text
stringlengths
54
17.5k
But let any reader fancy himself one of the Brethren in St. Edmundsbury Monastery under such circumstances! How can a Lord Abbot, all stuck-over with horseleeches of this nature, front the world? He is fast losing his life-blood, and the Convent will be as one of Pharaoh's lean kine. Old monks of experience draw their ...
What a historical picture, glowing visible, as St. Edmund's Shrine by night, after Seven long Centuries or so! _Vetulae cum colis_: My venerable ancient spinning grandmothers,--ah, and ye too have to shriek, and rush out with your distaffs; and become Female Chartists, and scold all evening with void doorway;--and in o...
For the rest, it must be owned, we Monks of St. Edmundsbury are but a limited class of creatures, and seem to have a somewhat dull life of it. Much given to idle gossip; having indeed no other work, when our chanting is over. Listless gossip, for most part, and a mitigated slander; the fruit of idleness, not of spleen....
Having at last obtained a Letter from our Lord the Pope according to my wishes, I turned homewards again. I had to pass through a certain strong town on my road; and lo, the soldiers thereof surrounded me, seizing me, and saying: "This vagabond (_iste solivagus_), who pretends to be Scotch, is either a spy, or has Lett...
And then 'another said of another, _alius de alio_, "That _Frater_ is a _homo literatus_, eloquent, sagacious; vigorous in discipline; loves the Convent much, has suffered much for its sake." To which a third party answers, "From all your great clerks, good Lord deliver us! From Norfolk barrators and surly persons, Tha...
On the morrow morning, accordingly, our Thirteen set forth; or rather our Prior and Eleven; for Samson, as general servant of the party, has to linger, settling many things. At length he too gets upon the road; and, 'carrying the sealed Paper in a leather pouch hung round his neck; and _froccum bajulans in ulnis_' (tha...
The King's Majesty, looking at us somewhat sternly, then says: "You present to me Samson; I do not know him: had it been your Prior, whom I do know, I should have accepted him: however, I will now do as you wish. But have a care of yourselves. By the true eyes of God, _per veros oculos Dei_, if you manage badly, I will...
Alas, the defect, as we must often urge and again urge, is less a defect of telescopes than of some eyesight. Those superstitious blockheads of the Twelfth Century had no telescopes, but they had still an eye; not ballot-boxes; only reverence for Worth, abhorrence of Unworth. It is the way with all barbarians. Thus Mr....
In all cases, therefore, we will agree with the judicious Mrs. Glass: 'First catch your hare!' First get your man; all is got: he can learn to do all things, from making boots, to decreeing judgments, governing communities; and will do them like a man. Catch your no-man,--alas, have you not caught the terriblest Tartar...
But we have to record also, with a lively satisfaction, that spiritual rubbish is as little tolerated in Samson's Monastery as material. With due rigour, Willelmus Sacrista, and his bibations and _tacenda_ are, at the earliest opportunity, softly yet irrevocably put an end to. The bibations, namely, had to end; even th...
Eloquence in three languages is good; but it is not the best. To us, as already hinted, the Lord Abbot's eloquence is less admirable than his _in_eloquence, his great invaluable 'talent of silence'! '"_Deus, Deus_," said the Lord Abbot to me once, when he heard the Convent were murmuring at some act of his, "I have muc...
Murmurs from the Monks, meanwhile, cannot fail, ever deeper murmurs, new grudges accumulating. At one time, on slight cause, some drop making the cup run over, they burst into open mutiny: the Cellarer will not obey, prefers arrest on bread-and-water to obeying; the Monks thereupon strike work; refuse to do the regular...
On the whole, however, it is and remains sore work. 'One time, during my chaplaincy, I ventured to say to him: "_Domine_, I heard thee, this night after matins, wakeful, and sighing deeply, _valde suspirantem_, contrary to thy usual wont." He answered: "No wonder. Thou, son Jocelin, sharest in my good things, in food a...
Henry Earl of Essex, standard-bearer of England, had high places and emoluments; had a haughty high soul, yet with various flaws, or rather with one many-branched flaw and crack, running through the texture of it. For example, did he not treat Gilbert de Cereville in the most shocking manner? He cast Gilbert into priso...
