Scotland is a country in which assassins have figured largely, and her history is more disfigured by their acts than that of any other modern nation, due allowance being made for the smallness of her territory and the limited number of her people. This peculiarity in Scotch history is principally owing to the circumstance, that, as a rule, Scotland has been more aristocratically dominated than any other community; and aristocracies are more prolific of assassins than democracies or monarchies, as before said. Aristocrats, members of privileged classes, are less patient of restriction, and more prone to take the righting of what they call their wrongs into their own hands, than are other men. Violence of all kinds was for centuries more common in Scotland than in any other European country that had made the same advances in civilization; and the troubles that overtook so many of her monarchs were the natural consequences of their position. The House of Stuart has been called "the Fated Line"; and it deserved the name, because it stood nominally at the head of a nation that really was ruled by the fiercest aristocracy that ever plagued a people or perplexed monarchs. The independence of Scotland, her salvation from that English rule with which she was threatened by Edward I., whose success would have made her what Ireland became under English ascendency, was based on a deed which even some Scotch writers have not hesitated to speak of as reprehensible,—the killing, namely, of Comyn in a church at Dumfries, by Bruce and Kirkpatrick; and it seems as if the blood-stain then and there contracted clung to the Stuarts, who were descended from Bruce by the female line. The Duke of Rothesay, son of Robert III., and heir-apparent, was murdered by his uncle, the Duke of Albany, whose purpose was to divert the crown to his own branch of the family. Rothesay's brother became James I., and he was assassinated by Sir Robert Grahame,—the King's offence being that he wished to introduce something like regular government into Scotland, having learned, the value of order in England, where he had passed many years as a prisoner. Grahame was one of the most ferocious of the savages who then formed the Scotch aristocracy, and he had no idea of seeing radicalism made rampant in his country; and so he headed a conspiracy against the King and murdered him. James II. was himself an assassin, as he stabbed the Earl of Douglas, who had come to him under an assurance of safety, and who was cut to pieces by some of the royal retainers, after their master had set them an example. The King's excuse was, that the Douglas had become too powerful to be proceeded against regularly; and, indeed, the question then before Scotland was, whether that country should be ruled by the House of Douglas or the House of Stuart, and we cannot wonder that a king in the fifteenth century should conclude rather to murder than to be murdered. James II. overthrew the Black Douglas, and in his case assassination did prosper. James III. was assassinated while flying from a field of battle on which he had been beaten by rebels. Mary Stuart, daughter of James V., is believed by many historical inquirers to have been a party to the assassination of her husband, (Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, who was her relative,) the question whether she did thus act forming the turning-point in that famous Marian Controversy which has raged for three hundred years, and which seems to be no nearer a decision now than it was before Loch Leven and Fotheringay,—Mr. Froude, the last of the great champions in the fight, having pronounced, with all his usual directness, adversely to the Rose of Scotland. Whether Mary was an assassin or not, it is beyond all doubt that her husband was one of the assassins of her servant Rizzio, who was murdered in her very presence. Mary's son, James VI., stands in the strangest relation to an extraordinary assassination of any man in history. The Gowrie Conspiracy is yet a riddle. According to one class of historical critics, the Earl of Gowrie and his brother, Alexander Ruthven, were bent upon assassinating the King; while another class are quite as positive that the King was bent upon assassinating the Ruthvens, and that he accomplished his purpose. We confess that we are strongly inclined to go with those who say that the Ruthvens were victims, and not baffled assassins; and we have always admired the reply of the clergyman to whom the King condescended to tell his story, in the hope of convincing him of its truth. "Doubtless," said that skeptical, but pious personage, "I must believe it, since your Majesty says you saw it; but I would not have believed it, had I seen it with my own eyes." Was ever a king more cleverly told that he was a liar? The Earl of Murray, Mary Stuart's bastard brother, and the first of many regents who ruled Scotland during her son's minority, was the victim of the most pardonable act of assassination that we know of,—if such a crime be ever pardonable. Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh was one of those Scotchmen who joined Mary Stuart after her escape from Loch Leven, and was condemned to death after her failure, but had his life spared, while his estate was confiscated. He might have borne this loss of property, but he became enraged when he heard that his wife had been so treated, when ejected from what had been her own property before her marriage, as to go mad and die. The person who misused her had received the estate from the Earl of Murray; and upon the latter Hamilton resolved to take vengeance. He carried out his plans, which were very cleverly formed, with great skill and coolness, and consequently was successful, taking off his great enemy, and getting off himself. He shot Murray as he was passing through the town of Linlithgow, stationing himself in a house that belonged to the Archbishop of St. Andrews, in and around which everything had been prepared for the killing of one man and the escape of another. It is beyond all doubt that the Archbishop was a party to the crime, or Bothwellhaugh could not have had the facilities which were his for obtaining revenge and striking a great blow for the Queen's party. The princely House of Hamilton generally approved of the deed. Let not those, however, who see in the Archbishop's conduct the natural effect of Catholicism, be in too great hurry to attribute his conduct to his religious belief; for there were Protestant assassins in Scotland in those days, and later. Only a few years before, a very eminent Catholic, Cardinal Beaton, who was Archbishop of St. Andrews, was murdered by Norman Lesley; and John Knox associated himself with Lesley, and those by whom he was aided, to hold the castle of St. Andrews against the Government's forces. The murderers of Rizzio were not Catholics, and their victim belonged to the old church. Some of Darnley's murderers were Protestants. In the next century some remarkable cases of Scotch assassination took place. Montrose stands charged with having attempted to take the lives of Argyle and Hamilton; but we hesitate to believe the story, so great is our admiration of that wonderful man. After the Restoration, (1660,) the ultra Protestants, perverting various passages of Scripture, assumed to execute judgment on those whom they held to be enemies of God and the true Kirk. The man for whom they felt most hatred was James Sharpe, Archbishop of St. Andrews,—a title that seems to have had peculiar attractions for assassins. Sharpe was accused, not untruthfully, of having sold his cause to Government; and he became a marked man with those whom he had betrayed. A preacher named Mitchell fired a pistol into Sharpe's carriage, and wounded the Bishop of the Orkneys so severely that that prelate ultimately died of the injury. Years later Mitchell was about to make a second attempt on the Archbishop, when he was arrested, tried, imprisoned for some time, condemned, and executed, at the Archbishop's earnest request. The next year Sharpe was slain by a number of Protestants, who were looking for a minor persecutor, and who thought that Heaven had specially delivered the Archbishop into their hands when they encountered his carriage, from which they made him descend, and murdered him in presence of his daughter, using swords and pistols. Among the many stories told of Claverhouse (then Viscount of Dundee) is one to the effect that he was shot on the battlefield of Killiecrankie by one of his servants, who used a silver button from his livery-coat, the great Grahame being impervious to lead.[C] About the same time, Sir George Lockhart, President of the Court of Session, and head of the Scotch tribunals, was assassinated by Chiesly of Dalry, who was angry because the President had assigned to Mrs. Chiesly, with whom her husband had quarrelled, a larger alimony than that husband thought she should have. The business of divorcing, and discriminating as to the amount of ladies' allowances, is a safer one in these times, and fortunate for the judges that it is, considering how much of such business they have to perform. If every hundred divorce cases produced one assassination, lawyers would be rapidly promoted—and shot.

