The story of Don Miff

Long, long years before these pages shall meet thine almond eye, my Ah Yung Whack, the hand which penned them for thy delectation will have crumbled into dust. Three hundred yea...

when I didn’t point you just right, but you knew where I wanted the bullet to go. Do you know what’s happened, old gal? Do you know that the little corner behind the bed, where...

read it? Would you not have skipped it, clear and clean (for it’s a hundred to one that you are a woman), had you known that it was my Introduction?

As the last rays of the setting sun were gilding the modest spires of Richmond, early in the month of October, 1860, I was sitting with two young ladies at the front parlor wind...

“Oh, here comes Mary!” And, looking across the way, I saw Mary Rolfe briskly tripping down the steps of her father’s residence. Away scampered Alice and Lucy into the hall; not...

“Oh!” cried Alice, springing up from the piano-stool. “But, Mary, I have not told you that he was the identical man who lifted me up the other day when I fell in the street.”

That evening, as I bade the family good-night, after with some difficulty escaping from Mrs. Carter’s urgent invitation to dine with them again next day, I agreed to call immedi...

The morning following these occurrences, and for several days thereafter, I had occasion to be absent from town. Calling at the Carters’ on the evening of my return, I found tha...

“What do you think?” said I, the next afternoon, as I entered the parlor. The young ladies were all there; Lucy, with whom I had an engagement to walk, with her bonnet on.

I think it will be allowed that, whatever else this story may be, it has been, so far, genteel. It is with regret, therefore, that, in the very opening of this eighth chapter, I...

“Then Don Miff is not his real name!” said Mary, with a rather injured air. “But of course we could not expect, in our every-day world, to meet an actual person with such a name...

The most dangerous gift that a man can possess is superior skill in perilous employments. Sooner or later the most illustrious lion-tamer furnisheth forth funeral unbaked meats...

I was somewhat stunned by my fall, but extricating myself from my entanglements, I rose just in time to see Alice spring from the carriage, followed by Lucy. The latter fell as...

A few days after this, when Mrs. Carter entered the Don’s room, before going down to breakfast, to see how he was getting on, she found him entirely free from fever and his head...

The Don now went on improving steadily, and it was not very long before his jolly doctor, entering the room in his brisk, cheery way, and bringing along with him much of the fre...

This decree of the doctor’s threw the household into a great bustle. I was requested to call on the Don’s landlord, explain his long absence, and have his trunk sent up to Leigh...

“P-p-p-pass me the tobacco.” He filled his pipe very deliberately and walked across the room. “Where do you keep your matches? Ah, here they are. Who,” added he, striking one—“p...

Next morning Charley and I called at the Carters’ to give the Don the invitation to visit Elmington, but found he had gone out for his first walk since his accident, to test, at...

At about the hour at which I was taking leave of the Don my grandfather was sitting alone in his dining-room, reading; his snow-white hair and beard, as they glistened in the la...

“Why, what’s all this, Uncle Dick?” exclaimed Charley, as that venerable servitor entered, with hospitably beaming countenance, bearing a tray. “Roast oysters! why, this cold tu...

Dick gave his company-bow, glancing, as the gentlemen rose from the table, with the imposing look of a generalissimo, at a half-grown boy who acted as his aide-de-camp whenever...

My grandfather, when a young man, spent several years in Europe. He was an enthusiast in every fibre, and one of his enthusiasms was music. Very naturally, therefore, he took le...

Meanwhile, Mr. Whacker has not been idle. He has been giving his wondering and interested guest an account of what I have just narrated to the reader; omitting, naturally, many...

So, after all, my grandfather lost his opportunity of explaining to the Don how he came to build the Hall. No doubt he will do so as soon as the latter returns from his walk. Bu...

It was just one week before Christmas,—that of 1860, the last Christmas of the olden time,—that Elmington—that Virginia—forever and forever—was to see—. But no matter; we did no...

I doubt whether the reader can guess who the “Pass’n” is. I must explain, therefore, that when I mentioned to the girls, in Richmond, that I had found the Don reading the New Te...

I will not suppose that any of my readers are superficial persons; and only superficial persons need be told that Alice Carter was a young woman of unusually strong judgment and...

Next morning, as the two girls were tripping downstairs, Mary said to herself, “Now I shall observe the Don narrowly, and see whether there is anything in what Alice says. Perha...