Nay, next year, there came to the same spot four-and-twenty young men, sons of Nobles, for another passage of arms; who, having completed the same, all rode into St. Edmundsbury to lodge for the night. Here is modesty! Our Lord Abbot, being instructed of it, ordered the Gates to be closed; the whole party shut in. The ...
Such was Abbot Samson's deliberate decision. Why not? Coeur-de-Lion is very dreadful, but not the dreadfulest. _Videat Altissimus._ I reverence Coeur-de-Lion to the marrow of my bones, and will in all right things be _homo suus_; but it is not, properly speaking, with terror, with any fear at all. On the whole, have I ...
Abbot Samson built many useful, many pious edifices; human dwellings, churches, church-steeples, barns;--all fallen now and vanished, but useful while they stood. He built and endowed 'the Hospital of Babwell;' built 'fit houses for the St. Edmundsbury Schools.' Many are the roofs once 'thatched with reeds' which he 'c...
'The Convent therefore being all asleep, these Twelve, clothed in their albs, with the Abbot, assembled at the Altar; and opening a pannel of the Shrine, they took out the Loculus; laid it on a table, near where the Shrine used to be; and made ready for unfastening the lid, which was joined and fixed to the Loculus wit...
Abbot Samson, at this culminating point of his existence may, and indeed must, be left to vanish with his Life-scenery from the eyes of modern men. He had to run into France, to settle with King Richard for the military service there of his St. Edmundsbury Knights; and with great labour got it done. He had to decide on...
Or what kind of baking was it that this other brother mortal got, which has baked him into the genus Dandy? Elegant Vacuum; serenely looking down upon all Plenums and Entities as low and poor to his serene Chimeraship and _Non_entity laboriously attained! Heroic Vacuum; inexpugnable, while purse and present condition o...
Nor was the Statute _De Tallagio non concedendo_, nor any Statute, Law-method, Lawyer's-wig, much less were the Statute-Book and Four Courts, with Coke upon Lyttelton and Three Estates of Parliament in the rear of them, got together without human labour,--mostly forgotten now! From the time of Cain's slaying Abel by sw...
There is no longer any God for us! God's Laws are become a Greatest-Happiness Principle, a Parliamentary Expediency: the Heavens overarch us only as an Astronomical Time-keeper; a butt for Herschel-telescopes to shoot science at, to shoot sentimentalities at:--in our and old Jonson's dialect, man has lost the _soul_ ou...
Or, alas, why go to Rome for Phantasms walking the streets? Phantasms, ghosts, in this midnight hour, hold jubilee, and screech and jabber; and the question rather were, What high Reality anywhere is yet awake? Aristocracy has become Phantasm-Aristocracy, no longer able to _do_ its work, not in the least conscious that...
'Rhetoric all this?' No, my brother, very singular to say, it is Fact all this. Cocker's Arithmetic is not truer. Forgotten in these days, it is old as the foundations of the Universe, and will endure till the Universe cease. It is forgotten now; and the first mention of it puckers thy sweet countenance into a sneer: b...
O sumptuous Merchant-Prince, illustrious game-preserving Duke, is there no way of 'killing' thy brother but Cain's rude way! 'A good man by the very look of him, by his very presence with us as a fellow wayfarer in this Life-pilgrimage, _promises_ so much:' woe to him if he forget all such promises, if he never know th...
Accordingly the impotent, insolent Donothingism in Practice and Saynothingism in Speech, which we have to witness on that side of our affairs, is altogether amazing. A Corn-Law demonstrating itself openly, for ten years or more, with 'arguments' to make the angels, and some other classes of creatures, weep! For men are...
A gifted Byron rises in his wrath; and feeling too surely that he for his part is not 'happy,' declares the same in very violent language, as a piece of news that may be interesting. It evidently has surprised him much. One dislikes to see a man and poet reduced to proclaim on the streets such tidings: but on the whole...
The spoken Word, the written Poem, is said to be an epitome of the man; how much more the done Work. Whatsoever of morality and of intelligence; what of patience, perseverance, faithfulness, of method, insight, ingenuity, energy; in a word, whatsoever of Strength the man had in him will lie written in the Work he does....
