"When last heard from," said the beauty with curling lip, "it was at Colonel Tarleton's back."
"Tarleton should be court-martialed for that affair at Cowpens," said Fraser with some warmth, and forgetting the proffered seat he prepared to take his leave.
"Perhaps Captain Fraser would like to have had a hand in the 'affair' also," added Miss Elliott with a demure smile. This allusion to Tarleton's wound was too much for the gallant captain, and again elevating the point of his queue toward the ceiling, but this time without his hand to his heart, he left the room with a face somewhat redder than his uniform.
III.
There are defeats which are more glorious than victory, and one of these it was which, on the 8th of September, 1781, gave to Jane Elliott's flag the title which has come down with it to posterity. In the earlier days of its history the saucy little standard was known to the gallant men who followed it to action as "Tarleton's Terror," and sometimes it is even now spoken of as "the Cowpens Banner." But the name by which its brave custodians most love to call it is "the Eutaw Flag," It is hard to realize as one stands beside the lovely fountains which flow to-day as they did a hundred—or perhaps a thousand—years ago, that close by these placid waters was fought one of the most desperate and bloody struggles of a long and cruel war. The sunfish and bream floated with quivering fins or darted among the rippling shadows on that autumn morning as we see them doing now. The mocking-bird sang among the overhanging branches the same varied song which gladdens our ears, and the wild deer then, as now, lay peacefully in the shady coverts of the neighboring woods. Who knows what they may have thought when they heard their only enemy, man, ring out his bugle-call to slip the war-dogs on his fellows, or when the sharp crack of the rifle told them for the first time of safety to themselves and of death to their wonted destroyers?
Already had "Light-horse Harry" Lee struck the first blow victoriously in the capture of Coffin and the discomfiture of his force. Already for several hours the old black oaks had quivered beneath the thunder of artillery more fearfully destructive than that of Heaven itself as Williams hurled back from his field-battery the iron hail with which the enemy strove to overwhelm him. Already had Howard's gallant Marylanders, the heroes of the Cowpens, crossed bayonets with the veteran "Irish Buffs" and forced them in confusion from the field. Majoribanks, with his regulars, grenadiers and infantry, was strongly posted behind a copse too dense to be forced by cavalry, and yet to dislodge him was Colonel Washington's special duty. Pointing with his sword toward a narrow passage near the water, he dashed the spurs into the flanks of his gallant mare and called on his men to follow. There was a momentary pause, for the duty was of the most desperate character, but Captain Peyton snatched the little banner which he had carried so long from the hand of the sergeant who had succeeded to its charge, and raising it above his head spurred after his leader. As the silken folds fluttered out on the air a ringing cheer went up from the troop, and the whole line, wheeling into sections so as to pass through the narrow gap, dashed forward as one man. It was a daring attempt, and terribly did they pay for their audacity. A perfect storm of bullets greeted the brave Virginians, and nearly one-half of them went down, horse and man, beneath its fearful breath ere the other half were in the midst of the enemy's ranks. Those were days when a certain simplicity of character made the soldier believe that bayonets and sabres were terrible weapons and meant to do terrible work. No rewards were then offered for "a dead cavalryman" or for "a bloody bayonet." There were cloven skulls at Eutaw as at Crecy, and men were transfixed by each other's deadly bayonet-thrusts. As Washington, maddened by the loss of his brave troopers, swung his sharp blade like the flail of death, a shot from the musket of a tall grenadier pierced the lung of his noble bay, and as the falling steed rolled over on her gallant rider the man shortened his musket and buried the sharp steel in the colonel's body. A second thrust would have followed with deadly result had not the British major, Majoribanks, seized the arm of the soldier and demanded the surrender of his fallen and bleeding foe. The tide of battle had receded like some huge swell of ocean, and as the wounded hero struggled to his feet he found himself surrounded by enemies, to contend with whom would have been folly. Turning his feeble glance for a second toward the retreating remnant of his shattered command, he caught a glimpse through the smoke and dust of his little battle-flag fluttering in the distance, and fast receding toward the point whence Hampton's bugles were already sounding the rally. Neither William Washington nor his "Eutaw Flag" was ever again in battle for the country, for the captivity of the former terminated only with the war, and the latter fades from history from that date until, in 1827, Jane Washington, for seventeen years a widow, presented it as a precious inheritance to the gallant corps of Charleston citizen soldiery, who still guard its folds from dishonor, as they do the name of the knightly paladin which they bear. The wedding was celebrated soon after the establishment of peace. Major Majoribanks escaped the carnage of the day, but he lived not to deliver his distinguished prisoner at Charleston. Sickening on the retreat with the deadly malaria of the Carolina swamps, he died near Black Oak, and his mossy grave may be seen to-day by the roadside, marked by a simple stone and protected from desecration by a wooden paling. It stands near the gate of Woodboo plantation, which old Stephen Mazyck, the Huguenot, first settled, about twenty-five miles from Eutaw and forty-three from Charleston. On the banks of the Cooper, amid the lovely scenes of "Magnolia," Charleston's city of the dead, there stands a marble shaft enwreathed in the folds of the rattlesnake, the symbol of Revolutionary patriotism, and beneath it rests all that was mortal of William Washington and Jane Elliott his wife.
