He picked out the hardest names he could remember in his geographical studies and determined to make them the means of propelling obstinate animals and inducing them to pull properly when pulling was desired. With the permission of one of the regular drivers he practiced on the teams and found his plan worked very well; so well, in fact, that it received the commendation of the chaplain and of the colonel of the regiment, and furthermore, the team seemed to enjoy it.
“Sebastopol” was one of his favorite expletives, and when he hurled it at a mule, hissing the first syllable through his teeth and giving full vent to his voice on the last, that mule was sure to do his very best until the load moved or the harness gave way. In the same manner he found “Calcutta” an expletive of great power, and so was “Nagasaki” and also “St. Petersburg.” When he wanted something of unusual strength for a momentous occasion he informed his obstinate animals that “Vienna is the Capital of Austria,” or “the Dutch have taken Holland.” Nothing could surpass the efforts of the team when these phrases were thrown into the elongated ears of the unschooled mules.
Harry imparted his plan to Jack, and when that youth was shortly afterward put in charge of a team which had been hired at Booneville for the trip to Springfield, he repeated the experiment. It did not work as well as in Harry's case, but the reason was found in the fact that Jack's mules were of Missouri origin and proverbially ignorant, while those of Harry had come all the way from Iowa, and had the benefit of a northern training. While the Northern mules might be supposed to have a thirst for travel that would make geographical facts sink deep into their hearts, those of the more southern state were content to remain in their ignorance, and, like Jeff Davis, “all they asked was to be let alone.”
“You're saying that in joke, of course,” remarked the quartermaster when Jack explained the reason of the difference in the animals of the two states. “But let me tell you,” he continued, “that you're nearer fact than you suppose. 'Like master like man' is an old adage, and why should n't a Missouri mule be like a Missouri man? As a general thing the Missouri people have opposed everything that tended to the development of the state. I refer to the slaveholding portion, or those who sympathize with slavery, though they may have no slaves of their own.”
“How was that?”
“They were afraid it would interfere with their system of slavery, as they saw it would bring in a population that believed in freedom instead of the old state of things. When the Butterfield Overland Stage Line was established from St. Louis to California they tried all they could to stop it; they declared it was n't needed; and they did the same when the Western Union Telegraph Co. wanted to build a line across the state. They opposed the railways that have been built in various parts of the state, and for the same reason, notwithstanding the fact that the railways would make their land more valuable by bringing them nearer a market. I have lived in Missouri and know what I'm talking about.
“Education has always been much more backward in the South than in the North, as everybody knows, and it is the system of slavery that caused this backwardness. Travel through the Northern states and you see a school-house in every village and almost at every cross-road, but in the South you may go hundreds of miles without seeing a school-house. This one fact speaks volumes in itself and illustrates the conditions growing out of slavery on the one hand and freedom on the other. A people that do not want education do not want railways and telegraphs, or anything else that indicates progress. Only when the South gets rid of slavery will it wake up and adopt the institutions of the North.”
Regarding the South in the light of the present day, the words uttered by the quartermaster may be regarded as prophetic. It is only since the war wiped away the stain of slavery that the Southern states have vied with the North in developing their resources and have sought to have a really intelligent population. Before the war education was confined chiefly to the rich or the well-to-do, the majority of the poor whites being but little above the negro in the scale of intelligence. Thousands on thousands of them were unable to read or write, and those who could do so had little knowledge of the rest of the world.
Our young friends had frequent opportunities to test the intelligence of the natives of the region through which they were traveling, and many of their experiences were amusing. One day they talked with a farmer who had an impression that St. Louis was the largest city in the world, and practically the only one he had heard of New York and Chicago, but had no clear idea of their location except that they were somewhere in the North, and did not believe they amounted to much anyway. He thought Abraham Lincoln was a black man, who had somehow been made president of the United States by the abolitionists, and if his armies succeeded in conquering the South the government would be altogether in the hands of the blacks, who would speedily proceed to enslave the rest of the population and “have white men for niggers.”
Several times they talked with men and women who were much surprised to find the Yankee soldiers were white men; they had expected to see only negroes, and especially thought it strange that the officers were white instead of black. A woman at whose house they stopped to get a drink of water said she did n't mind the white soldiers, but when it came to the black republicans she would n't be able to endure them.