Children of the Market Place

by Edgar Lee Masters

I offer him my purse. He smiles and thanks me. No time now to think of his affairs—later perhaps. Something deeper than money friendship is required to arouse the depths of him; and only the depths of him are left. Will I come to hear him speak? I go.

He is on the heights now. The purest fires leap from his being. The eloquence of great truths flows from his lips, along the melodious waves of that voice of thunder. He has become Orpheus; his Isabel is the Union now embodied in the strength, the beauty of the North which he has always wooed and never won until now. The crowd draws toward him, gives its spirit to him, casts its devotion at his feet. He is on the heights. For Death is near him and Death is the sincerest and most authentic of inspirers. He has nothing to ask now—only that the Union be saved. He has no reproaches for any one except disunionists. He has become impersonal on all things but the Union. I know that the end is near for him. No one can speak so who is not prompted by Death.

He has fallen ill at his hotel in this Chicago that he loved and dowered with a university and linked to the South with a great railroad in the interests of peace and a firmer Union. I go to see him. Mrs. Douglas cannot admit me. He is unconscious of those around him, but his soul is at work. "Telegraph to the President and let the column move on." "Stand for the Union." "The West, this great ..."

I go into the mad streets so grief-stricken, so alone. Dorothy is long dead. Isabel is lost to me. My boy is away. My home is haunted with loneliness. I would be rich if Douglas was to be too. Now he is rich, I am poor; he is poor, I am rich. Men are marching, bugles calling. The city roars. At the foot of Clark Street I see the masts of scores of sailing craft. Chicago has become a great mart.

The June sky is blue and cool, and great white clouds sail through it so indifferently. They were here when I first came to Chicago; here when the French explored the wilderness. Here they are now just the same; and Illinois has more than a million souls, and every heart carries the burden of war. Over them this sky, these clouds. They do not care.

It seems but a few minutes and the words go about the streets: "Douglas is dead." The newsboys cry it soon. I am prepared, but the city is not. It is shocked and wounded. Douglas is dead! This voice that spoke to us so lately is stilled. The great man who submerged everything of self in a cause of many is no more. I am dumb, a few tears ooze from my eyes; but on I go through the crowds. Now I shall throw myself more than ever into the work of the war. I pass a theater where speeches are being made. From it I hear a voice singing "Annie Laurie." I stop to look at a sign containing the name of Madam Zante. And I go in to hear her sing. I draw near her to get a seat. It is Zoe!

Zoe! I send up my name by an usher. The word comes back quickly to join her behind the scenes. There she is waiting for me. And we fall into each other's arms and sob. She is all I have left in the world except little Reverdy. I hold her from me. She is majestic, glorious in the maturity of great beauty, intelligence, art. She has long been a singer of note under this name of Madam Zante. What of Fortescue? She ran away from him. What was the explanation of Fortescue's trick? So far as we could guess at it, only that he had used the murder of another woman to get the property that he had learned from Zoe that she had inherited. But we had no time to talk of this now. "Come with me, Zoe, to my house." And Zoe came. But she was soon off again to nurse in the hospitals.

It is November, 1861. Word comes to us that Reverdy's boy, Amos, has been killed in the battle of Belmont. Douglas has now been in sleep five months; now Amos is a sacrifice to the war. He had joined Captain Grant's army against Sarah's fierce protest. He had gone forth happy and proud. Now he was to rest in the cemetery in Jacksonville near the dust of my father, near the dust of Major Hardin, and Lamborn.

And so it was that Zoe and I stood side by side touching the dead hand of Amos. Sarah was too grief-stricken to be surprised at Zoe's reappearance in our lives. She wailed incessantly: "What is free territory to me? My boy is dead! What is the end of slavery to me? My boy is dead! There was no use for this war, no use, no use! It needed never to be. If they had only listened to Douglas. What are Lincoln and Jeff Davis thinking of? My boy is dead."

And for nights after returning to Chicago I heard Sarah's voice crying: "my boy! my boy!"