from the east, just out of college, are apt to have, that in this great
western city there was a comparative lack of intellectual culture, and
that a man of my education must speedily and easily get into a position
of prominence, where my talents would earn me a fine living. But I very
soon found where my mistake lay. I had not been bred to work,--real,
practical, marketable work,--either mental or physical. The professions
were open to me, as to any other beginner,--nothing more. I could not
step out of college into a lucrative practice at the bar; but I could
enter a law-office, and study. So of the other professions. If I had
any one idea more prominent than another, it was that I could secure
an editorial situation at once on one of the newspapers here. I was
surprised to find that there was absolutely no demand for such services
as I had to offer.
"'Do you know anything about the newspaper business?' was the first
question put to me, by the first publisher to whom I made application.
"That was the very last question that I had expected to have asked of
me. Of course I imagined myself competent, or I should not have applied
for editorial employment; but I knew the publisher meant, Had I had
actual experience on the press? I felt so sure of myself that I was
tempted to answer him 'Yes,' but the fact is I was never brought up
with such a reverence for the truth, as to always keep at a respectful
distance from it; so I told him I had not, but I could quickly learn.
"'We are in no need of students,' said he; 'and, even if we took you to
teach you, your pay would not settle your washing-bill.'
"One editor was good enough to let me try my hand at writing a
political article. I sat down in his sanctum and went to work. At the
end of two hours I handed him what I had written, quite confident that
I had settled the question of utility. It was an essay that would have
brought me honor at college. He read it and smiled.
"'I don't want to hurt your feelings at all," said he, 'but you have
been two hours about a piece of work that a ready writer would knock
off in half an hour, and now it is done it is good for nothing.
You make the mistake so many have made before you, that an editor
does not need to be bred to his business. _My_ alma mater was a
printing-office,' said he, proudly, 'and I crept up the ladder round
by round. When I commenced editorial labor, I dropped type-setting, at
which I earned two dollars a day, to handle the reporter's pencil at
seven dollars a week. If you think you could do anything as a reporter,
I'll show you our Mr. Pyke, the local editor.'
"Mr. Pyke was a rough one.
"'Posted around town,' said he.
"I told him I was a new-comer.
"'Know short-hand?'
"'No, sir.'
"'What line are you strongest in?'
"What line?' said I, not exactly understanding.
"'Yes, what line? Speeches, fancy-work, police, sensations, picking up
items around town--or what?'
"'I really don't know,' said I; 'I've never had any experience,
practically, in the newspaper business.'
"At this Mr. Pyke turned round on me with a queer look in his face.
"'Oh, that's it,' said he; 'you want to work at a trade you haven't
served an apprenticeship to. There! it's the old story. If you'll go up
in the composing-room, they'll give you a stick and put you to setting
type, I reckon. You better try it. Go and ask for our foreman, Mr.
Buckingham, and tell him I sent you,--will you? Why, you couldn't tell
where the _e_ box is!'
"The man's manner was not so rude as his language, sir. He seemed
perfectly good-natured, and was scribbling away with a lead-pencil all
the while he was talking, much as if he were a writing-machine."
"Doubtless he is, to a great degree," said I; "that is just where the
apprenticeship does its work. I know Pyke, and I've seen him write a
column of city matter, carrying on conversations with half-a-dozen
different people who dropped in during the time, without interrupting
him at all. But I don't mean to interrupt _you_; go on, please."
"Well, sir," St. John continued, "before I had thoroughly learned
the lesson that I finally learned so well, I was almost literally
penniless. Such had been my high confidence in the easy and prosperous
path before me in Chicago, that when I came here I took board at a
first-class hotel, with my wife. I had very little money, and one day
I waked up to the consciousness that I had less than five dollars
remaining of that little, and still no work. Two hideous gulfs yawned
before me,--starvation and debt. My horror of the one is scarcely
greater than my horror of the other. Debt converted my father from
a well-to-do man into a bankrupt, and my mother, who owns the little
that is left of our old homestead in Massachusetts, was and is in no
condition to help me. I would beg in the streets, sir, before I would
look to my poor mother for help, after the long years of self-denial
she practised to get me through college. My wife is an orphan. You may
judge the color my future was taking on. I left the Tremont House,
and, falling at once from the highest to the lowest style of living in
apartments, came _here_. I had no confidence left, now, in that future
which had before seemed, so foolish and inexperienced was I, a broad
and flowery path for talent and education to tread. I never intend to
whine over anything in this world if I can help it, but I can assure
you this was a pretty dark old world to Brock St. John about that
time. The prospect of earning a dollar a day would have cheered me
wonderfully. I cared more on account of Aggie than myself, of course.
A man can bear ups and downs, kicks, cold shoulders, and an empty
stomach, if he is alone; but the thought that I have dragged _her_ down
to this is almost unbearable at times."
"You have _not_ dragged me, Brock," spoke up the little wife; "I came
of my own accord!"
"That you did, Aggie," said the husband, his eyes moistening; "I am
slandering you. But to go on: The day after we moved in here, and set
up house-keeping in careful preparation for the cold winter coming (I
had to pawn clothing to get these poor goods," he added, looking about
the room with a smile), "the German musician, who lives next door,
came in to ask us if his practising on a trombone annoyed us. We were
so hungry for a friendly face just then, that we would have let the
good-natured German blow his trombone through our transom-window after
that exhibition of fellow-feeling. That afternoon, I dropped in to see
him, in continuance of the acquaintance. There was a violin hanging on
the wall, and I took it down and played a tune on it.
"That was my introduction to my first situation in Chicago. Stumm
got me my place at the beer-saloon; and so, through the knowledge of
an art which has always been to me nothing more than an amusement, I
get enough to live, in this time when all the hard-earned culture,
which cost me so much labor, fails me utterly. I am thankful for this,
heartily thankful; but I don't need to tell you sir, how it galls me to
do this work,--to sit three or four hours of every evening in a dense
and vulgar atmosphere, fiddling for my daily bread. No wonder I am
seedy; no wonder I get to look like a loafer, listless, without pride,
spite of Aggie's wifely care. If I knew an honest trade, I should be
a happy man. I would gladly barter my knowledge of Latin, Greek, and
German for the knowledge of type-setting."
"So that you could prove to Pyke that you know the _e_ box from the _x_
box?" queried I.
He laughed.
"But you talk the words of bitterness when you talk in that way, St.
John. You can barter your knowledge of German for _cash_, and keep it
too. Have you ever sought for pupils!"
"Only a little. I have no acquaintances, you know. My only way to get
pupils was to advertise, of course. I tried it three days, and got not
a solitary reply. There are scores of teachers advertising. It seemed
useless for me to waste money in that way."
"Well," said I, "I think I can set you in a way of getting up a class.
My own German is very rusty, and I will be pupil number one. Then I
know of two or three friends who want to study the language. I think we
can get you up a class among us."
He made me no protestation of gratitude,--such protestations are
usually humbug,--but I saw his gladness in his face.
The little wife sat squeezing her fingers for joy.
Before a month had passed, St. John had a large class in German, and
bade adieu to fiddling. He proved an excellent teacher. Long before I
left Chicago to resume my residence in this city, he had got nicely
out from under his cloud, and was living in a snug house in the West
Division.
There was a little baby playing on the floor at his house last summer
when I called to see him, on my way to Lake Superior. That baby bears
my name, I am proud to say.
COMING FROM THE FRONT.
COMING FROM THE FRONT.
[Illustration]
"HEAD-QUARTERS. DEP'T AND ARMY OF THE TENNESSEE.
"_East Point, Georgia, September 22, 1864._
"SPECIAL ORDERS.
"No. 214.
[EXTRACT.]
* * * * *
"XI Having tendered his resignation, the following-named officer is
honorably discharged from the military service of the United States,
with condition that he shall receive no final payments until he
satisfies the Pay Department that he is not indebted to the
Government.
"1st Lieut. ---- ----, Ills. Vol. Inf'try.
"By order of Maj. Gen'l O. O. Howard.
"(Signed) W. T. CLARK, _Ass't Adj't Gen'l._"
Think of that! After forty-one months of hard-tack and hard marching,
interspersed with enough fighting to satisfy the stomach of an ordinary
man; after so long an experience of the beautiful uncertainty of army
life; after polluting, with the invading heel of my brogan, the sacred
soil of several of our erring sister States; after passing many breezy
and rainy nights under the dubious shelter of shelter-tents; after
sitting through long and weary days in the furnace-heat of narrow
and dirty trenches;--after all this, I am at last permitted to bid
farewell to "the front," to go home and doff the honorable blue for the
more sober garb of the "cit," and drop into my wonted insignificance.
