It was on a certain morning, many years ago, that I who write these lines—Eugenie Foa, friend to all the boys and girls who love to read of glorious and heroic deeds—was resting upon one of the seats near to the shade-giving walls of the Soldiers' Home. As I sat there, several of the old soldiers placed themselves on the adjoining seat. There were a half-dozen of them—all veterans, grizzled and gray, and ranging from the young veteran of fifty to the patriarch of ninety years.
As is always the case with these scarred old fellows, their talk speedily turned upon the feats at arms at which they had assisted. And this dialogue was so enlivening, so picturesque, so full of the hero-spirit that lingers ever about the walls of that noble building which is a hero's resting-place, that I gladly listened to their talk, and try now to repeat it to you.
"But those Egyptians whom Father Nonesuch, here, helped to conquer," one old fellow said,—"ah, they were great story-tellers! I have read of some of them in a mightily fine book. It was called the 'Tales of the Thousand and One Nights.'"
"Bah!" cried the eldest of the group. "Bah! I say. Your 'Thousand and One Nights,' your fairy stories, all the wonders of nature,"—here he waved his trembling old hand excitedly,—"all these are but as nothing compared with what I have seen."
"Hear him!" exclaimed the young fellow of fifty; "hear old Father Nonesuch, will you, comrades? He thinks, because he has seen the republic, the consulate, the empire, the hundred days, the kingdom"—
"And is not that enough, youngster?" interrupted the old veteran they called Father Nonesuch.[1]
[1] Perhaps the correct rendering of this nickname would be "The Remnant," and it applies to the battered veteran even better than "Nonesuch.">[
He certainly merited the nickname given him by his comrades; for I saw, by glancing at him, that the old veteran had but one leg, one arm, and one eye.
"Enough?" echoed the one called "the youngster," whose grizzled locks showed him to be at least fifty years old, "Enough? Well, perhaps—for you. But, my faith! I cannot see that they were finer than the 'Thousand and one Nights.'"
"Bah!" again cried old Nonesuch contemptuously; "but those were fairy stories, I tell you, youngster,—untrue stories,—pagan stories. But when one can tell, as can I, of stories that are true,—of history—history this—history that—true histories every one—bah!" and, shrugging his shoulders, old Nonesuch tapped upon his neighbor's snuff-box, and, with his only hand, drew out a mighty pinch by way of emphasis.