Lads and lasses made merry with the elated warriors. The muskets were turned into bouquet-holders, and the first move toward real war took on the air of a floral fête. There were popping corks and sounds of convivial revelry that made the scene anything but warlike. Jack, in a cluster of his town cronies, caught sight of his mother at one of the windows of the Parthenon Hotel. He wafted her a joyous kiss, pretending not to see the tears falling down her cheeks. Olympia was not apparently very deeply affected. She made her way through the crowd to her brother's side, and with an air of the liveliest interest demanded:
"Jack, what have you in your knapsack? Let me see."
"O Polly, it's such a job to close it! What do you want? It is harder to manage than a Saratoga trunk. I can't really stuff another pin or needle in, so pray keep what you have for my furlough."
"No, I am not going to put anything in." She bent over while Barney Moore, one of Jack's Acredale comrades, gallantly loosed the straps. She searched carefully through the divers articles, taking everything out, Jack looking on ruefully while his companions gathered about in vague curiosity. When she had removed and restored everything she arose, saying: "I feel easier now. I merely looked to see if that marshal's bâton I have heard so much about was there. I shall feel easy in my mind now, because a bâton in your baggage would have made you too adventurous."
There was a great shout of laughter as the fun of the incident flashed upon the listeners, many of whom had heard the ingenuous Jack often in other days sighing for war, and the chance that Napoleon said every man had of finding a marshal's bâton in his knapsack. Jack bore the banter very equably, knowing that Olympia was rather striving to keep his spirits up and divert him from the tears in his mother's eyes than indulge her own humor. Indeed, most of the gayety at this moment was contributed by those whose hearts were heaviest. The consecrated priesthood of patriotism must see no weakness in those left behind. The only son, now brought face to face with the meaning and consequence of his rashly seized chance for glory, must not be reminded that perhaps a grave lay beyond the thin veil of the near future; must not be reminded that heavy hearts and dim eyes were left behind, feeding day by day, hour by hour, on terror and dread, unsupported by the changing scenes, the wild excitement, and the joyous vicissitudes of the soldier's life, it was a cruel comedy acted every day between 1861 and 1865. They laughed who were not gay, and they seemed indifferent who were fainting with despair. The courage of battle is mere brutish insensibility compared with the abnegation of the million mothers who gave their boys to the bestial maw of war.
The harrowing ceremonial of parting is ended. The train moves slowly out of the station, and a murmur of sobs and cheers echoes until it is far beyond the easternmost limits of the city. After a journey of two days and a night the train readied Philadelphia. Jack was all eyes and ears for the spectacle the country presented. In every station through which the regiment passed crowds welcomed the blue-coats. Women fed them, or those who seemed in need, thinking, perhaps, of their own distant darlings receiving like tenderness from the stranger.
In Philadelphia, the regiment marched across the city to resume its journey. It was a cold spring night, and the regimental quartermaster and commissary had made no provision for the men. Indeed, as the observant Jack afterward learned, it was part of the plan of the groups that first began to create great fortunes during the war to make the soldiers pay for their rations en route to the seat of war, or depend upon the charity of citizens along the railway lines. The Government paid for the supplies just the same, while the money went into the pockets of contractors and quartermasters. After a weary tramp through what seemed to the soldiers the biggest city in the world, the regiment, with blistered feet, hungry and cross, were halted before a long, low wooden building, through whose rough glass windows cheerful lights could be seen. A rumor spread that they were to have a hot supper, and, sure enough, they were marched in, dividing on each side of four long tables that stretched into spectral distance, in the feeble glimmer of the oil-lamps hanging from the ceiling. Most of the men in Jack's company, at least, were gently nurtured, but the steaming oysters, cold beef, and generous "chunks" of bread, filled their eyes with a magnificence and their stomachs with a gentle repletion no banquet before or after ever equaled. The feast was set in the same place during four years, by the Sanitary Society, I think, but the memory of that homely board, plenteously spread, is in the mind of many a veteran who faced warward during the conflict.
CHAPTER VI.
ON THE POTOMAC.
The next morning, when the men debarked to march through Baltimore, every one was on the qui vive to fasten in his memory the scene of the shameful attack upon the soldiers of Massachusetts on the 19th of April. But, as the line marched proudly down Pratt Street, there were no signs of the hostile spirit that made Baltimore a center of doubt and suspicion in the North for many a day afterward. It was, however, when the train dashed out from among the hills to the northwest of the sheet of water behind the capitol that the Caribees glued their eyes to the panes in awe not unmingled with delight. No American will ever look upon that imperial dome again with the sensations that filled the breasts of those who first saw its rounded outlines in the war epoch. What the ark of the covenant was to the armies that marched in the wilderness, or the cross of St. Peter to the pilgrims approaching Rome, that the great dome, towering cloud ward in the perpetual blue, was to the wondering eye of the soldier as his glance first fell upon it; that it was for months—yes, ever after—on the plains of Arlington and in the deadly exhalations of the Chickahominy. Every one looked anxiously to see signs of war—indeed, since leaving Baltimore, there was a delicious feeling of suspense—as the train shot over embankments or skirted the deep pine woods. Perhaps an adventurous rebel vanguard might attack them. Perhaps they might have the glory of fighting their way to the beleaguered capital. Perhaps Father Abraham might come out and smile benignantly at them for a brave deed well done. Faces flushed and eyes sparkled in the delightful anticipation: and some of the ardent spirits, more eager than the others, loaded their muskets to be ready! But, beyond the Federal picket-post at the stations, no sign of war was soon, nor much sign of hostilities, such as the vivid fancies of the raw young warriors conjured.