Daisy

They recurred to me, however, and were as puzzling as ever. I had no key at the time.

The next afternoon was given to a very lively show: the light artillery drill before the Board of Visitors. We sat out under the trees to behold it; and I found out now the meaning of the broad strip of plain between the hotel and the library, which was brown and dusty in the midst of the universal green. Over this strip, round and round, back, and forth, and across, the light artillery wagons rushed, as if to show what they could do in time of need. It was a beautiful sight, exciting and stirring; with the beat of horses' hoofs, the clatter of harness, the rumble of wheels tearing along over the ground, the flash of a sabre now and then, the ringing words of command, and the soft, shrill echoing bugle which repeated them. I only wanted to understand it all; and in the evening I plied Preston with questions. He explained things to me patiently.

"I understand," I said, at last, "I understand what it would do in war time. But we are not at war, Preston."

"No."

"Nor in the least likely to be."

"We can't tell. It is good to be ready."

"But what do you mean?" I remember saying. "You speak as if we might be at war. Who is there for us to fight?"

"Anybody that wants putting in order," said Preston. "The Indians."

"O Preston, Preston!" I exclaimed. "The Indians! when we have been doing them wrong ever since the white men came here; and you want to do them more wrong!"

"I want to hinder them from doing us wrong. But I don't care about the Indians, little Daisy. I would just as lief fight the Yankees."

"Preston, I think you are very wrong."

"You think all the world is," he said.

We were silent, and I felt very dissatisfied. What was all this military schooling a preparation for, perhaps? How could we know. Maybe these heads and hands, so gay to-day in their mock fight, would be grimly and sadly at work by and by, in real encounter with some real enemy.

"Do you see that man, Daisy?" whispered Preston, suddenly in my ear. "That one talking to a lady in blue."

We were on the parade ground, among a crowd of spectators, for the hotels were very full, and the Point very gay now. I said I saw him.

"That is a great man."

"Is he?" I said, looking and wondering if a great man could hide behind such a physiognomy.

"Other people think so, I can tell you," said Preston. "Nobody knows what that man can do. That is Davis of Mississippi."

The name meant nothing to me then. I looked at him as I would have looked at another man. And I did not like what I saw. Something of sinister, nothing noble, about the countenance; power there might be – Preston said there was – but the power of the fox and the vulture it seemed to me; sly, crafty, selfish, cruel.

"If nobody knows what he can do, how is it so certain that he is a great man?" I asked. Preston did not answer. "I hope there are not many great men that look like him." I went on.

"Nonsense, Daisy!" said Preston, in an energetic whisper. "That is Davis of Mississippi."

"Well?" said I. "That is no more to me than if he were Jones of New York."

"Daisy!" said Preston. "If you are not a true Southerner, I will never love you any more."

"What do you mean by a true Southerner? I do not understand."

"Yes, you do. A true Southerner is always a Southerner, and takes the part of a Southerner in every dispute – right or wrong."

"What makes you dislike Northerners so much?"

"Cowardly Yankees!" was Preston's reply.

"You must have an uncomfortable time among them, if you feel so," I said.

"There are plenty of the true sort here. I wish you were in Paris, Daisy; or somewhere else."

"Why?" I said, laughing.

"Safe with my mother, or your mother. You want teaching. You are too latitudinarian. And you are too thick with the Yankees, by half."

I let this opinion alone, as I could do nothing with it; and our conversation broke off with Preston in a very bad humour.

The next day, when we were deep in the woods, I asked Dr. Sandford if he knew Mr. Davis of Mississippi. He answered Yes, rather drily. I knew the doctor knew everybody.

I asked why Preston called him a great man.

"Does he call him a great man?" Dr. Sandford asked.

"Do you?"

"No, not I, Daisy. But that may not hinder the fact. And I may not have Mr. Gary's means of judging."

"What means can he have?" I said.

"Daisy," said Dr. Sandford suddenly, when I had forgotten the question in plunging through a thicket of brushwood, "if the North and the South should split on the subject of slavery, what side would you take?"

"What do you mean by a 'split'?" I asked slowly, in my wonderment.

"The States are not precisely like a perfect crystal, Daisy, and there is an incipient cleavage somewhere about Mason and Dixon's line."

"I do not know what line that is."

"No. Well, for practical purposes, you may take it as the line between the slave States and the free."

"But how could there be a split?" I asked.

"There is a wedge applied even now, Daisy – the question whether the new States forming out of our Western territories, shall have slavery in them or shall be free States."

I was silent upon this; and we walked and climbed for a little distance, without my remembering our geological or mineralogical, or any other objects in view.

"The North say," Dr. Sandford then went on, "that these States shall be free. The South – or some men at the South – threaten that if they be, the South will split from the North, have nothing to do with us, and set up for themselves."

"Who is to decide it?" I asked.

"The people. This fall the election will be held for the next President; and that will show. If a slavery man be chosen, we shall know that a majority of the nation go with the Southern view."

"If not?" —