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Test Bank for Psychiatric Nursing 8th

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Chapter 02: Historical Issues


Keltner: Psychiatric Nursing, 8th Edition

MULTIPLE CHOICE

1. A person says, “What mental health issues are a major concern for the general population.”
The nurse’s reply should be based on what confirmed fact concerning mental health issues?
a. Bipolar disorder is a rare diagnosis among the general population.
b. A diagnosis of schizophrenia is rarely confirmed during the teenage years.
c. Major depression is very prevalent among the adult population.
d. Alcohol-related issues are minimal considering the entire adult population.
ANS: C
Four of the top medical disorders causing disability are psychiatric disorders (i.e., major
depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and alcohol abuse). About half of all mental
disorders start by the midteens.

DIF: Cognitive level: Applying TOP: Nursing process: Planning


MSC: Client Needs: Psychosocial Integrity

2. A nurse, preparing a community presentation, should include what information concerning the
most accurate characterization of treatment of the mentally ill prior to the Period of
Enlightenment?
a. Large public asylums provided custodial care.
b. Care for the mentally ill was more compassionate.
c. Care focused on reducing stress and meeting basic human needs.
d. Patients were often displayed for public amusement.
ANS: D
In the 1700s it was common practice for caretakers to display mentally ill patients for the
amusement of the paying public. The creation of large asylums took place during the Period
of Enlightenment. Mental illness was first studied during the Period of Scientific Study.
Dealing with stress and meeting basic needs are concerns of the modern era.

DIF: Cognitive level: Applying TOP: Nursing process: Planning


MSC: Client Needs: Safe, Effective Care Environment

3. A nurse is preparing to present a discussion to a group of nursing students on meeting the


needs of the mentally ill. What concerns should be identified as the focus of society’s
concerns during both the Period of Enlightenment and the Period of Community Mental
Health?
a. Moving patients out of asylums
b. Studying brain structure and function
c. Meeting basic human needs humanely
d. Providing medication to control symptoms
ANS: C
The use of asylums signaled concern for meeting basic needs of the mentally ill, who in
earlier times often wandered the countryside. With deinstitutionalization, many patients who
were poorly equipped to provide for their own needs were returned to the community. The
current system must now concern itself with ensuring that patients have such basic needs as
food, shelter, and clothing. Studying brain structure and function is more a concern of modern
times, as is the provision of medication.

DIF: Cognitive level: Applying TOP: Nursing process: Planning


MSC: Client Needs: Safe, Effective Care Environment

4. Which statement made by a nurse demonstrates an understanding of the issue affecting the
delivery of care to the mentally ill that motivated passage of the Community Mental Health
Centers Act in 1963?
a. “Involuntary hospitalized occurs only if a client demonstrated violent behavior.”
b. “We attempt to address the issues that occur when a client is geographically
isolated from family and community.”
c. “Legally a voluntarily admitted client can demand to be discharged before
receiving adequate treatment.”
d. “Mental ill clients must give informed consent before being used as subjects in
pharmacologic research.”
ANS: B
State hospitals were often located a great distance from the patients’ homes, making family
visits difficult during hospitalization. The Community Mental Health Centers Act in 1963
served as the impetus for deinstitutionalization, allowing patients and families to receive care
close to home. Admission only for behavior that endangers self or others is more consistent
with current admission criteria. Early discharge rarely occurred before the community mental
health movement. Unethical pharmacologic research was not a major issue leading to
community mental health legislation.

DIF: Cognitive level: Evaluating TOP: Nursing process: Evaluation


MSC: Client Needs: Safe, Effective Care Environment

5. Which of Freud’s contribution to psychiatry most affects current psychiatric nursing?


a. The challenge to look at humans objectively
b. Recognition of the importance of human sexuality
c. Theories about the importance of sleep and dreams
d. Discoveries about the effectiveness of free association
ANS: A
Freud’s work created a milieu for thinking about mental disorders in terms of the individual
human mind. This called for therapists to look objectively at the individual, a principle that is
basic to nursing. The correct answer is the most global response. Freud’s theories of
psychosexual development are an aspect of holistic nursing practice, but not the entire focus.
Free association is not a pivotal issue in nursing practice.

