Entering, she stood within a low stone cell. It was the prison house of the palace, used for the reception of new slaves, and for the punishment of such others as gave offence. It was a long, narrow apartment, paved with stone and lighted by a single grated aperture set high in the wall upon the courtyard side. The place was of sufficient dimensions to hold fifty or sixty persons, but, in the present case, there was but one tenant—Cleotos—-Not even a guard was with him, for the strength of the walls and the locks were considered amply sufficient to prevent escape.
Cleotos was sitting upon a stone bench, resting his head upon his right hand. At the opening of the door he looked up. He could not see who it was that entered, but the light tread and the faint rustle of a waving dress sufficiently indicated the sex. If it had been daylight, a flush might have been seen upon his face, for the thought flashed upon his mind that it might be Ænone herself coming to his assistance. But the first word undeceived him; and he let his head once more fall between the palms of his hands.
'Cleotos,' whispered Leta, 'it is I. I have come to set you free.'
'It is right,' he said, moodily. 'All this I owe to you alone. It is fit that you should try to undo your work.'
'Could I foresee that it would come to this?' she responded, attempting justification. 'How was I to know that my trivial transgression would have ended so sorrowfully for you? But all that is easily mended. You have money, and a token which will identify you to the proper parties. There is yet time to reach Ostia before that ship can sail.'
'How knew you that I had gold—or this signet ring; or that there was a ship to sail from Ostia?' he exclaimed with sudden fierceness. 'You, then, had been listening at the door! And having listened, you must have known with what innocence we spoke together! And yet, seeing all this, you called him to the spot and left him to let his eyes be deceived and his heart filled with bitter jealousy, and have played upon his passion by wicked misrepresentation, until you have succeeded in bringing ruin upon all about you! I see it all now, as clearly as though it were written upon a parchment rolled out before me! To think that the gods have beheld you doing this thing, and yet have not stricken you dead!'
'I have sinned,' she murmured, seizing his hand and bending over, so thata ready tear rolled down upon it. He felt it fall, but moved not. Only a few days before, her tears would have moved him; but now his heart was hardened against her. He had found out that her nature was cruel and not easily moral to repentance, and that, if emotion was ever suffered to overcome her, it was tolerated solely for some crafty design. The falling tear, therefore, simply bade him be upon his guard against deceit, lest once again she might succeed in weaving her wiles about him. Or, if she really wept with repentance, he knew that it was not repentance for the sin itself, but rather for some baffled purpose.
'Go on,' he simply said.
'I have sinned,' she repeated, still clinging to his hands. 'But, O Cleotos! when I offer to undo my work and set you free, you will surely forgive me?'
'Yes, it is right that you should repair the mischief you have caused,' he repeated; 'and I will avail myself of it. To-night, since you offer to set me free, and claim that you have the power to do so—to-night for Ostia; and then, then away forever from this ruthless land! But stay! What of our mistress? I will not go hence until I know that she is safe and well.'
'She is well,' responded Leta, fearful lest the truth might throw a new obstacle before her plans. 'And all is again right between her lord and herself, for I have assured him of her innocence.'
'Then, since this is so, there is no motive for me to tarry,' he said. He believed her, and was satisfied; not that he esteemed her worthy of belief, but because it did not seem to him possible that such a matter as a grateful kiss upon a protecting hand could require much explanation. 'I would like well once more to see her and bid her farewell, and utter my thanks for all her kindness; but to what purpose? I have done that already, and could do and say no more than I have already done and said. There remains, therefore, nothing more than to fulfil her commands, and return to my native home. But tell her, Leta, that my last thought was for her, and that her memory will ever live in my heart.'
'I cannot tell her this,' slowly murmured Leta, 'for I shall not see her again. I—I go with you.'
Cleotos listened for a moment in perplexed wonderment, and then, for his sole answer, dropped her hand and turned away. She understood him as well as though he had spoken the words of refusal.
'You will not take me with you, then; is it not so?' she said. 'Some nice point of pride, or some feeling of fancied wrong, or craving for revenge, or, perhaps, love for another person, tells you now to separate yourself from me! And yet you loved me once. This, then, is man's promised faith!'
'You dare to talk to me of faith and broken vows!' he exclaimed, after a moment of speechless amazement at her hardiness in advancing such a plea. 'You, who for weeks have treated me with scorn and indifference—who have plotted against me, until my life itself has been brought into danger—who, apart from all that, cast me off when first we met in Rome, telling me then that I was and could be nothing to you, yes, even that our association from the first had been a mistake and a wrong! Yes, Leta, there was a time when I truly loved you, as man had never then done, or since, or ever will again; but impute not to me the blame that I cannot do so now.'
'I was to blame,' she said; and it seemed that this night must be a night of confession for her, in so few things could she justify herself by denial or argument. 'I acknowledge my fault, and how my heart has been drawn from you by some delusion, as powerful and resistless as though the result of magic. But when I confess it freely, and tell you how I now see my duty and my heart more clearly, as though a veil ofafter all, I find no forgiveness in your heart, said I not truly that man's faith cannot be trusted? Am I not the same Leta as of old?'
