Louisville Evacuation

HARPER'S WEEKLY.

[OCTOBER 11, 1862.

654

THE LOUISVILLE SCARE.

ON the preceding page we reproduce a picture of Mr. Mosler's, representing the PARTIAL EVACUATION OF LOUISVILLE by the women and children, in consequence of the approach of Bragg's army. On the 22d September General Nelson issued the following order, accompanying the same with a declaration that in all probability it would become necessary to evacuate the city:

HEAD-QUARTERS, ARMY OF KENTUCKY, LOUISVILLE, Sept. 22, 1862.

The women and children of this city will prepare to leave the city without delay. By order of

GENERAL NELSON. J. EDWARD STACEY, A. A. A. G.

SPECIAL ORDERS—No. 22.

HEADQUARTERS, ARMY OF KENTUCKY, LOUISVILLE, Sept. 22, 1862.

1.The Jeffersonville Ferry will be used exclusively for military purposes. Private vehicles will not be allowed to go aboard of the ferry-boats without a special permit from these head-quarters. Persons on foot will pass as usual. This order will go into effect at 12 M. today.

J. EDWARD STACEY, A. A. A. G.

The publication of these orders created a terrible flurry at Louisville, and General Nelson has been much blamed for issuing them. But they may have helped to convince Bragg of the hopelessness of his enterprise, for he would not naturally care to cause the destruction of such a city as Louisville, and the order showed him plainly that the place would not be evacuated. On news being received of the retreat of the enemy business was resumed, and the people of Louisville returned to their homes.

IN EARNEST.

HERE and there was a rift of grayish light; tossed midway near the zenith low ranges of cloud hills, not with snowy base and glowing tops, but sullen inky forms; all the remaining sky a weary leaden desert stretch, water running with tiny foam crests, wind moaning; all the landscape hushed and sad, as if waiting in silent consternation for the mischief that air and wave were brewing.

It was not cold, yet every body at Grant Baracole's left the drawing-room because there was a fire in the library, and as some one said, "it was such a comfort to have ocular demonstration that all bright things were not dead." They were gossiping and lounging in such idle fashion as people careless in purpose and vacant in heart will, while apart in the window, half behind the curtains, Mabel Winthrop read slowly to herself,

"No danger shall affright, no difficulties intimidate us; and if in support of our rights we are called to encounter even death, we are yet undaunted, sensible that he can not die too soon who lays down his life in support of the laws and liberties of his country."

That was what the American David said in 1774 to the English Goliah, the assured words of men who have the truth and are in earnest about it.

"Are any of us in such solemn earnest?" thought Mabel, sighing, as she looked around her.

There was Del Cameron and her brother Reginald in the shadow of one of the book-cases. At a low-spoken word she had turned her head half away, her color rising slightly; he was watching the slight quiver of the full lips, the gleam in the downcast eyes; it was only another flirtation on the list of Del's follies that season; and as for Reginald, for what or whom did he care? Mabel, his sister, could hardly have told. As in the Eastern story, he had angled for gold and silver fish that turned black in the frying, and died uttering dismal voices of prophecy; he had plucked apples of Sodom and fed on ashes; he had ridden enchanted horses of theory to dizzy heights of speculation, and returned to earth with the eye of Faith put out; at last coldly resigned himself to exist.

There was Vivia Baracole and Allan earnest enough about each other; sneering Mayne Warren certainly in earnest about Lottie or Ethel's fortune, it hardly seemed to matter which; Hesperia, wife of Grant Baracole, and other cadet matrons enthusiastic over their babies and their braiding patterns; in a corner Grant Baracole and Jack Delaunay dissecting a military reputation after approved tea-table canons, and having it well down at last, every body closed in at the death with his or her particular thrust.

Mabel listened with eyes growing suspiciously soft and dark, like the summer sky before rain; and at last—

"Do you think people talked like that in 1775?" came out from the window in a voice a little indignant and tremulous.

Every body stared blankly, trying to piece the question and the conversation together. Reginald found the clew first in the book still lying open on her lap.

"Oh! you have been reading up; but your history knows nothing of the tea-table gossip and about-the-fire chat. Hearts were made of very much the same stuff then as now."

"Yes; but there is a difference. I can't explain, but I can feel it."

Reginald was about to dismiss the subject with a careless jest, but Mabel turned toward him such a distressed and quivering face that he stopped short; and as he looked thrilled through him suddenly the infection of her pain, waking feelings forgotten under the ice-crust of his selfish unbelief, followed by words crisp and stinging.

"You are right. Those queer, prim-powdered people were in desperate, deadly earnest, and we are not. That is just the difference."

Half a dozen voices broke out in full cry, "Not in earnest!"—the very thing that every body is talking about, that the papers are urging.

