Major Anderson in Harper's Weekly

HARPER'S  WEEKLY.

[JANUARY 12, 1861.

18

(Major Anderson Biography, Continued From Previous Page)

"I hope that it will not be long before something will occur to give me a chance of being relieved from my present position.

"Thanking you for your kind remembrance of me,

I  am, yours truly,   

ROBERT ANDERSON."

All the officers of the command at Fort Sumter have seen service. Captain Truman Seymour, one of the most gallant officers in the service, is also renowned as a traveler; his successful ascent of Popocatepetl — the highest mountain in North America—has been frequently mentioned. Lieutenant Talbot crossed the Rocky Mountains with Fremont's first expedition ; Lieutenant Davis was at Buena Vista, and Captain Foster was badly wounded at Molino del Rey.

A SEAT IN THE CITY CARS.

Five o'clock!—getting late!—never mind it a bit, I've a seat in the car, and here I will sit Till my street is announced. I will, I declare!

I have paid the half dime—it is no more than fair.

I've been standing all day in the store and the street; No rest for my limbs or the soles of my feet : I am tired to death—would not budge for a king, For an emperor, duke, or any such thing.

If a woman comes in, why, they shouldn't try For a seat in the cars, when the evening is nigh. "Be home before sunset," I tell Rosalie

(She's a wife for a pattern, she gets home at three).

They say, to be sure, "I can just as well stand!" But they put up a weak little bit of a hand In pursuit of a strap that they find is too high, Settle down on their toes, and give up with a sigh.

Then they seem so unsteady, and waver about When the cars with a jerk let a passenger out. There's one getting in!—I won't look up at all, But stare out of doors: she looks very small.

Standing up in the crowd among those great men, Her back is this way—I'll look once again. 'Tis a very nice back, and above and upon it, With a curl peeping out, is a black velvet bonnet.

"Dear me !"—this is bad, then !—Up goes the hand—Not bigger than Rosie's—she hardly can stand. I don't feel quite so tired; I said I'd sit still In spite of temptations to come : and I will.

Well, I'm glad it ain't Rosie—she's not very strong; A wee little woman, she couldn't stand long. But stop ! let me think; what if this one should be To some other man what Rosie is to me?

And how would I feel if some lazy boor

Should allow her to stand in the draught of the door; I'm not tired a bit ; I am fresh as can be

"Here, Madam, a seat"—" Oh, Fred !"—" Rosalie?"

HARPER'S WEEKLY.

SATURDAY, JANUARY 12, 1861.

MAJOR ANDERSON ABANDONMENT OF FORT MOULTRIE.

SOME journals have so far forgotten themselves as to censure Major Anderson for his removal from the defenseless work called Fort Moultrie to the strong fortification known as Fort Sumter. While chivalrous voices even in the Cotton States are loudly proclaiming that the gallant Kentuckian could not have acted otherwise than he has done, Governor Floyd, of Virginia, has carried his pique so far as to resign his post in the Cabinet in consequence of Major Anderson's proceeding.

We tender to President Buchanan our respectful sympathies on the loss he has sustained in the resignation of Governor Floyd. It is a bereavement which he will feel sensibly if, during the brief remainder of his administration, he should have occasion to sell or to buy new sites for military forts. Judging from the past, Governor Floyd's resignation will not diminish the safety of the property of the Government; though it may militate against the prospective profits of the contractors with the War Department. As we learn from the message which Governor Floyd condescended to transmit to Congress, the late Secretary of War was a man of such exuberant patriotism that be could not contemplate the attitude of an army contractor without emotion, and was ready to issue his own acceptances rather than see the firm which supplied flour to the troops put to any temporary inconvenience. The loss of such a patriot can not but be viewed with anguish ; still, this is a country of remarkable recuperative powers, and the ingratitude of republics is proverbial. Mr. Buchanan must nerve himself to the trial : we once lost the City of Washington, and recovered from it ; may we not hope to survive the retirement of Floyd ?

If Major Anderson, laden with the responsibility of holding the United States forts at Charleston, had remained at Fort Moultrie, which he could not defend, leaving Fort Sumter, which commanded it, to be seized any day by the Revolutionists, he would have proved himself a very poor soldier. By acting as he did he proved himself a good soldier, and, in all human probability, he saved the lives of the seventy odd men under his command.

The journals which accuse him of double-dealing forget that he made no contract with any one save with the United States, and that contract was to hold the United States forts in the harbor of Charleston. That contract he has fulfilled. In forty-five minutes he can destroy Fort Moultrie ; in forty-five weeks the South Carolinians can not take Fort Sumter.