England has contributed a large number of assassinations to the pages of that Newgate serial which is known by the grave name of history. One of her kings, Edward II., is known to have been murdered after his deposition; and it is supposed that he perished by a peculiarly horrible form of death. William Rufus is believed to have been assassinated in the New Forest, though the popular notion is, that he was accidentally killed by an arrow from the bow of Walter Tirrel, which must have been a long-bow. Richard II. was probably killed in prison, after deposition. Henry VI. is believed to have been killed in 1471, he being then a prisoner in the hands of the triumphant Yorkists,—but there is no proof that he was killed. Edward V., a boy-monarch, is one of the princes whom Richard III.'s enemies said he had smothered in the Tower,—a story to be maintained only by smothering all evidence. Many English sovereigns were attacked by assassins, but escaped. Edward I. was stabbed by a Mussulman when he was crusading in the East,—and we had almost said that he was rightly served; for what business had he in that remote part of the world? Henry V. was to have been assassinated, according to the statement of himself and his friends; but he had the satisfaction of killing the conspirators judicially. Elizabeth, as became her superiority to most sovereigns, was a favorite with persons with a taste for assassination strongly developed. She was under the Papal ban, and was an object of the indelicate attentions of that prince of assassins, Philip II.; and his underlings, who were all great people, made her life so uncertain that there never lived the actuary who was capable of estimating the probabilities of its duration. That she escaped is as wonderful as anything in her history, for she does not appear to have been very heedful of her personal safety; yet she could punish detected ruffians sharply enough. James I. was once in no slight danger. No conspiracy ever came so near making a great noise in the world, of a kind very different from that which it did make, as the Gunpowder Plot; and the silence which marked its course is quite as astonishing as the excitement that followed its disclosure. That so many persons should have kept so deadly a secret so long and so faithfully is as great a mystery as ever was invented by a writer of the sensation school; and when Catholics declare that there never was a plot, except that which was formed against their religion by artful men for the worst purposes, they do not talk so unreasonably as at the first blush it should seem. This plot was emphatically a gentlemanly transaction. There was hardly a person who had part in it who was not a gentleman by birth or education, or both. Catesby, Percy, Rookwood, Digby, the Winters, Grant, Tresham, Keyes, and the Littletons were all members of good families, and some of them of very high families,—as Percy, Digby, Rookwood, and Catesby. Some of them had been Protestants,—as Catesby and Percy; and Digby had been brought up in a Protestant house. Fawkes was of respectable parentage and of good education. Father Garnet, on his trial, was spoken of by Sir Edward Coke as having "many excellent gifts and endowments of nature: by birth a gentleman, by education a scholar, by art learned, and a good linguist." He was brought up a Protestant. That Catholics of such standing, and with such training as should have taught them better, should have engaged in so wicked a conspiracy, was one of the chief reasons why adherents of the ancient religion were treated so cruelly in England for more than two centuries. Titus Oates's invention, the Popish Plot, never would have found believers, had not men remembered the Gunpowder Plot. In Cromwell's time, and during the civil war that preceded it, assassination plots were common, and some succeeded. The Cavaliers had very loose notions on the subject. They killed an English envoy in Holland and another in Spain. Cromwell was almost as much a target as Louis Philippe became after he was converted, for his sins, into a Citizen King. It is even asserted that he feared assassination, and he was not in the habit of fearing many things. The court of the exiled Stuarts teemed with assassins; and projects for murdering the Protector were there formed, as well as in England. Nothing but the good intelligence which Cromwell purchased saved his life. Charles II., in his turn, became the object of assassins' attentions. Some of those who meant to kill him were superior men,—as Richard Rumbold, who was able, brave, honest, and pious. True, Rumbold in dying expressed his abhorrence of assassination, and denied that he ever had countenanced it; but the distinction which he made, and on which his dying expressions were founded, can deceive no one, and we find it difficult to believe that they deceived Rumbold himself. To have killed the King and the Duke of York after the manner spoken of by the Rye-House plotters would have been to assassinate them, and no amount of sophistry could have given to the conspiracy any other character than that of an assassination plot. William III. lived in almost as great danger of dying by the hand of an assassin as his immortal ancestor whom Gerard shot. It shows how common was assassination in those times, and how loose was public morality, that Louis XIV. was a party to at least two of the plots that were formed for taking William's life,—that of Grandval and that of Barclay, the latter known in English history as the Assassination Plot par excellence, and which would have succeeded, had two or three of the parties to it been left out. James II., William's father-in-law, was also concerned in both these plots; and his illegitimate son, the Duke of Berwick, a man of the highest personal integrity, was aware of what Barclay was about. Since William's time English sovereigns have had but little trouble from assassins, and that little has proceeded from insane creatures. George III. was struck at by a crazy woman, one Peg Nicholson, and fired at, in a theatre, by a crazy man named Hadfield. We can recollect three persons firing at Queen Victoria, none of whom were executed, though they all richly deserved hanging.

Englishmen of note have been assassinated from time to time. Becket's death was an act of assassination. Two Dukes of Gloucester, of the blood royal, were assassinated in prison,—one in the reign of Richard II., and the other in that of Henry VI. Not a few eminent persons in England were "done to death" by the abuse of judicial proceedings, which were in fact acts of assassination. Most of Henry VIII.'s great victims perished by means fouler than any of those to which Richard III. is accused of having had resort; and the manner in which his father, Henry VII., murdered the Earl of Warwick, last of the male Plantagenets, and only because he was a Plantagenet, was a deed worthy of a devil. Elizabeth, unless she is much libelled, would have avoided the execution of Mary Stuart by resort to assassination, only that her instruments were found scrupulous. The first Duke of Buckingham of the Villiers family was assassinated by John Felton, in Charles I.'s reign. Harley, afterward Earl of Oxford, was stabbed by a Frenchman, named Guiscard, Harley being then Chancellor of the Exchequer, in Anne's reign. Mr. Perceval, First Lord of-the Treasury, was shot by a lunatic named John Bellingham, in 1812, the scene being the lobby of the House of Commons. In 1819 the Cato-Street Conspiracy was formed by Arthur Thistlewood and others. It was meant to kill the British Ministers, and the mode in which it was finally resolved to proceed was to attack them when they should be assembled at a Cabinet dinner, to be given by the Earl of Harrowby, Lord President of the Council. Government knew all about the conspiracy, and allowed it to ripen, and then "bagged" the conspirators. This was in February, 1820; and on the first of May five of the assassins were hanged and five others transported. When Sir Robert Peel was last Prime-Minister, a fellow named M'Naughten sought his life, and killed his private secretary, Mr. Drummond. Sir Robert was so indiscreet as to charge Mr. Cobden with inciting persons to take his life!

Russia has lost several of her sovereigns through assassination, accompanied or preceded by deposition. Ivan VI. was assassinated in prison, almost a quarter of a century after the crown had been taken from him. Peter III. survived his downfall but a week, when he was poisoned, beaten, and strangled. The Czar Paul was so unreasonable as to resist those who were deposing him, and they were under the disagreeable necessity of squeezing his throat so long and so tightly, that breathing became difficult, and at last stopped altogether. The murderers of both Peter and Paul became great personages, held high offices, did important deeds, and were received in the very best society, as well abroad as at home. Macaulay, in his article on Madame D'Arblay, (Fanny Burney,) mentions the number, the variety, and the greatness of the company which her father, Dr. Burney, assembled frequently at his house. "On one evening, of which we happen to have a full account," he says, "there was present Lord Mulgrave, Lord Bruce, Lord and Lady Edgecumbe, Lord Barrington from the War Office, Lord Sandwich from the Admiralty, Lord Ashburnham, with his gold key dangling from his pocket, and the French Ambassador, M. de Guignes, renowned for his fine person and for his success in gallantry. But the great show of the night was the Russian Ambassador, Count Orloff, whose gigantic figure was all in a blaze of jewels, and in whose demeanor the untamed ferocity of the Scythian might be discerned through a thin varnish of French politeness. As he stalked about the small parlor, brushing the ceiling with his toupee, the girls whispered to each other, with mingled admiration and horror, that he was the favored lover of his august mistress [Catharine II.]; that he had borne the chief part in the revolution to which she owed her throne; and that his huge hands, now glittering with diamond rings, had given the last squeeze to the windpipe of her unfortunate husband." He must have been a nice man for a small party, and a peculiarly edifying spectacle for young ladies. And then how fit to be ambassador at a court the first woman of which was good Queen Charlotte! Many words have been wasted on the question, whether Catharine II. and Alexander I. consented to the murder, the one of her husband and the other of his father; but the question is absurdly framed. They consented to the act of deposition in each case, and that was the same as to sign the death-warrant. The old saying, that short is the passage of a dethroned monarch from a prison to a grave, applies with peculiar force to Russia: Catharine II. well knew that there was no hope for her husband; and Alexander I. could not have been deceived on such a point. While she was at the height of her power, Catharine herself was in danger of being assassinated. Some of the nobles suggested to her son, the Grand Duke Paul, that she should be deposed and murdered, and offered to do the job, quite as a matter of course, and with no more of shame than so many English Parliament-men might have felt for proposing to vote a minister out of office. It was their mode of effecting a change of ministry, and they regarded the proposition as showing that they were members of the constitutional opposition. As Talleyrand told Bonaparte, when news of Paul's murder reached Paris, "'Tis a way they have there!" Paul rejected the offer to rid him of his mother with horror. His own son was not so moral, in after days. Alexander was a haunted man, and remorse made him the crazy wreck that he was in his last years, and shortened his life. He was threatened with assassination by the Russian constitutional opposition, when it was thought that he was giving up too much to Napoleon I.; and the eventful war of 1812 was the result of his fears of that opposition. When he was at Vienna, attending the memorable Congress, he frankly said that he durst not go back to Russia without having added all of Poland that he claimed to his dominions,—that it was as much as his life was worth to comply with the demands of Austria, France, and England with regard to the Poles. This was the real reason why the Polish question was so clumsily disposed of, and left to make trouble for the future. Alexander preferred quarrelling with his allies rather than with his nobles, exactly as he had done when Napoleon I. was his foreign antagonist. There have been persons enough to argue that Alexander I. was assassinated, after all, and also that Nicholas was disposed of in the same constitutional way; but we can see no evidence on which to found any such argument. When, in the days of the Polish War, (1831,) the Grand Duke Constantine and Marshal Diebitsch died rather suddenly, it was generally believed that they had been assassinated by order of Nicholas, but without any foundation for the belief.

One of the last of the Swedish kings of the line of Vasa, Gustavus III., was assassinated in 1792, being shot by Count Anckarstroem, at a masked ball, March 16th. This murder was the result of an aristocratical conspiracy, the King having done much to lessen the power of the nobility. He was engaged at the time he was shot in getting up a crusade against revolutionary France, of which he purposed being the head. He survived his wound thirteen days.

An attempt to assassinate Joseph I., King of Portugal, was made in 1758, when the celebrated Marquis of Pombal was the real ruler of that country. Many executions took place, including several of the highest nobles. The Jesuits, who were then very unpopular, and against whom most European governments were directing their power, were charged with this crime, and some of them were put to death, and the rest banished from Portugal.

