Sara Agnes Rice Pryor

“ We first heard of him as a soldier in the Confederate army; then in the Union navy. He represented "the Blue and the Gray"—he had worn them both. We all know of his search for Dr. Livingstone, of his subsequent marches through the Dark Continent; of his perils by land, perils by sea, courage and fortitude. And now here he was—quite like other people—in an evening coat with a gardenia in his button-hole, and with an English bride all in white and gold, and still young enough to fill the measure of his glory with more adventures. ”

“ Imagination may fill in this picture, but reality will far exceed imagination, especially if the happy moment is caught at sunset when the mountains change color, from rose through delicate shadings to amethyst, and finally paint themselves deep blue against the evening sky. Then, should that sky chance to be veiled with light, fleecy clouds all flame and gold—but I forbear!
This was the spot chosen by my aunt as the very best for my education and my social life. The town was small in the forties, indeed, is not yet a city. ”

“ In the depth of winter I once found a woman bearing one of Virginia's oldest names. She was sitting upon a box beside a fireless stove, warming her baby in her bosom. Her husband had gone out to hunt for work! She had no fire, no furniture, no food! Another, belonging to a proud South Carolina family, I found in an attic in New York. She had had no food for two days! These, and more, I was enabled by the lovely women of Brooklyn to relieve, delicately and permanently. Better, truer, more cultivated women I have nowhere known. Of the extent of my own anxieties and privations they never knew. ”

“ We knew ourselves not only strangers but aliens, outcasts.
Dear little Willy came to me one day and advised me to change his terrier's name, "Rebel,"—a name he had borne by reason of his own disposition, and not at all in honor of the "lost cause." "The boys will stone him," said Willy; "I am going to call him 'Prince' in the street and 'Rebel' at home." On another day his younger sisters were decoyed into the garden of a neighbor, and there informed by the children of the house that we would not be allowed to live in the street—that we were "Rebels, and slave-drivers, and awful people!" ”

“ Nobody was ever known to decline an invitation to that house. It was one of the large, old-fashioned houses near Fifth Avenue, with San Domingo mahogany doors, wide staircase, and four spacious rooms on each floor. There were tapestries on the walls, a few good pictures, three busts,—one of Salvini, one of the hostess's husband, the other her maid,—wood fires, and fresh flowers every day. The gracious white-haired lady at the head of the house had a charm born of long experience in all the gentle ministrations of life ”

“ We were so far away from my general's office that his long journey morning and evening, accompanied by Theo, was exhausting to both of them. I taught Mary and Roger, but the children were very listless and unhappy. They found no pleasure in walking up and down the uninteresting sidewalk of a hot, dreary street. Loneliness, enhanced by the far-off hum of the city, the mournful fog-horns and whistles on the river, and the not less depressing sounds from the incessant pianos around us, oppressed us all. ”

“ Thoroughly alarmed, the women of Washington thronged the galleries of the House and the Senate-chamber. From morning until the hour of adjournment we would sit spellbound, as one after another drew the lurid picture of disunion and war.
When my husband's time came to speak on "the state of the country," he entreated for a pacific settlement of our controversy. "War," he urged, "war means widows and orphans." The temper of the speech was all for peace. He made a noble appeal to the North for concession. He prophesied (the dreamer) that the South could never be subdued by resort to arms! ”

“ One night, after a long, hot day, we were so tired we slept soundly. I was awakened by Eliza Page, standing trembling beside me. She pulled me out of bed and hurriedly turned to throw blankets around the children. The furies were let loose! The house was shaking with the concussion from the heavy guns. We were in the street, on our way to our bomb-proof cellar, when a shell burst not more than twenty-five feet before us. Fire and fragments rose like a fountain in the air and fell in a shower around us. ”

“ The splendid troops passed continually. Our hearts sank within us. We had but one hope—that General Lee would join Joseph E. Johnston and find his way to the mountains of Virginia, those ramparts of nature which might afford protection until we could rest and recruit.
Intelligence of the death of President Lincoln reached Petersburg on the 17th of April. As he had been with us but a few days before, manifestly in perfect health and in all the glow and gladness of the triumph of the Federal arms, the community was unspeakably shocked by the catastrophe. ”

“ It is the fear of that which is embarrassing us in Virginia, for all there say if we are reduced to the dilemma of an alternative, they will espouse the cause of the South against the interests of the Northern Confederacy. If you have any ideas of reconstruction, I pray you annihilate them. Give forth to the world that under no circumstances whatever will South Carolina stay in political association with the Northern states. I understand since I have been in Charleston that there is some little apprehension of Virginia in this great exigency. ”

“ Never, never was girl as happy! The tree loaded with tiny baskets of bonbons, each enriched with an original rhyming jest or sentiment, was magnificent, the supper delicious, the speeches and poems from the two old judges (Tucker) were apt and witty. I went as a little girl—a close bud—but no "high-necked" gown ever prisoned a happier heart.
It seems to me, as I look back, that my University friends, Mr. Schéle de Vere, James Southall, William C. Rives, Jr., George Wythe Randolph, Roger Pryor, et al., felt all at once a very kind interest in my education. ”

“ But it was evident from the very first, though formal, sentence, that exploded from General Pryor's lips that he needed no outward occasion to minister excitement to his surcharged batteries of personal electricity. A dry legal question was provocation enough; what he would do under the heat of an impassioned issue is inconceivable, if the proportions of occasion and effect were preserved. His execution, to borrow a musician's term, is prodigious, considered merely as a tour de force. It is a volcanic torrent of speech. To say the enunciation is rapid, is nothing: it is lightning-like. ”

