radical policy.

The upshot of the matter was that, with many a sigh and some tears, she
gave her consent for her onliest, her dearest, and her bestest, to go on
the long journey. And then, after consenting, she was angry with herself
because she had consented. In short, she was as miserable and as anxious
as mother-love can make a woman, and poor Cephas never could understand
until he became a grown man, and had children of his own, how his mother
could make such a to-do over the opportunity that Providence had thrown
in his way. To tell the truth, he was almost irritated at the obstacles
and objections that the vivid imagination of his mother kept conjuring
up. She said he must be sure not to fall in the ocean, and he must keep
out of the way of the railroad trains. She cried silently all the time
she was packing his modest supply of clothes in a valise, and put some
tea-cakes in one corner, and a little Testament in the other.

It is no wonder that children who do not understand such feelings should
be impatient of them, and Cephas is to be excused if he watched the
whole proceeding with something like contempt for woman's weakness. But
he has bitterly regretted, oh, tens of thousands of times, that, instead
of standing aloof from his mother's feelings, he did not throw his arms
around her, and tell how much he appreciated her love, and how every
tear she shed for him was worth to him a hundred times more than a
diamond. But Cephas was a boy, and, being a boy, he could not rise
superior to his boy's nature.

It was arranged that Cephas was to go to Savannah with Captain Falconer,
and return with Mr. Sanders, who would take advantage of the occasion to
settle up some old business with the firm that had acted as factor for
Meriwether Clopton before the war. The arrangement took place when Mr.
Sanders returned home after his visit to Cephas's mother, and was of
course conditional on her consent, which was not obtained at once.

Mr. Sanders was shrewd enough not to dwell too much on the plight of the
young men on his return. By some method of his own, he seemed to sweep
the whole matter from his mind, and both he and Meriwether Clopton
addressed themselves to such topics as they imagined the Federal Captain
would find interesting; and in this they were seconded by Sarah Clopton,
whom Robert Toombs declared to be one of the finest conversationalists
of her time when she chose to exert her powers. But for the softness
a