The following letter, the original of which lies before me as I write, gives Mr. Davis's view of the Conference, and is of great interest and historical value. The omissions are of family matters only. J. Wm. Jones.

MR. DAVIS'S LETTER
Beauvoir, Miss., 1st Sept. 1885.
REV'D. J. WILLIAM JONES,
My dear Sir:—

In "The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government" I believe I stated about all for which I had any official authority in regard to the Hampton Roads Conference. Beyond that I might say that the Commissioners orally gave me a long account of what transpired at their meeting but of which they declined to make an official report because they had agreed with Messrs. Lincoln and. Seward that their conversation should be considered confidential. I then pointed out to them that they had probably fallen into a trap and that their conversation on the Monroe doctrine as connected with the war then progressing between France and Mexico would be so represented by Mr. Seward through the American Minister at Paris as to interfere with whatever good feeling the Emperor of the French had for us. That this was done and probably with that effect may be learned from the published dispatches of Mr. Seward to Mr. Dayton, and the subsequent conduct of Louis Napoleon towards the Confederacy.

So far from Mr. Lincoln having exceeded his authority by promising compensation for slaves, he referred to that subject as closed by the Act of Congress and his own views as set forth in his

1 Stephens in his "War between the States," Vol. II, p. 617 (as quoted in Nicolay and Hay's "Abraham Lincoln," Vol. X, p. 124), says Lincoln "went on to say that he would be willing to be taxed to remunerate the Southern people for their slaves. He believed the people of the North were as responsible for slavery as the people of the South; and if the war should then cease, with the voluntary abolition of slavery by the States, he should be in favor, individually, of the Government paying a fair indemnity for the loss to the owners. He said he believed this feeling had an extensive existence at the North.... But, on this subject he said he could give no assurance--enter into no stipulation."-EDITOR C. M.

2 On this point Nicolay and Hay ("Abraham Lincoln," Vol. X, pp. 126-7) record that Mr. Hunter said at the Conference "that the Confederate States and their people were by these terms forced to unconditional

message. Mr. Hunter made an argument against taking the negro men for soldiers that it would leave the women and children destitute, to which Mr. Lincoln replied by telling an anecdote of a man in Ills. who had planted a large crop of potatoes which he said he would leave the hogs to gather, but when asked what they would do when the ground was frozen, replied it would be "Root little pig or die." Nothing could be more absurd than the story which has been of late circulated that Mr. Lincoln offered compensation for the slaves. He showed no disposition to make such promise,1 and it would have been idle if he had made it, because he had no power to fulfil it. Unconditional submission, with a general assurance of Executive clemency, was all he offered and more than this he said he could not give without recognizing the Confederate Govt.

It will be remembered that Mr. Lincoln had, through Mr. Blair, invited the sending of Commissioners to confer with him at Washington. For some reason the purpose was changed; the Commissioners were not allowed to proceed beyond Hampton Roads, and it was after some delay and correspondence that they were allowed to proceed so far. Had Mr. Lincoln proposed to come to the neutral border between the Federal and Confederate Armies, I should have chosen to meet him in person, instead of sending Commissioners whom, my letter to them shows, I expected to go to Washington, whither, of course, it was not proper for me to go, however protected by a safe conduct.

When the Commissioners returned from Hampton Roads neither the people. nor the Congress were prepared for unsurrender and submission," and add "To this Mr. Seward replied with patience and dignity, that no words like unconditional submission had been used, or any importing, or justly implying degradation, or humiliation even, to the people of the Confederate States. Nor did he think that in [sic] yielding to the execution of the laws under the Constitution of the United States, with all its guarantees and securities for personal and political rights, as they might be declared to be by the courts, could be properly considered as unconditional submission to conquerors, or as having anything humiliating in it. Southern people and the Southern States would be under the Constitution of the United States, with all their rights secured thereby, in the same way, and through the same instrumentalities, as the similar rights of the people of the other States were. This quotation of Mr. Seward's statement is also from Mr. Stephens's "War between the States," Vol. II, pp. 616-7.-EDITOR C. M.

