Chapter 89
"'_Beware!_' thundered the other.
"'Speak not so loudly, or you will wake my child,' said the hunter, gazing fearfully toward where Marcella slept.
"'Fear not, good Hermann, the sleep of the innocent cannot be disturbed by a Spirit of Evil. Declare your wish and it shall be granted.'
"'Then hear me, fiend, devil, or whatever thou art! I would have my child happy; I would have her husband ever warm in his love for her as he is this moment; I would have the curse of her parents forever averted from her head. Grant me this and I am thine.'
"'It shall be so,' answered Varno, with something like pity in his tones. 'Thou must meet me at sunset on the evening of to-morrow, beside the _Witch's Circle_--there shall our compact be fulfilled. _This is the third and last. Remember._
"The dark spirit pa.s.sed from the hut under the cliff but his shadow lingered behind; and the old hunter knelt beneath the swinging lamp, with the dead fawn at his feet, desolate and lone.
"The day smiled brightly on Marcella, the genial sunbeams dispelling night's horrors. She looked sadly when her father told her how the White Fawn had been wounded by some wandering hunter, and had sought the hut to die there; but the presence of Wilhelm made her cheerful as the morn, and Hermann felt rewarded for his sacrifice.
"A missionary monk stood within the old cabin, and said the words that joined two lives in one. When the holy rite was finished, the wedded pair knelt at the feet of The Demented, and called down Heaven's richest blessings on his head; but alas! he could not say 'Amen,' for he remembered his compact, and the words of Varno still rang in his ears. He watched his child with more than earthly care till the sun began to sink once more behind the Black Forest, then seizing his rifle, he kissed her blus.h.i.+ng cheek, and sallied forth toward the mountains.
"'Dear father, may you soon give up such unholy pastimes,' murmured Marcella, looking fondly after him as his grey hairs floated in the wind.
"'G.o.d grant that he may,' murmured her husband, fervently, pressing her to his heart.
"But the old hunter returned no more. The wolf started as he lay in his lair, when a man rushed by his covert in the Black Forest. A bugle, wildly sounded, awoke the bird in his leafy bower. Two men met at the Witch's Circle, while a day was dying, and the shades of the wood closed over them forever."
Yours, contemplatively, ORPHEUS C. KERR.
LETTER LXXIX.
SHOWING HOW THE NATIONAL INSANITARY COMMITTEE MADE A STRANGE BLUNDER; HOW THE BELOVED GENERAL OF THE MACKEREL BRIGADE WAS REMOVED AND EXALTED; AND ENDING WITH AN INFALLIBLE RECIPE.
WAs.h.i.+NGTON, D. C., November 15th, 1862.
As I calmly observe the present situation of our military affairs, my boy, and consider how persistently the Blue Ridge continues to get between our great strategic army and the dilapidated Southern Confederacy, I am impressed with the idea that the salvation of our distracted country demands the removal of either the Blue Ridge or the beloved General of the Mackerel Brigade.
I admit, my boy, that the Mackerel Brigade has spent time enough in one locality since the last battle to remove the incompetent and imbecile Blue Ridge, and that the immense number of spades consigned to that veteran _corps_ might be construed into the belief that they were really engaged in that great stragetic task. Furthermore, that the Mackerels have only succeeded in marching fifteen miles in six weeks, legitimates the supposition that they are going up very steep hills; but it must be borne in mind, my boy, that it is the Honest Abe's best policy to conciliate all political parties for the sake of Northern unity of action, and it cannot be doubted that the removal of the Blue Ridge at this crisis would occasion the bitterest heart-burnings and jealousies in the manly bosom of our nation's Democratic organization.
It would be construed into proof that the Honest Abe had yielded to the fiendish clamor of the crazy Abolitionists, and had rendered a restoration of the adored Union-as-it-Was of our forefathers impossible, by destroying that Blue Ridge which was an essential part of the Union. The manly Organization, my boy, would prefer an armistice with the unseemly Confederacy to a removal of the Blue Ridge--a removal,
Hence, my boy, the Honest Abe has concluded to leave the Blue Ridge where it is, and remove the idolized General of the Mackerel Brigade.
But before I proceed to describe the inexpressible anguish produced by the adoption of even this grievous alternative, permit me to record the useful proceedings of the National Insanitary Committee, in their philanthropical investigation of the lunacy now prevailing to an alarming extent in the Army of Accomac.
For some weeks past, my boy, insanity has been frightfully upon the increase in the ranks of the unconquerable Mackerel Brigade. Many Mackerels have even gone raving at times, persisting in the vague and incoherent exclamation that they "_Couldn't See It_." There was some hope that this terrible mental aberration might be stayed, if the superannuated _corps_ were supplied with spectacles; but the relief thus given was only temporary; and finally, when one of the poor maniac chaps went so far as to yell, that, even by the aid of his spectacles, he couldn't see what was the use of b.u.t.ting against the Blue Ridge all the time, it was deemed proper to call in the National Insanitary Committee.
