Chapter 57
So still--so still all nature far and near, As though the world had checked its breath to hear An angel's message from the distant skies!
VIII.
This one last glance at earth--one, only one-- To see, as through a vail, the gentle face Bent o'er me softly, with the timid love That half distrusts the sleep which gives it grace.
The thought that bids mine eyelids half unclose Fades to a dream, and out from Summer goes, In the brown Autumn of her drooping eyes.
Thus irregular in rhythm and vagrant in measure, my boy, are the half-sleeping thoughts of a summer noon in Virginia; and it was fully an hour before I could summon enough strength of mind to peruse a letter recently consigned to me by a rustic chap in my native village.
This chap describes to me what he calls the "Downfall of the Dramy,"
and says he:
The Dramy is a article for which I have great taste, and which I prefer to prayer-meeting as a regular thing. Since the time I wore breeches intended to facilitate frequent spankings, I have looked upon theatrical artiks with a speeshees of excitement not to be egspressed.
I was once paying teller to a barber artik who shaved a great theatrical artik, and although the theatrical artik never could pay for his shaving until he drew his celery, he always frowned so splendidly when he turned down his collar, and said: "What ho! there Figaro," that my infant mind yearned to ask him for a few tickets to the show.
This great respek for the dramy has grown with my hair, and since this high old war has desolated the dramy, my buzzom has been nothing else but a wilderness of pangs. The other evening, my fren--which is courting a six story house with a woman in the t.i.tle deed--called at my shattoe, and proposed that we should wander amid the ruins of the dramy. "It's rejooced to a skellington," says he, quite mournful, "and its _E pluribus Onion_ is gone down into the hocean wave." As my friend used this strong egspression, he tried to wink at me, but didn't get farther than a hik-cup. Arm in-arm, like two Siamese-twins in rejooced circ.u.mstances, we walked in speechless silence to what was formerly the entrance half of a theatre in the pallermy days of the dramy. It was like the entrance to the great desert of Sary, and as we groped our way through the gra.s.s to the ticket office, I observed six wild geese and a racc.o.o.n in a jungle that was a umberella stand in the pallermy days.
The treasurer was entirely covered with cobwebs, which had been acc.u.mulating since the day he last saw speshee, and when he at last tore himself out, the sight of the quarter which I handed in sent him into immediate convulsions.
"Excuse me," says he, "if I weep over this preshus coin; but the force of old a.s.sociations is too much for this affectionate heart."
He then sent a fly-blown little boy for a tumbler of brandy, and was weeping into it copious when we emerged from his presence. Upon entering the shattered temple of the dramy, we found a vetrun of 1812, which the manager had hired to keep company with the man what lit the gas, that artik having declared that if he was kept in solitude any longer he should shoot himself from sheer melancholy. It was the vetrun's business to keep moving from seat to seat until the performance was over, so that the artful cuss of a manager could say "every seat was okipied" in the next morning's newspaper. When the manager, who was representing the orkestra with a comb wrapt in paper, saw me and my fren, he paused in the middle of his overture, and said we should have a private box, but that the families of his princ.i.p.al artiks were keepin' house in the private boxes, and was rayther crowded for room. Seeing me put my hand in my pocket, he said, tearful:
"Tellum me, I conjure ye, are there any such things as quarters in the round world? It is now six months since I last mingled with the world, and I really forget how many make a dollar."
Touched to the quick by his plaintiff tone, I drew forth a quarter, and held it before his anguished vision. Never shall I forget how his eyes was sot on that ravis.h.i.+ng coin.
"Can it indeed be real?" says he, "or is it but a quarter of the mind?"
I was afeard he might come the "let me clutch thee" dodge if I inflamed his imagination any longer; so I put it back into my pocket, and axidently revealed the handle of my revolver.
