She takes
it all in like a wild duck diving for the bay celery."
With two such beautiful women to speak for it, the Eastern Shore
railroad seemed at first to have many friends, but it was not in the
nature of the enterprising elements about Baltimore to yield a point,
however complaisant they might appear.
Vesta did not go into general company, but her influence was mildly
exercised in her rooms at the large old hotel, and in her carriage as
she made excursions in pleasant weather to the South and West rivers, to
"the Forest" of Prince George and to the thrifty Quakers of Montgomery.
She wrote and received a daily letter, her husband being attentive and
tender, despite his growing cares, as he had promised to be on that
severe day he made his suit to her.
But the story of her sacrifice, shamefully exaggerated, with all that
intensity of expression habitual in a pro-slavery society whenever money
is the stake and denunciation the game, was used to injure her husband's
interests.
Mr. Milburn was described as a vile Yankee type of miser and
overreacher, who had plotted against the fortune of a gentleman and the
virtue of his daughter for a long series of remorseless years.
Local opposition affirmed that he would use the railroad to ruin other
gentry and oppress his native region, and that he was a Philadelphia
emissary and an abolitionist, scheming to create a new state of the
three jurisdictions across the bay.
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