ity and sweetness,
recalling the lovely atmosphere of far-off homes, and holding us by
unsuspected ties to whatsoever things were pure.

Chapter 9. Negro Spirituals

The war brought to some of us, besides its direct experiences, many a
strange fulfilment of dreams of other days. For instance, the present
writer had been a faithful student of the Scottish ballads, and had
always envied Sir Walter the delight of tracing them out amid their
own heather, and of writing them down piecemeal from the lips of aged
crones. It was a strange enjoyment, therefore, to be suddenly brought
into the midst of a kindred world of unwritten songs, as simple and
indigenous as the Border Minstrelsy, more uniformly plaintive, almost
always more quaint, and often as essentially poetic.

This interest was rather increased by the fact that I had for many years
heard of this class of songs under the name of "Negro Spirituals," and
had even heard some of them sung by friends from South Carolina. I could
now gather on their own soil these strange plants, which I had before
seen as in museums alone. True, the individual songs rarely coincided;
there was a line here, a chorus there,--just enough to fix the class,
but this was unmistakable. It was not strange that they differed,
for the range seemed almost endless, and South Carolina, Georgia, and
Florida seemed to have nothing but the generic character in common,
until all were mingled in the united stock of camp-melodies.

Often in the starlit evening, I have returned from some lonely ride by
the swift river, or on the plover-haunted barrens, and, entering the
camp, have silently approached some glimmering fire, round which the
dusky figures moved in the rhythmical barbaric dance the negroes call a
"shout," chanting, often harshly, but always in the most perfect
time, some monotonous refrain. Writing down in the darkness, as I best
could,--perhaps with my hand in the safe covert of my pocket,--the words
of the song, I have afterwards carried it to my tent, like some captured
bird or insect, and then, after examination, put it by. Or, summoning
one of the men at some period of leisure,--Corporal Robert Sutton, for
instance, whose iron memory held all the details of a song as if it were
a ford or a forest,--I have completed the new specimen by supplying the
absent parts. The music I could only retain by ear, and though the more
common strains were repeated often enough to fix their impressi