WIT AND HUMOR OF THE WAR.
If it be true that Sir Philip Sidney, burning with fever of his
death-wound, reproved the soldier who brought him water in his helmet,
that "he wasted a casque-full on a dying man," then humor borrowed
largely of heroism.
Many a ragged rebel--worn with hunger and anxiety for the cause, or for
those absent loved ones who suffered for it--was as gallant as Sidney
in the fray; many a one bore his bitter trial with the same gay heart.
We have seen that the southron, war-worn, starving, could pour out his
soul in noble song. Equally plain is it, that he rose in defiant glee
over his own sufferings; striving to drown the sigh in a peal of
resonant laughter. For humorous poetry abounds among all southern
war-collections; some of it polished and keen in its satire; most of it
striking hard and "straight-from-the-shoulder" blows at some detected
error, or some crying abuse.
One very odd and typical specimen of this was the "Confederate Mother
Goose;" only catch verses of which appeared in the "Southern Literary
Messenger," when under editorial charge of rare George Bagby. It was
born of accident; several officers sitting over their pipes, around
Bagby's editorial pine, scribbled in turn doggerel on some war subject.
So good were a few of these hits that they astonished their unambitious
authors, by appearance in the next issue of the magazine. As a record
of war-humor, a few of them may be of interest at this late day. This
one shows the great terror struck to the hearts of his enemies by the
war-gong of General Pope:
"Little Be-Pope, he came at a lope,
'Jackson, the Rebel,' to find him.
He found him at last, then ran very fast,
With his gallant invaders behind him!"
"Jackson's commissary" was a favorite butt for the shafts of rebel
humor. Another "Mother Goose" thus pictures him:
"John Pope came down to our town
And thought him wondrous wise;
He jumped into a 'skeeter swamp
And started writing lies.
But when he found his lies were out--
With all his might and main
He changed his base to another place,
And began to lie again!"
This verse on McClellan does not go to prove that the South respected
any less the humane warfare, or the tactical ability of him his
greatest opponents declared "the North's best general."
"Little McClellan sat eating a melon,
The Chickahominy by,
He stuck in his spade, then a long while delayed,
And cried 'What a brave general am I!'"
Or this, embalming the military cant of the day:
"Henceforth, when a fellow is kicked out of doors,
He need never resent the disgrace;
But exclaim, 'My dear sir, I'm eternally yours,
For assisting in changing my base!'"
Perhaps no pen, or no brush, in all the South limned with bolder stroke
the follies, or the foibles, of his own, than did that of Innes
Randolph, of Stuart's Engineer staff; later to win national fame by his
"Good Old Rebel" song. Squib, picture and poem filled Randolph's
letters, as brilliant flashes did his conversation. On Mr. Davis
proclaiming Thanksgiving Day, after the unfortunate Tennessee campaign,
Randolph versified the proclamation, section by section, as sample:
"For Bragg did well. Ah! who could tell
What merely human mind could augur,
That they would run from Lookout Mount,
Who fought so well at Chickamauga!"
Round many a smoky camp-fire were sung clever songs, whose humor died
with their gallant singers, for want of recording memories in those
busy days. Latham, Caskie and Page McCarty sent out some of the best of
the skits; a few verses of one by the latter's floating to mind, from
the snowbound camp on the Potomac, stamped by his vein of rollicking
satire-with-a-tear in it:
"Manassas' field ran red with gore,
With blood the Bull Run ran;
The freeman struck for hearth and home,
Or any other man!
And Longstreet with his fierce brigade
Stood in the red redan;
He waved his saber o'er his head,
Or any other man!
Ah! few shall part where many meet,
In battle's bloody van;
The snow shall be their winding-sheet,
Or any other man!"
Naturally enough, with a people whose nerves were kept at abnormal
tension, reaction carried the humor of the South largely into travesty.
