It was Christmas eve, and the parlors of No. 46 Shelby Street were ablaze with light; rare flowers, in vases rarer still, filled the rooms with a sweet perfume, bringing back, as it were, the summer glory which had faded in the autumn light, and died in the chill December’s breath. Costly pictures adorned the walls; carpets, which seemed to the eye like a mossy bed inlaid with roses, covered the floors, while over all, the gas-light fell, making a scene of brilliant beauty such as was seldom witnessed in the quiet city of ——, where our story opens.It was the night of Alice Warren’s first presentation to society, as a young lady, and in her luxurious dressing-room she stood before her mirror, bending her graceful head, while her mother placed among her flowing curls a golden arrow, and then pronounced the toilet complete. Alice Warren was very beautiful with her fair young face, her waving hair, and lustrous eyes of blue, which shone with more than their wonted brightness, as, smoothing down the folds of her dress, she glanced again at the mirror opposite, and then turned toward her mother just as a movement in the hall without attracted the attention of both. It was a slow, uncertain step, and darting forward, Alice cried:“It is father—come to see how I look on my eighteenth birthnight!”
The long disputed point as to whether the South was in earnest or not was settled, and through the Northern States the tidings flew that Sumter had fallen and the war had commenced. With the first gun which boomed across the waters of Charleston bay, it was ushered in, and they who had cried, “Peace! peace!” found at last “there was no peace.” Then, and not till then, did the nation rise from its lethargic slumber and shake off the delusion with which it had so long been bound. Political differences were forgotten. Republicans and Democrats struck the friendly hand, pulse beat to pulse, heart throbbed to heart, and the watchword everywhere was, “The Union forever.” Throughout the length and breadth of the land were true, loyal hearts, and as at Rhoderic Dhu’s command the Highlanders sprang to view from every clump of heather on the wild moors of Scotland, so when the war-cry came up from Sumter our own Highlanders arose, a mighty host, responsive to the call; some from New England’s templed hills, with hands inured to toil, and hearts as strong and true as flint; some from the Empire, some the Keystone State, and others from the prairies of the distant West. It mattered not what place had given them birth; it mattered little whether the Green Mountains of Vermont, the granite hills of New Hampshire, or the shadowy forests of Wisconsin had sheltered their childhood’s home; united in one cause they rallied round the Stars and Stripes, and went forth to meet, not a foreign foe, but alas, to raise a brother’s arm against another brother’s arm in that most dreadful of all anarchies, a national civil war.
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