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left them, and they have no money, even if they have the disposition, to hire the freed people.'

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I suggested that farms, under such circumstances, should be for sale at low rates.

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They should be; but your Southern aristocrat is a monomaniac on the subject of owning land. He will part with his acres about as willingly as he will part with his life. If the Valley had not been the best part of Virginia, it would long ago have been spoiled by the ruinous system of agriculture in use here. Instead of tilling thoroughly a small farm, a man fancies he is doing a wise thing by half tilling a large one. Slave labor is always slovenly and unprofitable. But everything is being revolutionized now. Northern men and northern methods are coming into this Valley as sure as water runs downhill. It is the greatest corn, wheat, and grass country in the world. The only objection to it is that in spots the limestone crops out a good deal. There was scarcely anything raised this season except grass; you could see hundreds of acres of that waving breast-high without a fence."

At the end of a long hour's ride we arrived at Charlestown, chiefly interesting to me as the place of John Brown's martyrdom. We alighted from the train on the edge of boundless unfenced fields, into whose melancholy solitudes the desolate streets emptied themselves - rivers to that ocean of weeds. The town resembled to my eye some unprotected female sitting sorrowful on the wayside, in tattered and faded apparel, with unkempt tresses fallen negligently about features which might once have been attractive.

On the steps of a boarding-house I found an acquaintance whose countenance gleamed with pleasure "at sight," as he said, "of a single loyal face in that nest of secession." He had been two or three days in the place, waiting for luggage which had been miscarried.

"They are all Rebels here,—all Rebels!" he exclaimed, as he took his cane and walked with me. "They are a pitiably poverty-stricken set; there is no money in the place, and scarcely anything to eat. We have for breakfast salt-fish,

SCENE OF JOHN BROWN'S TRIAL.

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fried potatoes, and treason. Fried potatoes, treason, and saltfish for dinner. At supper the fare is slightly varied, and we have treason, salt-fish, fried potatoes, and a little more treason. My landlady's daughter is Southern fire incarnate; and she illustrates Southern politeness by abusing Northern people and the government from morning till night, for my especial edification. Sometimes I venture to answer her, when she flies at me, figuratively speaking, like a cat. The women are not the only out-spoken Rebels, although they are the worst. The men don't hesitate to declare their sentiments, in season and out of season." My friend concluded with this figure: "The war-feeling here is like a burning bush with a wet blanket wrapped around it. Looked at from the outside, the fire seems quenched. But just peep under the blanket, and there it is, all alive, and eating, eating in. The wet blanket is the present government policy; and every act of conciliation shown the Rebels is just letting in so much air to feed the fire.”

A short walk up into the centre of the town took us to the scene of John Brown's trial. It was a consolation to see that the jail had been laid in ashes, and that the court-house, where that mockery of justice was performed, was a ruin abandoned to rats and toads. Four massy white brick pillars, still standing, supported a riddled roof, through which God's blue sky and gracious sunshine smiled. The main portion of the building had been literally torn to pieces. In the floorless hall of justice rank weeds were growing. Names of Union soldiers were scrawled along the walls. No torch had been applied to the wood-work, but the work of destruction had been performed by the hands of hilarious soldier-boys ripping up floors and pulling down laths and joists to the tune of "John Brown," the swelling melody of the song, and the accompaniment of crashing partitions, reminding the citizens, who thought to have destroyed the old hero, that his soul was marching on.

It was also a consolation to know that the court-house and jail would probably never be rebuilt, the county-seat having been removed from Charlestown to Shepherdstown-"for

ever," say the resolute loyal citizens of Jefferson County, who refuse to vote it back again.

As we were taking comfort, reflecting how unexpectedly at last justice had been done in that court-house, the townspeople passed on the sidewalk, "daughters and sons of beauty," for they were mostly a fine-looking, spirited class; one of whom, at a question which I put to him, stopped quite willingly and talked with us. I have seldom seen a handsomer young face, a steadier eye, or more decided poise and aplomb; neither have I ever seen the outward garment of courtesy so plumply filled out with the spirit of arrogance. His brief replies, spoken with a pleasant countenance, yet with short, sharp, downward inflections, were like pistol-shots. Very evidently the death of John Brown, and the war that came swooping down in the old man's path to avenge him, and to accomplish the work wherein he failed, were not pleasing subjects to this young southern blood. And no wonder. His coat had an empty sleeve. The arm which should have been there had been lost fighting against his country. His almost savage answers did not move me; but all the while I looked with compassion at his fine young face, and that pendent idle sleeve. He had fought against his country; his country had won; and he was of those who had lost, not arms and legs only, but all they had been madly fighting for, and more, prosperity, prestige, power. His beautiful South was devastated, and her soil drenched with the best blood of her young men. Whether regarded as a crime or a virtue, the folly of making war upon the mighty North was now demonstrated, and the despised Yankees had proved conquerors of the chivalry of the South. "Well may your thoughts be bitter," my heart said, as I thanked him for his information.

To my surprise he appeared mollified, his answers losing their explosive quality and sharp downward inflection. He even seemed inclined to continue the conversation; and as we passed on, we left him on the sidewalk looking after us wistfully, as if the spirit working within him had still some word to say different from any he had yet spoken. What his

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secret thoughts were, standing there with his dangling sleeve,

we came to other barren Here we engaged a bright

it would be interesting to know. Walking on through the town, and open fields on the farther side. young colored girl to guide us to the spot where John Brown's gallows stood. She led us into the wilderness of weeds, waisthigh to her as she tramped on, parting them before her with her hands. The country all around us lay utterly desolate, without enclosures, and without cultivation. We seemed to be striking out into the rolling prairies of the West, except that these fields of ripening and fading weeds had not the summer freshness of the prairie-grass. A few scattering groves skirted them; and here and there a fenceless road drew its winding, dusty line away over the arid hills.

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"This is about where it was," said the girl, after searching some time among the tall weeds. Nobody knows now just where the gallows stood. There was a tree here, but that has been cut down and carried away, stump and roots and all, by folks that wanted something to remember John Brown by. Every soldier took a piece of it, if 't was only a little chip." So widely and deeply had the dying old hero impressed his spirit upon his countrymen; affording the last great illustration of the power of Truth to render even the gallows venerable, and to glorify an ignominious death.

I stood long on the spot the girl pointed out to us, amid the gracefully drooping golden-rods, and looked at the same sky old John Brown looked his last upon, and the same groves, and the distant Blue Ridge, the sight of whose cerulean summits, clad in Sabbath tranquillity and softest heavenly light, must have conveyed a sweet assurance to his soul.

Then I turned and looked at the town, out of which flocked the curious crowds to witness his death. Over the heads of the spectators, over the heads of the soldiery surrounding him, his eye raged until arrested by one strangely prominent object. There it still stands on the outskirts of the town, between it and the fields,—a church, pointing its silent finger to heaven, and recalling to the earnest heart those texts of Scripture from

which John Brown drew his inspiration, and for the truth of which he willingly gave his life.

I had the curiosity to stop at this church on our way back to the town. The hand of ruin had smitten it. Only the brick walls and zinc-covered spire remained uninjured. The belfry had been broken open, the windows demolished. The doors were gone. Within, you saw a hollow thing, symbolical. Two huge naked beams extended from end to end of the empty walls, which were scribbled over with soldiers' names, and with patriotic mottoes interesting for proud Virginians to read. The floors had been torn up and consumed in cooking soldiers' rations; and the foul and trampled interior showed plainly what use it had served. The church, which overlooked John Brown's martyrdom, and under whose roof his executioners assembled afterwards to worship, not the God of the poor and the oppressed, but the God of the slaveholder and the aristocrat, had been converted into a stable.

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