And now the outrageous disturbers had split the nation. Mayor Fernando Wood, having failed to secede from the state, proposed that New York City should secede from the Union. He was not heeded. Indeed a number of prominent citizens held a meeting in Pine Street and passed resolutions pleading with Mr. Jefferson Davis and the Southern governors to return to the fold. RoBards was one of the signers of this appeal. To him and to others the great house of the republic could not be divided. It was a pity to let a herd of ignorant blacks disrupt the sacred compact. Numberless New Yorkers detested the abolitionists as heartily as the Southerners did. But the younger, hotter blood of the North demanded action. They did not care much for the niggers, but they hated the secessionists. Keith terrified Patty by his belligerent tone. He wanted to set out at once and trample Richmond and Atlanta and Charleston into submission. Strangely, very strangely, his martial humor brought on a sudden amatory fever, and awoke a sudden interest in a certain young woman of an old and wealthy family: Frances Ward, a relative of the banker Ward who had moved into Bond Street when it began to rival St. John’s Park as a select region. At first Patty had been glad to have Keith seen about with the girl. Patty had a wholesome and normal amount of snobbery in her nature, and it pleased her to tell of the great people she had known, especially the Ward sisters. They had been called “The Three Graces of Bond Street,” until Julia had terrified everybody by going in for learning to an almost indecent extent. Six years younger than Patty, she had, at the age of seventeen, published a review and a translation of a French book, reviewed German translations, and finally married an outright philanthropist, Dr. Howe. She had become an abolitionist and assistant editor of an anti-slavery paper! Not to mention her activities as a mother, a poetess, the author of a play produced at Wallack’s, and recently of a book on Cuba, which was forbidden circulation in that island. Still, much is forgiven to a banker’s daughter, and Patty encouraged Keith to cultivate the relative of Julia Ward Howe. Frances took the place of the aqueduct in Keith’s affections and Patty called her “the Nymph Crotona” in proud ridicule. Every evening when Keith was not at the Seventh Regiment in its armory over Tompkins market, he was at the home of Miss Ward, or out with her in one of the great sleighs that thrilled Broadway with tintinnabulation. Keith sighed at the thought of love and roared at the thought of war. He engaged in bitter wrangles with the supporters of the South, of whom there seemed to be more than there were enemies. Often he came home with knuckles bloody from the loosened teeth of disputants; but he washed the gore away and went forth to woo.