The days of shoddy. A novel of the great rebellion in 1861

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UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

SAN DIEGO
Donated in memory of

John W. Snvder

by

His Son and Daughter

Ps

33

DAYS OF SHODDY,

A NOVEL OP

THE GREAT REBELLION

IN

1861.

BY HENRY MORFOED.

AUTHOR OF " SHOULDER-STRAPS."

PHILADELPHIA:

T. B. PETERSON & BROTHERS,

306 CHESTNUT STREET.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1863, by

T. B. PETERSON & BROTHERS,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States,
in and for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

TO

HON. CHARLES P. DALY, JOHN R. BRADY AND HENRY HILTON,

JUDGES OF THE COURT OF COMMON PLEAS

OF THE

CITY AND COUNTY OF NEW YORK,

DURING

THE THREE YEARS OF WAR FOR THE UNION,

WHO HAVE NOT ONLY

KEPT SPOTLESS THE JUDICIAL ERMINE,

BUT

DISCOUNTENANCED ALL DISLOYAL PRACTICES

AND

HELD THE GOLDEN MEAN OF PATRIOTIC CONSERVATISM,

THE TRUE DEMOCRACY, —
THIS STORY OF THE OPENING DAYS OF THE GREAT STRUGGLE

IS

EESPECTFULLY DEDICATED

BY THEIR

FRIEND AND SERVANT IN THE SAME FAITH,

THE AUTHOR.

NEW YORK CITY, DEC. IST, 1863.

PREFACE.

THE Days of Shoddy, as the reader will readily an
ticipate, are the opening months of the present war, at
which time the opprobrious name first came into gen
eral use as a designation for swindling and humbug of
every character ; and nothing more need be said to indi
cate the scope of this novel. It would be easy for the
writer, if he felt disposed to forestall criticism, or if he
doubted that the work itself would be found its own
apology, — to point out those features in its construction
most likely to provoke unfavorable comment, and to prove
(at least to his own satisfaction) that all such points, pos
sibly to be considered blemishes by others, were really
beauties of the first prominence. The fact is, meanwhile,
that he does not feel that any prefatory apology is neces
sary, while he does recognize the propriety of a few
words of explanation that may not be supplied by the
body of the work. The considerable number of foot
notes appended in certain portions, giving to the book at
times more the appearance of a dry statistical volume or
an erudite history than a mere work of current romance,
may be regarded as an innovation, but the writer hopes
cannot be considered objectionable in a novel having for
its foundation the hard facts of contemporary history, —
in spite of the denunciations of August William Schlegel,
the distinguished German critic and essayist, against

23

24 PREFACE.

"notes to a poem," which he declares to be as much out of
place as " anatomical lectures on a savory joint served
up at table." The objection may lie quite as strongly
against " notes to a novel" ; but if so, Sir Walter, whose
prefatory and appendiary remarks in many of his novels
were merely notes set in another form, must be called as
the quite sufficient antagonist of the German. — A second
objection might lie against the discursive .character of
certain portions of the work, but it is hoped will not do
so when we remember how we trifle with side-issues that
seem pleasant, in every relation of life, from the child
turning aside to pluck flowers or catch butterflies on his
way to school, to the soldier loitering his night at the
theatre when he knows that the interests of the country
call him to hurry on to the field without an hour's delay.
— And still a third might be urged against the large ag
gregate of denunciation of national vices, with so small a
proportion of pointed personalities ; while the explana
tion of that feature, if any is necessary, lies in the belief
that the exposure of the vices and follies of the time will
be found much more effectual for the common good, if it
indicates, and provokes examination of official documents,
than it could be if it closed inquiry as well as excited it,
by merely gibbeting a few prominent wrong-doers, under
their real names. The writer, in conclusion, takes the
opportunity of thanking press and public for the very
great kindness shown to a previous venture in the same
direction, and of promising that if their favor continues,
the mine of romance of the rebellion, thus opened, will
not be allowed to lie unexplored.
NEW YORK CITY, Dec. 1, 1863.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

Coffee Joe, the Newsboy — The Thirteenth of April, 1861 —
News of the Bombardment and Capture of Sumter —
Public feeling on that occasion — The Sumter Hoax — Dry-
goods and Patriotism — Charles Holt, Burtnett Haviland,
and Tim the Errand-boy — Volunteering, Generosity, and

what Tirn thought of the arrangement 31

I

CHAPTER II.

Aunt Bessy White and Kate Haviland — The profits of School-
teaching in the Country — A last reminder of the Revolu
tion, Amos Haviland — A hurrah, and flag-raising on a
spire — The news of Sumter — The Apotheosis of the
American Flag — A crash, and a search for it — Sharpening
the Sword — The departure 48

CHAPTER III.

The Fullerton house on East Twenty-third Street — Mrs. Fuller-
ton and Miss Dora — A couple of people of decidedly
Southern proclivities — NedMinthorne, an Excellent Catch
as a Husband — Two or three rows, as " Parlor Entertain
ments" — Mr. Charles Holt as a Son-in-Law 64

CHAPTER IV.

The Merchant and his Fifth Avenue Residence — A glance at
Up-town Luxury — A Mercantile Letter, a Dinner and a
Summons — An Interview a la mode, between Husband

25

26 CONTENTS.

and Wife — How Burtnett Haviland went home— The
Romance of Half a House — A dear little Wife that
waited at the door— A Supper, and the Shadow that fell
over it 81

CHAPTER V.

A Short Chapter and a dull one — All History and no Romance —
The Rising of the People — Statistics and incidents of
Flag-raising — Rosettes, patriotic carts and "Union"
public-houses — Movements and Events after Sumter — •
The President's Proclamation — Danger of the Capital
and Baltimore — Military preparations in the Great City.. 104

CHAPTER VI.

Sunday morning at the Havilands' — A Domestic Scene — The
Husband's patriotic resolution — The picture of Valley
Forge — The Wife's noble but dangerous Resovle — South
ern and Northern Women during the War — The story of
Sarah Sanderson — Burtnett Haviland's unknown Tempta
tion — Church-going and Satinets, after Sumter 113

CHAPTER VII.

The Departure of the Seventh Regiment — A few words of
Justice to that Organization — Theodore Wiuthrop and
his career — How young Foster went away — How Burtnett
Haviland met an Acquaintance — Captain Jack — Ellsworth
and the First Fire Zouaves — One Soldier who did not
wish to be an Officer 131

CHAPTER VIII.

Katfe Haviland at the Fullertons' — Her Arrival, Examination
and Instructions — Myra and Mildred, the "Young
Wretches" — A Story that was interrupted — Mrs. Fuller-
ton's Law-papers and "property near Montgomery" —
How Ned Minthorne lost his Letter — An interview
between Millionaire and Teacher — How Ned Minthorne
recovered his Letter 146

CHAPTER IX.

Another Chapter that is not Romance, but History — The " Days
of Shoddy," as they were — The human Reptiles that
sprung up among the Demi-Gods — The great opportunity

CONTENTS. 27

for Plunderiiig, and how it was embraced — Shoddy
Swiudles in and about New York — Old Boats, old Satinets,
old Reputations and new Villainies — National, State and
City Movements — Is the Modern Sodom to be lost or saved? 172

CHAPTER X.

The departure of the Fire Zouaves — Public Confidence in them
— The scene of the 29th of April — Speeches, parades
and presentations — Retrospectory — How Burtnett Havi-
land kept -his Resolution — The extraordinary Friend
ship of Charles Holt, merchant — The Parting of Husband
and Wife — How an unlucky Box tumbled over, and how
Tim wrote a Letter inconsequence 197

CHAPTER XL

How Kate Haviland, the Teacher, was called to the Seat of
Judgment, and how she conducted herself there —
Humility and Arrogance — A Trap, and who fell into
it — What Kate Haviland overheard Behind the Curtain —
Mary Havilaud's Picture — A whole Hash of Revelations
— A Letter, and some anxiety about another 222

CHAPTER XII.

How Charles Holt, the Merchant, displayed his Delicacy and
became his own Errand-boy — Mary Haviland's Visitor,
with closer peeps at his Character — What the Merchant
found in an old Drawer — How the Visits multiplied and
the Net drew closer — A little "bribery and corruption"
— Kate Haviland's Researches, and how much she Dis
covered 241

CHAPTER XIII.

Voyage of the Fire Zouaves to Annapolis — Their Condition,
Character, and the Influences for and against them — Arri
val at Washington — Camp Lincoln and Camp Decker —
Burtnett Haviland's • Letters, and the Effect they pro
duced — The Regiment getting ready for work 264

CHAPTER XIV.

The Fire Zouaves on Secret Service — Landing at Alexandria —
The First Capture of the War — How the Zouaves became
railroad laborers — Taking the Fairfax Cavalry — A "Fire

28 CONTENTS.

in the Rear," of unpleasant character — A Startling Re
port—Death and Mad Imprudence of Col. Ellsworth 284

CHAPTER XV.

Charles Holt with a Call abroad— How he paid a Farewell Visit
to Burnett Haviland's — Miss Sarah Sanderson's Little
Amusement, and a Compact following — How the Mer
chant made a Confidante of Mary Haviland, and bade her
good-bye — Five Minutes in the room of Olympia Holt.... 303

CHAPTER XVI.

Kate Haviland's next and last Visit to Mary — City and Country
Morals, and the general appreciation thereof — A Woman
who had been crying, and who glanced too much out of
the Window — How the Two "agreed to disagree" — No
Letters, and the Story of the Guard-house — Miss Sarah
Sanderson's supplementary information 321

CHAPTER XVII.

More of Kate Haviland — Her biggest and most important Pupil
• — Ned Minthorne in a new character — Tobacco-smoke and
Impudence in the School-room — A new theory in Natural
History — How the Millionaire inspected the Common
People, you know! — Kate Haviland making another Dis
covery and executing a War-dance 338

, CHAPTER XVIII.

The Fire Zouaves at Shooter's Hill — Col. Farnham — Camp
Life and Equestrianism Extraordinary — The Major as John
Gilpin — Captain Jack's Company at Alexandria —
Whiskey, Darkey Sentinels, Pugilism and Dry Straw —
Captain Bob's Pocket-full — A word more of Burtnett
Haviland 351

CHAPTER XIX.

The Merchant coming Home — Wine at. the St. Nicholas — A
little "Urgent Business" — How Sarah Sanderson saw a
Ghost and found it Human — A Servant-girl " on leave" —
Alone in the House— The Tempter and his Victim-
How even a Man of the World may be puzzled — A sudden
Change and a Disappearance 369

CONTENTS. 29

CHAPTER XX.

The Battle of Bull Run — The " On to Richmond" cry, and how it
was obeyed — McDowell's '' grand army'' — The Advance —
The battle of the 18th July— Pause of the 19th and 20th
• — The opening of the 21st — Battle of Bull Run proper,
with a sketch of the Field and of the Corps-movements —
The Battle, the Panic, and the End 392

CHAPTER XXL

The Zouaves called to Battle — The Blow that struck Burtnett
Haviland at the same moment — A True Heart in its
Despair — The Zouaves in Battle — The three Charges and
three Repulses — End of a "Favorite Regiment" — How
Burtnett Haviland became a Rebel — How Charles Holt
took the road to Richmond — And how the Clerk ceased
to be a Soldier 413

CHAPTER XXII.

The Grief and Shame that followed Bull Run — New York on
the Twenty-second of July — How the City and the
Country mourned for their Supposed Dead — Mary Havi
land at Duffsboro — Aunt Bessy's reminiscences of Amos
Haviland — Sad News from the Battle in Virginia — How
the omens thickened and Mary Haviland temporarily
became a Widow 428

CHAPTER XXIII.

Hurrying to the End — An official Visit to Mrs. Fullerton, and
some Strange Operations between the Millionaire and
Kate — What the Teacher had found in the Drawer — A
"Burst-up" — Burtnett Haviland looking for a Wife —
Sarah Sanderson as a Cat in the Garret — Little Tim in
play once more — A re-union 444

' CHAPTER XXIV.

The Tobacco-Warehouse at Richmond — Some last passages in
the History of Mr. Charles Holt, Merchant — The Fuller-
tons in Secessia — Last glimpses of the Zouave and his
wife — How Kate Haviland and Aunt Bessy had a Visitor,
and the sequel — A farewell, and yet no farewell, to the
"Days of Shoddy." '. 403

THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

CHAPTER I.

COFFEE JOE, THE NEWSBOY — THE THIRTEENTH OF APRIL,
1861 — NEWS OF THE BOMBARDMENT AND CAPTURE OF SUM-
TER— PUBLIC FEELING ON THAT OCCASION — THE SUMTER
HOAX — DRY-GOODS AND PATRIOTISM — CHARLES HOLT,
BURTNETT HAVILAND AND TIM THE ERRAND-BOY — VOLUN
TEERING, GENEROSITY, AND WHAT TIM THOUGHT OF THE
ARRANGEMENT.

ROUND the corner of Ann Street into Broadway, at Bar-
num's Museum, broke a newsboy, and ran rapidly across
towards the Astor House and the mercantile streets on the
north side of the town, a bundle of papers under his arm,
just procured, after a tough scramble and a short fight, from
the Herald press-room on Ann Street, the door of which was
hopelessly beset by a multitude of the anxious disseminators
of general information.

Yery dirty faced was the newsboy, known at the "hotel"
which he patronized, by the soubriquet of " Coffee Joe," and
shabby and ragged were the ill-fitting clothes that sheltered
him from the statute against indecent exposures in the street,
and kept him out of the clutches of the police. The wreck
of a blue coat that he wore had once belonged to a full-grown
man, and the sleeves were turned back six inches, to expose
his grimy hands, while the draggled skirts nearly swept the
ground ; the patched arid greasy trowsers might have been
reduced from their original size in the same proportion ; one

31

32 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

boot and one shoe, both in a state of serious dilapidation, the
former run down at the heel and the latter guiltless of a
string, covered so much of his feet as did not peep out at the
yawning toes ; and the cap smashed low on the top of a
shock head frowsed by his last night in the Newsboys' Lodg-
ing-House and since uncombed, seemed almost certain to have
passed through a dozen previous ownerships and been at
least two or three times thrown away before it had come into
his possession.

Not a romantic or even a picturesque figure, certainly — this
type of the modern Mercury, who has not only supplanted
the ancient but outdone him both in speed and lying. And
yet he becomes a highly important figure at times, as he first
holds in his hand the intelligence which is to thrill thousands
of hearts with pride or sorrow. And in this instance, as
Coffee Joe hurried across Broadway, skilfully heedless of
carts or omnibuses, and took his way past the Astor House
towards some of the jobbing streets in which he seemed to
have special customers, he formed for the moment a leading
attraction. Others of the fraternity followed close behind
and scattered themselves among the throng that seemed to
fill the whole lower part of the city ; but Coffee Joe, who had
succeeded in securing the first instalment of the latest edition,
was ahead and consequently in great demand. Yelling as he
ran, a cry which seemed to strike with terrible force every
heart upon which it fell, he still did not pause to gather the
fruit of the excitement he had sown ; and the cries of " Here,
boy 1" "Give us a paper !" and the grasps made at the pack
age under his arm, did not prevent his making excellent time
to one of the corners above, and dashing down, with his cry
still ringing, into the mercantile precincts of Murray Street.
Let it not be supposed, meanwhile, that the fever of the
seekers after information who lined the sidewalk in front of
the Astor House remained uncooled ; for some of Coffee Joe's
compatriots came on rapidly and in good order, and the damp
sheets with half a column of intelligence and twenty lines of
sensation-heading, flew around as if they had been another
description of leaves and blown by another gale than the
breath of general anxiety.

*

T II K I) AYS OF S II O I) D Y . 33

When it is understood that the time was Saturday after
noon the 13th of April, 1861, and that the cry of Coffee Joe
was " Extry Herald ! Buruin' and surrender of Fort Sumter !"
the cause of all the excitement will be apparent. Nor is it
necessary to do more than merely allude to the feeling over
all the loyal States at that crisis, the events and the sensa
tions of which are yet a part of the late memories of this
generation. How about Anderson and his little band, up
holding the flag when all around it floated a bunting unknown
to Washington and the Fathers, had clustered a feeling not
more personal than natural. Ho\v the whole land had re
joiced when he removed from Moultrie to Sumter and seemed
to hold Charleston at his mercy. How the popular heart
had writhed over the exhaustion of his supplies, the miserable
failure of the attempt to reinforce him with the Star of the
West, and the action or inaction of a government which
seemed to have neither power nor will to sustain the national
honor. How a miserable hoax, with the statement that An
derson had attacked and reduced Moultrie and bombarded
Charleston, had a few daysbefoi-e created a wild delirium of
delight, that settled back to despair when the falsity of the
story was known. How Saturday morning had brought the
intelligence of the bombardment of Sumter and the outrage
on the flag; and how all day long the reports of the conflict
had varied but gradually grown more threatening, business
suspended, the newspaper offices and bulletins besieged, the
corners occupied by infuriated crowds, and the popular heart
sick unto death as the last rumor came that Sumter was in
flames and must surrender.

It was at the moment when this report had been for a few
minutes bulletined, when the first sheets of the extras an
nouncing it were just damp from the press and in the hands
of the excited newsboys, that Coffee Joe made his way, hot,
dirty and self-important, past the gesticulating crowd at the
Astor House and down into one of the commercial streets
leading to the North River, just above it.

" Extry Herald ! Last edishin ! Burnin' and surrender of
Fort Sumter !" rang his shrill cry, broken at every moment
by some one stopping him on the sidewalk, jerking one of
2

34 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

the sheets before he had fairly extricated it from the bundle,
and tossing into his hand the half-dime or five pennies that
the politic newsboy demanded for so late and so precious an
announcement.

He was half way down the street, midway between Broad
way and College Place. No matter what letter of the alpha
bet would supply the initial necessary to designate that par
ticular street. He was in front of a large iron-fronted import
ing and jobbing cloth-warehouse, the wide gilt sign over the
door of which may read, for the purposes of this narration,
" Charles Holt & Andrews."

" Here, boy I" in a loud tone ; and Coffee Joe ran up the
iron steps to supply an extra to one of the junior clerks who
stood in the half-opened door, pennies in hand. The trade
rapklly effected and the pennies pouched to the satisfaction
of the vendor, that important personage ran on down the
street with his accustomed yell, while the clerk, glancing for
an instant at the display-lines at the head of the first column
of the paper, shut the door and disappeared within.

It was later than the hour at which most of the jobbing-
houses generally closed their business for the day at that time
of the year ; but the necessity of packing and shipping cer
tain goods sold to Western customers, and the impossibility
that day of attending very steadily to any description of
work for more than five minutes at a time, had prevented the
store closing up ; and the principal and several of his clerks
remained at their posts, making occasional darts out into the
street and even up as far as the Astor House to catch the
latest news, and then returning to make some pretence of ex
amining accounts and comparing invoices, but really to talk
more or less connectedly over the events of that day for
which it seemed that all the previous days of the nation .must
have been made.

The interior of the heavy importing cloth-house of Charles
Holt & Andrews at that moment presented an appearance very
familiar to all those whose business has frequently led them
into places of corresponding character, but novel and instruc
tive to those who have either never seen such places at all,

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 35

or merely passed them with a glance in through the door
ways at what seemed to be wildernesses of merchandize.

An immense room, perhaps one hundred and fifty feet in
depth by thirty wide, with high ceilings finished with orna
mented cornices and a row Of slim fluted iron pillars extend
ing from front to rear in the centre and supporting the
weight stored in the stories above. No less than three pairs
of heavj- double doors opening to the street, but two of them
closed, with a "fist" scrawled on a piece of paper inside the
glass, and the direction : " The other door." To the left, in
front, nearly one quarter the width of the whole room taken
away by the space occupied for the outer stairway, closed in
with ground glass and iron lattice-work. In the centre and
towards the rear an oblong skylight, through which the light
came softened down from above, throwing into bold view
certain descriptions of goods that the buyer could be allowed
to view closely without damage to the interests of the seller.
At the right, a heavily balustraded stairway leading up to
the floor above, and below it another running in a parallel
direction but leading down into the dusky basements. All
around and on every side, covering every available foot of
space and making blocks of goods with aisles between, some
thing like the squares and streets of a city, woollens of every
color, cost and texture, from the finest and softest Saxony
broad-cloth that ever the Emperor put on, on a night when
there was " a good deal expected of him in society," to the
heaviest and clumsiest pilot-cloth that ever wrapped Pilot Joe
in a rough night off the Hook ; woollens in cubic roods of
unopened cases, and in great piles of uncut rolls that spoke
only of wholesaling on the most magnificent scale and
seemed sufficient to clothe all the generations that had lived
since the Flood. Here and there a costly velvet glittering
like a diamond among ordinary gems; and at rare intervals
some cube of brilliant stuff for the wear of the softer sex,
enlivening the whole like some sprinkling of the sex itself
amid the rough mass of its opposite ; but the great bulk
woollens of weight, of cost, and of undeniably male destina
tion. Up that heavy stair, down its opposite intothe regions
below, everywhere within those massive doors, the stock and

36 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

the general appearance of what is so well known as an ex
tensive cloth-house in the metropolis. Extending nearly
across the room at the rear, the counting-room, only separated
from the rest by a massive and high walnut railing, with half
a dozen desks, single and double, broadly lighted from the
rear end of the skylight, some of them bearing heavy can
vassed account-books, and others devoted to the more hurried
purposes of cashier and salesmen. A coal-burning Franklin
stove, not yet closed up for the summer and with a slight fire
of Breckinridge coal yet sparkling and sputtering there — an
immense safe built into the wall and one of the doors stand
ing half open — two or three high stools for the desks and as
many comfortable office-chairs for lounging during more idle
hours. Such was the picture presented, in all inanimate par
ticulars, at the moment wheir-Cofft-e Joe's extra flew into the
house of Charles Holt & Andrews, late on that April after
noon.

Mr. Charles Holt, the senior partner of the house, and head
of what was believed to be one of the most prosperous dry-
goods firms' in the city, had remained at his place of busi
ness, like his subordinates, somewhat beyond ordinary busi
ness hours, and sat leaning back on one of the office-chairs
within the railing, solacing himself with a prime Havana,
silent and apparently in thought, and his right hand listlessly
(or perhaps nervously) playing with the heavy chatelaine
guard-chain that dangled from his vest. The merchant might
have been forty years of age, or perhaps two or three years
past that mature period. He seemed above the middle height,
well-formed, in fine health and preservation, with dark Iwur,
dark eyes, and a placid if not pleasant face, wearing no beard
except a very short side-whisker running down to the level
of his mouth, — was faultlessly dressed in black, except that his
coat was an "office" one instead of frock or dress, and the
hat that stood on the desk near him was new, tasteful and
becoming. He looked the successful and, at the same time,
respectable man of business, to perfection; and something
more than the average keenness of observation was necessary
to perceive that there were certain lines under the eyes and
about the month, easily worn by passion at forty years or be-

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 37

fore, but seldom set even by hard work without some propor
tion of indulgence.

At one of the desks close beside him stood Mr. Wales, the
book-keeper, — a gray-haired, quiet and respectable-looking
man, running down a column of figures in one of his books,
before delivering them over to the care of Silas C. Herring
for the night. One of the clerks, Mr. West, was reading an
evening paper, standing and leaning against the railing on
the opposite side of the counting-room from his employer;
and another, Mr. Burtnett Haviland, was arranging some
packages of goods, at a little distance, into more becoming
order before closing.

As the latter is destined to play quite as important a part
in this relation as even his employer, he is entitled to the
same justice of a brief personal description. He was appa
rently not more than twenty-five or twenty-seven years of
age, a little above the medium height, rather slight than stout,
but with no impression of weakness or ill health. He was
brown-haired and hazel-eyed, wearing his broun beard ful\
but short, a little of the ruddy tinge of exercise and constanV
employment upon his cheek, dressed in a dark-gray business,
suit fitting him very loosely — altogether a pleasant, clever,
good-looking fellow, a successful salesman of dry-goods, and
popular enough in his general demeanor to make him a de
sirable acquisition in the dry-goods trade there or elsewhere,
though scarcely a man of peculiar mark to catch the eye of the
casual observer.

" See here, Mr. Holt, the thing is done !" said Foster, one
of the junior clerks — a bright-eyed, dark-haired, round-faced
boy of twenty — stepping hastily back from the door, with the
extra in his hand. " Sumter is on fire, and Major Anderson
has agreed to surrender!" Foster was very young, little
more than a boy, in feeling as well as years, and there was a
grief in his tone that might easily have been followed by
weeping and sobbing. Some of these very young people take
griefs and shames much harder, whether they have reference
to a lost love or a lost land, than they are likely to do after
a few years of hardening in the world. The lazy young scamp
was only teaching a great moral truth, when he turned over

38 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

on his bed at midnight, informed of the sudden death of his
father, said: "How sorry I shall be — in the morning!" and
dropped to sleep again. He was too busy, with sleep, to be
grieved then! The young have not only freshness of heart
to feel grief or joy, which their elders lack, but they are less
busy and absorbed, and have time to be sorry.

"Eh!" said Holt, the merchant, taking the paper from
Foster's hand and glancing his eye over the heading. " Yes^
so he has. The thing is done, indeed. Wales," to the book
keeper, "who knows but that may bring on a regular fight?
and then all those Southern accounts that have been doubtful
would not be worth a snap of the fingers!"

"Just so, as you say, Mr. Holt," said the placid and gray-
headed Wales. "There may be a war, and then I do not see
much chance for collecting them."

Charles Holt, the merchant, rose to his feet and walked two
or three times across the counting-room. His face looked
sombre, and his mouth was working with displeasure. Of
what was he thinking ? — the shame and wrong that had fallen
upon the country, or the fact that all the Southern accounts
were apparently gone beyond recall ? No one who saw his
face at that moment, could answer. There was an Eye look
ing down into his heart, meanwhile, and the sublime intelli
gence informing that Eye could have decided the question.
But it did not, to mortal mind.

Mr. Holt had laid down the paper after glancing at the
heading of the news, and Wales, after also glancing at it for
an instant, handed it over to Haviland, who stepped forward
a little eagerly to catch a glimpse of it after he had finished
his work. The clerk took it, threw himself hastily upon ari
unopened case. of goods, and seemed to be perusing the
double-leaded column with almost painful interest.

The front-door again opened at that moment, and a small
figure came in from the street and back toward the counting-
room. It was that of little Tim, the errand-boy, who had
probably never known any other name. He had a letter in
his hand, and brought it at once to Mr. Holt, displaying, as
he did so, a face and a figure equally singular. Perhaps it may
have been some idea of benevolence, and perhaps it may have

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 89

been mere oddity, that induced the merchant to take this
queer little morsel of humanity into his employ. He was
some fourteen years old, stout enough for his age, but not
too tull for ten. He had a shock head of stiff, straight red
hair, too unmanageable to allow of his putting on his cap
in the ordinary manner, that useful head-covering being ac
cordingly hung upon half a dozen tufts of the human scrub
bing-brush, springing from the back of his crown. His broad
face, which would not otherwise have been ill-looking, was
marred by a cast in the left eye which gave him the most
comical squint imaginable. Though the other eye was
straight enough, no one had ever been able to discover ex
actly the direction in which Tim was looking; and it was gen
erally supposed that he would have been invaluable as a spy,
from that qualification. An orphan, or worse, he. had been
for two years in the employ of Holt and Andrews, quick and
willing enough as an errand-boy, able to read the direction
on a letter or a package when not too badly written, capable
of making, very slowly and with difficulty, certain odd hiero
glyphics which were just decipherable as writing, and supposed
to have little knowledge or observation beyond. A couple
of suits of ordinary dark cassimere or satinett, with cheap
caps and coarse shoes to match, furnished the little fellow
with outer clothing for a year ; and he was known to sleep
somewhere over on the east side of the town, in poor lodg
ings but a little remove better than those of Coffee Joe. That
was all, known of him by his employers or those employed
with him : that was all, cared for him by any except perhaps
one of the whole number. And why was not that enough ?
What more of interest could there possibly be in the life or
fortunes of the insignificant errand-boy ?

Little Tim's one straight eye seemed to be quite sufficient
to make him aware that something unusual was agitating the
people in the store, and perhaps he had been listening to the
conversation that had taken place there during the earlier
part of the day, or caught something of the purport of the
talking in the street, for he squinted worse than ever in the
efi'ort to look serious and respectable, as he handed the letter
to Mr. Holt ; and then he fell back into his normal condition,

40 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

so expressive of abject poverty and dependence, by crowding
himself between two dry-goods boxes that were separated a few
inches, and sitting on the floor, his odd face peering elfishly
out, and his crooked eye seeming to play about like a flash of
heat-lightning as he twisted it hither and thither in the effort
to look into the faces of all his superiors at once.

Burtnett Haviland held the newspaper before his face with
one hand, while the other supported his shoulders on the box,
for several minutes — long enough to have read over the half
column of telegraphic announcement at least half a dozen
times. His face was sheltered from the others by the paper,
and as he uttered no word they could have no idea what was
the effect produced upon him or what were the thoughts
passing through his mind. But directly all doubt on the sub
ject was dissipated, for they saw him drop the paper, throw
his face between both his hands, and give vent to such sounds
as showed that the strong man was sobbing. Yes — sobbing ;
the word is written, and it need not be recalled. It has been
said that poor young Foster, the junior clerk, came very near
to shedding tears as he glanced at the heading of the intelli
gence and saw how the country had been insulted and dis
graced : here was a much older man than he, who should
have had more knowledge of the world and whose years should
have made him firmer and calmer — actually breaking into sobs
over the disgrace inflicted upon his country, as he might
have done over the body of an only child. Shame upon his
manhood ? No ! Shame upon the cold and sluggish heart
that does not realize how nearly deep feeling and true
courage are allied, and how exquisitely above all pathos are
those words of Bayard Taylor, concluding his picture of the
Crimean soldiers singing "Annie Laurie" and thinking
through tears of Mary and Norah at home, then marching to
death before the iron mouths of the Russian cannon on the
Malakoff, without a blench or a tremor : —

"The bravest nre the tenderest;
The loving are tho daring."

There are hearts that have bled over the wrongs and out
rages inflicted upon the country, since that day, and over the

T Tl E DAYS OF SHODDY. 4.1

fear of final loss which must ever haunt devoted love, — more
sadly than the same hearts have ever sorrowed for the death
and burial of their dearest. And if there is a hope that the
Land of the West will ever arise from the ashes of its humili
ation and put on the full glory which belongs to it as the
freest and greatest among nations, that hope must be born of
the belief that the God of Nations has been besought for it in
prayer, with such agonized wrestlings as would have pleaded
for the life of one dear beyond all expression, or for the safety
of a perilled soul.

But enough of this. Burtnett Haviland was sobbing over
the degradation of his country, beyond a question, and his
employer and his associates saw the strange spectacle. The
two mismatched eyes between the boxes saw the exhibition,
too, for the queer face was drawn into as near an, approach
to sympathy as it was capable of expressing, and there may
even have been moisture trembling under those short, stubby
eye-lids.

Not a word was spoken* by either of the persons present,
for several minutes. Each was thinking, without doubt, in bis
own way and from his own point of view, of the crisis which
had been reached and the evidence before them of even mor
bidly patriotic feeling. At length Mr. West said, illustrat
ing the mercantile habit of thinking that there must be ma
terial and action before results : —

"Talking about fighting — what are we going to do it
with ? We have no army. No army at all — not more than
eight or ten thousand ; and to punish those hounds as they
deserve we shall need a hundred."

" Humph !" said Charles Holt, though he added no words
to explain whether the expression was one of assent or dis
sent. The face of Haviland was yet buried in his hands,
though his sobs had ceased and he was evidently listening.
Who knows but he was a little ashamed to meet the gaze of
his companions, after such an exhibition of child-like emotion ?

" The Mexican War game must be played over again,"
West went on. "We must have men enough to sweep over
every one of the seceded States like a whirlwind "

"Enough to tumble down every house in Charleston, and

42 THE DAYS OF SHODDF.

sow salt where every blade of grass grows in the neighbor
hood," broke out young Foster, who had before with difficulty
restrained himself.

" We shall need at least an hundred thousand," repeated
West. How little he, or any of the others, realized the
miserable insufficiency of that "hundred thousand," for any
such purpose as putting down the gigantic rebellion, or how
many more than that hundred thousand would lie in soldiers'
graves before the struggle had more than commenced ! How
little even the President, surrounded by his Cabinet at Wash
ington, and preparing to call out seventy-five thousand troops,
realized the extent of the task upon which he was about to
enter ! How little has he, and have they, and have we, real
ized the stupendousness of the undertaking to restore the
Union, many a day since the 13th of April, 1861 !

"An hundred thousand? — a great number of troops!
Where can they be got ?•' said the gray-haired and prudent
Mr. Wales, whose habit of dealing with the hard reality of
figures necessarily made him exceedingly prudent in his cal
culations.

" Got ? by volunteering !" replied young Foster, who sprung
to the solution with a bound, as is the manner of line-hastened
youth.

"And I will be one of the volunteers !" cried Burtnett
Haviland, uncovering his face, springing from the box on
which he had been seated, shaking back the hair from his
forehead with the gesture of one who is throwing otf an
incubus, and standing firmly erect in the aisle between the
piles of dry-goods.

" You ?" asked the merchant, in a tone of surprise, which
indicated that if he had considered the raising of an army as
necessary or possible, he had thought of it as taking place
somewhere in Maine or Wisconsin, and by no means at his
own door.

" Yes, //" repeated Haviland. " Let the call be made, as
it must be made if they are not all traitors at Washington as
well as at Charleston, and I will be one,"

"And your family ?" asked the prudent Mr. Wales. " You
Lave a wife and child. Can you afford to leave them ?"

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 43

" God help me ! — I had forgotten them .'" said the young
man ; and deeply as he had been excited, a smile flitted over
his face at the thought that even for one moment he could
have forgotten the two dearest objects of his love. " No, I
suppose I cannot go, even when the call is made, for a
soldier's pay is very little, and I cannot leave Mary and
little Pet to sufl'er and perhaps to starve. Eh, well !
Heigho !"

During all the conversation just recorded, Mr. Holt, the
merchant, as before indicated, had seemed to take little in
terest in it and to be absorbed in thought. Now, there was
a marked change in his manner, though only a close observer
could have detected it. There was a new light in his eye, and
a slight flush upon his cheek, making him decidedly finer-
looking than before, while he rose from his chair, threw the
remains of his cigar into the grate and stood erect near the
railing, outside of which Haviland yet kept his position.
What could have produced this sudden change in the calcu
lating merchant and the cool man of business ?

" There may not be any such call for troops as you antici
pate, Mr. Ilaviland," he said, "and even if there should be,
I certainly was for the moment surprised at your idea of
quitting my employment to become a soldier. But we all
owe something to our country, of course ; and I can only say
that if a call for troops does take place, and you really wish
to do your share in revenging this gross insult to our flag,
you need not think so discouragingly of the pecuniary affair.
I should of course continue your salary during your absence,
and in the event of any misfortune to yourself I believe that
I should be liberal enough to see to it that your family did
not suffer."

There had been persons disposed to say of Charles Holt,
in previous days, that he was not the person to display
Quixotic liberality — that he never entered into a contract
unless he had at least a fair probability of getting the best of
the bargain. How must those narrow and illiberal persons,
had they been present at that juncture, have acknowledged
the falsity of their allegations and owned the grandeur of the
spectacle of the American merchant standing boldly up in the

44 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

first hour of his country's need, and offering to pay out of
his own coffers for the services of a soldier to swell the ranks
of her defenders !

At least such was the aspect of princely liberality which
the proposal bore to Haviland, who allowed his feelings to
master him sufficiently to step forward to the railing, grasp
his employer by the hand (a liberty which he was by no
means in the habit of taking), and thanking him out of a full
heart.

" I thank you indeed, very much, Mr. Holt," he said, " and
I am too poor to refuse your kind offer if I really have occa
sion to become a volunteer. There may be no occasion ; but
if there is, be sure that I shall be among the first, now that
you have made my mind easy as to the duty I owe my
family, — and that I shall try to keep you from being a loser
by your generous kindness."

" Oh, you will have occasion," said young Foster, who had
no doubt by this time fully planned out half a dozen cam
paigns to avenge Sumter, and who certainly had acquired the
soldier-fever to quite as great an extent as Haviland. " Per
haps I ought not to ask you, Mr. Holt," he went on, after a
half moment of hesitation, " but suppose that / should find
myself in the same condition, would you continue my salary
and look a little after the welfare of my old mother ?"

It could not have been that the merchant was any respecter
of persons, in providing prospective soldiers before they were
demanded; but certainly his face fell a little at this question,
and he did not answer in quite so high and patriotic a tone :

" You ? Why — yes — I suppose so."

It is just possible that there was even a shade of vexation
in his voice. Perhaps he knew that if the country really did
need protectors, enthusiastic boys like young Foster were
not likely to make quite such reliable soldiers as older and
better-seasoned men like Haviland. Perhaps he merely
hesitated in pity for the extreme youth of the boy, thinking
of the chances of the battle-field, the possible grief of the
mother over her son, and all that class of emotional specula
tions. Perhaps — but the other hypotheses must develope
themselves in due course.

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 45

During the course of this conversation the spring afternoon
had closed nearly into dusk, the remaining business of ti,e
clay had been completed by the junior clerks and the porter,
no more extras were bawled in the street — in fact no more
were needed or looked for, now that the catastrophe was
known ; and the house of Charles Holt & Andrews closed
for the night, the persons we have named separating with
widely different feelings. It is not necessary, at this period,
to follow the reflections of the merchant as he wended his
way through the still-excited and yet gesticulating crowd on
the corner of his street and Broadway, to catch one of the
omnibuses for his up-town residence — what those reflections
really were, will be much more satisfactorily developed in
the action which soon followed. Grave old Mr. Wales took
a car for his quiet home on the west side of the town, his
head a little confused, between the figures of his daily habit
and the strange excitement which had just burst in and sent
them flying hither and thither. West was not so excited by
the thought of the peril threatening his country, as to forget
the little game of billiards which he had promised to play
With one of his brother clerks at a saloon not far from the
Park, after dinner ; and he strolled away to keep his engage
ment. Young Foster, who still would keep jumpirig at his
conclusions, almost forgot his hat as he left the store, in the
excitement of the national crisis and the thought how proud
his old mother would be to see him in a gray uniform pre
cisely like that worn by the Seventh (he had made up his
mind that his corps, at least, would certainly dress in that
highly becoming manner), and how much prouder still she
would be when, after performing some wonderful feat of
arms as a common soldier in the ranks, he should come home
radiant under a somewhat rapid promotion and with the epau
lettes (the shoulder-straps were not then known as they are
to-day) of a general !

Burtnett Haviland, as he left his place of employment and
walked for some distance up Broadway before taking the ear
which was to bear him to his home, bore a heart filled with
conflicting emotions. He had within him, perhaps, none of
the materials of the hero except courage and devotion. His

46 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

reading, though somewhat extensive and very gerieri , had
not led him much among the demigods of romance and
romantic history — lie knew of them, but had never sat at
their feet and worshipped. Possibly he had never even been
aware that his heart beat more warmly for the honor and
welfare of his native land, than that of any one of the first
half dozen men he might happen to meet in the street; and
possibly he would have been as much shocked at the very
idea that he could do any thing patriotically heroic, as he
could have been by the knowledge that he had done some
thing dishonest and shameful. He was simply a whole
hearted and patriotic citizen, proud of the flag under which
he lived, and the country that had been growing so fast in
power and glory ; grateful for the peace and protection which
had been accorded him under the best system of government
known to the history of the world ; pained, shocked and
horrified at the thought that red-handed traitors against such
a government and such a country could be found ; and deter
mined, so far as in him lay, that the means should not be
wanting to crush out the rebellion which began to threaten
the national existence. He had felt and resolved thus, as a
matter of duty — not because he thought of being, or wished
to be, a hero.

But what a change had one short hour made in his position
in the world ! An hour before he had been engaged in the
peaceful pursuits of mercantile life, with no thought that he
should ever change the sphere of his action, — a happy hus
band and father, with no intention of ever being separated
from the objects of his love, for any longer period than an
occasional day passed in business or recreation. Now he
stood committed to his companions, his country and his own
heart, to don the garb of a soldier, to separate himself for
perhaps a long period from all that he held dear in the world,
and to plunge into a mad exposure of his life on the battle
field. For not for one instant had he doubted, after reading
the contents of Coffee Joe's extra, that a war for the preserva
tion of the Union must come, and come at once ; and not for
an instant had he faltered in his determination, expressed in
that moment of excitement, to be among the first to respond

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 47

to any call made upon the citizen soldiery of the land. Of
the life that was to be perilled he thought but little — fewer
men think of the exposure of their lives, when going into
difp-culty and danger, than the popular belief would warrant.
But Mary and Pet — his dear little wife and the one child of
his love — he did think of the possible parting with them,
with a prescient anxiety little short of agony; and it is not
strange that he passed along the street, and saw the groups
of gesticulating men gathered upon every corner, and saw
the old flag drooping from flag-staff and shop-windo'w, with
such a feeling as if he had become suddenly set apart and
separated from the world — a determined but a sad-hearted
martyr to evil times and inevitable duties.

Tim, the errand-boy, also went home, with his head quite
as full of new sensations as either that of his employer or his
employer's clerk. As he plunged down Frankfort Street and
across the Swamp towards the garret where his straw pallet
was nightly spread out, he muttered words between his teeth
which were almost as unaccountable to himself as they may
possibly be to the reader.

" Don't know 'bout that !" he said. " Boss was a big sight
williner to hev Misser Hevlin go 'way, than he was to let
Fosser go, an he keers a great deal the mos' about Hevlin,
for Fosser ain't much use, no how. Wonner what he wants
Hevlin to go 'way fur? Peru him ! he does want Hevlin to
go 'way — I know it ! Missers Hevlin cum down to the stove
tother day, and I seen Boss look at her so funny! Pern
him ! I've seen him look at her two'r three times, jes so —
jcs as if his mouth was a-waterin' an' he wanted to eat her
up. Wonner if big men like Boss ever do eat up wimmeri,
when they're other fokeses, or wot they want of 'em ! Dern
him ! he'd better not try it on Missers Hevlin, cos Misser
Hevlin kep all them big boys from lickin' me, more'n a good
many weeks ago, an I been wishin' he was my fader ever
since. Dern him 1 don't know !" and here Tim's specula
tions ceased to rumble out of his misshapen- mouth, though it
is highly probable that he thought the more intently because
he closed the vent which had so far given him partial relief.

Is it as true to-day as it was many a century ago, that the

48 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

" weak things of this world" are " chosen to confound the
mighty ?" And had the little squinting errand-boy, from his
loop-hole between the two dry-goods boxes, seen at a glance
what had been entirely overlooked by other and straighter
eves ? We shall see.

CHAPTER II.

ATJNT BESSY WHITE AND KATE HAVILAND — THE PROFITS OF
SCHOOL-TEACHING IN THE COUNTRY — A LAST REMINDER OF
THE REVOLUTION, AMOS HAVILAND — A HURRAH, AND FLAG-

RA1S1NG ON A SPIRE TlIE NEWS OF SUMTER — TlIE

APOTHEOSIS OF THE AMERICAN FLAG — A CRASH, AND A

SEARCH FOR IT — SHARPENING THE SWORD — TlIE DEPAR
TURE.

" GOING away to-morrow. How can we spare you ?" and
the hand of the speaker moved caressingly over the chestnut
hair of her companion, as if there was something gained by
touching in as many places as possible the form that would
soon be beyond even the reach of sight.

" Yes, aunt, going away to-morrow," was the reply, with
a return of the caress, in the laying of the brown head close
up against the sheltering shoulder, and a closer pressure of
the other hand that was not busy smoothing the glossy hair,
"lam sorry to leave you all, especially you and grandpa;
but you know that I can do better in the city, and that I am
really tired of this ceaseless labor in the school-room. Why
aunt," and there was a quiet smile creeping away from the
corners of her mouth as she spoke, "do you know how
much I have really made at trying to drum knowledge into
those stupid little heads, in a whole twelvemonth ?"

" No, Kate," was the reply of the aunt. "I suppose not
much, but enough to "

" Buy a pair of Congress gaiters, exactly. You know,
aunt, that my strongest point, as a teacher, is arithmetic. I

THE 1) A Y 3 O F SHODDY. 49

think I have Coaxed and pounded more of that into the little
numskulls, than any thing else. Well, I have been applying
it to my own labor and its receipts, and I find that after
laboring seven hours a day for a whole year, the amount I
have cleared by teaching a country school, over and above
what it has cost me for my board, clothes and other necessary
expenses, has been exactly two dollars and fifty cents !"

"Why, child, it can't be possible!" said the aunt, the
caressing hand still moving over the brown hair meanwhile.
"Is that all you have made? Well, it isn't much, is it!
But the board, you know —

" The board I could have had for nothing ? Yes, I know
it, aunt ; but what would you have said of my teaching
school at all, if I could not even pay my board and was
obliged to be dependent upon charity after all !"

" You were always so sensitive upon that point, Kate,"
said the aunt, "that "

" So sensitive that I was right ; was I not, aunt ?" and the
young face for a moment looked up at the elder one bent
above it, with so bewitchingly gentle and loveable an expres
sion, that the answer was a kiss, and the words in reply only
came murmured through it :

" Yes, yes, Kate, you were always right !" Then after a
pause. "But we shall be so lonely without you, when you
are away in the great city."

"And yet I shall not be far from you, aunt," said the young
girl. " Xot fifty miles ; and I can run home and see you any
afternoon when I can get away. I shall have only two chil
dren to manage, at Mrs. Fullerton's, instead of thirty Or
forty; and think of my receiving more money for doing that
little labor than for teaching that whole noisy school! I
must go, I should go, you know, dear aunt."

" Of course you must — of course you should," was the
reply, " and it is only my selfishness at thinking how lonely I
shall be when you are gone, that makes me talk in this way
as if I could hold you back by speaking. Go, Kate, fulfil the
duty to which you seem to be called, and God bless and keep
you." The hand laid on the young girl's head had stopped
its caressing movement, now, but it still rested there, and
3

50 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

beside it lay another, and they wore both giving the dear
pressure of love and blessing, as the lips syllabled that short
and fervent and unstudied prayer.

" Hark ! what was that ? It sounded like a hurrah, and
yet it could not be, "here on Sunday morning."

The speakers were Mistress Bessy White, widow, and her
niece, Kate Haviland, the only daughter of a dead brother.
And the place where the conversation occurred was in the
doorway and on the porch of a pleasant little farmhouse,
in the out-skirts of what may be here designated as Duffs-
boro, a country village within forty miles of the commercial
metropolis, and on the edge of one of the great battle-fields
of the Revolution, that is oftenest named from the intimate
connection of /he Father of his Country with the details of
the conflict which took place there on one hot and bloody day
of 1777.

The humble but comfortable-looking little farm-house, only
a story and a half in height, with a porch that was covered
with roses and vines in the later season, stood half-hidden
among the trees that bordered the main road leading into the
village, and on the southern slope of a gentle knoll that gave
it cool breezes and seemed to elevate it above the dust of the
road and the level of the travel that passed along it. An
hundred yards past the house, to the west, the road curved, and
the houses of the village could be seen glimmering through
the trees, in summer, rising on the slope of an opposite and
higher hill, with a little village church standing near the
summit, and its sharp white spire thrown out clear against
the blue sky. The houses of the main village could be seen
even more easily than usual, in the soft but clear air of that
April morning, for a slight shower had laid the dust late the
evening before, and the spring had only brought fonvai'd the
foliage to that condition of bursting from the bud in green
and satin-like sprigs, graphically designated by the country
farmers as "the size of a crow's-foot." Not only the church
spire but the church itself, and the outlines of most of the
houses of the village, could be seen through the trees, look
ing from the porch of the farm-house. A little later in the
morning, and the sound of the bell from that spire would be

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 51

heard ringing pleasantly across the intervening fields, calling
the villagers and the country people to morning service ; and
half an hour still later, the road and the path that bordered
it would be dotted with people in carriages, and people on
horseback, and people on foot, all pressing on through the
fresh April sunshine, at least to the form of worship of the
Benevolence whose smile it seemed to typify.

Perhaps that April sunshine might have peeped through
many a window and glinted through the opening foliage of
many a broad tree, before it rested upon a fairer vision than
that on the piazza of the little farmhouse — age and youth,
both in the perfection of physical beauty and mental good
ness.

Sixty years might have passed over Mrs. Bessy White,
widow, and they had of course done their work, but they had
done it gently and lovingly as beseemed the good. Her
brown eyes had lost something of their light, but no opacity
in their circumferences indicated that the sight had been seri
ously impaired ; there were many wrinkles on the once fair
face, but they seemed to have crept and nestled there,, not
been graven there by the sharp touch of *passion or the agony
of long sorrow ; the hair that peeped beneath the front of the
widow's cap was heavily grayed, but it was grayed evenly,
there were none of the heavy dashes of white in the midst
of the dark, denoting intense suffering, mental or physical,
and the gray hair was almost a halo round the head ; the tall
form was bent a little, but a very little, as it showed beneath
the carefully pinned kerchief and under the gray morning-
dress, but it did not need a keen eye to see that that form had
once been almost a sculptor's model, and that it had lost little
of its roundness or elasticity as thirty crept on to forty, and
forty to fifty, and fifty to the sixth decade. A very pleasant
picture, to any eye capable of taking in the beauty of coming
age, would have been the motherly woman, even had she
, held beside her no foil to throw her into contrast without un
dervaluing her.

No fitter foil could have been presented, than that shown
in bonny Kate Haviland, twenty-two and as fair that day as
her aunt had probably been forty long years before, of medium

52 THE DAY'S OF SHODDY.

height, two inches shorter than the matron beside her, she
was not eclipsed and obscured by a morning-wrapper, as she
might have been at the same hour in the city ; and her neatly-
fitting dress of light print showed a plump and well-rounded
form, broad though slightly sloping at the shoulders, pliant
at the waist, the chest well thrown forward and the figure
erect, and a springy little foot occasionally peeping out from
beneath the skirts and patting the floor of the piazza, to show
that nature, careful of the face and figure, had not disdained
care even upon that portion which spurned the ground.

We have said that nature had been careful of face as well
as figure ; and yet hundreds of observers might have been
found, not willing to concede that Kate Haviland could lay
any positive claims to beauty. They would have been out
numbered, however ; for only a small proportion of mankind,
are aware that beauty cannot be found except in features
moulded after the Medician Yenus or some other pattern of
Greek antiquity, and there are quite a large proportion of
observers who find it in any combination which pleases them,
makes them happier when they behold it, and indicates the
possession of true goodness. The head may have been a
shade too large for due proportion with the body, especially
in the frontal region, and the brow may have been a little too
fully rounded for perfect elegance. Then, again, the very
dark eyes, almost black, with sweeping dark lashes, may have
been a little too close together, and the nose too much de
pressed at the root, so as to rise a little too obtrusively from
the level of the face. But all this was forgotten in the wealth
of chestnut brown hair, swept plainly back from the full fore-
he-ad and presenting on the back of the head a luxuriance
that owed nothing to false braids and painful matching among
the stock of the wig-maker — the clear cheek, very fair, but a
little browned by the sun and showing a rose fighting with a
dimple in the centre — the lips full and with a little pout,
slightly petulant, perhaps, but much more merry, loving and
mischievous — and the full chin and rounded throat, exhibiting
rather determination than weakness of character.

Such was the picture presented by Kate Haviland, the
whilome countrv-school-mistress who was about to abandon

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 53

that any thing-but-sinecurical profession for the life of a pri
vate school teacher and governess in the city ; and Aunt
Bessy had certainly full warrant in personal attraction, as she
had in the knowledge what a good, and true, and brave and
loving heart lay within all this, for the long continued caress
with which she seemed to protest against the young girl's
leaving her.

There was another portion of the picture which would
have been presented to a spectator who stood on the steps of
the portico in front and looked towards the house, but which
was not taken in by the knowledge of either of the persons
just introduced. The two had stepped out from the door,
during their conversation, entirely upon the floor of the
piazza, and the instant after they had done so the door had
been filled by a third person. This was an old man — very
old, to all appearance ; his once tall form thin and bent, his
hair only a mocking memory of the thick locks that once
clustered on his head, and the little remainder white as the
driven snow ; his poor old face one mass of deep wrinkles
crossing each other like the line work on a fine steel-engrav
ing ; hjs eyes opaque and apparently fixed on vacancy ; his
lower jaw dropping and the toothless mouth exposed, as if
from very inability to kee'p the nerves at sufficient tension to
hold it in place ; his withered hands so thin that they were
little more than claws, one keeping its trembling hold on the
top of a stout bone-headed cane and the. other an equally
trembling grasp on the lintel of the door, the whole frame
shaking as if it would soon tremble itself away to the dust
of its original elements. Old — very old ; standing on the
last crumbling verge of possible mortality. And all this had
Amos Haviland warrant to be, for he had once fought, though
then only a boy, in the closing battles of the Revolution, and
had himself seen the proud face of Washington and heard the
cheers that went up from the thinned ranks of the patriot
army, when Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown. He had
afterwards fought with Brown on the northern lines, in the
battles of 1812-15, and won a commission there which had
given him a sword ; but he had always regarded that portion
of his career as secondary in glory to the other, and while

54 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

the brain had remained clear enough to make his relations in
telligible, they had almost always been of what he saw when
a boy during the great struggle, instead of what he had done
and seen done in the flush of his manhood. Old — very old :
death seemed almost to have forgotten him, for ninety and
ninety-five had yet escaped the spoiler, and he stood on tho
verge of that almost impossible age — one hundred ! A few
months more would see him a centenarian. He talked little,
now, and not very intelligibly, though he had still enough
brain remaining to understand what was said to him, and
still enough left of his decaying vigor to crawl out from his
little room on the ground floor, leaning on the arm of his
daughter or one of his grandchildren, or tottering along alone
on his heavy cane. He had crawled out, now, without either
of his relatives being aware of his presence, and stood thus
framed in the door behind them, looking out, through his dim
eyes and in silence, on them and on the clear April morning.

" Hark !" again said Kate Haviland, when a moment had
passed after her last exclamation. " It is a hurrah — I can hear
the words distinctly ! What can it mean, here on Sunday
morning ?"

" I do not know, my dear, I am sure," answered the aunt.
" It must -be some of the wild fellows from the city, who
have no respect for the day, coming here to disturb us."

Another moment of pause, and then

" Look !" said the young girl, whose eyes were something
keener than those of Aunt Bessy. " See — there are people
on the roof of the church yonder, and one is climbing to the
top of the steeple !"

" Oh no, my child, that cannot be," said Aunt Bessy.
" They certainly would not permit such work up at the vil
lage, on the Sabbath, unless the church was on fire ; and I do
not suppose they would hurrah about that."

(The good old lady had probably never been present at a
fire in any of the metropolitan cities, or she might have been
aware that there is no occasion in all the line of accident or
adventure, more likely to provoke noise or bring out any num
ber of shouts of the most enthusiastic description, than a fire !
But of that hereafter, possibly.)

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 55

" One of them is climbing the steeple," persisted Kate,
while the old lady was rubbing her spectacles for a more ac
curate view. " There, he has reached the top and is busy
fastening something there."

" True as you live !" said Aunt Bessy, when she had pol
ished her spectacles, put them carefully upon her temples
and fairly surveyed the strange proceeding. " The church
must be on fire, or they would never allow such things on
Sunday ! But why don't we see the smoke ?"

" No — see, aunt !" cried Kate, with a strange tremor in
her voice, and a still stranger trembling at her heart, as she
saw the figure that had been at the top of the spire glide
down again, then a dark mass of something soft and loose-
looking go up as if it ran upon a rope, and the moment after
a flag floated out on the westerly breeze from the very top
of the steeple. " See, aunt, it is the American flag !"

" I declare it is !" exclaimed the old lady. " Well, I be
lieve I love that flag \vell enough to see it anywhere else, but
of all the pranks I ever saw in rny life, that is the oddest to
climb the church steeple and hang it there on a Sunday
morning !"

" Aunt !" said the young girl, a sudden thought striking her,
and the recollection of the troubled news from the South com
ing into her mind, though they at the little farm-house had
heard nothing since some days before, when Anderson was
known to be leaguered in Suinter, and the government was
talking of trying to reinforce him — "Aunt, it is no freak!
Something has happened ! that flag does not go up for noth
ing 1 Who knows ? Perhaps Major Anderson has taken
Charleston, or burned it down I I hope he has, and then they
may raise flags anywhere they please on Sunday morning —
on the top of the pulpit, if they like !" . .

"Hush, Kate, you are crazy!" said Aunt Bessy. "You
are a good girl, but you must not think of putting flags in the
pulpit. They don't belong on churches, my dear !"

"Anywhere — everywhere !" cried the young girl. "After
the Cross, the flag of one's native land is the holiest thing in
the world. I would not have it put over the Cross, but any
where beneath it, or even beside it. As there does not hap-

56 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

pen to be a cross on the top of our steeple, I think they can
not get the flag too high, if there is any news from the South
that demands it."

The young girl did not know it; but that day and that
hour, the morning of Sunday the fourteenth of April, 1831,
was proving that others besides herself believed in setting the
flag beside the Cross, or immediately beneath it. She saw
one flag go up ; it was the type of ten thousand floating up at
the same hour. She heard a faint hurrah, from a few voices:
the sound was but the echo of a shout that was jarring the
very heavens, as it went up from a thousand miles square of
loyal American territory. She saw, though faintly and afar
off, what she and others may remember with pride to the last
day of their lives, whatever may be the after fate of the nation
— the apotheosis of the American Flag.

It will long remain a question, perhaps, whether that mo
ment was not the niost glorious in all American history. Nor
has the history of any land its parallel, in the sudden spring
ing into life and vigor of a feeling that had slept and seemed
to be dead or dying. The flag had been the emblem dishon
ored — it was now the emblem worshipped. A week before,
it had hung as a limp rag from the flagstaff, scarcely noticed —
apparently powerless — degraded for the first time in its long
record. It had seemed, during the days and weeks through
which the authorities at Washington had paltered and wavered,
as if any reprobate might have torn down that flag, spat upon
and trampled upon it, subjected it to any shame and degrada
tion, without any man born under it having nerve and hope
enough to strike the traitor to the earth. A few hours — a few
days — and what had been the change, in country and in city !
No longer, then, a weak and inanimate thing, drooping from
flagstaffs scarcely able to support it, and moved by no breeze
that had power to shake out its folds, — it blew out, that Sab-
. bath morning, free and clear to the heavens whose morning
flush, and blue of noon, and midnight glory of azure and star
light, were in its stripes and stars — blew out on the winds of
the free and unconquered North, the breeze that fluttered it
added to and strengthened by the voices of twenty millions of
people, who had never before known that flag to be dishonored,

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 57

and who had resolved to give up their lives before they would
permit dishonor to be entailed upon it. Let some rash hand
have been then laid in violence upon the bunting which had
before seemed of so little consequence to the men of America
— let some rash hand but have been laid upon it then, where
the eyes of men, or women, or even of children, in the loyal
States, could see the outrage, and the life of the owner of
that hand would not have been worth a pin's purchase. He
had better, at that moment, been in the midst of that howling
pack who in the ultra South were bearing the flag to mocking
and dishonored burial — he had better been there and dared be
true to his country, than in any poi'tion of the loyal States
and fallen under the anger of those who dared not be false
to it!

Should the American Union have crumbled away to ruin
the very day after, and the old flag under which it had won
its three 'quarters of a century of triumphs been pulled down
and laid reverently away forever, in curious museums and the
old arsenals where they gather the warlike relics of the past
— could this impossible thing have occurred — never saw any
flag on earth so bright a close to its destiny as that which
would then have been recorded of the Flag of the Union.
One moment eclipsed, it had burst at once into a glory and a
sacreduess unmatched by any banner ever borne since that
behind which the crusading hosts marched out to Palestine.
Not one man, but the collective strength of all the loyal
States, had hugged it anew to the heart. Not one had gazed
upon it with a new devotion, but every eye that could see the
blue sky and the spring sunlight. Not from one building in
a hundred had it waved, as in ordinary times, but from every
flagstaff, and front, and roof, and awning-post, where it was
possible to display the emblem of the national pride. Not
from one mast or gaff at our docks, had it floated, but from
.the spars of every craft that bore one yard of bunting, from
the proudest ship to the humblest fishing-boat. Not alone
had it waved in flaunting silk and enduring worsted — in great
flags that might have headed an army, — but in every size of
flag and description of material, from the standard large
enough to wrap a dozen dead gloriously in its folds, to the

58 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

penny toy-flag of the boy. It had been seen on the stage-
top, on the harness and bridle of the cartman's horse, on the
lappel of the gentleman's coat, on the point of the lady's par
asol. From hotel, and store, and private house, it had waved*;
and raised to the top of Bunker Hill Monument of the Puri
tan, it had been answered by the flap of its mate from the
spire of Old Trinity of the Churchman, and even that an
swered back by the flutter of still another mate from the dome
of the Cathedral of the Catholic. Had ever flag been so
honored ? Had ever devotion to a flag told so pregnant a
story, of what it costs to be a great nation, and what it must
cost to plunge one into disruption and destruction ? And
would not the Flag, could it have disappeared forever from
national view the very day after that apotheosis, have ended
i s career more gloriously than any formed by the hand of
man since the creation ?

But all this, which is to-day a matter of history and of
historical speculation, was unknown and unthought of by
Kate Haviland, in whose heart was mei'ely bubbling up that
feeling of true though blind patriotism which has seemed to
be the characteristic of woman in all countries and in all
ages, — as she saw the emblem of her country's pride flung
from the spire of the little village church at so unseasonable
a time as to indicate that some event of importance must
have occurred.

Her words of devotion to the flag, which have been so long
Interrupted by this digression, had indeed scarcely left her
lips when her attention \vas attracted by a horseman riding
rapidly down the road from the eastward, and about to pass
the house toward the village. She recognized him at the
same moment as Ben Davidson, a stripling brother of one of
her girl scholars ; and as the young man happened to have
his head turned toward the house, the recognition was
mutual. He drew rein as he came close to the gate, threw
his hand over his shoulder toward the church, and said :
\ " Do you see the red, white and blue there ? They have
got it out, away at the top of the steeple !"

" Yes " said the young girl, " 1 see it. But what does it

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 59

mean ? Has any thing happened ? Have you any news
from the South ?"

" Why, haven't you heard ?" asked Davidson, speaking in
a loud voice, but evidently in too much of a hurry to think
of alighting. " The secessioners attacked Sumter on Friday ;
it is burning and must be surrendered to-morrow. We got
the news last night, up in the city. Winter and Drexel came
down this morning, and they are having a terrible time there.
Everybody going crazy, and they're about as crazy up yonder
at the village. Flags going up everywhere, I guess."

" Were Major Anderson and all his men killed ?" asked
Aunt Bessy, in a voice agitated enough to have belonged to
a much younger woman.

" Nary a one of them," said Davidson. " They have
promised to surrender the fort and come away. But that
don't make any difference. There is going to be a war,
sure. They have got some of the city papers down at
the village, and they say there will be a call made in a
day or two — perhaps to-morrow — for troops to put down the
rebels. What do you think of that ? That's what the flag
means, upon the top of the steeple yonder. But I mustn't
stay any longer. Good mornin', ladies. G'lang, Bob !" and
away galloppcd Mr. Ben Davidson, to do his late share
among the Hag-raisers and other national demonstrators up
at Duffsboro.

Neither the aunt, the niece, nor the young stripling who
gave them this intelligence, had seen the old man standing in
the door. Had they done so, they would have seen that he
put one trembling hand up behind his ear, to catch the words
of the horseman more plainly, then that he seemed to shake
and shiver even more than his habit, and that he turned and
tottered away from the door just as Davidson gallopped off.

" Good heaven !" exclaimed the young girl. "They have
fired on the flag and burned Sumter. And there is to be a
war. Oh, how I wish I was a man !"

" I am very glad you are not, my dear," said the old lady,
and the look of love with which she regarded the young girl
showed that she really was grateful6 for the impediment of
sex which would keep that fair young head from danger when

60 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

war should break upon the land. " There will be enough men
without you, and God is over us all !"

"Yes, aunt, God is over us all," answered the young girl.
" But he does nothing for us without human hands, and he
allows some of us to work confoundedly hard for the bread we
eat and the clothes we wear. Calling for soldiers all over
the country. And only think how many thousands they may
need! And then if they should not come ! But they will
come, aunt, if there is one spark of the spirit of the old times
left among us — and I hope there is !"

" I hope so," said the aunt. " But come — this will be your
last day at church, and I suppose they will hold church to
day, even if there is a flag flying from the top of the
steeple."

" Yes, aunt, it is nearly time, now !" and the two turned
away from the piazza, to go in. But they were not to go to
church that day, though perchance to enter a place equally
sacred.

As they entered the door from the portico, there was a loud,
ringing crash heard in some portion of the back part of the
house, a clank as of metal, ending with what seemed to be a
heavy thump on the floor. Both aunt and niece started,
though without the least idea from what the sound could have
proceeded.

" Something must have fallen in the kitchen, I think," said
the aunt, after a moment's pause, and she passed through the
hall, directly back, to see whether some marauding dog or
cat had not disturbed the equilibrium of a pot or a kettle, and
sent it crashing down to the floor in that manner. Kate had
a fancy that the sound came from the story above, and passed
through the door to the right and up the stairway to ascer
tain. Neither discovered any thing out of due order, and the
moment after they again met in the hall.

" Something has tumbled down somewhere," said the young
girl, oracularly. " Things don't make such noises as that when
they are lying still and behaving themselves." Suddenly the
light went out from her face, and an expression of intense
anxiety took its place.* "Aunt, maybe it was in grandpa's
room! Only think — suppose he has -."

THE DATS OF SHODDY. 61

"Oh, you clear child, don't frighten me to death !" exclaimed
Aunt Bessy. "If he has fallen so as to make that noise, he
must be dead as a stone by this time !" So he would have
been, for she quite forgot that the poor old man had not
weight enough remaining to produce such a crash, had he
fallen through the entire house, from garret to cellar'! " Dear
me, Kate ! come with me ; I am so frightened !" and together,
aunt and niece, both trembling with apprehension, opened
another door to the left, passed through the half-darkened
" best room," or parlor, and opened another door which led
into the little room of old Amos Haviland. There and then
a sight was presented which fully explained the sound they
had heard, and which neither of them will ever forget, to
their dying day.

The poor old man (as ice know, though his relatives did
not) had heard Ben Davidson telling of the attack upon Sum-
ter and the flag. How much his dimmed sense had caught
of the truth involved in the attack, of the plans and purposes
of the rebels, and of the President's call for troops, can never
be known until the secrets of all hearts shall be revealed ; but
that he had caught something of the peril of the nation, and
of the need of soldiers, was evident; and it was the most
touching thing in nature, to see how the old fire lived yet —
the merest slumbering spark, but pore and steadfast, in the
very dying ashes of his mortal frame.

Over the little looking-glass in his room, for many a long
year, had hung the sword used by him in the war of 1812 — a
heavy old sabre, brass-hilted, and in an iron scabbard. The
old man had wished to have it hung in that place, on the op
posite side of his little room from the bed, so that he could
look upon it and recall the past, even when too weak and ill
to remove from his pallet. And there it had remained — not
even taken down when the careful housekeepers dusted the
room ; and it is probable that the old man's hand had not
rested upon it for a quarter of a century, however often his
dimmed eyes may have taken in that parallel to the reminder
of the weak and broken Kichelieu, of the time when he "at
Rochelle did cleave the stalwart Englisher."

Coming in from the door, after hearing the news brought

62 THE DAYS OF SH'ODDY.

by the horseman, the centenarian hatl evidently first paid a
visit, to the kitchen (the next room), and possessed himself of
the large file used for sharpening knives at the table. Then
he had crawled back to his own room, managed to mount a
chair, and tried to take down his old sword. The chair had
given way beneath him, or his weak limbs had refused their
office, for he had fallen to the floor, and the chair lay over
turned at a little distance from him. At the same time the
sword, loosened from its nail, had come clattering down,
striking the little table under the glass and then the floor,
making the loud noise they had heard upon the piazza, and
flying out of the scabbard, as his weak hand could never have
extricated it from the rust in which it wras imbedded. The
poor old man had been so badly hurt by the fall, as to be un
able to rise (he would never rise again, it seemed probable,
till the day of the last resurrection) ; but he had managed to
grasp the hilt of the sword, and to retain the file ; and at the
moment when Aunt Bessy and Kate entered the room, in a
cramped sitting position, and evidently in such suffering that
he uttered a low moan at intervals, he was trying to draw
the file over the dulled and rusted edge of the weapon, sharp
ening it for use !*

" Grandpa ! dear grandpa !" spoke Kate, kneeling down
beside him, while Aunt -Bessy seemed so much alarmed that
she could scarcely keep her feet and could not utter a word.
" Grandpa ! dear grandpa ! are you hurt ?" But the old man
did not heed her — perhaps he did not even hear her. His
eyes, less opaque-looking and more life-like than they had
been for years, still seemed to be staring at vacancy ; he was
still trying to draw the file across the rusted edge of the old
sword ; and as Kate knelt beside him, she could catch his
broken words — very low and fitful, and intermingled with
moans, but yet intelligible to her watchful ears :

" Sharpen it — sharpen it — rebels — fight — soldiers — sharpen
it — rebels — fight — soldiers."

Who shall say that this was not the Spirit of 'Seventy-Six
bequeathing its Massing and its injunction to the men of

* The incident of the "Sharpening of the Sword" is no effort of the
writer's imagination, but taken from a relation of real life made at the time.

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 63

'Sixty-One — sharpening the national sword destined to exe
cute judgment upon the foes of the land and the enemies of
the human race ?

With the help of one of the farm-hands called in for that
purpose, Aunt Bessy and Kate carefully and tenderly
removed the old man to his bed and disposed his tortured
limbs there in comparative comfort. Aunt Bessy was about
to hang up the sword again, but Kate interpreted aright the
look of his eye and the clutch of his hand, and laid it on the
bed beside him. There the weak right hand grasped it and
never released its hold until it let go of life. His eyes closed
after a time, and the moan ceased. He was dropping away
to his last sleep — the excitement of the moment and the
shock of the fall had been too much for the frame worn and
enfeebled by nearly a hundred years. He seemed to know
but one thing — the news of the morning; for the only utter
ance they caught was an occasional repetition — very low and
broken — of the words he had been uttering when they entered
the room :

" Sharpen it — sharpen it — rebels — fight — soldiers !"

When the two grieving relatives, kneeling by his bed-side
— grieving, and yet with no bitter tear to shed over so ap
propriate a close to a life so much prolonged beyond the
common lot of mortality, — when they and the half-dozen of
neighbors who had gathered into the death-chamber at their
call, heard the words no more and saw that the right hand
had released its weak clutch upon the sword, they saw, too,
that the old soldier had departed on that long march some
time ordered for all of us by the Great Captain.

When Kate Haviland, after the death, went out again to
the piazza, it was afternoon, the stars and stripes were yet
waving from the top of the spire of the little church at Duffs-
boro, and she caught the rattle of the drum of the little
militia company, somewhat prematurely called together, —
from the village. " There are no Sabbaths in war," says
some writer who must have passed through a national strug
gle something like our. own ; and the centenarian soldier,
without his dulled senses knowing the fact, had died with
the old flag flapping above him, and the fife and drum — most
martial of all martial music — sounding n« if for his departure.

CHAPTER III.

THE FULLER/TON HOUSE ON EAST TWENTY-THIRD STREET —

MllS. FULLERTON AND MlSS DORA A COUPLE OF PEOPLE OF

DECIDEDLY SOUTHERN PROCLIVITIES — NED MlNTHORNE, AN
EXCELLENT CATCH AS A HUSBAND — TWO OR THREE ROWS, AS
"PARLOR ENTERTAINMENTS" — MR. CHARLES HOLT AS A SON-
IN-LAW.

A HANDSOME house on East Twenty-third Street not far
from Madison Avenue. A very handsome house, brown-
stone with high stoop of the same material, very wide front,
the window-caps sculptured into fruits, grape-clusters and
vine-leaves, and over the door a heavy mass of fruit and floral
sculpture, enclosing an oval shield, with — alas for American
aristocracy ! — never a single quartering of arms to place upon
it. The basement windows heavily barred, perhaps to prevent
the servant girls looking out at the grass-plats in the front
yard. The railings of the front yard very heavy and massive.
The door-way from the landing, very deep and heavy, in dark
oak, with lace curtains showing through the glass panellings
of the inner doors. At the windows on the drawing-room
floor heavy lace curtains, and outside of them at each window
one red and one yellow side curtain of rich satin heavily
fringed and tasselled, evidently for the placing of sallow
faces, or their opposites, in proper lights for display. With
in, a wide hall, guiltless of oil-cloth or carpeting on the stair,
and hall 'floor and stair-steps in polished oak. A Flora, in
marble or plaster (the casual observer could not say which) in a
niche at the first turn of the stairs. Still further within the
penetralia, a double parlor or drawing-room on the first floor,
with arch between, the carpets of velvet tapestry, the walls
painted in the faintest blush rose color, and the heavy foliated
cornice matched by a massive floral centre-piece supporting a
largo chandelier of glass over bronze, with a dozen burners
G4

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 65

and a perfect cloud of dripping and tingling reflectors. The
furniture in dark wood and hair, with an oval piano standing
behind the arch, and a harp near it. On a marble centre-
table, in front, a sweet little bust of Mozart, under a glass
shade, and half a dozen picture albums and books scattered
around it. On the walls some ten or a dozen pictures, all
landscapes in oil, and all (as close observation would show)
compositions of European scenery or transcripts of Floridian
swamps or Carolina coasts.

On the floor above, in front, a large parlor ; the walls in
the same color, the furniture corresponding with that below,
but more massive : a heavy bronze chandelier, with shades of
porcelain ; an upright piano beside the door opening from
the hall; heavy rose worsted and white lace curtains at the
very deep windows — each really forming an alcove ; a centre-
table with a few books ; a card-table, with a chess-board lying
upon it; the few pictures on the walls, engravings, 'mostly
portraits, and these, again, of Southern statesmen or soldiers.
This room evidently affectod by the family and by those
visitors who had enough of intimacy to be received for
pleasure and not for the mere show of acquaintance. The
whole house rather a success than otherwise, in point of style,
and needing either wealth to support it, or excellent credit.
Mrs. Fullerton, the lady whose name figured on the cards sent
out from it, considered it as decidedly the most stylish house
in town, asking nothing from Townsend or John Anderson ;
and all her visitors, who wished to be received a second time
on as good footing as that achieved at first, took especial
pains to make the elegance of the appointments (as u-ell as
the beauty and grace of the hostess and her family) matters
of no infrequent mention.

Three persons occupied the parlor on the second floor, at a
certain hour on Sunday evening the Fourteenth of April.
The first (by seniority as well as by virtue of her proud posi
tion) was Mrs. Olympia Fullerton, widow of Randolph Ful-
Irrton, purser in the United States Navy, now 'some years
deceased. She was understood to have been born, some five
and forty years before, near Columbia, South Carolina, the
wealthy daughter of the still wealthier Judge Brixtone, of
4

66 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

that locality; while her husband, dating back a few years
earlier than herself in age, had sprung into existence not far
from Carrolton, Maryland. She had been educated (so it
was said) at one of the female academics of Virginia, and
had consequently escaped any infection of Northern heresy, to
which so many Southern young ladies, a few years ago, were
so dangerously exposed while pursuing their studies in the
private academies of New York and New England. Mr.
Fullerton, never resident in the North until long after his
marriage, had consequently escaped any Northern infection,
in like manner; and it might have been said, with truth,
daring the life-time of the worthy purser, that a more decided
and thorough-going couple, as to Southern sentiment, could
not very well be found wit'hin the limits of the free States.
Their four children were not much more likely to suffer from
any Puritan taint, than the parents, especially as they were
zealously guarded against evil influences ; and when Mr.
Randolph Fullerton, purser in the United States Navy, one
evening undertook to go on board the United States brig
Guineahen, then lying at Port Mahon, in the Mediterranean,
with more bottles of wine under his uniform than exactly
conformed to the navy regulations, and fell overboard from
the boat and was drowned, — his widow, even in the midst of
her grief, did not forget the obligations due to herself as a
Southern lady, and had always since kept up that broad line
of demarcation which should exist between those who are
sound on the Southern institution and those who have any
disposition to waver. The money upon which the style
of the house on Twenty-third street (not at all diminished
since the death of her husband) had been kept up, was sup
posed to be derived from her paternal estates near Columbia ;
and we are not at all prepared, at this stage of the narration,
to say that the popular belief on this point erred in any
particular.

Mrs. Fullerton, occupying a cushioned rocking-chair nea;
the window,- and rocking backwards and forwards in what we
may before have designated as a peculiarly American fashion,
was a decidedly pretty woman, in spite of advancing years,
and under the gaslight might well have been taken to be ten

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 67

years younger. She had never forgotten the art of so dis
posing herself, on chair or sofa, as to throw out the best
points of her tall and well-formed figure to the best advan
tage ; her dark evening-dress, with only one heavy gold chain
around her neck, and descending to her watch and waist-belt,
— only this too much in the way of jewelry, well threw out a
complexion that might have been a shade too dark, if falsely
relieved by bad dressing ; her very dark eyes seemed to have
lost nothing of their youthful light ; and there did not seem
to bo one thread of silver in the dark hair, with its slight
wave, drawn back from her proud forehead, and tastefully
disposed above the small ears and under a head-dress which
seemed to be a marvelous combination of her own hair, vel
vet, and alternate beads of pearl and jet. She had a proud
lip — no one could deny it — a little full and pouting, but
wonderfully well-shaped ; her nose was almost classical in
the fineness of its outline ; and the whole result was, as we
have before indicated, that she looked much younger than her
actual age, and a decidedly pretty woman.

Place aux dames — all of them — here as well as elsewhere ;
and the next sketch of the group must be that of Miss Eudora
Fullerton, usually denominated Dora, the eldest unmarried
daughter of the hostess. It needed almost a second look on
the part of the person fii'st introduced to the two — to believe
that they could be mother and daughter; so different seemed
to be the style of their faces in almost every particular. And
yet, strangely enough, after that second look, no one could
doubt the. relationship, even if previous information left the
matter an open question. There was an indescribable some
thing, no one could say precisely what, common to both,
which only needed observation to develope itself. Was it in
the eyes ? — yes, perhaps so ; for Dora Fullerton, though she
had inherited her father's light-brown hair, and was really a
blonde in that particular, had taken her mother's dark eyes —
eyes dark enough to be counted as black, at a little distance ;
and the combination of dark eyes and fair hair, was that
singularly effective one, so much prized in some of the
Southern countries of Europe, and sometimes seen, here,
when Mrs. Thalia Wood takes a fancy to put away her own

f)8 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

dark hair and appoar in the characteristic wig of the " Fair
One with the Golden Locks."

As to the other features of her face — the young lady had a
singularly bold and prominent forehead, a little too high and
a little too full, the intellectual evidently predominating over
the feeling and passional (which some of us do not hold to be
" an excellent thing in woman") ; the nose was sharp cut,
clear, handsome and decided, without a fault in its outline,
but perhaps a shade too high from the face at the base ; the
checks were handsomely moulded, and with a suspicion of a
dimple at times in each, but too thin for perfection ; and the
complexion was that blending between brown and fair, which
seems to combine the charms of both and leave nothing to
be desired. The bust was v.ery full and mature, for her age
(less than eighteen) and for the supple slightness of arm and
shoulder ; and it was evident that when standing she would
be taller than the middle height, and a most proud and
queenly (not to say defiant-looking) figure. Nothing has as
yet been said of the lower features of the face, because here
admiration ceases, and the gazer, half spell-bound in admira
tion, shakes off the influence and becomes unpleasantly free
a,gain. All the lower portion of Dora Pullerton's face was
too thin and insignificant for the upper. The cheeks fell in
too fast, and actually hollowed below the level of the nose ;
the mouth was too small, the lips too thin, proud, and hard,
with indications in a droop at the corners, that they might
easily be sullen and petulant ; and the chin was small, sharp
and weak — the very worst index of character presented in
the whole catalogue. A pretty girl, certainly, and a stately
figure in parlor or ball-room, and yet one at whom the close
observer might be disposed to look more than, twice before
putting the happiness of a life-time into her keeping. It
should have been said, before this time, that the young lady
wore a light stuff evening-dress, with ear-rings and a fair
display of jewelry, the picture being thus concluded.

And even this long description must be followed by
another — that of the third person of the group on that Sun
day evening. And here the apology of the old French royal
ist again comes into play ; for as he could only have his head

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 69

cut off, and make the bother appertaining to that operation,
once, — let it be remembered that these people will never need
a second photographing. Beside Miss Dora, who was loung
ing on the sofa under the full light of two or three of the
burners of the chandelier — sat a gentleman on that occasion.
A man of perhaps twenty-five years of age, tall and rather
slight in liguve, dressed in dark clothes in the very extreme
of the mode, with a head of very light brown curling hair,
side-whiskers long and pendant after the Dundreary pattern,
blue eyes, well-cut features, except a slight snub in the nose,
and a face that might have been good-looking enough, and
even handsome, if relieved of an expression of lazy, smiling
inanity, very nearly approaching to idiocy in appearance.
His collar was garotte to an extreme, though that fashion
was only then being introduced ; the diamond ring on his
right little finger would have furnished the stock in trade for
a jeweller of moderate capital ; the cornelian seal ring on his
left was nearly large enough for stamping an official docu
ment, and must have made sad havoc with his innumerable
pairs of gloves from Bajeux and Courvoisier ; and his patent-
leather boots, which he generally extended at full length
when sitting, could only be matched in the magnificence of
their polish by his extensive and immaculate wristbands, that
only needed to be ruffled to excite the envy of the departed
spirit of some beau of the time of Charles the Second, or roue
of the Regency of the Duke of Orleans.

This person was known as Edward Minthorne, Esq., the
name being taken from the innumerable invitations to bulls,
parties, suppers, conversaziones, opera-parties, etc., which
continually reached him in the season ; or from the covers
of the perfumed billets, boxes, hampers, and other packages,
which at snort intervals came to him while lounging away
the warm season at Newport or Saratoga. There were some
persons who called him Xed Minthorne ; but they were peo
ple of quality and condition, and could do bold things ; for
Mr. Minthorne was known to be the last heir and representa
tive of one of the richest patroon families of Xew York City,
worth a million in his own right, with nobody able to say
how many more millions might come to him at the death of

70 T H E D A Y S OF SHOD I) Y.

various relatives who must drop off out of his way in due
season. He was a fool, of course — had never been known to
utter ten words that could be construed into strong common
sense — had never done any tlwng, except eat, drink, ride,
smoke and dawdle — and appeared to be about as capable of
taking care of himself,- if placed in circumstances of want or
difficulty, as a kitten of ten days old. But then, what occa
sion had he to take care of himself? "Was he not rich enough
for ten men ? And what vicissitude could possibly fall upon
his landed property up the river or his houses and stores in
the city, leaving him to the mercy of the world ? None what
ever; and the good people of the set in which he moved,
especially the marriageable young ladies and the prudent mam
mas and guardians who managed them, petted and idolized
him as if he had been a young demi-god.

All but one, that is to say ; and the exception was just
then very near him. For more than a year before the period
of this story he had been a frequent visitor at the house of Mrs.
Fullerton ; and for more than six months all the other mar
riageable ladies had virtually given him up as beyond their
reach, he being understood to be under a tacit if not an ex
plicit engagement to marry Miss Dora Fullerton. She did
not treat him with studied respect — not even with common
civility, at times. Was be not "hooked," to use a vulgar,
but very expressive word ? Could she not hold him, no mat
ter what was her line of conduct ? She rather thought she
could ! She had brains — he had none : what hope could
there be for a man placed at that disadvantage, crawling out
from under the moral thumb of a pretty and attractive wo
man, no matter whether she treated him with marked respect
or the very opposite ? Not that she dreamed of openly in
sulting him — of course not. That would have been ruin to
her hopes ; for even fools sometimes know when they are
kicked, though they may be oblivious when a large pin is
thrust into them. And all her " hopes" lay in the wealth of
Minthorne, once in possession of which she would ride over
the world at her leisure. She had been taught by her mother —
and in fact needed little teaching to that end, — that it was not
a matter of the slightest consequence whether she loved or

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 71

even respected the man wh-jm she expected to marry; that
every man and every thing born or made north of Mason and
Dixon's line was of course wretched, plebeian and contemp
tible ; but that, with a sufficient quantity of gilding, even
one of these poor wretches could be matrimonially swallowed.
She had determined to swallow Minthorne, as the richest
morsel (pecuniarily) that had yet come within her grasp, or
could be likely to do so, unless she went to Europe (a step,
for certain reasons, not practicable) or unless one of the fa
vorite aspirations of certain people on this continent should
be carried out, and an order of nobility created for her to
pick, at her own sweet will, among the dukes, marquises and
earls thus scattered over the land. She had determined to
swallow him, but not gingerly, or with any indication that
she was the obliged party in the engagement. On the con
trary he must be made to know and feel his place continually
— to come at her will and go when she pleased ; and to do
the young lady justice, there really was every appearance
that she had made an accurate calculation. Ned Minthorne
made no " scenes" and no harsh remarks whatever, when he
came to fulfil an engagement to drive her out, and found her
just stepping into the carriage of one of his rivals. He
never sulked, when he came in to spend an evening and found
his inamorata enjoying a fit of sullenness which she called
"headache," and paying him no more attention than she
might have done to a dog whose place was at her feet. He
never presumed to argue with her at any length or with the
least ill-feeling, when her ultra-southern sentiments came out
in their full strength and she took the notion into her head to
denounce every Northern man, without a single exception,
as a poor, white-livered, thin-blooded milksop, not fit for the
wiping of the shoes of a real Southern lady. While the
secession had been going on, he had borne with all this and
as much more as she chose to heap upon the North, including,
of course, her declarations that the Southern rebels were
patriots, the Northern loyalists all brutes and would-be tyrants,
and the idea of ever getting back the seceded States into the
Union, something to be laughed at, loathed and spat upon.
At the moment when our observation falls upon them, Miss

I

72 T H E D A Y S O F S 11 O D D Y .

Dora had just subjected her devoted slave to one of those
tasks which seem to have been devised by the malignant fates
for the special torment of impatient mortality. She had set
him, with a very stylish but signally inconvenient paper-
folder, to cutting the leaves of a book of several hundred
pages, and insisted upon having them all cut before she
deigned to look at one of them, while she would certainly
look at not more than two or three before she would throw it
down in disgust. (Let us put in another parenthesis here,
to say that the man who first practised the enormity of send
ing out a bound book with the leaves uncut, should have
been compelled to cut book-leaves with a lead-pencil or a
pair of scissors, during the whole remainder of his existence,
in which case he would perhaps have suffered a punishment
somewhat commensurate with the injury he has inflicted upon
humanity.) The leaves of this particular book were thin and
limp. Ned Minthorne's fingers were not the nimblest in the
world, and he was making a decidedly slow job of it, while
the beauty sat idle upon the sofa, and pouted and " poohed"
and patted her foot upon the carpet in the most violent
dissatisfaction at his slow proceedings. At last she broke
out :

"Well, slow-motion, how much longer are you going to be
before you allow me to read a word ?"

" Really, Miss Fullerton, I can't say — that is — yes I can,
in a minute." And the millionaire, while the young lady
was so stupefied with anger that she could only stare at him
in surpris-e, actually laid down his folder, counted the number
of leaves he had cut, and the number yet remaining to be ex
perimented upon, drew out his watch and made a calculation
in the rule of three, that if he had been so many minutes
cutting a certain number (about one-sixth), he would be able
to complete the task in about such a period.

" You are a fool !" exclaimed the young lady at this junc
ture ; and the unfortunate book, which had been temporarily
laid upon her lap, found itself flying across the room with
singular rapidity, and going plump into the bosom of a very
decollde lady represented in an engraving on the opposite
wall.

THE DAYSOF SHODDY. 73

"Really, Dora "was all the expostulation the young

man was able to utter, for the divinity cut him short with: —

" Don't talk to me! You are the most provoking man in
the world, and you are never satisfied half so well as when
you can put me out of temper and get me to make a fool of
myself !" It is just possible that the spectre of a lost million
or more had loomed up the instant after she committed the
unladylike action, and that she felt the necessity of calling
herself a fool in order to balance the account of having desig
nated him in the same manner the moment before.

But she need not have given herself any trouble on that
account, for the stupid placidity of Mr. Minthorne's temper
did not seem to be in the least disturbed. He merely looked
at the Southern girl as she bounced up from the sofa and
then sat down again, and remarked, in the most matter-of-
fact manner possible : — ! 9

"Well — ah — yes, I believe that I do like to see you a little
out of temper, Miss Fullerton, better than when you are in a
good humor, because then you are so demned piquant and
pretty, you know !"

" Do you really think me pretty ?" asked the young lady,
her face all smiles again in a moment, and her narrow mind
(so sadly belying that full forehead) always cayght by com
pliments to her personal attractions. She was so gracious,
now, that her hand managed to drop upon if not into that of
Minthorne; and Mrs. Fullerton, who had heard and seen all
the preceding from her place in the easy chair, and thought
for the moment that her dear Dora might be playing the game
of temper and superiority a little too far, — felt completely
reassured and dropped back to her rocking with a sweet
motherly confidence that her darling was doing honor to her
training and managing her future husband with much ad
dress.

But calms are sometimes short and treacherous, especially
in the tropics, and the worst of squalls follow them, habitually.
Mr. Xed Minthorne, putting his hand into the skirt-pocket
of his coat to extricate his handkerchief and fill a little heavy
time by dabbing its perfumery to his nose, accidentally drew
out a newspaper, which fell upon the carpet. He reached

74 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

riown to pick it up and return it to its position, but Miss
Dora took it (not to say jerked it) from bis hand, opened it, and
the sensation headings of one of the daily Sunday papers stood
revealed, prominent among them the " Dastardly Outrage on
the American Flag!" "No Terms to be Hereafter Kept
with the Rebels !" etc., a statement that the Cabinet were in
session at Washington and that a large body of volunteers
would be called out to put down the rebellion, flanking the
account of the Sumter outrage in another column. Instantly
the face of the young lady fired up, her black eyes darted cruel
lightnings, her whole frame seemed to be quivering with in
dignation, and she broke out, dashing down her hand upon
the paper : —

" You dare, sir, to bring such a paper as that into this
house !"

For just one instant there was a curious expression on the
face of Xed Minthorne. A person who had seen it and who
did not know what an absolute ninny the young man was,
would have believed it to be keen, searching and self-confi
dent. Of course any person who had seen it and who did know
him, could only have supposed that he had been mistaken.
At all events, if there had been any thing more than usual, it
was gone in. an instant, and the face was just as placidly
stupid as ever. He merely replied in a tone of very great
surprise : —

" Why— that paper ? That is only the !"

" Only the !'' almost yelled the young lady, tearing the

paper to atoms meanwhile and dashing down the pieces on

the carpet. "Only the ! And what more could it be, I

should like to know I A nasty black abolition paper, trying
to stir up our slaves," ("our" was good, in that connection)
"to murder us in our beds ! I would not have believed it of
you, Mr. Minthorne! Would you, mother! Oh! oh! oh!"
and either overcome by her emotions or thinking that tears
ought to make their appearance at about that period, for the
effectiveness of the tableau, — she fell back upon the sofa and
sobbed, with her face hidden by both her handsome white
hands.

Ned Minthorue was affected. If Dora Fullerton was

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 75

charming when angry, she was overpowering when in tears ;
and the young man had proceeded so far as to put both his
hands on one of the young lady's, and endeavor to remove it
from her face, with a few endearing words, when Mrs.
Fullerton, who had likewise been watching this scene in the
drama of courtship, thought it politic to interpose.

" Mr. Minthorne," she said, rising so suddenly from her
chair that the young man did not see her until her stately
form loomed immediately before him. " Mr. Minthorne, I
really feel it to be necessary, in this instance, to interpose the
authority of a mother. Whether you have intended to do so
or not, this is twice already, within a few minutes, that you
have managed to excite my daughter in a manner very pain
ful to me as well as to herself."

" But, madam — " began the offender.

" I beg you will allow me to finish," said the stately woman,
while Miss Dora still kept her hands over her face, displaying
not only the hands but the rings to excellent advantage.
" You should have known, sir, that the wrongs and outrages
suffered by the South have made a great impression upon
M.S- /"

" You allude to the — the whipping of the slaves, setting
blood-hounds on them, and all that sort of thing — pshaw !
that is the other side ! You mean the — the — " and here he
broke down. Had any man, not an acknowledged ninny,
dared to hint at the things conveyed in the early part of that
sentence, in the house of Mrs. Fullerton, perhaps not even
the recollection of several millions at stake could have pre
vented her ejecting the offender with ignominy. But Min
thorne was such a fool, and he had so evidently blundered,
that she did not think it either necessary or politic to pay
any attention to the remark ; and she merely went on :

" We have been brought up, Mr. Minthorne, both of us,
among a society and in a section of country where high and
chivalrous feeling has some regard paid to it. You are some
what excusable if you have not been surrounded by the same
influences ; but I ask it of you, as a mother who has the
welfare of her daughter very much at heart, that at this
moment when the miserable hounds here at the North are

76 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

heaping still worse insults upon our dear down-trodden
South, you will not introduce into this house any thing
calculated to injure our patriotic feelings, and especially
those of my daughter, who is very sensitive and not a bit
strong."

There was only one thing that Ned Minthorne could possi
bly say at that stage of the peroration, and he said it.

" No, madam."

At which gentlemanly promise, and a sufficient time having
elapsed to make that measure proper, the hands of the young
lady came gradually down from her face, and her tears ceased,
though there was an occasional catch in her breath, bearing
the same relation to a sob that is borne to a hurricane by a
gentle spring zephyr.

"As for that thing /" and the dignified lady touched the

with her foot as it lay upon the floor — " it has always

been a lying, deceitful, abominable abolition sheet, hounding
on Sumner and Greeley, and doing every thing it could to
trample upon every Southern institution and every Southern
feeling !"

When it is known that the sheet alluded to had never up
to that time, and has never since, referred to either of the
agitators named, without abusing them — that it had been up
holding and defending the Southern side of the national
question, during all the difficulty, so continually that its
loyalty to the Union was more than doubtful — and that not
many days after the time treated of, its editor and proprietor
was obliged to throw out the flag from his windows, under
the threat of having his building torn down and being himself
taken out and hung, — the justice of Mrs. Fullerton's adjec
tives may be estimated, and some calculation may be formed
of what description of Northern sheet it would have needed
to be, that she did not designate as " lying, black abolition."

" There — there, mother, go back to your seat and don't say
any thing more about it !" said the gentle and impulsive Miss
Dora, who probably felt well assured that her lover could not
answer her mother's tirade if he would, and who had by this
time enjoyed quite enough of the peculiar sensation of the
quarrel, to be anxious for another novelty. Her mother was

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. r<7

about obeying the gentle behest, and the white hand would
in another moment have fallen again on that of Minthorne,
sealing a full reconciliation, — when there was a ring at the
bell, a foot heard ascending the oaken stairs, and the moment
after Mr. Charles Holt, merchant, entered the room.

Each of the persons previously there rose to meet him and
shake his hand, establishing the fact that he was an intimate
acquaintance. But in his salutation of " Mother !" to one of
the ladies and his familiar mode of saying " Dora !" to the
other, something more was revealed. The merchant was a
son-in-law of the handsome hostess of the Southern proclivi
ties ; and a sister of the impulsive young lady on the sofa
presided, or had presided, over his house and heart. Whether
from his family connection, or from some other cause, he did
not seem to be at all in awe of these terrible people ; and a
closer observer than Ned Minthorne appeared to be, would
have seen that something very like forced deference, un
accountable in the descendants of the chivalry of the South,
towards a man who had not a drop of Southern blood in his
veins and who was a mere merchant, was actually paid to
him.

" Torn papers on the floor !" he said, after the greetings
were over. " What does that mean ? Eh, Dora ?"

The young lady colored as if she had before been known
to tear papers (and other things), and as if that phase
of her disposition was no novelty to her brother-in-law.
" Only an old paper," she stammered out after a moment,
"that I — that has not been picked up."

" Xot very old — only this morning," commented Holt,
stooping down, picking up a portion of the torn paper, look
ing at the date, and then throwing it down again. " However,
one day is an age now-a-days. Of course, you saw what it
contained ?"

The inquiry seemed to be addressed to both mother and
daughter. Neither answered, and Minthorne looked as if he
had sense enough to feel for both and to be uncomfortable.
Holt went on :

" I did not allude to the Sumter business — that you saw
last night, — but to the statement that the Cabinet had been

78 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

all night in session ; that active measures had been decided
upon, and that there will probably be a call for troops, to
morrow, over the whole country."

Strangely enough, neither Miss Dora nor her mother, who
had been so outraged at the very sight of the heading-lines
conveying the intelligence of that proclamation, a few moments
befure, — went into tears or raved over the insults offered to
the South, now ! What a mysteriously calming if not de
pressing influeuce the merchant seemed to exercise, the mo
ment he entered the room ! Was it merely the iron will of a
hard man of the world, radiating out and affecting insensibly
all whom he approached, or was it something more ?

" There is a devil of a row brewing," he continued, meet
ing no answer. " They will need fifty or a hundred thousand
ni'-n, and that is no small army. I wonder whether they can
all be raised immediately ?"

" If they are, the whole fifty or a hundred thousand ought
to be hanged before they had marched one mile !" broke out
Mrs. Fullerton, who could endure the restraint no longer.
"And the man who would help to raise one of them — "

"As /shall do," interrupted the merchant. " Well ? — the
man who would help to raise one of them, ought to be — "

" Bah !" was the singular word with which the dignified
lady concluded the sentence which had threatened to end in
such a wholesale denunciation.

" Come here, Dora !" said the merchant, in a tone very like
one of command, walking towards one of the front windows
at the same moment. The young lady obeyed, while Mrs.
Fullerton rose from her chair near the other one, and left the
room, as if to avoid hearing what was to be said, and Min-
thorne, who had walked over to the other side of the room
and picked up the unfortunate book, sat down again upon the
sofa, and busied himself with it, with the air of a man who
felt that for the moment he was very much in the way, with
a very dull prospect of escape.

" Put that in your pocket," said the merchant, handing
Dora a very small package, when they were at the window
and out of ear-shot of the millionaire. " Of course you do
not want to have him see you receive it?"

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 79

" No ! no !" answered the young lady, in a low voice that
had in it something approaching shame and agony.

" I thought not 1" said the merchant, his tone something
that might, under other circumstances, have seemed a sneer.
" What the deuce is that noise ?"

"Oh," answered Miss Dora, "only Myra and Mildred,
squabbling, as usual, in the room above. They think they
are obliged to go to bed too early, and they are almost un
manageable, altogether."

" Singular !" said Holt, in a tone that conveyed his impres
sion of the fact not being singular at all.

" They will make less noise in a day or two, or they will
probably get killed," replied the affectionate sister. "We
have just been employing a new governess, somebody named
Ilaviland, from the country ; and we hired her because she
had been a country school-mistress, used to flogging children.
When she conies, if she doesn't keep those young wretches in
order, out she goes, and that in a week."

" Right," said the merchant, playing with the tassel of the
window-curtain. " Make everybody obey, around you, or
out with them ! Haviland, eh ? Oddly enough, I have a
clerk with the same not-very-common name, or had one, for
he is going to volunteer, and ha ! ha ! — do you remember
what your mother started to say a moment ago about 'the
man who would help to raise one of them' ? — I have promised
to pay him his salary while he is gone, and take care of his
family."

" You ?"

" Yes, I!"

"How much of a family has he ? and how old is he ?"

" What business is that of yours ?" asked the merchant, not
over politely. Then he smoothed his tone, half laughed, aud
answered :

" Oh, he is young — twenty-eight or thirty ; and his family,
he says, consists of a wife and one child. Any thing else you
want to know ?"

" Yes — one thing more. Have you ever seen his wife ?"

" Humph— yes — perhaps so !" was the answer, and at the
moment the eyes of the two met ; and Ned Minthorne, had

80 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

he been near enough to the merchant and his sister-in-law to
see the intelligence conveyed in either glance, and keen enough
to read it, would have found something much more worthy of
his attention than the dull book with the half-cut leaves, over
which he was whiling away time on the sofa.

" Dare you !" was the brief sentence that came from the
lips of the young lady, hissing through them with something
that sounded like the venom of the serpent when grasped and
powerless.

" Ha ! ha ! do you not think it may pay?" was the answer,
in a low, chuckling tone, such as one uses who is thoroughly
satisfied with himself and the world. And here the conver
sation ended, and the interlocutors, with an apology to Min-
thorne from Holt, returned to the centre of the room. Mrs.
Fullerton joined the circle in a few moments, and the conver
sation fell upon other and less exciting subjects than national
affairs — those trifling topics in which the mother and daughter
seemed to be perfect — the merchant no novice — and Ned
Minthorne, millionaire and fashionable ninny, more at home
than he could possibly be in any other line of conversation.
Half an hour later the merchant rose to leave, Minthorne
followed him, and the silence and quiet of repose soon after
wards fell upon the handsome brown-stone house in East
Twenty-third street, however far from quiet, during all that
long night, were some other sections of the great city, seeth
ing, bubbling and fermenting beneath the yet only half-
digested news from Charleston harbor, and the added excite
ment of the patriotic but intemperate comments made upon
it in the daily and Sunday papers.

CHAPTER IT.

THE MERCHANT AND HTS FIFTH AVENUE RESIDENCE — A

GLANCE AT LTP-TO\VN LUXURY — A MERCANTILE LETTER —

A DINNER AND A SUMMONS — AN INTERVIEW A LA MODE,
BETWEEN HUSBAND AND WIFE — How BURTNETT HAVI-
LAND WENT HOME — THE ROMANCE OF HALF A HOUSE — •
A DEAR LITTLE WIFE THAT WAITED AT THE DOOR — A
SUPPER, AND THE SHADOW THAT FELL OVER IT.

We have seen Charles Holt and Burtnett Haviland, the
merchant and bis clerk, leaving the store of the former on
Saturday evening, not together by any means, nor with the
same means of convej'ance in view, but each having the
same apparent object — to go home. It will now be neces
sary to roll back the tide of time for one day and return to
that evening, in order that more may be known of both men
and their domestic relations' as well as their patriotic emo
tions, and in order that at least a glance may be caught at the
temple in which the household gods of each were treasured.
Not only in right of his years but his position, the merchant
is entitled to the first place and must be accorded it.

Charles Holt, when he had reached Broadway, did not at
once enteman omnibus of the Fifth Avenue line, as he had at
first intended. There was yet light enough remaining to
make a stroll up Broadway pleasant j and he had either not
been so stunned by the news of the national shame and hi?
own prospective pecuniary loss, as to be discouraged and
down-hearted, or something else had occurred calculated to
overbalance such sad feelings. He looked pleasantly, even
smilingh' ; and as he emerged a few moments after from the
bar-room at Delmonico's with a fresh Havana between his
lips, no one would have believed him to be a man of position
and responsibilit}-, living under the shadow of a crushing
national shame and so fully impressed with his own duty to
5 81

82 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

the country as to be willing to make heavy pecuniary sacrifices
to meet its needs. The smoke from his cigar curled pleas
antly upward, his foot rung clearly on the pavement as he
lounged slowly on, read the signs once more that he had be
fore read ten thousand times, and looked in at the windows
to see the porters lighting the gas-burners for the display of
articles of use or luxury that no one was very likely to pur
chase on that particular evening. Occasionally he would
meet an acquaintance not too much absorbed in the sensation
of the hour to speak to him, and then he would exchange
salutations and pass with the most courtly ease. Men who
had chanced to know him in youth, but who had not risen so
fast in the world as lie had done, would turn their heads after
he had gone by, and think what a fortunate as well as eminently
respectable man was the head of the great firm of Charles
Holt and Andrews ; and handsome women, of whom the
street was not yet entirely thinned, would glance from their
carriages or throw" a pleased look after him as they saw
him on the side-walk, thinking that he was (as indeed he was)
a fine-looking man, and that it could be no undesirable thing
to hold the position of head of his household. Once he met
a little boy with tJniou rosettes, that had been gradually
creeping out for some days, in response and defiance to the
secession cockades known to be flaunted at Baltimore, Wash
ington and all over the South, and that this evening seemed
to have sprung up in a crop of red, white and blue flowers
that no man could number. He, bought one, paid his silver
quarter for it, accepted the offered pin from the bey, pinned
it to the left lappel of his coat, and passed on — having per
formed one more duty to his country, at least — that of put
ting on the national colors and taking part in the patriotic
madness of the hour.

Opposite St. Thomas' Church the dusk began to gather,
his cigar was smoked out, and he fancied that he had threaded
the jostling crowd sufficiently and taken quite exercise enough.
He hailed one of the Fifth Avenue line of stages, and stepped
in. Thenceforward, for half an hour, he was absorbed and
melted away into that great car-and-omnibus-riding crowd
which forms so large a part of 2vew York society every morn-

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 83

ing and evening ; and it would have been difficult to display
or even to preserve any decided individuality. With his
thoughts we have nothing to do, as they must show them
selves in action ; and even his sensations on being crushed
between a fat old lady who sat on him and a thin young lady
who looked so pale and fragile that he dared not make room
for himself by sitting on her, must be passed over as matters
of no moment. At the end of the half hour he emerged
from the eclipse of the 'stage, and walked quietly up the.steps
of his own handsome house on Fifth Avenue, so near to Dr.
Spring's Church that the spire of that building, had it chosen
to topple over, might have done serious damage to his- roof
and the elaborate ornamention of his brown-stone cornices.

One of those thin pass-keys of the Butler pattern, that
seem so slight and yet tumble locks of such formidable
strength, admitted him, and he passed into the hall, where the
lamp was already lighted. The house was a double one, of
immense size, and within as well as without it told of great
wealth as well as of a taste managing that wealth somewhat
more understandingly than is usual in aristocratically-repub
lican Xew York. Xo bare floor or stairway, here. The
walls of the hall were handsomely frescoed, Venus Aphrodite
and the Triumph of Galatea being the subjects filling the
centre on either side and bordered with heavy scrolls of fruit
and flowers with their extreme edges just touched with gold.
All the finishing of the hall and stairway, with the doors
opening on either side, was in oak — no imitation in grainers'-
paint, but a fine dark, solid wood that looked English. The
floor was covered with costly Indian matting that gave back
no sound of the foot and had not the cold look of oil-cloth ;
and the same warm taste was visible in the carpeting of the
stairs, in the heavy velvet of which showed red and gold-
color in profusion. The hall lamp was held by a handsome
bronze knight in armor, who stood at the foot of the stair ;
and in the niche of the landing, half way up, was a rich
gold-bronze reduction of Kiss' famous Amazon, its flash in.
the gas-light corning distinctly even to the door..

