The Army Mule and Other War Sketches

ue and delectable, dissimilar but equivalent to our ideal of those fringed silken pavilions wherein apoplecti

record. Only after Bull Run and Shiloh and Antietam and Iuka was the government nerved to the point of requiring its so

lastic cell developeth primordial germs. Versatile scorners, voluble as advocates of artesian irrigation, promptly scheduled its pedigree for generations up and down. Minutest of constructed residences for living humanity, save perhaps the half-credible tub of

Denmark, or saddle-colored Cantonese with eyes cut bias and a Pacific Mail subsidy lingo not on speaking terms with veracity. Likewise other infelicities which relegate housekeeping

ear. The force of dire frugality could no step farther go. In the multitude of counselors there is distraction, for existence, like a court-house, is full of trials. But all agree on this question of economy. We lead the world, but the French lead us in these little every-d

mperviousness, its flat measurement but squared an average soldier's stature. When the whi

unsophisticated military discernment first a weed, then a spear, then a full-grown corn in the ear-yea, v

s equilibrium in a world where the fragment of a donkey jaw has slain thousands. Fewer doubtless would divine at first blush how a square of cotton fabric, set down one side with buttons and holes to match cut opposite, could suffice for each warrior's allotment of habitation in embryo. Still fewer would devise, until Necessity, d

aunts. The bay-window that biteth like a serpent and stingeth like a cactus when the bill comes in, was conspicuously non-existent. Its architectural flippancies were few indeed. No fluted town hall pillars nor St. Gauden's blush-promoting statuar

her to a career of sudden and certain prosperity, would sneer at a plan for his rustic villa of content so void of all emb

tation of "society"-that medley of metaphysics and flirtations, of fashion, vanity, jealousy, altruism, rheumatism and gastronomy which is principally intent on beating tom-toms and dodging jim-jams. Then, ho

faintest shimmer could be hung, graced the wide frontal vacancy. Who entered here, though his brow were tall and his spirit strong, left his bon-ton behind. Style, root

unhopeful as the courting of a grass-widow with an inchoate right of dower to forty acres of swamp land in a school section,-of the hanging book-shelf, heavy with dull fiction and smeared with poetical syrup. No chimney was there to witness the w

sweltering social hilarity, when perspiration is unconfined and heels smite corns on toes that groan again,-mementos of genteel functions,

or a nightly prosecution of the poker industry and for overproduction of the chestnut crop. And even af

r and kitchen, oratory, refectory, and lavatory were all in one. But only in alternation, since the contracted area precluded simultaneousness as well as latitudinarianism. There was no disgraceful scramble for the apartment with southern exposure and all modern conveniences. The

allowance of sunny sky, a pair of bob-sleds and a gopher hole. There naturally prevail the finan

so of the glib and evanescent vendor whose monopoly of all fascinations was only equaled by his absolute prostration of all moral attributes. That convoluted metallic

e aggregate relief to the department of transportation was like shriving a bad man's conscience of crime or lifting a fear from a coward's soul. The reduction of regimental trains f

preciation of its value, not earlier. Its original introduction was as sensational as when John Barleycorn comes to town, and brings his blizzard with him. Its first arrival met with jeers; with hot reviling; with barkings imitative of indignant dog, or brayings as of disgusted donkey; with cursings such as tear

me. Jeering, barking, braying, cursing, rioting were as futile as the purr of a Vassar kitten at th

were free from the proverbial weary, next-morning-condition of civil life, for sleep profound had knitted up the raveled stocking heel of care. Each carried a moiety of homestead folded in the knapsack strapped to his stalwart form, and stepped out with a sublime song of triumph on his lips and in his heart. Each carried his own house. He also laughed at his own jokes with a loud tenor tone. Marvel of more than this marvelous facility of home-shifting was our inimitable volunteer. He bore constantly also his year's wardrobe and his week's pr

nking bayonet at his side, his logical musket on his shoulder, and his profane vocabulary h

