Border and Bastille | Page 2

permit, any interesting matter or incidents that fell in my way, in consideration of which was voted a liberal supplement of the sinews of war; but it was clearly understood that my movements and line of action were to be absolutely untrammeled. I could not have entered into any contract that in any way interfered with the primary object I had in view. I had no intention of commencing such correspondence before I had actually crossed the southern frontier, so that one letter from Baltimore--afterwards quoted--was the solitary contribution I was able to furnish.
I have said thus much, because I wish any one who may be interested on the point to know clearly on what footing I stood at starting: for the general public, of course, the subject cannot have the slightest interest.
Of all compositions, I suppose, a personal narrative is the most wearying to the writer, if not to the reader; egotistical talk may be pleasant enough, but, commit it to paper, the fault carries its own punishment. The recurrence of that everlasting first pronoun becomes a real stumbling-block to one at last. Yet there is no evading it, unless you cast your story into a curt, succinct diary; to carry this off effectively, requires a succession of incidents, more varied and important than befell me.
A failure--absolute and complete--however brought about, is a fair mark for mockery, if not for censure. Perhaps, however, I may hope that some of my readers, in charity, if not in justice, will believe that I have honestly tried to avoid over-coloring details of personal adventure, and that no word here is set down in willful insincerity or malice, though all are written by one whose enmity to all purely republican institutions will endure to his life's end.

CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
A Foul Start
CHAPTER II.
Congressia
CHAPTER III.
Capua
CHAPTER IV.
Friends in Council
CHAPTER V.
The Ford
CHAPTER VI.
The Ferry
CHAPTER VII.
Fallen Across the Threshold
CHAPTER VIII.
The Road to Avernus
CHAPTER IX.
Caged Birds
CHAPTER X.
Dark Days
CHAPTER XI.
Homeward Bound
CHAPTER XII.
A Popular Armament
CHAPTER XIII.
The Debatable Ground
CHAPTER XIV.
Slavery and the War

BORDER AND BASTILLE
CHAPTER I.
A FOUL START.
Looking back on an experience of many lands and seas, I cannot recall a single scene more utterly dreary and desolate than that which awaited us, the outward-bound, in the early morning of the 20th of last December. The same sullen neutral tint pervaded and possessed everything--the leaden sky--the bleak, brown shores over against us--the dull graystone work lining the quays--the foul yellow water--shading one into the other, till the division-lines became hard to discern. Even where the fierce gust swept off the crests of the river wavelets, boiling and breaking angrily, there was scant contrast of color in the dusky spray, or murky foam.
The chafing Mersey tried in vain to make himself heard. All other sounds--a voice, for instance, two yards from your ear--were drowned by the trumpet of the strong northwester. All through the past night, we listened to that note of war; we could feel the railway carriages trembling and quivering, as if shaken by some rude giant's hand, when they halted at any exposed station; and, this morning, the pilots shake their wise, grizzled beads, and hint at worse weather yet in the offing. For forty-eight hours the storm-signals had never been lowered, nor changed, except to intimate the shifting of a point or two in the current of the gale, and few vessels, if any, had been found rash enough to slight "the admiral's" warning.
It had been gravely discussed, we heard afterwards, by the owners and captain of "The Asia," whether she should venture to sea that day; finally, the question was left to the latter to decide. There are as nice points of honor, and as much jealous regard for professional credit in the merchant service as in any other. Only once, since the line was started, has a "Cunarder" been kept in port by wind or weather--this was the commander's first trip across the Atlantic since his promotion; you may guess which way the balance turned.
We waited on the landing-stage one long cold hour. The huge square structure, ordinarily steady and solid as the mainland itself, was pitching and rolling not much less "lively" than a Dutch galliot in a sea-way; and the tug that was to take us on board parted three hawsers before she could make fast alongside. It was hard to keep one's footing on the shaking, slippery bridge, but in ten minutes all staggered or tumbled, as choice or chance directed, on to the deck of the little steamer. I was looking for a dry corner, when an American passenger made room for me very courteously, and I begun to talk to him--about the weather, of course. It was a keen, intellectual face, pleasant withal, and kindly, and in its habitual expression not devoid of genial humor. But, at that moment, it was possessed by