“Oh, tell us about it,” said Josie, evidently pleased at the change of subject; “tell us about it, please.”
“No, no!” he protested, “you may read it better in the histories, written by young fellows who know more about it than we who were there. You’ll find, when you read it, that it was something like this: Grant’s host was over around Chattanooga, starving for want of means for carrying in provisions. We were marching eastward to join him, when a message came telling us to stop at Decatur and rebuild the railroad to Nashville. So, without a thought that there was such a thing as an impossibility, we stopped—we seven or eight thousand common Americans, volunteer soldiers, picked at random from the legions of heroes who saved liberty to the world—and without an engineering corps, without tools or implements, with nothing except what any like number of our soldiers had, we stopped and built the road. That is all. The rails had been heated, and wound about trees and stumps. The cross-ties were burned to heat the rails. The cars had been destroyed by fire, and their warped ironwork thrown into ditches. The engines lay in scrap-heaps at the bottoms of ravines and rivers. The bridges were gone. Out of the chaos to which the structure had been resolved, there was nothing left but the road-bed.
“When I think of what we did, I know that with liberty and intelligence men with their naked hands could, in short space, re-create the destroyed wealth of the world. We made tools of the scraps of iron and steel we found along the line. We felled trees. We impressed little sawmills and sawed the logs into timbers for bridges and cars. Out of the battle-scarred and march-worn ranks came creative and constructive genius in such profusion as to astound us, who thought we knew them so well. Those blue-coated fellows, enlisted and serving as food for powder, and used to destruction, rejoiced in once more feeling the thrill there is in making things.”
“Out of the ranks came millers, and ground the grain the foragers brought in; came woodmen, and cut the trees; came sawyers, and sawed the lumber. We asked for blacksmiths; and they stepped from the ranks, and made their own tools and the tools of the machinists. We called for machinists; and out of the ranks they stepped, and rebuilt the engines, and made the cars ready for the carpenters. When we wanted carpenters, out of the same ranks of common soldiers they walked, and made the cars. From the ranks came other men, who took the twisted rails, unwound them from the stumps and unsnarled them from one another, as women unwind yarn, and laid them down fit to carry our trains. And in forty days our message went back to Grant that we had ‘stopped and built the road,’ and that our engines were even then drawing supplies to his hungry army. Such was the incomparable army which was commanded by that silent genius of war; and to have been one of such an army is to have lived!”
The withered old hand trembled, as the great past surged back through his mind. We all sat in silence; and I looked at Captain Tolliver, doubtful as to how he would take the old Union general’s speech. What the Captain’s history had been none of us knew, except that he was a Southerner. When the general ceased, Tolliver was sitting still, with no indication of being conscious of anything special in the conversation, except that a red spot burned in each dark cheek. As the necessity for speech grew with the lengthening silence, he rose and faced General Lattimore.
“Suh,” said he, “puhmit a man who was with the victohs of Manasses; who chahged with mo’ sand than sense at Franklin; and who cried like a child aftah Nashville, and isn’t ashamed of it, by gad! to offah his hand, and to say that he agrees with you, suh, in youah tribute to the soldiers of the wah, and honahs you, suh, as a fohmah foe, and a worthy one, and he hopes, a future friend!”
Somehow, the Captain’s swelling phrases, his sonorous allusions to himself in the third person, had for the moment ceased to be ridiculous. The environment fitted the expression. The general grasped his hand and shook it. Then Ballard claimed the right, as one of the survivors of Franklin, to a share in the reunion, and they at once removed the strain which had fallen upon us with the General’s first speech, by relating stories and fraternizing soldierwise, until Conductor Corcoran called in at the door, “Mystery Number One! All out for the christening!”
As we gathered on the platform, we saw that the signboard on the station-building, for the name of the town, had been put up, but was veiled by a banner draped over it. Tents were pitched near, in which people lived waiting for the lot-auction, that they might buy sites for shops and homes. The waters of the lake shone through the trees a few rods away; and in imagination I could see the village of the future, sprinkled about over the beautiful shore. The future villagers gathered near the platform; and when Jim stepped forward to make the speech of the occasion, he had a considerable audience.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” said he, “our visit is for the purpose of showing the interest which the Lattimore & Great Western takes and will continue to take in the towns on its line, and to add a name to what, I notice, has already become a local habitation. In conferring that name, we are aware that the future citizens of the place have claims upon us. So one has been selected which, as time passes, will grow more and more pleasant to your ears; and one which the person bestowing it regards as an honor to the town as high as could be conferred in a name. No station on our lines could have greater claims upon our regard than the possession of this name. And now, gentlemen—”
Mr. Elkins removed his hat, and we all followed his example. Some one pulled a cord, the banner fell away, and the name was revealed. It was “Josephine.” The women looked at it, and turned their eyes on Josie, who blushed rosily, and shrank back behind her father, who burst into a loud laugh of unalloyed pleasure.