| Frankfort, KY |
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| Editor: B General Fred Arocha Asst. Editor: Ginger Arocha |
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| Robert E. Lee once remarked that without music, there would have been no army. |
| Reporter: Ted Harris |
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| "I don’t know. If I acted on my convictions, I should. I was captain of a company in Illinois, and they’d be glad to get me back again, I’ve no doubt. Only I wouldn’t like to have to fight against Kentuckians any how." "Or to leave Harry!" added his half-brother, knowingly. The name, we may remark, notwithstanding its masculinity, designated a girl of eighteen, cousin to the speakers; nor was it used as an abbreviation. It accordance with a practice not at all uncommon half a century ago, nor yet extinct among the rougher denizens of Kentucky and Tennessee, it had been bestowed in jocular defiance of the trammels of custom, as were not unfrequently those of women upon infants of the opposite sex. Maurice took the remark in good part. "Well, yes," said he; "you don’t object to that, Dan, do you?" "No! I wish you’d jes’ marry the gal, and settle down among us, as you might do for all I kin see to prevent it; for she’s as good a Union woman as any out of jail, let the next come from where she will." "That’s so, Dan Byrne; and she’s not ashamed of it either!" And the person alluded to unexpectedly looked forth from the window on to the wooden piazza, the scene of the preceding dialogue. She was a brilliant brunette, with magnificent black hair and eyes, ripe scarlet lips, and a face whose bold, symmetrical beauty of feature and ruddy health seemed in part to justify her masculine appellation. Not too neatly dressed, with her fell of tangled curls put back behind her ears; her bare, brown, handsome arms crossed on the window-sill, and a half-resentful blush upon her cheeks at what she had overheard, she stood regarding the cousin who had spoken of her with friendly defiance. He laughed, and affectionately tried to twitch her by the ear. "I’m right, Harry, ain’t I?" he said; "you’d stop me and Andy going if you could-wouldn’t you?" "Father would, if he were her," she answered, emphatically. |
| "I have been trying to persuade Dan not to take him," put in Maurice, in whose cheek an answering flush of emotion had welcomed Harry’s appearance. "The lad is altogether too young for it. Think of uncle’s anger and distress if he comes to any mischief." "He kin take care of himself; and if he cant’, I’ll take care of him," said the intended volunteer, doggedly; "and he will go!" "Can’t you stop him? I have tried my best, and the boy really seems bent on it," appealed Maurice to Harry, who, twisting one of her long tangled curls very much as an impatient or meditative man might his mustache, looked from one to the other, in sympathy with Maurice and anger at Dan, blended with apprehension for her younger brother. "Both had better remain at home, I am sure; and I’d give every thing I have in the world to keep them there. At least let us save the boy, who will join this infernal rebellion-don’t scowl, Dan, for it is a rebellion, and nothing else, as sure as you live-without a thought of the consequences." "That for consequences!" cried Dan Byrne, with an emphatic expectoration of tobacco-juice. "You want Andy killed, then?" inquired Harry, with exasperated affection. "I’d rather be killed myself, and you know it." "I don’t! If you cared for him, as you say, you’d never tempt him away from us-for it’s all your doing! Father is against it, and Maurice is against if, and I am against it; yet, because he’s a boy, and knows no better, and has got his head full of nonsense about Southern rights, and Yankees, and invasion, and Heaven knows what-as all the boys around here have-you’ll take him with you!" |
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| On the Kentucky Border-Part 2 |
| The War in the Border States Military Background On the left hand, we see some of our Union troops passing through a Border State town. Not a store is open; no vehicles are encountered by them in their march, there is no hurry and bustle of business; all seems to bear evidence of the rebels having hastily left and taken with them every sign of life. One might fancy that not a soul had remained, until some of the concealed inmates, seeing that our errand is not plunder, or murder, or cruelty, emerge from cellars and other hiding-places, and gather courage to beg, in heart-rending tones of despair, for something, be it ever so little, to appease their gnawing hunger. Our gallant soldiers, though not provided with more than sufficient for themselves, can not witness such suffering, nor listen to that plaintive appeal without responding to it. Each gives all he can spare, and blessings are invoked upon their kind hearts. Oh! It is pitiful to see the little children clutch at the hard crust and devour it as eagerly as if it were the daintiest morsel, and delicate women, hitherto accustomed to every luxury, now bereft of every thing but a few rags scarce enough to cover them. But the soldiers’ power to alleviate their distress in very limited, and the best they can do goes a very little way. They march on with their memory full of what they have just seen, and the cries of misery ringing in their ears.On the right hand are the ruins of one of the houses of a town that has been recently bombarded. Others are also visible which have escaped complete destruction, but still bear mournful evidence of what they have undergone. Scarcely a window is left in any of the dwellings; and the church-spire is pierced with many a hole. It looks almost like the ghost of a town-- mere spectre of what it once was. In the fore-ground we see a mother and her two children mourning over a body they have just found, which she recognizes as that of her husband. She came forth from the place of concealment where he so carefully put her and the little ones, while he thought he would go and try to save a few of the things most necessary to their comfort, and the first object which meets her gaze as she ventures out, after the noise of firing has ceased, is that lifeless form. There he lies among the smouldering ruins, for the first time deaf to the sound of his wife’s loved voice. The children call upon his name in vain; no answer comes from those dead lips and, frightened at the silence, they shrink timidly together, awe-struck, unable to comprehend why their father lies so quiet and motionless. They look to their mother for comfort, and a heart-broken wail of anguish is the only sound which greets their ears. Fragments of shell are lying all around them, and there is scarcely any thing left which they can recognize, and which could tell them that this was once their happy home. |
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