An hour afterward, I was conversing in the rotunda of the capítol, with the high-bred and smiling old cavalier, Judge Conway, and he was saying to me:-- “The times are dark, colonel, I acknowledge that. But all would be well, if we could eradicate abuses and bring out our strength. A fatality, however, seems pursuing us. The blockade-runners drain the country of the little gold which is left in it; the forestallers run up prices, and debase the currency beyond hope; the able-bodied and healthy men who ought to be in the army, swarm in the streets; and the bitter foes of the President poison the public mind, and infuse into it despair. It is this, colonel, not our weakness, which is going to ruin us, if we are ruined!” III. MY LAST VISIT TO JOHN M. DANIEL. On the night before my return to the army, I paid my last visit to John M. Daniel. Shall I show you a great career, shipwrecked--paint a mighty ship run upon the breakers? The current of our narrative drags us toward passionate and tragic events, but toward few scenes more sombre than that which I witnessed on this night in December, 1864. I found John M. Daniel in his house on Broad Street, as before; perched still in his high chair of black horse-hair, all alone. His face was thinner; his cheeks more sallow, and now haggard and sunken; his eyes sparkling with gloomy fire, as he half reclined beneath the cluster of globe lamps, depending from the ceiling, and filling the whole apartment with their brilliant light--one of his weaknesses. He received me with grim cordiality, offered me a cigar, and said:-- “I am glad to see you, colonel, and to offer you one of the last of my stock of Havanas. Wilmington is going soon--then good-bye to blockade goods.” “You believe Wilmington is going to fall, then?” “As surely as Savannah.” “Savannah! You think that? We are more hopeful at Petersburg.” “Hopeful or not, colonel, I am certain of what I say. Remember my prediction when it is fulfilled. The Yankees are a theatrical people. They take Vicksburg, and win Gettysburg, on their ‘great national anniversary;’ and now they are going to present themselves with a handsome ‘Christmas gift’--that is the city of Savannah.” He spoke with evident difficulty, and his laboring voice, like his haggard cheeks, showed that he had been ill since I last saw him. “Savannah captured, or surrendered!” I said, with knit brows. “What will be the result of that?” “Ruin,” was the curt response. “Not the loss of a mere town?” “No; the place itself is nothing. For Sherman to take it will not benefit him much; but it will prove to the country, and the President, that he is irresistible. Then they will _hack_; and you will see the beginning of the end.” “That is a gloomy view enough.” “Yes--every thing is gloomy now. The devil of high-headed obstinacy and incompetence rules affairs. I do not croak in the _Examiner_ newspaper. But we are going straight to the devil.”