The stranded bugle, and other poems and prose : including The eagle (originally contributed to the Los Angeles Times)

Front matter

LEROY E. MOSHER

LEROY E. MOSHER

("HANK WAGONER")

II

If I were asked to say what I remember as the most striking characteristic of Leroy Mosher, I should answer, without hesita tion, " He was a lovable man." During the ten years or more that I was in somewhat close contact with him, I do not remem ber a single occasion upon which he used harsh or unkind lan guage toward anybody. He gave out emanations of joy and good will, so that a man felt better and happier for coming into his presence.

Perhaps you consider this a comparatively small matter. Nay ; not so ! In these strenuous days, when the struggle of life is so fierce, we who are engaged in moulding public opinion, in aiding the wheels of commerce to revolve and the wilderness to blossom, too often are inclined to become sombre, and abrupt, and incon siderate toward those with whom we are brought into daily con tact. Many of the great men of history are largely the gainers by the distant view we have of them, for their personal lives might not bear close inspection. There was, for instance, the poor dyspeptic Carlyle, who has given such great and valuable works to the world. Yet he made life a hell to his patient wife. It is not always those to whom stately monuments are raised that live longest in the hearts of those who have known them. Be assured that when the recording angel balances up the good and the bad that a man has done on earth, he will give as much credit to the kindly word and the cheering smile as to a great mechani cal invention or the winning of a battle.

Mosher possessed a remarkable faculty. He was ambidex trous. He could take a pencil in each hand, and in that stylish, copperplate writing of his, dash off a sentence simultaneously, writing the one forward and the other backward, each perfect. I have sometimes thought that this was typical of his versatile na ture. For he was an ideal newspaper man, knowing something of everything, although perhaps not deeply versed in any one thing. He was level-headed in all matters where his own per sonal affairs were not directly concerned, and remarkably quick in perception. It required no surgical operation to get a joke into his head.

It looks like a satire upon human life that this sweet-hearted man, who wrote the names of his enemies on sand and of his friends on marble, to whom scores of willing hands would have been stretched out, had he but spoken the word, should have gone so prematurely hence into the Great Unknown. May God rest his soul !

HARRY ELLINGTON BROOK.

III

Let me speak of Leroy E. Mosher as man, as friend, as fellow-worker.

First of all, he was a Man in the best and noblest sense of the word. His manhood was sincere, undeviating, fundamental.

xi

It was not a veneer. It came from within. It was the outward symbol and manifestation of a soul that was truly great; great in the majesty of simplicity, of uprightness, of loyalty to principle, and of instinctive adherence to the right.

In the soul of this man there was no pretense. It was too full of love to have in it any hypocrisy. His nature was so gen tle that he could not be unjust; so just that he could not be un kind. Yet with all his gentleness, with all his inherent sweetness and wholesomeness of character, strength and firmness were not lacking. His manifold and multiform sympathies did not de generate into weakness. The firm foundation of manhood upon which his character was builded held him securely above the weaknesses that are belittling.

The character of this man whom we all so loved and honored was a mine of pure, tmminted gold — opulent, exhaustless, grow ing richer and deeper in proportion as it was drawn upon for sympathy, and hope, and the love that conquers all.

As a friend, Mosher was the heart and soul of loyalty. He followed with loving fidelity the admonition of Polonius to Laertes —

"The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel."

Among the long, long list of friends who loved him as their alter ego, not one can be found to say that he ever betrayed or forgot the sacred trusts of friendship. The writer will remember with deep thankfulness, to the end of life, that his was the good fortune to be counted as one of these. Between man and man there is no holier tie than the altruism of genuine friendship. All that man can find in the heart of man to love and honor, the friends of Leroy E. Mosher found in his faithful and generous heart.

As friend and fellow-worker, the writer could tell of a thous and kindnesses, of consideration that had in it no thought of self, of cheery words that go so far to brighten and uplift the lives of those who hear them. His greeting was always " Brother." If he had sorrows — and who has not? — he did not weakly yield to them nor utter complaint.

He set himself cheerfully and resolutely to do the work to which Duty called him. The esteem in which he was held is xn not expressible in words. The thought that we shall see him in life no more cannot all be minted into terms of speech.

Farewell, Brother; and may peace be with you forevermore ! " Friends, this frail bark of ours, when sorely tried, May wreck itself without the Pilot's guilt, Without the Captain's knowledge."

THEO. M. CARPENTER.

IV

It was my privilege to serve on The Times for quite a long period almost directly under the late L. E. Mosher. I had known him in quite an intimate way for years. My opinion is that it was in such relations as we bore in the way of superior and sub ordinate that we knew Mr. Mosher best. His nature was sunny and kindly far beyond the average. He had as little asperity and acidity in his disposition as any man I ever knew in close friend ship. This brightness and kindness of his nature came out to those under him, perhaps more than to those on his own level or to his superiors in position. In all the trials which beset the path of the reporter in the discharge of his duties, L. E. Mosher always held out both hands in encouragement and practical help fulness. He never condemned without a full hearing, and when patiently and kindly he had sifted the matter to the bottom, no matter who stood behind the attack on the reporter, if he could show honesty of purpose and diligence in the work he had done, he was safe. Where a man made a slip he always treated the matter with forbearance, but always exacted greater care in the. future. The hand of his discipline was laid on lightly and kindly.

His talents in the newspaper world were by all recognized as very high. He was a diligent user of his own talents, and made the utmost of each of them. He expected in a liberal measure that those whose duty it was to co-operate with him in the arduous task of getting out a newspaper whose motto is " All the news all the time " would realize that earnest, persistent and wisely-directed effort were essential every hour of every day in the year. He was not a commander who stood back and said to those in the ranks, " Go in, boys, and win." His cry was ever, " Come on, boys, and win." That spirit secured for him honest service from every man on the staff.

L. E. Mosher had high ideals of American citizenship. The patriotic impulses which led him in his boyhood to risk his life on the battlefields of his country continued with him through life and made him ever watchful over all that threatened to stain the honor of his country or his State. For he was an ardent Californian in his appreciation of the grand possibilities of this commonwealth. He realized how great a responsibility rested on a newspaper, and never allowed its columns to be prostituted to corrupt influences in politics or business.

Mr. Mosher's temperament was in a large measure that of the poet. His affections were of the warmest, and I think it may be said that he never failed a friend, much less those who had a claim on his heart for its best love. And dreamer though the poet may be, the fancies which flocked thick through his brain never dimmed his vision to the practical, prosaic side of life. His training in the railroad service was the most rigid from the busi ness point of view, and no matter how much the scintillations of the imagination might flash before his mental vision, they never dazzled him so that he lost sight of the substantial realm of hard racts in the every-day and work-a-day world.

G. W. BURTON.

V

There are some persons whose dispositions are so amiable and guileless that one feels at ease with them and pleasantly im pressed on first acquaintance. Such a man was Leroy E. Mosher. To look into his eyes inspired confidence and friendship. He seemed to regard every one from the best standpoint, and to take it for granted that all were worthy of his confidence. Even when convinced to the contrary, he was loath to acknowledge it, and more sorrowful than embit tered.

During the many years of our acquaintance, I cannot re call a single instance where Mr. Mosher uttered an unkind word or indulged in a peevish remark, even when under pres sure in a strenuous moment.

At a very tender age our friend lost his mother, and the little home to him became a sad memory. Times were hard. Border warfare was ravishing Kansas. Grown men were fight ing, and women and boys were working. Young Mosher was placed among neighbors to help in farm-work; in planting time he toiled behind the team and plow among the clods of a Kansas cornfield; and during the dreary winter days he stood in the snow and husked corn.

Such was our friend's boyhood ; but even then he was learning from Nature the lessons of life, and absorbing the inspirations that made him the patriot, the poet and the rounded-out man.

Leroy E. Mosher was descended from a long line of dis tinguished ancestors, who emigrated from France in the Seventeenth Century and located in England. They were prominent Protestants, and are supposed to have gone to England to escape religious persecution. A son of one of these immigrants was a man of superior business talents and became a member of the East India Company. He was sent by the company to Calcutta, where he amassed a large for tune. He subsequently returned to England and was made a baron. He died childless, and efforts have been made by American descendants to secure the property. A number of descendants of other branches of the family subsequently came to the United States and became distinguished in the ministry or in the army. A number were prominent officers in the Revolutionary War and friends of Washington. Capt. John Mosher's commission was signed by John Hancock. He had two brothers killed in the battle of Bunker Hill, and when Gen. Warren was wounded in that battle he fell into Capt. Mosher's arms, where he died.

Good bye, old friend ! May we meet on the other side !

"The good, the brave, the beautiful !

How dreamless is their sleep, Where rolls the dirge-like music Of the ever-tossing deep !

Or where the mournful night-winds

Pale Winter's robes have spread Above the narrow palaces in

The cities of the dead!"

