The veteran and his pipe

Preface

Comrade:

If you have succeeded in forgetting the impulse that made yon, for a time at least, a hero, and regarding your wounds as "•23oor dumb mouths" that testify of personal peril, rather than the immortal cause in which they were won, you can hardly feel surprise that the veteran is remembered chiefly as a pensioner ; heroism regarded only as a claim to public charity, and '^the soldier vote''' considered a political commodity, to be purchased with the promise of public plunder.

The Author.

INDEX OF TITLES.

A Double Annlv^ersaey 19

" Fkeedom and the Right" 21

High Water Mark , , 32

" The President Visits Gettysburg " 45

Our May Days 58

" Memorial " (?) Day 70

' ' Alas, Sweet Charity " 82

Puritan or Cavalier 95

" Peace in the Clover-Scented Am " 108

" The Day We Celebrate ! " 122

The Harmony op Disagreement 137

" The Hurt Is in the Heart " 150

Types and Landmarks 162

" With Drum-Beat and Heart-Beat " 172

The PtEFLECTED Light of Fame 188

The Mount of Transfiguration 202

Hymns of the Ages .• , 212

Songs of Two Pp:oples 224

The Climax of Devotion 234

Joined or Parted? . . . 248

Autumn Reveries 261

THE YETERAI AND HIS PIPE.

A DOUBLE ANOTYEESAEY.

Apkil 14, 1861 — The Sureender of Fort Sumter — April 14, 1865 — The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

IT is a strangely eventful day. Blower, — the anniversary of death and life. Many, perhaps the great majority of those who think to note its recurrence, count it perchance the saddest of all those land-marks by which our national growth is marked, or individual achievement commemorated. But we will celebrate it. Blower, as a feast of thanksgiving and a festival of rejoicing. Twenty-four years ago to-day the nation awoke to the new life of its most glorious epoch. The blow had fallen on the evening of the previous day. At midnight tolling bells began its proclamation to a wondering people. With the dawning came fuller knowledge of the thing we feared. The echoes of the guns of Moultrie were yet sounding the knell of peace over our broad land. The sunshine of the sabbath morning looked down on strangely contrasted scenes. The South was hoarse with exultant shouting. The emblems of rejoicing floated there from every hilltop.

The cannon's sulphurous breath and the bonfire's smoldering embers told of the night's wild jubilee of exultation. The church bells pealed out joyfully. The matin hymns were songs of victory. Miriam's exultant chant echoed from thousands of lips that smiled with the joy of accomplished success and anticipated triumph. Thanksgiving was the theme of every pulpit. The light of conquest was in every eye, the joy of victory in every heart.

Where the nation's power was still supreme, and her glory esteemed above section and self, the scene was widely different. How well we remember it to-day, Blower. The chill, gray sunshine looked on clouded brows ! Eyes were dull with weeping, or red with sullen rage ! Men wore grave faces and were strangely silent ! Women's cheeks were pallid, and they wept stealthily ! The sabbath bells sounded full of solemn foreboding as they called a stricken people to the house of prayer. The sanctuaries overflowed with worshipers ! The nation bowed before its God, and prayed that the blood-red cup might pass its lips, or grace be given to bear its woe! The Merciful heard and answered! The nation drank of the red wine of slaughter; but a richer, stronger life than she had ever known before swept through her veins !

Twenty years ago to-day another scene in the great tragedy of our national life was enacted. On that day the stroke was given which transformed an exultant nation into a weeping, grief-stricken people. The grandest life which has yet sprung from the loins of the Western world in the very hour of triumph entered.

through the gate of treacherous violence, into the haven of immortality. The banners of victory flaunted gaily over thousands of happy homes when the sun went down. Smiling lips told joyful tidings by the firelit hearth. Fair cheeks flushed red with welcoming roses for the home-coming brave. Even they that mourned the dead forgot their sorrow in the universal joy. The morrow's noon saw the flaunting banners bound and draped, the fair cheeks paler than the snow, and the mourners' woe enhanced a thousandfold.

