Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/494

 486 could have ever imagined; the enemy seemed to have indulged too freely in champagne, and were dashing about the house, shouting and screaming; they had evidently gorged themselves, and were about to slaughter the innocent inmates of the hotel in their drunken fury.

I sprang out of bed, to seek a place of concealment; a cupboard, a high one, stood invitingly open, and in I jumped, pulled-to the door with a bang, and for the moment I was safe. I heard them knocking at the door of my room, but of course I did not answer, and after a little time they went away. I don’t know how long I remained in my hiding place; it seemed about a year, but I suppose was only an hour, when all noise having ceased, I thought I might as well go back to bed, particularly as my costume was somewhat of the scantiest, and I began to feel cold, when, to my dismay, I found that the door had shut with a spring, and I was enclosed like the lady in the “Mistletoe Bough.” Nothing was to be done but remain quiet until morning, when some one would most likely come into the room, and I would surrender myself a prisoner.

After a lapse of time, which seemed centuries, a streak of light shone through the keyhole, and by-and-by I heard a knocking at my bed-room door.

“Come in,” shouted I through the keyhole. Fates be praised! I heard the door open. “Let me out,” I shouted again.

“Why, however did you get inside the cupboard, sir?” said the chamber-maid (for she it was), as she opened the door of my hiding place.

I did not stop to answer her ridiculous question, but sprang out at once into the room.

I have already stated that my garments were scanty, and the damsel fled precipitately at my appearance, before I had time to inquire the particulars of the fearful struggle of the previous night.

I dressed myself as quickly as possible, and ran down stairs expecting to find the whole lower storey a ruin; but, strange to say, everything looked as usual; the killed and wounded must have been removed I thought. I went into the coffee-room, and found the waiter; he looked a little pale, but otherwise appeared free from injury.

“How,” gasped I, “did we escape last night?”

The waiter scarcely heard my question, and replied:

“Why, sir, you see. sir, the wolunteers”

“Gallant fellows!” interrupted I; “so they drove the invaders from our hearths.”

The waiter looked at me somewhat dubiously, the chambermaid had most likely told him of my being found in the cupboard.

“Dear me, sir,” said he, “you must have been wery bad last night, sir.”

“What do you mean?” said I.

“Well, sir, I hope no offence, sir; but if I might make so bold as to recommend a glass of brandy neat, sir; a fine thing when a gentleman has had a little drop too much over night, sir.”

“Why, you rascal, you don’t think I was drunk, do you?”

The waiter grinned a ghastly grin, and replied:

“No offence, I hope, sir, but a good many on ’em was, sir.”

“A good many of whom?”

“Why, sir, the wolunteers had a midnight-march last night, and skirmished back through the town, and had supper at our house.”

“And the firing I heard, then?”

“Was them, sir; and they did fire beautiful, didn’t they, sir?”

I nodded assent.

“And some of the young gentlemen,” continued my loquacious waiter, “got uncommon jolly, sir, and chivied one another up and down stairs.”

I have still the greatest respect for our noble volunteers, but I sincerely hope that I shall never sleep again in a town, where they are in the habit of taking midnight-marches, or in an hotel where they come home to supper, and chivy one another up and down stairs.

W. H. S.

I write, this beautiful little city of the South may be given to the flames by its own people, or by the shells of its Northern invaders. When I think of its probable fate, it rises before me like a picture, and I see again the sweeping torrent of its great river, the shore lined with busy steamers, loading with cotton, the precipitous bluffs, or alluvial banks, rising a hundred feet from the river brink, the streets, the spires, the villas and gardens of a lovely town, and a fertile and beautiful land. Memphis—the name carries us back thirty centuries to Egypt and the Nile. Our Memphis is of to-day, and carries us across the ocean to America and the Mississippi. When the old world peopled the new, the emigrants took with them the names of the places they discovered or peopled. The Spaniards and French drew heavily upon the calendar. In the West Indies and Spanish America we have San Salvador, San Domingo, Santa Cruz, Santa Fé. The French, in Louisiana and Canada, gave the names of saints and European cities, or adopted Indian designations. Thus we have St. Lawrence, St. Louis, New Orleans, Montreal, Ontario, Niagara. The English settlers of the American colonies at first took English names, and the oldest towns are called Jamestown, Yorktown, Richmond, Charleston, Portsmouth, Plymouth, Boston, Exeter, Cambridge, Hartford, Albany, Baltimore, Hanover, Orford, and a hundred others. These are repeated over and over. The names of several of the States evince their English origin, as New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, so named in honour of Queen Elizabeth, the Carolinas and Georgia. The Dutch, German, and French settlers also gave their own familiar names to their settlements. But as the number of towns and villages increased, it was necessary to have more names, and people adopted those of every famous city in the world, from Babylon, Nineveh, Thebes, Memphis, Troy, Athens, Rome, Antioch, Carthage, Jerusalem, to Lisbon, Madrid, Lyons, Genoa, Florence, Smyrna, Moscow, and so on to Pekin and Canton. A few hours’ ride on a New York