Those Times and These

Time waits on no man, but has an accommodating way of checking up occasionally, while the seed pod of reminiscence sprouts beneath the warm, rich humus of a fellow’s memory; and, because time does do just this, I yet can visualise, with sufficient clarity for my present purposes, some of the things which happened that day. Again is my blood quickened by sweet strains of music as Dean’s Brass Band swings up Franklin Street, leading the procession of the forenoon.

Without serious mental strain I re-create the picture of the prominent guests riding in open carriages with members of the reception committee and, behind them, the Young Men’s Democratic Marching Club going afoot, four hundred strong.

I see a big four-horse wagon, used ordinarily for such prosaic purpose as moving household goods, but now with bunting and flags converted into a tableau car, and bearing pretty girls, badged and labelled with the names of the several states of the Union. And the prettiest, stateliest girl of all stands for Kentucky. At her side is a little dark girl who represents the Philippines, and accordingly she wears upon her wrists a dangling doubled loop of ironmongery. This hardware is very new and very shiny, and its links jangle effectively as the pageant moves onward, thereby causing the captive sister to smile a gratified smile not altogether in keeping with the lorn state of servitude here typified by these trace-chain manacles of hers.

It seems a long time – doesn’t it? – since Expansion was a cardinal issue and Imperialism a war cry, and we were deeply concerning ourselves with the fate and future of the little brown brother, and warmly debating among ourselves whether we should continue to hold him as a more or less unwilling ward of the nation or turn him and his islands loose to fend for themselves. But really, when we cast up the tally of the intervening years, it isn’t so very long ago after all. It is as though this might have happened yesterday, isn’t it?

So it is with me – abiding as one of those yesterdays that stand out from the ruck and run of yesterdays. Perhaps that is why I can almost taste the dust which is winnowed up from beneath the hoofs of the teams and the turning wheels as the crowds stream off out the gravel turnpike, bound for Cold Springs. Nearly everybody of consequence, politically or socially, joins in that hurrying pilgrimage. Like palmers of old, Judge Priest and Commonwealth’s Attorney Flournoy and Sheriff Giles Birdsong and all our district and county and city officials attend, to attest by their presence the faith that is in them. I attend, too; but in the capacity of scribe. I go to report the doings for the Daily Evening News. I am the principal reporter and, by the same token, one-half of the local staff of that dependable journal, the remaining half being its editor in chief.

Time in its flight continuing to turn backward, we are now at Cold Springs. Mint-master Jack Frost has been busy there these last few nights, so that the leaves of the hickories are changing from summer’s long green to swatches of the crisp yellow-backed currency of October. On the snake fence, which separates the flanks of the woodland from the cleared lands beyond, the trumpet vine and the creeper blaze in clumps so red that one almost wonders the dried rails do not catch fire too.

The smells of fall are in the air – of com in the shock; of bruised winesaps dropping, dead ripe, from the orchard trees; of fox grapes turning purple in the vine canopies away up in the tops of the trees. From the fringes of the grove come the sounds of the stamping of horses’ feet and the restless swishing of horses’ tails. Off in quiet places a hundred flat flasks have been uncorked; in each thicket rendezvous fore-thoughted citizens are extending the hospitalities of the occasion to such as forgot to freight their hip pockets before journeying hither. There have been two fights and one runaway.

And now it is noon time; and now it is half an hour past it, and the county committee, with the aid of the only known Republicans present – all these latter being of African descent and all, or nearly all, camp cooks of high repute in Red Gravel County – is about to play host to the multitude.

In retrospect I smell the burgoo a-cooking, and sympathetically my mouth waters. Do you know burgoo? If not your education has been sadly neglected – most woefully neglected. It is a glorified gumbo, made in copper caldrons over open fires; and it contains red meats and white meats, and ducks and chickens, and young squirrels, and squabs, and all the fresh green vegetables in season. And into it with prodigal black hands the cooks put plenty of tomatoes for color and potatoes for body and red peppers for seasoning and onions for flavour. And all these having stewed together for hours and hours, they merge anon into a harmonious and fragrant whole. So now the product is dipped up in ladles and bestowed upon the assemblage in tin cups, to be drunk after a fashion said to have been approved of by Old Hickory Jackson himself. A Jeffersonian simplicity likewise governs the serving out of the barbecued meats, following afterward. You eat with the tools Nature has given you, and the back of your hand is your napkin. And when everybody is as full of victuals as a good Democrat should be – which is another way of saying so full he cannot hold another bite or another sup – the band plays and the speaking starts on a plank platform under a brush arbour, with the audience sitting or standing – but mostly sitting – on a fragrant thick matting of faded wild grasses and fallen red and yellow leaves.

