Prologue.
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“I was born of a noble ancestry,” said a great man
who had risen from the kennel where Poverty hides its
hopeless face—“True, my parents were poor, but
three hundred years ago, the blood which flows in my
veins, coursed in the veins of Lords, Archbishops,
Counts, Dukes and Kings.”
Then another Great Man, who had listened to this
glorious boast made reply:
“I also come of a noble lineage,” he said, “My
parents it is true were rich, but three hundred years
ago, the blood which flows in my veins, coursed in the
veins—not of Count, Archbishop and King—but of
the Hewer and Digger, of the Serf and the Worker,
whose labors clothed the Lord, and gave bread to the
King.”
And the first great man laughed at the boast of the
second. There was great reason for this laughter.
Who would not sooner be descended from a King
although a robber and assassin, than from a ragged
Worker, who can boast no wealth save the heritage of
want and hunger? For a King, although his hands are
red with the blood of the innocent, and his fine apparel
purchased with the misery of countless hearts, is yet a
King; the head and fountain of all nobility. And a
Serf, although his hands are unstained with blood, and
his hard crust unpolluted by a single victim's tears, is
still a Serf; the foundation stone of the world, on
which Society is built; a very useful thing, but hidden
in the darkness, by the great edifice of Wealth and
Power.
Let us illustrate this question by a Legend of a far
distant age. Let us trace the Ancestry of a single
Great Man—whom we select from the crowd of
illustrious names—back to its very fountain, in this
dim Heraldry of the Past.
It has often come to me, clothed with strange and
peculiar details, this Legend of a long past age.
—The atmosphere of a luxurious chamber was
burdened with sighs and prayers.
It was a gorgeous apartment in the castle of a noble
race; no display of sumptuous grandeur was lacking
there, the walls were concealed by hangings of purple
and gold, the dome-like ceiling was supported by
marble columns. It was full of light and glitter, rich
with fine linen and gold, and yet Death was there.
He came not to strike the beautiful and the young;
no full bosom of a trembling woman was there, to
grow chill and dead at his kiss. His hand was
extended to palsy an aged head, whose wrinkled forehead—
wet with moisture—displayed the white hairs,
venerable with the snows of eighty years.
An old man was dying there.
Not sinking feebly into the wave of Death, his
senses wrapped in the fancies of delirium, nor yet with
his chilled lips moving with one impatient moan.
But sitting erect on his death-couch, the silken
coverlet thrown aside from his wasted chest, his hands
clasped, and his face, with the hair and beard, like
drifted snow, turned to the light. Beneath his thick
eyebrows, also snow-white, his grey eyes shone with
an unfaltering glance.
His gaze was centred on the light, and as the deathdew
began to glisten on his forehead, and the blueish
tint of the grave began to gather over the nails of his
long white fingers, the old man, supported by silken
pillows, never for one moment turned his eyes away.
At the foot of the couch stood an altar on which the
waxen candles burned with steady lustre. Their clear
light shone upon the Image of the Saviour, sculptured
in ivory, with his limbs nailed to the Cross, and a calm
Divinity of Despair writhing over his Divine face.
And at the foot of the bed beside the altar, was the
armor and sword of the dying man. He was the last
of his race. The sword was very bright; the armor
shone like a mirror. He had worn it in the days of
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his young manhood—it had encased many a noble
form of his race before he was born—that sword had
flashed in the holy war of the crusade, and covered
itself with the blood of Civil War.
In his last moments, the old man, dying without an
heir, sternly conscious that the fatal hour of his house
was at hand—that the bright and bloody career of his
race was about to end forever in his death—this brave
old man, venerable with the trials of eighty years, gazed
steadily upon the armor and the sword. Sometimes
his glance wandered for a moment to the Divine Face,
but as suddenly returned to the warrior array, which
was piled up at the foot of the bed.
The Priest, a hard, stern man with shaven crown
and sombre apparel, colorless hands folded on his
breast, and a dead vacant eye, glaring from compressed
brows, stood near the bed, with the vessels of the Last
Sacrament, arranged on the table by his side. But the
old man did not heed him, nor turn his eyes for a
moment to a pale faced woman who stood near the
priest, and fixed her eyes upon her father's dying face,
and wept without ceasing.
It was his widowed daughter—his only child. Nay,
there was another child, a younger daughter, but no
one might speak her name, in this death-room, or the
old man would couple that name with his dying curse.
And beyond the altar, stand the servitors of his
house, watching with dumb agony the last struggle of
the dying Lord. Here are the soldiers who fought with
him, in the days of old, and here the retainers who
dwell on his broad lands, as their fathers have dwelt for
ages past.
The old man's lips moved—
“He prays!” cried the widowed daughter, in an accent
of joy, as her wasted face was bathed in tears.
“He may relent—”
“Never—” cried the Priest, with a scowl—“The
old man is conscious that the honour of his house dies
with him. His son fell in battle—you, Lady, are
widowed—childless. As for Alice—”
“My sister—”
More gloomily scowled the Priest—
“Do not breathe her name. Let the old man, even
your father, Lord Ralph of Wyttonhurst, die in peace.
Or wouldst thou have him go to the presence of his
God with a curse upon his soul?”
While the Priest and the woman by his side conversed
in whispers, a dead awe had fallen upon all the
other faces, which were clustered near the light, gazing
upon the shrunken form and white-beared face of the
dying Lord.
For the first time in an hour he spoke —
“Sword that my fathers bore to battle, you will rest
upon my bosom when I am dust. There will be no
hand to wield you when I am dead. Bury me —” he
said, without once turning his eyes — “with my armour
on, and my sword by my side. Let the banner
of Wyttonhurst be taken from the hall, and wrap it
about my coffin, so that all the world may know that
the House of my Fathers is dead.”
“Father —” said a low pleading voice, and the old
man felt a warm hand upon his chilled fingers.
“It is Mary —” he muttered, without turning his
gaze — “A true daughter of our race. She will soon
follow her father to the charnel. In all the world there
will not be left a human thing with a drop of our blood
in their veins.”
And as a single tear rolled down his wasted cheek,
he surrendered his thin hand — already damp with
death — to the clasp of his faithful child. Her soft
golden hair was already touched with grey; her cheeks
had been robbed of their warm hues by the hard and
bitter experience of life, and yet as she bent her face
near to the stern visage of her father, not a heart in the
dreary chamber but was touched by the sight.
“Faithful,” murmured the old Lord — “True to the
last.”
Even the leaden visage of the Priest relented, and
something like humanity lighted his dead eye-balls.
“But Father —” and shuddering as she spoke, the
widowed daughter enfolded him in her arms, and pressed
her lips to his clammy face — “By the memory of
that Saviour who smiles upon you now, I beseech you
forgive your wandering child — forgive — your lost
Alice! Do not, O, as the dread Hereafter already
rushes upon your fading sight, do not curse your own
flesh and blood.”
Without a word, the old man raised his death-stricken
arm, and gathering his failing strength for the
effort, thrust her arms from his neck, her face from his
cheek. His brow glowed with a stern, unforgiving
look; the lines of his face grew suddenly rigid, as with
the outward indications of an unrelenting Will.
“Forgive her?” the cold tone of the Priest fell like
ice upon the daughter's heart — “Did she not, child as
she was of the old man's heart, betrothed to a Lord of
noble lineage, forsake her father, her betrothed husband—
leave these very walls—to share the fate of a —”
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“Low born peasant knave, who could not call one
rood of ground his own.”
“I know it —” the daughter exclaimed, as she confronted
the Priest. “Yet still she is of our own blood.
She is my sister. She is Alice of Wyttonhurst.”
A murmur pervaded the apartment, and the eyes of
the spectators was fixed upon the brave Woman, who
true to the holiest instincts of her nature, dared even
the anger of her dying father, in the attempt to wring
from his chilled lips only one word of blessing, one
accent of forgiveness.
But no accent of forgiveness came — stern, cold and
unrelenting he gazed upon the armour, the sword and
the image of the Dying Redeemer, murmuring with his
husky voice, a curse upon Alice, his Lost Daughter.
And when the Priest was encircled by white-robed
children with silver censers swinging in their little
hands — when the words of the Last Sacrament
trembled from his lips, rolling in full deep melody
through the dreary chamber — while the daughter knelt
by the bed, and the servitors were bowing their heads
against the floor — still, with a stern resolve upon his
forehead, the old Lord, sat erect on his couch, coupling
with a curse the name of the younger daughter, Alice.
Shall we leave this scene, where Death is clad in
grandeur and vengeance? In order to comprehend it
more fully, shall we behold death, rudely clad in misery
and chains?
In a cell, sunken far below the surface of the earth —
with a huge mass of walls and chambers between its
arched ceiling and the light of the stars—an Executioner,
torch in hand, came to look upon his victim.
He stood in the centre of the damp cell, his pale face,
with cold eyeballs and thin severe lips, standing out
from his black cowl. For the Executioner did not
appear in the form of a Headsman with a sharp axe in
his brawny hand, but as a Monk with the cold sneer on
his withered lips, a calm scorn in his impassible eyes.
Above him frowned the arch of the cell — around
him, brooded the shadows, through whose darkness the
moisture on the thick walls, shone with a pale dreary
lustre.
At his feet, crouching on a rude seat — a solid block
of stone — was his Prisoner or victim, chained by the
wrists and ancles to the floor.
The light of the torch disclosed him, as bowing his
head between his hands — they rested on his knees —
he seemed to be lost to all consciousness in a miserable
repose.
“One year of night and silence, will wither the
bravest form! A year ago, across the threshold he
stepped, with a bold and agile stride, and as the door
grated behind him, a smile flashed over his features.
Look upon him, now —”
Nearer to the couching form, the spectator held his
light. But the Prisoner did not move.
It was pitiable to see him, as he sat upon the hard
stone, irons upon his wrist, and chains extending from
his ancles to the massy ring in the centre of the floor.
It was but the wreck of a man. A muscular form,
broad in the chest, majestic in the stride, wrecked suddenly
into a living skeleton, whose fleshless arms and
gaunt outlines, the rays which fluttered about him could
not altogether hide. Such was the Prisoner of that cell,
whose Night was Eternal.
Once his hands wandered amid tangled masses of dark
hair, streaked with grey. It was a large head, but the
pale face could not be seen, for the chained hands
veiled it from the light.
“For one year he has not beheld the light of day. A
morsel of coarse bread, a cup of water, thrust through the
door of his cell — such has been his food for a year. He
cannot last much longer —”
The Prisoner moved; his chains aroused the echoes
of the cell. A miserably wasted face, with eyes hollow
and wild, glowed in the light. There was a broad
forehead, marked eyebrows, but the eyes were sunken
in their sockets, the cheeks hollow, the lips — parting in
an idiotic smile — chill and colorless.
He turned his face from the light, as though its glare
smote his eyeballs with deadly anguish — and then
shading his sight with his chained hands looked vacantly
into the impassible face of his Gaoler.
Do you feel that picture, in all its details? Far above
this solitary wretch, arise the walls, the corridors, the
huge roof and slender spires of this immense edifice;
and far above, the light of the midnight stars shines upon
the Cross, until it glitters like a brighter star above the
venerable pile.
Far above, there are free fields, and wide forests, the
fields white with snow and the forests desolate with
winter — yet still they are free.
And here, in the cell, which resembles a coffin, with
its low ceiling and narrow walls, a living man withers
inch by inch to death and feels that his voice is drowned
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by the impenetrable stone that shut him in. Feels that
this cell is not merely the Prison of his Body but the
Coffin of his Soul. He is shut off, forever, from society
and the sympathies of mankind. When he dies no
tear will moisten his cold face. Not one pitying eye
will look into the recesses of his accursed grave.
Ah, the reality of death like this, would chill the
heart of the bravest man that ever dared death on the
battle-field.
— The wasted man looked up, and murmured two
syllables, that may seem to us, but feeble and
incoherent —
“Wife — child —” he said, and bowed himself to
his chains again.
Then the cold sneer of his Executioner, was lengthened
out in measured words:
“A serf — a hewer of wood and drawer of water —
you dared to love the lady of a noble house. A man of
no name, born to hew and dig, as your fathers before
you were born, you dared to open the Book of God,
and read its pages for yourself. But the strong arm of
the Church, came suddenly down upon your head. The
wife whom you had dared to take to yourself was
doomed to the silence and secrecy of a convent — and
you — miserable man! Do you remember your
sentence — as it fell from the lips of your Judges, only
a year ago —”
The Prisoner moved not, but a groan was heard.
“Eternal seclusion from the face of man.” This was
the word pronounced upon your head by the Church
and the Law. `Only once a year, you shall be permitted
to see the face of a human being. The hand
of mercy will be extended to you, in case you renounce
at once your wife, and the heresy which you have
wrung from the pages of the Book of God.' I am here
to offer that mercy — say that the lady Alice is no longer
wife of yours — say that you believe no longer your
damnable heresy but in our Church — and you shall
live!”
It seemed as if the sneering tone and contemptuously
offered mercy of the Monk, had roused the wasted man
into a new life.
“You come too late,” he sadly said, raising his
hollow eyes — “That which you call my heresy, has
been my only stay, my unfaltering hope, through the
endless Night of this living grave. Shall I renounce it
now, and lie basely, as I am about to go into the presence
of my God? Alice — renounce her? Wherefore? We
will soon be joined again, where there are neither locks
nor bolts; not much of Church or King; nothing but
children whose Father is the living God.”
Not very boldly did he speak these words. Faltering
in every accent, his eyes vacant and dreary all the while,
his hands trembling in their chains, he spoke with great
difficulty, pausing for breath between every word.
“You come too late,” and he bowed his head without
a groan.
For a long while he was silent, while the Monk
holding the torch above his wasted form, looked upon
him with the same impassible scorn. At last, startled
by the breathless stillness of his prisoner, he went to
him, and shook him by the shoulder, but the Prisoner
moved not, nor uttered one moan. The Monk rudely
raised his head from his fettered hands, and saw at once
that he was Dead.
He too was the last of his race, the last Peasant of
his name. Or had he yet a child? No wife — no
child?
Yet even as the light flashed vividly upon his wasted
form, and tinted with a red glare his motionless eye-balls,
there was something upon his face, which spoke
of Peace. A smile hung around his chilled lips; there
was no sorrow in the solitary tear which bathed his
check.
The sneer passed from the spectator's face. He could
not but look with something like pity upon the dead
man. As he suffered the head to fall once more upon
the hands, a bright object escaped from the rags which
bound the shrunken chest, and fluttered to the floor.
The Monk raising it, beheld a dingy piece of parchment,
on which, in the rude yet nervous old English
character, certain strange words were written:
“The spirit of Jehovah is upon me to preach
good tidings to the Poor.”
These words (whose orthoepy we have modernized)
were all that the strip of parchment contained, but the
Monk pondered upon them for a long time, wondering
from what strange book they could have been taken.
And ere many hours were passed, a slab was lifted
from the prison floor, and the unshrouded corse of the
prisoner, hurled into the cavity which yawned beneath.
He was forgotten — lost in the great abyss of the past.
And yet perchance, his blood did not altogether die, his
spirit altogether fade, as they placed the stone upon his
breast, and left him to his long repose.
Turn we once more, to the gorgeons chamber of the
ancient baronial hall. The last sacrament has been
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said — the breath of incense yet lingers in the air.
Around the room still gather the servitors of the noble
house; the Priest kneels by the bed; the widowed
daughter above is absent from the scene.
The old man in the same position in which we last
beheld him, crosses his hands upon his breast, and
gazes upon the woman, the sword, and Holy Image.
There is a glassier light in his eye, the moisture starts
more brightly from his forehead; his hands are blue with
the death-chill.
The same ray which warms his face, glistens upon
the woman, and the rich purple hangings of the deathchamber.
— Gaze upon this scene, compare it with the miserable
death, which but a moment since took place, far
down in the dreary atmosphere of the coffin-like cell.
It is indeed a widely different scene. Here death is
invested with the splendors of rank, and grows less
terrible under the weight of purple and gold — there, a
ghostly thing of rags and famine appears in lurid torch-light;
and a face withered, not by age nor disease, but
by the pang of persecution, rests between hands which
are heavy with a felon's chains.
It was near the daybreak hour, when the dawn began
to steal through the curtained windows, that a woman's
form stole through the silent watchers and advanced to
the bedside.
“Father,” she whispered, and placed his chilled
fingers upon a little hand — not her own — which did
not shrink from the old man's dying grasp.
He turned and gazed upon his widowed daughter.
“I am dying,” he faltered; “Alice—” he murmured
the name of his lost daughter, but seemed to
hesitate as the curse hung on his lips.
“She died to-night,” said the faithful Daughter —
“Died in the Convent, amid the Nuns, who could not
but weep as they saw her glide so pale and brokenhearted
into the arms of death. She died but —”
Once more she placed this little hand within his own.
“Behold her child!”
It was a brown-haired boy, not more than four years
old, who looked with a vague wonderment into the old
man's face. He was coarsely attired, like the child of
a peasant, but his eyes were round and bright, his
warm cheek full of health.
The stern Baron looked upon that wondering child,
as though he would have killed him with the last
glance of his glassy eyes. But the boy clung to his
withered breast, crept tremblingly up the side of the
high couch, and wound his little arms around the
gaunt limbs of the dying man.
“Have you a Mother, child — a Father —” gasped
the Baron, as his senses began to wander in the mists
of death.
The Boy looked upon him with a vacant stare.
“Father”—“Mother” — these words sounded as an unknown
language in his ears. They had torn him,
when a babe, from his mother's breast. He had never
seen his Father's face. Therefore with his large black
eyes dilating with a stare of child-like wonder, he gazed
vacantly into the death-stricken face of the great Baron.
“Had I but a child like thee —” the old man gasped—
“To wear my sword, and bear my banner forth to
battle! Curses, curses upon the child who fled from
my roof with a low-born peasant! Had she but wedded
one of her own rank, her child might have taken the
name of our House. A peasant's wife! Thy name,
my pretty one — it is pleasant to feel thy kindly eyes
upon me — thy name!”
The Boy in his clear silvery voice uttered a name —
“The peasant's child!” cried the old man with an
oath that came with his last breath — “The child of
Alice and her peasant husband!” with the last impulse
of his strength — while death came coldly over every
sense — he dashed the boy aside, and fell back stiff and
dead.
A wonderful thing it was to see that little child
crouching on the silken coverlet, his rosy cheeks and
great dark eyes, contrasting so strongly with the dead
eyeballs and fallen jaw of the great Lord.
A peasant's child, pressing the downy pillow of a
dead Lord! Even in death the old man's face seemed
to sneer at the thought, and the frightened boy crept
slowly from his side.
And yet in distant ages — from this drear night of
the fifteenth century, when we stand beside the deathbed
of a Lord — the name of that Peasant Boy, may be
a nobler name, than all the Wyttonhursts of the English
Island. Aye nobler than Lancaster or Plantagenet,
nobler than all the names inscribed on the blood red
scroll of British Heraldry —
For the child, trembling on the death-couch of the
Baron, the Son of the Peasant, who died alone in his
dungeon coffin, was named Lawrence Washington.
Could that dying Baron have looked into the future,
through the mists of three centuries, he might have
seen a descendant of that peasant child, in the person
of — George Washington
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A mother on her knees, stretching forth her
hands over her slumbering child, while through
the gloom of twilight her soul, shining from her
uplifted eyes, ascends in voiceless communion
with God —
Was it in a Palace, where a Royal Babe,
wrapped in purple, clutches a seeptre for a
plaything, and only uncloses its eyes to behold
scenes of luxury — trains of liveried and titled
lacquies — magnificent halls, looking out from
their lofty windows upon gardens peopled with
armed vassals?
Was it a royal mother, like that doll of legitimacy,
Maria Louisa, whose veins were stagnant
with the royal blood of ten centuries,
whose silken vestment never once moved to
one throb of womanly feeling, warm from a
Mother's heart?
Was it an imperial babe that met her gaze;
a tiny thing, fated to be King of Rome to-day,
and to-morrow but the child of an Imperial
Outeast, chained by British hands to an isolated
rock in the centre of an ocean?
No. The Mother was neither Queen nor
Empress; she knelt at the evening hour, in a
chamber of her home, where the last ray of
sunset, trembling through an opened window,
bathed with the same flush her face and the
face of the sleeping babe.
And the breeze that came over fields, just
blooming into verdure, was imbued with the
delicious perfume of early summer. And the
sun which, setting, flung its beams upon the
faces of Mother and Child, was sinking in a
blue vault, undimmed by a single cloud. And
the Home was a plain wooden building, one
story in height, standing amid trees and gardens
near the water-side.
One hundred and sixteen years have passed
since that hour, and yet the scene is fresh before
us still. Let us invoke the memory of
the Past, and paint that scene upon the heart
of every American Mother.
In a room, whose old fashioned furniture —
pictures on the wainscot walls, a couch in one
corner, floor white as snow, and table on which
was placed a Bible — was shadowed by the
gloom of twilight, the Mother knelt, her face
toward the setting sun.
Through an open casement — fringed with
a young vine, amid whose tender leaves, delicate
flowers, white and beautiful as snow-drops
in the moonlight—came the breeze and sunshine,
filling the dim room with gleams of light and
odours of leaves and flowers.
The Mother was kneeling in the recess of
that window — a pale woman, whose matronly
forehead was radiant with the divine tenderness
of a Mother's love, whose eyes uplifted—
shining in their tears — were instinct with
a Mother's Soul. Her cheeks glowed with a
flush of crimson, as she stretched her thin
white hands above the child.
And the child, resting on a pillow, its tiny
hands clasped and its eyes sealed in slumber—
it was altogether a fragile thing, a frail embodiment
of an immortal soul. As the sunshine
stole in glimpses over its face, and turned the
marble whiteness of its little hands to coral, a
solitary flower fell from the vine above, and
trembled down upon it, and rested like a Blesing
upon its breast.
Altogether, this humble apartment, furnished
in the plain style of the olden time — the open
casement fringed with vines — the Mother
kneeling, and the Babe slumbering with the
white flower on its bosom — presented a scene
not at all worthy of the sage Historian who
can only picture intrigue and bloodshed, but
rather the simple chronicler, whose pencil and
whose heart lingers ever amid the holy quietude
of — Home.
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Her Son, the Babe which sleeps before her,
grown to mature manhood, was upon that river,
guiding the wreck of an army to the opposite
shore, and speaking to half-naked and starving
men the bold thoughts of Freedom.
There was a scene of cheerless hills, crowded
by miserable huts, whose rugged timbers rose
gloomily from amid a wide waste of snow.
Starvation was there, and Plague and Cold,
doing their three-fold work upon a band of
heroes. But there, upon his knees, in his
warrior uniform, praying to God for his men —
offering up his life as a sacrifice for his country—
there was the leader of this band, whose
great soul shone in his form and features, and
in his more than kingly presence.
The Mother knew that Face! It was her
son; and the voice which she had heard before
she heard again — “Your son, become the
Leader of a People, defies Hunger, Plague,
and Cold, and holds the serenity of his soul
against foes abroad and traitors at home, for
God's voice speaks to him again in the Memory
of his Mother's Prayer.”
At last there came a scene which filled every
avenue of her heart with joy — joy too deep
for words or tears.
A man of more than regal presence stood
among a countless multitude of freemen, and
while their shouts went up to Heaven, he gave
back into their hands the sword which had
achieved their Freedom.
And in that moment, his large grey eyes
flashing as they gazed upon the countless multitude,
brightened with a kindlier, holier lustre,
as the heart of the Great Man was filled with
the Memory of his Mother's Face — of that
gentle voice which had whispered Religion in
his ear — of that Soul which had infused its
holy nature into his own breast —
These scenes the Mother beheld with every
varied emotion. But the last scene fired every
pulse with a calm rapture, and shed the baptism
of unutterable peace upon her soul.
But once more that voice, which came
through darkness and silence, spoke to her —
“Mother! This will be the life of your
babe, in case you are true to your trust.
For God gives into every Mother's hands the
life, the Destiny of her child.”
Then, after the voice was still, came a scene
at once dark and crushing. With chilled blood
and a heart slowly struggling under an overwhelming
Terror, the Mother beheld it — a
Dream composed of a succession of vivid pictures.
First, a wild boy standing upon a vessel's
deck, amid the darkness of an ocean storm.
His defiant lip and blasphemous eye, his hand
uplifted in scorn at the lightning which circled
over him — twining among the clouds like a
fiery serpent over a pall — all attested a reckless
and outcast soul.
No Mother's Prayer shed its blessing on his
corrugated brow — no memory of a Mother's
teachings came to bless the heart of the Outcast
Boy.
And the Outcast Boy ripened into a Murderer
before the Mother's eyes — and the Murderer
became a Pirate — and at last the dread drama
terminated on a desert island, on whose bleak
shore a skeleton, washed by the waves from
its rude grave, glared whitely in the tropic sun.
And the skeleton — all that remained of the
Murderer and the Pirate — was her son, the
Babe which now slumbered beneath her outspread
hands!
“There is no blessing upon the Skeleton,
for no Mother's Memory comes to blossom
in good deeds over the dead”—
She heard the voice once more —
“And this, O Mother, will be the Future of
your child, deprived of a Mother's teachings
and a Mother's prayer.”
With the last accent of that voice her vision
passed away.
The Babe was still there — slumbering in
the twilight hour — with its hands clasped and
the white flower upon its heart.
An image of Peace — a glimpse of Eden —
centred in the serenity of the summer twilight,
seemed that Child slumbering beneath its Mother's
gaze.
Her mind still agitated by her Dream —
with its terrible picture of a child unblest by a
Mother's Prayer; and its divine picture of a
child hallowed by that Prayer — she turned
from the window, leaving the Babe in the
shadowy recess.
The ray of a candle trembled through the
gloom.
The candle stood upon a table, which, covered
with a white cloth, resembled an altar.
Upon the cloth, beside the candle, appeared
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a white urn, or vase, filled with clear cold
water.
And there stood a man of venerable presence,
a Minister of God, with the father of the babe
at his side. The wrinkled face, the white hair
of the Preacher, were in strong but not unpleasing
contrast with the young manhood of
the Father.
Around were grouped a few friends — men
and women, whose faces appeared in the dim
light, and who had come to witness the Baptism
of the Child.
And the Mother bore the Babe from its resting
place — it opened its eyes as she raised it,
and clutched the stray flower with its tiny hand.
And she stood by the baptismal vase, while
the holy words were said, while the withered
hand of the Priest sprinkled the blessed drop
upon the white brow of that sinless babe, and
all the while it gazed wonderingly around
clutching the stray flower in its little hand.
And that tiny hand should one day clutch a
Battle Blade, and carve a Nation's Freedom
with a Hero's Sword.
Holy were the words which fell from the
lips of the Preacher — holy the baptism which
he sprinkled upon the brow of unconscious
innocence — but the Mother, as she girdled the
Babe to her bosom and remembered her dream,
could not banish the thought — that the holiest
baptism which Earth could offer up to the eye
of God — holier than words, or forms, or
sprinkled water — was the Baptism of a
Mother's Prayer.
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It is not the most difficult thing in the world
to write the history of a battle. The tramp of
legions, the crash of contending foemen, the
waving of banners — arms glittering here, and
the cold faces of the dead glowing yonder, in
the battle flash — these form a picture that
strikes the heart at once, and makes its mark
forever.
But who can write the history of a Soul?
Who can tell how the germ of heroism, the
idea of greatness first swells in the mind of the
Boy, and slowly ripens into full life?
We have seen Washington the President.
We have known Washington the General.
Shall we look into the soul of Washington the
Boy? Shall we behold the almost imperceptible
gradations which marked the progress of
that soul into manhood? Shall we witness
the silent, gradual, ceaseless EDUCATION of that
soul?
How was Washington educated? Did he
lounge away five years of his life within the
walls of a college, occupied in removing the
shrouds from the mummies of Classic Literature,
busy in familiarizing his mind with the
elaborate pollutions of Grecian mythology, or
in analyzing the hollow philosophies of the
academy and portico?
No. His education was on a broader, vaster
scale.
At seventeen he leaves the common school,
where he had received the plain rudiments of
an English education, and with knapsack
strapped to his shoulders, surveyor's instruments
in his hand, he goes forth, a pilgrim
among the mountains. Where there is blue
sky, where the tumultuous river hews its way
through colossal cliffs, where the great peaks
of the Alleghanies rise like immense altars into
the heavens — such were the scenes in which
the soul of Washington was educated.
He went forth a wanderer into the wilderness.
At night he stretched his limbs in the
depths of the forest, or rose to look upon the
stars, as they shone in upon the awful night
of the wilderness, or sat down with the red
men by their council fire, and learned from
this strange race the traditions of the lost
nations of America.
Three years of his life glide away while he
sojourns among the scenes of nature's grandeur.
Those three years form his character, and
shape his soul. Glimpses of the future come
upon him like those blushes of radiance in the
day-break sky, which announce the rising of
the sun.
Shall we learn the manner of his communion
with nature and with God?
We know it is beneath the dignity of history
to look even for an instant into the heart. We
know that vague generalities, misty outlines,
compact and well-proportioned falsehoods,
sprinkled with a dash of what is called philosophy—
too often constitute the object and the
manner of history.
Shall we depart a little while from the respectable
regularities of history, which too
often resemble the regular tactics of Braddock
on his fatal field, and call tradition and legend
to our aid? Tradition and legend, which, in
their vivid but irregular details, remind us
forcibly of the crude style of battle which
young Washington so fruitlessly commended to
the notice of the regular general, on the battle
day of Monongahela.
Learn, then, the manner of young Washington's
communion with nature and with
God.
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But first learn and know by heart the scenes
in which his boyhood passed away.
Over a tumultuous torrent, high in the upper
air, there hangs a bridge of rock, fashioned by
the hand of Nature, with the peaks of granite
mountains for its horizon. Two hundred feet
above the foaming waves you behold this arch,
which in its very ruggedness, looks graceful
as a floating scarf. Over the waves, looking
through the arch, you catch a vision of colossal
cliffs, with a glimpse of smiling sky. Advance
to the parapet of this bridge — cling to
the shrubs that grow there — look below!
Your heart grows sick — your brain reels.
Stand in the shadow of the arch, and look
above. How beautiful! While the torrent
sparkles at your feet, yonder, in the very
Heaven, the Arch of Rock fills your eye, and
spans the abyss, with giant trees upon its
brow.
To the Natural Bridge, Washington, the
young pilgrim came. He stood by the waves
at sunset — he drank in the rugged sublimity
of the scene. And when the morning came,
with an unfaltering step, and hand that never
shook, not for an instant, with one pulse of
fear, he climbed the awful height — he wrote
his name upon the rock — he stood upon the
summit, beneath the tall pine, and saw the
march of day among the mountains.
Who shall picture his emotions in that
hour?
As his unfaltering hand traced the name
upon the rock, did he dream of the day when
that name should be stamped upon the history
of his country, and written not in stone, but in
the throbs of living hearts?
As he stood upon the arch, and saw the torrent
sparkle dimly far below, while the kiss
of light was glittering on the mountain tops,
did no vision of the battle field, no shadowy
presentiment of glory, gleam awfully before
his flashing eyes?
Again; another scene of Washington's
education.
There is a river which sparkles beautifully
among its leafy banks — glides on as smoothly
as the dream of sinless slumber; but even as
you gaze upon its glassy waves, it rushes from
your sight. It glides over a bed of rocks, and
then through a yawning abyss sinks with one
sullen plunge into the bosom of the earth. On
one side you behold its smooth waters — at
your feet the abyss — and yonder, an undulating
meadow. Yes, where should be the
course of the river, you behold slopes of grass
and flowers.
It is simply called the Lost River.
It fills you with inexplicable emotions to see
this beautiful stream, now flashing in the sunlight,
now — ere you can count one — lost in
a dismal cavern, with flowers growing upon its
grave.
Here Washington, the young pilgrim, wandered
oftentime, and gazed with a full heart
upon the mysterious river.
“Shall my life be like that river? Gliding
smoothly on — shining in sunlight, only to
plunge, without a moment's warning, into
night and eternity.”
Did no thought like this cross the young
pilgrim's soul? In that wondrous river he beheld
a symbol of a brave life, suddenly plunged
in darkness. Or, it may be, of a great heart,
hurled into obscurity, only to rise more beautiful
and strong, after the night was over and
the darkness gone. For after three miles of
darkness, the lost river comes sparkling into
light again, singing for very gladness, as it
rushes from the cavern into open air.
Amid scenes like these the youth of Washington
was passed. He grew to manhood
amid the glorious images of unpolluted nature.
Now, pausing near the mountain top, he saw
the valleys of Virginia fade far away, in one
long smile of verdure and sunshine, with the
Potomac, like a silver thread, in the distance.
Now battling for life, amid hunger, snow,
and savage foes, he makes his bed in the hollow
of the rock, or sets his destiny afloat amid
the waves and ice of a wintry river.
There is one picture in the life of Washington,
the Boy, which has ever impressed my
soul.
It is not so much that picture of young
Washington, seated at the feet of his widowed
mother, gazing into her pale face, drinking the
fathomless affection of her mild eyes, and for
her sake renouncing the glittering prospect of
an ocean life, and laurels gathered from its
gory waves.
This picture, in its simplicity, is very
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beautiful. But it is another picture which enchains
me. Behold it.
By the side of a lonely stream, in the depth
of a green woodland, sits a boy of fourteen —
shut out from all the world, alone with his
heart — his finger laid upon an opened volume,
while his large grey eye gazes vacantly into
the deep waters.
And that volume is the old Family Bible,
marked with the name of his ancestor, John
Washington; and from its large letters look
forth the Prophets of Israel, and from its pages,
printed in antique style, the face of Jesus
smiles in upon the soul of the dreaming boy.
Washington the boy, alone with the old Bible
which his ancestor, a wanderer and an exile,
brought from the English shore — alone
with the prophets and the warriors of long distant
ages — shut in from the world by the awful
forms of revelation — now wandering with
the Patriarchs under the shade of palms,
among the white flocks — now lingering by Samaria's
well, while the Divine voice melts in
accents of unutterable music upon the stillness
of noonday.
Let us for a few moments survey the various
EPOCHA of the youth of Washington.
At the age of ten years he is left an orphan;
from the hour of his father's death he is educated
by his widowed mother.
At the age of fourteen a midshipman's warrant
is offered to him — with a brilliant prospect
of naval glory in the distance. He accepts
the warrant — his destiny seems trembling
in the balance — when his mother, who
already saw a nobler theatre open before her
boy, induces him to surrender the idea of an
ocean life.
He is seventeen when he takes up the instruments
of the surveyor's craft, and crossing
the Alleghanies, beholds, for the first time, the
customs of the Indian people.
Three years pass, and he is a pilgrim amid
the forms of external nature.
We behold him on the ocean, amid the terror
of its storms, and very near the doom of
its shipwrecks. His heart pillows the head of
a dying brother; he accompanies Laurence
Washington on a voyage to Barbadoes, and is
absent on the ocean, and on the shores of a
strange land, from the fall of 1751 until the
spring of 1752.
When Laurence dies, his young brother,
George Washington, a youth of twenty years,
is appointed executor of his immense estates.
At the age of twenty-one, he is designated by
the Governor of Virginia as a Commissioner
to treat with the hostile French and their Indian
allies, who threaten our western borders.
In the pursuit of the object of this mission, he
journeys 560 miles into the trackless wilderness.
He is twenty-two when he first mingles in
battle; his sword is unsheathed July 3, 1754,
at the fight of the Great Meadows.
And at the age of twenty-three, July 9th,
1775, he shares in the dangers of Braddock's
field, and saves the wreck of the defeated
army.
The great epochs of the Youth of Washington
are written in the preceding paragraphs.
A wonderful youth indeed! From the common
school-house into the untrodden wilderness;
from the couch of a dying brother into
the terror of battle, Washington had already
lived a life, before he was twenty-three years
old.
Let us, my friends, write the unwritten history
of Washington, Not the dim outline
which History sketches, but a picture of the
Man — with color, shape, life and voice. Yes,
life; for as we go on, among the shrines of the
Past, the dead will live with us; and voice,
too; for as we question the ghosts of other
days, they will answer us, although the
shadows of a hundred years brood over their
graves.
And ere we hasten forth upon our journey,
let us for a moment compare the youth of
Washington with the boyhood of Arnold.
Washington, nourished by the counsels of a
mother, surrounded by powerful friends, and
with many a kind hand for his brow when it
was stricken with fever, many a kind voice for
his heart when it was heavy with sorrow.
Arnold, a friendless boy, left by an intemperate
father to the — world; guided, it is true,
by a kind mother, but a mother who saw all
the clouds of misfortune lowering upon her
path, and felt the heaviest blows of misery upon
her breast.
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One hour of silence and of thought.
Who shall paint its history? What power
of language, what eloquence of speech, can
paint the day-dreams that come like ghosts over
the mind of boyhood, and fling their shadowy
hands toward a distant but a gorgeous future?
One summer day, upon a rock which overhung
a wood-embosomed brook, there sat a
boy of fourteen years, clasping his hand over
a book which rested on his knee, while his absent
gaze was fixed upon the wave below.
That wave, framed in foliage, mirrored in a
cloudless sky, warmed by the rays of a declining
sun.
The slender form of the boy was clad in a
dress of coarse grey; his falling collar disclosed
his white throat; his brown hair, shadowed
features remarkable at once for their firmly
chisseled outlines, and their expression of precocious
thought. Those grey eyes, warming
and dilating under the boldly defined brows,
shone with the rapture of some absorbing day-dream.
Near the boy, reclining on the rock which
overhung the stream, arose an aged oak, whose
massive trunk was garlanded with vines, while
it extended one rugged and gnarled limb, thick
with leaves, over the bosom of the waters.
And the boy reclining on the rock, and the
old tree clad in vines, looked, together, like an
image of Youth stretched at the feet of the
venerable Past.
On the rock, beside the boy, were scattered
various things which seem to indicate the sports
of youth, mingled with the grave thought of
manhood. A bow and three arrows — a compass—
a fishing rod, and a rusted sword, battered
in the handle and dented in the blade.
But the eye of the boy was fixed upon the
waters with a dreamy, absent glance. He sat
for a long time like a statue — a dumb thing,
without power of speech or motion — his
clasped hands lay upon the old book, supported
by his knee.
Vines, whose green leaves embraced flowers
white as snow, were dipping in the waters with
every breath of the summer air — a solitary
bird hung trembling on the oaken bought, singing
as it swung, and filling the place with bursts of
wild music — the sun bathed the mass of foliage
with his rays, while yonder wall of leaves
was veiled in shadows — it was a beautiful
scene, an hour of peace, but the soul of the boy
was far away.
Once in the space of an hour he moved his
head. It was to grasp the hilt of the rusted
sword. Then something like a shadow passed
over his face, and his lip curled in a kind of
defiant smile.
Next his hand rested upon the book. A
massive volume, bound in dark leather, with
the traces of age upon its broad leaves, the
odor of time upon its bold and rugged type.
He lifted one lid of the book, and a blank leaf
was revealed — blank, save that it bore a name,
written in a quaint, round hand —
JOHN WASHINGTON — 1657.
For this book, more than a hundred years
old, had been brought from England by the
grandfather of this boy, at least one hundred
years before this summer day. That ancestor,
an exile from his native soil, brought the book
with him to the wilds of Virginia, and, believe
me, it brought a blessing with it: for, after
soothing many an hour of pain — lifting up
many a head bowed down by sickness — nerving
many a heart chilled by death — the book was
now, even in this calm summer hour, doing its
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[figure description] Page 021.[end figure description]
yet baptised in its first hour by the rays of a
star, that melted into the heart at once, and
filled it with a Peace unutterable.
The Boy read on.
The Child, grown to Boyhood, stands up in
a lofty temple, and confutes grave Doctors and
learned Scribes — heaps confusion upon their
cunning and puts their intricate code of lies to
shame — by the simple learning of a Heart that
cannot Hate, a Heart that finds Truth and Law
and Religion in the simple words —“Love one
another.”
Then came scenes that made the heart of the
boy beat with pulsations of vivid joy, succeeded
by oppressive sadness. His eyes were drowned
in tears. For the Child of whom he read, had
grown to manhood. He was derided by the
Priests, mocked by the minions of Kings,
crowned with thorns, and put to death on a
felon's tree — every instant of his agony, accompanied
by some unutterable mockery. And
with all this — He — the being of whom the
Boy was reading — gave to his enemies love
for their scorn, blessings for their blows — yes,
to the World which disowned him, and raised
him in mockery upon its breast, he bequeathed
a deathless Testament of Forgiveness, a holy
Covenant of Brotherhood. And while the Boy
was reading, the evening shadows fell. The
sun passed down the sky, leaving only one
smile of light upon the waters. And yet the
Face of the Divine Being seemed to start from
the very gloom, and look with its deathless
eyes into the very eyes of the dreaming
Boy.
Do you assert that the lesson which the old
Book taught to the mind and the heart of the
Boy — in this still hour — ever lost its influence,
ever passed away?
Or, did the words of the Book, dropping
imperceptibly into the heart of that Boy —
gentle as fragrant rain upon an opening flower
and yet mightier than armies — appear in his
Future life, in the shape of Deeds that win the
love of a World?
Who shall count the imperceptible steps by
which the soul of youth ascends to manhood,
gathering fresh vigor at every step, and coming
freer and bolder into the light, as the summit
grows near and nearer?
Who shall estimate the influence which the
old Book exercised upon the life of the solitary
Boy?
Other books would have taught him Glory
in the place of Duty — the life of Alexander
the Great would have learned him the blessing
of wholesale murder — the history of Oliver
Cromwell might have taught him the right to
destroy one form of oppression by another
form as galling.
But the old Book had a different lesson.
From the shadows of dead centuries it spoke
to the heart of that Boy. Its words took
shape, and rose before him, even from the
tombs of long buried ages. And its lesson was
simply — it is right to battle in the cause of
freedom, because God has given the earth and
its fruits to all his children — All. Yet never,
even in warring for the right, forget that perfect
freedom is only found in perfect love.
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One evening in the fall of 1754, three gentlemen
were seated in a quiet room of an Inn,
talking with each other with evident earnestness,
on a subject of much importance.
It was a comfortable chamber, with carefully
sanded floor, high-backed oaken chairs, and a
side-board, or beaufet, covered with decanters
and glasses. The centre of the room was occupied
by a large table, on which a lighted candle
appeared, with a pair of pistols on one side,
a sheet of paper, pens and an ink-stand on the
other. And while the light of the candle fell
over the animated faces of the three gentlemen,
and the slight fire burning on the hearth imbued
the atmosphere with comfortable warmth, they
maintained their conversation with energetic
gestures, yet in a subdued and whispering tone.
The eldest of the three, a grim old man, with
bald head, and grey whiskers on his bronzed
cheek, was clad in a scarlet uniform. His
form was rather portly: the expression of his
grey eyes full of settled spleen; the very wrinkles
about his compressed lips, indicated a hasty
and irascible temper. The others, when they
spoke to him, called him “Captain,” for, some
years before, he had served in the regular force
of the British Army, and although he had long
resigned his commission, the odor of his dignity,
as well as the glitter of the uniform,
clung around him still.
He sat at the head of the table, resting his
hand upon the sheet of letter paper on which
he was writing, and writing a challenge for a
Ducl.
The second of the party, a tall man, with fair
complexion, yet firm and regular features, was
clad in the costume of a planter; he sat in an
arm chair, calmly smoking a cigar, and now
and then adding a word, which was to the con
versation like a spark to a keg of gunpowder.
He was called “'Squire.”
The third, a slender young man, almost effeminate
in his appearance, and attired in a close-fitting
British uniform, sat at the foot of the table,
his delicate hands laid upon the pistols. They
were intended for the anticipated duel. The
eyes of this young man, large, dark, and intensely
brilliant, illumined a pale, thoughtful
face, and his mouth was impressed with a
smile, which had as much of scorn as of mirth
for its meaning. He was known by the others
as “the Ensign.”
And these three men, by the light of a wax
candle, cheered by the kindly warmth of a wood
fire, had secluded themselves in the Inn-room,
in the early hours of an autumnal evening, in
order to plan a deadly combat, and prepare the
way over which two living men might journey
speedily to their coffins and the grave-yard.
It was, in fact, a Council of War.
Let us listen to the “Ensign,” while he explains
the cause of the duel; there is music in
his delicately modulated voice:
“This day, gentlemen, our town was the
scene of the greatest excitement. An election
was held for a member of Assembly: of
course there was a great crowd, and a vast
deal of hard talking and hard swearing. The
excitement was no means diminished by the
presence of a regiment of soldiers, who now
make their quarters in the town. I have the
honor to hold the commission of “Ensign” in
that regiment, gentlemen, as you well know.
The colonel is idolized by his men, although
he is, like myself, only a boy of twenty-two.
You know the history of his campaign in the
West, among the French and Indians. What
Virginian does not know it by heart? And
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this Colonel, idolized by his men, loved by
every Virginian heart, was this day, in the
presence of hundreds — yes, in the court-yard
of Alexandria — levelled to the earth by a
blow from a club!”
The Ensign lifted the pistols, and glanced
into the faces of his friends, as if to note the
effect of his words.
“Saw it myself,” said the 'Squire, speaking
between puffs of smoke. “Colonel was struck
to the earth, by a man not five feet high;
Colonel is six feet three inches. Dispute
about the election merits of the different candidates.
Colonel gave Payne the lie! and
Payne seized a club and let him have it. Sum
total of the whole matter — the lie and the
blow have passed, and they must fight.”
The 'Squire knocked the ashes from his
cigar.
“I have written the challenge,” gruffly exclaimed
the Captain, looking round with an
emphatic grimace. “Ensign, will you act as
the Colonel's friend, or shall I? As pretty a
little affair as I ever saw. They can take a
little bit of green meadow, by daylight to-morrow,
and fire a couple of rounds, and settle the
matter like — gentlemen.”
