The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862

X

I have read of a young Indian girl, disguised as her lover, whom she had assisted to escape from captivity, fleeing from her pursuers, till she reached the brink of a deep ravine; before her is a perpendicular wall of rock; behind, the foe, so near that she can hear the crackling of the dry branches under their tread; yet nearer they come; she almost feels their breath on her cheek; it is useless to turn at bay; there is hardly time to measure with her eye the depth of the ravine, or its width. A step back, another forward, an almost superhuman leap, and she has cleared the awful chasm.... 'Look before you leap,' is one of caution's maxims. We may stand looking till it is too late to leap. There are times when we must put our 'fate to the touch, to win or lose it all;' there are times when doubt, hesitation, caution is certain destruction. You are crossing a frozen pond, firm by the shore, but as you near the centre, the ice beneath your feet begins to crack; hesitate, attempt to retrace your steps, and you are gone. Did you ever cross a rapid stream on an unhewn foot-log? You looked down at the swift current, stopped, turned back, and over you went. You would climb a steep mountain-side. Half-way up, look not from the dizzy hight, but press on, grasping every tough laurel and bare root; but hasten, the laurel may break, and you lose your footing. 'If thy heart fail thee, climb not at all;' but once resolved to climb, leave thy caution at the foot. Before you give battle to the enemy, be cautious, reckon well your chances of winning or losing; above all, be sure of the justice of your cause; but once flung into the fierce fight, then with 'Dieu et mon droit!' for your battle-cry, let not 'discretion' be any 'part of' your 'valor.'

Then your careful, hesitating people are cautious where there is no need of caution, they feel their way on the highways and by-ways of life, as you have seen a person when fording a stream with whose bed he was unacquainted. I'd rather fall down and pick myself up a dozen times a day, than thus grope my way along.

There is Nancy Primrose. I have good reason to remember her. She was, in my childhood, always held up to me as a pattern. She used to come to school with such smooth, clean pantalets, while mine were splashed with mud, drabbled by the wet grass, or all wrinkles from having been rolled up. She would go around a rod to avoid a mud-puddle, or if she availed herself of the board laid down for the benefit of pedestrians, she never, as I was sure to do, stepped on one end, so the other came down with a splash. The starch never was taken out of her sun-bonnet by the rain, for if there was 'a cloud as big as a man's hand,' she took an umbrella. It was well that she never climbed the mountain-side, for she would have surely fallen. It was well that she never crossed a foot-log, unless it was hewn and had a railing, for she would have certainly been ducked. It was well she never went on thin ice, (she didn't venture till the other girls had tried it,) she would have broken through. Her caution, I must say, was of the right kind; it always preceded her undertaking. She had such a 'wholesome fear of consequences,' that she never played truant, as one whom I could mention did. Indeed, antecedents and consequents were always associated in her mind. She never risked any thing for herself or any one else.... Of course, she is still Miss Nancy, (I am 'Aunt Molly' to all my friends' children,) though it is said that she might have been Mrs.–. Mr.–, a widower of some six months' standing, thinking it time to commence his probation—the engagement preparatory to being received into the full matrimonial connection—made some advances toward Miss Nancy, she being the nearest one verging on 'an uncertain age,' (you know widowers always go the rounds of the old maids.) Though, in a worldly point of view, he was an eligible match, she, from her fixed habits of caution, half-hesitated as to whether it was best to receive his attentions—he got in a hurry (you know widowers are always in a hurry) and married some one else.... I don't think Miss Nancy would venture to love any man before marriage—engagements are as liable to be broken as thin ice, and it isn't best to throw away love. As for her giving it unasked!… How peacefully her life flows along—or rather, it hardly flows at all, about as much as a mill-pond—with such a small bit of heaven and earth reflected in it. Oh! that placidity!—better have some great, heavy, splashing sorrow thrown into it than that ever calm surface.... As for me—it was a good thing that I was a girl—rash, never counting the cost, without caution, it is well that I have to tread the quiet paths of domestic life. Had I been a boy, thrown out into the rough, dangerous world, I'd have rushed over the first precipice, breaking my moral, or physical neck, or both. As it is, had I been like Miss Nancy, I would have been spared many an agony, and—many an exquisite joy.

