"The Mule seems to excel both its ancestral species in natural intelligence. It is remarkable for its powers of muscular endurance. Its sure-footedness particularly adapts it to mountainous countries. It has been common from very ancient times in many parts of the East, and is much used, also, in most of the countries around the Mediterranean Sea, and in the mountainous parts of South America. Great care is bestowed on the breeding of Mules in Spain and Italy, and those of particular districts are highly esteemed. In ancient times the sons of kings rode on Mules, and they were yoked in chariots. They are still used to draw the carriages of Italian cardinals and other ecclesiastical dignitaries."
And more to the same effect.
We respectfully submit that here is a well-buttressed certificate of character which fully justified the government in assigning to this useful equine mulatto the important function he performed in putting down the rebellion.
The average American Mule has not the soft fur, fine as dressed seal-skin and smooth as coffin varnish, nor the rich shades of coloring, worn by his pampered kinfolk of Spain or Cyprus or Smyrna. As to skin, he was, habitually, neither soft nor shining, he was simply tough. As to color, his muzzle was always whitish, as if fresh from a meal-tub, but otherwise he was more various than delectable, sometimes yellow, sometimes dun, sometimes sorrel, but oftenest darkly, deeply, beautifully bay. Second cousin to the New Mexican burro, but happily guiltless of any traceable relationship to the disreputable Texas mustang, his aspect was liable to be as one-sided as a Louisiana riot—seventeen negroes killed and one white man slightly wounded.
But texture and color apart, the harmless, unspeakable servitor of our march and camp was doubtless peer of any the effete monarchies of Europe or the East can boast. He had no overplus of style about him, but he was reliable, he was sincere, his muscularity was conceded by all. His facial angle was a convex curve, which somewhat impaired his beauty, but not his utility. Some knew him who did not love him; few named him except to praise after a reasonable acquaintance. His air of innocent gravity was sometimes mistaken for stupidity—most inexcusable and fatal error! He could look as imbecile as a rustic fop playing "Glory Hallelujah" on an accordeon. He could look as guileless as the youth who murdered his own father and mother and then begged the judge to have mercy on a poor orphan. He could look as soulful as a law clerk summing up to a jury of one with his arm around it. He could look as sober as though his whole intellect were grinding on the plus and minus of some unsolved problem, like that for example which the Book of Mormon and Mohammed's Koran and Clark's Commentaries, with all their attention to detail, have neglected, whether Aaron's golden calf was a Holstein or a Jersey.
Sleepy or asleep he may have seemed, but let some small darkey imp of mischief tweak his patient ear, then note how swiftly that magnetic hoof will lift the tweaker to a pearly seat amidst the celestial cherubim—direct and speedy circuit of nerve-telephone here manifest, without the intervention of any dilatory central office. His drooping lids were thus but the token of a measureless content, which craved not the mere bric-a-brac and gumdrops of existence. But it was liable to shift its specific gravity, if any misfit perfume came between the wind and his nobility, and explode in a sudden touch-and-go style, rocket-like, trigger-like, flashing.
He could smile like a heavenly blessing. His expressive yawn was widely eminent; without it no Mule was genuine. His bray, opening clear and sonorous, like the report of a judiciary committee, rapidly shaded off into a succession of disembodied shrieks and disemboweled groans, that sent thrills of suicidal delirium through all the encircling camps. No further seek his general merits to disclose. They developed constantly on the sensitive plate of our regard, and we have waited long for somebody to take off a blue-print of his ground plan and front elevation. The possessor of many virtues, poor but honest, with a large circulation but small political influence, sagacious and serene he stood, thick of head, tough of hide, hard of heel, the proffered hero of the expressive army shibboleth, "Here's your Mule."
The plutonic, speechless quadruped, Mule, like the platonic featherless biped, man, after being inspected on the hoof, was obliged to graduate through the three military degrees of Recruit, Soldier and Veteran.
We all remember those recruiting days; those first companies of picked men, mostly picked before they were ripe; when the fray was curtained behind song and hurrah, the cataract obscured by the rainbow. Who can forget the wrathful buzz and ferment, the wild tossing and writhing and moaning of an aroused people; the fierce uprising; the keen razor-edge of fervor. Then the enrolling and drilling and marching and evoluting in the moonlit squares and streets; the nocturnal visitations, with fife and drum, to the verandas of oratorical patriots for a "night-cap" of glowing speech, alternated with raids on suspected disloyalists to demand the prompt uphoisting of the star spangled banner. Saxon and Norman and Dane were we, or Celt or Teuton in birth or descent, but all of us then crystallized in the alembic of patriotism into the first generation of unadulterated Americans.
To the blasphemous challenge of secession, our young men, fully advised of the exceeding preciousness of life and yet thoroughly instructed how to dare and die, hurled back deathless daring and defiance. Their eyes, fixed on their idealized leaders, shining like white statues amid the black wreckage of rebellion, they marched into the flaming vortex with new, strange implements in their hands and "hot unutterabilities in their hearts."