the inner anchorage, when a
merchant-vessel lying inside hoisted a Confederate flag at her mizzen
mast-head. We saw it, but of course could do nothing. It was a clear
case of intended insult, for the ship had no claim to the flag, and
could only mean to flaunt us. It flew for perhaps an hour, and then
disappeared. The same day, and not long afterwards, a British
lieutenant from a vessel in the harbor came on board, and told me that
he had had it hauled down, acting in place of his captain, who was
absent. The communication to me, also momentarily in command, was
purely personal; indeed, there was nothing official in the whole
transaction, nor do I know by what means or by what authority he could
insist upon the removal of the flag. However managed, the thing was
done, and with the purpose of stopping a rudeness which, it is true,
reflected more upon the port than upon us, for I think the offending
vessel was British. Very many years afterwards I had occasion to quote
this, when, during the Boer War, on the visit of a British squadron to
one of our seaside resorts, a resident there thought to show American
breeding by hoisting the Four-Color. In the late winter of 1863-64 I
again met this officer and his ship in New Orleans. In conversation
then he told me he did not believe the Union cause could succeed; that
he, with others, looked to see three or four nations formed. In the
same month of 1863 this anticipation would not have surprised me; but
in 1864 it did, although Grant had not yet begun his movement upon
Richmond.

Blockading was desperately tedious work, make the best one could of
it. The largest reservoir of anecdotes was sure to run dry; the
deepest vein of original humor to be worked out. I remember hearing of
two notorious tellers of stories being pitted against each other, for
an evening's amusement, when one was driven as a last resource to
recounting that "Mary had a little lamb." We were in about that case.
Charleston, however, was a blooming garden of social refreshment
compared with the wilderness of the Texas coast, to which I found
myself exiled a year or so later; a veritable Siberia, cold only
excepted. Charleston was not very far from the Chesapeake or Delaware,
in distance or in time. Supply vessels, which came periodically, and
at not very long intervals, arrived with papers not very late, and
with fresh provisions not very long slaughtered; but by the time they
reached Galveston or Sabine Pass,