The

VERYBODY takes his own dreams

table when somebody else begins to tell the adventures of the night before. I hesitate, therefore, to enter upon an account of my dreams; for it is a literary sin to bore the reader, and a scientific sin to report the facts of a far country with more regard to point and brevity than to complete the literal truth. The psychologists have trained a pack of theories and facts which they keep in leash, like so many bulldogs, and which they let loose upon us whenever we depart from the strait and narrow path of dream probability. One may not even tell an entertaining dream without being suspected of having liberally edited it, as if editing were one of the seven deadly sins, instead of a useful and honorable occupation. Be it understood, then, that I am discoursing at my own breakfast-table, and that no scientific man is present to trip the autocrat.

I used to wonder why scientific men and others were always asking me about my dreams. But I am not surprised now, since I have discovered what some of them

In

believe to be the ordinary waking experience of one who is both deaf and blind. They think that I can know very little about objects even a few feet beyond the reach of my arms. Everything outside of myself, according to them, is a hazy blur. Trees, mountains, cities, the ocean, even the house I live in, are but fairy fabrications, misty unrealities. Therefore it is assumed that my dreams should have peculiar interest for the man of science. some undefined way it is expected that they should reveal the world I dwell in to be flat, formless, colorless, without perspective, with little thickness and less solidity-a vast solitude of soundless space. But who shall put into words limitless, visionless, silent void? One should be a disembodied spirit indeed to make anything out of such insubstantial experiences. A world, or a dream, for that matter, to be comprehensible to us, must, I should think, have a warp of substance woven into the woof of fantasy. We cannot imagine even in dreams an object which has no counterpart in reality. Ghosts always resemble somebody, and if they do not appear themselves, their presence is indicated

During sleep we enter a strange, mysterious realm which science has thus far not explored. Beyond the border-line of slumber the investigator may not pass with his common-sense rule and test. Sleep with softest touch locks all the gates of our physical senses and lulls to rest the conscious will, the disciplinarian of our waking thoughts. Then the spirit wrenches itself free from the sinewy arms of reason and, like a winged courser, spurns the firm, green earth and speeds away upon wind and cloud, leaving neither trace nor footprint by which science may track its flight and bring us knowledge of the distant, shadowy country that we nightly visit. When we come back from the dream-realm, we can give no reasonable report of what we met there. But once across the border, we feel at home, as if we had always lived there and had never made any excursions into this rational, daylight world.

My dreams do not seem to differ very much from the dreams of other people. Some of them are coherent and safely hitched to an event or a conclusion; others are inconsequent and fantastic. All attest that in Dreamland there is no such thing as repose. We are always up and doing, with a mind for any adventure. We act, strive, think, suffer, and are glad to no purpose. We leave outside the portals of Sleep all troublesome incredulities and vexatious speculations as to probability. I float wraithlike upon clouds, in and out among the winds, without the faintest notion that I am doing anything unusual. In Dreamland I find little that is altogether strange or wholly new to my experience. No matter what happens, I am not astonished, however extraordinary the circumstances may be. I visit a foreign land where I have not been in reality, and I converse with peoples whose language I have never heard. Yet we manage to understand one another perfectly. whatsoever situation or society my wanderings bring me, there is the same homogeneity. If I happen into Vagabondia, I make merry with the jolly folk of the road or the tavern.

Into

I do not remember ever to have met persons with whom I could not at once communicate, or to have been shocked or

panions. In its strange wanderings in those dusky groves of Slumberland, my soul takes everything for granted and adapts itself to the wildest phantoms. I am seldom confused. Everything is as clear as day. I know events the instant they take place, and wherever I turn my steps, mind is my faithful guide and interpreter.

I suppose every one has had in a dream the exasperating, profitless experience of seeking something urgently desired at the moment, and the aching, weary sensation that follows each failure to track the thing to its hiding-place. Sometimes with a singing dizziness in my head I climb and climb, I know not where or why. Yet I cannot quit the torturing, passionate endeavor, though again and again I reach out blindly for an object to hold to. Of course, according to the perversity of dreams, there is no object near. I clutch empty air, and then I fall downward, and still downward, and in the midst of the fall I dissolve into the atmosphere upon which I have been floating so precariously.

Some of my dreams seem to be traced one within another like a series of concentric circles. In sleep I think I cannot sleep. I toss about in the toils of tasks unfinished. I decide to get up and read for a while. I know the shelf in my library where I keep the book I want. The book has no name, but I find it without difficulty. I settle myself comfortably in the Morris-chair, the great book open on my knee.