DIF: Cognitive level: Understanding TOP: Nursing process: Assessment


MSC: Client Needs: Psychosocial Integrity

6. The greatest impact in the care of the mentally ill over the past 50 years is represented in
which nursing statement to a newly admitted patient?
a. “You will benefit from attending the assigned self-help groups”
b. “Outpatient therapy will be prescribed as a part of your post discharge therapy.”
c. “Let’s talk about the psychotropic drugs you’ve been prescribed.”
d. “This is a written copy of your patients’ rights.”
ANS: C
The advent of psychotropic drugs allowed patients to normalize thinking and feeling. As
psychosis diminished, the individual became accessible for psychotherapeutic interventions.
Hospital stays were shortened. Hospital milieus improved. Though important, none of the
other choices has had such a significant impact.

DIF: Cognitive level: Analyzing TOP: Nursing process: Evaluation


MSC: Client Needs: Physiologic Integrity

7. An adult diagnosed with schizophrenia is being discharged from a state mental hospital after
20 years of institutionalization. What intervention should the nurse include in discharge
planning to best manage the relapse of symptoms?
a. Discuss methods to assist in the transition from hospitalization to community.
b. Encourage the client to use community support services.
c. Evaluate the client’s ability to effectively self-administer antipsychotic
medications as prescribed.
d. Educate the client and family to the likely need for crisis or emergency psychiatric
interventions from time to time.
ANS: D
Patients with serious mental illness are rarely considered cured at the time of hospital
discharge. Decompensation is likely from time to time, even when good community support is
provided. While the remaining options are appropriate, none will affect relapse manage more
than an understanding that relapse care will likely be necessary.

DIF: Cognitive level: Applying TOP: Nursing process: Planning


MSC: Client Needs: Psychosocial Integrity

8. A nurse at a behavioral health clinic sees an unfamiliar psychiatric diagnosis on a patient’s


insurance form. Which resource should the nurse use to discern the criteria used to establish
this diagnosis?
a. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)
b. Nursing Diagnosis Manual
c. A psychiatric nursing textbook
d. A behavioral health reference manual
ANS: A
The DSM gives the criteria used to diagnose each mental disorder. The distracters do not
contain diagnostic criteria for mental illness.

DIF: Cognitive level: Applying TOP: Nursing process: Assessment


MSC: Client Needs: Safe, Effective Care Environment

9. Which nursing intervention is associated with a shift in the psychiatric nursing focus during
the community mental health period of the 1960s?
a. De-emphasizing the high numbers of people seeking treatment
b. Making substance abuse the primary focus of care
c. Focusing services on persons with serious mental illness
d. Assessing the client’s potential for improvement
ANS: D
The community mental health movement brought with it a broadening of areas of concern to
the psychiatric nurse. It became acceptable, even desirable, for psychiatric nurses to focus on
what was called the worried well, as opposed to providing care for acutely ill psychotic
individuals. Neither disillusionment with the numbers seeking treatment nor providing more
services to those with severe mental illness occurred.

DIF: Cognitive level: Analyzing TOP: Nursing process: Evaluation


MSC: Client Needs: Safe, Effective Care Environment

10. An adult with serious mental illness is being admitted to a community behavioral health
inpatient unit. Recognizing current trends in hospitalization, the nurse can reasonable assume
the need to prioritize which intervention?
a. Providing education regarding the need for medication adherence
b. Evaluating whether the client has a clear understanding of the illness
c. Implementing safety precautions to address aggressive behavior
d. Counseling the client concerning risks involved in demanding discharge against
medical advice
ANS: C
Compared with patients of the 1960s and 1970s, today’s patients are likely to display more
aggressive behavior. This understanding is critical to making astute assessments that lead to
planning for the provision of safety for patients and staff. Treatment compliance,
understanding of the illness process, and discharge against medical advice are possible issues
with which the nurse might deal, but these are less relevant when admission assessment is
performed.