Nay withal, stupid as he is, our dear John,--ever, after infinite tumblings, and spoken platitudes innumerable from barrel-heads and parliament-benches, he does settle down somewhere about the just conclusion; you are certain that his jumblings and tumblings will end, after years or centuries, in the stable equilibrium...
If I were the Conservative Party of England (which is another bold figure of speech), I would not for a hundred thousand pounds an hour allow those Corn-Laws to continue! Potosi and Golconda put together would not purchase my assent to them. Do you count what treasuries of bitter indignation they are laying up for you ...
And now to observe with what bewildering obscurations and impediments all this as yet stands entangled, and is yet intelligible to no man! How, with our gross Atheism, we hear it not to be the Voice of God to us, but regard it merely as a Voice of earthly Profit-and-Loss. And have a Hell in England,--the Hell of not ma...
To the man who _works_, who attempts, in never so ungracious barbarous a way, to get forward with some work, you will hasten out with furtherances, with encouragements, corrections; you will say to him: "Welcome; thou art ours; our care shall be of thee." To the Idler, again, never so gracefully going idle, coming forw...
What looks maddest, miserablest in these mad and miserable Corn-Laws is independent altogether of their 'effect on wages,' their effect on 'increase of trade,' or any other such effect: it is the continual maddening proof they protrude into the faces of all men, that our Governing Class, called by God and Nature and th...
What is the meaning of nobleness, if this be 'noble'? In a valiant suffering for others, not in a slothful making others suffer for us, did nobleness ever lie. The chief of men is he who stands in the van of men; fronting the peril which frightens back all others; which, if it be not vanquished, will devour the others....
"But what is to be done with our manufacturing population, with our agricultural, with our ever-increasing population?" cry many.--Ay, what? Many things can be done with them, a hundred things, and a thousand things,--had we once got a soul, and begun to try. This one thing, of doing for them by 'underselling all peopl...
One thing I do know: Never, on this Earth, was the relation of man to man long carried on by Cash-payment alone. If, at any time, a philosophy of Laissez-faire, Competition and Supply-and-demand, start up as the exponent of human relations, expect that it will soon end.Such philosophies will arise: for man's philosophi...
Howel Davies dyes the West-Indian Seas with blood, piles his decks with plunder; approves himself the expertest Seaman, the daringest Seafighter: but he gains no lasting victory, lasting victory is not possible for him. Not, had he fleets larger than the combined British Navy all united with him in bucaniering. He, onc...
Alas, what a business will this be, which our Continental friends, groping this long while somewhat absurdly about it and about it, call 'Organisation of Labour;'--which must be taken out of the hands of absurd windy persons, and put into the hands of wise, laborious, modest and valiant men, to begin with it straightwa...
Yes, all manner of help, and pious response from Men or Nature, is always what we call silent; cannot speak or come to light, till it be seen, till it be spoken to. Every noble work is at first 'impossible.' In very truth, for every noble work the possibilities will lie diffused through Immensity; inarticulate, undisco...
And who art thou that braggest of thy life of Idleness; complacently showest thy bright gilt equipages; sumptuous cushions; appliances for folding of the hands to mere sleep? Looking up, looking down, around, behind or before, discernest thou, if it be not in Mayfair alone, any _idle_ hero, saint, god, or even devil? N...
He who takes not counsel of the Unseen and Silent, from him will never come real visibility and speech. Thou must descend to the _Mothers_, to the _Manes_, and Hercules-like long suffer and labour there, wouldst thou emerge with victory into the sunlight. As in battle and the shock of war,--for is not this a battle?--t...
If the Serene Highnesses and Majesties do not take note of that, then, as I perceive, _that_ will take note of itself! The time for levity, insincerity, and idle babble and play-acting, in all kinds, is gone by; it is a serious, grave time. Old long-vexed questions, not yet solved in logical words or parliamentary laws...
Liberty? The true liberty of a man, you would say, consisted in his finding out, or being forced to find out the right path, and to walk thereon. To learn, or to be taught, what work he actually was able for; and then by permission, persuasion, and even compulsion, to set about doing of the same! That is his true bless...
