a difficult enterprise. At the outset it seemed wellnigh
impossible to gain access to Mr. Davis; but we finally did gain it, and
we gained it without official aid. Mr. Lincoln did not assist us. He
gave us a pass through the army-lines, stated on what terms he would
grant amnesty to the Rebels, and said, "Good-bye, good luck to you,"
when we went away; and that is all he did.

It was also a hazardous enterprise,--no holiday adventure, no pastime
for boys. It was sober, serious, dangerous _work_,--and work for _men_,
for cool, earnest, fearless, determined men, who relied on God, who
thought more of their object than of their lives, and who, for truth and
their country, were ready to meet the prison or the scaffold.

If any one doubts this, let him call to mind what we had to accomplish.
We had to penetrate an enemy's lines, to enter a besieged city, to tell
home truths to the desperate, unscrupulous leaders of the foulest
rebellion the world has ever known, and to draw from those leaders,
deep, adroit, and wary as they are, their real plans and purposes. And
all this we had to do without any official safeguard, while entirely in
their power, and while known to be their earnest and active enemies. One
false step, one unguarded word, one untoward event would have consigned
us to Castle Thunder, or the gallows.

Can any one believe that men who undertake such work are mere lovers of
adventure, or seekers of notoriety? If any one does believe it, let him
pardon me, if I say that he knows little of human nature, and nothing of
human history.

I am goaded to these remarks by the strictures of the Copperhead press,
but I make them in no spirit of boasting. God forbid that I should boast
of anything we did! For _we_ did nothing. Unseen influences prompted us,
unseen friends strengthened us, unseen powers were all about our way. We
felt their presence as if they had been living men; and had we been
atheists, our experience would have convinced us that there is a GOD,
and that He means that all men, everywhere, shall be free.

THE VANISHERS.

Sweetest of all childlike dreams
In the simple Indian lore
Still to me the legend seems
Of the Elves who flit before.

Flitting, passing, seen and gone,
Never reached nor found at rest,
Baffling search, but beckoning on
To the Sunset of the Blest.

From the clefts of mountain rocks,
Through the dark of lowland firs,