Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 by Various

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862

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On the battle-field I parted with my two companions, the Chaplain and
the Philanthropist. They were going to the front, the one to find his
regiment, the other to look for those who needed his assistance. We
exchanged cards and farewells, I mounted the wagon, the horses' heads
were turned homewards, my two companions went their way, and I saw them
no more. On my way back, I fell into talk with James Grayden. Born in
England, Lancashire; in this country since he was four years old. Had
nothing to care for but an old mother; didn't know what he should do, if
he lost her. Though so long in this country, he had all the simplicity
and childlike light-heartedness which belong to the Old World's people.
He laughed at the smallest pleasantry, and showed his great white
English teeth; he took a joke without retorting by an impertinence; he
had a very limited curiosity about all that was going on; he had small
store of information; he lived chiefly in his horses, it seemed to me.
His quiet animal nature acted as a pleasing anodyne to my recurring fits
of anxiety, and I liked his frequent "'Deed I don' know, Sir," better
than I have sometimes relished the large discourse of professors and
other very wise men.

I have not much to say of the road which we were travelling for the
second time. Reaching Middletown, my first call was on the wounded
Colonel and his lady. She gave me a most touching account of all
the suffering he had gone through with his shattered limb before he
succeeded in finding a shelter, showing the terrible want of proper
means of transportation of the wounded after the battle. It occurred to
me, while at this house, that I was more or less famished, and for the
first time in my life I begged for a meal, which the kind family with
whom the Colonel was staying most graciously furnished me.

After tea, there came in a stout army-surgeon, a Highlander by birth,
educated in Edinburgh, with whom I had pleasant, not unstimulating
talk. He had been brought very close to that immane and nefandous
Burke-and-Hare business which made the blood of civilization run cold in
the year 1828, and told me, in a very calm way, with an occasional pinch
from the mull, to refresh his memory, some of the details of those
frightful murders, never rivalled in horror until the wretch Dumollard,
who kept a private cemetery for his victims, was dragged into the light
of day. He had a good deal to say, too, about the Royal College of
Surgeons in Edinburgh, and the famous preparations, mercurial and
the rest, which I remember well having seen there,--the "_sudabit
muitura_,--" and others,--also of our New-York Professor Carnochan's
handiwork, a specimen of which I once admired at the New York College.
But the Doctor was not in a happy frame of mind, and seemed willing to
forget the present in the past: things went wrong, somehow, and the time
was out of joint with him.

Dr. Thompson, kind, cheerful, companionable, offered me half his own
wide bed, in the house of Dr. Baer, for my second night in Middletown.
Here I lay awake again another night. Close to the house stood an
ambulance in which was a wounded Rebel officer, attended by one of their
own surgeons. He was calling out in a loud voice, all night long, as
it seemed to me, "Doctor! Doctor! Driver! Water!" in loud, complaining
tones, I have no doubt of real suffering, but in strange contrast with
the silent patience which was the almost universal rule.

The courteous Dr. Thompson will let me tell here an odd coincidence,
trivial, but having its interest as one of a series. The Doctor and
myself lay in the bed, and a lieutenant, a friend of his, slept on
the sofa. At night, I placed my match-box, a Scotch one, of the
Macpherson-plaid pattern, which I bought years ago, on the bureau, just
where I could put my hand upon it. I was the last of the three to rise
in the morning, and on looking for my pretty match-box, I found it was
gone. This was rather awkward,--not on account of the loss, but of the
unavoidable fact that one of my fellow-lodgers must have taken it. I
must try to find out what it meant.

"By the way, Doctor, have you seen anything of a little plaid-pattern
matchbox?"

The Doctor put his hand to his pocket, and, to his own huge surprise and
my great gratification, pulled out _two_ matchboxes exactly alike, both
printed with the Macpherson plaid. One was his, the other mine, which he
had seen lying round, and naturally took for his own, thrusting it into
his pocket, where it found its twin-brother from the same workshop. In
memory of which event we exchanged boxes, like two Homeric heroes.