'The same as of old?' he exclaimed. 'Can you look earnestly and truthfully into your soul, and yet avow that you are the pure-hearted girl who roamed hand in hand with me only a year ago, in our native isle, content to have no ambition except that of living a humble life with me? And now, with your simple tastes and desires swept away—with your soul covered with love of material pleasures as with a lava crust—wrapt up in longing for Rome's most sinful, artificial excesses—having, for gold or position or power or ambition, or what not, so long as it was not for love, given yourself up a willing victim to a heartless master—do you dare, after this, to talk to me of love, and call yourself the same?'
'And are you one of those who believe that there can be no forgiveness for repentant woman?'
'Of forgiveness, all that can be desired; but of forgetfulness, none. There is one thing that no man can forget; and were I to repulse the admonitions of my judgment, and strive to pass that thing by, who would sooner scorn me than yourself? Let all this end. Know that I love you not, and could never love you again. Your scorn, indifference, and deceit have long ago crushed from my heart all the love it once held. Know further, that if I did still love you, my pride would condemn the feeling, and I would never rest until I had destroyed it, even were it necessary to destroy myself rather than to yield.'
'These are brave words, indeed!' she exclaimed, taunted by his rebuke into a departure from her assumption of affection. 'But they better suit the freeman upon his own mountain side than the slave in his cell. Samos is still afar off. The road from here to Ostia has not yet been traversed by you in safety. Even this door between you and the open street has not been thrown back. And yet you dare to taunt me, knowing that I hold in my hand the key, and, by withdrawing it, can take away all hope from you. Do you realize what will be your fate if you remain here—how that on the morrow the lions and leopards of the amphitheatre will quarrel over your scattered limbs?'
'Is this a threat?' he cried. 'Is it to tell me that if I do not give my love where my honor tells me it should not be given, I must surely die! So, then, let it be. I accept the doom. One year ago, I would have cheerfully fought in the arena for your faintest smile. Now I would rather die there than have your sullied love forced upon me.'
Without another word he sat down again upon the stone bench. Even in that darkness she could note how resolute was his expression, how firm and unyielding his attitude. She had roused his nature, as she had never seen it before. She had not believed that a spirit which she had been accustomed to look upon as so much inferior in strength to her own, could show such unflinching determination; and for the moment she stood admiring him, and wondering whether, if he had always acted like that, he might not have bound her soul to his own and kept her to himself through all temptation and trial. Then, taking the other key, she unlocked the door in the rear wall of the cell, and threw it open. The narrow street behind the court was before him, and he was free to go.
'I meant it not for a threat,' she said. 'However low I may sink, I have not yet reached the pass of wishing to purchase or beg for affection. Why I spoke thus, I know not. It may be that I thought some gratitude might be due me for rescuing you. But I cannot tell what I, thought. Or it might have been that words were necessary for me, and that I used the firstthat came. But let that pass. Know only that your safety lies before you, and that it is in your power to grasp it. And now, farewell. You leave me drifting upon a downward course, Cleotos. Sometimes, perhaps, when another person is at your side, making your life far happier than I could have made it, you will think kindly of me.'
'I think kindly of you now, Leta,' he said. 'Whatever love I can give, apart from the love which I once asked you to accept, is yours. In everything that brotherly affection can bestow, there will be no limit to my care and interest for you. Nay, more, you shall now go away from hence with me; and though I cannot promise more than a brother's love, yet with that for your guide and protection, you can reach your native home in peace and security, and there work out whatever repentance you may have here begun.'
'And when we are there, and those who have known us begin to ask why, when Cleotos has brought Leta back in safety, he regards her only as a sister and a friend, and otherwise remains sternly apart from her, what answer can be given which will not raise suspicion and scorn, and make my life a burden to me? No, Cleotos, it cannot be. Cruel as my lot may be here, I have only myself to answer for it, and it is easier to hide myself from notice in this whirl of sin and passion than if at home again. And whatever may henceforth happen to me, the Fates are surely most to blame. How can one avoid his destiny?'
'The Fates do not carve out our destiny,' he said. 'They simply carry into relentless effect the judgments which our own passions and weaknesses pronounced upon ourselves. O Leta! have you considered what you are resolved upon encountering? Do you not know that some day this master of yours will tire of you, and fling you to some friend of his—a soldier, actor, or what not—that as the years run on and your beauty fades, you will fall lower and lower? Have not thousands like yourself thus gone on, until at last, becoming old and worthless, they are left to die alone upon some island in the Tiber? Pray that you may die a better death than that!'
'It is a sad picture,' she answered. 'It is not merely possible, but also probable. I acknowledge it all. And yet, if I saw it all unrolled before me as my certain doom, I do not know that I would try to shun it. Already the glitter of this world has changed my soul from what it was, and I am now too feeble of purpose to spend long years in retrieving the errors of the past. There came into my heart a thought—a selfish thought—that you might forget what has gone before; and then it seemed that I might succeed in winning back my peace, and so shun the fate which lies before me. But you cannot forget. I blame you not: you are right. You have never spoken more truly than when you said that I would have despised you if you had yielded. Therefore, that hope is gone; and now I must submit to the destiny which is coming upon me.'
'But, Leta, only strive to think that—'
'Nay, what is the use? Rather let me throw all regrets away, and strive not to think at all. Why not yield with a pleasant grace to the current, when we know that, in the end, struggle as we may, it will surely sweep us under?'