Where the reality was ever somber, creation of the unreal found popular
and acceptable form in satiric verse. Major Caskie--who ever went into
battle with a smile on his lips--found time, between fights, for broad
pasquinade on folly about him, with pen and pencil. His very clever
parody of a touching and well-known poem of the time, found its way to
many a camp-fire and became a classic about the Richmond "hells." It
began:
"You can never win them back,
Never, never!
And you'd better leave the track
Now forever!
Tho' you 'cut' and 'deal the pack'
And 'copper' every Jack,
You'll lose 'stack' after 'stack'--
Forever!"
Everything tending to bathos--whether for the cause, or against
it--caught its quick rebuke, at the hands of some glib funmaker. Once
an enthusiastic admirer of the hero of Charleston indited a glowing
ode, of which the refrain ran:
_Beau sabreur, beau canon_,
_Beau soldat_--Beauregard!
Promptly came another, and most distorted version; its peculiar refrain
enfolding:
Beau Brummel, Beau Fielding,
Beau Hickman--Beauregard!
As it is not of record that the commander of the Army of Northern
Virginia ever discovered the junior laureate, the writer will not essay
to do so.
Colonel Tom August, of the First Virginia, was the Charles Lamb of
Confederate war-wits; genial, quick and ever gay. Early in secession
days, a bombastic friend approached Colonel Tom, with the query: "Well,
sir, I presume your voice is still for war?"
To which the wit replied promptly: "Oh, yes, devilish still!"
Later, when the skies looked darkest and rumors of abandoning Richmond
were wildly flying, Colonel August was limping up the street. A
_quidnunc_ hailed him:
"Well! The city is to be given up. They're moving the medical stores."
"Glad of it!" called back Colonel Tom--"We'll get rid of all this blue
mass!"
From the various army camps floated out stories, epigrams and anecdotes
unnumbered; most of them wholly forgotten, with only a few remembered
from local color, or peculiar point. General Zeb Vance's apostrophe to
the buck-rabbit, flying by him from heavy rifle fire: "Go it,
cotton-tail! If I hadn't a reputation, I'd be with you!"--was a
favorite theme for variations. Similarly modified to fit, was the
protest of the western recruit, ordered on picket at Munson's Hill:
"Go yander ter keep 'un off! Wy, we'uns kem hyah ter fight th' Yanks;
an' ef you'uns skeer 'un off, how'n thunder ez thar goan ter be a
scrimmidge, no how?"
A different story--showing quick resource, where resources were
lacking--is told of gallant Theodore O'Hara, who left the noblest poem
of almost any war, "The Bivouac of the Dead." While he was
adjutant-general, a country couple sidled shyly up to headquarters of
his division, one day; the lady blushingly stating their business. It
was the most important one of life: they wanted to marry. So, a council
of war was held, no chaplain being available; and the general insisted
on O'Hara tying the knot. Finally, he consented to try; the couple
stood before him; the responses as to obedience and endowment were
made; and there O'Hara stuck fast!
"Go on!" prompted the general--"The benediction."
The A.A.G. paused, stammered; then, raising his hand grandly, shouted
in stentorian tones:
"In the name and by the authority of the Confederate States of North
America, I proclaim you man and wife!"
A grim joke is handed down from the winter camps before Atlanta, when
rations were not only worst but least. A knot round a mess-fire
examined ruefully the tiny bits of moldy bacon, stuck on their
bayonet-grills, when one hard old veteran remarked:
"Say, boys! Didn't them fellers wot died las' spring jest _git_ th'
commissary, though!"
Another, not very nice, still points equally the dire straits of the
men, from unchanged clothing, and their grim humor under even that
trial. Generals Lee and Ewell--riding through a quiet road in deep
consultation, followed by members of their staff--came suddenly upon a
North Carolinian at the roadside. Nude to the waist, and careless of
the august presences near, the soldier paid attention only to the dingy
shirt he held over the smoke of some smoldering brush. The generals
past, an aide spurred up to the toilet-making vet, and queried sharply:
"Didn't you see the generals, sir? What in thunder are you doing?"
"Skirmishin'!" drawled the unmoved warrior--"An' I ent takin' no
pris'ners, nuther!"
