The Drummer Boy

J >> John Trowbridge >> The Drummer Boy

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16

"He is in camp, in the Jackson Blues," mid Frank. "I am going as drummer
in the same company."

"I'm glad of that," replied Mr. Winch. "For, though he is so much older
than you, I think you always have had an influence over him, Frank--a
good influence, too." And the neighbor took the young volunteer's hand.

Frank's eyes glistened--he felt so touched by this compliment, and so
proud that his father had heard it, and could go home and tell it to his
mother and sisters.

Neighbor Winch went on: "I want you to see John, as soon as you can,
Frank, and talk with him, and try to make him feel how wrongly he has
acted----"

Here the poor man's voice failed him; and Frank, sympathizing with his
sorrow, was filled with gratitude to think that he had never been tempted
to grieve his parents in the same way.

Mr. Manly accompanied his son to the railroad depot, and saw him safely
in the cars that were to convey him to camp, and then took leave of him.
The young volunteer would have forgotten his manhood, and cried, if the
eyes of strangers had not been upon him; even as it was, his voice broke
when he said his last good-by, and sent back his love to his mother and
sisters and little Willie.

III.

UNDER CANVAS.

The cars were soon off; and the heart of Frank swelled within him as he
felt himself now fairly embarked in his new adventure.

Soon enough the white tents of the camp rose in sight. The Stars and
Stripes floating under the blue sky, the soldiers in their blue uniforms,
the sentinels with their glittering bayoneted guns pacing up and down,
and above all, the sound of a drum, which he considered now to be a part
of his life, made him feel himself already a hero.

Several other recruits had come down in the train with him, accompanied
by an officer. Frank was a stranger to them all. But he was not long
without acquaintances, for he had scarcely alighted at the depot when he
saw coming towards him his neighbor and chum, Jack Winch, in soldier
clothes--a good-looking young fellow, a head taller and some two years
older than himself.

"Hello, Jack! how are you?"

"Tip-top!" said Jack, looking happy as a prince.

The officer who had brought down the recruits went with them to the
quartermaster's department, and gave orders for their outfit. When
Frank's turn came, his measure was taken, and an astonishing quantity of
army clothing issued to him. He had two pairs of drawers, two shirts, two
pairs of stockings, a blouse, a dress coat, an overcoat, a cap, a pair of
shoes, a pair of pantaloons, and a towel. Besides these he received a
knapsack, with two blankets; a haversack, with a tin plate, knife and
fork, and spoon; and a tin cup and canteen. He had also been told that he
should get his drum and drumsticks; but in this he was disappointed. The
department was out of drums.

"Never mind!" said Jack, consolingly. "You may consider yourself lucky to
draw your clothes so soon. I had to wait for mine till I was examined and
sworn in. The surgeons are so lazy, or have so much to do, or something,
it may be a week before you'll be examined."

Frank was soon surrounded by acquaintances whom he scarcely recognized at
first, they looked so changed and strange to him in their uniforms.

"How funny it seems," said he, "to be shaking hands with soldiers!"

"These are our tents," said Jack. "They all have their names, you see."

Which fact Frank had already noticed with no little astonishment.

The names were lettered on the canvas of the tents in characters far more
grotesque than elegant One was called the "Crystal Palace;" another, the
"Mammoth Cave;" a third bore the mystical title of "Owl House;" while a
fourth displayed the sign of the "Arab's Home;" etc.

"My traps are in the 'Young Volunteer,'" said Jack. "We give it that
name, because we are all of us young fellows in there. You can tie up
here too,"--entering the tent,--"if you want to."

Frank gladly accepted the proposition. "How odd it must seem," he said,
"to live and sleep under canvas!"

"You'll like it tip-top, when you get used to it," remarked Jack, with an
air of old experience.

Frank made haste to take off his civil suit and put on his soldier
clothes. Jack pronounced the uniform a splendid fit, and declared that
his friend looked "stunning."

"But you must have your hair cut, Frank. Look here; this is the fighting
trim!" and Jack Winch, pulling off his cap, made Frank laugh till the
tears came into his eyes, at the ludicrous sight. Jack's hair had been
clipped so close to his head that it was no longer than mouse's hair,
giving him a peculiarly grim and antique appearance.

"You look like Sinbad's Old Man of the Sea!" exclaimed Frank. "I won't
have my hair cut that way!"--feeling of his own soft brown curls, which
his mother was so fond of, and which he meant to preserve, if only for
her sake.

