[Being an Essay on Military Glory; by Charles Frobisher, Esquire, M.A.
(Univ. Va.); late Major of Artillery C. S. A.
_Omnibus, mentis compotibus_, SKIPIENDUM, _utpote quod_ TINKERII MOLEM
NON VALEAT.]
Charley shifted his manuscript to his left hand, and smoothing down the
leaves with his right, and glancing at the paper, raised his eyes to
mine. The tip of his forefinger, placed lightly against the tip of his
nose, lent to that organ an air of rare subtlety.
“A julep,” he began, “differs from a thought in this: that while—”
“A julep!” cried Alice; “why, just now you began with Hannibal.”
Charley stood for a moment, smiling, as he toyed with the leaves of his
essay with the forefinger of his right hand.
“True; I had turned the thing upside down, and was reading it backwards.
A julep,” he began again, with an authoritative air—
“What connection,” interrupted Alice, “can there be between juleps and
military men?”
“Innocence,” ejaculated Charley, raising his eyes to heaven, “thy name
is Alice!”
“Go on; I shall not interrupt you again.”
“A julep differs from a thought in this: that while an average man goes
to the bottom of the former, of the latter only philosophers can sound
the depths.” With that he sat down.
“Is that the end of your Essay on Military Glory?” I asked.
“No. That is the first round. I call for time. I am exhausted by the
vastness of the generalization.” And leaning back in his chair, he
closed his eyes with a sigh of profound lassitude. “My dear,” said he,
presently, in a feeble whisper,—“my dear, don’t you think this lecture
would go off better were it illustrated?”
Alice looked puzzled for a moment, then rose with a bright laugh, and,
making a pass at Charley (who minds Jack?) which he dodged, tripped
briskly out of the room.
“Charley,” said I, “you are a boundless idiot!”
“Too true; but there is method in my madness.” which I found to be so
when Alice (who could have wished a more charming waitress?) returned
with the illustrations.
Illustrations in the highest form of art; for they appealed to the ear
with the soft music of their jingle, the nostrils by their fragrance,
the touch by their coldness, to the eye by the fascinating contrast of
cracked ice and vivid green; while the imagination, soaring above the
regions of sense, beheld within those frosted goblets, jocund, blooming
summer seated in the lap of rimy winter,—or the triumph of man over
nature.
Ole Virginny nebber tire!
“What kind of an idiot did you say?” said Charley, as we chinked
glasses.
“I couldn’t find any straws,” said Alice.
“I accept your apology,” said Charley. His voice sounded soft, mellow,
and far away; for his nose was plunged beneath a mass of crushed ice.
“Straws,” added he, growing magnanimous, “they are only fit to show
which way the wind blows.” And with a magnificent sweep of his left hand
he indicated his disdain for all possible atmospheric currents. “Ladies
and gentlemen,” added he, as he rose from his seat; and this time there
was an indescribable jumble in the voice of the orator—(not at all, Mr.
Teetotaller! ’twas caused by the cracked ice),—for as Charley rose to
continue the reading of his Essay on Military Glory, he had pointed the
stem of his goblet at the ceiling; striving, at the same time, by a
skilful adjustment of his features, to prevent its contents from falling
on the floor,—such great store did Alice set by her new carpet. But, of
course, when he opened his mouth to say ladies and gentlemen, a baby
avalanche fell in upon his organs of speech; so that he didn’t manage to
say anything of the kind. “That,” said he, placing the glass upon the
table, “will do as a vignette; the illustrations we shall contrive to
work in farther on.”
One julep gives Charley the swagger of a four-bottle man.
“Where was I?” asked he, drawing the manuscript from his pocket. “I’ll
begin again. HANNIBAL! No, confound it! Ah, here we are: “An average man
has strength to go to the bottom of a julep; only a philosopher can
sound the depth of a thought.”
At these words Alice rose from her seat, and, leaning forward, first
fixed a scrutinizing glance upon her husband, then advanced towards him
with a twinkle in her merry-glancing hazel eye.
“If half the audience,” said Charley, with an imperious wave of the
hand, “will persist in wandering over the floor, the reading is
suspended.”
Alice took her seat, and did nothing but laugh till the end of the
chapter. I laughed, too, but without exactly knowing why. But laughter
(singularly enough,—for it is a blessing) is contagious. And then the
julep had been stiff; so that the very tables and chairs about the room
seemed to beam upon me with a certain twinkling, kindly
Bushwhackerishness.[1]
“Here’s a lot of stuff that I shall skip,” began Charley; and he turned
over, with careless finger, leaf after leaf. As he did so Alice rose
slightly from her seat with a peering look.
“Who is reading this Essay on Military Glory?” asked Charley, with a
severe look at his wife over his glasses (alas, alas, _nec pietas
moram?_).
“Very well; go on,” said Alice, dropping back into her chair with a
fresh burst of laughter. She had had no julep. What was she laughing at?
“It consists (my opening) of a series of illustrations, showing how much
nonsense comes to be believed through people’s not going to the bottom
of things. We suppose ourselves to have an opinion (there is no commoner
delusion), but we fail to subject that opinion to any crucial test;
though nothing is easier. The crucial test, for example, of sulphuretted
hydrogen, is a certain odor which we encounter, when, with incautious
toe, we explode an egg in some outlying nest which no boy could find
during the summer—”
“That will do,” said Alice; though why women should turn up their
blessed little noses at such allusions is hard to understand, seeing
what keen and triumphant pleasure they all derive from the detection of
unparliamentary odors at unexpected times and places.
