“He spent four years in the Civil War, and when he came home to Ohio at the termination of the war he was not yet old enough to vote.” But here is his letter:
“My dear Colonel: I am enjoying every inch of the text work in Trotwood’s—and especially that part that deals with the blue and gray paladins that wrestled for a time on the flanges of hell—in order to become better acquainted.
“Sometime, when you meet our friend Trotwood, tell him you once knew a trembling country boy, with calliper legs, who enlisted in the earliest earlies, and really thought for a time that he was a quarter section of Mars, until he hit Shiloh—and he has never fully recovered confidence in himself since. Even to this day, that boy needs no map of the ‘high places’ between Shiloh Church and the river bluffs. If there was a sunken road, it was so far below the level of the chain of pinnacles that youngster made use of in ‘promoting’ distance between section lines, that he only knows of it by hearsay and tradition, and that vortex called the ‘Hornet’s Nest’ was omnipresent in that lad’s ears until the following June. So far as that youth remembers, the “Purdy Road” only had one end leading in a bee-line to the steamboat landing, and he well remembers that large stocks of cannon balls were bursting in job lots as he crossed that open furnace known as the ‘Jones Field.’ For a number of days after the carnage at Shiloh this stripling of the tented field had no appetite for the ordinary rations, and it is doubtful if the best vaudeville extant could have made him sit up and take notice. He was much like Artemus Ward’s baby bear that straddled a buzz saw—willing to quit. Printer’s ink has been ladled out by the pailful to show that Shiloh was not a surprise; but the young truthful James of this sketch says that it was a ‘23’ for him—a powder and ball—before-breakfast surprise, accompanied by demoniacal yells that frayed the atmosphere and loosened the tent-pins of Sherman’s entire lines. If the loss of tents, luggage, arms, munitions, keepsakes, love letters, confidence, pride and self-respect was not enough to constitute evidences of a full-grown surprise, there was certainly nothing additional to throw in unless it might be the epiglottis and the back teeth. The youthful scion of this preachment says he has no doubt but the worthy men who wore the gray have had many a hearty laugh at the Herculean efforts of the North to show that Shiloh was not a surprise. Apropos of this, we are reminded of Len Wardlow, who was hurled from a sixth-story apartment during the San Francisco earthquake and lit in fifteen feet of water in an open cistern; Len says he was not one whit surprised, but for a very few minutes he was d—d badly startled.
“About the best definition of a ‘surprise’ is that it’s the unexpected; now, if, to drop into the language of Old Wash, our hosts, Grant and Sherman wuz expectin’ Deacons Johnsing and Booragard to come over real airly on dat Sunday mornin’ bringin’ dar Hornet’s Nests and bloody anglers erlong wid em, why in de name ob common eruptions didn’t dey fix for em? Put de house in order, have de different parts layin’ on de music rack and put all de perrotecknix whar de performers could stick er match to ’em? Stid ob dat, we all was a-actin’ as if no visitors was gwine to call on us dat Sunday mornin’ sure enough! Kase Grant was trimmin’ his korns way down at Savannah and Sharmin had put on no biled shirt to welcome de visitors. Ebber since dat Shiloh reception de rank and file, de real workers, hab all s’posed dat dey was sartinly not fixed for de influx ob callers—and ’specially not so tarnal airly. But de leaders, dem as was not dar to hear de knockin’ on de front door, and usher in Brer Johnsing, hab all erlong said dat de kyards had been out and de punch hole a simmerin’ for jist sech a quiltin’ and we are willin’ to ’serverate de leaders ought to know.”
TWO WOMEN AND A HORSE
Dear Trotwood: Knowing your fondness for satirizing women who drive horses, I am sending you this little true bill.
I was riding along the other week near a small city when a hard shower came up suddenly. Just before me I noticed two ladies driving a very spirited horse to a buggy. They were evidently just from the town. Instead of putting up the buggy top or drawing out the rain cloth when the shower came up, they each gave a little feminine shriek and both grabbed at once an umbrella, paying no attention whatever to the lines, and bent way over holding it over the rear end of the horse, the rain pouring down on them all the time. I followed them, looking on in amazement—there they were bending over the dashboard catching a hard rain on their graceful backs and well-fitting, new gowns and holding an umbrella half way over the southern half of a horse who was going along well enough and perfectly indifferent to the weather. For a mile they drove thus, and I followed, wondering. Finally, as I rode up to them, my curiosity was so great that I asked:
“Ladies, pardon me, but will you tell me why you are holding that umbrella over your horse and not protecting yourselves?”
“Why—yes,” one of them faltered, “we are scared nearly to death. You see, it is a hired horse, and we don’t know much about him, and when we hired him the liveryman told us to be very careful not to let him get the rain under his tail or he would kick us out and run away!”
C. R.