"Pshaw! you look like a girl! Come, Frank, there's a fellow in the 'Owl
House' that cuts all the hair for our company."

But here an end was put to the discussion by some of the boys without
crying, "Dinner!"

"Dinner!" repeated Jack. "Hurrah! let's go and draw our rations."

Three or four young volunteers now came into the tent, and, opening their
haversacks, drew forth their tin plates, knives and forks. Frank did the
same, and observing that they all took their tin cups, he took his also,
and followed them, with quite as much curiosity as appetite, to the
cook-shop, where a large piece of bread and a thick slice of boiled beef
was dealt out to each, together with a cup of coffee.

"How droll it seems to eat rations!" said Frank, on their return, seating
himself on his bed,--a tick filled with straw,--and using his lap for a
table.

The bread was sweet; but the beef was of not quite so fine a quality as
Frank had been used to at home and the coffee was not exactly like his
mother's.

"Here, have some milk," said Jack. "I've an account open with this
woman"--a wrinkled old creature, who came into the tent with a little
girl, bearing baskets of cakes and fruits, and a can of milk.

"No, I thank you," said Frank. "I may as well begin with the fare I shall
have to get used to some time, for I mean to send all my pay home to my
folks except what I'm actually obliged to use myself."

"You'll be a goose if you do!" retorted Jack. "I shan't send home any of
mine. I'm my own man now, ye see, and what I earn of Uncle Sam I'm going
to have a gallus old time with, you may bet your life on that!"

Frank drew a long breath, for he felt that the time had now come to have
the talk with his friend which Mr. Winch had requested.

"I saw your father, this morning, Jack."

"Did ye though? What did the old sinner have to say?"

"I don't like to hear you call your father such names," said Frank,
seriously. "And if you had seen how bad he felt, when he spoke of your
enlisting----"

"Pshaw, now, Frank! don't be green! don't get into a pious strain, I beg
of ye! You'll be the laughing-stock of all the boys, if ye do."

Frank blushed to the eyes, not knowing what reply to make. He had felt no
little pride in Mr. Winch's responsible charge to him, and had intended
to preach to his more reckless companion a good, sound, moral discourse
on this occasion. But to have his overtures received in this manner was
discouraging.

"Come," continued Jack, taking something from the straw, "we are soldiers
now, and must do as soldiers do. Have a drink, Frank?"--presenting a
small bottle.

"What is it?" Frank asked, and when told, "Brandy," he quickly withdrew
the hand he had extended. "No, I thank you, Jack, I am not going to drink
any thing of that sort, unless I need it as a medicine. And I am sorry to
see you getting into such habits so soon."

"Habits? what habits?" retorted Jack, blushing in his turn. "A little
liquor don't hurt a fellow. _I_ take it only as a medicine. You mustn't
go to being squeamish down here, I tell you." And Jack drank a swallow or
two, smacking his lips afterwards, as he returned the cork to the bottle.

By this time Frank's courage was up--his moral courage, I mean, which is
more rare, as it is far more noble, than any merely physical bravery in
the face of danger.

"I don't mean to be squeamish," he said; "but right is right, and wrong
is wrong, Jack. And what was wrong for us at home isn't going to be right
for us here. I, for one, believe we can go through this war without doing
any thing that will make our parents ashamed of us when we return."

"My eye!" jeered his companion; "and do you fancy a little swallow of
brandy is going to make my folks ashamed of me?"

"It isn't the single swallow I object to, Jack; it's the habit of
drinking. That's a foolish thing, to say the least, for young fellows,
like you and me, to get into; and we all know what it leads to. Who wants
to become a tobacco-spitting, rum-drinking, filthy old man?"

"Ha, ha, ha," laughed Jack; rather feebly, however, for he could not help
feeling that Frank was as much in the right as he was in the wrong. "You
look a long ways ahead, it seems to me. I haven't thought of being an old
man yet."

"If we live, we shall be men, and old men, too, some day," said Frank,
without minding his sneers. "And you know we are laying the foundations
of our future characters now."

"That's what your mother, or your Sunday school teacher, has been saying
to you."

"No matter who has said it. I know it's true, and I hope I never shall
forget it. I mean to become a true, honest man if I live; and now, I
believe, is the time to begin."

"O, no doubt you'll be great things," grinned Jack.

The tone in which he said this was highly offensive; and Frank was
provoked to retort,--

"You don't seem even to have thought what you are going to be. You try
first one thing, then another, and stick to nothing. That's what your
father said this morning, with tears in his eyes."

Jack turned red as fire, either with anger or shame, or both, and seemed
meditating a passionate reply, when some of his companions, who had been
eating their rations outside, entered the tent.

"Come in, boys," cried Jack, "and hear Frank preach. You didn't know we
had a chaplain in our company--did ye? That's the parson, there, with the
girl's hair. He can reel you off sermons like any thing. Fire away,
Frank, and show the boys."

"Yes, steam up, parson," said Joe Harris, "and give us a specimen."

"Play away, seven," cried Ned Ellis, as if Frank had been a fire-engine
of that number.

These, together with other facetious remarks, made Frank so ashamed and
confused that he could not say a word. For experience had not yet taught
him that even the most reckless and depraved, however they may laugh at
honest seriousness in a companion, cannot help respecting him for it in
their hearts.

"You needn't blush so, young chap," said tall Abram Atwater, a stalwart,
square-shouldered, square-featured young man of twenty, who alone had not
joined in the derisive merriment. "It won't hurt any of these fellows to
preach to them, and they know it."

Frank cast a grateful look at the tall soldier, who, though almost a
stranger to him, had thus generously taken his part against some who
professed to be his friends. He tried to speak, but could not articulate
a word, he was still feeling so hurt by Jack's ingratitude. Perhaps his
pride was as much wounded as his friendship; for, as we have hinted, he
had been a good deal puffed up with the idea of his influence over Jack.
This incident, as we shall see, had a bad effect upon Frank himself; for,
instead of persevering in the good work he had undertaken, he was
inclined to give up all hope of exerting an influence upon any body.

In the mean time Jack was washing down the sermon, as he said, with more
brandy.

"'Twas such an awful dry discourse, boys;" and he passed the bottle
around to the others, who all drank, except Abram Atwater. That stalwart
young soldier stood in the midst of the tent, straight and tall, with his
arms calmly folded under his blue cape (a favorite attitude of his), and
merely shook his head, with a mild and tolerant smile, when the liquor
was passed to him.

Such was the beginning of Frank's camp life. It was not long before he
had recovered from his confusion, and was apparently on good terms with
his messmates. He spent the afternoon in walking about the camp; watching
some raw recruits at their drill; watching others playing cards, or
checkers, or backgammon; getting acquainted, and learning the ways of the
camp generally.

So the day passed; and that night Frank lay for the first time
soldier-fashion, under canvas. He went to bed with his clothes on, and
drew his blanket over him. It was not like going to bed in his nice
little room at home, with Willie snuggled warmly beside him; yet there
was a novelty in this rude and simple mode of life that was charming. His
companions, who lay upon the ground around him, kept him awake with their
stories long after the lights were out; but at length, weary with the
day's excitement, he fell asleep.

There,--a dweller now in the picturesque white city of tents gleaming in
the moonlight, ruggedly pillowed on his soldier's couch, those soft brown
curls tossed over the arm beneath his head,--the drummer boy dreamed of
home. The last night's consultation and the morning's farewells were
lived over again in the visions of his brain; and once more his mother
visited his bedside; and again his father accompanied him to the
recruiting office. But now the recruiting office was changed into a
barber's shop, which seemed to be a tent supported by a striped pole;
where, at John Winch's suggestion, he was to have his hair trimmed to the
fighting-cut. The barber was a stiff-looking officer in epaulets, who
heated a sword red-hot in an oven, while Frank preached to him a neat
little sermon over his ration. Then the epaulets changed to a pair of
roosters with flaming red combs, that flapped their wings and crowed. And
the barber, approaching Frank with his red-hot sword, made him lie on his
back to be shaved. Then followed an excruciating sense of having his hair
pulled and his face scraped and burnt, which made him move and murmur in
his sleep; until, a ruthless attempt being made to thrust the sword up
his nostrils, he awoke.

Shouts of laughter greeted him. His companions had got up at midnight,
lighted a candle, and burnt a cork, with which they had been giving him
an artificial mustache and whiskers. He must have been a ludicrous sight,
with his countenance thus ornamented, sitting up on his bed, rubbing his
eyes open, and staring about him, while Winch and Harris shrieked with
mirth, and Ned Ellis flapped his arms and crowed.

Frank put up his hand to his head. O grief! his curls had been mangled by
dull shears in the unskilful hands of John Winch. The depredator was
still brandishing the miserable instrument, which he had borrowed for the
occasion of the fellow who cut the company's hair in the "Owl House."

