AN INCOMPLETE STORY
WHEN General Field came to Cairo, Illinois, after the war, I welcomed him with especial heartiness.
I was a little bit lonely, lacking comrades in sympathy with me.
General Field had been my drillmaster at Ashland, at the war’s beginning. Later, after he became a great general, I had many times been of his following in raids and scouts, and other military expeditions.
Like all the rest of us at the end of the war, General Field was very poor. He had come to Cairo to engage in business, and had not been able to bring his family with him. So he rented a bachelor room in the bank building in which my office was situated, and we two used to spend the evenings together in front of my office fire.
At that time General Don Carlos Buell was operating a coal mine in Kentucky, some distance up the Ohio River. He sold his coal through the commission house for which I was attorney.
When he came to Cairo, he, also, usually spent his evenings in my office.
One evening General Field was smoking a long pipe before my fire, and he and I were chatting about war times—we hadn’t yet got far enough away from the war to regard any other topic as worthy of intelligent conversation.
“The saddest part of it all, to us of the old army at least,” said General Field, “is the breaking up of old friendships. There’s Buell, now. He and I once tented together, messed together, slept under the same blankets together, and, without any blankets at all, under the same frozen sky; marched together, fought together, suffered together, and endured together. Once we thought of each other as brothers might. Now, if we should meet, he would refuse even to shake my hand. He would regard me as a rebel—to him anathema maranatha.”
At this moment came a knock at the door. I opened it, and to my consternation there stood General Buell.
My first impulse was to say to him that I was overengaged that evening, and couldn’t see him. My second was to invite him to my bedroom for a special conference, for which I could profess to have been longing. My third was to fabricate the story of a telegram, which should call him immediately to the house of the head of the firm.
Feeling that none of these devices would answer the purpose, I thought of the coal-shed below; but I remembered that there was no gas-burner there, and the night was rather a dark one.
Meantime, General Buell was catching cold in the hall. So at last I invited him in, taking pains to call him only by his title, not mentioning his name. As he entered, Field, who was always scrupulous in attention to the little niceties of courtesy, arose to receive the stranger.
When the two gentlemen had bowed to each other,—for it was no part of my purpose to introduce them, if I could help it,—I turned to General Buell and said: “General, I’m afraid there is a little discrepancy in the measurement of those last coal barges. If you have your memorandum book with you, we’ll go to the outer office and straighten the thing up. The book-keepers are bothered about it.”
Alas! My little device came to nothing. Buell had caught sight of Field, and Field had looked upon Buell. Though years of hard campaigning had intervened since they had last met, each recognized the other instantly, and after a moment’s hesitation each threw himself into the other’s arms.
“Why, it’s Buell!”
“Why, it’s Field!”
I can’t tell the rest of this story, because I didn’t stay to see it. I don’t like to see two men hugging each other with tears in their eyes.
RANDOM FACTS
ILLUSTRATIVE OF SOUTHERN SOLDIER CONDITIONS
WE soldiers of the Southern army lacked many things. Sometimes we lacked almost everything. We did not always have clothes, but when we had any, they were apt to be good ones; they were made of cadet gray cloth, imported from England through the blockade. And those Englishmen have a habit of making uncommonly good cloths.
We were often without shoes; but when we had shoes, they also came from England, and were thoroughly good, both in material and make.
But towards the end of the war, we lacked many essential things. We lacked medicines for one thing, and quinine, especially. I remember that one gentlewoman was deemed a peculiar patriot, because she got through the lines with one hundred and forty ounce bottles of quinine hung inside her hoop-skirt.
For lack of that and other drugs, our surgeons had to resort to many substitutions. Some of these were discoveries of permanent value. That is why the medical profession has studied with interest the records of our Southern surgeon-general’s department, now in possession of the war department at Washington.
These records, it is said, contribute more than any other like documents to the science of medicine.
Another thing that we terribly lacked was gunpowder—the one supreme agent of all warfare. Our fire was often compulsorily made as light as possible, in order to spare our cartridge boxes.
To supply this rudimentary need, the women of the country diligently dug up the earthen floors of all their smokehouses, and all their tobacco barns, and rendered out the nitre they contained. Some of them even destroyed their tobacco crops by boiling, in order to extract the precious salt necessary to the destruction of their enemy.
In the cities, our womenkind were requested to preserve and deliver to government collectors all those slops that contain nitre.
It was in this way alone that we got gunpowder enough to maintain resistance to the end. And we had equally to pinch in other ways in order that we might continue to be “fighting men.”
All the window-weights in all the houses, and all the other leaden things that could be melted down, were converted into bullets. Even then we ran dreadfully short towards the end of the war. At Petersburg, good soldiers felt it to be their duty to spend all their spare time in collecting the multitudinous bullets with which the ground was everywhere strewn. These battered missiles turned into the arsenals were remoulded and came back to us in the form of effective, fixed ammunition.
When we marched to meet Grant in the Wilderness, in the spring of 1864, we were about the most destitute army that ever marched to meet anybody, anywhere. We had nothing to transport, and we had no transportation.
At the beginning of every campaign it is customary for the commanding general to issue an order, setting forth the allotment of baggage wagons to officers and men. Just before we marched that spring some wag in the army had printed and circulated a mock order from General Lee, a copy of which now lies before me.
General Orders, Number 1.
Headquarters, Army of Northern Virginia,
April 20, 1864.
The allotment of baggage wagons to the officers and men of the Army of Northern Virginia during the coming campaign will be as follows:—
To every thirty officers.... No baggage wagon.
To every three hundred men.... Ditto.
(Signed) Robert E. Lee, General.
This order was a good-natured forgery, of course. Nevertheless it was carried out to the letter. The fact is that we had no baggage and no baggage wagons. The only baggage wagons I ever heard of in connection with that campaign were a few that General D. H. Hill summoned for a special occasion. His musicians put in a petition at the beginning of the summer’s work for wagons to carry their instruments. He assented instantly, and ordered the wagons brought up. As soon as the instruments were comfortably deposited within them, he turned to his quartermaster and said: “Send those wagons to Richmond.” Then turning to his adjutant he said: “Have muskets issued to these men immediately.”
General D. H. Hill was not a man from whose orders anybody under him was disposed to appeal.
We entered that campaign stripped almost to the buff. We had no tents, even for the highest officers. We had no canteens. We had no haversacks. We had no knapsacks. We had no oilcloths to sleep on. We had no tin cups. We had almost no cooking utensils and almost no blankets. We had no shoes, and our socks had long ago been worn out. We had an average of one overcoat to every thousand men.
It was in this condition of destitution that we entered the battles in the Wilderness. The Federal army was as much oversupplied as we were underfurnished with all the necessaries of campaigning. What with a perfectly equipped quartermaster’s department, a sanitary commission volunteering superfluous tin cups and everything else and with other sources of lavish supply, public and private, every Federal soldier entered the campaign carrying about three times as much as any soldier should carry. The moment there was fighting to be done, they shed all these things—as a man throws off his overcoat when there is work to do.
In the shiftings and changes of position that occurred during that most irregular of all possible contests, we were thrown often into positions where the shedding had been done. The first thought of every man of us was to equip himself with such necessaries as were lying about. It took us a week to get rid of the superfluous plunder, and reduce ourselves again to the condition of soldiers in light marching order.
The one worst lack of all we could not supply in this way. That was the lack of food. It was an army of starving men that fought those battles in the Wilderness. It was an army of starving men that confronted Grant at Spottsylvania. It was an army of starving men that faced the guns at Cold Harbor, at Bottom’s bridge, and all the way to Petersburg. Not until we were established in the works there, did any man have enough food in a week to supply his physical needs for a day. I have elsewhere in these stories illustrated this fact somewhat, but as it was the central fact in connection with that campaign, it seems to me important here to state it in its fulness.
At Petersburg we began to get something like regular rations, though they were very meagre and of extremely bad quality. It was, perhaps, under the influence of this prolonged starvation and hard work that the men fell victims to the great religious revival of that time. It was the ecstasy of anchorites. It proved, if anything ever did, the efficacy of fasting as an inducement to fervid prayer. Saint Simeon Stylites perched on top of his tower was no better subject of religious enthusiasm than were these worn out and starved veterans, whose cause was an object of perpetual worship. They believed no longer in themselves; they no longer looked even to their generals for results. The time and the mood had come when they trusted God alone to give them victory. Starvation had made them devotees.