You may be sure that I have well learned all of caution's maxims; they have, all my life, been dinged into my ears. Now I hate most maxims. Though generally considered epitomes of wisdom, they should, almost all of them, be received with a qualification. What is true in one case is not true in another; what is good for one, is not good for another. You, as far as you are concerned, in exactly the same manner draw two lines, one on a plane, the other on a sphere; one line will be straight, the other curved. So does every truth, even, make a different mark on different minds. This is one reason that I hate most maxims, they never accommodate themselves to circumstances or individuals. The maxim that would make one man a careful economist, would make another a miser. 'One man's meat is another man's poison;' one man's truth is another man's falsehood.

But how many mistaken ideas have been embodied in maxims—fossilized, I may say! It would have been better to let them die the natural death of falsehood, and they might have sprung up in new forms of truth—truth that never dies. What a vitality it has—a vitality that can not be dried out by time, nor crushed out by violence. You know how in old mummy-cases have been found grains of wheat, which, being sown, sprang up, and bore a harvest like that which waved in the breeze on the banks of the Nile. You know how God's truth—all truth is God's truth—was shut up in that old mummy-case, the monastery, and how, when found by one Luther, and sown broadcast, it sprang up, and now there is hardly an island, or a river's bank, on which it has not fallen and does not bear abundant fruit. The 'heel of despotism' could not crush out its life; ages hence it will be said of it: 'It still lives.'

And still lives, yours,

Molly O'Molly.

'THAT LAST DITCH.'

Many reasons have been assigned for the Chivalry's determining to die in that last ditch. One William Shakspeare puts into the mouth of Enobarbus, in Antony and Cleopatra, the best reason we have yet seen. 'Tis thus:

 
'I will go seek
Some ditch wherein to die: the foul best fits
My latter part of life.'
 

HOPEFUL TACKETT—HIS MARK

BY RICHARD WOLCOTT, 'TENTH ILLINOIS.'

 
'An' the Star-Spangle' Banger in triump' shall wave
O! the lan dov the free-e-e, an' the ho mov the brave.'
 

Thus sang Hopeful Tackett, as he sat on his little bench in the little shop of Herr Kordwäner, the village shoemaker. Thus he sang, not artistically, but with much fervor and unction, keeping time with his hammer, as he hammered away at an immense 'stoga.' And as he sang, the prophetic words rose upon the air, and were wafted, together with an odor of new leather and paste-pot, out of the window, and fell upon the ear of a ragged urchin with an armful of hand-bills.

'Would you lose a leg for it, Hope?' he asked, bringing to bear upon Hopeful a pair of crossed eyes, a full complement of white teeth, and a face promiscuously spotted with its kindred dust.

'For the Banger?' replied Hopeful; 'guess I would. Both on 'em—an' a head, too.'

'Well, here's a chance for you.' And he tossed him a hand-bill.

Hopeful laid aside his hammer and his work, and picked up the hand-bill; and while he is reading it, let us briefly describe him. Hopeful is not a beauty, and he knows it; and though some of the rustic wits call him 'Beaut,' he is well aware that they intend it for irony. His countenance runs too much to nose—rude, amorphous nose at that—to be classic, and is withal rugged in general outline and pimply in spots. His hair is decidedly too dingy a red to be called, even by the utmost stretch of courtesy, auburn; dry, coarse, and pertinaciously obstinate in its resistance to the civilizing efforts of comb and brush. But there is a great deal of big bone and muscle in him, and he may yet work out a noble destiny. Let us see.

By the time he had spelled out the hand-bill, and found that Lieutenant – was in town and wished to enlist recruits for Company –, – Regiment, it was nearly sunset; and he took off his apron, washed his hands, looked at himself in the piece of looking-glass that stuck in the window—a defiant look, that said that he was not afraid of all that nose—took his hat down from its peg behind the door, and in spite of the bristling resistance of his hair, crowded it down over his head, and started for his supper. And as he walked he mused aloud, as was his custom, addressing himself in the second person, 'Hopeful, what do you think of it? They want more soldiers, eh? Guess them fights at Donelson and Pittsburg Lannen 'bout used up some o' them ridgiments. By Jing!' (Hopeful had been piously brought up, and his emphatic exclamations took a mild form.) 'Hopeful, 'xpect you'll have to go an' stan' in some poor feller's shoes. 'Twon't do for them there blasted Seceshers to be killin' off our boys, an' no one there to pay 'em back. It's time this here thing was busted! Hopeful, you an't pretty, an' you an't smart; but you used to be a mighty nasty hand with a shot-gun. Guess you'll have to try your hand on old Borey's [Beauregard's] chaps; an' if you ever git a bead on one, he'll enter his land mighty shortly. What do you say to goin'? You wanted to go last year, but mother was sick, an' you couldn't; and now mother's gone to glory, why, show your grit an' go. Think about it, any how.'

