cal song rising above them.

Great numbers of the interested and the curious visited the camps,
carrying substantial tokens of sympathy for the cause and its defenders
in the shape of hams, loaves and sometimes bottles. Nor was such
testimony often irrelevant; for as yet the quartermaster and
commissary--those much-erring and more-cursed adjuncts to all
armies--were not fully aware of what they were to do, or how to do it,
even with the means therefor provided. But the South was at last awake!
And again the popular voice averred that it was not Congress, or
Cabinet; that the President alone was the motive power; that his strong
hand had grasped the chaos and reduced it to something like order.
Rapidly one needful and pointed law after another emanated from
Congress; and what had been a confused mass of weak resolves assumed
shape as clear and legible statutes. It was generally said that Mr.
Davis had reduced Congress to a pliable texture that his iron fingers
could twist at will into any form they pleased. Newspaper
correspondents wrote strange stories of the length to which that
dignified body allowed him to carry his prerogative. They declared that
frequently, the framing of a bill not suiting him, it was simply
returned by his private secretary, with verbal instructions as to
emendations and corrections, which were obediently carried out.

Some even went to the length of asserting that, before any bill of
importance was framed, a rough draft was sent down from the President's
office and simply put into form and voted a law by the ductile
legislators.

However much of this one may allow for exaggeration of "our
correspondent," it is certain that Mr. Davis was the heart and brains
of the government; and his popularity with the people was, at this
time, unbounded. They were perfectly content to think that the
government was in the hollow of his hand; and pronounced any of his
measures good before they were tried. His energy, too, was untiring;
and it was wonderful to look on the frail body and believe that it
endured the terrible physical and mental strain he imposed upon it.

At this time the President and his family, having left their temporary
quarters at the hotel, were living at a plain mansion provided for
them, but a few steps from the Government House. In the latter building
were the executive office and the Cabinet room, connected by an always
open door; and in one or the other of these Mr. Davis spent some