"Did it ever strike you," said the colonel, waxing philosophic, "that you can't dine in but two places south of the Potomac? True, sir. Egad! You may stumble upon a country gentleman with a plentiful larder and a passable cook, but then, egad, sir! he's an oasis. The mass of the people South don't live, sir! they vegetate—vegetate and nothing else. You get watery soups. Then they offer you mellow madeira with some hot, beastly joint; and oily old sherry with some confounded stew. Splendid materials—materials that the hand of an artist would make luscious—egad, sir; luscious—utterly ruined in the handling. It's too bad, Styles, too bad!"
"It is, indeed," put in Wyatt, falling into the colonel's vein, "too bad! And as for steaks, why, sir, there is not a steak in this whole country. They stew them, colonel, actually stew beefsteaks! Listen to the receipt a 'notable housewife' gave me: 'Put a juicy steak, cut two inches thick, in a saucepan; cover it well with water; put in a large lump of lard and two sliced onions. Let it simmer till the water dries; add a small lump of butter and a dash of pepper—and it's done!' Think of that, sir, for a bonne bouche!"
"Good God!" ejaculated the colonel, with beads on his brow. "I have seen those things, but I never knew how they were done! I shall dream of this, egad! for weeks."
"Fact, sir," Wyatt added, "and I've a theory that no nation deserves its liberties that stews its steaks. Can't gain them, sir! How can men legislate—how can men fight with a pound of stewed abomination holding them like lead? 'Bold and erect the Caledonian stood,' but how long do you think he would have been 'bold,' if they had stewed his 'rare beef' for him? No, sir! mark my words: the nation that stews its beefsteaks contracts its boundaries! As for an omelette——"
"Say no more, Will!" broke in the colonel solemnly. "After the war, come to my club and we'll dine—egad, sir! for a week!"
That invincible pluck of the southron, which carried him through starvation and the sweltering march of August, through hailing shot and shell, and freezing mud of midwinter camps—was unconquered even after the surrender. Equally invincible was that twin humor, which laughed amid all these and bore up, even in defeat. Some of the keenest hits of all the war—tinctured though they be with natural bitterness—are recalled from those days, when the beaten, but defiant, Rebel was passing under the victor's yoke.
Surprising, indeed, to its administrators must have been the result of "the oath," forced upon one green cavalryman, before he could return to family and farm. Swallowing the obnoxious allegiance, he turned to the Federal officer and quietly asked:
"Wail, an' now I reck'n I'm loyil, ain't I?"
"Oh, yes! You're all right," carelessly replied the captor.
"An' ef I'm loyil, I'm same as you 'uns?" persisted the lately sworn. "We're all good Union alike, eh?"