And yet—do you not hear them now, coming down the broad, granite-paved, moonlit street, the light that was made for lovers glancing on bayonet and sword soon to be red with brothers’ blood, their brave young hearts already lifted up with the triumph of battles to come, and the trumpets waking the midnight stillness with the gay notes of the Cracovienne?—
“Again, again, the pealing drum,
The clashing horn, they come, they come,
And lofty deeds and daring high
Blend with their notes of victory.”
Ah! the laughter; the music; the bravado; the dancing; the songs! “Voilà l’Zouzou!” “Dixie!” “Aux armes, vos citoyens!” “The Bonnie Blue Flag!”—it wasn’t bonnie very long. Later the maidens at home learned to sing a little song,—it is among the missing now,—a part of it ran:—
“Sleeping on grassy couches;
Pillowed on hillocks damp;
Of martial fame how little we know
Till brothers are in the camp.”
By and by they began to depart. How many they were! How many, many! We had too lightly let them go. And when all were gone, and they of Carondelet street and its tributaries, massed in that old gray, brittle-shanked regiment, the Confederate Guards, were having their daily dress parade in Coliseum place, and only they and the Foreign Legion remained; when sister Jane made lint, and flour was high, and the sounds of commerce were quite hushed, and in the custom-house gun-carriages were a-making, and in the foundries big guns were being cast, and the cotton gun-boats and the rams were building, and at the rotting wharves the masts of a few empty ships stood like dead trees in a blasted wilderness, and poor soldiers’ wives crowded around the “Free Market,” and grass began to spring up in the streets,—they were many still, while far away; but some marched no more, and others marched on bleeding feet, in rags; and it was very, very hard for some of us to hold the voice steady and sing on through the chorus of the little song:—
“Brave boys are they!
Gone at their country’s call.
And yet—and yet—we cannot forget
That many brave boys must fall.”
Oh! Shiloh, Shiloh!
But before the gloom had settled down upon us it was a gay dream.
“Mistoo Itchlin, in fact ’ow you ligue my uniefawm? You think it suit my style? They got about two poun’ of gole lace on that uniefawm. Yesseh. Me, the h-only thing—I don’ ligue those epaulette’. So soon ev’ybody see that on me, ’tis ‘Lieut’nan’!’ in thiz place, an’ ‘Lieut’nan’!’ in that place. My de’seh, you’d thing I’m a majo’-gen’l, in fact. Well, of co’se, I don’ ligue that.”
“And so you’re a lieutenant?”