And the worthy Captain confirmed his sentiment
with an oath of remarkable emphasis.
“They must fight, said the 'Squire, “as Virginians!”
“The Colonel will be forever disgraced as a
soldier unless he shoots this Payne,” said the
Ensign, in his mild voice.
“Zounds gentlemen, a blow! D'ye hear
me, a blow with a club —” began the
Captain.
“In the open court-yard, too, in the presence
of hundreds,” interrupted the 'Squire.
“The very soldiers would have massacred
Payne, if the Colonel had not interfered,” said
the Ensign, joining in the chorus. “Certainly
it is the most aggravated case that ever came to
my notice.”
It was an aggravated case. The Colonel, a
gallant youth of twenty-two, who had done
brave service in the wilderness, to be degraded
by a blow, and not only covered with insult,
but struck to the very earth, at the feet of his
antagonist. It was galling. There was no
other way of redressing the wrong, and wash
ing out the insult, save in the blood of one or
other, or both of the parties. And then —
“I know the Colonel,” said the Ensign,
still handling the pistols; “calm and resolved
in the hour of battle, he is a man of impetuous
temper; there is hot blood in his veins.”
“He is in the next chamber,” whispered
the 'Squire, “boiling over with a sense of the
insult, no doubt. Do not speak loud. He
will overhear us — it is not well to drive him
to madness.”
“And yet he must hear us,” — the portly
Captain started from his chair, “and without
delay. For, odds-blood, d'ye see, we must
arrange the preliminaries.”
He moved to the door of the next chamber,
holding the written challenge in his hand.
The Ensign followed, grasping the pistols, and
the 'Squire came next with his — cigar.
The Captain knocked — a pause — no answer.
“He is mad with excitement, no doubt,”
whispered the ex-officer, turning to his comrades
with a sly leer, for he considered a duel
as a capital joke, and the funeral which followed
it, as a striking lesson for the young.
He pushed open the door, and the party
entered the room in which the Colonel sat
alone — doubtless chafed to very madness by
the memory of the wrong.
A wax candle, burning on a table, revealed
the furniture of a spacious chamber, and the
figure of a gentleman, absorbed in writing.
And while he wrote, with his hand gliding
rapidly over the paper, he cast his eyes, very
often, toward a miniature which lay near his
hand. His back was turned toward the three;
of course they could not see his face nor remark
the agitation of his features.
He did not hear the opening door, nor heed
the sound of footsteps, but absorbed by his
thoughts, continued writing.
“Go forward, and tap him on the shoulder,”
whispered the Colonel to the Ensign.
The Ensign advanced on tip-toe, and gliding
over the dark mahogany floor, raised his hand
to place it on the Colonel's shoulder, when his
eye was arrested by the miniature, and his uplifted
hand dropped by his side.
He sank backward, with a noiseless footstep,
and whispered to the gruff Captain.
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“I cannot do it now. It is his mother's
picture. He is writing to her —a last letter,
may be.”
The 'Squire now assumed the task, and
said, “Good evening, Colonel!” in a loud,
hearty voice.
The Colonel rose, and greeted his visitors
with a manner which combined all the grace
and warmth of youth with the dignity of riper
years.
As he stood near the table, his form in all
its majesty of stature, and his face with all its
firmness of character, disclosed by the light,
the three gentlemen could not but acknowledge
that he presented a splendid mark for a —
duelling pistol.
The mark of the blow darkened his white
forehead. His hair, nut brown in color, and
without powder, fell in careless masses aside
from his face. He was very pale; his eyes
were bloodshot, and from his loosened cravat
to his torn ruffles, everything about his attire,
had a wild and disordered appearance.
As he stood with one hand resting on the
table, and the other extended toward his
friends, they might recognize that blue uniform,
which had been marked many a time by the
bullet of the foe.
“I have written a challenge, Colonel,” said
the Captain, advancing.
“He struck you down in the presence of hundreds”—
and the Ensign drew near.
“As a Virginian you must fight;”—the
Planter also advanced.
“Gentlemen —my friends —” said the Colonel,
in a voice which was tremulous with
emotion, “you say very justly to me, `you
must fight.' This is the law of the code of
honor; is it not? Well: I will meet Mr.
Payne. I have made my preparations. I
have just written a letter to my mother, in
which I inform her that to-morrow morning I
will go out into a meadow, and let Mr. Payne
shoot me through the heart. That is right —
is it not?”
“But you forget, my dear Colonel, that you
are decidedly the best shot of the two. And
as for the sword, Payne cannot come near you.
You will shoot Payne, my dear Colonel, and
there the matter will end.”
The Ensign uttered these words in his
mildest voice, and with the most gentlemanly
bow in the world.
“Yes, it is true the matter will end there,”
said the Colonel, as he saw his friends encircle
him, “unless, indeed, some day or other I
should happen to meet a wife, or a mother, or
even a sister and hear words like those
whispered in my ear —`Murderer! I demand
my child! or my `brother!' or yet my `husband!
' This, you will confess, would be very
unpleasant.”
The three friends were silent.
The Planter lit the end of his cigar. The
Ensign examined the mountings of the pistols.
The Captain began to be very much interested
in the words of the written challenge.
And the Colonel, looking from face to face,
awaited an answer.
“So you all see, my good friends, that if
there is to be a corpse” —he paused, and the
three friends began to feel uneasy —“a corpse
in this affair, I would much rather be that
corpse myself, than to have the weight of a
murder on my soul.”
“But the insult —it was galling,” cried the
Ensign, his face flushed and his eye brightening.
“It was indeed galling,” said the Colonel,
“but the provocation?”
“You gave him the lie! and you were right,
by —!” said the Captain, in his deepest
bass.
“Let us understand the question fully,”
resumed the Colonel, in that deep tone, and
with that steady glance which exercised an
irresistible influence over his friends. “I am
six feet three inches in height. You all acknowledge
that I possess great personal
strength. Mr. Payne, on the contrary, is
neither remarkable for his stature nor for his
physical power. And I —in the presence of
my soldiers and my friends, call Mr. Payne
by the most opprobrious word known in our
language. Was I right, or was I wrong, my
friends? Which do you most admire, gentlemen,
my gallantry in thus insulting Mr.
Payne, or the courage of Mr. Payne in knocking
me down —by an unexpected blow, it is
true — but in the presence of my soldiers and
my friends?”
A deep pause followed these words.
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“Zounds! If I can comprehend you,
Colonel,” cried the Captain.
“Am I to shoot Mr. Payne because I insulted
him?” asked the Colonel!—“or, am I
to shoot him because he was too brave to bear
my insult? These are questions which I would
like settled before I kill him, gentlemen.”
And the Colonel turned away —looked forth
from the window upon the star-lit sky —while
his three friends gazed wonderingly in each
other's faces.
The Colonel remained by the window for at
least five minutes, gazing upon the sky, while
the mark of the blow darkened over his forehead.
His thoughts may have been dark,
bitter —but while he stood there, his three
friends remained near the table, looking into
one another's faces, but without speaking a
word.
“If you were in my place, Ensign, what
would you do?” asked the Colonel, as he
came toward the light again.
“I would sooner be tied to a tree, among
the Indians, with their scalping knives flashing
before my face, than to bear that blow!” said
the Ensign, with a gleaming eye.
“And I would sooner lead off ten forlorn
hopes, old as I am, than to avoid one challenge,
or skulk one duel!”
The old soldier pulled his whiskers with
needless violence, and stamped his foot upon
the floor until the chamber shook again.
“And as for me, I'm neither a young nor
an old soldier, but as a Virginian, sooner than
bear that blow, I would blow my brains out
with one of these pistols.”
The Colonel lowered his head —his face
was shadowed by thought.
“Wherefore, gentlemen?” he asked, in a
changed voice, as he shaded his eyes with his
hand.
“Because, to refuse to fight, in a case like
this, is to wear the name of a —COWARD.”
“And you have not the courage to wear
the name of coward?” exclaimed the Colonel,
still shading his face —“Yes, gentlemen,” —
and he raised his face, no longer gloomy and
pale, but flushed and smiling —“by your own
confession, the courage manifested in dying at
an Indian stake, or in perishing in a forlorn
hope, or in blowing one's brains out with a
suicide's pistol, is nothing —absolutely nothing—
compared with that kind of courage which
enables a man to face the name of coward,
aye, and wear it too!”
The young Colonel was magnificent in
battle —stately in the ball room —glorious on
his war horse —but now, as he pronounced
these words, with a flushed cheek, brilliant eye,
and clear deep voice, his three friends acknowledged
in their whispers that although his ideas
were “deuced bad,” his appearance, his manner,
was imposing beyond all power of words.
The countenance of the three friends, however,
were clouded.
“My dear fellow,” and the pale Ensign laid
his hand upon the arm of his friend; “I have
fought by your side. You know me. These
things abstractly considered, mark you, are
precisely as you say. But come to the
practical view of the matter. There is not a
young man in Virginia with prospects like
yours. You will soon be called upon to lead
your regiment against the common enemy, to
wit, the allied bands of French and Indians.
But you cannot go out to battle for your
country with a dishonored name. You have
been disgraced by a blow — disgraced, mark
you. You must wash out your disgrace in
blood.”
The Ensign spoke with feeling. His companions
murmured assent.
The brow of the Colonel grew cloudy; his
eyes brightened with a deadly fire.
“There must be a duel,” he said with something
like scorn or vengeance on his lip.
“Gentlemen will you excuse me for half an
hour? I myself will write the challenge.”
The three friends retired from the room,
and the Colonel was left alone.
Alone, with the fatal mark upon his forehead,
the insult rankling in his heart, and the—
face of his widowed mother before his
eyes.
We dare not describe the emotions of that
half hour.
When it passed, he came forth, and stood
on the threshold, holding a billet in his right
hand. The three friends started to their feet,
with one movement of surprise. The Colonel
stood before them, not in military array, but in
festival costume; his hair carefully powdered,
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his dark attire relieved by a white cravat and
white waistcoat, snow-white ruffles about his
hands, and neat diamond buckles on his shoes.
By his side he wore a plain dress sword.
But his powdered hair and white cravat,
while they threw his remarkable features into
bold relief, and by contrast, gave a deeper
bloom to his cheek, a clearer light to his eyes,
only made the mark on his forehead more
dark and palpable.
“Which of you will hear this challenge to
Mr. Payne?”
The three friends answered as with one
voice — “I will — and I — and I!”
“In my room — at an early hour — tomorrow!”
said the Colonel, very calmly, but
with a singular emphasis upon the words.
“You understand, gentlemen?”
He handed the challenge to the Ensign.
“In your room” — began the portly Captain.
“In my room, my good friend — for especial
reasons,” answered the young officer,
“and hark ye, Captain! Let as many of our
mutual friends, as were witnesses to the insult
be present, at the hour of seven, you will remember?”
“That's it, my boy,” cried the bluff Captain.
“Now you begin to talk!”
But the Ensign did not like the strange
calmness of the Colonel's face, nor did the
Planter know how to construe his festival attire.
“You are not in uniform, Colonel,” he
whispered.
“Oh, no!” and the Colonel glanced at his
attire; “you remember there is a ball this
evening. I must be present. There will be
many of our fair ladies and a goodly array of
gentlemen, no doubt. On no account would I
be absent from the ball”—
“Yet you may have some little affairs to arrange,”
hinted the Ensign —“before a duel,
Colonel, there are letters to write, and you will
need some sleep”—
The Colonel took his brother officer by the
hand and looked intently into his eyes —
“Harry! Do you think a man who has
resolved to commit murder by the morrow's
light, can pass the night before the deed, in
writing letters, or in wholesome slumber,
cheered by pleasant dreams? No! If I must
murder, or be murdered to-morrow morning,
for the sake of Honor, I will pass this night in
the dance — among beautiful ladies — and
groups of friends. We will have gaiety —
dance — song! Come, my friends — who's
for the ball?”
And the gallant Colonel led forth his friends
to the festival of that night — all save the
Ensign, who went to bear the challenge.
And whether the beautiful women of Virginia
flouted in the dance, or strains of merry music
awoke the echoes of the lighted hall, or
groups of admirers clustered round some fair
one, pre-eminent for her loveliness — still,
amid every form of gaiety, the Colonel was
the most prominent; the first, the liveliest and
the handsomest of all the men who were
gathered there.
And all the while as a King might bear his
crown, or a victor his laurels, the Colonel
bore the livid marks upon his forehead.
And the dancers who saw him, so gallant
and so gay — shuddered when they saw the
wound of the fatal blow upon his forehead —
and many a fair daughter of Virginia whis
pered, with accents of undisguised terror, the
words — “To-morrow! * * * The Duel!”
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The morrow came.
The room of the Colonel in the Inn of
Alexandria, was the theatre of a remarkable
scene. Through the uncurtained windows
came the light of the early dawn, and there
you might behold a glimpse of a river, glimmering
faintly in the ray of a fading star.
Silence reigned through the chamber —
silence and gloom — although some twenty
persons were assembled there. In one corner
stood the bed, with unruffled coverlet; in the
centre was the table, and around were seated
the gentlemen who had been summoned as
witnesses of the approaching Duel.
These gentlemen — some of whom were
officers in the Colonel's regiment, others
planters of broad lands and immense fortunes—
sat in silence, gazing with folded arms upon
the table which stood in the centre, or though
the gloom into each others' faces.
The bluff Captain was there, but he had
forgotten all his apt sayings about Honor and
Chivalry; near him the Ensign, whose pale
face, paler in fact than ever, indicated a night
of anxious thought, and then our friend the
Planter, who although the hour was early, and
he had not yet broken his fast, still pressed
a cigar between his lips, and hid his face in a
curtain of smoke.
The Colonel and the challenged man alone
were absent. As for the Colonel, he was in
the next room, attending to his letters, and —
perchance — to his last will and testament.
The first ray of sunrise shot through the
window and trembled upon the vacant table.
As if that beam, breaking in upon the gloom,
had unloosened their hearts and tongues, the
gentlemen began to whisper with each other.
One spoke of the sad and fatal necessity of
Murder involved in the Code of Honor —
another of the widows and orphans who had
been made by that blessed code — a third of
the efficacy of a sword thrust, in healing
broken hearts, or of the short and easy method
of patching up “self-respect” by a — pistol
shot.
Some spoke of the character of the young
Colonel, who, but twenty-two years old, might
be cold and stiff before an hour was gone.
And others of his antagonist — of the virtues
which bound him to the hearts of many dear
friends — of the ties which held him fast to
life. Before an hour, very possibly, that
antagonist would be a — corpse.
Our friend, the bluff Captain closed all argument
by the emphatic — “The Colonel's
been struck and he must fight!” The Planter
said nothing, but smoked his cigar; maybe he
was thinking of his home, and calling to mind
the Mother who might hear of the Colonel's
death, ere the day was two hours older.
As for the Ensign, he had nothing to say.
It was his part to see that the weapons of
murder were fairly prepared, and that the
murder itself was done according to rule. That
was all he had to do with the matter. And he
waited for the hour of the performance with
commendable impatience.
At last the Ensign pulled out his watch,
and announced the hour of — “Seven!”
There was a general movement, and at the
same moment the two doors of the chamber
were suddenly opened.
Through the door opening into the hall,
came a very tall, slim gentleman with a pistol-case
under his arm.
“The second of Mr. Payne!” burst from
twenty tongues
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And this tall slim gentleman, with the pistol-case
under his arm, was followed by a gentleman
whose short and stout form — well
knit withal — and not unpleasing features,
indicated the antagonist of the Colonel, Mr.
Payne himself, who yesterday levelled the
popular favorite in the dust.
The second bowed and laid his pistol-case
on the table; Mr. Payne bowed and folded
his arms. His courage was unquestioned, but
his face was impressed with an expression of
seriousness — maybe — gloom.
“The Colonel is good with the rifle, good
with the pistol, good with the small sword!”
So the whisper ran round the room.
“And he'll wing his man,” rather rudely
whispered the Captain.
The Ensign rose, bowed twice, once to Mr.
Payne, then to the second, and then in low
tones, began to confer with the second upon
the arms to be used, and the form to be observed
in the approaching duel. Their whispers
alone broke the breathless stillness. With
rifle or with sword, or with pistol? Here in
this room, or in the open air? Shall a fallen
'kerchief be the signal for them to begin?
How many thrusts, how many shots, how
much blood before “satisfaction” is given?
Such was the hurried conversation of the
“seconds,” conducted in animated whispers,
now with a bow and again with a smile. The
politest man in the world is the “second” of
a duel.
Meanwhile Mr. Payne stood alone — his
arms folded — his eyes now fixed on the
mantel-piece, now wandering to the window.
Perchance he felt that his position was rather
awkward; or thought how cheerful the sunshine
looked, and how gloomy it would seem, if in
an hour or more, those beams would light up
the cold face of a corpse — or the cold faces
of two corpses.
Mr. Payne awaited with great impatience
for the end of the second's conversation, and
for the coming of — his antagonist.
We have forgotten the opening of the other
door. Through that door the Colonel came,
at the very moment that Mr. Payne and his
friend strode through the other. He remained
for a moment concealed by the shadow of the
bed, and then stepped suddenly into view,
before the very eyes of Mr. Payne.
That gentleman started back with involuntary
surprise, as he caught first, a glimpse of
his antagonist's shadow, and then a full view
of that antagonist himself.
A murmur swelled through the apartment,
at the contrast presented by the personal
appearance of Mr. Payne, as compared with
the tall and imposing figure of the Virginia
Colonel. Not that Mr. Payne was at all an
unhandsome man, nor that his firm features
lack expression, but the Colonel was a man
whom you would remark not only for the
majesty of his stature, but for the expression
of his face, among a crowd of ten thousand
men.
And a burning blush overspread Mr. Payne's
face, as he saw his antagonist standing before
him, looking into his face — wearing the very
uniform which he had worn yesterday —
bearing upon his brow the livid scar of that
fatal insult.
But Mr. Payne had no time for thought.
“We have arranged the preliminaries,”
exclaimed the seconds, turning suddenly round,
and starting with surprise as they beheld their
principals standing face to face.
Again Mr. Payne blushed as he saw the
eye of the Colonel fixed upon him, and then
folding his arms, he knit his brow and gazed
sternly into his antagonist's face.
The gentlemen present rose with one movement.
You might have heard the beating of
your own heart, all was so breathlessly still.
Not a spectator but anticipated a personal conflict.
“Mr. Payne,” the Colonel began.
Mr. Payne retreated a step, still folding his
arms.
“Yesterday I called you `Liar!”'
“You did,” cried Payne, with a flush of
anger. “And —”
“You levelled me to the ground,” continued
the Colonel. “Behold the mark of your blow!”
He paused — the silence deepened. The
Colonel's voice and look were calm, but firm;
Payne's face was flushed; his eye indignant.
“And now, sir, I have a word to say to
you,” continued the Colonel, still calm and
firm. “And first let me ask a question. Is
it manly — is it Christian, to attempt to justify
a wrong by a murder? Or, is it more
generous, more just, to confess a wrong with
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[figure description] Page 031.[end figure description]
frankness, and solicit forgiveness from the
injured? Yesterday I applied an unjust and
ungentlemanly epithet to you — you promptly
avenged yourself — are you satisfied? Here's
my hand — let us be friends!”
Long before the words had passed from the
Colonel's mouth — long before the spectators
recovered from their stupefaction — Payne had
flung both hands toward his antagonist. The
tears were streaming from his eyes.
The seconds recoiled — the audience had
no speech; they could only stand and look.
Then the Colonel, with the mark on his
forehead, led Mr. Payne toward the table. A
decanter stood there, with two glasses.
“Gentlemen,” said the Colonel, filling a
glass and handing it to Payne, and then raising
one to his own lips —“I give you the health
of my good friend, Mr. Payne.”
They emptied their glasses with one impulse.
“And now, gentlemen, allow me to hope,
that when, in after time, you recall the various
personal combats which you have witnessed,
you will remember with something like
admiration the Duel of Mr. Payne and his
enemy, George Washington!”
Was there one man in that assemblage who
could have called young Washington, Coward?
And it was because he had “courage enough
to bear the name of Coward,” that he became
the man of counsel and of Battle — the
Deliverer of a Country — the President of a
free People — his name the watchword of all
time.
For a moment let us glance upon a far
different scene, which took place after the
Revolution.
There is the blush of dawn upon the
Hudson. In a glade, shaded by rocks overgrown
with vines, and canopied by a glimpse
of blue sky, two men stand ready for the Duel.
In other words, they have come here, in the
silence of the morning time, to do Murder, in
accordance with the rules of Honor.
Both of the same age — the very prime of
mature manhood — renowned alike in the
history of their country — they stand apart,
while the “seconds” load the pistols and
measure the ground.
One attracts your attention with his great
forehead, indented between the brows, and
swelling with the sublime proportions of a
great soul.
That is Alexander Hamilton.
The other wins your gaze, not only by his
forehead, but by the indescribable, almost
supernatural fascination of his eyes.
That is Aaron Burr.
They have been together in the Revolution,
in the tent of Washington,— amid the perils
of battle, — among the wintry hills of Valley
Forge.
Both great intellects, renowned alike for eloquence
and courage; they have come here, to
steal side-long glances at each other for a little
while — and then stand back to back, and, at
a word, wheel and murder.
Burr challenges Hamilton, but Hamilton,
unlike Washington, has not the “Courage to
bear the name of Coward.” Hamilton, convinced,
as any man in his senses must be, that
the law of Duel is simply a law of Murder,
accepts the challenge, and flings his life away
like Abner of old.
Gaze upon the cold face of Alexander
Hamilton — behold Aaron Burr shrink shudderingly
away from the corpse — and then
contrast the conduct of Hamilton and Burr,
the one accepting the challenge tendered by
the other — with the sublime courage of
Washington —“a Courage which was not
afraid of the name of Coward.”
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Ninety-three years ago — from the ninth of
July, 1848 — a man of almost giant stature,
clad in the garb of a hunter, emerged from the
shadows of a western forest, and stood in the
sunlight, upon the summit of a rock, which overhung
the waves of a wood-embosomed river.
It was a calm day in summer. There was
no cloud in the sky; no shadow on the waves.
The air whispered in subdued murmurs through
the leaves of the colossal trees, and the river,
flashing in the sun, rolled through the solitude
with wild flowers scattered upon its bosom.
And the hunter, a man of gaunt form, and
sunburnt face, seamed with scars, rested his
arms upon his rifle, and surveyed the scene
with a quiet delight. Standing thus alone,
amid the silence and verdure of the green
forest, he looked like an impersonation of those
rugged pioneers of the white race, who combine
the craft of civilization, with the costume
and manners of the red men.
The scene was marked by peculiar features.
Gazing up the river, the hunter beheld on one
side the sombre verdure of a trackless forest,
advancing to the very brink of the waters; on
the other a level plain — bordered by woods—
succeeded by a sloping hill, with depth of
woods beyond, rising boldly into the summer
sky.
There were dismal ravines among those
woods — paths of difficulty and danger, beside
that river; and the hunter clutched his rifle,
while a grim smile crossed his scarred features
as the thought of his Indian foes flashed over
his brain.
Still, clad in his garb of skins, with a hunting
shirt worn over all, and girt by a leathern
belt to his waist, this man of the wilderness,
whose delight it was to track the wild beast to
its lair, or follow the Indian on his way of
death, leaned upon his rifle, while his sunken
eyes began to flash and brighten in his sunburnt
face.
It was high noon.
The silence of the wilderness was unbroken
by a sound.
Here waved the forest leaves, gorgeous with
the drapery of summer; there flashed the river,
bearing stray flowers upon its tremulous
bosom; yonder, on the northern shore,
extended the plain, with the hill rising gently
toward the distant wood.
In fact, the river and the plain, and sloping
hill, embosomed among woods, smiled in the
noonday sun, without one floating cloud to
shadow their beauty, or dim the tranquil azure
of the summer sky.
While the hunter stood on the projecting
rock, drinking the silence and the fragrance of
the untrodden wild, a change came suddenly
over the scene. The blast of a war trumpet
was borne upon the air; a war banner fluttered
in glimpses on the sight.
That trumpet was the voice of an army;
that banner waved over the heads of twelve
hundred men in battle array.
It was a very beautiful sight to see, as
emerging from the shadows, they came along
the southern bank of the river, with the great
forest on one hand, and the river, rolling and
flashing on the other. Banners were waving
there, and drum answered to trumpet, as they
came, and the tread of twelve hundred men
awoke the echoes of the woody glen.
There were British soldiers with their scarlet
coats glaring, and their burnished arms
flashing in the sun; there was the pride of the
Virginian chivalry, clad in huntsman attire;
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[figure description] Page 034.[end figure description]
and there, riding leisurely along, upon a snow-white
steed, came the general of the host, upon
whose word hung twelve hundred lives.
He was a man of commanding presence,
with a golden-hilted sword by his side, and a
laced chapeau upon his forehead. A scarlet
coat, adorned with gold lace, displayed the
strength and elegance of his warrior form; his
florid face, stamped with an abiding complacency,
was ruffled with a smile.
Around him rode a band of gallant men, the
officers of his staff, arrayed, like their General,
in scarlet and tinsel.
Only one in that band was attired in different
costume; only one did not mingle in
the laughter, or take part in the careless conversation.
He was a youth of twenty-three years, and
his pale cheek bore traces of sickness. Over
his blue uniform a hunting shirt was thrown,
but it did not conceal the noble outline of his
tall form, nor altogether hide the proportions
of his manly chest. Mounted upon a dark
bay horse, he rode forward in silence, his grey
eyes flashing from his pale face with steady
light.
On this side the woods — yonder the river—
around him the glitter of tinsel and the
waving of plumes, and the youth of twenty-three
years laid one hand absently upon the flowing
mane of his steed, while the other rested upon
the hilt of his sword. His thoughts were far
away — his absent eye and pale cheek contrasted
strongly with the laughing faces which
encircled him.
The General and his Staff were thinking gay
thoughts and talking pleasant words in that
quiet summer hour.
The youth of twenty-three was the only
silent one in the band. Unsheathing his goldhilted
sword, the General pointed to the
opposite shore, where the level plain, embosomed
among woods, rose into a gently sloping
hill, backed by a sombre forest and a
smiling sky:
“Before sunset, Fort Duquesne is ours,” he
said, with a smile. “Our men will cross the
river at this ford, ascend yonder hill, and
traverse ten miles of forest road, which lie
between us and the fort, ere the setting of the
sun. The banner of his Majesty will wave
over the conquered fort before the day is gone.”
The gallant men who rode near their General
chorussed his words, and amid the tramp of
that legion of armed men, the roll of drum and
the peal of trumpet, you might have heard
their exclamations —
“Before sunset, the flag will wave over the
conquered fort!”
The youth of twenty-three did not mingle
in the chorus. He cast his glance toward the
opposite shore — toward those magnificent
woods, whose depths embosomed dismal
ravines — toward the far-off hill-top, which
was separated from Fort Duquesne by a wilderness
of ten miles; and his lip was compressed,
his cheek grew paler, his eye gathered
new fire.
Only the night before he had started from
the sick couch and mounted his war horse.
Perchance the fever still lingered in his veins;
but his face was shrouded in sadness — his
heart was shadowed by a vague but overwhelming
foreboding.
The General turned to him with a laugh —
“Colonel, you are gloomy to-day,” he said.
“But then you have just risen from a sick
couch, and the road is rough and fatiguing.
In a little while, however, the danger and the
peril will be over. To-night we will sleep in
Fort Duquesne, and drink a bumper to the
health of our King.”
The young man urged his horse nearer to
the General's side.
“General,” he said, bending toward him,
and speaking in a whisper, “there are dangerous
coverts on yonder shore — fatal ravines
in the depths of yonder woods. Let me take
a band of picked men, and beat the covert and
explore the ravines, before the whole body of
our men cross the river.”
There was an inexpressible earnestness in
his voice — a steady light in his grey eye.
The General uttered an ejaculation of impatience:
“There is no danger,” he exclaimed, assuming
all the dignity of a General in the regular
service. “To-night we will sleep in Fort
Duquesne.”
The young man did not reply; and while
the bugle answered to the drum, and the
solemn grandeur of the forest was contrasted
by the flashing of the waters, General
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Braddock and Colonel Washington rode side by
side on the border of the Monongahela.
Twelve hundred men, some clad in scarlet,
others in blue — some lifting their glittering
bayonets into light — others girding their tried
rifles in sinewy arms, were marching there,
with their General in their midst, and the sad
eye of George Washington glancing from line
to line.
And the same breeze which fanned the pale
cheek of the young soldier, lifted the great
banner of England into light, and tossed its
gay emblazonry over plumes and bayonets of
the armed men.
It was a sight, mingling grandeur and beauty,
to see these soldiers emerge from the solemn
shadows, and take their way along the river's
verge; but as the glittering array, parting into
three divisions, prepared to ford the river, while
the bugles rang with merrier peals, the scene
assumed a deeper interest, a stranger and wilder
grandeur.
Braddock, reining his white horse near the
shore, saw the first division, of three hundred
men, march into the waves in exact order,
while the banner fluttered in their van. The
face of the brave General was clad in smiles;
his voice, heard in repeated commands, was
gay and boisterous.
And as the bayonets of the first division
glittered near the northern shore, the second
division, two hundred strong, left the southern
shore, with the roll of drum and the clang of
trumpet. Beautiful it was to see their burnished
arms, reflecting the blaze of noonday,
and firing the tremulous waves with masses of
dazzling light.
And as the General saw the first division
ascend the opposite bank, the second fording
the river; he himself led on the third, — the
main body of his brave army, — and while
his white horse bent down to slake his thirst
in the cool waves, he beheld the artillery and
the baggage train, slowly urging onward, while
the thoughtful young soldier, rode in silence at
his side.
There was no smile upon the face of young
Washington. True, the sky was smiling beyond
the opposite woods, but dismal ravines
were hidden beneath those groups of foliage;
deathly coverts lurked beneath those bowers
of summer verdure.
And yet it was a magnificent thing to see
this brave band parting into three divisions —
one flashing on yonder plain, the second
emerging from the waves, and the third toiling,
on in mid-stream —while from each division
trumpet answered trumpet, and the clattering
of arms, the tread of regular columns, the
neighing of war steeds, gave omen of a day of
glory, to be followed by a night of victorious
repose.
The grim hunter who stood upon the rocks
beheld it all. Saw the first division ascend
the hill, the second emerge upon the opposite
shore, and the third in the midst of the waters,
and then the animated face of Braddock, side
by side with the pale visage of Washington, for
a moment enchained his gaze.
He left the tree which had sheltered him;
he descended from the rock, and drew near the
shore. A solitary soldier, whose red coat
shamed the hunter's grim array, lingered there,
the last to cross the river, the last man of the
army. His foot was in the water, when the
hand of the hunter pressed his shoulder.
“Drink, man, drink, from the river, before
you cross,” cried the hunter to the astonished
soldier, “For there's a warm day before you,
and your next draught will be of blood.”
And while the soldier, startled at the appearance
of the gaunt backwoodsman, shrunk from
his touch, the hunter clasped his rifle more
firmly in his knotted fingers, and dashed
through the river's waves.
We will see him again, when the fight goes
on most horribly under its pall of cloud; the
rifle which he grasps is the fate of yonder
gallant army.
Meanwhile, Braddock, passing from the
river to the shore, — his eye drinking in, with
one quick glance, the blue sky, the encircling
woods, and the hillside clad in scarlet and steel,—
Braddock we say, the General of the army,
who had been trained to war on the parade
ground of Hyde Park, turned with a smile to
the young Virginian who rode near his
side.
“The sky is clear, Colonel, — to-night we
sleep in Fort Duquesne!”
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“General,” said young Washington, with an
earnestness in his tone that would have
penetrated any heart, not stultified by self-conceit,
“with twelve men, I will traverse
yonder thickets, and defend our army from a
fatal surprise.”
The young soldier as he spoke bent over
the neck of his bay steed, and his pale face,
shadowed in the forehead by his hat, was
touched in the cheeks by the noon-day sun.
Braddock smiled —
And at the moment, a column of smoke, rose
from the hill-side into the sky — there was a
sound as of one column of armed men recoiling
on another — from every side pealed the
rifle-shot mingled with that war-cry which
makes the blood sun cold even in a veteran's
veins.
The smile passed from Braddock's face.
Casting his gaze toward the hill-top, he
beheld his first division half lost to view amid
clouds and flame. He saw a sheeted blaze
pouring from the shadows of the trees. He
heard the cry which pealed from the wood,
from the ravine — echoing, thrilling, from
every side into the calm Heaven.
“The Indians and the French are upon us!”
he cried, turning his flushed face toward young
Washington.
At the same moment, the white plume which
crowned his chapeau was borne away by a
rifle shot.
“General,” cried Washington, “there is but
one way to save our army from defeat and
massacre. Let our men fight under shelter,
and then every rock will be a fort, every tree
a castle —”
With a sneer on his colorless lip, the
General turned away.
“That is not the way for an Englishman to
fight,” he said.
But as he spoke, the first division came
rushing in wild disorder from the top of the
hill — soon its panic-stricken soldiers communicated
their panic to the second — and from
the second to the third, like lightning from one
cloud to another, that panic leapt, until amid
the clouds which rushed over the scene, nothing
was seen but broken ranks, falling back before
a deadly fire.
How the voice of the battle awoke the
wilderness, and filled every nook of the forest
with the groans of dying men! Dying afar
from country and from home, not in open fight,
or by a foe, whose eyes flashed in their faces as
his arm fell in the death-blow, but by the hand
of an enemy who crouched in the thicket, and
murdered securely from the shadow of a rock.
Behold the scene. This band of twelve
hundred men, scattered over the hill-side, are
shut in by a wall of fire. They advance and
they are dead. They retreat, and their path
is choked by corpses, which a moment since
were living men. They move to his side, and
death flashes upon them from yonder log. On
to the other, and they are mown to pieces by
the fire from those collosal oaks.
And Braddock, hoarse with shouting and
blind with rage, sends the gallant men of his
staff whirling over the field.
“Let them form in regular order. Let them
fight like Englishmen, and the day is ours.”
And to his side there comes a wounded
horse, bearing the young Virginian, whose
hunting shirt, is torn into ribbons by the bullets
of the foe.
“General,” he cries, “it is not yet too late.
Let our men fight the enemy in their own way
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— let them fight behind cover — and the day is
ours.”
The words have not passed his lips, when
his horse reels under him, and sprinkles the
sod with blood. Then young Washington
starting from his dying horse, springs to his
feet, and awaits the answer of Braddock, his
pale face now flushing fast with the fever of
battle.
An oath escapes the lips of the Briton.
“No, sir. The men shall fight as Englishmen
or not at all!” he shouts, and dashes to
another part of the field.
Half-way down the hill-side, encircled by
the sudden clouds of battle, the young Virginian
stood, one foot resting upon the flank of
his dying steed, whose glassy eye was once
upturned toward his master's face, and then
cold and dark forever.
His cheek was no longer pale — flushed
with the impulse of the fight, it gave a deeper
light to his eye, while his brow grew radiant
with a sombre delight.
It was in this moment, when the fire of the
irresistible foe, hurled panic and death into the
“exact” order of the British army, that young
Washington lingered for a moment near his
dead steed, and took in with an eager glance
the confused details of the scene.
Clouds of white smoke, tinged here and
there with a midnight fold, rolled over the hill-side,
and hung over the river, reaching from
forest to forest, above the waters, like a bridge
of death.
Among these clouds, through the intervals
made by the musquet flash or rifle blaze, the
British host, no longer joined in compact
lines, but broken into confused crowds, was
visible. From the hill-top and from the ravines
on either hand; nay, from every log and
tree streamed the incessant blaze which strewed
the sod with dead and dying. And the calm
sky was choked by battle cloud — the awful
stillness of the virgin forest was succeeded by
the howl of demoniac carnage.
This was the scene which Washington beheld
as resting one foot upon the flank of his
dead horse, he cast a hurried glance around
him.
Braddock was there — upon his horse, which
panted and reared among heaps of dead — his
voice came hoarsely down the hill as he en
deavored to rally his men into parade order,
and force them to fight this battle in “regular”
style.
Washington groaned in anguish. He had
warned the General of the ambush — had besought
him, almost with tears, to move forward
with caution — and now, his warnings disregarded,
his prayers met with scorn, he beheld
twelve hundred men at the mercy of a hidden
foe.
“The day is not yet lost!” he cried, as a
hope brightened over his face.
“George!” said a gruff voice, and a hard
hand was laid upon his own.
The giant hunter,[1] clad in his costume of
skins, half concealed by a hunting shirt, stood
before him. The blood trickled over his sunburnt
cheek, but he grasped his good rifle in
one hand, while the other held the rein of a
frightened and riderless horse.
“George,” said the hunter, with gruff familiarity,
“thou'rt the only man can save us today.
Here's a horse, boy — mount him, and
tell that fool of a Britisher, that we don't
fight French and Ingins in this 'ere style. Tell
him that we can fight 'em in their own way,
but it is not our fashion to walk up to death
and swallow it, in this fool-hardy manner.”
Not a word more was spoken. With a
bound Washington sprang into the saddle — you
may see his form, yonder amid the mists of
battle — you may trace the fiery circles of his
sword above the lurid clouds.
The hunter gazed after him with a grim
smile, and then plunged into the smoke.
Near the top of the hill, his face purpled by
rage, Braddock mounted on a fresh horse —
two had fallen under him — was hurrying his
aids over the field, while the bullets whistled
like hail over his head, and about the long mane
of his war steed.
“General!” cried Washington, as he dashed
up to the side of the Briton — “once more let
me beseech you — change the order of this
conflict. It is folly, it is worse than folly, to
attempt to combat a hidden enemy in this style.
Let the Provincials, at least, fight behind
cover” —
In the very earnestness of the very moment
he leaned forward, his hunting shirt falling
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[figure description] Page 039.[end figure description]
back over his chest, and disclosing his blue
uniform. And at the very instant a button was
severed from his breast by a rifle ball.
Braddock did not even listen to the young
Virginian. Maddened by the terrible havoc
going on every hand — inflated by the peculiar
self-complacency which possesses mere
military men, over all the world, he bade his
aid-de-camp join with him in the attempt to
rally the panic-stricken troops, to display them
once more in regular lines, and march them
“exactly” to death, according to the tactics of
the regular army.
But at the moment a scene occurred which
paled even Braddock's cheek.
A band of Virginians, some eighty men in
all, fought their way up the hill-side, turned a
fallen tree, whose huge trunk, some five feet in
diameter, offered a convenient breast-work.
From the thicket, beyond that tree, streamed
the blaze of Indian rifles, and yet those men,
led on by their Captain, the brave Waggoner,
fought steadily up the hill-side, their blue hunting
frocks seen distinctly amid the clouds which
curled about the summit.
Their way is littered with dead; they cannot
advance but the corpse of a Briton, clad in
scarlet, glares in their faces with stony eyes.
Braddock saw them on their fearful way —
Washington, too, reining his brown steed near
the General's side, held his breath as he
marked each step of their progress.
The short sword of Waggoner gleaming in
their van — the heroic Virginians dashed
onward, and, leaving three of their number in
their path, they reach the fallen tree — they
are dealing death among the foemen hidden by
yonder thicket, when —
Braddock's cheek grew livid — Washington
uttered a cry of despair!
— When they are cut down, hewn into
fragments, crushed into one mangled heap of
living men, entangled among dead and dying.
Crushed not by a fire from their front, but by
a fire from the rear, mangled not by bullets of
the foe, but by the rifles of their comrades —
their brothers.
Captain Waggoner rose up from among the
heaps of dead, and shook his bloody knife in
the air, in witness of the fatal mismanagement
which had butchered thirty out of his eighty
men.
Washington saw that sword quivering and
gleaming from the hill-top, and with a cold
sneer on his face, turned to the regular general.
“You see, General,” he said, “those of our
men who mean to fight, are massacred by your
regular soldiers!”
Ere Braddock could reply, his horse sunk
beneath him, pierced in the heart by a rifle
bullet. He rises from the dying steed — he
shouts for a fresh horse — he plunges madly
to and fro in the thickest of the battle. Does
he learn wisdom by experience, does he bid
his men to maintain the fight behind the trunks
of these colossal trees? No — no! Determined
to enforce “regular tactics” and “correct
discipline” to the last moment, he speeds
wildly among his broken columns, never for a
moment pausing in his career, save to insult
some provincial band, who are holding battle
from the shelter of fallen trees.
There was a slender youth, clad in the
hunting frock, who loaded his rifle behind a
poplar tree which towered alone in the centre
of the field. His young breast protected by
this tree, he loaded in silence without even a
battle shout, and then, with lips compressed
and flashing eye, took his deadly aim, and saw
his distant foeman reel into death.
It was Braddock who marked this youth,
and reined his horse near the tree, pulling the
rein so suddenly, that the wild steed fell back
on his haunches.
“Coward!” cried he, turning his flushed
face towards the boy, “you dare not fight like
a man, but must skulk behind the shelter of a
tree —”
He leans over the neck of his steed; his
sword descends — the boy sinks on his knees,
and turns his disfigured face toward the British
General.
But Braddock was gone again. Urging his
horse over the dying and the dead, he hurries
to another part of the field, beholding everywhere
the same spectacle — broken crowds of
scarlet-coated soldiers, firing upon each other
while the hidden foe hems them on every hand,
and mows them incessantly into the great
harvest of death.
Meanwhile, the boy by the solitary poplar,
beaten to the earth by Braddock's sword,
wipes the blood from his eyes, and looks
around with a vague glance. His senses are
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[figure description] Page 040.[end figure description]
whirling in delirium; a word of home comes
to his white lip, mingled with the syllables of
a sister's name.
But there is a giant form bending over him;
a sunburnt face, streaked with blood, is gazing
into his own with dilating eyes. It is the
hunter, clad in a hunting shirt, spotted with
blood, but with his good rifle in his brawny
arm.
His own arm becomes nerveless, his harsh
voice faint and broken, as he bends over the
bleeding boy.
“Arthur,” he says, smoothing the brown
locks of the boy aside from his bloody forehead—
“who has done this? Tell me, child—
tell me;” — an oath escaped from between
his set teeth — “and if he's hidden behind a
hundred yards of French and Ingins I'll pay
him for it, afore this day's an hour older!”
The boy passed one hand over his eyes, and
wiped the blood away.
“Brother,” he faintly said, and a smile of
recognition passed his pale face — “It was a
sword * * * * In Braddock's hand. *
* * * You see, he did not like it, because
I fought behind a tree.”
The stern backwoodsman rose and clutched
his rifle. The cords of his bared neck began
to swell; a hoarse cry came from his heaving
chest.
And then, while his young brother lay
bleeding at the foot of the poplar tree, the sunburnt
man, with the great tears starting over
his tawny cheeks, began to load his rifle in
silence, but with much prudence and care.
“That ball is for him, Arthur — I shan't
fire this rifle until his heart lies afore it, and
that's a sartin thing!”
With these words he turned away, measuring
the sod with immense strides. He had
not gone ten paces, when a sudden thought
came over him.
“The boy will die,” he muttered, and
turned away.
He drew near, but no voice greeted him this
time with the word “brother.” Where he
had left a wounded form, bathed on the brow
with streaming blood, now was only a corpse,
propped against the tree, the rifle fallen from
its stiffened fingers, and the cold lips parting in
a smile.
There was a stain upon his breast, near the
heart — a stray bullet had completed the work
begun by Braddock's sword.
It would have moved your heart to see the
rugged backwoodsman, gazing silently into the
face of the dead boy. Few words he said,
but they were spoken with a heaving heart and
choking utterance.
“Arthur, my child, you staid at home with
the old folks in the settlements yonder, while
your brother went out to seek his fortin'
among b'ars and Ingins in the woods. A bold
fellow I've been — many a rough fight I've
had — but I don't want to see two days like
this in a life time. This mornin', when I
came to jine the army, I thought you was far
away — safe at home — it's the first time I've
seen your face for many a day. An' now
they're waitin' for you, — father and mother,—
and here you are, cut down like a dog, by
Braddock's sword.”
A gleam of battle light reddened the pale
features of the dead boy.
The giant hunter turned away, grasping the
rifle which embodied the fate of the army, the
destiny of Braddock. He turned away, and
soon was lost among the clouds — after a
while we will behold him again.
For three hours the work of massacre went
on. Five horses were shot beneath the British
General as he hurried madly over the field, but
all his efforts were vain. His artillery and
infantry, mingled at first in sad disorder, were
soon mingled in one common havoc. For
three hours the blood shed on the hill-side
trickled down through the grass, and fell drop
by drop into the Monongahela. For three
hours that girdle of flame shut in the doomed
army, and when the third hour came, and the
sun, as if weary of slaughter, veiled his beams
in a lurid cloud, seven hundred men were
stretched upon the sod.
Seven hundred dead and dying, out of an
army of twelve hundred men, slain in a combat
of three hours, by a hidden foe!
Sixty officers, brave and gallant; the flower
of Virginian chivalry and the pride of the regular
army, were stretched among the slain.
And as the work of carnage goes on, where
is Washington, the youth of twenty-three,
whose grey eye, already fires with precocious
experience?
Many and thrilling are the traditions which
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[figure description] Page 041.[end figure description]
the old soldiers of the field — the few survivors
of its carnage — have handed from the
history of their hearts down to our day.
Mounted on a dark bay he had crossed the
river, his pale cheek touched by a solitary
flush, but his grey eyes full of indefinable foreboding.
The bay horse had fallen dead beneath him
in the dawn of the fight.
Next, his commanding form, roused into all
its vigor by the frenzy of battle, was borne
over the field by a generous roan horse, whose
eye dilated with the fury of the hour.
And the generous roan had fallen, too, under
his young rider, howling his last war cry as
his broken limbs crumbled beneath him.