ied inflammation. On through floundering quagmires of yellow mud that settles into slush, then slumps into slime; vivid par

gthening day, his trousers shrinking to knee-pants as he trudges along. On, footsore and halting, each nerve a roadway for pain's

day's clothes-line billowy with confidential raiment. The tentmates join the sundered segments, and with sticks or stalks or poles, or, lacking these, with bayonet and gun and ra

f reckless engineer, who goes by the meeting point at a mile and a half a minute calling for more steam. The ablutions, rich in doleful reminiscence of rare

roll, but from whose humble lips no back-talk comes. The mastication, almost as irritating as classical music, save as spiced with time-

nd, are drawn exhaustless liquid refreshments that shame the isles of Greece, the hills of Spain, the purple heaven of Rome,-in dreams thou livest on!

eman with clews to a stabbing mystery; dreamless as some cold-sliced fragment of the long ago, sitting passionless through chasing, racing ages. Tentmates are nervous with the fatigues of march and nettles

th thunder-bursts and drenching rains and blowing of great guns. Valor is an indeterminate essence; a

rothers in that grewsome darkest hour which just precedes the dawn, when so many attacks are planned which mostly fail. Exceptions should possibly be noted in favor

rban symphony of snorings manifold, which care not one coreless clam what nationality stands guard to-night; the weird signals of the fond melodious mule struggling with anchylosis of thoracic articulation, and betimes bursting into an effort that saturates seven cubic miles of atmosphere with familiar mule music in seventeen seconds; the melancholy sq

e etiquette of a square meal at a round-table; provocative all of serenest, soundest sleep, until joyless reveille shall come, summoning fro

tutti-frutti visions of banished splendors and foresworn delights. Those bright single-gold-standard days haunt us still, with the persistence of a sixty winter damsel in her frosty bloom. The cribbed and coffined quarters expand into peopled vistas of epicurean magnificence, e

a boy without freckles. P. S. Give the negro a chance! Eighty generations barely sufficed to evolve a white man capable of inventing the postage

ors. Also, delicate the potables. Ragouts, chow-chow, dinde glacé, truffles, soquille, sorbot, terrapin, sauterne, cognac and extra dry

ny or sandal or teak or immemorial oak! All for ornament rather than utility, like the ears of a mule which have been stationed too far in front for wings, and too high up for fly-scares. Here are poems in brass, anthems in et

, glad, gladiatorial days, when men were muscled like the brawny, aged hen. They fought with bloody bludgeons long and well; or with sharp rapier carved the lion's liv

ing marvels of Chantilly; glowing glories of Corot and Daubigny, Gér?me, Vibert, Meiss

ut, beefsteak and onions on the half shell. The mills of the cooks grind slowly, but they grin

ll thud to the cramped coarse environment where he is tethered like an uneasy Indian restricted to a mental reservation. Blessed is the voluptuousness of reverie; blessed and cheap as an expectant clothier's greeting, while he pauses ecsta

ism is a tumble sharp and sudden

ortened pipe black as bombazine grief. His floor is honest old earth, ru

een splinters like the frightful porcupine; blanket harboring fecund colonies of that fraternal insect whose tentacles are inextri

nd cheap as an expectant clothier's greeting, while he

box hiding certain confiscated edibles for which some adjacent smoke-house holds a yawning v

growl. Here is hard, hard bread, stamped B. C., so dry that age can not wither it nor bicuspid masticate; acrid and bellicose pork, premonitory of thirst and tapeworm, rich in albuminates, but utterly poverty-stri

iceless, but stored as full of nutriment as a serenade of musty eggs and flagrant onions is stuffed with archaic perfumes. Smashed into chiplets with a hammer, moistened to pulpiness in cold water, fried in pork fat and served hot, it was dubbed "slumgullion." Pounded to gritty dust, reduced to thick dough with

grew toothsome, ingenious, diversified. It was withal as acceptable to the muscular appetites of voracious young warriors as was a drafted