After this lapse of time--when retrospect shows but the gloom and
sorrow which shadowed the dark "days of storm and stress," while none
of the excitement and tension in them remains--it may seem
incomprehensible that the South could laugh in song, while she suffered
and fought and starved. Stranger still must it be to know that many a
merry peal rang through the barred windows of the fortress-prisons of
the North. Yet, many a one of the exchanged captives brought back a
rollicking "prison glee;" and some sing, even to-day, the legend of
"Fort Delaware, Del."
The "Prison Wails" of Thomas F. Roche, a Marylander long captive, is a
close and clever parody on General Lytell's "I am dying, Egypt," which
came through the lines and won warm admirers South. It describes prison
discipline, diet and dirt, with keen point and broad grin. From its
opening lines:
"I am busted, mother--busted!
Gone th' last unhappy check;
And th' infernal sutlers' prices
Make my pocket-book a wreck!--"
to the human, piteous plaint that ends it:
"Ah! Once more, among the lucky,
Let thy hopeful buy and swell;
Bankers and rich brokers aid thee!
Shell! sweet mother mine, Oh! shell!--"
the original is closely followed and equally distorted.
But strangest, amid all strange humors of the war, was that which
echoed laughter over the leaguered walls of scarred, starving,
desperate Vicksburg! No siege in all history tells of greater peril and
suffering, borne with wondrous endurance and heroism, by men and women.
It is a story of privation unparalleled, met by fortitude and calm
acceptance which recall the early martyrdoms for faith! And, indeed,
love of country grew to be a religion, especially with the women of the
South, though happily none proved it by stress so dire as those of her
heroic city; and they cherished it in the darkest midnight of their
cause, with constancy and hope that nerved the strong and shamed the
laggard.
That history is one long series of perils and privations--of absolute
isolation--sufficient to have worn down the strongest and to have
quenched even
The smile of the South, on the lips and the eyes--
Of her barefooted boys!
Yet, even in Vicksburg--torn by shot and shell, hopeless of relief from
without, reduced to direst straits of hunger within--the supreme rebel
humor rose above nature; and men toiled and starved, fought their
hopeless fight and died--not with the stoicism of the fatalist, but
with the cheerfulness of duty well performed! And when Vicksburg fell,
a curious proof of this was found; a manuscript bill-of-fare,
surmounted by rough sketch of a mule's head crossed by a human hand
holding a Bowie-knife. That memorable _menu_ reads:
HOTEL DE VICKSBURG, BILL OF FARE, FOR JULY, 1863.
SOUP: Mule tail.
BOILED: Mule bacon, with poke greens; mule ham, canvassed.
ROAST: Mule sirloin; mule rump, stuffed with rice; saddle-of-mule,
_a l'armee_.
VEGETABLES: Boiled rice; rice, hard boiled; hard rice, any way.
ENTREES: Mule head, stuffed _a la Reb_; mule beef, jerked _a la
Yankie_; mule ears, fricasseed _a la getch_; mule side, stewed--new
style, hair on; mule liver, hashed _a l'explosion_.
SIDE DISHES: Mule salad; mule hoof, soused; mule brains _a
l'omelette_; mule kidneys, _braises_ on ramrod; mule tripe, on half
(Parrot) shell; mule tongue, cold, _a la_ Bray.
JELLIES: Mule foot (3-to-yard); mule bone, _a la_ trench.
PASTRY: Rice pudding, pokeberry sauce; cottonwood-berry pie, _a la_
iron-clad; chinaberry tart.
DESSERT: White-oak acorns; beech-nuts; blackberry-leaf tea; genuine
Confederate coffee.
LIQUORS: Mississippi water, vintage 1492, very superior, $3;
limestone water, late importation, very fine, $3.75; spring water,
Vicksburg bottled up, $4.
Meals at few hours. Gentlemen to wait upon themselves. Any
inattention in service should be promptly reported at the office.
JEFF DAVIS & CO., _Proprietors_.