This curious coincidence illustrates well enough some supposed cases of
_plagiarism_, of which I will mention one where my name figured. When a
little poem called "The Two Streams" was first printed, a writer in the
New York "Evening Post" virtually accused the author of it of borrowing
the thought from a baccalaureate sermon of President Hopkins, of
Williamstown, and printed a quotation from that discourse, which, as I
thought, a thief or catchpoll might well consider as establishing a
fair presumption that it was so borrowed. I was at the same time wholly
unconscious of ever having met with the discourse or the sentence which
the verses were most like, nor do I believe I ever had seen or heard
either. Some time after this, happening to meet my eloquent cousin,
Wendell Phillips, I mentioned the fact to him, and he told me that _he_
had once used the special image said to be borrowed, in a discourse
delivered at Williamstown. On relating this to my friend Mr. Buchanan
Read, he informed me that _he_, too, had used the image, perhaps
referring to his poem called "The Twins." He thought Tennyson had used
it also. The parting of the streams on the Alps is poetically elaborated
in a passage attributed to "M. Loisne," printed in the Boston "Evening
Transcript" for October 23d, 1859. Captain, afterwards Sir Francis Head,
speaks of the showers parting on the Cordilleras, one portion going to
the Atlantic, one to the Pacific. I found the image running loose in my
mind, without a halter. It suggested itself as an illustration of
the will, and I worked the poem out by the aid of Mitchell's School
Atlas.--The spores of a great many ideas are floating about in the
atmosphere. We no more know where all the growths of our mind came from
than where the lichens which eat the names off from the gravestones
borrowed the germs that gave them birth. The two match-boxes were just
alike, but neither was a plagiarism.

In the morning I took to the same wagon once more, but, instead of James
Grayden, I was to have for my driver a young man who spelt his name
"Phillip Ottenheimer," and whose features at once showed him to be an
Israelite. I found him agreeable enough, and disposed to talk. So I
asked him many questions about his religion, and got some answers that
sound strangely in Christian ears. He was from Wittenberg, and had
been educated in strict Jewish fashion. From his childhood he had read
Hebrew, but was not much of a scholar otherwise. A young person of his
race lost caste utterly by marrying a Christian. The Founder of our
religion was considered by the Israelites to have been "a right smart
man, and a great doctor," But the horror with which the reading of the
New Testament by any young person of their faith would be regarded was
as great, I judged by his language, as that of one of our straitest
sectaries would be, if he found his son or daughter perusing the "Age of
Reason."

In approaching Frederick, the singular beauty of its clustered spires
struck me very much, so that I was not surprised to find "Fair-View"
laid down about this point on a railroad-map. I wish some wandering
photographer would take a picture of the place, a stereoscopic one, if
possible, to show how gracefully, how charmingly, its group of steeples
nestles among the Maryland hills. The town had a poetical look from a
distance, as if seers and dreamers might dwell there. The first sign
I read, on entering its long street, might perhaps be considered as
confirming my remote impression. It bore these words: "Miss Ogle, Past,
Present, and Future." On arriving, I visited Lieutenant Abbott, and the
attenuated unhappy gentleman, his neighbor, sharing between them as my
parting gift what I had left of the balsam known to the Pharmacopoeia as
_Spiritus Vini Gallici_. I took advantage of General Shriver's always
open door to write a letter home, but had not time to partake of his
offered hospitality. The railroad-bridge over the Monocacy had been
rebuilt since I passed through Frederick, and we trundled along over the
track toward Baltimore.

It was a disappointment, on reaching the Eutaw House, where I had
ordered all communications to be addressed, to find no telegraphic
message from Philadelphia or Boston, stating that Captain H. had arrived
at the former place, "wound doing well in good spirits expects to leave
soon for Boston," After all, it was no great matter; the Captain was, no
doubt, snugly lodged before this in the house called Beautiful, at ----
Walnut Street, where that "grave and beautiful damsel named Discretion"
had already welcomed him, smiling, though "the water stood in her eyes,"
and had "called out Prudence, Piety, and Charity, who, after a little
more discourse with him, had him into the family."

The friends I had met at the Eutaw House had all gone but one, the lady
of an officer from Boston, who was most amiable and agreeable, and whose
benevolence, as I afterwards learned, soon reached the invalids I had
left suffering at Frederick. General Wool still walked the corridors,
inexpansive, with Fort McHenry on his shoulders, and Baltimore in his
breeches-pocket, and his courteous aid again pressed upon me his kind
offices. About the doors of the hotel the news-boys cried the papers in
plaintive, wailing tones, as different from the sharp accents of their
Boston counterparts as a sigh from the southwest is from a northeastern
breeze. To understand what they said was, of course, impossible to any
but an educated ear, and if I made out "Stoarr" and "Clipper," it was
because I knew beforehand what must be the burden of their advertising
coranach.

