No need to speak more definitely. Our minds had room for but one thought.
“It was arranged with the engineer and conductor that a flag should be made fast to the locomotive if there were good news. It was to be a large and handsome flag. Hundreds were on the lookout for it. As soon as I caught sight of the train I saw that the flag was not there.”
He smoked hard and fast. A choking in my throat held me silent. For, in a lightning flash of fancy, I had before me the glorious might-have-been that would have driven the waiting hundreds mad with joy. I pictured how proudly the “large, handsome flag” would have floated in the sunshine, and the wild enthusiasm of the crowds collected upon the sidewalks—the gladness that would have flooded our hearts and our home.
It was, perhaps, five minutes before I could manage my voice to say:
“How do you suppose Mr. Clay will bear it?”
I was a woman-child, and my whole soul went out in the longing to comfort the defeated demigod.
“Like the hero that he is, my daughter. This”—still not naming the disaster—“means more to the nation than to him.”
He raised his hat involuntarily, as I had seen him do that bright, happy May morning when we walked down to Jordan’s Creek to be amused by the Democratic barbecue.
He removed it entirely a week later, and bowed his bared head silently, when a fellow-Whig told him, with moist eyes, that the decisive tidings were brought to the hero as he stood in a social gathering of friends. Mr. Clay—so ran the tale I have never heard contradicted—was called out of the room by the messenger, returning in a few minutes to resume the conversation the summons had interrupted, with unruffled mien and the perfect courtesy that never failed him in public and in private. It was said then that he repeated on that evening, in reply to the expressed sorrow of his companions—if, indeed, it was not said then for the first time—the immortal utterance: