"
I had never seen Thorold laugh as he did then. And he asked
his aunt "where she had seen that extract?"
"It was in one of the papers — it was in an extract; itself,
I'm thinking."
"From a Southern paper," said Thorold.
"Well, I believe it was."
"I have seen extracts too," said Thorold. "They say, Alexander
H. Stephens is counselling the rebels to lay hold on
Washington."
"Well, sit down and tell us what you do know, and how to
understand things!" said Miss Cardigan. "I don't talk to
anybody, much, about politics."
So Thorold did as he was asked. He sat down on the other side
of me, and with my hand in his, talked to us both. We went
over the whole ground of the few months past, of the work then
doing and preparing, of what might reasonably be looked for in
both the South and the North. He said he was not very wise in
the matter; but he was infinitely more informed than we; and
we listened as to the most absorbing of all tales, till the
night was far worn. A sense of the gravity and importance of
the crisis; a consciousness that we were embarked in a contest
of the most stubborn character, the end of which no man might
foretell, pressed itself more and more on my mind as the night
and the talk grew deeper.
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