In the year 1831, Count Capo d'Istria, then President of Greece, was assassinated at Nauplia, by the brothers Mauromichalis. He was supposed to be a mere tool of Russia, in whose service much of his life had passed. He was by birth a Greek of the Ionian Islands; and after they had become a portion of Napoleon I.'s empire, he took office in Russia, rising very high. Employed to look after Russia's interests in Greece, he was ultimately chosen President of the latter country in 1827. Popular at first, he soon became odious, and was nothing but a Russian agent. His death probably cut short plans which, had they succeeded, would have had much effect on the course of European events. In the old land, where it was considered a sacred duty to kill tyrants, he was suddenly slain as he was entering a church. His death caused little regret, though the deed of the Mauromichalis was warmly condemned; many persons being ready to profit from crimes the perpetration of which they are swift to condemn, and as ready to execute the perpetrators.

FOOTNOTES:

[B] The word assassin, according to that eminent Orientalist Sylvestre de Sacy, is derived from hashish, being the liquid preparation on which the Old Man of the Mountain used to intoxicate his operators, and which appears to have been an uncommonly powerful tipple. The men whom he thus drugged, or hocused, when they were to commit murder, "were called, in Arabic, Hashishin in the plural, and Hashishi in the singular." The Crusaders brought the word from the East. The ancients had not the word, but they had the thing, as the English suffer from ennui, but have no name for it. A temperance lecturer might turn this connection between blind drunkenness and reckless murder to some good purpose.

[C] Mr. De Quincey's immortal Connoisseur, who delivered the Williams Lecture on Murder, speaking of the supposed assassination of Gustavus Adolphus, at the Battle of Lutzen, says,—"The King of Sweden's assassination, by-the-by, is doubted by many writers,—Harte amongst others; but they are wrong. He was murdered; and I consider his murder unique in its excellence; for he was murdered at noonday, and on the field of battle,—a feature of original conception, which occurs in no other work of art that I remember." His memory was bad. He must have heard the story that Desaix was murdered on the field of Marengo, after coming up to save Bonaparte from destruction; and he must also have heard the story that Dundee was murdered at Killiecrankie. Mr. Hawthorne mentions that he saw, in an old volume of Colonial newspapers, "a report that General Wolfe was slain, not by the enemy, but by a shot from his own soldiers." All these reports are just as well founded as that which represents Gustavus Adolphus as having been assassinated. Harte's doubts are, as the reader can see by referring to his work, well sustained, and leave the impression that the King was killed in fair fight. We have heard a very ingenious argument in support of the proposition that Stonewall Jackson was assassinated by some of his own men,—and there is some mystery about the cause or occasion of his death.



THE CHIMNEY-CORNER.

VII.

LITTLE FOXES.—PART VI.

DISCOURTESY.

"For my part," said my wife, "I think one of the greatest destroyers of domestic peace is Discourtesy. People neglect, with their nearest friends, those refinements and civilities which they practise with strangers."

"My dear Madam, I am of another opinion," said Bob Stephens. "The restraints of etiquette, the formalities of ceremony, are beauteous enough in out-door life; but when a man comes home, he wants leave to take off his tight boots and gloves, wear the gown and slippers, and speak his mind freely without troubling his head where it hits. Home-life should be the communion of people who have learned to understand each other, who allow each other a generous latitude and freedom. One wants one place where he may feel at liberty to be tired or dull or disagreeable without ruining his character. Home is the place where we should expect to live somewhat on the credit which a full knowledge of each other's goodness and worth inspires; and it is not necessary for intimate friends to go every day through those civilities and attentions which they practise with strangers, any more than it is necessary, among literary people, to repeat the alphabet over every day before one begins to read."

"Yes," said Jennie, "when a young gentleman is paying his addresses, he helps a young lady out of a carriage so tenderly, and holds back her dress so adroitly, that not a particle of mud gets on it from the wheels; but when the mutual understanding is complete, and the affection perfect, and she is his wife, he sits still and holds the horse and lets her climb out alone. To be sure, when pretty Miss Titmouse is visiting them, he still shows himself gallant, flies from the carriage, and holds back her dress: that's because he doesn't love her nor she him, and they are not on the ground of mutual affection. When a gentleman is only engaged, or a friend, if you hem him a cravat or mend his gloves, he thanks you in the blandest manner; but when you are once sure of his affection, he only says, 'Very well; now I wish you would look over my shirts, and mend that rip in my coat,—and be sure don't forget it, as you did yesterday.' For all which reasons," said Miss Jennie, with a toss of her pretty head, "I mean to put off marrying as long as possible, because I think it far more agreeable to have gentlemen friends with whom I stand on the ground of ceremony and politeness than to be restricted to one who is living on the credit of his affection. I don't want a man who gapes in my face, reads a newspaper all breakfast-time while I want somebody to talk to, smokes cigars all the evening, or reads to himself when I would like him to be entertaining, and considers his affection for me as his right and title to make himself generally disagreeable. If he has a bright face, and pleasant, entertaining, gallant ways, I like to be among the ladies who may have the benefit of them, and should take care how I lost my title to it by coming with him on to the ground of domestic affection."

"Well, Miss Jennie," said Bob, "it isn't merely our sex who are guilty of making themselves less agreeable after marriage. Your dapper little fairy creatures, who dazzle us so with wondrous and fresh toilettes, who are so trim and neat and sprightly and enchanting, what becomes of them after marriage? If he reads the newspaper at the breakfast-table, perhaps it's because there is a sleepy, dowdy woman opposite, in a faded gingham wrapper, put on in the sacredness of domestic privacy, and perhaps she has laid aside those crisp, sparkling, bright little sayings and doings that used to make it impossible to look at or listen to anybody else when she was about. Such things are, sometimes, among the goddesses, I believe. Of course, Marianne and I know nothing of these troubles; we, being a model pair, sit among the clouds and speculate on all these matters as spectators merely."

"Well, you see what your principle leads to, carried out," said Jennie. "If home is merely the place where one may feel at liberty to be tired or dull or disagreeable, without losing one's character, I think the women have far more right to avail themselves of the liberty than the men; for all the lonesome, dull, disagreeable part of home-life comes into their department. It is they who must keep awake with the baby, if it frets; and if they do not feel spirits to make an attractive toilette in the morning, or have not the airy, graceful fancies that they had when they were girls, it is not so very much against them. A housekeeper and nursery-maid cannot be expected to be quite as elegant in her toilette and as entertaining in her ways as a girl without a care in her father's house; but I think that this is no excuse for husbands' neglecting the little civilities and attentions which they used to show before marriage. They are strong and well and hearty; go out into the world and hear and see a great deal that keeps their minds moving and awake; and they ought to entertain their wives after marriage just as their wives entertained them before. That's the way my husband must do, or I will never have one,—and it will be small loss, if I don't," said Miss Jennie.

"Well," said Bob, "I must endeavor to initiate Charley Sedley in time."

"Charley Sedley, Bob!" said Jennie, with crimson indignation. "I wonder you will always bring up that old story, when I've told you a hundred times how disagreeable it is! Charley and I are good friends, but"——

"There, there," said Bob, "that will do; you don't need to proceed further."

"You only said that because you couldn't answer my argument," said Jennie.

"Well, my dear," said Bob, "you know everything has two sides to it, and I'll admit that you have brought up the opposite side to mine quite handsomely; but, for all that, I am convinced, that, if what I said was not really the truth, yet the truth lies somewhere in the vicinity of it. As I said before, so I say again, true love ought to beget a freedom which shall do away with the necessity of ceremony, and much may and ought to be tolerated among near and dear friends that would be discourteous among strangers. I am just as sure of this as of anything in the world."

"And yet," said my wife, "there is certainly truth in the much quoted lines of Cowper, on Friendship, where he says,—

"As similarity of mind, Or something not to be defined, First fixes our attention, So manners decent and polite, The same we practised at first sight, Will save it from declension."

"Well, now," said Bob, "I've seen enough of French politeness between married people. When I was in Paris, I remember there was in our boarding-house a Madame de Villiers, whose husband had conferred upon her his name and the de belonging to it, in consideration of a snug little income which she brought to him by the marriage. His conduct towards her was a perfect model of all the graces of civilized life. It was true that he lived on her income, and spent it in promenading the Boulevards, and visiting theatres and operas with divers fair friends of easy morals; still all this was so courteously, so politely, so diplomatically arranged with Madame, that it was quite worth while to be neglected and cheated for the sake of having the thing done in so finished and elegant a manner, according to his showing. Monsieur had taken the neat little apartment for her in our pension, because his circumstances were embarrassed, and he would be in despair to drag such a creature into hardships which he described as terrific, and which he was resolved heroically to endure alone. No, while a sous remained to them, his adored Julie should have her apartment and the comforts of life secured to her, while the barest attic should suffice for him. Never did he visit her without kissing her hand with the homage due to a princess, complimenting her on her good looks, bringing bonbons, entertaining her with most ravishing small-talk of all the interesting on-dits in Paris; and these visits were most particularly frequent as the time for receiving her quarterly instalments approached. And so Madame adored him and could refuse him nothing, believed all his stories, and was well content to live on a fourth of her own income for the sake of so engaging a husband."

"Well," said Jennie, "I don't know to what purpose your anecdote is related, but to me it means simply this: if a rascal, without heart, without principle, without any good quality, can win and keep a woman's heart merely by being invariably polite and agreeable while in her presence, how much more might a man of sense and principle and real affection do by the same means! I'm sure, if a man who neglects a woman, and robs her of her money, nevertheless keeps her affections, merely because whenever he sees her he is courteous and attentive, it certainly shows that courtesy stands for a great deal in the matter of love."

