An hour afterward, I was conversing in the rotunda of the capítol, with the high-bred and smiling old cavalier, Judge Conway, and he was saying to me:—
“The times are dark, colonel, I acknowledge that. But all would be well, if we could eradicate abuses and bring out our strength. A fatality, however, seems pursuing us. The blockade-runners drain the country of the little gold which is left in it; the forestallers run up prices, and debase the currency beyond hope; the able-bodied and healthy men who ought to be in the army, swarm in the streets; and the bitter foes of the President poison the public mind, and infuse into it despair. It is this, colonel, not our weakness, which is going to ruin us, if we are ruined!”
III. — MY LAST VISIT TO JOHN M. DANIEL.
On the night before my return to the army, I paid my last visit to John M. Daniel.
Shall I show you a great career, shipwrecked—paint a mighty ship run upon the breakers? The current of our narrative drags us toward passionate and tragic events, but toward few scenes more sombre than that which I witnessed on this night in December, 1864.
I found John M. Daniel in his house on Broad Street, as before; perched still in his high chair of black horse-hair, all alone. His face was thinner; his cheeks more sallow, and now haggard and sunken; his eyes sparkling with gloomy fire, as he half reclined beneath the cluster of globe lamps, depending from the ceiling, and filling the whole apartment with their brilliant light—one of his weaknesses.
He received me with grim cordiality, offered me a cigar, and said:—
“I am glad to see you, colonel, and to offer you one of the last of my stock of Havanas. Wilmington is going soon—then good-bye to blockade goods.”