Thanks, thanks, O ye heroes of Lookout! O brave Union boys! during Time
Shall stand this, your column of glory, shall shine this, your triumph sublime!
To the deep mountain den of the panther the hunter climbed, drove him to bay,
Then fought the fierce foe till he turned and fled, bleeding and gnashing, away!
Fled away from the scene where so late broke his growls and he shot down his glare,
As he paced to and fro, for the hunter his wild craggy cavern to dare!
Thanks, thanks, O ye heroes of Lookout! ye girded your souls to the fight,
Drew the sword, dropped the scabbard, and went in the full conscious strength of your might!
Now climbing o'er rock and o'er tree mound, up, up, by the hemlock ye swung!
Now plunging through thicket and swamp, on the edge of the hollow ye hung!
One hand grasped the musket, the other clutched ladder of root and of bough:
The trunk the tornado had shivered, the landmark pale glimmering now,
And now the mad torrent's white lightning;—no drum tapped, no bugle was blown—
To the words that encouraged each other, and quick breaths, ye toiled up alone!
Oh, long as the mountains shall rise o'er the waters of bright Tennessee,
Shall be told the proud deeds of the 'White Star,' the cloud-treading host of the free!
The camp-fire shall blaze to the chorus, the picket-post peal it on high,
How was fought the fierce battle of Lookout—how won the Grand Fight of the Sky!
ONE NIGHT.
I.
From the window at which I write, in these November days, I see a muddy, swollen river, spread over the meadows into a dingy lake; it is not a picturesque or a pretty stream, in spite of its Indian name. Beyond it the land slopes away into a range of long, low hills, which the autumn has browned; the long swaths of fog stretching between river and hill are so like to them and to the dissolving gray sky that they all blend in one general gloom. This picture filling my eye narrows and shapes itself into the beginning of my story: I see a lazy, dirty river on the outskirts of a manufacturing city; where the stream has broadened into a sort of pond it is cut short by the dam, and there is a little cluster of mills. They all belong to one work, however, and they look as if they had been set down there for a few months only; 'contract' seems written all over them, and very properly, for they are running on a Government order for small arms. There is no noise but an underhum of revolving shafts and the smothered thud of trip hammers. Ore dust blackens everything, and is scattered everywhere, so that the whole ground is a patchwork of black and gray; elsewhere there is snow, but here the snow is turned to the dingy color of the place. It is very quiet outside, being early morning yet; a cold mist hides the dawn, and the water falls with a winter hiss; the paths are indistinct, for the sky is only just enough lightening to show the east.
The coal dust around one door shows that the fires are there; a cavernous place, suddenly letting a lurid glow out upon the night, and then black again. It is only a narrow alley through the building, making sure of a good draft; on one side are the piles of coal, and on the other a row of furnace doors. The stoker is sitting on a heap of cinder. He is only an old man, a little stooping, with a head that is turning ashes color; his eye is faded, and his face nearly expressionless, while he sits perfectly still on the heap, as if he were a part of the engine which turns slowly in a shed adjoining and pants through its vent in the roof. He has been sitting there so long that he has a vague notion that his mind has somehow gone out of him into the iron doors and the rough coal, and he only goes round and round like the engine. Yet he never considered the matter at all, any more than the engine wanted to use its own wheel, which it turned month after month in the same place, to propel itself through the world; just so often he opened and shut each door in its turn, fed the fires, and then sat down and sat still.
He was looking at a boy of six, asleep at his feet on a pile of ashes and cinder, which was not so bad a bed, for the gentle heat left in it was as good as a lullaby, and Shakspeare long ago told us that sleep has a preference for sitting by hard pillows. The child was an odd bit of humanity. An accident at an early age had given it a hump, though otherwise it was fair enough; and now perhaps society would have seen there only an animal watching its sleeping cub. Presently the boy woke and got on his feet, and began to walk toward the cold air with short, uncertain steps, almost falling against a furnace door. The old man jumped and caught him.
'Ta, ta, Nobby,' he said, 'what's thou doin'? Them's hotter nor cender. Burnt child dreads fire—did knowst 'twas fire?'
He had a sort of language of his own, and his voice was singularly harsh, as if breathing in that grimy place so long had roughened his throat.