that they were actually pinched in their resources, ventured to call upon Charlton for a contribution for their relief. After an evident inward struggle, Charlton manfully pulled out his pocket-book, and tendered - what, think you? why, a tendollar bill! Hicks affected to regard the tender as an insult, and slapped the donor's face. Charlton at first threatened a prosecution, but concluded it, was too expensive a luxury. Thus you see he is a miser. It was with no little satisfaction, therefore, that I called to communicate the state of his affairs in New Orleans. "He lives on one of the avenues in a neat freestone house, such as could be hired for twenty-five hundred a year. There is a stable attached, and he keeps a carriage. Soon after he burst upon the fashionable world as a millionnaire, there was a general competition among fashionable families to secure him for one of the daughters. But Charlton, with all his wealth, did not want a wife who was merely stylish, clever, and beautiful; she must be rich into the bargain. He at last encountered such a one (as he imagined) in Miss Dykvelt, a member of one of the old Dutch families. He proposed, was accepted, married, and three weeks afterwards, to his consternation and horror, he received an application from old D., the fatherin-law, for a loan of a hundred thousand dollars. "Charlton, of course, indignantly refused it. He found that he had been, to use his own words, 'taken in and done for.' Old Dykvelt, while he kept up the style of a prince, was on the verge of bankruptcy. The persons to whom Charlton applied for information, knowing the object of the inquiry and the meanness of the inquirer, purposely cajoled him with stories of Dykvelt's wealth. Charlton fell into the trap. Charlotte Dykvelt, who was in love at the time with young Ireton (a Lieutenant in the army and a grandson of old Pompilard), yielded to the entreaties of her parents and married the man she detested. She was well versed in the history of his first wife, and resolved that her own heart, wrung by obedience to parental authority, should be iron and adamant to any attempt Charlton might make to wound it. "He soon found himself overmatched. The bully and tyrant was helpless before the impassive frigidity and inexorable determination of that young and beautiful woman. He had a large iron safe in his house, in which he kept his securities and coupons, and often large sums of money. One day he discovered he had been robbed of thirty thousand dollars. He charged the theft upon his wife. She neither denied nor confessed it, but treated him with a glacial scorn before which he finally cowered and was dumb. Undoubtedly she had taken the money. She forced him against his inclination to move into a decent house, and keep a carriage; and at last, by a threat of leaving him, she made him settle on her a liberal allowance. "A loveless home for him, as you may suppose! One daughter, Lucy Charlton, is the offspring of this ill-assorted marriage; a beautiful girl, I am told, but who shrinks from her father's presence as from something odious. Probably the mother's impressions during pregnancy gave direction to the antipathies of the child; so that before it came into the world it was fatherless. 66 Well, I called on Charlton last Thursday. As I passed the little sitting-room of the basement, I saw a young and lovely. girl putting her mouth filled with seed up to the bars of a cage, and a canary-bird picking the food from her lips. A cat, who seemed to be on excellent terms with the bird, was perched on the girl's shoulder, and superintending the operation. So, thought I, she exercises her affections in the society of these dumb pets rather than in that of her father. "I found Charlton sitting lonely in a sort of library scantily furnished with books. A well-formed man, but with a face haggard and anxious as if his life-blood were ebbing irrecoverably with every penny that went from his pockets. On my mentioning your name, his eyes brightened; for he inferred I had come with your semiannual remittances. He was at once anxious to know if rents in New Orleans had been materially affected by the war. I told him his five houses near Lafayette Square, excepting that occupied on a long lease by Mr. Carberry Ratcliff, would not bring in half the amount they did last year. He groaned audibly. I then told him that your semiannual collections for him amounted to six thousand dollars, but that you were under the painful necessity of assuring him that the money would have to be paid all over to the Confederate government. "Charlton, completely struck aghast, fell back in his chair, his face pale, and his lips quivering. I thought he had fainted. "Your brother would n't rob me, Mr. Semmes?' he gasped 666 forth. 666 Certainly not,' I replied; but his obedience is due to the authorities that are uppermost. The Confederate flag waves over New Orleans, and will probably continue to wave. All your real estate has been or will be confiscated.' "But it is worth two hundred thousand dollars!' he exclaimed, in a tone that was almost a shriek. "So much the better for the Confederate treasury!' I replied. "I then broached what you told me to in regard to his making a bona fide sale of the property to you. I offered him twenty thousand dollars in cash, if he would surrender all claim. "Never! never!' he exclaimed. I'll run my risk of the city's coming back into our possession. I see through your brother's trick.' "Please recall that word, sir,' I said, touching my wristbands. "Well, your brother's plan, sir. Will that suit you 1?' "That will do,' I replied. My brother will pay your ten thousand dollars