Read How Few Remain for Free Online Page B

can be no doubt that any of the previous governments—if by that the reader will forgive our stretching a point—would do no more than passively acquiesce to the sale, in much the same manner as the bull acquiesces to the knife that makes him into a steer. Richmond, London, Paris, and Ottawa form a formidable stall in which the United States are held.
    But will James G. Blaine, having been elected on a platform that consisted largely of snorting and pawing the ground, now have to show the world it was nothing but humbug and hokum? Even if it was humbug and hokum, will he dare admit it, knowing that if he should confess to weakness, even weakness genuinelyand manifestly in existence, he will become a laughingstock and an object of contempt not only in foreign capitals but in the eyes of the exasperated millions who sent him to the White House to make America strong and proud again and will with equal avidity send him home with a tin can tied to his tail if he bollixes the job?
    Our view of the matter is that caution is likelier to be necessary than to be, while our hope is that, for once, our well-known editorial omniscience is found wanting.
    Sighing, Clemens set down the pen and shook his wrist to get the cramp out of it. “I want to buy me one of those type-writing machines they’re starting to sell,” he said.
    “Good idea,” Clay Herndon said. “They can’t weigh much more than a hundred pounds. Just the thing to take along to listen to the mayor, or to cover a fire: that’d be even better.”
    “They’re the coming thing, so you can laugh all you like,” Clemens told him. “Besides, if I had one, the compositors would be able to read the copy I give ’em.”
    “Now you’re talking—that’s a whole different business.” Herndon got up from his desk and ambled over to Sam. “I never have any trouble—well, never much—reading your writing. You were really scratching away there. What did you come up with?”
    Wordlessly, Clemens passed him the sheets. Herndon had a lot of political savvy, or maybe just a keen eye for where the bodies were buried—assuming those two didn’t amount to the same thing. If he was thinking along the same lines as Clemens …
    He didn’t say anything till he was through. Then, with a slow nod, he handed the editorial back. “That’s strong stuff,” he said, “but you’re spot on. When I first saw the wire, I thought about the ports on the Pacific, but I didn’t worry about the railroad the Rebs’ll need to do anything with the ports they get.”
    “What about Blaine?” Sam asked.
    “I’m with you there, too,” Herndon answered. “If he lies down for this, nobody will take him seriously afterwards. But I’m damned if I know how much he can do to stop it. What do you think’s going to happen, Sam?”
    “Me?” Clemens said. “I think there’s going to be a war.”
        General Thomas Jackson left his War Department office in Mechanic’s Hall, mounted his horse, and rode east past Capitol Square toward the president’s residence on Shockoe Hill—somefrom his generation still thought of it as the Confederate White House, though younger men tried to forget the CSA had ever been connected to the USA. Richmond brawled around him. Coaches clattered over cobblestones, Negro footmen in fancy livery standing stiff as statues at their rear. Teamsters driving wagons filled with grain or iron or tobacco or cotton cursed the men who drove the coaches for refusing to yield the right of way. On the sidewalk, lawyers and sawyers and ladies with slaves holding parasols to shield their delicate complexions from the springtime sun danced an elaborate minuet of precedence.
    A middle-aged fellow who walked with a limp tipped his homburg in Jackson’s direction and called out, “Stonewall!”
    Jackson gravely returned the salutation. It rang out again, shortly thereafter. Again, he touched a hand to the brim of his own hat. Somber pride filled him. Not only his peers