Roundabout Papers - Penn State University

Roundabout Papersweather! I went to a play one night, and protest I hardlyknow what was the entertainment which passed beforemy eyes. In the next stall was an American gentleman,who knew me. “Good heavens, sir,” I thought, “is itdecreed that you and I are to be authorized to murdereach other next week; that my people shall be bombardingyour cities, destroying your navies, making ahideous desolation of your coast; that our peaceful frontiershall be subject to fire, rapine, and murder?” “Theywill never give up the men,” said the Englishman. “Theywill never give up the men,” said the American. Andthe Christmas piece which the actors were playing proceededlike a piece in a dream. To make the grand comicperformance doubly comic, my neighbor presently informedme how one of the best friends I had inAmerica—the most hospitable, kindly, amiable of men,from whom I had twice received the warmest welcomeand the most delightful hospitality—was a prisoner inFort Warren, on charges by which his life perhaps mightbe risked. I think that was the most dismal Christmasfun which these eyes ever looked on.Carry out that notion a little farther, and depict tenthousand, a hundred thousand homes in England saddenedby the thought of the coming calamity, and oppressedby the pervading gloom. My next-door neighborperhaps has parted with her son. Now the ship inwhich he is, with a thousand brave comrades, is ploughingthrough the stormy midnight ocean. Presently (underthe flag we know of) the thin red line in which herboy forms a speck, is winding its way through the vastCanadian snows. Another neighbor’s boy is not gone,but is expecting orders to sail; and some one else, besidesthe circle at home maybe, is in prayer and terror,thinking of the summons which calls the young sailoraway. By firesides modest and splendid, all over thethree kingdoms, that sorrow is keeping watch, and myriadsof hearts beating with that thought, “Will they giveup the men?”I don’t know how, on the first day after the capture ofthe Southern Commissioners was announced, a rumorgot abroad in London that the taking of the men wasan act according to law, of which our nation could take204