Why did
not McDowell drive a flock of sheep against the enemy, and furnish his
division commanders with shepherds' crooks? Oh, the burning, indelible
disgrace of it all! And yet--and the possibility of it makes me feel
that I would destroy myself had it happened--I might have run like the
blackest sheep of them all. I once read up a little on the subject of
panics; and there's a mysterious, awful contagion about them
impossible to comprehend. These men were Americans; they had been
fighting bravely; what the devil got into them that they had to
destroy themselves and everything in an insane rush for life?"
"Oh, Warren, see the sky!" cried his wife, the deep solicitude of her
expression giving place to a look of awe.
They all turned to the west, and saw a sunset that from the excitable
condition of their minds seemed to reflect the scenes recently
enacted, and to portend those in prospect now for years to come. Lines
of light and broken columns of cloud had ranged themselves across the
western arch of the sky, and almost from the horizon to the zenith
they were blood-red. So deep, uniform, and ensanguined was the
crimson, that the sense of beauty was subordinated to the thought of
the national tragedy reflected in the heavens.
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