Page:Confederate Portraits.djvu/289

 false teeth, and spittoons. He probably wrote the de- spatch, a copy of which had been handed me, in the intervals between the entrance and exit of his customers. It was not wonderful, therefore, that this semi-diplomat, charged with the affairs of the Great Republic, and with the decayed teeth of the young- ladies of Maranham, at one and the same time, should be a little confused as to points of international law, and the rules of Lindley Mur- ray." ^o

The man who wrote that had a coarse streak in him somewhere. Stuart liked rhetoric, but he could never have written that. Jackson detested Yankees, but he could never have written that.

And with this vein of detestable facetiousness Semmes mingles an almost equally trying assortment of cheap heroics. He quotes Byron, "Don Juan," and **The Cor- sair," and " The Island," until you would think Conrad and Lara were his ideals and Jack Bunce, alias Alta- mont, his model.

Such a tribute to the power of the gallery goes far to prepare us for the description furnished by one of Semmes' s captives, the master of the Brilliant, a descrip- tion no doubt exaggerated, but which may not seem so much so now, as when we were fresh from the touching — and absolutely genuine — confessions about home and God. It may be added that this passage furnishes the only explanation I have seen of " Old Beeswax," a name accepted by Semmes himself and frequently referred to

�� �