t T mond there was one thing better than they had in the North, and that was Zarvona smoking tobacco." I returned to Fortress Monroe-where I little knew what awaited me! As the boat passed City Point a man was pointed out on the wharf. He was in plain military dress, was round-shouldered, had his arms swung behind him, Land was moving about in a very careless and unsoldierlike gait. I was told it was General Grant. I was not near enough to observe his features. .... In what I have written above of General Butler's manner and his selfdefences with simple severity of justice-the reader may conclude with me that, like his popular prototype, he is not as black as he is painted. It is not too much to say that he is scarcely worse than other Yankee Generals, and infinitely better than many of them. Compare his career, in which individual outrages stand out, and in which there is much that is merely passionate, and, perhaps, more of fume and bluster than actual performance with the systematic cruelties and cold snakish hypocrisy of Sherman, and we must admit that the sentence of outlawry which President Davis has visited upon the former, is at least invidious. But after all, that sentence of outlawry was brutum fulmen intended merely to play a part in our President's elaborate melodrama of retaliation—a mere pretence to turn just popular indignation into the channel of gloomy abstractions and sentimental vapours. CHAPTER XVII. ON PAROLE IN FORTRESS MONROE-A Recollection of General Fitz Lee-A Bitter Disappointment-Letter from a Catholic Mother: In Memoriam. I returned to Fortress Monroe, and reported there to Captain Puffer, of General Butler's staff, who enlarged me on parole to the limits of the fort. I was assigned to a scantily furnished, but quite tolerable room; was allowed to hire the attendance of a servant; and thus, in circumstances, certainly not physically uncomfortable, was left to await, with what patience I could command, General Butler's convenience to send me through his lines, on an obligation of honour to make my own exchange in Richmond. I was treated very kindly by the officers in Fortress Monroe. Many of the men looked black enough at me, and sometimes as I passed a group of soldiers' they would strike up their popular, army air, "Rally Round the Flag," singing, I thought, with peculiar guste the line "Down with the traitors and up with the flag!" But this amused me. In no instance was I treated by any of the army officers I met in Fortress Monroe, either insolently or indelicately. One of the officers 、in the fort, on a certain occasion, invited me into his quarters, gave me an excellent supper, and offered me a bed in his casemate. He was not a "Copperhead;" he never once discussed the war in his conversation; he showed the spirit and sense of a gentleman. He said that, for himself, he had always determined to treat prisoners of war with all the kindness in his power, since an evidence he had had that such conduct was fully appreciated and repaid in the South. He then told me that when General Fitzhugh Lee was a prisoner in this fort, the officers, had treated him with great kindness, for which he expressed his gratitude. Some time after, one of these officers, who had gone to the field, was taken prisoner and conveyed to the Libby. General Lee heard of it, went to the prison, had him unconditionally released, and offered to supply him with any money he might need for his necessities. It is pleasant, indeed, to notice some passages of kind deeds, some mutual recognitions of noble and humane courtesies in this dark and horrible war. I see from the newspapers that General Butler has gone to Wilmington, and I have heard nothing of my promised exchange. I have had a curious intimation that I am not to be exchanged, and that another fate is reserved for me! What does it mean! I have been turned over by Captain Puffer to Major Cassell, the provost marshal; and he cannot or will tell me nothing, although he is not surly or unpleasant when I speak to him. My disappointment is painful and gloomy enough; it treads so closely upon my dearest hopes; it means whatever I may choose to imagine in the way of horrour, as there is no limit to whatever disposition the Yankee authorities may choose to make of a prisoner. Once within a few miles of Richmond, almost in sight of its spires, I find myself turned back, not, as it would now appear, to endure a brief delay, but probably again to go over a long, dreary course of a prisoner's trials-a prisoner's disappointments. I have received some melancholy tidings, sadly associated with a name that has become ever precious in my prison memories. A letter from an excellent Catholic friend lies before me, telling me of a sore affliction in the family of that gentle Boston lady, whose name there is scarcely a prisoner in Fort War-` ren can speak without the grateful effusion of his heart. He writes : "Your dear friend in Boston wrote me a lovely, touching letter the other day, which I wish you could see. She announces to me the death of one of her daughters, of typhoid fever, a few weeks ago-not the lovely girl, with the soft brown eyes, who visited you last summer, but the younger sister. The account she gives me of the dying hours of this dear girl are so touching that I could not refrain from tears, as I read the beautiful story. She died in delirium, imagining herself among the Angels, and chanting with her dying breath the glorious anthems of her Church. The mother is a saint in this lower world-such angelic.resignation, such child-like submission, such glorified acquiescepce to the blow, which has smitten her to the dust, is a lesson for all who mourn." And this bereaved mother, in the midst of her affliction, hearing of my prolonged detension as a prisoner, is able to write, for herself, to me words of con solation and encouragement, and to take into her grief the paltry sorrows of a friend. "I bear," she writes, "your burdens with my own. In doing battle with my own grief, I do not forget yours. But for our deep-lying trust in God's 'infinite love and mercy, how could we bear our trials. To me the perpetual missing of a bright and beautiful presence--the yearning for that which has gone forever-would be unendurable, but that my whole being believes in the infallibility of His love, who has smitten mc. Let us both, dear, suffering friend, look our sorrows in the face, and make of them angels to guide and guard us. I have asked my darling, who was so deeply interested in you, and who is now an angel in Heaven, to pray for you, where prayers are efficacious..... There stands near me a most beautiful and touching engraving from Albert Duree, of the Crucifixion—a gift from a valued and dear friend. Look at it with me, my suffering brother! Listen to the voice so full of pathos, that utters the "Father forgive them." Catch upon your aching heart the wail of the blessed Mother, "Oh, all ye that pass by the way, attend and see if there is any sorrow like unto my sorrow." Behold—“stabat juta crucem Jesu mater ejus." Before this blessed symbol of eternal love, I will daily kneel and pray for you, my friend, that by the Cross and Passion of the Crucified you may be delivered.". A deep shame mingles with my sympathy in reading these lines-shame for myself that I should be so weak in my own sorrows-so slight in comparison with those of that dearast of friends, who can write such a commentary of submission on her own great affliction. May God forgive me, and arm me for all future time, that in its trials I may have no more words of weak and cowardly complaint, but strength to suffer all things in his Providence! To the afflicted mother, who has been truly a mother to me, and who was wont to call all my countrymen, who were prisoners, "her children;" to her, the Beautiful, who now liveth among the saints in Heaven, my heart shall ever turn for refreshing draughts of grateful memory and holy thought, to cheer me on whatever remains of the weary course of life. IN MEMORIAM. Had earth no charms for thee, That thou, sweet soul, shouldst take the dusty way? From tend'rest infancy? Couldst thou no beauty see, But such as mock'd thy purest maiden dreams? |