Captain Samyule Sa-mith, whose duty it was to draw the Brigade up in two lines--the sane chaps on one side of the fence, and the insane on the other--hastened back to Accomac to finish a game of "Old Sledge,"
on which four drinks were distinctly pending, and left the aged Committee to perform its task at leisure.
In antic.i.p.ation of this sad ceremony, my boy, I had sent my architectural steed, the gothic Pegasus, down to Accomac, and thither I went on Tuesday morning, to amble totteringly from thence to the scene of Insanitary proceedings.
The Committee had just commenced work upon its line of chaps, and was examining the patients one by one.
The first invalid, Lively Mike, was born in the Sixth Ward, and weighed ninety-two pounds. He was a poor, slouching chap, my boy, resembling poverty's Ruin, two-thirds covered by an ivy vine of rags. His angular countenance was rich with unwas.h.i.+ngs, save a clean irregular circle just around his ugly mouth.
I asked how it happened that this one part of his face was clean, when all the rest was dirty; and they told me, my boy, that it was the place where his poor old mother had kissed him at parting.
Lively Mike's first symptom of his dreadful malady was a feeling of overwhelming weariness, as though he had been for a long time in one spot doing nothing. The feeling deepened into sullen, dangerous madness, until it was finally unsafe to let him go at large, as he had several times attempted to shoot scouting Confederacies.
The next hopeless patient was Big-nose Jake. Born at the commencement of his career in the Sixth Ward, and weighing ninety-four pounds without his knapsack, Big-nose had always enjoyed good health, with the exception of starvation; but was in the habit of muttering to himself that Strategy was a great humbug, and he'd rather die at home in his bunk in the engine-house than in a swamp, without a single fire in six months. His only way of keeping warm was by occasionally huddling up to a Confederate picket, and receiving _his_ fire.
No. 3 was Baby Jim, a resident of the Sixth Ward for many years, and weighing ninety-one pounds. His first attack of his malady came in the shape of an incoherent and irrepressible desire to get up a Directory of Army Names, so that the families of Mackerels in the Army of Accomac might know where their relatives were, and how old they had got to be.
Sometimes he would be suddenly seized with the absurd notion that the General of the Mackerel Brigade was killing more men by strategy than would be slain in fifty battles.
Another hapless maniac was Cross-eyed Tom. His family is well known in the Sixth Ward; weight, ninety-seven pounds. Always enjoyed excellent health, until one day, when it suddenly struck him--uncalled-for, as it were--that he hadn't seen the Colonel of his regiment for six months.
The demon of insanity tempted him to believe that his Colonel had all along been drinking bad gin and threatening to resign, in Was.h.i.+ngton, instead of staying with his men and getting acquainted with them. He knew that he must be entirely mistaken about this, but couldn't shake off the horrible delusion.
A fifth lunatic was the Worth street Chicken. Had voted several times a day in the Sixth Ward, and weighed ninety-nine pounds. The Chicken could not say that he was really a sick man; but had moments when he could not resist the malignant temptation to imagine, that the celebrated Southern Confederacy was just as even with us now as it was a year ago, with several majestic raids for small trumps. At times he was troubled with bad dreams about all the Treasury Notes becoming worthless if the General of the Mackerel Brigade went into winter quarters.
And so the Insanitary Committee went down the whole line, my boy, closely questioning the poor chaps who had lost their reason, and eliciting continued proofs of the national ravages of Insanity.
"Truly," says the chief Insanitary chap, cleaning his nails with his jack-knife; "truly these unhappy beings are hopelessly deranged, and must be sent to the Asylum. Their ravings are beyond all precedent."
Just as he finished speaking, my boy, and whilst he was picking his teeth to a.s.sist meditation, Captain Samyule Sa-mith came riding hastily in from his successful game of "Old Sledge," bringing the stakes with him, and says he:
"Well, old Medicusses, have you examined the beings which is unhappily bereft of sense?"
"Yea," says the Insanitary chap, with a grievous groan, "we've examined all those poor creatures, in that whole line, and find them all hopelessly and incurably mad."
Samyule gave such a start that he split one of his boots, and says he:
"_Which_ line?"
"Why, that line there," says the chap, pointing.
"By all that's Federal!" says Samyule, slapping his left leg; "I'll be blessed if you old goslings hav'n't been examining the WRONG LINE! Them veterans there are the _sane_ ones!"
Insanity, my boy, like Charity, so seldom begins at home, that we sometimes mistake the best kind of sanity for it when we meet the latter, as a stranger, abroad. The man we call a maniac is frequently nothing more than a sane man seen through a maniac's spectacles.
But the whole body of Mackerels, sane and insane alike, unite in a feeling of strong anguish blended with enthusiasm, at the removal of the beloved General of the Mackerel Brigade. He has been so much a Father to them all, that they never expected to get a step farther while he was with them.
There's a piece of domestic philosophy for you, my boy.
When the General heard of his removal, my boy, he said that it was like divorcing a husband from a wife, who had always supported him, and immediately let fly the following
FAREWELL ADDRESS.