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diff --git a/39911-8.txt b/39911-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..19faed4 --- /dev/null +++ b/39911-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5396 @@ +Project Gutenberg's The Army Mule and Other War Sketches, by Henry A. Castle + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere 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 + + +Title: The Army Mule and Other War Sketches + +Author: Henry A. Castle + +Illustrator: J. W. Vawter + +Release Date: June 3, 2012 [EBook #39911] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ARMY MULE *** + + + + +Produced by David Edwards, Matthew Wheaton and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +file was produced from images generously made available +by The Internet Archive) + + + + + + + + THE ARMY MULE + + HUMOROUS WAR SKETCHES + by + CAPT. HENRY A. CASTLE + + + [Illustration: _If he gets loose, he darts through an ambulance + or climbs a tree, without compunction. But he seldom gets loose_] + + + + + THE ARMY MULE + + AND OTHER WAR SKETCHES + + BY + + HENRY A. CASTLE + + + Private, Sergeant-Major and Captain Illinois Volunteers + Past Commander Loyal Legion Commandery of Minnesota + Past Commander Department of Minnesota G. A. R. + + WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY + + J. W. VAWTER + + + INDIANAPOLIS AND KANSAS CITY + + THE BOWEN-MERRILL COMPANY + + M DCCC XCVIII + + + Copyright, 1897 + BY + THE BOWEN-MERRILL CO. + + + + + CONTENTS + + + PAGE. + + I. THE ARMY MULE 1 + + II. THE SUTLER 91 + + III. THE SHELTER TENT 140 + + IV. DRESS PARADE 179 + + V. THE BOYS IN BLUE GROWN GRAY 218 + + + + + LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + + + + If he gets loose, he darts through an ambulance or climbs a + tree, without compunction. But he seldom gets loose + + The quenchless, marvelous mule emerges from the mire and clay, + with a whooping-cough wheeze + + But likeliest from safe shelter of some commodious, commanding + stump, observing the struggle with a rural Sunday morning + cheerfulness + + Blessed is the voluptuousness of reverie, blessed and cheap as + an expectant clothier's greeting, while he pauses ecstatically + for an appropriate smile + + No two companies have been drilled alike; no three consecutive + soldiers perform the same antic at the same time + + The veterans quietly gathered in the voluntary and involuntary + honors.... One state points with pride to her nine soldier + governors, and of seven presidents elected since the close of + the war, six were ex-soldiers + + + * * * * * + + + I hail thee Brother--spite of the fool's scorn! + And fain would take thee with me, in the dell + Of peace and mild Equality to dwell, + Where Toil shall call the charmer Health his bride, + And Laughter tickle Plenty's ribless side! + How thou wouldst toss thy heels in gamesome play, + And frisk about, as lamb or kitten gay! + Yea! and more musically sweet to me + Thy dissonant harsh bray of joy would be, + Than warbled melodies that soothe to rest + The aching of pale Fashion's vacant breast! + --COLERIDGE. + + + + +THE ARMY MULE + +I + + +The longevity of the Mule is proverbial. He lives on and on, until his +origin becomes a musty myth, and age erects a tumor on his brow which +betokens superb development of spirituality. The endurance of a +hallucination is perhaps greater still. Our civil war closed more than +thirty years ago. The Mules employed in the army are mostly dead--not +so the hallucinations. These still linger, picturesque but fatiguing. +There still survives in every northern town and village at least one +man who habitually asserts, who is willing to verify by affidavit, +worst of all, who steadfastly believes, that he put down the +rebellion. + +The Mules are not supposed to have understood the war, and +consequently can not be expected to hold themselves responsible for +its results. But the man of distorted perspective, who measures the +circumference of the universe by the diameter of his own egotism, +shrinks from no exaltation and shirks no responsibility. He is +festooned with self-complacency, wearing always a fourteenth century +smile of content. + +Controversy is welcome to him, as the advent of a bloomer woman to a +social purity club. He relishes argument and he loves to boast. He can +readily maintain that his side was eternally right and the other side +infernally wrong in the war, for that fact is beginning to be somewhat +widely accepted. To establish his own feats is somewhat more +difficult, whether he sing like Miriam or howl like Jeremiah in +narrating them. But he will cheerfully spend a week in marching one of +his deeds past a given point, and skeptics soon discover that it is +cheaper to feed him than to fight him. He may be an ex-major-general, +or possibly an ex-teamster. Sometimes he is an ex-corporal, mellow as +those autumnal days when the golden glory of the sassafras vies with +the persimmon's gaudy crimson. Oftenest perhaps he is an ex-captain, +for does not every war evolve the greatest captain of the age as its +ultimate hero? He may now pass for a respectable citizen, with houses +to let and money to burn, who rashly trusts to his imagination when +his memory is out of focus, and lets the bloody chasm go on yawning +for more gore. + +More likely, however, he carries his real estate as well as his +religion in his wife's name, fully persuaded that a rolling stone +gathers no moss but grinds exceeding fine, razors and tomahawks +included. In any event he is a mighty talker before the crowd, +bristling with home thrusts that give out a sizzling sound and an odor +of roast owl. He is a Chimborazo of noise with an ant-hill of +achievement to back it; a miracle of linked hallucinations ludicrously +elongated; an extinct incandescent carbon belching black smoke. His +sole claim to mention in connection with the useful, unpretentious +Mule, is the purely accidental circumstance of their simultaneous +military service. He has no other title to consideration in this +important historical episode. + +He is not a typical old soldier, and must not be so classified. He is +an exception. When tests are to be applied he can always prove an +alibi. His mouth was put on soft and spread; the flush on his nose was +acquired at a great expenditure of time and money. He comes to the +front in his community, sage of the flannel lip and velvet eye, in +accordance with a known law that not always the ablest men are heard, +but always the ablest to be heard. He comes to the front with the +persistence of a pardoned anarchist, and the flawless joy of a +yearling who has maxed in math. + +Meantime it is one of the everlasting verities that in hands of men +"entirely" great, the calligraph is mightier than the bludgeon. Shall +calligraphs stand dumb and the story of days when God shook the nation +until her lakes foamed over their pebbly shores and her rivers +gurgled with bloody ebullition remain unwrit, in fear of probing +blow-holes in the record of some grand snark in the concatenated order +of hoo hoos? Shall posterity be given over to moral mushiness, lest +some village Goliath of Gath, prone to such nightly exhilaration of +spirits as ends in losing the combination of adjacent streets, get +shrunken into shreds of paper-rag, brain-web and vapor? + +Historians of the war have minutely narrated its grand events--events +which rising generations are already reproaching themselves for coming +too late to engage in, being relegated to their own nerveless annals +penciled on the segment of a film. Most classes of participants in +these events have been heard from. Either in plain narrative or +wrathful controversy they have ventured an enormous consumption of +time and eternity. Whether their anger be a dynamite shell or a +soap-bubble, its vocalization is uniformly terrific. The generals and +the majors; the teamsters and the staff; even the drafted men and +substitutes, unstable as the heroine who vowed at first that she would +never consent, and then relented--all these have spoken or can speak +for themselves. Majestically muscled around the mouth, staunchly +nerved in the cheek, they need no rhetorical proxy. Since history has +accepted most of their averments, they modestly consider themselves +endorsed. + +There are other classes of participants who must be spoken for--their +merits have not yet become the theme of tropical, topical songs. The +speechless toilers of the conflict, half horse, half devil, half +donkey, stand high on the list of those who should not be forgotten. +We may fling flash-lights of inspection all around the black horizon +of war and find no greater faithfulness, not even in Israel. + +Under the cadence of march, murmur of camp, clangor of battle and +reverberating pæans of victory, rumbles the ground tone of all war's +harmonies, the deep contra basso of a melodious bray, reminding us +that justice remains yet to be done to the instrument which made +campaigns successful and battles possible. It is an instrument to +which due credit has never been given, yet which is infinitely more +credit-worthy than many of the boasters, "ablest to be heard," who +make the cackle of their villages noxious to mankind. + +That instrument is the Army Mule! Let him who hath ears to hear lend +them now to a belated attempt at vindication. Let the man of prejudice +disinfect his mind and listen. It is naught, saith the buyer, then +goeth his way and boasteth; but an _ad valorem_ tax on dudes has never +been made to yield any revenue. + +The name of the original inventor of the Mule is lost in the +immemorial mists. Although, as hereinbefore intimated, his longevity +is a chestnut as old as the Morse alphabet, or older, his nativity is +still a conundrum. No Mule's teeth, with or without gold filling, +glisten among shells of the pliocene period. No Mule elevates his +afterdeck in the granitic formations. None of his petrified footprints +are discernible in those anteglacial basins where Afric's sunny +fountains now sprinkle her shirtless swarms. Hence, although he +possibly antedates all living apostles of lady suffrage, he is +presumably not a pre-Adamite. Perhaps his first discoverer was "that +Anah" who, to his astonishment, "found Mules in the wilderness," where +donkeys had been browsing, etc. See Genesis xxxvi, 24. It is not +permissible to go behind the returns. What we know is that he was +introduced to the American people by anticipation, that is to say, +through his paternal ancestor, by G. Washington, Esq., of Mount Vernon +in Virginia. + +Much sarcasm, variegated as Paris green jealousy and red precipitate +wrath could dye it, has been expended on this delicate matter of the +Mule's paternal ancestry. Among other spiteful things it has been +averred that like certain party organizations he has no more ground +for pride of descent than he has for hope of posterity. Let us +promptly concede the validity of the averment. Argue not with one +steeped in kerosene and other fire-waters; matters look ominous when a +disputant opens the discussion with foam on his teeth and noises in +his nostril. Fill blanks as to name of party by majority vote of those +present, and let the proceedings proceed. + +It is doubtless true that the speechless, unspeakable Mule, seldom +troubles himself about his heirs, executors or administrators. Why +should he? He is a monstrosity, physical and metaphysical; the _ne +plus ultra_, the "nothing beyond" of his species. Besides, he has +little of value to bequeath; he is a disinherited prodigal, with +champagne tastes and a root beer revenue, digesting his diet of wild +oats; his assets would scarcely overbalance those of a disbanded Uncle +Tom troupe--one blood hound, one death-bed, and two cakes of imitation +ice. Moreover, truth to tell, he is probably in no special haste to +die. This amiable weakness is shared by certain of our own race. + +A hypercritical Boston lady, mistress of the mysteries of nine idioms +and five kinds of angel cake, was heard to declare that she would +rather not die at all than be buried anywhere outside Mount Auburn. + +The speechless, discredited Mule, born old, wise and fuzzy, has +little to thank his paternal ancestors for, save phenomenal ears that +not even a lion's skin can hide, as witness Æsop, and a phenomenal +voice that no lion's roar can drown. Both these heritages were +preordained for grand service in an epoch when war should gnash loud +her iron fangs, and shake her crest of bristling bayonets. Vouchsafe +unto the male line gratitude for little else. But as for the female +line, who knows? Possibly it runs back to "Araby the blest," where +horse pedigrees are cherished like a Connecticut coffee pot, until +they fade into genealogical perspectives. Such perspectives, for +example, as make the fine art of heraldic blazonry, frescoing and +retouching precious to the British nobility--some of whom, by the way, +have much less cause than the nameless, unblamable Mule, to canonize +the low-neck and short-sleeve branch of their lineage. + +Although we do not know precisely who invented the Mule, it must be +obvious that he is not a historical tenderfoot. He is not a mere +ephemeral product of the county fair season, when alleged acrobats +with leaky balloons monopolize the casualty columns. Neither is he one +of those picturesque gubernatorial giraffes of the populist era, who +come unwanted and go unwept. + +Notwithstanding the fact that he is necessarily renewed with each +generation, he belongs to an old family--one, in fact, fairly rancid +with antiquity. He was the unconsidered drudge of the hoariest +ancients, in those days when the average human heart could be readily +split up for floor tiles. He had been promoted thence to the rank of +mail carrier as long ago as when Mordecai the Jew "sent letters by +riders on Mules" from Babylon, after the king had turned the rascals +out with a promptness that compelled the admiration of every taxpayer. + +He was bestridden by sprigs of royalty as long ago as when Absolom the +lengthy-locked rode under the boughs of a great oak, wherein his hair +became entangled, "and the Mule that was under him went away,"--thus +sayeth the Scriptures! Unspeakable Mule, fraught with immeasurable +destinies! Had he stood until great David's shear-bearers could come +up and cut loose the best-beloved, the whole current of Israel's +history might have changed, saving vast research to the modern +sensational divine working a heresy advertisement for all there is in +it. Solomon, next-beloved, might never have reigned; his superfluous +seven hundred wives and his indispensable three hundred concubines, +with their lissome, lightsome round of free hand riots, internal and +interminable, might never have been accumulated; neither seen the +sparkle of his three thousand proverbs, nor heard the ripple of his +songs a thousand and five. + +It is thus manifest that although this interesting hybrid is virtually +an afterthought, he is not one of those later-day improvements in a +chronic state of apology. This is authentic. It is also reassuring to +such typical, representative citizens weighing three hundred pounds +each as still have misgivings. Had the speechless unspeakable Mule +been simply an unperfected modern invention in the rough, his hair not +yet dry, his effectiveness and hope of glory would have been greatly +lessened. The surviving boasters "ablest to be heard" now on grassy +village streets, with two million major-generals, colonels, first +sergeants and other soldiers, might never have been able to suppress +the most causeless and wicked rebellion ever waged by an army of +barefooted chevaliers, fed on corn meal, sporadic acid and gunpowder, +always in light marching order. N. B. They were always in hard +fighting order likewise, since by an eternal law increment of bile is +superinduced by shrinkage of commissariat. + +Almost any mediocre can compile a mass of information from the +cyclopedia. Even the vague enthusiast who goes through the world +wearing an air of crushed strawberry resignation on his face and +shaking hands with one finger can do that. But it is not the +desideratum in a matter of this sort. + +People prefer to see things step out with stereoscopic rotundity. Like +the juvenile Lochinvar, they stay not for stone and stop not for air +brakes. They demand the decentralization of apothegms. They desire +sculpture from a chisel that, ignoring down and dimple, cuts thought +and carves breath from the marble, without risk of challenge for +implied bias. In the absence of stone-cutters, let a cyclopedia +furnish from its cold-storage vaults some preliminary fundamentals. If +they be plain, ascertainable, intelligible statements of fact, clothed +in tights as it were, devoid of frills and amplifications, so much the +better--and briefer! I quote: + +"The Mule seems to excel both its ancestral species in natural +intelligence. It is remarkable for its powers of muscular endurance. +Its sure-footedness particularly adapts it to mountainous countries. +It has been common from very ancient times in many parts of the East, +and is much used, also, in most of the countries around the +Mediterranean Sea, and in the mountainous parts of South America. +Great care is bestowed on the breeding of Mules in Spain and Italy, +and those of particular districts are highly esteemed. In ancient +times the sons of kings rode on Mules, and they were yoked in +chariots. They are still used to draw the carriages of Italian +cardinals and other ecclesiastical dignitaries." + +And more to the same effect. + +We respectfully submit that here is a well-buttressed certificate of +character which fully justified the government in assigning to this +useful equine mulatto the important function he performed in putting +down the rebellion. + +The average American Mule has not the soft fur, fine as dressed +seal-skin and smooth as coffin varnish, nor the rich shades of +coloring, worn by his pampered kinfolk of Spain or Cyprus or Smyrna. +As to skin, he was, habitually, neither soft nor shining, he was +simply tough. As to color, his muzzle was always whitish, as if fresh +from a meal-tub, but otherwise he was more various than delectable, +sometimes yellow, sometimes dun, sometimes sorrel, but oftenest +darkly, deeply, beautifully bay. Second cousin to the New Mexican +burro, but happily guiltless of any traceable relationship to the +disreputable Texas mustang, his aspect was liable to be as one-sided +as a Louisiana riot--seventeen negroes killed and one white man +slightly wounded. + +But texture and color apart, the harmless, unspeakable servitor of our +march and camp was doubtless peer of any the effete monarchies of +Europe or the East can boast. He had no overplus of style about him, +but he was reliable, he was sincere, his muscularity was conceded by +all. His facial angle was a convex curve, which somewhat impaired his +beauty, but not his utility. Some knew him who did not love him; few +named him except to praise after a reasonable acquaintance. His air of +innocent gravity was sometimes mistaken for stupidity--most +inexcusable and fatal error! He could look as imbecile as a rustic fop +playing "Glory Hallelujah" on an accordeon. He could look as guileless +as the youth who murdered his own father and mother and then begged +the judge to have mercy on a poor orphan. He could look as soulful as +a law clerk summing up to a jury of one with his arm around it. He +could look as sober as though his whole intellect were grinding on the +plus and minus of some unsolved problem, like that for example which +the Book of Mormon and Mohammed's Koran and Clark's Commentaries, with +all their attention to detail, have neglected, whether Aaron's golden +calf was a Holstein or a Jersey. + +Sleepy or asleep he may have seemed, but let some small darkey imp of +mischief tweak his patient ear, then note how swiftly that magnetic +hoof will lift the tweaker to a pearly seat amidst the celestial +cherubim--direct and speedy circuit of nerve-telephone here manifest, +without the intervention of any dilatory central office. His drooping +lids were thus but the token of a measureless content, which craved +not the mere bric-a-brac and gumdrops of existence. But it was liable +to shift its specific gravity, if any misfit perfume came between the +wind and his nobility, and explode in a sudden touch-and-go style, +rocket-like, trigger-like, flashing. + +He could smile like a heavenly blessing. His expressive yawn was +widely eminent; without it no Mule was genuine. His bray, opening +clear and sonorous, like the report of a judiciary committee, rapidly +shaded off into a succession of disembodied shrieks and disemboweled +groans, that sent thrills of suicidal delirium through all the +encircling camps. No further seek his general merits to disclose. They +developed constantly on the sensitive plate of our regard, and we have +waited long for somebody to take off a blue-print of his ground plan +and front elevation. The possessor of many virtues, poor but honest, +with a large circulation but small political influence, sagacious and +serene he stood, thick of head, tough of hide, hard of heel, the +proffered hero of the expressive army shibboleth, "Here's your Mule." + +The plutonic, speechless quadruped, Mule, like the platonic +featherless biped, man, after being inspected on the hoof, was obliged +to graduate through the three military degrees of Recruit, Soldier and +Veteran. + +We all remember those recruiting days; those first companies of picked +men, mostly picked before they were ripe; when the fray was curtained +behind song and hurrah, the cataract obscured by the rainbow. Who can +forget the wrathful buzz and ferment, the wild tossing and writhing +and moaning of an aroused people; the fierce uprising; the keen +razor-edge of fervor. Then the enrolling and drilling and marching and +evoluting in the moonlit squares and streets; the nocturnal +visitations, with fife and drum, to the verandas of oratorical +patriots for a "night-cap" of glowing speech, alternated with raids on +suspected disloyalists to demand the prompt uphoisting of the star +spangled banner. Saxon and Norman and Dane were we, or Celt or Teuton +in birth or descent, but all of us then crystallized in the alembic of +patriotism into the first generation of unadulterated Americans. + +To the blasphemous challenge of secession, our young men, fully +advised of the exceeding preciousness of life and yet thoroughly +instructed how to dare and die, hurled back deathless daring and +defiance. Their eyes, fixed on their idealized leaders, shining like +white statues amid the black wreckage of rebellion, they marched into +the flaming vortex with new, strange implements in their hands and +"hot unutterabilities in their hearts." + +These were the boys of '61, the raw recruits of the dawning conflict. +With them went the memory of the girls they left behind them, many of +whom were afterwards lost in the shuffle. But the memory, then +infinitely sweet, was hourly refreshed by a contemplation of the +tangible Testament and pin-cushion. With them went the toe-ache of +tight boots, earthly, sensual, devilish, and a flushed consciousness, +even when drilling in the awkward squad, that the eyes of the universe +were upon them. With them also, or following them, or mayhap meeting +them in the dreamy borderland of Kentucky or Missouri to which he is +fortuitously indigenous, went the harmless, necessary Mule. + +He was a child of wrath, with a throat for melody spacious as the +funnel of a cyclone; with dexter and sinister ears of renown; with +eyes foxy but sad, and saddest when he sang. He carried with him the +appetite of a Chippewa maiden clad in cavalry trowsers and a tentfly; +also an inherited capacity to stand indefinitely on one foot and kick +vehemently with all the others. He was reliable as grandfather's clock +and prompt as the railway mail service. He was under a recognizance to +support the constitution of the United States, and stamp out the +Confederacy to the best of his ability. + +He was a raw recruit likewise. When men were beating the wrong way +their plowshares into swords, he was out of a job on a dull labor +market and could the better be spared. How much of the issues and +principles at stake his comprehensive intelligence intelligently +comprehended will perhaps never be known. He did not attend crowded +war meetings in country school-houses and waste his rhetoric on the +fetid air. It may fairly be surmised, however, that he knew better +than any northern croaker the futility of trying to repossess our +surrendered fortresses with writs of replevin; knew better than any +southern fire-eater the folly of attempting to build up a republic +with a live negro wriggling under the corner-stone; knew and would +gladly have proclaimed, that no lapse of slip-shod years, no +hoariness of unchallenged usage, no deftest hammerings of forensic +sophistry can ever fashion a vested right out of a ragged wrong. + +At all events, whether wittingly or willingly or neither, he became as +potent a factor in the situation militant as when Samson slew a +thousand Philistines with the jawbone of one of his remote ancestors. +He wheeled into line useful, ubiquitous, proud as a deceased +Connemarran with a solid silver door-plate on his pearl-plush casket, +blazoning his immortal virtues--also quite numerous. A total of +450,000 mules and 650,000 horses served in the various armies. In +1864, the forces actually in the field required for artillery, cavalry +and trains one-half as many animals as there were soldiers. + +As a recruit, the Mule soon became an object of usurious rates of +interest and concentrated curiosity. He was a drawing card, a +veritable bargain counter or church scandal in his tractile powers. +His fame had preceded him, and his name was a potent talisman for +conjuring ecstatic assemblages. His name pronounced, the sensation +seekers gathered, as in the manipulation of complicated governmental +machinery congress touches the button, and the department clerks do +the rest, subject to approval of the salary and allowance division. +Haled in, unhaltered, from amid the frisking bluegrass felicities of +his pasture primeval, with his tail full of burs and his gaze full of +vinegar, the details of his primary instruction were, as a rule, full +of activity and enthusiasm. + +In mischievous impulse he is fertile as those human scalps which raise +hair enough for home consumption, and send a surplus to market twice a +year. His venturesome instructors are wise if they make their +testamentary dispositions in advance, and provide abundant bandages +and plasters, with blank coupons or certified checks attached to +provide for extra dividends. One out-thrust of his right front foot +has been known to reduce a newly uniformed soldier to a state of +nudity from his napless crown to his callous sole, with incidental +contusions of flesh and abrasions of cuticle too hideous for +contemplation. + +Enmeshed in surreptitious cordage, the speechless, untamed quadruped +is thrown to the cold, cold ground, where, for a time, he writhes and +struggles, a _cheveaux-de-frise_ of black, gyrating hoofs. If he gets +loose, he darts through an ambulance or climbs a tree without +compunction. But he seldom gets loose. When his first wild anger has +been measurably spent and the mercury in him has gone down to the +bulb, five or six bow-legged hirelings of the quartermaster's bureau, +with waffle-iron cast of countenance born of small-pox, simultaneously +proceed to administer disjointed sections of harness to the exterior +of that noble form. + +Puck might girdle the earth for forty cents, but he could earn forty +dollars in girthing a cadet Mule. With each contact of strap or buckle +the white of his eye gleams poisonously and his outraged epidermis +gives a sudden convulsive shudder, like a fine lady's bare shoulder +vitalized by a mosquito-bite. But he is helpless and supine as a fat +alderman after a banquet, lying stomach upwards and feebly +gesticulating with his heels. With the final linking together of the +detached tackle into one engirdling gearage, the first step in his +humiliation is completed, and the pantings of his suppressed fury +mingle with the chokings of his self-contempt. From that hour he is a +changed Mule. Man delights him not, nor small boys either. Straps +leave invisible, indelible marks of servitude, as a blow from a parent +leaves a scar on the soul of the child. Harnessed and humiliated, +abased and abashed, the higher regions of pride and independence +wherein he has pranced with all the lofty grace of a thoroughbred, +know him no more forever. Mirabeau had swallowed all formulas. The +Mule recruit has swallowed all traditions, foretaste of much else, +good and bad, he will be obliged to swallow,--but the bridle-bit, of +all fabricated things, alas! he can not swallow. + +In this clinging, clanking harness-toggery cribbed and confined, he is +led out to where five shamefaced fellow-martyrs wait to endure with +him the culminating indignity. The Mule units are now to be transmuted +into a Mule team, for the glory of Yankee Doodle, and an entirely +novel programme of acrobatic marvels is to be enacted. + +No sooner have the predestined six been, with infinite patience and +circumspection, aligned and coupled and to the monstrous vehicle +deftly attached, than down they all go in a heap, a rolling, plunging +mass of offensive partisanship, in one dusty burial blent. Entangled, +prostrate, writhing like a coil of rattlesnakes; each eager nose, and +active heel, and tufted tail, points all ways at once, like a +mariner's needle in a thunder-storm. In this tumbling, tearing glomer +a philosopher might presciently discern the symbol and essence of +anarchy, the spirit of centrifugality, the revolt against _status +quo_, the protest of energetic natures against human government, or +self-government, or any other government. + +It may confidently be averred that from all vital chaos a new lathed +and plastered order is ever shaping itself and emerging; this is as +certain as that everybody is greater than anybody, and that discipline +is always brought forth by a Cæsarian operation from anarchy. So from +this sour animal effervescence of insurrection miraculously unravels +at last, scathless and satisfied, a melancholy sextette of curbed and +baffled penitents. They are awkward, divergent, unassimilated, to +begin with, and must be pounded and kicked and cursed into homogeneity +later on, but they are uproariously recalcitrant thenceforth never +more. + +The Mule recruit has thus rapidly developed into the Mule soldier. He +has been summarily mustered in, with a rope around his lower lip +rasping it to rawness, but without any very searching inquiries as to +his uncertain age, his wholly immaterial sex, his superfluous name, or +his complicated social status. + +He has been blacksmithed as to hoof (much against his will), and +veterinaried as to shoulder. He must now march forth in the name of +the Union and emancipation, but must first be introduced to his +commander--and so must you, my beloved. Ye who have blushes to blush +for your species, prepare to blush them now, and then proceed to bury +Cæsar, not to praise him. + +The army teamster may be safely diagnosed as a chronic malady of war +times. With such rare and radiant exceptions as the immortal nominee +of the Seattle caucus, who carried a hare-lip and a pure heart, he was +a pestilent metaplasm. He was a product of heterogeneous aggregation +and the survival of misfits. His status was fixed in earliest infancy; +when he was vaccinated, the doctor is suspected of having thrown away +the child and saved the virus capsule. He professed no patriotism; he +pretended to no bravery; he cherished no martial ambitions. He had no +desire to fight. There was no need of an order to show cause why a +temporary injunction should not issue restraining him from carnage. + +When his slim sweetheart, the dove-eyed, flat-chested maiden at Onion +creek, a stuttering siren to be courted only on the installment plan, +sent him to the field, it was with full assurance that he was not lost +to her forever--not he! The corn-fed, lank Delilah shrewdly guessed +that her prudent wooer would listen to battle's dissonant thunders +from posts of distant security, and come back unshot, unsabred, but +covered with vicarious glory, which he did. Heaven is merciful to the +idiotic and kind to the cautious. His previous occupations had varied +from cord-wood carpentry to slaughter-house surgery, and he had always +been disposed to shed perspiration with extreme diffidence. He was +mostly red-headed. He had been addicted to excess of raw spirits, +tobacco and other abominations--loving these, his enemies, with a +fine, magnanimous, scriptural, discrimination. He may be relied on to +fill a drunkard's grave some day, probably without even asking the +drunkard's permission; such are his knavish proclivities. His eye was +aglare with hate, every glance a stab. His occasional smile ran +through all the gamut of grins, from the smirk of conceit to the +simper of toadyism. He had a torpid liver and was no trustee of +beauty. His physical development was surprising; even an Englishman +never saw anything equal to it--outside of England. He was strong as +the Kansas zephyr that carried an anvil ten miles and came back next +morning after the hammer. Freckles were his trade-mark and profanity +was the staunch, infallible test of his identity. Huge quadrilateral +oaths, shingled with brimstone and fringed with fire, were the soft +relaxations of his happier hours. Blue, blistering maledictions, +flecked with white foam, marked the approach of his paroxysmal +frenzies, and no postponement on account of the weather. + +Cruelty uncloaked and unleavened, lumpy and rocky, was the energizing +motor of his existence. Before he gets three strides into his gait, +his antiphlogistic treatment always insures a dispersion of the Mule's +vitality into the extremeties--hence those kicks. His vocabulary was a +slimy ooze of the gutter, with its wailing stench. His breath was the +whiff of loose-corked, all-night gin shops, stale and stifling. His +typical caress to the Mule was a blow on the bone of the nose with a +neck yoke that settled the animal on his haunches. With a heart false +as a weather bulletin, more selfish than a petroleum trust, and colder +than a funeral with plenty of money and no God in it, his advent +might readily portend that direful apocalyptic sequence: Death on the +pale horse and hell not far behind. He was generally hare-lipped. + +To the tender mercies of this losel vile were committed by the decrees +of inscrutable fate the career and destiny of the speechless, +undecipherable Mule, who was often simultaneously off his feed and on +to his driver. He may have been an unattractive, non-magnetic +quadruped, a ragged hammerhead, with a wall eye and an amputated ear; +with yellow, irregular teeth and a surplus of lip. But his redeeming +features were sure to be disclosed in the end. The current acceptation +of the normal order of things in civil life was no criterion here; +there would be scant toleration for the methodical youth who indorsed +his sweetheart's first love-letter "Exhibit A." + +Ordinarily, when man, a little lower than the angels, bestrides a Mule +unquestionably possessed of the devil, he starts on a basalt road to +perdition, safe to arrive. Swift as a commuter's kiss at the ferry +gang-plank might be expected the direful finale. But in this zigzag of +military contradictions things are reversed. The man and the beast +have changed places. The semi-seraph and brevet horse have been +subjected to a mysterious transformation of functions, and gravitation +working t'other way lifts things skyward, as it were. The man sinks; +the animal soars--thrusting his jaw out sidewise in a satisfied yawn, +secure in the