There must be something wrong, some mystery. He tormented
himself with a thousand fancies and fears over what, he confessed, was
probably a mere accident; wisely determined to do so no longer,--but
did, spite of such excellent resolutions and intent.

This took place on the evening of Saturday, the 13th of April, 1861. The
events of the next few days doubtless augmented his anxiety and
unhappiness. Sunday followed,--a day filled not with a Sabbath calm, but
with the stillness felt in nature before some awful convulsion; the
silence preceding earthquake, volcano, or blasting storm; a quiet broken
from Maine to the Pacific slope when the next day shone, and men roused
themselves from the sleep of a night to the duty of a day, from the
sleep of generations, fast merging into death, at the trumpet-call to
arms,--a cry which sounded through every State and every household in
the land, which, more powerful than the old songs of Percy and Douglas,
"brought children from their play, and old men from their
chimney-corners," to emulate humanity in its strength and prime, and
contest with it the opportunity to fight and die in a deathless cause.

A cry which said, "There are wrongs to be redressed already long enough
endured,--wrongs against the flag of the nation, against the integrity
of the Union, against the life of the republic; wrongs against the cause
of order, of law, of good government, against right, and justice, and
liberty, against humanity and the world; not merely in the present, but
in the great future, its countless ages and its generations yet unborn."

To this cry there sounded one universal response, as men dropped their
work at loom, or forge, or wheel, in counting-room, bank, and merchant's
store, in pulpit, office, or platform, and with one accord rushed to
arms, to save these rights so frightfully and arrogantly assailed.

One voice that went to swell this chorus was Surrey's; one hand quick to
grasp rifle and cartridge-box, one soul eager to fling its body into the
breach at this majestic call, was his. He felt to the full all the
divine frenzy and passion of those first days of the war, days
unequalled in the history of nations and of the world. All the elegant
dilettanteism, the delicious idleness, the luxurious ease, fell away,
and were as though they had never been. All the airy dreams of a renewed
chivalrous age, of courage, of heroism, of sublime daring and
self-sacrifice, took substance and shape,