'You cannot walk the streets without beholding Democracy announce itself: the very Tailor has become, if not properly Sansculottic, which to him would be ruinous, yet a Tailor unconsciously symbolising, and prophesying with his scissors, the reign of Equality. What now is our fashionable coat? A thing of superfinest te...
The notion that a man's liberty consists in giving his vote at election-hustings, and saying, "Behold, now I too have my twenty-thousandth part of a Talker in our National Palaver; will not all the gods be good to me?"--is one of the pleasantest! Nature nevertheless is kind at present; and puts it into the heads of man...
And now do but contrast this Oliver with my right honourable friend Sir Jabesh Windbag, Mr. Facing-both-ways, Viscount Mealymouth, Earl of Windlestraw, or what other Cagliostro, Cagliostrino, Cagliostraccio, the course of Fortune and Parliamentary Majorities has constitutionally guided to that dignity, any time during ...
Henry of Essex, duelling in that Thames Island, 'near to Reading Abbey,' had a religion. But was it in virtue of his seeing armed Phantasms of St. Edmund 'on the rim of the horizon,' looking minatory on him? Had that, intrinsically, anything to do with his religion at all? Henry of Essex's religion was the Inner Light ...
Rituals, Liturgies, Credos, Sinai Thunder: I know more or less the history of these; the rise, progress, decline and fall of these. Can thunder from all the thirty-two azimuths, repeated daily for centuries of years, make God's Laws more godlike to me? Brother, No. Perhaps I am grown to be a man now; and do not need th...
'What Worship, for example, is there not in mere Washing! Perhaps one of the most moral things a man, in common cases, has it in his power to do. Strip thyself, go into the bath, or were it into the limpid pool and running brook, and there wash and be clean; thou wilt step out again a purer and a better man. This consc...
But heard are the Voices,-- Heard are the Sages, The Worlds and the Ages: "Choose well, your choice is Brief and yet endless:Here eyes do regard you, In Eternity's stillness; Here is all fulness, Ye brave, to reward you; Work, and despair not."BOOK IV.HOROSCOPE.CHAPTER I.ARISTOCRACIES.To...
More touching still, there is not a hamlet where poor peasants congregate, but, by one means and another, a Church-Apparatus has been got together,--roofed edifice, with revenues and belfries; pulpit, reading-desk, with Books and Methods: possibility, in short, and strict prescription, That a man stand there and speak ...
But truly a 'Splendour of God,' as in William Conqueror's rough oath, did dwell in those old rude veracious ages; did inform, more and more, with a heavenly nobleness, all departments of their work and life. Phantasms could not yet walk abroad in mere Cloth Tailorage; they were at least Phantasms 'on the rim of the hor...
One grand 'outline,' or even two, many earnest readers may perhaps, at this stage of the business, be able to prefigure for themselves,--and draw some guidance from. One prediction, or even two, are already possible. For the Life-tree Igdrasil, in all its new developments, is the selfsame world-old Life-tree: having fo...
And is it come to this? And does our venerable Parliament announce itself elected and eligible in this manner? Surely such a Parliament promulgates strange horoscopes of itself. What is to become of a Parliament elected or eligible in this manner? Unless Belial and Beelzebub have got possession of the throne of this Un...
It is the most momentous question. For all this of the Corn-Law Abrogation, and what can follow therefrom, is but as the shadow on King Hezekiah's Dial: the shadow has gone back twenty years; but will again, in spite of Free-Trades and Abrogations, travel forward its old fated way. With our present system of individual...
The man in horsehair wig advances, promising that he will get me 'justice:' he takes me into Chancery Law-Courts, into decades, half-centuries of hubbub, of distracted jargon; and does _get_ me--disappointment, almost desperation; and one refuge: that of dismissing him and his 'justice' altogether out of my head. For I...
Again, are not Sanitary Regulations possible for a Legislature? The old Romans had their AEdiles; who would, I think, in direct contravention to supply-and-demand, have rigorously seen rammed up into total abolition many a foul cellar in our Southwarks, Saint-Gileses, and dark poison-lanes; saying sternly, "Shall a Rom...