CARD: The proprietors of the justly-celebrated Hotel de Vicksburg,
having enlarged and refitted the same, are now prepared to
accommodate all who may favor them with a call. Parties arriving by
the river, or by Grant's inland route, will find Grape, Cannister &
Co.'s carriages at the landing, or any depot on the line of
entrenchments. Buck, Ball & Co. take charge of all baggage. No
effort will be spared to make the visit of all as interesting as
possible.
This capture was printed in the Chicago _Tribune_, with the comment
that it was a ghastly and melancholy burlesque. There is really a train
of melancholy in the reflection that it was so little of a burlesque;
that they who could endure such a siege, on such fare, should have been
compelled to bear their trial in vain. But the quick-satisfying
reflection must follow of the truth, the heroism--the moral
invincibility--of a people who could so endure and--laugh!
But it was not only from the soldiers and the camps that the humor of
the South took its color. Spite of the strain upon its better
part--from anxiety, hope-deferred and actual privation--the society of
every city keeps green memories of brilliant things said and written,
on the spur of excitement and contact, that kept the sense of the whole
people keenly alert for any point--whether serious or ridiculous.
The society of the Capital was marked evidence of this. It preserved
many epigrammatic gems; often coming from the better--and brighter--half
of its composition. For Richmond women had long been noted for society
ease and _aplomb_, as well as for quickness of wit; and now the social
amalgam held stranger dames and maidens who might have shown in any
_salon_.
A friend of the writer--then a gallant staff-officer; now a grave,
sedate and semi-bald counsellor--had lately returned from European
capitals; and he was, of course, in envied possession of brilliant
uniform and equipment. At a certain ball, his glittering blind-spurs
became entangled in the flowing train of a dancing belle--one of the
most brilliant of _the_ set. She stopped in mid-waltz; touched my
friend on the broidered chevron with taper fingers, and sweetly said:
"Captain, may I trouble you to dismount?"
Another noted girl--closely connected with the administration--made one
of a distinguished party invited by Secretary Mallory to inspect a
newly-completed iron-clad, lying near the city. It was after many
reverses had struck the navy, causing--as heretofore shown--destruction
of similar ships. Every detail of this one explained, lunch over and
her good fortune drunk, the party were descending the steps to the
captain's gig, when this belle stopped short.
"Oh! Mr. Secretary!" she smiled innocently--"You forgot to show us one
thing!"
"Indeed?" was the bland query--"Pray what was it?"
To which came the startling rejoinder:
"Why your arrangement for blowing them up!"
There was one handsome and dashing young aide, equally noted for
influence at division-headquarters, which sent him constantly to
Richmond; and for persistent devotion, when there, to a sharp-witted
belle with a great fortune. One night he appeared at a soiree in brand
new uniform, his captain's bars replaced by the major's star on the
collar. The belle, leaning on his arm wearily, was pouting; when
another passed and said: "I congratulate you, major. And what are your
new duties?"
The officer hesitated only one instant, but that was fatal; for the lady
on his arm softly lisped: "Oh! he is _Mrs._ General ----'s commissary,
with the rank of major!"
It is needless to add that the epigram--unjust as it was--had its
effect; and the belle was no more besieged.
But of all the bright coteries in Richmond society--its very arcanum of
wit, brilliance and culture--rises to memory that wholly unique set,
that came somehow to be called "the Mosaic Club." Organization it was
none; only a clique of men and women--married as well as single--that
comprised the best intellects and prettiest accomplishments of the
Capital. Many of the ladies were Will Wyatt's "easy goers;" ever
tolerant, genial and genuine at the _symposia_ of the Mosaics, as
they showed behind their _chevaux-de-frise_ of knitting-needles
elsewhere. Some of them have since graced happy and luxurious homes;
some have struggled with poverty and sorrow as only true womanhood may
struggle; some have fought out the battle of life, sleeping now at rest
forever. But one and all then faced their duty--sad, bitter, uncongenial
as it might be--with loyalty and tender truth; one and all were strong
enough to put by somber things, when meet to do so, and enjoy to the
full the better pleasures society might offer.