The programme of events having progressed to this point, I found my professional duties over for the day. The two principal speeches were already in type at the Daily Evening News office, advance copies having been furnished by Congressman Prentiss and the visiting Senator from Tennessee, the authors of the same. By special messenger I had transmitted brief dispatches touching on the complete and unqualified success of the burgoo, the barbecue, the two fist fights and the runaway.

Returning from the fringes of the woodland, after confiding my scribbled advices to our courier, my way led me under the shoulder of the bluff above Cold Springs. There, right where the water came seeping out through the bank of tawny gravel, I came upon a picture which is one of the pictures that have endured in reasonably vivid colours on the background of my mind.

The bole of an uptorn gum tree spanned a half-moon depression at the verge of the spring. Upon the butt end of the log, where an upended snag of root made a natural rest for his broad back, was perched Judge Priest. His plump legs hugged the rounded trunk. In one hand he held a pint flask and in the other a tin cup, which lately must have contained burgoo. A short distance down the tree from him sat old Doctor Lake, without any bottle, but with the twin to Judge Priest’s tin cup poised accurately upon one of his bony knees.

Behind these two, snugly screening them in, was a wall of green and yellow grape leaves. Through the vines the sunlight filtered in, to make a mellow flood about them. Through the leaves, also, came distantly the sound of the present speaker’s voice and, at frequent intervals, cheering. There was to be heard a gentle tinkling of cracked ice. A persuasive odour of corn distillations perfumed the languid air. All through the glade nuts were dropping from the hickories, with sharp little reports. It was a picture, all right enough!

My feet made rustlings in the leaves. Judge Priest squinted over his glasses to see who the intruder upon their woodland privacy might be.

“Why, howdy, son!” he hailed. “How’s everything with you?”

He didn’t offer to share his store of refreshment with me. I never knew him to give a very young man a drink or to accept a drink from such a one. Doctor Lake raised his cup to stir its contents and nodded in my direction over it.

“The big speech of the day has just got started good, gentlemen,” I said. “Didn’t you-all know it?”

“Yes; we knowed it,” answered the old Judge; “in fact, we heared the beginnin’ of it. That’s one reason why me and Lew Lake come on away. The other reason was that Lew run acrost a little patch of late mint down here by the spring. So we slipped off frum the crowd and come on down here to sort of take things nice and easy till it gits time to be startin’ back toward the city.”

“Why, I thought he was a mighty fine speaker, from what I heard right after Mr. Prentiss introduced him,” I said.

“He’s all of that,” assented the old Judge; “he’s a regular Cicero – seems to know this here oratory business frum who laid the rail. He don’t never jest plain ast somebody to do somethin’. He adjures ‘em by the altars of their Sunny Southland, and he beseeches ‘em by the memories of their sires; but he don’t ast ‘em. And I took notice, durin’ the few minutes I lingered on – spellbound, ez you mout say, by the witchery of his voice – that when he gits holt of a good long word it ain’t a word no more. He runs her as a serial and every syllable is a separate chapter.

“Oh, no; I ain’t got a word to say ag’inst the distinguished gentleman’s style of delivery. I only wisht I had his gift of melodious expression. I reckin ef I did, I’d talk in public part of the day and sing the rest of the time. But the p’int is, son, that me and Lew Lake have heared consid’able of that particular brand of oratory in our day, and after a little spell of listenin’ we decided betwixt ourselves that we favoured the quiet of the sylvan dell to the heat and dust of the forum. So here we are, ez you behold us.

“One speech mere or less won’t make much difference in the gineral results, noways, I reckin. Down here in the pennyrile country we’ll all vote the regular ticket the same ez we always do; and the Republikans will vote their ticket, bein’ the stubborn unreasonable creatures that they are; and then our boys’ll hold back the returns to see how many Democrat votes are needed, and up in the mountains the Republikans will hold them back to see how many Republikan votes are needed – and that’ll be the whole upshot of it, onless the corrupt scoundrels should succeed in outcounting the party of the people.