That little "extract" has a sweeter perfume for me than any triple
extract for the handkerchief ever elaborated by the renowned M.
Lubin. It is fragrant with thoughts of home and loved ones far away
in the Northland, of starry nights and starry eyes, of fluttering
fans and floating drapery, of morning naps unbroken by the strident
_ra-tata-ta-ta_ of the bugle. I grow quite sentimental over it,
notwithstanding the unpleasant condition with which it is qualified,
and which involves such a fearful amount of writing and figuring on
mysterious close-ruled blanks, and so much affidavit-making and other
swearing,--especially at the blundering clerks in the departments at
Washington.
But this troubles me little now. Time enough to attend to it after I
get home. That is all I can think of,--_home_, and how to get there.
How I should get there, and whether or not I ever would get there, were
questions not easily solved. It is the purpose of this sketch to show
some of the beauties of travelling on railroads that are under military
control, and especially to set forth the writer's experience in going
from Atlanta to Nashville.
It was a terribly hot morning when I reached the depot at Atlanta,
amid a cloud of dust and a maze of wagons and mules and commissary
stores and frantic teamsters. I threw my valise into the nearest car
and hastened to the Provost Marshal's office for my pass. There was an
anxious crowd already in waiting: resigned officers and officers on
leave; jolly, ragged privates on furlough, eager to see their wives and
babies; sutlers and "sheap-cloding" men; flaring demireps, seeking new
fields; mouldy citizens in clothes of antique cut, fawning abjectly
and addressing every clerk and orderly as "kernel;" dejected darkies,
shoved aside by everybody, with no "civil rights bill" to help them.
While I was waiting for my turn, the train kept me constantly worried
by pulling up and backing down and threatening to leave. At last I
found an opportunity to exhibit my "Extract," and, after reading it
as slowly and carefully as if it had been a dispatch in cipher, the
Provost Marshal very deliberately wrote a pass, read it over two or
three times, and then, looking at every one in the room but me, asked
"Who's this for?" as if I had not been standing at his elbow with my
hand held out for half an hour.
I left the official premises in a highly exasperated state of mind.
In the mean time the train had been plunging backward and forward in
a wild and aimless way, and I was unable to find the car my valise
was in. After much wear and tear of muscle and temper and trousers,
in climbing over boxes and bales of hay, I discovered it, and found
that it had been taken possession of by a crowd of roystering blades
on furlough, whose canteens were full and fragrant, and in whose talk
and manner appeared the signs of a boisterous night ahead, with the
possibility of a fight or two by way of special diversion. As I was
no longer in "the military service of the United States," I was, of
course, a peaceable citizen, so I took my quarters in a more peaceful
car. It was a cattle-car and not remarkably clean; but the company was
good, and through the lattice-work around the upper part of the car one
could get a view of the surrounding country; though looking through it
gave one a sensation very much like being in a guard-house.
"Will we never get off?" was the question asked dozens of times,--asked
of nobody in particular, and answered by a chorus of incoherent growls
from everybody in general, while some humorous young man suggested
that if any one wanted to get off, he'd better do it before the train
started.
"Now we're off!"
"No we're not," said the humorous young man, "but it's more'n likely we
will be before we get to Chattanooga."
This was not particularly encouraging to timid travellers, in a country
abounding in guerrilleroes, and where accident insurance companies were
unknown.
Between Atlanta and Marietta we passed line after line of defensive
works, protected by _abattis_ and _chevaux-de-frise_,--feed-racks, I
heard a bronzed veteran of rural antecedents call them,--built by the
rebels at night, only to be abandoned on the next night to the great
Flanker. While they wrought line upon line, Sherman and his boys in
blue gave them precept upon precept, here a little and there a great
deal. All this rugged country is historic ground. The tall, tufted
pine-trees stand as monuments of the unrecorded dead, and every knoll
and tangled ravine bears witness to a bravery and heroic endurance that
has never been surpassed.