'Leta—dear Leta—'
'Not a word, dear Cleotos; it must not be. From this hour I banish all human affections from my heart, as I banish all hope. Could you remain here, you would see how relentless and fierce my nature will grow. Plots and schemes shall now be my amusement; for if I must be destroyed, others shall fall with me. This must be the last tender impulse of my life. I know not why it is, but I could now really weep. Cleotos, forgive me! I came hither, loving you not, but hoping to beguile you into receiving me again. I have failed, and I ought to hate you for it; and yet I almost love you instead. It is strange, is it not?
'But, Leta—'
'How my heart now feels soft and tender with our recollections of other days! Do you remember, Cleotos, how once, when children, we went together and stole the grapes from Eminides's vine? And how, when he would have beaten you, I stood before you, and prevented him? Who would then have thought that, in a few years, we should be here in Rome—slaves, and parting forever? We shall never again together see Eminides's vineyard, shall we?'
'O Leta—my sister—'
'There, there; speak not, but go at once, for some one comes near. Tarry no longer. If at home they ask after me, tell them I am dead. Farewell, dear Cleotos. Kiss me good-by. Do not grudge me that, at least. And may the gods bless you!'
He would still have spoken, would have claimed a minute to plead with her and try to induce her to leave the path she was pursuing, and go with him. But at that instant the voice of some one approaching sounded louder, and the tones of Sergias could be distinguished as he tried to troll forth the catch of a drinking melody. There was no time to lose. With a farewell pressure of her arm about Cleotos's neck, Leta pushed him through the aperture into the dark back street; and then, leaving the keys in the locks, turned back into the garden, and fled toward the house.
The primary characteristics of creation are aggregation, producing all existing forms; and dissolution, in which the parts suffer disintegration, their varied elements entering into new combinations. The active powers producing such normal condition of matter, which is ceaseless motion, are comprehended in attraction for aggregation, and repulsion for dissolution, alternately. This power of combing atoms and dissolving their connection is electric, which is only possessed by that element, in its dual character of attraction and repulsion; and thus we may reasonably assume that electricity is the material wherewith creative energy manifests its power in the varied combinations, dissolutions, and reconstructions which comprise all animate and inanimate existences. This same cosmical power, electricity, holds all worlds in their normal relations, and is the source of light and heat, as well as the connecting link, through our electric nerve cords, by which our minds alone commune with the outer world, in direct contact with our bodily senses, and hence becomes the medium of all our knowledge.
If space were wholly devoid of matter, all globes, or other masses of matter, would be dissipated into it, orà prioricould not have been formed from it. The material interchange, passing through space, between globes, in all stages of formation, such as light, heat, and gravitation, could not be conducted through a vacuum, as their very presence would be destructive of vacuity. Materiality would be dissipated or absorbed in an attempted passage through vacuity; therefore, as we know that light, heat, and gravitation are, necessarily, material, space is but diffused materiality, at its minimum of etheriality. Globes moving in their orbits and on their axes must thus meet with resistance: this, together with the internal motion of their contained elements, necessarily excites the constant production of electricity, in its dual character of attraction and repulsion, according to its well-known laws; and this double character, alone possessed by electricity, when concentrated produces material affinity, with reciprocal attraction and repulsion, in all its atoms, thus forever preventing entire solidity or entire separation of its parts. Such condensation of matter by electric action, is the origin of heat and the variety produced by incandescence, which, therefore, accounts for the formation of globes from the materials in space, and their sustentation in orbit.
As motion is the normal condition of matter, and is the producer of electricity, therefore electric actions, concentrated in space, necessarily gathers cometic and nebulous matter from space, the materials, through incandescence, for future globes, with orbits contracting in proportion to condensation, its maximum of attraction. As material space is boundless, so the creation of globes is endless therein, through electric action, by producing gradual centres of material condensation, the mere whirlpool specks in infinite space.
Revolving bodies, gaseous, fluid, or solid, thus impress or charge the centres of their motion, by superinduced attraction, with electricity, as their Leyden jars. So, too, the central body, or primary of a system, so overcharged with electricity by its revolving secondaries, becomes positively electrified or repellant to all such revolving bodies; and thus the producers and accumulator are mutually attractive and repellant of each other.
The planets, by their lightning speed in orbits and on their axes, being producers, and the sun the recipient or accumulator of electricity; the latter, as the centre of our revolving system, is the Leyden jar, and thus becomes the overcharged positive source and dispenser of electric light and heat to the surrounding planets.
The planets, as producers, are always negatively electric, tending toward the accumulator, the sun; while the latter, as the accumulator, being overcharged, is positively electric, and repels. The sun being the greater body, the planets' negative electric attraction for it must always yield to the greater mass and tend toward the sun; while that great body, overcharged with accumulated positive electricity, is fully capable of repelling such tendency of the lesser revolving planets toward it. Attraction or gravitation with the planets, and repulsion (instead of centrifugal force) with the sun, forever and inexhaustibly retain the various bodies, of each system, in their respective orbits. As motion is the normal condition of matter, eternally producing electric action, and when centralized evolving light and heat; so light and heat are as inexhaustibly eternal as motion, and may thus be demonstrated as electric. The same principle of action applies to all individual globes of each separate system, conjointly; and collectively, the different systems mutually attract and repel each other, proportionate to mass and the weakened forces of distance, thus preserving a cosmical harmony throughout creation, forever forbidding collision or destruction of individual globes.
