A MAN FOR A' THAT
COMPANY A was cut up at Antietam, so that there was not enough of it left for useful purposes, and Deacon Andrew Terrell became a member of Company G, which nicknamed him “'is huliness.” Company A came from Dutchess County. There was a little white church in the village of Brewster, and a little white house with a meagre porch where that good woman, Mrs. Terrell, had stood and shed several tears as the deacon walked away down the street, looking extraordinary in his regimentals. She dried her eyes, settled down to her sewing in that quiet south window, and hoped he would remember to keep his feet dry and not lose the cough drops. That part of Dutchess County was a bit of New England spilled over. New England has been spilling over these many years.
The deacon took the cough drops regularly; he kept his gray chin beard trimmed with a pair of domestic scissors, and drilling never persuaded him to move his large frame with other than the same self-conscious restraint; his sallow face had the same set lines. There is something in the Saxon's blood that will not let him alter with circumstances, and it is by virtue of it that he conquers in the end.
But no doorkeeper in the house of God—the deacon's service in the meeting-house at Brewster—who should come perforce to dwell in the tents of wickedness would pretend to like it. Besides, Company G had no tents. It came from the lower wards of the great city. Dinkey Cott, that thin-legged, stunted, imp-faced, hardened little Bowery sprout, put his left fist in the deacon's eye the first day of their acquaintance, and swore in the pleasantest manner possible.
The deacon cuffed him, because he had been a schoolmaster in his day, and did not understand how he would be despised for knocking Dinkey down in that amateur fashion, and the lieutenant gave them both guard duty for fighting in the ranks.
The deacon declared “that young man Cott hadn't no moral ideas,” and did his guard duty in bitterness and strict conscience to the last minute of it. Dinkey put his thumb to his nose and offered to show the lieutenant how the thing should have been done, and that big man laughed, and both forgot about the guard duty.
Dinkey had no sense whatever of personal dignity, which was partly what the deacon meant by “moral ideas,” nor reverence for anything above or beneath. He did not harbor any special anger, either, and only enough malice to point his finger at the elder man, whenever he saw him, and snicker loudly to the entertainment of Company G.
Dinkey's early recollections had to do with the cobblestones of Mulberry Bend and bootblacking on Pearl Street. Deacon Terrell's began with a lonely farm where there were too many potato hills to hoe, a little schoolhouse where arithmetic was taught with a ferrule, a white meeting-house where the wrath of God was preached with enthusiasm; both seemed far enough away from the weary tramp, tramp, the picket duty, and the camp at last one misty night in thick woods on the Stafford hills, looking over the Rappahannock to the town of Fredericksburg.
What happened there was not clear to Company G. There seemed to be a deal of noise and hurrying about, cannon smoke in the valley and cannon smoke on the terraces across the valley. Somebody was building pontoon bridges, therefore it seemed likely somebody wanted to get across. They were having hard luck with the bridges. That was probably the enemy on the ridge beyond.