“I have here,” continued Charley, carelessly turning the leaves of his
manuscript, “a nestful of such illustrations.”
“We will excuse you from hatching them in our presence,” said Alice; and
with wrinkled nose she disdainfully sniffed a suppositious egg of
abandoned character.
“I have already passed them over. After all, what is the use of them?
You and Charley can understand what I mean without them; and if you can,
why not the reader, too? Are readers idiots? I’ll plunge _in medias
res_. Let us begin here:” (reading) “It is the same with military glory.
How many battles have been fought since the world began? Arithmetic
stands pale in the presence of such a question! In every one of these
conflicts one or the other commander had the advantage. How many of them
are famous? Count them. For every celebrated general that you show me, I
will show you a finger—or a toe—”
“You are too anatomical by half,” protested Alice.
“Why is this? Think for a moment? Why is this victor famous, that victor
not? It is the simplest thing in the world if you will but apply the
crucial test.”
Charley paused in his reading and peered gravely over his glasses. “What
is it, goose?” asked his admiring spouse.
“The crucial test is disparity of numbers. Formulæ: equality, victory,
obscurity,—disparity, victory, glory. There you have it in a nutshell.
Example (from Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire): imperator
of the West and imperator of the East, battling, with the world as a
stake. Innumerable but equal hosts. Days of hacking and hewing. Victory
to him of the East (or West). His name? Have forgotten it. Equality,
victory, obscurity!
“See? By the way, Jack, does not the brevity of my military style rather
smack of Cæsar’s Commentaries?
“Again—scene, Syria. Christians of the Byzantine empire, and
Mahometans. Final struggle. Vast but equal armies. Three days of
carnage. Remnant of Christians decline crown of glory. Name of victor? I
pause?—and so on, and so on, and so on.
“But now, _per contra_, read, by the light of our hypothesis, the
following:
PARADIGM OF GLORY.
Nominative Napoleon Italy disparity victory glory
Genitive Cæsar Pharsalia ditto ditto ditto
Dative Alexander Persia ditto ditto ditto
Accusative Zengis Khan Asia ditto ditto ditto
Vocative Sheridan Winchester ditto ditto ditto
Ablative Hannibal—”
“Ah, you have gotten to him at last,” said Alice.
“Yes, my dear,” said Charley, raising his eyes from the manuscript; “but
the vignettes grow dim. Let’s have an illustration in honor of the
victor of Cannæ. Let there be lots of ice as a memorial of the
avalanches he defied, piled mountain-high because of the Alps he
overcame. Typify with mint the glorious verdure of Italy as it first
bursts upon his view.”
Alice typified—
✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻
✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻
“After all,” said Charley, “this is a pretty good old world to live in.”
And he fillipped, gently, the rim of his goblet with his middle finger.
(Ching! ching!) “It was B flat when it was full, and now (ching! ching!)
it is a good C sharp. Listen!” And shutting one eye, he cocked the other
meditatively towards the ceiling. (Ching! ching!) “Acoustics or
something, I suppose. A pretty good old world, I tell you, boys. (Ching!
ching!) H’m! h’m! h’m!” It was a low, contented chuckle. “Jack-Whack,
you ought to have a sweet little darling of a wife, just like—”
“Mr. Frobisher, you are positively boozy!”
“Well, well, my precious little ducky dumpling, I don’t write Essays on
Military Glory every day. H’m! h’m! h’m! h’m! I left out my very best
illustration, simply because I couldn’t work it into my paradigm. It is
a little poem I heard once,—h’m! h’m! h’m! h’m! (Ching! ching!)
‘Dad and Jamie had a fight,
They fit all day, and they fit all night;
And in the mornin’ Dad was seen
A-punchin’ Jamie on the Bowlin’ Green.’
“One would say, taking the four lines together, that Dad probably got
the better of Jamie in the end. But who thinks of ranking him, for that
reason, with the world’s famed conquerors? Preposterous! They were
obviously too evenly matched. See? No one knows, even, who Dad was, or
Jamie; or what Bowlin’ Green drank their gore. (Ching! ching!) D
natural. Nor even the name of the poet. Some old, old Aryan myth, I
suppose, symbolizing the struggle between Light and Darkness,—‘in the
morning Dad’—the sun—‘was seen a-punchin’ Jamie’—moon, of course—‘on
the Bowlin’ Green,’—that is, this beautiful world. (Ching! ching!)
_What are you up to?_”
Alice had made a dive at Charley, who, mistaking her object, defended
himself vigorously. Meantime, she had darted with her right hand down
into his breast-pocket, drawing out the manuscript.
“If you supposed I wished to kiss your juleppy moustache, you are much
mistaken. This is what I wanted.” And she brandished the Essay high in
the air in triumph. “I knew it! I knew it!” cried she. “Listen, Jack!”
“‘Baltimore, August 14, 1885.
“‘Charles Frobisher, Esq.:
“‘_Dear Sir_,—‘The guano will be shipped by to-morrow’s boat, as per
valued order.
“‘Very truly yours,
“‘Bumpkins & Windup.’
“And look here—and look here,—nothing but a lot of business letters.
He has not written one line! His so-called Essay on Military Glory is a
myth!”
“We got the juleps, at any rate. Jack-Whack, you write it up.”
“If Alice will agree to illustrate again.”
“Not I!”
“Q minor!” sighed Charley, thumping his empty goblet. “Jack-Whack, my
poor boy, we dwell in a vale of tears!”
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[1] I need hardly say that I decline to be responsible for such
sentiments.—_Ed._