Ahr! well do I pmember. Blower, how I pressed the empty sleeve against the aching heart, while your polished amber tip slid from my quivering lips, as I bowed my head upon the rough pine desk to which a veteran's duty bound me still, and wept when the morning brought us knowledge of the night's bereavement. I remember thrusting your gleaming bowl within its silken case and pushing it aside regardless of its soothing fragrance. I remember still the trace of tear-drops on the azure cuff which marked the humble service I was permitted to discharge. How often had I looked with pride on that gold-bordered bit of velvet which told of danger manfully incurred, and duty faithfully performed. Until that hour the veteran's pride had swallowed up all other thought. Our country's glory had blinded me to all wea^<:er sentiments. The roar of battle had seemed to me the Nation's regal challenge to a wondering world and waiting future, published by the cannon's brazen lips. Laden as it might be with terror, it always brought a thrill of rapture to my heart, because I heard in its echoes the

10 THE VETERAN AKD HIS PIPE.

angry defiance of a free people to oppression, or the triumph of conscience over wrong.

Even the poor brave comrades who had shared peril and privation with ns, whose bones lay bleaching on so many battle-scarred hillsides, had hardly been mourned. To have died for such a cause seemed more of a privilege than a hardship. They were rather to be envied than deplored, because of the beneficent glory that enshrined their memories. It seemed but natural for a soldier to die, and an infinite honor to die for a cause so holy. They had not fought for themselves, their own exaltation, nor even for their own homes or firesides. Their devotion was not tainted by the flavor of self. They died for the rights of man, for the perpetuity of a government founded on liberty, in deadly conflict with a republic based on the principle of slavery. These were foolish notions, as we now can well perceive ; but in those days I never doubted the Moslemic dogma that "the gates of heaven swing easily before brave souls coming up from the battlefield." So the thought of conflict brought only a stern, strange joy. When we heard that thousands fell, we only thought how each death magnified our victory or added strength to our determination to avenge defeat. Strange as it may seem, I had hardly mourned the missing limb, which molders back to dust beneath the shadow of the springing pines. We were young then. Blower, and life was sweet as vernal sunshine to the springing early buds. The thought of death was all the more irksome because of life's delightsomeness. To be maimed, I knew was to be branded through the years

THE VETERAN AND HIS PirE. 11

that were to come as one in power less than his fellows — bearing in life the visible sign-manual of death. Today I almost blush to OAvn that I was then proud of the folded sleeve, because I had given the limb that filled it for the cause of human freedom. I did not once think of fame, nor of comparing myself with my fellows, whether the same had proved themselves meritorious or undeserving. I only thought that I had given up my blood to swell the rich tide that had been poured out to quicken the tree of liberty's second growth. Even the promotion that followed hard upon my hurt and bore date upon the day it happened, seemed a trivial thing compared with the high privilege I had enjoyed.

In that day, when clods were lifted to the plane of heroes, and knightly souls were fired to marvelous achievment — in all those years of conflict — there had been one, whose devotion every true heart felt had far eclipsed all others, whose tender, serious, self-forgetful spirit brooded regretfully, yet encouragingly, over every battle-field. Our ^' Father Abraham " had become to every heart a presence real and benign, which represented all that was noblest and most glorious in the struggle in which we were engaged. Strange as it may seem to the hard, material present, the sad, plain features of the Liberator were glorified to our eyes, so that we only saw benignity, devotion and a wisdom passing that of earth, in their calm austerity. He was to us the very impersonation of the spirit in which we fought, "Malice toward none and charity for all." Under its inspiration we bore " the banner of the free"

