Battle of White Stone Hill

OCTOBER 31, 1863.]

HARPER'S WEEKLY.

695

had hung his hopes, and when he looked at her there was no change in her fixed expression—part indifference, part vexation.

"I see it now," said he, bitterly: "this is my first knowledge of coquetry, and your sex are welcome to it as their special prerogative. You have worn me till you were tired of me, and now you throw me away as you will that wreath when it has faded, and care as much for one as the other."

"You talk now as if you loved me, certainly."

"Would I talk so if I did not? I ask you honestly, and with all the love of my soul, to be my wife, and help me reach a better height of manhood than I can ever reach without you; and you throw my love in my face as if I were made for your amusement. Now I see my duty before me. I will not be a slave if I can help it, and I am going to think it over, and put you out of my heart if I can."

Dorr was really angry. "Will you help me up, Mr Handy, or hand me my crutch?"

He obeyed, and went with her to her father's gate without another word, and left her there with a simple good-by, while she went to her room, from which she came to supper with such a face that Sam stared and kept staring.

On the next day Sam came rushing into the house like a tornado that had just slipped its halter, bringing with him three things—a pair of unusually large and round eyes, a bitten finger, and a lamentable face, and called on Dorr to go out and see what there was in the yard. Remonstrance on her part—she was busy; but Sam insisted. "Such an ugly little beauty!" he said, and so she went. In the grass close to the yard fence there was a cage in which was one of the gaudiest of parrots. Dorr went back to the house indignant. "Of all the screeching, hateful things in the world, a parrot's the worst!" And she would not let Sam move the cage or go near it; so there the unlucky bird staid all day, and bit and screamed to his heart's content.

But at nightfall I suppose she relented, for one who was on the watch might have seen that the cage was brought into the house. A folded piece of paper was attached to it, and Dorr read:

"Since yesterday I think I was harsh to you. Forgive me; but my heart was sore.

"You once said to me that you should like a parrot. I came upon this one a number of months ago, and so I brought him home with me, and now I leave him for you. His education has been sadly neglected, and he can not talk much as yet; perhaps you can teach him. I might have slit his tongue with the half of a sixpence you gave me so long ago, but for some reason I did not. I will not say, Keep him for my sake, but if you are ever tired of him I have never heard that the bird is peculiarly tenacious

of life.

"I fear I shall not be able to put you out of my heart, Dorr. It is sad and pitiful that you should forget, who have no need to, and I, who shall be tortured till I do, can not. If I have written in something like grim pleasantry forgive me, for bitterness will come sometimes, though not against you if I can help it. Good-by, and let me be your

friend.   FRANK."

At the same time that Dorr read this and dropped a tear on it, the impatient Esmeralda glided out of the harbor and stood to sea.

The bird was soon duly domesticated, and Dorr came really to like him. He was "an ugly little beauty," however, for he certainly was a beauty and his temper was vicious. He never was disposed to be talkative, and all his efforts at speech ended in an odd mixture of two or three consonants which sounded more like "whiff" than any thing else; so that was given as his name.

Time went on month by month, the Esmeralda creeping on her venturesome course somewhere on the lower edge of the world, and Dorr going quietly on with her old life. New England is even now very uniform in its domestic life from day to day, and was much more so in the old times. Dorr probably was content, or if she was not, she never hinted it or showed it, but went on with her duties, taking care also of her strange pet, native of regions where Nature has made life appeal to the eye rather than the ear; but sometimes when she looked at him she thought of his distant owner, and possibly felt a touch of some kind of regret.

One day there was an unusual screaming heard. The cat had made a demonstration against the cage, and when Dorr picked it up and replaced it on the hook there was a piece of white paper lying on the floor. She was puzzled at first, as she recognized the writing; then she concluded it must have been hidden, accidentally or purposely, between the two hoards of the bottom of the cage, and the fall had jolted it out. It read:

"I forgot to tell you that there is a sort of magic about this parrot. Some one bestowed it on him—a Malay wizard, I believe. He can speak if he has any thing important enough to say; and if you ever wish really to know about me, where I am, and what I am doing and thinking, if you will ask him seriously he will tell you. Never do it unless you really desire to know, and then believe that he will tell you the truth. Again, and for the last time,         FRANK."

"Nonsense!" was Dorr's thought; and she put the note away. During the afternoon she was thinking of it occasionally, however. She had an irresistible inclination to think over all she had known of her rejected lover in past years. How could he write her such a story as that and think she would believe it? Did going to sea make a man superstitious? Pshaw! Yet, indeed, she would like to know where he was, and it would be nice if the parrot could tell.

When it was coming dusk she found herself alone in the house; for her father and Sam had not come in from work, and her mother had stepped out for an hour. Perhaps the soft twilight influenced her, and she went up to the cage, which hung at the window. The bird had dozed, but she woke him up and looked at him, thinking it over. She sat down in the window and let him out, and he flew around her as he was accustomed to do, crawing his single odd word.

"Where is he?" cried she. Does he think about me yet? Does he know how sorry I am I used him so, because I love him?"

The parrot did not answer a word. Of course he couldn't; how foolish! He only flew round and round her. Finally he settled on her head; but he was rubbing her hair with his beak and claws in a very unusual way. The touch was strange, very strange; the bird was surely possessed. The pressure on her head grew stronger and changed, and the claws were transformed into a pair of hands that suddenly slid down over her ears to her waist, where they held her in a firm clasp, and—

"Yes!" said Frank Handy. "I did not go in the Esmeralda, and I got back yesterday."

"Yes?" cried Dorr, with a blush and a start. Then sinking her head lower and lower, till it rested naturally on his shoulder and hid itself there, she murmured:

"Oh, Frank! I was only talking to Whiff!"

CHIAPA CHOCOLATE.

DOM BERNARD DE SALAZAR, Bishop of Chiapa, Mexico, had the misfortune to live in a perpetual state of contest with the ladies of his flock, and the subject of dispute was chocolate. It was a brave struggle—bravely fought on both sides.

The prelate fulminated all the censures at his disposal in his ecclesiastical armory; the ladies, on their side, made use of all the devices and intrigues stored in their little heads.

Now the great subject of altercation was as follows: The ladies of Chiapa were so addicted to the use of chocolate that they would neither hear low mass, much less high mass, nor a sermon, without drinking cups of steaming chocolate, and eating preserves, brought in on trays by servants during the performance of divine service; so that the voice of the preacher, or the chant of the priest, was drowned in the continual clatter of cups and clink of spoons; besides, the floor, after service, was strewn with bon-bon papers, and stained with splashes of the spilled beverage.

How could that be devotion which was broken in upon by the tray of delicacies! How could a preacher warm with his subject while his audience were passing to each other sponge-cake and cracknels!

Bishop Salazar's predecessor had seen this abuse grow to a head without attempting to correct it, believing such a task to be hopeless. The new prelate was of better metal. He commenced by recommending his clergy, in their private ministrations, to urge its abandonment. The priests entreated in vain. " Very well," said the Bishop, "then I shall roach about it." And so he did. At first his discourse was tender and persuasive, but his voice was drowned in the clicker of cups and saucers. Then he waxed indignant. "What! have ye not houses to eat and to drink in? or despise ye the church of God, and shame them that have not? What shall I say to you?" The ladies looked up at the pulpit with unimpassioned eyes while sipping their chocolate, then wiped their lips and put out their hands for some comfits.

The bishop's voice thrilled shriller and louder—he looked like an Apostle in his godly indignation. Crash! down went a tray at the cathedral door, and every one looked round to see whose cups were broken.

"What was the subject of the sermon?" asked masters of their apprentices every Sunday for the next month, and the ready answer came, "Oh! chocolate again!"

After a course on the guilt of church desecration, the Bishop found that the ladies were only confirmed in their evil habits.

Reluctantly, the Bishop had recourse to the only method open to him, an excommunication, which was accordingly affixed to the cathedral gates. By this he decreed that all persons showing willful disobedience to his injunctions, by drinking or eating during the celebration of divine service, whether of mass (high or low), litanies, benediction, or vespers, should be ipso facto excommunicate; be deprived of participation in the sacraments of the Church, and should be denied the rite of burial, if dying in a state of impenitence. This was felt to be a severe stroke; and the ladies sent a deputation to Gage and the Prior of the Dominican monastery of St. James, entreating them to use their utmost endeavors to bring about a reconciliation and effect a compromise; a compromise which was to consist in Monseignor's revoking his interdict and in their—continuing to drink chocolate.

Gage and the Prior undertook the delicate office, and sought the Bishop.

Salazar received them with dignity, and listened calmly to their entreaties. They urged that this was an established custom; that ladies required humoring; that they were obstinate—the prelate nodded his head; that their digestions were delicate, and required that they should continually be imbibing nourishment; that they had taken a violent prejudice against him, which could only be overcome by his yielding to their whims; that if he persisted, seditious would arise which would endanger the cause of true religion; and, finally, the prelate's life was menaced in a way rather hinted at than expressed.

