"Oh, Clara! how can we ever let you go?"
"Ah, my beloved ones! I only go a little before you, and if you knew how sweet it will be to be strong, you would say, because you love me, 'I may go.' I have many things to say—and I shall remain with you a time, and may, I fear, weary you. I am glad Louis is strong."
It was pitiful to see the patience with which she bore her suffering. There was no pain, she said, but it was a strange feeling not to be alive—and she would look at her limbs and say, "Poor flesh, you are not warm any more." We had one of her crimson-cushioned easy chairs arranged to suit her needs, and in this she could be rolled about. She sat at the table with us and I kept constantly near her, and tried to shield her from any extra excitement. When on the thirteenth day of April, news reached us of the blow which, the day before, had fallen on Sumter, we feared to let her know it. But her spirit quickened into the clearest perception possible, divined something, and obliged us to tell her.
She said: "I knew it would come, I have felt it for years, and when the cruel sacrifice is finished, liberty will arise, and over the ashes of the slain will say, 'Let the bond go free.'"
Ben's eyes looked as Hal's did, when he left us for Chicago, and he whispered to me:
"I must go. Hal must stay here; Louis cannot go. John will see to every thing for me, and I am going."
Six days later he had enlisted, and oh! how filled these days were! When Matthias heard of it, he came over, and happening to meet me where he could talk freely, he said:
"Dis is jes' what I knowed was a comin', an' I have tole Ben fur to kill dat Mas'r Sumner, de fus' ting, for he's the one dat ort fur to be killed."
"Why, Matthias, you are in a great hurry to kill him, and you really believe he is to drop right into that terrible fire; why, I could not hurry a dog out of existence if I thought everlasting torment awaited him."
"Look a yere, Miss Em'ly, ef dat dog wuz mad, you'd kill him mighty quick, wouldn't ye?"