 | CHAPTER II. Tiger-lilies |  |
2. CHAPTER II.
Blunt.
Lord Mortimer of Scotland hath sent word
That Douglas and the English rebels met,
The eleventh of this month, at Shrewsbury:
A mighty and a fearful head they are,
If promises be kept on every hand,
As ever offered foul play in a state.”
King Henry IV.
But these sentiments, even if anybody could have
been found patient enough to listen to them, would have
been called sentimentalities, or worse, in the spring of
1861, by the inhabitants of any of those States lying between
Maryland and Mexico. An afflatus of war was
breathed upon us. Like a great wind, it drew on and
blew upon men, women, and children. Its sound
mingled with the solemnity of the church-organs and
arose with the earnest words of preachers praying for
guidance in the matter. It sighed in the half-breathed
words of sweethearts conditioning impatient lovers with
war-services. It thundered splendidly in the impassioned
appeals of orators to the people. It whistled
through the streets, it stole in to the firesides, it clinked
glasses in bar-rooms, it lifted the gray hairs of our
wise men in conventions, it thrilled through the lectures
in college halls, it rustled the thumbed book-leaves of
the school-rooms.
This wind blew upon all the vanes of all the
toward war. It blew, and shook out, as if by magic, a
flag whose device was unknown to soldier or sailor
before, but whose every flap and flutter made the blood
bound in our veins.
Who could have resisted the fair anticipations which
the new war-idea brought? It arrayed the sanctity of
a righteous cause in the brilliant trappings of military
display; pleasing, so, the devout and the flippant which
in various proportions are mixed elements in all men.
It challenged the patriotism of the sober citizen, while
it inflamed the dream of the statesman, ambitious for
his country or for himself. It offered test to all allegiances
and loyalties; of church, of state; of private
loves, of public devotion; of personal consanguinity;
of social ties. To obscurity it held out eminence; to
poverty, wealth; to greed, a gorged maw; to speculation,
legalized gambling; to patriotism, a country; to
statesmanship, a government; to virtue, purity; and to
love, what all love most desires — a field wherein to
assert itself by action.
The author devoutly wishes that some one else had
said what is here to be spoken — and said it better.
That is: if there was guilt in any, there was guilt in
nigh all of us, between Maryland and Mexico; that
Mr. Davis, if he be termed the ringleader of the rebellion,
was so not by virtue of any instigating act of
his, but purely by the unanimous will and appointment
of the Southern people; and that the hearts of the
Southern people bleed to see how their own act has
resulted in the chaining of Mr. Davis, who was as innocent
as they, and in the pardon of those who were as
guilty as he!
All of us, if any of us, either for pardon or for punishment:
this is fair, and we are willing.
But the author has nought to do with politics; and
he turns with a pleasure which he hopes is shared by
the Twenty-four-thousand-nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine,
to pursue the adventures of Paul Rübetsahl and
company in
| CHAPTER II. Tiger-lilies | |