So much could be seen, of the luxury which surrounded
the merchant, by merely entering the hall. The visitor who

84: THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

set his foot within the door which opened to the right as he
entered, would have found a drawing-room fitted with every
elegance known to the age — rosewood ; crimson velvet ;
heavy English tapestries ; pictures by well-known modern
artists, European and American, with no lack of the warmer
subjects of personal delineation, and yet nothing to which the
most fastidious prudery could object ; a heavy clock of ormolu ;
a piano of the best Germ\n manufacture ; costly bronzes on
the mantels, representing various progressions of dress and
arms in English history ; boM\s in superb bindings, scattered
on tables covered with heavy velvets, and interspersed with
statuettes in ivory and Parian, of different celebrities in the
musical world — all that wealth ef costly adornment with
which so many American mansions have within the past ten
years become overloaded, to the serious depletion of the purses
of those who indulge in them, — and which are almost as im
pertinent as tedious in the recital.

But if the visitor supposed that the proprietor of this estab
lishment had followed a very common national custom, and
heaped up luxuries in his hall and parlors as show-rooms, to
the beggaring of the other details of his house, that visitor was
very likely to be undeceived when admitted within additional
portions of the penetralia. Especiall v~ would he have become
aware that Mr. Charles Holt, in fitting up his superb man
sion, had not neglected liimxdf. For no thicker was the
velvet carpeting of the room to the right, than was that of the
corresponding apartment to the left, which the merchant en
tered the moment after he had closed the outer door. No
thicker in texture, but much larger in figure; for that of this
room, which seemed to belong exclusively to the proprietor,
was of grass-gi'een, cut into small diamonds by bars of gold-
color; while the windows had close inner-blinds, only thinly
veiled by curtains of festooned lace. The furniture was in
oak. like the furnishing of the hall, and among it could be de
tected an escritoire or secretary standing near one of the
windows ; a large book-case with the books hidden away by
curtains of crimson silk ; a lounging-chair of the Chinese pat
tern — capable of being converted into any thing, from a mere
stool to a bed ; and a large iron safe, so ingeniously disguised

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 85

in manufacture and grained to the appearance of the universal
oak, that it seemed to be nothing more than a beaufet to sus
tain a silver water-pitcher, a liquor case with bottles, and
half a dozen silver goblets and Bohemian glasses. The mas
ter of all these conveniences had evidently been expected \ for
a gas lamp with a snake attachment connected with the chan
delier, was lighted and stood on a small table very near the
escritoire and beside the easy-chair. The master, too, of all
these conveniences, should have been the happiest of men, so
far as outward circumstances could affect him, and always
provided, of course, that his domestic surroundings were
equally perfect and congenial. How nearly they were so,
will be gradually but very satisfactorily ascertained.

The merchant had evidently riot quite done with the
thoughts possessing him while crowded in the stage, for he
threw himself into the easy-chair the moment he had entered
the room, pressed it back until it became half chair and half
lounge, and mused for several minutes with his eyes shut and
in silence. Then he threw back the chair to be a chair alone,
drew it to the escritoire, opened that convenience, drew out
paper and rapidly indited a letter. Taking the privilege of
the literary Asmodeus to look over his shoulder, we may say
that this letter was addressed to his junior partner, Mr.
Beverly Andrews, then in Europe on purchasing-business
for the firm, and that one portion of it ran as follows :

"Taking all that has happened into consideration, there is no question
•whatever that the country must now fight or go to pieces. The South is
weak, but ready ; we are strong, but unprepared. This will make the strug
gle a longer one, when it coines, than most people suppose; and those who
are prepared, can make more money out of it than could be made in ten times
the same period of peace. We shall lose heavily by our Southern customers, and
Northern ones must repay the loss — that is all. We must have a large body
of soldiers, and those soldiers must be clothed. All parties will at first be
frightened at incurring enormous expense, and they will be clothed meanly.
Buy up all that you can of very common army cloths, light and dark-blue,
as of course they will retain the colors of the regular service. Double our in
tended investment, also, in cotton goods, as cotton must rise under the new

aspect of affairs. You can draw on Peabody for $ , in addition to avails

now ill his hands, for which I will provide by the current steamer."

So it will be seen that Mr. Charles Holt had a shrewd eye
to business, even if he felt the national affliction to some ex-

86 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

tent, and that he did not intend to permit losses by Southern
customers seriously to impair the fortunes of the firm. Some
of his calculations were rather shrewd — were they not? as,
for instance, that in first plunging into a war, everybody
would be frightened at the coming expense, and try to pro
ceed as cheaply as possible ; while after a time, and when once
fairly involved in it, a hundred millions would seem no move
than ten had seemed at the beginning. Perhaps he had gam
bled a little, some time in his life, and seen how carefully the
player risked his first small stakes, to become utterly reckless,
after a while, of risks that seemed to afford the only prospect
of winning back what had been already lost. If so, did he
not develop some of the qualities of a safe even if a bold
player ?

Not many minutes served to conclude the letter, which he
put into an inner pocket, unsealed, in view of the possibility
that he might need to add or change something before the
sailing of the steamer on Monday. Then he shut the escri
toire, locked it, replaced the key in his pocket, threw the easy-
chair back into precisely the same position that it had before
assumed, and ruminated for at least five minutes more.

It is not to be supposed that he had not heard, at any time
within the past fifteen minutes, sounds proceeding from the
room immediatly above his own. Those sounds had been
faint, and somewhat muffled by the thick floor and ceiling,
but still easily distinguishable as the tinkling of glasses, loud
laughter, and occasional pounding on the floor. Strange
sounds to come from an upper room of a gentleman's house,
one would have said, and especially strange when himself
had been for the whole day absent and had brought no com
pany whatever home with him. Yet the merchant had not
seemed to heed them, though he certainly heard them, and
once or twice made an impatient dash of the pen, as if the
noise merely interfered with his directions to his partner.
They had not ceased when he finished the letter and took his
second rumination.

After sitting in this manner for the few minutes named,
Mr. Holt leaned back and twice jerked the silver bell-pull
immediately behind him. The summons was very quickly

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 87

answered by a man-servant, to whom the master addressed
one word :

" Dinner ?"

"Yes, sir, ready whenever you wish, sir !" was the reply,
and the servant opened a door leading from the rear of the
apartment through a small dark room, threw open a second
door, and ushered the merchant into a handsome dining-room,
where a table was set sufficient in size for the accommodation
of at least a dozen, and profusely covered with plate, china
and glass, but with only one chair set before it and with only
the dishes which one person would use. That single chair
the merchant occupied, and two minutes sufficed for a quick-
moving and pretty female servant to set before him a dinner
worthy of some modern Lucullus. No costly luxury of
the market, whether of fish, flesh, fowl, or fruit, failed to be
there represented; and the neat-handed servant-girl, who had
evidently been subjected to some pretty severe training be
fore she acquired that perfection, "understood him and his
wishes so well that he merely needed to make a sign, without
uttering a word, and the demand was fulfilled — even to the
pouring out of one or another of the different kinds of wine
with which the solitary banquet was graced. Solitary, for
not one word was spoken iuring the fifteen or twenty minutes
— perhaps half an hour—that the merchant consumed in dis
cussing it. A banquet, because food enough was set before
him, and consequently prepared for waste in the servants'
hall, to have satisfied the hunger of twenty men. Some pitier
of poverty, conversant with the want and wretchedness of a
great city, and the thousands who drag around their weary
limbs and nightly crawl away to miserable beds, without
having had their hunger even once partially appeased, — some
man like this, who should have stood beside Mr. Charles Jloli,
on that occasion, might temporarily have had the heart-ache,
spite of the fact that the wealth which supplied the banquet
was truly enough the merchant's own, and that he had an
undoubted right, humanly speaking, to dispose of his own as
he liked. The merchant himself, it is highly probable, thought
of that luxurious dinner and of others which preceded and
followed it, one day when the table at which he ate was

88 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

not quite so plentifully spread and the food not quite so
savory.

All things have an end, and the quickest of all things to
end is an American dinner — except when Smith, who fares
meanly at home and never dines at any place more luxurious
than a shilling restaurant, finds himself transiently sitting at
one of the bountiful repasts spread for him by Beach at the
Cattskill Mountain-House, or Anderson on 'the good Cham-
plain steamer " XJnited States," determines that he will have
a full meal for once in his life (seeing that the cost is all the
same), and valiantly goes through with fish, flesh and fowl,
entrees and entremets, pies, puddings, custards, jellies, ice
creams, melons and peaches, down to the cheese, nuts and
raisins, in spite of the fact that all the other guests have long
before left the table, and that the waiters are looking three-
pronged forks at him because they have set him down as " no
gentleman," and because they are waiting to set the table for
another relay of hungry people. All other American dinners
but this of Smith, and that of Brown when he gives a hun
dred-dollar "blow-out"' to four friends at the Maison Doree,
whereat all parties eat themselves sick and drink themselves
blind and stupid, — have an end. And all this has nothing to
do with Mr. Charles Holt, who wrfl a quick diner, and who,
if he wasted food by having an unreasonable quantity and
variety prepared for him, did not gormandize it.

His dinner ended, the merchant tossed off yet another glass
of wine after he had rism, drew his hand across his brow as
if he was wiping away any fume it might have left in his
brain, lit a cigar that he took from a side-pocket, and went
back to his own apartment. The merriment from the room
above seemed yet to be sounding; and immediately on enter
ing the room he gave the bell the same double pulj as before.
The same man-servant entered at ouce, and stood mutely
within the door. Evidently, if he had nothing more (and
had he not much more ?) this man kept order among his
servants, whenever they came into personal relation with
himself.

" Go up to your mistress, and say that I wish to see her,
here," was the order, no sooner given than obeyed in the dis-

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 89

appearance of the servant. Perhaps five minutes elapsed,
while the merchant again sat in his easy chair, but in. a much
more erect position than before, and putted silently on his
cigar that was gradually filling the room with the subtle
fragrance of its Cuban birth. Then the door leading into the
hall opened, a little suddenly and as if the hand that impelled
it was trembling with temper, and a lady stepped into the
room and closed it behind her. It was worthy of notice that
the door closed less violently than it opened, and that the
step which carried the lady within the room from the thresh
old was slower than that with which she had approached it,
and seemed like the pulling up of a fast horse that had been
under very rapid way. It might have appeared as if the at
mosphere into which she came, so to speak, was heavier and
more dense than that from which she had emerged, and that
she could not move quite so rapidly through it.

The words uttered to the servant have indicated that this
lady was the wife of Charles Holt, and such was the fact.
Bearing this important relation to the merchant, and also to
two others who have before been sketched in this narration, a
word of description of her is unavoidable.

She might have been twenty-eight years of age, to judge
by the whole contour of face, figure and carriage, though
there were various points in her appearance, each of which
would have varied the estimate if taken by itself. Her
figure was tall, exquisitely rounded, and even the least in the
world inclining to embonpoint, though il had lost nothing of
its erectness and gave a very fine impression of the volup
tuous pride of Juno. The short sleeves of her evening dress
of dark shot silk, left the arm revealed, and gave even moVe
opportunity, by its perfect and yet substantial mould, to
judge of the outline of the remainder of the figure, than
might otherwise have been enjoyed. Her face was some
thing fuller than that of her sister Dora, as became her fuller
figure, though there were many of the same characteristics in
both. The same petulance on the lip, and the same diminu-
tiveness of the lower part of the face, though the forehead
was not so full, and the coldly intellectual seemed less fully
developed. The complexion was (or had been) nearly the

90 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

same, and there was the same dark eye, nearly passing for
black, without quite the same natural scorn flashing out from
it. The hair was perceptibly darker, though still rather light
than dark, and just enough waved to add to the charm of its
wonderful luxuriance. Handsomer than Dora, a little darker
and fuller in the general effect, and yet —

The fact is, that we must have been describing this woman
more as we know her to hare been, than as she was at this
juncture. Such variations from strict fidelity have occurred
and will occur again. The past shines through the present,
in face and form as well as in any other particular that can be
grasped by the human mind. The poor lost courtezan met
yesterday in a bye-street, did not look so wholly beyond
sympathy as she would have done, with her bleared eyes and
bloated face, and wrapped in her dirty and faded finery, had
we not remembered her under other auspices, many a long
year ago. It is doubtful whether the mother ever quite loses
the impression that her son is still her " baby boy," with
Bunny curls on his brow and the glow of early youth on his
cheek, though that son has really grown gray-haired and
broken, with crows-feet under the eyes and all the charms of
youth passed away, as seen by the eyes of others. And it is
certain that the auld-wife, looking into the face of John
Anderson her Jo, and crooning that sweetest of all ballads
of a love beyond time or change, did not quite see him as he
stood beside her then, with his hair thin and white and his
limbs tottering downward to their final rest, but as she had
seen him in the early days, when 'his hair was brown and
curly and he leapt the style with a boyish delight to come to
her at the milking.

Thank God that this is so, for it may save us loves that
might otherwise pass away before we were quite ready to
lose them !

Olympia Holt, (for she bore the Christian name of her
mother,) with all the charm of face and form that has been
indicated, bore yet something in both that made the heart
first sad, then almost filled it with horror. There was an
unsteadiness and want of assertion in step and position,
contrasted with an evident temper inclined to be even too

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 91

self-reliant, that created the most painful suggestions.
She could not be what she was, if all was right — she
should have been more or less. Then her hair gave the
impression of being a little dishevelled and a good deal
uncared for ; and nothing so far takes from the perfection
and dignity of a womanly presence. The lip, too, was
trembling and unsteady, not softened from its sullenness, but
quivering as if with perpetual conflict of what would be said
and dared not. Last of all, and yet most significant of all,
the eye was wavering and furtive, continually attempting to
flash a defiance that faded away in cringing submission, and
with a redness in the lids that might have been caused by
long weeping and might have been produced by other causes
quite as sorrowful.

And now let it be seen what were the relations existing
between husband and wife, after eight years had elapsed since
the marriage of Charles Holt and Olympia Fullerton ; and
perhaps some light, though not all that must come in the
future, may be thrown on the mysterious eclipse of this
woman. Her husband's first word may do something to
hasten the explanation.

" Drunk ?" -Not in such a tone as might have been used
if the fact had been thought pitiable, but as if the inquiry
had been a mere matter of business, preparatory to another.

" No ! sober enough ! — soberer than I wish I was !" came
the reply, jerked out from between lips and teeth only by a
violent effort. " But what is that to you ?"

"A great deal," answered the merchant — he still sitting,
she still standing, with no invitation to do otherwise. It was
evident that she had not sat down with that man, in a long
period. "A great deal, because one needs to talk differently
with a drunken woman, and with one reasonably sober."

"I am sober enough for you, then, Charles Holt!" was
the reply, with defiance, and yet defiance subdued and kept
under, in the tone. " Speak on, and get done with it, if you
have any thing to say !"

" In my time, not yours," said the merchant. " By the
way, I do not see how you could very well be sober, by the
jingling of glasses and the pounding of feet, besides the

92 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

drunken shouting, that have been going on up-stairs during the
half hour I have been in the house."

" That was my room, I suppose you know it, and you have
nothing to do with what goes on inside of it !" was the reply.

"Except," said the merchant-'-" except when you make so
much noise there that you disturb me in my room, which is
very inconvenient^and cannot be allowed ; and except — " and
here he paused, as if he wished 'to think twice before he
spoke, or perhaps for the very purpose of exciting her
curiosity.

"And what is the other 'except'?"

" Except when there is company in that room, whom I do
not choose you shall entertain."

" Indeed !" was the coldly-insulting reply of the wife.

" Yee, indeed !" said the husband, echoing her word, with
a corresponding emphasis. " Who are those, up-stairs ?" and
his finger pointed towards the ceiling that again the moment
before had been echoing with the muffled trample of feet.

" None of your business, I tell you !" came the reply ; but
even in the act of saying the words the slavish submission
came on the heels of the defiance, and she began to recount
the names of half a dozen wealthy but characterless young
men about town — such miserable and injurious wine-bibbing
drones of society as those who figure, at short intervals, in
the disreputable trials that shame our large cities.

" Stop !" said the husband, " I do not care for their names,
except one. What I want to know, and what I will know, is

— is there ?" and he mentioned the name of a

well-known man about town, whose handsome face, courtly
manners and libertinism have of late years been about equally
acknowledged.

"And again I say that it is none of your business !" re
peated the wife.

" Woman !" said the merchant, threatening in his tone,
now, whatever there might have been before. " I thought
you had got over defying me! It is time you had done so,
and the quicker the better !"

" What is it to you whether he is there, more than any-
other ?" was the question in reply, but with the defiance

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 93

changed to sullen submission once more. " Do you think
that he. can disgrace your house, or me?"

" Xo !" answered the merchant. " I have no fear on the
pubject. But I will not permit him within this house, and
you know it. Have your drunken orgies, according to custom
and arrangement," with a terribly significant emphasis on the
latter word ; " but if 1 catch him here he will go out of the
window, and there will be an expose, I am afraid — that
is all !"

" Man !" cried the evidently agonized woman. " I will
tell you the truth as to his being here, if you will tell me why
you will not permit him to come with the other — wretches."

" I will do it," said the merchant. " As well now as ever.
Speak on."

" He is not in this house, and has not been here this week,
upon my honor," said the wife.

" Very well," was the answer. " Now I Avil] keep my
promise. The reason why I will permit those other people
whom you very properly call 'wretches,' to come to this
house and enjoy your pleasant society, and why I will not
allow you to receive him, — is, that you love him."

« Well—if I did ? if I do?" cried the wife, bitterly. "What
then ? You have just said that you have no fear of his dis
gracing me or the house : what harm, then, can he do?"

" Xo fear in the world of his disgracing you or the house
— that I repeat," said the merchant. " But there are two
luxuries, wine and love, and I can only allow you one of
them. I buy you the best wines — drink deeply as you please,
but you cannot have the other at the same time. That is
mine ! So keep that man out of the house — you under
stand !"

" Ye£, I understand ! Devil !" said the woman, between
her clenched teeth.

" Possibly !" was the cool reply. " But don't call names :
H does not pay, with me. Now go up-stairs to your guests,
and have it through ! I am going out."

Olympia Holt turned away. What her eyes expressed it
is not very easy to say — rage, fear, misery, all so blended
that no human analyst could separate them. What was in

94: THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

her heart, none but the All-seeing Eye could pretend to judge.
She laid her hand on the door.

" Stop," said the merchant, as he lit another cigar and
turned down the light to go out. " You were round in
Twenty-third Street yesterday, I understood. Do they want
me, there ?"

" Yes — that is — I believe so," answered the wife, her tone
changed entirely, and her whole expression seeming like that
of abject humiliation.

" Very well — I will see them to-morrow, then. That will
do — you may go. No — I forgot to tell you, though perhaps
some of your friends have already brought you the intelli
gence, that your other friends down in South Carolina have
been attacking Fort Suinter and raising the deuce generally.
Good-night."

Before the last words were fairly spoken, the degraded wife
had left the room, arid, by the time she had rejoined her
friends in the room above, the dignified husband had passed
out again into the street, where there is no occasion at
present to follow him. As we have already seen, on the
evening following, that of Sunday, he kept his promise to
visit the Fullertons, and his conversation with Dora at the
window seemed to have been the legitimate consequence of
these closing^words.

The home of the merchant has been explored, and the joy
and comfort of the domestic relations existing in the midst of
so much splendor faithfully depicted : it is time, now, to join
the merchant's clerk as he, too, takes his course up Broad
way, towards another home and scene, presenting a marked
contrast.

Some indication has been given in a previous chapter, of
the feelings of Burtnett Haviland on that Saturday evening,
not only when the intelligence of the fall of Sumter was
brought to him in the store, but after he had left it on his
way up-town. But something more may be said on the sub
ject, for he is not only a very prominent character in this
narration, but he presents a type of popular feeling at that
juncture, not the less worth study because the number of
persons sharing in it may have been comparatively few. He

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 95

was very sensitive on national subjects — over-sensitive, as
those who knew him best sometimes alleged, and as he him
self believed in his calmer moments. The country was to
him a mother, quite as dear as any human mother could have
been ; and he could not think of any shame or dishonor
coming to her, without an indignant grief at the heart, any
more than he could have done of the foulest wrong or dis
honor falling upon her who had given him birth. Those
bitter tears he had shed in the store, had not been by any
means the first escaping from his eyes for the same cause ;
for during the previous few months he had seen the ruin
coming — had BOOH the rebellion gathering head, unchecked —
had seen the power of the nation lying dead or dormant — had
feared the worst, and doubted whether the end would not be
the destruction of the last republic ever inaugurated on earth.
More than once his wife had said to him, partially in jest and
yet with a good deal of earnestness in her manner, that " she
believed that he thought more of the country than he did of
her and Pet" ; and while he had gathered both within his
arms at that word, he had at the same time answered that
" he did not know but he did!"

Walking up Broadway that evening, a little in advance of
the merchant, he did not lounge like him. He was not
walking, like him, so much for exercise (for he had quite
exercise enough in his business hours) or to kill time (for he
had no time hanging so heavily on his hands that he needed
to perform such a murderous operation upon it) as because
the motion of his limbs was a i*elief, just then when his brain
was so full of heavy and anxious thought. He, too, saw the
articles of show in the windows as he passed, and thought
how miserably vain and trifling was humanity, " pleased with
a rattle, tickled with a straw," at the very moment when the
thunders of God's judgment were breaking in the heavens.
He wondered how long it might be before national ruin
closed those showy windows, or riotous violence laid the
fairest monuments of Xew York's commercial prosperity
level with the street. lie, too, met a small boy (as did every
one who walked Broadway that evening), and bought a red,
white and blue rosette, with a silver star in the centre, which

96 T,HE DAYS OF SHODDY.

he pinned to the lappel of his vest ; but he pressed the
national colors reverently to his lips as he did so.

Near Canal Street an elderly merchant of his acquaintance,
coming down-town on his way to one of the Brooklyn ferries,
met and accosted him. He had been heavily in the Southern
grocery trade, and during the preceding few weeks passers-by
had seen a palmetto-tree standing in his front office, as one
more "concession to the South," and a rank insult to every
loyal man who passed. His position, therefore, on the
national question, was fairly understood.

"Well, Sumter has gone, at last," he said, as he shook
hands with the young clerk.

" Yes," answered the latter. " I fancy that they have
about filled the cup of their outrages, now."

" Which ?" asked the merchant. Then he added : " But I
need not ask. I suppose I know you — you are about as mad
as the rest of them."

" Perhaps so," said Haviland. " Perhaps we are all mad ;
but if I do not miss a figure, you will see such a spectacle of
national indignation in these streets, before many days are
over, or even before many hours, as history never recorded."

" What do you mean ?" asked the other, his manner ex
pressing any thing but satisfaction at the thought.
,,"Mean? Why, mean that the people will rise, if the
government does not call them up !" replied the clerk. (It
must be remembered that the proclamation was not published
until the next morning.)

" Rise in arms, and to put down the South, here ?" asked
the merchant, a very perceptible sneer in his tone.

" Rise in arms, here, not to put down the South, as you
call it, but to put down the Southern traitors !" was the
reply. "And if they do not, the city of New York deserves
to be sunk with Sodom and Gomorrah !"

" Bah ! Mark my words, young man," said the merchant,
starting on, " if there is any rising here, and any troops leave
this city, four times as many will go to help the South as to
fight against it. If you were not very young in comparison
with myself, you would know that the interest of the Southern
States is the interest of New York, as opposed to that of the

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 97

manufacturing abolition East, and that when the Southern
trade all went permanently away, we might as well shut up
our doors at once. A rising against the South ? Bah !
But you will think better of it to-morrow morning ! Good
night !" and he passed on. downward, while Haviland pur
sued his course up Broadway.

Here was more food for sad and serious thought. "Was it
indeed true, that the great commercial city was rotten with
such sentiments as these ? Were there many merchants,
near enough to fools, and inclined enough to be traitors, not
to know and assert that the interest of New York lay with
the Union and not with any miserable section, however
large ? Was this leaven really spread very widely ? Was
there to be a "conflict at the North," when every man needed
to hold the one great, true, overwhelming patriotic feeling?
If so, God help the country, indeed ! But he could not —
would not believe it ; and the near sequel showed how much
more the gray-haired merchant knew of the temper even of
the mercantile community, than the clerk who had not counted
more than half his number of years !

Haviland saw the bill-boards of the theatres as he went by,*
and read the announcements on them, very much as one
studies the architectural details of the inside of a church
when attending the funeral of a dear friend within it. He
knew that an hour later, when the doors should open and
the lights and the music beckon, hundreds would flock in,
and mimic love and agony — perhaps mimic war, be repre
sented, the latter by mighty armies of four or six, while such
a struggle as the world never saw was gathering over the land.
He would himself just as soon have gone out from the

* It may be a matter of interest, at no distant day, to know what were the
performances at the New York theatres when Anderson was defending Sum-
ter and the civil war beginning. Forrest was pluj'ing Virginua, at Niblo's;
Laura Keene was running the '• Seven Sisters;" Edwin Booth was playing
Shyluck, nnd Charles Dillon Be/pJieyor, at the Winter Garden'; Wallaek was
running Wilkins' successful play, " Henriette ;" Fox was doing "Mother
GOOSA" and Robt. Johnston the "Bag Picker," at the New Bowery ; and
Spalding's and Rogers' Circus was at the Old. " Un Ballo in Maschera" and
" Moses in Egypt" were the features at the Academy of Music, then just
closing its season.

6

98 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

funeral of all he loved best in the world, and stepped into
theatre or ball-roonx, as to have done so on that evening ;
and hud he been able to judge the future and read the hearts
of others, he would have known that many thought like him
self, and that the box-books of the theatres then and for
many a long day after would show the effects of the national
discouragement.

At Astor Place the young man crossed to Third Avenue
and took a car upward. Thereafter, for half au hour or less,
he too was eclipsed and crushed in the stifled atmosphere of
a car, and smothered beneath dresses and bundles, as his em
ployer was in the Fifth Avenue stage at about the same period.
The eclipse came to a conclusion, however, as in the other
case, and the young wlerk emerged from the obscurity to the
light of his home on East Forty-eighth Street, between the
Second and Third Avenues.

A neat little brown-stone house it was that he approached,
a link between the palatial residences of the same material
on the more fashionable streets and avenues, and the humbler
houses of brick in which men of moderate salaries and small
expectations are generally content to find a home. A neat
little brown-stone house — and yet more costly than the clerk
could have afforded to occupy, had he and his peaceable little
family not been willing to submit to that " dividing" of a
house which is especially anathematized with a very different
meaning to the word, in Scripture. In other phrase, Burtnett
Havilaud only rented half a house — a most humiliating
admission to make in his behalf, and one that is accordingly
made with the due proportion of fear and trembling. There
have been romances written, setting forth almost every other
description of living, than this; but this is unquestionably a
novel feature, to be admitted when all the rest of the book is
proved to have been stolen from Alexandre Dumas, Dickens,
Balzac, Bulwer, Fenniiuore Cooper, Simms, and even perhaps
Cobb and Ned Buntline. Particular shaped houses have
been made the habitations of heroes and heroines, from
Hawthorne's " House of the Seven Gables" to the " Semi-
Detached House" of some English noodle who thought that
the success of the former lav in the architecture of the build-

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 99

ing instead of the brains of the writer ; and there is no
knowing whether some second-hand imitator did not go still
further down and write of the " House with the Mahogany
Balusters" or the " Castle with the Big Crack over the
Door." Then we have had plenty of stories located in
houses where families lived alone, and not a few in tenement-
houses where the floors numbered seven, with six families of
nine children each on every floor. But we have had none
showing the abodes of the really "middle classes," who
hover between wealth and poverty — between partial want
and comparative luxury ; and so let this story be known, if
no better distinguishing title can be found for it, by the
name of the " Story of a Man Who Only Occupied Half A
House."

Burtnett Haviland had been married four whole years, and
yet his wife had never quite forgotten the days gone by,
when he came to visit her in her mother's little cottage in the
country, and when she used to watch for him from the door
and meet him at the gate. There were no roses or climbing
honey-suckles in the scant front yard of the little house on
East Forty-eighth Street, and so some of the conditions of
romance were wanting ; but the heart could supply, it
appeared, all that nature denied, and the young wife had the
unfashionable habit, when she knew the time at which
she might expect her husband's return, if her domestic
avocations allowed, of stepping down to the door and waiting to
give him welcome, albeit the important mistress of the family
who occupied the lower half of the house (alas ! — another
confession must be made, and the Haviland family only occu
pied the upper, and cheaper !) — albeit that important lady
had more than once suggested that the front stoop belonged
exclusively to the lower occupants, and that people who
lived above had no business upon it any longer than might
be necessary to pass in and out ! Spite of all this, Mary
Haviland had a habit of coming down to meet her husband
when she could guess at the time of his return ; and though
it was a little late on this evening, the dusk fairly fallen and
the gas lighted in the street, she stood on the upper step of
the stoop, the full glare of one of the street lamps falling upon

100 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

her pleasant face and neat figure, and showing that gladness
in her eyes at the husband's approach, which can neither be
disguised nor simulated.

A pleasant picture indeed was Mary Havilaud, with her
blonde hair swept plainly back from her Madonna forehead ;
her brown eyes radiant with the pure love-light which
belongs especially to the mistress of a happy home when
standing on her own door-stone ; her well-cut and almost
purely Grecian features, with the lips budding, the cheeks a
little flushed and the chin dotted with a cunning little dimple ;
and her cheap but neat wrapper of dark small figured delaine
revealing a figure a little below the middle height and yet erect,
full moulded, and giving evidence of the most robust health.
A close view, it may be thought, to be caught beneath the
doubtful lamp-light from the street ; and if so, let it be sup
posed that a part of it was caught a few moments after, in
the broader light which fell on the supper-table.

A clasping of the hand, a kiss and a gentle word of greet
ing, then a reminder from the wife that supper had been
some time waiting ; and the married pair, a pair indeed,
entered the hall, closed the door and passed up the stairway
to the floor above. With the exception of two sleeping-
apartments on the third floor, the whole space occupied by the
Havilands was upon that they had just reached ; and through
the open door leading into the rear apartment showed a
neat little supper-table with their single female servant sitting
beside it, and a plated tea-pot pouring out fragrant steam
from the top of a small range set in front of the closed
grate. The door of the front apartment was also open, as
if every thing had been thrown wide to admit the coming
husband ; and a diminutive chandelier of only two branches,
dependent from the ceiling, threw a pleasant light from a
single burner, on a carpet of that peculiar wood color known
as " English oak" ; tables, a mirror and a small sofa in
walnut ; a few framed engravings of excellent quality on
the satin-papered walls (no less than two Washingtons
among them — one a copy of the great head by Stuart and the
other a proof of Barley's fine equestrian figure) ; a small book
case, with a fair representation of current literature ; small

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 101

photographs of husband and wife, and a larger one of " Pet,"
over the mantel ; and a cylinder stove standing brightly
polished but guiltless of fire, under it. Opening out of this room,
and also into the hall, was the small bed-room which formed
the inner penetralia of the happy household, where the little
girl of three years already lay in childish sleep, in her
diminutive crib, where husband and wife would erewhile
repose — for, alas ! — how long ?

The eyes of love are very keen — too keen, as we some
times think when there is a momentary grief to be hidden or
a less creditable cause of embarrassment to be dissembled.
There had been no want of warmth or gladness on the part
of her husband as he met her at the door and accompanied
her up to the little parlor ; yet Mary Haviland saw, intuitively,
that his mind was not quite at ease, that his hand trembled a
little with nervousness, and that his eye was sad and troubled.
The fact was, it may be supposed, that to the man who felt
himself self-doomed to temporary if not eternal earthly sepa
ration from those whom he loved so dearly, the very sight of
wife and home had brought a more marked agitation — no fal
tering in purpose, but a still more bitter consciousness of
what the resolution involved.

"And what is it, Burtey ?" at length asked the wife, as
the domestic was placing the tea-service on the table, in the
other room. She used the diminutive as a term of endear
ment — a very common and very effective practice with those
little women, — and assuming the existence of trouble with
out even asking the preliminary question. She locked her
hand in his arm at the same moment, and looked up into his
face with such trust and confidence as should have made him,
and no doubt did make him for the one instant during which
he forgot the coming weight of his cross, the happiest fellow
in the world.

" What is what, little one ?" he answered, with an evasion
seldom practised by either member of that domestic partner
ship.

" Your trouble — you have one — don't tease me, or I shall
pinch you 1" and she laid her fingers on his coat sleeve as if
she really intended to carry out the dangerous threat.

102 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

" Don't p'nch, or I shall have you taken up for assault and
battery ! Trouble ? No, I think not 1 Shall we go to sup
per ?" So answered the husband. (It will be noticed that the
merchant dined and his clerk supped, at about the same hour
— strange difference in the habits of two men in the same
line of employment, and two men whose digestive organs may
be supposed to have been very nearly similar !)

"Not a step until you have told me what is the matter,"
said the wife. " There is trouble, I know it ! You are not
sick ? — no, I know that. Have you lost something — been
worried ? insulted ? Has any thing happened in your busi
ness ?"

" Torment ! I meant at least to have my supper in peace,
but I suppose that I cannot !" said the husband, in a tone
that he endeavored to make as cheerful as possible, but that
somehow had earnest and deep feeling in it. "Yes, we have
all been insulted — we have all lost something ! Come to the
table, and I will tell you."

They passed together through the narrow passage, flanked
with a clothes-closet on the one hand and a range of standing
drawers and shelves reaching to the ceiling on the other, that
led to the other room ; and while the servant-girl handed 'the
crisp brown toast and Mary Haviland poured out the aro
matic tea, the husband told in a few words the story of Sum-
ter, which seems destined never to come to an end with the
allusions made to it in these pages.

" Can this be possible ? oh, dear ! oh, dear !" said the little
woman, who, herself naturally proud and patriotic to some
extent, had been influenced by the conversation and manner
of her husband during the preceding months of trouble and
anxiety, until she had become nearly as great an enthusiast
as he in all matters that touched the honor and welfare of the
nation.

" This is all possible — this has all happened !" answered the
husband, (though it must be unromantically confessed that
his mouth was partially full of toast at the moment, his utter
ance not being improved thereby).

"And what is to be the end of it all ?" asked the wife, who

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 103

naturally felt that the national troubles could neither end nor
stand still, just here.

" War — long, bloody and desolating war !" said the hus
band, no toast in his mouth now, his voice sinking very low,
and his eyes looking out from beneath his bent brows at the
little woman seated on the other side of the table.

If there was earnestness and anxiety in that glance, the
same qualities were shown in that which was returned, for
Mary Haviland nearly dropped the tea-cup which she was
about to re-fill, her face perceptibly paled for the moment and
her whole manner seemed agitated. The wife understood all
that must come upon herself, in that single short sentence.
She knew her husband to be brave, physically as well as
morally. She knew him to have a high sense of personal
duty in all relations. She knew how he despised the sender
who should have been the goer, in any line of action. She
knew how deep and abiding was the anxiety for the nation
which lay upon his heart — an anxiety which had not alone
manifested itself in their hours of conversation by day, but
sometimes broken out from his lips in the words of troubled
dreams when he lay beside her at night. He had said, with
that peculiar glance, that there must be bloody and desolating
war, and he had said in that glance and in the tone of his
utterance, that he must form a part of that bloody pageant
whenever it should be arrayed. She believed him, as she
might have done one of the archangels of heaven'; and from
that moment she knew that the unbroken companionship of
the last four years was soon to be no more for a time and
might be no more forever !

And yet no shrinking — no ! Sadness and sorrow, deep in
the heart, but no shrinking ; and even the sorrow so shut
down that it should not have power to issue from the lips.
Some of those little women have a power of being heroines
without fuss, lamentably denied to us of the sterner and
stormier sex ; and Mary Haviland, who had been fluttered
and nervous the moment before, now that she knew the worst,
shook off the agitation and looked her own calm self again,
almost smiling, as she said :

" I understand you, Burtey ! You know best ! What a

104 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

terrible tea-drinker you are, when you finish two cups and ask
for the third before I have finished even one !"

Little Pet, who had heard Papa's voice even in her first
nap, rushed out in her night-clothes at this juncture, her brown -
eyes half shut and blinded by the light, and her curly hair all
damp and tumbled. Then she had to be taken up and
kissed, and before her presence even the omens of war and
domestic separation faded away, to come back again when the
house grew still and Burtnett Haviland, encircled by the fond
arms that might soon be exchanged for a more bony pressure,
"talked in his sleep."

CHAPTER V.

A SHORT CHAPTER AND A DULL ONE — ALL HISTORY AND NO
ROMANCE — THE RISING OF THE PEOPLE — STATISTICS AND
INCIDENTS OF FLAG-RAISING — ROSETTES, PATRIOTIC CARTS
AND " UNION" PUBLIC HOUSES — MOVEMENTS AND EVENTS

AFTER SlJMTER THE PRESIDENT'S PROCLAMATION DANGER

OF THE CAPITAL AND BALTIMORE — MILITARY PREPARATIONS
IN THE GREAT CITY.

THEN came the rising of the people.

History has no more glorious spectacle than that which
followed the fall of Sumter and the issue of the President's
Proclamation calling for troops to assert the honor and dignity
of the nation. Xo such rebellion had ever been known, in the
magnitude of its preparations or the guilt of its object; and
no such rising had ever been seen, in the number of men in
volved in it or the sacreduess of the cause for which they
were preparing to combat. The sight may have been a glo
rious and a stirring one, when the New York Liberty Boy
ran out of his workshop, with his grimed hands and sooty
face, to take part against the murderous action of the British
soldiery at Goldeu Hill, — or when the Massachusetts farmer

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 105

left his plough standing in the furrow and the oxen to be un
yoked by other hands, as he rushed home to grasp the mus
ket and make himself a deadly thorn in the side of the red
coats who had massacred his brothers at Lexington. But the
men of the Revolution were the men of rougher and hardier
times, scarcely emerged, yet, from the perils of the old French
war, and surrounded still by savages for whom the fire-lock
was kept ever loaded in the house and the hand ever trained
to wield the weapon. The men called to combat this rebel
lion were the men of peace — the men of work and of trade,
bred in an age when luxury had surrounded them with an
imperceptible but all-powerful net to fetter their limbs, — un
accustomed to war, incredulous that such a calamity could
fall upon them, and as unprepared as men could be, in every
regard, for the summons to such a trial.

It may be said again — history has no more glorious specta
cle than this rising. Southern traitors had considered such a
thing a sheer impossibility, and made the want of warlike
spirit in the North one of the bases of their evil calculations,
even if they did not expect active aid in their own behalf.
Quasi-traitors at the North (like him of the palmetto-tree and
the well-bred sneer of age and experience, noticed in the last
chapter) had formed the same opinion, extending even to the
supposition of New York casting in her lot with South Caro
lina, as opposed to Pennsylvania and the Eastern States. The
truest lovers of their country had held little or no hope of
such a demonstration as would dishearten rebellion and teach
the world a needed lesson. William Howard Russell, L L.D.,
new in his appointment as American special correspondent of
the London Times, had passed through New York and writ
ten to his journal that the whole nation was lying in apathy
from which it could not be aroused, caring for nothing but
eating and drinking, rioting and making love — an essentially
un military nation, from which nothing energetic could be
hoped or expected. Such had been the omens and the ex
pectations: what was the glorious reality!

Saturday evening and night, as has been seen, were
a period of wild anger and sorrow — indignation and de
termination as yet blind and uushapen. Sunday was a day

106 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

of flag-raising, to an extent unparalleled in the history of
that sacred day. The glorious omen of the apotheosis of the
flag has before been mentioned, but something more may be
said of its generality, as part of the history of the time.
Monday, with the coming of the President's proclamation
calling for seventy-five thousand troops, brought a marked
increase in the number of flags floating from every mast and
steeple, draped over every door and drooping from every roof
and cornice. The costliest residences on the avenues vied
with the places of trade and the public buildings in throwing
out the national banner. The stocks of manufactured flags
in the stores soon began to be exhausted, and the prices
doubled and trebled without any abatement in the demand.
Soon the stock of silks, buntings and other ordinary flag-
materials began to run low : then flannels and muslins of
the proper colors came into requisition. Every liberty-pole
flaunted its flag, and hundreds of poles were raised, both in
city and country, where they had never stood before, even in
the hottest political contests. The public building that had
been inadvertently left without a flag-staff when erected,
suddenly found such an appendage not only proper but in
dispensable. The man who could manage to procure a flag
and did not do it, stood in danger of insult at least. The
proprietor of any public place who neglected to throw out
the ensign, was looked upon with distrust : if he refused, he
was indebted to public forbearance and not to public respect,
for freedom from serious injury — a freedom which he did not
always preserve until the close of the excitement. In some
instances, where buildings were occupied by people of oppo
site sentiments, the openly loyal took the precaution to hang
out the flag with letters appended announcing which of the
varying interests made that concession to individual feeling or
the public voice.* At one time the leading streets of New
York City were so festooned with flags as scarcely to leave

* A notable example of this was shown at one of the public buildings in
New York City. One of the daily newspapers, which occupied the lower part
of the building, and the loyalty of which was very seriously doubted, re
fused to throw out the flag; and one of the departments of the City Govern
ment, occupying the upper stories, took care that the flag they flung out
should designate where it belonged.

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 107

the mercantile signs visible ; and the flap .of bunting was so
general as to keep the eyes of the passer-by in a continual
quiver of movement. A careful statician, whose fancy for
numbers would probably have led him to count the number
of heart-beats consumed in the duration of its dearest joy,
made the estimate, from personal observation, that the num
ber of flags of all descriptions visible on Broadway, from the
Battery to Union Square, on one of the hottest days of the ex
citement, was not less than six thousand, and that from ten to
fifteen thousand were at the same time waving, flapping and
hanging in all the other different streets and avenues of
the city.

Anotbej display in which the public feeling broke out, was
in Union rosettes, stars, breast-pins, and other trifles of per
sonal adornment. The rosette-fever, particularly, began early
and spread beyond computation. Commencing with the very
evening of Sumter (as we have seen) the wearing of those
emblems of fealty to the Union grew more general day by
day, until within a week after the fall of that fort, the man
who did not display something of the kind on his breast or
at his lappel, was very likely to have his loyalty seriously
suspected. Ladies, too, assumed those emblems, quite as
eagerly, though not with the same generality, as their hus
bands, brothers, and lovers ; and among the most grateful
services that could be rendered by fair hands was the weaving
of one of those "favors," to be worn not in honor of herself,
but her country. (What would not some of us be willing to
pay, now, had we preserved some of those stars, rosettes,
and other emblems of universal loyalty, then so common as
to appear unworthy of hoarding, but long since passed into
the hands of the children as playthings, and already so gen
erally lost that scarcely one can be found even in a museum
or a private collection !)

Another phase of loyalty (the reserved force of which a
dry joker might have designated as the re-publican) was
shewn in the signs of the public houses, especially those of
moderate class and character. Here and there, in city and
country, there had been a " Union Hotel," as there had been
a "United States" or a " Washington." But within a day

108 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

or two after Sumter the number began to increase to an un
heard-of extent ; and in the cities, especially, scarcely a
block existed without at least one place of public resort
designated as the "Union." Clothing, shoe, hardware, and
even thread-and-needle stores followed ; and the same care
ful numerist to whom allusion has before been made, com
puted that within a week after the great outrage, no less than
twelve hundred stores, saloons, and other places depending
upon the public patronage, could have been found, in the city
of Xew York alone, bearing that word which had suddenly
become so endeared. A trifling circumstance, as some may
hold, and one not worth recording; but it may not be con
sidered a trifle, as indicating the general feeling, wjjen it is re
membered that each of those assuming it was acting to secure
additional popularity, and that each, consequently, was ful
filling what he held to be the public requirement. It may
have been even a more trifling thing, when the cartman, not
satisfied with the rosette on his breast and the flags he had
stuck into the bridle of his horse, came down-town one morn
ing with the same magic word, " Union," scrawled in hasty
paint on the front-board of his cart,' — and when another, the
proprietor of a new spring- cart with permanent sides, dis
played it to astonished Broad Street with the whole vehicle
striped red, white and blue, from shaft to end-board ; but these,
like the others, were glorious " straws," showing the blowing
and direction of the national " wind," and in the days to come
they may become part of the history of this sensation period.
The whole country was rising, as the people of no land
ever rose before ; and the flags and emblems that have here
been recounted were but the surface indications of the sterling
ore of patriotism that lay beneath. And for what was the
rising ? For a political polity or a party platform ? No !
Let not this fact go down to history distorted, many as have
already been the attempts to falsify it. Xor was the rising
even for revenge upon the traitors of the rebel States, bit
terly as burned the sense of degradation in the breasts of
loyal men, at the outrage which had been committed on the
American Flag. It was not even for this that such men as
Burtnett Haviland groaned most deeply in the night hours,

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 109

when the horror and misery of a coming war loomed up to
them ; and it was not even for this that they were so willing
to risk all that they had before held most dear, in the camp
and in the field. It was for the Union — the very word
blazoned on the front of the drayman's cart. They believed
their government to be the freest and best on earth — they
believed that it had done nothing to forfeit their respect or
their allegiance — they saw it in danger and knew that it must
fall, unless their hands supported it. For this they raised
flags and wore the national colors — for this they rose, held
public meetings, denounced treason, prepared to fight. For
this — nothing less and nothing more, — they have fought
throughout the war, — except a fanatic few, on either extreme,
a mere fragment, incapable of making one hair white or black
on the national head, but for their fatal power to hinder and
embarrass others. The day was when that fanatic few scoffed
every man who dared be a conservative lover of his country,
with the slighting and sneering epithet of " doughface," or
the still more contemptible cry of "Union saver;" but it
remains to be seen whether the great lesson has not already
been laid to heart even by them, and the tried, steadfast,
devoted lovers of the Union, first, last and all the time, begun
to be reckoned at their true worth in the national exchange 1
History, not this romance, must deal with the particulars
of the great national events and developments which followed
Sumter closely. The President's call for seventy-five thou
sand troops, on Monday, the 15th of April ; the certainty that
loyalty could not recede, that treason would not, and that
war was actually inaugurated ; the coming home of Anderson
and his brave men from Sumter; the sad knowledge that to
carry on the great struggle by sea, the nation had only twenty-
four antiquated vessels, carrying three hundred and eighty
guns, and by land the skeleton of an army of less than ten
thousand men ; the popular gatherings which raised and voted
moneys so liberally for the public defence, and which, ap
proaching even the mob spirit, compelled the throwing out
of reluctant flags and the sudden somersaults of men and
newspapers before considered disloyal ; the issuing by Fer-

110 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

nando Wood, Mayor of New York, of a proclamation calling
upon all good citizens to "stand by the Union and the Con
stitution," written perhaps with the same pen with which he
had only a few days before assured the Governor of Georgia
that he was in favor of the continued shipment of arms to the
seceded States ; the peril that was known to be gathering
around Baltimore and Washington — around Harper's Ferry
Armory and the Norfolk Navy Yard ; — these and a hundred
other details, otherwise of interest, can only be indicated — •
not related. Enough to say, once more, that the country was
alive — awake — earnest — determined ; springing boldly for
ward to the contest, however the image of a big man being
stealthily robbed of his weapons and having his hands tied,
from behind, at the same moment that a smaller but full-armed
antagonist was approaching him in front, would intrude itself
upon minds fond of drawing singular comparisons.

It is perhaps best for us, often, that we do not realize the
whole truth of any situation at once, but come to the under
standing by degrees. There have been many lamentations
vented, first and last, over the want of conception of the
magnitude of the great contest, at first so conspicuously
displayed, and the prophecies of the rebellion being " ended
in three months," that fell from prominent lips. This may
have been all providential : the country was enough alarmed
with what it saw, to be aroused and inspirited ; had it seen
all, it might have grown terrified and faltered at the very
moment when hesitation would have been absolute ruin.
One moment of vacillation, and no future time could have
regained the ground thus surrendered to rebellion and anarchy.
Enough to say, once more, lhat what it saw it sprung to
meet, as no nation ever before rose — as no nation will
probably ever find at once necessity and spirit to rise again —
young and old, rich and poor, male and female, giving heart,
voice, action, wealth, to the national cause.

Nor was the essential military point, that of the enlistment
of soldiers themselves, without which all the other prepara
tions could only have been a melancholy pretence, — at all
wanting at this juncture ; and to that point a few more words
must be devoted. State militia and citizens who had never

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. Ill

worn a sword or carried a gun, competed with each other in
the readiness with which existing organizations were prepared
for temporary service and new ones formed for " two years
or the war'1 — the two years being then the longest supposa-
ble limit for which the struggle could continue. All the loyal
States responded nobly to the call of the President, and
readily as nobly. Some of the Pennsylvania troops, ordered
to rendezvous at I[arrisburgh, reached that city even in ad
vance of the order coming to them, affording to Pennsylvania
the honor of furnishing the first soldiers (several companies
of the Twenty-fifth) who entered the national Capital for its
defence. Four Massachusetts regiments, ordered on the
afternoon of Monday to report at Boston, began arriving
there on Tuesday before nine o'clock in the morning, and
more than fifteen hundred men were at the rendezvous before
noon — an instance of celerity in gathering for warlike pur
poses, not often paralleled and never surpassed.

New York, the conservative and commercial city, upon the
friendship or supineniss of which the Southern leaders had
largely calculated for the early success of the rebellion, —
nobly gave the lie to all the base hopes which had been
formed of it, as did the State of which it formed so important
a part. It seemed to grow into a great military recruiting
centre and place of warlike preparation, as it had been only
the week before the great centre of commercial enterprize and
all the arts of peace. Not many hours elapsed after the
President's call, before the hindrances in the way of enlisting
melted away and the difficulty seemed to rest with those who
prepared to stay at home. It is of course impossible, at this dis
tance of time, to specify the order in which the different regi
ments of the New York State militia, located in and near the
great city, made their tenders of service to the Government.
Enough that all, not hopelessly out of service on account of
defective drill and thinned ranks, sprang forward with the
same alacrity. The tender of the Seventh, Col. Lefferts, the
pet regiment, will always be peculiarly remarked, because
they offered themselves with full ranks and in readiness to
march within twenty-four hours, (though only for the limited
period of thirty days), while others of the regiments, equally

112 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

patriotic and equally anxious, needed at least a little time for
preparation for longer service, dole upon the heels of the
Seventh came the Seventy-first, Col. Vosburgh ; the Sev
enty-ninth, Col. McLeay; the Sixth, Col. Pinckney; the
Fifty-fifth, Col. Le Gal ; the Sixty-ninth, Col. Corcoran ; the
Twelfth, Col. Butterfield ; the Eighth, Col. Lyons ; the
Second, Col. Tompkins ; the Fifth, Col. Schwarzwaelder ;
the Thirteenth, Seventeenth, and Fourteenth, of Brooklyn,
Cols. Abel Smith, Graham and Wood, and perhaps others
that escape hasty recollection. Of these the Fourteenth and
Seventy-ninth took two-years service, the others enlisting for
the three months of the existing crisis.

Volunteer organizations for the war sprung up with incredi
ble rapidity, and their ranks filled with astonishing speed. The
appellations of almost all those organizations are now historic,
as some of their brave men have fallen upon almost every
battle-field o£ the great struggle ; and the names of Duryea's
Fifth Zouaves, or " Advance Guard," — of Hawkins' Ninth
Zouaves, of McChesney's (afterwards %Bendix's) Tenth, or
" National Zouaves,"— of Col. Stiles' Ninth N. Y. S. M.,
that afterwards enlisted for the full term of service, — and of
fifty or an hundred regiments out of the nearly two hundred
that have first or last borne the honor of the Empire State in
their keeping, — are too familiar in the memories of readers
of the current history of the war, to, make their recapitula
tion necessary in a relation of this character. Some of these
have long since come home with thinned ranks, torn banners
and heads wreathed with the very halo of glory ; others
have fallen under misfortune or been sacrificed by incapacity,
and are known no more in the army they once adorned ; still
others are yet fighting the great battle,* under different com
mand from that in which they first breasted the iron storm,
and with different comrades at their sides, but with the same
old purpose animating their hearts. It is only with men and
events embraced in the three-months' service, and with one
corps that should have had a longer existence than envious
fortune vouchsafed it, — that we are obliged more peculiarly to
deal.

* September, 1863.

THE I) A Y S OP SHODDY. 113

That single corps, enlisted for a much longer period than it
remained in existence, and embracing material which should
have made it a splendid success instead of a signal failure,
was the First Regiment New York Fire Zouaves, organized
by an officer whose abilities seemed to be entirely wasted
upon it, and whose fate was even sadder than its own. And
the tie which binds this narration more closely to Ellsworth's
Zouaves than to any other corps that took part in the early
movements of the war, is the fact that one of the most im
portant characters embodied in it, cast his lot with that
regiment of citizen soldiers, for reasons and under circum
stances which will be soon hereafter explained.

CHAPTER YI.

SUNDAY MORNING AT THE HAVILANDS' — A DOMESTIC SCENE —
THE HUSBAND'S PATRIOTIC RESOLUTION — THE PICTURE OF
VALLEY FORGE — THE WIPE'S NOBLE BUT DANGEROUS RE
SPONSE — SOUTHERN AND NORTHERN WOMEN DURING THE
WAR — THE STORY OF SARAH SANDERSON — BURTNETT HAV-
ILAND'S UNKNOWN TEMPTATION — CHURCH-GOING AND SATI
NETS, AFTER SUMTER.

THAT was a strange, sad Sunday which dawned upon the
little household of Burtnett Haviland in East Forty-eighth
Street, albeit the sun shone brightly, and all the appearances
of nature were in harmony with the advancing season. Poor
Mary Haviland, standing on the verge of her first great
sorrow, had borne as heavy a weight on her heart through
the night, as the husband whose coming absence she mourned ;
and if no moan arose from her lips during that troubled
slumber which preceded the dawn, while the hardier and
stronger man was wrestling with fate in his sleep, it was
bodily habit and not absence of tortured feeling which gave
the restraint Half asleep and half awake, as the morning
7

1 14 THE DAYS OF S II O 1) 1) V.

broke, she dreamed that her husband was gone — that a huge
black figure, whose features she could not see for a dense,
dark veil, but which seemed to have a hand nearly as- large
as a human body, had snatched him away from her, in spite
of her outstretched arms and her piteous entreaties, and
dashed him down a precipice that she could riot even fathom
with her eyes. She rushed towards the verge to follow
bun — then shuddered and drew back in moi'tal fear — then
juvoke with a sharp scream, which broke other slumbers than
her own. Little Pet (who was seldom designated by any
other appellation, though she bore the sweet name of Louise)
had been fighting sleep with her tiny fists and rounded arms
for at least half an hour, trying unavailingly to open her eyes,
and bruising her diminutive nose in her pugilistic operations,
when the waking cry of her mother completed ,the exorcism
of the spirit of slumber. One bound out of her little crib,
and a pair of chubby legs were flying over the side of the
bed, with the white clothing wofully deranged, and the two
parents nearly pulling her apart in a playful squabble for the
first kiss of the little brown-curled darling.

" I fight 'oo !" said the spoiled little beauty, doing honor to
the bad instructions of Sarah, (the servant-girl,) or some of
their visitors, taking the part of her mother in the contest,
doubling her ponderous fists and squaring away at her father
from the pillow.

The father laughed, as we almost always laugh at a certain
proportion of the Amazon in the softer sex, whether they be
three years old or several times that age. But Mary Havi-
land did not laugh. Something in the child's words had
jarred her already over-wrought feelings. Though uttered
in play and in perfect unconsciousness, why must that word
" fight" have come between herself and her husband, at that
moment of all the moments in their lives ? The husband
saw the shadow on her face, and understood it but too well.

" There, Pet, take this bunch of keys," reaching over to his
pocket and getting them at the same time, " get into your
little bed again and play with them until mamma gets up."
Then to his wife, as the little one slid away and tumbled
ajjain into the crib to enjoy her new possession of jingling

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 115

iron and brass : " What is it, little woman ? And what did
you scream about, a little while ago ?"

" You know, Burtey !" answered the wife, nestling close to
him and laying her head on his breast. " You know, for I
heard you talking in your sleep more than twenty times
during the night. You have been thinking that we were to
be separated, and so have I. But, oh, Burtey, I hope you
have not been dreaming as I have done ! Did I wake up
with a scream ? Well, it is no wonder, for I dreamed that I
saw a great black hand catch you — that I screamed and tried
to hold you back — but that it dashed you over a deep, dark
gulf; and I was thinking of throwing myself over after you,
and _yet afraid to do it, when I woke — screaming, I suppose."

" Poor little wife ! Rough dreams indeed !" said the hus
band. "But you see no black hand has thrown ine over the
precipice, in reality. So your dream is false and there is
nothing to scream about."

"Nothing y?.t!" answered the wife. "But the future,
Burtey — the dark, sad future !"

" Mary," said the husband, very gravely and yet very
tenderly, caressing the head that nestled near him the while.
" You .understood me last night, I know. I saw that you
did, and tried not to spoil your night's rest by saying more.
There will be — there must be — a call for troops. I do not
know when it may come, but it should come at once. That
call must be met, and met the very moment that it is given.
The response must come from the people. If the land is to
be saved, it must be saved by those who have hearts to know
and feel its peril, and who have joys and comforts that they
can resign in its behalf. Nothing less than such a sacrifice
can be accepted by the God of Nations. I know and feel it.
The rich who can buy commissions and play soldier — the
very poor who have nothing to leave and are -bettered rather
than worsted by going into a soldier's life — neither of these
have any thing to sacrifice ; and they will be Cains, not
Abels, in the dark day. It is such as myself, who have
every thing to lose and nothing to gain by fighting for the
country/who must save the land or it will perish."

The beautiful eyes of his young wife looked up at him as

THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

he lay. There were tears in them, but there was no dissent
from the words he was saying, and the head even sadly nod
ded its acquiescence.

"Stop," said the husband. " Little woman, you always
will insist upon lying in the front of the bed, out of some
nonsensical excuse about 'seeing to Pet.' Now pay for it.
(Jet up, that is a good soul, and bring me that red-covered
History of the Revolution from the top-shelf of the book-case
in the other room."

Mary Haviland had never yet learned the peculiar horror
which belongs to the nineteenth century, against that phrase
in the marriage-service which speaks of a Avife "obeying'' her
husband. She rather enjoyed, than otherwise, a requirement
from his lips which she could properly fulfil, with the pleasant
feeling it brought that she was adding a little to the obligation
under which ho rested to treat her kindly and love her dearlv.
She was not strong-minded, and the necessity of apologizing
for her in this place is submitted to as well as acknowledged.
The conversation of a few friends of the proper cerulean hue,
or a little experience at those notable conventions in which it
is demonstrated that maternity has somehow been transferred
to the opposite sex from that for which it was originally in
tended, — might have made her wiser, given her a proper idea
of her own dignity as a wife — enabled her to accept all the
kind offices which her husband chose to tender her, without
doing any in return — and kept her from the gross impropriety
which she committed on this occasion. Not knowing any
better, Mary Haviland actually obeyed her husband when he
asked her for the book ! Her little bare white feet went pat
ting on the carpet, and her white night deshabille fluttered
lovingly round the dainty limbs that it somewhat saucily ex
posed, as she ran out into the parlor, procured the red-covered
volume that he desired, and tripped back again into the bed
room. There she flung the book at him, with a ferocity which
might have damaged some unfortunate fly happening between
it and her husband's body ; crept back into bed (it was Sun
day morning, early, and no time at which either needed to use
remarkable diligence) ; nestled a little closer than before, beside
him, on account of the chill of her short excursion ; and pre-

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 117

pared to listen to what the red-covered book might have to
say on the duties which men owed to their country in all ages,
and those which they paid without a murmur in those first
times of the free Land of the West which "tried men's souls."
It was only a picture to which he was about to call her
attention — only a picture at which she glanced as the rising
sunshine peeped in at the blinds. Only a picture, and yet it
told more than volumes of words could have done, of the
patriot duty of that time, seen in the light of days gone by.
The scene was evidently Valley Forge in that terrible winter
of 1778, which has since made so many hearts bleed even as
the feet of the poor soldiers of liberty were then bleeding.
A winter of deep snows and piercing winds, with the Ameri
can army well-nigh discouraged, sore present privations added
to past defeat, and only the presence of the master mind and
the master hand sufficient to prevent total despondency. A
miserable hut stood in the foreground, its roof half disman
tled, its clapboards broken, its chimney gone, and a wreath
of thin smoke creeping out from between the shivered shingles
of the roof, to denote that some poor apology for a fire was
burning within. Night was coming, as denoted by the sun
setting behind masses of cold, heavy clouds. The snow lay
thick upon the ground, showing tracks of men and horses
hither and thither, — almost covering a fence to the right, to
show the depth to which it had fallen. Behind lay the dark,
sombre woods, the position of the branches of the nearest
trees indicating that they were writhing and groaning in a
fierce winter wind. By the door of the hut stood the Father
of his Country, pale, sorrowful but determined, and his hat
removed in evident deference to the condition of those before
him. Two soldiers were just shouldering their muskets to go
upon guard, as could be seen by the gesture of the General,
pointing up a bleak hill to the left. Arid oh, what figures for
a guard, ou a sharp winter night ! One had the cocked hat
of the continental service, with the side broken and the hair
coming out at the crown ; the other wore what remained of
an officer's chapeau, all bruised and battered and the ends
drawn to the head with loops of twine. Both were in tatters,
at elbows, knees, and the bottoms of their fraved and worn

118 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

trousers — a very mockery of clothing, for the bitter weather
that surrounded them. One wore two boots, the one nearly
perfect but the other with the end entirely gone and the bared
toes kissing the snow. The second, one shoe, dilapidated and
lashed at the ancle with thick strings, arid the other foot only
covered with a coarse cloth that seemed to have been tied
around it in the same manner. Behind the two was an or
derly, apparently in attendance on the General — but little bet
ter clothed than his companions, and his thin face and sunken
eyes showing the sad effects of cold and privation, while his
attitude was so palpably shivering that the gazer could uot
well look upon it without experiencing a similar feeling. A
most cheerless and melancholy picture, and yet one that had
been executed by a powerful hand, and bearing the very im
press of the time treated of. It must have been a cold and
unpatriotic eye that could look upon the scene unmoved, and
no such eye was gazing upon it on that Sunday morning.
The husband, who had studied it often and never without a
painful swelling in the throat, turned his gaze upon his wife
when she had been regarding it for several minutes in silence,
and saw that there were tears trembling on her eye-lids. Far
down through the years, more than three quarters of a century
after the suffering of Valley Forge had been endured, one of
the patriotic women of America was paying a weeping tribute
to the bravery and devotion of her forefathers ; and the hus
band was sadly content with what he saw.

"This," he said, "is what the men of the Revolution en
dured. I have looked at this picture often during the past
year, when men have been loud in their professions of devo
tion to the country, and I have wondered how many could have
endured Valley Forge. I wonder, now, how many can go
through one tithe of the same suffering. But thousands must
do so, or we have no country. There must be lonely homes,
widowed wives, orphaned children, or we must sink down to
be a scoff and a bye-word among nations. I ask you, Mary, if
I have a right to hold my home, my comfort and even my
life, so dear as to shrink back from the trial ?"

For a moment Mary Haviland did not answer. Her heart
was quite as full as her eyes ; for the picture, while speaking

THE D A Y 3 OF S H O D 1) Y .

of duty, had at the same time spoken of the inevitable hard
ships of the soldier's life, and it was something terrible to
feel that her arms were to be exchanged for the cold bed of
the bivouac and perhaps for the still colder embrace of death.
Fur the instant her husband believed that she faltered ; and
his voice was low and broken with deep feeling as he
partially repeated his last words :

" Mary, my own wife, I ask you if I have a right to hold
you, my home, my life, dearer than my duty to my country ?"

" Xo !" said the wife determinedly rising from the pillow
and looking him steadily in the face — that morning pillow on
which a great many conversations take place, in different
regions of this round world, while very few find a chronicler.
" Xo ! go and do. your duty !" and there was not the suspicion
of a tear in the wife's eyes, now, and not a tremor in her
voice. With one more struggle, just past, she had determined
to give her husband up to his country, as her part of the
great sacrifice ; and she rightly believed that if she did so at
all, she should do so with cheerfulness and even with pride,
cheering him for his duty instead of weakening him by tears
and womanly wailings over their separation. . Thenceforth,
the little woman said to herself — (and she had a habit, weak
and gentle woman that she was, when fully aroused 'to her
duty, of doing the thing upon which she had resolved) — if she
could avoid such an exhibition by any effort of the will, he
should not see another tear trickling down her cheeks or
even standing in her eyes. She would be content, happy,
even merry, in his presence, helping him away, when the
time should come, as if he was only going on some, pleasure-
party that would keep him a while from her society ; and. if the
tears would come sometimes, to take their revenge in floods,
and if the overwhelming feeling would break out sometimes
in sobs and wailings over her great sorrow, she would see to
it that no such manifestation was made in his presence, to
give him a sadder image of her, which' he must carry in the
faithful mirror of his heart while in the tedious camp, or to
unnerve his hand in the day when all his manhood might be
required of him in battle.

These women of America — these wives, and mothers, and

120 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

sisters, and sweethearts, — have had much to do with the
varying tide of fortune in the War for the Union. They
scarcely know the fact themselves, but they have held in their
hands the balance of our success or failure, as woman has
done, in every civilized age and country, when motives were
to be sought as a means of strength. If from the fields of
the rebel South have sprung forth so many men to be their
defenders that they have seemed to embrace more than the
entire population, the secret of the Cadmus crops of armed
men has been found more in the fierce rebellious patriotism
of the women of their households, than even in the public
need and the forced conscriptions. The women of the rebel
States espoused the war from the beginning — made it theirs,
gave their personal services (honorably and dishonorably),
and literally drove into the ranks thousands upon thousands
who might otherwise have yielded to supineness, luxury or
cowardice. " No bridal ring for inc., until we have suc
ceeded !" has been the cry of the expectant bride ; " No
stay-at-home lounger or coward for my son !" has been the
echoing cry of the mother ; while the wife has severed the
yet dearer tie with the words " No rest in my arms for the
man who will not help to drive back the Yankee invader !"
Female circles, in the leading cities of the Confederacy, have
made solemn leagues, and kept them, to countenance no able-
bodied man who remained at home when what they called
the "country" demanded his service; sneers, threats arid
implorings have joined in making a force of compelling
power well nigh resistless ; sisters have morally as well as
literally buckled on the swords and strapped the knapsacks
of their brothers, and urged them off to the field ; and, these
things done, the women of the rebel South have gone one
step further and become spies, decoys and daring midnight
riders, to entrap unwary Union officers or bring destruction on
bewildered Union forces fighting their way through darkness
and treacherous swamps and unknown roads. Evil energy,
no doubt, and energy expended in a bad cause. The edito
rial copperhead may find but few sympathizers in his waitings
over the treatment of liolle Boyd, of Martinsburg, in the Old
Capitol Prison, while she was hissing out " My Maryland,"

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 121

with the very venom of the secession serpent ; and the
women of the North may well draw back with a shudder
from the emulation of such females as those who held
Stoughton's head in their laps while their messengers were
spurring in hot haste for troops to effect his capture. ]Jut
even the last was no worse a breach of hospitality than the
driving of the nail into the head of iSisera by the Scriptural
Jael ; and there comes up to mind, whenever real or
apparent degradation is submitted to by woman for the sake
of what she holds to be patriotism, the dark and fearful
image of Judith, warm from the caresses of Holofernes, sitting
on the side of his couch, with her night-robes dishevelled,
her white arms gleaming ghastly in the light of the cresset
from the recess, and her wild eyes glittering with baleful
fires, as she warily draws from its scabbard at the side of the
sleeping man the steel which is in another moment to make
but a headless trunk of the warrior flushed as much with his
victory over her as over the laud he had been conquering.
And as we think with shuddering admiration of the woman
of old, there is at least a shadow of excuse, if no admiration,
for the subtle, active, dangerous female fiend of the secession.
The very opposite has been the action of the women of the
North. Partially, perhaps, because the foot of the invader
has not been treading at their doors — because the mission on
which their husbands, brothers and lovers went forth seemed
rather to attack than to defend (while in truth the whole duty
of the Union army has been to defend, not a mere section of
country, but a whole broad land, a Union and a Constitu
tion), — partially from this seeming, no doubt, but much more
from the peculiarities of their lives and education, they have
taken no such stand as their whilome sisters of the rebel
South. Except in the gentle and womanly task of ministering
to sickness and relieving suffering, they have seemed' to take
no part whatever in the struggle. They have leagued to
gether, at times, for the most meritorious purposes, but it was
to prepare lint and bandages for the wounded, or delicacies
to send to those hospitals where our disabled soldiers were
)ying. And it is not certain that their ghastly preparations
for the surgeon's aid, exhibited in crowded cities and trump-

122 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

ctcd through the newspapers, have not sometimes cost us
more in the way of frightening away enlistments, than they
have saved us in lives and convalescence. A few of them
(to whom be all honor and praise !) have left happy homes to
b<|pome ministering angels after the battle-field and in tho
sick hospital ; and here and there one has been possessed of
the spirit of Joan of Arc, the Mtiid of Saragossa or Moll
Pitcher, changed sex for the time and carried the sword or
the musket. And a few have done like Mary Haviland — •
buried deep in their hearts whatever of sorrow they felt at
giving up those they loved to absence, hardship and probabl0
death, and speeded them away with cheerful words and
smiling faces. But beyond this they have never gone. No
circle of society has been closed against the man who had
youth, health, competence for his family, physical endurance,
and every obligation as well as inducement for becoming a
patriot soldier, and yet who ignobly remained at home when
the existence of the republic seemed hanging upon his action.
They have had no public word of reprobation for the mock
soldier who assumed the uniform of his country's service and
then basely absented himself from the field. They have had
no frowns, they have not even withdrawn their smiles, for
those who every day proved themselves to be drones or cow
ards. They have paid that homage which woman all the
world over pays to the epauletted shoulder, without stopping
to inquire whether that shoulder bore any of the weight of
the country's destiny. The women of the loyal North, in a
word, have with but few exceptions failed to make the War
for the Union a personal interest, and left it to be the war of
the men alone ; and the result has been seen in a supineness
and an eventual fading out of the war-spirit, which is inevi
table when woman fails to throw her love, her scorn and till
her influence, into the scale of patriotism.

It has been said that Mary Haviland, though she had no
more idea of playing the heroine than had her husband of be
coming a hero — though she was only moved, like him, by a
sense of duty, — resolved that she, for one, would play the
Spartan part and send away the pride and hope of her life
with a smile. What it cost her to make and keep this reso-

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 123

Jution, is among the secrets not yet to be made known. And
certain it is, that had she known what that very appearance
of calm resignation was eventually to cost her, she would
have been far from making the effort. But this, again, antici
pates what only the future should reveal. Enough to say
that half an hour after the close of the conversation we have
recorded, the young wife was moving about her household
avocations, while Sarah was making a tremendous clatter
with the breakfast dishes, and Haviland sat with little Louise
on his lap, frolicking with her after the manner of a great
school-boy, and giving no more indication than his wife that
he did not expect to remain quietly at home for the next de
cade.

But here it becomes necessary to say a word of the "neat-
handed Phyllis" who prepared the breakfast for the Havi-
lands, and who may be found to have more connection with
this scries of actual events than her two dollars per week
seemed to warrant. Sarah was not in the desolate condition
of poor Tim, as to patronymic. She had a second name, and
that name, alliteratively enough, was Sanderson, ISTor was
she one of those waifs who float into service' anywhere and
everywhere, unknown and uncared for. When Mary How-
land, now Mary Haviland, had been a young girl in the little
village of Duffsboro, and when Burtnett Haviland, himself a
native and resident of the same rural paradise, had been com
mencing his mercantile career as a clerk in the leading '•' store "
of that village — Sarah Sanderson, the pretty daughter of a
poor and proud widow, had also been living in a small house
in the neighborhood, not too well educated or too useful, but
with ideas above her station and some danger of falling into
the temptations so plentifully spread about her by the unscru
pulous. Two years after Mary Haviland's marriage, and
when with her husband she had become a resident of the great
city, after losing every one of her blood-relatives by death or
removal to the Pacific shore, — on one of her visits to her old
home she had found the widow Sanderson dead, Sarah penni
less, helpless and without a home, and the perils of her situa
tion inevitably thickening. She had taken compassion upon
her, at the same time that she had been glad of the opportu-

124 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

4

nity of securing "help" in her little house without introducing
a stranger, — had induced Sarah to accompany her to the city,
taught her what she lacked in the knowledge of house-keep
ing, and though employing her as a servant, treated her much
more as a member of her own family than as one holding that
relation.

Not much to the young wife's surprise, she had found the
girl captious, proud and difficult to manage — at least for a
time. Her propensity for the street had been among the
most difficult things to conquer, and left to herself the young
girl would assuredly have gone to ruin within a twelve-month.
Gradually she had improved in conduct as in capacity, as she
could not well fail to do under the kind treatment received
from. both husband and wife ; and though still at times unac
countably captious and sullen, and with an occasional pro
pensity for handling the table service as if it had been some
living thing and she hated it, Mary Haviland had grown to
consider her honest, reliable and valuable. That very morn
ing the young wife had been thinking, while musing upon the
probable coming absence of her husband, that she would not
even then be entirely alone, without any one near who knew
him and understood her — that Sarah would be with her still,
and that Sarah, then, would be almost like a near relative, in
the place she would fill in the household.

It was not the privilege of the young wife to look quite so
clearly into the hearts of those surrounding her, as may be
done here, under the Asmodean power of the romancer. Had
she been able to do so, she might have formed a somewhat
novel and startling opinion of the character of her "help,"
and of the companion \ipon whom she would be obliged to
depend so much during the absence of her husband. For the
better understanding of what is soon to follow, it is necessary
that no mystery shall hei'e remain as to the character of the
almost flaxen -haired, gray-eyed, handsome, childish-faced and
petite figured girl of t\vent}'-two or thereabouts, who was on
that Sunday morning making so terrible a clatter among the
breakfast dishes.

As before indicated, Haviland had been a country shop
clerk before coming to the great city. How much of ac-

THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

quaintanco and even of familiarity with all classes such a
situation involves, is well known to all who have had the op
portunity for observation. Business is not transacted imper
sonally, there, as on Broadway or Chestnut Street. The
shop-keeper knows nearly every one who sets foot within his
building, and nearly every one correspondingly well knows
the shop-keeper and especially the shop-keeper's clerk. With
the latter, particularly, customers who come very often, become
pleasantly familiar. If the clerk is reasonably good-looking
(courteous he must be), the younger female portion of his
regular visitors get to know him very well indeed, the more
certainly because his stock is very miscellaneous, and there
are sometimes little jars of toothsome bon-bons on one side
of the shop, while occasionally a remnant of ribbon, too short
to sell to advantage, may chance to be given away on the
other.

Burtnett Haviland had never been a " scamp," as the
phrase is. Had he been, he would never have made the
loving and excellent husband who has been in the mind's-eye
of the writer all this while ; for " reformed rakes" do not
"make the best husbands," and every vice of youth scars the
moral nature as sadly as an ugly wound disfigures the physi
cal. Yet the good-looking clerk had chucked girls under the
chin, occasionally, when filling that chrysalis position in mer
cantile life — had even, beyond doubt, occasionally stolen half
a dozen kisses from a peachy cheek, in forced or permitted
exchange for a handful of bon-bons. He had done so, perhaps
more than once, with the pretty and spoiled little daughter of
widow Sanderson. There had been the beginning and end of
his imprudence in that regard ; and of late years marriage,
removal, and the whirl of city life and business, had so filled
his mind with other things that it is doubtful whether he even
remembered, when the little girl came to fill a place in his
house as a servant, that such an event had ever occurred.
Something else, too, he had probably forgotten, which she had
not permitted to pass away so easily. One night, at the same
period of his life, the young girl had been caught at the store
in a heavy thunder-storm, no one being present in the build
ing but themselves. She had been terribly frightened and

126 THE T) A Y S OF S II O I) T> Y.

disposed to scream, and he had very innocently put his arm
around her, and held the little fluttering heart near his own — •
a most dangerous and improper position, by the way, even in.
thunder-storms, unless they are very heavy, and the people
as near relatives as brother and sister. After the thunder
storm, in that instance, it being night, and his employer
coming in, the clork had accompanied his protege home and
left her at her mother's door.

These little incidents may have been known to Mary Havi-
land, or they may have escaped her knowledge altogether.
Her husband, who believed that the marriage tie should be a
real one, with thorough confidence, would at all events have
told them to her at any moment, if he had happened to think
of them us worth telling. They were nothings to him, and
would be the merest trifles to her. But not so to the young
girl, whose whole existence seemed to have been affected by
them. Though not a living person upon earth, besides her
self, had ever dreamed of the fact, she had loved Burtnett
Haviland with the best love of her warped, perverted nature,
from the days when he gave her bon-bons and stole a kiss
from her cheek in the country-store. From the night when
he held her in his arms and seemed to shelter her from the
thunder, that love had become mad arid ungovernable within,
however it had left no mark without. From the hour when
he accompanied her home, she had entertained a sort of dim
impression that he was her " beau" — a country phrase almost
ignored in the city, which may mean every thing or nothing.
She had considered herself, ignorant and uncultivated as she
was, quite the equal of the young clerk, and believed that
some day, away off in the future, when he married, he would
marry l\?.r. "When she heard of his marriage engagement,
she had sulked. When he married, after passing away from
her sight for many months, and really quite .forgetting that
there was such a person as the little flaxen-haired girl in
existence, — she had sulked still more, a,nd the wicked devil in
her heart had risen up to hate Mary Haviland, his wife — to
wish her all ill — to wish that she was dead !

Then had come the death of her mother — the period of her
own helpless dependence — and the offer of Mary Havilaud to

THE DAYS OF S il 0 D P Y. 127

take her into her own house as companion more than servant.
And this was the person to whom the young wife, in the in
nocent goodness of her own heart, had made the offer ! She
would have refused it instantly, preferring liberty with the
chance of any vice or crime that it might bring, but that it
offered her the chance of being near the man whom she yet
considered as her " beau." She had accepted it with that end
in view, neither knowing or caring (though old enough, at
twenty, to realize all the danger to which she might be sub
jecting herself), what might be the event of her living in the
same house with him, without one religious or moral princi
ple to be her safeguard.

Two years had gone by. Burtnett Haviland, absorbed in
his devoted affection for his wife, and realizing that when
Heaven gave such a woman to any man, it gave him enough, —
had never dreamed of the temptation that lay in his path.
It, is to be hoped and believed that had he known it, he would
have removed it out of the way, not fallen into it. But hu
man nature is weak and unreliable — perhaps blindness was
the only safety. Almost any man had better pray to be de
livered from any similar temptation than hope to escape it if
it once comes to him. Haviland, however those chances
might have balanced, had been blind indeed — seeing the girl
daily, and yet never reading the feeling that spoke in lip and
eye, and that sometimes even trembled in the voice. During
those two years her love for him had grown more absorbing,
more calculating, more wicked — a love that did not. deify the
object, and that merely seemed to exist because the feeling
ministered to selfishness. She had felt, ever since his mar
riage, that she should have been his wife. She had felt, when
first she saw his child, that that child should have been hers.
What she saw of the mother in little Louise, she hated with
a deadly intensity : what she saw of the father she could love
and caress. Sometimes she would snatch up the child sud
denly, seeing one of these natures, and caress it : then she
\vould descry the other, and almost dash it down, to the terror
of Pet, who feared her almost as much as she childishly loved
her, — and to the surprise, at first, of both parents, who even
tually set down all her actions to odditv and the whims of an

128 THE DAYS OF S II O D D Y.

ill-balanced nature. Of course her hatred to the wife had
strengthened as her love for the husband increased; and there
was quite enough of evil thought in her heart to have budded
out in murder, but — and the cause which restrained her hand
from injury to either Mary Haviland, who, as she actually
believed, stood in her way, or to the poor little child, who
should have had the same father but another mother, not
even the wild, untrained, perverted he'art could well have
explained to itself.

This was the member of Burtnett ITaviland's household,
upon whom both himself and his wife blindly depended for
companionship to the latter in the event of his long absence !

There was another dependence, but that was entirely of a
secondary character. Haviland knew that his cousin Kate, a
handsome rattle-pate and the torment of every circle into
which she was introduced, had grown tired of school-teaching
in the country and taken an engagement to come to the city
and teach fewer children for the same amount of money ;
balancing the account of service rendered by receiving more
undervaluing looks and more insulting words, in one day,
in her new employment, than she could have seen and heard
in a twelvemonth, in her old profession. He could only sup
pose, however, that she would find very little time to spend
away from her new responsibilities and under his roof; and
he did not know that the family into which she was about to
enter had any connection whatever with that of the merchant
his employer.

It is just possible that with a clearer knowledge than that
existing, of the influences upon his own and Mary JIaviland's
welfare, which both the females just named were eventually
to exert, the husband might have made some difference in his
arrangements for absence. But the fates have their will,
generally.

Something more of that April Sunday, and a word of its
politico-religious aspects. The young clerk had not yet
enough shaken off the Puritan habits acquired during his
country life, to be in the practice of absenting himself en
tirely from the House of God on the Sabbath ; and he rightly
calculated, in the present instance, that the discourse to which

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 129

he would listen, attend whatever church he might, must have
some bearing on the great national question which absorbed
his own mind. And he might indeed have taken his chance
at a venture, among all the houses of worship in the city,
without fear of missing the necessary mental pabulum. For
the patriotic fever had invaded the pulpit quite as much as it
had done the counting-house and the street, and perhaps with
more reason than either. In the quiet little church which he
attended on that day with his wife, the unpretentious minis
ter, who had usually been in the habit of avoiding politics
and preaching the religion of his Master, — perhaps because
he felt that he could wash his hands of any agency in bring
ing about the distracted condition of the country, indulged
in no boisterous declamation, but told the story of Sumter as
directly and as plainly as he had erewhile told that of
Calvary, lamented that the days should have come when
brother must lift up his hand against brother, and yet con
cluded his temperate discourse with the declaration that re
bellion against the best of governments was the blackest of
sins ; that the constituted authority of the nation must be
maintained at all hazards ; and that the duty of every true
man who could bear a weapon, was to spring forward at the
earliest call and aid in restoring the ascendency of the flag
over every foot of soil it had once shadowed.

The preacher of a larger and more prosperous church,
whose diatribes against slavery and denunciations of every
one holding even tacit fellowship with that institution,
had done so much to weaken the fraternal bond and bring
about the contest just inaugurated, raved, denounced and
vilified as of old, but seemed to believe that raving and de
nunciation would win the battles of the Union, as he neither
urged the formation of an army nor prayed for its success
when it should be formed. Here one preached to a congre
gation so wealthy, indolent and exacting, that all agitation
• was forbidden, and he could only allude to the crisis in the
mildest and tenderest of terms. And there another had a
large proportion of the Southern interest among his auditors,
and dared only to mince his words and call rebellion "un
fortunate disagreement " and the outrage upon the flag " a

130 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

movement to be regretted." But all, or nearly all, had their
shy at the event ; until the volume of oratorical thunder
poured out in the one city, could it have been gathered and
let off in concert, would quite have equalled that of the
bombardment of Sumter itself.

We have seen how the clerk attended church, and what he
heard. Is it to be supposed that the merchant was more
of a heathen than he ? Certainly not ! At the orthodox
hour, one of Brewster's handsomest landeaux rolled up to the
sidewalk in front of his house on Fifth Avenue ; he entered
the carriage, faultlessly arrayed and immaculately gloved,
and was whirled three whole squares to the place of wor
ship. There he reclined at case in his luxuriously cushioned
pew, only secured in that eligible location by the annual
payment of one thousand dollars, and almost sobbed with
emotion when the preacher intimated that the great calamity
of war had fallen upon the country solely on account of the per
sonal sins and extravagances of its people — that each should
practice a return to early simplicity and economy in life,
justice towards others, and the cleansing of his walk and
conversation from all that could injure mankind or offend the
Divine Being. He almost sobbed — not quite : perhaps he
would have sobbed outright but for the scene of Saturday
evening with his wife, just past, and that of Sunday evening
with that pleasant family the Fullertons, yet to conie, — be
tween which the church-going was sandwiched.

Besides he was thinking (and this makes a further excuse
for his failing to derive full spiritual benefit from that able
discourse) whether S. & Co., of Boston, were likely to have
yet on hand any considerable proportion of the damaged
satinets of which they had bought so many and sold so few
during the preceding winter — whether there were many blue
ones among them — how satinets would serve for United
States uniforms, instead of cloth — how cheaply he could buy
them before S. & Co. thought of the new use to which they
could be turned — and whether it would pay him to take the
five o'clock train that very evening and go eastward to
satisfy himself as to the feasibility of the speculation, lie
did not go East by the five o'clock train, as has been demon-

T II E I) AYS OF SHODDY. 131

strated by his presence that evening in the city ; but there
is reason to fear that he must have taken that route the next
morning, or sent forward a confidential agent ; for the dam
aged satinets . But of them, like Felix's repentance

and Mr. Charles Holt's fulfillment of the solemn duties en
joined on him by the sermon, by and bye!

CHAPTER VII.

THE DEPARTURE OP THE SEVENTH REGIMENT — A FEW WORDS
OF JUSTICE TO THAT ORGANIZATION — THEODORE WINTHROP
AND HIS CAREER — How YOUNG FOSTER WENT AWAY — How
BURTNETT HAVILAND. MET AN ACQUAINTANCE — CAPTAIN
JACK — ELLSWORTH AND THE FIRST FIRE ZOUAVES — ONE
SOLDIER WHO DID NOT WISH TO BE AN OFFICER.

FRIDAY the nineteenth of April brought a pageant to the
city of New York, novel then, but since become lamentably
common — the going away of a regiment to the war. The
great city had known citizen soldiery for a long period — had
seen them on parade and when they departed on excursions —
had boasted that no finer body of men, taken suddenly from
the counter and the workshop, existed upon earth — had heard
their steady tramp and seen their perfect array, on Fourths
of July and parade days — had seen the Prince of Wales and
his staff of soldiers reviewing them, and heard those repre
sentatives of English pride wonder whether fighting men
could really be made in that manner. It had seen those troops
in the street, more than once, when possible mob-danger
threatened and their muskets seemed necessary to prevent
domestic violence. It had watched them when they went
away on such great occasions as the trip to Richmond for the
obsequies of Monroe, and the visit to Boston to honor the in
auguration of the statue of Warren on Bunker Hill. It had
seen the citizen soldiery on holidays and when acting as

132 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

merely an armed police ; but it bad never before sent any of
them away to fight.

Monday had brought the President's proclamation and re
moved from the minds of men like Burtnett Ilaviland any
doubt whether they would at once be called upon to do battle
for the country. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday had
brought intelligence of still more threatening belligerent
movements in the seceded States and on the borders — the call
of the Confederates for troops ; the refusal of three of tho
governors to furnish one soldier for the Union cause ; the
burning of the bridges between Washington and Baltimore,
as if to isolate the doomed cities of the border; the planting
of rebel batteries on the heights opposite Washington ; the
danger everyday growing more imminent, and every day mak
ing manifest by more agonizing appeals, that the Capital of the
natioh, with the public archives and all the machinery of the
government, might at any hour fall into the rebel hands. An
derson had come home; the Massachusetts Sixth had gone
down ; troops from New York had been called for — actually
implored : troops, without one more hour of dangerous delay.
The Seventh had sprung up to meet the call. Fullest in
ranks and most perfect in drill, it was believed that it would
have more weight and influence in discouraging the rebels in
the neighborhood of Washington, than four times the number
of men otherwise organized, because it had been, as a body,
at Richmond, had been seen and appreciated by the Virgin
ians, and had been reckoned "conservative" (i. e. not "abo
lition") to such an extent that many of the Southerners had
declared : " There is one regiment of soldiers we are sure of
— the Seventh will not fight against ws." To show that the
Seventh would fight against them or against any other ene
mies of the country, was rightly held as likely to have a de
pressing influence on that portion of the secessionists who had
calculated upon sympathy at the North. There is no doubt
that, for the moment, the influence of the movement was in
deed depressing — that the advance of the Seventh to Wash
ington did more than the presence of ten times the number
of other troops might have done, to prevent an immediate at
tack upon the Capital. Their drill and numbers wore feared

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 133

. — their wealth, respectability and moral influence were held
even more in dread.

It has been the fashion, since that time, to decry the Sev
enth Kegiment, before so feted and honored. The fashion
began on the day when they marched back up 13 road way from
that thirty days' campaign, their uniforms soiled and dusty,
but their weapons bloodless, their banners unrent, and their
ranks all full except in the absence of one gallant young mem
ber* who already lay in his grave in Greenwood, and a few
who had remained to take part in the longer service of other
regiments. But if they came back from a bloodless campaign,
let it be said that they icent away to a bloody one, not only in
their own belief but in the opin-ion of all the thousands who
gathered to witness their departure. Not one of those who
on that eventful Friday saw them leave their armory, the first
of the New York soldiery to peril their lives for the Union —
not one of the business men who crowded out from their
stores to witness a movement which carried away so many of
their own class, to meet all the uncertainties of war — not one
of the idlers who looked at them as they marched down
Broadway, and lazily respected a patriotic vigor and prompti
tude which they could not emulate — not one of the women
who waved handkerchiefs to them from the windows and
the sidewalks, as swept by the long steady lines of shapely
men in sober gray picked out with black, with faces calmly
grave and many of them seeming too young and too tenderly
reared for soldiers, with blankets rolled, knapsacks strapped,
and the two gleaming brass howitzers wheeling before, — not
one of all these believed that they would even pass through
Baltimore without a deadly struggle, or without leaving some of
their number* dead to seal the curse of that city then so deeply
execrated in the loyal North. They believed themselves, they
were believed by others, to be marching to conflict and death ;
what more of self-sacrificing bravery could they have Shown,
had the event justified the worst apprehensions? They were
marching, too, in reality, to that which tries the mettle of the
Boldier quite as much as the exposure of the battle-field — wea-

* Jonathan Lawrence Keese, son of the late John Keese, the well-known book-
auoiiunoer and table wit, killed by accident while encamped near Washington.

THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

rying labor of foot and hand, to which except as gymnasts
they had been little used. If the Seventh in that campaign
had no occasion to fight the rebel enemy, they found occasion
that tried the stoutest spirit, to fight the demons of sloth and
indulgence, when they threw by their white gloves, assumed
the axe, the spade and the rope, dragged cannon and rebuilt
burnt bridges, beneath a Maryland sun, on their toilsome way
from the seaboard to Annapolis Junction. All this is little,
now, it is true, compared to what trained soldiers have since
endured ; but it was much then and for them. And more as
they showed what they could do and were willing to do if
need. came, than for what they were really called to do, the
Seventh have ever since deserved honor instead of undervalu
ation, for their "March to Washington."

In a certain sense, too, they were realty marching to death
• — the death of their corps. From the day on which they
made their sadly triumphant progress down the crowded
streets of New York and swept away from the jostling and
shouting thousands gathered in the New Jersey Railroad
Depot at Jersey City, — the Seventh, as it before existed, has
been known no more. One Iry one the members of this
"show-regiment which has done no service" have dropped
away and entered other organizations engaged in the War for
the Union, until nearly four hundred of the original number
have been fighting for the cause— most of them promoted to
the rank of officers out of the respect paid their character
and discipline, and scattered through every grade from Lieu
tenant up to General. Others have filled their places, the
name and strength of the corps have been maintained ; but
the Seventh as it was — the Seventh that Winthrop chron
icled — is a thing of history.

And in that name which has crept unawares into the last
sentence, there was another interest involved in the departure
of the " pet regiment." Marching close beside the howitzers
as they passed down Broadway on that eventful Friday when
the Massachusetts Sixth were struggling with the crowd in
the streets of Baltimore, was a young man, known on the roll
as " Theodore Winthrop," who had only joined the regiment
when it was ordered to active service. Agile-framed, light-

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 135

haired and blue eyed, with something of arrogance in the
curl of the light-moustached lip and the full swell of the nos
tril — he would have been a man of mark, the cap removed
from his broad brow, in any drawing-room. But he was un
noticed there and then, and among men who had been heard
of while he had not. He believed that he had brain, and
some of those who kneAV him best had a corresponding im
pression. Traveller, philosopher, nature-lover, Sybarite, he
had seen and felt more than most men of twice his age ; and
yet he was a nobody. His opportunity had not come — it
was only to come when his head should be low in the dust.
He had volume upon volume of manuscript, novels and essays
finished and unfinished, lying in the compartments of the
escritoire in his little room on the slopes of Staten Island ;
but they were of no use — merely mediocre, the publishers
said. He had essayed the publishing experiment : Grub
Street had decided against him, while it sent out inane trash
by the million, and pirated alike brains and balderdash
from abroad. He was quiet, if not content : he was going
to save the country now, and write more and better romances
afterward. He did not know or dream it, but he was carving
out his literary name with the very weapon, he carried. He
was to become the chronicler of the " March of the Seventh ;"
— that was to make him a pet with the publishers and readers
of the Atlantic Monthly (a placer of fame for any man who
has the fortune to fall into its good graces) ; a few weeks
later, when the Seventh had passed up Broadway again, done
with labor and returned home, he was to die a soldier's death
at Big Bethel ; and then was to come immortality — regard
in the hearts of his countrymen for what he had been and
what he might have been, and literary appreciation, for which
he would have given an eye or an arm when alive, to the ex
tent of twenty or thirty editions when he had passed into
that happy state of existence which we have no warrant for
believing that there has ever entered a mere author, a critic
or a publisher.

But all the while that this, which may or may not be called
the " Apology for the Seventh," has been coming from the
pen of a writer who has never had any connection, honorary

136 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

or otherwise, with that regiment, — the course of this narra
tion has been brought to a provoking stand-still — very much
as a line of street cars might be by the laying of the hose
across the track, at a fire. Quite as provoking to the con
ductor as the passengers ; and at the very earliest moment
when the hose can be removed with safety to the public inter
ests, let it be so removed and the blocked cars pass on.

Young Foster, junior clerk in the house of Charles Holt
& Andrews, had found a vent for his juvenile enthusiasm
in joining the Seventh, and he was among the t \velve hun
dred who passed down Broadway on that eventful Friday.
Foster was not only very sanguine, as such young people are
apt to be, but very sanguinary, as the young are not apt to
be, any more than their elders. He not only believed that he
should save the country in some notable manner, and come
home with the single star of a brigadier-general at least, —
but he was "down on'' Baltimore, remembered his academic
classics, thought of delendo-ing Carthage, believed that Bal
timore ought to be " wiped out," and that he was one of the
destroying angels commissioned to perform that sublime
operation. He had accordingly taken a hint from the talk
about Billy Wilson's Zouaves, then already in course of or
ganization, and provided himself with a concealed revolver,
which was a little against the rules, for privates, but not
entirely unallowable, — and a hermetically-hidden bowie-knife,
which was indefensible and atrocious. At least ten of the
rebels were expected (by himself and his mother) to fall in
any attempt made on the life of young Foster ; and rebeldom
generally acted with great wisdom in keeping out of his way,
albeit he lost his revolver at Philadelphia and did not find
himself in the proper funds to buy another, and albeit the
bowie-knife found its best office, very soon after, in opening
oysters down at Annapolis.

Foster had invited all his friends in the store to come out
and "see him off." Haviland, who had been so pulled about
by half a dozen friends anxious to have him join one and
another regiment then in course of formation, that he had as
yet enrolled his name in neither, — with others accepted the
invitation as well as the chance to see the first corps going

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 137

away to the war, and came out to Broadway just as the regi
ment began to pass. He had many friends in the organization,
and might perhaps have joined it but that he believed his
duty as a soldier would lie beyond thirty days. He met
many nods and many waves of the hand in recognition, as
the good-looking fellows went by ; and at last he caught not
only a wave of the hand but almost a bow from Foster, who
was resplendent and gorgeous in his new uniform and appro
priating to himself nearly every flutter of alfemale handker
chief along the whole line. Then the files passed on, the
crowd closed in behind them, the flags fluttered, music
sounded and the cheers replied, farther down the street ; and
the Seventh was to be seen no more.

Just at that moment and when the crowd was closing in
behind the line of soldiers, Haviland felt a hearty slap upon
the shoulder and heard himself addressed by name. He
turned, to see a line-looking man of thirty-five to thirty-
eight; five feet ten or eleven in height; handsome in face,
though the cheeks were a little bronzed by exposure and
touched with the faintest suspicion of late hours and current
dissipation ; dark haired, but with a tinge of red in the
brown ; heavy dark whiskers with a still more decided dash
of red, worn all around the face, but the upper lip clean
shaven. A man of mark, beyond a question, with a merry
smile on his well-formed mouth and a quizzical glance out of
the corner of his eye, while the mouth could at times assume
'an expression strangely sad and the eye could be indignant
and even wicked-looking. The sort of man to be fallen in
love with by women not above a certain scale of intellectual
and moral requirement, very readily — the sort of man to
win warm friendships — and yet the sort of man who could
lose both the prizes named, occasionally, by a mis-step in
which carelessness was more of a component part than
wrong-headedness or want of good feeling. A man capable
of bearing warm regard to others, at least for a certain
period ; and then somewhat addicted to nursing the most
deadly hatred, that years and opportunity for revenge could
scarcely satisfy. A newspaper writer of experience, a wit,
an incarnate fireman, and an old member of the Seventh. A

138 THE DAYS OF .SHODDY.

man who looked every inch the soldier, with his erect figure
and in his well-fitting military blue, with the designating
mark of a Captain on the shoulder and the light-infantry
bugle on the front of his foraging-cap. Such was " Captain
Jack" (as he need only be known), on the clay when he
touched Burtnett Haviland on the shoulder and by that
simple act decided the whole future course of his destiny.

"Ah, Jack, is that you ? I did not see you !" said the
clerk, as he recognized the man who had accosted him.

" I saw you some minutes ago," said Captain Jack. " Got
lots of friends in the regiment, I suppose."

"A good many," answered Haviland. " One of our clerks
among the number. Hallo ! I did not notice — you are in
uniform ! Are you going ?"

" I should think so !" said the Captain. " Don't you see, I
have got things on my shoulders, and am going to carry
a toasting-fork instead of a shooting-iron."

"Yes, I see," laughed Haviland. Then in a different tone
he added. " Well, I am going myself, but I have not decided
where I shall enrol my name."

" Going, and have not yet enrolled your name !" exclaimed
the Captain. " Xow then, 13urt, 1 am in luck. The very
man I wanted !"

" In what ?" asked Haviland. " What is your number ?"

" Haven't the least idea what is to be our number," replied
Captain Jack. "All our fellows, though, are to be Number
One. 15ut see here," and he pointed to an object at a very
little distance- — "that will show you all about it."

A new store was in process of erection very near the corner
of the street by which they were standing, and the inevitable
pile of bricks had gathered in front, of the rising structure, to
the disfigurement of the street, the vexation of passers-by,
and the gratis instruction of the whole population in that
branch of the military art which consists in the passage of
any formidable obstruction thrown up by an enemy. On the
side-walk face of the brick fortification, rendered safe from the
appropriative fingers of old-paper gatherers by the planked
moat which surrounded it, flaunted a showy hand-bill, of

THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

189

which the following is a true copy, size and style of display-
type only excepted :

DOWN WITH SECESSION !

THE UNION MUST AND SHALL BE PRESERVED.

TO THE MEMBERS OP THE NEW YORK FIRE DEPARTMENT.

The government appeals to the

KEW YORK FIRE DEPARTMENT

for one regiment of

ZOUAVES.

The subscriber is detailed in New York for the purpose of
drilling and equipping the regiment after being organized.
The companies \vill be allowed to select their own officers.

The roll for Company is at the Engine House, No.

from 10 A.M. to 12 P.M., daily.

COL. ELLSWORTH, of Chicago Zouaves.

"That is the idea!" said Captain Jack, when his com
panion had taken sufficient time for the reading of the poster.
" Going to have the finest body of fellows that ever shouldered
a musket. Been used to rows, all their lives, you know," he
continued, with a proper appreciation of one of the peculiar
missions of the Department. " And won't they fight, I should
like to know ?"

" I should think they would," answered Haviland.

" You can bet your life they will !" said the Captain,
mimicking the tone and manner of some of the Moseys arid
Sikesej^s who had not then (and have not yet) quite all gone
out of the organization.

The whole history of that ill-starred regiment is a com
mentary on that remark of Captain Jack. It sprung into
existence from a corresponding idea, and was organized by a
man who had peculiar facilities for managing and yet mis
managing it.

Some two years before, in the "weak, piping times of
peace/' when soldiering was a holiday and display all that

140 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

was thought of in that connection, an association of young
men had been formed in Chicago, with Ehna (or Elmer) E.
Ellsworth as their Captain, under the name of the United
States Zouave Cadets. Ellsworth, an enthusiastic young
lawyer with much versatility and little practice, had been an
enthusiastic admirer of the exploits of that terrible branch of
the French service, the Zouaves, and their competitors, the
Turcos, both largely dependent for their efficiency upon their
gymnastic powers and their proficiency in a peculiar descrip
tion of drill. He had fancied that this drill could be intro
duced with advantage in the United States service, and the
Zouave Cadets formed the first embodiment of the idea.
They were principally composed of young business men,
clerks and others, respectable in character, and able to com
mand enough of both time and money for the purposes con
templated. They were subjected to almost as rigid bodily
discipline as so many prize-fighters preparing fur the ring,
liquor in any shape being forbidden, and all other enervating
indulgences put under ban. They commenced the practice
of the Zouave drill, amended and improved by Ellsworth,
and after a few months became as perfect in it as useless
(from exhaustion and over-use of the system) for almost any
other occupation in life. At about the time they had thor
oughly mastered the drill and become the admiration of
gaping thousands who flocked to their exhibitions — while
they could handle the rifle like a mere wand and contort
themselves into every impossible and unnecessary shape,
they probably would not have been able to stand, in actual
combat, before the same number of any ordinary militia in
the country. But they made a splendid show, and that
seemed to be all that was required. At the national exhib
ition held at Springfield, Illinois, in the summer of 18GO,. the
Zouave Cadets took, without any pretence at successful
rivalry, the prize of a magnificent stand of colors offered to
the corps showing the greatest perfection in drill; and then
their great end was achieved. They became the theme of
popular admiration — the very ideal of soldiers. A few months
later they came to the City of New York, by invitation, re
ceived the courtesies of some of the State militia orgauixa-

THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

tions, and gave some exhibitions which confused the specta
tors as to the object of many of the peculiarities of drill,
quite as much as they delighted by their brilliancy of execu
tion. Half a dozen corps were at once talked of among the
Xew York gymnasts, in emulation of the Chicago success,
but (fortunately or unfortunately as the case may be) none
of them were formed.

Among the admiring spectators of the drill of the Zouave
Cadets, at Springfield and Chicago, in 1860, was that remark
able person who was elected to the Presidency at the close
of that year. He admired the drill, proportionately as he un
derstood little or nothing of it. (There had been no Zouave
drill, whatever, in his Indian war experience, though had he
been on the opposite side in the fight, he might have found
something very like it.) He admired the young Captain of
the Zouaves, and came to the sage conclusion that the man.
who could do that, could do almost any thing — almost "make
an almanac." Accordingly, when the progress from Spring
field to Washington, by way of New York, commenced (to
suffer such a sudden interruption at Harrisburgh), young Ells-
Avorth, abandoning his new position of Quartermaster of
Northern Illinois and Paymaster of the State, was a member
of his suite, going proudly to make his debut on that broad
stage of the whole nation, which he believed so much fuller
of promise than his one State. Arrived at Washington, the
President seemed a little puzzled to know what to do with,
his protege ; and the wavering of intention in his mind is said
to have run for a time between making him Chief Clerk of
the War Department, or Second Lieutenant in the regular
army (two posts not entirely similar), the latter being finally
decided upon.

At this opportune moment, for Ellsworth, came the break
ing out of the rebellion. He had probably no ambition what
ever to be a subordinate in a service in which any one of a
thousand other men could be as valuable as himself, while he
felt that he had capacities for another and widely-different
command. He had courage, energy and patriotism, and he
believed that he could be useful in a higher charge and with
a corps organized and drilled after his own system. He at

142 THE DAYS OF SHODDY

once applied for permission to recruit a regiment for active
service, the Colonelcy to be conferred upon him when he suc
ceeded in that object. This permission was granted, all the
loyal States lying before him, "where to choose." And now
came that choice which proved at once his appreciation of
the possession of cei'tain qualities and his want of perception
of the absence of others.

Col. Ellsworth did not choose New York as the place in
which to raise his Zouave regiment, without excellent rea
sons for that selection. A regiment, to be fully effective,
should be recruited and organized in one locality. Next,
Chicago would not be likely to furnish enough athletic and
willing men to form a regiment with the original Zouaves,
even if all the latter should be as willing to fight as they had
once been to drill. Then, the Colonel hud made many valu
able acquaintances in New York, during the visit of the
Zouaves, and he had witnessed the bravery, agility and rat
tling character of the New York firemen. He naturally be
lieved that the man who could walk the slippery gutter of a
six-story house undaunted at midnight, amid ilame and smoke,
with that gutter a glare of ice and the heavy pipe of the en
gine in his hand, after dragging that engine five miles at a
run, — would not be likely to flinch before a battery or to break
down under the fatigues of the most arduous campaign. The
New York firemen were the men for his purpose, beyond a
question. And to a certain extent he was right, for they had
(as they have) the twin qualities of bravery and endurance.
'But there were two points upon which he had made no cal
culation or erred in his estimate — their readiness to fall
quickly under strict discipline, and his own fitness as the man
to command and develop them. These two points were to
present themselves, and to be solved, in the future. Just then
he was high in hope and energetic in action, raising the regi
ment wrhich was to be the pride of the service, and upon the
fighting qualities of which, as we have seeij, Captain Jack,
not altogether in jest, was disposed to " bet his life."

"And you think that / am one of the men who ought to be
in a fighting regiment ?" asked Haviland, when much less

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 143

time had elapsed after Captain Jack's remark than has been
consumed in this episode of the Ellsworth history.

"You come from a fighting State," said the Captain, who
knew something of the early history of the clerk. "And you
have always looked to me like a man who would be pleasanter
as a friend than an enemy."

" Thank you for your good opinion," said Havilaud. " I
hope and believe that I am no coward. But we are all yet
to be tried."

" There are other qualities than mere courage that are to
be tried," answered the Captain. " It is the awfullest bosh in
the world about people being afraid when going into battle.
The most nervous man in the service is likely to be the
worst dare-devil, after the first fire, for he gets angry soonest,
at seeing the brains of some one he knows, scattered all over
him ; and when he is once fairly mad he wants holding back
instead of pushing ahead."