And the men one met wore wreaths upon their collars often; quite as
likely _chevrons_ of "the men" upon their sleeves. Cabinet ministers,
poets, statesmen, artists, and clergymen even were admitted to the
"Mosaics;" the only "_Open sesame!_" to which its doors fell wide
being that patent of nobility stamped by brain and worth alone.
Without organization, without officers; grown of itself and meeting as
chance, or winter inactivity along army lines dictated--the Mosaic Club
had no habitat. Collecting in one hospitable parlor, or another--as
good fortune happened to provide better material for the delighting
"muffin-match," or the entrancing "waffle-worry," as Will Wyatt
described those festal procedures--the intimates who chanced in town
were bidden; or, hearing of it, came to the feast of waffles and the
flow of coffee--real coffee! without bids. They were ever welcome and
knew it; and they were likewise sure of something even better than
muffins, or coffee, to society-hungry men from the camps. And once
gathered, the serious business of "teaing" over, the fun of the evening
began.
The unwritten rule--indeed, the only rule--was the "forfeit essay," a
game productive of so much that was novel and brilliant, that no later
invention of peace-times has equaled it. At each meeting two hats would
be handed round, all drawing a question from the one, a word from the
other; question and word to be connected in either a song, poem, essay,
or tale for the next meeting. Then, after the drawing for forfeits,
came the results of the last lottery of brain; interspersed with music
by the best performers and singers of the city; with jest and
seriously-brilliant talk, until the wee sma' hours, indeed.
O! those nights ambrosial, if not of Ambrose's, which dashed the somber
picture of war round Richmond, with high-lights boldly put in by
master-hands! Of them were quaint George Bagby, Virginia's pet
humorist; gallant, cultured Willie Meyers; original Trav Daniel;
Washington, artist, poet and musician; Page McCarty, recklessly
brilliant in field and frolic alike; Ham Chamberlayne, quaint,
cultivated and colossal in originality; Key, Elder and other artists;
genial, jovial Jim Pegram; Harry Stanton, Kentucky's soldier poet--and
a score of others who won fame, even if some of them lost life--on far
different fields. There rare "Ran" Tucker--later famed in Congress and
law school--told inimitably the story of "The time the stars fell," or
sang the unprecedented ballad of "The Noble Skewball," in his own
unprecedented fashion!
It was at the Mosaic that Innes Randolph first sang his now famous
"Good Old Rebel" song; and there his marvelous quickness was Aaron's
rod to swallow all the rest. As example, once he drew from one hat the
words, "Daddy Longlegs;" from the other, the question, "What sort of
shoe was made on the Last of the Mohicans?" Not high wit these, to
ordinary seeming; and yet apparent posers for sensible rhyme. But they
puzzled Randolph not a whit; and--waiving his "grace" until the
subsequent meeting, he rattled off extempore:
"Old Daddy Longlegs was a sinner hoary
And punished for his wickedness, according to the story.
Between him and the Indian shoe, this likeness doth come in,
One made a mock o' virtue, and one a moccasin!"
Laughter and applause were, in mid-roar, cut by Randolph's voice
calling:
_Corollary first:_ If Daddy Longlegs stole the Indian's shoe to
keep his foot warm, that was no excuse for him to steal his house,
to keep his wigwam.
And again he broke down--only to renew--the chorus with:
_Corollary second:_ Because the Indian's shoe did not fit any
Mohawk, was no reason that it wouldn't fit Narragansett!
Such, in brief retrospect was the Mosaic Club! Such in part the fun and
fancy and frolic that filled those winter nights in Richmond, when
sleet and mud made movements of armies, "Heaven bless us! a thing of
naught!"
The old colonel--that staff veteran, so often quoted in these
pages--was a rare, if unconscious humorist. Gourmet born, connoisseur
by instinct and clubman by life habit, the colonel writhed in spirit
under discomfort and camp fare, even while he bore both heroically in
the flesh; his two hundred and sixty pounds of it! Once, Styles Staple
and Will Wyatt met him, inspecting troops in a West Virginia town; and
they received a long lecture, _a la_ Brillat Savarin, on enormities of
the kitchen.