The silly talkers who dare to couple his name

with the word coward are men who dare not meet him face to face and impugn his conduct. He has proved his courage over and over again in Florida, under Taylor in Mexico, and again under Scott in the same country. Southern army officers unanimously concede that the United States has produced no more gallant soldier than Major Robert Anderson. It is to be hoped that he may not have to add to the long list of his gallant exploits a successful defense of Fort Sumter with an insufficient force against an overwhelming body of insurgents. Still, if he be attacked, it will be better to be with him than against him.

THE COTTON MOVEMENT.

IN one of the late cotton circulars, prepared for the information of the trade in this country and abroad, mention was made of a shipment of 57,000 bales to Memphis, Tennessee. So far as our recollection goes the event is unprecedented. Some cotton has, for many years, been shipped north to Memphis, whence it has traveled by rail to the Northern factories. But the amount has always been so small that the historiographers of the cotton trade could afford to disregard it till the end of the year. Last year the total amount so shipped was set down at about 300,000 bales—an unusually large quantity for the year. This year it is probable that the receipts at Memphis will amount to several hundred thousand more — perhaps a million bales.

The reasons are very simple. On the fall in cotton which followed the first outbreak of revolution in the South the planters held back their crops. By doing so they very gravely embarrassed the factors, who failed in consequence. Hence, the receipts at the Southern ports to date are more than 500,000 bales short of those to same date last year. From the tone of the letters from the South the planters do not seem disposed to send on their crop, at the present time, to Mobile, or New Orleans, or Savannah. They must either hold it, and draw upon their resources for supplies for themselves and their negroes, or they must ship to Memphis. They are generally adopting the latter alternative.

Many planters expect to make Memphis their principal receiving port, from the belief that between this and March 4 all the principal sea-ports of the Southern States will be blockaded. In this event, of course, planters would have to elect between shipping to Memphis or keeping their cotton. In the present state of science cotton has not been found to be a nutritious article of diet, and it is therefore presumed that the planters will decide to ship to the North.

Thus the ill wind of which we are all complaining is likely to enrich Memphis, and Tennessee generally, to an extent which is not dreamed of by short-sighted politicians. That sagacious statesman, Andrew Johnson, may have seen it afar ; the merchants of Memphis sec it clearly enough.

THE CHRISTIAN PRISONERS IN
CHINA.

WE learn that Captain Brabazon, Mr. De Norman, Mr. Boultby, and others—nineteen in all, French and English, who were taken prisoners by the Chinese on the approach to Pekin—have perished in consequence of the severity of their sufferings in captivity. They were tied with cords so tightly bound across the wrists, ankles, and fingers that mortification ensued, insect life was engendered, and the wretched prisoners perished in agonizing torments.

We also learn, by telegraph from St. Peters-burg, that the Allies have concluded peace and evacuated Pekin.

We are unacquainted with the vengeance exacted from the Chinese for the maltreatment of their prisoners. It is to be hoped that it was calculated to impress upon the Chinese the value of Christian life. If it was not, Lord Elgin's expedition has been in vain, and the work will have to be done over again. His own reception in England, in this event, will not be enviable.

The brutal massacre of these Englishmen and Frenchmen is consistent with the uniform tenor of Chinese behavior toward foreigners of every race ; and if their barbarous conduct has escaped condign punishment, an opportunity has been lost which might have secured the safety of Christians in China for many years to come.

THE LOUNGER

A HAPPY NEW YEAR!

IT is not yet Twelfth-Night, and until then one may fairly wish a Happy New Year! The wish recurs often, and the oftener the older one gets. In any case, it comes once a year ; and it always comes with the same kindly feeling, the same doubts, the same wistful peering into the future and tender remembrance of the past.

There is one rather melancholy fact made more apparent every time it is heard—not, good Sir, that you and I are a shade more silvery upon the head ; nor yet, dear Madame, that you begin to see your

daughter doing and feeling what you have not laid entirely aside—no, a very different fact from either of those, the decay of the New-Year's call!

Oh yes, there is plenty of calling. Fred, Tom, and Bob, in the full flush of expectation, heroically begin in thin boots and kid gloves, and they push zealously on; but the veteran of seven or eight and twenty knows that he simply can not do it. He may make a few calls, but he can not go through that list which fired his ambition seven or eight years ago.