"With foolish women," said Bob.

"Yes, and with sensible ones too," said my wife. "Your Monsieur presents a specimen of the French way of doing a bad thing; but I know a poor woman whose husband did the same thing in English fashion, without kisses or compliments. Instead of flattering, he swore at her, and took her money away without the ceremony of presenting bonbons; and I assure you, if the thing must be done at all, I would, for my part, much rather have it done in the French than the English manner. The courtesy, as far as it goes, is a good, and far better than nothing,—though, of course, one would rather have substantial good with it. If one must be robbed, one would rather have one's money wheedled away agreeably, with kisses and bonbons, than be knocked down and trampled upon."

"The mistake that is made on this subject," said I, "is in comparing, as people generally do, a polished rascal with a boorish good man; but the polished rascal should be compared with the polished good man, and the boorish rascal with the boorish good man, and then we get the true value of the article.

"It is true, as a general rule, that those races of men that are most distinguished for outward urbanity and courtesy are the least distinguished for truth and sincerity; and hence the well-known alliterations, 'fair and false,' 'smooth and slippery.' The fair and false Greek, the polished and wily Italian, the courteous and deceitful Frenchman, are associations which, to the strong, downright, courageous Anglo-Saxon, make up-and-down rudeness and blunt discourtesy a type of truth and honesty.

"No one can read French literature without feeling how the element of courtesy pervades every department of life,—how carefully people avoid being personally disagreeable in their intercourse. A domestic quarrel, if we may trust French plays, is carried on with all the refinements of good breeding, and insults are given with elegant civility. It seems impossible to translate into French the direct and downright brutalities which the English tongue allows. The whole intercourse of life is arranged on the understanding that all personal contacts shall be smooth and civil, and such as to obviate the necessity of personal jostle and jar.

"Does a Frenchman engage a clerk or other employe, and afterwards hear a report to his disadvantage, the last thing he would think of would be to tell a downright unpleasant truth to the man. He writes him a civil note, and tells him, that, in consequence of an unexpected change of business, he shall not need an assistant in that department, and much regrets that this will deprive him of Monsieur's agreeable society, etc.

"A more striking example cannot be found of this sort of intercourse than the representation in the life of Madame George Sand of the proceedings between her father and his mother. There is all the romance of affection between this mother and son. He writes her the most devoted letters, he kisses her hand on every page, he is the very image of a gallant, charming, lovable son, while at the same time he is secretly making arrangements for a private marriage with a woman of low rank and indifferent reputation,—a marriage which he knows would be like death to his mother. He marries, lives with his wife, has one or two children by her, before he will pain the heart of his adored mother by telling her the truth. The adored mother suspects her son, but no trace of the suspicion appears in her letters to him. The questions which an English parent would level at him point-blank she is entirely too delicate to address to her dear Maurice; but she puts them to the Prefect of Police, and ferrets out the marriage through legal documents, while yet no trace of this knowledge dims the affectionateness of her letters, or the serenity of her reception of her son when he comes to bestow on her the time which he can spare from his family cares. In an English or American family there would have been a battle royal, an open rupture; whereas this courteous son and mother go on for years with this polite drama, she pretending to be deceived while she is not, and he supposing that he is sparing her feelings by the deception.

"Now it is the reaction from such a style of life on the truthful Anglo-Saxon nature that leads to an undervaluing of courtesy, as if it were of necessity opposed to sincerity. But it does not follow, because all is not gold that glitters, that nothing that glitters is gold, and because courtesy and delicacy of personal intercourse are often perverted to deceit, that they are not valuable allies of truth. No woman would prefer a slippery, plausible rascal to a rough, unceremonious honest man; but of two men equally truthful and affectionate, every woman would prefer the courteous one."

"Well," said Bob, "there is a loathsome, sickly stench of cowardice and distrust about all this kind of French delicacy that is enough to drive an honest fellow to the other extreme. True love ought to be a robust, hardy plant, that can stand a free out-door life of sun and wind and rain. People who are too delicate and courteous ever fully to speak their minds to each other are apt to have stagnant residuums of unpleasant feelings which breed all sorts of gnats and mosquitoes. My rule is, Say everything out as you go along; have your little tiffs, and get over them; jar and jolt and rub a little, and learn to take rubs and bear jolts.

"If I take less thought and use less civility of expression, in announcing to Marianne that her coffee is roasted too much, than I did to old Mrs. Pollux when I boarded with her, it's because I take it Marianne is somewhat more a part of myself than old Mrs. Pollux was,—that there is an intimacy and confidence between us which will enable us to use the short-hand of life,—that she will not fall into a passion or fly into hysterics, but will merely speak to cook in good time. If I don't thank her for mending my glove in just the style that I did when I was a lover, it is because now she does that sort of thing for me so often that it would be a downright bore to her to have me always on my knees about it. All that I could think of to say about her graceful handiness and her delicate needle-work has been said so often, and is so well understood, that it has entirely lost the zest of originality. Marianne and I have had sundry little battles, in which the victory came out on both sides, each of us thinking the better of the other for the vigor and spirit with which we conducted matters; and our habit of perfect plain-speaking and truth-telling to each other is better than all the delicacies that ever were hatched up in the hot-bed of French sentiment."

"Perfectly true, perfectly right," said I. "Every word good as gold. Truth before all things; sincerity before all things: pure, clear, diamond-bright sincerity is of more value than the gold of Ophir; the foundation of all love must rest here. How those people do who live in the nearest and dearest intimacy with friends who they believe will lie to them for any purpose, even the most refined and delicate, is a mystery to me. If I once know that my wife or my friend will tell me only what they think will be agreeable to me, then I am at once lost, my way is a pathless quicksand. But all this being premised, I still say that we Anglo-Saxons might improve our domestic life, if we would graft upon the strong stock of its homely sincerity the courteous graces of the French character.

"If anybody wishes to know exactly what I mean by this, let him read the Memoir of De Tocqueville, whom I take to be the representative of the French ideal man; and certainly the kind of family life which his domestic letters disclose has a delicacy and a beauty which adorn its solid worth.

"What I have to say on this matter is, that it is very dangerous for any individual man or any race of men continually to cry up the virtues to which they are constitutionally inclined, and to be constantly dwelling with reprobation on faults to which they have no manner of temptation.

"I think that we of the English race may set it down as a general rule that we are in no danger of becoming hypocrites in domestic life through an extra sense of politeness, and in some danger of becoming boors from a rough, uncultivated instinct of sincerity. But to bring the matter to a practical point, I will specify some particulars in which the courtesy we show to strangers might with advantage be grafted into our home-life.

"In the first place, then, let us watch our course when we are entertaining strangers whose good opinion we wish to propitiate. We dress ourselves with care, we study what it will be agreeable to say, we do not suffer our natural laziness to prevent our being very alert in paying small attentions, we start across the room for an easier chair, we stoop to pick up the fan, we search for the mislaid newspaper, and all this for persons in whom we have no particular interest beyond the passing hour; while with those friends whom we love and respect we sit in our old faded habiliments, and let them get their own chair, and look up their own newspaper, and fight their own way daily, without any of this preventing care.

"In the matter of personal adornment, especially, there are a great many people who are chargeable with the same fault that I have already spoken of in reference to household arrangements. They have a splendid wardrobe for company, and a shabby and sordid one for domestic life. A woman puts all her income into party-dresses, and thinks anything will do to wear at home. All her old tumbled finery, her frayed, dirty silks and soiled ribbons, are made to do duty for her hours of intercourse with her dearest friends. Some seem to be really principled against wearing a handsome dress in every-day life; they 'cannot afford' to be well-dressed in private. Now what I should recommend would be to take the money necessary for one or two party-dresses and spend it upon an appropriate and tasteful home-toilette, and to make it an avowed object to look prettily at home.

"We men are a sort of stupid, blind animals: we know when we are pleased, but we don't know what it is that pleases us; we say we don't care anything about flowers, but if there is a flower-garden under our window, somehow or other we are dimly conscious of it, and feel that there is something pleasant there; and so when our wives and daughters are prettily and tastefully attired, we know it, and it gladdens our life far more than we are perhaps aware of."

"Well, papa," said Jennie, "I think the men ought to take just as much pains to get themselves up nicely after marriage as the women. I think there are such things as tumbled shirt-collars and frowzy hair and muddy shoes brought into the domestic sanctuary, as well as frayed silks and dirty ribbons."

"Certainly," I said; "but you know we are the natural Hottentot, and you are the missionaries who are to keep from degenerating; we are the clumsy, old, blind Vulcan, and you the fair Cytherea, the bearers of the magic cestus, and therefore it is to you that this head more particularly belongs.

"Now I maintain that in family-life there should be an effort not only to be neat and decent in the arrangement of our person, but to be also what the French call coquette,—or to put it in plain English, there should be an endeavor to make ourselves look handsome in the eyes of our dearest friends.

