Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14.djvu/728

718 over the key-hole of our outside-door! What would happen, if he should hear that I had picked the padlock, and prowled about Richmond for an hour after midnight! The very thought gave my throat a preliminary choke, and my neck an uneasy sensation. It was high time I sought the embrace of that hard mattress in the fourth story. But my fears were groundless. When I crept noiselessly to bed, Javins was sleeping as soundly and snoring as sweetly as if his sins were all forgiven.

When I awoke in the morning, breakfast was already laid on the centre-table, and an army of newsboys were shouting under our windows, "'Ere's the 'En'quirer' and the 'Dis'patch.' Great news from the front. Gin'ral Grant mortally killed,—shot with a cannon." Rising, and beginning my toilet, I said to Javins, in a tone of deep concern,—

"When did that happen?"

"Why, o' Saturday. I hearn of it afore we left the lines. 'Twas all over town yesterday," he replied, with infinite composure.

"And you didn't tell us! That was unkind of you, Javins,—very unkind. How could you do it?"

"It's ag'in' orders to talk news with you;—besides, I thought you knowed it."

"How should we know it?"

"Why, your boat was only just ahead of his'n, comin' up the river. He got shot runnin' that battery. Hit in the arm, and died when they amputated him."

"Amputated him! Did they cut off his head to save his arm?"

Whether he saw a quiet twinkle in my eye, or knew that the news was false, I know not. Whichever it was, he replied,—

"I reckon. Then you don't b'lieve it?"

"Why should I doubt it? Don't your papers always tell the truth?"

"No, they never do; lyin' 's their trade."

"Then you suppose they're whistling now to keep up their courage? But let us see what they say. Oblige me with some of your currency."

He kindly gave me three dollars for one, and ringing the bell, I soon had the five dingy half-sheets which every morning, "Sundays excepted," hold up this busy world, "its fluctuations and its vast concerns," to the wondering view of beleaguered Richmond.

"Dey's fifty cents apiece, Massa," said the darky, handing me the papers, and looking wistfully on the poor specimen of lithography which remained after the purchase; "what shill I do wid dis?"

"Oh! keep it. I'd give you more, but that's all the lawful money I have about me."

He hesitated, as if unwilling to take my last half-dollar; but self soon got the better of him. He pocketed the shin-plaster, and said nothing; but "Poor gentleman! I's sorry for you! Libin' at do Spotswood, and no money about you!" was legible all over his face.

We opened the papers, and, sure enough, General Grant was dead, and laid out in dingy sheets, with a big gun firing great volleys over him! The cannon which that morning thundered Glory! Hallelujah! through the columns of the "Whig" and the "Examiner" no doubt brought him to life again. No such jubilation, I believe, disgraced our Northern journals when Stonewall Jackson fell.

Breakfast over, the Colonel and I packed our portmanteaus, and sat down to the intellectual repast. It was a feast, and we enjoyed it. I always have enjoyed the Richmond editorials. If I were a poet, I should study them for epithets. Exhausting the dictionary, their authors ransack heaven, earth, and the other place, and into one expression throw such a concentration of scorn, hate, fury, or exultation as is absolutely stunning to a man of ordinary nerves. Talk of their being bridled! They never had a bit in their mouths. Before the war they ran wild, and now they ride rough-shod over decorum, decency, and Davis himself.