"Exactly; 'urging'—every body urging somebody else. The Government—the army—the masses—our neighbors—any one but ourselves. It is high time for somebody to look alive, and be very much in earnest indeed. The handwriting is already on the wall. If some one don't bestir

himself, who knows how soon the foe will come crashing in among us? One man or woman's effort is but a drop toward the wave, therefore valueless; but if enterprise could only infect us in the lump—say by thirties and forties—because there is such desperate necessity that somebody should do something to tighten that mischievous screw that is turned 'loose' in every one's mouth, and near no one's grasp."

People sat aghast—partly at the heresy, partly at the source. Speech could have been expected from the marble-lipped Plato over their heads with as much reason as any thing serious from Reginald Winthrop.

Mabel left her seat to go over to him and take his hand in both of hers.

"Why not be in earnest, then? You who, if you would—"

He placed a finger on her lips.

"Have I ever announced myself as a candidate for martyrdom? and besides, though I call out vanity of vanities loudly as any Solomon, am I not a shareholder in the stock, drawing my dividends with tolerable complacency? I kindle sometimes at noble possibilities, just as I like a ballad, with metre all awry, because our mother sung it. We have all had our dreams, and perhaps it is true that for the child-world patriotism and honor lived; but facts or dreams, they are dead enough now, make our phylacteries as broad as we will, talk we ever so virtuously."

"I don't believe it, I won't believe it!" burst out Mabel, indignantly.

"You need not," said a quiet voice, as a gentleman who had entered during the discussion now came forward. "Life is not false, and if we are, it is not of necessity."

Mabel turned joyous and excited.

"Oh! Dr. Philips. Now you will help me."

(Reginald, cool and half displeased). "But we were not discussing truth."

"That, however, is your creed."

"If you mean that I believe that each man and woman is guided simply by reference to his or her interest, the only difference lying between base and lofty conceptions of interest, yes."

"There is, then, neither virtue nor truth. Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die. We may have hoped for something better—may have even started on pilgrimage, but the road was hard, or we lost the way, and forbid it, Pride, that others should succeed where we have failed! The men and women who have a purpose are self-deceived or liars, so let us all glide gently down the stream together. Out on this soft sneering devil that has possession of the age!" answered the Doctor, warmly. "We are so many spoiled children newly come to an estate contested and in confusion; we have yet to learn that we each have something to do, and we are slow in coining to knowledge of the truth; but the estate is a fact, not a fiction, and we will not sell our birth-right of liberty for a mess of pottage. God gave it us, and by his grace we will preserve it."

"From which I infer that Dr. Philips has volunteered by way of performing his share of the work," said Reginald, smoothly sneering.

"I have. I am here to spend my last day with you all."

The answer was most unexpected. Every one started a little, but still Reginald was incredulous.

"Do you go as surgeon, or have you a commission?"—which, translated by the air of eye and lip, meant in the original vulgar, "It is not so very heroic in a country doctor to accept an opening to distinction."

"No, as a private."

This time people gasped, as after a shower-bath, and Grant said in an under-tone,

"Thornton, I believe that you are in the incipient stages of brain fever, and that I should be justified in detaining you for the opinion of a physician."

A smile, sweet but how unutterably sad, shone out in the clear blue eyes.

"Et tu Brute! don't you see that any gentleman will go as an officer, scarce one as a private."

"But the degradation! the association!" said two or three voices together; "and what can you do as one of a mass, and such a mass?"

"Just the work, I trust (unless I am too vain), of the leaven in the dough. I shall be one man fighting with a purpose, and bringing trained moral and intellectual perceptions into contact with untaught instincts. Good against evil, knowledge against ignorance. Sacrifice is all I have to other, and I give it as others do money or military skill."

"Plucky that," muttered Jack Delaunay to Reginald, but that gentleman was silent, busy with an uncomfortable ghost of a former self that was thoroughly roused and would not be laid. Rose about the Doctor a feminine buzzing, all the ladies anxious to make the most of their new-fledged hero, and talking all together, excepting Mabel, who had gone back to her window, sitting quiet and watching them disdainfully.

How intolerable they all were! Why must people be so absurd, as if there were any use in talking, unless one were a man to say, "I will go too!" Girls, poor weak things! could do nothing but stay at home and suffer, though why should she suffer. She had no interest in this country doctor, who had neither money nor position, and though he talked well, could stoop to flirt with Del Cameron. He had just picked up a little knot of gay ribbon that she had worn at her collar, and refused to give it back. He would wear it as a badge, be said. That! after— Here the sentence stopped in Mabel's brain. Prudent sentence! and to mend matters, Reginald, catching sight of her face, which I am afraid was a dismal one indeed, put his head in between the curtains and quoted,

"Then her cheek was pale, and thinner than should be for one so young,

And her eyes on all his motions with a mute observance hung."

"The monster!" She was so glad when the dressing-bell rang. In her little airy, violet-scented chamber there was quiet at least.