"Many worthy women, who would not for the world be found wanting in the matter of personal neatness, seem some how to have the notion that any study of the arts of personal beauty in family-life is unmatronly; they buy their clothes with simple reference to economy, an have them made up without any question of becomingness; and hence marriage sometimes transforms a charming, trim, tripping young lady into a waddling matron whose every-day toilette suggests only the idea of a feather-bed tied round with a string. For my part, I do not believe that the summary banishment of the Graces from the domestic circle as soon as the first baby makes its appearance is at all conducive to domestic affection. Nor do I think that there is any need of so doing. These housewives are in danger, like other saints, of falling into the error of neglecting the body through too much thoughtfulness for others and too little themselves. If a woman ever had any attractiveness; let her try and keep it, setting it down as one of her domestic talents. As for my erring brothers firm who violate the domestic sanctuary by tousled hair, tumbled linen, and muddy shoes, I deliver them over to Miss Jennie without benefit of clergy.

"My second head is, that there should in family-life the same delicacy in the avoidance of disagreeable topics that characterizes the intercourse of refined society among strangers.

"I do not think that it makes family-life more sincere, or any more honest, to have the members of a domestic circle feel a freedom to blurt out in each other's faces, without thought or care, all the disagreeable things that may occur to them: as, for example, 'How horridly you look this morning! What's the matter with you?'—'Is there a pimple coming on your nose? or what is that spot?'—'What made you buy such a dreadfully unbecoming dress? It sets like a witch! Who cut it?'—'What makes you wear that pair of old shoes?'—'Holloa, Bess! is that your party-rig? I should think you were going out for a walking advertisement of a flower-store!'—Observations of this kind between husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, or intimate friends, do not indicate sincerity, but obtuseness; and the person who remarks on the pimple on your nose is in many cases just as apt to deceive you as the most accomplished Frenchwoman who avoids disagreeable topics in your presence.

"Many families seem to think that it is a proof of family union and good-nature that they can pick each other to pieces, joke on each other's feelings and infirmities, and treat each other with a general tally-ho-ing rudeness without any offence or ill-feeling. If there is a limping sister, there is a never-failing supply of jokes on 'Dot-and-go-one'; and so with other defects and peculiarities of mind or manners. Now the perfect good-nature and mutual confidence which allow all this liberty are certainly admirable; but the liberty itself is far from making home-life interesting or agreeable.

"Jokes upon personal or mental infirmities, and a general habit of saying things in jest which would be the height of rudeness if said in earnest, are all habits which take from the delicacy of family affection.

"In all this rough playing with edge-tools many are hit and hurt who are ashamed or afraid to complain. And after all, what possible good or benefit it? Courage to say disagreeable things, when it is necessary to say them for the highest good of the person addressed, is a sublime quality; but a careless habit of saying them, in the mere freedom of family intercourse, is certainly as great a spoiler of the domestic vines as any fox running.

"There is one point under this head which I enlarge upon for the benefit of my own sex: I mean table-criticisms. The conduct of housekeeping, in the present state of domestic service, certainly requires great allowance; and the habit of unceremonious comment on the cooking and appointments of the table, in which some husbands habitually allow themselves, is the most unpardonable form of domestic rudeness. If a wife has philosophy enough not to mind it, so much the worse for her husband, as it confirms him in an unseemly habit, embarrassing to guests and a bad example to children. If she has no feelings that he is bound to respect, he should at least respect decorum and good taste, and confine the discussion of such matters to private intercourse, and not initiate every guest and child into the grating and greasing of the wheels of the domestic machinery.

"Another thing in which families might imitate the politeness of strangers is a wise reticence with regard to the asking of questions and the offering of advice.

"A large family includes many persons of different tastes, habits, modes of thinking and acting, and it would be wise and well to leave to each one that measure of freedom in these respects which the laws of general politeness require. Brothers and sisters may love each other very much, and yet not enough to make joint-stock of all their ideas, plans, wishes, schemes, friendships. There are in every family-circle individuals whom a certain sensitiveness of nature inclines to quietness and reserve; and there are very well-meaning families where no such quietness or reserve is possible. Nobody can be let alone, nobody may have a secret, nobody can move in any direction, without a host of inquiries and comments. 'Who is your letter from? Let's see.'—'My letter is from So-and-So.'—'He writing to you? I didn't know that. What's he writing about?'—'Where did you go yesterday? What did you buy? What did you give for it? What are you going to do with it?'—'Seems to me that's an odd way to do. I shouldn't do so.'—'Look here, Mary; Sarah's going to have a dress of silk tissue this spring. Now I think they're too dear,—don't you?'

"I recollect seeing in some author a description of a true gentleman, in which, among other traits, he was characterized as the man that asks the fewest questions. This trait of refined society might be adopted into home-life in a far greater degree than it is, and make it far more agreeable.

"If there is perfect unreserve and mutual confidence, let it show itself in free communications coming unsolicited. It may fairly be presumed, that, if there is anything our intimate friends wish us to know, they will tell us of it,—and that when we are on close and confidential terms with persons, and there are topics on which they do not speak to us, it is because for some reason they prefer to keep silence concerning them; and the delicacy that respects a friend's silence is one of the charms of life.

"As with the asking of questions, so with the offering of advice, there should be among friends a wise reticence.

"Some families are always calling each other to account at every step of the day. 'What did you put on that dress for? Why didn't you wear that?'—'What did you do this for? Why didn't you do that?'—'Now I should advise you to do thus and so.'—And these comments and criticisms and advices are accompanied with an energy of feeling that makes it rather difficult to disregard them.

"Now it is no matter how dear and how good our friends may be, if they abridge our liberty and fetter the free exercise of our life, it is inevitable that we shall come to enjoying ourselves much better where they are not than where they are; and one of the reasons why brothers and sisters or children so often diverge from the family-circle in the choice of confidants is, that extraneous friends are bound by certain laws of delicacy not to push inquiries, criticisms, or advice too far.

"Parents would do well to remember in time when their children have grown up into independent human beings, and use with a wise moderation those advisory and admonitory powers with which they guided their earlier days. Let us give everybody a right to live his own life, as far as possible, and avoid imposing our own personalities on another.

"If I were to picture a perfect family, it should be a union of people of individual and marked character, who through love have come to a perfect appreciation of each other, and who so wisely understand themselves and one another that each may move freely along his or her own track without jar or jostle,—a family where affection is always sympathetic and receptive, but never inquisitive,—where all personal delicacies are respected,—and where there is a sense of privacy and seclusion in following one's own course, unchallenged by the watchfulness of others, yet withal a sense of society and support in a knowledge of the kind dispositions and interpretations of all around.

"In treating of family discourtesies, I have avoided speaking, of those which come from ill-temper and brute selfishness, because these are sins more than mistakes. An angry person is generally impolite; and where contention and ill-will are, there can be no courtesy. What I have mentioned are rather the lackings of good and often admirable people, who merely need to consider in their family-life a little more of whatsoever things are lovely. With such the mere admission of anything to be pursued as a duty secures the purpose; only in their somewhat earnest pursuit of the substantials of life they drop and pass by the little things that give it sweetness and perfume. To such a word is enough, and that word is said."



ACCOMPLICES.

VIRGINIA, 1865.

The soft new grass is creeping o'er the graves By the Potomac; and the crisp ground-flower Lifts its blue cup to catch the passing shower; The pine-cone ripens, and the long moss waves Its tangled gonfalons above our braves. Hark, What a burst of music from yon wood! The Southern nightingale, above its brood, In its melodious summer madness raves. Ah, with what delicate touches of her hand, With what sweet voices, Nature seeks to screen The awful Crime of this distracted land,— Sets her birds singing, while she spreads her green Mantle of velvet where the Murdered lie, As if to hide the horror from God's eye!



THE CHICAGO CONSPIRACY.

On the eve of the last general election, the country was startled by the publication of a Report from the Judge Advocate of the United States, disclosing the existence of a wide-spread conspiracy at the West, which had for its object the overthrow of the Union. This conspiracy, the Report stated, had a military organization, with a commander-in-chief, general and subordinate officers, and five hundred thousand enrolled members, all bound to a blind obedience to the orders of their superiors, and pledged to "take up arms against any government found waging war against a people endeavoring to establish a government of their own choice."

The organization, it was said, was in every way hostile to the Union, and friendly to the so-called Confederacy; and its ultimate objects were "a general rising in Missouri," and a similar "rising in Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, and Kentucky, in cooperation with a Rebel force which was to invade the last-named State."

Startling and incredible as the Report seemed, it told nothing but the truth, and it did not tell the whole truth. It omitted to state that the organization was planned in Richmond; that its operations were directed by Jacob Thompson, who was in Canada for that purpose; and that wholesale robbery, arson, and midnight assassination were among its designs.

The point marked out for the first attack was Camp Douglas, at Chicago. The eight thousand Rebel soldiers confined there, being liberated and armed, were to be joined by the Canadian refugees and Missouri "Butternuts" engaged in their release, and the five thousand and more members of the treasonable order resident in Chicago. This force, of nearly twenty thousand men, would be a nucleus about which the conspirators in other parts of Illinois could gather; and, being joined by the prisoners liberated from other camps, and members of the order from other States, would form an army a hundred thousand strong. So fully had everything been foreseen and provided for, that the leaders expected to gather and organize this vast body of men within the space of a fortnight! The United States could bring into the field no force capable of withstanding the progress of such an army. The consequences would be, that the whole character of the war would be changed; its theatre would be shifted from the Border to the heart of the Free States; and Southern independence, and the beginning at the North of that process of disintegration so confidently counted on by the Rebel leaders at the outbreak of hostilities, would have followed.

What saved the nation from being drawn into this whirlpool of ruin? Nothing but the cool brain, sleepless vigilance, and wonderful sagacity of one man,—a young officer never read of in the newspapers,—removed from field-duty because of disability, but commissioned, I verily believe, by Providence itself to ferret out and foil this deeper-laid, wider-spread, and more diabolical conspiracy than any that darkens the page of history. Other men—and women, too—were instrumental in dragging the dark iniquity to light; but they failed to fathom its full enormity, and to discover its point of outbreak. He did that; and he throttled the tiger when about to spring, and so deserves the lasting gratitude of his country. How he did it I propose to tell in this paper. It is a marvellous tale; it will read more like romance than history; but, calling to mind what a good man once said to me, "Write the truth; let people doubt, if they will," I shall narrate the facts.

There is nothing remarkable in the appearance of this young man. Nearly six feet high, he has an erect, military carriage, a frank, manly face, and looks every inch a soldier,—such a soldier as would stand up all day in a square hand-to-hand fight with an open enemy; but the keenest eye would detect in him no indication of the crafty genius which delights to follow the windings of wickedness when burrowing in the dark. But if not a Fouche or a Vidocq, he is certainly an able man; for, in a section where able men are as plenty as apple-blossoms in June, he was chosen to represent his district in the State Senate, and, entering the army a subaltern officer, rose, before the Battle of Perryville, to the command of a regiment. At that battle a Rebel bullet entered his shoulder, and crushed the bones of his right elbow. This disabled him for field duty, and so it came about that he assumed the light blue of the veterans, and on the second day of May, 1864, succeeded General Orme in command of the military post at Chicago.

When fairly settled in the low-roofed shanty which stands, a sort of mute sentry, over the front gateway of Camp Douglas, the new Commandant, as was natural, looked about him. He found the camp—about sixty acres of flat, sandy soil, inclosed by a tight board fence, an inch thick, and fourteen feet high—had a garrison of but two regiments of veteran reserves, numbering, all told, only seven hundred men fit for duty. This small force was guarding eight thousand Rebel prisoners, one third of whom were Texas rangers, and guerrillas who had served under Morgan,—wild, reckless characters, fonder of a fight than of a dinner, and ready for any enterprise, however desperate, that held out the smallest prospect of freedom. To add to the seeming insecurity, nearly every office in the camp was filled with these prisoners. They served out rations and distributed clothing to their comrades, dealt out ammunition to the guards, and even kept the records in the quarters of the Commandant. In fact, the prison was in charge of the prisoners, not the prisoners in charge of the prison. This state of things underwent a sudden change. With the exception of a very few, whose characters recommended them to peculiar confidence, all were at once placed where they belonged,—on the inner side of the prison-fence.

A post-office was connected with the camp, and this next received the Commandant's attention. Everything about it appeared to be regular. A vast number of letters came and went, but they all passed unsealed, and seemed to contain nothing contraband. Many of them, however, were short epistles on long pieces of paper, a curious circumstance among correspondents with whom stationery was scarce and greenbacks were not over-plenty. One sultry day in June, the Commandant builded a fire, and gave these letters a warming; and lo! presto! the white spaces broke out into dark lines breathing thoughts blacker than the fluid that wrote them. Corporal Snooks whispered to his wife, away down in Texas, "The forthe of July is comin', Sukey, so be a man; fur I'm gwine to celerbrate. I'm gwine up loike a rocket, ef I does come down loike a stick." And Sergeant Blower said to John Copperhead of Chicago, "Down in 'old Virginny' I used to think the fourth of July a humbug, but this prison has made me a patriot. Now I'd like to burn an all-fired sight of powder, and if you help, and God is willing, I shall do it." In a similar strain wrote half a score of them.

Such patriotism seemed altogether too wordy to be genuine. It told nothing, but it darkly hinted at dark events to come. The Commandant bethought him that the Democratic Convention would assemble on the fourth of July; that a vast multitude of people would congregate at Chicago on that occasion; and that, in so great a throng, it would be easy for the clans to gather, attack the camp, and liberate the prisoners. "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," and the young Commandant was vigilant. Soon Prison-Square received a fresh instalment of prisoners. They were genuine "Butternuts," out at the toes, out at the knees, out at the elbows, out everywhere, in fact, and of everything but their senses. Those they had snugly about them. They fraternized with Corporal Snooks, Sergeant Blower, and others of their comrades, and soon learned that a grand pyrotechnic display was arranged to come off on Independence-day. A huge bonfire was to be built outside, and the prisoners were to salute the old flag, but not with blank cartridges.

But who was to light the outside bonfire? That the improvised "Butternuts" failed to discover, and the Commandant set his own wits to working. He soon ascertained that a singular organization existed in Chicago. It was called "The Society of the Illini," and its object, as set forth by its printed constitution, was "the more perfect development of the literary, scientific, moral, physical, and social welfare of the conservative citizens of Chicago." The Commandant knew a conservative citizen whose development was not altogether perfect, and he recommended him to join the organization. The society needed recruits and initiation-fees, and received the new member with open arms. Soon he was deep in the outer secrets of the order; but he could not penetrate its inner mysteries. Those were open to only an elect few who had already attained to a "perfect development"—of villany. He learned enough, however, to verify the dark hints thrown out by the prisoners. The society numbered some thousands of members, all fully armed, thoroughly drilled, and impatiently waiting a signal to explode a mine deeper than that in front of Petersburg.

But the assembling of the Chicago Convention was postponed to the twenty-ninth of August, and the fourth of July passed away without the bonfire and the fireworks.

The Commandant, however, did not sleep. He still kept his wits a-working; the bogus "Butternuts" still ate prisoners' rations; and the red flame still brought out black thoughts on the white letter-paper. Quietly the garrison was reinforced, quietly increased vigilance was enjoined upon the sentinels; and the tranquil, assured look of the Commandant told no one that he was playing with hot coals on a barrel of gunpowder.

So July rolled away into August, and the Commandant sent a letter giving his view of the state of things to his commanding general. This letter has fallen into my hands, and, as might sometimes makes right, I shall copy a portion of it. It is dated August 12, and, in the formal phrase customary among military men, begins:—

"I have the honor respectfully to report, in relation to the supposed organization at Toronto, Canada, which was to come here in squads, then combine, and attempt to rescue the prisoners of war at Camp Douglas, that there is an armed organization in this city of five thousand men, and that the rescue of our prisoners would be the signal for a general insurrection in Indiana and Illinois....

"There is little, if any, doubt that an organization hostile to the Government and secret in its workings and character exists in the States of Indiana and Illinois, and that this organization is strong in numbers. It would be easy, perhaps, at any crisis in public affairs, to push this organization into acts of open disloyalty, if its leaders should so will....

"Except in cases of considerable emergency, I shall make all communications to your head-quarters on this subject by mail."

These extracts show, that, seventeen days before the assembling of the Chicago Convention, the Commandant had become convinced that mail-bags were safer vehicles of communication than telegraph-wires; that five thousand armed traitors were then domiciled in Chicago; that they expected to be joined by a body of Rebels from Canada; that the object of the combination was the rescue of the prisoners at Camp Douglas; and that success in that enterprise would be the signal for a general uprising throughout Indiana and Illinois. Certainly, this was no little knowledge to gain by two months' burrowing in the dark. But the conspirators were not fools. They had necks which they valued. They would not plunge into open disloyalty until some "crisis in public affairs" should engage the attention of the authorities, and afford a fair chance of success. Would the assembling of the Convention be such a crisis? was now the question.

The question was soon answered. About this time, Lieutenant-Colonel B. H. Hill, commanding the military district of Michigan, received a missive from a person in Canada who represented himself to be a major in the Confederate service. He expressed a readiness to disclose a dangerous plot against the Government, provided he were allowed to take the oath of allegiance, and rewarded according to the value of his information. The Lieutenant-Colonel read the letter, tossed it aside, and went about his business. No good, he had heard, ever came out of Nazareth. Soon another missive, of the same purport, and from the same person, came to him. He tossed this aside also, and went again about his business. But the Major was a Southern Yankee,—the "cutest" sort of Yankee. He had something to sell, and was bound to sell it, even if he had to throw his neck into the bargain. Taking his life in his hand, he crossed the frontier; and so it came about, that, late one night, a tall man, in a slouched hat, rusty regimentals, and immense jack-boots, was ushered into the private apartment of the Lieutenant-Colonel at Detroit. It was the Major. He had brought his wares with him. They had cost him nothing, except some small sacrifice of such trifling matters as honor, fraternal feeling, and good faith towards brother conspirators, whom they might send to the gallows; but they were of immense value,—would save millions of money and rivers of loyal blood. So the Major said, and so the Lieutenant-Colonel thought, as, coolly, with his cigar in his mouth and his legs over the arm of his chair, he drew the important secrets from the Rebel officer. Something good might, after all, come out of Nazareth. The Lieutenant-Colonel would trust the fellow,—trust him, but pay him nothing, and send him back to Toronto to worm out the whole plan from the Rebel leaders, and to gather the whole details of the projected expedition. But the Major knew with whom he was dealing. He had faith in Uncle Sam, and he was right in having it; for, truth to tell, if Uncle Sam does not always pay, he can always be trusted.

