Chapter 83
The Mackerel chaplain, my boy, is of inestimable value to a wounded man, his vivid and spiritual manner of describing the celebrated Fire Department of the other world being a source of unspeakable comfort and rea.s.surance to the sufferer. "I am afraid you have led a sinful life, my fellow-worm," says he to the sick Mackerel, "and can only advise you to buy one of these hymn-books from me, which I can afford to sell for six s.h.i.+llings."
But what the chaplain talked to me about, was his discovery, at a village not far from Winchester, of a new
"PICCIOLA."
It was a Sergeant old and gray, Well singed and bronzed from siege and pillage, Went tramping in an army's wake, Along the turnpike of the village.
For days and nights the winding host Had through the little place been marching, And ever loud the rustics cheered, 'Till ev'ry throat was hoa.r.s.e and parching.
The Squire and Farmer, maid and dame, All took the sight's electric stirring, And hats were waved and staves were sung, And kerchiefs white were countless whirring.
They only saw a gallant show Of heroes stalwart under banners, And in the fierce heroic glow, 'Twas theirs to yield but wild hosannahs
The Sergeant heard the shrill hurrahs, Where he behind in step was keeping; But glancing down beside the road He saw a little maid sit weeping.
"And how is this?" he gruffly said, A moment pausing to regard her;-- "Why weepest thou, my little chit?"-- And then she only cried the harder.
"And how is this, my little chit?"
The st.u.r.dy trooper straight repeated, "When all the village cheers us on, That you, in tears, apart are seated?
"We march two hundred thousand strong!
And that's a sight, my baby beauty, To quicken silence into song And glorify the soldier's duty."
"It's very, very grand, I know,"
The little maid gave soft replying; "And Father, Mother, Brother too, All say 'Hurrah' while I am crying;
"But think--O Mr. Soldier, think, How many little sisters' brothers Are going all away to fight And may be _killed_, as well as others!"
"Why bless thee, child," the Sergeant said, His brawny hands her curls caressing, "'Tis left for little ones like you To find that War's not all a blessing."
And "Bless thee!" once again he cried; Then cleared his throat and looked indignant, And marched away with wrinkled brow To stop the struggling tear benignant.
And still the ringing shouts went up From doorway, thatch, and fields of tillage; The pall behind the standard seen By one alone, of all the village.
The oak and cedar bend and writhe When roars the wind through gap and braken; But 'tis the tenderest reed of all That trembles first when Earth is shaken.
It is with infinite satisfaction, my boy, that I record the recognition of Commodore Head's priceless services on Duck Lake by the Secretary of the Navy. Our grim old son of Neptune is created Rear-Admiral, with the privilege of snubbing gunboat captains, receiving serenades, attending launches, and lavis.h.i.+ng untold scorn upon the feeble imitations of affrighted Europe.
Hence, there would appear to be an imperative demand in current literature for an authoritative
SKETCH OF COMMODORE HEAD.
This venerable ornament of our peerless naval service, to whom the eyes of the whole world are now directed, was born of one of his parents at an early period of his existence, and has since incurred the years temporarily elapsing between that epoch and the present auspicious occasion. The subject of our brief biography entered the navy when he was only fifty years old, as commander of the Mackerel iron-plated squadron on Duck Lake, where he became widely noted for success in fis.h.i.+ng, as well as for his skill in eluding vessels running the blockade. At one time, indeed, he came very near capturing a Confederate ram, being only prevented by failing to find the key of the box containing his spectacles in time to reconnoiter the wily foe.
Commodore Head's conversation concerning the speedy capture of Vicksburg, Charleston, Savannah and
Rear-Admirals, my boy, are an aristocratic inst.i.tution; and their creation must serve to convince besotted Europe, that in making a naval distinction between rank and file, our discriminating Government knows how to compromise matters by bestowing a new rank upon an old file.
It was on Wednesday that my architectural steed, the Gothic Pegasus, renewed his usual weekly journey to desolated Accomac, cheerfully conveying me thither at a speed that did not keep the same roadside house in view more than half an hour at a time. Having hitched the funereal stallion to a copy of Senator Sumner's recent Faneuil Hall speech, believing that doc.u.ment sufficiently heavy to hold him, I gave him a discarded straw-hat of mine for his dinner, and strolled into the Mackerel camp.