This theory will be found to correspond with the well-known laws of positive and negative electric action; as well as illustrative of the influence of electric light on vegetable production—the only artificially produced light, capable of imparting a healthy growth, and color—which, I think, clearly proves it to be of the same character as solar light. It is also corroborative of much that is inexplicable, except in the identity of electricity with solar effulgence, as the source of light, heat, and gravitation, as well as substituting repulsion for centrifugal force, and must forever disprove the theory of solar light being the result of mere metallic incandescence, or any other equally exhausting combustion. The latter theory, with such supposed expedients in nature, to carry out the mighty design of creation, belittles the subject by its transitoriness, and is, therefore, unworthy the conception of modern generations.
The predominant haze, which generally envelops the landscape and reddens the sun and moon during long droughts, is usually ascribed to smoke from burning woods and forests, pervading the air. I have observed a similar prevalent haze, connected with other extensive droughts than the one from which the country is now (August) suffering, and have invariably heard the same vague and inadequate cause assigned. Observation proves conclusively, that the assigned is not the true general cause (although it has its purely local effect), as with winds, for days together, in opposite quarters from local fires on mountain or plain, such widespread districts remain enveloped in haze, although hundreds of miles distant. Neither over such districts was there any odor as from smoke pervading the atmosphere (except temporarily from some neighboring chimneys, which the then heavy air kept near the earth), nor felt by the eyes, which very perceptibly smart when exposed to smoke. It is impossible, with varying winds, that mere local fires should spread smoke so uniformly as to comprise most of the area of the drought, which on this occasion extended from our great western lakes to the Atlantic seacoast; and anomalously, too, that it should have continued so long after a rain had extinguished those fires.
I should assign a very different cause for this phenomenon. Rain drops are negatively electric, while suspended moisture, such as fog, displays itself in the form of vesicles or globules, distended by the presence and prevalence of positive electricity, which refracts the rays of light from so many myriad surfaces, that all objects are thus, necessarily, obscured to the eye. During droughts, when haze prevails, positive electricity in the air becomes in excess, which is heating, and therefore serves still more to subdivide, as well as to expand or distend the floating moisture in the atmosphere (of which it is never entirely deprived) into infinitesimal vesicles, or globules, like minute soap bubbles, and thus from such an infinite number of refracting surfaces is produced the haze, as well as the obscuration of the landscape and the reddened disks of the sun and moon, by the absorption of their heat or red rays, so characteristic of great droughts. This same infinitesimal vesicular condition of suspended moisture, is also the sufficient cause of there being no deposition of dew on such occasions, except where a local change of electric condition cools the air, thus temporarily clearing the atmosphere, and permitting a local deposition of the previously suspended moisture, in the form of dew.
All fogs are due to this same cause, as well as that which, in extreme wintry cold, overhangs the open water, as it yields its comparative heat to the air. The formation and suspension of clouds, in all their varied characteristics, have the same origin. That highly attenuated haze which invests the distant landscape, particularly mountains, with its magical purple hue, is due to the same, but still more ethereal interposition of infinitesimal globules of suspended moisture. In corroboration of this being the true explanation of the phenomena of haze, fogs, etc., is the fact, that as soon as clouds prevail, denoting an electric change in the atmosphere, all haze immediately disappears, or becomes embraced in the larger vesicles or globules, forming clouds.
She sewed them on upside down. Please to remember that this was in May, 1861 (or was it 1851? it seems a long time ago), when a young lady of the most finished education, polished to the uttermost nine, could not reasonably be expected to know what a sergeant-major was, much less the particular cut and fashion of his badge of rank. I told her, exultingly, that I was appointed sergeant-major of our battalion. 'What's that?' she inquired, simply enough. I explained. The dignity and importance of the office was scarcely diminished in her mind by my explanation; and, indeed, I thought it the grandest in the army. Who would be a commissioned officer, when he could wear our gorgeous gray uniform, trimmed with red, the sleeves wellnigh hidden behind three broad red stripes in the shape of a V, joined at the top by as many broad red arcs, all beautifully set off by the lithe and active figure of Sergeant-Major William Jenkins? As for Mary, who protested that she never could learn the difference between all these grades, or make out the reason for them, she was for her part convinced that not even the colonel himself, certainly not that fat Major Heavysterne, could be grander, or handsomer, or more important than her William. So I forgave her for sewing on my chevrons upside down, although it was at the time an infliction grievous to be born, inasmuch as the fussy little quartermaster-sergeant was thereby enabled to get a day's start of in the admiration and envy of our old company. How they envied us, to be sure! But I had one consolation: Oates' were all straight; mine were arched. Andshesewed mine on. His were done by Cutts & Dunn's bandy-legged foreman.
