Page:Poems of Nature and Life.djvu/131

 THE RANDALL FAMILY I 23

Boston tomorrow for Washington (I fear it should be Bal- timore, which I suppose would have been burned long since, if Louis Napoleon had commanded the Union troops). General Butler was quartered on my friend Don- aldson at Elk Ridge. Business is nearly at a stand-still ; all the mills of Lowell stop this week, to be followed by most others in the State. Railroad travel has fallen off one half, and a great part of our banking capital is loaned only to government. ... It is much more easy to predict a general bankruptcy than a speedy end to the war. Massa- chusetts will soon have nearly 30,000 men in the field, yet so rapidly are they emptied from the workshops that I think it likely that even twice that number may be en- listed before winter is over. The principal drunkards of Stow have, I learn, become patriots and enlisted ; those of Centre Harbor, N.H., as I learned in that place, have al- ready gone to the war — truly a better business ; and many thousands who are not drunkards have followed their ex- ample. The money part of the business will present the greatest difficulties, and, as repudiation is much to be dreaded in case the war continues for several years, I wish that the government might be rapid and vigorous enough to end it before next summer, though I think it unlikely. My friend Charles Simmons has gone as adju- tant to Col. Wm. Greene's regiment, and Arthur Fuller fills the ornamental office of chaplain to the Mass. i6th. Mrs. Gumming is with us, her husband having left Utah and his governorship. We are all making ready to grow poor, and it is not easy to see how taxation can ever again be light or imported products cheap, unless our debts end in repudiation. But the country will not feel any serious effects from the war before next winter. ... I am sorry to see politicians, stump orators, and militia men receiving

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