But now, mounted upon a grey horse, his
forehead bared to the battle flash, and his uniform
riddled by bullet-holes, Washington is
seen where the fire of the enemy illumines the
verge of the ravine; where the Indian yell
mocks the anguish of the dying — where the
hill-top gleams like a funeral pyre, with bayonets
and rifle blaze.
Now confronting this havoc-stricken band
of regulars, hurling his horse before them, and
daring them to fly the field; now rallying
yonder group of Continentals, and leading
them to the hopeless charge; at one time, beside
the infuriated Braddock, listening to his
mad commands, at another, whirling like an
arrow over the hill side, into the very vortex
of battle.
It was thus that the grey horse became
known to friend and foe; it was amid the corses
of Braddock's field beside the waters of the
Monongahela, that the name of Washington
was first stamped upon the hearts of his countrymen,
to ripen into full glory upon a broader
and holier field.
And wherever the young Virginian went,
whether skirting the borders of the wood, or
riding in the centre of the fight, there was an
eye that followed his career; there was a rifle
levelled at his breast.
So, Braddock, wherever he rode, saw
through the mists of the scene, an eye watching
his progress, a rifle levelled at his heart.
There was this difference between the two.
It was an Indian who tracked the steps of
Washington, and hung like a red image of
death in his path. Three times he had fired
— he was the most fatal marksman in all his
tribe — and yet his balls had glanced from the
breast of Washington, like icicles from the
granite rock.
It was a gaunt form, almost gigantic in stature,
that followed Braddock through the mazes
of the scene. A backwoodsman, with a torn
hunting frock, fluttering over his garment of
skins. But never once had he fired. Many
times had the rifle rose, and the aim been taken,
but there was no report from the deadly
tube. He seemed, this unknown man, to delay
his fire, as an epicure pauses long, before
he touches the richest viand of his feast.
At last there come a moment — the bloodiest
and the darkest of all — near the close of
the third hour, when Washington reined his
grey horse near Braddock's side. It was near
the summit of the hill — they were encircled
by corpses; wherever their eyes turned was
the sight of a dying man, writhing in the last
agony, or a dead man's face, upturned to the
dark battle cloud.
Braddock's jet black horse — it was the
sixth he had bestrode on this fatal day — hung
his head over the neck of Washington's grey
steed, as the riders conversed in hurried and
subdued tones.
Braddock's gay uniform was sadly disfigured;
his face, livid under the eyes, was
stamped with a sullen despair.
Washington's visage, boldly marked against
the dark cloud — the forehead bare and the
eye gleaming — was radiant with a glorious
hope.
“General, I can save the wreck of our force,”
he said, in a pleading tone. “Permit me to
do it.”
At this moment, from a log, some few paces
behind the back of Washington, rose the image
of a gaunt backwoodsman, with levelled
rifle, and sunburnt face, compressed by a
deadly resolve.
And from a rock, fifty yards from the back
of Braddock, an Indian started into view, his
rifle poised — his red plume waving over his
visage — the death aim taken, and the finger
on the trigger.
Does the backwoodsman level his rifle at
the heart of Washington?
Does the Indian chief mean to slay the General
in the gay scarlet uniform?
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[figure description] Page 042.[end figure description]
No — no! Ten times the Indian has fired
at the heart of Washington; four bullets have
touched but not wounded him; six have left
him scatheless. If the eleventh does not kill,
the Indian will fire no more, assured that the
Great Spirit panoplies the youth of twenty-three
years.
And as for the Backwoodsman, this is his
first and last fire at the heart of Braddock. As
he loaded that rifle near the body of the dead
brother — he feels that its bullet is winged by
death.
And thus, the Indian behind Braddock, the
Backwoodsman at the back of Washington,
each take their fatal aim in the last hour of the
fatal fight.
“Permit me, General,” said the tremulous
voice of Washington, “permit me to save the
the wreck of our gallant band?”
There was a lull in the storm. Suddenly,
through the momentary stillness, two separate
sounds, from opposite sides, pealed on the air
like echo answering echo. Two rifle balls,
winged by death, hissed on their way.
One tore a fragment from the breast of
Washington's coat, but left the young hero
scatheless.
Braddock smiled as he marked the trace of
the bullet — and then fell on the neck of his
horse with a low groan. A bullet had
pierced his right arm, and buried itself in his
heart.
And the Indian chief fled into the thicket,
telling his red brothers how the Great Spirit
guarded the breast of the young man, mounted
on the grey horse — how steel could not
wound, nor bullet harm him — his heart was
as granite, his arm as iron, and his name destined
for great deeds in some future day.
And the gaunt hunter went slowly to the
foot of the poplar tree; and bent near the dead
boy, and wiped the blood, still warm, from his
cold features, saying, amid his anguish, two
simple words —
“My Brother!”
And the young Virginian, mounted on the
grey steed, rallied the wreck of the gallant
army, and — while artillery and baggage were
left, with the corpses of the slain, to the foe —
saw them cross once more the river, whose
waves now blushed as if in very shame for
the carnage, and a rude tumbril rolled onward;
bearing amid the broken columns the mangled
form of Braddock, who, in the delirium of his
wounds, kept ever repeating a single name —
“Washington.”
eaf256.n1[1] See Legend Seventh.
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[figure description] Page 043.[end figure description]
There is a Legend which should never be
told, save in the calm of the summer twilight,
when the drops of the shower yet sparkle on
the leaves, and the setting sun shines out from
the west, while the east displays a rainbow on
its clouds. Then when the glory of the rainbow,
set upon the eastern cloud, seems to call to
the declining sun, shining in great splendor,
from the clouds that hang above his rays —
when there are drops like diamonds on every leaf—
when the air is fragrance — and one heavenlike
glimpse of sunset and rainbow, looks in
upon the world, ere the storm and blackness of
night comes over us — then let us tell a strange
Legend of the wild wood, in the days of old.
And yet I am afraid to tell this Legend.
It has lingered so long about my heart — been
in my dreams so long — come to me like music
that bursts over still waters through midnight
stillness — that I am loth to write it down
in words. Afraid that my pen cannot do justice
to its simple pathos; that its joy and its
tears, will find in my words no voice, worthy
of their intensity and love.
One summer evening when the sun was low,
an old man sat in front of his cabin door.
That cabin stood in a hollow or glen, which
extended through the virgin forest from north
to south, with a glimpse of blue sky at either
extremity.
It was a one-storied fabric, built of huge
logs, and hidden under the boughs of the great
trees. The roof, the timbers, everything but
the rugged door, was hidden by boughs and
vines. So that rugged door looked not so
much like the entrance of a cabin, as a mass
of rough boards, set in branches and leaves.
Some gleams of fading sunlight came from
the sky above — from either extremity of the
glen — and spread a pool of light before the
old man's door.
Shut out from the world, three hundred
miles at least from white civilization, hidden in
this nook of the Alleghanies, this old man sat
on the side of a fallen log, and with light playing
around him — while the other part of the
glen was in shadow — he seemed thinking of
other days, of his youth, or of the graves of his
People.
It is no image of the imagination that I
would paint to you. An actual old man, enduring,
suffering — dying by inches — in the
awful solitude of the forest, in the year 1754.
A tall frame, gaunt and grim with age, and
looking like a skeleton, encased in hunting
shirt, leggins, and mocassins. A withered
face, browned by wind and sun, with the
sinews of the bared throat as prominent as
cords, and the wrinkled forehead contrasted with
scanty flakes of snow-white hair. His limbs
crossed, his large hands laid on his knees, the
old man gazes into the shadows of the forest,
and seems like the Pilgrim of the old story,
who sat him down one day, and waited patiently
until Death came by.
Upon the log which supports the old man,
we behold a rifle, with stock of dark mahogany,
and mountings of silver. It is much
worn, indeed it has seen forty years of service.
For this aged man, now sitting alone in the
forest, presents to us a stern embodiment of
that wondrous race of men, who penetrated
the great forest of Pennsylvania, at least one
hundred years in advance of their race, and
made the Indian mode of life their own,
gathering food with their rifles, and sometimes
feeling a great consciousness of God's Presence,
even in the midnight of the wilderness.
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But the hunter is old now, very old; ninety
years are upon him with their snows.
The hand that once was strong, is now
weak as any child's. The foot that once
scaled the mountain, and trod without fear, the
verge of dizzy chasms, now trembles in the
little journey from the log to the cabin door.
And he will die alone in the wilderness!
From no wilderness of Red Brick, will his
soul escape to his God. But gloriously from
the dead solitudes of the wilderness, that soul
will leave the shattered frame — cold and stiff
upon the log — and wing its way through the
virgin air to Eternity.
“Ninety years!” the old man murmurs —
and is still again. It is a long time to contemplate;
longer to feel like ice in your veins,
and winter in your soul.
And from the cabin-door, there steals on tip-toe
a form, which by its very contrast, made
the old age of the Hunter more deeply venerable.
A young girl, clad in a coarse skirt which
reaches to the knee, her limbs covered with
leggings, her feet with mocassins.
And yet you never saw a form at once so
lithe and so blooming in its outlines — you
never heard a step so gentle and yet so active—
you never saw a brown face like hers,
illumined by so pure a soul, or shadowed by
chesnut hair so rich and flowing!
She came behind the old man gently, and
laid her hands upon his white hairs, and
placed her smooth cheek against his withered
face.
It was like an embodied dream.
The withered cheek beside the clear brown
face of youth, the eyes dim with age, contrasted
with eyes large, black and brilliant;
while hair telling of ninety winters swept
the chesnut curls which scarcely indicated
nineteen summers.
It was a touching sight — to see the old man
clasp her hands within his own, while his
uplifted eyes, brightened into life again, as he
perused the wild beauty of her face.
And as the evening hour deepened into
night, they conversed together, the aged man,
and the young maiden. Talked low and long
of that strange life in the forest — of the books
which cheered the lonely hours of the winter's
night — of one Book which opened a path, even
through the silence of eternal solitudes, from
the lone heart to its God. Of the Hunters,
rude men of the forest, who often came to the
cabin door with stores of corn and venison —
and now and then a garment or some luxury
of civilized life — for the old Hunter and his
grand-child, Marion.
“But grandfather, you have often promised
to tell me of my father and mother,” said the
girl resting her hands upon his white hairs —
and of the Home in which they dwelt, far
away from the woods — near cities and gardens,
such as we see described in books. I
am but young, grandfather, — but you have
passed many long years in the forest. Tell
me, I beseech you, the story of your life, and
of my own.”
A shadow fell upon the old Hunter's face.
“Lo, Marion,” he said abruptly — “there
are histories my child, which should never be
told, save as confessions, made by white lips,
in the hour of death. Your father — your
mother!” he shuddered, and shrunk away
from her hands and cast his eyes to the sod.
The girl stood silent and trembling, her
bosom swelling beneath its coarse vestment;
her large eyes full of light and tears.
The sunshine tinting the mazes of her chesnut
hair, fell strong and vivid, upon his agitated
face.
“You thrust me from you” — said Marion—
“This is not well, grandfather. In all the
world I have no friend but you.”
He extended his withered hand.
“Come hither” — his voice was tremulous
and broken — “sit by my side. Seventeen
years ago, I came to this place, and bore you
in my arms — a babe whose eyes had hardly
seen one year of life. I reared this cabin for
you Marion — to you, and to your life, I devoted
what remained of mine own. By day I
hunted among the hills, while you remained
alone within our cabin. And at night, beside
our fire, we sat together — you learned to read—
the great world of books was opened to
your eyes. And before my sight you blossomed
into life, until the old Hunter, would look into
your face at times, and wonder whether you
were not an Angel, sent by God, to cheer the
gloom of his cabin, and with your Presence
lighten up the lone forest glen.”
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The old man paused, and wiped the moisture
from his eyes.
“Ask me of this — of your own history —
of the blessing you have been to me, in my
hours of pain — and I will speak freely. But
rather wish me dead at your feet — rather pray
that the lightning may strike these gray hairs—
than to ask me to relate the History of the
Past. The Past! That awful shadow which
rests upon my history, ere I brought you to
the glen, seventeen years ago!”
The old man rose abruptly, and with unsteady
but hurried steps sought the cabin door.
He disappeared beneath its shadow.
The girl remained near the fallen log, her
finger placed upon her moist red lip, her eyes,
burthened with tears, cast to the earth.
And while her bosom swelled with vague
thoughts — thoughts strange and mingled in
their hues — at once oppressive and lightened
by gleams of joy — she strayed absently over
the sward, toward the northern extremity of the
glen.
A wondrous life had been hers. Reared in
the lone forest, the Great World had come to
her, only as the memories of a half-forgotten
dream.
She had heard of a place, half a day's journey
from the cabin, called Fort Duquesne;
once, with her grandfather, she had visited
“a settlement” far away in the woods, and
seen for the first time in her life, the face of a
white woman. Oftentime the red man had
paused at the cabin door, but not with a thought
of harm, for the old Hunter Abraham, dwelling
thus alone, with this beautiful child — was
sacred in his eyes — protected by the Great
Spirit, who sends good angels to guard withered
Age and brown-haired Orphanage.
Even the backwoodsman, who mingled the
vices of civilization and the hardy virtues of
savage life, respected the Home of the old
man, and looked upon the beautiful Orphan as
a sacred thing.
Thoughts and memories, like these, glided
into the mind of Marion, as she wandered over
the sward, toward the northern extremity of
the glen.
At last, she started back with affright — for
she advanced to the brow of a crag — one step
farther — and she would have been dashed to
pieces, in the abyss, which yawned below.
That crag, terminating the glade, commanded
a wide horizon to the north and west.
A horizon of mountains, framing immense
masses of forests, through whose depths of
summer green, two winding rivers shone like
liquid silver in the setting sun.
Marion looked below and shuddered. From
the chasm beneath great trees arose, but a
hundred feet of granite intervenes between their
summit and the summit of the rock.
To the west she looked, and the flush of
sunset, tinged her brown cheeks and chesnut
hair, with light and rapture.
A blue canopy, with only one cloud — and
that was in the path of sunset, unfolding its
white breast, to the gaze of the dying Day.
But from afar — over the waste of woods,
and near where the mingling rivers shone —
came glimpses of a vision, which stirred the
maiden's heart with awe and wonder.
Glimpses of armed men, whose burnished
weapons, shone in the sunlight, like fire-flies
through the gloom of night. Armed men, in
ranks and columns, marching under banners,
with horsemen riding in their midst. Now
she saw them slowly ascend a hill, which rose
suddenly from the forest — soon they were lost
to sight — but at length came into view again,
dotting the slope of a wide meadow, with points
of dazzling light.
On the brow of the crag, clinging with one
hand to a sapling, whose leaves swept her dark
hair, while the other shrouded her eyes from
the sun, the Maiden stood gazing with indefinable
wonder, on the march of the unknown
army.
Not until the sun went down, and darkness
wrapt the landscape, and the chill mist, wandered
a like ghostly form, through the glen, and
before the cabin door, did the forest girl retreat
from the verge of the crag.
Within the cabin, a pine-torch, inserted in a
crevice of the logs, above the hearth, flung a
ruddy light.
The cabin was but one spacious room, with
two couches, of deer-skin, standing in opposite
corners — walls of log — rudely constructed
hearth — and floor as rude, sprinkled with pine
branches and fragrant moss.
Their evening meal was past, and a slight
fire burned on the hearth, for the atmosphere
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of the night — although it was a mid-summer
night — was damp and chill.
The old man was seated on his bench, leaning
his elbows on his knees, and resting his
cheeks in his hands; his grand-child stood
near a shelf, her lifted hand grasping a book,
and her face turned over her shoulder, towards
his motionless form.
The light played in flashes over the mosscovered
floor, and tinted with radiance the
dark logs which formed the cabin floor.
“But when I die,” said the old man, as if
thinking aloud — “And there are not many
days left to me — when I die, what will become
of — you?”
The girl was about to answer, when the
door opened with a crash, and a harsh voice
was heard —
“Why I'll take keer of her, old Abr'am. I
promise you that! I think o' settlin' in these
clearin's somewhere, and I'd jist like to have
a little woman o' that shape and complexion,
fur my cabin.”
The old man knew the voice; the sound of
its accents seemed to penetrate his blood. He
started to his feet, and fell back again with a
shudder.
The arm of the girl lifted to reach the book,
was palsied in the action — her face, turned
over her shoulder, grew deathly pale.
Meanwhile the intruder advanced to the centre
of the floor, and stood in the glow of the
hearth-side.
Picture to yourself, a form six feet and more
in height, with long limbs, lean bony arms,
narrow shoulders and shrunken chest, and a
thin scraggy neck, supporting a small head,
covered with masses of red hair. A face with
harshly moulded features, small eyes deep
sunken, prominent nose and bulging brow. A
costume made of fragments of military uniform,
and backwoodsman's attire — a short green
coat laced with gold, breeches of deer-skin,
boots of dark leather, a belt, powder-horn, and
spurs. One hand resting on a rifle, the other
grasping the hilt of a hunting knife.
Such was the intruder; a man notorious
among white and red men — among British
and French, as a dead shot and a reckless
bravo. In the course of a few years he had
been seen fighting on all sides; now at the
head of a band of Indians; now in the ranks
of the Provincial soldiers; and a year before,
at the battle of the Great Meadows, he had
been prominent among the French, who attacked
the little band of young Washington.
His real name, tradition tells us, was Michael
Burke; but the cognomen by which he was
named among the Indians, effaced his proper
designation. More in regard to his disposition
and the color of his hair, than to any rule of
natural philosophy — we presume — he was
called simply —
“The Red Wolf!”
And it was this title shricking from the lips
of the girl, and murmured by the old man,
which elicited a grim smile from the bravo
himself.
As he stood gazing into the fire, old Abraham
made a quick and stealthy sign to his grand-child.
She saw and comprehended that brief
gesture. It meant —
“Bring me my rifle!”
The rifle stood beneath the shelves on which
her books were placed. She seized it, was
darting forward, when the Red Wolf wheeled
suddenly round, and interposed his ungainly
form, between the girl and her grandfather.
“Ra-a-ly it makes me laugh!” he cried, devouring
the beauty of that young face, with a
coarse stare — “Why the gal's a-goin' to battle
surely! Which way my purty robin, with
that shootin' iron? You look so nice, and so
bright about the eyes, that I think I must e'en
have a kiss” —
He advanced — the girl, frightened and pale,
sank back, still grasping the rifle.
“Marion!” the old man cried — “Do not
let go the rifle. Remember — there is neither
mercy nor humanity about this man. Keep
the rifle girl, and —”
The old Hunter started to his feet, and
stood behind the bravo, his features animated
by an intensity of hatred and disgust.
“Oh, yer thar, are ye'!” — and the Red
Wolf turned his head over his shoulder, and
saluted the old man with a hideous grin — “I
remember you last in the fight of the Great
Meadows. I do. For I aimed at your topknot
no less than ten times. I did. In a
minnit you and I — will have a talk together,
but now —”
He turned toward the girl, uttering an oath.
The young maiden still leaned for support
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against the wall, clutching the rifle with her
hands, but between the bravo and the girl, there
stood a young man in the garb of a Provincial
soldier, whose remarkable free and commanding
form, enchained at once the eyes of Marion—
of Abraham — and “the Red Wolf.”
And this young man, standing so calmly,
between the bravo and the girl, his chapeau in
one hand, a pistol in the other, simply exclaimed:
“You had better retire Michael. The soldiers
are waiting for you at the foot of the glen.
Go! And tell them to push on without delay—
I will join them on the road.”
And the Red Wolf, without a word, slunk
to the cabin door and was gone.
No words can picture the surprise manifested
on the faces of the old man and his
child. With a simultaneous glance they remarked
the costume and appearance of the
stranger.
He was clad in a blue coat, trimmed with
silver lace; he wore military boots, a belt,
sword and pistols. His countenance, very
pale, and marked by features at once regular,
intellectual, and full of calm dignity, was
lighted by large grey eyes.
“Why Abr'am don't you know me. Forgotten
so soon! Only a year ago you fought by
my side, in the battle of the Meadows — have
I passed from your memory already?”
And the young man advanced and extended
his hand — the old man grasped it warmly —
“Colonel!” he ejaculated, “Surely God has
sent you hither!”
“I am on my way to join the main body of
the army under Braddock. You know our
destination — Fort Duquesne! Two weeks
ago I was left with the rear, prostrated by a
fever, from which I am only half recovered.
A few moments since passing near your cabin,
I was attracted by the sound of voices; I tied
my horse before the door, and to my astonishment
found the `Red Wolf' here —”
“But will he not return?” gasped the old
man — “Or plan some act of treachery —”
“No danger, Abr'am,” returned the young
man with a smile — “He is true to the side
that pays best. Last year he was French —
they paid best. Now he is retained by our
General, as Guide, Spy, and so forth. He
leads our rear division through the woods.
He will be faithful so long as there is a purse
before him, and a loaded pistol at his temple.”
A harsh sound was heard — the young man
turned, and for the first time seemed conscious
of the presence of the forest girl. The rifle
had fallen from her grasp. She leaned for
support against the wall, her arms folded, and
her cheek pale and red by turns.
“My grand-child!” said the old man, and
he repeated the name of the young officer.
As the girl advanced, and took the proffered
hand of the Colonel, and in her simple way
bade him welcome to that forest home, he gazed
upon her face — into her eyes — with a long
and absent glance. A glance which mingled
admiration and reverence. Admiration for a
face and form so beautiful, reverence for a soul
so chaste and pure, as that which lighted her
large eyes.
And the girl gazed without shame upon the
noble form and handsome face of the young
officer, and when she spoke, her voice was
low, musical, and full of delicate intonations,
her language the speech of a pure and educated
woman.
For a while the young man gazed in her
face — long, intently — while the thought half
escaped his lips —
“So beautiful, and in this forest, by the
hearth of a dying old man!”
His reverie was broken by the old man's
voice —
“Colonel you will stay with us to-night.
You are not yet sufficiently strong to bear the
fatigues of the march. You will remain —
will you not, and pursue your way tomorrow?”
The young man gazed around the cabin
with a smile —
“I am afraid the person of a rude soldier
like myself, might inconvenience you. Thanks
friend Abr'am for your kind offer, but I must
be on my way to-night. There will be a
battle before many days, and I would not, for
any consideration, be absent from its danger
and glory.”
And while he spoke to the old man, his
eyes were fixed upon the girl, his heart possessed
by an overwhelming wonder —
“This beautiful maiden, dwelling in the
wild forest, alone with a dying old man!
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There is a mystery here. Last year I saw him
at the battle; ah! I remember — he spoke of
a grand-child then, who awaited his return
home. And when he dies, she will be left
alone! An Orphan — young — friendless —
cast upon the mercy of the world!”
This Thought did not rise to his lips, but it
absorbed his soul. The light of the torch disclosed
a sight by no means without interest or
beauty.
These young forms, the one embodying all
that is pure in maidenhood — the other, the
courage and thought of young manhood —
while the old man, with withered frame and
white hairs, looked like an image of old Time,
gazing upon Youth and Hope.
