CHAPTER IV

WARS AND RUMORS OF WAR

We sent our carriage down to Wallingford that evening and had my new
friend, Mr. Orme, out to Cowles' Farms for that night. He was a stranger
in the land, and that was enough. I often think to-day how ready we were
to welcome any who came, and how easily we might have been deceived as
to the nature of such chance guests.

Yet Orme so finely conducted himself that none might criticise him, and
indeed both my father and mother appeared fairly to form a liking for
him. This was the more surprising on the part of both, since they were
fully advised of the nature of his recent speech, or sermon, or what you
choose to call it, at the Methodist church, the sentiments of which
scarce jumped with their own. Both my parents accepted Orme for what he
purported to be, a minister of the gospel; and any singularity of his
conduct which they may have noticed they ascribed to his education in
communities different from our own quiet one. I remember no acrimonious
speech during his visit with us, although the doctrine which he had
pronounced and which now and again, in one form or another, he renewed,
was not in accord with ours. I recall very well the discussions they
had, and remember how formally my mother would begin her little
arguments: "Friend, I am moved to say to thee"; and then she would go
on to tell him gently that all men should be brothers, and that there
should be peace on earth, and that no man should oppress his brother in
any way, and that slavery ought not to exist.

"What! madam," Orme would exclaim, "this manner of thought in a Southern
family!" And so he in turn would go on repeating his old argument of
geography, and saying how England must side with the South, and how the
South must soon break with the North. "This man Lincoln, if elected,"
said he, "will confiscate every slave in the Southern States. He will
cripple and ruin the South, mark my words. He will cost the South
millions that never will be repaid. I cannot see how any Virginian can
fail to stand with all his Southern brothers, front to front against the
North on these vital questions."

"I do not think the South would fight the North over slavery alone. The
South loves the flag, because she helped create it as much or more than
the North. She will not bear treason to the flag." Thus my father.

"It would be no treason," affirmed Orme, "but duty, if that flag became
the flag of oppression. The Anglo-Saxon has