For we Southerners _only bide our time_!"
And he cut his spirited lead-horse, until it leaped forward suddenly, as
though to vent his excitement, and, setting his small white teeth
sternly, with an eye like a burning coal, looked forward into space, his
whole face contracting.
"The Southern lyre has been but lightly swept so far, Miss Harz," he
continued, a moment later, "and only by the fingers of love; we need
Bellona to give tone to our orchestra."
I could not forbear reciting somewhat derisively the old couplet--
"'Sound the trumpet, beat the drum,
Tremble France, we come, we come!'
"Is that the style Major Favraud?" I asked. "I remember the time when I
thought these two lines the most soul-stirring in the language--they
seem very bombastic now, in my maturity."
He smiled, and said: "The time is not come for our war-poem, and, as for
love, let me give you one strain of Pinckney's to begin with;" and,
without waiting for permission, he recited the beautiful "Pledge," with
which all readers are now familiar, little known then, however, beyond
the limits of the South, and entirely new to me, beginning with--
"I fill this cup to one made up
Of loveliness alone,
A woman of her gentle sex
The seeming paragon"--
continuing to the end with eloquence and spirit.
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