There were three windows in our room, which we opened at night; but, notwithstanding the air that circulated, the feeling, after having been so long out of doors, was suffocating. The ceiling seemed descending to smother us. There was one joy—reveillé could ring out on the dawning day and there was no longer imperative necessity to spring from a warm bed and make ablutions in ice-water. There is a good deal of that sort of mental snapping of the fingers on the part of campaigners when they are again stationary and need not prepare for a march. Civilization and a looking-glass must now be assumed, as it would no longer do to rough it and ignore appearances, after we had moved into a house, and were to live like "folks." Besides, we soon began to be invited by the townspeople to visit them. Refined, agreeable and well-dressed women came to see us, and, womanlike, we ran our eyes over their dresses. They were embroidered and trimmed richly with lace—"befo' the war" finery or from the cargo of a blockade runner; but it was all strange enough in such an isolated State. Almost everything was then brought from the terminus of the Brenham Railroad to Austin, 150 miles, by ox-team. We had been anxiously expected for some time, and there was no manner of doubt that the arrival of the Division was a great relief to the reputable of both sides. They said so frankly—the returned Confederate officers and the "stay-at-home rangers," as well as the newly appointed Union governor.
Texas was then a "go-as-you-please" State, and the lawlessness was terrible. The returned Confederate soldiers were poor, and did not know how to set themselves to work, and in many instances preferred the life of a freebooter. It was so easy, if a crime was committed, to slip into Mexico, for though it was inaccessible except by stage or on horseback, a Texan would not mind a forced march over the country to the Rio Grande. There were then but one or two short railroads in operation. The one from Galveston to Brenham was the principal one, while telegraph lines were not in use. The stage to Brenham was our one means of communication with the outside world.
It was hard for the citizens who had remained at home to realize that war was over, and some were unwilling to believe there ever had been an emancipation proclamation. In the northern part of the State they were still buying and selling slaves. The lives of the newly appointed United States officers were threatened daily, and it was an uneasy head that wore the gubernatorial crown. I thought them braver men than many who had faced the enemy in battle. The unseen, lurking foe that hides under cover of darkness was their terror. They held themselves valiantly; but one wife and daughter were on my mind night after night, as from dark till dawn they slept uneasily, and started from their rooms out into the halls at every strange sound. The General and I thought the courageous daughter had enough brave, devoted blood in her veins to distill a portion into the heart of many a soldier who led a forlorn hope. They told us that in the early part of the war the girl had known of a Union flag in the State House, held in derision and scornfully treated by the extremists. She and her younger brother climbed upon the roof of a wing of the building, after dark, entered a window of the Capitol, found the flag, concealed it in the girl's clothing, and made their perilous descent safely. The father of such a daughter might well prize her watchfulness of his safety, as she vigilantly kept it up during our stay, and was equal to a squadron of soldiers. She won our admiration; and our bachelor officers paid the tribute that brave men always pay to courageous, unselfish women, for she danced, rode and walked with them, and when she was not so engaged, their orderlies held their horses before the official door, while they improved every hour allowed them within the hospitable portal.
It was a great relief to find a Southern State that was not devastated by the war. The homes destroyed in Virginia could not fail to move a woman's heart, as it was women and children that suffered from such destruction. In Texas nothing seemed to have been altered. I suppose some profited, for blockade-running could be carried on from the ports of that great State, and there was always Mexico from which to draw supplies.
In our daily rides we found the country about Austin delightful. The roads were smooth and the surface rolling. Indeed, there was one high hill, called Mount Brunnel, where we had picnics and enjoyed the fine view, far and near, taking one of the bands of the regular regiments from the North that joined us soon after our arrival. Mount Brunnel was so steep we had to dismount and climb a part of the distance. The band played the "Anvil Chorus," and the sound descended through the valley grandly. The river, filled with sand-bars and ugly on close examination, looked like a silver ribbon. At that height, the ripened cotton, at certain seasons of the year, looked like fields of foam. The thermometer was over eighty before we left the lowlands; but at the altitude to which we climbed the air was cool. We even went once to the State Insane Asylum, taking the band, when the attendants asked if dance music might be played, and we watched with wonder the quadrille of an insane eight.
