ACT I.

Fiction, Fact, and Fancy Series

EDITED BY ARTHUR STEDMAN

MERRY TALES

Fiction, Fact, and Fancy Series.

MERRY TALES.

BY MARK TWAIN.

THE GERMAN EMPEROR AND HIS EASTERN NEIGHBORS.

BY POULTNEY BIGELOW.

SELECTED POEMS.

BY WALT WHITMAN.

DON FINIMONDONE: CALABRIAN SKETCHES.

BY ELISABETH CAVAZZA.

_Other Volumes to be Announced._

Bound in Illuminated Cloth, each, 75 Cents.

⁂ _For Sale by all Booksellers, or sent postpaid, on receipt

of price, by the Publishers_,

CHAS. L. WEBSTER & CO., NEW YORK.

MERRY TALES

BY

MARK TWAIN

New York

CHARLES L. WEBSTER & CO.

1892

Copyright, 1892,

CHARLES L. WEBSTER & CO.

(_All rights reserved._)

PRESS OF

JENKINS & MCCOWAN,

NEW YORK.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

EDITOR’S NOTE.

The projector of this Series has had in mind the evident desire of our

people, largely occupied with material affairs, for reading in a shape

adapted to the amount of time at their disposal. Until recently this

desire has been satisfied chiefly from foreign sources. Many reprints

and translations of the little classics of other literatures than our

own have been made, and much good has been done in this way. On the

other hand, a great deal of rubbish has been distributed in the same

fashion, to the undoubted injury of our popular taste.

Now that a reasonable copyright law allows the publication of the better

class of native literature at moderate prices, it has seemed fitting

that these volumes should consist mainly of works by American writers.

As its title indicates, the “Fiction, Fact, and Fancy Series” will

include not only fiction and poetry, but such essays, monographs, and

biographical sketches as may appear, from time to time, to be called

for.

To no writer can the term “American” more justly be applied than to the

humorist whose “Merry Tales” are here presented. It was in an effort to

devise some novel method of bringing these stories, new and old, before

the public, that this Series had its origin. But, aside from this, those

among us who can gather figs of thistles are so few in number as to make

their presence eminently desirable.

NEW YORK, March, 1892.

_Acknowledgment should be made to the Century Company, and to Messrs.

Harper & Brothers, for kind permission to reprint several of these

stories from the “Century” and “Harper’s Magazine.”_

CONTENTS.

PAGE

THE PRIVATE HISTORY OF A CAMPAIGN THAT FAILED, 9

THE INVALID’S STORY, 51

LUCK, 66

THE CAPTAIN’S STORY, 76

A CURIOUS EXPERIENCE, 85

MRS. MCWILLIAMS AND THE LIGHTNING, 144

MEISTERSCHAFT, 161

MERRY TALES.

THE PRIVATE HISTORY OF A CAMPAIGN THAT FAILED.

You have heard from a great many people who did something in the war; is

it not fair and right that you listen a little moment to one who started

out to do something in it, but didn’t? Thousands entered the war, got

just a taste of it, and then stepped out again, permanently. These, by

their very numbers, are respectable, and are therefore entitled to a

sort of voice,—not a loud one, but a modest one; not a boastful one, but

an apologetic one. They ought not to be allowed much space among better

people—people who did something—I grant that; but they ought at least to

be allowed to state why they didn’t do anything, and also to explain the

process by which they didn’t do anything. Surely this kind of light must

have a sort of value.

Out West there was a good deal of confusion in men’s minds during the

first months of the great trouble—a good deal of unsettledness, of

leaning first this way, then that, then the other way. It was hard for

us to get our bearings. I call to mind an instance of this. I was

piloting on the Mississippi when the news came that South Carolina had

gone out of the Union on the 20th of December, 1860. My pilot-mate was a

New Yorker. He was strong for the Union; so was I. But he would not

listen to me with any patience; my loyalty was smirched, to his eye,

because my father had owned slaves. I said, in palliation of this dark

fact, that I had heard my father say, some years before he died, that

slavery was a great wrong, and that he would free the solitary negro he

then owned if he could think it right to give away the property of the

family when he was so straitened in means. My mate retorted that a mere

impulse was nothing—anybody could pretend to a good impulse; and went on

decrying my Unionism and libeling my ancestry. A month later the

secession atmosphere had considerably thickened on the Lower

Mississippi, and I became a rebel; so did he. We were together in New

Orleans, the 26th of January, when Louisiana went out of the Union. He

did his full share of the rebel shouting, but was bitterly opposed to

letting me do mine. He said that I came of bad stock—of a father who had

been willing to set slaves free. In the following summer he was piloting

a Federal gun-boat and shouting for the Union again, and I was in the

Confederate army. I held his note for some borrowed money. He was one of

the most upright men I ever knew; but he repudiated that note without

hesitation, because I was a rebel, and the son of a man who owned

slaves.

In that summer—of 1861—the first wash of the wave of war broke upon the

shores of Missouri. Our State was invaded by the Union forces. They took

possession of St. Louis, Jefferson Barracks, and some other points. The

Governor, Claib Jackson, issued his proclamation calling out fifty

thousand militia to repel the invader.

I was visiting in the small town where my boyhood had been

spent—Hannibal, Marion County. Several of us got together in a secret

place by night and formed ourselves into a military company. One Tom

Lyman, a young fellow of a good deal of spirit but of no military

experience, was made captain; I was made second lieutenant. We had no

first lieutenant; I do not know why; it was long ago. There were fifteen

of us. By the advice of an innocent connected with the organization, we

called ourselves the Marion Rangers. I do not remember that any one

found fault with the name. I did not; I thought it sounded quite well.

The young fellow who proposed this title was perhaps a fair sample of

the kind of stuff we were made of. He was young, ignorant, good-natured,

well-meaning, trivial, full of romance, and given to reading chivalric

novels and singing forlorn love-ditties. He had some pathetic little

nickel-plated aristocratic instincts, and detested his name, which was

Dunlap; detested it, partly because it was nearly as common in that

region as Smith, but mainly because it had a plebeian sound to his ear.

So he tried to ennoble it by writing it in this way: _d’Unlap_. That

contented his eye, but left his ear unsatisfied, for people gave the new

name the same old pronunciation—emphasis on the front end of it. He then

did the bravest thing that can be imagined,—a thing to make one shiver

when one remembers how the world is given to resenting shams and

affectations; he began to write his name so: _d’Un Lap_. And he waited

patiently through the long storm of mud that was flung at this work of

art, and he had his reward at last; for he lived to see that name

accepted, and the emphasis put where he wanted it, by people who had

known him all his life, and to whom the tribe of Dunlaps had been as

familiar as the rain and the sunshine for forty years. So sure of

victory at last is the courage that can wait. He said he had found, by

consulting some ancient French chronicles, that the name was rightly and

originally written d’Un Lap; and said that if it were translated into

English it would mean Peterson: _Lap_, Latin or Greek, he said, for

stone or rock, same as the French _pierre_, that is to say, Peter; _d’_,

of or from; _un_, a or one; hence, d’Un Lap, of or from a stone or a

Peter; that is to say, one who is the son of a stone, the son of a

Peter—Peterson. Our militia company were not learned, and the

explanation confused them; so they called him Peterson Dunlap. He proved

useful to us in his way; he named our camps for us, and he generally

struck a name that was “no slouch,” as the boys said.

That is one sample of us. Another was Ed Stevens, son of the town

jeweler,—trim-built, handsome, graceful, neat as a cat; bright,

educated, but given over entirely to fun. There was nothing serious in

life to him. As far as he was concerned, this military expedition of

ours was simply a holiday. I should say that about half of us looked

upon it in the same way; not consciously, perhaps, but unconsciously. We

did not think; we were not capable of it. As for myself, I was full of

unreasoning joy to be done with turning out of bed at midnight and four

in the morning, for a while; grateful to have a change, new scenes, new

occupations, a new interest. In my thoughts that was as far as I went; I

did not go into the details; as a rule one doesn’t at twenty-four.

Another sample was Smith, the blacksmith’s apprentice. This vast donkey

had some pluck, of a slow and sluggish nature, but a soft heart; at one

time he would knock a horse down for some impropriety, and at another he

would get homesick and cry. However, he had one ultimate credit to his

account which some of us hadn’t: he stuck to the war, and was killed in

battle at last.

Jo Bowers, another sample, was a huge, good-natured, flax-headed lubber;

lazy, sentimental, full of harmless brag, a grumbler by nature; an

experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite picturesque liar,

and yet not a successful one, for he had had no intelligent training,

but was allowed to come up just any way. This life was serious enough to

him, and seldom satisfactory. But he was a good fellow anyway, and the

boys all liked him. He was made orderly sergeant; Stevens was made

corporal.

These samples will answer—and they are quite fair ones. Well, this herd

of cattle started for the war. What could you expect of them? They did

as well as they knew how, but really what was justly to be expected of

them? Nothing, I should say. That is what they did.

We waited for a dark night, for caution and secrecy were necessary;

then, toward midnight, we stole in couples and from various directions

to the Griffith place, beyond the town; from that point we set out

together on foot. Hannibal lies at the extreme southeastern corner of

Marion County, on the Mississippi River; our objective point was the

hamlet of New London, ten miles away, in Ralls County.

The first hour was all fun, all idle nonsense and laughter. But that

could not be kept up. The steady trudging came to be like work; the play

had somehow oozed out of it; the stillness of the woods and the

somberness of the night began to throw a depressing influence over the

spirits of the boys, and presently the talking died out and each person

shut himself up in his own thoughts. During the last half of the second

hour nobody said a word.

Now we approached a log farm-house where, according to report, there was

a guard of five Union soldiers. Lyman called a halt; and there, in the

deep gloom of the overhanging branches, he began to whisper a plan of

assault upon that house, which made the gloom more depressing than it

was before. It was a crucial moment; we realized, with a cold

suddenness, that here was no jest—we were standing face to face with

actual war. We were equal to the occasion. In our response there was no

hesitation, no indecision: we said that if Lyman wanted to meddle with

those soldiers, he could go ahead and do it; but if he waited for us to

follow him, he would wait a long time.

Lyman urged, pleaded, tried to shame us, but it had no effect. Our

course was plain, our minds were made up: we would flank the

farm-house—go out around. And that is what we did.

We struck into the woods and entered upon a rough time, stumbling over

roots, getting tangled in vines, and torn by briers. At last we reached

an open place in a safe region, and sat down, blown and hot, to cool off

and nurse our scratches and bruises. Lyman was annoyed, but the rest of

us were cheerful; we had flanked the farm-house, we had made our first

military movement, and it was a success; we had nothing to fret about,

we were feeling just the other way. Horse-play and laughing began again;

the expedition was become a holiday frolic once more.

Then we had two more hours of dull trudging and ultimate silence and

depression; then, about dawn, we straggled into New London, soiled,

heel-blistered, fagged with our little march, and all of us except

Stevens in a sour and raspy humor and privately down on the war. We

stacked our shabby old shot-guns in Colonel Ralls’s barn, and then went

in a body and breakfasted with that veteran of the Mexican War.

Afterwards he took us to a distant meadow, and there in the shade of a

tree we listened to an old-fashioned speech from him, full of gunpowder

and glory, full of that adjective-piling, mixed metaphor, and windy

declamation which was regarded as eloquence in that ancient time and

that remote region; and then he swore us on the Bible to be faithful to

the State of Missouri and drive all invaders from her soil, no matter

whence they might come or under what flag they might march. This mixed

us considerably, and we could not make out just what service we were

embarked in; but Colonel Ralls, the practiced politician and

phrase-juggler, was not similarly in doubt; he knew quite clearly that

he had invested us in the cause of the Southern Confederacy. He closed

the solemnities by belting around me the sword which his neighbor,

Colonel Brown, had worn at Buena Vista and Molino del Rey; and he

accompanied this act with another impressive blast.

Then we formed in line of battle and marched four miles to a shady and

pleasant piece of woods on the border of the far-reaching expanses of a

flowery prairie. It was an enchanting region for war—our kind of war.

We pierced the forest about half a mile, and took up a strong position,

with some low, rocky, and wooded hills behind us, and a purling, limpid

creek in front. Straightway half the command were in swimming, and the

other half fishing. The ass with the French name gave this position a

romantic title, but it was too long, so the boys shortened and

simplified it to Camp Ralls.

We occupied an old maple-sugar camp, whose half-rotted troughs were

still propped against the trees. A long corn-crib served for sleeping

quarters for the battalion. On our left, half a mile away, was Mason’s

farm and house; and he was a friend to the cause. Shortly after noon the

farmers began to arrive from several directions, with mules and horses

for our use, and these they lent us for as long as the war might last,

which they judged would be about three months. The animals were of all

sizes, all colors, and all breeds. They were mainly young and frisky,

and nobody in the command could stay on them long at a time; for we were

town boys, and ignorant of horsemanship. The creature that fell to my

share was a very small mule, and yet so quick and active that it could

throw me without difficulty; and it did this whenever I got on it. Then

it would bray—stretching its neck out, laying its ears back, and

spreading its jaws till you could see down to its works. It was a

disagreeable animal, in every way. If I took it by the bridle and tried

to lead it off the grounds, it would sit down and brace back, and no one

could budge it. However, I was not entirely destitute of military

resources, and I did presently manage to spoil this game; for I had seen

many a steamboat aground in my time, and knew a trick or two which even

a grounded mule would be obliged to respect. There was a well by the

corn-crib; so I substituted thirty fathom of rope for the bridle, and

fetched him home with the windlass.

I will anticipate here sufficiently to say that we did learn to ride,

after some days’ practice, but never well. We could not learn to like

our animals; they were not choice ones, and most of them had annoying

peculiarities of one kind or another. Stevens’s horse would carry him,

when he was not noticing, under the huge excrescences which form on the

trunks of oak-trees, and wipe him out of the saddle; in this way Stevens

got several bad hurts. Sergeant Bowers’s horse was very large and tall,

with slim, long legs, and looked like a railroad bridge. His size

enabled him to reach all about, and as far as he wanted to, with his

head; so he was always biting Bowers’s legs. On the march, in the sun,

Bowers slept a good deal; and as soon as the horse recognized that he

was asleep he would reach around and bite him on the leg. His legs were

black and blue with bites. This was the only thing that could ever make

him swear, but this always did; whenever the horse bit him he always

swore, and of course Stevens, who laughed at everything, laughed at

this, and would even get into such convulsions over it as to lose his

balance and fall off his horse; and then Bowers, already irritated by

the pain of the horse-bite, would resent the laughter with hard

language, and there would be a quarrel; so that horse made no end of

trouble and bad blood in the command.

However, I will get back to where I was—our first afternoon in the sugar

camp. The sugar-troughs came very handy as horse-troughs, and we had

plenty of corn to fill them with. I ordered Sergeant Bowers to feed my

mule; but he said that if I reckoned he went to war to be dry-nurse to a

mule, it wouldn’t take me very long to find out my mistake. I believed

that this was insubordination, but I was full of uncertainties about

everything military, and so I let the thing pass, and went and ordered

Smith, the blacksmith’s apprentice, to feed the mule; but he merely gave

me a large, cold, sarcastic grin, such as an ostensibly seven-year-old

horse gives you when you lift his lip and find he is fourteen, and

turned his back on me. I then went to the captain, and asked if it was

not right and proper and military for me to have an orderly. He said it

was, but as there was only one orderly in the corps, it was but right

that he himself should have Bowers on his staff. Bowers said he wouldn’t

serve on anybody’s staff; and if anybody thought he could make him, let

him try it. So, of course, the thing had to be dropped; there was no

other way.

Next, nobody would cook; it was considered a degradation; so we had no

dinner. We lazied the rest of the pleasant afternoon away, some dozing

under the trees, some smoking cob-pipes and talking sweethearts and war,

some playing games. By late supper-time all hands were famished; and to

meet the difficulty all hands turned to, on an equal footing, and

gathered wood, built fires, and cooked the meal. Afterward everything

was smooth for a while; then trouble broke out between the corporal and

the sergeant, each claiming to rank the other. Nobody knew which was the

higher office; so Lyman had to settle the matter by making the rank of

both officers equal. The commander of an ignorant crew like that has

many troubles and vexations which probably do not occur in the regular

army at all. However, with the song-singing and yarn-spinning around the

camp-fire, everything presently became serene again; and by and by we

raked the corn down level in one end of the crib, and all went to bed on

it, tying a horse to the door, so that he would neigh if any one tried

to get in.[1]

Footnote 1:

It was always my impression that that was what the horse was there

for, and I know that it was also the impression of at least one other

of the command, for we talked about it at the time, and admired the

military ingenuity of the device; but when I was out West three years

ago I was told by Mr. A. G. Fuqua, a member of our company, that the

horse was his, that the leaving him tied at the door was a matter of

mere forgetfulness, and that to attribute it to intelligent invention

was to give him quite too much credit. In support of his position, he

called my attention to the suggestive fact that the artifice was not

employed again. I had not thought of that before.

We had some horsemanship drill every forenoon; then, afternoons, we rode

off here and there in squads a few miles, and visited the farmers’

girls, and had a youthful good time, and got an honest good dinner or

supper, and then home again to camp, happy and content.

For a time, life was idly delicious, it was perfect; there was nothing

to mar it. Then came some farmers with an alarm one day. They said it

was rumored that the enemy were advancing in our direction, from over

Hyde’s prairie. The result was a sharp stir among us, and general

consternation. It was a rude awakening from our pleasant trance. The

rumor was but a rumor—nothing definite about it; so, in the confusion,

we did not know which way to retreat. Lyman was for not retreating at

all, in these uncertain circumstances; but he found that if he tried to

maintain that attitude he would fare badly, for the command were in no

humor to put up with insubordination. So he yielded the point and called

a council of war—to consist of himself and the three other officers; but

the privates made such a fuss about being left out, that we had to allow

them to remain, for they were already present, and doing the most of the

talking too. The question was, which way to retreat; but all were so

flurried that nobody seemed to have even a guess to offer. Except Lyman.

He explained in a few calm words, that inasmuch as the enemy were

approaching from over Hyde’s prairie, our course was simple: all we had

to do was not to retreat _toward_ him; any other direction would answer

our needs perfectly. Everybody saw in a moment how true this was, and

how wise; so Lyman got a great many compliments. It was now decided that

we should fall back on Mason’s farm.

It was after dark by this time, and as we could not know how soon the

enemy might arrive, it did not seem best to try to take the horses and

things with us; so we only took the guns and ammunition, and started at

once. The route was very rough and hilly and rocky, and presently the

night grew very black and rain began to fall; so we had a troublesome

time of it, struggling and stumbling along in the dark; and soon some

person slipped and fell, and then the next person behind stumbled over

him and fell, and so did the rest, one after the other; and then Bowers

came with the keg of powder in his arms, whilst the command were all

mixed together, arms and legs, on the muddy slope; and so he fell, of

course, with the keg, and this started the whole detachment down the

hill in a body, and they landed in the brook at the bottom in a pile,

and each that was undermost pulling the hair and scratching and biting

those that were on top of him; and those that were being scratched and

bitten, scratching and biting the rest in their turn, and all saying

they would die before they would ever go to war again if they ever got

out of this brook this time, and the invader might rot for all they

cared, and the country along with him—and all such talk as that, which

was dismal to hear and take part in, in such smothered, low voices, and

such a grisly dark place and so wet, and the enemy may be coming any

moment.

The keg of powder was lost, and the guns too; so the growling and

complaining continued straight along whilst the brigade pawed around the

pasty hillside and slopped around in the brook hunting for these things;

consequently we lost considerable time at this; and then we heard a

sound, and held our breath and listened, and it seemed to be the enemy

coming, though it could have been a cow, for it had a cough like a cow;

but we did not wait, but left a couple of guns behind and struck out for

Mason’s again as briskly as we could scramble along in the dark. But we

got lost presently among the rugged little ravines, and wasted a deal of

time finding the way again, so it was after nine when we reached Mason’s

stile at last; and then before we could open our mouths to give the

countersign, several dogs came bounding over the fence, with great riot

and noise, and each of them took a soldier by the slack of his trousers

and began to back away with him. We could not shoot the dogs without

endangering the persons they were attached to; so we had to look on,

helpless, at what was perhaps the most mortifying spectacle of the civil

war. There was light enough, and to spare, for the Masons had now run

out on the porch with candles in their hands. The old man and his son

came and undid the dogs without difficulty, all but Bowers’s; but they

couldn’t undo his dog, they didn’t know his combination; he was of the

bull kind, and seemed to be set with a Yale time-lock; but they got him

loose at last with some scalding water, of which Bowers got his share

and returned thanks. Peterson Dunlap afterwards made up a fine name for

this engagement, and also for the night march which preceded it, but

both have long ago faded out of my memory.

We now went into the house, and they began to ask us a world of

questions, whereby it presently came out that we did not know anything

concerning who or what we were running from; so the old gentleman made

himself very frank, and said we were a curious breed of soldiers, and

guessed we could be depended on to end up the war in time, because no

government could stand the expense of the shoe-leather we should cost it

trying to follow us around. “Marion _Rangers_! good name, b’gosh!” said

he. And wanted to know why we hadn’t had a picket-guard at the place

where the road entered the prairie, and why we hadn’t sent out a

scouting party to spy out the enemy and bring us an account of his

strength, and so on, before jumping up and stampeding out of a strong

position upon a mere vague rumor—and so on, and so forth, till he made

us all feel shabbier than the dogs had done, not half so

enthusiastically welcome. So we went to bed shamed and low-spirited;

except Stevens. Soon Stevens began to devise a garment for Bowers which

could be made to automatically display his battle-scars to the grateful,

or conceal them from the envious, according to his occasions; but Bowers

was in no humor for this, so there was a fight, and when it was over

Stevens had some battle-scars of his own to think about.

Then we got a little sleep. But after all we had gone through, our

activities were not over for the night; for about two o’clock in the

morning we heard a shout of warning from down the lane, accompanied by a

chorus from all the dogs, and in a moment everybody was up and flying

around to find out what the alarm was about. The alarmist was a horseman

who gave notice that a detachment of Union soldiers was on its way from

Hannibal with orders to capture and hang any bands like ours which it

could find, and said we had no time to lose. Farmer Mason was in a

flurry this time, himself. He hurried us out of the house with all

haste, and sent one of his negroes with us to show us where to hide

ourselves and our tell-tale guns among the ravines half a mile away. It

was raining heavily.

We struck down the lane, then across some rocky pasture-land which

offered good advantages for stumbling; consequently we were down in the

mud most of the time, and every time a man went down he blackguarded the

war, and the people that started it, and everybody connected with it,

and gave himself the master dose of all for being so foolish as to go

into it. At last we reached the wooded mouth of a ravine, and there we

huddled ourselves under the streaming trees, and sent the negro back

home. It was a dismal and heart-breaking time. We were like to be

drowned with the rain, deafened with the howling wind and the booming

thunder, and blinded by the lightning. It was indeed a wild night. The

drenching we were getting was misery enough, but a deeper misery still

was the reflection that the halter might end us before we were a day

older. A death of this shameful sort had not occurred to us as being

among the possibilities of war. It took the romance all out of the

campaign, and turned our dreams of glory into a repulsive nightmare. As

for doubting that so barbarous an order had been given, not one of us

did that.

The long night wore itself out at last, and then the negro came to us

with the news that the alarm had manifestly been a false one, and that

breakfast would soon be ready. Straightway we were light-hearted again,

and the world was bright, and life as full of hope and promise as

ever—for we were young then. How long ago that was! Twenty-four years.

The mongrel child of philology named the night’s refuge Camp

Devastation, and no soul objected. The Masons gave us a Missouri country

breakfast, in Missourian abundance, and we needed it: hot biscuits; hot

“wheat bread” prettily criss-crossed in a lattice pattern on top; hot

corn pone; fried chicken; bacon, coffee, eggs, milk, buttermilk,

etc.;—and the world may be confidently challenged to furnish the equal

to such a breakfast, as it is cooked in the South.

We staid several days at Mason’s; and after all these years the memory

of the dulness, the stillness and lifelessness of that slumberous

farm-house still oppresses my spirit as with a sense of the presence of

death and mourning. There was nothing to do, nothing to think about;

there was no interest in life. The male part of the household were away

in the fields all day, the women were busy and out of our sight; there

was no sound but the plaintive wailing of a spinning-wheel, forever

moaning out from some distant room,—the most lonesome sound in nature, a

sound steeped and sodden with homesickness and the emptiness of life.

The family went to bed about dark every night, and as we were not

invited to intrude any new customs, we naturally followed theirs. Those

nights were a hundred years long to youths accustomed to being up till

twelve. We lay awake and miserable till that hour every time, and grew

old and decrepit waiting through the still eternities for the

clock-strikes. This was no place for town boys. So at last it was with

something very like joy that we received news that the enemy were on our

track again. With a new birth of the old warrior spirit, we sprang to

our places in line of battle and fell back on Camp Ralls.

Captain Lyman had taken a hint from Mason’s talk, and he now gave orders

that our camp should be guarded against surprise by the posting of

pickets. I was ordered to place a picket at the forks of the road in

Hyde’s prairie. Night shut down black and threatening. I told Sergeant

Bowers to go out to that place and stay till midnight; and, just as I

was expecting, he said he wouldn’t do it. I tried to get others to go,

but all refused. Some excused themselves on account of the weather; but

the rest were frank enough to say they wouldn’t go in any kind of

weather. This kind of thing sounds odd now, and impossible, but there

was no surprise in it at the time. On the contrary, it seemed a

perfectly natural thing to do. There were scores of little camps

scattered over Missouri where the same thing was happening. These camps

were composed of young men who had been born and reared to a sturdy

independence, and who did not know what it meant to be ordered around by

Tom, Dick, and Harry, whom they had known familiarly all their lives, in

the village or on the farm. It is quite within the probabilities that

this same thing was happening all over the South. James Redpath

recognized the justice of this assumption, and furnished the following

instance in support of it. During a short stay in East Tennessee he was

in a citizen colonel’s tent one day, talking, when a big private

appeared at the door, and without salute or other circumlocution said to

the colonel,—

“Say, Jim, I’m a-goin’ home for a few days.”

“What for?”

“Well, I hain’t b’en there for a right smart while, and I’d like to see

how things is comin’ on.”

“How long are you going to be gone?”

“’Bout two weeks.”

“Well, don’t be gone longer than that; and get back sooner if you can.”

That was all, and the citizen officer resumed his conversation where the

private had broken it off. This was in the first months of the war, of

course. The camps in our part of Missouri were under Brigadier-General

Thomas H. Harris. He was a townsman of ours, a first-rate fellow, and

well liked; but we had all familiarly known him as the sole and

modest-salaried operator in our telegraph office, where he had to send

about one despatch a week in ordinary times, and two when there was a

rush of business; consequently, when he appeared in our midst one day,

on the wing, and delivered a military command of some sort, in a large

military fashion, nobody was surprised at the response which he got from

the assembled soldiery,—

“Oh, now, what’ll you take to _don’t_, Tom Harris!”

It was quite the natural thing. One might justly imagine that we were

hopeless material for war. And so we seemed, in our ignorant state; but

there were those among us who afterward learned the grim trade; learned

to obey like machines; became valuable soldiers; fought all through the

war, and came out at the end with excellent records. One of the very

boys who refused to go out on picket duty that night, and called me an

ass for thinking he would expose himself to danger in such a foolhardy

way, had become distinguished for intrepidity before he was a year

older.

I did secure my picket that night—not by authority, but by diplomacy. I

got Bowers to go, by agreeing to exchange ranks with him for the time

being, and go along and stand the watch with him as his subordinate. We

staid out there a couple of dreary hours in the pitchy darkness and the

rain, with nothing to modify the dreariness but Bowers’s monotonous

growlings at the war and the weather; then we began to nod, and

presently found it next to impossible to stay in the saddle; so we gave

up the tedious job, and went back to the camp without waiting for the

relief guard. We rode into camp without interruption or objection from

anybody, and the enemy could have done the same, for there were no

sentries. Everybody was asleep; at midnight there was nobody to send out

another picket, so none was sent. We never tried to establish a watch at

night again, as far as I remember, but we generally kept a picket out in

the daytime.

In that camp the whole command slept on the corn in the big corn-crib;

and there was usually a general row before morning, for the place was

full of rats, and they would scramble over the boys’ bodies and faces,

annoying and irritating everybody; and now and then they would bite some

one’s toe, and the person who owned the toe would start up and magnify

his English and begin to throw corn in the dark. The ears were half as

heavy as bricks, and when they struck they hurt. The persons struck

would respond, and inside of five minutes every man would be locked in a

death-grip with his neighbor. There was a grievous deal of blood shed in

the corn-crib, but this was all that was spilt while I was in the war.

No, that is not quite true. But for one circumstance it would have been

all. I will come to that now.

Our scares were frequent. Every few days rumors would come that the

enemy were approaching. In these cases we always fell back on some other

camp of ours; we never staid where we were. But the rumors always turned

out to be false; so at last even we began to grow indifferent to them.

One night a negro was sent to our corn-crib with the same old warning:

the enemy was hovering in our neighborhood. We all said let him hover.

We resolved to stay still and be comfortable. It was a fine warlike

resolution, and no doubt we all felt the stir of it in our veins—for a

moment. We had been having a very jolly time, that was full of

horse-play and school-boy hilarity; but that cooled down now, and

presently the fast-waning fire of forced jokes and forced laughs died

out altogether, and the company became silent. Silent and nervous. And

soon uneasy—worried—apprehensive. We had said we would stay, and we were

committed. We could have been persuaded to go, but there was nobody

brave enough to suggest it. An almost noiseless movement presently began

in the dark, by a general but unvoiced impulse. When the movement was

completed, each man knew that he was not the only person who had crept

to the front wall and had his eye at a crack between the logs. No, we

were all there; all there with our hearts in our throats, and staring

out toward the sugar-troughs where the forest foot-path came through. It

was late, and was a deep woodsy stillness everywhere. There was a veiled

moonlight, which was only just strong enough to enable us to mark the

general shape of objects. Presently a muffled sound caught our ears, and

we recognized it as the hoof-beats of a horse or horses. And right away

a figure appeared in the forest path; it could have been made of smoke,

its mass had so little sharpness of outline. It was a man on horseback;

and it seemed to me that there were others behind him. I got hold of a

gun in the dark, and pushed it through a crack between the logs, hardly

knowing what I was doing, I was so dazed with fright. Somebody said

“Fire!” I pulled the trigger. I seemed to see a hundred flashes and hear

a hundred reports, then I saw the man fall down out of the saddle. My

first feeling was of surprised gratification; my first impulse was an

apprentice-sportsman’s impulse to run and pick up his game. Somebody

said, hardly audibly, “Good—we’ve got him!—wait for the rest.” But the

rest did not come. We waited—listened—still no more came. There was not

a sound, not the whisper of a leaf; just perfect stillness; an uncanny

kind of stillness, which was all the more uncanny on account of the

damp, earthy, late-night smells now rising and pervading it. Then,

wondering, we crept stealthily out, and approached the man. When we got

to him the moon revealed him distinctly. He was lying on his back, with

his arms abroad; his mouth was open and his chest heaving with long

gasps, and his white shirt-front was all splashed with blood. The

thought shot through me that I was a murderer; that I had killed a man—a

man who had never done me any harm. That was the coldest sensation that

ever went through my marrow. I was down by him in a moment, helplessly

stroking his forehead; and I would have given anything then—my own life

freely—to make him again what he had been five minutes before. And all

the boys seemed to be feeling in the same way; they hung over him, full

of pitying interest, and tried all they could to help him, and said all

sorts of regretful things. They had forgotten all about the enemy; they

thought only of this one forlorn unit of the foe. Once my imagination

persuaded me that the dying man gave me a reproachful look out of his

shadowy eyes, and it seemed to me that I could rather he had stabbed me

than done that. He muttered and mumbled like a dreamer in his sleep,

about his wife and his child; and I thought with a new despair, “This

thing that I have done does not end with him; it falls upon _them_ too,

and they never did me any harm, any more than he.”

In a little while the man was dead. He was killed in war; killed in fair

and legitimate war; killed in battle, as you may say; and yet he was as

sincerely mourned by the opposing force as if he had been their brother.

