Shoulder-Straps: A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862

by Henry Morford

"Let me see," said the doctor, taking the invalid's hand in his, examining his pulse, and subjecting him to a general scrutiny. "The proposal is a bold one, but I fancy that it is sensible, after all. Yes, when you can go out, you can go out to advantage, and I believe that time has come. You had probably better accept your brother's proposal."

The result of all which was, that the carriage was ordered between three and four o'clock, and that in spite of the insufferable heat of the day the two invalids (so very differently disabled) were driven to the Central Park, were driven around it, heard Dodworth's Band perform half a dozen operatic selections as only that cornet-band can perform them, saw the loungers on the grass, the promenaders on the walks, the boats on the pond which is called a lake, and all the picturesque features of that Saturday-afternoon gathering which within the past two years has become a pleasant feature of summer in the metropolis.

Richard Crawford did not experience the fatigue he had expected. On the contrary he felt new life and vigor flowing in with every breath of the yet early summer; and when they drove back to the house an hour before sunset, he had the sensations of a school-boy whose play-hour is over and who is just going back to school and his books. He was not only better, but he was nearly well. He felt and realized the fact for the first time. The wide, glorious, open world, with its flowers, its waters, its sunshine, and its smiling human faces worth them all, had once more called the man who had so lately believed himself shut away from life and enjoyment forever; and he was answering the call.

Not that Richard Crawford was happy, even while the music was sounding over the lake and nature was wooing him with her midsummer smile. He had loved—he yet loved—truly and devotedly; and without his realizing what evil influence could have fallen like a blight upon all his hopes, those hopes were destroyed. He was not broken-hearted, as he had believed himself to be while laboring under more serious bodily illness: he was only sad; but that sadness, he believed, would remain during life. Ah, well!—if life and health were still to be his, he must nerve himself to meet whatever of sorrow or disappointment might come, and bear what he could not conquer. So thought he as they rode homeward, when John for a time ceased that constant stream of chat for which a wounded arm did not in the least disable him. He little knew how a lumbering stage was at the same hour setting down a dusty little woman in a gray travelling-dress, at a country village hundreds of miles away, whose acts and words were to produce so marked an effect on his own destiny.

These details of very ordinary events in the Crawford family, which followed the re-union of the two brothers, may seem very uninteresting and common-place; and yet they are necessary for the possible understanding of what so soon followed. For the letting in of sunshine on a dark place may not only warm and illumine that place for a time but make the continuance of sunshine a necessity. And going out into the sunshine may have the same effect. The school-boy, once let out for his "play-spell," may have great objection to spending so many hours, thereafter, over his books in the dusky school-room; and Nature, after a time, may develop the fact that he needed the reviving and strengthening education of the outer world, much more imperatively than the additional education of the brain which he would have acquired within the sound of the teacher's voice. Nature's hygiene is very little understood, but it is at the same time very simple and very powerful. The sun contains the great mystery of health and hardihood, and the man who carefully shuts himself away from its rays is arranging for the same kind of existence which the unfortunate plant is forced to experience, growing under the shelter of a rotten log, succulent, tender and perishable. The fire-worship of the Ghebers was founded upon common-sense; and no doubt the first kneeling adoration of the sun-worshippers both of Persia and Peru, was paid by some poor fellow who had been sick, attenuated and miserable, who had finally crawled out into the sunshine after long confinement, and who believed that there must be some supernatural influence in the life radiating from the great orb and bounding through every half-chilled vein. The inventor of parasols and sun-shades should have been executed immediately on the announcement of his invention, for he has been the means of shutting away the faces of more than half the world, and especially the fairer portion, from their best inanimate friend, the sun, of making sallow complexions and lack-lustre eyes, and of causing a demand for cosmetics that would never have been known had the sun-god been allowed to steal kisses from the cheek of beauty and leave there the ruddy glow of health as a compensation for the privilege.

To induce a belief on the part of Richard Crawford that he was well enough and strong enough to leave the house to which he had been so long confined, had been found a little difficult. The ice once broken, the next adventure into the summer sunshine would need far less inducement. So it proved. And so it happened that within four days from the time when he believed that he was committing suicide by adventuring to the Central Park, he permitted himself to be persuaded, under the sanction of the doctor, into taking a step which was certain to test his powers of endurance pretty thoroughly—nothing less than going to Niagara Falls.

Of course this movement originated with John Crawford the Zouave, whose original restlessness had not been a whit quieted by the ever-moving adventure of a year in the army. The city was growing unendurably hot, he said, so that he every day expected to find the paving-stones splitting to pieces with the heat, and the fish boiling in the North River. It was ten degrees worse, he averred, than he had experienced in Virginia either season; and such a thing as a hot day had never been known at Niagara, even by the oldest inhabitant. (Perhaps the young man altered his opinion on that point, visiting it especially during the early days of July, 1862!) Dick would grow worse again—he knew he would—and lose the little strength he had gained, sweltering in such an unventilated pig-stye as the city. Come!—there were to be no more words about it!—they should all go to Niagara!

Richard Crawford was at first alarmed—then puzzled—then a little delighted. Bell, who did not often fall into the peculiarly girlish weakness of clapping her hands, did so on this occasion. She had missed Niagara for the previous two years; and this season, owing to the serious illness of her brother, she had expected to be debarred the privilege of exhibiting her unimpeachable summer wardrobe (which she had not quite forgotten) at any of the watering-places. Richard's rapid improvement and this restless suggestion of John, seemed like a god-send. She voted for Niagara, if Richard felt that he could endure the fatigue of the journey. His citadel surrounded on two sides in that manner, and the genial old doctor faithless, there was little else left than a surrender, and Richard Crawford surrendered.

Stop!—there was something of which neither had thought for a moment! They had a guest, whose wishes should be consulted the more religiously because she would make no parade of them. Would Marion Hobart, who mourned in heart if not in the sombre hue of her garments, for her last relative so lately dead—would she be pleased to go into the gay world of a fashionable watering-place? Not content, but pleased? If she would not, the project must be abandoned, whatever the temptations to go forward. Bell, who had the moment before been about commencing her action as a committee of one to overhaul Richard's laid-away wardbrobe and discover what additions would be necessary, had the sphere of her operations suddenly changed by being sent up-stairs to sound the inclinations of the young Virginian girl on the subject.

She found Marion Hobart half en deshabille, lying upon the bed in her own little chamber, busily reading and comparing the letter-press with the coats-of-arms, in a copy of the English Peerage which she had found in Dick's little library, and to which she had exhibited a scandalously aristocratic taste by paying more attention than to all the other books in the house.