And Hopeful did think about it—thought till late at night of the insulted flag, of the fierce fights and glorious victories, of the dead and the dying lying out in the pitiless storm, of the dastardly outrages of rebel fiends—thought of all this, with his great warm heart overflowing with love for the dear old 'Banger,' and resolved to go. The next morning, he notified his 'boss' of his intention to quit his service for that of Uncle Sam. The old fellow only opened his eyes very wide, grunted, brought out the stocking, (a striped relic of the departed Frau Kordwäner,) and from it counted out and paid Hopeful every cent that was due him. But there was one thing that sat heavily upon Hopeful's mind. He was in a predicament that all of us are liable to fall into—he was in love, and with Christina, Herr Kordwäner's daughter. Christina was a plump maiden, with a round, rosy face, an extensive latitude of shoulders, and a general plentitude and solidity of figure. All these she had; but what had captivated Hopeful's eye was her trim ankle, as it had appeared to him one morning, encased in a warm white yarn stocking of her own knitting. From this small beginning, his great heart had taken in the whole of her, and now he was desperately in love. Two or three times he had essayed to tell her of his proposed departure; but every time that the words were coming to his lips, something rushed up into his throat ahead of them, and he couldn't speak. At last, after walking home from church with her on Sunday evening, he held out his hand and blurted out:

'Well, good-by. We're off to-morrow.'

'Off! Where?'

'I've enlisted.'

Christina didn't faint. She didn't take out her delicate and daintily perfumed mouchoir, to hide the tears that were not there. She looked at him for a moment, while two great real tears rolled down her cheeks, and then—precipitated all her charms right into his arms. Hopeful stood it manfully—rather liked it, in fact. But this is a tableau that we've no right to be looking at; so let us pass by how they parted—with what tears and embraces, and extravagant protestations of undying affection, and wild promises of eternal remembrance; there is no need of telling, for we all know how foolish young people will be under such circumstances. We older heads know all about such little matters, and what they amount to. Oh! yes, certainly we do.

The next morning found Hopeful, with a dozen others, in charge of the lieutenant, and on their way to join the regiment. Hopeful's first experience of camp-life was not a singular one. He, like the rest of us, at first exhibited the most energetic awkwardness in drilling. Like the rest of us, he had occasional attacks of home-sickness; and as he stood at his post on picket in the silent night-watches, while the camps lay quietly sleeping in the moonlight, his thoughts would go back to his far-away home, and the little shop, and the plentiful charms of the fair-haired Christina. So he went on, dreaming sweet dreams of home, but ever active and alert, eager to learn and earnest to do his duty, silencing all selfish suggestions of his heart with the simple logic of a pure patriotism.

'Hopeful,' he would say, 'the Banger's took care o' you all your life, an' now you're here to take care of it. See that you do it the best you know how.'

It would be more thrilling and interesting, and would read better, if we could take our hero to glory amid the roar of cannon and muskets, through a storm of shot and shell, over a serried line of glistening bayonets. But strict truth—a matter of which newspaper correspondents, and sensational writers, generally seem to have a very misty conception—forbids it.

It was only a skirmish—a bush-whacking fight for the possession of a swamp. A few companies were deployed as skirmishers, to drive out the rebels.

'Now, boys,' shouted the captain, 'after'em! Shoot to kill, not to scare 'em!'

'Ping! ping!' rang the rifles.

'Z-z-z-z-vit!' sang the bullets.

On they went, crouching among the bushes, creeping along under the banks of the brook, cautiously peering from behind trees in search of 'butternuts.'

Hopeful was in the advance; his hat was lost, and his hair more defiantly bristling than ever. Firmly grasping his rifle, he pushed on, carefully watching every tree and bush, A rebel sharp-shooter started to run from one tree to another, when, quick as thought, Hopeful's rifle was at his shoulder, a puff of blue smoke rose from its mouth, and the rebel sprang into the air and fell back—dead. Almost at the same instant, as Hopeful leaned forward to see the effect of his shot, he felt a sudden shock, a sharp, burning pain, grasped at a bush, reeled, and sank to the ground.

'Are you hurt much, Hope?' asked one of his comrades, kneeling beside him and staunching the blood that flowed from his wounded leg.

'Yes, I expect I am; but that red wamus over yonder's redder 'n ever now. That feller won't need a pension.'

They carried him back to the hospital, and the old surgeon looked at the wound, shook his head, and briefly made his prognosis.

