Rusha Thornton's might have brought
moroseness and all unloveliness, Duncan Lisle, like the philosopher of
hemlock fame, had turned his wife's shrewishness into a coat of armor,
within which he preserved his soul serene, contemplative, and peaceful.
This is saying very much for Duncan Lisle.

During the stormy period to which we have just referred, when the nation
was in her throes of anguish, Mr. Lisle remained loyal to the
Government. Aside from reason, common-sense, and humanity, he had seen
more than enough in his wife's treatment of servants to disgust him with
slavery. Though he took no active part, and, except when occasion
required, preserved his usual reticence upon this subject also, he was
nevertheless heart and soul upon the one side.

It is needless to observe that his wife was upon the other extreme. The
idea of slavery was grateful to her intolerant nature. For herself she
acknowledged no superior. The very God Almighty of Heaven she never took
into _her_ account. Had she been Lucifer among the angels, she too would
have rebelled. Had she been daughter of Servius Tullius, she would have
ridden over the dead body of her father. The golden rule was for others
to practice, not for her; its Divine Author, the God-Man, was beyond her
comprehension; His teachings fit but for underlings and slaves. Though
scorning and hating the slave, she clung to slavery as if it were her
life's blood. She poured forth all the venom of her nature upon the
Northern foe, which was aiming to seize this petted horror from her
grasp. She recalled often the tyrant's wish; like him would have given
worlds had the subjects of Yankeedom but a single neck, that she might
sever the Gorgonian head at one happy stroke.

She went almost wild upon the subject, and was the more violent that she
could not draw her husband into her views. It was not enough that he
should listen with apparent patience to her harangues, she demanded his
verbal assent to her opinions. His silence, his attempts at evasion,
provoked her equally as his firmly expressed disapproval. Nothing could
satisfy her.

The marching of soldiers came even upon the grounds of Kennons. At times
the noise and smoke of battle filled the atmosphere, as had the direful
cholera thirty years before.

Rusha Lisle would have turned Kennons into an hospital for Southern
soldiers. Even when her husband, hiding for his life, was hunted and
dogged by rebel soldiers, her hand fed them wit