From that moment he would not speak of dying, but only of getting well and living; and each day he made visible stages towards a better strength, and would sit up longer, and would demand that we do some work. I can not say I witnessed these efforts without trembling; he might break himself down to death's door with this sudden load of labor. But no, he would go on; and no harm to come of it, but only good, for within the four weeks to follow Peg's inspired exhortation--for I shall ever think of her as one inspired of heaven to call the General back from death--he could be looked on as a hale man, one sound and in a plight of safety. Also, his old fierceness began again to burn; he would bicker with me viciously--a thing laid aside for months. It comes back to me how, at the tail end of that sickness, his first words of opposition to something I proposed fell on my ears like a concord of sweet sounds. I could thank God in my heart to hear his anger, for now I knew he was surely upon health's own highroad. And so he was. There came another thing of moment to find its cause in the General's illness, and that death it would threaten. The word had gone about the town that the General was in his last throes, or nearly; and at that, the thought giving a mean courage to the man, in the midst of this bad news our port wine Duff Green came upon us with a long editorial comparison of Calhoun with Van Buren, wherein the latter was lashed and the other uplifted to the blue dome. The article was nothing strong or well considered--a mere black thing of froth and poison!--and served no purpose beyond marking Duff Green's friendship in one quarter and his enmity in another. It was Peg, who had taken charge of our newspapers, to call our eyes to the business. Peg's indignation ran high, for she was a tireless adherent of her “good little secretary,” who would be her ally against Mrs. Calhoun. “Listen to this wretch!” cried Peg, as with the paper in her little claw she burst upon the General and me. Thereupon she gave us the English of it, and being strung with anger, flourished it off with much spirit and effect. While the General bent quiet ear, his brow lowered and his own anger began to run with Peg's. “The scoundrel speaks of Van Buren,” said the General, when Peg was done; “but he means me. And so he applauds Calhoun! Then let him follow his applause for his support.” Then, to me directly: “Did you not in the beginning speak of calling Blair to found a paper? Write to him; bid him come at once. This Duff Green has done enough for punishment, and we will go about his destinies in ways not soon to be forgot.” Within the hour, a word was on the road to Blair in Frankfort; a word to become at once the death-warrant of Duff Green's _Telegraph_ and the reason of Blair's _Globe_, which last, as the General once said, grew up in a night like any Jonah's gourd, to cast a long, important shadow in affairs.