MY FRIEND PHIL[2]
TO begin with, Phil was black.
The reader will please understand that the word “black” is here used in its literal, and not in its conventional, sense. Phil was actually as well as ethnologically black. There was no trace of a lighter tint anywhere in his complexion. Not a suspicion of brown appeared in his cheeks, and even his great thick lips, protruding far beyond the outposts of his nose, were as sable as the rest of his face. It was all a dead black, too, unaccompanied by that lustre which, by surface reflection, relieves the shadow upon commonplace African faces.
And nobody knew all this better than Phil did.
“Phil ain’t none o’ yer coffee-colored niggas,” he would say in moments of exultation, when his mood was to straighten his broad shoulders and boast a little. “Phil ain’t none o’ yer coffee-colored niggas, ner none o’ yer alapacker niggas, nuther. Ise black, I is. Dat’s sho’. Ain’t got no bacon-rind shine in my skin; but I jes’ tell yer what, mastah, Phil kin jes’ take the very shut offen dem shiny niggas an’ hoff an’ hoff niggas, when’t comes to de wuk. Drive? Kin I? Kin Phil drive? What yer mean, mastah, by axin’ such a question?”
Nobody had asked Phil such a question; but Phil had some remarks that he wanted to make on the subject of his accomplishments in this respect, and was disposed to answer what he wished somebody would ask.
“Drive? Co’se I kin. Der never was a hoss ner mule yit whatever had a mouf an’ two laigs dat Phil can’t han’le, an’ yer better b’lieve, mastah, Phil can plaunt de wheel ’twix’ de acorn an’ de shell.”
If I report Phil’s boastings, it is only because they constitute too large a proportion of what he said to be omitted. I do so to confirm, not to gainsay them, or to hold their author up to ridicule.
He was my friend, the faithfulest one I ever knew, and now he is dead.
If he boasted now and then, no one could have had a better right. His was the pride of performance, and not the vanity of pretension.
Phil was a Virginian—and a gentleman in his way—and a slave, though I doubt if he ever suspected his gentility, or felt his bondage as a burden in the least. He had no aspirations for freedom or for anything else, I think, except jollity and comfort. I do not say that this was well, but it was a fact.
My acquaintance with Phil began when I was a half-grown boy. Until that time I had lived in a free state, so that when I had returned to the land of my fathers, and become an inmate of the old family mansion in one of the south-side counties of Virginia, the plantation negro was a fresh and very interesting study to me.
On the morning after my arrival, as I lay in the antique carved bed assigned to me, wondering at the quaint picturesqueness of my surroundings, and the delightful strangeness of the life which I was now in contact with for the first time, a weird, musical sound, of singular power and marvellous sweetness, floated through the open dormer windows, borne upon the breath of such a June morning as I had never before seen. I listened, but could make nothing of it by guessing. It was music, certainly, at least a “concord of sweet sounds.” It rose and fell like the ground swell of the sea, and was as full of melody and sweetness as is the song of birds, but it was as destitute as they of anything like a tune. It began nowhere, and went nowhither. I had no memory of anything with which to compare it, and could conceive of no throat or instrument capable of producing such a sound. On the great piazza below, at the front of the house, sat the master of the mansion. Of him I straightway made inquiry.
“What is that?” I asked curiously.
“Phil,” answered my uncle.
“And who is ‘Phil,’ and what on earth is he doing, and especially how is he doing it?”
“He is calling the hogs, and you may be sure he is doing it well. If you’ll walk up to that skirt of woods, you can put your other questions to him in person. He is not shy or difficult of approach. Introduce yourself—be sure to tell him whose son you are.”
My uncle’s face wore an amused smile as I walked away. He could imagine the sequel.
In the edge of the timber stood a tall, broad-shouldered, brawny negro man. He was singularly ugly, but with a countenance so full of good humor that I was irresistibly attracted by it from the first. At his feet stood great baskets of corn, and around him were gathered a hundred or more swine, busily eating the breakfast he was dispensing. As I approached, his hat—what there was of it—was doffed. I was greeted with a fabulous bow, apparently meant to be half a tribute of respect, and half a bit of buffoonery, indulged in for my amusement or his own.