There never was such a uniform as ours. Not even the 'Seventh' itself—incomparable in the eyes of thethree-months'—could vie in grand and soldierly simplicity, we thought, with the gray and red of the 9th Battalion, District of Columbia Volunteers. Gray cap, with a red band round it, letters A S, for 'American Sharpshooters' (Smallweed used to say he never saw it spelt in that way before, and to ask anxiously for the other S), gray single-breasted frock coat, with nine gilt buttons, and red facings on the collar andcuffs. Gray pantaloons, with a broad red stripe down the outer seam. The drummers sported the most gorgeous red stomachs ever seen, between two rows of twenty little bullet buttons. The color rendered us liable to be mistaken for the rebels, it is true; but this source of anxiety to the more nervous among us was happily prevented from leading to any unfavorable results by the fatherly care displayed by poor old General Balkinsop, under whose protection, we were sent into the field, in always keeping at least a day's march from the enemy!
When we non-commissioned staff officers were first promoted, we felt badly about leaving our companies; wanted to drill with them still, and so on. But this soon wore off under the pressure of new duties. For my part, I soon found that the adjutant, Lieutenant Harch, regarded it as quite a natural arrangement that the sergeant-major should attend to the office duties, while the adjutant occupied himself exclusively with what he was pleased to style the military part of the business; meaning thereby, guard mounting every morning and Sunday morning, inspection once a week, making an average of, say, twenty minutes work per diem for the adjutant, and leaving the poor sergeant-major enough to occupy and worry him for ten or eleven hours. 'Sergeant-major, publish these orders,' Lieutenant Harch would say, in tones of authority exceeding in peremptory curtness anything I have ever heard since from the commander of a grand army; and then, scraping a match—my match—upon the wall, he would begin attending to his 'military duties' by lighting a cigar—my cigar—and strolling up the avenue, on exhibition, preparatory to going home to dine, while the fag remained driving the pen madly, kindly assisted sometimes by Quartermaster-Sergeant Oates, until long after the dinner hour of the non-commissioned staff. I think the company commanders must sometimes have doubted (unless they carefully refrained from reading orders, as I have sometimes thought probable) whether the adjutant could write his name; for all our orders used to be signed:
'By order of MajorJohnson Heavysterne:
Frederick Harch,1st Lieutenant and Adjutant,ByWilliam Jenkins, Sergeant-Major.'
Now, if the printer sets this up properly, you will see that, even at that early day, we knew too much to adopt the sensation style of signing orders which some officers have since learned from theNew York Herald, thus:
By command of
Major-General BULGER!Washington Smith, A. A.-G.
In those days there was but little of that distinction of ranks which has come to be better observed now that our volunteers have grown into an army. You see, the process of forming an army out of its constituent element follows pretty much the fashion set by that complex machine the human animal: the materials go through all the processes of swallowing, digestion, chylifaction, chymifaction, absorption, alteration, and excretion; bone, muscle, nerve, sinew, viscera, and what not, each taking its share, and discarding the useless material that has only served, like bran in horse feed, to give volume andprehensibilityto the mass. Our non-commissioned staff messed with the major, who was as jolly a bachelor as need be, of some forty-nine years of growth, and thirty of butchering, that being his occupation. The adjutant, being newly married to a gaunt female, who, I hope, nagged him as he us,preferredto take his meals at home. Smallweed, who had somehow got made quartermaster, couldn't go old Heavysterne, he said, and so kept as long as he could to his desultory habits of living as a citizen and a bachelor. So our mess consisted of the major, who exercised a paternal care over the rest of us, superintending, indeed often joining in, our amusements and discussions, our quarrels and makings up; of Quartermaster-Sergeant Oates, who knew all about everything and everybody better than anybody, and was always ready to ventilate his superior knowledge on the slightest provocation, and who, as Smallweed, now Lieutenant Smallweed, used to say, 'would have made a d——d elegant quartermaster-sergeant, if he hadn't had a moral objection to issuing anything;' of Chaplain Bender, a sanctified-looking individual of promiscuous theology and doubtful morals (the funny men used to speak of him irreverently as Hell Bender); of the battalion commissary, Lieutenant Fippany, an unmitigated swell; of Commissary-Sergeant Peck, a stumpy little fellow, full of facts and figures, and always quiet and ready; of the writer, Sergeant-Major Jenkins, or Jinkens as my name used to be mispronounced, infinitely to my disgust; and lastly, semi-occasionally, of the sutler, Mr. Cann. The surgeon, old Doctor Peacack, ran a separate mess, consisting of himself, the assistant surgeon, Dr. Launcelot Cutts, and hospital steward Spatcheloe.
The drum-major, Musician Tappit, having refused to be mustered in, and the War Department having presently refused to let us have any musicians at all, used to appear only on parades, gorgeous in his gray uniform and ornamental red stomach, disappearing with exemplary regularity, and diving into his upholsterer's cap and baize apron upon the slightest prospect of work or danger. I don't think it was ever my bad fortune to eat more unpleasant meals than those eaten at our mess table. The officers, excepting the major, but specially including the chaplain, used to insist on being helped first and excessively to everything; also on inviting their friends to dine on our plates, there being no extra ones; also on giving us the broken chairs, one in particular, that was cracked in a romp between the chaplain and the adjutant, and that pinched you when you sat on it. Then Lieutenant Harch was always playing adjutant at the dinner table, settling discussionsex cathedrain a sharp tone, and ordering his companions to help him to dishes, as thus: 'Sergeant-Major, p'tatoes!' 'Oates, beef!' 'Hurry up with those beans!' To be monosyllabic, rude to his superiors and equals, and overbearing to his inferiors in rank, this fledgling soldier—our comrade of a few days since, and presently the subordinate of most of us, through standing still while we went ahead—used to think the perfection and essence of the military system. And then that smug-faced, smooth-tongued, dirty-looking chaplain, with his second-hand shirt collars and slopshop morality—was it whiskey or brandy that his breath smelt oftenest of? He was the first chaplain I had seen, and I confess his rank breath, dirty linen, and ranker and dirtier hypocrisy, gave me a disgust toward his order that it took long months and many good men to obliterate.
