Border and Bastille | Page 7

fortunes. I was far from entreating him to leave me; landing utterly alone in a strange land, one does not lightly cast aside companionship. For reasons easily understood, I had declined to avail myself of many proffered letters of introduction to New Yorkers.
That lonely feeling did not last long: the first object which caught my eye on the steps of the Brevoort House was an honest English face--a face I have known, and liked right well, these dozen years and more. There stood "the Colonel" (any Ch. Ch. or Rifle Brigade man will recognize the sobriquet), beaming upon the world in general with the placid cheerfulness that no changes of time or place or fortune seem able to alter, looking just as comfortable and thoroughly "at home" as he did, steering Horniblow to victory at Brixworth. I had heard that my old friend was on his way to England to join the Staff College, but had never reckoned on such a successful "nick" as this. By my faith, my turns of luck beyond the Atlantic were not so frequent as to excuse forgetfulness, when they did befall.
So I had aid and abetment in performing the little lionization which is obligatory on a visitor to New York; for the "Colonel's" comrade, my fellow-voyager of the Asia, came to the same hotel.
Assisted by the Parisian, we made trial of the esculents peculiar to the country--gombo soup, sweet potatoes, terrapins, and canvas-backs--with much solemnity and satisfaction, agreeing, that fame had spoken truth for once, in extolling the two last-named delicacies. We went to the Opera, and there, in a brilliant salle of white and gold, spoilt, however, by the incongruity of bonnets mingling everywhere with full evening toilettes, assisted at a massacre--unmusical and melancholy--of "Lucrezia." We drove out through the crude, unfinished Central Park to Harlem lane, whither the trotters are wont to resort, and saw several teams looking very much like work (though no celebrities), almost all of the lean, rather ragged form which characterizes, more or less, all American-bred "fast horses." The ground was too hard frozen to allow of anything beyond gentle exercise; but even at quarter-speed, that wonderful hind-action was very remarkable. Watching those clean, sinewy pasterns shoot forward--well outside of the fore hoof-track--straight and swift as Mace's arm in an "upper-cut," you marvel no longer at the mile-time which hitherto has seemed barely credible.
Perhaps this same bitter weather may account for our disappointment in the brilliancy of Broadway. Several careful reviews of the sunny side failed to detect anything dangerously attractive in beauty, equipage, or attire. It is probable that most of the lionnes had laid them down in their delicate dens, waiting for a more clement season, to renew external depredations; though sometimes you could just catch a glimpse of bright eyes and a little pink nose peering over dark fur wrappings, as a brougham or barouche, carefully closed, swept quickly by. We visited Barnum, of course. I think a conversational and communicative Albino was the most note-worthy curiosity in the Museum, chiefly, from his intense appreciation of the imposture of the whole concern, originated and directed by the King of Humbugdom.
The sanguine popular mind was unusually depressed just then. The President's emancipatory proclamation had recently issued, and seemed to adapt itself, with wonderful elasticity, to the discontents of all parties; not comprehensive enough for the ultra-Abolitionists, it was stigmatized by the Democrats as unconstitutional and oppressive; while moderate politicians agreed that, beyond irritating feelings already bitter enough, it would be practically invalid as an offensive measure. We shall see, hereafter, how these prognostications were justified.
But the first word in all men's mouths, for a day or two at least after my arrival, was--Monitor. That same gale which had buffeted the Asia so rudely on the high seas, had raged yet more savagely shorewards: the Merrimac's antagonist, like a drowning paladin of the mail-clad days, had sunk under her mighty armor, and now, with half her crew in their iron coffin, lay at rest in the crowded burial-ground on which Cape Hatteras looks down. Great discouragement and consternation--greater than has often been caused by the loss of any single vessel--fell upon all the North when the news came in. Ever since her famous duel, which the Federals never would allow was a drawn battle, they had elevated the Monitor into a national champion, and prophesied weeping in the South if she and their batteries should meet: few then dared to insinuate a doubt about Charleston's certain fall, when once the leaguer was fairly mustered for assault. Grave doubts were now expressed as to the seaworthiness of all the new iron-clads, though their advocates could point to a sister of the unhappy Monitor, which had survived a great part of the same storm. That they all must be