serenity of his asininity. + +By sin pneumonia came into the world, and the docile aboriginal, with +dilapidated undergarments, or none, became a shining mark. The honest, +intelligent Mule restores an equilibrium of virtue lost through his +depraved and dissolute driver. The virtues of the Mule atone for the +vices of the man. He raises the average of merit and sum total of +achievement, so that credit for their joint share in the grand +climacteric will be as enduring as the solemn temples, the great globe +itself. + +Man approximated to the Mule ideal of gentility when he began to +suspect that the entire system of army team discipline rested on a +false basis. But that suspicion had not dawned at the close of the war +for the suppression of the rebellion--if, indeed, it has yet dawned. +The platform of the Mule millennial: Six quarts of oats at a feed; a +blanket; two curry-combs of assorted fineness; no spurs; no whip; no +cursing--this was a dim vision of futurity; alluring but delusive as +the seductive rustle of grain in a tin pan, with the ensnaring halter +deftly hidden. + +Fortunately for the Mule his epidermis was thick and tough, a +non-conductor of pain, as it were; fortunately for his flagitious +tormentor, likewise for other glowing lights of genus human, he was +speechless. If the Mule could talk! What new aspects would be given to +war-memoirs; what side-gleams would be thrown on historic events; what +showers and floods of reinforcement would be added to the gurgling, +vasty streams of patriotic reminiscence. He had his opinions on the +conduct of the war, and on the character of the warriors, also the +teamsters; but those opinions remain unrecorded and to all intents and +purposes unexpressed. He reserved them, which would be deliciously +sweet of him, don't you know, if it had not been involuntary and +unavoidable. + +Out in Oregon, apples grow to the diameter of Daniel Webster's skull, +though with diluted flavor and contradictory aromas, it is claimed; +but the inefficiently tutored Shoshone nevertheless affects his +_dejeuner_ of decayed salmon whose aroma is indisputable and widely +permeative. Arizona, latitude some hundreds of feet below the sea +level, offers a splendid climate in exceptionally large quantities, +where the insidious and terrible tubercle is unknown; but some of her +citizens are accused of entertaining loose opinions as to the strict +enforcement of law, and low, coarse views of the editorial function. + +At Spuyten-Duyvel-on-Hudson, the local four hundred, exploiting the +astrakhan hair and chinchilla whiskers inherited from a fused Iroquois +and Rotterdam ancestry, can only be coaxed into activity by an +elaborate expenditure of stimulants; then, however, they will very +cheerfully pump you full of sententious legendary lore while you wait. +In Rhode Island, walk under the mistletoe with a young lady and +tradition will do the rest. In Chicago, hand an attractive widow out +of a cable car, and gossips will supply all necessary additional +ingredients for a five-column sensation. Thus every locality has its +advantages and its drawbacks, its vexations and its compensations. By +parallel lines of illustration it may be demonstrated that what the +Mule lacks in volubility he fully makes up in sagaciousness. + +The capacity of this observant, discriminating animal to sit in +judgment on the character of his stridulous driver can scarcely be +subject to reasonable question. The judicial cast of intellect is so +universally associated with solemnity of visage that the terms become +substantially interconvertible, like the principles of a polished +politician. When the Army Mule lowers his head and lifts his eyebrows +and searches profoundly through his stable litter with his +deliberative hoof, the rich trolley-line tenor of his tuneful +meditations were worth a royal largess to read, assimilate and store +away for reference. + +The animated dialogue between a truckman and a cab driver in a New +York street blockade is said to embody linguistic traits and miracles +of lexicography peculiar to the atmosphere of that latitude. The +murmurings of a town that is stricken with paralysis at the first +intimations of a whisky famine, are marvelously intense and realistic. +But the Army Mule's honest and unbiased opinion as to the true +character of the army teamster, translated from his equi-asinine +vernacular, and rendered into the anglo-effervescent jargon of the +bivouac, would rattle like a regimental long-roll and yield aroma +rivaling the effluvium of a lime-kiln. His reprobate tormentor, with +no perceptible circulation of blood above the ears, presents +multiplied testimonials of having long been habitually fed on +aqua-fortis, hell-broth and ratsbane. Yet he reveals a cruel coldness +that would freeze the milk in a mother's wasted breast or the marrow +in her infant's fleshless bones. Hideous as is his chimpanzee +conformation of countenance inherited from root-eating ancestors, it +only indexes his whole physical structure--a sour aggregation of +compost, vitalized by a fetid protoplasm. Within his Nova Zembla skull +the pulpy and mysterious growth called brain lies fusty and fumid, +steeped in the vapidity of its own purulence. + +Offspring of the exiled offal and offscourings of civilization, he +grew up in the back settlements untaught, untrained, unkempt, +unchristened--not even vaccinated or manicured; and the +unwholesomeness of his exhalations vie with the complexities of his +vocabulary. The bath-room knows him never, nor tooth-brush ever. To +night-shirt, napkin, finger-bowl and fine stationery he is as utterly +alien as the remotest autocrat of Congo's jungles. The Indian has now +become about as bad as the white man can make him. But it is the firm +opinion of the Army Mule that there are lower depths. Somewhere +between the Indian's level and that bottomless perdition, where the +arches of Tophet redden in the glow of its quenchless flame, there is +a midway plaisance tableland, reserved transcendent in its horrors for +the ruminating promenades of the teamster terrific. Somewhat lower +than the Indian; a little higher than satan and his imps--not +much--there is the plane of character assigned with ghoulish gladness +to the hare-lipped caliph of the wagon train, by one best fitted, +through intimate, hourly association, to measure his moral girth and +estimate his mental altitude. There let him roam and range. In years +triumphant of the war era, now fast vanishing into the vague and misty +past, he had his jubilant day. This bog-spawn of humanity, with his +ashes-of-marigold face and his unthatched upper teeth, with his +three-cornered hot temper that scorned life's amenities; this slouchy +man with moist nostrils and an affliction in his left hip, who at one +time hoped to sometime shine as chambermaid to a livery stable but +failed, has run his course. + +What a child is taught in the abstract he is liable to practice in the +concrete, as his subjectivity develops into objectivity, his sentiment +into devilment. The Mule driver's unamiable childhood was punctuated +with copious threats that the goblins of desperation would get him if +he didn't watch out. The events of his pseudo war experience fully +verified this dreadful prophecy's prophetic inspiration. The goblins +got him and energized him, until his fury often bade fair to shred the +Mule into his by-products of kip-leather, trousers buttons and +mucilage. + +Under such inauspicious guidance and control, the army Mule, luckily +pachydermatous, proceeds to the theater of his sanguinary exploits. +The rich girl is often in danger of falsifying her accounts by +crediting to her personality the charms of her cash. But the cashless, +unsusceptible Mule stands in no peril of such baleful self-deception. +Lowest in rank of created beings assigned a part in the drama, fame +held to him no prismatic rewards for excess of zeal. + +He was not built for a general range of cynosure business; homeliness +was his heritage from the day he was foaled. He was unpoetic as a miss +receiving her beau in the parlor with her two younger brothers sitting +in the seat of the scornful hard by. He was unartistic as a Montana +hurricane kite--an iron shutter with a tail made of log-chains. He +was unsymmetric as a court dwarf with scythe-snath spine and a dome on +his shoulder. Hence for the splendid immortality of sculpture he was +ludicrously inapt. And if painting deigned to give him grudged space +it was ever in the burlesque of cartoonage or the dim littleness of +background. + +His lucky half-brother, the showy, exaggerated horse, in all classes, +from the pampered ex-trotter with his slim neck and his record, to the +bloated muldoon of the belt-line, jaded but defiant, was an easy +victor in the suit Neigh _versus_ Bray. To him might come sweet +visions of promotion in the life that is and artistic apotheosis in a +glad hereafter. But to the speechless, unapproachable Mule, with +periodical reactions in the hind leg, and hight merely "nigh" or "off" +in the vernacular, promotion never came. Cogitating to himself with +soulful grunts, he could only talk through his head-stall. + +Even the sutler's horse, intoed, sway-backed and wheezy, who had +habitually worn a ragged calfskin over his rump as he stood on frosty +nights before the war, tied to a rail fence while his owner talked +politics in the village grocery, claimed superiority. The picturesque +talisman U. S. upon his shoulder was the only badge of honor permitted +to the Army Mule, save when the whip-lash had cut out a slice of his +skin as a souvenir. But even this significant lettering was often so +inexpertly executed as to serve no decorative purpose whatever. It was +infinitely less effective than a bran mash to poultice his internal +pains, or a roached mane to command external admiration. With one foot +over the trace and both eyes blinking, the last state of that Mule was +worse than the first. To him all alleged or attempted adornments were +superfluous and unsatisfying. + +Here then was the sine of an arc which did not recognize equality in +the cosine of its supplement. The sorriest horse, though just released +from the duty of transporting miscellaneous triturations of real +estate in a dumpcart, with his alimentary system painfully void of +toothsome internal decoration, outranked the smoothest, softest Mule, +whether young or aged, black or sorrel, dun or gray. Nevertheless the +explanation of the fact that a rat-tailed cat-hammed Mule weighing +five hundred and thirty pounds, saw-backed, sharktoothed, and knobby +with protruding bones from throat-latch to crupper, could draw heavier +loads than a round robust Norman-Percheron horse weighing a ton, +remains to this day unknown, unguessable. Invidious comparison is +gross violation of consanguinity equal to marrying one's widow's +sister. The checked, banged and bitted high steppers of Fairmount +park, dear to the heart of placid quakers because their nerves can +endure the strain of "Curfew Shall Not Toll Tonight," or equivalent +atrocities, will not be involved therein; their pinked tennis-tan +harness, silver trimmed, with monograms at the joints and red stitches +in the tug, constitute a perpetual, effectual bar. There was one glory +of horse and another glory of mule, but no mule differed from another +mule in glory, by any palpable percentage. They had little regard for +the affinity of a somewhat common maternity. But whether rearing, +plunging, kicking, rolling in the mire or pawing at the clouds, they +were all equal. They met upon the level and parted on the square. + +The war-horse of the late unpleasantness has been chiseled and painted +in many attitudes--especially that of unsupported suspension in the +atmosphere, with extended nose and carefully adjusted legs. Sheridan's +horse, propelled down the wild, disheveled turnpike by "a terrible +oath" at the rate of five (5) miles per stanza, hangs to the canvas in +a posture unnatural as that of some artillery steed swung by the +breeching from a tree after a caisson explosion. The war-horse has +been sufficiently pictured and carved. But he still lacks his literary +limner. Almost the sole description of him now accessible is that left +by the versatile Orpheus C. Kerr. There is embodied an analysis of +that celebrated Gothic steed presented to this Orpheus by his maiden +aunt and endeared to the saline affections of the mackerel brigade by +several amiable idiosyncrasies. Of whom it is written: + +"The beast is fourteen hands high, fourteen hands long, and his +sagacious head is shaped like an old-fashioned pickax. Viewed from +the rear his style of architecture is Gothic, and has a gable end to +which his tail is attached. His eyes are two pearls set in mahogany, +and before he lost his sight were said to be brilliant." And more to +the same effect, intimating a diet of shoe pegs for oats and saw-dust +for millstuffs, save in the rare occasions when he could set his +inflexible teeth into a hay bale with unadulterated joy. + +Now, shall such of our children's children as through poverty or other +crime may be debarred admission to war cycloramas be condemned to +surfeit their hunger for knowledge as to the conflict's equestrian +features with job lots of descriptive pinxit like this? Is the war +charger to be cut off thus with no extra allowance for training or +pedigree? Are nice distinctions of gait, between the singlefoot trot +and the rack, which are manifestly matters of original brain power and +painful culture, modified of course by heredity, to be studiously +ignored? In short, is the horse to be thus dismissed into obliquity, +so to speak? If so, what conclusions will posterity deduce as to the +anatomical development of the speechless inferior Mule? If an animal +of fair social position and tenacious of his rank is to be thus +lightly disposed of, what can we claim for one of no rank whatever, +with only the snap of his teeth and the whisk of his tail to attract +attention? The case is critical. + +When the kicker in politics dies he stays dead a long time; when an +opportunity passes it may never recur. Opportunities for writing +correct history are slipping by month after month, year after year. +The aged, surviving Mule gets nervous as in the teething period of his +suffering colthood, while our expert historians move off toward the +horizon, clothed in linen ulsters and vain regrets. We have essays +galore on the immorality of trotting and the iniquity of pools. We +have treatises enough on overhead check reins and the cruelty of the +cable slot. But this is a condition, not a theory, which now +reproaches us. Soon it will be too late. If the agitation started here +shall finally result in loosening some corset strings of prejudice and +fixing the neglected, necessary Mule in his true orbit, all will be +well. The opportunities of a grateful country for upholstering his +stomach with the finest and greenest her pastures proffer, will soon +be gone forever. If we can now succeed in calculating his right +ascension and declination, and stamping him on the chart indelibly, we +may pass from recreation to refreshment in full assurance of a duty +well performed. + +Then let us agitate! The winner of the sinful and expensive Derby must +not forever flaunt his exclusive title to consideration. The piebald +circus favorite shall no longer monopolize the fondness of our rising +youth. The praiseworthy Mule, hot and foamy perhaps, stung with +gad-flies, thirsty, dusty and cross, but patriotic and persevering +amid all, shall have his long delayed due. + +The soldier Mule is in harness, fated to accomplish marvels in the +sweet ultimate, if his longevity holds out; his neo-pagan steersman, +with hare-lip, a hepatized conscience, a peroxide complexion and a +solitaire front tooth cut bias, is in the saddle; all being thus in +readiness the war can now begin. If the speechless miserable Mule +shall unfortunately escape sorosis of the heart, hermitage of the +lungs, and percolation by germicide decoctions, so as to live long +enough, he will become a veteran. But that is anticipation. The near, +dear day will arrive soon enough--alas! + +Harnessed and mounted, cursed, cudgeled and spurred he starts on his +weary pilgrimage. His emotions are more complex and profound than +those with which a young woman receives her first information that +there are spring styles in trousers as well as in gowns. For him no +primrose paths of dalliance open beckoning; they fade incoherently +into the dim bedraggled, with no stretch of white satin ribbons to +restrain feminine curiosity. + +He travels from Ohio to the gulf, but not in a palace car nor on a +deadhead ticket. Far otherwise. He goes out for an extended starring +tour in the provinces and assists in presenting a magnificent drama, +but only evokes volleys of powerful and prolonged hisses from the guys +of the gallery. He brings up the rear of the most gigantic and +jubilant salvation army since salvation was revealed, but he is not +conceited. He is full of suppressed merit as an egg is of omelet, yet +bashful as the kerchiefless caller who toys with the doily in nervous +embarrassment while the seconds swell into centuries. He officiates in +the conveyance of breadstuffs, otherwise hard-tack, mouldy and +fungous, left over from the Mexican war, and fit only for slumgullion; +of meats with the odor of a sewer-gas eruption; of black molasses, a +sulphuret of glucose, sour as the tartrate of acrimony. + +Also desiccated sundries obsolete as a rutabaga turnip, class of '56, +or a weather guess from an anti-bilious almanac for '49, or the +lottery wheel of a fair fakir in the early thirties. Likewise +commissary whisky, vintage of lye, lime and fusel; decanted of all +disgusts; confected for the scum of slums. But none of these have +terror or temptation for him; he knoweth his master's feed box. A +brave, bright, meritorious Mule is he, with a spring in his heel and +healing in his springs. + +He blots himself out of the green landscape of his youth, the +asphodel meadows of peace that lie athwart the rustic tavern with its +soft soap, communistic towel and brown sugar. He marches on, marshaled +in double column closed in mass, to slaughters that will all the +multitudinous creeks incarnadine, and fears not. He steps forth with +countenance severe as that of the sterilized milk speculator whose +investment has soured, but heart warm as the modest, efficacious +fritter, dear to the breakfast relish of Hoosier schoolboys when the +frost is on the melon and the fodder's in the stalk. He starts out in +the morning eager as if something of great value were hanging just in +front of him, with a town supervisor reaching for it and a creditor's +meeting in the annex; he trudges along all day with the testy and +sub-acid humor of a Pullman conductor, softened by a thousand +patriotic reflections; he comes in at night on right by file into +line, crisp and beautiful as a sarsaparilla lithograph. + +Toil has no fears; he does not care a cigarette for it. After the long +day's exertion, with no nutriment but raw fog for breakfast and +roasted south wind for dinner, with no encouragement but polyglot +epithets from a hare-lipped miracle of mendacity, and frequent +usufruct of hissing whip-lash to his quaking flanks and skinned sides, +he does not despair. One is foolish to waste time trying to throw five +aces with four dice, and the usual rustic system of studying games of +hazard has similar elements of weakness; but there is no weakness +about the character of the seasoned, unchangeable Mule. If a glossary +of battles could be transcribed from the quartermasters' reports of +"actions" where Mules were lost, it would make a fearful and wonderful +record. But no premonitions of battle trouble him now. With a good +hearty roll in the dust and its diatonic accompaniment of snorts, +groans and grunts, he rises refreshed. Then he kicks a few times for +practice with the agility of an antiquated drum-stick from the black +crook ballet, and lies down to rest, supperless but happy. All the +visible universe is action and motion, from the slow dissolving +mountain of granite, to the fleeting, flitting cloud of vapor that +scuds across the sky. + +But the Mule sleeps, noiseless and motionless. Into that steep, deep +sleep what dreams might creep! But no! No visions of to-morrow's big +load and high check now vex his royal ribs. No colic phantoms disturb +his illusion of combing his fetlocks in golden stubble--fit function +for his underrated merits. No nightmares come hurling cold hailstones +at his sinless head or murdering "Sweet Marie" in Z minor around his +protesting ears. So he awakens invigorated and steps out into the +purple dawn of next day, fresh as the cold oaken bucket that dangles +no longer in the moss-covered well, and chipper as Sancho Panza's +Dapple--oh! speechless, incredible Mule! + +Were not comparisons odious we might unreservedly affirm that he was +fully capable of the zeal displayed by one of our major-generals who, +on or about August 29, 1862, rushed toward the sound of John Pope's +cannon at a hold-the-fort-for-I-am-coming velocity of six miles a day. +We may furthermore safely claim for him devotion at least equal to +that displayed by another major-general, coincidently negatively +pregnant, who drank from the same canteen and simultaneously +telegraphed to Pope from Alexandria, proposing to reinforce him with +every wagon in camp if he would send back cavalry for an escort! + +There is a period in every battle when the bravest soldier would +donate liberally to the missionary cause for trustworthy assurance of +scathless emergence. The most valorous among us are at times +conciliatory and pacific as an intimidated husband just emerging from +a domestic cyclone cellar. Human nature is not perpetually keyed up to +the Marco Bozarris pitch. Marvel not then that the astute Lincoln, +when informed that a general and forty Mules had been captured by the +enemy, put on that far-away, lodge-of-sorrow look and plaintively +remarked: "I am sorry to lose the Mules." Generals, brave to the point +of recklessness and beyond it, could be made as easily as bonanza +Christians, who join the church by typewriter and are baptized by +telegraph--but Mules had a specific, ascertainable value. + +The Army Mule's market value or cost to the government ranged from +one hundred and fifteen to one hundred and fifty dollars. This price +was established when he was first brought in and exhibited to all +intents and purposes as an article of merchandise. He was then largely +occupied in attempting to conceal exclusive knowledge of certain +secluded green pastures; winking slyly to himself in the excess of his +cunning, all unaware of the multiplex miseries stored away for him in +the immediate future. The price was generally satisfactory, for the +service sighed for him. But the Mule did not receive the money. Far +from it! A part of it went to his loyal owner, so called. We all knew +him. He was suave as a Scotchman who has adopted the manners and +customs of civilization. He was cheerful as the radiant old circuit +rider who preaches to a mixed congregation in a boom suburb, from a +text found in lot 3, block 12, of Timothy's second subdivision. In +every crisis he was first to stay at home and readiest to volunteer +his moral support in putting down insurrection. + +After selling a string of Mules he would walk the streets for a week +filled with rum and gladness, bragging in his balmy periods over the +keenness of his sharpness. The remainder of the purchase price, as was +currently suspected, went into the pockets of the purchasing +quartermaster, clothed in white samite, mystic, plunderful--popular +only within restricted areas. None of it went to the Mule. A woman +never looks well in a fault-finding habit; a man never looks well when +detected in prevarication; therefore let us tell the truth: None of it +went to the Mule! + +Parenthetically we may remark that this type of financial injustice +has been perpetuated, until the hind quarters of the speechless, +unspeakable survivors would be excusable for rising in their might to +protest emphatically. If the shoe fits spike it, says the farrier; if +the conscience twinges one or more of us here present, it is perhaps +not yet too late to reform. Nearly a thousand men, mostly teamsters, +buglers and hospital stewarts, toothless but terrible, have been +pensioned since the war for lameness caused by the kick of a Mule's +hoof iron, while no Mule has been pensioned for lameness, spavin, +ring-bone, wind-gall or glanders--no, not one. The speechless, +rheumatic Mule, in all his army moods and tenses, acquired no +stiffness of the joints materially differing from the old +civil-service, barnyard variety. + +Why then differentiate? Punched by the wagon-tongue or tripped by the +trace chains, when the breeching was fractured on a down grade, the +exposures to rupture or fracture were incessant, with no experts in +attendance to splice the splints. These are facts which no profuseness +of classic allusion to pearly brooks and flowery meads can obscure, +when the sour cream of his experience curdles in his soul. In gushing +eras of reconciliation large populations seemed extremely bent on +pushing things to the whimpering point; the people who were wrong were +with surprising unanimity almost ready to forgive the people who were +right and kiss again with cheers. + +In those days the widow of Stonewall Jackson was gallantly escorted +through Boston Common by General Benjamin F. Butler, Governor of +Massachusetts. And she proclaimed with tears in her voice and +patriotism in her heart, that she found in this star-eyed hero an +elegant gentleman as well as an orthodox believer--then immediately +applied for a patent on her discovery. (Some men, like happy dreams, +are too good to be true). Surely the day of jubilee had come. But even +at that time undying animosities and misconceptions prevented an award +of due credit to the crippled, superannuated Army Mules. Little wonder +that so ungrateful an epoch was mostly given over to hybridizing +chrysanthemums and breeding chappies. + +And the end is not yet. "Loyal" owners, seedy and snuffy, are still +collecting exaggerated pay from a long enduring government for +unnumbered myriads of mythical Mules alleged to have been confiscated. +The bronzed Kickapoo matron with soiled fingers, straining maple syrup +through the family heirloom blanket for the St. Louis market in the +forests of southern Iowa, has almost ceased to be a picturesque, +typical feature of our civilization. But the war claimant still +lingers, multiplying his lost Mules periodically, as the years glide +by,--while the just claims of the unquestionably loyal Mule himself +are neglected with studious shamelessness. Many persons are said to +think that this is not just, but we may perhaps be pardoned for the +remark that it is a long time between thinks. + +Take notice, however, that not all Mules can establish unquestioned +loyalty. Some of them yielded to the strain on their principles and +went over to the enemy, like a rural dupe who is so charmed with the +accomplishments of the shell-game adept that he resolves to embark in +that line of business himself. Loyalty and treason were largely +matters of education and environment. Even the rival little liver +pills are quite the same in their essential, fundamental ingredients; +one is aloes, rhubarb and antimony, while the other is antimony, aloes +and rhubarb; either is equally offensive to a refined and cultured +mucous membrane, and both are warranted to go through by moonlight, +errors and omissions excepted. + +A veracious war writer has recorded that in May, 1865, the Confederate +army consisted of Kirby Smith, four Mules and a base drum, moving +rapidly toward Texas. The general's proudest hope then was that he +might be allowed to eke out his future anonymous existence in the +solitudes of Mexico; the chattels were joint and several assets, like +a plug of tobacco in the hands of a threshing crew. In war the +defeated faction must accept the quartermaster's brand, "Inspected and +Condemned," without a murmur, even as in politics he is four times +disarmed who lets his barrel burst. These bonnie blue Mules could be +readily classed as disfranchised and denationalized. They would +clearly come within the fourteenth amendment unless they have been +amnestied by the statute of limitations. + +At any rate, the vivid historic pageant ranks next in interest to Saul +of Tarsus riding the Mule's father into Damascus, where he proceeded +to mulch the nursery stock of a new faith and dig a few grubs out of +the roots. The boy with a big apple in his mouth, that he can neither +spit out nor chew nor swallow, is a distressing spectacle; the +twentieth century southerner apologizing for his deluded secessionist +ancestor will command a broad clientage of respectful sympathy. + +The Army Mule's strategic value was recognized throughout the whole +corrugated surface of the Kenesaw region, and everywhere else within +the lines of active operation. It was tersely expressed by General +George H. Thomas when he said: "The fate of an army sometimes depends +on a linch-pin." Poetry without a motif is held by experts to be +deficient in verve; an army without a train long as the exordium of a +professional spell-binder was supposed to be impossible. The science +of electrocution is in its infancy, but the death-dealing corset has +been industriously slaughterous for three or four generations. + +Erroneous solutions of the transportation problem are responsible for +much needless sacrifice of life and treasure. The army train was a +baffling understudy. Six patient, faithful Mules were attached to each +creaking big blue wagon, with a high, white canvas cover. Thirteen +wagons were, during the first two years of the war, allotted to a +regiment of infantry; six to a battery of artillery. Such campaigning +emulated the luxuriousness of a hundred-acre corn-field where every +ear-muff is made of silk. (P. S. It was subsequently abandoned.) One +hundred teams occupy a mile of road. Thus an army of seventy-five +thousand men are followed when marching by a wagon-train eighteen +miles long, hauled by Mules. + +A broken linch-pin or king-bolt or hame-strap near the front of this +lumbering procession would bring the whole succedent line promptly to +a halt. Strategy at once impinges against a nonplus. The campaign +comes to a dead stand with a dull thud. The florid, inductive +teamster, with a hare-lip, is pondering profoundly the subjectiveness +of dinnerlessness. He is a hectic, hungry, hairy man, with whiskers on +his wrists; in addition he is deliberate. He repairs the damage very +deliberately. He refreshes himself, meanwhile, with snatches of +ancient melody, rescued from the deluge with Shem and Ham. Also with +frequent volleys of Enfield curses and Gatling blows, discharged at +his speechless, unoffending Mules. Luridity of impiety is a _sine qua +non_. + +The mild, ethereal wickedness of that fossilized beechnut relating to +the dam by a mill site, pales its ineffective glow. It is usually the +dictate of wisdom to leave a wild-eyed cannibal in undisturbed +possession of his warpath; equally so to be very sparing of sneers at +another man's joss. Consequently the driver's amiable diversion is +seldom interfered with. When all damages are repaired the procession +moves on. + +Then begins again the long lumbering creak, to continue in melancholy +monotony until another linch-pin breaks or buckle parts asunder. +Eighteen miles of tortured wagons roll on and on; white-arched, +weighty; relics of a thorny, stormy past, yet pregnant with an +illimitable future. They bristle with tent-poles, trail tangled tent +ropes far behind, and exude knapsacks, haversacks, canteens, drums and +drum majors at every pore. They are festooned around and beneath with +clinging mess pans, pendulous camp kettles, and the like +differentiation of iron-mongery. If the weather is fine this creak and +grind and rumble goes on and on, with monotonous, mechanical +steadiness, subject to accidents as aforesaid, until the tuneful, +sagacious Mule sings the long roll, as he instinctively scents +approach to the preordained place of encampment, when welcome night +draws nigh. + +This is the poetry of transportation, jolly as a cake-walk, +comfortable as a smoking jacket, easy as reducing the labor question +to an exact science by the acceptance of a generous salary as walking +delegate. But when rains descend and floods come, the scenery shifts; +wagons, muleteers and quadrupeds are indiscriminately plunged into +diluvial quagmires, fathomless as air and shoreless as the +gulf-stream. Then the liquified turnpike spreads over the valleys and +yellow cascades roar down the defenseless ruts. + +Then the climax of helpless wretchedness arrives, always fatefully +tumbling on the articulated anatomy of a hapless, cadaverous Mule. +Beneath him even chilled-steel agony can not go. He gathers in all its +multiplex horrors, computed on the Utah plural family plan. He +would win a Columbian Exposition medal for the most picturesque +collection of miseries--picturesque, variegated and altogether +astonishing. They overwhelm him like a bather submerged in sea waves +twenty feet high, each weighing a thousand tons, half brine and half +sledge-hammer. + +[Illustration: _The quenchless, marvelous mule emerges from the mire +and clay, with a whooping-cough wheeze_] + +No man can adequately realize what magnificent folly he is capable of +until he sees his own old love-letters set forth in the cold, cruel +print of some hideous newspaper. No man can fully appreciate the +faithfulness of our devoted animal co-workers until he sees a crucial +test applied. The quenchless, marvelous Mule emerges from the mire and +clay, with a whooping-cough wheeze, driven to preternatural exertions +by redoubled curses and quadrupled scourgings. + +His step is quick, short and grasping. The spirit inherited from some +remote Hambletonian antetype flames in his nostrils. He rings a fire +alarm, hoists the grand hailing sign of distress, and defiantly dashes +his toe-calks through to hard pan. He rushes down the high bluff, +over the muddy flat, across the cold stream, up the steep +bank--lashed, lathered and spurred. With a whisk of his tail that +scatters bullets of mud he springs to the tremendous task. His body is +squat to the earth at times, but his ears always point starward. Every +muscle hisses with the heat of the strain and every nerve is burning; +his whole frame quivers and smokes as he bursts into supremest effort +and brings his freightage to the goal, or dies in his tracks, a +speechless, unsung martyr to the cause. No burial, no monument, no +obituary. + +To the Army Mule in camp, if anywhere, rest, rations and felicity +should come. A surplus of excitement is injurious to the nerves, but +life wholly without an atmosphere is in peril from suffocation. Rest +is alleged to be the only unfailing antidote to Dr. Bright's widely +advertised kidney complaint. Camp is recreation in army service as +courting is the play spell of the soul. The farmers in politics, +dedicated to a maximum of talk and a minimum of toil, need no +proclamation from the governor bidding them hold a fast from work in +order to enjoy a feast of discussion. + +The free-lunch rounder, with pretzel crumbs on his mustache, loves +above all things to sit easy at his inn. Even the emancipated lady +prays earnestly for deliverance from the fatigues of the conservative, +innocent, purely platonic schottische. Consequently no blame can +justly attach to the worn and worried Mule for standing ever in +readiness to fall in with propositions for honorable repose. Beautiful +are his anticipations of a good time in camp; beautiful as a statue of +hammered brass, and as hollow. The hollowness results from the fact +that no