Various

“ And I grant them due forgiveness,
Let them rip it as they be—
For they dock their horses’ tails
To match the owner’s pedigree! THE GRAVE ON THE BLUFF The most beautiful of all beautiful rivers—bold-bluffed and crooked, darkening in shadow or shimmering in sunlight, and never yet desecrated by the touch of a wheel of commerce—is the Duck, rising among the foothills to the east and flowing through the blue limestone of this Niagara period, like the Hudson, to the Cumberland. It flows through middle Tennessee and past the town I call my home. ”

“ I stamp my foot upon the earth and jostle the universe. The sun gives light for my pleasure, and the timid stars tremble in my presence. The oceans are my highways, and the mountains are my temples on whose purple domes I love to stand and throw kisses at the angels, or look down and view with rapture, the peaceful flocks that graze and sleep on a thousand sunny hillsides. All the fruited and flowered landscapes that swing between the seas are my royal hanging gardens, and I walk in the glow of their glory, and rest in the gloam of their sweet solitudes. ”

“ Thus it happened that I was with the army of General Sherman when it felt its way up the turbid Tennessee as far as Pittsburg Landing, and it so happened that I was at Shiloh Church on the morning of that terrible onslaught by General Johnston’s army on Sherman’s division, which held the advance of Grant’s army.
I have often wondered what sort of a soldier I must have appeared at that time. I can remember myself as a tall, pale, hatchet-faced boy, who could never find in the Quartermaster’s department a blouse or a pair of trousers small enough for him, nor an overcoat cast on his lines. ”

“ So at last Charleston has fallen, plucked like the golden apple of the fable that turned to ashes in the grasp. The great news is like wine to the pulse. The early telegrams were thought too good to be true. What a picture was that which the Tribune’s correspondents presented to us on Tuesday morning, of the flag hoisted once again upon Fort Sumter, even though waving from an oar blade for lack of a flagstaff. The rebellion is humbled in the city of its first haughtiness. Boastful, braggart Charleston skulks away from itself, and surrenders without firing one shot in its own defense. ”

“ There are many Helens, and readers will see the one who sat by the fire that winter’s night in the fated city, but each looks upon his own Helen and the fire glows upon his own hearthstone. One looks at her and she at the fire, and the light falling over her is bathing her beautiful face till every feature is radiant with its divine glow, and the most fascinating tints seem to tinge each ringlet of her hair, and to sleep and dream in those dark, brown eyes. ”

“ As the gray streaks of dawn began to appear, the band of the Thirteenth Regulars on the deck of one of the transports, came into the landing, playing a magnificent selection from “Il Trovatore.” How inspiring that music was! Even the poor, wounded men lying in front on the shore seemed to be lifted up, and every soldier seemed to receive an impetus. Soon there was light enough to distinguish objects around, and then came the ominous patter of musketry over beyond the river’s bluff, which told that the battle was on again. ”

“ On a sycamore tree that has grown from the river bottom up opposite my bluff, a crow suns himself and eyes me foolishly. I never see a crow but I think of Poe, the weird, wild genius, and his heavenly rhythm. I don’t exactly fancy that bird, and if I were not too lazy I’d throw a pebble at him.
But let me go on with the history of the man who was kicked to death. “Shall I make him young or old?” I asked myself. “Young. Why? Because an old horseman would have had better sense than to get too close to a strange horse’s kicking end.” ”

“ Might it not have been the soul of the fiddle stirred by a mountain breeze to life, getting itself in tune with the frantic transports of the heart against which it lay? They say a soundpost sometimes comes to life, and that all the tuneful sprites that burrow and buzz in the vibrant caverns of a fiddle are set a-humming and a-thrumming when Cupid peeps in at the slit. ”

“ The best definition of it, is, I love to think, God-given; and its genius is limited only to what God has put there in the beginning. It copies from no man—it is Master. Its flow is limitless, like the great tides of the greater ocean, and, like them, it grows as it goes. It does nothing twice the same way—every book is different, every poem, every mood. ”

“ She watched the leaden ashes gather over the bright embers, and thought how she, too, would some day return to the dust, after her forehead was wrinkled with age, as the fires of youth slowly burned out, just as every seamed log before her was seamed and scarred by the flames. But these thoughts were only for a moment, for the fire had just been kindled in her heart, and she would have to sit and watch it glow and flicker and flame for a long time yet. ”

“ They had given the General a volley and salute, and now surged forward to hear what he and their captain had to say.
It was a picturesque sight and one never to be forgotten. They were dressed in typical costume of their time, and yet there was a liveness and manliness about it which stirred the deeper emotions. Long hair above swarthy, sunburnt faces, heavy coon skin caps, hunting coats and buckskin trousers, ending in the top of rawhide boots. Powder horns, some of gourds, but nearly all of buffalo horns, hung over their shoulders by a thong of deer hide. ”

“ What a hideous sight saluted the eyes of the Union troops as they entered the city—helpless human beings, scalded, burned, mutilated by those who ought to have been their protectors; a city set on fire by its own garrison when not a flame could touch its enemy’s head, but only singe and roast its own inhabitants. Terrible is the self-inflicting retribution which an all-wise Providence has decreed against this cockatrice’s [518] den. Except for Charleston, the rebellion would never have been, and except Charleston had been terribly scourged by the war, poetic justice would have failed. ”

“ There is contained in a picture nothing less than all that it is capable of inspiring to our thoughts and imagination. Art, like nature, can only show us what we are capable of seeing and it is this faculty for showing not only the subtle sense of atmosphere to the critics but the beauty of life to all observers, which marks Mr. Bridgman’s pictures. ”