over to the Confederacy. But I am authorized to pay you a tenth part of that sum for your receipt in full of all moneys due to you for rents up to this time.' "Ha! you Secessionists are not quite so positive, after all, as to your fortune!' he exclaimed. You're a little weak-kneed as to your ability to hold the place, - eh?" "The city will be burnt,' I replied, 'before the inhabitants will consent to have the old flag restored. You'd better make the most, Mr. Charlton, of your opportunity to compound for a fractional part of the value of your Southern property.' "It was all in vain. I could n't make him see it. He hates the war and the Lincoln administration; but he won't sell or compound on the terms you propose. And, to be frank, I would n't if I were he. It would be a capital thing for us if he could be made to do it. But as he is in no immediate need of money, we cannot rely on the stimulus of absolute want to influence him as we wish. I took my leave, quite disgusted with his obstinacy. "The fall of Sumter seems to have fired the Northern heart in earnest. I fear we are going to have serious work with these Yankees. Secretary Walker's cheerful promise of raising the Confederate flag over Faneuil Hall will not be realized for some time. Nevertheless, we are bound to prevail I hope. Of course every Southern man will die in the last ditch rather than yield one foot of Southern soil to Yankee domination. We must have Maryland and the Chesapeake, Fortress Monroe, and all the Gulf forts, Western Virginia, Missouri, Kentucky, Delaware, every square inch of them. Not a rood must we part with. We can whip, if we 'll only think so. We're the master race, and can do it. Can hold on to our niggers into the bargain. At least, we'll talk as if we believed it. Perhaps the prediction will work its fulfilment. Who knows? "Fraternally yours, F. M. S." CHAPTER XXIX. THE WOMAN WHO DELIBERATES IS LOST. "O North-wind! blow strong with God's breath in twenty million men."- Rev. John Weiss. "Loud wind, strong wind, sweeping o'er the mountains, N coming down to the breakfast-table one morning, Kenrick was delighted to encounter Vance, and asked, "What success?" "I found in Natchez," was the reply, 66 an old colored man who knew Davy and his wife. They removed to New York, it seems, some three years ago. I must push my inquiries further. The clew must not be dropped. The old man, my informant, was formerly a slave. He came into my room at the hotel, and showed me the scars on his back. Ah! I, too, could have showed scars, if I had deemed it prudent." “Cousin William,” said Kenrick, “I wouldn't take the testimony of our own humane overseer as to slavery. I have studied the usages on other plantations. Let me show you a photograph which I look at when my antislavery rage wants kindling, which is not often." He produced the photograph of a young female, apparently a quarteroon, sitting with back exposed naked to the hips, her face so turned as to show an intelligent and rather handsome profile. The flesh was all welted, seamed, furrowed, and scarred, as if both by fire and the scourge. "There!” resumed Kenrick, "that I saw taken myself, and know it to be genuine. It is one out of many I have collected. The photograph cannot lie. It will be terrible as the recording angel in reflecting slavery as this civil war will unearth it. What will the Carlyles and the Gladstones say to this? Will it make them falter, think you, in their Sadducean hoot against a noble people who are manfully fighting the great battle of humanity against such infernalism as this?" "They would probably fall back on the doubter's privilege." "Yes, that's the most decent way of escape. But I would pin them with the sharp fact. That woman (her name was Margaret) belonged to the Widow Gillespie,* on the Black River. Margaret had a nursing child, and, out of maternal tenderness, had disobeyed Mrs. Gillespie's orders to wean it. For this she was subjected to the punishment of the hand-saw. She was laid on her face, her clothes stripped up to around her neck, her hands and feet held down, and Mrs. Gillespie, sitting by, then 'paddled,' or stippled the exposed body with the hand-saw. She then had Margaret turned over, and, with heated tongs, attempted to grasp her nipples. The writhings of the victim foiled her purpose; but between the breasts the skin and flesh were horribly burned." "A favorite remark," said Vance, "with our smug apologists of slavery, is, that an owner's interests will make him treat a slave well. Undoubtedly in many cases so it is. But I have generally found that human malignity, anger, or revenge is more than a match for human avarice. A man will often gratify his spite even at the expense of his pocket." Kenrick showed the photograph of a man with his back scarred as if by a shower of fire. "This poor fellow," said Kenrick, "shows the effects of the corn-husk punishment; not an unusual one on some plantations. The victim is stretched out on the ground, with hands and feet held down. Dry corn-husks are then lighted, and the burning embers are whipped off with a stick so as to fall in showers of live sparks on the naked back. Such is the patriarchal' system! Such the tender mercies bestowed on our man-servants and our maid-servants,' as that artful dodger, Jeff Davis, calls our plantation slaves." "And yet," remarked Vance, "horrible as these things are, how small a part of the wrong of slavery is in the mere physical suffering inflicted!" "Yes, the crowning outrage is mental and moral." "This war," resumed Vance, " is not sectional, nor geographi* The names and the facts are real. See Harper's Weekly, July 4, 1863. |