reckoning was made of the hare-lipped despot at the other end +of the picket rope. + +Ten pounds of grain and thirty pounds of hay is the daily allowance. +Some pie-plant professor of an agricultural institute, with a +marked-down set of artificial eyebrows hung at oblique angles to his +nose, long ago figured it out on strict mathematical principles of +animal economy. The court records it and the law doth give it. Thrice +happy is the beast that gets it; happy, but rarer than Indians with +side whiskers and ideality. Straw, stalks, tent pins and cracker boxes +are his more reliable provender. These are reinforced with stray bites +now and then, when he can chew himself loose, from a private's +laundered and lively underwear drying on a limb, or from the cold +shoulder of a corporal of the guard. + +In the sweet, serene night watches, when slumber's chain had manacled +us, roving Mules may have rubbed noses while hatching a bleak and dark +conspiracy to massacre the brigade and plunder the forage train. But +it came to naught; possibly for lack of leadership. There was no +relief for the oppressed, defrauded Mule. No satiating food for him, +savory as Lyonaise potato softly tinctured with onion. No lollipop +confectionery for him, melting in the mouth like painted butter. Empty +is the nosebag, even as to plebeian oats; empty as the wit of +irreverent soldiers who josh the chaplain and gibe at the Mule. + +An agricultural inquirer once wrote to Horace Greeley asking if guano +was good to put on potatoes. The busy editor replied that it might do +for men whose taste had been vitiated by tobacco and rum, but for his +own eating he preferred gravy. This was the cranberry tart retort of +the illustrious journalist, with a tough undercrust of misconception, +it is true. The condiments for the Army Mule's camp banquet were not +of the spice spicy. He has clear memories of a voracity which created +wide vacuum in sundry greenswards, and played havoc with corn cribs +manifold. The voracity remains, but the swards and cribs are far, far +away. + +At spasmodic intervals a sympathetic warrior, having burned all the +top rails of an informally confiscated fence, will toss the juicy and +edible bottom rail to the pleading, omniverous Mule, residuary legatee +of camp-fires. This is good average food in times of internecine +strife, when so simple an article as pie is a precious prerogative. +But such well-flavored morsels are too uncertain for standard +sustenance. For shockingly protracted periods, he stands unfed, +neglected, receiving all suggestions with a squeal and a kick, while +the zephyrs disinfect his fur. Pending which, stark, grim skeletons of +all the barked and branchless trees within stretch of his tether +attest the final result of an attempt to adjust his Minnesota appetite +to his Andersonville rations. If watered twice a week he may vote +himself lucky; he has not even the surfeit of a teetotaler's wassail, +where water flows like wine. "A Mule feels chilly in July," says the +Talmud; if his temperature depends on the supply of internal fuel, +there is limited space for astonishment. + +Meanwhile an unsanctified teamster, with red hair and hare-lip, +blushing with innocence until his whiskers singe in the heat, enjoys +the encampment episode to the uttermost. In Constantinople public +opinion is gauged by the prevalence of nocturnal conflagrations, and +the number of hanged bakers decorating the street corners next +morning. But in camp there is no concentrated public opinion +sufficiently intense to mete out due retribution to the profligate +castigator of the fodderless, thirsty Mule. He sleeps on ample +bedding of good sweet hay, and has large store of gerrymandered corn +to exchange for toothsome luxuries. His tobacco is of the costliest +brand and he defiantly blows the froth of numerous beers from his +blasphemous lips. He carries a full purse and a steady nerve; also a +bomb-proof conscience void of offense. Bad medicine, he! + +The jocundities of life in camp we may gather _ad nauseam_ from the +romances of some of the professors of freehand drawing who enlisted as +army correspondents; but for purposes of authentic history these +narratives are worthless as second-hand champagne corks. The +jocularities referred to have no interest to the solemn, imperturbable +Mule save when he is an object of their malevolence. Then they are +more interesting than enjoyable. The swell imbecile carries an +umbrella under his arm through crowded streets until its tip is +garnished with the eye of some unfortunate fellow wayfarer; the man +who loses the eye fails to see the point of--the joke. + +The Mule is not much of a joker himself; but as a victim of practical +jokes, fine, funny or chestnutty, he has become widely celebrated. +His resentment of these preposterous hilarities, all of which are on +the _passé_ social code of roller rinks, has caused much of the +reputation for waspy temper which now attaches to him with the +tenacity of a bachelor girl to the state of single blissfulness. +Temper changes with status, as was ascertained by the enthusiast who +originally named his _fiancée_ Revenge because she was sweet, but now +that she is his wife calls her Delay because she is dangerous. + +The city man who would own a farm should have a good income well +assured elsewhere, for it will certainly be needed. The foolhardy +individual who proposes to play tricks on a mule should be well +buttressed with sound accident policies. Beware the irritated +quadruped! Look not into the red mouth of a wild Numidian lion; touch +not the royal Bengal tiger's remotest whisker-tip; avoid the little +black bull with an eye like a razor's edge; make no experiments with +the terminal facilities of the speechless, inscrutible Mule! + +His ways are past finding out; his kicks are incalculable, +inexplicable, incomprehensible. He sometimes allows patience to pile +up in ridges on his neck, while the battalions of wrath are debouching +from all quarters into his hoof. Then the eruption breaks out with +torpedo suddenness and with an energy of fury that rivals the +deafening roar which smites the aggregated ear of the magnificent +metropolis, when fire invades the wholesale district. + +Blessed is the nation whose annals are uneventful--America is safe +with fifteen million children in the public schools and three thousand +citizens to one soldier. Happy is the bride whom the sun shines on +whether matriculated at Ognotz or merely captivated at Topeka. Joyous +to the weary mechanic the picnic of his labor holiday, with its +lemonade, its orations, and its other things that lull to peaceful +slumber. Halcyon to the Army Mule are monotonous days in camp, when +they bring surcease of torment as well as toil; red-lettered if +therewithal be brought, by rare concatenation, such plethora of long +forage as drowns vicissitude in bright beatitude. In that case he +rounds out radiantly and within the cycle of a very few days develops +beyond recognition. His protrusions disappear like the vanishing lines +of a mineral lode. His rumps accumulate fat and his girth expands with +a facility that is amazing. His eye takes on a new gleam and his bray +acquires a fresh intonation. + +Moreover, he is speedily transformed into a bold aristocrat. He +cultivates style and assumes airs of conscious superiority equal to +the contemptuous sniff of a Fifth avenue dog who has smelled some +chance passer-by two or three grades below par. His future may be +uncertain as a Spaniard's veracity or a Frenchman's paternity; but he +lives in the glad and glowing present, with the nonchalance of a +Russian official hunting for fragments of the czar by torchlight, +after a popular demonstration. + +Of the Mule in battle, lean is the record's exploitation. There is +little danger that his renown in that line will ever be subversive of +our liberties and other luxuries. Right is forever on the scaffold, +wrong forever on the make, as of old. But the placid, benevolent Mule +never takes up arms against either party--our quartermaster's returns +of uncounted thousands "lost in action" to the contrary +notwithstanding. It even seems difficult to secure credit for such +service as he actually rendered. His occasional sporadic work in +artillery teams is wholly forgotten. His frequent spurts to the +flaming front with ammunition wagons is entirely ignored. + +A common, peaceful explosion of powder magazines at home not only +shatters all the windows in the neighborhood, but also shatters the +faith of people for miles around in the doctrine of resurrection of +the body. So the peaceful nature of the Mule is fatal to any +accumulation of reputation bubbles, where bayonets bristle and +saltpeter burns. Were he ten times the tin-clad child of havoc that he +is, the florid, hare-lipped arbiter of his destinies would see to it +carefully that, barring accidents, his opportunities for responding to +long rolls should be few. + +The Chicago socialists tendered an olive branch to the police made of +gas-pipe and charged with nitroglycerine in a highly persuasive state +of concentration. But when the red and riotous fume of the +bomb-throwers' breath permeated the haymarket like a pestilence, no +army Mule mingled with the medley of frowzy trousers. No more do we +hear of him at Shiloh or Champion Hill or Cedar Creek. + +For offensive purposes the Mule was, in general, harmless as a United +States frigate or a divinity student at a bean-bag festival, or the +ghost of a goose, white, downy and clamorous. The valedictorian of the +last class at the Keeley cure, permeated with a variety of virtuous +joint and several resolutions, could scarcely be more docile. Even the +reproachful Confederate smokehouse could not shake its gory padlock at +the stainless, unimpeachable Mule--although he carried a jimmy equal +to most emergencies, he could, as a rule, readily establish an alibi. +When fodder is really in the shock, and frost is ready to be cleft +from pumpkins with a snow-plow, then such free tubers as have been +produced in sweet charity's name on the Pingree plan should be +harvested without procrastination; delays are perilous at that season +of the year. The evil effects of the shock, however, can be minimized, +by feeding the fodder, in advance, to the harmless, appreciative Mule. +Forewarned is four times armed, or more. + +Non-combatants and impedimenta compose the rear of an army when it is +in action. Here assemble great drinkers of alcohol, and vast eaters, +who measurably justify Germany's subsequent discrimination against the +American hog--all of whom let concealment like a chinch-bug prey on +their damaged cheeks, their necks, meanwhile, being given over to the +ravages of the army flea. Here in secure serenity mobilize numerous +excellent subjects for the romantic young woman who yearns for a +lovely debauchee to reform. Here congregate cooks, commissaries and +sutlers--this last with a sage-brush tinge of disappointment in his +aspect, and a Jenness-Miller cut of trousers on his limbs. Here +recreate skulkers who simulate heroes, and sneaks in the garbage of +soldiers, all cumberers of the ground, like a prophet gone to seed in +his own country. Here gather men of Trilby feet and mighty thirst, +who are riotous with repartee, but intensely hostile to all manner of +soft beverage; also cowards, inveterate as the upward tendency of +tartar emetic; moreover, quartermasters' clerks, spouting +bloodthirstiness like a congressional candidate, or some other gas +well; likewise, here in the rear, are mule wagons, mule pack trains, +mule teams, mule drivers and Mules. + +When retreating or outflanked the order is varied and rear becomes +front instanter. Then unthinkable confusion reigns. A financial +catastrophe brought on by forty-cent wheat and ten-cent statesmanship +looking at facts through a long-distance binocle, is bad enough. An +explosion of the swear tank for a thought distillery in the higher +realms of journalism is even worse, if possible. But when a Mule dam +breaks, the thundering reverberation of its tumultuous hoofs is a +resonant forecast of pandemonium rampant. Vain and futile then all +ardent aspiration for such quiet as ensues when the wicked cease from +borrowing and the female elocutionist soars and bores no more! Our +cavalry out-posts were broken doses of soothing syrup for the nervous +flanks of the infantry, and often stampeded the front line by their +too precipitate retrogression. + +A stampede of Mule teams to the rear had all the _spirituel_ features +and picturesque complications of an arrangement of tariff schedules on +the principle of local option. Attempts at control were hopeless as +piloting a national campaign when the American voter is on the +rampage. It was a chaotic conglomeration of convulsive uproar, +sufficient to whirl down any hope of glory with a sickening slump. The +gentleman from out of town, who, in spite of conspicuous warning, +blows out the gas, makes his exit from sublunary strife in enviable +quietude. No such privileges are extended to the end man of a Mule +rush. In exclusive social circles, the dress may be a dream, and the +bill a nightmare, but in the mixed companionship we are contemplating, +this impromptu display is a veritable delirium tremens of undelineated +horror. + +Frederick the Great shouted to a fleeing battle-straggler, "Wretch, +wouldst thou live forever?" and paralyzed him. The unabashed army +teamster, with a sliced upper lip and hair æsthetically matching his +sorrel Mule, sprinting along the broad highway of wrath, pitched +downward at an angle of forty-five degrees toward perdition, would +have admitted the soft impeachment, and pursued his flight, lashing, +blaspheming. He may have been, at home, as consistent a Baptist as +ever yoked a steer, but for this occasion all rules are suspended by +unanimous consent, and precedent tumbles headlong. The coincidence of +a florid girl and a pale horse is always exasperating, at least to the +girl; a hurried retreat in the presence of a menacing enemy, naturally +exasperates to full pitch of desperation the belligerent boss of the +nimble, obedient Mule. + +In numberless miscellaneous episodes of a military sphere, the Army +Mule was marked high as to deportment. Though of somewhat irregular +character, even verging at times on the diabolical, he emulated the +standards of the officer and the gentleman. We can afford to mix a +little sentiment with our matter of fact. We can afford to drop a +tear when the object is worth it. We can afford a note of eulogy under +like circumstances, even to an Arizona cayuse fattened on bunch-grass +to the rotundity of a prickly pear. + +Yes, certainly, business thrift is commendable, but when it comes to +crossing the lightning-bug with the honey-bee so that the latter can +work at night, we draw the line. Sentiment aside, there is a measure +of truth in the averment that the Army Mule and the army bean put down +the rebellion. The dancing diplomat, with his twisted comprehensions +and his addled complacencies may not appreciate it. Such an one, +having never associated with the speechless, unspeakable Mule, nor, +indeed, had any legitimate business transactions with him, may +possibly still assert that the lion is king of beasts. Far from it! +The lion will serve as a freak, children half price; but for steady +days' works, for genuine _aplomb_ and musical dexterity of wide +longitudinal range, the courteous, dignified Mule was preeminently +peerless. + +To hospital and guard-house, Siamese bugbears of honorable service, +he was a stranger. It was never necessary to detail a fatigue squad to +police his ears. The worthy chaplain, fresh from green pastures of +civil life, where he fed the juicy lambs and clubbed the tough old +rams of the flock, found no occasion for reproof to the silent, +orthodox Mule. + +No venial dereliction ever subjected him to stoppage of pay or +reduction to the ranks, even when the fodder that he longed for never +came. No court-martial, reeking with pungent odors of staple and fancy +sutlers' goods, ever met to arbitrate his predestinated destiny. You +might tie his tail like a pretzel, or pound his bray in a mortar, yet +would not his serenity depart from him. The proneness of his voice +apparatus to go off at half cock unfitted him for crooked works of +strategy--he could never be relied on either to "lie" in wait or +"steal" on an enemy. How gratefully he turns with a maple-sap thaw in +his aspect, when his neck has been stripped of the blistering harness; +how joyously his eager nostrils sniff the forage from afar. Oh! +grateful, melodious Mule! + +A zoological riddle, offspring of amalgam and miscegen as +unclassifiable as a severe case of Debs aggravated by symptoms of +Coxey and Altgeld, he had, nevertheless too much animal self-respect +to ever incur censure for getting humanly drunk. While the giddy whirl +of current events whirls even more giddily, let us remember that +virtue in his favor. + +Man's frailty darkens many a sad, sad story--sad as a volume of the +Congressional Record; the Army Mule's frailties were few, his +conquests many. He was amiable after all; even General Butler, the +most illustrious heavenly twin of war times, conceded that much. His +temper was by no means of the cactus order, generally speaking. He +chooses grudges with rare discrimination; it is always safe to suspect +the man that a Mule hates. Patient in toil; silent in suffering; +cogent and cautious as the rule in Shelly's case; serene amid direst +confusion and alarm; heedless of ancient sarcasms decaying or +petrified, he was in no sense a grumbler, and in no unpardonable sense +a kicker. His hours of feed were unstable as the advertising rates of +a poor but honest journalist, yet he was lighter of heart than a +newly married gent rushing the oil can to a corner grocery. + +If to his straight enduring back a mountain howitzer was sometimes +strapped and fired without unslinging, he accepted the indignity, went +to grass with the recoil, and rose for the next inning, unruffled as +an expert witness emerging from the labyrinth of a hypothetical +question--oh! dimless, unknowable Mule! + +A retired tobacconist adopted for the motto of a fresh coat of arms to +be emblazoned on his carriage panels: "_Quid Rides?_" Why do you +laugh? After a Saint Petersburg assassination episode it is +comparatively immaterial whether you call the widow czarina or +imperatritza. In these peaceful days, Lincoln's speech at Gettysburg, +translated into the jingling speech of Chinamen, and even into the +jabbering Japanese, which rivals the contortions of the kinetoscope, +opens a new evangel to their narcotic, Oriental souls. Sherman's +marvelous retreat from Atlanta to Savannah is studied by the +strategists of deepest Afgahnistan; alleged busts of John A. Logan +are worshiped as idols in innermost Kamchatka, and spicy narratives we +told to credulous marines are the basis of classic fiction on the +Congo. + +Hence nothing is frivolous that lends an added array to the most +luminous chapter of contemporary history--of any history. While in the +matter of beer, the foreigner unquestionably pays the tax, or most of +it, yet as between natives, white-colored may lose and black may win; +'tis hard to tell. Make no mistake as to the intrinsic, historic +importance of the forgotten, unforgetting Mule! + +The empty skeptic may come forth with fire in his eye and boiled egg +on his whiskers seeking to overwhelm us with the gorgeousness of his +gush or the sumptuousness of his gall. To empty skeptics, or shallow +scoffers, these simple annals of a lowly career may seem fruitless as +that famous sour apple tree that failed to yield its promised harvest; +hopeless as the perpetual revolutions of a bob-tailed dog chasing the +vacant space where the tail should be; tasteless as fried smelts; +thankless as opening a mint sauce to the free coinage of lamb. The +chappie fellows who flutter at functions and titter at teas may scoff +or scorn. But the eye of calm philosophy ought to beam kindly on a +faithful effort to weave unconsidered trifles of truth into a wreath +of earned, though meager and belated justice, so that even the +wayfaring man, though full, need score no errors. + +The speechless, unquenchable Mule was a real factor in those events we +love to commemorate. It is asserted that only one man now survives who +helped whip Lee at Gettysburg, and then marched triumphantly with +Grant into conquered Vicksburg next day. But the Army Mule did both, +and more! He went out with the mob of pinfeather volunteers, who spent +their first callow days principally in vociferous "swearing in," and +their sappy nights at discordant drills in patriotic minstrelsy. + +With less recognition than even the barnstormers' encore of addled +carrot and frumescent cabbage, he helped wet-nurse our infant +regiments when they were just getting able to sit up and gaze vacantly +around. With a prodigious faculty in his heels for putting strange +faces in heaven, he held himself in commendable subjection while +incipient legions evolved themselves out of chaos. He passed on, +beaten with many stripes, to that multitudinous aggregation called an +army, where human atoms, swarming and wriggling to the music of brass +bands, like agile mites in a nugget of archaic cheese, united to give +him the frigid shake with a glad hand. The girl, photographed for her +lover with her vail down, that his sister might not recognize the +likeness, was a miracle of modest artifice; thrice proficient in +meritorious cunning, the unassuming, artful Mule. + +Unequally yoked in servitude to a cowboy taskmaster, unlovable as the +venerable Smallweed's brimstone, blackbeetle helpmeet, also redheaded, +hare-lipped and stuffed with nitric nine-cornered blasphemy, he plodded +painfully on. Stark and indurate like an Adirondack meadow enameled +with trap rock, he plodded rigidly on. Anhungered and athirst, with no +credit at the sutler's, on he plodded, through hot, white clouds of +drastic turnpike dust, or red and hideous depths of gummy mud, +dragging incredible burdens of those indispensable supplies that +smooth war's wrinkled front and quell its clamoring emptiness. When he +diffidently claimed his share of such supplies, he was given the +marble heart or the dry and dreadful laugh--yea, the juiceless, +mechanical laugh, with daggers in it. + +Oh! liberty, what humbugs are nurtured in thy name! Prodded and flayed +until his staggering knees, his welt-fretted haunches and his bloody +nostrils placarded his agony, the Army Mule accepted the wideopen +policy of his castigator and crunched his barmecide feasts, lacerated +and scarified, hoping the brighter day. + +Like the intoxicating bewilderment of a reception ball, decorated with +roses, lilies, smilax, palms and electric illumination, come back to +us those grateful reminiscences, crowded with apparitions of the +maligned, mellifluous Mule. Leashed and shackled, foodless in the +drizzly, sleety camp, when our quarrel with destiny was an octave +higher than usual, his cheerful night cries, welcome as suicides to a +coroner, exorcised the blue devils of our dolorous solitude. + +While fumes of our priceless coffee floated pleasantly pungent like +the cedar aroma of a moth closet, the tuneful echoes of those night +cries floated also--Mule answering unto Mule in fond, fraternal +recognition. Baptized with fire, adjacent or remote, even if only with +its rumors and reflections, the pattering skirmish shots of distant +action, he at length became a veritable veteran. Like a +thrice-rejected suitor finally made happy, he had been well shaken +before taken. And now, a warrior bold, seasoned to war's alarms, he +could, upon occasion, thirst or seem to thirst for gore, with all the +mad ferocity of a sheep smitten with hydrophobia, or a camel charged +with nitroglycerine. Duplicating the awkwardness of man's debut into +polite society delayed until past the meridian of life, this ardor of +the mettled, military Mule, if late, was touchingly conspicuous. + +Marching triumphant home, kneesprung but irrepressible, his large, +luxuriant ears were tremulous with the hysterical emotions of the +hour, and his double-turreted voice was loudest in the wild acclaim of +victory. Long years he lived, it may be, wearing on knightly shoulder +a proud insignia of his service, the indellible brand of honor, which +no humility of avocation could degrade nor purse-proud aristocracy of +money bags, the basest known on earth, contemn with impunity. And when +the end comes, as come it must, even to the longevous Mule, then +speechless and unspeakable at last and eternally, the flag under which +he toiled might be put to worse uses than that of covering his +emaciated frame as it is trundled off to the glue-factory. + +I mean no disrespect to the flag. + + * * * * * + +That flag is our flag! Man has always and everywhere sought in +bannered blazonries the symbol of a sovereign power. Everywhere and in +all times some emblem of a might which confessed no mightier has led +embattled hosts to triumph, and taught heroic spirits how sweet it is +to die. The banner becomes the crystallization of the nation's life, +and the embodiment of her glory, until fighting beneath it is +patriotism, dying for it is immortality, and treachery to it is the +blackest of crimes. Our flag of beauty and renown, descending to us +from stainless sires by a shining pathway, pure as that down which the +holy grail slipped from the opening heavens, won a new lustre in the +hands of our generation. Overlapping each other in the crowding +profusion of their golden legends, every stripe of our banner is +weighty with its battle roll, even as each silver star burns the prime +jewel in a crown of valorous achievement. + +Donelson and Shiloh and Vicksburg; Nashville, and Murfreesboro, and +Kenesaw; Winchester and South Mountain and Antietam; Gettysburg and +the Wilderness and Appomatox--these and five hundred more. How the +deathless names gild the resplendent folds of the proud ensign of +liberty! Flag of the continent, rivers and seas; flag of a reunited +country; flag of the glorious past and of the dimless future; flag of +freedom; flag of the world! + + Washed in the blood of the brave and the blooming, + Snatched from the altars of insolent foes; + Burning with star-fires, but never consuming, + Flash its broad ribbons of lily and rose. + +Let us never cease to cherish the remembrance of the days when we +followed it and fought for it. Among the soft, delicious echoes of +those days which float booming across the ocean of memory will +sometimes come, whether we greet it kindly or coldly, a sunny +recollection of the seductive wink, the tuneful bray and the electric +kick of the Army Mule. + + + + +THE SUTLER + +II + + +Now the time has arrived when this matter of the Sutler should be +brought into its true alignment. His status should be differentiated +and embalmed in due longitudinal sections of small pica. It should be +finally settled whether he was the reincarnation of a seventeen-year +locust, or only a pansy blossom, with lips all mute like a thinking +star in the back row of a ballet. An excess of incertitude also +prevails as to his rank and historic area. This latter at least should +be staked out and cross-sectioned for the annals that portray scenes +when heroes' heels were on the shore of Maryland, my Maryland; which +annals are expected to go shimmering down festive centuries clothed in +the perennial freshness of St. Shamrock's day in the morning. + +The Sutler was born, not made. That is to say, his tendencies were +ingrained, perhaps hereditary, even in cases where his selection was +nepotic or accidental. Once he was purer than beautiful snow, it may +be, but even then he was a Sutler in embryo. And when the beautiful +snow was gone; when gentle spring had sprung and the croak of the +crocus was heard in the land; when the premature robin, wearing a sore +throat and lung-pads, came with hoarse notes whistling of peace when +there was no peace, because Sumter had surrendered--then Sutlers +blossomed out with the peach trees, to bear miscellaneous fruitage +later on. + +Army service gave technical nomenclature to many familiar avocations +and characteristics. Smoked halibut by any other designation would be +a thirst-provoker just the same. But some of these military titles +were very effective disguises. The ecclesiastical monitor, from spur +to plume a star of sanctimony, was called the chaplain. The +pharmaceutical tenderloin, with a razor edge to his voice at sick-call +ceremonies, was called a surgeon. The district messenger boy was +called an adjutant, and could upon occasion play a notable poker game +with the able assistance of his sleeve. The hearse thronged with +blood-curdling Lady Macbeth suggestions was called an ambulance, and +its driver, sure of dry lodgings, ranged high up in the Four Hundred. +The speechless indispensable instrument of transportation, which +performed most of the work and received none of the pay or glory, was +called a mule, with various picturesque prefixes. The sergeant-major, +noted for vast acrobatic ability and imposing length of leg, was +called--everywhere. The colonel was often called a ---- fool; the +quartermaster was usually called a ---- rascal; and the real rascal +was sometimes known as the Sutler. The blanks represent profanity, +which I abhor. + +Before those subsequent halcyon days when it had been demonstrated by +experience that the beneficent and plenteous sweet potato supplied +the precise nutritive elements best calculated to evolve serene +contentment and epicurean bliss; while yet each soldier was a voluble +and self-satisfied critic of tactics, strategy, logistics, finance and +diplomacy--then a Sutler's supplies were deemed absolutely essential +to the successful prosecution of war. But even then a measurable +discernment prevailed. Positive subtle, comparative and superlative +Sutler, was an acceptable etymologic formula in many varieties of +North American broken English. That was a period famous for the wild +coinage of phraseological vacuums into available linguistic currency, +and for the mad massacre of innocent idioms. If this formula is +incorrect it should be promptly amended by some of the back-easty +opinion architects who now lead public sentiment with a stub-pointed +pen, in long-distance controversies with hired prevaricators of a +capitalistic press out in Idaho, such as write their articles on birch +bark and wear a coat only on legal holidays. We can not always trust +the future, especially at our age. Corrections should be made +now--the able editors need not all speak simultaneously. + +The Sutler kept, or at least tried to keep, alleged articles of virtu +for sale to the "boys," so-called, meaning the soldiers. With warm +hearts, cold feet, flexible stomachs, bashful consciences, and a +perpetual feeling of weariness in the mouth, these "boys" constantly +environed him from zenith to nadir and return. Selling was hard as +teaching silver-tongued statesmen that cleanliness and godliness are +contiguous. Keeping was harder than selling, and getting pay was +hardest of all. Thus beset with hardships his lot rivaled in +cheerlessness that of the scratcher in politics, with a wasp-waisted +brain, a protuberant rectitude, a self-lubricating egotism, and +exactly the minimum of soul that serves in lieu of salt to save his +carcass from decay. What with shortage and leakage and stealage by +pretended friends, often self-convicted like a young man with an +indentation of corset steel in his cuffs, on the one hand, and +imminent risk of capture by an alert enemy on the other hand, the +Sutler's stock in trade was rather more uncertain than the salivary +aim of a sociable Virginian. + +The causes, incidents and results of the war in which he was a +stockholder with personal liability, though not a managing director, +were momentous to him as to all mankind, including such as still gnash +their teeth over him and revile his memory. It was a turning point in +the progress of a race; the culmination of a long series of political +events; the breaking down of an extended line of political compromises +futile as an attempt to combine finance with faro; the upheaval of a +mountainous aggregation of suppressed political forces; the explosion +of a mighty reservoir of hidden political combustibles; and in its +attendant events, as well as its remote consequences, it was as +tremendous a revolution as any which freights the records of human +destiny. This must be remembered to the Sutler's credit as he drifts +off into the subsequently. + +It was a vast army. Why, its brass buttons alone weighed over a +thousand tons! No Sutler was ever drafted into that army. Hence no +Sutler ever hired a substitute and afterward suffered reproach for +failure to weave immortelles around his sarcophagus. He could not wait +for the draft; the last thing he desired was a substitute. He wanted +to go himself. He volunteered early and often, with visible alacrity +and enthusiasm. He frequently tumbled over himself in his eagerness to +move the previous question, and blasphemed his own folly with +plunging-shot fierceness a little later. As the aborigine exchangeth +wampum for small-pox, silk hat and delirium tremens, so the sanguine +Sutler often parted with peace of mind for very inadequate +consideration. Rosy were his dreams of rolling, gloating wealth; cruel +his awakening to the paralyzing verity. Frailty, thy name is fortune! +Only an expert can distinguish between an asset and a liability. + +Acquit him in advance of hypocrisy and thus clarify the record. Money +was his avowed objective, the richly upholstered goal of his +solicitude,--money, even if merely accumulated for division among the +lawyers retained to break a will, as too frequently eventuates. For +him one crowded shower of glorious gold was worth a whole aurora +borealis of golden glory, earned at thirteen dollars a month and half +rations. Others might fight battles or write ballads for his country; +he was content to peddle its "Thomas and Jeremiah" fluid in flat tin +cans, surreptitious, villainous, and expensive. Others might stand +like Sheridan at Stone's river, holding his division amidst a cyclone +of shotted flame; he only asked a front seat at the paytable. Others +might manage the finances of a nation and temper wind to shorn shams; +he only petitioned that Sutler's checks be made full legal tender in +his military division. Others might yearn or pretend to yearn for +bleeding wounds and storied busts; sufficient unto him was two hundred +per cent. profit on cove oysters of antiquity. Like a fashionable +belle, his heart was always in the right place--the market place. +Honor and fame from no such conditions rise. + +Pardonable then was his wrath when edibles and potables disappeared +unpaid for into parts unknown save to the Latin tongue, whence they +could be recovered only by the gentle persuasion of a stomach pump. +Thus the yellow coinage of his rapt preliminary visions faded +incomprehensibly into nothingness. Thus he emulated the survivors of a +cholera epidemic who only hear in happy dreams the footsteps of +return. Give him air! He had cause for chagrin equal to that of the +Senegambian colony with a new coon in town and no heat hot enough to +roast a 'possum. He had a right to grow apoplectic with fury and +devastate the camp like a commercial maelstrom or a political +avalanche. He righteously resented; he piously protested. He were a +craven else, and the heir and ancestor of cravens. Do you laugh at +him? So did Sarah laugh at the angels, but they laughed last. + +That the Sutler's gallantry in action was specially exemplified in a +"charge," is a chestnut bald and hoary with unchallenged longevity. It +is one of those remarks that vegetate through a sequence of drowsy +centuries, to reappear during each spring season of chronology with a +masterful reach that brushes cobwebs from the skies and topples +chimneys down. Representative war-humorists who ride astride the +whistling winds, spurting effluent sluices of word-wash, and typical +war orators sorely afflicted with engorgement of vocabulary, combine +to exploit this moldy scintillation, joint product of brain sweat and +elbow unguent. They talk through their chapeaux. Every man is a +quotation from his forefathers. Every pun is a quotation from +paleocrystic cerebration. As vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the +eyes, so is misprint witticism to the properly instructed +intelligence. It is wicked to laugh at a bishop; it is criminal to +laugh at jokeless jocularity. He who can separate eloquence from the +gastric gases and distinguish between the sharps and flats of +_facetiæ_, suppressing his intellectual impatience at the unbridled +linguistic solecism, may pertinently ask: Wherefore not? To charge was +human, but to collect was sublime; always difficult, often impossible. +The credit a Sutler was obliged to give was often as long as a plea in +chancery. He was the old man not afraid of eternity; and the +prospective extended term of payment, if happily payment should ever +come at all, was a prime element in adjusting margins of profit. His +sole competitor in this line of making a charge is said to be the +modern plumber--he of the slow step and quick respiration redolent of +raw onions--he of the small tenderness and large bill. But that is a +chestnut musty as the other. Boycott both of them! Only a man of most +stomachful and gunpowder instincts, a warrior and a blood-quaffer from +aforetime, could long survive the rueful infliction of either. + +Although war without a Sutler would have been a barren ideality, worse +than politics without the negro, or the free coiner, or the +prohibitionist not taxed, yet even with him there was a not infrequent +flaw in its felicities. The fact may even at this late day be duly +verified by numerous surviving old soldiers, that when he was wanted +he was seldom there, and when he was there he seldom had what was +wanted. Milk for babes; skim milk for pigs and calves; buttermilk for +dyspeptic opulence. Beverages more pungent, searching and responsive +were in demand at the Sutler's tent. He trafficked within complex +circumscriptions; always threatened with craft and rapacity; always +perspiring with fear like the marble statues in Rome at the approach +of Hannibal; always liable to be welcomed with bloody hands to an +inhospitable calamity. No country cross-roads grocer's assortment was +his, reeking with pestiferous perfume of salt fish and sauerkraut; +filling the air with a duchess of limburger reminiscence, which was +liable to cause the effigy of freedom on her mountain height to +experience a very tired feeling. The etiquette of war and the eternal +laws of military necessity governed his movements and halts, his +stations and stock, his buying and selling. None of the syrupy +sweetness and languid trickle of spring poetry voiced his experiences, +tempting to practices incompatible with the professions of one who +desires to lead an earnest life. The list of his permissibles embraced +a varied miscellany of _non-desiderata_, vast as the outfit of the +greatest show on this or any other earth. The catalogue of contraband +exhibited numberless objects of universal allurement. Peradventure his +lockers held six gross of pale pills for pink people (no buyer); +meantime his patrons clamored for cheese, cheese, when there was no +cheese; not a microbe. Marvel not that wrath accumulated and men +bewailed--some men never do get through teething. + +Thus the irony of his fortune was more bitter than the jollity of a +wake, with the corpse lying in state next door. While popular articles +were quickly sold or stolen, the residuary stuff, howling abominations +which none would buy or steal, lingered flyblown or fermenting. They +were satirized and flouted by the dullest varlets in the regiment, who +were notably afflicted with Ananias-and-Sapphira paresis, and to whom +life's solemnest solemnities were a grimace and a grin. 'Tis ever +thus, for human nature has been the same since the earliest ages began +developing a monogram mania, when the sons of the stars first +fascinated the daughters of men. Every true and honorable mob always +holds in scornful contempt each simplest symbol of constituted +authority, especially when constituted by itself. Even so, all genuine +soldiers felt obliged to fleer and jeer at everything hidden or +concealed in that cavern of despair wherein our hero reigned. They +gave him the marble heart in the loud three-em dash newspaper style of +emphasis. They swore by the dorsal fins of a planked white fish that +he was a paroxysmal, flamboyant fraud, and showered on him weird +variations of the standard oriental malediction; may his countenance +be inverted diagonal-wise, and donkeys browse on his grandmother's +grave! They floated him to perdition hourly on the brimstone vapors of +their anathema, and soon beckoned him back again in the renaissance of +their whetted appetite. Then he assumed a fictitious importance, +sufficient indeed in more recent times to have almost entitled him to +arrive at a New York hotel. + +Probably no Sutler's stock was ever submitted to the critical and +crucial operation of an inventory, presided over by an expert +accountant's freshly laundered mustache, and cold, cruel, thin-lipped +smile. The variety of such an inventory would be as attractive as that +of the village landlord's menu--ram, lamb, sheep and mutton. Its +metaphysics would be unique as a bi-metallic understudy; its +mathematics only less recondite than a census of the baccilli encysted +in the buzzard's beak on a standard dollar, mintage of 'eighty-one. An +exhaustive attempt, at the present day, to remedy this omission would +certainly involve serious risk of undue spiritual exhilaration and +intellectual intoxication. But a partial list, achieved at any +specified stage of a vigorous campaign, would have read something like +this: + +Wooden combs and Mexican spurs. + +Gutta-percha bivalves (cove). + +Pretzels--prophetic of the hard, hard times which marked an era of +Hoke Smith and Dink Botts statesmanship. + +Effete cigars, bunch-grass filling, wrapped in genuine Havana onion +leaves at Wethersfield, in the state of Connecticut. + +Plug tobacco advanced in ossification. + +Smoking ditto, premonitory of asbestos; infinite in capacity for +provocation; imitating in incombustibility the sullen defiance of a +dead, cold epigram. + +Epsom salts. + +Smoked herring, also salt. + +Gingerbread, composted chiefly of sawdust, coal slack, tar, syrup and +chopped feed. + +Joke books, solemn as the summersault of the trick elephant in his +dotage. + +Cookies, tough enough to be handed down as heirlooms to the Weary +Waggleses of futurity. + +Rancid sardines, to be swallowed fin and scale, head and tail. + +Pistol cartridges, watch keys, jack-knives, pills, and lead pencils +conspicuous chiefly for brittleness. + +Bologna sausages of the conglomerate era, petrified; like our glorious +Union, invincible and indivisible. + +Engine-turned pickles, submerged in carbolic acid and frosted with +vitriol crystals; positively antiscorbutic. + +Incohesive tooth-brushes cut loose from their base of supplies. + +Long clay pipes after the form æsthetically affected by the honest +Hollander, bibulous, amphibious and narcotic. + +Dry figs and wormy raisins, savory as the juice of hard tack or +tent-pin syrup. + +Anonymous liquid perdition in sneaking disguises, which, judged by its +taste, was a cheap grade of _spiritus strychniti_, but judged by its +price was molten pearl diluted with dissolved diamond. + +Sundries, etc., etc. + +Supposed necessaries of luxurious military existence some of these, +more or less urgent even when subsisting on the enemy. In that case +the conversion by assimilation of Confederate provender into Yankee +bone and sinew was a delicious, romantic, patriotic, praiseworthy +function. The patriots rather enjoyed this process, but they welcomed +assistance from the foregoing catalogue. + +Many articles were purchasable only in those _post_-pay-day periods +when the center of financial gravity had been shifted by the +exigencies of chuck-a-luck and old sledge from many pockets to one. It +is an eminently usable list, resources permitting. Few of the +impracticable inutilities of dollar stores or charity bazaars lift +here their suspected forms, requiring us to exhaust all statutory and +common-law remedies against conspiracy to do great bodily harm. Few of +the frabbles are seen which adorn and dignify the dress-suit breakfast +given by smirking domestic snobs to a titled foreign fraud, +unintelligible as a Blavatsky theosophist. Yet even these, to the +insatiate askers of the bivouc, would never quite suffice. Do what he +could, the Sutler was ever fated to get himself disliked. A boy is a +series of accidents at best. Some of the recruits in their haste to +enlist forgot to provide themselves with a girl to leave behind. Those +persons, unnerved by the bewildering entanglements of Hardee's +tactics, and with no restorative compensations, were never satisfied. +They were iron-jawed steam-talkers of calamity, perpetually assailing +the walls of rebellion with huge explosions of wrath, and the flaps of +the Sutler's tent with the roar of their grumbling. Deafening was +their clamor for some absent staple to which distance lent the +deceptive enchantment of a dining-car menu; deep their dismay that it +was not held perennially on tap. Providence, assisted by timely hints +from the wagon master, sometimes brought the supply trains within +speaking distance by flag signal. But no discoverable influence ever +succeeded in keeping a Sutler's stock up to high-water mark of +gustatory demand. And all was in the ultimate cooked down to dire +alternative of buy (or steal) and have, or do without and gnaw a file +and swear. + +As a rule the radiant and responsive Sutler embarked on his voyage +militant with more or less capital and credit to back up the spirit of +acquisitiveness which possessed him with all its quenchless +inflammation. They were either his own, or that of the silent partner +who procured his appointment, mayhap a modest and mouse-colored +statesman from the remote suburbs, but whose identity was a secret +between himself and high heaven. Both capital and credit were prone to +evanescence equal to that of the pungent delicacy called quinine, sole +sworn antidote to innumerable gastric plagues. They oozed as oozed +insurgent hopes when Vicksburg fell, and the Confederacy, like the +vail of Solomon's temple, was rent in twain. A balance sheet after one +year's multiplication of tribulation, if the victim managed to survive +that long, would usually disclose, on the one side, liabilities to the +full extent of capital plus credit as aforesaid, the latter perhaps +pitted with very large small-pox scars. On the other side was an array +of dubious assets, embracing chiefly a tattered tent, a shattered +wagon and a battered team, five hundred pounds of scorned sundries, +sour and fusty, together with a fat ledger-full of "charges" against +the killed, wounded and missing, who by a mysterious fatality had been +his largest if not his only patrons. Hence this vexation that made him +say things innocent youth should not be permitted to hear. Hence those +tears, scalding even the nickel-steel armor of his cheeks. Therefore +those sobs, soulful as if wrung from the viscera of a sixteen-dollar +melodeon. Who hath hoarseness of voice? The tearful penitent afflicted +with mouth-gout and knee-failure on the morning after a debauch; he +speaks in muffled tones suggestive of a chastening headache. Who hath +redness of eyes? Surely he that tarryeth long over a Sutler's trial +balance, consecrated to the apotheosis of infinitesimals. + +The Sutler was subject to a military discipline varying from the +fierce precision of a Springfield rifle to the grotesque, picturesque +and variegated eccentricities of an Austrian musket. He ranked a +trifle lower than a mule, but a fraction higher than a corporal. In +that principally, if mislaid or lost in action, he did not need to be +officially accounted for in the returns like a mule, and would have +slightly better prospects than a corporal of posthumous mutilation as +to cognomen in the telegrams. The law recognized him and orders +shielded him. That was theory. The veterans jeered at him as at the +inexpressibly uncouth antics of the drafted raw disciple; everybody +kicked and cursed and plundered him. That was practice. The difference +was palpable as a headlight scarfpin; startling as the butcher's bill +after a charge on repeating rifle pits; significant as the evolution +of a human female form divine from cowskin frock and burlap leggins of +semi-savagery to high-shouldered polka-dot robings of advanced +civilization--further exalted with a laudable ambition to improve the +breed of pug puppies. + +The Sutler had no status on parade, review or inspection. In the small +tinkle and smear of preparatory smatter which preluded these symbolic +mummeries, grewsome as tableaux of Chicago option matrimony (three +years with the privilege of five), he was totally ignored. He was out +of date like the hot biscuit of our ancestors with its yellow +saleratus pungency--an auriferous bichloride of alkali. He was +forgotten; full satisfaction guaranteed. When the long wavy or +waveless tangent of bayonets, rustless or rusty as the case might be, +stood forth aligned by a tempestuous adjutant with gestures mysterious +and masonic, the unobtrusive Sutler, clothed in clouds of +invisibility, affronted no tenderness of occult proprieties by any +tangible revelation. He was out of sight, like the costumes of +Tyrolean peasantry, variegated with macaroni braidings. He was +absent, conferring perhaps with some ragged Haggard from Coxeyville; +terms private and no questions asked. When ambidextrous battalions +broke by right of companies to the rear into column, and, emulating +the conscious mastery of a Sampson hiving his mellifluous swarm in the +lion's lordly breast, swept past the statuesque chief of review with +resistless swing and strides invincible, he marched not! He sat in +seclusion like the stage manager of a bicycle tournament; he rested in +abeyance, scorched with scorn and broiling on hot epithets, in the +stratified attitude of a listener trying to hear himself cogitate; he +waited patiently, vibrating from gay to grave, from saucy to sincere; +he lingered; no presents, no flowers. When the reckless inspector +snapped hammers and jingled rammers and squinted inquisitively into +muskets' murderous mouths, our friend the Sutler, profoundly versed in +the preciousness of cautiousness, was nowhere seen. There was no +hayseed in his brain; there were no flies on his intellect. With just +enough body, perhaps, to serve as pretext for a soul to stay on +earth, his great head was crowded from pit to dome with prudence. He +had read of premature explosions and was satisfied; he had no wish to +be wounded by an accidental discharge of his duty; to him eyesight was +a poem and each finger a benediction; he was brave to recklessness, +but even his minor members were precious; he blew into no muzzles, for +safety is sweeter than fame; children half price. + +The most startling of all war reminiscences perhaps was that revealed +in far northern Michigan more than twenty years after Lee's surrender. +A party of skaters built huge bonfires on thick ice and finally thawed +out an imprisoned echo of bellum days, which cried impressively with +the broad, plaintive, querulous, rebel accent of long ago: "All we +want is to be let alone!" This current Confederate shibboleth +expressed the luminous Sutler's abiding desire. Even when brass music +stormed the camp as with whiffs of canister and grape, deluging all +ears in torrents of harmonious discord, he failed to materialize. +Suspicious of invidious comparison with the bluff drum major's +majestic gorgeousness, he relieved the strain by withdrawing the +infectious pestilence of his overshadowing personality. He vanished +like a beautiful dream; relatives might call and learn something to +their advantage. There were different opinions as to his +whereabouts--but then it is difference of opinion that supports pool +rooms as well as church choirs. Concord and discord were alike +unheeded. The drum's glum rumble; the mighty trombone's round, +reechoed roar; the feeble fierceness of cracked clarionet; the hissing +tortures of the tormented horn tuned to the shrieks of lacerated +souls; the witchbroth symphony from eye of newt and nose of frog and +bar of gospel hymn that drips in blistering spirals out of +tone-shattering fifes; the ghastly ground-swell's undertone that +floats this fumid wreckage of assassinated sound upon its bleeding +bosom--all these and other aggravated vibratory horrors searched for +him vainly in the nooks and corners of a disgusted atmosphere. He was +gone; front seats reserved for friends of the family. + +Hence when, if ever, the Sutler shall be monumentalized in +imperishable staff, it will be in none of those attitudes spectacular. +An attitude of watchfulness, of expectancy, of expostulation, or of +despair like one in last stages of the Baconian theory, were nearest +truth to nature. The flashing outbreaks of his fiery mind, the sorrows +of his overloaded heart, no carven stone or molded bronze can portray +to skeptical contemporaries, or transmit to an undeserving, +unbelieving posterity. + +If the post of danger is the post of real honor, the Sutler has been +scandalously overlooked in all awards. His assigned position at the +rear during an advance, and in front during a retreat, fatally exposed +him to depredations of the mixed society indigenous thereto. +Encompassed with perils, a floating Atlantis mislaid in a cannibal +archipelago, his only resource was rat-eyed vigilance and +brass-breasted audacity. A recital of his exploits in defending the +citadel wherein his precious perishables lay would shine with the +story of Farragut lashed to a mast, or Hooker bombarding rainbows, a +veritable torch-light procession down the dark avenues of history. +Painting him in gaudy hues would be as unæsthetic as offering green +goggles to a Delsarte club. But a mild touch of eulogy, a harmless +ginger-pop effervescence of panegyric, may supposedly be ventured +before we throw him on the tender mercies of posterity. Would Sir +Patrick's famed toast to the "bloody 69th"--"The last in the field and +the first to leave it; equal to none!" pass muster? If so, who will +begrudge? None, we defiantly aver, unless it be some surviving +marauder, overloaded with bias and twisted with prejudice until his +withers are wrung, who once wore a half-shaved head for +Sutler-burglary, then trod the brambly path of humiliation out of camp +to the tune of "Rogue's March," while sad breezes sighed through rents +in his respectability. + +What a magnificent army that was, in which we served--one of the +grandest in numerical strength, by far the grandest in its +intelligence, its achievements and its inspiration, whereof the world +holds record. + +Ninus of Assyria, 2200 B. C., led against the Bactrians a force of +1,700,000 foot, 200,000 horse, and 16,000 chariots armed with scythes. + +Cyrus besieged Babylon with 600,000 foot and 120,000 horse. + +Italy, a little before Hannibal's time, was able to send into the +field nearly 1,000,000 men. Yet Hannibal, during his campaign in Italy +and Spain, plundered 400 towns and destroyed 300,000 people. + +When Xerxes arrived at Thermopylæ his force by land and sea aggregated +2,641,610, according to Herodotus, a weighty worthy man, and worth his +weight in sesterces. + +January 1, 1861, the army of the United States consisted of nineteen +regiments of all arms, numbering, present and absent, 16,402 officers +and men. From April 1, 1861, to April 28, 1865, a monthly average of +56,000 men, a large army in itself, was recruited, equipped and +supplied for the volunteer forces. At the last-named date 1,034,064 +volunteers, after four years' casualties of war, were actually in the +service. From first to last 2,678,967 men were mustered in, +constituting 1,668 regiments of infantry, 232 of cavalry and 52 of +artillery--total 1,952 regiments. In three months, from May 7th to +August 7th, 1865, a total of 640,806 troops were mustered out of +service and restored to the ranks of productive citizenship. The cost +of the war to the United States government has been measured in money +at $3,963,159,751.15. The states in rebellion aggregated an area of +733,144 square miles, with 12,572 miles of navigable rivers, 2,523 +miles of sea coast and 7,031 miles of inland boundary. + +With these facts for a basis we may, if courageous, institute +comparisons with the great events of history. Courage is essential. A +page of fulminating statistics is as dangerous to the unwary as a +loaded gun-boat floating with the current, cocked, capped and aimed +below the water line. In a village ignorant of the science of the +division of labor, one may get his child christened by the same artist +who repaired his boots. In certain localities one may revel, so to +speak, in the enjoyments of a broad phase of humor, based on fried +onions, carbolized tar and commodities of that sort, or of a broad +plane of sociability, based on plug tobacco, pint flasks and +discussion of dog pedigrees. But in the higher realms of statistics, +and other like researches, success depends upon the cultivation of +devoted courage, courageous fortitude, and a subtle intellectuality +intricate as the distorted diagram on the face of a moss agate. + +Fenimore Cooper depicts the army Sutler of the Revolutionary contest +as a woman; habitually Irish; rubicund, snuffy, blasphemous and +addicted to gin--in brief an object of charity, socially and +pecuniarily. She can be fitted out, without violence to probability, +with an eye like a cross-section of hard boiled egg, and the shallow +retreating brow of an ibex; also with cotton in her ears. Her clothing +might easily have been fished out at random from a box of +contributions to hailstorm sufferers. Her coquettish, curly locks were +doubtless of oakum texture and solferino tinge. This much is +conjectural, for when we read on and learn that she was the camp +washerwoman we abandon the pursuit forthwith. Like flowers that bloom +in the Japanese spring, she has nothing to do with the case. She +vanishes like a congressman (before the czar era) constructively +absent when a quorum is to be burst. The Sutler of our more refined +war period was of the man masculine. No woman could have filled this +requisition, even in those days of Brigham Young's multi-wife +propaganda. No woman could have fought the good fight and kept the +stock in such a crisis, even with her trousseau reduced to a calico +basis. Where languorous lilies fill the eye with beauty, let the +gentler sex abide. A woman in our Sutler's sphere would have been more +useless than the horse that sustains superannuated relations to a fire +department. She would have been more expensive than the funeral of a +deceased statesman charged to the contingent fund; more dangerous than +a damp basement. During twenty centuries, while among men the glorious +Roman has degenerated into the monkey-tamer, woman, on the contrary, +has greatly advanced. And the advanced woman has apparently come to +stay. The ethereal creature who succumbed to tight lacing has +vanished. A stronger, sterner class succeed. The manly miss comes +forward, and her demands are something sumptuous. Nothing less than +the mandarin's full yellow jacket and peacock feather will suffice. +But the most fluent champion of uplifted femininity never dared to +rise with a whir to claim this dizzy pre-eminence of a Sutlership. The +cut of her garments may be virile and chic, still she aspired not so +high. The bravest of meat-stall heroines, with slaughter-house eyes +and leaf-lard complexion, may declaim suffrage syllogisms with the +witchery of a South Missouri angel, and her young man may tear his +hair in angry anguish at the thought, but Sutlerships transcend the +ambition of both. + +Of the man masculine was our Sutler. Not a woman. Neither a dude. No +gallon of gall in a plaid suit, owed for, could have endured, for one +short seething, scorching month, these multiplex ordeals of +catastrophe. At the current quadrennial round-up of aspirants, when +the internal revenue bung-smeller parades his political scars, the +dude is sometimes seen--in the Sutler's tent never. He would have +suffered all the agonies of a bullock threatened with corn-cob +strangulation, and no compensatory convictions. It were better to be +staked out in the legislative vestibule as custodian of cuspidors. We +have been generous in extending the elective franchise to naturalized +citizens and all who declare their intention to become such--probably +too generous. We have encouraged foreign nations to work off their +damaged and unsalable goods on us, in the immigrant line, as in other +lines. But we have never been cruel. We have pitied the sorrows of our +rich young man. We have certainly never been cruel enough to expose +our helpless, inferior fellow-creatures, those curled darlings of +dandydom, to vicissitudes like that of the Sutlership. That were an +infamy fit to make the green goods gouge and the gold brick trick +eminently respectable by comparison. Dudes have their function. So +have train-boys and other calamities. So have rose sherbet and chewing +gum; so have lambrequins and doilies. But not in war time. Neither +they nor any other gin-fizz effervescence of intangible ephemera. +Their fate in such surroundings would be sad as that of the tough but +meritorious army mule, who survived all war's perils, and thirty years +later shattered his hind leg, from hoof to hip, on the chin of a +traveling highwines apostle from Louisville. There was absolutely no +place for the dude in our army life. The velvet of his voice would +speedily roughen. One week of hard bread would ruin his teeth; one +day's rasp of the wind would utterly devastate his complexion. The +rural visitor who begins his city experiences by being piloted to a +bunco bank, and ends them by being piloted to a pawn-shop, would +encounter no more swift, inglorious career. The horrors of the zero +season are intensified when the man with a cold in his head insists on +discussing financial issues with us at every turn. The inconveniences +of army life were pronounced enough, as it was, without the further +infliction of the dreadful dude, in Sutler's trains or elsewhere. Nay, +verily! This small erratum of nature, this insectiverous +insignificance, had no place or function there. Heredity endowed him +with an intellect requiring a three months' vacation four times a +year, and fate left him to the full enjoyment thereof. Fortunately for +the credit of this nation the rebellion was efficiently and +sufficiently suppressed without his infinitesimal assistance. + +It is a sad and significant fact that the navy had no Sutlers. The +sailors and marines missed the picturesque inspiration of his +ministering service; the exuberant and perennial freshness of his +presence; the sounding brass of his tickling symbols. Our surviving +web-footed compatriots modestly demand that due recognition be +accorded their important branch of the belligerent forces. In making +and enforcing claims to our attention, their honest clamor fills the +sea-coast air, from Greenland's icy icebergs to Charleston's shifting +sands. And they have right. Did not each base of our supplies rest on +a waterway patrolled by gunboats? Were not all our armies named from +streams along which their fraternal tin-clads trolleyed and thundered? +Was not brave Jack always ready, manning the yards, when we fell back +for reinforcements, and the like, to receive us with three cheers and +a Dartmouth yell? Did not the Monitor, that grand old frigate, without +a sail, a mast, a rope, a stem, a stern, a yardarm or a bowsprit, +steam straight into the core of our hearts, and ram her chilled steel +nostrils far and away into the realms of historic muse? + +The naval veteran of to-day, working his chin industriously to keep +his teeth tight and vigorously dodging as best he may the wiles of the +world, the flesh and the politicians, complains at times that scant +allusion crops out in war reunions to episodes wherein he figures +lustrously. Here let full justice be freely done. For Farragut and +Foote and Porter, for Dupont, Dahlgren, and a hundred more, and all +their thousands of devoted, daring shipmates, let honors thicken with +the passing years, and glories brighten as the centuries roll on! The +same glad impulse burned within their breasts; the same great triumphs +gilded their endeavor. Their manners and methods differed widely from +ours, but in aim and motive we are one. It is their good fortune never +to have known how much they lost in having not the solace of the +Sutler. It was not their fault. + +The young recruit, christened Zephaniah, was not responsible therefor, +because he experienced his origin at a period when he was powerless to +direct results. If good people would only learn to vote as they pray, +it might possibly be different. But let even a marine run up against a +brace game in Dead Man's Gulch, and permanent enlightenment is liable +to eventuate. And when the atmosphere of our homes grows mephitic with +the odor of satanic journalism, we may perhaps awaken to the danger of +cultivating depravities that are calculated to stimulate a boom in the +brimstone market. + +Connecticut produced a learned pig which could read; New York, not to +be outdone, exhibits some educated donkeys that can write, that can +even edit newspapers, have done it, have been caught in the very act, +and, alas, seem inclined to boast of it. When such things can be, and +overcome us like a summer sunshade, why marvel that the navy had no +Sutler? If a shattered and battered son of the sea comes forward now +and then to bask in the glow of that comradeship we so fondly cherish, +let us bid him jolly welcome. In that long period which elapsed +between the dates when President Jefferson Davis was captured in +confidential costume and President Grover Cleveland escaped from the +congressional trocha, our people were steadily but very slowly growing +to an appreciation of their numerous blessings. During this period +many a stranded ex-sailor found himself filled with the vague unrest +of a rural legislator who for the first time carries a railroad pass +in his pocket. The yearning for travel was irresistable. He has thus +projected himself into the sphere of our observation as far inland as +Indianapolis or Omaha. If we have not seized the opportunity to thank +him for Hampton Roads, and Mobile Bay, and Fort Saint Phillip and +Pittsburg Landing and Fort Fisher, for New Orleans and Pensacola and +Galveston, we have ignored a binding obligation and neglected a +golden opportunity. Let us ignore, neglect no longer. + +We yield him full measure of credit. We regret more than words can +express that he never enjoyed the felicity of having a Sutler. If one +were accessible he should be introduced to him, even now! + +The impression which seems to be somewhat currently prevalent, in +circles usually well informed on financial topics, that many of the +largest fortunes of our present era were founded on the war-profits of +army Sutlers, is manifestly erroneous. It is at all times easier to +get poor in a minute than rich in a month, according to one of the +wise saws of the transcendental orientals. The wealthy widow who has +wasted her substance in riotous trolley parties can verify it. +Fortunes have originated in the profits of army contracts, judiciously +invested in well-slanted real estate at Pittsburg or Cincinnati. Their +inheritors have perhaps reached congress where they speak speeches +prescribed for them by a scrivener. Upon the condemned horses of the +thrifty quartermaster, or sunken cargoes of costly oats duly +accounted for by economical commissaries, mysteriously materializing +later in tangible cash, large estates have been based. They were +mostly dissipated thereafter by extensive land-purchases in remote +regions notable chiefly for a particularly brazen sky and a specially +mean annual temperature, where the prairie dog yelps to his or her +mate as the case may be, sole disturbers of all the dismal silence in +nature's vast immensity. + +Even the sumptuous pay of the pampered and envied private soldiers, +the magnificent stipend of thirteen dollars a month equal to an +average of at least six dollars in the precious gold of that period, +was sometimes duly hoarded at compound interest. This, with occasional +mining stock speculations on the side, may have rolled up in the +course of a generation to that standard of affluence which glitters +with hope of dowry to dudes or alimony to divorce lawyers. Believe it +ye who can; assert it ye who dare. It would not be incredible. The +first kiss, alas! often leads to more. + +Balder fictions have found credence at the chrysanthemum club, where +the lack luster eye of the effete plunger gazes into the gurgling +optic of the breadstuff debauchee, and where harvesting a royal flush +is the leading industry. Wilder improbabilities were widely swallowed +before the Russian Israelites landed on our coast and introduced their +rich nut-brown flavor to the ward caucus, together with the corrugated +spirituality of a bethel-vocalist and the vulcanized nerve of a +Tammany leader. Statements like those might pass current in village +drug stores, where streams of limpid, scented crystal burst forth from +marbleized iron fountains at five cents per burst. Rumors equally +incredible have floated around unchallenged at _recherché_ receptions +given by Mrs. Olof Swenson, of the James River Valley, S. D., to the +local colonial dames. Notwithstanding all this, such allegations as +these, with due, determined effort, might be made to harmonize with +possibility like a red cart with a sorrel mule. + +But no properly fertilized intellect can ever germinate a supposition +that the rudiments of even one contemporaneous million were laid in +the career of a Sutler. A hundred shillings invested in trade will +give a man meat and wine; in acres it will give him cabbage and salt, +wrote another astute Arabian--or mayhap the same. But the Sutler trade +is a valid and visible exception, verified by experience, costly as an +Indian outbreak and conclusive as the rebound of a London free-trade +banquet in the wilds of West Virginia. + +Poets of every class have license to festoon life's oasis, _et +cetera_, with platitudes and illogical assertions. But historians, +like the undersigned, must deal in fragments of the eternal verity. +Even the strawberry roan versifier of Zanesville, shouting through a +hole in his headgear, would burst his organ of ideality in the effort +to imagine heirs for the Sutler. He never gave them kingdoms or +dollars. They can not shake their crimped bangs at him and say he eats +pie with a knife, and absorbs soup with emphasis from the end of a +spoon. They can not give him the cold and gurgling laugh--he never +cultivated them beyond the radius of their capacity, and endowed them +with wealth beyond their powers of assimilation. In all the wide, +wild stretch of liars from Ananias to Zola, none will be found bold +enough to assert it. + +If the descendants of the Sutler are snobs and sneaks and shams, +social swells and moral lepers, with breath sweetly perfumed and +hearts bitter as Peruvian bark tempered with aloes, they owe no part +of their equivocal character or position to the influence of wealth +derived from him, for he had none. Thus by his lack of lucre to +bequeath, he