from victory to victory, counting no hardships too great, and no perils too woeful, while we followed where it led. To us the homely features represented a new era, which we fondly hoped would dawn when all the evils of the past had been swept away, and peace should bring her shining harvest of prosperity. To us he was the forerunner of an era of unmatched blissfulness — a millennium which should cover the continent and send the reflection of its glory across the seas. We did not light to triumph or to slay. The tender heart that led us on would have grieved, we fondly thought, had any impulse so low and base nerved our arms and steeled our hearts for conflict. He was the glorified incarnation of a beatific future. We kneAV he had forgotten himself in his devotion to a principle, of which the day in which he lived was but the seed time of the harvest which some distant morrow was to bring. His life had become so intermingled with the nation's future, in our thought, that we hardly counted him as mortal. We longed to see the load of care uplifted from his brow, and note the glint of jocund sunshine in his eye once more. He was our " Old Abe," calm and true and faithful. The touch of earthiness was never in the picture which our loving fancy drew of him. We never once thought of him as having any personal interest in the events that were happening beneath his ken. It was only as the guardian angel of his country's honor and the future's hope that he overlooked the vast arena and smiled sadly but hopefully when blood sank into the thirsty sand.

No vulgar sentiment debased him in our fancjr.

If we laughed at scurrilous jests, which made .the tour of the camps under his name, it was with no thought that the ascription of paternity was true ; but with a real gladness in the thought that the overburdened heart did sometimes find even a momentary relief from care in mirthful fancies. He was to us a tender leader, who, while he bore his own great burden uncomplainingly, found time to lighten ours, by pointing us to the future, ever bright to his eyes with the fruition of a divine hope. He was our Lincoln — the fruit of a marvelous past, and the precursor of a future to be shaped and moulded by his aspirations — greater than the greatest, humbler than the lowliest !

So when death came to him in the hour of final triumph, it seemed that all other deaths had been in vain. The little we had done was naught. The heroism of our fallen comrades was but wasted manhood. With his last breath it seemed that the future's hope had departed. The free, proud, happy land which we had pictured resting peacefully beneath his placid smile, while the loitering years went by and death unwilling brought at length the crown of immortality — this dream, which had filled so many millions of strong hearts, was blotted out forever. In his grave it seemed were buried all the brightness of the future. Those who were left, however good and great they might be, seemed but base and mean in comparison with him^our immortal martyr. The sunshine was blotted out of the triumphlighted sky, and the horizon was again overcast. The shadow of the present veiled the future to our eyes.

We know now, Blower, that this was but a foolish notion — a silly sentiment. The man whose death blotted out the sunlight of that mid-April day was not exceptionally great, if indeed he^ was great at all, judging by our later and, of course, better standards. Plain almost to uncouthness, he brought despair to the tailor's heart. Unversed in the wisdom of the schools, the highest culture yet esteems him but an uncut diamond — a possible brilliant. Counting the JSTation worthy to be saved only as it represented the idea of human liberty and equal right, he is regarded by the completer manhood of to-day as a man of one idea whom the fever of the times cast into accidental prominence. Simple as a child, he is, of course, not to be ranked among statesmen. Little given to denunciation and a stranger to self-glorification, he is naturally little esteemed by an age which accounts fault-finding the test of wisdom. Deeming the safety of the ISTation a matter above all price, he is held in- little esteem by a generation of publicists to v»diom an economic theory outweighs in sacredness the rights of man. Even they who have written of him — saving only one or two — seem to have accounted him great only in kindness, coarse wit, and a sort of instinctive cunning in the measurement of men and the forecasting of events. They depict him as fortunate, above all other men, in favoring accidents.

Some have sought to popularize the story of his life by magnifying the superficial coarseness of his nature. Some who observed him closely saw nothing in his character but a strange compound of th*e trickster and the clown. To them his greatness was but accidental and his marvelous career neither a legitimate result of previous training, nor a beneficient miracle especially ordained for the accomplishment of marvelous ends. He was simply a lucky accident of an anomalous age. There can be no doubt that these men thought they knew him thoroughly. They came ver}^ near him; knew his thought ; laughed at his jests ; wondered at his success and still marvel at his fame. So far as they were capable of doing, they understood his nature, and no doubt have portrayed it truly. We cannot question the tree-toad's knowledge of the oak on which he dwells.

The new life which has grown up in the land has very generally accepted their view. The thought which was the inspiration of yesterday is looked upon with kindly toleration to-day. We are told that the day of sentiment has passed, and the era of practicality begun. Gold is the criterion of value and ag^^regate wealth the real test of statesmanship. Patriotism is well enough as a reminisence, but parsimony is the key-note of prosperity. Devotion to the rights of man is an innocent weakness ; gain the one thing needful. The capitalist's margins are more important to the Nation than justice to the oppressed. This is the wisdom of to-day, Blower. It seems harsh and cold, base and degrading even, to us. But we must remember that we are of yesterday — of that recent past, which is always wrong in its strictures of the present. To-day is always an iconoclast that tramples ruthlessly beneath his heel the idols before which yesterday bowed in adoration. We must be patient, Blower, and learn to see our gods debased without resentment, if not without sorrow.

Little by little we are being taught the lesson of renunciation. This very year there was found in the legislature of the state which holds his ashes as a sacred trust, one — thank God there is yet hut one — who could oppose, in the name and by the authority of her people, an appropriation amounting to less than one-hundredth 'part of a cent per capita — one-thousandtli of a cent on every million dollars of her wealth — to provide for the adornment of the tomb of Ahraliam Lincoln on this anniversary of his assassination !

It seems to us incredible. But next year there will perchance be many more like-minded with him. We may even see the day when the sentiment uttered in the legislature of a neighboring state, a few days since, shall become all but universal, and the champion and apologist, if not the leader, of the "Copperheads" of Indiana be generally looked upon as a nobler patriot, a more sagacious statesman, and a worthier citizen of the Kepublic than he who led her armies to victory. It is time, Blower, that we prepared ourselves to see the verdict of yesterday overthrown. "What we then deemed right may yet be accounted the most grievous wrong ; what we foolishly thought to be patriotism may yet be considered oppression, and what we believe the nation's highest glory may yet be held a folly bordering upon crime and hardly susceptible of excuse.

Nevertheless, Blower, we will celebrate the double anniversary once more — the birth-hour of an epoch and the apotheosis of a hero-martyr. The flag shall float apeak upon the staff above our windovv, shedding blessings from its beauteous folds upon the rushing, heedless passers-by. Your polislied bowl shall be heaped with golden granules ; and as the smoke wreaths rise above its rim, we will think upon old times, revive almost-forgotten memories, and feel again the thrill of perished aspirations. We will still believe that self-forgetfulness is nobler than greed ; that patriotism is not to be measured by a gold standard ; that righteousness exalteth a nation; that justice to the lowly of earth is honor to the Highest in Heaven. When the children come — the bri^lit-eved heralds of to-morrow — we will tell them the stoiy of this day when the land awoke to a new life and the noblest of earth passed over to his reward. Perchance in their lives the seed sown in blood and watered with tears may spring into a fruitage all the richer for the winter of its waiting. Let us not murmur, Blower, but steadfastly believe that " the future, God's fallow, though barren it seem," shall yet outvie the past in the ripe fruits of patriotic devotion. For many a year we used to drape the flag upon this anniversary. It w^as a foolish thing to do. We mourned when we ought to have exulted. We bewailed the woes of war when we ought to have magnified its blessings, and rejoiced in the glory it shed upon the land. What were the dead it left us in comparison with the fresher, nobler life it brought ? Honor and glory can not be measured even by blood and pain. So, too, with him who went out from us in the hour of victory. Why did we ever weep for him ? He passed away when his work was done, leaving a memory unsmirched with evil, a fame unsullied with a thought of self. The purity of his life, the unselfishness of his devotion, and the grandeur of his character are the priceless heritage of the ages. Suffering had not weakened his frame ; failure had not cast its bhght upon his fame ; malice had no opportunity to assail. In the vigor of his strength, at the zenith of his glory, in the very hour of victory, the booming cannon told at once his death and immortality ! Happy beyond compare was he in the hour and manner of his death. He did not live to see the breath of detraction wither his laurels, nor feel that the thought which inspired his life had lost all significance to the wisest and best of his countrymen. We mourn. Blower, for his great lieutenant who, languishing, still lives ; but for him who died in the moment when war and peace met together to exalt his fame, let us don the garments of rejoicing and chant the songs of victory.