“Good mawnin’, young mastah. I hope I see you well dis mawnin’.”
“Thank you, I’m very well,” I replied. “You’re Phil, I suppose?”
“You’re right, fo’ dis wunst, young mastah. Ise Phil toe be sho’. Ax der hawgs—dey done know me.”
“Well, Phil, I’m glad to make your acquaintance. I’m your mas’ Jo’s son.”
“What dat? Mas’ Jo’s son! Mas’ Jo’s son!! MY MAS’ JO’S SON!!! Lem me shake han’s wid you, mastah. Jes’ to think! Mas’ Jo’s son! An’ Phil done live to shake han’s wid mas’ Jo’s son. Why, my young mastah, I done raise your father! Him an’ me done play ma’bles togeder many and many a time. We was boys togeder right heah, on dis very identumcal plauntation. Used to go in swimmin’ togeder, an’ go fishin’ an’ steal de mules out’n de stables Sundays, an’ ride races wid ’em and git cotched, too, sometimes when ole mastah git home from chu’ch. My Mastah. But Ise glad to see yer.”
All this while the great giant was wrenching my hand well-nigh off, laughing and weeping alternately, and stamping with a delight which could find no other vent than in physical exertion. I was naturally anxious to divert the conversation into some other and less personal channel, and managed to do so presently by asking Phil to give me a specimen of his hog-calling cry, which I wished to hear near at hand. That performance over, we talked again. I began by saying I had never heard any one call hogs in that way before.
“Dat’s jes’ it, mastah,” he replied. “Folks don’t understan’ de science o’ hog-callin’. Dey says ‘p-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-r’og,’ when de hogs ain’t po’ at all, but fat as buttah. Dey got to git ‘hog’ in some ways so dey thinks. But dey ain’t no sense in dat. Hogs don’t understan’ dat. Dey can’t talk an’ don’t understan’ de meanin’ o’ talk words. You mus’ jes’ let ’em know dat when you wants ’em to come youse gwine to make a noise, de like o’ which ain’t in heaven or yuth. Den dey gits to knowin’ what dat means. Dat’s my way. When I fetch a yell at ’em, dey jes’ raise der yeahs, an’ say to der se’f: ‘Dat dar’s Phil, fo’ sho’, an’ Phil’s de big, ugly, black nigga wid de bauskets o’ cawn.’ When you says ‘Phil,’ you mean mastah’s big nigga what wuks in de fiel’, an’ plays de banjo, an’ goes fishin’; but when de hogs says ‘Phil,’ dey mean a big black fella, wid a big yell into him, an’ de bauskets o’ cawn. An’ you bettah b’lieve dat makes ’em jump up an’ clap dey han’s fo’ joy, jes’ like de nigga does when he gets religion ’nuff to make him shout, an’ not ’nuff to keep him offen the hen roos’s. If a nigga gits ’nuff religion to keep him from stealin’, it’s a mistake. Dey don’t never mean to do it, and when dey does, dey ain’t glad a bit, an’ dey hurries up an’ sends de surplage back.”
Phil’s respect for what he called “niggas” was exceedingly small, and it was his greatest pleasure in life to demonstrate their inferiority and emphasize their shortcomings in a hundred ways.
He was “head man” of the hoe hands—which is to say he hoed the leading row of tobacco hills, and was charged with the duty of superintending the work of the others. It was his delight to keep his work so far in advance that he must now and then set his hoe in the ground, and walk back to inspect the progress, and criticise the performance of slower workers than he. In all this there was no spice of uncharitableness or malice, however. He wished his fellows well, and had no desire to hurt their feelings; but he keenly enjoyed the fun of outdoing them, and laughing at their inability to cope with him.
It was during wheat harvest, however, that Phil was in his full glory. The rapidity with which he could “cradle” wheat was a matter of astonishment to every one who knew him, and, what was more wonderful still, he was able to maintain a distinctly “spurting” speed all day and every day.
“Phil,” his master would say, as the men entered the field on the first day, “I want no racing now; it’s too hot.”
“Now you heah dat, you slow niggas! Mastah says Phil mustn’t kill his niggas, an’ de onliest way to save yo’ lives is fer yer not to try to follow me. Jes’ take yo’ time, boys. Race a little among yo’selves, if yer want to, but don’ yer try to get a look at de heels o’ my boots, if yer don’ want to go to de bushes an’ has any intrus’ in mastah.”