It is true the English Legislature, like the English People, is of slow temper; essentially conservative. In our wildest periods of reform, in the Long Parliament itself, you notice always the invincible instinct to hold fast by the Old; to admit the _minimum_ of New; to expand, if it be possible, some old habit or met...
Bucaniers, Chactaw Indians, whose supreme aim in fighting is that they may get the scalps, the money, that they may amass scalps and money: out of such came no Chivalry, and never will! Out of such came only gore and wreck, infernal rage and misery; desperation quenched in annihilation. Behold it, I bid thee, behold th...
Difficult? Yes, it will be difficult. The short-fibre cotton; that too was difficult. The waste cotton-shrub, long useless, disobedient, as the thistle by the wayside,--have ye not conquered it; made it into beautiful bandana webs; white woven shirts for men; bright-tinted air-garments wherein flit goddesses? Ye have s...
Some Permanence of Contract is already almost possible; the principle of Permanence, year by year, better seen into and elaborated, may enlarge itself, expand gradually on every side into a system. This once secured, the basis of all good results were laid. Once permanent, you do not quarrel with the first difficulty o...
Will he awaken, be alive again, and have a soul; or is this death-fit very 'death? It is a question of questions, for himself and for us all! Alas, is there no noble work for this man too? Has not he thickheaded ignorant boors; lazy, enslaved farmers, weedy lands? Lands! Has not he weary heavy-laden ploughers of land; ...
Nay, what is best of all, he cannot rebel, if he would. Superiors whom God has made for us we cannot order to withdraw! Not in the least. No Grand-Turk himself, thickest-quilted tailor-made Brother of the Sun and Moon can do it: but an Arab Man, in cloak of his own clouting; with black beaming eyes, with flaming sovere...
Thou, O World, how wilt thou secure thyself against this man? Thou canst not hire him by thy guineas; nor by thy gibbets and law-penalties restrain him. He eludes thee like a Spirit. Thou canst not forward him, thou canst not hinder him. Thy penalties, thy poverties, neglects, contumelies: behold, all these are good fo...
"Men cease to regard money?" cries Bobus of Houndsditch: "What else do all men strive for? The very Bishop informs me that Christianity cannot get on without a minimum of Four thousand five hundred in its pocket. Cease to regard money? That will be at Doomsday in the afternoon!"--O Bobus, my opinion is somewhat differe...
The condition of England one of the most ominous ever seen in this world: Full of wealth in every kind, yet dying of inanition. Workhouses, in which no work can be done. Destitution in Scotland. Stockport Assizes. (p. 3.)--England's unprofitable success: Human faces glooming discordantly on one another. Midas longed fo...
Electoral methods and manipulations. Brother Samson ready oftenest with some question, some suggestion that has wisdom in it. The Thirteen off to Waltham, to choose their Abbot: In the solitude of the Convent, Destiny thus big and in her birthtime, what gossiping, babbling, dreaming of dreams! (p. 96.)--King Henry II. ...
Mammonism at least works, but 'Go gracefully idle in Mayfair,' what does or can that mean?--Impotent, insolent Donothingism in Practice and Saynothingism in Speech. No man now speaks a plain word: Insincere Speech the prime material of insincere Action. (p. 188.)--Moslem parable of Moses and the Dwellers by the Dead Se...
New Religions: This new stage of progress, proceeding 'to invent God,' a very strange one indeed. (p. 280.)--Religion, the Inner Light or Moral Conscience of a man's soul. Infinite difference between a Good man and a Bad. The great Soul of the World, just and not unjust: Faithful, unspoken, but not ineffectual 'prayer....
Battlefield, a, 238. See Fighting.Becket, 297, 307.Beginnings, 157.Benefactresses, 262.Benthamee Radicalism, 36.Berserkir rage, 205.Bible of Universal History, 298.Blockheads, danger of, 111.Bobus of Houndsditch, 38, 41, 363.Bonaparte flung out to St. Helena, 239.Books, 51.Bribery, 312.Brindley, 199.Bucaniering, 239....
Jocelm of Brakelond, 51; his Boswellean Notebook seven centuries old, 52.John, King, 57, 131.Justice, the basis of all things, 12, 24, 138, 205; what is Justice, 17, 266; a just judge, 119; venerable Wigged-Justice began in Wild-Justice, 164; God's Justice alone strong, 238, 358. See Parchments.Kilkenny Cat...