April 14, 1885.

"FEEEDOM AND THE EIGHT;^

'TTT'E are growing old, Blower, you and I. Yet the VV years that we have seen ai^e not so many. Hardly more than two score winters have passed over the Veteran's head. Save the empty sleeve, he shows little of the scath of life. His eye is as bright, his step as elastic, and his heart as young — almost as young, it seems — as when poor Joe pressed into his hand thy polished bowl, and whispered in his ear a dying comrade's farewell message to his absent loved ones. His words as they come back to memory now, seem strangely overwrought. No doubt to-day would deem them sadly out of place upon a soldier's stiffening lips.

" Tell them," he said, " I — died — for freedom — and — and" — oh precious last word, let it not be lost! How the feeble clay struggles with the dying thought! At length it comes, so faintly that the bowed ear hardly distinguishes between the whispered word, and the night wind's murmur — " and the — right !"

No syllable of sorrow ! No thought of self ! No murmur of disappointment ! No w^ord of consolation for the father whose hope was blighted, for the mother whose heart yet waits expectant for his coming — fondly self-deceived by every manly footstep. Nay, not even a tender message for that unwedded widow whose heart was that day sealed forever against the thought of earthly love.

There was no sorrow in his eyes. The whispered words had no touch of sadness. The stillness that follows in the wake of battle hung above the bloody field. The bright southern moon looked calmly down through the soft filmy foliage of the early spring-time. It lighted up the velvety half -grown leaves upon the giant oaks, that crowned the crest on which the stru^o-le had begun, until they seemed like silver clouds touched with the tender green of summer seas. It was here that the first few scattering shots were fired. The skirmishers had swarmed out of the wood beyond, crossed the narrow valley, and crept up the hillside toward the sunimit where his little force awaited them. It was only an outpost of the great army which lay behind. He was not charged with any momentous duty. The strap upon his shoulder marked only a subaltern's grade. He was onlj^ expected to give the alarm, and perhaps to check the enemy's advance an instant, while the waiting lines prepared themselves to meet the onset.

The attack was not unexpected, and though the skirmishers wavered for a moment when they met his fire, the lines which followed hard upon their footsteps swept up the slope, scarring the great trunks with wasted volleys and tainting the balmy air of spring with sulphurous fumes, which overpowered the fragrance of the jasmine, while the little force which held the summit fled, leaving their brave young commander bleeding at the foot of one of the great oaks which crowned the summit. Then the tide of battle ebbed and flowed back and forth on the broad plateau beyond. After a fierce conflict we forced them back over the ridge into the wood from whence they had come. As the sun went down the last hot hue of fire flashed out upon the fleeing enemy a half mile to the southward of their morning camp.

As the night fell upon us, I traced backward the Dattle's bloody track in search of my friend. It is not any easy thing to do by daylight. The glare of conflict, while it photographs surrounding objects ineradicably upon the soldier's mind, so distorts distances and relations that one is always surprised when he tries to retrace the steps he has taken under fire. It needs not the flight of seasons to disguise the battle field. Even when first "Ardennes waves above them her gi^een leaves," it is almost impossible for the soldier to designate the spot where his comrade fell. The night made my task all the harder.