I set out for Philadelphia on the morrow, Tuesday the twenty-third,
there beyond question to meet my Captain, once more united to his brave
wounded companions under that roof which covers a household of as noble
hearts as ever throbbed with human sympathies. Back River, Bush River,
Gunpowder Creek,--lives there the man with soul so dead that his memory
has cerements to wrap up these senseless names in the same envelopes
with their meaningless localities? But the Susquehanna,--the broad,
the beautiful, the historical, the poetical Susquehanna,--the river of
Wyoming and of Gertrude, dividing the shores where

"aye these sunny mountains half-way down
Would echo flageolet from some romantic town,"--

did not my heart renew its allegiance to the poet who has made it lovely
to the imagination as well as to the eye, and so identified his fame
with the noble stream that it "rolls mingling with his fame forever"?
The prosaic traveller perhaps remembers it better from the fact that a
great sea-monster, in the shape of a steamboat, takes him, sitting
in the car, on its back, and swims across with him like Arion's
dolphin,--also that mercenary men on board offer him canvas-backs in the
season, and ducks of lower degree at other periods.

At Philadelphia again at last! Drive fast, O colored man and brother, to
the house called Beautiful, where my Captain lies sore wounded, waiting
for the sound of the chariot-wheels which bring to his bedside the face
and the voice nearer than any save one to his heart in this his hour of
pain and weakness! Up a long street with white shutters and white steps
to all the houses. Off at right angles into another long street with
white shutters and white steps to all the houses. Off again at another
right angle into still another long street with white shutters and white
steps to all the houses. The natives of this city pretend to know one
street from another by some individual differences of aspect; but the
best way for a stranger to distinguish the streets he has been in from
others is to make a cross or other mark on the white shutters.

This corner-house is the one. Ring softly,--for the Lieutenant-Colonel
lies there with a dreadfully wounded arm, and two sons of the family,
one wounded like the Colonel, one fighting with death in the fog of a
typhoid fever, will start with fresh pangs at the least sound you can
make. I entered the house, but no cheerful smile met me. The sufferers
were each of them thought to be in a critical condition. The fourth bed,
waiting its tenant day after day, was still empty. _Not a word from my
Captain._

Then, foolish, fond body that I was, my heart sank within me. Had he
been taken ill on the road, perhaps been attacked with those formidable
symptoms which sometimes come on suddenly after wounds that seemed to be
doing well enough, and was his life ebbing away in some lonely cottage,
nay, in some cold barn or shed, or at the way-side, unknown, uncared
for? Somewhere between Philadelphia and Hagerstown, if not at the latter
town, he must be, at any rate. I must sweep the hundred and eighty miles
between these places as one would sweep a chamber where a precious pearl
had been dropped. I must have a companion in my search, partly to help
me look about, and partly because I was getting nervous and felt lonely.
_Charley_ said he would go with me,--Charley, my Captain's beloved
friend, gentle, but full of spirit and liveliness, cultivated, social,
affectionate, a good talker, a most agreeable letter-writer, observing,
with large relish of life, and keen sense of humor.

He was not well enough to go, some of the timid ones said; but he
answered by packing his carpet-bag, and in an hour or two we were on the
Pennsylvania Central Railroad in full blast for Harrisburg.

I should have been a forlorn creature but for the presence of my
companion. In his delightful company I half forgot my anxieties, which,
exaggerated as they may seem now, ware not unnatural after what I had
seen of the confusion and distress that had followed the great battle,
nay, which seem almost justified by the recent statement that "high
officers" were buried after that battle whose names were never
ascertained. I noticed little matters, as usual. The road was filled in
between the rails with cracked stones, such as are used for Macadamizing
streets. They keep the dust down, I suppose, for I could not think of
any other use for them. By-and-by the glorious valley which stretches
along through Chester and Lancaster Counties opened upon us. Much as I
had heard of the fertile regions of Pennsylvania, the vast scale and the
uniform luxuriance of this region astonished me. The grazing pastures
were so green, the fields were under such perfect culture, the cattle
looked so sleek, the houses were so comfortable, the barns so ample, the
fences so well kept, that I did not wonder, when I was told that this
region was called the England of Pennsylvania. The people whom we saw
were, like the cattle, well-nourished; the young women looked round and
wholesome.

