"Why, the sun is shining at midnight at this moment in the other part of the world."
And his own daughter chimed in:
"Yes, and our teacher says the Mississippi does run up North in its tortuous course."
This created a little laugh at his expense. But, without noticing it or smiling himself—by the way, he was so dreadfully solemn looking—I doubt if he ever smiled—he got back on them by saying:
"Well, it will happen only when Democrats lose their inclination to steal."
After the laugh over this had subsided, he became eloquent as well as emphatic:
"And that will be when the damned spirits in hell swap for heaven with the angels, and play cards for mean whisky."
That's exactly the sort of a man Parson Brownlow was to talk; and we all know that he acted out his words to the bitter end. Then, by way of personal application, the parson said:
"I am not only a Tennessee Union man of the Jackson and Andy Johnson stripe, but I'm a native of Virginia. My ancestors fought for the Union in the Revolutionary War, and their descendents have fought to preserve it in every war since. This country is as loyal as any State in the North."
Mr. Brownlow's astonishing way of putting things was impressed on my mind, by his apt way of illustrating the dependence of the South upon the North, in his argument to show that disunion was not practicable.