"You talk as if you had seen service," suggested the clerk.
" Have you ?"

"Xever on the land, but a little at sea," replied the Cap
tain. " I had the honor of wearing Uncle Sam's blue a little

while on board the old , and if a man can be scared

anywhere under fire he can on shipboard, where he cannot run
away even if he has ever such a fancy for it, but must stay
and take wrhat comes. And yet I never saw more than one
man who showed the white feather when shot were flying,
and he had been made a wreck beforehand by the scurvy."

"But suppose that I should wish to join the Zouaves,"
said Ilaviland, returning to the subject as if his fancy had
really been taken with the idea, — " would Ellsworth have me ?
I am not a fireman."

" Have you never been ?" asked the Captain.

" Oh, yes," answered the clerk, " I joined old Thirty-eight
two or three years ago, did a little duty with her down-town,
and then backed out because I was too lazy or because it
kept me too much from home — I do not know which !"

"Either one will do — good excuses both," said the Captain.
"Meanwhile you have been quite fireman enough to como

M4 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

under the rule. And now say the word, for I must get up to
the Carriage-house. But stop — what do you want ?"

"A rifle, I suppose !" said the prospective recruit, very in
nocently.

" What!" cried the Captain. "I mean what rank will you
expect ? We can make you a sergeant — I don't know but we
can find you a Second Lieutenancy, if — "

"If I wanted any such position," answered Haviland,
calmly. "I do not know — I may not be fit for a private, and
I certainly am not (it for an officer ; and whether I go with
this regiment or some other, I expect no position but one in
the ranks."

Captain Jack turned short around and took such a look at
the speaker as a naturalist bestows upon a very rare curiosity
suddenly brought to view. Then he caught Haviland by the
arm, whirled him round to the sun, and made a steady survey
of his face. At last with a prolonged "Phew !" and a "By
Moses, I believe the man is iu earnest !" he released him.

" In earnest ? Certainly ! Why not ?" said Haviland. '

" Well, you are just the first man I ever saw, who did not
want an office, civil or military!" broke out the Captain.
" Any more like you down at the store ? If there are, fetch
them up, and I will have a regiment of my own — all privates.
The worst trouble we have is, that everyone wants something
on his shoulder, or two or three stripes on his arm, and nobody
is willing to go into the ranks. They remind me a little,
sometimes, of the Yankee militia company, in which every
one wanted to command and none to serve, and they had to
compromise the matter by appointing them all Brigadier-
Generals and letting them take command week about !"

Had the Captain been speaking a few weeks later, he might
have quoted a still more notable instance in the British Union
Regiment, so auspiciously commenced and so ingloriously
abandoned, and of which the newspaper wits reported that
there were something over two hundred officers, and one pri
vate, until they broke him down by over-fatiguing him at
drill, and the poor fellow finally perished in the cruel attempt
to form him into a hollow square I

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 145

But being reduced to the single jocular illustration, the
Captain concluded with it, and with the repeated question :

" And you really are willing to go into the service as a
private ?"

" Not only willing, but determined to do so," answered
Haviland.

" Will you go with me ?" asked the Captain, in a tone that
had lost all its levity.

"I will," answered the singular recruit; and that word
passed, the deed was done. Burtnett Haviland was not the
man to give his word lightly, or to falsify it when it was once
given. Captain Jack, much as he might wonder at the sin
gular fancy which preferred the ranks to the place of a non
commissioned officer, or even a commission, — understood the
speaker well enough to be sure of his adherence to any line
of duty he had marked out for himself; and he merely said,
as he shook him warmly by the hand :

" Will you come up to the Carriage-house to-night ?"

"No — to-morrow," answered Haviland. The Captain was
gone ; the- singular interview was terminated ; and Burtnett
Haviland was a Fire Zouave.

It is not worth while to speculate on the reasons which
really moved him to this singular resolution. Enough that
this is only the romance of history, and that the choice was
actually made under the circumstances related, though some
of the doubters may whistle incredulously, as did Captain
Jack in the first moment of his surprise. Perhaps the clerk
had no other motive than the one alleged — his desire not to
enter upon any responsibility for which he was not thoroughly
fitted. Perhaps he had another and rarer feeling — an after
thought of that which he had uttered to his wife in their bed
chamber, — that his sacrifice for the honor of his native land
would not be all that was demanded of him, if he allowed
himself to accept command over others and become any thing
more than a mere soldier. Perhaps he had a more selfish
motive — a belief that the true spirit and romance of war
were to be found by the camp-fire and in the rough comradely
of the common soldier, instead of in the tent of the officer, —
and that he connected himself with the Fire Zouave regi-
9

146 THE BAYS OF SHODDY.

mont, wlion the suggestion was made to him, because lie
believed that the most splendid dash of the service would be
found in their midst. All these are hypotheses. He did not
select the place of a private, because it involved less danger
than the position of an officer : had that feeling possessed
him, he would not have enlisted at all. So much is certain —
no more.

At all events, it is sure that had some hundreds of others
in the Union service rated their own capabilities no higher
than did the New York dry-goods clerk, and not pressed
themselves forward to Colonelcies and Brigadier-Generalships
until they knew at least enough of the art of war to make
them » respectable Sergeants or Second Lieutenants, — we
should have wasted fewer lives, spent less hard-won wealth,
and been nearer to the end in view, than can now be said of
the great national struggle.

CHAPTER VIII.

KATE HAVILAND AT THE FULLERTONS' — HER ARRIVAL, EX
AMINATION AND INSTRUCTIONS — MYIIA AND MILDRED, THE
" YOUNG WRETCHES" — A STORY THAT WAS INTERRUPTED —
MRS. FULLERTON'S LAW-PAPERS AND " PROPERTY NEAR
MONTGOMERY" — How NED MINTHORNE LOST HIS LETTER
• — AN INTERVIEW BETWEEN MILLIONAIRE AND TEACHER—
HOW NED MINTHORNE RECOVERED HIS LETTER.

IT becomes necessary at this juncture, to pay another visit
to the residence of the Fullertons, on East Twenty-third
Street, into which an additional element of interest had en
tered since the Sunday evening when Charles Holt paid it
that singular visit. That new element of interest was Kate
Haviland. Saturday of the following week had come, and
on the evening before the young girl had reached the city,
two or three days behind her appointed time, on account of
the death and burial of poor old Amos Haviland, wrho now

THE DAYS OF S IT O D D Y . 147

slept peacefully under 1ho shadow of that very spire whence
the flag had been waving that Sunday morning.. She had
made only a flying call of half an hour at the house of her
coiisin, where she romped with little Pet — set Mary first to
looking glum once more over the idea of her husband going
away at all, and then to laughing over the figure which she
\va.s sure he would cut in the short jacket and baggy trousers
of the Zouave — and put Sarah Sanderson into an ill humor
for a week by caricaturing some of the peculiar friends whom
that young lady had left behind her at Duffsboro. That done,
she had " reported for duty," as she militarily expressed it,
at Mrs. Fullerton's, and spent the evening in such an exam
ination at the hands (or more properly tongues) of that esti
mable lady and her accomplished daughter, as would have
put most girls of her age out of countenance as well as out
of temper, — but which said examination, with the arrogant
instructions accompanying it, had produced precisely the same
injurious effect on the temper and spirits of Kate Haviland,
that would be achieved against the physical integrity of one
of the new iron-clads by bombarding it with putty pellets*
from a pop-gun.

Mrs. Fullerton, accompanied by Dora, had taken her up
into the nursery and school-room, thirty minutes after her
arrival and before she had found time to more than half swal
low her light supper, — and subjected her to a series of ques
tions in grammar and geography which showed that the
mother must lately have been " reading up" in the children's
books, and yet that she did not quite know the difference be
tween a noun and a participle, or have any very definite im
pression whether the Cape of Good Hope did or did not pro
ject into the Bay of Fundy. This duty done and the answers
of the catechumen being received as satisfactory (we regret
to say that they were considerably more quizzical than cor
rect, in several instances) — both mother and daughter had
taken a hand at catechizing her as to her political sentiments,
and impressing upon her the enormity of holding any belief
at variance with the divine right of a Virginian or a South
Carolinian to ride booted and spurred over the universe, and
the superior saeredness of black slavery over Christianity

148 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

as a heaven-appointed institution. Mischievous and politic
Kate, who realty did not care one snap of her nimble white
finger for the whole question at issue between the abolitionists
and the pro-slavery zealots, however well she understood the
peril of the country and reprobated the wicked madness of
secession, — mischievous Kate had at once realized into what
a nest of ignorant Southern prejudice (perhaps of secession
treason) she had dropped — thought for one moment of aban
doning a place so uncongenial, then concluded that the situa
tion would be rather funny than otherwise, at least for a
time — taken her cue and made her responses accordingly.

When asked by Mrs. Fullerton whether she had ever been
in the South and seen any of the dear happy negroes in lov
ing attendance on the proprietors who took such tender care
of them — she had replied at once that she was born among
slaves, in one of the Middle States that had not yet quite
abolished the institution ; and she had improvised for the
occasion a dear old black nurse who had carried her in her
arms and held a good deal more of her love than her own
father and mother. When interrogated by the same lady as
to what she knew of Hinton Rowan Helper's " Impending
Crisis," that book falser than Munchausen and more injurious
than the " Age of Reason" (such were the lady's words) —
she had replied with an inquiry whether it was a novel or a re
cipe-book — a query quite re-assuring to the catechist. When
Dora put in a question as to her reading of the Tribune, she
had had no scruples of conscience whatever against saying that
she never opened that sheet, unless she wanted wrapping-
paper or something to light a fire. And when the same ener
getic young lady inquired of her whether she had ever read
"Uncle Tom's Cabin" which she further characterized,
parenthetically, as '.' a mess of ridiculous stuff, proving that the
writer had never been in the South for a single day," — the
reply of Kate (who had really wasted two days and nights
in reading and crying over that most effective piece of un
scrupulous imagination set down for reality), had been that
she once found the book lying on the window-sill, read two
pages of it and then threw both volumes into the mud-gutter.
It remains to be seen what entry the recording angel had

THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

made against the late country school-mistress for these atro
cious departures from veracity : she had not herself felt any
the worse after them, and they had answered the purpose of
putting two very anxious ladies into such beatific satisfaction
that they would sleep like humming-tops.

This catechism concluded and all the replies found emi
nently satisfactory, the dignified lady had condescended to
explain to her new dependant the reasons why she was so
searching in her inquiries. She wished it to be understood,
she said, that her family were none of the miserable
canaille (she did not use that word, but another much
rougher and signifying very nearly the same thing) of the
North, and she could not under any circumstances permit
the tender minds of her young children to be tainted with
disgraceful principles that might afterwards need to be eradi
cated at the cost of severe suffering. Her family was
wealthy, as every one understood, and she was willing to pay
the governess liberally for any services rendered ; but she
must be allowed to designate precisely what those services
should be, and she must insist upon unquestioning obedience
to her requirements. To which she added that the poor dear
children were not cart-horses, and must not be overworked
or ill-treated, but dealt with as became their birth and station.
To which Dora added, parenthetically, that if those children
were not kept in better order than they had been by the
former governess, and made to pay more attention to their
lessons, there would be occasion for a very hasty settlement
some morning, which she hoped that Miss Haviland (toss of
the head accompanying the polite prefix) would wish to
avoid.

Did there exist any one else in the world, we wonder, of
the age and tastes of Kate Haviland, who, seeing and hear
ing all this and learning what was the atmosphere of the
household she had entered, would not have fled from it as
from a pestilence — even kilted her skirts and rushed away
through the dusk, before sleeping one night in an air so un
congenial and threatening ? Perhaps not ; but as for Kate
Haviland, her only comment on the increasingly-pleasant

150 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

developments of character had been a mental one, shaped into
words something like the following :

"A nice, pleasant family, I fancy ! And won't I have a
nice time among you ! But won't there be fun, one of these
days, and won't you have a nice time of it with me!"

Her reply to the injunctions of the respectable and dignified
matron and her daughter had not been by any means a
lengthy or circumlocutions one, but one which some of us
have erewhile known to throw a gabbling termagant into
worse rage than could have been induced by applying to her
half the hard words in the language. Sweeping all the
injunctions and all the insinuations up into one imposing heap,
Kate had recognized, accepted and crowned the grand total
•by the utterance of the comprehensive assent :

" Yes, ma'am !"

Then Mrs. Fullerton and her daughter, informing her that
she would not be required to assume any charge over her
pupils until the following day, that they had already re
tired and could not be seen that night, and that by follow
ing the servant she would find her sleeping-room, — had
swept away. Kate had heeded the injunction, found a neat-
enough little room on the third floor fitted up for her reception,
and found — not the repose of the innocent, for had she not been
telling terrible fibs ? — but the rest of a young girl remarkably
easy in her own conscience, remarkably careless of some
things that would have been great vexations to others, and
altogether bored, bothered and sleepy.

The morning had introduced her to her charges, Myra and
Mildred, and opened to her one more new chapter in expe
rience. She had found Myra a tall, awkward girl of eleven,
with Dora's light hair and dark eyes, and the promise of being
very like her, both in good looks and arrogance, when she
grew older. Mildred she had found a plumper and browner
child of nine, with hair darker and a little more decided in its
wave, less arrogance, more affection, more pertness and mis
chief, and every indication of being quite as much trouble to
manage, as the other. She had found both hopelessly and
wretchedly ignorant, whether from the incapacity of the
person who preceded her (the children had been too precious,

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 151

all the while, and their blood too much distinguished above
that of ordinary mortals, to go either to a public or even a
private school) — or the fact that the family arrangements
made teaching them impossible. The mother had been too
busy with her own plans and projects, and Dora too much
removed from sympathy with* thorn by difference of age (the
children were, in point of fact, a sort of unexpected second
crop on the Fullerton clover-field) — that neither had paid
them any attention except to " humor," scold and slap — three
very necessary operations, no doubt, in family management,
but scarcely enough without other accompaniments. They
had been smattered with (no other word than this new one
will express the fact) in the primary branches, in grammar,
geography, history, philosophy, and even in French, without
acquiring enough solid knowledge to be able to write one line
intelligibly or add three figures correctly. Kate Haviland,
bringing them with her into the little school-room in the
morning (a back apartment on the third floor, plainly car
peted, with walnut furniture, two writing desks, a small case
for school-books and a map of the United States on the wall)
— had seated the little people in the best manner that a total
unwillingness to obey permitted, attempted to put them
through their educational paces, found the state of affairs as
before indicated, and discovered, within fifteen minutes, that
any further attempt at enlightening their minds would be
labor worse than wasted, until she could succeed in acquiring
some kind of personal influence, whether of love, respect or
fear, over them.

To this end, dropping the grammar with which she had
been muddling their unregulated brains while vexing her
own, just at the moment when we have occasion again to
enter unbidden into the Fullerton abode, she dropped sud
denly from her chair into a sitting position on the carpet,
drew one of the children down on each side of her, and com
menced to teach a primary school in her manner.

" Shall I tell you a story, girls, instead of bothering with
those dreadful old books ?"

" Oh, yes, yes, tell us a story ?" shouted little Mildred,
enough of the child, as yet, to be fond of hearing personal

152 THE D-AYS OP SHODDY.

narrations, though old enough to have a shrewd suspicion,
all the while, that most of them were unadulterated fibs.
" Yes, tell us a story !"

" Once upon a time, then," began the model school-mis
tress, her wealth of chestnut jjair half down about her ears,
her handsome face all aglow with mingled mischief and the
desire of pleasing and winning .the children, each arm around
the waist of a pupil, and her body rocking them and herself
backward and forward after a fashion that no natural school
girl will need to have explained — " once upon a time there
was a man who had two children. They were both girls,
very pretty, and about the age of little Myra and Mildred — "

" That's us!" put in Mildred, displaying her early gram
mar in what Sain AVeller would have called the "obserwa-
tiou."

" — They were about the age of little Myra and Mildred,"
the teacher went on, "and I don't know but they may have
looked a little like two girls who have those very pretty
names. Well, one day there came a nice-looking lady into
the garden where they were playing, and showed them a box
full of gold and jewels, that she would give them if they
would take a number of pretty books that she had in a little
satchel, and learn them all by heart."

" Oh, Jeminy !" cried little Mildred, again. "Wouldn't /
have read the books, though, if I could get lots of gold and
di'mond jewels by doin' it ! Wouldn't you, Myra ?"

" I don't know," answered that very upright young lady
of eleven, wh« had not, so far, been at all captivated.
" Never mind her — go on, if you are going to tell the
story !" This to Kate, and with an air of command which
would not badly have become the dignified head of the estab
lishment. The subject of the peremptory order took a glance
at her, smiled without being observed by either of the chil
dren, and went on :

" — If they studied the books and learned all their lessons,
they were not only to have the gold and jewels, but be al
lowed to put them on and go out into a beautiful grove
where there were brooks of clear water, and the birds sing-

j THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 153

ing, and the sunshine on the grass, and the trees waving,
and every thing that was pleasant and beautiful."

" Oli, Jeminy !" again cried Mildred, who seemed to have
adopted that as her standard adjuration. "Wouldn't that
have been nice ! Now I know that I should have read the
books — or made believe I had read them !" and here the na
ture so early warped peeped out in the most melancholy
manner possible to conceive. Deception in people of older
years is terrible, and falsehood indefensible except under cir
cumstances that change the very nature of the act. But in
the young it is simply heart-sickening — the most un-natural
thing in all nature. Innate depravity is an injurious humbug :
the little ones come to us from the hand of God, with the
gloss of the early leaves and the fragrance of the blossoms —
so nearly pure that of themselves they will never develop
serious evil or wanton falsehood. They have the latent capa
bilities for evil ; and these, which could no more spring up and
grow and bear fruit than the seed in the ground could do,
without air and sunshine — these we of older years develop
in them. Every broken promise made by a mother to her
child — every punishment threatened, or reward offered, by a
father, and never fulfilled — is something to develop this most
forward of the evil germs, falsehood. Think of it, fathers
and mothers, when you make promises. to your children that
you never intend to fulfil, or utter in their presence what they
must know to be falsehoods! — think of it; and if the day
should come when the daughter of your love refuses to
bestow her confidence upon you, deceives .you, and starts
upon some dangerous course with your hand made powerless
to restrain her, — or if the son of your pride makes his life,
his hopes and his troubles a secret from you, so that you can
hold no steadying hand over the first tottering steps of his
career in the world, — know that you are reaping what you
have sown in the promises broken and the shallow deceptions
practised towards imitative childhood !

All this because little Mildred indicated that she might
possibly have deceived the pretty lady as to her learning the
lessons set her ! Yes, all this, and yet not too much upon a
subject which concerns every father and mother in the uni-

THE DAYS OF S H O D D Y . ^

verse, and of which the understanding and the action sprincr
ing from it, must continue its influence when the now pre
eminent troubles of Secretary Seward, and Lord Lyons, and
Prince Gortschakoff, and Count Montholon,* shall have be
come mere insignificant specks in the far distance of time.

However this discovery of the Fullertou code of morals
may have shocked Kate Haviland and given her an addi
tional insight into the labor which would be required to make
those young people any thing more than intellectual savages,
it did not seriously interrupt her story. She went on :

— " If they didn't study their lessons and learn what the
pretty lady had told them to learn, they were not to have any
of the gold or jewels, or to go out into the beautiful grove at
all, and a big black man — oh, so big and black, was to come
and carry them away into a great dark pit, and — "

How this interesting story would eventually have ended,
and how the young school-teacher might have gone on to
explain, after a while, that the pretty lady was Knowledge,
the gold and jewels the blessings of Intelligence, the beauti
ful grove the World to those capable of enjoying it, the black
man Ignorance, and the dark pit the blindness arid misery of
the untaught, — how all this might, could, would or should
have occurred (to borrow a little of the teacherls own phrase
ology in the study of grammar) — will probably never be
known. There was an interruption, a little more effectual
than that of a moment previous ; for at this stage of the
proceedings the dignified Myra, who had not indulged in
many criticisms on the story, caught the name of the big
black man, and fancied that she had made a terrible discovery,
which she signified by exclaiming, very loudly and deci
sively :

" I don't believe a word of it ! It is a nasty, black Aboli
tion lie !"

There is no intention whatever on the part of the writer,
to depict an angelic character in Kate Ilavilaud, a real per
sonage — no saint, certainly, but a very nice little sinner !
Had such been the intention, her fibs of the night before
would have been carefully kept from view. She was a merry,

* September, 1863.

* THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 155

rattling, wide-awake (to use another slight vulgarism) and
whole-hearted girl, capable of a great deal of good and a
small proportion of evil, but very human, as Lady Alice
Hawthorne exclaims when the kiss she has been expecting
seems to linger on its way. She had temper — plenty of it ;
and determination — as those may be made aware who do her
the justice to follow out her career. The only difference be
tween this young lady and many others who seem to be half
the time angry and the other half unhappy, while she enjoyed
life with the same zest which is supposed to tingle through a
harp-string, — is that she kept her temper for great occasions
and was sunny and full of enjoyment the rest of the time,
while they fritter away their angry force in continued little
driblets of ill-nature. On the present occasion, one drop too
much of the Fullerton* gall had been suddenly poured into
her cup.

" Do you say that to me, you minx !" were all the words
uttered; but her two hands, small enough but by no means
powerless, caught the offending hoyden by the two shoulders,
and in the space of twenty seconds she received such a shak
ing as set her teeth chattering, her breath coming short, her
eyes full of angry tears, and herself very nearly tumbling out
of her clothes! It is just possible that the young teacher,
who seldom applied either hand or rod in the way of correc
tion, had before practised the same punishment on some re
fractory boy at her little school in the country, and found it
very effectual ; for she seemed to shake with a will. The
chill thought so, arid under the impression that she might
possibly be shaken to death before the operation closed, con
cluded to submit (at least for the time), and whimpered out,
as well as the shaking would allow : —

"Please — don't — shake me — so — and — I won't — say — so-o-
o — again 1"

But little Mildred, who was generally in a fight or a quarrel
with her sister, did not wish to see her harshly treated by any
one else, and blurted out : —

" You nasty thing ! I'll tell my mother !"

There might have been a corresponding shaking in store
for Miss Mildred, for the governess was not at all likely to

156 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

mince matters when she had commenced; but at that moment
another interruption in the programme occurred.

About an hour previous to the time of this occurrence, Mr.
Ned Minthorne, millionaire and noodle, walking his morning
rounds of inanity, called at the Fullertons' as he seldom
failed to do during some hour of the twenty-four, every day
when he was in town. He found Mrs. Fullerton just sealing
in a large envelope a letter which had an inner directed en
velope around it. Mrs. Fullerton seemed to color, became
flustered a little, then accepted the situation and threw off all
embarrassment. Why should she be embarrassed, in fact,
before a person so low in mental calibre as Ned Minthorne,
and one who lay so completely under the thumbs 01 herself
and daughter ? At last her daughter and herself held a mo
ment of whispered conversation^ (excellent treatment of the
morning visitor !) and then the mother somewhat hesitatingly
opened a conversation which may be stated as follows : —

" Mr. Minthorne, my daughter and myself have concluded
to make a confidant of you."

"Very much obliged, madam, I am sure," answered Min
thorne, in his own feeble way, apparently very little enlight
ened and not much enraptured by this striking proof of per
sonal esteem.

"Pray be seated," said Mrs. Fullerton, indicating a chair.
The visitor took one, and the lady another, while Miss Dora,
who affected soft seats, dropped upon the sofa as usual.

" Perhaps you had rather speak to Mr. Minthorne, my
dear ?" said the mother, inquiringly, when this arrangement
for personal comfort was concluded.

"No — speak to him yourself," answered the daughter, not
too respectfully, and as if the whole thing bored her a little.

"Very well, my dear," said the mother. "Mr. Minthorne,
you have now been for so long a time a frequent visitor at
this house, that you cannot be ignorant of our position or
sentiments."

Mr. Ned Minthorne would have done no violence to the
truth by saying that if he did not know the sentiments of
that particular family, on almost every subject, the ignorance
must bo his own fault, as he had had all the possible varia-

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 157

tions scolded, whined or wept into him, first and last. He-
said nothing- of this kind, however (how could he — the gilded
calf — the nobody ?) and merely replied, in the most natural
(fool?) manner in the world, that "he hoped he was not a
stranger — that was — to the feelings and sentiments of Mrs.
Fullerton and her estimable daughter — she knew."

" I am very glad to find that you understand us so well,"
said Mrs. Fullerton, with a permissible bridling at the com
plimentary word. " That will make every thing1 easier.
Among other things you understand, sir, of course, that my
daughter and myself are entirely Southern in feeling ?"

Mr. Minthorne, who might have made the same energetic
statement that he did know that interesting fact, merely as
sented in a manner qu;te as satisfactorily vacuous as he had
shown in his reply to the previous question.

" We have extensive property in the South," the lady went
on to say, "and of course our interests lie there. The aboli
tionists have brought on a war against South Carolina and
the other Southern republics,* and of course poor weak women
like my daughter and myself can do nothing to stop it; but
we can feel, sir, feel! Men of your family and position feel
with us, the disgrace of this abolition outrage \\ and they
ouyht to assist us in doing what little we can do to revenge
it. I mean," and h«re the lady flushed a little, again, and
corrected herself — " I mean that they should do nothing- to
help carry out the schemes of the abolitionists. Do you not
think so ?"

" Certainly, madam," was the reply of the millionaire, who,
if he had not brains enough to understand the whole drift of
the " Southern matron's" remarks, could at least take in and
answer the last simple question.

* See "The History of South Carolina, from its First European Discovery
to it* Erection into a Republic," etc. By AVilliam Gillincre Siimns. Pub
lished by Redfield, New York, 1860.

f If Mrs. Fullerton and her fniuily use the phrase "abolition" somewhat
too often, the fault does not lie with the writer. The ultra pro-slavery South
has had no other adjective, except the corresponding one, "incendiary," for
many a long year, fit to apply to any man or any measure not especially
pledged to keep all the offices in the hands of the fire-eaters. And the good
Vdy's dictionary, as we have already seen, was not likely to be very copious
Wi synonyms.

158 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

"We have property down in Alabama, not far from Mont
gomery," continued Mrs. Fullerton, "and in order that it may
not be confiscated, it is necessary that — that — my lawyer and
myself should hold a little intercourse with people in that
neighborhood. That is right and natural, is it not ?"

"Perfectly right and natural," answered the millionaire,
almost as senteutiously (because the words were already set
for him) as if he had been a man of ordinary common sense 1

"They tell me that by the Baboon's proclamation" (this
was the name by which the Southern lady dignified the Pre
sident of the United States) — "it is against the law to hold
any communication whatever with those States which belong to
the — which have, that is, seceded. IVow is not that hard ?
I ask you, Mr. Minthorne, as a friend of my family," and here
she glanced over to the sofa, where the fine form of Dora was
artistically displayed, as if she regarded her as the all-sufficient
attraction and the millionaire as something more than a mere
"friend of the family," — "I ask you if that is not hard, and
wrong ?"

The lady's voice was broken, and if there were no tears in
her eyes, there was certainly an appearance that they could
be called there with very little effort, when she contemplated
the bitter injustice of the government and the peril of her
property "near Montgomery"; and it is no marvel that Ned
Minthorne, ninny as he was, raised sufficient spunk to say,
without half so much drawl as usual in his tone, and even
bringing his hand down on his knee with a slap that must
have tingled, as he spoke :

" Madam, the man that would keep you and your daughter
from Montgomery — that is — I mean from your property
there, — ought to be — I can't say exactly, but — I don't know
what ought to be done with him !"

The mother accepted the sympathy, and the daughter, by
this time curled up on the sofa in what is sometimes desig
nated as a "kittenish" way (beware of the claws of people,
especially female people, who assume the ways of the kitten!) —
even she deigned to bestow a look upon her faithful adorer,
congratulating herself on the fact that he was not quite an

THE DATS OF SHODDY. 159

absolute nobody, after all, even if he had been born in the
North and born a fool.

" I see that you fully understand and appreciate our posi
tion," said the lady, "and so I can have no delicacy about
speaking the rest of my mind to you. Every few days I havr»
papers to send down, from — from my lawyer, to "

" Tut, tut I Confound it.! I knew who your lawyer was
not long ago. Let me see — what is his name ?" inquired
Minthornc, corrugating his brows in a terrible effort to re
member, and yet with something in his tone that the matron
did not altogether like. She took one long, keen glance sit
him from under her brows, but saw nothing to awaken any
more unpleasant impression, — before she replied :

" Oh, Mr. ," and she mentioned a name that could not

have been found in the Legal Directory for 18 61, one whit
more than it could to-day. But Minthorne, the do-nothing,
was not likely to know much about the names of all the law
yers in New York City; and so what was the difference ?

"Ah, oh, yes, I remember," was the satisfactorily stupid
reply of the man who had had the wrinkles in his brow.

"As I was going to say," the lady went onk apparently not
over well pleased at the interruption, after all, — " I have some
papers to send down every few days, and they are taking so
much pains to stop every thing and watch everybody, and
there is so much trouble along the railroads" (they had begun
to burn bridges at Big Gunpowder) " that really I do not
know, sometimes, how I can get any through at all. And
this was what I wanted to consult you about. Here is a little
package of law papers, that I am very anxious to get down
at once, and I really do not know how to send them. Would
it be putting you to too much trouble, if I should ask you to
get some friend of yours who is going to Washington, to take
this, and allow no one to see it, and leave it at the address
there ? It can easily enough get down, I believe, from Wash
ington."

"Of course not — certainly not — I will see that it is deliv
ered by some one of my friends going down — that is, if 1 do
not go down myself. A fellow wants to see all that is going
on, you know and I may go down myself to-morrow," an-

160 THE DAYS OF SHODDY

swered the noodle, taking the large letter and sticking it into
his skirt pocket without even troubling himself about the ad
dress ; and his whole manner falling, in the speech, into such
a very near approach to idiocy, that Dora Fullerton. looked at
him once more froni her place on the sofa, and wondered how
she could have held a particle of even temporary respect for
him a few moments before — he was such an absolute, unmiti
gated, irredeemable golden calf.

A few moments later, after saluting the mistress of the
establishment with that empresHement which was so eminently
her due, and kissing the hand of Miss Dora, who received the
homage with what she regarded as the native dignity of a
queen — Ned Minthorne left the house, perhaps to look for the
friend who was to carry Mrs. Fullerton's law papers to Wash
ington on their way to Montgomery, perhaps to arrange for
going himself, perhaps merely to kill a little more time before
strolling homeward to lunch.

And yet it was Ned Minthorne who tapped a few minutes
later at the door of the little school-room, and who opened it
the moment after he had done so, just in time to effect a diver
sion in favor of the offending rebel children, and perhaps to
prevent such a family TOW as might have obliged the young
school-teacher to leave her employment and deprived this nar
ration of some of its most instructive incidents.

The next thing in order is to inquire how he came there,
and how he, who had but a little while before left the Fullerton
mansion for the day, should now have been tapping at the
door of the school-room. Was there an unsuspected acquaint
ance between the millionaire and the governess, and did the
former, when he had concluded his call upon the members of
the family proper and pretended to leave the house, really
make a mere transfer of himself from the parlor to the school
room ? Not yet — that is, certainly not ; for the double reason
that of course Kate Haviland could not have been brought to
consent to any thing so improper and deceptive,— and that
(perhaps the latter is the better reason of the two) the mil
lionaire and the young teacher had never seen each othe1*
NO-T— the mechanical construction of Mr. Ned Minthorne's
clothes was at fault. Pardon the remark, that is so regret-

THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

fully made in the interest of truth and patience, all the
extensive manufacturers of that indispensable article known
as the sewing-machine, — but we have never understood
the full meaning of that gross modern vulgarism. " let her
rip !" until instructed by this great invention. Many and
various of our friends left partially denuded iu the street, at
times when the highest sartorial perfection was desirable, by
the giving away of seams that should have been enduring as
those of a seventy-four riding out a hurricane, and others
leaving portions of their garments behind them when the
whole would naturally have been considered better than a
part, — induce this side-reflection, which is not by any means
intended to undervalue the little brownie without which
the labors of the tailor and the sempstress would no longer
be sufficient to clothe an overcrowded world. Ned Miu-
thorne, wearing the best, the newest and the most fashion
able garments known to Broadway, was still not removed
above the accidents and infirmities inseparable from wearing
any clothes whatever. He had his little infirmities, too, one
of which was attachment to an occasional coat which fitted him
more perfectly than any of the many others in his possession;
and in the event of such a treasure being discovered, he some
times clung_to the favorite garment for days in succession
without having the tailor look after the seams.

Such a reckless course could only bring trouble, eventually,
as it did on this occasion. On the morning of the interview
with Mrs. Fullerton and her daughter, Mr. Minthorne unfor
tunately wore one of his pet coats, not less than two weeks
in wear and unexamined as to the state of its seams from the
day when it came from under the ferruginous and calorific
" goose." One of his skirt pockets, without his being aware
of the fact, had just yielded its flimsy pretence of sewing —
Anglice, "ripped"; to that pocket he confided the missive
entrusted to him by Mrs. Fullerton ; and the consequence
was that before he had passed ten steps through the hall on
his way to the door, the precious missive tumbled out on the
floor and all the " law papers" connected with the estimable
lady's " property near Montgomery" were placed at the mercy
of any unscrupulous person who happened to pass.
10

162 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

The first " unscrupulous persou" chanced to be Kate Havi
land, who trod upon the packet as she came up from her late
breakfast, on her way to the school-room, immediately pre
vious to the occurrences there which have already been de
tailed. She saw that it was a letter of considerable size,
which had evidently been dropped by accident ; and she would
at once have thrown it in upon the mantel of the parlor near
which it lay, but being an unmitigated daughter of Eve she
naturally glanced at the direction, and then — why then she
paused and thought a little. She had very keen, quick
young eyes, the paper of the outer envelope was unfortunately
thin, and pressing it close with her finger as she read the
direction : " Mr. Lionel Taylor, No. • F. Street, Wash
ington, D. C." — she saw, or thought she saw, shining through
the paper, another direction very like — she could not make
out what the name was, though something like " Walker" or
" Walters," as it was partially covered by the outer name ;
but the direction below happened not to be opposite the
other lines on the outside, and was certainly like " Mont
gomery, Alabama, Confederate States of America."

It has been said that the young girl thought "a little."
Perhaps that word does not properly indicate the rapid
action of her mind. She thought, as some of the graphic
story-tellers used to say of sensations when one of them had
been up a tree, the branch breaking and a bear waiting at
the bottom, — "a good deal in a little while." Union to the
heart's core, she was not by any means ignorant of the na
tional daily movements and theYules set by the Government
for those who meant to show themselves good citizens. Here
was indeed matter for thought. The people of the house
Southern by birth and education, and boasting of sentiments
very nearly approaching secession — a letter under cover to
some man in Washington, and really intended for Mont
gomery, the Capital of the Seceded States, in spite of the
prohibition against any intercourse — was there not indeed
ground for thought and suspicion ? Kate Haviland thought
so, as she resolved her own course for the present by thrust
ing the package into the large pocket of her dark delaine,
under the coquettish bordered white apron which she was

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 168

going to wear in the school-room, and muttered, not loud
enough for any one to hear except those recording intelli
gences who had already iu all probability set down so heavy
an account against her in their inaccessible day-books : — .

" If I do not smell a very large mice here, then I have no
nose ! And if anybody down at Montgomery, Alabama, gets,
this letter before I satisfy myself whether it does not contain
a lot of treasonable information for the rebels, I hope they
will let me know !"

Whereupon the young lady betook herself to the upper
room and her duties as teacher, as we have seen — ap
parently forgetting that she had made her delaine a tem
porary post-office, or that there was such a thing in the world
as a suspicious letter.

Mr. Ned Minthorne, at first blissfully ignorant of the loss
of correspondence sustained, did not long remain so. He had
not been absent from the house more than ten minutes,
when the bouquet of a neglected ash-box saluted his nasal
organ, agitating his physical system to a fearful degree and
throwing him completely off his mental balance. At once
his hand went into his pocket, in search of the perfumed
handkerchief which was to enable him to pass the abomina
tion without fainting, and in a moment thereafter he became
conscious of the loss which he (or some one else) had
sustained. The letter was gone — good gracious ! And Mrs.
Fullerton's " property near Montgomery" — good gracioiis
again ! — what would become of it ? The millionaire noodle
seemed to have some idea of the reparation of damages, for
he commenced retracing his steps, as nearly as he could
remember, looking down at the ground all the while, as
cfosely as if he had dropped a cambric needle instead of a
package that could be seen for half a block. Judging from
the previous intercourse between the lady who intended to
be his mother-in-law, and himself, and the mental relation
which seemed to have been established — it could only have
been the desire to keep on good terms with the lady and her
daughter which made Mr. Ned Minthorne so anxious to re
cover the lost packet ; and yet the words which he muttered

164 THE. DAYS OP SHODDY.

immediately after discovering the loss did not seem to bear
out that idea : —

" Confound this ripped pocket ! The old lady will rip
quite as badly as the pocket, though, and that is some com
fort ! What a fool I was — so anxious to get it' and get awav.,
that I did not even look at the direction ; and now if seme
fool should have picked it up and carried it off to the Post-
office, what a splendid, chance is lost !"

Mr. Ned Miiitimrne, though treading over every foot of
sidewalk with such religious inspection, found nothing of the
missing object. He reached the house, ran up the steps and
rang the bell again. Possibly he might have dropped it
before he had left the house, instead of after. The servant
who again admitted him knew him too well to say a word,
when not questioned ; arid as he was confident that if he did
not find the packet he should at least find the senders in some
one of the rooms, he asked her nothing and she disappeared
once more into the subterranean regions. He stepped into
the lower parlors — no one was there ; the ladies had evidently
not yet come down-stairs from the room where he had left
them. He ascended the stairs, looking carefully for the letter all
the while, and entered the front room before described, and
where the interview of that morning had taken place, No
one there, either : the ladies had flitted again. (The fact
was, that they had both left the house, in different directions,
within two minutes of his own departure ; but this he could
not know.) As a very intimate friend of the family, licensed
to go anywhere, he had no delicacy about running up and
down stairs as much as he pleased ; and as he knew that
Dora sometimes went up to the rooms on the third floor,
when she wished to be peculiarly sulky and exclusive, he
proceeded in that direction. As he passed the door of the
little school-room, towards one of the other chambers, he
heard voices within. There were the ladies, beyond a doubt.
So he tapped at the door, then fancied that he might have
missed the response made, and opened it, to find the young
school-teacher and her pupils in the situation described
several pages back.

In spite of his want of sense, the millionaire must have

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 165

had some eye for beauty and the picturesque, for he seemed
to be enough struck with surprise and interest at the picture
of the young girl seated on the floor with her two pupils
beside her, to look on them in silence for at least a minute.
During that time Miss Myra, who, under a new excitement,
instantly recovered from the effects of her shaking, fount!
tongue to say, loud enough for the gentleman to hear if he
had been listening very intently :

"That's Ned Minthorue."

To which Miss Mildred added, as if aware that such an
introduction could not be half compendious enough for a total
stranger like their new teacher :

"Ned Minthorne's courtin' my sister Dora, and is going to
marry her."

Whether Ned Minthorne heard these explanatory remarks,
or not, is a matter of no consequence. However questionable
their source or the breeding they displayed, they opened quite
an interesting ~new page to Kate Haviland. She liked to
know people as quickly as possible, without being half as
anxious that they should form the same ready estimate of
her. The self-sufficient young lady was engaged to be mar
ried, then, or something equivalent to engaged, to the rather
handsome and aristocratic but weak looking person standing
in the door. Her surprise, meanwhile, passed away a little
sooner than that of the millionaire ; and she made no motion
to rise, nor gave any indication that she did not consider her
position the most dignified possible, as she looked the intruder
steadily in the face, and said inquiringly :

" Well, sir ?"

" I really beg your pardon," answered the intruder, still
holding fast of the door. " My name is Minthorne. You
do not know me, of course."

"Yes she does, though 1" put in Miss Mildred.

" I have not previously had that pleasure," replied the
young teacher, with much dignity in her words but a mis
chievous smile on lips the beauty of which Ned Minthorne
was not fool enough quite to ignore.

"I did not mean to intrude," continued the millionaire.

166 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

" My name is Min.thorne, as I said, and I would not do that
sort of thing, you know."

" What a fool it is !" mentally commented Kate Haviland,
struck with the evident weakness of manner.

''I was looking for Mrs. Fullerton, or Miss Dora, and
thought that — that is — perhaps one of them might have been
in this room. I heard somebody speaking here."

" Mrs. Fullerton and her daughter have both just left the
house, to make some morning calls, I believe," answered the
teacher, with a conclusive tone in the remark which indi
cated : " Be kind enough to follow them, or at least shut the
door and go away." Ned Minthorne did not take the hint,
if a hint was intended. He said :

" I am very sorry. I did not know but one of the ladies,

might have you have not happened to see such a thing

as a letter lying about, this morning — within the last half
hour — anywhere — have you ? Excuse my asking, but the
letter is of some consequence to me, you know."

" Oho !" said the young girl to herself. " Here is the
writer of the letter, then, and the Fullertons may not be con
cerned, after all !" Then followed the instantaneous reflec
tion : " But the danger of the document may not be the less
to the country, and I won't give it up until I know more
about it — see if I do !" What she said aloud, and in re
sponse to the inquiry, was : " No — I have just come to the
house, sir, and know nothing whatever about any letters."

" Yes she does, though ! She has got one in her pocket
now — a big one ! See !" AVithout Kate being aware of the
fact, the letter had worked up in her pocket, as she moved in
rocking herself backward and forward ; Myra sat on the right
side of her and had caught a glimpse of the end beyond the
pocket ; and before the young teacher could have a thought
of what was about to occur, that young female reprobate had
made a grasp at it, caught it from the sheltering apron, and
wraved it in the air, before the astonished eyes of the mil
lionaire, with that triumphant exclamation !

Here was a situation ! To say that Kate Haviland did not
flush blood-red at the humiliating position of being caught
in a rank falsehood by a stranger, iii the presence of her two

THE D A Y S OF SHODDY. 167

pupils, and one of thorn the means of her detection, — would
be to record an absolute impossibility. Hatred of the young
wretch who had betrayed her— shame at the detection —
doubt whether she had not indeed done something very
wrong and disgraceful, without intending it — all surged
through her mind, with that much greater rapidity than anv
ever achieved by the favorite " lightning'' — the speed of
thought. All the blood in her body seemed concentrated in
her face and head ; there was fire in her eyes and a singing
sensation in her ears. Great heaven ! — to what humiliation
had she not subjected herself, even on the first day of her
residence in that house ! — and would not death on the spot
be preferable to any other fate which could befall her ? And
yet through all this there ran a consciousness that she had
not intended to commit either a crime or a meanness — that
she had acted from what she believed to be the highest and
noblest of motives. No ! — she would not break down be
neath the shame of the situation ! — she would force back that
rebellious blood ! — she would maintain the propriety of what
she had done, even though that effort was to be made in the
face of an obvious fool, (the very worst sort of person in
the world to impress or convince), and though the next
minute might necessitate her leaving the house and her em
ployment that very day.

It has before been intimated that for Kate Haviland to will
was to do. When she said that the rebellious blood should
flow back, the rebellious blood better knew its fate than some
other rebellious forces seem to do, and went back at once.
Her face was nearly as white, though not quite so calm, as
usual, before Ned Minthorne recovered breath from his sur
prise, to say, starting forward a little way from the still-
open door :

"Why, that is my letter, now, you know ! What does this
mean — Miss — Miss — what the deuce is your name ?"

"My name is Haviland !" answered the young girl, spring
ing up from the floor, at this juncture, with an alacrity which
nearly sent the two children, who had been sitting partially
on her skirts, sprawling against the two sides of the little
room. There was no shame in her face, now, nor was there

1G8 THE DAYS 0 F SHOD 1) Y.

any approach to that merriment which usually flowed so
easily into her dimpled cheek and cherry lips. Its expres
sion was strong, earnest, womanly determination ; and Ned
Minthorne saw it, as she advanced to where he was standing,
near the door, and asked*: —

'• You say this is your letter. Is it indeed yours ?"

" Mine ? yes 1" answered the millionaire, but there was no
great amount of confidence expressed in the tone of his reply.
It was surprising with what severity, such as might have he-
longed to an examining judge on the bench with a shrinking
culprit before him, the young girl put her next question.
The two children, astonished and a little frightened at what
seemed to be going on, and yet prevented from running away
out of the room by the presence of the interlocutors near the
door, had backed up into the t\vo corners of the rear end of
the room, nearly or quite out of ear-shot, and probably heard
no intelligible word of what followed.

" Did you write this letter ?" asked the teacher, and her
eyes sought those of the millionaire with an expression which
the latter, if he had brain enough to understand them, was
not likely soon to forget.

"I? — yes — that is, no," stammered Minthorne. "I did
not write the letter, and yet — yet I know — that is I know
pretty much, what is in it; and it is mine ! And look here !
— what kind of a young lady do you call yourself, Miss — Miss
— Hadley — Hamilton — "

" Haviland," corrected the owner of the name.

" — Miss Kaviland, then, to possess yourself of letters be
longing to other people, and then deny having them. Do
you not know that that is — that it is — something or other,
confound the name, that the law does not allow, and that can
be punished — "

" Not quite so severely as treason — holding correspondence
with the enemy, can it ?" asked the young girl, her eyes still
upon the millionaire, and her face stern as if it had never
flickered oil' a smile upon the world around her.

" What do you mean ?" asked Minthorne.

" This," answered the teacher, coming close to the million
aire, holding the letter equally near to his eyes and her own

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 169

and tracing1 her finder along it. " If this letter is yours, you
know that this outside is only a cover, and that within there
is a letter addressed to the rebel capital."

"And what do you make of that?" asked the young man,
apparently with less indecision in tone than he had before
manifested.

" What I have just named — treasonable correspondence
with the rebel leaders," answered the young girl.

".Will you give me that letter?" asked the millionaire,
reaching out his hand for it at the same time.

" 1 will not!" said Kate Haviland. " You are a man, and
I am only a woman, and if you choose to show yourself a
brute, perhaps you oan take it from me. If you do, I will
denounce you for what you are, within an hour, if you are
the last man on earth and I starve in the streets. You never
send this letter to Montgomery, and it never leaves my hands,
until I know that it carries no intelligence that can aid the
enemy !"

Brave Kate ! Brave and true ! Had there been more like
you, women as well as men, the city of New York would not
have been made, as indeed it was made, during all the early
days of the rebellion, the fountain-head from which the rebel
leaders drew all the information they needed, of the plans,
purposes and resources of the loyal States. The Under
ground Mail would not have revenged, as it did, the Under
ground Kailroad, — one injury to the public service and the
welfare of the nation, built upon and defended by another
the very opposite, which had preceded it. It is not the
province of this narration to personate the men known to
have been engaged in carrying on treasonable correspondence
with the enemy, during all the opening months of the war.
Had there been legal proof against them, as there was moral,
they would not have remained all this while at liberty : as
there is not such legal proof at the command of loyal men,
the time has not yet come when their names can even be
mentioned with safety in such a connection as this. Some of
them at the time held high position, penned their treasonable
correspondence in public offices where they had been placed
by the deluded people, and forwarded that treasonable cor-

170 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

respondence at the public expense. Some of them have since
lost those high positions ; and some have since regained
them, or gained others equally Honorable, so far as address
is concerned. Some of them will sit in the next Congress*
and hold a controlling influence in arranging the future weal
or wo of the nation. God help the nation, in such hands !
Half the infidels in the loyal States have been converted to a
belief in the truths of revealed religion, within the past two
or three years, from the impression that there must be a Day
of Judgment for the purpose of pronouncing doom upon such
men, and that there must be a place wherein they can expiate
those crimes against humanity and liberty for which they
seem so unlikely to be punished during this life !

Then happened (that is to say, on the heels of the declara
tion of Kate Haviland, that she had " put her foot down"
against surrendering the letter, to be forwarded to Mont
gomery) — something that she was very far from expecting,
and something that may surprise even the attentive reader
of these pages. It may not be possible even to say what did
happen,, or why it happened. Strong feeling sometimes
makes sudden metamorphoses, to which those of Ovid were
only slight variations of the same creature. Men who have
brains become suddenly devoid of them, under circumstances
of great peril ; and those who before seemed to have little
more than the crude understanding of the idiot, become not
only men, but men of brilliant intellect. There may be
something in the unparalleled circumstances of this unholy
rebellion, producing the same effect where it would seem to
be the most incredible.

Under the excitement (it must have been) of the moment,
and the absolute need that he should regain possession of the
letter on some terms, Mr. Ned Minthorne seemed to be actu
ally transformed. All his weak, dawdling, listless manner
vanished ; and Miss Dora Fullerton, with all the flow of
Southern blood in her veins, would no more have said an
insulting or overbearing word to the man who at that
moment stood before Kate Haviland, than she would have

* September, 1S63.

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 171

thrust her right hand into a grate-full of coal in full blast.
There was not one particle of drawl in his speech, though the
voice was very low, as he said :

" There — we have had enough of this ! — give me that
letter !"

The young girl's face had been painfully red not long be
fore. Xow it grew almost white, in the intensity of her sur
prise. Was this reaJly the same man with whom she had
been conversing ? She gazed at him with a strange fascina
tion, in silence and for quite a moment, and then she asked :

" Who are you ?"_

" I told you my name, before. Minthorne. Let me have
that letter ; Jov I must go, and I need it at once."

" To send it to Washington ?" asked the young girl.

Minthorne looked into her face one moment. "Xo," he
answered.

" Xo ?"

" Xo — nor to use it in any manner in which the interests
of the United States of America will be injured. Upon my
honor /" His words were very low, so that the children still
standing in the back part of the room could not have under
stood him if they had been literally " all ears."

Without another word Kate Haviland handed him the
packet : he put it into his pocket (his other pocket), said
" Good morning ; and you had better forget what has been
said and done here since I entered this room !" and was gone.
A moment afterwards, Xed Minthorne, millionaire and noodle,
once more emerged from the house of Mrs. Fullerton, with
out meeting either that lady or her daughter, went dawdling
down the street, and was 'shortly afterwards engaged in one
of the most eclectic games of billiards known to the profes
sion, at one of the most fashionable establishments for that
indulgence, in the neighborhood of Union Square. Where
he went after his weak nature had fortified itself with the
excitement of punching about a few ivory balls on a green
baize table with a long stick, as another and stronger man
might have fortified his with a glass of fiery liqueur and two
strong cigars, — it is not necessary at this time to inquire.

Kate Haviland of course obeyed the injunction to " forget"

172 THE DAYS OF 'SHODDY.

all that had occurred, and pursued that duty with such con
scientiousness that she did very little else (mentally) during
the remainder of the day, than continually to forget what she
had the moment before been remembering in spite of herself.
In order to quiet the apprehensions of some who might fear
for the future of Misses Myra and Mildred under the instruc
tions of a teacher of such ambiguous character — it may be
said that during the day she managed to tell the story she
had commenced, without being even once insultingly inter
rupted — that before a week Myra (as much from love as fear,
and yet with a due proportion of both in mind) would as
soon have jumped out of the third story window as played a
trick corresponding to the one in which she had indulged on
that eventful morning — and that not many days elapsed be
fore Mrs. Fullerton loftily declared herself pleased with the
new governess, and Miss Dora remarked that " the young
wretches had not been so still, any time within a twelve
month."

CHAPTER IX.

ANOTHER CHAPTER THAT is NOT ROMANCE, BUT HISTORY —
THE " DAYS OF SHODDY," AS THEY WERE — THE HUMAN
REPTILES THAT SPRUNG UP AMONG THE DEMI-GODS — THE
GREAT OPPORTUNITY FOR PLUNDERING, AND HOW IT WAS
EMBRACED — SHODDY SWINDLES IN AND ABOUT NEW YORK —
OLD BOATS, OLD SATINETS, OLD REPUTATIONS AND NEW
VILLANIES — NATIONAL, STATE AND CITY MOVEMENTS — Is
THE MODERN SODOM TO. BE LOST OF SAVED ?

IT would be for the honor of human nature, if no necessity
existed that the words following, and many others, should
ever be read or written. Yet the design has been to furnish
a faithful chronicle of the time, one partaking quite as much
of the character of history as that of romance; and though
it may be allowable for the painter in sunny lauds to bring

T H K DAYS OF SHODDY. 173

home only pleasant little bits of reminiscence caught from
moments when he saw the sun aslant on such a valley or the
evening falling on such a glorious combination of rock, and
tree and river, — yet the word-painter has not the same liberty
of choice ; and the faithful chronicler who accompanies this
Cole, or Church or Gilford, and who pretends to give an ac
curate account of the country visited, cannot be allowed only
to dwell upon such pleasant scenes and golden moments : he
must treat sometimes_of all that is hideous, loathsome and
disgusting — all that is annoying, dangerous and terrible.
Fearful gulfs lie, in reality, among the mountains which the
artist makes merely enjoyable adjuncts of his picture ; storms
burst upon broad-stretching plains ; and foul reptiles creep
among luxuriant foliage. It is the duty of some to tell the
whole truth, while others can be allowed only to exhibit the
glorious points which honor nature and -deify humanity.

It is a task of no ordinary repulsiveness, to put upon re
cord, amid the brightest glories that have ever been gathered
by the American name, a shame which must endure as long
as it has a place in history. Xota shame unparalleled in the
career of nations, but one from which we should have'kept
ourselves free, under the broad light of this epoch and in
view of all past experience. That shame is and has been,
trading and thriving upon the suffering and necessity of the
republic.

It has been the duty of some of the earlier chapters of this
work, to descant upon the glories which displayed themselves
in the national character and action, immediately after the
fall of Sumter — that attachment to the flag, personal courage
and devotion, manifested in rushing to the ranks .of the army
and pouring out wealth for the public service, which can
never be forgotten until men ceasq to be divided into nation
alities. Wo to the world that there is another and a darker
side to the medal ! If the rising was matchless in the sub
limity of its numbers, courage and devotion, it was accom
panied by another rising, almost if not quite unparalleled in
the whole record of baseness. If the true men of the re
public rose to be demi-gods, in the sublimity of their sacri
fices made and offered, there was a residuum among them —

THE DAYS £F SHODDY.

an evil spawn of men who at the same time sunk to be the
meanest reptiles that ever crawled the earth. If Russell's
dictum and the taunt of past years, that we were "nothing
but a nation of shopkeepers," were at once disproved, — an
other and a fouler charge, that we were capable of trading
upon any necessity and making the " almighty dollar" out of
transactions the most disgraceful, was proved to be true of
too many in our midst. It might be established that as a
nation we were brave and loyal : God help us 1 — it has not
been proved that as a nation we were honextf

The title given to the work of which this chapter forms a
part, is "The Days of Shoddy." And the name* has nbt
Iwen chosen without due consideration of its meaning ; for
the first weeks of the war, to which it peculiarly refers, gave
to that word, before but little known, a wide and disgraceful
significance. It has been, from that day, and must be in the
dictionaries of all future periods, a synonym for miserable,
pretence in patriotism — a shadow without a substance.
Shoddy coats, shoddy shoes, shoddy blankets, shoddy tents,
shoddy horses, shoddy arms, shoddy ammunition, shoddy
boats, shoddy beef and bread, shoddy bravery, shoddy libe
rality, shoddy patriotism, shoddy loyalty, shoddy statesman
ship, shoddy personal devotion, — these and dozens of other
ramifications of deception have gone to make up the applica
tion of the name ; and it is an eternal disgrace to be obliged
to say that in every one of the particulars named, the history
of this struggle, and especially of its earlier months, has
proved that we can vie with any people who ever practised
the great art of knavery.

We are not alone in the world, of course, in this disgrace.
Rotten ships, foundered horses, arms sold to enrich favorites,
trading and trafficking in every thing that should have been

* There may be many, even nt this day, who do not understand what this
substance really is, which has lately given a new popular word to the English
language at the same time that it has eternally disgraced one branch of tho
English family. "Shoddy," properly speaking, is the short wool carded or
worn from the inside of cloth, without fibre or tenacitv, and with no capa
bility of wear, and yet easily made into the semblance of more durable goods.
The name is now used, however, as applied to cloth, in a more general sense
— to signify any description of rotten or improper material.

THE DATS OF SHODDY. 175

held sacred, show on the pages of English history at almost
any time during the last three hundred years, and no doubt
would show at a still more remote period if the record was
not made obscure by distance. Whole pages of Maeaulay
might have been written of our own time, when they describe
the terrible condition in which the entire British governmental
polity lay for some time~ after the accession of William the
Third,* and the state of thorough disorganization in which
the whole commissariat was sunk when James the Second
made his descent upon Ireland, f And that the same mighty
England, accustomed to great wars, has not yet learned per
fect wisdom in some of these particulars, is known by all who
remember the gross mismanagement of the British commis
sariat during the first months of the war in the Crimea. As
if to prove that man in all ages and in all countries is a thief
when his own country is to be damaged and his own country
men robbed, Xenophon preserves us in his " Anabasis" the
shameful fact that the Greek troops of Cyrus, marching against
Artaxerxes, four hundred years before Christ, were starved

* " From the time of the Restoration to the time of the Revolution, neglect
anrl fraud had been almost constantly impairing the efficiency of every de
partment of the government. Honors and public trusts, peerages, baronet
cies, regiments, frigates, embassies, governments, commissionerships, leases
of crown-lands, contracts for clothing, for provisions, for ammunition, par
dons for murder, for robbery, for arsons, were sold at Whitehall scarcely less
openly than asparagus at Covent Garden, or herrings at Billingsgate. Bro
ker.-* had been incessautly plying for custom in the purlieus of the court. *
* * * From the palace which was the chief seat of this pestilence, the
taint had diffused itself through every office and through every rank in every
office, and had everywhere produced feebleness and disorganization."—
[Jlacmtluy, Hist, of Enyland, vol. III., p. 48, Crosby & Nichols' edition.

t'' A crowd of negligent or ravenous functionaries * * * plundered,
starved and poisoned the armies and fleets of William. * * * The beef
nnd brandy which he [Shales] furnished, were so bad that the soldiers turned
from them with loathing; the tents were rotten: the clothing was scanty;
the muskets broke in the handling. Great numbers of shoes were set down
to the account of the government; but two months after the Treasury had
paid the bill, the shoes had not arrived in Ireland. The means of trans,
porting baggage and artillery were almost entirely wanting. An ample
number of horses had been purchased in England with the public money,
and had been sent to the banks of the Dee. But Shales had let them out for
harvest-work to tho farmers of Cheshire, had pocketed the hire, and had left
the troops in Ulster to get on as best they might." — [3Iacaulay, Hist, of
England, vol. III., p. 336.]

170 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

and robbed by their commanders and commissaries, that their
own pockets might be filled with this "blood-money" of an
army. And some of the heaviest thunder of denunciation
poured by Demosthenes into the ears of the Athenians,
sounded against those public plunderers who enriched them
selves, wore costly robes and built luxurious palaces, while
the State and the army were being beggared to supply them
with that added wealth. But what is all this to us ? — and
what satisfaction is there in contemplating it, except such a
grim and horrible triumph as Lucifer might have felt, plung
ing down from the radiant battlements of heaven to the gloom
and despair of the lower pit, at the knowledge that he was
not the first of the celestial intelligences who had fallen into
the same disobedience and the same irretrievable ruin ? We
should have been honest, had the whole world before us and
around us proved false and treacherous : we should not have
permitted the most sublime rising that ever took place to
preserve a nationality, to be marred and belittled by a rising
equally general for theft and plunder.

There seems to have been a general declaration, in acts if
not in words, at the moment when the dangers and necessities
of the government began to be manifest, to this effect : " The
country is falling into trouble — it will be frightened and dis
tracted — it must have materials for carrying on a war, sud
denly — it must take such things as are offered, and there will
be neither time nor heart to examine — we can make what
profit we please — and it is no crime to cheat the government."
There was a time when some mercantile reputations in the
country stood, not only above any positive charge of dishonest
dealing, but even above suspicion. Not all those mercantile
reputations have been discovered to be bubbles, during this
struggle, but it has certainly been proved that none were too
hiyh to come under absolute proof of dishonesty. Govern
ment officials have been themselves fearfully weak if not ac
tually sharing dishonest profits with contractors ; and con
tractors have so habitually outraged all decency by their
swindles,' that the very name of " contractor" has long been a
scoff in the streets and the word upon which any performer
in the theatre could bring down rounds of reprobatory ap-

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 177

plause. These frauds began with the beginning, and it is
evident that they \viil not end until the clo.se. The leech has
fastened upon the bloud of the nation, and it will not let go
hs hold until the victim has the last drop of its blood sucked
away, or finds strength, in recovered health, to clash the rep
tiles from its bleeding sides. It was not only yesterday that
the army was clothed in rags when unimpeachable clothing
was bargained for : to some extent the same wretched condi
tion of affairs exists to-day.* It was not only last year or
the year still previous, that the soldiers ate mouldy biscuit
and gangrened beef: fare very little better supplies them to
day, though the exposure has ceased to lie a popular one in
the newspapers, and the soldiers themselves have grown so
used to the wrong treatment, or so hopeless of amelioration,
that they cease to utter loud complaints in letters addressed
to the public journals. Vessels are in the employment of the
government, to-day, at scandalous prices, and used for dan-
gvrous service, when they are neither sea-worthy nor in re
pair, just as they were two years ago when there was some
shadow of excuse for their selection, in the existing haste and
necessity ; and if the old Governor and the still older Xiagara
went the way of all rotten boats some time ago, it is not long
since two old Staten Island ferry-boats, the Clifton and the
Sachem, were sent upon service at Sabine Pass, for which
they were no more fitted than the same number of mud-scows
would have been, — and happily lost to the rebels. If the
windows of men's souls and the secrets of government con
tracts could both be laid open to the public view, to-day,
the discovery would be made that quite one-half the national
expenditures during the two and a half years of the war for
the suppression of the rebellion, have been lavished upon un
worthy favorites or picked away piece-meal by gross decep-

* September, 1863. In the Department of which Fortress Monroe is the
head-quarters, and where certainly there is not remarkably active service, it
has needed monthly distributions of clothing, during 1863, to prevent the sol
diers from being absolutely naked. As there has been no public investiga
tion of this abuse, which is, however, a common subject of sneering allusion
at Monroe, \ve hivve no license to give the names of Hie firms supplying either
the cloths or the clothing, and can only say that they are among the very
LII-I/IK! nnil MOST KKSrKCTABI.R di-iilem in tl>? ffunitri/.

11

178 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

lions. Half Ihc cost of the struggle having been thus felo
niously added, half the possible duration within the limits of
public patience has of course been subtracted; and if (which
no one contemplates as possible) there should eventually be
a premature and disastrous termination to the war, let it be
understood that the cause of the ruin will be found' in the con
tinued and unendurable sivindles which have created a false
impression in the public mind that the war itself is only
kept up to give still farther opportunities for plundering.

The city of New York, head of the commercial operations
of a whole continent, has of course been the place of purchase
of most of the supplies necessary for the government
service, and equally of course the theatre of most of the
disreputable transactions alluded to. Many of the unreliable
goods furnished have been manufactured at the East; and
some of the principal " shoddy mills," where a substance
known to be totally unfit for human wear is every day made
into an apology for cloth, to weaken, to sicken and freeze the
defenders of the country, are located in Connecticut. No
doubt Boston and Philadelphia have quite contributed their
share to the national disgrace. But the city of New York
must stand pre-eminent in this, as in every thing honorable
or disgraceful; and it is' almost entirely with transactions
connected with the great commercial metropolis, that this
humiliating record has to do. Nor is there occasion of enter
ing into many particulars of the frauds connected with the
city of New York : the public recollection is smarting under
them ; the names of the guilty parties are well known to
the great body of readers ; and such personation- as could
bring an additional blush (can they indeed blush ?) to the
cheeks of the most noted of the robbers of their motherland,
would be beyond the scope of a work of this character.
Let a few type instances suffice to recall public recollection
sufficiently for the purposes of this chronicle.

There is a story upon record, of a droll character who went
one day into a livery stable (proverbially a place for cheap
dealing and acute conscience) and inquired the price that
would be charged him for a horse arid carriage to go a few
miles into the country. The livery-keeper replietkwith his

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. • 179

price — a modest one, beyond pejrad venture, — whereupon the
droll very coolly remarked : " Oh, y,ou are mistaken ! I did
not ask you how much you would wll the establishment for,
but how much you would hire it to me for, for a couple of
hours !" The local legend does not record what was the
eventual issue of this transaction ; but something of the
same kind might with propriety have been said, by the gov
ernment officials, of charters of boats proposed in their
behalf, where the price charged for a month's hire was
afterwards proved to have been very nearly or quite the
whole value of the vessel, the government taking the risk of
loss and obligation to pay the whole value set by the owners
in that event, in addition ! Dozens and scores of vessels
were hired, in the harbor of Xew York and no doubt in other
harbors as well, of which the owners afterwards made their
boasts, when they had been retained in the government em
ploy for two, three or at the most six months, that they had
received the full value of their vessels and had them back
again as sound as ever. There was not even shame enough,
on the part of those unscrupulous persons, to conceal the
fact that they had attempted and succeeded in perpetrating a
great fraud on the government, as there might have been if
they had been speaking of transactions with private indi
viduals : on the contrary they chuckled publicly over that
"smartness" for which some discriminating fiend, specially
commissioned for the purpose, will yet treat them to an extra
roasting in perdition, above that received by ordinary scoun
drels.

It has often been said that " society" is an excellent insti
tution, not only from the legal protection which its rules and
observances afford to those who would otherwise be too weak
or too modest to take care of themselves, but because to some
extent it enforces the concealment of the worst points in the
characters of each, and prevents sensitive people going mad
at the great" aggregated spectacle of human depravity. This
phase of the questionable and yet necessary protection which
it affords to doubtful characters, has probably never been
more • strikingly illustrated than it Lids fair to be to-day and

4

180 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

in connection with the very outrages upon which we have
been commenting. , *

If only one man had been engaged in filling his purse at
the public expense, no matter how rich and powerful he bad
grown, it is just possible that there might be 'enough of deter
mined virtue and righteous indignation in the community, to
" taboo;' him in the street and on 'Change, to make his seat
an unenviable one at church and plant a few thorns and pin
points of shame in his nightly pillow. But it unfortunately
happens that the number of the impeccable is very limited
as compared with those to be assailed, and that consequently
there is a sort of " Mutual Defence Association" existing
just now in'almost every large community in Anjerica, whose
great end and object is to stifle outcry on this very subject.
" Help me keep my skirts clear, and I will assist in holding
you harmless," is the motto of this extensive organization
of notables ; and surrounded by such phalanxes, who have
first helped themselves to nearly all that was worth appro
priating and then banded together to prevent detection or
even accusation, — what chance would there really be for the
lonely prophet of just wrath who dared to raise his voice in
personal denunciation? A penny whistle in a hurricane,
would be that weak, small voice raised amid the universal
clamor.

Besides, there is naturally some objection, on the part of
the most scrupulously honest of men, to being on bad terms
with all his neighbors ! And as the wrong has been so
broadly disseminated over the land, and as it has permeated
every class of society, from the occupant of the policy-shop
to that of the pulpit, one is really cautious how he fires into
a crowd, lest the shot intended to cripple a contractor a
hundred leagues away, may have the unexpected effect of
" winging" an intimate acquaintance — perhaps even a kins
man ! There have been so many vessels to be supplied — so
many suits of clothing to be furnished — so many thousands
of arms to be procured — so many regiments to be fed, going
to or from the seat of war (no allusion is here made, be it
understood, to the Philadelphia Volunteer Refreshment
Saloons, among the true and far-seeing benevolences of the

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 181

time) — so many victorious officers^ to be banqueted at the
public expense — so many fallen to be buried, with long arrays
of carriages, and gloves and music ad infinitum — so many
different sorts of "relief" to be furnished to the wives and
children of absent soldiers — so many trips of official person
ages to Washington, or the different State capitals, or the
various battle-fields, to arrange for something that never
needed to be done and is consequently and very properly not
done — so many "little jobs," in short, to supply opportunities
missed in the more extensive ones, — that the brother, if dis
posed to be too particular, might think twice before he took
the hand of his twin, and the wife hesitate at putting on the
new bracelet brought her by her husband, until she had full
assurance that it had not been forged out of the melting down
of the national wealth.

As a consequence of all this, society will not be at present
seriously disrupted on account of the new element which has
crept into it, and men who should carry a scarlet letter " S"
upon the forehead, much more prominent than the " A" on
the breast of poor Hester Prynne, will be allowed to wear
their own unblushing fronts. Denunciators, when they do
spring up, will generalize instead of particularizing. Preach
ers, in their pulpits, when they feel the necessity of hurling
a bolt of wrath, will be careful not to look, at that awkward
moment, at the pew where my Lord Baron de Shoddy, just
inducted into his splendid new villa of -Shoddyhurst, sits
proudly in his shining raiment and forms the cynosure of
admiring eyes. Political speakers, though they may thunder,
will thunder innocuously at some supposed speculator who
lives, not in New York, Boston or Philadelphia, but in a very
distant "Borribhoola Gha" across some wide imaginary ocean.
Poets will jingle abuse, but they will disguise the shining
arrows of wit so cleverly that not even the object aimed at
will be aware that he is touched. And novelists — well,
novelists will be found human like their fellows ; and even
they will present, on this subject, innumerable bushels of
imaginative and deprecatory chaff, to a ridiculously small
measure of personal wheat.

At which stage of the argument the writer hereof becomes

182 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

aware thai he is giving forcible proof of his own prophecy,
and that if lie would not lose the opportunity entirely, in the
present connection, and present the most melancholy instance
on record of a " Hamlet" without ever a Prince, at least a
brief glance must be taken of a few of the frauds and blun
ders which, coming together, and each seeming to be espe
cially arranged for the aid of the other, disgraced the opening
days of the war in certain prominent localities. And Hot the
old clo' dealer of Chatham Street, who, about that time,
advertised that he would pay the very highest price for cast-
off clothing, as he had " extensive orders from the govern
ment," — nor yet the boatman on a certain shore-section not
far from the same city, who was seen digging off a schooner
that had been lying ashore, bilged and abandoned, for five
years, " to carry troops down South with," as he said, —
neither of these is to be the type. Prominent men, more or
less clearly indicated, gleam through the whole lamentable
series of operations, the record of which has lain entirely
beyond the scope of the eleven hundred pages of Van Wyck,
and even over-labored the Albany printers, so that though it
has been loud enough in the public voice, it has not reached
the public eye in the report of the Legislative Committee
appointed to investigate the mingled dishonesties and incapa
cities.

The crowning feature of that immediate time was of course
to be found in the great clothing contracts for thirty thousand
troops, in which popular clothing firms were engaged — affairs
probably no worse than others which accompanied and imme
diately followed them, but thrown into peculiar prominence
by their extent and their being the first to come under expo
sure — affairs which at once marked the names of those
concerned in them as proper subjects to bear the prefix of
"Shoddy" itself, for jokes in the street and "gags" at the
theatres, without which town wits, writers and actors might
all have been deprived of some of their very best opportu
nities.

It is equally obvious that most of the frauds upon the
government then and immediately after perpetrated, could
riot have met with the same evil success, had there not been

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 183

either collusion on the part of the authorities, or equally
lamentable though not equally culpable contusion and mis
management. He would be a bold man, to charge that
nearly every person at that time in public office was a shame
less swindler, and the alternative is to believe that frightened
haste and incapacity were the true explanations of the con
duct exhibited. The otherwise high character of most of the
officials involved, gives at least some ground for belief that
this charitable explanation is the true one, and that instead
of their being conspirators leaguing with private villains to
defraud the government, they were merely well-meaning in-
capables, frightened out of their propriety, and running aroun^
with that admirable want of knowledge where they were
going or what they were doing, graphically illustrated by
some of the country people in comparing them to the evolu
tions of " a hen with her head off !"

The New York Legislature was in session when the news
of the fall of Sumter burst upon the country. That body
naturally shared in the general alarm and indignation, and as
the elected exponent of the popular feeling in the State, at
once assumed the duty of providing for the emergency. A
law was passed, on the Tuesday following the announcement
of that astounding news and that of the President's Proclama
tion, appropriating three millions of dollars for the public de
fence, and empowering the Board of State Officers* to expend
that sum in raising, organizing and equipping thirty thousand
men, also authorized by that act. Really, this Board had lit
tle to do in the way of raising troops, for men were rushing
to arms in uncounted thousands : their principal duty lay in
overseeing the organization into regiments, looking after the
legality and propriety of the elections of officers which were
to be made by the regiments themselves, providing for their
proper arming and equipment, and getting them ready for the

* The names of the gentlemen composing this Board, for the additional
reminder of the time which they convey, may also be mentioned here. They
were: Edwin D. Morgan, Governor ; Robt. Campbell, Lt. Governor; David
R. Floyd Jones, Secy, of Sttite ; Robt. 'Denniston, Comptroller,- Charles G.
Myers', Attorney General ; Philip Porsheimer, Trcaaurer ; and Van R. Rich
mond, State E>njiiicer. Of these, after Gov. Morgan, Mr. Durshuiiner was a
leading actuary in tiriuy affairs.

THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

field as speedily as possible. Nor is there the slightest doubt,
it is only justice to say, that the Governor, at least most of
the other members of the Board, and the officers of his Staff
as Commander-in-Chief of the State, who filled especially
arduous positions in the equipment and fitting-out of the
troops, intended to do the very best that lay in their power,
to gather those troops readily, equip and send them off most
efficiently. And it is only justice to say, again, that they
would have presented a much better record than they did iu
reality, had not that unholy conflict between City, State and
Nation early begun to manifest itself, which in a wider sphere
had done so much to give birth to the rebellion, and which will
be found, unless yet undeveloped wisdom arises to bar the
door of divided feeling which admits the evil, the con troll-ing
cause of our national undoing.

The National Government had at that moment neither arms
nor money ; and it needed the one and the expenditure of the
other without a moment's delay. It was very willing to have
the States raise the troops demanded, in their own way, fur
nish the money necessary to equip and send them off, and look
to it (the General Government) for eventual repayment. But
it could not quite " keep still" all the while. It felt the neces
sity of making occasional embarrassing suggestions as to au
thority which the State Government (clearly iu the right, so
far) was not slow to meet with equal tenacity. Here and
there an officer (as in the case of Colonel Ellsworth, before
noticed) was sent on from Washington with " authority" to
raise a regiment ; while the fact was, if there was any State
authority at all, that the President could have given nothing
more than a recommendation that he or any other in the same
relative position should be commissioned by the Governor.
This muddle of " authority," in the case of Colonel Ellsworth
and his Zouaves, grew into a serious difficulty with reference
to their "ordering off" — a sad earnest of the reverses they
were afterwards to suffer. Then the authorities at Washing
ton had no idea whatever, how many troops they really
wanted, and scarcely how many they had ordered ; and here
grew up another matter of embarrassment, eminently worthy
of the time when nearly all thatvwas not dishonesty seemed

THE DAYS OF S H O U D Y. 185

to be inefficiency. By the Proclamation calling for seventy-
five thousand troops, the quota of the State of New York
would have been seventeen regiments, numbering thirteen
thousand, two hundred and eighty men.* The defection of
Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee arid Arkansas,
seriously affected the calculation, and made the quota of New
York, if the whole seventy-five thousand men were to be
raised, nearly twenty thousand. The legislature had believed,
from the first, that troops might be more easily raised then
than at a later period, and that they might be found " handy
to have in the" national " house" ; and their authorization had
been, as we have seen, thirty thousand. It will scarcely be
believed that such stupid blindness as to the future can have
existed at Washington, but such is the fact : the very moment
it was known that thirty thousand New York troops were
being, raised, there were rumors that a large part of them
would be rejected ; and it needed the visits of two different
Committees to the National Capital, before the government
could be induced to receive and recognize the whole thirty
thousand. (As an indication of the war-spirit of the State
of NewYork, it may be said, here, that the whole thirty thou
sand, in thirty-eight regiments, were organized, officered and
equipped, and left the State for the seat of war, within ninety
days from the date of the original call.) After Bull Run, anil
when the power and extent of the rebellion began to appear
in their full proportions, the government at Washington be
gan to sigh over lost opportunities, and to be willing to accept
more men, instead of less, than the State of New York was
willing to furnish. It is anticipating events to refer to it in
this connection, but no other opportunity can occur, and there

* The figures of the original call upon all the States supposed loyal, were
as follows: Maine, one Regiment, 780 men; New Hampshire, one, 780; Ver
mont, one, 780 ; Massachusetts, two, 1,560 ; Rhode Island, one, 780 ; Connec
ticut, one, 780; New York, seventeen, 1.3,280; New 'Jersey, four, 3,123
Pennsylvania, sixteen, 12,500; Delaware, one, 780; Maryland, four, 3,123
Virginia, three, 2,349; North Carolina, two, 1,560; Tennessee, one, 780
Kentucky, four, 3,123; Arkansas, one, 780; Missouri, four, 3,123; Illinois
six, 4,683; Indiana, six, 4,683; Ohio, thirteen, 10,153; Michigan, one, 780
Wisconsin, one, 780; Iowa, one, 780; Minnesota, one, 780. Total, 73,391
The balance of 7o,000, l,tioy, to be supplied by thu District of Columbia.

THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

is really an appropriateness in saying that it was at this time
(to wit, immediately after Bull Run,) that the conflict between
,the National and State authorities, in the raising of troops,
again and yet more injuriously manifested itself. Men, call
ing themselves military men, who lacked character to inspire
confidence at home, and who could not have procured authority
within the city of New York, where they were known, to organ
ize a gang of street-sweepers, — applied to the War Department
for authority to raise regiments within the State of New York,
without consultation with the State government, and were
listened to. It is alleged that some of them offered baits for
command, in tendering corps of peculiar name and organi
zation ; and however that may have been, certain it is that
some of the active men who at that time managed affairs in tlio
War Department, found capabilities in most of these men,
which those who knew them best would never have suspected ;
and such authorizations were given — not less than fifty in
two months, a part of them to drunken vagabonds and even
convicts ! And from those authorizations sprung most of the
disgrace which has since been reflected on the service, from
the State. The regiments "originally raised, under State au
thorization, took away such men as Duryea, Davis, Slocum,
Peck and others who have since reflected honor upon high
command ; and Hawkins, Bendix and many others who de
served higher command than they ever attained. It was un
der the new system of outside meddling that the disgraceful
scenes of Staten Island, East New York and the Red House
were inaugurated, with habitual drunkards and even convicts
pretending to command American citizens, with fudged mus
ter-rolls and forged orders, the whole culminating in the last
ing disgrace to the service, of D'Utassy immured at Sing
Sing.

Such was the inequality of the action at Washington, with
w^hich the State authorities were obliged to contend, — one
day unwilling to receive the troops raised at their order, and
the next willing to overstep their own authority to raise more
than the State would furnish under its recognized system.
This was very early in the war ; and the country might have
been better served could we say that nothing like the

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 187

same vacillation has been shown at a later period. But
the nation will not soon forget the events which followed the
disastrous (though able) retreat of Banks from' the Shenan-
doah Valley, early in 1862, the agonized appeals made to the
leading loyal States for militia to " save Washington" onco
more, and the repudiation of those very calls which followed
when the folly of the "big scare" (as it was then well termed)
had been discovered. Governor Andrews, of Massachusetts,
took the alarm communicated by the official telegraphic des
patches, in such earnest that he called out all the troops in
and near Boston, on the Common ; and Washington came
veiy near to being invaded on the opposite hand, by the
force of that State, at once. The Seventy-first Regiment of
New York National Guards hurried down, believing that
they would almost or quite find Washington captured, to bo
coolly received in that city with a denial that they were
wanted or that he had called for any three mouths militia
men, and that if they were " business men," as they alleged,
and not willing to enlist for the war — they could go home !
They had no authority to go home, meanwhile ; they had not
been mustered into the service of the United States, and con
sequently not even the officers could get legal leave to absent
themselves from the camp for an hour, so that they were
about half the time under arrest by the Provost Marshal and
in the lock-up ; and they were finally mustered in just one
week before they were mustered out and sent home. So
much for the change in management, in this particular at
least; and so much for the hindrances and misunderstandings
which did at least something to relieve the State officers
from the blame of all the blunders, hindrances, robbei'ies and
malfeasances which have occurred.

This somewhat long explanation of the embarrassments
which arose at that time and have since continued through
the conflict of State and National authorities, might be carried
even further and pointed with a still more terrible moral, iit
view of the later experiment in which the General Govern
ment has attempted to ignore the States altogether, while
the States have been quite as tenacious as ever of their
authority — to wit, the great national conscription. But

188 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

there are blunders so palpable and failures so admitted that
reprobation is literally wasted upon them; and the men of
this time* have probably seen the last instance that will ever
be exhibited while we remain a nation, of a popular
government throwing off all confidence in the patriotism of
the people, and hoping to make profitable substitution of the
principle of Federal force in loyal States. The present gen
eration may not live to see the evil impetus thus given to the
injurious doctrines of ultra State-rights, entirely checked ;
but let us hope that it has seen the worst of the conflict,
which has power, if directed long enough by the hands of un
scrupulous men, to wreck us at the very moment when we
may have triiuuphed over both domestic rebellion and foreign
enmity.

As if to prpve that all the evils of divided interest could
not be found in one direction, the city of New York felt
moved (from patriotic motives, of course) to take its little
shy at proving that nothing could be done without it. Im
mediately after Sumter a National Defence Committee was
formed, most of the members severely respectable, though
some who figured most prominently in it had not always
been inactive men in matters in which their own interest and
that of the public happened to be blended. It is said by an
old dramatist that while the evil perpetrated by men is very
likely to exist after they are dead, the good is generally
buried in the same grave as themselves (" or words to that
effect") ; and this may perhaps be the cause of there being
very little remembered to-day with reference to that highly
respectable Committee, except that they were a little in the
way, and that they, with the aid of Col. Ellsworth, who was
crazy after rifles when none worth the name could be fur
nished, supplied the Fire Zouaves with no less than seven
different calibres and thirteen descriptions of weapon, to one
regiment — an advantage in fighting which the dullest student
of military science cannot fail to perceive. They also aided the
magnificent Fernando to make five thousand dollars more out
of the celebrated Mozart regiment than he might otherwise
have been able to do, by giving him a " haul" at each of the

* September, 1863.

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 189

overcoats furnished to that body ; and this benevolence, like
the military wisdom just mentioned, should not be ignored.
That Committee has long since passed away, and its place
has been supplied by the Joint Committee on National Af
fairs, of the Common Council — a stupendous body, princi
pally composed of gentlemen of classical education and re
finement, who have been all the while immaculate in gloves;
readv to go to Washington or Albany, at any time, to consult
with the President or the Governor on — no one has an exact
idea what; indispensable at banquets and balls supplied to
the whole " tag, rag and bob-tail " of politics by the public
money; and at times profusely immense in their telegraphic
despatches, especially when New York was about being
bombarded by the rebel iron-clads and new fortifications
were necessary to be built the same night. Something may
have been forgotten, of the distinguished services of both
these Committees, but human memory is fallible, and at the
present moment the impression exists that neither was ever
much else than a shallow and somewhat expensive humbug.
But all this while the " thirty thousand" clothing contract
has been waiting for its ventilation. Let it wait no longer.
Clothing was wanted, and wanted as quickly as possible, for
the thirty thousand troops being raised by the State of New
York. That it should be respectable and comfortable, such
as would befit citizen soldiery going forth to the defence of
their country, was a natural understanding that needed no
words of contract to enforce it. Without such an under
standing in his own mind, no soldier, however patriotic,
would have enlisted. That the State and the country should
be fairly dealt by in furnishing it. was as much understood,
in the mind of every honorable man, as it would have been
had the purchaser been a private individual and a personal
friend. The State Board of Officers entrusted their Trea
surer with the duty of making the contract for'such clothing,
though into whatever blunders or errors he and the whole
State Board fell, the report of the committee of the New
York legislature on these operations makes it evident that
they had the company of some very high-sounding patriotic
names that have since then been continually recurring in the

190 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

newspapers as the strongest and loudest friends of the Union
and the instructors of government in the whole national
policy. The Treasurer found respectable* and reliable persons
in tlie city of New York, doing extensive business, and
entered into a contract with them to supply several thousand
suits, at such prices as should have procured plain but
strong and durable clothing for the service. The manufac
ture of the clothing went on, and the soldiers waited for it.
Suddenly, and without any one being aware whence the
whisper proceeded, there grew a rumor that these persons
were not making the clothing of such goods as would quite
fulfil the needs of the soldiers or the expectations of the State
officers. This could not be perhiitted, by any means : this
must be made straight, at any hazard. Gov. Morgan held a
consultation with the new Quartermaster-General of the
State,* and both the officials decided that the plan of the
Treasurer, to have one of his own employees inspect the
clothing, must be modified, materially. At the suggestion
of the Governor, and from a list furnished by him, the Quar
termaster selected four men whose standing in society and
advantages in intimate acquaintance with the qualities of
goods, would insure at once that no bribery could be
practiced upon them and that they could not well be deceived
as to the worth of the garments they should inspect. Now
would every opportunity for dissatisfaction and faultfinding
be most certainly removed. Now every thing was sure to be
correct and satisfactory. Seemingly no more effectual pre
caution could have been taken by the Governor and Quarter
master-General, who were both undoubtedly beyond reproach
in the matter, and thoroughly in earnest; but the same evil
fate and worse managementTvliich had at first taken the task
of procuring clothing out of the hands of the Quartermaster
and put it into those of the State Board, seemed disposed to
follow to the end. The manufacture went on, and the requisite
number of suits were finished, inspected, declared satisfactory,
and delivered. When delivered, and when inspected by the
practical eyes of men who were to wear them, a certain
proportion were respectable and almost up to the standard

* General Chester E. Arthur.

THE PAYS OF SHODDY. 191

^

required by the contract, and the rest the veriest insult to
the men for the clothing of whose backs and limbs they were
intended, that ever emanated from the most disreputable
slop-shop in the universe. It would seem that the shelves
of all the cloth-houses on the continent must have been
ransacked for the oldest, thinnest, most rotten arid moth-
eaten specimens of satinet,* that had been accumulating as
refuse stock for the previous twenty years. Straws could
have been shot through some of the garments, they were so
thin, open, coarse and "sleezy" (for the meaning of which
latter term, reference may be made to the first tailor of the
reader's acquaintance) ; in others whole generations of
greedy moths seemed to have been running riot ; and still
others were so rotten from long lying and dampness on the
shelves, that there was no difficulty whatever in holding up
the material and thrusting the finger through it as it might
have been thrust through soaked blotting-paper.

This was the stuff, unfit for any negro in a Southern cot
ton-field, designed for the American white man to wear,
when performing the highest and holiest duty known to the
citizen— that of battling for the liberty and honor of his coun
try ! This was the mode in which certain American citizens
testified to their devoted patriotism, their commercial in
tegrity and their appreciation of the needs of the soldier.
This was the stuff, too, that had been inspected by men
holding the very highest position, whose signatures to the
indorsement upon every package gave assurance that they
had examined and approved every garment.

But it is the fate of scape-goats, always, to carry the sins
of others as well as their own ; and this affair furnishes no
exception to the rule. The first operations of any class that
chance to come into public view, startle much worse than
corresponding ones which follow ; and other soldiers' clothing

•* Many persons, probably, have no knowledge of the manufacture of the
material known as "satinet," and its difference from cloth. Whereas
"cloth," in its ordinary acceptation, is a material made entirely of wool,
"satinet" is made with cotton warp and wool filling, and has a peculiar
faculty of becoming gray, thread bare and unsightly, after a very small
proportion of wear. What rotten and moth-eaten satinet must be, may be
imagined even by those who have never been brought into contact with it.

I»9 THE DAYS OF SHO TTD Y .

has, since that time, been quite as badly made, quite as inef
ficiently inspected, and all parties remained the purest patriots
in public estimation — stars in society, paragons in politics,
patterns in benevolence, admired in spirit-stirring oratory,
and, perhaps, saints in the calendar.

In another respect, too, the scape-goat comparison holds
good, as none better know than those who have escaped public
attention while it so seriously damaged others. The cloth
dealers are entitled to their full share of the odium, in this
and other instances of the manufacture of worthless clothing.
That they sold to th'e clothing contractors material even more
worthless than the latter knew, is beyond doubt. It has
been seen what Charles Holt, a type man of this class,
directed his partner to purchase in Europe, in view to meet
a large demand for soldiers' clothing material — the cheapest
and poorest cloths that could be found of any approach to
the required color ; and the very day on which his name ap
peared in the. daily papers appended to a subscription of one
thousand dollars to the Union cause, at one of the'great mer
chants' meetings of that week, — case after case of the most
worthless satinets that the Eastern markets could furnish,
was being carted up to the store ' of Charles Holt &
Andrews, from one of the Boston lines of steamers. Where
a part of the bad materials of the " respectable firm" came
from, he knew, if we do not; and other dealers of the same
pure, high-toned and patriotic impulses, could have explained
the place and mode of procurement of most of the others.
They kept out of the public view, however: the clothing-
manufacturers loaded themselves with an odium which will
never leave them while a man of this generation remains
alive, while their equally culpable coadjutors, the cloth-dealers,
almost totally escaped and have done so while furnishing
worthless materials throughout the entire war.

Does it seem that something too much has been said of
these frauds against the government, practised at the open
ing of the war, and that somewhat too intense reprobation
lias been bestowed upon them ? , They err who think so, or
who believe that even half enough has yet been said and
done to stamp the human vipers with infamy. It is not only

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 193

that they were, to the extent of their action, committing mat
ricide by crippling, paralyzing and rendering helpless so that
others could murder her, the country that was their mother :
nearly every swindling contract, then and throughout the war,
has done something more and worse than this. Every rotten
old boat sent to sea with Union soldiers on board, likely to
sink at any moment and bury them at one fatal plunge, has
been a bid for the wholesale murder of brothers, such as the
very fiends in hell must have contemplated with infernal ad
miration. Every shoddy suit, every defective blanket, and
every pair of shoes with the soles pasted to the uppers (no
fancy, this latter, but something that has been seen by too
many who were brought into contact with quartermasters'
operations) has been the means of making a TJni0n soldier
suffer what he need not have suffered in the chances of war,
nnd at last brought him to crippled limbs or consump
tion. Every mouldy biscuit or pound of gangrened beef has
been a bid for sickness in the field, or fever, delirium and
death in the hospital. Every defective arm, every sawdust
shell and every worthless horse, has left him at the mercy of
a fierce and unscrupulous enemy. Every dollar swindled
away from the public purse has been so much subtracted
from the very life-blood of the nation. Every public theft
has been an effort for the public downfall. Every swindling
shoddy contractor, so far as his abilities went, has been a
national murderer. Every person, of whatever name or
employment, buying for the government what wras worthless
or injurious — whether guns known to be worthless (whether
with or without touch-holes — a mooted point) ; ships fitted
for any other service than the one intended ; broken-kneed
stage-horses, passed for the consideration of two dollars per
head by the inspector ; every one of this class of operators,
of whom the list might be extended indefinitely, with or with
out his own intention has been an accessary to what may
eventually be the national death. And if there is a special
providence at once watching over nations and individuals,
the day of doom that may be coming to the nation and its
domestic foes — will be a day to be remembered.

Say not, oh historian of the coming time, that too much
12

194 THE DAYS OF S H O D D Y.

stress has been laid upon these terrible dishonesties,' here or
elsewhere, and that the true lover of his country will do
something to conceal the sins and follies of that country,
instead of bringing them with still more painful prominence
bffore the eyes of the world. Every withering utterance
may be a pang to the speaker ; but the uninspired prophet
of to-day must feel as his inspired prototype of the early
ages may have done — that wo is him if he speaks not the
truth of the people of his own blood, even as he might of
those removed from him by race and distance. To "foul his
own nest" by decrying it, was thought to be a detestable
feature in the conduct of the bird of the fable ; but men can
not always be subjected to- the same rules. Not the nest,
which he must ever love, but the unclean birds that make
their home within it, must be the theme of denunciation ;
and the Brutus of to-day must reverse history and sit in
judgment upon his father, or even his Mother, if need be !
If not, and if reprobation is to 'be withheld because it might
strike those bound to us by the ties of kindred and country,
all future time must change its estimation of some of the
brightest examples of old heroism, and Demosthenes and
Cicero must be hurled down from the high places which they
won by denouncing, not the countries that gave them birth,
but the vipers of disloyalty and pitiable meanness who -but
for them would have crawled in continued security until they
had given the last sting to national existence.

Write not, oh historian _of the coming time, words that
shall excuse or even undervalue such disloyalty, until this
generation has passed away and there are no longer those
remaining whose cheeks have burned and whose hearts have
bled at the alternate shame and sorrow forced upon them.
Wait, at least, until the carriages cease to splash us with
their mud, as they roll by with plumed and diamonded dames
—the cnrriages, the plumes, the diamonds, and even the rn-
.<•/>!'< lub/'l if >/, all achieved by trading upon the necessities of
the nation. Wait until Mayors of Cities, Honorable Mem
bers of Congress, Senators, Governors, and those wrho rule
cities and fill high places in every relation of civil life, cease
to offend our moral noses in the street by the aroma of cor-

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 195

rnption which they carry about with them, shaming us in
our poverty if we wear a thread-bare coat or fall into the
k misfortune of a note sent to protest, while the sleek raiment
they wear has been in too many instances purchased by send
ing to protest every feeling of patriotism and every dictate
of honesty ! Wait until the shadow of death passes away
from homes to which the cries of suffering soldiers who went
out from them have come up too late, asking for aid from
private hands to replace the ragged clothes in Avhieh they
were shivering, to supply shoes to their naked feet, and to
give them blankets that wrould afford them shelter from the
clamp ground on which they were sucking up pestilence at
every pore of their bodies. Wait until the poor mother has
at least partially forgotten 'her darling boy, murdered in
this manner, long before the bullet of an enemy had the op
portunity of reaching him : wait until the country has to
some extent ceased groaning over the thousands upon thou
sands of lives and 'the millions of wealth wasted in the
blunders and inefficiencies of management — every single life
and every single dollar thus wasted, being something to be
deplored ten times more than ten times their number sacri
ficed with Reason supplying the altar and Honesty holding
the sacrificial knife !

For blood, the life of the individual, and wealth, the life-
blood of the nation, are so intimately blended together that
no power can dissever them in the estimate of loss And in
the same wrong which wastes either or both, national success
is made impossible and national disaster inevitable. " Like
master, like man !" is a motto holding quite as good, to-day
and in speaking of the operations of a great war, as it was
yesterday and when the varying characters of farmers and
their hired laborers were to be considered. When inefficiency
and dishonesty equip a regiment and select its officers, it
need be no wonder to find the regiment unled in the hour of
conflict, the^ officers skulking, the men disorganized, the
weapons uncared for and misused, companies formed in line
by backing them up against the nearest fence, and the sharp,
ringing words of the command to mount, in the cavalry arm,
changed to that somewhat ambiguous double order which has

196 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

for months past been supplying merriment to the newspapers :
" Prepare to git upon your critters ! — Git !" And under offi
cers so appointed, and who have seen such examples among
the highest of those from whom they have themselves derived
authority, wilful waste of the public property is no wonder,
but a natural result. No wonder when we find hundreds of
tons of quartermasters' stores and army supplies recklessly
burned the moment there is any possibility of an attack upon
them, by officers too ignorant, too indolent or too cowardly
to defend them or superintend their removal to a place of
safety; no wonder that muskets have remained piled by the
thousand, out-of-doors and exposed to rain and rust — that
weapons have been flung away on march or retreat, as if they
had cost no more than so many straws or corn-stalks gleaned
from a stubble-field in autumn — that hay has been left rotting
by the ton on the levee at Cairo, while the cavalry-horses
within a hundred miles were literally starving for the want
of it — that even on Capitol Hill at Washington, the dragoon
quartered there has habitually flung down the hay of his
horse into the mud, to be trampled into manure, and his
corn in the midst of it, to be trampled and wasted in the
same manner, or to be appropriated by bands of predatory
hogs that better understood its value and its use !

All these details and suggestions are heart-sickening — let
there be lio more of them. The whole melancholy story is
told in two brief words — dishonesty and incapacity. And
yet one brief word will sum up the whole still more con
cisely and more appropriately for this connection — "shoddy."

That " righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach
to any people," is a dictum long ago set down by an authority
that not many men are rash enough to question. It remains
to be soon whether we have shown vice and dishonesty enough
to be doomed beyond hope, or whether there has yet been
shown enough of virtue, bravery, patriotism and self-sacrificing
devotion, to redeem in the eyes of the God of Nations the
wTide-spread Sodom of dishonesty and unfaithfulness, and
leave us yet worthy to be a people in His sight.

And here, passing again from the general subject of the
blunders and dishonesties which came in with the commence-

THE DAYS OP SHODDY. 197

merit of the war and have to some degree cursed the strug
gling nation up to the present moment, — the careers of parti
cular persons named in this narration must be rapidly foU
lowed ; and happy indeed will humanity be if the discovery
is not made that there are deeper and deadlier crimes against
patriotism, than even those which have been so plainly char
acterized in this most uninteresting and yet most necessary
chapter.

CHAPTER X.

THE DEPARTURE OF THE FIRE ZOUAVES — PUBLIC CONFIDENCE

IN THEM THE SCENE OF THE 29lH OF APRIL SPEECHES,

PARADES AND PRESENTATIONS RETROSPECTORY HOW BURT-

NETT HAVILAND KEPT HIS RESOLUTION — THE EXTRAORDI
NARY FRIENDSHIP OF CHARLES HOLT, MERCHANT — THE
PARTING OF HUSBAND AND WIFE — How AN UNLUCKY Box

TUMBLED OVER, AND HOW TlM WROTE A LETTER IN CONSE
QUENCE. «.

THE First Regiment of Fire Zouaves left the city of New
York for the seat of war, on Monday, the Twenty-ninth of
April, 1861. To the brave fellows who composed it and to
the ardent young Colonel in command, the day of departure
seemed to be an age after the call of the President for troops
had been made, though really only two weeks had elapsed
since the Proclamation. They had intended to get off earlier,
and would have done so but for some of the difficulties in or
ganization inseparable from the formatiori'of any peculiar
body of soldiery, and some of the blunders in management,
on the part of well-meaning outsiders, to which reference has
before been made. Every nerve had been strained by the
Chief Engineer of the New York Fire Department,* the
Treasurer of the Fundf so sacred to the firemen, and the other

* The present popular Chief Engineer, now serving his second term — Mr.
John Decker.

f Mr. John S. Giles, whose name has for many years been identified with
the best interests of New York firemen.

108 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

officers and leading men of the Department, at once to enable
the regiment to move early and to make it as practically efhV
cient as possible. Every Engine, Carriage and Truck-house
in the city had been made practically a recruiting office, the
interests of the fire-service for the time almost forgotten in
the new and absorbing work of patriotism ; and the number
of active firemen going away seemed so great (nearly one-
quarter of the whole enrolled force in the city) that some of tho
careful and not-over-sanguine property-owners believed that
their houses, in the event of a fire, would be left to burn at
leisure. Flags had waved and music sounded, universally,
among the men so long known as the defenders of life and
property against the devouring element; but for a sterner
and nobler purpose than when they had merely waved and
sounded for an Annual Parade or the torch-light reception of
a favorite company coming home from a visit or a tournament.
But they had not been necessary to induce the enlistment of
enough men to form the regiment — far from it. More than
another regiment of men, in numbers, had made application
for places in the corps, and been denied from -some defect in
health or some known obliquity of moral character. The Fire
Zouaves, both in the intention of Col. Ellsworth and the lead
ing spirits of the Department, were to be picked men, ready
for any service and capable of reflecting honor on the city that
sent them forth ; and all fondly believed that the selection had
been" made successfully. ff ever a regiment was sent out
with full confidence and bright prospects, this had that dis
tinction. Others, composed of miscellaneous material and of
men whose courage and endurance had never been proved,
might cover themselves with glory or fall into comparative
disgrace : the Fire Zouaves, with Ellsworth at their head and
otherwise officered* by men commanding the entire confidence
of their fellows, had no peradventure in their coming career,
which every omen indicated and assured.

* The field ami leading line officers of this regiment were ns follows : —

Colonel, Elmer E. Ellsworth; Lieut.-Col., ; Major., John A. Cregier ;

Captains: Company A., John Coyle ; Co. B., Edward Byrne; Co. C., Michael
C. Murphy ; Co. D., John Downey; Co. E., John B. Leverich ; Co. F., Wil
liam H. Burns; Co. G., Michael A. Tagen; Co. H., William Hackett; Co. I.,
John AVildey ; Co. J., Andrew D. Furtell.

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 199

It has been no unusual circumstance for the head of a family
to make certain calculations of the future of its 'members.
Of half a dozen sons and as many daughters, the career of
each has been foreshadowed to the quick eye of the parent.
In John, Peter, Thomas, William and Timothy, there was
something for which to fear. John was laborious and
obedient, but dull-witted ; Peter keen-witted and lively, but
unmanageable ; Thomas, a good boy in other respects, lacked
health and stamina ; William had no mental fault, but was
really so insignificant-looking that nothing brilliant could be
predicted of him ; and Timothy had never been any thing
more than a " runt," looked down upon and despised by all
the other members of the family. It has not been very easy
for the parent to decide upon the future of either of them,
each having some drawback or foible making thorough suc
cess in life unlikely. But Walter — ah, there at last has been
a fixed and well-grounded hope ! Walter was so handsome,
so intelligent, so brave, so forward in his learning, so ready
at every thing to which he turned his hand, so much a
favorite with all who met him — that there could be no failure
in his life and no question of the brilliant celebrity at
which he would arrive. So of Clara, the pet daughter.
While Jane and Susan and Mary and Marma and little
Esther had each some fault or weakness which threatened
their future, Clara, the beauty and the favorite, could be
nothing less than the wife of a noble and honored man, and her
self one of the queens of the society surrounding her. The
parent has sometimes been called to bitter reflections on past
calculations and the uncertainty of all human hopes, when
John and Peter and Thomas and William and Timothy, all
humdrum but very respectable heads of growing families,
with broad acres calling them master and money in bank,
have gathered home to the funeral of Walter, brilliant genius
who could do nothing practical, who tried every thing and
partially succeeded in everything but fully succeeded in noth
ing, and died at last penniless and unhonored, of a broken
heart and a ruined constitution. Or when the brothers and
Jane and Susan and Mary and Martha and little Esther, all
plain and unassuming but respectable heads of families,

200 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

have been obliged to read through blinding tears tho shame
of beautiful and gifted Clara, wandered away alike from her
old home and the teachings of those who loved her, and lost
thenceforth to them and to herself.

Which train of reflection may or may not be thought to
have legitimate connection with the expectations formed of
the Fire Zouaves when they went away, in comparison with
other regiments, and the result realized from those expecta
tions, under the same comparison, — according as the reader
possesses or lacks the faculty of making apposite* compari-
sions out of things in themselves very different — seeing in a
sheep sometimes a reminder of a saw-mill, or in a penny-
whistle a suggestion of the Parthenon.

It was a brilliant spectacle presented in the streets of New
York on that day when this oddly-favorite regiment marched.
Perhaps not so many saw the departure, as had attended the
going away of the Seventh and of the Sixty-ninth ; Uut no
others had been so honored in a general ovation. And this
turn-out was a cheerful one, as the first-named had been sad.
A few days had materially changed the popular feeling.
Washington, which had been threatened, was already pro
nounced " safe" in the hands of thousands of soldiers who
had" gathered from every loyal State and made a promising
lodgment on the opposite side of the Potomac. And that
few days had already inured the people to the sights and
sounds of warlike preparation, so that the files of soldiers
passing down the street on their way to the scene of conflict,
no longer seemed to be going martyr-like into the jaws of
some great dark monster, from which not one in ten could
ever emerge alive. Men had already ceased to be oppressed
by nightmare dreams of the great horror which lay beyond
the Potomac ; and women no longer threw their arms around
their children when alone with them, under the impression
that to-morrow they must be fatherless, even if the loyal
States should not be overrun by red-handed rebels and them
selves murdered on their own hearth-stones. Even the
theatres had ceased to be a mockery, and habitues had
returned to the practice of their nightly visits; while the
crowds on Broadway looked again into the decorated win-

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 201

do\vs and the ladies recommenced their purchases of finery:
so rapidly do \ve accommodate ourselves to any novelty or
any necessity. ,

Thousand upon thousand of spectators gathered at Broad
way and Canal Street, to see the manly fellows in their natty
grey Zouave suits picked out with red, and with red shirts
and the red chasseur cap, come out from their head-quarters
and form ranks for the reception of colors and the subsequent
march to the place of embarkation. Still other thousands
lined Broa'dway from Canal Street to the Astor House, down
which the pageant was to pass. The air seemed literally
thick with waving flags and answering handkerchiefs, while
every worn was one of confidence and joy and every shout
one of unalloyed hope for the country under such manifesta
tions. Twelve hundred firemen were in the ranks, ready to
meet a different foe but scarcely a moje dangerous one than
that they had so long battled, — when a little after noon the last
preliminary arrangement was completed, the ladies, the offi
cers of the regiment, and the Committee of the Fire Depart
ment had assumed their places, and a deafening cheer rent
the air as the tall form and high Norman face of Wickham*
were seen as he stepped forward to entrust to the Zouaves
the special banner prepared for them by the Department.
And something of wrhat the loyal citizens of New York ex
pected of the regiment was embodied in the words of this man,
who had once faced death in a more terrible form than it
wears upon any battle-field, f as he said: "People have high
hope in you. You have established a character for noble
daring which has secured the admiration and the tribute of
all. When the fire-bell rings in the night the citizens rest
secure, for they know that the New York firemen are omnipo
tent to arrest the progress of destruction. * * * You are
called to quench the flames of rebellion, and we know that
whether in the midst of burning cities or on the heated fields

* Mr. William II. Wiekhain, then President of the Fire Department.

f Mr. Wickham, when Secretary of the North Atlantic Steamship Com
pany, was one of the survivors of the terriblo foundering of the steamship San
Francisco, on the night of the 5th January, 1856 — an event scarcely paralleled
in its horrors even by that of the Central America.

202 T II E T) A Y S OF SHODDY.

of war, you will sustain your own high character, and that
this banner will ever wave in triumph, though it wave in the
midst of ruins." Then, amid cheery yet more deafening, fol
lowed the response of Col. Ellsworth, his sad, pale face, still
vigorously earnest, at once foreshadowing his reckless bravery
and his doom, — promising that if eve/ the regiment came back,
it would bring those colors unsp'otted as then, and pledging
his own life and the lives of all his command to that sacred
vow. There might have been 'a tremor in the voice, though
there would not have been a colder pallor on his yo\mg check,
had he known how soon his own share in that vow would ho
fulfilled, and what was to be the fate of those colors, left un-
cared for, soiled and ragged in the lumber-room of an old
warehouse at Alexandria, while the regiment went to meet
its ruin, and only rescued long after, to hang ingloriously
among the trophies of tjie. Department.