She sat down before her dressing-table, her long hair falling all about her slender waist, her chin supported in her hands, staring fixedly into the glass, and Hesperia, who had followed, watching her under pretense of playing with her fat golden-haired baby, and chattering something after this fashion.

"When are you going to town, Mabel? I am in a hurry for Le Moniteur. Some one told me they mean to wear short cloaks. Won't it be dreadful?"

"Very."

"Or do you like them?"

"Yes, I suppose so."

"Very dreadful, and you suppose that you like them; which do you mean, Belle?"

"I—don't—what were you saying?"

"That it is such a pity that Thornton Philips is going."

Mabel jumped up and began to do up her hair with great energy.

"You will lose a good physician."

"Do you know," went on Hesperia, as if entirely absorbed in her own speculations, "that I think we are going—Ella, stop, was there ever such a mischief!—going to develop a romance? Del Cameron, I think, really likes Thornton.—Don't touch the bottles, Ella!—She has some germs of nobility, and the love of a man like him might make of her a true-hearted woman."

"I am sure I hope it is so with all my heart," answers Mabel with unusual distinctness, very rosy, and putting the little sparkling back-comb into her hair very hard indeed, at which deep-scheming Hesperia put down her head to indulge in a little giggle behind the baby.

"Only I must say," went on this consistent Mabel, from under the floating white skirt just then going over her head, "that there is a certain degree of propriety to be expected even from Del Cameron, and I should have thought (buttoning up her dress vigorously) that Thornton Philips had too much sense to make himself so ridiculous."

"Oh! men in love are never sensible, my dear;" with which axiom the two ladies go down the broad staircase together.

Hitherto I have said nothing of Mabel's beauty, because I hardly knew how to translate into words what is almost too subtle for thought to seize and locate. I might, like Olivia, give an inventory of charms—item two gray eyes, item two lips indifferent red, and still you would not see Mabel. It was a certain morning—seeming as if she had just dawned from somewhere, such a look as a child wears when just waked, and with the sweet solemnity of the sleep-world still upon it, that was the subtle secret of her attraction, and made the people in the drawing-room below start a little, as though they had not seen her enter fifty times before.

Del Cameron with one glance (feminine) took in every thing, from the soft rolls of hair and mist-like dress to the perfect calm enthroned on her forehead, and her face lengthened visibly, but blind Thornton Philips saw nothing. He was too busy looking into Del's blue eyes and singing "How can I leave thee!" with an emphasis.

Reginald, to whom the flirtation, viewed in the light of the conversation near the book-case, was interesting, took a flower from a vase and handed it with a meaning smile to Thornton, who nothing daunted turned to Del with

"Ah! lay it on thy heart

And think of me."

"Brava!" cried Reginald, as Del took the flower, at which that young lady had the grace to blush.

"No, eleven, isn't this?" asked Jack Delaunay, who had always admired Mabel, coming to sit by her on the sofa.

"What do you mean?"

"Simply that this is Del's eleventh flirtation. I have been keeping count. There was Charlie Spence, and Eugene—"

"Spare the list! I will take your word."

"I think, though, this is serious. Del has been angling for the Doctor all summer, simply because he fought shy of her; and now, if he is in love, I suspect that she is."

"You call that love?"

"Why not? There are half a dozen different kinds of love. It has its varieties, like the scarlet fever, or any other epidemic. There is the mushroom growth—see present example—the Champagne sort, the slow product of years, the fierce passion that lives cycles in a week, the deep self-unconscious affection, part of life and soul, and then— There is the dinner-bell. Permit use to escort you."

That was a lamentable dinner indeed. They sat opposite Thornton and Del. If Mabel turned away people would think that she cared. If she looked she was afraid that she should care. She could not keep her wandering attention on Jack Delaunay, who at last grew piqued and sullen; but it was hardly over when the Doctor came to look for her.

"Miss Winthrop, you will not refuse me a game of chess—our last, perhaps," at the same time commencing to arrange the pieces as if refusal was impossible.

The table stood a little apart in the recess of a window opening directly on the grounds. The light curtains, filling and swaying with little puffs of wind, shut out the rest of the drawing-room in a measure. Jack Delaunay and Del walked away, feeling themselves de trop; so they were quite alone; and having neared nature, though ever so little, felt in her truthful presence the utter paltriness of the lie they had been enacting. Involuntarily Mabel had thrown aside her smile and careless look like a mask, and sat sober and silent, looking down at the board; while the keen, cold speculation that had dwelt in the Doctor's eves all day melted away into soft depths of feeling, and his voice trembled slightly when he commenced to speak.

