An Unofficial Patriot

It had rained in torrents. The stiff day of the muddy roads was ankle deep. Roy's regiment in camp near the Tennessee river was whiling away its time as best it could. It was ge...

When Griffith reached Washington he sent his name directly to the President, and was told to go to the room which Mr. Lincoln called his workshop, and where his maps were. The w...

It was a year later before the Rev. Griffith Davenport found himself in a position to carry out, even in part, a long-cherished plan of his. For some time past, he had been stre...

But all this was away back in the years when you and I were not born, my friend, and, therefore, the only reason I tell you about it or expect you to be interested in such simpl...

The long, lank mountaineer stood leaning on his gun and looking listlessly at the collection of bundles, bags, children, dogs, guns, banjos, and other belongings of the Davenpor...

It was arranged that the command with which Griffith moved should, so far as was possible, avoid collision with the enemy; move silently, swiftly or slowly as occasion demanded,...

But at last the crisis came. One of the girls--Sallie, a faithful creature--had married "Bradley's John," and now John was about to be sold and sent to Georgia. Either John must...

So desirable a candidate was speedily ordained, and Brother Prout himself rode with the boy on his two first rounds of the not far-distant circuit which was soon to be placed in...

In Washington, on the twentieth of July, 1861, expectation ran high. A decisive, and it was hoped a final blow was to be struck on the following day. Large numbers of troops had...

There had been a bright side for Griffith in all this change, too. New and warm friends had been made. He had watched with a feeling of joy the enervating influence of slave own...

"I am coming home next month," wrote Roy, "with my wife--the very dearest, sweetest, most lovable and beautiful girl in the whole world. We have decided not to wait, but to be m...

As time wore on the family had, in some sort, at least, adjusted itself to the new order of things. The dialect of the strapping Irish-woman who presided over the kitchen of the...

Griffith Davenport was a clergyman. I tell you this at the outset, so that you may be prepared to take sides with or against him, as is your trend and temperament. Perhaps, too,...

War! war! war! The great election was over. The bitterness of faction and of section had only intensified. The inevitable had at last come. Mobs, riots, and confusion followed t...

Since Beverly was a Virginian, and since it was well known that at least one of the new owners of the paper was from Massachusetts, it was deemed wise to have Beverly sign all o...

"Dear little Mother," wrote Beverly. "When I telegraphed you last night that Roy was wounded and that I was safe and unhurt, I feared, that to-day this letter would take you mos...

When Griffith reported at the White House, the President expressed himself as entirely satisfied. "You have done all I asked;" he said. "The maps sent, so far, are wonderfully f...

"When the war is over and the boys all get home," Griffith was fond of saying, as he sat and talked with Katherine, "how good it will seem just to live! I've seen all the suffer...

The fall and winter wore on. Spring was near. Griffith wrote to Katherine daily and mailed his letters whenever and wherever it was possible. His personal reports of progress we...

When the news of the battle reached Katherine, she was still alone. Griffith had not completed the task set, and was still in the tent of the irascible General, whose chief acqu...

It has been well said that the heresies of one generation are the orthodox standards of the next; and it is equally true that the great convulsive waves of emotion, belief, patr...

That a Davenport should seriously contemplate leaving the "Mother Church." as the devotees of the Anglican establishment were given to calling their branch of the real Roman mot...

"Dear Mother," wrote Howard, "I forgot to write last week, but then there wasn't the first thing to tell, so it don't matter. We're just loafing here in camp waiting for the nex...

One evening Griffith sat by the library table reading, and Katherine was moving about the room restlessly. For several days no news had come from the front--no home news, no let...