Then followed, amid demonstrations not less enlivening,
another presentation which showed the respect and confidence
borne in time of need by th'e- millionaires of the great com
mercial city, towards those whom they were in the habit of
holding as nobodies in the social scale under other circum
stances, and passing without more recognition than would be
bestowed upon the most abject inferiors. The wife of one of
the quintuple millionaires of New York* had prepared with
her own hands and purchased with an atom of her wealth,
another stand of colors to be borne by the Zouaves ; and these
were presented through that officer who has now won the
right to be considered one of the guardians of the flag, from
his noble command for the" instant death of the wretch daring
to profane by lowering it.f This done, and the second pre •
sentation answered by the young Zouave Colonel, the regi
ment moved away, under flaunting flags and waving hand
kerchiefs, amid shouts and cheers and the sounding of martial
music, and escorted by the flower of the whole Fire Depart
ment, down Broadway to the Park and the Astor House,
where still another stand of colors were to be presented to
this corps of men who had all their lives been accustomed to

* Mrs. Augusta Aslor, wife of Mr. John Jacob Astor, Jr.
f General John A. Dix.

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 203

few fabrics softer in texture than the red flannel of their fire-
shirts, but who seemed now destined to be smothered under
costly silks that the fairest hands had embroidered.

Jt was nearly evening when, the presentation at the Astor
House accomplished and their steps on Broadway retraced,
the regiment filed down the long pier at the foot of Canal
Street, to their embarkation <?n board the old Baltic, once so
proudly bearing her share of the honors of that Collins Line
which disputed the empire of the sea with the Cunarders, but
ever since lying, except at long intervals, in sullen and mo
tionless discontent at the ruin of so brave a promise. Was
it an omen that Ellsworth and his Zouaves were to take their
first steps towards the armed service of their country, on
board a vessel of that line so sacrificed to national meanness
and personal accident ? Who shall say !

Burtnett Haviland, from whose fortunes the course of this
narration has seemed to be too long separated, shared, as :i

private in the ranks of Company iu all the fatigues and

all the honors of that parting ovation. The die once cast
in his choice of the regiment, there had been no falling back
from his promise. He had enrolled his name at the Carriage-
house of Hose No. — the day following the conversation
before recorded between himself and Captain Jack, on Broad
way, at the time of the departure of the Seventh. He had
anuounced the new course of his destiny to his wife, the same
evening on which the resolution was formed, and thenceforth
devoted himself to such preparations as seemed to be neces
sary for his own welfare as a soldier and the comfort of his
wife and family during his coming absence.

In another particular, too, he had been steadfast, prone as
we all are to vacillation when home or comfort beckons to a
change of purpose, and few antitypes as there may be at the
present day of that La Tour d'Auvergne who preferred the
title of " First Grenadier of France" to any epauletted com
mand that could be tendered. Captain Jack, proud of his
recruit, and a little astonished at his stubbornness in such a
rare direction, had mentioned him to Col. Ellsworth, and at
once received in his behalf an offer of a Second Lieutenancy.
This liaviland had declined, as he had before done the three

204 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

stripes of the Sergeant"; and this had ended the matter in
that particular direction. jBut he had been obliged to resist
another temptation of the same character, coming to him
from a source altogether unexpected ; and here he had found
an enemy more difficult to conquer — the evident wish and
anxiety of his wife that he should be "something more than
a common soldier. " •

The offer of Mr. Charles Holt, merchant, to continue the
salary of his clerk while in service in the army, and to look
after the welfare of his family, has not been forgotten by the
reader, nor was it likely that it should be forgotten by either
of the parties interested. Though with a little delicacy in
volved in the action, on the very day when he signed the en
rolment, the clerk informed his employer of the carrying out
of his intention to enlist; and he remarked with pleasure,
that the merchant seemed to have no objection to re-affirm. in
cool blood a promise that he might have made under the in
fluence of sudden excitement, and that he seemed rather
pleased than otherwise to have the opportunity of proving
his good faith. So cordial seemed the great man towards a,
subordinate with whom his acquaintance had before been only
the formal intercourse of employer and employee, that "he had
even offered, unasked, to " drop in and spend an hour at his
house before he went away." The force of the courtesy of
wealth towards humble worth could not well have gone
further; and the clerk felt the obligation with a strength
proportioned to the straight-forward honesty of his own
nature.

Three days before the marching of the Fire Zouaves, the
merchant, in the fulfilment of this promise, for the first time
set foot within the little home of the clerk in East Forty-
eighth Street He was by no means a stranger to Mary
Haviland, as she had many times, during her husband's em
ployment by Holt & Andrews, had occasion to call for him
at the store, at the close of business hours, and when some
arrangement had been made for an evening down-town in
each other's company. An introduction between the mer
chant and the wife of his clerk had followed as a matter of
course, one evening when the former happened to put him-

THE DAYS OF S IT O P D Y . 205

self in the way of receiving (not to say forcing) such an
indorsement of the character of the lady who visited his clerk
at the store. Xot much conversation had followed, then or
afterwards. But the merchant, if he had not conversed to
any great extent with her, had at least looked at the hand
some wife of his good-looking clerk (Vide the past observa
tions of Tim the errand-boy, -on that subject.)

Three days before the inarching of the Zouaves, as has
been said, the merchant paid the promised visit to the house
and family of the clerk. He found the wife sewing, the hus
band reading aloud to her, little Pet playing sleepily on the
floor, in sad need of being put to bed, and Sarah too busy
about the crockery-renovating operations which follow supper
(he caught the usual clatter of dishes from that young lady,
through the half-opened door between the two rooms) to at
tend to the wants of the drowsy child. He found a very
happy home, with nothing of the shadow of coming disrup
tion seeming to loom 'over it. If he. experienced at that
moment any of the sensations which Apollyon Beelzebub,
Esq., gentleman-at-leisure, is supposed to have experienced
on the first day when he paid a visit to Mrs. Eve Adam at
her neat little country residence on the Euphrates, there is no
warrant for recording the fact in this connection. He was
cordially received, though with a very little of that empres-
settient which the proudest of us little people cannot a;void
showing in the presence of the great. But, a thorough gen
tleman (at least in the outward manner and when he chose),
the merchant did not seem to need five minutes to put both
host and hostess at their ease; and he had not been ten
minutes in the room when Mary Haviland caught herself
saying (of course not aloud, for that would have been neither
complimentary to her husband nor his guest) :

" What a very pleasant man he is ! So different from
what he appeared to be, down at his place of business !
I 'declare that I really like him !"

If the little woman did not say so much in words, her eyes
showed the fact that she was pleased, to- those of both hus
band and guest, and both were pleased in return. The
merchant for reasons best known to himself, and Burtuett

20iJ THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

Haviland because he felt ho\v good and kind a protector
heaven might really have raised up for his wife and child, in
the event that his parting with them, so soon to come, should
be the last.

But if the pretty face of Mary Haviland smiled with
pleasure when the merchant had for a few minutes exerted
his undeniable powers of fascination, it broke into a broad
glow of delight when he drew from his side-pocket and
threw down on the table before her husband, a Lieutenant's
commission in the very regiment in which she knew him to
stand enrolled as a private ! People have no right to be
enthusiastic and demonstrative, but some of them are so, and
there is no power on earth that can change their natures in
that regard. Mary Haviland was as proud of her husband
as any woman can be of the one dearest to her heart without
breaking the command of God and worshipping the creature
instead of the Creator. She knew him to be good, she be
lieved him to be able, and she thought it his right to be great.
She would not have doubted his capacity to (ill any office to
which the will of the people might have elected him, even to
the Chief Magistracy of the republic. Could her own hand
have lifted him to the highest position, the task would have
been performed as the mere according to him of a right, and
with no belief that he could fail to fill such a place with full
honor and high public approbation. She had infinitely more
pride in him than he had in himself, and was always disposed
to think of him as scarcely having his place, when she saw
him filling any subordinate position. All this without think
ing for a moment that he had not risen fast enough, that any
fault would attach to him if he held a much humbler position
than that he really occupied, or that he would not be quite
her equal if several degrees lower in the scale of respectability
and influence. Yet his being higher would have suited her
better, not for her sake but his own. She had bowed, as we
have seen, to patriotic necessity and duty, crushed down
every repining, and determined to send him forth to battle
with the remembrance of a face that shed sunshine instead of
weeping tears upon .his departure. And yet she had not by
any means crushed down an idea which had crept into her

THE DAYS OF S IT O T> T> Y. 207

dear little head, and which she had not communicated to him
simply because she considered its fullilment impossible and
its expression likely to worry him — that he ought to go as an
officer instead of a private. He must go — yes — that was
duty — the country needed him ; but could he not' do as good
and even better duty to the country, in command instead of
in the ranks with the common people? (Mary Haviland 's
husband was not one of the "common people" — to her:
Fiddler Joe, the darkey who plays for half the ambiguous
dances in Water Street, has a poor apology for a wife if she
does not rate him as a little superior to the average of his
color — something more than a "common nigger.") But
Mary Haviland had not expressed this one idea of her mind,
simply because she would have thought it worrying for no
purpose. Meanwhile, as the best of husbands do not tell their
wives every thought that creeps" into their minds, or the
history of every adventure they encounter, Burtnett Haviland
had said nothing to his wife of the flattering offers made him.
Jle had not done this, because he intended to carry out the
resolution he had formed — because he knew the pride held in
him by his wife, which would lead he,r to think that he should
have accepted one of the oilers — and because he knew how
much more difficult it would be, then, to adhere to his deter
mination.

Such was the position of affairs when Charles Holt, mer
chant, laid down the Lieutenant's commission on the little
table, somewhat. to the annoyance of Haviland, who saw an
other struggle before him, — but, oh, how much to the delight
of the proud wife ! We have already recorded the proper
condemnation against people being enthusiastic ; but Mary
Haviland, who has been (so far) the type of a devoted and
good little wife, could no more have resisted the impulse which
led her, her face all aglow, to rush up and grasp the hand of
the benefactor with a "Ah, how good 'you are, Mr. Holt!
How very much we thank you !" than she could have resisted
any thing else that seemed to be unobjectionably correct and
remarkably pleasant.

To the intense surprise of the wife, a shadow of vexation
(one of very few that she had ever seen there during four

208 THE DAYS OF SHOPPY.

years of marriage) crept over the face of the husband, and lie
did not take up the paper that she had supposed would so
delight him, as he said :

" I thank you very much, Mr. Holt, I am sure, for this
great kindness, but I cannot accept it, I have already refused
a similar offer from the Colonel, and I am going in the ranks."

"Phew !" almost though not quite whistled the merchant,
in spite of the obligations of good breeding. , ,

" What !" quite said Mary Haviland, without any propen
sity to whistle, but with something nearer to a pout on her
ripe and rosy lips than was in the habit of finding a lodg
ment in that pleasant locality.

" Just what I said, my dear," spoke the husband, in a tone
which if not vexed was more than usually decided. " I did
not tell you that my Captain and Col. Ellsworth offered me
a Lieutenant's commission, but they did so, and I refused it."

"And why did you do so, Burtey ?" asked the wife, more
in curiosity than in vexation, now, and throwing in the affec
tionate diminutive without thought of the presence of a
stranger.

" I had my own reasqns for it, Mary," said the husband.
" Please believe that they were satisfactory, and do not ask
me any further."

The wife obeyed. Her vexation went away almost as
rapidly as it had come, even if her wonder remained ; and she
said no more. One of the little hopes of her life, however,
born but the instant before, had already been extinguished.
That was not much matter — let it pass !

'.'And am I to understand that you mean to adhere to your
determination and to go in the ranks when a commission is
offered you without cost to yourself, Mr. Haviland ?" asked
the merchant.

" Unalterably, unless " and here he paused.

"Unless what — may I ask?" inquired the merchant, after
the pause of an instant.

"Unless — no — I will not ask the question." Had he done
so, the inquiry would have been whether the merchant con
sidered the acceptance of the commission a matter of pecu-

THE DATS OF SHODDY. 209

niary duty, as it would remove something; of his own cost of
paying a salary during his absence.

" I am glad you do not, for I think that I understand you,"
said the merchant. "I do not like to be misunderstood."
The tone, now, the least trifle lofty. "But once more-: — will
you not accept this commission ?"

" No," answered the clerk. "With a thousand thanks for
the trouble you have taken, and for all your kindness — no !"

" I am sorry !" said the merchant. To do him justice, he
looked sorry. To do him still further justice, he was sorry.
He was pleased that Burtnett Haviland was going away to
the war : he would have been infinitely better pleased had he
gone away as an officer. Why ? Was this man so sympa
thetic that the position of his clerk could interest him in that
manner ? Scarcely — in fact, not at all. After what has been
seen of Charles Holt in his domestic relations, it would be
idle to attempt further mystification, if any has indeed been,
carried on, as to his plans and purposes. He was sending
Burtnett tfaviland away, so far as his own action could in
fluence that of the clerk, because he wished a clear field for
the attempted dishonor of his handsome wife. There ! — the
word is out, — a plain, bold, bad, ugly word, but one that will
not be recalled. Charles Holt's " shoddy" propensity rau
somewhat more deeply than the same vein in many others,
but not deeper, as there is painful reason to know, than in at
least some others of his near neighbors at that period. With
the event of his experiment, so far eminently successful, we
have at present nothing to do. The same pen which in
formed us how often the " best laid schemes o' mice and men
gang agley," also advised us of "the rough wind blawin' the
heather bloom," and the certainty that, once swept away,
there was no power on earth to restore it. The combat
between vice and virtue is as old as the history of man ; and
if the one has conquered at times, to the joy of the angels,
has not the other quite as often, making harsh laughter in
those sombre realms where the lost welcome each other ? No
one has a right to despair under temptation ; but who shall
presume upon it, any more than upon human life, the continu
ance of reason or of happiness ? Vice is determined — virtue
13

210 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

V

is weak — God help the best of us when under strong and
overweening temptation, and recover us, if He will, even when
we have fallen !

But even if this motive be ascribed to the merchant, why
should he have exhibited any anxiety to raise the husband
from the ranks to the post of an officer ? Why benefit a man
whom he was planning to injure in the most deadly manner ?
Why make a man who was possibly to become, for the very
b^st of reasons, his mortal enemy, more powerful than he
would be of his own choice ? Strange and yet natural ques
tions, thot cannot be left without answer. Kings used some
times to ennoble (in title) the husbands of wives whom they
dishonored, or those wives themselves, in order to make the
game nobler for the royal chase ; and contemporary records
make it almost certain that Alfieri, the Italian poet, and the
Countess of Albany — wife of one of the last of the Stuarts,
and so by claim " Queen of England," — would have married
instead of living illicitly together after the death of the Count
of Albany, but that the Countess thought it nobler to have
the first poet of the time at her beck and call as a lover, than
bound to her as a husband, and Alfieri himself found corres
ponding pride in being able to think that he had a Queen for
a mistress ! But Charles Holt was not likely to be so daintily
exclusive that he could not approach the wife of a " common
soldier," and must, therefore, make him an officer ; and the
solution of his anxiety must be found in the added probabili
ties he could supply, for keeping him out of the way.

It is just possible that the merchant, quick at figures and
not yet entirely oblivious of the " calculus of probabilities"
mastered through such tribulation in educational days, had
been studying over army reports in the histories of great
wars, and making the discovery that of a given number of
persons who go into battle, ten or perhaps twenty common
soldiers come out unharmed, to one wearing the dangerous
distinctions of the commissioned officer. It is just possible
that he had some premonition how assiduously those wild
South-western marksmen would devote themselves to the
shooting of Union officers, as they certainly have done in
every contest from Bull Run to Gettysburg ; and that he

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 211

had heard something of that " setting in the fore-front of the
battle" which, for more than twenty-five hundred years, has
been considered an effectual way of disposing of a "trouble
some customer." We say these things are just possible ; and
if it should happen that they were really taken into serious
consideration, why might not Mr. Charles Holt's investment,
in trouble and perhaps in money, to procure Burtnett Havi-
land a commission, have been found quite as profitable as
any of his transactions in rotten satinets, 'if he could only
have conquered that stubborn will of his clerk and decorated
him with a gilt wreath on his cap, and a pair of shoulder-
straps ?

Half an hour after this peremptory refusal of the commis
sion on the part of Haviland, the merchant left the little house
on East Forty-eighth Street, his pulses more inflamed than
they had before been by the beauty of Mary Haviland, his
ideas of the wisdom of her husband not materially enhanced,
and one part of his musings taking shape in the following
muttered words (which neither the writer nor the reader is
expected to understand) :

" Two families in that house ! Confound it ! I wish peo
ple would live in houses by themselves, and not huddle up in
this kind of second-hand gentility."

He had not left the house five minutes when the shadow
passed away from the faces of both husband and wife and the
usual sunshine returned. The unfortunate commission had
gone away again in the pocket of the merchant, the die was
cast that it was not to be accepted, and neither Mary Havi
land nor her husband spoke further on the subject, except that
the wife, summing up her impressions gathered of the mer
chant during the whole visit, and speaking with that sweet
frankness which formed a part of her character, said :

" I do believe that Mr. Holt is an excellent man, and I am
sure that I like him very much — very much indeed !"

The days intervening between that time and the departure
of the husband changed to hours, and even those hours be
came few The parting was near at hand. Burtnett Havi
land knew, then, as he hud never known before, what it was
to exile himself from all that had so long been the blessing

212 THK DAYS OF SHODDY.

of his life. Ho did not often shed tears, though it was not
seldom that he fc.lt them ; and on that Monday morning
when the last pang was to be endured and he knew that the
next sun would rise upon a wide separation, it is no reproach
to his manliness to say*tnat he choked a little as he attempted
to swallow the dainty breakfast that Mary had provided
with her own hands as the last. Partings are hard, arid
cruel, and difficult, precisely in proportion as the, hearts that
are to be severed have been closely woven together and the
companionship has been long and uninterrupted. And
soldiers who have spirit to dare, have yet hearts to suifer.
Legendary history tells us much of how Cincinnatus left his
plough still standing in the furrow, with the oxen yoked to
it, and hurried away to use sXvord instead of ploughshare,
when Rome called him once more to defend her against the
victorious slaughterers of Minucius. But it telis us nothing
of the hasty call he may have made at his little homestead
at Janiculum, beyond the Tiber, that lay directly on his road
to the scene of the great conflict, and told Racilia to send a
slave and have the oxen unyoked, and held her for one
moment to his heart, her dark locks blended with his own
long fair hair, and patted the heads of his younger children,
and almost forgotten Rome and her needs as he wondered
whether he should fall, this time, beneath the swords of the
Yolscians, or gain such power and glory in victory as would
enable him to fulfil the one long wish of his heart and bring
back to Rome the banished Kseso. If he had no thought for
this, he may have been an abler general, but he must have
been a worse husband and father, than we are prone to be
lieve him.

Then came the parting itself. 'No pressure so sadly sacred,
of the husband's arms around the pliant form of the wife, had
ever before taken place, even in the little room so conse
crated to their married joys and confidences, as that which
encircled it for the last time that Monday morning. Never,
he thought, had the rounded arms of the wife. been so cling-
ingly fond in their pressure — a bond ctf the rarest and ten-
derest human flesh, that a rude grasp could almost sever like
a wisp of straw, and yet a bond more difficult to break than

THE D A Y S OF SHOD D Y . 213

any that ever encircled a living form, whether for good or
evil. Never, he thought, had she been so truly the perfect
woman, in the warmth of her caresses, the love-light in her
eyes, the glow on cheek and lip, as then, when he was to
lose her for so long — perhaps forever ! Had all the powers
that preside over destiny conspired to place within his grasp,
at that moment, all that the heart could desire, with the very
object of making the loneliness that should follow more in
tense and agonizing, they could not have inspired a manner
at parting, more maddeningly conducive to that end. Per
fection itself — no ! not perfection. What, then, was wanting ?
We have seen, long since, the martyr resolution that Mary
ITaviland made, that she would crush down within her soul
the sorrow sure to come to her in the last days of their union
and so likely to be overmastering at thetmoment of separation
. — that she would speak no more sad or foreboding words —
that neither before nor when the moment for parting came,
should there be a tear on her cheek or a sob in her breath —
that she would not dishearten but inspirit " her soldier," and
send him forth with his last glimpse of her haloed with a smile
which should be an omen for his futiire. When he was gone
. — then — what the lonely walls of her room, her pillow and
the crib of her child might know — that was something which
could not affect him, and it lay between God and her own
soul. Such had been her resolution, from the morning when
she knew that the die was cast, when the sad picture of
Yalley Forge came up to the patriot as pictures of Gethse-
mane and Calvary sometimes come up to inspirit the shrink
ing Christian with the memory of how much worse trials and
struggles than his own were once endured by the Man of
Sorrows. Such had been her resolution. What it had cost
her to keep it, heaven only knew, but she had kept it indeed.
Not one tear or sign of hopeless regret — not one word to
indicate that she would have been happier had he remained.
Not one tear or one word of regret, amid all the expressions
and the proofs of fondness, on that morning of parting.
And will it be believed that Burtnett Haviland, who had so
labored to impress upon her the duty which she owed to the
country to give him up without a murmur, even as he owed

214 , THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

a corresponding duty to meet all its requirements with manly
readiness — that Burtnett Haviland, now and in ' the nn-
whispered thoughts of his own heart, would have preferred
to hear some word of irnploration to stay, that he must en
tirely disregard, and to see SQine tear of regret which he
must leave undried upon the cheek !

These men are so unreasonable — the best and most thought
ful of them ! " Do not weep for me !" says the dying
husband. " I will not shed a tear for you !" is the response
of the afflicted wife, who in the reply is only showing her
implicit obedience, and yet the dying husband grows almost
angry enough at it to forsake his intention of dying, alto
gether. " Console yourself, my dear ! Though / shall be
gone, the world need not be a blank to }^ou. Find some
other who will love and. treasure you, and be happy !" says
another in similar circumstances, with much kind earnest in
his voice. " I have been thinking that I need not live alone,
and I sh.all look for some one to fill your place, as soon as
possible after you are gone !] replies this obedient wife, and
though she, too, is only expressing her intention to obey what
has been given as a solemn injunction, the shock to the hus
band's amor propre is so great that he flounces out of the
dying bed, upsets the stand with all its doctor's phials, raves
round the room, and recovers in spite of fate on purpose to
disappoint the jade who dared to take him at his word. No
doubt Collatinus, when he left Lucrece to join the camp of
the Kiyig, said to her : " Make yourself comfortable, my
dear ! Don't work too hard ! Laugh, sing and be as happy
as possible while I am away." And yet the boast of Col-
latinus to the sons of Tarquin was, that while others might
probably be gadding about and making themselves merry,
his wife would be found eschewing all merriment during his
absence and soberly intent on her domestic duties ! Yery
unreasonable, of course, and yet very like what human
nature has been doing every day since the flood. It is not
best even to accept any man's spoken estimate of himself, in
the ordinary relations of life. When he says : " Oh, I am a
poor miserable devil !" it is not prudent to address him as
such in the next conversation ; and when a lady murmur^

THE DAYS OF SHODDY, 215

confidentially : " How I have faded ! My-eyes have lost all
their sparkle, and — only think of it ! — I have no complexion
left at all !" — it is an enemy for life that he bargains for who
accepts the conclusion or even does not flatly contradict it.

Had Mary Haviland been wise, as she was good, loving
and patriotic, she would at least have " turned on the
water" (to use another gross but very expressive modern
vulgarism) and uttered some word of wild regret, at the last
moment. She was not wise — she was only brave and
determined ; and the result was to some extent disastrous —
more disastrous, afterwards, than the most lugubrious
prophet could then have imagined.

But so they parted, with one convulsive clasp of Pet and
one long embrace of the wife, on the part of the husband,
on the little stoop — with Sarah Sanderson, one of the break
fast-dishes in hand, looking curiously down the stairs on the
group at the door — with the husband's " God bless you, little
woman !" and the wife's " Do take care of yourself,
Burtey !" Then, as she stood on the stoop, .with Pet clinging
at her side, and Sarah, dish still in hand, come down to the
door and framed in it, she sa\v his erect figure, in its neat
gray Zouave uniform, pass out to the Avenue and disappear
into a down-town* car. He was gone : she was alone.
Through what was each to pass, and how changed was life
to be for both, long before the eyes of each that looked their
last should fall again upon the other !

Only the recording angels arid the heart of man that had
been tried in the same furnace of loneliness and suffering could
see what occurred but a few moments after, when the wife,
lying on her bed in an agony of tears, with poor little Pet
weeping too and childishly trying to comfort her, buried her
flushed face in the pillow and sobbed out : " Oh, Burtey !
Burtey ! How could I let you go ? When shall I see you
again ? Oh, Burtey ! Burtey !" And when Sarah Sanderson,
hearing the sobs and broken words that came from the little
chamber, stood outside with her own eyes full of tears but
her pretty lips compressed and her face the very embodiment
of wronged and vindictive feeling, and shook her small

216 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

clenched fist at something that seemed to be within the same
chamber as the wife and mother.

These latter had been the events of the morning. All the
parade, the presentations and the glorifications' had since oc
curred ; and late in the afternoon Haviland, a private in the

ranks of Company of the Fire Zouaves, marched down

Canal Street with the rest of his regiment, towards the
Baltic, as was more or less clearly said before this recapitula
tion of previous events.

The scene was a magnificent one, and one long to be re
membered. April was changing into May, and every breath
seemed such perfection that merely to live was a luxury.
No brighter or more glorious sun ever shone, than that
which had all day kissed the uniforms and flashed upon the
arms and banners of the Zouaves. Nature, at least, was
offering them no unfavorable omens. And the spectacle at
the foot of Canal Street was if possible finer and more im
posing than any thing which had preceded it in the pageantry
of the day. The noble steamer lay moored at her wharf
trembling with the internal fires that were in a few moments
to be her irresistible motive power. Flags floated from her
mast heads, and from bow and stern and the bridge between
her wheel houses. Around her, stretching away as far as
the eye could reach, were vessels of every chiss and character,
all radiant with bunting of such glaring colors that a rain
bow seemed to have fallen and scattered itself in a thousand
pieces on every hand ; but amid them all the old stripes-and-
stars everywhere prominent, as is an undertone sometimes in
music when the variations flutter hither and thither and ob
scure but never hide the theme. Out in the river beyond a
hundred steamboats were gliding, all radiant, too, with colors,
and among them darted skiffs and wherries, seeming like
greater and less attendant spirits on the great event of the
day. But the splendid spectacle of even all these inanimate
objects was dwarfed by the mass of humanity grouped in the
neighborhood and affording constant change in motion and
position. The decks, masts and shrouds of every vessel com
manding a view of the embarkation, the roofs and windows
of every house supplying a glimpse of the arrival of the regi-

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 217

ment, were filled so densely with human beings, of both sexes
and all ages, that it seemed impossible to escape the crushing
down of some building, or the slipping off of some clinging
mass of humanity into the river. The space on the wharves
reserved by the police for the soldiers, was kept with the
usual difficulty ; and all was life, bustle, pleasant confusion
and happy expectation. Inconveniences there were, of course,
and they were materially added to by the presence at the
wharf of a large amount of quartermasters' and commissaries'
stores awaiting transportation — barrels, bales and heavy
boxes, filling half the space within the enclosure, and seri
ously narrowing the room allotted to the soldiers. But if the
latter saw them, they thought, no doubt, more of the certainty
of food and other necessaries which those packages promised,
than of the temporary inconvenience caused by their presence.

Some delay had occurred in the preparations for imme
diately embarking the regiment, (did any man ever hear of a
regiment that embarked at the time first specified, anymore
than of a procession that moved until all the spectators along
the line had been wearied out by waiting ?) and the Zouaves
stood at ease and partially broke ranks for a time, half an
hour after they had reached the wharf. Some of the soldiers
took the opportunity of exchanging yet a few more "last
words" with wives or sweet-hearts who had followed them
through the crowd (as the wife of Burtnett Haviland, with
better judgment, had not; for of all places for a last parting,
in the midst of a mixed and miscellaneous crowd is the least
dignifled) ; and still others leaned on their rifles and chatted
•with friends who pressed up to urge or promise the sending
of letters during absence.

A part of the first files of Company stood at that

moment close beside one of the piles of quartermasters' stores
before noticed. Among those packages of goods were some
heavy boxes, one piled on the top of another to the height,
possibly, of a man's head. Immediately beside the spot
where Haviland was standing, in conversation with some of
his old acquaintances come down to " see him off," one heavy
rase of goods lay on the top of another, a little carelessly
placed and overhanging the lower one, so that no great effort

218 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

would be necessary to topple it over on the feet and lower
limbs of a person standing in front. Suddenly, while in the
midst of his conversation, but standing nearer to the boxes
than any of the others and almost alone, the upper box, evi
dently propelled by a sudden force from behind, toppled over
and made a rapid descent for Ilaviland's feet. Had it struck
him fairly, as there seemed a probability of its doing, the
career of the young soldier would have been ended, in that
capacity, before begun, for the box had weight enough to
have broken a leg or crushed a foot to jelhr. Haviland saw
the fall just in time to spring back and escape the worst, and
some of the others partially caught the box as it descended,
so that the only effect was that it struck him somewhat
severely on one of the legs, crippling him a little and prom
ising a stiif limb for days.

It is a very natural impulse, when something inanimate
tumbles down upon any of us, to endeavor to discover what
has* been the moving power ; and Haviland, even in the
midst of his internal execrations and outward rubbings, looked
hastily over the fallen box to see what lay behind it. A
policeman, who had happened to be very near and 'see the
operation, had his hand upon the collar of a nondescript
object in that direction ; and one of the Zouaves, with both his
hands on the other side of the collar, seemed about to inflict
summary vengeance upon it. Haviland was obliged to look
twice before he recognized little Tim, the errand-boy, squint
ing if possible more terribly than ever, half crying, and dis
figured by such a tall, shiny second-hand hat, evidently just
out of one of the slop-shops of Chatham Street, and newly
assumed in honor of the great occasion, that a want of re
cognition was easily excusable. The policeman was about
dragging him off: the Zouave felt that he should be first
kicked and cuffed.

" Come along ! I know you of old !" said the policeman,
who probably had never before set eyes on him since the day
when he was himself first elevated to the dignity of blue cloth
and locust.

" Let me have him ! I'll 'tend to him !" said the Zouave,
who had belonged to a fire company very much in the habit

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 219

of settling their own little disputes without appealing to
tedious and expensive legal proceedings.

" I haint been, a-doin' nothin' !" said poor Tim, thus held
between the two grips.

" Didn't you push over that box, say ?" said the Zouave.
"Look-a-here, you can't lie out of that, you know! I
seen ye !"

" So did I," said the policeman. " Let him go — I'll attend
to him."

" Stop !" said Burtnett Haviland, recognizing the errand-
boy, and wondering what could have induced such an attempt
at injuring him by one whom he had before thought warmly
attached to him. " Is that you, Tim ? You didn't throw
that box over on me, did you ?"

.^ " Maybe I shoved it over, leanin' agin it," answered the
boy, after the pause of a moment. There was something in.
the pause, and in the whole manner of the boy, which satis
fied Haviland that he had indeed pushed over the box* and
done it intentionally. But why ? That was the mystery,
and one that there was not time ^'ust then to inquire into.
At all events, he did not wish to have poor Tim go to the
station-house, when he could not 1)6 near to keep him out of
serious trouble ; and he said to the officer and to his own
demonstrative comrade :

" Let the boy go. I know him : he belongs in our store,
and there must be some mistake about it. He would not try
to hurt me !"

"No, Mr. Hevlin, I wouldn't! Boo! hoo ! hoo !" cried
poor Tim, now fairly broken down between thanks for the
kindness arid fear lest he might be lugged off after all.

The Zouave had by this time released his hold ; the police
man, who did not wish to lose his sight of the embarkation
by going away to the station-house, alsp released him, with
the injunction :

" Now get out of this, you young scamp, and home with
you as fust as your legs can carry you ! If I catch you here
again, I'll put you where the dogs won't bite you !" >,

" Good-bye, Mr. Hevlin !" cried the boy, his knuckles in
his eyes, and preparing to heed the admonition

220 T n E D A.*L S OF SHODDY.

" Good-bye, Tim ! Go home, before you get into any more
trouble !" answered Haviland, and the boy scudded away,
looking back at him, when at some distance, with a concen
trated- squint which seemed to comprehend all things on
earth and in the air, and then disappearing in the crowd.
Haviland rubbed his damaged leg a little more, wondered a
little more whether all parties had been mistaken or whether
the boy had gone crazy, and then dismissed the matter in the
excitement of the embarkation. A few moments after, the
ranks were formed, the Zouaves marched on board the Baltic,
and yet another speech was administered to them by that
Kentucky statesman with the Roman name who had not yet
become a Major General without command and a foreign
minister needing appointment to the same post twice within
a year. The Zouaves were by that time so weary of march
ing and speech-making, that they cared very little whether
they were being addressed by that speaker, who knew nothing
whatever about them, their natures or wishes, or by "Brother
Corbitt,"* who knew them from fh'e-cap to boot-sole. Not
long after, they were passing down the Bay and out to sea,
on their way to Annapolis, and the pageant of the departure
of the First Fire Zouaves had faded from the eyes if not from
the memory of New Yorkers.

Burtnett Haviland had of course left the address 'at which
letters would be expected to reach him most readily, at the
store, for the benefit of any of his brother-clerks who might
wish to keep up the old friendship by "dropping him a line."
This.had been posted on a slip of paper beside the stairway,
where all could see it — even those whose eyes had some obli
quity in their direction. Mr. West, who posted it, had little
thought who would be the first to profit by that little but
necessary item of information. Late into the night which
followed the departure of the Zouaves, hour after hour over
a greasy pine table in the garret of a miserable old house on
the East side of the town, with a sputtering candle so near
his nose that there was constant danger of burning that use-

* Rev. William P. Corbitt, the popular Methodist divine, for a long time a
great favorite with the New York firemen.

THE PAYS OF SHODDY. 221

ful member of the face or setting fire to the red scrubbing-

o o

brush above it, — with his eyes rolling horribly, his tongue
stuck out of bis mouth to the full extent of that appendage,
and all the indications of the severest and most earnest labor,
— sat Tim, the errand-boy, with a stubby and spattering pen,
thick ink and a villainously greasy whole sheet of foolscap —
writing a letter. "Poor Tim ! — it was undoubtedly the first
letter, worthy of the full magnificence of that name, that he
had ever written ; and though the Thirteenth Labor of Her
cules may have taxed the full powers of that mythical hero,
the effort was a feeble one compared to the struggles of the
errand-boy, trying to enrol himself in the list of " war cor
respondents," to justify himself in the eyes of his friend, and
to subserve the cause of virtue generally. Those over-
watching intelligences to whom we have more than once
before had occasion to refer, if they were keeping a sharp
look-out for the good of mankind on the East side, on that
eventful night, may have been peeping over poor Tim's
shoulder and reading the odd scrawl which follows, barring
the actual chirography, in which 'capital and small letters,
writing and printing, were ludicrously mixed and jumbled, so
that mere type would fail in any attempt at imitation : —

"Mister Hevlin. I doant want your to think that I ara a litel raskel and
a retch wich .some prigs says I am, only humly on account of my i's bein
cruked. Dern it, I cant holp thet, cin I ? I want to toll your this ere. I like
your like everrything, stead o hatin your. Doan't your rcmcmbir wen you
hit them are boys as was a hazin of mee ? Ses I then I'll do ennything I cin
for Mister Hevlin. Dod dern it — I spose I must apeared a verry bad boy
wen I nokt over the box and hit your. I hed to ly wen you askt me, to kepe
that ere poleeser from a lugin me off by the eer, but I did thro the box ovir
onto your, a purpus. I doant hardly no how to tel your what I done it fur,
but I musst. I ment to hirt your, not mutch but a little so's to kepe your
from goin away. I thout mebbe you'd stay home ef you was lame. Mister
Holt — dern him — doeseut mene no good to Missers Hevlin. I've seen him a.
lukin at hir when she was down to the stoar, and a smakin of his lipps.
Mebbe he haits her for soinethin, and seem's to me's ef he would most eat
hir. He wantid your to go away, and I thout your outnent to go. Seems to
me's ef your had better come back if you cin — ony doant tell Mister Holt for
he woud kil me thet 'd be what wus the matter — dern him. Doant think
herd of me dear Mister Hevlin. This ere is from jure litcl frend Tim the
arrant boy."

CHAPTER XL

How KATE HAVILAND, THE TEACHER, WAS CALLED TO THE
SEAT OF JUDGMENT, AND HOW SHE CONDUCTED HERSELF
THERE — HUMILITY AND ARROGANCE— A TRAP, AND WHO
FELL INTO IT — WHAT KATE HAVILAND OVERHEARD BEHIND
THE CURTAIN — MARY HAVILAND'S PICTURE — A WHOLE
HASH OF REVELATIONS — A LETTER, AND SOME ANXIETY
ABOUT ANOTHER.

IF Kate Haviland believed, when she had succeeded in
impressing the two spoiled Fullerton children with some
sense of her authority and winning commendation from their
mother and elder sister, that her troubles were over, or that
her path of learning (to others) was to be thenceforth one of
flowers, — she was not quite the wise and wide-awake girl
tbat certain previous movements would indicate. The
ignorant, narrow-minded and purse-proud are proverbially
brief in their fits of satisfaction, and liable to go off at any
moment into paroxysms of the opposite feeling, for which
they have not much more care than capacity to give an ac
count. They are cats : smooth the fur the right way all the
while, and nothing can be pleusanter than their purring,
even towards a dependant ; but woe to the rash hand,
especially one beneath them in position, that happens to rub
it the backward way and evoke those electric sparkles which
are so sure to be followed by an angry yell and the tearing
of the claws ! From such people, for every kind word that
has before fallen, there are sure to be scores of sharp epithets
and cutting allusions, cancelling, ten times over, all the good
impressions they may before have made by their transient
exhibition of winning qualities. Happy they who, placed
in dependence upon such people for the very bread that is to
be eaten day by day, have before entering into any relation
with them, learned the difficult art of bearing with patience,
or that still more useful though less amiable art of putting
222

THE PAYS OF SHODDY. 223

on the defensive armor furnished to order by contempt, and
ignoring the insults and undervaluations altogether ! Which
of the two philosophies was most nearly in the possession of
the young governess, or whether she could lay claim to
either, will be better understood when she has been exhibited
in other phases of her employment.

She had been nearly a month in her charge at the Fuller-
tons', and it was approaching the middle of May, when the
back of the employing cat received its first stroke in the
reverse direction. On the afternoon previous to the morning
to which attention is specially called, there had been what
may be designated as a " row" in the little school-room.
Both Myra and Mildred, after a day or two of such extra
ordinary obedience and goodness that the young teacher
believed the treacherous calm could not last, had solaced
themselves by breaking out into sullenness and rebellion.
Myra had refused to pay any attention whatever to her lesson
in geography (in which study, by the way, she had since
Kate's coming managed to learn the difference between a
cape and a continent), and when reprimanded and made to
stand on the floor for half an hour until she committed it to
memory, called the teacher by that forcible but inelegant
epithet "a nasty, ugly beast." This had led to the ears of
that young lady being soundly boxed (a mode of punishment
for which we have no defence to offer, but one quite as
effectual as improper, sometimes). Thereupon Mildred,
singularly reticent up to that period, had communicated the
startling intelligence that " her mother said she [to wit,
Kate] was a big black nigger and wanted whipping herself."
In support of which theory Mildred had "pitched into" the
teacher and done her small devoir at kicking her on a portion
of the anatomy not commonly mentioned in connection with
a lady — namely, the shins! Arid this had led to the latter
young lady being placed in a horizontal position and soundly —
to use another word which we believe does not often enter into
the material of modern romance — spanked! Under this
vigorous action the rebellion had been brought to an early
conclusion ; but, as some other rebellions may do when they
come to their inevitable end or defeat, it had left evil conse-

224 THE DAYS OF S II O D D Y.

quences behind it in its effect upon society. Not that, either
of the children would have told of this little esca'pade, any
more than of some of corresponding character which bad
preceded it. Miserably educated and half spoiled, with
nearly all the vices which could well be attached to the dis
positions of such people, Myra and Mildred had yet shown
that one virtue — indisposition to tell out of the school-room
what had occurred within it, — on which Kate believed that
something better and nobler might one day be built up. They
had not run away and detailed to mother or sister how they
had been beaten, bruised and mangled by the female -Ogre of
the Tree of .Knowledge. But unfortunately, in this instance,
Mrs. Fullerton had happened to be within ear-shot of the
scream which little Mildred vented when subjected to -that
peculiarly unpleasant " laying on of hands," and the result
had been the calling of both children into her presence, the
same evening, and the extracting from them, by threats of
flogging them soundly herself, of such ex par/e testimony
as would convict Kate Haviland, in the same court, of a
most gross and unprovoked outrage against the quiet of the
Fullerton family and the peace and dignity of the same.

While taking her late breakfast the next morning, Kate
had been informed by the dignified matron, with a chilling
tone in her voice, calculated to freeze the marrow of de
pendent people, — and with a frown on her brow, as Jovian as
the different sexes permitted, that she, the matron, " wished
to see her [the teacher] in the front room, immediately after
breakfast." After which the matron had swept away, and
Kate, who saw the storm gathering, had prepared for the
ordeal with such putting on of fear and trembling as her
own slightly-jolly disposition rendered possible. This was
the situation of affairs when bonny Kate entered the room
into which we have been more than once before introduced,
on the morning in question.

Cortesi made a terrible Medea : who does not remember
her, in that character and during the short opera season at
Xiblo's in 1858-9 ? When that proud, massive, statuesque
woman, with her eyes fire, her brow corrugated into whip
cords, and passionate love and hate shaking every nerve in

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 225

her system until some awful convulsion seemed inevitable —
when she stood with a child in either hand, awaiting the
coming of their faithless father, — the impression on the
mind of the auditor was that in real life a woman possessed
of the same nature and similarly circumstanced, would not
be a pleasant person to come home to ! Mrs Pullerton may
or may not have seen Cortesi in that rendering : certain it is
that on the morning in question she looked only less terrible
than the Mexican prima donna, and seemed to have taken a
hint from her in position, as she awaited the culprit, sitting
in a high-backed chair in regal state, her foot on an ottoman,
and one of the outraged darlings on either side of her.

Jt would I)e pleasant to say that Kate Ilaviland, on this
occasion, maintained the dignity of the family and was not
seriously impressed by the aspect of the stately matron.
She did not maintain that dignity at all, and was evidently
very much impressed. She approached the seat of judgment
with the true air of a juvenile culprit — eyes cast down, a
sort of shuffling hesitation in her gait, and only needing the
little finger stuck into the corner of her mouth, to be the
very ideal of the school-girl of twelve coming to be feruled.
She approached the awful tribunal, and there her eyes sought
the floor yet more humbly and her hands crossed before her
very much as the paws of Van Amburgh's lion do when the
courage of the beast is becoming conquered by the mastering
spirit of the man and he wishes the gesture to say : " There
— please don't use that rawhide, any more on my delicate
cuticle, and I'll never do so again — never, never !"

Mrs. Fullerton, who had been preparing a volley of vitup
eration to pour out on the head of a self-willed and arrogant
girl who had outraged the dignity of her family, saw the
humble aspect that approached her, and she was just a little
nonplussed by the difference from what she had expected.
If the girl had been defiant — why then she would have known
precisely what to say to make her shrink within her number-
three gaiters ; but what could she say to a dependant who
was so manifestly frightened at what she had done and so
full of deprecation of the wrath awaiting her ? Paixhans,
Dahlgrens and Parrotts may be all well enough, and indeed
H

226 THE T) A Y P OF SHODDY.

indispensable, when a stone fort or a stout war-vessel is to
be bombarded ; but who would think of employing one of
those mighty modern engines of war against a tea-chest or
one of the kindling-wood cob-houses built by idle children ?
Jove might have no objection to heating one of his best
thunderbolts and hurling it at a refractory Titan ; but would
not even Jove be a little ashamed to throw away such a
ponderous bolt on Commodore Xutt ? Yet what was to be
done ? Allow pity to stand in the way of justice, and thus en
courage further departures from the path of duty? Never!

— the dignified matron declared to herself, emphatically

never ! At least *o»ic. punishment must be awarded — at
least some example must be made of the offender. Ahem !

" So, miss !" began the indignant mother, while Myr^i and
Mildred, one on either hand, leaned across the back of their
progenitor's chair and exchanged the words of felicitation
following : —

" I say, Mil ! she looks as if she was going to be licked
herself !''

" Yes, don't she, though ! And oh Jeminy, won't she
catch it !" /

Both of which observations Miss Kate Haviland heard,
and put them away in her mental pocket-book for future
reference.

" So, miss !" repeated the matron, not having received any
response from the palsied tongue of the culprit.

"Well, ma'am?" answered the teacher, humbly and in
quiringly.

"So, you have already been disregarding my positive in
structions, it seems !" pursued the maternal mentor.

" I don't know, ma'am, I'm sure I don't !" half sobbed the
culprit, who was either dreadfully affected or a most con
summate actress.

"You do know!" answered the matron, the instinct of
overbearing demeanor rising within her as her dependant
seemed to sink lower in humility. " You do know ! These
dear children tell me that you have actually laid your hands
upon them in violence."

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 227

"Oh, no^ ma'am, they couldn't tell you so!" replied the
culprit. " Such dear little things, that I love so much "

" Restrain any allusion to your feelings, Miss Haviland I"
said the dignified woman. "It is a matter of very little con
sequence whether you love my daughters or not: you are to
teach them, and to treat them with proper consideration —
that is all !"

" Yes, ma'am," answered the disgraced teacher — the same
words, but uttered much more humbly, that she had used on
her original examination.

"My daughters tell me," pursued the outraged mother,
" that you last night administered severe punishment to both
of them."

" Oh, no, nra'am," again replied the teacher, " I couldn't — "

" She did ! — she knows she did !" broke out Miss Myra,
associate justice at her mother's right hand. "She slapped
my ears, so," suiting the action to the word, "just as if I was
a cat 1"

"And she slapped me,, too — hard — hard as ever she could !"
followed Miss Mildred, junior associate at her mother's left,
" Myra seen her — there, now !"

"And what were you doing, to make Miss Haviland punish
you in that manner ?" asked the mother, with that knowing
expression of the face which a counsel uses when questioning
his own witness on a point which he has before fully investi
gated in private and is now bringing out in public.

" Nothing at all, Ma !" answered Miss Myra, with such a
look of injured innocence as might belong to a Peri on trial
for highway robbery.

" Nor I neither, Ma !" chimed in Miss Mildred. " She just
went and — and — and — spanked me, for nothing at all."

" Children, don't talk so fast !;' said the mother, in a tone
of reproof — very gentle reproof; which conveyed : "Naughty
darlings ! How proud mother is of you !"

Let it be said, here, that of all occasions for administering
reproof on account of treatment of children, the most appro
priate is to be found in the presence of the children them
selves. If Mr. Smith has occasion to reprove his goveraess
for excessive harshness, he should always have the children

228 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

present when he does so, as it adds so materially to the re
spect borne by them to the governess and puts all parties on
such a satisfactory footing. And when Mr. Jones finds it
necessary to have a little plain talk with his wife, or Mrs.
Jones with her husband, about something in the management
of their darlings, and when a pleasant little domestic tiff, not
to say a quarrel, is morally certain to arise between the two —
by all means the little ones themselves should be witnesses
of the whole affair, because they will thereafter so much better
understand the anxiety felt for their welfare by both father
and mother ! The effect is still better if Mr. Smith breaks in
upon the governess with his reproof, at the very moment when
she has just succeeded after a long light with a stubborn will
and an ugly temper; and if Mr. or Mrs. Jones takes the op
portunity of administering reproof to the marital partner the
moment after punishment has been awarded to the child. In
either case, a pleasant state of affairs may be calculated upon
at some future day ; and nature is so just in its compensa
tions, that in such instances, at least, those, who sow are very
likely to have the privilege of reaping the profitable crop.

" You see, Miss Haviland," said the mother, loftily, "both
my children agree as to your action. I heard their screams
myself, and there cannot be any doubt in the world that you
beat them both — beat them, I say — my children. Now what
have you to say for yourself?"

" Nothing, ma'am !" answered the school-teacher, still in
the same tone of submission.

"Nothing? I should think not !" said the mother. "It
is well that you have that sense of propriety, Miss, at least I
I think you understood, when you first came into this house,
that your business was to teach these dear girls, and not to
impose upon them. Am I to understand that you now realize
your position better, and that if I overlook this misconduct I
may expect better attention to my orders for the future ?"

" Certainjy, ma'am!" answered Kate. "The dear little
things, lovely and innocent as they are, shall not be hurt on
any consideration. But I don't think I could possibly have
touched one of them, for I never, correct children under my
care, when they are behaving properly. I suppose, ma'am,

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 229

that if either of the dear little girls did misbehave themselves,
you would wish them taught to do better ?"

" Of course," said Mrs. Fullerton, with that sublime con
fidence that her children could not misconduct themselves
under any circumstances, which made the authorization of no
effect whatever. " But I do not believe, Miss Haviland, that
my children ever conduct themselves in such a way as to re
quire what you are pleased to call correction."

" No, Ma ! nary time !" asserted Myra, with a proof of the
classic severity of her education, broadly conveyed in the
elegance of her English

" Oh no, Ma ! We're always as good as — as — as — " and
finally little Mildred thought of the necessary comparison,
more or less appropriate — " as rats !"

" Now I couldn't have laid my hand angrily upon one of
these little ladies, because they are so good," said the teacher,
with something in her voice that a little belied the downcast
humility of her previous demeanor, and that made the matron
glance at her for the moment uneasily. " I don't think I have
punished any little girl in the last year, except two. One of
them called me a ' nasty, ugly beast,' and I boxed her ears ;
and the other one designated me as a ' big black nigger,' and
kicked me, and I am afraid that I took her across my knee.
I think I should do it again, with almost any lady's chil
dren."

" Why that was us!" broke out little Mildred, fairly caught
in the toils. " That was what Myra said before she slapped
her, and that was what I done before she spanked me ! See
\vbat a story-teller she is !"

" Oh, you did do something, then, my little dears, before
you were punished, did you ?" asked the teacher, humble and
downcast-looking no longer, but erect and radiant. " Now,
madam, you have at last got the truth, and perhaps you like
it ! Have you any further directions to give me, how I am
to manage these children who never misbehave themselves?"

" Miss Haviland, you may take these children away to the
nursery, and don't let me hear an}7 thing more about them for
the next month !" was the reply of the dignified rnothei1, who
was not too great a fool, even with all her pride, to realize

230 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

how completely she had herself been victimized, and how the
young girl, with her studied humility, had entrapped the two
ill-tempered and ungovernable children into betraying their
own misconduct and vindicating her. It is just possible that
she mustered common-sense and good feeling enough, for the
moment, to be aware that the children were in very good
hands, and that the less intermeddling indulged in as to their
management, the more hope that they might not become alto
gether ungovernable even by herself.

But 31adam was not yet to escape the trouble of her
attempted oversight of the education of her children, as it
appeared. Myra had shown a cramp in her hand-writing,
giving reason to fear that she might be afflicted with some
chronic disease in her hand ; and the teacher had been
anxious to consult the mother on the subject, without caring
to break through her habitual reserve. And now a proper
opportunity seemed to offer. Jn a few words she expressed
her fears and inquired whether her employer would come to
the school-room to examine the writing-book.

" No," said Ihe mother, who had a not unnatural horror of
places where children are being taught — "bring the writing-
book here, in a few minutes, after you have set the girls their
lessons, and we will see what is the matter."

A very little affair, apparently, to decide whether she should
step to the school-room to make the necessary examination,
or whether the teacher should come to her in that room ; and
yet more actually hung upon that decision than any finite
mind could calculate.

Mrs. I^ullerton left the room, immediately after the conver
sation recorded; and at the same time Kate Haviland, accom
panied by the two slightly crest-fallen children, took her way
to the school-room. Some fifteen minutes afterwards, her
pupils set down to certain lessons to which they would be
likely to attend during her absence, very much as children in
larger schools do when all oversight is temporarily withdrawn
from them, — the young girl, writing-book in hand, returned
to the room in which she was once more to have audience of
her "patroness."

Mrs. Fullerton had not yet returned, and when she entered

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 231

the room the teacher for the moment believed that it was
unoccupied. • She stepped Within, and had advanced half way
up the room when she became aware that there were persons
within it, and yet concealed, in conversation. It may be re
membered that the windows of this room were so deep as
literally to form alcoves, and that they were shaded by heavy
rose-colored worsted curtains, besides those of lace which
showed from the street — so that persons sitting or standing
within would be entirely sheltered from observation by others
within the room, and the tone of their conversation con
siderably muffled. It is not for this chronicle to say that
Miss Dora Fullerton had arranged the upholstery of these
windows with especial reference to their convenience for
flirtation, but recesses of this same character have been
known to be devoted to purposes very similar, and some
Puritan fathers and prudish mothers have also been known
to object to their construction, on grounds displaying not too
much confidence in the' propriety of male and female hu
manity. As a lounging-place, Miss Dora somewhat affected
it, whether alone or with 'company; and that pleasant May
morning, with air that even the million breaths of the city
could not make other than delicious, floating in through the
half opened window, it was certainly a most rational spot for
a quiet hour of reading or conversation. The latter was the
purpose to which it was devoted in the present instance, as
Kate Haviland discovered when she had half-way crossed the
room. One of the voices she at once recognized as that of
Dora Fullerton : the other left her in doubt for an instant but
not longer — it- belonged to Mr. Ned Minthorne. There
was, or should have been, no reason for the sudden flush
which came into the face of bonny Kate on making the latter
discovery ; but perhaps it was only a secondary and remote
effect of the intense red which had burned over brow, cheek
and bosom, nearly a month before, at the moment of that
unfortunate detection in the school-room ; and perhaps some
thing mysterious and uncxplainable which had occurred just
before the departure of the millionaire, that morning, had a
little to do with this temporary emotion. Temporary it was ;
and the young girl was about to kave the room, or at least

232 THE DAYS OF S II O D D Y.

to go out of possible ear-shot, when one word not only pre
vented her pursuing that laudable intention, but actually
drew her nearer to the concealing curtain. That word — she
could not be mistaken — came from the lips of the millionaire,
and it was " Haviland."

"Eh?" thought the young girl — "something about me?
What right have these people to be making me a subject of
conversation, I should like to know ! Of course I have no
right to listen, but I must hearjMstf one word.''

And she did listen, and heard many more words than one.
There is no intention of defending this conduct on the part
of the teacher, who, especially in virtue of her profession,
should have been fully up in all the proprieties of society
and indignantly incapable of listening to a single sentence
not intended for her ears. JBut it has been more than once
before intimated that the scope of this narration includes the
representation of persons as they are and not as they should
be ; and it is just possible that ninety-nine hundredths of the
good people who at this juncture feel ready to say :
" What a perverted state of society that writer must have
habitually seen, or what a disingenuous mind he must pos
sess — always to be exhibiting his ideal women as peeping at
doors, listening at curtains or appropriating letters that do
iiot belong to them }" — it is just possible, we say, that ninety-
nine hundredths of those very good people, under the proper
temptation, would do quite the same thing, or worse. And
besides, good sir, or nuidame, these are not " ideal women,"
at all, but real personages — poor fallible flesh and blood, with
all the hopes, fears, ordinary virtues and extraordinary weak
nesses, of humanity. They could quite as easily be depicted
as immaculate ; just as a certain eminent photographer not
long ago informed me of his dissatisfied lady sitter that he
really could not make the picture any handsomer and yet
have it resemble her, but that if she preferred it he had
no objection to making her a copy of the handsomest por
trait in the gallery and letting her carry 'it home as her
own ! Women, in romances, could easily be drawn, of un
faltering propriety as well as unimpeachable morality :
the great trouble might be that they would not at all resem-

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 233

ble the people of real flesh and blood whom we met to-day
in the street and will meet again to-night at the opera or in
society.

Kate Haviland listened, and heard more than one word.
Before she heard many, not even the fear of Mrs. Fullerton
corning in and catching her in that undignified position could
have drawn her away until she had heard at least a certain
number more. It was the name of Haviland that she had
heard, and she heard that name repeated. Evidently it had
before been spoken by Dora.

" Haviland ? Haviland ? A nice ambrotype and a deuced
pretty face, you know !" said the millionaire, inquiringly.
" Haven't you got some person of the same name in the
house ?"

" Why how do you know ?" asked Dora, in a quick, jerky
voice.

" I ?" said the noodle. " Oh, I met a young lady — that
is — a girl, I should say, the other day on the stairs, and I
heard one of the little girls call her by some name like ' Miss
Haviland.'"

" Oh," replied the young lady. " Yes, we have a person
of that name, here — a teacher, from Khode Island, or New
Jersey, or some other outlandish place ; a coarse thing — "

" I o\ve you one more for that, Miss Dora Fullerton !"
said the listener, between her teeth and so low that there
was no danger of being overheard. " A ' coarse thing,' am
I ? See if I do not make a settlement with you, before I
am done, quite as effectual a,s any that I have made with
either of your spoiled sisters !"

" Xo, if she is coarse, it could not have been the same per
son that I met," said Minthorne. " She was rather pretty, I
thought — that is — I mean that she was not — that is, I have
seen homelier people."

"You have, have you?" spoke Miss Dora Fullerton, in a
voice the very reverse of pleasant. " I am really much
obliged to you, Mr. Minthorne, that you don't think her the
handsomest person in the house, I am sure !"

" Now really, Miss Fullerton — " began the millionaire.

" Don't talk to me, sir !" said the young lady. " Come

23i THE DAYS OF S H O T) D Y.

into this house and foil in love with the school-teachers, and
the chambermaids, and even the cook, if you like, but I had
a little rather that you would not go to praising them to mv
face !"

" How can you be so cruel," replied the millionaire to this
very sensible speech, "when you know — "

" Know what, sir ?" broke in the young lady.

" — That there is only one face in the house worth any
money — that. is — worth thinking about — you know what I
mean, I am sure !" and the listener fancied that about that
time a hand was taken, or some other personal advance made
towards a reconciliation ; for the lady's next words were in a
very different tone :

" Well, there ! Don't say any thing more about it, and I
won't scold you any more, if you really like me so much. But
don't look at that school-teacher again, or I shall hate you !"

" Certainly not — that is — if I meet her again 1 shall shut
up both eyes and look the other way," said the noodle, who
certainly seemed disposed to adopt the most effectual pre
cautions against any further temptation. " But this picture
— you know ! The name on the back of it is certainly ' Hav-
iland,' and yet it is not a bit like her /"

" No," answered the lady. " Not a bit like hei — a great
deal handsomer. I do not suppose that the owner of this
picture is any relative of the person who teaches our chil
dren."

" And if you do not know — of course it is none of my busi
ness — but a fellow likes to be ppsted about all these things,"
said the millionaire, deprecatingly, " how did you come
by it ?"

" Oh, funnily enough ! ha ! ha !" said the young girl, the
laugh sounding strangely discordant to the listener. " I do
not know that I ought to tell you, but I suppose 1 must !
My brother-in-law, Mr. Holt, was here last night, and 1 found
it beside the chair in which he was sitting, only a few
moments after he left. I suppose that he must have dropped
it out of his pocket, by accident." ,

" But why he ?" asked the millionaire noodle, who in spite
of his known weakness of mind, seemed sometimes to have

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 235

powers of ratiocination and habits of sticking to a subject,
surprising even if they were not troublesome. " Why should
he be carrying around good-looking Haviland women in hiss
pocket, you know ?"

" Bah ! you don't know him !" said the lady, and tho
listener could recognize that her tone had changed from the
careless discordance of a moment before, not to petulance
.like that which it had exhibited in the preceding customary
quarrel with her lover, but to low and concentrated bitterness
like that of violent but suppressed anger. " He may ruin us
— destroy us all, if he likes, and if he ever hears what I say ;
but Charles Holt is a scoundrel, and no woman is safe in his
hands. That picture is the portrait of the wife of one of hid
clerks. How he got possession of it, I do not know, though
I would almost give my life to know. What I do know is
that he has sent the husband away to the war, and that — •
there ! — what have 1 been saying ? It is all nonsense, of
course: don't ask me any thing more about it! Don't!"
And the listener knew that without any of the petulant af
fectation which sli-e had exhibited when speaking of her not
long before, she was choking down tears and sobs of anger,
if she had not indeed burst into unrestrained indulgence of
the passion.

And what was the effect of all this upon Kate Haviland ?
Precisely what might have been expected, and very nearly
what she deserved ! People have no right to listen to what
'is not intended for their ears, as has already been insinuated
in this connection ; and those who outrage the rule must sub
mit to the punishment. The young girl, brave, self-reliant
and not a little jolly, had within five minutes been placed in
possession of a mass of information that was scarcely better
than ignorance, while it had the power of making her ex
ceedingly uncomfortable, and perhaps imposed upon her
onerous and painful duties without giving her the means of
fulfilling them: Something wierd and strange seemed whirl
ing and dancing in her head ; her feet, as she turned to leave
the room (for she had forgotten all about the writing-book,
now, and thought only of escaping from, possible detection)
seemed to be numb and treading upon air ; and it was really

236 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

with quite an effort that she succeeded in ascending the stairs
and gaining the privacy of her own little bed-room. There
she tried to think more calmly, and partially succeeded;
though what would she not have given, at that moment, to
lay her dizzy head upon the bosom of Aunt Bessy, and con
sult her as to the true meaning of all that she had heard !
Poor child ! — the wisdom of the simple country woman would
have been of no possible use to her : she had gone beyond
her aunt's atmosphere as well as her knowledge, and that
which required to be done required to be done by herself
alone.

And what was it that she had discovered, even partially, •
from the conversation just overheard ? First : that Dora
Fullerton hated as well as fooked down upon her, and that
any visitor at the house who even recognized her as of the
same flesh and blood with the family, was to be tabooed.
That was no great wonder, and for, that she had been partially
prepared from the first hour of her acquaintance with the Ful-
lertous. Second: that Mr. Ned Minthorne was the strangest
mixture possible to imagine — apparently part fool, for no
man not a fool, and possessing his wealth, Avould permit him
self to be overborne by such arrogant stupidity as that of
Dora. And yet not altogether fool ; for she could not forget
that one moment in her own school-room, weeks before, when
he had seemed to be a self-possessed, clear-headed, even com
manding man — one to be respected as well as obeyed. And
not by any means at all simple or transparent ; for evidently
he had not told Dora Fullerton, to whom he was engaged
(so at least the children averred, and she had no reason to
doubt the statement), one word of his adventure with her in
the school-room ; and she had just heard him give a false ex
planation of his having seen her at all, something in his
speech all the while indicating that he was endeavoring to
make sly discoveries with reference to her and to Dora's feel
ings towards her. An odd problem, certainly, for clearer
heads than the puzzled little "noddle of the school-teacher!
Third : a corroboration of previous suspicious that something
was wrong in the relation sustained by Mr. Charles Holt
towards his mother-in-law. Once during the fortnight she

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 237

had happened to be present for a few moments when the
merchant was in the room with both mother and daughter,
and she had seen that both bowed to him with-a cringing
and yet defiant subserviency, totally different from their con
duct to any other visitor. And what, coupled with this, did
Dora's exclamation mean : " He may ruin us — destroy us all,
if he likes, and if he ever hears what I say" ? Some mystery
of misfortune, if not of crime, was certainly involved, and the
whole family had a share in it. What could it be, and how
far would its existence imperil the comfort or the peace of a
resident in the household ? Kate Haviland might even have
been a witness of the interview between the merchant and his
wife, in his own house, and though she would have been still
more impressed with the existence of some terrible mystery,
and seen the degradation that had fallen upon Olympia Holt,
another member of the same family, yet she would have been
quite as unable as at this moment to decipher the strange
hieroglyphics with which fate sets down the first records of
all that is occult and dangerous. Fourth — and the thing of
most immediate and pressing moment : a picture of her
cousin Burtnett's wife was in the possession of the Fullerton
family, fallen from the pocket of Charles Holt, his old em
ployer ; and it was a matter of remark in mouths not likely
to jest upon such a subject, that the merchant had sent away
his clerk that he might the more easily accomplish his dis
honor ! What perils were these indeed surrounding Mary
Haviland ? An hour before, she would have staked her life
on the }Toung wife's fidelity and the impossibility of her
being placed in such circumstances as even to put her
good name at hazard : now, there were the words of Dora
and the fact that the portrait had been in the possession
of the merchant, to make her at least pause and consider.
And yet what to do, granting that any such peril really ex
isted ? Destiny, in permitting her to overhear that conver
sation, seemed to have set her a task : what was it, and how
was it to be accomplished ? "Speak to Mary Haviland on
the subject ? — if innocent of imprudence, (and that she could
not be guilty of more, the young girl knew), and if the pic-

233 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

tare had merely come into the merchant's hands by some
mere accident, — the question might offend the wife, and at
the same time establish for herself the most detestable of all
reputations, that of the spy and the meddler. Write to Burt-
nett Haviland and tell him what she had heard ? — that might
establish the same reputation in his regard, besides paining
and worrying him, without accomplishing any good. Was
ever the brain of a poor little woman more puzzled, than
Kate Haviland's in that half hour in her chamber, before she
bad sufficiently composed herself to descend' to the school
room and attend once more to the interests of her pupils ?

At length she did descend, however — found their tasks
neglected and Myra engaged in tying Mildred up to a desk
with one of her garters, with the declared intention of flogging
her soundly with the ruler when she had got her into proper
position — re-established order in that troublesome community
of two — and then, while they at least for the moment pursued
their studies, sat down to write — what ? — a letter to Burtnett
Haviland, exhibiting at least part of the resolutions which
she had finally formed.

Her cousin and herself had been very dear friends since
childhood, though he was some years the elder. She had been
his "little wife" at school, under the roof of the red school-
house at the foot of the hill and beside the alder pond half a
mile from Duffsboro ; and when separated they had ever
since been occasional correspondents. Perhaps no one un
derstood the odd, merry girl better than her cousin ; and when
she met him they had always been in the habit of exchang
ing sly hints and making odd comparisons, a little unintelli
gible and very nonsensical, sometimes, to those who did not
understand the peculiarities which seemed — so to speak — to
run in the Haviland stock. As a consequence, though Kate
was in the present instance writing with a purpose and a
very serious one, she either thought it best to spice the letter
with her old manner, so as tu avoid alarming her cousin too
much with her own apparent seriousness, — or found it im
possible to avoid the peculiarity. The odd mixture read
partially as follows : —

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 239

UP IN MY SCHOOL ROOM. WITH TWO CHILDREN WHO WILL NOT STUMY

AND WILL GABBLE, NfiW YORK, MAY , 1861.

Dear Cousin : —

Did I promise to write to you, before you went away ? If so, here is the
fulfilment of the promise. If not, you are getting more than you deserved or
expected, and ought to be duly grateful to the overruling providences for this
little dash in upon the (supposed) tedium of your soldier life. I do not know
but 1 should have written you before, if I had not been very busy. Apart
from my duty of keeping these two charming Pullerton children from un-
leurning any thing of the little they know, (they have never learned any
thing but that splendid science — mischief!) I have been studying some ab
struse problems in scriptural antiquity. I have been very desirous to know
what was the precise market value of Cain's best brindle heifer; whether
they really were potatoes or only Jerusalem artichokes that Shem's pig
rooted up in Japhet's garden; who was the ship-builder that put a new
bowsprit into the Ark, and whether it was oak or chestnut; where Jubal
bought his fiddle-strings; whether Miriam's timbrel was a bass-drum or only
a darkey tamborine; with several other problems of groat interest to humanity.
I have a big pile of books all around me, in seventeen different languages and
well thumbed, and when I solve any of the questions I will let you know by
telegraph. And now for yourself. Don't get shot, and don't contract the bad
habit, while you are lying idle in camp, of playing division-loo for buttons.
Especially don't cut off the buttons from your coat to play with. Wash your
face at least once a week : you will find that healthier than doing it once a
month. Do you dreadful Fire Zouaves really set fire to one of your tents
every night, for the sake of putting it out with a cannon, or is that only a
story they tell? Let me know when you answer this, if you ever do answer it,
I wish you could pick mo up a nice little nigger somewere down there — a
dwarf if you can find one. I want him for a page, some day when I get to be
Queen of the Cannibal Islands. If you can't find me a dwarf, send me one
of the ordinary style, not too large, and I will put it stone on his head and
keep him down. •****! suppose that you hear from Mary every day, so
that I need not tell you any thing about -Tier. She was well when I ran up
the other day, and so was Pet — well and kicking. (She kicked me.) By the
way, an odd genius that old employer of yours, Mr. Holt, must be. He must
take a very warm interest in you, for he had a picture of your wife in his
pocket when he was here yesterday, and dropped it out so that the family got
hold of it (I did not see it) and were admiring her and saying what a lucky
fellow you were. But now you have had enough of my gossip. Scribble me
something, some day when you have time, with a stubby pencil on a piece of
greasy paper (isn't that the way you soldiers do?) on the head of a drum or
the seat of one of your camp-stools.

Ever your affectionate good-for-nothing cousin

KATE HAVILAND.

There were a few words of tlTe conversation between Dora
Fullerton and Ned Mintho.rne, that Kate Haviland, running
away when satisfied that there was to be nothing more con
cerning herself or her family, did not catch. They were of

240 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

public if not of private interest, and may be very briefly de
tailed as a pendant to this chapter.

"Ma's letter, that was to go down to Montgomery?1' asked
the young lady, when the excitement of the conversation be
fore detailed had « passed over. "I do not know whether
she has asked you about it, or not — I have never thought of
it. Did you send it ?"

" No !" said the millionaire.

" What !" almost shouted the young girl, half springing to
her feet, her face ashy white with something like fear, and
then instantly red with anger. "You did not send it? You
dared—"

" My dear Miss Fullerton," said the noodle, who had been
looking at her very calmly and with that in his eyes w«hich
would have been close observation by any man 'not a fool —
"don't be alarmed ! If there was any thing of consequence
in it—"

" You're a fool ! — a miserable fool !" almost hissed the
young lady. " There was life, death, ruin, every thing in
that package !"

" Good gracious !" said the noodle — " so much property
near Montgomery ! I had no idea, you know."

"Jiah!" said the young girl, speaking at the millionaire
but really to herself. " If Ma thought you were to be
trusted at all, why did she not trust you altogether? There
was important information there, from the Men of the True
South., in this city, for President Davis. If that is lost, or
if it has got into the wrong hands, some of our necks will
be cheap ! Where is the letter ? Do you know that?"

" Oh, yes," said the noodle. " That is, I know where it
was. Your mother said that it was of a good deal of con
sequence, though I thought, you know, that it was all about
property — property is the main thing, after all — and as I
hadn't much to do — I never do have much to do, in the
spring, before a fellow can get away to some of the watering-
places — why, I just ran down to Washington and delivered it
myself, you know."

" Pshaw I then the letter is delivered, after all !'' said the

THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

»

young lady. "And what was the use of frightening me in
that manner ?"

" Why, / didn't say any thing to frighten you, I am sure !"
said the millionaire. "You asked me if I sent it; I said no.
You hadn't asked me yet if I had taken it, don't you see ?"

"Yes, I see!" answered Miss Dora. "But I wish, Ned
Minthorne, that you would be more like other people."

" Which of them ?" asked the subject of this compli
mentary wish.

"Any of them that have brains!" was what the lady
thought ; but what she said was : " Oh, anybody, everybody !
never mind ! Come — let us go down to lunch." And to
lunch they went down accordingly.

CHAPTER XII.
How CHARLES HOLT, MERCHANT, DISPLAYED HIS DELICACY

AND BECAME HIS OWN ERRAND-BOY — MARY HAVILAND'S
VISITOR, WITH CLOSER PEEPS AT HIS CHARACTER WHAT

THE MERCHANT FOUND IN AN OLD DRAWER — How THE

VISITS MULTIPLIED AND THE NET DREW CLOSER — A LITTLE
" BRIBERY AND CORRUPTION" — KATE HAVILAND'S RESEARCH,
AND HOW VERY MUCH SHE DISCOVERED.

IT will again be necessary to go back a little, in the order
of time, that the reader, who of course must not on an
account be left mystified with what so puzzles all the
characters in the 'life-drama, may understand precisely what
had really occurred to affect the fortunes and the reputation
of Mary Haviland.

Up to Monday the 29th of April, when the Zouaves left
New York — though a part of the time absent from the store
of his employers, Burtnett Haviland had drawn his salary
and applied it to the use of his family. After his departure,
the arrangement made by the liberality of Mr. Charles Holt,
was that the salary should still be paid weekly, as it had
15

242 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

•

been when the clerk was at home ; and as Mr. Holt could
always command an errand-boy if no higher medium of com
munication, and as it would be not only a slight incon
venience for Mrs. Havilaud to go or send for the weekly
amount, but also a little sacrifice of independence to ask for
what was really not earned and only supplied by the kindness
and public spirit of an employer, — It had also been arranged
that the money should bo sent up at the close of every week,
the wife receipting for it in each instance or monthly, so as
to supply the proper vouchers for the accounts kept between
the partners. These suggestions had all been made by the
merchant himself, and accepted by the clerk with the thanks
which seemed to be due to the nobility of mind which
dictated them. Though he could not, with any delicacy, pro
pose such arrangements himself, there had not been any sense
of humiliation on the part of Burtnett Haviland or his wife
in falling into them, as public spirit for the military service
of the country just at that time ran so high that scores and
perhaps even hundreds of merchants felt that they were doing
nothing more than their duty in continuing the salaries of their
clerks while absent, they being themselves incapacitated by
age. or prevented by business from joining the ranks of the
national defenders. It was felt, and very properly, that
while the clerk underwent the fatigue and bodily exposure of
the service, his employer was very lightly sharing in the
onerous burthen by paying him his salary as a sort of substi
tute. The merchants of New York, and of other leading
cities, reflected honor on themselves by pursuing this course ;
and the manly liberality of those who made such arrange
ments and adhered to them even when the first heat of the
war-fever was over, cannot be affected by the miserable
" shoddy" meanness of many others who stipulated to make
such payments to the families of their absent clerks, repu
diated the arrangement when they were in the service and
had lost the power to return, and literally left their wives
and families to starve except as relieved by the narrow
public bounty.*

* This was another phase of the "shoddy" which should bo unshrinkingly
exposed, and would be so in this connection but for the impossibility of

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 243

There was another side to this story, of course — a side
with which private employers had nothing to do and the
swindling propensity developed itself among those who pre
tended to be serving the country. • When the regiments were
hurriedly organizing and it seemed to be the duty as well as
the wish of every able-bodied man to join them in some ca
pacity, the public councils and heads of departments of many
of the cities (New York especially, again) announced that any
of their subordinate officers who wished to enter the service,
would have their places kept, and their salaries continued
during absence. Some of these, good fellows, took the offer
in. the same spirit in which it was made, and went into the
army to fight and to return when the fight was over. Too
many others saw a fresh opportunity for money-making, and
embraced it. They went into the army, it is true, but as or
namental officers who could not and would not have any thing
laborious or dangerous to do, drawing large salaries in such
situations and yet retaining their well-paid positions at home,
double duty to be meanwhile discharged by the under-paid
subordinates remaining at their posts. Or they took the still
more profitable positions of commissaries and army contrac-
'tors, absenting themselves at Washington or with the army
in such very speculative " service^' and yet drawing their
official salaries and having the name of being " patriots" who
had " sprung up at the call of duty" and " left every thing for
the sake of their country !" Has even the " shoddy" record
any thing more contemptible ?

It is already reasonably well understood that Burtnett Ha-
. vilaud had no selfish or money-making intentions when he ac
cepted his employer's offer and enrolled his name among the
First Fire Zouaves. Let it be equally well understood that
Charles Holt had no intention of repudiating his promise to
pay his salary and to " provide for his family" during his ab-

gathering up the names now forgotten. Obligations to employers living or
dead were repudiated, in hundreds of cases, and many of those oases crept
into the law courts, from which the grea I -grand-children of the claimants
may possibly recover something. In many cases this most execrable mean
ness was successful, the oath of the employer that he "never promised any
thing of the kind" being conclusive against the claim when the claimant
was dead or absent and there was no " black and white" to support it.

THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

scnce. If there was any danger whatever, it was that he
might " provide" for them too well ! Punctuality was among
the merchant's leading virtues. The regiment had gone away
on Monday, and a week's salary was due on the Monday fol
lowing. That very evening he presented himself at the house
on East Forty-eighth Street, to perform the noble duty of
Lord Almoner in person instead of entrusting it to a mere
subordinate. Of course this was delicacy — pure delicacy.
Who could say that the mere subordinate might not rush
roughly in, throw down the stipend with a coarse : " Here's
your money, Ma'am !" as if she had been a pauper on the
town, and rush out again as roughly ? — while he could hand
over that money with the delicacy of a true gentleman and
such courtesy that the taking of it might seem to be a favor
conferred upon him instead of the opposite. Pure delicacy —
we say again. By-and-bye, when the situation had grown
to be a more accustomed one and less danger of lacerated
feeling would be involved, the subordinate, even the errand-
boy, might be trusted : not now. So the merchant made the
personal visit indicated.

There are few prettier human pictures to be found in a long
search, than Mary Haviland presented as she herself answered
the bell at the summons of the merchant, and stood in the
doorway inviting him to enter. It was past dusk, and the
light of the lamp in the lower hall shone like a glory full upon
her blonde hair and threw her neat and compact figure into
the most admirable and rounded relief. Then the hand that
she extended in welcome when she recognized her husband's
kind friend and employer, was so creamy white and so taper,
and it was given with such evident warmth and good feeling,
that had the merchant not been beyond a new incitement in
that direction, one might easily have been created by the
proximity.

" I am very glad to see you, Mr. Holt. How kind you are
to come !" said the guileless wife, merely thinking of the call
as one of personal friendship. But in, an instant she remem
bered that the call might have a pecuniary motive, and that
her words of gladness might be supposed to refer to that.
Whereupon she wished, for a moment, that there was no such

THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

thing as money in the world, or that her o\vn tongue was
better regulated, and blushed a dear little faint roseate blush
that just tinted her forehead and cheeks and made her ten
times handsomer than ever. But the tongue had other offices,
it fulfilled them, and by the time the little blush had fairly
died away, the merchant had accepted her invitation and
followed her up the stair to the little front parlor. In another
moment the chandelier was lighted, and the two were seated
in conversation, with the apparent freedom from restraint of
very old friends.

Mr. Charles Holt, merchant, was an incarnate man of the
world, all the keenest and worst senses of that phrase being
embodied in his description. Xot a wise man, for no scoun
drel is truly wise, even the wisdom of this world being alone
taken into the calculation, — but a keen and nubile one, those
qualities sometimes supplying the place of the nobler with
very good effect, He bad been educated in nearly every
school, from the college to the casino, from the banking-house
to the bagnio. He had as many faces as any Hindu god in
the whole Brahminical calendar — each one as sharp and clear
cut as one of the facets of a diamond. Unfortunately, in
this relation, we have seldom occasion to see more than two
facets, the defiant and the villainous. Meeting three different
strangers within a given ten minutes, the chances were that
he would find occasion to present a different face to each, and
that the impressions formed of him by each would be so
different that a fight could easily be engineered on the prin
ciple of the gold and silver sides of the same shield. Perhaps
he cared as little for literature, perse, as any man of the age ;
and yet he could read Byron with force and propriety, arid
make any new acquaintance believe, within five minutes, that
he was a devoted lover of the poetical and the tender, with
out one grain of the hard or the practical in his disposition.
He was not scrupulously moral (this may have been indicated
before), and yet he could and would preach such a Puritani
cal sermon when occasion required, that, old Plymouth Rock-
would almost have tingled with delight to hear him. 'His
attachment to the marriage bond was not such as to make him.
lose his nightly rest in grieving over the numerous infractions

THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

of that sacred tie constantly supposed to be occurring (this, too,
may have been before indicated); and yet he could so inveigh
against Free Love and Mormonism that neither Stephen
Pearl Andrews nor Orson Hyde would have allowed him
within ten miles of their supposed-to-be-different-but-really-
similar conventicles. Given five minutes for a change of
auditors and motive, and he could and would take the very
reverse on any one of these subjects or any one of an hundred
others. He was, in short, "all things to all men" — a man of
great versatility and power, with strong enterprise and won
derful ability of acquiring, retaining and managing wealth,
with insatiable and most unscrupulous appetites — a bold, bad,
dangerous man, and yet with something shining through all,
which indicated that he had at some time in life received
some hard blow from the world and was taking a Luciferian
delight in achieving those revenges which are all that remain
to the lost spirit.

If there was any one science that Charles Holt had tho
roughly mastered, it was that of approach, jus-t as the French
Emperor has made it his speciality to learn to icait. He
never approached people in that way so graphically described
by some of the rough-talkers — "wrong end foremost." He
was generally unerring in his judgment of time and place,
and would no more have thought ef approaching a widow at
the grave-yard, before she had returned from the funeral of
her husband, than a bride only two days after marriage or an
outraged wife at the moment when she was smarting under
fierce jealousy of her husband.* He would no more have
dreamed of hinting at improper personal regard for Mary Ha-
viland, before creeping into her confidence by initial steps,
1 han he would of sawing off his own head, a la " Richard No.
3" of the old Mitchell's Olympic days. He had one unfailing
mode of approach, and he knew it and intended to practice it.
Apart from any personal experience in that direction, he had
read " Never Too Late to Mend," and knew^why Susan Mer-
ton tolerated Meadows' company when poor George Fielding

* Late Novels.

THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

was away in Australia. His, first approach was to speak to
her of h(jr husband.

This he did, on the evening in question, with the apparent
warmth of a true friend and the admiration of a brother pa
triot. He spoke of his business talents, the loss to the force
at the store which he was found to bej the pity that he should
be called away, his noble spirit in espousing his country's
cause, and the loneliness which the wife must feel during his
absence. In ten minutes he had won poor little Mary Havi-
land'a heart even more than before (won it, of course, in that
inoffensive sense which allowed no thought of coldness or dis
loyalty to her husband) ; and when, half an hour later and
after picking up a book from the table and reading two or
three of "Whitticr's poems with excellent intonation and feel
ing, and after performing the pecuniary portion of his errand
with such tact that it merely seemed to be one of the high
bred courtesies of a society something above her own — when
all this had been done and the merchant rose to go away, it
was no marvel whatever that the young wife accompanied
him to the door with undisguised pleasure at the visit beam
ing upon her face, — and that when he took her soft little hand
in his own daintily-gloved palm at parting, and held it for the
just one instant longer than strict propriety would have al
lowed, she neither frowned, uttered any petulant remark, nor
jerked it away.

Mary Ilaviland returned up-stairs less lonely than she had
been since the departure of her husband, and very much
pleased — very much indeed — with her late visitor and the
chance which had thrown around her, to some extent, the
protecting care of so noble a man and so true a friend of
Burtnett Haviland as his employer !

Charles Holt, merchant, stepped brisRly towards the Third
Avenue and across to the Fifth before taking his course down
town, rubbing his bends meanwhile and more than once clap
ping them together as if patting applause to some capital
actor who had just made an excellent point. He was ap
plauding a capital actor — himself; and he believed that he
had made an excellent point in the impression created by hig
personal manners on the wife of his clerk, and the assurance

248 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

he had given her that he was the true and warm friend of her
husband ! So far, so good ; indeed, very good : the rest would
cunie iu due time.

Yet what would he not have given, he thought, to be able
to follow up that impression before it had time to cool ! This
could not be, for under no circumstances could he find an ex
cuse for visiting the little house on East Forty-eighth Street
before the next Monday, and meanwhile he must fret — yes,
fret and burn, under the consciousness of time wasted. \ ;

But there are unquestionably ministering spirits watching
over the evil as well as the good, and affording opportunities
to the one as well as the other. Less than forty hours after,
and when this thought was yet fresh in his mind, he had oc
casion to pull open a drawer in the counting-room to which
any of the senior clerks had access ; and he chanced upon a
perfect placer of valuables — for him. Nothing that would
have brought fifty cents if offered at auction, and yet at the
moment of the discovery the merchant felt that they enriched
him more than a contract to supply rotten satinet or sleezy
cloth for clothing for ten regiments, could have done. A
little memorandum-book, bearing the name of Burtriett Havi-
laud and partially filled with private notes in pencil ; a white
silk handkerchief marked with his initials ; a volume of Gerald
Massey, with his name on the fly leaf; and last of all but
more than all, an old but excellent little ambrotype of Mary
Haviland, in a morocco case stamped with her name. Here
was a placer, indeed — and all his own. The ambrotype was
a charming one, the soft rounded features and blonde hair
having taken well in it, as they oftener do in that description
of picture than any other, and the dust upon the case indi
cating that it must have lain in the drawer for a considerable
period and been forgotten. That he would keep, at all haz
ards, and feed the fire in his blood by gazing upon the sweet
face at his leisure. As for the memorandum-book, the hand
kerchief and the volume of poems — they would furnish him
the very excuse that he coveted, for " dropping in" again at
the house of the original, at once, and with the opportunity
of creating a deeper impression of his care and anxiety for
her welfare, instead of any danger of awakening suspicion.

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 249

This programme was strictly carried out. The evening
of that day saw the merchant again at the house on East
Forty-eighth Street, and once more in the presence of its
young mistress. He found the gratitude he had expected,
for the restoration of the handkerchief and the memorandum-
book, which however seemed to be valued only (he was
obliged to note) because they furnished additional reminders
of the absent husband ; and if he had a momentary pang at
seeing the young wife furtively convey to her lips the
book that contained his hand-writing, he was consoled by the
fact that she did not ask after the ambrotype and evidently
did not know or. had forgotten-its having been in her hus
band's possession. With reference to. the kissing of the
book, it is only justice to Charles Holt to say that he was
rather prepared for than surprised at that manifestation. If
husbands cannot prevent little infringements on their marital
rights by wide-awake and unscrupulous men of the world,
those men of the world, constituting themselves lovers, are
sometimes obliged to witness very painful indications of at
tachment in the wives towards their husbands, by which
they, the lovers, are defrauded, but xto which they have
never yet been able to establish a formula of objection.
This Charles Holt knew by sad experience, and being pre
pared to make due allowance h'e did not suffer so much
from the yet existing attachment of Mary Haviland to her
husband, shown by the pressure of her lips to the memoran
dum-book, as he might have done had he never before seen
such a proof of weakness.

This time, as the visit was somewhat early and the spirit
of sleep had not yet sealed up the eyes of that young person,
Pet came into the arena and furnished the merchant with
another instrumentality for ingratiating himself into the good
graces of the mother. He took the sweet little child upon
his knee, talked baby-talk to her that seemed to come with a
strange grace from lips that could be so severe, ran his fingers
through her clustering curls and remarked (with a long look
of admiration at the latter which he would not have cared to
hazard without that excuse) that her hair was a shade darker
than her mother's, but woutd scarcely be so silkily beautiful

250 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

as hers when she grew up ; then kissed her with much
fatherly kindness and a side-glance which might have said
to a wiser than Mary Haviland that he would have preferred
to kiss older and riper lips instead, and finally yielded her to
Sarah Sanderson and Morpheus with a tenderness which
conveyed to the flattered mother : " How blessed should I
be if / had such a child !"

Then his powers of reading came again into p]uy — not as
if he had any intention of "showing them off,'' but as if he
read in the same unstudied way as the birds sing. Haviland,
a lover of the wierdly beautiful, had Praed in his little book
case, and his unsuspected guest read the " Bridal of Belmont"
and the " Legend of the Haunted Tree" so pleasantly and
naturally that the young hostess, as she pursued with her
fingers the sawing which she could not quite forego even
for so honored a visitor, found' herself borne insensibly back
/to the times Avhen belted knights and noble ladies rode
through the English greenwood, and when there was yet
life and revelry in the grim old castles that now frown down
on the Rhine tourist.

And when he laid by the book with an audible sigh,
glanced at his watch and arose to go, with a look which said :
" I haye been so many minutes in Paradise : now for so many
hours of banishment !" was there not an answering sigh in
the breast of the young wife, and did she not feel that by
some pleasant chance a member of society higher than her
own, of experience wider and views of the world more com
prehensive, had suddenly been thrown into the current of her
life, at the moment when she would otherwise have been so
lonely without that accident, — and that she was very happy
in his society ? It is almost qertain that this question must
be answered in the affirmative.

• And had the young wife, only a few days parted from her
husband, already forgotten him or learned to undervalue him ?
And was there an answering throb in her heart to the evil
passions surging up within the breast of the libertine mer
chant ? No ! — a thousand times No ! to each of these ques
tions. Not one clinging tendril of her love had fallen away
from her husband : not one impure thought had crossed her

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 251

mind or could cross her mind without being shuddered at and
started from like a hoi-rid reptile meeting her in some summer
path. Her tempter had yet to learn, perchance, the wide dif
ference between merely dazzling the fancy of a true woman,
and touching her heart or poisoning the fountain of her truth.
Perchance, we say : let the result be duly waited for. And
meanwhile let all remember that these distinctions, though
positive, are narrow, and that there is. a road to the heart
and the life, through the fancy, which sometimes betrays and
often endangers.

When Charles Holt, again ushered to the door by the
young hostess, and again holding that soft little hand in his
own for a single instant as he took it, left the house on that
second evening, the insatiate devil within him raged fiercely
and triumphantly. His keen eyes saw how the glamour had
fallen over the eyes of the wife, while they could not see the
purity and truth that lay as a reserved force at the bottom
of her character. He should triumph — he knew that he
should triumph — much more quickly than he had ever be
lieved ; and then — the future must take care of itself, and
he had wealth, power and will to mould even human hates
and revenges to his own purpose.

When Charles Holt left the house that evening, the young
-wife, except that she felt herself even more than before
pleased with his company and conversation, did not realize
that any change had taken place in her own position towards
her husband or the world. And yet a marked change had taken,
place, the after results of which were to be of the most pain
ful and almost irretrievable character. Mary Haviland might
have realized the fact, had she known the real composition
of her own household; but of this, as we have before seen,
she could have no idea. Sarah Sanderson was to her a mere
humble companion and "help": she was very nearly or quite
to be her fate.

Like attracts like with wonderful certainty and celerity — •
the remark is a truism. Evil is especially cognizant of evil.
What the pure eyes of the young wife could not see, the
jealous and jaundiced orbs of Sarah Sanderson saw without
an efl'ort. A strange mixture of weakness and wickedness,

THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

with only possibilities of goodness, — she had yet strength in
licr passions and in the powers of observation which they
engendered. She had seen, even through the narrow door
way, on the first evening, how the face of the merchant was
all smooth and gentlemanly decorum without, all fierce and
reckless passion below the surface. . She had seen, too, how the
yuung wii'e received his attentions with more sincere pleasure
ihun she had ever before shown 'in the presence of any one
except her husband. Then had occurred the second meeting,
and on one pretext and another the young girl had passed in
and out, overheard snatches of the conversation, and seen
how the eyes of the wife showed even more pleasure than be
fore and how the face of the visitor shone with yet more
terribly concentrated passion through his mask. And then
had arisen the thought — it was her time 1 — the opportunity
of her life had come 1

It is no secret, with what an unreasonable and hopeless
affection the young girl had for years regarded Burtnett
Haviland, nor how, living in the same house with himself
aud his wife, she had weakly and without purpose hated the
latter. Here came the purpose with the opportunity, full-
born from her brain at once, albeit probably she had never
heard of Minerva or the Jovian plan of reproduction. Here
was a proud and powerful man, who would become the lover
of the wife if possible. If he could do so, then would she be
lost to the husband forever; for Haviland was not the man,
as she well knew, to brook infidelity of the heart more than
that of the body. Then would he be free, or at least there
would stand no one between him and herself. But suppose
the wife should resist — what then? Then all would remain
as before, and she would be still an outcast. No — here came
another thought into the warped and perverted mind — why
should she be ? Suppose that the wife should remain pure
and loyal, would it not serve every purpose if the husband
could be brought to believe her false and so induced to cast
her off forever ? The ground for suspicion once given in the
visits of the merchant, it would be strange if she could not
play into his hands to effect the absolute ruin of the woman
she hated, or at least manage to destroy her by weaving

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 253

around her the appearances of guilt. From that moment the
latent malice became the active and the' practical; and in that
change what a perilous net became woven around the feet of
Mary Haviland !

The Monday evening following, when the next week's
salary was due the family of the absent soldier, brought the
third visit of the merchant, who, if he held out as he began,
was not at all likely to need the aid of any errand-boy in
transacting his business in that particular section of the town.
This time the fates favored him in another special regard.
When he reached the house he was admitted by Sarah in
stead of the hostess, and he found the latter absent and not
yet to return for half an hour. Through the door between
the two rooms he saw that the supper table was in readiness
and little Pet playing on the floor with a pussy nearly as large
as herself. He took his seat in the front room, the girl
lighted the gas and when she had done so went back to her
employment in the dining-room. The' merchant trifled with
a book, called the child, who did not seem disposed to desert
the cat for his company, and eventually called the girl her
self, who obeyed the summons with great alacrity. He had
just thought of something that might be of importance, and
the absence of Mrs. Haviland afforded him an excellent op
portunity to put his thought into practice. Who could tell
that he might not need the co-operation of the servant, who
was, as his eyes had told him the first time he looked at her
attentively, pretty, vain and not too scrupulous? An ally is
a good thing to have in any house where an important opera
tion is to be performed ; . and people whose God is Success
instead of Right do not always keep close hold of that rule
which forbids to "speak of things in the kitchen that are for
bidden in the parlor." So the merchant called Mary Havi-
laud's "help," and she came at once.

" Your name is Sarah, is it not ?" asked the merchant.

" Yes, sir," answered the girl, with a not ungraceful attempt
at a courtesy — " Sarah Sanderson."

" A pretty name enough," said Charles Holt, who really
thought it a most detestable alliterative combination. " And
'you are a pretty girl, Sarah 1 Do you know it ?"

254 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

The young girl might have answered with all propriety that
she did know the fact, quite as well as any person could in
form her ; but she merely blushed a very little, and replied:
" You are very good, sir, to say so."

" Yes, very pretty indeed, Sarah," continued the tempter,
who saw that his compliments were by no means displeasing,
and realized better than before that the girl was as proud as
Lucifer. " You ought to be mistress of a nice little house,
instead of working in one ! Don't you think so ?"

She had thought so, many a time, and in fact all the time
when she thought on the subject at all ; but this was putting
the matter a little bluntly, and she merely replied, in a tone
which showed that she was really not very doubtful about the
matter :

" I don't know, sir, I am sure."

Flattery, the first of evil agencies, having now done its
work, the man of the world considered it time that he should
employ the second — bribery. He put his hand into his
pocket, and carelessly drew out a well-filled purse.

" They don't pay you very well here, do they, Sarah ?"

" Xot very well, sir — only two dollars a week," said the
girl, who had always managed to spend all her wages in cheap
finery, and who had consequently always been a little dissat
isfied with the amount of her earnings.

"A mere trifle — nothing for you!'1'1 said the merchant.
" Why, it cannot even keep you in clothes. You seem to me
to be a very good girl, Sarah, and I like you. Perhaps I may
have it in my power, one day, to do something for you — get
you a nice beau, or something else you will like as well.
Meanwhile, you may want a new dress. You have had the
trouble of opening the door forme to-night, and you may
need to do -so at other times. Here is a trifle for you — put it
into your pocket, and you need not mention it to your mis
tress. If you are a very good girl, I shall have another to
spare for you one of these days."

A trifle ? It was a bright double-eagle that he put into
Sarah Sanderson's palm, and that she, after a single instant
of wondering hesitation, dropped into her pocket. How big
and bright it looked to her eyes, and how big and bright, too,

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 255

to the eyes of Pet Louise, who had followed the truant cat
into the room and was very near when that unexpected dou
ceur astonished and delighted the receiver.

How many thanks, and of what description, the young girl
might have repaid the merchant for his gift, is among the
mysteries foredoomed to meet no solution. If there had been
any part of Sarah Sanderson before left in the sei'vice of the
Havilands, there was nothing left after the flight of the
double-eagle from the purse of the tempter to her pocket. It
bought her, body and soul. She understood, intuitively, that
some service would be required of her, which would have
been differently bargained for if entirely correct ; but what
ever it might be, she was quite ready to render it.

It was the coming home of Alary Haviland, which prevented
any further conference between the pair of oddly-matched
conspirators and left the reply of the " help" in doubt. She
came in with her own pass-key, very quietly ; and had she
arrived but the moment before, she might have happened
upon the very instructive spectacle of her accommodating
paymaster chatting with and bribing her servant. As it was,
bhe saw nothing and suspected nothing. The merchant met
her with great empressement as well as great respect, and
with a repetition of that manner which said that he was again
temporarily coming into a paradise of happiness, just as he
had before made signal his sense of departure from it. The
young wife was again pleased to see him, warmly took the
hand he extended, and made no secret that she was flattered
by this third visit within eight days. Supper was waiting
her — an humble supper, but such as their circumstances per
mitted : would he join her ? He did join her, after she had
for just one moment bustled about as all housewives will do
when they have unexpected company at a meal ; and he
seemed to drink the tea she poured him, with a relish, and to
eat with -the appreciation of a true gourmand the flaky tea-
l.iscuit that she had moulded with xher own fair hands and set
into the oven of the little range before going out. Here was
another quiet and delicate compliment paid her ; and when
Charles Holt said with an air of very grave truth and feeling,

256 THE DAYS OF SIIODDY.

that " he had not so enjoyed any meal in a twelve-month,"
she believed him and appreciated his taste.

There was one momentary awkardness during the meal,
which might have grown into a still greater one but for skill
and readiness in averting the danger. Little Pet, not yet
being asleep, was taken up by the mother after the tea
had been poured, and passed the balance of the meal on
her lap, adding materially to the charm of the picture at
which the merchant gazed from the other side of the little
table. Suddenly, in a moment of silence between the elder
people, that very young person remembered a historical
incident of her long experience, and felt disposed to com
municate it.

" Big man gived Sary big purty yellowmoney !" — such was
her version of the event which had occurred in the other room
while she was experimenting upon the cat, and which neither
of the operators had thought it necessary to conceal from
her. The effect of the remark was for the moment very like
that supposed to be produced by. one of Gilmore's "Swamp-
Angels" when it first dropped a four-mile shell into the cradle
of the rebellion. Though very feebly propelled, it was a-
shell of no ordinary danger. The merchant had his second
cup of hot tea at his lips, and came near dropping it. He did
not drop it, however, and if he colored the gas-light was not
favorable for the exhibition. Miss Sarah Sanderson, who
stood in waiting by the mantel, was fortunately behind her
mistress, and her momentary flush of shame, succeeded by a
deadly pallor of fright, could not be seen by the person most
interested. Had the eyes of the hostess rested upon her,
instead of upon the trained features .of the merchant, the
confusion would certainly have been observed and the endan
gered bird had some warning before the snare closed about
her. All this was the work of an instant, however. The
merchant came to the relief of the new " firm," the moment
he could set down his cup, with :

" You shouldn't tell tales out of school, little dear ! Who
would believe it, Mrs. Haviland ? — I dropped a quarter into
your girl's hand for taking the trouble to admit me, and the
little darling appears- to have noticed even that !"

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 257

" 'Es ! Sary, et itty Pet see purty yellow money."

Here might have been another awkwardness, for Miss
Sarah unquestionably had the contraband gold still in her
pocket, and quite as unquestionably had no quarter of a dollar
to substitute for it, even if she had sufficient readiness. But
the merchant was by that time fully on his guard, and col
lected enough to have played for his life, much more for
his success against the unfortunate tongue of a " three-year-
old."

" Xo, little Pet, see here ! — here is something prettier than
any thing that Sarah has got !" His hand went into his
pocket, there was the jingling of coin, and it came out again,
the instant after, with a half-eagle in the fingers.

" Pray do not, Mr. Holt !" said the mother, deprecatingly,
seeing at least a part of the intention.

'' Oh, pray let me have my own way, madam, with the
little folks !" said the merchant. " Here, Miss Sarah, if that
is your name," (the "Miss" and the "if that is your name"
were well put, in that connection) — " be good enough to hand
me a pair of stout scissors and to give me a piece of ribbon
or tape."

The mother said no more ; both requests were complied
with by Sarah ; and in a moment or two the merchant had
artistically drilled a hole through one edge of the gold piece
with the sharp point of the scissors, inserted the narrow blue
ribbon given him, handed it over to be hung around Pet's
neck, and the little child was admiring the brightness of the
yellow coin and had forgotten that any one else in the world
had "purty money." The danger was arrested. :

"Rather a neat operation, that !" said Charles Holt to him
self, as he buttered another biscuit after the affair was over.
" I have not only managed to get Sarah and myself out of a
scrape that might have been devilish awkward, but found one
more way to please the blonde beauty and place her under
obligation !"

Reading was dispensed with for that evening, the supper

and the episode of the child's memory having occupied all

the time that the merchant felt it prudent to spend in the

house on that occasion. In order to avoid jarring what was

16

2-") 8 THE PAYS OF SHODDY.

otherwise so pleasant and so prosperous, by introducing any
thing sordidly pecuniary, the arch-schemer allowed the wife
to see him drop a little envelope on the mantel of the front
room, and knew that she understood it to be the weekly
salary of her husband. Then he stepped across to the door,
as if to take his leave. The wife, still conscious of the honor
done her by his repeated calls, prepared to accompany him
once more to the door.

"By the way," he said, stopping at the threshold, and as
if something before forgotten had just occurred to him, ^be
fore your husband went away, he and I were speaking of
your probably being a little lonely sometimes, and he did me
the honor to accept, in your behalf, my promise that I would
drive around some evening and ask you for your company to
one of the theatres. May I hope that you will fulfil your
husband's wish and gratify me so much ?"

"If it was his wish — certainly !" said the young wife, with
out one suspicion of the truth of the allegation or one doubt
that the conversation had really occurred. Her husband and
herself had both been very fond of theatrical performances
and spent many leisure evenings in that equally abused and
lauded mode of beguiling the present in the past or the possi
ble. What more natural, even if he had forgotten to speak
to her on the subject, in the many pre-occupations and emo
tions of his departure, — than that he should have been willing
to provide her with this pleasure, especially in company so
unexceptionable that he had to some extent confided her to
it? She had not one instant's thought of wrong or impro
priety connected with the invitation or its acceptance, and if
she hesitated at all, did so under doubt whether she should
allow their kind friend to take so much trouble on her behalf.
All this passed in an instant; any doubt of the policy of such
a, course vanished as quickly ; and she concluded the sentence
which had been begun conditionally, without any condition
whatever : —

" Certainly, Mr. Holt, if you will take so much trouble, 1
will go with you, some evening, with great pleasure."

For the instant Charles Holt was confounded (it could not
have been that he was shamed) by the unsuspecting inno-

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 259

ccnce of this woman. He had expected doubts and hesita
tions, and he did not know Mary Haviland well enough to
be aware that if she had doubted the propriety of the course,
she would at once have said " Xo !" She had answered
altogether too easily and too quickly for his calculation. But
men of the world must be prepared for unexpected successes as
well as unexpected rebuffs, and there was nothing of the
triumph which he really felt, in his voice, as he said, pressing
his advantage : —

'•' You delight me, my dear madam, by assenting so readily
to your husband's wish. Let me see — this is Monday. May
I drive round, then, on Wednesday evening, and expect the
pleasure of your company to see Joe Jefferson's burlesque
Mazijppa at the Winter Garden ?"

"I do nut know any thing to the contrary," said the wife.
"Yes, I shall be pleased to go the,re if you will be kind
enough to come for me."

And so, with the same respectful intimacy which had
marked their two previous partings, but perhaps the hand of
the unsuspecting wife held yet a little longer in the palm of
the tempter, — they separated at the door, and Mary Haviland
went again up-stairs, to seek her nightly rest, and to dream — •
of Charles Holt ? — no, of her absent husband and the lovo
with which, if God spared and shielded him amid the dangers
of battle, he would yet surround her !

" Easier than I thought !" said the merchant, as he crossed
to a car. (He had not thought it advisable, on ordinary oc
casions, to come to Forty-eighth Street in his carriage, for
reasons that prudent people will very readily understand.)
" Easier than I thought ! I was afraid there might be a check
here, but no ! Once at the theatre, and publicly talked about
as going out with some other person than her husband,
alone, — I do not think she can very well retreat afterwards."

Wednesday evening brought the merchant and his car
riage — not the handsome landau in which he sometimes rode
in the Central Park and made his calls -upon his recognized
fashionable acquaintances, — with a liveried coachman on the^
box, and his arms (on a field vert a griffin rampant argent,
holding a key or in the dexter claw and in the sinister gripping

260 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

a human heart gules, with the motto : "L'un ou Pantre," of
which " Your money or your life !" might perhaps be a some
what free rendering) on the dark panels, — but a plain close
carriage, with a handsome span before jt'and a driver out of
livery. This man understood, be it remembered, all the poli
cies as well as all the proprieties, and knew a thousand times
better than to startle the young wife of his poor clerk by the
reminder that livery might give her of the new world into
which she was so imprudently allowing herself to be carried
by the irresistible Maelstrom of wealth and passion ; and llio
plain close carriage was the result.

Mary Haviland would have been something more or less
than woman, if she had felt no sensation of pride and gratifi
cation when the merchant handed her into the carriage (she
so seldom rode in one ! — people of her position seldom do,
and seldom will until some benevolent pestilence sweeps over
all the Northern cities and carries off the whole race of livery-
keepers and hack-swindlers, who make less than half the
money they would do by liberal dealing, and yet manage to
make many a tired limb walk when it would ride if the purse
was heavierNor imposition less abhorrent) — she would have
been more or less than woman, we say, if she had felt no sen
sation of pride when the merchant, faultlessly dressed and
fine-looking, handed her into the carriage and took his seat
by her side, falling himself and leading her into pleasant chat,
as readily as he brushed a fleck of dust from his Saxony coat
with his snowy cambric. And when she floated into tho
theatre on his arm, and took her seat in the private box by
his side (another so-called luxury — that private box — to which
she had never before dreamed of aspiring), and when lorgnette
after lorgnette was levelled at her in that place (as they
would probably not have been, had she occupied a less con
spicuous position) with undisguised admiration of the beauty
and simple grace of "the pretty blonde with the rich hus
band," — she might have been easily pardonable if even slightly
intoxicated by the aroma to which she was so little accus
tomed, and touchingly grateful to the proud man who had for
the moment stooped down from his height to give her a new
and innocent pleasure.