A negro, exhausting himself in a race, lies down in the bushes to cool off and recuperate, and hence the winner of the race is said to send the others “to the bushes.”
Phil’s preliminary remarks were sure to exasperate his fellows and put them on their mettle. Silently they would determine to “push” him, and the utmost vigilance of the master was taxed to prevent dangerous overexertion. If the reapers were left alone for half an hour, several of them would be sure to overtask their strength, and retire exhausted to the friendly shade of the nearest thicket. But they never succeeded in coming up with Phil, or in so tiring him that he was not ready for a dance or a tramp when night came.
He was a strong man, rejoicing in his strength always; but there was one thing he would not do—he would not work for himself.
His master was one of those who hoped for gradual emancipation, as many Virginians did, and thought it his duty to prepare his negroes for freedom, so far as it was possible for him to do so. Among other means to this end, he encouraged each to make and save money on his own account. Each was expected to cultivate a “patch” of his own. Their master gave them the necessary time and the use of the mules whenever their crops needed attention.
In this way he thought to train them in habits of voluntary industry and thrift; and some of them, having no necessary expenses to bear, accumulated very pretty little hoards of cash from the sale of their crops every year. But Phil would not raise a crop for himself.
“What I want to raise a crop for?” he would ask. “I don’ want no money, on’y a quarter sometimes to buy a banjo string or a fish line, an’ I get plenty o’ quarters pitched at me when I hol’ de gentlemen’s hosses. I don’ want no money, an’ I wouldn’t know what to do wid it if I had it. My mastah takes good care o’ me, an’s long as dar’s a piece o’ meat in de smokehouse, Phil knows he’s gwine to have plenty to eat. I ain’t gwine to earn no money an’ be cas’in’ ’flections on my mastah. My mastah gives me mo’ clo’es ’an I kin war out; an’ what de devil I want to be makin’ money for, I donno.”
It was of no use to argue the matter. His mind was quite made up, and there was no possibility of changing it.
Phil’s marital philosophy was unique. He changed wives half a dozen times while I knew him, but one set of rules governed his choice in every instance. There were certain qualifications of a rather singular sort, which he deemed essential in a wife. She must not live on the plantation for one thing, or on one of those immediately adjoining, “’Cause den we’re sho’ to see too much o’ one anoder, an’ ’ll git tired o’ de ’rangement.” In the second place he would marry none but old women, “’Cause de young ones is no ’count anyway. Dey don’ half take car’ o’ dey husban’s stockin’s and things. ’F you want holes in yer stockin’s an’ buttons off yer shut collahs, jes’ you marry a young gal.” The third requisite was that the wife should be a slave, and the daughter of slaves on both sides. This qualification he insisted upon, even in the choice of masculine associates. His contempt for “free niggas” was supreme, almost sublime. He neglected no possible opportunity of villifying them, and practised no sort of economy in his expenditure of invective upon them.
Most of the negroes—in Virginia, at least—were very religious. Naturally their religion was intensely emotional in its character,—ecstatic, sombre, gloomy,—and quite as naturally it was largely colored with superstition. But religion of this kind had no charm for Phil, who, as the reader may possibly have guessed, prided himself on being strictly logical in all his views and actions.
“Bro’ Ben,” he said to one of his fellows one day, “youse done got religion, I heah. Anyway, your face is twict as long as it ought to be. Has yer got religion fo’ sho’?”
“Now, Phil, I don’t want none o’ your wickedness. Bless de Lord, Ise got religion.”
“Oh, you is got it, is you? Now lemme ax yer a question or two. Youse got religion, yer say?”
Ben: “Yes, Ise got religion.”
Phil: “Well, den, you’re gwine to heaven after while—when yer dies?”
Ben: “Yes, Ise got de ’surance o’ dat, bro’ Phil.”
Phil: “An’ you’d ’a’ gone to hell, if you hadn’t got de ’surance, as you calls it, wouldn’t you?”
Ben: “If I’d ’a’ died in my sins, course I’d ’a’ gone to hell.”