The boys stood there a half hour sorrowing over him, and recalling the

details of the tragedy, and wondering who he might be, and if he were a

spy, and saying that if it were to do over again they would not hurt him

unless he attacked them first. It soon came out that mine was not the

only shot fired; there were five others,—a division of the guilt which

was a grateful relief to me, since it in some degree lightened and

diminished the burden I was carrying. There were six shots fired at

once; but I was not in my right mind at the time, and my heated

imagination had magnified my one shot into a volley.

The man was not in uniform, and was not armed. He was a stranger in the

country; that was all we ever found out about him. The thought of him

got to preying upon me every night; I could not get rid of it. I could

not drive it away, the taking of that unoffending life seemed such a

wanton thing. And it seemed an epitome of war; that all war must be just

that—the killing of strangers against whom you feel no personal

animosity; strangers whom, in other circumstances, you would help if you

found them in trouble, and who would help you if you needed it. My

campaign was spoiled. It seemed to me that I was not rightly equipped

for this awful business; that war was intended for men, and I for a

child’s nurse. I resolved to retire from this avocation of sham

soldiership while I could save some remnant of my self-respect. These

morbid thoughts clung to me against reason; for at bottom I did not

believe I had touched that man. The law of probabilities decreed me

guiltless of his blood; for in all my small experience with guns I had

never hit anything I had tried to hit, and I knew I had done my best to

hit him. Yet there was no solace in the thought. Against a diseased

imagination, demonstration goes for nothing.

The rest of my war experience was of a piece with what I have already

told of it. We kept monotonously falling back upon one camp or another,

and eating up the country. I marvel now at the patience of the farmers

and their families. They ought to have shot us; on the contrary, they

were as hospitably kind and courteous to us as if we had deserved it. In

one of these camps we found Ab Grimes, an Upper Mississippi pilot, who

afterwards became famous as a dare-devil rebel spy, whose career

bristled with desperate adventures. The look and style of his comrades

suggested that they had not come into the war to play, and their deeds

made good the conjecture later. They were fine horsemen and good

revolver-shots; but their favorite arm was the lasso. Each had one at

his pommel, and could snatch a man out of the saddle with it every time,

on a full gallop, at any reasonable distance.

In another camp the chief was a fierce and profane old blacksmith of

sixty, and he had furnished his twenty recruits with gigantic home-made

bowie-knives, to be swung with the two hands, like the _machetes_ of the

Isthmus. It was a grisly spectacle to see that earnest band practicing

their murderous cuts and slashes under the eye of that remorseless old

fanatic.

The last camp which we fell back upon was in a hollow near the village

of Florida, where I was born—in Monroe County. Here we were warned, one

day, that a Union colonel was sweeping down on us with a whole regiment

at his heels. This looked decidedly serious. Our boys went apart and

consulted; then we went back and told the other companies present that

the war was a disappointment to us and we were going to disband. They

were getting ready, themselves, to fall back on some place or other, and

were only waiting for General Tom Harris, who was expected to arrive at

any moment; so they tried to persuade us to wait a little while, but the

majority of us said no, we were accustomed to falling back, and didn’t

need any of Tom Harris’s help; we could get along perfectly well without

him—and save time too. So about half of our fifteen, including myself,

mounted and left on the instant; the others yielded to persuasion and

staid—staid through the war.

An hour later we met General Harris on the road, with two or three

people in his company—his staff, probably, but we could not tell; none

of them were in uniform; uniforms had not come into vogue among us yet.

Harris ordered us back; but we told him there was a Union colonel coming

with a whole regiment in his wake, and it looked as if there was going

to be a disturbance; so we had concluded to go home. He raged a little,

but it was of no use; our minds were made up. We had done our share; had

killed one man, exterminated one army, such as it was; let him go and

kill the rest, and that would end the war. I did not see that brisk

young general again until last year; then he was wearing white hair and

whiskers.

In time I came to know that Union colonel whose coming frightened me out

of the war and crippled the Southern cause to that extent—General Grant.

I came within a few hours of seeing him when he was as unknown as I was

myself; at a time when anybody could have said, “Grant?—Ulysses S.

Grant? I do not remember hearing the name before.” It seems difficult to

realize that there was once a time when such a remark could be

rationally made; but there _was_, and I was within a few miles of the

place and the occasion too, though proceeding in the other direction.

The thoughtful will not throw this war-paper of mine lightly aside as

being valueless. It has this value: it is a not unfair picture of what

went on in many and many a militia camp in the first months of the

rebellion, when the green recruits were without discipline, without the

steadying and heartening influence of trained leaders; when all their

circumstances were new and strange, and charged with exaggerated

terrors, and before the invaluable experience of actual collision in the

field had turned them from rabbits into soldiers. If this side of the

picture of that early day has not before been put into history, then

history has been to that degree incomplete, for it had and has its

rightful place there. There was more Bull Run material scattered through

the early camps of this country than exhibited itself at Bull Run. And

yet it learned its trade presently, and helped to fight the great

battles later. I could have become a soldier myself, if I had waited. I

had got part of it learned; I knew more about retreating than the man

that invented retreating.

THE INVALID’S STORY.

I seem sixty and married, but these effects are due to my condition and

sufferings, for I am a bachelor, and only forty-one. It will be hard for

you to believe that I, who am now but a shadow, was a hale, hearty man

two short years ago,—a man of iron, a very athlete!—yet such is the

simple truth. But stranger still than this fact is the way in which I

lost my health. I lost it through helping to take care of a box of guns

on a two-hundred-mile railway journey one winter’s night. It is the

actual truth, and I will tell you about it.

I belong in Cleveland, Ohio. One winter’s night, two years ago, I

reached home just after dark, in a driving snow-storm, and the first

thing I heard when I entered the house was that my dearest boyhood

friend and schoolmate, John B. Hackett, had died the day before, and

that his last utterance had been a desire that I would take his remains

home to his poor old father and mother in Wisconsin. I was greatly

shocked and grieved, but there was no time to waste in emotions; I must

start at once. I took the card, marked “Deacon Levi Hackett, Bethlehem,

Wisconsin,” and hurried off through the whistling storm to the railway

station. Arrived there I found the long white-pine box which had been

described to me; I fastened the card to it with some tacks, saw it put

safely aboard the express car, and then ran into the eating-room to

provide myself with a sandwich and some cigars. When I returned,

presently, there was my coffin-box _back again_, apparently, and a young

fellow examining around it, with a card in his hand, and some tacks and

a hammer! I was astonished and puzzled. He began to nail on his card,

and I rushed out to the express car, in a good deal of a state of mind,

to ask for an explanation. But no—there was my box, all right, in the

express car; it hadn’t been disturbed. [The fact is that without my

suspecting it a prodigious mistake had been made. I was carrying off a

box of _guns_ which that young fellow had come to the station to ship to

a rifle company in Peoria, Illinois, and _he_ had got my corpse!] Just

then the conductor sung out “All aboard,” and I jumped into the express

car and got a comfortable seat on a bale of buckets. The expressman was

there, hard at work,—a plain man of fifty, with a simple, honest,

good-natured face, and a breezy, practical heartiness in his general

style. As the train moved off a stranger skipped into the car and set a

package of peculiarly mature and capable Limburger cheese on one end of

my coffin-box—I mean my box of guns. That is to say, I know _now_ that

it was Limburger cheese, but at that time I never had heard of the

article in my life, and of course was wholly ignorant of its character.

Well, we sped through the wild night, the bitter storm raged on, a

cheerless misery stole over me, my heart went down, down, down! The old

expressman made a brisk remark or two about the tempest and the arctic

weather, slammed his sliding doors to, and bolted them, closed his

window down tight, and then went bustling around, here and there and

yonder, setting things to rights, and all the time contentedly humming

“Sweet By and By,” in a low tone, and flatting a good deal. Presently I

began to detect a most evil and searching odor stealing about on the

frozen air. This depressed my spirits still more, because of course I

attributed it to my poor departed friend. There was something infinitely

saddening about his calling himself to my remembrance in this dumb

pathetic way, so it was hard to keep the tears back. Moreover, it

distressed me on account of the old expressman, who, I was afraid, might

notice it. However, he went humming tranquilly on, and gave no sign; and

for this I was grateful. Grateful, yes, but still uneasy; and soon I

began to feel more and more uneasy every minute, for every minute that

went by that odor thickened up the more, and got to be more and more

gamy and hard to stand. Presently, having got things arranged to his

satisfaction, the expressman got some wood and made up a tremendous fire

in his stove. This distressed me more than I can tell, for I could not

but feel that it was a mistake. I was sure that the effect would be

deleterious upon my poor departed friend. Thompson—the expressman’s name

was Thompson, as I found out in the course of the night—now went poking

around his car, stopping up whatever stray cracks he could find,

remarking that it didn’t make any difference what kind of a night it was

outside, he calculated to make _us_ comfortable, anyway. I said nothing,

but I believed he was not choosing the right way. Meantime he was

humming to himself just as before; and meantime, too, the stove was

getting hotter and hotter, and the place closer and closer. I felt

myself growing pale and qualmish, but grieved in silence and said

nothing. Soon I noticed that the “Sweet By and By” was gradually fading

out; next it ceased altogether, and there was an ominous stillness.

After a few moments Thompson said,—

“Pfew! I reckon it ain’t no cinnamon ’t I’ve loaded up thish-yer stove

with!”

He gasped once or twice, then moved toward the cof—gun-box, stood over

that Limburger cheese part of a moment, then came back and sat down near

me, looking a good deal impressed. After a contemplative pause, he said,

indicating the box with a gesture,—

“Friend of yourn?”

“Yes,” I said with a sigh.

“He’s pretty ripe, _ain’t_ he!”

Nothing further was said for perhaps a couple of minutes, each being

busy with his own thoughts; then Thompson said, in a low, awed voice,—

“Sometimes it’s uncertain whether they’re really gone or not,—_seem_

gone, you know—body warm, joints limber—and so, although you _think_

they’re gone, you don’t really know. I’ve had cases in my car. It’s

perfectly awful, becuz _you_ don’t know what minute they’ll rise up and

look at you!” Then, after a pause, and slightly lifting his elbow toward

the box,— “But _he_ ain’t in no trance! No, sir, I go bail for _him_!”

We sat some time, in meditative silence, listening to the wind and the

roar of the train; then Thompson said, with a good deal of feeling,—

“Well-a-well, we’ve all got to go, they ain’t no getting around it. Man

that is born of woman is of few days and far between, as Scriptur’ says.

Yes, you look at it any way you want to, it’s awful solemn and cur’us:

they ain’t _nobody_ can get around it; _all’s_ got to go—just

_everybody_, as you may say. One day you’re hearty and strong”—here he

scrambled to his feet and broke a pane and stretched his nose out at it

a moment or two, then sat down again while I struggled up and thrust my

nose out at the same place, and this we kept on doing every now and

then—“and next day he’s cut down like the grass, and the places which

knowed him then knows him no more forever, as Scriptur’ says.

Yes’ndeedy, it’s awful solemn and cur’us; but we’ve all got to go, one

time or another; they ain’t no getting around it.”

There was another long pause; then,—

“What did he die of?”

I said I didn’t know.

“How long has he ben dead?”

It seemed judicious to enlarge the facts to fit the probabilities; so I

said,—

“Two or three days.”

But it did no good; for Thompson received it with an injured look which

plainly said, “Two or three _years_, you mean.” Then he went right

along, placidly ignoring my statement, and gave his views at

considerable length upon the unwisdom of putting off burials too long.

Then he lounged off toward the box, stood a moment, then came back on a

sharp trot and visited the broken pane, observing,—

“’Twould ’a’ ben a dum sight better, all around, if they’d started him

along last summer.”

Thompson sat down and buried his face in his red silk handkerchief, and

began to slowly sway and rock his body like one who is doing his best to

endure the almost unendurable. By this time the fragrance—if you may

call it fragrance—was just about suffocating, as near as you can come at

it. Thompson’s face was turning gray; I knew mine hadn’t any color left

in it. By and by Thompson rested his forehead in his left hand, with his

elbow on his knee, and sort of waved his red handkerchief towards the

box with his other hand, and said,—

“I’ve carried a many a one of ’em,—some of ’em considerable overdue,

too,—but, lordy, he just lays over ’em all!—and does it _easy_. Cap.,

they was heliotrope to _him_!”

This recognition of my poor friend gratified me, in spite of the sad

circumstances, because it had so much the sound of a compliment.

Pretty soon it was plain that something had got to be done. I suggested

cigars. Thompson thought it was a good idea. He said,—

“Likely it’ll modify him some.”

We puffed gingerly along for a while, and tried hard to imagine that

things were improved. But it wasn’t any use. Before very long, and

without any consultation, both cigars were quietly dropped from our

nerveless fingers at the same moment. Thompson said, with a sigh,—

“No, Cap., it don’t modify him worth a cent. Fact is, it makes him

worse, becuz it appears to stir up his ambition. What do you reckon we

better do, now?”

I was not able to suggest anything; indeed, I had to be swallowing and

swallowing, all the time, and did not like to trust myself to speak.

Thompson fell to maundering, in a desultory and low-spirited way, about

the miserable experiences of this night; and he got to referring to my

poor friend by various titles,—sometimes military ones, sometimes civil

ones; and I noticed that as fast as my poor friend’s effectiveness grew,

Thompson promoted him accordingly,—gave him a bigger title. Finally he

said,—

“I’ve got an idea. Suppos’n we buckle down to it and give the Colonel a

bit of a shove towards t’other end of the car?—about ten foot, say. He

wouldn’t have so much influence, then, don’t you reckon?”

I said it was a good scheme. So we took in a good fresh breath at the

broken pane, calculating to hold it till we got through; then we went

there and bent over that deadly cheese and took a grip on the box.

Thompson nodded “All ready,” and then we threw ourselves forward with

all our might; but Thompson slipped, and slumped down with his nose on

the cheese, and his breath got loose. He gagged and gasped, and

floundered up and made a break for the door, pawing the air and saying,

hoarsely, “Don’t hender me!—gimme the road! I’m a-dying; gimme the

road!” Out on the cold platform I sat down and held his head a while,

and he revived. Presently he said,—

“Do you reckon we started the Gen’rul any?”

I said no; we hadn’t budged him.

“Well, then, _that_ idea’s up the flume. We got to think up something

else. He’s suited wher’ he is, I reckon; and if that’s the way he feels

about it, and has made up his mind that he don’t wish to be disturbed,

you bet he’s a-going to have his own way in the business. Yes, better

leave him right wher’ he is, long as he wants it so; becuz he holds all

the trumps, don’t you know, and so it stands to reason that the man that

lays out to alter his plans for him is going to get left.”

But we couldn’t stay out there in that mad storm; we should have frozen

to death. So we went in again and shut the door, and began to suffer

once more and take turns at the break in the window. By and by, as we

were starting away from a station where we had stopped a moment Thompson

pranced in cheerily, and exclaimed,—

“We’re all right, now! I reckon we’ve got the Commodore this time. I

judge I’ve got the stuff here that’ll take the tuck out of him.”

It was carbolic acid. He had a carboy of it. He sprinkled it all around

everywhere; in fact he drenched everything with it, rifle-box, cheese

and all. Then we sat down, feeling pretty hopeful. But it wasn’t for

long. You see the two perfumes began to mix, and then—well, pretty soon

we made a break for the door; and out there Thompson swabbed his face

with his bandanna and said in a kind of disheartened way,—

“It ain’t no use. We can’t buck agin _him_. He just utilizes everything

we put up to modify him with, and gives it his own flavor and plays it

back on us. Why, Cap., don’t you know, it’s as much as a hundred times

worse in there now than it was when he first got a-going. I never _did_

see one of ’em warm up to his work so, and take such a dumnation

interest in it. No, sir, I never did, as long as I’ve ben on the road;

and I’ve carried a many a one of ’em, as I was telling you.”

We went in again, after we were frozen pretty stiff; but my, we couldn’t

_stay_ in, now. So we just waltzed back and forth, freezing, and

thawing, and stifling, by turns. In about an hour we stopped at another

station; and as we left it Thompson came in with a bag, and said,—

“Cap., I’m a-going to chance him once more,—just this once; and if we

don’t fetch him this time, the thing for us to do, is to just throw up

the sponge and withdraw from the canvass. That’s the way _I_ put it up.”

He had brought a lot of chicken feathers, and dried apples, and leaf

tobacco, and rags, and old shoes, and sulphur, and assafœtida, and one

thing or another; and he piled them on a breadth of sheet iron in the

middle of the floor, and set fire to them. When they got well started, I

couldn’t see, myself, how even the corpse could stand it. All that went

before was just simply poetry to that smell,—but mind you, the original

smell stood up out of it just as sublime as ever,—fact is, these other

smells just seemed to give it a better hold; and my, how rich it was! I

didn’t make these reflections there—there wasn’t time—made them on the

platform. And breaking for the platform, Thompson got suffocated and

fell; and before I got him dragged out, which I did by the collar, I was

mighty near gone myself. When we revived, Thompson said dejectedly,—

“We got to stay out here, Cap. We got to do it. They ain’t no other way.

The Governor wants to travel alone, and he’s fixed so he can outvote

us.”

And presently he added,—

“And don’t you know, we’re _pisoned_. It’s _our_ last trip, you can make

up your mind to it. Typhoid fever is what’s going to come of this. I

feel it a-coming right now. Yes, sir, we’re elected, just as sure as

you’re born.”

We were taken from the platform an hour later, frozen and insensible, at

the next station, and I went straight off into a virulent fever, and

never knew anything again for three weeks. I found out, then, that I had

spent that awful night with a harmless box of rifles and a lot of

innocent cheese; but the news was too late to save _me_; imagination had

done its work, and my health was permanently shattered; neither Bermuda

nor any other land can ever bring it back to me. This is my last trip; I

am on my way home to die.

LUCK.[2]

It was at a banquet in London in honor of one of the two or three

conspicuously illustrious English military names of this generation. For

reasons which will presently appear, I will withhold his real name and

titles, and call him Lieutenant-General Lord Arthur Scoresby, Y.C.,

K.C.B., etc., etc., etc. What a fascination there is in a renowned name!

There sat the man, in actual flesh, whom I had heard of so many

thousands of times since that day, thirty years before, when his name

shot suddenly to the zenith from a Crimean battle-field, to remain

forever celebrated. It was food and drink to me to look, and look, and

look at that demigod; scanning, searching, noting: the quietness, the

reserve, the noble gravity of his countenance; the simple honesty that

expressed itself all over him; the sweet unconsciousness of his

greatness—unconsciousness of the hundreds of admiring eyes fastened upon

him, unconsciousness of the deep, loving, sincere worship welling out of

the breasts of those people and flowing toward him.

Footnote 2:

[NOTE.—This is not a fancy sketch. I got it from a clergyman who was

an instructor at Woolwich forty years ago, and who vouched for its

truth.—M. T.]

The clergyman at my left was an old acquaintance of mine—clergyman now,

but had spent the first half of his life in the camp and field, and as

an instructor in the military school at Woolwich. Just at the moment I

have been talking about, a veiled and singular light glimmered in his

eyes, and he leaned down and muttered confidentially to me—indicating

the hero of the banquet with a gesture,—

“Privately—he’s an absolute fool.”

This verdict was a great surprise to me. If its subject had been

Napoleon, or Socrates, or Solomon, my astonishment could not have been

greater. Two things I was well aware of: that the Reverend was a man of

strict veracity, and that his judgment of men was good. Therefore I

knew, beyond doubt or question, that the world was mistaken about this

hero: he _was_ a fool. So I meant to find out, at a convenient moment,

how the Reverend, all solitary and alone, had discovered the secret.

Some days later the opportunity came, and this is what the Reverend told

me:

About forty years ago I was an instructor in the military academy at

Woolwich. I was present in one of the sections when young Scoresby

underwent his preliminary examination. I was touched to the quick with

pity; for the rest of the class answered up brightly and handsomely,

while he—why, dear me, he didn’t know _anything_, so to speak. He was

evidently good, and sweet, and lovable, and guileless; and so it was

exceedingly painful to see him stand there, as serene as a graven image,

and deliver himself of answers which were veritably miraculous for

stupidity and ignorance. All the compassion in me was aroused in his

behalf. I said to myself, when he comes to be examined again, he will be

flung over, of course; so it will be simply a harmless act of charity to

ease his fall as much as I can. I took him aside, and found that he knew

a little of Cæsar’s history; and as he didn’t know anything else, I went

to work and drilled him like a galley-slave on a certain line of stock

questions concerning Cæsar which I knew would be used. If you’ll believe

me, he went through with flying colors on examination day! He went

through on that purely superficial “cram,” and got compliments too,

while others, who knew a thousand times more than he, got plucked. By

some strangely lucky accident—an accident not likely to happen twice in

a century—he was asked no question outside of the narrow limits of his

drill.

It was stupefying. Well, all through his course I stood by him, with

something of the sentiment which a mother feels for a crippled child;

and he always saved himself—just by miracle, apparently.

Now of course the thing that would expose him and kill him at last was

mathematics. I resolved to make his death as easy as I could; so I

drilled him and crammed him, and crammed him and drilled him, just on

the line of questions which the examiners would be most likely to use,

and then launched him on his fate. Well, sir, try to conceive of the

result: to my consternation, he took the first prize! And with it he got

a perfect ovation in the way of compliments.

Sleep? There was no more sleep for me for a week. My conscience tortured

me day and night. What I had done I had done purely through charity, and

only to ease the poor youth’s fall—I never had dreamed of any such

preposterous result as the thing that had happened. I felt as guilty and

miserable as the creator of Frankenstein. Here was a woodenhead whom I

had put in the way of glittering promotions and prodigious

responsibilities, and but one thing could happen: he and his

responsibilities would all go to ruin together at the first opportunity.

The Crimean war had just broken out. Of course there had to be a war, I

said to myself: we couldn’t have peace and give this donkey a chance to

die before he is found out. I waited for the earthquake. It came. And it

made me reel when it did come. He was actually gazetted to a captaincy

in a marching regiment! Better men grow old and gray in the service

before they climb to a sublimity like that. And who could ever have

foreseen that they would go and put such a load of responsibility on

such green and inadequate shoulders? I could just barely have stood it

if they had made him a cornet; but a captain—think of it! I thought my

hair would turn white.

Consider what I did—I who so loved repose and inaction. I said to

myself, I am responsible to the country for this, and I must go along

with him and protect the country against him as far as I can. So I took

my poor little capital that I had saved up through years of work and

grinding economy, and went with a sigh and bought a cornetcy in his

regiment, and away we went to the field.

And there—oh dear, it was awful. Blunders?—why, he never did anything

_but_ blunder. But, you see, nobody was in the fellow’s secret—everybody

had him focussed wrong, and necessarily misinterpreted his performance

every time—consequently they took his idiotic blunders for inspirations

of genius; they did, honestly! His mildest blunders were enough to make

a man in his right mind cry; and they did make me cry—and rage and rave

too, privately. And the thing that kept me always in a sweat of

apprehension was the fact that every fresh blunder he made increased the

lustre of his reputation! I kept saying to myself, he’ll get so high,

that when discovery does finally come, it will be like the sun falling

out of the sky.

He went right along up, from grade to grade, over the dead bodies of his

superiors, until at last, in the hottest moment of the battle of ****

down went our colonel, and my heart jumped into my mouth, for Scoresby

was next in rank! Now for it, said I; we’ll all land in Sheol in ten

minutes, sure.

The battle was awfully hot; the allies were steadily giving way all over

the field. Our regiment occupied a position that was vital; a blunder

now must be destruction. At this crucial moment, what does this immortal

fool do but detach the regiment from its place and order a charge over a

neighboring hill where there wasn’t a suggestion of an enemy! “There you

go!” I said to myself; “this _is_ the end at last.”

And away we did go, and were over the shoulder of the hill before the

insane movement could be discovered and stopped. And what did we find?

An entire and unsuspected Russian army in reserve! And what happened? We

were eaten up? That is necessarily what would have happened in

ninety-nine cases out of a hundred. But no; those Russians argued that

no single regiment would come browsing around there at such a time. It

must be the entire English army, and that the sly Russian game was

detected and blocked; so they turned tail, and away they went,

pell-mell, over the hill and down into the field, in wild confusion, and

we after them; they themselves broke the solid Russian centre in the

field, and tore through, and in no time there was the most tremendous

rout you ever saw, and the defeat of the allies was turned into a

sweeping and splendid victory! Marshal Canrobert looked on, dizzy with

astonishment, admiration, and delight; and sent right off for Scoresby,

and hugged him, and decorated him on the field, in presence of all the

armies!

And what was Scoresby’s blunder that time? Merely the mistaking his

right hand for his left—that was all. An order had come to him to fall

back and support our right; and instead, he fell _forward_ and went over

the hill to the left. But the name he won that day as a marvellous

military genius filled the world with his glory, and that glory will

never fade while history books last.

He is just as good and sweet and lovable and unpretending as a man can

be, but he doesn’t know enough to come in when it rains. Now that is

absolutely true. He is the supremest ass in the universe; and until half

an hour ago nobody knew it but himself and me. He has been pursued, day

by day and year by year, by a most phenomenal and astonishing luckiness.

He has been a shining soldier in all our wars for a generation; he has

littered his whole military life with blunders, and yet has never

committed one that didn’t make him a knight or a baronet or a lord or

something. Look at his breast; why, he is just clothed in domestic and

foreign decorations. Well, sir, every one of them is the record of some

shouting stupidity or other; and taken together, they are proof that the

very best thing in all this world that can befall a man is to be born

lucky. I say again, as I said at the banquet, Scoresby’s an absolute

fool.

THE CAPTAIN’S STORY.

There was a good deal of pleasant gossip about old Captain “Hurricane”

Jones, of the Pacific Ocean,—peace to his ashes! Two or three of us

present had known him; I, particularly well, for I had made four

sea-voyages with him. He was a very remarkable man. He was born on a

ship; he picked up what little education he had among his shipmates; he

began life in the forecastle, and climbed grade by grade to the

captaincy. More than fifty years of his sixty-five were spent at sea. He

had sailed all oceans, seen all lands, and borrowed a tint from all

climates. When a man has been fifty years at sea, he necessarily knows

nothing of men, nothing of the world but its surface, nothing of the

world’s thought, nothing of the world’s learning but its A B C, and that

blurred and distorted by the unfocussed lenses of an untrained mind.

Such a man is only a gray and bearded child. That is what old Hurricane

Jones was,—simply an innocent, lovable old infant. When his spirit was

in repose he was as sweet and gentle as a girl; when his wrath was up he

was a hurricane that made his nickname seem tamely descriptive. He was

formidable in a fight, for he was of powerful build and dauntless

courage. He was frescoed from head to heel with pictures and mottoes

tattooed in red and blue India ink. I was with him one voyage when he

got his last vacant space tattooed; this vacant space was around his

left ankle. During three days he stumped about the ship with his ankle

bare and swollen, and this legend gleaming red and angry out from a

clouding of India ink: “Virtue is its own R’d.” (There was a lack of

room.) He was deeply and sincerely pious, and swore like a fish-woman.

He considered swearing blameless, because sailors would not understand

an order unillumined by it. He was a profound Biblical scholar,—that is,

he thought he was. He believed everything in the Bible, but he had his

own methods of arriving at his beliefs. He was of the “advanced” school

of thinkers, and applied natural laws to the interpretation of all

miracles, somewhat on the plan of the people who make the six days of

creation six geological epochs, and so forth. Without being aware of it,

he was a rather severe satire on modern scientific religionists. Such a

man as I have been describing is rabidly fond of disquisition and

argument; one knows that without being told it.

One trip the captain had a clergyman on board, but did not know he was a

clergyman, since the passenger list did not betray the fact. He took a

great liking to this Rev. Mr. Peters, and talked with him a great deal:

told him yarns, gave him toothsome scraps of personal history, and wove

a glittering streak of profanity through his garrulous fabric that was

refreshing to a spirit weary of the dull neutralities of undecorated

speech. One day the captain said, “Peters, do you ever read the Bible?”

“Well—yes.”

“I judge it ain’t often, by the way you say it. Now, you tackle it in

dead earnest once, and you’ll find it’ll pay. Don’t you get discouraged,

but hang right on. First, you won’t understand it; but by and by things

will begin to clear up, and then you wouldn’t lay it down to eat.”

“Yes, I have heard that said.”

“And it’s so, too. There ain’t a book that begins with it. It lays over

’em all, Peters. There’s some pretty tough things in it,—there ain’t any

getting around that,—but you stick to them and think them out, and when

once you get on the inside everything’s plain as day.”

“The miracles, too, captain?”

“Yes, sir! the miracles, too. Every one of them. Now, there’s that

business with the prophets of Baal; like enough that stumped you?”

“Well, I don’t know but—”

“Own up, now; it stumped you. Well, I don’t wonder. You hadn’t had any

experience in ravelling such things out, and naturally it was too many

for you. Would you like to have me explain that thing to you, and show

you how to get at the meat of these matters?”

“Indeed, I would, captain, if you don’t mind.”

Then the captain proceeded as follows: “I’ll do it with pleasure. First,

you see, I read and read, and thought and thought, till I got to

understand what sort of people they were in the old Bible times, and

then after that it was clear and easy. Now, this was the way I put it

up, concerning Isaac[3] and the prophets of Baal. There was some mighty

sharp men amongst the public characters of that old ancient day, and

Isaac was one of them. Isaac had his failings,—plenty of them, too; it

ain’t for me to apologize for Isaac; he played on the prophets of Baal,

and like enough he was justifiable, considering the odds that was

against him. No, all I say is, ’t wa’n’t any miracle, and that I’ll show

you so’s’t you can see it yourself.

Footnote 3:

This is the captain’s own mistake.

“Well, times had been getting rougher and rougher for prophets,—that is,

prophets of Isaac’s denomination. There were four hundred and fifty

prophets of Baal in the community, and only one Presbyterian; that is,

if Isaac _was_ a Presbyterian, which I reckon he was, but it don’t say.

Naturally, the prophets of Baal took all the trade. Isaac was pretty

low-spirited, I reckon, but he was a good deal of a man, and no doubt he

went a-prophesying around, letting on to be doing a land-office

business, but ’t wa’n’t any use; he couldn’t run any opposition to

amount to anything. By and by things got desperate with him; he sets his

head to work and thinks it all out, and then what does he do? Why, he

begins to throw out hints that the other parties are this and that and

t’other,—nothing very definite, may be, but just kind of undermining

their reputation in a quiet way. This made talk, of course, and finally

got to the king. The king asked Isaac what he meant by his talk. Says

Isaac, ‘Oh, nothing particular; only, can they pray down fire from

heaven on an altar? It ain’t much, maybe, your majesty, only can they

_do_ it? That’s the idea.’ So the king was a good deal disturbed, and he

went to the prophets of Baal, and they said, pretty airy, that if he had

an altar ready, _they_ were ready; and they intimated he better get it

insured, too.

“So next morning all the children of Israel and their parents and the

other people gathered themselves together. Well, here was that great

crowd of prophets of Baal packed together on one side, and Isaac walking

up and down all alone on the other, putting up his job. When time was

called, Isaac let on to be comfortable and indifferent; told the other

team to take the first innings. So they went at it, the whole four

hundred and fifty, praying around the altar, very hopeful, and doing

their level best. They prayed an hour,—two hours,—three hours,—and so

on, plumb till noon. It wa’n’t any use; they had n’t took a trick. Of

course they felt kind of ashamed before all those people, and well they

might. Now, what would a magnanimous man do? Keep still, wouldn’t he? Of

course. What did Isaac do? He gravelled the prophets of Baal every way

he could think of. Says he, ‘You don’t speak up loud enough; your god’s

asleep, like enough, or may be he’s taking a walk; you want to holler,

you know,’—or words to that effect; I don’t recollect the exact

language. Mind, I don’t apologize for Isaac; he had his faults.

“Well, the prophets of Baal prayed along the best they knew how all the

afternoon, and never raised a spark. At last, about sundown, they were

all tuckered out, and they owned up and quit.

“What does Isaac do, now? He steps up and says to some friends of his,

there, ‘Pour four barrels of water on the altar!’ Everybody was

astonished; for the other side had prayed at it dry, you know, and got

whitewashed. They poured it on. Says he, ‘Heave on four more barrels.’

