“Done? Why, bless you, sir, they want you to stop him from singin’.”
“What an idea! You said his music was divine.”
“That’s just it. It’s too divine. Mortal man can’t stand it. It stirs a body up so; it turns a body inside out; it racks his feelin’s all to rags; it makes him feel bad and wicked, and not fit for any place but perdition. It keeps a body in such an everlastin’ state of repentin’, that nothin’ don’t taste good and there ain’t no comfort in life. And then the cryin’, you see—every mornin’ they are ashamed to look one another in the face.”
“Well, this is an odd case, and a singular complaint. So they really want the singing stopped?”
“Yes, sir, that is the idea. They don’t wish to ask too much; they would like powerful well to have the prayin’ shut down on, or leastways trimmed off around the edges; but the main thing’s the singin’. If they can only get the singin’ choked off, they think they can stand the prayin’, rough as it is to be bullyragged so much that way.”
I told the sergeant I would take the matter under consideration. That night I crept into the musicians’ quarters and listened. The sergeant had not overstated the case. I heard the praying voice pleading in the dark; I heard the execrations of the harassed men; I heard the rain of boots whiz through the air, and bang and thump around the big drum. The thing touched me, but it amused me, too. By and by, after an impressive silence, came the singing. Lord, the pathos of it, the enchantment of it! Nothing in the world was ever so sweet, so gracious, so tender, so holy, so moving. I made my stay very brief; I was beginning to experience emotions of a sort not proper to the commandant of a fortress.
Next day I issued orders which stopped the praying and singing. Then followed three or four days which were so full of bounty-jumping excitements and irritations that I never once thought of my drummer-boy. But now comes Sergeant Rayburn, one morning, and says,—
“That new boy acts mighty strange, sir.”
“How?”
“Well, sir, he’s all the time writing.”