DIF: Cognitive level: Applying TOP: Nursing process: Planning


MSC: Client Needs: Safe, Effective Care Environment

11. When a nurse working in a well-child clinic asks a parent’s address, the parent responds, “My
children and I are homeless.” What assumption should the nurse make of this response?
a. It is a common occurrence, because 1 out of 50 children are homeless.
b. It signals a need to investigate the possibility that the parent has severe mental
illness.
c. Confirms that evidence of child abuse or neglect that should be reported to social
service agencies.
d. Suggests that the parent may have substance abuse problem.
ANS: A
The current belief is that the homeless are people (including entire families) who have been
displaced by social policies over which they have no control. One out of 50 children is
homeless. Although homelessness might be associated with serious mental illness, it might
also be the result of having a weak support system and of social policies over which the
individual or family has no control. No assumption should be made about the existence of
child or substance abuse.

DIF: Cognitive level: Analyzing TOP: Nursing process: Assessment


MSC: Client Needs: Psychosocial Integrity

12. Which individual should the nurse assess as having the highest risk for homelessness?
a. An older adult woman with mild dementia who lives alone in an apartment
b. An adult with serious mental illness and no family
c. An adolescent with an eating disorder
d. A married person with alcoholism
ANS: B
The adult has both a serious mental illness and a potentially weak support system. Both are
risk factors for homelessness. The other individuals have psychiatric disorders but have better
established support systems.

DIF: Cognitive level: Applying TOP: Nursing process: Assessment


MSC: Client Needs: Psychosocial Integrity

13. A nurse begins working in a clinic housed in a homeless shelter. The nurse asks the clinic
director, “What topic should I review to improve my effectiveness as I begin my new job?”
Which topic should the clinic director suggest?
a. Care of school-age children
b. Psychiatric assessment
c. Communicable disease prevention strategies
d. Sexually transmitted disease signs and symptoms
ANS: B
It is estimated that significant numbers of the homeless population have a serious mental
illness and/or suffer from substance abuse or dependence. Although the other conditions may
exist, the numbers are not as significant.

DIF: Cognitive level: Applying TOP: Nursing process: Assessment


MSC: Client Needs: Psychosocial Integrity

14. Which skill is most important to a nurse working as a member of a community mental health
team that strives to use a seamless continuum of care?
a. Case management
b. Diagnostic ability
c. Physical assessment skills
d. Patients’ rights advocacy
ANS: A
To effectively use a seamless continuum of care, a nurse must have case management skills
with which he or she can coordinate care using available and appropriate community
resources. Psychosocial assessment and physical assessment are functions that can be fulfilled
by another health care worker. Patients’ rights advocacy is one aspect of case management.

DIF: Cognitive level: Analyzing TOP: Nursing process: Implementation


MSC: Client Needs: Safe, Effective Care Environment

15. The broadened scope of psychiatric nursing practice is attributable primarily to what factor?
a. Increased use of psychotropic drugs
b. Opening of community mental health centers
c. Legislation that changed nurse practice acts across the country
d. Recidivism of seriously mentally ill patients in public mental hospitals
ANS: B
Community mental health centers were designed and organized to provide services in addition
to inpatient hospitalization, thus giving nurses opportunities to practice in a variety of
treatment settings (e.g., emergency rooms, partial hospitalization settings, outpatient care) and
to have new roles, such as consultant, liaison, and case manager. Increased use of
psychotropic drugs is not as important a factor as are community mental health centers.
Legislation changing nurse practice acts broadened the scope of practice for nurse
practitioners only by allowing prescriptive privileges. Recidivism is not a relevant factor.