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 261

Perhaps she was a little intoxicated, both by her surround
ings and the conversation of that man who chatted so
easily of all the dramatic and musical celebrities whom she,
had never known, from the stars of the early days of the Old
Park on this side of the Atlantic, to Malibran and Taglioni
gleaming like meteors from the other. To her, so lately a
cuuntry-girl and even now but a novice in all the prides arid
luxuries of the great city, to some extent a new world seemed
opening; and it was not strange if more than once while Joe
JeiFerson was making Byron ridiculous and giving a new
beauty to Tartar history by his rendering of Mazeppa the
Second, her thoughts wandered away from the play, to the
luxury of wealth, the pity that all could not share in its advan
tages, the kindness of those who even for one moment gave
the humble and lowly a glimpse into the glories ordinarily
denied them.

And did her thoughts wander nowhere else ? If not — then
the innocent taste was really becoming perverted with melan
choly rapidity, and the merchant was winning even more
rapidly than he knew. Nowhere else ? — yes, the little wife
had an occasional thought that would have been a terrible
Mordecai in the gate of Haniau Holt if he could but have
fathomed it — how much pleasanter, after all, the play would
be, even in the commonest seat of the parquette or gallery,
if "Burtey" could only sit beside her and enjoy it with her,
instead of being far from her, away out in the lonely night,
leading the desolate life of a soldier.

It so happened that on that very evening, at about eight
o'clock (only one day, by the way, after the occurrences last
detailed at the Fullerton mansion), Kate Haviland, who had
not before been able to leave the house long enough for that
purpose, ran out Twenty-third. Street to the Third Avenue,
seized a car (that word exactly expresses the air with which
she took possession of one side of the vehicle, spread her rea
sonably voluminous skirts over one-half the length of the
cushion on that side, and patronized the conductor with five
cents), and just fifteen minutes thereafter was making a call,
as she supposed, on her female cousin-in-law.

Sarah Sanderson admitted her. Mary Haviland was ab-

262 THE DAYS OF S II O D I) Y .

sent. Where ? Gone to the theatre, the girl said, with an.
unpleasant expression of satisfaction on her elfish little face, —
with Mr. Holt, the merchant, who had just driven round and
taken her away in his carriage,

" Phew !" said Kate Haviland to herself, something coming
up in her throat and something else seeming to settle down
dark over her eyes. " Her husband two weeks gone, and
she riding about in carriages and going to theatres with his
wealthy employer ! Phew ! Stop — it may be only once,
and in that event not entirely beyond pardon. Sarah, has
Mrs. Haviland been out with Mr. Holt, before ?"

The double-eagle had sharpened the young girl's eyes,
keen enough before. She saw that there was worry in the
face of the teacher, and instinctively felt that she could not
do Mrs. Haviland more harm than by placing her in as bad a
position as possible before her relative. " Yes, ma'am," she
answered — " several times — that is, about t\vice or three
times, I guess."

" Ph — h — h — ew !" again said Kate Haviland to herself,
but this time with the whistle, to which she had a little un-
feminine proclivity, very much prolonged. "Been out with
him twice or three times before ! The habit is a regular one,
then, it seems ! And he the man he is represented to be by
members of his own family ! I am afraid that the possession
of the portrait is no mystery. And yet who could have be
lieved it, when she seemed to love Burtey so truly and to be
such a dear devoted little wife !"

All this to herself, of course; but Sarah Sanderson, who
was busied in getting little Pet ready for bed, had leisure to
look into the eyes of the teacher and see how the trouble was
gathering deeper there. She was pleased by the observation.
She was not a poor insignificant little thing — a nobody, to be
put about and made nothing of! She could make herself of
some consequence. She could wound Mary Haviland, the
usurper, who stood in her place ! She would do so, deeper
• and deeper, now that the thought had come to her and the
opportunity offered itself.

The portrait — perhaps something could be learned about
that — thought the teacher, and she felt no delicacy in making

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 263

the attempt, now that the most painful suspicions of the
\veakness (not the guilt, be it remembered) of the young wife
had begun to be entertained. She went to the mantel of the
front room and began turning over the few articles it con
tained. She knew nothing ofHhe portrait said to be in the
hands of the Fullertons, as of course she had not seen it ; but
there were two clues to its identity — its being an ambrotype,
and the name of Mary Ilaviland upon the case, which could
not by any means be common to the pictures in possession of
the family. After fumbling with the minerals, Red Riding
Hood match-safes and other trifles on the mantel, a few
moments, and opening and shutting the cases of the half
dozen of family daguerreotypes and ambrotypes lying there — •
she called to Sarah, who had returned to the other room and
left her to her apparently childish amusement.

" Sarah, there was an ambrotype here, that I was trying
to find — one of Mrs. Haviland, with her name in gilt letters
on the case. Do you know what has become of it ?"

" I am sure I don't know," very naturally answered the
girl, who did not know any thing about it. She remembered
the picture, by the description, but had no idea where she
might have seen it last. The fact was that she had not seen
it for many months, Burtnett Haviland having carried it
down to the store to have the broken case repaired, and then
forgotten it there, as husbands have a bad habit of doing
when they undertake to perform errands for the household.
He had other and more valuable pictures of the same dear
face, and the little ambrotype had been quite ignored in favor
of the still better specimens of the same art succeeding it.

But Kate Havilan'd was not to be foiled by the ignorance
of the girl. "It seems to be gone," she said. "Perhaps
Mr. Ilaviland may have taken it away with him to the war.''

"Xo, I guess not," said the girl. "He had a picture
taken of her, only a day or two -before he went away, on
leather, or something of that kind, so that he could carry it
in his pocket-book and not have it broken. I don't think he
took any other."

"What can have become of it, then ?" persisted the in
quisitor. "I am sure I saw it there not long ago." A little

264 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

fib, for a purpose, and answering a very different purpose from
the one intended,

" Yes, I am sure I saw it there after Mr. Haviland went
away," answered the girl, her ideas as to time fixed by the
questioner. Then the perpetual thought of Mary Haviland,
her haunting spectre, came into her mind, and she added,
without any thought how well the reply would carry out her
own intentions : " Mrs. Haviland must have given it away to
somebody, I suppose."

That closed the conversation. Strange how little will
sometimes satisfy those already half satisfied ! Five minutes
afterwards, Kate Haviland left the house with a sore heart,
convinced that Burtnett's wife was in the habit of going to
the theatres with a man of doubtful character, that she had
given him her picture, and that she was sly as well as weak.
Thenceforth confidence between the two, both so good and
both so true, was necessarily destroyed, and Mary Hav
iland had lost one of her guardian angels. Kate's next letter
to her cousin, which very soon followed, was full of a sad,
sober earnest, and had not even one jesting allusion to
relieve it.

CHAPTER XIII.

YOYAGE OF THE FlRE ZOUAVES TO ANNAPOLIS — TlIEIR CON
DITION, CHARACTER, AND THE INFLUENCES FOR AND AGAINST
THEM — ARRIVAL AT WASHINGTON — CAMP LINCOLN AND
CAMP DECKER — BURTNETT HAVILAND'S LETTERS, AND THE
EFFECT THEY PRODUCED — THE REGIMENT GETTING READY

FOR WORK.

IT now becomes proper, for a certain period, to follow the
fortunes of Burtnett Haviland, private in the First Regiment
of Fire Zouaves, and of the organization to which he had
attached himself in entering the Union Army. To pass to
sterner if not sadder scenes than those with which we have
already been conversant, and to note some of the early

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 265

peculiarities of that struggle to destroy the great republic,
which kept pace with the efforts before and after made to
destroy that other little republic — a home.

The Fire Zouaves dropped down the bay and went to sea,
on board the Baltic, on that Monday evening the 29th of
April, with high hopes and noble aspirations. The enthu
siastic young Colonel, only half acquainted with the material
of his men, believed it to be excellent ; and he possessed that
sacred hunger of patriotism (to alter a little an old and well-
known phrase) which made any means of fulfilling his desire
apparently sufficient for the end. His men had been hastily
gathered ; but had he not the assurance of those who should
know them best, and of his own observation of the actions
of the firemen, that they were far better than any other com
mander could hope to gather ? Their weapons had only been
found at the moment of starting, and of course they knew
nothing whatever of their use; but were not their hands
used to the tools of their various trades and to the implements
of their fire-duty, and could they not learn more quickly than
the same number of men taken from any other class of
society ? They had not been drilled even in the marchings
and facings which constitute the A. B. C., of soldierly
education ;* but had they not been used to the semi-soldierly
discipline of the fire-parade, and how much trouble could it
possibly be to change that discipline to the necessary move
ments of the camp and the field, especially under his instruc
tion, when he had won the credit of being the first
drill-master on the continent ?

Such were the hopes and beliefs of the young Colonel.
Some of the other officers of the regiment knew that the
organization was little more than a mob, with sufficient bad
material to vitiate the remainder, and that peculiar indepen
dence in composition which could scarcely be brought to
submit to that necessary restraint called discipline. They
knew that the common soldiers did not look up to the officers,
nor even hold many of them in any personal respect. They

* Only a single and very short attempt at drilling the Zouaves in the
facings was made before they went away — at the old building in Franklin
Street.

266 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

had been brother members in the same company — had been
"Jack" and " Bill" and " Bob" to each other, and were so still.
They might temporarily keep their tongues silent and their
passions under control, \vhen on parade or under the im
mediate eye of the Colonel or one of the other field officers ;
but even the Colonel had too much familiarized himself with
them and made them too nearly comrades and not enough sol
diers under his command. Off parade and when away from the
eyes of the field officers, discipline was actually a thing
unknown. Equality, in its largest sense, was the rule, with
plenty of liberty but not much fraternity. The Captain
slapped his hand on the shoulder of the private and said
" How are you, Jim ?" just"as he had done when they were
running together as members of Old Two Hundred and
Eighty-Seven Truck. The private returned the Captain's
slap and invited him to "smile, "when circumstances were
favorable and good humor prevailed ; and when ill-temper
arose be had no hesitation whatever in recommending that
officer to "go to" — some place not set down in ordinary
geographies, calling him a " foo-foo" with a very harsh
adjective prefixed, or threatening to " lick him when he got
him in a square place." At times, rumor said, the private
really did administer that corrective to his officer, and with
out any subsequent action being taken to punish what
would in any other organization have been called a " want of
respect" at least !

Then the firemen, as any one who knew thorn well should
have known, were naturally clannish to a degree never else
where equalled since Graham of Claverhouse attempted to
marshal the Highlanders in opposition to the forces of King
"William, and found all his sins against the Covenanters
revenged in the effort.* Soldiers they might become, but

* There is no finer piece of humorous earnest in the language, than M:i-
oaulay's description of the "Military Character of the Highlanders," in t!,e
thirteenth chapter (vol. III.) of his "History of England," in which he shows
what Claverhouse < then Viscount Dundee) had to contend with in ranking »n
firniy out of the Highland clans, and the pleasant probabilities that the
Caiuerons, the Macdonalds, the Gordons, the Grants, the Campbells, the
jVI:icgregor?, or some other leading clan might, at any moment, break out into
a, quarrel with some hereditary fue, or that at any hour '• the right wiug of

THE DAYS OF S TI O D DY. 267

they could never cease to be firemen and attached to their
respective fighting as well as working companies; and at any
moment a dispute was likely to arise between two members
of different engine companies, whether One Hundred and
Ninety did or did not "wash" One Hundred and Eighty-Nine,
at Laird's Pole on Thanksgiving Day of a certain year, or
whether One Hundred and Eighty-Eight did or did not pass
One Hundred and Eighty-seven fairly, coming down Chatham
Street hill on the night of a certain fire in the Eighth. It
is a melancholy fact that our fire organizations have not always
been the most peaceful in the world, even when coming home
from the funerals of deceased brothers ; and such little dis
putes between, members of different companies were almost
sure to result in open hostilities at the time, or the smoulder
ing of anger to a future period, infinitely worse. It was
almost impossible, meanwhile, for an officer to be either feared
or obeyed, except by such members of the regiment as had
feared and obeyed him in another relation ; and the effect of
all this, and of bickerings and disputes about old Engineer
elections and examinations before the Board of Fire Commis
sioners, may be imagined by any one who has closely ob
served one of the so-called " happy families" of the menag
erie.

There was something worse even than this, in the regiment;
and long before they had completed their prosperous sea-
voyage and landed at Annapolis, even the blindly enthusiastic
Colonel had become aware of it. There were nearly thirteen
hundred men attached to the organization when it left New
York, and at least two or three hundred were thieves and
vagabonds. Burtnett Haviland had scarcely composed him
self to sleep, down in the dusky steerage of the Baltic, on the
first night out and when the ship was yet in sight of the
Jersey coast, before he had occasion to fight in the dark for
the retention of his watch and pocket-book ; and some were
really robbed without being able to trace the depredators,
before they reached the place of disembarkation. The officers

the army might be found firing on the centre, in pursuance of some quarrel
two hundred years old, or that a whole battalion might march back to its
native glen because another battalion had been placed in the post of honor."

268 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

did all in their power to overawe the ruffians and maintain
order, but they could do but little ; and calm observers, if
any there were in the regiment, saw serious trouble ahead,
before they again set foot on the land.

Such was Burtnett Haviland's opening experience- as a
soldier, and such were the omens for the future usefulness of
the regiment staring him in the face. And if he had a mo
mentary regret that his lot had not been cast, by his own
choice, among men who promised to do more honor to llu:
service, — he had at least the consolation of knowing that he
had taken a wise course in refusing to accept any command.
To serve was bad enough : 'to command would have been
murder of body and soul. Such at least was the experience
of poor Ellsworth, and of Farnham and Crogier and the
more capable Captains, before their connection with the regi
ment closed in one or another misfortune.

There was, of course, much to relieve this somewhat
gloomy picture. The body of the regiment was formed of
elever fellows, full of the capability as well as the will of
enjoyment. Hilarity without disorder reigned among many
of the circles into which the Zouaves naturally segregated,
and high hopes of future honor and usefulness still animated
those who had within them the truth of patriotism. More
than once during the passage down, vessels were descried
and rebel privateers believed to be looking out for the trans
port-ships ; and the alacrity with which the Zouaves answered
the calls to arms on such occasions, evidenced, what every
one knew before, however — that if they had little proclivity
for discipline they lacked neither courage nor a firm deter
mination to uphold the honor of the flag. These were fal?e
alarms, of course, and the voyage ended without accident or
obstruction, other than those supplied by the shoal water of
the Chesapeake and a little official stupidity to make it
effectual.

The Baltic was off Annapolis on the morning of Thursday
the 2d of May, exchanging salutes with the Cunard steam
ship Kedar, that had preceded her but yet had on board the
Fifth New York, Duryea's Zouaves, destined afterwards to
reflect such glory on the volunteer service. General Butler

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 269

was in command at Annapolis and in high feather ; and the
town was literally one vast camp, with the Sixth, Eighth and
Thirteenth of Xe\v York, Massachusetts Fourth and Boston
Flying Artillery, and two Pennsylvania regiments. The
Sixty-ninth New York were meanwhile doing yeomen's ser
vice in guarding the railroad between Annapolis and the
Junction, so laboriously repaired by the Seventh on their
march.

The Zouaves disembarked, after many delays — without some
of which at intervals the voyage would have been incomplete. —
and made the rest of the journey by rail, reaching Washing
ton between eight and nino o'clock on Friday evening the 3d,
after a long delay at Annapolis Junction and much of what
is known in foraging phrase as "chicken experience."
Thoroughly beaten out by their different modes of travel, in
spite of the hardihood of their frames under ordinary cir
cumstances, half fed and with rest broken altogether, they
would have presented a miserable sight to the spectator, had
there been light enough to observe them, as they came in at
the Washington Depot that Tiight, the cars packed to reple
tion, and nearly as many on the outside as the inside, clinging
to the tops like so many bees to the hive at swarming time.
But this did not conclude the infliction. The feme of the
Zouaves and the expectation of what they were to do in
arms had widely preceded them ; there were not yet too
many soldiers in Washington for its defence, and every new
regiment was at once an object of interest and congratulation ;.
and though it was so dusky that nothing more than a gray
mass could be discerned beneath the starlight, the foot-sore
and weary (and it must be added, swearing) fellows were
marched all the way down Pennsylvania Avenue from the
Kailroad Depot to the White House, more or less paraded
there, and addressed in a speech which they neither heard
nor heeded, by a President of the United States who could
not see them to distinguish them from so many street boys !
Then another weary and foot-sore march (let it be remem
bered that the boys were taking their first lesson in trudging
under knapsacks and in military order) the entire length of
Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol, to quarters in the Hall

270 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

of Representatives that had never before been so thoroughly
filled or so oddly occupied, and to those chances for supper
which might have been doubtful enough but for the fore
thought of some of the officers who had learned the art of
"foraging" under other circumstances, and the commissariat
of one of the Massachusetts regiments already occupying a
portion of the national building.

It was one "week that the Zouaves lounged in the chairs of
Honorable Members, made burlesque speeches, told stories
of doubtful morality but undoubted jollity, smoked their
cigars and carried things witli a high hand generally, in
that Hall where so many worse follies had before been per
petrated and have since been continued, by men claiming
much higher position than the Fire Regiment. It was during
that week that fortune favored them with a fire of magnif
icent proportions, in the burning of one of the temporary
hospitals, giving them an opportunity for the display of that
one accomplishment (fire duty) which they certainly possessed
in a perfection beyond all others, and furnishing one of the
wits of the time with the mot iif^egard to them, that "if any
body wanted the Fire Zouaves to go through a body of rebels,
the proper course would be to ring a fire-bell on the other
side of the. enemy, and they would sweep away all opposi
tion within two minutes." It was within that week, too,
that Burtnett Haviland received the odd letter of poor little
Tim, read it twice, then kissed the spot where his wife's name
was mentioned, said: "The poor boy must be crazy!" put the
letter into his pocket and thought no more of it — until after
wards.

It had been on Friday that the Zouaves reached Washing
ton. Though they commenced preparations to leave the
Capitol on Thursday, it was not until Friday the 10th of May
that they finally left the scene of their Congressional exploits
and marched to the camping-ground selected for them. And
it may be said, here, that subsequent events seemed to give
some countenance to the old omen, as Friday proved to bo
their dies irce. In addition to the two Friday movements
just recorded, they moved from the camp now selected, to
the second, on Friday ; it was on Friday that they captured

THE DAYS OF S II O D P Y. 271

Alexandria and lost their brave hat rash and head-strong
young Colonel ; and it was on Friday that they took up their
line of march for tlfe battle-field of Manasses (Bull Hun), which
virtually "wiped out" the organization.

This first camp lay beyond Anacosti bridge, in Maryland,
three and a half miles from the Capitol, one and a half from
the Xavy-Yard bridge (then guarded by two companies of tho
New York Seventy-first) and about a quarter of a mile south
from the Insane Asylum which crowns the heights opposite
the city. The location was consequently about four miles
from Alexandria, at which place the rebels were reported to
have from one thousand to three thousand troops, though
after events made it doubtful whether there had been at any
one time in the town more than five hundred.

The camp, named Camp Lincoln (after the President —
perhaps because he had not bored the boys with a longer
speech on the night of their reception : perhaps because of
Colonel Ellsworth's personal attachment to that dignitary), was
not remarkably well selected, the ground being a deal level,
very retentive of rain and liable to mud, and woods flanking
it. on either side within a distance of one hundred yards,
rendering it liable to dangerous night-approach by the enemy,
unless under remarkable vigilance. It was capitally laid out,
however, under the direction and special care of the new
Lieutenant-Colonel, Egbert L. Farnham, who joined the
regiment here in that capacity, leaving a position in the
Seventh to assume it. The new Adjutant, Loeser (after
wards temporarily Colonel) also joined the regiment hero
and began to make his soldierly qualities felt in the organiza
tion.

Here, for the first time, Burtnctt Haviland and most of his
companions had their first experience of what could be truly
called "camp life." They learned how damp a bed straw
when well sunken into the mud, can make ; but they learned,
at the same time, how much better and less injurious to the
bodily health is even that soft, damp bed, than any one dry
and hard and not capable of yielding to the graduated pres
sure of the human body. They learned how much more of
sound than of substance there was in the name of the cele-

272 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

brated " Sibley" tents, an improvement (believed by many to
be backwards) on the old bell tent of the European armies, —
with an iron tripod for centre and cookiitg support, and a
ventilator at top that would permit the rain to come in when
that refreshing form of the watery element was descending,
and soak the sleepers thoroughly, red blankets and all. They
were firemen, however, used to water, and rather thrived
under such regimen than otherwise. They learned how
monotonous a day can be, when broken up by no great effort
of body or mind, however varied by morning reveille, and
the serving of rations, and roll call, and guard mounting,
and morning parade and drill, and dinner, and parade and
drill again, and cards, newspapers, conversation and writing
letters, for recreation, till tattoo at nine o'clock and the put
ting out of lights for another night of tossing about in the
red blankets. They learned that breakfast cooked al frexco
and dinners prepared in the same manner, when the beef
was reasonably fresh, the bread and biscuits neither dry nor
mouldy, the coffee not all beans, the fresh fish not a flat con
tradiction of the name and the mess-cooks not too incapable,
— tasted about as well as they would have done when pre
pared in smoky kitchens and served by waiters with black
skins and white aprons, anywhere along in the line of
luxury between Crook's in Chatham. Street and Pelmonico'a
on Fourteenth. They learned, at least to some extent, how
truly the occupation of a soldier is a trade, and how much
labor and earnest application are necessary before it can be
mastered — what blunders and oversights are inevitable, and
what marchings and countermarching^, facings and filings, are
to be endured with patience, before the human machine can
become useful to the God of War in whose hands he is after
wards to be a living puppet. They learned, too, and finally,
something of that experience which no soldier, volunteer
or regular, ever forgets after a little indulgence in it within
a hostile section — picket guard. The long, lonely hours in
darkness and storm — the feeling that a cat, or a Iwena of not
too 'fierce propensities, would be better company than none —
the doubt at what moment a bullet may come whizzing
through the bushes and supply a subject for the hospital

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 273

Burgeons, if it does not put a period to the career of the
picket — the overstraining of the eyes in looking through
the gloom at distant or doubtful objects, that may or may not
be creeping up for a shot at the sentry or an attack on the
camp — the overstraining of the ears in listening for sounds
that never come or that prove to be very different from those at
first imagined — the thoughts of home, and lighted rooms,
and places of public amusement, and gatherings of friends —
the wonder how late it is, how soon the relief is to come, and
whether, after all, a man is not a fool to place himself in any
such position — all this belongs to the experience of the
picket guard ; and all this, in forms more or less positive, the
Zouaves endured around that first camp on the Eastern
Branch of the Potomac, though such of them as lived and
kept heart to join other regiments, afterwards found another
and sharper experience in the same direction, along the lower
Potomac, the Chickahominy, the Rapidan and the Rappa-
h an nock, when the hostile forces only lay separated by nar
row rivers, and picket-shooting had become an amusement,
for both armies, about as common as rabbit-hunting in time
of peace. It may be imagined with what yearning the
young soldier in whose fortunes this narration is principally
interested, thought of Mary and little Pet and his pleasant
home, when his chanced to be the lot of the picket, and the
long night-hours that seemed as if they would never bring
the morning, crept slowly by.

There was one variation in the life of the Zouaves in camp,
then and afterwards, that should not be passed entirely with
out notice. Some allusion has already been made to the
clannishness of the members. They were a class as well as
clannish ; and the body from which they had been selected,
never ceased to consider them members or to hold some over
sight upon their movements. Holiday excursions down to
the camp, by men who had no idea whatever of going into
camp for any more warlike purpose, became fashionable at
once among the stay-at-home Xew Yorkers, — just as Green
wood is considered a good place for an idle, laughing summer-
afternoon ride or stroll, by people who have no desire what
ever to go there and be buried. There mav have been good
17

274 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

feeling in all this, as there certainly were variety and amuse
ment for the Zouaves ; and no doubt kind messages were
interchanged between soldiers and their friends and families,
through the means of such visits to the Zouaves and to any,
one of five hundred other regiments, that might never have
been conveyed under different circumstances ; but there are
some who have always doubted the nobility of position of the
able-bodied man, equally capable with his friends of leaving
home and business and taking the chances of war in their
company, -paying mere idle holiday visits to them in camp,
and then going calmly back to his own pursuits or pleasures,
while the soldiers went on to fight the battles of the nation.
Of course these parenthetical remarks, if there is any severity
in them, do not apply to those who have at any time during
the war visited the camps on official business, for the purposes
of benevolence, or even to carry out the very ostentatious
presentations of municipal and civic bodies : they apply only
to the useless, insignificant human butterflies who have had
the face to show themselves where they had no excuse for not
remaining permanently, and yet where they lacked courage
or patriotism to remain. Neither discipline nor efficiency have
very often been promoted by the visits of any : and so let the
subject be dismissed.

The Fire Zouaves remained a week at Camp Lincoln : then
came a change. A better location had been selected for them,
on the banks of the Potomac, three miles below and imme
diately opposite the Washington Arsenal, and occupying a
part of the lands of a Virginian named George Washington
Young, a large landed proprietor and slave-owner, who never
managed to make the fire-boys believe that he was any thing
more amiable than a covert secessionist. Here they had an
elevated position, fine wood and water, and a splendid parade-
ground stretching back from the river. They took posses
sion of the new location on Friday the 17th of May, and
pitched the tents composing the camp with the belief that
they were not soon to be called to the more active duties of
the war, and that the pleasant parade-ground might be their
place of daily exercise for weeks if not months, until they had
gained some proficiency in that drill which was to make them

DAYS OF SHODDY. 275

true soldiers. And so they might have done, to some extent,
even in the brief space that was really allotted to them in
that position, but for the same blundering mismanagement
which had seemed to cling to them from the beginning.
What an odd medley of weapons they carried away from New-
York, has already been seen ; and it did not need any extended
military experience to know that a regiment going into action
with thirteen different varieties of fire-arms and all the thir
teen in different stages of uselessness, could not be very effi
cient. They were promised new arms from Washington ;
and through some strange miscalculation which may have had
its origin in Col. Ellsworth's unconscious belief that he was
still drilling a company of Chicago Zouaves for exhibition
instead of a regiment for active and dangerous service — the
olla podrida of weapons had been left stacked under guard,
at the previous camp, and were again so deposited at Camp
Decker,* and the Zouaves only drilled in the marchings and
facings.

There was to be only one week at Camp Decker, as there
had been only one at Camp Lincoln. Thursday the 23d May
arrived. The fateful Friday was again approaching, and with
it the fate of individuals and of the regiment. Just now the
fate of the individual is of even more consequence than that
of the aggregate, and it must have precedence. There had
been serious difficulties in the reception of letters from home
by the regiment; but at last some regularity had been secured,
and a daily communication with Washington established
through the means of a boat and a "special agent"; and at
this juncture some of the arrears of correspondence began to
come in. Among the letters received that Thursday were
two by Burtnett Haviland — one from his wife and the second
from Kate.

The morning was pleasant, the young soldier was for the
time at leisure, and he went down to the bank of the Potomac
to secure a fair opportunity for reading without interruption
those missives which should again brighten the link binding

* So named in honor of Mr. John Decker, then and now Chief Engineer
of the New York Fire Department. — before referred to aa one of the great
promoters of the regimental organization.

276 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

him to his home. The Zouave made a pleasant picture as
he took his seat upon a convenient stone lying near the bank,
with the white beach shelving below, and prepared for the
perusal. A bird, sitting in one of the trees near the bank,
seemed to think so, for he sang on as if soldiers were not
haunting his favorite grounds and as if there was no war in
the land.

" Sing away, little birdie," said the Zouave, turning up a
face somewhat browned from what it had been a month be
fore, but trim in beard, healthy in complexion, and comport
ing well with the neatness of his gray uniform. " Sing
away, little birdie. Your music is not quite so loud as that
of Wallace's band, which it seems costs too much to have any
longer ; but it will answer as an undertone while I read my
letters from home. You can't carry a musket, little fellow,
unless they make them very small up in bird-paradise ; but
you have one advantage of me — if I had your wings and
knew how to use them as you do, I fancy I should just pop
over to New York to-night, and be back again in the
morning "

" Whir — r — r," and the bird, as if he had some home to
look after, flew away. " There he goes,2' said Haviland,
breaking the seal of Mary's letter and catching it to his lips
as he did so, " but my letters remain. Here it is — dear little
band ! — dear little wife !" and he read on. It \vas such an
epistle as he had already received several times before from
her since his leaving New York, in spite of the interruption
of the mails ; for the wife had written almost daily during the
first week, and he had answered her, though in pencil and not
with his best chirography, nearly as often. This letter had
been written' nearly ten days, but as the latest it was quite
as welcome as it would have been with less time consumed
in the delivery. It was one of those gentle, cheerful, wifely
little epistles, such as some happy fellows have the joy of re
ceiving when they are absent — all well, all happy though a
'•title lonely, with dear good wishes, and a love that could
never change indicated at the end by a thousand imaginary
kisses. To transcribe such a letter and expose it to the com-

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 277

mon gaze would be little less than sacrilege against the most
sacred revelations of the tenderest of all human bonds.

Burtnett Haviland read the letter twice over, as if it had
been the face of his living wife and he could not be quite con
tented with perusing it. Then he pressed it again to his
lips (this man was what the world would call a "spoony,"
in the romantic depth of his affection for his wife — the writer
is quite aware of the fact), laid it on his knee and turned to
the second. ;

" Kate's funny, hurried hand-writing," he said as he broke
the seal. " I am very glad to hear from her, and I am sure
there is a laugh inside of this, if nothing more."

There was a laugh within it, for the Fire Zouave first
smiled as he read, then laughed outright at the oddity of the
young girl's conceits in scriptural antiquity. Then suddenly
he laughed no more — his face sobered — and something like a
frown settled on a brow where frowns had seldom been in
the habit of finding place. " What is this she says ?" he mut
tered aloud. "Charles Holt carrying around a picture of
iny wife?" Then he paused a moment, the hand containing
the letter resting on his knee, and his face full of trouble.
"Pshaw! stuff — nonsense — it cannot be! Somebody has
told Kate this, or she must have mistaken some other picture
hurriedly seen, for Mary's. Charles Holt with my wife's pic
ture in his possession ? Not a bit of it. He might have
taken one from the mantel in the house, when he came there
to see me, but he certainly would not have done so without a
motive, and he could have had none whatever. I do not be
lieve a word of it. "

Burtnett Haviland's nature was too true and honest to
make him very quick of suspicion. It did not follow that,
his suspicions once aroused, he might not be found fatally
tenacious of them and the most deadly of enemies. Such
men are sometimes terrible when the depths of their beings
are stirred ; and it is never best to stir them unpleasantly.
But he had said that Charles Holt could have no motive for
possessing himself of his wife's picture ; and he could have
sworn, and would have sworn, that it had not come into his
hands by any act of hers. Still he did not feel so pleasantly

278 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

as he had done the moment before. The sunshine was not
quite so bright, the bird sung no longer in the tree, and the
yellow Potomac rushed by him more sullenly. One drop
poisons the purest spring, and the fresh waters must long
trickle down from the hills and wash the polluted fountain,
before the last trace of the taint is borne away. Ca3sar was
right when he said that his wife must not only be virtuous
but above suspicion. Stained garments may wash white ;
stained records seldom do; stained reputations never entirely.
It was just as well for Menelaus that Helen went away with
Paris, though his life was thenceforth to be one of war on that
account. For he had seen the lovelit eyes of the young
Trojan answered by glances from the fair partner of his
throne, that made him rest unquietly on his lion-skin couch
at night; and he had heard of the young type of every manly
grace lying at her feet, his sunny curls played with by her
tiny white fingers, through long summer days of that fatal
embassy at Sparta, while he himself was absent in Crete ;
and it was quite as well that he should come home to find
the woman he so worshipped fled away altogether, as to lie
by her side in mingled love and doubt and hope and fear and
devouring jealousy, and to find his worst suspicions corrobo
rated at some future Any.

Haviland did not think of all these things, and yet he was
unquieted. But the drum was rolling, up at the camp, and
he must join his comrades. He took the two letters, the one
so different from the other in its effects, and attempted to put
them into the inner breast-pocket of his Zouave jacket. Their
going in was obstructed by a thick, clumsy piece of paper al
ready there, and he drew it out. It was the letter received
from little Tim a few days before, and almqst unconsciously he
opened it. What was it that made the face of the Zouave
change so suddenly ? It had lost its ruddy smile before, and
become a little troubled and thoughtful. Now it grew dark
as night, for one instant, and the hazel eyes flashed with an
expression that had probably never visited them before since
they first opened to the light. He saw the words — and he
could no more have removed his eyes from them or prevented
their burning into his brain, than he could have emulated the

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. . 279

little bird he had so lately apostrophized, and flown away :
" Mister Holt — dern him — doesn't mene no good to Missers
Hevlin. I've seen him a lookin at hir when she was down
to the stoar, and a smakin of his lipps. * * * He wantid your
to go away, and I thoat your outnent to go. Seems to me 's
ef your had better come back if your cm."

" In the mouth of two or three witnesses may eveiy word
be established," says an authority which we all reverence
somewhat more than we obey it ; and good old Bishop Butler
tells us, in his "Analogy of Religion," that while the rising
of the sun one morning, to a man observing it for the first
time, would only mark it in his mind as a beautiful phenome
non that had never been exhibited before and might never be
exhibited again, yet when the same spectator saw it rise again
with precisely the same surroundings, on the second morning,
he might begin to believe that such a spectacle was not un
usual, and when he saw the rising in the same manner on the
third morning, would be justified in assuming that three such
coincidences could not have been accidental and that it would
probably rise every morning thenceforward. Burtnctt Havi-
land bad put Tim's letter into his pocket with a " Pshaw !"
and words that indicated his belief that the little fellow was
crazy : he had managed to throw off, at least partially, the
disquiet which Kate's information of the picture naturally
awakened ; but when the two were confronted each seemed
to assume a different shape and consistency. He had said to
himself, the moment before, discrediting the statement of
Kate, that Charles Holt could have no motive for procuring
her picture. He had totally forgotten the picture left at the
store, and did not remember it then or for a long time after
ward. Motive was the thing that had been wanting to the
belief, and here it was, before supplied in little Tim's letter ;
aud great God ! — what a motive !

Tempests may be blinding in the fury of their rain and
wind, whirlwinds may sweep material objects to destruction
and swollen rivers rush- down with a fury defying the human
hand to check or even the human fancy to measure ; but all
these are very tame and slow to the operations of the mind
of an active man when the flood-gates of a new thought or

280 THE .DAYS OF SHODDY.

especially of a new suspicion have just been opened and every
thing that can possibly bear upon the subject comes rushing
in. Without one glance before of all this, at once swept
through the brain of Haviland all the events and recollections
of the days following Sumter. How Charles Holt had him
self proposed to make his going to the war possible by con
tinuing his salary, while he had not manifested corresponding
anxiety to assist young Foster in the same manner; how the
merchant had introduced himself into his house and tried to
make his going away more certain and easy (might it not be

more deadly ?) by procuring him a commission ; how but

here another thought, darker and worse than any of the others,
crept up into his mind, never to be dislodged thence until
suffering had done a work he then little conjectured. Could
it be possible that at that moment, suddenly learning to doubt
all others, the trusting husband of half an hour before could
begin to doubt even his wife ? It could be possible — it was
possible — it was true.

Burtnett Haviland was a true, good, warm, loving hus
band ; he was a\good man, a brave and a patriotic one ; that
was all. He was neither a very wise man nor an archangel.
For the interest of this narration it is to be wished that he
might have been one or the other — wise men are so rare, and
archangels so interesting. He had never for one instant
doubted his wife, any more than he had doubted God and
Heaven ; but then he had had no occasion. He had never
known by experience the meaning of that fatal word — jealousy ;
but then he had been so fenced away from the necessity of
knowing it that he must have been either fiend or fool to
manufacture such a gratuitous torture for himself and others.
Now that the temptation had come, he was human and con
sequently weak. It is to be wished, again, that he had not
been so — that it was the task of "the writer to set down upon
this page the record of one more man who had implicit and
abiding faith in woman, and fortitude to believe her true
under every appearance of falsehood. There is nothing
nobler in all dramatic literature than the conduct of Gonzaya
in Sheridan Knowles' great drama, " The Wife" — maddened
by accusations against the fair fame of the lady of his love,

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 281

and yet never faltering for one moment in the belief that 51117
appearance against her, even to the apparent passing of the
night in her chamber by the reprobate St. Pierre, must be
the result of conspiracy against her, and could not indicate
any thing against her truth. But Gonzagas of this creation
are rare, if, indeed, they exist outside of the creative genius
of the dramatic poet. The true measure of the posfribilvfy of
jealousy, though not of jealousy itself, is probably to be found
in the two conditions of love and trial. Xo man can be truly
jealous, who does not love : perhaps.it may be said that no
man who loves, is beyond the possibility of jealousy when
subjected to the full severity of trial. Men have been found
who even jested at the word and passed through all the rela
tions of life without one moment of that painful experience ;
and yet when the hair has grown gray upon their brows and
that age come to them when the fiercer passions should all
have been laid at rest, the demon of jealousy has awoke to
stir them to new exertion or to mar their peace. They have
found a new love, stirring their beings to a depth before un
known, or they have been placed under trial before undreamed
of; and the capabilities of their natures have then been
proved to be the same as those of other men. To all which
may be added that the possibility of jealousy is something
like temptation to any vice : beyond a certain point of oppres
sion the resistive power ceases and the field so gloriously con
tested is lost.

At that moment and from that moment Burtnett Ilaviland
doubted his wife. Not that he believed her to be guilty, but
that the impression seemed unavoidable that she was weak
and in consequence unsafe. He remembered, now, how
warmly the merchant had been received by her — a subject
of congratulation to him, then, that she would have a power
ful friend remaining near her ; a subject of suffering, now,
that she might be under the influence of an unscrupulous
enemy. And something more. Oh, how we can turn every
thing to self-torture, when the mood is upon us ! Does the
reader remember with what heroic determination Mary Havi-
land had kept down her tears and her regrets at his coming
absence, from the moment her husband read her that stern

282 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

lesson of duty in the picture of Y alley Forge, and how she
had martyred her own heart to send him away from her with
out a sad thought of their parting ? That day, on. the banks
of the Potomac, that very absence of tears and spoken regrets
came up as a witness against her ! Absorbed in a new
friendship, if nothing warmer and dearer, the wife of his love
and the mother of his child had been almost willing to have
him leave her. Cruel — unjust — mad, of course, all this, on
the part of that tortured thinker ; but it is a truth, if a sor
rowful truth, that is being recorded.

Again that drum. Some movement was certainly going
on in camp. This feeling must be shaken off at every hazard.
The Zouave, who had some time before risen from his stony
seat and been pacing the young sod on the river bank, turned
to walk toward" the camp. As he did so, a couple of New
York city visitors, in company with one of the officers of the
regiment, came down towards the river, and they met, As
they exchang-ed greetings, one of them, a subordinate city-
official and an acquaintance who had sometimes visited at
Haviland's house with his sister, said : —

" Why, Haviland, you look dull. What is the matter ?
Unwell ?"

" No," answered the Zouave. " Perhaps a little bilious —
nothing more."

" I hope they are all well at home ? You have had letters,
I suppose ? I have not seen your people for some time,
though by the way, I did see your wife the other evening,
but did not get a chance to speak to her. She was at the
Winter Garden, and looked very well."

"Ah, indeed? Glad to hear that she was enjoying herself.
That was what I told her to do, when I came away," answered
the Zouave, something a little forced in 'his utterance, mean
while, that the friend did not notice. " Did you see who
was with her ?"

"Eh ?" said the New Yorker, pleasantly — "want to know
that, do you ? Well, really I don't know. .She was in a
private box with a gentleman — one of her relatives, probably
— a rather fine-looking middle-aged man, with short side-
whiskers and dressed very handsomely."

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 283

" Oh yes, I know. One of her cousins, from Boston — Mr.
Williams," Haviland managed to utter, and the friend, with
a nod, passed on down to the river. How he managed to
articulate that falsehood, he never knew himself, for the
words he had just heard, coming immediately after what had
before occurred, struck and stunned him as a blow on the
head might have done, and the words that he uttered inter
nally at the same moment were : " Great God ! — what next ?
That man is Charles Holt !"

Two minutes after, Captain Jack was standing on parade,
his company forming and evident bustle throughout the whole
camp. Burtnett Haviland strode rather than walked up to
him, his face darker than any man had ever before seen it,
touched his hat in military style to the officer, and said, in a
low voice but one that evinced much earnestness :_ —

" Captain, I want you to do me a great favor. I want you
to get me a few days' furlough, to go to New York."

" I am sorry you ask it just now, Mr. Haviland," said the
Captain. " I would do any thing in my power, for you, you
know ; but I am afraid Colonel Ellsworth will not wish to
spare a man. Your face looks troubled — nobody dead, I
hope !"

" No," said the Zouave. " But for certain reasons I wish
to go to New York at once — this very day if possible."

" I am afraid it is not possible, if you have not the excuse
of a death," said the Captain. "I was just wondering why I
did not see you at your place in the first file. Don't you see
the muskets coming, yonder ? We have been here a month,
you know, and done nothing. The Colonel is half crazy, and
I fancy we are all anxious to have something to do. I tell
you as a friend, not as your officer, that this regiment must
drill hard in the firings and general use of the musket, to-day,
as we are under orders for secret service to-night."

" To-night !" echoed Haviland.

"Yes, to-night," said the Captain. "You see how difficult
it would be to get a furlough for any purpose, and besides — "

" Besides," said Haviland, as Captain Jack paused, " it
would not look very well to go away just when the regiment
was going into a fight? Eh, Captain ?"

284 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

" That was what I meant," was the reply.

"Just so," said the private, "and I hope you know me
well enough to believe that I would not ask for a furlough
under such circumstances, or even take one if offered. I did
not know there was to be any movement, of course. If
there is to be any work, count me in for my share of it, and''
be kind enough to forget that I said any thing on the sub
ject."

" I know, of course, that you had not heard the report
when you made the request. All right !" said the Captain ;
and giving and receiving another salute, the private stepped
quickly to his company, received his weapon and took his
place in the ranks. Perhaps nothing could have been more
grateful to him, at that moment, than this promise of imme
diate action, that, if it would not put him entirely at ease,
would at least drown too rapid thought and make anxiety
comparatively endurable. To some extent bis private griefs
were to be swept away in the public service, as his private
afl'airs are again to be, for a time, merged in the fortunes of
the regiment.

CHAPTER XIY.

THE FIRE ZOUAVES ON SECRET SERVICE — LANDING AT ALEX
ANDRIA — THE FIRST CAPTURE OF THE WAR — How THE
ZOUAVES BECAME RAILROAD LABORERS — TAKING THE FAIR
FAX CAVALRY — A " FIRE IN THE REAR," OF UNPLEASANT
CHARACTER — A STARTLING REPORT — THE DEATH AND MAD

IMPRUDENCE OF COLONEL ELLSWORTH.

" SECRET service" was the word used by Captain Jack to
Haviland, as expressive of the peculiar condition in which
the regiment was at once to be placed, rendering any fur
lough difficult if not impossible to obtain. And "secret ser
vice" was the word that had been for an hour previous run
ning around the camp, seeming to have arrived with the new

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 285

weapons. Where or for what purpose, no one seemed to
have any idea, and it may be said that no one had any
anxiety on the subject. The Zouaves were as unquestion
ably brave, personally, as restless and undisciplined as a
body ; and to them any change, especially if it involved that
" fight" for which they had been " spoiling," seemed prefer
able to the comparative monotony of camp life. They could
not know, nor was it necessary they should do so, that a gen
eral movement of the forces at Washington into Virginia,
was to take place that night, under favor of the "bright May
moon." The new arms proved to be Springfield muskets,
for all the regiment except the two flank companies, for the
latter of which Enfield rifles were supplied. And all the
balance of the day the Zouaves drilled in what they should
have been instructed in from the beginning — the loadings,
firings and general use of their weapons. Thoroughly tired
were even those hardy fellows, when the evening closed down
and the drill was exchanged for the striking of tents and
other preparations for the immediate evacuation of Camp
Decker, to all which the light of the full moon lent a welcome
aid.

It was midnight before the steamboats that were to carry
the Fire Argonauts on their expedition, which they had a
premonition would be likely to thin the ranks of some of
them and hand them over to the mercies of Dr. Gray, the
Crimean surgeon,- — arrived in the river opposite and made
preparations for taking them on board. These were two
river-craft of no especial note then or afterwards — the Mount
Yernon and James Gray. But even those moderate craft
could not make a landing at the river bank, on account of the
slope of the sandy beach, and the soldiers were obliged to go
on board by means of a bridge of boats (the launches of the
Pawnee), serious if not dangerous, delay being caused by that
necessity. It was perhaps two o'clock when the last man
stepped over the side, and the first faint premonitions of day
began to tint the eastern sky as they steamed silently as pos
sible down the Potomac. Not till the day was fairly breaking,
and they were off Alexandria and heading in for the shore,
with the dark hulk of the Pawnee Iving in the river bevoud

280 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

as a sullen and silent witness of this first war movement of
the Federal forces, — did they become thoroughly certain of
their destination. Their orders were, they then understood,
to capture that dilapidated old town, important from its posi
tion, eminently secession in its popular tendencies, and well-
known to be sheltering a rebel force more or less numerous.

The boys were well in towards the town before any notice
seemed to be taken of them by the rebel sentries posted on
the wharves and around the warehouses that just began to
have their dark and mouldy sides touched by the first light
of morning. Crack ! — crack ! — went the warning muskets,
however, the moment the discovery was made ; and the gray
figures of the sentries could be seen dodging rapidly away
from what they evidently believed to be a dangerous neigh
borhood. It may have been a mark of enthusiasm, but it
certainly indicated any thing rather than discipline — that a
dozen or two of muskets were discharged, without orders,
towards the flying pickets, at such distances that the shots
could not possibly do any good or any harm, — and that loud
cheers burst from the throats of the Zouaves, as if over the
capture of a town which they were as yet only approaching.
But then our aborigines always attacked with shouts and
war-whoops; and the fire-boys generally yell a little louder
when going to a fire than when going home from one that
has already been extinguished ! *

No resistance whatever was offered to the landing; and
the pickets once out of sight, there was nothing left to mark
the existence of a hostile force in the town, as, in broad day
light and with the sun just coming up beyond the Potomac,
Colonel Ellsworth stepped with his Zouaves on the old wharves
at Alexandria — captors, so far without a struggle, of the first
rebel town to fall into Federal hands. His exact position
and the orders under which he was acting (or not acting)
were only known to himself and perhaps his Lieutenant-
Colonel ; but as the whole details are now unfortunately too
well known, they may be briefly given at this period.

Col. Wilcox, commanding the Fort Michigan, had been
ordered, as senior officer, to take his own and the Fire Zouave
regiments, with one of the United States batteries, and effect

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 287

the capture of Alexandria. The Zouaves were to go down
by steamboat, in the manner already shown, while the Michi
gan regiment was to cross the Potomac and make the march
by land. The two regiments were to effect a junction, or at
least concert the attack upon the town before entering it, and
Col. Wilcox of course to hold the right of making the final
dispositions. In pursuance of this plan, Col. Wilcox, with his
regiment and the battery of four pieces, had left Washington
by the Long Bridge, at nearly the same time as the embarka
tion of the Zouaves, and must have been, at the time of their
landing, rapidly approaching the town. Col. Ellsworth, how
ever, bravely insubordinate himself and therefore the last man
in the world to teach subordination to a regiment of peculiarly
independent character, had been unable to repress his desire
to strike the first blow in the War for the Union ; and his land
ing without artillery and without concert with his superior,
had been the consequence. It may be that the difference
between the fate of the two officers was at that moment marked
by Providence as the result of the partial obedience to orders
of the one and the absolute obedience of the other : the one
to lie in a grave too early for his abilities and conferring no
benefit, even if honor, on the great cause by his death — the
other to suffer hardship and imprisonment, but to wear event
ually the star of a Brigadier and do long and important ser
vice in the struggle.

Such had been the arrangement, and such the departure
from it. But the young Zouave Colonel Irad doubtless his
own plans and purposes, that death, hovering then in the air
above him though unseen by mortal eye, was so soon to seal
up from mortal knowledge ; and whether acting entirely upon
his own judgment, or from partial conference with his supe
rior, he at once gave a first order which showed some appre
ciation of the military position. This was to Captain Jack,
to take his company of eighty men, as the most thoroughly
disciplined and reliable in the regiment, march rapidly across
the town, secure what rolling-stock might be found at the
Depot of the Orange and Alexandria Railroad, and tear up
the track beyond the Depot in such a manner as to prevent

288 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

the removal of any munitions of war or the arrival or depart
ure of any rebel troops by rail.

No sooner was the order given than it was promptly obeyed ;
and Burtnett Haviland, wrho had already participated in the
capture of the first town taken by Union troops, was thus sent
into participation in the first capture of rebel soldiery, as well
as into peril so deadly that no ordinary chance of war could
be likely to blot away the recollection.

It was now some time past sunrise, when Captain Jack's
company filed rapidly up King Street towards the Railroad
Depot lying some two miles away. The very heart of the
town was to be crossed ; but so far as any signs of life were
concerned, the command might almost as well have been
traversing some city of the dead. One third of the inhabi
tants had fled at the first alarm — the rest had concealed them
selves. Here and there, around some corner of the miserable
tumble-down place a male figure could be occasionally seen,
but it shuffled away as rapidly, at sight of the soldiers, as legs
could very well carry it. Occasionally a slip-shod woman, or
a lounging negro, could be seen dodging along one of the ill-
paved streets, but even they seemed as apprehensive as all
the other inhabitants, that neither life nor property was safe
under the Zouave invasion. At times, too, Captain Jack and
bis men could see a movement of some half-closed shutter,
indicating that vengeful eyes, whether of male or female,
might be flashing through crannies, while the lips between
them might be muttering male curses or saying female pray
ers backwards; and it would not have surprised any of the
more intelligent members of the company, if at any moment
the crack of a rifle had come suddenly from some one of the
closed houses and put the locked step of the Zouaves into
confusion. Whatever the " Union feeling" so anxiously
looked for, might be elsewhere, there was evidently little or
nothing of it in Alexandria ; and though on some spots in the
Old Dominion it was believed that the coming of the Federal
soldiers would be hailed as a deliverance from hated tyranny,
too certainly here it was only regarded as an inroad of that
tyranny itself.

And here perhaps it may be proper to say a word more

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 289

with reference to that "Union feeling" at the South, which
has caused so many disputes and contradictions at the North,
und the existence or non-existence of which has been a
question as steadily mooted as was that of the sea-serpent
shortly after that terrible marine nondescript made his first
appearance in. the shape of two or three barrels lashed
together with old ropes, off Nahant. To some it does exist,
to others it does not — even in the same spot. Generally
speaking, however, it is found to be, where its existqnce
would be of any service to the Union cause, very much like
the benevolence of that gentleman who never gave anything
to any charity — "neither here nor there." And it has per
haps been unreasonable to expect it — at least under the sur
rounding circumstances. The government, from the beginning,
have taken no pains to foster and very little to protect it,
while the rebel authorities, in their own behalf, have clone
both for the opposite feeling. The property of the rankest
rebel has been protected and his person held sacred, \vhen the
Union troops have taken possession of any district before held
by the Confederates ; and however ultra may have been his
offences against loyalty, there has been no more thought of
punishing him than there habitually is of meting out justice
to one of the roughs of the " dangerous districts" of New
York city, who belongs to the dominant faction, is a useful
malP'at elections, and has only shot one of the poor devils
who intended to Vote the wrong way ! The offence of the
rough is " bailable," and eventually forgotten or rather looked
upon as a virtue : that of the rebel is passed over for " policy"
pake, and eventually forgotten if not rewarded. When the
rebels take possession of a district in which the Union power
has before been dominant (though, to be sure, their oppor
tunities in that line are something like the liabilities of the
unfortunate company who have been making a costly play
thing out of the Great Eastern — limited) they dragoon every
man who is either known or suspected to have rendered aid
and comfort to the " Yankee invader," and if he finally escapes
with his neck he certainly does not with any thing to feed or
clothe the other parts of the body. It has therefore become,
very naturally, the part of prudence to espouse the Confederate
13

290 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

cause, as no one ,can say when the tide of battle may turn
sufficiently for the overrunning of a small section, and the
Confederates both punish the refractory and protect the
"patriotic" (in their way) as the Federals do not. As well
might a crop of wheat be expected to spring from the trodden
paving-stones of Broad Street or Wall, as Union sentiment
where its manifestation is likely to bring punishment and
cannot bring protection. What the early colonists learned
of the savages might long ago have been learned by the
descendants of those colonists, had they been even respect
ably wise and observant. So many of the Indian tribes as
they taught by force of arms that it was safer and cheaper to
be friends than enemies with the whites, became and re
mained their friends : so many as they failed to teach that
needed lesson were and remained their bitter and injurious
foes. Wherever the hand of the Federal Union is proved to
be stronger than the grasp of that black mongrel which has
sprung from the unholy embrace of Southern treason and
Northern fanaticism — secession, — there will be found "Union
feeling" ; and that man is a fool who expects to find it else
where.

Perhaps the whole idea may be illustrated more drolly
and yet not a whit less earnestly, by the experience of the
bank-clerk and the French depositor, during that period
of depression following the United States Bank explosion.
Pierre had money in the bank ; the banks were breaking all
around him ; therefore Pierre came to draw his money out
of the ban.k. He was red of face and terribly excited : the
clerk was cool and equable. Pierre demanded his money,
with many hard words and many exclamations that he
" vant him ver mooch, and must 'ave him immediate — yes
by gar !" The clerk drew out his money and handed it over.
"Vat 1" said the depositor, "you 'ave my monish ?" "Cer
tainly," said the clerk. " You 'ave him all ze times ?"
queried the depositor. "Of course," said the clerk. "Zen
by gar," said the depositor, " I not vant him at all !" " What
do you mean by your shilly-shallying ?" said the clerk. " If
you want your money, say so and take it along ; if you
do not, don't bother !" " Eh, by gar," said the Frenchman,

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 291

putting the great financial question of confidence in a new
light, " zis is vat I mean. If you no 'ave my monish, so
zat I can't get him nevare, zen I vant him ver mooch, all ze
times. If you 'ave my monish, so zat I can get him ven I
vant him, zen I no vant him at all !" Wherever the Union
forces stand in such a relation to the rebels that the exist
ence of " Union feeling" is necessary to turn the balance and
give eventual success, there will be none to render that aid :
wherever the power of the government is thrown forward in
such overwhelming force that it asks no aid to achieve suc
cess and can command what it would otherwise be obliged to
ask — there will be Union sentiment in abundance.

Though there are and have been throughout the war, noble
and glorious examples of devotion to the old flag and desire
for its regained supremacy, in the very heart of the disloyal
territory, and though whole communities may be eventually
found in which the true feelings of the people would incline
to loyalty if permitted, — yet, taken as a great average, rebei-
dgm is about as rebellious as human nature is said to le
human ; and that military leader or that ruler who depends
upon Union sentiment for any considerable assistance, except
as he compels it, will find the same splendid success once
achieved by the aquatic experimentalist who tied bladders to
his feet and depended upon them to keep him above water,
in hip first (lush at swimming. Military success is the touch
stone for evoking fealty to the Union, in any part of the
rebel territory over which it sweeps ; and let no man lean
upon a staff of less unfailing dependence. It is scarce!}
necessary to say, in returning to the single event from which
we have so widely digressed, the march of Captain Jack and
his handful of Zouaves through Alexandria, — that there had
then been no time for the acquirement of all this wisdom
since attained at so costly a price, but that this earliest cap
ture of the war was made upon the plan afterwards to
become so popular — force inadequate if not contemptible, no
overwhelming power to overawe treason, and of course no
invitation of corresponding strength, to that loyal sentiment
which may have been lying dormant in the poisoned com
munity.

292 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

Slowly and steadily the Zouaves held on their way, how
ever, in close order, in comparative silence, and ready for any
hostile demonstration. Something more than half an hour at
rapid step, and they Avere in sight of the Orange and Alex
andria Depot. A train was just shooting away, loaded with •
munitions, valuables, and fleeing men, women and children ;
and another, in sight, had just been hailed by the people at
the Depot and ordered to back away as rapidly as possible —
an order which was being executed with all haste. At the
same moment that this spectacle met the view of the com
pany, some of the scouts who had been thrown forward,
brought in word that at the Slave-Pen, a block away to the
right and hidden by the intervening buildings, a rebel cavalry
company seemed mounting for attack or flight. There was
evidently work ahead, but of what character the Captain could
not well decide at that moment. One point wras clear — the
track of the road, the subject of his first instructions, must be
tern up instantly, to prevent any further movements of the
rolling-stock. Another — that when engaged in the labor of
tearing up the track, his men would not be favorably situated
to receive a headlong cavalry-charge, unless — and at this point
the quick eye of the Captain caught the solution of the pro
blem in a moment.

Only a hundred or two of yards beyond the Depot
road entered a cutting of considerable depth, and t
work must be done. Vulnerable as his command might be
to a cavalry-charge of possibly much superior numbers, when
half of them should be acting as railroad-laborers of the
reverse order, — the cavalrymen wTould be able to make Hut a
moderate charge through a cutting where the only footing for
their horses must be among railroad-ties and iron-rails.
Quick as the thought had been, necessarily was the action
upon it. A moment threw the Zouaves between the walls of
the embankment; and in five or ten the tough fellows, fancy
ing for the time that they were digging out some buried
comrade from the ruins of a fire at home, had so deranged
the track of the Orange and Alexandria road in that imme
diate vicinity, that neither car nor locomotive was likely to
go over it until extensive repairs should be completed. Had

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 293

they been aware what a system of railroad destruction on
both sides they were assisting to inaugurate, to go on until
nearly one-third the whole railroad wealth of the country
should lie in ruins, — even the well-seasoned men who had
grown used to seeing Mrs. Fitz-Piunick's pearl-and-rosewood
piano rolling down stairs at a fire, her costly mirrors shied
out of the window, and her tapestry carpets soaked and
thrown over a gutter to prevent its catching blaze from the
heat — might have paused in horror as they pried up rails arid
sent ties and sleepers into one wreck of confusion.

But they had little time to think of these things, even if
they had the disposition. The task was scarcely done when
word came to the Captain from his scouts that the cavalry
was certainly mounting and forming, apparently for a charge,
and no one could say what additional force, infantry or cav
alry, might have come up in the interval. The cavalry must
not be allowed to form. Moments were pressing, as they had
indeed been all the while since the landing. The company
were evidently on their good behavior, for they obeyed like
old soldiers, and dropping pries and seizing muskets they
formed again at a word. Double-quick back to the corner
of the street at the Depot, then sharp to the left for one long
block, down the lateral one that ran beside it, and facing
across the street to the west they were in full view of the
Slave Pen and the cavalry that threatened fight or escape.

"Price, Birch & Co., Dealers in Slaves," (so"' read their
singularly suggestive sign over the door, indicative of whip
ping as well as selling) had evidently for the time ceased the
slave business. They had had "a good thing of it" (to
quote one more expressive modernism) in other and more
peaceful days, judging by the extent of their accommodations
for what Exeter Hall hates but England loves. In front
stood a large brick dwelling-house, and behind it two im
mense slave-pens (literally jails or prisons) also of brick,
one each for males and females, the walls some twenty or'
twenty-five feet high, and the doors and windows so strongly
grated with iron as not to indicate that the occupants were in
the habit of clinging to their temporary home with peculiar
tenacity. Just then they had all gone out (as the Zouaves

29-i THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

afterwards found) with a single exception remaining in the
male department, and that single exception, oddly enough,
bearing the name of " George Washington." Price, Birch &
Co. 's building had ceased to be a pen for black slaves, and
become the quarters of a part of the military power of the
budding Confederacy. In front, some mounting, some at
tempting to form into line with the others, and some riding
around to the rear of the building and apparently getting
away, was a squadron of the Fairfax Cavalry, in their gray
coats and broad black hats — capitally mounted though some
what shabbily equipped, and looking as if they might be
dangerous foes under different circumstances.

Quick as thought, at the word of command, the Zouaves
covered the cavalry with their pieces, and every motion at
mounting or forming or riding away was suspended as if each
of the horsemen had been suddenly turned to stone. They
were caught — overpowered — helpless ; there was no alter
native but surrender or the sudden emptying of more than
half the saddles of the command. The Zouaves had made
the first personal as well as material capture of the war ; and
every heart beat so high with exultation that weariness, thirst
and danger were forgotten, and the shouts rising to their lips
could scarcely be restrained. Captain Jack, leaving his com
pany covering every man as before, was just about to step
forward and receive the formal surrender, when — God of
Heaven I—what was that ?

There are.jBome moments in life full of such unheard-of and
hopeless agony and horror, that the man who once meets
them is alike incapable of forgetting, and of ever experienc
ing their counterparts. They come by land and sea, in the
daylight and in the dusk night, falling usually with no warn
ing and apparently with no end to subserve except the test
ing of that metal out of which humanity is made. The
treacherous sea has most of them : the steady land presents
them sometimes in such terrible force that even the sea is
robbed of its supremacy. They seem blows from the very
clenched fists of the gods, dashed down in an anger that has
no mercy. They stun — they blind — they choke — they make
or unmake us Beneath them we lose the noblest parts of

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 295

our natures, or put on semblances almost divine. They have
their purpose, beyond a doubt, that humanity will never be
wise enough to see until the Great Unveiling. Sometimes
they come at the very moment when a great success has
made them less easy to endure : sometimes when long strug
gle against other and minor misfortunes has given preparation
for the worst and yet unstrung the nerves that must meet it.
Sometimes they merely calm and ennoble, as when Herndon,
after providing for the welfare of every woman and child on
the Central America, and when human energy could avail no
more for the safety of his own life or any of the others com
mitted to his charge, yielded to the weariness of his labor,
lay down and slept the peaceful sleep of childhood, within
fifteen minutes of the awful plunge that he knew to be in
evitable. Sometimes they freeze into stolidity, as when
Luce, inert in action, stood calmly on the deck of the Arctic
and went down with her as if he had been merely a statue of
stone placed in that position. Sometimes they provoke to
bravado, sublime and yet pitiful, as when Follansbee, know
ing that the last moment of the St. Denis had come, stood
on the deck as the last boat shoved away and the ship be
neath him reeled for the final plunge, winding his watch !
Sometimes they come when a man all health and hope slips
down between two cars of a railroad train and the wheel is
already pressing him that in another second is to crush him
into a mere pulp of blood and bones and flesh ; sometimes
when the accused, standing in the dock and confident of his
acquittal, hears that awful word "Guilty !" drop from the set
lips of the juryman ; sometimes when the physician comes
once too often to the bedside and says : " You may live half
an hour." Some meet them at the very moment of actual
death, and so with reference to them the agonized man is
dumb forever; others when the apparent doom is yet escaped
by the breadth of a hair. Driesbach the beast-tamer meets
one when the attendant has locked the door W the cage and
gone away, leaving him powerless to escape from the fangs
of the unbroken lion that is all the while lashing the bars
with his tail and crouching for a spring that may come at
any moment — sees it for thirty long minutes of fixed eye

i!96 THE 1) A Y S O F SHODDY.

and bated breath, man against beast, hope against despair,
till the keeper comes at last and the peril is averted ; Van
Amburgh, his rival and perhaps his master, meets one when the
tigress of the "Tiger King" springs upon him on the stage,
buries his whole shoulder in its engulfing mouth, and leaves
him with no hope of deliverance except the sledge-hammer
blow of that iron arm and hand, crushing brute brow and
brain like the fabled stroke of "Front de Boeuf." Eliot War-
burton sees one of them as he stands on the deck of the burn
ing Amazon, and in the horror of that moment the glory of
all the Orient lands is forgotten : he can do nothing but die,
and dies as becomes a man. Gilman Applet) v sees another
on his burning Constitution on Lake Erie, and again when
the storm is dashing her on the rocks that in another mo
ment will grind her to powder; but his wild, reckless will
alike denes the good and the evil, and with two pistols in his
belt, literally driving his frightened passengers to safety, or
sitting astride of his overburthened safety-valve, with his eye
glaring fiendishly down on the frightened engineer, he seems
to dash the very thunderbolts from the 'immortal hands and
reverse the decrees of fate. No man is quite the same after
enduring one of these moments; for though he ma.;/ be bettor
arid wiser, as befits one who has stood on the threshold and
seen the Mystery face to face, — yet he maybe wilder and more
reckless, as one who feels that there is no terror possible to
be added to his experience.

All which may or may not have a legitimate connection
with the event of that particular moment in front of the old
•Wave Pen at Alexandria. There was horror enough, cer
tainly, to mark the culmination of any man's experience of
pain, disappointment, bitter anger, and that other and baser pas-
nion — -fear. For at the very instant that Captain Jack moved
to receive the sword of the surrendering cavalry-officer, there
was a sharp rattle and clash behind him and his company,
the tramp of ffhrfted feet upon the pavement, the roll of
wheels, and almost before he could turn his head a battery of
four United States pieces dashed up, unlimbered, trained full
upon his company and himself, so near that the discharge of
grape must have swept the street clear of every living man,

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 2'J7

and he heard the quick voice of Wilcox, full of hurry and
anxiety, shout to the officer in charge of the guns : —

" Fire !"

How many in the company saw the peril, no man knows.
Every man in it, questioned afterwards, would have said he
saw it, for no man likes to lose the credit of having known,
as well as passed through, a great danger. So many as did
forsake their aim at the sound, and catch a glimpse of what
lay behind, undoubtedly set their teeth and waited their fate
in dogged despair. Captain Jack, the first to see the impend
ing catastrophe, and probably the only one who understood
it, followed Shakspeare, " swore a prayer," and waited for
his doom with an impression that the whole thing was an
"outrage — to blow away a company at the mouths of a battery,
just when they were about making a neat haul of prisoners.

But all this did not occupy an instant,, as the space after
an officer of a regular battery gives the command to fire and
before the command is executed, is singularly short to those
who happen to stand in the way. But what did the hesita
tion mean ? Why did not the iron come tearing through their
ranks ? Strange 1 Yes, strange — one of those hair-breadth
chances which partake a little of the character of the miracle.
Colonel Wilcox had believed his regiment the only Union force
in the town — seen the grey uniform of the Zouaves as he came
rapidly up, and supposed it to be the prevailing rebel color —
and the danger had been that just related. By the merest
accident Lieut. Ramsay, of the regulars, who commanded the
battery (and who afterwards had his head shot off, fighting
bravely at Bull Run) had chanced to see a Zouave uniform or
two as the battery came in through the city ; and at the mo
ment when the fatal command was given, the thought had darted
suddenly into his head that the Zouaves might have reached
the city in advance. This had withheld the last order to the
cannoniers, and by just so narrow a chance had the taking of
Alexandria been saved from going upon record as even a
darker and sadder tragedy than it now exhibits in the early
history of the war. Sorrow for the cause of the nation, for
the lives of many brave% men, and the peace of many hearts
nuw broken, — that even so narrow an escape as this from the

298 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

murder of friends has not always been accorded by the en
vious fates, and that once and again, from Big Bethel to some
of the last fights of the summer campaign of 1863 in Virginia,
score after score of lives has been lost, and regiment after
regiment disabled, by mistakes in uniform, flag or position,
quite as stupid and quite as sad as that which sacrificed a
great battle and a kingdom, in English history, through the
belief that foes were coming into the fight, carrying the
Rising Sun of York, instead of friends bearing the Silver
Star of Oxford.

It is surprising how short a space of time may be consumed
in occurrences that take a considerable -period in their most
concise relation. It did not seem more than a moment after
tbe-unlimbering of those guns, when Colonel Wilcox spurred
his horse past the left flank of the Zouaves, dashed up to the
Captain and drew rein in front of him, with the sharp, angry,
puzzled inquiry :

"Who are you ?"

" Captain , commanding Company . , of the First

Fire Zouaves," replied the Captain, who had scarcely yet re
covered from the impression that he should by that time have
ceased answering questions on this side of the line between
life and death.

" What !" exclaimed tho Colonel, who .had before enter
tained no more idea that the Zouaves could be in that posi
tion, than that they were quartered in South Carolina. " And
what are you doing here, then ?"

" Obeying orders 1" answered Captain Jack, with just the
least dash of offended dignity in his tone. He knew Wilcox,
at a glance, but did not know that he had any business, after
threatening to blow his company out of existence, to follow it
up by bullying him in the execution of his duty. "I was
sent by Colonel Ellsworth, who holds the town, to tear up
the track of the railroad yonder. I had just done it, and
was making a capture of that body of rebel cavalry, when
your little arrangement for blowing us away with that bat
tery spoiled the fun, and about half of them have taken the
chance to get away."

" Humph !" baid the Colonel, who saw that the last allega-

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 299

tion was true, at least. " If that is the case, look to your
prisoners."

" Thank you for nothing !" muttered Captain Jack, as the
Colonel wheeled his horse and dashed back to the battery and
his own regiment that was now coming up and filling the
whole street close behind. A moment more sufficed to throw
his men into such position that no further attempts at escape
on the part of the cavalry were possible, and the rebel Cap
tain Ball stepped forward and delivered up his sword. The
whole number of the rebel force when the Zouaves came upon
the ground, had been about their own number, eighty ; but
the interruption had enabled half of them to get away, and
the capture actually made was that of thirty-six men and forty
horses — unimportant of itself, but embodying some interest
from the fact that it was the first capture of men in the war,
as the taking of Alexandria was the first re-possession of any
town that had fallen into rebel hands, by the Federals.

The rebel cavalry were being disarmed and placed under
guard, while details of the Zouaves and the First Michigan
had commenced exploring the Railroad Depot and the Slave
Pen for traces of the Virginia troops who had been quartered
there, — when a mounted scout rode hastily up the street
from the direction of the river and stooped from his saddle to
speak to Col. Wilcox, who had dismounted. He spoke in a
low tone and the conversation was carried on out of easy ear
shot of the men, but some of the command saw that the
Colonel's face grew agitated and that his eyes seemed anxious
and troubled. A moment more, and the scout rode away
again, while Colonel Wilcox, coming up in front of the spot
where the body of the Zouave company yet stood in position,
and said, so loud that all could hear him :

" Captain, my men will relieve your company of the charge
of the prisoners. I have other service for you. There is a
hill about two miles west-south-west, between the Fairfax
and the Leesburg roads, called Shooter's Hill. It has a com
manding position, and it may be necessary to make a post
there at once. You* will go forward with your company and
take possession immediately. Never mind being a little tired,
boys. Away with you, quick !"

300 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

What is the magnetism which informs us when we are hear
ing a positive lie or only being entrusted with half of a truth ?
That we do have such intuitions, is beyond question. Captain
Jack knew, just as well as he could have done had the fact
been sworn to him by most competent authority, that Shooter's
Hill was not a matter of any such consequence to the Colonel,
just then, that he would send the tired Zouaves out to take
possession of it. Besides, he had no superior officer in the
town, from whom he could have received orders, by the scout,
to make any such movement. Then, be was in too much of
a hurry to get them away, as a few minutes could not possi
bly make so much difference in the occupation of a mere out
post. There was something else, and that something had a
connection with the hurried riding in of the scout. What ?
He was soon to be answered.

The company were ready in file for marching, when the
Colonel drew Captain Jack aside for a moment, and said, in.
a low, agitated voice :

" (let your fellows away as quick as you can, Captain !
Every moment is an. hour! The next scout that comes in
may say a word too much !"

" In God's name, what is the matter, Colonel ?" asked
Captain Jack, his tone as low and anxious as that of the
other. " I saw that something was wrong, but could not
guess what. In a scrape below ?"

" I meant to tell you before you went," said the Colonel.
" Worse than a scrape. Oh, why will men go beyond their
orders and make fools of themselves ! Your Colonel has
just been killed at the Marshall House, by the landlord, and
God knows whether Farnham can even manage the rest of
the regiment and keep them from burning down the town,
even if we can keep these in the dark a few hours."

" Colonel Ellsworth killed !" gasped the Captain, who
seemed as incapable of realizing that a man could be killed
in so short a time, as the man who backed up the validity of
his own note was incredulous of the possibility of a man dying
" within ninety days."

" Yes, killed, and the landlord with him," said the Colonel.
"But you will hear all about it, soon enough. Get out to

THE 'DAYS OF SHODDY. 301

Shooter's Hill as fast as you can, and not a word to the boys
about it until the day is over."

" The landlord killed, too 1 Well, that is some comfort I"
muttered Captain Jack, as he went back, took his place at
the head of his company and marched them away at quick
step up the Fairfax Road. They were very foot-sore and
weary, and fancied that one place was enough to capture in
a single day ; and Burtnett Haviland, file-leader of the first
file, caught himself thinking that if the bottoms of his feet
Avere not blistered and his stomach was not empty, they
probably would be by the time ;they had finished their march
and found breakfast. But they had taken a town and cap
tured the Fairfax Cavalry, the boys thought — that was some
thing ; and so they stepped away with very good spirits
towards Shooter's Hill, which Avas to form, with its neigh
borhood, the scene of almost all their camp experience in
Virginia.

Ellsworth dead ! Yes, that Avas the story told by the
Colonel, and too truly he indicated the misfortune. The
3'oung Colonel had already reached the end of his career —
the close of all his brilliant anticipations of the life of a
patriot soldier: He had seen the rebel flag flying on the top
of the Marshall House, a dingy old brick building at the
corner of King and Pitt Streets — had had too much headlong
patriotism to despise the exhibition, too much courage to
hesitate at any peril, and too little prudent forethought to be
capable of taking care of hirhself or others. He had sprung
into the house on the mad as well as useless errand of tear
ing down that flag, been shot through the heart by Jackson,
in performing it, and his slayer laid dead beside him by
Brownell, Avho could revenge his Colonel but could not re
member to shoot quickly enough to save him. He was dead,
and his plans and purposes as \vell as his hopes dead Avith
him ; while his regiment had its own welfare to look after,
under officers Avho an hour before had no dream of assuming
such a responsibility.

That is the story of the death of Ellsworth, somewhat more
briefly told than in the inflated relations and atrociously bad
plays with which, as the first death of an officer in the War

302 THE BAYS OF SHODDY.

for the Union, it has since supplied current literature. It was
a mad, reckless waste of life and desertion of command —
nothing more nor less. Washington was a hero at Prince
ton, when he rode between the cross-fires of the two forces,
and Xapoleon at Lodi when he charged over that deadly
bridge, — because all was lost to each without the exertion,
and the stake was worth life. But the one would have
proved himself a fool by exposing himself in the same man
ner in a mere skirmish, and the other by leading an ordinary
forlorn-hope instead of directing it. Ellsworth at once proved
his personal bravery and his unfitness for command, when he
went on a service for which (if it was to be done at all) he
should have sent a corporal's guard, and lost his life in taking
down a rebel rag of very doubtful cleanliness, from the roof
of a second-rate Virginia tavern. Two of bis own Zouaves
had " taken down" its predecessor from the same roof, only
a few days before, at much less cost, by climbing out and
stealing it after dinner, and one of them bringing it away
wrapped round his body and concealed under his clothing !
And they could have performed the same task again, if
necessary.

Striking the balance of the reckless exposures of the Union
War against its poltrooneries, perhaps there might be less to
complain of. For against one officer throwing away his life
in this manner, we might set another lying at ease behind a
haystack during a whole battle ; and against a second dare
devil we might oppose another' taking a sudden fancy, when
under fire, for whortleberries growing in the remotest parts of
a wood;* but unfortunately one fault does not quite do away
with the disadvantages of the other, and the middle ground
of bravery in conflict seems about as indispensable for the
success of our armies, as the middle ground of conservative
policy for the furtherance of the national cause.

* Some of the participants in the first battle of Bull Run, belonging to
the New York Militia Regiments, will not have much difficulty in remember
ing either of the circumstances here alluded to.

CHAPTER XV.

CHARLES HOLT WITH A CALL ABROAD — How HE PAID A
FAREWELL YISIT TO BURTNETT HAVILAND'S — Miss SARAH
SANDERSON'S LITTLE AMUSEMENT, AND A COMPACT '.FOLLOW
ING — How THE MERCHANT MADE A CONFIDANTE <ap MARY
HAVILAND, AND BADE HER GOOD-BYE — FIVE MINUTES IN
THE ROOM OF OLYMPIA HOLT.

AGAIN the active operations of war must drop for a time
into the back-ground and the course of this narration return
to those actors in the drama who have not passed into the
theatre of actual bloodshed. Only temporarily ; for the war-
clouds thicken, and one of those fierce struggles of one rank
of the descendants of Cain with another, which sometimes
make us doubt the identity of human origin, is in the near
prospect.

It has been more than intimated, before this, that Mr.
Charles Holt, merchant, some of whose " little amusements"
have begun to dawn upon the mind of the reader as at least
liable to moral objection, — was not by any means a mere man
of pleasure, or even of fashionable vice, but a thorough, in
carnate commercial manager as well, carrying on an extensive
business with signal ability, and losing no opportunity, proper
or improper, to add to a fortune already believed to be colos
sal. Xo better proof of this need be adduced than the man
ner in which he had seized upon the needs of the government,
at the very earliest moment, and entered into those cloth spec
ulations paying and promising so finely. To this fact may be
added another apparently very different — that if " the course
of true love never did run smooth," that of false and dishon
orable love is at least liable to an occasional ripple ; and
the connection between the two facts will soon be made ap
parent.

Coining into the store late of an afternoon not far from the

303

?>( )-A T HE DAYS OF SHODDY.

close of May, the merchant was accosted by Mr. Wales, the
gray-haired book-keeper :

" Quite a number of letters this afternoon, Mr. Holt, and
one that is privately addressed. It bears the London post
mark, and you will find it lying on your desk."

Charles Holt took up the letter, broke the seal and ran his
eye hastily over it. It was from London, by the steamer that
had reached Boston only the day before, and bore the signa
ture of Mr. Beverly Andrews, his partner, who yet remained
abroad. One portion of it ran as follows :

"All your advices are duly noted; and so far as I have judged it prudent
to do, I have acted upon them. But the fact is that for the fir.st time in iuy
life, in a plain matter of business, I fiud myself at fault. The Sumter affair
lias created almost as much excitement here as it undoubtedly has done at
home; and things are confused terribly. Exchanges begin to run against us
so that I scarcely know what to buy and what to leave untouched. I wculd
give almost any thing to have your older and (you must not think I intend to
flatter) clearer head, here, even for consultation an hour or two. I suppose
it is too much to ask, but could you not manage to run over, even if you went
back by the same steamer? I cannot possibly leave here, in the present pos
ture of American credit ; and yet I feel that some large operations might be
performed if one could only be perfectly sure of his footing."

For five minutes the merchant leaned on the desk, holding
the letter in his hand, and in silence. His brow was bent, as
if many conflicting thoughts were beating beneath it, and
then the cloud cleared away. lie had decided.

" Mr. Wales," he said, "you had better see Mr. Xellis to
morrow morning before you come down-town, and tell him
that he must give up his arrangement for going to Chicago,
until a month or two later. We shall need all our force at
their posts."

"I will attend to it, sir," answered Wales, a thorough old
martinet, who never questioned orders but obeyed them.

" I am going to England by the Cunarder from Jersey
City to-morrow," the merchant continued. The fact was all
that he had any occasion to announce : the why was his
business and his alone. " Some of those Western accounts
must be sent out by mail — have them attended to at once.
Send to the office and have me a forward state-room engaged,
if there is one left. If I can see Xellis in the morning before

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 305

I leave, all well ; if not, I will hand you a letter with full
instructions for him, as I go down."

"Very well, sir," answered the book-keeper. "Do you
have any idea of the time of your return ? As I suppose
that your arrangement is somewhat sudden, we may have
occasion to answer the question."

" I may I'eturn by the same steamer," said the merchant.
" If not, by the next ; and I shall not be absent more than
thirty to forty days, at the longest. You understand the
arrangement, I suppose ?"

" Entirety, I believe," said the book-keeper, and the merchant
slipped the letter into his. side-pocket and left the store. He
stepped out to Broadway, then down to the front of the Astor
House and motioned to the driver of one of the carriages in
waiting there. A few words, and the carriage whirled off up
Broadway, with its occupant lounging on the back seat, but
his head so thrown forward that the chin reposed upon his
breast, and the brow again wrinkled with thoughts that
seemed to keep his brain continually busy.

It was a little past sunset when the carriage, having pur
sued Third Avenue fi'om Astor Place, wrhirled into East
Forty-eighth Street and set the merchant down just below
the corner, driving round into the Avenue afterwards and
awaiting him. . For reasons of his own, which may have
been delicate unwillingness to be seen habitually going in a
carriage to a house the occupants of which so 'seldom used
that costly mode of conveyance, and which may have had the
far less creditable motive of not wishing to be observed at
all, — he had only been driven to the house once or twice, in a
considerable number of visits. On the pi'esent occasion he
walked briskly down the sidewalk and as briskly up the
steps, like one who had much business to do in a ver}* limited
period. The May evening was soft and pleasant, and many
doors along the street had been left standing open — among
others, that of the house he was about entering. He had, or
fancied that he had, now, sufficiently the footing of an intimate
acquaintance, to pass in, under those circumstances, Avithout
ringing, and merely tap at the door at the head of the stairs.
lie followed out the first part of this intention, but found the
19

THE DAYS OF S II 0 D I) Y.

remainder impossible. As he passed the dining-room door
at the head of the stair, he saw that it was open, cast a
glance within but perceived no one. Passing to the other
door, he found that also open, and as he was about to tap
his knuckles upon the casing as a summons, saw that there
appeared to be only one person in the room and that person
Sarah Sanderson.

The eyes of the merchant had the habit of taking in all
the details of a scene at a single glance, as well as embracing
the whole contour. They exercised that power in the pre
sent instance. He saw that the young girl was alone and
that she had not heard his foot on the stair or at the door.
He saw, too, that she stood with her face turned three-
quarters away from the door, that she held a letter in both
hands and was applying it to her lips. Kissing a letter, eh ?
— thought the merchant. Xo ! — every thing else rather than
that. She was licking the letter instead of kissing it —
taking the innocent liberty of coaxing open the seal by
dampening the gum of the envelope with her lips and
tongue ! Aha ! — and the merchant read the story at on'ce.
She was tampering with correspondence ! Perhaps he had
seen such a thing done before : at all events he did not,utti;r
any audible sound of surprise or indignation. He merely
took three steps to the spot where the young. girl was stand
ing — steps that she'_did not hear any more than those which
had preceded them, — reached his hand partially over her
shoulder and took away the letter with a quick jerk.

Sarah Sanderson half screamed with the surprise and
fright, then turned and recognized the merchant, and finished
by trembling like a leaf and nearly falling upon the door.
Beyond the half-suppressed scream and an attempt at repeat
ing it, not a word could she utter.

" Stop your noise and don't make a fool of yourself!" said
the merchant, with the calm superiority of older years and
better practised villainy, and at the same time catching a
glance at the envelope in his hand, which showed that it bore
the Washington post-mark and that it was directed to Mrs./
Mary Haviland in the well-known writing of his absent
clerk. " Where is Mrs. Haviland ?''

THE DAYS -OF SHODDY. 307

" She has — gone out," stammered the culprit.

"And you are alone in the house ?" queried the immaculate
judge.

" Yes, sir. Please " and here the small hands began

to clasp themselves and the merchant became aware that
pleading was about to commence.

" I tell you again to stop your noise, except when /speak
to you," said the man of experience, whose mind had
already taken in and revolved the thought how much more
completely this discovery would place the young girl in his
power. " Now then, what were you doing with this letter ?"
. " Please, sir, I was only trying to — to — to fasten it up —
oh, don't tell of me, Mr. Holt ! Please don't !" and the
Lands went together again and more pleading was likely to
begin, though there was no flush of shame on the cheek and
the eyes were entirely dry.

" I will tell of you, and have a policeman here in five
minutes, if you do not do precisely as I bid you !" said Charles
Holt, determined to finish the fright at once and crush out
the last spark of hope except in plain truth and abject obe
dience. " Now I have you in my power, Sarah, and can ruin
vou in a moment. I will do it if vou try to deceive me or

•/ if • it

disobey me. Tell me the whole truth, and you will be in no
danger. What were you doing with that letter ?"

"I was trying — to — to — "

"Open it, by dampening the gum?" the merchant helped
her out.

"Yes," answered the girl, evidently with a violent effort.

"Yes, so I thought!" said the merchant, with that sneer
in his tone which a lawyer uses when he has at last extorted
the injurious admission from the reluctant witness. " Now,
then, one thing more, and you had better answer this ques
tion quite as candidly — why were you opening this letter ?"

It has before been remarked that there was no flush of shame
on the cheek of Sarah Sanderson at her detection. Now, and
at this question, the whole cheek became one intense crim
son, until it seemed that more blood than the whole body
ought to have contained, was concentrated in the face. The
merchant saw it, and his mental comment was as quick s\?- the

308 THE DAYS OP SHODDY.

flush. She attempted to answer, and yet she could not an
swer the truth.

" Because — because I wanted to — to hear from Mr. Ilavi-
land— "

" Because you love Mr. Haviland !" and these words were
spoken in a low, concentrated tone, close clown to the ear of
the young girl. She started away from him, trembled yet
more violently than before, and if there had been any possi
bility of the amount of blood in the face being added to, that
addition was made at the moment. If she tried to speak, the
words stuck in her throat, for she uttered no sound except
what might have been the gurgle of one choking. Her eyes
ivere bent to the floor.

" Look at me," said the merchant. As if compelled, she
obeyed, and met eyes that had power but little pity in them.
" Now answer my question, without any further delay, or you
will be very sorry that you had not done so."

The answer came, but the eyes went down again to tho
floor and the assent was given in three or four nods that told
more than words could have spoken.

"That is well," said the merchant. "Xow one thing
more — you hate his wife. She is in your way."

" Oh, heavens ! what are you saying ?" broke out the young
girl, looking apprehensively towards the door. " Suppose
she should hear us !"

"Xo fear of that !" answered Charles Holt. "My ears tell
me when any one is approaching. Answer my question."

"Yes," said the girl, finding voice this time, and the voice
having an indescribable sound of angry dislike that might
have been any thing but reassuring to the subject of the reply.

" I thought so, and that is very well also," said the
tempter. " Xow, Sarah, we shall get on very well together,
I fancy."

"And you will not tell of me, Mr. Holt ?" asked the girl,
somewhat reassured by the less threatening, even patronizing
tone in which the last words had been uttered.

" Tell of you ? — no, not if you obey my. orders," answered
the merchant. " Tell of you ? — no. You are more of a
woman than I thought — have loves and hates, and I like you

THE DAYS OF S II () D I) Y . 809

the better for them. And besides, you hato given me a new
idea, for which I am going to be very grateful in some of
those nice yellow pieces that you have seen before. And by
the way, here is one of them."

As an earnest of the future as well as a reminder of the
past, Charles Holt's hand again went into his pocket and
emerged with a gold coin within the fingers, which he at once
transferred to the palm of the young girl.

" Now listen to me for one moment, and see that you pay
attention to what I am going to say," he went on. " You
love Burtnett Haviland, and you hate his wife because she is
in your way. Obey me, and she may get out of 'the way, al
most before you know it."

" Out of the way ! — She ?" queried the girl, an expression
of fierce delight passing over her face, but still friended with
something of uncertainty, as if such a joy must be impossible.

" I said so," answered Charles Holt, " and what I say I
generally have the power of proving. Now mind — by your
having the letter in your hands, before it came to Mrs. Hav
iland, you must be in the habit of taking in the letters your
self."

" Almost always," answered the girl.

" Make it always, then," directed her mentor. " Let every
one of the letters that comes to the house pass through your
hands. Stop — what is the name of the post-man who serves
on this route ? And where does he live ?"

" His name is and I have heard that he lives in East

. Street, not far from the Station," was the answer, the

young girl's eyes somewhat expressive of that wonder and
alarm which come of getting beyond one's depth.

" That will do," said the merchant. " I will see him, arid
any letters that come here for Mrs. Haviland will be given to
3*011, and if she happens to go to the door, there will be none
for her — those, I niean^that are in her husband's hand-writing.
See to it that she does not have one more letter from him, un
til I come here again. Do you understand me ?"

" I think I do !" said the neophyte.

" Something more — you take the letters to the Station, do
you 110 L ?"

310 TIIEDAYS OF SHODDY.

"Yes, sir — or hand them to the post-man."

" Well, then, stop every one~of Mrs. Haviland's letters ad
dressed to her 'husband. If one of them goes, all the rest of
the labor will be thrown away. Not one— mind.'1

" Oh sir — Mr. Holt — what are you going to do !" broke
out the young girl, completely off her depth in villainy,
shocked and stunned by the idea of entirely breaking up that
correspondence between husband and wife into which she had
only intended to pry, and quite as much frightened at the
possible result as she had been at the prospect of discovery
in her comparatively trifling crime.

" My own business, and yours !" answered the merchant,
severely, to her frightened inquiry. " And mind — you have
no choice in the matter! If you do not do as I have or
dered, and do it effectually, I will have you taken up for break
ing open letters, and sent to the State Prison ; if you do, you
may some day find that the man you love is your own, the
woman you hate out of your way, and yourself a woman.
Hush ! — some one is at the door and coming up the stair.
?u)t another word — remember !"

The last word was spoken threateningly, though very low ;
and the lips from which it emanated were scowling. One
moment after, when Mary Havilanet" entered the back room
wiljh little Louise, Sarah Sanderson was making a clatter
there, as if she had been steadily at work for an 'hour, and
Charles Holt was pacing slowly up and down the parlor, hum
ming a ballad tuny in a low, gruff voice, to " make assurance
double sure" and supply an explanation if one of his last
•words should have happened to be heard by the returning
wife. vThe young girl, as she busied herself about the supper
arrangements, may have been frightened and flustered at the
thought of the situation into which she was being plunged
deeper and deeper by her own fault and the ascendancy of
that strange man in the parlor ; but she had no more inten
tion of disobeying him than she could have had of sawing off
one of her own little hands with the dull carving-knife in the
box on the dresser. And as for the merchant himself — he
was not flustered or frightened one whit. He had simply
performed another " operation" — one quite in his line — if not

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 311

in cloths and cassimeres, in something quite as saleable — hu
man happiness and perhaps human souls.

Mary Haviland heard the step and the voice of the mer
chant in the parlor, as she surmounted the stair, and she went
first into the dining-room, dropped Pet and her bonnet, and
came into the parlor through the passage. How very hand
some she looked — really, as well as to the eyes of the scheming
merchant and man of pleasure ! Her cheeks, that did not
redden as do some others, to the extent of ungracefulness, by
walking, were yet a little flushed with exercise, and her dark
dress with its plain little white collar and cuffs, touched her
blonde hair with something almost angelic. Charles Holt
did not see the "angel" quite so plainly as he recognized the
woman ; but he was touched, nevertheless.

80 far, in intercourse that had now lasted for nearly a
month, never for one moment had that subtle and powerful
voluptuary forgotten the prudence and propriety of his role.
Not one word had yet been sp.oken that could compromise
his position with the wife, simply because he had not been
certain that the time had come. He preferred, generally, the
McClellan system of warfare, that is twice or three times as
long as it should be at building a bridge, but builds it, at
last, two or three times as strong as is necessary. He knewr,
intuitively, that too soon would be worse than too late, in
that quarter, and that one premature fright would d'estroy
future chance for all time. He had seen, all the while, that
the young wife, left so lonely and thrown so much into his
society, was growing more and more pleased with his visits
and reliant upon him. That was something — it was even
almost enough, in his mind ; for no matter how slight may
be the slope of the inclined plane, give it length enough and
it will cyme down to the lowest level desired. With this in
view, he had so far been able to restrain himself; and the
nearest approach to familiarity yet attained had been the
holding of one of the little hands something too long for strict
propriety, and a kiss which he had once or twice impressed
upon that innocent member with apparent courtly dignity
and yet with lips that burned more than the young wife
knew. So far the restraint had lasted : how much longer

312 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

was it, to last and how much longer could it last, with
such visions continually beaming before him ? One step for
ward — one step if no more, before the long swell of the
Atlantic should roll between them on the evening of the
morrow.

Mary Ilaviland received her guest with even more warmth
than had been her wont. AVhen he held out both hands to
her, one of hers fell into each, and she allowed him to retain
them long, as he walked beside her towards the front window
where the light of the May evening was fast fading away into
dusk. It was time for lighting the little chandelier, and yet
not only he but she felt that no other light was needed.
Nothing could have been more dangerous. Sunlight may be
exhilarating and moonlight may be entrancing, but neither
can for one moment compare with the soft dusk uncertainty
of twilight, in its peril to two who love, or fancy that they
love, or wish to fancy that they love, each other.

Then followed what the pen of the narrator has no fancy
for portraying, and yet what cannot be avoided — a little bit
of acting on the one side, which would have made Ned Booth
or Ned Davenport expire with envy, — and a corresponding
bit of womanly yielding, not to say culpable weakness, on the
other, which might have induced Mary Gannon (^uceu of all
the juvenile simplicities) to indulge at least in a small exhibi
tion of feminine spite.

The two were very near together as they took seats near
the window — nearer than they had sat on any previous occa
sion. The dark may have been the reason of this accident.
A few commonplaces, and the tone of the merchant's voice
sunk veiy low, at the same time that his hand, which had
been toying with the. tassel of the tidy on Mary Haviland's
chair, fell over on her lap and rested there, partially upon"
one of her own. Then it crept closer to the companion
member, and at last encompassed it. Neither of the motions
were opposed or resisted by the young wife. The grasp of
the merchant closed warm around the little hand in his own,
and Mary Ilaviland heard him utter a deep, low sigh, almost
a groan in its intensity. The instant after, she saw him
spring to his tout and clasp his haud to his brow, as if some

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 318

sudden pain had struck him there or some deadly recollection
stung him like an asp. It was the most natural thing in the
world for the little woman to spring from her chair and grasp
her guest by the arm, in real anxiety.

" You are in pain — sick ?" she asked, that bewildering touch
still upon his arm.

" No — }*es," with another sigh, half a tone still lower than
its predecessor. " Do not mind me, I beg of you."

" But I must mind you !" said the wife. " I cannot see you
suffer and be unmoved."

" Can you not ? Then God bless your kind, good heart !"
said the consummate actor, sinking back again into his chair
and allowing the little hand to slide down his arm until it not
only touched his hand but actually took it unbidden. Then
a shudder as he felt the touch, and then he continued: "And
yet I am afraid, Mrs. Haviland — may I not say Mary ? — that
I must either never come into your presence1 again, or you
may be doomed to see much more of such suffering, without
any power in the world to relieve it." He was calmer now
(as an attendant physician might have said after the paroxysm
of a patient), and did not sigh again in the same heart-rending
manner.

"What can you mean ?" asked the young wife, her hand
still retaining his in her grasp, with some kind of idea in her
heart that she was playing ministering angel. So she was,
but — bless her little innocent heart ! — to a very different sub
ject from what she imagined.

" Oh, I am a fool, if not a villain !" said the merchant, his
whole expression one of dissatisfaction and anger with him
self for this betrayal. " What right have I to cloud your life
with my unhappiness, with my — "

" Unhappiness !" echoed the young wife, to whom, it must
be confessed, spite of the content of her state, unlimited
wealth and position had seemed to be a bar against the pos
sibility of such a thing as that word represented. "Unhap
piness ? You, so good and so powerful, unhappy?"

" I could bite off my tongue for allowing me to .utter that
word," exclaimed the merchant. "And yet it is out, and I
cannot recall it. Unhappiness ? yes ! — of course you could

811 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

not be aware of the fact, but I have no home, and have never
had one. There are words Chat we cannot speak, and some
that we must not. But after my unguarded speech," (oh,
very unguarded !) " I suppose that I owe you the justice of
explaining that my home is a hell, and that my marriage has
never been any thing more than a mockery."

How sadly he seemed to be in earnest, now! — and how
impossible it seemed that all this could be assumed ! Alas !
— in this pne passage he assumed nothing, as the reader of
this narration is partially aware, and as he may become more
fully -convinced before it closes. And who does not know
how much more terribly real the tragedian becomes, though
only pla}ring his part, when he chances upon some passage
which befits his own real life ?

" My dear, good friend ! How I pity you !" said Mary
Haviland, his hand yet in hers and their chairs very near.

" 'Pity's nkin to love' — Shakspeare !" said the merchant to
himself. " I arn getting on famously." But his lips uttered
something very different.

" Yes, you do pity me — I believe it, I know it !" he said,
his hand more than returning the kindly pressure. "And
that — can you believe it ?— makes me more wretched."

" My pity make you wretched !" echoed the young wife,
not fully enough versed in the alchemy of human thought to
understand how that effect could be produced.

" Yes, wretched beyond thought !" said the merchant.
"Oh Mrs. Haviland — Mary — you do not know how I am
torturing myself as well as you, and yet what a straw I am
on the current of a misery I cannot resist. I came to bid you
good-bye, and I meant to do so, calmly; but see what a child
I have been — what a child I am !"

"To bid me good-bye?" asked the wife. "What do you
mean ?"

" That I am going to Europe to-morrow," said the actor,
" and that I could not go without seeing you— you and your
little house once more."

" Going to Europe !" said the wrife, and her tone and man
ner were so sincere that the close observer had no difficulty
iu discerning how she felt the coming loneliness.

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 315

"Yes," answered the merchant, "I am suddenly called
there, and I must be absent for weeks, at least. I can bid
good-bye to my own lonely home without one pang; but if
you only knew, Mary — there, you see I have called you by
that sweet name again, and you have not scolded me ! — if
you only knew how much of my enjoyment — of my happi
ness — has lain for weeks past in the visits I have paid to
this little house — how much nearer, even for a few brief
hours, it has been to supplying me a hame than any other
spot in the world, — you would know what has so unmanned
me and made me a child when I. came for a moment again
into a heaven of goodness, to go out of it for so long !"

He had risen as he spoke the last words, and reached over
to the little table on which it had been set, for his hat. He
was going, and going for so long. How kind and good and
flattering he had been, to be happy in her humble dwelling
when he could not be in his own luxurious home ! What a
good, honest, impulsive man he was, and how little the world
could be likely to understand him ! How much of her life
he had lately made, and how lonely she should be during
his absence ! Such were the thoughts of Mary Haviland — .
just those thoughts, nothing less or more. And when
Charles Holt moved towards the door of the little room and
she said : " I am really so sorry you are going !" her soul
was in her words as well as in her face. And when Charles
Holt, as if moved by an irresistible impulse for which he
could not be more accountable than the madman for his ac
tion or the man under the influence of the exhilerating gas
for his antic, — when Charles Holt sprang forward, said :
"Mary — dear Mary! good-bye and God bless you !" caught
his arm with convulsive suddenness around her and pressed
his burning lips to hers, — she did not repulse him or even
start back ; nay more, it is to be believed that beneath the
hot pressure of his lips there was for one instant the throb
of a sensation through the rose-leaves under which the sweet
blood coursed ! — that she actually returned his kiss !

Close your spiritual eyes as well as your physical ones, oh
Burtnett Haviland, soldier in the Army of the Union, as you
stand on guard on one of the wharves at Alexandria and hear

316 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

the Potomac rippling by in the twilight ! Close them, so
that by no chance you can peer through the many miles of
dusky air lying between the Yirginian city and your wedded
home, and see how foul a serpent is creeping into the para
dise of 3Tour love, and how the flowers do not even shrink
away and fold themselves at the approach of his poison !

And you, ye overmatching intelligences who make record
of every minute as well as every day of our mortal lives ! — •
be careful how you do your duty at this moment ! Analyze
well that subtle substance called the heart of woman, before
3rou set down' the record that can never be blotted away !
There are very sad shames and wrongs in the world, but
there are benevolences. Woman's life is one long martyr
dom to the drain made upon her heart, even as man's be
comes a torture and a suicide under the demands made upon
his brain. If there is shame and wrong, let it be so recorded ;
but if a holier feeling moves and the heart is blind instead
of erring, let the record bear no more. For the same Divine
Lips that added to the merciful dismissal of the woman taken
in adultery : " Sin no more !"— -^promised eternal blessings to
the giver of even a cup of cold water in the name of Faith
and Goodness ; and there may be those who bear the benevo
lence even upon their lips, that they believe shall save from
wretchedness and despair, and who therein sin not but blindly
and erringly tread a path whose last footstep will yet be
within the courts of Heaven !

" Without any exception the most successful little opera
tion I have managed in a long while," said Charles Holt, to
himself, as wrhile Mary Havilan J, her head all a strange whirl
which she by no means understood, was preparing sleepy
little Pet for her crib, he stepped again into the long-delayed
carriage and was~whirled down the Avenue. "If she ever
forgets that kiss, or ever again closes the door that I have so
snugly opened, until I am quite as willing to do it as herself
• — then my name is not Charles Holt, or I am a milksop.
'Now I can afford to go to Europe, and who knows how ripe1
some of the fruit may be against I return !"

Probably some of the billiard players who were knock
ing away at the balls in the buck room of a saloon on the

THE PAYS OF SHODDY. 317

Third Avenue just above Thirty-fifth Street, and who certain! j
could not be accused of being over-censorious in their morals
— seeing that Sunday was their grand gala day there, — would
have shuddered a little and missed some very easy caroms,
had they known what was the real errand of the well-dressed
and emincntly-respectable-looking man who a few minutes
afterwards stepped into the bar of that establishment, asked
to look at the Directory, and came back to the billiard-room
to find it. Quite as probably the post-man whose full name
and direction were just then so diligently sought after, might
have indulged in a corresponding shudder, had he been aware
of the temptation which was a few minutes later to be offered
him. But the billiard-players were ignorant, and if the
post-man had any scruples it is to be believed that he parted
with them at a stated price, as men have habitually done
from the days of Judas downward. Certain it is that Charles
Holt succeeded in transacting his business to his eminent
satisfaction, though his purse became somewhat lightened
thereby; and that within a very short space of time there
after he was set down by the carriage and dismissed it (after
paying nearly all the vehicle was worth) at the door of his
own house on Fifth Avenue.

He passed into the house,' as we have seen him do on a
former occasion, with his pass-key and without summoning a
servant. His splendid drawing-rooms lay in the same cold
and empty magnificence that has before been indicated. A
servant, hearing his step in the hall, came up from the
"lower regions," saw that it was "the master," and dodged
down again. He entered his own room, found 'the light burn
ing low, turned it up, lit a cigar, threw himself into the easy
chair and smoked a few minutes with his eyes closed. Then
he threw away the half-smoked cigar, turned his face to the
ceiling a,s if listening, remained perfectly silent for a moment,
with a "Humph !" passed out again into the lighted hall, and
ascended the broad stairway. His tread was slow and loiter
ing — the exact opposite of what it had been when running
up the steps of the house on East Forty-eighth Street — the
precise antipodes of the step of a lover hurrying to meet the
dearest object in the world. He trod slowly: had he known

318 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

the future, he certainly would have trodden yet slower or he
would never have ascended that stair at all ; for there was a
drop of life-blood (whose — no matter) oozing away at every
step !

At the head of the stair he turned to the left and followed
the upper hall so many feet as brought him to a door imme-
d;;itdv over his own. It was closed, and he tapped lightly
upon it with his hand. No answer from within. Then he
tupped louder, and waited an instant. Still no answer.

" Humph ! I wonder if she can be out at this time in the

evening, or only " he did not close the sentence, but

open6d the door and entered. What he saw when within,
must be set down at a little more length than the extent of
his observation at that moment.

The room, immediately over his own, was of the same size,
and fitted up with the same luxury for female purposes that
his showed for tbe uses of manhood. The curtains were of
heavy dark blue silken damask, and the walls of blue several
shades lighter ; the two sofas and the chairs were of rose
wood, covered with some very rich dark blue worsted stuff
with silken raised figures ; the carpet was Venetian, of a rich
small pattern and warm colors ; a massive pier-glass filled
the space between the windows, from floor to ceiling ; a piano
with legs of carved rosewood showing beneath the heavy
dark cloth, stood on one side of the room ; two or three feet
from the pier-glass stood a table, the legs also of carved rose
wood, covered with a damask cloth, and on it a liqueur-case,
with glasses, a basket with cake and a salver half filled with
hot-house grapes ; near it stood a small table with chess-men
and a pack of cards in a counter case ; and beyond it still
another, of larger size, had several costly articles of vertu,
scattered over it. A splendidly appointed room, and yet a
most painful one to look in upon. For the carpet was
stained and littered ; the cover on the piano was awry ; one
of the sofas was slewed out of its place and the tables ar
ranged without any regard to propriety ; one of the glasses
on the large table was tumbled over, a bottle out of the
liqueur-case, and a piece of cake lying over the side of the
basket; and looking through a door leading out of the apart-

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 319

ment into a smaller one adjoining it, a tumbled bed could be
seen, evidently lounged upon and then remaining unmade.
Splendor in neglect and ruin — so unlike what could be seen
in any other portion of the house that it has been our duty
to traverse.

And yet this was not all — no, nor the one-millionth detail
of the painful sight which revealed itself under the lighted
chandelier to the eye of the merchant, and which must have
filled any other observer with disgust and horror. > For at the
foot of the sofa standing opposite the door, as if she had
tumbled from it in restless sleep, lay Olympia Holt — her un
bound hair streaming backwards on the floor ; her dress
\vofully disarranged, so that the contour of the splendidly
rounded limb was too plainly revealed ; her dress of rich dark
silk unloosed at the throat and bust ; and her breathing that
short stertorous snort which tells the condition of a sleeper
better than almost any other test that can be applied. A
most painful — a most disgusting sight ! If the room showed
splendor neglected and in ruins, what was this ? — a beautiful
woman prone and insensible on the floor — humanity also in
ruins, and that humanity of the same sex which supplied our
mothers, our sisters, our wives and sweet-hearts !

" Drunk and insensible on the floor, by all that is unen
durable !" was the exclamation of the spectator. "What
is the next degradation ? That was the reason every
thing was so still. Here ! hallo ! wake up !" and he ad
vanced across the room, stooped down and shook the sleep
ing woman. Apparently he might as well have attempted
to wake one of the mummied Ptolemies whom the antiqua
rians will not leave alone in their crypts. A second shake,
and he desisted from the attempt. As he ceased, the eyes
of the sleeping woman opened, though how much they saw
was doubtful. The disgusted husband did not see that they
opened at all, for when he looked down they were apparently
close shut, "and there certainly had been no change in the
breathing. Disgusted — did we say ? — that word faintly ex
presses 'the sensations of the husband, fresh (however un-
holily) from the presence of beauty and purity, and outraged

320 T II E I) A Y S OF SHODDY.

by this spectacle of degradation to a degree beyond words
and almost beyond thought. How much of this had he
before endured, whether the fault \vhich originated it was
his own or that of some other ? What writhings' might the
proud man, splendid even in his vices, have suffered during
long years of this debasement ? It seemed as if he must have
endured much, for his lip set heavily and his brow lowered
threateningly. " Sot ! disgrace !" at length broke from lips
that seemed .to speak without opening ; and at the same mo
ment, moved by an impulse for which he could not probably
himself have accounted, and under the culmination of a
feeling of shame and anger which had been accumulating
for years, with whatever of justice or injustice, — this man,
who had never before in all his life broken the great first law
of chivalry by laying violent hand upon a woman, with a
muttered curse drew back his booted foot and twice so vio
lently kicked the sleeper that he even moved the body upon
the floor ! There was no sign of sensibility, that he saw,
though the eyes opened again as he turned away, then closed
again as suddenly.