“In an hour,” said the Colonel, “I must be
on my way —”
The old Hunter swept aside the hide of a
buffalo, which hung along one side of the
cabin. An aperture like a doorway was disclosed.
Taking the pine knot in his hand,
Abraham exclaimed —
“Come hither, my friend. Let me converse
with you alone.”
And followed by the young Colonel, he lead
the way through the passage, into a large
chamber, with high walls and lofty ceiling.
The floor, the walls, the ceiling, were white as
Parian marble. And as the old man stood beneath
the lofty arch, and raised the glaring
torch, its light fell upon the most beautiful
flowers and fruit — all fashioned out of stone
by the hand of nature — looking like the
ghosts of dead lilies and roses.
The young officer stood motionless and
wonder-stricken.
“Do not wonder,” said old Abraham —
“Our cabin is built on the side of a hill, and
before the mouth of the Great Cavern, which
pierces the womb of the mountain. Colonel
I have brought you here, so that you may
listen to the words of a dying man.”
There was a solemnity, a sadness, in the old
man's tone, which pierced the heart.
“I will listen,” murmured the Colonel.
“In a few days — perchance — in a few
hours, I will be dead. To you I will confide
a secret which I never entrusted to living man.
Listen to a fatal Revelation —”
And as the young officer sank upon a seat
of stone, with that solemn Chapel of Nature
all around him, the old man's voice broke the
stillness, and awoke the echoes of the place.
For an hour, Marion, seated near the fire,
awaited the re-appearance of Abraham and the
young stranger. We will not picture her
thoughts, but her large bright eye was forming
air-castles among the coals which glared on the
hearth; her bosom rose and fell; maybe a
vision of the old man, dead, and his grand-child
alone in the world, passed over her soul.
And even amid her waking dreams, she
heard the tones of the old man, breaking low
and murmuring from the Cavern Chapel.
The hour passed, the old man and the
Colonel came forth from the Cavern Chapel,
and Marion, looking up, saw that the face of
the young man was very pale — that there
were tears in his eyes.
“Good night, my friends —” his voice was
hurried and broken — “Abraham I have promised,
and will obey. When the Battle is
over — if God spares my life — I will come
this way on my return home, and attend to
your last request.”
He took the hand of Marion — pressed it
warmly — gazed upon her with a look which
filled her with wonder — then grasped the
hand of the old Hunter, and passed rapidly to
the door.
But even on the threshold he staggered and
fell.
It is no fiction that we are writing; weakened
by disease, worn down by fatigue — every
faculty of his soul roused into action by the
Revelation of the old man — the strength of
the young soldier gave way at last, and like a
dead man he fell to the floor.
When they raised him from the floor, the
forest girl and the old man together, he was
chilled and fevered by turns; his eye unnaturally
bright and vacant, his cheek now
pale as a shroud, and now fired as with a
living flame.
And all the night long, extended upon the
old man's couch, he struggled with the madness
of fever, now telling them to bring his
horse, so that he might ride to battle — now
starting up with livid lips and glaring eyes,
and shouting forth the words of the battle
charge — and sinking at last into a half dreamy
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slumber, with the name of “Marion!” on his
lips.
And sometimes the young girl, watching by
his couch — cooling his fevered brow with her
hand — shuddered as she heard the words of
the old man's “Revelation” on the tongue of
the delirious soldier.
Morning came; still the sick man was
racked by pain and tortured by delirium.
And while the old man prayed by his bed, the
young girl wandered forth and gathered certain
plants, commended by the rude Indian's lore,
and prepared a potion, which gave sleep —
oblivion — to the young Virginian.
The day wore slowly away, and the horse
of the soldier, tied to a tree and fed by the old
man, neighed wildly, as if to arouse his master,
and call him from his bed to the scenes of
the battle.
Towards evening the sick man unclosed his
eyes. Was it a Dream? — the beautiful form
that hovered near his bed? A glimpse of sunlight
stole through the opened door, and
illumined the beautiful face of the Watcher —
the sad, tender eyes, centred upon the pale
brow of the soldier — the young face, blooming
with youth, and shadowed by luxuriant
chesnut hair.
For a long while the sick man did not speak.
He feared to break the spell which held the
beautiful Dream so near his bedside.
At last endeavouring to recall his wandering
thoughts, he asked —
“How long have I been ill?”
The maiden started at the sound of his
voice —
“Since last night,” she answered, remarking
with undisguised joy, the healthy brightness
of the speaker's eye.
“It is then the Eighth of July — ” he cried,
with an accent of the deepest regret — “And I
am here, when the army are winning laurels.
Ah! the Spy has left my soldiers in ignorance
of my visit to this place; they have gone on
without me — they are now with Braddock.
Abr'am my friend, I must away!”
The old man answered his call; while the
girl stood apart, they conversed together.
He rose, and although still weak, discovered
that he was strong enough to mount his horse.
He hastily resumed his coat, his sword and
pistols, and stood ready to depart.
“Farewell, Marion!” he said, extending his
hand, “In my delirium I dreamed of a Good
Angel, watching by my bed, and placing her
hand upon my brow. It is a Dream no longer,
for I am awake, and the Good Angel is still
before me. Farewell! When the Battle is
over and Fort Duquesne won, I will see you
again.”
He hastened to the door; his horse, a dark
bay, stood pawing the earth, beneath an oaken
tree.
He was in the saddle, his tall form, looking
magnificent in the light of the setting sun; his
cheek still pale, but his eye bright and flashing.
And the white-haired man stood near the
stirrup, and at his back came the brown-haired
girl, her large eyes raised to the warrior's face.
“How far is it to the confluence of the
the Monongahela and the Yohiogeny? Braddock
was to encamp there the night before he
advanced upon Fort Duquesne.”
The old Hunter gave him directions, in relation
to a short path through the wilderness —
“You will reach it ere midnight, Colonel —
God go with you,” he said.
The soldier ere he put spur to his steed,
bent over the saddle, and fixing his gaze upon
the face of the maiden, lifted her hand to his
lips.
“Farewell!” he said, and his steed bounded
down the glen. The tall form of the rider rose
between the gaze and the sky, flushed by the
declining day.
The maiden stood near the white-haired
man, following that warrior form with her
eyes, until the horse and the rider went together
into the shadows.
“He will return when the battle is over,”
said Marion, like one awakening from a
dream.
That night, where the waters of the two
rivers mingle, Braddock standing among the
veterans of his host, pressed the young soldier
by the hand, and joyfully exclaimed —
“Welcome, Washington! We are only
fifteen miles from Fort Duquesne — we will
rest there to-morrow!”
To-morrow!
The battle was over.
It was the Tenth of July, 1754, and seven
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hundred corses, lay beneath the scalping knife,
near the banks of the Monongahela.
The French and Indians were holding festival
among the dead; the white man had his
dance and his wine, and the red man, his harvest
of scalps — all among the dead of Braddock's
field.
And through the wilderness, over the very
path where an army eager for battle, sure of
victory, passed two days before, fled the dismayed
wreck of twelve hundred warriors.
A young soldier, stood on a crag, which
overlooked a valley, and commanded a glimpse
of the distant Monongahela. Two horses had
fallen under him in the battle; the third had
died of fatigue in the terrible flight; and the
fourth — a while horse, worthy of his rider —
was tied to a neighbouring tree.
This soldier standing upon a crag, with arms
folded, and lip pressed between his teeth,
looked down — and saw the wreck of Braddock's
army whirl beneath him, like a torrent
suddenly undammed.
Men without arms, men faint with wounds,
men dying on the road, and stretching their
hands in vain to their brothers — this was part
of the sight which he saw.
But the full terror, and confusion and panic
of that flight, who can paint?
And there borne in a tumbril, which was
rudely jolted by the irregularities of the road,
Braddock, the General, was slowly dying, devoured
at once by pain and remorse.
His folly had sacrificed seven hundred men.
No wonder that the brow of the young soldier
darkened, no wonder that his bosom
heaved, as he saw this miserable wreck of an
army, whirl by, without purpose or aim, save
to place mountains and rivers between its living
and the fatal field on which its dead men lay.
The blue uniform of the young soldier was
marked by bullets and stained with blood. He
had dared the fiercest peril, shared the darkest
danger of the fight — his ears were filled even
now with the shrieks of the dying.
But in the fight the Face of a beautiful Girl
had been near him — hovering now on the
white mist — now smiling from the dark cloud.
Her Memory had never forsaken his heart.
And the story of her life, and of the life of her
People — told by the old Hunter in the Cavern
Chapel — had made its impression on his soul.
“When the Battle is over I will return!”
And now he was returning — from no victorious
field — from the Acaldema of the West —
the glen in which the Hunter's cabin stood
was not one hundred yards from the crag; he
had stolen from the retreating army for a brief
hour; he would visit the cabin, and join his
comrades near midnight.
Leaving his horse by the tree, he hurried
down the rock, he drew near the glen.
How visions of the future rose before him in
that hurried and lonely walk!
He was young; he was brave; but twenty-three
years old, he had already won a name of
which the oldest warrior might be proud.
And even from the desolation of the wilderness,
he might gather a wild flower to bless
with its fragrance, his heart, his home.
This forest girl, Marion, dwelling in the
wilderness — alone with her grandsire — a
beautiful form, an angel face, linked with an
angel soul! Should she hold no influence on
his life? Where in all the world could he find
a heart so true, a soul so pure and virginal?
Pardon the young man for these wild reveries—
but he was young — the blood of early
manhood was in his veins — the dreams of
youth still blossomed about his heart.
“She is so beautiful,” he thought, as he
hurried along — “When the old man is dead,
she will be left alone in the world. Can I
leave her alone in the wilderness — can I desert
purity and tenderness, like hers, in the
hour of its loneliness? Ah — even now, it
may be, she weeps over the corse of her only
friend —”
With that thought he hurried on.
Before him, a tall rock rose in the sun — on
the other side of the rock lay the glen which
embosomed the cabin — the Home of Marion,
the forest girl.
“Ah — they are standing at the door, the
old man and the beautiful girl. I will behold
them as I stand at the foot of the glen. They
await me. They have looked for my coming
all day long.”
Thoughts like these crowded upon him:
his blood began to bound; he looked toward
the rock, and hastened onward.
He reached the rock, passed it, and looked
up the mountain glade!
It was bathed in sunbeams on one side;
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wrapt in shadow on the other; he stood at its
southern extremity, and from its northern termination
caught a glimpse of the smiling sky.
But the cabin was not visible, for it stood
among the trees, buried — all save the rugged
door — by boughs and vines. Neither did he
behold the image of the old man, with the
dark-eyed girl standing near.
A hundred paces lay between him and the
cabin.
Do not smile at his violent agitation; do not
chide him for his wild enthusiasm, for the
Face of the girl is present with him now, as
he hurries on — he hears her voice as he heard
it in the delirium of fever — he resolves to
bear her from this forest dell, and show the
gay world what beautiful flowers are reared
by God, even in the howling wilderness.
He nears the cabin door —
And you will remember that the young
Virginian, in mere personal appearance, was
worthy of the proudest woman's love. He was
tall — well-proportioned — his face moulded
not so much after the “classic style,” but
moulded — as a face should be, which is intended
to express the manhood of a chivalric
heart.
He stands at last before the cabin door.
Framed in flowers, the face of the young girl
looks forth from the shadows — the withered
hands of the old man are extended in the act
of blessing him. No — No.
The flowers before that door are withered.
Blasted the flowers, the leaves — the very
boughs are green no longer, but stripped of
life, they fling their black limbs to the light.
Where the cabin stood two days ago, now is
only a pile of sightless and smoking embers!
It was a moment, such as do not occur to any
man twice in a lifetime.
He stood palsied, gazing upon the ruins and
the blackness, looking for some traces of a
living being — but unable to speak or move.
“Marion!” he said in a broken voice.
No answer came. A stillness like midnight
was upon the place.
The young soldier advanced — blackness
and ashes, nothing but ruins wherever he
turned.
The mouth of the cavern was before him.
The memory of the old man's Revelation came
back at the sight; he passed into the Chapel,
and saw the sunshine stealing over those
flowers and fruits of gold. But the Chapel
was vacant — no sound or trace of humanity.
It was like a tomb.
Deeper into the cavern the young man
passed — while he was gone, the night came
down — and when he came forth, his face
looked hollow, ghastly by the light of the rising
moon.
There was a single tress of brown hair
wound about the clenched finger of his right
hand.
He hurried away, he mounted his horse, he
joined the retreating army. But never from
his lips passed a word concerning the fate of
the old man or his child.
But when America became a nation, there
was in the cabinet of the President a sheet of
time-worn paper, encircling a faded tress of
hair, and bearing the superscription — “Marion,
July 11th, 1754.” That was the only
record left on earth of the
FIRST LOVE OF WASHINGTON.
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Braddock was dying.
At the foot of a sycamore, whose white
trunk glared like a ghost among the dark pines,
was stretched all that remained of the brave
General, who, five days before, had gone forth
so proudly to gather laurels from the wild hills
of Monongahela.
His throat was bare; his face pale as a
shroud, and imbued with the apathy of despair,
that neither hopes nor fears, was illumined by
eyes that shone more brightly as the night of
death came on. Sometimes he lifted his hand
to the fatal wound near his heart; sometimes
he rolled his eyes around the faces of the dismayed
spectators, and then, turning his own
face to the shadows, he bit his nether lip, and
longed for death.
It was in a glen, whose northern side was
bathed in sunlight; while the southern side
was wrapt in shadow.
A glen, strewn with broken arms and fragments
of artillery, with here and there the
body of a wounded man. Crowds of panic-stricken
men were scattered in groups over the
sward, talking with each other in low tones,
and speaking with livid lips the name of the
fatal massacre — Monongahela.
It was the fourth day of their flight from that
terrible field. For four days and nights they
had pursued their way, stricken with panic,
and only nerved to exertion by the example
of their leader, a Virginian youth of twenty-three;
and as they bore the body of their
wounded General, now in a rude tumbril,
now on horseback, and last of all in their
arms.
But five days ago he had gone forth so
proudly on his war horse, bearing the commission
of his king; and now, at the foot of a
sycamore, alone in the dark wilderness, he was
looking death in the face.
While a group of soldiers, whose tattered
uniforms and scarred faces bore traces of the
fight, gathered near him, and watched his
dying face, the valley or glen, only seven miles
from Fort Necessity, became the theatre of a
strange and varied scene.
These soldiers had paused only for an hour,—
paused that Braddock might die — but still
possessed by the panic which had maddened
them since the fatal day, they gave their baggage
to the flames, buried their cannon in the
bushes or underneath the sod, and stood panting
for the moment when they might resume
their flight.
Therefore the glen was dotted by groups of
affrighted soldiers, who talked in low tones with
each other; therefore, through the shadows of
the woods arose pyramids of flame; therefore,
no man thought of meat or drink or repose.
The only thought was this — When Braddock
is dead and buried we will fly as we
have fled, these four days and nights.
The day was fast declining.
Only two men, in that dreary valley, seemed
to keep firm hearts within their breasts: —
The man who was dying at the foot of the
sycamore.
— The young Virginian who stood near
him, watching his agony with fearful eyes.
The General reached forth his clammy hand:
“George,” he said, and his voice was husky
with death, “Let all but you retire. I would
be alone with you before I die.”
Washington took the offered hand, and the
pale spectators retired in silence, gazing from
afar upon the white sycamore.
For some moments there was silence, while
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the living and the dying gazed steadily into
each other's faces.
Braddock's face, pale with death; clammy
on the brow and glassy in the eyes — Washington's
visage, pale from fever and fatigue
but lighted by a soul whose fire never for a
moment grew dim.
It was a sad, a meaning contrast.
At last the silence was broken by the husky
voice of Braddock —
“George, in a little while I shall be dead”—
his lip did not quiver, nor his eye wander—
“When I am dead let me be buried in my
uniform, and let my body be protected from
dishonor.”
Washington pressed the cold hand, and
answered in a subdued voice —
“It shall be as you wish.”
“George,” continued Braddock — and a last
throb of pain distorted his face — it was only
for a moment — “I have a last word to say
to you. It is not of friends, now far away —
I may have those who love me, who long for
my return. But why speak of them? Before
the sun is low, I shall be dead —”
He paused and turned his face to the
shadow.
“Speak! If you have a message, I will
fulfil it!” whispered Washington, bending over
the dying man.
“These weary days of our retreat have
brought strange thoughts home to me!” said
Braddock in a calm voice. “I scorned your
advice — I did more — I scorned that instinct
of a heroic sould which fills your bosom, and
which is worth all the experience in the world.
Behold the result!— An army cut to pieces —
my name given out to dishonor — seven hundred
corpses out of twelve hundred living
men!”
His eyes grew brighter — his voice rose.
“Do not speak thus!” faltered Washington,
wrung to the heart by the last words of the
death-stricken man.
“And for myself, a dishonored name, an
unknown grave!”
“No! no!” cried Washington.
“There is no need of flattery at this hour.
The truth, if never seen before, comes up
terribly to us in the hour of death” — and the
eye of the dying man suddenly brightened into
new life. “Young man, I marked you in the
hour of battle. I saw you resolved and calm,
while all the rest were mad with rage, or
palsied by dismay. That battle, which to me
is dishonor, which to seven hundred others
means only defeat and an unwept grave, to you—
to you — is life and fame!”
He dropped the hand of young Washington,
and sank back against the tree, pale, and cold,
and trembling.
Washington could not speak.
Bending near the dying General, one hand
still extended, while the other shadowed his
face, he felt the memories of his boyhood come
over him — suddenly — like a burst of sunshine
through a thunder cloud — and a thought
of the Future took shape before him, and
panted with life.
Well was it that the shadowing hand hid the
agitated face of young Washington from the
gaze of the dying General.
And over the dreary glen the fires were
brightly burning, and through the thick foliage
great pillars of cloudy smoke rose in the evening
sky, and here and there, collected in
groups of two and three, the dismayed soldiers
watched the dying man from afar, and talked
of the fatal day of Monongahela.
It is a terrible thing to see one man ridden
by the nightmare fears of insanity, but the
most terrible insanity is that which throbs at
the same instant in the breast of a large body
of men, palsying and firing every heart by
turns, and overwhelming the individuality of
every man by one universal terror.
A panic like this swayed the fugitives from
Braddock's field. They were fresh from the
scenes of massacre; they feared the war-whoop
of the Indian might startle the silence of the
pass before another moment was gone; they
turned from side to side, in expectation of the
rifle shot and yell of murder.
And all the while Braddock was dying at
the foot of the sycamore, with the young
Washington kneeling near him.
“George, had I won the battle, your name
would have been lost to fame. But the battle
lost, it was your glorious part to save the living
from the dead, and bear the torn flag from
the grasp of the enemy. Therefore the battle
lost for me is a battle gained for you, a battle
won for your country — for the day will come
when your countrymen, remembering
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Braddock's fight, will call for their young hero, and
demand his sword in a more glorious field.”
Few words were spoken after this, between
the dying and the dead.
With the declining day, the life of Braddock
faded fast away. When the sunset lingered
on the top of the loftiest oak — it rises yonder
on the northern side of the dell — there was no
longer a dying man stretched at the foot of the
sycamore.
There was a corpse, clad in scarlet, with a
deeper scarlet near the heart — a corpse, resting
on the sod with leaden eyes, turned toward
a glimpse of the sunset sky — and a group of
silent and dismayed soldiers, standing near the
dead, the form of young Washington rising
over all.
Some few paces distant, hardy backwoodsmen
with spades in their hands, flashed the
earth aside, and made a grave for Braddock in
the centre of the road. A dreary road leading
through the wilderness from Fort Necessity to
Fort Duquesne, which had felt the hoof of his
war-horse five days ago, and now was to embosom
his corpse.
Mournful, and yet sublime in its very desolation
was the funeral of the dead General.
The grave was sunken — a cavity yawned
in the centre of the road — while the fresh
earth lay piled in brown heaps on either side.
The evening shadows were upon the scene.
Still trembled sunset upon the lofty tree, and
the golden sky began to deepen into night.
They wrapped the dead man in a tattered
flag. The red cross of England was laid upon
his breast, and the folds of the torn banner
shut him out from the light forever. They
held his body over the grave; two rough backwoodsmen,
one convulsed with rude emotion,
the other calm and tearless as stone.
The fearless man held the head of the General,
and every eye remarked the giant stature,
the broad chest and scarred face of the uncouth
backwoodsman.
“My Brother!” he said, as he gazed on
Braddock's face — it was his rifle that had
dealt the death to the General, on the fatal hill-side
of Monongahela.
At the head of the grave, his form erect and
his forehead bare, stood Washington, his torn
attire showing the bullet marks of Braddock's
field The shadows gathered thicker — his
face and its varied emotions were not visible—
but through the stillness and the gloom they
heard his voice, speaking some words of hope
over the body of the dead.
The form of those words, their exact memory
has long since passed away, but Washington
never till his latest hour forgot the twilight
of that lonely glen, when standing at the
head of the rude grave — dug in the centre of
the road — he gave the body of Braddock to
grave-worm and the clod.
They lowered it into the grave — the rugged
backwoodsmen, one trembling, the other
firm and tearless.
And as the last glimpse of light left the treetop,
and the first star came out from the world
of Heaven, they heaped the earth upon the
dead, and levelled it like a floor, passing the
men and horses and heavy wheels over the
road where the hero slept.
For they wished to save the corpse from
dishonor, from the white man's scorn and the
red man's steel.
Thus, without one sound of funeral music—
neither the roll of drum, or the shrill peal
of musquetry — they buried Braddock, at the
twilight hour, in the centre of the road. The
tramp of foosteps, the tread of horses' hoofs,
the groaning of the cumbrous wheels — these
echoed sullenly over the grave, as the silent
procession passed along — these were the only
sounds which broke the silence of the General's
funeral.
Soon the fugitives were on their way again—
through the forest, from the direction of Fort
Necessity, came the murmur of their dreary
march.
Two figures lingered still — one near the
grave, leaning on a sword, and the other near
a tree, cutting some rude characters into its
rough bark.
And the one who leant upon his sword, and
with a swelling heart stood over Braddock's
corpse — for there was no traces of a grave —
was Washington.
The other; a giant hunter, grimly clad, with
many a scar upon his face. You may guess
his name. He traced with his hunting knife
upon the bark of the tree, two crosses, one in
memory of the place where Braddock lay —
the other in memory of the hand which winged
the fatal bullet, or, perchance, in memory of
“Brother Arthur.”
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In a venerable edifice, dedicated to the
memory of a thousand years — crowded with
monuments which resembled palaces — dense
and heavy with the atmosphere of death — a
young man stood one night in the fall of 1760,
leaning against a column, his arms folded and
his eyes cast to the floor.
That ancient place was full of light and darkness—
light more vivid than day, and darkness
deeper than the night. The great pillars
flung broad shadows over the floor, with belts
of radiance quivering here and there; the
monuments stood boldly forth in red light, their
flowers of marble, and images of death, glowing
into life and bloom; the arches of the
place, stretching from pillar to pillar, and bewildering
the eye with the intricate mazes of
Gothic architecture, waved with the banners
of a royal race. Banners rich with armorial
splendors, and sad with emblems of the grave.