The moon, which hung a great red ball on the edge of the horizon when I began my search, shifted the shadows and gave to a score of other rounded hills the outline of the little " knob " on which my friend had been posted. Stark faces shone cold and white in the shadows of the half -leaved trees, and stiffened limbs made grotesque figures in the moonlight. I stopped more than once to comfort some wounded sufferer. A thin, ^vhite mist hung over the valley where the conflict had been fiercest. Voices came out of it at intervals. The low, indescribable moan that comes from the lips of many wounded men, rising and falling in alternate wailing cadances rose out of the silvery veil. The rumble of wheels away to the right told of trains that ^vere struggling to the front. A lantern shining dimly in the hazy depth, showed others on a like quest with myself. The sound of a spade grating on the stones bespoke the woefulness of a hasty burial on the battlefield. We knew the pursuit would begin at dawn, and that the offices of friendship must be 'speedily performed. As I passed along an unrecognized crest a groan came out of the shadow of a great yellow-leaved Spanish oak that stood in my path. I do not know why I stopped so suddenly, while my heart stood still Avith fear. Groans had not been rare along my way. Every soldier knows how often solitary dead are found upon the verge of the field of battle. You and I remember, Blower, finding on the very outer edge of a battle maelstrom, years after peace had drowned the din of arms, a whitened skeleton — a picket killed at his post, crouching behind a little natural mound, beneath a spreading cedar whose drooping boughs had hidden him from searching eyes. His rifle, rusty and black, lay beneath him, the hammer drawn back, the skeleton finger yet pressed upon the trigger.

I paused and listened — another groan. It is strange. Blower, but even in that muffled moan I recognized my friend. Poor Joe ! He might have lived I think had help been at hand when he fell. But the hours which had intervened had drained his life. He had but few more moments and strength for few more words. He had expected me. It Avas a contract of long standing that after every battle we might share together, as soon as duty Avould permit, each should seek out the other. So he knew that I would come. Before the light had faded from the sky he had traced upon a bit of paper, with a twig dipped in his own blood, a few last wishes. With the same rude stylus he had written my name in bloody characters upon the buckskin cover that encased your bowl. Poor, brave old Joe! He clasped my hand weakly; said he knew I would come; told me there Avas no hope, and whispering the message, '' Tell them that I died for freedom and the right," fell asleep. The moon had found an opening through the leaves, and looked calmly down upon his face as he breathed his last. Poor Joe ! You were his dying gift, Blower. In all the years that have elapsed since then, I have never looked upon your bowl without thoughts of him. The buckskin case has long since worn a way, but the red, straggling letters, " J-a-c-k," are still clear to my eyes. The touch of the worn amber mouthpiece, which his lips have pressed so often, ever brings old memories back.

He died for the right. Blower — "freedom and the right ! " So he said, so he thought, brave, self -forgetful knight, who sought not adventure nor the fame of valorous achievements, but the establishment of truth ! Yet, brave and chivalrous as he was, this true Sir Galahad was but a type of his time— that time to w^hicli we were proud to belong and which we still half wonderingly regret. A thousand men lay stark and cold upon that field who had rendered up their lives with gladness for the same idea — *' freedom and the right" — the right of every man to equal power and privilege with other men ! Say what we may. Blower, this was at the bottom of it all ! One side represented the rights of

24 thp: veteran and his pipe.

man, the other the rights of the master. The one meant equal rights for all ; the other special privileges for a class. It was only one phase of. the mighty conflict which is as old as man — the rights of the many against the encroachments of the few.

There are some who teach to-day, and many who believe, that the cause for which so many died was of a narrower scope, and its upholders animated b}^ meaner motives. We better know the story of that day, Blower; but we are getting old, and our ideas are growing sadly old-fashioned, too. To smoke a pipe and believe in human right as a practical, tangible thing— a sentiment that ought to outrank and overpower all other political ideas — are in the highest degree absurd, to one who sucks rice-paper cigarettes, glorifies the Anglican ideal, and studies political philosophy in the sweet seclusion of his club. It is often asserted nowadays as an undeniable truth that the sole object of the IS'ational arms was to restore the National power, forgetful that this ])Ower was made worthy of preservation only by the simple fact that it was the sole representative of the idea of individual rights and equality based upon the fact of humanity— poor Joe's " freedom and the right" Two great ideas faced each other in the struggle — the right of man to self-direction, and the right of one man to control and modify another's acts without his consent and against his will. Whether it be termed "Rebellion" "War between the States" or "War for separation," that is all there is of it.