CHAPTER VII.

    “But if chains are woven shining,
    Firm as gold and fine as hair,
    Twisting round the heart, and twining. 
    Binding all that centres there
    In a knot that, like the olden,
    May be cut, but ne’er unfolden;
    Would not something sharp remain
    In the breaking of the chain?”

Spring came with its “ethereal mildness” and budding beauty, and the ties which bound me to the Monumental City must, although with convulsive effort, be broken.

Miss Chase was but “a treasure lent,” her sweet, loving nature having won the heart of one who made her his life companion; hence it became necessary for me to find another to fill her place.  She came in the person of Miss Kate Fowler, a lovely young girl of seventeen years, who possessed great charms of person, mind and soul, as the sequel will show.

We traveled together throughout Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, meeting with greater success than we could have hoped for while the din of war was raging, always making sufficient for our support.

At Hollidaysburgh, Penn., I learned of the presence of General Anderson, and resolved that I would offer a tangible evidence of my appreciation of the “Hero of Fort Sumter.”  Entwining one of my little books with red, white and blue ribbons, I sent it to him with a little note, asking its acceptance from the authoress, a Baltimore lady, in behalf of her native city, then under a cloud, the Massachusetts troops having been stoned by a mob collected from various points, and for which she bore the undeserved odium.  These I sent in their tri-colored dress, expecting only a silent reception.  But, as I sat at dinner in my hotel, there came a singular and unexpected response in the person of the General himself.  He was introduced by the landlord, and was accompanied by his little daughter, holding in her hand my token, as she smilingly approached me in her fairy-like beauty.  A delightful chat ensued, and an urgent request upon his part that I should visit Cresson Springs, to which he had resorted with his family in order to recuperate his health, shattered by the protracted and gallant defense of one of our national citadels.

With a kind “good bye” he left, and as I passed out of the dining-room door I received an evidence of his great delicacy in a token he would not publicly tender.  The landlord handed me a box from him containing a handsome plain gold ring, ever since cherished as a memento; and, although worn by time, there is still legible the name engraved within this shining circlet, even that of General Anderson.