Christmas Eve had come, and, as usual, the holidays had been officially ushered in by a noble fire of hickory logs. A deep mass of ruddy coals was glowing upon the vast hearth o...

Yes, let it pass. There was music in that laughter, doubtless, but it cost us too dear. I think we Virginians[1] are agreed as to that,—more than agreed,—yet we cannot bring our...

“Git out o’ de way, you niggers! Aint y’ all got no manners? Git out o’ Marse Billy way! I declar’ fo’ Gaud niggers ain’t got no manners dese days. Tain’t like it used to be. Y’...

The note sounded was the lower A, produced, if I may be allowed to enrich my style with a borrowed erudition, by stopping the G string with the first finger. Whimsical as the id...

It was a match to the mine, that umgh-umgh eulogistic, and the explosion was tremendous; for my grandfather’s toddy-bowl, though wide and deep, was now nearly empty. In an insta...

“Christmas gift! young ladies, Christmas gift!” chirped Aunt Phœbe, bustling briskly, in her resplendent bandanna, into the room, and courtesying and bowing, and bowing and cour...

No one had heard her approaching footsteps. The charming little actress stood there, her arms akimbo, her head tossed back, her eyes fixed upon the Don with the blackest look sh...

Three o’clock was, in those days, the dinner-hour of the Virginia gentry; but my grandfather and Charley, being but two in family, and not caring to be bothered with three meals...

With the assembling of our friends in the Hall on that Christmas afternoon our story enters upon a new phase,—one, too, in which Mary Rolfe will figure more prominently than she...

Never, perhaps, was there a merrier Christmas party than that which was now laughing and chattering as they seated themselves before that noble hickory fire which lit up the Hal...

Especially among the ladies who had not heard the Don’s first performance, expectation was on tiptoe. The excellent Herr is bustling about, rubbing his hands, and smiling throug...

“Is not this Thursday?” suddenly asked my grandfather, at breakfast, a week or so after the events just described. “It is? Then this is the day for the Poythress’s return. Ah, n...

Friday came, and the Poythresses, having missed the Leicester Christmas festivities, were to dine with us that day. In the evening there was to be (no wonder my grandfather was...

“I am a little afraid,” continued Mrs. Poythress, turning to me, who chanced to be her nearest neighbor at table, “that your friend over-strained himself in that tremendous leap...

Charley hurried along the upper hall, and arriving at the head of the stairs, blew his nose three times with a certain fierce defiance. This strictly commonplace operation he re...

“As soon, Mrs. Carter, as the gentlemen have had a cigar or so,” said Mr. Whacker, “we shall have the honor of joining the ladies in the parlor and of escorting you to the Hall,...

“Ladies unt shentlemens, I have de pleasure to announce dot Miss Lucy will now favor de company mit a song.” The Herr was seated at the piano, while Lucy stood by his side.

The Poythresses were cordiality itself. No sooner had the Don’s foot crossed their threshold, than Mr. Poythress, taking him by the hand, gave him a warm welcome to Oakhurst. “Y...

I greatly fear that when I stated, somewhere in the course of the foregoing narrative, that I had firmly resolved to exclude love-making from its pages,—I greatly fear that none...

But he was enough. At the period at which we are now arrived, his conduct became more perplexing than ever. The neighborhood was divided into two camps, one maintaining that Mar...

The reader can hardly be more amazed at the last chapter than is the writer,—amazed not so much at its contents as at its existence. I agree, at the close of the forty-fifth cha...

Time was pressing. In another week these long-continued and long-to-be-remembered Christmas festivities would come to an end. Yesterday, Alice had failed to extract any informat...

Charley was right. She was the girl to tackle him, if he was to be tackled at all; but Charley knew that better than the reader, who has had merely a glimpse or so of the irrepr...

The return of our Jason and Medea from the Argo was very different from their departure for that fateful craft, if their going had been operatic, their coming was elegiac. A sal...

She glanced at his face. “Oh, I didn’t mean to be rude. Help me, then; thank you.” And barely moistening her lips (for somehow a choking sensation seized her), she handed him ba...

“It is very clever in the old girl, and all that, you know. Jove! didn’t she hit out on a high line? ‘Incense-breathing mist,’—how does that strike you, Hein? And ‘tempestuous t...

