aid. "He was only doing what I should have done in his place."
We may be sure that such an enemy inflicted no wanton injury upon the
country, and there was something in Morgan's presence that corresponded
with this magnanimity of his character. He was a man of powerful frame,
large beyond the common, of great endurance, and able to outride any
of his men, without sleep or rest. He had a fresh complexion, with fair
hair and beard, and his face was rather mild. When he gave himself up at
last, it was with an apparently cheerful unconcern at the turn of luck
which in other raids had enabled him to break bridges, capture trains,
and destroy millions of value in military stores.
Ohio is herself built upon so grand a scale that even her enemies seem
to have been cast in a noble mold; and the jokes upon her own people
that form the life of most of the stories of Morgan's raid are as large
as he. At one point, forty miles from their line of march, a good lady
saved the family horse from the southern troopers by locking him into
the parlor, where his stamping on the hollow floor kept the neighborhood
awake the whole night through.
One of Morgan's men, who plundered wildly, but not very wickedly,
carried for two days a bird cage with three canaries in it; another, at
the looting of a country store, filled his pockets with bone-buttons;
they were only dangerous when they met reluctance in their frequent
horse trades. They called at the house of a gentleman in Hamilton County
at one o'clock in the morning, and asked for breakfast; when he objected
that there was no fire at that time, they suggested that they could
kindle one for him that it might be hard to put out; then he made one
himself and they got their breakfast.
In Carroll County Morgan himself called for dinner at the house of a
lady whose maiden name was Morgan, and at table they fell into such
kindly chat about their cousinship, that she ended by giving him a clean
shirt, which he needed badly, and gratefully wore away.
[Illustration: Hiding with the pigs 242R]
A farmer in Morgan County took refuge in his pigpen, where one of the
raiders found him trying to hide behind a fat mother of a family, who
was suckling her farrow. The raider grinned: "Hello! How did you get
here? Did you all come in the same litter?" A stuttering hero who had
been bragging of what he would do to the enemy if he got at them, was
surprised by Morgan's men with a demand for his surrender
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