"Enough, my sons!" said the Bishop, with composure: "the souls under my jurisdiction must be in a perilous condition when they have forgotten that there must be obedience in little matters as well as in great: whether I am assaulting an established custom or a new abuse matters little. It is a bad habit; it is sapping the foundations of reverence and morality. God's house was built for worship, and for that alone. My children must come to His temple either to learn or to pray. Learn they will not, for they have forgotten how to pray: prayer they are unused to, for the highest act of adoration the Church can offer is only regarded by them as an opportunity for the gratification of their appetites. You recommend me to yield to their vagaries. A strange shepherd would he be who let his sheep lead him; a woundrous

captain who was dictated to by his soldiers! As for the cause of true religion being endangered, I judge differently. Religion is endangered; but it is by children's disobedience to their spiritual legislators, and by their own perversity. I am sorry for you, my sons, that you should have undertaken a fruitless office; but you may believe me that nothing shall induce me to swerve from the course which I deem advisable. My personal safety, you hint, is endangered; my life, I answer, is in my Master's hands, and I value it but as it may advance His glory."

When the ladies heard that their request had been refused, they treated the excommunication with the greatest contempt, scoffing at it publicly, and imbibing chocolate in church, "on principle," more than ever; "Just," says Gage, "drinking in church as a fish drinks in water."

Some of the canons and priests were then stationed at the cathedral doors to stop the ingress of the servants with cups and chocolate-pots. They had received injunctions to remove the drinking and eating vessels, and suffer the servants to come empty-handed to church. A violent struggle ensued in the porch, and all the ladies within rushed in a body to the doors, to assist their domestics. The poor clerks were utterly routed and thrown in confusion down the steps, while, with that odious well-known clink, clink, the trays came in as before.

Another move was requisite, and on the following Sunday, when the ladies came to church, they found a band of soldiers drawn up outside, ready to barricade the way against any inroad of chocolate; a stern determination was depicted on the faces of the military—that if cups and saucers did enter the sacred edifice it should be over their corpses.

The foremost damsels halted, the matrons stood still, the crowd thickened, but not one of the pretty angels would set foot within the cathedral precincts: a busy whisper circulated, then a hush ensued, and with one accord the ladies trooped off to the monastery churches, and there was no congregation that day at the Minster.

The brethren of S. Dominic and of S. Francis were nothing loth to see their chapels crowded with all the rank and fashion of Chiapa; for with the ladies came money-offerings, and they blinked at the chocolate cups for—a consideration. This was allowed to continue a few Sundays only: our friend the bishop was not going to be shelved thus, and a new manifesto appeared, inhibiting the friars from admitting parishioners to their chapels, and ordering the latter to frequent their cathedral.

The regulars were forced to obey; not so the ladies—they would go when they pleased, quotha! and for a month and more not one of them went to church at all. The prelate was in sore trouble: he hoped that his froward charge would eventually return to the path of duty, but he hoped on from Sunday to Sunday in vain.

On Saturday evening the old bishop was more than usually anxious; he paced up and down his library, meditating on the sermon he purposed preaching on the following morning—a fruitless task, for he knew that no one would be there but a few poor Mexicans. Sick at heart, he all but wished that he had yielded for peace' sake, but conscience told him that such a course would have been wrong; and the great feature in Salazar's character was his rigid sense of duty. He leaned on his elbows and looked out of a window which opened on a lane between the palace and the cathedral.

"Silly boy!" muttered the prelate. "Luis is always prattling with that girl. I thought better of the fair sex till of late." He spoke these words as his eyes caught his page, chattering at the door, with a dark-eyed Creole servant-maid of the De Solis family. Presently the bishop clapped his hands, and a domestic entered. "Send Luis to me."

When the page came up, the old man greeted him with a half-smile.

"Well, my son, I wish my chocolate to be brought me; I could not think of breaking off that long tete-a-tete with Dolores, but this is past the proper time."

"Your Holiness will pardon me," said the lad; "Dolores brought you a present from the Donna de Solis; the lady sends her humble respects to your Holiness, and requests your acceptance of a large packet of very beautiful chocolate."

"I am much obliged to her," said the bishop; I did you express to the maiden my thanks?" Luis bowed.

"Then, child, you may prepare me a cup of this chocolate, and bring it me at once."

"The Donna de Solis's chocolate?"

"Yes, my son, yes."

When the boy had left the room, the old man clasped his hands with an expression of thankfulness.

"They are going to yield! This is a sign that they are desiring reconciliation."

Next day the cathedral was thronged with ladies. The service proceeded as usual, but the bishop was not present.

"How is the Bishop?" was whispered from one lady to another, with conscious glances; till the query reached the ears of one of the canons who was at the door.

"His Holiness is very ill," he answered. "He has retired to the monastery of S. James."

"What is the matter with him?"

"He is suffering from severe pains, internally."

"Has he seen a doctor?"

"Physicians have been sent for."

For eight days the good old prelate lingered in great suffering.

"Tell me," he asked, very feebly; "tell me truly, what is my complaint?"

"Your Holiness has been poisoned," replied the physician.

The Bishop turned his face to the wall. Some one whispered that he was dead, when he had been thus for some while. The dying man turned his face round, and said:

"Hush! I am praying for my poor sheep! May God pardon them." Then, after a pause: "I forgive them for having caused my death, most heartily. Poor sheep !"

