All the Days of My Life: An Autobiography

“Well, dear, the boat is, I am sorry to say, a slaver; that is, it carries the negroes collected in the states of Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky down to the New Orleans slave market for sale.”

“Why? There is a market in Memphis.”

“It pays to send them to New Orleans. Mr. Fackler told me it was a slaver, but advised us to take it, rather than to wait for the next boat, which, under the circumstances, might be delayed. We are fleeing for our lives, Milly, do not forget that, and we cannot be too particular, lest we lose them.”

I said only, “Oh!” but Robert understood my dissatisfaction, and went to the deck unhappy.

I was too cross to care. Never in all my life, before or since, have I been so long and so willingly ill-tempered. I asked myself for no reason; I never tried to make an excuse for the mood. I just gave way to the feeling, and rather enjoyed my wickedness. Mary looked at me with strange questions in her gray eyes. Lilly crept into my arms, or clung to my skirts. I petted them when Robert was not present; when he was, it pleased me to speak sharply, or not answer their questions at all. Evidently, then, it was Robert who had offended me. Poor fellow! He tried being cheerful and bringing me little bits of ship gossip. I perfectly scorned to see there was anything in life worth smiling at. Then he tried being a little aloof, and only looked at me with hasty glances, and I was troubled. I could not gaze into his sorrowful eyes, and not see in them “Love’s philtred euphrasy.” But one day pitiful love, nay loving pity, bid the tides of memory cast on my soul a little spray of tears. It happened thus:

I had dressed the children, gone to the deck with them, and been compelled to come back to the cabin immediately. The air quivered with heat; the river, rolling rapidly onward, was like a river of death; there was no whirr of bird’s wings over it, no sound of a bird’s song on its banks, and vegetation there was apparently withered. The blacks on the lower deck were absolutely silent and motionless, except for a woman’s long drawn wail, always quickly stopped by a man’s passionate command. The captain spoke to no one; the officers passed constantly to and fro, always bent on some duty; in fact, even my short observations convinced me, that every man on the ship was watching the lower deck. I said to Mary, “Let us go to our room, dear,” and she answered, “Please, Mamma, and put on my nightgown; these things” – pointing to her dress and shoes and stockings – “they hurt Mary so much.”

I was granting the child her request, when Robert looked into the cabin. “I heard you and the children were on deck,” he said. “I was glad you were taking a little change. Why did you come in?”

“I could not endure the sight of the river.”

“It is a grand river, Milly; you should not speak ill of it.”

“It is like the river of sorrows – ’ Acheron sad and black and deep.’ I hate it with my whole soul,” and I spoke with passionate force, throwing down Mary’s coral necklace to emphasize my words, and scattering its scarlet and gold beads on the floor.

The child uttered a cry, and Robert said, “Hush, Mary! Papa will pick them up for you.”

“The Acheron, Milly?” he queried, as he gathered the scattered beads; “I have heard of it, but I cannot place it. Where is it?”

“In hell,” I answered.

I said no more, for Robert dropped the beads he had gathered into Mary’s pinafore, and then went to the door. As he stood with it open in his hand, he said, “Forgive me, Milly. I have brought you much sorrow, an Acheron of it! Poor child! I meant to make you happier than all our dreams. God help us both!”

As he spoke I lifted my eyes to his face, and an instantaneous penetrating sense of my sin made my soul tremble. For it was a handsome, loving face, though it looked, after all, as one made for suffering; half-pleading and half-defiant – the face of a man I could hurt, but could not move.

“Robert!” I said, and I knew that my voice had its old loving tones.

“Milly!” And he closed the door, opened his arms, and I buried my contrition in his tender words and kisses. It was he, and not me, who made excuses for my behavior; then he told me, that we should be in New Orleans the next day, and would take as long a rest as possible at the St. Charles Hotel.

At that time I wondered, and was ashamed and sorry for the temper I had not been able to control, but I was far from understanding its cause, and perhaps blamed myself a little more than I deserved. For I am sure now, that my mind was infected by the anger, grief, and misery with which I was traveling; that my soul had retired from her surroundings, and so left me to the tyranny of physical emotions. The mind, as well as the body, is subject to malignant diseases, and, in some fretful moment, when I had surrendered myself to disaffection, deposed will, and given all power to feeling, I had caught the mental malady so rife a few yards away from me.

Mental, or spiritual crowding, is just as injurious as physical crowding – perhaps more so; and, as people are made ill, or money-mad in a great city by breathing sickly, cast-off commercial atoms, so I was made angry, moody, sullen or passionate, by the cast-off thoughts of the wrathful, miserable crowd of sufferers almost at my elbow. Had I known then, what I know now, I would have called constantly for the help of Him who was able to say to such spiritual invasions, “Retro me, Sathana,” “Get thee behind me, Satan,” and drawn from the simple exercise of this power, the love that is omnipotent against all evil. And, if this excuse does not seem rational to my readers, let all who have never been cross under the suffering caused by excessive heat or cold, or the strain of things known and unknown, reprove me. The number of such accusers will be few, and their words mildly uncertain.

Two days after this explanation we were resting in the cool shadowy rooms of the St. Charles Hotel, New Orleans. I saw nothing of this city. Fever was present in many quarters, and Robert was anxiously looking for some ship ready to leave the port. He found a fine bark bound for New York, and also a small steamer going to Galveston, early on our third day in New Orleans.

“Which shall it be, Milly?” he asked.

“Have you any doubt, Robert?” I replied.

“A little. It seems I made a great mistake in not going to Boston. Is it too late now?”

“Yes, dear. Fortune does not stand twice on a man’s threshold. New York was our point of turning, and we turned to the West, instead of the North.”

“Mr. Curtis would not renew his offer, I suppose?”

“If he did, you would have to tell him all that has taken place.”

“That would be foolish.”

“It would be honorable.”

“Milly, I have seen all my life, that it is very near as bad to be accused as it is to be guilty. In a few words, a man is accused of some cruel or dishonorable deed – four or five words will do that wrong – but the accused, however innocent, cannot go about with the proofs of his innocence in his pocket, and expect people to take an interest in them. That unspeakable man knew this; he calculated on its influence, even if his plot failed.”

“Do not let us speak of him. His very name is malign on our lips. Robert, we have been traveling thousands of miles towards Texas. Shall we turn back now? Or shall we go on?”

“To go to New York, Milly – ”

“Is to turn back.”

“Then we had better go forward to Texas.”

“It seems the only road open to us.”

So Robert took passage for us on The Lone Star, bound for Galveston, and I had a singular failure of heart and hope. I had longed so to go to Boston, but that prayer had fallen from out my prayers and had come to nothing. Chicago had been our first station on a wrong road; all it promised had turned to failure, and it had taken the hand of God to lift us out of the ruth and ruin we met in places to which we were not sent. Yellow fever and cholera had driven us down that dreary, steaming, terrible river. Would Texas indeed give a future to our mistaken past? Then my eyes fell upon my children playing with such careless sweet content in the cool, dusky room. They had no fear as to where their father and I were going to take them. They believed in our love and wisdom. Would God be less kind to us than we were to them? Impossible! Then why not give Him the same child-like confidence and affection? For, if I did not know where we were going, I did know

“We could not drift,
Beyond God’s love and care.”

That surely was sufficient.

CHAPTER XII

A PLEASANT JOURNEY

“… all that is most beauteous imaged there
In happier beauty; more pellucid streams
In ampler ether, a diviner air,
And fields invested with purpureal gleams.”

We left New Orleans that evening, and, on the second morning thereafter, we were far out on the Gulf of Mexico. The blessed north wind was gently rocking The Lone Star. I could smell the sea, and hear the beating of its great heart, as deep called unto deep. Then, raising myself in my berth, I could see the white horses chasing each other over the blue waters. The port hole being open, I had been drinking oxygen all night, and I was a new woman, fit for anything, and afraid of nothing that could come to me.

I dressed myself and the children as quickly as possible, and we went to the saloon for breakfast. Then I sent for Robert to join us, but he had breakfasted with the captain; so we ate the good meal leisurely, and then went on deck. Oh, what a joy it was! How the children ran and played in the cool, fresh breeze! How happy, and how well Robert looked! And how heavenly it was, just to lie on the mattress the captain had placed for me in a snug corner, and shut my eyes, and let the wind, and the sea, and the sun revivify and remake me. I could hear my soul laugh low within me, and, when I was a little more rested, I knew it would break into song. In the meantime, I slept, and slept, and the wind and the waves sung me some lullaby of my fathers – some ancient song of love and courage, such as I used to hear Tom Huddleston sing in the Huddleston quarter in Whitehaven. It seemed years and years ago; though, when I tried to count them, I could only make out that it might be six or seven, since I heard the gay sailor lad singing to me,

“Round the world and home again,
That is the sailor’s way.”

The Lone Star was a slow ship, and the wind was a little contrary, but we were not troubled by delay. For a short space it was good to be out of the world, and away from all its cares and obligations; we were growing younger and stronger with every hour’s respite. The passengers were few in number, and consisted mainly of a respectable party of German emigrants bound for the beautiful colony of New Braunfels. They kept to themselves, but, in the still moonlit evenings, sung the folk songs of their native land in the most delightful manner.

This pleasant journeying soon came to an end. One morning when I awoke, the ship was as still as “a painted ship upon a painted ocean.” We were lying at anchor off Galveston bar, and, after breakfast, the captain told us if we wished to land at Galveston we had better get all our trunks ready. I was in favor of our landing at Galveston. From the sea the city had a tropical and most attractive appearance. “It is a city in a garden,” I said to Robert, and he was equally pleased with its pretty white houses, and flowery beauty, for the perfume of its gardens was distinctly felt on the ship.

It was nearly noon ere our captain’s signal received any attention, then a small boat arrived, and every man in it was dressed in white linen. They held a very serious conversation with our captain, and I was sure, from his air of annoyance and perplexity, that there was some trouble to be met; and, in a few minutes, we were made aware of its nature.

“Gentlemen,” he said, to a little group of passengers, of which Robert and I were a part, “gentlemen, we are in an almighty fix. There is yellow fever in Galveston – plenty of it, already – and likely to be much more, and that’s a fact. So none of us will be allowed to land there, unless we have homes in the city, and have been made immune by a previous attack.”