'Bone shattered—vessels injured—bad leg—have to come off. Good constitution, though; he'll stand it.'

And he did stand it; always cheerful, never complaining, only, regretting that he must be discharged—that he was no longer able to serve his country.

And now Hopeful is again sitting on his little bench in Mynheer Kordwäner's little shop, pegging away at the coarse boots, singing the same glorious prophecy that we first heard him singing. He has had but two troubles since his return. One is the lingering regret and restlessness that attends a civil life after an experience of the rough, independent life in camp. The other trouble was when he first saw Christina after his return. The loving warmth with which she greeted him pained him; and when the worthy Herr considerately went out of the room, leaving them alone, he relapsed into gloomy silence. At length, speaking rapidly, and with choked utterance, he began:

'Christie, you know I love you now, as I always have, better 'n all the world. But I'm a cripple now—no account to nobody—just a dead weight—an' I don't want you, 'cause o' your promise before I went away, to tie yourself to a load that'll be a drag on you all your life. That contract—ah—promises—an't—is—is hereby repealed! There!' And he leaned his head upon his hands and wept bitter tears, wrung by a great agony from his loving heart.

Christie gently laid her hand upon his shoulder, and spoke, slowly and calmly: 'Hopeful, your soul was not in that leg, was it?'

It would seem as if Hopeful had always thought that such was the case, and was just receiving new light upon the subject, he started up so suddenly.

'By jing! Christie!' And he grasped her hand, and—but that is another of those scenes that don't concern us at all. And Christie has promised next Christmas to take the name, as she already has the heart, of Tackett. Herr Kordwäner, too, has come to the conclusion that he wants a partner, and on the day of the wedding a new sign is to be put up over a new and larger shop, on which 'Co.' will mean Hopeful Tackett. In the mean time, Hopeful hammers away lustily, merrily whistling, and singing the praises of the 'Banger.' Occasionally, when he is resting, he will tenderly embrace his stump of a leg, gently patting and stroking it, and talking to it as to a pet. If a stranger is in the shop, he will hold it out admiringly, and ask:

'Do you know what I call that? I call that 'Hopeful Tackett—his mark.''

And it is a mark—a mark of distinction—a badge of honor, worn by many a brave fellow who has gone forth, borne and upheld by a love for the dear old flag, to fight, to suffer, to die if need be, for it; won in the fierce contest, amid the clashing strokes of the steel and the wild whistling of bullets; won by unflinching nerve and unyielding muscle; worn as a badge of the proudest distinction an American can reach. If these lines come to one of those that have thus fought and suffered—though his scars were received in some unnoticed, unpublished skirmish, though official bulletins spoke not of him, 'though fame shall never know his story'—let them come as a tribute to him; as a token that he is not forgotten; that those that have been with him through the trials and the triumphs of the field, remember him and the heroic courage that won for him by those honorable scars; and that while life is left to them they will work and fight in the same cause, cheerfully making the same sacrifices, seeking no higher reward than to take him by the hand and call him 'comrade,' and to share with him the proud consciousness of duty done. Shoulder-straps and stars may bring renown; but he is no less a real hero who, with rifle and bayonet, throws himself into the breach, and, uninspired by hope of official notice, battles manfully for the right.

Hopeful Tackett, humble yet illustrious, a hero for all time, we salute you.

JOHN BULL TO JONATHAN

 
You grow too fast, my child! Your stalwart limbs,
Herculean in might, now rival mine;
The starry light upon your forehead dims
The lustre of my crown—distasteful sign.
Contract thy wishes, boy! Do not insist
Too much on what's thine own—thou art too new!
Bend and curtail thy stature! As I list,
It is my glorious privilege to do.
Take my advice—I freely give it thee—
Nay, would enforce it. I am ripe in years—
Let thy young vigor minister to me!
Restrain thy freedom when it interferes!
No rival must among the nations be
To jeopardize my own supremacy!
 

JONATHAN TO JOHN BULL

 
Thanks for your kind advice, my worthy sire!
Though thrust upon me, and but little prized.
The offices you modestly require,
I reckon, will be scarcely realized.
My service to you! but not quite so far
That I will lop a limb, or force my lips
To gratify your longing. Not a star
Of my escutcheon shall your fogs eclipse!
Let noble deeds evince my parentage.
No rival I; my aim is not so low:
In nature's course, youth soon outstrippeth age,
And is survivor at its overthrow.
Freedom is Heaven's best gift. Thanks! I am free,
Nor will acknowledge your supremacy!