with your intimate knowledge of history, that Waite
was the nephew of the woman burned in Charleston;
that Granger was her cousin in the second degree,
and that the woman they burned in Boston was the wife
of John H.
Morgan, and the still loved but divorced
wife of Winthrop L. Willis. Now, Admiral, it
is only fair that you should acknowledge that the first
provocation came from the Southern preachers and that
the Northern ones were justified in retaliating.
In your arguments you never yet have shown the least
disposition to withhold a just verdict or be in anywise
unfair, when authoritative history condemned your position,
and therefore I have no hesitation in asking you to
take the original blame from the Massachusetts ministers,
in this matter, and transfer it to the South Carolina
clergymen where it justly belongs.”
The Admiral was conquered. This sweet spoken
creature who swallowed his fraudulent history as if
it were the bread of life; basked in his furious blasphemy
as if it were generous sunshine; found only calm, even-handed
justice in his rampart partisanship; and flooded him
with invented history so sugarcoated with flattery
and deference that there was no rejecting it, was
“too many” for him. He stammered
some awkward, profane sentences about the-----Willis
and Morgan business having escaped his memory, but
that he “remembered it now,” and then,
under pretence of giving Fan some medicine for an
imaginary cough, drew out of the battle and went away,
a vanquished man. Then cheers and laughter went
up, and Williams, the ship’s benefactor was
a hero. The news went about the vessel, champagne
was ordered, and enthusiastic reception instituted
in the smoking room, and everybody flocked thither
to shake hands with the conqueror. The wheelman
said afterward, that the Admiral stood up behind the
pilot house and “ripped and cursed all to himself”
till he loosened the smokestack guys and becalmed
the mainsail.
The Admiral’s power was broken. After
that, if he began argument, somebody would bring Williams,
and the old man would grow weak and begin to quiet
down at once. And as soon as he was done, Williams
in his dulcet, insinuating way, would invent some
history (referring for proof, to the old man’s
own excellent memory and to copies of “The Old
Guard” known not to be in his possession) that
would turn the tables completely and leave the Admiral
all abroad and helpless. By and by he came to
so dread Williams and his gilded tongue that he would
stop talking when he saw him approach, and finally
ceased to mention politics altogether, and from that
time forward there was entire peace and serenity in
the ship.
