History has few parallels to this absolute obliteration of a species. The bronzed old admiral emeritus is still extant, with tar on his heel and salt in his eyebrows. Generals in active service thread the German's mazes, agile as when in slim-waisted cadet days they paced flirtation walk, in all the pomp and circumstance of glorious gray. The retired list, infallible patent of longevity, lifts high its proud engrossment of venerable colonels and brigadiers, spattered at times with ill-flavored congressional epithets and blown about by every breeze of statesmanship, but yielding still its liberal monthly stipend; there too the Sutler's brief, broad, brambly service is unrecognized. The village boaster boasteth still his grand exploits as the sunset of life crowns a mystical bore. But no Sutler is here or there discerned.
Our pension rolls bear names scarce short a million, but his holds there no objurated blazonry. Myriads of veterans luxuriate in soldiers' homes, but in none of them does he, lingering and voluble, saturated with vis inertia, shoulder a crutch and tell how money never is but always to be won. When hale campaigners meet at non-intoxicating suppers where the cheers are not inebriated, and point to themselves with pride (who dare gainsay their right?), his place is but a yawning vacancy. River pilots of the war era, St. Vitus stricken from dodging guerrilla buckshot, have coveted the Grand Army badge; sons of sanitary heroes and of honorable women not a few have pleaded for the Loyal Legion's perquisites vicarious; but no residual Sutler, nor the lineal progeny thereof, draws drafts like these on honor's ample funds. Hence there is no Sutler left, q. e. d. He never got left—the good die young.
Seek ye his obituary in the thin cold records of the alms-house. Find his flat or sunken resting place in crowded silences of Potter's fields and be therewith content. He has passed in his "checks." He lives now only as a fond and fragrant memory.
THE SHELTER TENT
III
LUSTROUS among war's unfading reminiscences shines the contour of the Shelter Tent. It lingers in memory, unique and delectable, dissimilar but equivalent to our ideal of those fringed silken pavilions wherein apoplectic despots of the orient air their scandalous magnificence amid the frockless squalor of their cringing hordes.
The Shelter Tent was a supplement to the original scheme for putting down the rebellion—a fact, as it were, dehors the record. Only after Bull Run and Shiloh and Antietam and Iuka was the government nerved to the point of requiring its soldiery to shoulder their houses like mollusks, and thus relieve the tuneful, uncomplaining mule of a sore responsibility.