Then he says, ‘Heave on four more.’ Twelve barrels, you see, altogether.

The water ran all over the altar, and all down the sides, and filled up

a trench around it that would hold a couple of hogsheads,—‘measures,’ it

says; I reckon it means about a hogshead. Some of the people were going

to put on their things and go, for they allowed he was crazy. They

didn’t know Isaac. Isaac knelt down and began to pray: he strung along,

and strung along, about the heathen in distant lands, and about the

sister churches, and about the state and the country at large, and about

those that’s in authority in the government, and all the usual

programme, you know, till everybody had got tired and gone to thinking

about something else, and then, all of a sudden, when nobody was

noticing, he outs with a match and rakes it on the under side of his

leg, and pff! up the whole thing blazes like a house afire! Twelve

barrels of _water_? _Petroleum_, sir, PETROLEUM! that’s what it was!”

“Petroleum, captain?”

“Yes, sir; the country was full of it. Isaac knew all about that. You

read the Bible. Don’t you worry about the tough places. They ain’t tough

when you come to think them out and throw light on them. There ain’t a

thing in the Bible but what is true; all you want is to go prayerfully

to work and cipher out how ’t was done.”

A CURIOUS EXPERIENCE.

This is the story which the Major told me, as nearly as I can recall

it:—

In the winter of 1862–3, I was commandant of Fort Trumbull, at New

London, Conn. Maybe our life there was not so brisk as life at “the

front”; still it was brisk enough, in its way—one’s brains didn’t cake

together there for lack of something to keep them stirring. For one

thing, all the Northern atmosphere at that time was thick with

mysterious rumors—rumors to the effect that rebel spies were flitting

everywhere, and getting ready to blow up our Northern forts, burn our

hotels, send infected clothing into our towns, and all that sort of

thing. You remember it. All this had a tendency to keep us awake, and

knock the traditional dulness out of garrison life. Besides, ours was a

recruiting station—which is the same as saying we hadn’t any time to

waste in dozing, or dreaming, or fooling around. Why, with all our

watchfulness, fifty per cent. of a day’s recruits would leak out of our

hands and give us the slip the same night. The bounties were so

prodigious that a recruit could pay a sentinel three or four hundred

dollars to let him escape, and still have enough of his bounty-money

left to constitute a fortune for a poor man. Yes, as I said before, our

life was not drowsy.

Well, one day I was in my quarters alone, doing some writing, when a

pale and ragged lad of fourteen or fifteen entered, made a neat bow, and

said,—

“I believe recruits are received here?”

“Yes.”

“Will you please enlist me, sir?”

“Dear me, no! You are too young, my boy, and too small.”

A disappointed look came into his face, and quickly deepened into an

expression of despondency. He turned slowly away, as if to go;

hesitated, then faced me again, and said, in a tone which went to my

heart,—

“I have no home, and not a friend in the world. If you _could_ only

enlist me!”

But of course the thing was out of the question, and I said so as gently

as I could. Then I told him to sit down by the stove and warm himself,

and added,—

“You shall have something to eat, presently. You are hungry?”

He did not answer; he did not need to; the gratitude in his big soft

eyes was more eloquent than any words could have been. He sat down by

the stove, and I went on writing. Occasionally I took a furtive glance

at him. I noticed that his clothes and shoes, although soiled and

damaged, were of good style and material. This fact was suggestive. To

it I added the facts that his voice was low and musical; his eyes deep

and melancholy; his carriage and address gentlemanly; evidently the poor

chap was in trouble. As a result, I was interested.

However, I became absorbed in my work, by and by, and forgot all about

the boy. I don’t know how long this lasted; but, at length, I happened

to look up. The boy’s back was toward me, but his face was turned in

such a way that I could see one of his cheeks—and down that cheek a rill

of noiseless tears was flowing.

“God bless my soul!” I said to myself; “I forgot the poor rat was

starving.” Then I made amends for my brutality by saying to him, “Come

along, my lad; you shall dine with _me_; I am alone to-day.”

He gave me another of those grateful looks, and a happy light broke in

his face. At the table he stood with his hand on his chair-back until I

was seated, then seated himself. I took up my knife and fork and—well, I

simply held them, and kept still; for the boy had inclined his head and

was saying a silent grace. A thousand hallowed memories of home and my

childhood poured in upon me, and I sighed to think how far I had drifted

from religion and its balm for hurt minds, its comfort and solace and

support.

As our meal progressed, I observed that young Wicklow—Robert Wicklow was

his full name—knew what to do with his napkin; and—well, in a word, I

observed that he was a boy of good breeding; never mind the details. He

had a simple frankness, too, which won upon me. We talked mainly about

himself, and I had no difficulty in getting his history out of him. When

he spoke of his having been born and reared in Louisiana, I warmed to

him decidedly, for I had spent some time down there. I knew all the

“coast” region of the Mississippi, and loved it, and had not been long

enough away from it for my interest in it to begin to pale. The very

names that fell from his lips sounded good to me,—so good that I steered

the talk in directions that would bring them out. Baton Rouge,

Plaquemine, Donaldsonville, Sixty-mile Point, Bonnet-Carre, the

Stock-Landing, Carrollton, the Steamship Landing, the Steamboat Landing,

New Orleans, Tchoupitoulas Street, the Esplanade, the Rue des Bons

Enfants, the St. Charles Hotel, the Tivoli Circle, the Shell Road, Lake

Pontchartrain; and it was particularly delightful to me to hear once

more of the “R. E. Lee,” the “Natchez,” the “Eclipse,” the “General

Quitman,” the “Duncan F. Kenner,” and other old familiar steamboats. It

was almost as good as being back there, these names so vividly

reproduced in my mind the look of the things they stood for. Briefly,

this was little Wicklow’s history:—

When the war broke out, he and his invalid aunt and his father were

living near Baton Rouge, on a great and rich plantation which had been

in the family for fifty years. The father was a Union man. He was

persecuted in all sorts of ways, but clung to his principles. At last,

one night, masked men burned his mansion down, and the family had to fly

for their lives. They were hunted from place to place, and learned all

there was to know about poverty, hunger, and distress. The invalid aunt

found relief at last: misery and exposure killed her; she died in an

open field, like a tramp, the rain beating upon her and the thunder

booming overhead. Not long afterward, the father was captured by an

armed band; and while the son begged and pleaded, the victim was strung

up before his face. [At this point a baleful light shone in the youth’s

eyes, and he said, with the manner of one who talks to himself: “If I

cannot be enlisted, no matter—I shall find a way—I shall find a way.”]

As soon as the father was pronounced dead, the son was told that if he

was not out of that region within twenty-four hours, it would go hard

with him. That night he crept to the riverside and hid himself near a

plantation landing. By and by the “Duncan F. Kenner” stopped there, and

he swam out and concealed himself in the yawl that was dragging at her

stern. Before daylight the boat reached the Stock-Landing, and he

slipped ashore. He walked the three miles which lay between that point

and the house of an uncle of his in Good-Children Street, in New

Orleans, and then his troubles were over for the time being. But this

uncle was a Union man, too, and before very long he concluded that he

had better leave the South. So he and young Wicklow slipped out of the

country on board a sailing vessel, and in due time reached New York.

They put up at the Astor House. Young Wicklow had a good time of it for

a while, strolling up and down Broadway, and observing the strange

Northern sights; but in the end a change came,—and not for the better.

The uncle had been cheerful at first, but now he began to look troubled

and despondent; moreover, he became moody and irritable; talked of money

giving out, and no way to get more,—“not enough left for one, let alone

two.” Then, one morning, he was missing—did not come to breakfast. The

boy inquired at the office, and was told that the uncle had paid his

bill the night before and gone away—to Boston, the clerk believed, but

was not certain.

The lad was alone and friendless. He did not know what to do, but

concluded he had better try to follow and find his uncle. He went down

to the steamboat landing; learned that the trifle of money in his pocket

would not carry him to Boston; however, it would carry him to New

London; so he took passage for that port, resolving to trust to

Providence to furnish him means to travel the rest of the way. He had

now been wandering about the streets of New London three days and

nights, getting a bite and a nap here and there for charity’s sake. But

he had given up at last; courage and hope were both gone. If he could

enlist, nobody could be more thankful; if he could not get in as a

soldier, couldn’t he be a drummer-boy? Ah, he would work _so_ hard to

please, and would be so grateful!

Well, there’s the history of young Wicklow, just as he told it to me,

barring details. I said,—

“My boy, you are among friends, now,—don’t you be troubled any more.”

How his eyes glistened! I called in Sergeant John Rayburn,—he was from

Hartford; lives in Hartford yet; maybe you know him,—and said, “Rayburn,

quarter this boy with the musicians. I am going to enroll him as a

drummer-boy, and I want you to look after him and see that he is well

treated.”

Well, of course, intercourse between the commandant of the post and the

drummer-boy came to an end, now; but the poor little friendless chap lay

heavy on my heart, just the same. I kept on the lookout, hoping to see

him brighten up and begin to be cheery and gay; but no, the days went

by, and there was no change. He associated with nobody; he was always

absent-minded, always thinking; his face was always sad. One morning

Rayburn asked leave to speak to me privately. Said he,—

“I hope I don’t offend, sir; but the truth is, the musicians are in such

a sweat it seems as if somebody’s _got_ to speak.”

“Why, what is the trouble?”

“It’s the Wicklow boy, sir. The musicians are down on him to an extent

you can’t imagine.”

“Well, go on, go on. What has he been doing?”

“Prayin’, sir.”

“Praying!”

“Yes, sir; the musicians haven’t any peace of their life for that boy’s

prayin’. First thing in the morning he’s at it; noons he’s at it; and

nights—well, _nights_ he just lays into ’em like all possessed! Sleep?

Bless you, they _can’t_ sleep: he’s got the floor, as the sayin’ is, and

then when he once gets his supplication-mill a-goin’, there just simply

ain’t any let-up _to_ him. He starts in with the band-master, and he

prays for him; next he takes the head bugler, and he prays for him; next

the bass drum, and he scoops _him_ in; and so on, right straight through

the band, givin’ them all a show, and takin’ that amount of interest in

it which would make you think he thought he warn’t but a little while

for this world, and believed he couldn’t be happy in heaven without he

had a brass band along, and wanted to pick ’em out for himself, so he

could depend on ’em to do up the national tunes in a style suitin’ to

the place. Well, sir, heavin’ boots at him don’t have no effect; it’s

dark in there; and, besides, he don’t pray fair, anyway, but kneels down

behind the big drum; so it don’t make no difference if they _rain_ boots

at him, _he_ don’t give a dern—warbles right along, same as if it was

applause. They sing out, ‘Oh, dry up!’ ‘Give us a rest!’ ‘Shoot him!’

‘Oh, take a walk!’ and all sorts of such things. But what of it? It

don’t phaze him. _He_ don’t mind it.” After a pause: “Kind of a good

little fool, too; gits up in the mornin’ and carts all that stock of

boots back, and sorts ’em out and sets each man’s pair where they

belong. And they’ve been throwed at him so much now, that he knows every

boot in the band,—can sort ’em out with his eyes shut.”

After another pause, which I forebore to interrupt,—

“But the roughest thing about it is, that when he’s done prayin’,—when

he ever _does_ get done,—he pipes up and begins to _sing_. Well, you

know what a honey kind of a voice he’s got when he talks; you know how

it would persuade a cast-iron dog to come down off of a doorstep and

lick his hand. Now if you’ll take my word for it, sir, it ain’t a

circumstance to his singin’! Flute music is harsh to that boy’s singin’.

Oh, he just gurgles it out so soft and sweet and low, there in the dark,

that it makes you think you are in heaven.”

“What is there ‘rough’ about that?”

“Ah, that’s just it, sir. You hear him sing

“‘Just as I am—poor, wretched, blind,’

—just you hear him sing that, once, and see if you don’t melt all up and

the water come into your eyes! I don’t care _what_ he sings, it goes

plum straight home to you—it goes deep down to where you _live_—and it

fetches you every time! Just you hear him sing:—

“‘Child of sin and sorrow, filled with dismay,

Wait not till to-morrow, yield thee to-day;

Grieve not that love

Which, from above’—

and so on. It makes a body feel like the wickedest, ungratefulest brute

that walks. And when he sings them songs of his about home, and mother,

and childhood, and old friends dead and gone, it fetches everything

before your face that you’ve ever loved and lost in all your life—and

it’s just beautiful, it’s just divine to listen to, sir—but, Lord, Lord,

the heart-break of it! The band—well, they all cry—every rascal of them

blubbers, and don’t try to hide it, either; and first you know, that

very gang that’s been slammin’ boots at that boy will skip out of their

bunks all of a sudden, and rush over in the dark and hug him! Yes, they

do—and slobber all over him, and call him pet names, and beg him to

forgive them. And just at that time, if a regiment was to offer to hurt

a hair of that cub’s head, they’d go for that regiment, if it was a

whole army corps!”

Another pause.

“Is that all?” said I.

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, dear me, what is the complaint? What do they want done?”

“Done? Why, bless you, sir, they want you to stop him from _singin’_.”

“What an idea! You said his music was divine.”

“That’s just it. It’s _too_ divine. Mortal man can’t stand it. It stirs

a body up so; it turns a body inside out; it racks his feelin’s all to

rags; it makes him feel bad and wicked, and not fit for any place but

perdition. It keeps a body in such an everlastin’ state of repentin’,

that nothin’ don’t taste good and there ain’t no comfort in life. And

then the _cryin’_, you see—every mornin’ they are ashamed to look one

another in the face.”

“Well, this is an odd case, and a singular complaint. So they really

want the singing stopped?”

“Yes, sir, that is the idea. They don’t wish to ask too much; they would

like powerful well to have the prayin’ shut down on, or leastways

trimmed off around the edges; but the main thing’s the singin’. If they

can only get the singin’ choked off, they think they can stand the

prayin’, rough as it is to be bullyragged so much that way.”

I told the sergeant I would take the matter under consideration. That

night I crept into the musicians’ quarters and listened. The sergeant

had not overstated the case. I heard the praying voice pleading in the

dark; I heard the execrations of the harassed men; I heard the rain of

boots whiz through the air, and bang and thump around the big drum. The

thing touched me, but it amused me, too. By and by, after an impressive

silence, came the singing. Lord, the pathos of it, the enchantment of

it! Nothing in the world was ever so sweet, so gracious, so tender, so

holy, so moving. I made my stay very brief; I was beginning to

experience emotions of a sort not proper to the commandant of a

fortress.

Next day I issued orders which stopped the praying and singing. Then

followed three or four days which were so full of bounty-jumping

excitements and irritations that I never once thought of my drummer-boy.

But now comes Sergeant Rayburn, one morning, and says,—

“That new boy acts mighty strange, sir.”

“How?”

“Well, sir, he’s all the time writing.”

“Writing? What does he write—letters?”

“I don’t know, sir; but whenever he’s off duty, he is always poking and

nosing around the fort, all by himself,—blest if I think there’s a hole

or corner in it he hasn’t been into,—and every little while he outs with

pencil and paper and scribbles something down.”

This gave me a most unpleasant sensation. I wanted to scoff at it, but

it was not a time to scoff at _anything_ that had the least suspicious

tinge about it. Things were happening all around us, in the North, then,

that warned us to be always on the alert, and always suspecting. I

recalled to mind the suggestive fact that this boy was from the

South,—the extreme South, Louisiana,—and the thought was not of a

reassuring nature, under the circumstances. Nevertheless, it cost me a

pang to give the orders which I now gave to Rayburn. I felt like a

father who plots to expose his own child to shame and injury. I told

Rayburn to keep quiet, bide his time, and get me some of those writings

whenever he could manage it without the boy’s finding it out. And I

charged him not to do anything which might let the boy discover that he

was being watched. I also ordered that he allow the lad his usual

liberties, but that he be followed at a distance when he went out into

the town.

During the next two days, Rayburn reported to me several times. No

success. The boy was still writing, but he always pocketed his paper

with a careless air whenever Rayburn appeared in his vicinity. He had

gone twice to an old deserted stable in the town, remained a minute or

two, and come out again. One could not pooh-pooh these things—they had

an evil look. I was obliged to confess to myself that I was getting

uneasy. I went into my private quarters and sent for my second in

command—an officer of intelligence and judgment, son of General James

Watson Webb. He was surprised and troubled. We had a long talk over the

matter, and came to the conclusion that it would be worth while to

institute a secret search. I determined to take charge of that myself.

