e that had been known in
the city. Within our own little community, if parties ran high, they
were like those outside, quiet; but when alone, the Southern girls
testified an exultation that jarred painfully upon my ears.

"Daisy don't care."

"Yes, I care," I said.

"For shame not to be glad! You see, it is glorious. We have it all our
own way. The impertinence of trying to hold our forts for us!"

"I don't see anything glorious in fighting," I said.

"Not when you are attacked?"

"We were not attacked," I said. "South Carolina fired the first guns."

"Good for her!" said Sally. "Brave little South Carolina! Nobody will
meddle with her and come off without cutting his fingers."

"Nobody did meddle with her," I asserted. "It was _she_ who meddled,
to break the laws and fight against the government."

"What government?" said Sally. "Are we slaves, that we should be ruled
by a government we don't choose? We will have our own. Do you think
South Carolina and Virginia _gentlemen_ are going to live under a
rail-splitter for a President? and take orders from him?"

"What do you mean by a 'rail-splitter'?"

"I mean this Abe Lincoln the northern mudsills have picked up to make
a President of. He used to get his living by splitting rails for a
Western fence, Daisy Randolph."

"But if he is President, he is President," I said.

"For those that like him. _We_ won't have him. Jefferson Davis is my
President. And all I can do to help him I will. I can't fight; I wish
I could. My brother and my cousins and my uncle will, though, that's
one comfort; and what I can do I will."

"Then I think you are a traitor," I said.

I was hated among the Southern girls from that day. Hated with a
bitter, violent hatred, which had indeed little chance to show itself,
but was manifested in the scornful, intense avoidance of me. The
bitterness of it is surprising to me even now. I cared not very much
for it. I was too much engrossed with deeper interests of the time,
both public and private. The very next day came the President's call
for seventy-five thousand men; and the next, the answer of the
governor of Kentucky, that "Kentucky would furnish no troops for the
wicked purpose of subduing her sister Southern States." I saw this in
the paper in the library; the other girls had no access to the general
daily news, or I knew there would have been shoutings of triumph over
Governor Magoffin. Other governors of other States followed his