ROBERT WILSON.
CONVENT LIFE AND WORK.
To those who have had but little opportunity to examine the inner workings of the Catholic Church the subject of the conventual life has always been something of a puzzle. Of course it has been difficult for them to obtain a personal insight into its details, just as it would be difficult to gain admittance into the mosque of St. Sophia or a Hindu community of religious. Curiosity, unsatisfied, betakes itself to hearsay, and since those who know most are generally most silent about their knowledge, it is to the gossip of ignorance or prejudice that curiosity looks for an answer. Distorted views or imaginary descriptions end by being received into the mill of public opinion, and issue thence ground into gospel truth and invested with mysterious (because fictitious) interest. It is strange that a phase of life which is in constant practice at the present day, often within a stone's throw of our own doors, and which has personal ramifications in the families of our neighbors and acquaintances, should still be so much of a phenomenon to the public mind. In England, France, Italy, Germany and America I have been familiarly acquainted with it, have studied its principles and its details under many varying forms, and never found it less interesting because it was not mysterious. Human, fallible beings are the inhabitants of monasteries either for males or females, with individual peculiarities and different sympathies—by no means machines, but free and intelligent agents, each with a character as individual as that of separate flowers in a large garden—full of personality and of human imperfection.
In Rome, not far from the Fountain of Trevi—of whose waters it is said that they have the power to ensure the return to Rome of any one who has drunk of them in a cup not heretofore devoted to common purposes—is the spacious convent called San Domenico e Sisto. Here the first convent of Dominican friars was established, and the spot is historic ground in the annals of the order of Preachers. In the turbulent thirteenth century, when papal, feudal and democratic parties opposed each other in Rome, and the vigorous sap of half-tamed barbarian life still coursed through the pulses of Italy, Saint Dominic rose like a reformer, a lawgiver and a peace-maker. On the other side of the Tiber, entrenched behind baronial walls and fiercely protected by baronial champions, was a convent of women whose practice of their vows had become too relaxed for such a bad example to be allowed to remain unreproved. The ecclesiastical authorities wished peremptorily to disestablish the convent and filter its inmates through some neighboring religious houses more zealous and more edifying in their conduct. But the nuns, who were mostly of noble families, appealed to their charters, their immunities and exemption from papal jurisdiction. Their fathers and brothers, the formidable barons who held within the papal city many strongholds well garrisoned, took up their quarrel and dared the world to dispossess the refractory sisterhood. Saint Dominic had just brought his friars to the dilapidated house then known as San Sisto, had caused rapid repairs to be made, and in his fervor had created round himself a nucleus of ardent reformers. The Gordian knot was referred to him, and with characteristic abruptness he promised to cut it at once. He came alone to the gates of the convent, presented no credentials from pope or cardinal, and asked an interview with the abbess. He spoke of the holiness of an austere life, the reward of those that "follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth," the merit of obedience, the need of reform, the great work that his order was doing for God, and the call for more laborers in the field: he proposed to the nuns to be his helpers among their own sex, and his coheiresses in the heavenly reward of the future. His eloquence and zeal soon melted the haughty resolve of the rebellious but still noble-minded women. Roused to a new sense of power and responsibility, they embraced his rigid rule, and with the enthusiasm of their sex, that never halts midway in reform, became models of austerity. The better to signify to the world the spiritual change wrought in their temper, they migrated from the abode which they had sworn to make the symbol and palladium of their independence, and went to San Sisto, Saint Dominic taking his monks to repeople the convent across the Tiber left vacant by the submissive sisterhood.