McPherson

“ McPherson left Lower Canada and came to Toronto, where he remained a short time, and then crossed over to Rochester. From this place he travelled through the Genesee country to Buffalo and the Falls of Niagara, and when at the latter point, he saw Mr. McLeod, of Caroline steamer notoriety, a prisoner, surrounded by a strong guard at the hotel. He again returned to Canada, and found employment near the town of Simcoe. In this place he remained for a short time, and then left for New York, intending to sail from that port to Buenos Ayres, South America, and try his fortune there. ”

“ He pulled off his coat and throwing it over a chair ran up and down the platform and into the aisles among the people, shouting, threatening, pleading. People began to stir uneasily in their seats. Jane McPherson stared stonily at the back of the woman in front of her. Sam was horribly frightened.
The newsboy of Caxton was not without a hunger for religion. Like all boys he thought much and often of death. In the night he sometimes awakened cold with fear, thinking that death must be just without the door of his room waiting for him. ”

“ The funeral of Jane McPherson was a trying affair for her son. He thought that his sister Kate, with the babe in her arms, had become coarsened—she looked frumpish and, while they were in the house, had an air of having quarrelled with her husband when they came out of their bedroom in the morning. During the funeral service Sam sat in the parlour, astonished and irritated by the endless number of women that crowded into the house. They were everywhere, in the kitchen, the sleeping room back of the parlour; and in the parlour, where the dead woman lay in her coffin, they were massed. ”

“ Sometimes he caught himself wondering if there ever had been such a war and thought that it must be a lie like everything else in the life of Windy McPherson. For years he had wondered why some sensible solid person like Valmore or Wildman did not rise, and in a matter-of-fact way tell the world that no such thing as the Civil War had ever been fought, that it was merely a figment in the minds of pompous old men demanding unearned glory of their fellows. Now hurrying along the street with burning cheeks, he decided that after all there must have been such a war. ”

“ Where the church had failed the bold sensualist succeeded. Sam felt that he could have prayed in the presence of the entire town.
"Oh, Father!" he cried, sending up his voice in the silence of the little room, "make me stick to the thought that the right living of this, my life, is my duty to you."
By the door below, while Valmore waited on the sidewalk, Telfer talked to Jane McPherson.
"I wanted Sam to hear," he explained. "He needs a religion. All young men need a religion. I wanted him to hear how even a man like Mike McCarthy keeps instinctively trying to justify himself before God." ”

“ The next morning was bright and sunny, and at an early hour Donald McPherson came to take his wife home. Jamie was to accompany her. The ride in the fresh morning air was delightful as Donald's stout farm-horses plodded easily along over the two miles that lay between the homes of the brother and sister. The conversation ran mostly on farm-work, for that was Donald's province; beyond that his knowledge was limited. The few neighbors that they met or passed raised their bonnets, for all had a profound respect for the man who had risen from their ranks to become a professor in a college. ”

“ They were, many of them, not of the brute trader type, but were, instead, men who thought and acted quickly and with a daring and audacity impossible to the average mind. They wanted power and were, many of them, entirely unscrupulous, but for the most part they were men with a fire burning within them, men who became what they were because the world offered them no better outlet for their vast energies.
Sam McPherson had been untiring and without scruples in the first hard, quick struggle to get his head above the great unknown body of men there in the city. ”

“ McPherson's respect for the river was not without reason, as his father, with two others, had been drowned while making a crossing in a light boat near this point, some years before. Some accident occurred, possibly the breaking of a rowlock, and they were carried into a rapid. McPherson's men found it necessary to cross their cattle back and forth, but always took the wise precaution to have on some life-preservers. The cork preservers hung in the blacksmith shop, where they could easily be reached at a moment's notice. ”

“ It is only the common, the plain, unthinking man who slides peacefully through this troubled world."
At the house Jane McPherson sat waiting for her boy. She was thinking of the scene in the church and a hard light was in her eyes. Sam went past the sleeping room of his parents, where Windy McPherson snored peacefully, and up the stairway to his own room. He undressed and, putting out the light, knelt upon the floor. From the wild ravings of the man in the jail he had got hold of something. In the midst of the blasphemy of Mike McCarthy he had sensed a deep and abiding love of life. ”

“ All about them the rush of life went on, vast changes were impending in the industrial life of the people, cities were doubling and tripling their population, a war was being fought, and the flag of their country flew in the ports of strange seas, while American boys pushed their way through the tangled jungles of strange lands carrying in their hands Rainey-Whittaker rifles. And in a huge stone house, set in a broad expanse of green lawns near the shores of Lake Michigan, Sam McPherson sat looking at his wife, who in turn looked at him. ”

“ I then handed him an order that General McPherson had given me, [Pg 355] which said, "Guards, pickets, and patrols will pass Corporal Lorain Ruggles, of the 20th Ohio Veteran Volunteer Infantry, who is on special duty, at all places and at all hours, without the countersign."
When he had read it, he said, "May be General McPherson gave you that and may be you stole it from the pocket of a dead soldier. You look to me more like a reb. than any thing else." ”

“ Later in his life and after the death of Jane McPherson the old soldier married the widow of a farmer by whom he had four children and with whom he went to church twice on Sunday. Kate wrote Sam one of her infrequent letters about it. “He has met his match,” she said, and was tremendously pleased.
In church on Sunday mornings Sam went regularly to sleep, putting his head on his mother’s arm and sleeping throughout the service. Jane McPherson loved to have the boy there beside her. It was the one thing in life they did together and she did not mind his sleeping the time away. ”

“ Two years and a half following William Truedale’s death found things much as the old gentleman would have liked. Often Lynda Kendall, sitting beside the long, low, empty chair, longed to tell her old friend all about it. Strange to say, the recluse in life had become very vital in death. He had wrought, in his silent, lonely detachment, better even than he knew. His charities, shorn of the degrading elements of many similar ones, were carried on without a hitch. Dr. McPherson, under his crust of hardness, was an idealist and almost a sentimentalist ”

“ Well may we think his years are charmed—
The Eagle of the Blue.
A Dirge for McPherson, [13] Killed in front of Atlanta. (July, 1864.)
[13] The late Major General McPherson, commanding the Army of the Tennessee, a major of Ohio and a West Pointer, was one of the foremost spirits of the war. Young, though a veteran; hardy, intrepid, sensitive in honor, full of engaging qualities, with manly beauty; possessed of genius, a favorite with the army, and with Grant and Sherman. ”

“ McPherson quitted his chair.
“I think we had better go down-stairs,” he observed stiffly.
They found Carveth waiting for them in the office.
“I been lookin' over the paper,” he told Ames, as they seated themselves at the breakfast table. He turned to his secretary. “I can't see that we occupy so darn much space, Willie. The world seems unaware of the fact that Jeremiah Carveth and W. C. B. McPherson are willing to act as a kind providence in shaping the destiny of a freeborn people. I'm getting a sickenin' consciousness that there's tall timber growing for me.” ”

“ The division of McPherson's corps, which had got off and was on the way to join Steele in Arkansas, was recalled and sent, likewise, to report to Hurlbut at Memphis. Hurlbut was directed to forward these two divisions with two others from his own corps at once, and also to send any other troops that might be returning there. Halleck suggested that some good man, like Sherman or McPherson, should be sent to Memphis to take charge of the troops going east. ”

“ He can’t blow a bugle; I know he can’t. The whole town will have another laugh at our expense.”
Jane McPherson listened in silence to the boy’s outburst, then, turning, went back to rubbing clothes, avoiding his eyes.
With his hands thrust into his trousers pocket Sam stared sullenly at the ground. A sense of justice told him not to press the matter, but as he walked away from the washtub and out at the kitchen door, he hoped there would be plain talk of the matter at supper time. “The old fool!” he protested, addressing the empty street. “He is going to make a show of himself again.” ”

“ George’s church and a marble slab erected over his grave, which is now secured to the wall of the Mission House, at the west end of the lot on Princess Ann street. On that slab is the following inscription:
[Pg 236] “Here lies the body of Archibald McPherson, born in the county of Murray, in North Britain, who died August 17, 1754, aged 49 years. He was judicious, a lover of learning, open hearted, generous and sincere. Devout, without ostentation; disdaining to cringe to vice in any station. Friend to good men, an affectionate husband. ”

“ General Grant in person directed me to take the right-hand road, but, as McPherson had not yet got up from the direction of the railroad-bridge at Big Black, I sent the Eighth Missouri on the main Jackson road, to push the rebel skirmishers into town, and to remain until relieved by McPherson's advance, which happened late that evening, May 18th. The battalion of the Thirteenth United States Regulars, commanded by Captain Washington, was at the head of the column on the right-hand road, and pushed the rebels close behind their parapets ”

“ It concerns the unfortunate man McPherson, who was foolish enough to write to his wife and to make an appointment with her in New York. It can be imagined that when interests like ours were at stake, we could not leave them to the chance of whether a man in that class of life would or would not give away his secrets to a woman. ”

“ A very bold, independent commander might have attempted, whether successful or not, what Sherman thinks McPherson ought to have done at Resaca; and, as Sherman says, such an opportunity does not occur twice in the life of any man. ”

“ In the street he hurried along consumed with indignation. “I’ll never go into any church again,” he swore, shaking his fist in the air. The public avowals he had heard in the church seemed to him cheap and unworthy. He wondered why his mother stayed in there. With a sweep of his arm he dismissed all the people in the church. “It is a place to make public asses of the people,” he thought.
Sam McPherson wandered through Main Street, dreading to meet Valmore and John Telfer. Finding the chairs back of the stove in Wildman’s grocery deserted, he hurried past the grocer and hid in a corner. ”

“ Then, taking the glasses from her nose, and looking at Tom, who, while he did not find time to give her much help with The Argus, was the best checker player in Caxton and had once been to a state tournament of experts in that sport, she added, “Poor Jane McPherson, to have had a son like Sam and no better father for him than that liar Windy. Choked him, eh? Well, if the men of this town had any spunk they would finish the job.” ”

“ The evangelist ran upon the platform and called to the people demanding that they stand upon their feet. “Stand up for Jesus,” he shouted; “stand up and be counted among the host of the Lord God.”
In the church people began getting to their feet. Jane McPherson stood with the others. Sam did not stand. He crept behind his mother’s dress, hoping to pass through the storm unnoticed. The call to the faithful to stand was a thing to be complied with or resisted as the people might wish ”

“ Keeping them in sight he descended to the office floor. McPherson was now speaking directly to the clerk.
“Will you go personally to Mr. Carveth's room and interrupt the conference there between him and Mr. Smith? Mr. Smith wishes particularly to catch the eleven-ten train.”
Ames retired to the check-room. As the clerk's footsteps died out in the hall overhead, he heard a chair dragged across the tessellated floor, and peering out from his place of hiding, he saw McPherson by the aid of this chair reach the office clock and resolutely turn the hands back twenty minutes. ”

“ Lynda took her in her arms and the sick fancy passed, but from that hour there was a new tie between the two—a deeper dependence.
There was one day when they all felt little Ann was slipping from them. Dr. McPherson had come as near giving up hope as he ever, outwardly, permitted himself to do.
“You had better stay at home,” he said to Conning; “children are skittish little craft. The best of them haul up anchor sometimes when you least expect it.” ”