ALBERT MCPARLAND.

NOTE.

The reproductions which are here taken from the writings of Leroy E. Mosher necessarily take a wide range, and hence no attempt has been made at continuity or at classification of subjects, beyond arranging the matter under the general subdi visions of " The Eagle," Poetry, Prose, Editorials and Editorial Paragraphs, with suitable sub-headings over special articles on a variety of subjects.

Some of the descriptive matter, particularly that relating to great political conventions held in the past, may possibly be re garded by critics as not exactly timely; yet it is appropriately re produced here on account of its style and graphic qualities, and with the additional object of marshaling in review the great pub lic events of the past with which the author dealt through his brilliant pen.

For reasons equally candid, there has been no studied sup pression of political or partisan utterances by the outspoken jour nalist during his service with the Los Angeles Times. He wrote earnestly, with admirable candor, and without malice; and it is therefore considered the fairer way to faithfully reproduce, with out excuse or apology, what he wrote and as he wrote it, as far as his writings are republished here.

[poems.

THE STRANDED BUGLE.

V/ritten about 1877. Reprinted from The Aldine. Reproduced in many different journals.

One eve, I, musing, paced the sands

That skirt a shore where sets the sun,

Where every ripple of the sea

Is warm as kisses, love to love;

I listened to the droning waves —

The lace-like waves which fret and lave

The tinted shells upon the beach.

Among the jetsam washed ashore I found, deep in a sea-weed bed, A bugle, with the rime of years Corroded, tarnished, long since dumb.

I paused, and, wondering whence it came, Stooped down and took it from the sand.

Long, long before, I, young, had stood

Where armies gathered and advanced,

Where sabers clanked and trumpets blared,

And I had been a bugler then.

I dipped the mouthpiece in the sea —

I dipped the bell into the sea —

I washed its battered, brazen throat,

Then held to lip and flung a blast

Out on the pulsing, starlit air.

The long-hushed bugle woke and rang A limpid cadence 'long the shore, Which drifted out to sea, and came In ripples back upon the waves.

Which rocked its echoes back and forth From cliff to cliff — against the crags — Far up the heights, around and 'round As though it pealed, " I'm found, I'm found ! "

I blew again, a softer note,

Though full, which rang along the land —

Rang full, and clear, and sweet, and far ;

I thought (but could it swell so high?)

I heard it echo 'gainst a star,

Then drop into the placid sea,

A strain of perfect melody.

I hear that last note ringing yet, Like cry of lost one far away, Adrift and drifting past recall; I fancy it may be a soul — Perhaps the soul of melody !

So let it drift, and sink, and swell With every motion of the deep!

The bugle hangs against my wall, And when I will I'll send once more A blast upon it to the sea, To keep the lost one company.

ODE

TO OUR HEROES, RESTING.

I.

How sweet they sleep, our heroes,

Each like a babe upon its mother's bosom,

Lulled by the silken rustle of her robe.

II.

No bugle startles them at night

When high and far the white moon

Seems shouldering her way among the stars;

And Other Poems and Prose.

No throb of drum frets them into effort — No clank of saber and no shriek of shell Pierces the weight of silence lying Upon their pulseless hearts.

III.

Dawn creeps over the hilltops,

And with its ruddy light

Smiles on the dew-gemmed grasses

And kisses the fragrant meads;

Yet still our brave sleep on.

No neigh of steed nor voice commanding

Reaches the changeless quiet where they lie.

IV.

Clouds gather, and the dun sky Weeps above their faces ; the rain Gullies the knolls that show us Where they're resting; across the Forests and the fields the wind sweeps, Sobbing in the trees like mourners In the streets; yet still they slumber on, Our brave whose hearts are hushed.

V.

Absent in the farther Southland,

Amid the marshes and dark morasses —

By the rivers drifting to the sea —

Upon the mist-crowned mountains, where

Gaunt pines like spires pierce the upper air,

They rest in unknown graves.

No shifting bayonets gleam in the

Summer sun — tho' were it so

They could not know — their hearts are hushed.

VI

Yet once was war! That awful noun

Of fire and death! Long, gleaming lines

Of steel threaded the land. The wheels

Of cannon made furrows in the fields Where once the song of birds Flooded the pulsing space; a bugle's trill Rent the glad air of morning, and night Was born amid its brazen echo.

VII

With lance and sword, with musket and carbine, Columns wheeled into place; around the Gilded eagles and the flaunting flags The battle swirled, and brave men Fell from the lead-swept ranks In death upon the field of honor.