Taxes, where to lay the new, 304.Tears, beautifulest kind of, 70.Teufelsdroeckh on Democracy, 267.Theory, the Man of, 199.Thersites, 352.Thirty-nine Articles, 280.Tools and the Man, 308, 310.Unanimity in folly, 179.Unconscious, the, the alone complete, 145.Universe, general High Court of the, 13, 31, 225; a great uni...
Produced by Emmy and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)A SHORT ACCOUNT OF KING'S COLLEGE CHAPEL_LONDON AGENTS_SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & CO. LTD.[Illustration: OUTSIDE]A SHOR...
Henry VII, who has been credited with an excessive tendency to accumulate treasure, was, next to the Founder, much the largest contributor. A short time before his death in 1509[5], moved perhaps to emulate the liberal example of his pious mother, he gave L5,000 to the college, with instructions to his executors to fin...
AS I have previously mentioned, the building was begun in 1446, but, owing to the long Civil Wars, it dragged on until 1515; and it was in that year that a contract was entered into with one Barnard Flower, to glaze the windows "with good, clene, sure, and perfyte glass, according to the old and new lawe," or, as we sh...
In this window there are no Messengers with inscriptions; only six scenes from the Passion beginning at the bottom left hand corner, and each occupying three lights instead of two. In the first three lights below the transom is the Ecce Homo; in the centre three, Pilate washing his hands, the final moment in the trial....
The question has often been asked, How did the windows escape during the _Civil War_? There is one story that the west window was broken by Cromwell's soldiers (who certainly were quartered in the chapel), and that the rest of the glass was taken out and concealed inside the organ screen. Another, which appears in a sm...
[12] Mr. T. F. Bumpas in his _London Churches, Ancient and Modern_, speaks of him as an organ builder of some note. Renatus Harris he is there styled. "In 1663 the Benchers of the Temple Church being anxious of obtaining the best possible organ, we find him in competition with one Bernard Schmidt, a German, who afterwa...
There are four _Sepulchral Brasses_ on the floor of the chantries. The earliest one is that of Dr. William Towne, who is buried in the second chantry from the east, to which I have already referred as being the first roofed in. He is represented in academical costume; and on his hands hangs a scroll with the following ...
"Tax not the Royal Saint with vain expense, With ill-matched aims the Architect who planned-- Albeit labouring for a scanty band Of white-robed Scholars only--this immense And glorious work of fine intelligence! Give all thou canst; high Heaven rejects the lore ...
Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.netTHE SUCCESS MACHINEBy HENRY SLESAR_Mechanical brains are all the rage these days, so General Products just had to have one. But the blamed thing almost put them out of business. Why? It had no tact. It in...
"Greatest thrill in the world. My father had an orchard in Kennebunkport. Apples by the million. Green apples. Sweet apples. Delicious. Spy. Baldwin." He sighed. "Something's gone out of our way of life, Ralph."_Why, he's just an old dear_, thought Colihan. He looked at the boss with new sympathy."Funny thing about app...
"Put your finger on it," said Moss. "Hit the nail on the head. It's just like my father said: 'Trees go dead on the top.' Colihan--" The boss leaned forward confidentially. "I've got an assignment for you. Big assignment.""Yes, sir!" said Colihan eagerly."If Grimswitch is a sour apple, maybe _other_ department heads ar...
Produced by David Widger. Additional proofing was done by Bryan ShermanMEMOIRS OF GENERAL W. T. SHERMANBy William T. ShermanGENERAL W. T. SHERMANHIS COMRADES IN ARMS,VOLUNTEERS AND REGULARS.Nearly ten years have passed since the close of the civil war in America, and yet no satisfactory history thereof is accessible to...
Judge Taylor Sherman's family remained in Norwalk till 1815, when his death led to the emigration of the remainder of the family, viz., of Uncle Daniel Sherman, who settled at Monroeville, Ohio, as a farmer, where he lived and died quite recently, leaving children and grandchildren; and an aunt, Betsey, who married Ju...