"_Grass makes girls_," I said to my companion, and left him to work out
my Orphic saying, thinking to myself, that, as guano makes grass, it
was a legitimate conclusion that Jehaboe must be a nursery of female
loveliness.

As the train stopped at the different stations, I inquired at each
if they had any wounded officers. None as yet; the red rays of the
battle-field had not streamed off so far as this. Evening found us in
the cars; they lighted candles in spring-candlesticks; odd enough I
thought it in the land of oil-wells and unmeasured floods of kerosene.
Some fellows turned up the back of a seat so as to make it horizontal,
and began gambling or pretending to gamble; it looked as if they were
trying to pluck a young countryman; but appearances are deceptive,
and no deeper stake than "drinks for the crowd" seemed at last to
be involved. But remembering that murder has tried of late years to
establish itself as an institution in the cars, I was less tolerant of
the doings of these "sportsmen" who tried to turn our public conveyance
into a travelling Frascali. They acted as if they were used to it, and
nobody seemed to pay much attention to their manoeuvres.

We arrived at Harrisburg in the course of the evening, and attempted to
find our way to the Jones House, to which we had been commended. By some
mistake, intentional on the part of somebody, as it may have been, or
purely accidental, we went to the Herr House instead. I entered my name
in the book, with that of my companion. A plain, middle-aged man stepped
up, read it to himself in low tones, and coupled to it a literary title
by which I have been sometimes known. He proved to be a graduate of
Brown University, and had heard a certain Phi Beta Kappa poem delivered
there a good many years ago. I remembered it, too; Professor Goddard,
whose sudden and singular death left such lasting regret, was the
Orator. I recollect that while I was speaking a drum went by the church,
and how I was disgusted to see all the heads near the windows thrust out
of them, as if the building were on fire. _Cedat armis toga._ The clerk
in the office, a mild, pensive, unassuming young man, was very polite in
his manners, and did all he could to make us comfortable. He was of a
literary turn, and knew one of his guests in his character of author. At
tea, a mild old gentleman, with white hair and beard, sat next us. He,
too, had come hunting after his son, a lieutenant in a Pennsylvania
regiment. Of these, father and son, more presently.

After tea we went to look up Dr. Wilson, chief medical officer of
the hospitals in the place, who was staying at the Brady House. A
magnificent old toddy-mixer, Bardolphian in hue and stern of aspect, as
all grog-dispensers must be, accustomed as they are to dive through the
features of men to the bottom of their souls and pockets to see whether
they are solvent to the amount of sixpence, answered my question by a
wave of one hand, the other being engaged in carrying a dram to his
lips. His superb indifference gratified my artistic feeling more than it
wounded my personal sensibilities. Anything really superior in its line
claims my homage, and this man was the ideal bar-tender, above all
vulgar passions, untouched by commonplace sympathies, himself a lover of
the liquid happiness he dispenses, and filled with a fine scorn of all
those lesser felicities conferred by love or fame or wealth or any
of the roundabout agencies for which his fiery elixir is the cheap,
all-powerful substitute.

Dr. Wilson was in bed, though it was early in the evening, not having
slept for I don't know how many nights.

"Take my card up to him, if you please."

"This way, Sir."

A man who has not slept for a fortnight or so is not expected to be as
affable, when attacked in his bed, as a French princess of old time
at her morning-receptions. Dr. Wilson turned toward me, as I entered,
without effusion, but without rudeness. His thick, dark moustache was
chopped off square at the lower edge of the upper lip, which implied a
decisive, if not a peremptory, style of character.

I am Doctor So-and-So. of Hub-town, looking after my wounded son. (I
gave my name and said _Boston_, of course, in reality.)

Dr. Wilson leaned on his elbow and looked up in my face, his features
growing cordial. Then he put out his hand, and good-humoredly excused
his reception of me. The day before, as he told me, he had dismissed
from the service a medical man hailing from ----, Pennsylvania, bearing
my last name, preceded by the same two initials; and he supposed, when
my card came up, it was this individual who was disturbing his slumbers.
The coincidence was so unlikely _a priori_, unless some forlorn parent
without antecedents had named a child after me, that I could not help
cross-questioning the Doctor, who assured me deliberately that the fact
was just as he had said, even to the somewhat unusual initials. Dr.
Wilson very kindly furnished me all the information in his power,
gave me directions for telegraphing to Chambersburg, and showed every
disposition to serve me.