as a jack-pot, and satisfying as a high-church wedding service to a middlings purifier heiress; here, also, the indispensable coffee, and sugar wherewith it shall be confected, twin relics of

ulated in the thunder-storms of centuries; more mysterious than the doctrine of dynamics to a colored youth gorged with clandestine watermelon. Also "rations" of soap of a retiring early disposition; facing a condition, not a theory

ory. All these this shaky, unassuming cracker-box, chief of the snuggery's appointments, foremost in furnishing the Shelter Tent, doth garner and conceal with more than sealing-wax fidelity. Upon it rest the

us and undivided profits. By reason of wealth he would not have been like the camel debarred from threading the needle's eye. But he was ha

his cause and the splendor of his triumph. If immortality is to be achieved for the tent, the pen of history or the still small penetrating voice of tradition must be detai

was its final aspect, slashed, punched, shot-holed, and abraded, but faithful and useful to the end. Scorched also it may be, begrimed and soiled, mar

t were, wrapped still in obscurities, when a moonless night studded with glints of silver wears toward its end and the horizon of the favored east flushes with first promise of approaching day. Vague outlines of distant summits marshal themselves against the bri

orges; they gild and glorify clustered pinnacles; they awake into sparkling greenness the pine-clad slopes, and flame into burning scarlet on banks of hidden bloom. Then rising higher with the mists of morning still enrobing him, while hymning echoes of arou

t withers will be in his glow. And on dissolving storm clouds of a bitter bloody past, he will paint the rainbow o

honorable relation to those events, and cherish with pride their sacred recollections. Among these recollections is that of the contracted habitation, grander in its humility than a palace imperial, which domiciled a patriotism that was stainless and a heroism

kle bones, and freezing creeks that chilled their shoulder blades with a glacial emulsion; through fruiting farmst

redded alkali; through shoreless mud, black, yellow, red or gray, t

for the conflict against right and light. They marched through ignorance and barbarism and instruments of cruel bondage; through the snap of the lash and the sizz of the branding iron; through writhing

jack-pots were juicy; in flowering suburbs where sweet hams blossomed in the smoke-house and fat tu

r devouring camp-fires and their patriotic appetites wrought

nd straw in varying proportions furnish the picturesque materials; or, tentless, hutless, houseless, lay exposed to visits f

y exposed to imminent explosions from burrowing enemies, hilarious in undiscoverable tunnels far below. They camped with controversial comrades loaded on all topics from justification by faith to the cremation of garbage; with comrades wearing per

scorn; but they camped to stay, and they dispensed with welcome, as with other comforts and luxuries multifold. The swelling chorus of their war songs rent the sky, like the long, loud shout

inuous strain of joyous reveille. Their evening dress parades were a spectacular divertisement, imp

y awakening in our hearts echoes tuneful as

and aspiration into a short four years of matchless achievement. They fought against grievous error for the ete

welded Apollyon and megatherium. They fought against bayonets and bullets; against grape and shell; against howitzers and columbiads; against turrets and torpedoes; against sabres and carbines perversely aimed at their most vu

se who tore down the flag, and they lifted it to a peerless exaltation, wh

elcomed back the culprits to a share in governing the nation they had fought to destroy. They conquered slavery with its multiple

and admirals, seaports and citadels and cap

of heroes, and garlands dewy with the freshness of a fa

o whom their suffering and sacrifice have given the pri

ation a rampart of freedom, so high, so strong, so steadf

s the melodies of "After the Ball is Over," or "Over the Garden Wall." Some of this rhetoric is over-ripe, like the new school of fiction, in other cases it pumps beautiful incidents from a deep capacious imagina

ledged. A war-scarred relic of it now, even if covering Carlyle's "most shriveled, wind-dried, dyspeptic, chill-shivering individual, a professor of life-weariness" (a tramp), would be

was borne to the rendezvous by glad warriors returning in triumph, and legally mustered out. The war was ended; its work was done. No further seek its

f the republic; with it went our comradeship of trial and danger. After it came the new heaven and new earth to our redeemed, regenerated country. It has gone.

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