John William De Forest

“ A woman is only happy when she is the slave, body and soul, of some man. She is happy, just in proportion to her obedience and self-sacrifice. Then only she is aware of her full nature. She is relieved from prison and permitted the joy of expansion. It is a seeming paradox, but it is solemnly true."
Carter made no answer, not even by a look. He was thinking that his wife never philosophised concerning her love, never analyzed her sentiments, and a shock of self-reproach, as startling as the throb of a heart-complaint, struck him as he called to mind her purity, trust and affection. ”

“ But what can a woman do? It is one of the inconveniences of womanhood that we can't change our surroundings—not even our hoops—at our own pleasure. We can't run out into the world and say, Amuse us."
"There are two worlds for the two sexes. A man's consists of all the millions of earth and of future time—unless he becomes a captain in the Tenth Barataria—then he stays where he began. A woman's consists of the people whom she meets daily. But she can enlarge it; she can make it comprehend more than papa and Mr. Whitewood."
"But not more than Ravvie," said Lillie. ”

“ She was hardly sensible, I suspect, how thoroughly he was winding himself into all her emotions, her bygone griefs, her present consolations, her pitying remembrance of her husband, her love for her father and child, her recollections of the last four years, so full for her of life and feeling. His presence recalled by turns all of these things, sweeping gently, like a hand timid because of affection, over every chord of her heart. Man has great power over a woman when he is so gifted or so circumstanced that he can touch that strongest part of her nature, her sentiments. ”

“ In this movement Weitzel took command of the Reserve Brigade and covered the rear of the column. By night it made prodigious marches, and by day lay in threatening line of battle. The Rebel Cavalry, timid and puzzled, followed at a safe distance without attacking. Now came the delicious sail from Simmsport to Bayou Sara, during which Colburne could lounge at ease on the deck with a sense of luxury in the mere consciousness that he was not marching, and repose his mind, his eyes, his very muscles, by gazing on the fresh green bluffs which faced each other across the river. ”

“ It is hard to blind completely the eyes of one's own family and daily intimates.
As a hen is in trouble when her ducklings take to the water, so was Lillie's soul disturbed when her father was out on the flattering sea of Madame's conversation. Carter was amused at the wiles of the widow and the terrors of the daughter. He comprehended the affair as well as Lillie, at the same time that he did not see so very much harm in it, for the lady was pretty, clever, young enough, and had money. But nothing came of the flirtation—at least not for the present. ”

“ Colonel Carter—I beg pardon—General Carter is not only an officer but a gentleman; not one of those plebeian humbugs whom our ridiculous Democracy delights to call nature's gentlemen; but a gentleman born and bred—un échantillon de bonne race—a jet of pure old sangre azul. I, who am an old Knickerbocker—as I believe I had the honor to inform you—I delight to see such men put forward. Don't you, sir?"
The Doctor admitted with a polite smile that the promotion of General Carter gave him pleasure. ”

“ Her character and conversation seemed to be all solved in the great alembic of maternity. She was a mother as passionately as she had been a betrothed and a wife; and indeed it appeared as if this culminating condition of her womanhood was the most absorbing of all. This exquisite life, delicious in spite of her occasional anxieties and self-reproaches concerning her husband, flowed on without much mixture of trouble until one day she picked up a letter on the floor of her father's study which opened to her a hitherto inconceivable fountain of bitterness. ”

“ Colburne entered, saw an officer sleeping on a pile of blankets, and to his astonishment recognized him as Major Gazaway. In slumber this remarkable poltroon looked respectably formidable. He was six feet in height and nearly two hundred pounds in weight, large-limbed, deep-chested, broad-shouldered, dark in complexion, aquiline in feature, masculine and even stern in expression. He had begun life as a prize fighter, but had failed in that career, not because he lacked strength or skill, but from want of pluck to stand the hammering. ”

“ By the time a man gets to be near forty, his moral physiognomy is supposed to be so pock-marked with bygone amours as to be in a measure ludicrous, or at least devoid of dignity in its tenderness. But Carter's emotional nature was so emphatic and volcanic, so capable of bringing a drama of the affections to a tragic issue, that I feel no disposition to laugh over his affair with Miss Ravenel, although it was by no means his first, nor perhaps his twentieth. Considering the passions as forces, we are obliged to respect them in proportion to their power rather than their direction. ”

“ The old and tried soldier knows all that it means; he knows how tremendous will be the screech of the shells and the ghastliness of the wounds; he faces it with an inward shrinking, although with a calm determination to do his duty; his time for elation will not come until his blood is heated by fighting, and he joins in the yell of the charge. The recruit, deeply moved by the novelty of the sight, and the unknown grandeur of horror or of glory which it presages, is either vaguely terrified or full of excitement. ”

