His life was builded of these many interests, of her and himself and his
country and his town. In the fulness of his heart he even brought out
the latest _Argus_ and read parts from his obituary of Douglas, while I
stood stupidly striving to realize what I had long known must be true.

"A great man has fallen," he read, declaiming a little, as in our school
days. "Stephen A. Douglas is dead. The voice that so lately and
eloquently appealed to his countrymen is hushed in--"

How long he read is uncertain. But from moment to moment his tones would
call me back from visions, and I would vaguely hear that one was gone
who had warned his fellows against the pitfalls of political jealousy,
and bade all who loved their country band against those who would seek
to pluck a laurel from the wreath of our glorious confederacy.

But under visions I had made my resolve. Douglas was dead, but others
were living.

Two months before in a gray dawn, the walls of a fort in Charleston
Harbor had crumbled under fire from a score of rebel batteries. Now the
shots echoed in my ears with a new volume.

"Good luck, Solon--and good-by--I'm going 'on to Richmond.'"

"Oh, _that!_" said he, easily, "that will be over before you can get to
the front."

But I went, forthwith, and, triumphant lover though he was, the editor
of the _Little Arcady Argus_ was less than a prophet.