On returning to the Herr House, we found the mild, white-haired old
gentleman in a very happy state. He had just discovered his son, in a
comfortable condition, at the United States Hotel. He thought that he
could probably give us some information which would prove interesting.
To the United States Hotel we repaired, then, in company with our
kind-hearted old friend, who evidently wanted to see me as happy as
himself. He went up-stairs to his son's chamber, and presently came down
to conduct us there.

Lieutenant P----, of the Pennsylvania ----th, was a very fresh,
bright-looking young man, lying in bed from the effects of a recent
injury received in action. A grape-shot, after passing through a post
and a board, had struck him in the hip, bruising, but not penetrating or
breaking. He had good news for me.

That very afternoon, a party of wounded officers had passed through
Harrisburg, going East. He had conversed in the bar-room of this hotel
with one of them, who was wounded about the shoulder, (it might be the
lower part of the neck,) and had his arm in a sling. He belonged to the
Twentieth Massachusetts; the Lieutenant saw that he was a Captain, by
the two bars on his shoulder-strap. His name was my family-name; he was
tall and youthful, like my Captain. At four o'clock he left in the train
for Philadelphia. Closely questioned, the Lieutenant's evidence was as
round, complete, and lucid as a Japanese sphere of rock-crystal.

TE DEUM LAUDAMUS! The Lord's name be praised! The dead pain in the
semilunar ganglion (which I must remind my reader is a kind of stupid,
unreasoning brain, beneath the pit of the stomach, common to man and
beast, which aches in the supreme moments of life, as when the dam loses
her young ones, or the wild horse is lassoed) stopped short. There was
a feeling as if I had slipped off a tight boot, or cut a strangling
garter,--only it was all over my system. What more could I ask to assure
me of the Captain's safety? As soon as the telegraph-office opens
to-morrow morning, we will send a message to our friends in Philadelphia,
and get a reply, doubtless, which will settle the whole matter.

The hopeful morrow dawned at last, and the message was sent accordingly.
In due time, the following reply was received:--

"Phil Sept 24 I think the report you have heard that W [the Captain] has
gone East must be an error we have not seen or heard of him here M L H"

DE PROFUNDIS CLAMAVI! He _could_ not have passed through Philadelphia
without visiting the house called Beautiful, where he had been so
tenderly cared for after his wound at Ball's Bluff, and where those whom
he loved were lying in grave peril of life or limb. Yet he _did_ pass
through Harrisburg, going East, going to Philadelphia, on his way
home. Ah, this is it! He must have taken the late night-train from
Philadelphia for New York, in his impatience to reach home. There is
such a train, not down in the guide-book, but we were assured of the
fact at the Harrisburg depot. By-and-by came the reply from Dr.
Wilson's telegraphic message: nothing had been heard of the Captain at
Chambersburg. Still later, another message came from our Philadelphia
friend, saying that he was seen on Friday last at the house of Mrs. K--,
a well-known Union lady, in Hagerstown. Now this could not be true, for
he did not leave Keedysville until Saturday; but the name of the lady
furnished a clue by which we could probably track him. A telegram was
at once sent to Mrs. K--, asking information. It was transmitted
immediately, but when the answer would be received was uncertain, as the
Government almost monopolized the line. I was, on the whole, so well
satisfied that the Captain had gone East, that, unless something were
heard to the contrary, I proposed following him in the late train,
leaving a little after midnight for Philadelphia.

This same morning we visited several of the temporary hospitals,
churches and school-houses, where the wounded were lying. In one of
these, after looking round as usual, I asked aloud, "Any Massachusetts
men here?" Two bright faces lifted themselves from their pillows and
welcomed me by name. The one nearest me was private John B. Noyes, of
Company B, Massachusetts Thirteenth, son of my old college class-tutor,
now the reverend and learned Professor of Hebrew, etc., in Harvard
University. His neighbor was Corporal Armstrong, of the same Company.
Both were slightly wounded, doing well. I learned then and since from
Mr. Noyes that they and their comrades were completely overwhelmed
by the attentions of the good people of Harrisburg,--that the ladies
brought them fruits and flowers, and smiles, better than either,--and
that the little boys of the place were almost fighting for the privilege
of doing their errands. I am afraid there will be a good many hearts
pierced in this war that will have no bullet-mark to show.

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