SCENE THE SEVENTH. "THE CITY OF THE GREAT KING."* "For now I stand as one upon a rock, Environed by a wilderness of sea, Who marks the waxing tide grow, wave by wave, Will, in his brinish bowels, swallow him." On the plea of business at the Exchange hotel, the fugitive left his companion at a crossing, and found himself-alone! Think of it! a Unionist of 1861, outlawed, hunted, wearied, despairing, in the streets of the Confederate capital—alone! Say! can you imagine a situation of more total abandonment? Is there, on God's green footstool, a spot more dangerous to human tread, than the streets of Montgomery thent were to the presence of R. S. Tharin? The crater of Vesuvius is not inaccessible to human visitation, when the soft breezes whisper through its caverns, and the vine-bearing hills lift their summits in the purple sunset; but, when the lava-waves of Nature's fiercest convulsion wrap * Cotton. Not so to be always, however. city and forest in lurid glare, while the rocking earth hurls fragmentary temples from their bases -then? Why, then! to tread upon the brink of that earthly hell, is quite a different thing! It is the holy Sabbath eve (February 24th, 1861), and Montgomery's Christian temples are pouring out their retiring congregations under the peaceful stars. Reverend gentlemen, with snowy cravats and mincing gait, walk in the midst of gayly dressed damsels, who court their clerical smiles; elders and vestrymen, Sunday-school teachers and exhorters, laymen and deacons, presbyters and bishops-how multitudinously their feet patter, or strut, or stamp, or scrape, over that gas-lit pave! To see the happy throng, you would suppose them all to be on a starlit promenade direct to heaven, and that this pave is the "narrow way." But you would be mistaken; for this—although quiescent-is Vesuvius still! Should that mincing Pharisee, the cut of whose orthodox garment proclaims the clerical Brummell, as he saunters by with virgin innocence resting upon his arm, detect the presence, and its cause, of that traveler who, portmanteau in hand, is crossing toward the line of the Christian caravan, his lips, yet warm with pulpit strains of peace, and rhetorical flourishes about the mob of Calvary, would sound the tocsin of persecution; and his delicate hands, yet red with pummeling the gospel according to St. Matthew, or the martyr dom of St. Stephen, would hold the garments of those who would arrange the martyr's noose around a patriot's neck, consenting to-his death! Should that delicate female, whose intellectual brow is crowned with golden ringlets, and whose celestial eyes are upturned with worship to meet the rapt glance of her spiritual guide-should she perceive that a friend of the Union of her forefathers had just passed by, with mingled rage and hate she would shriek aloud, and the cry-false as hell!" Abolitionist! hang him!" would be the chivalrous response. "At that cry accurst," the heavenward throng would pause, attent, upon the "narrow way," and, catching up the celestial sound, would spring upon the fugitive's path like bloodhounds after their prey. Should their chase be crowned with success, they would add another element of thanksgiving to their next Sunday's praises, and lift their blood-stained hands to heaven, in attestation of their pious devotion to that Cotton who (for them) is supreme "in heaven above, in earth beneath, and in the waters that are under the earth." Alone, then, and—because loyal and law-abiding --outlawed and hunted-an American citizen, in his own country, stood upon the crater of a muttering volcano. Humble though he was-unblessed with wealth-is there not something anomalous in the situation? Can you not almost see the forms of the great tutelaries of America, who lived, bled, and died in and for the Union, bend ing from on high to keep watch over his destinies ? And he, the father of that exile, was not excluded from that august band, as he watched over the steps of his persecuted son, while the enemies of American equality were lurking in wait for his life. Time was precious. I felt the precarious nature of my footing. The only visible sympathizers with my agony were the-stars! whose distant, but encouraging eyes seemed to say, "Look up!" I tried to look up, and beheld the accursed flag of Secession, to me henceforth the detestable emblem of stripes alone, flaunting from the very building I was about to enter; but I was glad to see the twinkling stars beyond and above it, shining serenely in the "azure dome of night," out of the reach of treason or of change. They seemed to invite-to beckon me, saying "Come up hither, where the stars are free!” Have I not obeyed their mute but eloquent invitation? Am I not enjoying a hard-earned semi-tranquillity in the light of that constellation which still sheds its loyal rays upon the national banner? When the stars of heaven fell, the powers that were in heaven were only shaken." Passed is now the convulsion, and the pillars of Liberty rock only on account of a recent vibration. "It was (mirabile dictu!) into the Exchange hotel that I was about to enter. In that hotel, the perjured members of the illegitimate "Southern Congress" were even then concocting their flagitious schemes for the overthrow of that govcrnment the loyal citizen was risking his very life to maintain. The editor of the Charleston Mercury and one of the members of the "Southern Congress" are the sole occupants of "No. 6." A muffled knock is heard at the door, and in response to the invitation "come in," a pallid face and eager eyes burst upon the twain. The member of the Southern Congress rises and extends his hand: "Mr. Tharin, how do you do? Where have you come from? You look badly, but I can never for get that face." "Mr. Miles, I have come far to see you, and would prefer to communicate with you alone." Exit R. Barnwell Rhett, Jr., editor of the Charleston Mercury. As this man has played a conspicuous part in hounding on his class,-the cotton aristocrats,advocating every species of excess in the polished periods of a cultivated pen, it may not be amiss to give a short sketch of his origin, of which he is very proud. In 1712-13 the Tuscaroras, Corees, and other Indian tribes in North Carolina, broke out into sudden hostilities against the white settlers along the Neuce and Roanoke rivers. The "Palatines" of the old North State, then under colonial vassalage to Great Britain, could not sustain themselves without assistance, and a swift messenger was dis |