for novelty as boys only can hunger—­the useless and trivial suggestions of friends, the minor arrangements for the move, the decision on domestic questions present and to come, the questions, answers, futile conjectures, all formed a murk through which she labored, striving to please her husband and her children, to uphold authority, quell mutiny, soothe murmurs, and sympathize with enthusiasm; with a tact which shamed diplomacy, and a patience worthy of an evangelist.

After the indulgent American custom, she earnestly desired to please all of her children.  In her own thoughts she existed only for them, to minister to their happiness; even her husband was, unconsciously to her, quite of secondary importance, his strongest present claim to consideration lying in his paternity.  Had it been possible, she would have raised her tent, and planted her fig tree in the spot preferred by each one of her children, but as that was out of the question, in the mother’s mind of course her sons came first.  And this preference must be indulged the more particularly that Warner—­the elder of her two boys, her idol and her grief—­was slowly, well-nigh imperceptibly, but none the less surely, drifting away from her.  A boyish imprudence, a cold, over-exertion, the old story which is so familiar, so hopeless, so endless in its repetition and its pathos.  When interests were diverse, the healthy, blooming daughters could hope to make little headway against the invalid son. They had all the sunny hours of many long years before them; he perhaps only the hurrying moments of one.

For Warner a change was imperative—­so imperative that even the rebellious girls were fain to admit its necessity.  His condition required a gentler, kindlier atmosphere than that of New York.  The poor diseased lungs craved the elixir of pure air; panted for the invigoration of breezes freshly oxygenized by field and forest, and labored exhaustedly in the languid devitalized breath of a city.  The medical fraternity copiously consulted, recognized their impotence, but refrained from stating it; and availed themselves of their power of reference to the loftier physician—­the boy must be healed, if he was to be healed, by nature.  The country, pure air, pure milk, tender care; these were his only hope.

General Smith was a man trained by military discipline to be instant in decision and prompt in action.  As soon as the doctors informed him that his son’s case required—­not wanderings—­but a steady residence in a climate bracing, as well as mild, where the comforts of home could supplement the healing of nature, he set himself at once to discover a place which would fill all the requirements.  To the old soldier, New England born and Michigan bred, Virginia appeared a land of sun and flowers, a country well-nigh tropical in the softness of its climate, and the fervor of its heat.  The doctors recommended Florida, or South Carolina, as in duty bound, and to the suggestion of Virginia yielded only a dubious consent; it was very far north, they said, but still it might do.  To the general, it seemed very far south, and he was certain it would do.