has avoided many horrible and torturing responsibilities. +For a man who has been ruined by a woman there is no law and no judge. +The inheritor of lightly won riches enters the race for success in +life with a handicap weighty as the breech of a disabled columbiad. + +Gaze not upon the red rectification of the illicit still; quaff +sparingly the purple vintage of the Iowa drug store; yield not to +temptation at the stage of a game where the jack-pot boils over; drop +not your precious cash into the open palm of financial enthusiasts +whose soaring souls see cloudbursts of wealth in every fleece of +floating vapor; yield no credence to the millionaire who boasts of his +large inheritance from a Sutler's profits. + +As a rallying point in battle, rivaling redans, redoubts and parapets, +rifle-pits, abattis and _chevaux-de-frise_, the Sutler's wagon has +been apostrophized in many bursts of eloquence at reunion banquets +where wit and wine flow sparkling like the dew. When thrust out +between contending armies by design or accident, that modest vehicle +became a glittering prize worth fighting for and risking amputations +for, beside which even the old flag paled for a space its ineffectual +splurge. + +Friends, comrades who had lived together in the little shelter tent, +slept under the same blanket, divided the scanty ration and drank from +the same canteen, rallied around its doubtful treasures with all the +swift energy of a benzine explosion. Foes, hungry as sawtooth sharks, +assailed and reassailed it, the rich fruition of their whetted +desires. Where was the hilarious Sutler then with his bluegrass +fertility of resource? Neither in that beleaguered thesaurus nor even +entrenched beneath it, you may confidingly affirm, but likeliest +from safe shelter of some commodious, commanding stump, observing the +struggle with a rural Sunday morning cheerfulness. Like George Eliot's +hero, he is lord of the moment's change and can charge it with his +soul. + +[Illustration: ... _But likeliest from safe shelter of some +commodious, commanding stump, observing the struggle with a rural +Sunday morning cheerfulness_] + +The rich man unlearned in logic hires logic in form of a lawyer to +prove anything it is profitable to have proven. So a Sutler, destitute +of arms, knows that his armed compatriots will rescue his appetizing +goods from the enemy's most ferocious onslaughts, howbeit but to be +skinned and skimmed by themselves next moment before his +horror-smitten face, with comments recordable only in violation of +several salubrious enactments for the suppression of blasphemy. + +Perhaps tradition has been too caustic or too facetious in its +treatment of the unarmed soldiers who honored us with their +comradeship--the chaplain, the surgeon and the Sutler. Of the army +preacher, who filled his sacred office worthily as many did, let due +and reverent acknowledgment be made, in grateful memory of benignant +functions purely administered; "the gowned goslings, who were goslings +before they were gowned," let us in mercy and in pity commit to the +tenderness of eternal silence. The typical army doctor was skillful, +devoted, brave and self-sacrificing; at the front amid the blaze and +storm of battle; in the rear wrestling with festering wounds or +wasting fevers and contagions; everywhere his welcome, hopeful +features beamed in gracious blessing on us at our sorest need, and +each of us who lives to-day can name the surgeon to whom that life is +due. Even the Sutler, of whom we have been treating subjectively and +perhaps too unceremoniously herein, when reduced to his objective +individual status, has often supplied material for illustrating the +highest grade of patriotic heroism. The Sutlership was an agency not +devoid of utility, not without the noblest possibilities, by no means +unworthy of honor. Let no poet of the war, sitting in the refreshment +of the foliage of his phrases and sipping the coolness of the gases of +his gall, dare ignore these patent, blatant truths of history. Or if +he do, let him be doubly and trebly ware! It is certain that enough +scattered, incontrovertible, granite bowlders of fact lie snugly +imbedded in the conglomerate of fancy, to roll forward at the final +round-up and everlastingly necropolize him. + +Where is the Sutler now? Vanished from our ken and beyond all cavil +non-existent. + +History has few parallels to this absolute obliteration of a species. +The bronzed old admiral emeritus is still extant, with tar on his heel +and salt in his eyebrows. Generals in active service thread the +German's mazes, agile as when in slim-waisted cadet days they paced +flirtation walk, in all the pomp and circumstance of glorious gray. +The retired list, infallible patent of longevity, lifts high its proud +engrossment of venerable colonels and brigadiers, spattered at times +with ill-flavored congressional epithets and blown about by every +breeze of statesmanship, but yielding still its liberal monthly +stipend; there too the Sutler's brief, broad, brambly service is +unrecognized. The village boaster boasteth still his grand exploits +as the sunset of life crowns a mystical bore. But no Sutler is here or +there discerned. + +Our pension rolls bear names scarce short a million, but his holds +there no objurated blazonry. Myriads of veterans luxuriate in +soldiers' homes, but in none of them does he, lingering and voluble, +saturated with _vis inertia_, shoulder a crutch and tell how money +never is but always to be won. When hale campaigners meet at +non-intoxicating suppers where the cheers are not inebriated, and +point to themselves with pride (who dare gainsay their right?), his +place is but a yawning vacancy. River pilots of the war era, St. Vitus +stricken from dodging guerrilla buckshot, have coveted the Grand Army +badge; sons of sanitary heroes and of honorable women not a few have +pleaded for the Loyal Legion's perquisites vicarious; but no residual +Sutler, nor the lineal progeny thereof, draws drafts like these on +honor's ample funds. Hence there is no Sutler left, q. e. d. He never +got left--the good die young. + +Seek ye his obituary in the thin cold records of the alms-house. Find +his flat or sunken resting place in crowded silences of Potter's +fields and be therewith content. He has passed in his "checks." He +lives now only as a fond and fragrant memory. + + + + +THE SHELTER TENT + +III + + +Lustrous among war's unfading reminiscences shines the contour of the +Shelter Tent. It lingers in memory, unique and delectable, dissimilar +but equivalent to our ideal of those fringed silken pavilions wherein +apoplectic despots of the orient air their scandalous magnificence +amid the frockless squalor of their cringing hordes. + +The Shelter Tent was a supplement to the original scheme for putting +down the rebellion--a fact, as it were, _dehors_ the record. Only +after Bull Run and Shiloh and Antietam and Iuka was the government +nerved to the point of requiring its soldiery to shoulder their +houses like mollusks, and thus relieve the tuneful, uncomplaining mule +of a sore responsibility. + +This was an innovation whose dam was Necessity, and whose sire was +held to be some emissary of Satan, with an unearned increment of +prestige in the counsels of Halleck, general-in-chief, so-called. It +was evolved as the molecule evolves protoplasm and from a plastic cell +developeth primordial germs. Versatile scorners, voluble as advocates +of artesian irrigation, promptly scheduled its pedigree for +generations up and down. Minutest of constructed residences for living +humanity, save perhaps the half-credible tub of tough Diogenes, it won +a way into our reluctant liking that vindicates its title to +consideration among the factors of ultimate victory. You may pay the +doctor to diagnose and also to prescribe, but you must subsidize the +pharmacist before relief is possible. + +Most portable of mundane mansions, its very littleness relieved the +situation of numberless infelicities,--specifically, of servitude to +servants, whether apple-cheeked daughters of Denmark, or +saddle-colored Cantonese with eyes cut bias and a Pacific Mail subsidy +lingo not on speaking terms with veracity. Likewise other infelicities +which relegate housekeeping to the level of a cantharides blister, and +which make court corridors ring with the battle-cry for freedom +shouted by luckless suitors who married in haste to repent at Sioux +Falls. + +The Shelter Tent of the war for the Union, so waged, as +aforementioned, is said to have been a French device. We shall +introduce no evidence in rebuttal. It was unquestionably steeped to +the hem in martial economics. It was calculated to rob a miser of all +that life holds dear. The force of dire frugality could no step +farther go. In the multitude of counselors there is distraction, for +existence, like a court-house, is full of trials. But all agree on +this question of economy. We lead the world, but the French lead us in +these little every-day parsimonies. It was cheap but grand. Beecher +once asserted that flowers are the grandest things God ever made +without putting an immortal soul into them. Beecher had evidently at +that time never treated his optic nerve to a vision of the useful, +unobtrusive Shelter Tent. + +Woven of white cotton spun to fascine rigidity, sometimes +gutta-perchaed to counterscarp imperviousness, its flat measurement +but squared an average soldier's stature. When the whirl of recoil +developed into a torrent of flight, it was scarcely classed with +_impedimenta_. + +A weed is said to be only a plant whose uses have not yet been +discerned. This square of cotton was to the unsophisticated military +discernment first a weed, then a spear, then a full-grown corn in the +ear--yea, verily! shelled and in the sack, distilled and in the +cut-glass decanter, with accessories duly accessible. + +Styled "tent" in the sardonic nomenclature of our nomadic days, it was +in sober verity a wrap, a cape, a kirtle or a poncho, which only by +connected duplication and reduplication came within the pale of that +sonorous title. Only ten men are permitted to exist on earth at once +competent to read and understand Plato. Thus precious is equilibrium +in a world where the fragment of a donkey jaw has slain thousands. +Fewer doubtless would divine at first blush how a square of cotton +fabric, set down one side with buttons and holes to match cut +opposite, could suffice for each warrior's allotment of habitation in +embryo. Still fewer would devise, until Necessity, doting maternal +ancestor of rarest constructive genius, came to compel, the forms and +structures of abode that lay susceptible within that so innocent +appearing segment of a textile web, white, friendly and tractable. +Thus history goes on, dancing through the airy nothingness of +experiment, dainty as a harebell, graceful as a fawn. + +Of what the Shelter Tent had and had not, commended curiosity makes +now minute interrogation. It had neither veranda nor portico; if +offenses must come, woe to them whereby. No latticed porchway tempted +humming birds to linger in its honeysuckle haunts. The bay-window that +biteth like a serpent and stingeth like a cactus when the bill comes +in, was conspicuously non-existent. Its architectural flippancies were +few indeed. No fluted town hall pillars nor St. Gauden's +blush-promoting statuary decorated its blameless exterior, either for +botch or betterment. No black closets fanged with sharp hooks and +breathing pestilent mustiness lurked in its dreadful depths, +threatening to precipitate a ministerial crisis around the conjugal +hearth. + +The man of far western enterprise, who goes forth with nothing but a +few ounces of salt in one hand and a halter in the other to a career +of sudden and certain prosperity, would sneer at a plan for his rustic +villa of content so void of all embellishment. The rampant eastern +egotist, saturated with profound, uncanny mysticism, would echo the +supercilious sentiment. + +Guiltless of tapestry, even of paper tattooed into isosceles triangles +or fretted with peafowl tintages, were its walls. Nay, vetoed were +walls indeed, save when some mad riot of sumptuousness inspired an +imitation of "society"--that medley of metaphysics and flirtations, of +fashion, vanity, jealousy, altruism, rheumatism and gastronomy which +is principally intent on beating tom-toms and dodging jim-jams. Then, +hoisted above its normal altitude, like sliding roof of clover rick, a +rough joinery of boards or logs or turf, breasted it up four-square to +all the gusts of Boreas and the moral agencies of southern Arkansaw. + +No door-plate shimmered, purporting, in gothic undecipherables gnarly +as Pharaoh's lean kine, to name the occupant. Good cause, forsooth; +none better! No door, on which a faintest shimmer could be hung, +graced the wide frontal vacancy. Who entered here, though his brow +were tall and his spirit strong, left his _bon-ton_ behind. Style, +root of much heart-break and hen-peck, was smitten as by the stony paw +of a sphinx. Fit symbols of existence in this pretenseless home were +the broken column and the gates ajar. + +Destitute also was the Shelter Tent of the pompous excrescence of +chimneys, and their accessories,--of the parlor mantel, laden with +sea-shells and aconite pellets,--of the stove in the guest chamber, +voluble in prophecies of smokeless combustion, unhopeful as the +courting of a grass-widow with an inchoate right of dower to forty +acres of swamp land in a school section,--of the hanging book-shelf, +heavy with dull fiction and smeared with poetical syrup. No chimney +was there to witness the woes of perplexed Santa Claus. No chimney was +there to gaze with wide-eyed wonder on the tragedy which ensues when +Uncle Reuben blows out the gas. No chimney was there, with open gusty +grate, more dreary than the lignite desolation of the bad lands. + +Minus likewise were chandeliers, with their brazen sheen,--mementos of +dismal experience with colicky infants at paregoric time,--mementos of +sweltering social hilarity, when perspiration is unconfined and heels +smite corns on toes that groan again,--mementos of genteel functions, +where pink and purple ice cream circulates at par, and French-plate +diamonds flash on palpitating bosoms perilously exposed to the +weather. + +Chandeliers were extinct and non-existent. Candles stuck in bayonets +sufficed. There was light enough for a nightly prosecution of the +poker industry and for overproduction of the chestnut crop. And even +after taps, when utter darkness reigned, there was no danger of +bumping one's head against the upper berth. + +No walls of partition parceled off the Shelter Tent into spaces +conventionalized to pecular functions. Aristocracy of exclusion and +seclusion there were none, but broad and limpid democracy of exposure +to all curiousness, though searching as croton oil. Hence +drawing-room, boudoir and kitchen, oratory, refectory, and lavatory +were all in one. But only in alternation, since the contracted area +precluded simultaneousness as well as latitudinarianism. There was no +disgraceful scramble for the apartment with southern exposure and all +modern conveniences. There was little risk of bringing a blush of +modesty to the veteran's bronzed and massive cheek. Partitions would +have been useless as a pop factory in the bluegrass region. Each +tenant was the peer in imperturbability of a male divorcee in +Connecticut, digging clams to earn alimony. + +Area was not its boast. A well equipped farm on the Little Missouri is +said to consist of a due allowance of sunny sky, a pair of bob-sleds +and a gopher hole. There naturally prevail the financial views which +demand a currency based on pig-iron, short-ribs, hoop-poles and wheat +screenings. + +No lightning-rod adorned its frowning pediment, lank and fatiguing +reminder of Ben Franklin,--thrifty printer,--and his kite, such as +never was before in air or tree; also of the glib and evanescent +vendor whose monopoly of all fascinations was only equaled by his +absolute prostration of all moral attributes. That convoluted metallic +insufficiency thrust not its aluminum barb above the crest of this +domicile, like a reed shaken by the wind, mute witness to each passer +of the owner's sweet credulity. + +Trifling in weight, as was each segment of the Shelter Tent, +unappreciable addition to individual burden, and willingly borne for +the increased facility and certainty of bivouac, the aggregate relief +to the department of transportation was like shriving a bad man's +conscience of crime or lifting a fear from a coward's soul. The +reduction of regimental trains from thirteen wagons to three was as +efficient in ultimate results as the withdrawal of guards from +confederate poultry-coops and the obliteration of zouave jackets; +possibly more so. + +The Shelter Tent was the after-glow of an understudy, so to speak, but +it was a potent helper in the grand tragedy. It came into war annals +greeted with a welcome warm as that vouchsafed on election night to +the missing precinct that brings the necessary majority. This welcome +was tendered when use brought due appreciation of its value, not +earlier. Its original introduction was as sensational as when John +Barleycorn comes to town, and brings his blizzard with him. Its first +arrival met with jeers; with hot reviling; with barkings imitative of +indignant dog, or brayings as of disgusted donkey; with cursings such +as tear the curser's lungs to ragged tatters; with mellowing miracles +of profanest speech, horizonless trans-continental sentences of words +hurled endlong, overthwart, each word a stab or blister; with mutiny +and riot ludicrous to recall. But all in vain. Reeking language, that +put immortal souls in peril, availed nothing. + +The Shelter Tent came for use, and it came to stay. Orders were +imperative and discipline was supreme. Jeering, barking, braying, +cursing, rioting were as futile as the purr of a Vassar kitten at the +advent of a long-haired æsthete, wearing an air of discontent and a +coat with efflorescent elbows. + +It was prescribed and issued. The average visitor to Washington is +welcomed to his nation's proud capital with loud acclaim by the hack +fiend and the hotel runner, both Afro-American. The Shelter Tent was +welcomed with corresponding warmth, as aforesaid, when its utility +began to materialize. Out into the pink and pearl of morning sunshine, +or into a sour, dreary, morning drizzle, step from it the tentmates of +a night's camp. They were proud as the Jerseyman who boasts his +descent "from the family of Smith-Smiths, connected by a syphon." They +were free from the proverbial weary, next-morning-condition of civil +life, for sleep profound had knitted up the raveled stocking heel of +care. Each carried a moiety of homestead folded in the knapsack +strapped to his stalwart form, and stepped out with a sublime song of +triumph on his lips and in his heart. Each carried his own house. He +also laughed at his own jokes with a loud tenor tone. Marvel of more +than this marvelous facility of home-shifting was our inimitable +volunteer. He bore constantly also his year's wardrobe and his week's +provender, toothsome (though less tender) as planked whitefish from +the cold and classic Assiniboin. Likewise, his drink, his tools +tonsorial, manicurial and dentifric, such as fate vouchsafed and +regulations permitted. In addition he bore his bed, his financial +capital and surplus, his arsenal of projectiles, his weapons of +offense, his instruments of torture, and his implements of toil. +Strength considered, no pack-horse carried a weightier lading, and yet +the soldier was denied the dull, dumb creature's exemption from +rational accountability. + +Thus freighted with belligerent melange the mobilized veteran marches +all day, with his thinking bayonet at his side, his logical musket on +his shoulder, and his profane vocabulary held in measurable +subjection, the nominative agreeing with the verb occasionally by +accident. + +On through hot and bitter limestone dust that blanches all his +cuticle, then reddens eyes and nose and mouth with unsanctified +inflammation. On through floundering quagmires of yellow mud that +settles into slush, then slumps into slime; vivid parallel to the +moral collapse of a white-souled commissary warmed by beams of +opportunity and trodden by hoofs of temptation. + +On through heat excruciating or cold unendurable; through rain, sleet, +hail,--storm's dread alternations of discomfort,--all the lengthening +day, his trousers shrinking to knee-pants as he trudges along. On, +footsore and halting, each nerve a roadway for pain's burning steps, +each bone racked with rheumatic twinges, until night brings the +limping turnpike tourist to a welcome resting-place. + +The bivouac then, and full-orbed glory of the Shelter Tent! Matchless +for adaptation, it is pitched as soon as ranks are broken. The +landscape whitens with swift magic like a Monday's clothes-line +billowy with confidential raiment. The tentmates join the sundered +segments, and with sticks or stalks or poles, or, lacking these, with +bayonet and gun and ramrod, lift the flexile sheet to the required +angle, and lo! their dwelling stands confessed; no spectacular +monstrosity, but compact, cleanly and stylish as a salad dressed in +oil. + +Hasty, most hasty, also of formalities and frills devoid, the varied +events which thereupon eventuate. The search for wood and water, +energetic as the pace of reckless engineer, who goes by the meeting +point at a mile and a half a minute calling for more steam. The +ablutions, rich in doleful reminiscence of rare and radiant days at +home when the brow was wiped with cabbage leaves or cotton waste; +vivid with memories of the printing-house towel that hangs by the +door. + +The cooking simple and savory; the cook with a look of far-away +Georgia in his face, across whose peaceful breast salt waves of +trouble roll, but from whose humble lips no back-talk comes. The +mastication, almost as irritating as classical music, save as spiced +with time-honored facetiæ wrested from some wrecked parthenon; +long-distance jokes that would bore easily through an inch plank and +kill at random. + +Drinking straight and plain from the flat but priceless old canteen, +out of whose limpid depths, with a gurgling capacity of one miner's +inch per second, are drawn exhaustless liquid refreshments that shame +the isles of Greece, the hills of Spain, the purple heaven of +Rome,--in dreams thou livest on! Above all, post-prandial exercise of +dry dishwashery with a chip, exuding bicarbonate of turnpike dust; one +touch of water makes the whole camp grin. + +Then comes, with briefest interlude for rest, or recreation, or +knocking out spot after spot of the decalogue on the sly, swift +preparation for the few, short hours of nocturnal repose; profound as +a policeman with clews to a stabbing mystery; dreamless as some +cold-sliced fragment of the long ago, sitting passionless through +chasing, racing ages. Tentmates are nervous with the fatigues of march +and nettlesome as bibulous companions in civil life, who quarrel about +trifles slight as hair; then settle their quarrels over a round of the +rosy; and finally quarrel afresh as to who shall liquidate for the +liquor. + +The night may be moonlit, starry, glum as a ghoul, dark as black +bullocks of Galloway, or terrible with thunder-bursts and drenching +rains and blowing of great guns. Valor is an indeterminate essence; at +times the essence will ooze; much depends on the status; few men are +supremely valorous in the dark. + +Plato considered that woman was intended to do the same things as man, +only not so well. It is currently suspected, however, that women can +fight better than their brothers in that grewsome darkest hour which +just precedes the dawn, when so many attacks are planned which mostly +fail. Exceptions should possibly be noted in favor of the emancipated +female trotting out of her class; specially against the timid man who +has been dragged all night over loose stones, at the tail of a wild +nightmare. + +Sleep comes at last, and the camp sounds lull, not startle; peaceful, +innocent, harmless as the fresh-laid humorist pleading for a little +more civilization among the higher classes. Soporific is the sentry's +slow, reluctant Amsterdam tramp, as he strides, bemoiled by the long +day's detritus, wrapped mostly in the wailing winds; also the electric +interurban symphony of snorings manifold, which care not one coreless +clam what nationality stands guard to-night; the weird signals of the +fond melodious mule struggling with anchylosis of thoracic +articulation, and betimes bursting into an effort that saturates seven +cubic miles of atmosphere with familiar mule music in seventeen +seconds; the melancholy squeak of a belated sutler's wagon, grinding +out its assent to the maxim that a linch-pin in time saves an axle; +the hoot of a discontented owl in branches not remote; the howl of +expostulatory cur in distant farm-yard; the intercepted shriek of far +off poultry, prey of some army prowler who strews the ground with +severed heads and hot red spurts of gore. + +Soporific is all this medley of celluloid resonance; softer than the +first symptoms of velvety resistance on a youth's lip; smoother than +the etiquette of a square meal at a round-table; provocative all of +serenest, soundest sleep, until joyless reveille shall come, summoning +from iridescent dreams to another day of inglorious unromantic +toiling--double column at half distance and then double distance on +half rations. + +Through long, drowsy summer afternoons comes luscious _deshabille_ of +relaxation, born of an assured half-week's unthreatened encampment +serenity. Then the _recherché_ loungers in the Shelter Tent, clinking +their useless double-eagles together with capitalistic nonchalance, +revel in tutti-frutti visions of banished splendors and foresworn +delights. Those bright single-gold-standard days haunt us still, with +the persistence of a sixty winter damsel in her frosty bloom. The +cribbed and coffined quarters expand into peopled vistas of epicurean +magnificence, elusive and deceptive as a tax on dinner pails. Therein +the mirage of gorgeous furnishings alternates or mingles with the +phantasm of delicate potables, with a bewildering miscellaneousness +that recalls Agassiz's dictum on the impossibility of reconciling +American stratifications. + +Throw physic to the dogs--they need thinning out anyhow, but preserve +your hallucinations; four generations of gentility are required to +produce a boy without freckles. P. S. Give the negro a chance! Eighty +generations barely sufficed to evolve a white man capable of inventing +the postage stamp. Just four hundred years were occupied by the whites +in conquering the Indians, with the powerful aid of rum, gunpowder and +Indian agents. + +As we remarked, the furnishings of these visions were extremely +gorgeous. Cashmere, Bokarra and Khivan rugs bespread the marqueterie +floors. Also, delicate the potables. Ragouts, chow-chow, dinde glacé, +truffles, soquille, sorbot, terrapin, sauterne, cognac and extra dry +cover the beckoning tables; nectar, nectar everywhere and every drop +imbibable. Imported, perhaps, through Signor Sp. Frumenti, of Genoa. + +Behold priceless bijoux of Louis Quinze,--buhl, Sèvres, Limoges, +Dalton, and Royal Vienna; treasures of ormolu and ivory, and Carrara; +wonders of faience and Satsuma; quaint carvings from Padua, Tokio, +Delhi and Antwerp, in ebony or sandal or teak or immemorial oak! All +for ornament rather than utility, like the ears of a mule which have +been stationed too far in front for wings, and too high up for +fly-scares. Here are poems in brass, anthems in eternal bronze, +pastorals in Dresden, mythologies in the grinning idols of Cathay, +miracles in Gobelin and Daubisson; relics of the by-flown, fly-blown +past, before the great, red dragon of Wall street had been hatched and +hated. + +There are scimiter and falchion from the days of Lionheart, inwrought +with golden arabesque by fezzed wizards in Teheran. There are +poniards, it may be, reviving proud, glad, gladiatorial days, when +men were muscled like the brawny, aged hen. They fought with bloody +bludgeons long and well; or with sharp rapier carved the lion's liver +from his agile frame, while smiling beauty munched the Roman caramel +and saw with tearless lid the brave ones sink beneath hard blows more +deadly than the modern pie. + +Here swing hangings more valued than jewels; silk woven in the +caliphs' harems; yellowing marvels of Chantilly; glowing glories of +Corot and Daubigny, Gérôme, Vibert, Meissonier, Millais or +Rembrandt--unequaled as to flesh tints; superior even to most chromos. + +Ah, yes! Roast venison, fried chicken, stuffed oysters, broiled +lobster, sausage with sauerkraut, beefsteak and onions on the half +shell. The mills of the cooks grind slowly, but they grind, even +though their recipes be less intelligible than the personal +recollections of a giraffe. + +All these things float and allure and dazzle and tempt in the soaring +fancy of the dilettante militant, who is lifted from a deep dark +Hamlet melancholy to semi-celestial altitudes. But a drum-tap or a +horse-neigh brings him down with a dull thud to the cramped coarse +environment where he is tethered like an uneasy Indian restricted to a +mental reservation. Blessed is the voluptuousness of reverie; blessed +and cheap as an expectant clothier's greeting, while he pauses +ecstatically for an appropriate smile; blessed and safe as flirting by +telephone with a centripetal divinity at the exchange, sweet-voiced, +invisible and anonymous; blessed but unsatisfying as a tariff reform +bill stuffed with local concessions. + +From roseate fantasy to grim realism is a tumble sharp and sudden to +the dreamer in the Shelter Tent. + +His ormolu and bijoutry consist of a deformed pocket mirror and a +foreshortened pipe black as bombazine grief. His floor is honest old +earth, rugless, plankless, naked as a marble Venus and cold as New +England culture. + +His decorated couch of down and carved mahogany, ebony inlaid, is +superseded by a blanket and six fence-rails--rails quilled with +keen splinters like the frightful porcupine; blanket harboring fecund +colonies of that fraternal insect whose tentacles are inextricably +entangled with every shuddering recollection of army vicissitudes; +inescapable, inexpungable, yet nameless here forever more. + +[Illustration: ... _Blessed is the voluptuousness of reverie, blessed +and cheap as an expectant clothier's greeting, while he pauses +ecstatically for an appropriate smile_] + +His dresser of polished green malachite, silver-trimmed, shrinks to a +surreptitious cracker-box hiding certain confiscated edibles for which +some adjacent smoke-house holds a yawning vacancy, while Rachel weeps +for her turkeys and refuses to be comforted because they were shot. + +In the said cracker-box, like a jewel in a toad's tooth, we may also +find all that can legitimately represent in fact the figments of our +hero's appetizing hallucinations, the customary ration of his daily +gulp and growl. Here is hard, hard bread, stamped B. C., so dry that +age can not wither it nor bicuspid masticate; acrid and bellicose +pork, premonitory of thirst and tapeworm, rich in albuminates, but +utterly poverty-stricken as to savor, odor and social status. Here is +raw beef from the east rump of a most attenuated anatomy, doubtful as +the welcome of an uninvited visitor; sufficient unto the soup is the +toughness thereof, no less. + +The uses of venerable and ubiquitous hard-tack were as numerous as +they were suggestive. Its presence in all emergencies was one of the +mysteries of the eternal law of supply and demand, one of the grand +consummations and compensations of the art of war. In its natural +state it was dry, flinty, tasteless and juiceless, but stored as full +of nutriment as a serenade of musty eggs and flagrant onions is +stuffed with archaic perfumes. Smashed into chiplets with a hammer, +moistened to pulpiness in cold water, fried in pork fat and served +hot, it was dubbed "slumgullion." Pounded to gritty dust, reduced to +thick dough with warm water, seasoned with salt and pepper and baked +in thick cakes, it became fit ambrosia for the sages of the ages and +was known as "Son-of-a-gun." Burned to a crisp, boiled in water, and +eaten with a spoon it was as thoroughly disguised as odorless whisky +or smokeless tobacco, in the soubriquet "gum chowder." + +In combination with green apple fricasse, chicken stews, fresh pig +roasts, and other sequestered interludes of commissariat anomalistic, +it grew toothsome, ingenious, diversified. It was withal as acceptable +to the muscular appetites of voracious young warriors as was a drafted +man's certificate of exemption based on intermittent cramps in the +stomach and a devout devoted mother-in-law dependent on him for +support. + +Here are the small white beans, anhydrous, true angel food, beloved of +cherubim, immortalized in song, theme of interminable romance, most +potent, grave and carbo-hydrate provender, seductive as a jack-pot, +and satisfying as a high-church wedding service to a middlings +purifier heiress; here, also, the indispensable coffee, and sugar +wherewith it shall be confected, twin relics of homeland, sole +reminder of hearthstones _ante bellum_. Here is rice, nourishing to +Buddha and Confucius, redolent of joss-house and bungalow, chief of +staff of the life of languid anthropophagi. + +Here are desiccated vegetables; culmination of humiliation to nostril +and stomach; a cross between counter-irritant and disinfectant; +plausible as an argument for free raw material. Likewise concentrated +milk, Queen Anne style; acidulated in the thunder-storms of centuries; +more mysterious than the doctrine of dynamics to a colored youth +gorged with clandestine watermelon. Also "rations" of soap of a +retiring early disposition; facing a condition, not a theory; compost +of refuse alkaline and oleagenous, but with soaring spirit of the army +mule stowed in a steamer's hold until he soaks the air with sounds of +remonstrance, kicks the rivets from the boiler and goes aloft with the +explosion. + +Moreover, all the frugal condiments and seasonings which, like timely +words in a hot dispute, act chemically and precipitate the +sediment--all these made lawful by the Articles of War and acts +thereto amendatory. All these this shaky, unassuming cracker-box, +chief of the snuggery's appointments, foremost in furnishing the +Shelter Tent, doth garner and conceal with more than sealing-wax +fidelity. Upon it rest the empty haversack, the dry canteen, the waist +belt, bayonet scabbard, gunsling, and like _et cetera_ of unused +accoutrement, terrible to the turbulent classes, sharing their owner's +earned and relished respite. + +These aforesaid articles, together with a valuable collection of +narrow escapes, constituted his tabulated assets, including capital, +surplus and undivided profits. By reason of wealth he would not have +been like the camel debarred from threading the needle's eye. But he +was happy, nevertheless; happy as the free laborers who proudly wear +untaxed overalls woven in foreign parts, and socks from the isles of +the sea. + +The Shelter Tent was not immortal, at least in the concrete. Neither +was its occupant, howsoever swollen in the pride of his heart and +other viscera over the sacredness of his cause and the splendor of his +triumph. If immortality is to be achieved for the tent, the pen of +history or the still small penetrating voice of tradition must be +detailed for that duty. The Bengal tiger must not mew like inferior +families of the felidæ, but here were a theme worthy the stanchest +bard that glooms beneath the shining stars. + +The texture of the Shelter Tent, though rivaling a corrugated copper +casket as moisture proof, was