Before the Arsenal in Cambridge stood an innocent old cannon that had not been fired since the War of 1812, perhaps not since the Revolution. The grass and flowers grew about its silent muzzle, and lambs might have fed there as in the pretty picture of Landseer. Any thought that the old cannon could go off had long ceased to be entertained. One quiet night a tremendous explosion took place; the cannon had waked up from its long sleep, arousing the babies over a wide region and many a pane of glass was shivered. What had got into the old cannon that night was long a mystery. Many years after Barlow was discovered at the bottom of it—it was the first shot he ever fired.
Dr. James Walker, the college president, said to a friend of mine at the beginning of the war, speculating on the probable futures of the boys who had been under his care, "There's Barlow, now he'll go in and come out at the top." Barlow had been a sad puzzle to the faculty, good men, often perplexed to know what to do with him or what would become of him. Dr. Walker's astuteness divined well the outcome. As I review those early years I can see now that Barlow then gave plain signs of the qualities which he was later to display. I remember sleeping with him once in a room in the top story of Stoughton in our sophomore year and he talked for a great part of the night about Napoleon. The Corsican was the hero who beyond all others had fascinated him, whose career he would especially love to emulate. We were a pair of boys in a peaceful college, living in a time which apparently would afford no opportunity for a soldier's career. I have often thought of that talk. Barlow was really not unlike the youthful Napoleon, in frame he was slender and delicate, his complexion verged toward the olive, his face was always beardless. I never saw him thrown off his poise in any emergency. The straits of course are not great in which a college boy is placed, but such as they were, Barlow was always cool, with his mind working at its best in the midst of them. He was never abashed, but had a resource and an apt one in every emergency. He was absolutely intrepid before the thrusts of our sharpest examiners and as I have said could bluff it boldly and dexterously where his knowledge failed; then the odd cynicism with which he turned down great pretentions and sometimes matters of serious import, had a Napoleonic cast. In '61 he enlisted as a private but rose swiftly through the grades to the command of a regiment. At Antietam he had part of a brigade and coralled in a meteoric way on Longstreet's front line some hundreds of prisoners. His losses were great but he was in the thick of it himself, his poise unruffled until he was borne desperately wounded from the field. The surgeon who attended him told me, if I remember right, that a ball passed entirely through his body carrying with it portions of his clothing, if such a thing were possible; but, with his usual nonchalance he laughed at wounds and while still weak and emaciated went back to his place again in the following spring at the head of a brigade. He underwent Chancellorsville, and for the Union cause it was a great misfortune that his fine brigade was taken from its place on Hooker's right before Stonewall Jackson made his charge. Had Barlow been there he might have done something to stay the disaster. At Gettysburg, however, he was in the front in command of a division. An old soldier, a lieutenant that day under Barlow, told me that he had charge of the ambulances of the division and on the march near Emmitsburg Barlow put into the lieutenant's especial charge the ambulance of his wife who, with a premonition of calamity, insisted on being near at hand to help. When the battle joined and Gordon swept overwhelmingly upon Barlow's division, the lieutenant had difficulty in restraining Mrs. Barlow from rushing at once upon the field among the fighting men. He held her back almost by force but she remained close at hand. Barlow was again desperately wounded, so hurt that his death seemed inevitable, and when the faithful wife, at last making her way, presented herself even in the rebel lines with a petition for her husband, supposed to be dying, Gordon chivalrously gave him up. It was magnanimous, but for him ill-timed. Again Barlow laughed at his wounds. In May, 1864, he was in the field at the head of the first division of Hancock's corps and on the 12th of May performed the memorable exploit, breaking fairly the centre of Lee's army and bringing it nearer to defeat than it ever came until the catastrophe at Appomattox. He captured the Spottsylvania salient together with the best division of the army of northern Virginia, Stonewall Jackson's old command, two generals, thirty colours, cannon, and small arms to correspond. John Noyes, a soldier of a class after us, told me that in the salient he and Barlow worked like privates in the confusion of the capture, turning with their own hands against the enemy