DIF: Cognitive level: Understanding TOP: Nursing process: Implementation


MSC: Client Needs: Safe, Effective Care Environment

16. A patient diagnosed with an acute was hospitalized for a week and is now being discharged to
a halfway house, where care is managed by a community mental health nurse. Which
inference applies to this community?
a. Additional mental health services should be made available for the severely
mentally ill.
b. A seamless continuum of services is in place to serve persons with severe mental
illness.
c. Case management services should be expanded to care for acute as well as
long-term system consumers.
d. Care is effective for only a few selective psychiatric diagnoses.
ANS: B
Data are sufficient to suggest that a seamless continuum of service is in place, because the
individual is able to move between continuum treatment sources and is given the services of a
case manager to coordinate care. Data provided are insufficient to warrant any of the other
assessments.

DIF: Cognitive level: Analyzing TOP: Nursing process: Evaluation


MSC: Client Needs: Safe, Effective Care Environment

17. Which of these services is most appropriate for an older client requiring minimal mental
health interventions?
a. Day treatment
b. Hospitalization
c. Scheduled visits at a community mental health center
d. Regular attendance at a senior center facility
ANS: C
The continuum of care represents treatment services along a range of intensity.
Hospitalization is the most intensive, progressing to day treatment, and finally to routine visits
at a community mental health center. A senior center is not prepared to provide mental health
interventions.

DIF: Cognitive level: Analyzing TOP: Nursing process: Implementation


MSC: Client Needs: Safe, Effective Care Environment

MULTIPLE RESPONSE
1. Which changes in psychiatric nursing practice are directly attributable to events occurring
during the Decade of the Brain? (Select all that apply.)
a. Homeless shelters became practice sites.
b. Nurses upgraded knowledge of psychopharmacology.
c. Nurses provided psychoeducation to patients and families.
d. Nurses viewed psychiatric symptoms as resulting from brain irregularities.
e. Nurses were more likely to advocate for patients’ rights related to involuntary
commitment.
ANS: B, C, D
Psychobiologic research relating to brain structure and function made it possible for
psychiatric nurses to view symptoms as brain irregularities and made it necessary for them to
become knowledgeable about psychotropic medications to make appropriate assessments
regarding desired outcomes and side and toxic effects of therapy. With hospital stays
shortened, it became necessary for nurses to provide psychoeducation to patients and families
who would need to monitor outcomes, symptoms of relapse, and side and toxic effects of
medication. Homeless shelters became practice sites with the onset of deinstitutionalization.
Advocacy for patients’ rights relating to hospitalization and commitment became an ethical
issue before the Decade of the Brain.

DIF: Cognitive level: Analyzing TOP: Nursing process: Implementation


MSC: Client Needs: Safe, Effective Care Environment

2. A community mental health nurse works in a mental health services system that is undergoing
change to become a seamless system. To promote integrity of the new system, the nurse
should focus on: (Select all that apply.)
a. psychopathology.
b. symptom stabilization.
c. medication management.
d. patient and family psychoeducation.
e. patient reintegration into the community.
f. holistic issues relating to patient care.
ANS: D, E, F
A seamless system of mental health services will require new conceptualizations. Nurses will
need to focus more on recovery and reintegration than on symptom stabilization and more on
holistic issues such as finances and housing than on medication management. Consumers and
family members will also need to be provided with extensive psychoeducation.

DIF: Cognitive level: Applying TOP: Nursing process: Implementation


MSC: Client Needs: Safe, Effective Care Environment

3. A newcomer to a community support meeting asks a nurse, “Why aren’t people with mental
illnesses treated at state institutions anymore?” What would be the nurse’s accurate
responses? (Select all that apply.)
a. “Funding for treatment of mental illness now focuses on community treatment.”
b. “Psychiatric institutions are no longer accepted because of negative stories in the
press.”
c. “There are less restrictive settings available now to care for individuals with
mental illness.”
d. “Our nation has fewer people with mental illness; therefore, fewer hospital beds
are needed.”
e. “Better drugs now make it possible for many persons with mental illness to live in
their communities.”
ANS: A, C, E
Deinstitutionalization and changes in funding shifted care for persons with mental illness to
the community rather than large institutions. Care provided in a community setting, closer to
family and significant others, is preferable. Improvements in medications to treat serious
mental illness made it possible for more patients to live in their home communities.
Prevalence rates for serious mental illness have not decreased. Although the national
perspectives on institutional care did become negative, that was not the reason many
institutions closed.