far from indestructible. Worn to +windowed raggedness was its final aspect, slashed, punched, +shot-holed, and abraded, but faithful and useful to the end. Scorched +also it may be, begrimed and soiled, march-stained and battle-singed, +linked to its primal whiteness only as the vestal virgin of the +Cuthead Sioux tepee is to her star-eyed Athenian prototype. + +No matter. The cause in which its beauty and strength were expended +was richly worth this, and all the infinitely more precious cost. We +rejoice to believe that the events we commemorate were the ushering in +of a millennial epoch in human history. We stand, as it were, wrapped +still in obscurities, when a moonless night studded with glints of +silver wears toward its end and the horizon of the favored east +flushes with first promise of approaching day. Vague outlines of +distant summits marshal themselves against the brightening azure, and +soon flashes of crimson and purple playfully chase each other up to +the silent zenith. Shafts of unutterable splendor begin to shoot +through all the pulsing atmosphere, thrilling awakened nature with +reviving life, a harbinger of coming glory. + +And when earth has been clothed with magnificence for his royal +appearing, the sun himself wheels up from the nether deep, thus +heralded and attended with all due pomp of an unchallenged majesty. +His affluent beams pour in molten cascades down the revealed gorges; +they gild and glorify clustered pinnacles; they awake into sparkling +greenness the pine-clad slopes, and flame into burning scarlet on +banks of hidden bloom. Then rising higher with the mists of morning +still enrobing him, while hymning echoes of aroused animation fill the +air, he proudly, grandly marches up the sky--more grandly than any +monarch who ever trod the world's stately palaces and commanded the +homage of a prostrate throng. Even thus we fondly believe our dawning +will brighten into perfect day. + +Even thus the sun of our consummated civilization will rise and shine. +The hues that beautify and not the heat that withers will be in his +glow. And on dissolving storm clouds of a bitter bloody past, he will +paint the rainbow of an abiding pledge, that government of the people, +for the people, by the people shall not perish from the earth. + +The war for the Union, with all its majestic pageantry, is a thing of +the distant past. But its events have plucked the shining years they +gilded, even from this wondrous century, and molded them into a beacon +for ages yet to come. Let veterans rejoice in their honorable relation +to those events, and cherish with pride their sacred recollections. +Among these recollections is that of the contracted habitation, +grander in its humility than a palace imperial, which domiciled a +patriotism that was stainless and a heroism that was sublime, the +useful, modest, unappreciated Shelter Tent. It went with the heroes of +the war for the Union, through all their vivid experiences, as they +marched and camped and fought and conquered. They were the heroes of +the war, the heroes of the age. + +They marched through deep wildernesses and across rough mountain +ranges; through stony paths that grilled their ankle bones, and +freezing creeks that chilled their shoulder blades with a glacial +emulsion; through fruiting farmsteads with broad avenues of maple, +beech and oak; through beckoning orchards reddened for the clutch of +hungry hands. + +They marched through burning sands or stifling limedust white as +shredded alkali; through shoreless mud, black, yellow, red or gray, +tough, tender, slushy or plastic, but always tenacious as Arabic gums. + +They marched through settlements of frowning, hostile, alienated +countrymen, with a dagger in each frown and a stab in every stare, +toward the embattled hosts of a rebellious confederacy fiercely armed +for the conflict against right and light. They marched through +ignorance and barbarism and instruments of cruel bondage; through the +snap of the lash and the sizz of the branding iron; through writhing +iniquities and paths piled high with iron chains; through city streets +and country roads; through horrid prison pens, o'er bloody +battle-fields, past pyramids of skulls,--up to the shining heights of +fame. + +They camped in cottonfield and canebrake; in groves of magnolia and +myrtle; in still forests where jack-pots were juicy; in flowering +suburbs where sweet hams blossomed in the smoke-house and fat turkeys +ripened in the open air; on the levees of murmuring rivers and the +shores of the tossing sea. + +They camped on plantations and left them desolate, where their +devouring camp-fires and their patriotic appetites wrought piteous +ruin through wide landscapes of fertile plenteousness. + +They camped in shelter tents of microcosmic cut and altruistic design; +in huts composite, whereof logs, brush, mud, boards and straw in +varying proportions furnish the picturesque materials; or, tentless, +hutless, houseless, lay exposed to visits from alleged pearly dew and +so-called crystal raindrops, winked at all through the long +night-watches by the shimmering stars. + +They camped in barracks grimed with the smoke and smear of previous +occupants, who departing left behind them sociable swarms of their +closest friends, ready to extend from every crack and crevice an +incisive welcome; in bastioned forts, constantly exposed to imminent +explosions from burrowing enemies, hilarious in undiscoverable tunnels +far below. They camped with controversial comrades loaded on all +topics from justification by faith to the cremation of garbage; with +comrades wearing periodically the outward and visible signs of an +inward and spirituous exhilaration, to whom all paths of glory lead +but to the grass, and whose nocturnal slumbers yield a resonance with +terror-smiting combination of college yell and Indian war-whoop. + +They camped unwelcome amid prejudices and hatreds inveterate; amid +revilings incessant and intense; exposed to sneers in which the curled +lip of beauty impinged against a nose sniffing with scorn; but they +camped to stay, and they dispensed with welcome, as with other +comforts and luxuries multifold. The swelling chorus of their war +songs rent the sky, like the long, loud shout of jubilee which rises +when sundry millions of citizens, who have not dined regularly under a +revenue tariff regime, have tardily come to their senses, and voted +for three square meals a day. + +Their morning drum-beat belted the continent from the Atlantic to the +Rocky mountains with one continuous strain of joyous reveille. Their +evening dress parades were a spectacular divertisement, impressing on +daily thronging thousands enlarged views of the power and dignity of +invincible America. + +Their bugle calls ring through the air to-day awakening in our hearts +echoes tuneful as the song of triumph on the lips of cherubim. + +They fought the aged, ancient mildews of a hideous past, and fused one +whole new, glad, golden century of effort and aspiration into a short +four years of matchless achievement. They fought against grievous +error for the eternal truth, with a snow-bird-on-ice coolness, a +Scotch-Irish firmness and the zeal of a cuckoo congressionalist. + +On land and sea they fought the battles of humanity and posterity and +an immeasurable destiny. They fought giants who out-bunioned Bunyan, +and antedated Dante--veritable giants of the pit, with thorny tongues +and blazing eyes, welded Apollyon and megatherium. They fought against +bayonets and bullets; against grape and shell; against howitzers and +columbiads; against turrets and torpedoes; against sabres and carbines +perversely aimed at their most vunerable points; against breast-works +and rifle-pits bristling with sharpened steel. They fought across +enfiladed valleys hissing with hot death-bolts and red with volcanic +wrath; up rugged hillsides crested with flames of hell. + +They overcame armed rebellion and won a glorious peace. They conquered +those who tore down the flag, and they lifted it to a peerless +exaltation, where earth's admiring peoples may draw inspiration from +its radiant splendor. + +They gained a victory so consummate, so complete, so irrevocable, so +incontestable, that they condoned rebellion, and cordially welcomed +back the culprits to a share in governing the nation they had fought +to destroy. They conquered slavery with its multiples of horror. They +conquered ignorance and hatred and oppression, and opened all the land +to the sunbeams of modern enlightenment. + +They conquered navies and armies, generals and admirals, seaports and +citadels and capitals, senates and cabinets and presidents. + +They conquered deathless fame for their grand pantheon of heroes, and +garlands dewy with the freshness of a fadeless love for unnamed +millions who wore the loyal blue. + +They conquered the hearts of generations yet to come, to whom their +suffering and sacrifice have given the priceless heritage of noble +deeds and an undivided country. + +They conquered states, and built around the regenerated nation a +rampart of freedom, so high, so strong, so steadfast, that it may +proudly bid defiance to a hostile world. + +Grand as was their heroism, noble as were their deeds, the Union +soldiers have little patience with the rhetoric of war-boasters which +have caused nearly as much suffering throughout the country in recent +years as the melodies of "After the Ball is Over," or "Over the Garden +Wall." Some of this rhetoric is over-ripe, like the new school of +fiction, in other cases it pumps beautiful incidents from a deep +capacious imagination, painfully void of veracity. But at any rate no +untoward vauntings proceed from this unconsidered trifle of that +epoch, neglected proletariat of tabernacles belligerent, the fleered +and flouted Shelter Tent. + +To historians with the lenses of judgment in correct focus, its +functions in the splendid totality of achievement were by no means +unimportant, although hitherto almost wholly unacknowledged. A +war-scarred relic of it now, even if covering Carlyle's "most +shriveled, wind-dried, dyspeptic, chill-shivering individual, a +professor of life-weariness" (a tramp), would be more thrilling to the +eye and heart of patriotism than a dozen shining granite monuments +raised to commemorate forgiven but unforgetable rebellion. This is +the reason for these tears. + +Tattered and blackened but serviceable still, type of much else +whereon we might perhaps with gain philosophize, the humble but +priceless Shelter Tent was borne to the rendezvous by glad warriors +returning in triumph, and legally mustered out. The war was ended; its +work was done. No further seek its usufruct to discern. Its career was +as tame as a typewritten love-letter. The receipt of a depot +quartermaster was its sole and all-sufficient obituary. + +Vanished from the receding perspective of our experience is the +Shelter Tent--vanished from sight, but precious in memory forever. +With it went the golden age of the republic; with it went our +comradeship of trial and danger. After it came the new heaven and new +earth to our redeemed, regenerated country. It has gone. And already, +for more than half the soldiery of the grand army of the Union, it has +been replaced by that low, green canopy whose curtain never outward +swings. + + + + +DRESS PARADE + +IV + + +Any scheme of war which omits the stately ceremonial of Dress Parade +from among its essential elements is scandalously unsymmetric. The +military science is of pre-classical antiquity, its roots shattering +the sarcophagi of Cadmus, and Darius, and Ptolemy, and Tubal +Cain--penetrating even the caves of the troglodyte and the gravel-beds +of the trilobite and the saurians. Ripening ages have at last +disclosed the imperative demand of a frequent assembly and orderly +arrangement of troops for show and inspection just as the evolution of +a parson requires the cultivation of orthography, etymology, surplice +and orthodoxy. + +The problem as to who put down the rebellion, hitherto more recondite +than that of the precession of the equinoxes or of the invention of +the kindergarten, and infinitely provocative of type-written rhetoric, +has at last been solved! It was the boy in blue, his mother, and the +girl he left behind him. Only the first had or could have the right to +vote; the others had the higher right to be excused from voting. But +all were in the conflict, and each furnished a demonstrable quota of +heroic endeavor which crystallized into grand achievement. The first +did the fighting; the second did the praying; the third supplied the +inspiration. + +The first effort of a regiment at observance of the tactical symposium +termed Dress Parade marked an era in its annals which was always +thereafter recurred to with prickling sensations at the roots of the +hair and a revolving propensity in the pit of the stomach. How it was +ever accomplished, endured, and survived was a mystery fathomless as +the craft of a Christianized and deodorized savage. + +The component parts of this approaching cosmorama may, with profit, +be inspected separately. + +The enlisted recruit, only a fortnight removed from the fresh milk and +feather beds of home, is already jaundice-smitten, until the white of +his eye shows quite golden-roddish and sun-flowery. In his aspect we +discern the wisdom of one who is seventeen years old for the first +time, and duly appreciates the fact. In his liver, quinine is already +wrestling with calomel for the supremacy, even as in his soul +remembered moral precepts are already summoned to mount guard against +the wiles of sin. He is sugared o'er with the pale cast of +virtue--stern in his rectitude as the senator who has never betrayed a +trust. His black eyes duly sparkle in æsthetic harmony with his curly, +coaly hair, as he warbles new-fledged patriotic melodies with fervid +sincerity. And he views the imminence of experience in human carnage +with the blind insouciance of a political party that is being led +through a slaughter-house to an open grave. + +If by inscrutable preordination the chevrons of a corporal or +sergeant decorate his flapping sleeves, the agonies of his +self-consciousness are unutterably intensified. His picturesque, +variegated and altogether incomprehensible strut, is positively +unique. His awkwardness spreads and sprouts and amplifies and +ramifies. To witness his embarrassment is enough to break the heart of +an orphan. His tendency to do the right thing at the wrong time and +wrong thing at all times may be predicted with the precision of an +exact science. + +His responsibilities are enormous; his perplexities are terrible; his +woes are innumerable; he is dejected, afflicted, tormented. He is +helpless as a lawyer hurling maxims of abstract justice ruthlessly in +the face of evidence. He is a non-commissioned officer. That is to +say: an unquoted quota; an unenumerated numeral; a non-existent +existence; not an officer at all! + +The lieutenants, with authority varying inversely as the square of +their bumptiousness, are loud in their pretensions as the howl of a +defeated candidate who has fallen outside his breastworks. Mrs. +Solomon in all her several hundred glories was not elaborated like one +of these. Invincible Chicago, with the biggest and tallest Masonic +temple in the world, by thunder, is not so proud. The triumphant +statesman who has evolved a barley schedule that will put the robber +barons of western Iowa to open shame, is no more inflated. The +congressman who has exposed a rival's political armor-plate, +honeycombed with blowholes, is less exultant. State linked to state, +in goodly fate, in mart and mint and mine; in rolling plain of golden +grain or toss of plumy pine--none of these could fabricate a more +colossal national glorification than these imposing subalterns, with +ravenous tools of butchery girt on their semi-erect forms, and +fiercely fretful lest the rebellion should be suppressed before they +could debouch upon the ensanguined scenery. + +The captain is big with the fate of empire. He has dwelt upon the +agonizing spectacle of his beloved country bleeding at every vein, not +to mention the carotid and celluloid arteries, _et cetera_, until he +has accumulated an amount of frenzy which only blood of a highly +oxygenized quality and in most generous libations can ever expect to +satisfy. The candidate with a separate and distinct set of views on +all crucial questions for each county in his district may pass muster +on the civil arena, but this centurion is vehemently in earnest. He +has supped on a thousand horrors--remember the number. + +His eye is one gleaming chrysolite. His lips are pink and luminous, +dripping phosphorescent formulas in characterizing the assailants of +the flag. His mustache bristles with fury like the rays of an arc lamp +shooting pulsations of glow into unresisting darkness. His nose sniffs +battles from afar and threatens direful death in each resounding +sneeze. His brow is knit into knots of perplexity by chasing tactic +combinations which canter at will through the vasty thought-clefts of +his gray matter, foreboding a fatty degeneration thereof. His fervid +soul thirsts for the hour when he shall lead his eager men to regions +where bounteous crops of glory are harvested semi-monthly from +valor's fertile fields. No pent up Schenectady contracts his grand +ambition. But his torch is illuminative, not strictly conflagrational, +after all. + +The major and lieutenant-colonel blush bright crimson with the burden +of unwonted dignities. These bucolic ex-potentates from outlying +precincts, cross-road lawyers, perhaps, of the pig-replevin, +breachy-steer class, are limp supernumeraries in all this busy +ebullition. Marvel not that they mutter unprintable ideas as they pass +along. Each has now a clawing consciousness of his approximation to +the infinitely little--the cube root of nothing. Each has squandered +sixty dollars, the savings of a lifetime, in the purchase of the +prescribed habiliments. + +Now both find themselves eclipsed by a colored sport among the +on-lookers, who displays a loud check suit and screaming scarlet +necktie, enameled white shoes with black tips, and tall white hat +swathed in a broad black band. Suppressed and quenched they stand, +half-daft, with a glimmering recognition of their own marvelous +inutility; nerveless as the ecclesiastical victim of Christmas +generosity who has seventeen turkeys, in various stages of +decomposition, lying on his back porch. + +But the colonel! Great son of Mars, swathed in fire and thunder! Every +sublime and momentous prerogative of this illustrious occasion finds +its prescriptive focus in his person. Lucifer, son of the morning--he +will rise to the occasion or break a nerve in the effort! Lifted by +approved, unchallenged primacy above all mediocre surroundings, he +stands wrapped in the rampant amplitude of his own perpendicularity. +His dignity is frigid as the icicles on the fateful blizzard's beard +in those frosty northwest winters when the coyote ceases yelping and +the gopher is at rest. His serenity can calmly smile at Satan's wrath +and force a frowning fraud. He speaks an imitation West Point idiom +with the Tippecanoe accent, and his voice rivals in resonance the +venturous wild-fowl honking high in air. His mental endowments have +never been enervated by book gluttony and lesson bibbing. He is no +patent process product of enlightened educational methods. He is a +symmetrical outgrowth, so accepted and recognized by all, including +himself. + +Physically and intellectually he looms and glooms and towers. On him +all glances are centered; toward him all thoughts are stretched; for +him all hearts palpitate. Hector arming for the siege of Troy was +boy's play in comparison. The embryo soldiery regard him with pride; +admiring citizens look on him with poorly concealed reverence. He has +already trimmed his corns to fit a major-general's shoes. Consequently +his shoulders stiffen with pardonable arrogance; his gaze flashes +soul-satisfaction in radiant smileful beams, and the ginger is hot in +his mouth. + +These are the ingredients out of which, in the alembic of his genius, +the adjutant, perspiring like a wedding guest come to celebrate the +climax of a happy disaster, must fuse a Dress Parade. His task is +difficult as that of teaching a war ship how to swim. These are the +bristling units, which, when he swings his commands around and over +them, will submit their centripetence to his awecompelling +centrifugence. They are flexible as a rubber currency, that can be +expanded and inflated at will, if handled with care. But in the end +they will stand approximately aligned, ready to skip on light +bombastic toe, to wheel and whirl, to march or halt, to strike or +slay. + +Let not the drum major, gaudy as a calico cat, and his melodious +cohort, be forgotten. This cohort may be composed of small boys +executing Yankee Doodle with variations on snare drums and whistling +sticks, or of fluffy adults, agitating the atmosphere with resonant +trombone and shrieking piccolo. That is largely a matter of natural +selection,--that is to say, of accident. But it is always obtrusive as +a mourning costume expressly designed to advertise a quenchless woe +and save expenses generally. And it is always marshaled by a fierce +brobdingnag mounting a tall bearskin shako, and twirling a +nickel-plated besom staff with the dapper legerdemain of a +sword-swallower. + +This so-called "band" is as imperative in the saturnalia of Dress +Parade as a demijohn in an Iowa closet. In that province water that +contains only 32,000 microbes to the cubic inch has been +scientifically approved as a beverage--provided just enough brandy is +added to take the cruelty out of the water. Without the band, parade +would be a piebald abstraction, unthinkablest of impossibles. With it +obstacles vanish and everything bursts into buoyant feasibleness and +stem-winding accuracy, wrapped in the indwelling beatitude of +conscious grandeur. + +Music hath charms to smooth the savage breast. The reason why I can +not tell. In truth, strange to say, there are many other mysteries +connected with our mental operations and inspirational impulses which +are equally insoluble. The processes and boundaries of emotion in the +soul of a Wyoming senator, when her back hair comes down in the midst +of an eloquent peroration, are inscrutable and unfathomable. The bill +for an act entitled an act to amend an act is likely then to lose its +place on the calendar. But as a rule, the processes and boundaries of +thought are immutably conditional. Its formulas were petrified in +Aristotle, for man, with all his amazing progress in science and +inventions, still abides a little lower than the angels, his goods +never quite up to sample. The intellect pauses at a distance from +ultimate truth, dimly gleaming through the hush of a large gloom, and +painfully cries for external help. + +Explosions often result from suddenly injecting thought into a vacant +mind. Some syllogisms are fallacious as a decoy watermelon stuffed +with paris green. The imagination may roam uncurbed through infinite +realms, but reason is horizoned by an adjacent pale over which it can +neither leap nor soar. Beyond this boundary philosophy can not direct +man's tottering steps; further his unblazed path will lead into the +vagaries and discords and peopled torments of lunacy, unless he +permits faith to begin where reason ends. When a venerable pundit, +formulating huge installments of lexicography, assures you that he +knows it all, be careful where you repeat the statement. Tell it not +in Gath; tell it to the marines--but break it gently, cautiously, or +by the beard of the prophet you will find small credence. + +Necessary as it has been, dominant as it has been, military talent is, +after all, one of the lower forms of genius. It is not conversant with +the highest or the richest intellectual pursuits. It may exist to +perfection deficient in profound and liberal thinking, in imagination +and taste, in the noblest energies and inspirations of life. + +Hugo says that at Waterloo each square was a volcano attacked by a +thunder-cloud; the lava fought with the lightning. Their employment +demands none of the finer fibers of intellect or loftier aspirations +of the soul. Even the "business" statesman of well recognized +shrewdness and well advertised piety, entrusted with cabinet +portfolios on the theory that public office is a private usufruct, is +likely to tread the higher realms of intelligence with more certain +footsteps than the Wellingtons or Jubal Earlys of bellicose +notability. And Susan B. Anthony insists to this day that the little +affair between her younger brother Mark Antony and Cleopatra has been +grossly exaggerated for base political purposes. + +Parade differs from review as camp differs from campaign. The one is +solemnity, the other is vivacity. Positive parade, comparative review, +superlative battle, are the three degrees of comparison in war's +activities. They are respectively tableau, melodrama and tragedy of +systematic warfare. As ivory must germinate in the elephant's trunk +before poker chips can materialize, so parade and review must antedate +the battle agony. + +Parade discloses the proficiency of a command in decorum, alignment +and manual of arms. Review and inspection test its skill in evolution, +as well as in equipment, accoutrement, care of weapons and general +efficiency. Battle brings out all the qualities which drills, parades, +reviews and inspections have developed or exhibited. During parades +and reviews the officers come to the front; in battle they go to the +rear. This accounts for the seeming mystery that so many still survive +to tell the tale, and to tell it in such bewildering variety. + +Daily Dress Parade being enjoined explicitly by regulations, becomes +per force a vested right of citizen observers, and the periodic +irritant of lethargic soldiery. But its first dainty freshness, before +a state of lethargy has supervened and suppurated, threatens the +maddening frenzy that drowns all sorrow in ginger ale. Its occurrence +then brings whimsical complications equal to that of sweetening a +whisky ring with a sugar trust; mad alternations of hope, elation, +trepidation and horror; a synthesis like few! + +That two and two make five is a mathematical preposterosity; that +early experiments in Dress Parade should be a success is a military +ditto, with extra emphasis on the antepenultimate. Let the heathen +rage and the plutocrats imagine a vain thing! Here is a seriousness of +facetiousness that would discourage a comedy star in full apogee. + +As the fateful hour draws near, dim premonitions of coming +divertisements rapidly multiply. Dress Parade is about to materialize, +and the air is electric with expectancy, as when Corbett recognizes +the belligerence of Persimmons, hires a typewriter, and opens +hostilities in due form. Indications of the advent of an event worthy +the delicate touch of Bjornstene Bjeminison's poetic fancy, are +discerned. Matrons and maidens cluster and flutter and twitter athwart +the designated color line. The matrons are superb, and the maidens are +about to become historic--they are the girls who are to get left +behind. + +Accompanying them are their attendant male civilians, disgruntled as +an oldest son who has ceased to be the only child by a large majority. +They feel like a bunch of shop-worn lower-case ciphers just ready to +be edited into the hell-box. They are keenly self-conscious of total +eclipse in this martial splendor's plethoric incandescence. The +rippling tee-hee of maidenly merriment rasps roughly on their ears, +provoking wrath in the collar. Their cheerfulness matches that of a +quarter of beef on its journey from dissecting table to chill-room. + +Along company streets, redolent with intoxicating fumes of bean soup +and loyalty up to date, manifest signs of preparation obtrude. +According to the accepted congressional code, nothing succeeds like +success, when one is successful in succeeding himself. Even the +demagogues, who love the people in stump speeches at ten dollars per +speech, sometimes achieve success of that kind. + +A genuine military success requires painstaking method, as these +premonitions indicate. There are glimpses of toilet, glimmers of gun +barrel, suggestions of ablution, flashes of bayonet. There are dashes +of shoe-polishing and hair-brushery--mad wrestle with a Paderewski +growth of foliage, here and there. A tent fly lifts and the process of +creating a contemptuous curl of mustache greets the penetrating +vision. Bright steel rammers gleam in the glare of the giddy avenue. +Advance individuals, nervously premature in completed canonicals, +appear; then squads, groups, platoons--entire companies. Other things +may be late and worms may chew them, but the scythe and hour-glass are +always on time. So is Dress Parade. + +Companies are aligned and files are counted off. Sergeants, surcharged +with a rude, luminous unshaken faith in the republic, tumble +stumblingly into their positions. Corporals, sensitive as the bulb of +nerve fiber at the end of a cat's whisker, are given the merry hand +with a marble heart. + +The captain, already disliked by the enemies he has made, flings +himself to the perilous front. Ranks are right faced and levant +longitudinally, at a modified gallopade, toward the aforementioned +color line. Here, after miscellaneous entanglements, unequaled since +cable and trolley emancipated the mule from tram car servitude, a +measurable coherence is secured. The companies form by some sort of +incomprehensible intuition of incidence, on four or five alleged +"guides." These stand with inverted muskets and quaking knees, a soft +spot in the head and a hot spot in the cheek, robust delineations of +despairing imbecility. Their terrors are tremendous, reminding one of +that sweetly solemn village hour, when curfew rings and small boys +hunt their haunts. + +The colonel is now suddenly disclosed. He has dropped, unseen, +presumably from the propitious heavens, into his allotted station, +some forty paces in front of the center. At any rate, he is there. And +if I had a hundred dollars--as I had once, though I may never look +upon its like again--I would wager it all that he wishes he were +somewhere (anywhere) else. + +He is one of those lingering men whose minds go off with a wet fuse. +Like one dazed, he gazes amazed; and a gaze at him is worth the whole +cost of admission. He wears a little bunch of whiskers on his chin, +and his nose has the rising inflection. His warlike air and attitude +are prophecies of the day when Greece shall give Turkey a basting. He +poses statuesque, with folded arms, head aslant, one hip elevated and +both legs trembling. His make-up rivals that of a special Chinese +envoy with the yellowest of jackets and peacockiest of tails. He +carries a frown over the bridge of his nose that portends deep +concealment of valuable information as to his own consequence, unknown +to the world at large. That frown, however, is only borrowed for the +occasion; at heart he is humble as the Chicago aristocrat who has +squandered the price of a car of pork in the purchase of a bogus +Venus. He poses, with arms folded _a la_ Bonaparte over his Napoleonic +stomach. He poses like the last erect relic of a forest, colossal, +leafless, lifeless and sublime. He looks proud as the weary mechanic +greeted on his front porch at eve by a shining galaxy of posterity. He +has a right to be proud; he is the colonel. Bring forth the royal +diadem and make him a present of it. + +Meanwhile the adjutant is not idle. Far otherwise. His duties are +complicated as the new quadruplex telegraphic system for the +transmission of string-fiend fakes. He imitates the gyrations of a +cyclone funnel in his delirious attempts to frame one geometric +tangent out of ten miscellaneous arcs, with unassimilable _radii_. His +processes resemble a lurid, revolving nightmare of St. Valentine's day +in the morning. He foams and fumes; he shouts and signals; he +gesticulates; he genuflects; he perambulates. He pleads for correct +formation as pallid Maryland corn fields plead for rain and +fertilizers. His voice is softened by the sweet, feathery fluff on +his upper lip, but it reaches far. His perplexities equal those of the +man who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among hotel +runners. But as in the cruel abattoir the fated bullock glances at the +sticker's cold, callous, calculating eye and bows to the inevitable, +so the willing, though awkward, soldiery yield at last to the +adjutant's persistent insistence. He finally establishes a distant +resemblance to the shortest space between two given markers. The +markers introvert their marks and fall into desuetude--and the mummery +is duly inaugurated. + +First the music must sound off. It is of the class that has functional +relations with insomnia. Sad was the unlucky Kansas farmer who lost +his wife and his best yoke of steers, all in the same week. Sad is the +beatified spirit of the deceased alderman when he finds that the +streets of heaven are already paved and there can be no rake-off. Sad +is the fond wife, rummaging her husband's pockets, when she discovers +through her tears that the coins are copper. But sadder than any, +saddest of all, are they who by direful fortune are condemned to the +slow torture of listening to a moulting military band. Yet it is an +inescapable adjunct of Dress Parade. + +Now the rear rank must "open order," a strategic maneuver performed +with a ludicroterrific multiplication of blunders, appalling to the +articles of war and fatal to the flintiest risibles. Each witness +wears the face of one who drinketh vinegar unawares. More calisthenics +by the adjutant. More heaving of anchors and straining at cables and +hoisting on beam ends along the phalanx line. For the jolly mariners +of the prairie, fresh from the delights of home, with its pealing +bells and magic spells and appetizing smells, are trying to box the +compass of spectacular punctilio, with odds dead against them in +generous installments. Their timidity gives one a pain; their temerity +makes one tender to the touch of sarcasm. Marvel not that our infant +industries require protection while they are teething. + +Then follow, in startling, swift succession, certain decisive events, +decisive as the mystic, matrimonial rite which makes two mortals +immortal. + +The adjutant faces toward the left flank, shoulders his tinseled +pinking iron, and sets his teeth firmly, almost defiantly. + +He starts forward in an energetic amble, a melancholy glitter +weltering in his optic, and his features bathed in gloom whose +darkness might be bottled up and sold for Tyrian dye. + +He trots trippingly down to the axis of oscillation; wheels suddenly +to the right; charges madly on the perplexed, expectant colonel +standing promiscuous as aforesaid; thinks better of it halfway, and +halts suddenly. + +He whirls entirely around at imminent risk of summersaulting. + +He explodes vociferously: "Shltr-r-r Hr-r-rms! Pr-r-rsnt Hr-r-rms!" + +That is all, but that is enough. The result is astonishing as the +Rhode Island tenderfoot's first experiment with Montana wrath; but on +the whole it is satisfactory. This is a free country, even when +poverty stands with one ear at the telephone waiting for the stately +steppings of an advance agent of prosperity. This is a free country, +where the Italian may drink wine if he likes, even though the +Norwegian may prefer alcohol. This is a free country, where, in the +bright lexicon of sage brush statesmanship, there is no such word as +surrender. This is a free country, where once in four years the voters +may, if they see fit, commit all their political Jonahs to a school of +whales with broad throats and stout stomachs. This is a free country, +all the way from sterile