Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/86

Rh superior character. The rights of the South are the highest object for which he contends, and his highest impulse is a chivalric sense of honour as regards—his own honour. “The South must not yield because the South is the weaker combatant. If the South shall be conquered, no blush of shame must tinge her cheek.”

Soulé is a French knight, but not of the highest order, not a Bayard nor a Turenne.

Mr. Dickinson, a cold-blooded senator from Alabama, a man of an acute and stern aspect, highly esteemed for integrity of character in the camp of the Southerners, sits near the inflammable Mississippi, that is to say, the younger of the senators from that State, a young man of handsome person and inflammable temperament, who talks violently for “Southern rights.” The other, and elder senator of Mississippi, Mr. Foote, is a little, thin, and also fiery man, whom I believe to be a really warm patriot. He stands for the Union, and his most brilliant moments are when he hurls himself into a violent dithyrambic against all and each who threaten it. The explosions of his indignant feelings almost lift him up from the earth, as the whole of his slender but sinewy frame responds in vehement agitation to the apostrophes of the spirit. These are sometimes so keen and full of rebuke that I wonder at the coolness with which the Senate, and certain senators in particular, listen to them: but it seems to me as if they listened with that sort of feeling with which a connoisseur regards the clever work of an artist. For the rest, Mr. Foote is always on the alert, quick to interrupt, to make observations, and sometimes calls forth by his mercurial temperament a universal smile, but of a good-natured kind, as at the bottom is Mr. Foote himself.

Near the combustible Mississippi I see a young man, also handsome, and with features bearing a remarkable resemblance to those of the Indian. That is the senator