house over the
head of a dying man. The answer was, "Madam, we give you five minutes to
decide whether you are for the South or the North. If at the end of that
time you declare yourself for the South, your house shall remain; if for
the North, it must come down."

Her answer was memorable.

"Sir, I will say to you and your crowd, and to the _world_ if you choose
to summon it--I am, always have been, and ever shall be, for the
_Union_. Tear my house down if you choose!"

Awed perhaps by her firmness, and unshrinking devotion, the spokesman of
the mob looked at her steadily for a moment, then turning to the crowd
muttered something, and they followed him away, leaving her unmolested.
This man was a renegade Boston Yankee.

Such was her love for the national flag that during all this period of
persecution, previous to General Butler's taking possession of the city
she never slept without the banner of the free above her head, although
her house was searched no less than seven times by a mob of chivalrous
gentlemen, varying in number from two or three score to three hundred,
led by a judge who deemed it not beneath his dignity to preside over a
court of justice by day, and to search the premises of a defenseless
woman by night, in the hope of finding the Union flag, in order to have
an excuse for ejecting her from the city, because she was well known to
entertain sentiments inimical to the interests of secession.

Before the South ran mad with treason, Mrs. Taylor and the wife of this
judge were intimate friends, and their intimacy had not entirely ceased
so late as the early months of 1862. It was late in February of that
year that Mrs. Taylor was visiting at the judge's house, and during her
visit the judge's son, a young man of twenty, taunted her with various
epithets, such as a "Lincoln Emissary," "a traitor to her country," "a
friend of Lincoln's hirelings," etc. She listened quietly, and then as
quietly remarked that "he evidently belonged to that very numerous class
of young men in the South who evinced their courage by applying abusive
epithets to women and defenseless persons, but showed a due regard to
their own safety, by running away--as at Donelson--whenever they were
likely to come into contact with "Lincoln's hirelings.""

The same evening, at a late hour, while Mrs. Taylor was standing by the
bed-side of her invalid husband, preparing some medicine for him, she
heard the report of a rifle and felt th