It was not long before the Major reappeared with his budget, which he duly opened to the Lieutenant-Colonel. Its contents were interesting, and I will give them to the reader as the Union officer gave them to the General commanding the Northern Department. His communication is dated August 16. It says:—

"I have the honor to report that I had another interview last evening with Major ——, whose disclosures in relation to a Rebel plot for the release of the prisoners at Camp Douglas I gave you in my letter of the 8th instant. I have caused inquiries to be made in Canada about Major ——, and understand that he does possess the confidence of the Rebel agent, and that his statements are entitled to respect.

"He now informs me that he proceeded to Toronto, as he stated he would when I last saw him; that about two hundred picked men, of the Rebel refugees in Canada, are assembled at that place, who are armed with revolvers and supplied with funds and transportation-tickets to Chicago; and that already one hundred and fifty have proceeded to Chicago. That he (Major ——) and the balance of the men are waiting for instructions from Captain Hines, who is the commander of the expedition; that Captain Hines left Toronto last Thursday for Chicago, and at this time is doubtless at Niagara Falls, making the final arrangements with the chief Rebel agents.

"Major —— states that Saunders, Holbrook, and Colonel Hicks were at Toronto while he was there, engaged in making preparations, etc. The general plan is to accomplish the release of the prisoners at Camp Douglas, and in doing so they will be assisted by an armed organization at Chicago. After being released, the prisoners will be armed, and being joined by the organization in Chicago, will be mounted and proceed to Camp Morton, (at Indianapolis,) and there accomplish a similar object in releasing prisoners. That for months, Rebel emissaries have been travelling through the Northwest; that their arrangements are fully matured; and that they expect to receive large accessions of force from Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. They expect to destroy the works at Ironton.

"Major —— says further that he is in hourly expectation of receiving instructions to proceed to Chicago with the balance of the party; that he shall put up at the City Hotel, corner of Lake and State Streets, and register his name as George ——; and that he will then place himself in communication with Colonel Sweet, commanding at Chicago."

The Major did not "put up at the corner of Lake and State Streets," and that fact relieved the Government from the trouble of estimating the value of his services, and, what is more to be deplored, rendered it impossible for the Commandant to recognize and arrest the Rebel leaders during the sitting of the Chicago Convention. What became of the Major is not known. He may have repented of his good deeds, or his treachery may have been detected and he put out of the way by his accomplices.

It will be noticed how closely the Rebel officer's disclosures accorded with the information gathered through indirect channels by the astute Commandant. When the report was conveyed to him, he may have smiled at this proof of his own sagacity; but he made no change in his arrangements. Quietly and steadily he went on strengthening the camp, augmenting the garrison, and shadowing the footsteps of all suspicious new-comers.

At last the loyal Democrats came together to the great Convention, and with them came Satan also. Bands of ill-favored men, in bushy hair, bad whiskey, and seedy homespun, staggered from the railway-stations, and hung about the street-corners. A reader of Dante or Swedenborg would have taken them for delegates from the lower regions, had not their clothing been plainly perishable, while the devils wear everlasting garments. They had come, they announced, to make a Peace President, but they brandished bowie-knives, and bellowed for war even in the sacred precincts of the Peace Convention. But war or peace, the Commandant was ready for it.

For days reinforcements had poured into the camp, until it actually bristled with bayonets. On every side it was guarded with cannon, and, day and night, mounted men patrolled the avenues to give notice of the first hostile gathering. But there was no gathering. The conspirators were there, two thousand strong, with five thousand Illini to back them. From every point of the compass,—from Canada, Missouri, Southern Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, New York, and even loyal Vermont, bloody-minded men had come to give the Peace candidate a red baptism. But "discretion is the better part of valor." The conspirators saw the preparations and disbanded. Not long afterward one of the leaders said to me, "We had spies in every public place,—in the telegraph-office, the camp itself, and even close by the Commandant's head-quarters, and knew, hourly, all that was passing. From the observatory, opposite the camp, I myself saw the arrangements for our reception. We outnumbered you two to one, but our force was badly disciplined. Success in such circumstances was impossible; and on the third day of the Convention we announced from head-quarters that an attack at that time was impracticable. It would have cost the lives of hundreds of the prisoners, and perhaps the capture or destruction of the whole of us." So the storm blew over, without the leaden rain, and its usual accompaniment of thunder and lightning.

A dead calm followed, during which the Illini slunk back to their holes; the prisoners took to honest ink; the bogus "Butternuts" walked the streets clad like Christians, and the Commandant went to sleep with only one eye open. So the world rolled around into November.

The Presidential election was near at hand,—the great contest on which hung the fate of the Republic. The Commandant was convinced of this, and wanted to marshal his old constituents for the final struggle between Freedom and Despotism. He obtained a furlough to go home and mount the stump for the Union. He was about to set out, his private secretary was ready, and the carriage waiting at the gateway, when an indefinable feeling took possession of him, holding him back, and warning him of coming danger. It would not be shaken off, and reluctantly he postponed the journey till the morrow. Before the morrow facts were developed which made his presence in Chicago essential for the safety of the city and the lives of the citizens. The snake was scotched, not killed. It was preparing for another and a deadlier spring.

On the second of November, a well-known citizen of St. Louis, openly a Secessionist, but secretly a loyal man, and acting as a detective for the Government left the city in pursuit of a criminal. He followed him to Springfield, traced him from there to Chicago, and on the morning of November fourth, about the hour the Commandant had the singular impression I have spoken of, arrived in the latter city. He soon learned that the bird had again flown.

"While passing along the street," (I now quote from his report to the Provost Marshal General of Missouri,) "and trying to decide what course to pursue,—whether to follow this man to New York, or return to St. Louis,—I met an old acquaintance, a member of the order of 'American Knights,' who informed me that Marmaduke was in Chicago. After conversing with him awhile, I started up the street, and about one block farther on met Dr. E. W. Edwards, a practising physician in Chicago, (another old acquaintance,) who asked me if I knew of any Southern soldiers being in town. I told him I did; that Marmaduke was there. He seemed very much astonished, and asked how I knew. I told him. He laughed, and then said that Marmaduke was at his house, under the assumed name of Burling, and mentioned, as a good joke, that he had a British passport, vised by the United States Consul under that name. I gave Edwards my card to hand to Marmaduke, (who was another 'old acquaintance,') and told him I was stopping at the Briggs House.

"That same evening I again met Dr. Edwards on the street, going to my hotel. He said Marmaduke desired to see me, and I accompanied him to his house." There, in the course of a long conversation, "Marmaduke told me that he and several Rebel officers were in Chicago to cooperate with other parties in releasing the prisoners of Camp Douglas, and other prisons, and in inaugurating a Rebellion at the North. He said the movement was under the auspices of the order of 'American Knights,' (to which order the Society of the Illini belonged,) and was to begin operations by an attack on Camp Douglas on election-day."

The detective did not know the Commandant, but he soon made his acquaintance, and told him the story. "The young man," he says, "rested his head upon his hand, and looked as if he had lost his mother." And well he might! A mine had opened at his feet; with but eight hundred men in the garrison it was to be sprung upon him. Only seventy hours were left! What would he not give for twice as many? Then he might secure reinforcements. He walked the room for a time in silence, then, turning to the detective, said, "Do you know where the other leaders are?"—"I do not."—"Can't you find out from Marmaduke?"—"I think not. He said what he did say voluntarily. If I were to question him, he would suspect me." That was true, and Marmaduke was not of the stuff that betrays a comrade on compulsion. His arrest, therefore, would profit nothing, and might hasten the attack for which the Commandant was so poorly prepared. He sat down and wrote a hurried dispatch to his General. Troops! troops! for God's sake, troops! was its burden. Sending it off by a courier,—the telegraph told tales,—he rose, and again walked the room in silence. After a while, with a heavy heart, the detective said, "Good night," and left him.

What passed with the Commandant during the next two hours I do not know. He may have prayed,—he is a praying man,—and there was need of prayer, for the torch was ready to burn millions of property, the knife whetted to take thousands of lives. At the end of the two hours, a stranger was ushered into the apartment where the Commandant was still pacing the floor. From the lips and pen of this stranger I have what followed, and I think it may be relied on.

He was a slim, light-haired young man, with fine, regular features, and that indefinable air which denotes good breeding. Recognizing the Commandant by the eagle on his shoulder, he said, "Can I see you alone, Sir?"—"Certainly," answered the Union officer, motioning to his secretary to leave the room. "I am a Colonel in the Rebel army," said the stranger, "and have put my life into your hands, to warn you of the most hellish plot in history."—"Your life is safe, Sir," replied the other, "if your visit is an honest one. I shall be glad to hear what you have to say. Be seated."