a cannon that had just been taken. Barlow was as cool as when he fired off the old cannon in Cambridge ten years before. This stroke proved futile, but from no shortcoming of Barlow's. A few weeks later at Cold Harbor he effected a lodgment within the Confederate works when all others failed. That too proved futile, but his reputation was confirmed as one of the most brilliant of division commanders. There is a photograph in existence portraying Hancock and his division generals as they appeared during that terrible campaign. It was taken in the woods in the utmost stress of service. Barlow stands in the group just as he looked in college, the face thin and beardless, almost that of a boy, and marked with the nonchalance which always characterised him. There are no military trappings, a rough checked shirt, trousers, slouching from the waist to campaign boots, hang loosely about the attenuated limbs. Soon after that he was carried from the field, not wounded, but in utter exhaustion after exposures which no power of will could surmount. A few months' respite and he was at his post again, intercepting by a swift march Lee's retreating column, almost the last warlike act of the Army of the Potomac before Appomattox. In this "Last Leaf" I do not deal with "might-have-beens." I only remember, but we old classmates of Barlow have a feeling that had the war continued, if only the bullets to which he was always so hospitable had spared him, he would have gone on to the command of a corps, and perhaps even to greater distinctions. The photograph of Barlow, published after his death in the Harvard Graduates' Magazine, presents him as he was soon after the war was over. He had recovered from the hardships, the face is fairly well rounded but still rather that of a beardless, laughing boy than of a man. A stranger studying the face would hear with incredulity the story of the responsibilities and dangers which that face had confronted. He laughed it all off lightly, and that was his way when occasionally in his later years he came to our meetings.
I recall a reunion in 1865, ten years after our graduation. We sat in full numbers about a sumptuous banquet at the Parker House in Boston, and naturally in that year the returned soldiers were in the foreground. In our class were two major-generals, four colonels, a distinguished surgeon, and many more of lower rank. Barlow was the central figure. Theodore Lyman, who presided, introduced him with a glowing tribute, recounting his achievements, a long list from the time he had entered as a private to his culmination as a full Major-General. He called at last for nine cheers for the man who had captured the Spottsylvania salient, and we gave them with a roar that shook the building. Barlow was the only man in the room who showed not the slightest emotion. He stood impassive, his face wearing his queer smile. Other men might have been abashed at the tumultuous warmth of such a reception from his old mates; a natural utterance at such a time would have been an expression of joy that the war was over and that the country had been saved, coupled with modest satisfaction that he had borne some part in the great vindication, but that was not Barlow's way. He laughed it off lightly, as if it had been a huge joke. My classmate, the late Joseph Willard of Boston, told me of a reunion of the class at a time much later. The men were discussing the stained-glass window which it had been decided should be put in Memorial Hall. Since the class had a distinguished military record it was felt that there should be martial suggestion in the window and the question was what classic warrior should be portrayed. The face, it was thought, should have the lineaments of our most famous soldier. Barlow, who was present, pooh-poohed the whole idea, especially the suggestion that his face should appear, but someone present having suggested Alcibiades, probably not seriously as a proper type, that seemed to strike Barlow's sense of humour. That reckless classic scapegrace to his cynical fancy perhaps might pass, he might be Alcibiades, but who should be the dog? Alcibiades had a dog whose misfortune in losing his tail has been transmitted through centuries by the pen of Plutarch. "Who will be the dog?" said Barlow and called upon someone to furnish a face for the hero's canine companion. The scheme for the window came near to going to wreck amid the outbursts of laughter. It was carried through later, however, but Alcibiades and the dog do not appear, although Barlow does. No other Harvard soldier reached Barlow's eminence, and probably in the whole Army of the Potomac there were few abler champions. He was a strange, gifted, most picturesque personality, no doubt a better man under his cynical exterior than he would ever suffer it to be thought. His service was great, and the memory of him is an interesting and precious possession to those who knew him in boyhood and were in touch with him to the end.
