That was their way of doing things in the “Old First.” A way they never lost. In a dozen-and-a-half years we should have become used to it, but we never did. Each new manifestation of the esteem in which they held their leader, and of the royally generous spirit that interfused the whole church, as it might the body and soul of one man, remained to the last a fresh and delicious surprise. Ten days out of the six weeks of our vacation were spent in Charlotte. Mr. Terhune’s successor was Rev. Henry C. Alexander, one of a family of notable divines whose praise is in all the Presbyterian churches. He was a bachelor, and the “nest among the oaks” was rented to an acquaintance. I did not enter it then, or ever again. I even looked the other way when we drove or walked past the gate and grove. To let this weakness be seen would have been ungracious, in the face of the hospitalities enlapping us during every hour of our stay. We dined with one family, supped with another, spent the night and breakfasted with a third, and there was ever a houseful of old friends to meet us. My husband wrote to his father: “Swinging around the circle at a rate that would turn steadier heads. And talk of the fat of the land and groaning tables! These tables fairly _shriek_, and the fat flows like a river. Heaven send we may live through it! We _like_ it, all the same!” And enjoyed every hour, albeit senses less agreeably preoccupied might have detected the smell of gunpowder in the air. I am often asked if we were not uneasy for the safety of the Union, while in the thick of sectional wordy strife, and how it was possible to enjoy visits when much of the talk must have jarred upon the sensibilities of loyal lovers of that Union. The truth is that I had been used to political wrangling from my youth up. The fact that South Carolina and six other States had seceded in name from the control of the Federal government; that, in every county and “Cross-Roads” hamlet, from the Gulf of Mexico to Chesapeake Bay, bands of volunteers were drilling daily and nightly, and that cargoes of arms were arriving from the North and in distribution among the enlisted militiamen; that the Southern papers sounded the tocsin of war to the death, and “Death in the last ditch!” and “Down with the Yankees!” with every red-hot issue; that a convention had been solemnly summoned to meet in Richmond to decide upon the action of the Old Dominion at the supreme moment of the nation’s destiny—weighed marvellously little against the settled conviction, well-nigh sublime in its fatuousness, that the right must prevail, and that such furious folly must die ignominiously before the steadfast front maintained by the Union men of the infected section.