The young man leaning with folded arms,
against a pillar, gazed in silence down a broad
aisle, which led among colossal monuments,
like the track of time among the dead of past
ages.
It was an impressive sight which met his
gaze. Advancing slowly, to the sound of low
deep music, a coffin burdened with velvet and
gold, appeared in the centre of a circle of
lighted torches.
Upon that coffin a crown was laid — it shone
from the black velvet like a strange jewel, set
upon the breast of Death.
Around the coffin were yeomen of a royal
guard, clad in gay attire, and behind it, a long
procession extended far into the distance, until
its light and splendor dwindled into one little
point of brightness. There were priests clad
in sable — princes tottering under the weight
of robes, whose lengthened trains were borne
by lines of vassals — peers whose coronets
glimmered dimly under jet black plumes.
The far-extending arches flung back the
music, which groaned in a dismal chaunt for
the dead — a dirge which had a voice but no
sorrow, a moan but no tears.
The same torch-light which flashed over the
gorgeous sadness of the funeral array, beamed
upon the face of the young man, while his form
was lost in shadow.
In that great temple he stood alone. On one
side was darkness; on the other the coffin
glittering with a crown, and the procession
dwindling away in brightness, until it was lost
in the distance.
The face of the young man was by no means
unhandsome. It was a fair face; the eye-balls
somewhat protuberant, the nether lip
hanging with an irresolute expression, but the
eyes were clear deep blue, and the low forehead
and blonde complexion were relieved by
carefully arranged hair, strewn with white
powder, after the fashion of the time.
He was dressed in sable; on his left breast
shone a single star.
And while leaning against the pillar, his blue
eye glanced upon the procession, the coffin
and the mourners, which every moment drew
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nearer, the young man's face was agitated by
a singular expression.
It gave a glow to his cheek, imparted brightness
to his eye, and made his irresolute lip,
seem firm and determined.
This expression was not sorrow — it was
joy — joy whose very intensity was sublime.
For standing alone, by a great column of
Westminster Abbey, the handsome youth,
whose form and face were ripening fast into
beautiful manhood, did not weep as he beheld
the coffin — did not feel his heart grow heavy
with even one throb of awe, as the dismal
funeral chaunt swelled wearily upon the air.
It was the coffin of a king which he beheld.
Within that coffin lay the corse of a powerful
king. They were bearing him slowly along
the broad aisle — amid encircling soldiers,
priests and peers — under the arches hung
with banners — with the chaunt of death, the
solemn gleam of muffled arms, the sweeping
of princely robes, and bearing him to the vault
which yawned in the centre of the abbey.
And yet there was no tear in the young
man's eye. He gazed upon the coffin, watched
each minute detail of the splendid mockery,
and uttered in a low voice the simple words —
“And I am King of England — now
—”
The young man was George the Third,
gazing upon the funeral of his royal grandsire,
George the Second.
He felt it in every vein, it shone from his
eye, and with an involuntary impulse, he
reached forth his arm, exclaiming once more—
“King of England — King of England —”
King of England!
Not the England which a Norman Robber
conquered, one morning in the distant ages.
Not the England which quivered under the
iron footsteps of the Third Edward, or grew
drunk with blood under the Eighth Henry.
Not the England which saw Elizabeth upon
the throne; Elizabeth who dipped her fair
maiden hands in the blood of Mary, and
boasted amid her virtuous orgies that she was,
in truth, the Virgin Queen. Not the stern,
heroic England which tried a crowned criminal,
and sent him to the scaffold, as a warning
through all time to Royal Guilt. Not the
England which grew great and strong, stern in
courage, mighty in its victories, mightier in its
people, under the rule of a Brewer, named
Cromwell.
No! But an England, strong with the accumulated
conquests of ages, red with the concentrated
carnage of a thousand years: at once,
infamous with consecrated Murder, and glorious
with an Empire mightier than Imperial
Rome.
This young man, clad in sable — a star glittering
on his breast — can lay his hand upon
the Map of the World, and sweeping his Royal
finger over England, Scotland, Ireland — over
North America — over India — exclaim, without
a boast:
“This, and this — and this — one-eighth of
the world, at least, is mine!”
Was it not enough to bewilder even a royal
brain?
India, won by an hundred thousand corpses,
multiplied by ten — Canada conquered with
the blood of Wolfe, poured forth upon the
rock of Quebec — North America, from Georgia
to Massachusetts, secure under the dominion
of British Custom, British Taxes, and British
Law — Scotland, reeking with the carnage of
Glencoe — Ireland, beaten down at last, trampled
into dumb anguish, into slavery that had
no lower deep —
This was “England” in 1760, and over
this England George the Second had reigned;
and the handsome youth, George the Third,
was about to reign.
Therefore the spectacle of the royal funeral—
the coffin with purple and gold, the deathchaunt
and the long train of splendid mourners—
brought no sorrow to the heart of the young
man, who, leaning against the column, murmured—
“I am King of England — now” —
And there came no omen to fright the soul
of the young King, there was no word of the
future to make him feel afraid. The banners
that waved from the wide arches, the priests
and lords who came along the aisle, the chaunt
of the death, and the coffin adorned by a
Crown, only spoke to him of a glorious future,
of a kingdom unbroken by dissension, an imperial
sway, consecrated by God and acknowledged
by men.
And all the while through the dark night
which brooded over London, Westminster
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Abbey illuminated for the reception of the royal
corpse, shone like a funeral pyre.
Let us for a moment gaze upon the handsome
face which is turned toward the light,
while the young form is buried in shadow.
Let us mark the joy now glowing warmly on
the cheeks and flashing clearly in the blue
eyes. Let us stand in the midst of this dread
Mausoleum, called Westminster Abbey, and
while the splendors of a royal funeral mock
the monuments that start into view on every
side, and England sends her Prince and Priest
to bury the dead King, we will look upon the
face of the living Monarch, who, blessed by
youth, is about to enter upon a glorious career.
At this moment, we will ask one or more
rude questions, in our plain, peasant way —
Is there no danger in the future for this
King?
“Have the coming years any judgment for
his Throne, any stern decree against his
power and the power of Kings like him?”
There is danger for the King; danger for
his Throne; danger for the power of Kings
like him.
Where?
In England? Is he not the Sovereign Lord,
backed by a horde of Nobles, backed by a
code of bloody penal laws?
Not in England — but yonder? Yonder,
over the ocean — follow me across the trackless
ocean, into a land whose awful forests
and dread solitudes, compare but poorly with
Westminster Abbey, now flashing through the
dark night, like a sublime funeral pyre.
We are here, by the waves of the Potomac.
A mansion, not remarkable for its height, or
its breadth, or for the splendor of its architecture,
rises on the summit of a gently sloping
hill. It is half encircled by trees, and from
yonder window, the ray of a lamp trembles
out upon the dark river.
Entering the room lighted by that lamp, we
behold a man of twenty-eight years seated beside
a table, his cheek resting on his hand. He
is clad very plainly. In fact, he wears the
costume of a Planter of 1760. His form, tall
and muscular, his face sharpened in every
outline, indicate a life of some experience and
toil.
Before him, on the table, rests a letter, and
a sword whose long blade is covered with rust.
It may be seen that there are stirring memories
connected with the letter and the sword,
for as the solitary man gazes upon them, his
eye brightens and his cheek flashes into vigorous
bloom.
It is a very plain, uninteresting scene; such
as we may behold at any moment of our lives.
A man of twenty-eight years, seated alone, in
a neatly furnished chamber, his cheek resting
on his hand, and his brightening eye fixed
upon a letter and a sword.
Look upon him — mark each outline of his
form — note each outline of his face. You see
nothing remarkable in the scene. It is only a
Virginian Planter, sitting alone in his home,
by the banks of the Potomac, at dead of night.
That is all you behold.
The contrast between this solitary figure and
Westminster Abbey, flashing with ten thousand
lights, crowded by a royal funeral, tenanted
by a dead King, and a living — is it not
idle to think of any contrast?
And yet the solitary Planter buried in
thought, sees spreading before him a succession
of wild and phantasmal pictures. He is
dreaming, not in sleep, but dreaming wide
awake.
He is mounted upon a horse; that sword is
in his hand; an army of peasants, only peasants,
extends around him. He is in battle;
his army is crushed in dust and blood. But
another army darts into being from the dust
and blood; his sword is still in his hand, and
now — waving over his head — a flag, such a
flag as never was seen before, flutters on the air
of battle. There is another contest; there are
cold faces upturned to a setting sun, and then
the scene changes.
Still it is only a dream, a wandering dream,
but the Planter is in the Senate Hall of a
People — how vague, how wild a dream! In
the Senate Hall of a People — and amid the
deep silence of a breathless multitude, he is
invested with the crude insignia of a great office—
he is hailed as the Liberator of a Nation—
acknowledged as the Ruler of freemen.
Such are the dreams of the Planter, and
rising from his seat he advances to the window,
and looks forth upon the night.
He smiles as he thinks of his waking dream—
and yet it still pursues him, with its pictures
of battles all ending with a free people,
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all terminating in that scene, where a nation of
freemen hail their Ruler in the person of their
Liberator.
Smiling at his vague wild thoughts, the
Planter approached the table again — pauses for
a moment while the light streams over his
young face, already stamped with thought —
and then absently, scarce conscious of the action,
lays his hand upon his sword —
There is the danger, which the future has
in store for King George the Third.
There — in that hand grasping the sword —
in that eye lighting up with soul, in that face
stamped with a Prophecy of the Future —
there is the judgment which threatens the
future of King George and all Kings like
him.
They are burying the dead King in the Abbey.
They are placing the gorgeous coffin in
the vault; there are lines of torches, and
splendid apparel, deep crowds of mourners,
and a living King beside his grave.
At the same moment, perchance the Virginia
Planter, away in his new-world home, in
his silent chamber, grasps his sword, and dares
to think of the Future.
He utters certain half-coherent words —
“This sword I wore at Braddock's field —
and” —
He did not say where he would wear it
again, but his hand presses firmly the hilt of
his sword.
Was his dream false? Did that sword ever
threaten the power of King George?
-- --
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An ancient pistol, grim with the dents of
battle, black with the rust of years, its stock of
dark mahogany inlaid with brass, its barrel at
least fourteen inches long, its tarnished lock
bearing the dim inscription, “G. R.—1718,”
traced beside the figure of a Royal Crown.
An ancient clock, looking out from its coffin-like
case, with its dusky countenance sculptured
into dead flowers, the words “Augustin
Neiser, Germant'n, 1732,” engraven in distinct
round hand, beneath the hands — an
ancient clock, whose bell rings out through the
silence of the night, with a clear, deep, silver
sound, like the knell of a dead century; the
last word of the last of an hundred years.
An ancient arm chair, framed of solid oak,
the paint worn long ago from its brown arms,
the rude carvings which surmount its high
back, worn long ago, as smooth as polished
marble, with the letters “J. K., 1740,” cut in
rough old German text, well nigh blotted out
by the touch of an hundred years.
An ancient Bible, massive in its heavy
covers, and clasped with pieces of carved silver,
its pages, embronzed by age, stained with the
traces of many a bitter tear, comprising that
“Family Relics” — in itself the history of
a race.
An ancient round table, fashioned of walnut,
that was planted on the Wissahikon hills,
three hundred years ago, when there were
Red Men in the land, who rudely worshipped
God in the rocks and trees and sky, and made
Religion of their Revenge — an ancient round
table, once strong and firm, but now creaking
and groaning as with the anguish of its
memories, that reach far back into the shadows
of an hundred years.
— They are all in my room, at this dead
hour of midnight and silence, as I write these
words, all glaring in the light of the wood-fire
which crumbles on the hearth.
The clock stands in the corner, pointing to
twelve, the arm-chair is near it, spreading forth
its arms, as if to catch the full warmth of the
fire. The Pistol with its voiceless tube, rests
upon the Round Table, on which I write, and
outspread before me, is the venerable Book with
its clasps of silver.
I might tell you the story of these Relics of
the Past, and believe me, the story which they
bring home to me — or rather the hundred
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different Legends — would make the tears stand
in your eyes, the blood pulsate tumultuously
about your hearts.
For in that arm-chair, more than a hundred
years ago, an old man sate, bearing the name
which now is mine, and lifted his withered
hands and blessed his five sons, five manly
boys, reared in the woods of Wissahikon, which
I am so foolish as to love and cherish, even at
this hour, when it is blasphemous to love any
God, but the Lord of the Silver Dollar.
That old man — whose bronzed face and
hair as white as drifted snow, presented a true
Image of that French-German race, who left
their native land, and brought their Spiritual
Faith, which taught that God might be worshipped
without Church or Priest, or Creed,
here, to the hills of Wissahikon, here to the
rolling vallies, called Germantown — that aged
Father, laid his withered hands upon the brown
locks of his sons, and blessed them as he died.
Of the Fate of those sons, a volume might
be written. Not a volume for those to read,
who love big names, and pretty uniforms, and
smooth sentences, soft and tasteless as the pulp
which fills your Critic's skull, and passes for
brains — no! But a volume for those ignorant
souls, to read and love, who like to see the
Providence of God, shining out, even from the
records of the humblest Home.
One son, went forth from that old man's
roof and in the Dream-Land of Wyoming,
reared himself a Home, and worshipped God,
even as his father, without Priest — save the
voice of his own soul — or Temple, save that
which was sheltered by his fireside rafters, or
that glorious church which had the Mountains
for its pillars, the green vallies for its floor,
and for its dome, the blue canopy of God's
own sky. That son fell in the Massacre of
Wyoming; at this hour the white monument,
erected on the banks of the Susquehanna,
bears his name, enrolled among the Martyrs.
Another son, died in battte, in the cause of
Washington. Of the Third and his race, all
traces were lost, until two years ago, when I
pressed the hand of his grand-son, who came
from the hills of Carolina. The Fourth went
forth into the western wilds and left no trace
or record of his fate.
The Fifth and last son, dwelt all his life in
the home of his fathers, and saw many children
blossom into the bloom of womanhood, or the
prime of manhood. Death has reaped every
man of them all, and gathered them into the
full sheaf of the graveyard: and at the present
hour, the author of these lines is the only man
that bears the name of the white-haired Patriarch
who one hundred years ago sat in the
arm-chair and blessed his children as he died.
You will therefore know what I mean,
when I say that these relics of the Past, have
a voice for me, as sad, as tender, as a sound
from the lips of the dying.
The old clock that rings so deeply now, its
silver voice pealed as clearly in the bloodiest
hour of the Battle of Germantown. The
Round Table on which I write, once bore the
paper on which Lord Cornwallis traced the
hurried and deadly details of the fight. But it
is not of these historic memories that I speak:
No! There are other and more tender memories.
That old clock pealed at the birth
hour of all my people, and rung their knell
as one by one they died.
Around the Table, how many faces have
been gathered in a Circle of Home, faces that
now are lost in graveyard dust!
In that old chair, many a form has reposed—
how many, how revered, how dear —that
now find rest, within the narrow panels of the
coffin!
And the old clock, like a spirit whom no
anguish can one moment sway from his calm
watch over the dying men and dying years,
rings out now, clear and deep, as it will ring
when I too, am gathered to the graveyard
sheaf.
The Pistol too, so grim in its battered tube
and stock, has a story — sad, touching —
linked with the tradition of the Round Table,
the arm chair, the clasped Bible and centuried
Clock. The pistol alone, never belonged to
my people, but there was a time, in the dark
hour of the Revolution, when Clock and
Chair, Bible and Table, passed into the hands
of a collateral branch of my race, and became
connected with the grim thing of death, in a
Legend of harrowing yet tender details.
Let me tell you that Legend now, while the
old cloak, with its silver voice, rings out the
Hour of Twelve!
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There was snow upon the hills; a mass of
leaden cloud, with broken edges, was hung
across the sky; through the deep gorges, down
to the river, roared the winter wind, howling
the funeral song of the dying year; and yet,
within the stone farm-house of Valley Forge,
the Christmas fire burned with a warm and
cheerful glow.
A spacious room, with white walls and
sanded floor, huge rafters overhead, and a
broad hearth, heaped with massive hickory
logs.
On that hearth, in the oaken chair, sat a man
of some sixty years; his athletic form, clad in
coarse garments of reddish brown, his hands,
cramped by toil, laid on his knees, while his
face glowed with its long beard and hair turning
grey, and hues darkened by the summer
sun, in the cheerful light of the Christmas fire.
True, the garments of the old man were of
coarse home-spun — true, his floor was covered
by no gay carpeting — the huge rafters overhead
concealed by no paint or plaster, and yet,
as he sate there, the room had a joyous look,
full of the word home, and his dark brown
cheek, with its hair and beard, silvering from
brown to grey, spoke something of a heart at
peace with God and man.
Crouching on the hearth, her head laid on
the old man's knee, a girl of sixteen years —
her young form blossoming fast into the shape
and ripeness of woman — turned her clear
hazel eyes towards the light, and twined her
small hands among the cramped fingers of the
old man.
Her form was attired in plain home-spun —
boddice and skirt of dark brown — and yet it
was one of those forms, which, in the warm
bosom just trembling into virgin ripeness, the
lithe waist, and the rounded outlines of the
shape, remind you very much of a flower that
quivers on the stem, the red bloom just peeping
from the green leaves, and quivers more
gently in the moment when it is about to burst
the leaves, and blush into perfect loveliness.
A very loveable girl, with a soft, innocent
face — almost soft as infancy, and innocent as
the prayer of a child — was this maiden,
crouching by her father's knee on the hearth of
stone. Her brown hair, parted in two rich
masses, flowed over his knees, and half concealed
their hands.
“Katrine,” said the old man — he bore the
plain German name of Israel Kuch, and spoke
with a German accent — “it is now twenty
years and more, since I left my native land,
with the brethren of my faith. They would
not let us worship God in our own way; so
we followed Him into the wilderness, and made
our homes where no man dare murder his
brother on account of his creed. You know
our custom, Katrine?”
The young girl looked up, and in a voice
soft and whispering, answered:
“Every Christmas night, at the hour of
twelve, when the Lord Christ was born in the
manger of Bethlehem, we sing the Christmas
hymn, and read a chapter from the Book of
God.”
You see this old pioneer of the wilderness,
dwelling in the woods of Valley Forge, has
planted in the heart of his child the name of
Jesus!
Silently she rose, and gazed upon the old
clock — it stands there, in the corner, with
its broad face to the fire, pointing to the hour
of twelve — and then taking the old Bible with
silver clasps from the table, she laid it on her
father's knees.
A Christmas Picture!
The old man, seated in the arm-chair, the
young girl, in her virgin bloom, bending before
him, the same fireside glow, warming his
withered face, her velvet cheek, and revealing
the opened Bible, whose silver clasps shone
like stars in the ruddy light.
Israel's face was suddenly mantled with
deep sadness:
“There was a time, Katrine, when your
mother was here to sing the Christmas hymn.
She sleeps in the grave-yard now —”
There was another absent, whose memory
comes freshly to their hearts, though his name
is not upon their lips.
“He, too, is absent from home. He journeys
with the men of war: he has forgotten that
religion of peace which he learned by this
hearth, when he sang with us the Christmas
hymn!”
The brave and fearless Konradt! Even
now, turning her eyes — they were wet with
tears — from the light, Katrine remembered
him, her brother. A man of twenty years,
with a form like the forest poplar, a ruddy
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brown face, brilliant with large grey eyes and
shadowed by masses of chestnut-colored hair.
Katrine saw him as he looked on the day —
nearly a year gone by — when, with his true
rifle in his grasp, he passed the threshold of
home, bound for the Camp of Washington.
The old man knelt, and laid the Bible on
the chair. Without, the storm howled, and the
snow fell — within, the Christmas fire flung
its merry blaze, and the voice of prayer arose.
By her father's side, knelt the young girl,
placing her clasped hands on her bosom, while
the fringes of her closed eyelids swept her
cheek.
And as the storm howled, the old man read
hose words which are at once poetry and religion.
Beautiful it was to hear, in that lonely
home of Valley Forge, swelling from an old
man's lips, the very words which the Christians
of Rome, hunted to death, like wild beasts,
read in the catacombs — those cities of the
dead, hidden beneath the city of the living —
eighteen hundred years ago!
And there were in the same country, shepherds
abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flocks by
night.
And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and
the glory of the Lord shone round about them; and
they were sore afraid.
And the angel said unto them, fear not: for behold
I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be
to all people.
For unto you is born this day, in the city of David,
a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.
The clock rung forth the hour of twelve, as
the last word died on the old man's lips.
Clasping their hands over the Bible, they
bent their heads in silent prayer, her brown
curls mingling with the grey hairs of her
father. And the fireside light shone over them,
as they knelt, and baptized them with its glow.
But suddenly, breaking like a thunder crash
upon that house of prayer, a sound was heard,
mingling with the howling of the storm, and
yet heard distinctly from that howling, as the
musket shot is heard through the cannon's roar.
A footstep — it is in the yard without the
farm-house — it is upon the stone steps leading
to the porch — it is upon the porch, and the
door springs with a crash, wide open.
At once, with the same impulse, Israel and
his child rise from their knees: with dilating
eyes they behold the sight, which we may be
hold with them.
Upon the threshold stands a wild figure,
gazing round the room, with a glassy — a
horror-stricken stare. It is a man of some
twenty-five years, whose hair and beard increase
the deathly paleness of his face, with
their raven-black hues, and give a wilder glare
to his eyes — so dark, so bright, so full of
horror.
“John!” — the solitary word shrieked from
the maiden's lips, for in the wild form she recognized
her lover — her betrothed husband.
“John!” the old man echoed — “you are
a man of peace reared by my dearest friend,
your father, in the lessons of the Gospel, and
yet I behold you standing here, on Christmas
night, a bloody weapon in your hand — that
hand itself stained with blood!”
Not a word from the lips of the intruder!
Staggering forward, he dashed the pistol on
the floor — it is there, dripping blood, even
where the flame glows brightest — and sank,
like a lifeless mass, at the old man's feet.
“Save me, Israel, save me!” — he shrieked—
“for I have done murder, and the avenger
of blood is on my track!”
“You!” — the voices of the old man and
his virgin child joined in chorus.
“Yea — I — I! — the child of prayer;—I
so far forgot the lessons which I learned from
my father, as to become one of a secret band of
Loyalists, who have taken an oath to uphold
the cause of the King. They swore to have
the life of the Rebel leader — cast lots, who
should do the deed — the lot fell on me.”
In the excess of his remorse, he suffered his
head to droop, until his dark locks touched the
floor. The old man stood as though a thunderstroke
had blasted him, while Katrine, raising
her hands to her forchead, gazed upon her
lover with an expression of bewildered pity
and horror.
“I swore to do the deed! To-night, I saw
Washington leave his quarters, near the
Schuylkill — tracked him toward this farm-house—
a solitary dragoon rode some few feet
behind him. You see, I was wound up to
madness by the horrible oath — I nerved my
soul for the deed — I fired!”