CHAPTER III
HORACE MANN AND ANTIOCH COLLEGE
The cataclysm of the Civil War, in which as the preceding pages show I had been involved, had shaken me in my old moorings. I found myself not content in a quiet parish in the Connecticut Valley, and as I fared forth was fortunate enough to meet a leader in a remarkable personage. Horace Mann was indeed dead, but remained, as he still remains, a power. His brilliant gifts and self-consecration made him, first, a great educational path-breaker. From that he passed into politics, exhibiting in Congress abilities of the highest. Like an inconstant lover, however, he harked back to his old attachment, and putting aside a fine preferment, the governorship of Massachusetts, it was said, forsook his old home for the headship of Antioch College in south-western Ohio. I shall not dispute here whether or not he chose wisely; much less, how far a lame outcome at Antioch was due to his human limitations, and how far to the inevitable conditions. He was a potent and unselfish striver for the betterment of men, and his words and example still remain an inspiration.
My father in these years was a trustee of Antioch College, and this brought our household into touch with the illustrious figure of whom all men spoke. My memory holds more than a film of him, rather a vivid picture, his stately height dominating my boyish inches, as I stood in his presence. He was spare to the point of being gaunt, every fibre charged with a magnetism which caused a throb in the by-stander. Over penetrating eyes hung a beetling brow, and his aggressive, resonant voice commanded even in slight utterances. I recall him in a public address. The newspapers were full of the Strassburg geese, which, nails being driven through their web feet to hold them motionless, were fed to develop exaggerated livers,—these for the epicures of Paris. "For health and wholesome appetite," he exclaimed, "I counsel you to eschew les patés de foie gras, but climb a mountain or swing an axe." No great sentence in an exhortation to vigorous, manful living. But the scornful staccato with which he rolled out the French, and the ringing voice and gesture with which he accompanied his exhortation, stamped it indelibly. From that day to this, if I have felt a beguilement toward the flesh-pots, I still hear the stern tones of Horace Mann. In general his eloquence was extraordinary, and I suppose few Americans have possessed a power more marked for cutting, bitter speech. His invective was masterly, and too often perhaps merciless, and it was a weapon he was not slow to wield on occasions large and small. In Congress he lashed deservedly low-minded policies and misguided blatherskites, but his wrathful outpourings upon pupils for some trivial offence were sometimes over-copious. There are Boston schoolmasters, still living perhaps, who yet feel a smart from his scourge. His personality was so incisive that probably few were in any close or long contact with him without a good rasping now and then. My father was the most amiable of men, yet even he did not escape. As an Antioch trustee he was in charge of funds which were not to be applied unless certain conditions were satisfied. Horace Mann demanded the money, and it was withheld on occasions and a deluge of ire was poured upon my poor father's head. It did not cause him to falter in his conviction of Horace Mann's greatness and goodness. Nor has this over-ready impetuosity ever caused the world to falter in its reverence. He came bringing not peace but a sword, in all the spheres in which he moved, and in Horace Mann's world it was a time for the sword. He was a path-breaker in regions obstructed by mischievous accumulations. There was need of his virile championship, and none will say that there was ever in him undue thought of self or indifference to the best humanity.
My father held fast to the sharp-cornered saint and prophet, though somewhat excoriated in the association. He held fast to his trusteeship of Antioch; and in 1866, Horace Mann having some years before been laid in his untimely grave, he stood in his place as president of the college. Through the agency of my dear friends of those years, Dr. Henry W. Bellows and Dr. Edward Everett Hale, I was to go with him as, so to speak, his under-study, discharging the work of English professor and sometimes the duties of preacher. I went gladly. The spirit of the dead leader haunted pervasively the shades where he had laboured and died. The tradition of Horace Mann was paramount among the students, the graduates, and the whole environment. I had felt as a boy the spell of his voice and presence and knew no hero whom I could follow more cordially. It was a joy to become domiciled in the house which had been built for him and where he had breathed his last, and to labour day by day along the noble lines which he had laid down. This was my post for six years, one of which, however, was spent in Europe, in the hope of gaining an added fitness for my place.
I have no mind to set down here a record of those Antioch years. One experiment we tried in a field then very novel and looked upon askance. To-day in our schools and universities the pageant and the drama play a large part. Forty years ago they were unknown or in hiding, and it may be claimed that our little fresh-water college bore a part in initiating a development that has become memorable and widely salutary. In 1872 I wrote out the story of our attempt for Mr. Howells, in the Atlantic Monthly, a film which may appropriately be staged among my pictures.
The New Wrinkle at Sweetbrier; or, The Drama in Colleges