450 REALIZATION OF THE REBELLION. 



moving through the thick vapors, and their solemn 

 foot-fall broke the worse than Arctic stillness. I 

 reached Washington Street, and walked anxiously 

 westward. A news-boy passed me. I seized a paper, 

 and the first thing which caught my eye was the ac- 

 count of the Ball's Bluff battle, in which had fallen 

 many of the noblest sons of Boston ; and it seemed 

 as if the very air had shrouded itself in mourning for 

 them, and that the heavens wept tears for the city's 

 slain. 



I was wending my way to the house of a friend, 

 but I thought it likely that he was not there. I felt 

 like a stranger in a strange land, and yet every object 

 which I passed was familiar. Friends, country, every 

 thing seemed swallowed up in some vast calamity, 

 and, doubtful and irresolute, I turned back sad and 

 dejected, and found my way on board again through 

 the dull, dull fog. 



The terrible reality was now for the first time pres- 

 ent to my imagination. The land which I had left in 

 the happy enjoyment of peace and repose was already 

 drenched with blood ; a great convulsion had come to 

 scatter the old landmarks of the national Union, and 

 the country which I had known before could be the 

 same no more. Mingled with these reflections were 

 thoughts of my own career. To abandon my pur- 

 suits ; to give up a project in which I had expended so 

 much time and means ; to have nipped, as it were, in 

 the very bud, a work upon which I had set my heart, 

 and to which I had already given all the early years 

 of my manhood ; to sacrifice all the hopes and all the 

 ambitions which had encouraged me through toil and 

 danger, with the promise of the fame to follow the 

 successful completion of a great object ; to abandon an 