The merchant stepped to the bell, rang it violently and
waited a moment. A female servant came rapidly up the
stairs, tapped, stepped within the room, and waited for his
orders.

" Get one of the other girls, undress that woman and put
her to bed," he ordered. " When she gets so that she can
understand you, if she ever does, tell her that I am going to
England to-morrow, and that I stepped to her room to tell
her as much, but found her so sick that she conld not listen
to me. That is all— go !"

The servant disappeared down the stairs in search of the
required assistance. The merchant, with one look at the mass
of lost womanhood on the floor, went out, closed the door
and descended to his own room, which he did not afterwards
leave until his carriage was called at nearly eleven. But the
door of Olympia Holf's room had only closed behind him,
when the degraded woman opened her eyes once more,
struggled to a sitting position, shook her trembling fist after

THE DAYS OF S ft O D D Y. 321

ith an expression on the face that if drunken was yet
riac, and muttered thickly through her clenched teeth :
retch ! devil 1 It has come at last ! Be careful, now,
er get a chance at you !"

CHAPTER XVI.

KATE HAVILAND'S NEXT AND LAST VISIT TO MARY — CITY
AND COUNTRY MORALS AND THE GENERAL APPRECIATION
THEREOF — A WOMAN who HAD BEEN CRYING, AND WHO

GLANCED TOO MITCH OUT OF THE WINDOW— HOW THE TWO

" AGREED TO DISAGREE" — No LETTERS, AND THE STORY OF
THE GUARD-HOUSE — Miss SARAH SANDERSON'S SUPPLEMEN
TARY INFORMATION.

THE peculiar feeling which opprcssd Kate Haviland, with
reference to the wife of her cousin, after the episode of the
ambrotype, and after that visit to Forty-eighth Street which
revealed to her the (supposed) fact that her cousin-by-mar
riage was in the habit of going to theatres with a comparative
stranger during the absence of her husband, — cannot very
well be described and could not easily be analyzed even by
the young girl herself. Herself pure as the modest little vio
let that she had been in the habit of plucking under the hedges
and by the borders of the woods iu the early spring-time-
she knew and thought of vice only as a name ; but she had
caught the name and heard of the reality, nevertheless. She
had heard in her quiet country home, that the great city was
one correspondingly great haunt of vice and crime, where sin
was the rule and virtue the exception ; and she had necessa
rily contracted something of that indefinable horror which
many of the good people of the country indulge towards the
city, who believe in the exploded nonsense about green fields
making mankind more honest and upright than stone pave
ments, — and who do uot know that the country " party," its
20

322 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

"night-meetings" and its long and lonely walks in a wooded
solitude unattainable within the "fire limits," exert the same
doubtful influences that are brought into play and allowed scope
by the ball, the theatre, and places more openly dedicated
to the service of vice, in the city so set under ban. Those
good people who cannot be brought to believe that tempta
tion can assume the same dangerous and insidious forms, un
der the green trees and in the rustic paradises of the country,
and do the same effectual work of desolating the heart and
the life, as on pavements and under tiled roofs that cover
three or four stories ; — who do not suspect that the same
moral ruin can be wrought among budding boys and incipient
young men, playing division-loo or draw-poker all the Sunday
long in the upper story of the country wheel-wright shop or the
hay-mow of the farmer, that could be entailed upon them by
the plate-glassed and gilded gambling-halls of the metropolis ;
• — \vho do not know that Old Bill, buying his bad liquor by
the keg, and keeping himself in a continual muddle with
potations of it a.s he sits at home — or Young Bill, dashing
about with his fast team and stopping to drink half a dozen
times at each of the country taverns he passes, — is going
quite as prosperously down the road of drunkenness as any
old maa or young man of the city, who procures his means
of intoxication at the most splendid or the most degraded
of the places of universal supply; who do not realize that
frivolity goes to church under the little white spire in the vil
lage, just as frivolity displays itself in the pews of Bro\vn —
that misers crawl and schemers plot, universally — that the
good and the evil exist everywhere, so mixed and blended
that no mortal eye can discern their boundaries — that thefts,
slanders, marital falsehoods, debaucheries, unhappy and crimi
nal marriages, murders, and all the long array of crimes,
spring up on every square rood of God's footstool, as rank
fungi in dank and rotting swamps, — and that there is no ex
clusive patent for goodness or even for wickedness, existing
in any particular' spot of the earth's surface because it hap
pens to be capped with a flag-stone or tufted with a few blades
of grass.

Sharp, bright, intelligent Kate Haviland had imbibed

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 323

something of this prejudice of the country against the city,
long before, and only living in it for a few weeks had not yet
been able to make the proper mental equation. She had but
two points of view of society in the city — the Fullerton
house, and that of her cousin. The first was not by any
means such a place as would be likely to disabuse a young
mind of unfavorable impressions ; and what had she seen of
tire state of affairs at the second ? Much as she had loved
and respected Mary, and much as she was disposed yet to
love and respect her, the omens might have been puzzling
if not unfavorable, to more hackneyed minds than that of the
teacher ; it seemed to her that any thing and anybody, however
pure, might be corrupted in such a Babel ; and the fact is that
she quitted Forty-eighth Street, on the day of the visit there
before recorded, with her head in a whirl, her heart ill at ease,
and a sort of dim and indefinite impression creeping over her
that all her country education had been only a tithe of the
truth, and that New York must be a second Sodom, worso
than the original and somehow forgotten in the punitory
distributions of aerial brimstone in a state of combustion.

As a result of these things, the foot of the young girl did not
cross the threshold of her cousin's house for weeks, confident
as she would have been, under other circumstances, of Mary's
loneliness, and much as she might have been anxious, under
those circumstances, to relieve that loneliness and comfort
her in her husband's absence. She believed that Mary llavi-
land, without guilt but iu great weakness, was " consoling"
herself; and that belief at once removed the wish 'and the
duty. Then the young girl had really plenty to do iu the
Fullerton residence, what with the arrogances of Mrs. Ful
lerton (never quite so decided, however, since her signal
discomfiture in the great "overhauling'')'; the impertinences
of Miss Dora; the difficulty of keeping Myra and Mildred
from the most serious infractions of all those rules supposed
to be set down for the government of children not intended
for subsequent savage life ; and another little occupation, ia
the frequent presence of Mr. Ned Minthorne in the school
room, of which something more will be seen at a very early
period. All these causes, combined, kept her absent from

324 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

the house until the beginning of June, and consequently
ignorant of any tiling that had occurred there since her
previous visit.

But one pleasant June morning, past the middle of that
month, when Mrs. Fullerton had declared her intention of
taking both Myra and Mildred down-town and having one
more portrait taken of each of the dear children — so that
they would have no studies demanding her attention until the
afternoon, — bonny Kate felt all her good-nature predominant
and her desire to see how Mary was "getting along" alto
gether too strong to be resisted. She smoothed down her
chestnut hair a little, swung herself twice round before the
glass in her room to see that her dress of pretty brown-and-
white French gingham had the proper fall and sweep for the
street, crowned her rattle-head with a coquettish little jockey
hat (just then coming into use), and sallied forth for a walk
and a voyage of discovery.

Her cheeks glowing with the exercise of her walk of a
mile and a half, and her blood tingling pleasantly with the
soft June air and the sun that she felt were both playing
among the opening roses around her old home in the country,
the young girl reached the little house on Forty-eighth Street,
rang, and was admitted by Mary Haviland herself. The
first glance that Kate caught of the face of the wife, told her
that some marked change had come upon her. She looked
troubled, care-worn and anxious, and it did not need much
imagination to believe that there had recently been tears in
her eyes. This would have been quite enough to disarm any
ungenerous suspicion of her young cousin, and to put the two
good, whole-hearted and loveable little souls once more en
rapport with each other, as they had always before been and
as they never should have ceased to be, — but that two
hindrances intervened. First : Kate noticed that when
Mary took her seat near the window of the front room and
resumed her sewing that had been temporarily interrupted,
her eyes were most of the time downcast in a manner quite
unusual for her ; and that the rest of the time they were
glancing about, and especially towards the window, in a
troubled and restless way that seemed furtive and anxious to

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 325

escape observation. This was not the Mary of old — Kate
said to herself; and as she had many a time read that the
eye of guilt was downcast and furtive, there seemed some-
Dung in her conduct to corroborate the most painful suspicions.
Besides — and here a new light broke upon the very keen
young person, quite as reliable as many of the lights which
guide the feet of elder people until they lose their way
and tumble over. She had no knowledge, of course, that
Charles Holt had gone to Europe : and the thought crept
into her busy brain — what if his visits had become so frequent
that Mary had no idea at what time of day another might
occur, and if her furtive glances towards the window and the
constant clown-casting of her eyes should be in anxiety to see
him and fear of an awkward arrival while she [Kate] w^s in
the house ! If she thought such really was the case, how
quickly she wouM get out of that house and never set foot
jn it again while Burnett llaviland was absent and such
visits were permitted — never.

Second : Mary Haviland herself had a word to say about
any continued cordiality between Kate and herself. She had
depended much upon Kate's running over often to see her,
and making company in her loneliness. Since her husband's
departure, she had only called three or four times, and within
the past three weeks, not at all. She probably — Mary thought
• — had found gayer company down at the rich house on
Twenty-third Street, and did not care to spend any of her
valuable time upon a poor " grass-widow. " If so, let her
stay away — that was all ! And as a consequence, though
Mary received her visitor kindly enough, that day, she did
so without any pretence at cordiality ; and so barrier number
t\vo between the little women was firmly established.

Kate did not ask after Burtnett and when his wife had
heard from him. She really did not dare do so, after her ob
servations of the wife's face and manner, for fear of increasing
her agitation and producing an effect by no means desirable.
Mary wondered why she did not inquire, was ready to pour
out her whole heart-full of trouble if she only would do so,
and thought her more heartless than ever from the omission.
So that bond -winch mi "'lit. and should have drawn them to-

326 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

gether hold them apart — not to be joined again for — alas ! —
how long !

Does the picture seem exaggerated ? Do not kind, good,
whole-hearted people, who have the dearest reasons in the
world for clinging together more closely than one fibre of oak
to another, grow separated in this manner, from vague sus
picions and slight misunderstandings that should not be al
lowed to influence them for one moment, and sometimes
never unite again while the life of both endures ? We fear,
too sadly, that they do, and that in the great day of final
account, not open quarrels resulting from radical differences,
but nameless nothings springing from one word too much,
one glance too many, or the lack of one or the other, will be
found to have desolated more human hearts than all the
battle-fields of history have sacrificed of human bodies !

The veriest commonplaces, that might have been indulged
by two strangers accidentally meeting, instead of two persons
connected by the closest ties of blood and old acquaintance,
were the result of all this. Little Pet ran in from the other
room, eventually, lugging a doll a little larger than herself ;
and in Kate's involuntary catching her up and hugging her
out of all discretion, there was for one moment a chance that
the feelings of both might melt and confidence be re-estab
lished. But no ! — Her High Mightiness was not in the best
of humors, and she had some suspicion that the raiment
of her darling (which said darling had lost one leg and was
in a serious state of dilapidation) might be creased by the
too-close pressure, 'and consequently she was put down in a
moment, after uttering this solemn and impressive adjuration
and statement :

" Put Pet down, Katy ! 'Oo muss up Dolly ! Pet don't
like 'oo !"

Within ten minutes Kate Haviland discovered that her
time was nearly exhausted, or, in other words, that she had
never before found the atmosphere of the house so uncon
genial and did not care to stay in it another moment. How
ever, there was one point upon which she intended to satisfy
herself before leaving — that of the ambrotype. Though she
had not since heard any thing of it as in the possession of Mr.

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 327

Holt or the Fullertons, yet that such a picture of Mary had
been in their hands was beyond doubt : would the wife, if
the subject should be introduced, honestly state how it came
to be out of her own custody ? If so, there might not be
any seriops misconduct, after all ; while falsehood or pre
varication would stamp the intention as an improper one be
yond peradventure. There was nothing, for this end, but to
repeat, with variations, the same manoeuvre that had been
practised upon Sarah ; and this the young girl immediately
put in practice. Shaking off her depression, so far as was
possible, humming a snatch, meanwhile, from the popular
opera, " I Handorgani," she rose from her chair and stepped
to the mantel, apparently having discovered some new beauty
in the photograph of Pet which hung over it. After stand
ing there a moment and fumbling a little among the pictures
and other iricumbrances of that usually overloaded receptacle,
she said, in the most natural of tones and as if there was not
a thought of purpose in the inquiry :

" Seems to me, Mary, that some of your pictures are gone
off the mantel. What has become of them all ? There was
a very pretty little ambrotype of yourself, that I was admir
ing when I came up to the city and meant to ask you to give
me some day. I don't see it now."

" I do not know what you can possibly mean," answered
the young wife, with that candor born of truth. " I dusted
off the mantel not an hour ago, and every picture was there
that has been there for the last six months, I am sure."

Kate turned and looked at her as she said this. Not one
indication in her face that she was telling a falsehood (as she
was not — the reader well knows). But Kate knew (or
thought that she knew — which was quite the same thing !)
that this must be a falsehood ; and she said to herself that
the woman who could conceal or pervert the truth in this
manner, without one sign of blenching on the countenance,
must be a miserable little deceiver, altogether unworthy of
credit in any particular. Whereupon, without any further
experiments as to -her cousin's truth, she turned away from
the mantel, curtly said that "her time was up, and she must
go back to her school-room," bade Mary good-morning and

328 • THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

ran down the stairs to the street-door, leaving the house with
a determination that she would not come into it again in one
while — that she wouldn't!

Poor Mary Haviland sighed, after Kate had left the room.
During all the brief visit she had felt that some marked change
must certainly have taken place in the young girl — that her
words were curt and her manner dictatorial — and that the
last chance of Kate's affording to herself any companionship
during the absence of her husband, was quite as effectually
gone as if she had been dead. If such was to be the atmo
sphere thrown out by one of her visits, she had no 'objection
whatever to her remaining absent all the while ; for there in
one thing worse than utter loneliness — uncongenial company;
and at the moment when Alexander Selkirk fancied himself
arrived at the summit of human unhappiness in his little
retirement on the isle of Juan Fernandez, there is no doubt
whatever that he might have been made much more miserable
than any loneliness- could make him, by the presence of one
ignorant, peeping, chattering human magpie of his own sex,
or one woman who had the happy faculty of always misun
derstanding and crossing him — always wanting to stay at
home and scrub the poles of his hut when he particularly
wished her to go fishing with him — always going to sleep in
the midst of the m6st thrilling passage of the story he was
telling her — and always managing to be asleep and snoring
when he came to bed.

Kate Haviland had decided that Mary's beaten eyes, furtive
glances and general depression indicated "something wrong. "
So they did, too truly ; but how far were they from indi
cating, in truth, what she suspected ! The young wife was
unhappy — wretched — miserable ! — how truly miserable, only
those can conjecture who have had the whole fabric of their
happiness seem to crumble away as suddenly and as tho
roughly. Yesterday the mistress of a happy home, with a
husband fondly loving and as fondly beloved, at her side :
to-day a lonely wife, widowed perhaps by something worse
than death I

Not one single letter for a whole long month. Not one.
Writing often herself, but receiving no answer — none. There

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 329

could be no mistake in the matter, for had she not interro
gated the postman at the door, after waiting- in vain for
weeks, and received his assurance that every letter for that
distribution passed into his hands, and that none had come,
bearing her name ? This indicated sickness and perhaps
death. No — for in the one case some comrade would cer
tainly advise the wife, at his request, of the situation of the
husband ; and in the other the officers of the regiment would
consider it their duty to convey the intelligence of their
bereavement to the afflicted family. No — sickness or death
could not be the cause: something worse must certainly have
supervened. And what could be that " something worse"'/

One channel of information was beyond the meddling of
Charles Holt and his postman, and accessible to Mary llavi-
land as well as to others. That channel was the daily news
paper, with its correspondents everywhere and all the while
peeping and grasping for the least item of information con
cerning the men and the movements of any of the local
regiments. From the newspaper she learned that the com
pany of the Fire Zouaves to which her husband belonged,
had been for some time detached from the body of the regiment
and employed in guarding the government warehouses in
Alexandria. That company, then, was within easy reach of
Washington and the mails, and the failure could not be on
account of any difficulty in communication. That knowledge
made the mystery greater and the heart of the young wife
more hopelessly sad as she endeavored to fathom it.

Then, only the day before Kate's visit, she had what ap
peared to be a peep behind the curtain. And such a peep ! —
if a true one, she prayed heaven that she might be spared
any closer and more definite. That evening one of her few
'• pleasant neighbors " " happened in," to chat a few moments
and to " give her a little company when she knew she must
be so lonesome," as the visitor kindly expressed it. It did
not become evident to the wife, but it would have done so to
a close observer, that the visit was paid especially to un bur
then the mind of the visitor of certain news that was trouble
some in the keeping and needed help to hold it properly.
Not five minutes of conversation had elapsed when the

3.30 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

" pleasant neighbor" took occasion to remark that one of her
relatives had just been clown at Washington and Alexandria,
and that, among other persons, he had seen Burtnett Havi-
land.

" Did he see him ?" asked the young wife, glad at last to
hear something definite from him — that he was alive and with
bis regiment, — and ready to pour out her whole heart to the
kind friend who had been so good as to bring her news of her
husband.

" Yes, he saw him," said the visitor, " and no doubt you
are glad to hear from him, though I suppose he writes very
often."

The young wife was just about to give her the startling
information that for weeks past he seemed not to have written
at all, and the statement might have provoked comment and
inquiry not favorable to the success of the plotters : but the
tongue of the " pleasant neighbor" was too rapid for her, and
before she could undeceive her on that point, the informant
went on :

" But oh, my dear, I don't believe your letters tell you the
half of what is going on down there. The soldiers do not
appear to have gone down to fight, but just for a spree. You
must not feel hurt about it, my dear, but John says that the
company at Alexandria is doing nothing but drink — drink —
drink, gamble, and — some other things that I think I had
better not mention to you."

The heart of the wife beat quick for an instant, then sunk
low and almost died within her. But she forced herself to
be calm and indeed to smile some kind of a sickly libel upon
merriment, as she said :

" Oh, Burtnett tells me that they are enjoying themselves;
but are they so very wild ?"

" Yery wild ? Enjoying themselves ? I should think so,
my dear!" said the "pleasant neighbor." " Oh, you don't
half know what goings on they have, nearly all the time ; and
I fancy your husband would not be very likely to write in
any of his letters what I hear about him."

"About him ?" gasped the wife.

"Yes, about him!" echoed the informant. "I don't know

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 331

that I ought to have said any thing about it. I did not moan
to say a word, but I have let rny foolish tongue run away
with me, and gone so far, now, that I suppose I must tell you
the whole of it. Don't be too much hurt, my dear."

" I ? oh, I shall not be hurt at all !" answered the young
wife, forcing such a discordant laugh as some sufferer on the
rack might utter to prove that mind was still superior to
matter.

"Soldiers are a horrid set, always — no offence to your hus
band, my dear," pursued the visitor. " I suppose they are
all alike when they get away from our sight, so there is no
use in thinking too much about them. Well, it seems that
the whole town is full of women of the very worst character —
worse than any of the dreadful wretches on Broadway, and
you know how bad they are !"

" I have heard," said the wife, in a low tone.

"Well," said the visitor, "the town is full of just such
dreadful women, and a good many of the soldiers forget that
they have any wives at home."

" I do not believe that of my husband !" said the wife, with
a good deal of her old energy and a little asperity.

" I dare say not," replied the visitor. " That is right — al
ways believe the best you can of these men ; and bad enough
is the best, clear knows ! Well, the other night, while John
was asleep in the quarters of one of the officers, there was an
alarm and a musket fired, and the sentinels rushed towards
an old building not far from the dock, that was used as a sort
of temporary prison. The evening before they had been
obliged to put two or three of the worst of these women' up
in one of the chambers of the upper story, to prevent mischief,
my dear ; and a little after midnight the sentry in the yard
had been nearly killed by a man dropping upon him from the
window of the room where the women were shut up. He
had fired his musket as he fell, and that had caused the alarm.
When the other sentries came, they found that the man who
had fallen from the window was one of the Zouaves. lie
was drunk, and his leg was so badly injured that he could not
get away. They took him up and put him in the guard
house. I need not tell you, my dear, what his name was or

832 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

what his character must have been, to lie up among those
women, at that time of night, and then dropping out of the
window !"

"And you mean to say that soldier was — " gasped the wife ;
and there her voice failed.

" I mean to say that soldier was your husband, if you will
have it all !" said the informant, with the demeanor of a per
son who had been compelled to do a very distasteful duty.

"And I mean to say that it is a falsehood — a base, cruel
falsehood !" uttered the young wife. " I don't believe one
word of it !"

"Just as you please, my dear," said the "pleasant neigh
bor," putting on an air of offended dignity. " That is always
what people get for telling the truth ! The next time you
want to hear from your husband, somebody else may tell you !"

"I hope to heaven somebody else will have sense enough
to keep such news to themselves !" said the wife.

" Hoity toity !" commented the visitor; and she went away
in high dudgeon, to be a bitter enemy of Mary Haviland ever
after. And it may as well be said that she went away to be
hated by Mary Haviland quite as cordially.

But she left an impression behind her that could no more
be shaken off, however the young wife might make the effort,
than the earth can obliterate the chasm made in its bosom by
the earthquake, or the tree the scar ploughed down its side
by the lightning. " I do not believe one word of it!" had
been the reply to the " pleasant neighbor. " But "I do be
lieve too much of it !" was her commi'mion with her own
heart. She had always heard terrible stories of the crimes
and vices of soldiers, though she had thought nothing of them
when her husband went away, and had not even conceived
the possibility of his falling off from his goodness and his love
for her, into any of thorn. What else than this could really
be the explanation of his long silence ? Had he not indeed
been over-tempted, fallen into evil courses from bad compan
ionship, and then" been ashamed even to write to her with the
same hand stained with the coarse vices of the libertine ? He
might not be utterly lost to her — he might come back to her,
some day, if the chances of war should spare him, and be

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 333

nearly the same. But he could never be more than " nearly ;"
for when once a serious flaw begins to exhibit itself in our
idol, though we may love it still, we can never worship it
more.

It was a sleepless night for Mary Haviland, that followed
this revelation ; and in the silence of the dark hours, hugging
up to her bosom the child that had no longer slept in its little
crib since its father's departure, she rained tears on its uncon
scious face, and kissed it, and thought whether some day in
the near future, that would not be all that she could claim as
a reminder of the by-gone happy days ! And it was on the
morning after that night, of all the mornings' of her whole life,
that Kate Haviland visited her and marked her heavy eyes
and her furtive glances at the window. If the young girl
could only have known the fact, those glances at the window
were the truest tests of her agonized love for her husband ;
for she was listening — listening — listening yet, for the ringing
of the bell by the post-man, who might bring her a letter to
disprove all her suspicions and quiet all her fears ; looking —
looking — looking yet, to see him coming up the street and
bringing some word of comfort for her lonely heart.

Suppose that at this stage of the narrative, keeping in
mind the story of the "three black crows" ejected from his
stomach by the unfortunate subject, — we " boil down" the
story of the Zouave dropping from the window, and ascertain
what truth there really was in the report. The task is a very
brief one. During the visit of the " pleasant neighbor's" re
lative to Alexandria, such a circumstance had really occurred.
There were a considerable number of women of loose char
acter in the town, a part of them brought down by a Maine
regiment that should have been Puritanic enough to know
better. Some of them had been abandoned there or left the
command of their own will when the regiment marched away.
On the night in question two or three of the uproarious fe
males were really committed to that upper room in the old
house, and locked up as well as put under guard. During
the night one of the Zouaves managed to elude the sentinel
and climb in at the window, cat-like, just as he had often be4
fore done when intent on saving life or property at a fire.

834 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

After a time he came out again, by the same substitute for a
door, but was careless as well as a little tipsy, missed his foot
ing and tumbled down into the yard below. The sentry fired
as before stated, the other guards came up, and the blending
of Leander and Sam Patch was taken away and put under
lock. So far the story had really been told to the "pleasant
neighbor" by her returned relative. But what had all this to
do with Burtnett Haviland, and how did his name happen to
be involved ? Simply thus. One of the sentries who came
up and arrested the midnight prowler, was the husband of
Mary Haviland, and the narrator mentioned the circumstance
of his being an acquaintance of both. Whether the "pleas
ant neighbor" really managed to get the names confused into
the wrong relation, or whether she- understood the fact all the
while and merely thought that the story would sound better
by making that slight inversion, is a question not easy to de
cide. She told it as before described, with the result indi
cated ; and whether she blundered or plunged wilfully into the
lie, is something which she, not we, may have occasion to
settle hereafter.

Meanwhile, the poison will not be found without its anti
dote, if the first ten readers will take the lesson of this inci
dent and be somewhat more careful of the exactness of the
next relation made by each, that can in any way affect the
character of others.

If Kate Haviland left the little house on Forty-eighth
Street, that day, with her opinion of her cousin's wife sadly
deteriorated, she was destined not to reach her own home
before the depreciation should be much more signal and un
qualified. It so happened that at the moment when she
quitted the house, Sarah Sanderson, having disposed of the
breakfast-dishes and put the kitchen into the requisite order,
was about sallying out, basket on arm, to make some family
purchases at the grocery at the corner. She came down the
stoop very close behind the young teacher, and quickening
her steps a little, came up to her before she had half measured
the distance between the house and the Third Avenue. The
two girls, as will be remembered, had been born very
nearly together, and though not moving in precisely the same.

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 335

rank in society, were necessarily well acquainted. As they
joined company that morning, a few words of conversation
were inevitable. These were commonplaces, until Kate, mil
of the thoug-ht of her cousin, felt constrained to say :

" Sarah, Mrs. Haviland says that there has no picture gone
off the mantel since I came to the city."

Sarah, who well remembered the previous conversation,
felt it necessary to back up what she had said on that occa
sion, and threw up her own unoccupied hand in holy horror,
as she exclaimed :

" Oh ! — what — a — story !"

" I thought so !" said Kate, sententiously. " But you need
not tell Mrs. Haviland that I asked any thing about it. I
suppose she knows her own business."

Something in the young girl's tone told the servant that she
was displeased with Mary Haviland ; and that restless devil
of hate to the wife of the man she loved, lately called into
renewed life by the wrongs she was inflicting upon that wife,
suggested that this must be the proper period to speak a truth
to her prejudice.

" Mrs. Haviland ought to know her own business," said the
flaxen-haired little wretch. " But if you had seen all that /
have, Miss Kate, maybe you would not think she did !"

Xow if there was any thing in the world that Kate Haviland
hated and despised, it was prying into family business through
servants ; and at almost any other time, had she been so
addressed by Sarah, she would have closed the conversation
by the curt : " Mind your own concerns, and don't meddle
with those of your mistress !" but just then she was puzzled
and worried. Eve has left in all the descendants of her own
sex (as well as a few of the other) proof that she ate the
apple not because .she coveted or needed it, but from curiosity
to know how such a thing as a golden pippin might taste ; and
the desire to gain at least some clue to the matter that was
evidently wrong in her cousin's family, made the present temp
tation too strong for the teacher. She did not rebuff the ten
derer of illicit information, but rather encouraged as well as
piqued her with :

" Ah ? and what have you seen, I' should like to know ?"

33 3 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

" I seen " (the writer is not responsible for Miss Sarah
Sanderson's grammar, any more than for the peculiar lingual
gymnastics of some of the other characters embodied in this
.story) — " I seen Mr. Holt, the merchant that brings her the
money, have Mrs. Haviland in his arms the other night, hug-
gin' and kissin' her."

" Sarah Sanderson, you are telling me a lie !" said the
young girl, turning suddenly upon her.

For one instant the eyes of the servant blazed with rage,
then they softened, and she said, looking the teacher steadily
in the face :

" I hope I may die this minute, if he didn't, and if I didn't
see it with my own eyes I"

" You dare swear to that ?" asked Kate Haviland, shocked
and yet half convinced.

" I do swear to it, now !" said the girl, "and may I never
live to see to-morrow if it is not the truth !" The reader
knows that she wan telling the truth, or at least something
very nearly approaching to it; though there has not before
been occasion to reveal the fact that Sarah Sanderson, on the
night before the merchant's departure for Europe, was keeping
a close watch through the door between the two rooms, and
that the merchant was not sufficiently prudent in the location
of his demonstrations to prevent her seeing the most import
ant event that occurred.

This blow, coming so close upon the others, somewhat
staggered the teacher, and made her almost as blind in the
eyes and dizzy in the head as she had been a few weeks be
fore when confronted by her own shame and Xed Minthorne.
It would have needed but little more to make her totter in
the street — twenty years older, and under the same pressure
of feeling, she would have done so.

" Lost ! lost ! oh, poor Burtey !" washer mental comment.
But her lips syllabled something different, and that was :

" Sarah Sanderson, if you are telling me the truth, you
have been doing right in telling it to me, because I am a rel
ative ; but if you ever say as much to any one else, even to
Mr. II -iv i I and when he comes back, without my permission,
yon will be doing very wrong and no one can tell what injury

T HE DAYS O F R II O I) !» V . P,3 ,

you may cause. If you have been telling a falsehood, with
that oath — well, you will get roasted some time, that is all !"

" Humph ! I don't care if you never believe me !" was the
model servant-girl's reply, as having reached her destination
at the corner grocery, she flung away into it with her basket,
not over-well satisfied with herself, while bonnie Kate, to
escape the hot sunshine of the June meridian, took one of
the cars just passing, and was jolted, jerked and pounded
along down the Avenue to Twenty-third street.

Sarah Sanderson would have been somewhat better satis
fied than she really was when she stepped into the grocery
at the corner, could she have known the impression really
made by her words. The information tallied, though shame
fully, with all the circumstances that had preceded it, and
Kate Haviland believed so much of the story that she would
almost have given her right hand for the privilege of dis
crediting it. Her actual concern at the apparent heart-
lessness of Mary and her shame at belonging to the same sex
that could deceive under such a guise of angels of light, found
an odd blending with the reserved merriment of her own
character, just as she stepped from the car at Twenty-third
street and tripped along towards what she sometimes men
tally designated as the Fullerton " menagerie," with herself
the Amazon Queen and trainer of the animals, in the
characteristic remark, not more than half muttered :

" I wish to gracious I was not a woman ! I shall trick
somebody one of these days, I know I shall ! No — I don't
wish any thing of the kind, though ; for if I was a man I should
never know what to do with my bjg hands, and a pretty
figure I should cut with a crop of sedge-grass growing oa
my chin — ough !"

21

CHAPTER XVII.

MORE OF KATE HAVTLAND — HER BTCSC.EST AND MOST IM
PORTANT PUPIL — NED MINTHORNE IN A NEW CHARACTER —
TOBACCO-SMOKE AND IMPUDENCE IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM — A
NEW THEORY IN NATURAL HlSTORY — HOW THE MILLION
AIRE INSPECTED THE COMMON PEOPLE, YOU KNOW KATE

HAVILAND MAKING ANOTHER DISCOVERY AND EXECUTING A
"WAR-DANCE.

Miss KATY had thrown off the worst of her depression,
and concluded to live and be as happy as possible, in spite
of all the wickedness that she supposed to exist in the world,
. — at about the time she reached the house so flatteringly
designated in the previous chapter, tripped up to her cham
ber and disrobed herself of her walking attire, preparatory
to entering the ;< cage" with her "animals."

When she did so, or in other words descended to the
school-room in which she by that time expected to find her
pupils, she found only one bearing that relation, and that one
was altogether of an odd sex and style to come under the
tuition of a young lady, though a good many inconsiderate
persons, holding the same relative position, have first or last put
themselves under the same perilous influence. In short,
Kate Haviland's single pupil was of the male sex, approach
ing six feet high, and looking old enough to have mastered
nearly all the rudiments of ordinary education.

He sat at her desk, or perhaps it may be more correctly
stated that he sat on it, as though a portion of his person
rested on the arm chair in which the daimy figure of the
young girl generally reposed when she was throned in her
full authority, he leaned back so far that at least half his
length, including all his legs, was sprawled upon the desk, his
338

THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

patent-leathers just cosily perched between the ink-stand and
the pot of mucilage, and his stupendous width of trowsers
(thru an innovation, now an almost exploded antiquity)
literally covering the whole of the green cloth of which the
top of the article of school-furniture was composed. The
'trowsers aforesaid, as well as the coat that surmounted them
and the vest which formed an isthmus between the two con
tinents of clothing, was of a very light creamy gray, the
nearest possible approach to white without being it ; the hat
which surmounted his head was of the same color, round
and low in the crown and narrow in the brim, reminding the
observer something of an inverted soup-plate applied to im
proper uses (such hats have since that time become common,
but never " proper," although dignified by the name of
"tourist"); the neck-tie which confined his garotte was of
the richest and bloomiest cherry-color, and the kid-gloves
covering his well-shaped hands were the nearest approach
that could be found at Stewart's, to the same tropical hue.
A switch malacca cane, with the counterfeit presentment of
a woman's bent leg as the head, lay across his lap; and all
this, and the book which the student seemed to be attentively
perusing, was to be seen through a halo of tobacco-smoke
emanating from a cigar of the Emperor brand, not less than
eight inches in length and good for a cost of two hundred
and fif'iy dollars the , thousand, which reposed in a state of
blissful conflagration between his lips.

This was Kate's pupil, by name Ned Mint home ; and she
must have lost something of the awe with which he had
inspired her on that eventful morning^e^'their first meeting,
for her first act on taking in the whpl£/aspect of the man and
his surroundings, was to forget all that had oppressed her
during the morning, to literally double up with merriment
until she leaned against the door frame for support, and to laugh
one of those loud, clear, ringing, girlish laughs which the
hackneyed woman of the world would give half the charms
she has rnanageii to preserve, — to be able to throw out once
more. One of those peals which combine the exquisite
melody of the human voice with the trill of a black-bird
singing in the alders by some brook-side early in spring.

310 THE DAYS OF S II 0 D 1) Y.

One of those embodiments of mirth and melody for which we
might have been puzzled to find a fitting comparison, had
Adelina Patti, the little red-bird of song, never rippled out
"Una voce," " Batti batti," i"E d'amai-mi," — or her rival
sister Carlotta never trilled that " Laughing Song" which
even makes us forget bird-music.

Ned Minthorne, millionaire and noodle, rather seemed to
enjoy the laugh than otherwise, when it had made him fully
aware of the presence of the young girl. He dropped his
book a little lower, but neither put it down altogether nor
took down his feet from the desk, as he said :

" Oh, you are there, are you — you know ! Come here ! — •
I want to talk to you !"

" Bah ! you wretch, spoiling my room and making me sick
the whole day with your tobacco-smoke ! I wish they would
take you men and use you for chimneys when they build
houses, so that you could become avenues for smoke to join-
heart's content !" was the emphatic response to this modest
demand.

" Ha ha ! he he!1' laughed the millionaire, with such an
expression of idiocy that it was really pitiable. " Not a bad
idea, by gracious! I'll ask Trimble, when he builds my next
block of houses, if he can't put in half-a-dozen fellows I know
— you know."

" Ned Minthorne — stop that !" was the reply to this speech.
What the lady meant, may be something of a mystery to us,
but it did not seem to be to the object of the command, for
the expression of his face changed instantly ; and, strangely
enough, he did not seem to feel that his dignity was outraged
by that simple girl, without wealth or position, and nothing
but a school-teacher, addressing him in that reprehensibly
familiar manner. There is reason to believe that had either
the dignified Mrs. Fullerton or her exigeant daughter over
heard that style of address, however, there would have been
stormy weather in and about that latitude, very shortly after
wards.

Not yet did the millionaire noodle make any movement to
take down his feet from the desk. He seemed, in fact, to be
quite as much at ease in that position when the young mis-

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 341

tress of the room was present, as he had been when alone.
He merely held out his hand — that hand so burthened with
the immense seal-ring — and said, again :

" Come here."

The young girl crossed. the room and held out her hand.
He took it in his, lifted it to his lips with a gesture of courtly
grace that would have sat well upon him if he had not been
a fool, and pressed his lips to the fingers that were yet rosy
with the flush of her morning's exercise. The movement did
not seem to be at all repulsive to the young girl, even if it
had riot been expected, for the hand rested in that of the
millionaire a moment even after he had lowered it from his
lips.

" Slop," said Kate. " Where are they ?"

" They — ah — the rhinoceros and the young filly are both
gone out with the cub, and not back yet," was the zoological
response to this very enigmatical question.

" For shame !" said the teacher.

" Well, I am ashamed — see me blush !" said the pupil.

" Back of your ears, so that nobody can see it !" was the
response.

" How very well you are looking this morning !" said the
millionaire. "Now that I see you closer, you are almost
handsome."

"Am I ?" answered the young girl, with a pout on her lip,
real or assumed. " Well, you are not ! You look like every
thing that is dreadful, in that new suit. It is new, isn't it ?
Get off my desk, and come out here \vhere I can have a fair
look at all that cream-color and red."

And before the millionaire could quite conjecture what she
was about to do, the teacher caught him by the shoulder,
seizing the chair at the same time, and gave him such a whirl
that the extensive legs, trowsers and all, came off the desk in
double-quick time, and the owner had occasion for quite all
his gymnastic experience to prevent his measuring his length
upon the floor. He proved equal to the occasion, however,
and landed safely upon his feet ill the middle of the room,
concluding the performance by one of those appeals for ap
plause so commonly made by prima donne and premieres

34:2 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

danseuses at the theatres. Though not much used to the
habits of those places of amusement, the young girl under
stood the gesture and patted applause with her little hands,
the compliment being received with a low bow and the lead
ing performer thereafter remaining erect.

"And you don't like it, eh ?" was the inquiry of the ill-used
individual, when he had finally reached the perpendicular.

"As a means of using up a good deal of cloth and hiding
away the man so that no one can find him, the thing is rather
a success," said the young girl, " but as a suit of clothes — no,
I don't like it in the least,"

" Expect to see me in black, then, to-morrow," said the
pupil, " and that black fitting me a little closer than my skin.
Will that suit ? — I mean, will that suit suit ?"

"Don't be a ninny!" was all the reply, which certainly
seemed an 'in appropriate one, as addressed to a man who had
been recognized as a fool from the moment of his entrance
into society.

" Where have you been ?" asked the millionaire, in the
most matter-of-fact tone in the world, and precisely as if he
thought that he had a right to ask the question, — dropping
into a chair at the same time.

"None of your business, impudence!" was the reply.
"And yet I don't care if I tell you. I have been visiting at
the house of a man whose wife has forgotten him in a little
more than a month of absence. What do you think of that ?"

"A month is a long time — you know," drawled the mil
lionaire — the first drawl he had vented in a considerable pe
riod, it will be observed, — and indulged in apparently more
as a matter of habit than from any natural proclivity to that
mode of utterance.

" Stop !" said the young girl, holding up her finger with a
gesture of mock threatening.

" What a little tyrant you are !" said the millionaire, with
out the least drawl whatever.

" I mean to be worse," said the teacher, "if you keep in
truding on my school-room and disarranging every thing.
And there is your book on the iloor. What were you read
ing ?"

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 343

" See !" answered the millionaire, picking up the book and
handing it to her.

"Natural History, upon my word ! Who would have be
lieved that you could peruse any thing so practical ?" com
inented the lady.

" I ? oh, I am very practical," said the millionaire. "But
by the way, your book is not extensive enough — does not go
deep enough into the relations of the different classes of birds.
Did it ever strike you that the mosquito is lineally descended
from the crane or the blue heron — some one of those long-
legged birds that they used to fly their falcons at ? Scare
your mosquito a little, after he is gorged, as I did one a little
while ago, and he rises just as the heron used to do when he
sa\v the falcon coming — his long legs dangling behind him in
the same manner ; and I am going to look over my Buffon
and my Cuvier, to-morrow, to see whether either of those old
jokers recognized the resemblance."

" Will you ever get done with that nonsense ?" was the re
ply to all this.

" If that is nonsense, I would like to know where your
wisdom is to be found !" said the amateur naturalist. " Oh,
I suppose you expect to find that in another description of
bird — the owl — the totem of school-mistresses."

" As the jack-daw is of lazy fellows with fine clothes !"
shot back the teacher.

" Good — very good ! you will be almost witty, by-and-bye !"
was the encouraging reply, the male hands patting applause
in their turn.

" Hark !" said the young girl.

" Yes, I hear," said the millionaire. "The caravan is nr-
riving. I, will run down to the parlor — you know. Day-day !"
and he held out his hand once more for that of the young
girl, who responded to the gesture and allowed him to kiss
her fingers with the same courtly manner as before, though
she replied to his farewell with a rather equivocal com
pliment :

" Day-day, you goose I"

Ned Miuthorue left the room and took his way to the
parlor on the floor below, awaiting the coming in of his ex-

O -i-i THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

pectant mother-in-law and his still more expectant bride ;
and when those important personages finally disembarked
and reached that place of family resort, they found the young
man playing a medley of airs on the piano there, in which
" Old Hundred," the " Last Rose of Summer" and " I'll Bet
my Money on the Bob-tailed Hoss" seemed to be blended
about as oddly as ideas were generally supposed to be in his
queerly-constituted brain.

4 Kate Haviland walked the floor in silence and evidently in
thought, after the millionaire had left the room. She had
been merry and almost merry-mad in his presence: a very
diil'ercnt mood appeared to possess her at that moment. And
yet the expression on her face did not seem to be actually one
of trouble — it w,as more like deep and absorbed feeling, with
a little wonder and newness (so to speak) blended with the
other mental ingredients.

Of all the odd things that could have been imagined, possi
bly the oddest was to find the proud, vacuous ninny million
aire a habitue of Kate Haviland's school-room and so much
at home there that both he and the gay young girl could take
liberties in speech that are not likely to be taken except by
the most intimate acquaintances. And it might have been
supposed that such an intimacy could not exist in the house
of Mrs. Fullerton. And yet it did so, not only with the
knowledge of that good lady, but of her daughter. Xo one
but a recognized fool could have been permitted to form the
same intimacy, within the walls of that house, and yet re
tained his relations with mother and daughter — that fact is
beyond question. But every reader knows that among all
savage nations the half-witted are held sacred and permitted
to do many things from which ordinary mortals are debarred.
There had been a "flare-up," as we have seen, when Ned
Minthorne first mentioned having met Kate Haviland upon
the stairs; but afterwards, when he one day requested Miss
Dora to "take him to the school-room and let him see how
they managed that sort of thing — you know," she graciously
accorded the privilege, without the slightest' idea that he had
ever before been inside the walls of that room. And when
he afterwards took a fancy to stroll in and see the children

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 8-15

study, without her company, and she chose to say something
ill-natured about it, he quite disarmed her by saying that "a
fellow ought to learn something about sueh things as the
nursery and the school-room and all that sort of thing — you
know, because he might some day have such things of his
own." Dora. Fullcrton meant that he should at least entor
upon wedlock, that recognized preliminary to the filling of
educational halls ; and her blush and simper, accompanied by
a slap of the hand intended to be playful, gave the millionaire
thereafter the entree to the school-room. And if for a mo
ment mother or daughter could have believed that any dan
ger was possible from such visits, they would both have been
quite re-assured by the air with which he informed them, on
his second or third visit, that " it was really devilish refresh
ing — that is, funny, you know — to see those common people
doing things — he had not been used to that sort of people —
you know." Thus was repaired every breach in the social
wall, and all anxiety was dismissed.

The millionare oddity had strolled into and out of the
school-room, sometimes when lie came to the house. and
found the family absent — sometimes when Dora gave evi
dence of being bored with him and virtually gave him per
mission to " go away " He generally, in fact always, when
either Myra or Mildred was present, sat silently studying
the sublime mysteries of teaching, or dawdling with a book.
There could not be any harm in that — could there ? Rea
sonable people would be likely to think not ! And as both
writer and reader are supposed to be reasonable people, the
one has no hesitation in assuring the other that so far as he
knows, no harm whatever resulted. If the millionaire and
the school-teacher at this stage addressed each other some
what familiarly and seemed to have a good understanding,
the fact only proved that America was growing to be more
truly a republic than before ; and if the millionaire was a little
more careful of his language in the young girl's presence
than when otherwise confronted, what did that prove except
that the school-room had been found a profitable place of
study even for the noodle ?

But here this theme must be dismissed, as to Mr. Ned

34(3 T,H E DAYS OF SHODDY.

Minthorne ; though Kate llaviland does not yet disappear
from view.

After her promenade which followed the departure of
Minthorne, the young girl, still apparently absorbed in
thought, sat down at her desk, leaned her head upon her
hand, and closed her eyes, waiting the coming of the chil
dren, who would, as she supposed, be sent in by their
mother (to get them out of the way) the moment their hats
and street-dresses were removed.

She had no need to wait long, for one of her pupils, at
least. A trampling like that of a couple of race-horses was
heard in the little chamber adjoining the school-room, used
by Mrs. Fullerton as a wardrobe ; and through it the two
children dashed from their own, opening the door so vio
lently as to threaten the integrity of the latch, and plunging
in as if learning was the sweetest morsel in the world and
they had beea kept in a state of starvation from want of it.
Miss Myra preceded, bearing in her arms one of the drawers
of Mrs. Fullerton's private bureau, which she had unfortu
nately found unlocked and partially open as she came
through the room, a heap of finery of every description,
blended with small packages wrapped in paper, and a mis
cellaneous jumble of almost every thing that a careless
woman would throw into some spot of which she always
kept the key, showing in charming profusion from the top
of the drawer. Behind her came Miss Mildred, who had
paused in the clothes-room long enough to array herself in a
silk apron, a mantilla and a costly veil belonging to Dora, the
very sight of which in such use would have driven that young
person of weak nerves very nearly into hysterics. It was
evident, at a glance, that neither of the children had sup
posed the teacher to be within the school-room, and that
they had made up their vigorous minds for a spree among
Ma's and Dora's finery, with that room as a capital place
for its display.

The sight of the teacher1 sitting at the desk somewhat took
the two young ladies aback, and they paused suddenly, just
within the door — very suddenly, in fact. The stoppage was
the more violent, without doubt, from the energetic exclama-

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 347

tion of Kate : " What have you been doing, you young
monkeys !" and aware that, discovered, they would at once
be obliged to disgorge their plunder, they turned to retrace
their steps. But they had come in very violently ; Mildred,
behind, ran upon Myra iu front ; the drawer that the latter
carried was nearly as large as herself and altogether too
bulky for safe holding in small hands ; and the result of all
this was that the foot of Mildred caught in her long mantilla,
she fell against Myra, and the two children and the drawer
went down in a heap aud with a crash, about half the articles
in the drawer aforesaid temporarily emancipating themselves
from confinement and flying out upon the carpet.

The children scrambled to their feet pretty rapidly ; and
at the word of command from the teacher : " Pick up every
one of those things, and put them back where they belong,
instantly 1" accompanied by an energetic stamp of the foot,
• — Myra scrambled up all the articles that she saw, thrust
them back into the drawer, and the two disappeared through
the door about as rapidly as they had first made their ap
pearance.

" What a beautiful row there would be before many hours,
if I should allow the two seraphs to play all the finery into
ribbons !"' said the young girl to herself; and just then
chancing to cast her eyes on the floor behind one of the chairs
near the door, she discovered that quite a number of small
articles of the finery had fallen at that distance and not been
seen by the child in picking up the contents of the drawer.
She was on the point of calling Myra back and enforcing
discipline by making^her pick up the remainder, but finally
concluded to perfo*rm the office herself, take the lost articles
into the room and see that the drawer was properly restored
to its place and the clothing hung where it belonged.

A pair of gloves, a roll of ribbon, an India fan and two
pieces of paper were the articles which had managed to get
behind the chair, and which the young school-teacher thus
rescued. Both the papers were of the dimensions of a full
sheet of foolscap paper folded four times into the shape of a
document for filing or sending by letter. Neither had any
indorsement on the back ; aud the teacher would probably

34:3 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

have carried them at once into the room and disposed of
them, had not the singularity of color of the one attracted
her attention. It was very yellow and seemed so old that
she fancied it might be some document connected with the
early history of the family — perhaps even as far back as the
time of the Revolution, when the Brixtones might have had
something to do with Sumter or Marion — with Entaw or
King's Mountain. The young girl did not know how rapidly
paper sometimes musts and yellows when shut away from
light and air, and how a document that has only seen a quar
ter of a century may put on the semblance of four times that
age. Believing that it must be very old, and having a very
big bump of reverence for every thing of the antique, hidden
away somewhere under the chestnut hair — she took the lib
erty of just opening that yellow paper before returning the
articles to the room where they belonged, and saw — what ?
It is not the province of this narration to say precisely what,
at the present moment. Something that at first interested
her by its novelty, because she had never before seen a paper
of the kind ; then something that struck her by a similarity
of names and made her start as if a small bomb-shell had
burst iu one corner of the apartment. She looked again at
the paper — rubbed her eyes — muttered over a name or two
as if in surprise and some doubt — then read the paper all
over again, stuck it into that inevitable pocket, and sat down
at her desk.

Two or three minutes of uninterrupted meditation, with
her head between both hands, and then the young- girl raised
it with such a shake as almost sent the chestnut hair flying
loose down her shoulders, sprang to her feet with the not-
over-iutelligible exclamation: "It must be so! — it is so ! A
pretty party, you are ! Hurrah for Jiickson !" and then and
thereupon went into a saltatory movement about the room,
which might have been a Avaltz if she had only found a part
ner, but which really seemed to be accompanied by such sup
pressed convulsions of laughter, such writhings and contor
tions of delight, and such un-christian movements 'generally,
as to suggest the war-dance of a very athletic young Indiau
just after he has taken the scalp of his hereditary enemy.

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 349

The teacher had certainly made a strange discovery, the
full amount and purport of which' will soon be under
stood — unearthed a secret which had lain buried, not for a
hundred years, but for many more than all those numbered in
her own life. A secret, the knowledge of which might exer-%
else an untold influence upon her own fortunes and those
of others. And all this by a mere accident! No ! — let the
word be substituted by that better word, providence, and
then let the wonder 'cease.

There are no "accidents," really, though we, pretending to
be a Christian people, delight in so expressing ourselves as to
deny the existence of a God capable of exercising an over
sight upon a human life, oftener than once in a twelvemonth.
The fact is that he exercises it continually, in every instant
of 'that human life, or not at all ! It was no accident, the
other day, which sent half a dozen steam-tugs in to a certain
pier at the same time, all ready to steam out again at an in
stant's warning and save the lives perilled by one huge
steamer making her course between the two severed ends of
another. Others than the architect of St. Peter's and the
spiller of ink over bad manuscript, "build better than they
know," not only in the tragic but the comic. It was not
even accident, but a sense of fitness weighing upon her, of
which she was entirely unconscious, which induced a sleepy
young lady coming home late from the Japanese Ball, to hang
her " order of dancing" of that great event, on the umbrella
of Aminadab Sleek, in Karl Mailer's statuette of that Burto-
nian character, occupying one end of the mantel. It belonged
iu that place, by the inevitable fitness of things, and would
have been wasted anywhere else.

And there is no wonder, even if a singularity, in the late
discovery of that which has long remained hidden. The eye
sees what it needs to see, at once : all that remains it after
wards takes in by degrees if at all. Very often it goes to
the end without discovering half which really lies in the
possibility of sight. Only last summer, at Niagara, a habitue
who had made that popular resort his " stamping-ground"
every summer for twenty years, came in to dinner one day,,
big with the discovery of a tree of gigantic proportions and

350 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

great beauty, that he had never seen before, on that very
limited continent, Goat Island.

Going up the Hudson a dozen years ago, the writer was in
the pilot-house of the steamer with an old North River pilot
^who had passed up and down the river nearly every day for
thirty years. Just above West Point, on that occasion, ho
looked off to the west bank and said: "By George," [or some
other name] ".there is a house I never saw before !" The
writer looked, and saw a little old brown house, close down
to the bank, that had certainly been built not less than half a
century, and signified to the pilot that he must have seen it
before, during some one of his ten thousand passages up and
down. "No," said the pilot, in such a tone and with such a
manner that he left no doubt of the correctness of his allega
tion — " of course the house has stood there all the while, but
I tell you that I have never happened to see it till this mo
ment." Did the writer still doubt the correctness of the
pilot's memory ? If he did at that time, he has ceased to
doubt, in the light of added experience. For behind him, as
lie writes, hanirs a framed copv of that marvellous etchin^

i •. O

from Moritz Retzsch, the " Game of Life," in which the
young man is playing at chess with the devil for his own
soul. He has had the picture in possession for nearly or
quite twenty years, and made it a habitual study, and yet
less than a year has elapsed since he one day found a spider
crawling over the edge of the tomb-stone on which the com
batants have set their chess-board. Since then, the spider
has been one of the most conspicuous objects in the picture ;
and as the suggestion of little Brown Eyes cannot be received
as conclusive — that the spider had been all that while crawl
ing up from the sculptures on the side of the tomb below,
and only made his appearance at that time, — it only remains
to suppose that it must have been there all the while, but
that the eye had only then recognized that feature in the de
tail.

So much for the discovery of things long hidden, and the
accidental or providential character of the modes employed in
their revelation. Enough, in addition, on the events of that
day, to sa3r that after a time the young girl concluded her

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 351

" war-dance" and calmed herself sufficiently to. fulfil her
duties. Not all her duties, perhaps, — for she retained that
old yellow paper in her own possession, when she carried in
the remainder and added them to the heterogenous collection
in the drawer. And something more than her duties, per- (
haps, — as before she slept that night she wrote and forwarded
a letter to Burtnett Haviland, in which the reader would
have been puzzled to trace any of the merriment shown in
her former epistle.

CHAPTER XYIII.

THE FIRE ZOUAVES AT SHOOTER'S HILT, — COLONEL FARNITAM
— CAMP LIFE AND EQUESTRIANISM EXTRAORDINARY — MAJOR
C. AS JOHN GILPIN — CAPTAIN JACK'S COMPANY AT ALEX
ANDRIA — WHISKEY, DARKEY SENTINELS, PUGILISM AND
DRY STRAW — CAPTAIN BOB'S POCKET-FULL — A WORD MORE
OF BURTNETT HAVILAND.

THE Fire Zouaves held Shooter's Hill, two miles south
west of Alexandria, between the Fairfax •and Leesburg roads,
and commanding views of both through the few scrubby
trees that fringed it, while the towering bulk of the Fairfax
Seminary could be seen a few miles further to the south
west, and beyond it the great road stretched Jjjvay towards
Fairfax Court-House. They were building Fort Ellsworth
there ; and there, as has before been said, occurred most of
their experiences and exploits in camp life.

Lieutenant-Colonel Xoah L. Farnham, so suddenly become
Colonel of the Regiment by the death of Colonel Ellsworth,
did not go mad when suddenly left in the streets of Alexan
dria with that horde of half-disciplined and impracticable
men ; and afterwards, when the same unfortunate officer
was lying in the hospital, after Bull Run, suffering and slowly
dying with the terrible wound in his head received in that

THE DAYS OF S II 0 D D Y .

battle, and the debility arising from earlier and neglected in
juries, — he made his preservation of reason on that occasion
the test of his general power to retain it, in an exclamation
not easily to be forgotten.

" They tell me you have been out of your head, Colonel,"
said one of the other officers, coming in to see him as he lay
writhing on his pallet of suffering.

" Do they ?" said the Colonel, grimly. " They lie, then
— that is all ! If I did not go crazy at the moment when
Ellsworth left me in the streets of Alexandria, with that lot
of fellows and no idea what under heaven to do with them — •
why, there is not pain and suffering enough in the world to
drive me crazy : you may bet on that !"

Colonel Farnham, known among his familiars as " Pony,"
from his short stature and compact figure, was the very in
carnation of a soldier, by nature ; and under other circum
stances than those in which he chanced J:o be placed, he
would unquestionably have illustrated the service. The
little man, with his thin face, high check-bones, dark hair
and eyes and poor pretence at beard in a thin goatee, had
been a capital gymnast when resident in the great city and a
" fire-laddie" ; and when a member and officer of the Seventh,
with which he marched away, he had spent many of his hours
in the bunk-room, reading military books and planning oper
ations in that active service which he then little expected
to enter, — while his associates were finding other and more
congenial employment. It is just possible that, placed origi
nally in command of the Fire Zouaves and given time to dis
cipline them before they were thrown into service, he might
really have made the general dream of their capabilities a
reality and left a proud record of the regiment to be read in
the future.

But this is mere speculation. Enough to know that if any
man ever had his " hands full" of any body of men, the new
Colonel was placed in that position immediately after the fall
of Ellsworth. And no man who was a member of the com
mand will be likely to forget the two days in Alexandria
following that event, with the body of the Zouavoe drunk and
unmanageable, the town threatened with fire in an hundred

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 353 '

places from tlieir revengeful hands, theft frequent and rapine
not beyond very rational fear. All day and all night, on both
those days, the few remaining true to discipline, with the
Michigan troops, were busied in hunting out the skulkers
and returning them to their commands; and when on the
Monday following the death of Ellsworth the regiment
finally left their quarters at the Railroad Depot and marched
to take position at Shooter's Hill, it is a matter of question
Avhether the people of the old " secesh" town, no longer
afraid of their very lives, or the Colonel, with his command
once more gathered into something approaching discipline,
felt the more grateful for the order dictating the movement.

One company, that of Captain Jack, with Burtnett Havi-
land'yet in the ranks, found different employment from the
rest of the regiment, in guarding the government warehouses
skirting the river at Alexandria, a duty for which their better
discipline and greater steadiness made them available. With
them we shall have occasion to deal presently : our imme
diate view is to be taken of the body of the regiment and the
builders of Fort Ellsworth.

They were a merry body of fellows, beyond a question, and
when away from temptation they behaved like men and
soldiers. Fort Ellsworth sprang up quite as rapidly, in
comparison, under their active hands and ready spades, as
the extensive lines of fortifications opposite Washington were
growing under those of the Sixty-ninth and the other regi
ments of New York State Militia. They were happy, con
tented, even jolly. If they were ill-fed, they fared no worse
in that particular than any other regiment in the service ;
and if the soldiers of some of the regiments were damaged in
comfort and actually suffering in health from the miserable
quality of the shoddy clothing and blankets furnished them,
the Zouaves had not the same cause of complaint. In fact,
long before most of the regiments had any hope of seeing
the Quartermaster with requisitions for new clothing, they
had shed their shabby gray and appeared in the blue Zouave
pants arid jacket, with red shirt, in which (or a part of
which) they afterwards went into their first and last battle.

The fire-boys were fire-boys still, at Shooter's Hill as they
22

THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

had been in their native city. Not one but expected to return,
some day, and connect himself with his favorite machine ;
not one but could and would tell the same stories of the
night when the old wall on Broadway fell over and buried
an engineer and half of Fifteen's fellows, or the time when
Forty-eight got fast in a snow-bank, at the corner of Broorne
and Mercer, and let Forty-nine pass her,— that they had been
in the habit,of telling before war came upon the land. Not
one but could " bet his life" when occasion required, on the
honor of a friend or the capacity of an engine ; and scarcely
one but was both ready and willing to give the most trusty
of his comrades what he graphically designated as a " mash
in the jaw" when he " came foo-foo-ing around" with some
story that did not please. The musket was only a temp'orary
substitute for the trumpet, the brake and the spanner; and
not even Farnham could make the boys soldiers instead of
firemen.

One ambition spread a little among the officers, meanwhile
— that was peculiarly soldierly. That was the desire to learn
to ride. It is well known that not one man in ten, at the
North, is sufficiently at home in the saddle to be able to make
a good dragoon ; and not one in fifty is capable of riding with
sufficient grace to escape unpleasant attention among profes
sional riders. Of the Fire Zouaves, in gross, perhaps the
scale of equestrian power was almost as low as it would
have been found among the same number of old salts who had
spent half their lives at sea. But the Virginians rode well
as well as rode capital horses — that every man in the regi
ment could see, whether looking at them as they casually
passed, or through the spectacles of an enemy. To the rank
and file, this made very little difference ; but some of the
officers were more ambitious. Suppose some of the line
should rise to the dignity of field officers or be placed upon
the staff! — and suppose some of the field should have occa
sion to be almost constantly in the saddle ! Such things
were not inevitable, of course, but they were quite as likely as
that the female daughter of the house of Toodle should marry
a man with the name of Thompson. Therefore — said both
field and line officers — we will perfect ourselves in riding,

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 355

while there is an opportunity. They did so, to a great ex
tent ; and it is to be believed that no spot on the earth's
surface ever saw such specimens of equitation as some of the
Virginia roads surrounding the camp, when leisure allowed
and horses were supplied by the " accident" of a " secesh"
Virginian tumbling off his steed and forgetting to get up and
mount him again !

Captain , of Company , could tell us a good

story, if he only would, how he longed, nay, yearned for a
horse of splendid proportions and gallant mettle, with the
which he would at once perfect his equestrian education and
astonish the whole camp with the knightly grace and firmness
of seat which might have belonged to one of the old Paladins
• — how one day a steed, coal black and glossy, from which his
rebel owner had just accidentally* tumbled off, was brought in
to him and tendered for his coveted exercise — how the horse
neighed, curveted, and did many other acts and things calcu
lated to allure him to a seat in the saddle — how his orderly,
just before he essayed to mount, tendered him a pair of
spurs, of the which he felt a trifle shy, but the which he did not
dare refuse, owing to the many who stood around to witness
the first mounting of the neophyte — how the orderly then
and thereupon buckled on the spurs aforesaid, of which the
rowels seemed to the expectant rider of about a foot in length
each — how he mounted, with the assistance of the orderly at
the horse's head — how the horse playfully shied the moment
after, throwing him violently to one side, upon which one of
the spur rowels entered the horse aforesaid about twelve
inches — how he dismounted over the horse's head, the next
instant, somewhat in a confused condition, without any
assistance from the orderly whatever — how the horse turned
around and nosed him, when he lay half stunned and alto
gether discomfited upon the ground, with motions and ges
tures which said quite as plainly as words : " Poor devil !
What did you fall off for ?" — and how he did not ride any
more, at that juncture, on Virginian horses and with spurs.

But Captain will not tell the story, and he must even

be content with its relation, the name suppressed, by one

356 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

who could have tumbled off, under like circumstances, a little
more heavily than himself.

Major C (there was only one Major in .the regiment,

and so any attempt to disguise his personality must be
futile) had a more extensive experience, arid in some senses
it may be said a more unpleasant one. To say that the
Major rode very badly might be a libel : to say that he rode
very well would be a still more culpable perversion of truth.
He practised much, and certainly improved, though he did
not achieve that thickening of the cuticle which could render
him, after a few miles' ride, free from sensations best known
to unpractised riders who go up from the Crawford House to
the top of Mount Washington and back again the same day.
Of the epidermis of such people, under peculiarly unfor
tunate circumstances it may be said that it is " neither here nor
there." Of that of the Major, after his equestrian practice
of a particular day, very nearly the same might be said
without exaggeration.

Not many days after the occupation of Shooter's Hill and
the commencement of the fortification there, a detachment of
two companies was thrown out to Cloud's Mills, on the Fair
fax Road, with pickets lying a mile beyond. This brought
the Zouaves into the immediate vicinity of the rebels, so that
firing between the pickets began to be prevalent, and the ut
most vigilance became necessary. One scalding day in June,
when walking was a labor and riding a torture, the Major
rode out to Cloud's Mills, and aftenvai'ds to the full extent of
the Federal lines, to look after the vigilance and the welfare
of the pickets. He wras a little plethoric that day, and sensa
tion seemed to ooze out to the skin very easily. Though not
by any means angry or indignant, it may be said that he
" chafed," as the caged lion is reputed to do, though perhaps
not in the same sense. By the time he had ridden to the
station of the last picket, the Major might have said, without
exaggeration, that he had ridden quite enough for that day ;
and a close observer would have seen that he scai'cely kept
so erect in the saddle as he had done early in the morning.
In fact, from " causes beyond his own control," he leaned
forward a little, something after the manner of that estiina-

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. , 357

ble gentleman and model historian but sad innovator on the
science of equitation, who so often sets gratis riding-lessons in
the Central Park.

Riding away from the most distant of the pickets, with
pleasant visions of the relief he should embrace when once
more arrived at Fort Ellsworth, the Major took what he con
ceived to be a "short cut" through the woods and away from
the main road, gave his horse another, and galloped for
ward. His seat in the saddle became less endurable and the
motion of the horse more intolerable ; but was he not getting
back to camp and to repose? When he had galloped so far
that he fancied he should again have struck the main road,
and yet without being able to recognize any landmark — he
took the liberty of inquiring of one of the estimable residents
of the soil, whom he met, whether he was on the right road
for Shooter's Hill. He was answered in the affirmative, by
that reliable person, so decidedly that he felt almost ashamed
to have asked the question and galloped on yet more briskly
than before. Mile upon mile, it seemed to the tortured Major,
and the day growing hotter and hotter, with all the other
circumstances aggravated, that have before been hinted at —
and still no appearance of Fort Ellsworth.

Still riding ahead, the Major proved that he possessed the
material for a commander, by taking a view of the position.
Something was wrong, unquestionably — but what ? A little
astronomical knowledge conjoined with the suspicious cir
cumstances, gave him the clue. The sun was on his right
instead of his left : he was going the wrong way. Dimly
the fact began to reveal itself — he had lost his way and the
estimable citizen had been lying ! — he was some miles with
in the enemy's lines, and riding rapidly into the rebel strong
hold of Fairfax Court House !

" About ship !" sings out the Captain when he discovers
that his vessel has been swayed out of her course by false
currents and is just going head on to some rock that must
shiver her to atoms. The Major did not shout to his helms
man, being the helmsman himself; but he swayed hard on
the near rein, which the Captain before mentioned would
have designated as the " port tiller rope," and brought his

358 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

equestrian vessel about as rapidly as possible. Just at that
moment he found an additional incentive for wheeling sud
denly, for over the crest of a hill immediately ahead dashed
three rebel horsemen, who had caught sight of him and who
rode as if there was no such thing in the world as want of
sympathy between the horse and his rider.

Then followed one of those events which the writer feels
himself entirely inadequate to describe. The Major was a
brave man — none braver in the Federal army then or after
ward. Many a man, before that time, had seen him under
circumstances quite as trying to the nerves and quite as peril
ous to life as the shock of any battle conflict. Some of the
same persons afterwards saw him riding among the bullets
on Manasses, swearing a little, but apparently no more ex
cited by bodily fear than if he had been ordering up another
engine to a big fire or making an insurance calculation. And
yet the Major, in this instance, ran away — ignomiuiously ran
away ! He had his pistols, but they were only two against
six — fearful odds for the weaker party. His four horse's-
legs, so far as they could go, were just as good as twelve —
therefore — " g'lang !"

There are several rides in history, mythology and romance,
that might be introduced profitably, here, except that none
of them rise equal to the parallel. How the old Greek heroes
of the mythological period swept down to the hunt of the
Calydonian Boar — how the men of the Scottish border dashed
through Liddesdale after the rievers of their cattle fleeing
away to their mountain fastnesses — how the Wild Huntsman
of the German forests rushed by with horn and hound, on un
holy nights when all the demons of the air were unloosed —
nay, how John Gilpin rode on that fateful day when he dined
everywhere and nowhere, — all these might be brought in, with
great advantage to the general interests of the literature of
many lands, but they would only furnish a dim shadow of the
stern reality of that flight and that pursuit. Away with you,
up hill and down hill, horses that bear the rebel cavalrymen,
for nobler prey will not be hunted during all the war ! Let
out another link, gallant roan that bears the Major, for he
will never need your best speed more imminently than he

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 359

needs it at the present juncture ! Let the scrubby trees of the
Fairfax Road and the shabby worm-fences all sweep by like
the sudden shift of a panorama or the flash from railroad-car
windows ! Away ! away ! — after a life, and to save one !

But if language fails to describe that flight and that pur
suit, what shall be said of the sufferings of the flying Major,
before worn out with equitation, and now only able to keep
his saddle from the grimest of all necessities. Let the
reader make no attempt to roll with him, or writhe, or bend
forward, or lean back, or change from one dreadful position
to a worse, as every leap brings a new blister to the skin and
every spring half tears out another nerve or half dislocates
another bone ! There is terrible heat pouring down from tho
sky, but what is it to that apparently radiating up from the
earth ? Saint Lawrence was broiled on a gridiron ; but the
gridiron, if we are correctly informed, remained stationary
and did not gallop. Saint Ilenuinigildus was flayed alivo
before being cut in pieces ; but he was at least allowed (so
far as any volition of his tormentors was ^concerned) to re-
main quiet during the unpleasant operation. The flying
Major was a worse victim than either of these : he was both
flayed and roasted at a speed of twenty-five miles the hour.

The four legs were triumphant over the twelve, after all
the vengeance of the fiends had been exhausted on the unfor
tunate horseman. It seemed an age and a flight of fifty
leagues before the pickets beyond Cloud's Mills came in
sight, but they did come in sight at last, and a shot or two
sent the rebel pursuers to the right about. The Major rode
in under the sheltering fire. He was saved — what there was
left of him ! Draw the curtain. There is no cold cream in
the army commissariat, though rest and cold water applica
tions may do something. The Major will ride again, and
ride better than ever, some day — just as the pedestrian will
eventually walk further and with less suffering, on the heel
once blistered to torture !

These are only glimpses of the camp-life at Fort Ellsworth,
but they must suffice. So wore on June and July with the
main body of the Fire Zouave regiment, while the war-cloud
was gathering darker and darker over all Virginia, rebel fort-

3(30 T H K DAYS OF SHODDY.

ification answering to fortification built by Federal hands,
and the thunder muttering before that great conflict which
was to drench the soil of Fairfax with the blood of so many
who had but lately been brothers.

The main body of the regiment — we have said. Let it be
remembered that one company, that of Captain Jack, held
post at Alexandria and guarded the munitions of war and pro
visions stored in the warehouses on the wharves. It may
as well be remembered here, for it is certain that th'e Zouaves
at Shooter's Hill did not forget the fact, and that when they
found opportunity to express themselves they did so some
thing in the manner following : —

"Eh — yah ! You fellows of Company are nothing but

a set of foo-foos ! Soft bread and houses to sleep in, for you,
while the rest of us have nothing softer than hard tack and
sleep in the mud ! Eh — yah ! much good you do !"

Captain Jack had certainly a company somewhat better
disciplined than the balance of the regiment, and he cer
tainly manifested much better talent in managing them than
most of the others (though the other Captains, and their
subalterns, no doubt did wonders under the circumstances
and with their material). But if it should be said that the
discipline of even Captain Jack's Company was much
superior to that of the regular service, there is some fear that
the statement might smack of exaggeration. In the last
chapter casually came out one of the occurrences in which some
of the company figured — that of the women, in the old ware
house and the Zouave creeping in at the window, in which
the good name of Burtnett Haviland was so sadly made to
suffer at home. Let us glance at a few more of the salient
points of guard-life at Alexandria.

If there was any commodity, liquid or solid, difficult to
keep intact in the neighborhood of the Zouaves, it was
whiskey. Perhaps the same difficulty may sometimes have
existed in the vicinity of other Zouaves, and even of those
soldiers who never wore baggy trousers — who knows? At
all events, nearly every time that Captain Jack left his
quarters, located in an old dwelling house not far from the
wharves, when he returned the stock on hand would be

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 361

materially reduced and yet no culprit discovered. Pete, the
escaped contraband who acted as body-servant, was not
drunk on those occasions, so he could not be the depredator :
yet how could the favorite compound be abstracted without
Pete's knowledge ?

Going out to the regimental quarters one day, Captain
Jack held a conference with that indispensable darkey before
leaving, and calmly informed him that the stealing of whiskey
had now gone far enough, and that if on his return he dis
covered that any further depredations had taken place, he,
Pete, would be incontinently tied up and more soundly
flogged than he had been during all his days of " involun
tary servitude." The negro muttered something about:
" Try to keep urn, Masser Captin !" and with that assurance
the officer departed. Coming back to the house after dusk,
and well knowing that the sentries, in obedience to orders,
had left the house to itself and kept their posts nearer the
river, the Captain was hailed by a threatening voice from
the dark quadrangle, as he approached the house :

"Who come dar ? Keep off, I tell you, or I shoot !"

No answer to the challenge, and the Captain approached
still closer. This time it came still louder aud more
hurriedly, and with evident fright in the voice.

" Keep off dar, I tell you 1 Keep off, or I shoot ! Can't
come foolin' round dis nigger no more !" Then with some
thing approaching a yell, as the object of its terror ap
proached still nearer, the voice repeated : " Keep off, I tell
you, or dis nigger shoot ! Keep away, now mind !"

" Why, who the deuce are you, and what are you doing
here?" spoke the Captain for the first time, as through the
dusk he descried the negro, somewhat darker than the
dusk itself, standing sentry before the door with one of the
condemned muskets, that he knew to be unloaded, from the
old storehouse, the musket shaking and the poor darkey's
knees trembling still worse, with terror.

"Oh, is dat you, Masser Captin !" said the negro, dropping
his musket with a very howl of joy. " Oh, lord, I'se so
glad ! Tot it was some o> dem fellers again ; and den I lose
de whiskey, sure, and get licked into de bargain !"

362 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

Under the double impulse of his past fright and big present
joy, poor Pete at last explained the secret of the whiskey
disappearances. The moment they found the Captain had
gone away to any distance, some of the Zouaves were in
the habit of coming to the house, tying up the poor negro
and then helping themselves to the liquor, untying him when
they left, but effectually sealing his mouth by the threat that
if he dared to tell what had become of it they would "flog
him within an inch of his life." Between such a double fire
had the victim been placed ; though it is scarcely necessary
to say that after his valorous attempt to defend his own skin
and the Captain's whiskey by keeping guard in the dark
with an unloaded musket, he was not again 'allowed to be
placed in the same position.

Another trouble, imminent with the commandant, was the
impossibility of teaching the men that they were soldiers and
nothing else — that they were not now firenien and gymnasts.
This trouble has been before alluded to, but it had a ludicrous
illustration in a single instance. There was an alarm, one
day, down on one of the wharves just below the storehouses ;
and going down to see what had occurred, the officers found
that the "P. R." had suddenly made its appearance in the
antique city, seriously to the detriment of the armed service.
Two fellows were in a " rough-and-tumble" clench on the
pier, pounding each other merrily. One seemed to have
been a Zouave and a sentry, at no distant period, from
certain cast-off appurtenances lying on the dock ; and
the other appeared to be a gentleman of bivalvular ante
cedents, from one of the oyster-boats in the river. Rigid
inquiry established the fact that the little physical discus
sion had originated in this wise :

Occupant of the oyster-boat approached the wharf at a
point where the regulations strictly forbade any landing to
be allowed. Zouave, musket on shoulder, hailed him with :
" Look a here ! Jest you keep off, will you ? See this
thing ?" tapping his musket. " This shoots — this does ! So
jest keep off!" "Bah! you're a smartey !" ejaculated the
gentleman in the oyster-boat. " Very big, you are, because
you have a uiusket and I haven't any ! Jest put '^^n that

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 363

musket, and I'll ." He needed to proceed no further

with the challenge. The gallant member of Two-hundred-
and-fifty-seven Hose was not in the habit of backing out
from what he considered a " square fight." Down went his
musket and off went all his other warlike appurtenances.
The gentleman from the oyster-boat landed without hin-'
drance, and the little exercise in the " P. R." commenced,
afterwards kept up with such spirit on the part of the boatman
that when the officers arrived the Zouave was under and
considerably damaged. The ex-sentry did not understand
then, and probably (if he is alive) does not understand to
this day, why he should have been arrested and sent to the
guard-house for his " ex-sentri-city."

Still another trouble, and one more difficult to manage than
either of the others, was that propensity for variety mani
fested by the Zouaves in common with all other bodies of
armed men since the time when Xerxes found a few hundred
thousands of his million going back to Persia without formal
furloughs — a propensity cruelly designated by the moderns
as desertion. Probably not many of the boys wished to
escape from the service, but they did want to get away to
AVashington or elsewhere and enjoy a few days of liberty and
jollity oot attainable within sound of their drum-beat. And
they did it. Especially after the cars began to ryn north-
wrard again on the Leesburg road, were there vacancies con
tinually occurring in the ranks. Evidently they left with the
aid of the cars, but no one could ascertain how, as the trains
were examined inside and outside before starting. One day,
however, the station-master came to Captain Jack and made
a report. He had discovered the modus operandi. The fel
lows were in the habit of stowing themselves away under the
cars, on the trucks, until some stoppage might occur after
leaving the town, when they would drop off quietly and seek
their "fresh fields and .pastures new."

The station-master informed Captain Jack that there were
lat that moment three of his men stowed away under the cars
of the train about to start, and suggested that they had better
be removed. Captain Jack thought a moment, and adopted a

364 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

peculiar plan for their removal. He ordered a load of straw
to be scattered along the track a few hundred yards ahead,
where the " skedaddlers" could not be aware of the operation
— and that straw set on fire. Then he ordered the engineer
to go ahead and stop his train immediately over the burning
'straw. Bees have been known to come out of their trees,
and -rats from their holes, from the employment of similar
processes ; and once upon a time, in Algeria, was it not Mar
shal Magnan who proved that there is nothing in a name by
adopting that any thing but ruagnan-imous plan of smoking
out the Arabs from their caves or letting them stay in and be
smothered ? At all events, three -Zouaves came out from
under the Leesburg train, at that particular juncture, quite as
rapidly as they had ever run to a fire ; and they did not again
attempt that mode of escape without being fully aware how
much dry straw there might be in the neighborhood.

One more reminiscence of life in Alexandria, and this tells
not against the soldiers, but the officers — and, what is more,
against the officers of the regular service.

An United States steamer lay off the town when Ellsworth
went down with his Zouaves, and the same vessel kept guard
there during all their sojourn. The officers were jolly fellows ;

Captain Jack was a jolly fellow ; and Captain Bob S ,

of the regular army, was quite as jolly as either. The two
officers had semi-occasional invitations to visit and dine on
board the steamer, especially when they bad themselves sent
off a few boxes of claret or baskets of champagne that had
come into their own possession. One day claret was the
medium, and the two officers lingered somewhat long in the
ward-room, so that it was dark when the boat's-crew was
called away to convey the guests to the shore. When they
landed, Captain Jack had just brains enough left to be aware
that the jolly tars should have some compensation for their
row, and he thrust his hand into his pocket, took out the
handful of silver change to be found there, and poured it into
the palm of the coxswain. Captain Bob, who was "droopy,"
roused at this, with a : " See here — bo-o-oys ! — there's a liz
zie m-o-o-re for ye!" thrust his hand into his pocket and

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 365

passed over his handful ; whereupon the boat's-crew, with
many pulls of the top-knot, rowed away, and the two officers
separated for their respective quarters.

The next morning Captain Jack, very early, was favored
with a visit from Captain Bob. Captain Jack was cool, se
rene and happy : Captain Bob seemed puzzled and discom
fited. " Captain Jack, did I lend you any money last night ?"
" Not a cop !" " Did I lend anybody any, that you saw !"
" \o !" " Did you see me use any money at all, anywhere ?"
" Yes — I saw you give a handful of money, out of your
trousers pocket, to the sailors who brought us ashore, — just
after I had given them a handful myself." " Thunder and
lightning !" said Captain Bob — " then I have just given them
a twenty dollar gold piece, two tens, a few gold dollars and a
lot of silver — just every dollar I had in my possession !"
'• .Phew !" whistled Captain Jack. " Oh, that won't do, you
know !" said Captain Bob — " I must go off and see about
it !— can't be stripped in that manner !" " Think I wouldn't,
if I were you," said Captain "Jack. " And why in thunder
not ?" added Captain Bob. " Because they might take
a fancy to say that you must have been drunk," sug
gested Captain Jack. " So they might — I think I will let it
slide !" concluded Captain Bob. And he did so. The boat's-
crew must have realized somewhere between fifty and sixty
dollars of Captain Bob's money by that pull of a few minutes
. — probably the best pay of the kind on record ; and yet that
amount might have been worse spent, in any one of a dozen
different modes that will suggest themselves to the imagina
tive mind.

And yet one more incident, which must be preserved here,
lest the coming American Scott and the coming American
Macaulay may both chance to miss it in making up their act
ual and imaginative records of the war. Let the Macaulay
dig out for himself the particulars of those melancholy re
cords involving the hanging of a member of one of the Penn
sylvania regiments at Fort Ellsworth, for the shooting of a
woman, — and that sad spectacle, when the first dead and
wounded of the war came in from General Schenck's terrible
mishap at Vienna, with the secession men, women and chil-

366 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

dren gathering around the cars at the Leesburg depot at Al
exandria, as they were disembarked, reviling the dead, taunt
ing the living wounded, and showing the most fiendish joy
at the disaster, till the Zouaves and their Michigan comrades
could stand the insults no longer and charged bayonets upon
the pack of wolves that then turned to be sheep of a very
timid order. Let the historian dig out these for himself : we
have to do, just now, only with one more grand provocative
to merriment.

Concealed arms were all the while amongthe bugbears that
haunted the Union soldiers daring the early campaigns in
Virginia. Swords, muskets and pistols could be found hid
den almost everywhere by the rebels, above ground and under
ground, ready for use the moment they dared bring them forth.
Alexandria was a secession hold, and many seizures of con
cealed arms had been made there, until the Union officers be
lieved that the contraband stock must be very nearly exhaust
ed. But one night orders came for the Zouave company and
one company of the Michigan troops, to surround a certain
block half a dozen squares from the wharves, and seize a can
non, or perhaps two, hidden there, the locality of which had
at last been betrayed. Solemnly and sternly, at daylight
the next morning, the troops marched from their quarters and
drew a cordon around the entire block. Solemnly and' stern
ly they entered every house, searched it from garret to base
ment, explored the yards and even dug up the cellars where
the loose earth rendered the burying of a piece practicable.
Much perspiration they expended, and much wonder they
vented, for at least one piece must be there — they knew. And
a little after noon they found the gun so dangerous in rebel
hands, lying in one of the back yards ; and they gathered
solemnly and reverently around it. It was a child1 a toy can
non, just four inches long! And two companies of the Uni
ted States forces had been "sold" for almost an entire day,
by one of the cleverest " put up jobs" of the century.

It is time to return for a moment to Burtnett Haviland,
who shared the fortunes of the other Zouaves of Captain
Jack's company, in keeping watch over the warehouses at Al
exandria. Nothing has been said of his state of feeling,

THE PAYSOF SHODDY. 367

since weeks before when the regiment was about moving from
Camp Decker. What had he heard from his wife ? What
had occurred to soothe or to intensify that lacerated and al
most exasperated feeling which moved him to apply for a
furlough on the day of the departure ? He had heard noth
ing from his wife — not one word, from that day. Letters
had ceased to come to him, though that no stoppage in the
mails could be the cause of the continued failure, was but too
evident, from his occasional reception of letters from others —
his cousin Kate among the number. The reader knows what
he was likely to hear from his home, through her : none of
his other correspondents had any occasion to speak of his
wife, or would have any thought of doing so. He had heard
nothing of her — nothing — not one word, — from the hour when
the careless remark of his acquaintance showed her to have
been in a place of popular amusement with the merchant ;
and as a consequence, in spite of himself, from that hour he
had seen her with the eyes of his mind, in no other relation
but that of a gay, heartless woman who had forgotten her
husband and plunged into fashionable dissipation as a substi
tute for his society.

Precisely what Haviland believed of his wife at this junc
ture, it is difficult to say : it might have been difficult for him
self to explain. That he had been driven by a combination
of circumstances to believe her weak and heartless if not
criminal, and his own domestic happiness destroyed for the
remainder of their natural lives, — is beyond question. What
he harbored of discontent and anger, of the feeling of in
tense wrong, and of the necessity of some future revenge, he
was precisely the man to have kept altogether to himself, even
had the dearest of friends stood at his elbow. And if he had
not found a total change of his nature, in the unexpected cir
cumstances crowding upon him, he had at least been stunned
(so to speak) and found some of the better qualities of that
nature paralyzed. That he should not have allowed himself
to receive those suspicious circumstances blindly — that he
should have shown more faith and trust in the woman who
had for four years slept upon his heart — that he ought to have
investigated the reports that seemed so injurious, and found

308 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

some means to discover why he received no letters, instead
of receiving that failure as a proof that he was cast off and
forgotten — that he should have gone home, all other researches
failing, at any price, even that of desertion, — may all be true ;
and yet no man knows precisely how he would have acted
under corresponding circumstances.

Enough to say that he seemed to have accepted his fate —
that he applied for no furlough and held no more conversation
with Captain Jack on the subject — that he mechanically asked
for letters when the mail for the Company arrived, and swal
lowed any disappointment he might have felt, at that sad
word to the expectant, "None !" — that he grew taciturn and
comparatively moody, and asked no questions of the New
York visitors who might have chanced to say at least some
word to enlighten if not to comfort him — that, he mechani
cally performed his duties as a soldier, his uniform, accoutre
ments and person always in order and himself quoted as a
model of discipline and reliability — and that during all this
time his ruddy cheek grew thinner, his eye heavier and more
lowering, his lips more silent, and himself less and less, day
by day, the frank, whole-hearted, joyous man who had so con
scientiously and ardently enlisted in the Union service. To
which may be added that with his hair cut short to his head,
for coolness, and with his beard clipped close, after the man
ner of all the Zouaves who had any, he was shamefully dis
figured, and half his best friends would ftot have known him
under that radical change.

"We shall catch one more glimpse of him, at a very early
period, and before he became a part of that sorrowful spec
tacle set for the eyes of the world on the plains of Manasses,
on the 21st of July, 1861.

CHATTER XIX.

THE MERCHANT COMING HOME — WINE AT THE ST. NICHOLAS
— A LITTLE " URGENT BUSINESS" — H< »w SARAH SANDERSON
SAW A GHOST AND FOUND IT HUMAN — A SERVANT GIRL
"ON LEAVE" — ALONK IN THE HOUSE — THE TEMPTER AND
HIS A'lCTIM — HoW EVEN A ^AN OF THE "WORLD MAY BE
PUZZLED — A SUDDEN CHANGE AND A DISAPPEARANCE.

SATURDAY EVENING, 13th of July. That afternoon the Cu-
nard steamer had gone to her moorings at Jersey City, and
half a dozen of her passengers, not yet quite content with the
companionship they had kept for the previous ten days ou
shipboard, had gone up to the St. Nicholas, dined, and indulged
somewhat freely in " Green Seal"' and other varieties of the
liquid products of French vineyards and Jersey cider-presses.
One of the party had taken a different carriage from the-
others, at the pier, promising to keep the appointment nearly
as soon as his companions. He had reached the hotel but a
little while after them, in fact, but with quite .time enough
elapsing to permit of a hurried visit to a mercantile house in
a. street which the reader of this narration has before had oc-
rasion to enter. Man of pleasure as was this passenger by
the Persia, hurrying away from his enjoynlents on board that
steamer, to other and wilder orgies on the land — he was yet a
man of business, and the ramifications of an extensive trade
were to be looked after before even the parting banquet could
he enjoyed. The merchant shook hands with Air. Wales and
nodded to one or two of the others, glanced hastily over half
a dozen letters especially kept for him by the gray-headed
book-keeper, made inquiries as to certain important opera
tions, commended the position of a few things and found fault
with a corresponding number by way of keeping up the
23 3G9

370 THE DAYS OF SHODDY,

necessary balance of discipline, and then rolled away in his
carriage — hurrying home to the embraces of his family, as
most or all of his subordinates believed; to the St. Nicholas
and a species of dissipation not very usual with him, in
reality.

The scope of this narration does nofc bring us within any
close view of the movements of the merchant during his few
weeks of previous absence. Except in the rare yet not im
possible event of the loss of a steamer by fire or storm, there
is very little of mark in voyages by steam between two
nations only separated by a paltry three thousand miles.
Things have changed materially since some of us, then at
adult age and even now only a little gray about the tem
ples, confidently prophesied that any attempt to traverse the
ocean by steam must be a melancholy failure. They have
changed almost as much, in the staunchness and reliability
of those very steamers, since poor Power went away in the
President and buried all that wealth of Irish humor where so
many other gems too bright for the world had preceded it — .
" down with Wally, drownded, in .the deep, deep sea !" as
Burton used to say with a pathos of drollery that made the
eyes moist while the laugh was yet rippling from the lips.
They have changed again, and in another direction, since the
day when Collins directed a fleet of steamers unequalled in
speed and power — when America was at the head of the
passenger-trade between Xew York and Liverpool — and
when the world fondly believed that she had wisdom and
liberality enough to hold fast what she had attained. The
Cu narder dwarfs and outstrips all others, now, even when
there is no war in the Western World to make an excuse for
the failure of our capital and the want of spirit of our
merchants. They may change again, some day, for better or
for worse; as the whole '"communication of intelligence
between the two continents certainly will change when Cyrus
W. Field and his brother American blunderers, unwarned
by the history of the past and the omens of the present,
have assisted in laying down once more, with the aid of
American capital, an Atlantic Telegraph Cable with both its
ends on British soil, and the only hope that it will not add to

THE DATS OF SHODDY. 371

the consolidation of British power and the consequent crip
pling of our own, lying in the chance that it may again
refuse to work, from its location in those regions of eternal
aurora-borealis where air and water necessarily conduct more
electricity than land-wire or sea-cable.

Mr. Charles Holt, merchant, had made a pleasant run over
on the steamer, relieved the burthened mind of Mr. Beverley
Andrews, assisted him in some financial arrangements just
bold enough to be successful and just near enough to the
verge of being dishonorable to escape that reputation, made
a terrible onslaught upon those styles of goods which he felt
would supply "his country's need,'' lounged a couple of days
at the " Crystal Palace, inspected a couple more of old
castles that he had happened to miss on previous visits and
that lay very near London, heard Tietjens for the first time
and Sims Reeves for the fiftieth, and then made a pleasant
run back again, after blending the " utile" and the " dulce"
something on the principle of that thrifty young merchant
who once went on his "wedding and collecting tour." He
had gone — he had transacted his business — he had returned,
to transact other business-: s.o few words tell what might
otherwise be made a lo/ig .story. And this brings us back
once more to that popular caravanserai from which we had
wandered even beyond the reach of its tremendous dinner-
summons — the St. Nicholas.

It was some six o'clock when the party took their seats at
the table in one of the private parlors of that hotel ; and it
was about eight when the merchant, looking at "his watch,
declared his inability to remain longer, because business of
the most1 pressing character demanded that he should look
after it immediately. The good steamer that had carried
them safely over, the courteous Captain who commanded her,
America and England (the latter in compliment to two or
three of the guests who were of British birth), and each of
the party by name, had all been toasted meanwhile; and
while there was not a member of the party who could be
spoken of as "drunk," in the vulgar acceptation of the word,
there was not one but had taken sufficient wine to fever his
blood and destroy the cooler balance of his judgment.

372 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

What with the still-sensible motion of the steamer and the
effects of the wine he had taken, Charles Holt, when he left
the table amid the regrets of the party and stepped down to
the office of the hotel to order a carriage, was nearer tipsy
than he had before been for many a long day. And yet not
tipsy — only heated, exhilarated, and the cooler and more re
liable nature of the man for the time held under thrall by a
power foreign to itself.

At a little later than half-past eight the same evening,
Sarah Sanderson was descending the steps of Burtnett Havi-
land's little house on East Forty -eighth Street, basket on arm,
to make some late purchases at the baker's and the grocery-
man'^. Just as she reached the last step and descended to
the side-walk, she was confronted by the figure of a man who
stopped full in front of her. For the instant she did not re
cognize him — the next, as she caught a glimpse of his face by
the light of the street-lamp, she saw that it was the merchant.

The false are always cowardly, and alniost^ilways super
stitious. They are themselves outrages upon nature, and
believe all other outrages upon it to be possible. For the
moment, so suddenly had the merchant come upon her, and
so little had she dreamed of his* being within thousands of
miles of herself, the girl was disposed to believe his appear
ance supernatural; and she bandy escaped uttering one of
those screams of terror, ranging between a howl and a yell,
which are considered more forcible than agreeable, even by
the ablest defenders of the music of the human voice. A
Fcream which might have perilled more than her ill-regulated
brain could then have imagined. She did not scream, how
ever, for before she could fairly modulate the sound, the voice
of Charles Holt reassured while it rated her, and she did not
even drop her basket.

" What is the matter, you little fool ?" it said. " You
tremble, and seem ready to scream ! Do you think that I am
a ghost ?''

"Oh no, sir, 'I don't, now," said the girl, "but indeed' you
scared me for a moment. I did not know you was back.''

"And I did not know it myself, until an hour or two
ago/' ,-iaid the merchant. " Never mind that, now. I came

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 873

to-day. It is very lucky that I met you here. Come this
way — there may be some one listening around these stoops."

A portion of both sides of Forty-eighth Street, between
Second and Third Avenues, and nearest the latter, was then
unimproved ground, not even enclosed from the street, and
some of the lots scattered over with huge boulders of stone
not yet cleared away from the blasting that had taken place
in the neighborhood. Few persons passed up and down the
broken sidewalk ; and it was not easy to find a better place
for a conversation not intended to be overheard, than opposite
the vacant lots. The merchant's eye had scanned the fact,
weeks before, and it was to that place that he rather preceded
than accompanied the servant-girl.

" Now," he said when they had reached the spot, " I wish
to know all that has taken place since I have been absent.
Did you obey my orders ?"

" Every one of them," was the answer.

" How many letters has the post-man brought for Mrs.
Haviland ? — I mean letters from her husband ?''

" None — not one."

" You are sure ?"

" Yes, sir, I know he hasn't brought her any."

" Humph ! well, I rather thought he wouldn't, after the
little conversation I had with him !" said the merchant, his
tone very much like a sneer. "And how many have you
allowed her to send him ?"

" I don't think she has sent any, though she has written
a good many," answered the girl. " She always sent me
with the letters, I guess, and I have kept them all. Maybe
ehe may have put one or two into the box herself — I think
not, though. Lately she does not write any, as she never
receives any answers."

" Hum ! no, I suppose not !" commented the merchant.
" Well, Sarah, you appear to be a very good girl, so far. By
the way, those letters are not safe for you to keep — let me
have them the first opportunity. Now tell me something
more. How is your mistress ? Well ?"

" She's well enough," replied the girl, with something in
her tone which implied that she was even too well for her own

374 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

individual fancy. " But she is a little mopey and peaked — •
she couldn't help being that, I suppose."

" ]STo," said the merchant, "that is all natural enough.
Been lonely, of course — poor thing ! ^Now that I am back
again, she must not be left alone so much. She is alone now,
I suppose ? And where were you going when I met you ?"

" Oh, I was going up to the grocery and the baker's," said
the young girl, answering the last question first. "And she
is alone — not a soul but herself and the little girl in the
whole house."

" You mean in her part of it," said the merchant, recalling
a thought that had more than once crept into his head — what
a bore it was that people could not live in houses without
other families under the same roof, and how — . But that
portion of his contemplation may be quite as well left un
written.

" Xo, I don't mean any thing of the kind !" said the girl,
in reply. " She is all alone — all but the little girl. You
will find no oil-cloth in the hall, when you go in, for the
family that lived below moved out in the country, on a farm,
two or three weeks ago. "

Are there fiends who move beside us and stand at our el
bows wherever we go, ready to drop a temptation or a foul
suggestion into the heart and the ear, at aiw opportune mo
ment — just as there certainly are ministering angels always
beside us, ready, whenever permitted, to whisper some sug
gestion of good and drop some seed that may blossom for
eternal life ? Is there an Anteros to be worshipped as well
as an Eros, the one as a bribe to absent himself and be an in
nocuous enemy, as the other is to be wooed and welcomed as a
dear friend ? And were the philosophical heathens of old
right after all, in this particular ? Who knows ? Certain it
is that some of us, when only a minor evil is in the heart,
find temptation and opportunity for one more damning, so
often that the Tempter becomes a reality instead of an ab
straction ; and even the saint irpon his knees and the minis
tering angel beside the couch sometimes have occasion to
shriek out their prayer for deliverance.

Charles Holt stood silent for some moments after the girl

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 375

had uttered the last words. He could not have spoken, then,
had his existence depended upon the effort. More than forty
years of life had done nothing to render him marble in feeling,
however they might have made him unyielding as -that stone
in heart and purpose. lie could yet thrill — enjoy — suffer.
For a moment after the girl had ceased speaking, one short
sentence rung through his head with an hundred repe
titions — so many repetitions, that not one tenth part
of the number could really have been made by the voice with
in that space. "All alone — except the little girl!" "All
alone — except the little girl !" " All alone — except the little
girl !" The strong man trembled, under the weight of that
sudden and overwhelming temptation — to what, even he
scarcely knew himself. In one moment every thing had
changed to him. Restraints he had dreaded were removed
as if by some infernal providence. Opportunities he had
never hoped for, sprang forth to meet him. The steamer had
arrived at the right moment. He had dined at the St. Xich-
olas at the right time, and taken carriage at the very instant.
There was a thrill in all his nerves — a choking in his throat —
a beating of heavy hammers at his temples. How much of
this was wine and how much the natural development of hu
man passion, is a matter for the physiologists to decide at
their leisure.

But the nerves calm more quickly, after forty and before
the weakness of decay comes on, than they do at twenty-five ;
and if resolutions are less quickly formed they are formed
with more steadiness. Whatever the surprise and whatever
the temptation, the one was overcome and the other accepted,
before the girl, standing in the dim shadows by the open lot,
had time for more than a few heart-beats of wonder at his
sudden silence. When the merchant spoke again, his voice
was certainly hoarser than it had been before, as if he might
have taken a chill even in the warm summer air ; but it was
quite clear and steady.

" You are going up to the grocery, you say ?"

" Yes, sir ; and to the baker's ; and the baker will be shut
up if I stand here much longer."

" Humph, well, Sarah, you can take your time and need

THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

not hurry back to the house," said the merchant, his tones
equable as they could have been in directing the overlooking
of an invoice. " I am going down to chat with Mrs. Havi-
land awhile, and she will not miss you, while 7 -am there, if
you run in to see some of the neighbor girls and do not come
back for an hour or even longer. Do you hear me ?"

" Yes, sir," said the girl, " but Mrs. Haviland " and she

was going on to say that some of the articles from the gro
cery might be wanted, when the voice of the merchant, hoarse
as before but much sharper, interrupted her.

" I asked you if you heard what I said, and you answered
'Yes.' That is enough. Now obey my orders without
question. It is now nearly nine," pulling out his watch and
deciphering the hour even in the dim light. " Go and do your
errands. At ten o'clock — not a moment before — come back
to the house. Do you hear me this time ?"

" Yes, sir," answered the girl, her voice lower, more broken,
and as if frightened. How nearly she understood the man,
only the overwatching intelligences can say. That she under
stood something, and was a little frightened thereat, was but
too- evident.

"You know me" continued the tempter, now become the
master, " and you know that I can ruin you the moment I
choose. Here is something more to buy ribbons-^that proves
that I can be a good friend to you when you obey me," and
the girl felt that he dropped a heavy golden double-eagle into
her fingers. "Disobey me, and you will very soon know the
consequences. By ten o'clock I shall be done chatting with
Mrs. Haviland, and you may come back. Now go and do
your errands, and then pay your visits."

His voice had lost all its severity of a moment before, and
seemed almost playful.. If there was any perception of his
true meaning in the mind of Sarah Sanderson, and if she had
one spark of feeling left for the honor and reputation of the
woman she at once served and hated — that change in tone
somewhat reassured her. She turned away without another
word, and went towards Third Avenue with her basket, while
the merchant, watching her disappearing form for a moment,

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 377

then retraced his steps down the street to the door of the
house he had before approached.

The door was closed, and he rang the bell. It is doubtful
whether that singular, bold, bad man, who had passed through
so many varied scenes and enjoyed so many triumphs as well
as suffered so many agonies — had ever before rung the bell
for admission to any house, with precisely the same course
of reflection while waiting for the answer to the summons.

Two or three minutes — they seemed many more to Charles
Holt — and then a light foot descended the stair and the door
opened. / Mary Haviland stood once more before the man.
who had, without her knowledge, exercised so controlling a
power over her destiny, and who seemed likely to sway it
still further — where, heaven only knew ! She recognized him
at once, even in the dim light that came down from the land
ing; and when he said : " Mrs. Haviland !— Mary !" and held
out both his hands to her, it was with something very like a
cry of joy that she rather flung than put both those small
hands into his grasp. And when she said, in response to his
words : " Mr. Holt — J am very, very glad to see you !" she
told nothing more than the truth, and her eyes, which the
merchant saw had grown sadder and larger than he had
known them a few weeks earlier, seemed to light up with joy
that could not be controlled.

For just one instant that confidence and trust touched the
man of the world ; but it was only for one instant. The next,
that subtle flattery fell upon other and more dangerous senses,
and the demi-god became the fiend ! She thought of the
bare appearance of the hall, without oil-cloth or any covering
to the floor, and apologized for it in the simple words: "You,
must excuse the looks of our hall floor — laying down the oil
cloth here belongs to the people who occupy the lower story,
and they have moved away suddenly and left it as you see !''
arid those very words recalled the haunting sentence : "All
alone — except the little girl !" No, he did not relent : had he
ever relented, or been foiled in any purpose of his will ?
Never ! — and it was scarcely time, then, to begin !

Hark ! there came the very echo to his thought ! Never
woman spoke words with less of improper meaning than her

378 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

gentle : " We are all alone — little Pet and I. Sarah has gone
out. Come up-stairs !" but they fell upon the ears of that
man — God forgive him ! — almost as an invitation to pursue
his schemes of lawless love ! There are men (aye, and.
women !) who see voluptuousness in the marble and catch
libidinous sensations from the very songs of birds. They are
coarse, material Bjorns standing beside the Frithiofs of love
and devotion, and seeing in Ingeborg the Fair only a woman
to be torn shrieking away IVom her husband's side, while the
Viking beholds her as something holier than mortal flesh, to
be worshipped afar off witli a purer flame than that which
once burned in the temple of Balder. And of the;n and of
all such let the solemn invocation be uttered once more — God
pity and help them ! For they lack all that makes earth
beautiful and heaven possible.

Mary Haviland turned to lead the way up-stairs. There
was a small table standing at the foot, when.! the hat-rack
of the departed family had stood so lately, and Charles Holt
laid down his hat upon it. As he did so, though the light
was very dim, he caught thj) glitter of the brass key on the
inside of the door. Then, another thought perhaps, and per
haps merely the carrying out of one before harbored. It was
but a turn of the head, quick as lightning, to 'see that the
young wife was going steadily up the stair, with her back
towards him, — and then a turn of the wrist, almost as quick,
but steady and careful, so that not even a click should be
heard. It was done — the merchant was alone in the house
with the woman whom he had marked as his victim — alone
except as to the little child that lay cradled in sleep — alone,
and with the door locked, so that none — not even Sarah with
her pass-key — could enter from without !

There was no light, or a very dim one, in the back-room.
In the front, one burner of the small chandelier was ablaze ;
affording sufficient light for the unromantic task of "mending''
upon which the young wife had been engaged before disturbed,
and proving (by the care taken not to waste the illuminating
vapor) that the gas-bills were habitually paid on call !

Mary Haviland set a chair for her visitor, very near where
her own remained, and resumed her seat as well as her work;

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 379

while perhaps it may be said the merchant resumed his !
He had, for the first time, an opportunity to scan the counte
nance of the youhg wife closely, and to see the inroads which
disappointment and anxiety had been making upon it. It
was so much thinner, and the eyes looked so large and mourn
ful, while something like a quiver, born of many tears, played
continual]}' around the mouth. But the blonde, hair seemed
brighter than ever; the beauty of the young wife had not been
of that fragile order incapable of bearing the least depletion ;
and it may be said that she was more winningly — more melt-
ingly — beautiful than ever before. If the heart of the mer-
chant^for one moment smote him in the knowledge thatmdVe
than half the shadows on that fair face had been of his set
ting, other and less creditable feelings, promoted no doubt by
the fiery wines he had so lately been drinking, surged up
wards and drowned all impulses of mercy.

But this man was a man of business, always — as has before
been remarked. There was not a joy so dear or an agony so
acute that in the midst of it he could not count dollars and
cents ! He had ascertained, at the store, that the salary of
the clerk had not been paid for the past week ; and after the
first commonplaces he drew from his pocket a little roll of
bills and handed them to the wife, who nodded her thanks
and dropped them into her pocket with the tiniest of charm
ing blushes for the moment lighting up a face that had
become almost too fair if not pale. Then the recollection of
the service for which the money was paid, and that total
separation from her husband which she could neither explain
nor understand, came suddenly over her, her work fell upon
her lap, she dropped her head forward, and the merchant
could see that two or three bright tears trickled away from
her eyes and gemmed her cheeks. Mary Haviland could not
conceal feeling as she had done before her husband's depar
ture ! — who can be as strong after a month of fever and ex
haustion, as when the system is healthy and the veins bound
ing with life ?

The merchant drew his chair close to that, of the unhappy
woman — drew it up so quickly that she perhaps did not
know of the movement. The next instant he had both her

380 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

hands in his and was leaning over close to her. She made
no effort to withdraw her hands, and the tempter was even
deceived if she did not faintly return his warm pressure. An
instant more, and he had dropped upon one knee at the side
of her chair, thrown his left arm around her shoulder and
drawn her over to him. Even this movement was not
resisted, and the fair head fell upon his shoulder as if the
neck had long been aching with the effort to support it.
" Mary !" said the merchant, his voice so expressive of
sympathy and affection that it might have won a less yielding
woman than Mary ITaviland ; and at the same instant his
hand bent forward to the face that lay half upturned to the
light, and his lips glued themselves to those which should
have been so sacred against such a touch.

" No — you had better not kiss me," once said a lady in a
particular presence, the words rippling from her tempting
mouth in a musical burst that was half laughter. "Those
who kiss me have a bad habit of never forgetting the touch
of my lips !" The man who was warned did not heed — he
persisted in his opportunity — and as a result, from that
moment there grew a thrill upon his memory that not even
changing years, gray hairs, pain, toil and suffering could
ever take away. In that one touch he read the secret of all
the thraldoms held over strong men by weak woman — by
Semirarnis over Ninus, by Cleopatra over Antony, by
Rosamond over Henry of England, by Gabrielle over the
Conqueror of the League, by Castlemaine over the Merry
Monarch, by Montespan over Louis, by — (let us bring down
the comparison to our own times)— by Mrs. Howard over
the husband of Eugenie. 'Ever after he carried about with him
a recollection which enslaved him to one as it emancipated
him from all others. Had those lips been evil, he would have
been ruined from that instant : as they were pure in every
pulse that beat beneath them, and fragrant in every breath that
issued through gates of pearl to those crimson portals, they
only opened to him anew life whose duration ended with the
beginning of the life beyond.

