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the campaign music of their rivals.
Friendship allied many in either rank; kinship, not a few; yet loyalty was for a space intense enough to divide them by a party-hedge of the thickest.
One night, when the campaign was still young, a new shout, with a strange rhythm about the words, startled the Bell men. This cry came from two thousand lungs, filling the air with its proud defiance and stirring the Bell Ringers to many a satiric retort.
Not yet heeding, they were soon to heed the solemn voice of their mother State.
These gibes came from those whose credo was all for the ‘Union and the Enforcement of the Laws.’
The cry of that night prefigured the future: ‘Hurrah for the Confederacy.’
A subtone of youth's thoughtlessness might have been in it. For the first time injected into a Louisiana campaign, it was the key to that far mightier voice, yet unlocked, which, springing from heroism, was, in a muster of armies, to ring through the valleys and echo from the hills of an embattled South.
In New Orleans there was in that day a large body of citizens faithful to their section, but of conservative tone and suspicious of overhaste.
These heard this new cry of the young Democrats and thought it imprudent.
Some of them, indeed, reported the incident to the leaders of the party, then to be found in the rooms of the State central committee.
Strong with experience, the elders shook their heads gravely, but—like Tennyson's wise old chamberlain—said nothing.
Occasion was promptly found, however, to see the young children.
‘Don't go too fast, boys,’ said one, hiding behind grave glasses a smiling eye. ‘Now, you must really be more cautious,’ echoed another, beaming on the offenders.
The counsel was fatherly, the rebuke mild.
The Young Men's Breckinridge and Lane club received this warning from their leaders with respect, shrugged their shoulders on leaving the room, and continued to shout, with scarcely bated voices, for a Confederacy then mistily
Atlanta, Ga. 1899.
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