So I had myself called at two in the morning; and, pretty soon after, I

was in the musicians’ quarters, crawling along the floor on my stomach

among the snorers. I reached my slumbering waif’s bunk at last, without

disturbing anybody, captured his clothes and kit, and crawled stealthily

back again. When I got to my own quarters, I found Webb there, waiting

and eager to know the result. We made search immediately. The clothes

were a disappointment. In the pockets we found blank paper and a pencil;

nothing else, except a jackknife and such queer odds and ends and

useless trifles as boys hoard and value. We turned to the kit hopefully.

Nothing there but a rebuke for us!—a little Bible with this written on

the fly-leaf: “Stranger, be kind to my boy, for his mother’s sake.”

I looked at Webb—he dropped his eyes; he looked at me—I dropped mine.

Neither spoke. I put the book reverently back in its place. Presently

Webb got up and went away, without remark. After a little I nerved

myself up to my unpalatable job, and took the plunder back to where it

belonged, crawling on my stomach as before. It seemed the peculiarly

appropriate attitude for the business I was in.

I was most honestly glad when it was over and done with.

About noon next day Rayburn came, as usual, to report. I cut him short.

I said,—

“Let this nonsense be dropped. We are making a bugaboo out of a poor

little cub who has got no more harm in him than a hymn-book.”

The sergeant looked surprised, and said,—

“Well, you know it was your orders, sir, and I’ve got some of the

writing.”

“And what does it amount to? How did you get it?”

“I peeped through the key-hole, and see him writing. So when I judged he

was about done, I made a sort of a little cough, and I see him crumple

it up and throw it in the fire, and look all around to see if anybody

was coming. Then he settled back as comfortable and careless as

anything. Then I comes in, and passes the time of day pleasantly, and

sends him of an errand. He never looked uneasy, but went right along. It

was a coal-fire and new-built; the writing had gone over behind a chunk,

out of sight; but I got it out; there it is; it ain’t hardly scorched,

you see.”

I glanced at the paper and took in a sentence or two. Then I dismissed

the sergeant and told him to send Webb to me. Here is the paper in

full:—

“FORT TRUMBULL, the 8th.

“COLONEL,—I was mistaken as to the calibre of the three guns I ended

my list with. They are 18–pounders; all the rest of the armament is

as I stated. The garrison remains as before reported, except that

the two light infantry companies that were to be detached for

service at the front are to stay here for the present—can’t find out

for how long, just now, but will soon. We are satisfied that, all

things considered, matters had better be postponed un—”

There it broke off—there is where Rayburn coughed and interrupted the

writer. All my affection for the boy, all my respect for him and charity

for his forlorn condition, withered in a moment under the blight of this

revelation of cold-blooded baseness.

But never mind about that. Here was business,—business that required

profound and immediate attention, too. Webb and I turned the subject

over and over, and examined it all around. Webb said,—

“What a pity he was interrupted! Something is going to be postponed

until—when? And what _is_ the something? Possibly he would have

mentioned it, the pious little reptile!”

“Yes,” I said, “we have missed a trick. And who is ‘_we_,’ in the

letter? Is it conspirators inside the fort or outside?”

That “we” was uncomfortably suggestive. However, it was not worth while

to be guessing around that, so we proceeded to matters more practical.

In the first place, we decided to double the sentries and keep the

strictest possible watch. Next, we thought of calling Wicklow in and

making him divulge everything; but that did not seem wisest until other

methods should fail. We must have some more of the writings; so we began

to plan to that end. And now we had an idea: Wicklow never went to the

post-office,—perhaps the deserted stable was his post-office. We sent

for my confidential clerk—a young German named Sterne, who was a sort of

natural detective—and told him all about the case and ordered him to go

to work on it. Within the hour we got word that Wicklow was writing

again. Shortly afterward, word came that he had asked leave to go out

into the town. He was detained awhile, and meantime Sterne hurried off

and concealed himself in the stable. By and by he saw Wicklow saunter

in, look about him, then hide something under some rubbish in a corner,

and take leisurely leave again. Sterne pounced upon the hidden article—a

letter—and brought it to us. It had no superscription and no signature.

It repeated what we had already read, and then went on to say:—

“We think it best to postpone till the two companies are gone. I

mean the four inside think so; have not communicated with the

others—afraid of attracting attention. I say four because we have

lost two; they had hardly enlisted and got inside when they were

shipped off to the front. It will be absolutely necessary to have

two in their places. The two that went were the brothers from

Thirty-mile Point. I have something of the greatest importance to

reveal, but must not trust it to this method of communication; will

try the other.”

“The little scoundrel!” said Webb; “who _could_ have supposed he was a

spy? However, never mind about that; let us add up our particulars, such

as they are, and see how the case stands to date. First, we’ve got a

rebel spy in our midst, whom we know; secondly, we’ve got three more in

our midst whom we don’t know; thirdly, these spies have been introduced

among us through the simple and easy process of enlisting as soldiers in

the Union army—and evidently two of them have got sold at it, and been

shipped off to the front; fourthly, there are assistant spies

‘outside’—number indefinite; fifthly, Wicklow has very important matter

which he is afraid to communicate by the ‘present method’—will ‘try the

other.’ That is the case, as it now stands. Shall we collar Wicklow and

make him confess? Or shall we catch the person who removes the letters

from the stable and make _him_ tell? Or shall we keep still and find out

more?”

We decided upon the last course. We judged that we did not need to

proceed to summary measures now, since it was evident that the

conspirators were likely to wait till those two light infantry companies

were out of the way. We fortified Sterne with pretty ample powers, and

told him to use his best endeavors to find out Wicklow’s “other method”

of communication. We meant to play a bold game; and to this end we

proposed to keep the spies in an unsuspecting state as long as possible.

So we ordered Sterne to return to the stable immediately, and, if he

found the coast clear, to conceal Wicklow’s letter where it was before,

and leave it there for the conspirators to get.

The night closed down without further event. It was cold and dark and

sleety, with a raw wind blowing; still I turned out of my warm bed

several times during the night, and went the rounds in person, to see

that all was right and that every sentry was on the alert. I always

found them wide awake and watchful; evidently whispers of mysterious

dangers had been floating about, and the doubling of the guards had been

a kind of indorsement of those rumors. Once, toward morning, I

encountered Webb, breasting his way against the bitter wind, and learned

then that he, also, had been the rounds several times to see that all

was going right.

Next day’s events hurried things up somewhat. Wicklow wrote another

letter; Sterne preceded him to the stable and saw him deposit it;

captured it as soon as Wicklow was out of the way, then slipped out and

followed the little spy at a distance, with a detective in plain clothes

at his own heels, for we thought it judicious to have the law’s

assistance handy in case of need. Wicklow went to the railway station,

and waited around till the train from New York came in, then stood

scanning the faces of the crowd as they poured out of the cars.

Presently an aged gentleman, with green goggles and a cane, came limping

along, stopped in Wicklow’s neighborhood, and began to look about him

expectantly. In an instant Wicklow darted forward, thrust an envelope

into his hand, then glided away and disappeared in the throng. The next

instant Sterne had snatched the letter; and as he hurried past the

detective, he said: “Follow the old gentleman—don’t lose sight of him.”

Then Sterne skurried out with the crowd, and came straight to the fort.

We sat with closed doors, and instructed the guard outside to allow no

interruption.

First we opened the letter captured at the stable. It read as follows:—

“HOLY ALLIANCE,—Found, in the usual gun, commands from the Master,

left there last night, which set aside the instructions heretofore

received from the subordinate quarter. Have left in the gun the

usual indication that the commands reached the proper hand—”

Webb, interrupting: “Isn’t the boy under constant surveillance now?”

I said yes; he had been under strict surveillance ever since the

capturing of his former letter.

“Then how could he put anything into a gun, or take anything out of it,

and not get caught?”

“Well,” I said, “I don’t like the look of that very well.”

“I don’t, either,” said Webb. “It simply means that there are

conspirators among the very sentinels. Without their connivance in some

way or other, the thing couldn’t have been done.”

I sent for Rayburn, and ordered him to examine the batteries and see

what he could find. The reading of the letter was then resumed:—

“The new commands are peremptory, and require that the MMMM shall be

FFFFF at 3 o’clock to-morrow morning. Two hundred will arrive, in

small parties, by train and otherwise, from various directions, and

will be at appointed place at right time. I will distribute the sign

to-day. Success is apparently sure, though something must have got

out, for the sentries have been doubled, and the chiefs went the

rounds last night several times. W. W. comes from southerly to-day

and will receive secret orders—by the other method. All six of you

must be in 166 at sharp 2 A. M. You will find B. B. there, who will

give you detailed instructions. Password same as last time, only

reversed—put first syllable last and last syllable first. REMEMBER

XXXX. Do not forget. Be of good heart; before the next sun rises you

will be heroes; your fame will be permanent; you will have added a

deathless page to history. Amen.”

“Thunder and Mars,” said Webb, “but we are getting into mighty hot

quarters, as I look at it!”

I said there was no question but that things were beginning to wear a

most serious aspect. Said I,—

“A desperate enterprise is on foot, that is plain enough. To-night is

the time set for it,—that, also, is plain. The exact nature of the

enterprise—I mean the manner of it—is hidden away under those blind

bunches of M’s and F’s, but the end and aim, I judge, is the surprise

and capture of the post. We must move quick and sharp now. I think

nothing can be gained by continuing our clandestine policy as regards

Wicklow. We _must_ know, and as soon as possible, too, where ‘166’ is

located, so that we can make a descent upon the gang there at 2 A. M.;

and doubtless the quickest way to get that information will be to force

it out of that boy. But first of all, and before we make any important

move, I must lay the facts before the War Department, and ask for

plenary powers.”

The despatch was prepared in cipher to go over the wires; I read it,

approved it, and sent it along.

We presently finished discussing the letter which was under

consideration, and then opened the one which had been snatched from the

lame gentleman. It contained nothing but a couple of perfectly blank

sheets of note-paper! It was a chilly check to our hot eagerness and

expectancy. We felt as blank as the paper, for a moment, and twice as

foolish. But it was for a moment only; for, of course, we immediately

afterward thought of “sympathetic ink.” We held the paper close to the

fire and watched for the characters to come out, under the influence of

the heat; but nothing appeared but some faint tracings, which we could

make nothing of. We then called in the surgeon, and sent him off with

orders to apply every test he was acquainted with till he got the right

one, and report the contents of the letter to me the instant he brought

them to the surface. This check was a confounded annoyance, and we

naturally chafed under the delay; for we had fully expected to get out

of that letter some of the most important secrets of the plot.

Now appeared Sergeant Rayburn, and drew from his pocket a piece of twine

string about a foot long, with three knots tied in it, and held it up.

“I got it out of a gun on the water-front,” said he. “I took the

tompions out of all the guns and examined close; this string was the

only thing that was in any gun.”

So this bit of string was Wicklow’s “sign” to signify that the

“Master’s” commands had not miscarried. I ordered that every sentinel

who had served near that gun during the past twenty-four hours be put in

confinement at once and separately, and not allowed to communicate with

any one without my privity and consent.

A telegram now came from the Secretary of War. It read as follows:—

“Suspend _habeas corpus_. Put town under martial law. Make necessary

arrests. Act with vigor and promptness. Keep the Department

informed.”

We were now in shape to go to work. I sent out and had the lame

gentleman quietly arrested and as quietly brought into the fort; I

placed him under guard, and forbade speech to him or from him. He was

inclined to bluster at first, but he soon dropped that.

Next came word that Wicklow had been seen to give something to a couple

of our new recruits; and that, as soon as his back was turned, these had

been seized and confined. Upon each was found a small bit of paper,

bearing these words and signs in pencil:—

+-------------------------+

| EAGLE’S THIRD FLIGHT. |

| REMEMBER XXXX. |

| 166. |

+-------------------------+

In accordance with instructions, I telegraphed to the Department, in

cipher, the progress made, and also described the above ticket. We

seemed to be in a strong enough position now to venture to throw off the

mask as regarded Wicklow; so I sent for him. I also sent for and

received back the letter written in sympathetic ink, the surgeon

accompanying it with the information that thus far it had resisted his

tests, but that there were others he could apply when I should be ready

for him to do so.

Presently Wicklow entered. He had a somewhat worn and anxious look, but

he was composed and easy, and if he suspected anything it did not appear

in his face or manner. I allowed him to stand there a moment or two,

then I said pleasantly,—

“My boy, why do you go to that old stable so much?”

He answered, with simple demeanor and without embarrassment,—

“Well, I hardly know, sir; there isn’t any particular reason, except

that I like to be alone, and I amuse myself there.”

“You amuse yourself there, do you?”

“Yes, sir,” he replied, as innocently and simply as before.

“Is that all you do there?”

“Yes, sir,” he said, looking up with childlike wonderment in his big

soft eyes.

“You are _sure_?”

“Yes, sir, sure.”

After a pause, I said,—

“Wicklow, why do you write so much?”

“I? I do not write much, sir.”

“You don’t?”

“No, sir. Oh, if you mean scribbling, I _do_ scribble some, for

amusement.”

“What do you do with your scribblings?”

“Nothing, sir—throw them away.”

“Never send them to anybody?”

“No, sir.”

I suddenly thrust before him the letter to the “Colonel.” He started

slightly, but immediately composed himself. A slight tinge spread itself

over his cheek.

“How came you to send _this_ piece of scribbling, then?”

“I nev—never meant any harm, sir.”

“Never meant any harm! You betray the armament and condition of the

post, and mean no harm by it?”

He hung his head and was silent.

“Come, speak up, and stop lying. Whom was this letter intended for?”

He showed signs of distress, now; but quickly collected himself, and

replied, in a tone of deep earnestness,—

“I will tell you the truth, sir—the whole truth. The letter was never

intended for anybody at all. I wrote it only to amuse myself. I see the

error and foolishness of it, now,—but it is the only offence, sir, upon

my honor.”

“Ah, I am glad of that. It is dangerous to be writing such letters. I

hope you are sure this is the only one you wrote?”

“Yes, sir, perfectly sure.”

His hardihood was stupefying. He told that lie with as sincere a

countenance as any creature ever wore. I waited a moment to soothe down

my rising temper, and then said,—

“Wicklow, jog your memory now, and see if you can help me with two or

three little matters which I wish to inquire about.”

“I will do my very best, sir.”

“Then, to begin with—who is ‘the Master’?”

It betrayed him into darting a startled glance at our faces, but that

was all. He was serene again in a moment, and tranquilly answered,—

“I do not know, sir.”

“You do not know?”

“I do not know.”

“You are _sure_ you do not know?”

He tried hard to keep his eyes on mine, but the strain was too great;

his chin sunk slowly toward his breast and he was silent; he stood there

nervously fumbling with a button, an object to command one’s pity, in

spite of his base acts. Presently I broke the stillness with the

question,—

“Who are the ‘Holy Alliance’?”

His body shook visibly, and he made a slight random gesture with his

hands, which to me was like the appeal of a despairing creature for

compassion. But he made no sound. He continued to stand with his face

bent toward the ground. As we sat gazing at him, waiting for him to

speak, we saw the big tears begin to roll down his cheeks. But he

remained silent. After a little, I said,—

“You must answer me, my boy, and you must tell me the truth. Who are the

Holy Alliance?”

He wept on in silence. Presently I said, somewhat sharply,—

“Answer the question!”

He struggled to get command of his voice; and then, looking up

appealingly, forced the words out between his sobs,—

“Oh, have pity on me, sir! I cannot answer it, for I do not know.”

“What!”

“Indeed, sir, I am telling the truth. I never have heard of the Holy

Alliance till this moment. On my honor, sir, this is so.”

“Good heavens! Look at this second letter of yours; there, do you see

those words, ‘_Holy Alliance_?’ What do you say now?”

He gazed up into my face with the hurt look of one upon whom a great

wrong had been wrought, then said, feelingly,—

“This is some cruel joke, sir; and how could they play it upon me, who

have tried all I could to do right, and have never done harm to anybody?