DIF: Cognitive level: Applying TOP: Nursing process: Implementation


MSC: Client Needs: Safe, Effective Care Environment
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The victory
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where
you are located before using this eBook.

Title: The victory

Author: Molly Elliot Seawell

Illustrator: John Wolcott Adams

Release date: February 11, 2024 [eBook #72927]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1906

Credits: D A Alexander, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed


Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE


VICTORY ***
THE VICTORY
“Took her little hand in his and raised it to his lips.”
[Page 43]
The
VICTORY
BY
MOLLY ELLIOTT SEAWELL
Author of
“The Sprightly Romance of Marsac,”
“The Chateau of Montplasir,” etc.

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY


NEW YORK
1906
Copyright, 1906, by
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
Published October, 1906
To the Dear Memory of
Henrietta
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. —Harrowby 1
II. —Angela 21
III. —The Point of Honor 39
IV. —Love is a Mist 57
V. —The Hour of Fate 74
VI. —The Quaking of the Earth 88
VII. —The Parting 102
VIII. —The Meeting 117
IX. —Spartans All! 132
X. —The Arrival of the Strangers 155
XI. —How the Days went on at Harrowby 173
XII. —The Iron Hand of War and Circumstance 188
XIII. —Warp and Woof 210
XIV. —Snowbound 232
XV. —The Hegira 248
XVI. —The Tongue of Calumny 264
XVII. —Like the Little Trianon 282
XVIII. —The Visitations of War 295
XIX. —“I can’t get out!” said the Starling 309
XX. —A Soldier’s Errand 327
XXI. —Dust and Ashes 349
XXII. —Love and Life 367
XXIII. —The Aftermath 398
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING
PAGE
“Took her little hand in his and raised it to his lips” Frontispiece
“And so Angela Vaughn became Neville Tremaine’s
114
wife”
“He lay watching Angela with her quick-changing
236
expression”
“‘Missis, I done brought Marse Richard back to you’” 350
THE VICTORY
CHAPTER I
HARROWBY