When my fren had cut the damp gra.s.s away from one of the orchestra seats with his jack-knife, we sat down and put up an umbrella to keep off the dew. Being a little nervous, I asked the manager if there was any snakes about; and he said he see a couple in the parroquet last night, but didn't think they had got down to the orkestra yet. The vetrun, which was the audience, stoppd chasing a bull-frog in the vestibule when the manager struck up "Days of Abstinence" on his comb, and immediately took his seat on chair No. 1, with which he always commenced. The curting was then unpinned, and disclosed a scene in a lumber-yard, with a heavy mortgage on it. The Count de Mahoginy is discovered in the ak of leaving his young wife, who is seated on a pile of shavings, for the purpose of obtaining immediate relief from the Union Defence Committee. The vetrun received him with great applause, and moved from
My fren and I made no reply, but walked sadly from the ruins with tears in our eyes.
The regular Drama, my boy, cannot hope to succeed, while the war which now monopolizes all attention is believed by some critics to be a regular farce.
Yours, tragically, ORPHEUS C. KERR.
LETTER LVIII.
SHOWING HOW THE GENERAL OF THE MACKEREL BRIGADE ISSUED AN AFFECTING GENERAL ORDER; EXEMPLIFYING THE BEAUTIES OF A SPADE-CAMPAIGN AS EXHIBITED IN STRATEGY HALL, AND CELEBRATING A NOTABLE CASE OF NAVAL STRATEGY.
WAs.h.i.+NGTON, D. C., July 26th, 1862.
The high-minded and chivalrous Confederacy having refused to consider itself worsted in our recent great strategic victory near Paris, my boy, it only remained for the General of the Mackerel Brigade to commence undermining the Confederacy, after the manner of a civil engineer; and when last I visited the lines, I found a select a.s.sortment of Mackerels engaged in the balmy summer pastime of digging holes, and dying natural deaths in them.
There was one chap with an illuminated nose, who attracted my particular attention by landing a spade-full of sacred soil very neatly in my bosom, and says I to him:
"Well, my gallant s.e.xton, how do the obsequies progress?"
"Beautiful," says he, pausing long enough to take a powder which the surgeon had left with him. "We've just struck a large vein of typhoid fever, and them air Peninsula veterans, which, you see in them holes yonder, are already delirious with it. Really," says the chap, with an air of quiet enjoyment, as he climbed into the hospital litter, just sent after him--"really, there's a smart chance of pus.h.i.+ng on our cemetery to Richmond before the roads become impa.s.sable again."
I was looking after him, as the bearers carried him off, my boy, when I saw Captain Villiam Brown ambling leisurely toward me on his geometrical steed, Euclid, alternately perusing a paper which he held in his right hand, and discussing a canteen in his left. The countenance of the warrior was thoughtful, and his shovel swung listlessly against the charger's flank.
"How now, my Jack of Spades?" says I, sportively.
"Ah!" says Villiam, slowly descending from the roof of his stallion, and suffering the latter to lean against a tree, "here is a new Proclamation for the moral refreshment of the United States of America.
Read this impartial ed.i.c.k," says Villiam impressively, "and you will find it worthy of the Union Track Society."
I took the official parchment, my boy, and found inscribed upon it the following affecting
GENERAL ORDER.
Whereas, the United States of America now finds himself engaged in an unnatural struggle with the celebrated Southern Confederacy, for the Union which our forefathers planted; and it being our object to show the world that our intentions are honorable; it is hereby ordered, that the Mackerel Brigade do take possession of all guns, pistols, and howitzers previously fired at them by persons now in arms against this government, keeping strict account of said weapons, in order that their owners may be duly and amicably paid for them hereafter. It is further ordered that persons of Mackerel descent, occupying the cultivated grounds of the aforesaid Southern Confederacy, shall keep strict account of the time spent upon the same, in order that reasonable rent may be paid for the same as soon as the United States of America shall resume specie payment.
By order of THE GENERAL OF THE MACKEREL BRIGADE.
GREEN SEAL, } VINTAGE OF 1776.}
Having perused this doc.u.ment with much attention, I handed it back to Villiam, and says I:
"In purity of moral tone, my hero, that paper is worthy the descendant of 1776."
"1776!" says Villiam, reflectively. "Ah!" says Villiam, "it takes strategy to revive recollections of those days. We have at least seventeen hundred and seventy sick ones in our new hospital already.
