Explore "The Debatable Land" by Arthur Willis Colton on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The Shenandoah goes by the eastern edge of the wide valley, murmuring its own musical name, "Shenandoah," as if it knew the word's significance in glory, tumult, and pain, but had taught all three to march to a quiet requiem; "Shenandoah" -- old, unhappy, far-off things, under the lulling and palliation now of many years.
Gard rode directly south, through plodding, dusty lines of haggard-eyed men, and came to it a few miles above the junction and the famous Ferry. The cannon boomed all day on his left over by the larger river. He rode by daylight and openly and none seemed to doubt him; his dress and little printed tracts were passports enough for the time. He fell into the habit, first by impulse and then by policy, of carrying a tract in his hand, using its subject and phraseology for the next conversation and entering on the subject promptly.