No; the city has so spread, has so crossed the river and included Brooklyn and Jersey City, that you must either relinquish calling altogether or send your card. And, true enough, when pleasure has become a painful duty, it is time to try it no more. When your joints will not readily give, nor your instep quickly spring in the polka, it is time to perceive and acknowledge that your dancing days have gone by ; and when the city has so stretched itself that you can not hope to stretch with it to the doors of all your friends as easily and cozily as in the days that are no more, it is time for you to stay at home, and allow that New-Year's has one charm the less.

You may stay at home, and think of the good old Dutch days, when Wall Street was the northern boundary of the city, and on Broad Street the gable ends and stoops rebuilt the Old World in the New. You may dream of the time when the Brooklyn passenger blew a horn at the ferry-house to summon the boatman, and the high-capped Dutch girls looked like full moons out of the windows. Then a man had time enough and not too many friends for New-Years' visits. Then he could sit for a solid quarter of an hour and chat and smile and toast and wonder, while the young vrauw looked at him with wide eyes, whether the city would ever really extend beyond the fence, and what queer descendants would people the streets in eighteen hundred sixty-one.

MARIE ZAKRZEWSKA.

SOME time since, more than a year ago, the Lounger spoke of a most pleasant and readable History of the City of New York, compiled by Miss Mary L. Booth, who has since been signally successful in the translation of several French works ; among which About's novel of " Germaine" is an admirable specimen of her skill. The name of this lady is now associated with another little book, edited by Mrs. Dall, whose forcible, temperate, judicious, and unflagging exertions in behalf of " Woman's right to labor," have given her a distinguished place among those who really wish to open practical methods to women to keep them-selves. It is not the technical " Women's Rights" spirit, but the broad claim of a common welfare of the sexes which is the motive of Mrs. Dall's devotion.

But we have to talk now of something with which her name and that of Miss Booth are but incidentally associated as friends of Miss Marie Zakrzewska (pronounced Zak-shef-ska), who is al-ready known to many, and prized as a physician peculiarly qualified, by natural gifts and the most heroic and extensive study, for the treatment of women's diseases. She is still a young woman, but her career has been so profoundly interesting and unusual, that her friends have persuaded her to suffer it to be published ; which has been done in the form of a letter to her friend Miss Booth, edited by Mrs. Dail, and offered by her as a " Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor," which is the title of the little neat book of only 167 pages.

How wise her friends were to persuade her the work itself proves. In no novel of highly-wrought French life has Miss Booth ever translated a chap-ter so curiously fascinating as this autobiography of a young German woman making her way in the world, not only against the ordinary, but the extraordinary, difficulties which beset women who, with talent, character, education, and ambition, would honestly earn an honest living by a career commensurate with their gifts and cultivation. From her earliest years accustomed to the spectacle and care of the sick, with a clouded childhood, in which her love for her mother and her consuming desire to devote herself to a similar profession —for her mother was a highly accomplished midwife—she fought with the wild beasts of prejudice and skepticism at her Ephesus, which happened to be Berlin, and after eliciting the warmest sympathy and co-operation of the most accomplished men of medical science in Berlin—after teaching and practicing in the Royal Hospital in that city, with unqualified success, of which her credentials to those who do not know her, and personal experience to those who do, are the proof—she was at last the victim of a relentless jealousy, and finally came to this country with a younger sister.

Here they lived, two German girls who could not speak the language, and whose scant purse upon arriving was soon exhausted ; protected by Marie's indomitable resolution, her knowledge of the world gained in the toughest way, and by the employments which her quick perception showed would be profitable. When one of these failed, she turned to another ; and, almost without a friend, she was gradually and constantly improving her own and her sister's condition. At length, by constantly looking and asking for herself, she made the acquaintance of Miss Sedgwick, always the friend of the friendless, and Miss Elizabeth Blackwell, whose interesting story was printed in the Weekly several months since. Miss Blackwell introduced Marie to the college at Cleveland, in which she had herself studied. The stranger found other friends there ; and after completing her course, returned to New York, where at last, in company with Miss Blackwell, she had the satisfaction of seeing the Woman's Infirmary, for the treatment by women of diseases peculiar to women, formally opened. She remained in it for two years, and then removed to Boston, where she is now the Resident Physician of the Female College.

The sobriety and sincerity of her story, its total

freedom from offensive egotism, while it is necessarily all about herself, are most striking. Calm, firm, and capable, she has conquered every- obstacle, and secured the heartiest recognition of her ability and skill. In saying so, the Lounger but pays a tribute of personal knowledge. Yet there is an undertone of profound sadness in the auto-biography, of which she herself gives the best possible explanation :

" I remember that in January, 1845 [Marie was then sixteen years old], my mother attended thirty-five women in childbed—the list of names is still in my possession—and visited from sixteen to twenty-five daily, with my assistance. I do not think that during the month we were in bed for one whole night. Two-thirds of these patients were unable to pay a cent. During these years I learned all of life that it was possible for a human being to learn. I saw nobleness in dens, and meanness in palaces ; virtue among prostitutes, and vice among so-called respectable women. I learned to judge human nature correctly: to sea goodness where the world found nothing but faults, and also to see faults where the world could sea nothing but virtue. The experience thus gained cost me the bloom of youth ; yet I would not ex change it for a life of everlasting juvenescence."