The Rebel officer took the proffered chair, and sat there till far into the morning. In the limits of a magazine article I cannot attempt to recount all that passed between them. The written statement the Rebel Colonel has sent to me covers fourteen pages of closely written foolscap; and my interview with him on the subject lasted five hours, by a slow watch. He disclosed all that Judge Holt has made public, and a great deal more. Sixty days previously he had left Richmond with verbal dispatches from the Rebel Secretary of War to Jacob Thompson, the Rebel agent in Canada. These dispatches had relation to a vast plot, designed to wrap the West in flames, sever it from the East, and secure the independence of the South. Months before, the plot had been concocted by Jeff Davis at Richmond; and in May previous, Thompson, supplied with two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in sterling exchange, had been sent to Canada to superintend its execution. This money was lodged in a bank at Montreal, and had furnished the funds which fitted out the abortive expeditions against Johnson's Island and Camp Douglas. The plot embraced the order of "American Knights," which was spread all over the West, and numbered five hundred thousand men, three hundred and fifty thousand of whom were armed. A force of twelve hundred men—Canadian refugees, and bushwhackers from Southern Illinois and Missouri—was to attack Camp Douglas on Tuesday night, the 8th of November, liberate and arm the prisoners, and sack Chicago. This was to be the signal for a general uprising throughout the West, and for a simultaneous advance by Hood upon Nashville, Buckner upon Louisville, and Price upon St. Louis. Vallandigham was to head the movement in Ohio, Bowles in Indiana, and Walsh in Illinois. The forces were to rendezvous at Dayton and Cincinnati in Ohio, New Albany and Indianapolis in Indiana, and Rock Island, Chicago, and Springfield in Illinois; and those gathered at the last-named place, after seizing the arsenal, were to march to aid Price in taking St. Louis. Prominent Union citizens and officers were to be seized and sent South, and the more obnoxious of them were to be assassinated. All places taken were to be sacked and destroyed, and a band of a hundred desperate men was organized to burn the larger Northern cities not included in the field of operations. Two hundred Confederate officers, who were to direct the military movements, had been in Canada, but were then stationed throughout the West, at the various points to be attacked, waiting the outbreak at Chicago. Captain Hines, who had won the confidence of Thompson by his successful management of the escape of John Morgan, had control of the initial movement against Camp Douglas; but Colonel Grenfell, assisted by Colonel Marmaduke and a dozen other Rebel officers, was to manage the military part of the operations. All of these officers were at that moment in Chicago, waiting the arrival of the men, who were to come in small squads, over different railroads, during the following three days. The Rebel officer had known of the plot for months, but its atrocious details had come to his knowledge only within a fortnight. They had appalled him; and though he was betraying his friends, and the South which he loved, the humanity in him would not let him rest till he had washed his hands of the horrible crime.

The Commandant listened with nervous interest to the whole of this recital; but when the Southern officer made the last remark, he almost groaned out,—

"Why did you not come before?"

"I could not. I gave Thompson my opinion of this, and have been watched. I think they have tracked me here. My life on your streets to-night wouldn't be worth a bad half-dollar."

"True; but what must be done?"

"Arrest the 'Butternuts' as they come into Chicago."

"That I can do; but the leaders are here, with five thousand armed Illini to back them. I must take them. Do you know them?"

"Yes; but I do not know where they are quartered."

At two o'clock the Commandant showed the Rebel officer to his bed, but went back himself, and paced the floor until sunrise. In the morning his plan was formed. It was a desperate plan; but desperate circumstances require desperate expedients.

In the prison was a young Texan who had served on Bragg's staff, and under Morgan in Kentucky, and was, therefore, acquainted with Hines, Grenfell, and the other Rebel officers. He fully believed in the theory of State Rights,—that is, that a part is greater than the whole,—but was an honest man, who, when his word was given, could be trusted. One glance at his open, resolute face showed that he feared nothing; that he had, too, that rare courage which delights in danger, and courts heroic enterprise from pure love of peril. Early in the war, he had encountered Colonel De Land, a former commandant of the post, on the battlefield, and taken him prisoner. A friendship then sprang up between the two, which, when the tables were turned, and the captor became the captive, was not forgotten. Colonel De Land made him chief clerk in the medical department, and gave him every possible freedom. At that time it was the custom to allow citizens free access to the camp; and among the many good men and women who came to visit and aid the prisoners was a young woman, the daughter of a well-known resident of Chicago. She met the Texan, and a result as natural as the union of hydrogen and oxygen followed. But since Adam courted Eve, who ever heard of wooing going on in a prison? "It is not exactly the thing," said Colonel De Land; "had you not better pay your addresses at the lady's house, like a gentleman?" A guard accompanied the prisoner; but it was shrewdly guessed that he stayed outside, or paid court to the girls in the kitchen.

This was the state of things when the present Commandant took charge of the camp. He learned the facts, studied the prisoner's face, and remembered that he, too, once went a-courting. As he walked his room that Friday night, he bethought him of the Texan. Did he love his State better than he loved his affianced wife? The Commandant would test him.

"But I shall betray my friends! Can I do that in honor?" asked the Texan.

"Did you ask that question when you betrayed your country?" answered the Commandant.

"Let me go from camp for an hour. Then I will give you my decision."

"Very well."

And, unattended, the Texan left the prison.

What passed between the young man and the young woman during that hour I do not know, and could not tell, if I did know,—for I am not writing romance, but history. However, without lifting the veil on things sacred, I can say that her last words were, "Do your duty. Blot out your record of treason." God bless her for saying them! and let "Amen" be said by every American woman!

On his return to camp, the Texan merely said, "I will do it," and the details of the plan were talked over. He was to escape from the prison, ferret out and entrap the Rebel leaders. How to manage the first part of the dangerous programme was the query of the Texan. The Commandant's brain is fertile. An adopted citizen, in the scavenger line, makes periodical visits to the camp in the way of his business, and him the Commandant sends for.

"Arrah, yer Honor," the Irishman says, "I ha'n't a tr-raitor. Bless yer beautiful sowl! I love the kintry; and besides, it might damage me good name and me purty prefession."

He is assured that his name will be all the better for dieting a few weeks in a dungeon, and—did not the same thing make Harvey Birch immortal?

Half an hour before sunset the scavenger comes into camp with his wagon. He fills it with dry bones, broken bottles, decayed food, and the rubbish of the prison; and down below, under a blanket, he stows away the Texan. A hundred comrades gather round to shut off the gaze of the guard; but outside is the real danger. He has to pass two gates, and run the gauntlet of half a dozen sentinels. His wagon is fuller than usual; and the late hour it is now after sunset will of itself excite suspicion. It might test the pluck of a braver man; for the sentries' bayonets are fixed, and their guns at the half-trigger; but he reaches the outer gate in safety. Now St. Patrick help him! for he needs all the impudence of an Irishman. The gate rolls back; the Commandant stands nervously by, but a sentry cries out,—

"You can't pass; it's agin orders. No wagins kin go out arter drum-beat."

"Arrah, don't be a fool! Don't be afther obstructin' a honest man's business," answers the Irishman, pushing on into the gateway.

The soldier is vigilant, for his officer's eye is on him.

"Halt!" he cries again, "or I'll fire!"

"Fire! Waste yer powder on yer friends, like the bloody-minded spalpeen ye are!" says the scavenger, cracking his whip, and moving forward.

It is well he does not look back. If he should, he might be melted to his own soap-grease. The sentry's musket is levelled; he is about to fire, but the Commandant roars out,—

"Don't shoot!" and the old man and the old horse trot off into the twilight.

Not an hour later, two men, in big boots, slouched hats, and brownish butternuts, come out of the Commandant's quarters. With muffled faces and hasty strides, they make their way over the dimly lighted road into the city. Pausing, after a while, before a large mansion, they crouch down among the shadows. It is the house of the Grand Treasurer of the Order of American Knights, and into it very soon they see the Texan enter. The good man knows him well, and there is great rejoicing. He orders up the fatted calf, and soon it is on the table, steaming hot, and done brown in the roasting. When the meal is over, they discuss a bottle of Champagne and the situation. The Texan cannot remain in Chicago, for there he will surely be detected. He must be off to Cincinnati by the first train; and he will arrive in the nick of time, for warm work is daily expected. Has he any money about him? No, he has left it behind, with his Sunday clothes, in the prison. He must have funds; but the worthy gentleman can lend him none, for he is a loyal man; of course he is! was he not the "people's candidate" for Governor? But no one ever heard of a woman being hanged for treason. With this he nods to his wife, who opens her purse, and tosses the Texan a roll of greenbacks. They are honest notes, for an honest face is on them. At the end of an hour good-night is said, and the Texan goes out to find a hole to hide in. Down the street he hurries, the long, dark shadows following.

He enters the private door of a public house, speaks a magic word, and is shown to a room in the upper story. Three low, prolonged raps on the wall, and—he is among them. They are seated about a small table, on which is a plan of the prison. One is about forty-five,—a tall, thin man, with a wiry frame, a jovial face, and eyes which have the wild, roving look of the Arab's. He is dressed after the fashion of English sportsmen, and his dog—a fine gray bloodhound—is stretched on the hearthrug near him. He looks a reckless, desperate character, and has an adventurous history.[D] In battle he is said to be a thunderbolt,—lightning harnessed and inspired with the will of a devil. He is just the character to lead the dark, desperate expedition on which they are entered. It is St. Leger Grenfell.

At his right sits another tall, erect man, of about thirty, with large, prominent eyes, and thin, black hair and moustache. He is of dark complexion, has a sharp, thin nose, a small, close mouth, a coarse, harsh voice, and a quick, boisterous manner. His face tells of dissipation, and his dress shows the dandy; but his deep, clear eye and pale, wrinkled forehead denote a cool, crafty intellect.[E] This is the notorious Captain Hines, the right-hand man of Morgan, and the soul and brains of the Conspiracy. The rest are the meaner sort of villains. I do not know how they looked, and if I did, they would not be worth describing.