Come with me," says Villiam, genially, "and we will survey the interior aspeck of Strategy Hall."
Strategy Hall, my boy, is a fine airy hospital extemporized from a barn, on the estate of a prominent Southern Union man, now commanding a regiment of Confederacies. The house itself would have been taken, as it had somewhat more roof than the barn, and a little more shade; but when the General of the Mackerel Brigade learned that Was.h.i.+ngton had once thought of taking a second mortgage on it, he gave orders that no Mackerel should go within half a mile of the front door.
On entering Strategy Hall, I beheld a scene calculated to elevate sickness into a virtue, and shed immortal l.u.s.tre upon the kind-hearted women of America. Comfortably stretched upon rails taken from Confederate fences, and of which a strict account had been kept, with a view to future compensation, were a whole section of the Mackerel Brigade, in the full enjoyment of strategic health. Over each chap's head hung his shovel, and a s.h.i.+ngle inscribed with his name and address. Thus, the s.h.i.+ngle nearest me read: "Spoony Bill, Hose Company 123, New York Fire Department."
And woman--lovely woman! was there, administering hot drinks to the fevered head, bathing with ice-water the brow of those s.h.i.+vering with the cruel ague, pouring rich gruel over the chin and neck of the nervous sufferer, and reading good books to the raving and delirious.
It was with a species of holy awe that I beheld one of those human angels stand a hot coffee-pot upon the upturned face of one invalid, while she hastily flew to fill the right ear of a more urgent sufferer with cologne-water. And then to see her softly place one of the portable furnaces upon a very sick Mackerel's stomach, while she warmed the water with which his beloved head was presently to be shaved; and to see her bending over to ask one of the more dangerously ill ones if he would not like a nice fat piece of fresh pork, while the other end of her crinoline was sc.r.a.ping the head of the Mackerel on the opposite rail.
"O woman! in our hours of ease, Uncertain, coy, and hard to please, And variable as the shade By the light, quivering aspen made; When pain and anguish wring the brow A ministering angel thou."
I could have remained here all day, my boy; for I found the berries, ice-cream, and liquors, prepared for the patients, really excellent; but Villiam hinted to me that a splendid piece of naval strategy was just about to come off on Duck Lake, and I desired to witness our national triumph on the ocean wave.
Having quitted Strategy Hall, I repaired to the sh.o.r.e of Duck Lake, where numerous Mackerels were already watching Commodore Head's fleet as it lay waiting for an expected rebel ram on the treacherous element.
It appeared that a lurking Confederacy in Paris had waited until the Mackerels were all in their holes one day, and then hastily constructed an iron-plated ram from an old dry-goods box and two cooking stoves.
With this formidable monster, he designed offering irregular opposition to the Government in the way of killing a few vandal regiments, after which he proposed to repair to the Confederate side of Duck Lake, and send the particulars of his victory to Europe through some of the more vigilantly blockaded Southern ports. He had completed his ram, my boy, and hidden it under some hay on the Lake sh.o.r.e, ready to commence his carnage when the time came; but one of the Mackerels happened to see it when he went fis.h.i.+ng, and Commodore Head was at once ordered to have his iron-plated squadron in readiness to intercept and destroy the monster when she should appear.
"Riddle my turret!" says the Commodore, in his marine manner, as he sighted his swivel gun and placed his fis.h.i.+ng-rod and box of bait near his stool on the quarter-deck, "I feel like grappling with half-a-dozen rams of chivalry--loosen my plates! if I don't."
And there we stood on that hot July afternoon, watching the n.o.ble craft as she sat like a duck on the water, the Mackerel crew sitting aft picking a marrow-bone, and the venerable Commodore tilted back on his stool upon the quarter-deck, fis.h.i.+ng for ba.s.s.
Presently we could see the treacherous Confederacy stealing down to where his iron-plated monster lay hidden. Softly he removed the covering of hay, and cautiously did he place the ram in the water, carefully examining the priming of the old-fas.h.i.+oned blunderbuss he carried under his arm, as he stepped into this new Merrimac, and quietly raising his umbrella with one hand, while he paddled off with the other.