Motion Picture Story Magazine (Feb-Jul 1911)

A DIXIE MOTHER 61 Merriweather kissed his mother fondly and hurried after his brother. A detachment of Union soldiers under Lieutenant Sears was approaching, as the Capels attempted to escape, and a sergeant raised his gun and fired. Merriweather Capel, bravely facing the detachment with uplifted sword, clasped his hand to his breast and fell, mortally wounded. He kissed his sword, wafted the kiss in the direction of his darling mother, closed his eyes and died content, "like a Southern gentleman. " The shot warned those in the hall of impending danger. Mrs. Capel roused her husband and managed to help him to a hiding place behind a secret panel door, and then went forth to learn the fate of her sons. Fielding had escaped, with Lieutenant Sears in pursuit. Merriweather lay dead, and near him stood a Union sergeant loading his gun. The mother saw and understood. Pale and tearless, she led the way to the hall, while the Union soldiers carried in Merriweather 's body and laid it on the sofa. They wasted no time on sentiment. Mothers' sons were falling like autumn leaves. The privates went to search the house, while the sergeant prodded the walls with his bayonet in quest of some secret hiding place. The mother watched him with sullen hatred. Her eyes wandered to the body of her son and then to the weapons on the wall. Suddenly a flame lighted in her eyes. She seized a sword and attacked the sergeant with the ferocity of a tigress defending her cubs. She was driving him all over the hall, beating down his defense, when Lieutenant Sears entered and parried her weapon with his own sword. She was now surrounded by bluecoats, her daughter was pleading with her, and the big Lieutenant reminded her that she was a non-combatant. The Dixie mother bowed her head in bitterness and yielded her sword as gravely as if surrendering an army corps. She conceded the force of his claim, but there was no submission of spirit. When her son Fielding was brought in, a prisoner of war, the little mother shed no tears. The only betrayal of her heart's agony came when she placed one hand on the brow of her dead boy, the other on the breast of the survivor and said to Sears: "God has taken one. Spare me the other!" The Lieutenant bowed gravely and assured her that Fielding should be his special charge, and with his troops left the house. That day Sears sought his sister, working as a nurse in a field hospital, and committed Fielding to her particular care, saying : ' ' Blue or Grey, we are simply American brothers fighting among ourselves. ' ' When General Capel came to view the body of his dead son and learned that the other was in the hands of the enemy, his revengeful passion was fearful to behold. The grizzled warrior raised his sword hand in fierce resentment and his eyes glowed with settled hatred as he exclaimed: "May Almighty God strike me dead when I bow to that flag ! ' ' The Dixie mother sank down by her dead boy and murmured : "Oh, the pity of it all!" In the years that followed the close of the war, the wounds on nature's face were gradually covered by green verdure, but the scar on General Capel's heart never healed. His son, Fielding, had married the lovely northern girl, who had nursed him through a dangerous illness, and had remained in the North to repair his fortunes. The brooding General would accept no aid from what he regarded as a traitorous source, and his gentle wife asked none. She bore most of the after-burden of hardship and selfdenial with the same mental power of endurance that had inspired her patient courage under affliction. One day, after she had been gathering flowers for their meagre table, the faithful old servant and her daughter