Major Emory,[41] when he was ordered West, placed his resignation in the hands of his Maryland brothers. After the Baltimore row the brothers sent it in, but Maryland declined to secede. Mrs. Emory, who at least is two-thirds of that co-partnership, being old Franklin’s granddaughter, and true to her blood, tried to get it back. The President refused point blank, though she went on her knees. That I do not believe. The Franklin race are stiff-necked and stiff-kneed; not much given to kneeling to God or man from all accounts. If Major Emory comes to us won’t he have a good time? Mrs. Davis adores Mrs. Emory. No wonder I fell in love with her myself. I heard of her before I saw her in this wise. Little Banks told me the story. She was dancing at a ball when some bad accident maker for the Evening News rushed up and informed her that Major Emory had been massacred by ten Indians somewhere out West. She coolly answered him that she had later intelligence; it was not so. Turning a deaf ear then, she went on dancing. Next night the same officious fool met her with this congratulation: “Oh, Mrs. Emory, it was all a hoax! The Major is alive.” She cried: “You are always running about with your bad news,” and turned her back on him; or, I think it was, “You delight in spiteful stories,” or, “You are a harbinger of evil.” Banks is a newspaper man and knows how to arrange an anecdote for effect. _June 12th._—Have been looking at Mrs. O’Dowd as she burnished the “Meejor’s arrms” before Waterloo. And I have been busy, too. My husband has gone to join Beauregard, somewhere beyond Richmond. I feel blue-black with melancholy. But I hope to be in Richmond before long myself. That is some comfort. The war is making us all tenderly sentimental. No casualties yet, no real mourning, nobody hurt. So it is all parade, fife, and fine feathers. Posing we are _en grande tenue_. There is no imagination here to forestall woe, and only the excitement and wild awakening from every-day stagnant life are felt. That is, when one gets away from the two or three sensible men who are still left in the world. When Beauregard’s report of the capture of Fort Sumter was printed, Willie Ancrum said: “How is this? Tom Ancrum and Ham Boykin’s names are not here. We thought from what they told us that they did most of the fighting.” Colonel Magruder[42] has done something splendid on the peninsula. Bethel is the name of the battle. Three hundred of the enemy killed, they say.