Some one has counterfeited my hand; I never wrote a line of this; I have

never seen this letter before!”

“Oh, you unspeakable liar! Here, what do you say to _this_?”—and I

snatched the sympathetic ink letter from my pocket and thrust it before

his eyes.

His face turned white!—as white as a dead person’s. He wavered slightly

in his tracks, and put his hand against the wall to steady himself.

After a moment he asked, in so faint a voice that it was hardly

audible,—

“Have you-read it?”

Our faces must have answered the truth before my lips could get out a

false “yes,” for I distinctly saw the courage come back into that boy’s

eyes. I waited for him to say something, but he kept silent. So at last

I said,—

“Well, what have you to say as to the revelations in this letter?”

He answered, with perfect composure,—

“Nothing, except that they are entirely harmless and innocent; they can

hurt nobody.”

I was in something of a corner now, as I couldn’t disprove his

assertion. I did not know exactly how to proceed. However, an idea came

to my relief, and I said,—

“You are sure you know nothing about the Master and the Holy Alliance,

and did not write the letter which you say is a forgery?”

“Yes, sir—sure.”

I slowly drew out the knotted twine string and held it up without

speaking. He gazed at it indifferently, then looked at me inquiringly.

My patience was sorely taxed. However, I kept my temper down, and said

in my usual voice,—

“Wicklow, do you see this?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What is it?”

“It seems to be a piece of string.”

“_Seems?_ It _is_ a piece of string. Do you recognize it?”

“No, sir,” he replied, as calmly as the words could be uttered.

His coolness was perfectly wonderful! I paused now for several seconds,

in order that the silence might add impressiveness to what I was about

to say; then I rose and laid my hand on his shoulder, and said gravely,—

“It will do you no good, poor boy, none in the world. This sign to the

‘Master,’ this knotted string, found in one of the guns on the

water-front—”

“Found _in_ the gun! Oh, no, no, no! do not say _in_ the gun, but in a

crack in the tompion!—it _must_ have been in the crack!” and down he

went on his knees and clasped his hands and lifted up a face that was

pitiful to see, so ashy it was, and wild with terror.

“No, it was _in_ the gun.”

“Oh, something has gone wrong! My God, I am lost!” and he sprang up and

darted this way and that, dodging the hands that were put out to catch

him, and doing his best to escape from the place. But of course escape

was impossible. Then he flung himself on his knees again, crying with

all his might, and clasped me around the legs; and so he clung to me and

begged and pleaded, saying, “Oh, have pity on me! Oh, be merciful to me!

Do not betray me; they would not spare my life a moment! Protect me,

save me. I will confess everything!”

It took us some time to quiet him down and modify his fright, and get

him into something like a rational frame of mind. Then I began to

question him, he answering humbly, with downcast eyes, and from time to

time swabbing away his constantly flowing tears.

“So you are at heart a rebel?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And a spy?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And have been acting under distinct orders from outside?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Willingly?”

“Yes, sir.”

“_Gladly_, perhaps?”

“Yes, sir; it would do no good to deny it. The South is my country; my

heart is Southern, and it is all in her cause.”

“Then the tale you told me of your wrongs and the persecution of your

family was made up for the occasion?”

“They—they told me to say it, sir.”

“And you would betray and destroy those who pitied and sheltered you. Do

you comprehend how base you are, you poor misguided thing?”

He replied with sobs only.

“Well, let that pass. To business. Who is the ‘Colonel,’ and where is

he?”

He began to cry hard, and tried to beg off from answering. He said he

would be killed if he told. I threatened to put him in the dark cell and

lock him up if he did not come out with the information. At the same

time I promised to protect him from all harm if he made a clean breast.

For all answer, he closed his mouth firmly and put on a stubborn air

which I could not bring him out of. At last I started with him; but a

single glance into the dark cell converted him. He broke into a passion

of weeping and supplicating, and declared he would tell everything.

So I brought him back, and he named the “Colonel,” and described him

particularly. Said he would be found at the principal hotel in the town,

in citizen’s dress. I had to threaten him again, before he would

describe and name the “Master.” Said the Master would be found at No. 15

Bond Street, New York, passing under the name of R. F. Gaylord. I

telegraphed name and description to the chief of police of the

metropolis, and asked that Gaylord be arrested and held till I could

send for him.

“Now,” said I, “it seems that there are several of the conspirators

‘outside,’ presumably in New London. Name and describe them.”

He named and described three men and two women,—all stopping at the

principal hotel. I sent out quietly, and had them and the “Colonel”

arrested and confined in the fort.

“Next, I want to know all about your three fellow-conspirators who are

here in the fort.”

He was about to dodge me with a falsehood, I thought; but I produced the

mysterious bits of paper which had been found upon two of them, and this

had a salutary effect upon him. I said we had possession of two of the

men, and he must point out the third. This frightened him badly, and he

cried out,—

“Oh, please don’t make me; he would kill me on the spot!”

I said that that was all nonsense; I would have somebody near by to

protect him, and, besides, the men should be assembled without arms. I

ordered all the raw recruits to be mustered, and then the poor trembling

little wretch went out and stepped along down the line, trying to look

as indifferent as possible. Finally he spoke a single word to one of the

men, and before he had gone five steps the man was under arrest.

As soon as Wicklow was with us again, I had those three men brought in.

I made one of them stand forward, and said,—

“Now, Wicklow, mind, not a shade’s divergence from the exact truth. Who

is this man, and what do you know about him?”

Being “in for it,” he cast consequences aside, fastened his eyes on the

man’s face, and spoke straight along without hesitation,—to the

following effect.

“His real name is George Bristow. He is from New Orleans; was second

mate of the coast-packet ‘Capitol,’ two years ago; is a desperate

character, and has served two terms for manslaughter,—one for killing a

deck-hand named Hyde with a capstan-bar, and one for killing a

roustabout for refusing to heave the lead, which is no part of a

roustabout’s business. He is a spy, and was sent here by the Colonel, to

act in that capacity. He was third mate of the ‘St. Nicholas,’ when she

blew up in the neighborhood of Memphis, in ’58, and came near being

lynched for robbing the dead and wounded while they were being taken

ashore in an empty wood-boat.”

And so forth and so on—he gave the man’s biography in full. When he had

finished, I said to the man,—

“What have you to say to this?”

“Barring your presence, sir, it is the infernalest lie that ever was

spoke!”

I sent him back into confinement, and called the others forward in turn.

Same result. The boy gave a detailed history of each, without ever

hesitating for a word or a fact; but all I could get out of either

rascal was the indignant assertion that it was all a lie. They would

confess nothing. I returned them to captivity, and brought out the rest

of my prisoners, one by one. Wicklow told all about them—what towns in

the South they were from, and every detail of their connection with the

conspiracy.

But they all denied his facts, and not one of them confessed a thing.

The men raged, the women cried. According to their stories, they were

all innocent people from out West, and loved the Union above all things

in this world. I locked the gang up, in disgust, and fell to catechising

Wicklow once more.

“Where is No. 166, and who is B. B.?”

But _there_ he was determined to draw the line. Neither coaxing nor

threats had any effect upon him. Time was flying—it was necessary to

institute sharp measures. So I tied him up a-tiptoe by the thumbs. As

the pain increased, it wrung screams from him which were almost more

than I could bear. But I held my ground, and pretty soon he shrieked

out,—

“Oh, _please_ let me down, and I will tell!”

“No—you’ll tell _before_ I let you down.”

Every instant was agony to him, now, so out it came,—

“No. 166, Eagle Hotel!”—naming a wretched tavern down by the water, a

resort of common laborers, ’longshoremen, and less reputable folk.

So I released him, and then demanded to know the object of the

conspiracy.

“To take the fort to-night,” said he, doggedly and sobbing.

“Have I got all the chiefs of the conspiracy?”

“No. You’ve got all except those that are to meet at 166.”

“What does ‘Remember XXXX’ mean?”

No reply.

“What is the password to No. 166?”

No reply.

“What do those bunches of letters mean,—‘FFFFF’ and ‘MMMM’? Answer! or

you will catch it again.”

“I never _will_ answer! I will die first. Now do what you please.”

“Think what you are saying, Wicklow. Is it final?”

He answered steadily, and without a quiver in his voice,—

“It is final. As sure as I love my wronged country and hate everything

this Northern sun shines on, I will die before I will reveal those

things.”

I triced him up by the thumbs again. When the agony was full upon him,

it was heart-breaking to hear the poor thing’s shrieks, but we got

nothing else out of him. To every question he screamed the same reply:

“I can die, and I _will_ die; but I will never tell.”

Well, we had to give it up. We were convinced that he certainly would

die rather than confess. So we took him down and imprisoned him, under

strict guard.

Then for some hours we busied ourselves with sending telegrams to the

War Department, and with making preparations for a descent upon No. 166.

It was stirring times, that black and bitter night. Things had leaked

out, and the whole garrison was on the alert. The sentinels were

trebled, and nobody could move, outside or in, without being brought to

a stand with a musket levelled at his head. However, Webb and I were

less concerned now than we had previously been, because of the fact that

the conspiracy must necessarily be in a pretty crippled condition, since

so many of its principals were in our clutches.

I determined to be at No. 166 in good season, capture and gag B. B., and

be on hand for the rest when they arrived. At about a quarter past one

in the morning I crept out of the fortress with half a dozen stalwart

and gamy U.S. regulars at my heels—and the boy Wicklow, with his hands

tied behind him. I told him we were going to No. 166, and that if I

found he had lied again and was misleading us, he would have to show us

the right place or suffer the consequences.

We approached the tavern stealthily and reconnoitred. A light was

burning in the small bar-room, the rest of the house was dark. I tried

the front door; it yielded, and we softly entered, closing the door

behind us. Then we removed our shoes, and I led the way to the bar-room.

The German landlord sat there, asleep in his chair. I woke him gently,

and told him to take off his boots and precede us; warning him at the

same time to utter no sound. He obeyed without a murmur, but evidently

he was badly frightened. I ordered him to lead the way to 166. We

ascended two or three flights of stairs as softly as a file of cats; and

then, having arrived near the farther end of a long hall, we came to a

door through the glazed transom of which we could discern the glow of a

dim light from within. The landlord felt for me in the dark and

whispered me that that was 166. I tried the door—it was locked on the

inside. I whispered an order to one of my biggest soldiers; we set our

ample shoulders to the door and with one heave we burst it from its

hinges. I caught a half-glimpse of a figure in a bed—saw its head dart

toward the candle; out went the light, and we were in pitch darkness.

With one big bound I lit on that bed and pinned its occupant down with

my knees. My prisoner struggled fiercely, but I got a grip on his throat

with my left hand, and that was a good assistance to my knees in holding

him down. Then straightway I snatched out my revolver, cocked it, and

laid the cold barrel warningly against his cheek.

“Now somebody strike a light!” said I. “I’ve got him safe.”

It was done. The flame of the match burst up. I looked at my captive,

and, by George, it was a young woman!

I let go and got off the bed, feeling pretty sheepish. Everybody stared

stupidly at his neighbor. Nobody had any wit or sense left, so sudden

and overwhelming had been the surprise. The young woman began to cry,

and covered her face with the sheet. The landlord said, meekly,—

“My daughter, she has been doing something that is not right, _nicht

wahr_?”

“Your daughter? Is she your daughter?”

“Oh, yes, she is my daughter. She is just to-night come home from

Cincinnati a little bit sick.”

“Confound it, that boy has lied again. This is not the right 166; this

is not B. B. Now, Wicklow, you will find the correct 166 for us,

or—hello! where is that boy?”

Gone, as sure as guns! And, what is more, we failed to find a trace of

him. Here was an awkward predicament. I cursed my stupidity in not tying

him to one of the men; but it was of no use to bother about that now.

What should I do in the present circumstances?—that was the question.

That girl _might_ be B. B., after all. I did not believe it, but still

it would not answer to take unbelief for proof. So I finally put my men

in a vacant room across the hall from 166, and told them to capture

anybody and everybody that approached the girl’s room, and to keep the

landlord with them, and under strict watch, until further orders. Then I

hurried back to the fort to see if all was right there yet.

Yes, all was right. And all remained right. I stayed up all night to

make sure of that. Nothing happened. I was unspeakably glad to see the

dawn come again, and be able to telegraph the Department that the Stars

and Stripes still floated over Fort Trumbull.

An immense pressure was lifted from my breast. Still I did not relax

vigilance, of course, nor effort either; the case was too grave for

that. I had up my prisoners, one by one, and harried them by the hour,

trying to get them to confess, but it was a failure. They only gnashed

their teeth and tore their hair, and revealed nothing.

About noon came tidings of my missing boy. He had been seen on the road,

tramping westward, some eight miles out, at six in the morning. I

started a cavalry lieutenant and a private on his track at once. They

came in sight of him twenty miles out. He had climbed a fence and was

wearily dragging himself across a slushy field toward a large

old-fashioned mansion in the edge of a village. They rode through a bit

of woods, made a detour, and closed up on the house from the opposite

side; then dismounted and skurried into the kitchen. Nobody there. They

slipped into the next room, which was also unoccupied; the door from

that room into the front or sitting-room was open. They were about to

step through it when they heard a low voice; it was somebody praying. So

they halted reverently, and the lieutenant put his head in and saw an

old man and an old woman kneeling in a corner of that sitting-room. It

was the old man that was praying, and just as he was finishing his

prayer, the Wicklow boy opened the front door and stepped in. Both of

those old people sprang at him and smothered him with embraces,

shouting,—

“Our boy! our darling! God be praised. The lost is found! He that was

dead is alive again!”

Well, sir, what do you think! That young imp was born and reared on that

homestead, and had never been five miles away from it in all his life,

till the fortnight before he loafed into my quarters and gulled me with

that maudlin yarn of his! It’s as true as gospel. That old man was his

father—a learned old retired clergyman; and that old lady was his

mother.

Let me throw in a word or two of explanation concerning that boy and his

performances. It turned out that he was a ravenous devourer of dime

novels and sensation-story papers—therefore, dark mysteries and gaudy

heroisms were just in his line. Then he had read newspaper reports of

the stealthy goings and comings of rebel spies in our midst, and of

their lurid purposes and their two or three startling achievements, till

his imagination was all aflame on that subject. His constant comrade for

some months had been a Yankee youth of much tongue and lively fancy, who

had served for a couple of years as “mud clerk” (that is, subordinate

purser) on certain of the packet-boats plying between New Orleans and

points two or three hundred miles up the Mississippi—hence his easy

facility in handling the names and other details pertaining to that

region. Now I had spent two or three months in that part of the country

before the war; and I knew just enough about it to be easily taken in by

that boy, whereas a born Louisianian would probably have caught him

tripping before he had talked fifteen minutes. Do you know the reason he

said he would rather die than explain certain of his treasonable

enigmas? Simply because he _couldn’t_ explain them!—they had no meaning;

he had fired them out of his imagination without forethought or

afterthought; and so, upon sudden call, he wasn’t able to invent an

explanation of them. For instance, he couldn’t reveal what was hidden in

the “sympathetic ink” letter, for the ample reason that there wasn’t

anything hidden in it; it was blank paper only. He hadn’t put anything

into a gun, and had never intended to—for his letters were all written

to imaginary persons, and when he hid one in the stable he always

removed the one he had put there the day before; so he was not

acquainted with that knotted string, since he was seeing it for the

first time when I showed it to him; but as soon as I had let him find

out where it came from, he straightway adopted it, in his romantic

fashion, and got some fine effects out of it. He invented Mr. “Gaylord;”

there wasn’t any 15 Bond Street, just then—it had been pulled down three

months before. He invented the “Colonel;” he invented the glib histories

of those unfortunates whom I captured and confronted with him; he

invented “B. B.;” he even invented No. 166, one may say, for he didn’t

know there _was_ such a number in the Eagle Hotel until we went there.

He stood ready to invent anybody or anything whenever it was wanted. If

I called for “outside” spies, he promptly described strangers whom he

had seen at the hotel, and whose names he had happened to hear. Ah, he

lived in a gorgeous, mysterious, romantic world during those few

stirring days, and I think it was _real_ to him, and that he enjoyed it

clear down to the bottom of his heart.