“ They have killed every man in the South. We showed them how to cut off their necks, a million at a time. Then said I, ‘Behold victory on a white horse, and his rider is black!’”
It was Sam Tillett, who had borne the flag when General Anderson surrendered Sumter.
“Poor fellow,” said the colonel sadly, passing him by. “A raving lunatic.” And in the darkness the man ran on, shouting:
“Victory! Victory! We have slain! We have slain! Behold victory on a white horse, and his rider is black—black—black!” ”

“ All the delightful dreams that spread their wings above the horizon of the heart, all the glorious thoughts that fly out from the heaven of the brain, all the jubilees of joy that crowd the circling hours of mortal life are the regal gifts of God to mankind—the royal heritage of all. ”

“ She could almost see the purple anger retiring before the mastery of a mind whose first great instinct was unmeasured calmness—a calmness which, in spite of his nature, he could command when he wished at all times. A man who could both bluff and fight.
“No,” he went on, after awhile, “prepare to stay. I hate to see you go, but aside from the fact that there will be some very extraordinary fighting, which you will have nothing to do with, and need not see, New Orleans will be as safe as the Hermitage.” ”

“ The coals in the full glow were impetuous manhood, and the dark, somber ashes told her of a life buried away, and reminded her that dust shall return to the earth as it was, and the spirit—the bright, pure, flaming spirit, had it not already vanished into the presence of the God who gave it? ”

“ Are there no sails on those far-away summer seas, no wings to cleave that crystal air, no forms divine to walk those radiant fields? Are there no eyes to see those floods of light, no hearts to share with ours that love which holds all these mighty orbs in place? ”

“ Even if the nations of Europe found themselves unable at this moment to agree to this proposition, there is certainly nothing in the proposition that is unwise in the abstract, and if nothing is ever proposed which the world is not ready at the instant to adopt, it is utterly impossible to make any progress at all. But in the light of the salient facts of history, Mr. Bryan’s proposition is certainly entitled to the immediate consideration of every statesman in the world, and, in my judgment, it can count on acceptance in a comparatively short time. ”

“ That this should have occurred within our own prosaic generation, that many of those still living should have looked upon this man of gentle, quiet dignity, brings to mind how immeasurably below the strong realities of truth fall the portrayals of romance upon the mimic stage.
The dress of a workman was secured by Charles Thelin and successfully brought into the fortress; a blue blouse soiled with plaster; a black wig with long hair, a peaked cap rubbed threadbare with pumice stone, a pair of wooden sabots to make the prince look taller. ”

“ Timber, iron ore, marble, building rock, phosphate, kaolin, cement rock, mineral paint, fertile valleys, sturdy, God-fearing, liberty-loving people—what more do you want—where else can you find such a plethora of good things? As we write, an endless procession of wagons is passing, bearing cross-ties, telegraph and telephone poles, cotton and other farm products, all consigned to merchants here or to be shipped direct by way of the Tennessee river—nature’s great highway—for Clifton is a mighty part of commerce, and is the entrepot for a vast extent of territory. ”

“ And so are all the sons and daughters of Adam equal Kings and Queens with me, whose hearts beat time to nature’s music, and whose souls are in love with the beautiful. There is a crown of sunshine for every brow by day ”

“ The prospects of peace and justice not only within the existing political organizations, but in their relations with one another, were never so good as to-day, because the principle of Parliamentary Representative government has been applied during the past few centuries, to a greater or less degree, in almost every nation of the world, and this has prepared each of these nations to participate more easily and more effectively in the application of this principle to the affairs common to them all. ”

“ His neat little hat lying beside him bore the number of a Georgia regiment, embroidered, I am sure, by some tender fingers, and his waxen face, washed by the rain of the night before, was that of one who had fallen asleep, dreaming of loved ones who waited his coming in some anxious home. He was about my age. He may have been a drummer! At the sight of that poor boy’s corpse I burst into tears, and started on. Here beside a great oak tree I counted the corpses of fifteen men. ”

“ What intelligence less than God could fashion the human body? What motive power is it, if it is not God, that drives that throbbing engine, the human heart, with ceaseless, tireless stroke, sending the crimson streams of life bounding and circling through every vein and artery? ”

“ Now comes the question, will it ever be worth while to rebuild Charleston? Is her name worth saving? Is her site worth a memory on the maps? Is her sin less guilty than Sodom’s and her punishment to be less heavy than Gomorrah’s?
And underneath it his many friends read with some surprise a note from Bob Dingley, whom the new management styled “a distinguished Union citizen who is now free to express his sentiments.”
The rebellion is at an end, and now why not discard old, worn-out theories? Let every good citizen take the oath of allegiance. These good Union men are our best friends. ”

“ Those fresh and sturdy troops from the Army of the Ohio had furnished a blue bulwark, behind which the incomparable one-day fighters of Grant and Sherman were to push to victory. The whole aspect of the field in the rear changed. The skulkers of the day before seemed to be imbued with genuine manhood, and thousands of them returned to the front to render good service. In addition to this, six thousand fresh men under General Lew Wallace, who had marched from Crump’s Landing, ten miles away, had arrived during the night, and the tide of battle was now setting towards Corinth. ”

“ The angels of light hover above us all, and arch the heavens with the rainbow of hope for all, and bring from the vapory vineyards of the clouds, the sparkling champagne of pure crystal water to bless the lips of all. ”

“ Every department of our national government will be represented in miniature, complete in every detail. Every state will be represented by a reproduction of some building connected with its formative history, and the whole will form an object lesson in the history and development of our country that will surpass any means of teaching and interest ever before seen. Nearly every state in the Union is already at work upon its special buildings, and of the Southern states, all (at this writing) have commenced work except Mississippi, Texas, Alabama and Tennessee. ”