ed, with each angle just so
much truncated as to give room for one embrasure in every story. Its
whole air is massive, commanding, and formidable.

Eighty or a hundred citizens, volunteers, cadets from the military
academy, policemen, and negroes, greeted the arrival of the Columbia at
her wharf. It was a larger crowd than usual, partly because a report had
circulated that we should be forced to bring to off Fort Sumter and give
an account of ourselves, and partly because many persons in Charleston
have lately been perplexed with an abundant leisure. As I drove to my
hotel, I noticed that the streets showed less movement of business
and population than when I knew them four years ago. The place seemed
dirtier, too,--worse paved, shabbier as to its brick-work and stucco,
and worse painted,--but whether through real deterioration, or by
comparison with the neatly finished city which I had lately left, I
cannot decide. There was surely not a third of the usual shipping, nor a
quarter of the accustomed cotton. Here and there were wharves perfectly
bare, not only of masting and of freight, but even of dust, as if they
had not been used for days, or possibly for weeks.

My old hotel was as well kept, and its table as plentiful and excellent
as ever. I believe we are all aware by this time that Charleston has
not suffered from hunger; that beef has not sold at thirty-five cents a
pound, but rather at ten or fifteen; that its Minute Men have not
been accustomed to come down upon its citizens for forced dinners and
dollars; that the State loan was taken willingly by the banks, instead
of unwillingly by private persons; that the rich, so far from being
obliged to give a great deal for the cause of Secession, have generally
given very little; that the streets are well-policed, untrodden by mobs,
and as orderly as those of most cities; that, in short, the revolution
so far has been political, and not social. At the same time exports
and imports have nearly ceased; business, even in the retail form, is
stagnant; the banks have suspended; debts are not paid.

After dinner I walked up to the Citadel square and saw a drill of the
Home Guard. About thirty troopers, all elderly men, and several with
white hair and whiskers, uniformed in long overcoats of homespun gray,
went through some of the simpler cavalry evolutions in spite of their
horses' teeth. The Home Guard is a volunteer police force, raised
because of the absence of so many