o furbish up any intellectual entertainment for
readers from the excessively dry bones of my subsequent blockading,
especially off the mouth of the Sabine. Only a French cook could
produce a passable dish out of such woful material; and even he would
require concomitant ingredients, in remembered incidents, wherein, if
there were any, my memory fails me. Day after day, day after day, we
lay inactive--roll, roll; not wholly ineffective, I suppose, for our
presence stopped blockade-running; but even in this respect the Texas
coast had largely lost importance since the capture of Vicksburg and
Port Hudson, the previous summer, had cut off the trans-Mississippi
region from the body of the Confederacy. We used to see the big,
light-draught steamers coming up the river, or crossing the
lagoon-like bay, sometimes crowded with people; and the possibility
was discussed of their carrying troops, and of their coming out to
attack us, as not long before had been successfully done against our
vessels _inside_ Galveston Bay. In a norther, possibly, such a thing
might have been tried, for the sea was then smooth; but in the
ordinary ground-swell I imagine the soldiers would have been
incapacitated by sea-sickness. The chances were all against success,
and no attempt was ever made; but it was something to talk about.

The ensuing twelve or fifteen months to the close of the war were
equally uneventful. Long before they ended I had got back to the South
Atlantic coast. To this I was indebted for the opportunity of being
present when the United States flag was ceremoniously hoisted again
over what then remained of Fort Sumter, by General Robert Anderson,
who, as Major Anderson, had been forced to lower it just four years
before. Henry Ward Beecher delivered the address, of which I remember
little, except that, citing the repeated question of foreigners, why
we should wish to re-establish our authority over a land where the one
desire of the people was to reject it, he replied, "We so wish,
because it is ours." The sentiment was obvious enough, one would
think, to any man who had a country to love and objected to seeing it
dismembered, but to many of our European critics it then seemed
monstrous in an American; at least they said so. The orator on such an
occasion has only to swim with the current. The enthusiasm is already
there; he needs not to elicit it. Here and again a blast of eloquence
from him may start the fire roaring, but the f