BRIGHT was the Christmas of 1860 at the old manor house of


Harrowby in lowland Virginia. It lay upon the broad, bright river which
ran laughing into the arms of the great bay, and from there bay and
river rushed together to the windy floors of the wide Atlantic. Nearly
two hundred years before, the first Tremaine, a discontented
gentleman, who found life very uncomfortable in England after
Monmouth’s rebellion, had made the beginning of the Harrowby
mansion. It was built quite flat to the ground, with the low ceilings
and steep, narrow stairs of the seventeenth-century country house.
This first Harrowby house, with a room clapped on here and there,
as each successive inheritor fancied, answered well enough for the
Tremaines until the end of the eighteenth century. Then Mr. Jefferson
having brought back with him from France some noble architectural
conceptions, these became embodied in many Virginia country
houses, including Harrowby. There, a new and commodious house
was built, with a vast entrance hall, lofty ceilings, spacious rooms,
and wide staircases. It was connected by a narrow corridor with the
original house, and although frankly swearing at the first incumbent
of the ground, yet conformed to it enough to make the whole both
picturesque and comfortable. The modern part of the house was
reserved for the master and mistress, for guests, and for those
Virginia dinner parties which lasted from noon until midnight, the
Virginia balls where the dancers’ feet beat the floor from the first
rising of the stars until the rosy dawn, and the Virginia weddings
which took three weeks’ frolicking to carry through in style. There
were always sons in the Tremaine family, and these sons required
tutors and dogs, so that the old part of the house, with its shabby
Colonial furniture, was always in possession of men and boys and
dogs. The newer part, with its furniture all curves, its Empire mirrors,
its elaborate cornices, and decorative fireplaces, was reserved for
more ceremonious uses.
The house sat upon a great, smooth lawn, which sloped down to the
river, now a dull, steel blue in the red and waning Christmas eve. A
short, rude wharf lay a little way in the river, which softly lapped the
wooden piles. A little distance from the house, to the left, lay a
spacious, old, brick-walled garden, now all russet brown and gold
and purple in ragged splendor like a beggar princess. Great bare
clumps of crape-myrtle and syringas and ancient rose trees bordered
the wide walk which led from the rusty iron garden gate down to the
end of the garden. Here a long line of gnarled and twisted lilac
bushes clung to the brick wall; lilacs and crumbling wall had held
each other in a strong embrace for more than a hundred years.
Outside the garden, the wide lawn was encircled by what had once
been a shapely yew hedge, which had grown into a ragged rampart
of ancient trees, black and squat and melancholy as yew trees
always grow. A great gap in this hedge opened upon a long, straight
lane leading to the highroad and beyond that lay the primeval woods.
On each side of the lane were cedar trees which had once stood
young and straight like soldiers, but were now, as the yew trees, old
and bent like a line of veterans tottering in broken ranks.
Under the somber branches of the yew hedge was a walk of cracked
flagstones, known, since Harrowby was first built, as the “Ladies’
Walk.” For when the paths and lanes about the place were too wet
for the dainty feet of ladies, this flagged path was their exercise
ground. The negroes, of course, peopled it with the dead and gone
ladies of Harrowby, who generally took, upon those broken stones,
their last walk upon earth, and who found it haunted, not by the
ghosts of their predecessors but by the joys, the griefs, the hopes,
the fears, the perplexities, the loves, and the hates which had walked
with them there, in cool summer eves, in red autumn afternoons, in
bitter winter twilights, and in the soft and dewy mornings of the
springtime.
Far off in the open field beyond the garden lay the family burying
ground, where, according to the Virginia custom, the dead were laid
near the homestead instead of the church. The brick wall around the
burying ground was decaying, and the tombstones, never properly
set up, were beaten all manner of ways by storm and wind, and
trained into strange positions by the soft insistence of the roots of
huge weeping willows, those melancholy trees which give a touch of
poetic beauty to the most commonplace landscape. Yet the aspect of
Harrowby was usually far from melancholy. On the other side of the
house from the garden, still farther off, were the negro quarters,
slovenly but comfortable, and the stables, which were partly hidden
by the straggling yew hedge that extended all around the lawn. In
these quarters were housed the two hundred negroes on the
plantation, and as twenty-five of them were occupied about the
house and garden and stables there was always life and movement
around the place.
Especially was this true at Christmas time, and on the Christmas eve
of 1860, never was there more merriment, gayety, color, and loud
laughter known at Harrowby. Lyddon, the English tutor there for ten
years was struck by this, when returning from his afternoon’s tramp
through the wintry woods, he passed across the lawn to the house.
The air was sharp, like a saber, and the stars were already shining
gloriously in the deep blue field of heaven. He watched a half dozen
negro men who, with guttural laughter and shouts and merry gibes,
