Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 08.djvu/128

116 Then again, for the entertainment of lonely evenings, we organized a literary society, which held its meetings once or twice a week, immediately after supper, and which numbered some twenty or more clever debaters. Many and various were the subjects discussed; vast and heterogeneous the stores of original thought evolved by men who had no access to books, and amidst throes which attested the profoundness of that vasty deep from which the treasures were being drawn up. It is a matter of profound regret that no stenographer was present, and that thus all these purely original thoughts have been lost to the world.

It would naturally be supposed, the debates which awakened most interest were those in which woman was in some way involved. On these occasions not only would every Rebel be in place to hear the discussion, but Yankees, too, would crowd around us. Even Federal captains and lieutenants would swell the line of blue coats that formed a cordon about our quarters. The usual taps for extinction of lights would be disregarded, and the discussion ran on towards the hour of midnight. Then, alas for the speaker who was appointed to defend the side of the question which was unfavorable to woman, and thus go against the popular current! He might plead with the eloquence of a Demosthenes, or the smooth persuasion of a Tully; his logic might be irrefragable, his arguments conclusive, his positions impregnable; but no inspiring applause greeted his most masterly efforts, while his opponent was cheered at every point, and in the final vote the unlucky orator was sure to be in a lean and helpless minority.

Well do I remember when it was made my duty to defend the negative in the question, "Is love a safe guide in the formation of matrimonial alliances?" I traversed, as far as I could in unaided memory, all history and literature to establish the proverbial blindness of love then entered the domain of poetry and art, painting Cupid the blind boy, as Aurora with her rosy fingers drew aside the curtains of the dawn, and Apollo, god of day, drove his fiery steeds up along the eastern sky, whilst the poor boy groped in his blindness and shot his arrows at random through the air. Then I entered the domain of Metaphysics, and with KautKant [sic]'s marvellous trichotomy as my guide, showed how in that three-fold adjustment of man's nature god-like reason was designed to sit upon the