Frank's sudden awaking, astonishment, and chagrin were almost too much
for him. He could have cried to think of a friend playing him such a
trick; and to think of his lost curls! But he had made up his mind to
endure every thing that might befall him with unflinching fortitude. He
must not seem weak on an occasion like this. His future standing with his
comrades might depend upon what he should say and do next. So he summoned
all his stoutness of heart, and accepted the joke as good-naturedly as
was possible under the circumstances.

"I wish you'd tell me what the fun is," he said, "so that I can laugh
too."

"Give him the looking-glass," cried Jack Winch, holding the candle, while
Ellis stopped crowing, to bring a little three-cornered fragment of a
broken mirror, by which Frank was shown the artistic burnt-cork work on
his face. He could hardly help laughing himself at his own hideousness,
now that the first disagreeable sense of being the sport of his friends
had passed.

"I hope you have had fun enough to pay for waking me up out of the
queerest dream any body ever had," he said. And he told all about the
barber, and the epaulets that became roosters, and the red-hot sword for
a razor, etc. Then, looking at himself again in the piece of glass, he
called out, "Give me those shears;" and taking them, he manfully cut off
his mutilated curls. "There, that isn't exactly the fighting-cut, Jack,
but 'twill do. Now, boys, tell some more of those dull stories, and I
guess I can go to sleep again."

And he lay down once more, declining to accept an urgent invitation to
preach.

"There, boys," said stout Abram Atwater, who had sat all the time
cross-legged, a silent, gravely-smiling spectator of the scene, "you
shan't fool him any more. He has got pluck; he has shown it. And now let
him alone."

IV.

THE OLD DRUMMER AND THE NEW DRUM.

As yet, Frank had no drum. Neither had he any scientific knowledge of the
instrument. He was ambitious of entering upon his novel occupation, and
was elated to learn, the next morning, that he was to begin his
acquaintance with the noble art of drumming that very day.

"The sergeant is inquiring for you," said Abram Atwater, with his mild,
pleasant smile, calling him out of the tent.

Frank, who was writing a letter to his mother, on his knapsack, jumped up
with alacrity, hid his paper, and ran out to see what was wanted.

"This way, Manly," said the sergeant. "Here's the man that's to give you
lessons. Go with him."

The teacher was a veteran drummer, with a twinkling gray eye, a long,
thick, gray mustache, and a rather cynical way of showing his teeth under
it. He had some drumsticks thrust into his pocket, but no drum.

"I suppose," thought Frank, "we shall find our drums in the woods;" into
which his instructor straightway conducted him in order to be away from
the diversions and noises of the camp.

Frank was disappointed. The veteran gave him his first exercise--on a
board!

"I thought I was to learn on a drum," he ventured to suggest, looking up,
not without awe, at the bushy mustache.

"You don't want a drum till you know how to drum," said the veteran.

"But I should think it would be better----"

"Wait!" lifting his drumstick. "Do you understand what we are here for?"

"To learn to drum," replied Frank, in some astonishment.

"To learn to drum," repeated the veteran, a curious smile just raising
the corners of that grizzled mustache. "You understand correctly. Now, am
I your teacher, or are you mine?"

"You are mine, sir," answered the boy, still more amazed.

"Right again!" exclaimed the professor. "That's the way I understood it;
but I might be wrong, you know. We are all liable to be wrong--are we
not?"

"Yes, sir."

Frank stared.

"Good again! But now it is understood correctly; I am your instructor,
and you are not mine; that is it."

Frank assented.

"Very well! Now listen. Since I am to give you lessons, and you are not
to give me lessons, you will follow the method I propose, and excuse me
if I decline to follow your method. That is reasonable,--isn't it?"

"Certainly, sir," murmured the abashed pupil.

"The point settled, then, we will proceed," said the veteran, with the
same incomprehensible, half-sarcastic, half-humorous, but now quite
good-natured smile lighting up his grim visage.

"But before we proceed," said Frank, "may I just say what I was going
to?"

The old drummer lifted both his sticks, and his eyebrows too (not to
speak of his shaggy mustache), in surprise at the lad's audacity.

"Do you want me to report you as insubordinate?" he asked, after a pause,
during which the two regarded each other somewhat after the fashion of
two dogs making acquaintance--a tall, leering old mastiff looking surlily
down at the advances of an anxious yet stout and unflinching young
spaniel.

"No, sir," answered Frank. "But I thought----"

"You thought! What business have you to think?"