“You killed Washington?”
“No — no! The night was dark — my
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[figure description] Page 065.[end figure description]
aim unsteady — I fired — the pistol exploded
in my grasp — I saw the dragoon, the innocent
man, fall from his steed! I am a murderer —
the curse of Cain — I feel it fasten on my
forehead Hark! The Rebels pursue me —
I am lost!”
The sound of hoofs, the clattering of swords,
resounded outside the farm-house. In a moment
the Americans will enter, and secure the
assassin. The strong man, who grovels on
the floor — blasted all at once into an image of
despair, more from remorse than fear — raised
his head and moaned in a tone of agony —
“Israel — I am lost!”
“You have done a terrible thing in the
sight of the Lord, John — but I will save
you.”
Hark! The soldiers have dismounted,
they are on the porch — the old man drags
the murderer from his knees, and points toward
the eastern door.
“Enter! It is the bed-chamber of my absent
son. A secret passage — built in the time of
the Indians — leads into the cellar, and from
thence into the fields, a hundred yards from
the house. You will find the door on one
side of the fire-place — I, myself, will hurry
to the fields, and open the spring-house door—
for into the spring-house this passage
leads!”
With these muttered words, he thrust the
murderer into the bed-chamber of his son —
closed the door — and turned in time, and only
in time, to confront a band of American dragoons,
who rushed from the porch into the room.
“The murderer?” shouted the foremost
dragoon — a man stalwart in form, with a steel
helmet, surmounted by a bucktail plume, on
his brow, a sword gleaming in his hand.
“The murderer? — where is he? He went
this way — entered this house — we must have
him —”
The old man with his beard imparting a
venerable appearance to his face, stood erect,
in the presence of those armed men, and surveyed
their drawn swords without a fear.
And Katrine — where is she?
Upon her knees, before the Bible, spread
open in the old arm-chair, her brown tresses
flowing over her shoulders, her eyes closed —
the blood-stained pistol touching the folds of
her dress.
It was a moment of fearful trial to the aged
Christian. He would not lie — he could not
give up to certain death any man, even a
murderer, who had claimed sanctuary in his
home. And yet, he must either utter a lie —
or surrender up to death the son of his oldtime
friend.
“Why do you enter my home, with your
drawn swords, at this still hour of Christmas
night?” he slowly said, anxious to gain time.
Hark! There is a creaking sound in the next
room: the murderer has discovered the secret
door.
The only reply which Israel received was a
sword levelled at his heart.
“Come! no words! We know the Tory
is in your house; and the Tory we will have,
by —”
The brawny soldier clutched the hilt of his
sword, while the point was directed at the old
man's heart. Meanwhile, in stern silence, his
comrades gathered round, grasping their pistols
and swords, with a death-like stillness. The
Christmas light flashed over the kneeling and
unconscious girl — over that solitary old man,
and along the group of maddened soldiers.
“Friend Thompson, you would not stab an
unarmed man” — began Israel, in a voice that
trembled with contending emotions.
A sudden — a decided reply! The captain
made one deadly thrust with his sword, and a
half-uttered cry of horror, gasped in chorus by
his brother soldiers, echoed round the place.
For even to them, maddened by revenge, there
was something horrible in this murder of an
unarmed old man.
The sword flashed home, to its aim. Does
the old man fall a mangled thing, staining his
own hearth with his blood?
“Come, Captain, this is somewhat too British
for an American soldier!” spoke a strange
voice; and a murmur of surprise rose from
every lip, as the Captain's sword fell clattering
on the floor.
Why that murmur of surprise? Why this
sudden silence? Wherefore does even old Israel
stand silent — wondering — dumb
That stranger, with the commanding form,
and noble face — stern, determined in its very
mildness — rivets every eye.
“Washington!”
As the cry rose once more, the stranger
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advanced, and laid the bundle which he bore —
a wounded man, his forehead marked by a
hideous gash — upon the hearth, in the strong
glare of the fire. The stiffened arms of the
insensible man touched the dress of the unconscious
girl.
“Quick — my friends — some water for this
wounded man!” said the stranger; “I fear me
he is dying! I would not have him die thus,
for our cause knows no braver man than Cornet
Kuch!”
The last word froze the old man's blood.
So much had his gaze been rivetted by the
solemn presence — the warrior form of that
stranger — that he had not time to gaze upon
the burden which he bore, half concealed in his
cloak.
But the last word cut him to the heart. He
wheeled on his heel, and by the light of the
Christmas fire beheld the wounded man extended
on the hearthstone.
His own son dying, with a hideous wound
upon his forehead; lips, eyelids and cheek
clotted with blood.
For a moment he reeled backward from the
sight, and turned his face away.
The troopers stood as if spell-bound. Washington's
face writhed with an expression of involuntary
anguish.
He turned his face to the group again. It
was changed — horribly changed. That face,
on which peace seemed to have set its seal forever,
was now livid, ghastly, compressed in the
lips, and wild as madness in the eyes.
“My son!” he incoherently gasped. “Lord,
Lord my God, this cup is too bitter! Let it
pass from me! My son — Konradt! No!
no! It cannot be!”
There seemed to be a red light — a sea of
blood bathed in the glare of flames — rolling
before his eyes; his senses swam, his eye
shone with horrible lustre.
He strode forward and grasped the pistol
from the belt of Captain Thompson.
“He hath slain my son — the bone of my
bone — the blood of my blood — the prop of
my old age! Stand back and let me pass!
The murderer is in the spring-house in the
field. He shall die by my hands!”
He rushed from the room into the night and
the darkness.
“Follow him,” cried Washington. “He
will do harm to himself —and mark ye, let no
one, on peril of life, do harm to the murderer
of Cornet Kuch!”
It was at this moment that Katrine awoke
from her swoon. At this moment, when her
father rushed forth, pistol in hand, to do a deed
of murder — when the soldiers, stricken dumb
by his agony, retreated from his path — when
the voice of Washington was heard enjoining
that no harm should be done to the murderer
of her brother.
She rose — swept back the brown hair from
her brow — gazed upon her brother's form,
with the fatal wound on his forehead.
At a glance, by that divine instinct which
God hath given to women, as he bestows glory
upon his angels, poor Katrine read the whole
dark mystery.
“I will save my father from this deed of
murder!” she cried, and darted into her brother's
bed-chamber.
Washington was alone with the wounded
man. His cloak thrown aside, you see his tall
form clad in the uniform of blue, relieved by
buff, his good sword depending from the buckskin
belt. His face, glowing with the mature
manhood of forty-seven years, now bears upon
every firm lineament the traces of deep mental
anguish.
He silently places the Bible on the round
table, beside the arm-chair, lifts the bloody pistol
from the floor, and then raises the dying
man from his resting place on the hearth.
Gently — like a dear mother nursing her
child—he places the wounded soldier in the
arm-chair, and bathes his brow with cold water.
Then bending over the insensible man, surveying
that frank countenance, now pale as
death, he washes the blood away, while a deep
ejaculation rises from his lips.
It is a scene for us to remember — Christmas
Night — the lonely farm-house — Washington,
the Liberator of a People, revealed by
the Christmas fire, as he bathes the brow of a
wounded, a dying man.
Katrine, with her heart throbbing as though
it would burst, entered the door of the bed-chamber,
and saw the wretched murderer, seated
in one corner, the light revealing his livid face.
“John, you must fly —” she exclaimed, in
a calm voice, that sounded to him like the tone
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of a dying woman — “It is my brother who
fell by your hand — but, I, the sister, will
save you!”
She opened the secret door within the fire-place,
and turned upon him the light of her
hazel eyes.
— What words can picture the horror which
broke from his countenance, then?
“Your brother?” he gasped — “Konradt,
the friend of my soul? Oh, this is some horrible
dream! You know that I love you,
Katrine — yes, with a love too deep to be offered
to a creature — a love that is mad, idolatrous!
Think you, I would harm Konradt?
No — no! It is a trick of Satan to peril my
soul!”
He cowered upon the floor, and clutching
her hands, looked with fearful intensity into
her face.
“Take your hands from mine, John — they
are stained with my brother's blood. The
door is open, the secret passage before you —
fly! I bid you — I, the sister! But my father
will not spare you — even now he hurries to
the spring-house, to strike you as you seek to
gain the woods! Fly!”
“I will fly, but it is to meet my death at his
hands!” He darted into the secret passage.
— The memory of that livid face, was
stamped in terrible distinctness upon the soul
of the sister, as she gazed wildly around the
room.
Now was the moment for the child-like innocence
of her character to spring, all at once,
into the full bloom of a woman's heroism.
A shade crossed her face — her red lip grew
white — she tore the fastenings from her dress,
for her heart throbbed and grew cold, until she
gasped for breath — and in an instant, her disordered
hair, could not altogether veil the transparent
loveliness of that bared bosom.
For a moment she tottered as though she
would fall lifeless on the floor — the shroud on
the form of death is not more pale than her
face.
In that brief moment, the image of her happy
home, of the last Christmas, when John and
Konradt and her father, sat grouped by the
same fire — rushed vividly through her brain.
“Now, one is dead — the other, will die by
my father's — But no! God will help me—
I will save them yet!”
Light in hand, she darted into the shadows
of the narrow passage.
Down in the hollow yonder, near the
Schuylkill, whose hoarse murmur swells
through the night, rises a small structure of
dark grey stone, with a solitary door, formed
of heavy oaken panels, a steep roof, overarched
by the leafless branches, and a small stream,
winding from beneath that archway toward the
river.
In the summer time, this spring-house of
Farmer Kuch is a very loveable thing to see.
Then, the chesnut trees around it, are glorious
with broad green leaves; there is a carpet of
grass and flowers before the dark old door; the
very brook, singing its way to the Schuylkill,
is draperied with vines and blossoms.
But now it is winter. The trees leafless,
the brook shrouded in ice, the green prospect
of hill and valley, transformed into a wilderness
of snow.
From that waste, the spring-house rises like
a tomb, so black, so desolate, and alone.
Beside the door, stands the farmer, Israel
Kuch, cold damps like the death-sweat starting
from his brow, as the pistol trembles in the
grasp of his right hand. His livid face you
cannot see — for the night is dark, but the flash
of his dilating eyes breaks upon you, even in
this midnight gloom. All his peace of soul is
gone: in its place, nothing but madness and
revenge.
“Mine only son — the blood of my own
heart murdered — no! Lord, I will not falter.
Even as the Avenger of Blood, in the ancient
days of Israel, followed the murderer, and put
him to death, so Lord will I follow and put to
death the murderer of my son!”
Listen! There is a sound in the spring-house,
a rattling as of bolts unfastening, within
the door. Yonder glooms the farm-house, not
one hundred yards distant, and over the waste
of snow, the troopers come hurrying on. The
old man, in his madness, has outstripped them.
In a moment they will be here, but a moment
will be too late.
Listen! The bolt flies back within, but the
lock without holds the door firm. With one
blow the old man breaks the padlock, and with
his finger on the trigger, clutches the pistol.
and prepares to shoot the murderer as he
comes.
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That was a moment of intense and sickening
suspense.
The door receded, and the ray of a lamp
streaming through the doorway, revealed the
old man's livid face, and flung his shadow far
along the snow.
It was the murderer, lamp in hand, seeking
to escape!
— Katrine stood there, her bosom bared to
the cold, and defended only by her brown flowing
hair. She did not see her father. How
the heart of Israel throbbed in that terrible
moment! But shading her eyes with her left
hand, she called —
“Father!”
“I am here!” and transformed by his revenge
into an image of unnatural emotion, his
face from the beard to the brow, hideously
distorted, he clutched the pistol and confronted
his child.
“O, father! can this be you? A pistol in
your hand —”
“The murderer of my son — where is he?”
“But your lessons of peace, father, the
Bible, which says, `Love your enemies' —
your own heart, father —”
“The Lord hath called me, Katrine, and I
am here to do his bidding!” cried the wretched
man, as the hollow glare of his eyes rested
upon the pale face of the maiden: “Hark!
the men of war come — they would cheat me
of my victim. “Ah!” he groaned — “Mine
only son, mine only son, — Konradt mine
own boy!”
There was something awful in the depth of
his agony.
Scarce had his accents died, when a form
wilder than his own appeared in the doorway—
a face streaked with a livid blue glowed in
the light, and John the Murderer confronted
the father of his victim.
“Israel,” he said in a husky voice, “It is
past! kill me! but forgive me, for verily, before
God and the angels, I am a miserable man,
a sinner who hath lost his soul forever!”
With hands involuntarily joined, he stood
on the snow, and awaited his fate.
The old man shrank back at first, but as if
gathering strength for the deed, he presented
the pistol and fired.
At the same moment the lights went out, and
all was darkness.
But did you see that young form bounding
in the air, those white arms outspread? The
aim of the pistol was turned aside, and Katrine,
crouching on the snow, clutched her
father by the knees.
“O, father — you cannot do it — God will
be angry with you — you cannot murder —
nay! nay! do not shake me from your grasp—
you taught me to love the Lord Christ,
who says, `love your enemies,' and I will not
see you do this deed!”
“Ah! the murderer has escaped,” groaned
Israel, struggling to free his knees from the
grasp of that heroic girl.
“No!” said a hollow voice, “He is here!”
Through the gloom, Israel beheld the outlines
of the murderer's form, as he stood with
drooped head and folded arms.
At the same moment the troopers, like
shadowy forms, came hurrying round the corner
of the spring-house, their arms gleaming
indistinctly in the midnight darkness.
But the old man saw them not. Reared
from infancy to love the Bible, to love above
all the gentleness, the forgiveness of the Gospels,
at this moment of madness, the dark
scenes of the Old Testament, the terrible judgments
of the Mosaic dispensation, alone possessed
his soul.
“John, kneel on this sod, and pray forgiveness
of your God, for at this hour I am about
to put you to death!”
“No — Israel — this won't do,” cried Captain
Thompson, forgetting his own anger at
the murderer, in overwhelming pity for the
despair of the old man — “We will arrest the
young man, but he must not be harmed; it's
Washington's orders!”
Fiercely the old man scowled upon the
group — one desperate effort he made to shake
off the clutch of his daughter, and at the same
instant he seized a hunter's knife and sprang
upon his victim!
Every man in that crowd held his breath,
but the brave girl did not unloose her grasp.
Up to his heart she sprung, around his neck
she wound her arms, and even as he struck,
she baffled his deadly aim.
His madness now swept over all bounds.
There, unharmed, stood the murderer — there
grouped the awed soldiers — there. hung to
her father's neck, quivered the daughter.
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With one irresistible movement, he flung
Katrine from his neck, and knife in hand,
sprang forward. The strong man, with health
in his veins, and youth on his brow, knelt
calmly for the blow.
“John, the Lord hath spoken, and I obey!”
and the knife flashed in his hand.
But hark! That cry heard over the waste
of snow — it reaches the old man's heart, for
it says “Father!”
Every man in the group heard that cry, and
felt his heart grow like ice, with an unknown
fear — it was the voice of the dead man Cornet
Kuch.
“Joy — thank God — it is my brother's
voice!” — You behold Katrine sink swooning
on the snow.
The old man stood with his knife in mid-air—
stood bewildered — listening — dumb.
“Father!” the voice was nearer.
“Oh, can the demons mock me? Am I
indeed given over to the Prince of the Power
of the air?” Israel pressed his left hand to
his burning brain.
The troopers turned, gazed into the darkness,
but they saw nothing save the indistinct
outline of the farm-house, the cold dead sky.
“This puzzles me, I'll be confounded if it
don't!” muttered the stalwart Thompson, as
even he, an image of robust health, felt his
heart chill with superstitious fear.
“Tell me — do I dream — that voice —”
the old man staggered wildly over the frozen
snow.
“Father!” the voice spoke at his shoulder,
this time.
The old farmer turned, beheld a shadowy
figure, laid his hand upon a gashed forehead.
“Father! It is I — your son, Konradt — not
killed, scarcely wounded—only a little stunned!
Ha, ha! A mere scratch after all the outcry—
come father, we will go home!”
Israel fell like a weight of lead — so heavy,
so suddenly — and lay on the snow beside his
unconscious daughter.
Another form advanced from the gloom, and
a voice was heard —
“Captain, secure your prisoner!”
It was the voice of Washington.
In the old farm-house and by the Christmas
fire again. The broad face of the clock, points
with its small hand to the hour of One. On
the round table, rests the blood-stained pistol
and the opened Bible. Before the fire, extended
in the arm-chair, his form completely
broken down by the horrible emotions of the
past hour, Israel Kuch gazes in the faces of
his kneeling children. Here, Konradt with
the gash upon his brow concealed in a white
cloth, there loveable Katrine, smiling as the
tears course down her cheeks.
The troopers wait in the yard, without,
ready for the march.
Up and down along the floor in front of the
fire, paces Washington, his hands behind his
back, his eyes cast downward. That face is
stern as death. Now he pauses — steals a
glance toward the group, and then — while a
scarcely perceptible emotion quivers over his
face — resumes his measured pace again.
Where is the murderer in thought, the man
who levelled his pistol at the head of Washington?
Come with me through the eastern door,
into this small bed-chamber, where a solitary
lamp lights up the fire-place, the bed with unruffled
coverlet, the old-fashioned chairs, and
walls as white as unstained paper.
Crouching on a chair, his knees supporting
his elbows, with his cheeks pressed in his cold
and trembling hands, behold the murderer. His
pale face is framed in dark hair and beard —
his throat is bare — his eyes, sunken in the
sockets, shine with an anguish too big for utterance.
Wrapt in his own fiery whirlpool of remorse,
he does not hear the opening door, nor heed
the advancing form. A hand is laid upon his
shoulder; he looks up and beholds the stern
face of Washington. As though a bolt had
stricken him, he shrinks away from that hand,
for well he knows, that taken in the act of a
base assassination, he has but one Future —
the gibbet and the felon's grave.
“My friend, did I ever harm you?” said
that deep-toned voice.
John buried his face in his hands.
“They speak of you as a quiet, a religious
young man, descended from that class of the
German people, who hold war and all that belongs
to war, in decided abhorrence. I am
anxious to know in what manner have I incurred
your hatred — why arm yourself against
my life?”
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[figure description] Page 070.[end figure description]
There was a light in Washington's eye, a
glow upon his face. John looked up and felt
encouraged to speak. In broken tones, he
poured forth the whole story — grew wild,
painfully eloquent, in that frank confession of
his last hour. Entangled in a secret association
of loyalists, he had been led on from step
to step, until a horrible and blasphemous OATH,
taken amid scenes of darkness and mystery,
hurried him to a purpose, which his soul beheld
with shuddering. “I cannot tell their
names — my feelings of love to God, loyalty
to the king were horribly trifled with it is true—
but I cannot reveal their names! That
OATH maddened me — you behold me now,
willing to pay the forfeit of my crime, eager to
die and be forgotten!”
With clasped hands and gasping utterance,
he looked up into the face of Washington.
The American Chieftain turned his face
away, and leaned his arm upon the mantel.
By his averted face and downcast head, you
may guess the nature of his thoughts.
Was he thinking of his own life, which began
with a nature wild and passionate as the
flowers and sun of the southern clime, and
grew into ripeness with a calm, cold, stern exterior,
hiding the fires that glowed within the
heart? Was he thinking of his hardy boyhood,
passed among the rocks and mountains
of the western wilderness, and nourished into
manhood through many a bitter trial?
Did he, that man whose warm heart was
veiled with an icy shroud — who afterwards
signed with an unfaltering pen and tearful eyes
the death-warrant of John Andre — did he behold
amid the wrecks of a mad fanaticism
which covered the murderer's soul, the tokens
of a better nature, the buds of a noble manhood?
For a long time he pondered there, by the
hearth, while the miserable John ****, with
his face growing yet more livid, awaited the
words of fate.
“You will be tried, sir, according to the
forms of law in cases like yours provided”—
such were his cold words as he turned his
calm face to the murderer again — “In a
moment the soldiers of my Life Guard will
bear you to the camp at Valley Forge.”
He left the bed-chamber with his usual
measured pace.
John fell upon his knees, buried his face in
his hands, which rested on the chair, and tried
to pray. Tried! But above him a sky of
black marble seemed to spread, and as the
words faltered from his lips they fell back
upon his heart again like balls of living fire.
“Come, sir, the guard await you,” said the
voice of Washington.
John started to his feet, confronted his doom,
and felt — that warm, loveable Katrine quivering
on his heart, her arms around his neck,
her loosened hair about his face.
“There, sir, before you shoot at me again,
learn to be more careful in your aim.” There
was a smile upon that magnificent face —
something like a tear in that brilliant eye of
deep rich gray.
It was a painful thing to see the freed blood
pouring in one impetuous torrent from John's
heart to his face — to see the wonder, doubt,
tremulous joy, painted there — to see the
head pillowed on his shoulders, while over
his uplifted arms fell the maiden's luxuriant
hair.
But a glorious thing it was to see that commanding
form, one hand resting on the hilt of
his sword, while the other shaded his eyes
from the light, yet did not hide the nervous
movement of his lips. It would have stirred
your blood to behold that great man on his
war-horse, riding forth to battle, but now it
would have forced the tears in torrents from
your eyes to view him, in that half-lighted
chamber, shaken almost into womanish feeling,
as he saw the result of his own — For
giveness.
The old farmer reposed in the arm-chair,
his son bending over him — the pistol and the
Bible were laid upon the round table — the
clock tolled one — and the Christmas Fire
lighted up the faces of the lovers as they knelt
and took upon their heads, the blossing and
The Revenge of Washington.
Back matter
-- --
NEW WORKS BY GEORGE LIPPARD.
[figure description] Advertisement.[end figure description]
NOW IN PRESS AT THE OFFICE OF “THE QUAKER CITY.”
Forrvarded by mail to any part of the United States.
BY GEORGE LIPPARD,
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To be published in one volume, illustrated with fine engravings. Price 25 cents. This
work presents a series of historical pictures of the life of Washington from the cradle to the
grave. It comprises Legends of his youth — of his manhood — of his battles — and of his
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To be published, in one volume — price 25 cents. “A story extending over the space of
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whether of Priest, or Bishop, with its solemn mockery of divine right and power, but called
and consecrated by the spirit of God within himself, commanding him to lift up his voice,
and plead the cause of those who have no utterance for the wrongs that are crushing them—
to follow directly in the footsteps of his Divine Master, however widely it may diverge
from the beaten track of such as rejoice in the wearing, or in the shadow, of cassock and
of band, to impersonate the good Samaritan, though Priest and Levite pass coldly and
scornfully on the `other side.”'
—(Univercœlum.)
-- --
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BY GEORGE LIPPARD,
Author of “The Quaker City.”
One volume, splendidly illustrated, and making 250 pages. Complete for 50 cents.
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thoroughly and earnestly read than any work of the age. The few chapters that have been
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One volume. Price 25 cents. This work is an invaluable companion to the “Memoirs
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Lippard, George, 1822-1854 [1849], Washington and his men: a new series of legends of the revolution (Jos. Severns and Company, Philadelphia) [word count] [eaf256].
