to be surprised at every turn by some incongruity of speech or demeanor, such as book-makers have attributed to our American cousins, he would not fill a page of his mental note-book. I had no such prejudices to be disappointed. After experience of society in many lands, I begin to think that well-bred and educated people speak and behave after much the same fashion all the world over. Few Baltimorean voices are free from a perceptible accent; it is more marked in the gentler sex, but rarely so strong as to be disagreeable. ”

“ I do honestly believe that, in despite of the tempting geographical water-line, the natural place of the State is in the Southern Confederacy. And I do also believe, that the denial of a free vote as to her future, and a coerced adhesion to the Northern Union, would involve, not only the ruin of many important interests, political and commercial, but an exodus of more influential residents, than has occurred in any civilized land, since the Revolutionary storm drove thousands of patrician emigrants over every frontier of France. ”

“ Falkland himself could not have wished more devoutly for the termination of a fatal civil war—fatal, he said, to the interests, present and future, of both the combatant powers—ruinous to every class, with two exceptions; the adventurers who, having little to lose, gained, by joining the ranks of either army, a social position to which they could not otherwise have aspired; and the speculators, who, directly or indirectly, fairly or unfairly, made gains vast and unholy, such as wreckers are wont to gather in time of tempest and general disaster. ”

“ Now I have heard a challenge or two in my time, and felt certain at once that even, a Federal picket would have employed a more regular formula. The same idea struck Shipley too.
"Come on," he said, "they're only citizens."
So on we went, disregarding a second and third summons in the same words. We both looked round for the Nevil, but keener eyes would have sought for him in vain; at the first sound of voices he had plunged into the dark woods above us, where a footman, knowing the country, might defy any pursuit. Peace and joy go with him! ”

“ Slowly and reluctantly, the Baltimorean abandoned his cherished ideal of the British aristocrat—a covert Caligula, with all modern improvements—varying the monotony of orgies with interludes of murder and rapine; the instrument of these pleasant vices being always ready in the shape of a Frankenstein-monster, whose mission it is to tyrannize perpetually over the guilty lordling or lady whose secret he holds; doing a steady trade of two assassinations or abductions weekly; and utterly inviolable by cord, shot, or steel, up to the final blue-fire tableau of the dreary drama. ”

“ The public buildings of Washington do not attempt architectural display: with scarcely an exception, they are severely simple and square. But there is a certain grandeur in the masses of white marble, which is everywhere lavishly employed, and the Capitol stands right well—alone, on the crest of a low, abrupt slope, with nothing to intercept the view from its terraces, seaward, and up the valley of the Potomac. ”

“ I greatly fear that some of those daring dames and damsels, so careless in dissembling their antipathies, may, ere this, have been made to pay a heavy price for the indulgence of past disdain. The position of a Federal officer, in Baltimore, was certainly far from enviable; many men would have preferred the lash of a cutting whip, or even a slight flesh-wound, to the sidelong glances that, when a dark-blue uniform passed by, interpreted so eloquently the fair Secessionists' repugnance and scorn. ”

“ The gait and demeanor of the country lads are not more shambling and slovenly than those of the ordinary British; but the latter from his youth up, has imbibed certain ideas of subordination to superiors, which make him yield more pliantly and implicitly to after discipline. Now, the American is taught to contemn all such old-world ideas as respect of persons. Even the All-mighty Dollar cannot command deference, though it may enforce obedience. The volunteer carries with him into the ranks, an ostentatious spirit of self-assertion and independence. ”

“ Then a dull, hot weight closes round your brows, as if a heavy, fever-stricken hand was always clasping them; there it lies—at night, when the drowsiness which is not sleep overcomes you—in the morning, when you wake, with damp linen and dank hair: plunge your forehead in ice-cold water; before the drops have dried there it is burning—burning again. The distaste for all food grows upon you, till it becomes a loathing not to be driven away by bitters or quinine: there is no savor in the smoke of Kinnekinnick, nor any flavor in the still waters of Monongahela. ”

“ I believe that at home people have a very faint—perhaps a very false—idea of how men think, and act, and suffer, in this same Border State. Your impression may be that a lethargy prevails, where, in reality, dangerous fever is the disease—a fever that must one day break out violently, in spite of the quack medicines administered by an incapable Government—in spite of the restrictions unsparingly employed, by that grim sick-nurse, martial law. ”

“ I fancy one or two of those yeomen will see the color of Yankee blood, before they see the old homestead again.
That pale Judas face, with scanty, hircine beard, and an expression changing often from spiteful to cunning, could belong only to a Yankee paymaster or commissary, detected in his frauds before he had made up a pile high enough to defy justice; for swindler is not quite safe till he is nearly a "milliner." (So, was my comrade wont to pronounce millionaire.) Such cases occur daily, and the unity of shabbiness here is always diversified by some trim criminals in dark blue. ”

“ The Federal Government, at least, does ample justice to the proclivities of Maryland. The system of coercion, hourly more and more stringent, speaks for itself. The State is at this moment subjected to a military despotism more irritating and oppressive than was ever exercised by Austria in her Italian dependencies; more irritating, because domestic interference and all sorts of petty annoyances are more frequent here; more oppressive, because it is considered unnecessary to indulge a political prisoner with even the mockery of a trial. ”

“ But the great Army of the Potomac, in its shameful retreat, could not console itself by the boast of having done to death the terrible enemy, at whose name they had learnt to tremble. A miserable mistake (so the Richmond papers say) slew Stonewall Jackson, in the crisis of victory, with a Confederate bullet, as he was reconnoitering with his staff in front of his line.
Surely it is glory, sufficient for any one of woman born, that the news of his death should have sent a start and a shiver through thirty millions of hearts. ”