The best part of May we spent in drilling and idling and grumbling, and some of us, not so hard worked as Sergeant-Major Jenkins, in the true military style of conviviality, usually terminating in an abrupt entry in the orderly book, opposite the name of the follower of Bacchus, 'Drunk; two extra tours guard duty;' or 'Drunk again; four extra tours knapsack drill.' Now, the knapsack drill, as practised by well-informed and duty-loving sergeants of the guard, simply consists in requiring the delinquent to shoulder, say, for two hours in every six, a knapsack filled with stones, blankets, or what not, until it weighs twenty, thirty, or perhaps forty pounds, according to the nature of the case and the officer who orders the punishment.
Quartermaster-Sergeant Oates and I went up, one afternoon, with Lieutenant Smallweed, Corporal Bledsoe of our old company, and two or threeothers, to see the famous 'Seventh' drill, out at Camp Cameron, which I suppose nearly everybody knows is situated about a mile and a half north of the President's house, on the 14th-street road, and just opposite to a one-horse affair that used to call itself 'Columbian College,' but which, after passing through a course of weak semi-religio-secessionism, gradually dried up, leaving its skin to the surgeon-general for a hospital. The afternoon we selected to visit Camp Cameron turned out to be an extra occasion. General Thomas, the adjutant-general of the army, was to present a stand of colors to the 'Seventh' on behalf of Mr. Secretary Cameron, on behalf of some ladies, I think. Ladies! I admire you very much, for the very many things wherein you are most admirable, but why, oh! why, in the name of the immortals, will you, why will you present flags? Don't do it any more, please. They are always packed up in a box and left somewhere almost as soon as your handkerchiefs have ceased waving, your soprano hurrahs ceased ringing; or else they are given to some pet officer for a coverlet. They cost a great deal of money; they oblige the poor soldiers to endure a mort of flatulent oratory at a parade rest; and they force the poor colonel, in a great perspiration, to stumble through a few feeble, ineffectual, and disjointed words of thanks, which he committed to memory last night from the original, written for him by the adjutant or the young regimental poet, but of which he has forgotten almost every other word. The wise old Trojan says, speaking of the horse (I get my quotations from the newspapers, you may be sure):
'Timeo Danaos, et dona ferentes;'
implying that he is opposed to going into that speculation in wooden horseflesh, because he fears the Greeks, even when they bring gifts. Just so, I fear the ladies, especially when they present flags. RememberPunch'sadvice to young persons about to be married?'Don't!'
The Seventh, after going through the usual evening parade, and a few simple manœuvres, formed square, facing inward, with General Thomas and the oil-skin sausage that contained the new colors, and all the regimental officers, in the centre. General Thomas's feeble pipes sounded faintly enough for about half an hour, during which time no man in the ranks heard more than a dozen words. Then Colonel Lefferts responded in a few inaudible, but no doubt very appropriate remarks. Then 'the boys,' seeing that the time had come, cheered lustily, after the hypothetical manner of the rocket. But there was one thing we did hear, standing on tiptoe, and straining every ear. The Seventh was to go somewhere. The crisis of the war had come. The Seventh was going to shoot at it. Their thirty days were almost out; but they were going to be shot at, just like any of us three-months men.
To leave their canned fruits, and milk, and fresh eggs, and board floors, and a stroll on the avenue in the afternoon, and go where glory waited for them! Happy, happy gray-breasts! We wandered enviously round the excited camp, and talked with our friends. Many were the rumors, appalling to us in those days, when we were yet unused to camp 'chin.' The regiment was to go to Harper's Ferry. Johnston was there. They would hang him if they took him. They were to march straight to Richmond, One man of the 'Engineer Company' was going to resign, he said, because his company had to remain to guard the camp. They were to take two days' rations and forty rounds of cartridges per man—ballcartridges. Forty rounds of ball cartridges and two days' work! Surely, we thought, the days of the rebellion are numbered. And then, chewing the bitter cud of the reflection that the war would almost certainly be endedbefore we got a chance at the enemy, we wandered sadly back to our quarters, Smallweed growling horribly all the way. Our 'headquarters' we find in a great state of excitement. We find the orderly and Major Heavysterne discussing the prospects of the rebels being able to hold out a month, and Color-Sergeant Hepp and the adjutant both trying to decide the dispute. Hepp thinks they can't do without leather, and the adjutant thinks the want of salt must fetch them in a few weeks. Thinks? Decides! Whatever may be doubtful, this is certain. Everybody seems strangely excited. We tell them our news. 'Tell us some'n do'n know!' rasps Lieutenant Harch; 'our b'ttalion's goin', too; get ready, both of, quick! Smallweed, where in the h— have you been? I've had to do all your work.' We were to go at nine o'clock at night. It was then eight. Whither? No one knew. The chaplain comes in, with symptoms of erysipelas in his nose, and a villanous breath, to tell us, while we—the quartermaster-sergeant and I—are packing our knapsacks and leaving lines of farewell for those at home and at other people's homes, that the major has imparted to him in confidence the awful secret that we are bound for Mount Vernon, to remove the bones of Washington. This gives us something terrible to think of as we march down, in quick time (a suggestion of that adjutant, I know), to the Long Bridge, and during the long delay there, spent by commanding officers in pottering about and gesticulating. By commanding officers? There is one there who does not potter, standing erect—that one with the little point of fire between his fingers that marks the never-quenched cigarette—talking to Major Heavysterne in low and earnest tones, but perfectly cool and clear the while. That is our splendid Colonel Diamond, as brave and good a soldier as ever drew sword, as noble and true a Christian as ever endured persecution and showed patience. They are discussing a plan for crossing the river in boats, landing at a causeway where the Alexandria road crosses Four Mile Run, and so cutting off the impudent picket of the enemy's cavalry that holds post at the Virginia end of the Long Bridge. The battalion commanders are evidently dazzled by the brilliancy of the moonlight and the colonel's scheme, for it soon becomes apparent that they haven't the pluck and dash necessary to render such an operation successful. Even we young soldiers, intent upon the awful idea of resurrecting Washington's bones, and little dreaming then of becoming the pioneers of the great invasion, could see the hitch. Presently the major got a definite order, and beckoning to us of the battalion staff, began to cross the bridge. Dusky bodies of troops, their arms glistening in the moonlight, had been silently gliding past us while the discussion progressed. Most of them seemed to have halted on the bridge, we found as we passed on, and to have squatted down in the shade of the parapet, gassing, smoking, or napping. It was nearly midnight. We had got to the middle of the causeway, and found ourselves alone, bathed in silence and moonlight and wonder, when up dashed a horseman from the direction of the Virginia side. He stopped, and peered at us over his horse's neck. 'O'Malley, is that you?' says the major, seeing it is an Irish officer belonging to Colonel Diamond's staff. 'Yes,' says the captain, 'and who the devil are you?' 'Major Heavysterne. Won't you please ride back and send my battalion forward? You'll find the boys standing on the draw. Cap'n Bopp, of the Fisler Guards, is the senior officer, I believe.' But the Irishman was off, with an oath at the major's stupidity in forgetting to order his men forward. Presently the battalion came creeping up, silently enough, I thought, but the adjutant made the excuse of a casual 'ouch'from a man on whose heels Hrsthzschnoffski had casually trodden, to shriek out his favorite 'Stop 'at talken'!' 'Do you command this battalion?' asks Captain Pipes, sternly; and straightway there would have been a dire altercation, but for the major's gentle interference. The bridge began to sway and roar under our steps. We were on the draw. Clinging to the theory of Washington's bones, I peered over the draw, in the hope of seeing a steamer; there was nothing there but the sop and swish of the tide. Perhaps we were not going to Mount Vernon at all! 'Halt! Who are these sleeping beauties on the draw? Ah! these are the Bulgers. 'Say, Bulger,' I ask of one of them, 'who's ahead of you?' 'A'n't nobody,' he replied indignantly, as who should say, Whocanbe ahead of the invincible Bulger Guards. Nobody! Here was great news. ''Orr'dH'RCH!' drones the major, in low tones; and 'Owa''H'MP,' sharply, ''Orrrr'RRRCH,' gruffly, repeat the captains. On we go, breaking step to save the bridge, surprise and fluttering in our hearts. A'n't nobody ahead! Now we are on the hard dirt, the sacred soil, of the pewter State, mother of Presidents, the birthplace of Washington, the feeding ground of hams, but otherwise the very nursery and hive of worthlessness, humbug, sham, and superstition. Virginia, that might have been the first, and proudest, and most enlightened State in the Union, that is the last and most besodden State in or half out of it—But while my apostrophe runs on, the bit between its teeth, the head of our little column muffles its tread on the sacred soil itself, dirtying its boots in the sacred mud, the roar of the bridge ceases, the last files and the sergeant-major run after them to close up, in obedience to the sharp mandate of the major, and the invasion is begun. No man spoke a word; no sound was audible save the distant hum and cracking of the city, the cry of a thousand frogs, and the muffled tramp of our advancing footsteps. I thought the enemy, if any were near, must surely hear the cartridges rattle in my cartridge box as we double-quicked to close up, and I put my hand behind me to stop the clatter. If any enemy were near, indeed! There seemed an enemy behind every bush, a rebel in every corner of the worm fence. I am in the rear of the column, I thought, and my heart went thump, bump, and my great central nervous ganglion ached amain. 'Sergeant-major,' whispers Major Heavysterne; 'Sergeant-major,' barks the adjutant. 'Fall out four files and keep off to the right, and about fifty paces in advance of the battalion, and examine the ground thoroughly. Report any signs of the enemy.' The ache grew bigger, and I perspired terribly as I inquired, in tones whose tremor I hoped would be mistaken for ardor, whether any one was ahead of us. 'No one except the enemy,' laughed the major, quietly. No one except the enemy! Fifty paces from any one except the enemy, by my legs, each pace a yard! 'The ground to the right is all water, and about seven feet deep,' I reported joyfully, having ascertained the fact. 'Then go fifty yards ahead, as far to the right as you can get, and keep out of sight,' were our new orders. I thought we would keep out of sight well enough! We were going up hill—up the hill on which Fort Runyon now stands. Here is a shanty. What if it should be full of the enemy, and we but four poor frightened men, with our battalion hidden by the turn in the road. Mechanically I cocked my rifle and opened the door, and strained my eyes into the darkness. Nobody. I let down the hammer again.
