The Long Roll | Page 5

regard herself as a
county. Possibly Connecticut--for all that there was a Hartford
Convention!--sees herself in the same light. Possibly. 'Brutus saith 't is
so, and Brutus is an honourable man!' But Virginia has not renounced!
Eighty years ago she wrote a certain motto on her shield. To-day the
letters burn bright! Unterrified then she entered this league from which
we hoped so much. Unterrified to-morrow, should a slurring hand be
laid upon that shield, will she leave it!"
Allan Gold, from the schoolhouse on Thunder Run, listened with a
swelling heart, then, amid the applause which followed the last speaker,
edged his way along the crowded old brick pavement to where, not far

from the portico, he made out the broad shoulders, the waving dark hair,
and the slouch hat of a young man with whom he was used to discuss
these questions. Hairston Breckinridge glanced down at the pressure
upon his arm, recognized the hand, and pursued, half aloud, the current
of his thought. "I don't believe I'll go back to the university. I don't
believe any of us will go back to the university.--Hello, Allan!"
"I'm for the preservation of the Union," said Allan. "I can't help it. We
made it, and we've loved it."
"I'm for it, too," answered the other, "in reason. I'm not for it out of
reason. In these affairs out of reason is out of honour. There's nothing
sacred in the word Union that men should bow down and worship it!
It's the thing behind the word that counts--and whoever says that
Massachusetts and Virginia, and Illinois and Texas are united just now
is a fool or a liar!--Who's this Colonel Anderson is bringing forward?
Ah, we'll have the Union now!"
"Who is it?"
"Albemarle man, staying at Lauderdale.--Major in the army, home on
furlough.--Old-line Whig. I've been at his brother's place, near
Charlottesville--"
From the portico came a voice. "I am sure that few in Botetourt need an
introduction here. We, no more than others, are free from vanity, and
we think we know a hero by intuition. Men of Botetourt, we have the
honour to listen to Major Fauquier Cary, who carried the flag up
Chapultepec!"
Amid applause a man of perhaps forty years, spare, bronzed, and
soldierly, entered the clear space between the pillars, threw out his arm
with an authoritative gesture, and began to speak in an odd, dry,
attractive voice. "You are too good!" he said clearly. "I'm afraid you
don't know Fauquier Cary very well, after all. He's no hero--worse luck!
He's only a Virginian, trying to do the right as he sees it, out yonder on
the plains with the Apaches and the Comanches and the sage brush and
the desert--"

There was an interruption. "How about Chapultepec?"--"And the Rio
Grande?"--"Didn't we hear something about a fight in Texas?"
The speaker laughed. "A fight in Texas? Folk, folk, if you knew how
many fights there are in Texas--and how meritorious it is to keep out of
them! No; I'm only a Virginian out there." He regarded the throng with
his magnetic smile, his slight and fine air of gaiety in storm. "As you
know, I am by no means the only Virginian, and they are heroes, the
others, if you like!--real, old-line heroes, brave as the warriors in
Homer, and a long sight better men! I am happy to report to his
kinsmen here that General Joseph E. Johnston is in health--still loving
astronomy, still reading du Guesclin, still studying the Art of War. He's
a soldier's soldier, and that, in its way, is as fine a thing as a poet's poet!
I see men before me who are of the blood of the Lees. Out there by the
Rio Grande is a Colonel Robert E. Lee, of whom Virginia may well be
proud! There are few heights in those western deserts, but he carries his
height with him. He's marked for greatness. And there are 'Beauty'
Stuart, and Dabney Maury, the best of fellows, and Edward Dillon, and
Walker and George Thomas, and many another good man and true.
First and last, there's a deal of old Virginia following Mars, out yonder!
We've got Hardee, too, from Georgia, and Van Dorn from Mississippi,
and Albert Sidney Johnston from Kentucky--no better men in Homer,
no better men! And there are others as soldierly--McClellan with whom
I graduated at West Point, Fitz-John Porter, Hancock, Sedgwick, Sykes,
and Averell. McClellan and Hancock are from Pennsylvania, Fitz-John
Porter is from New Hampshire, Sedgwick from Connecticut, Sykes
from Delaware, and Averell from New York. And away, away out
yonder, in the midst of sage brush and Apaches, when any of us chance
to meet around a camp-fire, there we sit, while coyotes are yelling off
in the dark, there we sit