And he died.

Since then there has been a proverb prevalent in Mexico: "Beware of tasting Chiapa chocolate." The cathedral presented the same scene as before; the prelate had labored in vain, and chocolate was copiously drank at his funeral.

THE SIOUX WAR.

THE illustration which we give on page 693 shows us what, we trust, will prove the close of the Sioux War, viz., the surprise of the Indians by Sully's Brigade on 3d September. The author of the sketch, an officer in the 6th Iowa Cavalry, one of the most gallant regiments in the service, writes us:

" FORT PIERRE, DACOTAH TERRITORY,

September 26, 1863.

"While public attention has been completely absorbed with the Rebellion and the splendid record made by the Federal troops in July, an expedition which started from Sioux City in June has been working its way against every adverse circumstance up to Dacotah to punish the savages for the massacres in Minnesota last year. The troops were General A. Sully's Brigade, and consisted of the Sixth Iowa Cavalry, Colonel D. S. Wilson; eight companies of the Second Nebraska Cavalry, Colonel R. W. Furnass; one company of the Seventh Iowa Cavalry, Captain Millard, and one battery of six small brass pieces. General Sully's aids are his old Potomac officers, belonging to the immortal First Minnesota, viz.: Adjutant-General Captain J. H. Pell, Captain King, and Lieutenant Levering. They encountered the Indians near White Stone Hill, about the centre of Dacotah Territory, on the 3d of September, and in a most bloody fight of about thirty minutes, before night set in, killed nearly two hundred savages, wounding nearly one hundred more, capturing one hundred and fifty-eight prisoners, besides seizing immense supplies of buffalo meat which they had dried for the winter, destroying five hundred of their lodges, capturing a large lot of ponies, and an immense stock of robes, furs, etc. The result of this fight will most certainly lead the savages to sue for peace. They never have suffered such a terrible blow. The left represents the Sixth Iowa Cavalry led by Colonel Wilson, who narrowly escaped, his horse being killed under him while gallantly leading his regiment. The right represents the Second Nebraska under their popular Colonel R. W. Furnass, whose horse was wounded under him in the engagement. The whole brigade was commanded by Brigadier-General Alfred Sully. He is a most gallant officer, having fought bravely in every battle on the Potomac from Bull Run to Chancellorsville. He is an old regular, and was selected because he was experienced in savage warfare. In this battle the number engaged was about twelve hundred against the same number of Indian warriors. He lost twelve men killed and twenty-three wounded. Few officers would have overcome all the obstacles that General Sully did in this trip. He deserves well at the hands of his countrymen. In every grade he has done his duty nobly. I refer you for more particulars of the battle to the Iowa papers."

CHARLESTON.

WE devote pages 700 and 701 to illustrations of the progress of events at Charleston.

The attempt to blow up the iron-clad steamer New Ironsides, on the evening of the 5th of October, is one of the most daring and brilliant exploits of the present war—a war full of brave deeds. Our artist has drawn the scene just at the moment of explosion, when the crew of the vessel were firing volleys of musketry at the unseen foe. The explosion was witnessed by him from the beach near Fort Wagner, and the scene from there obtained inimitably grand, notwithstanding the darkness of the night.

Our artist also sends us a sketch of the "cigar steamer" used in the attempt. It is drawn from the descriptions of the prisoners Glassell and Toombs —the former, at the commencement of the war, a lieutenant in the United States navy. The steamer, if such a contrivance can be called a steamer, was only large enough to contain four or five men. The torpedo was attached to the forward end, and far enough under water to come in contact with the vessel's bottom to which it was directed. The man who steered was entirely exposed, sitting on top with his feet in the water. It was this man who fired the shot which is supposed to have mortally wounded the officer of the deck on the Ironsides. This nondescript was towed abreast of Fort Sumter by a small steamer, and from there started upon its supposed errand of destruction, accompanied by the small boat which our artist has thrown in the fore-ground of the picture on page 700.

The subject of our sketch now lies at the bottom of the harbor on the very spot chosen as the resting-place of the Ironsides. It carried down with it the bodies of two of its crew of four.

Our other illustrations, from sketches by Mr. Otto Enz, show us the enemy's works on Sullivan's Island. Mr. Enz writes:

"The representation of Fort Moultrie shows the effects of the last bombardment by the Ironsides and Monitors. The effect of the shots is visible on the house standing in the centre of the fort; also on the outside of the ramparts or banks where you see men at work to mend the damages. Those square white patches resting on the embankment are piles of sand-bags to protect the gunners, and have been erected since the last fight, giving to the fort a different appearance from what it had three weeks ago. The other batteries, Bee and Beauregard, are all on Sullivan's Island, and will in the next few days be the scene of a desperate fight."