Vermont to California, land of rose-bloom and +gold dust, where striped candy ripens every month on the woodbine and +new oranges can be dug before Easter. This is a free country, and each +soldier on his own terms, in his own good time, obeys the adjutant's +command. In the aggregate, every movement in the manual of arms, and +many more, are attempted; in the ultimate, the entire battalion gets +there. + +But the methods and fashions in which nine hundred fire-arms are +supposititiously tendered to all whom it may concern, are of +bewildering midway plaisance variety. They are void of monotony, like +a symposium on the cause and cure of panics. The absolute negation of +simultaneousness is an abiding charm. Variety is spice; better thirty +days of Texas than a palace in Cathay. When St. Louis contributes +melted snow of a very dark color to swell old Mississippi's limpid +tide, a waiting delta down in the gulf reaps the predestinated +benefit. + +The adjutant, reckless of addled brain tissue, wrenched spinal marrow +and sprained leg-ligaments, whirls once more. His heels come down with +a recoil that would jar the rivets from an iron-clad. Patience! noble +adjutant (and gentle reader), the prancings and rotatings approach a +terminal. We near a period such as that when the last cork has been +popped at a wine supper and the bill must be settled. Grudge not the +details that gild the gliding moments as they go. He whirls, and, with +smart salute of naked saber pointed toward the deathless stars, +confronts his commander. It is a moment big with fate. We are reminded +of the memorable occasion when Cleopatra clasped the asp and perished +dramatically. + +The adjutant confronts the colonel and salutes him to the best of his +feeble ability. Poor human utterance is inadequate at such an hour, +but he manages to stammer in propitiatory tone: "Sir! the parade is +formed!" Then, circling softly to right and rear of the rising +splendor, he subsides, succumbs, and is henceforth lack-lustrous in +this spangled pageantry. His part has been performed, and, whisper it +gently to the sighing zephyrs, his future function is merely to stand +at attention, like patience on a pedestal, grinning at grief. + +For a moment or more the silence is painfully intense. You can hear +hearts beat like the ticking of French clocks made in Rotterdam by a +Swede. In the recesses of each chest, "boots and saddles" is sounded +at frequent intervals. But outward silence reigns, as when a young +woman, purple with throbbing timidity and expectant bashfulness, +stands before her lover, uncertain whether he will lisp his love, or +switch off to a side track and discuss the January thaw. Silence is +golden and toothsome and restful. But it can not last forever. It +breaks. + +It breaks like a monetary stringency tapped with clearing-house +certificates. The colonel now looms, the crowning pride of all this +display. Behold, ye gathered multitude of non-combatives. Behold and +tremble! His sword of sharpness, gift from admiring neighbors over at +Goslin's lane, unsheathed after valorous struggles, swings clumsily to +a perpendicular. Excalibur's fit prototype, as emblem of authority and +fruitful of coming slaughters, is revealed. Hear, oh! post-office, and +give ear, all ye blacksmith shops. Great Mars, his son, has sway. Mock +him not! Madness that way lies, or worse. Cheer and the crowd cheers +with you; laugh and you laugh in the guard-house. Such being the case, +nobody cares to laugh. Napoleon called attention to the fact that +forty centuries were perched on the pyramids to umpire one of his +fights. More centuries than that are here to see and note. + +And the colonel proceeds to make a few remarks. He is in a remarkful +mood, but his style is dry and sententious. He is not one of those +authors who swell the bowels of their books with empty wind. His +remarks are meaningful. At home he was chief in the rosebud garden of +oratory, but it is not his cue, on the present occasion, to get into a +wrestling match with reckless word-trippers. He does all the talking +himself. Spherical, sonorous vocables, the well-conned phrases of +command, roll out upon the quivering air, and smite the multitudinous +ear of this battalion with a startling sense of impotency. The +multitudinous arm reaches out in nervous effort at obedience. But on +divergent lines the effort doth its energy expend, and the results are +simply marvelous. Melodramatic entanglements and perplexities tread on +each other's heels, like candidates for patrimony at the obsequies of +a plutocrat. Errors grotesque as hippogriffs impinge on errors +plaintive as threnodies in minor E. + +A woman of the impressionist school, who cooks in a chafing dish, and +prescribes reform ball costumes of high-neck gown, long sleeves and +mittens, is very appropriately registered from Boston. A school girl +in the same city wrote in her composition: "The boy thinks himself +smart because he can wade where it is deep, but God made the dry land +for every living thing, and rested on the seventh day." No calligraph +below the regulation Boston standard will suffice fully to portray the +errors and horrors of this Dress Parade. + +The evolutions of Darwinism are therefore presumably to be +intelligently apprehended only by the Boston transcendentalist, +nourished on mackerel salted to the _n_th power, and wearing a baked +bean in his vermiform appendix. The evolutions and involutions of a +maiden effort at Dress Parade are incomprehensible as the ravings of a +salaried jaw-smith in a labor strike, who has burst into a profuse +state of prevarication as the rosy beer-froth mantles his sublime +cheek. True wisdom is best exemplified by a turtle withdrawn into his +casemate; even the overestimated he-goat is less occult and dignified. + +The popular platform at Vassar is a free coinage of ice cream, 16 to +1, and a currency based on unsecured bonds of wedlock that have +defaulted their dividends would be unanimously spurned. On the western +frontier a presentable university can be set up with one bottle of +sulphuric acid, a four-foot telescope and two ball bats. In some +portions of the south a professor who boasts a bicycle kyphosis, +writes polysyllabic profundities in long-waisted chirography, and +combs his hair like John C. Calhoun, is impregnably intrenched. + +Thus do educational standards pulsate and palpitate in different +sections of our beloved country. In China, where the grasshopper is a +burden and mice are legal tender, it is not so. The tests for a civil +service examination of candidates for concubine to the emperor are +alike in all the provinces. The Chicago board of trade operator, who +rises with the lark at 8:45 A. M., and five drinks later is ready for +business, scorns the effeminate chappie who had his dog's tongue split +in order to crease his pants. But in Chicago, where even the Goddess +of Liberty frequently requires a chaperone after dark, such things +will happen in spite of the most stringent police regulations. Besides +which they are mostly incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial. These +evolutions and involutions of Dress Parade are to be wrought out by an +incipient soldiery, which three months hence will be seeking the hen +and ham of glory at the red mouth of smoke house and chicken coop, +lucky also not to be subject to rigid inspection by a state +entomologist. Now they are intangible as the man in the moon, +ineffable as the man in the honeymoon. + +Evolutions sometimes go backward. On the present occasion there is no +restriction--everything goes, as the young woman said when he drifted +slowly out of her life on a lumber raft. The evolutions are +meritorious in design and multifarious in execution; likewise in the +manual of arms. The flabergasted novices stand inextricable, like some +brittle Rosamond tangled in silken skeins to the queen's taste. You +may bray a crank in the mortar, but his wheels will still whirl. When +the irreclaimable faddist bestrides his foible, give him due latitude. +When the ambient air is full of ozone and things of that sort, look +out for thunder-storms. + +When the 'prentice musketeer shoulders his arquebus and intimates a +design to charge bayonet, stand from under promptly. Delays are +dangerous. Iscariot with his twelve pieces of discredited coin folded +in his turban figured as a tight-rope dancer on the occasion of his +very last appearance on any stage. + +Tasteless and intangible was the kiss that was prematurely discharged +in midair and never, never came. Even the joys of courtship suffer a +temporary eclipse when Johnnie is found behind the sofa. Exasperating +to a like degree is the humorous episode at which we dare not laugh, +yet can not die. It is alleged that rural homes decorated with +chromographic mottoes are largely responsible for the overcrowded +state of the paresis wards in our asylums. How much of the phenomenal +hereditary predisposition to recklessness which characterized the next +generation after the war was attributable to the enforced repression +of risibles at Dress Parade may never be definitely ascertained. This +much we know: When the safety valve is strapped down, boilers are in +danger. She who kindles fire with gasoline, and penetrates the +undiscovered country by that illuminated route, leaves few to pity and +none to praise. But the victim of an over-fermentation of merriment +has sympathizers numerous as the fashions of grandfather's hat. + +When the young recruit, twenty per cent. pork, thirty per cent. beans, +forty per cent. patriotism and ten per cent. soldier, stands up to be +exhibited, and a score of his best girls, each compounded in five +equal parts of beauty and brightness, grace, gush and giggle, gaze in +ravenous, enraptured solicitude on the dreadful performance, with +their steel walls of restraint riveted tightly around them,--well, the +consequences are to be unquestionably counted in as a part of the +general havoc of war. + +Meantime Dress Parade goes on. The evolutions and involutions continue +to revolve, until the tired recruits are threatened with serious +affection in the yellow pine district of the lumber region. The manual +of arms goes through all its ascensions and declensions, its +conjugations and calamities. He who would follow all its ramifications +must have a head on him like the learned pig. Arms are presented, +shouldered, ordered, right-shifted, trailed and held aport. Bayonets +are charged and fixed and clattered until their gleam threatens to +scream. No such confusion has prevailed since Lot's wife was +transformed into chloride of sodium. One third of the commands are +unintelligible; another third are incapable of execution according to +tactics; no two companies have been drilled alike; no three +consecutive soldiers perform the same antic at the same time. No +movement is attempted that does not yield mixtures of grief, drollery +and exasperation, sufficing for the most miscellaneous requirement. +Meritorious attributes sometimes crop out in unexpected places--many a +man conceals a bruised and bleeding heart beneath a porous plaster. +Humor and drollery develop. Still the routine goes on, nominally +monotonous, but in reality miraculously diversified. + +[Illustration: ... _No two companies have been drilled alike; no three +consecutive soldiers perform the same antic at the same time_] + +Arms are trailed, right-shouldered, presented, ordered; bayonets are +fixed, unfixed, or transfixed; rammers are sprung and imaginary +cartridges are subjected to supposititious mastication. Over and over +again, in bewildering diversity of succession, are the orders +inaccurately given and confusedly executed, until the colonel's +martial rage is seemingly appeased. Man wants but little here below, +while woman wants many things and wants them all marked down. Both man +and woman ought to find in this notable performance a maximum of +_quantum suf_. + +The perfunctory reading of orders; the reports of first sergeants; the +grand spectacular advance of the officers, might each inspire a modern +society poem, printed on linen paper with ink worth a dollar a pound. +The final dismissal of parade; the departure of companies to their +respective quarters--these are mere routine. They are essential, +perhaps, but dull, tasteless, flameless as unleavened sanctimony. It +is vanity and vexation to be born with a silver spoon in one's mouth, +if there is nothing in the spoon. + +Throughout its bellicose career, when occasion permits, the regiment +renews its daily practice of this imposing observance. Leaf by leaf +the roses fall; day by day the snare-drums call. But practice makes +perfect. Within a twelvemonth after muster-in the alert, alive and +agile volunteers will have become so facile in their exercise that +every motion is pivotal and simultaneous--a thousand with a single +joint who hear and move as one. The veteran reverts to his plebe camp +experiences even as the aged grandsire recalls the sorrowful coffee +and sad biscuit of early matrimonial days. The halo of romance +encircles them still! + +Every man to his trade, cries the bigamous cobbler, with shell-bark +resonance, and tenaciously sticks to his last. Every crank to his +whim, every fool to his folly, says common-sense, with some slight +conscientious twinges. When uncle Silas comes from South Squam, and, +for the first time, confronts the dizzy delights of a gay metropolis, +there is danger in the air. Look not upon Monte Carlo when it is red; +shun humbugs as you would shun a land title based on love and +affection. The events we commemorate happened, to all intents and +purposes, on a different planet from that now occupying our orbit. + +If ever a Dress Parade of hobbies, a review of sham or an inspection +of human nature could be displayed, there are grounds for a suspicion +that serious complications would ensue. They would equal the ferment +from an accidental mixture of gin, gingerbread and sauerkraut, prime +standard products of the early Knickerbockers and first exports from +New Amsterdam. Bulwer says: "Beware of the poor devil who is always +railing at coaches and four; book him as a man to be bribed." + +More than thirty years ago, for the last time in the volunteer army of +the Union, the welcome call, "Parade is dismissed," rang along the +attenuated line of some lingering battalion, and it dissolved into +history. Parades, marches and battles were finished. But victory was +assured; its results are embedded and embalmed in the nation's +splendid destiny. + +It is an inspiring thought that this destiny opens broad and bright +before us, and we need only be faithful to our trust to ensure a +realization of the fondest dreams of the heroes, saints and martyrs of +the olden time. Unrolled around us lies a continent, clothed with +verdure as with a garment, heavy with its stores of hoarded wealth, +all reserved for us in virgin purity and freshness since earth's +creation morn. Our race is inheritor of the best blood, the best +energies, the best principles, the best talent, that have illumined +and vivified the human family through all its glorious past. + +Here, then, if we and our descendants are true, in this enlarged and +beautified Eden, are to be evolved all the grand possibilities of +humanity. Here increasing prosperity is to bring increased virtue; +increasing intelligence, increased power; increasing culture, +increased happiness; increasing freedom, increased nobility. Here the +swarming millions yet to be, molded by free institutions and +universal education into a refined and homogeneous race, multiplying +their material comforts by now undreamed-of physical appliances, +adorning their homes until each family shall dwell, self-centered, in +a world of beauty as in a shining sphere of crystal, and warming in +the sunshine of God's presence as they grow in moral stature nearer to +His throne,--here the coming millions will advance to the millennial +fruition promised as the goal of earthly hope and effort. + + + + +THE BOYS IN BLUE GROWN GRAY + +V + + +There were no giants in those days that tried men's souls and stored +their bodies with unpensionable ailments. Giants, mostly apocryphal, +fought battles single-handed in periods of antiquity now remote and +malodorous. The last samples perished some centuries ago, painfully +regretted. Their spears were rust, their clubs were dust, their souls +were with the saints (we trust) long prior to 1861. + +The men who put down the slaveholders' rebellion were mostly boys. It +is estimated that the soldiers of the Union averaged only nineteen +years old when the roar of that first cannon broke on Sumter's walls +and echoed down the aisles of time, besides shattering a large +invoice of miscellaneous crockery. No such burden ever before fell on +the youth of any era; no such imperial manhood was ever before +developed in a single generation. Greece molded countless heroes of +her own, and has thrust her hand into every mass of mortal clay that +has been fashioned into beauty or power or glory since the days of the +demigods. But Greece can boast no more perfect heroism than that which +made our golden age illustrious, conspicuous, lurid as a trolley car +in a thunder-storm, for all ensuing ages. + +The recruit of 1861 was of the human various species so dear to the +articulating frenzy of Mr. Venus. He was intensely human yet various +as life's multiform phases in this resplendent hemisphere. He was a +farm boy, perhaps, fresh from the white sheets, and fried chicken, and +sweet cream, and angel cake of his ancestral roof, with no experience +more thrilling than that of the local press and pulpit arising as the +voice of one man to celebrate the production of some abnormal +cucumber; he went to town to see the parade, and, vowing he would +ne'er enlist, enlisted. He was a store clerk, skilled in pounds, pints +and prints, with a thin top dressing of Latin, and a silvery Minnehaha +gush of gaiety in every motion. He was a student with columns of +logarithms in his head and a theodolite in his stomach; conscientious +as a juryman sworn to bring in a verdict according to the law and the +lawyers' speeches. He was a mechanic, swart and grim, with steps so +energized with mobility that when he walked the pavements rolled and +rocked beneath him like waves of the sea. + +There were howling swells in that period, but he was not of them. +Reared in the bland atmosphere of plowshares and pruning-hooks, he had +no taste for the big orgies in which they reveled. He was not a fast +young man, nor did the fast young men, as a rule, make good soldiers, +or soldiers at all. Their furore was not the inspiring sentiment of a +war for liberty. Their recklessness was not bravery; their wild +natures accepted no yoke of discipline. These fast young men traveled +rapidly, because their road was all down grade. They were the same +then as now, the same yesterday, to-day and next century--worthless +and fruitless, first, last and forever. Each successive five years +brings a new generation of them, as the novices of five years +previous, worn out and burned out by dissipation, disappear over the +divide and enter that sulphurous enclosure, that stockade of horrors, +where the fires of torment are fed with their festering tissues, and +the towers of Tophet re-echo the shrieks of their tortured souls. +These howling swells, these fast young men, these debauched, debased +and dissolute youths, these devotees of the world, the flesh and the +flowing bowl, had no part or lot in the sacrifices of that heroic era. + +The average boy of '61 was of pure metal and exalted worth. The glint +of his eye reflected the stars of the flag, and a prophecy of +Appomattox was written on his brow. Into the white chambers of his +soul only such things could enter as affiliated with the guests +already cherished there--his mother, his sister, his sweetheart and +his God. + +In the alembic of stern discipline and relentless strife he and his +comrades were fused into that homogeneous, glorious host who, on five +hundred crimson fields from Wilson's Creek to Bentonville, at a salary +of thirteen munificent dollars a month in depreciated greenbacks, put +the love of life's joys behind them and, throwing their souls into +their bayonets, rushed to the flaming front, careless of wounds or +death if only they might help to final victory. + +What we call 1861 was not a year. It was history changing front; a +cycle dying, an era born. Ignorance was still shaking himself by the +hand pompously, after the manner of his species, and saying to +himself: "Go to! I am lord of the bailiwick as aforetime; I will bind +and stack and thresh as of hoariest yore." But knowledge was looming; +information was coming to the front with a seafaring hitch to his +trousers as one who had traveled far; even the professional reformer, +who talks dialectics while his wife toils sixteen hours a day to +nourish his soaring soul, found auditors. But knowledge did not loom +to an adequate altitude or permeate to a sufficient degree of +prevalence. Else had no Southron dared promise himself to whip the +people who had invented and built up and managed the great material +enterprises of the nation--or desired to whip them. Ignorance +fluttered around recklessly until he singed his ostentatious whiskers +in the flames of the pit; yea, more,--until he was blistered to the +eyebrows with scorchings of the everlasting bonfire. Where ignorance +is bliss, politics degenerates into irredeemable idiocy and ineffable +slush; the campaign of mutual delusion goes on and on, the whole day +long, the whole summer through, the whole year round; the oracle is an +imitation statesman, whose head was cast in a heroic mold, but the +jelly didn't "jellify;" his clientage is the adult male population of +an infested village, whose howling need is a dog-killery. Under such +leadership popular illumination is a slothful, discouraging process. +The modest, uncultivated mule is liable at times to reverse the +accepted formula, and put his best foot backward. The half-savage +conductors of an orthodox Afro-American cremation in Texas typify an +equally marked social retrogression. + +It is, as a rule, futile to preach predestination to people who are +not in the four hundred, but a general movement for the dissemination +of knowledge is effective in tearing away ignorance, as the rich soil +of Iowa is ripped up the back with a gang plow. With a due allowance +of school-houses in the south forty years ago, the slaveholders' +rebellion would have been impossible, just as in the prosperous, +progressive American republic of to-day with ten million depositors in +her banks and twenty million children in her schools, a successful +assault on intelligence and prosperity would be impossible. Ignorance, +as we have stated, fluttered recklessly near the scorchings of the +bonfire. Whereupon knowledge achieved a popularity unprecedented since +our first ancestress risked for its acquisition the fairest prospects +of her distant and inconceivably multitudinous posterity. + +During ten years next succeeding the war, its loyal survivors were +habitually called, half in affection, half in honor: "Our Boys in +Blue." Even those who had hated their cause and mourned their success +conceded the fitness of a sobriquet which exalted their uniform to the +dignity of a moral attribute, and tinged their classification with the +hue of their trousers. It was Plato who said: "The brave shall be +crowned. He shall wed the fair. He shall be honored at the sacrifice +and the banquet." This was the era of the wedding, the barbecue, the +"present arms" to a phalanx of angels--as was eminently fitting. + +The women of '61 were not the wailing watchers and tearful +lint-scrapers of a too current tradition. They were soulful, +heart-strong heroines, the swordless soldiers of the Union. +Lint-scraping and bandage winding were minor episodes. Their work was +many sided as a prism, with every angle reflecting a radiant +intensity. And all the ladders of grace that led from bloodiest +battle-fields straight to the bending heavens, were built up, round by +round, from the piety and devotion of intrepid womanhood. + +The Boys in Blue were rapidly and happily and most appropriately +mated to the noble girls they left behind them. One of Napoleon's +marshals exclaimed when dying: "I have dreamed a beautiful dream." To +the Boy in Blue, suffused with blushes as the compliments rained on +him, both war and peace were chrysanthemum visions, soft, rosy and +spicy. The compliments were well earned and welcome; welcome and +wholesome as a thoughtful surgeon's timely prescription in the cold +drizzle of a night march, when he proffered his flask with: +"Gentlemen, you need a tonic; leave a drop for me!" Even the chastened +copperhead hissed no expostulation; he simply folded his Nessus shirt +around him and lay down in baffled schemes, his only punishment being +an enforced allegiance to the proudest flag and grandest country the +world has ever seen. + +When ten years more had lent distinction and distance to receding +perspectives, the title changed to "Our Gallant Veterans." The +asperity of opposition had softened; the respect of friends had +deepened. There was tenderness in the accent which pronounced the +words and in the sentiment which inspired them. All recognized that +wherever a surviving soldier stood, there was a sentinel of liberty. +The Veterans came to the front in every sphere of activity, with the +nerve that stakes a royal flush against a marble synagogue. They +performed their full share of every-day work, and they rose to high +positions in the state. They generously divided the honors, even +turning out early in the morning to give the devil his dews. This was +comparatively easy, as the exposure of the crime of 1873 had not then +upset nearly everything, nor had the new woman come, constantly +provoking controversies with the antagonistic sex. + +The Veterans moved on the savage borderland and conquered it. They +transferred sandy deserts into radiant farmsteads, festooned with +clematis and enameled with gladiolus. Hated by men with stinging +consciences or none, they retaliated never--or hardly ever. Though +poor they were not discouraged; sockless, they were not ashamed. When +bedizzened with frontier fringes, even Doctor Mary Walker with all her +trousers was not arrayed like one of them. Many of them went south, +where they were greeted with black looks from white men and white +smiles from black men; a few remained there and outgrew both. +Gleefully as the beefsteak sings on the gridiron, the ring of their +axes sounded through northern forests; their hearts and heads were +solid to the innermost core, like the stumps they left behind them. +Broad prairies in the west blossomed with their chinchilla moustaches +and their alfalfa whiskers. They opened mines, subdued vast +wildernesses, tunneled mountains for railways and syphoned them for +irrigation. They equipoised some of that surplus gravity which has at +times caused the country to tip up on its eastern edge. They did not +wear toothpick shoes, lemon-colored or otherwise; these they left to +the weak and vicious elements of an effete civilization. + +With the army shoe, the army bean, the army mule, and the unfailing +army nerve, they marched on to new and noble conquests. They organized +commonwealths; founded cities; edited newspapers; captured +judgeships, governorships, senatorships, the presidency, +administering the multiform functions to their own eternal honor and +with benefit to all. Officeholding had charms for them recondite as +the link between beans and blue-stockings, inscrutible as the dynamics +of a cucumber which has concealed its aggressiveness until 3 a. m. +Should the demon of filibuster raise his crest from opposition benches +in any one of a score of legislative assemblies, you might readily +count a full quorum of them, each busily tying knots with his tongue +which no agility of his teeth could undo, each kindly instructing +novices how to work a tennis racket or advising experts how to extract +honey from Celtic ground-apples. Their arguments might be loose in the +joints like a plaisance camel, but they unerringly arrived at an +available conclusion. The feeble but sage members of a swell chappie +clique might pronounce them insufferable as to style, but they went on +capturing and conquering things by instinctive predilection and force +of habit. They experienced little exhilaration from the effervescence +of hired rapture and purchased adulation; their financial views +habitually had the ring of two metals; their accomplishments might +stop short of the mandolin and their scholarship shy at an ablative +absolute. But they reached the goal, on the average, and "Get there +Eli!" was their practical rendition of the motto "Excelsior." + +Of seven presidents elected since the close of the war, six were +ex-soldiers. Minnesota points with pride to her nine soldier +governors. The Veterans quietly gathered in the voluntary and +involuntary honors of their admiring countrymen, while the chief +function of their traducers seems to have been to crop thistles, grow +ears and bray. + +The surviving Veterans of the Union army were neither drones in the +busy hive of national development, nor a burden on the benevolence of +their fellow-citizens. Ninety-five per cent. of them made a success in +the civil battles of life--doing men's part honorably, industriously, +heroically in the work of the world. Only five per cent. were +failures, less than three per cent. ever became wholly dependent on +public charity for support. + +[Illustration: _The veterans quietly gathered in the voluntary and +involuntary honors.... One state points with pride to her nine soldier +governors, and of seven presidents elected since the close of the war, +six were ex-soldiers_] + +An appalling phalanx of apparitions at times menaced the peace of +nervous taxpayers over prospective drafts on their plethoric +resources. A cat may kick at a king. Men gifted with wind and lungs, +men with well-shaved voice and neatly-modulated nose, have proclaimed +a shuddering dread of future difficulty in preparing for wholesale +care of the thriftless ex-soldier. But those unsophisticated suspects +went on ruthlessly, recklessly, paying their own full share of the +taxes and manifestly bent on relentlessly taking care of themselves. +The identical persons who in the honey-dew days of the "Boys in Blue" +had gaily floated in geysers of taffy, constantly sprayed with +cascades of gush, were, ten years later, the objects of fathomless +solicitude on the part of contemporaries who feared that universal +pauperism would engulf them. Vain was the dread; bootless the +solicitude. In the aggregate, the discharged Veterans contributed in +taxes more than the sum total of their army pay, and by their own +productive labor added more to the wealth of the nation than the +entire cost of the war. And at any time within the last thirty years +there might have been found in all our prisons a larger per capita +proportion of former church dignitaries and bank officers than of +honorably discharged soldiers of the Union. The typical Veteran was +neither a tramp nor a bummer. He was a thrifty, self-respecting, +patriotic citizen. At the plow, the anvil, the lathe; on the engine, +the mail car, the ship; in the lumbering camp, the harvest field, the +counting-room, the factory; at the bar, on the bench, in the +pulpit--everywhere in spheres of useful, successful effort, he wrought +faithfully, ardently, triumphantly. + +Even where the Veterans never went, their influence penetrated and +vivified and fructified. Their aromatic, anæsthetic codfish, their +mackerel stuffed with savor and salinity, have carried freedom's +tidings to Borneo's wilds. A Grand Army post annually observes +memorial day in distant Honolulu. Ireland and Poland, lanced spots of +a huge European suppuration, have felt the pulsations of our victory. +And on the dim frontiers of far-off Argentina, sweet girl graduates of +Minnesota's normal schools, daughters of Veterans, turbaned with +haloes and aproned with the flag, are unfolding the mysteries of +orthography, chirography, cube roots, and syllogisms, to rejoicing +grandchildren of authentic Patagonian cannibals. Whether as a Daniel +come to judgment or a Jonah come to grief, the "Gallant Veteran" +adorned his era--an era that is past. + +The third decade brought peculiar revelations and some characteristic +iconoclasms, wrought by the most gothic of vandals known to human +kind. The deeds of the Boy in Blue and the Gallant Veteran have been +told and retold in verses so musical that they might almost be punched +with holes and performed on self-playing pianos, automatically, as it +were. But the terms are obsolete, and the current period has brought +its special designation, tremulous as a phrase from De Senectute, and +redolent of lean and slippered Pantaloon--"The Old Soldier." It came +in the days when colored cartoons were growing on the country like a +bad habit, and it came to stay. Whether applied in honor and +tenderness, or in derision and mockery, who can tell? + +This epithet tells a truth, though perhaps emanating from indecent +exposure of intellect in a brain whose convolutions are more crooked +than the ram's horn that triturated the defenses of Jericho. It tells +a truth, though more cruel than that sweeping massacre when the +patriarch Cain came within one of slaying all the youth in Asia, or +than the edict which collared and cuffed a dilapidated Coxey in the +shadow of the capitol's proud dome. + +Whether we like it or not, it has elements of permanence,--that +euphony which is the kernel of fact; that levity which is the soul of +wit; that pointedness which is the test of endurance. It has +manifestly come to abide. When the lady lacteal artist lactealizes the +sober, circumspect cow, the product is harmless as the process and +participants; no spirituous or vinous venom from that nourishing +fountain e'er exudes. When the lion eats a lamb the lamb becomes +lion; when the lamb eats a lion the results can be better imagined +than depicted. When the commonweal tourist falls aweary, he wins +consolation from a rehearsal of "Bunion's Pilgrim's Progress, or the +Trials of a Trail," and rises refreshed. + +When the ex-soldier feels rheumatic twinges clutching at his nerves +like an eagle's beak, resistance were vain as kicking at a thunderbolt +in crocheted slippers. He is still vigorous, considering all that he +has gone through--and all that has gone through him! But he is not +invulnerable; some of his elasticity is as deceptive as the +hospitality of an alleged park dotted all over with warnings to keep +off the grass. He may profitably display that charity which covers a +multitude of sarcasms, and serenely accept the inevitable as a +companion piece to tariff reduction, civil-service reform, lectures on +advanced domesticity by the emancipated female whose family lives on +canned goods, and other copyrighted jokes. Yes; the Boys in Blue have +donned the Gray. They are no longer young; they will never be +younger; they are "Old Soldiers" now, and will be to the end. + +Meanwhile they exist as an active element in society, none the less +interested and observant because of their phenomenal experience. A +subtle, half-forgotten aroma of school-boy Latin permeates the back +parlors of their minds, but the grand beacon-lights of world history +flush all the front windows with a ruddy glow. They lag, superfluous +it may be, like lingering aborigines who are chewing salt pork, +sandwiched with bread of idleness, out in the bad lands; but they will +not linger long. The ribald glee of the society sharp, boasting an +æsthetic eclat acquired at Christmas free lunches and other luxurious +functions, probes to no sore spots. Honesty is probably the best +policy when the amount involved is small, but it is