The favorite ride for my husband was across the Colorado to the Deaf and Dumb Asylum. There seemed to be a fascination for him in the children, who were equally charmed with the young soldier that silently watched their pretty, pathetic exhibitions of intelligent speech by gesture. My husband riveted his gaze on their speaking eyes, and as their instructor spelt the passions of love, hatred, remorse and reverence on his fingers, one little girl represented them by singularly graceful gestures, charming him, and filling his eyes with tears, which he did not seek to hide. The pupils were from ten to sixteen years of age. Their supple wrists were a delight to us, and the tiny hands of a child of the matron, whom the General held, talked in a cunning way to its playmates, who, it knew, could not comprehend its speech. It was well that the Professor was hospitality itself, and did not mind a cavalcade dashing up the road to his house. My husband, when he did not openly suggest going, used some subterfuge as trivial as going for water-cress, that grew in a pond near the Asylum. The children knew him, and welcomed him with lustrous, eloquent eyes, and went untiringly through their little exhibitions, learning to bring him their compositions, examples and maps, for his commendation. How little we thought then that the lessons he was taking, in order to talk with the children he learned to love, would soon come into use while sitting round a camp-fire and making himself understood by Indians. Of course, their sign-language is wholly their own, but it is the same method of using the simplest signs as expressive of thought. It was a long, pleasant ride; its only drawback to me being the fording of the river, which had quicksands and a rapid current. The Colorado was low, but the river-bed was wide and filled with sand-bars. The mad torrent that the citizens told us of in freshets, we did not see. If I followed my husband, as Custis Lee had learned to do, I found myself guided safely, but it sometimes happened that our party entered the river, laughing and talking so earnestly, noisily and excitedly that we forgot caution. One lesson was enough; the sensation of the sinking of the horse's hindlegs in quicksands is not to be forgotten. The loud cry of the General to "saw on the bit" or whip my horse, excited, frightened directions from the staff to turn to the right or the left, Custis Lee trembling and snorting with fear, but responding to a sharp cut of my whip (for I rarely struck him), and we plunged on to a firmer soil, wiser for all the future on account of that moment of serious peril.
We seldom rode through the town, as my husband disliked the publicity that a group of cavalrymen must necessarily cause in a city street. If we were compelled to, the staff and Tom pointed out one after another of the loungers about the stores, or the horseman, who had killed his man. It seemed to be thought the necessary thing, to establish the Texan's idea of courage, to have either fought in duels, or, by waylaying the enemy, to have killed from one to five men. The Southern climate seems to keep alive a feud that our cold Northern winters freeze out. Bad blood was never kept in abeyance; they had out their bursts of temper when the attack of rage came on. Each man, even the boys of twelve, went armed. I used to wonder at the humped-up coats, until a norther, before which we were one day scudding for safety, lifted the coats of men making a similar dash, and the pistol was revealed.
It was the favorite pastime of our men (having concocted the scheme with the General) to ride near some of the outskirts, and, when we reached some lone tree, tell me that from that limb a murdered man had lately swung. This grim joke was often practiced on me, in order that the shuddering horror and the start Custis Lee and I made, to skim over the country away from such a hated spot, might be enjoyed. I came to think the Texas trees bore that human fruit a little too often for truth; but some of the citizens gloated over these scenes of horror, and added a lamp-post in town to the list of localities from which, in future, I must turn away my head.
The negroes in Texas and Louisiana were the worst in all the South. The border States had commonly sold their most insubordinate slaves into these two distant States.[F] Fortunately, our now well-disciplined Division and the regular cavalry kept everything in a better condition; but there were constantly individual cases of outrageous conduct, and often of crime, among whites and blacks, high and low. Texas had so long been looked upon as a sort of "city of refuge" by outlaws, that those whom the other States refused to harbor came to that locality. A country reached only by sea from the south or by a wagon-train from the north, and through which no telegraph lines ran until after we came, would certainly offer an admirable hiding-place for those who leave their country for their country's good. I have read somewhere that Texas derived its name from a group of rascals, who, sitting around a fire on their arrival on the soil that was to protect them, composed this couplet:
"If every other land forsakes us,
This is the land that freely takes us (Texas)."