Preacher Carpenter, of Lancaster, was appointed to make the preliminary surveys, and selected the necessary working party out of the boys of the town. From our school were chosen ____Wilson, Emanuel Geisy, William King, and myself. Geisy and I were the rod-men. We worked during that fall and next spring, marking two...
In due season we arrived off the bar of Indian River and anchored. A whale-boat came off with a crew of four men, steered by a character of some note, known as the Pilot Ashlock. I transferred self and baggage to this boat, and, with the mails, was carried through the surf over the bar, into the mouth of Indian River ...
Her sister was more demonstrative, and wailed as one lost to all hope and life. She appealed to us all to do miracles to save the struggling men in the waves, though two hours had already passed, and to have gone out then among those heavy breakers, with an inexperienced crew, would have been worse than suicide. All ...
All this was agreed to, and a month was allowed for him to get ready with his whole band (numbering some one hundred and fifty or one hundred and sixty) to migrate. The "talk" then ceased, and Coacoochee and his envoys proceeded to get regularly drunk, which was easily done by the agency of commissary whiskey. They s...
Soon after two other companies arrived, Bragg's (B) and Keyes's (K). The two former companies were already quartered inside of Fort Moultrie, and these latter were placed in gun-sheds, outside, which were altered into barracks. We remained at Fort Moultrie nearly five years, until the Mexican War scattered us forever...
During the autumn of 1844, a difficulty arose among the officers of Company B, Third Artillery (John R. Yinton's), garrisoning Augusta Arsenal, and I was sent up from Fort Moultrie as a sort of peace-maker. After staying there some months, certain transfers of officers were made, which reconciled the difficulty, and I...
In the spring of 1846 I was a first lieutenant of Company C,1, Third Artillery, stationed at Fort Moultrie, South Carolina. The company was commanded by Captain Robert Anderson; Henry B. Judd was the senior first-lieutenant, and I was the junior first-lieutenant, and George B. Ayres the second-lieutenant. Colonel Wil...
The company had been filled up to one hundred privates, twelve non-commissioned officers, and one ordnance sergeant (Layton), making one hundred and thirteen enlisted men and five officers. Dr. James L. Ord had been employed as acting assistant surgeon to accompany the expedition, and Lieutenant H. W. Halleck, of the e...
In due time all had been done that was requisite, and the Lexington put to sea and resumed her voyage. In October we approached Cape Horn, the first land descried was Staten Island, white with snow, and the ship seemed to be aiming for the channel to its west, straits of Le Maire, but her course was changed and we pas...
All the necessary supplies being renewed in Valparaiso, the voyage was resumed. For nearly forty days we had uninterrupted favorable winds, being in the "trades," and, having settled down to sailor habits, time passed without notice. We had brought with us all the books we could find in New York about California, and...
I remember very well, soon after our arrival, that we were all invited to witness a play called "Adam and Eve." Eve was personated by a pretty young girl known as Dolores Gomez, who, however, was dressed very unlike Eve, for she was covered with a petticoat and spangles.Adam was personated by her brother--the same wh...
As the boat came nearer, we saw that it was General Kearney with an old dragoon coat on, and an army-cap, to which the general had added the broad vizor, cut from a full-dress hat, to shade his face and eyes against the glaring sun of the Gila region.Chapman exclaimed: "Fellows, the problem is solved; there is the gran...
Stevenson'a regiment reached San Francisco Bay early in March, 1847. Three companies were stationed at the Presidio under Major James A. Hardier one company (Brackett's) at Sonoma; three, under Colonel Stevenson, at Monterey; and three, under Lieutenant-Colonel Burton, at Santa Barbara. One day I was down at the head...
Colonel R. B. Mason, First Dragoons, was an officer of great experience, of stern character, deemed by some harsh and severe, but in all my intercourse with him he was kind and agreeable. He had a large fund of good sense, and, during our long period of service together, I enjoyed his unlimited confidence. He had bee...
He explained that he was a surveyor, and had been in the lower country engaged in surveying land; that the horse had escaped him with his saddle-bags containing all his notes and papers, and some six hundred dollars in money, all the money he had earned. He spent the night with us on the ground, and the next morning w...