[From _From Old Fields_ (Boston, 1906)]
Eighteen hundred and sixty-one:
There in the echo of Sumter's gun
Marches the host of the Orphan Brigade,
Lit by their banners, in hope's best arrayed.
Five thousand strong, never legion hath borne
Might as this bears it forth in that morn:
Hastings and Cressy, Naseby, Dunbar,
Cowpens and Yorktown, Thousand Years' War,
Is writ on their hearts as onward afar
They shout to the roar of their drums.
Eighteen hundred and sixty-two:
Well have they paid to the earth its due.
Close up, steady! the half are yet here
And all of the might, for the living bear
The dead in their hearts over Shiloh's field--
Rich, O God, is thy harvest's yield!
Where faith swings the sickle, trust binds the sheaves,
To the roll of the surging drums.
Eighteen hundred and sixty-three:
Barring Sherman's march to the sea--
Shorn to a thousand; face to the foe
Back, ever back, but stubborn and slow.
Nineteen hundred wounds they take
In that service of Hell, yet the hills they shake
With the roar of their charge as onward they go
To the roll of their throbbing drums.
Eighteen hundred and sixty-four:
Their banners are tattered, and scarce twelve score,
Battered and wearied and seared and old,
Stay by the staves where the Orphans hold
Firm as a rock when the surges break--
Shield of a land where men die for His sake,
For the sake of the brothers whom they have laid low,
To the roll of their muffled drums.
Eighteen hundred and sixty-five:
The Devil is dead and the Lord is alive,
In the earth that springs where the heroes sleep,
And in love new born where the stricken weep.
That legion hath marched past the setting of sun:
Beaten? nay, victors: the realms they have won
Are the hearts of men who forever shall hear
The throb of their far-off drums.
"TOM" MARSHALL[29]
[From _The Autobiography of Nathaniel Southgate Shaler_ (Boston,
1909)]
I have referred above to Thomas F. Marshall, a man of singular
attractiveness and talents with whom I had a curious relation. I first
met him when I was about fourteen years of age, when he, for some time a
congressman, had through drunkenness fallen into a curious
half-abandoned mode of life. He was then an oldish fellow, but retained
much of his youthful splendor. He was about six feet three inches high,
but so well built that he did not seem large, until you stood beside
him. His face, even when marred by drink, had something of majesty in
it. Marshall, when I knew him, picked up a scanty living as a lecturer.
When sober, which he often was for months at a time, his favorite
subject was temperance. On this theme he was as eloquent as Gough; in
his season of spree, he turned to history. The gradations were not
sharp, for he would, as I have seen him, preach most admirably of the
evil of drink while he supported himself in his fervent oratory with
whiskey from a silver mug. In matters of history, he had read widely.
One of his favorite themes was the mediæval history of Italy. I recall
with a distinctness which shows the impressiveness of his discourses his
story of Florence, so well told that ten years after, when I saw the
town for the first time, the shape of it and of the neighboring places
was curiously familiar. Along with some other youths, I noted down the
dates of events as he gave them and looked them up. We never caught him
in an error, though at times he was so drunk that he could hardly stand
up. I have known many historians who doubtless much exceeded him in
learning, but never another who seemed to have such a capacity for
living in the events he narrated.
I had no sooner met "Tom" Marshall than we became friends. He at once
took a curious fancy to me, talked to me as though we were of an age,
and gave me my first chance of such contact with a man of learning and
imagination. The relation, while on one side largely profitable to me,
became embarrassing, for the unhappy man got the notion that I could
stop his drinking if I would stay with him. A number of times when he
had his dipsomaniac fury upon him I found that by sitting by his bed
and talking with him on some historical subject, or rather listening
to his talk, he would apparently forget about his drink and in a few
hours drop asleep and awake to be sober for some months.
Sometimes these quiet interviews were most interesting to me. I recall
one of them when I found him in an attack of half delirium. His
memory, always active, took him back to the days when he was in
Congress and to the scene when he, a very young member of the House,
had been chosen by some careful elders to lead an attack on John
Quincy Adams. They, the elders, were to come to his support when he
had drawn the enemy's fire. It all became so real to him, that he
sprang out of bed and in his tattered nightgown gave, first his own
speech with all the actions of a young orator, and then the
deliberate, crushing rejoinder of his mighty antagonist. At the end of
it he fell back upon his bed, cursing the villains who led him into
the fight and left him to take the consequences.
My relations with Marshall continued until I went to Cambridge but my
influence over his drinking gradually lessened as he sank lower, and
his able mind began to be permanently clouded. When I had been some
months at college, I espied the poor fellow in the street, carpet-bag
in hand, evidently making for my quarters. I sent word by a messenger
to my chum, Hyatt, to receive and care for him, but to say that I had
left town, which was true, for I went at once to Greenfield, where I
had friends. Hyatt was also to provide the wanderer with a suit of
clothes and a railway ticket back to Kentucky. I stayed away until I
learned that Marshall was on his way home. I have always been ashamed
of my conduct in this matter, but the unhappy man was at that time of
his degradation an impossible burthen for me to carry; once ensconced
in my quarters it would have been impossible to provide him with a
dignified exit, and there was no longer hope that I might reform him.
Yet the cowardice of the action has grieved me to this day.
Two years afterwards, in 1862, I saw Marshall for the last time. I was
with a column of troops going through the town of Versailles,
Kentucky. He was seated in front of a bar-room, with his chin upon
the top of his cane. He was so far gone that the sight merely troubled
his wits without affording him any explanation of what it meant. His
bleared though still noble face stays in my memories as one of the
saddest of those weary years.