Phil: “Well now fo’ a nigga what’s jes’ made his ’rangements to keep out’n hell an’ git into heaven, youse got de mos’ onaccountable long face I ever did see, an’ dat’s all about it.”
When Ben had retired in disgust, I remonstrated with Phil.
“What do you tease Ben for, Phil?” I asked. “You know better than to make fun of religion.”
“Course I do, mastah, an’ dat’s jes’ it. Ben ain’t got no religion, an’ I knows it. He’s jes’ puttin’ on dat solemncholy face to fool de good Lord wid. Ben’ll steal, mastah, whenever he gits a chaunce. He ain’t got no mo’ religion ’n a hog. Sho. What he know ’bout religion, goin’ down under de hill to pray, an’ all dat nonsense? Couldn’t git him to sing a song or whistle a tune now on no account whatsumever, but he ain’t no better nigga for dat. Didn’t I see? He shouted mighty loud las’ night, but he shu’ked his wuk dis mawnin’ an’ didn’t half curry his mules; an’ religion dat don’t make a nigga take good car’ o’ po’ dumb creeters like mules ain’t wuth nuthin’ at all, no way yo’ kin fix it. When dey keeps de row up jes’ a little better, an’ don’t cover up no weeds dey ought to cut down, an’ takes good car’ o’ mules, an’ quits stealin’, den I begins to ’spect ’em o’ havin’ de real religion. But dey can’t fool Phil wid none o’ dere sham solemncholies.”
Phil was a trifle hard and uncharitable, perhaps, in his judgments upon his fellows in a matter of this kind; but there was, at any rate, no hypocrisy in his composition. And what is more singular still, I was never able to discover any trace of superstition in his conduct. He laughed to scorn the signs and omens with which the other negroes were perpetually encouraged or affrighted. Friday was as lucky a day as any in his calendar. He would even make his fire with the wood of a lightning-riven tree, and stranger still, was not afraid, as all the rest were, on the occasion of a funeral, to bring away the shovels used in the church-yard, without waiting till the moon and stars had shone upon them.
“How is it, Phil,” I once asked him, “that you don’t believe in any of the luck signs?”
“Do you b’lieve in ’em, mastah?” he asked in reply.
“No, of course not, but all the black folks do, except you.”
“Mastah, ain’t you foun’ out yit dat niggas is bawn fools? When my mastah wants de hogs changed from one piece o’ woods to annuder, he don’t go to makin’ blin’ signs to me, but he comes an’ tells me what he wants; an’ de good Lord what made de wuld, he ain’t a-goin’ to make no blin’ signs, nuther. He’s done tole us in de good book an’ in all de wuld aroun’ us what to do. He’s put sense in our heads to un’erstan’ what he means, an’ he ain’t gwine to govern de univarse wid a lot o’ luck signs, like a nigga would do it. ’Sides, Ise done all de unlucky things heaps o’ times, an’ ain’t never had no bad luck yit.”
When the war came, Phil was a stanch Southerner in all his feeling, and firmly held to his faith in the success of his side, even to the end. The end crushed him completely. When his master explained to the colored people their new condition of freedom, and proposed to engage them for wages, Phil stoutly refused.
“De odder folks may do as dey pleases, mastah, but Phil’s gwine to be your nigga jes’ as he always was. I ain’t gwine to be free nohow. I ain’t got no free nigga blood in me. I never saw no free nigga what wasn’t hungry; an’ I don’t know no free nigga what won’t steal; more’n dat, I never know’d a free nigga what wouldn’t sneak up on birds an’ shoot ’em on de groun’. I tell you, I ain’t gwine to be no sich folks as dem. Ise your nigga, an’ Ise gwine to be jes’ dat. I’ll do my wuk, an’ I ain’t goin’ to take no wages, an’ you’ll take car’ o’ me jes’ as you always did, on’y don’t never call me no free nigga. Ise a slave, I is, an’ Ise got de bes’ mastah in ole Virginy, an’ I ain’t fool ’nough to want to change de sitiwation.”
His master explained to him the necessity of the case, and showed him how impossible it was, by any mutual agreement, to alter the fact of freedom, or to escape its consequences.
“You must accept wages, Phil, for I may die or go into bankruptcy, and you may grow old or get ill; and if I should be poor or dead, then there would be nobody to take care of you. You must work for wages and take care of your money, so that it may take care of you.”