Leaving Marietta,--deserted by its inhabitants and turned into an
immense hospital,--we approached Kenesaw, so lately crowned with cannon
and alive with gray coats, now basking in the afternoon sunlight, as
quiet and harmless as a good-natured giant taking his after-dinner
nap. We approached it from the inside, to gain which side the compact
columns of Logan and Stanley and Davis hurled themselves against its
rugged front so fearlessly, but, alas, so fruitlessly, on that terrible
27th of June.
Farther on we came to Alatoona Pass, taken at first without a struggle,
but afterward baptized in blood and made glorious by a successful
defence against immense odds.
It was sunset when we reached Kingston,--a straggling row of
dilapidated shanties. As the train was to stop some time, I started
out in search of supper. There was no hotel, so I had to depend upon
sutlers, or peripatetic venders of pies. I entered one sutler's store,
and found a few fly-specked red handkerchiefs and some suspenders.
Another contained nothing but combs and shoe-blacking. Turning away
mournfully, I espied an aged colored man limping up the street with
a basket on his arm. I rushed madly at him, and, finding that he
had apple-pies, was soon the happy possessor of a brace of them. I
congratulated myself and gratefully sat down upon a stone to eat,
and--well, _such pies_! It was utterly impossible to tell what the
crust was made of. In taste and toughness it resembled a dirty piece of
towel. The interior--"the bowels of the thing," as some one inelegantly
called it,--consisted of a few slices of uncooked immature apple and a
great many flies cooked whole. The cooks were altogether too liberal
with their flies. I am not particularly well versed in the culinary art
myself, but I venture boldly to say that the flies that were in those
two pies would have sufficed, if judiciously distributed, to season two
dozen pies with the same proportion of apple in them.
And of such was my supper at Kingston. The whistle sounded, and we
got aboard and were off for Chattanooga. Night fell peacefully upon
Kingston and its dirty peddlers of unwholesome pies, as a curve in the
road hid it and them from our reproachful gaze.
As the darkness increased, and we went dashing at break-neck speed
over a road that had had little or no care bestowed upon it since
the opening of the campaign, I thought of the humorous young man's
remark, and of how unpleasant and inconvenient it would be to have
this long train thrown off and its contents, as Meister Karl hath it,
"pepperboxically distributed" in the adjacent ditch.
And then to have one of Wheeler's men take advantage of a fellow, as
he lay there with a broken leg, and rob him of the few dollars he
had borrowed to go home on! Well, we had been taking our chances for
the last three years, and it was no new thing to take them now. With
this comforting reflection, I sat down on my valise, and, wrapped
in my great-coat, awaited the coming of "the balmy." It was rather
unsatisfactory waiting. Something in my head kept going rattlety-bang,
jerkety-jerk, bumpety-bump, in unison with the noise of the cars; and
when I did get into a doze, I was harassed by the dim shadow of a
fear that we were about to leave the track and go end-over-end down
an embankment. At last weariness overcame me, and I slept soundly,
half-lying on the dirty floor, half-leaning on my valise, coiled up
in one of those attitudes in which only an old campaigner can sleep
at all; I woke amid an unearthly whizzing of steam, to find the train
standing still, and myself mysteriously entangled with various arms
and legs that didn't belong to me. I extricated myself and looked out.
Through the thick darkness of the early morning there glared upon me
the light of what seemed to be innumerable fierce, unwinking eyes.
I began to think that I had taken the wrong train and brought up in
the lower regions; but a little reflection and rubbing of the eyes
disclosed to me that we had reached Chattanooga in safety, and that
those fierce eyes were the head-lights of the locomotives that had
arrived during the night, and were now blowing off their superfluous
steam in that wild, unearthly manner. As soon as it was daylight
I inquired about trains going North, and learned that there was no
telling when a train would go, as Forrest was said to be in the
neighborhood of the road. So there was nothing to do but to go to the
Crutchfield House and wait. Alas for the man whose purse is slim, under
any circumstances! Alas and alas for him if he was obliged to wait
in Chattanooga at Crutchfield prices! It was a dollar that he had to
pay for each scanty meal, a dollar for the use of a densely populated
bed, and a dollar must be deposited with the clerk to secure the
return of the little towel he wiped his face on. Besides the pecuniary
depletion that he suffered, he was bored to death with weary waiting,
with nothing to do and nowhere to go. Chattanooga was far from being
a cheerful place, especially in the rainy season, when nothing was
visible out of doors except the lonesome sentinels pacing their beats
in dripping ponchos, and with guns tucked under their arms, and here
and there a team of steaming mules, struggling to draw a creaking,
lumbering wagon through the detestable clay.