To the everlasting disgrace of our rulers be it said, my boy, I found the devoted Mackerel Brigade progressing toward deep suffering at a rate which made me thank Heaven that I owned no chickens within sight of the harrowing scene. Being thoughtlessly supplied with three days'
rations at a time, these neglected martyrs incur all the perils of suffocation and cruel nightmare by doing nothing on the first day but eat from morning till night, what is left over at midnight being used to pelt each other with. Then for two whole days these gallant men who are fighting our battles find famine staring them in the face, and I actually heard one emaciated Mackerel chap offering a whole week's pay to another Mackerel chap for a Confederate cracker which he had picked up in a field, wis.h.i.+ng to consign that cracker to his friends at home as a sample of the unnatural food with which an ungrateful Republic feeds its faithful soldiers. I even found many Mackerels without knapsacks and blankets, which they had lost in adventures at "Old Sledge"; and there was that in the countenances of others which sured me that their poor faces had not been washed since the commencement of the war!
My soul turns sick at these things, my boy, and they even have an effect upon a beholder's stomach. To think that our n.o.ble volunteers, our country's preservers, should be subjected to sufferings in which they have not even the poor consolation of knowing that somebody else than themselves is responsible therefor.
Reflectively I turned from the scene of agony, and had rambled some fifteen minutes in an adjacent bit of woods, when the sound of voices near by made me stop short behind a tree and peer eagerly through an opening in the nearest thicket.
Seated just beyond some evergreen bushes were four dilapidated Confederacies, solemnly discussing the great Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation of our Honest Abe; whilst close by them, and astride of a mossy stone, was the accomplished swordsman, Captain Munchausen, frantically, and with many hiccups, endeavoring at one and the same time to catch a phantom fly and maintain his equestrian position.
One of the Confederacies took a bite from a cold potato which he held in his hand, and, says he:
"I reckon that it's near time for the unsubjugated South to adopt Retaliatory measures, and proclaim that all prisoners hereafter taken by the Confederacy shall be previously shot and made into bone-ornaments."
Here Captain Munchausen burst into an unseemly peal of laughter as he made another wild clutch at the phantom-fly, and says he:
"Wher--where's Mary's--ary's--snuff-box?"
Not perceiving that this special remark was relevant to the question in view, a second Confederacy merely tightened the string which held his inexpressibles in place, and, says he:
"What has been proposed by the Honorable Gentleman from the Alms House is not sufficiently severe. No mercy should be shown to the Was.h.i.+ngton demon, and I move that any Federal soldiers found disturbing a Confederacy during the progress of a battle shall be at once executed for arson."
The impression created by this motion extended even to Captain Munchausen, who fell flat on his face in a frantic attempt to catch the spectral insect, and exclaimed, in tones of awful solemnity:
"I don't want (hic) to be marri--ry--arried--Hic!"
After a moment's pause, the third Confederacy finished b.u.t.toning his coat with a bit of corn-cob, and says he:
"I move that the last Resolution be amended, to make it a capital crime for any person whatever to be guilty of Federal extraction."
Now, it chanced, my boy, that there was a Mackerel picket eating a confiscated watermelon in a clump of bushes close behind me; and just at this crisis of the debate, he casually tossed a piece of the rind in the direction of the Confederacies. It happened to fall in their midst, whereupon the enraged statesmen were seized with great tremblings, and immediately skedaddled in all directions, the last being Captain Munchausen, who at first endeavored to carry a rock of some hundred pounds' weight away with him, and ultimately retreated in a highly-circuitous manner, with an expression of abject despair under his cap.
It is said, my boy, that the celebrated Confederacy will resent the Proclamation by raising the Black Flag. It is a common belief, that if such be the case, it will be the duty of our generals to raise the blacks without flagging.
Yours, if it come to that, ORPHEUS C. KERR.
LETTER LXXV.
SETTING FORTH THE FALSE AND TRUE ASPECTS OF BEAMING OLD AGE RESPECTIVELY, AND SHOWING HOW THE UNBLUs.h.i.+NG CONFEDERACY MADE ANOTHER RAID.
WAs.h.i.+NGTON, D. C., October 19th, 1862.
It is a beautiful and improving thing, my boy, to see the wise and polished mob of a great nation paying unmitigated reverence to fussy gray hairs, and much s.h.i.+rt collar; and hence I never grew tired of considering the dignified case of the Venerable Gammon, whom everybody regards as the benign paternal relative of his country. When I see Generals, Senators, and other proprietors of Government property, hanging breathlessly upon the words of this sublime old man, just as though such words were so many gallows, I feel the cause of Justice typified to my mind's eye, and am myself enthusiastic enough to believe that hanging is too good for them. Whether at Willard's, the White House, the Capitol, or in his native Mugville, the Venerable Gammon is ever the same beneficent being, beaming blandly upon the whole universe from above his ruffles, and paternally permitting it to exist in his presence.
The precise thing he has done in his fearfully long lifetime, my boy, to beget such an agony of love and wors.h.i.+p from everybody, has not yet come to the immediate knowledge of anybody; but he is the moss-grown oracle of the United States of America, and it gives me unspeakable satisfaction to reproduce as follows, his benign letter of advice to the idolized General of the Mackerel Brigade: