ed had thinned greatly, from assignments to duty in divers
quarters; and that portion of it left in Montgomery began to settle
into a regular routine.

The ladies of the executive mansion held occasional receptions, after
the Washington custom, at which were collected the most brilliant, the
most gallant and most honored of the South. But the citizens still held
aloof from general connection with the alien crowd. They could not get
rid of their idea that Sodom had come to be imposed on them; and to
their prejudiced nostrils there was an odor of sulphur in everything
that savored of Washington society. And yet, while they grumbled--these
older people of Montgomery--they wrought, heart and soul for the cause;
yielded their warerooms for government use, contributed freely in money
and stores, let their wives and daughters work on the soldiers'
clothing like seamstresses, and put their first-born into the ranks,
musket on shoulder.

Early on the morning of the 18th of April, a salute of seven guns rang
out from the street before the public building. The telegraph had
brought the most welcome news that, on the evening before, Virginia had
passed the ordinance of secession.

Wild was the rejoicing at the southern Capital that day!

The Old Dominion had long and sedately debated the question; had
carefully considered the principles involved and canvassed the pros and
cons, heedless alike of jeers from without and hot-headed counsels
within her borders.

She had trembled long in the balance so tenderly adjusted, that the
straining eyes of the South could form no notion how it would lean; but
now she turned deliberately and poured the vast wealth of her
influence, of her mineral stores and her stalwart and chivalric sons
into the lap of the Confederacy.

The victory of the week before paled before this; and men looked at
each other with a hope in their eyes that spoke more than the braying
of a thousand bands.

And the triumph was a double one; for great as was the accession to the
South in boundary, in men and means, greater far was the blow to the
Union, when its eldest and most honored daughter divorced herself from
the parent hearth and told the world, that looked on with deep
suspense, that the cause of her sisters must in future be her own!

CHAPTER V.

A SOUTHERN RIVER BOAT RACE.

"Hurry, my boy! Pack up your traps and get ready for the boat," cried
Styles Staple, bursting into my room in his usual su