“And your ideal of life?”
“To fill the world with flowers, laughter, and music—especially my own home—and never do a thing I can make my husband do for me! How do you like it?”
“I think it very sweet,” Phil answered soberly.
At noon on the following Friday, the Piedmont Eagle appeared with an editorial signed by Dr. Cameron, denouncing in the fine language of the old school the arrest of Ben as “despotism and the usurpation of authority.”
At three o’clock, Captain Gilbert, in command of the troops stationed in the village, marched a squad of soldiers to the newspaper office. One of them carried a sledge-hammer. In ten minutes he demolished the office, heaped the type and their splintered cases on top of the battered press in the middle of the street, and set fire to the pile.
On the courthouse door he nailed this proclamation:
To the People of Ulster County:
The censures of the press, directed against the servants of the people, may be endured; but the military force in command of this district are not the servants of the people of South Carolina. We are your masters. The impertinence of newspaper comment on the military will not be brooked under any circumstances whatever.
G. C. Gilbert,
Captain in Command.