the best +principle, always and everywhere. Those who practice it look upon +themselves with the pleased astonishment of a man who has made a +verified prediction. Those who ignore it look upon themselves with a +cold diagonal Japanese stare of non-recognition--while still the +wonder grows that average-sized consciences can stand so many blows. + +The Old Soldier can afford to be honest and admit the hideous +imputation of adolescence. Yes! Eleven hundred times, yes. It were +safer as well as honester to admit, than to join issue and challenge +proof. Should he deny it, any unprejudiced tribunal would summarily +rule out all evidence for the defense and refuse to note an exception. +Only two generations lie between the shirt-sleeves of the money-making +ancestor and the patched pants of his impoverished great-grand-son; +only two generations ago, Astor was chasing the festive mink and +Vanderbilt was sculling the shapeless scow. Hence life is too short to +be frittered away in vain regrets and useless denials. The Boys in +Blue have all grown Gray. + +The sensations of a dizzy man when the floor rises up around him, +while east and west come together with a crash, are an antidote to his +precedent fairest visions of the heavenly. There are said to be tenors +before whose singing the larks are struck dumb and take to the woods, +while the whole landscape melts into one golden chalice of liquid +melody. + +But time, the enchantress, with all her benefactions, all her favor, +all her consideration, has wrought no miracle of perpetual youth for +the Boys in Blue or the gallant Veterans. The free coinage of silver +has gone on among their plenteous locks, whether auburn, black or +brown, unmindful of the edict of 1873. Dyes are futile; pigments are +in vain; bleaches are superfluous. The process goes on; sure, steady, +inevitable, inexorable. + +The Old Soldier pleads guilty to those who take toll of yellow meal +and neglect the weightier matters of the law. But he does not yet +apologize for persistent existence. They who resent his longevity as +an economic affront, contradicting all mortuary tables, whist formulas +and crap combinations, must abide the result, even though it create an +ice gorge in Ohio politics. He braves the feeble wrath of the +political dilettante, with a daily surplus of brains (fried in +crumbs), principally solicitous to provide mermaids with divided +skirts and get dried insects on the free list. He fully indorses +Horace Greeley's theory that snobs are the poorest breed of horned +cattle on earth. He does not even excuse himself to the frosty orators +of the alumni platform, educated beyond the limits of their intellect, +who assume to stand high in the councils of their creator, but +neglected to bring their souls with them when they condescended to be +born. + +The Rhode Island colonists defiantly proclaimed, in the midst of a +witch burning era, "There are no witches on this earth, nor +devils--excepting Massachusetts ministers, and such as they." Men with +paunches and other signs of wealth, men with white neckgear and other +signs of piety, men with binocles and other signs of culture, men with +unclassifiable crania and faces unfit for publication, have snubbed +and jeered the Old Soldier, but he still survives. An unsullied +Americanism vindicates itself always against the world. When the royal +United States Berkshire came in competition with the pauper hog of +foreign climes, his victory was decisive; he now reigns triumphant, +even in Westphalia, the home of ham! + +Stock exchange piousness, on affectionate terms with itself, and +clear, calm, introspective natures, stuffed with binomial theorems, +may sneer at compassion and gratitude; are not small potatoes the raw +material of a dignity that is born of starch? The county seat molder +of public opinion who can manage to keep three jumps ahead of the +sheriff, and pay for his boiler plate editorial C. O. D., vies with +the New York newspaper syndicate backed by indefinite millions of +Chicago beef money, in delicate sarcasm. Go to the mule, thou dizzard, +and learn of him! From that speechless, untranslatable functionary +valuable information may be extracted wholly novel to thy groveling +consciousness; amongst much else surely this, that gratefulness is +mate to saintliness. Even in the late James brothers' section of +darkest America, this is accepted orthodoxism. The statesman with +pickerel brow and muscalonge integument may join the ecclesiastical +mignonette and journalistic geranium in proclaiming threatened peril +to the republic from the fulfillment of a moiety of her despairing +pledge to provide for the disabled. The oblique expostulations of +professed friends are less endurable than the open malice of enemies. +The one-story man with a gravel roof has no conception of sky-parlors. +Let the untranslatable functionary rise up and bray responding echoes +in fit, sufficient answer. + +They jest at scars who never sniffed saltpetre. They mock at wounds +who never confronted a foe more tangible than a Baconian cryptogam. +But the Old Soldier has learned to contemplate with philosophic +tolerance the weak and wicked sides of human nature--the Christian +science side, the Tammany tiger side, for example. Bluffs were unknown +in his heartsome, wholesome youth; nor were jockeys subsidized to give +their backers tips. Undreamed-of was the soft, seductive game of +flim-flam. No one then suggested a law for the protection of innocent, +elderly congressmen from the wiles of the seminary miss. The Veteran +can pity those who hate him, and defy the gurgling giggle of his +scorners--in the words of Sam Johnson, "he remembers who kicked him +last." He who smote with the sword of the Lord and of Abraham safely +ignores an effervescence of mouth-vapor. Let those who surrendered to +the idols of the uncircumcised and now seek to expunge their records, +find merciful oblivion if they can. He tenders no apologies for his +motives and invokes no forgetfulness of his deeds. Like the backwoods +preacher entangled in an unmanageable sentence, he may have lost his +nominative case, but he is bound for the kingdom of heaven. + +The Old Soldier, entrenched in his philosophy as in a bastioned +citadel, rejoices in a redeemed country strong enough to regard with +forbearance the foibles of quondam foes. The men who looked bravely +into his eyes across the frowning ramparts of Vicksburg, or who, fed +on raw corn and persimmons, fluttered their heroic rags for a year +between him and beckoning Richmond, only ten miles distant, have been +welcomed, as with "sweet, reluctant, amorous delay" they returned to +enjoy the privileges and even to accept the honors of the rich +citizenship he fought to restore to them. He sees them squeezing pure +olive oil and genuine creamery butter out of honest old cottonseed. He +puts his own traditional pride of supremacy in the matter of basswood +hams and white oak nutmegs resolutely behind him, and hails them +proudly as right worthy fellow-yankees and brethren beloved. Whatever, +if anything, the present may withhold of universal consent to the +sacredness of his cause or the completeness of his triumph, he +exultantly leaves to time, to God and to history. + +The Old Soldier claims no undue meed of praise. Standing in the limpid +incandescence of a momentous epoch, his pardonable pride has only +degenerated into boastfulness on rare and radiant village greens, +where self-delusion finds a fertile soil fenced with applauding +auditors. It was his fortune to have contributed to the preservation +of the Union, the emancipation of the slave and the regeneration of +the country. But save and except as aforesaid, he makes no pretense +of having done it all. He had mighty and Almighty help. + +Sometimes the credit for emancipation is ascribed to the heroic +agitators, who, before the appeal to projectiles, had long demanded +unconditional abolition. It is error to award the palm of this +splendid consummation to any class of men. Slavery perished because +its death-doom had been sounded on the celestial chimes; because the +nineteenth century had come; because the flying engine and the +speaking wire had come; because the steel pen and the postage-stamp +had come; because the free school, the newspaper and the open Bible +had come; because Wilberforce, and Garrison, and Harriet Stowe had +come; because Lincoln, and Seward, and Stanton had come; because +Grant, and Sherman, and Sheridan had come; because two million gallant +boys in blue had come; because the great and terrible day of the Lord +had come, and not all the powers of evil could longer buttress and +bulwark the crowning iniquity of the universe. Give to all the potent +factors a full measure of the award. But let the rapture of +self-eulogy never eclipse vital historic truth. Slavery succumbed, not +more to military force than to the eternal verities. And rebellion +surrendered not alone to Grant and his legions, but also to the loyal +men and women who stood behind them, and to the churches and colleges, +the mills and mines and storehouses, the homes and herds and harvests +of the mighty North. + + They fell, who lifted up a hand + And bade the sun in heaven stand! + They smote and fell, who set the bars + Against the progress of the stars, + And stayed the march of motherland! + + They stood, who saw the future come + On through the fight's delirium! + They smote and stood, who held the hope + Of nations on that slippery slope + Amid the cheers of Christendom. + +In adversity's hard school the Old Soldier learned transcendent +lessons of human brotherhood such as no other school could have taught +him, dilute the tincture, water the stock, or inflate the currency of +educational methods how we may. Escaping from cruel prison pens, +where there was no one to love nor to caress, and with no light to +direct but that sun of the sleepless, melancholy star, his hand +reached out into the darkness searching for a guide; it was grasped by +another hand, warm, loyal and true; the hand of a man and a brother; a +black hand indeed, but it was all the same in the dark. + +He learned respect for authority and order, scorning the malcontents, +who, hornet-like, always stand sting-end uppermost, stinging their +friends to show their independence, their enemies to show their +impartiality, and each other to keep in practice; unwholesome whether +in conjunction or apogee; a bundle of tinder and rockets, on a raft of +smoke-storm, with sparks wildly flying; each a flask for brittleness, +whether decipherable into a nursing bottle or a sulphuric carboy. He +learned to value his country as more precious for his personal +sacrifice, stimulating his just demand that America shall henceforth +be reserved for such as are or wish to be Americans; for those to whom +her institutions are a birthright or those who bring due appreciation +of her blessings; shaking from her skirts the imported vermin of the +slums; spurning back from her shores the redhanded apostles of +anarchy, who dream of freedom in the death of law, and search for +thrift in robbery and violence. + +The Old Soldier is something of a politician. He loves to help save +the country again and again, on every convenient occasion. Soon after +each and every quadrennial interchange of governmental figure-heads, +the whole population is prepared to admit that we have narrowly +escaped a vast hemispherical catastrophe. Even when the election has +only been carried by a constitutional majority of three--two +Winchesters and a shot-gun--the escape is just as grateful. For the +campaign torch may then be extinguished; the paroxysm of hysterics +illuminated by an aurora borealis vex and vaunt no more. The shout of +the torch-bearer, screaming himself into grippe and pneumonia, is +quenched. The heeler and the howler are alike silent--they have folded +their tepees like Arabs and fled in wild dismay. The candidate no +longer inhales the whiff of whisky sours or clasps hands chiefly +notable as rich feeding ground for microbes. The precinct chairman, +reveling in his labor of lucre, bow-legged but full of enthusiasm, has +subsided. The able editor, a man of ice and iron, carrying around a +head heavily weighted with unpublished matter, can gaze down the +flamboyant vista of his victorious career and take a needed rest. + +The orator, whose seductive notes were rainbows melting into song, can +now sadly meditate on blind-stagger luck in politics; the senatorial +aspirant can proceed to gather in votes on a rising market; the +triumphant boss can accept from his Chicago admirers the finest +banquet their slaughterhouses yield; the average honest partisan can +rejoice in the temporary submergence of that specifically, +super-righteous element, the "saving five per cent." of voters, who +usually keep the country from going to destruction, by serenely, +sweetly, holding the balance of power. + +When the alleged campaign of lungs, larceny and lunacy is thus ended, +the wind-weavers and phrase-coiners are dumb, and the country has +escaped from the desperate situation of one whose incurable disease is +attacked by an infallible remedy. Herr Most, with a string of +transatlantic gutterals foaming from his lips, and Herr Altgeld +brandishing his gold-clause lease before our blinking eyes, enter into +the very sinew and substance of our recurring nightmares. We scorn +them, and our scorn bites--usually. But this time it falls harmless as +one of Chauncey Depew's periodical four-track, block-signal +presidential booms. The nightmare raves and ravages until the ballots +come down like an avalanche and smother it--ballots called +"snowflakes" in the old chestnut, but now each six inches wide, +thirty-two inches long and many-hued that wayfarers need not err. + +We accept the result with a smile that is childlike and grand. The +country is safe--again. In fact we begin to suspect that the nightmare +was, after all, the fond, familiar flea-bite of antiquity. At any +rate, the country is safe again--safe as a fire risk on crude +asbestos stored in a vacant lot. And then the resonance of Wyoming's +new, bewitching and lady-like female electoral vote splits fame's +brazen trumpet into hair-pins carrying the assurance that henceforth +presidents are liable to be nominated by intuition and elected by +instinct. Then, also, the men who helped to save it once if not +oftener--before, and are still willing diffidently to confess the +fact, rejoice with others at the latest victory. We have recently been +told in a magazine article, written by the meditative son of a +confederate sire, that the rebellion was put down chiefly by its own +pestiferous, irredeemable paper currency. This startling political +warning may well be subjected to searching cross-examination. The Old +Soldier of the Union neither affirms nor denies. He is content with +his limited measure of pardonable pride in some of the features of +that old, old story of daring and devotion and sacrifice in the days +when the country was saved once before--in the days of the deeds that +shaped up a country worth saving again, worthy of being saved again +and again, as many times as need be, by the generations yet to come. + +The Old Soldier is satisfied to have borne an honorable, though +inconspicuous, part on the winning side and the right side of a +contest fraught with such tremendous consequences. In the vast sum +total of effort, achievement and sacrifice, no man other than the +favored and gifted two or three ultimate leaders did more than an +infinitesimal share. The shares of glory are proportionally +minute--even our U. S. colonial dame cuts but a sorry figure in +contrast with the daughter of seventeen revolutions from Venezuela. +Thus the up-to-date woman is coldly antedated! The Old Soldier claims +no undue meed of praise. + +From corps commander to the man who bore a musket, individuals earned +but a fragmentary fraction of the full plentitude of honor. Comrades +of the flag were they, and all are equal now. He invites suspicion and +ridicule who struts to the front, while his hatband plays a sweet +symphonic tribute to his valor. No genuine Old Soldier attempts to +Weylerize his record. An occasional harmless effervescence of +exaggeration is charitably overlooked, but all are comrades and +equals. They only rank in priority of encomium who went up in chariots +of fire, through sulphurous battle-clouds, to advanced lines in the +battalions of the blessed. + +Together they marched and camped and fought and conquered. Dying, they +sealed their sacrifice with martyrdom. Surviving, they proved their +willingness to die, and lived to clasp with joy the sweetness of +restored affection, pride and hope. + +They died amid the battle clangors of five hundred crimson fields; +they died in hospitals where nerves were highways for the steps of +fever's scorching feet; they died in dismal prison pens, unshorn, +unsheltered, hungering, thirsting, desolate, despairing; they died, +four hundred thousand of them died, in the bloom of their beautiful +youth, that the slave might be unshackled, freedom apotheosized, the +nation saved. + +They lived--a million of them live to-day. They lived to do men's work +in building up the land their valor sanctified. They lived to witness +development and prosperity beyond the stretches of their fondest +dream. They lived to see a prospective disintegration of the too solid +south, her trusted leaders standing with reluctant feet where politics +and finance meet. They lived to see South Carolina, cradle of +secession, thoroughly reformed by an application of bi-chloride of +Tillmanism for the drink habit, and the entire Southern social system +thoroughly rejuvenated by an invasion of graceful young Sophomores +from Vassar, each with a cogent thesis on the remedy for punctured +tires. They have lived to see the sun of Appomattox flood the planet +with its warming, brightening beams. They have lived to know that the +war's immortal hero, touring around the earth, penetrated no regions +so remote that his fame had not preceded him, and visited no +populations too ignorant to comprehend the significance of his +victories. They have lived to read that in mud-hovels in the deepest +heart of Africa, in thatched huts on the banks of the Ganges, in +cabins buried among Siberian snows, portraits of Lincoln are found, +venerated by benighted peoples as the saint of a new dispensation. +They have lived to see the horizon strewn with wrecks of stricken +dynasties--crowns crumbling, thrones trembling, the whole filmy +remainder of hoary despotisms shriveling like a gossamer scroll. They +have lived to see the flag of our republic floating resplendent in the +zenith, as a token that the Union lives, and that liberty reigneth +forever. + + THE END. + + + * * * * * + + + The cover design of this volume is reproduced from a drawing in + _Edwin Forbes' Army Sketch Book_, with the kind permission of + the publishers, Messrs. Fords, Howard & Hulbert. + + + * * * * * + + + JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY'S STORIES OF THE + HUMORIST, EDGAR WILSON NYE + (BILL NYE) + + BY + + RUSSEL M. SEEDS + + + * * * * * + + + + +JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY'S STORIES OF THE HUMORIST, EDGAR WILSON NYE (BILL +NYE) + +(_Russel M. Seeds' Interview with James Whitcomb Riley in the +Indianapolis News._) + + +One morning James Whitcomb Riley dug up from the pile of recent books +Bill Nye's post-humorous work, "A Guest at the Ludlow and Other +Stories." It was not the first time he had seen it. Indeed; he has +given more care and attention to the bringing out of this last work of +his dead friend than he usually does to the mechanical and business +details of his own books, and he had read and reread everything in it +before it was given to the public. Yet he spent nearly an hour in +loving examination of the volume, reading again with thorough +enjoyment a number of the sketches. + +The friendship that existed between the poet and the gentle humorist +was one of those remarkable bonds of sympathy that few men are +fortunate enough to find in life, and those who do seldom find it more +than once. The same keen sense of the ridiculous, the same shyness of +humor in conversation, the same gentleness of spirit and the same +tender anxiety to lighten each other's cares, welded this bond of +sympathy that lasted to the death of the one and will remain through +life a happy memory to the other. + +"These stories are more like him than any he ever published while +alive," said Mr. Riley, sauntering over to the desk of the literary +editor and exhibiting the volume. "They breathe the spirit of Nye in +almost every line. Just listen to this." And in his inimitable way he +read an extract from the volume. + +"The quaintness and whimsicality of Mr. Nye's humor," said Mr. Riley, +as he closed the little volume gently and held it in his lap, "was the +notable thing about him. It was unaccountable upon any particular +theory. It just seemed natural for his mind to work at that gait. He +recognized the matter-of-fact view others took of the general +propositions of life, and sympathized with it, but he did so with a +native tendency to surprise and astound that ordinary state of mind +and vision. He could say a ridiculous thing or perpetuate a ridiculous +act with a face like a Sphinx, knowing full well that those who saw or +heard would look to his face for some confirmation of their suspicion +that it was time to laugh. They had to make up their minds about it +unaided by him, however, for they never found any trace of levity in +his countenance. As he would say, he did his laughing 'elsewhere.' + +"One day in midwinter the train stopped at a way station in the West, +and he had five minutes to wait. Mr. Nye's roving eye had discovered +that the plush-leather pillows of the sofa in the smoking compartment +of the car we were riding in were unattached. Without a word he picked +up the leather cylinders and placed one under each arm, with the +tassels to the front. He was an invalid in looks as well as in +strength, and when he appeared upon the platform thus equipped the +astounded natives watched him with silent, sympathetic curiosity as he +strode up and down, apparently seizing the opportunity for a little +much-needed exercise. The rest of us had to hide to keep from +exploding, but he was utterly oblivious to the stares and comments +until he returned to the car. No explanation was vouchsafed, and the +primitive inhabitants of that town are probably still wondering what +horrible malady compelled that invalid to wear those outlandish +cushions. + +[Illustration: EXERCISING AT THE RAILWAY STATION.] + +"A favorite amusement with him was the reading of imaginary signs at +the stations when we were traveling. When the train would stop and +that hush would come over the car, with half the people wondering who +their fellow-passengers were and the other half viewing the little +grocery on the one side, or the station, restaurant or bill-board on +the other, Mr. Nye would break forth and begin to read the bill-board +aloud: 'Soda water, crackers--highest prices paid for hides and +tallow--also ice cream, golden syrup and feathers.' The passengers +across the aisle would perk their ears, then rise and come, craning +their necks, to find the words he was reading from the bill-board, or +finally some old fellow would come up to the seat and declare that he +could not find where it said that. In a quiet way this would tickle +Nye beyond measure--away down in the deeps of his sad-pathetic spirit. + +"His conferences with the train boys have often nearly given me +convulsions. When the boy handed him a book Nye would ask with great +interest what it was about, and listen patiently to all the boy knew +of its contents. 'Let's see it,' and he would open the book and read +aloud, in a monotonous sing-song, a lot of purest nonsense drawn from +his imagination. It was done so seriously that the boy's eyes would +begin to hang out as the reading went on. Finally Nye would shut the +book up with a snap, losing the place, and hand it back to the boy +with a puzzled air, as if he did not understand why the young man had +lied so about its contents. We could find that boy for an hour +afterwards searching diligently the pages of that book to find where +that stuff was printed. + +"Nye's method of 'stringing' people," said Mr. Riley, "was +entertaining always, but never cruel and never earned him the +resentment of the people who were the victims of it. One of the most +artistic cases of this sort I recall was the way he got revenge on a +Chicago tailor. The tailor did not know him when he went to order his +suit, but he did know from his style that he was from the country. He +told Mr. Nye just what kind of a suit he wanted, selected the cloth +and measured him with the assurance that this was a beautiful fast +color and would wear like iron. It should be put up handsomely. When +Nye paid him for the suit and asked that it be shipped to a way +station in Iowa the tailor was sure that he was right in the mental +measurement he had taken of his customer. The suit arrived, neatly +lined with farmer's satin and Nye put it on. Day by day its bright +blue grew lighter and lighter, until, when we arrived in Chicago, six +weeks later, it was a kind of a dingy dun color. Nye remarked as the +train pulled in that his first duty in that city would be to go around +and interview that merchant-liar; and we went. He shambled back to the +rear end of the shop, where he found the man who sold him the +garments. He shook hands with him cordially, said he was glad to renew +the pleasant acquaintance and asked if he knew what had caused the +suit to change its beautiful color, at the same time turning up the +lapel of the coat and showing the striking contrast between the +original and the present color of the cloth. + +"'Why, man!' cried the tailor, bristling with defensive indignation, +'what in the world have you been doing to that suit?' + +"'Well,' replied Nye, in a tone of the meekest apology, 'you did not +warn me and I suppose it was my fault and I ought to have known +better. But since you insist, I'll tell you frankly what I did: I put +it on and wore it right out in the sun!' + +"The tailor saw the point and insisted upon making another suit out of +cloth that was really good and would not accept pay for it. + +[Illustration: CONVICTING THE TAILOR.] + +"Mr. Nye's sudden comments made in the midst of a lecture were often +the means of bringing the house to its feet. He knew better than +anybody his lack of physical ability to fill a large hall with his +voice and he strained every nerve to meet it. Any extraordinary +commotion in the hall discomposed him and he would wait until it +subsided. It was not a pleasant thing for him to hear a voice from the +back of the hall calling 'louder.' Upon such occasions he had a habit +of turning the laugh upon his tormentor by elevating his voice, +looking puzzled and asking what that remark was he had just heard. + +"I remember one occasion in particular when we had a remarkably large +hall, crowded to the walls. The entrance was at the further end of the +hall, opposite the platform. Mr. Nye, as usual, opened the evening, +very fearful of his ability to reach the whole throng. He had barely +got started when the doors opened and a great fellow about six feet +and two inches tall entered with two ladies and immediately fell into +an altercation with an usher about his seats. Nye paused and the +altercation could be heard all over the house, with this fellow +arraigning the usher in a very loud voice. Finally it died down a bit +and Nye resumed, but he was interrupted by the man, who held up his +hand and cried, 'Hold on, there, I have paid for seats for this +lecture and propose to hear all of it.' + +"Nye replied with great composure: 'In view of the great size of the +hall,' said he, 'I was about to congratulate the audience upon the +foresight of the managers in securing a speaker for each end.' + +"The house howled with delight and the applause beat back upon the +obstreperous interrupter with such force that it drove him from the +hall. After this episode Nye was always a great favorite in that city +and was recalled there many times. + +"Mr. Nye was a fatalist--not a complaining one, but a fatalist no +less, and with considerable occasion. He was pursued by a spirit of +the perverse. Unexpected, trying things were always happening that +seemed especially in line to test his patience. Indeed, I was +sometimes jealous of him, for these things seemed to occur with +greater force and persistence to him than to me. + +[Illustration: A CLOSE SHAVE.] + +"I had frequently remarked upon the persistent recurrence of the +number thirteen with me during one of our trips in the South, but this +was one superstition at which Nye scoffed. He told me that at the next +hotel we struck if I objected to being 'incarcerated' in No. 13 he +would risk it once. And not long after I found myself registered for +that fatal number; whereupon I promptly informed Mr. Nye that I should +hold him to his promise. I remember I had a handful of mail I was very +anxious to see, but I would not open it until I had got another room. +Nye declared he wanted to first size up the room he had been assigned +to, and went on down the hall with the landlord. He soon returned with +the remark that he could not lose much and walked into the thirteen +room and set his grip down, returning to where I waited in the hall +outside. He had not more than got out of the door when the heavy +transom fell with a crash. He was convinced that that transom had been +waiting for him for years. + +"Mr. Nye was an invalid, but again, as it would seem, it was the +perversity of fate that made the public unwilling to believe that a +humorist could ever be ill or have any reasonable excuse for breaking +an engagement. He never got the benefit of the excuses made for others +when they failed to appear or to write according to expectation. + +"One awful winter he was compelled to quit work in the middle of the +season here and go South for his health and to escape the rigors of +this climate. That was the winter that quit right in the middle of its +business here and struck for the South, where they had the coldest +weather they had ever known prior to Mr. Nye's advent. And there, +though he was nearly dead, his syndicate letters had to go on just the +same; and in fancy I can see that heroic, almost dying man on the flat +of his back, writing laboriously upon a scratch-pad, with the wind +blowing the rag carpet on the floor up in billows. He suffered all the +hardship of rigorous winter in summer quarters. + +"And while thus ill word reached him of the sudden death of his father +in Wisconsin, so far away that even if he had been able to make the +journey it would have been a physical impossibility for him to have +reached his father's house before the burial. It was a peculiarly hard +blow to him, for they had been friends and chums, as well as father +and son. Yet by the time the news reached him his father had been +buried. + +"To the last this perverse fate denied to him and his wife that one +pleasure that married couples usually enjoy if they have nothing +else--a wedding journey. He was very poor to begin with, but of a +sanguine temperament, and at the time of his marriage goodnaturedly +informed his bride fully of his circumstances. She, a brave woman and +worthy partner, probably foresaw the force of the man and his coming +recognition in time; at any rate she had great faith in him, and very +cheerfully accepted the situation. Their wedding journey, denied them +in the beginning by their poverty, was deferred from one cause and +another for years, so long that they came to refer to it as to be +taken upon the marriage of their eldest child, when the two couples +could take the journey together. + +"But Nye was yet an invalid, and one year when California had been +prescribed for him, we had made a line of engagements toward the +Pacific slope after the regular season. It had been arranged that Mrs. +Nye was to meet us in Kansas City and the trip from there to the coast +was to be the long-deferred wedding journey. He had built great hopes +upon this prospect, and in the pleasure of anticipation had devised a +dozen little schemes for the surprise and entertainment of his wife, +who had already left their home, on Staten Island, to join us. She had +left their four children in care of her niece, a very worthy young +woman, and was somewhere on her way to Kansas City when we arrived +there. + +"Nye had expected to find her there, but instead he was confronted +with a telegram from his Staten Island physician stating that all four +of the children had been stricken with scarlet fever. Through the +influence of the physician, who was a great friend of Nye, they had +not been removed to the hospital, as the regulations required, but had +been permitted to remain at home, with the house quarantined. During +the next few hours prior to Mrs. Nye's arrival, and in all agony of +suspense and apprehension, Mr. Nye busied himself with canceling all +further lecture dates, and when Mrs. Nye finally arrived he broke to +her the painful news of their children's illness, and took the next +train back East, not knowing if their little ones would be alive to +greet them when they came. + +"Arriving home after that terrible journey, they found the children so +ill that they could not be told of the arrival of the father and +mother; and Nye, with his heart breaking, sat downstairs and wrote to +the children he was not permitted to see in their rooms above, long +and happy letters from California, telling them what jolly lovely +times their mother and father were having in the land of flowers. + +"And, therefore," said Mr. Riley, in conclusion, again fondly +referring to the volume, "I am especially rejoiced to see my old +comrade at his best in this last published utterance, and the book +itself so befittingly presented--so handsome and so dignified a +volume, that I am certain a sight of it could but have been highly +gratifying to the gentle humorist himself." + + RUSSEL M. SEEDS. + + + * * * * * + + +A Guest at the Ludlow + +BY EDGAR WILSON NYE + +[BILL NYE] + + Go, little booklet, go!-- + Bearing an honored name, + 'Till everywhere that you + have went, + They're glad that you + have came. + +A volume of humorous stories and sketches, with twenty-one full page +and twelve smaller designs, the latter by the author. + +By arrangement with Mrs. Edgar W. Nye, The Bowen-Merrill Co. announce +a volume of humorous stories by Bill Nye (Edgar Wilson Nye), prepared +for publication by him during the last months of his life, entitled + + +"A GUEST AT THE LUDLOW" + +AND OTHER STORIES. + +It is printed, bound and illustrated in a style surpassing anything +heretofore issued of Mr. Nye's in book form, and containing the famous +humorist's best and most finished work. Twenty-eight stories and +numerous illustrations, including the author's introduction in +fac-simile. It is the handsomest copyrighted book published this +season for the price, $1.25, sent postpaid to any address on receipt +of the price. + +THE BOWEN-MERRILL CO., Publishers, Indianapolis and Kansas City + + + + +Transcriber's Note: + + +Archaic and inconsistent spelling and punctuation retained. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Army Mule and Other War Sketches, by +Henry A. Castle + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ARMY MULE *** + +***** This file should be named 39911-8.txt or 39911-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/9/9/1/39911/ + +Produced by David Edwards, Matthew Wheaton and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +file was produced from images generously made available +by The Internet Archive) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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