Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 41.djvu/20

 8 from them ruddy with the glow of health, through all this and more those blessed women of the old South never faltered and they never doubted. As the storm grew wilder their faces may have blanched, but their courage never failed. In the burning fiery furnace of the decade after the war the hearts of the men almost failed and their voices sank to a sigh, but with feet unblistered the women walked those billowing flames, singing of hope when all seemed lost, and lifting courage to the level of that horrible calamity.

It may be thought even by some stranger kind of heart who sits to-day in our company that my poor picture is idealized. Not so. The purpose has been to represent the best of that old life, but the picture falls far short of the living reality. It may be said that instances of a different kind of life could be found, that there was evil, shame and sin which marred the beauty and eclipsed the glory of the old South, leaving only the attraction of her pathos as she sat amid her sorrows a mark for the arrows of the cruel archers. It may be said that Southern generosity, hospitality, chivalry and honor are phrases which have been overworked, that at times these terms have been used as the paint that hides the pallor. The charge would be ungenerous and unjust. There are spots on the sun, but I am talking not of the spots but of the sun, and there was a sun. Not to be able to see the sun, never to thrill in its glorious light because a careful inspection would show some spots, were a pity. It were blindness, because there are cracks in the canvas, not to see the beauty in Raphael's Sistine Madonna. Because the face of Judas wears a scowl do we not see the winning smile of John?

No remembered experience of that old life remains in my mind, but of the delicate fragrance that clung to its shattered fragments, of the brilliant colors that even trouble could not cloud, I have a vivid memory. The use it made of its remaining mites still manifested its generosity, and even a robe of rags its princely dignity could not hide.

"The story's heart to me still beats against its side."