I have said that Mary was romantic; and I don’t know that I could give any clearer proof of the fact than this: as she lay sleepless that night, reviewing the scenes and events...

The friendship of Alice and Mary had renewed its youth. Each had told the other everything. That is, they did what they could; for there was always no end left to tell. Not a wo...

My grandfather was looking serious. Mr. Carter had come down from Richmond, and, next day, the great American Undulator and Boneless Vertebrate was to leave Elmington, taking wi...

I picture thee to my fancy, my Ah Yung Whack, popping thine almond eyes out of all almond shape. No? Then thou hast not read my last chapter. Couldst not? Ah, but thou must. I f...

Every one has heard the story of the Frenchman who, after a tour through America (or was it England?), had but this to say of us: that we were a people with thirty religions and...

It must, in former days, before we Christianized them (at any rate, if we didn’t do that, quite, we did what we could; we cut their throats for their heathenism and lands),—it m...

It was not many minutes after this before Mrs. Rolfe found herself across the street and closeted with Alice. “I am too tired and nervous to talk now,” Mary had said; “wait till...

If there was one feeling which swayed Mrs. Rolfe quite as strongly as her religious fanaticism (to use the word of the lukewarm), it was her absorbing love and admiration of her...

She might have added,—but she did not,—“You do not know me.” And after all, what mother, of them all, knows her daughter, enveloped as she is in a double veil? For between the o...

Alice was a brave little soul; but Mary’s pale face and tear-stained cheeks upset her, and her hands shook a little as she unfolded the letter. She read the first page with eage...

The two friends sat down and talked ever so much more. Alice did not show Charley’s letter to Mary, but before she said good-night she exacted a promise from her to give up her...

I have stated, elsewhere, that the dogma of the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures was held, at this period, throughout the length and breadth of Virginia. It was held, in tr...

“I think I can tell you. Your letter, as you quoted it to me, severed all relations between you. But have you not a kind of dim, unacknowledged hope that he will recant his here...

Four years have passed since our story opened, and the autumn of 1864 is upon us. For more than three years Virginia has been devastated by war. Most of Leicester’s pleasant hom...

Many thanks to your dear wife for the frequent bulletins she has found time to send me in the intervals of nursing you, getting well herself, and worshipping King Charles II. Ha...

“Jack,” said Alice, “every time I read this letter of poor Dory’s, I find it harder to understand how General Sheridan has so high a reputation in the North as a soldier. Can yo...

Charley shifted his manuscript to his left hand, and smoothing down the leaves with his right, and glancing at the paper, raised his eyes to mine. The tip of his forefinger, pla...

It is eight o’clock in the morning, at Harrisonburg, in the leafy month of June. You board the train from Staunton. As it rushes down the Valley there lies spread out before you...

They lay there, beyond Cedar Creek, the Eighth Corps, the Nineteenth Corps and the Sixth; and, further away, the heavy masses of their cavalry; spread out before him, forty or f...

It is not my purpose to describe the battle of Cedar Creek. Even of the rôle played by Gordon’s division, of which the present writer formed, according to Alice, a large part, I...

During the night of this 18th of October, while we were making our toilsome advance upon the enemy, a Virginia soldier, wounded in the battle of Winchester, lay in a small room...

They were pouring down upon us and around us in overwhelming masses. They had turned our left, and were raking Gordon’s flank and rear. It was a question of a few minutes only.

Let us return to that little parlor on Leigh Street, from the windows of which, four years ago, we caught our first glimpse of the man who has played so large a part in our stor...

On the morning following this christening, the papers contained a telegraphic account of our defeat at Cedar Creek. And, late in the afternoon of the same day, Lucy Poythress wa...

“Theodoric was the eldest son of Mr. and Mrs. Poythress. He was born on the 15th day of April, 1832, I on the 2d of the preceding March; so that I was his senior by six weeks. O...

They talked far into the night. What he told her of scenes already described in this book it is needless to repeat. But he gave her some other details which may interest the rea...

On the piazza of a house in Harrisonburg sat two young surgeons. One of them was on duty there; the other had driven in from Taylor’s Springs to procure supplies, and his ambula...

Just then the evening sun, which was slowly sinking in the west, burst from behind a cloud, and poured a stream of light in the room. She looked again. A clean-shaven face of ch...