Not a word can I make out, the pages are utterly blank. I am not surprised, but keenly disappointed. I finger the pages, I bend over them lovingly, the tears fall on my hands. I shut the book quickly as the thought passes through my mind, "The print will be all rubbed out if I get it wet." Yet there is no print tangible on the page!

fully as my dismay grew, until I was at the antipodes of sleep. Finally my eyes opened actually, and I knew that I had been dreaming. I had only waked into. sleep. What is still more bewildering, there is no difference between the consciousness of the sham waking and that of the real one.

It is fearful to think that all that we have ever seen, felt, read, and done, may suddenly rise to our dream-vision, as the sea casts up objects it has swallowed. I have held a little child in my arms in the midst of a riot and spoken vehemently, imploring the Russian soldiers not to massacre the Jews. I have relived the agonizing scenes of the Sepoy Rebellion and the French Revolution. Cities have burned before my eyes, and I have fought the flames until I fell exhausted. Holocausts overtake the world, and I struggle in vain to save my friends.

Once in a dream a message came speeding over land and sea that winter was descending upon the world from the North Pole, that the Arctic zone was shifting to our mild climate. Far and wide the message flew. The ocean was congealed in midsummer. Ships were held fast in the ice by thousands, the ships with large, white sails were held fast. Riches of the Orient and the plenteous harvests of the golden West might no more pass between nation and nation. For some time the trees and flowers grew on, despite the intense cold. Birds flew into the houses for safety, and those which winter had overtaken lay on the snow with wings spread in vain flight. At last the foliage and blossoms fell at the feet of Winter. The petals of the flowers were turned to rubies and sapphires. The leaves froze into emeralds. The trees moaned and tossed their branches as the frost pierced them through bark and sap, pierced into their very roots. I shivered myself awake, and with a tumult of joy I breathed the many sweet morning odors wakened by the summer

sun.

One need not visit an African jungle or an Indian forest to hunt the tiger. One can lie in bed amid downy pillows and dream tigers as terrible as any in the pathless wild. I was a little girl when one night I tried to cross the garden in front of my aunt's house in Alabama. I was in pursuit of a large cat with a great, bushy

LXXVII-9

tail. A few hours before he had clawed my little canary out of its cage, and crunched it between his cruel teeth. I could not see the cat; but the thought in my mind was distinct: "He is making for the high grass at the end of the garden. I'll get there first." I put my hand on the box border and ran swiftly along the path. When I reached the high grass, there was the cat gliding into the wavy tangle. I rushed forward and tried to seize him and take the bird from between his teeth. To my horror, a huge beast, not the cat at all, sprang out from the grass, and his sinewy shoulder rubbed against me with palpitating strength! His ears stood up and quivered with anger. His eyes were hot. His nostrils were large and wet. His lips moved horribly. I knew it was a tiger, a real live tiger, and that I should be devoured-my little bird and I. I do not know what happened after that. The next important thing seldom happens in dreams.

My

Some time earlier I had a dream which made a vivid impression upon me. aunt was weeping because she could not find me; but I took an impish pleasure in the thought that she and others were searching for me, and making great noise, which I felt through my feet. Suddenly the spirit of mischief gave way to uncertainty and fear. I felt cold. The air

smelled like ice and salt. I tried to run; but the long grass tripped me, and I fell forward on my face. I lay very still, feeling with all my body. After a while my sensations seemed to be concentrated in my fingers, and I perceived that the grass blades were as sharp as knives, and hurt my hands cruelly. I tried to get up cautiously, so as not to cut myself on the sharp grass. I put down a tentative foot, much as my kitten treads for the first time the primeval forest in the back yard. All at once I felt the stealthy patter of something creeping, creeping, creeping purposely toward me. I do not know how at that time the idea was in my mind,-I had no words for intention or purpose,— yet it was precisely the evil intent, and not the creeping animal, that terrified me. had no fear of living creatures. I loved my father's dogs, the frisky little calf, the gentle cows, the horses and mules that ate apples from my hand, and none of them had ever harmed me. I lay low, waiting

I