“Mastah, do you mean to tell Phil dat de law makes me a free nigga whedder or no?”
“Yes, Phil.”
“Den stick yo’ fingers in yo’ years, mastah, ’cause Ise gwine to swear. Damn de law. Dat’s what I say about dat. An’ now Ise jus’ gwine to die, an’ dat’s all about it.”
The poor fellow walked away with bowed head and tear-stained face. The broad, stalwart shoulders were bent beneath the weight of responsibility for himself. He was a strong man, physically, but the merest child in character, and the feeling that he no longer had any one but himself to lean upon, was more than he could bear. The light of cheerfulness and good humor went out of his face. The joyousness of his nature disappeared, and before the summer had ripened into autumn, poor Phil lay down and died of a broken heart.
OLD TIMES IN MIDDLE GEORGIA.
BY
RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON.
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SAILORS: Tales of 1812.
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“There are passages in this book which are as strong and captivating as the work of the best writers of the day; to mariners and those who love the sea and ships these tales will appeal irresistibly.
“Each story is a gem by itself. It is told with a directness and a strength which carries conviction. All are based upon actual occurrences, Mr. Barnes tells us, and while some of the incidents related may come under the head of tradition, yet most of them are historical facts, and he has worked up each tale so cleverly, so compactly, so entertainingly, that they may, one and all, be taken for models of their kind.”—Seaboard.
“Good stories well told are those of ‘Yankee Ships and Yankee Sailors,’ They deal with the gallant defenders of such vessels as the Chesapeake, the Vixen, the fiery little Wasp, and grand ‘Old Ironsides.’ All the stories are told in a spirited style that will quicken the blood and the love of country in every Yankee heart.”—New England Magazine.
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY,
66 Fifth Avenue, New York.
ON MANY SEAS.
THE LIFE AND EXPLOITS OF A YANKEE SAILOR.
BY
FREDERICK BENTON WILLIAMS.
EDITED BY HIS FRIEND
WILLIAM STONE BOOTH.
12mo. Cloth. $1.50.
COMMENTS OF THE PRESS.
“Every line of this hits the mark, and to anyone who knows the forecastle and its types the picture appeals with the urgency of old familiar things. All through his four hundred and more pages he is equally unaffected and forcible, equally picturesque. To go through one chapter is to pass with lively anticipation to the next. His book is destined to be remembered.”—New York Tribune.
“The book reads like a romance, but is at the same time realistic history, before which the fancy ships and the fancy sailors of the novelist are pale and faded.”—Baltimore Sun.
“The charm of the book is its simplicity and truth. The author, as I happen to know, can spin thrilling yarns by the hour, and this book of his is simply one long yarn of his life. A seaman every inch of him, he writes as only a sailor can. No landsman, no amateur yachtsman, could write a book like this. The entire book bears the stamp of truth, and in this age of literary shams that is a crowning merit.”—New York Herald.
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY,
66 Fifth Avenue, New York.
AMERICAN HISTORY
TOLD BY CONTEMPORARIES.
BY
ALBERT BUSHNELL HART,
Harvard University.
The Set of Four Volumes, $7.00.
Each Volume sold Separately, Price $2.00.
Vol. I. Era of Colonization, 1493-1689.
Published 1897.
Vol. II. Building of the Nation, 1689-1783.
Ready shortly.
Vol. III. National Expansion, 1783-1844.
In Preparation.
Vol. IV. Welding of the Nation, 1845-1897.
In Preparation.
Professor T. H. Wood, of Worcester Academy, Worcester, Mass., says of Volume I.:—
“The plan and the contents are alike admirable. The set will be a necessity for libraries and for teachers of American History.”
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY,
66 Fifth Avenue, New York.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] These notes were originally printed in the great war book of the Century Company, entitled: “Battles and Leaders of the Civil War.” They are here reprinted by the courteous and very generous permission of the Century Company.
[2] This story was first printed in the Galaxy for December, 1875. It is here reprinted by courteous permission of Colonel William Conant Church, now of the Army and Navy Journal, under whose editorship the Galaxy was made a conspicuous and honorable factor in American literature.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or alternate spelling has been retained from the original.