"And these people have fine wines, too," sadly wound up the colonel.
"Marvelous wines, egad! But they don't know how to let you enjoy them!"
"'Tis a hard case," sympathized Styles, "I do hear sometimes of a
fellow getting a stray tea, but as for a dinner! It's no use, colonel;
these people either don't _dine_ themselves, or they imagine we don't."
"Did it ever strike you," said the colonel, waxing philosophic, "that
you _can't_ dine in but two places south of the Potomac? True, sir.
Egad! You may stumble upon a country gentleman with a plentiful larder
and a passable cook, but then, egad, sir! he's an oasis. The mass of
the people South don't live, sir! they vegetate--vegetate and nothing
else. You get watery soups. Then they offer you mellow madeira with
some hot, beastly joint; and oily old sherry with some confounded stew.
Splendid materials--materials that the hand of an artist would make
luscious--egad, sir; _luscious_--utterly ruined in the handling. It's
too bad, Styles, too bad!"
"It is, indeed," put in Wyatt, falling into the colonel's vein, "too
bad! And as for steaks, why, sir, there is not a steak in this whole
country. They stew them, colonel, actually _stew beefsteaks_! Listen to
the receipt a 'notable housewife' gave me: 'Put a juicy steak, cut two
inches thick, in a saucepan; cover it well with water; put in a large
lump of lard and two sliced onions. Let it simmer till the water dries;
add a small lump of butter and a dash of pepper--and it's done!' Think
of that, sir, for a _bonne bouche_!"
"Good God!" ejaculated the colonel, with beads on his brow. "I have
seen those things, but I never knew how they were done! I shall dream
of this, egad! for weeks."
"Fact, sir," Wyatt added, "and I've a theory that no nation deserves
its liberties that stews its steaks. Can't gain them, sir! How can men
legislate--how can men fight with a pound of stewed abomination holding
them like lead? 'Bold and erect the Caledonian stood,' but how long do
you think he would have been 'bold,' if they had stewed his 'rare beef'
for him? No, sir! mark my words: the nation that stews its beefsteaks
contracts its boundaries! As for an omelette----"
"Say no more, Will!" broke in the colonel solemnly. "After the war,
come to my club and we'll dine--egad, sir! _for a week!_"
That invincible pluck of the southron, which carried him through
starvation and the sweltering march of August, through hailing shot and
shell, and freezing mud of midwinter camps--was unconquered even after
the surrender. Equally invincible was that twin humor, which laughed
amid all these and bore up, even in defeat. Some of the keenest hits of
all the war--tinctured though they be with natural bitterness--are
recalled from those days, when the beaten, but defiant, Rebel was
passing under the victor's yoke.
Surprising, indeed, to its administrators must have been the result of
"the oath," forced upon one green cavalryman, before he could return to
family and farm. Swallowing the obnoxious allegiance, he turned to the
Federal officer and quietly asked:
"Wail, an' now I reck'n I'm loyil, ain't I?"
"Oh, yes! You're all right," carelessly replied the captor.
"An' ef I'm loyil, I'm same as you 'uns?" persisted the lately sworn.
"We're all good Union alike, eh?"
"Oh, yes," the officer humored him. "We're all one now."
"Wail then," rejoined Johnny Reb slowly, "didn't them darned rebs jest
geen us hell sometimes?"
City Point, on the James river, was the landing for transports with
soldiers released from northern prisons, after parole. A bustling,
self-important major of United States volunteers was at one time there,
in charge. One day a most woe-begone, tattered and emaciated "Johnnie"
sat swinging his shoeless feet from a barrel, awaiting his turn.
"It isn't far to Richmond," suddenly remarked the smart major, to
nobody in particular.
"Reck'n et's neer onto three thousin' mile," drawled the Confed.
weakly.