“ Now, as I sat with my fascinated gaze upon it, I thought of the tens of thousands, of the hundreds of thousands of upturned faces beneath the green sod of old Virginia. Strong in early manhood, grave, high-spirited men of genius, men whom their country had educated for her own defence in time of peril,—they had died because that country could devise in her wisdom no better means of settling a family quarrel than the wholesale slaughter of her sons by the sword. And now? "Not until the heavens be no more shall they awake nor be raised out of their sleep." ”

“ Billion will really have any difficulty in getting into society, or what on earth Lord Frederick could see in that pug-nosed Peggy Rustic, who hasn't even the saving grace of a little money. I am afraid of personalities, and yet we cannot always discuss politics and religion. Men have been burnt at the stake for talking politics and religion!
I have never sympathized in the wholesale abuse of New York society—and by this much-used word I mean the society defined by Noah Webster as "that class in any community which gives and receives entertainments." ”

“ I remember one lovely June afternoon, which melted into a perfect moonlight evening. My little girls, attired in white, listened to the home music,—Roger, with his violin, accompanied by his mother on the piano my dear Aunt Mary had bequeathed to Gordon. A hasty ring at the door, a rush of eager steps, and Theo was in my arms! We thought him lovely. His father proudly marked his fine air and, with amusement, the delicate hint of a rising inflection in his voice. Never were people so glad and proud. ”

“ At whatever risk of personal obloquy, and at whatever sacrifice of personal interest,—and you know it involves both obloquy and sacrifice to talk as I do,—I am resolved to employ all the energy and intellect I may command in the incessant endeavor to promote peace and good-will among the people of the lately belligerent states. What the country needs, what in a most especial manner the South needs, is repose; freedom from the throes of political agitation, and leisure to recruit its exhausted energies. ”

“ These and other well-worn, well-read books became the nucleus of a large library, and hold to-day in their tattered bindings places of honor denied newer lights of more creditable appearance. We were not aware when we moved to Brooklyn Heights that we had descended into the very centre of the wealthiest society of the city. Had we known this, it would have signified nothing to us. Our extreme poverty forbade any expectation of indulgence in social life, even had we felt we had the smallest right to recognition. ”

“ Anybody can chatter, but how many of us can pass a thought "like a bit of flame" from one to another; or turn, like a many-faceted gem, a scintillating flash in every direction? This is possible! This made the charm of the French salon, and makes the charm to-day of more than one little drawing-room that I wot of, which has never been described in the society columns of the newspapers. ”

“ At their tables are gathered the wit and wisdom of many lands, and whatever accessories can be commanded by taste and wealth. These stars of the social firmament revolve in a sphere of their own,—around no wealthy or titled sun,—but around each other. Vitalized by one powerful magnet, they at once, like iron filings, attract each other.
I had known nothing of Mrs. Botta's prestige nor of her friendship with Emerson, Carlyle, Froude, Fanny Kemble, Frederika Brémer, Daniel Webster, Charles O'Connor, Fitz-Greene Halleck, even Louis Kossuth, when she first visited me, introducing herself ”

“ My uncle never allowed me to forget that one supreme moment in my child-life. To this day I cannot look at the fine bronze statuette of Henry Clay in my husband's library without a sensation born of the pride of that hour.
I am afraid the small maiden dearly loved glory! 36Nobody would ever have guessed the ambitious little heart beating, the next winter, under the cherry merino; nor the conscious lips deep in her poke-bonnet that followed the prayers at church and implored mercy for a miserable sinner! ”

“ In any war the masses rarely trouble themselves about the merits of the quarrel. Their pugnacity and courage are aroused and stimulated by the enthusiasm of their comrades or by their own personal wrongs and perils.
Now, in January, 1865, the common soldier perceived that the cause was lost. He could read its doom in the famine around him, in the faces of his officers, in tidings from abroad. His wife and children were suffering. His duty was now to them; so he stole away in the darkness, and in infinite danger and difficulty found his way back to his own fireside. ”

“ We remember the military pomp of the first day, the dignified carriage of the governors of our United States as they bared their heads in gracious acknowledgment of the cheers of the people, the triumphant blare of trumpets, the stirring strains of martial music, the glitter of bayonets, the long, living line, which was only a small part of the nation's bulwark against its possible foes. ”

“ It must soon have fallen a victim to foreign aggression or domestic anarchy. Nor to the reëstablishment of the Union is the Confederate soldier any the less reconciled by the destruction of slavery. People of the North, history will record that slavery fell, not by any efforts of man's will, but by the immediate intervention and act of the Almighty Himself. And in the anthem of praise ascending to heaven for the emancipation of four million human beings, the voice of the Confederate soldier mingles its note of devout gratulation. ”

“ Every heart is warmed with sympathy—every hand open, when real trouble, real disaster, overtakes any part of our country. And nowhere do we find a quicker response than among actors, who are rarely, if ever, rich, and never lead, as others do, a life of ease.
The letters I received from the New York women who had so nobly stood by me and helped me were, for a long time, delightful reading. They are still cherished as a reward second only to the crowning reward—the relief of suffering—which has comforted me all along the subsequent years of my life. ”