Fear had oozed out of my fingers' ends, in lifting the latch, just as valor did from those of Bob Acres, and Jenkins was himself again. We jobbed our bayonets under the lager-beer counter, to provide for the case of any lurking foe in that quarter. Just here theroad forked. Sending two of us to the right, the rest kept on the Alexandria. 'Look there,' chatters Todd second between his teeth, wafting in my face a mingled odor of fear and gin cocktails. 'Where?' 'Why there! on top of the hill—a horse.' 'Is that a horse?' 'Yes.' 'A man on him, too!' 'Two of 'em!' Click, click, click, from our locks. We creep on and up stealthily. We are scarcely thirty yards distant from the two horsemen, when a man darts out from the left-hand side of the road behind us—two men—three! We are surrounded. Todd second would have fired, but I held him back. 'Who's that?' I whispered; 'speak quick, or I fire!' 'Can't you see, you d—d fool,' barks out our surly adjutant, who, unknown to us, had been leading a similar scout on the opposite side of the road. Click, click, from up the hill. The enemy are going to shoot. An awful moment. We steady our rifles and our nerves; all trace of fear is gone; nothing remains but eagerness for the conflict that seems so near, and with a bound, without waiting for orders, we move quickly up the hill. Lieutenant Harch moves his men out into the road, where the bright moonlight betrays, perhaps multiplies, their number; the horsemen spring to their saddles, and are off at a clattering gallop, to alarm Alexandria. 'Don't shoot!' shrieks the adjutant; our rifles waver; the hill hides the flying picket; the chance is lost; presently all Alexandria will be awake, and a beautiful surprise frustrated. As we peer into the moonlit distance from the top of the hill now almost spaded away and trimmed up into Fort Runyon, feeling the solemnity of the occasion impressed upon us with dramatic force by all the surroundings—by our loneliness, by our character as the harbingers of the advance of the armies of American freedom and American nationality, and by the recent flight of the first squad of the enemy whom we had met with hostile purpose: as we dreamily drink in all these and many other vague ideas, up comes our battalion, and occupies the hill, the major sending off a company to hold the bridge where the road crosses the canal and forks to Arlington and Fairfax Court House. Presently there pass by us regiments from Michigan, New York, New Jersey, and it may be from other States which I forget. Some turn off to the right, to settle on the hill which is now scooped into Fort Albany; others press forward to Alexandria, the bells of which town very soon begin to ring a frightened peal of alarm and confusion. We move out a half mile farther and halt, our night's work being over, and other things in store; the moonlight wanes, and grows insensibly into a chilly daylight, presently reddened by the sun of to-morrow. All this seems to us to have occupied scarcely half an hour, but it is broad day again for certain, and surely we are a mortally tired and aching battalion as we march back listless, hot, sleepy, and gastric, over the Long Bridge, to our armory, there to fall asleep over breakfast in sheer exhaustion, and to spend the remainder of the day in a dry, hard series of naps, not the least refreshing—such as leave you the impression of having slept in hot sand. As we—the quartermaster-sergeant and I—stroll down the avenue that afternoon according to our wont, we hear the news of Ellsworth's death, of the occupation of Alexandria by our forces, and of the flight of the enemy's handful of silly, braggadocio Virginia militia, hastily collected to brag and drink the town safe from the pollution of the vile Yankee's invading foot. Ah! V'ginia; as thou art easily pleased to sing of thy sister-in-law, Ma'yland,
'The taäirahnt's foot is awn thaï sho','
and will be likely to remain thar a right tollable peert length of time, I expect.
Nothing but bridge guarding in the festering swamp on the Virginia sideof the Potomac, varied by multiplying details for extra duty as clerks in all imaginable offices, falls to our lot until the 10th of June, when, after a number of rumors, and many dark forebodings as to what the District men would do, we are finally ordered into the field as a part of the Chickfield expedition, originally designed for the capture of Dregsville, I believe; an object which may have been slightly interfered with by its detailed announcement about a week beforehand in one of the Philadelphia papers. The expedition consisted of the First, Third, Fifth, and Ninth Battalions of District of Columbia Volunteers, the First New Hampshire, the Ninth New York, and the Seventeenth Pennsylvania, whichwouldcall itself the First. I think four other regiments from the same State did the same thing, it being a cardinal principle with them, perhaps, that each regiment was to claim two different names and three different numbers, and that at least four other regiments were fiercely to dispute with it each name and each number: for example, there was the