“Of course there’s a great crisis hoverin’ over our country at present. There’s a crisis hoverin’ every four years, regular – to hear the orators tell it. But I’ve took notice that, after the votin’ is over, the crisis always goes back in its hole to stay till the next presidential election, and the country remains reasonably safe, no matter which side gits in; though I admit it’s purty hard to convince the feller who’s already got a government job, or hopes to git one, that the whole nation won’t plumb go to thunder onless his crowd wins.”

“Still, Billy,” put in Doctor Lake, “there was a time when all these high-sounding phrases about duty and patriotism meant more to us than they do now – back in the spring and summer of Sixty-one – eh?”

Behind the Judge’s spectacle lenses sparks of reminiscence burned in his faded blue eyes. He lifted his cup ceremoniously and Doctor Lake lifted his, and I knew they were drinking to the memory of olden days.

“Now you’re shoutin’!” Judge Priest assented. “Say, Lew, do you call to mind them speeches Hector Dallas used to utter ‘way back yonder, when Sumter was bein’ fired on and the Yankee Government was callin’ fur troops to put down the Rebellion, ez they seen fit to term it? Heck Dallas was our champion homegrown orator in those times,” he vouchsafed in an aside for my better enlightenment. “Somethin’ about that young feller yonder, that’s speakin’ so brilliantly and so fluently now, puts me right smartly in mind of him. Heck was plenty copious with language himself. When it come to burnin’ words he was jest the same ez one of these here volcanoes. Remember, don’t you, Lew, how willin’ Heck was to bleed and die fur his native land?”

“But he didn’t,” stated Doctor Lake grimly.

“Well – since you mention it – not to any noticeable extent,” said Judge Priest. “Leastwise, any bleedin’ that he done was done internally, frum the strain of utterin’ all them fiery remarks.” Again he included me with a gesture. “You see, son, Heck didn’t go off to the war with the rest of us. Nearly everybody else did – this town was purty near emptied of young fellers of a suitable courtin’ age after we’d gone down to Camp Boone to begin drillin’. But Hecky didn’t go.

“Ez I recollect, he felt called upon to put out first fur Richmond to give President Davis and the Cabinet the benefit of his advice or somethin’; and aimed to join us later. But he didn’t – somehow, somethin’ always kept inter-ferin’ with his ambition to bleed and die, until after a while it seemed like he jest got discouraged and quit tryin’. When we got back home, four years later – sech ez was left of us – Heck had done been entirely reconstructed and was fixin’ to run fur office on the Black Radical ticket.”

“The cat had to jump mighty brisk to beat Hector,” said Doctor Lake; “or else, when she landed on the other side, she’d find him already there, wanning a place for her. I’ve known a good many like Hector – and some of them prospered fairly well – while they lasted.”

“Well, the spring of Sixty-one was a stirrin’ period, and I reckin oratory helped along right smartly at the start,” said Judge Priest; “though, to be sure, later on it came to pass that the boys who could go hongry and ragged, and still keep on fightin’ the Yankees, were the ones that really counted.

“Take Meriwether Grider now: He went in as our company commander and he come out with the marks of a brigadier on his coat collar; but I’ll bet you a ginger cookie Meriwether Grider never said a hundred words on a stretch in his life without he was cussin’ out some feller fur not doin’ his duty. Meriwether certainly learned to cuss mighty well fur a man whose early trainin’ had been so turribly neglected in that respect.”

“Recall how Meriwether Grider behaved the night we organised Company B?” inquired Doctor Lake.

“Jest the same ez ef it was yistiddy!” assented Judge Priest.

He half turned his chubby body so as to face me. By now I was sitting on the log between them. I had scented a story and I craved mightily to hear it, though I never dreamed that some day I should be writing it out.

“You see, boy, it was like this: Upstate the sentiment was purty evenly divided betwixt stayin’ in the Union and goin’ out of it; but down here, in Red Gravel County, practically everybody was set one way – so much one way that they took to callin’ our town Little Charleston, and spoke of this here Congressional District as the South Carolina of the West. Ez state after state went out, the feelin’ got warmer and warmer; but the leaders of public opinion, all except Heck Dallas, counselled holdin’ off till the legislature could act. Heck, he was for crossin’ over into Illinois some nice pleasant dark night and killin’ off the Abolitionists, though at that time of speakin’ there weren’t many more Abolitionists livin’ on that side of the river than there were on this. That was merely Heck’s way of expressin’ his convictions.

