'Yes, cold—lead—like the d——l!'
'Where?'
'Well, to tell you the truth, it's pretty well scattered. First, there's a bullet in my right arm, they han't dug that out yet. Then there's one near my thigh—it's sticking in yet: one in my leg—hit the bone—that fellow hurts! one through my left hand—that fell out. And I tell you what, friend, with all this lead in me, I feel, ginrally speaking, a little heavy all over!'
C—— lightened his woes with a double quantity of Solace.
C—— was a good fellow, and the soldier deserved his 'Solace.' Many of them among us are poor indeed. 'Boys!' exclaimed a wounded volunteer to two comrades, as they paused the other day before a tobacconist's and examined with the eyes of connoisseurs the brier or bruyére-wood pipes in his window, 'Boys! I'd give fifty dollars, if I had it, for four shillins to buy one of them pipes with!'
In a late number of an English magazine, Harriet Martineau gives some account of her conversations, when in America in 1835, with Chief-Justice Marshall and Mr. Madison. These men then represented the old ideas of the Republic and of Virginia as it had been. The following extract fully declares their opinions:
'When I knew Chief-Justice Marshall he was eighty-three—as bright-eyed and warm-hearted as ever, while as dignified a judge as ever filled the highest seat in the highest court of any country. He said he had seen Virginia the leading State for half his life; he had seen her become the second, and sink to be (I think) the fifth.
'Worse than this, there was no arresting her decline if her citizens did not put an end to slavery; and he saw no signs of any intention to do so, east of the mountains, at least. He had seen whole groups of estates, populous in his time, lapse into waste. He had seen agriculture exchanged for human stock-breeding; and he keenly felt the degradation.