There is a very ugly word in the English language of which I, as a child, stood in mortal fear. I had then never read that word anywhere except in the Bible or my Catechism. I had never heard it except in the pulpit. I had an idea that the devil, in whose personality I believed, but of whom I had never thought enough to be afraid, might appear at any moment in connection with that inviting word, if uttered out of church.
Only lately has it been shorn of its terrors by being left out root and branch in the revision of the Bible. Now, although offensive to ears polite, it is no longer supposed to imperil the safety of the soul. Unless refined taste forbids, it may in seasons of peculiar vexation of spirit—à lâcher la vapeur—be applied to things inanimate: to a "spot" that will not "out," to tiresome "iteration," to "faint praise," or, on general principles, suitably preface the pronoun "it," but never to living individuals! That would be uncivil to a degree—highly imprudent, and likely to result unpleasantly. There can be no doubt of the fact that it contains certain mysterious elements of relief and comfort, else why its frequent use by men and not infrequent use by some women?
At the time of which I am writing it was to me still a desperate word of evil source and evil omen. Even now the cells of my brain respond with a shudder when I hear it.
You can then imagine the shock I sustained when I learned my husband's reply to the good old General's overture.
"What did you say?" I had sternly demanded.
"Well, if you will have it—I said, 'damn the money!'"
We did not leave Washington immediately. My editor knew he could make good his position in regard to Russia in her quarrel with England, and Mr. Gales offered him the columns of the National Intelligencer for that purpose. He wrote a long and able defence of Russia. Caleb Cushing met him afterward and congratulated him on an article which was, he said, "unanswered and unanswerable."
He was fascinated with editorial life, immediately bought an interest in the Richmond Enquirer, and became co-editor with William F. Ritchie. We had inaugurated President Pierce, whose friendship promised much. I had made charming friends in Washington,—Mrs. Gales and Mrs. Seaton, Mrs. Crittenden, beautiful Adele Cutts (afterward Mrs. Douglas), Mrs. "Clem" Clay, and other charming wives of the representatives in Congress. But I was not sorry to leave the city. My dear Blue Mountains were awaiting me. For years I could never return to them without a swelling heart. I was going back for a long visit to my aunt and the baby girl I had lent her (to keep her own dear heart from breaking when I left her), and I had a splendid boy to show my friends in Charlottesville—the old people only—for all my confrères had married and taken wing.
It was not long before Mr. Pierce sent my husband on a special mission to Greece. I could not accompany him. I could not travel with my babies—there were now three—nor could I leave them with my delicate aunt. I went with him as far as Washington, where we spent one day and night. A dinner had been arranged to witness the unfolding of a superb specimen of the Agave Americana, supposed to be over fifty years old, and which now, for the first time in the memory of the present generation, had suddenly thrown up a great stalk crowned with a bud nearly a foot long.
We did not attend the dinner, but at midnight, upon answering a knock at the door, there stood a man bearing in his arms the splendid flower. A thick fringe of narrow, pure white petals formed a rosette, and from the centre rose a plume of golden stamens. I was resolved this midnight beauty should not discover the dawn which signals the closing of its petals, so I placed it in the ample fireplace, made a framework of canes, parasols, and umbrellas around it and covered the whole with a blanket. In the morning I peeped in. It presented a tightly twisted spike, having entered upon another long sleep of fifty years, more or less. It was this flower that my husband, with outrageous American boasting, described to Queen Mathilde of Greece as an ordinary floral production of this country, not to be confounded with the commonplace night-blooming Cereus, and fired an ambition in her soul that could hardly have been gratified.