Don't you suppose that what such a woman tells of her life must be of commanding and significant interest ? You feel the electric force of her nature through her story. What listless ladies dream of and wish they dared to do, Marie Zakrzewska has done. There are heroines without halos ; and one such life is worth a torrent of talk about woman's sphere.

BROTHER JONATHAN AND TOM BROWN.

SCHOOL-BOYS are freemasons. The moment they meet they understand each other. Mr. Tom Hughes knew this when he wrote " School Days at Rugby"—a book which belongs to school-boys in America as in England, and which is always sure of a post of honor upon his shelf and in his heart. Stanley's Life of Dr. Arnold sent many pilgrims from this side of the sea to the home of the beloved and famous schoolmaster ; but Hughes's story has probably sent a larger and more enthusiastic throng. The Life of the Master was a book for men ; but that of the pupil for boys. And if there is any pleasure truer and more satisfactory than that which springs from the interest and sympathy and love of boys, it has not yet been mentioned.

It seems that not long ago there was an event at Rugby School in which we all have a peculiar interest. Upon the 22d of November of the year just ended, after the " calling over" of Rugby School in the afternoon, Dr. Temple, the Head-master, entered the room with a company of ladies and gentlemen, and followed by a man bearing a superb banner. The Doctor, in a few words, after alluding to the peculiar good-will now existing between England and America, as shown and sealed by the late visit of the Prince, introduced to the school Mr. James Geddes Day, a young gentleman of Norwich, in Connecticut, who, so far as appears, is the first representative of the American school-boy (he is, we believe, a graduate of Yale) who has, in that capacity, visited Rugby School.

Following the Doctor Mr. Day made a little speech upon presenting the banner—a speech remarkable in the annals of American oratory for its brevity and point ; saying just what is to be said, and nothing more or less. The report of the speech in the Rugby Advertiser of November 24, is as fol. lows:

"' Gentlemen of Rugby, with your permission, in the name of Master Willie Mills, of Norwich, Connecticut, of the United States of America, I present you with this standard, as a token of the interest which he and many others in our country feel in your noble school [Cheers]. I need not tell you how we know of it. "Tom Brown's School Days" is a household book in America as well as in England [Great applause], and since I have seen Rugby I do not wonder that Mr. Hughes loved it and was proud of it, and wrote of it as lovingly and as proudly as he did [Great cheering]. I hope that you will accept this standard in the same spirit in which it is given--as an unpretending offering of good-will from a young American to his cousins in the Mother Country [Cheers]. And now allow me, in his name and in my own, to promise you a warm, hospitable greeting should any of you cross the Atlantic. May this [pointing to the banner] remind you of the welcome that awaits you ; and may it be a pledge that we are ready and willing to sing as heartily as any of you " God save the Queen" [immense cheering], and shout as lustily as any of you " Floreat Rugbaea !"' [Renewed applause].

"Mr. Day having ended, three cheers were called for upon his account, and three for the donor of the banner, Master Willie Mills, all of which were given in the well. known hearty manner of the Rugby scholars. The cheering having subsided, Mr. Day said it was Master Mills's desire that the school-house undertake the custody of the banner."

The standard is described as made of crimson velvet, emblazoned magnificently with the arms of the school ; the letters L. S. upon each side ; the colors of England and America entwined in the corner's, and mounted with a rich gold bullion fringe.

The incident is in every way graceful and interesting. There is an instinctive and indefeasble loyalty in the American heart toward England. The Revolution was but an event of our history. It did not disturb that deep consciousness that, as we have the same language, so we have the same traditions and literature in the past, and the same great hopes in the future.

A HINT TO WATKINS.

WATKINS is anxious to know what the Lounger thinks of his pursuing a regular course of study. He says that he is no longer young, but that ho has taste and means, and would like to turn his at. tention to some department of literature.

Watkins asks the Lounger for the same advice which De Quincey supposed a young man to ask him, and in reply to which he wrote some very sensible letters, which every young man might read with profit. The great point, of course, is to make up your mind what you will try to master, or master as much as possible. No man can read