This is the story, briefly told, of the witchery of the lips.
If their touch is thus madness when only purity arid goodness

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 381

dictate the pressure, what indeed must it be when the pulses
are running riot with passion and all the better angels of our
nature have veiled their eyes from the spectacle of the man
turned for the moment to the demon ! Whatever may have
been the thoughts and intentions of Charles Holt the instant
before, the touch of those marvellous lips maddened him as a
dozen additional bottles of wine might ha-vtf failed to do —
removed efery restraint. — broke down every barrier — and
made him a fiend to be wrestled and prayed against with all
the failing energies of poor human nature.

In one instant he had flung his arms around the waist of
the young wife ; his sacrilegious hands gathered her close to
him without any regard to the propriety of his touch ; his
lips devoured hers with burning kisses that dropped thickly
as sparks from some great conflagration and seemed to blister
where they fell ; and his tongue, even between those most
unholy and enforced caresses, uttered words of miscalled
love so reckless and dangerous that no ear could misunder
stand them.

" Mary ! Mary ! My own Mary ! How I have waited for
this moment ! I have loved you — 1 love you, deeply, fondly
• — as I never before have loved woman in all my life ! You
love mr, I know that you do ! You are mine ! — you must be
mine — body, soul and spirit ! Come here — closer — you are
all mine, and there is no power under heaven that cau take
you out of my arms !"

Great heaven ! — what was this revelation to Mary Havi-
land ? — She who had up to that moment no more dreamed of
bestowing upon him a love more intense than that she could
have borne a father or brother, than she had of plunging body
and. soul into eternal perdition ! She who might have been,
and no doubt had been, imprudent — first in her gratitude to
wards him, on account of her husband, and again through her
loneliness, the great diiference in their ages, and that igno
rance of the nature of unholy passion which was a part of
her very being ! She who might have acted as if centering
an unholy love around that man, but who had all the while
never dreamed of any thing more than friendship and pro
tection ! What were the sensations of that spotless wife, the

:5<S2 T H E D AYS OP S H O D D Y.

doubtful past all illumined as by a lightning- flash, and the
whole horrible precipice on which she had been standing
made too revoltingly plain ? What did she suffer in those few
moments, clasped in the arms of that hot-blooded, fierce-tem
pered man,'his kisses raining upon her lips and cheeks, his
physical power enchaining her, and his words stunning her
ears while his fiery and blood-shot eyes literally devoured her
face ? Xot even her broken and agonized words could give
any indication of the terrible fear and horror that oppressed
her ; for words are sometimes powerless, and they are almost
always so when they should carry the force of the thunder.

"Oh, Mr. Holt! oh sir! Shame! Shame! Oh, do let
me go ! Please let me go ! You frighten me ! You suffo
cate me ! My God I — my husband ! Oh, sir ! you forget
that 1 am a wife ! Do let me go ! Please let me go !"

No response, except that clasp tightening yet more closely,
the hands more reckless, and the words more and more
fearful. Then a horrible culmination of fear took possession
of the outraged wife, and the strength that madness gives,
came to her relief. Came to her relief too, at the very mo
ment when the past delirium for an instant weakened her
tempter and the stiffened nerves relaxed. By an almost su-
perhunfljjh effort she released herself and flung him off, spring
ing to her feet, and dealing him, as she did so, a blow of some
force, merely by accident and without the least intention of
resisting violence by violence in that manner. The merchant
was on his feet at the same instant, and his eyes glared upon
her with the passion of rage that the apparently-intentional
blow had engendered, blended with the fierce energy of will
that had only become more violent from resistance. She
could see that the human tiger was fairly aroused — all the
bad passions in play — all the advantage on his side. Man
against woman ; reckless strength and long experience
against weakness and innocence ; wealth, that always compels
what it cannot buy, and habitually makes merchandize of the
feelings and the honor of poverty — against that poverty in
its most helpless form ; all overbalancing against her — not
one hope that was not crushed down by a deadly fear !

At this stage ol the narration, it becomes a matter of re-

T HE DAYS OF SHODDY. 383

gret that this story is not a inclo-drama — only a relation of
the actual life of to-day. A little change in time and place
would so smooth away the difficulties ! How easily, in the
melo-drama aforesaid or the novel of the intense school upon
which it is founded, the heroine can always pick up or have
conveniently about her those little articles necessary for her
rescue ! It /is always so convenient, in either of the walks
of " litter-attire" just named, for the Lady Isolinda, borne
away from her sheltering bower by the demoniac Lord of
Noirdiable. immured in liis lonely tower and visited by the
tyrant baron at midnight with the basest intentions, just as
he lays hand upon her, to break out with a :' Ha ! ha ! — vil-
lian, you are foiled !" and present full at his breast a horse-
pistol of such dimensions that it could not be conveniently
carried even under modern crinoline — thus holding him at
bay till the walls of the tower can be battered down, precisely
at the right moment, by two men, three women and a boy,
headed by her true lover, the young Knight of Silvergilt, who
was a thousand miles awav only a few minutes previous, but
has annihilated space as easily as probability, — and the rescue
duly accomplished ! And what difficulty has lovely Susan,
the cottager's daughter, in linding a table-knife of athletic-
proportions, lying loosely around, ready to catch up" and give
the corresponding threat against his life or her own, when
De Hirsute, the whiskered town villain, makes his deadly on
slaught upon her fair fame, down in the meadow, out in the
summer-house, or anywhere else that may be most convenient
for the story ? Alas ! — real life has its limitations, and the
nineteenth century is peculiarly e.m'g<jn»t. Mary Haviland
should have been provide/1 with a six-shooter or at least, a big
jack-knife, to make the narrative run smoothly; but the poor
little woman would really have been a good deal worse scared
at such a thing, had she possessed the first, than any person
at whom she pointed it ; and there is really no way of ac
counting for the presence of a big knife in the room, seeing
that the time was too early in the season for the peeling of
apples or peaches. Her scissors, even had she thought of
them, were not large enough to supply a dagger of very dan
gerous proportions ; and besides, the more formidable of the

384 'THE DAYS OF S H 0 T> B T .

two points might have been broken off by Pet a day or two
before, in an effort at Archimedean leverage between two
slabs of the chimney-piece, and Sarah failed to signal a
"grinder." So there is really nothing left for it, but to fall
back upon the solemn, sombre reality of a poor little woman
in terrible peril, with no means of defence and apparently
none of escape.

We left the two, a moment since, confronting each other.
It was but a moment that the pause endured. In the next,
the hand of Charles Holt was laid upon the young wife's wrist,
and he spoke two words in a tone that he strove to render
something other than fierce, and yet one terribly decided :

" Come here !"

Therevwas not strength enough in Mary Haviland, and she
knew it, to resist his drawing her towards him ; but there was
yet strength, as she believed, in prayers and tears, and she
burst into an agony of sobs, as she uttered : —

"Oh, don't ! Please don't ! Don't hurt me, please don't!
For God's sake, Mr. Holt, please let me go!''

Alas, once more ! Her soft blonde hair had become par
tially dishevelled during the first struggle,. and fell be witch-
in gly over the rounded and dimpled shoulders left partially
uncovered in the freedom of her summer-evening dress. There
was enough even in the charms revealed, to excite colder and
purer men than Charles Holt : there was enough to make him
nearer mad than ever. Even the tears softened and added
to the attraction of the pleading face ; and the ripe lips really
'trembling in fear and agony, quivered an ungovernable feel
ing into the human animal.

" I have told you; Mary Haviland," said the merchant—
and his voice was steady, firm and threatening — "that I will
never let you go until you are mine ! I love you — deeply
and devotedly. You love me, though you dare not own it.
Your husband has deserted you — you' have no choice but to
accept my love and protection."

Again that low, broken answer — " Please let me go !"
Suddenly a new thought of hope struck the young wife, and
she gave utterance to it at once " Oh, Mr. Holt, you do not
know to what danger you are subjecting me — and yourself.

T HE DAYS OF SHODDY. 385

Sarah has only gone out for a few minutes : she may come
back at any moment, and then we should both be ruined."
• " Not yet !" said the merchant, triumphantly, his hand
still around her wrist. " Sarah has gone to the grocery and
the baker's, and I have ordered her not to come back until
ten — more thaA three-quarters of an hour, yet."

"You have seen her? — you ordered her? Oh, my
God !" and the cry was one of heart-breaking agony. The
moment before, the young wife had caught one lightning
glance at mysteries before dark and hidden. Now she
caught another and scarcely less terrible. She had seen the.
merchant chatting aside with Sarah, when he supposed him
self unnoticed, before he went to England. She had thought
nothing of the circumstance then — but now ! Little Pet had
seen him giving the girl money, and he had taken so much
pains to turn off the conversation at the table. It had been
"yellow money," gold, as the child said, after all. Sarah
Sanderson was a suborned tool of the merchant, and her
enemy ! She had obeyed his orders and left her mistress to
be destroyed ! Putting aside the peril of the present
moment, she was deserted and alone — had not one friend left
in the city ! Father of the innocent ! — what should she do ?

Once before this time Mary Haviland has been seen in a
position to develop extraordinary strength of will — when
^lie crushed down her tears and her regrets and allowed
her husband to believe her cheerful when he went away.
Since that time she has been seen as showing no marked
energy, but at times absolute weakness. Something of the
causes of that blending of strength and weakness, may have
been found in her paternal blood of the Ilowlands of New
England, used to fighting the descendants of Moby Dick on
the far Pacific, where nerve and readiness were life, — and
in the soft, calm, yielding blood of her mother's Quaker
family. It was her first great peril, and under its very im
minence thought and determination rose to meet it — deter
mination in despair and blindness of body and soul, but yet
quick, active and efficient. One moment more of agony
formed her resolution, and a half moment more began to put
it into action. /

24

THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

Charles Holt, the merchant, had no doubt been surprised
a great many times in his life, but it is doubtful whether the
greatest of all those surprises did not fall upon him at that
time. For as he still held the wrist of the young wife and
repeated the commanding words: " Come here !" she turned,
literally threw herself into his arms, clasped her own around
his body, glued her lips to his face and covered it with pas-,
sionate kisses ! Could the man believe his senses ? Still
more — could he believe his ears the next moment ? The
woman was actually laughing as she clung to him with really
.shameless familiarity, and her words were :

" Love me, do you, Charley Holt ? Well, I wonder if this
farce has not been played far enough ! Why don't you kiss
me ? You are not half a lover !"

Actually the man was so surprised that he recoiled. It is
very possible that for that one moment the suspicion struck
him that this woman was one of the most consummate
actresses in the world — not only a false but a shameless
wife, who had " played him" (to use an expression that the
fishermen, if not the politicians, will understand) in the dis
guise of a pure modesty, and that instead of being the winner
he was really the victim ! A man of decidedly exclusive
tendencies, especially in his vices, that would not have suited
his mental calculation by any means. He could defy heaven
and beard the fiends, to win what could not be won by others
and should not have been by himself; but what any other could
win, however precious, was chaff before his breath and dust
under his feet. Yes, it must be said that at " Charley Holt ?"
and the flippant use of the word " lover," that bold, bad man
actually recoiled. He could not utter a word. The tempted,
now apparently become the temptress, went on, still laughing,
and there was not keenness enough in the brain yet a little
affected by the fumes of the wine, to know how hysterical
that laughter really was :

" Why, what a sober face you have, all at once ! Don't
you love me, after all ? I never saw such a man as you are, in
all my life !" and half a dozen more kisses rained upon his
face.

Suddenly, and before the merchant had yet spoken, she

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 387

drew away from him, went to the door leading out into the
hall (the other was shut already) closed it and turned the key !
After that movement, the lover so suddenly outrun in the

course of his balculations scarcely needed her " Prav. sit

»/ * >

clown, and excuse me a moment !" to induce him to drop into
the chair from which he had lately risen, and wait the next
proceeding of this singular creature. He followed her with
his eyes, as with a familiar nod and a smile she passed through
the half-opened door into the little bed-room adjoining, and
there for the moment disappeared from his sight, the door
still retaining its half-open position. He never saw her again,
after the folds of her soft evening-dress disappeared behind
the bed-room door. He will never see her again, until that
great assemblage of all ages and all nations, for whose trum
pet summons the reverent ear unconsciously keeps listening
over all the noise of the street, the chorus of the opera, the
hum of busy voices, the great commingled shout of human
joy and the still greater aggregate moan of human sorrow !

Mary Haviland passed into that little bed-room, every nerve
one shudder of excitement and her physical and her mental
systems both so overtasked that she was on the point of fall
ing in a dead faint on the floor, — reached over into her bed
and caught up the little girl that lay slumbering there ; opened
the door that led from the bed-room into the hall, with such
careful fingers that the slight click of the latch did not sound
above the painful catching of her breath and the wild beatmg
of her heart ; descended the stair so softly that if there was
even a creak it did not reach to the ear of the watcher in the
room above ; laid her hand upon the street-door, started with
fear when she found it locked and with joy when she saw the
glitter of the key ; unlocked it, opened it, went out, closed it
again, Math the same careful hand ; and all unbonneted as she
was, with no mantle, her thin slippers, and her unbound hair
streaming about her shoulders — but with the child which
seemed all that was left to her in the world, still sleeping
peacefully in her arms, — fled away into the night !

For perhaps five minutes the merchant retained his position
in the chair, waiting for the return of the woman who had so
puzzled him. Then, hearing no rustle within and anxious to

T H K DAYS OF SHODDY.

solve the mystery in one way or another, he rose and went to
the door. He looked in. The door into the hall was nearly
wide open, and- the light from the burner at the head of the
stairs streamed into the room. There was no one there ! He
Went to the bed, of which the light covering was turned down,
and for some unexplainable reason felt within it, In the mid
dle his hand encountered a warm spot — the nest out of which
the little bird had just been taken. He said nothing, but set
his teeth hard and passed along the hall into the back-room.
No one there. Then he descended the stairs and laid his hand
on the street door. It opened at once, without any aid of the
key. He saw it all. The door had been unlocked — the

woman was gone

It may be incorrect to say that the merchant " saw it all."
It might have been a puzzling study to see " all" of that sin
gular adventure. But he saw enough. Only one exclama
tion escaped his lips, as he took his hat from the little table,
put it on his head and left the house with that peculiar slam
of the door which does not indicate the possession of an
equable temper. That exclamation was, slurring a little gross
profanity:

" Tricked at last, by all that is outrageous !"

The little house on East Forty-eighth Street was at last
truly "alone." Without a great deal of concert among the
members, it is true, another family had " moved away."

Perhaps fifteen minutes after the departure of the mer
chant, Sarah Sanderson, who had been spending the allotted
time in gossip with some of her companions in one of the
neighboring basements, returned to the house and admitted
herself with the pass-key, a little doubtful, all the while,
whether the influence of the merchant would be quite suffi
cient to save her from the scolding she had deserved by diso
bedience. She found the light burning, but no one in the
house, and when she had called " Mrs. Haviland !" and ejac-
lated, " Where can she be ?" to her satisfaction, she explored
the bedroom. Little Pet was gone, as well as her mother ;
and from the moment of making that discovery the girl was
struck dumb with horror. She, too, " saw it all," or thought
that she did ! Mrs. Haviland had eloped with Mr. Holt, or

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 389

been carried off by him — there could be no doubt of it. And
Sarah Sanderson, hardened as she had been by the defects of
her early education and the wrongs she had already com
mitted against her mistress, was not yet so totally lost as not
to feel some upbraidings of conscience and some terrors for
the future. What would be the end of all this ? This she
asked herself, sitting dumb and stupid in the room that Mrs.
llaviland had so lately 'deserted, and listening, far into the
night, to hear if there should not be some noise at the door
or some other symptoms of her returning. Xo. sound what
ever ; and as the summer night wore on, the poor girl became
so frightened that she dared not go to bed, but fell uneasily
asleep in her chair, dreaming that her betrayed mistress
was being dragged screaming away by three men with masks
over their faces, while a fourth, who looked like Burtnett Hav-
iland, was pelting her (Sarah) with paving-stones. One at
last hit her on the side of the head, and she awoke to find
that it was daylight, the gas still burning, and that she had
fallen over out of the chair and struck her head against the
pommel of another standing near.

Around the house, after daylight, the girl staggered like
one in a dream. She was not more frightened and worried,
than stunned. It seemed to her that all the world had turned
topsy-turvy in a night, and that every one must fa^l off into
thin air. If she had sinned, terribly was she suffering at that
moment, however a little time might reconcile her to all her
past deeds and all their future consequences. She called " Mrs.
Haviland !" again, from garret to cellar, and looked under the
beds. All that she discovered, in this search, was that the
young wife had taken nothing from the house except the
clothes in which she sat — not a bonnet, shawl, and not even
a cent of the few dollars in money that had been lying in a
little pocket-book in one of the cupboards. She did not
know (perhaps Mary Haviland did, and thought of it before
she left the house) that the merchant had paid her the past
week's salary of her husband, and that she had it in her
pocket at the time of flight. If not with Mr. Holt, then, she
must have gone away penniless ; and that fact proved, more
conclusively than any other, that she .had fled with the mur-

390 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

chant. Stop ! — there was one fact yet more conclusive — the
merchant had told her, weeks before, that if she would obey
his orders, Mrs. Haviland should soon be " out of her way" ;
and after that what question could remain ?

At last this loneliness and fear became unendurable. The
girl well knew the street and number of the Fullerton house,
where Kate resided — though she had never been there. By
ten o'clock that morning, as a consequence, Kate Haviland
was informed by one of the servants that a girl was waiting
below to see her. She went down, and found Sarah Sander
son in that state of mind and body that might have been
expected — very confused in the one, shaky in the other. A
few words revealed the story which the girl came to tell, and
in which she by no means told all the truth (that part, espe
cially, which concerned her enforced absence from the house).
She had gone to the grocery, she said — met Mr. Charles Holt,
who told her he was going down to the house— had been
absent between a half and three-quarters of . an hour— and
when she came back, had found the house deserted and all
those evidences of a sudden flight.

Bonnie Kate Haviland was " bonnie" no longer for that
mument. She looked "wolfish," to use a Westernism. She
had believed pome unpleasant things of her cousin's wife ;
but this — elopement and final ruin — this was too much !
Seducer or seduced (as she believed them) would have
fared badly in her hands at that moment, little and dainty as
they were.

Ten minutes afterwards the young girl had her gipsy flat
on her head and was accompanying Sarah Sanderson up to
Forty-eighth Street. There was still no one within the house,
nor could any indication be found to discredit the belief of
Sarah that Mary Haviland had eloped with the merchant — •
fleeing with that suddenness to prevent being caught by the
girl on her return.

By that afternoon's mail another letter from Kate Haviland
to her cousin Burtnett, written on Mary's little writing-case
in her own parlor, and upon paper that the young wife had
specially designed for keeping up correspondence with him, —
left the citv for Alexandria or wherever the Fire Zouaves

THE DAYS Of SHODDY. 391

should be "on service." What that letter contained, in the
then prevailing state of mind of the young teacher, may be
easily imagined. It told Burtnett Haviland that the night
before, beyond doubt or hope, his wife had abandoned her
home at a moment's notice and eloped with the merchant, his
former employer !

Three things more must be said before the close of this
chapter. One, that Sarah Sanderson, at Kate's suggestion,
though with many fears and quakings, remained in the aban
doned house, to " see what would turn up," using the money
left behind by her mistress, to purchase what food was neces
sary for her very small family. The second, that Charles
Holt, whether already for the time sick of a city where such
disappointments as his own could be met with, or with some
business connected with his "shoddy" operations to transact
at Washington, left New York ibr the Capital on Wednesday
morning the 17th. The third, that Kate Haviland, after her
researches at the house on Forty-eighth Street and her ar
rangements for the subsistence of Sarah Sanderson, went
back to Mrs. Fullerton's and the care of those seraphs, Myra
and Mildred, with an indefinite impression floating about
beneath her chestnut hair, that all men were scoundrels, that
all women were fools, and that if any of the male sex ever
tried tricks of that character upon .her, they would be very
likely to have a good time of it !

CHAPTER XX.
THE BATTLE OP BULL RUN — THE "ON TO RICHMOND" CRY,

AND HOW IT WAS OBEYED — McDoWELL'S " GRAND ARMY" —

THE ADVANCE — THE BATTLE OF THE 18TH JULY — PAUSE

OF THE 19TH AND 20TII — TlIE OPENING OF THE 21ST — BAT
TLE OF BULL RUN PROPER, WITH SKETCH OF THE FIELD AND

THE CORPS-MOVEMENTS THE BATTLE, THE PANIC AND THE

END.

THE history of the battle of Bull Run has never yet been
so related as to clear away much of the mystery at first sur
rounding it and make the world fully aware why and how
that thunderbolt of national disaster fell out of an apparently
cloudless sky — how it was brought on, and fought, and won,
and lost. The cause of truth might be subserved, did space
permit the writer fully to avail himself of the copious mate
rials furnished,* and to narrate with that particularity which
trenches upon the province of the historian, the story of that
battle which has so much influenced the national cause at
home, and so affected our name in arms abroad. The limits,
however, of this^ story, now necessarily approaching its con
clusion, render impossible any thing more than a brief and

* By Lieut. William H. White, the desultory but graphic historian of the
Mexican War. unquestionably the closest and most capable student of all the
battles of the War for the Union, from its commencement, and to whom the
•writer has before had the happiness of avowing his obligations for the mate
rials of the description of the battle of Malvern Hill, in the previous volume
of this series — "Shoulder-Straps." Mr. White is not to be either credited
or held responsible for the operations of the Fire Zouaves, in their formation,
campaign, before, during and after the battle — the data for the movements
of that corps, during all its career, being derived from personal observation,
from the journals and letters of "A. 0. A.," who went down with the regiment
as a> fighting newspaper-correspondent in the interest of the Fire Department,
•was captured at Bull Run and kept for ten months a prisoner at Richmond,
Charleston and elsewhere, — and from the relations of officers and members
of the Zouave and other regiments.

392

T it E D A Y S O F SHODDY. 393

rapid recapitulation of leading events and movements con
nected with that battle, while so much is necessary as a part
of the history of the time, as well as from the influence pro
duced on the fortunes of leading characters in the narration,
by the closing events of the conflict. And in this hasty re
view of the battle, it must be understood that only the corps-
movements of the Union troops can be given, while the rebels
are more or less dealt with as a formidable aggregate.

"On to Richmond !" was the cry. The seat of the rebel
government had been removed to Richmond from Mont
gomery, and the belief then existed — first, that Richmond
could easily be taken ; — second, that to take Richmond and
capture the rebel President and Cabinet, would close the se
cession. The second of these opinions is still retained when
nearly three years have passed since the first effort; the first
is as fresh as ever in the public mind, when some hundreds
of thousands of lives have been sacrificed on tbe.road and some
dozens of the most gallant reputations in the nation sent to
keep them company.

Secretary Seward had predicted that the war would be
over in three months. Beginning in April, the three months
ended in July. What was called a mighty army lay in and
around Washington, and extensive fortifications stretched
south-westward over Arlington Heights into Virginia. From
the beginning the power and determination of the rebels had
been underrated, and in spite of the fact that nearly or quite
two thousand cannon and more than two hundred thousand
stand of arms had fallen into their hands by theft and capture,
they were said to have " no weapons." Scott, noble, glorious,
but broken down and superannuated, sat in his easy-chair at
his headquarters in Washington, tapped the maps on the wall
with his cane and scolded the young officers. Only once in
a long period was he even able to ride out to the field in his
carriage and overlook a few of the more important evolutions.
Yet he "commanded." McDowell commanded under him,
doing what he could to form an army out of raw materials,
but, as an old army officer, painfully aware that no army had
as yet been formed, though one of the finest in the world
might still grow up in the near future.

394 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

But " On to Richmond !" was the cry. Congress, not doing
mischief enough otherwise, bellowed -it, and the country took
up the cry.. The radicals, who felt that some share 'of the
responsibility of the struggle rested upon them, insisted upon
it ; and the conservatives, who felt that the struggle could
not close too soon, acknowledged the justice of the demand.
McDowell was not ready, but he must " go ahead." He has
not been the last man, in the Union service, hounded on at
the wrong time and undersuicidal circumstances — then abused
and underrated for failure. But enough of this, and quite
enough to recall to recollection what so many well remember
when reminded.

Brigadier General Irwin McDowell had a " grand army" —
so the journals designated it, and so the people spoke of it.
In numbers it was really formidable as compared with any
body of troops that had before assembled on this continent ;
and Gov. Andrew's happy phrase for it, of " an aggregation
of town meetings" (to which allusion may before have been
made) had not yet been applied. But even in numbers it
was contemptible, as compared with the force that subsequent
events showed to be needed, and as contrasted with the
hordes that sprung up on either side, when it had been des
troyed, and sown in the Virginian furrows after the manner
of the dragon's teeth. Let us for on-e moment, before exam
ining what was done by this force, glance at its numbers and
composition, when it took up its line of march from Arling
ton Heights and the various encampments around Washing
ton, at 3 P.M., on Tuesday, the 10th of July, 1861, to sweep
away the army of the rebel Beauregard, and "put an early
close to the secession."

At that early day a " division" was the largest command
in the service, "corps d'armee" (since better known among
the rough wits as " corps dammee") not having yet come into
use in the United States armies. The Army of the Poto
mac was made up of live of those divisions, each, with the
exception of the fourth (or " reserve") composed of two or
more brigades. The reserve was not subdivided into
brigades, but held in one entire command. There were in
all, eleven brigades. Of cavalry there were eight companies,

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 395

all regulars. There were twelve regiments of three-months
militia, thirty-six of Volunteers from the various States, one
battalion of marines and another of foot regulars — composing
the infantry force. The artillery consisted of fifty-five pieces,
light and heavy, divided into eleven batteries and one section
of two pieces attached to the New York Seventy-first. One
of these batteries, of six pieces, belonging to the Eighth New
York, was thrown out of service the day before the battle, by
the expiration of the term of service of the members, and
marched away at that awkward moment, giving rise to a
piquant charge which will not soon be forgotten, of their hav
ing " inarched to the rear to the sound of the enemy's guns."
The whole force of artillery remaining was therefore forty-
nine pieces of all calibres, twenty-eight b«ing rifled. The
batteries were fully horsed and equipped, but the section ac
companying the Seventy-first was drawn by drag-ropes
manned by detachments from that regiment.

The men, armament and horses of the " grand army" may
be summed up briefly thus : thirty-three thousand five hun
dred infantry, one thousand artillery and five hundred caval
ry : thirty-five thousand men of all arms. Horses — artillery
one thousand, and 'cavalry five hundred — in all fifteen hun
dred. Artillery, forty-nine pieces ; sabres and cavalry car
bines, five hundred ; bayonets, thirty-three thousand.

The highest officer in rank was a Brigadier General. Two
of the division commanders — Tyler of the first, and Runyou
of the fourth — were Brigadiers, both belonging to the three-
months men. The other three, Hunter, Heintzelman and
Miles, were Colonels, all of the regular army. Each of the
eleven brigades was led by a Colonel. Four of "these —
Keyes, W. T. Sherman, Franklin and Andrew Porter, be
longed to the regular service ; the others, Schenck, Richard
son, Burnside, Wilcox, Howard, Blenker and Davies, were
volunteers, temporarily detached from their regiments.

There were eighteen regiments from New York ; four from
Michigan ; two each from Ohio and Pennsylvania ; one from
Minnesota and one from Wisconsin. New England had four
teen, of which Maine sent four, Massachusets three, Connecti
cut three, Rhode Island two, and Vermont and New Hamp-

S96 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

shire each one. New Jersey had seven regiments, all in Gen.
Runyon's reserve, and consequently (as well as very unfor
tunately) never thrown into the fight, though a part of them
did good service in checking the retreat. One of the Penn
sylvania regiments, the Fourth, took the same view of the
situation, as that embraced by the New York battery, and
marched away when the conflict was actually beginning.
This, with the reserve subtracted, left the advancing army
with only forty-one regiments, or less than thirty thousand
men of all arms.

On the 17th, McDowell entered Fairfax Court-House and
drove the rebels towards Centreville and Manasses, making
some unimportant captures of material, but the South Caro
lina troops who had previously held that place, escaping.
The pursuit was not pushed beyond Centreville, owing to the
early exhaustion of the raw troops.

On the morning of the 18th, the situation of the various
commands was as follows : Tyler's first division at Centreville ;
Hunter's second at Fairfax Court-House ; Heintzelman's third
at Sangster's and Fairfax Stations ; Runyon's fourth in reserve ;
and Miles's Fifth between Fairfax Court-House and Station.

Each of the brigades encountered obstructions on the march,
from trees felled across the roads and other incumbrances,
that were yet easily removed by the axemen of the commands.
The pioneers, however, had no power to sweep away the
Virginian forests, fill up Virginian swamps or level the face
of the country ; and obstructions to advance a thousand times
more serious were found eventually in those peculiarities of
the "Old Dominion."

Richardson's brigade of Tyler's division passed on through
Centreville and advanced towards Bull Run Valley. At noon
Gen. Tyler commenced a reconnoisance in force, with this brig
ade, consisting of the Twelfth New York, First Massachu
setts and Second and Third Michigan — all volunteers ; Ayres'
battery and two companies of cavalry. This force, moving up
the Run through troublesome timber, near Blackburn's Ford,
two and- a half miles from Centreville, came upon a strong
rebel force, and the first hostilities were commenced by Ayres,
with a vigorous reply from the rebels, who had the advantage

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 397

of shelter. The eventual result of this skirmish was that the
Federal troops were virtually repulsed, (the Twelfth New
York, Col. Wai rath, behaving badly) — and that after a vigor
ous shelling of the woods by Ayres, Richardson fell back in
good order upon Centreville. The Federal loss in this opening
fight was perhaps one hundred 'in killed, wounded and
missing.

Friday the 19th and Saturday the 20th, though with heavy
skirmishes on both days, were principally employed in re-
connoisances, the body of the Federal army remaining quietly
in camp in the various positions taken on the 11th and 18th.
The rebels who had been driven from Fairfax Court-House,
Germantown, Centreville and other points in the neighborhood,
during those two days of fatal delay joined the main body
under Beauregard, strongly posted on the formidable range of •
hills near Manasses. Naturally a very strong position, this
had been further strengthened by miles of earthworks and
acres of that formidable obstruction so well known to military
men as abattis ; while thick woods so screened their works
on the crests and sides of the hills that it required the sharp
est scrutiny, even when close upon them, to discover their
precise locality before suffering the worst results of their
.presence.

Beauregard was evidently informed in good time of the
determination of McDowell to advance upon Manasses, —
through some one of the many ramifications of that treachery
which paralyzed all the Union movements at the commence
ment of the war, and has ever since so sadly crippled them.
He was thus enabled to withdraw his troops from the
Northern side of Bull Run, in time to escape McDowell's
skilfully-planned and well-executed attempt to effect their
capture. The precautionary spirit of that officer, leading him
even to check by a lift of the finger the cheers about to break
from the troops as he rode through them at Centreville, for
fear of the noise that might thus be created, — was of little use
when rebel spies and traitors lurked at every corner, ready to
betray each successive movement !

Bull Run, insignificant then and now in size, unknown then
except to the dwellers in its neighborhood, but now as

898 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

historic as the Danube or the Tiber, — is a small stream having
its source in the Bull Run Mountains, flowing in a direction
generally South-east, and falling into the Ocoquan about three
and a half leagues from the junction of the latter stream
with the Potomac. Narrow in width, it is usually very low
in the dry weather of summer, but in winter almost always
deep and unfordable. At times, even in summer, heavy rains
and their consequent freshets swell it within a few hours so
that the fords are rendered impassable. The country, on
either side, is thickly wooded and hopelessly broken, making
it the most troublesome of barriers to an armed advance in
the face of defences so easily thrown up on the surrounding
hills.

Man asses is seven miles distant in a South-west direction
from Centreville ; and the latter is a small village of a few
straggling houses, lying on a ridge of hills taking a direction
nearly North and South. The Centreville and Manasses
road runs along this ridge and crossing Bull Run at
Mitchell's Ford, about equi-distant between the two villages.
The Warrenton turnpike runs nearly East and West over the
ridge, through Centreville, and crosses Bull Run some four
miles from that village, at the Stone Bridge, first passing over
one of its tributaries, Cub Run, by a bridge of mason-work
two miles west of Centreville ; — the latter and smaller stream
falling into Bull Run about half way between the Stone
Bridge and Blackburn's Ford That ford is nearly South
east of Centreville, distant about three miles, and the lowest
down-stream of any near the scene of action. Passing up
stream, the next is Mitchell's Ford ; then the Stone Bridge — •
each at the distance of about one mile. Another ford one
and a half miles above the Stone Bridge, and still another at
Sudley's Springs, ten miles North-west of Centreville. This
brief view of the ground partially or altogether covered .by
the battle, may do at least something to make intelligible the
movements rapidly following.

The original purpose of Gen. McDowell had been to turn
the rebel position on their right, but a reconnoisance in person
con viced him that such a movement was impracticable ; and
the affair of the 18th stamped as equally futile an intended

T H K DAYS OF S H O D D Y. 899

attempt to cross at Blackburn's Ford, which would bring his
forces directly in front of the rebel main position at Man as
ses. The only alternative remaining was to turn the enemy's
extreme left Hunter's and Heintzelman's divisions were
accordingly put under orders to cross at Sudley's and the
ford below ; Tyler's to threaten the Warrenton turnpike by the
Stone Bridge, leaving Richardson's brigade to watch Black
burn's Ford against a possible attempt to flank by the rebels;
Miles, sending one brigade to Richardson, with the remain
der to occupy the heights at Centreville, in reserve. The
plan was to cross at the upper fords, less strongly defended
because the enemy had been expecting an attack on his right
• — press down to the Stone Bridge before reinforcements
could be thrown there, form a junction with Tyler's division
crossing there, strike the enemy's flank, then turn to the
right and force his left, attacking his rear and destroying the
railroad leading down to the Valley of Virginia, where a
heavy force was know to be concentrated. The rebels,
meanwhile, were really in force at all the fords except Sud
ley's ; and the Stone Bridge was strongly defended by
artillery and thick abattis.

The various columns were directed to move from their
camps at half-past two o'clock on the morning of Sunday,
July 21st. Tyler marched out on the Warrenton turnpike at
the time designated, and arrived in front of the Stone Bridge
at six. His force then consisted of Schenck's and Sherman's
brigades, with Ayres' and Carlisle's batteries. After posting
his troops and examining the position, Tyler fired the iirst
gun of the battle proper of Bull Run, at half-past six, elicit
ing no I'esponse, and leaving the question an open one
whether the rebels did not themselves intend to attack by a
flank movement at Blackburn's Ford.

Hunter's division had meanwhile followed Tyler by the
same road until Cub Run was crossed, then wheeled to the
right and moved North towards Sudley's Ford. Heintzel
man's division broke camp at the same time, but was blocked
for three hours by Hunter being in the way, near Centreville.
He then followed Hunter across Cub Run, and wheeled to the
left for the ford next below Sudley's ; but no such road as

400 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

that reported by the scouts was found to exist there, and the
division was pushed on to Sudley's Ford.

During the march of the two columns dense clouds of dust
were seen rising in the direction of Manasses ; and before the
head of Hunter's division reached Sudley's, a heavy body of
rebels was seen at the distance of a mile, advancing to meet
the expected attack. The loading brigade of Hunter, Burn-
side's, reached the ford at half-past nine, when intelligence
was received that the enemy was in force in front. Even at
this early hour the heat of the July morning began to be
oppressive, and the thick clouds of dust rising from every
direction not only obscured the view, in advance of the smoke
of battle, but caused intolerable suffering among the Union
forces, as it no doubt must have donexamong those of the
enemy.

A brief halt for rest and water — too brief, in the already
exhausted condition of the troops — and Burnside pushed for
ward, the Second Rhode Island crossing first, throwing out
skirmishers to the front and on both flanks. These were met
in a few moments by those of the enemy, firing commenced,
the main body of the regiment fell into line of battle, the
battery wheeled into position and opened fire, and the battle
of Bull Run commenced in earnest.

The ground over which Burnside moved was thickly
wooded and hilly, for about a mile between the Sudley road
and the Run ; on the other side, or right of the road, it was
for an equal distance divided between fields, hills and woods.
A mile South from the Run the country on both sides of the
road was more open ; and still farther beyond, large rolling
fields extended a mile or more to the Warrenton road. A
small tributary of Bull Run, fringed with thick woods, crossed
the battle-field ; and in the valley of this water-course, at that
point, ran the Warrenton turnpike. While the Second Rhode
Island was there engaging, the remainder of the brigade
formed on the right of the road.

It was at this juncture that Col. Hunter, pressing forward
with the advance, was severely wounded and obliged to leave
the field, his command falling upon Col. Andrew Porter of the
First Brigade. The Second Rhode Island became hard

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 401

pressed, and the Second New Hampshire, the First Rhode
Island and Seventy-first New York went forward to their
support, the First Rhode Island coming into position first,
owing to greater celerity in forming. The Second Rhode
Island had gallantly held its own and even forced the enemy
back for a short distance, though Col. Slocum was killed,
Major Ballou badly wounded, and the regiment under com
mand of Lt. Col. Wheaton. Col. Martin led the Seventy-
first New York splendidly into action, planted his two
Dahlgren boat-howitzers, and worked them most effectually.
The battery of the Second Rhode Island, Capt. Reynolds,
meanwhile did heavy service, nearly silencing some of the
rebel batteries masked in the woods at the right, and driving
back six regiments thrown forward to force that position.
The Second New Hampshire came into action and fought
well, though Col. Martin was early wounded and the regiment
fell under the able command of Lt. Col. Fiske. The whole
of Burnside's force was now under fire, and Col. Porter's first
brigade was ordered up to his support.

The enemy, at this time, was drawn up in a line extending
along the Warrenton road, from a house of some size and
half a dozen hay-stacks fronting the extreme Federal right,
to a smaller house lying a little beyond the left of the divi
sion. A rebel battery was masked behind the first of these
houses, others along the lines ; and a thin wood partially in
front of their right gave shelter to that wing, while shrubbery
and fences screened their centre and left.

Griffin's battery opened a deadly fire upon the batteries on
the rebel left, and not onlysilenced or drove them back, but
threw that wing into confusion. The right of Porter's bri
gade was now thrown forward, including the marines under
Major Reynolds ; the Twenty-seventh New York Volunteers,
Col. Slocum ; the Fourteenth Brooklyn, Col. Wood ; the
Eighth New York, Col. Lyons ; and Major Palmer's seven
companies of cavalry in the rear. These troops went gal
lantly forward, and the enemy fell back in some disorder ; at
thje same time that Burnside was pouring the fiercest of his
attack on the rebel right, still clinging to its protecting woods
with great tenacity. The Second Rhode Island battery being
25

THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

hard pressed in its turn, Sykes' regulars were sent to its
assistance, dashed in under a terrible fire and delivered stag
gering volleys into the very face of the enemy. At this
moment Burnside succeeded in breaking the rebel right and
driving them from the shelter of the woods. They came
flying towards the Federal right, and their discomfiture was
completed by a withering fire from the Xew York Twenty-
seventh. But Col. Slocum of that regiment (the second of
that name cut down on the field) was now badly wounded,
the rebels fought with the ferocity of desperation, and the aid
of the New York Eighth and Fourteenth, scut to reinforce
the Twenty-seventh and cut them off, came too late or proved
too feeble, and the broken right of the enemy at last got into
shelter in safety.

At this time, eleven o'clock, A.M., the heat of the day had
so culminated that severe and almost unendurable suffering
commenced in both armies ; and those engaged, fond of
American history, began to appreciate, better than ever
before, the suffering said to have been experienced on the day
of Monmouth. From whatever "shoddy" mismanagement
many of the Federal troops had received no food that morn
ing ; not one-tenth of their canteens were filled with water
or had been during the march ; the sun poured down rays
that seemed direct emanations from the fiery furnace ; the
dust choked, the smoke blinded ; and the raw troops certainly
had good reason to feel that their first baptism in the terrible
reality of war was to be an effectual one. Poor fellows ! — .
many of them came to think, before the conclusion of that
day, that their position at eleven in the morning, unenviable
as it was, had been rather desirable than otherwise, in com
parison !

The head of Heintzelman's delayed division (which in
cluded the Fire Zouaves) reached Sudley's Ford at that hour.
Gen. McDowell was by that time at the front, and ordered
Ileintzelman to send forward two regiments to prevent the
flanking of the troops already engaged. Heintzelman threw
forward the First Minnesota, Col. Gorman, to the left of the
road, and the Eleventh Massachusetts, Col. Clarke, directly
up it. He accompanied the Massachusetts regiment in per-

THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

son, and placed it in position. The rest of the division
followed close, with the exception of Arnold's battery and its
supports formed of part of Heintzelman's second brigade.
His first, under Franklin, was formed of the First Minnesota,
Col. Gorman ; Fifth Massachusetts, Col. Lawrence ; and the
Eleventh Massachusetts, Col. Clarke. His second, under
Wilcox, comprised the First and Fourth Michigan, Lt. Col.
Comstock and Col. Woodbury ; the Eleventh New York
(Fire Zouaves), Col. Farnham ; and the Thirty-eighth New
York (Scott Life Guards), Col. J. II. Hobart Ward. His
third, under Howard, numbered the Third, Fourth and Fifth
Maine, Cols. Tucker, Berry and Dunnels ; and the Second
Vermont, Col. St. Clair.

The line of high ground beyond the "Warrenton road,
before spoken of, running from the house with haystacks on
the hill west of the Sudley road, to another hill more than
half a mile to the east of the road, was at this time the
particular object of the Federal attack, the first mentioned
point yet more especially. Ricketts' battery was to take part
in this attack, and took position within a thousand feet of the
enemy's batteries.

Tyler's first division had meanwhile been busy. As soon
as the divisions of Hunter and Heintzelman were fairly en
gaged, the brigades of Sherman and Keyes (at about noon)
were sent across the Run by a ford just discovered below the
Bridge. Sherman's brigade, in the advance, consisted of the
Sixty-ninth and Seventy-ninth New York, Cols. Corcoran
and Cameron ; the Thirteenth New York Volunteers, Col.
Quimby ; and the Second Wisconsin, Lt. Col. Peck. Keyes,
on the left, commanded the First, Second and Third Con
necticut, Cols. Burnhfl,m, Terry and Chatfield ; and the
Second Maine, Col. Jameson.

Sherman, after crossing, ascended the steep bluff on the
opposite side without molestation, the Sixty-ninth New
York leading. No artillery accompanied the column, from
the impossibility of crossing it by the ford. Here he encoun
tered a body of the retreating enemy, but a few moments
after, under the shelter of a cluster of pines near the bank ;
and it was in riding rashly forward to intercept the retreat,

404 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

that the gallant Lt. Col. Haggerty, of the Sixty-ninth, was
shot down by a rebel marksman at short range and in full
view of his regiment, Firing on both sides followed, but
Sherman was intent upon forming a speedy junction with
Hunter, and his forces pushed on towards the field where the
two divisions were already hotly engaged. Reaching the field
he formed in the rear of Porter's brigade, and joined in the
pursuit of the rebels, then falling back to the left of the Sud-
ley road. Quimby's Thirteenth were in the advance, followed
in their order by the Second Wisconsin, Seventy-ninth and
Sixty-ninth New York. Quimby's regiment advanced steadily
down the hill, across the road and up the further slope to tho
top of the ridge lately occupied *by the enemy, from which
it opened fire upon them in their new and favorable position.
Quimby continued his advance and the rebels retreated, until
they reached a point where the heat of the conflict had been
raging against Heintzelman and Ricketts' battery severely
cut up. The other regiments of the brigade followed, .in
good order though under a severe cannonading from Iho
rebel pieces on the ridge ; and sheltered for a moment under
the banks of the deep roadway from the terrible fire of artil
lery and musketry pouring down the ridge, as they prepare
to dash over the crest and engage in some of the most
splendid fighting of the day, — they must be left for the time,
while we trace the fortunes of the gallant brigade of Keyes.

This brigade crossed Bull Run, closed well up to Sherman's
left, some eight hundred yards above the Stone Bridge. Af
ter crossing, Keyes marched at once up the opposite slope and
formed on Sherman's left. In a few moments this brigade,
now forming the extreme left of the entire army engaged,
came into conflict with a strong body- of rebel cavalry sup
ported by infantry, and drove them with heavy loss. Its own
course was finally arrested by a severe fire from a cluster of
buildings standing on the heights above the Warrenton road.
The second Maine and Third Connecticut were ordered to
assault the position, which proved for the moment a Chew's
House or Hoguemont against their advance. They performed
that duty splendidly, under a deadly fire from a rebel battery
of eight and a strong body of infantry, — carried the buildings

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 405

and held them for a time. Then, finding those buildings in
turn commanded by a battery on the heights behind, they
marched by the left flank from the heights across an open,
field to the shelter of the banks of Bull Run, half a mile be
low. Up this ravine the whole brigade pressed, with a view
of turning a rebel battery which commanded the Warrenton
road at Stone Bridge. This diversion caused the enemy to
retire from that point, and gave Capt. Alexander, of the en
gineers, an opportunity, gallantly embraced, of crossing the
bridge, cutting away the abattis and making way for the pas
sage over of Schenck's brigade, with Ayres' and Carlisle's
batteries, thus brought to participate in the action. But the
rebel 'battery only limbered up and moved to a new position,
from which it kept up a galling fire. Keycs skilfully ma
noeuvred his force out of that unsafe position, by a flank
movement around the base of a sheltering hill, came to a
front, advanced a hundred }rards and prepared to charge up
the hill and capture the troublesome battery.

But by that time symptoms of disaster to the Federal right
became palpable, and Gen. Tyler ordered Keycs to face by
the right flank, file to the right, recross the Run, and join the
main body of the Federal troops, already in full retreat.

It is at this juncture necessary once more to leave the left
and return to the right and centre, last seen in preparation for
those desperate and final charges on the long ridge held by
the enemy on the hill west of the Sudley road, which were to
decide the whole event of the battle. •

Three times the forces left in that position assaulted that
ridge bristling with musketry and pouring down one contin
uous rain of the most deadly missiles known to modern war
fare — the defenders half hidden behind formidable obstruc
tions at every point of the line : the assailants unsheltered
and convenient marks for all that rebel valor driven to des
peration could pour down upon them. Yeteran troops have
recoiled under less discouraging circumstances than those in
which the worn-out and sweltering soldiers of the Union
staggered up to that assault, beneath the blazing sun of the
early midsummer afternoon, unfed, athirst and doubtful of the
capacity of many of their commanders : literally raw levies

406 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

might have been excused if they had scarcely attempted the
assault at all. Sad to say that human justice is so uncertain !
— the relations of the panic of that afternoon, which have
ever since filled the land and been wafted far and wide beyond
the Atlantic, have been unaccompanied by any reminder how
nobly those very men fought when there was yet one hope or
one chance of victory !

Three times that assault was made. Twice it was repulsed.
The third time, nothing could stand before the ill-regulated
but desperate courage of the assailants. The rebel lines
wavered — they gave way — they broke : and foot by foot the
Federals pressed them backwards. Still further — away from
the hill and so far down and beyond it that they were liter
ally hidden from sight, — the rebel's were forced backwards.
To all appearances the central position was swept — the field
was in the hands of the Federal forces — the day was won !
IS"o thought of hunger or fatigue, then ! Fatigue was for
gotten in the thought of victory : hunger was filled in that
most glorious of banquets at which the soldier sits down with
bravery as his warrant, and feasts with the gods in the con
sciousness of developed power.

A few moments of triumph, then doubt, to bo followed by
despair. Dense clouds of dust arose in the West and North
west, far beyond the point to which the main body of the
rebels had been driven. Then the head of their column ad
vanced again — so lately broken, now broken no longer, but
closed up and threatening, and evidently reinforced! ]STo
military eye but saw the omen too plainly. Fresh rebel
troops had arrived : whence, none could tell, but whence was
really a matter of little consequence. Not a few — not a
brigade or even a division, but thousand upon thousand ! — ab
solutely what seemed to be an army quite as large as their
own, of rebel reinforcements. They could not know, what
the country and the whole world knew too soon — that Gen
eral Joe Johnston, the very ablest and most dangerous of
the rebel commanders, with twenty or twenty-five thousand
troops, had been allowed to slip away from the force intended
to hold them in check if not to bring them into actual engage
ment, near Winchester, and to reach that hard-foughten field

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 407

at the very moment when the worst could be done by those
troops for the cause of the nation and for humanity.

The story of the battle proper, after this point was reached,
is all too briefly told, though some of the most desperate
fighting of the day took place after the arrival of the rebel
reinforcements. "What Washington felt when he saw the last
hope of his campaign of 17"l6-7, destroyed by the pouring of
an overpowering British force against hi§ exhausted troops
at the close of the day of the battle of Long Island — what
Napoleon felt when he saw that the long line of troops ad
vancing to Waterloo, by Wavres, were those of Blucher in
stead of Grouchy — something like this must have been ex
perienced, in however less a degree, by McDowell and the
other officers who with him saw the imminence of the danger
and the probability of ruin.

A fourth time the rebel force poured forward to the ridge,
now overwhelming in numbers and flushed with a certainty
of victory. Franklin's brigade, of the First Minnesota, Fifth
and Eleventh Massachusetts, met the first shock with great
gallantry, unavailing as that gallantry eventually proved.
The enemy regained the ridge, and now held it against all
attempts to dislodge them. Col. Wilcox's brigade, on the left
of Franklin, met the heaviest of this shock, but in the more
particular account yet to be given of the special fortunes of
the Fire Zouaves, the fate of that brigade is involved. Heintz-
elman led forward several of the regiments of this command,
in person, in support of different batteries, and they were
broken one by one — a point of military policy which will al
ways remain a question. And here occurred another of those
blunders in identity, which have before been alluded to as so
fated during the war. The First Minnesota and a rebel
brigade mutually mistook each other, from the fact that the
rebel uniform and that of many of our militia, was the same
— black-trimmed gray ; and they were close together and
the rebels partially sheltered within a belt of timber above
the road, before the mistake was discovered. In the deadly
fire which then opened, almost into each other's faces, the
Minnesota troops, sadly outnumbered, were literally cut to
pieces, Kicketta' battery was cut up and disabled, and Heintz-

408 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

olman was wounded in the arm, though he did not leave the
field.

All the regiments of Wilcox's brigade suffered terribly
hore — not only the Fire Zouaves, but the First and Fourth
Michigan — both the latter doing duty nobly long after they
were broken. The last but best regiment of this brigade, the
New, York Thirty-eighth Volunteers of Col. J. H. Hobart
"Ward, held their ground manfully, once drove the rebels en
tirely in their attack on Ricketts' battery, but were finally
driven back and scattered by a force beyond human power to
resist. It was in attempting to make a last rally of this bri
gade that Col. Wilcox, fighting determinedly, was taken by
the rebels, afterwards to supply one of the most notable,
prisoners to the dens at Richmond.

Howard's brigade, on the left of Wilcox, now suffered terri-
lily in the assaults of the enemy upon Griffin's battery. Of
this brigade, the Fourth Maine, Colonel Barry, showed in
domitable courage and extraordinary discipline, and did not
lose its organization for a moment, even when under the dead
liest fire and actually decimated. The Fourteenth Brooklyn
fought nobly for a time, but that regiment had yet to win its
after-glorious reputation, and they too broke after a time and
went to the rear. In the attempt to rally them, the gallant
Colonel Wood was severely wounded and supplied the rebels
with their second captured Union Colonel. In attempted
support of Griffin's battery, too, the marines, a battalion of
the Twenty-seventh New York under Major Bartlett, and the
Eighth New York State Militia, were all ordered up. The
Eighth gave evidence of courage and determination to fight,
but a part of their field was miserably inefficient if not basely
cowardly, and they were soon broken and more than half the
time left without a regimental officer in command. Once the
Quartermaster, Lieut. Cornell, took command and fought
them for a while en amateur, and once Major Wadsworth,
finding them wandering in the woods like lost children, swear
ing terribly and shooting very much at random, performed
the same service for them for a few minutes ; but this was all
that was realized out of the excellent material and very good

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 409

discipline of a regiment certainly worthy, if well led, to have
ranked beside or next to the Seventy-first.

We have now seen the fate of the Fourteenth and the
Eighth, of Porter's brigade. His cavalry did all that the
broken nature of the ground would permit ; but the marines
broke in spite of every exertion ; and only the battalion of the
Twenty-seventh remained entirely unbroken, and retired,
when they did so, without panic.

We left Burnside's brigade of Hunter's division, some time
since, under heavy fire between the Sudley road and the Run,
to the left; and aid under Sykes, from Col. Andrew Porter's,
coming up to its relief. The battery of the Second Rhode
Island and the howitzers of the New York Seventy-first did
splendid service, and Burnside, with the support of Sykes,
drove the rebels in confusion before him and was enabled to
open upon the body opposed to Porter. He sent the Second
New Hampshire to the support of Howard, and with the re
mainder of his brigade went into the woods in the rear, to
supply the troops with ammunition, which was nearly ex
hausted.

Sherman's brigade was lost sight of, some time ago, shel
tered under the banks of the roadway near the crest of a hill
on the Sudley road. Here Sherman received orders from
McDowell to attack at once, and the Second Wisconsin went
steadily over the crest for a time, but broke at last, Western
hunters though they were, under a fire that might have stag
gered veteran troops. The Seventy-ninth New York were
now ordered to cross the ridge and drive the rebels from the
sheltering clusters of pines which gave them such advantage.
Worthy of the reputation of their race was the stubborn at
tempt of the Scotsmen to fulfil that duty, in the face of re
peated repulses. They Avavered and rallied again, several
times, but were at last driven back to the shelter of the road
way, leaving their brave Col. 'Cameron dead on the field.

Now came the turn of the Sixty-ninth, and if the Gael had
just displayed his stubborn bravery, here was a chance for
the exhibition of the fiery heroism of the Celt. Quimby's
Thirteenth was hotly engaged on another ridge a little to the
left, aud the event in that direction seemed doubtful, when

410 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

Colonel Corcoran led his brave Irishmen over the ridge, in
the face of such a fire as few troops ever successfully encoun
tered — such a fire as up to that time had never been poured
over any portion of the American continent, but since that
time, alas ! — too often paralleled and even exceeded in vio
lence. It is the same old story once more to be told over — .
advance, repulse, rally, the tasking of every energy ; then
final repulse, with the gallant Corcoran in the hands of the
enemy — the third and last of the Union Colonels taken pris
oner.

It was about four o'clock, P.M., when the last charge of
the Sixty-ninth was made. By that time the Federal troops
had begun to give way under the pressure of Johnston's rebel
reinforcements and disaster in that quarter became apparent.
Schenck, crossing Stone Bridge after Sherman and Kcyes, had
been recalled in the midst of local success. Kicketts' and
Griffin's batteries had been taken and retaken three times, but
finally left in the hands of the enemy for lack of hoi'ses to
draw them away. The rebels captured no others during the
engagement, properly so called.

By that time (four, P.M.), the field of Bull Run had been
fought, won and lost ; and the whole force on the other side of
Bull Run was in full retreat. Heintzelman's- and Hunter's
divisions retreated by Sudley's Ford, and Sherman's and
Keyes' by the ford near the Stone Bridge. Burnside, whose
brigade was the least disorganized, covered the retreat at
Sudley's. The Rhode Islanders and the New York Seventy-
first; brought off their guns in safety. At this period of the
retreat the Twenty-Seventh and Thirty-eighth New York,
Fourth Maine, Fifth Massachusetts, First Minnesota, Seven
ty-first New 'York, First and Second Rhode Island, all dis
played coolness and brought np the rear with steadiness that
would not have done discredit to veterans.

The details of the action of the reserve, not actually included
in the battle, must necessarily be omitted, as well as the corps-
movements of the main body, while they retained regularity
worthy of the name, and after the event of the action was
decided. It was not until more than an hour after the retreat
had commenced — when really no danger from the enemy was

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 411

longer to be apprehended, and when even the rashest bravery
could not have saved the lost battle, — that the retreat became
a flight and the feeling of discouragement a panic. They err
who say that the battle of Bull Run was lost by the coward
ice of the Union troops. It was lost by a lack of numbers
from the first* — delay in marching, owing partially to the in
experience of officers and partially to the want of endurance
of raw troops on the route — the knowledge of the country
possessed by the rebels and lacking in the Federals, giving the
former at all times the advantage in position — the wooded,
broken and easily-defensible nature of the ground held by the
rebels — and more than all and above all, by the rebel General
Johnston being allowed, as before recorded, to reach the field
at that very inopportune moment, with his overwhelming
reinforcements. Most of the troops fought well — the three-
months militia regiments peculiarly well — when even decently
led and while there was a hope of success . remaining : they
were simply beaten out, exhausted and overpowered. And if
any man wants any more explanations of the melancholy failure
than have already been furnished, let him find them, after the
manner of Victor Hugo explaining away Waterloo, in some
supposition that " God was tired of" McDowell or the Ameri
can Union.

How the panic commenced, before the retreating army
reached Cub Run, throwing the disorganized regiments into
and over the top of those that yet remained intact, and break
ing the whole mass into one frightened horde, throwing away
arms, clothing, every thing, in the madness of fear and the sin
gle thought of dishonorable flight, — no man can tell, to this
clay, any more than that panic can be explained which made
the Old Guard frightened sheep at "Waterloo. Some say the
soared teamsters ; others particular regiments ; still others,
reports that the enemy (themselves too badly cut up to pursue
at all) were close upon their backs with still other reinforce-

«•' McDowell, leaving his reserve, only carried 17,500 men of all nrrns and
12 pieces of artillery over Bull Run and into action. The rebels could not
then have had less than 20,000 to 25,000 on the ground, nnd Johnston's rein
forcements brought up their strength to 40,000 — tho Union forces actually eu-
gaged buing cutnuiuborod two, to one.

412 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

ments ; and yet others, the inevitable tendencies of humanity
under discouragement. Only God knows the secret cause :
the fact, meanwhile, is painfully patent to mankind. The dis
graceful affair occurred. A beaten army left the field, in no
worse order than hundreds of other beaten armies have re
treated ; but nothing more than a mob reached the choked-up
bridge at Cub Run, under the suddenly-opened fire of the
enemy ; and certainly nothing less melancholy than a mob
staggered fainting, foot-sore, half-clothed, crazed and demo
niac, along the roads leading to Centreville, to be checked a
little by the reserve there, to re-occupy the abandoned camps
in that neighborhood, or to straggle through the night towards
Alexandria, Arlington Heights and Washington, carrying ter
ror and panic everywhere, and doing even more injury to the
nation after leaving the field, than they had caused in its
forced abandonment.

The pitying eye of heaven has seldom looked down on
sadder scenes than some of that night. Men half-dressed,
barefoot, bareheaded and delirious, fighting for the ambu
lances with the wounded, dragging officers from their horses,
mounting them and riding away ; wounded and exhausted
men crawling to the brooks, drinking and dying there ;
piteous cries for help and oaths of impatience on every hand
and at every step ; carriages filled with civilians or men on
horseback dashing down the dusky roads, heedless of life or
limb in their career; arms lying abandoned everywhere,. as
if the toil and sweat of the nation had not bought them ;
frightened inquiries on every hand, from those who had not
shared in the conflict, and still more frightened answers
from those who were leaving it ; brave men become -cowards,
demoralization universal, and despair seeming to brood
over the whole scene in the thick gathering clouds that
were before many hours to expend themselves in rain on the
abandoned battle-field and cool the fevered lips of the dying
even while adding to the tortures of their wound's.

One word more — to say that besides the heavy material
loss of the Union forces, the loss in men numbered nineteen
officers, four hundred and sixty two non-commissioned officers
and men, killed and wounded, and about twelve hundred

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 413

taken prisoners ; — and then let the curtain of silence, thick
as that of the falling night, be drawn over the general sad
result of the battle of Bull Run, while we return to trace
rapidly and briefly the fortunes of the Fire Zouaves in that
conflict, and especially those of Burtnett Haviland, through
whom the whole has a pertinency to this relation.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE ZOUAVES CALLED TO BATTLE — THE BLOW THAT STRUCK
BURTNETT HAVILAND AT THE SAME MOMENT — A TRUE
HEART IN ITS DESPAIR — THE ZOUAVES IN BATTLE— THE
THREE CHARGES AND THREE REPULSES — END OF A "FAVO
RITE REGIMENT" — How HAVILAND BECAME A REBEL —
How CHARLES HOLT TOOK THE ROAD TO RICHMOND — AND
now THE CLERK -CEASED TO BE A SOLDIER.

THE battle call came to the Zouaves on Tuesday the 16th
of July, at which time the companies at Fort Ellsworth and
those on duty beyond received orders to prepare for a
march and the word "advance movement" began to be
bruited in the camp. Then broke out afresh the petty
jealousy which has before been noticed, against the Company
employed on other service ; and though the fire-boys had no
objection whatever to a nearer insight into the mysteries of
actual warfare, they could not avoid venting such remarks as :

" Oh ho ! we are going to fight, are we ? But you don't

catch Company S°'l^S — n°t they ! They are having a

soft thing of it down at Alexandria ; and catch them going
any nearer to a fight than that, if they know it !"

Perhaps the grumblers were a little surprised, and not a
little mortified, when the cars from Alexandria that carne in to
the line of the road where they were forming, a mile south
of Cloud's Mills, on Wednesday morning, brought Company

, and found it formed and ready for the march, before any

other of the regiment ! Perhaps they would have been a

414: THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

little more surprised, could they have heard what passed be
tween Captain Jack and the General in command at Alexan
dria, on Tuesday — the Captain's request that the Company
might be allowed to join the balance of the command — the
veteran General's grufl': " Young man — when you are as old
as I am, and have seen as many battles, you will think twice
before you go into any fights that you can keep out of !" —
and the Captain's reply : " Very likely, General ; but every
one of my command would rather be killed — at least killed a
little, — than have the name of shirking when the rest of the
regiment is going into active service 1"

The same note of preparation heard at Fort Ellsworth and
Cloud's Mills, of course sounded at Alexandria on Tuesday,
and the same rumor of the " onward movement" rangamoiig
the Zouaves there, and the Michigan troops who assisted in
holding the town, that was stirring up the companies beyond.
Activity, energy, bustle, were the order of that day of prep
aration for sterner service than any they had so far seen ; and
}*et there was one man among the Zouaves, who showed noth
ing of either — who moved like a man in a dream — with set
and glaring eyes, compressed mouth, and something in his
whole demeanor that would have told any close observer that
he was passing through that period of quiet despair which
follows the acme of 'mental suffering.

That man was Burtnett Haviland. The same hour which
spread among the Zouaves the knowledge that they were to
participate in the army's advance movement, had brought him
a letter from Washington by the mail-boat, bearing the New
York post-mark, and in Kate's well known hand writing.
What that letter contained, may be easily judged, when it is
remembered that Kate Haviland had written it in his own
house, within an hour after the discovery of his wife's sup
posed elopement ! What that true-hearted man suffered un
der that culminating blow which could never be followed by
one deadlier or more cruel, can only be known by those (and
they are few — and yet too many !) who have passed through
the same terrible ordeal.

The Zouave was on guard on one of the wharves when the
letter was handed him, and very fortunately he was alone

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 415

when he opened and read it. For he would not have been
pleased at the neighborhood of too close observers, however
friendly, when the worst fears of the last two months were
all realized a thousand times over, and the last hope of his
life destroyed. "When he bent down his head, leaning- upon
the weapon that at that moment seemed to be bis only friend,
felt the hot tears gushing from his eyes in another and a
deeper sorrow than he had known that fatal night in the store
of Charles Holt & Andrews, and great sobs burst forth and
shook his strong frame as if the very foundations of his be
ing were breaking up. When at length he raised his head,
with one fearful oath which the recording angels who pity
human sorrow while they measure human crime, can scarcely
have set down against him, — threw the unwelcome missive
into the dirt that lay thick upon the wharf, and ground it with
his heavy heel till it was a mere mass of illegible fragments.
The ruin was complete and final. He believed that his
destiny was accomplished — that the sacrifice he had felt him
self called upon to make for his country, was made to the
uttermost, in a bereavement fifty times worse than the mere
vielding up of his life. The yielding up of his life ! — ah,
there was one thought of consolation. He had, just then, no
wish for life ; nor had he yet even constructed- out of the
wreck of his hopes, that raft upon which so many float for a
time -after existence is a burthen — revenge. His regiment
was going into battle : the chance was welcome — he would
go with it and die ! After that one fearful oath he spoke no
word aloud. , There was no one to whom to speak it ; and
there are exti'emities of outrage and misery, under which
dead, stubborn silence, with the lip rigid and the eye set like
stone, forms the only exponent of feeling. And yet perhaps
it was a revenge which that wronged husband thought for
the moment of taking — one of those revenges which gods
might exhibit, and weak, loving women sometimes display to
shame the arrogance of those who would claim to be their
masters — the terrible revenge of going away from the chance
of any struggle that might interfere with the mad course of
unscrupulous crime, and leaving that unrestrained indulgence
to punish itself in the future.

416 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

This was the state of feeling with which one member of
Captain Jack's Company went forward to the fight : who
knows how many others, in that, and other companies, may
have suffered equally from some other cause as shameful, and
yet found no chronicler of the wrong or its eifects ?

The whole Zouave regiment, with the others of Wilcox's
brigade (already named in the preceding general account of
the battle), moved from Cloud's Mills on Wednesday morn
ing, and caught a new taste of the quality of " active service"
by sleeping that night, without blankets or any shelter, in a
miserable muddy swamp some eight or ten miles south of
Fairfax, where frogs, lizards and water-snakes had an undis
puted pre-ehiption, — after making an unsuccessful detour to
trap the rebel troops at Burke's Station, and seeing the smoke
rising during the day at a distance, from Fairfax Court House,
then being sacked by the forces advancing from Washington.

On Thursday night they encamped at Burke's Station, and
on Friday pushed on to Centreville, coming in while the can
non were yet sounding at the close of the skirmish of that
day. All night long poor Farnham, the Zouave Colonel, lay
sick in an ambulance, unfit to move one step further, but the
soul too large for his broken and enervated body. At two in
the morning they were again under arms, in the waning
moonlight, and ready for the march as the other unfed troops
(one more imprecation on the " shoddy" quartermasters who
starved them while filling their own capacious pockets !) could
be under the circumstances. But it was seven o'clock before
they could move, other divisions (as .has been seen) occupy
ing the road towards Man asses.

At seven the brigade moved forward, over the broken and
stony. road between Centreville and Manasses, the best hours
of the morning lost, the air fearfully sultry, the sun coming
down with a blinding glare which seemed like that of meri
dian, and the exhausted men even then dropping so fast that
there was scarcely a rood of the road not darkened with some
human form incapable of further exertion and doomed to
death if left to writhe in the heat of the coming noon. But
the word was " Hurry I" and on they pressed — faster — faster,
at every mile, as it seemed to the unaccustomed soldiers.

T HE DAYS OF SHOD I) Y , 417

Half-past ten, and they were near Cub Run Before them
could be heard the boom of cannon and seen the rising smoke
of the battle already begun. 'Then rose what is to be found
at times in every true man — excitement overcoming fatigue,
and that power born of temporary madness. An aide-de-camp
dashed down the road from Heintzelman, who had been long
on the watch, ordering Wilcbx's brigade forward instantly.
There were yet two miles to traverse, to reach Sudley, where
the bravery and dash of the brigade, upon which the General
so largely counted, were sorely needed for the support of the
hotly-engaged centre. To the Zouaves, especially, this was
something like what the ringing of a "general alarm" iTad
been in the days of fire-duty. Away went coats, in some in
stances caps, even shoes — every thing but guns and ammuni
tion, and on they dashed at double-quick, exhausted and beaten
out, but believing that they had work before them and de
termined to do it or die. More than once Burtnett Haviland,
one of the most able-bodied men in the advance companies,
rushing on under the blistering sun, through the choking
dust, and feeling the blood surging to his head like a tide of
hot lava that seemed to scorch every vein and wither every
nerve, — doubted whether that object of which he was in
Hrarch— death ! — would not be found ingloriously in the light
ning flash of sun-stroke, before the bullet of any enemy could
have opportunity to reach his heart !

It wns noon when they reached Sudley's Springs, and a
moment's halt was ordered to " fill canteens." Down to the
rivulet not yet reddened with the blood that was so soon to
thicken it, sprang the tired fellows ; but even this justice was
to be denied them, for before one-third had succeeded in ob
taining a drop of the fluid so necessary for the maintenance
of human life, there was another call for help that came out
of the deafening roar and blinding smoke immediately in
front, and the order " Forward !" was again given. There
was but a little time more of pride for the Zouaves, but that
pride .yet existed. The order was obeyed, and the Zouaves
rather plunged than marched forward into that hell of deadly
strife — of cannon roar, and the crack of small arms, and
shouts, and smoke, and blinding dust — which seemed so ini-
26

418 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

possible for airy man to escape when he should once have
entered it.

The Zouaves were in the advance. Ayres' regular battery,
as they reached the spot on the right of Sudlcy's Ford whore
the centre was so hotly engaged, was hardly pressed, and they
wheeled short to the right and4 rushed up a stony side-road
that climbed the wooded hill, to support that battery. So
far there was no lack of discipline. Orders wore obeyed
almost with the precision of regulars. A moment placed Ihe
body of the regiment in position, and they opened fire, while
the right wing dashed into what they supposed to be the
shelter of a clump 'of woods, to support, A most deadly
" shelter," indeed ! The whole clump wos a masked battery,
with infantry at either edge! At not more than pistol-shot
distance it burst into the faces of the Fire Zouave^, who
found, then and there, that there was something in the world
yet more trying to human courage than the smoke and flame
of their favorite service and the tottering of red-hot walls in
the air above their heads ! They broke ; and yet discipline
could not have been all lost at once, as some detractors aver;
for military men will know what is contained in the fact that
the first company only drove back the second about twenty
feet, and that the second counted off under that fire, two men
falling in their ranks as they did so ! Burtnett Haviland's
file-closer had just answered "two !" as a fragment of shell
struck him in the forehead, scattering his brains over the file-
leader ; and yet neither shell nor bullet seemed to be billeted
for him.

The regiment was yet in good order whon it dropped down
the hill a hundred yards for shelter; and it was in good order,
though somewhat thinned, when it made the second advance,
not many minutes afterwards, to clear the clump of woods
and take the annoying battery. But the fates seemed against
it, even if courage could have availed against overpowering
numbers. PoorFarnham reeled in his saddle — a rebel bullet,
had struck him in the side of the head, tearing off his ear
and injuring the brain. These men were not soldiers enough
to be maddened by the sight of their leader tottering in bis
seat and only held on his horse by supporting hands — they

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 419

were only discouraged by it. They broke again, worse than
before, and fell back once more under the shelter of the hill,
where they were again formed with some difficulty. "Want of
discipline and steadiness was beginning to tell, now, at the
very moment when its lack or its possession was to make or
mar the whole future of the regiment.

Heintzelman — that bundle of nerves, whose thin, active
figure, ever in motion, seems the incarnation of restless dis
content, — hurled some fierce oaths as he put. himself at the
head of the Zouaves, ordering the Michigan troops of the
brigade forward to support, and led them to that third
charge which was the only one connected with their action
on the field, that he thought proper afterwards to mention
in ,his official report. The little General was grim and
"wolfish," just then — not the less so from the pain of his
wound. Just as the brigade advanced up the hill, the rebels
poured out from their shelter upon Ayres' battery, and showed
not less than three brigades of Mississippi and/ Alabama
troops, supported by a squadron of cavalry known as the
"Black Horse." The odds were really hopeless, and this
time the Zouaves broke disgracefully, the cavalry riding
through them with only the emptying of a few saddles, to
meet destruction a few moments after at the hands of the
Union troopers of Capt. Colburn. Two companies of tin;
Zouaves maintained order for the time, and did their part in
a sharp fight over the guns of Ayres' battery, assisting at
last in bringing away all the pieces but one ; and many of
the regiment did duty afterwards as skirmishers ; but Farn-
ham had at last fallen and was to lie un cared for during all
that long day and night and with the rain of the next day
beating him into the mud it was forming; Downey and many
others of the best officers and men of the organization were
prisoners in the hands of the rebels, doomed to a year of
suffering in the prisons of Richmond, Charleston and Colum
bia ; and the career of the regiment, as a regiment, was
ended from that moment. Traits of nobility there were to
be exhibited by individual members, worthy of any body of
troops in any service ; some of the most valued members
were to permit themselves to be dragged off as prisoners,

420 THE DAYS OP SHODDY.

contrary to all the usages of war, rather than desert the
wounded who were imploring their aid ; one of the Captains
was to crawl back all the way from Centreville to Cub Run,
that night, to look after the life of an orderly-sergeant, so
unendurably footsore all the \vhile as to be obliged to throw
a\vay his shoes and return barefoot, — and stopping at mid
night on the bridge choked up with dead, to give water from
his canteen to the dying who implored it; those and other
noble traits were to be exhibited, but to no purpose for the
eventual salvation of the regiment. Disorganization . had
commenced and no human power could check it.

Half an hour after their last repulse, when the general
retreat commenced, the Fire Zouaves were among the most
disorderly bodies in the whole army. When the panic began and
disgraceful flight became the order of the day, there seemed
to be no bound to the miserable poltroonery of a large propor
tion. None in all the army bragged so of their courage
and disgusted all listeners with the account of the exploits
they had performed, as those members of the regiment who
had run away without doing any thing else. Captain Jack's
company mustered forty men at Fort Ellsworth the night
following, and for a time again guarded the warehouses at
Alexandria. Others straggled into Alexandria and Washing
ton, without commanders, and were fed like beggars on
charity, by other troops. More than half of those who
remained, disgracefully deserted and reached New York and
other places in the North, within a few days after the battle,
disguised or boldly shameless. They recruited vainl3r at
Eedloe's, and went into camp vainly at Fortress Monroe.
No power could save what was doomed ; and within a year
from the date of its organization, the Fire Zouave Regiment,
upon which so many hopes had been built when Ellsworth
sailed away with it from the city of New York — after winning
honor in some particulars but covering itself with eternal
disgrace in others — after being alternately over-glorified and
disgracefully ill-used,* — was mustered out of the service,

* Thiit may as well bo said hero which has never yet, as we believe, been
made public, but which is certainly true and very important a? affecting fhe
career and conduct of this unfortunate regiment. Must of the Zouaves bo-

THU DAYS OF SHODDY. 421

melted away and has been heard of no more, except as its
name has occasionally crept in to illustrate a newspaper
paragraph, or the circumstances surrounding some particular
member have been found singular enough (as in the present
instance) to warrant weaving them into the romance of
history.

With which observation, once more and for the last time
the course of this narration leaves the general events of the
war to trace briefly out the remaining fortunes of the leading
characters.

Burtnett Haviland was unwounded during either of the des
perate charges made by the Zouaves at Sudley. The blood
and brains of comrades continually spattered over him and
occasionally made him sick at heart, but because he had really
sought death there seemed to be no bullet directed at his life.
Even fighting over the guns of Ayres' battery, three times in
hand-to-hand conflict, twice Avith foot-soldiers and once with
a, mounted officer, and twice of the three times killing his
man, — he had not even a scratch ! He was once swept down
and literally run over by one of the charges made by the
rebels on the battery, and believed for the moment that his
time was come, as he lay temporarily prostrate and guns
flashed and swords gleamed above him. Anv one who saw

*

him might have believed him gone beyond hope, as were
indeed many of those who fought at his side, in that very
charge. But he rose again, swept away from the spot in the
irresistible rush, by some miracle unwounded and not even
bruised by the trampling feet of men and horses, though his
outward appearance was certainly not improved by that An-
taean contact with his mother earth, so little calculated to en
dow him with additional strength. He had long before lost

lieved themselves, when they enlisted, to bo going for three months: after
wards thej agreed to remain in service one year; and when they were mus
tered in, in front of the Capitol, by Major McDowell, they were forced to
agree to their term being made three yeam. or disgrace themselves by
apparent cowardice. Ellsworth may not have been guilty of intentional
deception : if he was not, he made a sad mistake and other parties were sadly
culpable. There was nothing more essentially " shoddy" about any thing in
the whole early management of the wnr. than the blundering shown in the
arrangements uiude fur and with this regiment.

THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

his canteen, thrown away his coat, suspenders and red shirt,
only retaining pants, shoes, cap and his white shirt — white by
courtesy, for amid the sweat, and dust, and grime, the shirt,
like his face, was nearer to aLmost any other color than that of
purity, and the man would have possessed keen eyes who
even recognized in that desolate, grimy and bandit-looking
figure the once neatly-dressed and really handsome clerk of
Charles Holt & Andrews.

Then came the panic, the rush and the mad desperation in
which he was borne away with all the others. He heard noth
ing, saw nothing, except sounds and sights of terror and dis
organization, .culminating as the flight extended and the fugi
tives were borne farther from the field, in the opening of the
rebels upon them with cannon at Cub Run, and the struggling
of the mass of disorganized humanity across that stream —
over the choked bridge and through the water below and
above it. The Zouave scarcely knew how he himself crossed,
so stunned and deafened was he by the general confusion ;
but he must have forded at some shallow part of the stream,
for he was wet to the knees. He staggered up the bank,
and gained the edge of a little thicket of scrubby oaks near
the bank. The sounds of flight and pursuit were all around
him, but not in his immediate neighborhood ; and for a mo
ment he dropped down upon the stump of a fallen tree, to
catch breath. Haviland had been flying like the rest, for
the past half hour — there is no use of attempting to disguise
the fact, — flying for his life. He bad forgotten, for the time,
his desire for death, as many another man has done when the
spectre he invoked came too near ; or he had seen how many
of the Union troops were being captured, and he dreaded,
more than the sacrifice of his life, the • possibility of being-
dragged away to a rebel prison.

At all events, the next movement of this man, after sitting
down upon the stump of the fallen tree, showed that his grief
had been made subordinate to other considerations. Under
the edge of the brush of the tree-top lying on the ground,
he caught sight of a ghastly object. It was the body of a
dead rebel, a large man, with the number of the Tenth Mis
sissippi regiment on his gray cap, who had been killed there

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 423

or crawled there to die, some hours earlier in the battle.
Burtnett Haviland staggered to his feet, and a new thought,
as well as the culmination of a new feeling, took possession
of him. He did not know that fate was bearing him on and
that he merely played his part; he believed that he was act
ing1 entirely from his own volition. The new feeling that cul
minated was the sudden desire to save his life or escape from
imprisonment, which had been born within the past half-hour.
The new thought was the belief that the means for both were
at hand. Under such circumstances, to will is to do, and very
little time is consumed in preliminary operations. In a mo
ment he had loosened the clothes of the dead rebel at the
waist, and in another moment had drawn off' the trousers
and drawn them on (hot 'as was the addition to his wardrobe)
over his own. For the coat he had no necessity — his own
diity white shirt was quite sufficient to make him a "butter
nut." He threw down his own cap, put on that of the half-
denuded Mississippian, caught up the old long rifle that lay
beside him, and was for the time, to all intents and purposes,
a rebel.

His plans, at the moment, may be told in a word. While
upon ground in the rebel possession, in that guise he would be
safe even against capture, and if captured by any of the re
treating Union troops he would of course be beyond danger,
as he had the means in his possession of proving his iden
tity. If he thought of ridicule in that connection, the idea did
not trouble him sadly; for the man who runs away in his
own clothes is not much less ridiculous than the man who
escapes in thjose of another 1

A moment, and there was the cry of voices coming down
the road from the North-west, outside of the clump of trees.
The new rebel ran to the edge of the wood and looked out.
A carriage was dashing down to the Centreville road, from
the banks of the Run above — one of the many containing
civilians who had gone out from Washington and the neigh
borhood, to feast their eyes on that bloody spectacle, as the
Roman patricians might have done on the agonies of the
gladiators fighting with each other or with beasts in the
arena, — highly edified because out of danger — both ! One

42-i THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

moment's glance told the Mississippian pro iein. , so much ;
the next showed that close behind were ten or a dozen rebels,
attracted by the beauty of the turn-out and intent on making
a capture. The horses were going at speed, and though two
or three of the rebels were a little ahead, it seemed doubtful
whether they could reach the edge of the road in time to in
tercept the carriage ; while the carriage could no^t swerve
from its course, owing to the rocks and trees to the left, and
must pass within six feet of where he stood. The gray-clads
seemed to have exhausted their ammunition, and could not
fire : there was every chance that the occupants of the car
riage would escape : he hoped and believed that they would,
though of course he could do nothing to aid them at that
moment.

Suddenly, as the carriage came nearer, he started forward.
A man had thrust his head out of the right window of the
vehicle, to see how matters were progressing or to urge yet
greater speed. Rapid as was the movement, Burtnett Havi-
land saw and recognized that peculiar and well-known face
in an instant. That man was Charles Holt, the merchant, his
old employer and the betrayer of his wife ! Did we say, a
few pages back, that the husband whose domestic happiness
Avas thus ruined, had not yet found time to build the raft " re
venge" out of the wreck of his hopes ? If so, he built that
raft very rapidly at this moment ! Shame, wrong, hatred,
every thing rose within him in an instant, and his hand was
ready for any deed. He would kill the seducer, now while
he had the opportunity ! Then another thought followed,
quite as rapidly : he would throw him into the hands of the
rebels, and trust to them for his suffering a thousand deaths !
No sooner thought than done. The carriage was close at
hand and still flying rapidly : it had cleared the rebels trying
to cut it off, and would escape. He had tried the rifle, before
— found it unloaded, and so could not shoot the horses and
stop their career. But he could do something else, and he
did it. Springing to the side of the road as the carriage
swept up, he clubbed the long, heavy Mississippi rifle and
brought it with all his force ful into the face of the horse
nearest him. Not even the flying speed of the animals could

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 425

overbalance such a check. A second blow, given before they
could recover and spring forward again, sent the horse to the
ground, the other falling over him, and the carriage half-over
turned on the top of both ; at the same time that a couple of
revolver-shots came from the carriage window and one of
them went through Haviland's gray cap, very nearly afford
ing him that chance of death for which he had been looking
during all the earlier portion of the day.

The door of the carriage was dashed open in an instant,
and Charles Holt, the only occupant, sprang out. The driver
Avas already on his. feet. The hindrance had been sufficient
to give the rebels behind time to come up, and as he touched
the ground, he, as well as the driver, was in the hands of
half a dozen of the gray-dads. He looked at Haviland, but
diil not recognize him in that changed garb, with his short
hair and beard, and beneath that load of grime. Had he
done so, and done it but one moment earlier, the two remain
ing shots in his revolver would probably have been better
aimed !

" Who are you ?" asked one of the rebels, who all belonged
to a native Virginian regiment.

" Tenth Mississippi — don't you see ?" answered the Zouave,
pointing to his cap.

" Oh yes. Well, you did that smart enough, anyhow.
Got a hole through your cap, too, pretty near the head. Did
he do it, just now ?"

" Yes," said Haviland.

"Well, confound his Yankee blood !" said the rebel. "He
won't do so any more, just now, I'll bet 1"

" I think he is an officer, trying to escape in other clothes.
Take good care of him, and don't let him get away !" said the
Zouave, with a refinement of ingenuity Avhich did great honor
to his short military education.

" Don't you want any thing ? We couldn't have got him,
you know, if you hadn't stopped him !" said the rebel, as the
rest were just completing their operations upon watch, jewelry,
Avell-filled purse, and ail the other articles in the merchant's
possession. Others were getting up the fallen horses and
preparing to drive away with tlieir prisoner.

426 THE DAYS OF S H O U D V.

" No, nothing — / have been paid well enough !" answered
the virtual captor.

"Hallo! here is a picture! the Yank has got a woman
somewhere !" exclaimed one of the rebels.

" A picture ? let me see it !" said Burtnett Haviland, stop
ping forward. How much that word " picture" recalled, in.
connection with that man and his own hnppiness ! What if
this should be the one to, which Kate had referred !

There was something in the voice that startled the mer
chant for a moment. He looked hard at Haviland, but no
human eye, not even that of his wife, could have recognized
him under that change in every particular. Haviland took
the picture, and at that moment, like a revelation, came to
him what he had before forgotten — that he had had that pic
ture down at the store, and left it there where the merchant
could very easily have obtained it without any good will of
his wife The thought disturbed him, for it half unsettled
what had been total misery submitted to and therefore en
durable. As he examined the little ambrotype, two or three
of the butternuts were looking over his shoulder.

" Purty, I tell you !" said one of them. -

" Them Nuthern wimmen isgallus, I reckon !" said another,
who had been North on' an oyster-boat and seen " around
the market" and perhaps even Broadway.

" The Yank's mistress, I suppose !" said Burtnett Haviland,
in a loud tone, glancing at the prisoner out of the corner of
' his eye at the same moment.

Charles Holt was a scoundrel, but no coward; and lie
lacked one vice — that of boasting over female conquests never
achieved — the dirtiest, meanest, foulest vice of this age. Not
even among those greasy butternuts would he do that, even
by implication !

"No, by heaven !" he said, in a tone that left no doubt as
to his sincerity. "That woman never was my mistress,
though the Lord knows I have tried hard enough to make
her sol She was too smart — too good, I suppose, for me!
That is enough, and it is none of your business, you thieves,
any thing about it."

liaviland reeled again, as if struck by one more of those

THK DAYS OF SHODDY. 427

ever-recurring blows. Superadded to the exhaustion and the
excitement of the day, this discovery of the picture and asser
tion of the merchant were too much for him. There was
vertigo in his head, and a trembling in his limbs; and he was
so fearfully excited that he was almost on the point of betray
ing himself and sharing the merchant's imprisonment by one
imprudent question. But a thought of his danger and of the
merchant's intended if not actual guilt, confessed by his own
lips, calmed him a little, and he said:

" Give me this picture, boys, for my share. You may have
the rest,"

"Agreed !" said two or three voices, for such a distribution
rather pleased the rebels than otherwise ; and Haviland
dropped the picture into one of his pockets, as he said :

"Well, take care of the Yankee, boys. Some of our fel
lows are below here, and I must go down and look for them."

Xo effort was made to detain him, and he turned away and
plunged into the woods, looking back to see the rebels lifting
the carriage around in the road and thrusting Charles Holt
and the driver int^> it, preparatory to giving them a ride into
the lines of Beauregard, as a turn on the road to Richmond.

Half an hour later, skirting the woods stretching down Cub
Run and striking thence across to the Centreville road, Havi
land was beyond danger from rebel capture and up with some
of the retreating Union regiments. Before that time, finding
them no longer necessary, he had thrown away the rebel pants
and cap, easily supplying the place of the latter with one of
the Federal caps' that so plentifully strewed the way, and
adding a jacket and a couple of revolvers to the equipment.
At dusk the crowd of fugitives had carried him into Centre
ville, amid such scenes as have been hurriedly described in
the previous chapter, but without their producing any effect,
for the time, upon him. His brain was whirling with new
thoughts. Life might be worth something, even yet. "What
if some dreadful mistake had occurred, after all ! — if his wife
should yet be innocent! Oh, to get to New York without
the delay of one moment ! — to solve the mystery which seemed
so much thicker than it had ever done before !

Among the forty Zouaves who reported to Captain Jack

428 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

at Fort Ellsworth on Monday night, was Haviland. But ho
did not remain. One glance at his sad face and one hearing
of his earnest words : " I -tnuxt go to New York, Captain, im
mediately !" procured him an informal leave from that officer,
then become for the time the virtual commander of what there
was left of the regiment. The same hand supplied him with
clothes to replace those he had lost on the field, and money
fur his temporary use. Tuesda)' morning took him to Wash
ington, then one mass of fright, mourning, inefficiency, wounded
soldiers, beggared contractors, newspaper correspondents
penning lies and guesses, officers without commands, com
mands without officers, drunkenness, and all that could dis
grace the capital of a great nation. And Wednesday noon,
the 24th of July, landed him in the city of New York, which
he had left under such widely-different circumstances not
quite three months before, and where Coffee Joe, the news
boy, a little dirtier and more dilapidated than we have seen
him in the spring, met him at the ferry with the sixteenth
extra of that day, giving two more lines of particulars from
the lost field. •

CHAPTER XXII.

THE GRIEF AND SHAME THAT FOLLOWED BULL RUN — NEW
YORK ON THE TWENTY-SECOND OF JULY — How THE CITY
AND THE COUNTRY MOURNED FOR THEIR SUPPOSED DEAD — .
MARY HAVILAND AT DUFFSBORO — AUNT BESSY'S REMINIS
CENCES OF AMOS HAVILAND — SAD NEWS FROM THE BATTLE
IN VIRGINIA — How THE OMENS THICKENED, AND MARY
HAVILAND BECAME TEMPORARILY A WIDOW.

•

THERE was a celebrated painter of old, who, when pressed
to attempt a certain grand picture which should embody
great interest arid command the attention of the whole world,
refused to do so from the insufficiency of his artistic materials
and his own powers. He would attempt it, he said, when

•THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

il

N

the blue vault of heaven was supplied him for a canvas, when
the light of sun and stars and the forked vividness of the
lightning were all given him as colors for his palette, and
when Jove should inform his right hand with his own tre
mendous power for their handling. Until then, his canvas
should be a blank, so far as any connection with that great
subject was concerned.

Very nearly the same disclamatory remark might with alt
propriety be made, when it is demanded that a writer should
attempt description of any of those peculiarly black days
which have fallen in the midst of the many dark ones of the
republic — making men's hearts sink within them under a fear
little less deadly than that which might fall in the sudden and
unwelcome dawning of the Morning Star — clouding the brow
with a black shadow through which the sunlight of heaven
could no more shine than through the heavy stones that lie
closed above a burial-vault — turning love, the first passion of
mankind, into a hollow mocker}^ and avarice of wealth or
power, the second, into a weakness not worth the indulging —
making idleness a torture and occupation impossible. Days
when there has seemed to be but one key-note to everything
in the heaven above or the earth beneath : " Lost ! lost !" —
just as through every touch of one of Hogarth's greatest
pictures there is one feeling of desolate finality running, from
the sun that is never to rise again, going down behind the sea,
to the watch dashed to pieces by the dying madman, the
murderer swinging ghastly upon his gibbet, the hour-glass
with the last sands just dropping out, and the half-open book
with its last page bearing the significant " Finis." Days
which have made the nation old in an hour, and caused its
collective hair to whiten as that of the perilled wretch has
sometimes done when too much fear and agony for human
endurance were crowded within a limited space. Days which
have "made history" with fearful rapidity, and which have
yet within them, perhaps, a more fearful curse than any yet
developed, in the temptation to "make novels!"

The most notable of these, as yet, and perhaps the most
desolately blind and Lopeless of all, was the Monday follow
ing the defeat of the Union forces at Bull Run. The Peuin-

430 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

eular repulse from before Richmond, Fredericksburg, the
second Bull Hun — all have been more important reverses, in
an actual military point of view, but they have all been com
parative trifles in public feeling, because they have all fallen
in the midst of extended warlike operations, and after other
reverses and amid counterbalancing victories, destroying their
otherwise fearful isolated prominence. Nations are saddle-
fcorses, in the capacity to bear reverse as well as debt : they
may be able to carry a mailed warrior after long practice, but
the weight of a child worries them at first, and they do not
willingly bear even the empty saddle itself. Nations are
children, with the same necessity for growth in any particular
and with the same capacity for discouragement, exhibited by
the boy as compared to the man. A torn coat is not much
to a man of years and experience, who has worn an hundred
different coats and looks forward to wearing an hundred more ;
but a torn coat is desolation to the boy just verging towards
manhood, whd has been for the first time permitted trem
blingly to overstep the bound and put on that modern sub
stitute for the ancient toga mrilce. The first clearly defined
blast of the trumpet of fame tingles through the nerves more
deliciously than any after utterance ; the first shaft of hostile
criticism wounds more deeply than any bolt that can be
launched at the man grown seasoned to abuse ; and it may
be that the first love torn away by death or falsehood leaves a
more terrible void than any after wrenching away of the whole
race could create. To destroy a first effort in any direction
is little less than a "slaughter of the innocents" — that first
effort is so truly meant, so proudly looked upon, so over
valued.

The blow of the defeat at Bull Run fell with peculiarly
crushing force on the community, because it marked the
failure of a first essay — the slaughter of one of those
national "innocents." The battles of the republic had always
before been on that limited scale which made them little more
than skirmishes in comparison with the great conflicts of
Europe and Asia ; for a long time, before the breaking out
of the rebellion, with the single exception of the short con
test with Mexico, peace had been our constant and happy

THE DAYS OF SHODDY 431

mtional condition The answer to the call of the President
n n d the forming of the Army of the Potomac, had been our
first trial in what was considered war on a grand scale. We
had failed — miserably failed. "Who wonders that the young
national heart should have bled — that the omen for the future
should have been held discouraging — that desolation and
despondency should have settled down anew, with every new
detail and corroboration of the great misfortune, on the hope
that had been before so unreasonably and even childishly
buoyant ?

Xew York city waaonce more prominent, in the grief that
followed Bull Run, and nowhere else could the spectator
from another land have discovered so quickly, how sadly
the pall had fallen over and shrouded the banner. And this,
too, had a warrant. New York had- license to be chief mour
ner at what seemed, for the moment and to the faint-hearted,
the nation's burial. Xo fight has ever since taken place, in
which so many favorite organizations and so many of what
may be called "citizen soldiery," have taken part. Reference
to the account of the battle heretofore given in these pages,
as well as to common memory, will afford a reminder that
with the exception of the Seventh and t\vo or three other
regiments which had failed to recruit in sufficient numbers
for taking the field, the whole body of the " household
troops" were known to have been engaged in the conflict.
The Eighth, the Seventy-first, the Twelfth, the Sixty-ninth,
the Seventy-ninth, the Brooklyn Fourteenth,*, the Fire
Zouaves — these were all type regiments for themselves and
others ; and the general diffusion of sorrow which their
" cutting-up" Avould cause may well be imagined even by
those who had no blood-kin perilled in their ranks. For the
slaughter of the "American Guard" arid its brother regiments,
there would be closed doors in many a mercantile house and
crape at the bell-pulls of many of the wealthy dwellings
of the metropolis ; over the decimation of the " fire-boys"
there would be half-masted flags and mourning draperies on
every engine, hose and carriage house within the fire-limits ;
and to the " Wirra ! wirra !" of the Irish woman, wide over
the city, mourning a son, a husband or a brother killed in the

4.?>2 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

thinned ranks of the Sixty-ninth, there would answer the
" Och hone-a-rie !" of her Scottish sister, crooning the same
lament over her dead of the Seventy-ninth, that rung hun
dreds of years ago through Lochabar and. the Braes of Appin.

The news from the field — blended truth and falsehood —
came precisely in such a shape as to produce the worst possi
ble feeling of anxiety and discouragement. They could not
have been more dexterously managed, had some fiend taken
a contract for breaking half the hearts in the city. First the
movement was heralded with such loud boasts of the cer
tainty of the Union Army routing out the rebel wolf from his
lair of woods and batteries at Manasses, that the hearers
ceased to remember that there were chances in war and that
victories could not be bespoken like coals or beef-steaks !
Then on Saturday and again on Sunday, came intelligence of
the taking of Fairfax Court House and the affair at Black
burn's Ford, the latter really a repulse to the Union forces,
in effect, but both gilded with all the mendacious arts of
newspaper letter-writers who seemed to think that boasts and
hollow self-glorifications were the most Pcileable commodities
in tlie whole market of intelligence, and made to appear like
signal successes that only needed to be followed up to anni
hilate the rebels and " crush the rebellion." Sunday was es
pecially prolific in " victories" that had never been won, and
skirmishes in which the advantage was skilfully set on the
wrong side. But through all these reports ran the one fea
ture — desperate fighting. If the Union troops had so far been
successful, they had been so at the price of heavy loss — there
seemed to be no doubt on that point. This made the public
heart sore, though not discouraged. For the victory that
had been promised, even the price of the blood of friends
and brothers could be paid, and yet no repining. But the con
dition of success was inexorable ; and there was a lacerated
spot in that heart, ready to receive the next blow that was so
soon to fall.

Monday morning, in the papers of that date, brought the
sensation headings of a great battle that had been fought on
the day previous, near^tfanasses, and at a place called " Bull's
llun." (It needed days and even weeks be/ore the terminat-

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 453

ing " s" was dropped, at the instance of some who happened
to have known the topography of Virginia in the days of
peaci'.) The letters and other accounts which followed these
headings, indicated no serious reverse, but something like a
drawn battle, yet the old burthen of the song again repeated
— d<: operate fighting and heavy loss. Certain regiments of
the Xew York troops were particularized as having made
the most desperate charges and defences, leaving one quarter
or one half their numbers, as the case might be, dead on the
field. The Seventy-first, the Sixty-ninth, the Seventy-ninth
and the Fire Zouaves, as pet regiments, were particularly
spoken of, their valor lauded while their whole corps were
slaughtered — by the reporters ! And even yet the public
feeling endured and did not murmur, however much it
mourned. Even this for victory ! • :» .

The morning grew later, and the bulletins began to bear
startling additions to the news of the regular editions. The
rebels had gained a slight advantage on Sunday afternoon —
the Union troops had fallen back from the attack. Still the
same undertone — desperate fighting and heavy loss. The
general heart began to be discouraged. All that heavy
slaughter, after all, without result — with even disadvantage
to the Union arms !

An hour or two still later — and then burst the peal of
woful thunder that shocked and stunned all ears. Extras
made their appearance, and the anxious crowds around the
bulletins separated to read the words that seemed the death
knell of the republic. Not a drawn battle — not a slight re
pulse — not a defeat — but a total and irredeemable rout ; the
Union troops flying like frightened sheep, disorganized and
disheartened, back upon Washington, and the victorious and
infuriated rebels slaughtering them at will ! Whole regi
ments of favorite troops, not decimated, but annihilated.
Every corps — the whole army — cut to pieces. Not enough
left to form the nucleus of another army — not enough to offer
an effectual defence of Washington, where the Confederates
would certainly be stabling their horses in the Capitol and
burning the public records ill the Departments, before the
rising of another sun 1
27

434 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

Tales of horrible cruelty and yet more horrible butchery.
Squads of ambulances fired upon by whole parks of rebel
artillery, and all the wounded they contained blown to infini
tesimal fragments. Disabled men begging for quarter, but
bayoneted by hundreds and even by thousands, by the infu
riated conquerors. The dead hacked in pieces with sabres, as
so many hogs might have been, and their very quarters dis
tributed among different rebel corps as trophies. Indian bar
barities outdone, and the very atrocities of the Sepoys at
Meerut and Cawnpore dwarfed into insignificance. Loss —
defeat — panic — hopeless ruin — slaughter 1

Such were the reports. We know, to-day, how grossly
exaggerated they were, as the previous reports of the suc
cesses had been. We know, now, how the Union troops won
the battle before they lost it, and that the panic only com
pleted what outnumbering had begun. We know, now, how
small was the loss of almost every regiment in the Union
army, compared to what troops had often suffered before in
other services, and what others have since suffered in our
own. We know, too, that while too many of the allegations
of cruelty made against the rebels were disgracefully true,
and while many must remain a damning stain against them to
the last day of recorded time, — many of them were the miser
able exaggerations of the frightened or the more miserable tales
of the unscrupulous. We have seen one of the Captains who
was bracked into four pieces on the field (according to these
reports) come Rack from the Ilichmoud prisons without any
marks of that cruel operation. We have winnowed out the
wheat from the chaff of voluminous misrepresentation, and
know very nearly the truth of the story of Bull Bun, which
would never have wrought us half the in jury that it has done,
at home and abroad, if we had not been frightened children
yelling at the bugaboo of a servant.

But all these reports were terrible reality, then. They had
their work of extracting tears and groans, and they did it.
Oh Rachel of the nation, how you did mourn that day, for
your children ! — how you did shed tears of blood in response
to those kindred drops which seemed to have been poured out
so unavailingly on the battle-field !

THE DATS OF SHODDY. 435

What a day was that in the city of New York ! — and who
that passed through can ever forge i it ! The day after Sum-
ter had been a spasm — this was an agony. The city lying
beneath the blazing heat of mid-summer — men panting for
very breath in the streets. The country seeming to lie under
the blaze of the wrath of God, and panting for its very life.
Business suspended— sellers with no wish to sell — buyers with
no heart to buy. Men meeting with inquiries of sad omen,
and parting without comfort. More hands wrung in silence
or with broken words, than had ever been in any one day
since the birth of the nation. Frenzied inquirers after friends
and relatives known to have been in the lost battle ; no
answers of consolation even from those who had reached the
city from the scene of the disaster. No pride in the.past, —
nut even the pride of believing that our troops had deserved
victory if they had failed to secure it; no sunlight in the
future, with those ill-omened birds, false and unscrupulous
reports, darkening the air. Anxiety — discouragement — deso
lation — mourning without certainty of death but without hope
of life — everywhere ! God in His infinite mercy grant that
that blackest of all the dark days of the nation may never
find a parallel !

But the terrible news disseminated on the 22d of July,
reached other hearts than those that throbbed within the great
cities. The blow did not fall so soon, by a few hours, in the
more quiet and isolated country sections, but it came with
no less crushing force from its short delay. The stony streets
of the cities had not alone echoed to the tread of the armed
men who marched away to the campaign that was ending so
disastrously: the green lanes of the country had known the
same gathering and departure, and the plough and the scythe
waited there for the returning hand, even as the counter and
the workshop waited in the town. There was to be wailing
along the green lanes as well as along the stony streets —
fear, discouragement and indignation around the doors of the
little country tavei'n as well as under the porches of the
Astor House and the Continental.

Mary Haviland had been just a week at the little farm
house at PuiTsboro, when the news of Bull Run broke over

436 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

the land. The reader, not purposely but unavoidably kept
in the dark as to her whereabouts after leaving the house on
East Forty-eighth Street, that terrible night, may before this
time have suspected that she had gone home— home to the
place of her birth and the sheltering arms of Aunt Bessy
White. She had done so, indeed. Protected by the police
man at the corner, and accompanied by him to the residence
of her family physician on Sixth Avenue, she had found rest
and refuge there, and on the Monday following gone down to
the little farm-house, to be received with almost delirious
pleasure and pity by the good old lady. All her griefs had
been poured into the sympathizing ears of Aunt Bessy, and
they had all been consoled by the assurance of that model
aunt who should have been mother to half a generation, that
"wickedness would yet be punished and those who truly
loved and trusted be once more made happy." Then Kate
had come down on the Wednesday following, for reasons
which will be hereafter fully understood; and between the
two strangely separated by misunderstanding, explanations
had been made which sent them into each other's arms with
sobs and kisses — the school-mistress humble and abashed,
Mary sweet-tempered and forgiving. Not even Kate could
tell the wife how much she had misjudged her husband, as
she could not know the secret of the lost letters and the false
hood of the malicious reports affecting his character. But
she had been able to say enough to the wife, from intercourse
personally held'with Burtnett Haviland by lettei1, and in the
midst of her confessions that " she had probably half-broken
his heart by meddling with what she had much better left
alone — doing what she would never do again until she grew
old enough to be Methusaleh's grandmother !" — to satisfy
Mary that her husband's silence had been the result of neither
guilt nor coldness, to show her how false her own position
had probably grown to be in his eyes, and to make her yearn
ing love and burning desire for his return even a thousand
times deeper and more intense than they could have been
without the knowledge of that misunderstanding. One of
the first fruits of all this, in fact, had been the penning of a
letter by Mary, addressed to her husband at Alexandria,

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 437

which, had it reached him before his departure, would have
sent him into battle with a different care for his life from that
which he at first exhibited. But, as the reader well knows,
that letter could' only have reached Alexandria after the de
parture of the Zouave Company ; and it probably lay there
waiting1 for him, with full explanations which would have
made him the happiest man in the world, at the moment when
he rushed insanely back through that town, on his way to
New York and the quest for his wife, after the battle ! So
vigorously and persistently we often strain body and brain,
in the distant pursuit of that which lies precisely under our
own noses !

Ho\v stronger and stronger every day, then, in the heart
of the puzzled and anxious but ever-loving little wife, grew
this desire for her husband's return, which had only been a
dull pain before the late events, but now became a torture !
What if he should never come back-— if her letter should fail
to reach him and he wander away, in some of the army move
ments, where communication was impossible ! What if that
which had before been only a dim shadow of evil, should
change to be a terrible reality — if he should be killed without
ever knowing, while in life, how truly her heart beat for him
alone, how false had been every word that set a shadow be
tween them !

Bonnie Kate, the busiest, the most cheerful and the mad
dest minx that ever puzzled a village or threw new life into a
dulled circle in the great city — would have been an excellent
medium for the elevation of Mary's spirits, and would, in fact,
so have kept her in pleasant confusion as to afford little time
for despondent thought, — but that she had really so humbled
her own position before her cousin's wife, by her terrible
mistakes and misunderstandings, as to be placed temporarily
on what might be called the " retired list" in the service of
mischief, or, as she herself expressed it, "obliged to be good
when she did not wish to, one bit !" And Aunt Bessy, ever
good and hopeful, might have been found the quite-sufficient
consoler, had a shadow not rested over her heart and the
household, in the memory of the late death of Amos Havi-
laiid, on whose grave the young grass had scarcely yet Degun

438 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

*

to spring, and whose shade scarcely yet seemed to have de
parted from the doors it had unobtrusively haunted.

. Aunt Bessy would talk of him, not alone to Kate, who had
like herself been with him and known him to the last, but to
Mary, who had for yaars only seen him during very brief
visits, though she yet retained enough recollection of him to
make the knowledge that he had passed away, even in his
century of old age, a saddening one. And this, which kept
alive the blended relations of war and death, was by no
means the mental pabulum on which the nervous and worried
woman, who had so lately been tried beyond her whole
strength, should have been fed at that juncture. " Misery
loves company," of course, as the old "proverb has it; but it
does not follow that misery always grows less poignant by the
association ; and while it might be sadly jarring to the nerves
of the widow of a week, to be thrown suddenly into the
society of half a dozen brilliant and laughing men and women
of the world, with wit, music and rattle alike at the ends of
their tongues and fingers, yet she might be quite as well
prepared, at the end of a given period, to meet her lonely
fate and do battle with the world, as if that period had been
passed in the company of half a dozen people with long
faces, black dresses, white handkerchiefs, and who- managed
to excite each other to sympathetic tears and sobs every
half hour.