"Miss Mabel, suppose we try and add interest to the game by putting up stakes. Say, for instance, that, if I win, you will wear this ring forever." Mabel looked and crimsoned on the instant. It

was the betrothal ring of the Thorntons—diamonds in an antique setting, with their motto, "Fidelis," graved on the gold. His eyes were fixed full on her, questioning, yet combating also resistance on her part. Impossible now to assume coldness; her first look had betrayed her; more impossible to meet his eyes. He had made the first move, and was waiting for her.

"And how if you lose?" she asked, with a faint hope of turning the affair into a jest.

"I shall not lose."

Now, if the floor would but have had bowels of compassion and opened to receive her, or if an accommodating fairy godmother had only been on hand to whisk her up the chimney, for he was pitiless. He would smile his triumph into her very eyes, the eyes that had kept him at such cool distance all summer. Not Zenobia chained to the Roman's wheels chafed more fiercely. With heart and soul she vowed to herself that he should not win. She was no contemptible player, and she bent all her energies on the game, but she was flurried, and her opponent cool and determined; and so at last her heart gave a sudden quivering throb and was still, and even Thornton's steady face gleamed and quivered as he said under his breath, "Checkmate."

Some one parted the curtains, and bright golden hair and pink cheeks showed themselves in the opening. Del Cameron come to look after them.

"Who wins? What an age you have been!" Mabel looked in dismay, but the tell-tale ring was gone, and the next moment half the chessmen were swept off by a careless move of the Doctor's. On one knee he bent to recover them, and Mabel felt her hand seized under the table and pressed to a mustached lip, as the cold circles slipped on her finger, emblem of what? She dared not think of it, but slipped away, and left the window to Del and Thornton.

The twilight was almost over, the drawing-room already lighted; and catching a gleam from one of the lamps, the thing on her finger sparkled as if flashing out a laugh at her. Ethel, talking with Jack Delaunay and Hesperia, saw it at once.

"How odd, and how pretty! Have you ever worn that ring before, Belle? I have never seen it."

Mabel's cheeks grew warm again. Hesperia smiled benevolently. Jack Delaunay caught both blush and smile, and his face grew dark.

"My memory is better than yours, Miss Ethel," he said, with a world of meaning. "I have seen it before. It is not easily forgotten."

"It is an antique," returned Mabel, indifferently, passing on into the hall lighted only by dim flame, and cool with the damp night-breeze. Out on the wide piazza the still night, seemed hushing and brooding low over the earth, like a tender mother leaning over the cradle of her youngest born. The vines hardly rustled on the trellis, and one could scarce have guessed at the neighboring of the water but for the lights mirrored in its dark surface; but as she looked through the branches of a larch pierced a fine quivering gleam, and streamed from behind a jagged boulder of cloud up into the dark heavens a sudden glory, flowing up in golden waves about black promontory and vapor islet, and throbbing in glancing ripples over the still water. At the moment Thornton's voice sounded behind her: "I have been looking for you. Here is your shawl."

"Oh, it is you! I am glad you came. I wanted to give you 'this.' "

"This" was the ring. Thornton put it gravely back.

"One moment, Mabel, till I say what I came here determined should out. All this summer you have halted between two opinions. You did not hate me absolutely, I think, but always sounded in your ears that dread "Only a doctor, Philips;" and if ever at any time cheek began to glow and eye to kindle, you stiffened at once again into propriety. Now it is even worse. It will be "a private in the army," or at best "a romantic madman;" yet I love you, Mabel; you are in my heart to live and die for you. If you will trust me, with God's help I will make your happiness. Choose now. Keep or give back the ring. I shall know how to interpret it."

The little hand that had been extended was withdrawn, slowly, tremblingly, to cover a bowed and averted face, and then followed a hush, broken at last Thornton: "I had forgotten in my selfishness. I have news for you."

"For me!"

"Yes. Reginald is going with me."

"As what?"

"A private."

It was too stupendous. Mabel received it by faith; take it in understandingly she could not; not even when she read, as doubtless you did, reader, a few days ago, the two beloved names in a corner of a daily paper, on the unpretending list of a few men who are in earnest.

THE BATTLE OF ANTIETAM.

WE devote several pages this week to illustrations of the great BATTLE OF ANTIETAM, from sketches by our artist, Mr. A. R. Waud.

The long picture across pages 648 and 649 represents

THE BATTLE-FIELD ON THE RIGHT, WITH GEN. MANSFIELD'S CORPS GETTING INTO POSITION. It was just at this moment that the General was killed. Mr. Waud writes:

"In this sketch is represented the woods on the left from which Hooker so gallantly drove the left wing of the rebel army, and also the woods on the right in which they took refuge, and which they subsequently held till they retreated, repulsing the efforts of our troops to drive them out. The fields between these woods were twice fought over, and thickly strewn with the dead and wounded. General Mansfield fell on the spot where he is represented with his staff. In the corn-field beyond a rebel General, Evans or Earry, was killed. In the front, lying down, is the Forty-third New York (Next Page)