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A hundred years they wander on the shore;
At length, their penance done, are wafted o'er."
Then you fancy them a collection of howling dervishes; or a congregation of monks in Purgatory, the figures about the fires being the working devils preparing to roast the poor monks for their morning's course of expiatory torment.
While you are trying to drown your misery in this sort of musing the fire is doing its work, and soon the pots boil, the fixens are tossed in, and the coffee. Near by your own company fire—that is what most interests you now—there is spread on the ground a rubber cloth, whose irregular protuberant shape suggests agreeable things. The busy figure at the fire approaches the mystery, raises the covering at one end and draws forth bread, which he cuts in chunks, loaf after loaf; a crock of apple butter—a Pennsylvanian Dutch dish somewhat analagous to the apple sauce of the Yankees; and a can of brown sugar—a luxury which only the prudent forethought of enterprising officers rendered possible, intended doubtless for their own mess, but generously devoted to the comfort of the company, now struggling under the terrible triple load of fatigue, privation and exposure. For be it remembered that, although we had had fresh meat rations served out to us only forty-eight hours previously, sufficient to last us a couple of days if not wasted, yet the unexpectedness and suddenness of our resumption of the march had prevented us, in our inexperience, from availing ourselves of the provision. Indeed it rarely happened that we carried in our haversacks from bivouac to bivouac anything more than half a dozen hard-tack, if so many, which we snatched up hastily as we fell into line for the forward march. So that the only real refreshment we found within our reach at the end of each day's march, when, weary, hungry and sore we dropt down on the rough ground of bivouac, was night itself and its sweet gift of sleep. Whatever may be the theories of physiologists on the subject, we felt, as a matter of daily experience, that a good, wholesome, appetizing meal half an hour or an hour after coming to a halt would have enabled us to endure much harder marches with much less fatigue than is here recorded.
All being ready, the boiling pots are slipped off the fire, and the viands set on the ground in order before the master of ceremonies. A shout goes forth, "Fall in for rations!" But the call is needless. For the last half hour fifty pairs of eyes have been following every motion of the cook and his volunteer aids, and tin plates and cups been giving forth their dulcet strains. A long cue of black headless devils stands merry before the flourishing disciple of Soyer. He dips into the smoking pot of stew and raises a cupful, dripping and delicious; a plate is ready to receive it. He dips again; another is ready. The supernumeraries dispense the coffee, bread, apple-butter, and sweetnin'. The black cue shortens one by one till the last hungry devil is supplied, and all have assumed the squat posture, and the grove is filled with black heaps again. But not now as before. Then all were glum, silent, motionless—the rain pelting them remorselessly. Now every one is alive with movement and talk. By and bye the weather clears up a little. One after another, human forms reappear upon the scene. The drummers sound their call;—it is the Assembly—the summons to forward march. Tents are struck quickly; luggage rolled and shouldered; arms taken; and away goes an army of brave youths, three short hours ago utterly and miserably "played out", now ready to make a long day's march, or to move upon the enemy, singing as they pass under Logan's windows, "Marching along," "John Brown," etc., ignorant at the moment of the poetic justice which their mighty chorus celebrates.
A member of the Twenty-Third left behind at Altodale, sick and in care of a kind mater-familias, related an amusing experience which illustrates the semi-civilization of the people of those regions. His bed was provided with but one sheet; and the hostess kindly enquired whether he would rather have a counterpane or a blanket next him—"some people prefers one, and some the other!" she remarked. He thanked her blandly and chose the counterpane. During the two days and nights of his stay he did not hear the sound of a piano, nor a note of music from the inhabitants, though he was in the heart of the village, and at twilight saw young ladies promenading the street. In lively contrast to this neglect of the divine gift of music, he heard, on the second evening, a company of soldiers who were dallying in the place, singing patriotic songs, which were received by their comrades with a familiar "Hi! Hi!" This sudden irruption of democratic New York into a Pennsylvania Dutch village, whose only idea of the great city was, doubtless, what had been derived from rose-colored descriptions and fanciful pictures of its great hotels or its streets of palaces, must have seemed to the inhabitants about as strange as the unheralded appearance on Broadway, some fine afternoon, of a caravan of Bedouins from Arabia.
Another instance was narrated to show the primitive taste of the villagers; one more to the point than that just recorded, which may have been accidental. Opposite the room where he lay sick was the residence of one of the rich men of the place. His house was of brick, commodious and painfully plain. The roadway extended to the very door, the only marks of division between the portion to be used for vehicles and that intended as a walk being a locust tree and a bridle post. The door was raised some two feet above the ground, and was reached by a partly hewn log, from around which the rain had washed away quite a depth of gravel, so that it now presented an awkward step for a lady. Though there was abundant room for a door yard there was no enclosure, no sign of shrub or flower. Here dwelt one of the upper-tendom of Altodale.
This same soldier, on his way to rejoin his regiment met a Pennsylvania youngster with whom he had the following colloquy:—
"Many more back?" inquired the boy, who evidently wanted to know whether there were many more troops coming forward. Carlyle might envy such terseness of language.