"Nonsense! You must be crazy," retorted the officer staring.
"Wail, I ent a-reck'nin' adzact," was the slow reply--"Jest tho't so,
kinder."
"Oh! you did? And pray why?"
"Cos et's took'n you'uns nigh onto foore year to git thar from
Wash'nton," was the settling retort.
In the provost-marshal's department at Richmond, shortly after
surrender, was the neatest and most irrepressible of youths. Never
discourteous and often too sympathetic, he was so overcurious as to be
what sailors describe as "In everybody's mess and nobody's watch." One
day a quaint, Dickensesque old lady stood hesitant in the office
doorway. Short, wrinkled and bent with age, she wore a bombazine gown
of antique cut--its whilom black red-rusty from time's dye. But "Aunt
Sallie" was a character in Henrico county; and noted withal for the
sharpest of tongues and a fierce pair of undimmed eyes, which now shone
under the dingy-brown poke bonnet. Toward her sallied the flippant
young underling, with the greeting:
"Well, madam, what do _you_ wish?"
"What do I wish?" The old lady grew restive and battle-hungry.
"Yes'm! That's what I asked," retorted the youth sharply.
"What do I wish?" slowly repeated the still-rebellious dame. "Well, if
you _must_ know, I wish all you Yankees were in ---- hell!"
But not all the humor was confined to the governing race; some of its
points cropping out sharply here and there, from under the wool of "the
oppressed brother"--in-law. One case is recalled of the spoiled body
servant of a gallant Carolinian, one of General Wheeler's brigade
commanders. His master reproved his speech thus:
"Peter, you rascal! Why don't you speak English, instead of saying 'wah
yo' is'?"
"Waffer, Mars' Sam?" queried the negro with an innocent grin. "Yo allus
calls de Gen'ral--_Weel_-er?"
Another, close following the occupation, has a spice of higher satire.
A Richmond friend had a petted maid, who--devoted and constant to her
mistress, even in those tempting days--still burned with genuine negro
curiosity for a sight of everything pertaining to "Mars' Linkum's
men"--especially for "de skule."
For swift, indeed, were the newcome saints to preach the Evangel of
alphabet; and negro schools seemed to have been smuggled in by every
army ambulance, so numerously did they spring up in the captured
Capital. So, early one day, Clarissa Sophia, the maid of color, donned
her very best and, "with shiny morning face," hied her, like anything
but a snail, to school. Very brief was her absence; her return
reticent, but pouting and with unduly tip-tilted nose. After a time
negro love for confidences conquered; and the murder came out.
The school-room had been packed and pervaded with odors--of sanctity,
or otherwise--when a keen-nosed and eager school-marm rose up to exhort
her class. She began by impressing the great truth that every sister
present was "born free and equal;" was "quite as good" as she was.
"Wa' dat yo's sain' now?" interrupted Clarissa Sophia. "Yo' say Ise
jess ekal as yo' is?"
"Yes; I said so," was the sharp retort, "and I can prove it!"
"Ho! 'Tain't no need," replied the lately disenthralled. "Reck'n I is,
sho' nuff. But does yo' say dat Ise good as missus?--_my_ missus?"
"Certainly you are!" This with asperity.
"Den Ise jess gwine out yere, rite off!" cried Clarissa Sophia, suiting
action to word--"Ef Ise good as _my_ missus, I'se goin' ter quit; fur I
jess know _she_ ent 'soshiatin' wid no sich wite trash like you is!"
And so--under all skies and among all colors--the war dragged its weary
length out; amid sufferings and sacrifices, which may never be
recorded; and which were still illumined by the flashes of unquenchable
humor--God's tonic for the heart!
Had every camp contained its Froissart--had every social circle held
its Boswell--what a record would there be, for reading by generations
yet unborn!
But--when finished, as this cramped and quite unworthy chronicle of
random recollections is--then might the reader still quote justly her
of Sheba, exclaiming:
"And behold! the one-half of the greatness of thy wisdom was not told
me!"