"No business, perhaps," Frank admitted, confronting the weather-beaten
old drummer with his truthful, undaunted, fine young face. "But I can't
help thinking sir, for all that."

"You can help expressing your thoughts out of season, though," said the
veteran.

"I will try to in future, sir," answered Frank, laughing.

At the same time a smile of genuine benevolence softened the tough,
ancient visage of the veteran; and they proceeded with the lesson.

After it was over, the teacher said to the pupil,--

"Now, my young friend, I will hear that observation or question of yours,
whatever it is."

"I think I have answered it for myself," said Frank. "I was going to say,
I should think it would be better to learn to drum on a drum; but I see
now, if I get to roll the sticks on a board, which is hard, I can roll
them so much the better on a drumhead, which is elastic."

"Right, my young friend," replied the veteran, approvingly. "And in the
mean time, we avoid a good deal of unpleasant noise, as you see." For he
had other pupils practising under his eye in the woods, not far from
Frank.

"And I should like to ask--if I could have permission," began Frank,
archly.

"Ask me any thing you please, out of lesson-hours." And the old drummer
patted the young drummer's shoulder.

Frank felt encouraged. He was beginning to like his teacher,
notwithstanding his odd ways; and he hoped the old man was beginning to
like him.

"I want to know, then, if you think I will make a drummer?"

"And what if you will not?"

"Then I shall think I ought to give up the idea of it at once; for I
don't want to be second-rate in any thing I once undertake."

"And you have been just a little discouraged over your first lesson? and
would be willing now to give up?"

"No, sir. I should feel very bad to be obliged to give up the drum."

"Very well. Then I can say something to comfort you. Stick to it, as you
have begun, and you will make a drummer."

"A first-rate one?" Frank asked, eagerly.

"First-rate, or else I am no judge."

"I am glad!" and the delighted pupil fairly jumped for joy.

From that time the two got on capitally together. Frank soon become
accustomed to the veteran's eccentric manners, and made great proficiency
in his exercises. And it was not long before the hard-featured old
drummer began to manifest, in his way, a great deal of friendly interest
in his young pupil.

"Now, my boy," said he one day, after Frank had been practising
successfully the "seven-stroke roll," greatly to the satisfaction of his
instructor,--"now, my boy, I think you can be safely intrusted with your
comrade."

"My comrade?" queried the pupil.

"I mean, your better half."

"My better half?"

Frank was mystified.

"Yes, your wife." And the grizzly mustache curled with quiet humor.

"I must be a married man without knowing it!" laughed Frank.

"Your ship, then," said the veteran, dryly. "Come with me."

And conducting Frank to his tent, he took from one side an object covered
with a blanket.

"My ship!" cried Frank, joyfully, already guessing what treasure was now
to be his.

"Your sword, then, if you like that name better. For what his sword is to
a hero, what his ship is to a true sailor, what a wife is to a true
husband,--such, my young friend, to a genuine drummer is his drum."

So saying, the veteran threw aside the covering, and presented to his
pupil the long-coveted prize. The boy's eyes shone with pleasure, and (as
he wrote that evening to his parents) he was so happy he could have
hugged both the old drummer and the new drum.

"I selected it for you, and you may be sure it is a good one. It won't be
any handsomer, but, if you use it well, it won't be really much the
worse, for going through a campaign or two with you. For it is with drums
as it is with the drummers; they grow old, and get some honorable
scratches, and some unlucky bruises, and now and then a broken head; but,
God prospering them, they come out, at last, ugly to look at, perhaps"
(the veteran stroked his mustache), "but well-seasoned, and sound, and
very truly at your service."

Frank thought be saw a tear in his twinkling gray eye, and he was so much
affected by it, that he caught his hand in both of his, exclaiming,
"Bless you, dear sir! Dear, good sir, God bless you!"

The old man winked away the moisture from his eye, smiling still, but
with a quivering lip, and patted him gently on the shoulder, without
saying a word.

Frank had the sense to perceive that the interview was now over; the
veteran wished to be left alone; and, with the new drum at his side, he
left the tent, proud and happy, and wishing in his heart that he could do
something for that singular, kind old man.

As Frank was hastening to his tent, he was met by one of the captains in
his regiment, who, seeing the bright beaming face and new drum, accosted
him.

"So, you are a drummer boy--are you?"

"Yes, sir, I am learning to be one," said Frank, modestly.

Now, these two had seen each other often in camp and the captain had
always regarded Frank with a smile of interest and kindness, and Frank
(as he wrote home) had "always liked the looks of the captain
first-rate."

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16