carried into the house the great back log for the Christmas fire. From
the time that this back log was placed upon the iron fire dogs of the
yawning hall fireplace until it was entirely consumed, the negroes
had holiday. According to the privileged practical joke of long
custom, the log was of black gum, a wood hard to burn at any time. It
had lain soaking for weeks in the inky mud of the salt marsh on the
inward bend of the river, where the cows stood knee-deep in water at
high tide, and hoof-deep in black ooze at low tide. The union of
marsh mud and black gum was certain to insure at least a week’s
holiday, when no work was required of the negroes, except the
waiting on the house full of guests which always made the roof of
Harrowby ring during the Christmas time. Great pyramids of wood
towered at the woodpile to the left of the house, where the joyous
sound of the ax was heard for a week before Christmas, that there
should be oak and hickory logs to feed the great fireplaces, and
lightwood knots to make the ruddy flames leap high into the wide-
throated chimneys.
Lyddon, a gaunt, brown, keen-eyed man, who had watched this
backlog business with great interest for ten successive Christmases,
studied it anew as a type of the singular and unpractical relations
existing between the master and the slave. All of these relations
were singular and unpractical, and were a perpetual puzzle to
Lyddon. One of the strangest things to him was that the word slave
was absolutely tabooed and all sorts of euphemisms were used,
such as “the servants,” “the black people,” in order to avoid this
uncomely word.
Another typical puzzle was taking place on the side porch. There
stood Hector, Colonel Tremaine’s body servant, and general
factotum of Harrowby, engaged in his usual occupation of inciting the
other negroes to work, while carefully abstaining therefrom himself.
He was tall, and had by far the most imposing air and manner of any
person at Harrowby. Having accompanied his master several times
to the White Sulphur Springs, to say nothing of two trips to Richmond
and one to Baltimore, where he saw a panorama of the city of New
York; and most wonderful of all, having attended Colonel Tremaine
through a campaign in the Mexican War, Hector held a position of
undisputed superiority among all the negroes in five counties. He
classified himself as a perfect man of the world, a profound
expounder of the Gospels, an accomplished soldier, and military
critic.
As regards Hector’s heroic services during the Mexican War, he
represented that he was always at General Scott’s right hand except
when his presence was imperatively demanded by General Zachary
Taylor. According to Hector’s further account he led the stormers at
Chapultepec, supported Jefferson Davis when he made his
celebrated stand at Buena Vista, and handed the sword of General
Santa Anna to General Scott when the former surrendered. Colonel
Tremaine, on the contrary, declared that Hector never got within five
miles of the firing line during the Mexican War, and that whenever
there was the remotest sign of an attack, Hector always took refuge
under the nearest pile of camp furniture and had to be dragged out
by the heels when the danger was overpast. He modeled his toilet
upon Colonel Tremaine’s, whose cast-off wardrobe he inherited. The
colonel claimed to be the last gentleman in Virginia who wore a
ruffled shirt, and Hector shared this distinction. Great billows of
cotton lace poured out of the breast of his blue coat, decorated with
brass buttons, which was too short in the waist and too long in the
tails for Hector, and for whom the colonel’s trousers were distinctly
too small, and were kept from crawling up to his knees by straps
under the heels of his boots.
What Hector’s business in life was, beyond shaving Colonel
Tremaine once a day, Lyddon had never been able to discover.
Colonel Tremaine always said, “my boy Hector,” although, like the
colonel himself, he had passed the line of seventy; but having
become the colonel’s personal attendant when both were in their
boyhood, he remained “my boy, sir,” until Time should hand him over,
a graybeard, to Death. Another anomaly, scarcely stranger to Lyddon
than Hector’s eternal boyhood, was that, having an incurable
propensity to look upon the wine when it is red, he had entire charge
of the cellar at Harrowby, and when upon occasions of ceremony his
services might have been of some slight use, he was tolerably sure
to be a little more than half-seas over. He made up for this by an
Argus-eyed vigilance over his two postulates, Jim Henry and Tasso,
gingerbread-colored youths, who did the work of the dining room
under Hector’s iron rule. So careful was he of their morals that he
made a point of himself drinking the wine left in the glasses at dinner,
“jes’ to keep dem wuffless black niggers f’um turnin’ deyselves into
drunkards, like Joshua did arter he got outen de ark.”
Now, from Hector’s unctuous voice and unsteady gait, it was
perfectly obvious to Lyddon that Hector had not escaped the pitfall
into which he alleged Joshua had fallen. Lyddon passed along and
entered the great hall, where the work of putting up the Christmas
decorations was not yet finished. A noble fire roared upon the broad
hearth and the rose-red light danced upon the darkened, polished
leaves of the holly wreaths, which hung on the walls and the family
portraits that seemed still to live and speak. Before the fireplace
stood Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine, with Archie, the sixteen-year-old

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