“In spite of his desires, we kept on waitin’. But when word come from Frankfort that the legislature, by a mighty clost vote, had voted down the Secession Ordinance and had declared fur armed neutrality – which was in the nature of a joke, seein’ ez everybody in the state who was old enough to tote a fusee was already armed and couldn’t be a neutral – why, down in this neck of the woods we didn’t wait no longer.

“Out of the front window of his printin’ office old Colonel Noble h’isted the first Confederate flag seen in these parts; and that night, at the old market house, there was the biggest mass meetin’ that ever had been held in this here town up to then. A few young fellers had already slid down acrost the border into Tennessee to enlist, and a few more were already oyer in Virginia, wearin’ the grey; but everybody else that was anybody was there.

“Right away Heck took the platform. They’d a had to lock it up somewheres to keep him frum takin’ it. He was up on one of them market benches, wavin’ his arms and spoutin’ about the mudsills and the nigger lovers, and jest darin’ the accursed invader to put one heel upon the sacred soil of the grand old Commonwealth – not both his heels, but ary one of ‘em – when all of a sudden Meriwether Grider leaned over and kissed his wife – he hadn’t been married but a little more’n a year and they had a baby about three weeks old at home. And then he stepped forward and climbed up on the bench and sort of shoved Heck to one side, and called out that there’d been enough talk, and that it was about time for action; and said, ef somebody had a piece of paper handy, he’d like mightily to put his name down as a volunteer fur the Southern Army. And in another second every woman there was cheerin’ with one side of her mouth and cryin’ with the other.

“And Colonel Noble had fetched his flag up and was wavin’ it with both hands; and old Doctor Hendrickson, the Presbyterian preacher, had made a prayer – a heap shorter one than whut he ginerally made – and had yanked a little pocket Testament out frum under his coattails fur the boys to take the oath on. And in less’n no time Heck Dallas was back down in the crowd, in considerable danger of being trampled to death in the rush of young fellers to git up there and sign their names to the roll.”

Doctor Lake slid off the log and stood up, with his black hat crumpled in one gnarled old hand. In the emotion of the moment he forgot his grammar: “You remember, Billy – don’t you? – how you and me and Peter J. Galloway and little Gil Nicholas went up together to sign?”

“I ain’t exactly liable to furgit it, ever,” said Judge Priest. “That was the night I jest natchelly walked off and left my little law office flat on its back. I’d been advertisin’ myself to practise law fur about a year, but whut I’d mainly practised up to that time was economy – that and checkers and old sledge, to help pass away the time. No, suh; I didn’t leave no clients behind me, clamourin’ fur my professional services. Clients were something I’d heared a lot of talk about, but hadn’t met face to face. All I had to do when I quit was jest to put out the fire and shut the door, and come on away.”

“And the last one of all to sign that night was Herman Felsburg,” stated Doctor Lake, as though desirous of rounding out a recital.

“Yes – that’s right too, Lew,” agreed the old Judge. “Herman was the very last one. I remember how some of the crowd begun snickerin’ when he come stumpin’ up on them crooketty little laigs of hisn; but the snickerin’ died out when Meriwether Grider grabbed Herman’s hand and shook it, and Doctor Hendrickson held out the Book fur him to swear on it to be true and faithful to the cause of the Southern Confederacy. A person don’t snicker so very well that’s got a lump in his throat at the moment.

“You see, son, Herman was a kind of town joke them days,” stated Judge Priest, again digressing for my benefit. “There weren’t many furreign-born people in this section back yonder in Sixty-one. Ef a feller come along that was frum Greece or Italy or Spain, or somewheres else down that way, we jest called him a Dago, dry-so – and let it go at that. But ef he hailed from Germany or Holland or Russia, or anywhere in Northern Europe, he was a Dutchman to us.

“There were just two exceptions to the rule: An Irishman was an Irishman, of course; and a Jew was a Jew. We had a few Irish families in town, like the Galloways and the Hallorans; and there was one Jewish family livin’ here – the Liebers; but they’d all been born in this country and didn’t speak nothin’ but English, and, exceptin’ that old man Lieber used to close up his hide-and-pelt store of a Sad’day, instid of Sunday, it never occurred to anybody that the Liebers practised a different religion frum the run of folks.

