THE WAY SMITH GETS BORED.—AN EPISODE.
HAVING taken a stroll of six or seven hours about the city, I proceeded
to Market street, and got into the first car going westward. Soon after,
a dignified gentleman, whom I liked the appearance of,—and I modestly
think he liked the looks of me,—got into the car, and occupied a vacant
seat directly opposite. He glanced at my crutches, then at the vacant
space where my left leg should have been, if I had possessed one, and
said:
“How do you do, sir? You lost your leg in the army, I suppose?”
Just here, reader, before I tell you who this excellent gentleman was,
pardon a slight digression. Did it ever occur to you that one who has
lost a limb in the service of his country, finds it necessary to answer
“a question or two” now and then—to put it mildly—for some time after
his return? He is looked upon as public property, and is almost bored to
death with questions, by the many curious strangers he meets. No one who
has not experienced it, can imagine what a nuisance this quizzing is. I
can never have a moment’s rest in any public place. I no sooner take a
seat in a car, restaurant, or lecture-room, than my right-hand or
left-hand lady or gentleman commences. I give below an impartial list of
the questions they ask, and which I, at first, answered with pride and
pleasure; but which, however, after I had answered them a few hundred
thousand times, grew rather stale. Here they are: they have been asked
me so often, as to become stereotyped upon my heart and brain:
Did you lose your limb in battle?
What battle?
Did a cannon ball take it off?
A rifle ball, eh?
Did it knock it clear off?
Did it sever an artery?
Did it hit the bone?
Did it break it?
Did you afterward find the ball?
Was it crushed out of shape?
Did you fall when hit?
Did you walk off the field?
Who carried you off?
Did you feel much pain?
How long after you were wounded till it was amputated?
Who performed the operation?
Did you take chloroform?
Did it put you to sleep?
And didn’t you feel the operation?
Not even the sawing of the bone?
Could not your limb have been saved?
Was it taken off right where the wound was?
Can you wear an artificial leg?
Would the Government furnish it if you could?
Do you draw a pension?
How much?
How old are you?
What is your name?
What did you do before the war?
Don’t you often wish you hadn’t lost your leg?
How does a person feel with a leg off?
Does it ache when the weather changes?
Would you rather lose a leg than an arm?
I have heard persons say that an amputated limb still feels as if it
were on—is that so?
How do you account for that?
All these questions, dear public, I have answered thousands of times,
and may have to answer thousands of times yet, if my miserable existence
is lengthened out for many years. Imagine how it must torment me! The
same old questions, to me long since devoid of interest, I must meekly
answer, over and again, day by day, week by week, year by year! How
would you like to commence and repeat the A B C’s five thousand times
every day, as long as you live?—Be pleasant, wouldn’t it?
But this is not all. After the affable stranger has asked all the
ridiculous questions he can think of, he commences, without being
solicited for a narrative, and entertains (?) me with a glowing (?)
account of the army experience of one of _his_ relatives—his son,
nephew, cousin, or wife’s uncle’s brother’s cousin, and I must patiently
listen. He, poor fellow, goes the story, was wounded, too: arm or leg
nearly torn off, barely hanging by a bit of the hide. Doctors wanted to
carve it off. He wouldn’t let ’em. But they said he’d die unless his
limb was amputated. Said he’d die all in one piece, then, and save the
trouble of digging two graves: wasn’t going to die a piece at a time.
Doctors said they knew best and limb _must_ come off. “Hero” declared
they didn’t, and that it shouldn’t be cut off, and, moreover, he’d shoot
’em if they tried it. Hence, limb left on. Patient got well, although
Doctors said wouldn’t live a day, “and to-day,” continues the narrator,
“the limb is sounder and stronger than before it was wounded.” I have
heard ten thousand such stories told of persons I never knew, never saw,
and never heard of, and never wished to hear of. Yet I had to sit and
listen. How interesting!!!
Nor is this all. I occasionally meet with one who, in addition to all
this, asks a few questions and makes a few remarks too ridiculous to be
believed. Once, a gentleman who had been quizzing me for half-an-hour in
a street-car, gravely asked:
“Don’t you think there are a great many _unnecessary_ legs taken off, by
army surgeons?”
He meant, I suppose, “legs taken off unnecessarily,” and I thought so;
but he had been boring me till I felt pale and looked like fainting, and
I replied:
“Yes. I think that, strictly speaking, all that are taken off are
unnecessary, for those who lose them manage to live without them.”
He didn’t bother me any more.
On a similar occasion, a gentleman asked:
“Do you ever go away and forget your crutch?”
When too late, he perceived how ridiculous the question was; but I
gravely replied:
“Yes, I once went away and left it standing in the corner of a
restaurant. I went several hundred yards before I missed it; and I then
had a deuce of a time getting back to it.”
Another once thoughtfully asked:
“Now, suppose you had lost your left arm instead of your left leg, where
would you have placed your crutch?” He never considered that in such a
case it would not have been necessary for me to use a crutch at all.
“Then,” I replied, “I would have used the crutch under the right
shoulder, and a cane in my left hand.”
Another idiot, one day, after having asked the usual questions and
entertained me with the usual incidents, consolingly remarked:
“Well, you don’t have to pay so much for shoes.”
“I never pay any thing for shoes,” I replied.
“For boots then,” he suggested, with a complacent smile.
“No, nor for boots either,” I replied.
“Why so?” he asked, with some curiosity.
“I buy neither boots nor shoes.”
“How then?”
“I buy _only one_.”
Thus, dear public, am I, John Smith, tormented for having sacrificed a
leg for my country. How often have I felt that I would be far happier if
I were still a mark for the bullets at Malvern Hill, Bull Run, or
Antietam! This accursed _quizzical_ disposition on the part of the
public has made me feel, at times, that life was actually a burden to
me!
One day I met an elderly lady in Philadelphia who stopped me on the
street, asked a profusion of questions, and wound up by giving me an
accurate history of her son. She said he had gone into the army, had
been missing ever since a certain battle, and she feared he was no more.
Ever after that, whenever we met—and it happened frequently—she would
hail me, commence with, “I’ve never heard from my son yet!” and talk at
me till I felt weak in the knee. At last, I met her one day, and
pretending I did not see her, I was passing by, when I felt her grasp on
my elbow, and was obliged to stop.
“My son’s dead,” she said. “I’ve heard from his officers, and they say
he was killed.”
O, how I envied him! Sleeping peacefully in a quiet grave, somewhere,
with nothing to trouble him, and no one to torment him with questions,
he must have been happy compared with the wretched John Smith! The old
lady began again to give me his full history, as she had related it to
me many times before, while the cold perspiration started from my frame,
and I felt as though death was not two doors from me.
Thus am I bored without mercy. No one spares me, except such as have
been in the army themselves. Men, women, children, foreigners, fools and
even negroes, subject me to this systematic torture.
One day I was walking in front of the Naval Asylum, when two little
girls passed me, on their way to school. When they had passed, I heard
one of them say:
“O, look at that man with one leg!”
“Hush!” said the other. “How would you like it if _your_ pa had but one
leg and a little girl would call out that way.”
“_He_ aint anybody’s pa,” retorted the first.
“How do you know?” rejoined the other.