“Sing _at_ it!” my father would command in heartsome tones, from his stand at the top of the double line. “You will never learn it if you do not make the first trial.” I arose to my feet the other day with the rest of the congregation of a fashionable church for a hymn which “everybody” was enjoined from the pulpit to “sing.” When the choir burst forth with “Triumphant Zion! Lift thy head!” I dropped my head upon my hands and sobbed. Were the words ever sung to any other tune than “Anvern,” I wonder? In the interval of singing we chatted, laughed, and were happy. How proud all of us girls were, on one stormy night when the gathering was smaller than usual, and good-looking George—coloring to his ears, but resolute—sang the bass solo in the fourth line of “Cambridge”: “Resound their Maker’s praise!” The rest caught the words from his tongue and carried the tune to a conclusion. We sang until ten o’clock; then apples, nuts, and cakes were brought in, and sometimes sweet cider. An hour later we had the house to ourselves, and knelt for evening prayers about the fire before going to bed. It was an easy-going existence, that of the well-to-do Virginia countryman of that date. If there were already elements at work below the surface that were to heave the fair level into smoking ruin, the rank and file of the men who made, and who obeyed the laws, did not suspect it. Grumblers there were, and political debates that ran high and hot, but the Commonwealth that had supplied the United States with statesmen and leaders since the Constitution was framed, had no fear of a dissolution of what was, to the apprehension of those now at the helm, the natural order of things. XII ELECTION DAY AND A DEMOCRATIC BARBECUE THE time of the singing of birds and the departure of winter came suddenly that year. Hyacinths were aglow in my mother’s front yard early in February, and the orchards were aflame with “the fiery blossoms of the peach.” The earth awoke from sleep with a bound, and human creatures thrilled, as at the presage of great events. It was the year of the presidential election and a campaign of extraordinary importance. My father talked to me of what invested it with this importance as we walked together down the street one morning when the smell of open flowers and budding foliage was sweet in our nostrils. A Democratic barbecue was to be held in a field on the outskirts of the village just beyond “Jordan’s Creek.” The stream took its name from the man whose plantation bounded it on the west. The widening and deepening into a pool at the foot of his garden made it memorable in the Baptist Church.