“Be quiet!” interrupted my companion in a savage undertone, jerking me along by the arm.  “It’s only a rebate on the seats!” And without allowing me a chance to set myself right he dragged me out.

CHAPTER XLII

OLD TALES AND A NEW GAME

Mrs. Eichelberger supplied us merely with a place to sleep.  For meals she referred us to a lady who lived a few doors up the street.  But when in the morning we went, full of hunger and of hope, to the house of this lady, we were coldly informed that breakfast was over, and were recommended to the Bell Cafe, downtown.

My companion and I are not of that robust breed which enjoys a bracing walk before its morning coffee, and the fact that the streets of Columbus charmed us, as we now saw them for the first time by daylight, is proof enough of their quality.  There is but little appetite for beauty in an empty stomach.

The streets were splendidly wide, and bordered with fine old trees, and the houses, each in its own lawn, each with its vines and shrubs, were full of the suggestion of an easy-going home life and an informal hospitality.  Most of them were of frame and in their architecture illustrated the decadence of the eighties and nineties, but here or there was a fine old brick homestead with a noble columned portico, or a formal Georgian house, disposed among beautiful trees and gardens and sheltered from the street by an ancient hedge of box.  So, though Columbus is, as I have indicated, not too easily reached by rail, and though, as I have further indicated, walks before breakfast are not to my taste, I am compelled to say that for both the journey and the walk I felt repaid by the sight of some of the old houses—­the Baldwin house, the W.D.  Humphries house, the J.O.  Banks house, the old McLaren house, the Kinnebrew house, the Thomas Hardy house, the J.M.  Morgan house, with its garden of lilies and roses, its giant magnolia trees and its huge camellia bushes; and most of all, perhaps, for its Georgian beauty, the mellow tone of its old brick, its rich tangle of southern growths, and its associations, the venerable mansion of the late General Stephen D. Lee, C.S.A.—­now the property of the latter’s only son, Mr. Blewett Lee, general counsel of the Illinois Central Railroad, and a resident of Chicago.

It was apropos of our visit to the Lee house that I was told of a dramatic and touching example of the rebirth of amity between North and South.

Stephen D. Lee it was who, as a young artillery officer attached to the staff of General Beauregard, transmitted the actual order to fire on Fort Sumter, the shot which began the war.  Two years later, having been promoted to the rank of lieutenant-general, the same Stephen D. Lee participated in the defense of Vicksburg against the assaults of Porter’s gunboats from the river and of Grant’s armies, which hemmed in the hilled city on landward side, until at last, on the 4th of July, 1863, the place was surrendered, making Grant’s fame secure.