"
This was a crusher for me. Drawing myself up to my full height--which
ought to be but is not six feet--I seized a kerosene lamp with my
right hand, and looking the unfortunate man full in the eye, I said
very respectfully, "General, good-night."
Undismayed, he eyed me back, and, in a tone of what I took to be
cordiality, replied, "Maybe you'd like a little whisky-and-water
before going to bed?"
I thanked him "No," mounted the lofty staircase, divested myself of
sundry sartorial cerements and plunged my earthly tabernacle into the
centre of a big delicious bed. There, while the thunder rolled among
the mountains, the rain plashed upon the window-shutters and the wind
blew like the very devil, I muttered to myself, "Here is a man bearing
worthily one of the most honored names in the Commonwealth--a member,
in fact, of one of the first--the first--_first_ fam--families in
Vir--gin--ia, actually pr--prais--praising Yan--Yank--Yankees in--in's
own hou--" I was asleep.
On the morrow, when I returned to the station and saw how very lovely
the country was, how fertile--the rounded mountains, when cleared
of their royal forests, arable to their very summits, the air like
Olympian nectar, the sunshine a divine balm, the whole scene a
Sabbath-land of peace and of boundless plenty, awaiting only the
cohorts of the North and of the white-cliffed isle--I would fain have
cried, "Come, ye moderately pecunious Bulls, and you, ye hyperborean
Vandals from the far Lake of Winnipiseogee and the uttermost Cape of
Cod--come to this Canaan, not like carpet-bagging spies to steal our
big bunch of grapes and tote it off on a stick between two of you (as
per authentic pictures in Sunday-school books), but with your shekels,
your deniers, your pence, pounds sterling and crisp greenbacks: come
to this beauteous land, take it, own it, possess it, buy freely, and
be sure you reserve enough cash to build a house with; or, better
still, bring your houses ready made, in nests like buckets or painted
pails (I am sure you have them in your inventive realm).
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