But he made trouble enough for us, and just no end of humiliation. You

see, on account of him we had fifteen or twenty people under arrest and

confinement in the fort, with sentinels before their doors. A lot of the

captives were soldiers and such, and to them I didn’t have to apologize;

but the rest were first-class citizens, from all over the country, and

no amount of apologies was sufficient to satisfy them. They just fumed

and raged and made no end of trouble! And those two ladies,—one was an

Ohio Congressman’s wife, the other a Western bishop’s sister,—well, the

scorn and ridicule and angry tears they poured out on me made up a

keepsake that was likely to make me remember them for a considerable

time,—and I shall. That old lame gentleman with the goggles was a

college president from Philadelphia, who had come up to attend his

nephew’s funeral. He had never seen young Wicklow before, of course.

Well, he not only missed the funeral, and got jailed as a rebel spy, but

Wicklow had stood up there in my quarters and coldly described him as a

counterfeiter, nigger-trader, horse-thief, and fire-bug from the most

notorious rascal-nest in Galveston; and this was a thing which that poor

old gentleman couldn’t seem to get over at all.

And the War Department! But, O my soul, let’s draw the curtain over that

part!

Note.—I showed my manuscript to the Major, and he said: “Your

unfamiliarity with military matters has betrayed you into some

little mistakes. Still, they are picturesque ones—let them go;

military men will smile at them, the rest won’t detect them. You

have got the main facts of the history right, and have set them down

just about as they occurred.”—M. T.

MRS. McWILLIAMS AND THE LIGHTNING.

Well, sir,—continued Mr. McWilliams, for this was not the beginning of

his talk;—the fear of lightning is one of the most distressing

infirmities a human being can be afflicted with. It is mostly confined

to women; but now and then you find it in a little dog, and sometimes in

a man. It is a particularly distressing infirmity, for the reason that

it takes the sand out of a person to an extent which no other fear can,

and it can’t be _reasoned_ with, and neither can it be shamed out of a

person. A woman who could face the very devil himself—or a mouse—loses

her grip and goes all to pieces in front of a flash of lightning. Her

fright is something pitiful to see.

Well, as I was telling you, I woke up, with that smothered and

unlocatable cry of “Mortimer! Mortimer!” wailing in my ears; and as soon

as I could scrape my faculties together I reached over in the dark and

then said,—

“Evangeline, is that you calling? What is the matter? Where are you?”

“Shut up in the boot-closet. You ought to be ashamed to lie there and

sleep so, and such an awful storm going on.”

“Why, how _can_ one be ashamed when he is asleep? It is unreasonable; a

man _can’t_ be ashamed when he is asleep, Evangeline.”

“You never try, Mortimer,—you know very well you never try.”

I caught the sound of muffled sobs.

That sound smote dead the sharp speech that was on my lips, and I

changed it to—

“I’m sorry, dear,—I’m truly sorry. I never meant to act so. Come back

and—”

“MORTIMER!”

“Heavens! what is the matter, my love?”

“Do you mean to say you are in that bed yet?”

“Why, of course.”

“Come out of it instantly. I should think you would take some _little_

care of your life, for _my_ sake and the children’s, if you will not for

your own.”

“But my love—”

“Don’t talk to me, Mortimer. You _know_ there is no place so dangerous

as a bed, in such a thunder-storm as this,—all the books say that; yet

there you would lie, and deliberately throw away your life,—for goodness

knows what, unless for the sake of arguing and arguing, and—”

“But, confound it, Evangeline, I’m _not_ in the bed, _now_. I’m—”

[Sentence interrupted by a sudden glare of lightning, followed by a

terrified little scream from Mrs. McWilliams and a tremendous blast of

thunder.]

“There! You see the result. Oh, Mortimer, how _can_ you be so profligate

as to swear at such a time as this?”

“I _didn’t_ swear. And that _wasn’t_ a result of it, any way. It would

have come, just the same, if I hadn’t said a word; and you know very

well, Evangeline,—at least you ought to know,—that when the atmosphere

is charged with electricity—”

“Oh, yes, now argue it, and argue it, and argue it!—I don’t see how you

can act so, when you _know_ there is not a lightning-rod on the place,

and your poor wife and children are absolutely at the mercy of

Providence. What _are_ you doing?—lighting a match at such a time as

this! Are you stark mad?”

“Hang it, woman, where’s the harm? The place is as dark as the inside of

an infidel, and—”

“Put it out! put it out instantly! Are you determined to sacrifice us

all? You _know_ there is nothing attracts lightning like a light.

[_Fzt!—crash! boom—boloom-boom-boom!_] Oh, just hear it! Now you see

what you’ve done!”

“No, I _don’t_ see what I’ve done. A match may attract lightning, for

all I know, but it don’t _cause_ lightning,—I’ll go odds on that. And it

didn’t attract it worth a cent this time; for if that shot was levelled

at my match, it was blessed poor marksmanship,—about an average of none

out of a possible million, I should say. Why, at Dollymount, such

marksmanship as that—”

“For shame, Mortimer! Here we are standing right in the very presence of

death, and yet in so solemn a moment you are capable of using such

language as that. If you have no desire to—Mortimer!”

“Well?”

“Did you say your prayers to-night?”

“I—I—meant to, but I got to trying to cipher out how much twelve times

thirteen is, and—”

[_Fzt!—boom-berroom-boom! bumble-umble bang_-SMASH!]

“Oh, we are lost, beyond all help! How _could_ you neglect such a thing

at such a time as this?”

“But it _wasn’t_ ‘such a time as this.’ There wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

How could _I_ know there was going to be all this rumpus and powwow

about a little slip like that? And I don’t think it’s just fair for you

to make so much out of it, any way, seeing it happens so seldom; I

haven’t missed before since I brought on that earthquake, four years

ago.”

“MORTIMER! How you talk! Have you forgotten the yellow fever?”

“My dear, you are always throwing up the yellow fever to me, and I think

it is perfectly unreasonable. You can’t even send a telegraphic message

as far as Memphis without relays, so how is a little devotional slip of

mine going to carry so far? I’ll _stand_ the earthquake, because it was

in the neighborhood; but I’ll be hanged if I’m going to be responsible

for every blamed—”

[_Fzt!_—BOOM _beroom_-boom! boom!—BANG!]

“Oh, dear, dear, dear! I _know_ it struck something, Mortimer. We never

shall see the light of another day; and if it will do you any good to

remember, when we are gone, that your dreadful language—_Mortimer_!”

“WELL! What now?”

“Your voice sounds as if— Mortimer, are you actually standing in front

of that open fireplace?”

“That is the very crime I am committing.”

“Get away from it, this moment. You do seem determined to bring

destruction on us all. Don’t you _know_ that there is no better

conductor for lightning than an open chimney? _Now_ where have you got

to?”

“I’m here by the window.”

“Oh, for pity’s sake, have you lost your mind? Clear out from there,

this moment. The very children in arms know it is fatal to stand near a

window in a thunder-storm. Dear, dear, I know I shall never see the

light of another day. Mortimer?”

“Yes?”

“What is that rustling?”

“It’s me.”

“What are you doing?”

“Trying to find the upper end of my pantaloons.”

“Quick! throw those things away! I do believe you would deliberately put

on those clothes at such a time as this; yet you know perfectly well

that _all_ authorities agree that woolen stuffs attract lightning. Oh,

dear, dear, it isn’t sufficient that one’s life must be in peril from

natural causes, but you must do everything you can possibly think of to

augment the danger. Oh, _don’t_ sing! What _can_ you be thinking of?”

“Now where’s the harm in it?”

“Mortimer, if I have told you once, I have told you a hundred times,

that singing causes vibrations in the atmosphere which interrupt the

flow of the electric fluid, and—What on _earth_ are you opening that

door for?”

“Goodness gracious, woman, is there is any harm in _that_?”

“_Harm?_ There’s _death_ in it. Anybody that has given this subject any

attention knows that to create a draught is to invite the lightning. You

haven’t half shut it; shut it _tight_,—and do hurry, or we are all

destroyed. Oh, it is an awful thing to be shut up with a lunatic at such

a time as this. Mortimer, what _are_ you doing?”

“Nothing. Just turning on the water. This room is smothering hot and

close. I want to bathe my face and hands.”

“You have certainly parted with the remnant of your mind! Where

lightning strikes any other substance once, it strikes water fifty

times. Do turn it off. Oh, dear, I am sure that nothing in this world

can save us. It does seem to me that—Mortimer, what was that?”

“It was a da—it was a picture. Knocked it down.”

“Then you are close to the wall! I never heard of such imprudence! Don’t

you _know_ that there’s no better conductor for lightning than a wall?

Come away from there! And you came as near as anything to swearing, too.

Oh, how can you be so desperately wicked, and your family in such peril?

Mortimer, did you order a feather bed, as I asked you to do?”

“No. Forgot it.”

“Forgot it! It may cost you your life. If you had a feather bed, now,

and could spread it in the middle of the room and lie on it, you would

be perfectly safe. Come in here,—come quick, before you have a chance to

commit any more frantic indiscretions.”

I tried, but the little closet would not hold us both with the door

shut, unless we could be content to smother. I gasped awhile, then

forced my way out. My wife called out,—

“Mortimer, something _must_ be done for your preservation. Give me that

German book that is on the end of the mantel-piece, and a candle; but

don’t light it; give me a match; I will light it in here. That book has

some directions in it.”

I got the book,—at cost of a vase and some other brittle things; and the

madam shut herself up with her candle. I had a moment’s peace; then she

called out,—

“Mortimer, what was that?”

“Nothing but the cat.”

“The cat! Oh, destruction! Catch her, and shut her up in the wash-stand.

Do be quick, love; cats are _full_ of electricity. I just know my hair

will turn white with this night’s awful perils.”

I heard the muffled sobbings again. But for that, I should not have

moved hand or foot in such a wild enterprise in the dark.

However, I went at my task,—over chairs, and against all sorts of

obstructions, all of them hard ones, too, and most of them with sharp

edges,—and at last I got kitty cooped up in the commode, at an expense

of over four hundred dollars in broken furniture and shins. Then these

muffled words came from the closet:—

“It says the safest thing is to stand on a chair in the middle of the

room, Mortimer; and the legs of the chair must be insulated, with

non-conductors. That is, you must set the legs of the chair in glass

tumblers. [_Fzt!—boom—bang!—smash!_] Oh, hear that! Do hurry, Mortimer,

before you are struck.”

I managed to find and secure the tumblers. I got the last four,—broke

all the rest. I insulated the chair legs, and called for further

instructions.

“Mortimer, it says, ‘Während eines Gewitters entferne man Metalle, wie

z. B., Ringe, Uhren, Schlüssel, etc., von sich und halte sich auch nicht

an solchen Stellen auf, wo viele Metalle bei einander liegen, oder mit

andern Körpern verbunden sind, wie an Herden, Oefen, Eisengittern u.

dgl.’ What does that mean, Mortimer? Does it mean that you must keep

metals _about_ you, or keep them _away_ from you?”

“Well, I hardly know. It appears to be a little mixed. All German advice

is more or less mixed. However, I think that that sentence is mostly in

the dative case, with a little genitive and accusative sifted in, here

and there, for luck; so I reckon it means that you must keep some metals

_about_ you.”

“Yes, that must be it. It stands to reason that it is. They are in the

nature of lightning-rods, you know. Put on your fireman’s helmet,

Mortimer; that is mostly metal.”

I got it and put it on,—a very heavy and clumsy and uncomfortable thing

on a hot night in a close room. Even my night-dress seemed to be more

clothing than I strictly needed.

“Mortimer, I think your middle ought to be protected. Won’t you buckle

on your militia sabre, please?”

I complied.

“Now, Mortimer, you ought to have some way to protect your feet. Do

please put on your spurs.”

I did it,—in silence,—and kept my temper as well as I could.

“Mortimer, it says, ‘Das Gewitter läuten ist sehr gefährlich, weil die

Glocke selbst, sowie der durch das Läuten veranlasste Luftzug und die

Höhe des Thurmes den Blitz anziehen könnten.’ Mortimer, does that mean

that it is dangerous not to ring the church bells during a

thunder-storm?”

“Yes, it seems to mean that,—if that is the past participle of the

nominative case singular, and I reckon it is. Yes, I think it means that

on account of the height of the church tower and the absence of

_Luftzug_ it would be very dangerous (_sehr gefährlich_) not to ring the

bells in time of a storm; and moreover, don’t you see, the very

wording—”

“Never mind that, Mortimer; don’t waste the precious time in talk. Get

the large dinner-bell; it is right there in the hall. Quick, Mortimer

dear; we are almost safe. Oh, dear, I do believe we are going to be

saved, at last!”

Our little summer establishment stands on top of a high range of hills,

overlooking a valley. Several farm-houses are in our neighborhood,—the

nearest some three or four hundred yards away.

When I, mounted on the chair, had been clanging that dreadful bell a

matter of seven or eight minutes, our shutters were suddenly torn open

from without, and a brilliant bull’s-eye lantern was thrust in at the

window, followed by a hoarse inquiry:—

“What in the nation is the matter here?”

The window was full of men’s heads, and the heads were full of eyes that

stared wildly at my night-dress and my warlike accoutrements.

I dropped the bell, skipped down from the chair in confusion, and said,—

“There is nothing the matter, friends,—only a little discomfort on

account of the thunder-storm. I was trying to keep off the lightning.”

“Thunder-storm? Lightning? Why, Mr. McWilliams, have you lost your mind?

It is a beautiful starlight night; there has been no storm.”

I looked out, and I was so astonished I could hardly speak for a while.

Then I said,—

“I do not understand this. We distinctly saw the glow of the flashes

through the curtains and shutters, and heard the thunder.”

One after another of those people lay down on the ground to laugh,—and

two of them died. One of the survivors remarked,—

“Pity you didn’t think to open your blinds and look over to the top of

the high hill yonder. What you heard was cannon; what you saw was the

flash. You see, the telegraph brought some news, just at midnight:

Garfield’s nominated,—and that’s what’s the matter!”

Yes, Mr. Twain, as I was saying in the beginning (said Mr. McWilliams),

the rules for preserving people against lightning are so excellent and

so innumerable that the most incomprehensible thing in the world to me

is how anybody ever manages to get struck.

So saying, he gathered up his satchel and umbrella, and departed; for

the train had reached his town.

[EXPLANATORY. I regard the idea of this play as a valuable invention. I

call it the Patent Universally-Applicable Automatically-Adjustable

Language Drama. This indicates that it is adjustable to any tongue, and

performable in any tongue. The English portions of the play are to

remain just as they are, permanently; but you change the foreign

portions to any language you please, at will. Do you see? You at once

have the same old play in a new tongue. And you can keep on changing it

from language to language, until your private theatrical pupils have

become glib and at home in the speech of all nations. _Zum Beispiel_,

suppose we wish to adjust the play to the French tongue. First, we give

Mrs. Blumenthal and Gretchen French names. Next, we knock the German

Meisterschaft sentences out of the first scene, and replace them with

sentences from the French Meisterschaft-like this, for instance; “Je

voudrais faire des emplettes ce matin; voulez-vous avoir l’obligeance de

venir avec moi chez le tailleur français?” And so on. Wherever you find

German, replace it with French, leaving the English parts undisturbed.

When you come to the long conversation in the second act, turn to any

pamphlet of your French Meisterschaft, and shovel in as much French talk

on _any_ subject as will fill up the gaps left by the expunged German.

Example—page 423 French Meisterschaft:

On dirait qu’il va faire chaud.

J’ai chaud.

J’ai extrêmement chaud.

Ah! qu’il fait chaud!

Il fait une chaleur étouffante!

L’air est brûlant.

Je meurs de chaleur.

Il est presque impossible de supporter la chaleur.

Cela vous fait transpirer.

Mettons nous à l’ombre.

Il fait du vent.

Il fait un vent froid.

Il fait un temps très-agréable pour se promener aujourd’hui.

And so on, all the way through. It is very easy to adjust the play to

any desired language. Anybody can do it.]

MEISTERSCHAFT: IN THREE ACTS.

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ:

MR. STEPHENSON.

MARGARET STEPHENSON.

GEORGE FRANKLIN.

ANNIE STEPHENSON.

WILLIAM JACKSON.

MRS. BLUMENTHAL, the Wirthin.

GRETCHEN,

Kellnerin.

ACT I.