Eighteen hundred and sixty-two:
Well have they paid to the earth its due.
Close up, steady! the half are yet here
And all of the might, for the living bear
The dead in their hearts over Shiloh's field—
Rich, O God, is thy harvest's yield!
Where faith swings the sickle, trust binds the sheaves,
To the roll of the surging drums.
Eighteen hundred and sixty-three:
Barring Sherman's march to the sea—
Shorn to a thousand; face to the foe
Back, ever back, but stubborn and slow.
Nineteen hundred wounds they take
In that service of Hell, yet the hills they shake
With the roar of their charge as onward they go
To the roll of their throbbing drums.
Eighteen hundred and sixty-four:
Their banners are tattered, and scarce twelve score,
Battered and wearied and seared and old,
Stay by the staves where the Orphans hold
Firm as a rock when the surges break—
Shield of a land where men die for His sake,
For the sake of the brothers whom they have laid low,
To the roll of their muffled drums.
Eighteen hundred and sixty-five:
The Devil is dead and the Lord is alive,
In the earth that springs where the heroes sleep,
And in love new born where the stricken weep.
That legion hath marched past the setting of sun:
Beaten? nay, victors: the realms they have won
Are the hearts of men who forever shall hear
The throb of their far-off drums.
"TOM" MARSHALL[29]
[From The Autobiography of Nathaniel Southgate Shaler (Boston, 1909)]
I have referred above to Thomas F. Marshall, a man of singular attractiveness and talents with whom I had a curious relation. I first met him when I was about fourteen years of age, when he, for some time a congressman, had through drunkenness fallen into a curious half-abandoned mode of life. He was then an oldish fellow, but retained much of his youthful splendor. He was about six feet three inches high, but so well built that he did not seem large, until you stood beside him. His face, even when marred by drink, had something of majesty in it. Marshall, when I knew him, picked up a scanty living as a lecturer. When sober, which he often was for months at a time, his favorite subject was temperance. On this theme he was as eloquent as Gough; in his season of spree, he turned to history. The gradations were not sharp, for he would, as I have seen him, preach most admirably of the evil of drink while he supported himself in his fervent oratory with whiskey from a silver mug. In matters of history, he had read widely. One of his favorite themes was the mediæval history of Italy. I recall with a distinctness which shows the impressiveness of his discourses his story of Florence, so well told that ten years after, when I saw the town for the first time, the shape of it and of the neighboring places was curiously familiar. Along with some other youths, I noted down the dates of events as he gave them and looked them up. We never caught him in an error, though at times he was so drunk that he could hardly stand up. I have known many historians who doubtless much exceeded him in learning, but never another who seemed to have such a capacity for living in the events he narrated.
I had no sooner met "Tom" Marshall than we became friends. He at once took a curious fancy to me, talked to me as though we were of an age, and gave me my first chance of such contact with a man of learning and imagination. The relation, while on one side largely profitable to me, became embarrassing, for the unhappy man got the notion that I could stop his drinking if I would stay with him. A number of times when he had his dipsomaniac fury upon him I found that by sitting by his bed and talking with him on some historical subject, or rather listening to his talk, he would apparently forget about his drink and in a few hours drop asleep and awake to be sober for some months.
Sometimes these quiet interviews were most interesting to me. I recall one of them when I found him in an attack of half delirium. His memory, always active, took him back to the days when he was in Congress and to the scene when he, a very young member of the House, had been chosen by some careful elders to lead an attack on John Quincy Adams. They, the elders, were to come to his support when he had drawn the enemy's fire. It all became so real to him, that he sprang out of bed and in his tattered nightgown gave, first his own speech with all the actions of a young orator, and then the deliberate, crushing rejoinder of his mighty antagonist. At the end of it he fell back upon his bed, cursing the villains who led him into the fight and left him to take the consequences.
My relations with Marshall continued until I went to Cambridge but my influence over his drinking gradually lessened as he sank lower, and his able mind began to be permanently clouded. When I had been some months at college, I espied the poor fellow in the street, carpet-bag in hand, evidently making for my quarters. I sent word by a messenger to my chum, Hyatt, to receive and care for him, but to say that I had left town, which was true, for I went at once to Greenfield, where I had friends. Hyatt was also to provide the wanderer with a suit of clothes and a railway ticket back to Kentucky. I stayed away until I learned that Marshall was on his way home. I have always been ashamed of my conduct in this matter, but the unhappy man was at that time of his degradation an impossible burthen for me to carry; once ensconced in my quarters it would have been impossible to provide him with a dignified exit, and there was no longer hope that I might reform him. Yet the cowardice of the action has grieved me to this day.