“Herman had been here about a year, off and on. He didn’t seem to know nobody, and he didn’t have any friends. He wasn’t more’n nineteen years old – or maybe twenty; and he was shy and awkward and homely. He used to go out through the county with a pack on his back, sellin’ gimcracks to country people. He could make change all right – I reckin he jest natchelly inherited that ez a gift – and he was smart enough at drivin’ a bargain; but somehow it seemed like he jest couldn’t learn to talk English, or to understand it, neither, exceptin’ when the subject was business. Understand, that was thirty-odd years back; but sometimes, even now, when old Herman gits excited, you’d think, to hear him, that he didn’t know much English yit. His language matches the shape of his laigs then.”

I nodded understanding, Mr. Felsburg’s conversational eccentricities being a constant fount of material for the town humourists of my own generation. The Judge went on: “Well, anyway, he signed up that night, along with all the rest of us. And after that, fur a few days, so many things was happenin’ that I sort of forgot about him; and I reckin nearly everybody else did too. It seemed like the whole town sort of went crazy fur a spell, whut with the first company, which was our company, electin’ its officers, and the County Battery formin’, and a troop of cavalry organisin’, and the older men enrollin’ fur home defence, and a lot of big-moth fellers standin’ round on street comers lowin as how it was goin’ to be only a ninety-day picnic, anyway, and that any Southern man could whip five Yankees – and so forth and so on.

“And then we’d go home at night and find our mothers and sisters settin’ round a coal-oil lamp, makin’ our new grey uniforms, and sewin’ a tear in with every stitch. And every feller’s sweetheart was makin’ him a silk sash to wear round his waist. I could git a sash round my waist then, but I s’pose if I felt called on to wear one now I’d have to hire old man Dillon, the mattress maker, to make one fur me out of a roll of bedtickin.” And the speaker glanced downward toward the bulge of his girth.

“My mother kept telling me that it would kill her for me to go – and that she’d kill me if I didn’t go,” interpolated Doctor Lake.

“I reckin no set of men on this earth ever went out to fight with the right sort of spirit in ‘em onless their womenfolk stood behind ‘em, biddin’ ‘em to go,” said the old Judge. “That’s the way it was with us, anyway – I know that much. Well then, right on top of everything else, along come the big ball they gave us at the Richland House the night before we left fur Camp Boone to be mustered in, regular fashion. There wasn’t any absentees there that night – not a single solitary one. They’d ‘a’ had to tie me hand and foot to keep me frum comin’ there to show off my new grey suit and my red-striped sash and all my brass buttons.

“Fur oncet, social lines didn’t count. That night the best families mixed with all the other families that was mebbe jest as good, but didn’t know it. Peter Galloway’s old daddy drove a dray down on the levee and his mother took in washin’, but before the ball broke up I seen old Mrs. Galloway with both her arms round Mrs. Governor Trimble, and Mrs. Governor Trimble had her arms round Mrs. Galloway, and both of ‘em cryin’ together, the way women like to do. The Trimbles were sending three sons; but old Mrs. Galloway was givin’ up Peter, and he was all the boy she had.

“We danced till purty near sunup, stoppin’ only oncet, and then jest long enough fur ‘em to present Captain Meriwether Grider with his new gold-mounted sword. You remember, Lew, we buried that sword in the same coffin with him fifteen years later?

“About four o’clock in the mornin’, when the first of the daylight was beginnin’ to leak in at the winders, the nigger string band in the corner struck up Home, Sweet Home! We took partners, but that was one dance which never was finished.

“All of a sudden that sassy little red-headed Janie Thornbury stopped dead-still out in the middle of the floor, and she flung both arms round the neck of Garrett Hinton, that she was engaged to marry, but didn’t – on account of her marryin’ somebody else while Garry was off soldierin’ – and, before everybody, she kissed him right smack on the mouth!

“And then, in less’n no time at all, every feller in the company had his arms round his sweetheart or his sister, or mebbe his mother, and kisses were goin’ off all over that old ball room like paper bags a-bustin’. I fergit now-who ‘twas I kissed; but, to the best of my recollection, I jest browsed round and done quite a passel of promiscuous kissin’.”