For amusement, there was a billiard-room, where one had to wait eight
hours for a chance to play. If he failed to see any fun in this,
he could step into another room, and squander his currency for,
and bemuddle his brains with, a sloppy sort of beverage that the
gentlemanly proprietor would assure him was good, new beer. I would
rather take his word than his beer. At night, if his tastes ran that
way, for a small outlay one could witness what was called a dramatic
exhibition, but which was really more anatomical than dramatic.
In this enlivening village, an ever-increasing crowd of us was
compelled to wait for five long days. Resigned officers were far from
being resigned, and officers on leave were vexed and impatient because
it was impossible to leave.
At length the joyful news spread that a train would leave for Nashville
at two o'clock in the afternoon. I rushed to the depot, and was just
fairly aboard a car, when some one, more forcibly than politely, told
me to "git out o' that car." As he spoke as a man who had authority,
and knew it, I got out, and learned that I was on the wrong train, and
in a fair way to have been carried to Knoxville. I forgave the man his
abruptness of speech, and went in search of the right train. Catching a
glimpse of Capt. S., whom I knew to be going North, in one of the cars,
I got in without farther question; and soon a fearful jerk, that piled
us like dead-wood in one end of the car, started us towards Nashville.
Rattling along at the usual reckless rate, we found ourselves, soon
after dark, at Stevenson, Alabama. Here we were to stay all night;
for the managers of affairs still had the fear of Forrest before
their eyes, and dared not run trains at night. It was raining, and
the darkness of Erebus covered the face of the earth. Notwithstanding
this, Capt. S. and myself plunged out into the night, determined to get
something to eat, or perish in the attempt. After wandering blindly for
a while,--tumbling into ditches, and falling over boxes and barrels,
that turned up where they were least expected,--we finally brought up
among the ropes of the tent of a sutler. We entered, and found the
proprietor dozing over a dime novel. We were sorry to disturb him
in his literary pursuits; but we were hungry, and had to be fed. We
eagerly demanded various articles of food, which he sleepily informed
us he hadn't got. Questioning him closely as to the edible part of his
stock in trade, we learned that it consisted of some Boston crackers
and a little cheese. We filled our haversacks with these, regardless of
expense. Having bought so generously, the proprietor became generous
in turn, and, bringing forth a square black bottle, proffered it to us
with the remark: "You'll find that a leetle the best gin this side o'
Louisville. Take hold!" The captain took hold; but the silent, though
expressive comment, that was written on his countenance when he let
go, induced me to decline with thanks. A decent regard for the man's
feelings prevented any audible expression; but, as soon as we were out
of the tent, the captain solemnly assured me that he was poisoned, and
that he would utter his last words when he got comfortably fixed in
the car. Getting back to the car was almost as perilous an undertaking
as finding the sutler's store; but, fortunately, we were guided by
the voice of Capt. W. crying, in heart-rending tones, "Lost child!
lost child!" Capt S. interrupted one of his most pathetic cries by
striking him in the pit of the stomach with a loaded haversack, and
demanding to be helped aboard. Once more snugly ensconced in our car,
we proceeded to sup right royally on our crackers and cheese. S. forgot
all about his last words until some time near the middle of the night,
when he woke me to say that he had concluded to postpone them till
he got home, where he could have them published in the county paper.
Barring this interruption, I slept soundly all night, having more room
than on the trip from Atlanta, and not having the thunder of a running
train sounding in my ears.
At breakfast-time we drew out the fragmentary remainder of our last
night's repast, and were about to take our morning meal, when we
discovered that both crackers and cheese had a singularly animated
appearance. Symptoms of internal commotion manifested themselves in all
of us except S., who thought that, as the gin had not killed him, he
was proof against anything. His stoic composure acted soothingly upon
the rest of us, and we concluded that it was too late to feel bad, and
consoled each other by repeating the little rhyme,--
"What can't be cured
Must be endured."