“ Pallid stragglers who had dropped out of the leading brigade drifted by the Tenth, dodging from trunk to trunk in an instinctive search for cover, although it was visible that the forest was no protection, but rather an additional peril. Every regiment has its two or three cowards, or perhaps its half-dozen, weakly-nerved creatures, whom nothing can make fight, and who never do fight. One abject hound, a corporal with his disgraced stripes upon his arm, came by with a ghastly backward glare of horror, his face colorless, his eyes projecting, and his chin shaking. ”

“ I have more than once seen an elegant, brilliant, highly-cultured girl make an inexplicable and hungry snap at a man who was stupidly, boorishly, viciously her inferior. The subtle and potent sense which draws the two sexes together is an inexorable despot.
The Colonel was one of its victims, although not quite bereft of reason. Still, if he did not offer himself to Miss Ravenel before going on this Lafourche expedition, it was simply from considerations of worldly prudence, or, as he phrased it to himself, out of regard to her happiness. ”

“ The time during which he had known the Ravenels at New Boston was now a pasture of very delightful things to his memory.
"It is pleasant to me because it seems like New Orleans," laughed Miss Lillie. "No, not much like New Orleans, either," she added. "It used to be so gay and amusing! You have made an awfully sad place of it with your patriotic invasion."
"It is bad to take medicine," he replied. "But it is better to take it than to stay sick. If you will have the self-denial to live ten years longer, you will see New Orleans more prosperous and lively than ever." ”

“ I say this in sorrow and not in anger, for New England is the land of my birth and Puritanism is the creed of my progenitors. And I add as a mere matter of justice, that, deficient as the New Bostonians are in timely smiles and appropriate compliments, bare as they are of jollities and angular in manners and opinions, they have strong sympathies for what is clearly right, and can become enthusiastic in a matter of conscience and benevolence. If they have not learned how to love the beautiful, they know how to love the good and true. ”

“ They object to the nineteenth century. They mean to smash the United States of America. And for all this they pledge their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. It surpasses all the jokes in Joe Miller. To think of those whiskey-soaked, negro-whipping, man-slaughtering ruffians, with a bottle of Louisiana rum in one hand and a cat-o'-nine-tails in the other, a revolver in one pocket and a bowie-knife in the other, drunken, swearing, gambling, depraved as Satan, with their black wives and mulatto children—to think of such ruffians prating about their sacred honor! ”

“ To keep the ranks closed and aligned in any tolerable fighting shape while struggling through that mile of tangled forest and broken ground, was a task of terrible difficulty. Plunging through thickets, leaping over fallen trees, a continuous foliage overhead, and the fallen leaves of many seasons under foot, the air full of the damp, mouldering smell of virgin forest, the brigade moved forward with no sound but that of its own tramplings. It is peculiar of the American attack that it is almost always made in line, and always without music. ”

“ Do you believe that conscience, sense of duty, philanthropy, would induce men and women to bear with each other—to bring children into the world—to save the race from extinction? Strike out the affection of sex for sex, and earth would be, first a hell, then a desert. God is not very far from every one of us. The nation was not more certainly guided by the hand of Providence in overthrowing slavery, than was this man in loving this woman. ”

“ Larue, the tenderness which did actually exist in some small measure beneath her smooth surface of amiability and coquetry, was profoundly stirred by her instinctive sympathy for a suffering which was all feminine. She remembered that same anguish in her own life, and lived it over again. Every throe of the sick girl seemed to penetrate her own body. She thought of the child which had been given and taken years ago, and then she wiped away a tear, lest Lillie might see it and fear for herself. ”

“ Some of the prettiest and gentlest-born ladies of New Boston waited in a mixed crowd half the night at the railroad station to see the first regiments pass towards Washington, and flung their handkerchiefs, rings, pencil-cases, and other trinkets to the astonished country lads, to show them how the heart of woman blessed the nation's defenders. In no society could you be ten minutes without hearing the words war, treason, rebellion. And so, the subject being every body's subject, the Ravenels and Colburne frequently talked of it. ”

“ If we surrender, we make the whole campaign a failure. We must not do it. We never shall be able to face our comrades after it; we never shall be able to look loyal man or rebel in the eye. We can defend ourselves. General Banks has been repulsed twice from inferior works. It is an easy chance to do a great deed—to deserve the thanks of the army and the whole country. Just consider, too, that if we don't hold the fort, we may be called on some day to storm it. Which is the easiest? Gentlemen, I say, No surrender!"
Every officer but Gazaway answered, "That's my vote." ”

“ Larue.
"My God! what a woman you are!" exclaimed the Colonel. "Don't you know that I should be ashamed to look her in the face?"
"My dear, why do you distress yourself so? You can love her still. I am not exacting. I only want a corner in your heart. If I might, I would demand the whole; but I know I could not have it. You ought not to be unhappy; that is my part in the drama. I have sacrificed much. What have you sacrificed? A man risks nothing, loses nothing, in these affairs du cœur. He has a bonne fortune, voilà tout."
Carter was heavy laden in secret with his bonne fortune. ”