Poor Mary Haviland, driven into new anxiety with refer
ence to her absent husband, found little to buoy up her spirits,
in the temporary humility and silence of saucy Kate or the
sadly patriotic conversation of Aunt Bessy. No matter — the
end was coming, and coming, rapidly.

On Sunday, the 21st of July, at meeting at the little village
church at Duffsboro, the ladies from the old farm-house learned
by conversation among the groups gathered at the door before
service, that newspapers had come down from the city the
evening before — that the Army of the Potomac had advanced.
— that a battle (represented as a Union victory) had been
fought on Thursday — that another and heavier battle was un
avoidable and might even then be in progress or decided. It
is now well known that the battle was at that very hour in-

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 439

deed in progress, and that then (half-past ten to eleven) the
whole body of the Federal troops were first being hurled
against the enemy, so that the spiritual ears of the worship
pers, could they have been keen enough, might have heard
sounding over the hum of conversation at the door, and after
wards floating in at the open windows to blend with the
sleepy drone of that summer noon discourse, the thunder of
the cannon then crashing over the field of Manasses.

There may have been an 'hundred hearts in that little con
gregation, beating with fear and anxiety for those dear to
them and exposed to the shock of battle ; but it is only our
province to measure the heart-beats of three in that whole
number. Aunt Bessy folded upon her breast the hands still
so fair, when she heard that the two armies were actually
meeting in the first battle, — bent down her head and uttered
a prayer that the heavens heard though the ear of man lost
ii — a prayer for perilled lives and for the land. Kate Havi-
land trembled like an aspen leaf, then shook off the feeling,
took home to her heart that peculiarly Yankee confidence
which knoivs that its own must conquer, and waited calmly
for what was to follow. Mary Haviland met the issue veiy
differently from either. Unnerved and overtasked as she had
before b«en, her heart seemed to die within her and lie thence
forth in her bosom a dull, cold lump of lead or stone ! The
previous four days had been to her an omen of her husband's
death — he was a member of that Fire Zouave regiment so
depended upon, in advance, for deeds of daring whenever
called upon to perform them, and so likely to be sent into the
very thickest of the conflict — he would fall if he had not fallen,
and the hopes of her whole life would expire with him. Yet,
as of old, she determined to suffer in silence ; and she did not
even tell to Kate or Aunt Bessy, as they went homeward
from the little church, how deadly was the fear that oppressed
her. But nature had its revenge on suppression, as usual ;
her pillow was that night wet with hopeless tears ; and only
a mockery of sleep came to her, clasping little Pet close in her
arms, just before' the robins began to sing in the peach-trees
at dawn.

Slowly and steadily fell the omens, each worse than the one

440 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

preceding. The afternoon boat of Monday brought down to
Duffsboro some of the extras containing the very worst an
nouncements of that day of the lost battle, the panic and the
rout. They relieved the whole country round with the news
that all the regiments containing men from that section had
been held in reserve at Centreville, and that consequently
there would be no mourning homes in the neighborhood. But
what was the " relief" brought by that extra to Mary Havi-
land ? The certainty that the Fire Zouaves had been in the
very front of the battle — that they had suffered beyond almost
any other regiment in the army — that they had been the sub
ject of the worst cruelties of the victorious rebels, their men
shot down and bayoneted in cold blood, quarter refused,
their wounded fired upon in the ambulances, one of their Cap
tains quartered and his very body carried away piecemeal !
What hope was there left for Burtrictt Haviland ? — what for
his wretched, hopeless, miserable wife ? Thenceforth, spite
of the efforts of Aunt Bessy and Kate, who tried to play con
solers while their own hearts were full of fear and grief, the
poor wife, tearless but suffering a thousand times more than
she could have been with the tears flowing freely, rather stag
gered than moved about the farm-house ; and when she
went to her lonely bed that night, though she sk?pt from
sheer exhaustion, sleep was no mercy, so horribly came up
in her dreams all the imaginary incidents of the lost battle,
thunder, cries, bloodshed — a dark cloud in the foreground of
which her husband seemed ever struggling with a host of
foes, crying for mercy, fainting, bleeding, dying.

And yet there was one wretched, desolate hope. Xot all
could be killed, even in the doomed regiment. The one dear
est of all the world to her might have escaped, even if only
twenty, or ten, or five, should be left to tell the melancholy
story. Oh, if he should be but alive, however wounded,
maimed, a mere wreck of the glorious type of manhood who
had gone away from her ! — how would her whole future life
be one long aspiration of thankfulness to Heaven for even
that mercy ! Poor wife ! — not even that sad hope was to be
allowed her, while passing through what the reader knows
to have been onlv an iuiuginarv bereavement, but as terrible

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 4-11

to her, far the time, as if the most fatal reality had laid hidden
behind it.

It was at nearly noon on Tuesday that the young wife,
silent and tearless in the agony of her anxiety, sat with little
Pet on her lap, at one of the shaded windows overlooking her
]>orch and the road, twining her fingers absently in the silken
hair of her ehild, and her eyes looking out on vacancy in
that fixed stare which is so near to the glare of the maniac.
Aunt Bessy was in the unromantic act of rinsing white clothes
from the wash of the day before, beside the old well with its
crank and bucket, a few feet from the porch, to the left.
Kate was busied in the kitchen behind the passage, in the
preparations for dinner, the appetizing savors of which floated
wide through the house.

Suddenly Mary Ilaviland heard a voice in conversation
with Aunt Bessy at the well. It was the voice of a man — .
some one had come up by the little path eastward at the end
of the porch. The wife summoned interest enough to turn
her eyes more closely in that direction, and then a deadly
faiiitness seized her. She saw a man, whose face she did not
recognize, in the uniform of a soldier — blue Zouave jacket and
pants, with a red fez, but his face browned almost to the color
of red earthen, his uniform dingy and discolored, and his right
arm slung to his side by a bloody handkerchief depending
from, his neck. That last mark told of a participant in some
battle — the man might be conversing with her aunt of the
great disaster from which he had himself escaped — she must
hear the words that were spoken. She staggered to her feet,
dragging little Pet by the hand, and moved to the door open
ing upon the porch, where she could both see and hear dis
tinctly. She might almost as well have moved herself, as
she knew the moment after, into point-blank range of one of
the rifled cannon that had been so fatal on the heights of
Man asses two days before !

The man, as she could not be aware, was a scape-grace
member of one of the best families of the neighborhood, well
known to Aunt Bessy, most of the time resident in the city,
but coming home often enough to be remembered. Nor could
she know from the changed uniform that he was a Zouave —

4i2 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

a member of the very corps which had contained her husband
— one of the fugitives from the defeat and the regiment, com
ing home to be nursed with his wounded arm. But what the
eye failed to reveal the lips told too soon and too suddenly.
The young wife saw that Aunt Bessy had dropped the clutlu s
from her grasp and was starting back with upraised hands, in.
surprise and terror. Half-fainting, yet determined, she list
ened to what followed :

" It was be-tween three and four o'clock, not far from Sud-
ley Church," she heard the soldier say. " We were trying to
support Ayres' battery — he and I belonged to the same com
pany, you know — but the rebs were too many for us, all the
time. He was up and all right, one minute — the next there
was a perfect rain of balls over the battery and all around us,
and almost at the same moment a squadron of the rebel horse
followed the lire. I was hit here, in the arm, pretty badly,
but did not fall — only staggered against one of the wheels of a
piece. He was not more than six feet from me when the fire
went by and the horse followed. I saw him fall, and saw the
horses go over him. The next moment the dead were four
or iiv,e deep, there, and there was no living man at the bottom
of the heap — I know that !"

" You are sure that you could not be mistaken — that it was
my poor boy that was killed ?" she heard Aunt Bessy gasp.

"I wish I wasn't!" she heard the soldier reply. "I tell
you, Mrs. White, that we belonged to the same company. I
thought I ought to stop and tell you. There was not a bet
ter fellow in the regiment than Burt Haviland "

The informant went no further, for at that instant, from the
piazza, went up a cry of mortal pain and agony that sent Kate
flying from the kitchen and Aunt Bessy and the soldier hurry
ing to the spot. Mary Ilaviland had not fallen insensible, as
some might have done under similar circumstances. She had
not even clung to any support, but stood rigidly erect, her
veyes set in a fearful spasm, her hand yet grasping that of the
frightened child, and her lips repeating that terrible cry which
seemed to embody all the torture of an overwrought body and1
a breaking heart. Her lips uttered no word as they led her
in ; and sho seemed rigid and motionless but by uo means

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. ' 443

lifeless, as they laid her on her bed, poor little Pet crying
over her " tick Mamma !"

And that spasm lasted for more than two hours. Xo stim
ulant that the village doctor, suddenly called over by a farm
hand on horseback, could administer, had any effect towards
rousing her; no anodyne, when he adopted that mode of
treatment, had power to throw her into sleep. The doctor
sat by her almost in despair, in doubt whether insanity if
not death from syncope, might not be the result ; Aunt Bessy
and Kate, who knew that she must have heard all, ministered
beside her like human angels as they were, and tried to utter
broken words of consolation ; but still there was no reply and
no movement of the set eyes. Then the spasm seemed to
have spent itself. The watchers, late in the afternoon, saw
her turn her head for the first time, recognize little Pet, beckon
her to the side of the bed and clasp her to her breast; break
ing meanwhile into tears and sobs that seemed to rend her
very being.

" She is saved !" said the doctor, in a low voice. " There
is no danger now."

" Thank God !" said the reverent lips of Aunt Bessy, while
Kate went up to the side of the bed, kissed the white forehead
of the sufferer, and then remained smoothing down the blonde
hair as if she could communicate life and consolation through
that gentlest and tenderest of mediums.

The doctor was right — the worst was over. Mary Havi-
land, bereaved, as she supposed, of her husband, had deter
mined to live for her child, and that agonized clasp of her
last link to life had been the first evidence of returned com
posure. Within an hour afterwards she arose from her bed,
calm, but oh, how unutterably miserable ! Then it was,
thought flowing in its accustomed channels, that she began to
suffer the full measure of rational grief. Then it was that
she realized the whole extent of her bereavement, and knew
how many more and worse arrows of agony fate could add,
and how many more human capacity could endure, than even
those experienced eight days before, on the night of her
persecution and her flight.

And here, for a little time, plunged in a grief that had ex-

THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

hausted its worst and most threatening features within a few
hours of its falling, and yet a grief that would probably
remain unassuaged until the last day of her life — here, wan
dering blindly in the thick darkness of bereavement, yet so
petted, caressed and consoled by the three dear ones still left
her, that long despair would have been impossible — here, for
a very little time, \ve leave the young wife. The light was
coming, as we know — it was nearly at hand. That day was
Tuesday. Wednesday, as has already been recorded, brought
Burtnett Ilaviland to the city of New York. And there
after, even we of this writing and reading must wait. Only
a faint and feeble picture has here been given of the trials
and griefs of one little wife who had given up her husband
to the service of his country and believed that she had
parted with him forever in life : what pen could depict the
trials and the sorrows which have fallen upon so many thou
sands of Union wives actually bereaved, and so many
thousands of Union homes permanently desolated, during all
tlfe long struggle ?

CHAPTER XXIII.

HURRYING TO THE END — AN OFFICIAL YlSIT TO MllS. FuL-

LERTON, AND SOME STRANGE OPERATIONS BETWEEN THE
MILLIONAIRE AND KATE — WHAT THE TEACHER HAD FOUND
IN THE DRAWER — A "BURST UP" — BURTNETT H AVI LAND

LOOKING FOR A WlFE — SARAH SANDERSON AS A CAT IN THE

GARRET — LITTLE TIM IN PLAY ONCE MORE — A REUNION.

IT is nothing uncommon in geography, as the travellers in
many lands can tell us, to find some little stream creeping
lazily down out of 1he hills and through the meadows,
gathering breadth and force at every mile of its way and yet
displaying no sudden change, until it has at last become a
rapid, rushing river, resistless in the volume of its waters

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 445

and terrible in the momentum of its current, before which
nothing of human erection can stand, and the only manage
ment of which is to be found in obedience to the law of its
might. Almost as often it happens that a stream of circum
stances in personal history, dallying and delaying for months
and even for years, arrives one day at a point beyond which
there is no delay and after which it sweeps on to the end
with a rapidity inconceivable to those who have so long idly
watched the. tardy movements of the past, — bearing lives,
fortunes, characters, like straws on its current, and closing
in an hour what seemed likely to endure for a century. If

"The mills o' the gods grind slow, but grind exceeding flue,"

there are times when the wheel revolves slowly, and others
when it whirls and clashes so rapidly as to dazzle and deafen
the beholder ; and Immar the Inevitable, swinging his great
flail in the garner of fate, sometimes brings down that
weapon on the bodies and brains of the condemned Irmenides
with slow and measured strokes that can be distinctly heard
and counted as they fall ; then anon breaks into a very rage
of justice and whirls that power of destruction so rapidly
that only the thunder of the aggregated blows meets the ear
and only one constant flashing glitter of the polished oak is
seen through the gloom that wraps the universe. Something
of the same character of increased rapidity must now be
assumed by this narration, which only in that way can keep
pace with the celerity of the closing events it records ; and
all those events must be thrown into the intimate though not
involved relations of two closing chapters.

All this while, though it has been more than once shown
that Kate Haviland had abandoned her employment in the
city and returned to Duffsboro, no clue has been given to
the reasons which moved that slightly erratic and cometary
person to leave an engagement which she had at least pre
tended to take for a considerable period, and to return to a
vicinity where her clear profits at school-teaching, according
to her own arithmetic, footed up the magnificent figure of
twenty York shillings a year ! Any omission of that charac
ter must now be repaired ; and in the explanation not only
her own fortunes but those of the family of which she had

446 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

been for a little less than three months an outside member,
will be found involved.

A somewhat strange scene was presented on Wednesday
afternoon, the 17th of July (some days before many of the
occurrences already narrated), in the drawing-room of the
house of Mrs. Fullerton on East Twenty-third Street — that
drawing-room on the first floor which has long since been
incidentally described, but in which none of the incidents of
this relation have as yet actually occurred. That " best room
in the house" has its mission now, for the house has a new
visitor.

At the opened piano on that occasion sat Miss Dora, who
had evidently, from the appearance of the musical hills and
valleys with great ravines between and many five-barred
gates and a few dangerous ditches, on the sheet of music set
before her, been engaged in that description of violent steeple-
chasing over the world of sound, widely known and as widely
anathematized by all listeners, as "practising." But though
she still sat at the piano, the eyes of the young lady had in
them nothing of the devotion or tenderness of music — they
were restless, fiery and blazing with anger, as those of a cat
may be seen to be when that diminutive tiger is driven into
a corner and still worse danger threatens.

At a little distance stood the dignified lady of the mansion,
and if the eyes of the young lady had something of threaten
ing in them, those of the mother were lakes of fire without
soundings. Her dark brows were so bent in rage and her
still handsome mouth so wreathed in a blending of terrible
anger and ineffable scorn, that he must have been a bold man
who expected to hear her next words without wincing. Her
shapely arm, from which the light mantle thrown hastily
around her shoulders had fallen back, was raised at the mo
ment, and her fist clenched as if object and not will was
wanting for an Amazonian demonstration ; and there was
something about the working of the mouth which indicated
that only a little more champing of the teeth would be needed
to bring bloody foam from between the lips.

The third person of the group did not seem at all excited,
meanwhile. He was a man of medium height, rather thin,

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 44:7

with high, bald brow, and hair and beard slightly gray,
dressed in dark summer cassimeres, very gentlemanly in
appearance and action, and yet with unmistakable marks, to
those familiar with criminal life and the detective service,
that his business had long been the disguising of his own
identity and the making of surreptitious discoveries. This
was what he looked to the instructed eye ; and the impres
sion did not belie him, for he had been for years one of the
most capable and trusted agents of the New York police de
partment, not long before this time transferred to the detective
service of the State Department, and much employed where
tact and gentlemanly manners were both known to be needed.
This man sat on a chair four or five feet from the spot where
Mrs. Fullerton was standing, one hand playing with his
chatelaine watch-chain and the other holding the broad
Panama hat of which he had not been relieved. Mrs. Ful-
lertou, of the raised arm and the clenched fist, was speaking :

" Send us away, will you ! I'd like to see you, or any of
the Baboon's crew, do it ! Dare to lay hands on us, any of
you, and you will know what it is to meddle with the best
blood of South Carolina !"

"Oho!" said the official to himself, "this woman would
hang herself, directly, if I should give her rope enough, but
I should have no fancy for carrying things so far." He wished
to whistle a little, but he did not, and only said, aloud :
" You mistake me very much, madame. ' Send away' is a
hard word, and I did not use it. I only said that it would be
prudent for you and your daughter to leave the Northern
States, at once, and go South; and that arrangements would
at once be made for transferring you within the lines of the
so-called Confederates."

" ' So-called !' " broke in the enraged woman. " ' So-
called !' I should like to know why they should not call
themselves Confederates, and who can hinder them ! Jeffer
son Davis is more of a President than your miserable — "

" Mother," broke in Dora, who was not quite so mad as her
parent. " Mother, remember what you .are saying."

" The good lady does no/, remember what she is saying, T
am afraid," said the official, rising, "though of course what

44:8 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

she says is quite safe in my keeping. Meanwhile, ladies,"
drawing out his watch and casting a glance at the time it
revealed, " I am afraid that I shall be obliged to shorten a
pleasure of my own and abridge an intrusion upon yourselves,
by leaving you to attend to other business. Am I to under
stand that you decline to be guided by the advice I have
offered ?"

"Altogether, sir!" said the matron, very decidedly. "We
will remain here while we please, and go away when we
please."

" Perhaps," answered the imperturbable official. " Once
more, you had better give me your promise, and keep it, to
be absent from this city within the next forty-eight hours."

"And once more I say that I will not submit any logger to
this impertinence !" almost shrieked the lady. " We hate
you and your miserable government, and do not care .\v,ho
knows it ; but they lie who say that we have done any thing
to place ourselves in your power, and we will not stir one
step. And now, sir, if you will leave this house at once, very
well ; if not — "

"People lie sometimes, but handwriting docs not," said the
official. " You put me under the necessity, ladies, of adopt
ing a tone that I would willingly have avoided. You ivill
take my advice, b<5lh of you, within the time I have named,
or, women though you arc, you will certainly find the inside
of a prison within tweutj^-four hours after that time has ex
pired ! Did you ever see this paper before ?" and he threw
suddenly open and held out to her a folded paper that he had
been drawing out from the inner side-pocket of his coat.

" My letter to Walker !" exclaimed the lady, completely
surprised beyond her guard for the moment.

"Exactly!" said the official, in the same equable tone.
"Your revelation of the projects of the Men of the True
South, some minutes and names of one of the meetings held
here, and what some people call treason, in a very explicit
shape. Will you think better of it, and take my advice ?"

" We will obey your orders /" said the lady, in a voice
broken with rage and hate. " Just like you sneaking spies
and thieves, to steal letters out of the mail. We will go,

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 449

and the sooner the better, to get out of this miserable aboli
tion nest of peddlers and pickpockets."

" I thought so. We shall depend upon your keeping your
promise. Good afternoon, ladies !" and the official bowed
himself out as he might have done from the pleasantest of
interviews.

" That letter — how ever did it get into their hands ?" asked
Dora, when the door had closed.

" Stolen, of course — -just like them !" answered the mother.

" And what are we to do now ?" as another thought
struck her. " I shall lose — "

" That fool and his money ? So you will I Oh, I could
strangle the whole pack of them !"

" But, mother." said Dora, as still another thought struck
her — " why that was the letter that Minthorne took down to
Washington himself! What does it mean ? Could he
have "

" Betrayed us ?" the mother concluded the question. For
a moment her face darkened still more, and she almost hissed
out the words : "If he did, and I can make sure of it, he
will not live a week !" Then her face lightened again and her
voice changed, as she said : " Pshaw ! what is the use of
thinking of that? He is too gre^t a fool to do that much
harm to anybody."

" Still — why not ask him ?" continued Dora. " Yery
luckily he went away before that ruffian came in, and I sup
pose he is up in the school-room, dawdling again with those
children."

" I will ask him !" said the mother, and rising she stepped
out into the hall and ascended the stairs, while Dora, yet a
little confused at the complication of affairs, remained seated
at the piano but " exercised" in mind only. Perhaps two
minutes had elapsed, when she heard what sounded like a
scream from the upper part of the house, in her mother's
voice, and she followed her hastily up to the third story,
where the spectacle that met her view was something to be
remembered even by a lady of the " best blood of South
Carolina" with that of Maryland added.

When Mrs. Fullerton reached the door of the* school-room,
28

450 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

where she expected to find the millionaire-noodle " dawdling
with the children," the door was half open and she heard the
millionaire and the school teacher in conversation. Perhaps
she did nothing more than some ladies of much more refine
ment and principle would have done, in pausing at the
threshold for just one moment. But she certainly heard
more than most ladies would have been pleased to hear, and
listened longer than she had at first intended. " Come, it is
time to get done with trifling," she heard the voice of Ned
]Minthorne say, with nothing in it of the drawl and hesita
tion that had always saluted her ears when he spoke. t "I
have asked you three times, and really I think that if you
are ever going to answer me it is nearly time to begin. How
many girls out of an hundred, do you think, have an offer of
marriage made them once, much less /hrne times?"

" Especially by a man worth a million !" answered the voice
of the teacher, blended with a merry, ringing laugh.

" Pshaw ! let me hear no more of that !" said the voice of
the millionaire. " If my hand is not worth yours, without my
money, it could not be made so by ten millions."

" Spoken like a man, and more than that — like a really
nice, clever fellow !" answered the voice of the teacher. " I
have more than half a mind to put you out of your misery.
Stop ! I have one question to ask you, before I answer yours.
Have you ever played false to the Union cause, for one mo
ment, since the secession commenced?"

" Never, upon my honor !'' solemnly said the voice of the
young man.

"If not, what aid you do with that letter directed to Mont
gomery ?" Female voice.

" Took it to Washington, according to the direction, and
there sent it in to Secretary Seward, with my compliments,
at the State Department." Male voice.

" Bravo !" said the voice of the teacher. " Yes ! — with all
my heart !"

It was at this juncture that Mrs. Fullerton, who had with
difficulty restrained herself during all that time at the door,
found any longer restraint impossible, under the double
treacherv that was so evidentlv beins? ena,cted under her own

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 451

roof, and dashed open the door with a scream that might with
almost as much propriety have been called a yell. Dora's
nimble feet were but an instant in ascending the stairs at the
sound, and the scream had scarcely died away, and certainly
positions had not changed in interest, when she stood beside
her mother in the open door and saw what was being
transacted in the school-room — a kind of "dawdling with
children" not set down in the programme !

Neither of the children — to wit, Myra and Mildred — was
to be seen ; but near the teacher's desk stood Ned Minthorne,-
with that young lady clasped in his arms, and kissing her in
that deliriously ravenous manner which indicates that the
person banqueting has been kept on " short commons" for a
considerable time previously, and that he is laying in a store
against possible future deprivation. His arms were both
round the young girl's pliant waist ; and, shame of shames !
— hers not only clung round his neck as if they had no inten
tion whatever of loosening, but she was receiving his kisses
and paying back at least a part of them, with that freedom
and abandon which are so disgusting — to those who have no
share whatever in the feast !

The fact is incredible, but the millionaire and the teacher
actually kissed on, and — well, the plain word may as well be
used — hugged on, for quite a moment after that scream, and
in fact until Miss Dora had a fair view of the interesting
operation, and threw in a supplementary howl of her own.
Then they seemed both at once to have discovered the
presence of uninvited spectators ; and Kate made a motion
to release herself with 'a little scream of surprise that com
pared with the sounds uttered by either mother or daughter
as a zephyr does to a tornado or a penny trumpet to a loco
motive whistle ; while Ned Minthorne still kept his left arm
around her and merely stared at the intruders as if they had
been two new specimens in his pet study of natural history.

All this was a little too much for the " Southern matron,"
who made a dart forward as if she would tear the lovers not
only apart but into several pieces, — followed by Miss Dora,
who had already fallen into a speechless passion of tears and
sobs. And yet, strangely enough, even in the midst of her

452 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

passion, Mrs. Fullerton seemed to retain Pome regard for
and some hope of the million or more, for she began to pour
out all the vials of wrath upon the female head and that
which wore no gilded crown of wealth.

" You shameless hussy ! You dirty trollope ! These are
the goings on in my house, are they ?"

"Mrs. Fullerton," said the millionaire, very calmly, and
still without any hesitation in, his speech, " be kind enough
to recollect that if there is any fault here it is mine, and to
know, if you do not know it already, that this young lady is
to be my wife !"

Audacious as were these words and all the surrounding
circumstances, it is doubtful if they would have struck either
mother or daughter with more surprise than the manly and
unembarrassed manner of their utterance, so unlike what they
had been used to hearing from the millionaire noodle, — had
either been cool enough to recognize the difference. But just
now rage was uppermost in the one and spiteful tears pre
vailed over the other ; and the mother went on with her ob
jurgation :

" You low-lived, low-born, miserable Northern scum, out
of my house you go this instant, and you deserve a whip on
your back as you go !"

Something in these words produced an effect she had not
contemplated, and an effect that might have been escaped (at
least for the time) but for their utterance. Kate Haviland
had not said one word, so far ; but now she flung herself free
from the arm of her lover, thrust her hand suddenly into the
bosom of her dress, took out a yellow folded paper and shook
it from its folds, as she said, in a tone that was far from being
good-humored :

"Hold on, madam, before you call the grand-daughter of
a soldier of the Revolution and an officer of the last war, 'low
born' and 'low-lived,' and talk about putting a 'whip on her
back,' until you get clear of a little of your own negro blood!1'

" What !" cried the millionaire, and he was too nearly struck
dumb to say more. Dora Fullerton dropped into a chair and
covered her face with her hands, and the light storm of tears
and sobs that had before been passing over her deepened into

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 453

such a tempest of agitation as seemed to threaten her life.
As for Mrs. Fullerton — it has been said that when standing
at the door her scream was almost a yell. The sound that
she uttered at this moment blended scream, yell and roar in
one ungovernable and indescribable sound of rage, as she
sprung forward at the young girl as if she would tear her to
pieces with her naked hands, raving out, with other words
that cannot be penned here :

" Liar ! liar I wretch ! oh, I will tear out your black, lying
heart !"

But Ned Minthorne's hand, small and white but strong
enough for that purpose, first thrust Kate Haviland behind
him and then shoved away the enraged woman ; and storm
as the latter would, the words of the young girl, now tho
roughly out of temper, could be heard distinctly :

" Yes, madam — negro blood ! I would have spared you
this, had you kept your temper and your tongue. Now take
it all, for you have deserved it. I hold in my hand the man
umission papers given by your father, Judge Clifton Brix-
tone, of Columbia, South Carolina, to you, his slave daughter
Olympia, the child of Myra, his quadroon slave. Deny it if
you dare, you miserable old woman who talk to a free-born
Northern woman about 'low. birth' and 'whips' !"

There are points beyond which the human system, however
strong and well-disciplined, cannot resist the pressure of* the
spirit that rages within. Mrs. Fullerton made one more
spring forward, as she realized that the dark secret of her life
was at last discovered, her social position swept away, and
her daughter's chances of wealth destroyed ; the;i she threw
up her hands to her throat, while the word " Liar !" gurgled
there, tottered and fell heavily forward in one of those dense
swoons that are mercies to the mind however painful to the
body.

The curtain may well be dropped here, as the daughter
still sobs helplessly in her chair and the others gather around
the miserable woman and try to recover her. And yet, as
it goes down, perhaps the reader of this narration may be
able to discover what had been the skeleton ever sitting at
the feast of this family. Negro blood — a thing well enough.

454 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

in its mixture with white, according to the new lights, — but
not yet recognized as a necessary component by "our best
society." That reader may remain in doubt, as does the
writer, whether Randolph Fullerton, purser in the United
States Navy, ever knew that he had married a mestizo wife,
the daughter of a quadroon slave, and whether his arriving
at such a knowledge was or was not one means of plunging
him into the drunkenness which ended in his falling over
board and drowning at Port Mali on ; but that reader will
not remain in doubt, this clue furnished, how Charles Holt,
merchant, must have revolted, after his marriage with Olyni-
pia Fullerton the younger, at finding himself trapped in that
manner with the "best blood of South Carolina" — how
separation between husband and wife was instantaneous
and eternal, from the moment of the discovery — how that
domestic ruin fostered the seeds of evil in his nature, and
made him a worse and wickeder man than he might ever
have grown to be under other circumstances — how he be
came an unbridled voluptuary and his wife a reckless wine-
bibber, the husband keeping the family's secret through all
those years, in order to keep that of his own disgrace, hold
ing over them all that iron hand which without the key
seemed so inexplicable, a,nd actually pensioning them and
allowing them to be supposed pure-blooded and wealthy,
that some other fool might be trapped with Dora as he had
been with Olympia !

The government official of the suave demeanor was right
when he said that both the ladies would leave the city of New
York within forty-eight hours. On Friday morning Mrs.
Fullerton, Dora and the two children went Southward, with
how much of means of subsistence suddenly snatched from
the abundance which had before surrounded them, it is im
possible to relate with certainty. But something else oc
curred, upon which neither the official nor yet the family had
calculated. Charles Holt was absent from the city, at Wash
ington. When informed of the betrayal of the secret and
the enforced flight of her family, Olympia Holt arose, girded
herself, shook off the dust from her feet against the house
where she had so heavily sinned, and suffered, " spoiled the

THE DAYS OF SHODDY'. 455

Egyptians" by loading herself with all the jewelry she pos
sessed and all the money and small valuables within her
reach, and "wandered on with her people."

Kate Haviland was before that time in the arms (ever
those army, enfolding all the world !) of dear, good old Aunt
Bessy, at Dufl'sboro, and in some other company that we
wot not ; and the drama of the handsome house on West
Twenty-third Street was closed.

No slow-moving cars, now — it was in a carriage driven at
flying speed (almost like that he had stopped so suddenly on
the Centreville road, three days before) that Burtnett Havi
land dashed up Cortlandt Street and Broadway and the
Third Avenue, on Wednesday, the 24th of July, immediately
after his arrival from Washington. His brain was in a
whirl. Every hour made him more and more doubtful
whether he must not have been the victim of some terrible vil-
lany — whether the wife he had supposed lost forever might
not be pure and spotless after all. And yet — her flight ? —
she must have fled — Kate could not have been deceived —
what could that flight mean, but guilt ? Still, those words
of the merchant — so unimpeachable a testimony to her truth
• — why should they have been spoken in falsehood ? And
where was she ? Not at home, of course ; }ret he must go
there, and go at once, or go mad. Even to stand where Mary
and himself had once been so happy, would be something.

Such was his frame of mind as he dashed up to the front
of the house on East Forty-eighth Street, flung open the
door of the carriage, and leaped out. He ran up the steps
and laid his hand on the knob of the door. It yielded, and
he went in, the driver waiting without with the carriage. No
body seemed to hear him — the hall floor and the stairs were
bare — so unlike the cozy nest of love and home that the little
house had been 1 He went up stairs, his brain throbbing
wildly and his heart beating with a worse excitement than he
had known when making the first charge at Sudley or fight
ing over the guns of Ayres' battery. Hurriedly into both
rooms and the little bed-room ; but no one to be seen. Every
thing nearly as he had known it of old — nothing removed,

456 THE DAYS OF SHODDY

only a little disordered. Ah, there had been fire in the range
in the little back-room, and some fragments of bread and
meat lay on a plate on the side-board. Joy ! — there was
somebody in the house, after all ! But where ?

He passed up the second stair to the bed-rooms, and there
his footstep seemed to be heard. A figure darted out of one
of the rooms. Was it his wife ? — no, it was the figure of
Sarah Sanderson ; but he scarcely knew the face, it was so
changed and woe-begone — so pinched and starved-looking.
Some of us have seen a cat, discovered when long shut up in
a granary or an upper room, and nearly starved as well as
made wild with loneliness. The expression of the poor girl's
face was something of that desolate and almost fearful char
acter.

" Why, Sarah !" was all that the returned Zouave could
ejaculate.

For an instant the girl did not recognize him, in his changed
uniform and with his bronzed face and close-cut beard and
hair. But his Voice reassured her, and the moment she knew
that it was indeed Burtnett Haviland whom she saw, she
dropped on her knees before him, caught her arms around his
leg, burst into tears and sobs that seemed to come from a
heart nigh bursting, and broke out with :

" Oh, Mr. Haviland ! what have I done ! kill me — kill me,
Mr. Haviland !"

" My wife, Mary — quick, tell me where my wife is !" was
the answer of the equally agonized husband.

" Oh, I don't know ! I don't know ! — she went away, some
where, and I drove her away, I suppose ! Do kill me, Mr.
Haviland — I have been so wicked !"

" You !" said the husband. " What have you done, Sarah ?"

" Oh, every thing that was bad !" sobbed the poor girl,
whose week of loneliness in the house, keeping vigil on Kate's
bounty and under her orders, waiting for some one to come
back and attend to the goods and furniture it contained,
seemed to have been blessed by the celestial influences with
an insight into her own heart which the poor warped and
half-educated nature had never before found strength to take.
She arose from her knees — dragged Havilaud into her room

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 457

— showed him the letters that his wife had written and that
she had herself kept back from the mail, hidden away in a
locked drawer, — and amid tears and sobs and such implora-
tions for pity and forgiveness as might have moved a colder
heart than she was addressing, told him all she knew of the
wrongs under which himself and his wifeliad been suffering ever
since their separation. It was a terrible confession, and some
men, in the midst of it, might have been moved to a deed,
even upon a woman, that would have furnished subject of
regret for a whole life. But Burtnett Haviland had been
seasoned in sorrow and wrong, within a few weeks. He
listened with set teeth, and only once, when the sublime vil-
lany of the stopped letters was recounted, broke out with
words that the girl little understood :

" The scoundrel ! I oug*ht to have killed him on the spot !
Richmond is no punishment for him!" He did not know,
then, let it be remembered, half that Richmond could do in
the way of supplying expiation for mortal sin I

"And how could you do this ?" at length he asked, when
the whole terrible criiue had been related. " What had Mi's.
Haviland or myself done to you, that you should do that
villanous bidding ? Oh, Sarah ! Sarah ! — how could you ?"

That thin, pinched, sorrowful face was red as the peony
in a moment. All the blood in her little body seemed
have rushed into it, as she dropped once more on her knees,
clasped her hands so piteously and so repentantly, and uttered
that last confession that only the breaking up of the very
depths of her being could have wrung from her.

"You must kill me, Mr. Haviland, because I have been so
wicked ! I hated your wife because I loved you and had
loved you ever since I was a little girl, away off }Tonder in
the country. I drove her away, but I would die to bring her
back again an'd make you both happy, now 1 Oh, what will
become of me?"

We forgive nothing so quickly or so easily as even crime
done for love of ourselves. Haviland was mortal, and he
forgave the poor girl from that moment, however impossible
he might have felt it to be that the wrongs committed could
ever be repaired. And then her story added to his chances

458 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

of happiness. His wife had not forgotten or neglected him
when he thought her guilty of that wrong: her own yet Un
opened letters bore that witness. And yet her story added
to his agony, for she had fled away, and Kate knew nothing
of her, and all was yet darkness and desolation, with only
one glimmering spark to lead to the possibility of happiness.

He questioned the girl further. She had asked the neigh
bors — not one of them had seen or heard any thing of the
wife since her flight. Moments were years, for the great end
of his life seemed no nearer than when he had reached the
house. So far, all that remained to him of wife or child,
hung over the mantel in their pictures. He had time to
breathe a word of forgiveness to the heart-stricken girl, to
give her some money, with orders still to remain in the house
until she heard from him again, to kiss the dear pictures over
the mantel, and to cast one more glance into the little bed
room that had been his nest of love before the birds flew
away ; and then he sprang again into the carriage and dashed
down-town.

To the store, next. It was but a remote chance, but some
one there might have a clue to her whereabouts. If her
flight had really been innocent, she might have thought of
the possibility of his return, and sent her direction there. A
wild hope, indeed ! He found the store of Charles Holt &
Andrews in confusion, owing to a report which had come on
from Washington that the senior partner had gone out to see
the battle of Bull Run on Sunday, and that he must either
have been killed or taken by the rebels ! And what a de
moniac satisfaction there was for the agonized husband, for
the moment, looking at the puzzled and anxious faces of
Wales, and West, and Nellis, and thinking how much he
could tell them of that matter, jf he only would ! But he was
not very likely to betray his own secret, even in a boast ;
and it is doubtful whether either of the clerks has ever
known, to this day, and after all the investigations of the
lawyers in winding up the concern and handing over the
profits of shoddy contracts to one partner and to distant heirs-
at-law of the other, precisely how Charles; Holt fell into the
hands of the rebels at Cub Run.

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 459

But nothing of Mary. No one of the clerks mentioned
her to him, and she had not sent her direction. Another hope
gone ! He was turning away heart-sick, and just leaving the
store to take that dernier resort of making an application for
aid at the police headquarters, when just as he reached the
door, little Tim, the cross-eyed and the scrubbing-brush-
headed, was coming in with a bundle of letters from the post-
office. He remembered the boy's queer dispatch in an instant,
and how nearly it had proved to be true. It appeared to
make him a link between husband and wife; and when the
boy laid^down his letters and came back to the door, there
seemed to be a vague hope in the mind of the husband that
he who had known what others failed to know, before, might
know something now.

"Mister Hevlin, don't think of that ere box Ithrowed over
on your leg, or about that ere letter I writ you !" he said,
very imploringly, as his old friend took him by the stubby
hand. " I didn't mean nothin' bad, Mister Hevlin — I 'clare
to man I didn't ! Dern old Holt — I didn't like him, and I
don't care ef the seseshers hev ketched him — that's all! I
don't believe he meant right by Missers Hevlin, no how, but
I s'pose he went away to Europe or England or some of them
ere parts, so that he hadn't no time to do nothin', 'r else I
dunno what might ha' come of her."

" Ha," said Haviland to himself, "they have evidently
heard nothing whatever of the scoundrel's movements, down
here at his own place, or the boy would have known of them !"
An additional pang of agitated joy went through his heart as
he thought of the corroboration thus given to all the circum
stances weighing in his wife's favor ; but another deadly fear
followed, that he was to catch no clue to her whereabouts
from Tim, from the fact that the boy had made no allusion to
any such knowledge, even when speaking of her. These
thoughts kept him silent for an instant after the errand-boy
had ceased speaking ; and all that time the squint eyes were
devouring his face with that keenest of all anxieties which
looks for forgiveness of an injury, from one almost worshipped.
At last the suspense could be endured no longer, and the boy,
who really believed that his old friend was growing implacable

460 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

under the reminder of his past conduct, repeated the implora-
tion :

" 1 didn't mean no harm, Mr. Hevlin — I 'clare to man I
didn't ; and you mustn't think hard o' me !"

" You didn't mean any harm, and you didn't do any harm,
Tim," said the husband. " But, Tim, did you ever see any
thing of Mrs. Haviland afterwards ? I have just come home,
you know, and don't know where to find her. She has gone
out of town, I suppose, and didn't expect me back, and so she
has shut up the house, and left me no direction." How the
heart of the husband beat with anxiety as he framed this ex
cuse to the boy for what was yet his possible shame !

" Oh yes, I've seen her," said the boy. " Seen her — dern
it, I forgit the day — one day last week. I was down to the

railroad boat at the foot of • Street, carryin' a bundle,

and I seed her go aboard with that derned purty little girl
o' yourn with her. She looked kind o' peaked, but I guess
she'll get better now you've come — won't she ?"

Poor Tim had been at the Bowery circuses on pit-tickets,
two or three times in his uneventful life ; but he had never
seen clown or gymnast make such a bolt as Haviland exhib
ited, off the steps of the store and down the street towards
the wharves that lay full in sight with their mingled masts
and smoke-stacks ; and as the seeker disappeared two blocks
away, he muttered to himself :

" Wonder what the dernation is the matter of him ! Had
all his hair cut off and must ha' got sun-struck down among
them are seceshers, I guess !"

Burtnett Haviland, meanwhile, was fleeing as if for his
life, towards the pier from which the railroad boat left,
which had been designated by the boy. And all the time he
was mentally knocking his head with his fist and saying :
"'Fool! fool! why did I not think of that? She has gone
home — home !"

Some three hours by boat and road, but they seemed three
centuries to Haviland, before he dropped from the cars at the
little station nearest Duffsboro and walked across the mile of
fields separating the village and the railroad. He had asked
no questions on the boat, of any who might have known the

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 461

whereabouts of his wife : he was determined to moot complete
happiness or utter misery at once — not drink either in by-
slow and miserable degrees. Changed as he was, and not
so well known as of old in the section of country which
supplied many of the passengers for the- way-station, he es
caped recognition, or he might have become a subject of
general astonishment and conversation, so widely had the
news of his death spread within the previous twenty-four
hours, among those who had been acquainted with him in
other years.

It was past sunset and falling dusk when he stepped from
the path behind the house, on the end of the little porch
where Aunt Bessy and Kate had stood that Sunday morning
and seen the flag raised on the spire of the village-church.
Aunt Bessy was coming out of the door. He recognized
her at once : he was so much changed that she did not at first
know the rough and cropped soldier who accosted her, and it
was only when he managed to conquer the rising in his
throat enough to say : " How dy'e do, Aunt Bessy ?" that
she knew the voice and threw her arms around his neck and
greeted him with a cry of joy wild enough to alarm the
whole household :

" Burtnett, oh Burtnett !• my dear boy, how glad I am to
see you ! You are not killed ! — Heaven be blessed for all its
goodness !"

It was a terrible task for the anxious husband to calm
down his voice enough to ask : " Is Mary here ?" and by the
time he had done so, the good old lady, her own ebullition of
joy over, thought of some of the naughty stories she had
heard of her nephew while away at the war, and concluded
to tease him a little :

" Mary ? Why how should she be here ? Kate is here !"

And at that moment the ci-devant schoolmistress came out
of the door. Burtnett Ilaviland had her in his arms before
he realized that it was not indeed his wife ; and she heard
him mutter :
' " Only Kate !"

" ' Only Kate,' you impudent wretch !" said the merry girl,
who even then could not altogether restrain her propensity

462 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

for mischief, though the warmth of her embrace showed the
real joy of her heart. " See if I don't pay you for that insult,
some time or other 1 You may go away and be killed in
earnest, next time 1"

But she spoke to the summer evening breeze that was com
ing in over the stubble-fields, or she might as well have done
so ; for another figure came out of the door but a moment be
hind her, there were two names called in one scream of joy,
and holding that figure in his arms the returned soldier, for
getting all the past for one moment in the delight of that long
kiss of reunion, and eatching those words of heart-felt joy that
almost took away the breath of the speaker as she uttered
them, ami that told how false must have been every word
that militated against the abiding truth and fondness of this
dearest of wives: "Burtey! Burtey! oh my husband ; you
have come back to me at last ! Burtey ! Burtey ! my husband !
How I have gone mad because I believed that you were dead
. — that I should never see you again — that our poor little Pet
had no father 1" — did not say : " Only Mary !" but : " My
dea"r, darling wife ! — worth all the battles and all the causes
in the world !"

And then another figure, much smaller, toddled out into the
gathering dusk on the porch, and another embrace, almost as
dear, was turned into a temptation to laughter by little Pet's
remark, feeling around his face, that "Papa had tut off mos'
all his viskers !"

Explanations are proverbially dull, and there are none to
make in this instance. It is to be supposed that husband and
wife indulged in several octavo volumes of them between that
time and the hour next morning when the birds woke them,
singing in the peach and cherry-trees under their windows.
But to the reader all these have been forestalled ; and even
if they had not been, only the merest folly could tempt the
recital. Abu Taleb, the great Turkish preacher, refused to
lecture in the mosque one morning, because a part of his ex
pectant auditory already knew what he was going to say and
had no need of being instructed, and the balance did not know
what he was going to say and could not be made to under
stand within such a limited period ; and his droll idea holds

THE PAYS OF SHODDY. 403

good in the present instance. Of those who read, a few have
passed through the agonies of such separations between those
Avho love, believed to be eternal, and the unutterable joys of
such reunions. They know, without an attempt at leading
their minds into that channel, what are the words, what the
'broken sobs, what the long embraces, what the wakings in
the night and Teachings out of the hands to feel whether the
returned happiness has not existed only in a dream, — that
come with the weaving together once more of those chords

which make the divinity of human life ; and to them words

f '

would be wasted. The great balance of readers, meanwhile,
have never known either the pangs or the transports of such
an epitomizing of all that is most enjoyed and all that is most
dreaded in the experience of love ; and to them, lacking the
knowledge of the "shibboleth," all would appear gross ex
aggeration and unreality. The dramatist is right when he
drops the curtain suddenly, at least for the moment, on the
embrace of rejoined affection or the agonized clasp of the
hands over the body of a dead lover or a dead love. Either
scene is sacred to the blessed or the bereaved, and either un
intelligible to all who stand without the gate. So falls the
curtain on the reunion of Burtnett Haviland and his wife —
the one apparently rescued from the grave, the other from
that worse burial which coiues with falsehood and loss !

CHAPTER XXIV

TOBACCO- WAREHOUSE AT RICHMOND — SOME LAST PAS
SAGES IN THE HISTORY OP MR. CHARLES HOLT, MERCHANT

THE FULLERTONS IN SECESSIA — LAST GLIMPSES OF THE
ZOUAVE AND HIS WIFE — How KATE HAVILAND AND AUNT
BESSY HAD A VISITOR, AND THE SEQUEL — A FAREWELL, AND
YET NO FAREWELL, TO THE " DAYS OF SHODDY."

FOR a month Charles Holt had shared the captivity of the
Union troops taken at Bull Run and elsewhere — shared all

464 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

that suffering, abuse and near approach to starvation, which
will in future days make the old Ligon Tobacco Warehouse
on Main .Street, Richmond, the peer in history of the Jersey
Prison-Ship, the Old Sugar-House, and almost of the Black-
Hole of Calcutta. If the Confederates had food at command,
they starved the Union prisoners with full purpose : if they
lacked themselves, they had some excuse. Heaven and the
future will arrange all that little matter of responsibility and
punishment. We have nothing to do, here, with the details
of " prison-life at Richmond," which so many have tasted, by
the way, within the past three years/ that Richmond is be
coming better known to the people of the North than even to
most of the native Virginians !

Charles Holt had ample leisure, eating his bad and scanty
beef, hard bread, and drinking his bean coffee, to remember
his luxurious dinners at the lonely table on Fifth Avenue.
He also had leisure, on his miserable pallet, at night, to think
of hair-mattresses, beds of down, and other luxuries equally
attainable. And he seemed likely to have even more leisure
for such profitable contemplations. The Federal government
had cither no power or no time, to look after the welfare
of its captured soldiers (another branch of "shoddy" ma
nagement, not yet finished) — how then could it be expected
to look after civilians who had had' no business. whatever on
the battle-field, and of whose capture the general verdict was
that gruff but expressive Western one — " Sawed 'em right !"

One day, late in August, the merchant had two lady visit
ors. Somewhat to his surprise, when he was allowed by the
sentry to go to the door and speak to them within ear-shot,
they proved to be his wife and mother-inilaw, who had been
duly passed within the rebel lines, transported to Richmond,
and a day or two before informed that Charles Holt was a
prisoner in the Tobacco Warehouse. It would be falsehood
to say that the greeting was cordial on either side — it was the
reverse. The ladies wanted money — the most universal of
all wants, and that which may always be "bet upon" asjthe
particular errand of male or female, when no other is known.
Mrs. Fullerton, who seemed in high feather in Secessia, prin
cipally acted as spokeswoman (a habit of hers) and suggested

THE I) A Y S OF SHODDY. 465

that the merchant owerl something to his wife — that they had
influence with the Confederate authorities and might be dis
posed to sell him a little indulgence. The merchant, whose
breakfast of mouldy bread and muddy coffee had not been
satisfactory, was in an ill humor and did not wish to purchase.
On the contrary, very much in defiance of the feelings of the
sentry (as well as his .bayonet — bayonets "think!") head-
dressed the two ladies, at the end of Mrs. Fullertou's per
oration, in the following words :

" You are now among the niggers, where you belong — you
know why ! You can stay here, or go away again, or rot, or
starve, or do any thing else you like, so that none of your
cursed brood ever comes near me again. If ever you get
another cent of my money, it will be after I am dead. Now
go — and the sooner you go to perdition, the better !n

They went, accordingly, and did not trouble him again —
at least they did not trouble him again in that manner. Three
days afterwards, there was another arrival of prisoners, and
some bustle on Main Street in front of the prison, in conse
quence. A few of the prisoners tried the dangerous experi
ment of thrusting their heads out of the windows to see
what was the cause of the disturbance. Three ladies were
just turning the corner of Twenty-fifth Street and Main,
when one of them looked up and saw the row of heads. A
sentry stood at the corner — one of those rough, deadly
marksmen from the South-western rivers. The woman,
whose eyes were heavy and red with liquor, spoke quickly
and sharply to the soldier :

"Look, quick, at the end window there. See that Yankee
trying to escape. Shoot him, and I will give you a gold
dollar."

The last word was scarcely out of her mouth, when the
sentry, wrho probably had no particular objection to riddling
any part of the building whore a " Yank" showed his head,
raised his piece and fired in the direction indicated. A quick,
sharp cry, and the head at that particular window fell inward,
while the lady with red eyes handed him the promised dollar,
was thanked with a chuckle, and passed on.

" Who was that, my dear ?" asked the elder ladv. whose
29

406 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

eyes bad not caught the features of the man looking out of
the window.

"That was my husband," answered Olympia Holt. "He
has called me 'nigger' often enough, and just before he went
to England he kicked me like a dog! Now he has paid
ibv it !"

So he had ! Lying there on tho floor of the Tobacco
Warehouse, with the top of his head carried away by the
rngged bullet and his frightened companions rushing fearfully
up to see who had been the last victim, — he had paid, so far
as human life can expiate crime, for his wrongs to Olympia
Holt, for his attempts against the honor of Alary Haviland,
for his speculations in shoddy, and for all the errors and
crimes of a career of prostituted power that had wrought
much evil and little good, dazzled the world without bene-
fitting it, and brought no blessing to humanity.

Mrs. Fullerton was " in high feather in Secessia." She
and her daughters must be so still, if poor Olympia Holt's
ruling vice has not ended her career ; fora few weeks ago the
Richmond Whig contained a notice of the marriage of the
young lady who has been known throughout this narrative as
Miss Dora Fullerton, to an officer holding a prominent com
mand in the Confederate army. How much he may be de
ceived in the "best blood of South Carolina," we have no
means of knowing ; but it is almost certain, in the present
pecuniary position of the rebels, that she has not secured her
coveted " millionaire,'1 though she may find her happy hus
band an Earl, Marquis or Duke, some day, in that'appanage
of the French Empire known as the Kingdom of Jefl'erson
the First. Myra and Mildred, Kate's " young wretches," ac
companied the family Southward, and will no doubt grow up
in due time to take the places of their elders and illustrate
their education.

Burtnett TIaviland, passing to an honorable and useful po
sition in another mercantile house, (where, by the way, at his
instance, little Tim the squint-eyed is also employed in his
old capacity) after his return and the permanent disruption

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. . 467

of the house of Charles Holt & Andrews, — occupies with
Mary and little Pet, a house much further up-town than that
on East Forty-eighth Street, and very near the Harlem river.
They did not return to the same house at all, after the re
union, from obvious motives of policy with which the word
" neighbors" seems to have some mysterious connection.
There is no shadow between their lives ; and he would be a
bold man who should attempt weaving another to intercept
the sunshine of their happiness, and a skilful man who should
succeed. Unlike many others, Haviland had " enough of
war" in one three-months campaign. He has not faltered in
patriotism or purpose, but the sweet blonde hair of Mary
twines around him and the clinging pressure of her lips holds
him fast ; and after suffering so much in one absence, how
could they separate again ?

The suffering of that time, though a recollection which can
never be effaced from the mind of either any more than the

Hebrew Children could afterwards lose the recollection of

0 '

that hour in the Fiery Furnace and the Hand which made
the glowing embers harmless as carpets of fallen rose-leaves,
• — is not even an occasional sadness to either, now. They
can even jest, in the full security of their returned happiness,
over what was once an unendurable agony — so rapidly do
our very sensations pass and become outworn, in the rapid
progress of this lightning age. Not seldom, when the " Havi
land mischief" comes upon the ex-Zouave, he torments his
wife (though never when any other ear can catch the remark)'
by dating some incident before or after " the time when she
ran away with the policeman," — and she retaliates by mating
a dies nota out of " the time when he jumped out of the
store-house window, down at Alexandria." One name sel
dom passes between them, however — that of Charles Holt,
the merchant. The}'- have buried him, even in the same grave
with his splendid powers and his dangerous vices.

Captain Jack, like Haviland tired of war and no longer a
soldier, meets him occasionally, and the past that is really so
near but seems so far away, comes back to officer and private
as they speak for a moment of the deadly peril at the Slave
Pen or the fight over the guns of Ayres1 battery at Sudley.

468 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

Xo doubt both have faults, and no doubt both have enemies ;
but whether because of this or in spite of it, they are not
likely to sever the friendship that grew to its warmest point
in the midst of danger.

There is still " help'' in the Havilands' house — the sub
dued, chastened and infinitely more loveable remains of what
once was Sarah Sanderson. She can be trusted, now, and
•will not falter. Both the evil love and the evil hate are dead
and buried out of sight. It is doubtful whether Burtnett
Haviland has ever told to Mary the whole of the poor girl's
story ; and it is quite as well that he should not have done so.
Enough that she is safe in his hands, though she may pass out
of them, some day, into those of young Foster, not a Brigadier-
Geueral, but a brother clerk again with Haviland in his new
house, — who has been home with him to tea in a good many
instances within the last few months, and who seems a little
disposed to concentrate faimself down from miscellaneous ad
miration of the whole sex, to adoration of one very small
flaxen-haired member of it who has been enough fried and
refined in the triple furnace of guilt, suffering and repentance,
to make him a faithful wife if he takes the hazard. His bill
for smashed crockery may be a little heavy, but what is that
as an item in domestic life ?

Bonnie Kate Haviland is bonnie as ever, but Kate Haviland
no more. And that remarkable young lady cannot be dis
missed without a little additional glimpse of her demeanor
and the choice she made in life at the eventful period of this
story. How she went down at once to Duffsboro and to
Aunt Bessy again, the moment the disruption in the Fuller-
ton household occurred, in spite of the fact that she was
thrown out of her place as private-teacher and had never a
country school to go back to — the reader already knows.
Perhaps the reader also at least suspects that the betrothed
wife of a millionaire had not much occasion for weary-wig out
body and brain for the miserable pittance of a school-mistress ;
but the truth is that the merry girl was a little restless, and
that if sbe'could have picked up the excuse for doing some
thing a little independent and undignified, even if it brought

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. -169

her no money whatever, she would have slightly preferred
that course to inactivity. It has already been intimated that
she is " Kate Haviland no more," so that if not dead she must
be married ; and it is therefore no betrayal of any thing kept
for the future,^ to illustrate the feature in her character just
mentioned, by saying that on her marriage-day (she would
be married in the old country style, in the early evening, at
home, and with all her old friends gathered about her, or
never marry ! — she said) — she insisted upon spending so
much time in polishing up the brass knob of the front door,
in a shilling calico, a pair of old gloves, and her chestnut hair
in a sad but bewitching tumble, that the earliest of the guests
caught her in that not-very-bridal array and occupation, and
at first mistook her for a lazy servant-girl behind time !

But this, again, anticipates, even if it does not betray.
There was much that preceded that event, and some of it de
manding relation.

When Kate carne home again from the city, her first busi
ness, as has before been seen, was to discover the truth with
reference to the maligned cousin-in-law who had preceded
her; and when she found how terribly she had herself erred
in estimation, to make such amends by the most abject hu
miliation as the generous heart is ever p-rornpt to do when
made aware of the injustice it has committed. Her third
task, as we have also seen, was the attempt to console Mary
Haviland under the fearful grief of the death of her husband.
But the second, sandwiched between the other two, was ex
clusively personal and even more difficult than either of the
others. That was nothing more nor less than to inform A tint
Bessy how rapid progress she had been making during her
short stay in that very fast place, the city — that she was en
gaged to be married ! She tried to command her cheek when
she caught the good old aunt entirely-alone, feeding her .brood
of poultry, in the back-yard, one morning; but the tell-tale
color would come, and she/not only blushed but actually stam
mered (think of that, with her glib and saucy tongue !) and
came very near to " making a mess of it."

"Why, you dear child !" was the surprised exclamation of
Aunt Bessy, pausing with a whole handful of moistened meal

470 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

in her grasp, the hungry brood cackling around her mean
while. For such particular business as the distribution of
food to her poultry, the good old lady always wore her spec
tacles ; and the way in which she looked at Kate under those
glasses, at the moment of making the exclamation, the ex
clamation and the look both seeming to say : "There — that
crazy girl has been at another one of her pranks, that she
can't help, I suppose !" — did not in the least tend to reassure
the young lady who was making her first "confession."

But when the good aunt fairly understood the whole con
fession — that her niece was really engaged to be married to a
young man belonging to one of the first families of the great
city, a man of fabulous wealth, who might have married the
most arrogant belle of Fifth Avenue — she frightened the
young girl still more by throwing out the remainder df her
meal, going to the little bench that stood near the back-door
of the farm-house, setting down her basin, washing her hands
and_ drying them on the towel hanging there, and then coming
back to the spot where Kate stood, opening her arms and
drawing her niece to her bosom, with the motherly love, com
pounded with pity, that had always marked her demeanor in
the old time.

" Kate," she said, looking the young girl straight in the
eyes, "has this man been trifling with you ?" The country
suspicion was probing the sincerity of the city ; the honest
country woman could not quite believe that wealth and fashion
would seek for a bride in that hasty and incongruous man
ner ; and heaven knows what terrible thoughts may for the
moment have been running through the mind of the widow
who was so good herself and yet not so good as to ignore
what the preacher told her every Sabbath at church — that
this was a " wicked and deceitful world." Poor Kate at least
partially understood the protecting fear and fondness of that
question and that embrace ; she remembered the pressure that
had been given on the little piazza on the Sunday^niorning
when she believed she was going away on the morrow ; and
a flush as hot as even guilt could have manifested and yet as
delicate as the most spotless innocence could have demanded,
burned over brow, cheek and bosom, as she replied :

THtf DAYS OF SHODDY. 471

"No, Aunt — dear, good Aunt! It does seem strange
enough, does it not, that he should seek me ? But he has
nut been trifling at all — he has asked me to behistrue, honest
wife, just as Uncle Joseph once asked you."

"Has he? — you dear, dear child !" said the aunt, all her
fears driven away in an instant by the words of the young
girl, and gathering her still closer to her breast. Then again
still another thought took possession of her, and she stated a
second doubt of no small consequence.

" Katy, is he good ? So many of those very rich men in
the city, I have heard, lead such dreadful lives ! If he should
not be good, and you should marry him and find your whole
future life embittered by neglect and ill-treatment, while he
was pursuing the pleasures that you could not and would not
share — what would become of you ? — and how could I live
when I knew that you were miserable ?•'

It was Kate Haviland's turn, now, to become the soother
and apparently the protector. They were her arms that
supplied the next pressure, and it was her voice, all its em
barrassment shaken oft' and the old mischief rippling in it most
deliciously, that replied :

" Aunt, do not be alarmed. He is a good man — that is, as
good as they make them. I would stay siugle until the last
man on earth used Sperling's Amphobia and Bray's Patent
Hair-Dye and Professor Drown's Patent Anti-Corrosive
Artificial Teeth (warranted for two years, or taken back and
put into somebody else's mouth) before I would marry a man
whom I did not know to be something else than the miserable
stuck-up trifler you are thinking of ! I have done better than
that, Aunt, depend upon it, though he is a little odd and you
may see some things in him that will bother you at first."

" Well, I hope he is all that you believe, Katy, I am sure !''
said the aunt, returning the caress and then releasing the
young girl.

" And — Aunt — may I invite him to come over here ?" asked
the fiance with again a little hesitation in her manner. " I
have promised to write to him in a day or two ; and I have
ppoken so much of you and the old place to him, that he

472 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

wished me to ask if he might come and see how you liked
him."

" Did he, child ?" asked the aunt, flattered by this proof of
attention. " Yes, that sounds well. Certainly, ask him lo
come over whenever he likes, if you do not think that he will
be afraid of the living and fare of your poor country friends."

" He will be ashamed of nothing that / love," said the
young girl, proudly ; " or if he is, and shows it, he may go
back to New York when he likes, and look for some one else
to help him spend his million or two !"

" You are a good girl, Kate. You always were a good
girl — a little wild sometimes, but good — from your cradle,"
said the aunt, her eyes moist with the sad pleasure of sorrow
as she looked back into the past. And with that the con
versation closed.

The result of that conversation, however, was that in the
letter which went to Xew York from the little village post-
office the next morning, Xed Minthorne was invited to pay
the farm-house at Duffsboro a visit, whenever his time
allowed, and " whenever," as the young girl took care to add,
"he could make up his mind to dress soberly and respecta
bly and not horrify the country people by making a ninny of
himself."

It was more than two weeks after, when Bull Run had been
fought and almost all the other incidents herein recorded had
taken place — that the good people who came down by the
steamboat and line of rail leading to and beyond Duft'sboro,
experienced, on the Saturday afternoon run, something like
the same sensation felt by the Roman warrior in the thick
of the groat battle, when Castor and Pollux burst upon his
view, and

'• — He was aware of a princely pair >
That rode at his right hand."

In other words, the good people were " takeiv down a peg",
as some of them expressed it in their homely but graphic
phrase, by the appearance on the steamer and the cars, of a
male human flower of such gorgeous color and general ap
pearance that all the centuries of ordinary human production
seemed to have been mere preparations for his arrival. Mr.

THE DAYS OF SHODDY. 473

Minthorne, on that occasion, strictly obeying the instructions
of Kate, who was so anxious that he should in the first
instance neither frighten nor shock her friends in the country,
and especially Aunt Bessy, — appeared in coat, pants and vest
of light violet summer-cloths evidently new and got up for
the occasion — the pants even wider than any that he had
before worn, and actually forming a loose bag divided by
a sectional slit — the coat so short as to be little more than a
jacket, and very close at the body, while the sleeves con
tained nearly as much material as the- legs of the trousers — •
the patent-leathers of the most dazzling polish — the hat
another of the " tourist" shape, still lower in the round
crown and narrower in the brim than any that had preceded
it — the gloves bright yellow — the neck-tie cherry-color — the
collar garotte of painful tightness — the malacca cane with the
Phidian limb for a head, retained and duly switched — the
short light-brown curly hair parted in the middle and form
ing little horns at the two brows, something like those that
the old painters have unaccountably made Moses wear on
Sinai — the side whiskers more luxuriously pendant than
ever — and, to complete the equipment, a gold eye-glass
(which he had never before been in the habit of wearing,
even in his worst moments) dangling by a blue ribbon from
his neck and jjeriodically applied to his ^re when he had
occasion to draw up his nez retrousse with the affectation of
being near-sighted.

This was the figure that the good people saw, coming down
on the steamer and on the cars. This was the figure that
they saw disembark, with a large valise, at the station nearest
Duffsboro, and hire an open country-wagon as a hack to take
him over to "Mrs. White's farm-house." And if they were
all struck with horror and amazement that any man living
could be fool enough to dress in that outrageous manner,
what were the feelings of Kate Haviland, when, — after wait
ing his arrival with a good deal of real impatience to see the
" deal-, good fellow," and some anxiety to know what con
cessions he would be found to have made to her wishes on
that occasion, — she saw him land at the gate and approach
the piazza, valise in hand, in that hideous disguise, his eye-

THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

glass in his eye, and such an expression of goou-natured
idiocy rampant from brow to chin that it did not appear as
if he knew enough to corne into the house from the street
when it rained !

For a moment, at the first glimpse of him, the young girl
was so mortified and almost angry, that she came very near
bursting into tears, running away up-stairs and refusing to see
her visitor at all, or acknowledge that she had ever known him.
And certain it is that the wealth of Xed Minthorne did not
restrain her from that course of action which would probably
have separated them forever. — while something else — yes,
the warm regard, respect and love that she bore the odd hu
man compound inside of the violet clothes, unquestionably
did produce the restraint. She forced down both the tears
that wanted to come and the blush of mortification that
would come in spite of her, and came out at the door to re
ceive the nondescript, meeting him at the- edge of the piazza
with outstretched hand, but with the pouting words :

" How you mind me, Xed Minthorne, don't you ! You're
a beauty!"

" Humph ! — glad you like me ! Had to get a new suit to
come down, you know. How are you all ? Kiss me, Kate !''
was the reply, in his very worst affected drawl — the latter
part probably a nnotation from Shakspeare's Hotspur, but
spoken, and or/' a, as if original, as he proceeded with his
right hand to encircle the young girl's waist and secure the
answer to his demand, his left still occupied with holding the
valise.

" Set down that valise and don't be a ninny. But here
comes aunt, and what will she think of you !" was the reply
of the young girl, after the kiss had been warmly accorded
by the very lips that carried the pout, aj\d as she saw the
good old lady coming out of the door, resplendent in a new
cap with bright ribbons, and her very best evening dress, both
put on in honor of the expected coming of Kate's "beau."

" Mr. Minthorne — my aunt, Mrs. White," said Kate, intro
ducing, though she was in a terrible tremor all the while.

" Glad to see you, Mr. Minthorne," said the good old lady,
extending her hand, though there was something of disap-

THE DAYS OF S H O D DY. 475

pointment and almost of pain in her face, that both the young
girl and her lover saw, and that produced very different effects
on the two. Kate Haviland was nearly ready to sink with
vexation and a feeling of bother, and in her heart she was
saving : " See if I don't make you pay for this trick and
mortification, old fellow, some day when I get my opportu
nity !" Ned Minthorne, meanwhile, though he was really
impressed by the matronly beauty and evident goodness of
Mistress Bessy White, could not stop to recognize such things
just then, and carried out his role by a half-idiotic stare and
a drawled :

" Glad to have the pleasure of knowing Mrs. White, I am
sure. Fine evening, and you have a deuced nice place here,
you know !" ^

" Yes, sir, a pleasant place enough for poor folks, and I
am glad you like it," answered Aunt Bessy, dryly. Then she
called her "help" from within, informed Mr. Minthorne that
his room was ready for him, .and sent him up-stairs with the
girl, apparently a little in a hurry to get rid of him, and re
taining Kate on the porch, as if she had something important
to communicate. And so she had — really.

" Kate," she said, when he had gone, adjusting the spectacles
on her nose, coming close to the young girl, and this time
looking over the glasses instead of under them — " Kate, you
dear child, haven't you made a terrible mistake ? I don't
think he has been trifling with you, now that I see him, but,
Kate, is that man sensible ?"

Those who know. what the last word means, in ordinary
country parlance, as opposed to " idiotic" can understand
the whole significance of Aunt Bessy's new fear. She
really believed that Kate had been promising to marry an
absolute natural, and she had keenness enough to know
that even wealth could not gild and make endurable such a
connection.

But the answer to this was what she had least expected —
a clear ringing laugh from. Kate, that went out on the air of
early evening and must have made the birds just folding their
wings for repose wink their bright eyes in momentary wake-
fulness. The ridiculousness of the whole thing had at last

476 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

overcome her vexation, and she was really enjoying it, now
that the torture was over.

" Yes, Aunt," she said, when her peal of laughter was
ended. " I shall be obliged to betray him, since he will not
mind me. He is sensible enough, and some people think that he
is smart as a steel-trap. But he is the queerest fellow and the
greatest quiz in the world ; and he has put on all that, clothes
and manner, on purpose to come down here, set all the people
along the line talking, deceive you and vex me."

Aunt Bessy was not in the habit of using hard words ; but
she did say,' when her unsuspicious mind had fairly taken in
the whole arrangement, and with an emphasis denoting that
she might " owe that young man one," some time or other,
for attempting to quiz her :

" Drat his picture !"

Yet Aunt Bessy forgave the ex-" millionaire noodle," when
be came down stairs on Sunday morning, dressed for church
at the little village, in garments rich and costly but plain
enough to have beseemed the most unpretending man in the
country, and his hair neatly parted at the side, perhaps, by
fairer hands than even his own — when his words were those
of manly dignity and propriety — and when she saw him look
ing upon Kate with a world of pride and affection in his eyes,
waiting for the time to come when he should gather her
home to hi» heart and hold her there for evermore.

And he did so gather her, as has already been indicated, in
due time, — with the double blessing of the good old minister
of the village church with the white spire, and of the good
aunt who had trained him a wife shaming in beauty and
goodness all the " wealthy curled darlings" of fashion, met
day by day in the street, in the rich jj raw ing-rooms of Mur
ray Hill, at the Tiger Ball," at the opera and at Saratoga.

And that is how bonnie Kate Haviland is Kate Haviland
no longer. Married to the millionaire, and as she had her
self once $aid — "much more than that — a really nice, clever
fellow," in the fall of 1861,— she spent the summer of 1862
with him in Europe ; and that of 1863 has been passed by
herself and others (two others — little people, both of the male
sex and the same age : a shameful revelation of the ungov-

THE PAYS OF vS II O D D Y . 477

ernable character of the ex-teacher, hut one that must be
made I) with Aunt Bessy, beside the rose-bushes and under

the fruit trees of the old farm-house at Duffsboro ; while
(

Ned Minthorne, with not much time now for Dundreary mas
querading', has again been absent in Europe on special busi
ness for the government, with which it would seem probable
that he' must have had some confidential connection, under
his mask of millionaire noodle, during all the time covered
by this relation.

The " Days of Shoddy," as designated by that name, began
with the commencement of the War for the Union, though
the habit of swindling City, State and National governments
even more deeply than individuals, had long before that time
been educating the national character for such an issue.
They have not ended now, though the struggle may be more
or less nearly approaching its termination. It is certain that
they will not end until the contest closes, and they may linger
long after. While the nation remains in distress or society
convulsed, thieves (moral, social and pecuniary) will continue
to embrace their opportunity. Men of the stamp of Charles
Holt, merchant, will still attempt to outrage every precept of
honor and virtue, by such arts as have been shown connected
with his career; arid they will not think it beneath them,
while they are taking advantage of the absence of patriotic
men in the public service, to destroy the peace of homes once
happy, — to buy and sell a few rotten satinets, shoddy clothes,
shoes with glued soles, muskets without vents and tents made
of six-cent muslin, and all other army supplies of a corres
ponding character, to maintain or increase ill-won fortunes, or
to furnish themselves with the means of indulging the costlier
luxuries and vices. Men who can find sale for munitions of
war, useful or worthless, at prices four or ten times their
actual cost, will not cease to urge such measures as must
prolong the evil harvest. So-called statesmen and political
Generals who know that they can keep no hold upon
rich salaries or public honors from the day when the war
closes, will assist in crippling and hindering it, and yet keep
ing it fastened upon the country, under one pretence or
another of ardent patriotism.

478 THE DAYS OF SHODDY.

The pecuniary dishonesty of the shoddy age will all the
while be the most contemptible of all, though by no means
the most guilty. The wealth suddenly acquired by knavery
is sure to curse its holder with ridicule, if it brings with it
no worse punishment. The wife of the shoddy millionaire
will buy diamonds that she can neither appreciate nor value
and wear them so unfitly and ungracefully that every gem
will cast a new ray of light on the splendid misery of her
position. The shoddy millionaire himself will struggle for
places in social life and public employment, for which he is
DO more fitted than desired ; and every upward step which he
succeeds in taking will but make him a more shining mark for
covert ridicule or open detestation. His daughters will strug
gle for incongruous marriages, and be equally miserable
whether they succeed or fail ; and his sons will disgrace the
country abroad, as types (Heaven save the mark !) of the
American gentleman, — will buy worthless daubs in Europe
as pictures by the Old Masters, or eat fish with a knife, ask
for " more of them 'ere taters'' and send up their plates twice
for soup, to the intense disgust of Newport and Saratoga.

And eventually, all that has been ill-won will be as rapidly
lost. Cinders in the hand and Dead Sea ashes upon the
tongue, must be the end of the objects unholily grasped and
tasted. No "moth can corrupt or thieves break through
and steal," so certainly and so quickly as with gain acquired
at the sacrifice of every noble and patriotic impulse. For
God yet lives, the courses of nature are not changed, the
sunshine smiles broad upon the earth, the stars keep their
places in the blue heaven, the waves of the ocean keep their
appointed bound, and the rivers r«ji sparkling to the sea.
And in His hand lie the destinies of men, after all that their
own hands have wrought — the destinies of the republic, after
all that has been done by the faithful to preserve and by the
dishonest and the reckless to destroy it.

THE END.

T. B,

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$1.00; or in oue vol., cloth. $1.50.
Mother-tn-La-w. Complete in two !

volumes, paper cover. Price $1.00;

or in one vol., cloth. $1.50.
THe Lady of the Isle. Complete

in two vols., paper cover. Price $1.00 ;

or iu one vol., cloth, $1.50.
THe Two Sisters. Complete in two

volumes, paper cover. Price $1.00 ; or

in oue vol., cloth. $1.50.
THe Tliree Beauties. Complete

iu two vols., paper cover. Price $1.00;

or iu one vol., cloth, $1.50.

Vivia. The Secret of Power.

Two vols., paper cover. Price $1.00 ;

or in one vol., cloth, $1.50.
India. THe Pearl of Pearl

River. Two volume*, paper cover.

Price $1 .00 ; or in cloth, for $1.50.
THe Wife's Victory. Two vols.,

paper cover. Price One Dollar ; or in

one volume, cloth, for $1.50.
The Lost Heiress. Two volumes,

paper cover. Price One Dollar; or in

one volume, cloth, for $1.50.
Hickory Hall. By Mrs. Southworth.

Price 30 eeuts.

The Missing Bride. Two vol
umes, paper cover. Price Oue Dollar ;
or iu one volume, cloth, for $1.50.

Retribution: A Tale of Paa-
sioii. Two vols., paper cover. Price
$1.00; or iu one vol., cloth, $1.50.

THe Haunted Homestead. Two

vols., paper cover. Price One Dollar ;
or in oue vol., cloth, $1.50.
THe Curse of Clifton. Two vols.,
paper cover. Price One Dollar ; or in
one volume, cloth, for $1.50.

THe Discarded Daughter. Two

vuls., paper cover. Price One Dollar;
or in oue vol., cloth, $1.50.

THe Deserted \Vife. Two vol
umes, paper cover. Price One Dollar ;
or in oue volume, cloth, for $1.50.

THe Jealous Husband. Two vol
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one vol., cloth, for $1.50.

THe Belle of Washington. Two
vols., paper cover. Price One Dollar;
or in one vol., cloth, $1.50.

THe Initials. A Love Story.
Two vols., paper cover. Price Oue Dol
lar ; or in one vol., cloth, $1.50.

Kate Aylesford. Two vols., paper
cover. Price One Dollar; or bound in
oiie vol., cloth, for $1.50.

THe Dead Secret. Two volumes,
paper cover. Price One Dollar ; or
bound in oue vol., cloth, $1.50.

THe Broken Engagement.
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(I)

2 T. B. PETERSON & BROTHERS' .PUBLICATIONS.

MRS. ANN S. STEPHENS' WORKS.

The Rejected Wife. Onevolume,
paper cover. Price Oue Dollar ; or in
one volume, cloth, for 1.50.

Vashion and Famine. One vol
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one vol., cloth, $1.50.

Mary Derivent. One volume,
pa per cover. Price One Dollar; or in
one volume, cloth, for $1.50.

The Heiress. One volume, paper
cover. Price One Dollar ; or ip one
volume, cloth, for $1.50.

The Old Homestead. One vol
ume, paper cover. Price One Dollar ••
or in one vol., cloth, $1.50.
The edition of these books in one vol
ume, paper cover, is the "Railway
Edition."

CAROLINE LEE HENTZ'S WORKS.

Planter's Northern Bride.

Two volumes, paper cover. Price One
Dollar; or in cloth, $1.50.
J.iT»l:i. The Young- Pilot of
the Belle Creole. Price $1.00 in
paper ; or $1.50 in cloth.

Robert Graham. The Sequel to,
and Continuation of Linda. Price $1.00
in paper ; or $1.50 iu cloth.

The Lost Daughter. Two vol«.,
paper cover. Price One Dollar ; or
bound in one vol., cloth, $1.50.

Courtship and Marriage. Two

vols., paper cover. Price One Dollar;
or iu one vol., cloth, $1.50.
I? run: or, The Snow Bird.

Two vols., paper cover. Price One
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MarriiK Warland. Two volumes,
paper cover. Price One Dollar; or
bound in one vol., cloth, $1.50.

Love after Marriage. Twovols,
paper cover. Price One Dollar; or i«
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The Planter's Daughter. Two

vols., paper cover. Price One Dollar;
or in one vol., cloth, $1.50.

Eoline ; or, Magnolia Vale.
Two vols., paper cover. Price One
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The Banished Son. Two vols.,
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Helen and Arthur. Two vol
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Ernest. Linwood. Two volupes,
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Courtship and Matrimony.
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MRS. HENRY WOOD'S BOOKS.

The Shadow of Ashlydyat.

Two vols., paper cover. Price One
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Squire Trevlyn's Heir. Two

vols., paper cover. Price One Dollar ;
or in one vol., cloth, for $1.25.

The Castle's Heir. Two volumes,
octavo, paper cover. Price One Dol
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Verner's Pride. Two vols., octavo,
paper cover. Price $1.00; or in oue
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Wo also publish a. " Railway Edition"

of all the above, each onein one volume,

paper cover. Price Oue Dollar each.

A Life's Secret. Price Fifty cents ;
or in one vol., cloth, 75 cents.

The Lout Bank Note i and
Mar I yn Ware's Temptation.

One vol., octavo, paper cover. Price
50 cents ; or one vol., cloth, for 75 ct».

The Channiiigs. One vol., octavo,
paper cover Price 75 cents ; or in one
vol., cloth, $1.00.

The Mystery. Price Fifty cents;
or bound in one vol., cloth, 75 cents.

The Earl's Heirs. Price Fifty
cents; or one vol., cloth, 75 cents.

Aiir'ora Floyd. Price 50 cents ; or
a finer edition, in cloth, for $1.00.

Better For Worse. One vol., oc
tavo, paper cover. Price 50 cents.

The Foggy Night at Oflford.
Price 2"> cents.

THE GREAT NOVEL OF THE WAR.

ghonlder Straps. A novel of New York and the Army in 1862. By Henry
Morford, editor of the "New York Atlas." It is the book for Ladies! Gentle
men! Soldiers! Wives and Widows, Fast Young Ladies, Slow Young Ladies,
Married Men and Bachelors, Young; Ladies about to be Married, and those who
have no Matrimonial Prospects whatever! Stay-at-Horne Guards, Government
officials, Army Contractors, Aldermen, Doctors, Judges, Lawyers, etc. Complete
in tW5 larsre volumes, illustrated, and neatly done up in paper cover«, price
One Dollar a copy ; or bound in oue volume, cloth, for $1.50. We also publish a
" Itailway Edition" of it, complete In one vol., paper eo» sr, price One Dollar.

T. B. PETERSON & BROTHERS' PUBLICATIONS. 3

CHARLES DICKENS' WORKS.

ILLUSTRATED OCTAVO EDITION.

David Copperfleld, Cloth, 2.00

Barnaby lluclgc, Cloth, 2.00

Pickwick Papers, Cloth, $2.00

Nicholas Nickleby, Cloth, 200

Great Expectations,. ..Cloth, 2.00
Lamplig liter's Story,. .Cloth, 2.00

Oliver Twist, .....Cloth, 2.00

Bleak House, Cloth, 2.00

Tattle Dorrit, Cloth, 2.00

Dombey and Son, Cloth, 2.00

Sketches by " Boz,".... Cloth, 2.00

Martin Chuzzlewit,...Cloth, 2.00
Old Curiosity Stoop,.... Cloth, 2.00

Shop,.... Cloth, :
ories, Cloth,

Dickens' New Stories, 2.00

A Tale of Two Cities, 2.00

American Notes and
Pic-Xic Papers, Cloth, 2.00

Price of a set, in Black cloth, in 17 volumes , $32.00

'• " Full Law Library style , 42(10

" " Half calf, sprinkled edges 4S.OO

" " Half calf, marbled edges 50.00

" " Half calf, antique 60.00

" " Half calf, full gilt backs, etc 60.00

PEOPLE'S DUODECIMO EDITION.

Nicholas Nickleby, ...Cloth, 1.75
Great Expectations, ...Cloth, 1.75
Lamplighter's Story, ..Cloth, 1.75
David Copperfleld, Cloth 1 75

Dombey and Son, Cloth, 1.75
Christmas Stories. Cloth, 1.75
Sketches by " Box,". ...Cloth, 1.75
Barnnby Rudge, Cloth 1.75

Oliver Twist, CJoth, 1.75
Bleak House, Cloth 1 75

Martin Chuzzlewit,... Cloth, 1.75
Old Curiosity Shop,. ...Cloth, 1.75

A Tale of Two Cities, ... 1 75

Dickens' Short Stories, 1.50

Dickens' New Stories, 1.50

Message from, the Sea, 1.50

Price of a set, in Black cloth, in 17. volumes $29.00

" " Full Law Library style 35.00

" " Half calf, sprinkled ed^es 42.00

" " Half calf, marbled edges 44.00

" " Half calf, antique 50.00

" " Half calf, full gilt backs, etc 5000

" " Full calf, antique 60.00

" " Full calf, gilt edges, backs, etc 60.00

ILLUSTRATED DUODECIMO EDITION.

Pickwick Papers, Cloth, $3.00

Tale of Two Cities,.... Cloth, 3.00
Nicholas Nickleby,.... Cloth, 3.00
Dnvid Copperfleld, Cloth, 3.00

Oliver Twist,.

.Cloth, 3.00

Christmas Stories, Cloth, 3.00

Sketches by " Boz,"... Cloth, 3.00

Barnaby Rudge, Cloth, 3.00

Martin Chu7.zlewit,...Cloth, 3.00
Old Curiosity Shop,. ..Cloth, 3.00

Little Dorrit.

.Cloth, 3.00

Dombey and Son., Cloth, 3.00

Bleak House, Cloth, 3.00

Eauh of the above are complete in two^cnlumes, illustrated.

Great Expectations,. ..Cloth, 1.75 j Dickens' New Stories, 1.75

Lamplighter's Story, 1.75 1 Message from the Sea, 1.75

Price ijf t. set, in Thirty volumes, bound in Black cloth, gilt backs $4/5.00

1 " Full Law Library style 55. 'K)

* " Half calf, antique 90.00

' " Half calf, full gilt back 90.00

' " Full calf, antique 100.00

• •• Full calf, gilt edges, backs, etc 100.09

4 T. B. PETERSON & BROTHERS' PUBLICATIONS.

CHA.UL.KS DICKENS' WORKS.

CHEAP EDITION, PAPER COVER.

This edition is published complete in Tweuty-two large octavo volumes, in paper
cover, as follows. Price Fifty cents a volume.

Pickwick Papers.
Great Expectations.
A Tale of Two Cities.
New Years' Stories.
Harniiliy limit;*-.

Old Curiosity Shop.
Little Don-it.

David Copperfleld.
Sketches by " Boz."
Dickens' New Stories.
American Notes.

Oliver Twist.
Lamplighter's Story.
Domliey and Sou.
Nicholas Nickleby.
Holiday Stories.

Martin Chuzzlewit.
Bleak House.
Dickens' Short Stories.
Message from the Sea.
Christmas Stories.
Plc-Nic Papers.

LIBRARY OCTAVO EDITION. IN SEVEN VOLUMES.
This edition is in SEVEN very large octavo volumes, with a Portrait on steel of

Charles Dickens, and bound in the following vari ais styles. .

Price of a set, in Black Cloth, in soyen volumes, $14.00

" " Scarlet .'loth, extra, 1600

" " LHVV Library style, 17 .10

" " Half calf, sprinkled edpcs, 20.00

" '! Half calf, marbled e<li;«s 21.00

•' " Halfralf, antique 2.5.00

" " Halt' calf, full gilt backs, etc., 25.00

CHARLES LEVER'S WORKS.

Fine Edition, bound separately.

Charles O'HIalley, cloth, $1.50

Harry Lorrcqucr, cloth, 1.50

Jack Million, cloth,

Arthur O'Leary, cloth, l.«0

Con Cregan, cloth ,

1.50

1.50 j Knight of Gwynne, cloth,.. 1.50

Dnveiiport Dunn, cloth, 1.50 Valentine Vox, cloth, 1.50

Tom Burke of Ours, cloth,. 1.50 ' Ten THousand a Year,... 1.50

CHARLES LEVER'S NOVELS.

All neatly done up in paper covers.

Charles O'Malley,....Prto? 50 cts.

Arthur O'Leary, 60 cts.

^he Knight of Gwynne, 50

Kate O'Doiioghue, 50

Con Cregan, tlie Irish.
Gil Bias, 50

Davenport Dunn, 50

Harry Lorrequer, 50

Horace Temple ton, 50

Tom Burke of Ours, 50

Jack Hint 011, the Guards
man, 50

LIBRARY EDITION.

THIS EDITION is complete in FIVE large octavo volumes, containing Charles
O'Malley, Harry Lorrequor, Horace Templeton, Tom Burke of Ou,'s, Arthur O'Leary,
Jack Hiuton the Guardsman, The Knight of Gwynne, Kate O'Donoghue, etc., hand
somely printed, and bound in various styles, as follows :

P-ice of a set in Black cloth $7.50

" Scarlet cloth, 8.00

" " Law Library sheep, 8.75

Hfllf Calf, sprinkled od^p* 12.00

" " Half Calf, marbled edge*,, 12..W

Half Calf, ftuti.iue, .' , lu.08

T. B PETERSON & BROTHERS' PUBLICATIONS. §

VVILK1K COLLINS' GREAT' WORKS.

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The Crossed Path 5 or, Basil.

Complete in two volumes, paper cover.
Price One Dollar ; or bound in one vol
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The Stolen Mask. Price 25 cents.

| Hide and Seek. One vol., ocU vo,
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After Dark. One vol., octavo, paper
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Sights A -foot ; or Travels Beyond
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Petersons' New Cook Book;

or Useful Rec«fipt.« for the Housewife
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One vol., bound. Price $1.50.

Miss Leslie's New Cookery
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Oue volume, bound. Price $1.50.

\V iddifield's New Cook Book;

or. Practical Receipts for the House
wife. Cloth. Price #1.25.

Mrs. Hale's New Cook Book.

By Mrs. Sarah J. Hale. One volume,
bound. Price $1.25.

Miss Leslie's New Receipts
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MRS. HALE'S RECEIPTS.

Mrs. Hale's Receipts for the Million. Containing 4:545 Receipts.
By Mrs. Sarah J. Hale. One vol., 800 pages, strongly bound. Price, $1.50.

MISS LESLIE'S BEHAVIOUR BOOK.
Leslie's Behaviour Book. A complete Guide and Manual for

Miss

Ladies.

Price $1.50.

FRANCATELLI'S FRENCH COOK.

Francatelli's Celebrated French Cook Book. The Modern
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in addition to English Cookery, the most approved and recherchS systems of
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ments. as for the use of private families. By CHAKLES BLUE FRAXCA-
TELLI, pupil to the celebrated CARRMK, and late Ma'tre-d'Hotel and Chief Took
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J. A. MAITLAND'S GREAT \VORKS.

Tne Three Cousins. By J. A.

Maitland. Two vols., paper. Price
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The "Watchman. Complete in two
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or in one vol., cloth, $1.50.

Tlie \Vanderer. Complete in two
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or in one vol., cloth, for $1.50.

Tlie Diary of an Old Doctor.

Twe vols . paper cover. Price $1.00;
or bound in cloth for $1.50.

The Lawyer's Story. Two vol
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bound in cloth for $1.50.

Sartaroe. A Tale of Norway.
Two vols.. paper cover. Price $1.00;
or in cloth for $1.50.

MRS. DANIELS' GREAT WORKS.

Marrying for Money. One vol.,
ortavo. paper cover. Price fifty cent* ;
or one vol., cloth, 75 cents.

The Poor Cousin. Price fiO cents.
Kate WaUingham. Price 00
cents.

6 T. B. PETERSON & BROTHERS' PUBLICATIONS.

DUMAS' WORKS.

Count ol Monte -Crlsto. By

Alexander Dumas. Beautifully illus-
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in two volumes, paper cover, for $1.00.

The Conscript. Two vols., paper
cover. Price Oue Dollar ; or in one
volume, cloth, for $1.00.

Camille; or the Fate ot a
Coquette. Only correct Translation
from the OHginal Krouch. Two vol
umes, paper, price ijil.oo; cloth, $1.50.

The Three Guartl.Miieu. Price

75 cents, iu paper cosvr, or a filler
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Twenty Years After. A Sequel
to the " Three Guardsmen.'' Price 75
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Bragfloniie; the Soil of Athos:
being the continuation of "Twenty
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The Iron Mask. Beinsf the con
tinuation of the "Three Guardsmen."
Two vols., paper cover. Price One
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Louise La Valliere ; or, The

Second Series and end of the "Iron
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Price $1.00, or iu one vol., cloth, $1.50.

The Memoirs of a Physician.
Beautifully Illustrated. Two vols.,
paper cover. Price Oue Dollar ; or
bound in one volume, cloth, for $1.50.

The Queen's Necklace. A Se
quel to the " Memoirs of a Physician."
Two vols , paper cover. Price $1.00 ;
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Six Years Later; or, Taking- of
the Bastile. A Continuation of " The
Queen's Necklace." Two vols., paper
cover. Price One Dollar ; or iu one
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Countess ot Charny; or, The
Fall of the French Monarchy. Sequel
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cover. Price One Dollar; or in one
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Andree de Taverney. A Sequel
to and continuation of the Countess of
Charny. Two volumes, paper. Price
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The Chevalier. A Sequel to, and
final eud of " Andree De Taverney.''
One vol. Price 75 cents.

The Adventures of a Mar
quis. Two vols., paper cover. Price
1.00; or in one vol., cloth, for $1.50.

The Forty-Five Guardsmen.
Price 75 cents, or a finer edition in one
volume, cloth. Price $1.50.

The Iron Hand. Price 75 cents,
in paper cover, or it finer edition in
one volume, cloth, for $1.50.

Diana of Meridor. Two volumes,
paper cover. Price One Dollar ; or in
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Ed m 0*1 d Dantes. Being a, Sequel
to Dumas' celebrated novel of the
"Count of Monte-Cristo." Price 50 cts.

Annette ; or, The Lady of the
Pearls. A Companion to "Camille."
Price 50 cents.

The Fallen Angel. A Story of
Love and Life in Paris. One volume.
Price 50 cents.

The Man with Five Wives.
Complete in one volume. Price 50 cts.

George : or, The Planter of
the Isle of France. One vol
ume. Price Fifty cents.

Geiievieve ; or, The Chevalier of
M:iisou Rouge. One volume. Illus
trated. Price 50 cents.

The Mohicans of Paris. 50 cts.

Sketches in France. 50 cents.

Isabel of Bavaria. Price 50 cts.

Felina de Chamlnire ; or, The
Female tfiend. Price 50 cents.

The Horrors of Paris. 50 cents.

The Twin Lieutenants. One
vol. Price 50 cts.

The Corsican Brothers. 25 cts.

FRANK E. SMEDLEY'S WORKS.

Harry Coverdale's Courtship
nnd Marriage. Two vols., paper.
Price $1.00 ; or cloth, $1.50.

Lorrimer Littlegood. By author
of "Frank Fairleijfh." Two vols.,
paper. Price*!. 00; or cloth, $1.50.

Frank Fairleigh. Oue volume,
cloth, $1.50 ; or cheaj edition in paper
cover, fo« 75 cents.

Lewis Arundel. One vol., cloth.

Price $1.50 ; or cheap edition in paper

cover, for 75 cents.
Fortunes and Misfortunes ot

Harry Racket Scapegrace.

Cloth. Price $1.50 ; or cheap edition

in paper cover, for 50 cents.
Tom Racquet; and His Thre«

Maiden Aunts. Illustrated. SOcenU.

T. B. PETERSON & BROTHERS' PUBLICATIONS. 7

MISS BREMER'S \TEW WORKS.

The Father and Daughter.

By Fredrika Bremer. Two vols. paper.
Price ijl.00 ; or cloth, $1.50.
The Four Sisters. Two vols.,
paper cover. Price One Dollar ; or in
oue volume, cloth, for $1.50.

THe Neighbors. Two vols., pap»r

cover. Price Oue Dollar; or In one

volume, cloth, for $1.50.
The Home. Two volumes, paper

cover. Price One Dollar; or iu one

volume, cloth, for $1.50.

Life In the Old World} or, Two Tears in Switzerland and Italy. Com
plete in two large duodecimo volumes, of near 1000 pages. Price $3.00.

GREEN'S WORKS Off GAMBLING.

Gambling Exposed. By J. H.

Green, the Reformed Gambler. Two
vols., paper cover. Price $1.00 ; or In
one volume, cloth, gilt, for $1.50.
The Gambler's Life. Twovols.,
paper cover. Price Oue Dollar ; or in
one vol., cloth, gilt, for $1.50.

The Secret Band of Brothers.

Two volumes, paper cover. Price One
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for $1.50.
The Reformed Gambler. Two

vols., paper. Price One Dollar ; or iu
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M/RS. GREY'S NEW BOOKS.

Little Beauty. Two vols., paper , Cousin Harry* Two vols., paper
cover. Price One Dollar; or in one cover. Price One Dollar; or in oue
volume, cloth, for $1.50. | volume, cloth, for $1.. -JO.

The Flirt. One vol. octavo, paper cover, 50 cents ; or in cloth, for 75 cents.

MRS. GREY'S POPULAR NOVELS.

Price Twenty-Five Cents each.

The Man«uvriiig Mother.
The Young Prima Donna.
Alice Seymour.
Baronet's Daughters.
Old Dower House.

Hyacinthe.
Mary Seaham. Price 50 cents.

Gipsy's Daughter.
Lena Cameron.

Belle of the Family.
Sybil Lenuard.
Duke .and Cousin.
The Little Wife.
Passion &• Principle. 50 cents.

G. P. R. JAMES'S NEW BOOKS.

The Cavalier. An Historical Ro
mance. With a steel portrait of the
author. Two vols., paper cover. Price
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The Man in Black. Price 50 cts.

Arrah Nell. Price ,»0 cents.

Lord Montagu's Page. Two

voluin»K, paper cover. Price One Dol
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Mary of Burgundy. Price 50 cts.
Eva St. Clairj and other Tales.
Price 25 cents.

MISS ELLEN PICKERING'S WORKS.

Price Tliirty-EigU Cents each.

Who Shall be Heir 1
Merchant's Daughter.
The Secret Foe.
The Expectant.
The Fright.
Quiet. Husband.

Ellen Wareham.
Nan Darrel.
Priuce and Pedlar.
The Squire.

The Grumbler. 60 reot»
Orphan Niece. 50 cents.

COINS OF THE WORLD.

Petersons' Complete Coin Book, containing Perfect Fac-Si.miles of all
the various Gold, Silver, and other Metallic Coins, throughout the World, near
Two Thousand in all, being the most complete Coin Book in the World, with
fc-.e United States Mint Value of each Coin under it. Price $1.00.

8 T. B. PETERSON & BROTHERS' PUBLICATIONS.

MISS PARDOE'S WORKS.

The Jealous "Wife. By Miss Par-
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volume. Price Fifty cents.

The Wife's Trials. By Miss Par-
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volume. Price Fifty cents.

The Rival Beauties. By Miss
Pardoe. Complete iu one large octavo
volume. Price Fifty cents.

Romance of the Harem. By

Miss Pard"e. Complete in one large
oclavo volume. Price Fifty cents.

Confessions of a Pretty Wo
man. By Mis*. Pardoe. Complete
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Fifty cents.

Miss Pardoe'g Complete
\Vorks. Tliis cnrnpriSM thu icholt,
of the abone Five, workn. find art. bound
in cloth, gilt, in one large octavo vol
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The Adopted Heir. By Miss Par-
doe. Two vols., paper. Price $1.00;
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W. H. MAXWELL'S WORKS.

Stories of Waterloo. One of the

best books in tlie English language.
One vol. Price Fifty cents.

Brian O'Lynn; or, Luck is Every
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Wild Sports in West. 50 cents.
SAMUEL C. WARREN'S BOOKS.

Ten Thousand a Year. Com
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Dtary of a Medical Student.

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• Nothing to Say. Illustrated. Price 50 cents.

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With Illuminated Military Covert*, in Colors.

Published and for sale at wholesale, by the single copy, or by tb dozen, i undre< ,
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Their Sames are as Follows :
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Jack Hintoil, the Guardsman.. 50

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paper cover, price One Dollar.

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The Lady at Home.

Year after Marriage.

Cecilia Howard.
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Mary Moretoii.

The Divorced Wife.
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Lucy Sandford.
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Tl»e Two Merchants.

Insubordination.
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The Iron Rule.

Pride and Prudence.

Lizzie Glenn or, The Trials of a Seamstress. By T. S. Arthur. One
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CHARLES ,T. PETERSON'S \VORKS.

Kate Aylesforil. A Love Story.

Two vols., paper. Price $1 00 ; or in

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The Old Stone Mansion. By

Charles .T. Peterson. Two vols., paper.
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octave. Price 5(! :ent»

octavo. Price 50 cent*.

T. B. PETERSON & BROTHERS' PUBLICATIONS. 11

WAVERLEY NOVELS

Tlie Waverley WOT els. By Sir Walter Scott. With a magnificent Portmll
of Sir Walter Scott, engraved from the last Portrait for which lie ever sat, at
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CHEAP EDITION IN PAPER COVER.

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Tlie fnlbncing are thf.ir names.
The Heart of -Mid liOtUlaii,
Guy Mamiering, /
Tlie Antiquary,

Old Mortality,

St. Rouan'M Well,
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Highland Widow,
Ivanhoe,
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Waverley,

Tales of a Grandfather,
Ivciiil worth,
Fair Maid Perth,
Fort uiirs of Nigel.
Pevcrll of the Peak,

I Count Robert of Paris,
The Pirate,
The Abbot,
Red Gauntlet,

The Talisman,
(tut- ill in Dili-ward,
The Monastery,
\Voodstock,
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The Betrothed,
Castle Dangerous, and Sur
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Black I)wurf and Legend of
Moiitroi>e.

Morednn. Price 50 cents.

Lockhart's Life of Scott. Complete in one volume, cloth. Price •*] ..r>o.
WALTER SCOTT'S PROSE AND POETICAL WORKS.

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Illustrated Wandering .Tew.

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Martin the Foundling. RPAII-
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First Love. Price 2.5 cents.
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The Rone ; or. The Hazarcta of Wo- Cnlderon, the Courtlrr. By

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12 T.B.PETERSON & BROTHERS' PUBLICATIONS

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Major .Tones' Courtship. With
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Drama in Pokervllle. By ,T. M.
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lioui.siaiia Swamp Doctor. By
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Yankee Amongst, tlie Mer
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Misfortunes of Peter Fabcr.

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Major .Tones' Sketches of
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Quarter Race in Kentucky.

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Sol. Smith's Theatrical Ap
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Yankee Yarns and Yankee
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Life and Adventures of Col.
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Big Bear of Arkansas. Edited
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Major .Tones' Chronicles of
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Life and Adventures of Per-

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Pickings from the " Pica
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Streaks of Squatter Liife. By

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Simon Suggs. — Adventures
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FrankForester's Deer Stalk
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Adventures of Captain Far
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Widow Rugby's Husband.

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Theatrical .Tourney - Work
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Polly Peablossom's Wed
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Frank Forester's Warwick
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New Orleans Sketch Book.

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The Love Scrapes of Fudge
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American Joe Miller. With 100

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T. B. PETERSON & BROTHERS' PUBLICATIONS. 13

GUSTAVE AIMARD'S WORKS.

The Pirates of the Prairies.

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Consuelo. By Oeorge Sand. Trans
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"omitess of Rudolstadt. The

Sequel to •• Consuelo.'' Translated from
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First and True Love. By author
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The Corsair. Price 50 cents.

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Familiar Letters on Chem
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Chemistry and Physics -in re
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The Potato Disease.

Agricultural Chemistry. By

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Humors of Falconbridge. Two

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Piiiey Woods Tavern; or,
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Yankee Stories. By Judge Hali-
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The Swamp Doctor's Adven
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Containing the whole of the Louisiana
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The Big Bear's Adventures
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"Big Bear of Arkausaw," and "Stray
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Frank Forester's Sporting
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High Life in New York. By

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Sam Slick, the Clockmaker.

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Mnjor Jones' Courtship and

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Hnjor Jones' Scenes in Geor-

gla. Full of beautiful illustrations.
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Simon Suggs' Adventures
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volume, cloth. Price $1.50.

Major Thorpe's Scenes in Ar-
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the "Quarter Race in Kentucky,1'
and " Bob Herring, the Arkansas
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14 T.B.PETERSON & BROTHERS' PUBLICATIONS.

CAPTAIN MARRYATT'S WORKS.

Price. Tuxnt.y-Fire Cunts each.
Japhet In Search of a Father. .Pacha of many Tales.

Snnrleyow.

King's Own.

Newton Forster.
Pirate and Three Cutters.
Phantom Ship.

Jacob Faithful.

The Naval Officer.

Midshipman Easy.

Rattlin, the Reefer.
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Peter Simple. 50 cents.

Sea King. 50 cents.

Pool- .Tack. 50 cents.
Valerie. 50 cents.

GEORGE
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Revolution ; 01% Washington and

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cover. Price One Dollar.
The (tuaker City 5 or, The Monks

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cover. Price One Dollar.
Paul Ardenheim; the Monk of

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LIPPARD'S WORKS.

Blanche of Itrandy wine

A

Revolutionary Romance. Two vols.,
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The Lady of Aluarone ? or, The

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Legends of Mexico. One volume.
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ADVENTURES AND TRAVELS.

What I Saw; and Where I ' Adventures in Africa. By Major
Went. Being the private daily
educated

Journal aud Letters of an
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Life <fc Adventures of Paul j
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Don Q,ulxotte.— Life and Ad
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and his Squire, Sancho Panza. Two
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WORKS.

The Volunteers' Text Book.

This Work contains the whole of
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The United States' Light In-
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United States' Government
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T. B. PETERSON & BPvOTHSKS' PUBLICATIONS 15

REVOLUTIONARY TALKS.

Price Tweiity-t'ioe Cents each.
The Seven Brothers of AVy- Old Put 5 or, The Days of 76. A

Revolutionary Tale.

Wau-nan-gee ; or, The Massacre
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Gract Dudley; or Arnold at
Saratoga.

0111 ii fj ; or, 1'he Brigands of the
Ameiican Revolution.

< Uiief.

The Itebel Bride. A Revolution
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Ralph Ruunlon; or, The Out
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Tlie Flying Artillerist, or Mex
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Lippard's Legends of Mexico.

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Life and Adventures of Ben
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Tlie Petrel ; or, Love on the Ocean.
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Cruising in Last War. 50 cents.
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of the Tornado.

Tlie Flying Dutchman.
Life of Alexander Tardy, the

Pirate.

The Flying Yankee.
Hazel.

the Arctic Regions.
The Pirate's Son. Illustrated.

Bloodhound.

Harry Tempest; or, The Pirate's
Protege.

Tlie King's Cruisers. By Harry

Hazel.

By Harry

Charles Ransford ; or, Love on.
The Yankee Middy ; or, The Two Board a Cruiser.

Frigate
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the Lively Sally.
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New York.

1.8 ark Shade* of City Life.
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Thieves of Paris.
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lures of a Sailor.

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The Freebooters.

Jack Junk; or, The Tar for all

Weathers.
Davi

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Red Wing; or, Cruiser of Van

Diemau's Laud.

The Pacha of Many Tales.
Pirate and Three Cutters.
The Man-of-War's-Man.
Rebel and the Rover.
Jacoo Faithful.

Midshipman Easy.
Newton Forster.
King's Own.

The Naval Officer.
Phantom Ship.

Snarleyow.

Our Mess.
the Pirate ; or, the Free- ! Wreck of the Golden Mary.

Wild Oats Sown Abroad; or,
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Adventures. I paper ; or in cloth, gilt, 75 cents.

16 T.B. PETERSON & BROTHERS' PUBLICATIONS.

AINSWORTH'S BEST WORKS.

Life of Jack Sheppard, the most !
noted burglar, robber, and jail breaker, i
that ever lived. Illustrated. 50 cents. I

The Tower of London. With |
over One Hundred splendid Engra
vings. Twoivols. Price $1.00.

The Miser's Daughter. Com
plete In two larife vols. Price $1.00.

Pictorial Life and Adven
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Bloody Tower, &c. Price .">0 cents.

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A Tale of the Phurue and the Fire. Il
lustrated. Price 50 cents.

Tlie Star Chamber. Beautifully

Illustrated. Price 50 cents.
Mysteries of tlie Court of

Q,ueen Anne. Price 50 cents.

Windsor Castle. One volume.
Price 50 cents.

Mysteries of tlie Court of the

Stuarts. Price 50 cents.
Life of Henry Thomas, the

Western Burglar and Murderer. Full
<>t Plates. Price 25 ceuts.

Pictorial Life and Adven
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Tlie Desperadoes of the New
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Life of Ninon De L'Knclos.
With her Letters on Love, Courtship,
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Pictorial Life and Adven
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Grace O'Malley— Her Life and

A dventures. Price 50 cents.
Life of Arthur Spring. Price

25 cents.

HARRY COCKTON'S WORKS.

Valentine Vox, the Ventrllo- The Sisters. By Harry Cockton,

qulst. One volume, paper cover. < author of "Valentine Vox, the Ven-

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clKh, for*1.50. | The Steward. By Harry Cockton.

Sylvester Sound, the Som-

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'iiiimbulist. Illustrated. One vol- : Percy Klliiigham. By Harry

Price 50 cents. i Cockton. Price 50 cents.

BY VARIOUS GOOD AUTHORS.

Somebody's Luggage. ByChas.

Dickens. Price 25 cvuc.v
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The Deformed. By Mrs. Marsh.

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The Iron Cross. By Sylvan-s :
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\V c h s t e r and H a y n e ' a
Speeches in the United States Son-
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„ States, March 7, 1850, on the Slavery
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Train's Union Speeches. Com
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Father Tom and the Pope.

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Rine Shots at the Great Men.

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Tom Tiddler's Ground. By

Charles Dickens. Price 25 cents.

REV. CHARLES WADSWORTH'S SERMONS.

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giving Discourse. By Rev. Charles
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trivinsf Sermon. By Rev. Charlej
Wadsworth. Price 12 cents.

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